Jonathan Leighton

I have finally managed to polish off, document, test and release a jQuery Date Input plugin I initially wrote whilst at Torchbox last summer. It’s been a long time coming so I’m glad to have got it out the way now! Comments and feedback are much appreciated.

Yesterday was an eventful day. One of the last remaining “green spaces” in Oxford city centre is Bonn Square. Unfortunately it has been neglected by the council and is currently in quite a state. So instead of making improvements, like, ooh I dunno, having someone maintain the place, the council have invested £1.5 million in “redevelopment”.

The redevelopment involves cutting down four mature trees (estimated over 100 years old) and slapping sandstone over the archaeological remains of a Georgian church and cemetery. There will be seven younger trees planted instead but it baffles me why the architects could not have designed around the existing trees (they had to design around a memorial which would obviously have more been difficult to get away with removing.)

The key point though is not simply about saving a few trees from being chopped down. The Bonn Square redevelopment is part of a much bigger plan for the “regeneration” of the west end of Oxford. Most worryingly this involves huge expansion of the Westgate Shopping Centre. The current plans necessitate the felling of many more trees, and the compulsory purchase of 18 houses for elderly and disabled people, plus a part of Oxford and Cherwell Valley College.

There is an ongoing public inquiry into the compulsory purchase order, so it is not guaranteed the development according to current plans will even happen. Despite this, the council have been felling trees for the Westgate expansion at the same time as felling the Bonn Square trees. There has been no public consultation on the expansion (please see comments below) and it fails to meet the council’s own environmental standards.

The felling of these trees has been met with fierce opposition by environmental activists, which in turn has raised the profile of the Westgate development in the public knowledge (the council hasn’t exactly been shouting from the rooftops as it tries to force people from their homes.) As the council’s intentions became clear, an initially small group of activists formed a protest, climbing trees to prevent them from being felled. Gabriel Chamberlain occupied the last remaining tree in Bonn Square on the 4th of January, and has now been living in the tree house for 10 days. Tomorrow, the 14th, a court will decide whether to grant Oxford City Council an eviction order, which may spell the end of the protest.

Yesterday a number of activists gathered at Bonn Square in solidarity with Gabriel. Nobody thought it would be a particularly big event but the protest struck a chord with the people of Oxford and generated considerable interest. At one point there were apparently as many as 100 people there, including many younger people who felt strongly about what the council is trying to do to their city.

After placing solid metal fencing right around the tree, the workmen tried to extend it to surround Bonn Square entirely. In response to this protesters forced their way in and the council apparently held an emergency meeting about health and safety concerns, resulting in the fencing being removed.

One of the biggest problems for Gabriel is that he has been effectively cut off, making it very hard to get food and most importantly water to him. This is presumably to encourage him to come down from the tree and face arrest. At about 2AM this morning a friend and I decided to try to get some supplies to Gabriel in the quiet of the night. There were still a pair of security people at Bonn Square and a pair of policemen in a car. We decided the best plan was for my friend to try to distract the security whilst I threw a bottle of water to Gabriel.

My throw was frankly abysmal and the water bottle fell on the ground inside the fenced off area. Perhaps Gabriel or somebody else was able to get it from the ground but I don’t know because I was very quickly arrested “on suspicion of littering”. For real. After roughly 2 hours in a cell I was released without charge; apparently something to do with the area being private property and fenced off made it an un-prosecutable offence.

As I understand it, this effectively made the arrest unlawful, but a solicitor advised me pursuing that avenue may just see me charged for something else (like public disorder). In any case I am not significantly worse off from the situation, but I do feel very angry over the principle of “arrest first, ask questions later”, where the arresting officer clearly felt the need to assert control. I may make an IPPC complaint. Update: People have noted that the solicitor’s advice was dodgy. I am currently seeking legal advice from another solicitor and may take it to court. If not I will make an IPPC complaint.

Overall, I think the recent action has been extremely successful and generated significant public interest. I think we can be sure this won’t be the last protest over the council’s desire to turn Oxford into a more characterless, consumerist city.

More information

• Oxford Indymedia – They paved paradise and put up a parking lot
• Oxford City Council – Bonn Square transformation begins
• e-architect.co.uk – Bonn Square Oxford, Grame Massie Architects
• Councillor Matt Sellwood – Westgate
• Green Party – Oxford Green arrested as City Council defy public demand
• Oxford Mail – Protesters Invade Oxford Square

Modern Art Oxford are running this brilliant exhibition called The Oxford Open (the private view is tomorrow and then it opens to the public on Saturday). The basic idea is that anyone who lives or works in Oxford can submit a piece of art. There is no selection committee and they accepted about 500 works, so I guess there will be a complete range. I submitted a board of 7 photos; the project was a study of people during the rush hour in the “square mile”. It’s all black and white film and I’ve never scanned them in so they’re not on Flickr. Let me know what you think if you go :)

Last month I blogged about a security bug in Basecamp which allows administrators to see all the users’ passwords. Yesterday, David Heinemeier Hansson commented that it has now been taken care of and fixed, which is great. It turns out I was wrong about them ignoring the issue; there was a previous, similar issue which is the one talked about on the Basecamp forums, but what I encountered was separate to that. In hindsight I should have tried to contact 37signals before ranting about it on my blog, but I guess you live and learn.