Pink Sauce

Last night, I attended the pre-launch event of LGBT History Month 2008. This was the fourth event of this kind and I am pleased and proud to say that I have attended all of them. In 2004, the first ever pre-launch event took place at Tate Modern, the following year, we were at the Met Police's Empress State Building. Last year, the TUC welcomed us at Congress House and this year, we were in the grand surroundings of the hall at the Royal Courts of Justice on the Strand. This was also the event with the most guests, several hundred, I would say. After a few nibbles and drinks, people moved towards the end of the hall to take a seat and listen to the various speakers. After a quick word of welcome by the co-chairs of the Month, Sue Sanders and Paul Patrick, the Attorney General, Baroness Scotland of Asthal QC took the stage for a speech where she retraced the legal history of gay rights since 1967, highlighting the work done by Labour in fighting discrimination (read more here ). Th...

The London Gay Men's Chorus debut at the London Palladium on Sunday December the 16th 2007 with a stunning concert raising funds for the Terrence Higgins Trust. Featuring a celebrity host and special guests including West End star Alison Jiear, the evening will be an upbeat and poignant celebration of how people's experience of living with HIV and AIDS has changed. Including songs such as House Of Fun, One Night Only, Je Ne Regrette Rien and Being Alive , the evening will uphold the London Gay Men's Chorus' tradition of entertaining, informing and uplifting. Marking 25 years of the Terrence Higgins Trust, this will be a night to remember. Bring your lovers, families, friends and memories and join us in marking a quarter of a century of support, education, love, loss and life. Accentuate the Positive The London Palladium Argyll Street, London W1 7:30pm Sunday 16th December Box Office: 0870 890 0144 Tickets from £20 Performance will be BSL Interpreted www.lgmc.org.uk

Imagine your are the managing team of a big company and that you find yourself will a little spare dosh. You look around for what you can do with it and suddenly realise that, Richard Branson, the owner of your company is keen to get rid of it because, like its competitors, it is in trouble and is losing money. So you decide to buy Virgin Megastore. And because you have been working there for a while and you obviously know what a bad brand it is, that people don't like and don't recognise very well, you decide to rebrand the chain of shops with a new snazzy name that you are sure will work wonderfully: Zavvi ... I am speechless!

Salut Zefrog, I came across your blog and wondered if you'd be interested in a website I've set up called MenuLover.co.uk . I'm collecting menus for local takeaway restaurants and posting them on the site so that local people can easily find different sorts of takeaways. If you have a moment to take a look, and if the thought of takeaway food is not anathema to your French sensibilities, I'd really appreciate any comments you have. (The website's just a beta version, but hopefully it gives you a rough idea.) Also, in case you're trying to promote your blog, feel free to list it on Localmouth.com . It's (another) site I've set up which I hope will help people get more involved in their local communities. There are a few South London blogs there already, but I'm pretty sure yours would be the first gay(?) French one ;-) All the best. Cordialement, Matt

Today, I planned I attended an all day event organised by the Southwark Alliance. Or so I thought. The event was billed as their November conference. In fact it turned out to be a consultation exercise on the future of Burgess Park. The vast majority of the 60-odd people attending had no direct involvement with the Park and it seems to me it would have been more efficient to consult users of the Park and local residents. After people had been divided into groups, we were taken for a site visit of an area of the park with the instruction to put ourselves in the boots of a type of user. We walked around the area, we took pictures and registered our impressions of the park. Back to our base, we had to find words to describe the experience. Later on, we had to make a collage with pictures cut out from magazines showing our vision for the Park in 2025. That was more or less what the event was about. Because of our lack of knowledge about the park and the ares, the points we made were and ha...

I am just back from a meeting of the Southwark Anti-Homophobic Forum and I am feeling elated and disappointed at the same time. The meeting was great. Good company and good food were the least of its positive points. Yes, Columba Blango, Executive member for citizenship, equalities and communities (Lib. Dem.), had left mid-meeting during a presentation on domestic violence in the LGBT community but the whole meeting was very positive and in many ways empowering. Simon Hughes , the local MP, had suddenly remembered his (in more ways than one) communihttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifty (I have never seen him at any of our events) and was present at the meeting (although not for long), talking about working with us on several local issues and asking for advice on the current Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill and the government's proposals to introduce a new offence of incitement to hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation. This was followed by an intervention by members...

Slightly dragged me to Blackheath last night to watch the fireworks. Rather than joining the crowds gathering near where the fireworks were taking place, we decided to stand back a bit and stayed about halfway in the middle of the heath. The view was good. We apparently missed the music though. As for the fireworks, I might be getting blaze but I don't seem to have enjoyed the last few I have seen. Last night's were rather boring. This was mostly due, in my view to a lack of rhythm. There were long periods with little happening and all in all the event was a bit too long. After that we went nearby to the place of one of Slightly's friends who was having drinks. That was quite nice. I got home very late after a bus driver waving at us rather than stopping! and a punch up with police involvement on the bus I finally managed to board. Ah! Deptford!