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EB FOR WHO? NOT 4 U

GRAVY TRAIN DE-RAILED

So what’s going down at the local quangocrat cash-cow? In the last few weeks East Brighton For You (eb4U) bosses have faced yet more resident complaints about how middle class managers continue not to listen to the locals. This time bosses faced two high profile resignations by residents fed up with a lack of community consultation over corporate style plans for the Preston Barracks redevelopment.

Set up in 1999, eb4U was part of Neo Labour’s £2bn ‘New Deal for Communities’ regeneration programme for deprived neighbourhoods. £47m was targeted at Moulsecoomb, Bates Estate, Saunders Park and Whitehawk, with the stated aim of helping residents set up projects to tackle every day problems like the lack of health facilities, child care, places for the kids to go and crappy housing conditions.

Surprise,surprise half the money, however, has been creamed off by the bureaucracy, and, despite thousands of pounds pissed away on an awareness propaganda campaign; most residents still don’t even know what eb4U is. Projects meanwhile, avoid mentioning that they are funded by eb4U for fear of putting residents off. So what went wrong? Over the next three issues Rough Music will give you the low down on eb4U and how middle class bureaucrats used it as a golden trough while trashing local ambitions and still avoiding the watchful eye of popular scrutiny.

 Of course with the usual Neo Labour targets around anti social behaviour and teenage pregnancy the programme was never really going to take up local issues. But while Fatty ‘two-Jags’ Prescott, yep that ignorant bonehead again, promised local residents that they would be in charge, Brighton Council (which was ultimately held the purse strings) had other ideas: it wanted control. Facing mass redundancies after Brighton and Hove councils merged the council offered soon to be booted employees jobs at eb4U, avoiding having to make expensive redundancy payments.

Eb4U was a great break for cash strapped Brighton & Hove which would no longer have to pay for key services in East Brighton. Eb4U remains on the council’s telephone exchange and all workers had Brighton & Hove email addresses until only very recently. Council bosses sit on the eb4U board and even the council’s own ‘scrutiny’ panel of expressed concern at the conflicts of interest this caused. Let’s face it the last thing Kodfish and Co want is genuinely empowered local communities.

And how many local residentsend up on the eb4U boards? – Fuckall unless you include some wealthy streets on the outskirts of Moulsecoomb and Whitehawk. For sure, the riff raff can staff the reception and clean the loos, but being in charge of what projects get funded is out of the question. The recent council ‘scrutiny’ report into eb4U’s operations found that residents were ‘railroaded’ and ‘bullied’ into going along with what managers wanted. “I was appalled when I went to a steering group meeting”, one project worker told RM, “out of eight people present there were only two residents and one of them was told to shut up, by this posh woman, when he dared to open his mouth”.

 Keeping the poor down is the name of the game. Had the funding been evenly split between the 16,000 residents everyone would have been three grand better off: more than a year’s income for some residents – people could have decided for themselves how best to use the money. At the same time that 3/4 of residents are on benefit level income, eb4U bosses receive anywhere up to £70,000 a year with a range of perks to boot, including the ability to pay their own expenses: Nice work if you can get it. A couple of years ago, one resident was trying to set up a kids group and spent £30 of her benefits on sandwiches for the other mothers. They came, they ate and they decided to start a project. Meanwhile, eb4U officers earning up to £40,000 a year, refused her claim for £30 when she lost the receipt. One former project manager told RM “Once I was told that our project was very expensive. Thing is, the project cost less than the three members of eb4U staff who sat in front of me explaining this!”

Faced with criticism eb4U stuck its head in the sand and lashed out £1/4m on a propaganda campaign and introduced a system called ‘project cycle management’ which, while making it nearly impossible for residents to get projects off the ground, enabled jargon loving and experienced middle class managers to get keep their hands on the cash.

 Next issue RM will dig the dirt on how eb4U workers trashed local projects. We’ll look at the time when eb4U spent more money telling one project that they couldn’t have any more funding, than the project was actually asking for in the first place! Then there’s the time eb4U bureaucrats spent over two grand deciding whether to let one project spend £20 on paper! eb4U funding lasts only ten years and managers were supposed to sort out investments so that projects could continue to receive cash beyond 2009. Instead the long term sustainability plan lies in property investment which is only going to help drive up the cost of local homes - but more on that later. In the meantime help us dig the dirt. If you’ve got some insider info send it to us at the usual address.

WE’RE INTER MILAN

Milan Rai, a Hastings based peace activist is currently in Lewes prison after he refused to pay £2,000 for damage caused to the Foreign Office in Whitehall when he sprayed “Don’t attack Fallujah – Black Watch Out” on the building. Milan has direct experience of life in Iraq having spent a great deal of time in Fallujah during the sanctions regime. Hastings magistrates on 16th November in their wisdom gave him 28 days in Lewes Nick. Previously Milan managed to get himself nicked for organising a demo outside Downing St contrary to the Civil Rights Clampdown, er sorry the Serious Organised Crime Act.

Please write letters of support to: Milan Rai, HMP Lewes, Brighton Road, Lewes, East Sussex, BN7 1EA.

See also www.j-n-v.org

PULP FICTION

So who got excited when the council announced they were going to spend £5 million quid on a new library back in 1998? Sad to say, for the bookish among us, the whole thing’s been a bit of a ghost-written celebrity autobiography. The Millennium Library-themed building has been hailed as a great PFI success for the city, and council-types have been wearing out their hands with all the backslapping.

Yeah, we know its aircraft-hangar style won the Prime Minister’s award for Better Public buildings (if it’s alright by Tony who are we to argue?), but with all the thrills of the coffee shop, internet café, wide vistas and glass frontage shenanigans, one thing seems to have been forgotten: the books. We realise it’s a bit old school to be so hung up the printed word but that’s us – stuck in the past. We realise that the bit with the books in is just an unprofitable sideline next to the gift shop (where you can get an Edgar Allen Poe action figure among other wonders) but we can’t help thinking it’s kind of integral to the whole ‘library’ concept.

Thousands of books lost their jobs earlier this year during ‘downsizing’ when the library moved from New England Street. Ruthlessly left without a purpose or decent shelf over their spines, they received little thanks for the rich contribution they made over the years to the local intellectual community. Rumour has it that those books were selected on the basis of how regularly they’d been taken out; so while Trinny and Susannah stayed safely in their positions, Tolstoy and Dickens looked set for the short trip to the Newhaven Incinerator.

An employee of Magpie, who got the book-burning contract told Rough Music, “We were taking away eighty bin bags of books a day for three weeks.” He showed our correspondent a roomful of orphaned literature that the council decided the people of Brighton could do without. It’s left to local recyclers / 2nd hand bookshops to go through the piles to salvage what they can, but the sheer quantity of discarded books makes it a daunting task, and sadly loads of quality doorstops are being pulped.

For this to happen once could be said to be misfortune – but twice? Hove library is now going to shut for six months – don’t worry folks ‘cos they’re going to install CCTV to keep an eye on you in the meantime. And... another bonanza-book-away is happening under our noses. Magpie are once more removing skiploads of ‘unwanted’ literature. Now, we’re into recycling but the idea of communally owned books being pulped to print pretentious club flyers makes us want to bang our heads on the desk.

Here’s an idea: when you spend £5 million doing up a library make sure there’s something to read when you’re done.

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ASYLUM INJUSTICE

Brighton-based Iranian asylum seeker Amir was arrested in a dawn raid on Thurs 17th and taken to Hollingbury police station ready for immediate deportation. Only an intervention by his MP secured a temporary stay. The Home Office are now reconsidering the decision. Despite this, while Amir was at Cornbrook, the newest detention centre for failed asylum seekers, an illegal deportation was attempted. Luckily one of his teachers from Brighton City College was there and prevented it. If Amir is deported he faces a prison sentence in Iran. A friend of his was imprisoned for six months simply for helping him to leave the country.

The situation is developing very quickly: A campaign has been organised to fight for Amir's rights: To get yourself on the mailing list contact Keep Amir in the UK, C/o Brighton & Hove Unemployed Workers Centre, 4 Crestway Parade Brighton BN1 7BL, Phone 01273 540 717, Fax 01273 540 797, brightonunemployedcentre2000@yahoo.co.uk

OLD BILL BOARD

Community art workshop demolished

Another blow for city art lovers, as Sussex Police have demolished a long-standing freestyle graffiti workshop and billboard for anarchist agitation at the bottom of Elm Grove. The little Cop Shop of Horrors was dismantled in early November, citing Health and Safety concerns. Chief Contstable Ken Jones, announced ‘It is with great sadness that I have to close this installation – it was a wonderful outlet for community frustration and outsider art, as well as a useful forum for feedback on our style of policing. We at John St are no strangers to whitewash, but the constant repainting just became too much in the end.”

He added “Eventually the display just got too avant-garde – run of the mill smashed windows with ‘Fuck da Pigs’ or ‘Fire to the Bosses’ slogans were simple to understand and we all knew where we stood, but the addition of a four-foot grinning SS officer was a situationist step too far. A pair of googly eyes demanding ‘Free the Alien within’ began to shatter the cosy authoritarian mindset of too many officers.”

Guy Debord was unavailable for comment as he died in 1994.

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War Of The Words

EDO IN THE DOCK

The campaign against Brighton’s very own bomb builders is stepping up. EDO MBM manufacture parts used by the US, UK and Israeli militaries in air strikes. Weekly demos are taking place in defiance of the injunction and EDO’s hired goons. A three day hearing in the High Court saw director David Jones shown evidence of war crimes committed with equipment made at his factory. Eyewitness statements and photographs from Iraq were shown to the court. EDO’s solicitor, the vastly expensive Timothy Lawson Cruttenden whose bloated fortune relies on his firm’s reputation as “the market leader in obtaining ground-breaking injunctions on behalf of corporations who have been the subject of harrassment by direct action protest groups”, received a mauling in court and was only rescued by the untimely intervention of the Attorney General’s barrister Perry ‘smooth as silk’ QC.

Perry’s job was to make sure that there was no discussion of the legality of the Iraq war in court, something the government is pretty keen to avoid. He was aided in this task by Judge Wallace who all but kissed the brogued feet of this emissary of the great and powerful. Sadly it would appear that while civilian deaths by air strike in Iraq might have been ‘regrettable’ and even on occasion ‘tragic’, they were not ‘war crimes’ as they occurred in the pursuit of ‘legitimate military objectives’. Admittedly no one knows what those objectives were - ‘cos they’re ‘secret’. A Catch 22 of these proportions surely merits a bonus in Perry’s pay packet.

Rumour has it that EDO’s factory in Fishersgate has regrettably been the victim of collateral damage, as laser-guided smart bricks targeted the windows. As of going to press, Rough Music is still uncertain whether there was a legitimate political objective to this tragic act.

Meanwhile back on the streets, Sussex cops did their level best on August 13th to dispel any doubts that we still live in a free and open society. In a stunning piece of street theatre a force over 100 police, reinforced with a helicopter, some snarling dogs and a few members of the MET for good measure, faced down an anti-EDO demonstration consisting of about fifty peaceniks on North St. They made four arrests including an eighty-year-old man and a sixteen year old girl. Three of those were released without charge but one man has been charged with organising the whole thing.

And now it looks like there’s gonna be a rerun. SMASH EDO campaigners are holding another demo in town on 10th December. Spokesperson Andrew Beckett said “Negotiating with the police is a dead end. For example during the run up to the Iraq War, the only demo that Sussex Action for Peace bothered organising with the police ended with threats made to cancel the annual Peace Messenger festival if their every whim was not catered for. Demands made by the cops invariably include a hundred small compromises each designed to undermine the independence of any dissent. On the 10th December we want nothing more than to march from Churchill Square to the Level.”

This is all part of Sussex Plod’s plan for a cross-force policy of all demonstrations having to be organised through the police. And that doesn’t just mean dropping a friendly line to your local station. Organising a demo with the cops is an exhausting process with endless haggling over the tiniest details of the route, doorstep calls early in the morning, demands for stewards and public liability insurance. All that and a promise of the finger of blame pointing in your direction should anything go wrong. The fact that we all are supposed to have the right to freedom of assembly and speech guaranteed as human rights under the European Convention on Human Rights seems to have escaped Sean McDonald and the rest of the bright-eyed boys in blue.

Those involved in the campaign against EDO MBM are understandably reluctant to come forward and deal with the police as every shred of information, including personal phone numbers, seems to mysteriously find its way from Sussex Police HQ to the office of Timothy Lawson Cruttenden, solicitor acting for EDO MBM. Rough Music has been shown e-mails from TLC, which make it very clear that he has access to personal details of the defendants and other campaigners. In fact he’s facing an abuse of process hearing next week (28-29th Nov) as a result of information obtained illegally from the police.

Are Sussex Plod on another planet? ‘Cos it looks as if they’ve been infiltrated… by nerds. Rough Music has learned that every operation to clamp down on anti-arms trade activists has been named after characters from seminal 70s TV show Star Trek. So far activists have been transported by Operation Kirk, photon torpedoed by Operation Enterprise and been through the mind melding experience of Operation Spock. Rumours that the whole of EDO MBM is to be concealed under an experimental Klingon cloaking injunction were described by a Sussex Police spokeman as “highly illogical”. Anti-Edo activists have vowed to boldly go etc etc...

TERMINAL DISEASE

As Brighton Council Plc steamrolls through with its new corporate image – Gehry Towers anyone or how about the Albion up on the Downs - plans for Shoreham Airport’s expansion lurch forward.

Brighton and Worthing Councils, who jointly own the airport, recently valued it at £4m – the debt the airport currently owes – rather than the £21m it’s actually worth. Red faces all round hey Cllr Don ‘nice little earner’ Turner?

CARE (Communities Against Airport Expansion), based in Lancing, got wind of a council business enterprise meeting to do with the airport which was held at the Thistle Hotel on November 9th.

When they called up for tickets they were told ‘sorry it’s been cancelled’. Funny that. Couldn’t be the growing profile CARE is getting – No Jets at Shoreham banners turning up on the news, and CARE members in No Jets t-shirts being booted out of a Worthing Council meeting for asking awkward questions.

At the meeting the airport sell-off to greasy property company Erinaceous Group was hurried through with no debate in about five minutes while an hour and half was spent congratulating last year’s mayor!! You work that one out.

Erinaceous plc won the expansion contract from next April on the basis of opening up flights to Edinburgh, Paris, Amsterdam and Dublin.

In anticipation CARE campaigners have set up their own pollution monitoring stations with the first annual results due next year. Air pollution remains the fastest growing contributor to global warming with the richest 10% making the majority of flights in this country, either business trips or weekend breaks to holiday homes.

To CARE we say more power to your elbow - it takes all sorts to beat greedy scum developers with an eye on profits.

For more info from CARE www.adurcare.wanadoo.co.uk

PATCHAM BASH ‘EM

Allotment holders at Horsedean and Patcham Court Farm are taking the fight to Brighton council over plans to build a giant car park on their plots and demolish five adjoining farm cottages.

Neo-Labour council leader Bent Kodfish wants a 900-space car park either here or at nearby Braypool. For the benefit of locals? Who you trying to kid? - once again it’s out-of-towners coming to clog up the Laines in a mass consumerist frenzy. Spied the new Starbucks etc etc etc – it’s enough to make yer wanna put a few windows in, not that RM would advocate that sort of behaviour, honest.

Kodders is gonna have his work cut out for him though now the allotment holders have managed to win over the Lib Dems and their leader Paul Elgood. In October allotment holders handed in a 7,000 signature petition to the Town Hall calling for the plans to be scrapped. That’s more than the Gehry Towers petition and you’d reckon worthy of consideration.

However with a decision expected on Dec 7th RM isn’t holding its breath. An allotment holder told us: “We’re going to carry on the fight.” Even if the decision goes against you? “Yes.” Some of these gardeners have been cultivating these beautiful plots for more than 30 years. The 35 allotments are in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) serving more than 100 members of the local Patcham community, and that’s not counting the 30 plus on the waiting list.

Recent stalls outside the local Co-op and displays in the newsagents have won universal support from residents. Allotments are part of the green lung of Brighton and a statutory lung at that, meaning they can’t be built on at the drop of a hat.

We’re sure if push comes to shove the council will have more than a council revolt - they’ll be facing a protest camp.

For more info Patcham Against Insensitive and Destructive Development’ (PAIDD) see www.timeistight.co.uk/PAIDD

* March on Nov 24 from 3pm at the Peace Statue to the Town Hall.

Stock In Trade

“A bald fat rhymer in a leather jacket
Went to Falmer to make a racket
Cutting down trees to stay in clover
A rich man’s puppet, a factory lover
A drummer boy for the ruling class
With his head stuck up Fat Boy’s Arse
Sung for his supper by selling out the downs
A parting shot for the tired old clown
‘You saw your chance to grab the limelight
And sold your soul to dance for Dick Knight’”

MARINA MADNESS

After sustained pressure from locals, council planners have come out against the giant Marina development with bolt-on 445ft metropolitan-scale skyscraper. Good news? well it’s a start but don’t count your chickens.

Are the developers likely to walk away quietly? Are they fuck. They want to transform the city into a haven for the wealthy. The Marina towers are just an emblem for stinking conspicuous consumption. Meanwhile many thousands of Brightonians live in sub-standard housing and our nature reserves (such as Whitehawk Hill) lie neglected and in decay.

The council had talked of 40% affordable housing, but the developers – with refreshing honesty - talked of only 15% - and that’s no more than a modern equivalent of servants quarters for the rich isn’t it?

As for the biggest sky-scraper, planners have always worked on the assumption that no building should be taller than the nearby cliffs, areas protected for their natural beauty. The central tower, at 125m (445ft), stands 6m taller than Whitehawk Hill at 119m.
Council officers have previously bigged up this skyscraper as something for the city to be proud of, to build all important business confidence here. “Build it and they will come” is the new business mantra. Every County Council in Britain is urging us to build ever larger and more baroque monuments to their vanity.

So how’s about about a pride in our downscape - the fact that we live on the edge of what will be Britain’s newest national park.

A skyscraper should fit in a treat with all the geological magic of the cliffs. Like fuck it would! It will totally dominate the eastern end of the Bay of Sussex and would be seen from Cissbury, Lancing Hill, Lancing Ring, Steep Down & Chanctonbury. Stick it!

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Council House Sell Off

Heard the one about the council flogging the family silver? – well here they go again, this time privatising our council homes - now a step closer thanks to Bent Kodfish and Sons plc. The same Bent Kodfish who only recently faced a vote of no-confidence on how the whole council house matter’s been handled. No shame has he, the the fop-haired git. He and his chums have decided that a private Housing Association would be best for tenants.

Now of course in this spin driven, Gehry tower fuelled city of ours, the council can be expected to come up with a full-colour newsletter aimed at convincing you to vote for a “brand new, independent, not-for-profit housing organisation”. It’s already shelled out £320,000 deciding which of three different forms of privatisation is “best” and now engaged an expensive PR Company, a new “independent tenant adviser”, and a legal consultant, all at our expense. And the “independent adviser”, SOLON, have refused to include information from tenants groups with its own material, at no extra cost!!

There are 13,000 council homes - a lot of people to be at the mercy of profiteering shysters.

Resistance to privatisation up and down the country is growing, with 56 councils areas choosing just such an approach to retain their housing.

Brighton’s vote is due in the Spring. Vote for transfer, and you lose your secure tenancy. You become tenants of a housing association, with “assured” tenancies. The new housing association will promise to “preserve” existing rights, but these promises are not legally binding and in practice associations often break them. Now former council homes are being demolished and homes for private sale built in their place. Many tenants are not being re-housed, and people are having to compete with their neighbours for a home.

Council housing is still one of the cheapest, most democratic way of providing decent, low cost housing on a large scale.

Ring Ruth Arundell on 01273 608704 if you can help Defend Council Housing with leafletting etc.

SEAGULLS SHIT ON THE DOWNS

Now don’t get us wrong we’re not against football, and yep the city should have its club, but at the expense of one of the last remaining chalk grasslands in northern Europe?

Who’s to trust Albion boss Dickie-boy Knight anyway – ok, so he talks the talk but he’s a businessman same as Bellotti and Archer before him. D’you really think he’ll have any qualms about selling this new Falmer stadium if the right offer comes along? If it looked like the fans were gonna have any say we might be of a different opinion but it looks from here as if those loyal to the Albion have been led right up Fat Boy Dim’s garden path.

Think about it, community stadium; oh, right so we can all use it. My arse – it’s a money-making venture which will attract yet more development – Burger King, Toys R Us – and before you know it there won’t be any South Downs.

And everyone says well, it isn’t a particularly beautiful spot – only part of an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty for crying out loud. It’s soon to be a National Park and as such it’s home to all manner of rare plants and animals; giant toadflax and the adonis blue butterfly just two examples. In fact just one square metre of downland is home to anything up to 50 species. Even richer than West St on a Saturday night.

Who cares? Well, this is land used recreationally by all Brightonians - dog walkers, ramblers, kids on bikes, you name it – and has been long before a football was even kicked.
And Falmer Parish, Lewes District Councils, Brighton Urban Wildlife Group, The South Downs Campaign, FoE and not one, but two planning inspectors can’t all have been wrong. They all came out against the stadium proposals, talking of the sustainable option of using a brownfield site better served by public transport.

Of six new football stadia surveyed recently, all were on brownfield or ex-brownfield sites and the smallest of these was 75 acres allowing space for buses etc. The Falmer site is just eight, and is right slap-bang next door to the village and has crappy train access.

As one villager put it: “This is all wrong for the area. You cannot have a village with a football stadium in it. They just don’t go together. We are a gridlocked village and God only knows what is in store for us now.”

As RM went to press Lewes District Council were deciding whether to take the decision to judicial review, which will only be successful if they can get Two Jags Prescott, who as planning Tsar rubber-stamped the whole deal, on a technicality. RM would love to get Prescott on a technicality – preferably rammed as far up his arse as it could go.

And as for Fatboy Dim – well what can we say… errrr drug casualty, sell-out. Does he even know what day it is?

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ROAD TO RUIN

MORE HASTINGS LESS SPEED

“This is one of the most damaging and unnecessary road proposals in the entire country. That is why so many environmental organisations have united against it. This council should abandon this crazy scheme and investigate alternative ways of dealing with the area’s transport problems.” - Friends of the Earth’s Tony Juniper.

Plans for this resurrected Hastings bypass – already defeated once by campaigners in 2001 - are moving rapidly towards a conclusion. Neo-Labour has agreed to put in £45m and East Sussex County Council are rushing the plans through. Bulldozing set to begin April 2007.
The planned route cuts through the middle of Combe Haven Valley, a SSSI home to lapwings, badgers and dormice among others. As well as the link road, we get 1,100 houses and an out-of-town business park thrown in for giggles. Research shows the road will draw the life out of nearby town centres, with local businesses deserting deprived areas like central St Leonards for the new commerce cathedral.

Michael Paxman of the local Wishing Tree Residents Association said, “The Link Road isn’t going to solve the traffic problems in the area. The council’s own figures show that we will see increased numbers of cars on roads in the north of the town.” Well, why not wish on yer magic tree Mike and put a hex on the road?

Nick Bingham, chair of the Hastings Alliance added: “We know from previous experiences, such as the M25, that new roads fill up really quickly. We want something which won’t cost so much to the taxpayer or the environment”.

Nick Bingham: 07768 193900 Michael Paxman: 01424 428383.

ASBO NO SHOW

HOTLINE CLIMBDOWN

Triumphant press release by the council: the It’s Your Call line (AKA Dial-a-Stasi see Asbolute Bollocks in RM2) in the seven months since its creation has received a staggering 560 calls! You do the fuckin’ math mate. (HINT it’s under 3 a day). So in a triumph for anarchist theory, out of a population of 250,000 a whole 560 busy-bodies and curtain twitchers (don’t forget repeat calls from serial whingers) troubled the council with a neighbourly dispute. All this in a city which ‘confronts us with graffiti, aggressive begging and burnt out cars’ - if you’d believed the hype when they launched this white elephant back in February.

When Rough Music rang the It’s Your Call line (0845 605 2222, if there’s anything you need to get off your chest) and asked if this was the ‘ASBO Hotline’ we were given an enthusiastic affirmative - how’s that for crackdown service?

The council doesn’t bother to tell us how many of those calls were followed up on or resulted in any action – which might give a more accurate picture of the terrifying tsunami of anti-social behaviour which threatens to engulf us if we don’t all grass on our neighbours now. Or how much this little scheme is costing us. It certainly doesn’t seem that normal people want the heavy hands of the council and the police involved in their everyday neighbourly disputes (HINT try talking to each other).

HUNTS OUTFOXED

Did we miss something or was fox hunting banned? The last redcoat has trotted off into the sunset, his bloodthirsty hobby history, right? Well not quite. Sussex hunts have all assured the police they are hunting within the law and the clean minded constabulary have chosen to take them at their word. Whereas hunts across Sussex used to receive the attentions of over seventy officers a week (source: PATROL magazine the ‘arresting’ in-house journal of Sussex Police) it seems that resources are a bit scarcer this year - now that it’s the aristos and their spade-wielding inbred friends who might be on the wrong side of the law. National guidelines on policing hunts say that organisations engaged in legal hunting should inform police of their whereabouts so that they can discount any ‘well meaning but inaccurate reports of law-breaking’. i.e. carte blanche for the blood junkies to get up to their old tricks and the red card for any antis and their ‘well meaning’ attempts to report crime.

So far every time anti-hunt activists have turned up on one of these ‘legal’ hunts they have encountered blatant flushing of er, the same woods with the same hounds (bred just for hunting foxes) by the same people who last year were merrily killing wildlife. Recently a SKY cameraman with hunt sabs caught the local Crawley & Horsham foxhunt blatantly chasing a fox. Every time sabs have turned up it’s been quite clear that hunts are maintaining a cloak of legality over the usual grim business.

Around the time of the ban all the hunts vowed to defy the ban and carry on hunting (Even laughably promising CIVIL WAR). Over the summer this mutated into a call to ‘hunt within the law’. Given that the law specifically outlaws the hunting of wild mammals with dogs, this seems a little like promising to carry out burglary within the law. But the plod continually buy the line that all’s above board in the countryside – which has led to the bizarre spectacle of anarchist law enforcement agents going up to the hunt and saying (with gravelly voice), “I’m your worst nightmare; a vegan with a badge...” A wild eyed spokesman for local wildlife rescue group South Downs Sabs said “No Comment” before asking us to re-home a rabbit.

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