Category: South West England

The Bath Bomb
Issue #12
free/donation
July 08
@nti-copyright: copy and dis­trib­ute!
Non-addic­tive Humour Sub­sti­tute

Dig­ging In Around Coal

The dead­line is draw­ing ever near­er for this August’s Camp for Cli­mate Action (see www.climatecamp.org.uk), and it’s not just the ice caps that are hot­ting up. Whilst last month saw a high pro­file coal train heist up north on the rail­way line to Drax Pow­er sta­tion, the planned open-cast coal mine at Lodge Farm in Der­byshire has had plans scup­pered by squat­ters! They took the site on the 18th June under the ban­ner ‘Leave it in the Ground’, with full sup­port of the own­er and local pop­u­la­tion, and have just had their evic­tion kicked out of court until 18th July. And now campers have just entered into dia­logue with the coal min­er’s union NUM, in an attempt to break the tra­di­tion­al wedge between envi­ron­men­tal­ists and work­ers.

Despite the lies spread by the Gov­ern­ment-spon­sored UK Coal Forum, coal is nei­ther the cheap­est option for our ener­gy future (with coal prices dou­bling in the last 2 years), nor the most reli­able (this May saw the biggest brownouts in Britain since 1987 from con­ven­tion­al pow­er fail­ure), nor will it make Britain inde­pen­dent from for­eign import (70% of our coal being import­ed from Rus­sia). With Thatch­er’s destruc­tion of the steel and engi­neer­ing indus­tries, nei­ther do we now have the infra­struc­ture for coal pow­er.

So, in Green Park Sta­tion on Sat­ur­day the 12th July, from 2 til 5, Bath Activist Net­work held a ‘Roots of Change’ day of stalls and info on how bet­ter to spend the £1.7 bil­lion that EON will waste at Kingsnorth’s new super­crit­i­cal coal units, as well as demon­strat­ing bet­ter, green­er, more prac­ti­cal ways of liv­ing — and we’re joined by Tran­si­tion Town Bath, the Lon­don Road Food Co-op, and the Camp for Cli­mate Action pho­to exhi­bi­tion!

http://www.berr.gov.uk/energy/sources/coal/forum/page37276.html
http://www.berr.gov.uk/energy/energymarketsoutlook/page41839.html
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/utilities/article4023634.ece
http://uk.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUKL3081324220080130
http://www.leaveitintheground.org.uk
http://www.squatter.org.uk
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/07/403585.html (for a write up of the roots of change day, with pic­tures!)

Fuck Off Tesco

This week on TescoW­atch, the Bath Bomb can regret­tably inform you that the Tesco infes­ta­tion just gets worse and worse. With a poten­tial Tesco Metro sniff­ing around Keyn­sham, a Tesco Express patient­ly sit­ting on the old petrol sta­tion on Eng­lish­combe Lane, and the new one at Bath­wick Hill due to open in the next two months, the future for inde­pen­dent retail and real food looks bleak. On the plus side, the Tesco Express and Tesco hous­ing try­ing to get in at Upper Bris­tol Road have just had their plan­ning appli­ca­tion refused. Fin­gers crossed.

Mean­while, 5 min­utes away on Low­er Bris­tol Road, Tesco are being coy about their super­store plans for the old Bath Press site. Built at the end of the 19th Cen­tu­ry, this is a lit­tle nugget of Bath’s indus­tri­al his­to­ry, the home of Pit­man Short­hand. Snapped up by Tesco front group St James Finance for a bar­gain base­ment £52 mil­lion (or a more con­ser­v­a­tive £20 mil, depend­ing on who you talk to), it’ll soon prob­a­bly be crawl­ing with strip lights and chron­i­cal­ly over­worked and under­paid shelf-stack­ers. The increased traf­fic load will no doubt prove no threat what­so­ev­er for pupils of the near­by infant school, and will be total­ly con­ducive to the £75 mil­lion coun­cil fund­ing ded­i­cat­ed to rid­ding Bath of HGVs. That’s joined up think­ing for you.

Coun­cil­lor David Dixon and his Face­book cronies (what are you, 12?) is prob­a­bly cream­ing him­self right now.

Hands Off My Wrin­kles You Sex­ist Shit

A cur­rent TV advert pro­motes its beau­ty prod­uct by open­ing with the line, ‘for women who aren’t yet ready for plas­tic surgery.’ Just anoth­er ploy to make females shell out more mon­ey on van­i­ty prod­ucts, or is there more to it than that? If some­one’s not yet ready for some­thing, it’s implied that, at some point, they will be. What mes­sage does this put across, watched by mil­lions of women? The real­i­ty is that there’s so much wrong with that short and seem­ing­ly harm­less state­ment. It dif­fer­en­ti­ates based on gen­der, implies, or per­haps even dic­tates, that it’s expect­ed that women should have the marks that life has left them with altered or tak­en away through inva­sive process­es. Beyond this, the state­ment insin­u­ates, that even younger females who ‘aren’t yet ready’ should be tak­ing steps to ensure that signs of liv­ing don’t show through. The real­i­ty is that dis­crim­i­na­tion based on gen­der comes in many guis­es and in all walks of life and affects us all. Some­times it’s mali­cious and some­times just a sub­con­scious by-prod­uct of the soci­ety we live in. So next time you see an advert, think about what’s implied, or what you’re being told and ask your­self, is that real­ly okay?

Get The Pigs Off Our Streets!

We’ve all seen them lit­tered around the streets of Bath: hun­dreds of ceram­ic pigs, form­ing an exhi­bi­tion cel­e­brat­ing our city’s her­itage. But we are now being swamped with a new kind of pig — less use­ful, and def­i­nite­ly less wel­come on our streets — the city mar­shal. Join­ing the del­uge of uni­formed human odd­i­ties: cops, com­mu­ni­ty (‘don’t make me call a real cop’) sup­port offi­cers, secu­ri­ty guards, taxi mar­shals and street mar­shals, these guys are anoth­er exam­ple of the grow­ing sur­veil­lance we are sub­ject­ed to on a dai­ly basis by the watch­ful eyes of our friend­ly and non-voyeuris­tic state (cap­tur­ing each of us near­ly 400 times a day on a vari­ety of CCTV and mon­i­tor­ing equip­ment). With­out any real pow­ers, there’s legal­ly not much city mar­shals can do to you that an ordi­nary shop­per could­n’t, but armed with walkie-talkies, swish uni­forms and a failed police entrance exam paper — these guys are out to get you! How many cam­eras (87 at the last count, cost­ing us around £300,000 a year), cops, fake cops and even fak­er cops do we need before we decide ‘enough is enough’ — that we are capa­ble of con­trol­ling our own lives and fill­ing our time with­out the state watch­ing our every move? So, try not to be ner­vous, you know they can smell fear. But don’t wor­ry, you’ve got noth­ing to hide, dear read­er… Or do you?

Farmer Cull Immi­nent As Bad­gers Spared

On Sat­ur­day the 28th June, mem­bers of Bath Activist Net­work trav­elled to Cardiff Bay to join the Viva! bad­ger cull demo out­side the Welsh Assem­bly. Welsh politi­cians announced in April that it pro­pos­es the mass mur­der of bad­gers in order to appease farm­ers. Bad­gers are being used as scape­goats by dairy farm­ers as being the main cul­prits in the spread of bovine TB. How­ev­er, the real cul­prit is the bar­bar­ic prac­tice of dairy farm­ing: as well as hav­ing their calves mur­dered, dairy cows are so inten­sive­ly farmed and exploit­ed (not to men­tion being forcibly impreg­nat­ed every year, far more often than they would be nat­u­ral­ly), that they face numer­ous infec­tions and rarely sur­vive beyond 5 years old, which is a frac­tion of their nor­mal lifes­pan. Ire­land has been culling bad­gers since 2002, yet this has not affect­ed their TB prob­lem — even after the bru­tal culling of 30% of the indige­nous pop­u­la­tion of 200,000, the dis­ease has still failed to dimin­ish.

Around 300 peo­ple stood in front of a gar­goyle of Mar­garet Thatch­er (which for some rea­son is plas­tered to the front of the build­ing, next to a carv­ing of Nye Bevan) wav­ing plac­ards and bad­ger masks for a pho­to shoot and chant­i­ng for about an hour. After speech­es and dec­la­ra­tions of sup­port from absent celebri­ties, the group went off to a hotel for stalls, more speech­es and work­shops.

How­ev­er, on the way back, 35 dodgy-look­ing char­ac­ters slipped of from the Viva! pro­ces­sion, shun­ning the promised free veg­an food back at the hotel and made their way to the near­est foie gras restau­rant. Dur­ing a pre­vi­ous vis­it to Cardiff, a BAN mem­ber had noticed the dis­gust­ing stuff being sold in the city, so had smug­gled ban­ners and leaflets over the bor­der, plan­ning to demo them after the bad­gers had been saved. The first restau­rant, Woods Brasserie, was quick­ly sur­round­ed with shout­ing, ban­ner-wav­ing pro­test­ers, and even lock­ing the door and draw­ing the blinds did­n’t pre­vent a stream of leaflets and angry words fly­ing through the let­ter­box. Fol­low­ing pro­tes­tors from the bad­ger cull demo, the cops soon got shit­ty, push­ing peo­ple around and impos­ing a con­fused Sec­tion 14 notice to force the protest from the area, round­ly ignored by pro­test­ers. As more cops, includ­ing the head of the Nation­al Extrem­ist Tac­ti­cal Coor­di­na­tion Unit (NETCU) arrived, activists split off into small groups to reassem­ble 10 min­utes lat­er out­side Gar­con, anoth­er restau­rant, with some activists man­ag­ing to sneak inside, leaflet and gen­er­al­ly make nui­sances of them­selves. Being on pri­vate prop­er­ty, the protest was soon forced to dis­band by cops, who curi­ous­ly ordered pro­test­ers to dis­perse in the same direc­tion, which they did — straight back to Woods! After 10 more min­utes’ demo­ing and pushy-shovey from the cops, the own­er re-print­ed his menus, minus the foie gras.

And what of the bad­gers? Eng­lish Par­lia­ment has vot­ed to repeal the slaugh­ter (enrag­ing the blood­thirsty Nation­al Farm­ers Union, who are lodg­ing an appeal), pos­si­bly remem­ber­ing the smashed traps and pub­lic­i­ty dis­as­ters of the last cull. Welsh bad­gers how­ev­er are not so lucky, and the cull is to resume across the bor­der. But Wales is only a short train trip away, and there’s noth­ing more sat­is­fy­ing than decom­mis­sion­ing tools of bru­tal­i­ty such as bad­ger traps. If you have info to help bodge the bad­ger cull, check out http://www.badger-killers.co.uk/

Free Nor­mal­i­ty Test­ing

To CELEBRATE Mad pride Day on Mon­day 14th July, the MAD HATTERS OF BATH are offer­ing free nor­mal­i­ty test­ing to the gen­er­al pub­lic and tourists in Bath City Cen­tre from 12 noon onwards. Con­cerns over the grow­ing num­bers of non-nor­mal peo­ple have meant the British Gov­ern­ment has had to intro­duce many new laws. These include anti-ter­ror­ist leg­is­la­tion, which does not just affect ‘tra­di­tion­al ter­ror­ists’ but also the new breed of ‘dan­ger­ous demon­stra­tive envi­ron­men­tal activist’. The crim­i­nal jus­tice leg­is­la­tion is renowned for its restric­tions on trav­ellers, mak­ing liv­ing in a vehi­cle or car­a­van not just ‘not nor­mal’, but also ille­gal. ASBO’s are used to keep teenagers under con­trol. The changes to the men­tal health act means forcible med­ica­tion of peo­ple liv­ing in the com­mu­ni­ty is eas­i­er than it ever has been. Pub­lic­i­ty cam­paigns fund­ed by the Gov­ern­ment and admin­is­tered by MIND, RETHINK and Men­tal Health Media all con­trast men­tal well being (nor­mal) and men­tal ill­ness (deviant). There are far too many men­tal­ly ill, or as we pre­fer to say ‘non-nor­mal’ peo­ple in Britain today and we must, as a mat­ter of nation­al urgency, help find and nor­malise these ill peo­ple as soon as pos­si­ble.
We do not like labelling peo­ple but it is imper­a­tive that we find those who are nor­mal and hope­ful­ly their nor­mal­i­ty can be diag­nosed and stored and maybe we will be able to teach ‘nor­mal­i­ty’ self-man­age­ment tech­niques to those who are out­side the nor­mal­i­ty spec­trum. We are expect­ing this rad­i­cal new tech­nique to imme­di­ate­ly reduce any extreme of mood or ideas, and the gen­er­al pub­lic will know they are safe as their views are fil­tered down to the low­est com­mon denom­i­na­tor of nor­mal­i­ty. We expect this to mean: a life time of moan­ing, per­sis­tent veg­e­ta­tive TV view­ing, Sat­ur­day night drink­ing for the under 30’s, shop­ping, shop­ping and more shop­ping, life enhanc­ing removal of body hair, total dis­re­gard of the exploita­tion of the plan­et or peo­ple on it.

ALTERNATIVELY come down to Abbey Church­yard Bath and cel­e­brate your right to be dif­fer­ent. Music, the­atre, dance, com­e­dy and per­for­mance are all wel­come at THE GRAND ‘NOT NORMAL’ CELEBRATION.

The White Rab­bit of Bath Mad­hat­ters, is also pre­sent­ing free online poet­ry on www.homegrownart.co.uk where there are links to donate to NSPCC and MIND

Con­tact us on: bathmadhatters@hotmail.co.uk

www.mindfreedom.org

Final­ly just to share the news about Bonkers­fest Sat­ur­day 19th July 12–9pm Cam­ber­well Green, Lon­don: a bril­liant mad fes­ti­val; web­site www.creative-routes.org
and www.bonkersfest.com

Also, the next edi­tion of the Great Escape is now on sale at secret loca­tions, as usu­al. we have had to increase the price to £2 but it is cer­tain­ly worth it.

Balls To Car Cul­ture

Our blush­ing jour­nal­ist took part in this year’s World Naked Bike Ride in Lon­don, on the 14th June, with over 1,000 most­ly naked cyclists, in a protest against oil depen­den­cy, in favour of curb­ing car cul­ture, and a cel­e­bra­tion of body free­dom. By rid­ing nude, pro­test­ers demon­strate the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of cyclists on the streets (such as Marie Vesco, an activist killed on her bike on the 3rd June by a care­less and cal­lous dri­ver). It also feels good! The World Naked Bike Ride is an inter­na­tion­al event, and this year there were rides in Brighton on the 7th June, Cardiff (for the first time), Edin­burgh, York, Man­ches­ter, Sheffield and Southamp­ton, as well as Barcelona and else­where. Spec­ta­tors lined the whole route in Lon­don, which stretched from Hyde Park, past the Hous­es of Par­lia­ment (the best bit), cen­tral Lon­don and back to Mar­ble Arch. Many cyclists were body paint­ed, the sun was shin­ing, and it was a great day all round. They even had a police escort, though clothed — it’s prob­a­bly for the best. We here at the Bath Bomb look eager­ly for­ward to next June for more of the same!

News­bite: Big­ging Up Japan

As we go to press, pro­test­ers will be kick­ing off in Hokkai­do, Japan, against the 2008 G8 Sum­mit. The G8 lead­ers of the world’s eight most indus­tri­alised nations meet every year to dis­cuss how to pre­tend to save the poor mass­es from them­selves, whilst fences are rat­tled and pro­test­ers are bat­tered on the streets out­side. This year won’t be any dif­fer­ent — so far, jour­nal­ists have already been denied at the bor­der, and known local activists are being fit­ted up on sus­pect charges. But things are chang­ing, and our noble lead­ers are get­ting ner­vous — with the mil­i­tary growth of the Shang­hai Co-oper­a­tion Organ­i­sa­tion (the who?), and the polit­i­cal sous of South Amer­i­ca and Asia, the rich, white west may soon be get­ting a taste of its own med­i­cine. Yep, inter­est­ing times…

The­o­ry Cor­ner — Are All Cops Bas­tards?

‘All Cop­pers are Bas­tards’, we’ve heard it yelled on demos, but how much have we thought about what it means? Are they all bad peo­ple, hell­bent on defend­ing oppres­sion and exploita­tion? Let’s look at the facts and find out! While get­ting turfed out of a tem­po­rary squat­ted social cen­tre last year (which had been opened in Bath cen­tre to pro­vide a FreeShop and Xmas card-mak­ing work­shops for locals dur­ing the fes­tive sea­son), the cop doing most of the evict­ing was falling over him­self to come across as a good guy, apol­o­gis­ing and mak­ing excus­es, almost ashamed of what he was doing — and there are many like him. While most cops seem to be gen­uine­ly vio­lent, unin­tel­li­gent and obnox­ious indi­vid­u­als, attract­ed to the abus­able pow­er and weapon­ry that come with the job, a small num­ber do seem to be, well, almost human. So what of these nice peo­ple who have mys­te­ri­ous­ly end­ed up in uni­form, do they also fall into the bas­tard cat­e­go­ry? I think the answer has to be no, many are bas­tards, but that is only one of the rea­sons we should view cops with con­tempt. While many an offi­cer has delight­ed crowds of activists with macho vio­lence and big­otry above and beyond the call of duty, even the ‘nice’ ones are bound to car­ry out orders they may dis­agree with. On numer­ous occa­sions, cops have been seen car­ry­ing out duties on the brink of tears, clear­ly hor­ri­fied by what they are hav­ing to do — it is this, more than any oth­er unpleas­ant ten­den­cy of the aver­age cop that makes them so pathet­ic and dan­ger­ous. Let us not for­get that many cops are bas­tards — nasty peo­ple in every sense of the word — but this can­not be true of them all. The prob­lem is that they have all let them­selves be bought by big­ger, more vio­lent bas­tards, the gov­ern­ment. They are whores to the will of the state and must unques­tion­ing­ly do its bid­ding, no mat­ter how moral­ly repug­nant the task, and it is this, rather than the per­son­al­i­ty of the indi­vid­ual that means that, until they take off the uni­form, cops — like so many oth­ers through­out his­to­ry who have ‘just fol­lowed orders’ — will always be the ene­mies of free­dom, jus­tice and equal­i­ty.

IOM: Good Guys, Real­ly

On Thurs­day the 19th June, activists from Bris­tol No Bor­ders and BAN once again con­tin­ued their assault on the cred­i­bil­i­ty of those sin­is­ter car­toon bad guys, the Inter­na­tion­al Organ­i­sa­tion for Migra­tion; the Bath Bomb again sent some new­shounds to get the scoop.

Being Refugee Week, the Pier­ian Cen­tre near Stokes Croft had been hold­ing a week of work­shops and talks on the pos­i­tive impacts that refugees and immi­grants had made on British soci­ety, and Thursday’s invi­ta­tion to the IOM was intend­ed to be no dif­fer­ent. It was only after the 8 Bris­tol No Bor­ders folks set up the all day pick­et out­side how­ev­er, full of info about the IOM’s cal­lous agen­da, their depor­ta­tion agency and PR work, and their man­age­ment of mon­strous con­cen­tra­tion camps, like the detain­ment cen­tres off the coast of Aus­tralia, that the event organ­is­ers soon realised in hor­ror how they’d been duped. The IOM may set itself up as the friend­ly face of the bor­der regime, but after a three-hour debate with the IOM rep, it was only a mat­ter of time before he admit­ted that he saw humans as eco­nom­ic units to be exploit­ed rather than liv­ing crea­tures. Lizard.

But free trade peo­ple traf­fick­ing is big busi­ness now, with offices open in Bris­tol, Leeds, Birm­ing­ham, Lon­don, Glas­gow, Liv­er­pool, and soon in Peter­bor­ough. Though in the office of the IOM in Damak, Nepal, on the 30th June, folks angry about the sell-off of 60,000 Bhutanese refugees to the west as cheap labour lev­elled the place with a dou­ble wham­my bomb­ing, but no injuries. That’s the spir­it!

http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/003200807011521.htm
http://www.iom.int/jahia/jsp/index.jsp
http://www.noborder.org/iom/index.php
http://bristonoborders.wordpress.com

EVENTS

Mon­day nights — Bath Hunt Sabs Meet­ing, 8pm, Bell
Wednes­days 4–7pm — Lon­don Rd Food Co-op, River­side Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre
Sat­ur­days 11.30–12.30 — Bath Stop The War Vig­il, Abbey Court­yard
Weds 16th July, 8.15am — Green­wash Gueril­las protest at the Guardian Cli­mate Change Sum­mit, Busi­ness Design Cen­tre, 52 Upper St, Lon­don
Wed 16th July, 8pm — Bris­tol Anar­chist Book­fair ben­e­fit punk gig, the Croft, Bris­tol, £5
Thurs 17th July — anti-Tescos meet­ing, Hob­gob­lin, 7.30
Fri 18th July — Left­ism, The Crown, Bath­wick, 9–1am
Fri 18th-Sun 20th July — Tolpud­dle Mar­tyrs Fes­ti­val, in a field, Tolpud­dle
http://www.tuc.org.uk/the_tuc/index.cfm?mins=414&minors=75
Sat 19th July — Bath Ani­mal Action street col­lec­tion 1–5
Sun 3rd-Mon 11th Aug — Camp for Cli­mate Action www.climatecamp.org.uk
Weds 6th Aug 7.30–8.30 — Bath Ani­mal Action meet­ing, back room of Bell
Thurs 7th Aug 7.30–9 — Bath Activist Net­work meet­ing, Hob­gob­lin, 7.30–9

For fur­ther info on any of our sto­ries see www.myspace.com/bathbomb

Q: Who Are Bath Activist Net­work? A: 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 to greens, and peo­ple who just want to change Bath for the bet­ter. For details on meet­ings, demos, or just to get in touch, ring us on 07949 611912, email bathactivistnet@yahoo.co.uk, or see our web­site: www.myspace.com/bathactivistnetwork

GOT A STORY? WANT TO RECEIVE THE BATH BOMB BY EMAIL? HOPING TO SUE?
Con­tact us by e‑mailing bathbombpress@yahoo.co.uk. Large print e‑versions avail­able on request.

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 does not nec­es­sar­i­ly rep­re­sent the views of any oth­er con­trib­u­tor…