[Cc-webedit] [Fwd: Post article that community council members are threatened for linking to?]

[Jon Leighton]

I don't think we should just re-post stuff that's gone on Indymedia, but
maybe it can be added to the next links round-up.

Also, a reminder that discussion about the blog happens on the
cc-socialmedia list (which I've cc'd)

Jon

On Thu, 2010-09-02 at 09:09 +0100, website at climatecamp.org.uk wrote:
> I think this should go up. Thoughts?
> 
> ---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
> Subject: Post article that community council members are threatened for
> linking to?
> From:    "ruth" <ruthe at allwomencount.net>
> Date:    Wed, September 1, 2010 10:54 pm
> To:      website at climatecamp.org.uk
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Hello, website team, have you considered doing this?  (Sorry about the final
> highlight below– unintended but I can’t get rid of it).
> 
> Love,
> 
> Ruth (London neighbourhood)
> 
> 
> 
>   _____
> 
> From: ftp-bounces at freedomtoprotest.org.uk
> [mailto:ftp-bounces at freedomtoprotest.org.uk] On Behalf Of dave
> Sent: 31 August 2010 10:27
> To: ftp at freedomtoprotest.org.uk
> Subject: [ftp] Bullying Council Takes Anti-Open Cast Community Council to
> Court - activists call for defiance
> 
> 
> 
> http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2010/08/457844.html
> 
> 
> Bullying Council Takes Anti-Open Cast Community Council to Court
> 
> 
> Indymedia 30.08.2010
> 
> South Lanarkshire Council threatens Douglas Community Council after they
> reveal corruption. Coal Action Scotland demand that South Lanarkshire
> Council end all legal proceedings immediately, issue an apology to the
> Community Council, and ask people to stand in solidarity by posting up the
> original article on their websites and blogs.
> 
> 
> The on-going battle over open cast coal in the Douglas Valley has had a
> shocking development, with South Lanarkshire Council issuing each member of
> the Douglas and Glespin Community Council with legal notices that
> proceedings against them are to begin at Lanark Sheriff Court over alleged
> libel claims. This move is seen by the community as an attack on their
> freedom of speech.
> 
> This latest dispute, where South Lanarkshire Council under the auspices of
> Archie Strang, council Chief Executive, are taking primary school teachers
> and pensioners to court in an effort to silence their dissenting voices,
> comes because of a logo reading “South Lanarkshire COALcil” and an article
> titled “South Lanarkshire Council and Scottish Coal Hand-in-Hand at
> Community LIE-aison Meeting”. The logo superimposes the Council's logo with
> that of Scottish Coal, and the article was a repost, linked from the Coal
> Action Scotland website.
> 
> The article described a liaison meeting between the community, Scottish Coal
> and South Lanarkshire Council. At this meeting, the council made every
> effort to exclude the community from it, misrepresented what was said in
> minutes and council workers were indistinguishable from Scottish Coal
> representatives.
> 
> Coal Action Scotland are demanding that South Lanarkshire Council end all
> legal proceedings immediately and issue an apology to the Community Council.
> 
> 
> Fiona Reed from Coal Action Scotland said today: “It is unbelievable that
> the Council would take legal action over what is essentially a link, and not
> even contact the original authors of the article. This is nothing more than
> an attempt to limit the Community Council's freedom of speech. The community
> has to put up with ill health, environmental and economic degradation from
> open casting, and now the politically-motivated bullying of this deceitful
> council. Take it back and say sorry Archie.”
> 
> Coal Action Scotland are also asking people to stand in solidarity with the
> Community Council and post up the controversial logo and article on their
> websites and blogs.
> 
> - The original article can be found here:
> http://coalactionscotland.org.uk/?p=1635 [See below]
> - Douglas Community Council have been opposing the decisions by South
> Lanarkshire Council to allow numerous open cast developments throughout the
> valley for close to 20 years, with the campaign against Mainshill Open Cast
> Coal site, where over 650 letters of objection were submitted to the council
> and a survey by MSP Eiline Campbell found that 70% of residents opposed the
> mine.
> - Coal Action Scotland works with communities affected by coal mining and
> infrastructure and takes direct action in support of campaigns, such as the
> recent 7-month occupation of Mainshill Wood in South Lanarkshire
> - South Lanarkshire Council is renowned in the area for being pro-open cast
> coal and for putting the interests of Scottish Coal before those of the
> people in South Lanarkshire. Indeed, the council has never refused an
> open-cast application by Scottish Coal, despite overwhelming community
> opposition.
> 
> -----------------------------------------
> 
> http://coalactionscotland.org.uk/?p=1635
> 
> 
> South Lanarkshire <http://coalactionscotland.org.uk/?p=1635>  Council and
> Scottish Coal Hand-in-Hand at Community LIE-aison Meeting
> 
> 
> May 30th, 2010
> 
> Anti-open cast residents of the Douglas Valley were subjected to the same
> old lies from South Lanarkshire Council (SLC) and Scottish Coal in the most
> recent Poniel and Mainshill Open Casts Community Liaison Meetings, both held
> on 27th April 2010. With it being practically impossible to distinguish
> members of SLC from Scottish Coal, the meetings demonstrated the council and
> corporate corruption which has blighted the Douglas Valley, where open casts
> are pushed through to the detriment of local health and devastation of the
> environment.
> 
> In the Poniel Community Liaison meeting Roger Dick, SLC’s Minerals
> Enforcement Officer, noted that the restoration work at Poniel had
> temporarily ceased due to the bad weather in recent months. Given the mess
> that Dalqhuandy has been left in, it is unsurprising that the community
> remains unconvinced by Dick and Scottish Coal’s assurances that restoration
> will be finished by the end of summer 2010, especially since the extraction
> of 600,000 tons of coal from Poniel had finished by Christmas 2009. Poniel
> currently employs zero people from the local area and Scottish Coal could
> not guarantee any jobs for local people from the restoration work which is
> being subcontracted.
> 
> SLC and Scottish Coal’s reluctance to provide a forum in which communities
> can articulate their concerns about 20 years of open casting in the area is
> apparent in the restrictions placed on attendees to the Mainshill Community
> Liaison meetings: just 6 members of the local community are allowed to
> attend, and they must live within 3 miles of the centre of the Mainshill
> site, a distance even Scottish Coal admits is arbitrary. The company’s
> commitment to the local community is similarly minimal when it comes to
> providing local employment. At the time of the community liaison meeting
> there were 39 workers on the Mainshill site operating single shifts.
> Scottish Coal are hoping to introduce two 8 hour shifts a day, running from
> 6am-2pm and 2pm-10pm. Scottish Coal boasted that 29 of the employees live
> within a ML postcode but with this postcode meaning Motherwell and not
> Mainshill, these workers may come from as far as 25 miles away from Douglas.
> Ian Gardner, Site Manager at Mainshill said, ‘The employment thing is a
> seasonal thing’ and acknowledged that during soil extraction the numbers
> employed fluctuates. Scottish Coal revealed that coal was programmed to be
> lifted from the site on May 15th and that the dispatch date was not yet
> known but the coal from Mainshill will be taken to Ravenstruther.
> 
> Despite the constant deflecting of questions, members of the community
> persisted in grilling Scottish Coal and SLC about coal lorries on Douglas’
> roads. Coal from Broken Cross Open Cast is currently being transported
> through Douglas to Ravenstruther and on a return haul basis to Ayrshire.
> Scottish Coal’s typically evasive response was that, ‘Quality issues have
> necessitated that we do it’ and ‘Nothing precludes us from taking coal
> through Douglas’. However, legal agreements between Scottish Coal and SLC
> state that, under Section 96, extraordinary wear on the road due to open
> cast mines is restricted to within a ½ mile to 1 mile stretch from the site
> entrances. When asked how this is monitored and when Scottish Coal would be
> required to sort out such wear and tear, Roger Dick said that the only
> monitoring is carried out by him as he ‘observes lorry movements if I’m in
> the area.’ When pushed further and asked by a local resident, ‘How do you
> monitor it?’, Dick replied ‘I don’t’. SLC and Scottish Coal both refused to
> acknowledge the role of coal trucks and heavy machinery entering and exiting
> the site in causing extraordinary wear and tear on the A70 just outside
> Mainshill. Frustrated residents were angered by this shirking of
> responsibility and the lack of warning given for the recent closure of a
> section of the A70 for resurfacing.
> 
> Damage done to road surfaces is not the only thing going unmonitored. The
> Mainshill site manager Jim Gardner said that The Coal Authority licence for
> the extraction of coal is expected to be granted soon. Even before coal is
> extracted from site dangerous Particulate Matter is being released into the
> air from diesel consumed by vehicles on site. When quizzed by local
> residents about dust monitoring, Scottish Coal answered that exposure levels
> are being monitored according to PAN 50 guidelines but were embarrassingly
> revealed not to be measuring Particulate Matter (PM) sizes or quantities,
> the information required to monitor the impact of the open cast on local
> health. When asked by angry residents if they would start monitoring PM
> sizes and quantities, Scottish Coal said they would advise the next
> community liaison meeting of their decision on this matter. Despite not
> collecting any useful data regarding dust at Mainshill, Scottish Coal have
> released their own health report alongside the application for an extension
> to the open cast at Glentaggart, provoked by the ‘Coal Health Study:
> Douglasdale Edition’ produced by members of the local community in
> conjunction with the Mainshill Solidarity Camp. Given that they aren’t even
> monitoring the particles which have an impact on health, how can we be
> expected to trust the information in their health report?
> 
> When pushed to declare the diesel consumption at Mainshill, Scottish Coal’s
> Colin Ortlepp answered: ‘It’s not information that I’ll be passing on to
> this committee.’ The application to mine Mainshill was submitted under
> SPP16, which obliges Scottish Coal to declare diesel consumption, but
> members of SLC admitted that they had chosen not to ask for this information
> at the time. Under new planning policy that superceded SPP16 in February,
> there is now no obligation for Scottish Coal to declare diesel consumption.
> Planning legislation is becoming increasingly convenient for greedy
> companies such as Scottish Coal, and SLC places no pressure on the company
> to increase transparency.
> 
> Demonstrating the same level of transparency as Scottish Coal and SLC, the
> Douglas & Angus Estates manager Ian Flemming managed to completely avoid
> answering locals’ questions about the long plantation. The ownership of this
> woodland is meant to be being transferred back to the Estate to prevent open
> casting as part of the deal to mine Mainshill. Flemming simply said: ‘I
> don’t think I’ll comment on that at the moment’.
> 
> As well as skirting around the questions asked by local residents, SLC,
> Scottish Coal and Douglas & Angus Estates revealed that the community fund
> which is supposed to go some way to recompensing those who live around these
> open casts has not even been established yet. The ‘Mainshill Trust’ will be
> made up of a donation from Scottish Coal of 25 pence a tonne which will be
> ‘topped up’ by the Douglas and Angus Estate at 12 ½ pence a tonne.
> 
> 
> 
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