Plane Stupid shut down Stansted Airport
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danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
Spymaster
Plastic Paddy
Or pass round a petition?
Aye. You can do it online now too.
frogwoman
No amount of cajolery...
wrong. direct action does force change, look at the poll tax,
my point is that if you are going to an airport to catch a plane, the chances are you will be going for a reason, most people who go to airports aren't ridiculously well off people who can afford to go on holiday whenever they like, whereas most other businesses are different from this. you may have got up ridiculously early to catch said plane, you will mostly likely be tired, stressed, nervous anyway and you won't take kindly to a bunch of people barricading the airport.
i'm all for direct action when it works, but i can only see this annoying and inconveniencing the public, and allowing big business to paint the protesters in a similar light. other tactics need to be used. occupying offices - very effective. if you end up missing your flight because of these people you are hardly likely to be sympathetic to their cause or support future actions that they take, whereas if this happens DIRECTLY TARGETTING THE PEOPLE YOU ARE AIMING TO TARGET (ie not the customers,not the workers, but the bosses of these companies) - ie barricading/occupying offices, and the like, you are more likely to gain popular support than if thousands of people miss their holidays or potentially very important trips because of your publicity seeking actions
Spymaster
Plastic Paddy
Are you one of those chaps who protests against Shell by siphoning petrol from vehicles in supermarket car parks?
frogwoman
No amount of cajolery...
Whereas if their business is being direclty affected by protests, gaining popular support, these companies will be forced to change their policies. their responsibility is to make profit and satisfy their shareholders and if their business practices are leading them to lose profit they will be forced to reexamine them. at the time of the iraq war the economy was fairly stable, most of the "bread and butter" isses that affect voters (or the people who would vote for labour anyway) were perfectly fine. elections are very rarely won and lost on foreign policy and a good proportion of those who would have attended the marches would have not voted for labour anyway. it sounds harsh, but labour already had a very comfortable mandate, having won two years previously with a very comfortable majority. they could safely afford to ignore such sentiments and they did.
as a result of popular pressure, huge numbers of companies are now divesting from Israel in Scotland for example, and similar things have happened vis a vis Burma. last year i was involved in a highly successful protest where we managed to stop the majority of people filling up at a total garage due to its links with the burmese junta. direct action can and does work, it just needs to be done in a way that will gain maximum popular support, not alienate people and fuck people off.
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
Exactly.
(Btw, direct action is just acting directly to affect change yourself, rather than petitioning someone else to act for you).
Bakunin
I am Noodle's bitch.
frogwoman
No amount of cajolery...
not necessarily true, especially because if the government fucks off enough people, ANY seat can be turned into a "swing seat".
frogwoman
No amount of cajolery...
lol good one ...
Meltingpot
Living in our pools we soon forget about the sea
That was before the government wised up and increased its security. I loved the poll tax protests (riots in Tunbridge Wells for heaven's sake) but don't forget that they didn't work on their own; the government was also shaken by the loss of a safe seat, Eastbourne, to the Liberal Democrats.
Have to admit you've got a point there.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
You're mad. lib dem mad.
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
Not as mad as Plane Stupid, though; they are zealot lifestyle hippies. Preachy, preachy. Like all class-blind liberal lifestylers, they are missing where responsibility lies: the interests of the business classes.
frogwoman
No amount of cajolery...
Both symptoms of popular discontent though, no?
elbows
Well-Known Member
Can we explore the idea that the solutions to climate change will cause far more disruption than any protests?
I know that some like to imagine that all the answers are there, that government & business has options to change its ways yet still give us the jobs and stuff we desire. Please indulge me for a moment if you hold such views, and imagine that we are only going to deal with climate change & resource woes by having a vastly lower rate of consumption than we have today.
Are we going to come to terms with the idea that flying is a luxury?
Are we going to come to terms with the idea that if we dont want business to avoid the true costs of their way, then we are going to pay for that, its as much our sacrifice as theirs?
Or at the very least we are only going to have access to such luxuries in future if we are able to surrender our present ways enough to enable a clever transition to take place. That attempts to cling to the way things have been, or to pick at the edges of the problem, is storing up one hell of an ugly reality check later on?
Never mind, we wont get too much choice, the economic hell arrives and will chop our carbon footprint down substantially. The hydro-electric potential of all the frothing at the mouth this will cause is sadly not easy to harness. The transition will be misery, I hope the anger is matched by a new hope.
I know that some like to imagine that all the answers are there, that government & business has options to change its ways yet still give us the jobs and stuff we desire. Please indulge me for a moment if you hold such views, and imagine that we are only going to deal with climate change & resource woes by having a vastly lower rate of consumption than we have today.
Are we going to come to terms with the idea that flying is a luxury?
Are we going to come to terms with the idea that if we dont want business to avoid the true costs of their way, then we are going to pay for that, its as much our sacrifice as theirs?
Or at the very least we are only going to have access to such luxuries in future if we are able to surrender our present ways enough to enable a clever transition to take place. That attempts to cling to the way things have been, or to pick at the edges of the problem, is storing up one hell of an ugly reality check later on?
Never mind, we wont get too much choice, the economic hell arrives and will chop our carbon footprint down substantially. The hydro-electric potential of all the frothing at the mouth this will cause is sadly not easy to harness. The transition will be misery, I hope the anger is matched by a new hope.
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
Who is "we"?
I've flown less than a handful of times in my lifetime. (Which is why I'd be mightily pissed off if my flight had been disrupted). I note that in some scenarios I'm to be priced out of flying, while Chris feckin Martin will wring his hands and pay the surcharges. He's probably flown more times this week than I have I my life. But he'll weep on TV about climate change.
"We" are not all frequent flyers. "We" don't need to be weaned off it.
Meltingpot
Living in our pools we soon forget about the sea
Sure, but my point is that of the two the decisive one was the Tories losing Eastbourne in 1990. That was the beginning of the end for Thatcher.
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
Indeed, and according to Ryanair's own figures (and they need to know these things), the purpose of flights with them breaks down:
Business (19%)
Leisure (41%)
Visiting friends or relatives (38%)
frogwoman
No amount of cajolery...
i doubt it somehow. parties can recover from election/by election losses. they cannot very easily recover from an embarrassment like the poll tax riots happening on their watch ... and we see it now, the tories are in complete disarray still, after all these years
in any case, all of these things were all part and parcel of the same expression of popular discontent that eventually forced thatcher out of the party, and of these the poll tax riots involved more people and were more "spectacular"
elbows
Well-Known Member
I know, dont get me started on Chris Martin.
I never claim that what will happen is going to be fair, or that its how Id choose to do things, its merely what I think will happen.
I never mentioned frequent flyers, Im suggesting all flying is a luxury.
The problem is, even if you eradicated economic injustice in the world, it wouldnt stop the masses from bearing the brunt of the sacrifice, quite simply because there are a lot of them. The pay of nurses is kept low because there are a lot of them, whereas the relatively small number of CEO's means they've been able to get silly pay. A million people flying once is less sustainable than one git flying a thousand times.
All classes will lose, once the masses suffer, some of the pain will trickle up. Every day I am depressed that those who can least afford it will bear the biggest burden, I just struggle to see any scenario in which that isnt the case. The best I hope for is that some things of real value are gained in exchange for the sacrifice.
Indeed - those scum who heat their homes beyond 12C are the real culprits of "climate change" - get a pullover you polar bear mudering swine!!!!!!!!!
lostexpectation
New Member
54 people thats alot did they just huddle inside a ring of locked fences?
are plane stupid a direct off shoot of greenpeace?
they've started a group up in ireland plane mad i think, they just interupted mr ryanair etc,
for some reasons im suspicious of them
are plane stupid a direct off shoot of greenpeace?
they've started a group up in ireland plane mad i think, they just interupted mr ryanair etc,
for some reasons im suspicious of them
never mind Chris Martin, a member of Plain Stupid itself flew over to NY recently. "i wanted to see it while i can"
beyond parody.
chainsaw cat
Tea. Biccies. Happy now?
Well, revolution, dumbo.
lostexpectation
New Member
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/dec/09/plane-stupid-environmental-activists Plane Stupid's funders are wealthy west London opponents of the expansion of Heathrow.
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
Doesn't surprise me in the least.
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
Indeed.
I've long been an admirer of Bookchin, and recommend his book, Post Scarcity Anrchism. In it he outlines how society could be structured, and technology harnessed, so that resources can be available to all, rather than squandered in the pursuit of profit for the few.
Plane Stupid are self-righteous rich kids pursuing an anti working class agenda, deliberately targeting working class travellers (most non business Standsted users are C1C2Ds; less than 20% of Ryanair flights are for business purposes).
Elbows says "A million people flying once is less sustainable than one git flying a thousand times", but it is a matter of priorities, and how resources are spread. Blaming aviation for CO2 emissions has even more of a multiplier effect than trying to hit government targets via the 30% non business energy use, instead of the 70% business energy use: Globally, carbon dioxide emissions from aviation are responsible for around 1.6% of total greenhouse gas emissions.(Source.). Whereas, the internet is already producing more CO2 emissions than worldwide air traffic (Source.).
Why, then, has Plane Stupid got a website? How often do they organise via email?
Their agenda is: stop the masses from flying, but let us keep doing the things we want to do.
They are class-blind, and their actions perpetuate class inequalities.
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
So this is basically a huge m/c NIMBY group? What a shock.
The thing is, I don't disagree with their aims - there's no need for 2nd/3rd runways at Stanstead or Heathrow, and the money should go into developing the rail network so that short-haul flights throughout Europe become less and less attractive - but this isn't motivation about climate change, this is house price motivation.
FWIW - anyone setting up a 'Ship Stupid' pressure group to blockade ports? Marine trade is responsible for not just more atmospheric pollution than the aviation industry, but also huge amounts of fuel and waste dumping in the oceans. Where are the climate change protestors at Felixstowe and the other major docks where the ships from China come filled with unsustainably produced goods, and then return mostly unladen?
Flying should be more expensive than it is, and as a society we need to ween ourselves off cheap flights, whether you're a frequent flyer or not, but the same can be said of driving cars and using gas central heating.
cantsin
Well-Known Member
ffs - so lets judge a profit hungy corporation with a notorious climate change 'sceptic' for a a CEO , by the alleged class composition of it 's consumers !!
genius , roll on the apocalypse
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