Issue 31 - October 2000
BUSINESSMEN WANT TO BAN BEER!
THE GANG of killjoy
busybodies that run Worthing want to stop you from enjoying a refreshing
can of shandy in the open air. This new assault on our already limited
freedoms was launched at a meeting of the unelected business-led
Worthing Town Centre Initiative. Reported The Evening
Argus on September 21: "The Worthing Town Initiative is now calling on
Worthing Council and Sussex Police to draw up a new law banning the
drinking of alcohol in public places such as Steyne Gardens and Liverpool
gardens. Strangely enough, our spy at the meeting tells us the police
inspector present was not keen on the idea. This is because the police know
they have already got plenty of powers to deal with anyone who is
actually drunk or causing some sort of problem. What this new move is about is
eroding further ordinary people’s right to move around in their own home
town and do what they want to, as long as it doesn’t harm other people.
Together with the ubiquitous CCTV spy cameras, this amounts to a kind of
privatisation of the town centre - it now apparently belongs to traders
and businessmen who don’t like it being made all messy by human beings
who are not there simply to spend money in their shops. It is no
coincidence that the Worthing Town Centre Initiative chairman is Chris
Spratt, an estate agent who was involved in the privatisation
of Worthing’s council houses a couple of years ago (see issue 10). And
it is also no coincidence that Worthing Churches Homeless
Project are mentioned in the Argus report of the meeting - these
fanatic Christians breathalyse homeless people seeking shelter at their Byron
Road hostel and kick them back onto the streets if they’ve had a single
drop of evil alcohol, even if they’re not in the least bit drunk.
That’s charity for you! Worthing Hospitality Association
are also involved in the Initiative. They presumably want people drinking in
their bars rather than buying cans or bottles at the off license for a third
of the price. Mr Spratt admitted to the Argus: "Obviously, we are not asking
things to be taken to extremes such as not letting people sit outside a pub,
restaurant or cafe and have a drink." Well, no, you wouldn’t, would you?
And we don’t suppose you’re going to ban your posh mates from
sipping champagne on the back lawn in the summer, are you?
There’s drinking and then there’s drinking, it would
seem. Outrage is already bubbling up about these proposals around the town.
Once again an arrogant elite are trying to make life difficult for hard-up
ordinary people. There are interesting plans for a protest drink-in in
the town centre if the law is actually brought in. What do you think? If you
want to get on board on this one drop us a line and we’ll keep you in
touch.
Victory in Montague Place
FOLLOWING last month’s
Pork-Bolter front page, Worthing council finally seems to have
conceded defeat over Montague Place and agreed that no
development will be allowed on this important open space. This has to be seen
as a major triumph for the Great British Tradition of Direct Action.
Hats off to the Worthing Anarchist Teapot activists who staged
several protests against the plans and defeated the goliath of Business
Development.
WE POSE THE BIG QUESTION ABOUT WEIRD WORTHING MP...
IS BOTTOMLEY AN ALIEN?
WE have become increasingly worried,
over recent months, about West Worthing MP Peter Bottomley.
Particularly disturbing was a picture of him hanging around at the top of
Cissbury Ring, in a suit, as featured on the front page of the Worthing
Guardian on Friday September 8. Bottomley, or Bumley as he is
affectionately known by some, was quoted as declaring: "Within a
five-minute walk from Worthing I can be here at Cissbury Ring and enjoy a
glorious walk in the South Downs." Astute reader Robert Brew was quick to
spot that something was not quite right about this statement. His letter in
the next week’s Worthing Guardian explained: "As the
distance is about three and a half miles, that means an average speed of
over 40mph, some of it uphill." So how does Mr Bumley come to have
acquired these astonishing speed-walking powers? We think a clue may be found
in the MP’s previous front-page exposure in the Worthing Guardian, on
September 1, where he was to be found calling for DNA samples to be collected
of all males over the age of 16. Embarrassingly for Mr Bottomley, this idea
got an immediate kick in the teeth when that week’s
Observer (September 3) revealed that even police officers
were declining to give "voluntary" DNA samples because they were worried they
would be misused! (Where that leaves the rest of us is another
question...) Now all this is very fishy indeed. For you wouldn’t
have thought Super-Bumley was the sort of chap who would want to build a
police state. After all, he has already pledged his admiration for the
Great British Tradition of Direct Action in the shape of the
Suffragettes and he also spoke up for the Cambridge Two (jailed for "allowing"
drug use in a hostel) against totalitarian Jack Straw. But what if he had an
ulterior motive? What if he was an ALIEN from another planet out to
steal the DNA secrets of humanity? That would explain why he can run at
40mph! And why he chose the Earthling name "Bottomley", wrongly thinking it
would enable him to come across as quite normal. And what exactly was
he waiting for on top of Cissbury Ring that day?
Stuff it through the letterbox!
MEMBERS of the
anti-skateboarding pressure group Worthing Against Naughty Kids have
already volunteered to help Mr Bottomley’s DNA-collecting crusade by
providing him with examples of their own bodily fluids. And they are appealing
for others to deposit their samples through the letter box of the Conservative
Association in Union Place or at Mr Bottomley’s Worthing pad in Ambrose
Place.* (*Legal note: This is a joke. Do not do anything of the sort.
It’s illegal and very messy)
Now You Can Go the Whole Hog!
WE have now been producing
The Pork-Bolter for three whole years, the first issue having
come out in October 1997, just a few months after a young, wholesome and
non-sweating politician called Tony Blair led us into the promised land of a
fair and free new Britain... And now you can relive our porcine perambulation
through the events of the following months with a special 30-issue
compilation, complete with introduction and cover. It’s all there - the
battle against council house privatisation, Rocket Ron and Rotarians and loads
of stuff about Big Brother that’s got nothing to do with that
porkin’ thing on the TV. You can get a copy of the Whole
Hog by sending £2 (PO, cheque or stamps) to The Pork-Bolter, PO
Box 4144, Worthing BN14 7NZ. This could be the ideal Christmas present for
friends, family or any slimey politician types you particularly want to piss
off.
Porky Pie’s Top Tip of the Month!
HOW TO IMPROVE
MONTAGUE PLACE AND BOOST LAW AND ORDER!
- GO TO THE WOOLWORTH’S WALL.
- PAINT A HUGE AND REALISTIC MURAL OF CCTV CAMERAS, RIOT POLICE WITH BIG
BATONS, BENEFITS AGENCY SNOOPERS AND CHRISTIANS WITH BREATHALYSERS.
- THEN WE’LL ALL FEEL SAFE!
Justice is offside for football fans
IT’S not
fashionable to stand up for the rights of football fans, particularly those
supposedly linked to "trouble". We’re encouraged to believe that
supporters are some kind of lower life form who somehow do not deserve the
same rights as "respectable" members of society (like lying politicians and
crooked businessmen). And that is how the state has got away with bringing
in an shocking new law called the Football Disorder Act, which
came into effect on August 28. As The Guardian explained on
September 2, this sinister legislation "gives police the right to prevent
even those who have not committed any offence from leaving the country
or attending a match if it is felt they may cause trouble at some point". What
kind of justice is that? The previous legislation allowed for banning orders
on people who had actually been convicted of a football-related
offence, but obviously it is no longer good enough for the authorities
that somebody is proven guilty by law before they are treated as a
criminal! Dozens of fans have already been hit by the new law,
including twin brothers from Littlehampton who had been planning
to attend the France v England game. Even if you are too stuck-up to care
about the rights of lowly football fans, this clearly sets a precedent for any
other groups the Government decides it doesn’t like (farmers are
probably near the top of the list at present!). There are parallels here
with state plans to allow people to be locked up because their
"psychological profile" suggests they may commit crimes
(exposed in Nick Cohen’s column in The Observer on September
10). This has nasty echoes of the USSR communists’ habit of
declaring dissidents to be mentally ill and banging them up in psychiatric
hospitals. And all this ties in with the current attempts to do away with the
ancient English right of trial by jury for a whole raft of offences.
The message is clear. Even the limited amount of fairness in the British legal
system is too much for the totalitarian New Labour regime. Tony Blair and Jack
Straw simply have Zero Interest in the rights of the population they
are supposed to serve and Zero Tolerance of anybody’s freedom but
that of their Big Business masters.
Democratically approved tyranny
FOAMING-at-the-mouth
authoritarian extremist (and New Labour supporter, naturally)
Barrie Slater of Dorchester Gardens, Grand Avenue, Worthing,
wrote to The Worthing Guardian (September 8) to say that Mr
Bottomley’s plan for a DNA database (see above) "doesn’t
really go far enough". He wants compulsory DNA testing for everyone,
male or female, over 12 years old, plus compulsory ID cards that must
always be carried on the person and "can only be accessed centrally by
democratically approved authorities". We’re not sure you’ve
gone far enough, either, Mr Slater! (Indonesia would be ideal) Why not
chain the population to their place of work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, so
they can’t get into any mischief? Food could be supplied on a conveyor
belt and encouragement for more efficient working provided by electric shocks
- administered by democratically approved authorities, of course.
Oh for a Mayor that cares
ISN’T Worthing’s Tory
mayor Ann Lynn a sensitive soul? With 120 workers at Daewoo at Lyons Farm
already sacked and the remaining 750 not being paid and also threatened with
the dole, she found it perfectly OK to accept a free car, a posh Leganza, from
the firm. And then she claimed this was to show "confidence" in the workers.
"Complete and utter disdain" would be closer to the mark . . .
Palming this off as a good idea
POOR Worthing council has
been told that if it wants palm trees on the seafront they will not
survive a Worthing winter outdoors and they will have to be removed for part
of the year. A stylish solution would be to plant them in disused
supermarket trolleys (some kind of sponsorship tie-in could be
arranged) padlocked to lampposts along the prom. Tree-hugging volunteers
could be issued with keys, wheel them home and keep them warm and cosy in the
colder months!
The wonderful world of technology
* ROBOTS that power
themselves by eating flesh have been invented, reported The
Guardian on August 31. It also says machines will eventually be
capable of "artificial evolution" - mutating, testing and improving
their design far faster than living organisms. A splendid development. What
could possibly go wrong? * A hi-tech ‘eye’ is to watch over the
elderly at home, reports The Independent. It adds: "If they
stay in bed too long, they will hear a voice saying ‘Isn’t it time
I was getting up?’." How marvellous. * Children born by donated
sperm are liable to suffer an identity crisis in later life, revealed
The Guardian on August 31. Well, there’s a surprise.
Have you seen these persons?
1. KIM and Malcolm Wise have
contacted us in their quest to restore contact with friends Peter and
Wendy Paisley, whose last known address was Manor Road, Worthing. If
anyone can help, please phone 01622 676589 or send an e-mail
(kim10@btinternet.com) 2. An alert has gone out for Worthing MP Peter
Bottomley who has tragically completely lost touch with reality. He
was last seen on Cissbury Ring in a suit.
PORK-SCRATCHINGS
THREE West Sussex County
Council officers are paid more than £110,000 a year, it
has been revealed (West Sussex County Times, September 29). Four
get pay and perks worth £80,000 to £90,000, eight staff earn from
£70,000 to £80,000, 19 are on £60,000 to £70,000, 47
get £50,000 to £60,000 and a staggering 180 employees are paid
£40,000 to £50,000. Remember folks, keep paying your council tax -
it’s all for a good cause!
* * *
FANCY doing a course in permaculture design over in Brighton?
Contact Fran Saunders on 01273 381686.
* * *
OUR best wishes for a speedy recovery to hunt sab Steve
Christmas, run over and badly hurt by a hunt supporter’s car
near Crawley on September 1. Help is needed out there. Contact 01273 622827 to
get involved and save foxes’ lives.
* * *
NOW there’s a funny thing. We hear that a recent cleansing blow-out of
chimneys at the new gas power station at Shoreham was followed
by an outbreak of mysterious rashes in the Fishersgate area, just downwind. We
are entirely convinced that this can be nothing but an unfortunate
coincidence.
* * *
WORTHING opponents of burger chain McDonald’s will be
taking part in a global day of action on Monday October 16. Meet outside the
Montague Place McDollar’s at 7pm. And
Worthing.eco-action’s next meeting will be on Tuesday
November 7 at 42 Marine Parade (above Paiges) at 7.45pm.
* * *
THIS year’s Anarchist Bookfair is being held at Conway
Hall, Red Lion Square, London (Holborn tube) on Saturday October 14, 10am-6pm.
* * *
READER’S letter in Private Eye (1,009): "Am I alone in
thinking that there should be a register of News of the World readers? Surely
we should be told if such people live in our midst."
Don’t all vote at once
PANIC voting has been breaking
out across the country because of uncertainty over the date of the next
general election, reports the Ministry of Obedience. Queues are forming
outside ballot stations and fights have broken out in key marginals. Warns the
Ministry: "Unauthorised voting cannot be tolerated. People must realise
they cannot take democracy into their own hands."
Back the Boar War - subscribe!
THE PORK-BOLTER is an
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have YOU tried ... Direct action - the craze that’s sweeping the
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