Action:Other actions

Today, on one of the busiest shopping days of the year, activists in both London and Norwich dressed up as Santas Against Excessive Consumption and hit the high streets to sing a different tune to the usual buy, buy, buy madness of the holiday season.

In Norwich, bearing a festive banner reading Lapland is Melting and singing subverted Christmas carols (Welcome to Consumer Wonderland, Oh Little Town of Chapelfield, etc.), the Santas set up outside the temple to consumption that is Chapelfield Mall.

To mark Buy Nothing Day, 12 people from Norwich Rising Tide held a Rat Race in the city centre.

Activists created a mobile rat race that stopped off at the city’s busiest malls and high streets.

People in rat costumes hurried hither and thither between the edges of the rat race maze, built out of placards reading Work Harder, Earn More Money, Buy More Things, Keep Going, while Fat Cats advised that happiness was just around the corner if the rats would only keep shopping!

Santas Against Excessive Consumption (SAEC) went out to play for the second year running on Saturday December 16th 2006, dropping in on the Shell-sponsored Natural History Museum (NHM) on the way to the consumer hell that is Oxford Street.

'On 26th July 2006 I set off from the end of the M27 at the edge of Southampton en route to Glastonbury. I sat on my bike loaded up with panniers and pulling a bike trailer full of tent and bedding stuff. I was allowing 5 days to get there, which I realise was not particularly challenging by professional cyclists standards. However, I am by no definition a ‘professional’ or even an experienced cyclist. I’d only made my decision a couple of weeks beforehand and had done little preparation. I’ve got 2 arthritic knees and was still aching from a minor back injury a few days before. Storms were forecast ahead. Accusations of ‘foolhardiness’ seemed to just fuel the compelling determination I had developed for the journey!

Activists from Reading Rising Tide protested the absence of Climate Changes from the election agenda. A Banner was held up and flyers distributed at the entrance to the Rivermead leisure centre where the count for the Reading East and West seats where held.

Climate Change featured very little in the any of the campaigns by major poltical parties who preferred to concentrate on issues such as Refugees, the Ongoing War in Iraq and the Health service. Climate Change affects many of these issues (i.e. the recent heat wave in 'France resulted in an additional $748 million pledged to adapt failing hospital emergency services' and '25 million people world-wide were uprooted for environmental reasons' and that 'by the year 2050, there could be 150 million' environmental refugees. Many people believe Iraq was attacked and occupied to control oil resources a major contributor to climate change)

Police arrested two protesters at a noisy demonstration protesting the climate policies of G8 ministers meeting today in the City of London.

About 40 activists beat pots and pans and blew whistles to demonstrate their opposition to G8 climate policies, arguing that they served the interests of big business rather than the world's poor likely to be most affected by global warming...

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