Kelvin Mason
This report is written as a letter to Pat O’Donnell and Niall Harnett who are in jail in Ireland for opposing Shell’s Corrib gas pipeline.
Dear Pat and Niall
We’re just back from the Merthyr to Mayo Solidarity Bike Ride, which connected the struggles of the people of Wales and Ireland opposing the misuse of our natural resources by multi-national corporations and complicit governments.
My partner and I joined the ride in Galway. Some of the other riders did…
Aberystwyth Peace and Justice Network got the election ball rolling in March, organising a peace and justice hustings in the Morlan Centre.
Prospective parliamentary candidates Mark Williams (Lib Dem), Penri James (Plaid Cymru), Richard Boudier (Labour) and Luke Evetts (Conservative) turned up for a grilling from the audience. Typically, the Labour and Conservative candidates, who stand no chance of winning the seat, were politically-inexperienced young men.
The…
First prize in the Copenhagen Greenwash Awards must go to Siemens and Coca-Cola for branding the host city “Hopenhagen”. Siemens set up a faux city, brightly lit in a mendacious green, extolling unsustainable technologies including super-fast electric sports cars. Coke posters proclaimed the mega-corp’s sugar- and exploitation-suffused product as “hope in a bottle!” Hopenhagen makes you sick.
There was never any hope of mitigating climate change or attaining climate justice via…
Plaid Cymru MEP Jill Evans hosted a visit of climate campaigners from Wales to Brussels in mid-October. Campaigners urged European politicians to act decisively ahead of the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen later this year.
The Welsh group visiting Brussels, many of whom participated in Climate Camp Cymru, included Vicky Moller, an Ecotour operator; Sue Hutchinson, a town councillor; Siobhan Ashe from Newport, Pembrokeshire; James Cass from the Centre for Alternative…
The Little Mermaid, Tivoli Gardens, Probably The Worst Beer In The World: these may be some of the tourist attractions, but what will draw people to Copenhagen this December is the United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP15. Sponsored by, among others, BMW, DHL and SAS (Scandinavian Airlines), and revealing no discernible sense of either shame or irony because of that, COP15 runs from 7-18 December.
Sometimes referred to as Kyoto 2, COP15 is supposed to conclude a…
At the Drax Camp for Climate Action in 2006 a few Wales participants formed a neighbourhood with the West Country and West Midlands, the legendary - out West anyway – ‘Westside Hood’. By 2008 at Kingsnorth, Wales got together our own neighbourhood. This year Wales hosted Climate Camp Cymru (CCC) in Merthyr Tydfil, very near the notorious Ffos-y-Frân opencast coalmine. In tribute to the movement we are building, CCC was actively supported by the Westside Hood. In turn, CCC supported the hard…
Bethan Jenkins AM (Plaid Cymru) will meet with Assembly environment minister Jane Davidson to raise concerns on behalf of constituents and campaigners who fear new regulations on opencast mining may not be enough to protect the health and wellbeing of communities in Wales.
On 20 January, the Minister issued the Minerals Technical Advice Notes: Coal (Coal MTAN), which included the implementation of a 500-metre buffer zone for future opencast developments.
Campaigners and…
Plaid Cymru assembly member Bethan Jenkins has tabled a statement of opinion at the National Assembly to honour the memory of conscientious objectors in Wales: “I call upon all Assembly members to sign this statement of opinion. We rightly remember our war dead annually and recognise the huge sacrifice that many people have made, and Wales also has a strong tradition of supporting the right not to kill and I look forward to events to mark this important element of our national life.”…
On 25 April, Ceredigion Council conferred the freedom of the county on the Royal Welsh Regiment. With much pomp and circumstance, cadres of the regiment, their band and mascot goat marched into Aberystwyth. The ceremony was attended by, among others, councillor JTO Davies, chairman of Ceredigion Council, Mark Williams (Liberal Democrat MP), Elin Jones (Plaid Cymru AM), and mayor of Aberystwyth Sue Jones Davies (Plaid Cymru).
One invitee who declined to participate, though, was Cen…
In the foreword to Low Impact Development, long-time promoter Simon Fairlie favours a definition of the eponymous concept as “development which, by virtue of its low or benign environmental impact, may be allowed in locations where conventional development is not permitted.”
The book sets out by putting low impact development (LID) into context, stressing the urgent need for such environmentally-friendly housing to be considered as a mainstream approach: “LID has huge potential to…
My sympathies go to the family and friends of Ian Tomlinson. At the G8 in Germany in 2007, the peaceful demonstrator next to me was beaten to the ground by a policeman wielding a similar baton, probably supplied by the same arms manufacturer. Unprovoked, another policeman punched my wife.
Intimidation and violence are not confined to London or “The Met”; they are the stock-in-trade of police the world over when dealing with peaceful democratic protest. Peaceful, I hear some…
I’m at a loss finding the right idiom for this story: Throwing good money after bad? A fool and his money are easily parted? A leopard can’t change his spots…? You decide.
A joint report by the National Audit Office and the Wales Audit Office concluded that the Red Dragon project to build a super-hangar at RAF St Athan in the Vale of Glamorgan cost the public £113m and created only 45 jobs instead of a forecast 4,500. It now stands virtually empty.
The problem arose…
On Saturday 14 March, I woke early and was up and about with an uncharacteristic spring in my step. I can hardly remember such a joyful start to a day.
Okay, the sun was shining and a chaffinch trilled in the garden, and I’m sure that had something to do with my mood. But the real reason I was so enthused – and activists may need to take a seat – was because I was going to a meeting!
A reinvigorated Cynefin-Y-Werin (Common Ground) network met at the Morlan in Aberystwyth…
Once again this year Aberystwyth Town Council will lay a white poppy wreath at the war memorial. The ceremony takes place on Saturday 8 November at 11am. In taking this action Aberystwyth Town Council is unique in Britain. But the decision to maintain the tradition was not made easily. It took the casting vote of the Mayor, Sue Jones-Davies.
The white poppy not only commemorates all those who suffer in wars; it also sends out the message that “there are better ways to resolve…
I’ve been to the last two camps for climate action, and both were transformative experiences. At Drax in North Yorkshire in 2006, the sense of building a politically, socially, technologically, environmentally and educationally viable community in and for a week shifted my whole gut-feeling about the difficulty of changing society: it can be done, it can be fun, and it’s immensely fulfilling to be part of. Instead of policing our society, we had the irresistible Tranquillity Team in pink…
