Archive for March, 2020

XR Westminster

Saturday, March 21st, 2020

I don’t know who these two men were, striding purposefully with their document cases but I think they had emerged from a government ministry and they were probably making their way to another or possibly the Tory party HQ. It’s possibly quite unfair, but to me they seemed to epitomise the reason why we are in the situation we are in, a determination to carry on ‘business as usual‘ when it is quite clear that to survive we need drastic system change. We can’t trust men in suits.

XR were protesting across Westminster, and it was hard to keep up with what was happening at I think eleven locations, but I did quite a lot of walking around and taking pictures, with a pretty total shutdown of all the roads in the area. Police made movement a little more difficult by setting up some road blocks of their own, which seemed totally pointless but made my job more difficult when they wouldn’t even let me walk across Lambeth Bridge although I showed my press card.

They seemed also to be making the very occasional and almost totally random arrests, picking on small groups or individuals when hundreds were blocking roads. It seemed a simply pique at being unable to control the situation of mass peaceful civil disobedience.

Although it was taking place in London, the XR protest was not a London protest, with the huge bulk of the protesters having come into the city from small towns across the country. XR has been very successful at motivating a largely white mainly middle class and highly educated population but rather less so with the urban working class, and there were far fewer from London’s ethnic communities than at most London protests, and who are well represented in movements such as the Youth Climate Strike and of course anti-racist and anti-fascist protests.

It will of course be the poor and those who have to struggle most to make a living in our cities who will be the first to suffer as the effects of global heating kick in, just as it is the countries of the majority world who are now feeling it most severely. But perhaps it is hard to persuade people who are living in precarious situations of the efficacy of the kind of apolitical and non-violent approach that appeals to XR supporters.

More at Extinction Rebellion occupy Westminster.


All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

There are no adverts on this site and it receives no sponsorship, and I like to keep it that way. But it does take a considerable amount of my time and thought, and if you enjoy reading it, please share on social media.
And small donations via Paypal – perhaps the cost of a beer – would be appreciated.


Sunday afternoon Sheffield

Friday, March 20th, 2020

We found ourselves at Sheffield station a couple of hours before our train was due to leave – as usual we had booked Advance tickets that were only valid on a particular service to save ourselves a small fortune on the journey, but hadn’t been sure when exactly we would be able to travel.

Rail fares in the UK are a crazy system which has become much worse since rail privatisation, leaving us with a system where standard fares are the highest per mile in the world, thanks largely to rail companies owned by foreign governments and dodgy capitalists all hugely subsidised by the UK taxpayer.

It’s now hard to find what the standard price is, but for the journey we were undertaking I think around £85 each. But then there are Off-peak, Super Off-peak and advance tickets, these latter often being sold at various prices depending on how far in advance you book. The whole system is more like a lottery than a ticketing system and is seldom understood even by those who sell the tickets. But by advance booking and taking a slightly slower route (including a 55 minute wait in Birmingham) we were able to get the price down to less than a third of the standard fare, even without going into any of the complex methods involving split ticketing and other dodges that have spawned an new web industry.

It truly is a crazy system, and at times it’s better for us to book from London rather than our suburban station, with at times a 200 mile journey into the city actually costing less than the tube across London and the 19 miles to our local station.

One of Labour’s more popular policies at the last election was the re-nationalisation of the railways, but unfortunately it was an election fought on ‘getting Brexit done’ rather than so many more important policies. And so we ended with a government pledged to get us out of Europe, but with no comprehension of the other desperately needed changes in policy, nor the ability to make any realy sensible deal over Brexit, with too many among it committed to a ‘no deal’exit. And which is now proving itself utterly incapable of handling a global pandemic.

Back to October in Sheffield, Linda saw the wait as an opportunity to indulge her tea-room obsession and led us off towards one in the canal basin, but unfortunately it had closed down since she was last there. There was a pub open, but that wasn’t what she required, and after some discussion and a short walk around the area we retired back to the station where she was at least able to buy a takeaway tea and cake.

I would happily have had a rather longer walk around and would probably have avoided Victoria Quays, which I’ve photographed on several previous occasions.

Quite a few more pictures, both of the canal basin and from the walk there and back to the station at Sheffield, Yorkshire.


All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.


Enjoy the country

Thursday, March 19th, 2020

The Corona virus seems to be bringing out both the worst and the best of people and organisations. So while we have the incredible spectacle of a billionaire island-owner and airline boss threatening his workers with redundancy and demanding compensation from the government (and has avoided paying a fair share of tax and sued the NHS for a large cash deal in earlier years), there are also other business owners like Gary Neville who has announced there will be no redundancies or unpaid leave and has handed his hotels over to the NHS for extra capacity, and companies like Greggs who are offereing free hot drinks to all Emergency Service Personnel, Health and Social Care Workers.

The National Trust has had to close its houses, but is making its car parks and gardens free for all, good news for those who have to self-isolate but are still able to get out and get some exercise. Of course we can also do so in all those NT sites that are always free to the public as well as the rest of the countryside – and even in towns and cities so long as we keep well away from others.

I don’t have a car, and there are few NT sites within my cycling range which normally have admission fees, but its a welcome gesture. And since there are few if any events now taking place that I could cover even if I were not a high-risk case I may well find myself doing a few more country walks or rides now that I have time on my hands. Though so far I’ve spent most of that extra time in front of a computer, getting some of my old black and white images scabbed and retouched ready to go on-line.

I’ve always liked to walk, both in country and city, though my legs are not quite as good as they used to be. Most of the walks I’ve done in recent years have been with small groups of friends, but in the current situation I will perhaps revert to wandering on my own – with a camera, though perhaps not to the extent I did around London in the 80s and 90s, when I was out a couple of days most weeks filling the pages of my A-Z with ten or twelve miles of wandering and taking several contact sheets of photographs.

The pictures accompanying this slightly meandering piece are from an afternoon walk last October in a not particularly spectacular area of the countryside around Unstone Grange, a residential centre between Chesterfield and Sheffield where we were attending a weekend conference. There are a few more at Unstone, Derbyshire.


The Rich don’t care

Wednesday, March 18th, 2020

The main event I had come to Mayfair to cover was the continuing dispute at one of the most exclusive of clubs, LouLou’s, where the IWGB Cleaners and Facilities Branch was holding one of a series of protests on behalf of the kitchen porters who work there.

The porters want a living wage and to be treated with dignity and respect and given decent terms and conditions including proper sick pay, holidays and pension contributions.

LouLou’s is an exclusive club and membership is apparently only available to people who are regarded as celebrities and they include some well-known names. What they appear to have in common, from their reactions as they were escorted past the protesters is any regard for the people who work long and unsocial hours to service their needs.

And of course they are also people to who spend silly amounts of money on their own entertainment – the annual subscription to the club is £1800 and a gin and tonic costs £20 – but begrudge the workers a living wage. That £20 drink is over two hours wages for a kitchen porter.

The club tried to play a very hard game, suspending some of the workers – all migrants – on trumped up charges in August. But the protests and an online petition:

Migrant workers at Brexiteer millionaire Robin Birley’s 5 Hertford Street club have been suspended on trumped up charges. #5HeartlessStreet

Their crime? Demanding a living wage & sick pay.
Sign & help end this injustice

increased the pressure. And on December 11th the IWGB made an announcement:

11 December: The Independent Workers Union of Great Britain (IWGB) has called off strikes planned for today and tomorrow at 5 Hertford Street, as it consults members following an offer from the club.

5 Hertford Street has offered its kitchen porters the London Living Wage from January 2020, 5 days sick pay, and regular quarterly consultations with the union on terms and conditions.

https://iwgb.org.uk/post/5df0d186b3f7c/5-hertford-street-concedes-top

More at IWGB at Mayfair club Loulou’s


All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.


Defending the Indefensible

Tuesday, March 17th, 2020

It just hadn’t occurred to me that there would be protesters defending Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, hereafter MbS, the man responsible for sending a team of assassins to kill and then dismember with bone saws the body of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2nd 2018.

Of course their state-sponsored posters and placards – including two large electronic screens strapped to two men didn’t mention the killing, nor MbS’s other purges, including the 2017 arrest of business leaders and other prominent Saudi figures in what he called an anti-corruption campaign, the kidnapping of former Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri in 2017 and more – including recent arrests of yet more leading Saudi figures who he sees as possible rivals.

So when I first walked up to their noisy protest I misunderstood their reason for being there. I couldn’t of course understand what they were shouting, and it was only after I read the posters that I realised they had come to support MbS and not to protest against a cruel dictator.

Of course some of them may have had good personal reasons for supporting MbS. Saudi businessmen operating in the UK may well be profiting from his economic reforms and support his Vision 2030 for a Saudi Arabia that in some respects will modernise, largely in the interests of business. Some of those taking part will be working for the Saudi government and companies such as Saudi Aramco, supposedly the most profitable company in the world, though this position is perhaps under threat by MbS’s current oil war with Russia. And some may have been paid for their evening’s work.

Certainly if you are a Saudi citizen and have any intention of returning to that country in the future, being seen as a supporter of MbS rather than an opponent will be vital for your health – as the brutal Khashoggi murder testifies. You need to be seen (and filmed) to be on the right side.


Justice for Jamal Khashoggi

On the anniversary of Khashoggi’s death, a small group of protesters on the opposite side of the road stood in a quiet line in front of the Embassy garden holding posters, and later burning nightlights, in a silent vigil for the cruelly murdered journalist. It was a small but dignified and rather more impressive display than the PR event taking place opposite.


More on both events:
Saudis support killer Prince MBS
Justice For Jamal Khashoggi


All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

Brighton 1983

Monday, March 16th, 2020

Here’s one I made earlier. I’d forgotten completely about this image, taken on a family trip to Brighton, but came across it in my archive on hard disk when I was looking for something else a few days ago, and thought it looked interesting.

But I was busy with other things and didn’t make a note of the file name, and when I decided I would share the picture I couldn’t find it. I spent an hour late last night looking through folder after folder of images. It didn’t fit any of the categories I have, and I went to bed annoyed with myself for not being able to find it.

I spent another half hour this morning. If only when I scanned images back in 2012 I had added some metadata. I’d thought a little more about when I’d taken the image, and thought it was almost certainly when we had two young German girls staying with us, some time in the early 1980s. I couldn’t exactly remember the year, but it was easy to track down some of the pictures I’d taken of them playing with my own children.

It still wasn’t easy to recognise this image from the small thumbnail in File Explorer’s ‘Large Icons’ mode, which was on its side and rather low in contrast, and I wasn’t sure I had found it until I double-clicked to load it into FastPictureViewer Pro and see it full-screen.

I wasn’t surprised to find that I hadn’t retouched the scan and there were as usual quite a few blemishes, particularly noticeable in the sky area. Usually I retouch images on a second computer which has a small Wacom Graphire pad and stylus, and is still on Windows 7 – I can’t get this old pad to work on Windows 10. I couldn’t be bothered to switch to that machine for a single image, so I did the retouching using a mouse. It made me realise why I normally use the Wacom pad.

Then I saved the image, resized it to post online (the original is roughly one hundred times the number of pixels), converted to 8 bit sRGB and made the mistake of saving it again over the original file. Fortunately on a drive connected to the other machine I had a backup. So I had to start that machine to restore the original file, and before I did so used the stylus and pad to do a slightly better and rather easier retouch.

Back in 1983 we were of course working with film, and when I took this picture I couldn’t be sure I had caught the moment. It surprises me now that this was the only frame I took, but of course I was on Brighton Palace Pier with a group of people most of whom were more interested in ice creams and silly hats than taking pictures, and some were probably pulling at my arms as I stopped to make this exposure with my Olympus OM1 on Ilford FP4.


All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.


London October

Monday, March 16th, 2020

I don’t go out a great deal at night now, and mainly its when I’m out with friends and taking few pictures. I like to be at home and sitting down to a good dinner and a glass or two of a decent red wine. I quite like eating out, but the food at home is usually better and the wine almost always so, even at prices for a bottle you might pay for a large glass in a restaurant.

I’d hoped to be at home and at table by the time I left the protest in Chalk Farm. I left partly because there wasn’t a great deal going on, but mainly because the light had sunk to levels where working without flash had become more or less impossible and I was hungry. I don’t like winter and shorter days, but at least you don’t have to stay out so late if you want to take night pictures.

There is I think only one picture taken from the train as it goes through Vauxhall or Nine Elms in this month’s selection; perhaps the train windows were dirtier this month. But there are other pictures of the fast-changing area still under development, even the one above on Vauxhall Station itself. It gives a good idea of how vertical parts of the city are becoming.

There are several of Vauxhall and Lambeth across the river, including one with this Henry Moore piece in the foreground. I think the only thing still visible from when I first walked this way is Vauxhall Bridge itself, even the walkway and the river wall have been rebuilt.

London’s buses give a unique viewpoint on the city, and there is no need to spend large sums on open-top private operators to enjoy it. London’s buses are cheap, and a travelcard gives you a day’s unlimited access, though pictures like that above will fall foul of TfL’s over-zealous legalistic protection of its copyright symbol. Were I making some commercial use of it rather than posting an image on a non-commercial blog there might be a case to answer.

Many more pictures, including some slightly different views of a few well-known landmarks as well as some of London’s more obscure streets, such at the one above.

London Images


All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

There are no adverts on this site and it receives no sponsorship, and I like to keep it that way. But it does take a considerable amount of my time and thought, and if you enjoy reading it, please share on social media.
And small donations via Paypal – perhaps the cost of a beer – would be appreciated.

Requiem For A Bee

Sunday, March 15th, 2020

Getting to Clissold Park in Stoke Newington isn’t the most convenient of London journeys, at least not if you are in a hurry. And having been at Euston to photograph the HS2 protest it took me a while to arrive there – the Underground to Manor Park, a bus ride and then a run (or rather a mixture of walking and running we used to call ‘Scout’s pace’) across the park.

But events were running late, and I was pleased and surprised to find that the funeral procession to Stoke Newington Town Hall that should have left just over 15 minutes earlier was only just forming up. And I had another 5 minutes to recover my breath before it finally moved off.

The bee in question was apparently the Red Girdled Mining Bee, previously found in Abney Park Cemetery was now extinct there due to loss of habitat with increasing development in Hackney. It was a local example of species extinction that is occurring on a huge scale world-wide as a result of human activities destroying ecosystems and increasingly from the changes in weather and climate from global heating due to rising levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

Although I could see the idea of concentrating on a small local example, I did rather wonder how clearly and powerfully it would communicate with the many citizens of Stoke Newington going about their daily business who saw the procession, though other aspects were clearer from many of the placards and banners. But Extinction Rebellion does sometimes seem to be a very much a highly successful movement of the educated middle class making relatively little connection with the bulk of the population.

After the funeral orations at the Town Hall, the procession and the coffin moved on down Stoke Newington Church St and up Stoke Newington High St to the wonderful Egyptian-style listed 1840s cemetery gates. It was a shame that the protest did not take greater advantage of the location and pose with their various banners and flags.

Rather it slid uneasily into the kind of new-age reflection and meditation that while it may appeal to some gets very much up my nose. As I commented on My London Diary, “Had I been protesting rather than photographing the event I would have left for a pint. ” I hung on hoping that something more interesting might happen, but it didn’t. While this aspect of XR may go down well with some I think it probably causes many to avoid it. But perhaps it’s just me.

More at Requiem for a Bee.


All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

There are no adverts on this site and it receives no sponsorship, and I like to keep it that way. But it does take a considerable amount of my time and thought, and if you enjoy reading it, please share on social media.
And small donations via Paypal – perhaps the cost of a beer – would be appreciated.


Feb 2020: My London Diary

Saturday, March 14th, 2020

February’s event are now completed on ‘My London Diary‘ thanks to a few days I’ve taken off going out to take more photographs. It’s getting harder for me to go out and take pictures at night or in bad weather and I’m also getting a little pickier about what I cover. This month’s list is around half as long as some others.

I’ve also been busy with some other things – getting a small show of work ready for next month (here’s the invite) and putting quite a few more of my old pictures at a decent size on Flickr.

feb 2020

Against the Anti-Muslim pogrom in Delhi
Earth Strike target Glencore

Green Anti-Capitalists Rally Against Capital
University teachers march for Education
City Inter-Livery Pancake Race
Enough is Enough XR march

Don’t Extradite Assange
St Georges’s Hospital Security Guards
Wandle Wander
Youth Strike for Climate
Bermondsey Walk

BP Must Fall!
End Jamaican Charter Flight deportations
Tamils Sri Lanka Independence Day protest
Battersea, Chelsea and Kensington
No To Jamaica Deportation Flights
Nine Elms

Palestinians against Trump’s Deal

London Images


All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

There are no adverts on this site and it receives no sponsorship, and I like to keep it that way. But it does take a considerable amount of my time and thought, and if you enjoy reading it, please share on social media.
And small donations via Paypal – perhaps the cost of a beer – would be appreciated.


Private view cancelled

Friday, March 13th, 2020

I’m not sure what to make of our Government’s response to the virus, but everyone else seems to be taking it more seriously and cancelling events which bring numbers of members of the public together.

Hilary Rosen and I have had to cancel the private view for our exhibition at The Street Gallery, UCLH, which was to have taken place next Thursday.

Unless the situation changes drastically the show will still go ahead and you can view it any time from 19th March -22nd April 2020 at University College Hospital, 235 Euston Road, London NW1 2BU – just opposite Warren St Underground.

It may be possible to hold a private view at the end of the show, but I rather think this is unlikely.