Rob Edwards

Anti-Trump campaigner threatened with violence

from Sunday Herald, 17 January 2016

Police in Scotland are investigating a threat of physical violence against a campaigner who is battling the American hard right in her bid to ban Donald Trump from the UK.

Suzanne Kelly, a 54-year-old New Yorker who has made her home in Aberdeen, has complained to Police Scotland about an email warning her not to leave the UK and suggesting that she could end up picking cotton.

Kelly started a petition calling on the UK government to bar Trump, the front-runner to be the Republican Party’s candidate for US president, from entering the UK. It has been signed by over 574,000 people, and is due to be debated by the UK parliament on 18 January.

Last week Kelly went on The O’Reilly Factor, a widely-watched Fox News talk show hosted by the tough-talking right-wing pundit, Bill O’Reilly. “He didn’t eviscerate me, which was good,” Kelly said.

“He’s a staunch conservative showman who got more than a bit of an aggressive twist to him. Clearly O’Reilly and Trump have a bit of bromance going on.”

For the four minutes she was on air Kelly was allowed to speak for just 1 minute and 15 seconds, with O’Reilly talking for the remaining 2 minutes 45 seconds. It looked like more of a harangue than an interview.

While insisting that he didn’t agree with all of Trump’s comments, O’Reilly highlighted problems allegedly caused by Mexican immigrants in the US and Muslim refugees in Europe. He said it was wrong of Kelly to accuse Trump of “hate speech” and try to have him banned.

Police accused of harassing nuclear bomb convoy protestors

from The National, 12 January 2016

Scotland's police force has been accused of harassing peace campaigners who followed a nuclear bomb convoy by road around Glasgow and Stirling on Saturday afternoon.

An SNP MSP is to complain to the chief constable of Police Scotland after activists from the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (SCND) were pulled over near Stirling, and their car was subjected to a detailed roadworthiness check. Students filming the convoy from a roundabout were also questioned by police.

Heavily guarded 20-vehicle convoys regularly transport nuclear weapons in need of maintenance between the Burghfield bomb factory in Berkshire and the Royal Naval Armaments Depot at Coulport on Loch Long. The convoys are often tracked by anti-nuclear campaigners, but they say this is the first time they have been hassled by police in recent years.

The SNP MSP Bill Kidd, co-convenor of the Scottish Parliament’s cross party group on nuclear disarmament, accused the Ministry of Defence (MoD) police who guard the convoy of tipping off Police Scotland.

“It seems to be a waste of police time to be stopping and questioning law-abiding peace campaigners, who are simply performing a legitimate public service by keeping a watchful eye on the transport of nuclear missiles along our roads,” he said.

“It appears that the MoD has, without good reason, requested that police officers detain peaceful nuclear disarmers by means of carrying out spurious car searches. I will be writing to the chief constable asking that this unwarranted practice should stop henceforth.”

Record rainfall and floods: climate pollution’s ‘new normal’

from Sunday Herald, 10 January 2016

The record-breaking rainfall and devastating floods that have drenched Scotland over the last few weeks are the “new normal” – and they could force communities to abandon built-up areas and move to higher ground.

Experts canvassed by the Sunday Herald warn that we will have to get used to more winters like this one, as climate pollution from vehicles and industry warms the globe and wreaks havoc with the weather. Without action to curb carbon emissions, they say, it is likely to get much worse.

“There is no natural weather any more,” declared Professor James Curran, the former chief executive of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency and a leading climate expert. “The world is now warmer by one degree centigrade than it would be without climate change – so there is no weather anywhere, at any time, that isn’t man-made these days.”

It was wasting time to endlessly debate to what extent the current bad weather was caused by climate pollution, he argued. After last month’s climate summit in Paris, the priority was to tackle the problem.

“It’s been long predicted and is almost certain now that, whatever we do, flooding both from the sea and from rivers will become more severe and at least twice as frequent by 2100,” he said.

Concerns over safety at Rosyth after emergency exercise failures

from Sunday Herald, 10 January 2016

The safety regime at the Rosyth naval dockyard in Fife has been called into question after an emergency exercise failed to demonstrate adequate arrangements for rescuing casualties from an accident.

The UK government’s nuclear safety watchdog has ordered Babcock, the multinational company that runs the dockyard for the Royal Navy, to rerun the exercise, codenamed Nightstar, in March because of mistakes made last September.

An inspection by the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) concluded that there were flaws in the way that staff looked after injured people during the exercise. There were also communication and command problems in dealing with the imagined accident.

The revelation has prompted “unease” about safety at the naval base, according to the local MP. Anti-nuclear campaigners have highlighted the serious risks of accidents, and demanded higher standards.

The problems with the Nightstar exercise on 30 September 2015 were disclosed in the ONR’s latest three-monthly report on Rosyth, posted online. Though inspectors thought that some of the exercise procedures were adequate, others were not.