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What the Gas Price hike means – the Tales of Two Cities
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Oct 20, 2021
Hot on the heels of the Petrol Panic comes the Gas Price Panic and the Electricity Price Panic – my head spins as I try to take in each of these fossil fuel driven convulsions. It is worth the effort to unpick this ball of yarn and lay out the tale it reveals. It is...

Petrol Panic II – taking on the barriers to climate action
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Oct 12, 2021
Week two of the Petrol Panic – Monday 4th October. It looks like the pumps are working as normal in the BP petrol station at 232 Priory Road in Anfield, Liverpool, fed by road tankers filled at the gantries of Stanlow Refinery, 12 miles to south on the banks of the Mersey. But the Petrol...

Profiting from the Panic – how to use a squeeze in the oil flow to financial advantage
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Oct 4, 2021
Petrol Panic grips the nation. A second week of fuel shortages on the forecourts threatens to hobble the economy, or at least erode support for the Tories in their heartlands and overshadow the Conservative Party Conference. Will queues at the petrol pumps in Manchester crowd the prime minister’s show? The Shell stations in Bolton were...

Of Turmeric and Truth – ‘Fuel for Thought’ and the struggle in Ogoni
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Jun 12, 2019
This blog is co-authored by Andy Rowell (Oil Change International) and James Marriott (Platform) Lazarus Tamana, Europe Coordinator of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), holds up a small round plastic container, an inch deep, two inches across. It is filled with a rich yellow-ochre coloured powder. “This was grown...

Of Plastics and Brexit – the struggle against the new lords of oil & gas
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Apr 4, 2019
On 16th January 2019 news was leaked through the German paper Handelsblatt of The Alliance to End Plastic Waste. A new industrial coalition that will invest $1billion over the next five years in a campaign to reduce the amount of plastic waste in the world. Here was a powerful body of major corporations determining to...

‘The Knowledge Quarter’ – resistance to capture and divestment from capital
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Jan 24, 2019
In the Autumn I attended an utterly inspiring Shake! & Stuart Hall Foundation event – the launch of the Black Cultural Activism Map. It was held at the Platform theatre space in the Central Saint Martin’s art school – CSM – part of University of the Arts London. This new premises is a vast warehouse of...

Victory at Leith Hill! Divest Fracking! Resisting sites of speculation
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Oct 12, 2018
This piece was written before the news of the draconian jail sentences passed on those opposing fracking in Preston, Lancashire … but that bitter ruling does not destroy the reality that shortly before that decision we celebrated a Victory! The News of an Amazing Victory! We wrote of it as follows … The permission to...

#FromNopeToHope – Salon des Réfuseurs for our time
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Sep 25, 2018
Heads up everybody interested in powerful political art and graphics. The exhibition From Nope To Hope – Art vs Arms, Oil and Injustice is running for an extra week, in Brixton Rec, London. Come and get inspired by the artwork of political artists, designers and activists who demanded their works were withdrawn from the Design...

Decades of neglect, years of waiting: it’s time to clean up Ogoniland’s oil pollution
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Jun 4, 2018
Two years ago, the Nigerian Government officially launched a clean-up programme of Shell’s oil pollution in Ogoniland. But today communities are still waiting for emergency measures on drinking water and health protection and the clean-up to begin. Here’s what Godwin Uyi Ojo, Executive Director, Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria had to say about it:...

The Invisible Machine – a gas pipeline in the Caucasus and a handshake in No10
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May 1, 2018
On the evening of Thursday 26th April 2018, it was warm and sunny in London. President Ilham Aliyev strode down Downing Street and was met by Prime Minister Theresa May with smile and a handshake. They posed for the cameras on the red carpet outside No 10 and then retired inside. A short formal chat...

Aliyev re-elected as President for another 7 years – the chain of oil autocracy that binds Azerbaijan
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Apr 18, 2018
On 18th April Ilham Aliyev will be inaugurated for the fourth time as President of Azerbaijan. His re-election comes as no surprise. It is so predictable that it barely counted as ‘news’ and consequently got next to no coverage in the international media. Originally the election was scheduled for 17th October, but at nine weeks...