A hill to die on

One of our local SSI's in under threat from developers who want to cut down most of the trees that are home to endangered Red Squirrels and full of lots of other wildlife. They want to build a holiday park with a load of lodges, gym, sauna, poll and restaurant, they very kindly say that local swill be able to use these facilities without having to stay at the park, most locals kindly say words with lots of FF's to the developers. Not only will this development destroy a local amneity thats also a big draw with tourists wanting to watch the wildlife, but there's been no thought for local infrastructure. Our roads are already at breaking point, and with the port at Holyhead becoming a freeport roads will be overwhelmed. What about water and sewerage, waste and the quality of life for those who already live here? The people behind this always say it will bring jobs, but what kind of jobs? Will they be proper, well paid and permanent jobs, or will they be seasonal, zero-hours and minimum wage? We have plenty of those already and local people are already priced out, we have problems attracting workers anyway for the existing businesses serving the tourism industry.

Like many local people I intend to protest if they get to the stage of chopping trees down, I know we probably won't stop it, that we will end up arrested, and all that goes with it, we may end up physically injured too. But this sort of thing has to stop, this is my hill and choose to die on it.

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  • Builders expanding foam with the long pipe will after careful application as far into the exhaust sytem as you can get (late at night in the dark when no one is around might be a tiem when one can aply it without interrruption) will render any large earth moving type machines quite inoperable...  

    Obviously, one should check ones local laws and make sure that this non-violent protest method is legal in your jurisdiction, if you decide  to employ it as a part of your protest, but for anyoen who has a pressing need to make a large engine unstartable for security reasons perhaps, in a reversible but definitely time and resurce consuming way, that's how you do it. Make sure you use enough of the urethane foam, with the longest applicator you can find...

    Always protest responsibly, but effectively.

    This is the 121 century and placards and sticks and stones and petrol bombs do not work as well as they used to. The weapons that count now are time and money. You cost them enough time and money and they will give up. 

    Go read Sun Tzu's "art of war" (It's tiny, and a real good read for this sort of thing).

    Protesting and getting arrested is dead lame, get together with local people and brainstorm ways of making it as difficult and time consuming to for the opposition to do anything.

    Brains wins these things now, not brawn. It's all about winning propaganda war, and wasting their time and resources when you are battling a large and powerful opponent. When negotiating I always like to have worked out the path I don't want to go down as well as the paths that I do.

    Good luck. Remember the 1980's when Wales fairly sucessfully repellled the English invasion?

    My friend Waseem's family farm in Wales caught fire mysteriously during that time, forcing them to move to Birmingham where the liviing is easier.. Only happened because some Welsh people really wanted wales to remain Welsh, and were prepared to do more than "appealng to higher authority". As far as I am aware they didn't hurt anyone just made it impossible to "settle in". 

  • Go read Sun Tzu's "art of war"

    I choose to follow his quote "Be where your enemy is not.”

    I'll be in bed with a nice cuppa!

  • YOUR quality of life isn't under threat...

    Neither is mine in that way, but I feel "empathy" (I think!) for her situation.

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