UK politics

Marking 1,600 days since I began posting a photo a day, with an accompanying essay, on my Facebook page ‘The State of London’, drawn from my daily bike rides though London’s 120 postcodes, which I began in 2012. I also extend my thanks to the nearly 6,000 people following the project on social media.

My report about Extinction Rebellion’s fortnight of actions in London, primarily targeting the City of London, and demanding an immediate end to all investments in fossil fuels — the minimum that is required to tackle the alarming and irreversible climate change that is already underway, but whose worst effects can be mitigated if we act now — and not, as politicians like to think, by 2030 or even 2050. Included are some of my photos from the last two weeks, plus a detailed account of how awareness of a looming environmental catastrophe has grown, and information about the banks and other organisations targeted by XR — as well as others who only escaped attention because two weeks isn’t long enough to expose all the climate crimes of our banks and other financial institutions.

The latest fundraiser for my photo-journalism project ‘The State of London’, a labour of love for which I have no institutional backing whatsoever, and rely on your support to enable me to keep cycling, taking photos and posting a photo a day, with accompanying essays, on social media.

As the wretched Tory government of Boris Johnson irresponsibly prepares to lift all Covid restrictions, I look at how the delusions of Brexit, which is crippling British businesses, have fed into a political climate in which the Tories’ irresponsible and sometimes criminal response to Covid gets overlooked, and how Johnson and his Cabinet prioritise whatever will keep them in power — opening up sports events, for example, and cynically capitalising on England’s success in the Euro 2020 championships, while almost entirely abandoning the country’s cultural sector. I also look at how, under Priti Patel, almost all immigration has been shut down (despite job shortages that are making many businesses unviable), as this particularly vile home secretary also seeks to stamp out all political dissent, as well as criminalising the way of life of Gypsies and Travellers.

My thoughts on the summer solstice, 37 years after the last Stonehenge Free Festival, as ‘Managed Open Access’, in place since the 15-year exclusion zone came to an end in 2000, was cancelled for the second year running because of Covid (although some revellers turned up anyway). Also included: the video of last year’s ‘Virtual Stonehenge Free Festival’, organised by Neil Goodwin, in which videos of musicians who performed online last year during lockdown are interspersed with footage of the Stonehenge Free Festival, travellers and the Beanfield.

I remember the 72 people who lost their lives in the Grenfell Tower fire exactly four years ago, through profiteering and cost-cutting on the part of those responsible for their safety, and I also look at how, since then, the cladding scandal that became so apparent at Grenfell now involves millions of people in unsafe tower blocks across the country, many of them leaseholders, who bought their homes in good faith, but now find themselves in unsafe and worthless properties, abandoned by the government and the developers of their homes, and facing bills of up to £100,000 to remove the dangerous cladding that was installed through no fault of their own.

Today marks the 36th anniversary of the Battle of the Beanfield, when the police, under Margaret Thatcher, destroyed, with unprecedented violence, a convoy of vehicles containing men, women and children, as they tried to make their way to Stonehenge to set up what would have been the 12th annual Stonehenge Free Festival. Despite the trauma caused that day, the Tories continued to persecute Travellers, passing punitive legislation in 1986 and 1994, and now, under Priti Patel, are seeking to outlaw the entire nomadic way of life through a draconian clampdown on “trespass” in the new Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill.

A fundraiser marking nine years since I first began photographing London’s 120 postcodes by bike for my ongoing, reader-funded photo-journalism project ‘The State of London’, for which I have no institutional backing whatsoever. Any donations you can make will be very gratefully received.

Video of my interview with the London-based activists of Team Assange, about the new UK police bill, the right to protest, Guantánamo and Julian Assange. Also included is an update regarding genuinely shocking incidents of police violence in Bristol over the last week in response to protests about the bill.

My assessment of the first year of Covid lockdowns, and how, on two occasions — last June, and last weekend — political protests have erupted, regarding racial oppression and women’s rights, when the logical limits of strict lockdowns have been reached. Plus a much more critical analysis of the parallel world of Covid denial.