There is plenty of blame to go around. Nobody is innocent, although the guiltiest parties will no doubt turn out to be the local Tory administration who seem - to judge by the fact that the police say that they may never know how many people died - not to even have had an updated list of the residents. How could anyone not know who lived where? And ( Read more... )

Mr. Will Crooks, as I know him in his own house at Poplar and in that other House at Westminster, always seems to me to be something far greater than a Labour Member of Parliament. He stands out as the supreme type of the English working classes, who have chosen him as one of their representatives ( Read more... )

IN the last few weeks, there have been gang murders in at least three parts where I have lived, and knew well, and felt fairly safe in - Walthamstow, Ilford and Leyton. And a few months ago, an innocent Polish woman was shot down as she found herself in the middle of a shoot-out between gangs, a couple of miles down the road from here. Last ( Read more... )

The cyber-stalking note referred to in my previous post turned up as the cherry on the cake of one of the most miserable days I had in months. As you know, I have been moving my books out of storage and into my flat. This, as a rule, involves a couple of daily journeys to the storage warehouse - which is a long way away - with a suitcase or a ( Read more... )

The big talking point in London right now is the coming above-inflation rise in bus and tube tickets announced by Mayor Livingstone. London already has the highest public transport fares in the known universe, and, in the recent mayoral elections, Livingstone had promised not to raise them above inflation - at at time when he must have known that ( Read more... )