SWIMMING POOL OCCUPIED

On Friday 28^th August, a group of around 30 campaigners carrying banners and wearing swimming costumes occupied the Sedgemoor Splash pool in Somerset. The group staged the sit-in protest in an attempt to stop the closure and demolition of the pool, which the council claims is too expensive to run and would cost too much to repair.

This story sounds somewhat familiar, with the LEA Pool in Hereford being closed by the council last year on similar grounds. Many Herefordians learnt to swim in this pool, and it provided an important service to local schools. Since its closure schools have had to use the Leisure Pool for swimming lessons, with questions being raised concerning its safety and practicality.*

Consecutive Tory and Labour governments have been putting big business before the needs of people, resulting in many communities slowly being broken down. This has often manifested itself in the closure of things such as youth centres, schools, sports and leisure facilities, and post offices. Tesco is the only bidder for the Sedgemoor site, continuing their tradition of buying any available land to build even more supermarkets, and doing their bit to close all independent and localised services at the centres of once strong communities.

The protesters have been forced to leave the pool, after a court injunction was granted on Saturday. Despite the odds (and courts) being against them and for the time being , these campaigners have shown that people are at least willing to stand up and fight for local social and leisure facilities. There is still strength in community!

*For more stories about the closure of the LEA Pool, you can view issues 4, 5 & 6 of the Hereford Heckler.

LOCAL PLOD KEEP TEENAGERS’ DNA FILES ILLEGALLY

Figures obtained through the Freedom of Information Act reveal that West Mercia Police (the force that covers Herefordshire, Worcestershire & Shropshire) has captured and stored the DNA profiles of over 19,000 teenagers in the region. The profiles are being kept whether the youngsters have committed a crime or not. This comes to light after a recent ruling by the European Court of Human Rights stated that stockpiling DNA of innocent people is illegal. This is a common practice across the UK, and highlights the erosion of liberties and the growing ‘surveillance society’ that the government has created.

In Britain we have an estimated 4 million CCTV cameras, and the average citizen is caught on camera more than 300 times a day. The police have the largest DNA database in the world. Emails, text messages and phone conversations are now stored and kept for monitoring and local authorities are using anti-terror legislation to spy on local tenants. We are told that these Orwellian measures are taken to prevent crime and to keep us safe, yet crime continues to rise with more people being added to Britain’s 84,000+ prison population (the highest per head in Europe). Something clearly isn’t working!

BYPASS STALLED

Plans for a Hereford bypass have yet again been put on hold after government officials refused funding for the project.

Acting on behalf of the council, the West Midlands Regional Assembly was applying for at least half of the estimated £130 million for the road.

But Herefordshire Council had failed to even decide upon a route for the road before asking the government for funds.

In a letter leaked to the Hereford Heckler, the Department for Transport told the WMRA that plans for the ‘outer distributer road’ are premature.

“The promotor should … expand its current study work and investigate a full range of options for addressing the transport challenges in the area.” In plain English, go and do your homework, roads aren’t the only option!

Government funding for the bypass has been refused several times previously because of the severe consequences it would have on the local environment. Current plans will either take the road west through the village of Breinton or east around the Lugg Meadows; both will be problematic.

Herefordshire Council plan to raise the rest of the funds by selling off land to developers, who will be building an estimated 8,000 new homes in the city. 

What is obvious is the need to look beyond quick-fix traffic solutions and to see how the project will impact the environment and the the lives of our children and our grandchildren.

Is there anyone left out there that does not believe climate change is now inevitable and that reducing the burning of fossil fuels is a necessity?

There is now only one solution: changing our lifestyles and improving our county’s existing facilities … not new roads.

IT WAS NEVER GOING WORK

“The best laid schemes of mice and men / Go often askew / And leaves us nothing but grief and pain / For promised joy!” —Robert Burns

These lines have never applied more accurately than to the current situation in Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwe’s influential generals are still refusing to salute Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai six months after he joined President Robert Mugabe in a unity government.

Almost two months before the first anniversary of the historic 15th September power sharing agreement, which gave Zimbabweans hope that Mugabe was being eased out of power, an unpalatable reality is beginning to sink in.

Zimbabwe has been out of the news recently and most people think the situation there has greatly improved, however evidence exists that shows this is not the case. It is becoming more and more evident that the coalition government was just a ploy by ZANU-PF to get international sanctions lifted from their top officials.

The only people now being arrested and brought to court, apart from the occasional housebreaker and bank robber, are Movement for Democratic Change members and, of course, white farmers. So far, five MDC MPs have been sentenced to more than six months in prison, the minimum sentence that allows them to be thrown out of parliament. This has been seen as one of ZANU-PF’s strategies to regain the parliamentary majority they lost in the March 2008 elections.

Resistance campaigner and Hereford resident, Simbarashe Muzembe, said: “Whilst it is very clear that MDC have very little power and influence in policy making and ZANP-PF continue to rule with an iron fist, the people of Zimbabwe have to stand aside and watch in a state of limbo. I still maintain that the only way forward for Zimbabwe is to have an opposition party with it’s own militia.”

Meanwhile, independent monitors of the performances of Tsvangirai’s MDC and Mugabe’s ZANU-PF (such as Sokwanele in Zimbabwe and Idasa in Pretoria) agree that even as the MDC has stuck both in deed and spirit to the Global Political Agreement, ZANU-PF violates it daily.

“If Zimbabwe is to truly move towards peace, justice and democracy, ZANU-PF has to be removed. After a 30-year rule Zimbabwe has suffered some of the worst economic crisis in recent history. Human rights are abused on a daily basis and there is no rule of law.

“How this can be achieved is one of the biggest problems of today, but without the help of the international community it will be impossible,” said Muzembe.