Monaxle Photo-Walk Pictures

Back in August 2009 I participated in the photo-walk in recognition of the ordeal through which local photographer Monaxle had been put by over-zealous police. Mark Reckless, at that time just a candidate and not yet an MP, posted this concerning the incident.

At the time of the photo-walk I posted this short item with the photos themselves being stored and made publicly visible elsewhere.

Since then, that photo-hosting social media site has been taken down, so here is the full set of 35 photos I took on that occasion. Clicking on any of the following images will display a larger version (though still reduced in size from the original to be manageable on a normal computer display) and your browser's Back button then enables you to return to this page...

Music and Images from Dinotopia

This is a good reminder of the striking imagery of James Gurney's Dinotopia, which for me at least was probably the most compelling aspect of the mini-series (I was never as keen on the full episodic series) and of Trevor Jones' music, of which there are several themes in this selection...

Remembrance Sunday 2012

This year Remembrance Sunday has fallen on the 11th day of the 11th month, and as always the two minutes silence was observed at the 11th hour of this day.

I was at the War Memorial on nearby Victoria Gardens in Chatham, along with around 180 other adults and (less visibly, but only because of their height, or lack thereof) a good sixty or more younger folk, many from Scout/Cub/Guides/Cadets troupes and similar. There were a few dogs with their owners too, including one with poppies all around its collar.

We also had the local Salvation Army band, who played Abide With Me, Rule Britannia, some themes from around the United Kingdom (e.g. Men of Harlech and The Londonderry Air) and finally the National Anthem.

I carefully and respectfully took a number of photographs non-intrusively at the event itself, and another batch close to Chatham railway station as the band-led procession marched past on its way back from Victoria Gardens. Here are just a few of the more than thirty I took.

First, at the War Memorial...

Then, the parade...

Wine for Non-Techies

Tweet of the Day – 8 November 2012

From local Lib Dem blogger and twitterer Chris Sams, the 'Ginger Liberal', quoting Winston Churchill...

"Churchill once said 'if you aren't a liberal in your youth you've no heart. If you aren't a Tory later in life you've no brain'."

I hadn't encountered this before. Of course, as regular readers here will no doubt have spotted already, this echoes the sentiments I have expressed on a few occasions that – looking at the same thing from another direction – there are clues in the fact that older folk are generally more likely to vote Conservative, whereas youngsters tend on the whole to be more on the Left in their outlook including voting patterns.

It takes a rare kind of youngster to bypass that early Lefty stage – although doing so doesn't actually, in and of itself, make them 'heartless' – it's more complex than that, as life tends to be, i.e. multi-dimensional, not merely black-and-white as some (typically those with vested interests of one kind or another) like to portray such matters.

Thus, yet again from Winston, a seemingly simple enough sentence carries layers of understanding within it, and the genuinely perceptive will recognise those nuances.