Political Issues | >Re-PHOTO

Goodbye Carte Orange

I can still remember standing in a photobooth in Montreuil around 1983 and posing for the picture that went on my first Carte Orange, although I’ve had several since then having lost them or left them at home when coming to Paris.

For years, coupled with a Coupon Hebdo bought on a Monday it’s provided a cheap and easy way to get around the city – a week’s totally unlimited use of buses, Metro, RER and other trains at any time of day or night for a ridiculously cheap 16.80 Euro – a little less than £14 even at the current bad rate of exchange for travel within the city itself. For longer stays a monthly coupon offers even better value, and even if you are staying in the suburbs tickets to cover the outer zones as well are great value.

The impressive (if impractical) Ville Savoye, around 29km from the centre of Paris

A couple of summers ago we explored some of the haunts of the Impressionists on the banks of the rivers in greater Paris – the Seine of course, but also the Marne and the Oise, visted Le Corbusier’s Ville Savoye at Poissy, went to Pontoise and more as well as travelling around the city whenever we wanted. The ticket covering Zones 1-5 cost around £25. The cheapest way we could have done this in London would have cost around half this per day.

Le passe Navigo Découverte (from the RATP site)

However, though I feel a little sadness at the disappearance of these tickets with their reflective metal strip along the edge at the end of this year, it won’t greatly alter the cost of travel as they are being replaced with ‘Le passe Navigo Découverte’, although this will add an initial cost of 5 euros, but can then be charged with a weekly ticket at the same cost as the Carte Orange. Those who live or work in the Paris area can get a free personalised Carte Navigo, which have already been in use for some other fares for some years.

We certainly got our money’s worth out of the Carte Orange, travelling around to try and find the various shows, as well as doing a little of the tourist trail as going to find some new places to eat. I love walking around Paris (and we did a lot of it) but it’s good not to have to worry to much about where you are going, knowing you can just jump on a bus or on the Metro anywhere to take you back to the hotel when you get tired. Last year there was a transport strike, and although I enjoyed photographing the accompanying demonstration, it’s really better when they are working.

Media scrum around the front of the march, Nov 2007, Paris

Hopefully it won’t be too long before London catches up again by making Oysters usable on the overground railways and also in the whole of Greater London including those suburbs left outside the old GLC area on political grounds in the sixties. But somehow I don’t see us matching either the fares or the service in Paris

Bee-keepers swarm in Whitehall

As you can read in My London Diary, I owe my very existence to the honey bee, although the only thing I’ve done to repay my debt to the species is to eat the honey others have stolen from them.

Beekepers at Parliament

But bees are much more important than just suppliers of honey. Bees play a vital role in the production of fruit and other foods, with around a third of our food supply dependent on their pollination.

The loss of our bees would be a catastrophe, but it seems increasingly a possibility with Varroa mites (which have killed a large propertion of our wild bees) developing resistance to current treatments which have saved those in hives, and the more recent and still unexplained colony collapse disorder which has caused huge losses of bees in the USA and is now in parts of Europe.

Bee-keeping was seen as an important source of home-grown food during the war. Afterwards interest gradually fell away but is now reviving, even in cities, where some people keep bees on rooftops as well as in gardens. The revival is a part of a greater interest in healthy foods and home growing that have seen more turning to allotments too.

Several hundred bee-keepers came to Westminster to lobby MPs for increased funding for research into bee health, and took a petition with over 140,000 signatures to Downing St.

More text and pictures on My London Diary

London gets what it deserves. Unfortunately

Ken a couple of days before the election
Ken takes the tube home a couple of days before the election in May

Londoners in May voted Ken out and a right wing idiot in, so should not be surprised at Boris’s plans to scrap most of the greatly needed improvements in public transport.

Too many other people have written about it for me to bother. As Diamond Geezer puts it today in ‘Down the tube‘, the new TfL “business plan has incinerated several slow-burning transport projects, each liberally doused with car-friendly petrol by our beloved Mayor.”

Yesterday, DG commented on some of the missing projects in the Mayors ridiculous “Way to Go: Planning for better transport” which were doomed to disappear:

» Cross River Tram (bugger Peckham)

Peckham
I Love Peckham festival, 2007

» DLR extension to Dagenham Docks (bugger Dagenham)

Train coming in to Dagenham Docks Station, 2003

» East London Transit (bugger Barking)

Barking
New Riverside Flats along the River Roding at Barking

» Greenwich Waterfront Transit (bugger Thamesmead)

Thamesmead, 1994

» Thames Gateway Bridge (bugger Beckton)

Beckton from the alp
Beckton from the Beckton Alp, 2008

There were of course a few things DG missed that Boris also had it in for – High Street 2012 to tidy up the London marathon route will perhaps not be greatly missed (except by DG.) Most important is the Croydon Tramlink Extension to Crystal Palace, a small, relatively cheap, straightforward and useful tidying up exercise in South London, and the Oxford St Tram scheme (part of a larger scheme already scrapped in favour of Crossrail.)

Under siege: Islam, war and the media

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Troops out of Iraq march, London , October 2004

One of the events I’ll miss because I’m in Paris is ‘Under Seige: Islam, war and the media’, a half-day conference organised by Media Workers Against the War at the London School of Economics on Saturday Nov 15 , with registration from 1.15pm for a 2pm start and the event ending at 6.30pm. You can find fuller details on line and can even book your ticket through a secure booking system.

Among those who have agreed to take part in plenary sessions and workshops are photographers Guy Smallman and Marc Vallée, journalists and writers including Peter Oborne, Nick Davies, Uzma Hussain, Roshan Salih, Explo Nani-Kofi and Eamonn McCann.

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‘Close Guantanamo’ – Amnesty International protest at US Embassy in London, Jan 2007

Three people very much involved with Guantanamo Bay are campaigning solicitor Louise Christian, former prisoner Moazzam Begg and author of the Guantanamo Files, Andy Worthington. Others include Inayat Bunglawala of the Muslim Council of Britain, Lyndsey German of Stop the War, Jeremy Dear, General SSecretary of the NUJ and Mark Almond, lecturer in modern history at Oriel College Oxford.

The conference aims to “examine what media workers and students can do to improve coverage of the “war on terror”, to bring critical views into the mainstream, raise the profile of the anti-war movement, and create our own sources of critical news and comment.”

Another Worrying ‘Terrorism’ Story

Popular newspapers in the UK have all covered the story of a 15 year old schoolboy using his mobile phone to photograph Wimbledon station was stopped and searched by three police community support officers. They claimed to be doing so under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act, although they do not appear to have had the supervision of a constable that this requires, nor is it clear that the authorisation was in force that would enable it to be done.

But, apart from being an abuse of law, what the PCSOs did was simply incredibly stupid. But also part of a concerted anti-photographer culture being promoted by police and Home Office through poster campaigns and press releases.

Marc Vallée’s blog has a number of posts related to this and has recently posted Terror Law and Photography about Clause 75 of the new Counter-Terrorism Bill 2008, which will create a new offence which may well cover photographing or publishing a photograph of any policeman (or members of the armed forces or intelligence services), with draconian sentences.

The Bill does include the statement:
It is a defence for a person charged with an offence under this section to prove that they had a reasonable excuse for their action, although I’m not at all sure what the courts might consider a reasonable excuse.

Could pictures like these put me in jail?

Marc’s post also mentions that the Home Office is about to post new operational guidance to police about using their stop and search powers, and quotes the draft as clarifying that the police have no powers to stop people taking photographs in authorised areas under Section 44, but if they “reasonably suspect that photographs are being taken as part of hostile terrorist reconnaissance” they may search the person and possibly make an arrest, when they can seize cameras, films and cards as evidence (though they must not destroy or delete images.)

The Wimbledon schoolboy is yet another example of how the police (and PCSOs) misuse existing law. Giving them further powers can only make things worse. The future of photography on our streets looks increasingly bleak.

US Election Special

In my inbox this morning was a message from Ricken Patel and the team at Avaaz.org, “a community of global citizens who take action on the major issues facing the world today.” In it they reminded us of some of Obama’s election pledges, and here is their list, with some related images from the streets of London:

Campaign against Climate Change Kyoto Climate March, London, 12 Feb, 2005

Reduce the US’s carbon emissions 80% by 2050 and play a strong positive role in negotiating a binding global treaty to replace the expiring Kyoto Protocol

Stop the War march, London. Sat 15 March, 2008

Withdraw all combat troops from Iraq within 16 months and keep no permanent bases in the country

Approaching Aldermaston, April 2004

Establish a clear goal of eliminating all nuclear weapons across the globe

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Amnesty International at US Embassy, London mark 6 years of Guantanamo shame, Jam 2008

Close the Guantanamo Bay detention center
Double US aid to cut extreme poverty in half by 2015 and accelerate the fight against HIV/AIDS, tuberculoses and Malaria

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Open diplomatic talks with countries like Iran and Syria, to pursue peaceful resolution of tensions
De-politicize military intelligence to avoid ever repeating the kind of manipulation that led the US into Iraq

Time running out for Darfur

Launch a major diplomatic effort to stop the killings in Darfur
Only negotiate new trade agreements that contain labor and environmental protections
Invest $150 billion over ten years to support renewable energy and get 1 million plug-in electric cars on the road by 2015

Obama provides a welcome new chance for the USA; perhaps the world’s last fragile hope of avoiding global disaster.

Justice for Asbestos Victims

Some events (even when you are at the right place at the right time) are difficult to photograph because visually they are not very exiting of different. It doesn’t help when the issues involved are complex so that it is not easy to decide on a point of view to take.

The ‘Justice for Asbestos Victims‘ rally was organised by trade unions representing people who had worked with asbestos. As we all know, asbestos is dangerous stuff, exposure to it killing many workers, and it is also clear that many employers have been negligent and failed to take reasonable precautions to prevent people working for them being exposed to its dangers.

The demonstration was over a decision by the Law Lords that compensation should not be awarded for pleural plaques, a form of irreversible lung damage caused by exposure to asbestos, because in themselves these do not normally materially affect people’s physical health. People with them are however likely to develop more serious, often fatal conditions – for which damages are awarded. I think the employers should be liable for their negligence in exposing workers and that the pleural plaques provide clear evidence that this has occurred.

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Several other photographers present were working for the unions concerned who would probably be happy with some fairly tedious group pictures showing workers and MPs and a few banners – and they proceeded to set these up. It all helps to make a living, but I wanted to find something more, and don’t really think I managed it. The picture I took at the International Workers Memorial Day march in April 2006 was considerably stronger – but then its message was clearer too.

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Asbestos kills

Justice for Deaths in Custody

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Family and friends call for justice for Sean Rigg, who died in Brixton Police Station this August

Being in police custody or prison should really be the safest possible of situations, but unfortunately as the over 2500 names on the list carried in Saturday’s demonstration by the United Families and Friends of those who have died in custody shows this isn’t the case. It isn’t even easy to get the figures and the names, and even this long list covering the years since 1969 is far from complete. Last year there were 182 known deaths – and at that rate the list would be three times as long.

The police, the prisons, secure psychiatric units, immigration detention centres all have a duty of care for the people in them, but it a duty in which they too often fail. Some of those 182 will be people known to be likely to commit suicide who were not adequately supervised, others those who were restrained in a manner that caused their death.

One of the names on the long list was a young Brazilian man who took a bus to Stockwell station and walked through the barriers and down the escalator. He didn’t know that his perfectly innocent and ordinary movements were being followed by a surveillance team, even though they were very close to him as he entered the station.

While I was writing my post about this year’s United Families and Friends march, I watched the CCTV footage from the station on that morning, showing nothing untoward until about a a minute after he made his way to the platform, when three armed men jumped over the barriers and rushed down.

Someone had blundered, with the result that these men were sent to gun down an innocent man. The Met’s response was to try to cover up in various ways for the mistake, and even at the inquest they are still clearly doing so. The order that was given was clearly a gross error which should have led to the immediate dismissal and almost certainly criminal charges against the senior officer concerned, but it also highlights a ‘shoot to kill’ policy that I think has no place in a civilised society. It remains to be seen what the inquest will determine.

When Maria Otonia de Menezes came to lay flowers at the gates of Downing St, I was there with others photographing and filming. Earlier, along with other photographers I’d been asked to give the family a little space as they were finding it difficult, and I’d immediately stopped taking pictures and turned away to photograph other things, although some others took no notice of the request. But when it came to the actual pacing of the bouquets and photographs my job was to show the grief and anger of the de Menezes family and others whose sons, brothers, fathers had died to the best of my ability. At times I found it hard to keep taking pictures, but that after all was what I was there for, and I owed it to these people to do it as well as I could.

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More pictures and text about the demonstration on My London Diary

Guy in Hospital

Not an early Nov 5th story, but a kind of follow-up to my recent post Police attack Photographers where I mentioned that a photographer was attacked by a police dog.

On photographer Marc Vallee’s blog, in the post Guy Smallman in Afghanistan, you can read about another incident in which the same photographer was injured. I’m not quite sure why, but the words that Oscar Wilde put into Lady Bracknell’s mouth about losing parents came into my mind. Guy certainly has suffered misfortune, but I think it is more a matter of working in dangerous places rather than carelessness. And being rather cautious, as I tend to be (unkind people might call it timid) is seldom the best way to get good pictures. (You can see more of the Swiss incident in which he was injured on PigBrother.)

Elsewhere on Marc’s blog you can read a lot more about the problems that photographers have with police harassment. On Tuesday he was in the committee room when NUJ Gen Secretary was giving evidence to the Joint Committee on Human Rights and he gives this link to the long video of some of the proceedings. As he says, parts of it make interesting viewing, though there is a lot best fast-forwarded.

Here in London, the police appear to have been easing off recently, especially over the SOCPA restrictions on demonstration. On October 11, ‘People in Common‘ and others, including FitWatch, staged a Freedom not fear 2008 event outside New Scotland Yard, although a smiling officer handed out the usual maps and warning, it seemed clear that while reminding people of the law they had no real intention of enforcing it.

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A warning that eating in the SOCPA zone could be an offence

But perhaps the strangest thing about the demonstration was the little person I photographed trapped inside the hood of a large black suit

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See the detail view below:
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More about that demonstration – and more pictures on My London Diary.

Cheney & Iraqi Oil at Shell UK

It’s good when someone actually comes up with a visual idea for a demonstration that you can photograph; too often you really get things that would only look good from a helicopter. Actually it’s usually better if people don’t try to be too clever, but give us something a little out of the ordinary in the way of masks or makeup or costumes or props that we can play around with and find a different way to photograph.

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Dick Cheney, Iraqi Oil and the Shell Centre (right)

So although a giant Dick Chaney was a nice idea, and he was very well produced, and we all had some fun photographing him, I have a feeling that every other photographer there will have produced a picture more or less like mine. But perhaps not quite.

100 Days to stop Bush & Cheney’s Iraq Oil Grab! was of course a protest about a very serious issue, basically the pay-off US and UK forces were sent to Iraq to bring home. Forget WMD, Iraq was about another three letters, OIL, and Cheney with his friends at Shell and BP are now getting down to wrapping it up and bringing the swag home.

It’s a simple plan. A nationalised oil industry belonging to the Iraqi people (even if much of the proceeds went into palaces for the president) does nothing for multinational oil companies. So you invade, topple Saddam, put a puppet government in his place and send them your “oil experts” to draft natural resources laws that hand out the oil to your friends.

I photographed the demonstration outside Shell’s UK Offices in Waterloo, before it set off for the BP offices and then the US Embassy at Grosvenor Square. There is some opposition to the proposed handover in the Iraqi Parliament – and rather more among the Iraqi people. If the give-away goes ahead I think we can forecast further trouble in the Middle East after US forces finally pull out.