epolitix had this little excerpt today:
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs publishes guidance for councils on how to tackle fly-tipping by householders. “Councils have tended to concentrate on clearance. That is vital, but there needs to be more emphasis on preventing fly-tipping happening in the first place,” said environment minister Ben Bradshaw. “Prevention, coupled with coming down hard on those who are caught fly-tipping, could help reduce the problem and save money.”
Ah Ben Bradshaw - “coming down hard” what nonsense! Really - will we never get away from this obsession with punishment? oh yes you mention prevention - and how? that”s what you want to focus on my friend - forget the punishment. the reason people fly-tip is very simple: what else are you going to do? Especially if you haven”t a car in london and you know if you leave stuff “outside” someone”s gonna come and get it. in the absence of formal exchange/re-use mechanisms that are actually convenient, what the hell is anyone actually meant to do, for goodness sake? If there are freecylce type schemes or Re-use type schemes in the Borough that Councils actually supported instead of leaving for the voluntary sector to deal with - we may get actually somewhere. If Councils were really bothered, they”d have worked this out by now. So take for example the disgraceful state of re-use and recycling in Southwark - right on the GLA and Ken”s doorstep. Alongside the few recycling bins there was a textile/materials recycling thingie - it got full pretty quick,
( obviously in demand) so what do the Council do - provide some more textile bins? Nope - just take the existing one away. Very smart.
And this is how the Capital is going to hit its recycling targets? It seems ( and i”ve found this out through my work with local authorities) that basically because the whole business of recycling is so difficult for them to work out ( something to do with supply chain logistics - hmmph) and expensive, it turns out its cheaper for them to miss their targets. Right. Wonderful.
Love/Death: The Tristan Project
Now showing for free - at two venues: Haunch of Venison Yard and St. Olaf’s College - Tooley St. ( or what used to be the College) [ Adjacent to Tower Bridge Rd, London, SE1 2JR - nearest tube is London Bridge]
The Love/Death: Tristan Project is a twelve piece collaborative project with input from theatre directors and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. The exhibits range from large scale video projections with sound to smaller, silent flat screen panels.
Considered a pioneer in video art, Viola is represented by the James Cohan Gallery in New York, as well as Haunch of Venison in London. His video installations at the SF MoMA ( San Francisco Museum of Modern Art) can be still found as online exhibition features here.
“Viola’s work looks at birth and death, time and human experience. He is said to draw elements of religion into his work and has studied mysticism, Sufism, Kabbalah and Zen Buddhism.â€
Much of the work in this latest show comes from material produced for a recent production of the Wagner opera Tristan and Isolde.
The Haunch of Venison Group are an international art group representing contemporary art, based in Zurich.
The exhibition is running till the 2nd of September
Stefan Lubomirski de Vaux’s blog has photos and comments on his experience.
Zadie Smith discusses her latest book “On Beauty” at Wanstead Library this Saturday - 29th July.
This is her third novel and was published in 2005, and won the 2006 Orange Prize for Fiction. It”s been referred to in a lot of reviews as a “homage to EM Forster”.
Starts at 7.00 p.m. and tickets are £3.
**
Wanstead Library is in the London Borough of Redbridge
Spratt Hall Road
Wanstead
London
E11 2RQ
Tel: 020 8708 7400
via Daniels Counter - ( Not in the news! Tel Aviv: Anti War protest)
This was interesting - Daniel highlights the anti-war protests in Israel on Sunday 16th July - which the mainstream media hardly covered. Also on the 21st of July in Haifa.
“This featured in the Israeli papers Haaretz and Yediot Ahronot, but not on the BBC, Sky or even CNN.
Presumably the existence of a Zionist Peace and Anti War Movement movement in Israel is bad news as it does not fit not the image of ugly Zionism many have, or others who wish Israel to fight Islam for them (U.S.)?
Organizations mentioned :
Gush Shalom Israeli Peace Bloc
New Profile. Movement for the Civilization of Israel
Hadash (Wikipedia on Hadash)
Ta’ayush Israeli / Palestinian Partnership Group
Yesh Gvul (Organization for soldiers refusing to serve in Occupied territories)
The Women’s Coalition for Peace (Palestinian and Israeli)Mossawa, The Advocacy Center for Arab Citizens in Israel.
On 21st of July BBC worldservice for the first time reported on an Israeli Peace demonstration in Haifa the same day”
View photos and write up on the Gush Shalom site here
“Hundreds of thousands of people were warned to flee from southern Lebanon today as Israeli military officers indicated that final preparations were being made for a ground invasion.” Guardian
Yeah like where to? Any bright ideas?
” The UN estimated that about a half a million people had been displaced in Lebanon, with 130,000 fleeing to Syria and about 45,000 believed to be in need of assistance”.
this is all so fucking ridiculous. bloody stupid hizbollah giving the Israelis an excuse. Someone on the Comment is Free was talking about ‘miscalculation’. Well was it? Sounds like both of those entities wanted trouble and now they’ve got it. If they want to kill each other what can I say? Still they jolly well ought to think about everybody else. So selfish otherwise, isn’t it! its incredible that so many people should have to be stuck and trapped in this awful situation. Time and time again I’ve said this and I’ll say it again - can the people who want war go somewhere else like Mars or something? Talk about the tyranny of living in a collective with some stupid people. Where is one to go???! The whole school being bombed for what a couple of kids have done. Or the whole country rather.
I don’t like tanks - i don’t like looking at them or being reminded of them but i’m putting up this image. Is this something you want to wake up to - a tank facing its artillery at you or your window? Nope probably not. I’m lucky right now i’m not looking at one but i haven’t always been so lucky. I’m lucky i’m alive now, but others AREN’T as lucky. I don’t want that to be ignored. Some of us are lucky and some of us aren’t - it’s terrible.
I do feel i wish i weren’t a member of the human race at times like this.
And in the meantime if you want to see what the government is thinking, read this article here
so it all comes down to the fact that if you’re a nation-state you can do what the hell you like - it doesn’t matter - violence is ‘justified’..nation-states have given themselves a monopoly on this after all. We either condemn violence all together or we’re going to be stuck with this hypocritical violent world we’re in and we may as well acknowledge there ain’t no fucking concept of human rights.
Okay, depressing news like the world erupting into wars aside, check this out! Here in London temperatures forecast this week are in the 30’s and 37 degrees celsius on Wednesday! If that’s the case, surely we’re close to the record 38 degrees back in 2003.
Sweltering..going to have to think hard about ‘office attire’..see the A/C’s going to go on full blast, so will have to wrap up warm inside whilst of course it will be boiling outside. Ah..this is the time when jumping into a pool at lunch time sounds like a wonderful idea..
..Breaking news.. explosions on commuter trains in Mumbai. Nothing much seems to be clear yet - the BBC“s reports indicate that the first blast was at around 6 pm local time ( 1 p.m. here)
According to Sploid - there were seven separate explosions - and they also have a bit more on the recent events in Mumbai (something to do with a fuss about statues and the Shiv Sainiks..) Reuters” reports suggest about 135 deaths.
Terrible..
The Mumbai Help blog has live updates - hopefully will be helpful for those trying to get more information on their loved ones ( thanks to Neha for the tip)
Tomorrow: one year on from last year’s awful attacks here in London. It will be marked by a two-minute silence at noon - to remember the victims, and presumably - more generally - mark the tragedy of loss of life. A public ceremony is also being held in the evening at Regent’s Park.
A terribly difficult time for anyone who lost a loved one in the attack.
And in a lesser way, for Londoners who will possibly be reminded how it could have been one of them - given the vagaries of the Tube, there’s no accounting for which line you have to hop on when. Overall, it’s relevant i think to highlight and reflect on what such terrorist attacks have achieved: terror, reduction of civil liberties, mutually suspicious ‘communities’, about a million steps ‘back’ basically. What does the violence achieve - nothing. What does violence ever achieve - nothing? just further violence - a vicious cycle. in this kind of nightmarish world, it’s more important than ever to hang on to the notion of a universal human right to peace, which cannot be ‘protected’ and ‘furthered’ by violent action, but promoted through democracy and dialogue.
People talk about ‘just wars’ - to me that’s the same as justifying ‘terrorism’. there are many ‘just’ causes and ideals - but violence and war and terror are never just.
A Londoner takes a walk and reflects..
Rachel from North London writes this..
Update:
..Guardian...
“The anniversary has brought renewed calls for a public inquiry into the bombings from some survivors and relatives of the victims.
Marie Fatayi-Williams, 51, who lost her 26-year-old son Anthony in the bus bombing, yesterday added her support to the campaign. “We need to ask ourselves, almost a year on from 7/7, whether we are safer now than then,” she said.
“We need to know what led to 7/7, we need to know the real reasons behind 7/7 and other such atrocities that seem to occur on an almost daily basis the world over.”
Earlier this week, the prime minister reiterated his opposition to an inquiry, saying it was essential that the police and security services concentrated on the terrorist threat facing the country.”
A date for your diaries - the Spitalfields Green Fair is happening on Sunday the 16th of July from 12 noon - 6 p.m. at Allen Gardens (off Brick Lane) & Spitalfields City Farm - Weaver Street E2 in the Spitalfields Green quarter.
Admission is Free!
Featuring: music and dancing from around the world, acoustic yurt sustainability, biodiversity green market, organic food, fairtrade goods, stalls, rickshaw rides, street theatre and a cycling arena by Tower Hamlets Wheelers.
for more information, please ring 020 7375 0441 or download the flyer here from the alternative arts site
Undercover Surrealism explores the ’subversive climate’ of the dark undercurrent within Surrealism in the late 1920’s spearheaded by Georges Bataille. The exhibition draws together work by Picasso, Miro, Masson, Giacometti as well as imagery from the magazine Bataille edited from 1929 to 1930 called DOCUMENTS :
“..a shocking and bizarre juxtaposition of art, imagery, ethnography, archaeology and popular culture in such a way that overturned conventional notions of ‘primitive’ and ‘ideal’. Bataille described himself as Surrealism’s ‘enemy from within’… â€
The exhiition is running at the Hayward Gallery till the 30th July.
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