Friday 17 August 2007

Eco-village with a stark warning (track changes: ON)

NotBy Jon Kelly, BBC News, Heathrow

As the workshy tanned, wasted cheerful twenty-somethings set up their tents, you could be forgiven for thinking this was the summer's latest music festival.
But the lines of able bodied, working burly police officers around the site, not to mention the bleedin obvious 747s roaring overhead, give a clue as to the true purpose of this gathering.

Flanked by Heathrow Airport on one side and west London's outer suburbs on the other, this is an unlikely setting for an impromptu econazi-village.

Collectivist, self-obsessed, delusional Environmental campaigners have assembled here not just to oppose a third runway for the airport but to ram their own crackpot ideas down the throats of everybody, with force if necessary.

With their pestilential compost toilets, tokenistic but useless wind turbines and faux-leaderless command structure, they are also keen to present the charade demonstrate that an alternative, more sustainable way of living is possible.

But despite the inevitable privations they face (aw, diddums!), not all the protesters conform to the typical econazi-warrior twattish stereotype.

Brenda Hatton, 60, a retarded retired head teacher from an inner city Soviet hell-hole central London, says she woke up to the issue of climate change after her 29-year-old gullible son began being indoctrinated studying geography at university.


"I'm not here for me much - I'm here for my cats children and my grandchildren," she said with a thousand yard stare.

"I've just arrived It's all been very good-natured so far. I hope there won't be any trouble for us, and if there is we are all going to live in denial and blame-shift it won't be because of the people on the camp."

The police, however, are collecting their overtime not so sanguine.

Some 1,800 officers have been dragged away from their BBQs mobilised, almost matching the 2,000 campaigners who are expected over the coming week.

All vehicles approaching the site are searched under section 44 of the Terrorism Act and photographs are taken of anyone who enters so just like driving down the M4, then.

Campaigners - who insist their protest will be peaceful - want a free hand to cause mayhem so disingenuously complain that the police approach is heavy-handed.

"We've had to shuttle all the supplies in here using stolen wheelie bins. It's not exactly high-tech," laughs barely shaved gibbon volunteer Tony Chambers, 35, a forestry worker from Ceredigion, mid-Wales.

"But we've managed to set everything up without any problems so far. The attitude of the authorities just smacks of parental resignation over a screaming tot desperation, really."

So far only about 250 sponging, disingenuous collectivists activists have gathered at the camp, but organisers are preparing for cholera an influx they expect to join them as the weather improves week progresses.

Protesters pitch their tents alongside others from the same area - Oxford, London and Nottingham already have settlements, each with their own kitchen serving sanctimonious, inedible, methane generating vegan, high carbon-footprint organic food.

More than 100 propaganda fests workshops are due to be held on subjects like carbon denial offsetting and building tokenistic wind turbines.

But despite their faux-leaderless structure - where all decisions are taken by the first sheep to move consensus at regular meetings - reporters must follow the censorship and control protocol of going through a dedicated media politburo team before setting foot on site.

On Sunday - expected to be one of the airport's busiest days of the year - they plan opportunistic lawlessness and vandalism "mass direct action", although all insist this will be non-violent as long as everyone lets them do precisely what they want and there will be no attempt to blockade runways because the terminal buildings will be razed to the ground.

"We have to think first do something," says Gary Dwyer, 34, a care assistant from Southport, Merseyside.

"Climate change is the biggest issue I've been told about we face and we haven't got I don't know how long to act.

"I can't tell you what will happen, because I will be wasted we'll decide collectively when everybody gets here, but it will be a peaceful protest as long as everyone lets us blah blah blah"

As they wait for more hypocritical parasites reinforcements to arrive using carbon-producing tranport, the campers say they are enjoying the camaraderie of pulling together and committing a blatant act of trespass setting up their temporary community.

"It's been fun so far - I've been topping up my tan while I don't work," laughs Claire Blatchford, 20, a "full-time parasite protester" who has spent four months claiming benefits and increasing the burden of law enforcement at a peace camp outside Faslane naval base in Scotland.

"I've brought lesbian day-wear sturdy boots and my waterproofs, though. I'm sure I'll need them after the summer we've had."

Even the most ardent climate change protester, it seems, is forever at the mercy of 4bln years of climate change British weather.

3 comments:

Mark Wadsworth said...

That got me smiling, at least.

CFD Ed said...

Excellent! You actually got me chuckling there - made all the more amusing by the fact that it was all true.

Angry Steve said...

I still say we should be shooting them when they protest at Faslane - that would take a few of them out of the protest loop...