Tuesday 28 July 2009

Mainshill Solidarity Camp




Mainshill Solidarity Camp in South Lanarkshire Scotland is on the site of a proposed open-cast coal mine. The land has been occupied and defended by campers who are working with the local community in opposition to Scottish Coal's plans.

See updates on the website:
mainshill.noflag.org.uk

Tuesday 7 July 2009

tart tart tart

Tart:

TART * The sweet: as in the dessert tart, coming to English in the 1200s from French. A bit of pastry with some fruit in. Maybe a spot of cream in there and a glaze on top.

TART * The tart: as in the adjective tart, meaning “sharp, piquant,” originating from an Old English word teart, with intense meanings of pain and suffering.

TART * The sweet and tart: as in the pejorative tart applied to prostitutes, promiscuous women and occasionally men. This version of the word was sweet in that it was used in a positive sense when it appeared around the mid 1800s; it took pejorative connotations not long after. It's thought that the first use of tart in this sense was as a shortening of sweetheart, or jam-tart, cockney rhyming slang for sweetheart.

Monday 6 July 2009

Item 4:

Item 3:

Item 2:




Item 1:

Evidence

I've been quiet for a while...the evidence to follow.

Wednesday 18 March 2009

Wednesday 11 March 2009

Protest Groups Disrupt Miss University London


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
11.03.09 4:30 AM
smashmisscontest@gmail.com

Protest groups disrupt Miss University London beauty pageant.

“Now I know why my mother’s generation did what they did in the 60s. I feel amazing. Tonight we did what we said we would – we smashed Miss University London!”
- Martina Pasonaria, 30, Musician

At 1.30am this morning a group calling themselves SMASH MISS CONTEST infiltrated Miss University London and caused disruption throughout the event with stink bombs and personal alarms, culminating with a stage invasion bringing the show to a halt during the announcement of the winner. A questionnaire and open letter to participants were scattered to the audience, contestants and compere.

Miss University London re-emerged two years ago amongst widespread controversy. Set up by 121entertainment, led by Christian Emile, the event drew in three different protest groups. Miss-Ogyny, a group specifically set up to resist the pageant’s presence on campus, rallied opposite the entrance. They were joined by The Space Hijackers who handed out tissues to men queuing for the pageant.

“They couldn’t hide what the event was – a crass judgement of women based on their looks, all so that they could make money.”
- Helen Bradshaw, 21, Student

**Video on youtube soon**

Saturday 7 March 2009

Tuesday 24 February 2009

Creative Rebels Needed


CLIMATE CAMP AT THE G20, WED 1 APRIL

CALL OUT FOR WORKSHOPS and CULTURE - AT CLIMATE CAMP G20

Climate camp 2009 /// Stopping carbon markets /// Because nature doesn't do bailouts.

At Noon on April 1st people will gather at the European Climate Exchange on Bishopsgate to set up camp against carbon markets.

The camp is looking for workshops for the day. We would love to hear from you if you can offer a workshop, especially (but not limited to) workshops on carbon trading, market solutions to climate change, and the economic crisis. We are also really keen to hear from you if you can offer music, street theatre or anything else which will make the day inspiring and educational!

Please let us know if you would be able to offer a workshop and the details at g20workshops@riseup.net

The information about the camp is at www.climatecamp.org.uk/g20, and we hope to see you there!

Monday 16 February 2009

Smash Miss Contest!


On Saturday The Ketchup Vaginas (name to become evident soon enough...) had a stall at the Anti-Capitalist Feminist conference 'Gender, Race and Class' - and met lots of great people interested in spectacular interventions...visit and find out more about Smash Miss Contest!

Wednesday 4 February 2009

The People VS The Banksters


RBS, or The Oil Bank of Scotland have misappeared billions of taxpayers' money in a matter of months. And their favourite investment? Fossil fuels...

FOSSIL FOOLS more like! Taking the snow-fight fun to a bank that likes to take a risk any day of the week, 30 or 40 people pounded the doors, the building, bankers and of course, each other. Workers in the bank stopped working to watch, and the rotating door got jammed with snow - business as usual stopped for a good half hour or so.

Monday 2 February 2009

Climate Justice Assembly Declaration


Bélém, Brazil, 1 February 2009

CLIMATE JUSTICE NOW!

No to neoliberal illusions, yes to people's solutions!

For centuries, productivism and industrial capitalism have been destroying our cultures, exploiting our labour and poisoning our environment.

Now, with the climate crisis, the Earth is saying "enough", "ya basta"!

Once again, the people who created the problem are telling us that they also have the solutions: carbon trading, so-called "clean coal", more nuclear power, agrofuels, even a "green new deal". But these are not real solutions, they are neoliberal illusions. It is time to move beyond these illusions.

Real solutions to the climate crisis are being built by those who have
always protected the Earth and by those who fight every day to defend their environment and living conditions. We need to globalise these solutions.

For us, the struggles for climate justice and social justice are one and
the same. It is the struggle for territories, land, forests and water, for
agrarian and urban reform, food and energy sovereignty, for women's and worker's rights. It is the fight for equality and justice for indigenous peoples, for peoples of the global South, for the redistribution of wealth and for the recognition of the historical ecological debt owed by the North.

Against the disembodied, market-driven interests of the global elite and the dominant development model based on never-ending growth and consumption, the climate justice movement will reclaim the commons, and put social and economic realities at the heart of our struggle against climate change.

We call on everyone – workers, farmers, fisherfolk, students, youth,
women, indigenous peoples, and all concerned humans from the South and the North – to join in this common struggle to build the real solutions to the climate crisis for the future of our planet, our societies, and our cultures. All together, we are building a movement for climate justice.

We support the mobilizations against the G20 summit and on the global crisis from 28 march to 4 April, and the 17 April 2009 mobilisation of La Via Campesina.

We support the call for an International Day of Action in Defense of
Mother Earth and Indigenous Rights on 12 October 2009.

We call for mobilisations and diverse forms of actions everywhere, in the lead up to, during and beyond the UN climate talks in Copenhagen, especially on the Global Day of Action on 12 December 2009.

In all of our work, we will expose the false solutions, raise the voices
of the South, defend human rights, and strengthen our solidarity in the
fight for climate justice. If we make the right choices, we can build a
better world for everyone.

Thursday 29 January 2009


You didn't remain impartial Mark Thompson, you exposed your bias.
Bricks, squashed tomatoes and indeed shoes may be posted to his BBC HQ office at Television Centre, Wood Lane, London, W12 7RJ

Wednesday 28 January 2009

Extract from Friday at Kaaitheater


I’m from Manchester in the UK and I’ve lived in cities all my life. I’ve lived off food I’ve got out of bins for six months at a time.
It was a fun thing to do with friends.

What we did was meet up in the evening, after the pub or whatever, and cycle round the smaller supermarkets of the city, hopping in the bins at the back and picking through the see-through plastic bags picking out what was edible. Bag of pineapples? Magic. , for example, Bag of beef? Eurgh, put that back in! My all time favourite skipped food finds have to be…No 1 the forty bunches of Marks & Spencer’s flowers – we gave them away to everyone on the main road, they were like Oh that’s so nice are you really sure are they for free?! And we were like, we just got them out of the bins, on you go! And then No 2 the great mango and cabbage find, literally about 40 of each, mangoes not even ripe yet. My friend made a lot of chutney. And then finally No 3 is when they recalled Maltesers, that was a good one. They got everywhere.
We’d take loads of bags with us, and divide out the food into bags for different people that we’d then drop off on our way home. You’d put in all the things you thought each person or household would like the most – no cheese for them, they’re vegans, all the ricotta for Thom, he’ll use it, and flowers? They have to go to Scarlet, she loves them and so on.

I like statistics which are expressed in humans, so for example, 1 in 15 people think Obama is actually going to make some changes, or 1 in 2 people have tried cat biscuits or, I remember in secondary school when someone found scientific proof on the internet that 1 in 3 people were definitely gay, and the whole class looked round the room of like 30 of us and realised that meant 10 of us were gay but we were 12 and we didn’t know if we were one of the gay ones or not so it was quite exciting.
So, 1 in 5 people in the UK live below the poverty line, in Belgium it is 1 in 10. Meanwhile, across Europe, 30-40% of food put on the shelves ends up in the bin. In the UK an organisation formed to get some more numbers on it. For me there was a clear winner for the worst and therefore kind of the best statistic. Guess how many whole chickens are thrown away in the UK every day? Any guesses? 5,500 whole chickens. Each day. Shit. Sqwauk.

Tuesday 27 January 2009

a pretty good day.


Early wake up with phone calls and buzzes and there's folks on the sofa and an invite for breakfast where there's beans and squishy skipped bananas and ach - we'll make a plan on the way. Wobbling bikes lugging cardboard gun, wedding dress, banana skins, bouquets of wilting flowers and a fat suit.
First stop the bank, where there's an organised protest – placards and leaflets and a megaphone and in we go without a thought and blag and blah and ask the questions that they can't answer until we're firmly escorted out.
I wanna do something but I don't know what.
There's a samba band around the corner – Let's get 'em round here.
I'm bored. Let's buy loo roll and throw it in. Let's write messages on it.
Let's go.
Catch youse soon.

That shop window's got a door in - we just have to dodge the guard - catch him off guard.
OK, hold my gun - let's go. One by one we step, grinning into the readymade playground.
I pull down my new-man-the-mannequins trendy trousers and hold his hand and ask the gathering crowd: “SHOPPING IS...?”
“That's the police on the way”.
“SHOPPING IS...SEXY?
“You'll have to leave now”
“SHOPPING IS...BORING.”
And off we go and it must be time to distribute these flowers salvaged from the bins in all their cellophane glory. We shower the band with confetti and dance along to find those most deserving of the flowers.
A couple parting – here, you get him, I'll get her – say they're from each other.
Another guard. But he wont have it – he's got his image to think about.
And then there's folk in the window – wedding dress and fat suit, telling a strange love story of super bargains.
We chat to the guy who's visiting from Nigeria. He says "if it looks too good to be true, it probably is", but eventually he accepts the flowers and as far as we know they brought him no ills. He can't imagine that we'd ever make our way to Nigeria on our bikes, but he certainly likes the sound of us trying.
After some negotiation the bargain bride and bulging companion are released from the shop with no more than a strained groin and a confused shop-manager. BHS has never known such excitement.
On then, on.

GIVE BLOOD says the sign and so we obey - “can you keep moving round please”. Each time a chair becomes free we move camp. Dresses and fat-suits and crumpled guns and all. This is very important, despite the fact that there's nobody waiting behind us.
Giving blood isn't as simple as it seemed.
The tricky questionnaire filters most of us out but I scrape through and leave a pint of myself behind.
Then it's on to McGills for karaoke (and replacing those lost fluids) but it's a no-goer so we creep underground for the free preview and out for the trudge home.
May as well lets stick our heads in the bin eh? And the trudge home is harder but merrier with bags of food to share out over tea and snoozes and banging loud crazy tunes. And in the background there's bikes to be fixed, sculptures to be made, friends to be met, dogs to be walked and then the party to fill the night.
That was a pretty good day by the way.
(Though we never did find a use for that cardboard gun).

Things are getting sticky

So I thought I'd leave you a little something to wake up to, little B.  On a regular basis.