A Chatham bloke doing a much better job than me...until the power went and the two cycling hippies had to peddle faster.
I wuz on the telly, I wuz.
On Sunday I took the train in fair Rochester town (yes it is a town, thanks to an admin error a couple of years back when it lost it’s city status) to take part in the Stop Kingsnorth Power Station rally to mark the beginning of the climate camp week.
Rochester high street swarmed with journalists, hard-nut cops with armoured video cameras recording everyone’s faces. I suppose I’m on file now. Some police database has my mug shot and a listing saying: “potential trouble maker, mostly harmless”. Come to think about it, I should put in a Freedom of Information request into them to see what they have got on me. It’ll probably be disappointingly little.
Hey, I don’t even look like an eco-terrorist. I need better dreadlocks for that. And a didgeridoo. I had Ki with me, but it’s not the same as having one of those brown-green moth-eaten lurchers that seem to come free with battered old transit vans. Not that I’m resorting to petty stereotypes you understand.
It was a really well organised effort and the turnout was pretty good, and collected momentum as we marched over Rochester bridge and up through Strood and towards the camp at Kingsnorth. I didn’t go that far and ambled back with a couple of local Green Party activists who had been tasked to go and get some extra spuds.
There are a lot of very brave people out in that field this week. The police are playing silly buggers to see if they can provoke trouble.
What gets me about this whole debate is the government aren’t willing to spend big money on renewables because of the uncertainties and risks, and yet they believe that market forces will make companies like E.ON spend billions of pounds on Carbon Capture & Storage, which is unproven, untested and likely to be hugely expensive to build and maintain. They aren’t even willing to put legal clauses into E.ON’s permissions to make them use CCS even if it does become available.
No such thing as ‘clean coal’.
Anyway, I did get a very minor non-speaking part in Sunday’s Channel 4 news, you can see the report on their website (click on the picture below). Don’t blink, you’ll miss me. My speech seemed to go ok, though my message may not have been conventional CPRE….
No, I’m not the rambling bloke in the mac or the scary lady in yellow.
- Sean
blink and you'll miss me
