With the News International phone hacking scandal gaining more and more momentum and with no-one admitting anything or likely to stand up and say it was me – there must be someone that knows something so where does the buck stop?

My latest work, www.leinz.co.uk, challenges the current issue of Government funding cuts and the possible affect they will have on our cultural access.

As George Osborne announced crippling spending cuts on October 20th, it is becoming ever more apparent that the Arts will suffer greatly under the cold glare of the coalition government. I have used my website to send a foreboding message to those concerned about the future of art in the UK. Means-tested access is a drastic implication that the arts will become more accessible to those who are able to afford it, and those who can’t will simply have to make do.

In other words – if you aren’t earning enough, you’ll be faced with the “value site”, a low-budget, limited low-key affair where you are denied access to simple human rights such as an RSS feed, and presentation semantics (CSS). On the other hand, those with a higher income are welcome to browse the “premium site” containing a wealth of luxurious goods, full exhibition and archive of my work, and full site with all the bells and whistles.

To find out which version of the website you qualify for just visit the Leinz website »

Over the last week I have created a selection of new pieces to coincide with the UK General election and for the great project BillBored.org. They have been projecting statement art pieces onto lots of places around london by night including; Tate Modern, Saatchi & Saatchi, City Hall, The Gherkin and last night PARLIAMENT.

My latest piece about the Hung Parliament and the power Clegg holds as third place candidate was loved by BillBored who wanted to end the project with a bang – so they set out on a dark Sunday evening to project this onto the hottest spot in London.

Images courtesy of cakehead

After weeks of tireless campaigning and voting in the Leinz General Election “Personalities not Policies” I am very please to announce the results of who you all voted for. I was not too surprised by the result but it will be interesting to compare the clever little so and so’s who visit my site with the actual results.

Thanks for all those that took part.

The Electoral TV debate has now reached UK politics and it’s popularity is set to make it a future staple of the Election process, are we taking another step towards Personalities not Policies?.

After two of the three television debates already over and with instant polls and numerous thousand tweets on them, a lot of people are being more persuaded by the individual leader and not looking at the party and it’s policies. The majority of the talk has been about who is the most charismatic and engaging on a personal level.

The voters are not being won over by the hard facts and figures of each party but by who they like the most on a non- political level. Alright, we need to like who is in charge, but how they intend to run the country is what we should really be focussing on.

Poor old Labour will ultimately loose a lot of seats with dour and unapproachable Mr Brown, whereas The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats who are more savvy to the impact TV debates and new media can have on opinions are changing tactics to gain more votes.

Is our election process on a dumbed-downward spiral where parties are made almost obsolete by a candidate’s smile and personality?

The election forms were given away free to the first 100 people that registered through a Free Art scheme run on the Leinz homepage. The visitors didn’t know what the free art piece was but after submitting their name, email and address the election forms were posted to them secretly. As intended quite a few people mistook them for real ballot papers.

Once the Ballots were posted I changed the homepage of Leinz to a digital version of the ‘Personalities not Policies’ paper where each visitor cast their vote on which personality they wanted to become prime minister.

ELECTION RESULT – Check out the results from the online voting…. did your personal choice win?

For all those that have been following my Twitter you will have seen some of my updates and pictures of Frank as he progressed from original blank white elephant to his finished glory. Over the three weeks that I spent in the Elephant & Castle Shopping centre painting, spraying and sticking stuff to him I kept a photo/video diary which you can view in it’s entirety below – it’s 7minutes long so stick with it but 3 weeks is a long time to fit into a tiny video:

I have just found out that my art will be appearing on an elephant in this summers London Elephant Parade. I will be painting the 2m x 1.5m elephant over the next months and will keep you up to date with regular posts on how things are going – should be great fun.

Billed as the capitals largest public art exhibition, Elephant Parade will embrace all that is excellent about London and will highlight every green initiative of the capital’s top businesses.  Decorated by a different artist or celebrity, the brightly painted elephants will help to create a bright new atmosphere in London and beautify each city park, street corner and building they grace. The event has already won the backing of Boris Johnson and the Greater London Authority, prominent artists and well known personalities such as The Duchess of York, Stephen Fry, Joanna Lumley and Michael Palin.

I am very pleased to announce that my art is being featured at ‘Vivienne Westwood’s Active – Resistance to Propaganda’ event at the Bloomsbury Ballrooms, Friday 4th December ’09. Tickets have already sold out but I will try and keep you up to date as the evening progresses – will be a very interesting evening.

With the public becoming more aware of the range of environmental issues facing our planets future and with debate still raging on the human impact. Politicians and world leaders are stalling on how we are going to tackle it – will the natural world start fighting back before the policy makers leave it too late.

Global Warming Action Group I

Global Warming Action Group II

Lovable Boris Johnson with his astute intellect and bumbling persona is seen by many as a friendly and approachable character. A complete contrast to the more serious Ken Livingstone but is BoJo really the face and personality to represent London on the world stage, or does he turn London into a circus in the eyes of many.