The week in pictures

 Week ending 28 Sept

Zelensky addresses UN





Liverpool






History repeats itself first as tragedy then as BRICS






My people

Immigrants






Hounds

Street Sleepers

 
Back at the beginning of this century, there was only one guy sleeping out in central London and everybody knew his name.  Brian Haw.

He was an anti-war campaigner who made his protest by camping in Parliament Square, much to the embarassment of the Blair Govt.  They tried vainly to get him moved on and set the Met Police on harassing him, but he persisted and became a known political figure.

Times change.  In the first decade of the century food banks proliferated, and so did rough sleeping.   Now the streets are littered with beggars and rough sleepers.  Nobody knows their names.


Tottenham Court Rd is a main thoroughfare of the W.End,  probably best known for the Dominion Theatre at the corner with Oxford St.

A walk down Tottenham Court Rd, mid-day, mid-week, and who I passed on my way.


Grafton Way, a side street at the north (aka top) end.  Turn left at the traffic lights and you're on Tottenham Ct Rd.  There's three tents there.
Around the back of this building is UCLH which involuntarily hosts an impromptu camp site.

When I was a kid and saw a tramp I'd ask my Dad who was that and what were they up to.  His reply was they were a gentleman of the road who, for their own reasons, had chosen this mode of life for a while.
Such was a very rare sighting when I was a kid.  Now it's a commonplace.


Gentleman of the road.

Gentlewoman of the road.

Bivouac outside a "retail opportunity", of which there are so many.

This spot is considered part of the American Church or, alternatively, the WWII bomb shelter (depending on your historical perspective).
As a campsite it's a near permanent fixture.  There's always five or six tents there.

A lady begging in her sleep while her dog guards her dreams.  I've seen her there for a week.  On less sunny days, the dog curls up with her.

In the evenings, on the other side of the road, the colonnade of Heals department store is shelter to more rough sleepers.

On the few occasions I've spoken to these people, they all turn out to have been rendered homeless by circumstances outside their control.


At the beginning of September, Nadhim Zahawi (former Chancellor and tax avoider) complained about rough sleeping in Mayfair, seemingly oblivious to a commonplace in London and other cities.
Tott Ct Rd is in the constituency of PM Keir Starmer who likewise appears oblivious to this symptom of a structural problem.
"It's the economy, stupid."

For over three decades we have had an economy dislocated from the needs of the population and unrecognised by politicians.

Election 2024

The strife is o'er, the battle done.

The result
Lab  412
Con 121
Lib    72

Others 45  including 5 for Reform and 4 Greens.


Labour's effective majority  157

Turnout was low at a fraction under 60%.  Labour got 34% of the vote.
So we can ball park it at 20% of the total electorate (i.e. adults) voted for them.  And probably more in anger than enthusiasm.

The Conservative and Reform votes added together make a sum greater than Labour's vote.
The next Conservative leader should have something to ponder there.


We now have a One Party State.

Over the last four years, the Labour Party leadership has become totalitarian.  The Party as it was is no more.  All reference to socialism has been purged as has the membership who advocated it.
Party policy and structure has been top led and rigid. There is no place for dissent.
It has sought funding from big finance rather than its members and trade unions.

It is also out of touch with the plain folks, who see Parliament as detached from them.  One of the reasons for the low turnout, "there's no one to vote for".

People are edgy.  They've had a long time of deteriorating standards, both indoors and out.  I foresee trouble on the streets this autumn, if the weather is fine, or in the New Year.


The inequities of the FPTP system have been glaring for a long time.  This election has shown that the 2nd and 3rd Parties combined have more support than the Governing Party.  Which latter has a majority that makes them irrelelvant.

Yeah, we live in a One Party State.  The leader of the Party displays the characteristics of a fascist but otherwise seems clueless.  His Chancellor appears incapable of arithmetic.
After 4 years of this, any Party that can put up 600 candidates on a platform of bringing in Proportional Representation within 3 years of election,  looks to be on a winner.




General Election 2024 Results
https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-10009/CBP-10009.pdf

Update.
I was taken by surprise (obv) at the outbreak of rioting less than a month after the Election.  Shows what a tinderbox the place is at the mo.

Starmer continues with his grinding of the populace.  He cannot appear in public without receiving a barrage of abuse.
I recall his wife was upset, finding the pavement in front of their house covered in children's shoes.  A demonstration by pro-Palestinian protesters.   She's gonna be even more upset by the names they are called when they appear before the public.

Farage

 

The Conservative Party is breaking up, possibly disintegrating.  None of them seem to know what Conservative should mean and there’s no unifying idea.
I blame Thatcher for this.  She sowed the seeds that led to the dysfunction of society, taking the Con Party with it.
But it’s a long story and not for now.  This is gonna be long enough.

The current collapse I credit to Cameron.
Cameron, when asked why he wanted to be Prime Minister replied “Because I think I’d be rather good at it.”  i.e. “it’s what a chap does”. 
His education omitted common sense.  It was absent in his circle, they didn’t need it.

He didn’t think much of Farage and was dismissive of UKIP "fruitcakes, loonies, and closet racists".  Rather than toss part of his electorate a bone, he chose to insult them.
He seemed to think his modern, liberal conservatism would attract more support.

In 2009, Nigel Farage became (again) leader of UKIP.  A flamboyant figure with a flair for publicity, he was forthright and plain spoken.  He held many traditional conservative values.   Much of what he said appealed to a widening constituency.

In 2010 Cameron won the Election.  But only just and, as PM, the economic reality hit him.
We had to have Austerity.  (there were other options.)
The population, who had seen wages decline in the previous decade, were now to be poorer.  The system was to be supported by grinding them down.

By 2014, UKIP were a threat to the established political order.  They had more votes in the EU elections than any other party and hence more MEPs.
The writing was clearly on the wall.
In five years Farage had turned UKIP into an electoral force.

In his election manifesto of 2015, Cameron pledged to hold a Referendum on EU membership.  This to disarm UKIP and close the splits in his Party.  If he’d had any political nous, he’d’ve come up with something that unobtrusively kicked the can down the road.


The Referendum, in 2016, didn’t turn out the way Cameron had campaigned.

Nigel Farage had wrought a constitutional change in the UK, from outside Parliament and within the law.

David Cameron had neither the grace nor the common sense to put him in the Lords for this.
It would’ve been a recognition of the achievement and put him politically out of harms way.
He would most likely have gone off to make millions on speaking tours in the States and hanging round with his Trump cohort chums.

Instead Cameron went off in a huff.  Leaving behind a mess of his own making.  He’d forbidden his Civil Servants from making contingency plans in the event of Leave winning.


The subsequent debacle was years of Parliament obstructing Brexit.  Three quarters of MPs had campaigned for Remain. They were sore losers.

Farage quit UKIP after the Ref and the party faded away.  But the anarchy in the Govt left him grumbling freelance on the outside, attracting an increasing constituency.

In the chaos of Governments we’ve had since, there were three PM resignation honours lists.  None of those PMs had the wit to stuff Farage out of the way in the Lords.  A symptom of their lack of wit of how to be a PM.

In 2018 Farage was one of the founders of the Brexit Party, which became Reform UK.  Following the recent dissolution of Parliament he became the leader of Reform.  They are standing in 608 seats.
At least the tories will have someone to vote for.  Unlike the rest of us.