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Vedanta AGM Protest – 2010

Vedanta AGM Protest: Westminster, Wednesday 28 July 2010

The protest outside Vedanta’s AGM held in Westminster on Wednesday 28th July 2010 was the first time I really became aware of the company and its mining activities. This protest concentrated on its plans to displace and wipe out an ancient civilisation in the Niyamgiri Hills of Orissa, India by bauxite mining.

The hills which would have been destroyed by their mining are sacred to the region’s Adivasis, primarily the Dongria Kondh tribes. By 2010 Foil Vedanta who organised the protest were saying that Vedanta had caused more than 100 deaths in the area though accidents, police shooting, forced displacement, injury and illness.

More than a thousand people have already been displaced, with 8000 under threat, moved away from their traditional sources of income and dumped into shanty towns where there is no work. Thousands of acres of fertile agricultural land have been destroyed, rivers and streams disrupted and drinking water contaminated by fly ash and toxic red mud.

Anil Agarwal is CEO of Vedanta

Vedanta Resouces is an Indian company founded and still run by the Agarwal family, but in 2003 was listed on the London Stock Exchange following a two year ban by the Securities Exchange Board of India from accessing capital markets after they were found guilty of cornering shares and rigging share prices.

Police push back security who assaulted activists who tried to enter the building

A damning report, Vedanta’s Billions: Regulatory failure, environment and human rights‘, issued by Foil Vedanta in 2018 accuses “the City of London and the Financial Conduct Authority” of minimising the risks associated with Vedanta’s legal violations and human rights and environmental abuses’ and failing to investigate or penalise any London listed mining company on these grounds.”

Among other crimes, the report names Vedanta as “the latest in a string of London listed mining companies linked to the murder or ‘massacre’ of protesters, including Lonmin, Glencore, Kazakhmys, ENRC, Essar, GCM Resources, Anglo Gold Ashanti, African Barrick Gold and Monterrico Metals.”

As well as Foil Vedanta the campaign against them was supported by Amnesty International, Survival International and Action Aid, and a number of campaigners had become shareholders so they could attend the meeting and attempt to question the company’s activities – and these included Bianca Jagger. Her presence and that of two bright blue aliens from the tribe destroyed in the James Cameron film ‘Avatar’ ensured that the protest for once got some press coverage. Also supporting the protest were the South Asia Solidarity Group, South Asian Alliance, Brent Refugee and Migrant Forum and London Development Education Centre.

The campaign against Vedanta had already been successful in getting various shareholders to end their investment, including the Church of England, the Joseph Rowntree Trust and the Dutch pensions company in ending their investments due to concerns about its approach to human rights and the environment. And continued protests by Foil Vedanta undoubtedly played a part in the company’s decision to de-list from the London Stock Exchange in 2018.

The company was helped to list in London by the British Government’s Department of Trade and Industry and the Department for International Development (DfID), and was getting continued support from the DfID Building Partnerships for Development programme and the Orissa ‘Drivers for Change’ research project, and former British Ambassador to Saudi Arabia and High Commissioner of India David Gore-Booth had been a directory.

Its billionaire CEO Anil Agarwal was said to have close links with the extremist umbrella group for Indian Hindu right-wing organistions, Sangh Parivar, said to be responsible for many attacks on Muslim and Christian communities in Orissa, Gujurat and other parts of India.

The Foil Vedanta report has a “special focus on illegal mining in Goa, pollution and tax evasion in Zambia, as well as illegal expansion and pollution in Thoothukudi, Tamil Nadu, industrial disaster at Korba in Chhattisgarh, land settlement and pollution issues in Punjab, displacement and harassment of activists in Lanjigarh, Odisha, and a mineral allocation scam in Rajasthan.“

You can see and read more about the 2010 protest on My London Diary at Vedanta AGM Protest.

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End the Genocide, Stop Arming Israel – 19 July 2025

End the Genocide, Stop Arming Israel: Last Saturday, 19th July 2025, the weather forecast for London was dire. Thunderstorms and heavy rain until clearing a little later in the afternoon, with up to several inches of rain leading to some localised flooding. In the event it was a bit under two inches, with small rivers running along the side of some streets.

In this account I intend to write about my personal experiences and working as a photographer on the day rather than my views on the terrible situation in Palestine and the reprehensible actions of the Israeli government and army – and Hamas. I’ve often written about the need for peace and justice, for an end to occupation and destruction and for the release of hostages and prisoners.

Linda and I were determined to go out and join the national demonstration, to show our support for the people of Gaza, to demand our government stop selling arms to Israel and to call on the Israeli government to end its terrible destruction and genocidal attacks and to allow humanitarian aid for the people of Gaza, many now starving. A little rain was not going to stop us.

As usual I checked online for our trains, only to find that our services into London were subject to delay and cancellation due to signalling problems. We dropped everything and hurried to get an earlier train than we had intended – and which actually was more punctual than usual – only two or three minutes late into Waterloo.

It was raining fairly heavily as we walked out of the station and by the time we’d crossed the Jubilee bridge to the Embankment where the march was gathering we were already quite wet.

As the forecast was for afternoon temperatures in the low to mid twenties I’d grabbed a lightweight waterproof jacket on my way out, which was a mistake. It did keep the water off to start with but was soon getting soaked through in places. I realised too late that I should have worn my poncho – or a heavier jacket that although too warm would have kept me dry. At least I’d had the sense to put on my truly waterproof walking boots rather than my usual trainers.

We joined the large crowd that was sheltering under the bridge carrying the rail lines into Charing Cross and I started to take photographs. It was dry – so long as you avoided the areas where water was leaking down from above – but rather dark.

I was working with my Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mark III (what a crazy mouthful of a name) a camera that came out over 5 years ago. It’s a Micro 43 camera with a sensor only around half the size of full-frame, but that does mean it can be significantly smaller and lighter – something increasingly important to me as I get less able to carry heavy camera bags. And, vitally important today, it is a camera that has good weather protection.

I also had my Fuji X-T30 in my camera bag, with a 10-24 zoom fitted. Had I not rushed out I might have chosen a more suitable body and wide angle for use in wet weather. Neither that camera or lens are weather sealed (the more recent 10-24mm is) and for most of the day they stayed in my bag. I did take them out a couple of times when the rain had eased off, but hardly any of the pictures I took with them were usable.

Under the bridge light was low, but the Olympus has good image stablisation and the main problem was subject movement, as people shouted slogans, jumped up and down, banged drums and more. Being very crowded also meant people were often banging into me as I was working.

I also use small and light lenses – in the case the Olympus 14-150mm F4-5.6 – equivalent to 28-300mm on full frame, going from a decent but not extreme wide-angle to a long telephoto. Its a small, light and incredibly versatile lens, but not one at its best in low light with its rather small aperture.

I started off working with the lens on the P setting, the programme choosing suitable shutter speed and aperture – with the lens wide open and shutter speeds of around 1/15 to 1/25 second. But I soon realised to stop action I would need a faster speed and switched to manual, deliberating underexposing at 1/100th second, f5.0 and at ISO 3200. The RAW images were dark but I knew that I could get Lightroom to make them look fine – if sometimes lacking in shadow detail.

Eventually people began to move out into the rain and march and I went with them, holding my camera under my jacket and only taking it out quickly to take pictures. I looked in my bag for the chamois leather I usually hold to dry and hold in front of the lens filter and it wasn’t there – I’d left it back home in the pocket of the jacket I was wearing when it last rained while I was taking pictures. I had to make do with a handkerchief instead, giving the protective filter a quick wipe before each exposure.

Outside it was a little brighter and I was able to increase the shutter speed to something more sensible, and was using manual settings of 1/160 f5.6 with auto-ISO giving me correct exposure. I was mainly working at the wider focal lengths of the lens and f5.6 gave me enough depth of field.

I hadn’t got out my umbrella, but of course many others were carrying them to keep dry. I find it hard to work with one hand while holding an umbrella in the other. But other people’s umbrellas were a little of a nuisance, with water often pouring from them onto me as I took pictures, adding to the effect of the rain.

So I was getting increasing wet – and soon retreated to the sheltered area under the bridge where different groups were now coming through. Keeping close to the end of the sheltered area I was able to keep working at the same settings, with the ISO now 3200.

London, UK. 19 July 2025. Stephen Kapos and another holocaust survivor on the march.

After a while I went out into the wet again – the rain had eased off slightly, and took more pictures. Then I noticed the banner for the Jewish holocaust survivors and their descendants and went over to greet Stephen Kapos, photograph him and another survivor as they set off on the march.

Shortly after I decided I would move to Westminster Bridge to take pictures of the marchers with the Houses of Parliament in the background, and walked as quickly as I could to there. Crowds of marchers and tourists watching the march slowed my progress somewhat.

The bridge is open to light and I was now using 1/250 second, but still with the Olympus lens at its wide-angle lens there was no need to stop down and I was working at around ISO 640.

I think around half of the march had gone over the bridge before I got there and I stayed taking pictures around halfway across the bridge for around half an hour, only leaving when I could see the end of the march coming on to the bridge. Fortunately the rain had eased off, but I was still getting wet.

I then hurried taking a short cut to get to Waterloo Bridge, taking just a few pictures where hurried past the march again on York Road. I took more photographs as people came onto Waterloo Bridge and then saw that a large group had stopped in the shelter underneath the railyway bridge and were having a spirited protest there – so I went to photograph them. When they marched off I went with them to Waterloo Bridge.

I looked at my watch. I had thought about taking the tube to Westminster and then going to photograph the rally in Whitehall, but decided it was perhaps too late to bother. I’d taken a lot of photographs and was rather wet and also hungry and decided it was time to go home.

I went to Waterloo and got on a train. Eventually, 15 minutes late, it decided to leave, and with a few stoppages at signals got me home around 25 minutes later than it should. Fortunately I’d packed some sandwiches and was able to eat them sitting at Waterloo, though the view wasn’t interesting. I’d edited and filed my pictures by the time Linda arrived home.

More pictures on Alamy and Facebook.

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National March for Palestine 30 Nov 2024

National March for Palestine: On 30th November 2024 I photographed yet another large march through London calling for an end to the continuing attacks by Israel in Gaza, Lebanon and the occupied West Bank.

As usual there was a strong Jewish presence on the march – and it was opposed by a much smaller counter-demonstration by largely Jewish protesters, many calling for the release of the hostages still held in Gaza.

Many of those on the main march also want the hostages to be released, but see the only way to acheive this is not to continue the devastation and genocide in Gaza, but a ceasefire with serious negotiations towards a long-term peace in Palestine and Israel.

Last week over 200 Israelis living in the UK signed a letter to Keir Starmer and David Lammy urging them to impose sanctions on Israeli ministers Itamar Ben Gvit and Bezalel Smotrich, asking others living in the UK with Israeli citizenship to add their signatures.

In part this stated their opposition to the hateful and dangerous rhetoric of these two miniters which they say “endangers lives, obstructs the possibility of a hostage deal , and endorses calls for ethnic cleansing.”

Reported here in the Jewish press but I think ignored by the BBC and the rest of the UK press, the letter accuses the two ministers of “doing all they can to prevent a hostage and ceasefire deal and instead focusing their entire energies on their messianic aims: annexing the West Bank and settling the Gaza strip.”

The letter makes clear that the two “do not speak for us” and that opinion “polls in Israel reveal that the majority of the public supports a hostage deal and seeks an end to the war.”

Earlier the Jewish News had reported on a campaign by British Jewish organisation “Yachad, who advocate for peace and equality for Israelis and Palestinans“, also calling for sanctions against the two men, and the media more widely covered both David Cameron stating his government had been planning sanctions against these ministers and on Starmer and Lammy “mulling over” sanctions. By now these seem well overmulled.

As with all the previous marches and events calling for an end to the attacks on Gaza, the protest was entirely peaceful, with a complete absence of any antisemitism – unless you define calling for freedom for Palestine and Palestinians as antisemitic.

I wrote in my captions “As the death toll from Israel’s attacks in Gaza is now over 43,000 and many now face starvation with every hospital having been bombed and with virtually no medical supplies, and the UK is still complicit in the genocide, thousands including many Jews, marched in yet another entirely peaceful mass protest in solidarity. They call for an immediate ceasefire with the release of hostages and prisoners and for negotiations to secure a long-term just peace in the area.“

That figure of 43,000 is sadly out of date and the true figure is now considerably higher, with many bodies still buried under rubble and an increasing number of deaths from the disease and starvation caused by the continuing attacks and the deliberate denial of food, fuel and medicine. Israeli forces have destroyed much of the infrastructure as well as the organisation of society which was of course largely provided by Hamas.

We are witnessing – despite the banning of the international press from any effective access to Gaza – the large scale collective punishment of the entire population of Gaza. And the detailed reported and conclusion “that following 7 October 2023, Israel committed and is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza” by Amnesty International confirms what has been clear to almost everyone for many months

All the pictures here are from the march through London on 30th November 2024. You can see many more here in my album on the event.

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Climate March & Open House 2014

Climate March & Open House: On Sunday 21st September 2014 I photographed the so-called ‘Peoples Climate March’ in central London before going to party with Focus E15 Mothers on the Carpenters Estate where they celebrated a year of their fight to be rehoused in the area.

Peoples Climate March – Embankment

As in this week in 2023, a Climate Summit was taking place in New York in September 2014 and marches were taking place in London and elsewhere to demand divestment in fossil fuels and an end to the domination of politics by the fossil fuel industry which has blocked action against climate change.

Little has actually changed in the 9 years since then. More empty words and promises but too many governments including our own in the UK continuing to encourage exploration for more gas and oil and even approving new coal mines. And carbon levels continue to rise, with at least a 2 degree rise in global temperature now seeming inevitable.

What has changed is that we are all much more aware that climate change is real and are feeling its effects. While many in the Global South have been suffering for years, we in Europe and North America have now felt the new record high temperatures and seen the increasing wild fires and unstable weather caused by global temperature rise.

Last Saturday I photographed another Climate March in London, and it had a rather more serious and committed air than the 2014 event, not just because it was organised by Extinction Rebellion, but because the global situation has worsened, with new an disturbing reports coming out almost weekly.

Back in 2014 I wrote about some length about the march and how it “seemed to have been rather taken over by various slick and rather corporate organisations rather than being a ‘people’s march’ and seemed to lack any real focus.”

Then I commented that “There was one block – the ‘‘Fossil Free Block’ that I felt was worth supporting, and what the whole march should have been about. We have to stop burning oil, coal, gas. We are certainly on our way to disastrous climate change if we fail to severely cut carbon emissions, and probably need to actually reverse some of the rise that has already occurred. Drastic action really is needed.”

The 2023 march was behind a banner ‘NO NEW FOSSIL FUELS’ and another read ‘BIG OIL HAS FRIED US ALL’. But it didn’t get the kind of corporate support of the 2014 event and I don’t think there were any celebrities on the march, though I think some spoke at the rally afterwards, but I had left before this.

Worryingly in 2023 it was much smaller than the 2014 March. Back in 2014 I still felt there was time to avert catastrophe, but now I’m rather less optimistic. It may be too late. I have a feeling that in another nine years time we will be marching again, world leaders will still be talking and doing little and the world will be descending into chaos. Given my age it may still see me out but I worry about those younger.

More on My London Diary at Peoples Climate March.

Focus E15 Open House Day

I left well before the end of the march in 2014 too, catching the Underground to Stratford to get to the Carpenters Estate in Stratford where Focus E15 Mothers were celebrating the first anniversary of their fight against LB Newham’s failure to provide local housing for local people.

It was a year since Newham Council had cut funding for their hostel in Stratford run by East Thames Housing and they had been given eviction notices. Newham, which had a statutory duty to rehouse them told them it would be in private rental property miles away in Birmingham or Hastings or Wales but they wanted to stay within reach of families, jobs support services and friends in London.

Unlike many others they decided to fight the council, and launched an active and successful campaign, later widening their personal fight into “a wider campaign for housing for all, for social housing in London and an end to the displacement of low income households from the capital, with the slogan ‘Social Housing not Social Cleansing’.”

Despite the desperate shortage of social housing in Newham, the council led by Mayor Robin Wales had been trying to sell off its Carpenters Estate for ten years, moving people out and leaving good homes empty. The estate is next door to Stratford Station and Bus Station and so has excellent transport links making it very desirable for development. It is a post-war estate with large numbers of good quality low-rise housing along with three tower blocks. By 2014, most of the properties had “been boarded up for years, empty while thousands wait on the council’s housing list.“

In June 2014 I’d come with Focus E15 to the estate and had photographed them pasting up large photographs of themselves on some boarded up flats with slogans such as ‘This home needs a family‘ and ‘This family needs a home‘ and ‘These homes need people‘. I’d been told something intersting might happen at the party and wasn’t surprised when after a noisy session by a samba band to mask the sounds of removing some of the metal shutters at the rear of the flats we saw some of the E15 mums and supporters waving at us from a first floor window.

“It was Open House Day in London and courtesy of the Focus E15 Mums, 80-86 Dorian Walk was now one of the houses open to the public, even if not on the official lists, and we formed an orderly queue in best Open House tradition to go in and look at the four flats. “

I was surprised to see what good conditions the flats were in, “fitted kitchens and bathrooms still in good working order – with running water, wallpaper and carpets almost pristine, and the odd piece of abandoned furniture. In one of kitchens, the calendar from 2004 was still on the wall, a reminder that while Londoners are desperate for housing, Newham council has kept this and other perfectly habitable properties empty for ten years.”

Focus E15 occupied the flats for a couple of weeks, leaving after the the Council issued legal eviction notices but their fight continued. Most of them have been rehoused in London and they have supported many others in Newham and neighbouring boroughs to get proper treatment from the council and prevent evictions. Their actions saved the Carpenters Estate and it is now being regenerated, although the plans don’t satisfy many of the groups demands. Their campaigns for housing for people in Newham continue.

More on My London Diary at Focus E15 Open House Day.

Algeria, BDS and Kenya – 2014

Algeria, BDS and Kenya: The three protests I covered on Saturday 12th April 2014 were all about activities in other countries, though the first was calling on UK consumers to take action by boycotting goods produced in illegally occupied Israeli settlements on Palestinian land.

Don’t Buy Sodastream at John Lewis – Oxford St

Supporters of the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign were handing out flyers in a regular fortnightly protest outside John Lewis, urging people not to buy SodaStream products which were then being made in illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land.

The protests are a part of the BDS campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions of Israeli products called for by Palestinian civil society, particularly aimed at products which are made in the illegally occupied settlements.

The Financial Times had recently commented that the “status of the settlements is clear in international law even if Israel chooses to ignore this and expand its colonisation of Palestinian land, while ostensibly negotiating on the creation of a Palestinian state.” Sodastream makes some of its dispensers in Ma’ale Adumim, a large Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank. Trade with these illegal settlements is illegal under international law.

Sodastream claim that they promote peaceful coexistence between Arabs and Jews by employing around 500 Palestinians, but the FT pointed out “The way to create Palestinian jobs is to end the occupation and let Palestinians build those foundations – not to build “bridges to peace” on other people’s land without their permission.”

A former Sodastreamn worker there claims that most Palestinians working for Sodastream support the boycott “because they are against [Israel’s] occupation. But they cannot afford to personally boycott work opportunities.” The company was reported to be trying to set up a new factory inside Israel rather than the occupied territories which would mainly employ Israeli Arabs. In 2015 as a result of protests such as this one, Sodastream moved production from Ma’ale Adumim in the occupied West Bank to Lehavim in Israel proper. The company, which had been founded in the UK in 1903 but relaunched in 1998 was bought by PepsiCo in 2018.

Before the establishment of the state of Israel, Palestinians (including Druze & Bedouins) owned 92% of the land, while Jews owned about 8%. The UN awarded Israel 54% of the land, though a fairly large part of this was empty desert. In the 1948 war, Israel took another 24%. In 1967 Israel occupied all of Palestine and with further settlements and the building of the separation wall since then only the Gaza strip and around 40% of the occupied West Bank remains under Palestinian control.

Don’t Buy Sodastream at John Lewis

Against the Electoral Masquerade in Algeria – Algerian Embassy, Riding House St

This protest in London came as presidential elections were about to begin in Algeria, electing President Bouteflika for his fourth term since 1999.

The Algeria Solidarity Campaign say these elections are a huge scam and they are “more convinced than ever that the upcoming elections will be neither free and fair, nor transparent. They will certainly not result in the election of a legitimate President, representative of the wishes of the people.”

Their campaign called “for a massive boycott and/or abstention from voting and its full rejection of the ‘Presidential poll’, as it deems it to be a mere spectacle meant to maintain and cloak its authoritarian and corrupt rule in electoral legitimacy.”

The turnout in the election was low at 51.7%, and as low as 20% in some regions, and around 10% of votes were blank or invalid. But of those who voted, 81.5% were for Bouteflika. Ill health meant he made few public appearances in his fourth term and he resigned in April 2019 after months of mass protests, dying two years later.

Against the Electoral Masquerade in Algeria

Somali Refugees mistreated in Kenya – Kenya High Commission, Portland Place

Members of the Somali community protested outside the Kenyan Embassy against the mistreatment of Somali refugees at the Kasarani Concentration Camp in Kenya. They called for the ICC to investigate the crimes being committed there.

According to Reuters, the Kenyan authorities arrested more than 1,000 Somalis in mass arrests in a Somali dominated suburb of Nairobi following terrorist attacks by the Somali militant Islamic group al Shabaab. Almost 4000 were arrested and more than a thousand were held in the Kasarani sports stadium. Human Rights Watch reported many were held in packed and filthy police station cells and they saw “police whipping, beating, and verbally abusing detainees. There have been numerous credible accounts of Kenyan security forces extorting money and beating people during the arrests and in detention.”

Access to the Kasarani camp by invesigators and reporters was severely restricted, and the few people allowed access “were not able to freely interview detainees in the stadium.”

The arrests followed a number of earlier incidents reported by Human Rights Watch when “Kenyan police in Nairobi tortured, raped, and otherwise abused and arbitrarily detained at least 1,000 refugees, including women and children, between mid-November 2012 and late January 2013, following grenade and other attacks.”

Kenya still hosts large numbers of refugees from other African countries, including around 287,000 Somalis in a total of 520,000 refugees and asylum seekers.

Somali Refugees mistreated in Kenya

Slavery, Meditation, Stolen Goods & Santas

Saturday 8th December 2018 was another busy day for me in London.

Protest Slavery in Libya – Saturday 8th December 2018

Slavery, Meditation, Stolen Goods & Santas

Campaigners held a short rally outside Europe House in Smith Square protesting over the lack of action by the EU over African migrants and refugees being sold or held against their will in Libya by terrorists and jihadists which the EU funds.

They then marched to protest at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, saying the UK had failed to do anything to help because the victims were African, then stopped briefly at Downing St on their way to the Libyan Embassy.

I left them as the went past Trafalgar Square for my next event.
Protest Slavery in Libya

Dharma meditation for climate – Trafalgar Square, Saturday 8th December 2018

In Trafalgar Square members of the Dharma Action Network were meditating and handing out flyers calling for people and governments to take effective actions to combat climate change. They urged people to move their money out of banks which invest in fossil fuels, get informed by reading the IPCC report on global warming and join them and other groups including Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace or take action with Extinction Rebellion.

Dharma meditation for climate

British Museum Stolen Goods Tour – British Museum, Saturday 8th December 2018

News in the past weeks that the Horniman Museum is returning the Benin Bronzes and other items in its collection to Nigeria is a sign of the changing attitudes to museums holding on to looted objects. The museum handed over total of 72 bronzes and other objects to Nigeria. But the British Museum is full of thousands of questionably acquired objects, including over 900 from Benin.

BP or Not BP, a group opposed to the polluting oil company ‘greenwashing’ its dirty fossil fuel business by sponsoring artistic activities including major exhibitions in the British Museum had organised a tour of some of the more important stolen cultural artifacts in their collection, beginning with the Gweagal shield, stolen by Captain Cook when his men had first landed in Australia.

When they landed they were greeted by the indigenous inhabitants carrying spears and wooden shields; the sailors opened fire with muskets, with one musket ball going through the shield and wounding Cooman. The people dropped their weapons and fled, carrying the wounded man.

This shield is now on display in the British Museum and spears and other items are also in their collection, with some in other museums. This was the second time I had photographed Indigenous Australian campaigner Rodney Kelly, a 6th generation direct descendant of Cooman, standing in front of the glass-fronted cabinet containing the shield and talking about its history. His talks with the museum authorities have so far failed to get the property returned.

There was a packed audience listening to Kelly playing his didgeridoo and then telling the story of the shield and telling of the failure of the British Museum authorities to take seriously the oral tradition of his people as it could not be confirmed by written records. The Museum has gone to desperate lengths, including getting their own experts to cast doubt on the stories which the museum had previously featured about these objects.

From there we moved on, guided by BP or not BP campaigners some dressed as ‘burglars’ in striped black and white tops and carrying a sack for swag.

Another in a smart suit with a BP logo explained why BP gave the museum a relatively small amount in sponsorship which gave them huge rewards in making them seem a responsible company despite their reprehensible activities in countries around the world, despoiling resources, polluting the environment and severely aggravating global warming by encouraging fossil fuel use.

Outside the entrance to the BP-sponsored Assyrian show an Iraqi woman talked about BP’s role in her country and the looting which followed the invasion of Iraq including some of cultural artifacts which formed a part of this show.

By a large stone figure from Easter Island a speaker from Pacific Island arts group the Interisland Collective talked about the treatment by museums of Maori and Pacific Islands cultural items and read a statement from the Rapa Nui Pioneers on Easter Island calling for the return of this stolen Moai Head.

The final location for the tour was in the large room containing the Parthenon (Elgin) Marbles, where BP or not NBP’s Danny Chivers revealed his partly Greek ancestry and talked about his visit to the Parthenon and the museum there which has been built to exhibit its missing sculptures.

It seems inevitable that eventually the British Museum and other museums will have to return these objects, and to replace at least some of them by facsimiles would enable the museum to continue its educational function while restoring vital cultural objects to their proper homes.

More at British Museum Stolen Goods Tour.

London flooded with Santas – Covent Garden, Saturday 8th December 2018

Christmas was coming and so was Santacon, a huge annual charity event and excuse for a highly alcohol-fuelled stagger and dance through the streets of central London dresses as santas, elves and reindeer.

The event had started at various locations and large crowds were now converging on Trafalgar Square spreading glad tidings as darkness fell, some following hand-pulled sound systems and dancing on the streets, though many groups were diverted into pubs and food shops on the way.

I had fun dancing along with some of them and taking photographs close to the British Museum and then going through Covent Garden, but by the time I reached Trafalgar Square decided I’d photographed my fill of santas and took a bus to Waterloo.

More santas at London flooded with Santas.

Climate Change and the Budget

Once again the recent budget has failed to show any real commitment to make the changes we need to combat the climate crisis. The chancellor’s speech and the treasury details were strong on rhetoric, telling use that we need to make radical changes and that cutting carbon was a major government priority, but there were few and only minor changes announced that will combat climate change, while more major announcements that will accelerate it.

Perhaps one of the more disappointing areas were the announcements on infrastructure and on road building. The expected UK national infrastructure strategy was not yet available and is now expected “later in the spring” but it is unlikely to change the commitment made already to wrongheaded project of which HS2 is the most glaring. And the promise of the “largest ever investment in England’s motorways and major A roads” goes completely against the need to get more people using sustainable public transport and will certainly lead to increased road traffic.

Another way the budget encourages car use is of course the continued freezing of fuel duty, which has remained at 58p per litre (+VAT) since 2011. Had the increases promised in the June 2010 budget taken place it would now be at 84p. While fuel duty has been frozen, rail fares have continued to rise.

Although there were minor changes intended to encourage the decarbonisation of heating buildings, any long term plans on the scale needed are still lacking. It is an area which could be addressed in that long promised infrastructure strategy, and one that could be an important source of ‘green jobs’ so fingers are firmly crossed – but I fear we will get yet another disappointment.

There are other disappointments in this budget too. The support for measures to combat the increasing risks of flooding seems lukewarm, and the ambitious programme of tree planting seems to be only roughly a fifth of that in earlier promises, and clearly insufficient. The budget also restates a commitment to invest in carbon capture and storage which still seems very unlikely to deliver any real dividends. It is also very unclear if the £900m for research into nuclear fusion, space and electric vehicles will make any positive contribution to combating climate change.

Six years ago, on Saturday 7th March, I was with over 20,000 protesters marching through London to a rally outside Parliament demanding action on climate change with divestment from fossil fuels, an end to fracking and damaging bio-fuel projects and for a 100% renewable energy future which would create a million new jobs.

The case then was clear and the protest made it firmly, but since then governments had spent six years talking about it but doing very little, listening more to the lobbyists from fossil fuel companies rather than the science. Slowly there have been some changes, and more politicians are now saying the right kind of things, but there has been precious little action. It’s probably now too late to avoid some pretty disastrous effects of the inevitable global temperature rise, but we may still be able to mitigate them and avoid the worst possible consequences. But it will need governments to stop fiddling while the planet burns.

More on My London Diary:
Climate Change Rally
Time to Act on Climate Change

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.