Archive for the ‘Photos’ Category

Having safely returned from our trip across Europe I’ve finally got round to adding all my photos into the photo gallery website I designed while in La Rochelle.

You should be warned now that essentially “this site is best viewed on Chris’s computer.” Ideally you need a Javascript enabled Firefox which you can run full screen on a 22″+ full HD resolution monitor hucked with a reasonably fast broadband connection. You may think to yourself this reasonably poor usability – and you’d be right. But as I have that, my friends at work have that and my parent have that, I don’t really care about anyone else. Well, not that I don’t care about you, I just don’t think it worth my time to make a usable gallery for photos you probably don’t give a crap about.

In any case, you can check out the photo gallery in all it’s beautifully transitioned jquery glory which doesn’t even look good over the internet because it takes so long to load everything and is therefore only good when viewed on a local machine anyway, but again, see above, here.

We’ve long talked about doing suit day at work. Well this week it finally happened! Now of course we’re back to “dress down year” but it was fun while it lasted.

Last weekend saw Leeds Pride 2010, stealing many of our members of Humanist Community away for the day – but we’re not bitter or anything 😉 . The event itself was good, there were stalls and some live entertainment though I have to say I was somewhat disappointed by the parade.

Having spent time at Disneyland maybe I expect too much out of parades but Gijsbert noted the same thing – even compared to St. Lois our parade was rather low effort. Most of it was just people walking around, which is rubbish, you want to see floats and coordinated dancing, and costumes. Even the floats that were there were simply people riding around on buses.

Ultimately though it probably comes down to the apathy generated by a lack of marginalisation. Gays are simply not discriminated against in the UK, it’s perfectly normal and acceptable to be gay (as it should be too!) so we simply don’t feel the need to make as much noise as they would in the US for example.

A few things did really amuse me though.

First of all, LGBT Conservatives. Lol.

Also, the fact that there were two different Christian groups – “Christians Together at Pride” and “Some Christians are Gay – Get over it!” Even if something as niche as gay Christians (or Christians suffering from “same sex attraction” as the True Freedom Trust puts it) they still manage to splinter themselves.

You can see loads more photos from Leeds Pride on my Facebook album.

While my photography skills are far too amateur for me to call myself an amateur photographer, on reviewing the photos I got back from London I was quite pleased to find that some of them turned out quite interesting, particularly those where I had managed a short depth of field utterly blurring everything but the focal points.

Lachlan having sent us over a picture of himself on the beach in Melbourne where they are currently enjoying 42 degree days we decided to enlighten him on the sudden heatwave that had hit the UK causing us to head off to the beach on Monday. A quick snaps and non involvement of Photoshop later and the email was on it’s way. You can’t tell by the pixels or anything…

Props to Vince for touching up everything slightly given the time constraints we were working under.

On Thursday myself and Kieran braved the bitter cold to go for a wander round Kirkstall Abbey. A lot of it was unfortunately closed off but we got round the main parts and the visitor’s centre which was informative if a little brief.

Myself and Ian Abbott from Lancashire Secular Humanists at the Ummah Channel studios where we were filming a debate.

As part of my aim to try new things, I gave some kind of new foodstuff a go today. It’s some kind of weird green thing that the nice lady in Co-op informs me is known as a “vegetable.” How very quaint.

Combined with the tomato ketchup I had I believe that counts as two of my five a day.

I went down to the English Defence League protest and counter-protest on Saturday to see what was going on. There were an amazing amount of police everywhere including loads of mounted police, riot police and an endless series of vans. The Manchester operation cost approximately £200,000 of tax payers money, I expect the Leeds operation cost a similar amount.

The EDL lot were based on city square where the police had them penned off with barriers across the entrances where they were letting people in and out. They had also blocked a number of roads round the area off though they didn’t seem to stop traffic going into the traps – so the most amusing point of the day was when a BMW X5 complete with a very middle class looking family found itself with nowhere to go on the one way system. As such the husband got out of the car, politely moved the cones blocking off the turned off onto Park Row, drove through them and put them back.

It was a bit dead down on the EDL side of things so I headed up to the counter demo outside the art gallery. There was far more of an atmosphere up here though I’m not convinced that drums are generally considered the sound of peace. It was a strange mix of leftist politics as you would expect, for example I’m not sure what the Stop the War Coalition has to do with any of this other than trying to hijack the event for some cheap publicity.

Not longer after I got there Revolution led a march away from the event as they tried to move towards EDL. The police soon had lines across the roads they didn’t want them to go down and they ended up down the financial district.

Having eventually nowhere else to go that would get them closer to EDL things inevitably turned ugly as Revolution charged the police line. They managed to get some people through though there was a second line of mounted officers and several police vans in support so the police eventually forced them back and they eventually gave up and marched back to the art gallery.

Wondering back down to the EDL protest it had really picked up with far more people there and a bit more atmosphere, especially when several coaches turned up bringing EDL reinforcements many of which were carrying banners. Doesn’t speak too highly for the Leeds movement if they have to bus in reinforcements but there you go.

The most enjoyable part of the day was chatting to the other amateur photographers which had turned to cover the event. Many of them had been covering such events for as long as a decade. There were some interesting lessons to be learned too. “I always follow the leftist side at these events,” one of the pro-left photographers explained. “It’s always the left that start the violence.”

Luckily on Saturday there was very little in the way of trouble – the day passed with only five arrests and no major injuries though of the clashes there were with the police I found the attitudes of those involved very disconcerting. “We could have broken through the police lines” one of the leftist supporters said. I replied “Well, I mean surely you shouldn’t do that?” “No, it would have worked, we had the number just not enough people went for it.” “No, I mean, from a moral point of view you shouldn’t be charging the police,” I tried to explain but the concept seemed lost on him.

EDL got approximately 900 people down there while the counter protest managed to get 1,500. Therefore we can conclude that only 38% of the population are in favour of fascism while the other 62% opposite it. Democracy works.

Of course, that isn’t a serious comment. Both sides are actually a bunch of fascists so the real conclusion we can draw from Saturday is that the 95.5% of the population of Leeds that didn’t attend think they are all wankers and wish they would stop wasting our tax money on huge policing operations.

Despite that though I’m glad the event happened. It is a true testament to the free and democractic society we live in when nut job organisations such as EDL, Revolution and UAF are able to speak their mind like this. It is ultimately this type of libertarianism which is so desirable that will ultimately defeat Sharia law, the object of both sides’ protests.

English Defence League crowd on city square.

The police attempt to block Revolution from marching on EDL.

Revolution charge the police line.

More EDL supporters arrive by coach.

Me and Nicola at the hospital after Tom had a bit too much to drink on Friday night.