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GRAVY DRAIN

Part III of Rough Music’s investigation into Brighton Quangocracy ‘EB4U’

Maybe RM got it all wrong with our previous stories on the East Brighton For You (eb4U) quango. Over the last two issues we told you about how £47 million was being used to fund a middle-class managers’ job creation scheme rather than to regenerate the poorest part of Brighton by funding grassroots community projects. In fact the ‘New Deal for Communities’ programme is the winner of three ‘prestigious’ awards including ‘Best Supporting Organisation’, a ‘Housing and Physical Environment’ award and a Government Office award for ‘Sustainable Energy in a Commercial Building’. Convinced that maybe we’d got it all wrong, RM dug a bit deeper and the truth soon came out - East Brighton residents are not only being ripped off today, they’re going to be ripped off tomorrow and for some time to come!

Although eb4U chucked them some cash, it was actually the Bridge Community Centre and Chichester Diocesan Housing Association which won the first two awards, and eb4U are only one part of a consortium of funders behind the Westergate Business Centre which picked up the Sustainable Energy prize. The building is insulated using recycled newspaper, uses thermal energy and sports one of Brighton’s only wind turbines. Only one slight snag: eb4U bureaucrats were put in charge of the finances and the building may now face repossession! More worrying for residents, however, is the intention behind the Westergate centre was that it would generate money to keep resident projects going when the eb4U cash runs out in 2010. Not only is that plan now in jeopardy, but a range of other property investment schemes are likely to put residents out of pocket for years to come.

By the time RM hits the streets eb4U are planning to have spent £6.7 million in the last 12 months. To date, eb4U managers have declared that they have ‘only’ taken 11% of the money in wages and kickbacks. In the true style of any quango, eb4U have been less than truthful as they attempt to hide the fact that a much bigger chunk of the money has ended up in their pockets.

eb4U runs five ‘themes’ which attract the other 89% of the funding. Each theme is designed to coordinate projects that meet a range of Neo Labour targets - from reducing teenage pregnancies to putting more people in McJobs. One of the themes, ‘A Safer East Brighton’, is due to spend £850,000 on social control measures like Anti Social Behaviour Orders and Acceptable Behaviour contracts over the next year. So how much of this cash is ending up in Community Projects? Not much. Especially after you’ve paid for the extra police officers and for a Community Safety Manager. But hang on; isn’t the cost of managers met from the declared 11% cited above; or has there been a mistake? RM looked a bit deeper and found that another sixty grand had been used to extend the job of Employment, Training and Enterprise Manager. This too falls under the ‘Enterprising East Brighton’ theme rather than the central management pot of cash. eb4U insiders told RM that the total management costs of running the whole scheme is probably more than 40%. So whilst well-paid bosses and their supporting bureaucracy take £5m over to share between them!

Meanwhile another £1/2 million has been blown on a contribution to the £2.8m Westergate business centre.
As well as being environmentally sound, the Westergate building is supposed to bring in a profit which is then to be channelled towards community projects. eb4U bureaucrats estimate that the Westergate project will generate around eighty grand a year this way. So that means that after the usual 40% management cut, there’ll be around £48,000 a year up for grabs for local resident projects. Although that’s better than a kick in the teeth, the Westergate project’s not going so well. Originally eb4U decided that they would borrow £275,000 to plug an unforeseen hole in the finances, but eb4U tsar Graham Maunders (rtd.) came back to the eb4U board late last year, asking that the cash now be given to the project as a grant. Despite residents’ anger, he told the board that eb4U had little choice because their prize project faced being repossessed by the council; and that would be more than a little embarrassing. As 6 years’ worth of future funding for resident projects is siphoned off to prop up this white elephant, despairing local residents told eb4U bosses that no local businesses are able afford the £10,000 rent being charged each year for an office in the building!

Although government rules state that eb4U shouldn’t be investing in property, local cash is being shovelled into a range of acquisitions, including a flat in Selsfield Drive and a shop in Barcombe Road. Residents’ frustration is made even worse when they complain that they can no longer afford the rents on these buildings now they are tenants of eb4U! Like all good venture capitalists, the eb4U bureaucracy has realised that the only way to make serious cash is through property investment and becoming a landlord. That’s one of the reasons why eb4U directors have been sniffing around the Housing Options Working Group which is busy planning the privatisation of Council homes across the City. When the privatisation of council housing arrives, it will come with higher rents and less secure tenancies.

Residents putting in requests for money to turn unused land into parks for their kids are being politely told to ‘shove it’. Land right on the edge of the Downs appears to be earmarked for development. The Swanborough Drive Loft Apartments are on the way! Anyway RM recommends that eb4U residents needn’t worry. If all goes according to plan they can tap into £48,000 of annual funding – just a little under half of top boss, Graham Maunder’s current salary!

To read part two of this article click here

To read part one of this article click here

* We’re always interested if you’ve got any more info on eb4U or are pissed off with any other Council quango, so give us shout at the usual address.

BRIGHTON COCK

Life imitates satire with another unsightly seafront erection.

This time it’s the designers of the London Eye punting up a folly for the West Pier site, a tower cutely named the i360 – ‘cos it’s got a pod, you see, which will have the added advantage of giving it a ‘retro’ feel in six months time. They want us to nickname it the ‘Brighton Eye’ but we reckon it should be the Brighton Finger – rising from the fist of Fanshawe et al against Joe Public. The heady concept is of a ‘vertical’ pier (nice - how about a level playing field instead?), a 600ft pole with a doughnut-shaped platform which will move up and down in accordance with local house prices.

All the usual suspects have lined up behind this piece of regeneration magic, claiming that a big tower will put us on the map with Paris (Yeah and napalming Churchill Square would put us on a par with Baghdad but no one’s suggested that… yet). Brighton’s gentrification mafia seem to think this dubious Dubai style prestige project will act as a mystical money magnet and attract investment – as if yet more aggressive corporate money is what we need. The Finger has “been designed to be low energy use and energy efficient” and “20 per cent of the energy required to drive it will come from wind-turbines at its top”. What about the other 80 per cent, wasted on a totally shit building? RM suggests that not building it in the first place would save 100 per cent of the energy.

But Rough Music isn’t bothered about tourists looking through our bathroom windows in the near future as given the history of the development on the West Pier to date we’re sure the architects will receive a warm welcome for anything which overshadows rival Palace Pier. Clue: There’s no smoke without it.

Dr Kurtz Blundermacher, professor of post-rational idiotics at Sussex University, told RM, “It is psychoanalytically axiomatic that the tower is the penis. But what is the doughnut? This automated self-masturbating sculpture clearly represents the self-referential emptiness of mespace: the autochthonous need of the bourgeois zeitgeist to suppress and thus reproduce its fear of negative equity, which it identifies simultaneously with orgasm and death. But on a sunny day you’ll get a lovely view of Saltdean.”

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SHAME ACADEMY

THE GREAT PFI EDUCATION SWINDLE

It is, of course, all about consumer ‘choice’. Which hospital you want to be treated in, what school you’d like your children to be taught in – it’s just like choosing which shop to go to (Waitrose if yer posh and Aldi if yer not). But what happens to choice when it’s a school where no-one wants to send their kids? A school like Falmer High, situated in Brighton’s (sorry East Brighton’s) unfashionable Moulsecoomb estate, where parents from Hanover’s middle class Muesli mountain are fleeing their houses in terror as the catchment area for the school is widened to include them. There’s no doubt Falmer has its problems. 50% of the kids are on special measures, over a third get free school dinners and despite improving exam results, these are still well below the national average. But the school is improving, and acknowledging that not all children are academically minded and want to go to university, it is giving pupils the opportunity to take part in vocational training, from plumbers to PE teachers, carpenters to chefs. In any case the Brighton mechanics and plumbers of tomorrow will be earning shed loads more than the thousands of useless university graduates that can’t change a lightbulb.

The solution? Well, Falmer has been given the opportunity to become an ‘Academy’, thanks to Sussex investment banker Jon Aisbitt, one of the richest men in the country – with an estimated fortune of £95 million tucked under his mattress. Aisbitt, who sits on the board of Man Group, Britain’s biggest hedge-fund and donated £250,000 to New Labour’s 2005 election campaign, has pledged to give £2 million of his cash to Falmer. If the plans are approved, the Government will then give up to £25 million to completely rebuild the old school, and turn it into “a flagship education centre focusing on business and enterprise skills”. Sounds good doesn’t it?

Trouble is every time this Private Finance Initiative malarkey has been tried in Brighton it’s been an unmitigated balls-up (unless you’re one of the millionaire property developers hoovering up the funds). Despite constant Neo-Labour fiddling it seems impossible to square the public service to profit circle. Previous attempts in Brighton include, in no particular order of idiocy, Jarvis’s abandonment of Patcham High School (after charging the school for using its own hall for music rehearsals), and Stanley Deason school in Whitehawk, rebuilt under PFI by Jarvis and ridiculously renamed the East Brighton College of Media Arts (COMART). After just a couple of years COMART closed after pupil number predictions by the council proved over-optimistic, leaving the authority owing up to £4.5 million in penalty fees to Jarvis.

So what’s in it for the sponsors of these new Academies? In return for their cash, sponsors are given the right to rename the school and to control the board of governors (meaning they can introduce a selection policy and crowbar any wacky hobbyhorse such as creationism they like onto the curriculum). Rough Music predicts another highly profitable cock-up bailed out by public funds in a few years time.

So why can’t the fourth richest country in the world sort out a decent education system for all? Maybe one of the reasons is tax-dodging scum like Jon Aisbitt who run hedge fund companies based in off-shore tax havens.

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ROUGH MUSIC Gig List

Sat 8th April, 2pm: Communities Against Runway Expansion (CARE) AGM at Lancing Parish Rooms along the High Road near Lancing station.

SMASH EDO Noise Demos – every Wednesday 4 ‘til 6 outside EDO MBM, Home Farm Road, Moulsecoomb. www.smashedo.org.uk

Brighton Critical Mass - reclaim the roads with bikes. Last Friday of every month, 6pm, meet at The Level. Next Friday 28th April. www.tinyurl.com/dfkc2

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Bag it, Bin it, Stick it

This is the message to come out from Hollingbury residents to greenwash-monkeys Veolia (formerly Onyx Southdown) and their revised plans for a waste dump in Hollingdean.

Campaigners from ‘Dump the Dump’ say that the negative impacts of the ‘materials recycling facility’ remain the same – i.e. it’s too big, it’s too close to Downs Infant School and the 44 tonne juggernauts will create traffic hell.

And anyway if Brighton really is this supposed ‘green mecca’ then why don’t we have a zero-waste strategy where reduce, re-use, repair and recycle are the watchwords? Expansion, economic growth - and Simon Fanshawe while we’re at it - should all be crushed, shredded and replaced by local, human-scale economics where the environment really does come first.

CRITICAL HASS

PIGS POOP PEDAL-POWER PARTY

So it looks like Sussex Plod have decided to put the brakes on the monthly freewheelin’ freakout that is Critical Mass. Last Friday’s Mass saw over twenty police in attendance as cyclists gathered on the Level at six for their regular round town circuit. Previous Masses have seen just two of Brighton’s finest riding with protestors (no doubt sent out to work off some of those canteen bacon sarnies). Up ‘til now, Critical Mass has been a pretty fluffy, indeed almost post-modernly objectiveless affair - a regular event where urban cyclists gather together for safety in numbers among the speeding Jeeps and Jags. Perhaps disgruntled by their lack of success at cracking down on anarchists up at EDO, the plod have now decided to put a spoke in the wheels of justice. Cops in vans followed the cycle convoy as it left the Level and aggressive driving by motorcycle cops forced the Mass into one lane. Police did their best to spoil the celebratory atmosphere and turn a positive, eco-friendly event into a bad-tempered shouting match. Ever mindful of the need to enforce traffic law (except when it comes to wholesale parking in cycle lanes of course), cops started to hand out fixed penalty notices for the heinous offence of riding without lights – at thirty quid a pop it seems that once more freedom to protest in Brighton comes with a price tag.

One man got nicked after being the eighth person to cycle through a red light. Nothing was said to the other seven riders. The fact that number eight’s time was up has probably got more to do with his being a noted local Rough Musician than with his attitude to road safety. Undeterred Critical Mass riders are now more determined than ever and will be back for more cranking fun next month. Critical Mass meets 6pm at the Level, last Friday of every month.

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BOO-ING 24-7

SHOREHAM AIRPORT COMPANY IN THE DOCK

Grassroots campaigners in Lancing have found that the level of pollution from expanding Shoreham… sorry Brighton Shitty… Airport, is shooting up. Communities Against Runway Expansion (CARE) paid £700 out of their own pockets for six diffusion tubes (that measure levels of nitrogen dioxide) back in November 2005. CARE’s Jean Kitchener said: “The results we have just got are showing a rise in levels after just six months, we’ll get the full results this November, but it’s worrying.”

Their findings are backed up by a report in March showing Shoreham airport to be on the border of safe European Union limits for noxious gas, with the high levels of nitrogen dioxide a threat to asthma sufferers, and people with bronchitis and emphysema.

Meanwhile the new company behind the planned airport expansion, the Erinaceous Group are being ‘patted down’ by the Serious Fraud Office over an alleged £10m scam. Police raided the home of one of their valuers, who was nicked in connection to a property which had been valued at around £12m, only to be re-valued later closer to £2m. Easily done: “Hit the wrong button on me calculator m’lud”.

Set up in 1999, Erinaceous plans even bigger and better crimes against the environment with extra flights to Amsterdam, Paris and Edinburgh. Just what’s called for when car pollution will rise four fold in Shoreham as a result and with 800,000 extra people expected to use the airport by 2018 (5-10 times more than current use). And of course air pollution is the fastest growing contributor to global warming, with the richest 10% making the vast majority of flights, either business trips or weekend breaks to holiday homes.

Erinaceous are planning to extend the current runway or failing that build another – valued at £200bn , ahem… sorry finger’s on the wrong button that should read around £2m.

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

YOU MUST BE CHOKING

Readers of Insight City News may have been surprised to hear that Brighton’s air is clean and lovely to breathe. Obviously not been hanging out down at Vogue Gyratory or Preston Circus then, because last year, levels of pollution there were way above safe European levels and some of the worst in the country. Apparently Brighton & Hove’s carbon output is ‘only’ 289,289 tonnes which is hardly anything compared to Greater London’s 9 million tonnes. Forgetting, presumably, that Greater Londons population is 36 times greater than Brighton - which would actually mean Brighton’s equivalent carbon output would be over 10 million tonnes - a million more than the whole of Greater London, an area unlike Brighton that’s dominated by industry.

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We at Rough Music know only too well the pitfalls of publishing a newsletter out of our pocket money and relentlessly pushing a one-sided agenda and relying on a small circle of cronies to prop up our sad dreams of being newspaper magnates. But that’s the only thing we’ve got in common with Reg Kray lookalike Mike Holland, who cops this month’s Wankers Corner crown for taking vanity publishing to Olympic extremes by printing a newspaper about himself. He’s just outright bought the ‘Insight’- (small change when you’ve made millions in property development). The Insight was a 30-something lifestyle freesheet for plastic hippies which revolved around a weighty agenda of cappuccino and yoga.

Mikey snapped it up and renamed it ‘Insight City News’. Luckily the council chose that exact week to close their own ASBOs-and-tourism themed freesheet “City News” leaving the market wide open. Despite promises to keep the Insight as frothy and content free as before a new editorial line is somewhat heavy handed - typical is the fortnightly three page feature on the fascinating redevelopment of Stanmer House co-incidentally owned by one Mr Mike Holland. Adverts for luxury yachts and interviews with pro-development cronies such as Derek “Adenstar” Chapman might keep this turd afloat for a while, but given that the editor’s rumoured to be off and half the staff have already had it away on there toes, how much longer? The takeover has been greeted with waves of apathy throughout Brighton, probably because Mike is a self-made bore whose heart-warming rags to riches tale can be read on pages 1, 3, 5 through 13 and indeed most of the rest of his destined-to-line-rabbit-hutches rag.

“With only a fiver in his pocket, a sprightly glint in his eye and a handkerchief on a stick, Mike arrived in Brighton back in 1935.Within weeks a mixture of common sense and nose-to-the-grindstone hard graft saw our cockney barrow-boy hero make his first million”, the new look Insight tells anyone still reading.
In his own words Mike “is a man who loves this city, who is extremely active in charitable work” (and he does like to talk about it) By charity work Mike means Narconon, the Scientology linked anti-drugs campaign. Wacky cult Scientology claims that, “Man’s capabilities are unlimited, even if not presently realized — and those capabilities can be realized,” which finds a curious echo in Mike’s vision for the City-by-the Sea: “There is a lot happening and a lot is going to happen-and a lot more could happen if people realized it.”

Mystic Mike knows there’s only one solution for Brighton - Development ‘til yer ears bleed. And he’s not afraid to push it in his propaganda. ‘We have to think of the city as Brighton PLC’ he thunders. And to the ‘vitriolic and vocal minority’ who oppose ‘visionary projects’ such as the celebrity driven Gehry towers development he’s only got one thing to say ‘It’s easy to get stuck in a time warp but things are changing fast and you have to get on board or get left behind’.

Some who don’t want to get on board Mike’s luxury yacht might consider his views of unrestrained PFI hell a little right wing but don’t worry ‘cos as the man says “I’m apolitical. I’m simply interested in getting people voted in who are interested in the advancement of the city.” RM can hear the snuffling of noses in troughs as we speak.

JUNK EMAIL

What happens to all that junk people collect that they no longer actually need but hate to throw away, either cos it wastes resources, fucks the environment or they’re just tight. Often it fills cupboards, lofts, spare rooms and sheds, but fear not - help is now at hand. Here’s a radical idea – give it away! It’s now easier than you think to find a good home for things, using an Internet group called ‘Freecycle’. The idea is you give away your old TV, furniture etc to someone who actually wants it, and then you can browse through lists of other people’s tat and pick up things you might need. And all without any cash involved.

One bit of friendly advice about Freecycle however is to use a separate e-mail account, cos you get inundated with hundreds of messages offering things like, ‘one left shoe, green, size 6’ or ‘broken radio’ or ‘600 foot tower, needs some attention’.

* Get involved and more details at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/freecyclebrighton/

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HOMEs & AWAY

COUNCIL HOUSES FLOGGED ON THE SLY

Brighton Council has started selling off its housing stock despite having given a written undertaking to council tenants that there would be no sell-offs before the vote on stock transfer this autumn. Tenants stand to lose their right to a ‘Secure’ tenancy as their homes are transferred over to business orientated Housing Associations. Imagine living somewhere for years and then being told, sorry mate you’re on your bike by the end of the year. That’s what’s happening to Patching Court Sheltered housing block residents who have had their building taken over by Hanover Housing Association.

Despite Hanover’s corporate propaganda claim that “You cannot reach your destination without a shared vision”, tenants reps are livid about not even being properly consulted about the proposed development that’s going to see them booted out of house and home. Although told this is a ‘temporary’ move and that they can move back under their new landlords when re-development is completed, residents reckon this is one of the first of a series of sell offs. In a recent meeting Brighton and Hove tenant reps voted unanimously against any sale or transfer of housing or land prior to the Autumn ballot into whether the council housing stock should be privatised as a job lot.

Assistant Director of Housing Management, Pam Montgomery, said that although the council agreed ‘in principle’ she could not rule out further ‘exceptions’. Nor would she guarantee that the ballot would be held this year as promised, raising the question how many more blocks will be disposed of in this way.
The council says it cannot afford to say ‘no’ to the £3m sweetener offered by the government, because it hasn’t got the cash to bring the Patching Court block up to the Decent Homes Standard. Councillor Don, ‘nice little earner’ Turner told tenants in a recent newsletter that there would be no fourth option (keeping the homes in public ownership) and that we should turn our attentions to the much-vaunted ‘new, local, organisation’ Brighton & Hove City Homes to look after our interests.

Despite government plans to withhold £1.5billion of national rent receipts, investment will only be ‘released’ when tenants vote the ‘right way’. Tell Don where he can shove his privatisation plan and Vote ‘No’ in the Autumn ballot. To find out more or help Defend Council Housing with leafleting, phone Ruth on (01273) 608704.

ARRESTING DEVELOPMENT

PEACE PROTESTORS’ CHARGES DROPPED

Just when you thought there was no justice. Campaigners against local bomb-builders EDO MBM have been startled by a series of victories in the courts. Not only has the injunction creating a protest exclusion zone been thrown out of court, but almost all criminal cases against activists have been dropped. Just two months ago it looked as if most of the regular protestors at EDO were going to become all too familiar with the magistrates court. One had nine outstanding court cases!

In the course of the year since EDO MBM went crying to Brighton nick about supposed ‘harassment’, in an effort to get an injunction, over thirty arrests were made during protests outside the factory and in town. Out of these, four have been thrown out on appeal and most of the rest have been quietly dropped. This includes three people fitted up for the go-straight-to-jail offence of assaulting a police officer. Only two cases remain and they’re hanging on a thread.

So what happened? It’s not as if activists usually expect a fair deal in court. Self-appointed spokesman for SMASH EDO, chat show regular and bombastic know-it-all, Andrew Beckett, is in no doubt. “Basically the stitch up between Sussex Police and EDO MBM to get arrests in order to bolster the case for an exclusion zone was too blatant for even the magistrates to swallow. When the District Judge demanded to see evidence regarding police radio logs, the Crown Prosecution Service dropped charges against three people charged with holding an illegal assembly – in the middle of a trial! Suddenly cases that had been hanging over people’s heads for a year were being dropped. Right now we still don’t know what it was that the police wanted to keep out of court but we’re going to find out!”

As of the end of March, the injunction case has completely collapsed with EDO MBM about to pay thousands out in costs to those who represented themselves. They are withdrawing all allegations of harassment after their specialist anti-protest lawyer Lawson-Cruttenden received a judicial bollocking for deliberately delaying the case. A victory demo saw over 40 police vehicles in attendance at the weapons factory and we’ll leave the last words to an IC1 male we now know to be Inspector PARR, who gave us the official Sussex Plod lowdown on the stitch-up fiasco: “Just because you’ve been found not guilty doesn’t mean you didn’t do it.”

See also www.smashedo.org.uk

SQUATBUSTERS!

Homeless people plus empty houses equals…? Clued-up Rough Music readers will surely be aware that squatting is sensible and legal. Unfortunately, reliably thick and corrupt Sussex Police don’t seem to be so clear about it, and treat squatting as one of those things that aren’t quite actually illegal but should be - like protesting, cycling and tofu. Rough Music knows of several incidents where trivial arrests have been made so as to evict squatters and board up properties. In one particularly blatant example, a man was arrested in his home for the fictional offence of “being in an enclosed space” and immediately “de-arrested” as soon as he was out of the house.

The officers behind that episode of paramilitary-style illegality were led by the sinister PC “John” Thomas CT376, who wears plain clothes and despite his PC rank is rumoured to have read a book. A CSO (community support officer) admitted to the arrestee that she had “done” several other squats using similar tactics.

Police Superintendent Laurence Cartwright CC133, in an e-mail to one of his victims, denies that there is a “policy” of evicting squats. How many evictions make it a policy then? He goes on to justify this non-existent policy with bullshit prejudice. Apparently some squats “can degenerate into dens of iniquity”, in which case the police “will use all legal means at our disposal to disrupt and prosecute” squatters. PS Can’twrite also informs us that PC Thomas “works for me on one of Brighton’s Specialist Neighbourhood Support Teams,” we presume thanks to his door-smashing abilities. So if you’re in an enclosed space, or just moved into a house and not phoned the ‘leccy company yet, watch out because the Specialist Neighbourhood Support Team might be round with a battering ram.

Top cop Nev Kemp has stated in the Argus that “squatting will not be tolerated in Brighton.” He has no legal authority to make such a statement because squatting is not illegal. Another ugly face of the campaign to clean up Brighton for the yuppies? One step closer to the Do What You’re Told Act 2007? Sussex Police don’t have a leg to stand on and had better learn they won’t find Brighton squatters sitting down on the job.

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Fox Trotters

After years of ridiculous over-the-top policing to harass hunt saboteurs, The Argus are suddenly upset that “1,300 hours’ policing has been lost” to police hunts since the so-called ban. Good – keeps a few violent thugs off the street. But, as the Countryside Alliance admit, there have been less police at hunts since the ‘ban’. No prosecutions have taken place for illegal hunting, even when it’s in full view of the cops. In fact police are still acting as enforcers for the hunt, preventing sabateurs from going down footpaths while allowing hunts to openly hunt foxes. No surprise to sabs, who are used to seeing hunt personnel get away with serious assaults and murder. If the cops won’t enforce the ban, it’s up to the sabs as usual.

* For more see www.huntsabs.org.uk

KICK UP THE ARGUS

It’s come to RM’s attention that a photographer from our rival publication the Argus got lumped by Lewes council leader Ann De Vecchi’s hubby (a copper believe it or not). Now it’s not often RM’s gonna applaud a bit of police brutality but on this occasion…You see the Argus are big supporters of the Albion’s planned new footie stadium up on the downs. A while back they published a big front page story putting the boot into de Vecchi with mugshots of her and fellow Lewes councillors who oppose the stadium, and called for a judicial review which will now go ahead later this summer. Which kinda makes you think, if you can dish it out Argus - be prepared to get some in return with fuckin bells on!

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OCCUPATIONAL HAZARDS

Seven campaigners against the Occupation of Palestine are in the dock in Uxbridge as we go to press. Three Brighton activists, with four others from London, shut down the UK headquarters of Carmel Agrexco on 11th November 2004 with a non-violent blockade of the road. Agrexco is Israel 's largest importer of agricultural produce into the European Union, and it is 50% Israeli state-owned. It regularly imports produce from illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

The protesters will argue in defence that they were acting to prevent crimes against International law that are also illegal in the UK, under the International Criminal Court Act. Before taking part in this action many of the defendants had witnessed first hand the suffering of Palestinian communities under the brutal Israeli occupation, having served as volunteers with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), documenting human rights abuses by the IDF in the West Bank and Gaza, and taking part in non-violent civil resistance to the occupation organised by Palestinian civilian committees.

• See also www.palsolidarity.org

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