Category: South East England

South East Eng­land

Reading: Common Ground, squatted community garden, to re-open 12 April!

Spring re-ener­gis­es squat­ting gar­den­ers to dig-in and con­tin­ue the strug­gle!

1. Com­mon Ground Squat­ted Com­mu­ni­ty Gar­den Re-Open­ing, 1pm, 12th April!

Time: Open from 1pm, Com­mu­ni­ty BBQ (tra­di­tion­al & veg­an) from 3pm, live acoustic music from 6pm.
Date: Sat­ur­day 12th April

Spring re-ener­gis­es squat­ting gar­den­ers to dig-in and con­tin­ue the strug­gle!

1. Com­mon Ground Squat­ted Com­mu­ni­ty Gar­den Re-Open­ing, 1pm, 12th April!

Time: Open from 1pm, Com­mu­ni­ty BBQ (tra­di­tion­al & veg­an) from 3pm, live acoustic music from 6pm.
Date: Sat­ur­day 12th April
Venue: Com­mon Ground Com­mu­ni­ty Gar­den, entrance through alley­way next to (Ex) Wom­ens Infor­ma­tion Cen­tre, Sil­ver Street, Read­ing, RG2.

Con­tact: Tele­phone 07774023475 on the day for lat­est infor­ma­tion.
Email katesgrovegarden@yahoo.co.uk any oth­er time.

2. ‘Plan B’…

If nec­es­sary, we will take the cel­e­bra­tion to the spoil­sport author­i­ties!

3. Com­mon Ground Col­lec­tive joins anti-cap­i­tal­ists!

We unite to fight for “Every­thing for Every­one!”

4. Plans for new ‘autho­rised’ com­mu­ni­ty gar­den in Kates­grove pro­gress­ing.

Any­one inter­est­ed urged to get in con­tact.

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1. Com­mon Ground Squat­ted Com­mu­ni­ty Gar­den Re-Open­ing, 1pm 12th April!

Gar­den­ers reaf­firm “We will always val­ue com­mu­ni­ty, democ­ra­cy and com­mon sense over prop­er­ty rights and beu­ro­c­ra­cy!”

Com­mon Ground Col­lec­tive plan to re-open the squat­ted com­mu­ni­ty gar­den (1) in Sil­ver Street to the pub­lic from 1pm on Sat 12th April, with a free BBQ (tra­di­tion­al and veg­an) from 3pm and live acoustic music from 6pm. (2)

Fol­low­ing the gar­den being closed down by landown­ers Read­ing Bor­ough Coun­cil (RBC) in Oct 07, it turned out that RBC intend to pri­va­tise the site, flog­ging it off to the mul­ti­mil­lionare ‘Unite Group’, a com­pa­ny spe­cial­is­ing in pro­vid­ing pri­vate­ly owned stu­dent acco­mo­da­tion and renowned across the coun­try for rip­ping stu­dents off in the process (3).

How­ev­er, five months have now passed dur­ing which the peo­ple of Kates­grove have had one of our few poten­tial green spaces denied from them and despite RBC and Unite say­ing a con­tract would be signed in Decem­ber 07, no progress seems to have yet been made. Even if a con­tract were to be signed tomor­row, which we vehe­ment­ly oppose as being unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic (4), no plan­ning per­mis­sion could be grant­ed for months, leav­ing the land des­o­late and unused for the dura­tion when fam­i­lies from the neigh­bour­hood could be enjoy­ing it.

For this rea­son, we have resolved to once again take direct-action and re-open Com­mon Ground Com­mu­ni­ty Gar­den to our neigh­bours and any­one who cares to enjoy it, begin­ning on Sat 12th April. We have cho­sen this date to tie in with a Euro­pean ‘day-of-action for squats and autonomous spaces’, where sim­i­lar activ­i­ties will take place across the UK and in more than 20 cities Europe wide. (5)

As always, we hope that RBC will see sense and allow the gar­den to be re-opened. Clear­ly we dis­agree on what should hap­pen to the site long term, but sure­ly it does not make sense to see the site once again aban­doned for a sig­nif­i­cant amount of time when it could be pro­vid­ing much need­ed green space and relax­ation to peo­ple and fam­i­lies from around the area. We encour­age RBC to sup­port us and to dis­cuss meth­ods of alle­vi­at­ing any con­cerns they might have.

How­ev­er, as pre­vi­ous­ly, we aim to go ahead regard­less of the the views of the author­i­ties. We will always val­ue com­mu­ni­ty, democ­ra­cy and com­mon sense above prop­er­ty rights and beu­ro­c­ra­cy.

2. ‘Plan B’…

We recog­nise with sad­ness that there is a (hope­ful­ly very small) pos­si­bil­i­ty that the author­i­ties will not see sense and could suc­ceed in phys­i­cal­ly pre­vent­ing us re-open­ing Com­mon Ground. But nev­er fear, ‘Plan B’ is here!

In this sit­u­a­tion, the entire event will sim­ply be relo­cat­ed into the Town Cen­tre, tak­ing place exact­ly as adver­tised but in the area imme­di­ate­ly in front of the Civic Cen­tre and law courts, behind the Police Sta­tion and just off Hosier Street. (6)

If mem­bers of the pub­lic can­not find us at Com­mon Ground in Sil­ver Street, they are encour­aged to join us at this sec­ond loca­tion. Alter­na­tive­ly, peo­ple can ring 07774023475 on the day for up to date infor­ma­tion.

3. Com­mon Ground group joins anti-cap­i­tal­ists!

In ear­ly March, Com­mon Ground Col­lec­tive agreed to affil­i­ate to anti-cap­i­tal­ist organ­i­sa­tion ‘Read­ing Grass­roots Action’ (RGA). RGA aims to organ­ise in a direct­ly-demo­c­ra­t­ic way (i.e. every­one involved is equal), tak­ing direct-action to defend and improve our lives, sup­port­ing oth­er com­mu­ni­ties and groups of work­ers local­ly and glob­al­ly and unit­ing and link­ing with oth­ers to con­tin­ue the growth of the glob­al ‘anti-cap­i­tal­ist’ move­ments.

Sev­er­al peo­ple involved in Com­mon Ground, includ­ing many of those who orig­i­nal­ly start­ed the gar­den project, were all­ready mem­bers of RGA, and Com­mon Ground view this step of join­ing RGA ‘en masse’ as an entire­ly log­i­cal one. The prin­ci­ples which under­pin Com­mon Ground — includ­ing oppo­si­tion to devel­op­mentim­posed from out­side and above the com­mu­ni­ty, a belief that land should be under the ‘com­mon own­er­ship’ of the peo­ple (its use decid­ed by and for the ben­e­fit of every­one affect­ed not by minori­ties for pri­vate prof­it), as well as our use of direct-action and direct-democ­ra­cy — are tak­en to their log­i­cal con­clu­sion in RGA’s more gen­er­al anti-cap­i­tal­ist, egal­i­tar­i­an, com­mu­nis­tic hall­marks. (7)

As Com­mon Ground said in our very first press-release, “by cul­ti­vat­ing unused derelict land with­out the con­sent of author­i­ties and landown­ers, we present a pos­i­tive demon­stra­tion of resis­tance to the (dom­i­nant) set of pri­or­i­ties which sees our local envi­ron­ment as just anoth­er (exploitable) com­mod­i­ty”. And by join­ing with RGA we declare our inten­tion to con­tin­ue this strug­gle in all areas of life, unit­ing to fight for “Every­thing for every­one”! (8)

4. Plans for new ‘autho­rised’ com­mu­ni­ty gar­den in Kates­grove
pro­gress­ing.

Mean­while, sev­er­al peo­ple involved in Com­mon Ground/RGA, are work­ing to ensure that an ‘autho­rised’ com­mu­ni­ty gar­den is estab­lished in Kates­grove. As a response to Com­mon Ground Com­mu­ni­ty Gar­den, RBC offered two oth­er sites of derelict land, to be used for such a project. Fol­low­ing meet­ings with both RBC, local coun­cil­lors and Kates­grove Res­i­dents Asso­ci­a­tion, plans are pro­gress­ing.

The con­di­tions of the RBC offer have now been clar­i­fied, sat­is­fy­ing all involved that there is def­i­nite poten­tial worth work­ing for. Kates­grove Res­i­dents Asso­ci­a­tion have hap­pi­ly agreed that any ‘autho­rised’ com­mu­ni­ty gar­den could be man­aged under their name, and research is ongo­ing into the method of legal­ly insur­ing any such gar­den. All involved are very pos­i­tive that this project can be realised over the next year or so, and we strong­ly encour­age any­one iter­est­ed in any capac­i­ty to get in touch via Com­mon Ground’s email address: katesgrovegarden@yahoo.co.uk

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Com­mon Ground con­tin­ue to meet at 3pm, every Sun­day, in ‘The Turks’
pub on the Lon­don Road. Every­one who can agree to work with­in the RGA hall­marks
(found at www.rgacollective.org.uk) and Com­mon Ground aims, is wel­come to join us.

We can be con­tact­ed by email at katesgrovegarden@yahoo.co.uk.

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Notes for the edi­tor:

1. Tak­ing inspi­ra­tion from New York, where work­ing-class, most­ly immi­grant, com­mu­ni­ties had ille­gal­ly trans­formed hun­dreds of derelict lots into won­der­ful com­mu­ni­ty gar­dens (see http://www.weareeverywhere.org), Com­mon Ground was orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed by squat­ters and local res­i­dents in Jan 07 on land owned by RBC. RBC had left the land and sur­round­ing build­ings a nee­dle-cov­ered derelict junk­yard for more than five years before­hand. Despite legal threats (includ­ing an injunc­tion bar­ring the open­ing and an vic­tion notice being served), the gar­den was opened in May 07, reciev­ing huge sup­port through­out the com­mu­ni­ty and beyond, as well as favourable media reports includ­ing tele­vi­sion news clips. Over the sum­mer, the gar­den was enjoyed by local peo­ple — young and old — every­day and sev­er­al well attend­ed com­mu­ni­ty events were held in the gar­den includ­ing BBQ’s, live acoustic music shows, an art day and a talk by a vis­it­ing indige­nous ‘land-rights’ cam­paign­er from Mex­i­co. Two ‘evic­tion days’ were seen off by local protest and refusal to coop­er­ate, before the gar­den and near­by squat was final­ly evict­ed, through phys­i­cal force, on 18th Octo­ber.

2. Sev­en acoustic acts, rang­ing in influ­ence across folk, punk, ska, coun­try and hip-hop, are con­firmed: Neil Suther­land ( http://www.myspace.com/neilsutherlandacoustic), Nao­mi-Hates-Humans ( http://www.myspace.com/?????), Sam Rus­so, Kel­ly
Kemp ( http://www.myspace.com/?????), Smoky Bas­tard ( http://www.myspace.com/smokybastard??) and Clay­ton Bliz­zard ( http://www.myspace.com/claytonblizzard).

3. Unite Group hope to con­struct a huge (300+ capac­i­ty) devel­op­ment on the site, rent­ing rooms to stu­dents at over­all prices poten­tial­ly £1000’s above the aver­age cost of uni­ver­si­ty owned acco­mo­da­tion. This is despite two stu­dent halls build­ings hav­ing lain emp­ty for two years less than 200 yards away. For infor­ma­tion and links to com­plaints and cam­paigns against Unite Group from around the UK, please con­tact Com­mon Ground.

3. RBC is nego­ti­at­ing the pri­vati­sa­tion (flog­ging off) of land which is cur­rent­ly pub­licly-owned, behind closed doors and away from the com­mu­ni­ty and pub­lic. There has been no pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion about whether the land should or should not be sold, let alone ‘who to’ and ‘for what pur­pose’. We do not con­sid­er a plan­ning con­sul­ta­tion to be be any­thing like ade­quate, as this would come after the land had been sold and plan­ners can only con­sid­er spe­cif­ic con­cerns, not tak­ing into account wider social or envi­ron­men­tal fac­tors. Democ­ra­cy can only mean some­thing if local com­mu­ni­ties have direct con­trol over their own resources.

4. Please see http://april2008.squat.net for more infor­ma­tion or http://www.indymedia.org.uk for arti­cles about spe­cif­ic actions planned. So far we know of actions planned in Lon­don, Leeds and Man­ches­ter, as well as Read­ing and 20 oth­er cities around Europe.

5. We have cho­sen this loca­tion as we feel it would be an apt protest
against the author­i­ties actions sur­round­ing Com­mon Ground, as well as
express­ing our oppo­si­tion to the pos­si­ble fur­ther pri­vati­sa­tion of pub­licly-owned land
in this area and any poten­tial neg­a­tive effects against the mar­ket, which is of major ben­e­fit to low-income res­i­dents like our­selves.

6. For more infor­ma­tion please see http://www.rgacollective.org.uk. RGA is cur­rent­ly based on the ‘Hall­marks’ of glob­al anti-cap­i­tal­ist net­work ‘Peo­ple’s Glob­al Action’. These hall­marks and more infor­ma­tion can be found at http://www.agp.org. RGA cur­rent­ly meets at 8pm every Thurs­day, in the Turks pub on Lon­don Street. Any­one who agrees to work with­in the hall­marks is wel­come. Every­one is free to make pro­pos­als and dis­cuss items on the agen­da, all mem­bers (i.e. those who have attend­ed four or more meet­ings) have an equal vote and roles of ‘chair­per­son’ and ‘minute-tak­er’ are rotat­ed each week.

7. “Every­thing for Every­one, Noth­ing Only for Our­selves!” is the
slo­gan of Mex­i­co’s ‘Zap­atista’ rebel com­mu­ni­ties. RGA and par­tic­u­lar­ly Com­mon
Ground was great­ly inspired by their strug­gles.

Com­mon Ground
http://www.rgacollective.org.uk

Newbury Bypass video archive (& other protest gems)

Near­ly 3 hours of neat­ly col­lat­ed video from the New­bury Bypass evic­tions in the win­ter of 1996.

Very last cen­tu­ry, but good for inspi­ra­tion…

http://www.kinokast.net/newbury.html
kinokast@gmail.com

There’s also lots of stuff:
var­i­ous envi­ron­men­tal protests at http://www.kinokast.net/ecoprotest.html
RTSs at http://www.kinokast.net/reclaimthestreets.html

Near­ly 3 hours of neat­ly col­lat­ed video from the New­bury Bypass evic­tions in the win­ter of 1996.

Very last cen­tu­ry, but good for inspi­ra­tion…

http://www.kinokast.net/newbury.html
kinokast@gmail.com

There’s also lots of stuff:
var­i­ous envi­ron­men­tal protests at http://www.kinokast.net/ecoprotest.html
RTSs at http://www.kinokast.net/reclaimthestreets.html
and Lon­don Crit­i­cal Mass­es, G8 and much more, www.kinokast.net

Aberthaw power station succesfully blockaded this morning (updated — videos) & follow-up action at npower HQ

At 7.30am this morn­ing, activists suc­cess­ful­ly block­ad­ed all entrances to Aberthaw Pow­er Sta­tion in Bar­ry, South Wales.

Press Release: For Imme­di­ate Release
3rd April 2008

Aberthaw power stationAberthaw power station 2
At 7.30am this morn­ing, activists suc­cess­ful­ly block­ad­ed all entrances to Aberthaw Pow­er Sta­tion in Bar­ry, South Wales.

Press Release: For Imme­di­ate Release
3rd April 2008
Oxford Activists Hit Welsh Pow­er Plant

This morn­ing, eight activists from Oxford have suc­cess­ful­ly dis­rupt­ed work at a coal-pow­ered pow­er sta­tion in Wales.

The group have helped block­ade entrances to Aberthaw Pow­er Sta­tion in Bar­ry, Wales. This is to raise aware­ness of the dev­as­tat­ing affect that Wales’s biggest pol­luter has on the plan­et. [1]

The group are act­ing in sol­i­dar­i­ty with cur­rent actions against the Ffos-y-fran open­cast coal mine in Merthyr Tyd­fil, South Wales. Aberthaw pow­er sta­tion is burn­ing coal extract­ed from the con­tro­ver­sial mine[2].

Deb­o­rah Locke, 30, who is one of the activists cur­rent­ly block­ing the road said,
“Cli­mate change is the biggest issue of our time, and we all have to pow­er to take action to halt cli­mate cat­a­stro­phe. We are act­ing in sol­i­dar­i­ty with activists and locals in Merthyr where the mine is not only envi­ron­men­tal­ly dev­as­tat­ing, but is also dan­ger­ous­ly close to where peo­ple are liv­ing.”

RWEn­pow­er own Aberthaw pow­er sta­tion, and also Did­cot Pow­er Sta­tion in Oxford­shire. Did­cot pow­er sta­tion is at the heart of a deba­cle that might see local beau­ty spots Thrupp and Bull­field Lakes filled with pul­verised fuel ash (PFA) from the plant.[3]

Andy, a stu­dent at Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty argued,

“Anoth­er rea­son why we have come here today is to high­light the link between big busi­ness and cli­mate change. Sci­en­tists reck­on that annu­al­ly, around 400,000 deaths are direct­ly linked due to inhal­ing soot. Also, coal has a dev­as­tat­ing affect on the cli­mate, around 150,000 die every year due to cli­mate change. We just can­not go back to the coal age.”

The activists plan to block­ade for as long as pos­si­ble.

Ends

Notes to Edi­tors
[1] Aberthaw Pow­er sta­tion is a coal-pow­ered sta­tion sit­u­at­ed near the coast of Wales. Accord­ing to Friends of the Earth Cmyru, in 2006 it pro­duced sev­en mil­lion tonnes of car­bon diox­ide emis­sions. In 2007, it was deemed to be num­ber one of the top ten biggest pol­luters in Wales (Lisa Jones, ‘Aberthaw is Wales’ biggest pol­luter’, South Wales Echo, 07/12/07)
[2] More about Ffos-y-Fran can be found at http://thecoalhole.org, con­tact the cam­paign’s media team 07775 654 500 / 07876 753 254
[3] The Save Radley lakes cam­paign argue, with sci­en­tif­ic back-up, that the ash also con­tains poi­so­nous heavy met­als (lead, mer­cury, arsenic, cad­mi­um and some ura­ni­um) For more infor­ma­tion Radley Lakes cam­paign please see: http://www.saveradleylakes.org.uk

oxford autonomists[at]googlemail[dot]com
http://thecoalhole.org

—————————–

Mem­bers of bris­tol ris­ing tide are suc­ces­ful­ly blockad­ing Aberthaw pow­er sta­tion, Wales worst pol­luter, 10 bris­tol activists have done a joint action with Bath, Cardiff and Oxford activist as part of a nation­wide prostest against some of the worst pol­lut­ing com­paines in the uk.

Today mem­bers of Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide, a group of cli­mate activists [1], are par­tic­i­pat­ing in an action that has stopped nor­mal work at Wale’s biggest pol­luter, Aberthaw Pow­er Sta­tion in the Vale of Glam­or­gan. The pow­er sta­tion, also con­demned by work­ers for its poor safe­ty record, last year pumped out more than 7.4million tonnes of CO2 (car­bon diox­ide), the major con­trib­u­tor to cli­mate change. It also emit­ted 28,000 tonnes of nitro­gen diox­ide and 31,000 tonnes of sul­phur diox­ide – two chem­i­cals that con­tribute to acid rain.

This action comes after the suc­cess­ful clo­sure by activists of Ffos-y-Fran open cast mine in Merthyr Tyd­fil, on Tues­day 1st April. Ffos-y-Fran is the biggest mine in Europe and has been forced upon the peo­ple of Merthyr Tyd­fil in-order to fuel the dirt­i­est of all pow­er sta­tions and big busi­ness’s greed for prof­it.

As the world acknowl­edges the need for a sub­stan­tial reduc­tion in car­bon emis­sions the gov­ern­ment and the Welsh Assem­bly have giv­en their back­ing for the min­ing com­pa­ny Miller-Argent to spend upwards of 17 years extract­ing 11 mil­lion tons of coal from the near­by Ffos-y-Fran open cast mine in Merthyr Tyd­fil to con­tin­ue feed­ing this pow­er sta­tion.

As fos­sil fuels go coal is a seri­ous con­tender for the dirt­i­est known. But despite the fact that coal-burn­ing gen­er­a­tors pro­duce twice the car­bon emis­sions of gas burn­ers [2], the gov­ern­ment intends to build £20 bil­lion worth of new coal-burn­ing gen­er­a­tors by 2020.

Gor­don James, direc­tor of Friends of the Earth Cym­ru, described the pow­er sta­tion as a “dirty dinosaur” that should not be allowed to stay open in its present form. But RWEN­Pow­er, the gen­er­at­ing com­pa­ny that runs Aberthaw, said, “It is true Aberthaw Pow­er Sta­tion is a large emit­ter of CO2 and that there are oth­er emis­sions involved in pow­er gen­er­a­tion.”

Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide believes that it is cru­cial to high­light the con­cerns and issues sur­round­ing the devel­op­ment of Aberthaw and the pro­posed new invest­ments into Coal pow­ered gen­er­a­tors such as Kingsnorth pow­er sta­tion in Kent. The site of the next Camp for Cli­mate Action.

Cia­ra, a mem­ber of Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide states: “The burn­ing of coal at Aberthaw and the new pow­er sta­tions across the UK such as Kingsnorth will only exac­er­bate the prob­lems of cli­mate chaos. Peo­ple need to know that the gov­ern­ment is hell bent on return­ing us to the dark age of fos­sil fuel.”

bristol@risingtide.org.uk
http://risingtide.org.uk/bristol

—————————–

10:48am
There are still 11 activists in atten­dance at the plant — four locked on and sev­en in sup­port. Although it is true that the work­ers have been sent home for the day.

—————————–

npower actionOxford activists round up day of anti-coal action with vis­it to npow­er HQ

After suc­cess­ful­ly blockad­ing Aberthaw pow­er sta­tion in South Wales, a crack team of Oxford activists paid a vis­it to npow­er HQ.

Activists moved from their suc­cess­ful block­ade of the back entrance to Aberthaw pow­er sta­tion, owned by npow­er, which was part of a joint action with Bris­tol, Bath & Cardiff activists. Once work­ers had been instruct­ed by man­age­ment to take the day off, the activists moved to their next tar­get. They occu­pied npow­er’s head office in Swin­don, ask­ing to talk to the CEO and unfurl­ing their ban­ner read­ing “Cli­mate Change Starts Here” in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the activists remain­ing at Aberthaw.

Mis­chie­vous activist Jack Green said, “Coal is the dirt­i­est fos­sil fuel in exis­tence; car­bon cap­ture and stor­age is unproven and will be too lit­tle, too late. Accord­ing to the World Health Organ­i­sa­tion, cli­mate change is already killing 150,000 peo­ple per year.”

The cam­paign­ers left peace­ful­ly and there were no arrests.
oxfordautonomists@googlemail.com
http://www.thecoalhole.org/

—

Video from the locked on vehi­cles, of sur­veil­lance by state and by Miller-Argent, with a state­ment by exec direc­tor Steven Till­man.

Video not sure who this guy works for — video/quicktime 1.6M

Video weak­est link? — video/quicktime 4.3M

Video state­ment — video/quicktime 35M

Video var­i­ous — video/quicktime 16M

A love­ly suit­case full of con­crete

Fossil Fools Day action round up — fully updated

Pic­tures, more info on all these actions and updates at http://www.fossilfoolsday.org
Start plan­ning your next action on the upcom­ing days of action on False Solu­tions (1st May), and Food (3rd June).
More details are below these brief reports:
Activists Block­ade Major Gas Ter­mi­nal, Nor­folk UK
Earth First! UK activists today block­ad­ed the UK’s largest off shore gas ter­mi­nal at Bac­ton in Nor­folk. 40% of the UK’s domes­tic gas comes ashore here, is processed and dis­trib­uted by pipeline. Activists block­ad­ed the main road out­side the site at 6.30 am this morn­ing, pre­vent­ing con­struc­tion work­ers and shift work­ers from arriv­ing. There were 19 Arrests.

Pic­tures, more info on all these actions and updates at http://www.fossilfoolsday.org
Start plan­ning your next action on the upcom­ing days of action on False Solu­tions (1st May), and Food (3rd June).
More details are below these brief reports:
Bacton FFD 1Activists Block­ade Major Gas Ter­mi­nal, Nor­folk UK
Earth First! UK activists today block­ad­ed the UK’s largest off shore gas ter­mi­nal at Bac­ton in Nor­folk. 40% of the UK’s domes­tic gas comes ashore here, is processed and dis­trib­uted by pipeline. Activists block­ad­ed the main road out­side the site at 6.30 am this morn­ing, pre­vent­ing con­struc­tion work­ers and shift work­ers from arriv­ing. There were 19 Arrests.

Merthyr Tydfil FFD actionPro­test­ers Shut down open-cast coal mine, Merthyr Tyd­fil, Wales.
Pro­test­ers Shut Open­cast Coal Mine Direct action expos­es ‘black hole’ in cli­mate change pol­i­cy Tues­day, 1st April, 2008: At 7am this morn­ing, pro­test­ers halt­ed work at one of the biggest open­cast coal mines in Europe. They intend to remain on the site for sev­er­al days. Video here

Ban­ner Hang for Fos­sil Fools in Wrex­ham, Wales
Read­ing “Car cul­ture = Cli­mate Chaos”

Cli­mate activists block­ade E‑on in Not­ting­ham, UK
Nottingham FFD 1Cli­mate activists from East­side Cli­mate Action block­ad­ed E‑on work­ers as part of Inter­na­tion­al Fos­sil Fools Day. At 7:30 this morn­ing 30 peo­ple block­ad­ed the entrances to E‑on’s offices on Mount St, Not­ting­ham City Cen­tre. Peo­ple cov­ered in green paint to rep­re­sent E‑on’s green­wash, locked onto the front entrance to E‑on’s office and stood in front of oth­er entrances pre­vent­ing E‑on work­ers from get­ting to work.

Cli­mate Activists Shut down Esso sta­tion, Ply­mouth, UK
Cli­mate activists from Ris­ing Tide occu­pied the Esso petrol sta­tion on Exeter Street in Ply­mouth. There were sev­en arrests. Thir­ty occu­pied the fore­court and three took to the roof shut­ting it down for over two hours.

Shenani­gans in Southamp­ton, UK
Today cli­mate activists from Southamp­ton tar­get­ed the Shell garage on Burgess Road cor­nered with Glen Eyre Road as part of Inter­na­tion­al Fos­sil Fools Day. A group of eight activists have tak­en over the fore­court and three activists have scaled and occu­pied the roof with a ban­ner.

Land Rover Ad Agency occu­pied by Lon­don Ris­ing Tide on Fos­sil Fools Day
Activists from cli­mate jus­tice direct action group Lon­don Ris­ing Tide (LRT) have occu­pied the offices of Y&R, the ad agency behind the cur­rent Land Rover cam­paign, and a new cam­paign for arms giant BAe Sys­tems.

EV-EON Car­bon Cap­ture launched on South­bank, Lon­don!
EV-EON | Saving the planet from climate changeThe first ever Fos­sil Fools day has been giv­en a ter­rif­ic chris­ten­ing today with the launch of EV-EON Unnat­u­ral­ly Car­bon­at­ed Water. This inno­v­a­tive new tech­nol­o­gy will be used at E.ON’s Kingsnorth Pow­er­Sta­tion and used to cap­ture the car­bon diox­ide giv­en off by the burningof coal. The car­bon diox­ide is then bub­bled through fresh spring water from near­by Kingsnorth Hills to cre­ate car­bon­at­ed drink­ing water which is bot­tled and sold in Ital­ian restau­rants.
http://ev-eon.com/

Peo­ple & Plan­et in Par­lia­ment Square, Lon­don
Peo­ple & Plan­et built a coal pow­er sta­tion com­plete with 12ft cool­ing tow­ers in Par­lia­ment Square and burnt a mock Cli­mate Change Bill to protest against the Government’s plans to build eight new coal-fired pow­er sta­tions in the UK
New Fool Found in West­min­ster, Lon­don, UK

Hutton FFDWest­min­ster awoke to cries of “Roll up! Roll up! Come see the Fos­sil Fool” at 8am this morn­ing as 15 jesters and 30 pro­tes­tors arrived at the depart­ment for busi­ness and reg­u­la­to­ry reform to laugh at John Hut­ton, the min­is­ter respon­si­ble for the government’s push to build a string of new coal-fired pow­er sta­tions in the UK.

Porsche FFDPolar bears take on Porsche, Lon­don, UK
Cli­mate change activists today deliv­ered a mock apol­o­gy on behalf of Porsche, high­light­ing the company’s bla­tant dis­re­gard for the envi­ron­ment. There to receive the apol­o­gy, to be deliv­ered at 8.30am out­side Porsche’s main Lon­don show­room in Berke­ley Square, was an audi­ence of protest­ing polar bears and Lon­don­ers.

Fos­sil Fools Day “kicks off” ear­ly in Lon­don! UK (mon­day)
FA Red card FFD
FA Red card 2Fos­sil Fools Day 2008 got an ear­ly start today — with Lon­don Ris­ing Tide “kick­ing” things off. In front of the Foot­ball Asso­ci­a­tion head­quar­ters in Lon­don, Ris­ing Tide pro­test­ers issued the FA a Red Card for accept­ing spon­sor­ship from E.ON — a util­i­ty com­pa­ny propos­ing to build new coal-fired pow­er plants in the UK.
More pho­tos here and here.

London FFD subvertising 1
London FFD subvertising 2The Evening Stan­dard­’s recent run-in with the press com­plaints com­mis­sion (which can be viewed here http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/03/394299.html ), which regard­ed last years Cli­mate Action Camp near Heathrow Air­port, seems to have result­ed in a remark­able volte-face with regards to cli­mate activism. These pho­tographs where tak­en of bill­boards around Lon­don on Fos­sil Fools day.
More pho­tos

Also in Lon­don, peo­ple demon­strat­ed out­side a Total petrol sta­tion, over their involve­ment in Bur­ma.

Leam­ing­ton Spa, UK
In Leam­ing­ton Spa today there had a demon­stra­tion parade against the pro­posed Claren­don Shop­ping Arcade. There were 50 adults and chil­dren, many dressed up as fairies, polar bear, jesters, and deaths with oil drips. Along­side musi­cians play­ing a fos­sil fool’s song writ­ten spe­cial­ly for the event. The Group had ban­ners, plac­ards and fliers.

Cam­bridge (UK) Fos­sil Fools Day Protest at RBS Bank
cambridge FFDThe Roy­al Bank of Scot­land is one of the main financiers of cli­mate crime, in the form of oil and gas explo­ration. After tar­get­ing the Trin­i­ty Street branch last year for the RBS day if action, this time pro­test­ers paid a vis­it to the Hills Road Branch to mark the occa­sion of Fos­sil Fools Day.

Edinburgh mung FFD34 4x4’s and sports cars ‘dis­armed’
One of Edin­burghs’ more afflu­ent areas was tar­get­ed for April fools fun!
“We chose only rich peo­ples vehi­cles to sym­bol­ise how the wealthy and pow­er­ful are main­ly respon­si­ble for the destruc­tion of our plan­et. We did the mung bean trick. It was very easy and fun!”

Edin­burgh clowns vis­it­ed var­i­ous super­mar­kets high­light­ing the prob­lems of food miles.

Ban­ner Hang in Scot­land
This ban­ner was hung on Char­ing Cross motor­way inter­sec­tion in cen­tral Glas­gow this morn­ing read­ing “Cli­mate change doesn’t exist. (APRIL FOOLS YOU FOSSIL FOOL!)”

Glas­gow (UK) Fos­sil Fools present awards to local Cli­mate Crim­i­nals
The Glas­gow Fos­sil Fools present their local Cli­mate Change Crim­i­nals with Awards for their con­tri­bu­tion to Cli­mate Chaos.

Fos­sil Fools in Sheffield
Sheffield FFDAs part of Fos­sil Fools Day activ­i­ty across the coun­try, motorists in Sheffield were remind­ed of an alter­na­tive to their fuel-con­sum­ing, car­bon pro­duc­ing trans­port… Petrol sta­tions belong­ing to Wait­rose and Shell were tar­get­ed with dri­vers being offered leaflets and bike route maps while being enter­tained by a cycle bal­let per­for­mance.

In Hull peo­ple in high vis jack­ets hung a ban­ner in the town cen­tre, and hand­ed out leaflets.

Lancaster FFD bannerBan­ner Hang in Lan­cast­er
Build­ing up to the Fos­sil Fools Day, some peo­ple in Lan­cast­er, Eng­land hung a ban­ner at the side of Lancaster’s busiest round­about for the “rush” hour grid­locked car dri­vers to enjoy. The ban­ner read: “Wor­ried about Cli­mate Change? Stuck in Traf­fic? Get a Bike!”

On the day in Lan­cast­er, mem­bers of Lan­cast­er Cli­mate Action hand out penal­ty notices for dan­ger­ous dri­ving caus­ing cli­mate change to car dri­vers. The penal­ty notices were stuck on the wind screens in city cen­tre car parks.

Also the day before, in Nor­wich peo­ple organ­ised a press cofer­ence on behalf of Nor­wich Union, stat­ing that they were pulling out of their fos­sil fuel invest­ments.

In Man­ches­ter a Fos­sil Fools’ Day parade vis­it­ed var­i­ous cli­mate crim­i­nals, includ­ing RBS, Flight Cen­tre and the local coun­cil.

5 activists includ­ing one refugee polar bear descend­ed on the streets of Wor­thing town cen­tre to tell the pub­lic about the cli­mate crimes of RBS, Natwest and Thom­son trav­el agents. Per­cy the polar bear told of his ecosys­tem’s plight, and spec­i­fied how the tar­get­ted cor­po­ra­tions were con­tribut­ing to cli­mate change. 300 leaflets were hand­ed out to mem­bers of the pub­lic, telling them about Fos­sil Fools Day and explain­ing how local cor­po­ra­tions are dam­ag­ing the plan­et. Lat­er on, Per­cy went into the Natwest branch and closed down his account in protest, and encour­aged oth­ers to do the same and write to their bank man­ag­er con­cern­ing Natwest­’s
bankrolling of oil cor­po­ra­tions.

A Tyne­side 4x4 show­room was block­ad­ed; work­ers were aggres­sive, and the police arrest­ed 2 peo­ple who had been dri­ven in to.

In Liv­er­pool, peo­ple hung a ban­ner at the train sta­tion demand­ing free trans­port for all, and hand­ed out fake tick­ets for free trav­el.

NORTH AMERICA

Bil­lion­aires for Dirty Ener­gy block­ade Citibank in New York, USA. 2 arrest­ed.
At 12:30pm today over 25 “Bil­lion­aires for Dirty Ener­gy” block­ad­ed the main entrance of Citibank’s Upper East Side head­quar­ters. Two were arrest­ed after chain­ing them­selves to the front doors and refus­ing to leave. Police even­tu­al­ly sawed them out of the chains, and a ral­ly con­tin­ued in front of the bank.

8 Arrest­ed as North Car­oli­na, USA Res­i­dents Shut Down Con­struc­tion at Cliff­side Coal Plant
At 6:30 this morn­ing, North Car­oli­na res­i­dents locked them­selves to bull­doz­ers to stop the con­struc­tion of Duke Energy’s mas­sive Cliff­side coal-fired pow­er plant being built 50 miles west of Char­lotte

Activists Block­ade Bank of Amer­i­ca to Protest Fund­ing of Coal, Boston, Mass­a­chu­setts, USA
Boston, MA – Cop­ley Square, April 1, 2008. April Fools! At of 9:00AM, in con­junc­tion with a down­town ral­ly, four activists locked them­selves to the front entrance of the Bank of Amer­i­ca branch in Cop­ley Square. They were protest­ing the bank’s fund­ing of coal and ener­gy com­pa­nies who are among the worst con­trib­u­tors to cli­mate change, and direct­ly respon­si­ble for innu­mer­able human rights abus­es in com­mu­ni­ties where coal is extract­ed and burned. There were four arrests.

Ban­ner drop in Port­land, OR, USA
As part of Fos­sil Fool’s Day, Stump­town Earth First! in protest of the LNG Ore­gon Pipelines, per­formed a four-sto­ry tall ban­ner hang off of the Burn­side Bridge in down­town Port­land, OR. The ban­ner reads No New Pipelines with a no LNG logo direct­ly in the mid­dle. The Liq­ue­fied Nat­ur­al Gas (LNG) Pipeline is a pro­posed project that involves three LNG pro­cess­ing ter­mi­nals and over 600 miles of new pipeline through­out Ore­gon. Stump­town Earth First! is based out of Port­land, OR Cas­ca­dia.

Pranksters mar­ket “infi­deli­ty off­sets” to down­town Port­landers, Ore­gon USA
Port­land, OR – With a bou­quet of heart shaped bal­loons, a group of Port­land-area cli­mate activists call­ing them­selves the “Green­wash Guer­ril­las” pre­sent­ed a high­ly exper­i­men­tal new busi­ness mod­el to passers­by in down­town Port­land on Tues­day. Draw­ing their inspi­ra­tion from so-called car­bon neu­tral com­pa­nies like Portland’s Cli­mate Trust, the activists claim to be launch­ing a new com­pa­ny called “Cheat Neu­tral.”

Plum Creek Receives “Fos­sil Fool’s Award”, Maine, USA
Fair­field, ME — Vol­un­teers with the Native For­est Net­work (NFN) staged a mock “Fos­sil Fool’s Day” awards cer­e­mo­ny today at the offices of the Plum Creek Tim­ber Com­pa­ny to draw atten­tion to the poten­tial impacts of the company’s Moose­head region devel­op­ment pro­pos­al on the region­al and glob­al cli­mate.

AUSTRALIA & NEW ZEALAND

Air New Zealand in Auck­land received a ‘Fos­sil Fool’ Award
A group of cli­mate change activists have pre­sent­ed Air New Zealand with New Zealand’s first ever ‘Fos­sil Fool’ award.

3 arrests at peace­ful parade in Christchurch, New Zealand
Three peo­ple were arrest­ed at at the Christchurch Fos­sil Fools Day protest

Aus­tralian Pranksters attempt to Pur­chase Goods with Coal

Newcastle (Oz) FFDA group of peo­ple from Ris­ing Tide New­cas­tle went to a K‑mart armed with a fist full of leaflets, bags full of coal, and a large ban­ner which asked the ques­tion “How does buy­ing stuff fuel cli­mate change?” and direct­ing the read­er to a web­site for the answer. They planned to swap their bags of coal for some cheap con­sumer prod­ucts (there­by cut­ting out the mid­dle man).

Durban FFD
In Dur­ban, South Africa, flo­ral wreaths were laid at a petrol dinosaur for the destruc­tion it caus­es.

====================================================
More detailed details below of actions list­ed above:
====================================================

Cli­mate activists, a proud pen­guin, king rat, yel­low clowns and crit­i­cal massers joined forces to shut down the Esso petrol sta­tion on Exeter Street, Ply­mouth today.

The climb­ing clowns scaled the roof while oth­ers blocked access to the fore­court.
The atmos­phere was cel­e­bra­to­ry in a doomed plan­et kin­da way! — music and danc­ing, lots of leaflets giv­en out and a sur­pris­ing num­ber of pos­i­tive hoots from pass­ing cars.
Plymouth Esso FFD
There were sev­en arrests, both the roof team and those block­ing the fore­court.

Cli­mate sci­en­tists are warn­ing us to make imme­di­ate and mas­sive reduc­tions in our car­bon emis­sions or face the end of life on earth, and yet prof­it-dri­ven cor­po­ra­tions and gov­ern­ments are drag­ging us deep­er into cli­mate chaos! We have got to cut our­selves free! We have got to organ­ise our­selves to lead localised low-car­bon lifestyles and we’ve got to leave the fos­sil fools behind!

Action video

PRESS RELEASE 1.4.2008 — For Imme­di­ate Release

Fos­sil Fools Day — Cli­mate Activists Tar­get Irre­spon­si­ble Esso.
(The U.K. arm of the Amer­i­can oil giant Exxon­Mo­bil)

Cli­mate activists from Ris­ing Tide[1] have today occu­pied the Esso petrol sta­tion on Exeter Street in Ply­mouth.

The demon­stra­tors are call­ing for Exxon­Mo­bil to acknowl­edge the urgency of cli­mate change, to cease fund­ing think-tanks and lob­by­ists that are com­mit­ted to block­ing inter­na­tion­al­ly agreed poli­cies on glob­al warming,[2][3] and to start invest­ing in renew­able ener­gy.

With ban­ners, leaflets and cos­tumes — this peace­ful protest aims to focus atten­tion on Esso as a major obsta­cle to those seek­ing solu­tions that address cli­mate change.
This protest is part of Fos­sil Fools Day, a nation­wide day of action called by Ris­ing Tide for April 1st. While the fools at the head of the fos­sil fuel empire con­tin­ue to plun­der the earth, cli­mate chaos threat­ens our very sur­vival.

Despite high-pro­file cam­paigns by Green­peace and Friend’s of the Earth,[4][5] Exxon con­tin­ues to fun­nel mil­lions of dol­lars to groups iden­ti­fied as mis­lead­ing the gen­er­al pub­lic on glob­al warm­ing sci­ence and policy.[6]

In 2006 The Roy­al Soci­ety called on Esso to with­draw their sup­port for groups that have “mis­rep­re­sent­ed the sci­ence of cli­mate change by out­right denial of the evidence.”[7]

As the world’s largest pri­vate oil company,[8] Exxon­Mo­bil has the pow­er to direct the ener­gy indus­try and pol­i­cy mak­ers towards a sus­tain­able future. How­ev­er it con­tin­ues to invest sole­ly in fos­sil fuels.

In March of this year Chair­man and CEO Rex Tiller­son promised record lev­els of fos­sil fuel invest­ment. From 2008 to 2010 alone the cor­po­ra­tion plans to fund 19 new projects which, at peak, will add more than 725,000 oil-equiv­a­lent bar­rels PER DAY to Exxon­Mo­bil’s pro­duc­tion. Mr. Tiller­son also pro­posed to approx­i­mate­ly dou­ble pro­duc­tion of liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas (LNG).[9] While com­bus­tion of this fuel pro­duces 16% less CO2 than oil,[10] the ener­gy required to process and trans­port it result in LNG being a major source of green­house gases.[11][12]

Last year tem­per­a­tures in the U.K. were 1.3 degrees warmer that the 1961–1990 average.[13] If we reach two degrees of glob­al warm­ing the rise will trig­ger car­bon-cycle feed­backs from soils and plants — instead of absorb­ing CO2 they will start to release it. This could tip the plan­et into run­away glob­al warm­ing by 2050. We must reduce emis­sions of green­house gas­es by 60% over the next 10 years to avoid this. If we do not, sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence sug­gests that cli­mate change will result in the end of life on earth.[14]

The warn­ing signs of cli­mate change are all around us; mas­sive storms, dev­as­tat­ing flood­ing, uncon­trol­lable for­est fires. We must make a stand against the luna­cy and greed of cor­po­ra­tions like ExxonMobil[15] before it is too late!

Notes for edi­tors:

[1] Ris­ing tide is a glob­al net­work of local groups, tak­ing action against cli­mate change and build­ing a move­ment based on social and envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice. Ris­ing Tide activists from Devon and Corn­wall took part in recent actions to high­light the cli­mate impact of the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land and to protest about the envi­ron­men­tal­ly destruc­tive expan­sion plans at Newquay air­port.
[2] http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/sep/26/climatechange
[3] http://www.exxposeexxon.com/facts/Smoke-and-Mirrors.pdf
[4] http://www.greenpeace.org/international/news/exxon-still-funding-climate-ch
[5] http://www.exxon-files.eu/
[6] http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/assets/binaries/exxon-secrets-analysis-of-fun
[7] http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2006/sep/20/oilandpetrol.business
[8] In 2005, Exxon­Mo­bil made an all time record prof­it of $36.1 bil­lion — more than any cor­po­ra­tion in his­to­ry. In 2006, the com­pa­ny exceed­ed its own record with anoth­er $39 bil­lion in prof­it.
http://www.exxposeexxon.com/facts/failedpolicies.html
[9] http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?p=irol-eventDetails&c=115024&eventID=1746215
[10] http://earthtrends.wri.org/updates/node/188
[11] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquefied_natural_gas#_note‑1
[12] http://www.risingtidenorthamerica.org/wordpress/liquified-natural-gas/
[13] http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/2007/seasonal.html
[14] http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article1480669.ece
[15] Exxon­Mo­bil also deserves to be shamed for its con­tin­ued involve­ment with Arc­tic Pow­er, the sin­gle-issue lob­by group intent on plun­der­ing the Arc­tic Nation­al Wildlife Refuge, and for its refusal to pay the puni­tive dam­ages it still owes for the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill.
http://www.exxposeexxon.com/facts/faq.html#1

plymouth@risingtide.org.uk

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Merthyr action 1
Merthyr action 2
Press Release: 7AM — 01/04/08

Email: media@thecoalhole.org
Tel: 07876753254 or 07775654500
PROTESTERS SHUT OPENCAST COAL MINE
Direct action expos­es ‘black hole’ in cli­mate change pol­i­cy

Tues­day, 1st April, 2008: At 7am this morn­ing, pro­test­ers halt­ed work at one of the biggest open­cast coal mines in Europe, on the out­skirts of Merthyr Tyd­fil. They intend to remain on the site for sev­er­al days.

One group of pro­test­ers have chained them­selves to large exca­va­tion machin­ery, while a sec­ond group have block­ad­ed one of the main entrances to the site.

The protest at the Ffos-y-Fran site high­lights the hypocrisy of a gov­ern­ment that claims to be tak­ing cli­mate change seri­ous­ly, while approv­ing new coal mines and coal-fired pow­er sta­tions. Coal has the biggest impact on cli­mate change of any fuel — despite oppo­si­tion from the world’s lead­ing sci­en­tists, the Gov­ern­ment is sup­port­ing an out­dat­ed and dan­ger­ous tech­nol­o­gy that has no future.

Merthyr res­i­dents have opposed the scheme for many years. The mine comes with­in 36 metres of local homes — in Eng­land and Scot­land, the scheme would have been reject­ed due to leg­is­la­tion requir­ing a 500 metre buffer zone between open­cast mines and res­i­den­tial areas.

The action coin­cides with Fos­sil Fools Day, an inter­na­tion­al day of cli­mate change protest.

PHOTO OPPORTUNITY: The coal wash­ery and pro­test­ers are clear­ly vis­i­ble from the Bogey Road, east of Merthyr Tyd­fil. Oth­er pro­test­ers on the edge of the mine are avail­able for inter­views and fur­ther infor­ma­tion.

INTERVIEWS avail­able in both Eng­lish and Welsh.

More details and live updates from the site are avail­able on www.thecoalhole.org

Ends.

—
Merthyr action 4Merthyr action 3Don't be a Fossil Fool
UPDATE: Pro­test­ers leave coal mine after suc­cess­ful demon­stra­tion

Press release

Email: media@thecoalhole.org

Tel: 07876753254 or 07775654500

Suc­cess­ful protest expos­es ‘black hole’ in cli­mate change pol­i­cy

Tues­day, 1st April, 2008: At the finale of today’s occu­pa­tion of Ffos-y-Fran open­cast coal mine, Merthyr Tyd­fil, south Wales, a group of pro­test­ers unfurled a 36 metre ban­ner across the main build­ing stat­ing “Coal: the black hole in UK cli­mate pol­i­cy.” Thir­ty-six metres is the dis­tance between the mine and local res­i­dents’ homes.

Pro­test­ers occu­pied the mine since 6am this morn­ing, bar­ri­cad­ing the main entrance to the site, climb­ing on the roof of the coal wash­ery and chain­ing them­selves to machin­ery. The action halt­ed work at the mine, one of the biggest in the coun­try, before pro­test­ers left this after­noon.

Pro­test­er Esther Tew, who sat on top of an eight metre high Komat­su dig­ger for most of the day, said: “We just want the Gov­ern­ment to take its own cli­mate poli­cies seri­ous­ly. By sup­port­ing open­cast min­ing at Ffos-y-Fran and encour­ag­ing the build­ing of new coal pow­er sta­tions, Gor­don Brown is under­min­ing any chance the UK has of mak­ing the 60% cuts in emis­sions the Gov­ern­ment is cur­rent­ly com­mit­ting to, let alone the 80% tar­get the cli­mate change com­mit­tee is like­ly to rec­om­mend at the end of the year.”

The protest at the Ffos-y-Fran site high­lights the hypocrisy of the UK Gov­ern­ment, which claims to be tak­ing cli­mate change seri­ous­ly while approv­ing new coal mines and coal-fired pow­er sta­tions.

Coal has the biggest cli­mate impact of any fuel – despite oppo­si­tion from the world’s lead­ing sci­en­tists, the Gov­ern­ment is sup­port­ing an out­dat­ed and dan­ger­ous tech­nol­o­gy that has no future.

Local res­i­dents have opposed the scheme for many years, and invit­ed pro­test­ers to Merthyr last Decem­ber to sup­port their cam­paign. In Eng­land and Scot­land, the scheme would have been reject­ed due to leg­is­la­tion requir­ing a 500 metre buffer zone between open­cast mines and res­i­den­tial areas.

As the team leave the mine for the pub after a hard day’s work, oth­ers around the world are pick­ing up their ban­ners and get­ting ready to expose the ‘fos­sil fools’ mak­ing a mock­ery of cli­mate change pol­i­cy. In the US there are at least 100 ‘Fos­sil Fools’ protests planned lat­er today.

PHOTOS: A wide range of high res­o­lu­tion, high qual­i­ty images are avail­able. Con­tact us on the num­bers above for more details.

INTERVIEWS avail­able in both Eng­lish and Welsh.

More details and live updates from the site are avail­able on www.thecoalhole.org

Ends.

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Back­ground & news of sab­o­tage
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East­side Cli­mate Action block­ade E‑on work­ers as part of Fos­sil Fools Day
Nottingham FFD 2
At 7:30 this morn­ing 30 peo­ple block­ad­ed the entrances to E‑on’s offices on Mount St, Not­ting­ham City Cen­tre. Peo­ple cov­ered in green paint to rep­re­sent E‑on’s green­wash, locked onto the front entrance to E‑on’s office and stood in front of oth­er entrances pre­vent­ing E‑on work­ers from get­ting to work.

At E‑on’s offices today, Bob Cas­tle said “We are here today because despite E‑on pub­licly claim­ing green cre­den­tials, it is try­ing to build a new gen­er­a­tion of coal fired pow­er sta­tions. It is try­ing to build the first new coal fired pow­er sta­tion in the UK in 50 years, at Kingsnorth in Kent, and wish­es to con­tin­ue its expan­sion with a new pow­er staion at High Marn­ham in Not­ting­hamshire. We are here to tell E‑on that they will not suceed and the only real solu­tion to cli­mate change is to keep fos­sil fuels in the ground. Coal is the dirt­i­est Fos­sil Fool and to build new coal pow­er sta­tions in the face of cli­mate change is col­lec­tive sui­cide.”

Fos­sil Fools Day, called by the inter­na­tion­al Ris­ing Tide net­work and its allies, has seen over one hun­dred actions take place around the world. Protests have focused on the com­pa­nies respon­si­ble for run­away car­bon diox­ide emis­sions, as well as com­plic­it gov­ern­ments and those pro­mot­ing false solu­tions.

Groups who have tak­en action today in the UK include East­side Cli­mate Action, Ris­ing Tide, the Camp for Cli­mate Action, World Devel­op­ment Move­ment, Peo­ple and Plan­et, the Net­work for Cli­mate Action and Earth First!

While East­side Cli­mate Action were vis­it­ing E‑On in Not­ting­ham, oth­er groups around the UK were in Par­lia­ment Square (where Peo­ple and Plan­et built a coal pow­er sta­tion com­plete with 12ft cool­ing tow­ers), Porsche HQ in Lon­don (where a pub­lic apol­o­gy was issued on behalf of Porsche), the Depart­ment for Enter­prise, Busi­ness and Reg­u­la­to­ry Reform (where WDM held the world’s first laugh-in over plans for new coal at Kingsnorth) and Man­ches­ter City Cen­tre (where a parade toured the city’s biggest fos­sil fools).

“We are tak­ing action to pre­vent the fos­sil fuel indus­try from destroy­ing our future,” said Bob Cas­tle from East­side Cli­mate Action. “Vest­ed inter­ests in busi­ness and gov­ern­ment are bent on pur­su­ing eco­nom­ic growth at all costs. We need to shrink, not pro­tect, the fos­sil fuel econ­o­my if we are to sur­vive cli­mate change.”

For inter­views and more infor­ma­tion about today’s action at E‑on con­tact 07880 937511
** Updates will be avail­able through­out the day at www.fossilfoolsday.org **

Notes to Edi­tors:

1)E‑on own Rat­cliffe on Soar Pow­er Sta­tion the site of protests by 11 peo­ple who locked them­selves to machin­ery to pre­vent coal enter­ing the pow­er sta­tion. The judge in the tri­al agreed that the 11 defen­dants had act­ed to pre­vent death and seri­ous injury from the release of CO2 from Rat­cliffe into the atmos­phere.
2)Ratcliffe is the largest CO2 emmit­ter in the East Mid­lands and 2nd largest in the UK
3)Despite E‑on’s green claims they only pro­duce 9% of their ener­gy from renew­able sources. http://www.eon.com/en/unternehmen/8559.jsp
4)E‑on’s infra­struc­ture invest­ment fund is 95% for non-renew­able ener­gy projects. http://www.energyrisk.com/public/showPage.html?page=449443
5)E‑on plan to build the UK’s first new coal fired pow­er sta­tion, plans that are opposed by groups from Green­peace to World Devolp­ment Move­ment.
6)The Cli­mate camp, (which pre­vi­ous­ly held camps and did actions at Drax and Heathrow) plan to tar­get Kingsnorth this year. www.climatecamp.org.uk
7)E‑on also plan to build a new Coal Fired Pow­er Sta­tion at High Marn­ham near Ret­ford in Not­ting­hamshire.
http://www.thisisnottingham.co.uk/displayNode.jsp?nodeId=133965&command=displayContent&sourceNode=133948&contentPK=20117809&moduleName=InternalSearch&formname=sidebarsearch

—
As some e.on staff tried to enter the build­ing past the paint­ed pro­tes­tors, one woman took it upon her­self to abuse the paint­ed ones. This is shock­ing behav­iour and I would like to point out that most of the staff I encoun­tered were pleas­ant and most­ly indif­fer­ent or sym­pa­thet­ic.

Lat­er on in the record­ing, you can hear a secu­ri­ty guard, who was try­ing to push his way out of the build­ing respond­ing to an activist who claimed assault, say­ing: “Assault? I’ll give you assault in a minute”

More pho­tos here, here and here.
———————————–
Cli­mate Change Activists Block­ade Major Gas Ter­mi­nal
Bacton FFD 2
Earth First! UK activists today block­ad­ed the UK’s largest off shore gas ter­mi­nal at Bac­ton in Nor­folk. 40% of the UK’s domes­tic gas comes ashore here, is processed and dis­trib­uted by pipeline. Activists block­ad­ed the main road out­side the site at 6.30 am this morn­ing, pre­vent­ing con­struc­tion work­ers and shift owrk­ers from arriv­ing.

Envi­ron­men­tal activists have today dis­rupt­ed work at a major North Sea gas instal­la­tion as part of the Fos­sil Fools Day inter­na­tion­al day of action on cli­mate change.

At 6.30am, around 25 activists from Earth First! UK peace­ful­ly block­ad­ed the North Sea gas instal­la­tion at Bac­ton on the North Nor­folk Coast. The Bac­ton instal­la­tion, oper­at­ed pri­mar­i­ly by petro­le­um giants Roy­al Dutch Shell & Exxon­Mo­bil, includes a gas-fired pow­er sta­tion, pro­cess­ing plant and dis­tri­b­u­tion point for domes­tic gas. Shell esti­mates that over one third of domes­tic UK gas comes ashore at Bac­ton.

The protest is also in sol­i­dar­i­ty with pro­tes­tors at Ross­port in Ire­land, who have been try­ing to pre­vent a sim­i­lar instal­la­tion being built in their com­mu­ni­ty.

Cather­ine Lewis, one of the activists at the Bac­ton block­ade, said: “The fos­sil fuel indus­try is the sin­gle biggest dri­ver of cli­mate change, and gas is no excep­tion. Switch­ing from one fos­sil fuel to anoth­er is not a solu­tion to cli­mate change – the only real solu­tion is to keep fos­sil fuels in the ground.”

Ban­ners pro­claim­ing “Shrink of Sink” were stretched across the road, giv­ing the mes­sage that we need to shrink our econ­o­my and con­sump­tion to cut car­bon emis­sions.

—

Press release
1st April 2008
For imme­di­ate release

Cli­mate Change Activists Dis­rupt Work at Major Gas Instal­la­tion

Envi­ron­men­tal activists have today dis­rupt­ed work at a major North Sea gas instal­la­tion as part of an inter­na­tion­al day of action on cli­mate change. “Fos­sil Fools Day” 1 aims to draw atten­tion to the role that fos­sil fuels play in car­bon emis­sions, a key com­po­nent of cli­mate change.

At 6.30am, around 25 activists from Earth First! UK 2 peace­ful­ly block­ad­ed the North Sea gas instal­la­tion at Bac­ton on the North Nor­folk Coast. The Bac­ton installation3, oper­at­ed pri­mar­i­ly by petro­le­um giants Roy­al Dutch Shell & Exxon­Mo­bil, includes a gas-fired pow­er sta­tion, pro­cess­ing plant and dis­tri­b­u­tion point for domes­tic gas. Shell esti­mates that over one third of domes­tic UK gas comes ashore at Bac­ton.

Cather­ine Lewis, one of the activists at the Bac­ton block­ade, said: “The fos­sil fuel indus­try is the sin­gle biggest dri­ver of cli­mate change, and gas is no excep­tion. Switch­ing from one fos­sil fuel to anoth­er is not a solu­tion to cli­mate change – the only real solu­tion is to keep fos­sil fuels in the ground.”

Mar­tin Jenk­ins, anoth­er activist, said: “All around the world today, peo­ple are tak­ing action to pre­vent the fos­sil fuel indus­try from destroy­ing our future. Vest­ed inter­ests in busi­ness and gov­ern­ment are bent on pur­su­ing eco­nom­ic growth at all costs. We are here today to say no more – we need to shrink, not pro­tect or expand, the fos­sil fuel econ­o­my if we are to sur­vive cli­mate change. This means shrink­ing our con­sump­tion and even our econ­o­my.”

The activists at Bac­ton shut off part of the B1159, pre­vent­ing all move­ments out­side the gas instal­la­tion. Ban­ners stretched across the road read, “Keep fos­sil fuels in the ground” and “Shrink or sink”.

Notes to edi­tors
1.
Fos­sil Fools Day has been called by the inter­na­tion­al Ris­ing
Tide net­work. For more infor­ma­tion about Fos­sil Fools Day and the oth­er
protests tak­ing place today: www.fossilfoolsday.org.uk
2.
Earth First! UK is a net­work ded­i­cat­ed to envi­ron­men­tal
direct action. Fur­ther infor­ma­tion can
be found at www.earthfirst.org.uk
3.
Bac­ton is one of the largest gas ter­mi­nal com­plex­es in the
UK. Gas is piped onshore at the three pro­duc­er ter­mi­nals from the South­ern
North Sea and from the Shear­wa­ter Elgin Area Line (SEAL) and is then
dis­trib­uted to UK cus­tomers or to Bel­gium. When in reverse flow mode, Bac­ton
Ter­mi­nal is used to import gas into the UK. Infor­ma­tion on Bac­ton ter­mi­nal can
be found at www.shell.com or via
www.interconnector.com.
4.
Con­tacts for the Bac­ton Block­ade are: office: 0795 144 454;
at the block­ade 07507095345
5.
Print qual­i­ty pho­tos avail­able on request.
—

Ear­ly on Fos­sil Fools Day over 20 Earth First! activists paid a vis­it to Bac­ton Gas ter­mi­nal. The road was block­ad­ed (using steel and con­crete arm tubes) for over 4 hours — dis­rupt­ing the smooth func­tion­ing of the ter­mi­nal. Ban­ners were stretched across the road, which read — “Keep fos­sil fuels in the ground” and “Shrink or sink”.

Police, some of them armed Min­istry of Defense offi­cers, were on scene, divert­ing traf­fic around back roads. The action end­ed vol­un­tar­i­ly just before 11am. Three peo­ple who locked on were arrest­ed for obstruct­ing the high­way, but then police decid­ed to arrest every­one for the same offence — despite the fact that oth­ers were not posi­tioned in the road and had left the scene.

Back­ground – Bac­ton is a major ener­gy hub for the UK, han­dling around a third of the nation’s gas sup­ply, com­ing in from the North Sea and Euro­pean pipelines. The gas is han­dled by a range of oil and gas com­pa­nies (Shell and Exxon among oth­ers) before being sent into the nation­al grid.

In total nine women and ten men were arrest­ed and tak­en to three dif­fer­ent police sta­tions. All were released, after about 5 hours, to return in ear­ly May.

—

19 were arrest­ed after a four hour block­ade, and have now been released, on bail till the begin­ning of May. Two block­ades were set up, one with­in 30 yards of the MOD police sta­tion on site. Two cops were sit­ting in a car there, watch­ing peo­ple set up the block­ade, and anoth­er police patrol arrived short­ly after­wards. The site is pro­tect­ed by 2 high fences with space and razor wire between, plus is cov­ered by SOCPA due to its nation­al strate­gic impor­tance. Pro­tes­tors used a cun­ning com­bi­na­tion of steel and con­crete lock-ons, with extra secret ingre­di­ents, plus speed & skill. Local res­i­dents applaud­ed. The polic­ing poli­cies kept chang­ing, with a con­fus­ing com­bi­na­tion of MOD & Nor­folk plod; even­tu­al­ly the Gold Com­mand lost it and decid­ed stu­pid­ly to arrest every­one for obstruc­tion of the high­way. Apart from some of those locked on, all the oth­er alleged obstruc­tors were arrest­ed some dis­tance away. Unfor­tu­nate­ly cam­era, pho­tos & oth­er use­ful items are cur­rent­ly in the cus­tody of Nor­folk Con­stab­u­lary.

norfolk@earthfirst.org.uk

———————————–

Lon­don Ris­ing Tide played a spoof game of foot­ball out­side the Foot­ball Asso­ci­a­tion’s head­quar­ters in Soho Square with a coal ball, demand­ing that the FA end their spon­sor­ship deal with E‑ON.

At clos­ing time today Lon­don Ris­ing Tide played a spoof game of foot­ball out­side the Foot­ball Asso­ci­a­tion’s head­quar­ters in Soho Square with a coal ball, scor­ing own-goals and with the slo­gans ‘Cli­mate FU Cup’ and ‘E‑ON: No new coal’ embla­zoned on their foot­ball shirts. On the backs of their shirts were the names of the pro­posed new coal-fired pow­er sta­tions.

A mem­ber of the group hand­ed in a for­mal let­ter to Jonathan Hill, Direc­tor of the FA’s Com­mer­cial Divi­sion, to com­plain about spon­sor­ship of the cul­tur­al­ly icon­ic game by a fos­sil fool. E‑ON are aggres­sive­ly pro­mot­ing a return to coal, the dirt­i­est of all fos­sil fuels, despite the urgent need to dras­ti­cal­ly cut cli­mate-chang­ing emis­sions.

Some police, and FA secu­ri­ty attend­ed the match, sup­port­ing from the front doors of the FA head­quar­ters. The match went on for over an hour, only stop­ping for oranges and a team pho­to at half time.

———————————–
manchester FFD 1
Man­ches­ter’s Fos­sil Fools got up to all sorts of tricks today, vis­it­ing some of their idols in the city cen­tre… unfor­tu­nate­ly in our efforts to con­grat­u­late the best fos­sil fools a few mishaps occurred…

Some clowns got stuck in the revolv­ing doors at RBS and a human pipeline was escort­ed from the city cen­tre build­ing by secu­ri­ty. Some mem­bers of the parade got con­fused and chalked mes­sages on the pave­ments, and peo­ple try­ing to escape the beat­ing of drums ran to hide in the Flight Cen­tre while the sam­ba band, who real­ly had no idea, blocked the entrance! Some police­men came along look­ing for Spar­ta­cus but could­n’t find him any­where.

This was a won­der­ful day where fos­sil fools in all their many guis­es could come togeth­er, from old men (we think?!!), to young dinosaurs, in shades, masks, face-paints and suits to wor­ship at the altar of com­mer­cial cli­mate denial. To encour­age peo­ple to con­sid­er whether or not they too may be fos­sil fools there were free veg­an cakes, and leaflets with guid­ance about mak­ing Man­ches­ter a clean­er city (anoth­er lit­tle slip up).

On a pos­i­tive note ban­ners read­ing ‘OIL,GAS and COAL the jokes on US! Hap­py Fos­sil Fools Day! were hung on the walls of RBS, out of respect for their hard work con­tribut­ing to cli­mate chaos. Plac­ards say­ing ‘Mr.T says “I pity the fuel” were waved. The parade end­ed tri­umphant­ly out­side Man­ches­ter Town Hall to recog­nise the vital role Man­ches­ter City Coun­cil play in the area, dam­ag­ing the cli­mate every day. Just before the end a charm­ing man did a short but inspir­ing solo on the spoons.

———————————–

The mung bean trick*
*basi­cal­ly, the activist places a mung bean in the dust cap of a car tyre, and then screws the cap back on. repeat x4. this depress­es the valve, releas­ing the air in the tyre grad­u­al­ly while the activist escapes.

———————————–
Edinburgh clowns FFD
Clowns take on Food Mile Freaks on Fos­sil Fools Day

Today the Edin­burgh bat­tal­ion of the Clan­des­tine Insur­gent Rebel Clown Army (CIRCA) marched into Sainsbury’s and Tesco to point out the absur­di­ty of squan­der­ing lim­it­ed fos­sil fuel resources on fly­ing straw­ber­ries to Scot­land so we can eat them in the mid­dle of win­ter.

As part of Inter­na­tion­al Fos­sil Fools Day ten clowns burst into super­mar­kets between 4 and 6 o’ clock in the after­noon, in time to salute shop­pers on their way home from work. The red-nosed army marched into the new Sainsbury’s on Mid­dle Mead­ow Walk, where they act­ed out the car­bon inten­sive process of trans­port­ing food from farmer to plate. The clowns then scat­tered through­out the store in search of an elu­sive ‘Scot­tish banana’, encour­ag­ing fel­low shop­pers to find (if they could) any pro­duce in the store which was actu­al­ly from Scot­land. The bat­tal­ion placed fly­ers in shop­ping bas­kets and amongst pineap­ples, peach­es and pears remind­ing shop­pers that 50% of veg­eta­bles and 95% of the fruit eat­en in the UK now comes from over­seas.

Under the watch­ful eyes of the police, the clowns then nav­i­gat­ed their way through the streets of Edin­burgh and stum­bled into a Tesco on Nicol­son Street. Here they dis­cov­ered the lat­est inven­tion of green super­mar­ket spin, ‘car­bon labelling.’ Shop­pers seemed sur­prised, but amused by the pres­ence of the trick­sters who were going about their nor­mal shop­ping rou­tine. The clowns were even­tu­al­ly forced to leave by secu­ri­ty at both Sainsbury´s and Tesco.

At Tesco today, Clown com­bat­ant Major Look said, “We are here to draw atten­tion to super­mar­ket food mile freaks such as Tesco and Sainsbury’s who adopt extreme­ly harm­ful prac­tices in order to sell food from all over the world, all the year round. Instead of pro­mot­ing local Scot­tish pro­duce and sea­son­al fruit and veg­eta­bles, big super­mar­kets air-freight food into the coun­try from far away, con­tribut­ing tons of CO2 to the atmos­phere. Trans­port­ing food by plane is one of the fastest grow­ing meth­ods of dis­tri­b­u­tion, and also the most pol­lut­ing.”

When asked to com­ment on the tac­tics of the Clan­des­tine Insur­gent Rebel Clown Army, Ker­nel O’Truth com­ment­ed,

“It’s bet­ter to be fool­ish than fos­sil fuel­ish!”

Edin­burgh bat­tal­ion of the Clan­des­tine Insur­gent Rebel Clown Army
edinburghrebelclowns@riseup.net

More pho­tos

———————————–

I’m hap­py to report that here in Hull we suc­cess­ful­ly staged a Fos­sil Fools Day action;

Dressed in high vis­i­bil­i­ty jack­ets read­ing “Cli­mate Cri­sis Pre­ven­tion”, hard hats and boil­er suits, we hung a ban­ner in the town cen­tre, below the large TV screen, read­ing;

MONEY WELL SPENT?
2007 = 17,000 HOMES FLOODED
CLIMATE CHANGE = MORE FLOODS

We then pro­ceed­ed to hand out fly­ers to local res­i­dents, of whom the VAST major­i­ty were very sup­port­ive. Local media con­duct­ed inter­views, with BBC Look North promis­ing to do a live TV news feed, until a ‘break­ing sto­ry required their cam­era men to go else­where.

Our expe­ri­ence of suc­cess­ful­ly mak­ing the tran­si­tion for ‘talk­ing’ to ‘doing’ was very pos­i­tive for every­body involved, and hav­ing now com­plet­ed our first ever action, we’re look­ing for­ward to plan­ning the next on the 1st May.

———————————–
EV-EON Unnat­u­ral­ly Car­bon­at­ed Water : The Plan­et is Saved!
Ev-EON
EV-EON Unnat­u­ral­ly Car­bon­at­ed Water was launched today on the streets of Lon­don. Using all new cli­mate-sav­ing tech­nol­o­gy we can save the day and keep burn­ing coal for ever more. Well done Car­bon Cap­ture and Stor­age!

Today saw the launch in Lon­don of EV-EON Unnat­u­ral­ly Car­bon­at­ed Water a new car­bon cap­ture tech­nol­o­gy (CCS) to be used at E.ON’s Kingsnorth Pow­er Sta­tion.

Burn­ing coal to gen­er­ate elec­tric­i­ty pro­duces Car­bon Diox­ide (CO2), a green house gas that con­tributes to cli­mate change. How­ev­er by cap­tur­ing the CO2 before it is released into the atmos­phere and pip­ing it through nat­ur­al spring water we at E.ON are able to cre­ate car­bon­at­ed drink­ing water that is bot­tled and sold in Ital­ian restau­rants under the brand name EV-EON.

Although a sim­ple solu­tion, the impli­ca­tions are huge. With over a hun­dred years worth of coal deposits left and with mas­sive growth in ener­gy demand CCS will allow E.ON to con­tin­ue to burn coal for decades to come. EV-EON’s Chief Exec­u­tive Taton Rebfluw says, “cli­mate change had turned coal into a dirty word, but car­bon­at­ed drink­ing water could be the sil­ver bul­let we have been look­ing for” a quick sip of EV-EON bot­tled water and he con­tin­ues “the water tastes great and drinkers have the added bonus of help­ing com­bat cli­mate change – the more water they drink, the more CO2 they store, and the more coal can be used to gen­er­ate elec­tric­i­ty, this real­ly is sym­bio­sis at its very best”.

EV-EON is avail­able now in restau­rants and cafes. Please drink respon­si­bly and refrain from burp­ing or breath­ing the CO2 back into the atmos­phere oth­er­wise you may be respon­si­ble for caus­ing cli­mate change.

Please vis­it our web­site to watch our fan­tas­tic ani­ma­tion and learn more.

info@ev-eon.com
http://www.ev-eon.com

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Welsh Open­cast Mine protest in Lon­don on Fos­sil Fuels Day
Argent FFD solidarity
The demon­stra­tion by the Cam­paign Against Cli­mate Change at the offices of Argent Group PLC in Pic­cadil­ly on April 1 was one of many actions as part of the glob­al ‘Fos­sil Fools Day.’

Argent form half of Miller-Argent who run the UK’s largest open­cast coal mine, Ffos-y-Fran in Merthyr Tyd­fil, South Wales. Just 36 metres from the near­est hous­es, extrac­tion will con­tin­ue for more than 15 years (per­haps as along as 40 years), pro­duc­ing coal that will add at least 30 mil­lion tons of CO2 to to our atmos­phere.

Scot­tish safe­ty stan­dards demand a min­i­mum gap of 500 metres from hous­ing, but the imple­men­tion of a 350 metres lim­it by the Welsh office has been delayed — alleged­ly to allow the Merthyr work­ing to go ahead.

Despite the mis­ery and health haz­ards through air-borne dust, diesel fumes and noise to the 70,000 or so who live in Merthyr (the author­i­ties set up a Health Impact Study — then refused to accept it when it gave a damn­ing report) and the dan­gers of pos­si­ble dis­as­ter to those liv­ing on the edge of the ‘black hole’, no offers have been made of com­pen­sa­tion or relo­ca­tion.

Think­ing glob­al­ly, the car­bon diox­ide will add sig­nif­i­cant­ly to the world-wide cli­mate change which already threat­ens mas­sive dis­as­ters, in par­tic­u­lar with dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed low-lying coun­tries such as Bangladesh like­ly to become large­ly unten­able in the medi­um term future.

This open­cast coal mine has only been allowed to go ahead because of close coop­er­a­tion between the gov­ern­ment and com­mer­cial inter­ests back­ing ‘new coal’ and new coal-fired pow­er sta­tions such as Kingsnorth. You can read more about it on the web sites http://www.campaigncc.org, http://www.thecoalhole.org and http://www.stopffosyfran.co.uk

Around a dozen demon­stra­tors turned up at 4pm in in Albany Court­yard, a pri­vate street off Pic­cadil­ly where Argent have their Lon­don office and set up behind bar­ri­ers watched by rather more police from three vans and a police car, with a police pho­tog­ra­ph­er tak­ing exten­sive video and pho­tographs. A man­ag­er from the Albany came and talked to the demon­stra­tors, tak­ing a doc­u­ment about the mine and promis­ing to deliv­er it to his ten­ants at Argent Group PLC.

A steady stream of pedes­tri­ans walk­ing along Pic­cadil­ly took leaflets and quite a few expressed their sup­port for action against cli­mate change (only one stopped to argue against it while I was present,) and pass­ing motorists hoot­ed in sup­port.

A few more pic­tures on My Lon­don Diary, http//mylondondiary.co.uk/2008/04/apr.htm short­ly.

———————————–

Fos­sil Fools Day protest against Kingsnorth coal-fired pow­er sta­tion
Parliament Square FFD 1
Parliament Square FFD 2
Stu­dents from ‘Peo­ple and Plan­et’ along with oth­er cli­mate activists came to Par­lia­ment Square, Lon­don on April 1 as a part of the inter­na­tion­al Fos­sil Fool’s Day protest.

Around a hun­dred came West­min­ster to protest about the plans to build a new coal-fired pow­er sta­tion at Kingsnorth in Kent, the first of eight such major car­bon-emit­ters being planned. Stu­dents brought with them three large white cool­ing tow­ers, each with a large mes­sage ‘NO NEW COAL’ and one with rather nice grime drip­ping from its upper lip, and erect­ed them on Par­lia­ment Square in front of the Hous­es of Par­lia­ment.

Many of the stu­dents also held cutouts of Gor­don Brown’s face as they shout­ed advice to him that this pro­gramme makes a non­sense of the gov­ern­men­t’s pol­i­cy on car­bon emis­sions, and sev­er­al held posters show­ing the Draft Cli­mate Change Bill, one of which, held by a jester, was set alight with the help of some lighter fuel.

Stu­dents went on to lob­by their MPs, and a cou­ple, includ­ing the Labour MP for Read­ing West, Mar­tin Salter came out into Par­lia­ment Square to meet stu­dents from their con­stituen­cies.

More pic­tures on My Lon­don Diary short­ly : http://mylondondiary.co.uk/2008/04/apr.htm#kingsnorth

———————————–

Fos­sil Fools Day action at Y&R adver­tis­ing.
Y & R agency FFD 1
Y & R agency FFD 2
Y & R agency FFD 3
Yes­ter­day April 1st, which as you all know is inter­na­tion­al Fos­sil Fools day the offices of Y&R adver­tis­ing were paid a vis­it by Lon­don Ris­ing Tide. Out­side the Cam­den HQ activists did a spoof mar­ket­ing cam­paign by Y&R who are cur­rent­ly try­ing to con­vince the pub­lic of Landrover’s green cre­den­tials…!!?? One of their employ­ees was ini­tial­ly quite angry ansd bewil­dered by what was hap­pen­ing. Though in fair­ness he did calm down and see the fun­ny side mak­ing numer­ous cig­a­rette breaks to come out­side and chat to the activists and their polar bear.

Mean­while inside the build­ing some oth­er peo­ple pos­ing as cor­po­rate clients gained access to Y&R and bar­ri­cad­ed them­selves inside one of their offices. The Police even­tu­al­ly showed up in force and nicked those inside. Which is exact­ly what they want­ed as any charges will bring a nice big PR dis­as­ter to Y&R. Nice sun­ny day for it too….

Spoof Press Release which some gullible out­lets actu­al­ly fell for:
** 9am, 1.4.08; for imme­di­ate release ***

AD AGENCY Y&R TO LAUNCH CIVILIAN JUMP-JET MARKETING CAMPAIGN

Lead­ing adver­tis­ing agency Y&R is proud to reveal that it will be spear­head­ing a major adver­tis­ing and over­all brand­ing cam­paign for the new Har­rion® Civil­ian Jump-Jet. The Har­rion® — the civil­ian ver­sion of the Har­ri­er — is the cen­tre­piece of Har­rion­Pro­jects, the new­ly-pri­va­tised wing of the UK Min­istry of Defence.

The cam­paign will be mod­elled on Y&R’s huge­ly suc­cess­ful work for Land Rover, which com­bined rugged loca­tions, spec­tac­u­lar pho­tog­ra­phy and a promi­nent claim to ‘off­set’ the CO2 pro­duced from the first 45,000 miles of dri­ving. The com­pa­ny which arranged the off­sets, Cli­mate­Care, is also on board to offer the same ser­vice for the Har­rion®, (which has an even health­i­er thirst than its land-based broth­er!)

Y&R’s Bernard Dono­van said “This is a dream come true for us, and not only because so many of our lads grew up ogling Har­ri­ers back in the Sev­en­ties! Seri­ous­ly, we see a great future loom­ing for the Har­rion®, and we can’t wait to get out there and help mould pub­lic per­cep­tions of it.’

Mimi San­to­ria of Har­rion­Pro­jects added ‘There’s noth­ing to stop the Har­rion® becom­ing the world’s most icon­ic per­son­al trans­porta­tion solu­tion. And with Cli­mate­Care part of our team, there’s every chance it will come to be regard­ed as a zero-emis­sion 21st Cen­tu­ry green zeit­geist machine!’

Mick Mar­tin of Cli­mate­Care said ‘CO2 off­sets are lit­er­al­ly tak­ing off through­out the west­ern world. We’re ready to jump into action and car­bon neu­tralise the Harrion®’s admit­ted­ly chal­leng­ing 0.3 miles per gal­lon in the same way as we have for Land Rover. This is our first major deal since being acquired by JPMor­gan, so we real­ly are fly­ing high with the big boys!’

For inter­views, pic­tures and more infor­ma­tion as it hap­pens:
Tel: 07513 341970 or 07513 335777
yr_worldbeaters@yahoo.co.uk or
harrion_launchpad@yahoo.co.uk
www.fossilfoolsday.org

Press Release form the occu­piers:
*** 9am, 1.4.08; for imme­di­ate release***

LAND ROVER AD AGENCY OCCUPIED BY LONDON RISING TIDE ON FOSSIL FOOLS DAY

Activists from cli­mate jus­tice direct action group Lon­don Ris­ing Tide (LRT) have occu­pied the offices of Y&R, the ad agency behind the cur­rent Land Rover cam­paign, and a new cam­paign for arms giant BAe Sys­tems. This is one of many actions tak­ing place world­wide on Fos­sil Fools Day, a day of action called by the Ris­ing Tide net­work. Out­side the office, cli­mate street the­atre is also under­way.

The LRT activists are pos­ing as exec­u­tives from a new­ly-pri­va­tised wing of the MoD called Har­rion­Pro­jects, a spoof com­pa­ny whose cen­tre­piece is the Har­rion®, a civil­ian ver­sion of the Har­ri­er Jump-Jet. LRT has issued a spoof press release say­ing that Y&R has agreed to launch the Har­rion® mar­ket­ing cam­paign, and also that Cli­mate­Care, the CO2 off­sets com­pa­ny which is work­ing to ‘off­set’ Land Rover emis­sions, has agreed to do the same for the Har­rion®, even though the Har­rion® only man­ages 0.3mpg.

LRT’s Sam Chase said: ‘It feels good to be join­ing oth­er cli­mate jus­tice activists around the world on a day when tra­di­tion­al­ly the world is turned upside down. Fos­sil Fools Day is about using fool­ery to reveal the insan­i­ty of the cur­rent fos­sil-fuelled mar­ket mad­ness, an insan­i­ty whose inten­si­ty is stoked to a great extent by the adver­tis­ing indus­try.

LRT’s Mimi San­to­ria added: This is the first time an ad agency has been tar­get­ed by cli­mate jus­tice cam­paign­ers – it’s long over­due, and it cer­tain­ly won’t be the last.’

For inter­views, pic­tures, a copy of the spoof press release and more
infor­ma­tion as it hap­pens:
Tel: 07513 341970 or 07513 335777
london@risingtide.org.uk www.londonrisingtide.org.uk
www.fossilfoolsday.org

———————————–

On 31st March, Nor­wich Ris­ing Tide start­ed the fos­sil fool­ery ear­ly.
Norwich Union FFD leaflet front
Norwich Union FFD leaflet back
Step One — we sent out a spoof press release (see below) announc­ing that Nor­wich Unions would be with­draw­ing all of its £6.1 bil­lion invest­ment in the fos­sil fuel indus­try – yes they real­ly do invest that much is fos­sil fuels! You name it – BP (£1.4 bil­lion — 2% own­er­ship of the com­pa­ny), Shell (£1.1 bil­lion), Exxon, Cono­coPhillips, Chrysler, British Ener­gy, Cen­tri­ca, Eon, BMW… the list goes on and on.

Step Two – we organ­ised a press con­fer­ence to spread the word fur­ther, out­side the front entrance of the Nor­wich Union HQ. This real­ly set the cat amongst the pigeons and Nor­wich Union emailed all there staff to say “Ris­ing Tide are plan­ning pos­si­ble action against Nor­wich Union … the group will car­ry our dis­rup­tive activ­i­ties … and will pos­si­bly attempt to inter­act with employ­ees”. Heav­en For­bid … actu­al­ly inter­ac­tion! Won’t that require extra, extra back up polic­ing. Sure enough when we arrived at Nor­wich Union we were greet­ed by numer­ous police (includ­ing some of the For­ward Intel­li­gence Team who had decid­ed to come from Lon­don to Nor­wich for a day out).

At the press con­fer­ence ‘Nor­wich Union Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Direc­tor, Sarah James’ gave a beau­ti­ful speech (see below) explain­ing the change in Nor­wich Union invest­ment pol­i­cy, which thor­ough­ly con­fused the press (they very near­ly bought it!).

All that remained was to give out the 50 Nor­wich Union ‘Apol­o­gy Sand­bags’ which had been deliv­ered and to hand­ed out over 300 leaflets to passers by (see below).

On a per­son­al note – it was a fun day out and best of all our research into Nor­wich Union revealed who the biggest fos­sil fool in Nor­wich tru­ly is! Watch this space.

Nor­wich Ris­ing Tide.

SPOOF PRESS RELEASE

Nor­wich Union to announce £6.1 bil­lion with­draw­al from fos­sil fuel indus­try

Embar­go: 00.01 AM, Mon­day 31 March

On Mon­day, Nor­wich Union will announce a dra­mat­ic change of com­pa­ny pol­i­cy.

In 2007 Nor­wich Union invest­ed £6.1 bil­lion in the fos­sil fuel indus­try, £1.4 bil­lion in BP alone. After last sum­mer’s heavy flood­ing, the company’s Chief Exec­u­tive, Mark Hodges, has decid­ed to with­draw Nor­wich Union’s invest­ments from this sec­tor.

Nor­wich Union Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Direc­tor, Sarah James, announced: “The com­pa­ny has realised that invest­ing £6.1 bil­lion worth of insur­ance pre­mi­ums in BP, Shell and oth­er major oil, coal and car com­pa­nies is unsus­tain­able in the cur­rent cli­mate. In the past we have been indi­rect­ly exac­er­bat­ing the flood­ing and oth­er extreme weath­er events that are now mak­ing homes increas­ing­ly unin­sur­able.”

Nor­wich Union will mark the announce­ment with a peri­od of pub­lic apol­o­gy for past invest­ment deci­sions, by issu­ing ‘Nor­wich Union Apol­o­gy Sand­bags’ free to all home own­ers who now face greater flood risk as a result of fos­sil fuel induced cli­mate change. Mem­bers of the group Nor­wich Ris­ing Tide will be on hand to help Nor­wich Union dis­trib­ute the first 60 ‘Apol­o­gy Sand­bags’ after the announce­ment on Mon­day.

Pho­to oppor­tu­ni­ty: Mon­day, 31 March, 12.15 PM, Nor­wich Union (Mar­ble Hall entrance).

Can This Be True?
Has Nor­wich Union come to its sens­es? Or does this event mark the start of Fos­sil Fools Day (1), a day of direct action against the fos­sil fuel indus­try and its finan­cial back­ers?

David Wat­son, of Nor­wich Ris­ing Tide, today said: “Finan­cial insti­tu­tions like Nor­wich Union that fun­nel mon­ey into the fos­sil fuel indus­try have stood in the shad­ows for too long. Today, we are join­ing with thou­sands around the world in tak­ing cre­ative direct action to pre­vent the fos­sil fuel econ­o­my from destroy­ing our future. The only real solu­tion to cli­mate change it to keep fos­sil fuels in the ground.”

The pho­to oppor­tu­ni­ty is real, and the apol­o­gy sand­bags are ready to go.
The only ques­tion is — will Nor­wich Union accept its respon­si­bil­i­ty for cli­mate change and help us to dis­trib­ute them?

Con­tact: norwich@risingtide.org.uk, 0795 144 4545
www.risingtide.org.uk/norwich

SPEECH GIVEN OUTSIDE NORWICH UNION ANNOUNCING THE DECISION.

Wel­come ladies and gen­tle­men.

I am here today to announce a land­mark deci­sion that puts Nor­wich Union at the very fore­front of respon­si­ble busi­ness prac­tices and, we believe, makes it a world leader in the finan­cial sec­tor. This announce­ment will change a lot about the way Nor­wich Union does busi­ness, and will impact our cus­tomers, investors, and all of our cor­po­rate part­ners.

Before I go any fur­ther, I want to tell you a sto­ry. It’s about Mark Hodges, the CEO of Nor­wich Union Life.

Last sum­mer, Mr Hodges’ wife had a baby, their first child. They planned a hol­i­day to their sum­mer home to spend time with their new baby. But their sum­mer home was in Tewkes­bury, and it was flood­ed last sum­mer. Mr and Mrs Hodges arrived, Mr Hodges cradling the new baby in his arms, to find chairs float­ing, car­pets sod­den, and pho­to albums full of fam­i­ly mem­o­ries destroyed. Over the course of the next few days, as news of the dam­age across the coun­try spread, the inevitable fin­ger was point­ed to cli­mate change. Watch­ing his new child in her bassinette, Mr Hodge had an epiphany. He did not want his lega­cy to his daugh­ter to be a world rav­aged by cli­mate change. He began to devour every­thing he could find about the effects cli­mate change might have, here in the UK and around the world. He read about more floods, more droughts, more fam­i­lies’ lives ruined. He read about the destruc­tion of the Ama­zon and the loss of wildlife. He read about the mil­lions of peo­ple who would lose their homes, or their lives. And on his first day back at work after the birth of his daugh­ter, Mr. Hodge made a vow to do every­thing in his con­sid­er­able pow­er to pre­vent these dread­ful things from hap­pen­ing – start­ing with the com­pa­ny he is respon­si­ble for.

Mr Hodge looked with new eyes at Nor­wich Union’s approach to its invest­ment of insur­ance pre­mi­ums. He looked at fos­sil fuel indus­try – a sure­fire win­ner when it comes to return on invest­ment – in a whole new light. And he looked on the Nor­wich Union invest­ment port­fo­lio with grow­ing hor­ror: Shell, BP, Exxon, Cono­coPhillips, Chrysler, British Ener­gy, Cen­tri­ca, Eon, BMW… the list went on and on. In total, Nor­wich Union’s invest­ment in the fos­sil fuel indus­try added up to 6.1 bil­lion pounds. Mr Hodge realised that if his com­pa­ny was 2% own­er of BP, it was as com­plic­it in the dam­age to the cli­mate as BP was. And here, he realised, is where the change must start.

So, ladies and gen­tle­men, I am extra­or­di­nar­i­ly proud to stand here today and announce, on behalf of Mr Hodge and the Board of Direc­tors, that from today, Nor­wich Union will be with­draw­ing the entire­ty of its 6.1 bil­lion invest­ment in the fos­sil fuel indus­try. [shock hor­ror in the audi­ence]. Please, remain calm. We realise this will come as a major shock to our share­hold­ers and cor­po­rate part­ners. We want to enter into a dia­logue with all of our part­ners about this deci­sion, and Mr Hodges will be mak­ing him­self per­son­al­ly avail­able to all those with con­cerns. I will be on hand fol­low­ing this pre­sen­ta­tion to arrange meet­ings, and dis­trib­ute con­tact details. How­ev­er, going for­ward, I appeal all those lis­ten­ing to look to the big­ger pic­ture. Nor­wich Union has always been about pro­tect­ing our cus­tomers’ futures. Today, we are mak­ing a pol­i­cy change that will pro­tect our col­lec­tive future. I’m sure our share­hold­ers, and indeed all of you here today, will agree with me that pro­tect­ing our com­mon future, is cer­tain­ly more impor­tant than pro­tect­ing our bot­tom line.

But today is not all about the board room and the share­hold­ers. Today, as every day, is about our cus­tomers. We realise that the deci­sions we have made over the past decades have already caused irrev­o­ca­ble changes to our cli­mate. We also realise that many of our cus­tomers in the Nor­folk area are find­ing that their homes are now at greater risk of flood­ing. There­fore, as a token of our deep regret for the role we have played in plac­ing our own cus­tomers at greater risk, today we are offer­ing every­one free sand­bags to help pro­tect their homes from future flood­ing. We espe­cial­ly encour­age those home­own­ers who have recent­ly dis­cov­ered that their homes are now unin­sur­able to make use of this offer, and it is to them that we extend our great­est apolo­gies.

How­ev­er, I hope that you all join me in see­ing this day not as a day to regret, but a day to cel­e­brate, and a day that we all can be immense­ly proud of.

Thank you.

I would now like to invite my col­leagues to help me dis­trib­ute our Apol­o­gy Sand­bags.

norwich@risingtide.org.uk
http://www.risingtide.org.uk/norwich
———————————–

2.4.08
Police Search­es Hous­es After Arrests At E.On Block­ade

Not­ting­hamshire Police searched 2 hous­es yes­ter­day after­noon after it had made two arrests at the block­ade at E.On offices on Mount Street. The search­es were ‘autho­rized’ under sec­tion 18 of the Police And Crim­i­nal Evi­dence Act 1984. Under this act; “A con­sta­ble may enter and search any premis­es occu­pied or con­trolled by a per­son who is under arrest for an arrestable offence, if he has rea­son­able grounds for sus­pect­ing that there is on the premis­es evi­dence that relates to that offence”. Both peo­ple arrest­ed were released ear­ly in the evening and were charged with Sec­tion 5 pub­lic order offences. They are to appear at Not­ting­ham Mag­is­trates Court on April 14th.

———————————–

Fos­sil Fool­ing in Glas­gow

A bunch of Fos­sil Fools took to the Streets of Glas­gow today, try­ing to per­suade peo­ple to up their car­bon emis­sions by putting more petrol in their cars, applaud­ing SUV’s and urg­ing pedes­tri­ans to Stop Walk­ing — Start Dri­ving!

The stu­pid suit­ed Fools, some sport­ing bowler hats, face­paint, pin stripes and brief­cas­es, and glass­es adorned with dol­lar signs, went to a near­by Shell garage where cus­tomers were urged to guz­zle more gas, and big cars were slavered over. One dri­ver refused to dri­ve over a hand-paint­ed Plan­et Earth as he left the scene of Cli­mate Crime, but san­i­ty pre­vailed as the next guy in a Jaguar (JAAGGUUAORRRGASSMMMM!!! er
sor­ry) glee­ful­ly put his foot down on the rub­bish plan­et and sped off, to the delight and applause of the Fools. The car is might­i­er than the plan­et! The con­fused Fools then unfurled a giant Award to Shell for its con­tri­bu­tions to cli­mate change.

Next they applaud­ed more 4x4s at traf­fic lights, before inad­ver­tent­ly stum­bling into a branch of Star­bucks to play – and Star­bucks are a well known mod­el employ­er and sell Green Cof­fee! The Fools, hav­ing realised their mis­take, then took to the Street again, and lit upon a branch of the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land. One of the slight­ly more sane look­ing Fools, more of an idiot real­ly, plant­ed lots of leaflets about how the RBS is financ­ing cli­mate change on a mas­sive scale, in amongst the oth­ers in the bank
telling you how good mon­ey is. When told he shouldn’t be doing this, he mere­ly smiled and was left alone. But not for long.

A grotesque of Fools sud­den­ly appeared in the bank, caus­ing noise and may­hem and laugh­ing at some insane joke, before unfurl­ing their large Award ban­ner, applaud­ing the RBS’s con­tri­bu­tion to cli­mate change. It seemed that these idiots would stop at noth­ing to show how Fool­ish they were!

Hav­ing some­how nego­ti­at­ed the cross­ing of a Sauchiehall Street, after frol­ic­some times with some road work­ers, the Fools socked toward, then into, a Flight Cen­tre. Here they enquired about get­ting a hol­i­day with the biggest, guar­an­teed CO2 emis­sion. Then they pre­sent­ed the flight cen­tre staff with anoth­er huge ban­ner Award for their con­tri­bu­tions to cli­mate change, and had a fun game of ‘Chairs’, before turn­ing into heli­copters and fly­ing out of the shop.

Here they learned that many BIG SUVs were to be seen at a local pri­vate school, so they scram­bled up there to drool over all those beooooo­ti­ful gas guz­zlers. At one point, some of them, under­stand­ably, lost con­trol of them­selves over a specif­i­cal­ly Big Beau­ti­ful Car­car, slaver­ing and lick­ing at it. Then, the ‘own­er’ showed us how big a hard-on he has for his guz­zler by push­ing a Fool, who had pro­duced an old feath­er duster from the depths of his bag, and shout­ing ‘Get away from MY CAR!!’. Said sane man then pro­ceed­ed to get on his mobile, more of that lat­er.

As they went down the street, lots of chil­dren were pleas­ant­ly sur­prised by this strange Frol­ic of Fools as they pro­gressed, Then — THE COPS! Gasp! The sane man had called them because his car­car had been dust­ed off and ‘touched’, but they soon realised what a harm­less bunch of Fools con­front­ed them, and went away smil­ing.

So the Fos­sil Fools strug­gled off into the late after­noon sun­shine. What a con­fus­ing day it had been. For­tu­nate­ly, the rest of the world went on being sane.

Thin­stan­ley
———————————–

Dear Car-Dri­ving Com­muters

This ban­ner was sight­ed on Char­ing Cross motor­way inter­sec­tion in cen­tral Glas­gow this morn­ing.

“Cli­mate change does­n’t exist. (APRIL FOOLS YOU FOSSIL FOOL!)”

It had the fol­low­ing note attached…
“Dear Car-Dri­ving Com­muters.
Who stack your­selves up one by one.
Grid-lock­ing our city Glas­gow in high car­bon, low health, grrr- noise / eurgh-air and cat­a­stroph­ic cli­mate chaos.

GET OUT OF YOUR CARS YOU FOSSIL FOOLS!

From Cyclists, Pedes­tri­ans, Health Work­ers, City-Dwellers,
Low-Car­bon Lifestylers Want­i­ng Rad­i­cal Change Now,
Ground­ed Non-fly­ers Who Want to Grow Veg­eta­bles on Your Land.”

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New­cas­tle activists block­ade 4x4 deal­er­ship!

Peo­ple from Tyne­side con­cerned about the effects of cli­mate change paid a vis­it to a 4x4 deal­er­ship which sells hum-ve or hum­mer style 4x4’s.

The entrance to Vroom car super­store was block­ad­ed and a ban­ner pro­claim­ing “kill car cul­ture before it kills us” was stretched across the road.

The activists hoped to high­light the fos­sil fool car cul­ture which is so dom­i­nant in all u.k cites and the unsus­tain­able cap­i­tal­ism which fuels car cul­ture.

The work­ers at the garage did­n’t take the protest very well and respond­ed aggre­sive­ly to our presence,at one point a work­er rammed his car though the block­ade which left two of the protest group on the bon­net of his car and lucky to avoid seri­ous injury!

The police soon arrived and broke the block­ade up and let the over zeal­ous work­ers in to the garage. Despite the fact two peo­ple had been assault­ed by a motor vehi­cle the police chose to ignore this and pro­ceed­ed to arrest the two peo­ple that had been struck for crim­i­nal dam­age of the car that was dri­ven into them!! The police then seized the video cam­era belong to one of the group as it con­tained evi­dence of the alleged crim­i­nal dam­age (so no pics.. sor­ry)

The block­aders encour­age oth­er groups or indi­vid­u­als to take action against the cli­mate crim­i­nals in your area.

Hap­py fos­sil fools day.

for fur­ther info on events and actions in New­cas­tle and the North-East con­tact; whydontyou@post.com

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Free pub­lic trans­port for all? Liv­er­pool activists are hav­ing a laugh!

Ear­ly on the morn­ing of April 1st, a group of Liv­er­pool activists car­ried out a ban­ner drop and dis­trib­uted leaflets and dum­my tick­ets out­side Lime Street Sta­tion, telling the pub­lic that they could trav­el for free.

A ban­ner read­ing “FREE TRANSPORT FOR ALL – DON’T BE A FOSSIL FOOL” was hung from scaf­fold­ing above the sta­tion, and fake tick­ets marked “Free Trav­el” were giv­en out, accom­pa­nied by a leaflet enti­tled “Only Jok­ing”, which called on peo­ple to take the deci­sions on improv­ing pub­lic trans­port into the hands of those who run and use the ser­vice, not the com­pa­nies who prof­it from it.

“Prices are going up mas­sive­ly,” says the leaflet, “at a time when the gov­ern­ment says they want peo­ple out of their cars so they can cut down on the use of fos­sil fuels! Instead, the gov­ern­ment are cut­ting price sub­si­dies and let­ting com­pa­nies charge what they like!” It ques­tions the 3.8% price hike imple­ment­ed by Merseyrail last year, point­ing out the lack of a cor­re­spond­ing improve­ment to the ser­vice or to the pay and work­ing con­di­tions of Merseyrail’s employ­ees.

It was not long before two Trans­port Police and a Com­mu­ni­ty Sup­port Offi­cer took an inter­est, and upon read­ing the leaflet they ini­tial­ly seemed sat­is­fied (pro­vid­ed one activist moved a full five inch­es to her right in order to be clear of the sta­tion bound­ary.) Five min­utes lat­er, though, they returned, with the real­i­sa­tion that, though it had slipped their minds before­hand, the activists were, in fact, break­ing the law. One of them wore a trench­coat, and slapped his fore­head with the heel of his palm before turn­ing back and announc­ing there was just one more thing (I may be mak­ing that up). What had sud­den­ly occurred to them was that some com­muters may not prop­er­ly under­stand the phrase “Only Jok­ing” and try to use a clear­ly home-print­ed joke tick­et as if it were the real thing, which would make the activists guilty of “Mak­ing or sup­ply­ing arti­cles for use in frauds”, under Arti­cle 7 of the Fraud Act (2006) and mean they had to be arrest­ed; as nobody want­ed that kind of paper­work, the police advised that it was best for all con­cerned if they moved on.

After con­sul­ta­tion, the activists decid­ed to take that risk, and the rest of the leaflets were dis­trib­uted with­out inci­dent. Amus­ing as this is to recount, it is yet anoth­er exam­ple of the dis­turb­ing rise in police harass­ment of peace­ful pro­test­ers and cam­paign­ers in the city cen­tre.

Mean­while, car­bon emis­sions rise along with pub­lic trans­port prices and it is cheap­er to dri­ve to Man­ches­ter than to get the train. How long are we going to suf­fer these fools?

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Total FFD
Total­i­tar­i­an Fos­sil Fools Day took place at the Dor­est House Total Petrol Sta­tion 170–172 Maryle­bone Rd, Lon­don on April 1st. Join­ing in with the events of http://www.fossilfoolsday.org the 5 pro­test­ers demon­strat­ed against the French oil com­pa­ny’s fos­sil fool­ish­ness caus­ing cli­mate change and pol­lu­tion as well as the usu­al protest against Total’s sup­port of the bru­tal Bur­ma jun­ta. Total funds the evil jun­ta with 500 mil­lion dol­lars a year and its gas pipeline in Bur­ma was built with slave labour (see http://www.totaldenialfilm.com).

The heavy Maryle­bone Road traf­fic beeped in sup­port of the “BEEP 4 BURMA BOYCOTT TOTAL” ban­ners and many taxi dri­vers vis­it­ing the sta­tion request­ed leaflets about the protest. One pass­er-by made a point of vow­ing to the pro­test­ers nev­er to get petrol from Total ever again.

In Jan­u­ary 2008 Total’s fos­sil fool­ish­ness was recog­nised by the French courts as they con­vict­ed Total of France’s worst oil dis­as­ter over the sink­ing of the tanker Eri­ka off the coast of Brit­tany in Decem­ber 1999. The dis­as­ter leaked 20,000 tonnes of oil into the sea, con­t­a­m­i­nat­ing 400km of coast­line. Hav­ing tried to deny respon­si­bil­i­ty Total was fined 375,000 euros (£280,000) and ordered to pay a share of near­ly 200m euros in dam­ages. The fine was the max­i­mum penal­ty allowed. See BBC news arti­cle

Cavendish Square Protest
========================
On April 2nd, totaloutofburma.org also protest­ed out­side Total’s offices at 33 Cavendish Square. We were pleased to speak to one pass­er-by who had read our leaflet from a pre­vi­ous protest and said she had switched her home gas sup­ply from Total due to Total’s sup­port of the mil­i­tary regime in Bur­ma.

Total and Bur­ma

A detailed report on Total Oil’s involve­ment in Bur­ma, writ­ten by Bur­ma Cam­paign UK, can be down­loaded at http://www.burmacampaign.org.uk/total.html

Total is in a joint ven­ture with the dic­ta­tor­ship in the Yadana gas project in south­ern Bur­ma. [1]

The gas project funds the jun­ta with hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars a year and rep­re­sents a major source of for­eign cur­ren­cy for the regime to buy weapons and finance the army.

Bur­ma has the world’s worst health care [2], the most cor­rup­tion [3] and the most child sol­diers [4].

Protests are held week­ly but loca­tions may change. For infor­ma­tion and reports on protests in Lon­don and around the coun­try please see
http://totaloutofburma.org

Bur­ma Videos

Bur­ma Cam­paign UK’s video chan­nel on YouTube:

- New to Bur­ma? Watch these videos for a brief intro­duc­tion
— This is Bur­ma Music — U2, REM, Damien Rice, KT Tun­stall…
— This is Bur­ma: News and Doc­u­men­taries — includ­ing Bur­ma’s Secret War
and Inside The Crack­down

http://www.youtube.com/burmacampaignuk

Get TOTAL OIL out of Bur­ma group on Face­book:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6833508763

Recent Bur­ma news: (see http://myamarnews.blogspot.com — read links for the full ver­sions of sto­ries)

———————————–

Engen the focal point of Fos­sil Fools day in Dur­ban, South Africa

Coun­tries around the world observed Fos­sil “Fools” Day — which is an inter­na­tion­al day of protest focused on cli­mate change and ener­gy issues.

In Dur­ban, petrol giant Engen became the focal point for res­i­dents who have long focused their anger at the refin­ery, hold­ing it respon­si­ble for caus­ing var­i­ous lung dis­eases among the com­mu­ni­ty.

The pro­test­ers laid flo­ral wreaths sig­ni­fy­ing deaths in this com­mu­ni­ty due to lung infec­tions. Asth­ma has been one of the main prob­lems here. The gen­er­al preva­lence rate of the lung dis­ease world­wide is between 10% and 12% and this area has over five times the norm.

Solu­tions to pol­lu­tion
Den­nis Bru­tus an Envi­ron­men­tal Activist says: “If Engen and oth­er cor­po­ra­tions chose the best tech­ni­cal solu­tions you would end up min­imis­ing the amount of pol­lu­tion. The prob­lem is that it would cut into their prof­its so they choos­ing to put prof­its ahead of peo­ple.”

Indus­try boss­es say there has been a reduc­tion in air pol­lu­tion over the past 10 years, but admit more can be done.

Willem Oost­huizen of Engen says: “We will cer­tain­ly try to keep on work­ing on our envi­ron­men­tal per­for­mance, reduc­ing the flar­ing, becom­ing more reli­able, we care for the com­mu­ni­ty and we going to do more.”

Engen has also accept­ed a mem­o­ran­dum — deliv­ered by uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents and ill chil­dren from the area. They’re call­ing for, among oth­er things, trans­paren­cy. The com­mu­ni­ty has vowed to fol­low up on their demands.

———————————–

Pranksters attempt to Pur­chase Goods with Coal in New­cas­tle, Aus­tralia

A group of peo­ple from Ris­ing Tide New­cas­tle went to a large indoor shop­ping mall armed with a fist full of leaflets, two bags full of coal, and a large colour­ful ban­ner which asked the ques­tion “How does buy­ing stuff fuel cli­mate change?” and direct­ing the read­er to a web­site for the answer. While a few of the peo­ple head­ed up to the roof of the build­ing with the ban­ner, the rest of the group walked towards the K‑mart in order to swap their bags of coal for some cheap con­sumer prod­ucts (there­by cut­ting out the mid­dle man).

The small group of pranksters was met by a stiff line of about 20 humour­less police offi­cers in crowd con­trol mode, and a sim­i­lar num­ber of secu­ri­ty guards. No, they were informed, they would not be enter­ing K‑mart today. The pranksters explained what they were doing, and how ram­pant con­sumerism was one of the root caus­es of cli­mate change, and would it be okay please if we just did our lit­tle prank of try­ing to buy prod­ucts with coal, and then we could all go home? No, replied the humour­less author­i­ties, you may not. Not only that, but try­ing to buy prod­ucts with coal was one step away from theft, offered one of the police offi­cers.

So some of the pranksters began talk­ing to the shop­ping pub­lic about the cli­mate change impact of cheap import­ed con­sumer items, and hand­ing out fly­ers with more infor­ma­tion. A cou­ple of oth­ers snuck off into the near­by Toys ‘R’ Us and tried once again to spend their coal. Alas, just as our pranksters approached the check­out they were rum­bled by secu­ri­ty. Final­ly, a few min­utes lat­er, the pranksters were final­ly offer to make an offer to a near­by fash­ion shop. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the deal was knocked back.

Mean­while, on the roof of the build­ing, things were going bet­ter. A big ban­ner was suc­cess­ful­ly hung off the build­ing, fac­ing two main roads and cov­er­ing the mas­sive shop­ping cen­tre logo on the cor­ner of the build­ing. The ban­ner had a pic­ture of a shop­ping trol­ley with a plume of smoke com­ing from the back of it said “How does buy­ing stuff fuel cli­mate change?”. A news­pa­per pho­tog­ra­ph­er caught the action from down on the street below.

Even­tu­al­ly, all those involved were round­ed up and kicked out of the build­ing, at threat of arrest. While some of the shop­pers they had spo­ken to were just cranky, some were sup­port­ive, and some of were inter­est­ed to know more. Unfor­tu­nate­ly it seemed none of secu­ri­ty guards or police offi­cers were inter­est­ed in con­sumerism fuel­ing cli­mate change, and they cer­tain­ly weren’t inter­est­ed in a bit of light-heart­ed prank­tivism.

———————————–

8 Arrest­ed as North Car­oli­na, USA Res­i­dents Shut Down Con­struc­tion at Cliff­side Coal Plant
North Carolina FFD
At 6:30 this morn­ing, North Car­oli­na res­i­dents locked them­selves to bull­doz­ers to stop the con­struc­tion of Duke Energy’s mas­sive Cliff­side coal-fired pow­er plant being built 50 miles west of Char­lotte, NC. “In the face of cat­a­stroph­ic cli­mate change, build­ing a new coal plant is tan­ta­mount to sign­ing a death sen­tence for our gen­er­a­tion,” said local farmer Matt Wal­lace, while locked to a bull­doz­er. The con­cerned cit­i­zens also roped off the con­struc­tion site with “Glob­al Warm­ing Crime Scene” tape and held ban­ners that read “Coal Fuels Cli­mate Change” and “Social Change, not Cli­mate Change.”

Short­ly after activists locked them­selves to con­struc­tion equip­ment, police arrived on the scene and used pain com­pli­ance holds and taz­ers to force them to unlock them­selves.

The act of civ­il dis­obe­di­ence is one of over 100 protests tak­ing place around the world on what cli­mate activists are call­ing Fos­sil Fools Day, a con­fronta­tion­al day of protest tar­get­ing com­pa­nies respon­si­ble for run­away car­bon diox­ide emis­sions. The day of action was orga­nized by the inter­na­tion­al Ris­ing Tide net­work and its allies to demand an end to the extrac­tion and burn­ing of fos­sil fuels and a just, rapid tran­si­tion to sus­tain­able ways of liv­ing. In Not­ting­ham, UK, cli­mate activists block­ad­ed the offices of E‑on, a com­pa­ny try­ing to build a new gen­er­a­tion of coal-fired pow­er sta­tions, while anoth­er group in Wales halt­ed work at one of the biggest open­cast coal mines in Europe.

The new Cliff­side plant is cur­rent­ly in legal lim­bo for being in vio­la­tion of the Clean Air Act. While Duke CEO Jim Rogers pub­licly paints Duke as a “green” ener­gy com­pa­ny, he has refused to install the best avail­able pol­lu­tion con­trols on the new coal plant, as is required by fed­er­al law. The plant would pump 6 mil­lion tons of car­bon diox­ide into the atmos­phere annu­al­ly in addi­tion to tox­ic heavy met­als such as mer­cury.

“The Fos­sil Fools in gov­ern­ment and indus­try are play­ing games with our future: the time for lip ser­vice and half-mea­sures is over. Direct actions like this one are nec­es­sary to stop peo­ple like Jim Rogers, who watch the plan­et burn while count­ing the mon­ey they make from the fire.” said Char­lotte res­i­dent Jane Cal­houn.

Cli­mate change warn­ing signs abound: count­less plant and ani­mal species are being pushed to the brink of extinc­tion by warm­ing tem­per­a­tures; low-lying islands are evac­u­at­ing due to ris­ing sea lev­els; droughts, tor­na­dos, and floods are on the increase. “Cli­mate change is the great­est threat humans have ever faced. We should be tear­ing down coal plants, not build­ing new ones,” said Clare Jones of Asheville Ris­ing Tide.

Pub­lic oppo­si­tion to the Cliff­side plant, includ­ing law­suits, pub­lic protests and acts of civ­il dis­obe­di­ence, has been grow­ing steadi­ly. “Jim Rogers won’t have to live with the con­se­quences of glob­al warm­ing. Our gen­er­a­tion will. We aren’t going any­where until this plant is can­celed!” said Cal­houn. A ral­ly this Sat­ur­day in Char­lotte is expect­ed to draw hun­dreds of demon­stra­tors.

This action was orga­nized by Asheville Ris­ing Tide and Earth First!

Street Mr Rogers

Con­tact:
On-site: Liz Veazey, South­east Cli­mate Con­ver­gence (919)619‑5964
Off-site: Abi­gail Singer, Asheville Ris­ing Tide (828)280‑3462

———————————–

NY Citi lock-on25 Bil­lion­aires for Dirty Ener­gy Block­ade Citibank Head­quar­ters; 2 Arrest­ed

In Cel­e­bra­tion of Fos­sil Fools Day — Citi takes heat for coal financ­ing

New York, NY — At 12:30pm today over 25 Bil­lion­aires for Dirty Ener­gy block­ad­ed the main entrance of Citibank’s Upper East Side head­quar­ters, 2 were arrest­ed by NYPD after chain­ing them­selves to the front doors. NYPD offi­cers even­tu­al­ly had to cut through their chains.

Dressed in tuxe­dos and top hats, Bil­lion­aires are demand­ing Citibank shift their large-scale invest­ments in coal-fired pow­er plants due to coal’s increas­ing invest­ment risk. “Coal has lost its appeal as a pre­dictable invest­ment; it is fraught with uncer­tain­ty” said Bil­lion­aire, Lau­ren Valle, pri­or to being arrest­ed by NYPD. “Bot­tom-line, CITI is mort­gag­ing our future and com­pro­mis­ing their own long-term com­pet­i­tive­ness.”

Bil­lion­aires held large signs read­ing: “Coal=Too Risky, Citi We Want our Mon­ey Back.”

“Cli­mate change will be a major invest­ment theme of the future” said Scott Parkin of Rain­for­est Action Net­work. “You don’t have to care what glob­al warm­ing will do to the cli­mate to make a buck­et load of mon­ey by prepar­ing.” Oth­er notable bil­lion­aires that have turned to clean ener­gy for their invest­ment poten­tial include, CEO of GE Jef­frey R. Immelt, Wal­mart CEO H. Lee Scott, and mav­er­ick oil­man Boone Pick­ens.

By all accounts coal is becom­ing an increas­ing­ly risky invest­ment. In the last three months alone, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment indef­i­nite­ly sus­pend­ed a loan pro­gram for new coal-fired pow­er plants in rur­al areas because of uncer­tain­ty about cli­mate change and soar­ing con­struc­tion costs. The deci­sion came short­ly after three major Wall Street invest­ment banks, includ­ing Citi, announced new rules requir­ing util­i­ties to show that coal-plant pro­pos­als fac­tor in the cost of future car­bon reg­u­la­tion. In addi­tion, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment yanked fund­ing from their expen­sive, fan­tas­ti­cal Future­Gen plant.

In con­junc­tion with today’s Citi event, Fos­sil Fools Day activ­i­ties are hap­pen­ing from North Dako­ta to New Zealand. There are over 100 actions planned includ­ing Fos­sil Fool award deliv­er­ies to some of the most dam­ag­ing CEOs and politi­cians, green job ral­lies, protests and civ­il dis­obe­di­ence at pow­er plants, ener­gy com­pa­nies, and banks. Actions aim to express oppo­si­tion to dirty ener­gy and show sup­port for cli­mate jus­tice and cor­po­rate respon­si­bil­i­ty. Fos­sil Fools Day is being orga­nized by the Ener­gy Action Coali­tion and a num­ber of inter­na­tion­al allies includ­ing the Inter­na­tion­al Ris­ing Tide Net­work, Rain­for­est Action Net­work, and the Cana­di­an Youth Cli­mate Coali­tion.

For more infor­ma­tion vis­it, www.dirtymoney.org

CONTACTS:
Nell Green­berg, 510.847.9777
Sam Haswell, 415.659.0519

———————————–

Activists Block­ade Bank of Amer­i­ca to Protest Fund­ing of Coal, Boston, Mass­a­chu­setts, USA
BoA Boston FFD
Boston, MA – Cop­ley Square, April 1, 2008. April Fools! As of 9:00AM, in con­junc­tion with a down­town ral­ly, four activists have locked them­selves to the front entrance of the Bank of Amer­i­ca branch in Cop­ley Square. They are protest­ing the bank’s fund­ing of coal and ener­gy com­pa­nies who are among the worst con­trib­u­tors to cli­mate change, and direct­ly respon­si­ble for innu­mer­able human rights abus­es in com­mu­ni­ties where coal is extract­ed and burned.

Update: Four arrests in Boston, some lock box­es were cut, but oth­ers were loaded into the police wag­on still locked to each oth­er.

The April Fools prank took place as part of the Fos­sil Fools Day of Action, in coor­di­na­tion with over 100 ral­lies, protests, and acts of civ­il dis­obe­di­ence around the world. These actions are intend­ed to chal­lenge and dis­rupt the fos­sil fuels indus­try, which sci­en­tists say is pri­mar­i­ly respon­si­ble for glob­al warm­ing.

Bank of Amer­i­ca has lent over $144 bil­lion to com­pa­nies like Massey Ener­gy, Arch Coal, and Peabody Ener­gy, who are infa­mous for their human rights vio­la­tions, strip min­ing, and moun­tain­top removal coal min­ing. The demon­stra­tors are demand­ing that Bank of Amer­i­ca stop pro­vid­ing fund­ing for coal com­pa­nies engaged in all forms of sur­face min­ing and can­cel all loans to new fos­sil fuel burn­ing pow­er plants.

“With­out the finan­cial sup­port of large banks like Bank of Amer­i­ca, the fos­sil fuels indus­try could not con­tin­ue destroy­ing the earth and our com­mu­ni­ties,” said Elise Ansel, who locked her arms to oth­er activists in order to pre­vent the bank from doing busi­ness as usu­al.

Coal-burn­ing pow­er plants are respon­si­ble for 40% of U.S. green­house gas­es that cause glob­al warm­ing, and are a lead­ing cause of asth­ma and lung can­cer, caus­ing over 24,000 pre­ma­ture deaths a year. “It’s not just an envi­ron­men­tal issue. The peo­ple who are most affect­ed by the coal indus­try are already dis­ad­van­taged by this eco­nom­ic sys­tem,” said Laila Murad of Brighton, who also locked down to the bank, “Coal plants are often built in low-income neigh­bor­hoods and com­mu­ni­ties of col­or, and the coal is most often mined in poor areas and on indige­nous land. Coal min­ing is just anoth­er chap­ter in a long and bloody sto­ry of colo­nial­ism and injus­tice.”

The Fos­sil Fools Day of Action was called for by Ris­ing Tide North Amer­i­ca, Rain­for­est Action Net­work, and the Ener­gy Action Coali­tion. More infor­ma­tion on the actions tak­ing place around the world is avail­able at www.fossilfoolsday.org.

Boston Fos­sil Fools Day Media Con­tact:

Colleen Cronin
781–308-2458 / bostonfossilfools@gmail.com

Nation­al Fos­sil Fools Day Media Con­tact:

Mon­i­ca Vaugh­an, Ris­ing Tide North Amer­i­ca
541–521-1832 / fossilfools@risingtidenorthamerica.org

More pho­tos
———————————–

At the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ken­tucky, USA, stu­dents protest­ed the university’s coal-fired pow­er plant by climb­ing atop the coal stock­pile, and rais­ing giant wind tur­bines. Rais­ing a mock wind tur­bine on top of the UK pow­er plant’s coal fuel pile was designed to show the futil­i­ty and myopic vision of the University’s cur­rent ener­gy pol­i­cy. While hap­py to learn that UK does not use coal from moun­tain­top removal sites, the State of Kentucky’s flag­ship uni­ver­si­ty is a fos­sil fool and it must demon­strate lead­er­ship and a far-think­ing approach to its ener­gy sourc­ing and usage.

April is Earth Month, and as stu­dents of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ken­tucky and Blue­grass Com­mu­ni­ty and Tech­ni­cal Col­lege we are oblig­ed to point out the areas where our pub­lic insti­tu­tions need improve­ment.

Giv­en the grav­i­ty and imme­di­a­cy of glob­al warm­ing as a pre­em­i­nent issue of our life­times, we believe that the Uni­ver­si­ty of Kentucky’s con­tin­ued reliance on coal should be lam­bast­ed, and what bet­ter way to do so than in the spir­it of April Fool’s Day?

Rais­ing a mock wind tur­bine on top of the UK pow­er plant’s coal fuel pile was designed to show the futil­i­ty and myopic vision of the University’s cur­rent ener­gy pol­i­cy. While we are hap­py to learn that UK does not use coal from moun­tain­top removal sites, the State of Kentucky’s flag­ship uni­ver­si­ty is a fos­sil fool and it must demon­strate lead­er­ship and a far-think­ing approach to its ener­gy sourc­ing and usage.

Fos­sil fuel use is unequiv­o­cal­ly bad for the envi­ron­ment at large, as well as all of its denizens; how­ev­er, it is through obsta­cles of our own mak­ing that we con­tin­ue on this short-sight­ed and harm­ful path. Ken­tucky needs to rethink the destruc­tion of its moun­tains and its coal use, and groups like the Ener­gy Action Coali­tion, Ken­tuck­ians for the Com­mon­wealth, UK Green­thumb, and The Uni­ver­si­ty of Transylvania’s TERRA are great lead­ers and resources for those wish­ing to become edu­cat­ed or involved.

We wish every­one a Hap­py Earth Month, invite every­one to UK’s Earth Day Fair Tues­day April 22nd, and look for­ward to a con­tin­u­ing dia­logue to meet the con­cerns and needs of every­one here in our great state.

Cor­dial­ly,
Con­cerned Stu­dents and Cit­i­zens
Ukgreenthumb@googlegroups.com

———————————–

For fur­ther details of more actions in North Amer­i­ca, check out http://actions.energyactioncoalition.org/fossilfools/reports/list and
http://www.fossilfoolsdayofaction.org/category/north-america/

Westgate Demo, Oxford

For Imme­di­ate Release — 29th March 2008
Cam­paign­ers Cel­e­brate West­gate Delay With Street Par­ty Protest

For Imme­di­ate Release — 29th March 2008
Westgate demoCam­paign­ers Cel­e­brate West­gate Delay With Street Par­ty Protest

Cam­paign­ers took a pirate ship, a dozen inflat­able sharks and a sam­ba band into the West­gate Shop­ping Cen­tre today to cel­e­brate a sig­nif­i­cant set­back for its planned expan­sion. Build­ing work on the expand­ed West­gate — which Oxford res­i­dents say will increase traf­fic, flood­ing and green­house gas emis­sions — has been post­poned until 2009.

Local cam­paign­ers drew large crowds on Corn­mar­ket and around (and inside) the West­gate Cen­tre with the musi­cal stunt, which had a watery theme to raise aware­ness of the flood­ing risk to neigh­bour­hoods in West and South Oxford. They launched a new peti­tion, call­ing for a full Envi­ron­ment Agency flood­ing assess­ment for the expan­sion plans. The cam­paign­ers were also dis­trib­ut­ing a “Real Con­sul­ta­tion” doc­u­ment, to find out what Oxford res­i­dents real­ly want to see in the mid­dle of their city.

The protest had a fun and friend­ly air — a pair of pirates sailed around the City Cen­tre in a home-made boat as cam­paign­ers asked the crowd to “stop the West­gate pirates from sink­ing Oxford”. There was only one unpleas­ant moment, when a secu­ri­ty guard threat­ened to smash a pho­tog­ra­pher’s cam­era. The guard was report­ed to the West­gate Cen­tre man­ag­er.

One of the cam­paign­ers, Jess Worth,said “We’re in the Cen­tre today to start doing the con­sul­ta­tion that the City Coun­cil failed to do. We’re ask­ing Oxford res­i­dents what they want to see on this site — nine­ty new chain stores, or an eco-friend­ly devel­op­ment with afford­able homes, a bus sta­tion, a mar­ket­place and pub­lic green spaces?”

Accord­ing to the West­gate Part­ner­ship, build­ing work has been post­poned because a pub­lic enquiry into the demo­li­tion of Abbey Place, a street of shel­tered accom­mo­da­tion, won’t make its rul­ing on the legal­i­ty of the plans until May 2008. However,the Part­ner­ship have not yet explained why this requires a delay until 2009.

Dan­ny Chivers, a local res­i­dent and a mem­ber of the Oxford Against West­gate Expan­sion (OAWE) cam­paign, said: “This is great news- every month that the scheme is delayed gives Oxford res­i­dents more time to raise aware­ness about how bad the cur­rent plans are, and to put togeth­er some san­er alter­na­tives. It’s out­ra­geous that they start­ed felling trees in Jan­u­ary when the pub­lic enquiry had­n’t giv­en them the final go-ahead. Per­haps now they’ve realised that the many prob­lems with the scheme — that have been high­light­ed by our cam­paign — aren’t going to go away and need to be tak­en seri­ous­ly.”

ENDS

Notes for edi­tors:

* A full brief­ing, “What’s Wrong With The West­gate Expan­sion”, is avail­able at
http://westgatewatch.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/whats_wrong_with_westgate.pdf

* For inter­views and more information,contact
oxfordagainstwestgate@activist.com

http://westgatewatch.wordpress.com

T5 a complete shambles, but Flashmob a success.

Heathrow’s Ter­mi­nal 5 opened today with a great fan­fair. By mid after­noon the much vaunt­ed, com­put­erised, lug­gage sys­tem was shut down and dozens of flights can­celled.

T5 flashmob 2
T5 flashmob 1Heathrow’s Ter­mi­nal 5 opened today with a great fan­fair. By mid after­noon the much vaunt­ed, com­put­erised, lug­gage sys­tem was shut down and dozens of flights can­celled.

How­ev­er the 11am Flash­mob went ahead with­out a hitch.

10.59, and the Inter­na­tion­al Arrivals area was a pre­dictable dull grey.

11.00, and it turned red, as hun­dreds of activists stripped off their out­er lay­ers to reveal their ‘Stop Air­port Expan­sion’ T‑shirts.

We’d all tak­en cam­eras, expect­ing to crack of a cou­ple of shots and run to the bogs to hide the mem­o­ry cards but — no need!. The bal­cony above was packed shoul­der to shoul­der with pho­tog­ra­phers and film crews, all ignor­ing the meed­ja ops pro­vid­ed by BAA in favour of cov­er­ing the Flash­mob.

Lat­er cov­er­age was dis­ap­point­ing (dun­no about tomor­rows papers) but because even bet­ter news was emerg­ing that the T5 open­ing had turned out to be a com­plete fuck up. After promis­ing to the fly­ing world that Heathrow’s prob­lems were licked, the place ground to a mis­er­able halt with­in hours.

Amongst oth­ers, www.news.bbc.co.uk writes:

“The sus­pen­sion of lug­gage check-in was just the lat­est prob­lem to hit pas­sen­gers hop­ing to leave T5 on its open­ing day.

BA ear­li­er announced “ini­tial teething prob­lems” with car park­ing pro­vi­sion, delays in staff secu­ri­ty screen­ing and staff famil­iari­sa­tion had result­ed in a back­log of bag­gage. ”

Very good news indeed for every­one except BA and BAA. Now all we have to wait for is for BAA and its par­ent com­pa­ny Fer­rovial to go bust, wide­ly expect­ed to hap­pen less than a year from now, see:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3ca6b20a-fad7-11dc-aa46-000077b07658.html

Watch some footage of the flash­mob here

T5 a complete shambles, but Flashmob a success

27.03.2008
Heathrow’s Ter­mi­nal 5 opened today with a great fan­fair. By mid after­noon the much vaunt­ed, com­put­erised, lug­gage sys­tem was shut down and dozens of flights can­celled.

How­ev­er the 11am Flash­mob went ahead with­out a hitch.

STOP T5 Heathrow27.03.2008
Heathrow’s Ter­mi­nal 5 opened today with a great fan­fair. By mid after­noon the much vaunt­ed, com­put­erised, lug­gage sys­tem was shut down and dozens of flights can­celled.

How­ev­er the 11am Flash­mob went ahead with­out a hitch.

10.59, and the Inter­na­tion­al Arrivals area was a pre­dictable dull grey.

11.00, and it turned red, as hun­dreds of activists stripped off their out­er lay­ers to reveal their ‘Stop Air­port Expan­sion’ T‑shirts.

We’d all tak­en cam­eras, expect­ing to crack of a cou­ple of shots and run to the bogs to hide the mem­o­ry cards but — no need!. The bal­cony above was packed shoul­der to shoul­der with pho­tog­ra­phers and film crews, all ignor­ing the meed­ja ops pro­vid­ed by BAA in favour of cov­er­ing the Flash­mob.

Lat­er cov­er­age was dis­ap­point­ing (dun­no about tomor­rows papers) but because even bet­ter news was emerg­ing that the T5 open­ing had turned out to be a com­plete fuck up. After promis­ing to the fly­ing world that Heathrow’s prob­lems were licked, the place ground to a mis­er­able halt with­in hours.

Amongst oth­ers, www.news.bbc.co.uk writes:

“The sus­pen­sion of lug­gage check-in was just the lat­est prob­lem to hit pas­sen­gers hop­ing to leave T5 on its open­ing day.

BA ear­li­er announced “ini­tial teething prob­lems” with car park­ing pro­vi­sion, delays in staff secu­ri­ty screen­ing and staff famil­iari­sa­tion had result­ed in a back­log of bag­gage. ”

Very good news indeed for every­one except BA and BAA. Now all we have to wait for is for BAA and its par­ent com­pa­ny Fer­rovial to go bust, wide­ly expect­ed to hap­pen less than a year from now, see:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3ca6b20a-fad7-11dc-aa46-000077b07658.html

Main­stream media links:

CNN.com clip fea­tur­ing inter­view with women from Sip­son: go to
http://edition.cnn.com/video/?/video/world/2008/03/27/quest.heathrow.flash.mob.protestors.cnn
Times Online film: http://tinyurl.com/22xuja
YouTube vid: http://tinyurl.com/3adv5y
Asso­ci­at­ed Press pic­tures: http://tinyurl.com/29c2lh
Get­ty Images pic­tures: http://tinyurl.com/yv874c
Green­peace moblog: http://moblog.co.uk/blogs.php?show=9068
Green­peace Flickr page: http://tinyurl.com/2jwczc
More Flickr pics: http://tinyurl.com/2pq6oc
Guardian on-line sto­ry: http://tinyurl.com/24w8mr
Tele­graph on-line sto­ry: http://tinyurl.com/2y5rgc
Dai­ly Star piece: http://tinyurl.com/ytfs2k
MSN News UK: http://tinyurl.com/yquswa
Sky News: http://tinyurl.com/2flzng

19 April Sheffield: Climate Action Movement Building Day

A date for your diary!

Cli­mate Action Move­ment Build­ing
Net­work for Cli­mate Action
Sat­ur­day 19th April, 10am — 5pm
Friends Meet­ing House Sheffield
Map — http://home.btconnect.com/sheffieldquakers/hire.htm

A date for your diary!

Cli­mate Action Move­ment Build­ing
Net­work for Cli­mate Action
Sat­ur­day 19th April, 10am — 5pm
Friends Meet­ing House Sheffield
Map — http://home.btconnect.com/sheffieldquakers/hire.htm

Are you involved in local cli­mate action or would you like to be? Cli­mate Chaos is get­ting real and we need to act now — build­ing a vibrant grass­roots move­ment tak­ing action all over the coun­try.

The Net­work for Cli­mate Action is a Uk net­work of local groups and and nation­al net­works with the aim of shar­ing skills and pro­vid­ing sup­port for each oth­er as well as organ­is­ing for action.

We’d like to invite you to a day of net­work­ing, skill­shar­ing and organ­is­ing!

What’s going to hap­pen?

1) DAYS OF ACTION ON CLIMATE CHANGE
Review of Fos­sil Fools Day and plan­ning the next round!
1 May: Inva­sion of the Cli­mate Snatch­ers (day of action against false solu­tions to cli­mate change)
3 June: Day of Action on Food and Cli­mate Change
(for more info see: http://www.daysofclimateaction.org.uk)

2) NETWORK FOR CLIMATE ACTION
What do we want the Net­work to do? How should it func­tion? What needs improv­ing? How do we organ­ise skill­shar­ing, sup­port, infor­ma­tion shar­ing, direct action train­ing, out­reach etc?

3) BUILDING MOMENTUM for the Cli­mate camp and beyond
Ideas for build­ing momen­tum for the cli­mate camp local­ly

4) WORKSHOPS
on top­ics such as get­ting a local group going/keeping momen­tum, plan­ning actions and local press work. Let us know if you could con­tribute to a work­shop, or even offer to run one.

We’re still in the plan­ning stages — please get in touch if there’s some­thing you’d like to see hap­pen­ing on the day!

PRACTICAL INFO
Sat­ur­day 19th April, 10am — 5pm
Friends Meet­ing House Sheffield
Map — http://home.btconnect.com/sheffieldquakers/hire.htm

We aren’t able to pro­vide lunch, but there is a fan­tas­tic vegan/veggie cafe near­by or you can bring your own food.
We’re ask­ing peo­ple for a dona­tion of £2–3 towards the cost of the room. Some accom­mo­da­tion will be avail­able (please email us if need­ed).

The venue is wheel­chair acces­si­ble. Please let us know if you have any spe­cial require­ments.

Please let us know whether you are plan­ning to come, so we can get an idea of num­bers! Email us at contact_NO@SPAM_networkforclimateaction.org.uk

Check out our web­site with hun­dreds of resources for cli­mate action and a direc­to­ry of local groups! http://www.networkforclimateaction.org.uk

For info about the days of cli­mate action check out http://www.daysofclimateaction.org.uk

Oxford community-run bar under threat from local cops

East Oxford Com­mu­ni­ty Social Club is a social club run for and by its mem­bers, based in a local com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre for which it rais­es mon­ey. It’s unique not just for the way it’s run but also because of its diverse, inclu­sive and friend­ly atmos­phere, cheap prices and avail­abil­i­ty as a com­mu­ni­ty venue.

A per­son­al account and call to action. Cor­rec­tions and com­ments wel­come!

THE BACKGROUND

East Oxford Com­mu­ni­ty Social Club is a social club run for and by its mem­bers, based in a local com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre for which it rais­es mon­ey. It’s unique not just for the way it’s run but also because of its diverse, inclu­sive and friend­ly atmos­phere, cheap prices and avail­abil­i­ty as a com­mu­ni­ty venue.

A per­son­al account and call to action. Cor­rec­tions and com­ments wel­come!

THE BACKGROUND

In Feb­ru­ary 2007, secret col­lu­sion between com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre bureacrats and unelect­ed coun­cil offi­cers came to light dra­mat­i­cal­ly when it emerged that the Coun­cil were plan­ning to shut the club down — at the request of the Com­mu­ni­ty Asso­ci­a­tion (which runs the cen­tre)! Rather than talk to the Social Club com­mit­tee about the prob­lems they had with the club, they went behind every­one’s back to try and seal the fate of the club before sup­port could be mobilised. They failed. A flur­ry of last minute activ­i­ty — packed emer­gency meet­ings, let­ter writ­ing cam­paigns to coun­cil­lors, peti­tions etc — bought the club time to sort its act out and a last chance to stay open.
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/oxford/2007/02/363768.html
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/oxford/2007/02/363408.html

With the threat of clo­sure, the author­i­ties clear­ly had the club over a bar­rel and pro­ceed­ed to issue all man­ner of demands — every­thing from hand­ing over finan­cial con­trol to installing CCTV on the build­ing. The club gave in to almost every request and many a com­pro­mise was made.

A new com­mit­tee took over, and through a huge amount of patience and hard work pro­ceed­ed to rebuild the club; it became safer, more organ­ised, was redec­o­rat­ed and grad­u­al­ly began pay­ing off its debts.

THE CRISIS

Fast for­ward to the present day and changes in the atti­tude of the police may final­ly fin­ish the club off for good, tram­pling all the work done over the years by count­less vol­un­teers. See, the club has also his­tor­i­cal­ly been a place where (shock! hor­ror!) cannabis was smoked. The police had always turned a blind eye to this aspect of the club’s cul­ture and there was an unof­fi­cial under­stand­ing that it was con­ve­nient for them to con­tin­ue doing so. In any case the Feb­ru­ary cri­sis and the smok­ing ban ensured that peo­ple stopped skin­ning up in the bar, though of course those that want to can always smoke out­side in the street.

A few months ago the pol­i­cy changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly; snif­fer dogs patrolled bars and pubs all along Cow­ley Rd, and the club was raid­ed repeat­ed­ly, with some arrests tak­ing place. The police want­ed to be seen as ‘tough’ on drugs and were will­ing to bul­ly their way to that rep­u­ta­tion.

Now they have threat­ened that unless the Social Club turn its alco­hol licence over to a sin­gle named indi­vid­ual (whom they can then per­se­cute indi­vid­u­al­ly as they choose) thus ceas­ing to be a mem­bers-run club, they will use their influ­ence to ensure the entire com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre has its licence revoked.

The Com­mu­ni­ty Asso­ci­a­tion, led by Sarah Lasen­by (who it seems has always want­ed a more sani­tised, mid­dle-class-friend­ly bar) went along with this, and despite attempts at com­pro­mise and dia­logue by the social club, gave us 28 days notice to leave. To be fair to the Com­mu­ni­ty Asso­ci­a­tion, they can rea­son­ably claim to have been giv­en lit­tle choice by the cops, at least if they want to hold onto the licence in some form or anoth­er — and it’s clear the cen­tre would col­lapse with­out the abil­i­ty to hold events.

But they *could* have done things dif­fer­ent­ly. They could have worked with the club to try and find a solu­tion instead of reject­ing their attempts. They could have kicked up a fuss when first threat­ened by the cops, con­tact­ing local coun­cil­lors, news­pa­pers, and com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre users to point out what was hap­pen­ing. In the ensu­ing con­tro­ver­sy, the cops might have been forced to back down. The way to stop a bul­ly is to stand up to them and to shout loud­ly for oth­ers to help you, not to give in and hope they will go away. Soon­er or lat­er the same forces may come after the com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre as a whole, and they need to be con­front­ed soon­er rather than lat­er.

But after Feb­ru­ary 2007 we are used to such breach­es of sol­i­dar­i­ty from the Asso­ci­a­tion, and we have to be clear that the main cul­prits are the cops.

WHAT CAN WE DO?

1) Come to the club’s AGM this Sat­ur­day (29th) at 6pm in the bar (East Oxford Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, Cow­ley Rd). Doors close at 6.30, and every­one gets a free drink at the end about 7.45pm. We need every­one’s ener­gy and ideas to talk about what we can do.

2) Con­tact your local coun­cil­lors to let them know if in your opin­ion the Club is a safe and friend­ly place; whether it improved dur­ing 2007; and whether it would be bet­ter off run by the EOCSC com­mit­tee or by a fran­chisee. Con­tact details are here:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/arc/oxford-activism/2008–03/msg00014.html

You might want to ask them to get the police to clamp down on the big pow­er­ful venues that are the real source of Cow­ley Rd’s late night prob­lems instead of bul­ly­ing small com­mu­ni­ty out­fits.

3) Watch out for news of a spe­cial emer­gency Com­mu­ni­ty Asso­ci­a­tion meet­ing to hold those respon­si­ble account­able for their recent actions and try and reverse the deci­sion.

4) You could also con­tact the social club: 01865 640059 enquiries@eocsc.co.uk to offer your prac­ti­cal sup­port and join if you aren’t already a mem­ber.

5) Con­tact Sarah Lasen­by to ask her to over­turn the deci­sion to kick out the social club, and to work with the social club to try and keep the club open:

sarahlasenby@breathemail.net
01865 725991

Sarah Lasen­by
EOCA
Princes St
Oxford OX4 1HU

THE FUTURE

Ulti­mate­ly we can only secure the long-term future of the social club and spaces like it by re-assert­ing com­mu­ni­ty con­trol over East Oxford itself. It’s *our* club, it’s *our* com­mu­ni­ty and those are *our* streets. We should keep remind­ing our­selves of that! It’s all part of a wider strug­gle against cap­i­tal­ist gen­tri­fi­ca­tion of our spaces and cul­ture, and they have to be fought every step of the way.

********
Anoth­er account of recent events that has cir­cu­lat­ed:

So as far as I under­stand,

Despite ful­fill­ing ALL the cri­te­ria out­lined in an ACTION PLAN last year by THE POLICE and THE COUNCIL.…

at the TIME, ENERGY AND PERSONAL EXPENSE of the Social Club Com­mi­teee mem­ber­ship and sup­port­ers who are all local VOTERS which includ­ed com­plete­ly redec­o­rat­ing the whole space, bar and cel­lar and man­ag­ing to clear all the debts left by the com­mit­tee from years ago in ONE YEAR !.….

and DESPITE the fact that the Social Club is now run­ning the BEST it has EVER been run.….

and DESPITE fact that there is a FULLY FUNCTIONING MEMBERSHIP WHICH many HUNDREDS OF LOCAL VOTERS Have sub­scribed to for 08/09.….

THE POLICE sim­ply do not want this UNIQUE INDISPENSIBLE COMMUNITY RESOURCE which is run BY THE COMMUNITY FOR THE COMMUNITY to stay open.….

And that they have SUGGESTED to the Asso­ci­a­tion (whic runs the build­ing) the unless they abol­ish the social club, the POLICE will SUGGEST that the LICENCE for the ASSOCIATION will NOT be renewed either.……

AND as event s are the bread and but­ter life and soul of a com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre (By the Peo­ple for the Peo­ple) the Ass­so­cial­tion will go bust and the build­ing will become anoth­er great white ele­phant like like so many oth­ers run by a Coun­cil appoint­ed (ie unelect­ed) manger (prob­a­bly Sajid Malik from the Asian Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre) who will decide what is allowed to take place in the build­ing from which the Coun­cil will recoup ALL the income.…

(in this love­ly reju­ve­nat­ed build­ing redec­o­rat­ed by unpaid labour…)

OR they will sim­ply sell it off for more stu­dent hous­ing aor anoth­er STARBUCKS as the prop­er­ty alone is worth mil­lions — which means the end of FUSION and RAP and OX POTS THe OXFORD BEFRIENDING NETWORK and the CLAIMANTS UNION — and afford­able use of the space by the local com­mu­ni­ty.

New collective aims to help grassroots events

We are post­ing this to let peo­ple know about a new col­lec­tive designed to help grass­roots groups through net­work­ing equip­ment and exper­tise when it comes to putting on cam­paign events. But first they need to know what you have to offer…

We are post­ing this to let peo­ple know about a new col­lec­tive designed to help grass­roots groups through net­work­ing equip­ment and exper­tise when it comes to putting on cam­paign events. But first they need to know what you have to offer…

Do you have a pile of use­ful equip­ment that you hard­ly use, clut­ter­ing up your space? Do have or know of a large stor­age space being under­used? Do you main­tain large vehi­cles that nev­er quite earn their keep?

If you answer yes to these and would like to see them ben­e­fit oth­er good caus­es, then the AT Col­lec­tive are inter­est­ed in hear­ing from you. They are cur­rent­ly com­pil­ing a list of equip­ment, skills and spaces that peo­ple have and wish to see used for the ben­e­fit of oth­er groups engaged in rad­i­cal social change.

If you do have any equip­ment, skills or stor­age on offer then please fill in their sur­vey at http://tinyurl.com/3bl8ny

You can also con­tact them direct­ly. For more back­ground info, please see below.

AT Col­lec­tive
Email: atcoop@atcoop.org.uk
Web: www.atcoop.org.uk
Tel: 0845 217 8997

————->

AT Coop­er­a­tive: An Overview

From camps to urban con­ver­gences and squats, we want to help cam­paigns groups access the skills and mate­ri­als they need to be effec­tive and sus­tain­able. This helps reduce work load of cam­paign­ers putting on grass­roots events and effec­tive­ly dis­trib­utes equip­ment and knowl­edge through­out our net­works.

How­ev­er, we will be more than that — by work­ing with AT Coop we will ensure that your equip­ment is not just used for good caus­es but is prop­er­ly main­tained and stored as well. We want to take the risk and wor­ry out of lend­ing your equip­ment by being tru­ly pro­fes­sion­al about it. Though coop­er­a­tion every­one ben­e­fits, and as AT Coop grows we can pro­vide more and more at ever cheap­er rates.

The AT Coop is a new, not-for-prof­it col­lec­tive, formed to acquire, store, main­tain and mon­i­tor mate­ri­als like solar pan­els, wind tur­bines, vehi­cles, tools, mar­quees, field kitchens and oth­er equip­ment. It also aims to pro­vide prac­ti­cal sup­port to grass­roots cam­paign groups by shar­ing the knowl­edge and skills of those who have them already. For exam­ple, build­ing grey water sys­tems or com­post toi­lets, plumb­ing, pow­er gen­er­a­tion, site man­age­ment, trans­port logis­tics, and so on. Cur­rent­ly we are com­pil­ing a data­base of equip­ment, skills and spaces which can be made avail­able to oth­er social change move­ments.

Our aim is to reduce reliance on expen­sive com­mer­cial busi­ness­es, and encour­age groups to sup­port each oth­er by shar­ing their resources. We will focus on recy­cling and reusing equip­ment wher­ev­er pos­si­ble. Aside from our data­base of skills and equip­ment (and what we are plan­ning to pro­vide our­selves) we are work­ing on a how-to guide for putting on events, devel­op­ing skills and main­tain­ing equip­ment. We can then enable groups to become more autonomous by pro­vid­ing train­ing and knowl­edge based what we learn. Longer term we plan to invest in our own vehi­cles and equip­ment.

The new­ly formed col­lec­tive works along the prin­ci­ples of non-hier­ar­chy and mutu­al aid. Our focus is to sup­port non-dis­crim­i­na­to­ry forms of cam­paign­ing on issues of social jus­tice, eco­log­i­cal defence, ani­mal rights, or any oth­er groups adher­ing to the PGA hall­marks. All of us are expe­ri­enced in putting on var­i­ous cam­paign events, both rur­al and urban.

If you are work­ing on a project or event which needs vol­un­teers, or might pro­vide an oppor­tu­ni­ty for train­ing then please let us know. If you want to sup­port the ATC but don’t have skills or equip­ment, we are cur­rent­ly fundrais­ing to move into the next phase of our project…please get in touch!

To help you we need infor­ma­tion about what is avail­able! Please for­ward this onto con­tacts with­in your move­ment, post this text on your web­site, and get in touch for more infor­ma­tion.

AT Col­lec­tive
atcoop@atcoop.org.uk
http://www.atcoop.org.uk