GAY BISHOP - New Reading Local Radical Newsletter - Bumper 1st Edition!

Welcome to Gay Bishop – Reading’s new radical local
newsletter.

Why Gay Bishop? Well, it’s a name with a local
connection; it made us giggle when we thought of it;
and we thought it would be a slightly more
eye-catching name than ‘The Reading Radical
Newsletter’.

This is what you’ll find in our bumper first edition:

• Bus-ted: Fares up and services cut on Reading
Buses.
• …and Zapped: A giant research laser for the Atomic
Weapons Establishment.
• Gender Equality declared in Reading!? Or is it?
The Women’s Information Centre think otherwise.
• Watching them, watching us: National identity
cards. Worried? You should be!
• The Third Thames Bridge …A bridge too far?
• Private Property: Who makes the decisions on this
town’s future?
• Trim yer bush: A polite request to householders.
• So just who are this Gay Bishop lot anyway? A bit
more about us and what we’re up to.


Bus-ted:
Fares up, services down

Last month Reading Buses announced that they were
withdrawing services on bus routes 14 and 15 – or
rather, announced no such thing. The first that most
passengers knew about the cuts was when they turned up
to catch their bus and found a notice on the bus stop
telling them that the service was no longer running.
Public consultation on the route closures was limited
to a tiny announcement on an obscure internet website
for the Traffic Commissioner.

Closure of the route 14 and 15 circular service means
that there is now no direct route from Southcote and
Whitley to the Royal Berkshire Hospital. A patient
travelling to the hospital for an appointment by bus
from Southcote now has to take a bus into the town
centre and then take a second bus to the hospital –
twice the waiting, longer journey times, and more to
pay in fares.

A couple of weeks earlier Reading Buses told us that
fares on their bus routes would be increasing at above
the inflation rate, blaming increases in fuel and
insurance costs for the price rises. Under the new
fares it now costs a single mum and four kids £8.40 to
catch a bus from Whitley for a return journey into the
town centre.

Reading Buses is owned by Reading Borough Council, who
have set themselves a target to increase bus passenger
journeys by 25% in their Local Transport Plan.
Cutting services and increasing fares seems a strange
way of encouraging people to use the buses to us but
hey, what do we know – we’re just the passengers, not
the council experts and transport consultants who
wrote the plan

The major schemes listed in the Local Transport Plan –
which are where most of the money for transport in
Reading will be spent - say nothing about bus
transport. Instead, most of the money is to be spent
on schemes benefiting private motorists – showing the
real priorities for Reading’s Labour Council. These
schemes include increasing the size of Junction 11 (a
whopping £64 million), introducing a one-way scheme on
the Inner Distributor Road (£8 million), and building
new bridges for Cow Lane (another £8 million). Great
news if you’re lucky enough to own a car, but not so
good if you’re a pensioner or young person forced to
rely on public transport, or if you’re worried about
the contribution car use makes to global climate
change.

• The cost of using buses has gone up by 16% in real
terms since Labour came into power in 1997. The cost
of using a private car has gone down by 6%.


…and Zapped!

Although there’s no money to provide a decent bus
service in Reading, it looks like there’s plenty of
dosh available to build new nuclear weapons. Down the
road at Aldermaston, the Atomic Weapons Establishment
(AWE) is gearing up to build a replacement to the
Trident nuclear weapons system, which is nearing the
end of its life. This year more than half a billion
pounds have been spent at Aldermaston, with a further
billion and a half in the budget for the next two
years. Never mind improving the bus service – we
reckon that that kind of money would be enough to buy
everyone in Reading their own bus.

A key part of the work at Aldermaston is construction
of a new laser facility which will be used to model
nuclear explosions. The Orion laser which AWE want to
build will be powerful enough to simulate conditions
found at the centre of a star or within a nuclear
detonation behind five foot thick walls. The laser
facility will cost £20 million and take 30 months to
construct, and it is essential for the research work
needed to build new nuclear weapons.

West Berkshire Council will be considering the
planning notice for the Orion laser at the Eastern
Area Planning Committee meeting at the Calcot Centre,
High View, Royal Avenue (to be confirmed) on the
evening of 23rd November. Come along to the meeting
to show your opposition to new nukes and to make the
point that you don’t have to go to all the trouble of
invading Iraq if you want to find weapons of mass
destruction.

The ‘Block the Builders’ campaign are taking direct
action to prevent construction of the Orion laser and
other upgrade work at Aldermaston: more info at
 http://www.blockthebuilders.org.uk and
 http://www.aldermaston.net


Gender equality declared in Reading!

As women have now achieved equality the Women's
Information Centre, based in Silver Street, will no
longer be needed. In the bad old days when women were
oppressed, subjected to violence and excluded from the
public sphere it provided free pregnancy testing,
legal advice and counselling as well as access to
alternative therapies. Perhaps more importantly the
centre used to provide a safe space reserved for women
to come and chat. The Centre was also a base for an
Eating Disorder Support Group and housed a large
library of books on Women's issues. Women could come
to the Centre for information on anything and
everything from domestic violence to health issues.

The situation for women is SO much better now in the
UK because ONLY:

1 incident of domestic violence is reported to the
police every minute.
2 women per week are killed by a male partner or
former partner.
50% of women have total incomes of less than £100 per
week.
20% of young women are on a diet all the time or most
of the time.

HOLD ON A MINUTE - WOMEN STILL HAVE A REALLY SHIT
TIME!!

So, with such a clear need why is the Centre
struggling to obtain funding from the Council? In the
Council's eyes the Centre is failing to provide a
service to enough women but number crunching fails to
appreciate the quality of the provision. The Centre
does need to change, it needs to move with the times
and this can only be done with the full participation
of the women of
Reading. That's you!

If you have time, money or ideas to support the future
of the centre please get in touch or drop in. It's
YOUR Centre. Unless of course you think that women are
now equal...


Reading Women’s Information Centre: 0118 931 1939
e-mail:  redoryellow@hotmail.com


Watching them, watching us
Checking out the Government’s plans for increased
social and economic control

“A national ID card for the UK is overly ambitious,
extremely expensive and will not be a panacea against
terrorism or fraud, although it will make a company
like mine very happy.” - Roberto Tavano, a biometrics
specialist for Unisys.

Last week the Government managed to shove the
beginnings of their plans for national ID cards and
(more importantly) a national identity database
through a third Commons vote, albeit with a reduced
majority. They will now face tougher opposition in the
Lords - but anyone with any common sense knows we
can’t trust the upper classes to protect the
marginalised, vulnerable and low waged from state
power, so I guess we'll have to do it ourselves. But
if even the companies and politicians involved admit
its got nothing to do with the stated excuses, I
reckon we should find out what it’s really all
about....

Are you feeling brave? Well everyone's out to get you
- terrorists, migrants, the unemployed, travellers -
the list is endless. We ain’t sure what they do, but
we're sure they're bad people! Of course that's pretty
much bollocks but even if we really did need to be
terrified of everyone else, ID has got nothing to do
with it. For starters the technology ain’t exactly
spot on - a bloke in the US who had gone bald and had
a wrinkled forehead was told by a scanner he had an
upside down face! It won’t stop terror or fraud
either. The 7/7 bombers were Brits, Microsoft say the
database will attract crime and why we should care
about benefits fraud anyway, when the rich avoid tax
totally and most of our taxes go on wars and corporate
exploitation, is beyond me. And these cards will be
bloody expensive! £30 say New Labour, £300 reply the
London School of Economics, and all for the luxury of
further moves towards a police state - similar current
legislation is used overwhelmingly against ethnic
minorities and political dissidents. No prizes for
guessing who’ll be targeted most under ID laws then...

So what is the point? To find the real reasons we need
to look at the retail sector. Market research
technology, creating databases from credit and loyalty
card transactions, has helped companies ‘profile’
their customers. Tiny new radio transmitters called
RFID’s now allow companies to ‘track’ sales, thefts
and even us! However, the public sector hasn’t been
keeping up. So New Labour are pushing ‘e-Government’
and computerising everything. Though their attempts in
the Pensions and Education departments totally failed,
ID is the next major scheme.

In Feb 2002, Blunkett tried to introduce an
entitlement card. This was shot down in flames, but
the ID cards bill aims at the same things - economic
entitlement and its flipside, economic discrimination.
The ID card bill could rightly be called the ‘Identity
Register Bill’ since it is more about the database
than the cards. Personal details held on this database
can be given to any Tom, Dick or Harry - ranging from
immigration officials, the Police, NHS and benefits
offices to banks, credit organisations and employers.
You can bet your bottom dollar that this will be used
to persecute the most vulnerable people in society as
well as continuing the recent attacks on the
unemployed through welfare ‘reform’.

As with most other state exploits, this bill is about
increasing state control and decreasing social
autonomy, aiming at crushing those who attempt to
survive in the grey and black economies, those who are
deemed ’useless’ by capitalism and those who dream of
constructing our own directly-democratic economies.
This scheme means if we are not ‘useful’, in other
words not contributing enough to the wealth of our
bosses, we count for nothing. So probably worth
fighting then eh?

For more information please see the excellent article
available at:

 http://www.libcom.org/hosted/af/ace/anon.html

To get involved please see:

 http://www.defy-id.org.uk
 http://www.no2id.co.uk


The Third Thames Bridge … A bridge too far

For the last 82 years the debate has been raging about
whether Reading should have a Third Thames Bridge. You
may think the fact that in 82 years no-one has been
able to provide a convincing case for a bridge would
be enough for most people? Wrong.

Impact of additional traffic on roads in South
Oxfordshire that aren't capable of taking it...not our
problem. Swathe of land around Caversham stretching
eastwards towards Shiplake which the South East
Regional Assembly (SEERA) could see as ripe for
environmentally destructive development...maybe if we
cosy up to those nice developers they'll throw us some
section 106 crumbs from their table? Detrimental
impact on sensitive river environments...don't worry,
those pesky animals can't vote.

In 1998, consultants Transport Research Laboratory
(TRL) Limited were commissioned to investigate
cross-Thames travel problems. The TRL report concluded
that “a Third Thames Bridge would draw extra traffic
into the area and through adjacent settlements in
South Oxfordshire and former Berkshire with
consequential adverse impacts over a wide area”. That
didn't put Reading council off though, they just hired
another bunch of consultants to give them the answer
that they wanted. In 2002 consultants Atkins were
commissioned and reported that “the case for the
bridge be considered further”. Reading Council 1,
common sense 0.

We should be managing our traffic problems in a
sustainable way (i.e. not shafting future
generations), and not following in the footsteps or
more accurately car tracks of the Conservatives'
rubbish 'predict and provide' road building policy,
which far from solving traffic problems actually
increased them. We should be reducing peoples need to
travel through promoting local shopping and working,
making it easier and quicker for people to travel by
foot, pedal and bus through dedicated bus and cycle
lanes and changes in road priority, promoting car
sharing and car clubs and dissuading people from
unsustainable travel by congestion charging, and a
reduction in car centric infrastructure.

The Third Thames Bridge, a bridge too far? Hell yeah!


Private property

Question: what on earth is a ‘property-focused event
that brings the leading players in Reading’s ongoing
transformation to an invited audience’?

Answer: in plain English, it’s the Reading Property
Conference: a meeting where Council chiefs, government
officials, and company directors get together to
discuss plans to sell off and build on land in the
town centre and surrounding countryside. The Reading
Borough Council sponsored property conference took
place at the Old Town Hall last month giving council
members and officers the chance to rub shoulders and
drink champagne with the likes of John Madejski; the
director of Prudential Property Investment Managers;
Thames Water’s Property Director; and the editor of
Property Week magazine. No room for any local
residents, community groups, or environmentalists,
though: they don’t qualify for membership of the
‘invited audience’.

Hold on a moment, though. We thought it was the
council’s job to protect the local environment, not
flog it off to property developers. Er, no.
According to Steve Waite, the Labour councillor
responsible for Reading’s environment, protesting
about the scale of development in Reading is “wrong,
wrong, wrong, wrong.”

So what about the 82% of passers-by who participated
in a survey conducted by campaigners outside the
conference venue and said they thought the council
should give precedence to protecting the environment
and green spaces, not property development? They’re
wrong too, apparently: “The way that Reading has
changed over the last 10 years is popular with the
people”, says Council leader David Sutton.

The survey results make it obvious that the Reading
Conference in no way represents the future that local
people want for their town, and shows just how out of
touch the council are with the people they are
supposed to be representing. People who took part in
the street survey had no doubt that there is a
conflict of interest in stitching up the town’s future
with business interests behind closed doors at a
private meeting.

The corporate sector is taking over in Reading, and
events like this show that the Council is more
interested in the views of big business than what
ordinary people think. So if you want to have your
say in the future of the town the answer’s simple:
don’t bother joining Friends of the Earth or your
local Globe group: all you need to do is set up your
own property development company.


Trim yer bush!

A little request from one of our friends who is
visually impaired.

Is your bush budding out of control? Are your shrubs
sprawling into the street? Autumn is a good time to
cut back the trees and bushes outside your house.
Overgrown bushes which have spread out into the street
during the summer force passers-by to the edge of the
pavement or into the road and give pedestrians a
soaking when they brush past after the rain – not very
pleasant.

If you or anyone you know is visually impaired, you
will know what a big problem overgrown hedges and
trees can be. Being whacked in the face by a branch
is no joke. Those with mobility problems or who push
a baby buggy will know all about stretches of pavement
which have become impassable because of overhanging
branches and slippery leaves on the pavement. So help
improve your neighbourhood by cutting back your
full-on foliage. If you can’t do it yourself, ask a
friend to help, or if you’re a tenant, get your
landlord to do it. And if you’re feeling really keen
and green, don’t forget to compost the cuttings!

Here at Gay Bishop we can think of another Bush that
needs cutting down to size, but that’s another story…


So just who are this Gay Bishop lot anyway?

Gay Bishop is produced on a voluntary basis by an open
collective of local people and activists who want to
shine the spotlight on the news stories that local
politicians would prefer stayed hidden - and get to
the roots of the ones they gloss over! Our roots are
in the direct action movements, but we welcome new
members who support our principles – please get in
touch if you would like to get involved or want more
information. Our email address is
 readinggaybishop@yahoo.co.uk or you can write to us at
Gay Bishop, c/o RISC, 35-39 London Street, Reading,
RG1 3JE (but we prefer email!).

We’re hoping to put out Gay Bishop on a roughly
monthly basis, but as we’re only a small group and
aren’t always the most dynamic bunch in the world
(read lazy, really lazy, and in the pub too much),
we’ll need your help to do this! We need ideas for
stories, writers, people with experience at using the
web, and donations. We also want to know what you’re
up to, so please send us details of forthcoming events
to include in our ‘what’s happening’ section.

Most important of all, we need new readers – so if you
liked Gay Bishop, forward it to your mates and
subscribe to receive future editions. To subscribe,
just send a message to
 reading_gay_bishop-subscribe@yahoogroups.co.uk – we’ll
be sending out all our future editions through this
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out!

And finally, we’d like your feedback. What did you
think of the first edition of Gay Bishop? Essential
reading or boring old bollocks? Let us know and tell
us how we can make improvements so that our next
edition is even better.