According to figures released by the Mayor of London 31 Hackney schools exceeded legal limits for Nitrogen Dioxide in 2013.  The figures have only just been released after the previous Mayor failed to publish them.  

25 primary and 6 secondary schools in the borough are among the 443 schools in the capital exceeding the limits with Cardinal Pole School and de Beauvoir School among the worst in the borough.  

The Mayor has joined a legal action brought by…

Change in London has been overwhelmingly led by developers supported by politicans.  So much so that Londoners no longer feel our city is our own nor our home. Many can simply no longer afford to be here, threatening our families, communities and services.  Now that we have a new Mayor we need to get the message across that that needs to change and we as citizens need to be in the driving seat.  Just Space have produced a newspaper calling for ongoing effective community participation in the…

Mauritian lawyer, political activist and friend Jean Claude Bibi was interviewed by the l'express on this subject in 2012.  It's a clear statement of the difference between law and justice and demonstrates that the struggle for justice is indeed international. JCB is referring to the Mauritian system.  It should be remembered that legal aid has been cut savagely by the UK Government.  It would be good if someone could blog about…

For anyone looking for tips on how to repair things like ripped pockets, broken bra underwires and detached belt loops, WRAP have new webpages:http://loveyourclothes.org.uk/care-repair 

Could save money and favourite clothes.

Subversion, sabotage and spying: Political policing and state racism in the UK

This was the title of the extraordinary conference I attended at South Bank Uni in early April. Over 2 days speaker after speaker spoke about appalling cases of racism, subversion, dishonesty, criminality and violence by the…

It was wonderful to find my old friend Inonotus dryadeus (also known as Oak Bracket) back in Clissold on Monday. Calling a bracket fungus a friend may seem a bit weird but having not seen this amber beauty for 8 years it was joyous to rediscover it on the same veteran plum tree where it fruited in 2008. Surely knowing an organism as beautiful as this for 8…

I Tweeted (@treeruss) the above photo to advertise yesterday's bee walk and it happens to feature the first bee we saw.  This is a male Hairy Yellow-Face bee Hylaeus hylinatus. It's tiny, less than 6mm! Yesterday's male was a bit dozy, presumably due to the cold weather. It soon warmed up in the glass tube I used to show if to the assembled bee…

Where is London's economy? - take a look at Mark Brearley's analysis of just how many of London job's are outside the central area and how important safeguarding employment space is.  There needs to be a balance between land…

If you know what you are looking for it's not that hard to demonstrate the vital importance of deadwood in parks.

10 minutes at a horse chestnut stump in CLissold Park this afternoon revealled 2 new nationally scarce species for the park:

• a fungus beetle called Hallomenus binotatus Nationally Scarce…

A Hackney brewery gained popularity this winter when they joined the UK's nation-wide food waste campaign. The venture called Toast Ale and was dedicated to utilizing London's increasing amount of wasted bread. 

The…

This weekend saw the opening of the first publicly accessible wetland in Hackney at Woodberry Wetlands, and it was tremendously popular when I went along on Sunday.  Closed to the public since it was built to store water brought along the New River from Hertfordshire it was officially opened by Sir Richard Attenborough on 30th April.…

Don't forget to vote for your choice of London Mayor and GLA representatives on 5th May!

You've got three votes:

• One for your first and second choice of mayor
• Another for an assembly member to represent your local constituency (North-East London)
• A third to choose one of the 11 assembly members who represent the whole city

There's an interesting analysis of the green policies of the main mayoral candidates from Friends of…

Arriva will take over as the operator of the London Overground services from November 2016 including all the Overground services through Hackney.  The franchise will operate for 7 1/2 years with a possible additional two years.

The…

Hackney Council statement 20 April 2016

A very clever satirical short sketch by Patrick Stewart and friends, well worth watching, on the Guardian website: http://bit.ly/1SngsGF

Please sign this petition to keep our pathology lab at the Homerton.  Management committed to building a new pathology lab but the construction company have gone bust and left them with a hole in the ground.  Now our…

In "A good city has industry" Mark Brearley looks at how London is "eating itself" consuming the buildings, places and spaces that house our jobs for housing, threatening the very rich mix…

How much longer can we tolerate market-based climate change policies that clearly aren’t working? This is the central challenge in a new report from the New York-based Trade Unions for Energy Democracy, which puts carbon market under its intense spotlight. The…

Electrical recycling

The Hackney recycling service has installed extra temporary recycling points for small electrical items from 11-22nd April at: 

• Dalston C.L.R. James Library
• Clapton Library
• Hackney Central Library
• Homerton Library
• Shoreditch Library
• Stamford Hill Library
• Stoke Newington Library
• St Dominic’s Primary School, Balance Road, E9 5SR
• Gayhurst Primary School, 92 Well Street, E9…

Found Buffish Mining bee Andrena nigroaeanea on Hackney Downs last week. That's another new species for Hackney.

That brings the total to 50 confirmed species in Hackney so far; 2 new species in a week! That's getting on for 20% of all UK species. See…