Back to the 80s

London politics goes retro

The French always have to go one better, don’t they? We had Konnie Huq and some burly men in tracksuits introducing the new Olympic sport of the 100 metre dash-and-beat-
up-a-hippy. It was pretty exciting stuff as our Konnie nearly had the torch wrestled off her, just as she was struggling through to the finish line.

In Paris, on the other hand, they first had riot police smashing batons into hundreds of protestors. Next, they had to extinguish the torch and put it on a bus. Finally, in a scene that could have come straight out of a Luc Besson movie, rollerblading, wall-scaling Green party members managed to hang an enormous Free Tibet poster off City Hall, forcing them to abandon the ceremony that was supposed to take place at the end of the torch’s journey.

(Incidentally… extinguishing the torch so that it could go by bus? Surely that isn’t quite right? As far as I can remember, the idea was that they lit the thing in Greece, and then it passes the spirit of the Olympics on to a fire that burns all the way through the games. Surely when they light the big flame in Beijing, it’s not going to be the sacred spirit of the Olympics burning there, it’s going to be the sacred spirit of the French safety matches they used to relight the thing.)

It’s been a good month for protestors throughout the Capital. The airport expansion lot got their extra publicity from Terminal 5 going tits up, and every child in the Capital is getting a free holiday as the teachers seem to be set on a proper one-day walkout. Along with the fact that people actually seem to care about an election, it’s like the 1980s nostalgia thing has slipped over from music and fashion into politics.

Blair is Drawn

Not really the kind of portrait Cherie Blair would want to look at over her morning cup of coffee – her husband looking decidedly worn out and preoccupied, as though the years in office have been etched into his face. Lucky, then, that the official portrait by Phil Hale will hang in the Houses of Parliament – a stark warning to Mr Brown, perhaps, and maybe an attempt by Tony to retouch his image?

Curry Crisis

One thing that you’re guaranteed if you head to Brick Lane is a curry; a choice of freshly prepared, spicy, delicious curries, at that. But now it seems London’s Indian chefs ensconced in kitchens up and down the “Curry Mile” could be under threat. Not only is there a worldwide shortage of rice (how can you have a curry without rice?), but new immigration rules could make it harder to recruit Indian chefs. Surely Britain will never stand for that!

Passage to India

Forget Paris and Brussels, that’s sooooo last season! The latest train ride to do is the 23-day one from London to Bangladesh, being described as “the world’s greatest railway journey” by er… people who love trains. By the time you get there you’ll have pretty much have used your annual leave for the entire year and there are some security concerns on the Iran-Pakistan border (apart from the fact these lines still need to be linked) but, hey, you’ll see a lot of countries whizzing past.

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