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Rough Music 17 - January / February 2008

What's In This Issue:
Churchill Spirit - 150 people assemble to demonstrate against Sussex Police's attempts to curtail the right to protest
Omar Ordeal - Guantanamo detenee released from torture camp only to be arrested again by Paddington nick
Bitter Lemon - Set back for rival bus outfit set to break Brighton & Hove Bus Comapny's local monopoly
Spin Cycle - Has Brighton really gone bike crazy?
Leaflet it Out - Shortage of roach material to hit North Laine?
What's in Store - Supermarkets poised to control every aspect of our lives
E.I.A. OWE YOU - A new planning application has been submitted by property developers, but the tree top protest continues
Splinter of Discontent - Insurance company declares collecting driftwood to be an illegal activity
Wanker's Corner - OK, so its not exactly a RM exclusive, but Old Nick Van Hoogstraten features in this editions Wanker's Corner
A Bridgewater Too Far - Preston Road protest camp evicted
Rough Music Gig List - Forthcoming events around Brighton.
What Is Rough Music

CHURCHILL SPIRIT

“Whose streets – OUR STREETS!”

NO JUSTICE – NO PEACE – FUCK THE POLICE. That was the uncompromising message delivered by Brighton activists on Saturday 19th January on the Freedom to Protest march.

Around 150 assembled at midday outside the spiritual home of the mindless shopper, Churchill Square. They were answering the call put out by SMASH EDO to all those fed up with Sussex Police’s heavy-handed attacks on the right to protest (see RMs 1-16...)

Activists also planned to draw attention to the change of ownership up at EDO. EDO Corp have been bought out by arms giant ITT, one time bespoke bomb builders to Hitler. Also present were a number of police from Surrey and the Met, representatives of the National Public Order Intelligence Unit, busy snapping photos of all and sundry.

Following a banner demanding “Freedom to Protest” and drummed along by a samba band, the mob descended down North St, along Bond St past the Pavilion and then onwards to the lair of the beast itself - John St nick. Alarmed cops were forced to form lines to defend their own station. As the gathering became more lively, one drumming protester scrambled on to a parked police car. Although at first he just got warned, senior police then decided that such flagrant disrespect for law and order wasn’t going to go unpunished and after some brief but entertaining scuffling, he was nicked.

As the police attempted to form a cordon, the crowd streamed back down James St to the Old Steine. Ever mindful of the need to protect the war memorial* – police reinforcements arrived in a convoy of vans, just in time to follow in the footsteps of the march as it went up North St.

Shouting, “Whose streets – OUR STREETS”, the marchers returned to Churchill Square and continued down Western Rd, where more confrontation was sparked with a police attempt to clear the road. One masked bystander told RM, “The police didn’t seem to have a plan, apart from Sergeant Avery bellowing totally contradictory orders, all they seemed interested in was running into us and pushing people to the ground.” During the hoo-ha, which at times bordered on a ding-dong one man was arrested for ‘indecent exposure’ for mooning the city’s finest.

The marchers then dispersed having proved that, in the words of one young firebrand, “the police are going to be forced to realise that they can’t clamp down on demos outside the weapons factory with impunity – we’ve got a lot of people behind us.”

On Weds 23rd Jan, Students against EDO successfully blockaded EDO MBM’s plant in Fishersgate. Two students who had occupied the roof were arrested. The pressure on Brighton’s bomb builders is really starting to pile up.

*We don’t know why the local plod are so worried about anarchists of this parish attacking or occupying this monument – perhaps as ley-lines are rumoured to meet on the Steine it’s a Site of Special Masonic Significance – wild-eyed theories to the usual address please.

See www.smashedo.org.uk

OMAR ORDEAL

After six years stuck in the hell-hole of Guantanamo, Saltdean man Omar Deghayes is free at last... well not quite.

The minute he arrived back in the country on 20th December he was ushered straight through the doors of Paddington Green nick. Quite what they hoped to screw out of him there that he hadn’t already been tortured out of him in Camp X-ray will perhaps never been known.

However while he was at the station he was also arrested under a Spanish extradition warrant. Although released a day later, Omar didn’t get to return home to rebuild his life – he was released on bail under a restrictive set of conditions on a price of £50,000 surety. Although no doubt a welcome relief after conditions in the illegal US detention camp, Omar is now wearing a tag which keeps him under house arrest between 7pm and 8am everyday. This is despite him not being wanted by the British authorities in relation to any offence whatsoever.
It was a concerted effort by local campaigners which kept Omar and the other British mens’ cases in the public eye. Without that pressure it is likely he would still be incarcerated.

The Save Omar Campaign have expressed dismay at the Spanish government’s decision; “As far as we understand, the authorities in Guantanamo, not known for their leniency, were aware of allegations from Spanish sources and did not take them seriously. Omar spent five years of his life in isolating conditions and separated from his family on the basis of suspicion, which was then simply disregarded. Isn’t all this bad enough? Why was there no extradition while Omar was in Guantanamo? Why wait till now? We can only think the whole Spanish case, and especially its timing is a put-up, politically rather than legally motivated. It saves a few faces.”

Save Omar will be demonstrating outside Westminster Magistrates court on 14th Feb – the date of Omar’s next extradition hearing.

For more see www.save-omar.org.uk

BITTER LEMON

Eco-enterprise fees the pinch

Keen not to see a rival muscle in on its local monopoly, Brighton & Hove Bus Company cut fares in the run up to Christmas - just as The Big Lemon bus company was trying to get a service off the ground. Big Lemon runs buses along the Falmer seafront route and was set up as an eco-enterprise – yep its buses run on vegetable oil from yer local chippie. It’s now relying on a workforce of just two and a dog following the exodus of the full complement of six before Christmas as they believed the service was well and truly on the skids and so skidaddled before getting the chop.

If it had managed to keep its head above water, the Big Lemon’s plans would have been a major headache for profit hungry Brighton & Hove Buses. If public transport running on veggie oil didn’t go down well, the lower fares were sure to pull in the punters - especially amongst the well-fleeced travellers unhappy at the more than doubling of bus fares in less than eight years.

The Big Lemon was founded as a community interest business to provide cheap and eco-friendly travel. But the company thought too big and launched a service it couldn’t sustain without much larger passenger numbers. And then there was the price war - initiated by Go-Ahead owned rival Brighton & Hove Bus Company, now a big corporation with very deep pockets, having grown fat on the 90s national bus service privatisation bonanza. Lo and behold, the snazzy new £2 all-day weekend tickets strangely disappeared once Big Lemon confirmed that its buses would be off the road.

The sprawling Go-Ahead Group run dozens of bus companies in the South and a train operating company or two. In the Shitty-by-the-sea it enjoys a virtual monopoly – if you don’t like the inflated prices they charge where else are you going to go? The taxi rank?! Go-Ahead bosses must have been a bit worried when the Big Lemon company came along. Their proposed bus route map would have seen direct competition with Brighton & Hove - and Go-Ahead group investors know how valuable a monopoly can be: the company’s share price has risen from £1.20 to more than £22 in just ten years.

The Big Lemon was also the victim of more underhand tactics, including the theft of fuel and damage to buses. In October, someone went into the company’s double decker bus and cut the cables to the ticket machine, and the air pipes that operate the door, and emptied the engine of its oil. No one knows who did the dirty deed, but they certainly knew how to disable a bus and probably worked in the trade.

Now the Transport Commissioner is threatening a fine because the company didn’t give 56 days notice that it was closing some of its routes. But the company is trying to make a comeback - so if you can’t afford £3.20 a day to meander through the city, why not see if there’s a Big Lemon route near you? www.thebiglemon.com

SPIN CYCLE

Of course, for anyone with half a brain it should be self-evident that two wheels good four wheels bad. And for Brighton’s BMX bandits surely the news that the city has wheedled a grant of £3 million to turn us into a Demonstration City of Cycling Excellence (or something) is surely good news?

To read the council propaganda about it, you’d think the bike craze was all down to them and their forward thinking policy-making. You’d think they’d invented the personal-bi-pedal-self-propelling-carbon-neutral-transport solution themselves. With a quick bit of consultant-fuelled re-branding with the catchy bicycle / bike (clever - just like coca-cola / coke!), it would appear that the wise council elders have redesigned the entire city’s infrastructure to be a cyclist’s wet dream and sat smugly back as the new hype-created craze swept through the quiet leafy streets of an ever-grateful electorate.

The reality, naturally, is somewhat different. The eco-friendly Brighton set and cash poor students / workers are all saddled with ludicrous housing costs which make buying and running a car a pipe dream in any event. Brighton has now become one the cycling ‘capitals’ of Britain. Although there is now a half decent cycle network covering much of the city centre, in the end, the council was as much responding to the huge public demand and the likely embarrassment of too many bike casualties splattering blood on the public highway. Not to mention the chance to get a few grants and government handouts to tart up the B&H image as the all-green city-by-the-sea.

At the same time other traffic has also increased exponentially which, aside from the unpleasantness of just so many cars, has lately been boosting cyclist numbers as more people realise how slowly traffic now moves around the clogged up endless one-way systems that it’s far quicker to ride to almost anywhere in the town. The council has made a huge effort to endlessly reshuffle parking permits, create extra spaces where possible and brought in a huge revenue generating regime of meters and pay and display zones, using it also as a handy way to crack down on the traveller communities (see RM 16). And it’s not like all that cash raised has been ploughed into the infrastructure for cyclists ...

Did we say half-decent cycle lane network? That means half crap then... many of the solutions are piecemeal and ill-thought out with cyclists needs a long way down the list of priorities compared to developers, buses, taxis and cars. The disjointed hotch-potch of unconnected sections of bike lane have become so infamous it inspired a whole website cataloguing all the strange lanes with lamposts in the middle, starting and stopping in two yards etc etc.

Of course the main problem is that the existing cycle lanes are either used as footpaths or free parking. Cyclists along the Lewes Rd and Dyke Rd cyclists are forced to slalom in and out of traffic. With the council now thinking about banning the use of bikes on stretches of the A259, perhaps it’s about time we all started cycling on the pavement...

For more on local cycle campaigning: www.bricycles.org.uk
Brighton’s bizzarest bike lanes at www.weirdcyclelanes.co.uk

*NB, RM suggests that the best way to get motorised traffic in town moving again would be to rip up those unneeded bus lanes and make them solely for estate agent’s corporate-sponsored minis and beetles. It’s the sheer weight of these self-important commission-driven snake oil salesmen (and women) racing round town to flog off another luxury flat (well, it’s had a laminate floor put in - a snip at £200k!) that’s caused at least 50% of the gridlock as the property frenzy has raged these past few years... The plan would also make them easier to target – we could dig a large hole, cunningly covered up by unread copies of Latest Homes, safe in the knowledge that no innocent human beings would be endangered...

LEAFLET IT OUT

The council is planning to put the kibosh on elaborately coiffured and teeth-achingly hip hoboes who hang around the North Laines handing out glossy roach cards pushing Psy-trance nights of dubious provenance.* That’s right, next on the ever-lengthening crackdown list is...flyering.

Of course this has to be backed with the full force of law... A new bye-law under the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act will leave leafleteers open to arrest and fines of £75, with up to £2,500 for ‘repeat offenders’. You will be able get a licence for £50 or (£100 for a year’s worth) and for that you’ll get a little photo ID badge to go round yer neck. So advertising that poetry night or benefit gig could end up being pretty expensive.
Without Photo ID it’ll be illegal to hand out flyers in North Laine, The Lanes, North Street, West Street, Western Road, Queens Road, St James Street and the Seafront from Dukes Mound to the peace statue. The licence conditions will also require the distributor to clear up any discarded material.

Charities, religious and political organisations, community groups and schools are apparently going to be exempt from the scheme, but must agree to clear up any discarded material. We’re sure that Sussex Police will respect the rights of, say, local peace groups or edgy newsletters to hand out their propaganda. The council claim to have ‘consulted widely’ talking to all possibly interested groups: i.e. local businesses and the distribution and promotions industry.

*NB One of the signs of ageing in this fair city is failing to be offered one of these cards. If you make it through the Laines without receiving even one of these glossy invites to unbridled hedonism, then face it - yer style’s rolled over and died and its time to start thinking about log-fires in that nice little housing co-op in Lewes...

WHAT'S IN STORE?

Ever noticed how almost every new redevelopment in Brighton comes with a free supermarket attached?

In a city where land is so scarce, you’d think the most important thing for city planners would be to make sure we all had somewhere decent and affordable to live - but where there’s land there’s profit and nothing lights up the eyes of local bureaucrats more than the pound sign.

In RM16 we reported how Waitrose was planning to step in and rescue the already knackered Preston Barracks development. According to the slick marketing, the Barracks will be a ‘regenerative catalyst’, an ‘urban gateway’ and an ‘academic corridor’ to boot. After five years overselling the project, the scheme has now come unstuck due to a gap in funding. It’s only likely to go ahead if a ‘value generator’ (i.e. supermarket) comes on board with the project.

The funding ‘gap’ was easy to foresee. Back in the Summer of 2003, The South East England Development Agency (SEEDA) produced a briefing document for potential contractors which outlined the problems in obtaining ‘real commercial value’ from the site. A key concern was that the Ministry of Defence have retained one of the buildings, which includes a rifle range! Difficult to squeeze shareholder value out of a posh development when there’s tooled-up teenage cadets firing bullets in full sight of that overpriced loft apartment...
Of course, a supermarket will also need planning permission. But that’s not a major worry for Waitrose - most councillors wouldn’t shop anywhere else. More importantly, losing a five year project that’s cost millions just to plan would be just too embarrassing not to say a firm ‘yes’ to the John Lewis Partnership (Waitrose’s owners). The potential homes that could be built on the site are of no concern.

In fact the government took the decision a long time ago not to build more places for us to live. Despite failing to transfer every last council house over to a profit-orientated housing association, the private sector is more involved than ever in planning the future of housing. Every time an affordable house goes up it hurts the bottom line. Why else are they building so many luxury flats when the shortage is at the other end of the market?
Even council officers are losing their influence. The City Council is currently fighting a Freedom of Information request asking for more details about a letter written by council officials to their boss. The memo was basically a complaint about the pressure that was being applied to them to say ‘yes’ to the £270m King Alfred development.

Supermarket subsidies are an old story in this town with Tesco in the Jubilee Library scheme and Sainsbury at the station site.

It’s worth remembering at this point (and laughing hollowly at) how the council went back on their original commitment that any retail business on the New England Quarter site station car park would not compete with other retail outlets. Perhaps bureaucrats lost their sense of direction and forgot that a Sainsbury store there would be in direct competition with the Marks and Spencer already at the station, a Somerfield three minutes down the hill, a Co-op round the corner and two more Sainsbury stores within a one mile radius.

Back in 2004, Tescopoly opened a new ‘Metro’ store at Palmeira Grande, Western Rd. That’s on top of the Tesco Express outlets in Denmark Villas and Dyke Rd. And then there’s the huge supermarket on the old gas works site in Church Road. If that’s not enough, another 20 minutes walk west and there’s the store in Portslade High St and the expanding ‘flagship’ store in the Holmbush Centre at Shoreham. And that’s only going in one direction! Withinl 15 miles in any direction from Brighton you’d find 21 Tescos and another 20 Sainsburys. Some, like ASDA like to play it a different by only having three stores but hey, what stores they are! The one down the Marina takes up a whopping 49,000 square feet.

Corporate propaganda raves about the number of new jobs Big Food brings with it, whilst all research suggests just the opposite. The British Retail Planning Forum discovered that every time a large supermarket opens, three hundred jobs are lost. Many of those are in smaller shops who can no longer compete with the sweatshop prices that Tesco and Co. bring with them. The New Economics Foundation predicted that the number of corner shops, grocers, post offices and local boozers will have declined by a third between 1990 and 2010. So what of B&H City Council’s commitment to sustainable development? Hard to see it as they send local businesses to the wall, promote the sale of food that travels thousands of miles and create ever more reliance on private transport.

It might be too late to stop some of the developments in the city but you can always hit the supermarkets where it hurts the most and boycott them. Supporting local shops means that any money you spend is more likely to stay in the local community and buying or (even better, growing) local veg is a great way to reduce your food miles (and bill).

E.I.A. OWE YOU

SPLINTER OF DISCONTENT

The biggest bonanza to hit the Brighton beach, since Fat Boy Slim, and what happens? The council and police gang up to prevent an outbreak of eco-looting.

It’s estimated that approximately 2,000 tonnes of sawn timber broke free from the wreck of the Ice Prince, when it sank on 15th January. It’s all washed up along miles of the Sussex coastline in a five-foot high stack. And according to one salty sea dog of RM’s acquaintance, it’ll be washing up till the end of February. Surely enough to go around for everyone?

After the initial free-for-all, the wreckage has now been officially claimed by BMT Offshore Surveys. And what are they gonna do with it – dry it it out and use it? No they’re going to turn it into wood pulp, in order to reclaim a tiny fraction of its value.

Meanwhile anyone filching a few planks for the allotment is warned of possible arrest and £2,500 fines! Given that we as a town are going to have to put up with a totally trashed beach for the next few months surely a blind eye and a bit of free timber isn’t too much to ask?

RM has heard plenty of reports of people being chased off the beach by the police or forced to dump their gleanings where they stood. Before being asked to unload the entire contents of his trailer, one reprobate was even asked if he had ‘deliberately broken’ a plank on his roof rack - Officer Keen Twat eager for a criminal damage rap. They’ve even had the police chopper out twice to keep an eye out for timber-crazed mobs.

But now the council’s hit on the perfect excuse to keep us away from the tempting pile of freebies – splinters! Rumour (OK, the Argus) has it that beaches are to be placed off limits due to excessive splintering. The fact that the contractors are using grabber cranes to pick the stuff up means that this particular health and safety nightmare should continue well into the tourist season...All together now: “What planks!”

Prison food? I could murder an Indian

Rough Music was obviously overcome with grief (OK a fit of the giggles and schadenfreude accompanied with a bit of punching the air, singing, dancing and a bottle of Co-op Fairtrade Cava) on hearing that the original Nasty Nick, crooked bully boy and arch-wanker Nicolas van Hoogstraten has been banged up – this time in Zimbabwe. Somehow we don’t expect a solidarity campaign to be hitting the headlines any time soon.

Old Nick owns 200 properties in Zimbabwe along with his Sussex property portfolio, and strangely avoided being thrown out with all the other white farmers. Of course it helped that he had special links with dictator Mugabe who he described as, “100% decent and incorruptible”. He holds vast fortunes in the African country and once said: “I don’t believe in democracy, I believe in rule by the fittest.”

As ever it is awkward tenants who’ve landed the tycoon in the dock. Naughty Nick’s been collecting rent in US dollars (well he can make so much more profit in the black market) - illegal under Zimbabwean law. As nothing happens in that country without the say-so of Mugabe we can’t help wonder what Hoogstratens’ done to get up his nose.

Perhaps playing with the really big boys wasn’t such a good idea – after all somebody who’s prepared to defy the UN and is backed by AK47-toting militias probably isn’t going to be quaking in their boots over threats to ‘send the boys’ round.

Nick’s been on record in the past as saying, “The only purpose in creating great wealth like mine is to separate oneself from the riffraff”...well, we’re sure that only the very highest class of people populate the jails of Harare, Nick...

For services to rampant corrupt global capitalism, plus his previous contribution to the Brighton underworld, including frequent use of the heavy mob for everything from intimidation to casual murder of business rivals... N.v.H. we salute you as an....ambassadorial-class Wanker!

A BRIDGEWATER TOO FAR

Protest camp evicted ...

The Preston Road tree campers have finally been booted off their squatted site next to Anston House with the only sign of their six month stay a burnt out caravan where camp founders Colin and Sandra set up home see RM 16 and SchNEWS 614).

The eviction went ahead with all the subtlety you’d expect of scum-bucket developers (Haslemere-based Bridgewater Properties in this case). They cut down eight ancient trees including oaks and copper beeches back in June 2007, all with existing tree preservation orders (for all the good that did) which led to the camp being set up.

RM visited the site soon after the eviction, but none of the camp residents has been spotted anywhere nearby. The ironic thing is that they were actually calling for a homeless centre on the site rather than yet another office block. Now they will be back on the streets themselves.

The tide turned against them following the brutal attack against camp supporter Chris Bowles. Chris sustained serious head injuries on Christmas Day and is still in hospital having regained consciousness from a coma. (RM wishes him well).

Brighton & Hove Council have once again showed what a total waste of space they are by failing to nail Bridgewater Properties for cutting the trees down in the first place. They could take them to court which could result in a fine of up to double the cost of the development (£21m) plus a bit of time at her majesty’s pleasure.
But all has gone quiet on that front. Whatta surprise, now that the pound signs are flashing with a brand new office development (plus 509 parking spaces) imminent!

And the developers themselves? Well this lot take the biscuit, not only did they chop down the trees at the weekend to avoid any unnecessary interference.– they’re more than happy to pay the £20,000 per tree felling fines - a drop in the ocean to the costly delays involved in cutting them down legally.

And just to add insult to injury they’ve destroyed the root system of one of the last three trees on the site – a lime bordering the road – in another finger up to the council who’ve had to agree to it being felled because of the safety hazard to car drivers. You couldn’t make it up...

Rough Music Gig List

Cowley Club Listings

Regulars

• Smash EDO Noise Demos - Every Wednesday 4-6 outside EDO MBM – Home Farm Rd Brighton. www.smashedo.org.uk
• Timer looting - every night, after dark, on the seafront for the next three weeks
• Sussex Action for Peace - Activists Meeting every Tuesday fortnight, 7:30 pm, Brighthelm Centre, North Rd. All welcome. Next one October 16th - see http://safp.info