UK politics

My analysis of the UK’s elections to the European Parliament, which took place on May 23, 2019, in which I look at why the Brexit Party’s performance is not as good as it might initially appear. I also congratulate the Green Party on their performance, thanks my fellow Londoners for voting the most sanely in England, and propose a few solutions to the ongoing Brexit deadlock.

As campaigners withdraw from a protest camp outside the bitterly-contested site of the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden in Deptford, I look at how the ‘regeneration’ industry, of which Tidemill is a part, is coming under increasing scrutiny from environmental campaigners demanding an end to practices that contribute to climate change.

To celebrate seven years of my photo-journalism project ‘The State of London’, in which I have been posting a photo a day for the last two years, from my archive of photos covering all 120 of the capital’s postcodes, here are my reflections on how the project began, and what it has come to mean.

My pledge of commitment to the struggle to save ourselves and much of life on earth from the worst effects of man-made catastrophic climate change and species extinction, which is already underway. With thanks to those who have recently led me to this commitment: Dahr Jamail, Extinction Rebellion, Greta Thunberg and David Attenborough. Please get involved!

Exactly six months ago, the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden in Deptford, a beautiful community space and environmental asset, which had been occupied for two months by members of the local community (the Save Reginald Save Tidemill campaign) to prevent its destruction by Lewisham Council for a housing scheme, was violently evicted by bailiffs hired by the council. Here’s the story six months on.

On the eighth anniversary of WikiLeaks’ release of classified military files from Guantánamo, on which I worked as a media partner, I recall how I got involved, I reiterate the significance of the files, and I call for the release from custody, in the UK and the US, of Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning.

It’s the fourth day of Extinction Rebellion’s occupation of four sites in central London, as part of a demand for immediate political change to tackle the already ongoing global environmental catastrophe. If you can get involved at all, please do. As Extinction Rebellion explain, this is an unprecedented climate emergency, and we need to do what we can to change the way we operate immediately.

My analysis of the significance of Julian Assange’s arrest in London last week, and why – regardless of what anyone may think about Assange personally – it’s hugely important that there is concerted resistance to any effort by the US to clamp down on media freedom by pretending that Assange and WikiLeaks were not engaged in journalism, but in some sort of espionage.

700 days ago, on May 11, 2017, I began posting a photo a day on a new Facebook page I’d set up, called ‘The State of London’, marking five years to the day since I’d consciously embarked on a project that was very ambitious — or perhaps slightly unhinged would be a better description: to take photos of the whole of London by bike.

On the eighth anniversary of when I was hospitalised with a rare blood disease, I recall how those dark days ended up inspiring me to cycle the whole of London taking photos, for what became my ongoing photo-journalism project ‘The State of London.’