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| Newsletter | October 2002 |
A never ending stream of advertising messages - 'because I'm worth it', 'Coke is it', 'just do it' - reinforces people's delusion that the accumulation of material goods is the royal road to happiness, the very purpose of our lives. The assumptions that 'growth' is always good and 'development' is essential are rarely questioned by a society experiencing unrivalled 'growth' in childhood cancers, and which continues to 'develop' ever more toxic chemicals that permeate the air we breathe, the food we eat and the materials we use in our offices and our homes. -- Fritjof Capra
Resources move from the poor to the rich, and pollution moves from the rich to the poor. -- Vandana Shiva
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The devastated heathland to the west of Farnborough Airport is starting to recover. Early September it had mainly returned to very good heath grassland. The area that had been scoured into long bare strips is struggling to recover. On the mounds heath grass is starting to dominate the weeds, the bare earth between is still mainly bare. The area before is making good recovery, but a closer inspection shows around 50% bare ground. That beyond, at the foot of Norris Hill, has almost totally recovered and is covered with heath grass.
TAG have finally applied for discharge of conditions 16 & 17 of their outline planning consent, ie risk contours. To this end, TAG have submitted a consultants report, which can be summed up in one word, garbage. It is difficult to imagine a more shoddy piece of work. Copies of the report can be found on the Rushmoor web site.
Rushmoor head of planning Keith Holland claims there will be widespread consultation, which will be a novel idea for Rushmoor, but when questioned he referred to a notice in the Surrey-Hants Star! It appears no-one, not even those beneath the flight path have been notified.
One of the people who has NOT been notified is Keith Parkins who brought a landmark case against Rushmoor (Parkins v Rushmoor) in the High Court in London. The out-of-court settlement was that Rushmoor carry out an independent ground safety study BEFORE considering this planning application. [BVEJ newsletter #0021 February 2002, #0022 March 2002]
If you have not been notified, and are affected, please lodge a complaint with the Local Authority Ombudsman. Keith Parkins has asked Rushmoor to notify all those who commented on the TAG planning application, and all those who are encompassed within the risk contours.
Please ask Keith Holland to supply you with a copy of all relevant documents, and make sure you get an objection in, ideally BEFORE the deadline of 4 October 2002.
Keith Holland Head of Planning Rushmoor Borough Council Farnborough Hants GU14 7JU 01252 398 790 kholland@rushmoor.gov.uk http://www.rushmoor.gov.uk
Keith Parkins hopes to write a critique of the submitted report. Look out for this on his web site, or on the FARA site if they trouble to do anything. It needs people to leaflet the affected area, and mass public lobbying at the planning meting.
Since the government announced massive airport expansion, the number of airfield opposition groups has doubled. Groups have been holding public meetings and generating public awareness. What has FARA been doing, er nothing.
TAG are facing massive compensation claims under the Land Compensation Act for devaluing property prices. If your property has slumped in value, or not risen as fast as elsewhere, or you cannot sell your house, sue the bollocks off TAG.
FARA have known of this for at least a year. Why have they been so reticent in telling anyone?
Stop Press: As we were going to press we learnt that TAG had made a further submission, this time to discharge environmental monitoring conditions under the Section 106 Agreement - movements and noise. More details on the Rushmoor website, objections to Keith Holland and check out FARA's or Keith Parkins' website.
Depending upon whose figures you take there were 125,000 or more than 250,000 or 350,000 or in excess of 450,000. Certainly the Biggest ever anti-war demo seen in the UK. Speakers included: Tony Benn, Caroline Lucas, George Galloway, Robin Corbyn, Scott Ritter, John Pilger, trade union leaders, Muslim clerics etc. A strong message was sent to Tony Blair and other warmongers.
To give some idea of the numbers in Hyde Park. People assembled at the Embankment at 12-30 (Embankment Station was closed) and set off at 1-30. The tail end of the demo was passing through Trafalgar Square at 5-00 and through Piccadilly Circus at 5-30.
The action received very little coverage. The BBC was not atypical. The BBC website headlined tens of thousands but admitted at least 125,000, possibly 250,000. BBC Radio 4 headlined tens of thousands, reported thousands, and if you did not blink, you may have heard mention of 125,000.
According to the NUJ, the BBC instructed their reporters to play down the rally, to do otherwise would be seen as bias.
Similar demos are taking place in the US coordinated by anti-Vietnam War veterans.
The next action is to be civil disobedience across the UK on 31 October 2002.
Opposition To War Increases, UK Indymedia, 28 September 2002
The main obstacles to investigating Islamic terrorism were US oil corporate interests and the role played by Saudi Arabia in it. -- former FBI deputy director John O'Neill
No one would doubt that 9-11 was an appalling tragedy, and we extend our sympathy to all the innocent victims. But what is obscene is the way Blair and Bush have hijacked the tragedy for their own ends.
The Bush cabal may not have been complicit in 9-11, but to what extent did they have prior knowledge, to what extent have they benefited? Prior to 9-11, Bush had ordered the FBI to 'back off' any terrorist investigations involving Saudis or the bin Laden family. In the immediate aftermath of 9-11, stocks and shares plummeted in value, but some saw their fortunes rise. One such was the Carlyle Group, a $12 billion private investment fund with strong defence links, controlled by the Bush cabal, Saudi royal family and, until 9-11, the bin Laden family. The Carlyle Group are poised to seize a controlling stake in QinetiQ, henceforth to be known as the Al-QinetiQ Network (more on this soon).
Consider:
The 9-11 hijackers were trained at a flying school in Texas used for covert operations with links to dubious characters. All relevant documentation and local police files were seized and flown to Washington, never to be seen or heard of again. Jeb Bush rode shotgun on the plane. [BVEJ newsletter #0019 December 2001]
Former FBI deputy director John O'Neill resigned in July of 2001 in protest over the obstruction of terrorist investigations. According to O'Neill, 'The main obstacles to investigating Islamic terrorism were US oil corporate interests and the role played by Saudi Arabia in it.' The restrictions worsened after the Bush administration took over. Intelligence agencies were told to 'back off' from investigations involving other members of the bin Laden family, the Saudi royals, and possible Saudi links to the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Pakistan. John O'Neil died on 9-11 in the World Trade Center. [BVEJ newsletter #0019 December 2001, #0020 January 2002]
Arab kids in the neighbourhood went to school with their cameras ready to film 9-11. One Arab kid told his teacher the twin towers would not be there the next week. The same kid predicted the air crash from New York in November.
Cameras were in the right place at the right time to film 9-11 as it happened.
Three months before 9-11, America told its allies it planned to attack Afghanistan in October.
The 9-11 attacks were a political and military godsend to Bush and Blair. Ferocious pressure (including anthrax attacks originally blamed on Iraq) was put on the Congress not to question the official 9-11 story, US commentators who criticised Bush's extraordinary behaviour on the day were fired.
Bush/Blair said the attacks were successful because the US government was taken by surprise. But US officials already knew a multiple hijacking was at the top of Osama bin Laden's wish list. The Genoa summit was protected by a ring of anti-aircraft batteries.
The official 9-11 story has changed, and goes on changing. Leaks have shown that Bush received a personal briefing on Al-Qaeda in July while Rice was aware of warnings by the secret services of Britain, Israel, Russia and Egypt that an attack on the mainland US was imminent.
Both German and Russian intelligence agencies picked up signals during the summer of 2001 about bin Laden plans.
The FBI in its investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui's activities documented his desire to fly a plane into the World Trade Center. When those FBI agents requested a warrant to search Moussaoui's personal computer, the civil liberties-minded Attorney General, John Ashcroft, turned them down.
On the other hand, Ashcroft was worried enough about the hijacking of commercial airplanes that starting on July 26, 2001 he stopped flying on commercial aircraft. Of course, neither Aschroft nor anyone else in the Bush Administration bothered to warn airport authorities to be on heightened alert and to tighten airport security in the face of such warning signals.
Why did Bush say he saw the first hit on TV when no channel had the footage, and why did the Secret Service think Bush was safe at a public engagment within a few miles of an international airport?
For over an hour no planes were scrambled to protect the Pentagon. Is this really because the US Air Force didn't have any? Within minutes, and for weeks after, the skies were full of them.
Was it ever credible that Mohammed Atta's passport was found in the ruins within minutes of the attacks? Or that a car was found in a car park conveniently full of flight manuals and other 'evidence'?
Why did Bush and his poodle Blair immediately immediately decide to call an act of terror an act of war?
There is a lawsuit by 13 of the 9-11 victims' families alleging criminal complicity by the Bush regime in the attacks. Why has no mainstream media channel in the UK reported this?
Was it a coincidence that the Carlyle Group held a meeting on 11 September 2001? Those present included former secretary of defence Frank Carlucci, former secretary of state James Baker, and representatives of the bin Laden family.
Ref:
BBC: Did Bush turn a blind eye to terrorism?, BBC Newsnight, BBC2, Tuesday 6 November 2001
Nafeez Ahmed, The War on Freedom
Noam Chomsky, 9-11, Seven Stories Press, 2001
Laura Flanders, Oil Omissions: Bush Sr., Cheney Have Big Stakes in Saudi Status Quo, WorkingforChange.com, 18 October 2001
Ian Henshall, Action newsletter: Attention all UK publications, businesses and individuals opposed to the Iraq war and the Bush/Blair invasion plans, 10 September 2002
Larry Klayman et al, Fatal Neglect, Judicial Watch, 2002
Daniel Hopsicker, Mohamed Atta and the Venice Flying Circus, New York City Indymedia, 14 November 2001
Greg Palast and David Pallister, Officials told to 'back off' on Saudis before September 11, The Guardian, 7 November 2001
Keith Parkins, Airport Security, NY Indymedia, 10 November 2001
John Pilger, The New Rulers of the World, Verso, 2002
John Pilger, The Blair government continues to insist that Iraq poses a threat to the Middle East, despite clear evidence to the contrary, 27 Aug 2002
John Pilger, John Pilger finds cause for optimism as the world awakens to the true rapacity of US power and detects, even in America, the beginnings of a new rejection, 5 September 2002
Jeffrey Scott Shapiro, Prior Knowledge of Sept. 11 Not Just Urban Legend, Insight
Fran Shor, Follow the Money: Bush, 9/11 and Deep Threat, Counter Punch
Web:
The least important global environmental issue is potential global warming, and we hope that your negotiators at Johannesburg can keep it off the table and out of the spotlight. -- Excerpt from a letter sent to George W Bush by a group of ExxonMobil funded lobbyists
What can we say, the entire event, was, as we predicted, a bloody disaster.
The Earth Summit in Johannesburg got off to a good start. On the eve of the summit the police lobbed stun grenades into the crowds. At a summit to discus the environment and poverty the last thing we want is it being contaminated by the poor, the dispossessed, and God forbid, environmentalists.
Tine has not permitted us to give this the coverage it deserves for so important an issue. Please check out the excellent Indymedia coverage and check out their links. Also check out the coverage in the last two BVEJ newsletters and follow the links.
Multination Set WSSD Agenda, Indymedia, 26 August 2002
Social Movements Indaba Marches Against Repression, Indymedia, 26 August 2002
Blair's Junket to Rio + 10, Indymedia, 27 August 2002
Struggles Silenced at the WSSD, Indymedia, 29 August 2002
Reporting the Earth Summit, UK Indymedia, 30 August 2002
From Alexandra to Sandton; Apartheid to the IMF, Indymedia, 31 August 2002
Blair rebukes US on global warming, BBC news on-line, 2 September 2002
World Scientists' Warning to Humanity Revisited, Indymedia, 4 September 2002
WSSD Ends in Failure Amid Growing Dissent, Indymedia, 6 September 2002
This is government of the people, by the people and for the people, no longer. It is government of corporations, by corporations and for corporations. -- US President Rutherford B Hayes, 1876
We take it as granted that corporations exist, that rapacious global corporations are an evolutionary fact of life. But it doesn't have to be.
The modern corporation is a relatively modern phenomenon. We used to have merchants and traders, often consortia, the classic capitalists of Marx and Engels, but there were some projects that even for them, with all their wealth, the railways for example, were too big. That is why the modern corporation was conceived. They had a strictly defined purpose, often only a limited life, and prices were often strictly controlled.
Corporations exist by means of their charters of incorporation, they exist as pseudo-people, with all the rights but without any of the responsibilities. Although it rarely, if ever, happens, that charter can be revoked.
Corporations, whilst they benefited their shareholders, if they made a profit, existed for the common good. This very simple rationale for their creation and existence has long been forgotten. Now they exist for the greed of their senior executives, shareholders are a long way down, and the environment, human rights and the general public good are somewhere undetectable over the horizon.
Corporations are in need of reform. As we stagger from one crisis to the next, now is the time to push for reform. If corporate criminals cannot be trusted not to cook their own books in the most regulated part of their business, ie their financial transactions, voluntary labour and environmental codes, will, as we have seen, count for nought.
Corporations have to be kicked out of politics. They have no role in lobbying to effect laws which are for the good of civil society, they have no place in financing political parties, any attempt to do so should be a criminal offence with prison as a mandatory sentence.
Protection of the environment, labour laws, human rights, have to have penalties that hurt. Currently corporations are only too willing to blatantly flout the law, let alone heed voluntary codes, if it has a positive effect on the balance sheet, and even more so if it improves the share price. Senior executives have to face jail terms. Fines have to be measured in millions, possibly billions.
For repeat offenders, corporations have to face enforceable death sentences, their charters of incorporation being revoked, the company dismantled and the assets sold off at public auction, the funds raised being distributed to the victims and the local community. The workforce, even though they would be facing redundancy, wouldn't get a dime, as it is for them to expose and stop corporate malpractice.
Rio Tinto, one of the world's biggest mining corporations, has pulled out of plans for the Jabiluka uranium mine in the Northern Territory, Australia. The mine is in the ancestral homeland of the Aboriginal Mirrar people and would have contaminated huge parts of their land which is also part of Kakadu National Park, a listed World Heritage Site.
Since uranium was first found there in the early seventies, the Mirrar have been fighting to stop mining on their land. The struggle escalated in 1998 after the government reversed long-standing environmental policies permitting new uranium mines to be built. A protest camp then sprang up, blockading the site for several months and resulting in hundreds of arrests. This, along with constant acts of sabotage on site and pressure on the government from UNESCO (UN environment quango) and the World Heritage Organisation, forced Rio Tinto to pull out of Jabiluka.
This letter casts a grim light on the iron triangle of the Bush White House, corporate polluters such as Exxon Mobil, and conservative lobbyists. They are determined to block any progress at the Johannesburg Summit. They have already leaned on President Bush not even to show up, and are now demanding that his negotiators do their best to wreck any hope of agreement. These lobbyists cannot live off the support of ordinary citizens - who would react with incredulity or anger to their claims that climate change is an issue of no importance. So they rely instead on handouts from corporations such as Exxon. Exxon doesn't have the courage to promote its political agenda directly. So it relies on the lobbyists to do its dirty work. -- Tony Juniper, FoE
... we applaud your decision not to attend the Summit in person ... Even more than the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992, the Johannesburg Summit will provide a global media stage for many of the most irresponsible and destructive elements involved in critical international economic and environmental issues. Your presence would only help to publicize and make more credible various anti-freedom, anti-people, anti-globalization, and anti-Western agendas. -- Excerpt from a letter sent to George W Bush by a group of ExxonMobil funded lobbyists
... the least important global environmental issue is potential global warming and we hope that your negotiators at Johannesburg can keep it off the table and out of the spotlight. -- Excerpt from a letter sent to George W Bush by a group of ExxonMobil funded lobbyists
'... in our view the worst possible outcome at Johannesburg would be taking any steps towards creating a World Environmental Organization, as the European Union has suggested.' -- Excerpt from a letter sent to George W Bush by a group of ExxonMobil funded lobbyists
Leading Republican Party and conservative lobbyists, many funded by ExxonMobil, lobbied Bush to stop progress at the Johannesburg Earth Summit. In a letter to President George W Bush, 31 political groups and individuals, demanded that he not attend the Summit and called on him to ensure that his negotiators prevented any progress on climate change.
Many of these groups have long been active in trying to frustrate progress on tackling man-made climate change and other global environmental crises. For example, CFACT sent fifty 'trained' Republican students to the Bonn climate talks in 2001 to demonstrate against the Kyoto Treaty. The AERF promotes and supports the work of leading US climate sceptic S Fred Singer.
Signatories include:
Exxon is the climate baddie (BVEJ newsletters passim), was responsible for removal of the guy in charge of the scientific panel on climate change (BVEJ newsletter #0025 June 2002), is attempting crude intimidation of Greenpeace (BVEJ newsletter #0027 August 2002), stands charged with human rights abuses in Indonesia (BVEJ newsletter #0028 September 2002), has tried to derail the Johannesburg Earth Summit (this issue) and now stands accused of killing whales.
Held over until next month.
Turkey is now divided into three countries, the area where Turkish law applies; the Kurdish areas under official or de facto military rule; and a strip running the entire length of the country, where BP is the effective government. The MAI was rightly rejected by governments for eroding national sovereignty under pressure from civil society. Now these companies are trying to revive the MAI by negotiating directly with undemocratic governments. -- Nicholas Hildyard, Cornerhouse
[Turkey] has recently charged students signing a Kurdish education petition with membership of an illegal terrorist organisation, and charged a father who named his daughter after a Kurdish character in a popular soap with sabotage of the state. These precedents do not instil confidence in the way such nebulous terms as 'civil disturbance' and 'terrorism' will be applied under this agreement. -- Anders Lustgarten, Kurdish Human Rights Project
We have highlighted in the past that the interest in Afghanistan is oil. Afghanistan lacks oil but passage is needed for oil pipelines to transfer oil from the oil rich ex-Soviet republics to the north. That is why US attacked Afghanistan, 11 September 2001 was merely the pretext. Another piece of the jigsaw has now slotted into place. Oil majors have negotiated a pipeline route through Turkey. [BVEJ newsletters passim]
The planned 1760km oil pipeline is backed by BP (UK), Unocal (US) Statoil (Norway), Turkiye Petroleum (Turkey), ENI (Italy), TotalFinaElf (France), Itochu Oil (Japan), Delta Hess (US/Saudi Arabia) and the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan. It would stretch from Baku on the Caspian Sea, through T'blisi in Georgia, to Ceyhan on the Turkish Mediterranean coast. Expected to be completed by 2005, it would operate for at least 40 years.
The BP-Turkey agreement, known as the Host Government Agreement (HGA), creates a corridor running through some of Turkey's most politically volatile regions, including Turkish occupied Kurdistan. The corridor would effectively be outside the national government's jurisdiction for the lifetime of the proposed project.
The agreement exempts the companies from obligations under any current or future Turkish law that may threaten the project's profits, including environmental, social and human rights legislation. The only Turkish law not superseded by the agreement is the Constitution.
The HGA allows the consortium building the pipeline to demand unlimited protection from Turkish security forces, without safeguards against human rights abuses. Under the vague wording of the agreement, paramilitary units could be placed along the pipeline route to pre-empt 'civil disturbance' or 'terrorist' activities. Since the pipeline cuts repeatedly through villages and bisects established ownership patterns, people could find themselves cut off from their families or land and be forced to trespass regularly on oil company property in their daily lives.
Other provisions in the HGA include unfettered access to water, regardless of the needs of local communities, and exemption from liability in the event of an oil spill or any other harm caused by the pipeline consortium. The Turkish government can intervene only temporarily in the case of an 'imminent' and 'material' threat to the public, the environment or national security.
The route chosen for the pipeline is one of the most expensive possible for Caspian oil exports. According to BP Chairman John Browne, its profitability will be dependent on 'free public money' - much of which will come from funding sources like the World Bank and export credit agencies. The legal agreement signed with the Turkish government further props up the project by preventing the Turkish government from taking any actions that could disrupt its 'economic equilibrium'.
Similar agreements between governments and the oil companies have been negotiated for Georgia and Azerbaijan. Commenting on the implications for Georgia, Manana Kochladze of Green Alternatives stated: 'The requirement to compensate the consortium for any disruption caused to the 'economic equilibrium' of the project by new social and environmental laws severely curtails the development possibilities for our country.'
All three countries are known for their disregard for human rights. Once again we see what Big Business means by 'sustainable development' and 'public private partnerships'.
Keith Parkins, Oil and Turkey, Indymedia UK, 31 August 2002
George Monbiot, Trouble in the Pipeline, The Guardian, 3 September 2002
As in ExxonMobil, the litigation seeks to penalise a US company for investing in a country with a record of human rights abuses. It could have a chilling effect on investment and efforts to induce the host country to improve human rights. -- Unocal
Oil giant Unocal could be sued for forced labour, rape, and murder committed by Burmese soldiers who guarded a Unocal gas pipeline project. Because according to a US federal appeals court. 'Unocal knew the acts of violence would probably be committed, it became liable as an aider and abettor'. Cases are also pending against Royal Dutch Shell, Texaco and ExxonMobil for various abuses by security forces 'defending' their installations.
But before we get too excited, the US State Department has already interfered in one case and this is setting a precedence. [BVEJ newsletter #0028 September 2002].
Held over for a future issue.
The Criminal Records Bureau is in disarray. Who is running CRB? Why none other than our old friends Crapita.
The school year has begun with a right neo-labour cock-up. Thousands of lucky kids have been turned away from school because not all staff have been cleared by the new Criminal Records Bureau (CRB). And just who's behind this mess? Why our old friends Crapita (see Schnews 335) who got control of the bureau thanks to the PFI (Private Finance Initiative) - £400 million for a ten year contract.
Launched in April, the CRB is a system for checking the background of all people who work with children or vulnerable adults in schools, voluntary organisations or professional bodies. Collating information from the police and government agencies, the CRB is run by Crapita, which charges £12 for each check. Initially, Crapita promised to respond to 90% of high-level enquiries - those required for the teaching profession - but within three weeks this promise had slipped back to the end of the year 'if yer lucky'.
The problem was that poor Crapita were expecting 75% of the applications to come by phone and were surprised that so many came in handwritten through the post - actually not all that surprising since applications from local authorities need to be signed by a designated officer and so can't really be phoned in. The real reason for the mess up is that Crapita set up a system to scan the applications using optical character recognition which can't read handwriting so all the data had to be input manually (I don't believe it!) and they just didn't have the staff to handle such a tall order. Crapita have since shipped off all the applications to India! So the education Secretary Estelle Morris was left a 'very dissatisfied customer'.
But of course unlike failing schools, Crapita is under no threat of the government taking them over or even giving them a slap on the wrist. Instead, Crapita, who cocked up the Individual Learning Accounts Scheme earlier this year and left £260 million of tax payers money open to fraud, have continually been fed more and more contracts - over £1 billion worth in the first half of the year alone including a 10-year contract to collect TV licence fees (which should make readers without licenses breath a sigh of relief) and a five-year contract to run the congestion-charging scheme in London. Maybe that's why they've had a 38% rise in profits for the first half of the year, with three of their top executives sharing a £7.5million payout.
Meanwhile, hospitals, care homes and social services departments trying to recruit struggled with delays that have built up in vetting potential staff. The whole social services system had 'slowed down dramatically', said one director of social services. A care worker told Schnews she'd spent 18 weeks waiting to be cleared and unable to work.
Next year Crapita hope to expand the CRB. They will be offering companies a service to vet any potential new recruit. Are you happy having Crapita trawl through your personal life?
Is there any contracts Crapita have not fucked up? Why does neo-Labour still keep awarding Crapita contracts?
[Private Eye passim, SchNEWS passim]
PFI is the neo-Labour scam whereby money is sucked from the public sector into the coffers of Big Business. If you don't believe us, check out the Annual Reports of companies like Jarvis and see how they are drooling at the massive profits to be made.
If it costs the public purse £50,000,000 to build a new hospital, under PFI it will cost the public purse the same sum every year over the next 30 years for an inferior product.
Lies told by neo-Labour
Given a choice PFI is always chosen. There is no choice. It is either choose PFI or go without, or the figures are rigged to benefit PFI.
It is the same as you and I getting a mortgage. Not true. We borrow money and we own the resource at the end of the payment period. Under PFI, a company like Balfour Beastie borrows money at a higher rate than the government can borrow, then adds in fees for management, risk, plus its inflated guaranteed profit. To be like our mortgage the government would borrow on its own behalf.
Under PFI the private sector bears the risk. As we have seen with Railcrap and the nuclear power industry, it is a win-win situation for the private sector, they reap all the profit, and if in spite of reaping all the profit, they still go under, the government, ie the taxpayer, will bail them out.
PFI is investment by the private sector. Wrong! PFI is the private sector bleeding the public sector dry.
Other ills include poor working conditions for workers forced to transfer from public to private sector, poorer quality services, secrecy on the grounds of 'commercial confidentiality', lack of accountability.
As we went to press the neo-Labour criminal leadership were defeated 2:1 by the membership at their neo-Fascist rally, but in the true tradition of neo-Labour democracy the criminal leadership said they would ignore the result anyway.
Locally QinetiQ is earmarked for part-privatisation, with the Carlyle Group (Bush cabal, Saudi royal family and bin Laden family) the preferred bidder. More on this soon.
Excellent coverage of neo-Labour PFI scams in Private Eye and SchNEWS. Also read George Monbiot's Captive State.
Tens of thousands of UK school children are being finger printed by schools, often without the knowledge or consent of their parents, not because they are guilty or suspected of some crime, but as part of a cost cutting 'automation' of school libraries by the company Micro Librarian Systems. As many as 200,000 primary and high school children from the age of seven have already been fingerprinted.
Held over to next month.
Primary School Children Fingerprinted, UK Indymedia, 28 July 2002
By the end of Christmas we expect to see many of the stores in Kingsmead closed. The card shop in Queensmead next to the fish and chip shop is due to close. The last straw was trading on a building site. Many retailers have been forced to relocate within the town.
Demolition of the south side of The Mead has caused problems. Projectiles were flying everywhere, dust in everything (the staff in the dry cleaners were forced to wear dust masks). Asda are now unable to turn their lorries.
Problems are also being caused on the old Post Office site. A tree at the back of the Pizza Hut has been destroyed on the direct orders of slime ball Simon Rutter (KPI). Neither contractors, objectors or even members of the planning committee were aware of this tree's destruction. It was not on the original plans. Rushmoor Head of Planning Keith Holland has lied through his teeth and claimed it was shown on amended plans. Strange no one has seen these amended plans, not even the contractor carrying out the work. Plans submitted to GOSE at least a year after planning consent was granted for the Post Office site shows the tree still safeguarded.
Dredging has taken place of Cove Brook where it runs through Southwood Golf Course. The work has destroyed all wildlife and amenity value and left behind an unsightly drainage ditch.
The work is not only pointless, it is worse than pointless. It drains what is a flood plain, accelerating the flow downstream where there is nowhere to flood other than surrounding houses.
The equivalent would be at Guildford, that instead of opening the gates and releasing water into the water meadows, the water meadows were drained to dump more water into the River Wey at times of flood.
It comes as no surprise to learn that the Rushmoor cretin responsible for this appalling waste of public funds is none other than John Edwards, a classic example of rising way above ones capability, though as one wit commented, crud always rises to the surface.
The driving force behind this work is the need to remove the water that TAG are sending downstream causing Southwood Golf Course to flood, and the embarrassment this is now causing after we have repeatedly highlighted the problem.
The obvious solution, limiting TAG's ability to discharge more water downstream, cannot of course be contemplated.
[BVEJ newsletters passim]
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