Here are dates for your diary and news updates following our meeting last week in The Cornubia.
In brief:
Sat 17th Dec – Stall at Stokes Croft Winter Fayre
Thu 12th Jan 2012 – January meeting including film show! The Cornubia
13th -15th Jan 2012- South West Skillshare – Exeter – details to follow
Sat 21st Jan 2012– Potential Campaign Date (TBC)
Thu 9th Feb 2012– February meeting at The Cornubia
18th-20th May 2012 – Skillshare – Goblin Combe – details to follow
The main contact for the group is Richard: r.lancaster@blueyonder.co.uk / 07505 990595.
In detail:
FUTURE EVENTS
Help Needed for more Volkswagen Campaigning – Sat 17th December
We are planning on being out again on Sat 17th Dec at the Stokes Croft Winter Fayre – starting at 12 noon. people who said they could help at the meeting were Carol, Richard L, Richard B, Sue (early), Lauren (early), Natasha (early), Loz, Ian (later). Also via email Stacy said she could manage 12noon-2pm. If anybody else can help please let Carol know (caroldurrant@hotmail.com or 07970 590070) so she can plan the rota.
NEWS UPDATES
Cairn Trial Result
Natasha described what had happened in the run up to and the trail that resulted in the amazing not-guilty verdict a couple of weeks ago. Natasha and Carol had been part of a larger group of protesters who had invaded the international headquarters of the controversial Edinburgh-based oil company Cairn Energy dressed as polar bears. The company is currently doing risky deep-water oil drilling in the Arctic waters off Greenland and, breaking with industry norms, is refusing to publish its oil spill response plans. Due to delays and re-scheduling it ended up that Natasha was the first (and in fact only) defendant to go the lengthy trial process and after she was found not guilty the Fiscal agreed to drop the charges against the other 16 activists. It was inspiring hearing the report first-hand from Natasha and how she coped with the pressure of the trial process – including three exhausting trips up to Edinburgh. She was full of praise for the solicitor who represented her who by all accounts did an amazing job. You can read more about the Cairn’s latest setback here: http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/climate/cairns-arctic-misadventure-end...
Tar Sands Action
We received first-hand accounts of the Tar Sands action in London last week which blocked the entrance to the Department for Transport over its involvement in UK support for Canada tar sands. One was one of the first into the building and successfully blocked the door until the cars could be reversed up into the doorway and the tyres let down. The other was on the outside leafleting (and nearly managed to give a leaflet to Michael Portillo!) – apparently it went like clockwork and everything was in place within a couple of minutes (apparently even the senior police officer was impressed). Luckily nobody from our group was arrested so it means none of our group will have to worry about court cases over Christmas. To see more about this action :
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/groups/bristol-east/blog/ministry-transport-tar-sands-action http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5wAKHDG0kg&feature=youtu.be
and some of the press coverage here
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/27/canada-oil-sands-uk-ba...
Volkswagen Campaigning
We’ve had a great month collecting signed postcards for the Volkswagen campaign.
Sat 19th Gloucester Road – Paul in the costume, lots of photos, plus a slightly surreal video of Stormtrooper Paul meeting and greeting and 150 signed campaign cards
Sunday 20th Totterdown – Natasha in the costume – again lots of photos and a possibly even more surreal video of Natasha in her alter-ego of Stormtrooper ‘Brian’ going fishing with a garden gnome - collected 257 signed cards.
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/groups/bristol-east/blog/stormtroopers-roam-bishopston-and-totterdown
Saturday 3rd December – Richard first then Greg in the costume - more photos and although it seemed somewhat slower than the other locations still collected 205 cards.
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/groups/bristol-east/blog/greenpeace-stormtrooper-bristol-harbourside
Wednesday 7th December – Wiltshire College Lackham Campus Carbon Roadshow – again quite quiet but Richard & Sue still managed 78 cards signed
Online Campaigning
We are being encouraged to make more and more use of online campaigning and I know that some of the group such as Lauren, Carol, Richard B, Natasha and others (sorry if I missed you out) already tweet, and use Facebook etc and this is something we probably need to spend some time on. Carol made an interesting observation that many more people had viewed the video of Natasha (in Stormtrooper guise) than had looked at the photos of the same event. So video is key to getting our message out so whenever we are doing anything for Greenpeace we need to see if there is a video opportunity. Nearly all digital cameras have a video capability so shooting video when we are out and about shouldn’t be too difficult – anyway all give it some thought please.
Other Updates
We received apologies from Cordelia, Paul, Stacy, Iain and also welcomed to the meeting Natasha’s mum who was visiting from Swindon.
Richard B will from now on be campaigning with us in East Bristol – Richard has done occasional campaigns with us for some time now and is great to have him with us.
We are planning on having a new year get together – probably in late Jan or early Feb – details to follow.
We are hoping to get a banner from Emily at HQ in the new year.
We have a copy of Petropolis (http://www.petropolis-film.com/) which we haven’t worked out when to use yet – ideas please.
Nuclear Power
Richard L shared some excerpts from an article in the Guardian the previous day in which George Monbiot says “We need to talk about Sellafield, and a nuclear solution that ticks all our boxes” and goes on to point out that Germany’s abandoning of nuclear power means it will produce an extra 300 million tonnes of carbon dioxide between now and 2020. We had a lively discussion exploring why a number of leading greens have changed their minds and are now supporting nuclear power. During the subsequent open and informative discussion it was questioned whether promoting Nuclear at the expense of renewables was better or worse than promoting of coal and gas at the expense of nuclear. You can read the full article and make you own comments about George’s article here at http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/dec/05/sellafield-nuclear-e...
The Greenpeace case against nuclear power was nicely summarised back in 2008 here http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/nuclear/the-case-against-nuclear-power...
There also an interesting Greenpeace post here about effective campaigning which references another Monbiot article here
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/groups/peace-disarmament/blog/persuading-no...
I think that Greenpeace and George Monbiot are pretty much in agreement on everything except nuclear power!
Finally for this section there is also a startling article about the nuclear fallout from Fukushima http://www.monbiot.com/2011/11/22/how-the-greens-were-misled which is worth a look.
General Discussion
After the formal meeting the discussion continued over drinks downstairs when we were exploring whether people were generally selfish or not with inevitable references to the Thatcher years. Question: Does it seem that the people around you care about others and the environment because the vast majority of people do in fact care or is it simply because you are friends with and therefore spend your time with people who care about the things you care about?
Meetings for 2012
Second Thursday of every month as follows:
Thursday 12th January – will include VW videos
Thursday 9th February
Thursday 8th March
Thursday 12th April
Thursday 10th May
Thursday 14th June
Thursday 12th July
Thursday 9th August
Thursday 13th September
Thursday 11th October
Thursday 8th November
Thursday 13th December
So when you open your stocking on Christmas morning and Santa Claus has left you a new diary you will have something to write in for every month! Happy Christmas and Happy New Year!
Comments