Category: South West England

South West Eng­land

Day of Action against Extraction, April 19/April 20 — 2011

Com­mu­ni­ties around the world are under attack from extrac­tive indus­tries that poi­son our fam­i­lies, kill our loved ones on the job, and destroy the ecosys­tems we cher­ish. The BP oil spill was unfor­tu­nate­ly just one of an end­less string of dis­as­ters born of an eco­nom­ic sys­tem that must end­less­ly con­sume the Earth’s resources.

Com­mu­ni­ties around the world are under attack from extrac­tive indus­tries that poi­son our fam­i­lies, kill our loved ones on the job, and destroy the ecosys­tems we cher­ish. The BP oil spill was unfor­tu­nate­ly just one of an end­less string of dis­as­ters born of an eco­nom­ic sys­tem that must end­less­ly con­sume the Earth’s resources.

Extrac­tion is the act of tak­ing with­out giv­ing any­thing back. Extrac­tion takes work­ers lives so cor­po­ra­tions can make a few more bucks.
Extrac­tion takes clean water and air and gives us black­ened oceans and a cli­mate in chaos. Extrac­tion takes the nat­ur­al wealth of com­mu­ni­ties and ecosys­tems and leaves behind pover­ty and eco­log­i­cal waste­lands.

For a sta­ble cli­mate, clean air and water, we must stop the extrac­tion of fos­sil fuels and oth­er “resources.” From the tar sands of Alber­ta to the Gulf Coast, peo­ple are fight­ing back against the extrac­tive indus­tries that have declared war on our plan­et. Ris­ing Tide is call­ing for a day of direct action against extrac­tion on the 1 year anniver­sary of the BP oil spill. On April 20th take it to the point of pro­duc­tion.
Shut down a well site, occu­py a mine, take over an office, block­ade a bank. Nobody’s com­mu­ni­ty should be a sac­ri­fice zone. For cli­mate jus­tice and a live­able plan­et.

Ris­ing Tide (North Amer­i­ca)

Successful Hinkley Demo

Sep­tem­ber 13, 2010
Pro­tes­tors blocked the Hink­ley Point main gates for almost an hour this liunch-time as they demon­strat­ed against the pre­ma­ture destruc­tion of upto 435 acres of open land and wildlife habi­tats before major con­sents are approved for the two giant reac­tors pro­posed by EdF.

Sep­tem­ber 13, 2010
Pro­tes­tors blocked the Hink­ley Point main gates for almost an hour this liunch-time as they demon­strat­ed against the pre­ma­ture destruc­tion of upto 435 acres of open land and wildlife habi­tats before major con­sents are approved for the two giant reac­tors pro­posed by EdF.

A large group of cam­paign­ers, togeth­er with local res­i­dents includ­ing chil­dren, held ban­ners and plac­ards in front of Hink­ley Point, pre­vent­ing any traf­fic move­ments. The Hink­ley main gates were forced to shut from 11.45 to 12.45pm and no traf­fic entered or left dur­ing that time. Some of the pro­tes­tors wore face paint images of sun­flow­ers, the Stop Hink­ley logo and anti-nuclear signs. Oth­ers dressed as nuclear ‘boffins’ and with a loud­hail­er led a march through the ear-marked green­field site.

The ‘nuclear boffins’ high­light­ed bad­ger setts which had been cement­ed over or had been cov­ered with met­al grills, beau­ti­ful old wood­lands and indi­vid­ual trees des­tined to be bull­dozed and they walked down some of the scores of sunken lanes criss-cross­ing the fields lined by ancient hedgerows brim­ming with wildlife.

At the coast the tour-guides showed where the so-called ‘tem­po­rary’ jet­ty will be built over the 200 mil­lion year old fos­sil-filled rocky beach.

At the beach des­ti­na­tion of the march, one cam­paign­er read aloud a poem on the need to respect nature and its part in glob­al ecol­o­gy.

Crispin Aubrey, spokesman for Stop Hink­ley who mar­shalled the demon­stra­tion, said: “There is obvi­ous strong feel­ing against destroy­ing this beau­ti­ful area. Despite being close to the exist­ing pow­er sta­tions there are large expans­es of beau­ty and tran­quil­i­ty. It’s wrong for EdF to jump the gun by trash­ing the area such a long time before it receives major con­sents for the two reac­tors.”

The protest was part of a two day Action Week­end. Yes­ter­day a series of talks and work­shops took place in Bridg­wa­ter for cam­paign­ers around the region. Three nation­al-lev­el speak­ers gave talks:

Green­peace

Ben Ayliffe, nuclear cam­paign­er for Green­peace said: “Green­peace is opposed to new nuclear pow­er sta­tions because they would make a min­i­mal con­tri­bu­tion towards reduc­ing green­house gas emis­sions, they have mul­ti­ple dan­gers from long-lived radioac­tive waste through to nuclear pro­lif­er­a­tion, and they are a dis­trac­tion from real solu­tions such as renew­able ener­gy.”

“In par­tic­u­lar we see two major prob­lems — waste dis­pos­al and eco­nom­ics – both could sink the pro­pos­al for Hink­ley C,” he said.

“The coali­tion gov­ern­ment has said that there will be no sub­si­dies for new nuclear plant. Eco­nom­ics could be the thing that makes it impos­si­ble for Hink­ley C to go ahead. No nuclear pow­er sta­tion has ever been built with­out pub­lic sub­sidy.”

On waste he said that the amount EDF were being asked to pay for dis­pos­ing of the radioac­tive lega­cy from Hink­ley C was not enough to cov­er the true cost. “It amounts to a £1 bil­lion sub­sidy to the com­pa­ny per year, accord­ing to our cal­cu­la­tions,” he said.

He also referred to delays and cost over-runs on sim­i­lar projects in both Fin­land and France, where the first reac­tors like the one pro­posed for Hink­ley C are being built.

The Green­peace strat­e­gy was to chal­lenge the process of approv­ing new nuclear pow­er sta­tions all the way. This includ­ed expos­ing the risky eco­nom­ics, pro­mot­ing the alter­na­tives and legal chal­lenges.

Health

Pro­fes­sor Chris Bus­by talked about stud­ies that he, and Som­er­set Health author­i­ty in the eight­ies, had shown that there was a high­er inci­dence of can­cers round Hink­ley Point and oth­er nuclear pow­er sta­tions. He said the inter­na­tion­al mod­el used by reg­u­la­tors to esti­mate the effects of radi­a­tion on human health is being wide­ly chal­lenged, and a for­mer head of the inter­na­tion­al radi­a­tion com­mis­sion accept­ed that their mod­el did not stand up in the case of a seri­ous acci­dent.

“Our stud­ies have shown raised lev­els of can­cer along the down­wind coast from Hink­ley to Burn­ham-on-Sea. Health offi­cials have object­ed to our find­ings on spu­ri­ous grounds includ­ing ran­dom clus­ters in oth­er areas but year on year we keep find­ing an entrenched prob­lem near Hink­ley. The offi­cials have got it wrong.”

Alter­na­tives

Neil Crump­ton, for­mer Friends of the Earth ener­gy cam­paign­er, pre­sent­ed an alter­na­tive vision of the UK’s elec­tric­i­ty sup­ply in which nuclear pow­er was mar­gin­alised and new sources of renew­able ener­gy, such as con­cen­trat­ed solar pow­er import­ed from North Africa, were devel­oped on a large scale. He also dis­missed the sug­ges­tion that the lights would go out with­out nuclear, list­ing the many oth­er options, includ­ing gas-fired plants, which were queue­ing up to fill any gap in sup­ply.

“Friends of the Earth and oth­er organ­i­sa­tions are con­fi­dent we can put for­ward a rea­son­able low car­bon ener­gy net­work based on cur­rent tech­nol­o­gy. More than that we can very soon tap resources like Clean Coal Tech­nol­o­gy and solar-pow­er from the Sahara to boost our own abun­dant nat­ur­al ele­ments of wind, tide and wave dri­ven elec­tric­i­ty.”

Jim Duffy

Stop Hink­ley Coor­di­na­tor

www.stophinkley.org

07798 666756

Quotes from Crispin Aubrey who coor­di­nat­ed the Action week­end: 01278 732921 / 07920 523673

Pro­fes­sion­al pho­tographs for the media avail­able imme­di­ate­ly from

Simon Chap­man: 07889 747916

http://www.stophinkley.org

Bath Bomb #33 Out Now!

THE BATH BOMB

@nti-copyright: copy and dis­trib­ute!
Issue #33
free/donation
Sep­tem­ber 2010

“More rusty barbed wire than cut­ting edge”

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The First Cut Is The Deep­est

Whilst we’ve nev­er claimed to be the cut­ting edge of jour­nal­ism, the Bath Bomb has become privy to a series of unpleas­ant plans from coun­cils in the south­west:

THE BATH BOMB

@nti-copyright: copy and dis­trib­ute!
Issue #33
free/donation
Sep­tem­ber 2010

“More rusty barbed wire than cut­ting edge”

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The First Cut Is The Deep­est

Whilst we’ve nev­er claimed to be the cut­ting edge of jour­nal­ism, the Bath Bomb has become privy to a series of unpleas­ant plans from coun­cils in the south­west:

Somerset’s most ded­i­cat­ed N.H.S. pro­fes­sion­als are being “strong-armed and rail­road­ed” into defect­ing from the Pri­ma­ry Care Trust to join social enter­prise ven­tures, with­out the chance of a prop­er con­sul­ta­tion. But at a meet­ing filled with angry health vis­i­tors, school nurs­es, local hos­pi­tal and oth­er work­ers in Bridg­wa­ter on Wednes­day 1st Sep­tem­ber, they vot­ed “No!” to pri­vati­sa­tion. Their cam­paign is now seek­ing pub­lic sup­port for the P.C.T. meet­ing at Wyn­ford House, Lufton Way, in Yeovil on Wednes­day 15th Sep­tem­ber from 10am, where the deci­sion is expect­ed to be made.

Employ­ment Min­is­ter Chris Grayling has start­ed a cru­sade to force the 260 young Inca­pac­i­ty Ben­e­fit claimants in B.&N.E.S. (and a fur­ther 530 in Wilt­shire) into work – regard­less of whether they’re fit to or not. There are already wider moves to slash the Wel­fare Bill, and expand the con­tro­ver­sial Work Capa­bil­i­ty Assess­ment health test, but Grayling some­how seeks to frame this witch-hunt as a form of phil­an­thropy: “Thou­sands of young peo­ple with their lives ahead of them just parked on sick­ness ben­e­fits with no way out.” A big man with a big heart.

Three out of sev­en youth key work­ers in the Bath area are to be cut, along­side their youth cen­tres. Youth work­ers who have been col­leagues for years are now being turned against each oth­er, anx­ious­ly com­pet­ing to not put a foot wrong and lose their jobs, or be ‘matrix’ed. Whether crime rates will go up as deprived kids are alien­at­ed even fur­ther, is hard to say.

Waste man­age­ment ser­vices in the vil­lage of Old Wel­ton are to be cut and shipped out to Bath. As they share the Trans­fer Sta­tion site with oth­er pub­lic ser­vices, there is expect­ed to be a knock-on ‘tip­ping point’ effect where more ser­vices are sent off to the big city, even­tu­al­ly drain­ing the area of a large por­tion of its employ­ment, and its econ­o­my.

Mean­while G.M.B. union work­ers in Bris­tol are being ille­gal­ly threat­ened with dis­ci­pli­nary action for shar­ing news of intend­ed cuts with their unions.

But peo­ple aren’t just gonna sit and take it: a noisy 40-strong demo out­side Bris­tol City Coun­cil took place on Tues­day 7th Sep­tem­ber, with many a union ban­ner and speak­er. Sat­ur­day the 4th saw the Bath Stop The War Coali­tion find unan­i­mous con­sen­sus from the 90 bal­lot­ed on their reg­u­lar vig­il, who would rather cut Tri­dent than ser­vices. On Wednes­day 22nd Sep­tem­ber, from 7.30pm, a ‘Fight the Cuts’ pub­lic meet­ing will take place, down­stairs at Friends Meet­ing House on York Street. Though speak­ers will be present from the tra­di­tion­al unions – such as the N.U.T., G.M.B., Uni­son, U.C.U. and Bath Trades Coun­cil – we need a wider pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion from oth­er affect­ed peo­ple, so we can sort this crap out! You owe it to your­self to come along!

Who knows? Per­haps we might take a livre out of France’s book, where 2.5 mil­lion took to the streets on Tues­day the 7th, against Sarkozy’s aus­ter­i­ty plans. No to Job Cuts! No to Pen­sion Cuts! No to Ser­vice Cuts! Cut Tax Eva­sion! Cut I.D. Cards! Cut Tri­dent! Cut the Pay Gap! Cut a Tory! Vive La Strike!

http://bathactivistnetwork.blogspot.com
http://www.thisisbath.co.uk/news/260–25s-sickness-benefit-B-NES/article-2602689-detail/article.html
http://bristol.indymedia.org.uk/article/693333

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Tory Scum, Out Of Brum!

ACTION STATIONS! ACTION STATIONS! EVERYONE TO THE STREETS! Sun­day 3rd Octo­ber will be our first chance to show our anger at the Con-Dem cuts. As the Tories kick off their par­ty con­fer­ence in Birm­ing­ham, they will be met by thou­sands of angry pro­test­ers from the diverse sec­tions of soci­ety that are being forced to bear the brunt of the cuts onslaught. The mes­sage will be clear: this cri­sis was caused by the rich, and we refuse to pay for it with job loss­es, pay reduc­tions, ser­vice cuts and hiked V.A.T., while the toffs at the top con­tin­ue to line their pock­ets. Plans for the protest are shap­ing up nice­ly, with many unions, com­mu­ni­ty groups and oth­ers gear­ing up to make some noise. Those angry pranksters over at Class War have booked them­selves a team at the Tory Par­ty pub quiz, and are call­ing for as much help (with the ques­tions of course!) as pos­si­ble. There is also a ‘direct action’ bloc shap­ing up, which promis­es to dis­rupt pro­ceed­ings nice­ly. So, whether you want to peace­ful­ly protest, or have some­thing a bit more live­ly in mind, there will be some­thing for you on the day. This will be the start of a mas­sive cam­paign against the cuts and there will even be trans­port run­ning to the demo from Bath — leav­ing at 9am from Lau­ra Place foun­tain (though details may change), tick­ets are £10 waged or £5 unwaged, and to get yours, e‑mail either bathagainstcuts[at]yahoo.co.uk or tel 07908 355456.

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Get Shorty

Kil­ter, Bath’s unique out­door the­atre com­pa­ny, plants the seeds of change with their play­ful, engag­ing ‘Roots Replant­ed’ show, inves­ti­gat­ing food-secu­ri­ty in the fast approach­ing post-oil world. Elope to the Hamp­ton Row Allot­ments from Fri­day 10th to Sun­day 12th of this month, down the bean-rows, for an inti­mate tale of love and veg­eta­bles. Times are 6.30pm Thurs­day to Sat­ur­day, and addi­tion­al show­ings at 2.30pm on Sat­ur­day and Sun­day. Or catch them lat­er at Pease­down St John Com­mu­ni­ty Farm or Bloom­field Allot­ments at Bear Flat. Book­ings can be made by ring­ing 01225 386777.

On invi­ta­tion from Frome Friends of Pales­tine, “Israel’s bravest, most prin­ci­pled” his­to­ri­an Ilan Pappe will be speak­ing at the Mason­ic Hall on North Parade on Fri­day 17th Sep­tem­ber at 8pm. His talk will exam­ine the ongo­ing his­to­ry of Zion­ism, from its roots in the racist soils of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry to the sit­u­a­tion today. His book The Eth­nic Cleans­ing of Pales­tine, effec­tive­ly cost him his job at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Haifa four years ago. Admis­sion is £5.

B.&N.E.S. Coun­cil seem to final­ly be doing some­thing right, as, from 4th Octo­ber, week­ly col­lec­tions of food waste will reach 72,000 house­holds, con­vert­ing the £48+ per tonne tax­pay­er bur­den to agri­cul­tur­al com­post in Glouces­ter­shire. With any luck, the £400,000 imple­men­ta­tion cost will come straight from John Everit­t’s pock­et? And maybe sort­ing out a por­tion of the annu­al 20 mil­lion tonnes of super­mar­ket and indus­try U.K. waste will be next, right?

A gang of racists attacked the Indi­an Cur­ry Nights restau­rant in Augus­ta Place, off Upper Bris­tol Road, on Tues­day 24th August. Two wait­ers were minor­ly hurt, and a win­dow was tar­get­ed by thrown rocks. Con­sid­er­ing attacks on take­aways and mosques in the city over the last cou­ple of years, per­haps it’s way past time that local anti-fas­cists stepped it up?

Police Sergeant Mark Andrews showed his true colours back in July ’08, when he smashed 59-year-old Pamela Somerville’s face against the cell floor at Col­erne cop­shop. Recent­ly sent down this week for six months for Actu­al Bod­i­ly Harm, for once a cop­per has paid a price for his actions. But can we all rest easy now that the friend­ly bob­bies have cleaned them­selves up once more? Or are cas­es like Andrews and (Ian Tom­lin­son’s killer) Simon Har­wood per­haps not just a cou­ple of bad eggs, but instead symp­to­matic of a wider insti­tu­tion­al vio­lence, and near-com­plete free­dom from con­se­quence, infect­ing the whole of the force?

Rad­i­cal cam­paign­ing groups such as Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide have called for an inter­na­tion­al day of action against the coal indus­try on Tues­day 12th Octo­ber; more details to fol­low

http://www.kiltertheatre.org
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb5245/is_7840_231/ai_n29412429/
http://www.thisisbath.co.uk/news/Council-gears-food-waste-scheme/article-2604136-detail/article.html
http://www.thisisbath.co.uk/news/Police-appeal-waiters-attacked-Bath-park/article-2603995-detail/article.html
http://www.thisisbath.co.uk/news/Police-officer-faces-sack-cell-brutality-woman-59/article-2607007-detail/article.html

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GOT A STORY? WANT TO RECEIVE THE BATH BOMB BY EMAIL? HOPING TO SUE? Con­tact us by e‑mailing bathbombpress[at]yahoo.co.uk. Large print e‑versions avail­able on request. And for more info on any of our sto­ries, check out http://www.thebathbomb.blogspot.com

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Fash In The Pan

The August bank hol­i­day week­end was due to be a big day for the British far-right, with two high-pro­file demos designed to put racist thug­gery firm­ly back on the map; but unfor­tu­nate­ly for them, it was­n’t to be.

The week­end start­ed off with media rev­e­la­tions that, far from being a grow­ing dynam­ic par­ty, as fuhrer Grif­fin would have us believe, the fas­cist B.N.P. is in fact falling apart. On the verge of bank­rupt­cy due to finan­cial mis­man­age­ment, lack of sup­port and a cost­ly law­suit (filed by Unilever when Grif­fin used the Mar­mite logo in a par­ty broad­cast), the rats are well and tru­ly flee­ing the ship. First to go was Richard Barn­brook, ama­teur gay porn direc­tor and the B.N.P.‘s sole mem­ber on the Greater Lon­don Assem­bly, who quit after call­ing for a “full inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion” into cor­rup­tion in the par­ty. He was fol­lowed short­ly by Lee Barnes, the par­ty legal offi­cer and ‘unsteady’ Eddy But­ler, for­mer Nation­al Front full-timer and B.N.P. press offi­cer, both of whom assert­ed that Grif­fin was exer­cis­ing a dic­ta­to­r­i­al stran­gle­hold over the par­ty. Just to prove them wrong, Grif­fin expelled a fur­ther 30 high-rank­ing par­ty mem­bers for chal­leng­ing his abil­i­ty to lead the par­ty. So, with the B.N.P. slid­ing off the scene, the stage was set for the thick-as-shit boot boys of the Eng­lish Defence League to take the far-right lime­light.

They intend­ed to do this with a mass march through Brad­ford on Sat­ur­day 28th, in the hope of ignit­ing fur­ther Asian riots to jus­ti­fy their anti-immi­grant agen­da. Deter­mined to cause a ruckus, the E.D.L. banned women from the demo, pre­dict­ed a turnout of 5,000, and dubbed the demo “the big one”. In the event, the ‘Bat­tle of Lit­tle Big One’ was a dis­ap­point­ing washout, with only 700 fas­cists being dwarfed by sev­er­al thou­sands of com­mu­ni­ty and anti-fas­cist activists, who told the E.D.L. in no uncer­tain terms that they would not be goad­ed into full-scale riot­ing. How­ev­er, that did­n’t stop a few naughty lads and ladies smash­ing up the E.D.L. coach­es as they fled the scene. The high point of the day came when a sym­pa­thet­ic cop­per forced a lone E.D.L. skin­head into a crowd of locals, despite his tear­ful protes­ta­tions. Appar­ent­ly no-one saw exact­ly what hap­pened, but an ambu­lance was observed speed­ing away from the scene short­ly after­wards!

So, on to bank hol­i­day Mon­day, and sun­ny Brighton, where fringe fas­cist group the ‘Eng­lish Nation­al Alliance’ had called a ‘March for Eng­land’ (their stat­ed tar­gets were mus­lims, immi­grants, stu­dents and paci­fists — nice!). They pre­dict­ed a turnout of over 300 patri­ot­ic war­riors, which turned out on the day to be around 50 jug-eared Burber­ry mod­els scream­ing racist slo­gans at any­one unfor­tu­nate enough to be in earshot. The turnout then pro­ceed­ed to get turned over by 300 assem­bled anti-fas­cists who dis­rupt­ed the march con­tin­u­ous­ly until the police called full-time and escort­ed the fas­cists home for their own safe­ty!

What was billed as being a week­end that would put racist pol­i­tics back on the map, end­ed in two woe­ful­ly under-attend­ed demos, vast­ly larg­er anti-fas­cist counter-events, unan­i­mous rejec­tion of the fas­cists by local com­mu­ni­ties and the vir­tu­al dis­in­te­gra­tion of the far-right’s bright­est star, the B.N.P. It may be too ear­ly to cheer, as a dying beast still has fangs, but the news is encour­ag­ing and sug­gests that a few hard shoves could boot these groups to where they belong — the dust­bin of his­to­ry.

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Bath Activist Net­work are a local umbrel­la group cam­paign­ing on issues as diverse as devel­op­ment, envi­ron­men­tal­ism, anti-war, ani­mal rights, work­ers’ rights and more. Help­ing to pro­duce the Bath Bomb, we are open to any­one, and our mem­bers range from trade union­ists to anar­chists, lib­er­als and greens, and peo­ple who just want to change Bath for the bet­ter. For details on meet­ings, demos, or just to get in touch, e‑mail bathactivistnet[at]yahoo.co.uk, or see our web­site: http://www.bathactivistnetwork.blogspot.com

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UPCOMING EVENTS

 

draw­ing class­es: ‘Remem­ber­ing the Present’, Mon­days & Tues­days, Stokes Croft Muse­um, 81–83 Stokes Croft, Bris­tol, http://www.stokescroftmuseum.info

 

Lon­don Road Food Co-op, Wednes­days, 4–7pm, River­side Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, Lon­don Road, http://www.londonroadfoodcoop.blogspot.com

 

exhi­bi­tion: ‘Remem­ber­ing the Present’, Wednes­days, Thurs­days & Fri­days, 11am-3pm, Stokes Croft Muse­um, 81–83 Stokes Croft, Bris­tol, http://www.stokescroftmuseum.info

 

Bathamp­ton Com­mu­ni­ty Grow­ers work­day, Thurs­days, 10am-dusk, Mill Lane, Bathamp­ton, e‑mail thelostplot[at]googlemail.com/ tel Chris 07792 444628

 

Bathamp­ton Com­mu­ni­ty Sup­port­ed Agri­cul­ture project: fruit pick­ing, Thurs­days and Sun­days, http://www.transitionbath.org/bathampton-csa-news

 

Bath Stop The War Coali­tion vig­il, Sat­ur­days, 11.30am-12.30, Bath Abbey Court­yard

 

Brad­ford-On-Avon peace vig­il, Sat­ur­days, 11.30am-12.30, by the peace stat­ue oppo­site West­bury Gar­dens by the Town Bridge, Brad­ford-On-Avon

 

exhi­bi­tion: ‘Remem­ber­ing the Present’, Sat­ur­days, 12–4pm, Stokes Croft Muse­um, 81–83 Stokes Croft, Bris­tol, http://www.stokescroftmuseum.info

 

Recy­cle Your Sun­days, Sun­days, 10.30am, starts Abbey Church­yard, the reg­u­lar series of socia­ble, easy-paced cycle rides, http://www.bathrys.org.uk/ tel Hazel 01225 469199

 

one year part-time ‘Prac­ti­cal Sus­tain­abil­i­ty’ course, starts Sep­tem­ber 2010, Bris­tol; explor­ing per­ma­cul­ture design, organ­ic hor­ti­cul­ture, wood­land man­age­ment, green build­ing, eco­log­i­cal inter­ac­tions, ener­gy, group dynam­ics, re-local­i­sa­tion, cre­at­ing change, com­mu­ni­ty engage­ment and more; http://www.shiftbristol.org.uk

 

Kil­ter the­atre: ‘Roots: Replant­ed’ (per­for­mance about food secu­ri­ty issues), Fri­day 10th Sep­tem­ber, Hamp­ton Row Allot­ments, Bath­wick, 6.30pm, £9 (£7 con­ces­sions), tel 01225 386777 to book, http://www.kiltertheatre.org

 

‘Bris­tol Green Doors’: 52 peo­ple will open their homes show­cas­ing ener­gy waste reduc­tion, Sat­ur­day 11th to Sun­day 12th Sep­tem­ber, http://www.bristolgreendoors.org

 

Bris­tol Anar­chist Book­fair, Sat­ur­day 11th Sep­tem­ber, 10.30–6pm, Hamil­ton House, 80 Stokes Croft, Bris­tol; e‑mail bristolanarchistbookfair[at]riseup.net; http://www.bristolanarchistbookfair.org

 

Stop Hink­ley ‘C’ talks and work­shops, Sat­ur­day 11th, 11–5pm, Trin­i­ty Hall, St Sav­iours Avenue, Bridg­wa­ter, http://www.stophinkley.org

 

Kil­ter the­atre: ‘Roots: Replant­ed’ (per­for­mance about food secu­ri­ty issues), Sat­ur­day 11th Sep­tem­ber, Hamp­ton Row Allot­ments, Bath­wick, 2.30pm & 6.30pm, £9 (£7 con­ces­sions), tel 01225 386777 to book, http://www.kiltertheatre.org

 

Stop Hink­ley ‘C’ protest/guided tour, Sun­day 12th Sep­tem­ber, 12 mid­day, Hink­ley Point pow­er sta­tion, near Bridg­wa­ter, http://www.stophinkley.org

 

‘The Atmos­phere Of Heav­en’:  his­to­ry walk, Sun­day 12th Sep­tem­ber, 12 mid­day, walk begins 3 Rod­ney Place, off Cliftin Down Road, Bris­tol, http://www.brh.org.uk/misc/gas.html

 

Kil­ter the­atre: ‘Roots: Replant­ed’ (per­for­mance about food secu­ri­ty issues), Sun­day 12th Sep­tem­ber, Hamp­ton Row Allot­ments, Bath­wick, 2.30pm, £9 (£7 con­ces­sions), tel 01225 386777 to book, http://www.kiltertheatre.org

 

film: ‘Grass’, Sun­day 12th Sep­tem­ber, 7.30pm, Pier­ian Cen­tre, 27 Port­land Square, St Pauls, Bris­tol, £5 entry, http://www.pieriancentre.com

 

Bath Ani­mal Action meet­ing, Mon­day 13th Sep­tem­ber, 8–9pm, The Bell, Wal­cot Street, e‑mail bathanimalaction[at]yahoo.co.uk; http://www.bathanimalaction.blogspot.com

 

Kil­ter the­atre: ‘Roots: Replant­ed’ (per­for­mance about food secu­ri­ty issues), Thurs­day 16th to Fri­day 17th Sep­tem­ber, Pease­down St John Com­mu­ni­ty Farm, Dunker­ton Hill, BA2 8PJ, 6.30pm, £9 (£7 con­ces­sions), tel 01225 386777 to book, http://www.kiltertheatre.org

 

Taunton Wom­ens Refuge punk ben­e­fit gig, Thurs­day 16th Sep­tem­ber, 7pm, Road­house, taunton, free entry, feat. Rat Attack, As We Sink!, Fights & Fires, Sub­gen­er­ates & Bats About Bats; http://www.tauntonwomensrefuge.org.uk

 

‘Wild Food in Autumn’ walk & for­ag­ing course, Fri­day 17th to Sun­day 19th Sep­tem­ber, Monk­ton Wyld Court, near Char­mouth, Brid­port, Dorset, £215 residential/£145 non-res­i­den­tial, http://www.monktonwyldcourt.co.uk/

 

Kil­ter the­atre: ‘Roots: Replant­ed’ (per­for­mance about food secu­ri­ty issues), Sat­ur­day 18th Sep­tem­ber, Pease­down St John Com­mu­ni­ty Farm, Dunker­ton Hill, BA2 8PJ, 2.30pm & 6.30pm, £9 (£7 con­ces­sions), tel 01225 386777 to book, http://www.kiltertheatre.org

 

Bris­tol Free Veg­an Food Fair ben­e­fit gig, Sat­ur­day 18th Sep­tem­ber, 7.30pm, the Black Swan pub, 438 Sta­ple­ton Road, Bris­tol, feat Dad­dy Long Bones, Budd, Mol­ly Sam­son, Ren, D.J. Dub Simi­an & The Long Dead Beat, £3/£4 entry

 

Region­al South West Ani­mal Rights Coali­tion meet­ing, Sun­day 19th Sep­tem­ber, 12–5pm, Kebele Com­mu­ni­ty Co-op, 14 Robert­son Road, Eas­t­on, Bris­tol, e‑mail regionalarc[at]googlemail.com

 

Kil­ter the­atre: ‘Roots: Replant­ed’ (per­for­mance about food secu­ri­ty issues), Sun­day 19th Sep­tem­ber, Pease­down St John Com­mu­ni­ty Farm, Dunker­ton Hill, BA2 8PJ, 2.30pm, £9 (£7 con­ces­sions), tel 01225 386777 to book, http://www.kiltertheatre.org

 

Seed Sav­ing work­shop, Sun­day 19th Sep­tem­ber, 2.30–5pm, put on by Bath Organ­ic Group, places are lim­it­ed, tel 01225 319117, £2.50 entry

 

‘The Glob­al Cir­cle of Peace’: mul­ti­me­dia work of art to cel­e­brate U.N. World Peace Day, Tues­day 21st Sep­tem­ber, 6.30–8.00pm, Kingston Parade Gar­dens, http://www.theglobalcircleofpeace.com

 

two-day work­shop: ‘Hold­ing the Vision’, Wednes­day 22nd to Thurs­day 23rd Sep­tem­ber, 10–4.30pm, Bris­tol, £45–75 entry, with Starhawk; e‑mail shiftbristol[at]yahoo.co.uk; http://www.starhawk.org

 

Kil­ter the­atre: ‘Roots: Replant­ed’ (per­for­mance about food secu­ri­ty issues), Thurs­day 23rd to Fri­day 24th Sep­tem­ber, Bloom­field Allot­ments, Bear Flat, 6.30pm, £9 (£7 con­ces­sions), tel 01225 386777 to book, http://www.kiltertheatre.org

 

‘An Old Home Fit for the Future’: vis­it to vic­to­ri­an eco-effi­cient house, Fri­day 24th Sep­tem­ber, 3–7pm, 16 Pul­teney Gar­dens, Wid­combe, Bath, BA2 4HG,  http://www.transitionbath.org/old-home-fit-for-the-future

 

Crit­i­cal Mass Bike Ride, Sat­ur­day 25th Sep­tem­ber, meet 1pm, Kingsmead Square, http://www.bathcyclingcampaign.org.uk

 

‘An Old Home Fit for the Future’: vis­it to vic­to­ri­an eco-effi­cient house, Fri­day 25th to Sun­day 26th Sep­tem­ber, 11–6pm, 16 Pul­teney Gar­dens, Wid­combe, Bath, BA2 4HG,  http://www.transitionbath.org/old-home-fit-for-the-future

 

Kil­ter the­atre: ‘Roots: Replant­ed’ (per­for­mance about food secu­ri­ty issues), Sat­ur­day 25th Sep­tem­ber, Bloom­field Allot­ments, Bear Flat, 2.30pm & 6.30pm, £9 (£7 con­ces­sions), tel 01225 386777 to book, http://www.kiltertheatre.org

 

Bath Ani­mal Action info stall, Sun­day 26th Sep­tem­ber, 2–4pm, Stall Street, e‑mail bathanimalaction[at]yahoo.co.uk; http:///www.bathanimalaction.blogsppot.com

 

Kil­ter the­atre: ‘Roots: Replant­ed’ (per­for­mance about food secu­ri­ty issues), Sun­day 26th Sep­tem­ber, Bloom­field Allot­ments, Bear Flat, 2.30pm, £9 (£7 con­ces­sions), tel 01225 386777 to book, http://www.kiltertheatre.org

 

Tran­si­tion Bath Social, Mon­day 27th Sep­tem­ber, 7.15pm, the Love Lounge/ back room of the Bell, Wal­cot Street; bring food to share; http://www.transitionbath.org

 

Bath Cycling Cam­paign meet­ing, Mon­day 27th Sep­tem­ber, 7.30pm, the Ris­ing Sun, Grove Street, http://www.bathcyclingcampaign.org.uk

 

Bath Hunt Sabo­teurs meet­ing, Mon­day 27th Sep­tem­ber, 8–9pm, The Bell, tel Justin 07854 062336

 

Bath Social­ist Forum meet­ing, Mon­day 27th Sep­tem­ber, 8pm, upstairs St James Wine Vaults, pre­sent­ed by Ken Loach

 

speak­ers & dis­cus­sion: ‘Cli­mate Jus­tice: Think Glob­al, Act Local’, Tues­day 28th Sep­tem­ber, 7–9pm, Uni­tar­i­an Meet­ing House, Brunswick Square, Bris­tol; F.F.I. e‑mail Katharine[at]wdm.org.uk / tel Katharine 020 7820 4900; http://groups.wdm.org.uk/bristol

 

No Bor­ders Camp Bel­gium, Wednes­day 29th Sep­tem­ber to Sun­day 3rd Octo­ber, Brus­sels, http://www.noborderbxl.eu.org/?lang=en

 

‘Low Car­bon Bath Con­sul­ta­tion’: Thurs­day 30th Sep­tem­ber, 6.30–8.30pm, Build­ing of Bath Col­lec­tion, The Count­ess of Huntington’s Chapel, The Vine­yards, Paragon, Bath, for a book­ing, e‑mail gkillick[at]bptrust.org.uk, or ring 01225 338727

 

Nation­al March for Farmed Ani­mals, Sat­ur­day 2nd Octo­ber, 12pm start, Cavendish Square, Lon­don

 

anti-Tory demon­stra­tion, Sun­day 3rd Octo­ber,  Tory Par­ty Con­fer­ence, Birm­ing­ham more details tbc

 

Bath Activist Net­work meet­ing, Thurs­day 7th Octo­ber, 7.30–9pm, down­stairs at the Hob­gob­lin, St James Parade, http://ww.bathactivistnetwork.blogspot.com

 

Legal fees ben­e­fit punk gig: ‘SUBVERT 2010 — A Fes­ti­val Of Resis­tance’, Fri­day 8th to Sun­day 10th Octo­ber, Bris­tol, feat Hel­lkrush­er, Rui­dosa Immu­ni­di­cia, War All The Time, Ignosy, The Wankys, The Extin­guish­ers & Bul­letrid­den, as well as veg­an cafés/ stalls/ films/ work­shops & pic­nic; more details tbc

 

Bath Green Drinks, Wednes­day 13th Octo­ber, 8pm, the Ris­ing Sun, Grove Street

 

Region­al day of action against the cuts, Sat­ur­day 23rd Octo­ber

 

Lon­don Anar­chist Book­fair, Sat­ur­day 23rd Octo­ber, 10am-7pm, Queen Mary’s, Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don, Mile End Road, Lon­don, http://www.anarchistbookfair.org.uk

 

Bris­tol Free Veg­an Food Fair, Sat­ur­day 30th Octo­ber, 12–5pm, Broad­mead Bap­tist Church, Union Street, Bris­tol, BS1 3HY, http://www.bristolanimalrights.org.uk/veganfoodfair

 

Coali­tion of the Resis­tance Con­fer­ence, Sat­ur­day 27th Novem­ber, Lon­don, more details tbc

 

Camp for Cli­mate Action Aus­tralia, Wednes­day 1st to Sun­day 5th Decem­ber, Bayswa­ter Pow­er Sta­tion, http://www.climatecamp.org.au

 

Cli­mate Camp Aotearoa, Thurs­day 16th to Tues­day 21st Decem­ber,  Welling­ton New Zealand, http://www.climatecamp.org.nz/node/51

 

*

‘Fat­cat Boss­es Get The Cream’ Shock­er!

Insult has been added to injury once again, as a G.M.B. union sur­vey scru­ti­nised 151 coun­cil and met­ro­pol­i­tan accounts and dis­cov­ered how 129 chief execs are paid more than £150,000 a year. It went on to note how two earned more than £300,000, and 76 earned between £200,000 and £300,000. In the south­west, B.&N.E.S. Coun­cil head hon­cho John Everitt net­ted a com­fy £211,859 this year, includ­ing pen­sion con­tri­bu­tions and expens­es; though his rivals at Corn­wall Coun­ty and Bris­tol City did bet­ter. Life’s hard, eh?

And this is at a time when coun­cils claim to be hard up, slash­ing jobs, ser­vices, and hand­ing out pay freezes like they were sweets to kids. Stand­ing there shiv­er­ing in the play­ground, in their plas­tic mac. Local gov­ern­ment min­is­ter Bob Neill makes an inter­est­ing point: “We need to stamp out a cul­ture of dupli­ca­tion, which is why, in many cas­es, coun­cils should be look­ing towards shar­ing chief exec­u­tives.” But actu­al­ly stamp­ing on the guy seems a bit harsh; instead of cut­ting the 300 out of 7,000 coun­cil jobs, sure­ly it would make more sense to cut just one… After all, the dole queue is nice this time of year, John.

*

Grub Street Mee­ja

Pity the shit-upon peo­ple of Bath, whose local lose-papers, the Bath Com­ic and the West­ern Dai­ly Piss, are two of the apolo­gies for jour­nal­ism in the city.

Time was when the Com­ic would give reg­u­lar and gen­er­ous cov­er­age to anti-war, anti-coun­cil and anti-devel­op­er stunts, but since the lat­est edi­tor took over, it looks as if any­thing like­ly to rock the boat gets packed off on an extend­ed Hol­l­i­day. The big trou­ble with the Com­ic is that it has its head well and tru­ly up the rec­tums of cor­po­rate crooks and shys­ters like B.&N.E.S., Bath Rug­by, First­Bus, Crest Nichol­son (West­ern River­side), Mor­ley Fund Man­age­ment (South­gate), and oth­ers. Proof that the Com­ic had aban­doned any pre­tence of seri­ous news report­ing and had achieved full Beano sta­tus, came with its hilar­i­ous but read­er­ship-insult­ing ‘Attack of the giant seag­ulls’ front-page last month.

The Piss, part of the same bar­rel-scrap­ing North­cliffe out­fit should, after the appoint­ment of ITS lat­est, yes-man edi­tor, be renamed the West­ern Mil­i­tary Gazette or West­ern Dai­ly War, as all this cur­rent bunch of r‑slickers do is pump out the same tired Cameron-lov­ing war­mon­ger­ing pro­pa­gan­da dri­v­el as their sta­ble­mate the Dai­ly Fail.

All the Com­ic and Piss are good for is wip­ing your arse on; the only fault there is that the print comes off on your bum.

The glossies are no bet­ter. Bath Life, a crim­i­nal waste of newsprint, is stuffed full of estate agent waf­fle and oth­er adver­tis­ing, and page after page of ‘Invi­ta­tion Only’ bash­es fea­tur­ing dozens of Bath Z‑z-z lis­ters grin­ning gorm­less­ly for the cam­eras in a pre­ten­tious par­o­dy of Coun­try Life’s soci­ety columns. Pub­lish­ers guilty of this rub­bish are Media Clash, the same bunch of brown-nosers who churn out the coun­cil’s spin-rag ‘Con­nect’. Some­one should tell them that con­nect­ing is not enough; they should try switch­ing on as well.

As for what lit­tle of inter­est the free­bies Bath Mag­a­zine and Folio con­tain, you’d be bet­ter off buy­ing Venue, which does arts and alter­na­tive far bet­ter. It is pub­lished by the Piss/Comic group, but, hey, nobody’s per­fect!

*

If I Had A Ham­mer…

Fol­low­ing the suc­cess­ful acquit­tal of the nine ‘Decom­mis­sion­er’ activists who smashed up Brighton-based bomb fac­to­ry E.D.O./I.T.T. (see B.B. #31), the Smash E.D.O. cam­paign is call­ing for one last shove to close the fac­to­ry all togeth­er. For six years, the com­pa­ny, which sup­plies bomb com­po­nents to Israel, Afghanistan, the U.S.A. and any­one else who has enough cash, has been under relent­less assault from activists, who have block­ad­ed, protest­ed, smashed and exposed the com­pa­ny’s dodgy deal­ings time and time again. The demo has been called for Wednes­day 13th Octo­ber, and promis­es to be a lit­tle on the tasty side, and as the name ‘I.T.T.‘s Ham­mer­time’ sug­gests, peo­ple may have more than wav­ing plac­ards in mind! Peo­ple have been request­ed to get down and stay at the con­ver­gence space from the night before, but also to help fli­er for the event in their home towns before­hand. For more infor­ma­tion on the cam­paign, check out http://www.smashedo.org.uk, or drop them an e‑mail at smashedo[at]riseup.net.

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Cru­el­ty-Free: You Can’t Say Fayr­er Than That

The sec­ond annu­al Bath Veg­an Fayre 2010 filled a hole on Sat­ur­day 4th Sep­tem­ber, with over 150 pass­ing through the doors. Held at Man­vers Street Bap­tist Church in the cen­tre, free of entry fee and cru­el­ty, the event last­ed from 12 til 4pm. Oth­er­wise, the day stuck to much the same recipe as the pre­vi­ous year: with a tan­ta­liz­ing spread of steam­ing soups, nib­bles, cakes, sweets and savouries – some nut-free, some wheat-free, all meat and dairy-free – fill­ing the bowls and bel­lies of queues of hun­gry fayre-goers. The tea and fruit juices flowed like nev­er before, whilst the tables were filled with relaxed con­ver­sa­tion and ingest­ed edu­ca­tion. As well as the over-bur­dened info tables (with every­thing from nutri­tion, envi­ron­men­tal ethics, recipes, ani­mal rights, med­ical sci­ence and updates for cam­paigns against Noah’s Ark Zoo, hunts, foie gras out­lets and ani­mal labs), free sam­ples table, read­ing cor­ner and chil­dren’s area, there was also a prize raf­fle. Pun­ters includ­ed the usu­al sus­pects of dread­ied and alter­na­tive veg­gie types on the make for free pick­ings, for starters, but also a healthy flow of the unini­ti­at­ed from the street.

By the end of the day, many a hap­py scav­enger got their just desserts, and were heard utter­ing the immor­tal words: “I had no idea veg­an food could taste this good!” Hey, even veg­gies need more than a diet of inde­scrib­able slop every now and again. Next up is the Bris­tol Free Veg­an Fair at Broad­mead Bap­tist Church on Sat­ur­day 30th Octo­ber, from 12 til 5pm, and their ben­e­fit gig at the Black Swan on Sta­ple­ton Road, on the 18th of this month.

http://bathanimalaction.blogspot.com/p/today-uk-is-home-to-around-300000.html
http://www.vegansociety.com/home.php
http://www.bristolanimalrights.org.uk/

*

Cycle-logy 101

Ped­al­phile activists group Bicy­col­o­gy will be crank­ing things up a gear in Bris­tol next week­end, with a trio of car-free fun days for all the fam­i­ly. On Sat­ur­day 18th Sep­tem­ber, they’ll be ‘Doing it with­out a car’ at Mina Park in St Werburgh’s; go sam­ple their col­lec­tion of bike acces­sories, book your ride in with the women bike mechan­ics for free advice and safe­ty checks, or get down to some D.I.Y. cre­ative ses­sions — turn tyres into bike belts, bike chains into bracelets or cob­ble your­self togeth­er a last minute carnie cos­tume. All this just in time for the next day’s ‘Bris­tol Bike Car­ni­val’ — start­ing in the city cen­tre at 12 mid­day, expect day­g­lo, dinosaur skele­ton pup­pets and two-wheeled gonzo weird­ness. Then, after a day’s rest, Tues­day will be ‘Food is our Fuel — Cycle for your Sup­per!’ An explo­ration of mod­ern agri­cul­ture, its prob­lems and its solu­tions, this three-hour long gen­tle cycle starts at 6pm out­side Tesco Metro in Broad­mead, and heads out of the city for black­ber­ry and wild food pick­ing – hot food and drinks will be pro­vid­ed on dona­tion. Bring your bike, lights, ruck­sack or pan­nier, and accom­pa­nied chil­dren.

And in relat­ed Bath news, a bike refurbishment/homelessness fund-rais­ing project has recent­ly re-opened, called ‘ReCY­CLEd’, at 35 Corn Street. E‑mail bikes[at]julianhouse.org.uk, for details.

*

Toys Tory

While the resis­tance against the Con-Dem cuts is shap­ing up nice­ly, the same can­not be said for the cut-crazy coali­tion who have been hit in recent weeks by a string of embar­rass­ing fallings-out. Tories attack­ing Tories, Tories attack­ing Lib-Dems and Lib-Dems attack­ing both each oth­er and the Tories (although we don’t think any­one has noticed or cared). The first of the cracks began to show when odi­ous Osborne informed the press that nuke pro­gramme Tri­dent would have to be fund­ed by the defence bud­get, rather than the tra­di­tion­al fun­ders, the Trea­sury. It turns out Osborne had let every one know his plans – except the Min­is­ter for Defence, Liam Fox. This news came to the delight of T.V. jour­nal­ists as Fox brand­ed the propo­si­tion “ridicu­lous”, assert­ing that after a 20% bud­get cut, there was no way the M.o.D. could pay for Tri­dent. Osborne shot him down on live T.V. as a lit­tle bick­er­ing match erupt­ed before the very eyes of bor­der­line orgas­mic tel­ly journos. The spat has yet to be resolved.

This was quick­ly fol­lowed by bout #2, fea­tur­ing High­er Edu­ca­tion Min­is­ter David Wil­letts in the blue cor­ner vs. Devey boy him­self in the, umm­mm, oth­er blue cor­ner. This time the argu­ment was over milk. Now, some of you may remem­ber that one of Thatch­er’s less pop­u­lar deci­sions was the removal of free milk from schools; so what has Wil­letts done? In the image of the Tory God­moth­er, Wil­letts proud­ly told the assem­bled press pack that under-fives no longer deserved their free milk, and that it was to be cut. After a rapid apol­o­gy at the foot of this Thatch­er shrine, Cameron popped his head out of the door of Down­ing Street to con­tra­dict his edu­ca­tion min­is­ter, prompt­ing oppo­si­tion M.P.s to notice that “This is a coali­tion in chaos, mak­ing pol­i­cy on the hoof. The Gov­ern­ment does­n’t seem to have a clue.” As if Cameron did­n’t have enough trou­ble keep­ing his own house in order, the Lib-Dems have also start­ed hav­ing a pop, with many Lib-Dem M.P.s (in fact almost all of them that don’t have a cab­i­net seat) promis­ing a rebel­lion over Con-Dem V.A.T. increase plans, with promi­nent Lib-Dem­mers such as Charles ‘5 years on the wag­on’ Kennedy and Simon Hugh­es pub­licly crit­i­cis­ing Con-Dem pol­i­cy. To add anoth­er dol­lop of the stinky stuff on the smoul­der­ing feck pile that is the coali­tion, Clegg has crawled out of David’s cosy ori­fice to take the reigns while the Camerons sun them­selves. Like a naughty school­boy, Clegg took the oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­tra­dict key Con-Dem poli­cies relat­ing to immi­gra­tion, Tri­dent and hous­ing ben­e­fits, some­thing that he has been warned about in the past. Looks like some young upstart will be get­ting an Eton-style bot­ty-thrash­ing when dad­dy Cameron rolls back into town!

*

The Filth And The Fur­ry

As men­tioned back in B.B. #30, the U.K. Gov­ern­ment has per­formed a spec­tac­u­lar U‑turn on its pol­i­cy regard­ing bovine tuber­cu­lo­sis, and has cho­sen to go ahead with a nation-wide bad­ger cull. Last week, Envi­ron­ment Sec­re­tary Car­o­line Spel­man approved the cull for T.B. hotspots, hand­ing the license to kill over to indi­vid­ual farm­ers’ dis­cre­tions.  These wannabe 007’s of the Nation­al Farm­ers Union lob­by will need to prove that a cull is nec­es­sary before being allowed to kill and/or vac­ci­nate (shoot and gas first, a spoon­ful of med­i­cine lat­er?) any­thing black and white in a 50 square mile zone; what sort of proof required is yet to be dis­closed, but a sham of a pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion is expect­ed lat­er this month. At least this might stop farm­ers from rolling gunned down bad­gers onto high­ways in the mid­dle of the night, as imi­ta­tion road­kill.

The Welsh Assem­bly were pushed into a U‑turn of their own, of sorts, back in July, when the Bad­ger Trust and oth­er ani­mal ‘wel­fare’ activists won their legal chal­lenge on a tech­ni­cal­i­ty, push­ing kill-crazy plans back for months. These pro-culling deci­sions fly in the face of the ten-year Inde­pen­dent Sci­en­tif­ic Study Group on Cat­tle T.B., who con­clud­ed in 2007 that culling could­n’t mean­ing­ful­ly con­trol the dis­ease, and that car­ri­er bad­gers would dis­perse the dis­ease over a wider area. This posi­tion has been loose­ly cor­rob­o­rat­ed by Impe­r­i­al Col­lege Lon­don and the Zoo­log­i­cal Soci­ety of Lon­don. But screw all that, the Con-Dems say – let’s shoot us some varmints! Yee­haw! In a “care­ful­ly man­aged” and “sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly-led” man­ner, of course.

As ever, ani­mal right­sies are much-need­ed to save our fur­ry friends – check out http://www.badger-killers.co.uk, or con­tact bathanimalaction[at]yahoo.co.uk for ideas.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/7982848/Farmers-to-be-handed-powe
rs-to-cull-badgers.html
http://www.bathanimalaction.blogspot.com

*

First Class News!

In a heart­en­ing bit of news just in, a pub­lic sur­vey has found that sev­en out of every eight peo­ple oppose the pri­vati­sa­tion of the postal ser­vice (one of the Tories’ key poli­cies) and would pre­fer it to be kept pub­lic. Bil­ly Hayes, head of the posties’ union said “This poll reaf­firms what we already knew — the British pub­lic do not want their postal ser­vices sold off. The union and the com­pa­ny have worked hard to agree a ful­ly fund­ed mod­erni­sa­tion plan and that work needs sup­port from the Gov­ern­ment.” How­ev­er, the will of the pub­lic con­tra­dicts Tory plans to put a bill before Par­lia­ment demand­ing the pri­vati­sa­tion of the ser­vice. Will this be anoth­er case of the Tories ignor­ing the opin­ions of the aver­age per­son and try­ing to plough ahead with their agen­da of cuts and pri­va­ti­za­tion? We sus­pect so, so if you like your postal ser­vice pub­lic, lets get ready to fight for it!

*

And now, to the dis­claimer: as any­one is free to con­tribute, the opin­ions expressed in each arti­cle are not nec­es­sar­i­ly reflec­tive of all con­trib­u­tors. Nat­u­ral­ly, any right-wing or cor­po­rate bull­shit will be binned and spat upon. Need­less to say, the opin­ions of the author of this dis­claimer do not nec­es­sar­i­ly reflect the opin­ions of any oth­er con­trib­u­tor.

Crude Awakening info update

12 Sept 2010

THE CRUDE AWAKENING MASS OUTREACH EMAIL

A mass action to switch off oil

Sat­ur­day, 16 Octo­ber 2010, Cen­tral Lon­don

12 Sept 2010

THE CRUDE AWAKENING MASS OUTREACH EMAIL

A mass action to switch off oil

Sat­ur­day, 16 Octo­ber 2010, Cen­tral Lon­don

Have you been think­ing it’s about time a whole load of peo­ple got togeth­er to take mass action against oil in cen­tral Lon­don? We thought so. And so it fol­lowed that the Crude Awak­en­ing was launched. The mobi­liza­tion is now in full swing and every­one is invit­ed to help pub­li­cize and pre­pare. There is loads to do….please have a read through this email and get involved!

The email is in three parts:

Upcom­ing events and how to get involved
Fre­quent­ly asked ques­tions
The call out — please copy and paste and help this get all over the Inter­net!

1. How to get involved and build up events you are all invit­ed to.

Events already planned are list­ed bel­low:

In Lon­don……

17th Sep­tem­ber, net­work­ing meet­ing at 6pm just inside the entrance to the Brunei Gallery at SOAS, a meet­ing for peo­ple inter­est­ed in help­ing to do out­reach in the Lon­don area the Cli­mate Camp out­reach group are meet­ing.

There is going to be a Lon­don coor­di­nat­ing and plan­ning meet­ing for the Crude Awak­en­ing very soon, and the details will be announced short­ly.

Thurs­day 23rd Sep­tem­ber at 7.30pm, Cli­mate Action Film Night, Lon­don Action Resource Cen­tre, Whitechapel (for address see www.londonarc.org)

An evening of films and dis­cus­sion about cli­mate activism and the oil indus­try, host­ed by Lon­don Ris­ing Tide.

A screen­ing of two short films of recent actions against BP and Shell by Ris­ing Tide and friends, plus Petrop­o­lis, a visu­al­ly stun­ning and dis­turb­ing doc­u­men­tary about the Cana­di­an Tar Sands. Fol­lowed by a brain­storm­ing ses­sion on tak­ing direct action against the oil indus­try in Lon­don — includ­ing all the lat­est info on the Crude Awak­en­ing, an oily mass action hap­pen­ing on Sat­ur­day 16th Octo­ber. For any­one who believes in cli­mate jus­tice and wants to help make it hap­pen; any­one hacked off with the greed and irre­spon­si­bil­i­ty of oil giants like BP; any­one back from the Cli­mate Camp and look­ing to get involved local­ly… every­one welcome.…and there’ll be cake!

The Crude Awak­en­ing Lon­don Rab­ble Rouser – a mass out­door team game, warm­ing us up for the big day– date, place and time to be announced.

Sat­ur­day 2nd Octo­ber. MOLASAPULTPARTY FUNDRAISER .… Venue TBC, more details to fol­low short­ly

Sat­ur­day the 2nd and Sun­day the 3rd Octo­ber Stilt mak­ing work­shop for the stilt block on the mass action!.…
This time we’re think­ing big, we’re think­ing high, we’re think­ing tall.… and we’re going as a Stilt Bloc.

Yep, thats right! On stilts!

So in order for this to hap­pen we’re hav­ing a skill share week­end in Lon­don to build stilts and learn how to walk on them. The week­end is Sat 2nd and Sun 3rd Octo­ber, 10am to 6pm.

And even if you don’t want to be up high, each stilt walk­er will need a bud­dy stay­ing on the ground so there’s a place for every­one, young and old, big or small, high or low.….. we need you at this week­end too!!!

Its all free and lunch is includ­ed.…

We need RSVPs so we know num­bers. Email: stilt.bloc@gmail.com

Oh and its MEXICAN DAY OF THE DEAD theme.….

In Man­ches­ter….

Sat 9th Oct — Mass Action train­ing

Tue 12th Oct — Pub­licly announced rouser for CJA inter­na­tion­al day of action

Crude Awak­en­ing mobil­i­sa­tion

We hope that there will be loads more to fol­low but this is what is lined up so far. If you are plan­ning a build up event let us know so we can adver­tise it please.

There is a huge amount to do to mobi­lize quick­ly for an event this big. Maybe you could organ­ise a film show­ing or talk (we can prob­a­bly send a speak­er if you email us). You could put on an affin­i­ty group or action train­ing work­shop, or host a fundrais­er. You could book a coach and fill it. You could run a work­shop so peo­ple can build prac­ti­cal stuff , for exam­ple a load of dis­pos­able bikes to bring along (email us to let us know if you do make lots of use­ful stuff). You could have a stall and hand out fly­ers at your fresh­ers fair (again email for mate­ri­als). You could make a sten­cil and graf­fi­ti adver­tise for it all across your city/ region. Unless every­one gets involved there is a real dan­ger we won’t get the num­bers we need.
The Crude Awak­en­ing is now on crab­grass! Join it, join a work­ing group and lets get plan­ning! https://we.riseup.net/thecrudeawakening (crab­grass is a lit­tle bit like face­book for activists and is a way of organ­is­ing on line). And sign up for more infor­ma­tion by email and text alerts on the web­site. www.crudeawakening.org.uk. Our face­book page is a lit­tle slow to get off the ground but it will soon be buzzing.

Please also raise The Crude Awak­en­ing as an agen­da point at the next organ­is­ing meet­ing at your Social Centre/ Friends of the Earth Group/ Union/ Cli­mate Camp neighbourhood/ Hous­ing Coop etc. Get peo­ple talk­ing and excit­ed and com­mit­ted to the idea that they are going! If you are not already in a group or affin­i­ty group you are of course still total­ly wel­come. You will prob­a­bly want to make con­tact with some like mind­ed folk to talk things through and make some plans before the big day. For exam­ple you could go to climatecamp.org.uk or risingtide.org.uk and find your local active group, or email us and we can try to sign­post you on. At the least try to get a cou­ple of mates to come with you, so that you have some sup­port as a group of friends (known by activists as an affin­i­ty group).

2. Fre­quent­ly asked ques­tions

Q. Nei­ther the web­site nor the fly­er gives much info. What is going on?

A. As you have prob­a­bly twigged there is also a delib­er­ate sense of mys­tery around the action. So often with recent mass actions we have said exact­ly where we are going to go, and the police have had as much time to pre­pare as us, mak­ing things much more dif­fi­cult for peo­ple who want to be involved in mass and effec­tive direct action . With this project we are exper­i­ment­ing a lit­tle bit. The 10 tar­gets are left unspec­i­fied, giv­ing the action more chance of being suc­cess­ful. But at the same time we can open­ly adver­tise that we all need to be in Cen­tral Lon­don so we can get loads of peo­ple togeth­er at the same place at the same time for the mass action. And those peo­ple need to be ready to take action and to have fun. This is not a march and it’s not a camp. This is an action that needs prepa­ra­tion and we can all be involved in most of that preparation….although the tar­gets will be a sur­prise until much lat­er.

We can’t be sure that this mix of secret and pub­lic plan­ning will work, but we can give it a go, have some fun and maybe make some progress…..but maybe, just maybe we have got it total­ly nailed and this will be the best mass action in Lon­don ever! If you don’t show up there it will be dif­fi­cult for you to know. Our advice is don’t miss it 😉

Q. So what do I need to do to pre­pare?

A. Peo­ple need to be ready to move, and to stand their ground. Don’t bring with you any­thing that you can’t eas­i­ly walk with or get on a tube with. But do bring with you stuff that will help you and your affin­i­ty group hold a space in what ever way you feel you want to. Whether you want to bring arm­tubes, dis­pos­able bikes or a huge slow mov­ing met­al and wood­en tow­er with a papi­er-mâché rhi­no head (that can fit on and off a tube!?); diver­si­ty of tac­tics and affin­i­ty group plan­ning are key to this work­ing. Peo­ple can also pre­pare stuff to make this action look beau­ti­ful; pup­pets, masks, ban­ners, a portable molasses fondue……you get the idea.

Q. Why Oil?

A. For a whole host of rea­sons. Here are just a few…..
Because oil com­pa­nies search for new oil reserves to make them­selves rich­er while our cli­mate spins into cri­sis.
Because the UK gov­ern­ment starts wars for oil.
Because of human rights abus­es and mur­der in West Africa.
Because of the Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon spill.
Because of the destruc­tion of wilder­ness in the Arc­tic and the coast of Rosport in Ire­land.
Because of UK pub­lic mon­ey being used by bailed out banks to fund new oil projects.
Because Lon­don is brim­ming with oil mon­ey, oil spon­sor­ship and oil com­pa­nies.
Because glob­al ener­gy resources are the peo­ples com­mons.
Because oil com­pa­nies and the filthy rich peo­ple who prof­it from them have no place in a sus­tain­able future.
Because Copen­hagen failed and now it’s down to us.
Because oil has had it’s day and it’s time we pulled the plug.

Hope that that made things a lit­tle clear­er. And more spe­cif­ic infor­ma­tion will be sent out soon. If you are still strug­gling with the idea, it is a bit like the Great Cli­mate Swoop of 2009, except where we are going is kept secret. Remem­ber, you are being asked to come and move around Lon­don, so stay mobile, be cre­ative, be prepat­ed and be ready to stand your ground. So talk in your affin­i­ty group about the ways in which you are going to be able to hold a space and equip­ment and mate­ri­als that you might want to bring along to help you. The action is open, and will be shaped by the peo­ple who are there. Only the tar­gets and how we are get­ting to them are secret.

3. The call out – please copy and paste and help get this all over the Inter­net!

THE CRUDE AWAKENING

A mass action to switch off oil

Sat­ur­day, 16 Octo­ber 2010, Cen­tral Lon­don

Floods in Pak­istan, drought in Rus­sia, huge glac­i­ers break­ing up in Green­land…

Our cli­mate sys­tem is rapid­ly slid­ing into cri­sis, as oil com­pa­nies destroy peo­ple’s lives and the envi­ron­ment to keep suck­ing up their prof­its.

Oil sat­u­rates every aspect of our lives. Oil prof­its lubri­cate the finan­cial mar­kets and its spon­sor­ship clings like a bad smell to our cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions. It flows through pipelines to the pumps, air­ports and fac­to­ries of our cities.

The fail­ure of the UN COP15 process showed us – if there was ever any doubt – that gov­ern­ment and indus­try can’t tack­le cli­mate change. It’s up to us and it’s time to up the ante.

As a move­ment, our actions against coal and avi­a­tion have made a real dif­fer­ence. Now oil’s time is up.

Togeth­er, on Octo­ber 16, let’s give the oil indus­try a Crude Awak­en­ing.

Meet in cen­tral Lon­don. Be ready to move. Be ready to stay and stand your ground.

Be cre­ative. Be pre­pared. Be there.

Find out more, get involved and sign up for text alerts at www.crudeawakening.org.uk
Face­book: http://bit.ly/c6S0kg
Twit­ter: @crudeawake

Part of the CJA glob­al week of action for cli­mate jus­tice
Sup­port­ed by: Space Hijack­ers, Cli­mate Camp, Plane Stu­pid, Ris­ing Tide, Lib­er­ate Tate, Lab­o­ra­to­ry of Insur­rec­tionary Imag­i­na­tion, UK Tar Sands Net­work

Hope to see you on the streets,
Crude Awak­en­ing
crudeawakening.org.uk

Stop Nuclear Power gathering, 23–24 October 2010

Sat 23 — Sun 24 Oct 2010, Bris­tol

Meet, make plans, take action

Sat 23 — Sun 24 Oct 2010, Bris­tol

Meet, make plans, take action

Stop Nuclear Pow­er is a grass­roots net­work of groups and indi­vid­u­als tak­ing action against nuclear pow­er. If EdF get their way, Hink­ley C will become the first nuclear pow­er sta­tion built in Britain for 20 years and will sit next to two oth­er radioac­tive and dan­ger­ous sites. Stop Hink­ley is a long run­ning com­mu­ni­ty cam­paign to stop dead­ly nuclear reac­tors oper­at­ing near their homes.
Their strug­gle is our strug­gle. Let’s sit down togeth­er in Bris­tol and make some plans togeth­er.

Hink­ley is the bat­tle­ground, if they get one in there, it opens the door for at least nine oth­er nuclear pow­er sta­tions across the coun­try. This Autumn, the gov­ern­ment is tak­ing its pro-nuclear pro­pa­gan­da on tour around the UK. We’ll be there. Come to the gath­er­ing or send us an email to find out how you can get involved.

www.boycottedf.org.uk

Info for the week­end:

Meet­ing space dur­ing the day on Sat­ur­day and Sun­day tbc but will be in Bris­tol.
Crash space is avail­able on a dry, warm and qui­et floor space.
If you need a bed please get in con­tact with us as soon as pos­si­ble and will try and help you out.
Lunch and din­ner will be done com­mu­nal­ly on Sat­ur­day and lunch on Sun­day.

For a tele­phone num­ber to con­tact dur­ing the week­end send us an email.

Please help by let­ting us know you are com­ing so we can plan for space, food and logis­tics.

Email: nonewnuclear@aktivix.org

Bath Bomb #32 Out Now

THE BATH BOMB

@nti-copyright: copy and dis­trib­ute!

Issue #32

free/donation

August 2010

“Fast, aggres­sive, and it wants your sand­wich!”

Armagge­don Out­ta Here

THE BATH BOMB

@nti-copyright: copy and dis­trib­ute!

Issue #32

free/donation

August 2010

“Fast, aggres­sive, and it wants your sand­wich!”

Armagge­don Out­ta Here

An unpalat­able mod­ern-day truth is that human life, far from being sacred, is deemed expend­able, almost an incon­ve­nience, when the col­li­sion of pol­i­tics, pow­er and eco­nom­ics pro­vokes con­flict. Then, the big­ger the con­flict, the greater the num­ber of lives wast­ed.

This month marks an espe­cial­ly poignant anniver­sary. In 1945, U.S. Pres­i­dent Har­ry S. Tru­man took the deci­sion to drop atom­ic bombs on Japan: ‘Lit­tle Boy’ was det­o­nat­ed over Hiroshi­ma on August 6th in that year ; on August 9th, ‘Fat Man’ was explod­ed over Nagasa­ki. Both cities were near-oblit­er­at­ed.

The tens of thou­sands who died instant­ly were most­ly civil­ians. The ‘ratio­nale’ for these acts of mass slaugh­ter, if it is even pos­si­ble to dig­ni­fy them with that term, was that Hiroshi­ma and Nagasa­ki had con­sid­er­able indus­tri­al and mil­i­tary sig­nif­i­cance, and that their anni­hi­la­tion would put an end to Japan­ese prospects of ter­ri­to­r­i­al aggran­dis­e­ment , ter­mi­nat­ing their involve­ment in World War II.

The body-count from both atroc­i­ties was a trag­ic coda to the tal­ly of the total lives squan­dered in the entire six-year con­flict. The Amer­i­can pro­pa­gan­da machine sought to spin what was in effect mass mur­der into a moral and mil­i­tary ‘suc­cess’, claim­ing that if the Japan­ese had­n’t sur­ren­dered after two of their cities had thus been blown to pieces, then a land inva­sion would have undoubt­ed­ly had to be car­ried out to achieve the same effect, cost­ing the lives of thou­sands of U.S. troops.

It shows just what a moral vac­u­um the U.S. high com­mand were liv­ing in when they had to skulk behind a hypoth­e­sis to avoid cop­ping the blame for what in any­one else’s lan­guage would be inter­pret­ed as a cold-blood­ed war crime.

The bomb­ing of Hiroshi­ma and Nagasa­ki was, and still is, inde­fen­si­ble. You can nev­er ‘save’ lives by tak­ing them. We all need to be remind­ed of the hor­rors which took place in Japan in ear­ly August 1945, because the nuclear mon­ster that was unleashed upon the world then is still with us. It lurks off the British coast in the form of the Tri­dent sub­ma­rine fleet.

To tout the pow­er-plant used by these weapons-in-wait­ing, as Cameron’s gov­ern­ment is now doing, as a domes­tic ener­gy source,  shows that politi­cians con­tin­ue to bam­boo­zle the pub­lic with smoke­screens while they har­bour fan­tasies of nuk­ing their way to world dom­i­na­tion. 

To blow bil­lions on an unnec­es­sary arma­ment upgrade at a time of swinge­ing pub­lic ser­vice cuts would be laugh­able were it not such an obscen­i­ty.

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Join The Resis­tance!

Con­sid­er­ing the state’s mas­sive attack on ordi­nary peo­ple, with cuts to jobs, ser­vices, pen­sions and ben­e­fits, the time has come to fight back. We should not be expect­ed to pay for the crises caused by politi­cians and bankers. We are not all ‘in this togeth­er’ – the rich politi­cians in the Cab­i­net and the bankers with their bonus­es are not affect­ed. Mem­bers of B.A.N., along with oth­ers in the trade unions, are set­ting up an anti-cuts cam­paign in Bath, fight­ing to pro­tect every job and defend pen­sions, ser­vices and ben­e­fits from cuts. The cam­paign is open to all those affect­ed by gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy. We need to organ­ise and fight back togeth­er.

The cam­paign will be organ­is­ing a big pub­lic meet­ing at the end of Sep­tem­ber, and hopes to attract sup­port from all affect­ed groups. If you wish to get involved, con­tact johnbamphylde[at]yahoo.co.uk or phone 07908 355456.

More info is to fol­low in next mon­th’s issue, but here are some impor­tant dates for your diary: the next Bath Anti-Cuts Com­mit­tee meet­ing is at the Bell, Tues­day 24th August, 8pm; Sun­day 3rd Octo­ber will be a nation­al day of action out­side the Tory Par­ty Con­fer­ence in Birm­ing­ham; Wednes­day 20th Octo­ber will be the day of bud­get announce­ment; and Sat­ur­day 23rd Octo­ber will be a region­al day of action against the planned cuts.

And here are some web­sites to check out, too: http://www.righttowork.org.uk, and http://www.coalitionofresistance.wordpress.com.

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Fight And Unite!

Some anar­chists argue that the main trade unions are bureau­crat­ic, their lead­ers have sold out and they have lit­tle rel­e­vance to work­ing class peo­ple. They argue that anar­chists should form their own unions. How­ev­er, many young peo­ple find unions bor­ing and do not real­ly under­stand what they are. Oth­ers argue back that unions are still work­ers’ organ­i­sa­tions, that they could still be the force to take on the cap­i­tal­ist state, and that work­ers should join and fight with­in unions to make them more demo­c­ra­t­ic and com­bat­ive.

At the Bath Social­ist Forum meet­ing on Mon­day 30th August, at 8pm, we will be dis­cussing the way for­ward for work­ers in trades unions, pre­sent­ed by John Bam­phylde of Bath Trades Coun­cil. The fol­low­ing meet­ing, on Mon­day 27th Sep­tem­ber, will be pre­sent­ed by film-mak­er Ken Loach. The meet­ings take place at St James Wine Vaults, and all are wel­come.

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Killer Faces Unem­ploy­ment!

A dis­ci­pli­nary hear­ing is to be held against P.C. Simon Har­wood on the grounds of gross mis­con­duct with regards to an attack on Ian Tom­lin­son on April 1st 2009. It is con­sid­ered like­ly the out­come will be imme­di­ate dis­missal.

I pose this ques­tion, does­n’t it seem a bit extreme to take away this man’s occu­pa­tion sim­ply for a light shove? After all, to push from behind is all part and par­cel with polic­ing a large-scale protest. Cer­tain­ly, Tom­lin­son was­n’t dead imme­di­ate­ly after the inci­dent, so why then should Mr Har­wood be sub­ject­ed to mix with the doleys and scroungers?

A few indi­vid­u­als are claim­ing the P.C. to be guilty of manslaugh­ter and hence deserves to lose his liveli­hood. These peo­ple are clear­ly revenge-bent or deranged as it is well known that there has been a long (and nat­u­ral­ly there­fore thor­ough) inves­ti­ga­tion by the C.P.S., which decid­ed there was no case. Irrefutably trust­wor­thy patho­log­i­cal evi­dence has shown the man died of nat­ur­al caus­es. Fur­ther, the video footage does­n’t even show the man hit­ting the ground, let alone gain­ing injuries. Sure­ly only one con­clu­sion can be reached, that P.C. Simon Har­wood is unde­ni­ably inno­cent.

Clear­ly, it was a high­ly volatile sit­u­a­tion and a police offi­cer can­not be blamed for get­ting a bit touchy-feely. If peo­ple get so het up about this, then with the home office more and more con­cerned about P.R., in the end we’ll have a police force too scared to catch any crim­i­nals.

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Agri-Cul­ture Shock

Tran­si­tion Bath are start­ing up a new scheme in Bathamp­ton, work­ing with the Hugh­es fam­i­ly to restore a six acre area of land to organ­ic pro­duc­tion, and hope to bring togeth­er locals to explore how this can be done. Tran­si­tion Bath are a local envi­ron­men­tal­ist group aim­ing to build a sus­tain­able future using the pow­er of com­mu­ni­ty, in the face of declin­ing nat­ur­al resources and increas­ing costs. They hope to make the tran­si­tion to a low car­bon, local econ­o­my, whilst cre­at­ing pos­i­tive, self-reliant com­mu­ni­ties. This project should turn out to be the first Com­mu­ni­ty Sup­port­ed Agri­cul­ture (C.S.A.) scheme in the city – a part­ner­ship between farm­ers and the sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ty, pro­vid­ing mutu­al ben­e­fits for both, and recon­nect­ing peo­ple to the land. Whether you would like to grow your own, meet oth­er locals, or get involved in a project to help reduce food bills and food miles, why not come along to the end of Hol­combe Lane, near Hol­combe Farm, Bathamp­ton, at 1pm, on Sun­day the 15th August for a bar­be­cue and fruit pick. All dona­tions to Tran­si­tion Bath will be much appre­ci­at­ed. For more info, con­tact Jamie Col­ston at jamiecolston[at]gmail.com, or ring 01225 851377.

Anoth­er exam­ple of the link between eth­i­cal sus­tain­abil­i­ty, the com­mu­ni­ty and the food we eat, has been going on down at the River­side Youth Cen­tre on Lon­don Road since 2001. The Lon­don Road Food Co-op is a vol­un­teer-run, not-for-prof­it mem­bers’ co-oper­a­tive, open­ing Wednes­days from 4–7pm at the end of the lane behind the for­mer Porter Butt pub. Mem­ber­ship is afford­able and paid annu­al­ly on a slid­ing vol­un­tary scale between £3 and £10, and mem­bers get access to a whole host of organ­ic, fair­ly trad­ed and veg­an-friend­ly whole­foods and gro­ceries, with­out the price mark-up you will see in oth­er stores. In the past the co-op has also oper­at­ed a week­ly veg, fruit, egg and bread scheme, which it hopes to revive. In the mean­time, though, this is a great lit­tle friend­ly project, and is keen to attract mem­bers and vol­un­teers. If you do want to find out more, why not pop along, or give them a call on 07837 784715?

http://www.transitionbath.org

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Food Fayre Thought

Lazi­ly aping our arti­cle from last month, in case you did­n’t catch it, Sat­ur­day the 4th Sep­tem­ber will mark the day of the sec­ond annu­al Bath Veg­an Fayre! Run­ning from 12 mid­day til 4pm down­stairs at Man­vers Street Bap­tist Church, free entry, expect hours of free veg­an savoury and sweet delights, as well as a sprin­kling of talks and con­ver­sa­tion, with a (non-dairy) creamy after-taste of nutri­tion­al and eth­i­cal info. In a deli­cious dash of déjà vu, there will also be a ben­e­fit gig at the Hob­gob­lin on Fri­day 27th August, from 8pm, fea­tur­ing bands and D.J.s, £3 entry. Helpers for both would be much appre­ci­at­ed! E‑mail bathanimalaction[at]yahoo.co.uk, or ring 07717 130954 for fur­ther info. And again, don’t for­get Bris­tol’s grass­roots veg­an fayre/fair, tak­ing place on Sat­ur­day 30th Octo­ber in a venue near you.

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GOT A STORY? WANT TO RECEIVE THE BATH BOMB BY EMAIL? HOPING TO SUE? Con­tact us by e‑mailing bathbombpress[at]yahoo.co.uk. Large print e‑versions avail­able on request. And for more info on any of our sto­ries, check out http://www.thebathbomb.blogspot.com

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UPCOMING EVENTS

Lon­don Road Food Co-op, Wednes­days, 4–7pm, River­side Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, Lon­don Road, http://www.londonroadfoodcoop.blogspot.com

Bathamp­ton Com­mu­ni­ty Grow­ers work­day, Thurs­days, 10am-dusk, Mill Lane, Bathamp­ton, e‑mail thelostplot[at]googlemail.com/ tel Chris 07792 444628

Bath Stop The War Coali­tion vig­il, Sat­ur­days, 11.30am-12.30, Bath Abbey Court­yard

Brad­ford-On-Avon peace vig­il, Sat­ur­days, 11.30am-12.30, by the peace stat­ue oppo­site West­bury Gar­dens by the Town Bridge, Brad­ford-On-Avon

Recy­cle Your Sun­days, Sun­days, 10.30am, starts Abbey Church­yard, the reg­u­lar series of socia­ble, easy-paced cycle rides, http://www.bathrys.org.uk/ tel Hazel 01225 469199

Bathamp­ton Com­mu­ni­ty Sup­port­ed Agri­cul­ture bar­be­cue & fruit pick, Sun­day 15th August, 1pm, Hol­combe Lane, Bathamp­ton, e‑mail jamiecolston[at]gmail.com/ tel Jamie 01225 851377 FFI

Region­al hunt sabo­teurs get togeth­er, Sun­day 15th August, 1pm, Bris­tol Downs

Bath Cycling Cam­paign meet­ing, Mon­day 16th August, 7.30pm, Ris­ing Sun, Grove Street, http://www.bathcyclingcampaign.org.uk

Cli­mate Camp Ire­land, Thurs­day 16th to Mon­day 20th August, Vic­to­ria Bridge, Coun­ty Tyrone, http://www.climatecamp.ie

Que­bec Cli­mate Action Camp, Wednes­day 18th August to Sun­day 22nd August, http://www,climateactionmontreal.wordpress.com/climatecam

Fam­i­ly Fun Day – Out­door Cook­ing work­shop, Thurs­day 19th August, 12–3pm, Broad­lands Orchard, Box Road, Bath­ford, £15 per fam­i­ly (suit­able for over 7s), book­ing essen­tial: http://www.bathford.net/broadlands.php

Camp for Cli­mate Action UK, Thurs­day 19th August to Tues­day 24th August, Edin­burgh, http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/actions

talk: ‘The Venus Project’, Sat­ur­day 21st August, 1–5pm, Vic­to­ria Rooms — The Audi­to­ri­um Uni­ver­si­ty of Bris­tol, Queens Road, Clifton, Bris­tol, BS8 1SA, £16.02 entry; http://thevpinbristol.eventbrite.com

Cli­mate Camp Ger­many, Sat­ur­day 21st August to Sun­day 29th August, Erke­lenz- Borschemich, http://www.klimacamp2010.de

film: ‘The War Game’, Sun­day 22nd August, 2.30pm, the Arnolfi­ni, Bris­tol; http://www.arnolfini.org.uk/whatson/films/details/716

Bath Hunt Sabo­teurs meet­ing, Mon­day 23rd August, 8–9pm, The Bell, tel Justin 07854 062336

Bath Anti-Cuts Com­mit­tee meet­ing, Tues­day 24th August, 8pm, The Bell, Wal­cot Street

Bath Stop the War meet­ing, Wednes­day 25th August, 7.30pm, Friends Meet­ing House, York Street, Bath, BA1 1NG; http://www.bathstopwar.org.uk

Fam­i­ly Fun Day – Build Your Own Pond work­shop, Thurs­day 26th August, 12–3pm, Broad­lands Orchard, Box Road, Bath­ford, £15 per fam­i­ly (suit­able for over 7s), book­ing essen­tial: http://www.bathford.net/broadlands.php

Bath Veg­an Fayre ben­e­fit gig, Fri­day 27th August, 8–11pm, Hob­gob­lin, St James Parade; more details tbc

Bath Stop The War Coali­tion vig­il: vote with your mon­ey against Tri­dent, Sat­ur­day 28th August, 11.30am-12.30, Bath Abbey Court­yard, oth­er Bath human rights/trade & development/ justice/trades union organ­i­sa­tions are invit­ed to sup­port Crit­i­cal Mass Bike Ride, Sat­ur­day 28th August, 1pm, Kingsmead Square, http://www.bathcyclingcampaign.org.uk

Cli­mate Jus­tice Action meet­ing at the Nether­lands Earth First! Gath­er­ing, Sat­ur­day 28th August to Sun­day 29th August, Utrecht, http://www.climate-justice-action.org

Bath Ani­mal Action info stall, Sun­day 29th August, 2–4pm, Stall Street, e‑mail bathanimalaction[at]yahoo.co.uk

Tran­si­tion Bath Social, Mon­day 30th August, 7.15pm, the Love Lounge/ back room of the Bell, Wal­cot Street; bring food to share; http://www.transitionbath.org

Bath Social­ist Forum meet­ing, Mon­day 30th August, 8pm, upstairs St James Wine Vaults, pre­sent­ed by John Bamphylde/Bath Trades Coun­cil

one year part-time ‘Prac­ti­cal Sus­tain­abil­i­ty’ course, starts Sep­tem­ber 2010, Bris­tol; explor­ing per­ma­cul­ture design, organ­ic hor­ti­cul­ture, wood­land man­age­ment, green build­ing, eco­log­i­cal inter­ac­tions, ener­gy, group dynam­ics, re-local­i­sa­tion, cre­at­ing change, com­mu­ni­ty engage­ment and more; http://www.shiftbristol.org.uk

Bath Activist Net­work meet­ing, Thurs­day 2nd Sep­tem­ber, 7.30–9pm, down­stairs at The Hob­gob­lin, St James Parade, http://www.bathactivistnetwork.blogspot.com

Kil­ter the­atre : ‘Roots: Replant­ed’ (per­for­mance about food secu­ri­ty issues), Thurs­day 2nd to Fri­day 3rd Sep­tem­ber, St Wer­burgh’s City Farm, Boil­ing Wells, Bris­tol, BS2 9YJ, 7.30pm, £9 (£7 con­ces­sions), tel 01225 386777 to book, http://www.kiltertheatre.org

Bath Veg­an Fayre, Sat­ur­day 4th Sep­tem­ber, 12–4pm, Man­vers Street Bap­tist Church, free entry

Kil­ter the­atre : ‘Roots: Replant­ed’ (per­for­mance about food secu­ri­ty issues), Sat­ur­day 4th Sep­tem­ber, St Wer­burgh’s City Farm, Boil­ing Wells, Bris­tol, BS2 9YJ, 2.30pm & 7.30pm, £9 (£7 con­ces­sions), tel 01225 386777 to book, http://www.kiltertheatre.org

Kil­ter the­atre : ‘Roots: Replant­ed’ (per­for­mance about food secu­ri­ty issues), Sun­day 5th Sep­tem­ber, St Wer­burgh’s City Farm, Boil­ing Wells, Bris­tol, BS2 9YJ, 2.30pm, £9 (£7 con­ces­sions), tel 01225 386777 to book, http://www.kiltertheatre.org

Bath Green Drinks, Wednes­day 8th Sep­tem­ber, 8.30pm, the Ris­ing Sun, Grove Street

Kil­ter the­atre : ‘Roots: Replant­ed’ (per­for­mance about food secu­ri­ty issues), Thurs­day 9th to Fri­day 10th Sep­tem­ber, Hamp­ton Row Allot­ments, Bath­wick, 7.30pm, £9 (£7 con­ces­sions), tel 01225 386777 to book, http://www.kiltertheatre.org

Bris­tol Anar­chist Book­fair, Sat­ur­day 11th Sep­tem­ber, 10.30–6pm, Hamil­ton House, 80 Stokes Croft, Bris­tol; e‑mail bristolanarchistbookfair[at]riseup.net; http://www.bristolanarchistbookfair.org

Kil­ter the­atre : ‘Roots: Replant­ed’ (per­for­mance about food secu­ri­ty issues), Sat­ur­day 11th Sep­tem­ber, Hamp­ton Row Allot­ments, Bath­wick, 2.30pm & 7.30pm, £9 (£7 con­ces­sions), tel 01225 386777 to book, http://www.kiltertheatre.org

Kil­ter the­atre : ‘Roots: Replant­ed’ (per­for­mance about food secu­ri­ty issues), Sun­day 12th Sep­tem­ber, Hamp­ton Row Allot­ments, Bath­wick, 2.30pm, £9 (£7 con­ces­sions), tel 01225 386777 to book, http://www.kiltertheatre.org

Bath Ani­mal Action meet­ing, Mon­day 13th Sep­tem­ber, 8–9pm, The Bell, Wal­cot Street, e‑mail bathanimalaction[at]yahoo.co.uk

Kil­ter the­atre : ‘Roots: Replant­ed’ (per­for­mance about food secu­ri­ty issues), Thurs­day 16th to Fri­day 17th Sep­tem­ber, Pease­down St John Com­mu­ni­ty Farm, Dunker­ton Hill, BA2 8PJ, 7.30pm, £9 (£7 con­ces­sions), tel 01225 386777 to book, http://www.kiltertheatre.org

Kil­ter the­atre : ‘Roots: Replant­ed’ (per­for­mance about food secu­ri­ty issues), Sat­ur­day 18th Sep­tem­ber, Pease­down St John Com­mu­ni­ty Farm, Dunker­ton Hill, BA2 8PJ, 2.30pm & 7.30pm, £9 (£7 con­ces­sions), tel 01225 386777 to book, http://www.kiltertheatre.org

Region­al South West Ani­mal Rights Coali­tion meet­ing, Sun­day 19th Sep­tem­ber, 12–5pm, The Fac­to­ry, Cave Street, cen­tral Bris­tol

Kil­ter the­atre : ‘Roots: Replant­ed’ (per­for­mance about food secu­ri­ty issues),

Sun­day 19th Sep­tem­ber, Pease­down St John Com­mu­ni­ty Farm, Dunker­ton Hill, BA2 8PJ, 2.30pm, £9 (£7 con­ces­sions), tel 01225 386777 to book, http://www.kiltertheatre.org

Kil­ter the­atre : ‘Roots: Replant­ed’ (per­for­mance about food secu­ri­ty issues), Thurs­day 23rd to Fri­day 24th Sep­tem­ber, Bloom­field Allot­ments, Bear Flat, 7.30pm, £9 (£7 con­ces­sions), tel 01225 386777 to book, http://www.kiltertheatre.org

Kil­ter the­atre : ‘Roots: Replant­ed’ (per­for­mance about food secu­ri­ty issues), Sat­ur­day 25th Sep­tem­ber, Bloom­field Allot­ments, Bear Flat, 2.30pm & 7.30pm, £9 (£7 con­ces­sions), tel 01225 386777 to book, http://www.kiltertheatre.org

Kil­ter the­atre : ‘Roots: Replant­ed’ (per­for­mance about food secu­ri­ty issues), Sun­day 26th Sep­tem­ber, Bloom­field Allot­ments, Bear Flat, 2.30pm, £9 (£7 con­ces­sions), tel 01225 386777 to book, http://www.kiltertheatre.org

Bath Social­ist Forum meet­ing, Mon­day 27th Sep­tem­ber, 8pm, upstairs St James Wine Vaults, pre­sent­ed by Ken Loach

No Bor­ders Camp Bel­gium, Wednes­day 29th Sep­tem­ber to Sun­day 3rd Octo­ber, Brus­sels, http://www.noborderbxl.eu.org/?lang=en

Nation­al March for Farmed Ani­mals, Sat­ur­day 2nd Octo­ber, 12pm start, Cavendish Square, Lon­don

anti-Tory demon­stra­tion, Sun­day 3rd Octo­ber, Tory Par­ty Con­fer­ence, Birm­ing­ham more details tbc

Legal fees ben­e­fit punk gig: ‘SUBVERT 2010 — A Fes­ti­val Of Resis­tance’, Fri­day 8th to Sun­day 10th Octo­ber, Bris­tol, feat Hel­lkrush­er, Rui­dosa Immu­ni­di­cia, War All The Time, Ignosy, The Wankys, The Extin­guish­ers & Bul­letrid­den, as well as veg­an cafés/ stalls/ films/ work­shops & pic­nic; more details tbc

Region­al day of action against the cuts, Sat­ur­day 23rd Octo­ber

Bris­tol Free Veg­an Food Fair, Sat­ur­day 30th Octo­ber, more details tbc

Camp for Cli­mate Action Aus­tralia, Wednes­day 1st to Sun­day 5th Decem­ber, Bayswa­ter Pow­er Sta­tion, http://www.climatecamp.org.au

Cli­mate Camp Aotearoa, Thurs­day 16th to Tues­day 21st Decem­ber, Welling­ton New Zealand, http://www.climatecamp.org.nz/node/51

*

The Only Good Boss Is A Dead Boss?

B&NES Coun­cil has man­aged to well and tru­ly shit on its work­ers once again through its recent adver­tise­ment of a new job role to fill. After cut­ting loose 70 staff in the last cou­ple months, and plan­ning at least anoth­er 300 job loss­es in the near future, the cre­ation of the new Head of Prop­er­ty post, with its wage pack­et of between £71,166 and £76,638 per year, tells those for­mer employ­ees exact­ly what the coun­cil thinks of them. The cre­ation of this man­age­r­i­al role could only hap­pen once the rank and file, who actu­al­ly do the work rather than just fan­ny around sack­ing peo­ple, had been let go. Set to man­age (i.e. leave them all board­ed up for years then flog) the coun­cil’s port­fo­lio of 1,000 build­ings, many in retail, worth more than £500 mil­lion, this has left union offi­cials furi­ous with the coun­cil chiefs. But here at the Bath Bomb, con­sid­er­ing the cal­i­bre of inhu­man slith­er­ings and evo­lu­tion­ary dead-ends infest­ing the rest of B&NES’s Prop­er­ty Ser­vices depart­ment, we won­der what sort of two-faced rep­til­ian abom­i­na­tion they’ll dredge up to fill that role, and which car­ni­val freak show will soon be miss­ing its star attrac­tion?

Bath Activist Net­work are a local umbrel­la group cam­paign­ing on issues as diverse as devel­op­ment, envi­ron­men­tal­ism, anti-war, ani­mal rights, work­ers’ rights and more. Help­ing to pro­duce the Bath Bomb, we are open to any­one, and our mem­bers range from trade union­ists to anar­chists, lib­er­als and greens, and peo­ple who just want to change Bath for the bet­ter. For details on meet­ings, demos, or just to get in touch, e‑mail bathactivistnet[at]yahoo.co.uk, or see our web­site: http://www.bathactivistnetwork.blogspot.com

*

Gull War Syn­drome

There’s an epi­dem­ic going on! You may or may not have heard about the killer seag­ulls roam­ing the streets of bath. Or, EVEN WORSE the mur­der­ous fox­es patrolling EVERY CITY IN THE UK!!! look­ing for pets and chil­dren to eat. The nation­al press have brave­ly sol­diered on to warn the gen­er­al pub­lic of these men­aces, one Bath pho­tog­ra­ph­er took his life in his hands to get a pic­ture of the gull men­ace close up.

Bath land­lords are feel­ing the need to join brave vig­i­lante groups to oil the eggs and stop the demon spawn escap­ing. Unfor­tu­nate­ly these brave souls have neglect­ed to think about why wild ani­mals would chose to move into urban areas.

The only rea­son that wildlife can sur­vive in cities is our atti­tude to waste. Pigeons, gulls and fox­es all sur­vive on the dis­gust­ing amount of food waste scat­tered all over. ‘Gull pre­ven­tion mea­sures’ in one part of Bath sim­ply move the prob­lem to the next street. If home­own­ers, land­lords and the coun­cil made a con­cert­ed effort to get rid of the birds they could do so eas­i­ly. All it takes is to clean up our waste.

The dis­pos­able cul­ture we live in means that a huge amount is thrown out, a lack of ade­quate recy­cling facil­i­ties (along with pure lazi­ness on many peo­ples part) means that waste is left on our streets for days before being col­lect­ed. Along with ani­mals being able to sur­vive on all of this, it also pos­es risks to them. The fact that food waste, when not com­post­ed, is mixed in with oth­er rub­bish means that ani­mals are at risk of chok­ing, poi­son­ing, and numer­ous oth­er hor­ri­ble deaths — lead­ing to the sight of rot­ting corpses on our streets. Sure­ly not good for the tourists?

In order to ensure humans are kept away from this dan­ger­ous wildlife entire­ly, we need to make our cities unin­hab­it­able to these men­aces. Clean­ing up after your­self – rather than toss­ing the blame at any old scape­goat – should do it.

*

From Our Unclothed Cor­re­spon­dent

“On Sun­day 13th June, I took part in the first prop­er ‘Bris­tol World Naked Bike Ride’, to protest against oil depen­den­cy, in favour of curb­ing car cul­ture and to have car- free Sun­days in the city and a cel­e­bra­tion of body free­dom. By rid­ing nude, pro­test­ers demon­strate the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of cyclists on the busy streets. It also feels good and lib­er­at­ing.

We met at the Full Moon pub, Stokes Croft, Bris­tol at 12 noon, and it was a love­ly hot sun­ny day so peo­ple start­ed strip­ping off before­hand in the beer gar­den, as you had to stay dressed inside the pub.

The ride head­ed off about 1pm, most of the cyclists were naked includ­ing myself, some were body-paint­ed, oth­ers had small cos­tumes on, it’s a clothes-option­al protest, but the more that are nude the bet­ter. There was no police pres­ence.

Spec­ta­tors lined  some of the route cheer­ing and enjoy­ing the event which went through Broad­mead, Cas­tle Green, the Cen­tre, Bald­win St, Old Mar­ket and Col­lege Green, where we stopped for a pho­to call before head­ing back to the Full Moon where many remained naked out­side until leav­ing late after­noon.

The protest was a great suc­cess, with good pho­tos on Bris­tol Indy­media, and the local press. The World Naked Bike Ride is an inter­na­tion­al event and this year there were rides in Lon­don, Brighton, Southamp­ton, York, Sheffield and­Man­ches­ter, it’s grow­ing. It’s also show­ing that there is noth­ing wrong with the human body and being a free spir­it.”

*

Hit­ting The Books

Con­tin­u­ing with the cur­rent plug­ging craze, the Bris­tol Anar­chist Book­fair fol­lows hot on the Bath Veg­an Fayre’s heels, on Sat­ur­day 11th Sep­tem­ber. There is a def­i­nite growth of anar­chist and alter­na­tive book­fairs hap­pen­ing through the U.K. and abroad, which shows both increased co-oper­a­tion between dif­fer­ent anar­chist trends, and a grow­ing inter­est in find­ing an alter­na­tive to the fail­ures of cap­i­tal – not too sur­pris­ing, con­sid­er­ing the state our econ­o­my and plan­et is in! The event will fea­ture two floors of stalls, work­shops, books, zines, mer­chan­dise, and talks, plus a rad­i­cal his­to­ry zone, film room, creche and veg­an café. Tak­ing place at Hamil­ton House, 80 Stokes Croft in Bris­tol, from 10.30am to 6pm, the fair (they obvi­ous­ly did­n’t quite have the gump­tion to go with ‘fayre’) is free and acces­si­ble to all, and is guar­an­teed to open both eyes and wal­lets.

http://www.bristolanarchistbookfair.org

*

Don’t Think We’re Alone Now

For our Bris­tol read­ers, ‘The Auton­o­mist’, Bris­tol’s new rad­i­cal news sheet and direc­to­ry, is out now: get it online at http://www.bristolautonomist.blogspot.com!

*

I Would Have Got Away With It Too, If It Was­n’t For You Hedd­lu Kids

The long-await­ed Welsh Cli­mate Camp/Climate Camp Cym­ru went into action on Fri­day 13th of this month, focus­ing once more on the pol­lut­ing evils of the coal extrac­tion indus­try, and set up near the Selar and Nant-Helen (due for expan­sion) open­cast coal mines, in Glyn-Neath in South Wales. Both mines are owned by Celtic Ener­gy. The Selar mine itself destroyed a Site of Spe­cial Sci­en­tif­ic Inter­est (SSSI) back in the 1990s, for added eco­cide – trash­ing vital marsh this­tles, and fail­ing to rehome the colony of rare marsh frit­il­lary but­ter­flies. For the camp itself, as with pre­vi­ous camps, a pos­i­tive agen­da of decen­tralised, renew­able pow­er sys­tems, com­mu­nal liv­ing, eco-action plan­ning and skill­share work­shops were all on the cards.

How­ev­er, the Welsh police put paid to all that the next day, pre­ma­ture­ly evict­ing the site and 30 or so activists present, draw­ing on a mas­sive out­lay of mount­ed police and at least 15 riot vans full. Maybe Fri­day the 13th was­n’t such a good day after all?

On relat­ed news, the 13 remain­ing defen­dants of April’s Ffos-y-fran coal train block­ade were con­di­tion­al­ly dis­charged at Merthyr Tyd­fil Crown Court on the Fri­day; the oth­er five had their charges dropped in July. A life­long restrain­ing order bar­ring them from the vicin­i­ty of Aberthaw Pow­er Sta­tion and the Ffos-y-fran mine hangs round their necks. They were greet­ed out­side court by more mount­ed police, two riot vans and the flash­es of BBC and ITV pho­tog­ra­phers. Ahh, the price of fame.

http://www.bristol.indymedia.org.uk/article/693181

*

And now, to the dis­claimer: as any­one is free to con­tribute, the opin­ions expressed in each arti­cle are not nec­es­sar­i­ly reflec­tive of all con­trib­u­tors. Nat­u­ral­ly, any right-wing or cor­po­rate bull­shit will be binned and spat upon. Need­less to say, the opin­ions of the author of this dis­claimer do not nec­es­sar­i­ly reflect the opin­ions of any oth­er con­trib­u­tor.

Trashing, dashing, bashing, mashing: the new EF! Action Update

So what have you been up to the last few months? Just hang­ing around?
Maybe you’ve been part of human wheel-clamp­ing aero­planes, climb­ing up scaf­fold­ing tripods incon­ve­nient­ly placed in the road, smash­ing machines at open-cast mines, play­ing nuked-dead in the street, kayak­ing against bore­hole drill rigs in Ire­land, burn­ing mobile phone masts, resist­ing Tesco, camp­ing against trash­ing of wood­land, with some suc­cess at Tit­nore (& oth­er protest camp updates), or get­ting in on BP’s act, spilling oil in pub­lic places.

Or have you been on hol­i­day, tak­ing part in indige­nous block­ades against log­ging, dams and min­ing, spilunk­ing against high speed trains, slash­ing tuna cages, blockad­ing Mon­san­to HQ, trash­ing GM fields, and more?

So what have you been up to the last few months? Just hang­ing around?
Maybe you’ve been part of human wheel-clamp­ing aero­planes, climb­ing up scaf­fold­ing tripods incon­ve­nient­ly placed in the road, smash­ing machines at open-cast mines, play­ing nuked-dead in the street, kayak­ing against bore­hole drill rigs in Ire­land, burn­ing mobile phone masts, resist­ing Tesco, camp­ing against trash­ing of wood­land, with some suc­cess at Tit­nore (& oth­er protest camp updates), or get­ting in on BP’s act, spilling oil in pub­lic places.

Or have you been on hol­i­day, tak­ing part in indige­nous block­ades against log­ging, dams and min­ing, spilunk­ing against high speed trains, slash­ing tuna cages, blockad­ing Mon­san­to HQ, trash­ing GM fields, and more?

Maybe you’re in need of a break. But if you’re not, and are just champ­ing at the bit, the return of AUn­tie MIffy’s prob­lem page might help, address­ing what to do if there’s no local group near you. There’s an arti­cle about the begin­nings of EF! in this coun­try, look­ing for­wards to the next 20 years, to help inspire. If you need sup­port to get things going where you live, do get in touch. And if all that’s not enough, here’s a quo­ta­tion, from Paul Wat­son, the Sea Shep­herd cap­tain:

“Future gen­er­a­tions will not have the chance and those that came before us did not have the vision nor the knowl­edge. It is up to us — you and I.”

Print ver­sion
Oth­er issues and extra info

Earth First! Summer Gathering set-up plans announced

We can now announce that set-up will begin from around 2pm on Sat­ur­day, 31 July. Mar­quees, tools and con­struc­tion mate­ri­als will be arriv­ing on site from Sat­ur­day morn­ing so there will be plen­ty to do. You will be able to camp on the site from Sat­ur­day and there will be skele­ton facil­i­ties (water, basic kitchen) from that time.

We can now announce that set-up will begin from around 2pm on Sat­ur­day, 31 July. Mar­quees, tools and con­struc­tion mate­ri­als will be arriv­ing on site from Sat­ur­day morn­ing so there will be plen­ty to do. You will be able to camp on the site from Sat­ur­day and there will be skele­ton facil­i­ties (water, basic kitchen) from that time.

We also have a mobile num­ber for set­up which is 07766 947852. This will be on-site from Sat­ur­day lunchtime, and may well get answered in the few days before­hand but please don’t try ring­ing until then — e‑mail will remain the main con­tact point until near­er the time — sum­mer­gath­er­ing -{at}- earthfirst.org.uk

What we need to know:

*Please can you let us know when you are com­ing? — this helps us plan foods, facil­i­ties and what jobs to do when.

*It is also help­ful if you can let us know if you have any par­tic­u­lar skills or inter­ests with respect to set-up — we might need dri­vers, so if you are over 25, hold a clean licence, are con­fi­dent dri­ving a 3.5 tonne Luton AND can bring along both parts of your dri­ving licence please let us know.

*Sim­i­lar­ly if you are arriv­ing in a vehi­cle and could poten­tial­ly pro­vide lifts, trans­port equip­ment en route or run errands from site once you arrive please let us know. In this case it is very help­ful if you are able/willing to sup­ply us with a con­tact phone num­ber.

How to get there

As you maybe aware that we do not announce the exact site of the gath­er­ing until one week before the main event, this means direc­tions will be avail­able on the web­site http://www.earthfirstgathering.org.uk/ from Wednes­day, 27 July. We realise this will be short notice for peo­ple arriv­ing on the Sat­ur­day, how­ev­er to make things eas­i­er we will e‑mail direc­tions to set-up crew on that day (that still 4 days to check a map!).

The near­est train sta­tion is Der­by if you want to pre-book train tick­ets, you will also need to take a local bus ser­vice from Der­by (these are fre­quent). We are aim­ing to have a vehi­cle on site that can assist if peo­ple have dif­fi­cul­ties between Der­by and the site, so hope­ful­ly every­one will be able to get there okay.

There may be a very small num­ber of lifts avail­able from the Not­ting­ham area across the week­end of Sat­ur­day 31st July/Sunday first of August. There may also be lifts from the Leeds area first thing on 31 July. Let us know if this may be of inter­est to you.

What to bring

*Every­thing you need to the gath­er­ing, tent sleep­ing bags etc. and espe­cial­ly a torch

*It may be wise to come a bit more self-suf­fi­cient in food and snacks than you would need to for the main gath­er­ing — we will have a basic kitchen but Veg­gies and the tuck shop are not arriv­ing until Wednes­day

*If you are able to bring any tools, espe­cial­ly for basic car­pen­try, these are often use­ful

Big thanks for offer­ing to help out

Do get in touch if you have any ques­tions

Love & rage

The EF! Gath­er­ing crew

Bath Bomb #31 Out Now

THE BATH BOMB
@nti-copyright: copy and dis­trib­ute!
Issue #31
free/donation
July 2010
‘Where news goes to die’

George’s Mar­vel­lous Med­i­cine!

Bath Bomb small logoTHE BATH BOMB
@nti-copyright: copy and dis­trib­ute!
Issue #31
free/donation
July 2010
‘Where news goes to die’

George’s Mar­vel­lous Med­i­cine!

Won­drous news this month as we dis­cov­er that the chan­cel­lor has heal­ing hands rivalling those of the good Lord Jesus. Osborne claims he has the abil­i­ty to cure the dis­abled and reduce the bankers’ debt in the process. Praise be.

It would seem irre­spon­si­ble, uncar­ing and cru­el to ignore the wel­fare for those most vul­ner­a­ble in our soci­ety, espe­cial­ly in the cur­rent cli­mate. Thank­ful­ly, the Con­ser­v­a­tive Par­ty think, with a dose of George’s mar­vel­lous med­i­cine, one in five peo­ple pre­vi­ous­ly con­sid­ered inca­pable of work will be able to mirac­u­lous­ly attain and keep gain­ful employ­ment. This will cut the deficit and bring noth­ing but hope and hap­pi­ness to those unfor­tu­nate enough to be hand­i­capped.

Despite the lev­el of unem­ploy­ment being so trou­bling, the Tories assure us that those com­ing off sick­ness ben­e­fits will have an easy time find­ing work. It does­n’t mat­ter if they’ve spent long peri­ods out of work; that sure­ly won’t affect employ­ers’ deci­sions. Cer­tain­ly, it won’t influ­ence those already on the dole. That’d be ridicu­lous.

Enough irony.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Con-Dem don’t appear to under­stand the def­i­n­i­tion of inca­pac­i­ty, seem­ing to believe that there are those who are unable and yet, at the same time, able.

Fur­ther issues are seen with the pen­sion age due to rise to 66 and lat­er to 70 and so on. Sim­ply the increase by one year will mean 200,000 extra peo­ple will die with­out reach­ing retire­ment age. It’s cer­tain­ly worth not­ing that those with big salaries and big bonus­es can and do retire ear­li­er with the free­dom their dirty mon­ey brings them. Even more so, high­er wages mean high­er life expectan­cy. The Con­ser­v­a­tives promised no cuts to pen­sions and yet sure­ly these sub­stan­tial­ly are.

In France, there is cur­rent­ly large scale indus­tri­al action over their increase to 62, sure­ly 66 is just tak­ing the piss.

This mon­th’s bud­get deliv­ers freezes on child ben­e­fit and pub­lic sec­tor pay (con­sid­er­ing infla­tion, essen­tial­ly a cut in both). It brings annu­al­ly decreas­ing state ben­e­fits in line with the cost of liv­ing and fur­ther hits on the poor by rais­ing V.A.T. to 20 per­cent. Mean­while, cor­po­rate tax is reduced to leave more mon­ey with the C.E.O.s and share­hold­ers. Clear­ly, Con-Dem could have raised tax­es in order to tack­le the deficit, espe­cial­ly of those with could have raised tax­es in order to tack­le the deficit, espe­cial­ly of those with more mon­ey than they know what to do with, yet they’ve ignored this avenue. Instead the Tories are seek­ing out ways to direct­ly attack the poor­est and most vul­ner­a­ble to keep their bank­ing friends’ pock­ets lined. Cunts!

It’s A SHSEI-ing Shame

Whilst we have giv­en a fair chunk of cov­er­age to the woes of one com­mu­ni­ty activist ini­tia­tive get­ting repeat­ed­ly bounced off the pave­ment by Bath’s pow­ers-that-be, anoth­er local scheme has also been tak­ing it in the chops, but on the qui­et. The brain­child of one Mr Lawrence Buabeng, Snow Hill Skills and Enter­prise Ini­tia­tive, has been slog­ging through coun­cil nego­ti­a­tions for the last four years. Whilst gov­ern­ment direc­tives and strate­gies have been blath­er­ing on about emo­tive touchy-feely terms like ‘com­mu­ni­ty empow­er­ment’, ‘help­ing peo­ple to help them­selves’ and ‘stronger, safer com­mu­ni­ties’, on the ground they offer the exact oppo­site. S.H.S.E.I. is a case in point.

Whilst the scheme has put togeth­er a com­pre­hen­sive, step-by-step and ambi­tious plan (a term its detrac­tors often use against it) to com­bat workless­ness, ill health, and lack of com­mu­ni­ty cohe­sion, it also seeks to regen­er­ate a visu­al­ly-neglect­ed area and recon­nect its peo­ple to their own his­to­ry. Specif­i­cal­ly, it is made up of those peo­ple itself, and aims for ful­fill­ing work, offer­ing the skills and prac­ti­cal train­ing to get it. It also imple­ments local­ly account­able, cost-effec­tive pub­lic ser­vices. Though Lon­don Road is one of the main arter­ies into this World Her­itage city, it is the UK’s third worst pol­lut­ed road and absolute­ly lit­tered with board­ed-up shop fronts. The fact is that the home­less, unem­ployed, ex-offend­ers, and drug-depen­dent who make up a size­able pro­por­tion of the com­mu­ni­ty often have a poor work­ing rela­tion­ship with insti­tu­tion­al bod­ies. When an afflu­ent, phil­an­thropist out­sider rolls in to tell you how to improve your lot, the dis­em­pow­er­ment, the patro­n­is­ing arro­gance, the dis­trust and inequal­i­ty leave a sour taste.

Start­ing off with a film-mak­ing work­shop for youth (four films are already avail­able at http://www.ilovesnowhill.com), the scheme also aims at re-open­ing the gar­den behind Car­o­line House, tak­ing back three build­ings for the com­mu­ni­ty (main­tain­ing them to exact­ing envi­ron­men­tal stan­dards, and put them to use as Her­itage, Skills & Enter­prise Cen­tres), pro­mot­ing child- and elder­ly-care schemes, and explor­ing alter­na­tive eco­nom­ics. The first stage sur­vey of local needs was done for free this spring, whilst the coun­cil’s sur­vey of 170 peo­ple in 2002 gob­bled up around £30,000. The results of the first 100 have been damn­ing, dis­play­ing a 45% rate of localised unem­ploy­ment. The scheme has seen sup­port from a dizzy­ing array of insti­tu­tions: B&NES Her­itage and Eco­nom­ic Devel­op­ment offi­cer, the local MP, the Local Improve­ment Advi­sor, British Trust for Con­ser­va­tion Vol­un­teers, Somer Hous­ing, Bet­ter Bath Forum, Job Cen­tre Plus, Gen­e­sis Trust, Bath Abbey Home­less Ini­tia­tive, North East Som­er­set Arts and Bath Spa Uni, as well as those local denizens at the bot­tom of the lad­der.

But no, it seems the coun­cil would rather sweep any prob­lems under the car­pet: though Snow Hill has four times as many Job-seek­ers as the nor­mal rate, it is divid­ed neat­ly between the afflu­ent wards of Lam­bridge and Wal­cot, so no one has to get upset by damn­ing sta­tis­tics. For its part, the Lon­don Road Part­ner­ship seeds its mem­bers into com­mu­ni­ty meet­ings to witch-hunt local youth. The Coun­cil seems to be wait­ing for the uppi­ty poor folk to either die off (as two of the S.H.S.E.I. sub-com­mit­tee already have) or do what they’re sup­posed to do, like get a habit or a jail sen­tence. This jus­ti­fies an ever-increas­ing gold-rush of police resources as the upper ech­e­lons mat­ter-of-fact­ly step up the class war. At the same time, they scav­enge the choic­est morsels of the scheme, rather than give cred­it to the dis­ad­van­taged who have put in years of sol­id, unpaid work.

The first hint of back-stab­bing was when B&NES’s Paul Pen­ny­cook all but promised a sum of £45,000 for a workless­ness ini­tia­tive in the area at the turn of the year; but when the cash did arrive, instead of it going to the exist­ing, local­ly-based scheme, it instead fell in the hands of Re:Generate — a team of well-mean­ing young and pol­ished com­mu­ni­ty con­sul­tants from Shrews­bury, cyn­i­cal­ly being used by their high­er ups to under­mine and mar­gin­alise the active com­mu­ni­ty, (who already do work in more need­ed areas like White­way, Twer­ton and Keyn­sham) and instead sink fund­ing into a spate of jum­ble sales.

Things start­ed get­ting ugly from there on in. Although the offi­cial route has­n’t led to many results so far, a com­plaint was lodged with the local author­i­ty ombuds­man, and law suits were ini­ti­at­ed. Alex Schlesinger, chair of the Lon­don Road Part­ner­ship and antiques empo­ri­um emper­or, threat­ened to return fund­ing to sender or waste it on court fees, rather than use it for the scheme — paint­ing him as a self-serv­ing, self-sat­is­fied do-good­er refus­ing to actu­al­ly do any good for those who count. 3 and 4 Long Acre got squat­ted to push the coun­cil in the right direc­tion, but things got even ugli­er when Joanne Long, from B&NES Prop­er­ty Ser­vices, reared her.…face? and start­ed court pro­ceed­ings. The evic­tion took place on Thurs­day the 8th of this month. Prop­er­ty Ser­vices man­age­ment of the build­ing, or mis-man­age­ment, inci­den­tal­ly, bor­ders on crim­i­nal neglect: back in April, they erect­ed scaf­fold­ing round the out­side of the build­ing to car­ry out a sur­veyance, and ‘deal’ with the rain dam­age; how­ev­er, when we say ‘deal’, we mean they did­n’t both­er to patch up the holes in the roof which admits reg­u­lar streams of rain (and the floor­boards are par­tial­ly rot­ten inside, which the squat­ters took pains to reverse), but just put up board­ing to con­ceal the moss grow­ing on the out­side of the brick­work. Rather than return the build­ings over to the needs of the com­mu­ni­ty, they’d rather flog them off to the high­est bid­der, in a des­per­ate bid to pay off coun­cil debts from oth­er mis­takes.

We could go on — we often do, but the sor­ry saga involves a lot more dou­ble-stan­dards, co-option, per­jury and lies. S.H.S.E.I. still has­n’t giv­en up, and if peo­ple of integri­ty want to sup­port it in any way — be it prac­ti­cal, finan­cial or polit­i­cal — drop them an e‑mail at lawrencebuabeng[at]googlemail.com .

Nice Work If You Can Skel­lett

Although the times are hard, it’s nice to know that some folks are get­ting by. Col­in Skel­lett, for exam­ple, own­er of Great West­ern Enter­pris­es, is doing quite nice­ly. G.W.E. spe­cialise in pro­vid­ing busi­ness ser­vices (invent­ing this sea­son’s hottest buzz­words, and oth­er impor­tant stuff) for local coun­cils like B&NES. He was bust­ed by the Lon­don Police Fraud Squad back in 2002 for accept­ing a sup­posed £1 mil­lion bribe for sell­ing off his com­pa­ny Wes­sex Water to Malaysian-owned YTL Pow­er (appar­ent­ly, the mon­ey was pay­ment for the con­sul­tan­cy role he played in the buy-out). It turns out this chair­man of the Ini­tia­tive for Bath and North East Som­er­set just can’t get enough (monop­o­lies, that is). Still on Wes­sex’s board of direc­tors, he also helped out Busi­ness West after their finan­cial trou­ble two years back, by acquir­ing them. Busi­ness West pro­vide busi­ness ser­vices too, for com­pa­nies in the west-coun­try. How­ev­er, G.W.E. also owns the freema­son-like Bath and Bris­tol Cham­ber of Com­merces, who rep­re­sent the inter­ests of large busi­ness­es like banks, super­mar­kets, lawyers and pub­lic trans­port groups.

Then con­sid­er the shin­ing exam­ple of Orwellian dou­ble­s­peak that is ‘Future Bath Plus’. Half-owned by B&NES Coun­cil, they pro­mote Bath’s tourism and World Her­itage rep­u­ta­tion, and have let loose a city cen­tre man­ag­er intent on threat­en­ing pos­i­tive com­mu­ni­ty schemes like the Bath FreeShop. They are also the vehi­cle through which Bath’s Busi­ness Improve­ment Dis­trict scheme is brought in. B.I.D.s, which, if vot­ed in, pop an extra tax levy onto all local busi­ness­es, with the stat­ed aim of pro­mot­ing ‘all’ busi­ness­es in the area, osten­si­bly. The B.I.D. is like­ly to boost CCTV sur­veil­lance and pseu­do-cop pres­ence in the city cen­tre, pri­vatis­ing pub­lic space, and sweep­ing away the home­less, the eth­nic minori­ties and the polit­i­cal­ly active who might just ren­der the high street too unseem­ly for our beloved tourists’ del­i­cate sen­si­bil­i­ties. First seen in this coun­try in Lon­don in 2006, 22 of them have spread now, with par­tic­u­lar out­cry in Ply­mouth, where vast amounts of tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey has been chan­nelled into the pro­mo­tion of the B.I.D. com­pa­nies’ direc­tors, inter­ests whilst com­peti­tors have been high and dry. It’s the same sto­ry of cor­rup­tion through­out the so-called North East Tri­an­gle of Bris­tol, Swin­don and Glouces­ter. Oh, and did we men­tion that our Col­in is the chair of Future Bath Plus?

So, Skel­lett, a close friend of B&NES Coun­cil’s CEO John Everett, is send­ing G.W.E. all over the south-west, accu­mu­lat­ing heaps of tax­pay­er cash through a mul­ti­tude of dis­guis­es, whilst vul­ner­a­ble pub­lic ser­vices face wave after wave of ‘inevitable’ cuts. B&NES claim that last year G.W.E. earned £40,000, but if you include the funds tossed Future Bath Plus and Busi­ness West­’s way, it’s look­ing clos­er to £1.5 mil­lion. Any­one else smell a rat?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_improvement_district”
http://www.bbc.co.uk

A Class (War) Act!

So, the bud­get has been announced and, as expect­ed, it hits the poor­est hard­est, while leav­ing the rich — the same peo­ple who caused the cri­sis — laugh­ing at the rest of us. There is expect­ed to be a min­i­mum of 600,000 redun­dan­cies sole­ly from the pub­lic sec­tor. In Bath alone, the largest employ­ers, B&NES, the MoD, and the Uni­ver­si­ties, are all fac­ing heavy loss­es, with at least three hun­dred coun­cil jobs on the chop­ping block in the next three years. Along with the all-out assault on aver­age peo­ple, Cameron and his Eton chums have decid­ed to reduce the amount of tax paid by cor­po­ra­tions and the ultra rich. But while the old school tie brigade get ready to dish us out a kick­ing, many ordi­nary peo­ple are get­ting pre­pared to bash back. Bob Crow, leader of the 85,000 strong RMT union summed it up best by say­ing “The trade unions must form alliances with com­mu­ni­ty groups, cam­paigns and pen­sion­ers’ organ­i­sa­tions in the biggest show of unit­ed resis­tance since the suc­cess of the anti-poll tax move­ment. Wav­ing ban­ners and plac­ards will not be enough — it will take direct action”. He has also called for ‘gen­er­al and coor­di­nat­ed strike action’ — a call which is being tak­en up by thou­sands around the coun­try prepar­ing to fight back against the dev­as­tat­ing Tory cuts. Already, there have been a spate of protests and actions up and down the coun­try. Where bet­ter to ignite the fight­back in earnest than the Tory Par­ty Con­fer­ence in Birm­ing­ham on Octo­ber the 3rd? Protests are being organ­ised that look set to involve thou­sands of angry peo­ple, and it looks like a coach will be going from Bath. So, if you fan­cy let­ting lord Snooty and the rest of the Thatch­er clones know what you think of their cuts, why not drop B.A.N. an email at bathactivistnet[at]yahoo.co.uk. In the mean­time, anti-cuts cam­paigns are spring­ing up left, left and cen­tre, so keep your ear to the ground and take a bit of inspi­ra­tion from our mate Bob Crow, who end­ed his recent speech with a clear mes­sage to all of us — “Don’t fear them — fight them!”

Cli­mate Camp Coun­ters Cym­ru Coal

There will be a Camp For Cli­mate Action tar­get­ing coal in South Wales this August, from the 13th to the 17th.

The direct action net­work will con­verge at a venue in Cardiff on Fri­day the 13th August, from which peo­ple will be tak­en to the camp itself. “Coal is one of the dirt­i­est fos­sil fuels in terms of car­bon. We will take action against open­cast coal min­ing because it trash­es the land, destroys our plan­et and wrecks the health of local peo­ple. Clean coal is a dirty joke”, said spokesper­son Cerys Jones.

Last year’s camp was held next to Ffos-y-fran in Merthyr Tyd­fil, the largest open­cast coal mine in the UK. The camp involved work­shops on cli­mate sci­ence, direct action train­ing, a solar-pow­ered cin­e­ma, com­post toi­lets, solar-heat­ed show­ers, grey­wa­ter sys­tems and wind pow­er.

As part of the con­tin­u­ing cam­paign res­i­dents are now tak­ing Miller Argent to court on the issue of ‘pri­vate nui­sance’. Due to the con­stant clouds of coal dust res­i­dents are unable to open win­dows, or hang wash­ing out. Also, of the 18 coal train block­aders, as men­tioned last month, five have now had their cas­es with­drawn.

For fur­ther infor­ma­tion about the camp, e‑mail: media[at]climatecampcymru.org, or give them a call at 07077 076147.

http://www.risingtide.org.uk
http://www.stopffosyfran.co.uk
http://coalaction.org.uk
http://www.climatecampcymru.org
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2009/aug/12/climate-camp-cymru-blog
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/8270681.stm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/apr/26/coal-protest-ffos-y-fran

GOT A STORY? WANT TO RECEIVE THE BATH BOMB BY EMAIL? HOPING TO SUE? Con­tact us by e‑mailing bathbombpress[at]yahoo.co.uk. Large print e‑versions avail­able on request. And for more info on any of our sto­ries, check out http://www.thebathbomb.blogspot.com

UPCOMING EVENTS

Lon­don Road Food Co-op, Wednes­days, 4–7pm, River­side Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, Lon­don Road
Bathamp­ton Com­mu­ni­ty Grow­ers work­day, Thurs­days, 10am-dusk, Mill Lane, Bathamp­ton, e‑mail thelostplot[at]googlemail.com/ tel Chris 07792 444628
Bath Stop The War Coali­tion vig­il, Sat­ur­days, 11.30am-12.30, Bath Abbey Court­yard
Recy­cle Your Sun­days, Sun­days, 10.30am, starts Abbey Church­yard, the reg­u­lar series of socia­ble, easy-paced cycle rides, http://www.bathrys.org.uk/ tel Hazel 01225 469199
Bris­tol & South Wales Hunt Sabo­teurs punk & thrash ben­e­fit gig, Fri­day 9th July, 7.30pm, The White Hart, White­hall Road, Bris­tol, feat. Kismet H.C., Death Job, Mutiny Plot and This Ends Here, £5
Intro­duc­to­ry Per­ma­cul­ture Week­end, Sat­ur­day 10th to Sun­day 11th July, Bath City Farm, £50, http://www.transitionbath.org
Bath FreeShop, Sat­ur­day 10th July, 12–3pm, out­side Pump Rooms, Stall Street
Broad­lands Orchard­share Vol­un­teer­ing Day, Sat­ur­day 10th July, 12–4pm, Broad­lands Orchard, Box Road, Bath­ford, http://www.bathford.net/broadlands.php
work­shop: Activist Comms/Radio Train­ing, Sat­ur­day 10th July, 12–4.30pm, Bris­tol Cas­tle Park, sug­gest­ed dona­tion £2; please let us know if you’re plan­ning on com­ing — either e‑mail nickkassam[at]hotmail.com, or text 07796 864 649; bring food for a pic­nic and some­thing water­proof
film & dis­cus­sion: ‘Stop that train!’: direct actions on the rail­ways against cli­mate chaos and nuclear pow­er, Thurs­day 8th July, 6.30pm, Kebele Social Cen­tre, 14 Robert­son Road, Eas­t­on, Bris­tol; host­ed by Bris­tol and Bath Ris­ing Tide
Cli­mate Camp Cym­ru plan­ning gath­er­ing, Sat­ur­day 10th July, the Wyn­d­ham Street Cen­tre, 3–5, Wyn­d­ham Street, Cardiff, South Glam­or­gan CF11 6DQ; e‑mail info[at]climatecampcymru.org
Cli­mate Camp Cym­ru comms train­ing, Sun­day 11th July, Cardiff, e‑mail l3wis85[at]gmail.com
Bath Ani­mal Action meet­ing, Mon­day 12th July, 8–9pm, The Bell, Wal­cot Street, e‑mail bathanimalaction[at]yahoo.co.uk
cul­ture fes­ti­val: ‘A Taste of Pales­tine’, Tues­day 13th July, 7.30pm, Mason­ic Hall, Frome, £7.50/£4 con­ces­sions, includ­ing food
Bath Mad Pride, Wednes­day 14th July, 2–4pm, Abbey Court­yard; danc­ing, games & enter­tain­ment
work­shop: ‘Organ­i­sa­tion­al Resilience’, Wednes­day 14th July, 9.30am‑5.30pm, the Cre­ater Cen­tre, Smeaton Road, Bris­tol, slid­ing scale pay­ment from £50; http://www.response-ability.org.uk
com­e­dy: Ivor Dem­bi­na’s ‘This Is Not A Sub­ject For Com­e­dy’, Wednes­day 14th July, The Gra­nary, Frome, £5
Raw food work­shop, Wednes­day 14th July, 7pm, the Abun­dant Life Well­ness Cen­tre, 36 New King Street, £10; pre-book­ing essen­tial as num­bers lim­it­ed to 12, tel 01225 318060
Bath Stop the War meet­ing, Wednes­day 14th July, 7.30pm, Friends Meet­ing House, York Street, Bath, BA1 1NG; http://www.bathstopwar.org.uk
Bath Green Drinks, Wednes­day 14th July, 8.30pm, the Ris­ing Sun, Grove Street
read­ings & food: ‘Arab Writ­ing Today’, Thurs­day 15th July, 7.30pm, Trin­i­ty Hall, Frome, £8
Tolpud­dle Mar­tyr’s Fes­ti­val, Fri­day 16th July to Sun­day 18th, Tolpud­dle, Devon; http://www.tolpuddlemartyrs.org.uk/index.php?page=martyr-s-festival
Two Tun­nels group open day, Sat­ur­day 17th July; walks will start every half hour between 10am and 4pm at the Tuck­ing Mill (south­ern) end of the tun­nel; http://www.twotunnels.org.uk
work­shop: ‘Per­ma­cul­ture Allot­ment Gar­den­ing Tech­niques’, Sat­ur­day 17th July, 1–7pm, Roy­ate Hill Allot­ments, Bris­tol, slid­ing scale pay­ment from £20; http://www.shiftbristol.org.uk
‘Wild Walk’ for­ag­ing day, Sun­day 18th July, 2pm, meet point tba, £10; tel Jonathan to book: 07740 706232
Bath Cycling Cam­paign meet­ing, Mon­day 19th July, 7.30pm, Ris­ing Sun, Grove Street
gig & work­shop: ‘Sur­vival Tales’, Wednes­day 21st July, 7pm, Eas­t­on Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, Kil­burn Street, Eas­t­on, Bris­tol, BS5, £5/suggested dona­tion entry — please book in advance: contact[at]survivaltales.uk; http://www.survivaltales.org.uk; with Eirlys Rhi­an­non
gig & work­shop: ‘Sur­vival Tales’, Thurs­day 21st July, 7pm, Kebele Com­mu­ni­ty Co-op, 14 Rober­ston Road, Eas­t­on, Bris­tol, £5/suggested dona­tion entry — please book in advance: contact[at]survivaltales.uk; http://www.survivaltales.org.uk; with Eirlys Rhi­an­non
con­fer­ence: ‘A Sec­ond City Remem­bered: Rethink­ing Bristol’s His­to­ry, 1400–2000’, Fri­day 23rd July to Sat­ur­day 24th July, Muse­um of Bris­tol, The Old Coun­cil House, Corn Street, Bris­tol; orga­nized by the Region­al His­to­ry Cen­tre, Uni­ver­si­ty of the West of Eng­land
Peace News Sum­mer Camp, Fri­day 23rd July to Tues­day 27th, Oxford­shire; http://www.peacenewscamp.info
Bath Ani­mal Action info stall, Sun­day 25th July, 2–4pm, Stall Street, e‑mail bathanimalaction[at]yahoo.co.uk
Tran­si­tion Bath Social, Mon­day 26th July, 7.15pm, the Love Lounge/ back room of the Bell, Wal­cot Street; bring food to share; http://www.transitionbath.org
Bath Hunt Sabo­teurs meet­ing, Mon­day 26th July, 8–9pm, The Bell, tel Justin 07854 062336
Crit­i­cal Mass Bike Ride, Sat­ur­day 31st July, 1pm, Kingsmead Square, http://www.bathcyclingcampaign.org.uk
Earth First! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing, Wednes­day 4th to Mon­day 9th August, Der­byshire, £20–30; five days of work­shops, skill shar­ing and plan­ning action, plus low-impact liv­ing with­out lead­ers; e‑mail summergathering[at]earthfirst.org.uk FFI
Bath Activist Net­work meet­ing, Thurs­day 5th August, 7.30–9pm, down­stairs at The Hob­gob­lin, St James Parade, http://www.bathactivistnetwork.blogspot.com
film: ‘A Grin With­out a Cat: Scenes of the Third World War 1967–1977’, Sat­ur­day 7th August, 7.30pm, the Arnolfi­ni, Bris­tol, http://www.arnolfini.org.uk/whatson/films/details/710
film: ‘Novem­ber’, Thurs­day 12th August, 6.30pm, the Arnolfi­ni, Bris­tol, £3.00/£2.00; http://www.arnolfini.org.uk/whatson/films/details/711
film: ‘Lit­tle Dieter Needs to Fly’, Fri­day 13th August, 6.30pm, the Arnolfi­ni, Bris­tol; http://www.arnolfini.org.uk/whatson/films/details/712
Cli­mate Camp Cym­ru, Fri­day 13th August to Tues­day 17th, http://www.climatecampcymru.org
talk: ‘The Venus Project’, Sat­ur­day 21st August, 1–5pm, Vic­to­ria Rooms — The Audi­to­ri­um Uni­ver­si­ty of Bris­tol, Queens Road, Clifton, Bris­tol, BS8 1SA, £16.02 entry; http://thevpinbristol.eventbrite.com
Camp for Cli­mate Action, Sat­ur­day 21st to Tues­day 24th August, Edin­burgh, http://www.climatecamp.org.uk
film: ‘The War Game’, Sun­day 22nd August, 2.30pm, the Arnolfi­ni, Bris­tol; http://www.arnolfini.org.uk/whatson/films/details/716
Bath Veg­an Fayre ben­e­fit gig, Fri­day 27th August, Hob­gob­lin, St James Parade; more details tbc
one year part-time ‘Prac­ti­cal Sus­tain­abil­i­ty’ course, starts Sep­tem­ber 2010, Bris­tol; explor­ing per­ma­cul­ture design, organ­ic hor­ti­cul­ture, wood­land man­age­ment, green build­ing, eco­log­i­cal inter­ac­tions, ener­gy, group dynam­ics, re-local­i­sa­tion, cre­at­ing change, com­mu­ni­ty engage­ment and more; http://www.shiftbristol.org.uk
Bath Veg­an Fayre, Sat­ur­day 4th Sep­tem­ber, Man­vers Street Bap­tist Church, 12–4pm, free entry
Bris­tol Anar­chist Book­fair, Sat­ur­day 11th Sep­tem­ber, 10.30–5.30pm, Hamil­ton House, 80 Stokes Croft, Bris­tol; e‑mail bristolanarchistbookfair[at]riseup.net; http://www.bristolanarchistbookfair.org
Region­al South West Ani­mal Rights Coali­tion meet­ing, Sun­day 19th Sep­tem­ber, 12–5pm, The Fac­to­ry, Cave Street, cen­tral Bris­tol
anti-Tory demon­stra­tion, Sun­day 3rd Octo­ber, Tory Par­ty Con­fer­ence, Birm­ing­ham more details tbc

Paint­ed Lions As White Ele­phants

Bath’s ele­gant and impos­ing 30s-era Churchill House in South­gate was smashed up, and a giant trash-can stuck in its place. The back of the old Tech col­lege build­ing in Low­er Bor­ough Walls was ripped off by a cow­boy ‘devel­op­er’, leav­ing the rest of it jacked up with a met­al gird­er after he did a run­ner. Only some ugly scaf­fold­ing stops the aban­doned Corn­mar­ket in Wal­cot St. from falling down. The last remain­ing Geor­gian-peri­od lido in the coun­try, the Grade II list­ed Cleve­land Pools, just off Lon­don Road, is falling to bits as a result of years of delib­er­ate coun­cil neglect.

B&NES’s ludi­crous response to this dere­lic­tion is to dump 100 iden­tik­it plas­tic lions on the streets of the city in some lame excuse for ‘street art’, and try to flog the idea to the pub­lic under the ban­ner of ‘Pride in our City’. The spin-doc­tors from B.U.M. (Bath Urban Mafia) must have laboured for min­utes to come up with this oh-so-clever dou­ble mean­ing.

These same coun­cil P.R. hacks describe the dum­mies as ‘pub­lic art’, yet, in the tra­di­tion of Bladud’s Pigs, Sophie Ryder’s hideous giant bril­lo pads, and the decade-old Earth from the Air exhi­bi­tion, they don’t both­er ask­ing the Bath pub­lic what THEY want.

By snub­bing local res­i­dents yet again, they were ask­ing for trou­ble, and they got it. Some of the beasts were smashed up not long after being unloaded, which would seem to show that extreme cen­sor­ship rules, K.O.

Not every­one is tak­en in by the B&NES moral spiel either; the three char­i­ties which are appar­ent­ly to ben­e­fit when the beasts are auc­tioned lat­er in the year, are Off the Record, the Quar­tet Com­mu­ni­ty Foun­da­tion, and the May­or’s relief fund for Bath. Yet the self-same fund­ing areas for young peo­ple, the home­less and the needy are the first to be sav­aged when cuts are made. A £3.4 mil­lion butcher­ing of chil­drens’ ser­vices, to be spread over a three-year peri­od, was announced by B&NES in 2009. So maybe this is why B.U.M. uses smoke and mir­rors to flaunt the lions as some kind of tes­ti­mo­ni­al to their alleged con­cern for the wel­fare of the vul­ner­a­ble in Bath, by using them as giant char­i­ty beg­ging bowls in this pathet­ic pub­lic­i­ty stunt.

Smash­ing News!

After well over a year of wait­ing, the E.D.O. Decom­mis­sion­ers’ tri­al has come to an end, with the result being a unan­i­mous NOT GUILTY ver­dict for all sev­en defen­dants. The Decom­mis­sion­ers are activists who, at the height of Israel’s 2009 geno­cide jol­ly (aka oper­a­tion ‘Cast Lead’) took things into their own hands and smashed up the Brighton fac­to­ry of arms man­u­fac­tur­ers E.D.O./I.T.T., caus­ing upwards of £200,000 of dam­age and destroy­ing heaps of records and research doc­u­ments. The com­pa­ny have long sup­plied Israel with bomb release mech­a­nisms and oth­er nas­ties that they need to main­tain their bru­tal stran­gle­hold over the peo­ple of Gaza. The E.D.O. Sev­en used the defence that by crip­pling the weapons fac­to­ry, they were pre­vent­ing ille­gal war crimes from tak­ing place in Pales­tine, thus mak­ing their actions legal by virtue of pre­vent­ing a big­ger crime from occur­ring. After hear­ing evi­dence direct from Pales­tine and reams of human rights reports, the judge decid­ed that the E.D.O. Sev­en had a point, acquit­ting all. This effec­tive­ly deems the Israeli occu­pa­tion of Gaza ille­gal, E.D.O./I.T.T. immoral and com­plic­it in war crimes, and sets a prece­dent for sim­i­lar action in the future. Whichev­er way the court case had gone, the E.D.O. Sev­en have set an exam­ple for us all — when the pow­er­ful active­ly aid war crimes, it is the job of ordi­nary peo­ple to step in and jam a span­ner in the works and a brick through the win­dow of the war machine.

http://www.smashedo.org.uk

Pre-emp­tive Incar­cer­a­tion For Bath’s ASBO Bas­tards

We here at the Bath Bomb were inter­est­ed to hear about Avon & Som­er­set Con­stab­u­lary’s pre­dic­tions for the future of the city’s youth, with their open day last month. As well as teach­ing up to 2,000 would-be crims how to com­mit unarmed rob­bery with repli­ca firearms, Dis­trict Super­in­ten­dant Gary Davies explained how “This police sta­tion belongs to the peo­ple.” They then pro­ceed­ed to baton charge infants and throw them in the cells, demand­ing char­i­ty bribes from the fam­i­lies to secure their release. Giv­en a stark taste of things to come should she put a foot wrong in the ever-increas­ing­ly dystopi­an police-state of her next sev­en­ty years, nine year-old Abby weep­ing­ly begged her sneer­ing goalers for free­dom. The ter­ri­fied tyke lat­er con­fessed about her cell: “I did­n’t like it. It was quite scary and not very big. I am not going to com­mit a crime as I don’t want to be locked up.”

There Is Such Thing As A Free Lunch

Plans are cur­rent­ly sim­mer­ing away for anoth­er free Bath Veg­an Fayre in the city, to take place on Sat­ur­day the 4th of Sep­tem­ber. The one last year was a great hit, with around 150 folks com­ing through the doors, much chuffed at the qual­i­ty of cru­el­ty-free fare fill­ing their bel­lies. The event was very much a local­ly-focused and a non-cor­po­rate affair, empha­sis­ing that even with the health, ethics and envi­ron­men­tal ben­e­fits of a plant-based diet, exploita­tion of humans is also on the ‘bad’ list. Many were dis­ap­point­ed by the angle that the Bris­tol Veg­an (sor­ry, ‘Eco Veg­gie’) Fayre took this year, jack­ing up the prices and the pol­ish, and mar­gin­al­is­ing cam­paign­ing groups away to a quar­an­tined-off sep­a­rate enclo­sure, so that peo­ple won’t be dis­tract­ed away from all the con­sumerism to be done. This year, the Bath Veg­an Fayre will take place at the Bap­tist Church Hall on Man­vers Street, but oth­er plans are still pret­ty much open. If you can help organ­ise or improve the event in any way, please get in touch with Bath Ani­mal Action — e‑mail bathanimalaction[at]yahoo.co.uk, or ring them on 07717 130954.

The fol­low­ing month, on the 30th of Octo­ber, Bris­tol Ani­mal Rights Col­lec­tive will put on a sim­i­lar event. A ben­e­fit gig to raise funds is also expect­ed to take place at the Hob­gob­lin pub on the 27th of August — more details to be con­firmed.

Rich Jus­tice

Five employ­ees work­ing at the South African Roy­al Marang Hotel have been caught steal­ing var­i­ous items, and a small sum of mon­ey from some of Eng­land’s mil­lion­aire foot­ball play­ers. It is report­ed the items includ­ed under­wear. The employ­ees were sen­tenced to pay­ing a fine of £524, fol­lowed by three years of prison. This from a ‘World Cup Court’, a very spe­cial kind of court indeed, where the rich get all their stuff returned in one day, and the poor despair for three years after an after­noon’s hijinks.

Jail sel­dom is called for. What resti­tu­tion or repa­ra­tion could the fact of a per­son being jailed accom­plish? Do we have some kind of nat­ur­al duty to spend time behind bars once in a while? No. The ori­gin of the prison sys­tem lies in a medieval con­cep­tion of jus­tice. That is, jus­tice as pun­ish­ment. Jus­tice as an attempt to con­trol the pop­u­la­tion’s behav­iour, and make it fit in the ‘cor­rect’ mould.

Of course, the ‘cor­rect’ mould is arbi­trar­i­ly defined by the author­i­ties, so that we are today incar­cer­at­ing not only actu­al crim­i­nals, who may pose a threat to the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion were they roam­ing free. But also, and most­ly, peo­ple who either did not do any­thing wrong, or peo­ple whose vic­tims will clear­ly not gain any­thing from them being in jail. How­ev­er, those un-unionised prison labour­ers do make a lot of cheap con­sumerist tat, so it’s not all bad.

Bath Activist Net­work are a local umbrel­la group cam­paign­ing on issues as diverse as devel­op­ment, envi­ron­men­tal­ism, anti-war, ani­mal rights, work­ers’ rights and more. Help­ing to pro­duce the Bath Bomb, we are open to any­one, and our mem­bers range from trade union­ists to anar­chists, lib­er­als and greens, and peo­ple who just want to change Bath for the bet­ter. For details on meet­ings, demos, or just to get in touch, e‑mail bathactivistnet[at]yahoo.co.uk or see our web­site: http://www.bathactivistnetwork.blogspot.com

And now, to the dis­claimer: as any­one is free to con­tribute, the opin­ions expressed in each arti­cle are not nec­es­sar­i­ly reflec­tive of each con­trib­u­tor. Nat­u­ral­ly, any right-wing or cor­po­rate bull­shit will be binned and spat on. Need­less to say, the opin­ions of the author of this dis­claimer do not nec­es­sar­i­ly reflect the opin­ions of any oth­er con­trib­u­tor.

Bath Bomb #30 Out Now

THE BATH BOMB

@nti-copyright: copy and dis­trib­ute!

Issue #30

free/donation

June ’10

“Fuck­ing Laws at your expense”

Elec­tile Dys­func­tion

THE BATH BOMB

@nti-copyright: copy and dis­trib­ute!

Issue #30

free/donation

June ’10

“Fuck­ing Laws at your expense”

Elec­tile Dys­func­tion

As read­ers may have noticed, May the 6th’s hung par­lia­ment (no noos­es, more’s the pity) and sub­se­quent clam­our of back­room deals has led to a coali­tion fea­tur­ing the odi­ous ’18 of our MPs went to Eton’ Con­ser­v­a­tives and the almost-as-posh ‘Tory-lite’ Lib Dems. Now the dust has set­tled, it’s clear that no par­ties have a man­date for the cuts they will try to unleash. No par­ty dared to clear­ly set out what the Finan­cial Times dubbed the “bru­tal” eco­nom­i­cal deci­sions required. That is sim­ply because to do so would have been elec­toral sui­cide. If they had been hon­est about the cuts — the first stage being £6.2 bil­lion hacked from vital pub­lic ser­vices, hun­dreds of thou­sands of jobs and harsh pay slash­es — then nobody would have vot­ed for them. The mar­kets and rul­ing class demand a vicious eco­nom­ic pro­gram (rather than ‘rich tax’) that will mean tur­moil. There will be resis­tance from unions, ser­vice-users and the com­mu­ni­ty alike, with the fight mov­ing from the bal­lot box to the pick­et lines and to the streets. Ordi­nary peo­ple can­not be expect­ed to pay for a cri­sis caused by cor­rupt politi­cians and bankers and, like the peo­ple of Greece, Ire­land, Spain and Roma­nia, we must be pre­pared to fight every cut, and pro­tect every job. Local­ly, B.A.N. and oth­ers are plan­ning to set up a ‘Pub­lic Ser­vices Defence Group’, and every­one is invit­ed to join — to pro­tect our rights, jobs, pay, pen­sions and ben­e­fits. Togeth­er, we can win.

Press­ing Their Luck?

Tesco are now dis­play­ing for pub­lic com­ment their plans to occu­py the for­mer Bath Press site and demol­ish the entire build­ing, leav­ing noth­ing but a wob­bly-look­ing front wall. The new site, to incor­po­rate a ‘com­mu­ni­ty hall’ — pre­sum­ably sim­i­lar to the social improve­ments promised at oth­er Tesco sites, which have almost uni­ver­sal­ly failed to mate­ri­alise — will be Tesco’s first major store in Bath. 650 ‘new jobs’ are also promised. The eco­nom­ics behind this claim are flawed, how­ev­er. As the mar­ket for food is already sat­u­rat­ed here — oth­er­wise there’d be a city-wide out­break of mal­nu­tri­tion — the new store won’t be cre­at­ing any new mar­kets, and so will just be tak­ing cus­tom away from exist­ing stores. As Tesco is renowned for their effi­cien­cy and high income-to-staff ratio, this will cause an over­all drop in employ­ment as oth­er busi­ness­es close or shed staff. In fact, stud­ies have shown that the open­ing of a large super­mar­ket caus­es an over­all loss of 276 jobs per new store opened.

For a more hope­ful out­look, look to Bris­tol, where the anti-Tesco cam­paign on Stokes Croft has left the coun­cil con­sid­er­ing plac­ing a Com­pul­so­ry Pur­chase Order on the site and hand­ing it over to the com­mu­ni­ty, as an indoor mar­ket incor­po­rat­ing local ‘Time Bank’ trad­ing schemes.

GOT A STORY? WANT TO RECEIVE THE BATH BOMB BY EMAIL? HOPING TO SUE? Con­tact us by email­ing bathbombpress[at]yahoo.co.uk. Large print e‑versions avail­able on request. And for more info on any of our sto­ries, check out http://www.thebathbomb.blogspot.com

Schools Of Hard Cuts

Amongst the raft of cuts the Tories and their pet Lib Dems have unleashed on us, their plans for edu­ca­tion stand out for sheer idio­cy. Dressed up as ‘free­ing teach­ers from bureau­cra­cy and let­ting them teach’, their plans in fact boil down to sell­ing off the entire edu­ca­tion sys­tem whole­sale. Intent on send­ing our schools the same way as the rail­ways and ener­gy com­pa­nies, the Tories intend to auc­tion off schools to com­pa­nies and reli­gious groups. The plan has already been exposed as a fail­ure, with work­ing con­di­tions for teach­ers, attain­ment for pupils and bul­ly­ing man­age­ment all com­ing under scruti­ny in exist­ing acad­e­mies, and the coun­try’s largest acad­e­my group Unit­ed Learn­ing Trust (ULT) being banned from tak­ing on more schools. With sev­er­al schools in Bath explor­ing the acad­e­my route, we spoke to ‘Matt’, a teacher in a local acad­e­my about the prospect of spread­ing the acad­e­my love. “It would be a ter­ri­ble idea,” Matt tells us, “Work­ing in an acad­e­my, you are dri­ven by bul­ly­ing man­age­ment that aren’t bound to fol­low the same pay and con­di­tions that state schools are tied to. Unions are dis­cour­aged, and union mem­bers face ques­tion­ing and har­rass­ment. Every facet of school life is out-sourced to pri­vate com­pa­nies, often lead­ing to a sub­stan­dard pro­vi­sion of edu­ca­tion for the kids. As acad­e­mies are grades dri­ven, teach­ers are rou­tine­ly bul­lied into fak­ing course­work, and low­er abil­i­ty pupils are ignored in favour of C/D bor­der­line kids. On top of that, any­one with enough cash can spon­sor an acad­e­my, mean­ing that some real­ly unsavoury, and right wing reli­gious and cor­po­rate groups con­trol our kids edu­ca­tion. From per­son­al expe­ri­ence, the acad­e­my sys­tem is an unfair and fail­ing sys­tem, for staff and kids.” Four schools in the Bath area are already threat­ened with clo­sure, includ­ing Old­field, to be replaced by two acad­e­mies. With unions already gear­ing up for the fight­back, why not drop an email to your kids school and let them know how you feel about the future of your child being flogged to the high­est bid­der.

Con­sul­ta­tion Stitch-up On The Ken­net And Avon

About 20 trav­el­ling boat dwellers attend­ed the Ken­net and Avon Canal User Group meet­ing on the 29th April where the recent con­sul­ta­tion on set­ting up local moor­ing strate­gies was dis­cussed.

Although 73 out of 98 respons­es to British Water­ways opposed the idea, BW’s Dami­an Kemp told the meet­ing it will go ahead and start set­ting up the first strat­e­gy group on the Ken­net and Avon between Devizes and Bath. BW jus­ti­fied this by say­ing that many of the replies were from groups rather than from indi­vid­u­als, and gave the groups more cre­dence. Boaters chal­lenged this inter­pre­ta­tion as BW did not make clear at any stage that respons­es from groups would be treat­ed dif­fer­ent­ly. Now, many boaters believe that the process was a com­plete sham and the results are being manip­u­lat­ed to sup­port BW’s agen­da of rid­ding live-aboard boaters from the Ken­net and Avon and replac­ing them with “the leisure indus­try”. This is demon­strat­ed by the com­ments of James Young, anoth­er BW employ­ee, describ­ing the process as “a work­ing par­ty to address the prob­lems asso­ci­at­ed with live­aboards.”

Dami­an Kemp, who was appoint­ed in mid 2009 to head the project imple­ment­ing moor­ing strat­e­gy groups on the Ken­net and Avon, inad­ver­tent­ly admit­ted the dis­crep­an­cy. Whilst telling the meet­ing at one point that the respons­es from indi­vid­u­als were giv­en less weight than those from groups, a few min­utes lat­er he con­tra­dict­ed him­self by say­ing that the results were not weight­ed. What is more, Mark Stephens, man­ag­er of the Ken­net and Avon, admit­ted at the meet­ing that there is no addi­tion­al mon­ey in the cur­rent bud­get for a local moor­ing strat­e­gy group, and that to set it up could cut fund­ing in oth­er areas. This all sounds com­plete­ly unwork­able. And why did BW hold a con­sul­ta­tion when Mr Kemp had already been appoint­ed?

These restric­tions will be decid­ed by a steer­ing group in which most of the boat­ing com­mu­ni­ty in this area will not have a say, even though they are the only group that is direct­ly affect­ed. Yet, if BW’s plans go ahead, many will be forced to make a tough choice: lose the home or lose the job. Plen­ty may also be forced to give up their homes to keep their chil­dren in school. BW has already worked with Bathamp­ton and Claver­ton Parish Coun­cils in Sum­mer 2009 to draw up these pro­posed moor­ing restric­tions, which will vast­ly reduce the avail­abil­i­ty of two-week moor­ings between Brad­ford and Bath. Boaters only dis­cov­ered this plot by acci­dent, and were nev­er invit­ed to these meet­ings or informed about them. The min­utes of these meet­ings, maps and asso­ci­at­ed cor­re­spon­dence are pub­lished in an arti­cle enti­tled ‘The Out­er Zone’, see http://kanda.boatingcommunity.org.uk/wordpress/?p=77

The 1995 British Water­ways Act con­fers a statu­to­ry right for boats to cruise the water­ways with­out hav­ing a per­ma­nent moor­ing, so long as they do not remain in any one place for more than four­teen days, or a longer peri­od if there are excep­tion­al cir­cum­stances.

The next boaters’ meet­ing takes place on the 16th of June upstairs at the Geor­gian Lodge Hotel in Brad­ford-on-Avon. For more infor­ma­tion, con­tact info[at]boatingcommunity.org.uk.

http://kanda.boatingcommunity.org.uk

Eco Vil­lage Of The Damned

Back on the 5th of May, after a maze of legal bat­tles, the first incar­na­tion of the Bris­tol Eco Vil­lage was evict­ed. The vil­lagers moved onto a dis­used plot of land in St Wer­burghs in April to set up a com­mu­ni­ty to exper­i­ment with sus­tain­able liv­ing on and improv­ing indus­tri­al­ly con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed land.

The Lon­don-based landown­ers made sev­er­al ille­gal attempts to evict them before final­ly… wait for it… going through legal chan­nels to get their land back, so they could get on with devel­op­ing it at the expense of the local com­mu­ni­ty, the endan­gered newt pop­u­la­tion, and the wider envi­ron­ment. But a mass of local res­i­dents decid­ed they’d rather have a low-impact liv­ing project on their doorstep than prof­it-dri­ven devel­op­ment. On evic­tion day they block­ad­ed the gates that bailiff com­pa­ny Con­stant & Co were attempt­ing to enter the site by. Lat­er they occu­pied a cher­ry-pick­er as it attempt­ed to enter the site. Game on!

How­ev­er the over-arch­ing mem­o­ry of the day will be the sad hos­pi­tal­iza­tion of one vil­lager, cyn­i­cal­ly assault­ed by the bailiffs while atop a tri­pod. Bailiffs dis­re­gard­ed health and safe­ty reg­u­la­tions and col­lapsed the tri­pod, crush­ing the vil­lager’s leg between long stur­dy met­al poles, and then sit­ting on them. Vil­lagers are appeal­ing for any wit­ness­es to come for­ward, par­tic­u­lar­ly those with any video footage of the assault.

The Bris­tol Eco Vil­lage briefly took a new site on the 15th of May, near Tem­ple Meads train sta­tion. Rumours abound about the Eco Vil­lage’s next move, with a pos­si­ble pin­cer move­ment to simul­ta­ne­ous­ly occu­py land adjoin­ing the canal in Bath and a sec­ond site in Bris­tol, being on the cards.

Con­stant & Co are a noto­ri­ous­ly bru­tal col­lec­tion of pondlife (not newts) that proud­ly spe­cialise in forc­ing the vul­ner­a­bly housed onto the streets. Any ‘con­cerns’ can be ‘voiced’ to them at 66 Harpur Street, Bed­ford, MK40 2RA.

Short And Snap­py

Whilst the gov­ern­ment decid­ed on the 12th of May to scrap Heathrow expan­sion and addi­tion­al run­ways at Gatwick and Stanst­ed, at the end of May, North Som­er­set Coun­cil chose a dif­fer­ent path. Ignor­ing not only B&NES and Bris­tol Coun­cils, but also 5,000+ objec­tions, the lat­est find­ings on cli­mate change and World Health Organ­i­sa­tion noise and health guid­ance, they green­light­ed Bris­tol Air­port’s plan­ning appli­ca­tion. Stop Bris­tol Air­port Expan­sion are now look­ing to the Sec­re­tary of State, and are build­ing funds to mount a legal chal­lenge — con­tact them for info at email[at]stopbia.com

Despite expert sci­en­tif­ic advice, the gov­ern­ment has decid­ed to fol­low the Welsh lead (and unsus­tain­able indus­tri­al farm­ing lob­by) and push ahead with a nation­al bad­ger cull, par­tic­u­lar­ly in bovine TB hotspots like Devon and Corn­wall. The annu­al cull in Pem­brokeshire, repeat­ed for five years, costs £10 mil­lion so far, with bal­a­clava’d con­trac­tors aim­ing to kill off 80% of the local pop­u­la­tion. Your local ani­mal rights groups need you!

For the first time in 12 years, the EU has approved the growth of genet­i­cal­ly engi­neered crops. A peti­tion might be all that stands in their way!: http://www.greenpeace.org/GEpetition

EDF’s bid for the pro­posed Hink­ley C nuclear pow­er sta­tion has just had its plan­ning appli­ca­tion delayed a sec­ond time, from ear­ly July to the 1st of Decem­ber. Ener­gy Sec­re­tary Chris Huhne has stat­ed that there will be no gov­ern­ment sub­si­dies avail­able for new nuclear build

Local cam­paign­ing group S.W.A.G. have formed to dis­suade Char­lie from sell­ing off roy­al green­belt land near New­ton St Loe, doomed for the con­struc­tion of 2,000 homes. How­ev­er, they won an unex­pect­ed overkill vic­to­ry when the Con­Dem alliance scrapped Neo-Labour’s plans for 21,300 homes in the local area, and poten­tial­ly the con­test­ed Bus Rapid Tran­sit route, too!

Cat­naps And Chin­wags

It’s been a strange time for Bath’s Black Cat inde­pen­dent com­mu­ni­ty social cen­tre. Thrown out in the rain from their for­mer opu­lent home at the old Porter Butt pub on Lon­don Road (after a storm­ing ‘Nev­er Mind the Vote, Here’s the Folk’ gig) on the 7th of May. Land­lord Julian Rich­er and a dodgy col­lu­sion of Bath police and Man­ches­ter-based JMW solic­i­tor (claim­ing to be a bailiff), rather than go to the trou­ble of legit­i­mate­ly attain­ing a War­rant of Evic­tion, instead just intim­i­dat­ed the res­i­dents to “vol­un­tar­i­ly leave”. Since then those frisky Black Cats have been home­less and gone through an inter­nal shake-up, team­ing up with the Snow Hill Skills and Enter­prise Ini­tia­tive (who have been patient­ly attempt­ing to work with the Coun­cil for four years to set up a grass­roots, pover­ty-break­ing and eco­log­i­cal­ly-sus­tain­able com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre for the local, deprived area) and help­ing birth the ‘Black Kit­ten’ anar­chist free lend­ing library in Stokes Croft, in Bris­tol. Though deter­mined to keep it real and rad­i­cal, the col­lec­tive are cur­rent­ly going through a spate of nego­ti­a­tions over premis­es with Coun­cil and polit­i­cal offi­cials. Who’d have thought it? In the mean­time, there’s every­thing to play for, and the Black Cat is very keen for new vol­un­teers to get involved: con­tact them at bathsocialcentre[at]gmail.co.uk.

http://www.blackcatcentre.blogspot.com

EVENTS

Lon­don Road Food Co-op, Wednes­days, 4–7pm, River­side Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, Lon­don Road

Bathamp­ton Com­mu­ni­ty Grow­ers work­day, Thurs­days, 10am-dusk, Mill Lane, Bathamp­ton, e‑mail thelostplot[at]googlemail.com/ tel Chris 07792 444628

Bath Stop The War Coali­tion vig­il, Sat­ur­days, 11.30am-12.30, Bath Abbey Court­yard

Recy­cle Your Sun­days, Sun­days, 10.30am, starts Abbey Church­yard, the reg­u­lar series of socia­ble, easy-paced cycle rides, http://www.bathrys.org.uk/ tel Hazel 01225 469199

Bath FreeShop, Sat­ur­day 12th June, 12–3pm, out­side Pump Rooms, Stall Street

Broad­lands Orchard­share Vol­un­teer­ing Day, Sat­ur­day 12th June, 12–4pm, Broad­lands Orchard, Box Road, Bath­ford, http://www.bathford.net/broadlands.php

Pal­la­di­um Bridge Pic­nic: with the Nat­ur­al The­atre Com­pa­ny, Sat­ur­day 12th June, 6pm, Pri­or Park

AmnesTea fund-rais­ing cream tea, Sat­ur­day 12th June, 2.30–5.30pm, 6 Wid­combe Ter­race, BA2 6AJ, http://www.greenbath.org

Wid­combe Ris­ing fes­ti­val, Sun­day 13th June, 1.30–7.30pm, Wid­combe, http://www.widcombe.net

Bris­tol Naked Bike Ride, Sun­day 13th June, loca­tion tbc, http://bristolwnbr.blogspot.com

film: ‘Estab­lish­ing a Food For­est the Per­ma­cul­ture Way’, Sun­day 13th June, 7.30pm, the Love Lounge/ back room of the Bell, Wal­cot Street, £5 entry, http://www.transitionbath.org

Bath Ani­mal Action meet­ing, Mon­day 14th June, 8–9pm, The Bell, Wal­cot Street, e‑mail bathanimalaction[at]yahoo.co.uk

Boaters’ Meet­ing, Wednes­day 16th June, 8pm, Geor­gian Lodge Hotel, Brad­ford on Avon

film: ‘Pas­sen­gers’, Wednes­day 16th June, 8pm, Cube Cin­e­ma, Bris­tol, bristolnoborders[at]riseup.net

film: ‘Wel­come’, Thurs­day 17th June, 8pm, Cube Cin­e­ma, Bris­tol, bristolnoborders[at]riseup.net

Bathamp­ton Com­mu­ni­ty Grow­ers work­day, Sat­ur­day 19th June, 10am-dusk, Mill Lane, Bathamp­ton, e‑mail thelostplot[at]googlemail.com/ tel Chris 07792 444628

Coal Train Block­aders ben­e­fit defence gig, Sat­ur­day 19th June, 8pm, the Plough, Eas­t­on, Bris­tol, feat. Ceilidh Minogue, Hero­in Hero and DJs

Bris­tol Anar­chist Book­fair ben­e­fit punk & thrash gig and film, Sun­day 20th June, 6pm, feat. Guara­pi­ta, Pow­er Is Poi­son, Threat Man­i­festo and This Ends Here, £5, http://www.thebastardsquadcollective.wordpress.com

Bath Cycling Cam­paign meet­ing, Mon­day 21st June, 7.30pm, Ris­ing Sun, Grove Street

talk: ‘Cli­mate Migrants: Feed­ing Back from the World Peo­ple’s Con­fer­ence on Cli­mate Change’, Wednes­day 23rd June, 7pm, St. Paul’s Learn­ing Cen­tre, 94 Grosvenor Road, Bris­tol

Tran­si­tion Bath Vis­it to Stroud Com­mu­ni­ty Farm, Sat­ur­day 26th June, 8.43am from Bath Spa train sta­tion, http://www.stroudcommunityagriculture.org

Crit­i­cal Mass Bike Ride, Sat­ur­day 26th June, 1pm, Kingsmead Square, http://www.bathcyclingcampaign.org.uk

Bath Ani­mal Action info stall, Sun­day 27th June, 2–4pm, Stall Street, e‑mail bathanimalaction[at]yahoo.co.uk

Tran­si­tion Bath Social, Mon­day 28th June, 7.15pm, the Love Lounge/ back room of the Bell, Wal­cot Street, http://www.transitionbath.org

Bath Hunt Sabo­teurs meet­ing, Mon­day 28th June, 8–9pm, The Bell, tel Justin 07854 062336

Bath Social­ist Forum: ‘What is Social­ism?’, Mon­day 28th April, 8pm, upstairs at St James Wine Vaults, e‑mail ianjprior[at]aol.com

Bath Activist Net­work meet­ing, Thurs­day 1st July, 7.30–9pm, down­stairs at The Hob­gob­lin, St James Parade, http://www.bathactivistnetwork.blogspot.com

Earth Oven Cook­ing work­shop, Sat­ur­day 3rd July, 10am-4pm, Broad­lands Orchard­share, Box Road, Bath­ford, £25, http://www.bathford.net/broadlands.php

Bris­tol & South Wales Hunt Sabo­teurs punk & thrash ben­e­fit gig, Fri­day 9th July, 7.30pm, The White Hart, White­hall Road, Bris­tol, feat. Kismet H.C., Death Job, Mutiny Plot and This Ends Here, £5

Intro­duc­to­ry Per­ma­cul­ture Week­end, Sat­ur­day 10th to Sun­day 11th July, Bath City Farm, £50, http://www.transitionbath.org

Bath Green Drinks, Wednes­day 14th July, 8.30pm, the Ris­ing Sun, Grove Street

Earth First! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing, Wednes­day 4th to Mon­day 9th August, Der­byshire, £20–30; five days of work­shops, skill shar­ing and plan­ning action, plus low-impact liv­ing with­out lead­ers; e‑mail summergathering[at]earthfirst.org.uk FFI

Camp for Cli­mate Action, Sat­ur­day 21st to Tues­day 24th August, Edin­burgh, http://www.climatecamp.org.uk

Ani­mal Cru­el­ty? Noah Way!

Activists from Bath and Bris­tol have been run­ning a con­cert­ed cam­paign against local ani­mal abus­ing nut­cas­es Noah’s Ark Zoo Farm. This shod­dy estab­lish­ment has a long his­to­ry of neglect towards ani­mals for ‘enjoy­ment’. The zoo has recent­ly been the sub­ject of a coun­cil inves­ti­ga­tion relat­ing to a cat­a­logue of ani­mal wel­fare vio­la­tions, includ­ing ill-treat­ment of the tigress Tira, lead­ing to the death of her and her cubs. To make mat­ters worse, the zoo were caught out hav­ing skinned, behead­ed and buried the moth­er on farm land. In addi­tion to this, the zoo trades ani­mals with the noto­ri­ous ‘Bob­by Roberts’, a cir­cus con­demned by many organ­i­sa­tions includ­ing the RSPCA for the hor­rif­ic con­di­tions and degrad­ing, painful per­for­mances its ani­mals are sub­ject­ed to. As if the dis­gust­ing dis­re­gard with which the zoo treats its ani­mals was­n’t rea­son enough to try and shut them down, the frankly nut­ty views of the zoos cre­ation­ist own­er make them a prime tar­get for any­one who gets annoyed at fairy tales being passed of as fact! The whole zoo is a homage to the pseu­do sci­ence of cre­ation­ism, and numer­ous dis­plays (includ­ing one that depicts the actu­al Noah’s ark as fact) try to con­vince bewil­dered vis­i­tors that the bible is the lit­er­al word of god, and that evo­lu­tion is a myth! While sev­er­al prime exam­ples of the miss­ing link can be seen oper­at­ing the zoo, num­bers of vis­i­tors have been dwin­dling as word of the dis­gust­ing ani­mal cru­el­ty and insane beliefs of the man­age­ment spreads. Activists are hold­ing week­ly demos against the zoo with the aim of clos­ing it down, and are con­fi­dent of suc­cess. To get involved, come along to a demo, or to find out more about the zoo, con­tact Bris­tol Ani­mal Rights Col­lec­tive at barc[at]hotmail.co.uk.

Greek Econ­o­my Crum­bles, Class War Erupts

Ear­ly May saw a mas­sive erup­tion of work­ing class anger greet the EU/IMF pro­posed bailout of the debt-rid­den Greek econ­o­my. The bailout of some 120billion Euros over three years requires the Greek state and ‘social­ist’ gov­ern­ment to enact strin­gent aus­ter­i­ty mea­sures and cuts across all sec­tors of the work­force, except of course for the rich and greedy. Whether this cash comes in time to avoid a Greek state debt default remains to be seen, but it sure has the cap­i­tal­ist sys­tem wor­ried as shares crashed world­wide.

Equal­ly wor­ry­ing for the boss­es is the response from the Greek peo­ple. Mas­sive strikes, protests and riots erupt­ed across Greece on the 1st, the 5th and the 6th of May, and ongo­ing, as the work­ing class made it clear they have no inten­tion of pay­ing for the cap­i­tal­ist cri­sis, nor of accept­ing fur­ther for­eign inter­ven­tion in their affairs. Par­lia­ment was near­ly stormed, min­istry build­ings burned, and sym­bols of cap­i­tal­ism were attacked as strik­ers shut the coun­try down. Such active resis­tance also brings more tragedies to go with the long list of peo­ple from all back­grounds killed and bru­talised in the con­flict. Homes, cafés and social cen­tres were attacked by riot cops using gas, stun grenades and live ammo, and the mil­i­tary was put on full alert.

As the class war rages in Greece, the rest of the Euro­pean rul­ing class look on aghast, ter­ri­fied of the con­ta­gious effects of both the protests and the finan­cial cri­sis, such as the wave of anti-cuts protest sweep­ing Bucharest in mid-May (and the pub­lic ston­ing of econ­o­my min­istry offi­cial Mar­cel Hoara) and the Irish ‘Anglo Irish Bank’ occu­pa­tions and ‘Right to Work’ demos at the same time. They and we know that we too face such attacks on our liv­ing stan­dards as they seek to main­tain the prof­it sys­tem. What nobody knows is how far the Greek resis­tance will go in chal­leng­ing the pow­er of the rul­ing class, nor how far we will fol­low down the same path?

http://libcom.org/news

http://www.occupiedlondon.org

Dis­pro­por­tion­al Mur­der

The Israeli army has once again engaged in its favourite game: Inno­cent Peo­ple Mas­sacre! Last time we left them, the Zion­ists were busy crush­ing all Pales­tin­ian hope by build­ing a huge wall around Gaza, and not let­ting any­one out while killing the peo­ple inside under false pre­texts.

A bunch of civil­ians thought they’d be sneaky, pre­tend­ing to break the siege and all, by sail­ing to Gaza on a flotil­la of boats named ‘Free­dom Flotil­la’. But rais­ing a white flag did­n’t fool our brave sec­tar­i­ans: clear­ly, they were secret­ly work­ing with Hamas to kill Jews. Their instru­ments of death: aid, food, med­ical sup­plies, con­crete.

So, on the 31st, a brave bunch of guys killed 19 peo­ple (all Turk­ish) aboard the Mavi Mar­mara, and wound­ed anoth­er 60. The rest of the crew, some 800 peo­ple, were just kid­napped and deport­ed, Nazi-style, but with­out a camp at the end of the trip. That makes all the dif­fer­ence, you know.

Imme­di­ate­ly after news of the mas­sacre came out, demon­stra­tions were held in many Euro­pean coun­tries. 2,000 peo­ple in Lon­don gath­ered out­side the Israeli embassy to protest the slaugh­ter. If the Israeli army did­n’t kill them all, it prob­a­bly was because they were too far away. Some oth­er day, on a boat in inter­na­tion­al waters, maybe.

The usu­al emp­ty round of out­rage surged in the inter­na­tion­al polit­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty. The com­mon theme of which was, that the Israeli attack was dis­pro­por­tion­al to the threat the boat was rep­re­sent­ing. That’s an under­state­ment, hint­ing at the white-wash­ing of crimes.

The attack was not dis­pro­por­tion­al, it was not self-defence gone awry, it was unjus­ti­fied. The Israeli forces have engaged in a crim­i­nal assault on the aid boat, in inter­na­tion­al waters, and they fired on inno­cent civil­ians. Nat­u­ral­ly, the lat­ter were said to have attacked the Israelis first. Sure, a bunch of civil­ians prob­a­bly thought they were going to beat up the Israeli army and break the siege by force.

More impor­tant than the insan­i­ty of such an ali­bi, even if they had used force against Israeli forces ille­gal­ly assault­ing their ship, it would still be right. The Israelis had no right to be on there. Nei­ther do they have a right to arbi­trar­i­ly pen in 1.5 mil­lion inno­cents like cat­tle. That is, even if this had been a mil­i­tary expe­di­tion to break the siege, by law this would have been the right thing to do.

Every time you focus on details in a con­tro­ver­sy, you end up con­ced­ing the larg­er point, which is the most griev­ous­ly false. This block­ade is ille­gal any­way, and that means force can be used to end it, nev­er mind that the activists were paci­fists engag­ing in aid.

Bath Activist Net­work are a local umbrel­la group cam­paign­ing on issues as diverse as devel­op­ment, envi­ron­men­tal­ism, anti-war, ani­mal rights, work­ers’ rights and more. Help­ing to pro­duce the Bath Bomb, we are open to any­one, and our mem­bers range from trade union­ists to anar­chists, lib­er­als and greens, and peo­ple who just want to change Bath for the bet­ter. For details on meet­ings, demos, or just to get in touch, email bathactivistnet[at]yahoo.co.uk or see our web­site: www.bathactivistnetwork.blogspot.com

BNPa­thet­ic!

For the aver­age per­son, the last mon­th’s elec­tions have been noth­ing to smile about — cuts, deep­en­ing reces­sion and a choice between twee­dle­dum, twee­dle­dumber and twee­dle-Eton edu­cat­ed toff twat. How­ev­er, one glim­mer of hope came from the dis­mal, yet enter­tain­ing elec­tion cam­paign of the fas­cist BNP. Their cam­paign got off to a cork­er when fuhrer Nick Grif­fin con­tact­ed the police to squeal on his press offi­cer, Mark Col­lett, who is alleged­ly plot­ting to kill him. After kick­ing Col­lett out of the par­ty, then sub­se­quent­ly let­ting him back in, the sec­ond blow came just days before the elec­tion. Simon Ben­nett, the bloke behind the BNP web­site, decid­ed he had had enough and took down the web­site. He then redi­rect­ed vis­i­tors to a page list­ing the dire finan­cial straits of the par­ty as well as numer­ous com­pelling rea­sons not to vote BNP! On the same day, Grif­fin got pelt­ed with rot­ten veg by an angry mob while out on the cam­paign trail. In the South West, the BNP fared no bet­ter, with a strong force of trade union­ists leaflet­ing against the BNP in Chip­pen­ham, Cor­sham and Swin­don, meet­ing a few deject­ed and iso­lat­ed fas­cists along the way. On elec­tion night, the BNP fared ter­ri­bly, los­ing both coun­cil seats of Bark­ing and Dagen­ham, even with Nazi Nick stand­ing as their prospec­tive MP in the area. Mean­while, in Here­ford, 20 anar­chists under a ban­ner read­ing ‘my grand­par­ents did­n’t vote for fas­cists, they shot them’ stormed the polling booth, chas­ing out the BNP can­di­date under a hail of boots and fruits! Local­ly and nation­al­ly, we have final­ly seen a clear indi­ca­tion that soci­ety has seen the BNP for what they are, a gag­gle of white suprema­cist thugs who have no place in civilised soci­ety. With­out gain­ing even a sin­gle seat on polling day, and with grow­ing calls from inside the par­ty for Nick Grif­fin to step down,it looks like we are wit­ness­ing the dis­in­te­gra­tion of the BNP. All they need now is a lit­tle push.

Steeeeerike!

Recent months have seen the unwel­come return of a trend not seen in many decades in this coun­try — the ban­ning of strikes. Both the recent BA cab­in crew, and Rail, Mar­itime and Trans­port work­ers (RMT) sig­nallers’ strikes have been banned by judges for var­i­ous dubi­ous ‘irreg­u­lar­i­ties’ and the fact that the strikes may cause finan­cial dam­age to the com­pa­nies involved (sort of the point of a strike!). With the reces­sion show­ing no sign of going away, and with mas­sive job, pay and ser­vice cuts loom­ing in the near future, this is a wor­ry­ing prece­dent for sti­fling work­ers’ right to raise col­lec­tive griev­ances. On top of this, the Tories hope to esca­late the class war by intro­duc­ing leg­is­la­tion which will all but ban strikes in the hope of chok­ing the mas­sive resis­tance that will inevitably fight back against the upcom­ing cuts. But it is not all doom and gloom. The last year has seen the resur­gence of anoth­er old trend — the wild­cat strike. Real­is­ing that boss­es do not lis­ten to polite requests, sev­er­al fac­to­ries were occu­pied by work­ers last year. If we hope to fight back against the anti-work­er poli­cies of the judi­cia­ry, the employ­ers and the rul­ing class, we need to be pre­pared to take the ini­tia­tive and flout oppres­sive anti strike and protest leg­is­la­tion. We are as pow­er­ful as we want to be. In the words of mar­tyred trade union mil­i­tant Joe Hill ‘If the work­ers took a notion they could stop all speed­ing trains; every ship upon the ocean they can tie with mighty chains’. As some oth­er bloke said ‘when injus­tice becomes law, resis­tance becomes duty’.

Necks On The Line

On the 26th of April, the rail­way line from Ffos-y-Fran open­cast coal mine, near Merthyr Tyd­fil in South Wales, was closed by folk from Bris­tol and Bath Ris­ing Tide. The coal was due to sup­ply the near­by Aberthaw pow­er sta­tion, but nev­er arrived.

Once absolute­ly cer­tain the train would­n’t leave the sta­tion — as the com­pa­ny and work­ers had been informed — the activists locked them­selves to the track using chains and super glue. This sin­gle track is used only by the mine own­ers Miller Argent, and isn’t used by the pub­lic for trav­el.

It took some thir­ty South Wales cop­pers (plus a heli­copter) four and a half hours to remove those locked on. As this hap­pened the police received some incred­i­bly irri­tat­ing news: a sec­ond group had been hid­ing just round the cor­ner and were, as they spoke, emerg­ing and lock­ing onto the tracks with rein­forced lock-on arm tubes. Clear­ly too exhaust­ed from their hard work to take a quick stroll down the line to check this out, the heli­copter took to the skies once more. This swoop even­tu­al­ly con­firmed what it had failed to notice from hours of pre­vi­ous sur­veil­lance — the sec­ond group, now cheer­ful­ly wav­ing from the track. It took the cops until 8pm to arrest every­one and no coal left that day.

Local res­i­dents have been up in arms over the mine since it was first opened, just 30 metres from the near­est home, with many locals join­ing last year’s Cli­mate Camp Cym­ru next to the site. Not only is open­cast min­ing ter­ri­ble for local peo­ple’s health (with black rain and ris­ing lung com­plaints), it also destroys wildlife and local ecosys­tems and con­tributes mas­sive­ly to cli­mate change. In the UK alone, 43 new mines or exten­sions have been applied for or approved in the last three years.

We need to rapid­ly change our ener­gy sys­tems to avert cat­a­stroph­ic cli­mate chaos. This will take huge ambi­tion, which the gov­ern­ment is com­plete­ly unable to achieve with its hands in the pock­ets of cor­po­ra­tions. We can’t rely on their false solu­tions any more — it is down to ordi­nary peo­ple to devel­op work­er and com­mu­ni­ty con­trol of our ener­gy sup­ply and our soci­ety.

Mean­while, the 18 (one of which was hand­ed the olympic bail con­di­tions of hav­ing to reside in Corn­wall, and some­how make the dai­ly 150 mile return trip to sign on at Bath cop­shop, all with­out using trains) are back in court in Wales on the 8th of July to enter their pleas. They also have a ben­e­fit gig on the 19th June, 8pm, at the Plough in Eas­t­on.

http://www.risingtide.org.uk

http://www.stopffosyfran.co.uk

http://coalaction.org.uk

Politi­cians ‘Meet’ The ‘Peo­ple’

My dad told me that when he was a boy grow­ing up in the coal­fields before the war that any­one stand­ing for polit­i­cal office had to be able to do three things; do gen­uine pub­lic meet­ings, han­dle heck­lers and dodge turnips thrown from the audi­ence. How times change. Politi­cians now are wor­ried about meet­ing gen­uine vot­ers and dur­ing elec­tions, move around pro­tect­ed from the rab­ble by min­ders and the author­i­ties. Back on the 22nd of April, the three main par­ty lead­ers staged a so called pub­lic debate in Bris­tol, before a spe­cial­ly select­ed audi­ence who had to sit and ask preap­proved ques­tions, like good chil­dren. Out­side, the real elec­tors were being kept away from the meet­ing by lines of police. Around 300 peo­ple — a mix­ture of anar­chists, social­ists, ani­mal rights and anti-war pro­tes­tors one side and a group of sev­en pissed-up Eng­lish Defence Lea­guers on the oth­er — made their voic­es heard. The defend­ers of democ­ra­cy, the police, using batons and hors­es tried sev­er­al times to push the protest away from the Arnolfi­ni Cen­tre, the loca­tion of the debate. The crowd stood firm how­ev­er, and were able to deliv­er some suc­cinct opin­ions to the par­ty lead­ers as they drove in. Police made between sev­en and ten arrests, but were out­foxed at one time by anti-hunt­ing activists aboard a boat who pro­duced anti-blood­sports ban­ners for the ben­e­fit of Cameron and his blood­thirsty toff mates. How­ev­er, because of the secre­tive and con­trolled way this debate was run, who­ev­er won it, it was democ­ra­cy and the peo­ple who lost.

And now, to the dis­claimer: as any­one is free to con­tribute, the opin­ions expressed in each arti­cle are not nec­es­sar­i­ly reflec­tive of each con­trib­u­tor. Nat­u­ral­ly, any right-wing or cor­po­rate bull­shit will be binned and spat upon. Need­less to say, the opin­ions of the author of this dis­claimer do not nec­es­sar­i­ly reflect the opin­ions of any oth­er con­trib­u­tor.