“Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails and where any one class is made to feel that society is in an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.”
Frederick Douglas, Speech on the 24th anniversary of emancipation, Washington , DC, 1886

A local resident is interviewed by a foreign correspondent while rioting is taking place around the Pembury Estate in Hackney, East London.




At present Sheldon Thomas runs his own organization The Helping Hand Trust which works directly with gang members especially around extreme teenage violence giving intensive support, mentoring and gangs mediation...

No telly so haven't seen it, but on Twitter @jennifermjones was rather caustic about Tier 1 sponsor BP's new Olympics greenwashing ad:

Oh my god. Just saw the London2012/BP advert. It is a f***ing oil company talking about blatantly greening a mega event.

As @PlatformLondon point out, BP do culture-washing too. The newly launched UK edition of HuffPo has a review, Hunt's Glass Slipper is Filling with Toxic Toes. As the title suggests it's not exactly flattering about the new Tessa, Jeremy *unt either.

But Reverend Billy is coming to cleanse them. And there was some guerilla ballet in Trafalgar Square too: BP White Swan

BP White Swan from You and I Films.

Nogoe publishes pictures of the steady takeover of Greenwich Park with more than a year to go to the Olympics.

Hitting a new low of poor taste in PR, plotholders evicted from the historic Manor Garden Allotments received an invitation from the Olympic Delivery Authority to see the 'progress' on the Olympic landscaping for which the ODA demolished their gardens three years ago. The photo on the invite is taken from a spot near the middle of the old allotment site, which stretched down to the bridge embankment in the upper left.

The watchdog which never barks the Commission for a Sustainable London 2012 has suddenly realised that it is unlikely London 2012 will deliver any health benefits just as the Guardian reports the government is about to abandon its Olympic legacy pledge of inspiring one million more people to play sport. "We've looked for evidence of previous Olympic Games or other major sporting events having an impact on health and sport participation and there isn't any tangible evidence," said the Commission's Shaun McCarthy.

Westfield Stratford beyond Bridge LO3: A view over the 2012 Olympic site towards Westfield Stratford and Bridge LO3, 3rd March 2011, taken on the 'Printers' Paradise' walk organised by Wick Curiosity Shop.

A heavily secured transit route, known as the 'Northern Retail Lifeline', is to be carved through the Olympic Park so that 4x4 drivers can be shepherded through to Westfield to do their Christmas shopping this year - while cyclists, pedestrians and public transport are banned from using the route. So much for the 'greenest Olympics ever'.

In a still from 'Going for Green', Olympic Park designer John Hopkins demonstrates the plans that spelled the end for the rabbits and their nature reserve.

Olympic Delivery Authority contractors Thurlow Countryside Management (TCM) undertook a secret mass gassing of rabbits during the clearance of nature reserves, allotments and parkland within the London 2012 construction site in 2008. The ODA had sought to systematically misrepresent the existing open space as 'industrial wasteland' and a '100-year-old rubbish tip' while claiming to be protecting the wildlife on site. This is the first evidence that wildlife incompatible with the construction plans was deliberately destroyed.

by Stuart Fuller

Here is a little secret for West Ham United and Tottenham Hotspur awaiting the decision on who will get the Olympic Stadium next week. Whisper it quietly, but football fans rarely want to watch football in an Olympic Stadium. Why do I say that? Well a simple look at similar structures around the world, built for non-football events reveals quite a bit. The prospect of an Olympic Games being awarded to a city sends them into construction meltdown, over promising and in most cases under delivering on the legacy of the games. The whole story of whether a stadium will have an athletics track or not is not a new thing. We all know that at the end of the day politics will win the day, and we have seen all sorts of stories in the past few weeks about who will do what when/if they win the bid.