Community Organisation Offers 1/2 Price Solar to Homes in Areas that Need it Most

A pioneering energy-saving community group based in St Werburghs has devised a scheme to help Bristol go solar - more affordably. Called 'Let’s Go Solar', the scheme is looking for Bristol homeowners interested in having a solar-powered hot water system installed in their home for around half the normal price. The energy-saving kits use the power of the sun to heat hot water, enabling homeowners to save on fuel bills as well as reduce their individual carbon footprint.

Particularly welcome are homes deemed deprived according to government statistics such as some parts of St Agnes, St Pauls, Lockleaze, Eastville, Easton, Ashley Down, St Werburgh’s, Knowle, Hartcliffe, Fishponds etc.

Thanks to securing both government funding and local bargaining power, the not-for-profit community group, Ashley Vale Action Group (AVAG), has cut the typical cost of installing solar-powered hot water heating from around £5,000 to approximately £2,500.

Ashley Vale Action Group was one of 38 UK-wide groups, and the only Bristol group, to successfully bid for a share of £3 million from the UK government. The government scheme aims to make renewable technologies accessible to more people in its effort to help reduce the UK’s overall carbon dioxide emissions. In addition, Let’s Go Solar has cut the costs even further by negotiating with nine local solar installers to use their collective power to buy hot water heating kits in bulk.

We should receive expressions of interest by the 28th February, with the majority of systems installed by the end of March so contact us today to check your eligibility and to arrange a free and non-binding survey of your home.

Monday February 4th, 8pm., Cube Cinema, Bristol Entry £3/£4 (But nobody turned away due to lack of funds)

For more than three decades, transnational corporations have been busy buying up what used to be known as the commons -- everything from our forests and our oceans to our broadcast airwaves and our most important intellectual and cultural works. In This Land is Our Land, acclaimed author David Bollier, a leading figure in the global movement to reclaim the commons, bucks the rising tide of anti-government extremism and free market ideology to show how commercial interests are undermining our collective interests. Placing the commons squarely within the American tradition of community engagement and the free exchange of ideas and information, Bollier shows how a bold new international movement steeped in democratic principles is trying to reclaim our common wealth by modeling practical alternatives to the restrictive monopoly powers of corporate elites

The film will be followed by a talk by Sy Taffel from the University of Bristol on commons and the peer-to-peer movement and a discussion on the current rising global commons movement.

See the link below for an introduction to debates around the commons.

From fracking to opencast, biofuels to nuclear, energy companies are turning to more and more extreme ways to extract energy. Despite their nightmarish variety, these tecnologies are connected by their disastrous impacts, and by the corporate agendas driving them.

How do we make our resistance to all these forms of extreme energy just as connected?

As part of the Frack Free February month of action, local coalition, Frack Free Somerset in collaboration with Frack Off and Bristol Rising Tide are leading a workshop on community resistance to extreme energy.

The workshop will look at what 'extreme energy' is and place these developments in the context of the bigger picture before looking at models of resistance around the world. There will be the chance to hear activists from:

Rising Tide Australia, involved in the 'Lock the Gate' & Coal Seam Gas Free Communities. The Copenhagen (Denmark) based network The Climate Collective, who are mobilising against shale gas extraction and fracking in Denmark with the initiative Skifergas - Nej tak! (shalegas no thanks!) Biofuel Watch Stop New Nuclear and the campaign against Hinkley Point C and the local resistance to fracking and coal bed methane in Somerset

Community resistance in the UK will then be explored as well as next steps for Somerset & the South West. http://risingtide.org.uk/bristol

http://frack-off.org.uk

Date: Thursday 31st January, 2013
Time: 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm
Venue: The Hydra Bookshop
Price: Donation

Book Launch – Physical Resistance: A Hundred Year’s of Anti-Fascism by Dave Hann

Large-scale confrontations, disruption of meetings, sabotage and street fighting have been part of the practice of anti-fascism from the early twentieth century until the twenty-first. Rarely endorsed by any political party, the use of collective bodily strength remains a strategy of activists working in alliances and coalitions against fascism. In Physical Resistance famous battles against fascists, from the Olympia arena, Earls Court in 1934 and Cable Street in 1936 to Southall in 1978 and Bradford 2010, are told through the voices of participants. Anarchists, communists and socialists who belonged to a shifting series of anti-fascist organizations relate well-known events alongside many forgotten but significant episodes.

For more on the book details see: http://www.zero-books.net/books/physical-resistance