Issue 33 - Yule 2000/New Year 2001
PLOT TO POISON OUR WATER!
A SINISTER plot is being hatched to
contaminate our drinking water here in sunny Worthing with a poisonous
chemical. The noxious substance can affect various parts of the body,
causing a variety of complaints from headaches to
cancer, kidney failure to heart
attacks. It impairs IQ and increases infant
deaths. It accumulates in the body over time and contains impurities
such as mercury, lead, cadmium,
radium, polonium, uranium and
arsenic. The threat to spoil our healthy local South Downs water
is all down to money and power - as usual! The chemical is an
industrial effluent produced in large quantities by the fertiliser
industry, which could find no commercial use for it. Putting it in our
water is a convenient way to sell it which avoids the high cost of safe
disposal. The businesses flogging this nasty stuff have funded research
to clean up its image and hoodwink the public. Institutions,
laboratories and professional associations have been pressurised to support
and endorse its use. Research exposing toxic effects has been suppressed or
denied publication, with researchers denied funding or publicly vilified and
taxpayers’ money has been used to set up a government
quango to promote the poison and prepare the ground for its compulsory
introduction into your body. The New Labour government, notorious for its
boot-licking fawning to Big Business, appears determined to go ahead with this
mass medication "if necessary by subtle means", as Frank Dobson
admitted to The Dentist in July/August 1998. And the name of
this dangerous poison? If you haven’t already guessed, it’s
fluoride. Yes, that’s right, the stuff that’s good
for your teeth. Except it isn’t. It actually damages them.
Explains The National Pure Water Association: "Tooth enamel is
often discoloured and corroded by over-exposure to fluoride in
childhood. Dentine becomes progressively more brittle with repeated exposure
to fluoride over time. Topical application of fluoride (toothpaste etc) have
led to the increasing incidence of ‘occult caries’, a condition in
which apparently sound enamel conceals chronic internal decay leading
to tooth disintegration." If you’re as gobsmacked as we are by
this latest threat to our health, you may want to bite back and get
your teeth into campaigning against the extension of water
fluoridisation to this area. Write to the National Pure Water
Association (12 Dennington Lane, Crigglestone, Wakefield WF4 3ET) or
visit their website http://www.npwa.freeserve.co.uk for some
more information to chew over.
A poor sort of ‘prosperity’
WORTHING has been
officially designated a deprived area by the West Sussex Health
Authority, the Worthing Guardian revealed on December
15. While the smarmy useless prats who run the council bleat on about the
town’s ‘prosperity’ and making it a "centre for business"
and want to chuck cash away on novelty water spouts, thousands of residents
are living in poverty and illness. The report revealed that Worthing
Central is the most deprived ward in the county, with Worthing
Heene in fourth spot. Life expectancy for new born children in
parts of Worthing is also the shortest in the county. Dr Sheena Parker of the
NHS is quoted as saying: "Conditions such as poor housing, unemployment and
associated social deprivations are strongly linked to greater health
needs. There are those populations more deprived and disadvantaged than
other parts of the county and where there is poverty there is illness.
There is more disease and people do not live as long.
MP snubs the spirit of Christmas
IF you’re a pregnant
woman on a donkey with no roof over her head on December 24, don’t
expect any sympathy, let alone rent-free use of a stable, from West
Worthing’s MP Peter Bottomley. For this Christian
gentleman has registered his support for the unpleasant Government campaign
telling people not to give money directly to homeless people, in case they
irresponsibly spend it on making their lives a little more enjoyable. A
Merry Christmas to you too, Mr Bumley, you’re a kind-hearted gent and no
mistake!
Hot deal for church
WHILE devout Christian anti-smut
campaigner Steve Stevens continues to pontificate on pornography
to all who will listen (The Worthing Herald, November 16), the
Church itself is taking a somewhat more flexible and
financially-orientated approach. Reported The Guardian
(November 30): "The Church of England has written to all 13,000 parishes in
the country asking whether they would like to have mobile telephone
aerials concealed in their steeples. They are being lured with suggestions
of annual rentals for aerials of £5,000 and a share of operating
profits." Operators say they need 1,000 new aerial sites and 50,000 cell sites
by 2004 to cope with the current expansion, which revolves around mobile
internet connections. This means that churches, as well as selling their
spires to Mammon, will be relaying to their flocks everything from the
foul heresies of atheists to the satanic temptations of internet
pornography. Meanwhile, the massive dose of microwaves being beamed
out by the money-making masts should ensure that it is not only
church-goers’ Sunday dinners that are cooking nicely during the
Vicar’s sermon...
Porky Pie’s Top Tip of the Month!
HOW TO GET FROM
WORTHING TO SHOREHAM IN LESS THAN AN HOUR AND A HALF.
- WALK!
Big Brother marches a step closer
REGULAR readers of this
newsletter will probably be fed up to the back teeth with our warnings of an
approaching Big Brother state in Britain. One or two of you have even written
in to say that we are exaggerating when we accuse the powers-that-be of
wanting to impose by stealth a totalitarian control over the whole of the
population. It’s only criminals that are targeted, you have told
us. "If you’ve nothing to hide, you’ve nothing to fear". So
what do you lot have to say about the story that broke in the national press
on December 3, then? It was all there in The Observer under the
headline: "Secret plan to spy on all British phone calls." It
explained: "Britain’s intelligence services are seeking powers to seize
all records of telephone calls, emails and internet connections made by
every person living in this country. A document circulated to Home Office
officials and obtained by The Observer reveals that MI5, MI6 and the police
are demanding new legislation to log every phone call made in this
country and store the information for seven years at a vast government-run
‘date warehouse’, a super computer that will hold the
information." Privacy expert Lord Cope was quoted as warning: "Vast banks of
information on every member of the public can quickly slip into the world of
Big Brother". And he’s a Tory. Still think we’re a bunch of
irresponsible alarmists? Or are you beginning to see that, thanks to
media-induced public indifference, George Orwell’s 1984 nightmare is on
course to become hard reality only 20 years or so behind schedule...
Fears for Tories’ sanity
"FEAR of crime is one
of the biggest issues troubling Worthing/Adur residents," storm East
Worthing Conservatives in their Winter 2000 newsletter. But who on
earth could be responsible for this terrible fear, you ask? The leaflet
continues: "Conservative Councillors and MP Tim Loughton have attended Police
Community Liaison meetings to raise residents’ concerns about the lack
of uniformed ‘bobbies’; no patrol cars based within the East
Worthing & Shoreham Constituency and rampaging hooligans vandalising
town centres, terrorising foreign students and running riot on local
trains." Nothing like pouring petrol on the fire you’re claiming to
be fighting, is there chaps?
A dead end approach
NOBODY deserves to have gridlock traffic
jams outside their front door day and night and it’s not that we
don’t sympathise with the residents of Sompting village.
But we do remember how, a few years ago, some of them turned their noses up at
offers of support from Worthing Friends of the Earth in their
battle against the rat-runners. Direct action ideas such as physically
blocking the road were roundly rejected in favour of working with their
elected representatives through officially approved channels. Several years
on, these law-abiding residents have got precisely nowhere. Who would have
thought it?
Insurance firm won’t pay up
GOOD news and bad on the
dodgy scheme planned for Thomas A Becket school in
Tarring by insurance firm Allied Dunbar, exposed
in our last issue. Firstly,the "talk" or hard sales evening was roundly
snubbed by parents, with only 16 households signing up. This fell well short
of the 40 stipulated by the firm, under the Government’s Sports
Match scheme, so they cancelled the event. Fine. Not so fine is that,
despite having provided Allied Dunbar with addresses of 16 potential customers
and having met the cost of copying the firm’s publicity letter, the
school finds it is entitled to not one penny of the £1,000 for
new goalposts that was dangled in front of it as a bribe...
Press silence over hunt GBH case
YOU may have noticed in the
papers that a man has appeared in court in connection with the running over of
anti-hunting protester Steve Christmas (see issues 31 & 32).
On the other hand, you may not have, because it wasn’t reported! But
take it from us that his name is Martin Graham Maynard, born
17.7.55. He is accused of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm,
plus various driving offences and should be dealt with at Crown Court in
February/March.
Privatising the planet . . .
IT'S just over a year since the
World Trade Organisation (WTO) attracted massive opposition in
Seattle. But behind the closed doors of the world’s most powerful trade
organisation, bureaucrats backed up by their mates in big business have
been busy plotting. What they’ve come up with is a few new ways of
expanding the General Agreement on the Trades in Services (GATS)
. Basically this amounts to a cunning plan to privatise the world’s
public services. Everything from water to housing to education to hospitals,
and a whole lot more are now ‘barriers to trade’ creating
unfair competition that must be put on the open market to the lowest bidder. A
European Commission representative singled out the European
health service as ripe for ‘liberalisation’ (that’s
corporate chat for privatisation), with a US healthcare industry
lobbyist complaining that health has "largely been the responsibility of
the public sector (making it) difficult for US private sector health care
providers." You may think they’d never get away with privatising the
NHS. What about the public outrage, the protests? Well, when the new GATS
agreement is in force, the privatisers won’t have to worry about that,
because as the WTO Secretariat points out, one of the benefits of GATS is
helping "overcome domestic resistance to change." What that means is
that once a country signs up and decides to open up a particular service to
WTO rules, it would be practically impossible to go back on any agreement. Any
change of heart - tough. Change of government - tough. Popular protest - grin
and bear it. Or face the trade sanction consequences. In effect, the
‘new world order’ way of running the world is being forced on
every country and every person on the planet, whether they like it or not.
Unless that is, people dare to actually disobey these
undemocratic laws that are imposed on us without our consent. But then
where would that sort of thinking lead...?
Bob Baines RIP
STALWART local activist Bob
Baines has sadly died in Southlands Hospital at the age of 42. He had
suffered a stroke at the October meeting of Worthing.eco-action
and had been in hospital since then, though apparently on the road to recovery
until he suffered a heart attack. Bob who lived in Goring, was a keen cyclist
who helped out with a range of local community groups in Worthing, ranging
from The Royal British Legion to the Green Party,
Friends of the Earth, the BTCV and, lately,
Worthing Anarchist Teapot. He was also a regular contributor of
information and press cuttings to The Pork-Bolter and we will
miss his input and interest. Our condolences to Bob’s dad and his
family.
PORK-SCRATCHINGS
A PLEASING update to the missing
friends appeal we carried in October’s issue - it worked!
Somebody spotted the piece and Kim Wise e-mailed to let us know
she is now back in touch with her lost mates.
* * *
WOULD you like to help form a new Sussex Vegetarian and Vegan Social
Group? The idea is to hold everything from informal get-togethers and
visits to restaurants to cookery demos and discussions. Contact Steve Roper on
01273 581596 if you fancy joining in or lending a hand in getting it going.
* * *
SO much for freedom of movement in the brave new Europe. In reality it
doesn’t apply to people, only goods and money. The Daily
Telegraph reported on December 8 how the French government had stopped
a train full of Italian anti-capitalist protesters reaching the Euro Summit at
Nice: "The Schengen Treaty, which allows unhindered passage between the
countries that have adopted it, was suspended." Very democratic.
* * *
THERE won’t be a meeting of worthing.eco-action in
January, so the next Tuesday night event is on February 6, at the usual
meeting room at 42 Marine Parade, Worthing seafront (above Paiges), 7.45pm.
See you there!
Pork out for a subscription!
THE PORK-BOLTER is an
independent newsletter for Worthing, which gets it title from the nickname
given to Worthing folk in the days when this was still a small innocent
fishing village and the idea of putting chemicals in the water, mobile phone
masts in the churches or CCTV surveillance cameras on every corner was not
even a deranged twinkle in a madman’s eye. If you want to make sure of
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To get the next six issues send a donation of at least £2 to cover
costs. Copies of back issues are still available. You can get issues 1 to 30
under one cover in The Whole Hog, our special compilation, for a £2
donation. Cheques/postal orders made payable to The Pork-Bolter. email
subscriptions also available. Drop us a line: porkbolter@eco-action.org or PO Box
4144, Worthing, West Sussex, BN14 7NZ. website: http://www.eco-action.org/porkbolter
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and finally ... Have a Happy Christmas and a Rebellious New Year!
