A post prompted in part by Mike Sivier’s excellent open letter to Angela Eagle and in part by having a few other things to share – enjoy.
INTRODUCTION
This post is a bit of a pot-pourri, although one of the links and the open letter are related.
THE OPEN LETTER AND RELATED LINK
The author of this open letter is Mike Sivier of Vox Political, on whose blog I found it. Here is the open letter in full, followed by a link to the blog post in which I found it:
Dear Ms Eagle,
As a Labour voter of many years’ standing, and a member of the party for the last six, I am writing to express my outrage at your comments following the vandalism of the Wallasey party office.
We can agree that the damage to the window – like any crime – is unacceptable. However:
How dare you claim that it was carried out by a supporter of Jeremy Corbyn, “in his name”? Do you have any evidence? Do the police already know who did it? I think not – otherwise we would no doubt have heard about it.
In fact, Mr Corbyn has made it abundantly clear – many times over the past few weeks, that he finds such behaviour abhorrent and wants members of the party to discuss their differences in a cordial manner. This leads me to my second point:
How dare you try to pontificate to the rest of the party about “bullying”, after the behaviour you have forced Mr Corbyn to endure, together with the other 170+ PLP rebels?
Look at the behaviour that has occurred in YOUR name:
Months of secret plotting against Mr Corbyn after he won the Labour leadership last year;
The intention to mislead the public into thinking the Labour ‘coup’ was prompted by Mr Corbyn’s performance in the EU referendum when it had been pre-planned over many months;
The co-ordinated, on-the-hour resignations of shadow cabinet members throughout June 26 in an effort to BULLY Mr Corbyn out of the Labour leadership;
The purchase of a web domain entitled ‘Angela4Leader’ the day before those resignations;
The hasty and unconstitutional calling and passing of a vote of ‘no confidence’ in Mr Corbyn in another attempt to BULLY him out of office;
(It has been implied that some, or indeed many, Labour MPs were BULLIED into supporting that vote)
The attempted BULLYING of Mr Corbyn himself at a Parliamentary Labour Party meeting;
The many letters by your fellow Labour MPs, trying to BULLY Mr Corbyn into resigning; and
The fabricated smear stories intended to undermine Mr Corbyn’s support among members and, again, BULLY him into resigning – including your claim today about this broken office window.
If you are serious in your claim that bullying “has absolutely no place in politics in the UK and it needs to end”, then perhaps the best way to start would be by ending your own challenge to Mr Corbyn’s leadership, submitting yourself to the mercy of your constituents who are holding a ‘no confidence’ vote on your conduct later this month, and considering your own future in politics.
I have just put up a new post on my London Transport themed website centred on the Institute of Education.
SOME NEW PHOTOS
Just a few photos that I have not previously shared:
A work colleague who knows of my interest in railwayana gave me this badge. By the way, this union was one of those amalgamated to form the Rail and Maritime Transport workers union (RMT).Moorhen with two chicks, upper Purfleet, King’s LynnI saw this near Lynn Sport on Sunday
The conclusion to my series of posts about Marxism 2016.
INTRODUCTION
Welcome to my fifth post in this series about Marxism 2016. Since Marxism adopted its current format of running from Thursday afternoon through to Monday afternoon in 2005 (before that it used run from a Friday evening to the afternoon of the following Friday) the Monday morning has usually been the quietest time of the event, before the closing rally finishes things with a flourish.
GETTING THERE AND THE PLAN
I wished to arrive early at the event so as to have time to deposit my main bag in the left luggage room for the morning and then prepare for the day. I was accompanied on this last journey in from Walthamstow to the Institute of Education by the other person who had been a guest in the house I was staying at, and who I had discovered was also autistic. We left in good time and had a very smooth journey to the event.
THE MORNING MEETINGS
My first meeting, Lewis Nielsen on What Would a Revolution Look Like? down in the drama studio was interesting, and well worth attending. The second meeting, Camilla Royle on How Big Pharma stops us making progress in Nunn Hall was excellent. As well as stuff from Bad Pharma (Ben Goldacre’s classic) she mentioned the Martin Skhreli case. This meeting was a worthy lead up to the closing rally, due to start at 2PM in the Logan Hall.
Lewis Nielsen ready for his meeting.Camilla Royle ready for action in Nunn Hall.
THE FINAL RALLY
The Final Rally was quite simply magnificent. After several prominent campaigners, including a trainee nurse and a junior doctor, the last two speeches were by Richard Boyd Barrett TD and Michael Bradley. I left during the applause at the end of Michael’s speech, wishing to retrieve my bag and leave the building reasonably swiftly. This meant that I missed the singing of the Internationale.
Some of the team, in their red t-shirts.
Sarah who helped organize the event chaired the final rally.Our firs speaker, a trainee nurse talking about what is being done to people in her position.
Junior doctor Megan Parsons addresses the final rally.Richard Boyd Barrett TD seeks to inspire by showing how Irish politics has changed out of all recognition since he joined the Irish SWP in 1989Mike Bradley making the final speech of Marxism 2016.
HOMEWARD BOUND
My departure during the applause for Mike Bradley enabled me to make a swift exit from the building, which had the extra benefit that I got to King’s Cross station at 15:37, so was able to travel back on the 15:44, which I had not expected.
An account of the Saturday at Marxism, with lots of pictures.
INTRODUCTION
First the big news – I am writing this on my own computer. Second, for this post, the third in my series on Marxism 2016 (see here and here) I will not be writing about all the meetings I attended on the Saturday, but rather setting out a brief framework of the day before concentrating on two meetings in particular.
GETTING THERE AND THE PLAN
I had my usual smooth journey in. Here is my plan for the day:
Thus, my selected meetings were: Engels and the origins of women’s oppression (Celia Hutchinson) in room 728, Precarity: minority condition or majority experience? (Kevin Doogan) in the Elvin Hall, The Anthropocene and the global economic crisis (John Bellamy Foster) in the Galleon Suite room A Royal National Hotel), After the elections: Ireland’s new politics? (Brid Smith and Richard Boyd Barrett), in the Galleon Suite room C Royal National Hotel) and The gene editing revolution – its promise and potential perils (John Parrington), Room 728.
It so happened that the two meetings in the above list that were in the Royal national Hotel were the only two that I attended there and were back to back. Regular readers will recall that the entrances to the Institute of Education building are on levels 3 and 4. Room 728 as its name suggests is on level 7, while the Elvin Hall is on level 1. There are lifts, but I am not keen on lifts and I also recognized that there were others at the event whose need for lift access is greater than my own, so this program involved a lot of stairs.
The first two meetings featured one late change – Kevin Doogan had to withdraw and was replaced as speaker by Joseph Choonara. Here are some photographs…
After the usual picnic lunch it was time for…
A VISIT TO THE ROYAL NATIONAL HOTEL
The Royal National Hotel is separated from the Institute of Education by the width of a street (albeit a central London street with all that that entails). Observation of the timetable will lead you to note that Galleon A and Galleon C but no Galleon B. This is because the Galleon Suite is divided by means of temporary partitions which are not soundproof (I have been attending incarnations of this festival since 1995, and can attest to this, as it was not always taken account of), so Galleon B (the middle of a three way partition) was used as a kind of anteroom to the other two parts of the suite, simultaneously serving as a sound-break between them. My first port of call in this building was Galleon C for…
THE ANTHROPOCENE AND THE GLOBAL ECOLOGICAL CRISIS
The basic thesis behind this talk is that the scale of human impact on our climate has already been such that we are no longer in the Holocene, the period which began about 10,000 years ago, but in the Anthropocene, the start of which is still not agreed on, with estimates of the exact point spanning the 19th century.
The term Anthropocene is not as new as you might think, having been used in the 1920s by Alexei Pavlov. What this terminology implies is that human influence (anthropo- is a Greek prefix meaning human) on the earth has become so great that human history is now driving geological history.
The speaker (and we were lucky enough to have noted author John Bellamy Foster in that role) presented a huge amount of data explaining the thinking, and left himself without enough time to explain what we should be doing about this situation. While I found this meeting interesting and sobering I was somewhat disappointed by this aspect of it.
The platform with no speakers
Abstract art at the RNHThe platform just before the start of the meeting.
PICTURES FROM GALLEON B IN BETWEEN MEETINGS
IRELAND’S NEW POLITICS?
I had been looking forward to this one since hearing Brid Smith speak at the opening rally (I already knew how good Richard Boyd Barrett was from previous years) and I was not to be disappointed. Richard Boyd Barrett (now in his second term as TD for Dun Laoghaire) and Brid Smith are both members of the Irish Dail as part of the People Not Profits coalition.
Before looking at Ireland’s new politics, a brief summary of Ireland’s old politics. For virtually the whole history of the Republic of Ireland the government of the country had swung between two right-wing conservative parties, Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, depending on which of them the Labour Party in that country chose to prop up.
So what is different now? Well both of the main parties have suffered heavy electoral losses, and one election after its best ever showing the Labour party is down to seven seats. People Before Profit has six seats, and four others are held by socialists who are not members of that coalition (this would be equivalent to having 40-50 radical left MPs at Westminster).
Ireland was forced by the EU to bail out toxic banks at a cost of 68 billion, which was clawed back by inflicting cuts on the weakest in society. Then, the EU decided it had not gone far enough in immiserating Ireland and demanded that the Irish government levy a water charge. This provoked a huge backlash, including a 250,000 strong demonstration in Dublin (equivalent, given the two countries populations to 4-5 million in London), and there is simply no way that the water charge will be made to stick.
It is not just in the Republic that things are changing rapidly (the Irish Socialist Workers Party is a cross-border organisation). There are now two People Before Profit coalition members sitting in the Stormont Parliament (Eamonn McCann and Gerry Carroll), the first two people in Stormont not be signed up as either nationalist or loyalist but as socialists pure and simple,and as part of the campaigning that brought this about they managed to have a meeting in the Shankill Road, attended by 50 people – even the most entrenched sectarianism can be broken through.
The two speakers and chair Emma Davis on the platformA second picture of the platform taken moments before the start of the meeting
BACK TO THE INSTITUTE
After the evening picnic it was time for the final meeting of the day. John Parrington gave an excellent introduction after which there was a variety of contributions from the floor. I was pleased to see Steve Silberman’s book Neurotribes (surely destined to become the standard work on autism) on display at this meeting. The homeward journey was uneventful as expected.
This one is a bit blurred – a consequence of being on an escalator travelling at London Underground standard speed of 145 feet per minute.
An account of the second day of Marxism 2016, with plenty of photos.
INTRODUCTION
This is my second post about the wonderful event that was Marxism 2016. This time I will be covering the events of Friday.
GETTING THERE
Although the first post in this series featured a shot of Walthamstow Central station the quickest way to get from the house at which I was staying to the event was by bus to Blackhorse Road station and then tube to Euston. Making my usual allowances for unforeseen (but eminently foreseeable) public transport issues I was treated to a very smooth journey, and it was barely even after nine o’clock (for a ten o’clock start) that I arrived at the Institute of Education building.
Art at the top of the escalator shaft at Blackhorse Road stationTFL advertising, Blackhorse RoadThe tiled logo at platform level (the victoria line is famous for having this feature at all of its stations)The timetable for Friday with my selections marked.
MEETING 1: AFTER THE PANAMA PAPERS – HOW THE RICH HIDE THEIR MONEY
Both of my first two meetings of the day were to take place at Nunn Hall on Level Four of the Institute of Education (the IOE has nine levels in total, with exits from the building on Levels three (street only) and four (street and back). Nunn Hall has one commanding feature – this painting, here shown flanked by posters:
The “JOIN THE SWP” poster closest to the painting as A2 size to give you an idea of the scale of the painting.
This meeting, with journalist Simon Basketter as main speaker featured powerpoint slides, some of which I have photos of. A killer stat first: 44% of global economic output is reckoned to be hidden via tax havens.
This is a real picture from 21st century London and that ferrari is gold-plated!
This is a penthouse dining suite in one of London’s newer blocks – the developers claim that it caters to all income levels, but the cheapest apartments have a price tag of £715,000 – even further removed from affordable than the Gidiot’s version.
Moving on from the third picture above, many of London’s grander properties these days are actually not really dwelling places at all but ostentatious safety deposit boxes for the super-rich.
MEETING TWO: POLITICS OF THE MIND: MARXISM AND MENTAL HEALTH
This meeting, with main speaker Beth Greenhill was excellent, and her presentation featured one of the best logos I have ever seen. I have a few photos. During the discussion which folowed the main presentation lots of stories both good and bad were told.
LUNCH TIME
Lunch time features what has become a Marxism tradition – the district picnic. London food prices being what they are, these communal picnics reduce individual expenditure quite considerably. Food and water duly consumed it was time for the afternoon sessions. I have no pictures of the food itself, but here is the symbol that denotes the presence of Norwich and East Anglia:
MEETING THREE: SHOULD WE BE IN FAVOUR OF FREE SPEECH?
After making it clear that we should be and are in favour of free speech, speaker Esme Choonara went on to talk about some recent controversies and then to talk about two particular things that have been much misused recently – the No Platform policy and the concept of a safe space.
The No Platform policy, first established in the 1970s was originally intended specifically to target fascism in the form of first the National Front, and later the BNP. It was never seen originally as being a way to deal with general disagreement.
Likewise, the concept of a safe space was developed for a specific purpose. This dates from the Vietnam War and the idea was to have places where people would not be exposed to recruiters. Again this concept should not be used to ban contrary ideas.
We favour the maximum amount of free speech possible – restricting freedom of speech is a measure of last resort.
Speaker Esme Choonara (left as you look) and chair Kambiz Boomla before the meetingEsme giving her talk.
MEETING FOUR
The verdict on this one was that it could be either.
Speaker Michael and chair Sarah before the meeting.Michael giving his talk.
THE SECOND MEAL BREAK
For the first time at Marxism, the Norwich and Eats Anglia district picnic was happening twice a day, so I got some more cheap food. I also had a look around bookmarks (for the record, I bought two new and one second-hand book there over the five days).
MEETING FIVE: FIGHTING SEXISM TODAY: MARXISM AND WOMEN’S LIBERATION
This was a splendid way to finish the day. I did not stay on that long after the end of this final meeting of the day because I was already tired, and considered it sensible to get some sleep.
Judith Orr (on the left as you look) and chair Despina immediately before the final meeting of the day.A topiary roundel near Euston station.
Bus routes in the part of London where I was stayingBlackhorse Road Station just before the bus arrived.
An account of my experiences onj the opening day of Marxism 2016, topped and tailed with details of getting there, and getting to my accommodation after the final meeting.
INTRODUCTION
Welcome to the first of what will be a series of posts about Marxism 2016, a five-day political festival that happened in London between June 30th and July 4th.
THE JOURNEY
I made my usual allowances for things to go wrong, catching the 10:54 train out of King’s Lynn. This then ran very smoothly, meaning that I had time once at the event to deposit one bag, pick up a final timetable and plan my meetings without hurry.
MEETING 1: CORBYN, THE LABOUR PARTY AND THE STRUGGLE FOR SOCIALISM
This meeting, with Mark L Thomas as speaker was scheduled for the Drama Studio on level one of the Institute of Education building. However, the numbers of people wishing to attend led to a last minute change of venue to the Elvin Hall.
The talk started, as it had to, with some stuff about the attempted coup against a leader voted for by 59.5% of the membership. The 172 PLP members who voted for the motion of no confidence in Jeremy Corbyn are vastly out of step with their membership – most are pro-austerity while their membership is anti-austerity.
One of the points made about the progress of this attempted coup was that if it succeeded Labour would have lost all claim to be regarded as democratic party – 172 highly placed individuals would have demonstrated that their opinions counted for more than those of over 250,000 who voted for Corbyn.
Mark L Thomas reckoned that the right-wingers in the PLP had two fears:
As people who depend on election results they feared that Corbyn could not win an election and…
As right wingers they feared that Corbyn could win an election (Blair himself had said opnely that he would rather lose an election than win one with Corbyn as leader).
This meeting was an excellent and inspiring start to the event. Of course since then tens of thousands of people have joine the Labour party, many stating that their reason doing so is to support Corbyn.
I will finish this section with a suggestion/ challenge: if the 172 are so confident that they are in the right why don’t they resign their seats, triggering 172 by-elections, in which they stand without the benefit of the Labour rosette against whoever the CLPs choose as the Labour party candidate? Of course the answer to this is the same as the answer to why hasn’t one of these individuals garnered 51 signatures and challenged Corbyn to a leadership battle: they know that in a fair, open fight like that they would get thrashed.
A late addition – it appears from breaking news that the Chilcot report (it is fairly obvious from the timing of the attempted coup against Corbyn that they wanted him out before Chilcot was released) is very damining – here is a snippet from a much longer piece that can be viewed here:
In its damning report the inquiry panel found:
Judgments about the severity of the threat posed by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction – WMD – were ‘presented with a certainty that was not justified’;
There was ‘little time’ to properly prepare three military brigades for deployment in Iraq, the risks were not ‘properly identified or fully exposed’ to ministers, resulting in ‘equipment shortfalls’;
Despite explicit warnings, the consequences of the invasion were under-estimated;
Planning and preparations for Iraq after Saddam’s fall were ‘wholly inadequate’;
Mr Blair’s government failed to achieve its stated objectives.
Mark L Thomas giving his talk.
MEETING 2: WOMEN, SOCIAL REPRODUCTION AND THE FAMILY
This meeting, with main speaker Sally Campbell (editor of Socialist Review magazine, and author of Rosa Luxemburg: A Rebels Guide) and chaired by Ruby Kirsch was also very interesting and lively.
Sally (left as you view the picture) and Ruby preparing for the meetingSally giving her talk
THE OPENING RALLY
Finally in terms of first day meetings came the Opening Rally, at 7PM in the Logan Hall. We heard from a variety of workers who have been involved in struggles in various places (as well as speakers from the UK this panel included an Irish TD and a French railway worker. Perhaps most impressive were Victor and Juan, two cleaners who spoke by way of a translator, and who have been part of an all out strike in the heart of the City. After all these amazing contributions Amy Leather (organiser of the Marxism festival) made the last speech. The whole thing was superbly chaired by Emma Davis, a teacher.
The whole panel of speakersEmma Davis calls the meeting to orderEmma introducing the first speaker.
ACCOMODATION
The person who had put me up last year had offered to do so again this year. Unfortunately he could not attend the opening day of the festival, so we had arranged a meeting point at the Rose and Crown on Hoe Street, which I located without undue difficulty.
I chose to use Russell Square because although I knew Euston meant a journey without changing I wanted to top my Oyster Card up and reckoned I would wait less long at Russell Square than at Euston.
A Piccadilly line train arrives
The change from Piccadilly to Victoria at Finsbury Park is cross-platform.
From here to the meeting place was about a ten-minute walk.
A contribution to the developing story of the Tory election expenses scandal. I provide three links to detailed accounts of the story so far and make a brief mention of an old case that relates to this subject.
INTRODUCTION
This is a story that has been running for months. As well as the Electoral Commission’s involvement, nine different police forces are investigating various MPs. In this post I will provide links to three versions of the story (all tally closely, and all are from national newspapers) and then quote a case from the past which indicates how seriously this kind of thing has been viewed.
THE STORY SO FAR
Here are the three links:
For the Guardian version click here. Note, that as often when dealing with a controversial story the Graun has switched off its comments section.
This case is almost a century old (I read the details in Iain Wilton’s “C B Fry: An English Hero”, where it featured because Fry was involved in the subsequent by-election). The culprit was Frank Gray’s election agent, who played fast and loose with campaign finances. Gray was as shocked as anyone when he found out what had been going on, and held his hands up. The judge in this case while praising Gray for his honesty and co-operation still considered it necessary to debar Gray from seeking public office for a period of seven years.
I never like to put up posts without a picture, so here (with apologies to any such creatures who take offence at being associated however loosely with Tory MPs) is a snail from this morning…
A celebration of the fifth anniversary of aspiblog – read, enjoy and please share!
INTRODUCTION
What does the title of this post refer to? Here, courtesy of Robert Harris, backed by Edgar Allan Poe is a clue:
The definition of lustrum from the front of Robert Harris’novel of that name.
From Edgar Allan Poe’s “Eleonora” an example of the literary use of the word lustrum.
The special significance of lustrum in the sense of a five-year period to aspiblog is that today is the fifth anniversary of aspiblog. To view the post that started it all on May 10th 2011 click here.
BLOGGING
There are many approaches to blogging. Some blogs deal almost entirely in original content, some blogs are devoted principally to sharing stuff created by others, and some like this one are a mixture of the two. I create new posts such as this when I feel I have stuff to write about and/or enough good pictures to warrant creating a post to share them.
SHARING ON A BLOG
Sharing can be done in various ways. There is the “Links” section was has been a frequent feature of this blog, which enables one to share lots of stuff in a single post. Other wordpress posts can be reblogged, and some other posts not on wordpress allow one the option of ‘pressing’ a link on to a wordpress blog (I have a ‘press this’ tool for my wordpress hosted London transport themed website www.londontu.be to enable me to post links to interesting and appropriate articles). This morning I used the press this button on Richard Murphy’s Tax Research UK blog to post a link to a piece of his speculating on the prospect of Mr Osborne being reshuffled into obscurity on June 24th and took some screen shots along the way to illustrate the process:
This is first stage, at which you merely need to press the button marked PublishYou will then see two buttons saying Customise and Edit, and it is the Edit button you want to clickAt this point, having done some simple editing and put in some tags I have opened up the ‘more options tab’ and you will notice two checked boxes indicating that at the moment I am allowing comments and trackbacks/ pingbacks…I conclude by unchecking the ‘allow comments’ box so that people who wish to comment have to visit the original and post their comments there (this is not to avoid fielding commments, but to ensure that the creator of the post gets full credit for it)
MAIN THEMES OF THE BLOG
This blog features many things, but there are several recurring themes:
Autism – I am #actuallyautistic, and although the Asperger’s Support Group that I ran for some time ultimately became a casualty of Tory funding cuts I am now on the branch committee of NAS West Norfolk.
Photography – I am a very keen photographer and invariably share pictures in my posts.
Politics – I am politically very active and I follow many political blogs/ websites.
Cricket – I am a huge fan of cricket and particularly during the summer months I will frequently have things to say about the game.
CRICKET
I spent yesterday listening to commentary of the fascinating match between Somerset and Warwickshire. While elsewhere in the country vast numbers of runs were being racked up this match was low scoring, and the better for it. The big scoring that has been such a feature of this early season is partly due to a daft playing condition introduced into the county championship whereby the visiting side can dispense with the toss if they wish to bowl first. This has resulted in a succession of pitches on which batsmen can fill their boots. There is no logic to such a playing condition – if you want to absolutely ensure that home teams cannot prepare pitches to suit themselves simply get rid of the toss altogether and award choice of innings to the visitors, although I would personally stick to having a toss for innings. If, as currently seems likely, Somerset win, they will owe it in large part to Peter Trego who in a low scoring game has amassed 94 and 51.
I heard while listening to that commentary yesterday that there are going be matches played between the North and South to give the best county players a chance to play in matches of higher standard than normal county games, taking place in the UAE in March, before the MCC v Champion County match, which I think is an excellent idea.
My next two links are both related and concern a subject close to my heart: libraries. Libraries in many parts of the country are facing cuts, and one of the areas affected is Lancashire. A campaign is running to save their libraries, and they have recently created a bit of a stir by telling their MP to stay out of it, such is their (entirely justified) lack of trust in the individual concerned. Two links for you:
No aspiblog post would be complete without a few pictures, and I choose to finish with this section…
The Erie Railroad pass now in its display placeThe top portion of the Clifton House tower.rThe top of the flagpole above Clifton House Tower, doubling up as a bird perch
I also found a way to display the Old London Bridge print.The Stories of Lynn flag – the trouble with this newly opened attraction is that at £5 the admission price is too high.
Finally to end this post a message to all my readers, and fellow bloggers who have helped to inspire me to keep this blog going…
A mention of politics, cricket and summer being here. Some good photographs as well.
INTRODUCTION
I have various things to cover, and of course pictures to share. I will work up to the pictures, covering everything else first…
LOCAL AND REGIONAL ELECTIONS
The only vote I was able to take part in was for Norfolk Police & Crime Commissioner, and although disappointed that it went the way of the Tory (by a small margin from Labour) I was pleased to see the incumbent, Mr Bett, finish a humiliating fourth.
THE LONDON MAYORAL ELECTIONS
The news from these was nearly all good. Sadiq Khan won with a record vote for any candidate in any London Mayoral election. This has probably had the added beneficial effect of ensuring that no further campaigns will be conducted under the malign influence of Sir Lizard of Oz (yes, even as the latest effort to be besmirched by his dirty pawprints was unravelling in spectacular fashion Mr Cameron was orchestrating a knighthood for him) aka Linton Crosby. Sian Berry was rewarded for the excellence of her own campaign with third place, a record vote for a Green candidate and election to the Greater London Assembly along with Caroline Russell, while Shahrar Ali just missed out on becoming a third Green GLA member.
THE OVERALL PICTURE
In the first set of elections since Jeremy Corbyn became Labour leader his party won 47% of the council seats contested while also succeeding in in two mayoral elections (Bristol as well as London) and two by-elections. For comparison during the first set of elections contested after the election as leader of Anthony B Liar Labout won 46% of the council seats contested, while in those days there were no mayoral elections.
CRICKET
The English cricket season is well under way, with some heavy scoring going on all over the country. May 9th 1895 was the day on which W G Grace played his first first class innings of that season, and just 21 days later he reached 1,000 runs for the season, the first time that feat had been achieved in May (the strict 1,000 in May has since been emulated only by Wally Hammond and Charlie Hallows, although Tom Hayward, Don Bradman (twice), Bill Edrich, Glenn Turner and Graeme Hick all reached 1,000 for the English season before June, having played some innings in April).
SUMMER IS HERE
After a somewhat patchy spring, summer appears to have started early. For the second straight day I am in shorts and t-shirt. Here are some summery photographs to end the post (in tiled mosic form – click on an individual to view at full size)…
These planes flying in chevron formation were tough to capture, and shooting upwards from ground level I probably have not done the spectacle full justice, but I was glad to have managed this much.
aspiblog 