Free Shops — easy positive action. A Newcastle story

I did a Free Shop this week­end, and it was bril­liant. Free Shops make a pos­i­tive stand against land­fill, con­sumerism, social iso­la­tion and cli­mate change. Let’s have a sum­mer of free shops every­where — at your local com­mu­ni­ty fes­ti­val, on your high street and heck, why not, lets have one against the G8 in Auchter­arder too!

This week­end I set up a Free Shop at the New­cas­tle Com­mu­ni­ty Green Fes­ti­val. By Sun­day it was run­ning itself. This report tells you how to do one, and some of the good things you might get out of it.

The resources need­ed were one small gaze­bo ( bor­rowed ), two tables ( bor­rowed ), a mark­er pen, a bit of gaffer tape, and a vantrip on sat­ur­day morn­ing to deliv­er the first 10 bags of stuff. All that was left at the end was one bin lin­er half-full of ripped and mud­dy bin­lin­ers and plas­tic bags — but as many peo­ple request­ed the bags to car­ry their items away, even that was­n’t too bad.

Amongst the items giv­en away were a gui­tar, three cam­eras, 7 beech seedlings, 2 conker trees, 6 ‘ted­dy bear’ sun­flow­ers, a dozen boardgames, at least 20 pairs of shoes, at least 7 bin­bags full of clothes ( includ­ing swim­ming cos­tumes, pin­stripe suits and bras ), at least 30 books, at least 30 cds, at least 20 videos ( both chil­dren’s and adult ), at least 20 com­put­er games and pro­grammes, crock­ery, fry­ing pans, a dozen mugs, place­mats and orna­ments, a dozen bags, play­ing cards, at least a dozen keyrings, at least a dozen cud­dly toys, a bag of mina­ture sol­diers, 2 water can­nons and a water pis­tol, bags of mar­bles and boun­cy balls, lock­ets and neat con­tain­ers, tea from dar­jeel­ing, incense from new del­hi, fab­ric from thai­land, hip­py clothes and so on. All these things were junk to the peo­ple in pos­ses­sion of them, and they were all in imme­di­ate dan­ger of end­ing up in land­fill.

This was the first time that I’ve known a Free Shop to be not just about giv­ing stuff that we’ve col­lect­ed away, but for oth­er peo­ple to actu­al­ly bring stuff along and keep replen­ish­ing the stock. Tak­ing place on two con­sec­u­tive days was cru­cial for this, and it real­ly worked as a par­tic­i­pa­to­ry exchange sys­tem. For exam­ple, on Sat­ur­day one lass said she was leav­ing the coun­try in 4 weeks time and need­ed to get rid of all her stuff, which duly turned up on Sun­day. I’d pret­ty much run out of my col­lect­ed stuff by Sun­day, so the only rea­son it kept going was cos peo­ple kept deliv­er­ing stuff. I’d wan­der off for a cof­fee, only to find anoth­er 3 bin­bags on my return which I could then spread out and shout ‘get your free stuff here’ and draw anoth­er crowd. One indi­vid­ual brought along a whole batch of longlife light­bulbs with slight­ly dam­aged pack­ag­ing, maybe 50 of them?, and we split them into indi­vid­ual lots to spread around.

Chil­dren picked up things to give to their par­ents ( I had to be care­ful the rude books did­n’t go to them ), and most pleas­ing to me, non-hip­py local moth­ers would come along with their kids and fill a plas­tic bag with the things that appealed to their chil­dren. The so-per­fect-it-almost-makes-you-retch moment was when a woman appeared with a box of baby clothes. She said ‘i’ve got a load more things in the car. they’re every­thing you need for a girl from 0 to 2 years old’ ( a bit spe­cialised, i won­dered, for the free shop? ). So she asked for a hand to unload them, and whether I thought they’d be of use to any­one. Then a sec­ond woman who’d been going thru stock on the oth­er table said ‘well i’m expect­ing in 5 weeks, and it’s going to be a girl’. So I put the two of them togeth­er, they had a chat, and off they went to the car — where I think all the stuff got deliv­ered to the 2nd wom­an’s home.

Oth­er high-lights:

Hav­ing chat­ted to me on Sat­ur­day, a fes­ti­val vol­un­teer and his daugh­ter brought along their 4 foot high play-kitchen on Sun­day, com­plete with plas­tic food and uten­sils. This was pos­si­bly the star offer of the week­end and it attract­ed a lot of atten­tion, but it final­ly went to the grand­par­ents of a young girl. Although I’d writ­ten ‘deliv­ery offered on this item’ on it they said ‘ah no, we just live over there’ and so they car­ried it off towards the sta­di­um end of the park.

Some­one, I for­get who, left mon­ey on the table so I had great fun shout­ing out ‘even the mon­ey is free’ and it was ages before any­one took it — in the end we had two blokes rum­mag­ing thru the clothes rac­ing to find it, with me going ‘warm, warmer, arr your hand almost touched it!’

Sev­er­al stall­hold­ers and per­form­ers got real­ly into the free shop too and said it was one of the best things they’ve seen at a fes­ti­val in ages. On Sun­day for exam­ple, when a clown was float­ing bub­bles on the lake, he got pushed in by a gang of lads and, he says, got very close to los­ing his tem­per. He was soaked, so he came along to the Free Shop and picked him­self up a dry set of clothes and was very grate­ful for it. ( He also donat­ed a bag of trin­kets and assort­ed items ). A cou­ple of our per­form­ers who ear­ly on Sat­ur­day picked up some clothes, then decid­ed to come back every hour or so to donate one pack of bat­ter­ies and one set of recharg­er things each time.

Lots of peo­ple were chal­lenged by the idea of things being free and had to get over their guilt or dis­be­lief, but once they did they were all very chuffed. One chi­nese guy in par­tic­u­lar had to keep ask­ing the price of the small items he was tak­ing, because his eng­lish was­n’t great and he did­n’t want to make a mis­take. One young girl in a wheel­chair who came both days, was so keen that I start­ed to get annoyed with her hang­ing round the stall and try­ing to get the best stuff as soon as it arrived. Most peo­ple how­ev­er were unnec­es­sar­i­ly polite to each oth­er, a lit­tle bewil­dered and scared of get­ting told off, and the only scram­ble for items took place when I got some boun­cy balls out of the bag and there hap­pened to be 20-odd kids from a steel band around the stall!

Two of us took turns to man the stall. But by the time we were start­ing to get tired of it on Sun­day, two teenage lads who I had­n’t met before inde­pen­dent­ly took over and had great fun shout­ing how every­thing was free and must go. I’d expect­ed at least a cou­ple of bin­lin­ers of unwant­ed clothes at the end, but some­how they man­aged to get rid of every last bit. I found only one skirt left as lit­ter in the park.

I great­ly enjoyed the con­ver­sa­tions with peo­ple, which cov­ered such top­ics as how to care for sun­flow­ers, why land­fill was bad and got dumped next to where peo­ple live, con­sumer cul­ture, the his­to­ries and prove­nance of items, char­i­ty shops, what to do with mon­ey instead, and so on. Com­ments includ­ed ‘it’s made my day’, ‘all shops should be like this’, ‘it’s not real­ly free is it’ and ‘if only i’d known i’d’ve brought…’

I promised peo­ple the free shop would become a reg­u­lar fea­ture at this fes­ti­val, and will adver­tise it more wide­ly next year.

Free Shops can also work on high streets, at gigs and on your neigh­bour­hood street cor­ner. A bit of pre-adver­tis­ing helps but is not essen­tial.

Protest against G8 climate ministerial, London

Police arrest­ed two pro­test­ers at a noisy demon­stra­tion protest­ing the cli­mate poli­cies of G8 min­is­ters meet­ing today in the City of Lon­don.

About 40 activists beat pots and pans and blew whis­tles to demon­strate their oppo­si­tion to G8 cli­mate poli­cies, argu­ing that they served the inter­ests of big busi­ness rather than the world’s poor like­ly to be most affect­ed by glob­al warm­ing.

They were out­num­bered by more than 50 police offi­cers behind a met­al bar­ri­cade set up to defend an entrance to The Brew­ery on Chiswell Street, where the min­is­te­r­i­al meet­ing dis­cussing respons­es to the cli­mate cri­sis was being held.

‘The min­is­te­r­i­al meet­ing’s aim was to con­tin­ue with busi­ness as usu­al while por­tray­ing indus­tri­al­ized-coun­try gov­ern­ments as the sav­iours of the envi­ron­ment. We were here today to say enough is enough. We need true cli­mate jus­tice now,â€? said Matthew Rob­bins of Ris­ing Tide, a Lon­don-based envi­ron­men­tal group.

The pro­test­ers stressed G8 and World Bank poli­cies of sub­si­diz­ing oil explo­ration and extrac­tion, which they said could only make glob­al warm­ing worse.

“This shows how afraid of the truth min­is­ters are, when they have to bar­ri­cade them­selves out of hear­ing of the pub­lic” said Amy Tan­ner of the G8 Cli­mate Action Group.

The arrests, on pub­lic order grounds, were made as pro­test­ers paused by anoth­er entrance to The Brew­ery where they had moved prepara­to­ry to dis­pers­ing.

The protest fol­lowed Mon­day’s Alter­na­tive Sum­mit for Cli­mate Jus­tice, held at near­by Toyn­bee Hall.

The alter­na­tive sem­i­nar was also watched close­ly by more than 20 police in what one par­tic­i­pant char­ac­ter­ized as “the sort of attempt at intim­i­da­tion that is becom­ing rou­tine in Blair’s Britain”.

 

In the build-up to the G8 Sum­mit in Scot­land in July this year the Labour Gov­ern­ment will share its future vision of mar­ket envi­ron­men­tal­ism with 20 coun­tries (includ­ing the G8 them­selves).

So will they prac­tice what they preach or preach what they prac­tice?

£5.5 bil­lion road-build­ing pro­gramme to build 200+ new roads.

Air­port expan­sion (12 new run­ways across Britain); refuse to tax avi­a­tion fuel despite gov­ern­ment promis­es to tax pol­lut­ing indus­tries

£500 mil­lion of pub­lic mon­ey for export guar­an­tees to the oil and gas sec­tor per year in the last three years via the UK Export Cred­it Guar­an­tee Depart­ment (ECGD).

Nuclear ener­gy classed as ‘green’ with Labour plans for more reac­tors

Why leave the future sta­bil­i­ty of the plan­et in the hands of these prof­it-dri­ven mega­lo­ma­ni­acs as eco­log­i­cal and social jus­tice is pil­laged world­wide.

 

 

 

Anti coal protesters lock on to Solid Energy: support needed, New Zealand/Aotearoa

At 12 noon on Sun­day the 6th March 2005, 4 pro­test­ers locked them­selves on to the entrance way of Sol­id Ener­gy’s head offices in Christchurch. Sup­port­ers pitched tents and held ban­ners, while all are prepar­ing to spend the night at the site.

The activists are oppos­ing Sol­id Ener­gy’s pro­posed Cyprus Mine; an open cast coal mine to be sit­u­at­ed at Hap­py Val­ley, on the West Coast. The Envi­ron­ment Court is set to hear appeals against the mine from tomor­row morn­ing. Those locked on to the build­ing plan to stay through­out the hear­ing as a con­stant reminder to Sol­id Ener­gy that their pro­pos­al to mine Hap­py Val­ley is strong­ly opposed, both with­in and out­side the court process.

More info and pic­tures to come, please come down (clarence st by the train sta­tion) and sup­port, espe­cial­ly for Mon­days pick­et!

“Hap­py Val­ley is a unique and pre­cious ecosys­tem, home threat­en species such as the Great Spot­ted Kiwi and giant land snail. Fur­ther­more the min­ing of this beau­ti­ful val­ley will only add to the prob­lem of cli­mate change. Coal is a total­ly unsus­tain­able fuel source that only pol­lutes our local and glob­al envi­ron­ment,” com­ment­ed Jonathan Oost­er­man, one of the locked on activists.

A pick­et is also planned for 8.30am Mon­day morn­ing out­side Sol­id Ener­gy, although sup­port­ers are encour­aged to come down at any time, as are those who want to dis­cuss the issues with those locked on.

“We are here to stay! We won’t back down until Sol­id Ener­gy put a stop to their plans and Hap­py Val­ley is saved!”

Linslade Demonstration — Saturday 5th March 9.15 and more trees threatened

On SATURDAY 5th MARCH @ 9.15 a demon­stra­tion against the bypass will be held at the Wing Hill round­about, junc­tion of A418 and A505.

This is where the bypass is intend­ed to end and six mag­nif­i­cent oaks have already been felled, with sev­en more marked with the cross of death (these could still be defend­ed with a tree­house if any­body is inter­est­ed). The local (Tory) MP Andrew Selous, will be at the demon­stra­tion. Whilst pre­dictably he remains in favour of the bypass, he has agreed to ask some ques­tions in par­lia­ment about the way in which it received per­mis­sion. There is also the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a Sam­ba band com­ing along.

Trans­port from Oxford: Details have yet to be finalised but a vehi­cle should be leav­ing from Manzil way at 8am and return to Oxford short­ly after mid­day.

This should enable those who want to attend the Azim Anzari demon­stra­tion also at 1pm. More details will fol­low. The only oth­er way to get to Linslade this ear­ly from Oxford is by train via Lon­don, but this is expen­sive (£20-£30). The protest site is about a 20-minute walk from the sta­tion.
Links:  http://www.linsladeprotest.org.uk or  http://www.roadalert.org.uk/

Whilst sad­ly it looks as though the road will be built it is still worth protest­ing.
This bypass is only the start of a four-sec­tion road from Ayles­bury to Mil­ton Keynes, which could effec­tive­ly form anoth­er motor­way par­al­lel to the M1. Con­tin­ued protest will hope­ful­ly make the coun­cil think twice about con­tin­u­ing this scheme and fur­ther actions / camps on the bypass site will increase secu­ri­ty costs.

About two miles north of where Sat­ur­day’s demon­stra­tion is due to take place the full scale of destruc­tion can be seen. Where 2 weeks ago stood sev­er­al love­ly old trees and the protest camp now is mud, machin­ery and fenc­ing. Sec­tions of oil pipeline are vis­i­ble in the field south of the road in prepa­ra­tion for the pipeline diver­sion.

Climate Change activists STOP London’s oil traders

Thir­ty-five Green­peace vol­un­teers halt­ed trad­ing on the glob­al oil mar­ket by occu­py­ing the Inter­na­tion­al Petro­le­um Exchange in Lon­don. They entered the high secu­ri­ty build­ing near Tow­er Bridge short­ly before 2pm, just as the world mar­ket in Brent crude was about to switch to Lon­don.

They attached dis­tress alarms to heli­um bal­loons, blew foghorns and hand­cuffed them­selves to the trad­ing pit, forc­ing the exchange to shut down. The Inter­na­tion­al Petro­le­um Exchange does one thou­sand bil­lion dol­lars of busi­ness each year and trad­ing at the Lon­don exchange sets the price for 60 per­cent of the world’s oil.

The Exchange spe­cialis­es in so-called ‘open out­cry’ trad­ing, where all orders have to be shout­ed in a clear and audi­ble voice. But the Green­peace vol­un­teers with their float­ing alarms and foghorns have made that form of trad­ing impos­si­ble.

An IPE spokes­woman said open out­cry trad­ing was sus­pend­ed for an hour but elec­tron­ic trad­ing con­tin­ued through­out.”

“I have to say we weren’t lis­tened to by the traders. They were more inter­est­ed in punch­ing us than lis­ten­ing to us,” Tin­dale said.

“They pulled a met­al book­case down on our heads. They were try­ing to use that to push us back out so that was the moment we decid­ed to retreat for every­one’s safe­ty.”

One pro­test­er was injured. He was treat­ed at the scene before being tak­en to a hos­pi­tal.

“It was to send a mes­sage to the oil indus­try on the day Kyoto comes into force that busi­ness as usu­al is no longer an option,” Tin­dale told jour­nal­ists by tele­phone from the cen­tral Lon­don build­ing on Wednes­day.

“The oil indus­try has been key to pre­vent­ing progress on cli­mate change which is why it has tak­en so long for Kyoto to come into force. But sci­en­tists are telling us we are get­ting dan­ger­ous­ly close to the point of no return,” he added.

“To be ramp­ing up pro­duc­tion — which the oil indus­try seems to be doing — on the day Kyoto comes into force is sim­ply irre­spon­si­ble,” he added.

The Green­peace raid was one of a num­ber of protests staged across the globe.

Green groups marked the day with protests out­side U.S. embassies and con­sulates, street parades in Japan and by carv­ing fast-melt­ing ice sculp­tures of kan­ga­roos in Aus­tralia.

Today is a day for action. After a long and ardu­ous process the Kyoto Pro­to­col comes into force and busi­ness as usu­al is not an option.

The Kyoto Pro­to­col is designed to cut emis­sions of green­house gas­es from fos­sil fuels like oil. But Kyoto tar­gets, which are now legal­ly bind­ing, fall well short of what is need­ed to seri­ous­ly fight cli­mate change. We are rapid­ly approach­ing a point of no return. Tony Blair and oth­er world lead­ers must use this year’s G8 to move the world onto a dif­fer­ent track.

Dan­ger­ous cli­mate change is already with us. Accord­ing to the World Health Organ­i­sa­tion 150,000 peo­ple are killed every year by cli­mate change. The Inter­gov­ern­men­tal Pan­el on Cli­mate Change, a UN body com­pris­ing the world’s most emi­nent cli­mate sci­en­tists, pre­dicts tem­per­a­tures will rise this cen­tu­ry by as much a five degrees Cel­sius.

Tony Blair has said he will put cli­mate change at the top of the agen­da for this sum­mer’s G8 meet­ing in Scot­land, but he has thus far failed to push for a strong Euro­pean posi­tion or extract con­ces­sions from Pres­i­dent Bush, while UK car­bon diox­ide emis­sions have not gone down since New Labour came to pow­er.

Protestors NOT evicted at Linslade. The protestors retreated under the cover of darkness as a surprise tactic against the Council

Bucks Coun­cil arrived this morn­ing with the heavy mob at Linslade to mur­der half a dozen more ancient trees. Hun­dreds of secu­ri­ty and police, some on hors­es, as well as pro­fes­sion­al climb­ing baliffs, accom­pa­nied the Coun­cil goons to evict pro­tes­tors from the six tree­hous­es.

How­ev­er the mur­der­ous coun­cil­lors were left with egg on their faces when it emerged that there was nobody in the trees to evict. The pro­tes­tors had retreat­ed under the cov­er of dark­ness as a sur­prise tac­tic against the coun­cil, who had already paid for police, bal­liffs, secu­ri­ty and climbers.

Noth­ing was to be gained by fight­ing a pitched bat­tle on this day. These trees were doomed but the road is far from built and the bat­tle goes on.

Local pro­tes­tors were on the verge to show their oppo­si­tion to the destruc­tion. There were no arrests, but the trees are gone and a bit of us has gone with them.

Unlike the trees we are free to fight anoth­er day.

http://www.linsladeprotest.org.uk

Greenpeace greenwash lecture guerilla-ed

The 4th Green­peace Busi­ness Lec­ture took place on Tues­day 25th Jan­u­ary 2005 at the Roy­al Soci­ety of Arts and was deliv­ered by Lord Oxburgh, Chair­man of Shell. Green­peace Busi­ness said in advance that “The lec­ture will focus on the future of oil com­pa­nies in the light of grow­ing evi­dence on the dan­gers of cli­mate change.”

Wear­ing pro­tec­tive radi­a­tion suits and wield­ing top-of-the-range (home-made more like) green­wash detec­tion and clean-up equip­ment, The Green­wash Guer­ril­las were on site to declare the event a ‘Tox­ic Green­wash Haz­ard’. Passers-by and would-be atten­dees were advised to move away from the build­ing, while those insist­ing on entry were warned that direct phys­i­cal con­tact with the lev­els of “Cor­po­rate Social Respon­si­bil­i­ty” (CSR) antic­i­pat­ed could cause long-term dam­age to spir­i­tu­al health. Not to men­tion the like­li­hood of becom­ing a bit-play­er in a Shell-chore­o­graphed CSR soap opera. Sad­ly, none took this advice — per­haps the gas masks made it too hard to deci­pher.

A ban­ner read­ing “TOXIC GREENWASH HAZARD” (with the “A” of “GREENWASH” an oil der­rick pump­ing out flames and clouds of CO2) was tied to the rail­ings of the very fan­cy Roy­al Soci­ety of Arts. One oper­a­tive detect­ed high lev­els of green­wash below street lev­el. “They“re smug­gling Oxburgh in through the sew­er!” cried anoth­er, a the­o­ry which could not be ver­i­fied at time of writ­ing.

At one point, who should be seen step­ping from a black cab but Dr. Robin Bid­well, Chair­man of Envi­ron­men­tal Resources Man­age­ment (about whom, see our spoof web­site of a few years back at www.erm-concerns.com) He expressed no regrets for his company“s com­plic­i­ty in laun­der­ing BP“s Baku-Cey­han pipeline, and wouldn“t be drawn about the num­ber of con­tracts with BP had been lost since his offices were occu­pied in 2002/3.

Soon after, the freez­ing Guer­ril­las were thrilled to feel the heat of right­eous indig­na­tion cours­ing through their veins as a Shell pub­lic rela­tions rep­re­sen­ta­tive emerged onto the steps and began to insti­gate a lit­tle dia­logue. “Oil com­pa­nies can save the plan­et, (if their share­hold­ers will let them)”, he declared, before being wrapped in haz­ard tape…through which he kept spout­ing top-draw­er corp-speak, swear­ing on his mother“s SUV that Shell was “try­ing real­ly hard”, and “real­ly, real­ly cared” about the cli­mate. The GG“s were stunned into silence by this bare-faced dis­play – either that or they were smart enough not to be lulled by the prospect of “hav­ing their say” at the big mahogany board­room table of pow­er. (One who was tempt­ed had to be dis­in­fect­ed by a less cred­u­lous col­league.)

Rumours that this Shell rep was a plant to cre­ate a lit­tle fris­son of a full and frank exchange of views are a shock­ing bar­rel of lies.

Most atten­dees were drawn from the world of oil com­pa­nies, renew­ables com­pa­nies, big NGOs, media and pol­i­tics. Almost all accept­ed a non-tox­ic leaflet while some stopped to talk through the issues, often implaca­bly opposed to Shell and deter­mined to throw Oxburgh a tough ques­tion. One asked if we were Green­peace pick­et­ing Shell, as did an Inde­pen­dent reporter; there“s noth­ing like a lit­tle con­fu­sion to get the issues to show up in a clear­er light.

As the pun­ters queued to enter the lec­ture, a few GGs took advan­tage of their pro­tec­tive cloth­ing to accept a Green­peace Busi­ness offer to come inside and watch the lec­ture on the live video feed. At first they just checked the room for high but man­age­able lev­els of green­wash. But once Oxburgh came on screen, the equip­ment was under too much pres­sure, so they beat a swift retreat. This equip­ment is cut­ting edge, high-tech pro­to­type stuff on its first out­ing, and we need it to be in good order for the doubt­less large num­bers of events which we will have to attend and con­tribute our unpaid, unsung pub­lic ser­vice. This is the year of the G8 in the UK after all, so unprece­dent­ed lev­els of cli­mate-relat­ed green­wash will be stick­ing to our shoes all the way to July at least.

For that rea­son, (noth­ing at all to do with the bit­ing Jan­u­ary wind), we decid­ed to retreat tac­ti­cal­ly to a near­by hostel­ry to wash away dan­ger­ous inter­nal traces of Shell green­wash that might have evad­ed our anti-Shell suits ear­li­er on.

MESSAGE FROM THE GREENWASH GUERRILLAS (dis­trib­uted out­side lec­ture)

Shell vs. plan­et
WARNING! — you are with­in chok­ing dis­tance of a seri­ous spillage of ultra-pow­er­ful super-sophis­ti­cat­ed extra-tox­ic Shell green­wash. (Green­wash = envi­ron­men­tal white­wash.) Tonight, Lord Ron Oxburgh, Shell Chair­man, deliv­ers the Green­peace Busi­ness Lec­ture on “Peo­ple, Cli­mate and Nat­ur­al Resources”. We trust you have brought your gas mask & sick bag.

In terms of cli­mate chaos, the solu­tion is sim­ple: LPG (Leave Petro­le­um in the Ground). And in the bat­tle against green­wash, here“s anoth­er sim­ple acronym: DBI – Don“t Buy It. If not, then we will see the grad­ual sell­ing out of all mean­ing­ful oppo­si­tion to indus­try and gov­ern­ment-ped­dled fos­sil fuel mad­ness. You can“t put a price on the atmos­phere, and mar­ket envi­ron­men­tal­ism will not pre­vent mar­ket-dri­ven cat­a­stro­phes.

FOUR EXAMPLES FROM OVER A CENTURY OF PLUNDER:
* Growth at all costs? Shell “has promised to close the grow­ing gap with rivals such as BP and Exxon­Mo­bil by find­ing new reserves equal to 100 per cent of the oil and gas it pulls from the ground on aver­age for the next four years.”
Action aims to restore reserves, FT, 19.1.05.
* Niger­ian destruc­tion: 2005 is the 10th anniver­sary of the Shell-sanc­tioned mur­der of Ken Saro-Wiwa; “Shell“s com­mit­ment to cor­po­rate social respon­si­bil­i­ty looks shal­low in the light of the sus­tained mis­ery of the peo­ple of the Niger Delta.”
Sus­tained mis­ery — Shell in the Niger Delta;www.christian-aid.org.uk
* Iraqi sell-off: “Oil majors, includ­ing Shell and BP, are mov­ing clos­er to estab­lish­ing a long-term pres­ence in Iraq…it emerged yes­ter­day.”
Shell advert seeks ‘our man in Iraq’, Gdn 11.8.04.
* Sakhalin sac­ri­ficed: “Clean up the oil spill, not just your image, cam­paign­ers tell Shell”;www.sakhalin.environment.ru/en/sakhalin2/msakhalin.html

With many civ­il soci­ety groups climb­ing into bed with rapa­cious, PR-savvy cor­po­ra­tions, it“s a relief to know that Green­peace will nev­er take cor­po­rate cash. But Shell has pulled off an invalu­able coup in appear­ing to have tamed the group best known for anti-oil direct action.
Since Big Oil“s triple bot­tom line is prof­it, prof­it & prof­it, since it is trained to lie to pro­tect that prof­it, and since it has no place in a sus­tain­able, social­ly just future, we look for­ward eager­ly to news of Green­peace and oth­er direct actions on Shell, (not to men­tion BP, Exxon, Sus­tain­Abil­i­ty et al) in the future. After all, there“s no such thing as a good oil com­pa­ny.

Let The Green­wash Guer­ril­las know what you think, c/o
Mal Brand­ed or Jude Boyn­ton from Lon­don Ris­ing Tide:
london@risingtide.org.uk c/o 62 Fieldgate Street, Lon­don E1 1ES
Tel: 07708 794665 londonrisingtide.org.uk See also risingtide.org.uk

Anti Linslade Bypass Protestors go to Road Builders Bucks County Council

Linslade council banner hang

Pro­tes­tors against the Linslade Bypass today took there protest to the Bucks Coun­ty Coun­cil Offices in Ayles­bury, hang­ing a large ban­ner on a car park oppo­site the coun­cil offices read­ing Chal­lenge Car Cul­ture. (Oh the irony!)

Chal­lenge Car Cul­ture! — The ban­ner oppo­site Bucks Coun­ty Coun­cil Offices.

The protest was held to time with Bucks Coun­ty Coun­cils efforts in the High Court today to get a rul­ing for­bid­ding fur­ther protests on the site, and was also at the same time as head of trans­porta­tion Gar­ret Emer­son was hold­ing a meet­ing with Bed­ford­shire Coun­ty Coun­cil regard­ing the Bypass.

The aim of the protest was to show oppo­si­tion to the con­struc­tion of the Linslade bypass and sec­ond­ly to encour­age the coun­cil to devel­op a trans­port pol­i­cy based upon increased sup­port for pub­lic trans­port and local facil­i­ties. For exam­ple new hous­ing (if real­ly nec­es­sary) could be based around a reopened east-west rail link and express inter-town bus routes. It is hoped that the protest will also give encour­age­ment to the more Eco-mind­ed mem­bers of the Coun­cil to put across their views more strong­ly.

The ban­ner was vis­i­ble to any­body work­ing with­in the main coun­cil office tow­er and would have would have been vis­i­ble to any­body work­ing with­in the coun­cil offices. Unfor­tu­nate­ly as the ban­ner was tied to the side of a pri­vate car park it was tak­en down by secu­ri­ty with­in about 20 min­utes, how­ev­er those present felt it was there long enough to make a sig­nif­i­cant impact. The protest also got good local press and was cov­ered by the Bucks Her­ald, Mix 96 Radio and BBC local radio.

4 secu­ri­ty guys turned up to remove the ban­ner and escort­ed the two pro­tes­tors from the car park. Although tech­ni­cal­ly with­in their rights as the protest was on pri­vate prop­er­ty, they were slight­ly mob hand­ed in their actions. Where as the police on fac­ing a sit­u­a­tion like this will usu­al­ly polite­ly ask what you are doing and give you a chance to take down a ban­ner your­selves, these guys moved in with lit­tle pre­am­ble and start­ed to tear down the ban­ner. For­tu­nate­ly plead­ing with them worked to a small extent, as we were able to res­cue the ban­ner from their knives for use on anoth­er occa­sion.
Also to be fair to them they are prob­a­bly paid very poor wages and are unlike­ly to be giv­en train­ing as to what to do in such sit­u­a­tions.

Watch this space, more protest against the bypass will fol­low!
More peo­ple will­ing to get involved in action against the road always want­ed. See road alert for con­tact details.http://www.roadalert.org.uk/

Peat processing plant sabotaged, Somerset

At the end of 2004 a peat pro­cess­ing plant near Glas­ton­bury, Som­er­set, was sab­o­taged. The Plant processed peat for sev­er­al com­pa­nies dis­trib­ut­ing to Gar­den Cen­tres. The peat was extract­ed from areas in and near 5 dif­fer­ent Sites of Spe­cial Sci­en­tif­ic Inter­est for their eco­log­i­cal val­ue. These sites were with­in an Area of out­stand­ing Nat­ur­al Beau­ty.

Two large bull­doz­ers, and a tur­bo engined pack­ing machine had their engines destroyed. A cat­api­lar tracked bull­doz­er and a JCB exca­va­tor had their engines sab­o­taged. All elec­tri­cal cut outs for the pro­cess­ing plant were switched off and sealed. Over 200 palets of peat sacks for three dif­fer­ent com­pa­nies had their bags slashed (well over 1000 sacks). This action was taked in defence of the wild species of Som­er­set. Take action!

Solid Energy HQ Lawns Dug Up (Aotearoa/New Zealand)

Solid Energy HQ mined

More than 20 mem­bers of the  SHVC and oth­ers arrived at the Sol­id Ener­gy head­quar­ters in Christchurch and pro­ceed­ed to dig for coal under their front lawn. As a parady of Sol­id Ener­gy’s mit­i­ga­tion plans, peo­ple dressed as kiwi entered the build­ing and attempt­ed to “relo­cate” Sol­id Ener­gy staff so that the min­ing efforts out­side could pro­ceed. Every­one man­aged to get away before the police arrived, and the efforts were replayed on TV3 news that night