Monthly Archives: March 2007
Manor Garden Allotments Still Holding On
Sunday, April 1st was to be a farewell party to the Allotments, the day before plot holders were to be officially evicted to make way for a concrete path for the 2012 Olympic Games. Fortunately there will be less good bye and more fighting on, as the eviction is canceled until at least until July. Owing to the LDA’s inability or unwillingness to find any space to relocate the Manor Gardening Society to during the Olympic development, the Society, supported by Friends of the Earth, has launched a legal challenge, resulting in an injunction (temporarily) against the eviction. So come down and raise a toast to celebrate and pitch in to help protect one of the most socially important green spaces in Hackney threatened by the short-term greed of Olympic planners and builders…. Read more
Thirteen Things I Thought I Knew About England
Edition #32. Last week I wrote about things that I had discovered that the British (at least in London and Essex) had misunderstood about America. This week, in the spirit of fairness, I turn the tables and look at thirteen of my own misconceptions about Britain and the Britons. Now that I have been disabused of these notions, I realize that England is a fascinating place in it’s own right, but very different from how I imagined it. So here you have thirteen misconceptions that I arrived in the UK with, and the reality I have discovered over the last half year: Peace & Quiet: I thought that the famous British reserve would translate into a sort of calm, quiet country, full of nice people minding their own (nice) business. No such luck. The bits (Brits?) I have seen in so far are just as rude, loud and overweening as any in the States. The only difference is that in the UK, all the noise and confusion is accomplished without ever looking anyone in the… Read more
London Fields Lido Reopen This Weekend
…but not for long. On Saturday “Hackney’s Urban Beach” will briefly reopen to accommodate all of those daft enough to go swimming over the cold rainy Easter break. It will close (again) on Sunday, the 15th of April to allow work to continue on the ever-popular but essentially useless CCTV cameras, some sugary vending machines to offset whatever health benefit you get from swimming in the pool and the all important “queue control system”. The lido has been resurrected by Hackney Council, which has invested £2.5million to return the derelict pool in to an art deco icon for residents and visitors to the borough. Ultimately, there will be a seasonal roof that will increase access to more swimmers during the winter. Proposals for a seasonal roof are currently being developed and plans are to fit it in 2007. The Lido first opened in April 1932. It closed during the Second World War, re-opening in 1951 before closing again in 1986 when the Greater London Council, which ran all the London… Read more
The World’s Tallest Log… Read more
My Politics & My Philosophy
Through my writings presented here I have come to be misunderstood by a great many people, mostly with regards to my politics and my philosophy. There seems to be, if my email box is any measure, a widespread conviction that I am a socialist of one stripe or another. While that may be true (I do not know), it is entirely irrelevant to me and to my thinking and acting, whether you call that politics or philosophy. While I do have a passing interest in political economy and a much-more-than-passing interest in reading and discussing both Western and Eastern philosophical systems and ideals, neither of those things can easily map onto my personal ethos; what I care deeply about and what I spend my time pursuing. If my politics or my philosophy, as the two terms seem to be used interchangeably by most people who comment on either is not obvious from my writings, and I assume it is not, or there would not be so many missed guesses emailed to me, then perhaps I should state them as… Read more
Food Deserts & Urban Farming
Food deserts are ‘areas of relative exclusion where people experience physical and economic barriers to accessing healthy food’. They are a growing problem in both the US and the UK, and likely elsewhere in the world, but those two countries are the places I have encountered them. Food deserts are a result of the ever-larger super- or hyper-markets who, because of their big-box bulk migrate outside of urban areas, leaving the residents (usually poor working class) of those areas with little choice in how to get their food other than either to spend precious monies on the logistical nightmare of using foot power or public transport to out-of-town locations to secure food, or to rely on ‘convenience’ or liquor stores with their tiny selection and outrageous prices. Not everyone, of course, sees food deserts as a problem, or even a reality. The always defensive Mises Institute trots out their standard ‘there is no problem here, business is good’ response and engages in a bit of… Read more
The History Of… Read more
Tidbits
Diamond Geezer has a bit up about the new Starbucks Coffee in Whitechapel, which will soon be followed by a Tesco Express, in his words, “bringing even greater multinational homogeneity to a spot where previously there was none”. The LDA refuses to meet with the Manor Garden Allotment holders, preferring to order the destruction of their gardening plots from… Read more
King George Builds A Baghdad… Read more