Friday 28 September 2018

PNR UPDATE (28/09/2018)


PNR UPDATE (28/09/2018)

The HUGE news, of course, is that earlier this week, the Fantastic Four truck surfers of July 2017, were handed down prison sentences for their actions to protect our planet and its climate:





















In case anyone has forgotten, their actions were undertaken to prevent what we saw this summer - an unprecedented global heatwave that was such an extreme piece of evidence of dangerous global warming that even the tabloids felt it necessary to carry front pages that drew attention to the mounting Climate Crisis:



Yet, in this bizarre and increasingly undemocratic corporate state that the UK has become, those who try - peacefully - to help the government meet its carbon-reduction ‘commitments’ are now put in prison, whilst the perpetrators & facilitators of the climate crime that is fracking remain outside prison.

It is worth bearing in mind that this is the first time, since 1932, that anyone has been imprisoned for peaceful civil disobedience. Since 2016, when the Tory government went back on its election ‘promises’ about ‘Big Government’ and over-ruled Lancashire County Council’s decision to refuse Cuadrilla planning permission to frack at Preston New Road & Roseacre, several more democracy lines’ have been crossed:
·        planning regulations have been altered to make it possible for dirty energy companies to by-pass democratically-elected local councils
·        an increasing number of injunctions have been granted by High Courts to prevent effective peaceful protests designed to protect Planet Earth and all the species that live on it.

But these prison sentences are arguably the most serious crossed line of all - I, for one, shall certainly be re-thinking about ‘upping the game’. Having been privileged this summer to be part of two Greenpeace actions which ‘disrupted the days’ of facilitators and perpetrators of various climate crimes, I’m thinking that the time has well & truly come to disrupt the days of all those facilitators of fracking whose offices are not covered by the injunction.

To slightly misquote James Larkin:

“The powerful only seem powerful because we are on our knees. Let us rise!”

Only maybe we should be thinking more of sitting down - in HUGE numbers - and linking arms, rather than standing up: the former is much harder for the police to deal with!

However, one piece of encouraging news is that, even if the Tories haven’t understood the seriousness of the Climate Crisis, Paul McCartney has!

His new LP, Egypt Station, has a 7-minute track about the Climate Crisis, entitled ’Despite Repeated Warnings’. You can listen to it via this link:



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Forthcoming Green ‘Mondays’:

1 October - As you will have seen from the covering email, the 100 Women are taking their climate & democracy campaign to the Tory Party Conference in Birmingham on Monday.

However, as planned, Emeritus Professor Terry Sloan, of Lancaster University, will still be the main speaker on this Green Monday.

Although his main specialism has been physics, he has also written much on fossil fuels and global warming.

So, if you’re not going to Birmingham with the 100 Women, PLEASE make a big effort to come to PNR on Monday:

He will be speaking at around 12.30pm.


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8 October - We are very pleased to announce that the main speaker on that day will be Clara Paillard, the President of the Public and Commercial Services Union’s (PCS) Culture Sector Campaigns Group:


She is also the Green Officer for Merseyside TUC, an active ‘green’ member of the Labour Party, and has written several articles about the Climate Crisis and the need for climate jobs.  The more Greens & Reds reach out to, and join with, each other, the greater our chances of stopping fracking - and getting rid of this neoliberal Tory government. As was said during our 1st. Green Monday Anniversary, we need a new ‘Gathering of the Tribes’!

She is expected to be speaking outside the gates at around 12.30pm.

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22 October - We are pleased to announce that, on this Green Monday, we’ll be having a MYSTERY speaker (or two!) from Friends of the Earth! Don’t miss out on the surprise! 

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Other speakers, for other Green Mondays, are currently experiencing a renewed deluge of emails & Tweets - as soon as they ‘capitulate’, they’ll be advertised here! However, once fracking actually begins at PNR, our plans may change somewhat.

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All the best
Allan Todd
Membership Secretary
Allerdale & Copeland Green Party



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