M F

"Boyle, the Oscar-winning director of Slumdog Millionaire, spent almost four times less money and deployed roughly one-tenth as many people. But he outstripped the previous Olympic host city by flaunting what the Chinese actively suppressed. This was pageantry as jiu-jitsu. While Britain's coalition government weighs further cuts to its government-run health-care system, Boyle went out of his way to honor the National Health Service, with real NHS employees as nurses capering on hospital beds. The show also included a nod to the early-20th-century suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst and the Jarrow Marchers, who in 1936 walked more than 300 miles from County Durham to London to protest hunger and joblessness. When Boyle made a point of inviting their descendants to the proceedings, he also made a point to us." - M F

"Billions of pounds are being invested in regeneration, including new housing, however many older properties are in an appalling state and Newham Council is blaming bad landlords. There are 35,000 private rental properties in Newham and half do not meet acceptable standards, says Mr Moffatt. Of those around 5,000 are in a "diabolical" condition, he adds." - M F

I agree that bad landlords are bad but they have been allowed to get away with it. - M F

Private landlords are usually property developers with a large portfolios these days, out bidding 1st time buyers on homes, chopping them up into multiple occupancy tiny flats, then charging ridiculous rents, because they can. Also, interesting how the East End is being revamped, which is good, but Haringey is poor due to major cut backs from the government and has no money for repairs, let alone new homes :'( - Halil

"An 11-year-old boy took a flight to Rome on his own from Manchester airport without a passport or boarding pass. Liam Corcoran passed through security without being checked, before making his way on to the Jet2.com flight on Tuesday." - M F

Tired of the crappy weather? - Eivind

Possibly, he could have come to London then, it's very hot now and we have the Olympics as well - M F

"A global super-rich elite has exploited gaps in cross-border tax rules to hide an extraordinary £13 trillion ($21tn) of wealth offshore – as much as the American and Japanese GDPs put together – according to research commissioned by the campaign group Tax Justice Network. James Henry, former chief economist at consultancy McKinsey and an expert on tax havens, has compiled the most detailed estimates yet of the size of the offshore economy in a new report, The Price of Offshore Revisited, released exclusively to the Observer." - M F

it's were cameron got his money from; his dad squirreled it away in tax havens. - Winckel

"About one in every five species of mammal is a bat, which is to say, there are nearly 1,250 bat species out of about 5,700 mammal species (these numbers vary from source-to-source and time-to-time both because of the vagaries of classification and the discovery of new species)." - M F

"A New York Times journalist has written that 'low-grade grousing is [Britons'] default response to life's challenges, and part of the national condition – as integral to the country's character as its Eeyoreish attitude toward the weather'. Are Britons the worst for whingeing?" - M F

"A little more than two years ago, the Library of Congress announced it would preserve every public tweet, ever, for future generations." - M F

not completely surprising - Halil

"There are at least four good reasons to reject this argument solidly and uncompromisingly: The rules may change, it’s not you who determine if you’re guilty, laws must be broken for society to progress, and privacy is a basic human need." - M F

I wish i could like this post twice - Jeff (Team マクダジ )

Yes I was quite impressed with it - M F

Quite wise this grey bloke. - M F

"Hundreds of thousands of unsold tickets for some of the biggest events at the Olympics are being sold behind closed doors to corporate sponsors instead of the British public." - M F

What's your thoughts on Blair coming back as post Olympics sports adviser then? - Halil

I've been using a more ethical bank for over 10 years but I have to admit that due to convenience and my own laziness I have still an account with one of the big 5. Not for long though. - M F

I should really talk to the coop or someone. problem is, lots of my card use, payment and bank transfers are international, and most banks offer really lame rates/fees on that. But I should ask, who knows? - Iphigenie

"A study into the state of democracy in Britain over the last decade warns it is in "long-term terminal decline" as the power of corporations keeps growing, politicians become less representative of their constituencies and disillusioned citizens stop voting or even discussing current affairs." - M F

Scary times. - M F

"So what of Thursday's bombastic celebration of the Shard's arrival on the London skyline? It too has drawn Unesco's ire for intruding on the Tower of London and Parliament Square. It will boast its hugeness with lights and lasers, and publicists will dismiss its critics as fuddy-duddies and aesthetes, proclaiming Shards for all time as angels of growth. I suffer from having found London's skyline a thing of beauty. The views from Parliament and Primrose hills, from the parks and from bridges over the Thames offered a vista that allowed the eye to spread, with no part dominating the whole. Even St Paul's did not crush its neighbours but floated above them at just twice their height." - M F

I mostly don't like Gehry's work. =P - Andrew C (see frenf.it)

"A month from the start of the London 2012 Olympic Games, It’s worth gathering together some of the restrictions, bans, and don’t you dares which seem so essential to defining the modern Olympic spirit. While these controls have been reported individually, it’s only by stepping back and considering them together that we can hope to understand the mindset which has produced them. As we shall see, it’s a mindset governed by two impulses: greed and fear." - M F

"Scientists at the Royal Society’s annual Summer Exhibition are explaining how we can understand the visual world from an animal perspective, examining the hidden hues of some of nature's most colourful characters. "The idea is to explain why animals are the colour they are," said Dr Tom Pike from the University of Lincoln. " - M F

"Thanks to the increasingly cruel regime that now applies to benefits – which, we now know, David Cameron wants to make yet crueller – the latter seem to be increasing in number by the week, pushed into their predicament by a system that can summarily ruin lives, but offer only the most sluggish remedies by way of appeal. By and large, they remain invisible, but their fate is starting to intrude on the news media: last week, a man set himself alight outside a Birmingham jobcentre, reportedly thanks to a "dispute over benefit payments", an episode that occurred just as the Guardian was revealing rising concerns about suicides among people faced with so-called benefits "sanctions". For an intimate picture of the misery and anxiety that lies behind all this, have a look at this film by my colleague John Domokos, partly centred on a family reduced to fretting over their last dregs of electricity, and apparently surviving on a diet founded on budget baked beans. The benefits system refuses to understand that one of them is a carer, whose obligations to his ill wife mean that he cannot always make his appointments at the jobcentre." - M F

I'm very angry. - M F

Exactly, many people seem to be happy to dismantle the entire welfare system based on hearsay and anedoctes (you know the legendary woman with a bad back who does not work and gets a free car, free holidays three times a year and she practises pole vaulting in her back garden) and do not realise that they are shooting themselves in the foot. No one can say that they will never be too ill to work. - M F

"As is currently the case, migrants will then have to sit a test based on what they’ve read: according to reports, among their key challenges will be reciting the first verse of the national anthem. But what else will be in there? If only to present a slight alternative to the Theresa May/Michael Gove school of history, here are 15 questions about Britain’s past and present – and if you don’t get more than 10 right, you’ll have to send us your passport, read some more books, and then try again. Possibly." - M F

It wasn't the best doc, and the people were certainly full of BS, but I did feel sorry for the girl, she was nice and tried to fit in, but they were just horrible to her, but they were all naive imho on so many levels. - Halil

I kinda love Jeff Koons. He came and spoke when I was in art school. - Derrick

"David Cameron has once again highlighted the proposal to cut housing benefits to the under 25s, the Coalition government’s repeated protestations that the austerity measures were designed so that the nation’s ‘children’ would not have to pay for the mistakes of the adults in the financial crisis looks increasingly weak. What their patronising attitudes disregard is the fact that we are already paying for the crisis now. One of the justifications trotted for raising tuition fees is that it should increase competition and thus standards in UK universities. However, along with their additional fall in spending and universities cutting corners by laying off lectures, reducing contact hours and cutting less high demand courses, this excuse has fallen flat on its face. Similarly, the idea that young people will not be put off going to university fails to account for the idea that young graduates are now expected to work for free for six months or more after building up all that debt or in the case of workfare, simply to keep the meagre £56.25 a week they are given in benefits seemingly in order to help Tesco keep their wage cost down." - M F

"The food bank is part of a network established by the Trussell Trust, which provides individuals and families with sufficient non-perishable food for three days. They are also given a menu guide if they need help in planning basic meals. People can't just walk in off the street – they are referred and given vouchers by professionals including housing officers, social services, health workers and jobcentre advisers." - M F

"Headteachers and senior doctors are calling for needy children to receive a free breakfast at school after a Guardian survey found almost half of teachers have brought food in for pupils who arrive at school with empty stomachs. Four out of five teachers (83%) see pupils who are hungry in the morning and 55% said up to a quarter of pupils arrive having not eaten enough. More than half say the number of children involved has been rising in the past year or two, which have seen some families hit hard by the recession, unemployment and benefit cuts." - M F

As expected there are plenty of comments by people who blame the parents. There is the school of thought that says parents should not have kids that cannot afford which obviously does not take into consideration that things can go drastically wrong after the children are born. Then we have those who think that the parents are lazy/buy cigarettes instead of food/buy a plasma TV instead of food which is completely anecdotal. I think that parents who are that irresponsible are a tiny minority, in my lifetime I've only met two but it was ok as they came from middle class families and they had the money to hide their recklessness. The point is whatever the reason it is unacceptable that children in the UK in 2012 should be hungry. End of rant. - M F

Everyone can afford oats - it's usually the time to organise breakfast they don't have/can't find (or afford). Schools certainly could offer toast juice and cereal - and could probably find food lobbies willing to push their own products (eg: milk) - Iphigenie

I find this an appalling indictment of where we are as a country :-( - Winckel

"But there is more humanity and tolerance in this small part of London than the millionaires in Government could ever understand. People with nothing look out for each other, speak to each other, care for each other and help each other in ways the grasping businessmen who sneer at the poor would consider completely alien. Selfishness and greed are not virtues here. Yet these are the people that odious government ministers blame for their own poverty, ignoring the fact that the thieves in the city have stolen the entire world. Whether working for a pittance, or unemployed, whether single parents, disabled, unwell, or with poor mental health, people round here, and in thousands of other deprived areas of the country, survive despite the onslaught against the poor." - M F

"The stillness and beauty of central London are captured in these aerial photographs taken as dawn breaks over the city." - M F

"The government is to offer a blank cheque to internet and phone firms that will be required to track everyone's email, Twitter, Facebook and other internet use under legislation to be published on Thursday. The Home Office has confirmed it will foot the bill, thought to run into tens and possibly hundreds of millions, for collecting and storing the extra social media and web browsing records needed to implement the scheme, which critics have dubbed an "online snooper's charter"." - M F

Let me get this right, we no longer have money for schools and hospitals but we have money to check what people write on Twitter? - M F

"Venues where top bands started out are shutting down as rent rises and falling audiences spell crisis for gig promoters" - M F

sign of the times :-( - Winckel

new and alternative venues will be found - the hunger for live music is there. The time is gone though where gig promoters can keep most of the cash in and venues are expected to make their profit from the drinks alone. - Iphigenie

"The latest evidence from an international summit the Sutton Trust is hosting with the Carnegie Corporation in London sheds new light on these drivers. It reveals how greater income inequality leads to a cycle of ever-increasing opportunity gaps between rich and poor. At the same time, educational qualifications have increasingly become the golden tickets to the professional elites and higher earnings. And so the cycle goes on. Income inequality and educational inequality reinforce each other in an endless generational feedback loop leading to an increasingly ossified society." - M F

"Research by The Independent has established that thousands of corporate hospitality packages for the most popular days of the Games – likely to feature the likes of the sprinter Usain Bolt and the diver Tom Daley – are still unsold with just 69 days to go. With Britain slipping into a double-dip recession, companies appear unwilling to pay the typical £4,500 per ticket for blue riband events demanded by Prestige Ticketing, which has sole rights to provide business hospitality at venues." - M F

He is still only 18 - M F

"Canary Wharf has been for the last 20 years the most spectacular expression of London's transformation into a city with levels of inequality that previous generations liked to think they'd fought a war to eliminate. Very, very few of the new jobs went to those who had lost their jobs when the Port of London followed the containers to Tilbury; those that did were the most menial – cleaners, baristas, prostitutes. The new housing that emerged, first as a low-rise trickle in the 80s and 90s followed by a high-rise flood in the 00s, was without exception speculatively built. Inflated prices, dictated by the means of a captive market of bankers, soon forced up rents and mortgages in the surrounding areas, a major cause of London's current acute housing crisis." - M F

"In his witness statement to the Leveson Inquiry, MailOnline publisher Martin Clarke talked about reporting pregnancies: For instance the other month a US website broke the news of Sienna Miller’s pregnancy which was swiftly followed by all our American rivals but not by us because we don’t report pregnancies unless confirmed by the subject." - M F

That is so reassuring - M F

Friendfeed is quite chatty, actually. - Starmama

Friendfeed was my favorite, but people pay attention to me on the evil FB - MiniMage

"In successive budgets, George Osborne has slammed the door on the poor, sometimes trapping their fingers in the process. By cutting the taxes the richest people pay while simultaneously shrinking both benefits and essential social services, he has done more than any chancellor in living memory to prevent the poor from rising and the rich from sinking. That, after all, is the point of this government. It exists to secure and enhance the position of the banks, the corporations and the rich. It exists to support the system of rentier capitalism – and the inherited wealth that arises from it – that made so many members of the cabinet wealthy. This is the plutocratic class that funds the Conservative party, whose air it breathes, whose interests and opinions it shares." - M F

Very good read and excellent idea by George Monbiot, but does Gove have the guts to follow through with his convictions? More importantly, is he even allowed too, which is why he's a great orator, he sounds brilliant on BBCQT when I see him. - Halil

"Exotic warm water marine species such as anchovy, bluefin tuna, stingray, and thresher shark are spreading northwards into British coastal waters, where average sea temperatures are now moving closer to the warmer conditions of southern Europe." - M F