The emperor's new clothes

It was very disappointing to find almost no people in the embassy today comparing to the recent parliamentary elections. One who hasn't been to polling station previous time might have thought that there still was a fair amount of people voting, especially given that not every londoner is Russian yet. But I'm only going to say that we didn't have to queue this time at all, and it took us several hours to get into the embassy back in December.

It was raining in London today, but was it a disaster? I bet it was also hot today in Dubai and chilly in Alaska. But even the usual picket on the opposite site of the road featuring some Moscow celebrities dissolved rather quickly.

I do hope people in Russia can boast stronger morale.

Russian winter - come to the embassy

Fellow Russians living in London, I really urge you to read this post: http://ponny1.livejournal.com/632205.html

We tend to be a bit snobbish towards our kind and distance ourselves from the country we came from. Well, before the recent elections there were bloody good reasons for that. But what if it's no longer the case - wouldn't that be just great?

My phone number is 07951574886. See you there.

Toy parliament, real people

I was very surprised and also impressed to find a terrific number of Russians queueing around the embassy to vote. It took us no less than two hours to get inside.

Something is surely changing. Don't know if that's for good - our nation has been tolerating the crooks currently in charge for too long, and now, I am afraid, the situation simply can't be resolved without lots of innocent people suffering regardless of the outcome (I might be too picky but I don't really like the opposition either). We're probably beyond the point where peaceful measures could have helped - e.g. there are no doubts these elections results are already being faked by this moment. It doesn't mean though that it's better to keep things as they are - obviously, that'll only make the future decisions more tough.

And frankly I'm glad that by being here I don't have to make those decisions. Yet.

There are more photos on Flickr if you're interested.

Treason & plot

Yesterday I grabbed several cycling guides from the TfL information stand at one of the Tube stations:

Somewhat to my surprise, the "mayor's introduction" on the other side of the map featured Ken Livingston's photo and signature:

Too late... or too soon?

#OccupyLSX - a week later

Protesters are still camping near the St. Paul's. The Canon welcomed the tent site five days ago but today the statement was issued asking people to leave peacefully. It was printed and distributed at the camp, and occupiers were gathering in circles to read it aloud. Then a general meeting was called, and now "consensus seems to be to stay".

The cathedral remains closed but to be honest the protesters aren't creating much mess. Everything is very well organised - there are, for example, separate rubbish bins, volunteering janitors and toilet schedules:

The main stairs and side entrances are also kept clear most of the time:

Solar panels and people offering free refreshments in convenient packages:

I might be wrong, but I'd say tourists create more problems generally for anybody wants to access the building. However, with the cathedral being shut, there were very few people just visiting, so two crowds together might be indeed creating an effective blockage.

There were some amusing Easter eggs among the endless slogans, posters, signs and stickers:

Or, for example, a leaflet which suits the Tea Party more than the OWS movement:

But these were of course exceptions. The main message remains clear:

I talked to some of the occupiers and found out that not only Londoners or even Britons were participating in the protest. People came from all over the word, so I myself eased somehow as it always feels a bit weird being a foreigner when internal affairs are being discussed. This guy was very nice to talk to, and also his outfit was fabulous:

I did some sketches of the site. There were at least four more people drawing around - thing is contagious!

***
I have also updated the Flickr set I linked to before.

"No occupation, just visiting"

An arguably copycat demo has broken out today near the St. Paul's cathedral with an intention to occupy the London Stock Exchange like the Wall Street in US is. Similar to other protests by left-wing activists which happened often in last two years, this one still introduced something new.

The narrow passages connecting the squares around the cathedral with the main streets were blocked by police as well as by private guards. The signs telling about the private status of those side streets were put outside and only tenants were let in. That was the first thing I didn't notice on the previous similar events.

Major landmark on Saturday - yes, the tourists were there and were apparently happy to see something not offered by their travel guides. As the police presence grew heavy, more an more of them were scared away but at the beginning it was a mixture of protesting locals and random people. Not as easy to make a distinction though as everybody brings a camera on demonstrations nowadays.

There were much more police than usually, clearly prepared to block all the means of getting to the building - from the very beginning the arc was already put under control, and as the crowd thickened more of them appeared proportionally.

So I'd say that the planned occupation has really happened, only the occupants were wearing uniforms.

Another successfully occupied venues were posts and railings - it was nearly impossible to find a place to chain a bike in 500m radius.

I tried to sketch, but it was hard to concentrate.

According to the most recent tweets protesters are now being kettled away. That was, I suppose, expected and doesn't mean much - what will define the success of today's action will be the number of people staying for occupation on the streets, not necessarily near the Stock Exchange. Nights became noticeably colder recently so that'd be a challenge to carry on.

You're welcome to peek into the full Flickr set if interested.

Update: BBC tells Assange was there addressing the protesters. I left too early to see him.

Navalny at LSE

Alexey Navalny, by far the most famous Russian whistleblower and lawyer was speaking today at LSE about his fight with corruption.

I was lucky to arrive earlier than I planned so I had no problems with getting in, but there were more people in the queue than it was possible to get seated and many visitors were not let into. This is quite typical for LSE public events, but I am not sure if it is still usual for the lectures being interesting almost only to foreigners. Roughly 3/4 of the audience were Russians (it was easy to measure as Navalny once asked Russian speakers to raise their hands), most of them students, most of those students from the LSE. As somebody mentioned in their Twitter ironically, the speaker was very likely talking to children of his opponents.

I haven't been to that many LSE public lectures but still this was the first one I attended organised more as an interview than as a talk. Instead of giving a speech, Navalny was answering questions asked by the host, who was reading them from the sheet of paper, eyes buried in his notes. That was when Navalny asked Russians to raise hands: "Alas, not all of you are Russian speakers so I can't speak Russian, and I'm tired talking in English", he complained.

Russian media always mention Navalny's "brilliant English". That's not true. His speech is fluent but with many grammatical mistakes seasoned with a heavy accent. It is not really his fault as he is a Russian politician and lives in Russia, and also he's simply famous enough to get invited here and there across the globe having people listening to him anyway. And my English is also far from being perfect, so how can I judge. Still, that surprised me enough to mention that.

I liked some of Navalny's points:

• In its history, Russia has never been as rich as it is now, so people generally don't mind negative aspects they face when dealing with the public institutions.
• Western societies, UK particularly, are also generally fine with filthy rich Russians, not being interested in how had they acquired their money. "There are so many people with LSE diplomas in Transneft and Rosneft, do you run a special embezzlement course here?" (host laughing).
• There is no good cop in Russian presidential tandem, as there is no bad cop either. They're both evil and even more precisely, there is only one guy who's in charge, not two of them. For the same reason it doesn't really matter who of them will "win" the next elections.
• Putin's rating is not a complete fake and he's indeed the most popular politician in the country. But his real figure is hardly higher than 35%, and when everybody learns that, it will drop significantly.

But what I didn't like today was the same attitude I didn't like in Navalny before this talk when reading his posts back in Russia.

The man on the slide above is Oleg Simakov, a supposedly corrupt Russian official, as many of them are (at least he was caught red-handed with £1.000.000 deal). But he was never named during the talk while mentioned several times, because he was always referred by Navalny only as "Mister Unibrow". That might be funny (well, for the first two or three times) but don't you find that Mr. Putin is already very good with rude jokes? Do we really need another guy with this precious talent?

I also had a chance to ask Navalny about his late political commercials showing him shooting a stereotypical immigrant with a handgun. My question was how did his beliefs change since that moment and does he regret now or proud of that activity. The answer I got was long and calm but in brief he told that yes, he's fine with that. I don't really think Navalny is a true racist or something, but I have a strong feeling he's not very picky with his methods. Whatever works, he will use. First liberal socialism in Yabloko party, then nationalism turned out to be less effective, so why don't we try corruption - oh yeah, that works. Okay, but what will be the next? I am not really comfortable with that approach, if you ask me.

There were funny moments as well. "We are not living in a better country because of ourselves", said Navalny solemnly, which, in the context given, made me giggle. Some of us are actually living in a better country, aren't we.

***

Speaking of who lives where, while standing in the line I overheard some talks between Russian students. Many of them are concerned by the new immigration rules which no longer privilege foreign UK graduates over other foreign workers, so if you don't manage to secure a job soon enough after graduating (being now handicapped by the foreign workforce limitations during your search), you have to leave. "It's actually not that bad", - said one guy - "There are much more opportunities in Moscow. Not as comfortable as London, but nothing money can't buy". And as I mentioned in the beginning, I couldn't help thinking that many corrupts targeted by Navalny reason in a very similar way.

New flags in the sky

Today after work I went to Libyan embassy to see if they're already flying the rebellion flag:

And they are:

The plaque on the wall is also covered by a sheet of paper - totally drenched though and so unreadable:

The security guard told me to go away soon as they noticed me taking pictures, and so I left.

The weather is getting worse in London and days are getting noticeably shorter already - for the first time this summer I had to turn the lights on when cycling back home. And as fall season approaches implacably I couldn't help thinking that after the rough but sunny spring the Arab world will also face its autumn soon - which might be even harder to make it through.

Free lunch not provided

I have remembered about the Rally against debt too late today (and also lost time on a train thanks to the usual London Underground excellent service), so maybe that was the reason I saw only a handful of people there. But basing on live tweets and reports I didn't miss much. When I arrived, the crowd was only that large:



Plenty of signs were piled on a lawn so while there was a possibility they've all had a protester to wield them an hour ago, more likely it was a pitiful case of supply's prevalence over demand typical for a controlled market:



I expected no young people there due to the students' recent rage over cuts, but some of them were around. The whole crowd wasn't unreservedly old, with average age around 30-35:



"Keep calm and carry on":



UKIP sign (I read on Twitter EU flag was burned earlier but didn't witness that):



A couple of random shots:





A group mocking the left-wingers:



Don't know if that impersonation was really necessary as the lefty anti-war activists were based, as always, just across the road on the Parliament square (this time demanding to, uhm, end freemasonry).

As the Old Palace Yard where the rally was organised is between the Houses of Parliament and the Westminster Abbey, there were swarms of bloody foreigners tourists wandering around and demanding the police officers overseeing the situation to pose for them. On the other hand, tourists apparently doubled the amount of attendants at any given moment.

Speaking of the place choice, the George V statue was also not very relevant as the UK national debt sky-rocketed to almost 200% GDP during his reign.

I also loved the advice on event's site telling how long would it be to get to the place by taxi. That was classy.

P.S. I caught a short glimpse of the spectacular TPA's lorry with live debt counter on its side, and I can admit it was impressive. For some reason it only made a short appearance and drove away before I managed to take a picture.

P.P.S. A coverage from a right-wing perspective: http://byrnetofferings.com/2011/05/14/why-i-didnt-attend-the-rally-against-debt/

"UK Uncut"

In last weeks many stores all over the country were forced to close temporarily by protesters because of the tax avoidance - with cuts introduced by the government hitting public sector many people are angry about private companies as well. So as I have read about a TOPSHOP flagship store being blocked at Oxford Street today, I decided to take a look.

While walking to the place one has all the opportunities to get in the proper mood:



The store is situated very close to the always-busy Oxford Circus underground station and the crowd was hardly thicker than usually on weekends. That doesn't mean though that the event wasn't popular - there were plenty of people, but the number of shoppers wandering around and crossing the x-junction was high enough for somebody unaware of the action and walking by to stay unaware of it.

However, it was nearly impossible to get into the particular blocked store:



With Christmas sales fever already started, a weekend wasted is probably a punch that even the big store can really feel:



From time to time police dragged one or two protesters away to the emptier place, apparently on random basis (at least I didn't get what was triggering their attitude):



On my way back I noticed that billboards from the photos at the beginning of this post sported usual nail polish and snacks adverts on their other sides. That's symbolic, isn't it?