No 51, February 2003
Worthing needs YOU!
SO what was your New Year
Resolution, then? Never had one? Forgotten already? Broke it at 12.03am on
January 1? What exactly are you going to be doing for the rest of 2003 other
than smoke, drink and subscribe to a few more sports channels on the TV? Maybe
you’re reading this and you’re already doing far more good in the
world than Mother Theresa has ever dreamed about or perhaps you will count
yourself lucky to be alive or with a roof over your head in 12 months’
time. If so, don’t worry -this is not aimed at you. But if you are who
we think you might be - which is just about ALL of us, let’s face it -
maybe now is the time to sit down in front of a mirror for a serious chat with
yourself and discuss your future. Our society’s in a mess, no doubt
about it. Our communities are disintegrating. Our countryside is disappearing.
Our freedoms are being stolen away. Not a lot you can do about it? We think
not. In fact, the only way anything will ever change is if people do
something. Some small thing. Take control of their lives. Rebuild their
communities. Shake off the disease of submission and decay. Like what,
exactly? Well, here’s a few examples that might at least get you
thinking. Then hopefully acting. Because YOUR Worthing needs YOU!
* Volunteer to help out with one of the numerous charities operating
in the area. Contact Worthing Volunteer Bureau, Methold House, North Street,
Worthing BN11 1DU (01903 528622) vb@avow.org
* Don’t collaborate with slave-driving corporate monsters. Buy
Fair Trade wherever possible and avoid products made in sweatshop
economies. Even better, help out in Worthing with Fair Trade Fortnight, from
March 4 to 16. Contact Rod from the Oxfam Campaigns Group (01903 504767) or
RodAnnenet1@aol.com
* Support the South Downs Campaign’s efforts to protect our
beautiful Sussex landscape. PO Box 3473, Brighton BN1 7FZ
* Don’t watch the "news" on TV. You will have withdrawal symptoms for
a while, but will then realise you understand the world better without
it. The more you watch the less you know.
* Join a group that helps our fellow creatures, like the Worthing
and District Animal Rescue Service (01903 217788), the Worthing Cat Welfare
Trust (01903 202251/873158) or Worthing Animal Aid (PO Box 4065, Worthing BN11
3JL, 01903 877144)
* Help Protect Our Woodland! (POW!) to fight the proposed development at
Titnore Lane, Durrington. Contact pow@worthinga27.freeserve.co.uk,
website www.worthinga27.freeserve.co.uk/pow
* Support community projects, like the West Durrington one (50A
Shelby Road, Durrington BN13 2TR) 01903 260199 west.durrington@pact.org.uk.
Sussex-wide info from PACT on 01273 828458 www.pact.org.uk
* Cut air pollution by using your car less. If you’ve got
children, encourage them to walk to school.
* Don’t be defeated by the cost of housing. Squat an empty
building - it’s perfectly legal! Advisory Service for Squatters, 2 St
Paul’s Rd, London N1 2QN (020 7359 8814) www.squat.freeserve.co.uk
* Oppose the madness of a war with Iraq. Contact worthingagainstwar@yahoo.co.uk
* Join or create a co-op or social enterprise. Sussex info at
www.co-op.org/mutualaid/
* Strike a blow for freedom and stand up to CCTV cameras! A cool website gives some top tips, not that
we’d encourage anything like that...
* Get informed about what’s going on in the world. Current
books worth a look are The New Rulers of the World by John Pilger and Stupid
White Men by Michael Moore. Read Brighton’s excellent weekly SchNEWS (PO Box 2600, Brighton, BN2 0EF) or
surf into Indymedia. George
Orwell’s classic novel 1984 is now looking more up-to-date than ever and
worth reading with current events in mind.
* Support your local graffiti cleaners. Use only water-based
paint.
* Help build an independent local community media, free of corporate
agendas and official lies. Set up a newsletter, website or pirate radio
station. Support existing initiatives (like this one!) by subscribing,
distributing or contributing info.
* Visit and befriend one elderly or lonely neighbour in 2003.
* Don’t be trampled over at work. Join a union (TUC, Congress
House, Gt Russell St, London WC1B 3LS, 020 7636 4030, www.tuc.org.uk, start your own one (IWW, PO Box
591, Hull, HU5 2WZ, BrightonIWW@hotmail.com www.iww.org.uk or simply know your rights
and stand your ground. Phone in sick regularly and reclaim your life.
* Form a residents’ group for your road. Don’t ask
anyone’s permission, just do it. Then tell your elected councillors what
you expect of them.
* Set up a Local Exchange Trading Scheme (LETS) - a community-based
mutual aid network in which people exchange all kinds of goods and
services with each other, without the need for money. LETSLINK UK at 12
Southcote Road, London N19 5BJ (0207 607 7852) www.letslinkuk.net/
* Don’t treat shopping as a hobby. Buy what you need, not what
you fancy. "Retail therapy" may make you feel better, but it will deprive your
descendants of a planet to live on.
* Bypass greedy supermarkets and cut down lorries on the roads by
digging for victory over capitalism! Turn that flower bed into a veggie
patch! Get an allotment! Or at least join a local scheme supplying organic
veggie boxes direct from the farm (Ashurst Organics, 01273 891219).
* Keep Worthing’s prize-winning public conveniences spick and
span. Urinate on posh cars instead.
* DO NOT, under any circumstances, try to carry out ALL of
these suggestions at once or you won’t be around to make anymore
resolutions next year!
Boy racer blues
HOW we agree with Insp Russ
Whitfield of Worthing police about the menace posed in our town by boy
racers - arrogant young men who speed all over the place, with complete
disregard for the local community. They happily propel their noisy cars,
complete with go-faster stripes, through red lights and on the wrong side of
the road as if the law didn’t apply to them. These sad anti-social thugs
seem to have nothing better to do than cruise around the streets just looking
for trouble ... and dazzling the rest of us with their flashing blue
lights!
Anti-war Protest
1pm, Saturday February 8
Montague Place, Worthing
worthingagainstwar@yahoo.co.uk
NO BLOOD FOR OIL!
Pete Shaughnessy RIP
CHARISMATIC campaigner and Worthing
resident Pete Shaughnessy sadly took his own life just before Christmas, after
a long spell of serious depression, at the age of 40. Pete was best known for
his work in mental health campaigning, being one of the founders and driving
forces of Mad Pride, an organisation that pushed for an end to
the treatment of people suffering from an illness - mental ill health - as
second class citizens to be abused and manipulated by those in power. He was
also dead keen on football, particularly non-corporate lower-league stuff, and
was a fan of Crystal Palace and Dulwich Hamlet, from his old stomping grounds
in South East London, as well as Worthing FC, where he had become social
secretary. Pete couldn’t stop himself getting involved with a good cause
and was a regular helper with Brighton radical newsletter SchNEWS and with
your very own Porkbolter and had been a regular at worthing eco-action
meetings until he became ill last year. Ex-bus driver Pete was a great bloke
who made loads of friends wherever he went - as witnessed by the packed-solid
church in Dulwich for his funeral on Christmas Eve. Obituaries were published
in The Big Issue and The Guardian (the national,
not the Worthing one). There is to be a tree planting in his honour and a
special memorial night at Brighton’s new social centre, The Cowley Club
in London Road, on February 8. We’ll miss him, as of course will Penny,
Daniel and many others, particularly his kids in London. Cheers, Pete. It was
good to know you. Oh and by the way - it wasn’t you that was crazy. It
was this porkin’ world we live in...
Worthing’s war effort
WORTHING is in the forefront of
the efforts to halt Blair and Bush’s relentless march towards war with
Iraq! A new anti-war group has been formed, a letter against war from the
town’s church leaders made front page news in the Worthing
Herald and a Worthing student hit the national and international
headlines as he heckled Blair at what was supposed to be a cosy meeting with
Labour Party androids in London. Iain Wilson, 22, a student at the London
School of Economics, explained to The Porkbolter that he had got
in using a friend’s Labour Party card. He said: "I sat there and kept my
head down, then I just jumped up and started shouting at him. There was a Stop
the War demo outside and basically I asked all the questions that Stop the War
would want to ask. I was so nervous I didn’t really notice what he was
saying. As I was being thrown out of the door I shouted ‘we will not be
silenced!’." Iain, one of our regular readers, added that he was
completely behind new group Worthing Against War and wished he
was in town to take part in its current activities - though we reckon he
hasn’t exactly been missing out on all the action! Next Worthing Against
War group meeting will be at The Downview pub opposite West Worthing railway
station on Tuesday February 4, 7.45pm. Then on Saturday February 8, at
1pm, an anti-war protest will be held in Montague Place, Worthing, followed by
a vigil and wreath-laying at the war memorial in Chapel Road at 2pm. That
evening there will be a vigil for peace at St Matthew’s Church in
Tarring Road from 7.30pm to 9.30pm - people can come and go as they wish.
Worthing people will be travelling to the big London anti-war protest on
Saturday February 15 - meet for the 10.03 train from Worthing station.
Contact worthingagainstwar@yahoo.co.uk
(01903 206588). March from 12.30 at Embankment, then gather at 5pm in Green
Park for a mass sit-down at Piccadilly Circus.
OATs ready to strike
WORTHING has been put on a major
security alert as experts warned it is a hotbed of potential terrorism,
writes our War on TerrorTM correspondent Felicity Gully-Ball. Terrorism
expert Prof S.N.L Lyre told me: "Worthing has been highlighted by our crack
War on TerrorTM units because of its unique demographics. There is a greater
percentage of older people in Worthing than anywhere else in the country and
this is just so dangerous. Many are faced with the prospect of being taken
into a residential care home and having to sell off their own house to pay for
the care they will need in their final years. "All they have to look forward
to is experiencing deteriorating health and watching their life savings pour
into the pockets of the company that owns the nursing home. Put simply, these
people have nothing to lose." Fears are arising that this new sinister breed
of Old Age Terrorists - or OATs - could conceal explosives like semtex in
their zimmer frames or deadly poisons such as ricin in their colostomy bags,
primed to explode in crowded areas with horrendously unpleasant results. And
intelligence sources say "chatter" picked up by dedicated 24-hour surveillance
teams outside the bingo hall suggest the crazed OAT cells are even now
preparing to attack a series of targets across the borough selected for their
proximity to bus stops. Allied bombing of Worthing is expected to commence
next week.
PORK-SCRATCHINGS
A HUGE campaign has been launched nationally
against an under-publicised section of the proposed new licensing law that
would effectively ban small-scale live music across England and Wales, by
demanding that everything down to carol singing be officially licensed. More
info on www.musiciansunion.org To join the local struggle against the latest
scheme by those money-grabbing, life-hating totalitarian bureaucrats that call
themselves our leaders contact Sunny Worthing Arts Group (SWAG)
at Henry House, 189 Heene Road, Worthing (01903 232875)www.swagonline.org
* * *
COUNCIL tax is set to rocket again in April, as it has done every year since
it was brought in. And what are we getting for it? Answers on a postcard to
your local smug-faced councillor.
* * *
A POLICEMAN arrested on suspicion of downloading child porn has resigned from
the Sussex force, reported the Argus (Jan 8). It added that a
second man, former Sussex Police inspector Chris Wratten, aged 48, is awaiting
trial on 27 counts of downloading child porn. He has also resigned from the
force.
* * *
WORK on improving the A24 near Horsham has been designed by Halcrow Group
Ltd, revealed the Worthing Advertiser on January 1. Can this
making-money-from-road-upgrading Halcrow Group Ltd be related to the
independent and totally objective consultancy Halcrow Group Ltd whose recent
report gave the go-ahead for massive road-building projects across the area?
We rather think so...
* * *
THE next Worthing Green Social will be upstairs at
Barney’s Café/Bar in Portland Road on Wednesday February 12, 8pm.
And this month there will be a guest speaker from the South Downs
Campaign, who will be talking about the ongoing battle to protect
Sussex’s beautiful countryside. Contact Richard for more details.
* * *
MOBILE phones and masts are a big danger to people’s health, a group of
eminent German doctors have warned. They link "a dramatic rise in severe and
chronic diseases among our patients" to pulsed high-frequency microwave
radiation, such as that from mobile phones and masts. Contact Mast Sanity
at 20, Outwood Road, Radcliffe, Manchester M26 1AQ, tel 0161 959 0999.
Titnore - developer alert!
A NEW planning application for the
threatened massive development at West Durrington, threatening Titnore &
Goring Woods, was being unveiled as we went to press. There is a public
exhibition at the Durrington Community Centre (at the back of
Tesco’s car park) in New Road Durrington on Friday January 31, 3pm to
9pm and Saturday February 1, 9am to 5pm - so go along and register your view!
If you can’t do so, the developers’ agents also have a website
called, absurdly enough, green issues. The phone number
for comments etc is 0118 9591211. And visit POW's website for more updates on
the big campaign against the development. * An appeal has gone out to anyone
who has access to detailed and/or technical information about this site.
Anyone who could help on specific issues such as geological surveys,
groundwater problems & flooding, pollution from old landfill sites, threat
to wildlife, transport problems etc which could be used in an objection should
urgently contact luciecolkett@yahoo.co.uk
Authorised independence
THE Minister for
Liberty yesterday stressed that community cohesion and self-reliance
were central planks of government policy. But he warned: "People must remember
that if they want to start any independent initiatives they must ensure they
have gained permission from the relevant authorities, completed the necessary
paperwork, acquired the appropriate license and paid the statutory fees.
Otherwise we’ll bung them in jail."
Hog standard newsletter
The Pork-Bolter is a local
independent newsletter named after an old and rather daft nickname for
Worthing people. To get the next six issues through the post send a donation
of at least £3 payable to The Porkbolter. Drop us a line at PO Box 4144,
Worthing, West Sussex BN14 7NZ or send e-mail porkbolter@eco-action.org. e-mail
subscriptions are also available.
If you can help distribute copies in any way, big or small, or know
anyone else who can (for instance, by having them available in a shop or local
army recruitment office) just get in touch. And many thanks to those who have
already done so!
Printed and published by The Pork-Bolter, PO Box 4144, Worthing BN14 7NZ.
No copyright. No justice in this world when Gary Glitter’s still alive
and Joe Strummer’s dead.
and finally ...
Reclaim Your Town, Reclaim Your Life!
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