Posts Tagged ‘overcrowding’

Fair Fares, Kobane and Biomass – 2014

Monday, October 28th, 2024

Fair Fares, Kobane and Biomass: Ten years ago on Tuesday 28th October 2014 I photographed protests calling for fairer fares on our railways, an end to the Turkish backed Islamic state invasion of Kobane in Kurdish Syria and finally calling on the Green Investment Bank to end funding for hugely climate wrecking investments in using biomass for power generation.


Fair Fares Petition – Westminster

Fair Fares, Kobane and Biomass

The Campaign for Better Transport, including their director Stephen Joseph OBE protested at the Dept of Transport before walking to Portcullis Hous to hand a petition with over 4000 signatures to Rail Minister Claire Perry MP calling on the recent increase in Northern Rail evening peak rail fares to be scrapped. My own rail fares also increased by around a third if I need to return from London between 4pm and 7pm, though the evening peak only really begins around 5pm.

Fair Fares, Kobane and Biomass

We have the most expensive rail travel in the world, largely thanks to privatisation, as well as lower levels of service than many companies, and a hugely complex system of ticketing which often results in passengers paying more than necessary.

Fair Fares, Kobane and Biomass

Labours Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill should eventually bring in a simpler more uniform structure for the railways and we can hope that it might make fares simpler to understand – and perhaps even less costly. Currently it is often cheaper to travel by less green modes of transport, even by air.

Fair Fares, Kobane and Biomass

We also need to move away from the companies which lease trains and pay out huge dividends to their shareholders to a more sensible system in which the railways actually own trains and ensure that they provide more carriages on services which are now heavily overcrowded – which seem to include almost all CrossCountry trains. Their franchise ends in October 2027.

Fair Fares Petition


Kobane – Unite against Isis Drawing – Trafalgar Square

Kurds stood around a giant chalk drawing on the North Terrace of Trafalgar Square including the Statue of Liberty and the message ‘KOBANE Unite against ISIS‘ hold small posters “support progressive and left forces against ISIS” and “Support Kobani Struggle“.

The ISIS forces attacking Kobane, close to the Turkish border in a Kurdish region of Syria were being supported by Turkey as a part of their fight against the Kurds,

The main opposition to ISIS is provided by Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), who were being supported by US air strikes.

Kobane – Unite against Isis Drawing


Biofuel picket Green Investment Bank Birthday – King Edward Street

Protesters from Biofuelwatch and London Biomassive, some dressed as wise owls, picketed the second birthday celebrations of the Green Investment Bank at Bank of America Merrill Lynch in London against their funding of environmentally disastrous biomass and incineration projects.

These are more polluting than coal, producing more climate-wrecking carbon dioxide than coal, and protesters urged the GIB to finance “low carbon sustainable solutions” instead of these “high-carbon destructive delusions.”

The protest took place as many city workers were walking past on their way home and many took leaflets and some stopped to talk with the protesters.

There was live music, some short speeches and couple of birthday cakes for the GIB, one edible and the other rather larger with two ‘oil palms’ on top and a banner with the message ‘GIB No Biomass’ strung between them.

Biofuel picket Green Investment Bank Birthday


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Shaker, Screws, London Met & Ash Wednesday

Monday, February 13th, 2023

On Wednesday 13th February 2013, ten years ago today, I photographed three protests in Westminster and one on Holloway Road in north London outside London Metropolitan University.


Shaker Aamer – 11 Years in Guantanamo – Parliament Square

Shaker, Screws, London Met & Ash Wednesday

Opposite Parliaments people gathered to mark 11 years since London resident Shaker Aamer was flown to Guantánamo from Afghanistan. He was still being held and tortured there daily despite having been cleared for release by the US over 5 years ago.

Shaker, Screws, London Met & Ash Wednesday

Shaker arrived at Guantanamo on 14th February 2002, having been captured by bandits and sold to the US military while working for a charity in Afghanistan. He was still held and routinely tortured in Guantanamo despite being cleared for release five years earlier as there was no case against him. His youngest son had been born the same day in London where his wife and four children were living.

Shaker, Screws, London Met & Ash Wednesday

A line of protesters held banners across the whole long frontage of Parliament Square facing the Houses of Parliament, with others around the edges of the square handing out fliers. Many people passing were surprised to find that prisoners were still being held there after Obama’s promise to close the camp down, which he appears to have made little effort to keep.

Shaker, Screws, London Met & Ash Wednesday

Continued torture in the camp meant that his health was rapidly failing. Among those at the protest organised by the Save Shaker Campaign and the London Guantánamo Campaign as Green MP Caroline Lucas who held a banner before dashing back to the Commons for Prime Minister’s Questions. The protesters s were still standing there in the freezing cold when I left an hour and a half after the protest had started.

Shaker Aamer – 11 Years in Guantanamo


Prison Officers Protest Against Cuts – Old Palace Yard

A hundred or so prison officers protested against prison closures, overcrowding and privatisation outside the Houses of Parliament after briefing MPs on the dangers of the prison closure programme.

Prison doesn’t work because our prisons are overcrowded and underfunded. It punishes people but almost entirely fails to reform them, to provide them with skills, support and opportunities for when they leave prison – and too many soon return. Our prisons are a training ground for criminality. Government cuts and handing over prisons to be run for profit simply make things worse.

Prison Officers Protest Against Cuts


Victimisation at London Metropolitan University

London Met is a much maligned university largely because it has prided itself on giving chances to many of the more deprived members of the community. It has often ranked high for its teaching quality and giving students greater personal attention than better regarded universities.

The protest outside its Holloway Road buildings in North London was against the suspension of Max Watson, Unison branch chair and Jawad Botmeh, the elected staff governor on false charges. The university had also threatened to de-recognise Unison.

No reasons were given for the suspension which was said to be over a ‘serious matter of concern’ relating to ‘gross misconduct’, but it was thought to relate to the appointment of Botmeh to the staff of the Working Lives Research Institute five years earlier.

Botmeh, a London-based Palestinian science graduate, was arrested in 1995 in connection with a bomb attack on the Israeli embassy the previous year. There was no direct evidence connecting him to the bombing but he was sentenced to 20 years in what was widely seen as a miscarriage of justice. His convictions were declared when he was appointed as a researcher by London Met after his release. The two men, along with another man suspended later were re-instated the following month.

Victimisation at London Met


Ash Wednesday – Ministry of Defence

Christian peace activists and friends held their annual Ash Wednesday liturgy at the Ministry of Defence in London, calling for repentance and taking symbolic actions including some who risked arrest by marking the buildings with charcoal.

During the service in front of the Ministry people tied purple ribbons on a cross and prayers were said for the victims of ware and the warmongers called on to repent and change their ways.

There was then a march around the war minstry before the group returned to write the word ‘REPENT’ in water and ashes on the pavement outside and the liturgy continued,

ending with a large circle in the adjoining Embankment gardens.

As the service ended, police briefly held a woman who had jumped over a fence and begun to write a cross and the word Repent on the Defence Ministry wall in charcoal. She was stopped with the word half written, and after a few minutes was released.

More on My London Diary at Ash Wednesday – Ministry of Defence