Joe D » westminster

AWWTM: The man who crossed the road

Joe — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 16:01:30 +0000

Brian Haw had a few weird ideas amongst the good ones in his head — in that he was not unusual. But the weird ones do not mean that we don’t all owe him thanks for the good ideas and the way he acted on them. For ten years he sat in his deckchair, inches from the trucks and taxis, staring across the road, a constant reminder for the Members of Parliament who were battling their own consciences and their own constituencies to take us to war. Every once in a while one of our representatives would catch a glimpse in the corner of their eye as they walked past a window or raced across Bridge Street from Whitehall. They knew they were being watched.

He deserves our thanks for something else, something unintended. Brian Haw made Parliament Square a place again.

Continue reading at At War With The Motorist…

AWWTM: The out-of-sight commuters that don’t matter to TfL

Joe — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 15:53:15 +0000

The sky lightening, I head for a bridge with a scene that would suit a subtle sunrise photograph, as Big Ben rang for four fifteen. Bored policemen loiter beside their van, parked in the Westminster Bridge bike lane. Tired taxi drivers inch across advance stop lines and cautiously through red lights. A refrigerated truck of fresh Dutch imports — tulips, one must assume — obediently follows the satnav’s directions onto the Embankment. On the pavement before the entrance to Portcullis House is a man in City of Westminster hi-vis vest, bent on hands and knees with a brush and a big barrel of hot soapy water. Yesterday’s dirt must not be allowed to stick to the soles of our dear leaders. And three late-teenaged blokes on BSOs head home from the night shifts, back to their mums’ flats on the housing estates of south London, weaving around the tourist-free zone that is the Westminster Bridge footway. (And why not? The pigeons can’t call You and Yours or have their say in the Daily Mail letters pages.)

Continue reading at At War With The Motorist…

AWWTM: Participatory democracy (London edition)

Joe — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 23:27:53 +0000

Central government have decided to roll back their red tape and give power back to the people! In reality, this is power going to the county and borough councilors (who don’t have the budgets needed to do anything productive with their new powers), or in some cases it could amount to less power for the councilors to resist the pressures of developers. It is now more important than ever to keep an eye on local developments: to provide the local opposition that the councilors will need if they are to justify turning down bad proposals, and the local support that they need to get funding for good proposals.

Continue reading at At War With The Motorist…

Protest The Pope!

Joe — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 21:48:36 +0000

At the weekend around 12,000 people marched through London in protest against the policies of the Pope. A photo essay on cotch dot net explains why we were there.

AWWTM: Parliament Square

Joe — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 20:24:29 +0000

As the “democracy village” are turfed out of their camp in the scorched and smelly square outside the home of democracy, I take the opportunity to review one of central London’s least impressive locations, an isolated and inaccessible grass and concrete traffic island — Parliament Square. Read it here.

Cotch: Victory Flashmob

Joe — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 22:25:11 +0000

With Section 44 stop-and-search found to be in contravention of the declaration of human rights this week, the people of Photographer Not A Terrorist organised a victory flashmob at New Scotland Yard. For pictures, and to find out what it was all about, go over to cotch dot net.