The Trebanos Five — “Ramblers” arrested on route of National Grids Pipeline

This morn­ing ( Wed 31-01-2007 ) five peo­ple were arrest­ed on the pub­lic foot­path run­ning through the con­struc­tion site in Tre­banos, South Wales.

The Tre­banos Five.…. Whose quick deci­sion mak­ing left a bit to be desired were arrest­ed today for “learn­ing Ital­ian, hav­ing a pic­nic and read­ing” on an ille­galy closed pub­lic foot­path in Tre­banos.….. Hav­ing being giv­en 5 min­utes to move on, they were hand­cuffed and man­han­dled whilst decid­ing what to do next( three min­utes lat­er.…) They are now known as The Tre­banos Faffing Five !!!

This morn­ing ( Wed 31-01-2007 ) five peo­ple were arrest­ed on the pub­lic foot­path run­ning through the con­struc­tion site in Tre­banos, South Wales.

The Tre­banos Five.…. Whose quick deci­sion mak­ing left a bit to be desired were arrest­ed today for “learn­ing Ital­ian, hav­ing a pic­nic and read­ing” on an ille­galy closed pub­lic foot­path in Tre­banos.….. Hav­ing being giv­en 5 min­utes to move on, they were hand­cuffed and man­han­dled whilst decid­ing what to do next( three min­utes lat­er.…) They are now known as The Tre­banos Faffing Five !!!

The foot­path was sub­ject to an “undat­ed” clo­sure notice on Thurs­day 25th Jan­u­ary 2007. The notice gave 7 days notice. Today’s arrests on the foot­path were with­in the 7 day peri­od and those arrest­ed are seek­ing legal advice with regards their wrong­ful arrest.

Neath Port Tal­bot CBC who closed the foot­path are soon to be sub­ject to a Judi­cial Revue for the way they han­dled the plan­ning process. Nation­al Grid are now threat­en­ing local peo­ple in South Wales that they will sue them should their work be delayed any longer.…

Nation­al Grids Secu­ri­ty Guards, sor­ry I mean The South Wales Police Force, seemed very pleased with them­sleves and were filmed and pho­tographed by a local res­i­dent con­cerned for the safe­ty of those arrest­ed.
Up to 40 police offi­cers were on hand to arrest the five young peo­ple.

Nation­al Grids 48″ dia, high pres­sure pipeline has caused a storm of con­tro­vesy. The envi­ro­men­tal issues, safe­ty issues, the lack of democ­ra­cy and the abuse of human rights have drawn sup­port for the pro­tes­tors from all of the UK, The Bahamas, Cal­i­for­nia and Ross­port.

The Tre­banos Five were arrest­ed with­in a few feet of the site where Nation­al Grid are attempt­ing to dig a 30 mtrs deep ver­ti­cal shaft through which will trav­el the 48″ pipe. The pipe goes through much of the South Wales Coal­field and also through the Bre­con Bea­cons Nation­al Park.

Nation­al Grid claim this pipeline is essen­tial for our future ener­gy needs. That has been dis­proved using their own data. This pipeline is not need­ed, it is not want­ed and it is a dan­ger­ous project which will only add to our car­bon foot­print. The con­tin­ued use of fos­sil fuels, which is clear­ly sup­port­ed by our gov­ern­ment and police force, can only end in dis­as­ter. We may not see all of the effects today, but our chil­dren and their chil­dren will have to live with the results of our bla­tant dis­re­gard of the Earth.

The Bristol Alliance Against Urban 4x4s celebrated its launch on Saturday

30.01.2007

Cam­paign­ers gath­ered on Col­lege Green, after spend­ing the morn­ing issu­ing over 1,000 mock park­ing tick­ets to 4x4s in areas of cen­tral Bris­tol includ­ing Red­land, Clifton and Broad­mead. The paper tick­ets, which are placed harm­less­ly under the wind­screen wipers of parked vehi­cles, are titled ‘Poor Vehi­cle Choice’ and chal­lenge the need to own and dri­ve a 4x4 vehi­cle in town.

Bristol anti-urban 4x4 launch30.01.2007

Cam­paign­ers gath­ered on Col­lege Green, after spend­ing the morn­ing issu­ing over 1,000 mock park­ing tick­ets to 4x4s in areas of cen­tral Bris­tol includ­ing Red­land, Clifton and Broad­mead. The paper tick­ets, which are placed harm­less­ly under the wind­screen wipers of parked vehi­cles, are titled ‘Poor Vehi­cle Choice’ and chal­lenge the need to own and dri­ve a 4x4 vehi­cle in town.
—-break—->
The depen­dent media were inter­est­ed in the launch of the cam­paign. HTV shot a TV news item. Mem­bers of the group were inter­viewed by BBC Radio Bris­tol / GWR and Star. Sto­ries appeared in the Bris­tol Evening Post and BBC Online. The Alliance aims to use peace­ful and humor­ous means to raise aware­ness of the prob­lems asso­ci­at­ed with 4x4 usage in cities like Bris­tol, led by con­cerns over road safe­ty, road space and cli­mate change. Although 4x4s are mar­ket­ed as being safer than small­er cars – and many dri­vers buy them on this assump­tion – a series of expert reports warns this is not the case. Euro-NCAP crash tests and acci­dent fig­ures show that the greater weight and height of 4x4s increas­es the risk of rollover and makes them more dan­ger­ous in acci­dents with small­er vehi­cles, cyclists and pedes­tri­ans. The British Med­ical Jour­nal has run arti­cles call­ing for ‘health warn­ings’ on 4x4s due to their increased injury risk, and a recent study in the US found the like­li­hood of a pedes­tri­an fatal­i­ty is near­ly dou­bled in the event of a col­li­sion with a large 4x4 com­pared with a pas­sen­ger car. There is also evi­dence that 4x4s pose extra dan­gers to the dri­vers of oth­er cars – the Trans­port Research Lab­o­ra­to­ry has found that in a crash, the per­son dri­ving a small­er car is 12 times more like­ly to be killed than the per­son in the 4x4. 4x4s also pro­duce far more car­bon diox­ide – the main gas asso­ci­at­ed with cli­mate change – per kilo­me­tre than small­er cars. A large 4x4 such as the Range Rover Dis­cov­ery 4.4 pro­duces 354g CO2/km – more than three times that of a Ford Fies­ta, Peu­geot 206 or Renault Clio (diesel mod­els). TV pre­sen­ter David Atten­bor­ough has said that dri­ving a 4x4 is “moral­ly wrong” and the ener­gy min­is­ter Mal­colm Wicks has crit­i­cised the “crass irre­spon­si­bil­i­ty” of those who dri­ve large 4x4s around the sub­urbs. The Alliance has received offers of help from over 100 Bris­tol res­i­dents so far, and sent out over 3,000 spoof park­ing tick­ets for dis­tri­b­u­tion. On Mon­day we received a huge num­ber of email orders for spoof park­ing tick­ets from con­cerned Bris­tol res­i­dents. Many new mem­bers have joined and are enthu­si­as­tic to start local groups in Red­land and Bish­op­ton. They plan to stage humor­ous direct actions against the 4x4s in Bris­tol that endan­ger the lives of peo­ple and the future of the plan­et. Thanks to every­one who helped organ­ise our suc­cess­ful launch and came to Col­lege Green on Sat­ur­day and thanks to Claire for the inspi­ra­tion.

bristol4x4alliance at yahoo.co.uk for more infor­ma­tion on how you can be part of this cam­paign.

Foe of the 4x4
e‑mail: bristol4x4alliance at yahoo dot co dot uk
Home­page: http://www.stopurban4x4s.org.uk/

Protests at Irish embassy in London against Shell’s hell in north west Ireland

30.01.2007

At mid­day today, while a sam­ba band played below, a man who wished to be known as “G” climed the Irish embassy. This was in protest over the Irish gov­ern­ments col­lu­sioin with Shel­l’s activ­i­ties in North West Ire­land where they are con­struct­ing a pipeline and refin­ery. Many cam­paign­ers claim this pipeline and refin­ery pose as seri­ous envi­ron­men­tal risk. While there have been wide­spread protests in Ire­land itself many claim that the gov­ern­ment of Ire­land has giv­en Shell sus­pi­cious­ly favourable busi­ness terms on the deal. “G” was arrest­ed for on sus­pi­cion of crim­i­nal dam­age though there was no dam­age vis­i­ble from ground lev­el. For fur­ther details see the cor­po­rate watch web­site.

30.01.2007

At mid­day today, while a sam­ba band played below, a man who wished to be known as “G” climed the Irish embassy. This was in protest over the Irish gov­ern­ments col­lu­sioin with Shel­l’s activ­i­ties in North West Ire­land where they are con­struct­ing a pipeline and refin­ery. Many cam­paign­ers claim this pipeline and refin­ery pose as seri­ous envi­ron­men­tal risk. While there have been wide­spread protests in Ire­land itself many claim that the gov­ern­ment of Ire­land has giv­en Shell sus­pi­cious­ly favourable busi­ness terms on the deal. “G” was arrest­ed for on sus­pi­cion of crim­i­nal dam­age though there was no dam­age vis­i­ble from ground lev­el. For fur­ther details see the cor­po­rate watch web­site.

301007_Irish_Embassy_Shell_Hell — video/x‑ms-wmv 5.4M

Press Release

Today, sup­port­ers for the Anti-Shell Cam­paign took their protest to the Irish Embassy. The action was to tar­get the Irish State; Shell; Sta­toil and Marathon who are attempt­ing to con­struct a dan­ger­ous and exper­i­men­tal onshore raw gas pipeline and refin­ery in Coun­ty Mayo; a beau­ti­ful remote part of North West Ire­land.

There is mas­sive oppo­si­tion to this pro­posed pipeline by the local com­mu­ni­ty, Ire­land and inter­na­tion­al­ly. A cam­paign of direct action against this plan has been ongo­ing since 2005.

The action at the Embassy today is to demon­strate that this pol­lut­ing project will not just affect the area in which it is to be built, but will con­tribute to the ongo­ing organ­ised destruc­tion of the plan­et by Shell. The action is in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the peo­ple direct­ly affect­ed by this unprece­dent­ed raw gas pipeline, which has been con­demned as pos­ing an unac­cept­able risk to health and safe­ty.

The Irish State active­ly encour­ages the Shell led con­sor­tium – Nor­we­gian owned Sta­toil and U.S. owned Marathon — by facil­i­tat­ing stages of the con­struc­tion project, includ­ing the chang­ing of laws to allow the project go ahead. These com­pa­nies are tax exempt, thus there is no finan­cial ben­e­fit to the Irish peo­ple. Shell are also deploy­ing hun­dreds of police, who dai­ly intim­i­date peo­ple and use vio­lence to deter them, espe­cial­ly at recent demon­stra­tions.

The action at the Embassy today is to show the con­cern which many peo­ple share about the cor­rup­tion and com­plic­i­ty of the Irish Dáil, using its pow­er to sell out the inter­ests of the Irish peo­ple, putting per­son­al prof­it before pub­lic inter­est, safe­ty and health.

Events at Cowley Club, Brighton

Here is the lat­est list of events at the Cow­ley Club, 12 Lon­don Road, Brighton, East Sus­sex.

Weds 31st Jan, 7pm: V is for Video Activist — Schnews film show­ing

Thurs 1st Feb, 8–9pm: Evening Meal in the bar — Veg­etable and nut bake with mush­room sauce, parsnip mash and sal­ads

Here is the lat­est list of events at the Cow­ley Club, 12 Lon­don Road, Brighton, East Sus­sex.

Weds 31st Jan, 7pm: V is for Video Activist — Schnews film show­ing

Thurs 1st Feb, 8–9pm: Evening Meal in the bar — Veg­etable and nut bake with mush­room sauce, parsnip mash and sal­ads

Fri 2nd Feb, 8pm: Ground Zero DJs

Mon 5th Feb, 6.30pm: Gen­er­al Meet­ing — all mem­bers wel­come to dis­cuss the run­ning of the club, make pro­pos­als etc.

Thurs 8th Feb, 8–9pm: Evening Meal in the bar — Jew­ish food, plus cock­tails.

Fri 9th Feb, 8pm: Gig: Ast­pai, Aus­tri­an punk, The Steal, pos­i­tive hard­core, and Andy Fic­tion, melod­ic punk

Sun 11th Feb, 5pm: Film and dis­cus­sion with Oax­a­ca activist

Tues 13th Feb, 7pm: Film show­ing: And still they dance, doc­u­men­tary about the com­mu­ni­ty resis­tance to the build­ing of a Shell pipeline in Ross­port, Co. Mayo, Ire­land.

Thurs 15th Feb, 8–9pm: Evening Meal in the bar — Cur­ry Night

Fri 16th Feb, 8pm: Gig: Breach plus sup­port

Sat 17th Feb, 8pm-late: Dub night, fundrais­er for del­e­ga­tion to Pales­tine

Sun 18th Feb, 2–6pm: Sun­day roast fundrais­er for Brighton ABC

Thurs 22nd Feb, 8–9pm: Evening Meal in the bar — Ital­ian delights

Thurs 22nd Feb, 8pm: Bar col­lec­tive meet­ing, all vol­un­teers wel­come!

Fri 23rd Feb, 8pm: Gig: Los Alber­tos, fundrais­er for Oax­a­ca

Sat 24th Feb, 8pm: Gig: Crowzone/Scrap Recs

Sun 25th Feb, 2–5pm: Sun­day Roast in the bar, fundrais­ing for The Refugee Trust

Tues 27th Feb, 8pm: Open Mic night

http://www.cowleyclub.org.uk

New Rising Tide Group Starting Up in Norwich

Tired of watch­ing politi­cians and cor­po­ra­tions screw up the plan­et? Think that end­less eco­nom­ic growth is at the heart of the cli­mate cri­sis? Unin­spired by send­ing £3 to Char­i­ty X, but not sure where to put your ener­gy? Want to help build just, sus­tain­able solu­tions here and now? Then come to the first meet­ing of Nor­wich Ris­ing Tide!

Tired of watch­ing politi­cians and cor­po­ra­tions screw up the plan­et? Think that end­less eco­nom­ic growth is at the heart of the cli­mate cri­sis? Unin­spired by send­ing £3 to Char­i­ty X, but not sure where to put your ener­gy? Want to help build just, sus­tain­able solu­tions here and now? Then come to the first meet­ing of Nor­wich Ris­ing Tide!

Nor­wich Ris­ing Tide — Tak­ing Action to Stop the Fos­sil-Fuelled Mad­ness!

Be part of a nation­al net­work com­mit­ted to tak­ing cre­ative direct action against the root caus­es of cli­mate change, and pro­mot­ing local, com­mu­ni­ty-run solu­tions to our ener­gy needs. For five years, Ris­ing Tide groups around the coun­try have tak­en action to pre­vent air­port expan­sion, end oil com­pa­ny spon­sor­ship of the arts, stop con­struc­tion of dodgy BP and Shell pipelines, start con­struc­tion of urban com­mu­ni­ty gar­dens and much, much more – see www.risingtide.org.uk.

We all know it’s time to act, so come along to kick-start an ener­getic new group that can help bring about the rad­i­cal change that’s need­ed.

First Meet­ing:
When — Tues­day 27th Feb­ru­ary, 7.30 — 9.30pm
Where — The Green­house, 42–46 Bethel Street, Nor­wich, NR2

More Info -
www.risingtide.org.uk/norwich
07961 917535

Be part of a Ris­ing Tide for Cli­mate Action!

norwich@risingtide.org.uk
http://www.risingtide.org.uk/norwich

Some Jan Critical Mass reports — London, Leeds, Manchester (& I Bike Mcr festival)

You nev­er know what the police are going to do next on the Lon­don ride. They clamp down on some things and relax on oth­ers from one month to the next and from one part of the ride to anoth­er. ‘Sham­bol­ic’ is per­haps the word that best describes their behav­iour. They seem at times to behave more like Anar­chists than the rid­ers. You would think with their radios they could at least arrive at some sort of a con­sen­sus. In addi­tion to our usu­al police overkill the For­ward Intel­li­gence Team were also in atten­dance at the South Bank, pok­ing their cam­eras in peo­ple’s faces. All this just because of a bike ride!

You nev­er know what the police are going to do next on the Lon­don ride. They clamp down on some things and relax on oth­ers from one month to the next and from one part of the ride to anoth­er. ‘Sham­bol­ic’ is per­haps the word that best describes their behav­iour. They seem at times to behave more like Anar­chists than the rid­ers. You would think with their radios they could at least arrive at some sort of a con­sen­sus. In addi­tion to our usu­al police overkill the For­ward Intel­li­gence Team were also in atten­dance at the South Bank, pok­ing their cam­eras in peo­ple’s faces. All this just because of a bike ride!

This time the cops decid­ed to get tough with rid­ers with­out lights and those who go through red lights and also with sound sys­tems in the SOCPA zone. Did you know, it is OK for some­one with a car to play their sound sys­tem in the vicin­i­ty or Par­lia­ment but not for a cyclist with a sound sys­tem? How dis­crim­i­na­to­ry is that? Any­way, the cops allowed an extra long ‘bikes high’ stop in Oxford Cir­cus but no stop what­so­ev­er in Pica­dil­ly Cir­cus. Those rid­ers who were pulled for going through red lights are now fac­ing a £30 fine, despite the fact that some cops were actu­al­ly ush­er­ing oth­er rid­ers through red lights!

One of the high­lights of the ride was storm­ing through the Ald­wych under­pass, some­thing the police nor­mal­ly pre­vent. We had a fun time with Bri­an Haw in Par­lia­ment Square, he led the “More bikes less cars!” chants on his mega­phone and seemed in a very good spir­its. The ride split up after that at around 9pm, going off in all direc­tions and leav­ing our yel­low coat­ed ret­inue behind, chin-wag­ging among them­selves.
http://www.criticalmasslondon.org.uk

Quick­time video ver­sion — video/mp4 8.3M
Win­dows video ver­sion — video/x‑ms-wmv 8.6M

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45 peo­ple rode around Leeds for just under an hour last night, with no police inter­ven­tions. The largest ride for some years, its hoped that this is the begin­ning of rever­sal in the down­ward trend of recent times.

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crit­i­cal mass man­ches­ter last fri­day and the next one..

Crit­i­cal Mass on Fri­day was absolute­ly amaz­ing. We stood around chat­ting out­side the library for ages just chill­in and social­is­ing and meet­ing the many new­com­ers to the mass. Peo­ple mak­ing the I Bike MCR did some film­ing for part of the film and some­one tak­ing pho­tos for the bicy­cle exhi­bi­tion in March.

Then the 40 or so of us took to the streets, rid­ing around the city cen­tre and down past the sta­tion right down Grosvenor street and onto oxford road where mass­es of stu­dents wait­ing for some gig cheered us as we rode by the union. We rode through Rusholme and then up to With­ing­ton and back , hard­ly any neg­a­tiv­i­ty at all instead we were greet­ed with cheers and friend­ly beeps and waves from car dri­vers and pedes­tri­ans… woooo!
After the ride we all went for a nice cold beer..mmm

Join us on Fri­day 23rd Feb for the next one, which will end at the ram­pant lion on upper brook st/anson rd where we will have our very own cel­e­brate crit­i­cal mass par­ty with bands and dj’s play­ing reg­gae, ska and punk..

email us at: mcrcriticalmass@yahoo.co.uk
be our myspace friend: http://www.myspace.com/mcrcriticalmass
see our web­site: http://velorution.x21.org.uk

Man­ches­ter I bike Mcr fes­ti­val:

From 30th March to 20th April the I Bike MCR fes­ti­val takes place in
Man­ches­ter. It is a grass­roots fes­ti­val organ­ised by cyclists for cyclists
with diverse events that will entice any cyclist. From Bicy­cle Polo
class­es and match­es to All­ey­cat rac­ing to a Bicy­cle Art Exhi­bi­tion,
there’s some­thing for every­one.

Those involved in organ­is­ing the event are cyclists from dif­fer­ent walks
of life includ­ing cycling instruc­tors, dai­ly com­muters, bicy­cle
mes­sen­gers, Crit­i­cal Mass advo­ca­cy group mem­bers and bicy­cle mechan­ics.

Timetable

Fri­day 30th March
6pm Crit­i­cal Mass bike ride, meet at Cen­tral Library to cel­e­brate the
bicy­cle over car cul­ture.

8pm Exhi­bi­tion Open­ing at The Base­ment, 24 Lever St. The open­ing event
will be one to remem­ber and will fea­ture the pre­mier screen­ing of new
Man­ches­ter bicy­cle film “I bike MCR”. We shall also be show­ing oth­er
bicy­cle films and hav­ing a roller race (an indoor bicy­cle race- on
rollers) with lots of prizes to be won! Local acoustic bands will be
per­form­ing includ­ing the amaz­ing Coop­er Jones and Dr But­ler’s Hat­stand
Med­i­cine Band

Sat­ur­day 31st March
1pm Platt Fields Park Bicy­cle Polo class. Oxford bicy­cle polo team are
com­ing to teach us how to play the sport. Please email to reserve a place.
(they return 2 weeks lat­er to play a match: Man­ches­ter vs Oxford)

Sun­day 1st April
2pm Cen­tral Library April Fools Day Bicy­cle Trea­sure Hunt. A fun trea­sure
hunt around our city.

Wednes­day 4th April
Moon­light Pub Ride Start 7pm Sand­bar, Grosvenor St (off Oxford Road/opp.
All Saints Park. A night ride out and around the out­skirts of Man­ches­ter
stop­ping off at some love­ly pubs for a drink on the way.

Fri­day 13th April
Hell Of The North West All­ey­cat
Fix­ies and road­ragers ride the all­ey­cat for a fast race round our city. £5
entry, amaz­ing prizes to be won. with some donat­ed by the won­der­ous Twin
Six and Keirin Cul­ture
Email to reg­is­ter

Alleykit­ten
Shop­pers, bmx’s and sil­ly bikes ride alleykit­ten for a ran­dom race full of
games and non­sense round our city cen­tre. £5 entry, amaz­ing prizes to be
won. Email to reg­is­ter

Sat­ur­day 14th April
1pm Platt Fields Park Bicy­cle Polo Match: Man­ches­ter vs Oxford.

For more infor­ma­tion see the web­site: www.ibikemcr.org.uk or email
info@ibikemcr.org.uk

Colombian farmers evicted by British mining companies

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of African-Colom­bian and Indige­nous fam­i­lies evict­ed from their land in the province of La Gua­ji­ra, Colom­bia to make way for a mas­sive open­cast coal mine will speak in Lon­don on Mon­day 29th Jan­u­ary, 6.30pm‑8.30pm at The Human Rights Action Cen­tre, 17–25 New Inn Yard, Lon­don EC2.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of African-Colom­bian and Indige­nous fam­i­lies evict­ed from their land in the province of La Gua­ji­ra, Colom­bia to make way for a mas­sive open­cast coal mine will speak in Lon­don on Mon­day 29th Jan­u­ary, 6.30pm‑8.30pm at The Human Rights Action Cen­tre, 17–25 New Inn Yard, Lon­don EC2.

Many com­mu­ni­ties have been forced from their land since the mine opened in the 1970s. The vil­lage of Taba­co was demol­ished in 2001 just after British-based com­pa­nies bought into the project. Many inhab­i­tants accept­ed the inad­e­quate finan­cial com­pen­sa­tion on offer, oth­ers are still hold­ing out for com­mu­ni­ty relo­ca­tion so that they can con­tin­ue liv­ing as a com­mu­ni­ty and farm­ing the land as they did before.

The British-based com­pa­nies that now own the mine are Anglo Amer­i­can, BHP­Bil­li­ton and Xstra­ta. All raise mon­ey on the Lon­don Stock Exchange. Anglo Amer­i­can has its head office in Lon­don. Many pen­sion funds invest in these com­pa­nies. Many ordi­nary work­ing peo­ple in Britain, with­out know­ing it, are ben­e­fit­ing from the destruc­tion of farm­ing com­mu­ni­ties in Colom­bia by the world’s rich­est min­ing multi­na­tion­als. All three com­pa­nies have good rep­u­ta­tions as social­ly and envi­ron­men­tal­ly respon­si­ble enter­pris­es. The real­i­ty is very dif­fer­ent. Come and hear the com­mu­ni­ties’ side of the sto­ry

Loca­tion: The Audi­to­ri­um, Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al UK, The Human Rights Action Cen­tre, 17–25 New Inn Yard, Lon­don EC2
Con­tact:  info@colombiasolidarity.org.uk
(near­est tube Old Street)

3 protesters arrested at supermaket blockade (for Welsh language)

Mor­risons super­mar­ket was block­ad­ed by pro­test­ers and three mem­bers of the Welsh Lan­guage Soci­ety were arrest­ed today (Sat­ur­day 27 Jan­u­ary) as part of the con­tin­u­ing cam­paign for a law ensur­ing rights to use Welsh

Welsh supermarket blockadeMor­risons super­mar­ket was block­ad­ed by pro­test­ers and three mem­bers of the Welsh Lan­guage Soci­ety were arrest­ed today (Sat­ur­day 27 Jan­u­ary) as part of the con­tin­u­ing cam­paign for a law ensur­ing rights to use Welsh
Fol­low­ing a pub­lic meet­ing held in the High Street of Ban­gor, north Wales, attend­ed by about 250 peo­ple a small­er group held a sit-down protest in the entrance to Mor­risons super­mar­ket. Despite pre­vi­ous protests and meet­ings between cam­paign­ers and the company’s head office in Eng­land, Mor­risons have failed to pro­vide a full bi-lin­gual ser­vice.

As eighty or so pro­test­ers sat down block­ing the entrance a num­ber of oth­er Welsh Lan­guage Soci­ety mem­bers plas­tered posters on the doors announc­ing that the store was tem­porar­i­ly shut. Gwen­no Teifi, Sti­wart Edwards and Bethan Willams were lat­er arrest­ed for sus­pect­ed crim­i­nal dam­age. were lat­er arrest­ed for sus­pect­ed crim­i­nal dam­age.

Estab­lished in 1962 The Welsh Lan­guage Soci­ety (Cymdei­thas yr Iaith Gym­raeg) has been suc­cess­ful in win­ning a TV chan­nel, edu­ca­tion reforms and two changes in leg­is­la­tion pro­vid­ing lim­it­ed rights ensur­ing gov­ern­ment, local coun­cils and offi­cial bod­ies make use of Welsh. How­ev­er the Soci­ety con­stant­ly draw atten­tion to exam­ples such as Mor­risons as typ­i­cal of the pri­vate sector’s fail­ure to pro­vide bi-lin­gual ser­vices.

More pho­tos on Flickr.com
 http://www.flickr.com/photos/51447658@N00/

http://cymdeithas.org

12 February 2007 — Fantastic February Blockade at AWE Aldermaston

12 Feb­ru­ary 2007
Fan­tas­tic Feb­ru­ary Block­ade at AWE Alder­mas­ton
From 7 am at Tadley gate

Block the Builders photo montage12 Feb­ru­ary 2007
Fan­tas­tic Feb­ru­ary Block­ade at AWE Alder­mas­ton
From 7 am at Tadley gate

Meet up the night before for con­spir­a­cy and prac­tice

Block the Builders are call­ing for spe­cial efforts for this last
announced block­ade before the vote on Tri­dent replace­ment

Par­lia­ment will vote on Tri­dent replace­ment with­in weeks. The gov­ern­ment
are propos­ing a long term pol­i­cy in favour of new nuclear weapons and
against
dis­ar­ma­ment. Now is the time to show your oppo­si­tion to British weapons
of mass destruc­tion in a prac­ti­cal and vis­i­ble way.

If Par­lia­ment vote to replace Tri­dent in March it will be an uphill
strug­gle for decades to come, so it is vital that we exert pres­sure now
to influ­ence the
debate. This means not just tak­ing action, but also let­ting peo­ple know
— local groups, local media and your local MPs as they are the ones who will
be vot­ing.

At Alder­mas­ton new facil­i­ties to devel­op the replace­ment for Tri­dent are
already being built. Block the Builders are call­ing for all build­ing work to
stop until a deci­sion is made about the future of Britain’s nuclear weapons.

Pre­vi­ous­ly…
In Novem­ber 400 peo­ple descend­ed on Alder­mas­ton to oppose Tri­dent
replace­ment and halt the con­struc­tion of new facil­i­ties. Nuclear war work
was dis­rupt­ed for sev­er­al hours but the large num­bers involved meant
that only one per­son was arrest­ed. The more peo­ple we have the low­er the
risks are.

The road out­side Alder­mas­ton was closed by police for two hours in
Decem­ber dur­ing a block­ade by a dozen peo­ple using a con­crete-filled
wheel­ie bin and
a vari­ety of lock-ons. And a suc­cess­ful sur­prise action this week by
Scot­tish activists saw con­struc­tion traf­fic blocked for four hours and
con­crete
lor­ries arriv­ing to build the new facil­i­ties were turned away.

Join the block­ade on Mon­day 12 Feb­ru­ary.
Block the Builders are call­ing for a spe­cial effort dur­ing this cru­cial
time.
Non-arresta­bles and sup­port­ers are need­ed. We are encour­ag­ing oth­ers to “be
pre­pared”. Bring plans, equip­ment and enthu­si­asm. Bring your friends!

Accom­mo­da­tion avail­able the night before, legal sup­port team on the day.

See www.blockthebuilders.org.uk for fur­ther details or
ring 07969 739 812

Protests continue at Trebanos

26.01.2007

At 2.00 pm today a group of cam­paign­ers against the con­tro­ver­sial LNG pipeline forced work to stop yet again on the con­struc­tion site in Tre­banos.

Pipe protest on footpath26.01.2007

At 2.00 pm today a group of cam­paign­ers against the con­tro­ver­sial LNG pipeline forced work to stop yet again on the con­struc­tion site in Tre­banos.

Cam­paign­ers occu­pied a foot­path run­ning through the site. They argued that the foot­path had been closed ille­gal­ly because the required sev­en days noti­fi­ca­tion had not been giv­en. Even local res­i­dents had not been informed of the clo­sure.

Ini­tial­ly, the police tried to stop pro­tes­tors gain­ing access to the foot­path, how­ev­er, they had to admit that they were uncer­tain of the legal­i­ty of the path clo­sure.

Pri­or to today’s action, work on the con­struc­tion site had been stopped for three weeks by cam­paign­ers occu­py­ing the foot­path. Resis­tance to the pipeline is grow­ing, with protest sites and actions against the pipeline increas­ing dai­ly. The lat­est direct action site is a tree camp in Bre­con occu­py­ing the route of the pipeline.

Come to Wales and be on the front­line of Britain’s eco-defence!

Con­tact Rachael (Tre­banos): 01792 830417
Bre­con Tree Camp: 07903152822