Monday, January 08, 2007

Faslane

They're all it - getting arrested at Faslane that is. Caroline Lucas MEP (who I nominated for an award earlier) is currently in police custody after blocking the road at Faslane naval base, home to a dastardly nuclear submarine.

She is said to have said "What’s more likely to cause a breach of the peace – sitting down in a road or stockpiling 200 nuclear warheads, each with a destructive capacity 18times greater than the bomb which killed 200,000 in Hiroshima?"

SONG IN SPACE, When man first flew beyond the sky, He looked back into the world's blue eye. Man said: What makes your eye so blue? Earth said: The tears in the ocean do. Why are the seas so full of tears? Because I've wept so many thousand years. Why do you weep as you dance through space? Because I am the mother of the human race.Other people of note to have been arrested there recently include Hilary Wainwright (her off of Red Pepper) and Adrian Mitchell, the amazing poet (pictured). Caroline was joined by other politicians including Robin Harper, co-leader of the Scottish Greens, Colin Fox of the Scottish Socialist Party and Fiona Hyslop from the SNP. The SSP website also reports that three of their MSPs Rosie Kane, Carolyn Leckie and Frances Curran have been arrested.


Blair is spending billions on replacing Trident in order to retain our capability of turning the entire world into a steaming irradiated slag heap (where would we be without it?). Colin Fox described this situation saying; "Whilst Tony Blair is intent on obtaining even more of these weapons most people consider them obscene. It is clear Labour just cannot be trusted on Trident. It is plainly a pro nuclear party now. By contrast, we believe these weapons to be both immoral and illegal. They fall foul of international law because they cannot distinguish between enemy combatants on the one hand and innocent civilians on the other."

Climate change is a far greater security threat than anything a nuclear bomb could possibly be designed to solve - but for some reason Blair and co. are much keener on having shiny new bombs than actually doing anything to make the world a safer place.

Update: Recieved this from the GMB earlier, seemed to fit with the Faslane story.

Resulting cuts in routine planned maintenance will lead to more incidents like that at Sizewell [nuclear power station] yesterday says GMB.

Gary Smith, GMB National Officer for energy industries commenting on the incident of the burst 10 inch mains water pipe... which led to leaking of 40,000 gallons of water yesterday said: "This recent incident at Sizewell highlights decades of chronic under investment in our nuclear industry. It also comes at a time when the Government is proposing to cut funding to the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority NDA. This Government gave a commitment that it would clean up the nuclear legacy, and proposals to cut NDA funding will ultimately impact upon investment in training and maintenance, which can only further exacerbate problems that we have as a result of neglect. Any cuts in the NDA budgets will severely undermine public confidence in the future of the industry."

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think you forgot to mention Leanne Wood. I've often wondered why a principled socialist like her persists with Plaid.

Anyway, solidarity with all those arrested.

(Wonders if Solidarity will be the only organisation failing to offer their ... solidarity)

Jim Jepps said...

Sure - I expect there were lots of people there I've not mentioned.

There seem to be quite a number of good socialists in Plaid including Adam Price one of their MPs (although not unfortunately their main guy) it certainly seems to be more firmly placed on the left than the SNP although I certainly wont pretend to know the ins and outs of the organisation.

Anonymous said...

Jean Lambert MEP was there too, I believe.