Category: South West England

The month­ly out­poured bile of Bath’s ide­al­ists and mis­an­thrope’s reach­es dou­ble fig­ures…

The Bath Bomb
Issue #10
free/donation
May 08

Shock As 200 Shop­pers Freeze Sol­id In Town Cen­tre!

Last week­end saw a break from the banal­i­ty of the famil­iar shop-till-you-drop rou­tine of town cen­tre. A cou­ple of hun­dred peo­ple, using Face­book, organ­ised a flash mob in which peo­ple milling around town would freeze at a giv­en time, and stay that way for five min­utes before, at anoth­er sig­nal, con­tin­u­ing on as nor­mal. Bath Bomb sent a reporter into town to see what the fuss was about, and the results proved pret­ty impres­sive. Two hun­dred peo­ple, frozen in mid sand­wich, con­ver­sa­tion and dance blocked a large area of the city cen­tre while con­fused onlook­ers laughed and spec­u­lat­ed. At one point, a mis­er­able shop­per laden with bag upon bag of dis­pos­able cul­ture walked past moan­ing to her daugh­ter that the frozen mob was ‘prob­a­bly just a bunch of pro­test­ers’. My reac­tion had been that this was more an arty style event than a protest, but the mis­er­able woman strain­ing under tonnes of plas­tic got me think­ing. Whether inten­tion­al­ly or not, this was a protest, and a very mean­ing­ful one. The mes­sage was that town is ours, the streets are our play­ground — the stag­ing ground for fun, adven­ture and friv­o­li­ty. The frozen mass­es briefly wrest­ed town from those neon gods of con­sumerism who would see our
town cen­tre reduced to noth­ing more than a means to get to shops, buy things, then go home again. The freeze event gave us a brief glimpse of how we can trans­form and re-imag­ine our sur­round­ings, turn the banal into the beau­ti­ful and do some­thing with our town more impor­tant, fun and inter­est­ing than more f**king shop­ping! So let’s take a leaf out of the book of our frozen com­rades and start using town as a place for meet­ing, frol­ick­ing, shar­ing and cre­at­ing. Who needs cap­i­tal­ism, when we’ve got imag­i­na­tion?!

The End Of The Begin­ning Of Some­thing Spe­cial In Chip­pen­ham

Remem­ber last month we brought you news of a new squat in Chip­pen­ham? We are sad to report that the build­ing is now back in the hands of its law­ful own­er — a man who has let the place rot while liv­ing miles away for over 25 years. Dur­ing the brief his­to­ry of The 78 as the build­ing became known, it pro­vid­ed a glimpse of what a fair soci­ety could look like. As well as pro­vid­ing a home for some, the space was a com­mu­nal meet­ing place, organ­ic gar­den and a cen­tre of learn­ing, co-oper­a­tion and fun. Before the evic­tion, The 78 was in the process of organ­is­ing gar­den­ing work­shops, a free shop, free child day care for young par­ents and a week­ly veg­an cafe. The build­ing itself was con­sid­er­ably ren­o­vat­ed by the occu­piers and neigh­bours (who were entire­ly sup­port­ive and glad that
space was no longer wast­ed ) agreed that it has nev­er looked nicer! Still, the evic­tion is not the end — every­one who went to the place was inspired by the pas­sion, ded­i­ca­tion and com­mit­ment to equal­i­ty and the envi­ron­ment showed by the occu­piers. Where one lib­er­at­ed space falls, anoth­er springs up and we can’t wait to see what the future holds for Chip­pen­ham. In its short his­to­ry, The 78 suc­ceed­ed in win­ning hearts and minds of peo­ple who would oth­er­wise have neg­a­tive views of squat­ters, rad­i­calised and inspired a com­mu­ni­ty and brought togeth­er strangers who are now friends, com­rades and part­ners in lib­er­a­tion and adven­ture. The 78 is dead, long live The 79!

Top Shop Sweat Shop Stitch Up

A 17-strong coali­tion of stu­dents from Hayesfield Eth­i­cal Group and Bath Uni’s One World Soci­ety, as well as the usu­al rent-a-mob from B.A.N., endured the sun­shine and soul­less con­crete on Wednes­day the 24th April, to demon­strate out­side Top Shop’s use of sweat­shop labour. Indeed, the vast major­i­ty of UK high street fash­ion gets rich from the exploita­tion of des­per­ate work­ers in the glob­al South, but the Arca­dia Group, of
which Top Shop is the lead­ing brand, is high­ly influ­en­tial. Where­as own­er Philip Green made the record books in 2005 for net­ting the biggest share div­i­dend in his­to­ry, $1.2 bil­lion, work­ers in Cam­bo­dia are coerced into invol­un­tary over­time work below any liv­ing wage, suf­fer­ing shock­ing health and safe­ty, physical/verbal abuse from man­age­ment, dai­ly
strip-search­es, and are barred from union­i­sa­tion. Women are often refused employ­ment if preg­nant, and if they do become so, are still forced to do stand­ing work in uncom­fort­able tem­per­a­tures, until they quit. To add insult to injury, work­ers often con­tract blad­der infec­tions from lack of access to drink­ing water or toi­let use. Demon­stra­tors leaflet­ed and held ban­ners air­ing Top­shop’s dirty laun­dry, ask­ing cus­tomers to per­suade their favourite brand to gen­uine­ly change its ways: like it or not, these fash­ion car­tels have the pow­er to change indus­try con­di­tions for bet­ter as well as worse, if only they’d stop spout­ing emp­ty PRomis­es for one sec­ond.

Hair today, gone tomor­row?

I’m not going to make this any more com­pli­cat­ed than it needs to be — for most women to go about their dai­ly lives feel­ing like their nat­ur­al form, their unadul­ter­at­ed bod­ies, are at least wrong, at worst dis­gust­ing, is in itself wrong and dis­gust­ing. It’s not just women, although present­ly they do seem to fare worse, a sig­nif­i­cant pro­por­tion of us have prob­lems these days feel­ing inad­e­quate and ugly, as if we need to change our appear­ance con­stant­ly, dai­ly, to be accept­able or even to look stun­ning — it is our duty to look as fab­u­lous as we can at what­ev­er cost. You’ve got women in their 60s with design­er vagi­nas match­ing that of a 16 year old, 16 year olds hav­ing cos­met­ic surgery when they’re bare­ly grown yet and 10 year olds being tak­en to salons to have their legs
waxed.

A healthy back­lash is begin­ning to grow. For exam­ple, the live jour­nal site ‘fuck shav­ing’, and on recent body image shows I’ve seen not one, but two women liv­ing their lives per­fect­ly hap­pi­ly, with full on nat­ur­al beards. I am fas­ci­nat­ed — to me, they don’t look ugly, or wrong, or dis­gust­ing. They don’t even look like men. They just look like them­selves. So, I beg of you soci­ety, can’t we just be us? This may seem like a sim­ple thing on paper, but it is a huge step to take (or maybe lots of lit­tle ones.) But it is such a worth­while step to take and I feel the world would be bet­ter off for it, chang­ing many things, not just how we feel about our­selves when we look in the mir­ror. Cause this image stuff ain’t just van­i­ty — it real­ly does deeply affect, and even destroy, lives.

May­day! May­day! The Ducks Are Revolt­ing!

And now for our oblig­a­tory foie gras cam­paign update: we’ve recent­ly heard that good old Christophe at The Pinch, the French restau­rant in St Mar­garet’s Build­ings for­mer­ly known as Le Petit Cochon, has decid­ed to brave the storm of con­tro­ver­sy and put the ‘del­i­ca­cy of despair’ back on the menu. When will they learn? Mean­while, we received this anony­mous report: “In the ear­ly hours of the 2nd May, in anger at Bistro Num­ber 5’s con­tin­ued sale of foie gras, Ani­mal Lib­er­a­tion Front vol­un­teers d‑locked their front entrance, cost­ing them hours of lost rev­enue for the fol­low­ing day. It’s high time they re-eval­u­at­ed whether prof­it­ing from ani­mal abuse real­ly is good busi­ness!” If you feel moved to let the man­age­ment of either of these out­lets know your feel­ings on force-feed­ing and ani­mal tor­ture, here’s their con­tact details — The Pinch tel:
01225 421251, info@thepinch.biz and Bistro Num­ber 5 tel: 01225 444 499,
fax: 01225318 668 chrome@globalnet.co.uk /ym/Compose?To= chrome@globalnet.co.uk&YY=10755&y5beta=yes&y5beta=yes&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b.

And remem­ber, The Bath Bomb in no way con­dones repeat­ed phone calls or threat­en­ing behav­iour, and nei­ther does it con­done spread­ing these com­pa­nies’ details to every spam­mer or junk mail list you can think of.

Gov­ern­ment gets F- As Teach­ers Strike

There were impres­sive march­es and ral­lies in towns and cities across Britain on Thurs­day 24th April. More than 2000 strik­ing teach­ers, lec­tur­ers and civ­il ser­vice work­ers from across Bris­tol, Bath, Glouces­ter­shire and Som­er­set joined a live­ly and noisy march which brought traf­fic to a halt in Bris­tol. This march was sup­port­ed by mem­bers of Bath
Activist Net­work. This action occurred to a back­ground of an eco­nom­ic cri­sis where the poor are being forced to bail out the rich. Tax­pay­ers are expect­ed to pay £100 bil­lion to North­ern Rock, when in a time hon­oured fash­ion, the man who over­saw the col­lapse of his bank, walked off with a £750,000 pay off. The response of politi­cians to this cri­sis is for new labour Brown to abol­ish the 10p tax law, hit­ting the poor­er work­ers the most and for the shad­ow chan­cel­lor, George Osborne, this week, to call for greater con­trol of trades unions as a mat­ter of urgency. With almost every­thing ris­ing in price, the media warns of a ‘sum­mer of dis­con­tent’ here and abroad. This means through riots, strikes and days of actions, work­ers and the poor are tak­ing con­trol of their own lives and not rely­ing on politi­cians and boss­es to sort out their prob­lems.
This grow­ing spir­it of resis­tance must be sup­port­ed by all those who wish to build a more just soci­ety. If you’re fired up about these issues, come to Bub­bling Under on Sun­day 18th May, 1–4 as usu­al at the porter cel­lar bar on George Street, where there will be a free show­ing of ‘The Gama Strike: A Vic­to­ry For All Work­ers.’ This is a film about migrant work­ers in the Irish Repub­lic who were sup­port­ed by local work­ers to fight back against slave con­di­tions.

Free Your Time-www.myfreethyme.com

Why buy when the best things in life are free? Cred­it cards, stu­dent loans and debt are the vices that trap us into this con­sumer cul­ture. Man made mon­ey and mon­ey made man: mad. Media brain­wash­es us into think­ing that if we work hard­er, earn more mon­ey and buy more things then we will be accept­ed. Exces­sive con­sumerism is ruin­ing both the air we
breathe and the ground we walk on. All we need is an aware­ness of what we can con­tribute to a soci­ety of free­thinkers that is sim­ple and reward­ing to become part of.

So, the web­site, www.myfreethyme.com, was set up with this ethos in mind, with a mis­sion to dis­cov­er alter­na­tive ways of liv­ing which help pre­serve the plan­et, inspire trust and keep change in your pock­et jin­gling. The pos­si­bil­i­ties are end­less from Freecy­cle, grow-your-own and net­tle munch­ing, to bin div­ing, couch­surf­ing and woof­ing, the ulti­mate aim being to cre­ate a nur­tur­ing eco-space rather than a mon­ey grab­bing metrop­o­lis. There are many com­mu­ni­ties which func­tion on human com­pas­sion, not on mon­ey; the aim is to get these voic­es heard and known about. As a stu­dent at Bath Spa Uni­ver­si­ty, I was amazed at how lit­tle the gen­er­al stu­dent pop­u­la­tion knows about the ways of free liv­ing. I was
inspired by read­ing about the Free Econ­o­my walk­er, Mark Boyle, and his attempt to get to Gand­hi’s birth­place with­out a pen­ny in his pock­et. Though angry that most of the news­pa­pers ridiculed his jour­ney and did­n’t focus on the phi­los­o­phy behind it, it led me to become part of the FreeEcon­o­my landshare/skillshare com­mu­ni­ty (justfortheloveofit.org) and I realised this was some­thing worth shout­ing about.

See­ing these things in action can inspire change, and who bet­ter to help out than the Bath Activist Net­work. As part of the Big Green Week bonan­za, a live Freecyle stall was set up at the SU and wel­comed with many a “What? Free? No fee?” squawks of glee as the skint stu­dents rum­maged and browsed. In a uni­ver­si­ty where they charge 15p for a sachet of toma­to sauce and 30p for hot water, the gen­er­al reac­tion was wel­come shock mixed with curios­i­ty and many a stu­dent-friend­ly bar­gain picked up. All in all, it went glo­ri­ous­ly well. If you have any free liv­ing sto­ries, feel free and let me know at thegreensofa@yahoo.com , I’d love to hear them.
Bath FreeShop is out­side Hol­land and Bar­ratts the sec­ond Sat­ur­day of every month if you’ve got some a han­ker­ing to get rid of some stuff then join us for some free
Earl Grey tea.

Green Space Invaders Evad­ed

Con­grat­u­la­tions are due to the res­i­dents of Twer­ton and sur­rounds, who’ve just fought off plans to destroy green space near the much-loved Bath City Farm, flood­ing the Coun­cil with over 1,000 objec­tions. Somer Hous­ing, well-known for its com­mit­ment to sell­ing off need­ed social hous­ing to unscrupu­lous pri­vate land­lords on the cheap, whinged about the foil­ing of their ploy to build 30 hous­es on the 1.6 con­test­ed acres
between Cotswold View, The Hol­low and the City Farm: where they no doubt would have done the same. Bath City Farm is manned by ded­i­cat­ed vol­un­teers and pro­vides wood­craft skills, inter­ac­tion with the nat­ur­al world and mean­ing­ful leisure to local youths, and need the land to both progress their work and pro­vide res­i­den­tial allot­ments.

Boris John­son — May­or Or Mani­ac?

Boris John­son says he’s a fem­i­nist. Actu­al­ly he’s sex­ist. And the worst kind of sex­ist. He thinks that by stat­ing he’s a fem­i­nist and say­ing a few pro-women things, that when he begins one of his ridicu­lous­ly mis­guid­ed rants about men and women and the edu­ca­tion sys­tem, peo­ple will say, well, he can’t be sex­ist, the man says he’s a fem­i­nist. Truth
is, as far as this writer’s con­cerned any­way, as long as we car­ry on gen­der stereo­typ­ing, this idi­ot­ic tug of war that is the per­pet­u­al see saw of men on top, women on top, men on top, will con­tin­ue — with casu­al­ties on both sides (domes­tic vio­lence against either sex, rape, misog­y­ny, hatred of men, unfair pay at work and gen­er­al dishar­mo­ny and fight­ing against rather than help­ing each oth­er.)

Boris John­son may be enter­tain­ing, he comes off like a char­ac­ter from a com­e­dy show, and maybe that’s a nice change next to some rather bor­ing politi­cians, but is this the kind of fig­ure­head we want as may­or of Lon­don? He’s out of touch, out­spo­ken and seems so harm­less. But it seems to me, to let some­one like this have such a posi­tion of pow­er is a very dan­ger­ous thing. When are peo­ple going to wake up to the mock­ery our gov­ern­men­tal sys­tem has become, from the jibes and jeers of the com­mons, to the buf­foon­ery of Mr John­son him­self, and choose some­thing dif­fer­ent? (ps — NOT the BNP.) As for Boris — do us a favour, give the man some bells and a fun­ny hat and call a nump­ty a nump­ty.

SHAC Attack

On Sat­ur­day 26th April, a con­tin­gent from bath went to Hor­sham, west sus­sex, for the Nation­al Stop Hunt­ing­don Ani­mal Cru­el­ty demos against Nor­var­tis, a com­pa­ny that tests on pri­mates and sup­plies the noto­ri­ous vivi­sec­tion lab, Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences. The protest start­ed at Hor­sham park and around 500 peo­ple marched through the cen­tre of Hor­sham to sub­ur­bia where the ani­mal abus­ing com­pa­ny is locat­ed. After a few speech­es some of the pro­test­ers under­stand­ably got upset and start­ed shak­ing the fences. The com­pa­nies body guards (police) soon stopped this how­ev­er, after a brief strug­gle. All in all a good day, and we went back to the park where leg­endary veg­an cater­er Veg­gies pro­vid­ed veg­an burg­ers and cake. It seems Nor­var­tis UK got off light­ly, the Span­ish HQ hav­ing been van­dalised at a recent demo in Barcelona.

EVENTS

Mon­day nights Bath Hunt Sabs Meet­ing, 8pm, Bell
Wednes­days 4–7pm Lon­don Rd Food Co-op, River­side Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre
Sat­ur­days 11.30am-12.30 Bath Stop The War Vig­il, Abbey Court­yard
12th May, 7.45pm Green­peace meet­ing, Still­point, Broad Street
14th May, 8.30pm Bath Green Drinks, upstairs, the Rum­mer
17th May, from 6pm Punk ben­e­fit gig, The Junc­tion, Stokes Croft, Bris­tol
18th May, 1–4pm Bub­bling Under, Pot­er Cel­lar Bar, George Street
21st May Smash EDO phone/email block­ade-see www.smashedo.org.uk
29th May, from 7.30pm Talk by chair of CND, Friends Meet­ing House, York Street
31st May‑1 June Bris­tol Veg­an Fayre, The Water­side, Bris­tol
2 June, 8pm Friends of the Earth meet­ing, Still­point, Broad St
3 June, 12–3pm There is such a thing as a free lunch stall, Queen Sq
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…

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

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