>Re-PHOTO

Another first for my work tomorrow when it will be projected for the first time by bike power!

“The nabokov Arts Club returns with another extravaganza of live theatre, music, comedy, poetry and visual art in a vast, atmospheric Victorian warehouse in the heart of Shoreditch … at Village Underground, recently named ‘Top Venue for Wow Factor’ by Time Out London… the Arts Club will be joining tens of thousands of people from over 150 countries for the biggest ever day of climate change activism. We’ll be part of a global action coordinated by 350.org to urge world leaders to take bold and immediate steps to address climate change and reduce carbon emissions. Within our solar-powered venue we will have a bicycle-powered art installation showcasing climate change photography…”

Which will include the set of 24 pictures – including the one above – that I put together for Foto Arte 2007 in Brasilia. Just in case you can’t get along to Shoreditch for what looks like a very interesting evening (and I can’t make it myself) you can see the full set of pictures here. As well as showing a number of demonstrations in London there are also some pictures from the Manor Gardens Allotments, which were bulldozed to make way for the London 2012 Olympics – see London Olympics – Green Disaster for my thoughts on that and links to some more pictures.

The venue for the Brasilia show  – more snaps from my Brasilia trip

The partying in Shoreditch goes on from 8pm until 2am – including an extra hour when we change back from Summer Time to GMT, always a sad moment for those of us who like to photograph out of doors. The people there are going to produce a banner which will be photographed on the rooftop with the City as a backdrop and become part of the 350.org campaign to put pressure on world leaders to actually agree to some effective action at Copenhagen in December.

Village Underground is just a few minutes walk from Hoxton Market, where the exhibition ‘Taken in London‘ with work by myself and Paul Baldesare continues until the end of the month at ‘The Shoreditch Gallery‘ in the Juggler – see Opening Night, Hanging Day and Taken in London for more details. And just before lunch on Sunday, Paul and I will be giving a five minute illustrated presentation on the show as a part of the ‘This is Not A Gateway‘ festival in Hanbury St, Spitalfields, again about a five minute walk away. Things really are all happening in this part of London – and Photomonth 2009 really is keeping photography very much at the heart of them.

The Foreign Office advises “against all travel to Baghdad and its surrounding area” on the grounds that it is unsafe, but somehow the UK Borders Agency thinks it’s fine to forcibly take Iraqis who have sought refuge in this country on planes, fly them back there under heavy guard and dump them back on its streets, leaving them to fend for themselves having shoved a few dollar bills in their hands.

They flew 44 to the airport last, but the Iraqis refused to let most of them disembark. One who was put off there was interviewed by a reporter for the BBC, obviously in fear of his life, in hiding there. He’d only left Baghdad after his brother was murdered, convinced that it was a case of mistaken identity and that the real target for the attack had been him. Now he feared to meet his attempted killers on every street he walked.

It’s a sorry tale of a government determined to look tough over migration into this country, to appear to take a harder line than the Tories – or even the ultra-right. More about this shameful failure to meet our obligations under the UN Convention on the Treatment of Refugees and the EU on My London Diary.

Standing alongside the lawyers, the International Federation of Iraqi Refugees and others at the emergency demonstration on Saturday was Brian Haw who has become a public hero for his continued peace protest in Parliament Square since June 2001 – over 8 years. It is a vigil that has taken its toll on him, but he still spoke strongly at the event.

I’m not a great supporter of animal rights. I enjoy eating meat and fish – though I also eat a lot of vegetarian dishes. But I do think we should treat animals with a decent amount of care and respect, and avoid the kind of cruelty that is so much a part of factory farming. It isn’t all like that, and I’ve known farmers who really care for the animals they raise and spend a great deal of time and effort in making sure that they are well treated. Of course I can’t be sure that all the meat I eat or all the dairy products come from farms like this, but we do try as much as possible to avoid factory farmed produce when we are buying food.

But there is no such thing as cruelty-free fur. Wherever countries have tried to provide less cruel conditions in fur farms the result has always been to make the farms unable to compete with those in other countries that have no concern for animal cruelty. The UK policy banning fur farms is the only sensible policy and one that should be adopted across the world.

Trapping and hunting of wild animals for their furs also involves considerable cruelty, and around the world traps are still in use in many countries that were banned here years ago. Shooting too often fails to kill cleanly, with some wounded animals escaping to die a lingering death, and young animals whose parent is killed may be left to starve.

We don’t need to wear fur, and for almost any purpose that fur is used there are better vegetable or synthetic alternatives. Most fur used now is simply decorative, and even when produced under cruel regimes is still expensive. It’s become just a marginally less crass way than sewing large denomination notes onto clothes for people to say “look how effing rich I am darling.”

Wearing fur – including fur trimmings – had more or less become unacceptable in polite, civilised society, but recently some parts of the fashion trade have been trying to rehabilitate it. We shouldn’t need a Campaign to Abolish the Fur Trade in the twentyfirst century, but unfortunately we still do.

Boycott Harrods – the only department store still selling furs

More on My London Diary about the National Anti-Fur March and more pictures

Almost all these pictures were taken with the 24-70mm f2.8, which was pretty much an ideal lens, enabling me to work close in and at a reasonable shutter speed and ISO in the rather poor light. There were just a few times when I wanted something longer (usually considerably longer) and rather more where something just a little wider was called for.  I think the ideal kit on full frame would have at its centre something like a 20-50mm lens, but unfortunately they don’t exist.

It would be hard not to feel a great sympathy for the Tamils. The world – including the UN and of course our own government have for many years decided to turn a blind eye to the takeover of Sri Lanka by the majority Sinhalese. Britain failed to protect their interests when we gave Ceylon independence, failed to inspire Commonwealth action over the years, but particularly at the time of the creation of Sri Lanka. The world looked away (or gave encouragement and arms)  as the Sri Lankan government imposed a military solution on the Tamil areas, killing many thousands of civilians as well as the Tamil Tigers.

The Tamils were calling for the release of the  over 280,000 Tamil civilians – including at least 50,000 children  – still held in miserable and squalid conditions in camps run by the Sri Lankan military.  They want international aid agencies and press to have access to the camps and a full independent investigation of the war crimes committed by the Sri Lankan government and army. They have lost faith in the UN and its General Secretary Ban Ki-Moon.

At the start of the demonstration at Temple, protesters seemed rather thin on the ground and the mood seemed  one of resignation and dejection, rather than the energetic enthusiasm of the much larger demonstrations before the military defeat. Even the ‘prisoners’ in the mock concentration camp leading the march seemed subdued, although by the time I left the march as it turned up Northumberland Ave they were noticeably more animated.

But it was a difficult event to find anything to photography, which is perhaps why rather more than usual of my pictures were taken from a distance, looking down from the footbridge on the east side of the Hungerford Bridge (now one of the two bridges on each side of the rail bridge.)

I wasn’t particularly happy with the pictures I took. I had hoped to catch up with them later in the afternoon before the march reached Hyde Park, but with the smaller numbers the police were able to pressure them to walk rather faster than on previous occasions where they had taken over the roadway and by the time I was able to get back the march had finished. You can see them as usual on My London Diary.

While these were the questions asked over the toast and marmalade in many homes this morning, for once I knew all the answers. Because I was at the centre of David Wilshire MP’s constituency, Staines.  Spelthorne is at the centre of all those reservoirs visible on the left immediately after take-off from Heathrow as you wantonly increase your carbon footprint.

David Wilshire and his partner and office manager Ann Palmer

All that water is not enough for our local council, which also goes under the rather silly name of Spelthorne, and despite the fact that the River Thames was only a few yards behind me they had to install the rather fatuous ‘water feature’ (a concrete ditch) that you can see behind the Spelthorne MP and his very personal assistant taking part in a very worthwhile charity event Stepping Out for Water that I photographed last year.

Mr Wilshire has earned some local respect for getting involved in events such as this, where he came to speak at the meeting in the Staines Riverside Gardens/Car Park at the end of a walk raising concern and cash about the one fifth of the world who lack clean water and the 40% who lack basic sanitation – and our failure to do our part to meet the Millennium Development Goals, one of which included the aim to halve those without clean water and sanitation by 2015.  He’s also supported other events, such as a Trade Justice demonstration in Staines. So he isn’t all bad.

Wilshire at a Trade Justice demonstration in Staines in 2003

He also regularly replies to letters from me and Linda, telling us of his support for various things we oppose – such as the wasting of vast amounts of money on Trident and the expansion of Heathrow – an issue where he is one of few local MPs to defy official Conservative policy. But he does keep in contact with constituents and argue the case even if he almost invariably ends up coming to the wrong conclusion.

He must have been doing something right, as there is a group of local Tories reported to be trying to get rid of him since August – though their main beef is over his expenses claims, others criticise him for not living in the borough (reportedly he has homes in Somerset, Hanworth and London.)  The current allegations are about payments to Moorlands Research Services, an unregistered company owned by himself and his partner, Ann Palmer.

Spelthorne exists because of opposition by Conservative backwoodsmen and women back in the 1960s, who fought tooth and nail to keep this true blue area out of Greater London and in particular the London Borough of Hounslow (thus ensuring it remained under Labour control. Oh dear!)  It then jumped over the Thames to become part of Surrey, although that country has never quite accepted it, and even now some local activities get missed out from Surrey listings because they are in Middlesex. But Staines really isn’t Surrey. We have the crime rates, unemployment and social problems  you’d expect for outer London, with an extra dose of pollution from Heathrow and three motorways around our edges – the M25, M3 and M4.

David Wilshire MP speaks. Rather a lot of nonsense as usual.

Wilshire, a former Conservative whip, probably last made the national headlines for the controversial Section 28 which he introduced into the Local Government Act, 1988 aimed at preventing “local authorities from promoting homosexuality“.  A half-baked and largely ineffectual attempt at discrimination, it had the effect of uniting and galvanising LGBT groups in protest and thus advancing the cause of equality in the period until it was repealed (in Scotland in 2000 and the rest of the UK in 2003 – hard to comprehend why it took New Labour so long.)

It seems inevitable in the current climate that Wilshire will have to go – whatever the justice of his case. But I don’t hold out any great hope that the conservative candidate that replaces him as MP (a monkey with a blue rosette would get elected here) will be any better.

Another picture from ‘Stepping Out For Water‘