Events Calendar
Thu 10th July – Indymedia Cambridge meeting, 7.30pm, The Hut, Argyle Street
Indymedia Cambridge meetings are open to all wanting to get involved. View more events, read about our meetings or sign up to our events email list.
"No Tesco's" campaigners march on Mill Road
Several hundred people (estimates range from 250 to 800) marched down Mill Road in Cambridge today to show their opposition to Tesco's plans to open an "Express" store. Many sent reports on the event:
- Photos and short report by Poon
- Photos by manos | beverley | uug | Alan
- Photos and extensive comment on the event by Camera Boy
- Video by Sarah W
According to the campaign over 4000 people have signed a petition, and a remarkable 1100 people sent in written objections to the City Council regarding Tesco's planning applications. A poll in the local Cambridge Evening News suggests 75% of people across the city are opposed to the proposed increase in Tesco's dominant position in Cambridge. The multinational giant already controls 51% of the grocery market here - putting us in the top 10 Tesco-dominated places in the UK. According to a recent Competition Commission report such dominance - surprise, surprise - has a negative impact on the consumer.
Older feature | http://www.nomillroadtesco.org/ | Main campaign post with many useful links | No Chains on Mill Road | Tescopoly
Keep Tesco off Mill Road, Cambridge
Tesco hope to move into Mill Road, Cambridge. The over whelming majority of residents and local traders absolutely do not want this to happen. Already posters are appearing in many of the shops on Mill Road, and campaigners spent Saturday spreading the word and drumming up support for the campaign.
An open organising meeting has been called to start planning a campaign against Tesco. It will be held on Thursday 27th September at 7 pm in Libra Aries bookshop (9 The Broadway, Mill Road). (The bookshop has been graffitied in the run up to the meeting).
http://www.nomillroadtesco.org/ | Main campaign post with many useful links | Tescopoly site
Camp for Climate Action - East Anglia Round up
While the Camp for Climate Action (full Indymedia coverage) was going on next to Heathrow, campaigners have not been slacking in East Anglia. There have been protests at Norwich Airport and Stansted Airport, while it is has been reported that Cambridge Airport is seeing rapid growth in use by executive jets - over 3000 per year. And away from the airports, Friday started with a blockade of the Sizewell nuclear power station in Suffolk where a group of five people locked on in the entrance of Sizewell nuclear power station and unfurled a banner reading 'nuclear power is not the answer to climate chaos'
Many activists from Cambridge were at the camp, including some supergluing themselves to the Department for Transport, while others found themselves held as terrorists when they clearly weren't or photographed by police while using the toilet.
Britain is GMO free again
On the night of Friday the 6th of July, a group of activists converged on Britain's only GM trial site just outside Cambridge. They scaled the security fences and destroyed the crop of genetically modified potatoes.
This was the only crop of GM potatoes being grown in the UK, after the chemicals giant BASF abandoned plans for a GM potato trial in Yorkshire this year. There have been multiple protests at the Cambridge site [video] and at the Yorkshire site (where organic potatoes were planted [video]).
However BASF have permission lasting until 2011, so this may not be the end of the story ...
Background : GM back on agenda | sabotage promised | detailed talk report | audio interview re victory and protest 1st july
Campaign links : Mutatoes | Hedon Against GM | Cambridge GM Concern
Two Arrested at Cambridge GM potato picnic
7/7/07 Update: The field has been decontaminated!
Sunday July 1st. Fifty anti-GM campaigners take their protest directly to the test site in Girton near Cambridge. One protester is arrested scaling the fence erected to protect the GM potato crop and another is arrested later on for alleged criminal damage (they will be in court on Tuesday morning[ 1 | 2 ]). The crop are GM potatoes developed by BASF, who have already dropped their one other potato trial in the UK [ 1 | 2 ].
Detailed write up - video - Pictures [ 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 ] Local media coverage - Criticism of tactics.
Background : GM back on agenda | sabotage promised | detailed talk report | audio interview re victory and protest 1st july
Campaign links : Mutatoes | Hedon Against GM | Cambridge GM Concern
Anti-GM Victory : One down, One to Go!
It seems there are not often victories to celebrate so it's strange when they occur seemingly unnoticed. That's exactly what's happened regarding the news that the chemicals giant, BASF have abandoned plans for a GM potato trial in Yorkshire this year, despite government consent.
Back in April there was an action in Hedon near Hull [1 | 2 ] to demonstrate public opposition to the first GM trials in the UK proposed in three years. Taking action before the trial began, the protesters planted their own organic spuds in what they thought was the field earmarked for the GM variety [1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6]. The aim was to invalidate the experiment before it was even started and while it turned out that they had picked the wrong field they did successful demonstrate that public opposition to GM crops is as strong and militant as ever [audio | video].
The planting of the other trial, located in Cambridge [1 | 2], went ahead despite local opposition and protests but campaigners say that it's not too late to drive home the message that "there is still no future for GM in the UK".
There is a national call out for a 'potato picnic' announced for Sunday 1st July near the site of the Cambridge trial. [flyer | directions]
Background : GM back on agenda | sabotage promised | detailed talk report | audio interview re victory and protest 1st july
Campaign links : Mutatoes | Hedon Against GM | Cambridge GM Concern
Full Story | 1 addition | 1 comment >>
Indymedia Cambridge Logo Competition
With Tony's Decade of Darkness rapidly drawing to a close, the banner at the top of this page will soon become obsolete. And that's where you come in: we need you to put your creative talents to the test, and make up a new banner for Indymedia Cambridge. It doesn't matter what form your idea takes. Obviously, the closer to a finished product that we can just bung on the webpage the better, but if you just want to sketch out a doodle on a napkin, that's fine too.
There are few parameters. The size of the banner will have to be roughly the same size as the current one, and have a space somewhere to insert the words INDYMEDIA CAMBRIDGE. It also needs to contain the Indymedia logo (the 'i' with the radio waves). And finally, it would make sense to have some visual link to Cambridge. If you really want to show off, you could make sure the banner stretches with the width of the browser window.
When we were kicking this around the editorial office, we thought it'd be cool to have a famous Cambridge landmark like the Reality Checkpoint (pictured) or the cycle bridge over the railway line as the 'i', and then draw in the radio waves. But that's just one idea. Maybe you can come up with a better one.
Is there a prize for the winning entry, you ask? How about this: a year's free entry to Indymedia film screenings. Oh, and our eternal gratitude. So get your camera / inkpot / GIMPshop / napkin out and start creating.
You can send your ideas and contraptions to Cambridge Indymedia before 20 June or add your logo as a comment to this article. That will give us a week to put up scaffolding and hoist the new banner onto the top of our homepage.
Ready to remove a blight on our landscape?
UPDATED This month a controversial experimental genetically modified potato crop is due to be planted in the UK by the German chemical giant BASF (offshoot of the infamous AG Farben). DEFRA initially gave approval in December for BASF to undertake trials at two sites, one in Cambridgeshire (at the National Institute of Agriculture and Botany) and the other initially in Derbyshire - until the farmer pulled out.
The trials are the first GM crops to enter British soil in nearly 3 years, after public opposition forced a u-turn in government and corporate plans for patented crops. Although presented as an R&D trial into the effectiveness of an anti blight gene, they are widely considered to be trial of public opinion.
On 14th April in Cambridge a protest walk took place [photos 1, 2]. This was followed on the 21st by a rally in Hull. This event ended with the proposed trial being effectively sabotaged even before it had began when over a hundred people entered the site and planted several varieties of seed potatoes in the field making it impossible for a scientifically valid trial to take place there.
LINKS:
Cambridge 1 | 2 | 3 | grid reference
Hull 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | pics
Background GM - Back on the agenda? | Sabotage promised | New GM crop trials | London info night (Tues 17th)
Campaign sites mutatoes.org | hedonagainstgm.org.uk | Cambridge GM concern | myspace.com/gmfreepotatoes
Full Story | 1 addition | 6 comments >>
GM Potatoes - Blessing or Blight?
On Monday 2 April, Cambridge GM Concern organized a public meeting regarding the forthcoming NIAB/BASF trial of GM potatoes in the Cambridge area. Some fifty people turned up for the event, which featured three speakers, who had travelled up from London for the occasion: Michael Antoniou is a Reader in Molecular Genetics at Guy's Hospital Medical School, Helena Paul is the chair of GM Freeze, and Clare Oxborrow is from the Real Food Campaign organized by Friends of the Earth.
Meanwhile campaigners concerned about similar trials in Yorkshire are having a demo on the 21st of April and have set up the mutatoes website and a myspace page.
'Defend the NHS' National Day of Action
Saturday, 3rd March, saw a national day of action to defend the National Health Service (NHS), called by NHS Together, an alliance of health service unions and staff associations together with the TUC. Demonstrations and rallies took place across the country, in Birmingham, Cambridge, Hackney (London), Leeds, Preston, Sheffield and other places. The aim of the protests, according to the organisers, was "to send a powerful message in celebration and defence of the NHS" against more cuts and privatisation. Almost three quarters of NHS trusts in the UK are reported last year that financial deficits are forcing them to make massive cutbacks; wards are being closed down, hospitals shut and jobs cut. Billions are going into 'restructuring' the service along market lines, with millions going on management consultants and financial advisers and millions more, in massive PFI payments, to shareholders and bankers.
Reports and pics: Defend the NHS Day: Sheffield Demonstration [photos] | Demo against the privatization of the NHS in Preston | Hackney Save NHS Demo | Leeds General Infirmary For Sale!
Previous Indymedia Features: Is Britain ready to defend its NHS? | The NHS in Crisis | Sheffield Children's Hospital: Save Ward S2 | Local Trusts Take Scalpel To NHS | Indymedia UK's Health topic page
Links: NHS Together | Keep Our NHS Public
