Dr Pat Hart is third from left in the photo above. He was a schoolboy at Pilton Academy and studied at Petroc. He gave a most moving talk - ‘Is the Climate Crisis worth placing your career and freedom in jeopardy?’ - in the North Devon Green Party Autumn Lecture series in 2024. When he was in prison many of us sent him letters. I sent a book that seems to me a very useful model for memoir writing - Lara Pawson’s much-admired This is the place to be (2016). The handling of Dr Hart’s case drew criticism from the United Nations special rapporteur for environmental defenders, Michel Forst, who visited him in prison. He has called for the termination of fitness-to-practise proceedings against him and described his treatment as a ‘double punishment’. I hope Dr Pat can now resume his career as a doctor. Marvellous that 24 members of Palestine Action were acquitted by a jury too.
Stop Press: the Geoffrey Cox / Cumbria coalmine meeting on Tuesday 24 February at 7pm has been moved from St Mary’s Church to the Pannier Pantry, 1 Bridgeland Street, Bideford EX39 2PS at the new time of 7.15pm.
Photo: Brian Garman
We held our Vigil as usual on Wednesday. Later that day the UN Security Council, chaired by our Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper, discussed the latest Israeli outrages. The Israeli landgrabbing and killing in the West Bank continue with token sighs of disapproval from the US, UK and others who should be vigorously intervening. The situation is ‘deteriorating rapidly’ in the occupied West Bank, the UN’s Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, Rosemary DiCarlo, said in a briefing late on Wednesday. ‘Widespread raids have been accompanied by home takeovers, mass detentions, movement restrictions and repeated displacement of Palestinian families, particularly in the north’, DiCarlo said. ‘We are witnessing the gradual de facto annexation of the West Bank’, she said. In the last few weeks, Israel has launched a contentious land regulation process that will deepen its control in the occupied West Bank. The BBC still won’t drag senior ministers to the microphone to explain our feeble lack of action.
The disregard of international law by the US is being normalised - BBC presenters don’t raise it when they should - so I am proud of our government for not allowing the US to use the Diego Garcia airbase in its threatened illegal attack on Iran.
RIP Jesse Jackson: I was in Hyde Park in 2003 to hear him eloquently address the largest demo in our history. Between 1.5 and 2 million marched to try to prevent the illegal Bush-Blair invasion of Iraq. Now President Twerp wants a re-run of that disaster, this time in Iran. Has anyone explained why Israel can have nuclear weapons but Iran can’t? How gratifying that the Supreme Court ruled on Friday that Twerp’s tariffs are illegal.
I have been reporting potholes again. We have many more following the recent frosts. I was alerted to this one in Landkey by Paul Prouse, who does maintenance jobs for the parish council. Others I reported recently have already been done - including some I thought didn’t meet the criteria but were close by and fixed anyway by the DCC Highways team. Thank you! I was also very pleased that the police visited a property in Swimbridge which has been at the heart of a string of Anti Social Behaviour incidents that residents found deeply upsetting. I have been working with NDC officers and the police on this and had a phone call on Thursday morning from the chair of our parish council who happened to see four police vehicles and eight officers arrive at the problem residence. I got there in time to see four officers leaving the house with a large evidence bag. Like the residents, I am looking forward to further information and an end to the disturbances in our much-loved village.
My daily constitutional near Codden Hill regularly brings me close to murmurations. Often they are formed by hundreds of Linnets and sometimes Goldfinches but this one, unusually, comprised Wood Pigeons in large numbers. My walk is enlivened by early Spring flowers such as Celandines, Daffodils, Early Dog Violets, Periwinkles, Primroses and Snowdrops. Best of all, however, is the arrival of frogspawn on our pond this week. Thank you for reading.
