Issue 18 - July 1999
MONSTER-GUE PLACE!
WHAT is the worse kind of vandal? Someone who
smashes up a bus shelter or park bench because they are bored or somebody who
destroys a whole town because they can make a load of money out of it?
That’s the question brought once again to the forefront of Worthing
people’s minds with the announcement of the hideous and outrageous plans
to ruin Montague Place. Two rival bidders, contesting a bizarre land ownership
row, have both spotted that here is a bit of open space in the town centre.
Somewhere you can actually breathe and look out towards the sea. So they have
decided to cover it with shops in another porkin’ commercial development
aimed at lining the pockets of the few at the expense of the rest of us who
share this town. Reported the Worthing Guardian on June 4: One of the last
features of Old Worthing will disappear if the go-ahead is given for a
controversial shops and pedestrianisation scheme in Montague Place. The
Worthing Society is opposing the £1.5 million plan... It would mean the
width of the entrance from Montague Street to Montague Place being cut by half
and retail floorspace of up to 16,000 square feet being built alongside the
blank wall on the west side of Woolworth’s. Worthing has seen it all
before, of course. The multi-storey car park on the seafront, the Guildbourne
Centre replacing unique streets of ancient cottages, Teville Gate - and now
the planned Multipox. Anyone here remember the late Frank Kenton?
There’s always a quick buck to be made out of 'modernising' the urban
environment. As usual, both would-be developers seem confident they have the
council on board and eager to allow the nightmare of Monster-gue Place to
become reality. But, along with Worthing Society, groups like Worthing Friends
of the Earth and Worthing Green Party are firmly against the plans. We join
them in calling for the people of Worthing to speak out against this
disastrous scheme. Defy the business mafias and save our Worthing heritage!
Doing his Neville best ...
WE think we have spotted a familiar name in
the details of the original bid to build over Montague Place. The applicants
are listed as CR and NJ Pressley. Good heavens! Could NJ Pressley possibly be
the same Neville Pressley who was appointed chairman of the board of Worthing
Homes Ltd after the borough council bulldozed through its privatisation of our
council housing? Could this be the same Neville Pressley who is a director of
Spofforths Chartered Accountants? And finance director of Pressley’s the
jewellers? And who chairs the management committee of Worthing MIND? And who
is vice-chair of the board of governors at Northbrook College? Surely only a
man possessed of superhuman powers could even dream of taking on such a raft
of responsibilities? And still find time to redesign Worthing town centre! To
clear all this up, we have written to Mr Pressley as follows: Dear Mr Neville
Pressley, Are you really one of the applicants behind the Montague Place
scheme? How do you find the time for all your good works? And, while
we’re at it, could you confirm for us, on the record, that you are
definitely NOT a Freemason? PS: We have reserved a space for your reply in our
next issue.
Big Brother Focused on Sussex
ONCE again our Big Brother’s
Birthday message against police surveillance on the streets has been backed up
with news reports hitting the media. Last year it emerged just before our June
protest that crime in Worthing had actually gone up in the two years since
CCTV had been installed! This year, no fewer than two separate stories helped
to support our efforts out on the streets on June 26 to warn people of the
menace posed by the spy cameras. Firstly, the front page of The Argus a.m. on
June 2 was devoted to a story headlined 'Spies Like Us' We are CCTV capital of
the UK, says new report. It explained: People in Sussex are the most watched
anywhere in the UK, according to a report on security cameras out today. With
an extra 35 cameras currently being installed to bring five more Sussex towns
under the eyes of police, the total value of schemes now exceeds £6
million. There are more than 230 police cameras operating in 22 towns, the
largest integrated police-controlled system in the nation. Second item was in
the Scots-based Sunday Mail on June 27. A police worker has been sacked for
allegedly using security cameras to spy on women. David Henderson, 43, is
claimed to have used a town centre CCTV system to zoom in on young women and
follow them through the streets. His sacking comes two years after he was
cleared of a sex charge. Last night, critics of CCTV said it confirmed their
worst fears about ‘Big Brother’ cameras, reported the paper.
United in Quest for More Money
TOP fictional footballers Montague
United will not be defending the Worthing Satire Cup next season, they have
announced, as it clashes with the prestigious G&J Waste Disposal
Kick-Around in far-off Bognor. Said United manager Arthur McBribe: I’d
like to point out that we are doing this for the greater glory of Worthing,
but I can’t because it isn’t true. At the end of the day
it’s just about cash and sod everything else.
PORKY PIE'S TIP OF THE MONTH
How to be Quids In!
- TYPE THE WORD 'WORTHING' ON A BLANK PIECE OF PAPER.
- DRAW THREE COLOURED CRAYON STROKES UNDERNEATH IT.
- CONGRATULATIONS! YOU HAVE JUST INVENTED THE WORTHING MARQUE! COLLECT
THOUSANDS OF POUNDS OF COUNCIL TAX PAYERS’ CASH!
Green Light for Merriment!
DON’T WORRY! There is an alternative
in Worthing to the ugly obsession with commercial development and big money
deals. And there are a couple of opportunities to get involved with this
healthy community scene in the coming months. First in line is
Children’s Day in South Street Square,
Worthing, on Saturday August 21, 10am to 5pm. This will feature
juggling, face painting, street theatre, stilt walking, balloon painting and
musicians. It has been organised by Worthing Town Centre Initiative and
voluntary groups including Worthing Friends of the Earth. Even bigger and
better is Worthing Green Fair a major fun event on the town calendar to be
held on Saturday September 4 from 12 noon to 11pm
at the Field of Hope, Beach House Green, Brighton Road, next to
the Aquarena on Worthing seafront. Our Environment, Our Community, Our Future
is the vision for the day and there will stuff for children and adults alike,
including a cafe, music, information stalls, displays, workshops and circus
skills. Meanwhile organisers Worthing Friends of the Earth have issued the
following wish list marquees, entertainers, display boards, workshop leaders,
artists, campaign groups, performers, voluntary groups, healers, musicians,
art and craft materials, garden plants and herbs in pots, banners and
backdrops, rugs, cushions, dancers, money, clowns. I
Press here for Secret Monopoly
YOU won’t have read this in the
local papers, but most of the press in the Worthing area and indeed across
West Sussex is now in the hands of one Big Business group. Johnston Press plc,
a fast-expanding company based in Edinburgh (that’s in Scotland for
those who didn’t know - maybe it’s us that should be demanding
independence from them!) has just taken over Portsmouth and Sunderland
Newspapers plc. This means it now has its hands on titles such as The West
Sussex Gazette and the Chichester Observer, as well as existing assets such as
the Worthing Herald, Worthing Guardian, Worthing Advertiser, Shoreham Herald,
Shoreham Guardian, Littlehampton Gazette, Littlehampton Guardian, West Sussex
County Times, Storrington Advertiser, Horsham Advertiser, Mid-Sussex Times. .
. Can this be right? Surely the monopolies and mergers people (now the
Competition Commission) would have something to say about all this? Seems not!
Meanwhile, underpaid staff and overcharged customers alike will be pleased to
hear that Johnston Press plc last year made a heart-warming £50 million
profit and that chief executive Tim Bowdler raked in a well-deserved
£240,000 salary. Try writing in a letter to your caring, crusading local
paper (any one, take your pick!) commenting on this particular shock horror
scandal and see how far you get!
Stop that Monkeying Around
THINKING caps on, folks, for a special
Porky Pie challenge! One of the following is from a real reader’s letter
in the Worthing Herald, the other is a spoof. Can you tell which is true and
which is false? A) I am writing to enquire if any readers remember a house on
Worthing seafront where there were some very small monkeys, which one could
give/feed peanuts to. The nuts were placed in a small tin, which the chained
monkeys pulled up on a string to the end of the ramp on which it was sitting.
Oh, for the days when you could sit in the bandstand on a deck chair with a
rug over your knees and listen to the various well-known bands in the summer
months. All very sedate and peaceful in those days: I don’t remember any
disturbances from rough lads either. B) I am writing to enquire if any readers
remember a house in Worthing where there lived a tame rhinoceros. It used to
stick its massive horn out of a ground floor window and allow children to
swing from it if they fed it Mint Imperials through a hand-made china funnel.
In the summer months, Worthing children used to perform tea dances on the
promenade, with rugs balanced on their heads. Unfortunately that all came to
an end after the Mad Rhinoceros Tea Dance Massacre in the late 1920s.
Wonderful days.
Squeaking about the Fear of Crime
FEAR of crime is an important part
of Big Brother Britain - why else would any sane person put up with spy
cameras? And it is now going to surreal extremes. Reported the Worthing
Guardian on May 28: When a Findon woman reported hearing noises downstairs, to
Sussex Police patrol cars with two-man crew, a police dog unit and the Force
helicopter responded to the midnight 999 call. The woman, calling controllers
from her upstairs bedroom, refused to leave the safety of her room. After a
while officers were allowed entry and searched the house. A mouse was
discovered and removed.
Benefits of some Porkin’ Publicity!
REMEMBER the bureau-pratic
Catch 22 situation we highlighted in the last issue, where a homeless young
Worthing couple could not get a tenancy agreement without a letter from the
housing benefit people and the housing benefit people would not give them a
letter until they had a tenancy agreement? Well, the couple now tell us it has
all been resolved - thanks to the publicity we gave the case. For once, we are
glad to say, common sense has prevailed!
Carnival against Hypocrisy
A CONTINGENT of Worthing campaigners
travelled up to the City of London on Friday June 18 to join the Carnival
Against Capitalism, part of a worldwide protest against the G8 conference. The
Worthing folk joined the massive 10,000-strong Reclaim the Streets parade,
taking the message straight to the corrupt heart of the money-men’s
empire that people and the planet must come before profits. In the finest
tradition of English protest (Peasants’ Revolt, Swing Riots, Luddites,
Suffragettes etc) the fun was combined with a certain amount of symbolic
damage to City institutions (and McDollar’s!) and London’s
thuggish riot cops caused further conflict by trying to break up the protest.
The reaction of the media was laughable, if predictable. Serbia’s
undoubted crimes against Kosovo apparently merited the brutal full-scale
destruction of their country and the deaths of hundreds of innocent people.
The global financiers’ undoubted crimes against humanity, however, do
not seem to count in the same way and a few broken windows apparently put the
perpetrators completely beyond the pale. Hypocrisy? We rather think so.
Pig out the truth from the lies!
THE PORK-BOLTER is an independent
newsletter produced by and for ordinary Worthing people and is named after an
ancient term once applied to residents of this sunny seaside paradise. We
support no political party and our aims are to cut through the hypocrisy, cant
and spin-doctoring of the politicians and their chums, expose what they are
really up to and explain in a calm and lucid manner why they should all be
chucked off the end of the pier with bricks stuffed down their underwear.
Put Yourself in the Pig-ture!
IF you want to make sure of getting a
copy of issue 19, simply send us a stamped self-addressed envelope. To get the
next 6 issues send a donation of at least £2 to cover costs. Copies of
back issues are still available. Cheques/postal orders made payable to The
Pork-Bolter. email subscriptions also available. These are free, but a
donation from time to time would be appreciated. It ain’t easy you know.
Drop us a line: porkbolter@eco-action.org or PO Box
4144, Worthing, West Sussex, BN14 7NZ. website: http://www.eco-action.org/porkbolter
PORK SCRATCHINGS
WORTHING Borough Council proudly launched its
'Worthing Marque' last month. This totally pathetic attempt at a logo, which
would not win runners-up prize in a playgroup art competition, will
undoubtedly have involved a huge amount of council tax-payers’ money
going to some corporate design consultant - we are still trying to find out
exactly how much. Meanwhile, for the price of an extra letter ‘e’
they could have turned the marque into a large tent for the town’s
homeless to sleep in.
* * *
TWO election victories in as many months! The snowball effect from our
Don’t Vote campaign for the council elections meant we didn’t even
have to campaign against the Euro elections but still gathered a staggering
76.2% of the regional vote. With that sort of proportion across the continent,
The Pork-Bolter would be entitled to hundreds of piggy MEPs. Just imagine the
Euro Parliament full of Euro-swine, all eagerly stuffing their snouts into the
trough of Euro-cash ... Oh, hang on a minute. That seems to have already
happened. On the subject of elections, we neglected in our last issue to say a
couple of words about Sheila Player, queen of the council house privatisation,
who lost her seat on the council in May. So here are they are now: HA! HA!
* * *
MYSTERY surrounds Worthing Borough Council’s study into cycling
provision in the town. Money was apparently put aside by the county council
and the cycle group Sustrans commissioned to do a report, but nothing has been
heard since! Two letters written by the Green Party to the borough on the
issue have bizarrely been lost! Contact the Greens’ Lucie Colkett
luciecolkett@yahoo.co.uk to get
campaigning.
* * *
FREE video nights upstairs at Paiges Bar on Worthing seafront are now being
held on the first Tuesday of each month, 7.30pm. Next date is August 3 for the
feature film Zapata, starring Marlon Brando in a tale of Mexican peasant
uprising.
Warning: Ignore all Dissident Views
THE MINISTRY of Freedom would like
to point out that, contrary to the impression created by unauthorised
publications promoting dissident agendas, surveillance cameras enjoy enormous
popularity in the UK. This is clearly demonstrated by the fact that the
Department of Propaganda is currently working on 14 new prime time TV series
featuring the effectiveness of CCTV. Statistics show that 77% of 4 to 9 year
olds in the North-East and South-West would welcome CCTV cameras in their
school for 37.6 minutes of every hour, 88% of 96 to 103 year olds with
double-glazing would like to see CCTV installed in their bathroom within three
days, 98% of 32 to 46 year olds who shop at Tesco say CCTV cameras have saved
them from being beheaded on eight or more occasions, and 113% of digital TV
subscribers aged over 46 in the Wolverhampton and Maidstone areas believe the
death penalty should be reinstated for repeated failure to comply with
Government averages.
and finally ... Reclaim Worthing - put people before profits!
