Bishop Hill Environmentalist journalist
Aug 7, 2013 Energy: gas Media Louise Gray has adopted the role of recruiting sergeant for the Balcombe protest camp, offering up helpful advice on what aspirant participants should bring along:
At the moment there are around 40 protesters on the site, but this is expected to swell as word spreads about the camp. Groups involved include Frack Off, backed by Lush, UKUncut and the Occupy movement.
The ‘climate camp’ or ‘peace camp’ will include compost lavatories, a ‘kid’s space, communal kitchen and possibly solar and wind power. Larger tents will host workshops on direct action.
It is expected the camp will ‘occupy’ a field by the site. Campers are advised to bring a tent, a sleeping bag, warm clothes, toothbrush/paste, loo roll, sunblock, waterproofs, a torch, and “a desire to change the world”.
I think this probably kills off any suggestion that Gray is a reputable truth-seeking journalist.
Bishop Hill
There are some more, rather intriguing details on Louise Gray and the demonstrators here.
Reader Comments (69)
Climate camp with communal kitchen sounds fun. Wonder what kind of camping stove they use?
Balcombe is a conventional oil well, not a shale gas well. The first Balcmbe well was drilled in the 1980's, with no fuss at all. Has the water table become contaminated since then? Livestock mysteriously died? Gas come out of people's kitchen taps?
The following article is an excellent summary of the facts and the hysteria. Nice reference to the already existing 2,000 onshore wells drilled which most people don't even know are there.
http://frackland.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/talking-about-balcombe-on-5live-and-is.html
“a desire to change the world”.
=
"a desire to break today's world" ?
Much of this are the left behind leftovers from USSR established and supported innocent Clubs With the original purpose to undermine the Western world economical and Cultural.
USSR is "goooone" but not ideology it was bulit on? Why do we tolerate undemocratic actions like these?
"possibly solar and wind power"
Their shining countenances should be enough and there will unlikely be a shortage of hot air...
@Jon
How is it undemocratic?
Surely even if we think the Balcolme protesters are a bunch of idiots, they nevertheless have the right to protest peacefully about anything they want to protest about, just like everyone else?
Ultimately, it's going to make no difference at all - like all the other "climate camps" and the like that have been performed in recent years.
Don't knock it. The more the merrier. Let it attract thousands of Occupy drones, travellers, foreigners, Green Peace, WWF, the lot. Hundreds of scruffy tents + caravans, people going to the toilet wherever they want, every bit of wood for miles around cut down for sustainable fires, animals going missing and smells of BBQing, rubbish, theft, people settling there and claiming permanent residence, the local schools getting an influx of... errr... new kids and all in the name of protecting the environment.
Next time locals will look at a quiet little drilling site and hope nobody tells the media.
"The ‘climate camp’ or ‘peace camp’ will include compost lavatories, a ‘kid’s space, communal kitchen and possibly solar and wind power. Larger tents will host workshops on direct action."
Just like a group of faithful followers coming to watch heretic burn! Blind faith does it everytime!
"...bring loo roll..."
Will they share a communal trench? Occupy are going to be there too. Are they going to pay rent for occupation? I wonder how a hippy invasion will go down with the residents of Balcombe
Insults aside about the "type" of people who are there at Balcombe, I seriously doubt their understanding of the subject.
Protest is important - even if its being done by people or types you don't approve of, even if they're demonstrably wrong, and even if you don't like it.
"It is expected the camp will ‘occupy’ a field by the site."
Without evidence of support from the landowner I find that sentence quite sinister.
This is the first example I have seen of Loopy Lou constructing her own sentences. If indeed she has done on this occasion.
Let them all come, the locals will soon get fed up
I guess the camp will be a smoke free zone then? Or are they also funded by big tobacco, the hypocrites. /sarc
Turning Tide asks "How is it undemocratic?"
Peaceful protest is essentially democratic. But the tactics here are that since the drilling doesn't really cause much inconvenience, the protest will be as designedly unpleasant for local people as possible, and hence create or amplify opposition to the drilling.
Of course it may backfire. Or turn into a sort of boring, endless Greenham Common sort of thing. Although I remember they used to pin tampons to the fences.
But the intention is undemocratic: it is bullying.
"The ‘climate camp’ ... will include ....... communal kitchen and possibly solar and wind power."
So a climate-realist, scouting round that camp, won't find any LPG bottles or portable petrol/diesel generators to photograph. Yeah.
Insults aside about the "type" of people who are there at Balcombe, I seriously doubt their understanding of the subject.
Protest is important - even if its being done by people or types you don't approve of, even if they're demonstrably wrong, and even if you don't like it.
Aug 7, 2013 at 12:28 PM RB
It's isn't about 'type' it's about people who are living off grid (electric, gas, sewage, employment, law). It's hard to maintain the niceties of life when you live without them. I like being part of a modern society with those things and so I recognise that there are necessary evils like drilling. I'm not such a hypocrite that I think it should only happen in other countries. I am in a potential fracking area and may have to face such a thing too. I'd far rather see it than a windmill.
I'd prefer people saved their protest energies for when things are genuinely causing problems. Yes, if a company pollutes, yes if there is major disruption but not just to protest the theory of drilling on principle. Is protest a right to uphold? Yeah and I have a right to protest about the protesters.
Andrew said,
Nah, come off it Andrew - you never considered it "truth seeking" - not once.
;^)
LouLou, the dear gal she has always been a space cadet seeking a cause.
Louise "cut and paste" Gray has never been a journalist. There is no evidence to support such an accusation. Kindly withdraw the suggestion that she is capable of researching, constructing and writing an article, fact checking, providing supporting documentation and then publishing it and responding to critiques. You cad sir!
Ivor Ward
Nowadays all "peaceful protest" ends up as bullying.
As soon as protest goes beyond simply expressing a strong opinion, into deliberately causing inconvenience to others going about their lawful business, it becomes a Breach of the Peace IMHO.
There should be no illusions about the use of the word "occupy" either - in their language it means occupy without consulting the legal owner.
The links between environmental journalists and protest movements are pretty well documented already . I remember years ago, when one of the swampies protesting against a Manchester Airport extension proudly boasted about sharing his tunnel with John Vidal of the Guardian - something like "he stayed most of the week and only commuted to the office to file his copy".
Peaceful protest is not illegal but this will descend into near riot because most of the protesters have nothing to loose and perhaps Greenpeace will pick up their bill.
Ms Gray is inciting riot.
Protest is OK, but surely an organised protest by professional groups such as Frack Off should be limited in the same way that Trade Union picketing is? That would include taking a vote of all members to the same rules as apply to Trade Unions of the group, no secondary picketing (only one demonstration/picket at a time only the members of one group allowed).
In my view Frack Off and Unison are not that different in both goals and methods. Unison admittedly has more members but that's about it.
Dominic Lawson, who says he has " lived in the High Weald for the past 16 years", writes about the area's industrial past and present.
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/where-do-these-fracking-protesters-think-energy-is-going-to-come-from-8746683.html
You can leave your brain at home.
@ John Marshall
Please John, it's spelt "lose". Why did you (and so many others) never learn this? I despair.
The Greenham Common Wimmin (or their daughters) ride again. Lets hope the police give the leftist rent-a-mob the thrashing they richly deserve.
"I think this probably kills off any suggestion that Gray is a reputable truth-seeking journalist."
She doesn't seek the truth. She creates the truth, as in 'we are an empire now. We create our own reality'.
This camp will do more to destroy local property values around Balcome than any well will ever do. If I were a local farmer I wouldn't want to leave any animals wandering the fields unattended.
RB
If they are "demonstrably wrong" and I (and, many, many others including after this weekend half the residents of Sussex I bet) "don't like it" by what definition is protest "important"?
As SH points out, it is bullying. All environmental protests are bullying. They are an attempt to coerce (not convince) others to behave in ways that run counter to the interests of the majority by a very small political minority that cannot command wide support.
In effect it doesn't really matter whether they are right or wrong; their methods are blatantly anti-democratic.
Note the participants that are lined up for this weekend: UKUncut, Occupy, Disabled People Against Cuts, Greater London Pensioners Association and Fuel Poverty Action.
WTF?
Every one an offshoot in one form or another of the Troublemaking Trots, the very people who abuse democracy in order to destroy it.
And we're supposed to sit back and just let them get on with. Aye, right!
I am sure the wind and solar energy installation will meet all of their energy needs. To prove it, they will be cooking only on small electric stoves. The site will be clean and tidy with all waste properly disposed of in an environmentally responsible fashion.
The demonstrators have the opportunity to show the world just how liberating and comfortable sustainable living can be. What could possibly go wrong?
They may have job titles saying 'journalist' or 'media director' or 'science coordinator', but they are helpless when opportunity arises to raise the banner for the cause and swim in that activist glow.
Whoever wrote that we think they are fools and they think us evil has captured the nature of this debate in a way which could hardly be bettered.
'At the moment there are about 40 protesters on site, but this is expected to swell, as word spreads about the camp...'
I would have thought that, over the past few days, the protesters would have had as much publicity as they are ever likely to get - so I can't see a massive influx of further protesters...
'Possibly solar and wind power...' Bless...
'Compost lavatories...' 'Mummy - can we go home now..?'
Oh, for some 'typical' British summer holiday weather (lashing rain; gale force winds; temperatures in the mid-teens..) Not that I'm a Bad Person, you understand...
By the way - has anyone explained to them that the company is drilling for oil - without needing to resort to fracking..?
Hello Mike and Tiny C02
I thought my comment fairly innocuous, but perhaps not!
All that you say about the protesters and their views and motivations are probably not far off.
The point I was making is that tolerating protestors or demonstrations we completely disagree with (and accepting the police and other costing coming from the taxes we pay) is one of the fundamental ways of showing that we are in favour of democracy.
I get all of the comments you make about the individuals concerned and their motives. All I am saying is that in a democracy we agree (impliedly) to put up with this stuff.
Louise Gray has missed a scoop here.
The Co-op are as bad at Science/Engineering as they are at banking!
Shale gas: Co-op is major corporate backer of anti-fracking movement
The Co-op has emerged as a major corporate backer of the anti-fracking movement.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/10223936/Shale-gas-Co-op-is-major-corporate-backer-of-anti-fracking-movement.html
and
Co-op Bank unveils £1.5bn rescue plan which 'could see 5,000 investors lose 30% of their cash'
* Pensioners and other small investors could lose money
* The mutual has a £1.5billion shortfall in its finances
* The black hole in its capital reserves largely stems from loans acquired through a 2009 merger with Britannia building society
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-2342570/Co-op-Banks-5-000-PIBs-investors-lose-30-cash-rescue-deal.html
RB
I'm not sure where in the definition of 'democracy' it mentions allowing the minority to disrupt other people's lives, trash the environment (yeah! ironic, innit?) and bully people.
I believe in democracy and think we could actually do with a bit more of it, but I also believe in an informed democracy which means that if you want to persuade people you do it politely (as far as possible) and you do it with facts (as far as possible — gut feeling always has a place in human relations seeing as how we are all human!).
You do not drag a couple of thousand gullible adolescents who in 10 years time will be denying like mad they ever did anything of the sort into a small village in order to disrupt a perfectly lawful activity which is not what you are actually protesting about anyway just because your vanishingly small political view happens not to agree with it.
While at the same time, lying and lying and lying about the real reason you don't want it to happen (because only by lying about it can you get those same gullible adolescents to go along with it. Tell them the truth and they would disappear faster than snow in a heatwave).
Currently mitigating the cold turkey at canceling my TVL (and SKY, to remain legal, though if they ask I will explain what I think of much of their 'news' output too) DDs by sussing out the online, catch-up alternatives.
Amazingly, quite a few, even some via the kids' XBox; already connected to the broadband.
That's the BBC force-funding and SKY subscription models sorted.
The Telegraph is of course easier. More so, ironically, as they are now restricting the freebies.
I always considered Mr. Lean and Ms. Gray only of value as sacrificial goats for some often very funny comments in reply. What they wrote/write has almost never had any value on any basis beyond this.
There's really no problem denying advertisers my eyes on these areas any more.
Which could be a pity, as such advertisers may consider me a worthwhile audience.
But that's how market forces work. The editors and owners of the Telegraph may wish to reflect on this.
Enough people protest agenda-driven advocacy claimed as professional objective reporting in such a way, with the added benefits of being passive and legal, and who knows what else can be changed?
RB,
There's a big difference between protesting (advertising a point of view) and physically interfering with people going about their lawful business.
"The ‘climate camp’ or ‘peace camp’ will include compost lavatories, a ‘kid’s space, communal kitchen and possibly solar and wind power."
Can we expect locals to turn up to protest against the protestor's windmills?
If I was a farmer in the area reading that, I'd be making sure my fields were well manured right now.
'‘peace camp’ will include compost lavatories'
***
Worked out well at the St. Paul's #Occupy gig, as I recall.
Can we expect locals to turn up to protest against the protestor's windmills?
Ooooh - nicely.
Latest! "Cuadrilla roustabouts join protest against windbags and mini bird slicers"
It seems to me that Frack On is almost irresistable as a name for an English pro-fracking group now...
'Frack on'
Yup.
Bishop,
next time an Ecomentalist tries to talk you down try the classic response "so you're frighten to let me tell the truth" and see how that goes down. You barely got a dozen words out before the first interjection, You're too polite.
That was the sort of interview where the BBC lets one side (usually green or socialist) continually interrupt the other. Normally I end up shouting at the radio or TV.
Sorry wrong thread, should have been under Polar Bears
"Frack On" - excellent.
A few more slogans would be good, if only for variety:
"Keep Calm and Frack"
"Fracking Rocks!" (no pun will be left err, un-punned)
Ha ha, I like "Frack On" (keep calm and frack on?). I can just picture an air ad banner saying "Frack On" photographed with the camp in the foreground... should be about £500 or so... quick whip round anyone?
(Hmm, maybe that is wrong on second thoughts, given the lack of fracking on the site)
Quick and dirty but I couldn't resist it. "Keep Calm and Frack On" poster, done very crudely:
http://i41.tinypic.com/20uub10.jpg
(based on original scan from here)
The right to freedom of assembly is a good one. It let's people form ideas and communities outside of control from the state.
If these protesters break current laws (littering, anti-social behaviour, fire starting, blocking roads...) then they should be arrested.
But they have every right to gather and whine.
However, I confess, if these eco-gypsies landed next to my house I'd be screaming for them to move on.
Spence, is it OK to put this on a blog, please?