Category: My Own Work

I’m not an economist. Nor a rich man, because I’ve never thought it worth my time thinking about money.

When I grew up we had none. At least that was simple, although my mother kept careful accounts of every penny in a small red bock, balancing her accounts carefully each week to avoid getting into debt. Penny-pinching all the time, making do and mending.  But my early years were years of austerity and rationing for the whole nation, and being poor like we were wasn’t very different from being almost as poor as the rest of the people down the street.

Even on a student grant I was better off, and my first full-time job earned me more than my father ever had but I’ve never got into the habits of spending (except on cameras) and waste that most people seem to take for granted, so I’ve never had to really count the pennies.

Banks have changed dramatically since I opened my first account to handle my student grant cheque. Rather than computers there was a man in the corner sitting with a big black-covered book and when you presented a cheque the cashier would go over to him and check that your account had the funds to pay.

Now it seems they have all been busy trading with borrowed money, betting on bets in ways that no-one had thought to regulate, making huge profits for their shareholders and massive bonuses for themselves in the good times. Which have now come to an end and the taxpayers are having to pick up their massive losses.

The failure of the banks doesn’t give me any pleasure, not least because it also has resulted in a fairly dramatic fall in the value of my own investments towards a pension, which I thought (and had been assured) were reasonably safe. Oh well, its only money.

But I certainly had considerable sympathy for the protesters who organised the March on the City with the slogan ‘We Won’t Bail out the Bankers’. As usual, more details and pictures on My London Diary.

Women dressed as suffragettes, including Tamsin Osmond (center left) rush toward the entrance of the Houses of Parliament in London, Oct 13, 2008

Exactly 100 years ago, more than 40 women were arrested in the ‘Suffragete Rush‘ as they attempted to enter The Houses of Parliament in Westminster, London. To mark this centenary, young women concerned with the lack of political action to tackle climate change organised and led a ‘Climate Rush‘ rally in Parliament Square, calling for “men and women alike” to stand together and support three key demands:

• No airport expansion.
• No new coal-fired power stations.
• The creation of policy in line with the most recent climate science and research.

It turned out – as expected – to be an interesting evening, although unlike 100 years ago none of the women managed to get into parliament and disrupt the proceedings there.  You can read more about it – and see rather a lot of pictures – on My London Diary.

Inside the building, the upper house was debating one of our more repressive pieces of proposed legislation, the Counter-Terrorism Bill 2007-08, and threw out by a large majority to proposal to allow suspects to be detained for 42 days before charge. However this is only one of several extremely suspect provisions, and we can only hope that their Lord and Ladyships will also throw out the proposals for secret inquests and look very carefully at the other provisions of the bill when they return to it in the next few days.

I must admit that until last week I had no idea that Lytchett Matravers even existed, let alone where it is. Nor for that matter its neighbouring village, Lytchett Minster.  And I think that is exactly how the people who live in these Dorset villages a few miles from Poole would like to keep it.

The government has other plans, intending in its Regional Spatial Strategy to include a new town of 2750 houses in the Green belt next to it.  This private development was rejected by the regional authority who drew up the draft plans, the local authorities in the region and bodies including Natural England, the Dorset Wildlife Trust, RSPB and CPRE, but somehow found itself in the final version of the draft currently waiting approval by Hazel Blears, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government.

They had a big demonstration in Bournemouth to oppose the plans, and on Thursday some of them came to London to deliver a petition to the Prime Minister in Downing St.

In my lecture in Brasilia I talked about the need for a Green Belt that came about with the growth of car culture, and you can read a little about this in my post Under the Car which looks at my reaction to car culture. In Green Belt Protest Rally on My London Diary you can see my pictures and thoughts on last Thursday’s demo from Dorset. I wrote about another related event earlier in the year  here in Time Running Out.

I’ve had a busy few days, and they started on October 9 which was the anniversary of Ugandan independence.

For gay Ugandans in particular there is little to celebrate.  Around 50 people met in a demonstration sponsored by the NUS outside the Ugandan Embassy in Trafalgar Square at noon on Ugandan Independence Day, Oct 9, to protest against human rights abuses in Uganda.

Peter Tatchell of Outrage! and Davis Makyala of Changing Attitudes
You can see more pictures and a longer comment on the event on My London Diary

 

Gary McKinnon caused a lot of red faces among top brass in the USA when he penetrated and wandered around computer systems at the Pentagon and NASA in his obsessive trawl for documents revealing their cover-up of UFO sightings.  They didn’t like their incompetence being made obvious, and want him “to fry” for it. His case is also useful in their attempts to secure large amounts of extra funding for security.

David Blunkett brought in a one-sided extradition treaty with the US through the back-door when Parliament was on holiday which means that McKinnon can be sent for trial in the US without any evidence being presented in the courts here. The only thing that can stop this now is a decision on compassionate grounds by Jacqui Smith.  McKinnon has now been diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome which is said to be the cause of his obssession. If tried here, the case would probably collapse (as an earlier hacker prosecution did) or result in a very short sentence, but in the US he might get 40 years or more in jail.

The demonstration outside the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square on Sunday was organised by the London Autistic Rights Movemeny. More pictures on My London Diary.

Controversy has grown in the last couple of years over the celebration of Al Quds (Jerusalem) Day in London.  Al Quds Day was started by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979, and is promoted by some groups supported by the Islamic regime in Iran, which most of us have some good reason to protest against.

Police hold back marchers at Piccadilly Circus

But it is also supported by a number of groups that clearly are not supporters of the Iranian regime (though like most people they would be opposed to a US attack on Iran)  who see the day and the march as supporting the Palestinians and the Lebanese in their fight against Israeli occupation and aggression.

Not all of the groups against the march were Iranian
As a photographer and a journalist I try to approach things without closely identifying with either side, keeping a certain distance and although I always have a point of view, I went to photograph both sides of the argument.

So you can see my pictures of the march, and also of the demonstration against the march as usual on My London Diary.  Perhaps this kind of unpleasantness could be avoided in future if groups that  support Palestine but have no connection to Iran were to organise an alternative Al Quds Day march.