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To Bruce Mackenzie – For these and future memories
In the flurry of a Tuesday afternoon, I receive an unexpected e-mail from Vicki Carroll. The header has your name in it Bruce, and I know instinctively within an instant what the message holds. I hover a while and then open the text to read the inevitable. You have stepped over, passed through the…
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A False Promise of Prosperity
An analysis of UK Prosperity Fund support to the oil and gas industry Based on official Foreign Office data, this briefing reveals that the UK’s Foreign Office spent funds from the Official Development Aid budget to promote shale gas drilling in China, as well as supporting expansion of oil and gas industries in Brazil, Mexico,…
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UK government spends aid money on promoting fracking
News just in: the UK is spending its official development aid funds to promote fracking abroad. The Foreign Office financed two projects in China to “export UK expertise in shale gas development”, aiming to create “an improved business environment” for UK companies. Our research, released today in collaboration with Friends of the Earth and Christian…
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Report: Foreign Office spends aid budget on ‘promoting fracking’ abroad
0.01am 19 November Research released by Platform today [1] reveals that Foreign Office spent funds from the UK’s Official Development Aid budget to promote shale gas drilling in China, as well as supporting expansion of oil and gas industries in Brazil, Mexico, India, and Myanmar. Foreign Office ran 16 strategic projects to expand fossil fuel industries…
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Victory at Leith Hill! Divest Fracking! Resisting sites of speculation
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…
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The Invisible Machine – a gas pipeline in the Caucasus and a handshake in No10
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…
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Aliyev re-elected as President for another 7 years – the chain of oil autocracy that binds Azerbaijan
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…
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Vive La Zad ! – in the midst of the tear gas, La Zad exists in our hearts
The police arrived at 03.00 am on the morning of Monday 9th April. The exact number is, of course, unclear but it is said that 2,500 officers in riot equipment, with crash helmets and visors, Perspex shields and plastic body armour were deployed. Two and a half thousand highly trained men appeared out of the…
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Defending the NHS – Platform and a community of health
Recently I was sitting talking with a friend who was relating the harrowing tale of her partner’s sudden illness. My heart was in my mouth as she described the paramedics arriving in minutes to their home, the ambulance that took them to Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich, her partner being transferred to a specialist clinic…
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Communal Memory – the power of community to resist Shell in Nigeria
I’m holding in my hands a report published by Amnesty International in November last year – ‘A Criminal Enterprise? Shell’s involvement in human rights violations in Nigeria in the 1990s’. It analyses in forensic detail exactly how much Shell staff knew about, and were involved in supporting, the actions by the Nigerian military taken against…
