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pepperf · 7 months ago

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Lawyers’ offices shut down, high street shops were boarded up, GP practices closed early and MPs were told to consider working from home as 41 of the 43 local police force areas in England and Wales braced for potential disorder. About 6,000 riot-trained officers were drafted in to tackle the expected rallies and an estimated 30 counter-protests after immigration law firms and refugee centres were listed as potential targets in a far-right chat group on the encrypted messaging app Telegram. But instead, thousands of counter-protesters took to the streets of Liverpool, Birmingham, Bristol, Brighton and London to protect their communities. At 7pm in Liverpool, hundreds of people formed a human shield outside a targeted church that hosts an immigration advice centre while women held banners saying: “Nans against Nazis”. Similar scenes were witnessed in the east London boroughs of Hackney and Walthamstow as thousands of local people and anti-fascist activists came together and held placards saying “we are one human race” and “unite against hate”. In Brighton, the handful of anti-immigration protesters who gathered outside a targeted law office were surrounded by police for their own protection after they were outnumbered by about 500 counter-protesters who chanted: “Off our streets, Nazi scum.” Later, the gathering took on a street carnival atmosphere with a samba band and loud singing. But tensions flared in Aldershot in Hampshire after a group chanting “stop the boats” clashed with protesters holding “stand up to racism” placards who had been chanting “refugees are welcome here”. Dozens of police officers rushed onto the road to stop the groups from getting too close to each other. There were also reported skirmishes in Blackpool. Northamptonshire police said three people had been arrested for public order offences in Northampton, and were in custody, and no members of the public or police had been injured. The Metropolitan police said eight people had been arrested in Croydon for assaulting emergency workers, possession of offensive weapons and other offences after about 50 people gathered “to cause disruption and fuel disorder”. “They’ve dragged and thrown objects down the road and thrown bottles at officers. This is not linked to protest, this appears to be pure anti-social behaviour,” the force added on X. But by 9pm few far-right protesters were seen at the alleged targeted sites, although counter-protests continued to grow. A police source with knowledge of law enforcement’s view of the national picture said “no significant public order issues” had been reported by mid-evening, with no known events where counter protesters and the far right had turned up at the same time. The source said: “It’s not looking as widespread as expected yet but still very early.” Some 15 events across England and Wales were known of by police, mostly involving counter protesters. It was believed some far right led gatherings were taking place, though on a much smaller scale than expected.

Keep racists afraid!

#my country showed up today #uk politics #long post

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socialpracticegrouprca · 4 years ago

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‘What do our publics look like now?’

Activity with Sadie Edginton June 16th 2020

‘Here is my lockdown publics diagram developed for a workshop session, which I led with a group of students for the RCA Social Practice Group. I led a session on this again afterwards with a group of art educators and artists for a practice sharing group. Called ‘Writing the Rules for Zoom’ started by Alex Parry it was kick started by Alex’s development of ideas around this topic for a session for the social practice group in May 2020.

The diagram asks questions about different networks, communities and publics that we are communicating with and are in connection with (in the context of the first 3 months of lockdown). I developed mine through a process of creating a few drawings, into this kind of Venn diagram overlapped series of shapes. It was interesting to think about who is ‘the public’ to me, are these people I just don’t know, the ‘unknown’? Or people in various roles, networks or spaces? The process of doing it explored which groups of people I tended to identify as being ‘the public’ or which different publics and communities I was aware of being in contact with, both virtually and physically, at this time.

Putting people into ‘categories’ can of course be problematic, so it was definitely a process of thinking through this. Do publics get reduced or expanded at this time? As the people we are in touch regularly has physically changed a lot, depending where you happen to ‘lockdown’ or which networks or communities you are part of, I wondered how we can analyse and unpick possible and potential new ‘publics’ or communities to interact with, to play with as an audience or to set artwork within, or to communicate with. The delivery drivers, the supermarket workers, the people who walk past your house, these are all potential collaborators, viewers or audiences. Memorable moments in the workshops were: people identifying making regular connections with dogs (not their owners) on the beach, wondering who the people are behind newsletters in email inboxes, having the unnerving ability to ‘select’ online communities and students commenting on the ‘outsourcing’ of care and being able to be in a position of selecting which people or networks they wanted to hear from, speak to, listen to at this time.

It was a process of conceptualising the connections and groups as new communities, to seeing potential works coming out of unexpected daily relationships created by the change in social networks due to the pandemic. To see who or how we communicate in terms of varying distances. One artist commented that it made her think about the varying distances of intimacy that she has now with different people, a shorter distance with a partner, then family members, growing to huge distances, from 1 metre to 2 metre’s, to online distances that stretch across the world.’

More about the session below:

Social Practice Group Session 6, Tuesday 16th June 2020

Notes written: 22/06/2020 by Sadie Edginton

We wanted the last social practice session to be different. After experiencing other practitioners work over the weeks, we wanted the emphasis to be turned onto the students, to create some have room for them to try out their own ideas and to experiment with the format. The group had grown to become a space which felt comfortable, some recognisable faces every week, although there was always a few new people which worked well. Everyone could potentially test out ideas within the safety of the online zoom session format. It seemed to have become important that the group had evolved into a sense of familiarity whilst maintaining the possibility for unexpected things occurring. One student said, that was what she like about this group, that it was one place she could go knowing something surprising might happen. With some students returning often and creating a general sense of being relaxed, the group had created a comfortable sharing space, where people could voice their ideas, share thoughts about where they were, and most seemed open to trying new things out.

We had been playing with this space for the last few months since the beginning of lockdown. This was the sixth session and last (official) session of the school year. We'd had sessions by Louise Shelley, a curator; about group listening and reading processes, Alex Parry led us through a playful workshop stretching the rules for zoom, and Tim tried out his laptop-synthesiser experiment creating collective sounds out of objects in our homes with students now based across the globe overlapping their object orchestras into a magical din.

I had missed a session two weeks before where the group had had an informal conversation about what they'd like to try out. We'd had some interesting feedback too where students had said they felt like this space for sharing and practicing was needed, and it seemed to open-up space for vulnerability (through sharing) and support.

I had planned a vague structure for the last session, I would introduce, do a check-in so that everyone had a chance to speak and do a half hour workshop about mapping the publics and communities we were connecting with now (and how this has changed during lockdown).

There was then time for three students slots; Sally's workshop on confronting the awkwardnesses of online communication, followed by a 5 minute break, then Kats workshop about the taste and other sense. Everything went over time-wise so there was only 10 minutes left for Yuka to play us her experiments with the spatiality of sound.

We started by going around the group using these two questions for a check-in.

'What does 'the public' look like, from where you are now?'

'How are you connecting to a community?'

These questions were borrowed from a recording of a discussion here: http://www.nowandthere.org/blog/2020/4/7/nt-asks-what-does-public-mean-right-now

It was interesting to hear about where the students were based, most in the UK, then China, Japan and Paris. We had seven students and Hannah and I, so altogether it worked well for creating a grid of nine on the gallery view on zoom. As we went around the group I was struck how each student shared with us a detailed picture of how they were in unexpected circumstances and feeling isolated. Some had just travelled to another place, and were stuck living mostly inside and with family, they were not sure about what a local community might look like. One had discovered new communities through volunteering for local mutual aid groups, Hannah mentioned working with existing connections to create networks of in different ways, new connections with animals and birds seeming to be important. Some international students admitted they didn't feel like they had a community, whether they were in London, or back home. One said she felt like there were layers of community, from those close by who were a local support system, then the online groups she was part of, and then her family members who were contactable by phone. Another student said that communities felt ‘chosen’ at the moment; that you could select who you wanted to be in touch with, and it was almost a way of ‘outsourcing care’. Another mentioned that new rituals had emerged in her local village neighbourhood, kicked off by the Thursday clap for carers, leading to local people creating other ways to come together in the street, such as VE day where they set-up tables outside. Another student said it was so long since he had been in Beijing, now that he was back there again, he had to try to find people again who he had known a long time ago.

Next we created 'What do our publics look like now?' diagrams. Attempting to get away from a formal 'pdf' presentation, I sketched out the questions and stages of the diagram drawing onto paper beforehand, and held them up to the screen. I asked everyone to draw a square or circle and inside it to list groups of people, categories of people that they were seeing in real life, in 'physical space'.

I was interested in what different or new groups of people were identified, in the lock-down. For instance I was not staying where I usually live and discovered that I was coming into contact with; next-door neighbours, people who walk past the house, the vet, the nurse at the GP, dog walker friends and dogs who were our dogs friends, delivery drivers, shop-keepers and the public we see on walks. This changed again when I went back to London.

We drew overlapping bubbles and listed those we connected with through 'virtual' connections, then 'phone calls', emails, social media, and letters.

The idea was to then circle in a different colour, those categories of people who you didn't know. Or who you saw as 'the public'. I was intrigued as to if it could be used to locate a new audience/ public for an artwork, project or workshop.

Practice diagram by my mum, Sue Edginton

Holding up my publics diagram to the screen

Reflection: We did the activity a bit too quickly, as it turned out it takes a long time to think through all of this, and I did not have time to get proper feedback afterwards. I showed a few slides about this idea of the physical public becoming much closer, smaller and local, and then the opposite happening with the virtual public where it really expands to include an international community. The publics or groups I was working working with or had contact with still, had really changed too. From working in schools and care homes with lots of people and children face-to-face, this has changed. Now I was just in touch with people via zoom calls or colleagues via the phone, and all the work with children and elders had been put on hold for now. Where were all the people and how were they right now, what were they doing? A lot of people I talked to who work in the community found themselves asking similar questions.

Museum of the Street by Louise Ashcroft and her local neighbourhood, Walthamstow, London, May 2020

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vespaporn · 4 years ago

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WHEELS

It Looks Like a Vespa, Rides Like a Vespa, but Doesn’t Smell Like a Vespa

An Irish mechanic in London has developed a kit to transform classic Italian scooters into clean-riding electric machines.

By Nick Czap

April 1, 2021, 6:00 a.m. ET

Among the iconic designs of Italy’s vibrant postwar period, few capture the essence of La Dolce Vita like Vespas and Lambrettas, the free-spirited motor scooters that brought mobility to the masses and became beloved across Italy, and subsequently, the world.

While the two companies still make scooters, those early models — whose whining two-stroke engines spew plumes of aromatic smoke — are by far the most sought by collectors, some commanding up to $30,000.

But just as vintage scooters are reaching a new peak of popularity, a wave of emissions regulations aimed at reducing pollution threatens their access to Europe’s city centers. Within every regulation, though, lies an opportunity, and one lifelong scooter enthusiast has seized it firmly by the tailpipe.

Niall McCart, an Irishman from the city of Armagh, got his first Vespa at 16. De rigueur for a youth swept up in Britain’s early-1980s Mod revival, the Vespa was eminently practical as well.

“A two-stroke is a very simple mechanical structure,” Mr. McCart said, with a modesty common to the mechanically gifted. “I could fix it with a screwdriver and a hammer” — an ability that would eventually serve him well on rallies along the English coast, and on extended tours of Europe and India.

In 1989, at the age of 21, Mr. McCart moved to London, where, after stints in the building trade and delivering packages on a Vespa, he began working as a mechanic at a scooter shop. In 2000, he opened his own concern in a garden shed. Today, his business, Retrospective Scooters, occupies a 3,500-square-foot warehouse in the East End town of Walthamstow.

As Mr. McCart’s business grew, so did restrictions on older vehicles. The European Union’s first Low Emission Zones were established in 1996. By 2018, there were over 260, and still rising.

London has one such zone, as well as an extra-stringent Ultra Low Emission Zone, in the city center. Introduced in April 2019, the more stringent zone will expand substantially this October. To drive inside it, owners of polluting scooters must pay a daily fee of 12.50 pounds (about $17). Failure to pay can result in a hefty fine.

In 2017, with the end of cheap and dirty scootering looming, Mr. McCart posed a question to a friend and fellow scooter enthusiast, John Chubb: “Wouldn’t it be great if we could make our old Vespas electric?”

Mr. Chubb recalled the moment vividly. “We were sitting in a tent in a music festival in Cornwall, and he was saying the future is electric. I said, ‘I reckon I could build one of those.’”

He could also bring a raft of technical competencies to the project. A retired Royal Navy commander with degrees in electrical engineering and rocket science, Mr. Chubb is also an expert in anti-ship missiles, a qualification whose benefit, though perhaps unquantifiable, couldn’t hurt.

Mr. McCart’s brief was explicit. The conversion “was not to interfere in any way with the original design and setup of the scooters,” he said. “You don’t do any cutting or welding or destruction of the original chassis.” And critically important for preserving a scooter’s value, the process had to be reversible.

An encounter with a Chinese manufacturer at a motorcycle show in Milan in 2017 proved instrumental.

“The Chinese have been riding electric scooters for 15 years-plus,” Mr. McCart said. “They’ve done it and made it and perfected it. They had it all laid out.”

Mr. Chubb, meanwhile, hobnobbed with the chief technical officer of QS Motor, a firm in Zhejiang Province that makes motors for electric scooters and e-bikes.

“We had a really good conversation,” Mr. Chubb said. “I’d done a whole load of first-principles calculations about the power of an electric motor and how that would work in an electric scooter. I saw all his equations, and he and I did it exactly the same way.

“Seeing that data was very interesting,” he continued, “because we knew exactly where the sweet spot was in terms of the specifications of what we wanted to run as a motor, and we could run it more or less to optimum efficiency.”

Mr. McCart and Mr. Chubb devised the basic plan: Pull the gas tank and put a lithium-ion battery in its place, and replace the scooter’s original swing arm (which supports the engine and rear wheel) with a custom-made swing arm that holds a wheel with a built-in hub motor.

Mr. Chubb set to work on the prototype, meeting periodically with Mr. McCart, who fine-tuned various components. In June 2018, Mr. McCart unveiled their creation — an electrified 1976 Vespa Primavera — at the Vespa World Days rally in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

The initial reaction was skeptical. “These guys were purists,” Mr. McCart said. “They were against it when they seen it,” he recalled, “but as soon as they drove it to the other end of the car park and back again, they had the biggest grin on their face.”

One rider made a pivotal suggestion: “You’ve got to sell it as a kit.” Mr. McCart, who had planned to offer electric conversions only as a service, embraced the idea. “I thought, ‘He’s right. I’ve got to make it really simple.’ The next step was to try and make a plug-and-play kit.”

Three years later, Retrospective Scooters sells kits for five types of vintage Vespas and Lambrettas. Costing £3,445 (about $4,750), each includes a 64-volt, 28-amp-hour battery that can push a scooter to a top speed of 50 miles an hour and go 30 to 35 miles on a charge.

Certain scooters can accommodate two or three batteries. A Lambretta GP for instance, packed with three lithium-ion units, can go 120 miles between charges. Mr. McCart, though, thinks a single battery is sufficient.

“Let’s not forget what scooters were invented for — traveling in a 20-to-30-mile radius of where you lived,” he said.

To date, Mr. McCart has sold 60 kits — 24 in Britain (20 of them installed at his shop), and 36 to customers overseas, mostly, and somewhat surprisingly to Mr. McCart, in the United States.

“I expected more to go into Europe,” he said, “but there’s quite a lot of bureaucracy and official inspections of any vehicle alterations, so there’s really no incentive for Europeans to buy our kit with all that up against them.

Last summer, Danny Montoya, the owner of a children’s woodworking studio in San Francisco, installed a kit in his 1973 Vespa Rally 180. Mr. Montoya had owned the scooter since 1999, but in recent years had grown uneasy with its pollution, not to mention the constant reek of petroleum.

A capable do-it-yourselfer, he initially considered cobbling together his own electric kit with information gleaned from internet message boards, but when he came across Mr. McCart’s, he said, he thought: “Whoa, this guy has actually done the work.” Although the price gave him pause, after corresponding with Mr. McCart, who promised to assist with any technical issues, Mr. Montoya said, “OK, this is legit.”

Mr. Montoya estimates he spent 20 to 30 hours on the project, the most complex part of which, he said, was ensuring that all of the electrical connections were correct. Mr. McCart acknowledges that at the time, in late 2020, the installation guide was rudimentary. Since then, he explained, the design of the kit and the instructions have been improved so that someone with basic mechanical skills should be able to complete the installation in about 16 hours.

These days, Mr. Montoya seeks any excuse to ride his electrified machine, which performs just as advertised, delivering 30 miles on a charge, even on San Francisco’s hills. Recalling his first ride, Mr. Montoya said: “It was very weird. A normal scooter is so loud, all you hear is the motor. This is so quiet, all you hear is the wind.”

On a recent afternoon, as Mr. Montoya did a few drive-bys, a reporter struggled to discern which was louder — the soft hum of the motor or the sound of the tire treads licking the pavement.

The new incarnation is so stealthy, in fact, Mr. Chubb finds that “when you live in a quiet village, people walk right in front of you.” He’s looking into noise generators that could produce anything from the thrum of a Harley-Davidson to the futuristic racket of a “Star Wars” Podracer.

Mr. McCart, who commutes every day on his electrified Vespa, takes a different approach to unwary pedestrians: “I shout at them. I say, ‘Oi!’”

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orbemnews · 4 years ago

Link

It Looks Like a Vespa, Rides Like a Vespa, but Doesn’t Smell Like a Vespa Among the iconic designs of Italy’s vibrant postwar period, few capture the essence of La Dolce Vita like Vespas and Lambrettas, the free-spirited motor scooters that brought mobility to the masses and became beloved across Italy, and subsequently, the world. While the two companies still make scooters, those early models — whose whining two-stroke engines spew plumes of aromatic smoke — are by far the most sought by collectors, some commanding up to $30,000. But just as vintage scooters are reaching a new peak of popularity, a wave of emissions regulations aimed at reducing pollution threatens their access to Europe’s city centers. Within every regulation, though, lies an opportunity, and one lifelong scooter enthusiast has seized it firmly by the tailpipe. Niall McCart, an Irishman from the city of Armagh, got his first Vespa at 16. De rigueur for a youth swept up in Britain’s early-1980s Mod revival, the Vespa was eminently practical as well. “A two-stroke is a very simple mechanical structure,” Mr. McCart said, with a modesty common to the mechanically gifted. “I could fix it with a screwdriver and a hammer” — an ability that would eventually serve him well on rallies along the English coast, and on extended tours of Europe and India. In 1989, at the age of 21, Mr. McCart moved to London, where, after stints in the building trade and delivering packages on a Vespa, he began working as a mechanic at a scooter shop. In 2000, he opened his own concern in a garden shed. Today, his business, Retrospective Scooters, occupies a 3,500-square-foot warehouse in the East End town of Walthamstow. As Mr. McCart’s business grew, so did restrictions on older vehicles. The European Union’s first Low Emission Zones were established in 1996. By 2018, there were over 260, and still rising. London has one such zone, as well as an extra-stringent Ultra Low Emission Zone, in the city center. Introduced in April 2019, the more stringent zone will expand substantially this October. To drive inside it, owners of polluting scooters must pay a daily fee of 12.50 pounds (about $17). Failure to pay can result in a hefty fine. In 2017, with the end of cheap and dirty scootering looming, Mr. McCart posed a question to a friend and fellow scooter enthusiast, John Chubb: “Wouldn’t it be great if we could make our old Vespas electric?” Mr. Chubb recalled the moment vividly. “We were sitting in a tent in a music festival in Cornwall, and he was saying the future is electric. I said, ‘I reckon I could build one of those.’” He could also bring a raft of technical competencies to the project. A retired Royal Navy commander with degrees in electrical engineering and rocket science, Mr. Chubb is also an expert in anti-ship missiles, a qualification whose benefit, though perhaps unquantifiable, couldn’t hurt. Mr. McCart’s brief was explicit. The conversion “was not to interfere in any way with the original design and setup of the scooters,” he said. “You don’t do any cutting or welding or destruction of the original chassis.” And critically important for preserving a scooter’s value, the process had to be reversible. An encounter with a Chinese manufacturer at a motorcycle show in Milan in 2017 proved instrumental. “The Chinese have been riding electric scooters for 15 years-plus,” Mr. McCart said. “They’ve done it and made it and perfected it. They had it all laid out.” Mr. Chubb, meanwhile, hobnobbed with the chief technical officer of QS Motor, a firm in Zhejiang Province that makes motors for electric scooters and e-bikes. “We had a really good conversation,” Mr. Chubb said. “I’d done a whole load of first-principles calculations about the power of an electric motor and how that would work in an electric scooter. I saw all his equations, and he and I did it exactly the same way. “Seeing that data was very interesting,” he continued, “because we knew exactly where the sweet spot was in terms of the specifications of what we wanted to run as a motor, and we could run it more or less to optimum efficiency.” Mr. McCart and Mr. Chubb devised the basic plan: Pull the gas tank and put a lithium-ion battery in its place, and replace the scooter’s original swing arm (which supports the engine and rear wheel) with a custom-made swing arm that holds a wheel with a built-in hub motor. Mr. Chubb set to work on the prototype, meeting periodically with Mr. McCart, who fine-tuned various components. In June 2018, Mr. McCart unveiled their creation — an electrified 1976 Vespa Primavera — at the Vespa World Days rally in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The initial reaction was skeptical. “These guys were purists,” Mr. McCart said. “They were against it when they seen it,” he recalled, “but as soon as they drove it to the other end of the car park and back again, they had the biggest grin on their face.” One rider made a pivotal suggestion: “You’ve got to sell it as a kit.” Mr. McCart, who had planned to offer electric conversions only as a service, embraced the idea. “I thought, ‘He’s right. I’ve got to make it really simple.’ The next step was to try and make a plug-and-play kit.” Three years later, Retrospective Scooters sells kits for five types of vintage Vespas and Lambrettas. Costing £3,445 (about $4,750), each includes a 64-volt, 28-amp-hour battery that can push a scooter to a top speed of 50 miles an hour and go 30 to 35 miles on a charge. Certain scooters can accommodate two or three batteries. A Lambretta GP for instance, packed with three lithium-ion units, can go 120 miles between charges. Mr. McCart, though, thinks a single battery is sufficient. “Let’s not forget what scooters were invented for — traveling in a 20-to-30-mile radius of where you lived,” he said. To date, Mr. McCart has sold 60 kits — 24 in Britain (20 of them installed at his shop), and 36 to customers overseas, mostly, and somewhat surprisingly to Mr. McCart, in the United States. “I expected more to go into Europe,” he said, “but there’s quite a lot of bureaucracy and official inspections of any vehicle alterations, so there’s really no incentive for Europeans to buy our kit with all that up against them.” Last summer, Danny Montoya, the owner of a children’s woodworking studio in San Francisco, installed a kit in his 1973 Vespa Rally 180. Mr. Montoya had owned the scooter since 1999, but in recent years had grown uneasy with its pollution, not to mention the constant reek of petroleum. A capable do-it-yourselfer, he initially considered cobbling together his own electric kit with information gleaned from internet message boards, but when he came across Mr. McCart’s, he said, he thought: “Whoa, this guy has actually done the work.” Although the price gave him pause, after corresponding with Mr. McCart, who promised to assist with any technical issues, Mr. Montoya said, “OK, this is legit.” Mr. Montoya estimates he spent 20 to 30 hours on the project, the most complex part of which, he said, was ensuring that all of the electrical connections were correct. Mr. McCart acknowledges that at the time, in late 2020, the installation guide was rudimentary. Since then, he explained, the design of the kit and the instructions have been improved so that someone with basic mechanical skills should be able to complete the installation in about 16 hours. These days, Mr. Montoya seeks any excuse to ride his electrified machine, which performs just as advertised, delivering 30 miles on a charge, even on San Francisco’s hills. Recalling his first ride, Mr. Montoya said: “It was very weird. A normal scooter is so loud, all you hear is the motor. This is so quiet, all you hear is the wind.” On a recent afternoon, as Mr. Montoya did a few drive-bys, a reporter struggled to discern which was louder — the soft hum of the motor or the sound of the tire treads licking the pavement. The new incarnation is so stealthy, in fact, Mr. Chubb finds that “when you live in a quiet village, people walk right in front of you.” He’s looking into noise generators that could produce anything from the thrum of a Harley-Davidson to the futuristic racket of a “Star Wars” Podracer. Mr. McCart, who commutes every day on his electrified Vespa, takes a different approach to unwary pedestrians: “I shout at them. I say, ‘Oi!’” Source link Orbem News #doesnt #rides #Smell #Vespa

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