Bradley Manning

No doubt many of us are concerned about what's happening to Private First Class Bradley Manning, the courageous whistle-blower for Wikileaks. He has now been held for over 800 days in a cell measuring 8 x 6 feet t the Marine Corps base in Quantico. He has been detained all this time without trial in conditions which the UN rapporteur describes as "torture". I've just begun subscribing to the newsletter of Courage to Resist, a US-based organisation which supports whistle-blowing soldiers. I'm also following the blog at www.bradleymanning.org.

It might be of interest to tell you that I have arranged a method of accessing the Bradley Manning blog posts via daily emails (useful because of my sight problem). Blogtrottr allows you to enter your email address and the RSS feed address for a blog you wish to follow. You can then receive updates on daily or real time basis.

Happy hunting

Colin

The Birdman flies on

On  Monday I mentioned the Birdman event in Worthing and give links to my own photos and also to the video made by a Worthing firm called Viewpress TV of the Saturday. They have now made a video of the Sunday:

Not politics but social!

Some readers may know of the annual Birdman contest here on the coast of Sussex. Nowadays this is held on Worthing Pier. You can see some photos taken yesterday of a City Synergy outing and of the café where we had a cup of tea following our exertions in the sun emulating Icarus: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hova/sets/72157631156932680. It was hot!

A video was taken by Viewpress TV and it's of good quality:

If there's a video of Day 2 (Sunday, 20 August) I'll post it later.

Exciting times

All those who are interested in freedom of speech and the exposure of what the rich and powerful are up to will be heartened by recent developments in the Julian Assange case.

Such people will be interested in the Sydney Morning Herald of 19 August 2012: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/australias-secret-assange-files-20120818-24f9c.html.

A luta continua!

Latest developments in the Skipton saga

Things are moving to a satisfactory outcome following my protest outside the main branch of the Skipton Building Society in guess which town? A second substantive article appeared in the Craven Herald of Thursday 9 August 2012:

http://www.cravenherald.co.uk/news/ocalnews/news_skipton/9864551.Happy_ending_for_blind_man_in_Skipton_Building_Society_protest

The Society and I reached agreement that they would pay what they owed me and also pull up their socks with regards to communicating with their investors and members who had declared sight problems. It was agreed that the RNIB would hold their hands on this matter and direct them towards good practice. The RNIB has been a little tardy in doing that but this is probably because it's high Summer and the relevant staff are on holiday.

I remind readers that if they want to look at my photos on my Flickr photo gallery they can access them all here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hova/sets.

Summer activities in Brighton

Life has not been dreary these last few days! I attended a successful City Synergy event in Brighton on Saturday 4 August. It was a sushi-making class. If you think this was a bit fishy, don't worry: we made veggie sushi. I had never seen, touched, smelt or eaten any sushi hitherto but on that day I did all these things and even made two of them. You can see photos on my Flickr gallery:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hova/sets/72157630969179922

On 7 August Karis and I went on one of our occasional walks and this time it was in Stanmer Park. As you can see it was very verdant and peaceful. Karis is a candidate PhD and she's doing a project examining how visually impaired people make sense of the countryside. It's easy to tell the difference between me and Karis in these photos as Karis is the elfin pretty one.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hova/sets/72157630969032628

Posh photos

Today's email post brought these two photos taken by Stephen of the Craven Herald of the Skipton protest of 24-25 July 2012. I shall point out that the chair was kindly provided by the management of the Skipton Building Society so the the Queensberry Rules prevailed.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hova/7724156578

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hova/7724155666

Exciting announcement

It's not the silly season here in Hove! No? No! Colin Bennett and his ludicrously expensive team of web developers have relaunched his website. Seriously, my website has been in a sad state for some years even though there have been links to it from my blog. There's a lot of work still to be done but the skeleton of the website is complete. In the coming weeks and months things will get even better and there will be an official launch when the small matter of the London Olympics is out of the way. The website now contains details of my main interests including my campaigning work as well as various articles I have written about my travels and travails. I have to say I'm very excited about getting all this in order as it makes more sense of how I spent a lot of the last few years. If you think the website is good please tell me. If you don't think it's good then jump in the lake!