Cambridge Picket Pictures

Camera Boy | 28.03.2006 20:12 | Social Struggles | Workers' Movements | Cambridge

Today in Cambridge, hundreds of public sector workers either stayed away from work or picketed their workplaces in protest at the two tier pensions system that Neocon Wannabes New Labour want to impose.

Placards & Banners...

Picket Line Portraits #1...

Picket Line Portraits #2...

Picket Line Portraits #3...

...Children & Animals!

Amongst the Picket lines were those at Shire Hall on Castle Hill (local Government offices), Mandela House (Housing Benefits, Environmental Health), Anglia Ruskin University, and Road Sweepers and Refuse Collectors from Mill Road Depot who didn't collect rubbish today and picketed the depot gates from 6:00am until 9:30am.

There was also a picket line at Parkside Police Station by support staff from there.

This was part of a concerted national day of industrial action in protest at support staff in the public sector being told they cannot retire until they are 65, as opposed to staff in other public sectors, whom have a retirement age of 60.

These actions also coincided with a general strike in France, also about government imposed repealment of employment rights there for younger workers, allegedly to lower unemployment rates.

Several local schools were affected by today's action, including The Manor Community College, Chesteron Community College and Impington Community College.

The overall atmosphere wherever I went was one of friendliness and cameraderie, only marred slightly by the odd haranging from less sympathetic workers or passersby, although they seemed to be in the minority, with many motorists honking their horns as they went past the ARU picket line on East Road.

There was also a very strong wind, which made steel signs walk across pavements wherever it blew!!

You can find out more about today's events from here:

http://www.unison.org.uk/pensions/photogallery.asp

http://www.gmb.org.uk/

Also, if anyone out there has their own stories or pictures of the day to add, please do so!

Camera Boy

Comments

Hide the following 5 comments

Picture width

29.03.2006 13:08

Hi Camera Boy

Great set of pictures, but do you think you could upload them in future in way that's a little easier for people to view...

It's not an editorial guideline, but the help section does request:

"Photos should in a compressed format such as jpeg and should be less than 50k file size and no more then 200k at very most. The width to be viewable easily on everyones screen should be restricted to 540 pixels, certainly no more than 1024"

Your composites are coming in at 244k at 1600+ pixels which is going to be a bit of a problem for dialups on domestic PCs.

Cheers mate.

mini mouse
mail e-mail: mini_mouse@riseup.net

Here we again!!

29.03.2006 17:46

As I've said before, the reason I upload the pictures in this format is to actually SAVE upload/download time for anyone coming to the site, unless you want me to continually post 25+ media files each time I post an item, which would really slow things down, and stress your already snail's-pace server.

In this format, I have just five media files, but all the pictures displayed in a fraction of the data you usually require for such files.

It also gets around one of the shortcomings of IMC server software, in that you can't group images thematically in blocks, only present them in vertical columns.

Cake = Eat.

As for the compression, well, if they get compressed any more, you lose image quality, which defeats the object of posting pictures in the first place if they all look cruddy (I know, I've tried it before).

Jeez!!

So I do things differently.

Isn't this how things are supposed to progress in the world, by people trying out new ways of doing things..?!

Camera Boy

Here we go again...

29.03.2006 23:15

Transfer time is *much* more dependent on the total size of the images than the number of individual files. A half-competent browser (yes, probably even IE) will load ten 10k files in much the same time as one 100k file. By compositing them into a single image, you *don't* reduce the amount of data, only the number of files into which that data is split. Therefore this statement is completely untrue:

"In this format, I have just five media files, but all the pictures displayed in a fraction
of the data you usually require for such files."

Images wider than a typical browser window just *do not work well* on this site. You might argue that that's a shortcoming of the software, and that it should allow for horizontally-scrolling layouts, but it's clearly the case so why make your article look bad just to make the point? It's *very* likely that in the near future such images will be automatically resized to something sane, ie probably no more than about 600 pixels wide with a link to the original full size image.

A. Techie

what about...

30.03.2006 12:32

i think it would be good if the site could either automatically resize pics *or* (as los angeles indymedia seems to do) have a kind of thumbnail option so big pics get shrunk down but you can still look at the pics in the original if you want...

its such a constant problem on indymedia i think the solution has be more profound than trying to train every user how to go about posting their pics, which is a never ending task and off putting to those who are not technically minded (no matter how simple techies might think resizing a pic might be) and could be impractical if there is limitted time or access to the appropriate software.

it would also mean that people who post to the site useful and interesting pics are not subjected to a barrage of criticism for doing so which is probably not the most welcoming and inclusive way to encourage people to get more involved...

just a thought

jim jay

Agree with the above...

30.03.2006 15:50

I can't help thinking that, in lieu of actually bothering to address as a live problem that this needs to be fixed (which it has needed to be for quite a long time now), it does seem to be easier to just have a go at whoever may run into the technical shortcomings of the site itself.

In other words, for goodness sake, don't shoot the messenger.

There are, as the person above suggests many clever and creative ways to fix this problem, so, please please please stop ranting at me (and others) about it, and instead try and find a solution so you don't have to keep nagging people about resizing images etc. all the time.

I'm sure there must be a way of automating this process, and then maybe including in the publish form itself several different picture formats/sizes (e.g. "large", "small", "wide", "tall" etc) that can than be rendered as part of the layout.

And no, it doesn't present a very inclusive or friendly face to this network if you're nagged at when you post items.

Camera Boy