Pink Sauce

Today, together with a few thousand people, I attended the "mass photo gathering in defence of street photography" in Tafalgar Square. A protest in response to apparently haphazard way in the which the police apply S44 of the Terrorism Act. Recently there has been several high profile cases of people getting stopped simply because they are taking pictures. Several years ago before this become so obvious, I was also stopped and searched and my details were collected, simply for walking around Whitehall and taking pictures. Months later, it was in London Bridge station that a policeman asked me to delete a picture of a hoarding I had just taken with my mobile phone for the reason that it is not allowed to take pictures of the structure of the station. Strangely nothing was said to the person using his camcorder a few metres away. Recently the European court of human rights ruled that the use of counter-terrorism stop and search powers on photographers and peace protesters was ...

Better late, than never, they say. Well, perhaps not in this case. This week, I finally got round to doing something I have been meaning to do ever since the exhibition opened and which I was very much looking forward to, due to my strong interest in the Aztec civilisation. I went to see Moctezuma, Aztec Ruler at the British Museum (BM). It closes next Saturday, so it was indeed very late but it was also rather disappointing. My first big issue about the exhibition is that, unlike the fabulous Hadrian exhibition of last year that did exactly what it said on the tin, this one is not really about Moctezuma. Despite the fact that a press release by the Museum claims that the exhibition, which is the last in the series "exploring power and empire", "is the first exhibition to examine the semi-mythical status of Moctezuma and his legacy today", it is not really about him. To be fair there is probably so little reliable information about him (ie information that has n...

If you cast your mind to 2008, you may remember that the wife of Northern Ireland's first minister, Iris Robinson, said that homosexuality was "comparable" to paedophilia and a mental illness that could be "cured". Last month, she announced that she was retiring from politics, adding that she indeed knew about mental illness, since she was a sufferer herself. And yesterday, she revealed she tried to kill herself while suffering depression after an extra-marital affair. As Newton Emerson, columnist and satirist for the Irish News, who was discussing this sorry business on Thursday morning (scroll down to 0722) on Radio4's Today, had warned us, there was more to come. The story apparently broke after a BBC investigation on the Robinson couple. The BBC Northern Ireland show, called Spotlight, revealed (iPlayer till 15 january) that Mrs "are you trying to seduce me?" Robinson got sexually involved with a 19 year old man right about the time when sh...

Probably my last picture for 2009

We learn today that two Argentinian gay men, Alejandro Freyre and Jose Maria Di Bello, had to literally go to the end of the world for the opportunity to get married (BBC News, includes video). Becoming the first gay couple in south America to get hitched, they had tried to tie the knot once already but had been denied by some "militant jusge" no doubt! But they have finally made it and all my congratulations and best wishes go to them. Once again, however, religious people are meddling with things that don't really concern them and as is so often the case, are talking through their hat in another desperate effort to keep their so-called moral ascendant. How exactly would that marriage be "an attack against the survival of the human species", as Bishop Juan Carlos of Rio Gallegos worded it, I would truly like to know. Those two men are gay, they are not going to reproduce whether they get married together or not. Furthermore their marriage is not stopping anyon...

A series of pictures of various London landmarks without cars or people, taken on Christmas day between 9.30 and 10.30am, can be found on my flickr account here . A selection of these pictures appeared in Londonist here .

When you enter a cinema showing what is reportedly the most expensive movie ever made, you have a right to expect something outstanding. And in many ways Avatar , James Cameron's latest offering is quite outstanding. Set in the future, on a fictional small earth-like planet inhabited by the na'vi people, called Pandora, the film tells the sotry of Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a disabled former marine, sent to the planet to take over his dead twin brother's avatar, a man-made human/na'vi hybrid body used to make contact with the indigenous people. The humans have discovered mineral resources on the planet that they intend to plunder but the na'vi people, who are highly in tune with their ecosystem, are in the way. Sully finds himself stranded with a na'vi tribe and gets to learn their ways and finally becomes one of them. Soon he has to choose between humanity and his adoptive people. The plot is to a large extent fairly conventional: the hero finds his true sel...

After reading some of the despicable comments left on the edition of the BBC's Have Your Say asking "Should homosexuals face execution?" (see previous post on this here and my complaint to the BBC here ). This "brilliant" piece of investigative journalism comes in the context of the debate around Uganda's proposed bill that would have enshrined death penalty for homosexual acts in law and also encourage people to snitch on others for fear of being prosecuted themselves. Although it seems that the people involved are now backing down and will remove the death penalty element from the bill in favour of "a more refined set of punishments". Without going into what is wrong with the very fact that the BBC should feel it appropriate to ask such question - Should blacks face execution?, Should Jews face execution? - I would like to answer one of the recurrent arguments I have seen (not just on the BBC's site) in that debate in response to the inter...

More seriously though , here is the text of my complaint to the BBC: How utterly heartless, disrespectful and depressing that you should think it appropriate to ask your reader if homosexual should face execution. The BBC is supposed to be a bastion of quality and I am afraid in this case the urge to give in to sensationalism has been the stronger. I trust you would never dare publish a similar request for "debate" about Jews and balck so why did you judge it legitimate to be asked about gay people? You too can complain here .

I would like to publicly congratulate the BBC News Online team for being so daring and forward thinking in setting up the edition of Have Your Say asking people if homosexuals should face execution . By doing this, the team shows how at the cutting edge of true journalism it really is, valiantly flying in the face of any moral or ethical consideration (and the fact that death penalty will probably be removed from the Ugandian bill the tabling of which started the whole story) and going straight(!) for subjects that really matter. In the same spirit I would like to suggest to you a couple of other subjects for future editions of the page which will no doubt help further and enhance your reputation as fearless seekers of the Truth. How about: "should blacks face execution?" and then I would follow up with the always popular "should Jews face execution?". I trust the team will embrace those subjects too and I am very much looking forward to reading all the enlightened...

"Everyone of average education considers it inadmissible, ill bred, and inhumane to infringe the peace, comfort, and yet more the health of others for his own pleasure. But out of a thousand smokers not one will shrink from producing unwholesome smoke in a room where the air is breathed by non-smoking women and children." Leo Tolstoy, "Why do Men Stupefy Themselves?", 1890 as an introduction to a book by his medical brother in law, Dr S P Alexeyev, Drunkenness

My pictures are here on flickr (with the photopool to share yours here ). My report for Londonist is here (please give it a star if you like it, thanks). Enjoy!

Picture illustrating the paper version of this article in the Guardian. In a fast-changing digital world in which most traditional media are struggling to adapt, BBC Radio 4 has bucked the trend, posting its highest listener numbers for a decade over the summer months. [...] Today – which has refreshed its presenter line-up over the last 18 months with Evan Davis and Justin Webb joining the breakfast programme team – gained 95,000 listeners on the previous quarter to reach 6.6m an average each week, an increase of nearly 500,000 on the same time last year. Today's 16.8% share was its highest ever. [...] With Moyles losing 679,000 listeners over the same period, his audience of 7.04m put him 718,000 adrift of Wogan compared with a 213,000 gap in the second quarter. Chris Moyles, who presents the morning show on BBC Radio 1, has made several homophobic comments on air. Evans Davies is the gay presenter of the Today programme on BBC Radio 4.

On Friday 25th September 2009, Ian Baynham, 62, and his friend were subjected to homophobic abuse in Trafalgar Square, London. When Ian challenged this unacceptable behaviour he was assaulted by three youths: two women and a man. He later died of his injuries on 13th October. On Sunday 25 Ocotber, James Parkes, 22, an off-duty trainee police officer, was set upon by a group of up to 20 teenagers in the heart of the gay quarter of Liverpool. James was with his partner, another man and a woman when he was attacked. One of his companions was punched in the face. James is now fighting for his life with multiple skull fractures and other injuries. Ian and James are sadly not alone; They are two among thousands of people who have been victims of hate crime. In London alone , 1,192 homophobic offences were reported in the year to September 09, up from 1,008 the previous year - a rise of 18.3%. That's an average of almost 3 per day! People from all communities are invited to come together...

It's all a bit hazy now but as far as I can remember, sometimes in the late 1990s, after I finally got an Internet connection (pay as go dial up, no doubt) at my parents' house in the middle of nowhere, I started looking at building my own website. Using publisher I put together a couple of pages both in French and in English and looked at a way to put them online. Lots of animated GIFs ensued... I quickly came across Geocities and Angelfire which offered webhosting for free. I am not even sure those few webpages made it online and there have been several attempt at creating my own site. In August 2001 when I took over as moderator of my newly founded reading group, I decided that a website would be useful and once again I turned towards Geocities. The site has been online ever since, though it underwent a much needed redesign in 2005, loosing the black background and the GIFs that had been the canons of amateur webdesign a few years before. For over a decade, Geocities were ne...

I spent the last two days in a computer room on the second floor of the London College of Communication (LCC), at the Elephant and Castle, a good 10 minutes walk from my garret. Having started a new job a couple of weeks ago, I am being sent to various training courses (amazingly all within walking distance of what I call home). This week's was entitled "InDesign, the fundamental". Unexpectedly I found myself seated next to one of my former colleagues at VisitBritain. Small world and all! We learnt how to create shapes, apply all sorts of rather amateurish (in our hands at least) effects (shadows, glows and embossing) to our documents, create business cards, master pages and style sheets, tables, lay out some text and insert images in the desktop publishing software that seems to have become the new professional tool (replacing Quark). We were made to collate our efforts into a sort of booklet which we then turned into a pdf file. The results of my own efforts (albeit sli...

Yesterday and for the second time this week (the first time had to do with Trafigura, and the PR-illiterate law firm Carter-Ruck trying to gag The Guardian and then Parliament (no less) around the publication of the Minton Report), Twitter and other social networking sites flexed their cyber-muscles and ostensibly made a difference in British public life. It all start with a despicable article by Daily Mail hack Jan Moir about the recent death of Stephen Gately. The article was originally titled "Why there was nothing 'natural' about Stephen Gately's death". Within half a day, a Facebook group had been created (counting close to 23,000 members at the time of this update; that's more in three days than in the past five years!), the article was retitled "A strange, lonely and troubling death..." at the same time that all adverts were removed from the page, the Press Complaint Commission's website had crashed from receiving over 21,000 complaints,...

just uploaded: my 3000th picture on flickr! View the rest of this set (an art installation in a former tram tunnel) on flickr here .

Several people expressed curiosity about that delicious concoction I invented for my pasta, so here is a little piccie so that said people get a better idea. ok, it looks more orange than pink, here but that's because I didn't put quite enough cream in (it's normally shrimpish pink). Give it a go... go on, you know you want to. (for those wondering, the yellow rectangle at the back of the plate is Emmental)

It was announced this week that Gordon Brown has officially invited Pope Ratzinger to visit UK. This he will do next year. Already, protests are announced ( in Brighton, tomorrow ) against the invitation and a Facebook group has been created for longer term action. Today Tanya Gold has published a damning summary of the Catholic Church's actions in the Guardian. Ignore the bells and the smells and the lovely Raphaels, the Pope's visit to Britain is nothing to celebrate. Gordon Brown is 'delighted', David Cameron is 'delighted'. I am 'repelled'. Read the full article here . In the meantime, the Vatican has come out with a little gem of hypocritical bad faith (!), stating "that the problems with clerical sex abuse in other churches were as big, if not bigger." I suppose that makes it ok, then. right?