THE BATH BOMB
@nti-copyright: copy and dis­trib­ute!
Issue #17
free/donation

Dec 08 ‘No, he doesn’t exist you whiny lit­tle brat’

Batho­ni­ans Stand Up As The Econ­o­my Falls Down!

Sat­ur­day the 22nd of Novem­ber saw the start of BAN’s lat­est cam­paign, aimed at com­mu­ni­ty self-defence against the effects of the reces­sion. The ‘We Won’t Pay For Their Cri­sis!’ cam­paign has these key demands: fair heat­ing sub­si­dies, bailiffs out of our com­mu­ni­ties, no more house repos­ses­sions, no job or ben­e­fit freezes, con­trol of the banks and no to lay-offs. The demo start­ed off with around 20 activists (although the num­ber lat­er grew to around 35) con­gre­gat­ing at Bath Abbey before tak­ing to the roads and mak­ing a bee­line for Mil­som Street. Out­side the strip of banks, the crowd start­ed a spon­ta­neous road­block, snarling up traf­fic and tak­ing advan­tage of the huge amount of atten­tion to inform the pub­lic what the action was about and shame the banks through BAN’s shiny new mega­phone! Dur­ing the road­block, sev­er­al Xmas shop­pers decid­ed to join the action, and stayed with the march until the end. From there, the demo moved towards Guild­hall, where a brief block­ade was staged (this was only lift­ed to allow a wed­ding par­ty into Guild­hall; the sup­port­ive bride-to-be even posed for pic­cies with pro­test­ers!). After this, march­ing in the oppo­site direc­tion that the (by now slight­ly despair­ing) police pushed the crowd in, the protest moved back up to Nat West, where anoth­er block­ade took place, and dur­ing which the bank was adorned with ‘Where’s our bailout?’ stick­ers. In many ways, the day was a huge suc­cess. Many on the march were first time pro­test­ers, who refused to be intim­i­dat­ed by pushy and threat­en­ing police. The pub­lic were over­whelm­ing­ly in sup­port of the march — with hun­dreds of leaflets being giv­en out, and fre­quent cheers and applause com­ing from the pave­ments. Above all, the march marked the begin­ning of what promis­es to be a strong and effec­tive to defend our com­mu­ni­ties against greedy boss­es, politi­cians and land­lords, who would rather see us freez­ing, job­less and home­less than sac­ri­fice their own moun­tains of wealth.

How To Sur­vive A Reces­sion

With the reces­sion now deep­en­ing, all of us are feel­ing the pinch. Some already can­not afford to turn on their heat­ing, while oth­ers are get­ting laid-off and hav­ing prop­er­ty stolen by bailiffs. We have talked a lot about tak­ing the fight to the greedy sys­tem that caused the reces­sion, and we have giv­en a lot of col­umn inch­es to pro­mot­ing the idea of fight­ing against the sys­tem to pro­tect and improve our stan­dard of life. While this is def­i­nite­ly vital if we are to roll back the effects of this reces­sion, we at the Bath Bomb have not giv­en much time to talk­ing about what we can do in the here and now to make things a bit eas­i­er. All of the ideas we will look at involve the reclaim­ing of your own life — break­ing the umbil­i­cal cord of depen­den­cy on super mar­kets, banks and politi­cians, and it is this dis­as­so­ci­a­tion from the rich’s sys­tem of cap­i­tal­ist greed com­bined with direct attacks upon it that will allow us to live our lives free of their finan­cial cri­sis and social oppres­sion. With the rant behind us, let’s have a look at some bud­get-bust­ing reces­sion sur­vival mea­sures:

1. Grow some veg!: now is the time to be plant­i­ng gar­lic and win­ter peas, and from Jan­u­ary to March, every­thing from run­ner beans, toma­toes, car­rots and pota­toes go in the ground. If you have an unused fence, you can grow run­ners, and even the tini­est bit of gar­den can be turned into a good source of food. If you don’t have any space, start gar­den­ing with friends, or pop down to the Bath Organ­ic Allot­ments on Upper Bris­tol Road, who exchange huge bags of veg in return for vol­un­teer­ing.

2. Start a food co-op: this is a real­ly sim­ple idea. It involves you and your mates chip­ping in, order­ing from a whole­saler and get­ting the goods at cost price, side­step­ping the huge prof­its slapped on by super­mar­kets. You will each have to stick in a bit of mon­ey to get start­ed, then ‘buy’ the food from your­selves to gen­er­ate mon­ey to order in next month’s stock. Trust us — it’s cheap, and more info can be found at http://www.cooperativegrocer.coop/cg_special.html.

3. Five fin­ger dis­counts: a bit con­tro­ver­sial, but hey, super­mar­kets have been steal­ing from us for years. They steal land and resources from impov­er­ished farm­ers here and abroad, then steal our cash by charg­ing tens of times above the cost of trans­port and pro­duc­tion. So go on, rob — don’t feel guilty, you are poor and they are gross­ly rich, and most of their wealth comes from our pock­ets.

4. Jack­ing elec­tric­i­ty: there are loads of good ways to jack elec­tric­i­ty to help beat those win­ter bill blues. One involves locat­ing the cog that turns the meter on your elec­tric­i­ty box, heat­ing up a pin and push­ing it through the cas­ing to stop the tick­er turn­ing. Hey presto, free elec­tric­i­ty! But make sure to take the pin out for a few hours a day so the elec­tric com­pa­ny does­n’t start ask­ing ques­tions.

So there we go, just a few hints and tips to get you start­ed. We will try and bring you month­ly advice on beat­ing those reces­sion dol­drums (by any means nec­es­sary) from now on, and we’d love to hear your ideas. All mes­sages to bathbombpress@yahoo.co.uk

The Lit­tle Big Screen

Sun­day the 30th Novem­ber saw yet anoth­er fine Bub­bling Under offer­ing at the Porter Cel­lar, show­ing ‘Live Nude Girls Unite’ – a doc­u­men­tary chron­i­cling the for­ma­tion of the first exot­ic dancers’ union in the US in the late 90’s. This proved to be both enter­tain­ing and inspir­ing, as it tack­led racial dis­crim­i­na­tion, exploita­tive boss­es, fam­i­ly strug­gles and com­mon stereo­types of the sex indus­try. After all that excite­ment, though, Bub­bling Under is tak­ing a well-earned break this month. How­ev­er, it’s com­ing back thick and fast on Sun­day the 18th of Jan­u­ary from 1–4pm, with both a doc­u­men­tary about the British Poll Tax riots, and GI resis­tance to Viet­nam with ‘Sir No Sir’. More frag­gings and lobbed bricks than you can shake an iron lady at! Get there ear­ly to get a good seat, or bring your own.

Bath Bomb Word­watch: frag­ging (v); the act of killing a supe­ri­or offi­cer with the use of a grenade

http://www.sirnosir.com/

Christ­mas Chrompe­ti­tion

Here at the Bath Bomb we’re often accused of hat­ing the upper class. So we thought to our­selves, what bet­ter time to prove it! So, to win a free exclu­sive one-year sub­scrip­tion to the Bath Bomb, sim­ply send in your sto­ries about how you’ve man­aged to get up a toff’s nose this fes­tive sea­son.

EVENTS
2nd and 4th Mon­days of the month, Bath Hunt Sabs meet­ing, 8pm, the Bell, Wal­cot Street
Wednes­days, Lon­don Road Food Co-op, 4–7pm, River­side Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, Lon­don Road
Sat­ur­days, Bath Stop The War vig­il, 11.30am-12.30, out­side Bath Abbey
Fri­day 12th Decem­ber, anti-foie gras demo, 7–9pm, meet­ing at the Cir­cus
Fri­day 19th Decem­ber, anti-foie gras demo, 7–9pm, meet­ing at the Cir­cus
Wednes­day 7th Jan­u­ary, Bath Ani­mal Action meet­ing 7.30–8.30pm, back room of the Bell pub, Wal­cot Street
Thurs­day 8th Jan­u­ary, Bath Activist Net­work meet­ing, 7.30–9pm, down­stairs at the Hob­gob­lin
pub, St James Parade
Sat­ur­day the 10th Jan­u­ary, Bath FreeShop, 12–3pm, oppo­site Hol­land & Bar­rett, Stall Street
Tues­day 13th Jan­u­ary, Tran­si­tion Bath Forum, 7.15pm, Wid­combe Social Club
Wednes­day 14th Jan­u­ary, Bath Green Drinks, 8.30pm, upstairs at the Rum­mer pub, Grand Parade
Thurs­day 15th Jan­u­ary, The Pow­er of Com­mu­ni­ty film screen­ing, 7.30pm, the Cork pub, West­gate Street
Sun­day 18th Jan­u­ary, Bub­bling Under film screen­ing, 1–4pm, Porter Cel­lar, George Street
Mon­day 5th Feb­ru­ary, Bath Friends of the Earth AGM, Still­point, Broad Street Place, 8pm

My Big Fas­cist Greek Shoot­ing

Many of us in Eng­land have wit­nessed police bru­tal­i­ty, either first hand or on the news. To those of us who have been on the receiv­ing end of the raised trun­cheon of the law, it will come as no sur­prise that in Greece, the bru­tal­i­ty has reached a peak. On Sat­ur­day the 6th of Novem­ber, a detach­ment of blue-shirt­ed police (hat­ed in Greece, and usu­al­ly reserved for sit­u­a­tions of polit­i­cal tur­moil) provoca­tive­ly cruised through, and parked in a tra­di­tion­al­ly left-wing estate in Athens. Exert­ing their right to be free from unnec­es­sary sur­veil­lance, local anar­chist youths inter­vened to remove the police from their com­mu­ni­ty. The police respond­ed with stun grenades and live ammu­ni­tion, leav­ing 15-year-old anti-cap­i­tal­ist Alexan­dros-Andreas Grig­oropou­los dead on the street. Greece has since erupt­ed into spon­ta­neous riot­ing, described by Greek police as the worst in a gen­er­a­tion with dozens of banks and police sta­tions get­ting burned to the ground. Tens of thou­sands of peo­ple have been demon­strat­ing since Sat­ur­day night, and are already plan­ning for fur­ther unrest. The cities of Thes­sa­loni­ki, Athens, Patras and oth­ers have become bat­tle­grounds in which an angry civil­ian pop­u­la­tion is fight­ing the police and demand­ing an end to indis­crim­i­nate and bru­tal repres­sion. While the sense­less mur­der of a child by arro­gant and vio­lent police is news enough, this sto­ry fits into a big­ger pic­ture. This is not just the sto­ry of a Greek tragedy, but one that res­onates across the world. In coun­tries where police are allowed to kill indis­crim­i­nate­ly (e.g Bur­ma and Indone­sia), they do so. In coun­tries where police are giv­en access to tear gas, pep­per spray and stun grenades (Ger­many, Spain and Italy etc.), they use them with aban­don. As any­one who remem­bers the min­ers’ strike, the Poll Tax riots in Trafal­gar square, the Bean­field, the mur­der of Jean Charles de Menezes, or any oth­er exam­ple of police bru­tal­i­ty in the UK knows, the dif­fer­ence between a cop in this coun­try and the mur­der­ers in Greece has noth­ing to do with com­pas­sion or decen­cy of the British bob­by, but more to do with the fact that the aver­age cop in this coun­try does not have access to lethal weapon­ry… yet.

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. For more infor­ma­tion on any of our sto­ries, check out http://www.mypace.com/bathbomb

Mon­sieur, With Zees Protests You’re Real­ly Spoil­ing Us

Fri­day the 28th of Novem­ber saw a fol­low-up demo in the third ren­di­tion of the cam­paign against foie gras sell­er The Pinch of Margaret’s Build­ings. Long-time read­ers should be well versed in the ins and outs of this excit­ing saga, or maybe sick to death of hear­ing about it – well, so are we! Come on, Christophe, haven’t you had enough yet? After two hours of mega­phones, noisy chant­i­ng, leaflet­ing, spon­ta­neous song and dance rou­tines, heat­ed debates and even the odd fisticuffs (some well-to-do jol­ly old bean’s birth­day meal got ruined), the demo and atten­dant PCSOs moved off. Local opin­ion seems mixed, with some res­i­dents in great sup­port of the cam­paign, whilst oth­er big spenders couldn’t yank the wads of cash out of their wal­lets quick enough as they splut­tered their red-faced way inside the restau­rant – that’ll teach them bloody pro­test­ers!

So now the cam­paign is upping the ante: the demos will now be every Fri­day night, from 7pm. So, if you like your fine din­ing to be sans ear-split­ting dis­rup­tion, it’s best to eat else­where. And if you live local, and you want a bit of peace and qui­et, tell own­er Christophe LeCroix to do the right thing: stop sell­ing foie gras!

The Pinch
11 Margaret’s Build­ings, Bath, BA1 2LP
tel: 01225 421251
e‑mail: info@thepinch.biz

All The Food Of The Fayre

Sat­ur­day the 22nd was also the date of the first Bath Veg­an Fayre, show­ing near­ly 200 pun­ters just how sim­ple eat­ing veg­an can be. Info on nutri­tion and ani­mal rights issues was avail­able, as well as recipe books, but the food proved more appetis­ing: piz­za, soft drinks, pies, cheese­cake, bis­cuits, burg­ers, veg­gie bacon and sausage, soups… This jour­nal­ist is get­ting hun­gry just think­ing about it! Though the sched­uled talk on genet­ic engi­neer­ing was replaced short notice with one on food secu­ri­ty, the event was very much a suc­cess, and hap­py bel­lies were made full. Look out for their next big­ger, bet­ter (don’t quote us on that) instal­ment in ear­ly sum­mer, when the next is planned.

http://www.vegansociety.com

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 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: http://www.myspace.com/bathactivistnetwork

Steal Some­thing Day

Sat­ur­day the 29th of Novem­ber has been cel­e­brat­ed as Buy Noth­ing Day for some years now — a day aimed at high­light­ing the human rights and envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns gen­er­at­ed by exces­sive con­sumerism in the run up to Xmas (the sea­son of shod­di­ly made sweat­shop goods, and over­flow­ing rub­bish bins). But this year, anony­mous Batho­ni­ans decid­ed to make a slight­ly dif­fer­ent point. While we can make respon­si­ble deci­sions when buy­ing — it is not our fault that the prod­ucts we buy are made using slave labour in far off sweat­shops, not our fault that most large com­pa­nies show scant regard for the envi­ron­ment and cer­tain­ly not our fault that the com­pa­ny puts a mark-up of sev­er­al hun­dred % on the prod­uct before pass­ing it on to us. While the sweat­shop work­ers who pro­duce the prod­ucts are the biggest vic­tims, we are also vic­tims of cor­po­rate greed emp­ty­ing our pock­ets at every oppor­tu­ni­ty. With this in mind, activists set off on a marathon ‘steal some­thing’ spree. While declin­ing to com­ment whether they them­selves indulged in an orgy of shoplift­ing, the activists did reveal that, over the course of sev­er­al hours, they vis­it­ed some of the biggest, bad­dest chain stores and human rights abusers in town and improved hun­dreds of prod­ucts with invi­ta­tions encour­ag­ing con­sumers to lib­er­ate the prod­uct rather than part with hard-earned cash. The let­ter out­lined the eth­i­cal argu­ment for shoplift­ing, and the uneth­i­cal argu­ment for ram­pant free-mar­ket cap­i­tal­ism. The mes­sage was well and tru­ly spread that ‘buy noth­ing’ can also mean ‘take some­thing back’. If you want to join the cam­paign against sweat­shop con­di­tions, why not con­tact either No Sweat or Labour Behind The Label? After what these com­pa­nies have done to our envi­ron­ment, our high street and our fel­low human beings, the ques­tion begs to be asked — who are the real thieves?

http://www.nosweat.org.uk/
http://www.labourbehindthelabel.org/

Mak­ing A Song And Dance About It

Wel­come to Tesco Town: the hot­ly con­test­ed Tesco Express on Bath­wick Hill final­ly opened on Mon­day the 24th of Novem­ber, though not with­out inci­dent. They’d been drag­ging their heels ever since their pro­ject­ed open­ing in Feb­ru­ary, after being vocal­ly opposed by res­i­dents every step of the way for two years; the tale of toad­y­ing, bribery and trick­ery that final­ly got them their desired store is a leg­end unto itself. They also got away with not installing the traf­fic-calm­ing mea­sures they promised… but what’s a bro­ken promise among neigh­bours? For their so-called ‘grand’ open­ing, singers from local char­i­ty Gold­en Oldies pro­vid­ed the music, and man­ag­er Bren­dan Tuck­er wore his fixed grin. How­ev­er, pro­ceed­ings were dis­rupt­ed by two mod­est-sized protests that day, with four cheeky pirates wav­ing a jol­ly roger dur­ing the open­ing cred­its, and then anoth­er five lat­er on, from 6pm, freez­ing their bits off long into the night.

The char­i­ty above was set up to com­bat alien­ation, com­mu­ni­ty break­down and lone­li­ness amongst the elder­ly. The great irony is, though, that when local inde­pen­dents like Bath­wick Stores are worn away, then that is itself yet anoth­er exam­ple of com­mu­ni­ty ero­sion: what sort of famil­iar­i­ty or com­mu­nal bonds can you con­struct with a revolv­ing door pol­i­cy of bored check­out staff? The cash that Tesco injects into these groups is a drop in the ocean com­pared to the PR pay­back they reap through such asso­ci­a­tions. Not that you should be tak­en in by their friend­ly face, any­way – not when they’re spon­sor­ing sweat­shop con­di­tions in ‘fair-trade’ banana pack­ing hous­es in Luton, respon­si­ble for the deaths of cock­le-pick­ers in More­cambe Bay, or engag­ing in such oth­er human­i­tar­i­an ven­tures as help­ing kill off local food vari­eties, indus­tri­al farm­ing health scares, pol­lu­tion and ani­mal abuse, or build­ing up retail monop­o­lies. And they’ll prob­a­bly lock up their skips, too. In terms of pos­i­tive solu­tions, iron­ic leaflets and sub­ver­tis­ing notwith­stand­ing, local food co-oper­a­tives are a much bet­ter way to go – such as the Lon­don Road Food Co-op, the South­side Food Co-op or, if you can afford it, Har­vest on Wal­cot Street. But the ques­tion still stands with these food giants (and Tesco aren’t the only cul­prit) – what to do about them?

http://www.impacttlimited.com/2007/05/23/abuse-of-workers-packing-fair-trade-bananas-in-the-uk-on-today-programme-this-morning‑2/
http://www.tescopoly.org/
http://www.golden-oldies.org.uk
South­side Food Co-op: http://www.twerton.con/twerton-articles/southside-food-co-op-a22.html
Lon­don Road Food Co-op, River­side Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, York Place, Lon­don Road, Bath, BA1 6AE, tel: 07837 784715

Your Name’s Down, You’re Not Com­ing In

Antifas­cists across the land last month were cel­e­brat­ing Christ­mas ear­ly, as the entire BNP mem­ber­ship list was leaked on Novem­ber 18th. Whilst threats of legal action, arrests and the hyp­o­crit­i­cal invo­ca­tion of the Human Rights Act (which the BNP active­ly oppose) has been bandied about the net, it’s all a bit futile as the list has beamed far and wide. In Bath we alleged­ly have a measly nine proud bull­dogs to dis­own, and Frome has four, whilst Bris­tol seems to have a 100-strong infes­ta­tion to clean up. For a par­ty that is all about appar­ent­ly res­cu­ing the endan­gered great white work­ing class, it’s curi­ous that the major­i­ty in Bath are from mid­dle class areas; how dis­ap­point­ing. If any­one has any more infor­ma­tion on the fas­cist scene to impart, such as shoe size, IQ, favourite chat-up lines or places of work, send in to the usu­al address.

http://blogs.journalism.co.uk/editors/2008/11/19/bnp-members-list-leak-gathers-pace-online-to-link-or-not-to-link/

I Think We’re Alone Now…

You know you’re in trou­ble when the band you book for the end of your protest stand around mak­ing snide remarks at your expense. “Of course, we could all go and occu­py par­lia­ment,” sug­gest­ed that nice chap from Seize the Day, to sheep­ish laugh­ter and ner­vous foot-shuf­fling from the crowd of hip­pies in Par­lia­ment Square. We were in Lon­don for the annu­al Cli­mate March, expect­ing to join 15,000 marchers and a healthy anti-cap­i­tal­ist bloc, using our sheer force of num­bers to make the gov­ern­ment lis­ten.

Sad­ly, on the day only around 5,000 turned up, and our antic­i­pat­ed bloc did­n’t quite break dou­ble fig­ures. We marched a wind­ing route from the emp­ty-look­ing US embassy to the def­i­nite­ly emp­ty Par­lia­ment, demand­ing CO2 cuts, no to air­port expan­sions, and green jobs. Feel­ing increas­ing­ly mar­gin­al­ized, sur­round­ed by a sea of ‘Car­bon Cap, Not Hip­py Crap’ plac­ards, and in con­stant dan­ger of being run down by an encroach­ing sam­ba band, our mer­ry group clung togeth­er behind our ‘Cap­i­tal­ism Isn’t Work­ing’ ban­ner for half the march, then prompt­ly dis­in­te­grat­ed.

Two of us, red and black flags in hands, end­ed up at the very head of the march for almost a minute before being quick­ly removed by the stew­ards. Walk behind the green­house, they told us. It’s the sym­bol of the cam­paign. Go on; get back in your box. Every­one else is doing it.

And that’s the issue. The cam­paign­ers turn up once a year to demand some­body else fix their prob­lems, then they go home. The only way this march will help at this point is if it becomes an annu­al get-togeth­er to unite the move­ment and give us a chance to brag about all the suc­cess­ful direct actions of the past year. Oth­er­wise, the reduc­tion in marchers from 30,000 to 5,000 in a hand­ful of years will be reflect­ed in the move­ment as a whole. With­out sol­id actions and sol­id accom­plish­ments, we’re all fucked.

Now hand over those bolt­crop­pers – I’ve got stuff to do tonight.

Spe­cial Yule­tide Dis­claimer: Like you, we prob­a­bly dis­agree with every­thing every con­trib­u­tor has writ­ten. We’re just in it for the scene points. We espe­cial­ly wouldn’t encour­age any­one to do any­thing that might get them­selves in trou­ble with the law… Play safe kids!