FryingPanFire

Crown Prosecution Service drops all charges against 11 Space Hijackers for impersonating police officers.

Elated. Over the moon. Downing a stiff gin to celebrate. But shaking with anger at the drama I and my friends have had to endure over the past ten months. Many of us have suffered throughout this ordeal, a farcical attempt by the CPS and the City of London and Metropolitan Police to slap our wrists for exercising the right to protest.

There are many friends, family and colleagues (sometimes former colleagues…hint hint) who supported us. Thank you all. Really.

So it seems we have the option to continue with proceedings should we choose. Hmmn…. Would we like to continue with a vexatious prosecution that’s already cost the taxpayer thousands in legal and administration fees, and cost us a lot of undue upset in our lives? We were arrested in April, charged in July. We had our first appearance in court in autumn. We had pre-trial hearings, and even secured a Queen’s Counsel (there were a few in the queue tripping over their silks). Despite the police offering us cautions (and thereby admitting guilt) upon arrest, we refused. We took it to the line.

The CPS were playing a very expensive and annoying game of chicken with us. It’s a lot of effort to go through. The City of London and Metropolitan Police screwed up at the G20 – crowd kettles, baton charges and the matter of killing an erstwhile newspaper vendor who had no connection to the demonstrations other than it happened to be near where his mate works. They fucked up and were trying to make up for it. Our prosecution smacks of spreadsheet-led number crunching – there were 37 people charged over the G20 protests. 11 of them were us.

Michael Wolkind QC, who was briefed on behalf of all the defendants, commented “it was a great surprise when Keir Starmer, the DPP, took time off from the investigation of the death of Ian Tomlinson, personally to confirm the absurd decision to pursue this prosecution. His judgement has been exposed by the late decision to discontinue the case”.

It’s taking all my self-control not to dance in the streets, park an armoured personnel carrier outside Keir Starmer’s front door and sing “nyah nyah nyah”.

Corinthians. “When I was a child I spoke as a child I understood as a child I thought as a child; but when I became a man I put away childish things”. Shame the CPS, the DPP and the City of London and Metropolitan police didn’t learn this at Sunday school.

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Here’s an extract from the letter from our lawyers informing us that we can get on with life:

“The Crown Prosecution Service has finally come to their senses and made the long overdue decision to discontinue your case. This means that the case is over, you are no longer on bail and no longer required to attend Court.

To quote directly from their letter faxed this evening at 17.41hrs: “The decision to discontinue these charges has been taken because there is not enough evidence to provide a realistic prospect of conviction. I have considered the statements that you have submitted and your Defence Case Statement and as part of our continuous duty of review I am not satisfied that a bench of magistrates’ or judge hearing the case alone, properly directed in accordance with the law is more likely than not to convict the defendants of the charges alleged.”

You have the option to revive the proceedings if you want the Trial to take the place although I’m sure that none of you will want this to occur….

Regards,

Hodge Jones & Allen LLP”

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I’m making a film. A virginal effort. I wrote an article for Who’s Jack last autumn. I was then invited on a press trip to India with Pants to Poverty. At this time, I was at the Frontline Club on a course with documentary Claire Lewis. I told her about the trip and she shoved a camera in my hand.

“Film it. Present it. You can do it,” I think is what she said to me. My head was rushing with all sorts of fears based around fucking up.

A few months on and the taster for the film was selected for the Branchage Film Surgery session as part of the London Short Film Festival. Got some amazing feedback. James Mullighan and his surgeons took a potato peeler to my eyes and have given me a clearer idea of how I should take this project on.

Claire Lewis has agreed to Executive Produce my film. Less than a week after its taster was first screened.

I now need to find a cameraman with kit who believes in the project and is willing to work for deferred pay.

So I’m standing naked over the precipice but can see a nifty boutique at the other end.

Watch the taster here: Dirty White Gold

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Am a heartless bastard. Let me use this space to thank everyone who has helped so far (and has yet to be credited). This includes all at Pants to Poverty (inc Ben and Celia), all who attended the Branchage, those at the Frontline Club who’ve aided me so far (you know who you are), Mike Cupcake, those at Frith St with whom I share a space (again, you know who you are), Suzan Keen…lots more but I’ll save that for the Oscars speech I’ll give in the shower ok?

The Home Office is to appeal a European Court of Human Rights decision stating that the use of Section 44 (Terrorism Act 2000) to stop and search individuals violates the right to respect for a private life guaranteed by Article 8 of the Convention on Human Rights.

Section 44 has long drawn criticism from protestors who argue the police have used the power to infringe their right to peaceful protest.

Policing and Security Minister David Hanson MP argued that the powers under Section 44 are “an important tool in a package of measures in the on-going fight against terrorism.” He said that he was “disappointed” with the ruling and “will seek to appeal”.

The case brought to the ECHR was that of Kevin Gillan and journalist Pennie Quinton who were stopped and searched en route to demonstrations against the world’s largest arms fair, Defense and Security Equipment International (DSEi), in 2003.

As she was stopped, Pennie volunteered her press cards with the hope of being waved on by the police. Instead Metropolitan Police searched her and Gillan under Section 44 and were ordered to stop filming.

Press freedom isn’t always a high priority for those policing protests. Press cards, as any journalist can tell you, are no guarantee of special treatment by the Metropolitan Police. Those that read “NUJ” are taken less seriously by our uniformed friends because “anyone can get those”. Despite carrying press cards emblazoned with the logo of a corporate television station I worked for, I’ve not only been stopped and searched under Section 44 but also arrested. And charged. And am now due to stand trial this February. For impersonating a police officer.

On other occasions, I’ve received hassle and faced physical injury at the hands of the Metropolitan Police. And that’s while I’ve been armed with that typical terrorist ruse of a television news crew consisting of me, a reporter, a cameraman and a rather conspicuous satellite truck.

Whilst manning newsdesks, an occasional complaint from journalists on the ground would involve members of the Metropolitan Police getting heavy-handed with cameramen and their kit. Nothing much comes from these incidents…phone calls from bosses to bosses ends up in apology and an unsaid agreement that they’d do the same dance when another such incident comes up in future. The link between newsrooms and the police is too great (one relies on the other for tip-offs on events, the other thinks they’re winning the PR war by doing so).

The Metropolitan Police are yet to issue any new instruction to their officers with respect to today’s ruling. I wonder how many stops and searches have happened since the Court’s decision. Because the Home Office have three months within which to appeal, I doubt the general public will see much change in how the police operate.

Section 44 allows senior officers to designate entire areas of their patch as stop and search zones based on their likelihood of being a terrorism target. Every train station in the UK is covered by a Section 44 order and there are over 100 stop and search zones in London. Because the Home Office is afraid such information might give terrorists ideas, most exact locations of stop and search zones are kept secret. So nobody really knows whether you are in an area covered by Section 44 and whether they are likely to be stopped and searched going about your daily business.

Even more invidious has been the way police forces across the UK have used Section 44 to target protestors.

What I want to ask is, by saying they will seek to appeal the ECHR’s decision, what do the Home Office think they know and who do they seek to control? And to what end? It’s as if, as people living in the UK, it’s assumed we are guilty and have to prove ourselves innocent.

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This article was originally published in the Index on Censorship, 12 January 2010.

Environmental pressure groups have abandoned their moral integrity by clubbing together with arms manufacturers and corporate energy giants. So why should you go to Copenhagen?

Over 50,000 members of the “I Only Fly to India” militia will descend on Copenhagen over the next week to demonstrate over a shopping list of demands longer than J-Lo’s rider. Attendees are an international who’s who of the best-branded campaign groups from Oxfam to Action Aid to superglue and D-lock specialists Plane Stupid. Lesser-known groups like Brazil’s Land Reform Movement will be there to boost everyone’s ethnic credentials.

Developed countries like the USA and the UK have pledged to cut carbon emissions (on their terms) by 2020 alongside developing nations like China and India cutting their carbon intensity (on someone else’s terms). The finer points over who does what by how much and who’s going to police 192 countries will also be debated.

A sore point has already come up with the leak to The Guardian of the ‘Danish text’ – a leaked draft agreement that gives rich nations more power, marginalises the UN’s role and abandons the Kyoto protocol. All the jaw jaw about making a difference to the world’s global temperature becomes hot air in the cold Copenhagen wind.

The feeling that a potentially powerful global movement is being hijacked by some very slick PR is keeping me away from Denmark. The talk around and within the conference seems to be an exercise in appearing to make a difference without actually changing a damn thing.

Initiatives like the 10:10 campaign (who recently accepted missile makers MBDA onto their scheme with the lines “Of course arms manufacturers can reduce their emissions by 10%. What they do with the rest of their time is a different matter, on which we couldn’t possibly comment”) ask individuals and companies to pledge to reduce their carbon emissions by 10% in 2010. I had a recent Twitter debate with one of their worker ants, @malchadwick, who failed to see the hypocrisy in cosying up with a firm whose business it is making things that kill people.

If it makes you feel better about yourself turning off a few lights and flushing the loo only for solids, just be aware that the bandwagon you’re joining broke down a long time ago and your cooperation is helping corporations wash their sins away in the green haze of a well-run publicity campaign.

This weekend and next week will see a range of so-called direct action protests. How direct and effective will sitting in a street getting water-cannoned be if you’re an Indian farmer considering suicide to get out of debt because your crops failed?

What’s needed is justice. Fair rights and fair pay for workers and bold international policing of commerce and corporate structures. Grass roots movements that tackle tangible goals, not semantic abstract concepts. Proper justice and action directed at those who use and exploit. Not branded climate justice and a spectacle only likely to achieve hypothermia.

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This article was originally published in The Guardian, 11 December 2009, and republished on The Comment Factory.

Who would win in a fight between a baboon and a badger?
A question posed to the leader of the opposition, David Cameron, by the Brighton Argus.
He dodged the question then…but others are more forthcoming.
Among those who chose to tackle this Copernican question are: Stephen Fry, Adz from 5ive, Jon Snow, the cast of Skins, Noam Chomsky, the Dream Bears, Akhmed Zakayev….

Seek and you shall find.

Baboon vs Badger…coming to a Christmas stocking or a sweaty uncle’s palm near you.

Shake off those winter blustery blows with this.
Rock on….

as featured on Queen’s Absolute Greatest album

A bit like Fulham?

In the background, the Sheraton Hotel. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The poshest place in town…possibly in the country. Owned by the richest man in the country who’s half Ethiopian and half Yemeni. He’s also one of the richest men in Saudi Arabia…more wonga than the entire Bin Laden family. He reckons he can throw billions into Ethiopia and turn it into a progressive African economy.

In the foreground is a local Addis neighbourhood where corrugated steel roofs are de rigeur and entire families live in spaces 4m x 4m on around $70 a month. If you’re lucky. The road on the way down to the Sheraton is smooth, paved, marked by security checkpoints to keep out the undesirables. The roads in the neighbourhood are patted down through years of footfall and litter where you’re asked to “drop a note” if you want to photograph anything. Which is only fair if you’re gonna gawp at the poor people.

Bring out your inner lion with this Ethiopian delicacy…if you dare.
As served at what someone described as “the largest buffet I’ve ever seen in the poorest country I’ve ever been to”.

Allow me to be a bit smug with this little number:

Have just come back from India filming my first ever documentary (by filming, I mean shooting, producing, directing, presenting, editing, everything myself) on suicides, pesticides and fashion. Working title “Deadly White Gold”… same as the article I wrote for Who’s Jack this September.

At its height, up to 26 Indian cotton farmers a day were drinking pesticides to take themselves out of debt. The cycle of death and debt, pesticides and penury, starts off by farmers approaching loan sharks to front them the money to buy cotton seeds and the chemicals to tend their crops. Due to the failed monsoons, this year’s crop turned up rather crap. The majority of farmers are young – early twenties. And the debt accumulates as quickly as the dark thoughts that compel these young people to drink the very thing that took them into this deficit.

I’m cutting a little teaser which I intend to take out on the streets of London tomorrow asking shoppers what lovely cottony bargains they managed to bag ahead of this festive season. (If I got my shit together, I’d be filming the lights on Oxford St being switched on…but Oxford St + Boris Johnson + twinkly Christmas lights + Jim Carey + thousands of swine flu ridden Londoners and tourists = me rather being stabbed in the vagina).

The teaser will feature a suicide widow, a man who tried to kill himself in the fields, and a man who sells pesticides for a living. The salesman, when asked whether he felt bad about what he did, replied with something along the lines of “Yeah but it’s a job innit?”

So I plan to head out into the jungle of Calle Oxford to doorstep unwitting shoppers…and hopefully get kicked out of / barred / sent to the Topshop jail (yes there is one, ask me later about this).

Will then cut it into a little taster tape I plan to take with me to the Sheffield DocFest on Friday.

Theeeeeeen…it’s full steam ahead for an exhibition I may or may not have a little hand in with some friends at the Truman Brewery in London. It’s called Signs of Revolt and looks at activist and protest art from Seattle in 1999 to Copenhagen 2009.

Participants range from David Gentlemen, Adbusters, kennardphillipps, Guy Smallman, Jess Hurd –  a kind of who’s who of the thorns in the Metropolitan Police’s side.

And theeeeeeeen…it’s off to Ethiopia. It’s a junket of some sort, though a very loose one where I’m given a lot of freedom to find the stories I want to find. I’m thinking of things outside the “hey check this it’s a starving black kid” angle. If you know of any outfit or outlet that would want something out of the Kingdom of Ethiop, drop me a line. I know quite a few news outfits are currently trawling the starving black kids route ahead of the eco summit in Copenhagen. Which is fine. It’s the newsroom bread and butter. But Ethiopia is a country that eats sour bread as its staple and is possibly where we’d find the origin of the human species (apart from Charles Darwin’s bookshelf). There’s a lot more in that land which I’d like to find in the week I’m there.

There’s more planned for when I get back from the sand and starvation but that’s for a later note.