Category: Political Issues

There is a particular satisfaction in photographing an event where there is really very little visually to work with, and coming up with some even half-decent pictures, and the demonstration against ID cards outside the Border and Immigration Agency provided me with that.

Nov 25, 2008 saw the start of the programme to track the every movement of all of us in the UK by our government with the start of the issue of biometric identity cards. You can read some of my thoughts about this and see the other pictures I took on My London Diary.

Wellesley Road in Croydon sprouted tall buildings in the late 1960s, in an attempt to imitate Manhattan in Surrey. Most now look rather grim and dated and they have been joined by newer buildings. The ensemble forms an efficient wind-tunnel providing a blisteringly cold gale to chill the protesters.

Among the few who came to brave the Arctic conditions was one man who has managed to get his fingerprints and DNA profile removed from the police national databases – and you can read more about him there too.

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

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.

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

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)

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)

New Riverside Flats along the River Roding at Barking

» Greenwich Waterfront Transit (bugger Thamesmead)

Thamesmead, 1994

» Thames Gateway Bridge (bugger Beckton)

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.)

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

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

• 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

• 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.