UK politics

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.’

As a reader-funded journalist, activist and photographer, every three months I ask you, if you can, to make a donation to support my work, as I do not receive any sort of institutional backing for it. Any donation you can make, however large or small, will be very gratefully received.

Today marks 25 days until the UK is supposed to leave the EU, and my band The Four Fathers are taking the opportunity to release — via Bandcamp — our anti-Brexit anthem, ‘I Want My Country Back (From The People Who Wanted Their Country Back)’, which has become something of a live favourite over the last few years.