A day’s work in London to finish off the week (and it did finish me off). This creation was being put together outside Holborn tube station as I passed, and was proving quite a profitable enterprise for its sculptor — justifiably.
The building works in St. Peter’s Square, Manchester, do not seem to have advanced a huge amount since they were pictured nearly a year ago (26/1/15). Never mind, they remain good photographic subjects. I like this one because it seems like a collage of shapes and textures, but there is still an underlying logic to it.
How awesome is this. I want to go and get my next tattoo at this place simply because of this mural. Which, I suppose, is the point, but it doesn’t make it any less impressive.
Good news… the Picture House has reopened. Just the balcony — visible here is the front part of the ground floor, or stalls, where now no seats remain. The heating’s not working either. But at least this particular community asset has survived.
I haven’t felt like taking many pictures over these last three days. Media coverage of natural disasters encourages us to see the flood just as a spectacle, a series of dramatic images, and all these things we do on social media are part of it. Voyeuristic citizen journalism is little different from the voyeuristic corporate kind. I wish I had something else to document, though.
This to me is the saddest sight; virtually every house and business in the town centre now has these piles of stock and/or furniture outside on the pavements, waiting to be cleared.
UK Prime Minister David Cameron today announced that he would ‘do all he could’ to help the victims of flooding across the north of England.
In June this year, his government’s Climate Change Committee warned that previously unprecedented weather events would become more common and that the UK state was not doing enough to protect its citizens from flooding. In October 2015 Cameron’s government finally responded to this, by announcing that a new flood defense and prevention strategy was “not appropriate” at this time.
In December, two days after the signing of a new international agreement in Paris, aimed at alleviating climate change, UK Chancellor George Osborne slashed all subsidies for renewable energy, while retaining them both for fracking, and for the burning of peat and heather on the moors of northern England, a land ‘management’ strategy that greatly increases run-off of water into the valleys during rain storms.
The gentleman pictured here is the owner of Paradise, a successful and long-established take-away joint in Hebden Bridge. He has just lost £30,000 worth of kitchen equipment from his business; even if he can reopen again he will have to be closed for many weeks. He was uninsured for this, not through neglect, but because the free market in insurance would not deign to cover him or other businesses in Hebden Bridge after the 2012 floods.
Calder Valley has a Conservative Member of Parliament, Craig Whittaker. His email address is craig.whittaker.mp@parliament.uk and his Twitter handle is @CWhittakerMP. I just thought I would mention these things.
Second of five days in a row where I guarantee I am not going beyond the home — pub — shop axis. Time to dig into some creative corners; I’ve had my eye on this door for a while.
Friday night in the pub – the world outside passes by, but the working week (a 6-day one for me) is over.
Why? Why are there abandoned shoes in this world, particularly just one of them, and particularly with a heel like this, right in the middle of Manchester city centre on a Wednesday morning? Who knows, but let’s make it number 3 in this occasional series…
Very, very far from being a satisfactory photo but it does sum up a terribly dull, grey and dark day, in which very little happened of note. Thus, the turn of the year etc etc.
