This weekend saw the national Green Party’s spring conference in Liverpool and London Green Party members made a big splash at the Titanic themed Adelphi Hotel. Amid the motions and machinations that always accompany such occasions the upcoming London Assembly Elections were preying on delegates’ minds. In his Deputy Leader’s […]
With today’s news that the Occupy London Stock Exchange (or Occupy LSX to its friends) is set to be evicted it’s a good moment to assess the impact this extraordinary movement has had on politics today. As with most British cultural movements it started in America where the Occupy Wall […]
The Coalition government is having a hard time of it lately (queue a loud “ahhh” from everyone). If the Lords aren’t beating them up over their disgraceful Welfare Reform Bill then they are getting all awkward over the disgraceful NHS “reforms”. Due to a rather inactive opposition the weak link […]
At the weekend Big Smoke met up with Caroline Allen and Emma Dixon, two Green Party members and users of Hackney’s Clissold Cafe, to discuss what kind of cafe the community really needs. Clissold Park on a Saturday is dog utopia. Full to the brim of dogs charging, full tilt, […]
On Thursday the first meaningful salvo of the 2012 Assembly elections took place as the parties put forward their proposals for the Mayor’s budget. The Conservatives had already announced that they were proposing a tax cut (£3.10/year) and there were no significant surprises there. What the budget showed is that […]
“Ken Livingstone is not homophobic. His use of the word riddled has to be judged in context. It was clearly not used with any homophobic intent. All parties have lots of gay and bisexual MPs, as Ken noted. He is right to state that there were many gay MPs in […]
Sometimes a whole week goes by without hearing a peep from any of the Mayoral candidates. They are probably somewhere in London chuntering around looking for feral children to scold or non-feral children to kiss, but never-the-less at this stage of the election the general public can generally go about […]
Over the last couple of days we’ve had a wide range of responses to the video of the new Walker House CCTV camera that barks orders at you in an American accent. Many have been aghast and I’ve read the words “dystopian” and “1984” more times over the weekend than […]
Today, Saturday, Friends of the Earth held a regional gathering for activists in London and the South East to help bolster the oganisation’s capacity on the ground. The well attended event held near Finsbury Park saw activists share skills, discuss experiences and train up to help their day to day campaigning work. […]
It was only last week that Conservative Mayor Boris Johnson was telling fellow Tory Andrew Boff AM that whilst he was in charge of a “thrifty regime” he wasn’t going to be able to see his way to “cutting the precept” (the portion of our council tax that goes to […]
Never noticed this before. As strolling past Trafalgar Square I saw the statue of Charles the first....
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