The people of Blackpool have today been besieged by anti-fracking wackos in need of a wash. No Dash for Gas like to present themselves as local, normal “mothers and grandmothers…wearing aprons,” who just want to make a polite point about shale gas. They’re spinning harder than a drill working its way through the Lancashire landscape. 

The programme for today’s ‘Reclaim the Power’ protest camp lists a series of workshops including “An introduction to anarchism and anarchist organising”, legal training from the anarchist Green and Black Cross movement, and a PCS union talk on “reclaiming unions”. Attendees can also listen to the advice of delegates from Occupy London, the Polish anarcho-syndicalist Workers’ Initiative and the Squash campaign to decriminalise squatting.

Among the camp’s supporters are Ewa Jasiewicz, a Polish Palestine solidarity activist who wrote on the Reclaim the Power Facebook page: “please come share a bevvy with me and talk more BDS… Ahlan wa sahlan, see you tonight!!” Past attendees include David Icke wannabe Ian Crane, who reckons: “The socio-psychopathic ZIONIST Government of Israel is deliberately fuelling the wave of global anti-jewish sentiment, in a bit to FORCE the diaspora out of their host countries and move to IsraHELL.” And Tom Palmer, who at a protest last week requested: “need some people to bring speed (or some other uppers) though and paraffin for fire poi and a guita (sic)”. Just your usual mothers and grandmothers wearing aprons, then…