M1 widening actions pigged

Police News Man­age­ment, Incom­pe­tence and Poor Atti­tude To Peace­ful Protest Exposed After They Pre­vent Peace­ful Cli­mate Camp Action With Mas­sive Over Reac­tion

Today, Mon­day 19th of Feb­ru­ary, peace­ful pro­test­ers from the Camp For Cli­mate Action had planned a series of events to high­light the envi­ron­men­tal cost of widen­ing the M1. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, a mas­sive police pres­ence, total­ly out of pro­por­tion to the pro­posed protest, appears to have con­tributed to mas­sive tail-backs on the motor­way near Sheffield. The pro­test­ers decid­ed not to go ahead with their event after being offered a ridicu­lous­ly lim­it­ed space in which to make their point and no pro­test­er actions took place at any time. At no point did any of them approach close to the motor­way, and they could not have there­fore caused the tail­backs as the Police sug­gest­ed to local radio. In fact, there had been an acci­dent on that stretch, which com­bined with the road­works and the police pres­ence, was prob­a­bly the cause of the delays.

Police News Man­age­ment, Incom­pe­tence and Poor Atti­tude To Peace­ful Protest Exposed After They Pre­vent Peace­ful Cli­mate Camp Action With Mas­sive Over Reac­tion

Today, Mon­day 19th of Feb­ru­ary, peace­ful pro­test­ers from the Camp For Cli­mate Action had planned a series of events to high­light the envi­ron­men­tal cost of widen­ing the M1. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, a mas­sive police pres­ence, total­ly out of pro­por­tion to the pro­posed protest, appears to have con­tributed to mas­sive tail-backs on the motor­way near Sheffield. The pro­test­ers decid­ed not to go ahead with their event after being offered a ridicu­lous­ly lim­it­ed space in which to make their point and no pro­test­er actions took place at any time. At no point did any of them approach close to the motor­way, and they could not have there­fore caused the tail­backs as the Police sug­gest­ed to local radio. In fact, there had been an acci­dent on that stretch, which com­bined with the road­works and the police pres­ence, was prob­a­bly the cause of the delays.

In a sec­ond embar­rass­ing mis­take, the Police seem to have believed that the action had been planned by the No M1 Widen­ing Cam­paign. In fact, the Camp For Cli­mate Action was sole­ly respon­si­ble. The police prob­a­bly don’t realise the link between traf­fic growth and wors­en­ing cli­mate change which threat­ens us all.

Sam Nex­ter said “Tony Blair has claimed that the gov­ern­ment is tak­ing cli­mate change seri­ous­ly but bil­lions of pounds of tax­pay­er’s mon­ey is now being wast­ed on a scheme that will do noth­ing to ease con­ges­tion but will increase emis­sions. There are much more effec­tive and eco­nom­ic ways to tack­le con­ges­tion such as improv­ing pub­lic trans­port and trans­fer­ring freight onto the rail­ways.”

“Its mad that, on top of pay­ing for dan­ger­ous motor­way build­ing, mon­ey is also wast­ed pay­ing large num­bers of police to sit around in vans.” he added.

The work to widen this stretch of M1 start­ed a month ago, and work on the sec­tion between junc­tion 6a-10 is already well under way. In total 115 miles of the M1 is due to be widened from the M25 to Mil­ton Keynes and from Leices­ter to Leeds, cost­ing a total of over £3.74 bil­lion. Many peo­ple believe the widen­ing will allow traf­fic to grow, caus­ing more CO2 emis­sions. Road trans­port already accounts for 21% of emis­sions in the UK and ris­es every year.

info@climatecamp.org.uk
http://www.climatecamp.org.uk