I've never voted Labour before, but...

My quick, dirty and critically faulty contribution to ConservativeHome's mylabourposters campaign. Check out the website for the best examples.

"Love Clean Streets" goes live

Nigel Tyrell of LoveLewisham has recently launched LoveCleanStreets, a " site (that) allows you to review and submit environmental issues and have your local authority deal with it, and then let you know how they got on." - basically an index of the bad and the ugly in and around London, and how quick (and effective) the Council have been at making it good.

I'm genuinely looking forward to see how Cleansweep respond to this challenge.

What's going on with that?

As usual I've been remiss in my posting (though certainly not through lack of things to say and do). Tonight I would like to quickly and simply draw attention to the various groups of people rightly upset by the poorly advertised (whilst I was aware that major works would be taking place, I didn't know the full details til reading the Phantom's article last week) and (in my personal opinion) ill conceived decision to close the Blackwall Tunnel to southbound traffic from Sunday to Friday for the forseeable future.

The facebook protest group and Blackwall Tunnel Special Report blog (recognise the style sheets on it ;-) ?) articulate the case against TfL's decision succinctly, so I shan't reinvent the wheel here, but merely highlight the (sadly unreferenced) statistic that "this closure and lack of contraflow is not acceptable by 92% of local residence and tunnel users" and note that the tidal flow operated without public protest or "catastrophic fire" from 1978 to 2006, so why would reinstating a contraflow in off-peak times for a couple more years be more risky than back in 2006?

Perhaps I'm missing something glaringly obvious here, and I'm by no means a civil planning expert or someone with an army of surveyors and accident statistics at my disposal, but in my ignorance I feel the decision made here doesn't feel right.

Watch the space.

Do you like absorbing the politically banale? I do

Maybe this is for a rare hybrid of a person who a) has an unhealthier than perhaps is normal interest in politics (I'm thinking geek more than activist here) and b) a longing for the return to good old voyeuristic banale reality television as it was before producers started engineering conflict at every turn.

Eyespymp is billed as the successor to an anonymous Whitehall tweeter (executive paralysis does wonders for civil service creativity I'm sure) who was game was blown by James Kirkup in the Telegraph a little while ago.

I feel like I shouldn't enjoy it, but I do. I wonder if they had a Greenwich version what they would see? "Easton walks across road for bacon sarnie before returning to move some more paper around the Museum". Still can't be any less surprising than the thought of Eric Pickles munching doughnuts in the lift...

Well done Charlton :-)

Now don't get me wrong - I will happily admit to knowing very little about association football (I'm more of an RFU man), but since I happened to be down in Charlton delivering leaflets earlier this evening (Peninsula's boundaries stretch along the railway down past the flyover beyond Anchor and Hope Lane. Even though it's a different post code and I'm not permitted to park there, apparently I'm still allowed to put myself forward to represent there! The joys of ward boundaries.. but I digress) I had a chance to see the fans making their way to the game.

It's a warming sight, and one that takes me back to the odd occasions when I went to watch Norwich play at Carrow Road (back in the period when we were falling fast out of what was then the Barclays Premiership, we nearly always lost :-( ) - seeing groups of friends and families getting together to share a common cause.

I'm going to end this before I get accused of being oversentimental, but mainly I just wanted to say well done to Charlton on their win. :-)

Surveilling the surveillance

Returning from my Christmas shopping travels in Norwich yesterday, I passed a GATSO speed camera on Ipswich Road (the one by City College if you know it). Last few times I was in Norwich, it had been put out of use by local hooligans/vandals/vigilantes/heroes (depending on your viewpoint - my personal view is that mobile police speed controls are fairer and more effective at reducing casualties on the road, and that speed is just one of many variables affecting road safety. But I digress). Now it has been reinstated - but what caught my attention was a yellow sign on the base of the camera, stating that the camera was subject to "24hr CCTV surveillance" - the surveillance has its own surveillance!

Strange times indeed. But I wonder: just who or what's watching the camera that's watching the camera?

Viral marketing done properly...

This Australian TV advert has been pulled from the airwaves and removed from Toyota's website. Yet the fact it's made news in the papers shows the power of viral marketing. Is all publicity good publicity?

And sorry for the lack of posting recently - the usual story of work, illness and assignments I'm afraid. Hopefully normal service shall be resumed by the new year.