Busyish day in bbkbar then to class on possible 'democratisation' via new internet associated media. Some things ring a bell eg when I was at a recent demo in Parliament Square (see http://gptublog.blogspot.com/ entry for 21/03/08 'Anti War march London 15/3/2008' ), the police tried to move back a couple of protestors behind a barrier, Brian Haw, who has been camping out in the Square as a protest against the Iraq war jumped out with a video camera to film them. I wonder if he would call this "Political disintermediation"?

STRANGE POLITICAL DONATIONS IN OBSCURE CIRCLES

Write up minutes for Brent Green Party Meeting which took place last night, the most sensitive bit is the finances ie

Brent and Harrow GP current acc’t £6.59
Brent and Harrow GP elections acc’t £0.92
Brent GP Co-op current acc’t £6.00
Expected Cheque £6.50
Total £21.04

Who can the sinister magnate who is trying to buy political influence with an 'expected cheque' in Brent be? Whoever he/she is he/she has the value of Brent Green party about right.

I SEEM TO BE DEVELOPING a TIME LAG And I'm certainly running up a sleep deficit, Sunday (18th May) was spent mainly in the Birkbeck computer rooms finishing off coursework, so no day of rest there. Then Monday was also productive, but I don't mean any Calvinist implication that that is a good thing. On the way to work a Green Party comrade rings me in a rage with another Green Party comrade who has called a meeting to clash with the all important Green Left AGM next saturday. So when I get to Birkbeck I have to compose and send various electronic Fatwas about this, and print out papers and flyers for a London Federation of Green Parties meeting that evening. To do this I have to treck round Birkbeck college searching for a computer room that is not being used for an exam and has any paper in the printer. Then more people come into the Birbeck bar wanting drinks after their exam (see below;)





so I don't get much work done on the laptop. Then I go to London Fed which is surprisingly good tempered, now that the electoral obsessives have had their fix (ie after the Greater London Authority and Mayoral elections on May 1st), we can do some real poiltics and a motion that I wrote re S.African dockers goes through unan nem con. "Gleft/London Federation of Green parties congratulates the Durban dockers of the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (Satawu), and the police trade union (POPCRU) members who supported them for turning away the Chinese arms shipment to Zimbabwe where it might be used to attack trades unionists and others engaged in the struggle for democratic rights in Zimbabwe. We note that such action would be illegal if taken by British Trades unionists and call for a restoration of the rights of British trades unionists to take solidarity action with other groups nationally and internationally." Prop P.Murry sec John Carver (PP: GPTU) Good drink in the pub afterwards too

YESTERDAY was well shitty.

The backward incompabitility of new versions of Microsoft messed up my morning plans for getting my college coursework out of the way and I've posted a draft of it to the blog so that I can aceess it from different machines by cutting and pasting it from there.

Then I went to a Campaign Against Climate Change TU group planning meeting and as I had got up early in the misguided hope of doing some coursework, I slept through half of it because I was still knackered from the unexpected rush of bar work the day before.

I might as well have stayed in bed, (that could be another title for this blog), especially since some bright spark decided to call an editorial board meeting for "Post 16 Educator", a magazine, in the forecourt of Euston station, which looked like this.

Clearly both the architect of this place and the person who decided to meet here must have assumed that Britain has something like a mediterranean climate, wishful thinking,I fear,after all this is almost mid summer.