Owen Lydiard

at large

The way the ITU operates seems rather too secretive to me, so I was happy to join the Stop the Internet Coup campaign. Dec 2012.
The UK Labour government's long awaited Freedom of Information bill, when first drafted by Jack Straw, the Home Secretary, contained pages of exemptions, which I objected to in June 1999 and again in Feb 2000.
Former MI5 officer David Shayler revealed that the UK secret services had been spying on various Labour politicians. I backed the Public Friend No1 that was launched in his support against legal efforts by the UK government to jail him.
Forest clearance on the Philippine island of Palawan was displacing the Batak and Tagbanwa indigenous people, who stood to gain no benefit from it, so I wrote to Palawan's Mayor Hegedorn urging reasonable behaviour. Although he has introduced some environmentally friendly projects, habitat loss is still a major concern for Palawan's 232 endemic species.

Many of these campaigns were brought to my attention by Survival International.

Exxon Mobil's exploration for oil in Peru in 1996 risked dire consequences for the indigenous tribes in those areas, which I put to Mobil and President Fujimori. They abandoned block 77 in 1998, and block 78 in 2000.
Peruvian loggers and mineral explorers putting previously uncontacted tribes at risk of violent eviction and western disease - President Garcia published the fantastic view that such tribes were 'invented' by anti-capitalists. My letter to him urged more responsible behaviour. He was voted out of office in 2001, though came back in 2006.
The Canadian government, while in the middle of negotiating land ownership with the Innu, were simultaneously giving chunks of disputed land to multinationals, which I put in a letter to Jean Chretien, Prime Minister in 2000.
Botswana in 1997 decided to evict the Khwe and the Bakgalagadi tribes of the Kalahari desert. I complained to President Mogae back in 1998 and then in 2000.
The Jarawa people of the Andaman Islands, a group of islands in the Bay of Bengal belonging to India, were in 1999 being threatened with forcible resettlement, which seemed like a recipe for disaster to me, so I put this to Ms Maneka Gandhi Minister of Welfare at the time.
Colombian paramilitaries were busy in 1999 shooting opponents of the Urrá Dam megaproject, in particular the Emberá Katío people that were due to lose their land. I wrote wrote to President Andrés Pastrana to urge the Colombian government to look after all its people.

I joined the long-standing Nestlé SA boycott, which was a protest against their promotion of formula baby milk started in 1977.
In 1996 I protested to Unilever about their refusal to label GM Soya products in the UK.
BT in 2001 were effectively demanding £100 extra per year for broadband services to non-windows users. I complained to David Edmonds, DG of OFTEL.

Imagine my surprise when, following my suggestion to the UK Highways Agenc of a new cycle lane along the A23 in London, close to Streatham Station, they actually did it! Sadly they dug it up again only a few years later.
Unbelievably Powergen's web site expected me to type my bank details into an insecure page which to me seemed rather lax. See also July 2000 Powergen security breach