Yesterday at around 3pm a group of 50 activists from Greenpeace broke onto the Parliamentary estate and climbed onto the roof of Westminster Hall to protest against what they see as a weak government position on climate change.

The protesters stayed overnight on the roof for what was quite a cold night.  During the night around half of the activists came down from the roof, with the remaining twenty or so protesters pledging to remain on the roof for at least the rest of today.

The protest was planned to coincide with MPs return to Parliament after the long summer recess.  MPs returning today for the first day of the new Parliamentary session were greeted by the protesters who were calling for the MPs to sign up to a climate change manifesto in advance of next years general election.  It was also hoped the protest would influence the government position at the upcoming Climate Change summit in Copenhagen.

So it’s election day in the UK (for the European and County Council elections).  I voted on my way to work this morning, but if you haven’t voted yet you still have 2.5 hours to get out and vote.  

Because of the recent expenses scandal in Parliament chances are turnout is going to be very low which could benefit the small parties like  UKIP and the BNP, making it even more important to use your vote – especially stop the idiots in the BNP representing this country in Europe!

OK so here are the pictures from today’s Tamil protest outside parliament as promised. It took me longer to process them than I’d expected. It also looks like I was right about the mainstream media coverage.  Considering about 1,000 people held a sit down protest outside Parliament blocking the traffic, I have seen NO coverage in the media.  I’ve had 24 hour news on most of the day and haven’t seen anything.  We’ll have to see what the papers show tomorrow.

EDIT – I stand slightly corrected.  BBC London has just briefly mentioned the protest during its 10.30 bulletin.  It couldn’t have been any shorter mention.  Unbelievably I did learn that the protest is STILL going on, with them sleeping in the street.  I think they’re planning to be there all night!

I’ve just seen one of the oddest sights i’ve seen in a while.  At the moment there are literaly hundreds of protests sat down in the middle of the road outside Parliament.  Right under Big Ben, at the junction of Westminster Bridge Road and Victoria Embankment this group of people calling for a protest in the Sri Lanka/Tamil conflict are sitting their holding their protest.  It’s quite a sight to see!

The group were originally protesting in Parliament Sqaure (I saw them there during lunch) and I guess as they finished there they moved to the street.  The police didn’t seem to fussed by the whole thing and they certainly weren’t making any attempt to move them on.  I haven’t seen any news coverage of this yet, will be interesting to see whether the main stream media will cover it all.

As soon as I finish work i’ll get the pictures up, so check back this evening.

So yesterday was Shrove  Tuesday, or to give it its more common name – Pancake Day!!  And what a great day it is, you can’t beat a day that has an in-built excuse to eat pancakes

Anyway, apart from eating plenty of pancakes another British tradition on Shrove Tuesday is the pancake race.  They happen all over the UK and are great fun.  One of the more interesting ones is the Parliamentary Pancake Race which sees teams from the House of Commons, House of Lords, and the Parliamentary Lobby (political journalists) compete for the title.  The race is in aid of the brain injury charity Rehab UK and was this year sponsored by the British Lion Eggs.

Yesterday’s race saw three teams compete, with the Media team the reigning champions.  It looked like the journalists were set for a second consecutive win, but because BBC Political Editor Nick Robinson pulled up at the last second he was just pipped to the finish line by Lib Dem Lord Redesdale who secured victory for the Lords team!

To see some of the shots in a larger format, head on over to my website

So this morning London (and much of the UK) woke up to a covering of snow.  But this wasn’t normal UK snow, that melts within minutes, this was serious deep snow.  My garden had a good 12cm possibly more!  So naturally the whole of London came to a standstill!  I still had to go to work so I set out at 7.30 hoping to take some pictures on the way.  In the end it took me nearly two hours to get to my office!  And this is a journey that normally takes just over 20 minutes.

Despite the poor state of London transport (and frankly the Mayors decision to cancel all London buses was appalling!!) I still London in snow like today.  It makes the city look so nice, like the scenes from Christmas cards.  So I wandered around Westminster snapping away.

Believe it or not (and I was pretty surprised) I even managed to come across a protest to photograph.  I’ll post that later, or tomorrow morning.