Wipe-out

There were local government elections in the UK on Thursday. Labour did really badly, which provoked Tony Blair to reshuffle his cabinet to distract the headline writers from the disastrous results. It might have backfired though.

The elections results show how unpopular he and his government have become. Surely he won’t last much longer.

In Camden, where we live, the Labour party got tipped out for the first time in nearly 40 years. Yesterday they held 36 of the 54 seats on the council, now they have 16.

There was a bizarre result in the Highgate ward where we live. Yesterday it was an all Labour ward, now there are two Greens and a Tory representing the area. Still it’s bizarre that two Greens were elected given the ridiculous number of gas-guzzling urban attack vehicles clogging up the streets round here. Two Green councillors is a good result in this 'hood though. Walking the streets you’d think you were traipsing through Tory heartland.

Although there has been a small Tory resurgence it looks like people haven’t been tricked by Tory leader David Cameron’s phoney environmentalism and opportunistic 'vote blue, go green' campaign. It’s better to vote for the real thing rather than those trying to hitch themselves to the bandwagon.


Now that I've got my bike back I've started riding to work again. There aren't as many cyclists on the road as there were last year in the weeks following the 7/7 bombings. Maybe these fair-weather cyclists are waiting for the summer. Drivers in London generally seem to regard cyclists as a menace. Which perhaps explains why only 2% of children in the UK ride their bikes to school. Not as many as you’d like to think, eh?

Just by chance

Today while surfing, just by chance, I happened to come across the name Josh On, a guy I went to university with back when he had a different name. He is now an American based activist and digital artist.

It’s well worth visiting his website, particularly the award winning they rule which, among other things, has an interactive mapping system that shows the interconnections between the board members of the most powerful companies in the US.

While looking around I happened across this quote by an American socialist called Howard Zinn. He once said something like: Historians talk about history, plumbers fix the plumbing, and artist make art but who's role is it to talk politics? Surely we can't leave it up to the politicians. It's up to all of us to talk politics; everyone should be political.

It's hard to disagree with him.