Politics on David Marsden

Tue, 23 Jun 2026 17:24:56 +0100

I think it’s fair to say that Starmer led an authoritarian Labour Party and government that was morally bankrupt and utterly corrupt.

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 20:23:34 +0100

Starmer anounces another plan for change.

Wed, 20 May 2026 22:28:32 +0100

Rather a confusing “economic migrants in small boats—good / extremists trying to stop them—bad” story, in the current scheme of things.

The deadly plane attack at the centre of Castro's indictment: bbc.com
Home - BBC News https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp3pz43k99xo?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=rss

Live at the Counter Eurovision '79

Sat, 16 May 2026 23:42:41 +0100

“without the knowledge of your history you cannot determine your destiny”

Forty-seven years ago, Misty In Roots played at the Counter Eurovision rock festival in Brussels, in response to the Eurovision song contest being held that year in Jerusalem, and in solidarity with the Palestinian people.

Less than a month later, Blair Peach was murdered by the British police on the streets of Southall while defending the town from the National Front.

Ealing Council allowed the march of the fascists to go ahead despite a 10,000-strong petition from local people opposing it.

Clarence Baker, Misty In Roots' manager, was violently assaulted by police that day and left in a coma for five months.

Organist Vernon Hunt was jailed for six months on trumped up charges. He was so broken by this experience of state oppression that he never rejoined the band.

Today the British government allowed another fascist march in London on the anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba.

Today I dragged my 11 year old down to the Dominion Centre and Library in Southall to meet Misty In Roots in the entrance foyer and learn a little history.

The Dominion Centre is the site of the former Dominion Theatre where Blair Peach’s lifeless body lay “in state” for six weeks while thousands visited to pay their last respects.

This iconic photo of Misty In Roots outside the entrance now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery.

We came home with a signed limited edition red vinyl copy of arguably the best live album ever recorded. We spoke to some very nice people. And we bumped into my friend Happy.

And we met Poko, Kazi and Tunga from the band.

“if you’re not conscious of the present you’re like a cabbage in this society”

Tue, 05 May 2026 07:57:05 +0100

My @SouthallStories piece has been picked up by @thecanaryuk.

Cactuses Never Die : southallstories.uk
David Marsden https://southallstories.uk/2026/05/03/cactuses-never-die/

Apocalypse Now Then

Sat, 11 Apr 2026 15:47:13 +0100

Finished reading: In Plain Sight The Life and Lies of Jimmy Savile by Dan Davies 📚

In a preview to the dramatised television series of his biography, author Dan Davies says:

There is not a day that passes where I don’t wonder why I chose Savile. Of all the people to become obsessed with, to follow and agonise over, why did it have to be him? It is a question that provides no answer. The only consolation I can find is that my instincts were right.

I wonder why I keep being drawn back to Savile, but I will trust my instincts.

The opening chapter of Davies' book, “Apocalypse Now Then”, reads, deliberately so, as a litany: a nefarious late night excavation of Savile’s dead body; eulogies from the great and the good that followed his death; the absence of any knowing of the person who carried out the good deeds that earned the tributes from family, friends, and colleagues; the eventual and inevitable exposure of his lifetime of money-grabbing, psychopathic criminality; Savile’s ultimate immunity from it all.

Sun, 01 Mar 2026 16:44:08 +0100

The War for Greater Israel - Craig Murray

Having sanctioned genocide, mass killings and deliberate destruction of medical facilities and staff, the mass murder of children, as well as the kidnapping and murder of Heads of State, it is hard now to imagine almost any atrocity which the Western powers are in any moral position to condemn.

Fri, 27 Feb 2026 17:48:50 +0100

It’s wild out there!

Free speech warriors out in force on X. Simultaneously celebrating book-burning (the Qur’an) while decrying “racist” improvised paint jobs and graffiti on Churchill’s statue and Gail’s Bakery, and “family values” voting tactics and “cheating” after their favoured fascist lost an election in Manchester.

Custard Woman vs The Dark Lord

Mon, 09 Feb 2026 21:37:53 +0100

If you think America has it bad with a rapist paedophile president hell-bent on fascisting his way out of the international blackmail trap he happily stumbled into with his pants around his ankles… wait ‘til you hear about the UK’s current predicament.

Our rapist paedophile ex-prince aside, and the King’s late rapist paedophile man-of-the-people “jingle jangle” advisor aside, we find ourselves with a prime minister who thinks it’s ok to have a key political advisor who is best friends with a rapist paedophile.

Kiddie-fuckers are bad, but not so bad that you can’t stay in touch and even stay in their mansion while they’re in prison for fucking children.

Of course, its not even the kiddie-fucking that’s the problem. The problem is that the kiddie-fucker looks like he was a foreign asset or a spy. And the key political advisor passed on highly privileged sensitive information to this foreign asset.

Fuck the children! This is about national security and the national interest!

But remember, for all his faults, the key political advisor isn’t a paedophile, as far as we know.

Three strikes and we’ll chop off your broadband.

He does, however, have a history of fucking our children’s (and other poor people’s children’s) futures. He wanted to reduce aid to developing countries as long ago as 2005. And he wanted to expand Heathrow. And he wanted to cut off the internet for seven million Brits found to have downloaded copyrighted material.

Enter Custard Woman. Custard Woman bravely made some vegan custard (unusually smooth, according to her mum), dyed it green to match the green slime she imagined coursing through his’s veins, and promptly accosted him with it, throwing it right into his creepy, frightening-looking face.

To Mandelson’s credit, he brushed it off and carried on with his day. He reappeared five minutes later, custard-free, and claimed the custard was organic and non-toxic. If anything, he looked positively glowing and revitalised - as if he’d just received a hydrating facial massage and a blood/slime transfusion simultaneously. At no time did he complain of being assaulted, or of violent left-wing fascists, unlike modern-day far-right snowflake warriors. Although he did whine about a minor skin irritation on his face. Fuck him!

What brought all this on? Well I was going through my email archive to make sure I wasn’t inadvertently connected to Mandelson, Epstein, Savile or any other kiddie-fuckers or their friends. I a spirit of openness and transparency, this was all I found.

This, and a couple of messages from my fellow not a podcasters. One saying how creepy and frightening Mandelson’s facial mannerisms are. The other saying he is “worse than a bronchoscopy”.

Sun, 08 Feb 2026 10:02:22 +0100

Trigger warning.

Thu, 22 Jan 2026 11:01:31 +0100

Trump bombs Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Nigeria, Venezuela, kidnaps Venezuela’s president and his wife, threatens Colombia, Mexico, Greenland (and NATO); sets up “Board of Peace” and invites UK to join.

UK Foreign Secretary: Putin.

UK holds off joining Trump's peace board over Putin concerns: bbc.com
Home - BBC News https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp9jj1j74ggo?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=rss

Mon, 12 Jan 2026 19:00:10 +0100

A Fire We Were Warned About.

Within hours of publishing an update on Southall’s Toxic Town scandal, the recycling site behind our home burned - an event long predicted by residents and enabled by years of regulatory inaction.

I am bleeding

Mon, 29 Dec 2025 18:54:42 +0100

“AND I WOULD HAVE GOTTEN AWAY WITH IT, TOO, IF IT WEREN’T FOR YOU PATHETIC, SINISTER, CHILDISH, MORONIC TYRANT CLOWNS!!1!”

Sat, 20 Dec 2025 11:50:09 +0100

Reassuring to know that moral heavyweight “BJ” Clinton was just along for the ride and knew nothing about Epstein’s crimes, which is presumably why he cut him off before they came to light…

Mr Clinton’s spokesman Angel Urena said the investigation was not about the former Democrat president.

He said in a statement: “There are two types of people here. The first group knew nothing and cut Epstein off before his crimes came to light. The second group continued relationships after that.

“We’re in the first. No amount of stalling by people in the second group will change that.”

A new photo of the disgraced Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has been released in a huge Epstein photo dump
New photo of disgraced royal Andrew released in huge Jeffrey Epstein photo dump
The National (@scotnational.bsky.social) https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:aimsrmhagunhtv5bqaslvnjn/post/3mafsvtdsel25

Tue, 18 Nov 2025 10:37:40 +0100

Starmer and Farage - two cheeks of the same backside.

Wed, 12 Nov 2025 12:43:49 +0100

Some sensible thoughts on what’s needed from the Left.

Mon, 03 Nov 2025 22:33:13 +0100

I’d never heard of this guy before, and wish I hadn’t. Apparently he was deputy leader of the Green Party ten years ago. His illiberal rantings then forced his leader to quit, before he was given the boot. I don’t think he’s joined Reform yet, but I’m sure he will be very welcome there (until they deport him). And yes, someone did point out to him he’d missed out a number of white murderers with no foreign heritage.

Fri, 17 Oct 2025 11:41:53 +0100

Reminds me of when Ofcom censured the BBC for not declaring the status of the interviewees on the “Is Labour Anti-Semitic?” Panorama programme, oh wait…

BREAKING: The BBC has been sanctioned by the broadcasting regulator over a documentary about Gaza
www.thenational.scot/news/2555...
The National (@scotnational.bsky.social) https://bsky.app/profile/scotnational.bsky.social/post/3m3ezb4steb2h

Mon, 29 Sep 2025 09:54:32 +0100

New fact-based polemic on local matters to me.

Fri, 26 Sep 2025 14:34:00 +0100

No justice like British justice.

Terror case against Kneecap rapper thrown out: bbc.com
Home - BBC News https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce846r2drg8o?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=rss

Mental Colonisation

Sun, 31 Aug 2025 08:23:26 +0100

The mind colonised by imperialism loses the ability to recognise atrocities when committed by the “correct” side.

Post-war Germany provides a clear example. After 1945, a defeated imperial power was restructured by Allied occupation forces who retained many Nazi officials while absorbing others into Western institutions. The Marshall Plan rebuilt infrastructure, but the deeper project was ideological reconstruction - replacing one form of authoritarian thinking with another that served new imperial masters.

This mental colonisation operates through historical trauma weaponised for present purposes. German guilt about the Holocaust becomes justification for supporting Israeli atrocities. “Never again” transforms from universal principle to selective protection, enabling the very crimes it was meant to prevent.

The colonised mind cannot process moral consistency. Someone who once offered complex geopolitical analysis reduces their thinking to partisan cheerleading. Resistance to occupation becomes “terrorism” when committed by the wrong people. Documented war crimes become “self-defense” when perpetrated by the right flag.

Most tragically, this mental colonisation makes Jewish communities less safe globally. When a state claiming to represent all Jews commits documented genocide while using Jewish identity as a shield against criticism, it creates backlash against Jewish people worldwide who had no role in these decisions.

The imperial project continues under new management. Whether we call it World War Three or an extended World War Two becomes academic when viewing the unbroken chain of interventions since 1945, each justified by the previous one’s consequences.

Mental decolonisation requires recognizing that principles apply universally, not selectively based on geopolitical convenience.

From Antisemite to Anti-American

Sat, 30 Aug 2025 21:21:30 +0100

When confronted with documented evidence of war crimes, defenders of atrocities cycle through predictable stages before settling on a final (final?) position: reframing opposition to genocide as “anti-Americanism.”

This evolution is telling. First came the antisemitism accusation - the nuclear option deployed when hospital bombings and destroyed aid trucks became indefensible. But when that weaponisation of historical trauma failed to silence criticism, the charge quietly disappeared, replaced by a more sophisticated imperial framework.

Now the same critic who was supposedly driven by “rabid anti-Semitism” gets recast as an anti-American contrarian. The accusations shift, but the goal remains constant: delegitimise opposition to documented atrocities through character assassination rather than evidence.

The “anti-American” framing is particularly absurd given the intertwined nature of Anglo-American imperialism. British special forces operate in Ukraine alongside extensive arms sales and military coordination with Israel. When Boris Johnson can veto Ukrainian peace negotiations and the UK maintains outsized influence in international organisations despite its declining economic power, we’re seeing coordinated imperial projects rather than American unilateralism.

The “special relationship” allows Britain to punch above its weight strategically while America provides the military muscle. Royal Marines in “high-risk operations” in Ukraine, deep military oversight of Gaza operations, and the historical legacy of the Balfour Declaration all point to British imperial continuity operating through American power.

Critics who oppose both British and American imperial interventions get labeled “anti-American” because the imperial mindset cannot process consistent opposition to coordinated oppression. It must choose sides in great power competition rather than opposing the system of domination itself.

The accusations will keep shifting - antisemitic, anti-American, whatever works - because the goal was never sincere concern about prejudice, but silencing criticism of documented atrocities.

Why complain?

Sat, 30 Aug 2025 08:11:58 +0100

Two years into Gaza’s destruction, you can trace the evolution of genocide denial in real time:

Phase 1: “It’s not happening” - Israel is only targeting Hamas, civilian casualties are minimal, reports are exaggerated.

Phase 2: “It’s justified” - Palestinians brought this on themselves, Hamas (“ISIS” - seriously?!) uses human shields, Israel has the right to defend itself.

Phase 3: “It’s normal” - War is ugly, these things happen, other conflicts are worse, why complain about hospital bombings when other wars exist?

Phase 4: “Why do you care?” - The mask fully drops. Not defending the actions anymore, just questioning why anyone should object to war crimes at all.

Each phase abandons the previous justification while moving the moral goalposts further into the abyss. By the end, you’re not debating policy or tactics - you’re facing someone who has reasoned themselves out of basic human empathy.

The weaponised whataboutism reveals the imperial logic - both Ukraine and Israel are Western client states whose “sovereignty” depends on US backing. When a UK prime minister can fly to Kyiv in order to veto peace negotiations, and US aid determines Israeli military capacity, these aren’t independent nations making sovereign choices.

Some of this stems from historical guilt transformed into moral blindness - where “never again” becomes “never again to Jews” rather than “never again to anyone,” providing cover for Western imperial projects wrapped in humanitarian language.

The most chilling part isn’t the denial itself. It’s watching someone systematically dismantle their own moral framework, piece by piece, to avoid confronting what they’re supporting.

Fri, 29 Aug 2025 09:51:29 +0100

Two years into the genocide and this is now all perfectly normal and acceptable.

Israel struck Gaza's Nasser Hospital four times, analysis finds: bbc.com
Home - BBC News https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly6lxn1l4po?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=rss

Wed, 13 Aug 2025 19:58:57 +0100

The Thought (For The Day) Police are here!

BBC apologises after Jenrick accused of xenophobia: bbc.com
Home - BBC News https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1dxqwkwx5qo?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=rss

Sun, 03 Aug 2025 09:47:50 +0100

A shocking indictment of Ealing Labour Council from a young black woman.

When I was in primary school the air pollution was so bad, it stopped me from going to the local park,” she says

Thu, 31 Jul 2025 16:36:22 +0100

The same legal scholars who would never question Israel’s right to exist as a state - despite its own contested borders, ongoing military occupation, and complex governance issues - are suddenly very concerned about technical legal criteria when it comes to Palestinian statehood.

Wed, 30 Jul 2025 08:17:12 +0100

Last week Starmer proscribed Palestine Action. Yesterday he advocated the ultimate Palestine action - recognising it as a state - while simultaneously making that recognition dependent on Israel continuing its genocide of the Palestinian people.

Starmer’s actions on Palestine were unforgivable https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2025/07/30/starmers-actions-on-palestine-were-unforgivable/ I am stunned, shocked and appalled by the continuing support Starmer is offering Israel, because that is what he really did yesterday.
Richard Murphy https://mas.to/@RichardJMurphy/114940857687371217

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 11:05:20 +0100

Look away if you’re not interested in reality, right and wrong, or changing it. And yes, that’s politics.

Israel admits no proof of Hamas systematically stealing UN aid. [original NYT article with its misleading url.]

Israel destroyed over 1,000 aid trucks, leaving supplies to rot.

Documentation of American and Israeli forces murdering Palestinians seeking aid.

The pattern is clear: Israel used false claims about Hamas aid theft to justify a blockade that has created mass starvation, while simultaneously destroying aid shipments and shooting people trying to get food. This is the very definition of collective punishment and using starvation as a weapon of war. It’s a war crime.

Fri, 25 Jul 2025 09:24:34 +0100

This is so messed up!

‘Yves Bonnet, the intelligence chief who tried to negotiate Abdallah’s exchange in 1985 and is now a member of the far-right National Rally, said he was “treated worse than a serial killer” and that “the United States was obsessed with keeping him in jail”.

‘According to a report in Le Monde newspaper, no Palestinian prisoner – even those condemned to life imprisonment in Israel – has served more than 40 years in jail. Abdallah served 41.’

Pro-Palestinian convict freed by France after 41 years: bbc.com
Home - BBC News https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg8gmly8gno

Thu, 24 Jul 2025 17:39:08 +0100

Save Ealing Children’s Centres campaign raised over £5,000 in just eight days to begin legal action against Ealing Council to prevent closure of ten and of the borough’s twenty-five children’s centres.

An audio summary of my satirical take on what it’s all about.

Thu, 24 Jul 2025 09:11:53 +0100

This explains why our government is so keen to suppress dissent.

The UK 'House of the People' parallel parliament - 50 people nominated by their communities and 50 people selected by democratic lottery - has agreed 5 top priorities for political action:
1. Tax wealth by removing tax loopholes and closing tax havens
2. Slash political corruption by banning lobbying, gifting, and second jobs in politics
3. Establish a Future Generations Act which priorities people and nature over GDP
4. Implement an immediate embargo on all arms, trade and support for Israel and other countries which violate international law
5. Grant councils power to repurchase disused homes and protect renters’ rights.
GeofCox@climatejustice.social https://climatejustice.social/@GeofCox/114906977959799046

Thu, 17 Jul 2025 12:49:28 +0100

URGENT support to fund a legal challenge to Ealing Council’s decision to close 10 children’s centres.

Perceval House W5: Where Local Democracy In Ealing Goes To Die : davidmarsden.info
David Marsden https://davidmarsden.info/2025/07/11/perceval-house-w-where-local.html

Tue, 15 Jul 2025 10:43:32 +0100

Added a new chapter to my Ealing Council takedown:

The Engagement Paradox - The Council Leader had perfected the art of simultaneous engagement. He could tweet about “absolutely committed to engaging, listening and compromising” while sharing photos of residents protesting his refusal to engage, listen, or compromise.

URGENT support to fund a legal challenge to Ealing Council’s decision to close 10 children’s centres.

Sun, 13 Jul 2025 14:07:54 +0100

“Existential threat” Jeremy Corbyn is having British Jews arrested for opposing Israeli genocide of Palestinians.

Oh, wait, it’s not Corbyn, it’s human rights lawyer Keir Starmer.

Perceval House W5: Where Local Democracy In Ealing Goes To Die

Fri, 11 Jul 2025 13:50:30 +0100

The Children’s Centres Crusade

Chapter 1: The Art of Political Contradiction

In the London Borough of Ealing, our elected representatives have perfected something remarkable: the ability to hold completely contradictory public positions without experiencing any apparent cognitive dissonance.

Take our Council Leader. On January 15, 2015, he tweeted: “Think its really important that we put people before buildings. Important we keep activities going & that can be done in a different way."

Ten years later, he’s closing children’s centres, buildings where people access those activities.

This isn’t hypocrisy - it’s innovation. Why limit yourself to consistent principles when you can have all the principles, simultaneously?

Mrs. Patel, a parent trying to save her local children’s centre, discovered this when she attempted to navigate Ealing’s democratic processes. What she found was a system so logically perfect that resistance had become mathematically impossible.

Chapter 2: The Democratic Möbius Strip

“Who decides about children’s centre closures?” Mrs. Patel asked at a council meeting.

“The Cabinet,” she was told.

The Cabinet explained they were implementing officer recommendations based on budget pressures created by government policy following community consultation showing residents wanted services maintained differently.

“So who can change the decision?”

“The decision-makers.”

“Who are the decision-makers?”

“The people with authority to make decisions.”

“Who has that authority?”

“The decision-makers.”

Mrs. Patel found herself trapped in a perfectly circular system. To influence the decision, she needed to identify who made it. But everyone who appeared to make decisions claimed to be implementing someone else’s decisions. The decision seemed to exist independently of anyone actually deciding anything.

Image: Jono Hey, [Sketchplanations](https://sketchplanations.com/mobius-strip)

It was like a democratic Möbius strip - no matter which direction you followed, you always ended up back where you started.

Chapter 3: The Mathematics of Progressive Budget Management

The numbers, at least, were clear:

Cost of councillor allowance increases (2022-2025): Over £1 million
Savings from closing children’s centres: £750,000
Council Leader’s pay rise: 70%
Number of children’s centres being closed in Southall: 3 out of 6

The Council Leader had discovered something revolutionary: you could simultaneously claim budget constraints while voting yourself substantial pay rises. The secret was treating these as completely unrelated mathematical operations.

“We have to make difficult decisions due to budget pressures,” he explained, while awarding himself £58,000 annually.

“But you spent more on pay rises than you’re saving,” Mrs. Patel pointed out.

“That’s a different budget.”

“It’s the same money.”

“You don’t understand local government finance. And we need higher calibre councillor candidates.”

Mrs. Patel was beginning to understand perfectly.

Chapter 4: Environmental Priorities - A Scientific Approach

The Council Leader’s environmental consciousness follows a precise hierarchy, documented through his public responses:

Tier 1 Emergency Response: Eels gasping in the River Brent receive immediate action [pdf) and public concern.

Tier 2 Public Complaint: Someone’s “bag and/or small child” taking up a tube seat merits a public tweet about “Some people.”

Tier 3 Busy Schedule: Children gasping from toxic air [YouTube] in bedrooms get told " I’m very busy.” [YouTube)]

When five-year-old Zion asked him directly, “Peter, why didn’t you help us?” [YouTube] about the gasworks poisoning, the response was so technical that Zion said it was “too sciencey” to understand.

This established a clear principle: if environmental concerns can’t be explained to five-year-olds, they’re probably too complex for five-year-olds to experience.

Chapter 5: The Southall Paradox

Only in Southall can carcinogenic benzene, and naphthalene - which is known to be potentially fatal to some people with African and Asian heritage - be released into the air from the Gasworks development at levels way above legal limits and be simultaneously “not hazardous” according to Ealing Council.

One moment the Headteacher at Blair Peach Primary School is reporting asthma and headaches [p. 10] caused by very strong smells from the Gasworks site; in another moment, the developer’s head of construction is appointed to the school’s board of governors [pp. 7-8] and arranges to remove dead rats from the nursery playground [p. 11]. These events are clearly unconnected.

It’s all perfectly normal in Southall, where kids can be locked in class without ventilation on hot days to protect them from the harmless petrol odour, and the developer’s “community liaison officer” can simultaneously be the chair of Southall’s charity umbrella organisation, an ex-Tory tobacco salesman whose former employer paid for our ex-MP’s research assistant to attend a jolly. Nothing to see here!

Here’s where things get even more interesting. The Council’s own “Southall Reset” [pdf] document acknowledges that “challenges of deprivation, low pay, are particularly acute” in Southall, contributing to “deeply embedded health and wellbeing challenges.”

The Race Equality Commission Report “highlighted the need for an investment in adequate primary care in Southall” and “deeper meaningful engagement, and better conversations with residents.”

The Council’s response to this need for MORE investment? Close children’s centres.

“So you know we need MORE investment?” Mrs. Patel asked.

“Absolutely. The evidence is clear,” they said.

“Then why are you closing children’s centres?”

“Budget pressures.”

“But your own report says we need more investment, not less.”

“That’s a different report.”

“It’s your report. You wrote it.”

“Different department.”

“Same council.”

“Different budget.”

“Same money.”

“You don’t understand local government.”

Mrs. Patel was beginning to understand perfectly. They could officially acknowledge that Southall needed more investment while simultaneously cutting investment. They could document the problem and implement policies that made it worse. Each document existed in its own logical universe, disconnected from actual decisions.

Chapter 6: The MIPIM Negotiations

Every year, the Council Leader attends MIPIM in Cannes - what Private Eye calls a “booze ‘n’ hookerfest” - with expenses paid by Berkeley Group, the company behind the gasworks development that’s been poisoning Southall residents.

He goes to “negotiate hard” with developers.

The documented results of these negotiations:

More developments approved
Continued toxic air from gasworks
Larger councillor allowances
Closure of community facilities

Either he’s a remarkably poor negotiator, or “negotiating hard” means something different in Cannes than it does in English.

Chapter 7: The Zionist-Anti-Zionist Synthesis

The Council Leader represents Southall Green - 69% BAME, one of the most ethnically diverse wards in Britain. Many of his constituents have strong views about Palestinian liberation.

His attitude? “People who commit themselves to being opposed to Jewish national self determination / liberation aren’t my cup of tea. They can exist, sure, just outside of the Labour movement.”

So he simultaneously represents a diverse community while working to exclude people from that community based on their views about Middle Eastern politics.

It’s a masterclass in representation: represent everyone, except the people whose politics you disagree with.

Chapter 8: The Protection-by-Destruction Innovation

The Council Leader has pioneered a new approach to public service: protecting things by eliminating them.

“We’ve made the decision to protect the front line by working with what we have, rather than allowing Govt Commissioners to slash and burn services,” he explains, while slashing and burning services.

It was like watching someone slash the low-hanging fruit on the trees and then set fire to the orchard; then selling the “infertile land” to developers when there’s nothing to eat.

But that wasn’t even the worst part. Mrs. Patel had discovered something even more troubling. Back in 2012, a group of unelected businessmen had met to play Monopoly [pdf] with public assets. Not the board game - though the principle was identical. They wanted to “sell off our public assets for £20m profit.”

Their target included “buildings used for services for vulnerable adults, children and families.”

“So they planned this years ago?” Mrs. Patel asked the councillor.

“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” the councillor said.

“But you’re closing children’s centres,” Mrs. Patel said.

“We’re protecting services by cutting them,” they explained patiently. “We’ve made the decision to protect the front line by working with what we have, rather than allowing Government Commissioners to slash and burn services.”

“But you ARE slashing and burning services.”

“We’re protecting them by cutting them responsibly.”

“How is closing them protecting them?”

“If we don’t close them, someone else will close them worse.”

“Who?”

“The Government Commissioners.”

“Have they said they’ll close them?”

“Not yet.”

“So you’re closing them to prevent them being closed?”

“We’re protecting them by cutting them.”

Mrs. Patel was beginning to understand perfectly. Round and round she went, trapped in a perfectly logical system designed to make resistance impossible.

The beautiful thing was that everyone was telling the truth. The councillor really didn’t know about the 2012 meeting. The 2012 meeting really had happened. The plan really was being implemented. Nobody was really in charge of implementing it.

Somehow, a decision made by people who didn’t officially exist was being executed by people who officially couldn’t stop it. This allows him to be simultaneously the protector of services and the person closing services - a remarkable administrative innovation.

Chapter 9: Democracy 2.0 - Now With Less Democracy

But the system’s crowning achievement is happening right now. This month - July 2025 - Ealing Council is rewriting the petition rules in direct response to successful community campaigns.

On page 294 of their July 15, 2025 council papers [pdf, see p. 294], you can see democracy being crossed out in real time. They’re removing:

Residents' rights to ask follow-up questions
Requirements for senior officers to give evidence
Meaningful participation in debates about their own petitions

They’ve solved the democracy problem by removing the democratic bits from democracy.

The timing is perfect: after communities proved they could win by building independent pressure (Save Southall Young Adult Centre, Save Southall Town Hall, Save Warren Farm Nature Reserve), the council is changing the rules to prevent it happening again.

Soon residents will be able to petition - they just won’t be able to ask questions, get answers, or participate in discussions about their concerns.

It’s democracy in name only, which is much more efficient than the old democracy where people could actually influence things.

Chapter 10: The Southall Young Adult Centre Miracle

But here’s the thing - resistance is still possible. In 2022, the Council wanted to demolish Southall Young Adult Centre to build 60 flats. The usual process commenced: consultation theater, predetermined decisions, official helplessness.

Then the “Save Southall Young Adult Centre” campaign launched. They didn’t try to work within the impossible system. They built independent pressure. They refused to accept that “decisions had been made.”

They won.

The centre was saved.

“How?” Mrs. Patel asked.

“We stopped playing by their rules,” the organisers said. “We built power they couldn’t ignore.”

Chapter 11: The Impossible Solution

Mrs. Patel realized the children’s centres could be saved the same way. But it would require doing something the system said was impossible: organising outside the official channels, building independent power, refusing to accept predetermined outcomes.

The Council had just changed the petition rules specifically to prevent another people-powered victory. But that only proved they were afraid of effective organising.

The system’s weakness was its strength: it was so obviously absurd that anyone paying attention could see through it.

The Council Leader could tweet about putting “people before buildings” while closing buildings where people accessed services. He could claim to protect services while cutting them. He could represent diverse communities while excluding their political views. He could prioritize eels over children and call it environmentalism.

All of this was only possible because residents had been playing by rules designed to make them lose.

But the campaigns to save the Young Adult Centre, the Town Hall and Warren Farm proved the rules could be broken.

Chapter 12: The Choice

Mrs. Patel had a choice. She could continue navigating the impossible bureaucracy, filing petitions that couldn’t ask questions, attending consultations about predetermined decisions, lobbying councillors who claimed to have no power.

Or she could do what the other campaigners did: build independent power and refuse to accept defeat.

The children’s centres could be saved. But only if parents stopped trying to reason with an unreasonable system and started building the power to change it.

The Council Leader would continue inhabiting his world of simultaneous contradictions, where closing centres meant protecting them and cutting services meant investing in communities.

But Mrs. Patel had learned something important: impossible things happen every day in Ealing politics.

If the Council Leader could be simultaneously progressive and regressive, protective and destructive, representative and exclusionary, then maybe Mrs. Patel could do something equally impossible.

Like save a children’s centre.

The Young Adult Centre campaigners had already shown it could be done.

Now it was the children’s centres' turn.

Mrs. Patel was beginning to understand perfectly. Even this right wing authoritarian Labour government thinks it’s a bad idea to close children’s centres.

Chapter 13: The Engagement Paradox

The Council Leader had perfected the art of simultaneous engagement.

He could tweet about “absolutely committed to engaging, listening and compromising” while sharing photos of residents protesting his refusal to engage, listen, or compromise.

He spoke frequently about “transparent engagement” and “finding the compromises everyone needs to make” - usually while explaining why the compromises residents needed to make were accepting whatever he’d already decided.

Even councillors who were “most responsive” resigned rather than “effectively endorse his toxic brand of politics.”

But the real innovation was tweeting “Welcome to Dystopia” while creating it.

Chapter 14: The Investment Paradox

The Council Leader had achieved something remarkable: he could simultaneously remember genocide while investing in it. “Remember Yesterday, Act Today,” his council posted about the genocide of 8,732 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica thirty years ago, while investing £112 million in companies enabling genocide of more than 28,000 women and girls in Gaza today. More than 50,000 children killed or injured in Gaza to pay for his pension.

It was beautifully efficient. Why limit yourself to one genocide when you could remember one while funding another? The children understood perfectly.

Equally impressive was his ability to close children’s centres for budget reasons while sitting on the board as a paid director [pdf] of a corporation that had just received £140 million in public funding. The logic was flawless: children’s services were unaffordable, but corporate development was essential.

The Council Leader had mastered the art of proportional response. Children’s centres closing to save £750,000? Budget pressures, difficult decisions, no choice. Sitting on the board overseeing “one of the biggest regeneration schemes in Europe” with £140 million in funding? That was worth £2,000 a year of his valuable time.

It was a masterclass in priorities: Europe’s biggest regeneration project required his oversight, but Southall’s children’s centres were an unaffordable luxury.

He could simultaneously claim there was no money for community services while helping to plan a “mini-Manhattan” in his own borough. The vision was clear: 54-storey towers, yes. Children’s centres, no.

He’d found the perfect balance: cut services locally to save money, earn money regionally to oversee developers' profits. It was like a perpetual motion machine of fiscal responsibility.

Chapter and Verse: The Evolution of Enlightenment

In 2010, our future Council Leader shared his frustration about “sitting around not understanding all this punjabi” at community meetings in the area he would later represent.

By 2020, he had evolved. “Words have consequences,” he tweeted. “Impact is as important as intent. Culture is defined by leadership.”

Ten years of personal growth had taught him that words matter. Which made it remarkable that he could simultaneously lecture about cultural sensitivity while closing community centres in the same diverse communities he’d once struggled to understand. It was a masterclass in progressive evolution: you could acknowledge that words have consequences while ensuring your own words from the past had none.

Disclaimer

Readers who think this is all a bit unfair, unbelievable, unhelpful or downright unlawful…

The most revealing evidence of how the system works came from inside the machine itself. In 2022, leaked WhatsApp messages [pdf] from the Ealing Labour councillors' group chat revealed what they really thought about their leadership.

Mason’s own Labour colleagues called the Council Leader “callous, ruthless, sectarian.”

They discussed votes of no confidence, referenced “corruption and even theft” regarding the previous leader, and debated “bribes” and “rewards” for loyalty. Meanwhile, publicly, they maintained perfect unity and collective responsibility. It was the perfect illustration of how the system works: private recognition of the problems, public performance of harmony.

Mrs. Patel understood perfectly. The same councillors who privately criticised authoritarian leadership accepted Mason’s cabinet positions and pay rises to sit in silent support during council meetings.The leaked messages proved Mrs. Patel wasn’t imagining the contradictions - even the people inside the system could see them. They just couldn’t say so publicly.

URGENT support to fund a legal challenge to Ealing Council’s decision to close 10 children’s centres.

Sources: All tweets, council documents, and quotes are publicly available and linked in the original post at https://davidmarsden.info/2025/07/11/perceval-house-w-where-local.html

Try your hand at democracy in Ealing with our fun interactive FAQs, budget calculator and decision-making process explainer!

Wed, 09 Jul 2025 13:43:55 +0100

Fixed the headline.

Gaza truce talks reportedly stall ~~despite second Netanyahu-Trump meeting~~ after Netanyahu demands the elimination of the people he's negotiating with: bbc.com
Home - BBC News https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce3newwl1zeo

Wed, 09 Jul 2025 10:27:01 +0100

Looking forward to the day when I will legally be branded a terrorist for wearing my hat.

Wed, 09 Jul 2025 09:42:10 +0100

A slap on the wrist.

Housebuilders to pay £100m towards affordable homes to avoid legal decision: bbc.com
Home - BBC News https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2d0740px42o

Wed, 25 Jun 2025 15:54:44 +0100

If it’s antisemitic to talk about Israel’s genocide of Palestinians, is it also anti-Japanese to compare the bombing of Iran to Hiroshima?

Mon, 16 Jun 2025 19:15:33 +0100

Israel launched an unprovoked, illegal attack on Iran, committed terrorist car bomb attacks, assassinated scientists, bombed residential apartment buildings, a hospital and a TV station, all war crimes.

Here’s the BBC saying how brave they are.

Israel's smaller, sophisticated military opposes larger Iran: bbc.com
Home - BBC News https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2lxkpekedo

Sun, 08 Jun 2025 18:07:26 +0100

Incredible piece from Auntie’s most experienced war correspondent and Middle East journalist. Good explainer here, too.

Bowen: Israel is accused of the gravest war crimes - how governments respond could haunt them for years: bbc.com
Home - BBC News https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0r1xl5wgnko

Sat, 31 May 2025 12:19:03 +0100

A must read.

Israel so-called 'aid' programme for Gaza isn't about feeding the survivors.
It's just another phase in its genocide.
New post 👇
www.owenjones.news/p/israels...
Owen Jones (@owenjones.bsky.social) https://bsky.app/profile/owenjones.bsky.social/post/3lqhecnnfvk27

Tue, 20 May 2025 11:38:17 +0100

My morning walks back from dropping my kids off at school are usually relaxing. Not this morning. I was on edge with the nearby presence of our local elected racist doing his rounds.

Sat, 17 May 2025 10:45:14 +0100

My own tiny contribution to the “island of strangers” keeping us safe.

Tue, 13 May 2025 21:40:45 +0100

A little tune I created, related.

The sports presenter said: “I know where I stand on this… What’s going on there [Gaza], the mass murder of thousands of children is probably something we should have a little opinion on.”

Gary Lineker deletes 'Zionism' post amid criticism: bbc.com
Home - BBC News https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c39x0133e2wo

Tue, 13 May 2025 09:50:58 +0100

Starmer’s immigration speech “nonsense language worthy of a Trump style populist.”

New post: Starmer’s Disgraceful and Damaging Remarks
https://mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2025/05/starmers-disgraceful-and-damaging.html
As with austerity in the 2010s, if none of the main parties can be honest about immigration then the public debate will be equally dishonest.
Simon Wren-Lewis https://econtwitter.net/@sjwrenlewis/114499436948223776

Fri, 09 May 2025 12:26:06 +0100

Fund Britain’s Waterways.

The Canal & River Trust (CRT), which manages over 2,000 miles of waterways, relies heavily on government grants to maintain this infrastructure. From 2027, CRT is set to lose 40% of its grant funding, threatening the maintenance and accessibility of canals and rivers.

Tax the rich, ffs!

Wed, 07 May 2025 18:49:04 +0100

True then, and true now.

Thu, 24 Apr 2025 14:15:14 +0100

Starmer nails his true colours to the mast.

George Monbiot: “Across my long and largely futile career…”

Keir Starmer's identity crisis

Wed, 23 Apr 2025 13:03:37 +0100

Keir Starmer is a walking, talking political identity crisis. Starmer is a man - at least we assume that’s what he is. We have not verified his biological sex. We see him using the men’s toilets (at least that’s what I assume) and playing football with other people who appear to be (unverified) men. Ok, let’s put it this way. Starmer is an unverified man, or at least, appears to self-identify as a man. I tell you what, for the sake of clarity, I’m just going to refer to him - or them - as a person.

Starmer is a person who lied to Labour Party members to win their votes to become the elected leader of the Labour Party. He made a series of pledges to enact socialist, progressive policies. All of which he’s reneged on. As leader of the Opposition to the murderous, racist liar Boris Johnson, Starmer went out of his way to consistently support the Tory government.

His entire strategy was to remove any possibility of mistaking him for a Labour leader, and one former Labour leader in particular. If anything he was even more right wing than Johnson. Crucially, he had no responsibilities and therefore appeared more competent and professional than Johnson. Having established himself as a Tory clone, Starmer was able to position himself as the “change” candidate against the dripping wet washout Rishi “carry on” Sunak. It was no contest. Starmer won by a landslide and had a mandate to do exactly as he was told by his advisers/handlers.

I see people complaining now that Starmer has no policies, no principles, no political beliefs. Yet his entire career, and certainly his entire election campaign, was built solely on the pursuit of power. Pledges, promises, missions, principles, beliefs - they’re all for losers, people who identify as something or other. Starmer’s handlers positioned him as a nobody. A no-one. Someone no one could possibly identify with. Someone who could win votes from Tories in Tory seats dressing to the right, from Labour voters in Labour seats dressing to the left, and from Liberal voters in liberal seats dressing to the right again but this time wearing orange underpants. Hell, he even won votes from Scottish Nationalists wearing a tartan dress and no knickers.

It was an amazing and amazingly brilliant election-winning strategy. But it does mean that we have a Prime Minister who panders to the electoral threat from the right. It does mean we have a PM who is obsessed with people’s genitals, and whether they had them at birth. And it does mean that we have a leader who eats three Shredded wheat for breakfast every morning just to look tough for Reform voters even though he has a severe gluten intolerance. Hence Starmer’s persistent strained facial expression and his whiny voice.

Wed, 02 Apr 2025 09:38:16 +0100

Every outdoor seating area in the public realm is littered with beer bottles and cans, laughing gas canisters and other drug paraphernalia.

Probably not what local homebuyers here signed up for with the marketing lure of “canalside living”.

Fri, 28 Mar 2025 10:58:57 +0100

Not sure where this came from, but it’s where we’re at.

Thu, 27 Mar 2025 19:05:01 +0100

Interesting the way this story is framed as if award-winning BBC journalist Jeremy Bowen has committed a heinous crime, associating what he has consistently reported with the ludicrously banned documentary Gaza: How To Survive A Warzone.

Thu, 27 Mar 2025 12:03:40 +0100

“One night, I opened my front door to such a strong gas smell I actually thought someone was trying to gas me and I rang the police”.

A Very British Coup.

Fri, 14 Mar 2025 08:56:19 +0100

Watched the first two (of three) episodes of A Very British Coup (also available on YouTube) last night.

First broadcast in the summer of 1988, when socialist Tony Benn came close to being elected as deputy leader of the Labour party, then in opposition to Margaret Thatcher’s Tory government.

Radical socialist and Sheffield Wednesday fan Harry Perkins becomes the UK prime minister, with financial backing for his government’s economic policies from the state bank of Russia after the US, CIA, Labour “moderates” and the British establishment conspire to subvert the democratic will of the people.

Plenty of echoes in today’s political environment, and great acting from Ray McAnally, Keith Allen and others. Doesn’t seem dated at all.

Some things never change.

Wed, 12 Mar 2025 23:03:46 +0100

My boy got his picture taken for the local council propaganda rag when they opened the school street this week.

Think of the children

Wed, 12 Mar 2025 14:02:55 +0100

Ealing Council are consulting on their proposals to improve services offered by the borough’s children’s centres to children under five and their parents by reducing the number of centres from 25 to 12.

In Southall, the poorest and most deprived of the seven towns in the borough, and the town with the highest rates of new arrivals to the country, English as a second language, and up to 40,000 new residents occupying all the new builds homes currently being developed, the council proposes to improve uptake of services at the six Southall children’s centres by reducing their number to two.

If you’re not already persuaded that this is an obvious, winning and ever-so-centristly adult and professional management of the local economy, then let me elaborate further with some data!

The problem with the children’s centres as they are now is that they are very inefficient. In some parts of Southall where there are no children’s centres, for instance, as few as a third of children are accessing services offered by children’s centres based in other parts of the town. And while arguably one of the best and most successful of the purpose-built and award-winning children’s centres reaches over two thirds of children in its locality, if we close this one down, repurpose the building as something else (more unaffordable high-rise flat$$$? [like we tried to do with Southall Young Adult Centre, the only youth club in town]), and get our (private) less-qualified and experienced partners to deliver cheaper and less effective children’s services in community venues such as the recently repurposed community-centre-as-a-library, churches, mosques, gurdwaras and mandirs, everyone’s a winner, right?

I should be a highly paid consultant!

To those of you who actually live in Southall, and who are mostly women (of colour) and have children who have used or use these services now, and who say to me, “Hmmm…. This sounds like cost-cutting. We need more children’s centres not fewer. What you’re proposing is madness. You’re a Labour council, why are you doing this? Many people won’t be able to travel half an hour or more on foot or be able to afford public transport to the two remaining centres. Many people won’t want to go to the places where they worship and which are highly patriarchal, not known for confidentiality, and not designed for children’s safe and secure play and development. The library is too small, and small children like to make a lot of noise and run around. Instead of looking for new exclusionary venues, why not just use the safe and secure, purpose-built inclusive children’s centres we already have? Market the services offered in the library and the faith centres”: your feedback is valuable and I have no answers. Please fill in the survey and rate my brass neck out of five.

It’s all a bit rich coming from the same council who lectured Warren Farm campaigners on the health and wellbeing of Southall’s children two short years ago. Local people fought the council’s plans to destroy much of the rewilded land at Warren Farm Nature Reserve in order to build new football and cricket pitches on it, and instead wanted to preserve Warren Farm as a nature reserve so that local children living in an otherwise urban environment would have some wildlife and peace and quiet on open land to visit. Meanwhile, the two cricket pitches at Southall Recreation Ground which are used all day every weekend in all weathers are dilapidated and dangerous.

Wed, 12 Mar 2025 09:03:18 +0100

American values.

Democratic Senator Chris Murphy on the forced disappearance of Mahmoud Khalil
#Israel #Palestine #Gaza #MahmoudKhalil
Raphael Mimoun רפאל מימון https://social.coop/@raph/114147680572533972

Save Ealing's Children's Centres

Sun, 09 Mar 2025 22:21:58 +0100

Save Ealing’s Children’s Centres

Actions we can all do:

SIGN THE PETITION - Over 1,000 neighbours already have. Every signature shows our community’s strength.

SPEAK UP BY 27 APRIL - Tell the Council closing 13 centres is unacceptable. Fill in the online consultation.

CONTACT COUNCILLOR JOSH BLACKER - Your personal stories matter. Tell him how these centres support your family.

blackerj@ealing.gov.uk

Template email. Please personalise to make it more powerful, or better still write your own!

VISIT YOUR LOCAL CENTRE - Show it’s valued. Bring neighbours who might not know what’s at stake.

Why This Matters To Everyone

• Your children lose vital services - health support, parenting help, and early learning will disappear from your neighbourhood

• Hardest hit: families who can least afford it - longer journeys, more costs, and fewer services for those already struggling

• Growing population, fewer services - Ealing’s population is increasing while services are being cut

• Your voice matters - especially if English isn’t your first language or you live in an affected area

Sun, 09 Mar 2025 11:57:07 +0100

“This is what happens when someone appeases barbarians. More bombs, more aggression, more victims. Another tragic night in ~~Palestine~~Ukraine.”

Tue, 04 Mar 2025 23:54:07 +0100

Boris Johnson has a lot to answer for.

Is he a communist spy, too?

He knew before anyone else that it was Putin who poisoned the Skripals, and held secret meetings with a Russian oligarch soon after.

He’s been stoking Russophobia ever since.

He met with the Russian oligarch again just prior to deciding that “herd immunity” was the way to beat covid-19, leading to tens of thousands of deaths.

He made the Russian oligarch a Lord soon after.

He flew to Kyiv to prevent a ceasefire three years ago, promulgating instead an endless war that will erode our defences and economy before it erodes Russia’s.

He’s a Trump apologist.

Tue, 04 Mar 2025 21:28:46 +0100

Big kid brought home a June 1983 copy of National Geographic from the school library today (I said it needs an update!).

Some things never change.

Mon, 03 Mar 2025 22:25:14 +0100

If only there was a human rights lawyer / political leader of sound moral principles who could form a coalition of the willing to secure a peace plan.

Israel has resumed its genocide in Gaza.
But the Western media has overwhelmingly suppressed the truth.
New post
👇
www.owenjones.news/p/israel-...
Owen Jones (@owenjones.bsky.social) https://bsky.app/profile/owenjones.bsky.social/post/3ljipaydpuk2t

Mon, 03 Mar 2025 20:21:12 +0100

Having unilaterally pledged endless war against a nuclear enemy with “British boots on the ground” Starmer’s popularity is apparently soaring.

Mon, 03 Mar 2025 20:12:13 +0100

Security is not the ability to destroy your neighbour. Security is the ability to get on with your neighbour. Think of the kind of society we could build if politicians had the slightest interest in building a world of peace.

The Prime Minister’s decision to cut foreign aid to fund warfare will have lasting, catastrophic consequences.
Read the full article here: tribunemag.co.uk/2025/03/g...
Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn.bsky.social) https://bsky.app/profile/jeremycorbyn.bsky.social/post/3ljike2espc2d

Mon, 03 Mar 2025 20:05:06 +0100

It is worth noting that Starmer’s delusional “Hundred Year Alliance” agreement with Zelensky contained the UK’s attempt to grab the same minerals Zelensky is now asking again to be allowed to hand over to Trump.

Ukraine, Diplomacy and War : craigmurray.org.uk
Latest News - Craig Murray https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2025/03/ukraine-diplomacy-and-war/

Sun, 02 Mar 2025 22:03:19 +0100

Starmer is now the de facto leader of the European Union.

Sun, 02 Mar 2025 16:58:05 +0100

I saw the heavily edited Trump-Zelensky smackdown video and couldn’t help but think of Trump as Emperor Ming the Merciless to Zelensky’s Flash Gordon. Vance as General Klytus. Keir Starmer made a grovelling cameo as Prince Thun (RIP).

Sun, 02 Mar 2025 16:51:17 +0100

Trump is an evil narcissist for publicly humiliating Zelensky because Zelensky refuses to negotiate a peace deal with Putin because Putin is “the aggressor”, illegally occupies Ukrainian land, and “wants to kill them all”.

Netanyahu illegally occupies Palestinian land and reneges on a peace deal he negotiated with “the aggressor” Hamas who “want to kill them all”.

Israel blocks entry of all humanitarian aid into Gaza: bbc.com
Home - BBC News https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9q4w99je78o

On yer bike! (Your voice matters)

Sat, 15 Feb 2025 17:15:24 +0100

Last week we had the local cycling group at the school offering free bikes and training to families.

We’d love free bikes, of course.

Two problems for me, though:

There’s nowhere safe and secure to keep them.
The roads and drivers around here are downright dangerous, and no dedicated cycle lanes.

I couldn’t help myself imparting this information in no uncertain terms to the two smiley elderly ladies handing out the marketing leaflets.

Afterwards, big kid gave me some feedback.

“Dad, when you shout it makes me want to freeze out of fear.”

Me: “Oh no, sorry, did I shout at those ladies?”

“No, you didn’t shout at them. You used your political voice. Your political voice makes me want to listen.”

Sat, 15 Feb 2025 11:38:33 +0100

‘The UK currently has schemes for some Afghans, Ukrainians and people from Hong Kong to come to the UK but no route for Palestinians.’

Keir Starmer pledges to close loophole that let Gazan family settle in UK bbc.co.uk
BBC - Home https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpdx0yn6v7lo

Wed, 12 Feb 2025 13:41:23 +0100

‘Under UK law, it is now an offence to enter the country without permission, while international law states that refugees should not be penalised for illegal entry.’

Gotta love that rules-based international order.

UK to refuse citizenship to refugees arriving on small boats bbc.com
Home - BBC News https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9d5wj9l8e2o

Mon, 10 Feb 2025 18:52:53 +0100

Helicopter crews exposed to benzene twenty years ago now dying from cancer.

MoD investigates air crew cancers after helicopter claims bbc.com
- news.bbc.co.uk, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp3wrkeng2eo

Sat, 08 Feb 2025 12:03:20 +0100

‘The BBC contacted Biden’s talent agency, which recently signed him, but no response was immediately forthcoming.’

My talent agency said, “WTAF?!”

Trump says he is revoking Joe Biden's security clearance bbc.com
BBC - Homepage https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn57p5r99xyo

Sat, 08 Feb 2025 11:37:37 +0100

‘Find someone your base already dislikes. Attack them. Make it personal. Make it cruel. Make it loud. Then monetize the outrage- both from your supporters who love the show and your opponents who can’t look away.’

The Cruelty Market joanwestenberg.com
westenberg. https://www.joanwestenberg.com/the-cruelty-market/

Sat, 08 Feb 2025 10:41:34 +0100

‘“Cultural evidence”, also used in far-right and religious extremist cases… does not equal guilt.’

Youth culture experts could help avoid stereotyping of young black men, say lawyers theguardian.com
theguardian.com https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/07/youth-culture-experts-could-help-avoid-stereotyping-of-young-black-men-say-lawyers

Fri, 07 Feb 2025 23:48:24 +0100

A better all round social work experience for everyone involved. They should be able to move to a four day week.

Ealing Council slashes admin work by 44% with new AI tool ealing.nub.news
ealing.nub.news https://ealing.nub.news/news/local-news/ealing-council-slashes-admin-work-by-44-with-new-ai-tool-250186

Fri, 07 Feb 2025 09:04:44 +0100

AI will drink all our water, use up all our electricity, take all our jobs, deliver to us online shopping and pizza and feed our timelines forever and ever with slop, before framing us on made up charges of terrorism or sexual deviancy, or just go right ahead and murder us in our beds.

Concern UK's AI ambitions could lead to water shortages bbc.com
Home - BBC News https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce85wx9jjndo

Fri, 07 Feb 2025 08:57:26 +0100

Pleased to see that Auntie has updated the headline on this story.

Public invited to suggest names for next archbishop bbc.com
Home - BBC News https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz9e23jlwdko

Publish and REDACTED!

Thu, 06 Feb 2025 23:24:26 +0100

This was supposed to be a comprehensive account of events of the last couple of weeks in this corner of the interwebs. Instead, thanks to the events of the last twenty four hours, and on the advice of REDACTED’s lawyers, I’ve had to make some amendments.

Nevertheless, I hope it will help to clear up any misunderstandings and fill in any gaps about what has been going on.

Unfortunately, most of my source material has now been REDACTED, breaking the very fabric of our beloved internet. Forgive me for not taking screenshots.

OMG!!1!

The dust has REDACTED, it’s all REDACTED over, and it’s all REDACTED under the bridge now (or is it?), so what REDACTED time to start REDACTEDing over the muck of the very recent past all over again?

I don’t really want to do that, and I held back from saying anything directly at the time, or since, mainly because I didn’t feel like there was anything I could add that others hadn’t already REDACTED or that wouldn’t simply fan the flames of the REDACTED of the REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED that descended from their REDACTED REDACTED horses to demand REDACTED Rotten’s evisceration and expulsion from the internets for being a REDACTED-loving REDACTEDphobe.

And I didn’t want to upset or offend anyone.

But most of all, I didn’t want to be on the receiving end of someone else’s REDACTED REDACTED.

So out of sheer bloody-minded cowardice and self-preservation I sat back behind the safety of my keyboardless AI slop consumption screen and watched the entirely human generated shitshow go down with an ever increasing sense of unwanted vicarious and voyeuristic unease.

I’ve taken part in plenty of online arguments and fights over the years (hell, even some real life and in person ones, too), mostly in closed communities, but occasionally in public forums.

My memory isn’t what it used to be, but I can’t recall there was ever a winner in any of them (and if there was it certainly wasn’t me - although it’s not the winning that matters, of course, it’s the taking part), and no perceivable good has ever come about other than that the flames eventually burn up all the oxygen of publicity and peter out.

Oh, and I hope I have learned that its not worth the emotional toll of getting involved. I learned The Power To REDACTED.

I’ve also faced unfounded accusations in the workplace.

And I still carry the scars of my REDACTEDs' arguments when I was a child.

So all this arguing and accusing evoked in me some difficult emotions and memories.

LOL!!1!

As someone who still feels relatively new to REDACTED (after two years), and certainly not feeling part of the already well-established community - I’d already been “told off” by one of the sensible centrist liberal adults for lacking a REDACTED or REDACTED opinion because I drew a metaphorical and frankly dogmatic bloody line in the sand of the ashes of the thousands of murdered children in REDACTED, and planted a tattered REDACTEDbow flag in the rubble opposing the REDACTEDide of REDACTEDinians in REDACTED by REDACTED, and the Good Ol' REDACTED of REDACTED’s role in funding and arming it - I was aghast to witness the self-declared grown-ups bitching and fighting amongst themselves over who was the fairest of them all.

A few of the most fairest of them all promptly decamped to set up in another part of the world wide web where they will be safe from REDACTEDists and REDACTEDs, and fairytale queens cosplaying as old ladies bearing poison apples.

Speaking of apples, it was First Man REDACTED who ate the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil and brought about the Fall of Man. First Man REDACTED, and First REDACTED Eve, lost their innocence and became ashamed of their nakedness. Their sinful obsession with REDACTED made them the world’s first REDACTEDs.

Led by judge, jury and executioner in-chief First Man REDACTED, the REDACTEDers had decided that REDACTED Rotten’s use six months previously of “REDACTED” was non-binary and cast-iron proof that REDACTED is, in fact, REDACTEDphobic, and that cannot be tolerated - or at least, it cannot be tolerated six months down the line when First Man REDACTED, who wasn’t cyberstalking REDACTED Rotten at all, just happened to notice that REDACTED had paid for a subscription to REDACTED’s newly unelected REDACTEDist henchman REDACTED’s REDACTED.com.

Not only was he a fully paid up member of the REDACTED billionaire’s despised social network, REDACTED had publicly praised REDACTED’s REDACTED exploration ambitions and his REDACTED cars!

As if this wasn’t REDACTED enough on its own, REDACTED was named as a REDACTED of the REDACTED indieweb REDACTED social network REDACTED, set up several years ago as a community-minded alternative to the toxic REDACTED by the ever so manly monikered REDACTED.

“HOW COULD MANLY MONIKERED REDACTED EMPLOY REDACTED-LOVING REDACTEDPHOBE REDACTED ROTTEN?!!!!”

“MANLY MONIKERED REDACTED MUST IMMEDIATELY “PRONOUNCE” HIS PERSONAL ALLYSHIP WITH TEH REDACTED COMMUNITAH!!1!”

“REDACTED MY AUTHORITAH!!1!”

FAFO!!1!

Don’t get me wrong. I think REDACTED could and should be more careful with his REDACTED utterances, particularly in his role as a REDACTED of his own REDACTED, which I presume he welcomes anyone and everyone to use, contribute to and subscribe to. It does look bad that he’s also a REDACTED REDACTED, and paying REDACTED to use REDACTED, AND praising REDACTED (especially in light of REDACTED’s overt REDACTED salutes).

But in my humble, unwanted and irrelevant white middle-REDACTED male REDACTED-gendered opinion, none of that defines him as a REDACTED-lover or a REDACTEDphobe. I mean, he could be both, or one or the other, or neither. I don’t know. I think it’s disingenuous to pretend otherwise.

That said, it doesn’t mean people can’t be offended by any or all of it six months ago, two weeks ago, now and forever more. In REDACTED’s defence, it seems like he did make some kind of apology at the time even if it wasn’t good enough, and it was compounded by his publishing of later REDACTED posts complaining about being ‘REDACTED’.

REDACTED, a REDACTED REDACTED who did take offence at REDACTED’s “REDACTED” comment REDACTED her subscription to REDACTED’s REDACTED service, and REDACTED about her REDACTED. REDACTED REDACTED her in full, and while it shouldn’t have REDACTED, could have been REDACTED much better, and undoubtedly left a very REDACTED REDACTED in the mouth for REDACTED, First Man REDACTED and plenty of others, that really should have been the end of it.

As others have REDACTED better than me, it does appear as if First Man REDACTED had it in for REDACTED and saw REDACTED’s blue REDACTED account and his praise of REDACTED as an opportunity to exert some kind of REDACTED or “REDACTED” upon him. While I’m not suggesting REDACTED set out to invoke the REDACTED REDACTED, he knows as well as anyone what it’s all about and The Power To REDACTED get involved in other people’s battles.

So it’s somewhat ironic, if no less unpleasant, that in seeking to give up his Power to REDACTED in order to REDACTED the internet, he has now had to REDACTED his REDACTED REDACTED in the face of REDACTED REDACTED.

Wed, 05 Feb 2025 11:47:00 +0100

Of course, it’s the anti-genocidal voters who didn’t buy the genocidal Biden/Harris presidential ticket who are to blame for the genocidal Trump presidency.

Seriously?!

Does anyone seriously believe she wouldn’t have continued to arm and fund Israel to “finish the job” with or without this temporary ceasefire and hostage exchange?

Mon, 03 Feb 2025 08:55:05 +0100

Not on our side.

So now we have it. Rachel Reeves's claim that a third runway at Heathrow Airport would boost economic growth comes from a report commissioned by .... Heathrow Airport. Instead of acting in the national interest, she's channelling corporate lobbyists. [www.theguardian.com/environme...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/feb/01/ree...) bsky.app
- georgemonbiot.bsky.social, https://bsky.app/profile/georgemonbiot.bsky.social/post/3lhax4nqkxs22

Mon, 03 Feb 2025 08:50:45 +0100

Is Trump doing a Truss and will “the deep state” intervene?

Trump’s nightmare 2025 is going as I predicted https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2025/02/03/trumps-nightmare-2025-is-going-as-i-predicted/ Trump is dragging financial markets down - and people in the US, from the MAGA to Trump's donors - are not going to like that.
- RichardJMurphy@mas.to, https://mas.to/@RichardJMurphy/113938828787885958

Mon, 03 Feb 2025 08:48:45 +0100

More evidence, should you need it, that in the last 50 years capitalism has disproportionately advantaged the top 10% of earners (and we also know that within that top 10% there is a further division between the richest - the top 1% - and the rest).
In the last 50 years the reductions in inequality of the post-1945 period have been reversed confirming that the governance & regulation of capitalism after 1945 to make it more generally beneficial was a blip not a trend
#capitalism #economics
top 10% has risen over period to over 160; for the bottom 20-40% & the median earner, earning have risen to around 135-139; for the bottom 10%, from 100-120." loading=“lazy”>
- ChrisMayLA6@zirk.us, https://zirk.us/@ChrisMayLA6/113938704626685539

Sat, 01 Feb 2025 10:57:12 +0100

In 1988, the great American novelist Kurt Vonnegut wrote a letter to the human race of 2088.

Via @cubicgarden.com’s newsletter

Tue, 28 Jan 2025 11:48:45 +0100

Can’t remember ever seeing the equivalent Israel/Palestinian headline on the BBC.

In a split second, Russia wipes out three generations of a Ukrainian family bbc.com
Home - BBC News https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyp8nkgxj3o

Tue, 28 Jan 2025 11:46:54 +0100

My local council in the news.

Temporary housing linked to deaths of at least 74 children bbc.com
Home - BBC News https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c897d0l97jko

BBC says IDF murdered children and lied about it

Fri, 24 Jan 2025 09:05:02 +0100

‘The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) says the building was targeted because it was a Hezbollah “terrorist command centre” and it “eliminated” a Hezbollah commander. It added that “the overwhelming majority” of those killed in the strike were “confirmed to be terror operatives”.

‘But a BBC Eye investigation verified the identity of 68 of the 73 people killed in the attack and uncovered evidence suggesting just six were linked to Hezbollah’s military wing. None of those we identified appeared to hold a senior rank. The BBC’s World Service also found that the other 62 were civilians - 23 of them children.’

IDF said bombed apartments were Hezbollah base - but most of dead were civilians bbc.com
Home - BBC News https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgrn0nwn0eqo

What's out there?

Wed, 22 Jan 2025 01:13:52 +0100

What’s out there?

My space-obsessed four and three quarter year old might ask me that soon, so I better have an answer.

At the moment he’s happy to copy his ten and a half year old brother and stick with “What’s in Uranus?” for laughs. (Although he does actually want to know what’s in Uranus, too.)

Recently, I have been replaced by Professor Brian Cox on bedtime story reading duties.

Instead of me reading simple kids' books on space until he falls asleep, Prof. Cox narrates stories on YouTube about black holes, space-time elasticity and Fermi’s Paradox. It’s fascinating, and sends the little one off to sleep at least as efficiently as me reading to him.

I admit that while I was aware of Fermi’s Paradox, I hadn’t quite cottoned on to its significance.

That, in answer the the question “What’s out there?” there’s an unimaginably vast number of planets, stars, galaxies, etc., in an even more unimaginably vast and mostly empty space. And in spite of this vastness, there’s absolutely zero evidence (so far) of any kind of life at all other than here on our tiny, tiny speck of Earth. We’re alone.

Echoing Carl Sagan, Prof. Cox was quite poetic about it and described it as the Universe taking millions of years to come up with just the right conditions for an unbroken chain of evolutionary life to emerge that has an awareness of itself.

And that the Universe is a frighteningly violent place so it’s quite miraculous that we haven’t (yet) been smashed or fried in some astronomical event. In fact, we look odds-on to smash or fry ourselves first right here, right now.

Our evolutionarily advantageous over-confidence will inevitably lead us to self-destruction, as surely as boom leads to bust, as we ignore climate warnings from our wise elders, wage war on our brothers and our sisters, and repeatedly fail to think of the children.

We’re wedded to screens and technology as life passes us by. Doom-scribing, scrolling and trolling, when we should be out there talking to our neighbours, being the change we want to see in the ‘hood, and showing some fucking solidarity with each other. We’re not all perfect, we can all say and do the wrong things, even hold the wrong beliefs.

Identity politics has much to answer for, but the answer isn’t to dismiss people’s lived experiences. Each to their own, and everyone must be able to live their lives as they want to while not harming others. But when someone expresses themselves in ways that cause hurt or offense, piling on and ostracising them often just deepens divisions.

Instead, we need to find ways to acknowledge everyone’s feelings and guide each other toward mutual understanding. This isn’t easy, especially online, but it’s essential if we want to build real solidarity.

Because the point is that the people who want to colonize Mars, or make “their” country great again, or spend billions on war when our elders are dying in hospital corridors, are not on our side. If we could find ways to stick together, however we identify as individuals, we could challenge these concentrations of power and wealth.

I feel certain that if everyone had a decent home with enough food, meaningful and/or well paid work, and enough free time to pursue leisure interests with friends and family, then very few people would give a flying fuck about what pronouns people prefer, or if someone moved from one “country” to “another”.

Maybe then we can leave a planet that’s still inhabitable for our children.

Of course, it’s also possible that we are not alone. It’s possible that aliens are among us, badly disguised as awkward, orange humans, or owls, or neutrinos.

Who knows?

Sun, 19 Jan 2025 13:32:02 +0100

GET FUNDING AND TRAINING TO ORGANISE YOUR COMMUNITY.

Sat, 18 Jan 2025 12:02:29 +0100

Thatcher’s daughter.

Reeves is still peddling the household analogy https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2025/01/18/reeves-is-still-peddling-the-household-analogy/ Reeves is still claiming she is running the economy like her mother did their household when she was growing up. That's crazy. Her mother could not create her own money. As Chancellor, that is what she has to do. If Reeves cannot spot the difference, no wonder we're in deep trouble.
Richard Murphy https://mas.to/@RichardJMurphy/113848435474816423

Fri, 17 Jan 2025 17:10:37 +0100

Not sure why this wasn’t prosecuted under anti-terrorism laws?

White supremacist jailed for asylum seeker attack at hotel bbc.com
Home - BBC News https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c7vddrjjgr0o

Fri, 17 Jan 2025 12:58:53 +0100

More than two years after I suggested this should be a priority, my sons' school will have a school street during the school run times.

Fri, 17 Jan 2025 09:30:05 +0100

The new President of Israel.

Israel has changed since Donald Trump's last term – has he? bbc.com
Home - BBC News https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgkjxlml42vo

AI, ethics and democracy

Thu, 16 Jan 2025 15:15:58 +0100

I keep reading that AI is dumb, dangerous and demented. And I’ve no doubt it’s all true. Ethan Mollick, author of Co-Intelligence, describes ChatGPT as “a very elaborate auto complete like you have on your phone”

AI slop is contaminating our lives with worthless junk, and while I’ve played with and been briefly amazed and entertained by Google NotebookLM’s auto-generated podcast creations, they can get repetitive, boring and stupid very quickly.

We can rail against AI all we want, but it’s not going away. I expect AI to get smarter and to have fewer hallucinations even if the danger level remains high.

What is Al good for?

Micro.blog uses Al to generate Alt-Text descriptions of images and that seems to work well enough for its intended purpose. What it can’t do, of course, is generate descriptions that are personal to the uploader or post context, e.g., if I have a picture of my son the description will be a generic “boy with curly hair” or such like.

I’ve used Google’s Gemini on blog posts I’ve written and it’s given me some very positive feedback about my writing, enough to make me feel good about myself (certainly much more so than any human reader). Although it also got into the habit of creating its own alternative versions, which often were funnier and more interesting (to me) than my own writing. (It will also roast you if that’s your thing.)

Similarly, Google NotebookLM has fed back on my entire year of posts in 2024, and was very nice about it, too. It is quite therapeutic to hear that, as long as you take it for what it is - an elaborate auto-complete that ultimately will rot your brain, take your job and ruin your life.

I’ve also used both for work in some limited ways - drafting a job description, drafting cases for support for funding applications, and summarising or analysing documents. Both require some degree of human intervention, but the process and product was useful in helping me get started, and complete the tasks.

One area where I found Al to be most interesting was in commenting on and forming an ethical response to a local democracy issue where I live. I found the response to be in line with what community campaigners (including me) had been asking for, and in total contrast to the response from our elected representatives, authorities and business leaders. That must be the auto-complete.

While I don’t think I would yet call for all politicians to be replaced by AI, I do wonder if there is a potential use case here for analysing policy implications, or at least highlighting ethical considerations?

I ran these thoughts past Claude.ai and this is a summary of what it had to say:

democratic processes need human judgment, accountability, and the ability to balance competing interests the ways that AI currently cannot

core ethical principles that should guide public service:

transparency about conflicts of interest

accountability to the people

clear acknowledgment of problems rather than minimisation

practical solutions for reporting complaints and response

the fundamental duty of public officials to serve their constituents

Human decision-makers can, of course, choose to prioritise other interests over ethical imperatives

I suggested to it that the AI response to the Southall Gasworks issue demonstrated more “empathy” than the human political response:

The AI’s response prioritised human wellbeing and acknowledged suffering, in contrast to the actual political response, which was bureaucratic and dismissive, treating hundreds of complaints as isolated incidents and prioritising procedural responses over human impact

A truly empathetic human response to such serious health impacts should have been immediate and decisive action to protect public health

Of course, the AI response wasn’t actually empathetic. It applied logical ethical principles that prioritise human wellbeing. What looks like empathy is actually systematic ethical reasoning unclouded by personal interests, political considerations, or institutional self-protection.

I suggested that it might not be uncommon for political leaders to lack empathy, and that it’s therefore so much easier for them to allow personal, and powerful political and institutional interests to take precedence over what most ordinary people would see quite clearly as the interests of human wellbeing:

This connects to research on the prevalence of psychopathic traits in leadership positions. In the Southall Gasworks case, a leader with normal empathetic capacity might find it psychologically difficult to:

dismiss hundreds of health complaints from suffering residents

accept substantial gifts while community members develop serious illnesses

continue business as usual while learning of deaths potentially linked to their decision

Of course, even someone with empathy might not be able to resist powerful institutional or financial pressures.

Thu, 16 Jan 2025 10:36:32 +0100

Bye bye Biden. A genocidal war criminal with the blood of tens of thousands of women and children on his hands. Paved the way for fascism.

Thu, 16 Jan 2025 10:28:43 +0100

This Lino government is fucking awful.

Patients dying in corridors at overwhelmed hospitals, say nurses bbc.com
Home - BBC News https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgly9z4z62do

Thu, 09 Jan 2025 13:26:54 +0100

Liz Truss’s lawyers have sent me a cease and desist notice for writing:

Liz “Pork Markets” Truss.

Oh, fuck. She might not have been a liar, or a racist, or a murderer, but boy was she stupid. She killed the Queen, trashed the UK economy, and blew up Russia’s Nordstream pipeline…

Thu, 02 Jan 2025 12:04:29 +0100

20lb Sounds by 20lb Sounds

I posted on my blog about Jimmy Carter. Hoping to post more in 2025 but don't hold me to that - https://www.danlynch.org/blog/2025/01/rip-jimmy-carter/
#music #creativecommons
Dan Lynch https://mastodon.social/@methoddan/113758324721538278

Sat, 28 Dec 2024 20:43:00 +0100

Tl;dr: we’re doomed!

Developers: if you really want to help the community

Sat, 28 Dec 2024 10:09:06 +0100

This was survey feedback given to developers proposing to build a massive data centre on the site of the industrial estate down the road from me, but it applies more broadly to all big developers, especially those with annual profits of half a billion pounds.

I’m concerned about noise from the site causing a nuisance and health problems in an area that is already susceptible to multiple environmental health stressors, and exacerbated by deep-rooted poverty, deprivation, low pay and systemic racism and power imbalances embedded in the local authority planning system.

I’m also concerned about the local power grid. Only a couple of years ago it was reported that Ealing doesn’t have enough capacity to power more new homes that are so badly needed, particularly in Southall which suffers from chronic overcrowding. A data centre requires a lot of power. How will this work?

If you really want to do something for the local community how about you plant thousands of trees to compensate for the fact that Southall has the lowest tree canopy cover in the whole of Ealing?

How about building homes for the street homeless and providing ongoing support they will need to live in them sustainably?

How about building a drug and alcohol rehab unit to treat the ever growing numbers of addicts roaming our streets and parks?

How about using all that information processing power to work out how to provide more frequent, more reliable, free public transport in Southall and to reduce the congestion caused by all the traffic?

How about building a secular community centre, a library, a youth club, a health centre, a school? Southall is so overdeveloped now, and Ealing Labour Council sold off all our community assets to developers.

Mon, 23 Dec 2024 17:53:41 +0100

Quite the confession.

Gabriel said the agency duped Hezbollah into buying the pagers, making advertising films and brochures, and sharing them on the internet.

“When they are buying from us, they have zero clue that they are buying from the Mossad,” he said. “We make like [movie] Truman Show, everything is controlled by us behind the scene.”

Sat, 21 Dec 2024 17:36:20 +0100

At the heart of neoliberalism is the fantasy of escape: escape from taxation and regulation, escape from the European Union and international law, escape from social obligation, escape from democracy. Escape, eventually, to a starlit wonderland beyond politics and beyond people.

Currently reading: The Invisible Doctrine: The Secret History of Neoliberalism (& How It Came to Control Your Life) by George Monbiot 📚

Wed, 18 Dec 2024 09:29:03 +0100

…streets were relatively clean, traffic lights and lamp-posts worked, and officers were present in the busiest areas. Simple things absent in other parts of Syria, and a source of pride here.

Traffic lights and lamp-posts usually work in Southall. Seems like Idlib is cleaner and safer?

All we need now is an authoritarian ethno-nationalist leader….

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 11:10:35 +0100

They are reduced to playing a game of politics which lacks any substance, with their only reward (apart from those that might come when they have left office) being the dopamine hits that they get as a consequence of the appearance of their being in power.

Sounds like someone I know.

Via Richard Murphy.

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 11:08:13 +0100

A shame we only get to choose one.

Sun, 15 Dec 2024 19:28:05 +0100

“…Netanyahu said the move was necessary because a “new front” had opened up on Israel’s border with Syria after the fall of the Assad regime to an Islamist-led rebel alliance.”

How (in)convenient.

Israel plans to expand Golan settlements after fall of Assad bbc.com
Home - BBC News https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz6lgln128xo

Southall Odours

Sat, 14 Dec 2024 12:19:13 +0100

I step out of my house and immediately notice the artificial “cotton fresh” scent of odour suppressants wafting south from the old Gasworks site. How can this be? They finished remediating the contaminated earth in 2019, and people have been living there in the new homes they built since 2021.

Still, it’s better than the smell of petrol, which is what we had to put up with day and night for months on end in 2018. Bad enough to wake us up in the night during the long hot summer.

And it’s better than the smell of tar, which we still get when the wind is blowing from the west. Before the asphalt plant was built, we didn’t get any odours even though there is also a Tarmac plant nearby. The Asphalt plant owners say that is because the Nestle coffee plant closed. The (burnt?) coffee smell masked the tar.

I get around the corner of my block, on my morning walk, and see the small industrial estate that was the bane of our life for months in 2022. The main culprits were the paper recylcling company, which had its own incinerator for burning (believe it or not) plastics and coated wooden pallets.

Their neighbour opposite was a custom kitchen furniture maker, which also had its own incinerator for burning laminated particle fibreboard. The garage at the front regularly burns stuff in an old oil barrel.

All of which contributed to some of the most disgusting odours imaginable blowing into our kitchen, bathroom and hallway whe the wind blew from the north-east.

I walked down the street to the corner where the local council installed a tiny corner “wildflower garden”, which my wife and kids loved because it smelled so good. Two years later, it’s reduced to a dumping ground (no one could have foreseen this).

Further on my walk, past the homes reeking of marijuana, and weaving in and out of the obstacle course of bed bases mattresses and pallets stren across the pavements, I reach the town and smell the food aromas.

I’m reminded of the old Honey Monster factory, which used to regale us with the smell of roasted (burnt?) onions (I know, right?).

And my first visit to Southall (in daylight hours), twenty odd years ago, turning left out of the old station and naively going into the underpass. The stench of piss that hit me! “Welcome to Southall!” indeed.

I finished my walk through the town and back up round and through the park. If I’d gone further up the canal by my sons' school I would have got the smell of the narrowboats' wood-burning stoves, which sometimes fills the school playground and causes kids to have to use their inhalers.

And if I’d walked along the main road home or by the junction with the big industrial estate I would have choked on the heavy air filled with the exhaust fumes from cars and lorries.

Southall stinks so bad that the council set up its own Southall Odours web page, email and hotline where you can report bad smells. Because if you don’t report it, the council can’t do anything.

If you’re lucky, you might see something done after a year or two of complaining, as long as you can withstand the constant gaslighting.

If you’re unlucky, and you’re not already dead or too ill to complain, you’ll be branded a troublemaker and excluded from local democracy.

Or you’ll be told to move by the council’s community safety director.

What's going on in Syria?

Wed, 11 Dec 2024 21:43:50 +0100

If I understand this correctly: it’s illegal in the UK to say or do anything that could be construed as support for the democratically elected government of Gaza and likewise for a party of the democratically elected government of Lebanon because we designate them as proscribed terrorist organisations.

The outgoing US president brokered a one-sided ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel, which allows Israel to continue bombing Lebanon and illegally invading and occupying its sovereign territory.

As soon as this ceasefire was in place, the Israeli prime minister threatened the president of Syria, and the armed militia formerly known as al-Qaeda/ISIS/Daesh/al-Nusra (who we designate as proscribed terrorist organisations) proceeded to violently overthrow the government of Syria (who we did not designate as a terrorist organisation despite all the bad press).

Incidentally, the leader of this armed militia formerly known as al-Qaeda/ISIS/Daesh/al-Nusra was previously held in US detention facilities in Iraq for several years and was coincidentally released just in time to form Al-Nusra at the start of Syrian Civil War in 2011.

The leader of this armed militia formerly known as al-Qaeda/ISIS/Daesh/al-Nusra has now formed the new government in Syria.

They are the good guys and are really very moderate compared to the former government of Syria - the bad guys (which is presumably why we didn’t proscribe them as a terrorist organisation).

While all this is happening, Israel is bombing Syria and illegally invading and occupying its sovereign territory. And Israel continues to obliterate Gaza. All paid for by the good ol' US of A.

Mon, 09 Dec 2024 12:06:52 +0100

Don’t most start-ups fail?

Maybe a pop-up government would work better?

Government wants state to be more 'like a start-up' bbc.com
Home - BBC News https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8xjqvngekjo

Mon, 09 Dec 2024 12:03:23 +0100

The Queen had the IRA over for tea, so I can’t see what the problem is?

UK will review Syrian group's terror ban, cabinet minister says bbc.com
Home - BBC News https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz7qenxy8r2o

Sun, 08 Dec 2024 12:10:31 +0100

My friend Tim has been busy…

Dull Men's Club - the 'mundane' Facebook group that became an unlikely hit bbc.com
Home - BBC News https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c20n76l76e1o

Thu, 05 Dec 2024 12:38:24 +0100

Luxury flats newly built by the canal.

The absence of windows on the sides of the blocks is presumably so that the residents don’t have to see the people in the poor houses next door.

Mon, 02 Dec 2024 19:23:54 +0100

I don’t understand how people think Joe Biden is a good guy. He’s probably done more than anyone to drag the political centre to the right, and paved the way for fascism.

Suggesting that pardoning his drug addict son is somehow good and righteous is obscene.

Blaming smartphones is laughable.

Mon, 02 Dec 2024 08:40:00 +0100

Is this the end for Greggs sausage rolls?

Sun, 01 Dec 2024 16:08:34 +0100

I knew where this is before clicking through.

Sat, 30 Nov 2024 10:54:30 +0100

Wife wants to know what I think about the Assisted Dying Bill.

She’s strongly in favour: “It can’t come soon enough for some people,” she says.

Bye Bye Biden

Thu, 28 Nov 2024 17:16:48 +0100

Some highlights and thoughts from Yesterday’s Man: The Case Against Joe Biden by Branko Marcetic 📚

Against Biden’s best efforts, disaster had been averted. (p. 127)

This seems to sum up his career neatly. Far from the popular public image that he has cultivated and that the media have happily gone along with for the most part.

Foreign policy

“I’m not going to start World War Three for you!”

Not Biden, but British army General Mike Jackson refusing to follow Biden’s friend General Wesley Clark’s orders to confront Russia in Kosovo. (p. 172)

The book was written before Russia invaded Ukraine. It seems that Biden wants to go out with a bang, despite his previous utterances.

”There is no such thing as a winnable nuclear war.” (p. 152)

Biden saying one thing and doing another is characteristic of his entire political career. He’s not unique in that respect, of course, and perhaps he’s actually better at it than most. He did get elected president after all.

Israel

Biden was the ultimate Friend of Israel. He helped provide Israel with huge amounts of US aid money, and Israel lobbyists on his campaign staff returned the favour helping Biden raise huge amounts of money to run his various election campaigns.

Biden spent his entire career giving unqualified support to Israel, and claimed that Americans “couldn’t afford” to criticise Israel in public.

Yugoslavia

Toward the end of Bush’s term, the ex-communist Eastern European country of Yugoslavia began disintegrating in a miasma of nationalism and ethnic and religious sectarianism, forces unleashed by a Western-imposed program of economic “shock therapy” that in essence exported Western neoliberal policies to the once prosperous country, running its living standards into the ground. War soon broke out. (p. 156)

Later, Biden agitated for Clinton’s military intervention in Serbia, which lay the foundations for future “humanitarian” bombing campaigns elsewhere.

If you cared about political survival, it was safer to err on the side of war. (p. 158)

Iraq

Despite [or because of?] his role in starting the war, Biden was still considered one of the party’s wisest heads on foreign policy. (p. 173)

George W. Bush apparently followed Biden’s instructions on selling the war on Iraq to the American people and the United Nations.

Biden proposed an ethno-nationalist “three state solution” for Iraq similar to Israel’s proposals to came up Arab states into weaker sectarian units.

He proposed to Balkanise Iraq into smaller ethnic and religious sectarian states with limited freedom of movement and borders controlled by foreign troops.

A bit like Gaza and the rest of the illegally Occupied Palestinian Territories now.

Flawed as it was, the plan burnished Biden’s credentials as a foreign policy expert. (p. 179)

Iraq duped Biden forcing withdrawal of US troops. In response, ISIS ‘emerged' from an oppressed religious minority.

War on Terror

Biden’s ‘counter-terrorism plus’ policy saw the US bomb seven Muslim countries without declaring war, much like Israel is now doing with more American bombs.

That helped to fuel anti-Americanism and an immigration and prisons crisis.

Instead of providing homes for the poor, he would spend the following decades housing them in jails. (p. 85)

Domestic policy

Race relations

Racist Clinton doubled the American prison population and achieved the world’s highest rate of incarceration. Mostly with black people.

This policy usefully helped to reduce official unemployment figures and paint Clinton’s neoliberalism as an economic miracle.

Another lesson Biden had first wrongly internalised from American apartheid: that people of different backgrounds simply couldn’t live together in harmony. (p. 177)

Instead Biden backed segregation (busing) and individual states' rights over a united federal states of America.

Women’s rights

”I don’t think that a woman has the sole right to say what should happen to her body.” (p. 184)

Biden on the Roe v. Wade decision in 1974

Biden’s neoliberalism

Biden presented as a progressive liberal on the side of the working class. But he spent his career siding with Republicans and moving the Democrats ever further to the right.

At one time even a former Klan recruiter thought Biden had gone too far. Another Klan leader praised Biden’s election platform claiming it was as if it had been written by a Klansman.

Supporting spending cuts

Biden said Jimmy Carter was nothing special, and welcomed Reaganomics as a step in the right direction. Although in typical Biden fashion he also claimed Reagan’s first budget would be an economic disaster before voting for it (along with 29 other Democrats).

Reagan’s cuts cost 270,000 jobs and reduced access to financial support for millions of Americans. Rather than reducing the deficit, it increased it, and made the rich richer, and the poor poorer.

Like Thatcher in Britain, Reagan’s greatest achievement was in transforming his opposition into his mirror image. You still get a choice at the polls, but there’s very little, if any, substantive policy difference between the two.

”Biden isn’t a liberal anymore.”

Ayn Rand acolyte Paul Ryan, who lost to Biden in the 2012 vice-presidential election, but declared a more important victory.

Biden’s support for tax cuts for the rich wasn’t a one-off. This was a repeated pattern of voting indicating where his true loyalties lay. Indeed, later he proposed his own tax cuts that were more severe than Reagan’s, and “right out of the Tea Party playbook”.

Where once the tyranny of “special interests” meant the control of government by big business and the super-rich, it now referred to the ordinary Americans the New Deal had sought to protect from those same powerful entities. (p. 68)

No longer aligned with the working class, Biden now focused on the middle class, solidly Conservative, tax-and-government fearing supporters of the super-rich.

”It’s the middle class, stupid.” (p.147)

Much like the South where Biden always pivoted for support of anti-union, pro-slavery and white supremacist votes. Biden could have tried to bring Southern voters to the Democrats, but instead chose to lead the Democrats to align with the politics of the South.

Biden had successfully facilitated the decades-long wholesale robbery of working- class Americans by law enforcement. (p. 91)

Enter Bill Clinton, who with Biden’s full support, carried on Reagan’s economic policies leading to ever more cuts in government spending and hardship for millions more Americans.

Biden again offered trillions of dollars of cuts to retirement funds, Medicare, Medicaid and food stamps, giving Mitch McConnell everything he asked for.

As president, much of Obama’s job involved cleaning up messes that Biden had helped create. (p. 191)

The major legislative accomplishments that Biden had racked up in prior decades had succeeded because they had been in pursuit of Republican goals. (p. 199)

Biden did what he always did: plead fealty to working class voters in public speeches filled with references to his Scranton roots while privately appealing for the support of big-money interests. (p. 214)

By 2020, Biden had shifted (and shifted the Democrats) so far to the right, he was finally electable and the safest establishment option to defeat Trump as president.

Fri, 22 Nov 2024 10:20:30 +0100

The air outside is thick with the smell of tar and vehicle emissions.

Not doing my cough any good.

Fri, 22 Nov 2024 09:04:41 +0100

Starmer is proving to be every bit as reckless and depraved as Johnson.

People Don't Change

Tue, 19 Nov 2024 09:01:07 +0100

People don’t change, but they can make good decisions.

This is a quote, or the gist of a quote, from an episode of Person of Interest, a TV show I watched avidly for two and a half seasons before rapidly losing interest after the scriptwriters killed off one of the only characters with a fully functioning sense of empathy (who happened to be a black woman) and which therewith descended into a cliched, repetitive, and all-too predictable (yet surprising) slapstick parody of itself.

If I wanted to watch a bunch of psychopaths endlessly escalate a brutal war on humanity I could just look at the news. Americans sure like their guns and shooting people for entertainment. Personally, I prefer a nice cup of tea and a good book, and a bit of peace and quiet.

Anyway, people don’t change, but they can make good decisions. Especially when they have enough guns pointed at their head. That’s the takeaway, or the moral of this story. But they always escape, and then they’re back to making bad decisions all over again, usually involving pointing guns at other people’s heads.

And maybe that’s right. People don’t change. Not until there’s a compelling reason to. We carry on mindlessly making the same old bad decisions over and over again like in Einstein’s theory of insanity, repeating the same mistakes and expecting a different outcome.

It’s a horrible take. But it’s true to some extent. Getting better (it can’t get much worse) can be a bit of a song (and a dance). Recovery is a long and winding road. They tried to make me go to rehab, but I said “No, no, no!” There’s a lot of resistance to change, and even to making good decisions.

But is much of this also a result of the world we live in, and who we are? We live in a world consumed by neoliberal orthodoxy. We are in thrall to the ideas of freedom of the market, the decimation of government and public services, and the freedom of individuals (and individual responsibility, even while what’s left of the state bails out the greed and mistakes of unaccountable banks and corporations).

There’s no such thing as society, Thatcher told us. There is no alternative.

Trump was right, Americans will never vote for a black woman. Hell, they wouldn’t even vote for a warmongering white woman. The white supremacist patriarchy is strong. Yes, they voted for a black man, but he turned out to be the most murderous president in history.

Is there an alternative? There’s always an alternative. It’s just that usually the alternative is more of the same, or worse. Take it or leave it. And even when there is a different option, one which might slightly rein in the excesses of this neoliberal onslaught, it’s demonised as a Stalinist coup that will murder Jews. “Nothing. Has. Changed.” implored Theresa May, quite rightly, as she continued as Prime Minister despite losing her massive parliamentary majority and failing to obtain a mandate to deliver Brexit, or anything other than her own resignation. Calling that election was the most audacious thing she ever did, aside from running through a field of wheat as a child.

Despite the people obviously voting for change, and genuine hope, it was clear that what we really needed instead was a lying, racist killer clown to run the country into the ground.

At least he had a plan. An oven-ready plan to deliver Brexit on a plate just in time for the New Year. It would be served cold, and thoroughly unappetising to everyone, toxic even. But it was the will of the people. It’s what we wanted. We voted for it! We wanted to sever our economic ties to our nearest and biggest trading partner and experience the freedom of going it alone in the big wide world, unleashed!

But that wasn’t enough! The killer clown told too many lies, and hosted too many parties in covid lockdown. He had to go. A tiny minority of elderly rich right wingers then voted for a new leader for us. One who would be more honest, less racist, less murderous, and not as stupid. Liz “Pork Markets” Truss.

Oh, fuck. She might not have been a liar, or a racist, or a murderer, but boy was she stupid. She killed the Queen, trashed the UK economy, and blew up Russia’s Nordstream pipeline, all in less than a month. Talk about a whirlwind. And some bad decisions. She now has a very nice pension. You reap what you sow.

People don’t change, but they can make good decisions. Neoliberalism doesn’t change, and the more that the people are subjected to its bad decisions, its lust for war, for death, for oil, for money, for making the rich richer and the poor poorer, the harder it gets for people to change, and the fewer good decisions are made.

WFH Saved My Life

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 11:24:42 +0100

I’ve worked from home since the end of February 2020. I transferred all my work and systems online to do so, and while I’m still part-time, in practice I’m now available 24/7 for every conceivable administrative emergency (“Hi David. Please order me some large coloured post-it notes and have them delivered to my home tomorrow” or “Hi David. Please bring £200 in cash to my house this morning so I can pay for my lunch meeting today.").

I won’t pretend I’ve always been highly productive, in the office or at home. But I always get everything done that needs to be done, and I’m super-flexible and adaptable. I’ve been asked to do - and done - huge, complex projects at short notice and with short deadlines that are outside of my remit and frankly beyond my skill set, but I’ve done them, learned how to do it on the spot or got help.

I do go into the office for occasional in-person meetings and social gatherings (“xmas lunch” looms) when necessary, and indeed spent a solid three hours working last Thursday with a masked colleague (she had a fever) in a freezing cold office. I’d just recovered from a bad reaction to the covid vaccine. Next day was a write-off. I was exhausted and worried about whether the work we did was really good enough. The day after and since I’ve had a terrible cough and cold, shortness of breath, wheezing. (Since my COPD diagnosis, every rasping breath I take is assessed and rediagnosed by my non-medic wife as requiring medical attention.)

My workplace is bad for my health. Pre-covid I had multiple chest infections that kept me away from work and reduced my productivity to zero for weeks at a time. Since I worked from home, and catching covid aside, I’ve had zero time where I’ve been unable to go to the office for essential work that can only be done there. Even when I’ve had coughs and colds, I’ve felt well enough to do the work that needed to be done. Somehow (until now with this new cough) I don’t seem to get so ill or feel so bad when I’m at home.

Working from home has given me the time and space to transform how I work for the better. I’m better organised, more thoughtful, less rushed and distracted. I can honestly say that I’m now the most productive I’ve ever been thanks to a more comfortable, relaxed and focussed personal work space.

And, yes, being part-time, and flexible, I can take a nap if I need one.

Why should people work at home? https://youtu.be/bQN_Fb03RfE?si=CZoQagrotTA_urw8 The ‘return to work’ now being enforced by many organisations makes no sense for many people, or the planet. It really is time that we have some enlightened managers who did what is best for people and the world, and not what they see as being best for them.
Richard Murphy https://mas.to/@RichardJMurphy/113468713160356801

Mon, 11 Nov 2024 22:32:34 +0100

The politics of envy?

Thu, 07 Nov 2024 19:15:42 +0100

A genuine laugh out loud moment from Jonathan Pie, who is definitely not having a liberal meltdown.

Not Fake News

Wed, 06 Nov 2024 13:53:31 +0100

Convicted felon, fascist and fake news king, the 45ᵗʰ President of the United States paid the porn star ‘stormy Daniels’ hundreds of thousands of dollars not to tell anyone that she had sex with him.

Last night, she appeared on a Channel 4 US election special with disgraced former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who was there to plug his memoir “Unleashed.”

Daniels wanted to know if Johnson had any children, and wondered if Johnson would leave his daughter alone with Trump. (Trump has a whole series of very serious sexual misconduct allegations against him.)

Johnson explained that he has met Trump and he’s perfectly polite and well-mannered, so of course he would have no problem with him.

Johnson himself, of course, is famous among other things for being a serial liar and not knowing how many children he has.

Needless to say, Trump won the election, and Johnson is trying to make a comeback.

Wed, 06 Nov 2024 12:52:17 +0100

Wasn’t Harris ahead in the polls until the UK government started interfering in the election?

Liz Kendall - Mad, Bad and Dangerous

Wed, 06 Nov 2024 10:52:18 +0100

Trials of employment advisers giving CV and interview advice in hospitals produced “dramatic results”, Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall told the BBC.

No. No they didn’t.

The Secretary of State for the Department of Work and Pensions was referring to her experience of visiting a severe mental illness Individual Placement and Support (IPS) programme.

In the community.

Mental health patients are in hospital usually because they are incapable of living life in general let alone getting a job. Plus, mental health units are usually secure wards, so they can’t get out.

IPS works because people are in recovery, receiving treatment that makes them feel better and well enough to start thinking about work.

Wed, 06 Nov 2024 10:39:11 +0100

Factional right-wing neoliberal think tank “Labour Together":

The Budget is a Winner with Tories

Wed, 06 Nov 2024 10:01:26 +0100

Now we can all agree that Biden was a total failure of a president.

The Southall Gasworks Story

Tue, 29 Oct 2024 23:21:53 +0100

The story of how the remediation of Southall Gasworks highlights the environmental injustices faced by communities of colour.

The disregard for the health and concerns of these residents raises questions about the inequitable distribution of environmental burdens and the role of local government in protecting vulnerable populations.

It also highlights the potential conflicts between development, profit, and public health, and the need for greater transparency and accountability from authorities and developers.

(This is a Google NotebookLM creation, based on selected sources from my blog posts on Southall Gasworks.)

Fri, 04 Oct 2024 10:20:51 +0100

Every word speaks the brutal truth.

The Year After Al-Aqsa Flood | Black Agenda Report

Fri, 04 Oct 2024 07:38:55 +0100

Dear President Biden…

Impossible demands

Sat, 14 Sep 2024 21:45:22 +0100

Starmer is cynically setting up the NHS to fail in order to present private healthcare as the fix.

Starmer: a man way of his depth when dealing with the NHS https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2024/09/13/starmer-a-man-way-of-of-his-depth-when-dealing-with-the-nhs/ Starmer's speech on the NHS yesterday offered view of a man unprepared for office who sends out incompetent messages to those who now work in the organisation he leads and who has no comprehension of the economic environment in which he must manage healthcare.
It's not surprising that now the UK public is seeing Starmer in action that his popularity is falling.
Richard Murphy https://mas.to/@RichardJMurphy/113129230455417659

Death cult

Sat, 14 Sep 2024 21:40:40 +0100

OBR: We have to kill old people and starve the children of the poor in order to keep funding our expensive wars and ensure the rich get richer.

Labour: Let’s get to it!

The Office for Budget Responsibility’s forecast for the national debt is a worthless exercise by economically illiterate fantasists https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2024/09/13/the-office-for-budget-responsibilitys-forecast-for-the-national-debt-is-a-worthless-exercise-by-economically-illiterate-fantasists/ The Office for Budget Responsibility has forecast that UK debt will rise to 300% of GDP in 50 years because they think it impossible that taxes can rise above current levels, even though state spending will reach 60% of GDP in their opinion. All they prove is their own lack of imagination and competence by doing so.
Richard Murphy https://mas.to/@RichardJMurphy/113128970254426009

Tue, 09 Jul 2024 08:10:51 +0100

Labour’s self-imposed, arbitrary and “binding” “fiscal rules” are the same as the Tories' Austerity policies.

Political choices.

The same choices.

So much for change.

Original link to the article from 11 years ago:

Thu, 04 Jul 2024 14:12:45 +0100

My polling station was empty when I went to vote around 1:30 pm.

My nearly ten year old looked at the TWELVE names on the ballot.

“Don’t vote Labour, Dad”.

He looked some more.

“There’s Joe!” he said.

“VOTE FOR JOE!”

Election Fever

Thu, 04 Jul 2024 07:55:00 +0100

My inbox is full of people asking for my opinion and personal experience of this UK general election campaign and who to vote for.

(Un)fortunately, as I sat down to type the words from my fingertips, my four year old decided he needed to express his thoughts instead.

It’s obviously not to scale (he’s only four!), but you can clearly see the Labour supermajority in red, and the Tory wipeout in blue. That they are a ‘uniparty’/two cheeks of the same backside is encapsulated in the red triangle atop the blue square in the centre.

The Green surge in vote share (in green, on the left) isn’t reflected in seats won, of course. In pink, you can see the rise of the independents, black is the Workers Party, and to the far right (in grey) is Reform.

The Lib Dems are an irrelevance (except in the South West) in yellow (this is where we had to stop, as he got very upset at the lack of orange).

Wed, 03 Jul 2024 10:18:02 +0100

New e-scooter and cycle hire infrastructure in Southall Green.

[Edit]

Not the ideal location.

The Cuckoo's Nest

Sun, 19 May 2024 12:25:41 +0100

Ealing Genocide Supporters Club (aka Ealing Labour Party) held their Southall Branch meeting yesterday at the Dominion Centre in Southall. Under the guise of a “Your Town, Your Voice” community get together, our local elected repellents gathered on masse in all their finery. I couldn’t help myself as they posed for a group photo all gurning inanely as the photographer encouraged them to “say cheese!”. “Say genocide!” I offered. “Genocide supporters!”

Cllr Dr Murtaza of their number aggressively reprimanded me. “What evidence do you have that we support genocide?” he demanded to know. Well, I told him, my main piece of evidence would be that you have done nothing to oppose it.

Ooh! There’s Cllr Martin! Our locally elected anti-Traveller racist! “What evidence do you have to support that?” Well, here it is.

Oh, and while you’re at it, Cllr Dr Murtaza. Next time you are chauffeuring our glorious leader around in your Porsche, try not to park in a cycle lane, please.

Then there was illegal samosa factory proprietor Cllr “I own half of Southall” Anand.

I hadn’t realised until yesterday quite how visceral my revulsion for these people is. The grand cuckoo in the nest arrived about half way through the event. I would have confronted him myself, and previously I have done. Maybe I was just worn down from a week with the ‘flu, but I felt like I really had to keep my distance for my own sanity. In any case, a few council officers made beelines for me and made sure I was busy answering their questions.

Interestingly, one officer suggested to me that resident-led ward forums would be the likely outcome of this event. Fantastic news, if that’s the case. Another officer I spoke to later, knew nothing about this idea, though, but took copious notes. A neighbour and friend told me that she spoke to the cuckoo himself who told her that this meeting was in fact the replacement for he old (councillor-led) ward forums. That’s that then.

The event itself was a repeat of several resident[pdf] surveys and failed plans over the past twenty years or so (for which I’ve seen records, or taken part in). The problems are always the same. The responses from the council are always the same. Nothing.

Thu, 16 May 2024 10:30:54 +0100

“…when you look at it on a personal level, if Nelson was your friend or your neighbour, you would absolutely agree that he should be given the immediate right to settle.”

You. Absolute. Bastards.
If anyone knows of a crowdfunder to support this man’s legal challenge, I would like to contribute to it.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-merseyside-69016539
- drandrewv2@freeradical.zone, https://freeradical.zone/@drandrewv2/112449885402615520

Sat, 11 May 2024 15:36:33 +0100

Natalie Elphicke said Labour can’t be trusted and doesn’t listen. She said the victim of her husband’s sexual assault was a liar even after he was convicted.

Does she really share Labour values?

Starmer: “I’m delighted to welcome Natalie Elphicke to my changed Labour Party!”

Thu, 09 May 2024 09:25:15 +0100

“Zionism is rooted in trauma and fear. It’s about survival and love for the Jewish people. But like any other ethnic nationalism, Zionism establishes a hierarchy: It’s about prioritizing our safety and well-being, even at the expense of others. It relies on an alternate historical narrative that justifies the occupation and rationalizes the status quo. And it cannot produce a just peace on its own.”

Via Zionism cannot produce a just peace. Only external pressure can end the Israeli apartheid.

Wed, 08 May 2024 13:23:11 +0100

M.S. Panesar hit wicket b Panesar 0

Tbf, he lasted longer than I thought he would.

What Marxism teaches us

Sun, 05 May 2024 15:52:23 +0100

What Marxism teaches us is simply to approach questions of society from a material basis: how does human life persist? Through production of the goods and services needed to live.

How are these things produced under capitalist society? Through exploitation of the labor of the working class, that is, by requiring one class of people to sell their labor as a commodity to another class to produce values.

What is the result of this system? That workers are “alienated” from their labor, meaning from much of their waking life, constantly required to produce more and more with an ever-precarious access to the means of subsistence.

Via Jacobin.

Stop the Planes

Sun, 05 May 2024 14:58:15 +0100

My wife was born in Uganda. She’s Black, like our kids. She came to the UK when she was five.

She’s just told me she feels like she should put herself on a plane to Rwanda.

Then she said she realised she came here legally, she has indefinite leave to remain, and she’s a British citizen.

I asked her what was it that made her feel like she should deport herself.

Unsurprisingly, she said it’s because of all the anti-immigration rhetoric in the news. As she said,

It’s obvious no one wants my Black face here.

Thu, 02 May 2024 13:52:19 +0100

A local shop owner asked why big kid wasn’t at school. When I told him it was closed because it was being used as a polling station we got talking about the elections.

He asked me who I voted for, and then he told me he thinks “it’s going to be another hung parliament”.

Thu, 02 May 2024 13:34:17 +0100

My local polling station was deserted when I went to vote around 11am.

Fri, 12 Apr 2024 09:54:38 +0100

Zack, 35, says: “I got pretty disillusioned after I found myself consistently matching with anti-Zionists, even when I set it to ‘Jewish only’.”

Zack put an Israeli flag emoji on his profile to rectify the situation. “It’s annoying because the more creative personalities I normally go for tend to be more anti-Israel.” Now he’s having fewer awkward conversations about the conflict, but the people he’s matching with are “less interesting”.

Source: Hinge and Tinder are swamped with anti-Zionism, say Jewish singles - The Jewish Chronicle

Fri, 12 Apr 2024 09:45:50 +0100

…blanket denial of Israeli war crimes has served to quiet the consciences of Israel’s most ardent supporters, ensuring their unreserved backing for the war. After all, if it can be argued that the rest of the world is lying, or, failing that, the devastation and casualties in Gaza can all be blamed on Hamas, then what is there to feel guilty about?

Source: Six months of liberal Zionist doublethink

Mon, 08 Apr 2024 10:04:06 +0100

The agenda now is all-Israeli: There is no one else but us. Only our disasters, our suffering, our sacrifices – and everything else can burn for all we care.

We have become as monsters. Not only in our actions, but above all in our apathy.

Gideon Levy via Hippy Steve

Where's Daddy?

Thu, 04 Apr 2024 09:49:47 +0100

We have AI that can decide who is a terrorist and then track their every movement so we can wait until they're home to drop a bomb on their whole family.
But the 3 successive precision air strikes on #WCK aid workers coordinating with and following route instructions from the IDF was just a 'tragic mistake' because it was night time.

Hippy Steve

Sat, 16 Mar 2024 09:37:08 +0100

Hamas wants a permanent end to the war and full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

Mr Netanyahu’s office said the proposals were “unrealistic”.

Thu, 07 Mar 2024 22:35:19 +0100

Currently reading: Yesterday’s Man by Branko Marcetic 📚

He would indeed spend his Senate career showering Israel with unquestioning support, even when its behavior elicited bipartisan outrage. He helped to secure an unparalleled amount of US aid for Israel early on and to scuttle a 1998 peace proposal with Palestine, and he told an assembly of lobbyists that Americans “cannot afford to publicly criticize Israel.”

Sat, 17 Feb 2024 10:09:31 +0100

Back cover image of the dec 1975 issue of “issues in radical therapy” (via danielle carr on Twitter.)

Thu, 18 Jan 2024 13:22:04 +0100

File under ~~Hamas~~Israel don’t care about their own people?

Thriving?

Wed, 13 Dec 2023 14:43:17 +0100

My son’s school’s Thrive teacher is leaving. She helped transform my lad’s experience of school from being one where he had weekly if not daily challenges with regulating his emotions and his behaviour, to one where he enjoys school every day. She’s going to be very greatly missed.

I managed to tell her this today and thank her for her work. It was so sad to hear her story.

She has committed ten years of her life to helping our youngsters get the best start in life, and done lots of extra work getting accredited to do so. But, at the end of the day, she can no longer afford to continue, and has taken a job elsewhere in sales and marketing.

What a stupid, shit country we live in.

ToryBoy

Mon, 20 Nov 2023 12:35:00 +0100

ToryBoy The Movie is the account of filmmaker John Walsh’s disillusionment with what he saw as the corruption, lies, hypocrisy and general incompetence of Blair’s Labour government, and his conversion to the Conservative (Tory) Party general election candidate for Middlesbrough in 2010.

Under his own steam and £15,000 of his own money, John found his opponent, Sir Stuart Bell, the serial incumbent Labour MP, invisible and unknown to his local constituents who nevertheless voted him back in every four or five years (albeit with an ever diminishing majority). Bell was too busy, it seemed, living in Paris, and employing his family not to answer phone calls at his parliamentary office. Worse, his son stole £8,000 worth of stuff from Bell’s parliamentary colleagues, eventually serving sixty days in prison for the privilege.

Despite this record of failure, Bell was duly elected again, with Walsh coming in third behind the newly Nick Clegg-revitalised Lib Dems.

Last year, I had my own attempt to counter what I (and many others) saw as corruption, lies, hypocrisy and general incompetence of our local elected councillors. Standing as independent candidates, me and my two friends came fourth in the safest Labour ward in Ealing. It was good fun campaigning, and I enjoyed the physical activity of walking almost every street in my ward dropping leaflets, and the social activity of actually talking to people in person. And we helped to reduce Labour’s vote share and majority (not that it makes any difference to the result).

Still, people voted in their thousands for two councillors who have been in post for twenty four years each, while the problems everyone complains about are the same but worse.

Ultimately, it was another failure to add to my CV.

Writing to my MP: ICJP - Complicity in War Crimes

Sat, 18 Nov 2023 10:37:15 +0100

Adapted from this template letter.

Dear Mr Sharma,

My esteemed representative: I write to you today with a heavy heart, weighed down by the profound disappointment I feel in your recent actions. Your unwavering support for Israel, despite its blatant disregard for international law and its commission of war crimes, has cast a shadow over your impartiality and your ability to hold office effectively.

The recent decision by the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) to serve written notice to Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer of their intention to prosecute UK governmental officials for their role in aiding and abetting Israeli war crimes has sent shockwaves through our nation. Your name, unfortunately, stands out locally among those who have failed to condemn these atrocities, a silence that could have serious criminal ramifications.

I urge you to reconsider your position on this matter. The evidence of Israel’s war crimes is overwhelming, documented by the United Nations, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the International Service for Human Rights. These are not mere accusations; they are indictments of a government that has flagrantly violated international law and caused immense suffering to the Palestinian people.

Your constituents, including myself, have repeatedly implored you to vote for a ceasefire. You claimed to support a ceasefire, but when you had the opportunity to cast your vote to represent your constituents, you failed to do so. Worse, you claimed you did. But “humanitarian pauses” are not enough; they merely provide Israel with a respite to regroup and continue its assault on innocent civilians. The lack of leadership and condemnation from our elected officials is a stain on our country’s reputation.

If you are unwilling to do the right thing and support a ceasefire, then I implore you to step down from your position. You have lost the trust of your constituents, and your continued presence in office is an insult to the values of peace, justice and humanity that we hold dear.

Sincerely,

Your concerned constituent,

David Marsden

Curriculum Vitae (Repetitum)

Fri, 17 Nov 2023 11:32:55 +0100

Following on from my success delivering the news to my local community, I took a break from the world of (very part-time) work to focus on… playing in my first bands. And learning to play the guitar. Much of which came at the expense of any interest in or motivation to study, or revise for ‘O’ Levels, and later ‘A’ Levels.

Living in a small rural market town, some of my friends, and my own younger brother, in fact, had Saturday jobs bush beating - literally (as far as I know) beating bushes to encourage game birds to fly to their sporting deaths. Let’s never forget that killing is a sport for our aristocracy and their hangers-on. Famously, at the time, the host of these shootings was “peppered in the buttocks” by our drunken home secretary Willie Whitelaw. You couldn’t get away with a name like that now.

My brother graduated from bush beating for toffs to hunt sabotage.

I did well enough in my ‘O’ Levels (one A, eight Bs, and a C), that my maths teacher told me I would “never amount to anything”. He wasn’t wrong.

My dad tried to motivate me after my mock ‘A’ Level results by leaving me a drunken handwritten note and caricature drawing of me with an arrow pointing to it (I mean, in those days what else could he have done?) saying: “THICK CUNT”.

Then he got me what felt like a punishing summer job at the duck processing plant where he was a line supervisor. Being the boss’s son was no fun when they put me on the killing floor. I became a vegetarian for nine years after that (although since returned to meat eating - that’s another story).

I messed up my ‘A’ Levels (three Es, and failed General Studies writing about the punk band Stiff Little Fingers). I was profoundly depressed, but had no one to talk to about it. Mainly because I had been brought up not to talk about or express any “bad” or “difficult” feelings. Random people used to come up to me and say “Cheer up, it may never happen”, but it in my internal world, it already had.

Music, and playing guitar in a band, was my only outlet, but we were young and totally delusional. We were a three-piece, but believed we were the next Fab Four. We played a successful debut gig in Cleethorpes at The Sub, but instead of building on that, we immediately packed our bags and gear into a van, and drove to London to live in a series of squats in Stepney, Poplar and Limehouse.

An older ex-school friend was part of an anarchist community based out of a bookshop, and helped us find, gain entry to, and occasionally get the water, gas and/or electricity working. In those good old days, you could easily “sign on” the dole and get enough to actually live on.

I read and heard a lot about the politics of anarchism, which I found very attractive to my idealism. That said, I couldn’t ever see how it would work in practice, in the real world. It would need a revolution, of course, but even then, it would need a revolution in people’s minds and thinking first.

Six months living in squats, a couple of lousy gigs and a demo tape later, we packed our bags and returned home.

Mon, 13 Nov 2023 13:05:16 +0100

Last night, I watched ToryBoy The Movie.

This morning, I watched unelected former Tory Prime Minister and Jewish National Fund patron David Cameron become the UK’s new Foreign Secretary.

Sat, 11 Nov 2023 10:53:30 +0100

Where we’re at.

“Humans are complex and flawed.”

“Nazis were only human.”

“Hamas are animals and must be slaughtered.”

“Palestinians don’t count.”

Wed, 01 Nov 2023 16:26:34 +0100

After more than three weeks of Israel’s “targeted” bombing of Hamas in Gaza, Starmer claims that a ceasefire now “would leave Hamas with the infrastructure and the capabilities to carry out the sort of attack we saw on October 7.”

Propaganda

Tue, 24 Oct 2023 15:10:41 +0100

Last night, I was away in the middle of nowhere with no wifi and very poor data connection, so put on the TV to watch the BBC/ITV news at ten.

Haven’t watched it for fifteen years or more.

It was pure propaganda for Israel.

Jeremy Bowen even said as much: “This is what they want you to see” (as opposed the genocide in Gaza).

Pay Rise

Fri, 13 Oct 2023 09:24:00 +0100

I haven’t had a pay rise since April 2017.

Taking into account the cost of living increases year on year, and especially in the last year or two, I’ve effectively taken a pay cut every year.

To be fair, I was thankful to have a job at all during and after covid.

Thanks to Kate Morley’s historical UK inflation rates and price conversion calculator, I now know how much I should be earning if my pay had kept up with inflation.

Free Palestine

Wed, 11 Oct 2023 14:05:41 +0100

There seems to be a co-ordinated drive to obliterate Palestine, and Palestinians, from the map.

I find it very upsetting that my government, and many other “Western” governments are wholeheartedly supporting Israel’s genocidal “self-defence” narrative.

Nothing justifies carpet-bombing innocent people - mostly women and children.

Nothing justifies cutting off their supplies of electricity, water, food, fuel.

The sadistic Netanyahu told Palestinians in Gaza to leave, then bombed the crossing into Egypt while they tried to do so.

These are war crimes.

Now, our fascist government is attempting to outlaw any expression of support for the people of Gaza and Palestine.

Fully supported and enabled by our fascist “opposition” party.

The Labour Mayor of London helped to spread what turned out to be fake news about an alleged anti-Semitic attack on a Jewish-owned shop. Known liar Luciana Berger, MP, did the same. As did countless other “sensible, adult centrists”.

It’s not anti-Semitic to support the people of Palestine in their long struggle for freedom from Israel’s oppression.

Class

Fri, 06 Oct 2023 13:37:00 +0100

Thinking about Maths at school, got me thinking about the origin and meaning of class.

It’s a classic word, and means so many different things depending on the context in which it’s used.

Its Roman origin relates to the dividing up of society, or groups of people for war or military objectives.

My Latin teacher at school was obsessed with lining up the desks and chairs at the end of each lesson.

“Caecilius pater est” is the only Latin I can remember.

We rebelled, and persuaded our headteacher to teach us Classics in Translation instead. That was fun. Reading, and learning all about ancient Greek philosophy and mythology.

Responses to my open letter to Peter Mason

Wed, 09 Aug 2023 18:26:33 +0100

I got a reply to my open letter to Peter Mason[pdf], Leader of Ealing Council, and one of my local ward councillors.

Slightly oddly, he addressed it not just to me, but also to CASH (Clean Air for Southall and Hayes, and my neighbour Angela Fonso (who heads up the campaign group. You can see a record of all Mason’s Letters to CASH, if you’re interested in the history.

I’d also submitted two Freedom of Information requests(FOIs) to try to get answers, as I didn’t expect a reply (as he has never replied directly to any of my previous questions).

The FOI response on the developer Berkeley Group’s sponsorship of council events stated:

The Mayor of Ealing had sought sponsors for his Pride reception. Berkeley responded to this request and offered a £500 contribution to the event. However, while the offer was publicly acknowledged, the money was never accepted or received because the Council is committed to not accept sponsorship from Berkeley for corporate events.

The FOI response on the council’s relationship with developers was, to my mind, wholly unsatisfactory and generated a third FOI:

In other words, plain English perhaps, it took two years to put in place any formal procedure to uphold the Leader’s stated aims, and there is literally nothing to see to evidence that councillors are following the procedure, or will do. And the fact that there is nothing to see to evidence your claims is, you claim, an indication of the council’s commitment to transparency?

Anyway, here’s my reply to his reply (via his Head of Cabinet Office).

Thanks for passing on Cllr Mason’s response. Please pass this on to him.

I appreciate Cllr Mason’s honesty in acknowledging that the Mayor accepted Berkeley Group’s offer of sponsorship, contrary to council policy.

I also appreciate that the Mayor, councillors and officers have been reminded of the policy going forward.

However, the Mayor’s original tweet still stands, published, thanking Berkeley Group for sponsoring the event.

I would like to know why this tweet has not been retracted or clarified, because it continues to give what I am now asked to believe by Cllr Mason is a wholly misleading statement of Ealing Council policy, as well as free good marketing publicity for what is a proscribed organisation. That’s even worse than accepting sponsorship. (I hope that Berkeley Group were asked to donate their sponsorship directly to one of the Mayor’s charities instead.)

I would like Cllr Mason, the council leader, to ensure that the Mayor removes and publicly clarifies and apologises for his tweet, and mistakenly accepting Berkeley’s offer. I would like him to explain why it was a mistake and why it’s necessary to apologise.

In Southall, we’ve suffered, as Cllr Mason recently acknowledged in one of his self-promotion videos, six years of “many, many terrible smells and certainly some bad chemicals released into the environment”, which have undoubtedly caused long-term mental and physical health problems for residents young and old.

I hope I don’t need to remind anyone that Southall is home to by far the largest South Asian and Black community in Ealing, and the lowest average incomes, who are among the most vulnerable to the adverse health impacts of these “bad chemicals”. In addition, Southall residents live with some of the worst air pollution in Ealing from traffic congestion, FM Conway asphalt plant, and non-permitted incinerators. Some environmental justice campaigners describe this as a “sacrifice zone”.

So, it’s very hurtful, insulting and offensive to people in Southall, who have suffered and sacrificed so much, to see the new Mayor break the council leader’s pledge, and offer no public retraction, acknowledgement, clarification or apology. It’s as if his words have no consequences. It’s as if South Asian and Black lives don’t matter, or South Asian and Blacks don’t count.

I would also question how the offer of sponsorship came about. We all know that the person responsible for “Community Liaison” for Berkeley Group is Jags Sanghera, who was a Labour Party councillor candidate in last year’s local elections. Why is Jags, who came close to being elected as a councillor, offering sponsorship to the Mayor? It does make me wonder if councillors (and prospective councillors) have ever been told of the council policy, and when? Not to mention the obvious conflict of interest.

Will Cllr Mason establish a “zero tolerance” policy for accepting sponsorship, gifts and hospitality going forward (and, perhaps, apply it retrospectively)?

With regard to Cllr Jassal’s participation in Berkeley Group’s “Community Engagement” steering group, I’d have more confidence in Cllr Mason’s assertion that this is to hold them to account if the group wasn’t set up and controlled by Berkeley Group and Jags Sanghera. Were CASH invited to be members? Was I? No. Why not? Because as far as I can see, we are among the only people who do consistently try to hold Berkeley Group to account, and their relationship with the council.

As Cllr Mason addressed his reply to me to Angela and CASH as well, I’ve copied them in to this.

Yours…

Open letter to Peter Mason davidmarsden.info
David Marsden https://davidmarsden.info/2023/07/07/open-letter-to.html

Open letter to Peter Mason

Fri, 07 Jul 2023 14:09:29 +0100

Publishing this as it’s in the public interest and I’ve had no reply to my original email sent on 1st July (Mason has, as far as I know, several personal assistants who read and respond to his emails, even if it’s just a holding acknowledgement response - I’ve had one before, as well as a next day reply, and a ‘no reply at all’).

I’ve also now submitted two Freedom of Information requests to get answers to my questions.

Dear Peter,

In your open letter to Angela Fonso and CASH dated 12 July 2021, you pledged that:

“[t]he Council will not take any further sponsorship from Berkeley Group.”

I was shocked, therefore, to see the new Mayor of Ealing tweet to thank Berkeley Group for their sponsorship of an event he organised and hosted.

In your letter mentioned above, you also stated:

“I am determined to ensure that the Council’s future dealings with developers are transparent, arms-length and do not give rise to concerns that it is privileging the relationship with developers above that with residents.”

I was dismayed, therefore, to discover (from Berkeley marketing material, hand delivered, photo attached) that a Southall councillor (Cllr Jassal) and a council officer (Evelyn Gloyn, Ealing’s Community Engagement Manager) are members of Berkeley Group’s new “community engagement” steering group. This clear conflict of interest with the health and wellbeing of residents who Cllr Jassal is elected to represent does not appear on Cllr Jassal’s declaration of interests on the council website. Cllr Jassal and Evelyn Gloyn are literally standing shoulder to shoulder with Berkeley Group, not at “arms-length”, as you pledged two years ago.

I note also that various councillors have continued to attend Berkeley Group’s marketing events (sold as “community events”).

I know you have a very strong commitment to leading an open and transparent administration, and so, therefore, I ask you to tell me:

the monetary value of “sponsorship” Ealing Council (councillors, officers, Mayor) has accepted from Berkeley Group since your letter of 12 July 2021, and for which events?
the Ealing Council policy for councillors, officers, Mayor, for accepting sponsorship, hospitality and gifts from developers, and to ensure that the Council will not take any further sponsorship from Berkeley Group?
the action you will take to prevent councillors, officers, Mayor accepting sponsorship, hospitality and gifts from developers in future, and publicly returning sponsorship already received from Berkeley Group.
the Ealing Council policy for councillors, officers, Mayor, to ensure future dealings with developers are transparent, arms-length and do not give rise to concerns that it is privileging the relationship with developers above that with residents?
the action you will take to prevent councillors, officers, Mayor privileging the relationship with developers above that with residents, and publicly disengaging from Berkeley Group’s profit-driven marketing schemes dressed up as “community engagement”?

Yours sincerely,

David Marsden

Thu, 04 May 2023 09:52:58 +0100

Based on [residents'] feedback, Ealing Council has drawn up a list of ideas to reduce congestion and to make walking, cycling and using public transport easier in Southall.

There are links to the survey results and to a new survey.

Thu, 04 May 2023 07:57:45 +0100

Adam Curtis (1984), The Great British Housing Disaster, on how local councils dealt with unsafe new housing developments.

“Privately, they know that their tenants are at risk, but publicly they have to try to defend the decision to leave them…”

Thu, 04 May 2023 07:48:28 +0100

Local council elections today in many areas.

Don’t forget you now need to take some form of id with you (passport, driving licence, or something else from this list).

Risks to health from remediating Southall Gasworks

Mon, 01 May 2023 12:00:38 +0100

AI is more ethical than Ealing Labour Party. No money was exchanged.

What are the risks to health from remediating Southall Gasworks on site in the open air? The land is highly contaminated with benzene, naphthalene and a while host of other VOCs, PAHs, heavy metals, “blue billy” and asbestos, and surrounded by residential streets. The local community is mostly of south Asian and African heritage, and it is known that people with this heritage can be genetically vulnerable to naphthalene poisoning. What response from the developer and regulatory authorities should there be if levels of benzene and naphthalene are consistently above the legal safety guidelines and local residents complain of eye, nose and throat irritation, new or worsening of respiratory conditions and infections, or other health problems as a result of odour and air pollution?

The health risks from remediating Southall Gasworks on site in the open air are significant. The site is highly contaminated with a variety of hazardous chemicals, including benzene, naphthalene, VOCs, PAHs, heavy metals, “blue billy” and asbestos. These chemicals can cause a variety of health problems, including cancer, respiratory problems, neurological problems, and birth defects. The local community is mostly of south Asian and African heritage, and it is known that people with this heritage can be genetically vulnerable to naphthalene poisoning. This means that they are more likely to experience health problems from exposure to naphthalene.

If levels of benzene and naphthalene are consistently above the legal safety guidelines, and local residents complain of eye, nose and throat irritation, new or worsening of respiratory conditions and infections, or other health problems as a result of odour and air pollution, the developer and regulatory authorities should take immediate action to protect the health of the community. This may include:

Stopping the remediation work until the levels of contamination can be brought down to safe levels.
Providing air filters and other protective equipment to residents who live near the site.
Evacuation of residents who are most at risk.
Conducting a health study of the community to assess the impact of the contamination.

The developer and regulatory authorities have a responsibility to protect the health of the community. If they fail to take action, they could be held liable for any health problems that result from the contamination.

Here are some additional information about the health risks of the chemicals found at Southall Gasworks:

Benzene: Benzene is a colorless, flammable liquid that is used in a variety of products, including gasoline, paints, and solvents. It is a known carcinogen, and it can also cause leukemia, anemia, and other health problems.
Naphthalene: Naphthalene is a white, crystalline solid that is used in mothballs and other products. It is also a known carcinogen, and it can cause respiratory problems, skin irritation, and other health problems.
VOCs: Volatile organic compounds are a group of chemicals that can easily evaporate into the air. They can come from a variety of sources, including gasoline, paints, and solvents. VOCs can cause a variety of health problems, including respiratory problems, headaches, nausea, and cancer.
PAHs: Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons are a group of chemicals that are formed when organic matter is burned. They are found in a variety of sources, including gasoline, coal, and tobacco smoke. PAHs can cause cancer, respiratory problems, and other health problems.
Heavy metals: Heavy metals are a group of metals that are toxic to humans and other animals. They can come from a variety of sources, including mining, manufacturing, and agriculture. Heavy metals can cause a variety of health problems, including cancer, neurological problems, and birth defects.
“Blue billy”: Blue billy is a type of asbestos that is found in coal tar. Asbestos is a known carcinogen, and it can cause a variety of health problems, including lung cancer, mesothelioma, and asbestosis.

It is important to note that the health risks of exposure to these chemicals vary depending on the level of exposure, the length of exposure, and the individual’s health. If you are concerned about your health after being exposed to these chemicals, you should see a doctor.

I am the leader of Ealing Council

Sun, 30 Apr 2023 15:34:19 +0100

I asked Google Bard to advise me on a local matter.

I am the leader of Ealing Council. I have received more than 250 reports about a BAD odour nuisance and air pollution from the remediation of the highly contaminated Southall Gasworks land. We had a public meeting where 250 angry residents complained about health problems as a result of the air pollution, including eye, nose and throat irritation, respiratory problems and infections, and even cancer and death of loved ones. The developer has implemented increased odour suppression to the satisfaction of the Environment Agency. I’ve given residents three numbers to call, each of which takes twenty minutes or more to get through and treats every report as an isolated incident. By the time my investigating officers arrive hours later the smell has gone. I’ve accepted over £30,000 in gifts and hospitality from the developer. What should I do?

What you should do:

Resign as leader of Ealing Council. Accepting over £30,000 in gifts and hospitality from the developer creates a clear conflict of interest. You are no longer in a position to objectively represent the interests of the residents of Ealing.
Publicly apologize to the residents of Ealing for your actions. Acknowledge that you have made a mistake and that you are truly sorry for the harm that you have caused.
Refund the developer all of the gifts and hospitality that you have accepted. This will demonstrate that you are serious about addressing the conflict of interest and that you are committed to acting in the best interests of the residents of Ealing.
Work with the developer to find a solution to the air pollution problem. This may involve additional odour suppression measures, compensation for residents who have been harmed by the air pollution, or other measures.
Ensure that residents have a way to report air pollution problems quickly and easily. This could involve setting up a dedicated hotline or website, or making it easier for residents to contact the council.
Investigate all reports of air pollution promptly and thoroughly. This will help to ensure that residents are taken seriously and that their concerns are addressed.
Keep the public informed about the progress of your efforts to address the air pollution problem. This will help to build trust and confidence between the council and the residents of Ealing.

What you should not do:

Do not deny or downplay the seriousness of the air pollution problem. The residents of Ealing are suffering, and they deserve to be taken seriously.
Do not try to cover up your conflict of interest. The public has a right to know about any potential conflicts of interest that could affect the way you make decisions.
Do not try to blame the developer or anyone else for the air pollution problem. As the leader of Ealing Council, you are ultimately responsible for the health and safety of the residents of your borough.
Do not give up on finding a solution to the air pollution problem. The residents of Ealing deserve to live in a clean and healthy environment, and you have a responsibility to do everything you can to make that happen.

Under poisoned skies

Fri, 28 Apr 2023 08:03:00 +0100

Watched Under Poisoned Skies on BBC iPlayer last night.

It’s the sad and shocking story of children in Iraq dying from leukaemia as a result of toxic air pollution from mega rich oil companies burning off excess natural gas in the open air near their homes.

Benzene (found in the air) and naphthalene (found in the children’s urine samples) are the main carcinogens.

Levels of benzene are between 3 and 9.6 Micrograms per cubic meter or “µg/m3”.

Levels of benzene by the so-called soil “hospital” at Southall Gasworks were between 4 and 12 Micrograms per cubic meter or “µg/m3”.

Southall residents to give blood samples

Thu, 27 Apr 2023 07:49:00 +0100

After six years of campaigning for justice:

“The fact that gas used to be manufactured from coal has been lost to the public consciousness, but the chemical legacy remains.”

“These communities already have multiple disadvantages with air pollution, overcrowding and poor housing. This is another burden being placed on them.”

Via: Scientists to examine health fears at west London luxury development

Horseshit parade

Thu, 30 Mar 2023 19:09:22 +0100

I visited the Palace of Westminster this week with my big kid on an educational school trip.

It was a very cold, wet and windy day, and we were patriotically under-dressed and sans brollies. We took a good lashing from Mother Nature.

The tour of the Houses of Parliament was cool, dry and stuffy, and the little radio headphones we were given so we could hear better were sub-optimal.

The House of Commons was closed to ordinary commoners like us, but the House of Lords was open as long as we refrained from parking our cold, wet and windy working class bums on our superiors' ‘holier than thou’ red leather benches. Police guards armed with sub-machine guns would forcibly remove any insubordinate eight or nine year olds, and presumably march them straight to the Tower of London (or shoot them dead if they looked like Jean Charles de Menezes.

The children asked a police officer why he carried a gun, and they learned it is to keep them safe. That may be true, but I didn’t feel safer, and there were no buses to flag down.

The children learned that murderous megalomaniac misogynist King Henry VIII is still held in very high regard in these parts, despite beheading two of his six wives, and creating a new religion and laws to divorce two more.

I asked the children how the chamber of the House of Lords made them feel.

Small.

We had lunch across the road outside Portcullis House where we could shelter a little from the wind and rain. Portcullis House is where elected Members of Parliament (MP) and their staff have offices. There were lots of posh-looking mostly white men going in and out and getting frisked inside by more armed guards. Out in the cold, we shared our lunch with toothless and homeless Len, who we found sleeping in the doorway next to us, and looking very wet and cold. Len told us he was “a midget, a dwarf from Burnley” and he’d come to London to sort his life out, but his marriage failed and here he was. He was very pleased to have a homemade tuna mayonnaise sandwich, a juice drink and a satsuma. My wife told me off when we got home, claiming that he will have sold or exchanged the sandwich for drugs.

We waited for our own MP Virendra Sharma to come and meet us as the teachers had arranged. No one knew what he looked like, so they asked me as my lad told them I had met him before (which is true). Then we played a game “Where’s Sharma?” until he appeared. Mr Sharma thanked the kids for coming to meet him, and asked them who wanted his job. His two assistants took photographs.

We ended the day by getting drenched walking up to see Downing Street and the Horse Guards Parade. Downing Street was, of course, guarded by more armed police and totally inaccessible to us ordinary folk, and the parade smelled of horse shit.

Fri, 24 Mar 2023 10:51:48 +0100

Finally got around to watching Our Friends In The North.

‘None of the issues the show mines so brilliantly – from inequality, deindustrialisation and the parlous state of Britain’s housing to homelessness and the corruption of our public officials – have gone away.’

Wed, 08 Mar 2023 18:26:46 +0100

‘…housebuilders appear to be making ever greater profits.’

‘[they] …blame the planning system, the costs of materials and labour for elevated prices. It’s also popular to blame land prices.’

‘The evidence to back up this claim is hard to find.’

Wed, 01 Mar 2023 12:48:11 +0100

‘…according to research by the London Tenants Federation, we are demolishing more social housing than we are building. Economics makes that inevitable.’

www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/opin…

Wed, 01 Feb 2023 10:25:21 +0100

Solidarity with all teachers today, especially those striking for better pay.

Eight year old is at home, and refusing to practice for his spelling test tomorrow because he doesn’t want to be a scab.

Wed, 01 Feb 2023 09:31:59 +0100

‘…financial liberalisation, mortgage reform and lack of investment in the existing building stock has transformed English homes into crumbling vehicles for the accumulation of wealth.’

We need more than new homes - Positive Money

Tue, 31 Jan 2023 17:40:17 +0100

No tipping or dumping.

Mon, 30 Jan 2023 09:17:20 +0100

‘…prioritises the maintenance of public housing, which is crucial in ensuring that people have a roof over their heads and a comfortable place to live’

Singapore housing policy

Response to Ealing's air quality strategy and action plan

Thu, 26 Jan 2023 16:32:29 +0100

Ealing Council’s draft Air Quality Strategy is a 64 page document together with a 40 page Action Plan, and the consultation period runs until 30 January 2023. It’s taken me the best part of six weeks, all my spare time over Christmas and New Year, to get through it all, make notes and cross-reference to try to make sense of it all and offer some feedback.

Really, there must be a much longer consultation period if Ealing Council is genuinely interested in residents' views.

The following is a summary of what the key points of interest are for me, and in particular in relation to Southall, where I live and work. My additional suggestions are in bold, and my comments and questions in italics.

Warning

This is a LONG post. I’ve tried to break it into sections to make it easier to read.

Disclaimer

I don’t claim to be an expert, other than through experience. I am just an ordinary resident living in the midst of four major industrial and construction site polluters for several years. I have campaigned alongside my family, neighbours and friends for clean air after my then nearly four year old said he wanted fresh air not stinky air. He’d been hospitalised three times when he was two and diagnosed with asthma. We soon discovered people who had lost loved ones, had heart attacks, ectopic pregnancies, cancer, all attributed to the foul petrochemical stink.

I welcome any corrections.

My Summary

If Ealing is serious about “fighting” inequalities, action must be targeted to protect vulnerable people in Southall to reduce air pollution and its impact on the health of its large, mostly economically deprived and non-white population.

The Strategy and Plan must target children and older people, people with lung conditions, and pregnant women: outside schools and school run hours. The Council must question if it is ethical to promote active travel in Southall when it knows that it is a high pollution area and that most of its population is particularly vulnerable to its adverse health impacts.

The draft strategy and action plan don’t do this at all.

Clean Air for Ealing!

To begin, I think it’s fantastic that Ealing Council has stated its vision for clean air for all Ealing residents, in alignment with that of local residents’ campaign group Clean Air for Southall and Hayes (CASH).

CASH has been asking for clean air for residents in Southall and Hayes since 2018.

Summary of the Strategy and Action Plan

Ealing’s draft air quality strategy’s five stated priorities are to:

Reduce road traffic emissions

Improve indoor air quality and reduce emissions from wood-burning

Reduce emissions from construction of new developments

Invest in green infrastructure

Raise awareness of air quality

It would be useful to see the strategy and action plan follow the same structure with clear definitions of terms, and specific and detailed aims and objectives for each priority, along with baseline air pollution levels and equalities data for each in order to monitor and measure impact.

Somewhat confusingly, the action plan groups its actions into six categories:

Emissions from Developments and Buildings

Public health and awareness raising

Delivery servicing and freight

Borough fleet actions

Localised solutions

Cleaner transport

This maybe because they are copied and pasted from the previous 2017-22 action plan.

It would be better for understanding, monitoring and evaluation to have consistency and coherence between the two documents, updating the action plan where necessary to reflect this.

Also somewhat confusingly, Ealing’s draft air quality strategy has nine stated goals, starting with the obvious. I’ll say more on these later:

Improve air quality

Tackling the climate crisis

Fighting inequality

Protect biodiversity

Protect health and wellbeing

Raise public awareness

Promote sustainable infrastructure

Support the transition to clean energy

Creating good jobs

Inequalities

There’s a lot of talk in Ealing’s air quality strategy about being inclusive and “fighting” (“reducing” would be better?) inequalities, and recognising that not everyone will be able to reduce their own air pollution “footprint” (“exhaust trail” might be more apt?). I’m not convinced that the strategy actually does this consistently, if at all. More on this later.

Public Health Policy

The strategy sets out how it fits into national, regional and local policy frameworks.

When I first read the strategy, I felt it fell very much within an environmental policy framework (which in Ealing seems to come under the Cabinet portfolio for Climate Action), with its focus on reducing air pollution, and as we’ll see later, promoting active travel.

In contrast, the draft action plan is explicitly a legally required document that falls directly within a public health policy framework (Ealing’s Healthy Lives cabinet portfolio).

*There’s obviously a good deal of crossover between the two, and other policy frameworks and cabinet portfolios, too, not least of which is housing policy (or Good Growth), and social policy (Tackling Inequalities).

It would be useful to see this joint responsibility formally recognised in both the strategy and the action plan, too. This work is important, and there needs to be joint working and accountability.

The strategy goes on to make the case for why air pollution is bad and needs to be reduced. The headline figure that around 150 people die every year in Ealing due to long-term exposure to toxic air is not insignificant.

Ealing’s Health Profile from 2019 puts that figure in some context:

Air Pollution in Ealing

Pollution Sources

The strategy states that the two worst air pollutants in Ealing are nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and particulate matter (PM10 and PM2.5). Short and long-term and/or frequent exposure to high levels of both can cause irritation to eyes, nose, and throat, and cause or worsen heart and lung disease in children and adults, and reduce life expectancy.

Those most vulnerable to the adverse health effects of toxic air are children, older people, people with pre-existing lung disease (e.g., asthma), and pregnant women.

It would be sensible and ethical for the strategy and action plan to focus on reducing air pollution in and outside schools, sheltered housing, residential and nursing homes, and in and around identified local air pollution “hotspots”, especially where these are located in areas of known multiple inequalities (e.g., Southall).

I don’t believe the strategy or the action plan really does this at all.

The strategy explains in further detail what the main sources of NO2, PM10 and PM2.5 are in the borough.

Again there is what appears to me, to be some inconsistency about sources and their health effects within the same document. For example, on page 19 there is a graphic showing that wood burning is a source of particulate matter (PM2.5 - 20%, data from 2019).

On page 11, another graphic suggest that wood burning is a source of nitrogen dioxide (but not particulater matter):

In the graphics from the 2017-22 action plan, wood burning doesn’t get a look-in at all, data from 2013.

It would be useful for the strategy to have clarity and consistency on air pollution sources.

The good news is that road traffic emissions, the council’s key action area for 2022-30, reduced significantly in Ealing between 2013 and 2019.

It would be useful if the strategy could make clear and explain how the reduction in road traffic emissions between 2013-19 happened.

Air Quality Monitoring

The strategy notes the air quality targets set by European Union, United Kingdom and World Health Organisation (WHO) guideline limits.

It’s worth noting here (and in the strategy), that, as things stand, the background levels of PM2.5 in London (i.e., particulate matter that comes into the borough from outside Ealing and even from abroad) is around double the WHO’s target.

The draft strategy document continues by identifying the areas in Ealing worst affected by air pollution from nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter. There are eight Air Quality Focus Areas, including one in Southall covering South Road (remember the name), The Green, King Street and Western Road.

Ealing has 67 air quality monitors acrosss the borough, all recording levels of notrogen dioxide, but only four measure particulater matter (PM10 only).

It seems remiss not to have more PM10 monitors, or to have any PM2.5 monitors (although their are three NO2, PM10 and PM2.5 monitors around the Southall Gasworks site, rather erroneously remarketed as The Green Quarter.

Ealing publishes annual air quality status reports.

Ealing also has an interactive map showing all its NO2 diffusion tube monitoring sites where you can see graphical annual data summary charts. Unfortunately, none seem to have been updated since 2021.

It would be useful to have more monitors for particulate matter, especially PM2.5, across the borough, and in Southall, and for published data from all air pollution monitors to be kept accessible and up-to-date.

Priorities for Action

Back to the strategy’s priorities for action, and my comments and questions, and suggestions.

Reduce road traffic emissions.

The biggest reduction in road traffic emissions came during 2020 covid lockdowns, and while it’s not practical, feasible or desirable to replicate that going forward, it might be worth promoting the idea that employers should encourage and support an increase to the 36% of Ealing’s working age population already mainly working from home whenever possible, as opposed to the current political groupthink that everyone must return to the office in order to be productive.

Improve indoor air quality and reduce emissions from wood-burning.

There are two wood-burning incinerators close to my home, which frequently create disgusting burning plastic odours forcing us to stay indoors and close all our windows. Not very good for healthy lives or improving indoor air quality, and the Council’s response to mine and my neighbours’ complaints has been infuriatingly slow and unhelpful. It doesn’t give me much confidence that the council really believes all these fine words about reducing air pollution and improving health outcomes when it comes to enforcement action.

Reduce emissions from construction of new developments.

Wouldn’t this be fantastic?! Again, the Council’s response to the Southall Gasworks poisoning has been shameful, and bears no resemblance to its 2017-22 Air Quality Action Plan pledges to reduce emissions and enforce construction management plans. How can we have any confidence that the council will put residents' needs for clean air first, and above developers' desires to enrich themselves and their shareholders by cutting corners by compromising the health and quality of life of the most vulnerable population in the borough already faced with multiple inequalities?

Invest in green infrastructure.

Southall has the least tree canopy cover in Ealing, yet is subjected to massive overdevelopment. This almost entirely terraced town is being transformed into a new Manhattan.

The one concession negotiated hard for by our elected representatives, and granted by the London Mayor for overruling local democracy to allow the Gasworks development, was to widen the South Road bridge by the train station to ease the often gridlocked road. Now, the Council Leader has undemocratically pressed the ‘reset’ button. Having sat on the Mayor’s money and done nothing for so long it’s no longer nearly enough to do the necessary work. We are promised £9.5m worth of cycle lanes, a tiny new ‘pocket park’ outside Lidl on the High Street, and a couple of mini-‘orchards’ planted in existing parks, instead. And we have the ‘Poison Park’ to look forward to, the ‘green space’ crafted by Berkeley Group from the contaminated old Gasworks land.

If the council’s air quality strategy is to have any real meaning and intent to address air pollution and multiple inequalities in the Southall Air Quality Focus Area and beyond, it must surely include a vast tree-planting project, and proper maintenance of our existing parks if no new ones can be created on non-contaminated land.

Instead, the council Leader has undemocratically proposed a ‘compromise’ to destroy most of the already re-wilded Warren Farm Nature Reserve in Southall in order to build new sports pitches that the vast majority of local people he consulted don’t want. I don’t understand how the Leader’s desires complement the Council’s stated strategies to reduce air pollution, tackle the climate emergency they declared, and to protect and promote biodiversity and our ecosystem.

Raise awareness of air quality.

The council also wants to (and must) lead by example.

If the council really wants to lead by example on reducing air pollution, then the council Leader cannot accept or request car rides to or from meetings in Southall, councillors cannot park in cycle lanes in Southall, nor fly to the property developer festival in the south of France. They must engage with Southall residents suffering the worst of the air pollution from multiple sources, and stop denying or minimising the existence and extent of the problems, and proactively and collaboratively work to reduce or stop such pollution episodes continuing.

Otherwise, the council’s strategy isn’t worth the virtual paper it’s printed on, and is just more hot air.

What we have in the draft plan, however, is largely a copy-and-paste of the previous 2017-2022 plan, which was, at worst, a demonstrable failure of ambition, leadership and political will, and, at best, a simple failure of the council to do what it said it would do.

Strategy Goals

Improve air quality. Protect the health and wellbeing of Ealing residents from the harmful effects of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and particulate matter (PM) air pollution.

The strategy MUST have the inclusive goal of protecting residents from the harmful effects of ALL air pollutants (not just nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter)..

Tackling the climate crisis…. by aiming for the highest environmental standards.

The “highest environmental standards” must be clearly stated and defined.

Fighting inequality…. to ensure that no-one is left behind… [and] residents feel safe.

The strategy must ensure that inequalities are reduced, that ALL residents are included in this process, and that their concerns for the safety of their air are taken seriously and acted upon. Promoting the uptake of expensive electric vehicles and discounting parking spaces for them is discriminating against economically deprived mostly non-white people who suffer most from air pollution.

Protect biodiversity. Ensuring our parks, open spaces and nature are protected and enhanced.

This is particularly relevant right now, as the Council Leader pushes on with his undemocratic desire to destroy much of the already rewilded Warren Farm Nature Reserve in Southall, and killing off a quarter of London’s endangered skylarks, in order to build new sports pitches and/or a football stadium.

Protect health and wellbeing. Protecting and enhancing the physical and mental health of all.

Except in Southall? Public Health England’s four risk assessment reports into the Southall Gasworks poisoning clearly stated that “Odours can cause nuisance amongst the population possibly leading to stress and anxiety. Some people may experience symptoms such as nausea, headaches or dizziness."

Raise public awareness. Promoting awareness of the causes and impacts of air quality issues, as well as the available local solutions…. encouraging community activism….

Except in Southall? At every opportunity, Ealing Council has sought to erase, deny or minimise the the causes and impacts of air quality issues related to Southall Gasworks, refused to enforce any local solutions, and actively discouraged and attempted to prevent community activists' voices from being heard.

Promote sustainable infrastructure. Ensure local transport and development planning supports investment in sustainable infrastructure, that limits impact on air quality, enabling a shift to low-emission transport and energy options.

Except in Southall? The Council recently decided NOT to widen the South Road bridge in Southall. Widening the bridge, as promised, would ease congestion, and improve air quality, public transport and active travel options. The bridge widening was the one concession granted to the Southall community when the London Mayor overruled local democracy to give the go ahead to developement of the highly contaminated Southall Gasworks site.

Support the transition to clean energy. Supporting the uptake of low-emission energy technologies and improvements in efficiencies, and reducing reliance on the consumption of fossil and solid fuels.

Like in Chile? Simply promoting and encouraging more (low emission) cars isn’t going to reduce congestion, emissions from brake and tyre wear, or help to reduce our “reliance on the consumption of fossil fuels”. Ealing reportedly doesn’t have enough power on the electricity grid for new homes until 2030.

Creating good jobs. We want to… deliver an ambitious programme of building more genuinely affordable homes.

Ealing is building fewer genuinely affordable homes than ever, and making the housing crisis in Ealing worse by demolishing more social rent homes than it is building.

Spotlight on Southall

These are all my comments, so I’m not putting it all in italics.

My suggestions and questions for the strategy are still in bold.

Southall cannot be used as a good example of how Ealing Council takes air pollution seriously.

Inequalities

Southall has a BAME population of more than 90%.

Southall Broadway/West and Southall Green are the two council wards that border the old Gasworks site, and which are downwind from the FM Conway asphalt and Tarmac plants, and the two wood-burning incinerators, depending on wind direction. They are connected by the Gasworks site and by the Air Quality Focus Area from South Road to The Green, King Street and Western Road.

Southall is already a high pollution area (and an Air Quality Focus Area as a result), but has several additive sources of unmitigated, uncontrolled air pollution.

Economically poorer, BAME people, children, older people and pregnant women are the most vulnerable to the health impacts of toxic air pollution. Certainly not a fairer start for Southall’s children.

We know from bitter experience over the last six years in Southall that the council has failed in its duty to protect some of its most vulnerable residents from harm.

Raising Awareness

To add insult to injury, the council failed to raise public awareness of the risks and the air quality monitoring data in an open and transparent manner before work on the site began, and while the work was in progress. It was only thanks to local residents and CASH campaigners that a Public Meeting was held in 2019, and it was only then that Public Health England (PHE) acknowledged that some people with African and South Asian heritage are genetically vulnerable to naphthalene poisoning. PHE stated that “levels of naphthalene [at the Gasworks site] must be urgently reduced”. Residents were never informed if, when or how levels of naphthalene were urgently reduced.

It’s noteworthy that the Council claims it asked PHE to get involved only “following concerns raised by local residents” and not because the Council itself carried out an Equalities Impact Assessment prior to works starting in 2016, knowing that the Southall population was significantly more vulnerable to air pollution due to high pre-existing levels and multiple inequalities.

Similarly, the council says it responded to residents' concerns by installing “independent” air quality monitors on site in 2021, but this is five years after the work started, and two years after the main source of air pollution and odour complaints (the so-called soil “hospital”) was decommissioned. The monitors now installed record near-real time data for “urban background” emissions of odourless particulate matter, nitrogen oxides and carbon monoxide.

The odours and air pollution that residents are concerned about originate from polyaromatic hydrocarbons and volatile organic compounds (i.e., the hundred years’ of toxic waste from town gas, coal tar and petrochemical work sites). We are told that there are diffusion tubes monitoring these emissions, but there is a total lack of openness and transparency as to their locations and the data they have recorded. The council has refused to answer the most basic questions (e.g., what chemical or chemicals causes the odour of petrol? What level of this chemical or chemicals in the air is detectable by the human nose?) So much for raising public awareness!

Public Health

We are also told that the emissions from the site are not harmful to health (this despite hundreds of residents reporting that they have suffered ill-health as a result), so it is surprising that the council then spent £200,000 (albeit paid for by Berkeley Group) on these monitors. Is the air pollution from Southall Gasworks harmful to health, or not? The money would have been better spent on statutory nuisance enforcement. Why did Berkeley Group agree to pay for these monitors?

Moreover, the council must have known in 2016 that the economically poorer, mostly BAME population of Southall carried a higher burden of risk to the potential ill-effects of a hundred years' of highly contaminated toxic waste being dug up and “cleaned” in the open air in the middle of a densely populated residential area. Why wasn’t truly independent (i.e., not paid for by the perpetrators Berkeley) air quality monitoring put in place before work started (to record a baseline), and open and transparent near-real time data published so that residents could see for themselves the reality of what they were forced to breathe night and day for the best part of two and a half years?

Enforcement

Why didn’t the council force Berkeley Group to stop work and make the site safe in the three month heatwave of 2018 when residents pleaded with the council leader, local councillors and Member of Parliament to do so?

The council failed to act on enforcing the construction management plan (CMP) at Southall Gasworks. Indeed half of the plan was missing from the planning portal and the council admitted that it didn’t have a full copy of the original CMP.

How on earth was the council planning to enforce a CMP it wasn’t in possession of? This was a gross dereliction of duty to care for the health and wellbeing of (by its own definition) the most vulnerable residents in the borough.

The Council was committed to full enclosure of waste sites in its 2017-22 Air Quality Action Plan. Why wasn’t the one hundred years of petrochemical waste “soil cleaning hospital” enclosed?

National Grid have enclosed their enclosed their soil remediation work specifically to avoid causing odour nuisance to the local community (and thanks no doubt to campaigning by local residents and activists at Clean Air for Southall and Hayes).

On Whose Side?

Why did the former and current council leader accept over £30,000 in gifts and hospitality from developers including Berkeley Group to fly (!) to the south of France for what Private Eye Magazine describes as a booze and hookerfest?

The new council leader claims he went there to negotiate hard. If that’s the case, what did he negotiate? He also claimed that it wasn’t what he expected and that it was a mistake to go. If that’s also the case, why was it a mistake?

How can we be sure that the new council leader and his administration won’t continue making these mistakes and taking the side of developers rather than standing up for the residents they are elected to represent?

Local Action

If the soil is now clean and the air is safe to breathe, why would stopping works during hot weather (which didn’t happen in 2018), and covering stockpiles (why weren’t they covered already?) be given as examples of possible mitigating actions?

There must be a new commitment to work with and for residents where these are issues. Air pollution and odour nuisance reporting and investigation procedures need to be overhauled as they are currently not fit for purpose (reporting process too convoluted, each one investigated as a single, isolated incident rather than as part of an ongoing problem, residents are simply not believed and our reports are minimised and invalidated).

Work on the Gasworks site is due to complete in 2038. Why is the date for net-zero emissions set for twelve years after this date in 2050?

There’s a similar commitment to target zero-emissions for construction vehicles by 2040, which is two years after the new draft local Plan period for new developments ends.

What has Ealing Council done to date to campaign for greater regulatory powers and for a Clean Air Act? Please give examples.

This draft Air Quality Strategy is fine in many respects in terms of the words it contains, but what concerns me is that these are empty words if they are not acted on and enforced.

Recent history strongly suggests the council doesn’t have the leadership, organisational culture or political will to act in the interests of its most vulnerable residents in Southall.

Active Travel

There’s a lot of talk about active travel and Ealing Council’s multi-million pound Let’s Go Southall campaign in the draft Strategy, but very little on its real cost and impact. They seem to have about 50 regular weekly activity groups. Over two years that’s 5,000 sessions. 30,000 attendances (not individuals). So average of six people per session? 1,000 people attended at least two sessions (repeat attendances). My guess would be not many more than 1,000 in total, most will be repeaters (thinking GP referrals, lots of organisers?). If it’s helped 1,000 individuals, that’s £5,400 per person. If 10,000 it’s £540 per person (still seems like a lot of money). And there’s no evidence that it’s helped anyone!

The council must be open and transparent with residents that Let’s Go Southall is a top-down neoliberal behavioural change (“nudge theory”) programme led by a retired stockbroker, and not the “grassroots social movement” of the council’s Orwellian publicity.

If the Council is serious about improving safe active travel options in Southall, then it must improve road and pavement conditions and safety first. Many of the roads and pavements are not fit to cycle or walk on, especially for children and families, older people, and people with disabilities.

Air Quality Action Plan

The 2017-2022 Action Plan

a. Included a number of no-or-low-impact schemes such as Low Emission Neighbourhoods (LENs), implemented in 2021 as Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs). The Action Plan itself states that there is no (or, elsewhere, conflicting) evidence that LENs/LTNs reduce air pollution within the designated area, and that there is evidence that they increase air pollution outside it. The Action Plan also states that LENs/LTNs are often implemented in areas of relatively low air pollution. Surely it would be better to reduce traffic in areas with high levels of air pollution?

b. Similarly, a 20mph zone was implemented borough-wide, yet the Action Plan states there is no evidence that speed reduction zones produce a reduction in emissions. The Plan states that there is a perception that road safety is improved. Perhaps the Council will reflect on the road safety issues associated with its promotion of the uptake of much heavier electric vehicles while reducing road space for vehicles.

c. Another low impact scheme was Play Streets. How many Play Streets are there now? How often do they run? Where are they?

d. How many Pocket Parks are there? Where are they?

e. How many Green Screens are there? Where are they? Why were green screens not erected at Southall Gasworks even after residents complained of dust from the site in their homes?

f. How are these schemes evaluated in terms of reducing air pollution? Where are the air quality monitors located to record baseline measurements to compare against air pollution levels during or after the scheme is in place?

g. Enforcement of anti-idling laws was deemed “not cost-effective”. Smoke control was not deemed a problem and therefore not promoted or enforced. Who made these decisions?

h. What is the wider ‘cost’ to residents in not taking enforcement action against these criminal behaviours?

The 2022-2027 Action Plan (AQAP)

If air pollution monitoring data cannot inform the efficacy of individual actions, how can it be used in combination with secondary data to do so? I’m sure there must be a sensible explanation, but to most people I suspect this statement makes little sense. In Southall, we have continuously been asked to ignore our own lived experience of health and quality of life problems attributed to the open-air ‘cleaning’ of a hundred years of petrochemical waste at the Gasworks site, in favour of the developer Berkeley’s assurances that it’s own monitoring of air quality is ‘within acceptable limits’ and harmless to health. Public Health England published four risk assessments based on Berkeley’s data, and came to similar conclusions, although neither looked at any secondary data. The air pollution data has still to be published so that the public can make up their own minds.

I’m not sure how imperceptible changes that cannot be detected by monitoring or modelling can be interpreted as Low Impact or a step in the right direction.

The Action Plan here seems to contradict the Strategy by stating that changes in the levels of air pollution above a certain level can be attributed even to individual actions (although more likely to be due to multiple actions).

If the council is serious about using air pollution data and secondary data to establish efficacy of its air quality strategy and action plan, (which sounds sensible enough), then it must explain what measures it will use, and publish baseline data and regular updates.

Like it does with its performance dashboard.

Looking at the Council’s own evaluation of it’s 2017-22 Action Plan, I would suggest that it’s achievements are minimal, and misleading.

Electric Vehicle charging points (p. 30 of 2022 AQAP) were not actually a specified target in the 2017 AQAP, so I’m unsure how this can be claimed as an achievement? Similarly with School Streets and specific cycle lanes. LENS/LTNs were specified as a target, but there is no mention of that fiasco here. Air quality monitoring data must be used to locate pollution hotspots for any future implementation of LENs/LTNs

The 20 mph speed limit was implemented borough-wide, but only since December 2021. Why did it take so long? What is the use of it if it isn’t enforced, especially in Southall?

Thu, 12 Jan 2023 11:02:47 +0100

New podcast, International Marxist Radio (IMR).

The first episode features Ealing’s own Joe Attard speaking to In Defence of Marxism (IDOM) editor-in-chief Alan Woods.

Well worth a listen, Alan is a very knowledgeable and engaging speaker.

The Property Lobby: The Hidden Reality Behind the Housing Crisis in Ealing

Fri, 16 Dec 2022 20:30:40 +0100

There will be 14,800 new homes in 23 new developments in Southall over the next few years. 14 units over 10 stories high, and 7 over 20 stories high. Up to 40,000 new residents (and their cars)!

One third of the total new developments in the whole of Ealing borough (only Acton is getting it worse).

So not happening so much in the ‘white’ or richer areas of the borough, for some reason.

None of these homes will be genuinely affordable to most people currently living in overcrowded homes in Southall or Ealing, as Studio bedsit flats start at around £300,000!

Most will stay empty until they are sold to investors from China, Malaysia, Singapore, Bahrain(!) where they are actively marketed by the greedy property developers.

The same property developers who gave former Ealing Council ‘Leader’ Julian Bell and new Ealing Council ‘Leader’ Peter Mason (also a Southall Green ward councillor) over £30,000 in recent years to holiday in the south of France at the MIPIM property festival in Cannes described as a “booze ‘n’ hookerfest” by Private Eye Magazine.

Bell says, “it didn’t cost the taxpayer a penny”, but in Southall we are already paying with our health and quality of life thanks to the poisonous air from the development of the contaminated old gasworks site (due to complete in 2038!).

Town planner Mason says it was a mistake, and not what he expected(!).

Where will 40,000 new residents' children go to school (and how will they get there and back), how will they get an appointment to see a GP, which hospital will they go to when they need emergency treatment, and how will they get there on the roads already regularly gridlocked by too much traffic?

Worth taking the time to have a look at stopthetowers.info/other-cam…

Cllr Mason recommended we read Bob Colenutt’s ‘The Property Lobby: The Hidden Reality Behind the Housing Crisis’.

So I did.

What Colenutt says (and he has a wealth of experience in local authority housing and planning, and in the community resisting property developers), is that developers do have too much power (as Mason argues), but also that local councils and councillors do not do enough to resist, do not have the negotiating skills (contrary to how Mason originally described the importance of trips to MIPIM to ‘negotiate hard’), and too readily embrace the ‘financialisation’ of the land and property market brought about by David Cameron’s and Nick Clegg’s ConDem government in 2010.

So now, we have a very real housing crisis fuelling the huge profits of private developers, all facilitated and egged on by mostly Labour councils too easily rolling over and allowing them to build fewer and fewer ‘genuinely affordable homes’ (because “where’s the profit in that?").

What Colenutt says loudly and clearly is that without ordinary people’s and communities' resistance it would be so much worse, and that to all intents and purposes councils and councillors are in bed with the developers.

Non-fiction: The Property Lobby: The Hidden Reality behind the Housing Crisis by Bob Colenutt 📚

Tue, 29 Nov 2022 10:40:33 +0100

Surprised I haven’t been asked to remove this review of FM Conway. Is 5,000 views a lot? I guess, at the end of the day, it makes no difference.

Mon, 28 Nov 2022 18:25:44 +0100

Got soaked the skin collecting big kid from school (who, it turns out, ate and drank nothing all day…). Last time I got this wet was on my way to record this interview for the BBC…

Sat, 26 Nov 2022 01:16:03 +0100

Regular exposure to even low levels of air pollution may cause changes to the heart similar to those in the early stages of heart failure…

Low levels of air pollution linked to changes in the heart

Fri, 25 Nov 2022 00:10:53 +0100

Public concerns over remediating the toxicity of the land… have not been addressed in the revised plans…. “no details have been provided” on the proposed remediation strategy.

Brighton Gasworks developer changes plans to include affordable homes

Strawberries for pigs?

Wed, 14 Apr 2021 10:33:42 +0100

Little did we know at the time, but these little strawberries were usually engulfed in a toxic plume of benzene, naphthalene, and god only knows what else.

Sensibly, the wife refused to eat them.

We later discovered that official planning documents for the nearby old gasworks, which was being dug up in the open air for new homes to be built on the contaminated land, stated that no vegetables should be grown on the land. Ever!

Ealing Council Leader Julian Bell publicly blamed 'the wrong kind of wind', and – quite possibly – privately blamed 'fucking moaners'. All the while racking up over £30,000 in declared gifts and hospitality from developers including Berkeley Group, who were digging up the gasworks land.

Our soon-to-be local ward councillor and (ex-)Head of Planning Peter Mason knew all about the dangers (he tells us on Twitter) from the contaminated land back in 2009 when he campaigned against its development along with our MP Virendra Sharma (who said the development would be 'a disaster environmentally').

Yet no one told people living nearby to expect to be gassed in our own homes and gardens during the three month heatwave that was shortly to arrive.

In fact, Ealing Council announced on Twitter that the odours, while 'unpleasant', were 'not harmful to health' would be 'gone in a few days'.

I later discovered that there is scientific evidence that some people with Asian and African heritages are genetically more vulnerable to very serious and sometimes fatal health conditions from inhaling naphthalene, a fact acknowledged (although later denied, despite the published evidence) by Public Health England at a packed public meeting in July 2019.

No one told us.

Ealing Council, despite being fully aware of the potential dangers to health (and to the environment) failed to carry out any kind of Equalities Impact Assessment, and only helped Berkeley Group to rush through the decontamination process to maximise their profit from Crossrail in Southall.

Profit over people. Labour Council. Our lives didn't matter to them.

Now, we are being asked to believe that our MP (who has begun making the right noises two years too late – what happened to the nearly 1,000 signature petition I gave you in 2018 Mr Sharma?) cares and is on our side, and that our local ward councillor cares and always has done. Only Bell is – unusually for him – honest enough not to suddenly pretend he gives a shit about anyone but himself and looking after his own family.

At the packed public meeting in 2019, which our local ward councillor chaired, he and Bell refused to declare their financial interests with Berkeley Group, refused to let me speak with the microphone so that people couldn't hear that the Council, Berkeley Group, the Environment Agency and Public Health England had all colluded to cover up the real level of toxic and carcinogenic air pollution – that it was consistently above legal limits and rising – by manipulating, removing, and presenting the air quality data in such a way as to make it look like it was mostly within legal limits.

At the same meeting, our MP arrived late, mostly unseen, sat silently at the back of the room, and left early, mostly unseen. At the same meeting, a strangely truthful Bell admitted that he had 'known about the nuisance, the BAD nuisance, for two and a half years'! Yet nothing could be done.

Now Peter Mason, free from his constraints as Head of Planning after resigning following his failed coup attempt to take the leadership from Bell last year, is telling us that something could and should have been done, yet all of them remained silent and did nothing for years.

Unbelievable!

Chaos and Confusion

Wed, 23 Dec 2020 10:28:00 +0100

If you thought last year was bad…. No one could have foreseen this!

British coastguard sued by French charity for failing to save drowned refugees.

Broccoli and cauliflower thrown away.

A shortage of lorry drivers.

Renationalised energy companies.

Nationalising Sausages

Wed, 23 Dec 2020 10:01:00 +0100

Navy gunboats defending our fish from the French.

An army of Sikhs feeding European lorry drivers caught up in Kent.

Shortages of broccoli and lettuce.

Nationalising sausages doesn’t seem like such a crazy idea, now, does it?

High Traffic Neighbourhood

Mon, 05 Oct 2020 09:36:00 +0100

Took me an hour (as opposed to 10 minutes) to drive my lad home from school this afternoon, thanks in part to the High Traffic Neighbourhood (‘Improving access for HGVs’) in Southall ‘Green’.

Like a rat, I tried the side streets and back roads option and found those to be jammed, too, and Scotts Road - although confusingly still two-way throughout - is now No Entry from the eastern end.

I would have abandoned my car and got out and walked/scooted home, but there was nowhere to leave it - all the pavements (and even the double yellow lines) were parked on, or being used by, er, pedestrians.

The more virtuous brothers and sisters amongst us may righteously question why me and my lad weren’t scooting/walking anyway? Why are we driving when Southall is known for its traffic gridlock?

We have done it a couple of times. It takes us 40 minutes each way in fine weather. My lad would love to do it every day, I’m sure, although not in the wind, cold and rain. I don’t believe my dodgy feet/knees/hips/back would manage it daily, either.

And why are we going to a school so far away from where we live?

Well, it’s the best (and happiest) school in Southall. And it’s the one that is furthest away from the gasworks stink and toxic air. We wanted to give our little asthmatic boy some clean air five days a week, if we could. (Of course, we since found out the school is under the Heathrow flight path, and next to the smoky narrowboats moored on the canal….).

(In case you are wondering, the ambulance somehow squeezed down the middle of Western Road, fortunately no well-intentioned bollards or planters in the way.)

Return To Work

Tue, 08 Oct 2019 09:14:00 +0100

I returned to work last week after my extended absence due to respiratory illness, which may or may not be related to three years of breathing the poisonous gasworks' air.

I find I now have to literally climb over two rough sleepers camped outside the door of my workplace in order to get in. There is no more space in the nearby doorway, and the doorway around the side entrance is similarly occupied.

By my reckoning, we have five more rough sleepers than we did two months ago, or two years ago, or four years ago.

Meanwhile, Southall’s skyline is rapidly changing from terraced family houses to much-needed ‘genuinely affordable’ skyscraper studio flats, while ‘parklets’ are opening up in the posher parts of Ealing.

To be fair, I did see that the Bell regime have cut a deal with Compton’s foldaway bikes so that residents on the Copley estate can hire them without having to pay a membership fee, and improve air quality at the same time.

Trigger Vote for Sharma

Tue, 01 Oct 2019 15:24:00 +0100

In July 2019, I attended a public meeting with Public Health England to discuss air pollution problems created by the development of the old gasworks site.

At this meeting, I asked Public Health England if it is true that people with Asian and African heritage are genetically more at risk from poisoning from naphthalene – one of the main causes of the stink coming from the gasworks site.

Do you know what they said?

Yes.

Yes, Asian and African people are genetically more at risk from poisoning from naphthalene – one of the main causes of the stink from the gasworks site.

Our MP, Mr Sharma, who had been publicly supporting the need for this meeting, arrived ten minutes after it started. He sneaked in, sat at the back mostly unseen by anyone there, and then left early.

A bit like his time as an MP!

So, at this meeting.

We discovered that Asian and African people, the majority of people in Southall, are genetically more at risk from poisoning from naphthalene.

What did Mr Sharma have to say about that?

Nothing.

For two years or more, Southallians have complained to Mr Sharma about the oppressive stink, and poison air, coming from the old gasworks site. I have suffered numerous chest infections, my wife had serious and severe health problems, and my young son has been hospitalised with asthma and now has to take steroids every day of his life so that he can breathe. I know neighbours whose loved ones have now got cancer, and some who have died from cancer. All, we believe, caused by the poison air.

What has Mr Sharma done to help us?

Nothing.

A year ago, a group of us presented Mr Sharma with a petition signed by 900 Southallians and their families and friends begging Mr Sharma to do something to get Berkeley Group, the developer of the old gasworks site, to stop poisoning Southall.

What did Mr Sharma do?

Nothing.

Finally, throughout the last couple of years, while his constituents in Southall Green have been poisoned by the toxic air from the old gasworks site, and getting ill with breathing problems, and cancer, the developer Berkeley Group has sponsored numerous local events, mainly to 'clean up' Southall.

What did Mr Sharma do?

He attended every one and was photographed smiling broadly wearing his hi-viz jacket with the Berkeley Group logo emblazoned across it.

So tonight, I'm voting in favour of the trigger ballot for Mr Sharma, so that we have the opportunity to have a new Labour MP for Ealing Southall, one who will stand up for local people rather than help those who oppress them.

And I ask all of you to do the same.

Solidarity!

UPDATE: Sharma was triggered for reselection, but survived without having to stand again thanks to his old pal Boris Johnson, who called a general election shortly after.

Southall Under Siege: The Neighbours From Hell

Sun, 25 Aug 2019 22:14:32 +0100

‘A lack of scrutiny,’ says John Freeman, Regulatory Services Officer at Ealing Council.

He’s talking about lessons to be learned from the council’s response to the new asphalt plant built in neighbouring Hillingdon borough in 2014.

‘We didn’t expect there to be so much odour from a new building, or so many complaints.’

Moving swiftly on.

Oppressive odour

The highly contaminated old gasworks site in Southall has been kicking up a stink, too.

Carcinogenic benzene and naphthalene, among a cocktail of polyaromatic hydrocarbons, heavy metals and particulates large and small, are in the air.

‘The odour is oppressive,’ says Damian Leydon.

There are twenty or thirty people in the room.

No one bats an eyelid.

Upset residents

Damian is the Operations Director at 'Southall Waterside', as the gasworks site is being marketed.

It's wedged between the grand union canal, Yeading Brook and Minet Park to the north-west of the site, and two of the twenty percent most economically deprived council wards in England. Southall Green to the south, and Southall Broadway to the north and north-east.

‘The last thing we want to do is upset residents,’ says Damian.

It’s a bit late for that.

Please stop

Damian previously worked as the Construction Manager on Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant in Somerset, and the Athletes Village at the 2012 London Olympics.

Presumably, there were no carcinogenic leaks, oppressed, or upset residents there.

Three times I ask Damian, ‘How many residents are you prepared to upset before you will stop?’

No answers

As for almost every question that night, at Ealing Council’s Air Quality Scrutiny Panel meeting in September 2018, there is no answer.

The meeting concludes, and later the ‘minutes’ are published, but such minutiae do not make the cut.

Was I at a different meeting?

The final report of the ‘scrutiny’ panel, six months later, reads as if the problem is in the past, finished, with yet more ‘lessons to be learned’ (and immediately forgotten).

Friends with benefits

As I leave the meeting, I see Damian having a cosy-looking chat in the corridor (of power) outside the meeting room with Julian Bell, Ealing Council's Leader.

Councillor Bell sat through the two hour meeting in silence.

I ask Julian if he’s booking his holiday in Cannes?

The south of France resort hosts the annual MIPIM property developers’ ‘booze and hookerfest’ (as Private Eye magazine calls it).

Julian is a regular attendee, all expenses paid for by Damian’s employer Berkeley Group, despite claiming to be teetotal. Peter Mason, my ward councillor, is a new attendee. He is not teetotal.

‘If my son gets cancer because of this, you better not stand so close to me,’ I say to Leydon.

He rolls his eyes.

‘David, don’t let’s make this personal,’ says Bell.

We can't breathe!

For two and a half years, my family, my neighbours and friends, have been harassed, attacked, and gassed in our own homes and gardens.

Our children have been forced to breathe ‘stinky’, poisonous air in their school playgrounds, and in our public parks.

We have been laid under siege through three hot summers, including last year’s extended heatwave.

Despite many repeated requests to stop, Damian’s uncovered, unenclosed cesspit of decontamination of a hundred years of toxic waste continues unabated.

Good neighbours

‘Be a good and respectful neighbour,’ says Councillor Mason, at the ward forum.

‘It’s unpleasant’ we are told. ‘It will clear in days, and it’s not harmful to health,’ Ealing Council namelessly tweeted. In June 2017.

Round and round we go.

Is this corrupt?

‘It’s the wrong kind of wind,’ claims Bell.

‘It’s not our responsibility, it’s the Environment Agency.’

‘It’s not us, it’s Public Health England.’

‘I’ll phone Julian and get him to put a councillor on it for you,’ Tony Pidgley, founder and chair of Berkeley Group tells us.

“Cash. Always cash.” (Tony Pidgley)

We started a campaign. Clean Air for Southall and Hayes. CASH for short.

‘I DO NOT TAKE CASH! I DO NOT TAKE CASH!’ is our MP Virendra Sharma’s frankly bizarre opening statement, shouted at us when we go to meet him.

What’s going on?

When is remediation NOT remediation?

Back to the future with John Freeman.

I email John to ask him when remediation of the soil (the cleaning of the contaminated land) is due to be completed. It’s the excavation, the turning, the moving of the toxic waste that has laid at rest for fifty years or more that we’re told is likely to be the main source of the odour nuisance and air pollution.

‘March 2019. It’s finished already.’

‘But it still stinks.’

‘Did you leave the cooker on?’

‘But I’ve seen the planning documents where it says remediation is scheduled to be completed in 2038.’

John consults his colleague, James Potter, Ealing’s Contaminated Land Officer, whose post was initially funded by none other than Berkeley Group.

A very simple explanation as it turns out.

‘The remediation for the next nineteen years is, in a sense, NOT remediation.’

Berkeley bribes?

Then there is the fact, confirmed (and denied) by Public Health England, that the majority Asian and African population of Southall, due to genetic factors, have an increased risk from exposure to naphthalene.

And then there’s Berkeley Group's track record of paying off their former finance director to keep quiet about allegations of bribery and corruption at the top of the company.

Understandably, we doubt the veracity of their own reports of the air quality monitoring data recorded by their business partner, data which they refuse to share with us.

Enough is enough.

Stop the work at the gasworks site while it is made safe.

Stop poisoning Southall.

Please donate to our legal campaign for justice: https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/cleanairforsouthallandhayes/

Inconsiderate Constructor

Tue, 13 Nov 2018 11:05:00 +0100

Lorry driver on his phone while leaving ‘Southall Village’ building site, right next to school entrance during school run.

Got a load more verbals from the driver and his colleagues on site - ‘Did he hit anyone?’, ‘He doesn’t work for us!’

All part of the Considerate Constructors Scheme, aka Couldn’t Care Less Scam.

Twenty Ten (The Prequel): The Cheesemaker

Fri, 21 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Originally intended as a follow-up to part one of my milk-based food product styled personal review of 2010, this post quickly regressed into a metaphorical guide to the cheesemaking process, as you will see.

By the end of the first week of March 2010, I felt like I was several thousand feet above sea level. High up a mountain, again, perhaps mostly due to the ever-decreasing capacity of my right lung, but plummeting to new emotional depths thanks to the leaden weights of my ever-increasing self-doubt and sense of despair, perhaps partly as a reaction to stopping taking my antidepressant medication (although I stopped because I was feeling worse, not better).

One of the problems I found with officially going a bit mental is that I started to lose all confidence and trust in myself and the rest of the world. I think it’s fair to say that I’ve always been a bit of an independent-minded so-and-so and generally not afraid to say out loud whatever comes into my head. This invariably leads to me getting punched in the face. Or some other non-violent conflict.

The Big Cheese

A few years ago, I worked for someone who was responsible for making the lives of a few of her staff abjectly miserable, quite contrary to our organisation’s stated raison d’être ‘for better mental health.’ It appeared that she would move from one person to another and to another and then, it seemed to me, it was my turn. I decided I wasn’t going to take it.

During a torrid six months as her primary target, I had to undergo hospital tests on my heart for still unexplained and not since repeated vomiting and blackouts. When I told my GP what was going on at work she immediately signed me off with stress and didn’t want me to go back when I did. By the time my boss had finished with me I was unemployed and unemployable. Never underestimate the power of a bully.

I learned from painful experience quite a lot about how bullies and psychopaths operate. I learned that, while part of me wants to stand up to them and expose them for what they are, the sane part of me wants to avoid them altogether. So when I did manage to find a new job with a decent manager and then moved on from that with a good reference into my current post four years ago, I was delighted to be in a position where I was ‘the boss’, although, of course, I still had to report to a management committee made up of volunteers, led by a truly wonderful Chair.

When I say I was glad to be in charge, I don’t say that because of any desire to have power over others. Quite the contrary, in fact (unless I’m deluding myself). I’ve always believed in sharing power and responsibility as much as possible, but you can’t do that if you have an egomaniac boss or a rigidly hierarchical organisational structure. Yes, there are differences between staff and service users (staff get paid being the main one), but I try to minimise these as far as I can.

Cheese Grating

It was also gratifying to work in a London borough that not only funded my new organisation’s work, but whose commissioners seemed genuinely supportive. Within two weeks of me starting my new job, however, it was grating to be informed that the local authority would be able to fund us for only 40% of what we had budgeted for on their advice of just three months earlier. My first significant and highly unpleasant task, therefore, was to have to ask staff to reduce their hours from full-time to two days a week or to make them redundant in order that the organisation could survive.

Over the next two years, we began to flourish and I was able to bring in external funding to supplement the local authority’s money so that we could provide a still much-reduced service to what we had originally planned. Even so, it seemed popular with members, staff were highly skilled and dedicated to their work and feedback from carers and professionals who referred people to us was without exception, I think, almost worryingly positive.

Cheese Ripening

By working together on daily household and business tasks, we had established a sense of community, friendships and social engagement from a safe and supportive workplace. A lifeline for people whose experience was often one of many years of loss of sense of self and worth and an absence of meaningful relationships and occupation. A second home, where they were welcomed back with warmth and kindness into the human family (cite Richard Bentall’s ‘Doctoring The Mind’) and encouraged to believe that they had real reasons to hope for - and expect - better lives.

We had people going out into the community to volunteer and set up our own catering service to employ some of our members in very part-time casual work, based on their existing skills and interests. For all but one, this was the first paid work they had done in years. We weren’t able to find anyone permanent full-time employment during a time of global recession, but still I felt proud of what we’d achieved in difficult circumstances and with fairly limited resources.

Cheese-Induced Nightmare

So when I attended our annual review in 2009 with our main funder and described what we did and the impact it had on people’s lives I was gobsmacked to be told ‘We don’t care what you do or how you do it. We just want people off benefits and into work.’ I felt physically sick and faint.

While I understand (and, in principle, support) government targets to help people with disabilities to return to work, I’ve always been sceptical about the management-theory driven obsession with outcomes and, worse, the introduction of outcome-based contracting - where service providers get paid only if they meet agreed targets. What happens, is that the largest national providers are able to tender for local contracts with the lowest unit cost, inevitably, in my opinion, sacrificing quality (process) in the name of quantity (outcomes). Except that they fail to deliver.

Processed Cheese

To me, what we do and how we do it - the process - is of fundamental importance. There are plenty of organisations who work in completely different ways and who consistently fail to get people with diagnoses of schizophrenia (who form 60% of our membership) off benefits and into work and who receive considerably larger sums of money for doing so, making their CEO’s rich (and famous) in the process. Pushing people who lack confidence and don’t feel ready to work into inappropriate and unsupported employment simply doesn’t work for most and carries the very real risk of being detrimental to their mental health.

In order to massage their figures, these organisations ‘cherry-pick’ or ‘cream’ the most able and likely to find employment while ‘parking’ those with the most complex needs and severe disabilities, the very people small, local organisations like mine tend to work with. This is not to say that these people are not able. My experience tells me that indeed they are, but that they require much longer to build up sufficient confidence and trust and need much more support to do so. Time and support costs money, but so does a lifetime of unemployment and welfare dependence, not to mention the personal and social costs of inactive and isolated lives.

Cheesed Off

Well, that was a rather long-winded way of saying that in 2009 I began to feel that I was being fucked about at work. What I believed to be the right way of working and what I was being told to do by my paymasters conflicted and didn’t make any sense to me. A year later, while I had time on my hands due to my own physical and mental illness I ‘discovered’ that evaluations of the way I was being told to work clearly stated that this approach doesn’t work, either. I felt angry for not trusting my own judgment (based on experience and advice from mentors) and felt like I’d been bullied into submission, yet again.

Join me for another cheese and whine morning next time.

Waterboarding on the NHS

Tue, 25 May 2010 09:00:00 +0100

Abstract: Gagging for it. Tags: waterboarding, NHS, bronchoscopy, torture, worklessness, Nazi, psychotherapy, banana, splat

On Another Planet this week: controversial new government plans to tackle ever increasing worklessness using waterboarding.

Techniques refined and perfected by secret military personnel known only by their codename ‘Our Boys’ are being piloted by the NHS in an effort to ‘encourage and empower’ people claiming statutory sick pay to return to work.

One persistent malingerer, who asked not to be identified, claimed that he was subjected to an horrific ordeal at the hands of his torturers and says he was tricked into believing he was just playing a game of ‘doctors and nurses’.

‘I always liked playing doctors and nurses when I was a kid,’ said Roger (not his real name).

Over to Roger to tell the rest of his story.

Nazi

I received a phone call from my local hospital telling me I had an appointment with the chest consultant I’d seen before. I thought it was a bit odd, because I’d seen the surgeon who operated on me only the previous day, but I went in anyway. I felt I could trust these people after they did such a great job of fixing my lung. Anyway, when I got there, they made me wait for an hour as usual, then a pretty young student doctor asked if I minded if she sat in on my appointment? How could I say no? I could barely speak with my tongue hanging out like that. So I just nodded and wiped the dribble from the side of my mouth hoping she hadn’t noticed. When I got to see the consultant himself I thought it was a bit odd that he was wearing full Nazi regalia, but he seemed like a nice guy and to know his stuff.

‘Don’t rush back to work", he said.

‘Now, about this bronchoscopy. Don’t worry, I’m sure everything will be OK. I’m 90% sure everything’s fine. People say it tickles a little bit, but you’ll have a sedative and some local anaesthetic that they put up your nose and on the back of your throat. That will make you cough, but it’s really nothing to worry about.’

‘Fine, I’ll do it,’ I told him.

So this week I went in for my ‘bronchoscopy’. After waiting the requisite hour, I was hurried into the day surgery operating theatre by a pretty young nurse and ignored by the doctor. Another nurse made small talk with me to reassure me. I clambered on to the operating table so that I was sat upright with my legs outstretched. The second nurse put a bib on me to deal with my dribbling while the doctor chatted with his friend on his mobile.

‘Hi, I’m Dr Heydrich,’ he said to me finally.

Although I had been feeling relaxed, at this point I suddenly felt a twinge of anxiety.

‘I’m going to put some anaesthetic gel up your nose,’ he said, as he squirted anaesthetic gel up my nose.

The second nurse then stuffed a tube up my left nostril, saying, ‘Don’t worry, it’s only oxygen.’

Banana splat

I looked at her and she had donned what looked like a welder’s visor. ‘You look like you’re about to do some welding,’ I said.

‘It’s just to protect myself from any splatter,’ she replied.

Another twinge.

‘OK, open your mouth, please,’ barked Heydrich. ‘I’m going to spray some anaesthetic on the back of your throat. It tastes very strongly of bananas,’ he added, as he sprayed what tasted like banana flavoured liqueur on to the back of my throat, making me cough. ‘Just a little bit more,’ he said.

‘UURRRGGHHH!!!’ I splattered.

‘UURRRGGHHH!!! UURRRGGHHH!!!’ I repeated.

‘It’s OK,’ said the second nurse, holding my head down with her hand. ‘It makes you feel like there’s a ball in your throat and you can’t swallow.’

‘UURRRGGHHH!!! UURRRGGHHH!!!’ I repeated, desperately.

Heydrich then took what I had thought was a stethoscope and zoomed towards me with the bright flashing end of it and shoved it up my right nostril.

AARRRGGHHH!!!" I said.

‘Let’s try the other one," said Heydrich.

They swapped the oxygen for the stethoscope, which then dropped out of my traumatised right nostril.

‘AARRRGGHHH!!! AARRRGGHHH!!!’ I repeated.

That hurt even more than the right one did. The second nurse (I don’t know what the first nurse was doing, but she was there afterwards) then pushed something into my mouth, saying, ‘Open your mouth and hold it with your teeth.’

Heydrich zoomed back into view.

‘We’ll try it through the mouth’, he said, as he pushed the thick black fibre-optic tube down my throat.

‘UURRRGGHHH!!! UURRRGGHHH!!!’

I tried to cough and splutter, but my throat was numb and I couldn’t breathe. I felt like I was drowning.

‘UURRRGGHHH!!! AARRRGGHHH!!!’

I panicked and pulled the tube out, gasping for breath.

‘I can’t do it!’ I cried, literally, tears rolling down my cheeks.

‘I can’t do it. I’ll go back to work. I promise!’

Over. Roger and out.

Another Planet understands that if this pilot is successful, then the procedure will be rolled out to the rest of the UK in the coming months.

As Nick Clegg-Hess, Deputy Prime Minister, said:

‘What we need is strong, stable government. That means we must weaken and destabilise people who are not working for whatever reason and by any means necessary to get them to conform and work to pay our taxes. This is about control and maintenance of the status quo. Anyone who thinks otherwise is sadly deluded and will be dealt with accordingly. Waterboarding is an effective and reliable means of manipulating even the craziest of people to do what we want them to do. It’s in the national interest to get people off benefits and into work and we will do whatever it takes to make that happen, even if it means torturing people after they have already confessed."

On a more serious note, I’m open to suggestions for other medical procedures you’d like me to blog about. Let me know your ideas in the comments!