Hi,

Not to put anyone off, but it's important to note that police do not have to give a warning before arrest for agg tress.

There are two sections to agg tress legislation:

Section 68 gives the police the power to arrest anyone who is committing the offence.
Section 69 gives them the power to direct a person to leave. The person then has the right to leave or stay and continue what they are doing and get arrested.

Yes, there are many times when the cops don't want the publicity and hassle of nicking loads of people and will give warnings first. There are other time when they are total wankers and will just steam in and nick everyone. Anyone doing an action should be aware of these risks.

However really good inspiring stuff and good luck.

Cool really good to see local people empowering themselves in such a way.

Come on Oxford, its only a few miles away lets keep going over thier to help them out! Maybe another meeting / benefit gig could be in order??

I agree with your opposition to the government's road programme, but your article also suggests you oppose the government's 'growth areas'. 'Growth areas' are, in fact, areas planned for the development of homes for people.

Where do you suggest new homes are built? More intense development in the cities (and the loss of more, precious 'breathing' space for the existing residents)?

Or shouldn't we build any more homes for the country's growing population?

The current spate of opposition to new housing development (opposition strongly supported
by the Tories) is no more than the crudest form of NIMBYism - I'm all right Jack, sod everybody else!

Lets hear some positive alternatives to present plans for new housing, not the usual 'just cram 'em all into the cities, there's plenty of space there'.

Building new homes over precious breathing space (being Valley Fen ) will affect the local residents too (being the wildlife residing there already).

Many cities also are bulging with empty spaces that could be used for city types, for example in Manchester there are over 2000 empty bedspaces yet they are still erecting shiny, silvery mega-expensive flats over land that could be reclaimed.

So why tear down precious green field for a load of yuppie housing estates? Moreover, why build a road that's gonna be just as congested as everywhere else in a few years time?!

To refute the argument about the expanding UK population have a look at see  http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=760 quite a slow growth really.

The only need for people to live in the South is coz of better pay and better prosepcts of longevity than in the 'grim' North.  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/545517.stm

Good luck to the Linsdale protesters, I say :)

"Yes, there are many times when the cops don't want the publicity and hassle of nicking loads of people and will give warnings first. There are other time when they are total wankers and will just steam in and nick everyone. Anyone doing an action should be aware of these risks."

True as far as it goes, "Legal". But don't let your ideology blind you to other possible realities. Read the story again, carefully, and consider the possibility that these might be local cops who are in sympathy with the demonstrators. Doesn't mean that would make them stop being cops, enforce what they had to. But it does mean they might do what they can.

It doesn't happen all that often but it does happen and demonstrators need to be alert to the possibilities. Proper effective tacxtics are a little different when this happens. If it seems to be the case (that the cops will help if and when they can) then you need to set things up so that they CAN "go slow" or look the other way without getting into trouble. You need to consider how you can do things so that they CAN be helpful. Get creative.

hundreds of thousands of empty, unused buildings all over the country, locked up until someone can think of a way to make private profit from them...

squat the lot!

To the fatalist 'eze' above.

You want to know why we are in this predicament, go back and study some history books and you will find out why.

Some recent stats from New Statesman magazine:

1) The British Isles has a total (estimated) land mass of 60 million square miles.

2) Urbanised areas comprise just 4 million square miles of this.

The reason this is so dates back to to the enclosure laws of about 200 years ago, which was effectively a legal land grab of the remaining land that the so-called landed gentry and royals didn't already have.

The rest of us poor, dumb, saps had to make do with the 4 million square miles so generously alloted to us.

You see, as with most things to do with this capital and asset-based system we live under the yoke of, the current housing 'crisis' is actually a contrived one, a deliberate scarcity of resources that has been set up to keep property prices artificially high and the profits rolling in for the taxman, estate agents and the banks.

We also have the slight problem of having too many people (about 55 million of us) crammed into a land area that hasn't really gone up or down since the enclosure laws, the other 5 million or so of them luxuriating themselves with ooh, at least several tens of millions of square miles of land. The rest being owned by a combination of Universities, The Queen, the MoD, a few rich farming/food corporations and land/property speculators.

In other words, we have reached critical mass.

So, you see, we end up with this situation where, even if you want to build just one new road somewhere, it will invariably go through ex-farmland, nature reserves or parkland, because, quite simply THERE IS NOWHERE ELSE FOR IT TO GO.

So, if you want to criticise anyone, criticise the whole, sordid little collective of land mafia we have in this green and pleasant land of of ours.
Criticise them for their avarice, their greed, their selfishness, their ignorance, their treachery.

Just don't take out your frustrations on a small band of people who actually give a damn.

It's not their fault.

What planet are you from, "Roadwrecker"?

This one (our Earth) does not have a land area of 60 million square miles (the area of a sphere is 4 pi r squared and the Earth is about 3/4 ocean so if you approximate the radius as 4000 miles (it's less than that) you come out to about 50 million square miles for the land area total).

Not 60 million but 60 thousand squqare miles for England including Wales. If only it were 60 million then we would not be facing the environmental crisis before us. But the reality is that we must somehow come inot sustainable balance with what is here. Since it is impossible to stratch the amount of land we will need to adjust what can be adjusted. That's not a statement about what we necessarily want to do but what will happen once the fossil resoruces become exhausted and there is no choice about it.

If you bother to read my comment properly, you'll realise I was referring to the TOTAL LAND AREA OF THE BRITISH ISLES, NOT THE WHOLE FREAKING PLANET, so, please don't try blinding us all with your smug science, because it's not big and it's not clever.

Actually, it was a misquote on my part.

I meant acres, not miles. But, I can't be bothered to argue the toss with pedants who seem to have nothing better to do than test the rest of us on our mathematics.

Perhaps if you hadn't been quite so smug and insulting I might feel like being nicer to you.

We all make mistakes, so sue me.

errmm, I've just been round the country measuring it up, just to be sure (well, on the web anyway). Road Wrecker - British Isles is 77,871,037 acres. Mike - England and Wales is 37,362,674 acres.

The point is surely that there is lots of land not used for housing for all sorts of reasons. A lot of the land is green and pleasant precisely because it has been owned for centuries and housebuilders haven't been able to get their greedy mitts on it.

We need more housing now, but not due to the population increasing - family units tend to be only 2 generations and dispersed around the country as people are more mobile. There are also more single people needing accommodation.

There are also local reasons why someone wants to build a road. At Linslade, there is a bottleneck of traffic; there are also two councillors living in the road (literally, I'm sure some would hope), and it has had more traffic-calming measures than anywhere else in the locale. Developers may well want the bypass to link across to new planned developments, and there will be nimbyists objecting to their loss of amenity and house value. I'm sure there are people there who want the bypass to reduce the risk of accidents. And of course traffic will increase as a result of a new road because it will be quicker to traverse. And that's not even giving consideration to the real residents, the flora and fauna, or the 7 archeological sites that may be affected.

So the situation's not black and white (never is) - I wouldn't want to be responsible for stopping the bypass and someone being killed or seriously injured on the old road because of the heavy traffic. But then I wouldn't want to be responsible for ripping up our green and (mostly) pleasant land.

So, someone convince me one way or the other. No empty rhetoric or class polemic please.

I DONT GIVE TRESPASSERS ANY WARNING. I SIMPLY BUST.

I AM SICK AND TIRED OF YOU BASTARDS PROTESTING EVERYTHING AND MAKING LIFE DIFFICULT FOR OFFICERS. THEREFORE, I WILL HUNT YOU DOWN AND WHEN I FIND YOU,I WILL MAKE AN EXAMPLE OUT OF YOU

FUCK YOU!