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Date: Sat, 24 Oct 1998 13:21:15 +0100
To: schnews@brighton.co.uk, allsorts@gn.apc.org
From: Cornerstone Resource Centre (cornerstone@gn.apc.org)
Subject: B'ham Eviction - Get in B4 the baliffs!

Please copy and circulate!

Help Us Now!

Get off your arses (if you're not already totally snowed under doing radical social change) and help defend the protest camp against the key link to the biggest road building programme in Britain.

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The baliffs have arrived this morning (Friday 23rd October) at the squat on the route of the Birmingham Northern Relief Road (a.k.a. the new M6!)

The water supply for the Greenwood camp has been turned off.

The security guards from Arthur’s Wood camp at Manchester Airport have disappeared and been replaced by spotty faced teenagers. The ‘experienced’ guards from Manchester are expected to arrive at Birmingham at any time.

On Wednesday 21st the under-sheriff, accompanied by bailiffs, attended the squatted houses on route of the Birmingham Northern Relief Road and read out a 48 hour eviction notice.

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The squat and the tree camp are on the left-hand side of the A38 (going North West) between Bassett's Pole and Weeford.

Catch 105 bus from Bull Street or Corporation Street in Birmingham city centre to Roughley. Get out at the last stop, walk up slip road and approximately 1 mile up the A38 to the ARC quarry / protest site.

Site can be telephoned on: 07971 354045 or 07970 301978.

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BNRR web pages

http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/3081/bnrr.html
http://ds.dial.pipex.com/beep/bnrr/index.htm

also how to get to the camp is on:
http://www.newwave.co.uk/vivid/web/blag/bnrr/rdptest.htm

John Prescott has broken Labour's promise not to build the Birmingham Northern Relief Road (BNRR) - a 6 lane, 27 mile toll motorway through the West Midlands Green Belt.

Construction could start at the earliest in January 1999. Midland Expressway Ltd have now to convince the banks to lend them the money to build the BNRR. Midland Expressway Ltd is a company jointly owned by Kvaerner and Autostrada.

If built the BNRR would:

Cut through Chasewater Heath, a nationally important wildlife site. Increase traffic on the M6 north and south of the West Midlands adding to pressure to widen this motorway. Increase pressure to build on the West Midlands Green Belt. Generate extra traffic, causing more pollution and congestion on already crowded roads. Undermine Labour's planned integrated traffic policy.

7 things they don't really want you to know about the Birmingham Northern Relief Road -

* Despite Labour's claims that the BNRR is needed as a means of alleviating traffic, the Department of Transport's own figures predict that this motorway would generate a 40% traffic increase on the M6 Northwards.
* The Highways Agency are already planning to spend £415 million of public money on widening the M6 to cope with the extra traffic.
* No Cost Benefit Analysis (COBA) of the BNRR has ever been carried out although this would be the method normally used to quantify the economic benefit of a new road. Work by expert consultants suggests that such an exercise would prove the road to be not in the public interest.
* The BNRR would not generate new business regionally or nationally but would lead to the relocation of business away from the inner city and into the Green Belt.
* Frank Dobson, Shadow Secretary of State for Transport at the time, said "The Labour Party is opposed to the building of the BNRR".
* The toll booths will be specially sealed to protect employees from the dangerous chemicals pumped out by cars using the BNRR. Nine schools will be severely affected by the motorway, three backing directly onto the route - the children will have no protection from the toxic fumes.
* Construction is due to start in January 1999 and involves the destruction of miles of Green Belt, 2 Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), archeological sites, Sites of Ecological Interest, homes and farmland.

Inundate Midland Expressway's office - don't let them think about anything else -
Midland Expressway Ltd
20 Eastbourne Terrace
London, W2 6LE

tel: 0171 262 8080

Find out if your bank supports the BNRR and is going to risk your money on this project.

For lots of bumff & blurb, write to -

Midlands Against Super Highway (M*A*S*H)
c/o Friends of the Earth
54-57 Allison Street
Birmingham B5 5TH

*** Stop the Birmingham Northern Relief Road - Or die of Air Pollution ***

road protests 1998   |   road protests (current)   |   movement links