legal

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Meet the defendants in the Kingsnorth Six trial:

Kevin Drake
Kevin Drake is 44 and lives in a Wiltshire village with his wife and daughter. He is a freelance industrial rope access safety supervisor. Kev is a proud father and values humour and family life, and enjoys being outdoors and likes interacting with the natural world through activities such as caving, camping, rock climbing and body boarding. He has been volunteering for Greenpeace for ten years.

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On Monday, six brave Greenpeace souls will be appearing at Maidstone Crown Court for the start of a trial centring around Kingsnorth, coal and climate change.

In October last year, they took a personal stand to protect the environment and climbed to the top of the smokestack at Kingsnorth coal-fired power station in Kent.

Now, the Kingsnorth Six (Ben Stewart, Emily Hall, Huw Williams, Kevin Drake, Tim Hewke and Will Rose) are being prosecuted for criminal damage.

A Greenpeace volunteer on the boom at Faslane nuclear submarine base in Scotland

I don’t know if your remember our Trident Tour last year - that five week frenzy of Faslane blockading, crane climbing, arrests, solitary confinement, losing a ship, getting it back again, bearing witness, gigs, press conferences, political events and rallies.

Well, it’s been a long time coming but, over a year after the event, I can give you the final results of the legal wranglings that ensued.

Jubilant climbers on top of the chimney at Kingsnorth power station in October

I've been so busy with the launch of EfficienCity (our blueprint for a climate-friendly town) that I haven't had a chance to update you on all the goings on in our coal campaign since we delivered our alternative energy speech at the government / industry shindig last Wednesday.

On Friday morning, listeners of Radio 4's Today programme heard a withering attack on the proposed new coal plant at Kingsnorth from top Nasa scientist (and the world's most eminent climate scientist) James Hansen. The plans for the UK's first new coal plant in 30 years were, he said, a "terrible idea" which “will destroy the efforts of millions of citizens to reduce their carbon emissions”.

Just a very quick update. The Heathrow injunction hearing has closed and Mrs Justice Swift will be ruling at 10am on Monday.

If you want some weekend reading to keep you going until then, The Times has a piece on the legal basis of the injunction attempt (an anti-stalkers law), the BBC has a round-up of yesterday's happenings at the High Court and Sian Berry mulls over what it all means in the New Statesman.

The hearing on BAA's Heathrow injunction began today and, so far, it mostly seems to have involved debate about whom BAA did and didn't intend to injunct.

From PA (snipped for length):

Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone has just joined the fray, speaking out against BAA's injunction. (If BAA wins its case next Wednesday, five million people would be banned from Heathrow airport, parts of two motorways and the entire Picadilly Line on the London Underground.)

Update - 1st August: The hearing is underway.

Here's a doozy for you: on Wednesday, the aviation industry is taking five million people - including a lot of their own staff - to court. If you're a member or supporter of a group that's concerned about climate change, the chances are you're a defendant too.

The industry seems to want to ban five million of us from Heathrow and all routes to the airport, including the Piccadilly line, parts of the rail network, and sections of the M25 and M4.

"We have made the decision to continue with nuclear power."

With those ten words, Gordon Brown managed to break the law, sabotage an ongoing public consultation and do a U-turn on his promise to listen to the people - all during his first Prime Minister's Question Time.

As head of government, Brown's meant to be abiding by a high court ruling that says the government can't legally make a decision on whether to build new nuclear power stations before a proper public consultation has been carried out.

The last consultation, said Justice Sullivan, was "seriously flawed"; the process was "manifestly inadequate and unfair" because insufficient information had been made available by the government for consultees to make an "intelligent response".

It now looks like this consultation is as much of a sham as the last one; the government seems to have already made up its mind on nukes, before the consultation's even really underway.

Here's a pdf of the letter our lawyers sent Brown this morning.