UK housing crisis

Listen to the single here on Bandcamp, and please buy it as a download. All takings will be donated to Grenfell charities. The recording was produced by acclaimed musician and producer Charlie Hart, who also plays accordion on it. Exactly 500 days ago, Britain changed in a way that has haunted me ever since, as […]

Please support my work as a reader-funded investigative journalist, commentator and activist.   In Deptford, in south east London, the Save Reginald Save Tidemill campaign that I’m part of is involved in a significant struggle against three aspects of the current housing crisis that are a microcosm of what is happening elsewhere in the capital […]

In Deptford, in south east London, a battle is taking place. On one side are Lewisham Council and the developer Peabody, who intend to destroy the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden, a garden that has been used by local children and the wider community for 20 years, and Reginald House, a block of structurally sound council […]

Please support my work as a reader-funded investigative journalist, commentator and activist.   If you’re in London and concerned about the unprecedented scale of London’s housing crisis, I hope you’ll come along this Friday to the launch of ‘No Social Cleansing in London’, a new campaign group that I’m setting up to provide a focal […]

Since the occupation of the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden in Deptford began, on August 29th, we’ve been so busy focusing on Lewisham Council’s shameful role as the would-be destroyers of a crucially important environmental and community green space, and the wilful destruction of 16 structurally sound council flats next door, in Reginald House, for a […]

Yesterday marked 30 days since campaigners — myself included — occupied the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden, a much-loved community garden in Deptford, and it was a day of celebration, as we secured a court ruling allowing our occupation to last for at least another month. Campaigners have been occupying the garden since August 29, to […]

Please support my work as a reader-funded investigative journalist, commentator and activist.   Yesterday marked 500 days since I began publishing a photo a day on my Facebook page ‘The State of London’ — photos drawn from the extensive archive of photos that I’ve built up over the last six years on bike rides in […]

Please support my work as a reader-funded investigative journalist, commentator and activist.   Last Saturday, I was on community radio station Wandsworth Radio for two hours, taking part in a freewheeling, wide-ranging political discussion with host Andy Bungay and regular monthly co-host Colin Crilly.  The show is here, and below I’ve broken it down into […]

Please support my work as a reader-funded investigative journalist, commentator and activist.   Last week I was delighted to get the opportunity to write an article for Novara Media, an online news organisation established in 2011, about the occupation of the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden in Deptford to prevent its destruction by Lewisham Council and […]

Please support my work as a reader-funded investigative journalist, commentator and activist.   Yesterday, September 15, marked the 10th anniversary of the day the new world order that started under Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, and continued under Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, blew up spectacularly when the banking giant Lehman Brothers went bust, precipitating […]