UK politics

Celebrating 1,700 days since I first began posting photos of London, with accompanying essays, on ‘The State of London’ Facebook page, which I established in May 2017, on the fifth anniversary of when I first started cycling around London’s 120 postcodes taking photos, and which recently reached 5,000 followers.

My review of 2021, in which I assess the last 12 months regarding Covid, corrupt governments, and, overshadowing it all, the climate crisis, the gravest existential threat in our lifetimes. With reference to Adam McKay’s ‘Don’t Look Up’, this New Year’s post is, I hope, something of a call to action.

As the UK High Court allows the extradition to the US of WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange, overturning a lower court’s ruling regarding his suicide risk, I explain my disappointment with the ruling, not only because US assurances regarding his treatment are unreliable, but also because the key element of the case wasn’t under discussion: the US’s reprehensible efforts to prosecute a publisher for making available leaked information that it is in the public interest to know about, which sends a chilling message to the world about the US’s disregard for press freedom.

My response to the shameful deaths of 27 refugees crossing the Channel to the UK, how it reflects appallingly on the Brexit-soaked racism and xenophobia of the Tory government, the right-wing media and far too many of the British people, and how counter-productive it is to be turning away immigrants when, post-Brexit, all manner of British businesses are critically short of workers.

My latest quarterly fundraiser, in which I’m hoping to raise £1,000 to help me continue my photo-journalism project ‘The State of London’, in which I post a photo a day, with detailed accompanying essays, of the changing face of the capital, with the photos taken on bike rides throughout London’s 120 postcodes over the last nine years.

My analysis of the appeal by the US government, heard in the High Court in London this week, against a judge’s refusal in January to allow the extradition to the US of WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange, on the basis that, because of his mental health issues, the risk of him committing suicide if extradited is too severe to allow the extradition to go ahead.

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.