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Friday the 27th Nov – Doncaster climate hearing, more like doncaster green wash! This event was organised by Oxfam, some very good people attended and its fantastic that local people are addressing issues that we all face and talking about ways to be sustainable, unfortunatley there was ‘a wave’ of insincerity from a few but this doesn’t matter working together does!

We love the Earth Centre campaigners went along to pose the question to our MP for Climate Change and Energy -

Why has a multi-million pound sustainable living education centre been left to rot for five years?

From Mr Miliband’s response it seemed strange that he showed very little knowledge of the Earth Centre, curious since we’ve contacted his offices and his colleague, Denaby MP Caroline Flint, neither has responded. Considering Milband’s job title you would think that he would have recognised the significance and true potential of this amazing resource and beautiful space. Also you would think that he would be aware that the MOD are looking to aquire a sustainable living education centre in his area, however he is from oxford!!

Local community projects in Denaby struggle to access funding because the Earth Centre swallowed up the quota in the area and this still has reprecusions five years on. Resources were mysteriously flying out of the Earth Centre in the end and we would like to know where they went too as millions were spent on them.

We say reopen the Earth Centre and allow the community to benefit from its resources rather than having to watch the Police and MOD training with guns and dogs and wargame enthusiasts running about with pretend machine guns and smoke screens.

Ed Miliband this is a time for truth, no more greenwash!

We came to the meeting to let people know about The Campaign to Reclaim The Earth Centre, we think it hugely significant to local people and climate change discussion. It was a multimillion pound sustainable living education centre and has been left to rot and ruin for five years by a council that took it on with the agreement to maintain it for educational purposes, they have neglected their responsibilities and seem to have utter disregard for the local community and the local environment.

We felt it important to ask Mr Milibland why this amazing resource so significant in this current climate been left to rot for 5 years. Also why is an educational facility that was built using lottery money and therefore should be for the benefit of the people now used as a wargame playground by CerebusAirsoft, Police and MOD.?

We also took the opportunity to ask why exactly Mr Miliband has chosen to endorse 10 new nuclear power plants. The prospect of ten new nuclear power stations here on our little island is a terrifying thought, we have children to think of it is extremely dangerous and has a disgusting impact on the environment and future generations, we have to learn from history! Nuclear is not and has never been a viable option it requires uranium for starters which is mined out of the ground and will run out and where exactly does he plan to put all the waste?

We are happy that we had our chance to have our say after all that’s what Oxfam was asking people to do! We felt that Mr Miliband was insincere and passed responsibility of the Earth Centre matter to his colleague Caroline Flint, he seemed to have very little knowledge of the site which seems very strange give his job title and the fact that we’ve contacted his offices prior to this regarding this very matter. Nevertheless we gained support from local people who have now taken active roles in our campaign.

We’re sure that there will be many opinions shared and debated during the reclaim the earth centre campaign and after but my partner and I feel strongly that the only way is for everyone to slow down, stop consuming, work together and wake up to the deception of government propaganda and lies.

With regards to some people finding us a disturbance, we feel it more disturbing that people are swallowing the greenwash and allowing their liberties and children’s future to be taken away. This is a time for truth, unity, love and respect for ourselves, each other and the environment.

Public meeting to decide the future of the Earth Centre all are welcome its to be held at the Denaby and Cadeby Miners Welfare Club, Tuesday 15th Dec at 7pm

New Planning Application for Portland Works! The consultation period runs from now until 10th December.Past info and images One Two Three Four

Save the Portland works building on Randall Street Sheffield from the threat of being developed into flats.The online campaign is centered on the Portland works blog and a Facebook group which you can join to keep up to date with the cause.Perhaps the most useful way of showing your support is to formally object to the planning application on the Sheffield city council website. The case for keeping the building as a home for little mesters-style workshops is articulated well in a letter in this week’s Sheffield Telegraph which describes the works as our ‘living heritage, not a museum or polished up piece of preserved past’.

Portland Works Sheffield Oct 2009

Summer 2009

20/9/2007

This mother of a Viaduct is now part of The Trans Pennine Trail it just had to be done, walking down under was quite special then into a field and you get the span of  The Conisbrough Viaduct – built with 15 million bricks in 1906-7 this massive structure carried passenger trains across the Don Gorge until 1951. With 21 arches, 14 to the north side of its iron girder section and seven to the south, Conisbrough Viaduct formed part of a connection between the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway and those of the Great Northern and Great Eastern. At 1,584 feet in length, it is truly a Goliath structure built of 15million bricks – each one put in place by contractors Henry Lovat Ltd, who used an aerial cradle – called a ‘blondin’ – to carry men and materials across the river during its construction.

We was expecting to have to do a bit of old rail trespass, no it has now a path going along, and doing a search seems the place to end your days and jump, we walked over the goliath structure looking over the river don, onto Cadeby quarry where we had come from, i know this is not urban explration but it was left from 1951 to 2005 going to rot with the lines in place then opened up for walkers on to the images.

On a Sunshine Winters Day

On a overcast Winters Day..

“If ever anybody got the Sex Pistols wrong, it was that lot,” he says, referring to the fascist skinheads, who appropriated the Pistols’ sound in the late 1970s. “Britain’s an island, it’s always had a constant ebb and flow of immigration, it makes it a better place. And there’s not a BNP hooligan in existence that can do without his curry on a Saturday night, right?” He laughs, scornfully. “There’s no brain challenge with these morons.”

John-Lydon-interview

Toll Bar: summer 2007

Many of us from Doncaster and Sheffield had first hand experiences of the effects of flooding during the disastrous summer of 2007. Some of us are all too familiar with the problems that now face the people of Cumbria. We can send our sympathies and offers of support, but what we really need to do is wake up to the fact that more and more people are going to suffer as our planet warms up.

Paul Kingsnorth, co-founder of the Dark Mountain Project, has posted some important thoughts on the flooding in Cumbria on their blog. We think that his words bear repeating (as often as possible until the message gets through)…

Recently, I moved to Cumbria. Just in time, it seems, to experience the highest level of rainfall ever recorded in the country. I’ve known and loved the lake district for a long time, but I have never seen it like this. For the past few days, every road has been a river, and the rivers themselves have become Himalayan in their rage and their reach. Every hill and mountain has had rills and torrents cascading from it and the fields have become meres. Five bar gates peer forlornly from the middle of wide and expanding lakes. The stream that comes down from the moor behind my house diverted itself at the weekend and chose a course that sunk below the building and welled up through the wall of our garage. Meanwhile, in the village on the other side of the common, an elderly man was lifted to safety with a Sea King helicopter; a common sight in the county over the last week.

And it’s not over yet. Roads are closed, bridges are down, trees have fallen, town centres are swamped and another 100mm of rain is on the way. It should reach us tomorrow. I am very aware of being one of the lucky ones. There are hundreds of people across the county who have literally lost everything, and a few who have lost their lives. I lost a few boxes of junk and my broadband connection.

In the same week this has happened, we have been treated to news about an argument between a gaggle of climate change deniers and some scientists, whose leaked emails they have stolen and published. To the deniers, this is the final proof of a giant global conspiracy by eco-socialists to tax and regulate them on the back of an invented scientific theory. To those of a calmer and more analytical frame of mind – such as my friend George Marshall, who analyses the situation here – it seems to be yet more evidence of the inability of a large swathe of the human race to look the future  in the face.

Here on the Dark Mountain we have been accused by some of hysteria, scaremongering and apocalyptic fantasies. This is par for the course for anyone who takes a realistic look at the future these days, but sometimes, sitting in a warm room in front of a computer, with a full stomach and a well-tended landscape outside, it can seem to be true. I have found myself, at times, wondering whether I am some sort of dilettante, paying games with darkness just for something to do. I have wondered whether I’m right; whether I’m getting carried away. Come on, I have said to myself. Calm down. That’s hardly going to happen, is it?

It’s easy to feel like this. Immediate comfort is a wonderful drug that can blind you to anything else, and especially the end of it. But it turns out to be wrong, and I can see some of the reasons why it is wrong from my window as I write. And I wonder how many pensioners will have to be rescued from their English country cottages with military helicopters, and how many A-roads will have to collapse into the white torrents beneath, and how many National Trust tea rooms will have to be submerged before it starts to sink in that it can happen here.

It can happen, and it is happening, and it will go on happening more and more. Because this is not a ‘one in a thousand year flood’ as the newsmen keep telling us. This is the present and the future; the descent has begun, and the electric cars and the conferences are not going to hold back the waters. The world we knew is not the world we have in store for us, and the future … well, the future is probably best left to Leonard Cohen:

Things are going to slide, slide in all directions
Won’t be nothing
Nothing you can measure anymore
The blizzard, the blizzard of the world
has crossed the threshold
and it’s overturned
the order of the soul

Visit the Dark Mountain site to offer your support.

Also Oxfam are hosting the Doncaster Climate Change Hearing at Bentley Pavilion, 5pm, Friday 27th November. We urge every concerned Doncaster resident to come along. We’d also like to draw people’s attention to a new proposal for the Earth Centre which attendants might like to support at the hearing…

The problem with Doncaster council is that it’s executive mayor since May is Peter Davies, a raving (but non-BNP) racist and facist (English Democrats) who never expected to win the election in a million years.  His principal ambience is the betting shop and he apparently still spends much of his time there.  When photographed in his office, the only documents visible on his desk or the shelving etc. were copies of the Racing Post.  Apart from his noxious racist and homophobic politics he is a complete incompetent and thicko who didn’t have a clue what the mayor’s powers were or what an elected mayor was supposed to do.  As the EDs got no councillors elected he couldn’t form a cabinet but eventually, after almost 2 months, a small group of very right-wing Tory councillors agreed to be his cabinet.  There’s so few of them that each holds 3 or 4 different cabinet posts.

He is opposed to “all green claptrap” and thinks Donny town centre needs a lot more traffic as this is “good for business”.  The so-called “policies” on which he was elected were just a series of slogans, most of which had nothing to do with any powers the mayor has, and all of which begged the question “how?”.  He told a delegation from Donny’s twin town in Germany (which couldn’t be cancelled after his election) to piss off and not come back again on the grounds that “this is England”.

I assume the unelected officers are just getting on running Donny.  Problem is that once an issue gets big enough for Davies to become aware of it, he’ll be in there denouncing “green claptrap”.  Under the elected mayor system he, effectively, IS the council.

Don’t have any answers.  He is a nightmre and actually a much more immediate threat than the BNP, in our view.  The BNP MEPs and councillors actually have no power at all, whereas this arsehole does.  What do people in Donny think?

Just so people who don’t know have the picture, Donny is not a small place.   It is a very large town with over a quarter of a million people.  It is about the same size as Nottingham or an inner London borough.  This is the mess in which it has been landed by decades of spectacular and blatant Labour Party corruption.

If Donny was in Sussex or Hertfordshire, you’d be reading about the scandals there in the national papers every week and someone like Davies would either never have got elected or been quickly hoyed out.  But it’s in South Yorkshire so the insular metropolitan elite don’t know and don’tgive a toss.

Last weekend, I visited with two intrepid yurt-makers and The Land is ours  who are taking forward a campaign to raise public awareness about the neglect and imminent fire-sale of the Earth Centre, a multimillion pound project funded at huge cost by the public with clear aims to be used as an educational facility for the community, which has been squandered and left to rot in the outskirts of Doncaster – home of Energy Secretary Ed Milliband’s parliamentary constituency in North Doncaster.

The centre has become a white elephant which exhibited all the hallmarks of being a temple to elitist middle-class pretensions of trendy environmentalism – and stands as a monument to a collosal waste of public (lottery) money (so much so that everyone who was involved in the project
has run a mile from it ever since). Nevertheless, it is home to an outsanding array of cutting-edge reneweable energy technology, which criminally, now currently stands idle.

Last Saturday, along with othere local activists, we walked round the site in the rain I might add, exploring all around it.

This is loosely a landrights issue, in that it’s a campaign against the potential public disposal of land. More of interest is the fact that it is a potentially explosive issue, of interest no doubt to climate change activists because Ed Milliband is a local MP, and the site is home to some of the most advanced sustainable technology currently available (near silent wind turbines, an advanced ‘living machine’ sanitation system, solar canopy, extensive allotments & forest gardens, etc.), yet remains
derelict, while it is currently being used by a corporate ‘war-games’  company. Despite being a project which became a collosal failure, the site remains a huge opportunity as a educational resource, not least for the local community. The public waste of the Earth Centre in it’s misconceived attempt at being purely a tourist centre which displayed the latest in renewable power solutions without working with the local community is analogous to the government’s half-hearted commitment to renewable energy, as it puts it’s stock in the nuclear option.

The local campaign wish to pressurise the local council to not ditch the  agreement that the site be used for educational purposes, as well asr unning a project which emphasises the decentralised solutions to power generation, with local people having more of a stake in the running of the
centre.

If the Millenium Dome in London can be sold for a pound, then why can’t the local community have a stake in the running of this centre, instead of simply flogging it off to the highest bidder!

Cadeby Quarry, Doncaster, South Yorkshire Cadeby is a village and civil parish in the Metropolitan Borough of Doncaster in South Yorkshire, England. It is about five miles west of Doncaster, and four miles east of Mexborough. The manor of Cadeby was held in medieval times by the Norman baronial Fitzwilliam family, and later by their descendants, the Copley baronets. Later, it was inherited by barrister Thomas Levett, a native of High Melton, who sold to his brother, York barrister John Levett, who in turn sold it to Edmund Hastings, Esq., of Plumtree, Nottinghamshire  http://projectsheffield.wordpress.com/2009/11/20/cadeby-quarry-doncaster/

It is right next door to the Earth Centre under here is 40 years of coal and more limstone, yes Cadeby Quarry has been rapeing the earth for over 40 years and has been given in quite another 40 years to expand there is, a site of special scientific interest which was notified in 1977 for its geological interest. The site covers 97 hectares (240 acres) of the old quarry.It is one of 35 sites of special scientific interest in South Yorkshire.

The Conisbrough Viaduct – built with 15 million bricks in 1906-7 this massive structure carried passenger trains across the Don Gorge until 1951. With 21 arches, 14 to the north side of its iron girder section and seven to the south, Conisbrough Viaduct formed part of a connection between the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway and those of the Great Northern and Great Eastern. At 1,584 feet in length, it is truly a Goliath structure built of 15million bricks – each one put in place by contractors Henry Lovat Ltd, who used an aerial cradle – called a ‘blondin’ – to carry men and materials across the river during its construction.

Could it be that the Quarry has been given the nod to expand into the land around the earth center, there is remember 40 years of  coal ready for an opan cast, once done why not take the limestone as well? The middle class talk about climate change here is one issue that is of real concern

As a site in Thurnscoe is top of the list of potential sites for a giant incinerator, it has emerged.The Thurnscoe Business Park was one of 13 sites in the South Yorkshire Times distribution area identified by regional waste management bosses looking to build a huge incinerator to deal with waste from Barnsley, Doncaster and Rotherham.

A total of 54 sites across the three boroughs were considered, but the Thurnscoe site has emerged as the front runner in a Development Plan Document jointly commissioned by the three councils. The former Corus site at Parkgate ranks third on the list of suitable sites.

The region faces the challenge of managing 611,000 tonnes of municipal, commercial and industrial waste per year by 2020, according to figures set out in the Yorkshire and Humber Plan.

A total of 231,000 tonnes per year will need to be recycled or composted to meet government targets. New waste management sites, needed to plug a shortfall of facilities across the region and reduce the amount of rubbish sent to landfill, will provide the latest equipment for recycling and either the physical, chemical or biological treatment of waste. Other sites will concentrate on composting or generating energy from waste products – including incineration, a process which relies on elaborate systems to clean up a wide range of harmful gases before they are released into the atmosphere.

Other sites in our area that were considered include:

・    Denaby Lane, Denaby Riverside at the rear of the Earth Centre
・    Pastures Road Mexborough, Mexborough Power Station,
・    Station Road Manvers, New Stubbin Colliery Rawmarsh,
・    Waddingtons Parkgate, Yorkshire Water sewage works Parkgate
・    Corus Parkgate, Bolton Road, Manvers, Yorkshire Water Wombwell and
・    Cadeby Quarry

All shortlisted sites will be subject to strict planning procedures before any schemes are given the go-ahead. Where have we herd this befor.

We need to act fast on this as Doncaster’s Climate Change denying Mayor has been holding planning meetings that were held in secret despite calls for them to be public meetings. Visit We Love the Earth Centre for more details.

[notes}
http://www.notinmanvers.co.uk

A new planning application for Portland Works (reference 08/01850/FUL) was validated 24/11/09  by the Council’s Planning department and the consultation period runs from now until 10th December.

When an article of mine looking at the role of Africa, Caribbean and South Asian troops in the British army during the two World Wars was published on Remembrance Sunday, some people criticised me for “re-writing history in favour of the BME community.

So I thought I’d see what the BNP had to say on the subject, by way of comparison. To be totally honest, I hoped to find ammunition for another article like my original “They’re taking our Spitfires!” After all, making your political opponents look ridiculous is often a good way to defeat them.

Of course I didn’t expect to find anything about non-white troops fighting for Britain in the two World Wars; but I was surprised to find nothing about the white British troops in those wars either. There’s a picture of Churchill on the home page, but no profile – though figures of legend such as Hereward the Wake get one – and he’s not one of the “British Giants”. The section on defending us from invasion has a Spitfire picture, but while there’s an article on Boudicca, there’s no Battle of Britain.

Potteries historians note there’s no RJ Mitchell, nor James Brindley and Josiah Wedgwood. I guess Wedgwood’s politics were wrong, as social and political reformers are notable by their absence. Whole political movements are missing too – nothing on the Chartists or Suffragettes, and for a party supposedly all for the working class, no mention of the Levellers, the Tolpuddle Martyrs or the Jarrow Marchers.

Art and literature are clearly for wimps – Shakespeare gets a mention but not Dickens, Jane Austen, George Eliot or the Bronte sisters; no Wordsworth or Tennyson, and no sign of Dr Johnson (another snub to Staffordshire!). There’s a serious lack of the “Christian heritage” the BNP claim to defend too, but lengthy articles full of glossy illustrations on the “Gods of the Ancient Britons” and Anglo-Saxon gods. No Quakers, no Methodists – all that social reform and concern for justice and the poor must be totally the wrong values for the BNP!

And I thought that was about it – a version of history ending with the British Empire at its height full of the sort of uplifting stories of powerful men taught when a quarter of the globe was coloured pink – a sort of “Boys Own Yarns” meets “1066 and all that”. The makings of a witty little item, perhaps.

But it’s not that simple, and not actually funny at all when you look a bit deeper.

On every page of this site, there’s a flyer for a book called “March of the Titans” by Arthur Kemp. If you click on this, you can buy the book via the BNP’s merchandising site, or you can read it on line. If you do so, you’ll find the whole of human history twisted to support the following:

“revealed in this work is the one true cause of the rise and fall of the world’s greatest empires – that all civilizations rise and fall according to their racial homogeneity and nothing else – a nation can survive wars, defeats, natural catastrophes, but not racial dissolution”.

Arthur Kemp moved to Britain from a murky past in South Africa in 1996 and is responsible for writing the BNP’s education and training manuals and the content of their website. He also runs the party’s merchandising arm, Excalibur.

If you are under any doubts at all about the ideology still at the heart of the BNP, you’ll find it within the pages of Kemp’s book, in all its ugliness. Note that this isn’t just a link among many other links – it’s an integral part of the BNP’s history section. Some items on the main site are lifted straight from it – “British Genius” is simply Kemp’s list of clever white folks with the non-Brits cut out.

Still, it might not have done the BNP’s reputation much good to include Kemp’s analysis of the Second World War, where sympathies seem to be very much with the Third Reich. He’s full of praise for Nazi science and medicine, and their banning of vivisection, but draws a discreet veil over the issue of how such “progress” was made with the frequent use of unwilling human “guinea pigs”. Here are a few extracts on what Kemp calls the “Second Great Brothers’ War”.

Dunkirk – HITLER LETS BRITISH ESCAPE

By 26 May – 16 days into the campaign – the Allied army in the north was trapped along a coastal enclave next to the town of Dunkirk. For reasons which have never been explained (the most common belief is that Hitler wanted to let the British escape so as to facilitate a peace with them at a later stage) the German panzers were deliberately stopped outside the town.

So it was that when Winston Churchill became prime minister of Britain on 10 May 1940, his first act the next day was to announce that German cities would be targeted for bombing attacks. The same month the first German cities were bombed by British aircraft. The German air force however avoided bombing British cities, concentrating on the strategically more important airfields and ports, launching the first of these major raids during August 1940.

The Blitz STARTS IN RESPONSE TO BRITISH AIR RAIDS

In the interim, British bombers had been raiding German cities for almost four months: finally, after a bombing raid on Berlin itself, Hitler authorized the Luftwaffe to start bombing British cities in return.

Nazi atrocities are given a sinister positive gloss: note the phrases “granted euthanasia” and “mercy killings” for the murder of disabled people.

In all, some 5,000 retarded and deformed children were granted euthanasia by the German government before the end of the war – with each case being individually reviewed by a specially appointed committee. The policy of administering euthanasia to retarded and deformed children was then also extended to incurably insane adults. Thanks to the German habit of keeping meticulous records, the exact number of incurably insane adults granted euthanasia is known: 70,273. Although the adult euthanasia project was conducted in secret, it was impossible to conceal such things from the German public, and by 1941, news of the mercy killings had been leaked. Growing public pressure on the Nazi government forced the abandonment of the program in that year.

The Concentration Camps

Nazi Germany is however most known for its concentration camps, and particularly those in which large numbers of emaciated and dead prisoners were discovered at the end of the war, and which have become synonymous with any image of that era. The first concentration camps were set up soon after the Nazis came to power, with the best known being Dachau, which is situated to the north of Munich.

These camps were in fact large prisons, and the prisoners were sentenced by civil courts to fixed terms of imprisonment which depended upon the crime committed. These crimes could be overtly political – membership or activism in the banned Communist Party was common – but was also extended to all other crimes, including conventional criminal activities such as theft or robbery. Eventually homosexuals were also interned: although this would only occur quite a while later.

All things said, to have been a Jew in Nazi Germany could not have been a pleasant experience: but, as the over 4.3 million claims against the post war German state from Jews who suffered as a result of this persecution, (by 1998 the German state had paid out over $50 billion in reparations), certainly far fewer died than what is most often claimed. Increasingly, all the evidence urges a complete revision of this aspect of the history of World War Two.

The effect of the Jewish factor was a primary reason for the outbreak of the war and lay behind much of the Allies’ double standards when reacting to German and Soviet aggression at the beginning of the war.

So much for Griffin’s claim to have left the bad old days of Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism behind him; this book so keenly promoted by the BNP also says:

The well known Jewish propensity for business and the ability to accumulate vast amounts of money – a phenomena well known to this day – was the source of much original anti-Jewish feeling.

Whether by deliberate plan or accident, the situation has arisen whereby Jews have ended up dominating the mass media forms of both the USA, and to a slightly smaller extent, of Western Europe. The ownership of the mass media by a small group of Jews is well documented and full details are easily obtainable on the Internet. Given the long association between Jews and assorted left-wing causes, varying from hard-core Communism to all manner of pro-Black activities, it is therefore not surprising that the mass media then also mirrors an uniformly pro-non-White message in its portrayal of current events and opinion. This Jewish domination of the mass media means that what is generally construed as ‘public opinion’ is in fact always presented in a way which is as sympathetic as possible to Jewish interests.

This Jewish domination of the media can, and does, have serious consequences, so vividly illustrated by the 11 September 2001 attacks on New York’s World Trade Centre and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.. These events were triggered exclusively by the unflagging US support given to Israel against the Palestinians. The fact that the USA – and much of the West – continues to support Israel at any cost – including the deaths of thousands of its own citizens – is the surest evidence yet of the power of the Jewish lobby in both the mass media (which generates ‘public opinion’) and of the Jewish lobby’s famed control over the US government, and to a lesser extent, the governments of Western Europe.

Note particularly the claim that “These events were triggered exclusively by the unflagging US support given to Israel against the Palestinians”. Consider for a moment what our local BNP councillors might have to say if such a comment was made by, say, a Muslim student union officer…

And in case you think it’s just the Jews Kemp despises, here are a few words about Christianity, from the people who are telling us they are the true defenders of the faith:

The introduction of Christianity has to count as the single greatest ideological catastrophe to ever strike Europe.

So it was that Christianity came to be the dominant religion of Europe – the first religion to convert by mass murder. The original White religion had never tried to convert followers upon pain of death, and had never waged a war in its name – and as such it was psychologically unprepared to do battle with a Middle Eastern religion which engendered a genocidal fanaticism amongst its followers. Once the Christians had run out of pagans to kill, they turned upon themselves in a violent and bloody fratricidal conflict which saw the Church split and the various protagonists kill each other in a crazed blood lust.

I ’m an agnostic, and my point here is not to defend Christianity, or for that matter Judaism or British strategy in World War Two; it’s to highlight the BNP’s hypocrisy. Their enthusiasm for our “Christian” heritage and sudden keenness to see it promoted in schools is surely exposed here as just another means to divide “us” from “them”.

Remember that this book was written by one of Nick Griffin’s right-hand men, who strongly influences party ideology. The new website might look pretty flashy, but it’s just a new set of sheep’s clothing for the same very dangerous wolf.

Pits’n'Pots – The Radical Press

Doncaster Climate hearing Meeting details can be found here – this coming Fri 27th November

I am a resident of Doncaster who will, hopefully, be attending the Doncaster Climate Hearing in Bentley on Fri 27th November.

I would like to take the opportunity to put forward a proposal regarding Doncaster’s former ‘Earth Centre’.

The Earth Centre was originally conceived as ‘an exhibition of sustainable development practices and an international centre for related research and education’. Unfortunately it lost its way and closed down five years ago even though its fortunes had finally begun to change for the better. The site is still home to some of the most advanced sustainable technology currently available (near silent wind turbines, an advanced ‘living machine’ sanitation system, solar canopy, extensive allotments & forest gardens, etc.), but it is currently being used by a corporate ‘war-games’ company.

I would like to propose that the former ‘Earth Centre’ should become the UK’s ‘National Climate Change Centre’.The location is central to the rest of the UK and a highly sustainable infrastructure already exists. I feel that the Earth Centre should once again be seen as an international research and education facility with Climate Change’ as its central remit. The main building could be be used for research and development, whereas some of the grounds, gardens and the former shop could be handed over to local community to encourage the development of grass-roots climate change initiatives. – I do have a number of other ideas which can be discussed further if Oxfam decide that they may be able to help.

Oxfam could invite other major Climate Change charities to support the proposal and North Doncaster MP – and local climate hero – Ed Miliband could liaise with Doncaster Council to save the site from the developers. The fact that the buildings and resources already exist means that a conglomeration of charities could assume joint management of the centre at greatly reduced costs to all involved – as long as the political willpower exists.

Friday’s meeting would seem to provide a unique and opportune moment to put this proposal to the people who can help bring it to fruition. Can you help me put the idea forward?

Kind Regards

http://welovetheearthcentre.blogspot.com/

We hope to see as many people there as possible attached is a freedom of information response its crap but not to worry this is a great opportunity and this has to be done the mayor has held private meetings this week about the earth centre our calls for a public meeting have been denied we will organise our own as soon as possible.

Doncaster Council

Regeneration Department, Blue Building,

38 – 40 High Street, Doncaster DN1 1DE

Contact: Trish Wood
Tel: 01302 736916
Fax: 01302 737362
Email: FOI@doncaster.gov.uk
Website: www.doncaster.gov.uk
Date: 24th November 2009

Dear ####

Thank you for your Freedom of Information request dated 30 October 2009 for information about the Earth Centre. Please find below Doncaster Council’s response to the questions you have raised.

1. I would like to know the deadline date for submitting proposals to the DMBC regarding use of the Earth Centre site. The Council has not formally invited proposals from interested parties for the Earth Centre and hence a deadline has not yet been set.

2. I would like to know the details of any proposals already submitted regarding the Earth Centre site. The Council has received expressions of interest from a number of parties but as stated above the council has not formally invited proposals.

3. I would like to see a copy of the agreement between the Millennium Commission and DMBC regarding the transfer of ownership of the Earth Centre site. There was no transfer of ownership to the Millennium Commission. The Council was and still is the freehold owner and granted leases to the Earth Centre; when the Earth Centre entered receivership the leases were disclaimed and vested back to the Council. I hope that this information is useful to you.

Reviewing any decisions made: You can ask us to review any decisions made about your request. You do this by writing to:

Doncaster Council
Regeneration Department, Blue Building, 38 – 40 High Street, Doncaster DN1 1DE
Freedom of Information Manager
Council House
Floor 2
College Road
Doncaster
DN1 3DA
e-mail: FOIAppeals@doncaster.gov.uk

You can apply to the Information Commissioner for a decision about our compliance or otherwise with the Freedom of Information legislation. Please contact the Commissioner for details on how to do this – Telephone: 01625 545700, Address: Information
Commissioner, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF. Website: http://www.informationcommissioner.gov.uk/

Yours sincerely
Trish Wood
Trish Wood
FOI Lead Officer
Regeneration Department

You might like to write and comeing up is that public meeting watch this space we still are meeting if you want to come along then contact those involved.

welovetheearthcentre
underclassrising.net
yorkshireanarchist
the land is ours

The wind and rain knocked on his window the winter had come to “the largest village in England” his home city of Escafold. In 1996, his Grandfather stated that “Modern Escafold, a flourishing former industrial city with over half a million inhabitants and a world-wide reputation, still retains many of the essential characteristics of the small market town of about five thousand people from which it has grown in the space of two and a half centuries.”.

“For a long time my window gave onto a cabaret painted half  green and half bright red–a sweet torture for my eyes.”

–Charles Baudelaire (Salon of 1846)

In this village of this bleak northern town it mattered who people thought you was it walked before you and stood at the bar with a knowing snarl, not that he was any longer a associate of the village fools, the paranoia had eaten him up, the history was written all over his face each time he shaved it looked back at him there reminding him of his former nihilism, time he had looked at the neon lights that told him he was in the gutter outside The Bar Eat More Fruit.

The philosophy of nothingness was far removed from true nihilism any truth he was proclaiming was like the written word a lie, the prevarication had gone on for some years, in the concrete jungle the shadows of paranoia loomed in the dark walkways stood the dark thoughts, the city was dead as the plague dogs of humanity no doubt walked, as he sat reading in the light of the wax light the cold night played itself out, the open fire gave him warmth he was no longer a man of pleasure but one of a time stood still.

He walked his days in the other world, down in the valley Escafold no doubt moved in tune with the beat of capitalism, those who can remain civil in the face of fascism perhaps fail to understand the true nature of their opponent, he had seen the face of fascism looked into its eyes of deadness in The Bar Eat More Fruit they had stood mocking his anarchism in a slow tone, his anger was growing.

Plans for ticket barriers at Sheffield railway station have been refused on the grounds that they would affect the character of the listed building. East Midlands Trains wanted to install the barriers to combat fare evasion. The move was widely opposed because it would have led to the closure of a pedestrian footbridge which links homes behind the station to the city centre.

The Planning Board today unanimously rejected East Midlands Trains proposal to install barriers at the station. Further more the chairperson, Councillor Tim Rippon, advised East Midlands Trains that they shouldn’t bother appealing against this decision. I think a celebratory drink is in order! Thank you everyone who has played a part in this campaign.Together we have won a victory for common sense and ordinary Sheffielders over the money grabbing corporate interests of East Midlands Trains who want to privatise our public space.

The people of Sheffield have won this battle, but the war may not be over. East Midlands Trains are threatening to continue with the “human barriers”. RASC will not stop campaigning until EMT stop preventing people from crossing the bridge

Sheffield is proud of the station and the region has spent £50 million on the award-winning refurbishment of the station and the immediate vicinity. The resulting refurbishment is described as a world class gateway to the city (In this SYPTE article.)

The footbridge links communities and organisations on both sides of the station. It is one of the few truly integrated transport networks in the area uniting as is does, the tram stop, the station and the Sheffield Interchange (explained on this council video). The bridge is particularly important for wheel chair and push chair users as the only alternative bridge is completely inaccessible, so a very large diversion would be required. Go here to see a Sheffield Council photo presentation on the area, including the alternative bridge (pdf document).

The link through the station is also central to the City regeneration strategy as it provides a direct route for future occupants of the massive Park Hill scheme to access the Golden Route into the city centre.

The next meeting of rasc will be at Victoria Methodist Church, Stafford Road, on Monday December 7th at 7pm

“This decision by the planning board adds to the long list of people who believe that closing the footbridge would be a disastrous mistake. “People are justifiably outraged at the idea that our footbridge, paid for with £15m of taxpayers’ money, could be shut off by a private company for the purposes of profit.”

East Midlands Trains said it was “clearly disappointed” by the decision. A spokeswoman said: “We believe we put forward high quality plans, which support the crackdown on fare cheats and protect honest fare paying passengers, as well as ensuring continued unhindered access for residents and providing additional enhancements to Sheffield station.

“Whilst we take time to consider our options going forward, we will continue with the rolling programme of manual ticket checks which has been in operation at the station since May.”