Gwyneth's personal blog

Monday 24th March, a cold night, Mars very bright, more a livid pimple than a pinprick now the moon is down; frost on the decking, & down to the Magistrates' Court, Edward Street for 9am, to join the throng for the media (another meat in the room call), as today's the day Caroline Lucas goes on trial for obstructing the highway. Talked to the Lush contingent, starting their working day like this with the campaigning firm's full approval, and to a sussex university Climate Change student, who tells me her lecturers are clearly against fracking, but maybe "they can't say so". (Oh? Why not?) & another young man whose party had all come down from london and were staying in Brighton B&B (who says fracking isn't good for the economy?). We discussed the BBC's piecharts (provided by the energy industry) on the tv last night, demonstrating totally fictitious UK dependency on Gazprom, But the news coverage, he said, is shifting a bit, and I agree: you hear far more now about how difficult it's going to be to get communities to accept the devastation they face, how over-the-top violent the police have become, ( I mean, it's not just ordinary police violence anymore) and less about the puzzling antics of a few bad apples. And that's a good thing. Ate a chocolate biscuit, waved a yellow triangle for Greater Manchester, and cheered as my MP arrived. That's all so far.

I'm off there again at noon, it's going to be a disrupted few days, and more on this later.

Later: It seems the trial of the Balcombe Five may need longer than five days. Not much achieved today before the lunch break & now I'm back at my desk for the afternoon.

See Radio Free Brighton for details of tomorrow's public meeting in Brighton. Brighthelm Centre, North Road 7pm 9.30pm, and please check the Frack Free Sussex page.