The Big Blockade of Devonport

Devonport Dockyard in Plymouth not only refits, maintains, and upgrades the submarines which carry the UK’s immoral and illegal Trident nuclear weapon system, but it is also increasingly becoming the dumping ground for old and out of service nuclear submarines. Plymouth is being paid for its role in the servicing of Britain’s weapons of mass destruction by becoming the ‘Sellafield of the South West’.

A decade of Trident Ploughshares blockades and disarmament actions have helped build a strong and broad movement against nuclear weapons in Scotland. The Scottish government was elected with a policy of nuclear disarmament. Now it is England’s turn.

On the 1st of November we are calling on people to join us to continue to increase the pressure by non-violently blockading the Devonport submarine base.

http://www.tridentploughshares.org/article1608

Lonesome no More!

My new name under Kurt Vonnegut’s Lonesome No More! scheme is:-

John Hollyhock-17 Robb

Enter your full name to find out if you’re part of my family:-

How I Became a Black Sheep.

I watched the film ‘Broken Arrow’ on television last night.  Despite the fact I went to see it at the cinema in 1996, I could remember nothing of it.  After watching it again I realized why – it is absolute garbage.  Still, the film did get me thinking.    It started me off on a nostalgia trip to my salad days, and in particular my life in 1996, and how it evolved over the following few years.

In 1996 I was 24 and earning VERY good money with British Gas as a service engineer.   I had a pension, and was also the regular recipient of dividend cheques from a multitude of shares that British Gas kept throwing my way.  I also had a £21,000 mortgage on a little flat on Castlegreen Street in Dumbarton.  Life seemed a complete doddle.

Broken Arrow was released in the UK during April of 1996, and it would have been there or thereabouts that I first saw it.  I remember going to see it with my then girlfriend Fiona, at the UCI multiplex in Clydebank.    I’ll admit now that it wasn’t one of my better ideas for a date.  Whether she had a thing for John Travolta I can’t recall, though I can’t imagine anyone fancying Travolta in that movie.  His girning alone would be enough to give any woman nightmares.

Life seemed so easy in those days.  The only clouds on my horizon were generally the product of my lovelife.  I had no real awareness of the wider world outside my own social circle, and had no thoughts or opinions on anything ‘political’.  My life revolved around work and beer, with increasing forays into dope, and guitar-generated rock and roll.

It was in about 1996 that I started to become a regular concert go-er.  Looking at my collection of ticket stubs, I can see how my musical tastes gradually changed.  In 1996 I was paying to see Bon Jovi, Oasis, Del Amitri, Reef, and Ocean Colour Scene.  By 1997 I was watching the Verve, Skunk Anansie, Live, Primal Scream, Radiohead, Smashing Pumpkins, and Beck.

The late 90′s went on to become, for me, something akin to a ‘perfect storm’.   I had moved away from Dumbarton to live in Rothesay on the sunny Isle of Bute.   For the first time in my adult life the Labour Party had won election to Government.  My formerly apolitical nature had been eroded by exposure to the music of Public Enemy and Rage Against the Machine.  And possibly most significant of all was the new time I found for reading.   I started reading broadsheet newspapers, particularly the Glasgow Herald, and a new work colleague was introducing me to the works of Noam Chomsky, Richard Brautigan, Kurt Vonnegut, Tom Waits, and Hunter Thompson.  I developed strong views on nuclear weapons, on the 1998 Gulf War, and the 1999 Kosovo bombing.  Almost despite myself, I was slowly turning into some kind of political black sheep.

And suddenly life seemed not so simple.   I saw in the millenium listening to Godspeed You Black Emperor and Mogwai.  

Before long I was resigning from British Gas and getting arrested in front of nuclear submarine bases.

I wish I’d never saw that damn film

Can’t find a better man.

My search for a new job took me to Bristol today for an interview/assessment for a position as a breakdown engineer.   I think this job and I would be perfect together, so fingers crossed.  The last time I lusted over a job like this was when I applied to become a fireman on the Isle of Bute.  It’d be nice to have a happy ending this time.  I am resisting taking an overly optimistic view, but it has to be said, my C.V. will take some beating.    

Being a kind of black sheep amongst tradesmen these days – I actually did an apprecticeship, actually genuinely care about doing a good job, and don’t give a flying fig about profit or bonuses - finding a suitable position has been a bit of a problem for me.  Some employers just don’t want honest and conscientious human beings as employees.   Ye widnae believe it, wi’d ye?

Chernobyl Revisited.

Sunday is supposed to be the day on which we visit Church to contemplate the sins of mankind.  But instead I visited http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/chapter1.html  and followed Elena Filatova as she travelled on her motorbike  through the ghost towns and villages surrounding the Chernobyl nuclear reactor.   It was not a pleasant journey, but it was an illuminating one.

Chernobyl was a terrible, terrible accident.   Accidents happen, after all ‘to err is to be human’.  Yet the consequences of this accident will be with us for hundreds if not thousands of years.  Some risks are not worth taking.   A  journey through the wastelands around Chernobyl should be a priority for those that think nuclear power is the way to secure mankinds future.  It could, in fact, be the very opposite.

Blame it on The Sun, sunshine

Woke up at one minute to twelve today, relieved to find that swine flu had not killed me in the night.  I have been suffering with this blasted bug for several days now, but at least it has given me a few days off from a much despised job.

Had a cup of tea – milk, two sugars – took a shower and meandered along to the Co-op for a newspaper and some ciggies.   Buying a copy of the Independent always reminds me how uncommon I am. Most shops only get in one or two copies a day.   It never ceases to amaze me that there is a pile of Sun newspapers 4 ft high.   It regularly irritates me that much of the flock are being kept informed of national and international affairs by a semi-pornographic scandal sheet.  If I had my way those relying on the Sun for their knowledge of the world would be barred from voting in elections.

And some still wonder why the country is going to the dogs?