See more LOLBorisez at I HAZ A LUNDUN! Please make more and submit them. I sense a rich vein of comedy here.

Today I got a council tax reminder notice saying that if I didn’t pay my late council tax within the next seven days I would be taken to court and incur an additional £95 court cost. It’s dire straights these days: I had to choose between paying the council tax or buying food this week. I chose food.

And speaking of food, has anyone else noticed it’s gone up? I dropped £12 today at Tescos for:

Toilet Paper
Coffee
Milk
Honey
2 Fishes (where you have to skin, bone and chop off the head yourself ’cause it’s cheaper)
Honey (which PJ has in tea instead of sugar, which is bad for him)
2 apples
2 bagles

Anyway, called the Council to see if they could give me a reprieve. It’s an 0845 number, by the way, which I don’t understand ’cause it’s the government, right? At first the very nice lady said that she couldn’t help me because I’m not on income assistance. I told her that I couldn’t get on income assistance because I’m a foreigner and it’s illegal because of the visa and all. Eventually, she did help me. Gave me a 7 day extension before they take me to court.

The thing is that they didn’t have to help me at all because I’m not a voting citizen…I’m a foreigner, or did I say that already? I’m reminded that “no taxation without representation” was one of the reasons why American broke from this country to begin with. (All of you complaining about Boris…at least you got to vote.)

Then there’s the bank charges, but I don’t want to get into that yet. It’s too depressing.

You’re probably saying, “if you don’t like it then just go the hell home.” Well, honestly, at this point, I probably would. At least I can go on welfare and get food stamps back in the States. But because fuel prices are so high, I can’t afford the airfare.

We love to mock the Americans for electing the clownish, idiotic George W. Bush: now we can boast the same honour.

By 140,000 votes (of 2,188,738), Boris Johnson is the elected leader of the largest electorate in Britain.

Here’s hoping that he’s neither the fool nor the bigot that he pretends to be. The Guardian calls it “his first really grown-up job“…and we all know how fun it is to work with a newbie.

I welcome your comments, especially disagreeing with me and welcoming a brave new Boris world: I sincerely hope you’re right.

Photo and graphic courtesy The Guardian

In response to a question in the comments from eoinhouly:

…I do not view this mayoral election as meaningful. All major decisions regarding education, healthcare etc are made at parlimentary level and I feel this reduces the significance of the role they play.

They look after transport, policing and what else?

So, what is the point of voting in the local London elections tomorrow?

I’ve already ranted about how valuable it is is just to keep out the BNP. Keeping fascists out of power, locally or nationally, is no small thing. You don’t hove to man the barricades, just vote.

But what about reasons to vote for someone, rather than against someone? What does the mayor and assembly do?

Transport, police, fire and emergency services, cultural strategy, economic development and local policy relating to waste, culture and sport, health, and climate change.

Hey, that’s a lot of stuff [see more about it at the Mayor of London website]. Especially in a city of 7.5 million people…practically a small country in some ways.

For me, planning and development is very important. Building and land use in London is something that will effect my quality of life directly, and shape the city for many years to come.

Culture and sport may sound superficial, but even if the local council isn’t out there making foreign policy (although ours kind of is) these things do effect our day-to-day life, especially for families living in London.

Not to mention that old voting cliché: if you don’t vote, you can’t complain. And god, I love to complain!

During the few months I’ve been living in London, there have been at least two potentially catastrophic tube strikes called off. So when I see the BBC reporting that the RMT are planning yet another one, I can’t help but feel like I’m justified in suffering from strike-threat fatigue.

I don’t even get what the fuss is about, to be honest. Given that “TfL said it had assured the RMT that no staff would lose jobs or pensions, nor would any be transferred”, the fact that “the RMT wants a guarantee that Metronet workers will be allowed to join the TfL pension scheme and receive the same travel facilities as other TfL employees” seems like a pretty poor reason to try and bring an entire city to a standstill.

But don’t get me wrong, I’m a massive fan of unionisation and what it’s given this country, and others.

Actually, here’s a fantastic example from South Africa from this very week. Despite the fact that Zimbabwe has bought some arms from China - and that South Africa’s National Conventional Arms Control Committee has approved the transit of the weapons through the country - the members of the SATAWU union are refusing to unload the arms from the cargo ships because they disagree with their government’s lack of action on the issue.

Now that’s what I call solidarity. I suspect that if the RMT picked an issue that actually had a lot of public support to strike on, it’d be less likely to have to back down…

If you’re going to vote in the upcoming elections for the London Mayor and Assembly, and have a bit of a green tint to you, it’s well worth checking out some of the recent podcasts on Guardian Environment Weekly.

This week featured the Lib Dem candidate Brian Paddick, last week it was the Labour incumbent Ken Livingstone - and I can only assume Boris Johnson is coming up soon! Oh, and the (easily) most attractive candidate in the race, the Greens’ Sian Berry, was on the show back in February. You can find the entire audio archive at www.guardian.co.uk/environment/environment+content/audio. (more…)

FixMyStreet is another wonderful, simple app from MySociety. Use it to quickly report graffiti, fly-tipping, broken streetlighting, or whatever blights your morning stroll.

All you have to do is enter your postcode, click a map to locate the issue, and even upload photos of your favourite eyesores. I reported a burned out scooter that brightens up my daily commute.

I also had a jolly time looking at posts from other complainers; very satisfying curtain-twitching.

Photo courtesy of El Freddy via Flickr

Politics may not be your bag. You may find it all overwhelming and depressing these days. You may prefer to vote for ice-dancing celebrities than boring people in suits. But it is more important than ever that you vote in this year’s London elections on May 1.

It is more important than ever that you vote in this year’s London elections on May 1

Whether you love Red Ken, find Boris charmingly hilarious, or fancy the pants off Brian Paddick (I do, all of the above, oddly).

You don’t even have to vote for mayor, if you can’t stomach it. Write “screw you, New World Order” on your mayoral ballot. But vote in the London Assembly vote, and vote to keep out the BNP.

That means voting for anyone else. This is because the London Assembly has ‘proportional representation’: any party that gets 5% of first choice votes is in with a chance of an assembly seat under the system.

According to the BBC, at the last London elections the BNP got 4.8% of the vote and the party is confident it will get at least one seat this May. The BNP has tried hard to change their image and hide their white supremacist hate views. Check out Searchlight’s Stop the BNP site to learn about the real BNP and their candidates.

Your vote does count in the London elections. The more people vote, the less likely it is that extremest parties of all kinds will win seats. The BNP is working hard to get out every single voter that will support them. All we have to do to stop them is get out every single voter that will support anyone else!

You don’t even have to be a British citizen; if you are a Commonwealth or EU citizen you can also vote. You must register to vote, but you have lots of time until the April16 deadline. (Being on the register of voters also helps with things like loan and mortgage applications.)

If you have never voted before, this is your chance to vote and know that it will make a difference!

The Independent Asylum Commission has released its report of the state of our asylum system, and they call it ’shameful’ and ’seriously below the standards to be expected of a humane and civilised society.’

Please let this be a wake-up to the fact that refugees are suffering in this country. Listening to the news, which helpfully points out any crime or allegation that involves an asylum seeker, you would think that they are the source of all of our problems. In fact, they suffering in a system that ‘combines incredible complexity with systemic incompetence.’ I’m talking about unlawful incarceration of families, children and torture survivors, combined with the hell of endless, fathomless court dates.

Humane treatment is simply what is needed.

Photo courtesy Independent Asylum Commission

It’s been almost a week since the most awesomest piece of legislation that is the English ban on smoking in enclosed public spaces.

I can’t believe how completely people have adopted the strict rules. No fighting, no biting, no illicit smoking around the side of the bar or on the dark dance floor. Today I saw a winsome short-order cook, propped on a chair just outside the kitchen door of his workman’s caf (the holy shrine of smokers), puffing away. And ‘No smoking’ signs adhered to every entrance, exit, farmhouse, henhouse, doghouse and outhouse in the city.

People have an amazing tolerance for being told what to do in our town. I was living in Vancouver when their smoking ban was enacted a few years ago, and the reasoning of the government was heath and safety — that people have the right to be protected from smoke in their work environment, just as they do from any other toxic material. An unbeatable argument, if you have even the slightest belief in worker’s rights. But admittedly, it’s a bit of a whitewash of the deeper reasons for a ban.

However, that reasoning is barely touched on by our government, who prefer the more straight-forward, but less defensible, “for god’s sake, it’s f*cking addictive killer smoke, people! What’s wrong with you? It’s banned!” approach. Which I kind of love. But is also scary, in the whole ASBO, being a jerk is now illegal, radio call-in programs about what women can and can’t wear, way.

Not that I believe for one picosecond in the fallacious “choice” of being addicted to smoking, it’s just interesting that the government doesn’t feel that the public health or health and safely reasons are really necessary. Simple moral high ground is sufficient.

But my concerns about the creeping fungus of the police state doesn’t change that, after a lovely lunch spent having a pint and reading the paper (my definition of heaven) at a great local pub, which is usually made unendurable at lunch due to smoke, I say: cheers to the ban!

Image from the Smokefree England website.