yet another blog

Ratcliffe-on-Soar, Nottinghamshire, 17-18 October

Hmm. Couldn’t manage to be at this one but have been keeping an eye on events there courtesy of the Climate Camp website, Twitter (#swoop), Indymedia etc.

Two interesting little snippets caught my eye, from the Notts Indymedia timeline…

October 17, 2009 19:33 – Reports arrive that, contrary to the Police’s press release, the policeman who collapsed went dizzy from overheating, fell over and hit his head on somebody’s knee on the way down. There was definitely no violence involved in that incident. The innuendo in the police press release is ridiculous.

And a bit earlier…

October 17, 2009 18:02 – Injured protester’s ambulance took about an hour, cop’s took about 3mins.

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Located this year at Kingsnorth in Kent, where it is proposed that a new coal-fired power station will be constructed by e.on, the energy giant.

And this year’s Climate Camp attracted a higher level of repressive policing than I’ve witnessed at any of the events I’ve attended over the past few years.
Policing that went way beyond what any reasonable person would consider necessary, and set against a backdrop of smear stories and inflammatory allegations (such as the supposed “discovery” of “caches of weapons”) that bore little resemblance to anything I saw “on the ground”.

Yet despite all that the Camp still attracted a record number of people, with estimates putting the figure at more than either of the previous two Camps (the first at Drax in Yorkshire, the second at Heathrow), and still managed to successfully launch a number of protest actions.

And, on-site, the people were as friendly as ever, and just as eager to share their knowledge and skills with those who are only know engaging with the issue of climate change and related problems.

Its such a shame that the police still haven’t yet realised that Climate Camp protesters are not the real criminals. That honour must surely lie at the door of the big corporations that continue to pollute and destroy our environment in the name of profit… and the governments that support them.

For my own personal account of my week at Climate Camp see this article at TawNews.
And photos are on Flickr, mirrored on Envirospeak.

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