The Prostitute State and the fossil fuel industry’s corruption of British Cycling.. !!
Attached is a little 3 minute silent protest video I made on Friday at the London Bike Show.
PLEASE share share share !!!
It objects to the corporate sponsorship of British Cycling, the national governing body for cycling in Britain by HSBC, Britain’s largest banking investor in dirty fossil fuels.
HSBC invested £17,000,000,000 (£17 BILLION!) in fossil fuel poisonous pollution last year.
Fossil fuel pollution is THE largest killer of people who cycle in Britain.
40,000 people were killed by fossil fuel pollution last year.
There are an estimated 400,000 others living with terrible diseases associated with it, including heart and lung diseases, dementia and cancers and it is stunting the lung growth in young children who live in high traffic pollution areas, damaging them for life.
In addition, fossil fuel carbon emissions are by far the greatest existential emergency environmental threat facing Britain today.
It threatens our major cities and coastlines with inundation from rising sea-levels, it is already damaging our fragile damaged eco-systems, globally hundreds of thousands of people are already dying from its consequences and millions have already been made into climate refugees, with potential hundreds of millions more in coming decades.
Thus it is totally unacceptable for British Cycling to accept such blood money!
Britain, for health, economic and environmental reasons. simply cannot afford to not have the vast majority of our population cycling.
When I wrote my book about the corruption of democracy in the UK, having spent 7 years on the board of the Liberal Democrats and 2 years as its Deputy Chair, I described what I called the four pillars of The Prostitute State:
1/ The corrupted political system
2/ The prostituted media
3/ Our perverted academia
4/ The thieving tax-haven system
One of the ways that the corrupted tax-thieving fosil-fuel corporates try to legitimise their destructive behaviour via the prostituted media pillar, is to invest in very high public profile charities, such as museums, theatres and sporting bodies.
Following the prostitution of cycling by British Cycling, all of its major national sporting events and even the national cycling centre will now be drenched in HSBC’s death drenched logo.
Even those donning British Cycling’s lycra cycling gear are now drenched in this shameful logo, doing HSBC’s dirty promotion work for them on televised events even as they cycle!!
Indeed, I have rarely seen such a total takeover of a sporting body’s logo, as I have with the shocking merger of the British Cycling’s logo with HSBC’s.
Their website sales page says:
“Great Britain Cycling Cycling team Kit – Wear Your Team’s Kit with Pride”
It is outrageous that they now have some of Britain’s greatest cyclists promoting this fossil fuel investor on TV screens around the world at global sporting events.
And it is beyond words that British Cycling will even manipulate innocent kids whose lungs are being damaged by this corporation’s investments, into promoting them.
I was slightly nervous filming this video beside the British Cycling HSBC stand at the London Cycling Show.
A British Cycling official approached us as we were filming as you can see in the video, as we did not edit it out.
He asked me what I was doing. I said we were filming re their sponsorship and kept going.
He then said “I know what you are doing. But I cannot stop you” and he then left us alone.
You can see my hand was shaking a little afterwards as I continued, as I was nervous that the Excel Exhibition Centre security guards might have been called.
Having been fairly brutally arrested 5 times last year whilst peacefully protesting at various climate protection events, I get quite stressed by such encounters.
But we got it done without any other interference thankfully.
British Cycling needs to be on the side of people cycling, not those who are profiting from our deaths.
They need to clean up their act, dust themselves down and then raise their game as one of the key proponents of road cycling for ALL the community, not just the sporting elite.
We all need them urgently to do this. They are hugely important to all of us who care about encouraging Britons to drop the car habit and take up the bike habit.
So if you care about cycling, about the health of our kids, about the awful lethal fossil fuel pollution on our streets, about the climate emergency etc etc please share this little tiny short amateur video.
Please tweet a polite call to @BritishCycling to end this disgusting sponsorship.
#NOHSBC4BC
Or email them at [email protected]
And importantly move your own money to a bank that does not fund lethally destructive fossil fuels.
You can find out how much your bank invests in fossil fuels at www.moveyourmoney.org.uk
I bank with the green and social justice bank Triodos and with Nationwide.
Yes You Can! Yes We Can!
love
Donnachadh x
www.theprostitutestate.co.uk
PS Big shout out to Simon Morris who did the filming and production and who willingly risked the Excel security guards to do so. He is an amazingly committed environmental and social justice campaigner.
PSS I really want anyone committed to the cause of climate protection and social justice to know and understand how the hijacking and corruption of our political system has been undertaken. So if you cannot afford it, please email me on [email protected] and I will send you the ebook version for free.
