Bubaking – ghetto funk, dubstep, drum and bass

Dr Fish – hip hop

Dub Boy – reggae, bashment

HiHat – funk

Jung – dubby techno

Smerin – reggae, funk

Thanks to Tim Jones.

Check out the photos and dj set downloads available here.

Thank you all so much for coming to our first party of the year!  We had a wonderful time and hope you did too.  We are currently counting up the donations, will let you know soon how much we raised for charity.  Photos and DJ set downloads will coming over the next few days.  Date for your diary, Saturday 5th May is our Birthday Hoedown, celebrating 5 years of oinkstastic parties!

oink! oink!

Our resident Queen of Cakes Katrina will be baking some delicious savory muffins and cupcakes.  These are very popular indeed at our parties and disappear literally like hot cakes, so when you see them we recommend you grab one quick!  We will be asking for a suggested donation for each treat with proceeds to charity as usual.  All ingredients are ethically sourced and where possible certified organic and fair trade.

No.51′s lush pizzas will be served all day into the late evening.  Lovingly handcrafted and baked in their wood fired oven.  You can eat your pizza downstairs listening to the music, upstairs in the restaurant where it’s more quiet and relaxed, or out in the sunshine in the courtyard garden.  There are lots of vegetarian and meat pizzas to choose from, also a selection of starters, sides and puddings, each named with a quirky Bristolian twist.  We highly recommend you pop in any day of the week to fill your belly.

What started as a few scattered demonstrations against ACTA has exploded into an international day of action this Saturday! There are nearly 200 events across the world, with hundreds of thousands of people expected to hit the streets to protest this dangerous international agreement.

Our feet have not yet hit the pavement, but our voices are already being heard! Facing a groundswell of opposition to ACTA, the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovenia are already wavering on ratification and the European Parliament’s point person for ACTA resigned his post in protest.

With ACTA’s supporters starting to wake up, we’re facing a critical moment. ACTA can still be stopped in the European Parliament, and if it’s defeated there, the whole agreement will unravel. Momentum is on our side and we must not stop now. Click through to find out how to join hundreds of thousands of people protesting online and offline against ACTA:

https://www.accessnow.org/acta-protest

Here you’ll find information about ACTA, a listing of Saturday’s protests, fact sheets in several languages to hand out, and steps to download the ACTA Protest USTREAM App so you can livestream the event using your mobile phone. If there’s no protest near you, host one by starting a Facebook event and e-mail info@accessnow.org the link.

While we support the rights of creators, protection of intellectual property should not come at the expense of freedom of speech and our privacy. It is the duty of government to protect our rights, not put them in the hands of corporations and encourage ISPs to act as judge, jury, and executioner over our content and web activity.

Once seen as a done deal, ACTA’s fate is now hanging in the balance. The world is watching. Stand up for internet freedom this Saturday and protest ACTA!

https://www.accessnow.org/acta-protest

See you out there,
The Access Team

P.S. Our petition has hit 350,000 and is still growing. To have the most impact in the European Parliament, it needs to get to 500,000. Help us by sending this link around to your family and friends: https://www.accessnow.org/acta 

Is our NHS still in danger? Andrew Lansley’s NHS plans are due to become law within three months. So we need to vote now to decide what we should do together to keep our NHS safe.

Our campaign has made real progress. We have just heard that under pressure from us, the House of Lords has watered down Lansley’s plan to scrap his responsibility to provide a National Health Service. [1] That’s a huge success and shows that our campaign can work.

But there’s still plenty to worry about. Leading medical organisations like the Royal College of GPs and the Royal College of Nurses are now calling outright for Lansley’s plans to be dropped. They warn that – even with the changes we’ve campaigned so hard for – the plans are “a mess” and the future of the NHS is still under threat. [2]

Can you fill in a quick online poll to help decide what we do next? Then we can spring back into action next week.
https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/saving-our-nhs

It’s no surprise 38 Degrees members keep making protecting the NHS a priority. We all know that it’s a national treasure. We can’t afford to lose it. So in the past year half a million of us have got involved with this campaign – emailing and visiting MPs, signing petitions, donating money, buying ads and even hiring a team of expert lawyers to cut through Lansley’s spin. [3]

What should we do now? Is it time to zoom in on the parts of Lansley’s plan which would introduce more competition and privatisation to the NHS? Or should we step back from the details and join with the doctors and nurses demanding the entire plan is withdrawn? Or something else? [4]

It’s up to you – please take 3 minutes to help plan our next steps:
https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/saving-our-nhs

38 Degrees members have proved time and again that people power works. When we launched our campaign against the government plans to sell off our national woodlands we were told we had no chance. But we kept at it. And after months of working together, we forced the government to stand up and admit they got it wrong. [5]

In the same way, people have been telling us for nearly a year now that Lansley’s NHS plans are a done deal. We have never let that put us off! And already by working together we’ve helped rein in some of the worst parts. There’s so much more we can do in the next three months – so let’s decide our plans together.
https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/saving-our-nhs

Thanks for getting involved,

Johnny, David, Marie, Hannah, Cian, Becky and the 38 Degrees team

PS. Nearly 45,000 of us have now signed up to join The Big Switch, our attempt to drive down gas and electricity prices by bargaining with the power companies as a group. That’s got to be a record! If you haven’t joined in yet, you can do so here: https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/the-big-switch

NOTES:
[1] An alliance of Lib Dem, Labour and cross-bench peers forced major concessions from the government over the “duty to provide” and “hands-off clause”. See for example: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/jan/28/andrew-lansley-nhs-health-reform-climbdown
[2] “NHS reform: GPs and physiotherapists urges scrapping”: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-16861672
[3] Watch a video highlighting some of the things 38 Degrees members have done together here: http://www.38degrees.org.uk/pages/save_our_nhs_action_centre
[4] Obviously to some extent we can do both. But we will have more impact if we prioritise. And it may prove harder to influence Lords over specific amendments if they see the starting point for our campaign being that we want to scrap the bill altogether.
[5] Watch a video of our forests victory here: http://www.38degrees.org.uk/campaigns/achievements