Titnore Woods battle goes on! Upcoming events & update

DETERMINED eco-pro­test­ers in Wor­thing are fac­ing up to the hard­est chal­lenge yet in their two and a half year occu­pa­tion of threat­ened wood­land.

The freez­ing tem­per­a­tures and stormy con­di­tions mean life is cur­rent­ly no pic­nic for the hardy pro­test­ers camped out in Tit­nore Woods, West Dur­ring­ton, in a last-ditch bid to try and stop a new hous­ing estate and Tesco mega­s­tore from being built over green fields and ancient wood­land.

And grate­ful local sup­port­ers are organ­is­ing a pre-Christ­mas stall in the town cen­tre to bring fes­tive cheer to the tree-house dwellers, who moved onto the site back in May 2006.

They will be col­lect­ing pro­vi­sions for the pro­test­ers under the title “A Ham­per for a Camper” at Hold­er’s Cor­ner, Mon­tague Street, Wor­thing, on Sat­ur­day Decem­ber 20, from 11am.

It wasn’t an easy option when the team of eco-heroes sneaked onto the threat­ened ancient wood­land off Tit­nore Lane at the crack of dawn on a May bank hol­i­day and start­ed build­ing their tree homes before any­one knew what was hap­pen­ing.

Most peo­ple assumed they’d be kicked off again straight away, but the days turned to weeks turned to months turned to years and they’re still there!

The final plan­ning appli­ca­tion isn’t even through yet — they had to rethink part of it — and you can still object, writ­ing to the Wor­thing Bor­ough Coun­cil plan­ning depart­ment at Port­land House, Rich­mond Road, Wor­thing and quot­ing WB/04/00040/OUT.

But, sad­ly, Wor­thing cam­paign­ers against the devel­op­ment have already dis­cov­ered through years of cam­paign­ing, let­ter-writ­ing, peti­tion-rais­ing and large, peace­ful, demon­stra­tions that mon­ey and pow­er don’t lis­ten to the lit­tle peo­ple who know the dif­fer­ence between right and wrong.

We live in a world where even if police com­mit mur­der or theft they can get com­plete­ly off the hook.

We live in a world where politi­cians can lie through their teeth, start wars that kill hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple, and get away with it. We live in a world that is being choked to death by the blind greed of cap­i­tal­ism and yet we are told there is no oth­er option.

The Tit­nore campers are part of that big­ger pic­ture — they have the guts to phys­i­cal­ly put them­selves on the line and say ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!

Please sup­port them in any way you can — food, sup­plies, a friend­ly vis­it.

There are tough times ahead and we all need to be there for each oth­er.

* 1990s road pro­test­er Jim Hin­dle will be giv­ing a talk at 8pm on Thurs­day Jan­u­ary 29 upstairs at The Rest in Bath Place, Wor­thing. All wel­come.