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https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/jun/11/artemis-fowl-review-judi-dench-kenneth-branagh-eoin-colfer-novels | Film | 2020-06-11T16:00:06.000Z | Peter Bradshaw | Artemis Fowl review – Judi Dench gruffs it out amid rogue fairies | After the film version of Cats, the world agreed that Judi Dench could never, should never do anything as bizarre as her performance as Old Deuteronomy, the bafflingly attired matriarch of the Jellicle cat tribe, wearing a fur coat in addition to her normal fur. But now Dench might actually have topped her feline folly, in this family fantasy adventure, adapted by Conor McPherson and Hamish McColl from Eoin Colfer’s bestselling novels about the teen Irish hero in touch with magical forces and directed by Kenneth Branagh. She plays someone called Commander Root, who is the security chief of the fairy peoples who live deep underground. (It was a man in the book, but no male actor could be gruffer than Dench is here.)
Dench is styling a very notable military-style outfit in emerald green, which makes her look like some forgotten intergalactic villain from Star Wars. Root has a growly, twangy, slightly Cornish voice; yet it was only when she appeared in full uniform, including a sinister peaked cap, and said “top o’ the morning,” that I said out loud: “Judi Dench is supposed to be Irish!”
The last time I heard that phrase used to denote Irishness, however ironically, was when Colin Farrell played Bullseye, the Irish supervillain in the little-loved Marvel movie Daredevil (2003) and Farrell turns out to be in this as well, phoning in his performance for the fantastically dull role of Artemis Fowl Sr, the wealthy and reclusive connoisseur of Irish myth and legend who understands what most do not – that the fairies and little folk are real. When Fowl Sr is kidnapped by a fairy gone rogue, it is his troubled but brilliant 12-year-old son Artemis Fowl Jr (Ferdia Shaw) who has to save him, and deal with this evil abductor’s ransom demand for the fairy-folk’s most precious artefact: the Aculos, the key that governs the fairies’ control of their own domain and their entrance to the human world. But this Aculos is missing. How on earth is young Artemis supposed to get it? Fortunately, his destiny is to coincide with that of an audacious young fairy under Root’s command: Holly Short (Lara McDonnell) and also a roguish and somewhat Hagridian “giant dwarf” called Mulch Diggums (Josh Gad). Nonso Anozie plays Artemis’s bodyguard and martial-arts trainer, Butler. Together, Artemis and Butler wear some men-in-black-type suits and ties.
Dench has one or two moderately funny lines (“Get the fffff … four-leaf clover out of here,” she stutters at one stage) and there is an amusing setpiece when the fairies impose a kind of mass-hypnotic time-freeze situation on an Italian wedding where a giant, grisly troll is about to run amok, so that Holly can neutralise the horrible beast without any of the humans there remembering afterwards what has happened. (Again, a bit of a men-in-black idea.) Images and characters bounce around like shapes on a screensaver and only McDonnell and Gad’s performances have any fizz. This is a YA-franchise by numbers.
Available on Disney+ from 12 June. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/nov/04/wonga-film-premieres-london | Business | 2013-11-04T22:10:11.000Z | Josh Halliday | Modern, authentic, relevant' … Wonga film premieres in London | They say money can't buy love, but controversial payday lender Wonga is attempting to win the hearts of its critics with a film that promises to tell the "real stories" of its hard-pressed borrowers.
Twelve Wonga customers are the stars of a 30-minute film commissioned by the firm to counter criticism that it targets the vulnerable with interest rates of up to 5,853%.
Billed as a "modern, authentic and relevant" portrait of British life, the movie pulls at the heart strings by showing people trying to bounce back from low ebbs, including a woman who borrowed £200 to pay for flowers at two family funerals in the same week.
For Wonga the film marks the start of a PR fightback against what it calls a ceaseless "misrepresentation" in newspapers.
"The reason we commissioned that film is that we wanted to redress the debate about Wonga out there," said Niall Wass, its chief operating officer, after the film's low-key premiere in London on Monday night. "What we felt was that the voice of the silent majority was not being heard, but there were perceptions out there that weren't justified."
The debut of the film – before an audience of business journalists, film critics and a smattering of Wonga customers – comes before a grilling by MPs in Westminster on Tuesday as calls grow for tighter curbs on payday lenders.
The half-hour movie, named 12 Portraits, marks a surprise departure from routine corporate marketing tactics – not least because it does not mention Wonga or borrowing until the closing credits. Instead, it tells the "unscripted" stories of 12 customers who volunteered to participate in the film earlier this year – for free.
Viewers see Angela, from Dewsbury, who borrowed £200 to pay for flowers at two family funerals in the same week and repaid under £235, including interest and fees, two weeks later. Dawn from Doncaster loaned £180 to hire camera equipment after deciding to switch careers following a breast cancer diagnosis two years ago. She repaid £208, including interest and fees, the film says.
Others did not fall upon such hard times. Blackpool karaoke king Dennis found himself stuck for cash and borrowed £101 from Wonga to fund his travel costs between gigs. Four days later he repaid £111.
But the film's debut failed to quieten all of the firm's critics. Gary Tarn, its Bafta-winning producer, bristled when asked by one audience member if his work was "artfully-produced propaganda". "If someone called it that I would say I don't see it that way. I don't think I was toeing the party line," he said.
"I was given the freedom to go out there and make the film and if that happens to reinforce a position they're happy with, so much the better, but if it didn't happen to have done that, that would be the film it would have been. Sorry if it didn't meet with people's preconceptions, but these were the people I met."
In a Q&A after the screening, Wass refused to classify the film as advertising or marketing and declined to reveal the cost of marketing the film in cinemas and on Channel 4 later this year.
Business minister Jo Swinson responded to the film by saying payday lenders have "far bigger advertising budgets than debt charities or government money advice could ever hope to have". She added: "I've been concerned about vulnerable customers being lured by adverts into taking out payday loans that aren't right for them. While for some people in some circumstances payday loans can be a useful product, there are many others who are already in financial difficulty and need debt advice, rather than more debt."
Wonga's previous experiments with advertising have failed to do much for its image. Only last month, the advertising watchdog banned a radio skit featuring the rewritten lyrics from the 1950s song Mr Sandman: "You make it easy when the month feels too long. Thanks for everything you've done. Mr Wonga, you're No 1."
Its sponsorship of Newcastle United also went awry earlier in the year when Papiss Cisse, the striker, temporarily refused to wear the shirt after complaining that it conflicted with his Muslim beliefs. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/aug/31/here-is-the-beehive-by-sarah-crossan-review-subversive-spin-on-adultery | Books | 2020-08-31T08:00:02.000Z | Julie Myerson | Here Is the Beehive by Sarah Crossan review – subversive spin on adultery | Adulterous affairs, with all their secrecy and thrill and inevitable fallout, are hardly an unmined seam in fiction. So it’s all the more impressive that with this, her first novel for adults, award-winning children’s author Sarah Crossan has not only found what feels like a whole new spin, but has managed it in verse. Here Is the Beehive is a gutsy, modern, deeply entertaining and, at times, faintly subversive-feeling piece of work. It’s also entirely and likably original in its execution, quite unlike anything I’ve read before.
The novel – and, yes, it has all of a novel’s weight, breadth and tension, while at the same time slithering down the page with the sly spareness of a poem – tells the story of unhappily married solicitor Ana, whose three-year will-he-won’t-he-leave-his-wife affair with Connor comes to an abrupt end when he suddenly dies.
The pair first meet in Ana’s office when he walks in for legal advice, so it’s no coincidence that she receives the shocking news from his wife: “I have a Mrs Taylor on the line/ She says we wrote up her husband’s will/ and he’s passed. She seems fine.” It’s a brilliantly explosive opener – flagrantly dramatic yet wholly earned – and it sets the tone for everything that’s to come.
When Ana offers to visit Rebecca’s home to sort out her husband’s affairs, you know that this can only end badly
The book flits back and forth in time, revisiting those first moments of attraction amid a pretence at friendship – “I stopped myself leaning in/ and resting my head against your chest” – followed by Ana’s ill-advised, quasi-stalkerish attempt to befriend Connor’s grieving widow, Rebecca. Meanwhile, as she sneaks into her lover’s funeral – “You will be smoked, nothing but ash in an hour/ I will still be in this cashmere” – it begins to dawn on the reader that, rather than leaving her genuinely bereft, Connor’s sudden death has just left Ana feeling short-changed.
Nevertheless, she obsessively checks and double-checks his social media “in case anything has changed/ in case this has all been/ some grisly mistake”. And when Ana offers to visit Rebecca’s home to sort out her husband’s affairs – and on seeing her lover’s computer keyboard “it is as much as I can do not to put my mouth against them/ find the lingering taste of you” – you know that this can only end badly.
Crossan’s depiction of Ana’s interior state – tense, vulnerable, always teetering just on the edge of destructive – is appealingly unsentimental, almost disconcertingly frank at times. If I had a minor criticism, it might be that neither of the lovers ever quite seems fully to exist outside of the affair. We know all about their clothes and glasses of wine and the way they speak to and touch each other, but there’s a sense that not much lies beneath, as if, despite their spouses and jobs and children, neither is psychologically or physically rooted in anything other than the next stealthy rendezvous.
And perhaps that’s the point. But it doesn’t help that, while Ana is criticised by her husband for being a too often absent or disengaged mother, it’s sometimes hard for us to believe that she’s a mother at all. Writing about (rather than for) children does not seem to be Crossan’s strong suit and it is difficult to imagine that Ana ever gave birth to these two, let alone that they are also a little too quiet and cute.
Still, it’s hard to mind when the writing is so bright and alive and the novel is a triumph – crackling with psychological and sexual ambiguity – in its descriptions of a man who, all too depressingly believably, has zero intention of leaving his wife. Sitting in a cafe with Ana and questioned about whether he had sex with Rebecca last night, he pinches his nose and admits, with chilling nonchalance: “I did actually.” It’s the moment where form and content align perfectly.
At least Ana, for all of her hunger and brittleness and mess, is honest about what she wants: “I wanted you to tear/ the world to shreds/ to get/ to me/ I wanted to be chosen.” And she’s prepared to follow through as well, getting ready to tell her husband and viewing dingy one-bedroom flats in a bid to move out of the family home.
And yet, like so many women before her, she comes to understand that the damage she has done to her family is deep and tragic, while, death notwithstanding, Connor’s family will emerge unscathed: “My husband couldn’t speak/ he was crushed./ And I had caused it./ We had./ While Your life ticked by unaltered.”
Here Is the Beehive by Sarah Crossan is published by Bloomsbury Circus (£12.99). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com. Free UK p&p over £15 | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/2017/nov/06/genius-crossword-no-173 | Crosswords | 2017-11-06T00:01:01.000Z | Enigmatist | Genius crossword No 173 | In the seven paired across clues the wordplay for each of the required solutions is separated by a redundant word. These paired solutions have a common theme, not further defined, which is represented in the solution to 1,4 across (10). In sequence, the seven redundant words may be used to provide a two-word phrase that when applied to the down clues, which are normal, gives the location of 1,4 across.
Deadline for entries is 23:59 GMT on Saturday 2 December. You need to register once and then sign in to theguardian.com to enter our online competition for a £100 monthly prize.
Click here to register | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/aug/18/kind-hearts-and-coronets-review | Film | 2019-06-06T10:53:25.000Z | Peter Bradshaw | Kind Hearts and Coronets review – the most elegant serial killer in history | The Ealing genre reached utter perfection with this superb black comedy of manners, made in 1949, and now on rerelease for its 70th birthday. It’s history’s greatest serial-killer movie, directed by Robert Hamer and adapted by Hamer with accomplished farceur John Dighton from the 1907 novel Israel Rank, by Roy Horniman.
All of us in the KHAC fan community have been gripped by new research from critic and historian Matthew Sweet, showing that the original draft script included startlingly melodramatic scenes, including a murderous attack with a hammer and a collection of violent swans. I am grateful to Sweet for discovering these unfilmed ideas and more grateful still to Hamer and Dighton for rejecting them in favour of something more subtle and effective, just as they radically improved the story in the original novel.
Kind Hearts and Coronets: from 'antisemitic' novel to classic film
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Dennis Price gave a performance that he was, sadly, never again to equal as Louis Mazzini, the suburban draper’s assistant who becomes the most elegant serial killer in history. Finding himself by a quirk of fate distantly in line to a dukedom, and infuriated by this aristocratic family’s cruel treatment of his mother, he sets out to murder everyone ahead of him in line to the ermine.
Alec Guinness gives a miraculously subtle and differentiated multi-performance as all eight members of the noble clan. Joan Greenwood is in her element as the honey-voiced siren Sibella, with whom Louis is briefly entranced, and Valerie Hobson is utterly convincing as the morally pure Edith D’Ascoyne, whom Louis is to marry. (In 1963, Hobson was poignantly to find a similar “loyal wife” role in real life, standing by her husband, disgraced politician John Profumo.)
This was Hamer’s masterpiece, and though his troubled life and career were sadly brief, it surely entitles him to be mentioned in the same breath as, say, Max Ophüls, and to be considered one of the great British directors. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2005/dec/18/features.review2 | Film | 2005-12-18T00:55:00.000Z | Philip French | The Producers | That Mel Brooks has always attached particular importance to The Producers is well known. In reworking it as a stage musical in 2002, he was reasserting his belief in a movie he considered had undeservedly failed at the box office (though not with the critics, who continue to regard it as a flawed masterpiece) 34 years earlier.
This time his dramatic joke about success and failure proved triumphant, and it now returns to the screen. Structurally it remains much the same. Two archetypal New York Jews, the middle-aged Max Bialystock (Nathan Lane), the very embodiment of chutzpah, and the neurotic, self-effacing accountant Leo Bloom (Matthew Broderick) meet when Leo comes to inspect Max's dodgy books. Observing Max's recent failures and a small discrepancy in the book-keeping, Leo observes that a producer could make a fortune by selling 200 per cent in a show that flopped because he'd never have to repay his backers. An odd-couple partnership is thus born.
Seeking the worst play, the pair discover a musical celebration of Hitler by a demented neo-Nazi. They hire a ludicrously untalented preening Broadway queen to direct it, and they sell several hundred per cent in the show to Max's angels - a gaggle of rich, amorous old widows. How can they fail? As the world now knows, the show becomes the camp success of the Broadway season and the desperate duo end up staging their next musical in jail.
Much of The Producers has become legendary, though as we recall the show, most of us have Zero Mostel's Max and Gene Wilder's Leo in mind. We conjure up Max tearing his cardboard belt in two to demonstrate his poverty; Leo going berserk at the prospect of committing a dishonest act; the discovery of the appalling text ('It's the mother lode!'); and Max's despairing cry when at last he accidentally produces a hit: 'Where did I go right?' Above all it's the number 'Springtime for Hitler' that we remember. It's entered the language as a byword for the ultimate terrible musical, a milestone in the progress of bad taste.
The Producers features in their sharpest form Brooks's abiding preoccupations - the desire simultaneously to shock and please an audience, the glamorous rapaciousness of show business, wily Jews up against it in a world run by the disdainful goyim, a fascination with the prancing subculture of narcissistic homosexuals, the combined horror and absurdity of Hitler and Nazism, the sheer pleasure of the offensive joke.
Little of this has been diluted in the musical version, though the end is now more upbeat. And Lane and Broderick stand up well to the obvious comparison with Mostel and Wilder, though obviously Lane lacks the sheer imposing bulk of Mostel and no one can manage as varied a range of hysterical conduct as Wilder does.
Brooks has cleverly relocated the musical to the late 1950s when Broadway was at its zenith. West Side Story, The Sound of Music and My Fair Lady are playing at nearby theatres, Addison De Witt (the urbane, acerbic critic played by George Sanders in All About Eve) is still around to comment on them for the New York Times, and the Sixties revolution is still to come.
The newly written songs aren't bad and are decently choreographed by the movie's director, Susan Stroman, who was responsible for the Broadway production. 'Springtime for Hitler', both as song and dance, remains the highpoint, but there is one particularly effective number, 'I Want to be a Producer', which sees Leo casting off his identity as a security-obsessed nebbish and accepting Max's invitation of money, glitz and girls. It's staged in a Dickensian office where a tyrannical Jon Lovitz oppresses his rows of accountants. Suddenly a transformed Leo leaps up to sing and dance with a line of a Busby Berkeley-style chorus girls who emerge glittering from a wall of filing cabinets. Where Brooks has improved on the original is in sharpening up the latter part, dispensing with the elaborate intrigues following the success of 'Springtime for Hitler', though the last 20 minutes remain flabby and occasionally sentimental.
I felt a little uneasy about the over-elaboration of the scenes in which a gleeful Max seduces and exploits the little old ladies who invest in his show. On the other hand there is now something a trifle cosy about the treatment of Hitler and Nazism in the character of the demented playwright Franz Liebkind (very well played by Will Ferrell) and his musical. Would the Broadway audience have responded so readily to the camp humour of 'Springtime for Hitler' if there were a few Jews with yellow stars pinned to their chests being jostled by the chorus of stormtroopers? | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/jun/21/stanley-tucci-the-flirty-hero-of-foodie-tv-you-need-in-your-life | Television & radio | 2021-06-21T10:59:34.000Z | Stuart Heritage | Stanley Tucci: the flirty hero of foodie TV you need in your life | You may not realise this at the moment, but your heart has been crying out for a series like Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy. If you saw last night’s first episode, tucked away on CNN International, you will already be aware of this. If you didn’t, stop what you’re doing and seek it out. It’s less a TV show and more an hour of full-body relaxation. By the time the episode ended, I felt as if my entire brain had been taken out and massaged in olive oil.
Although the title suggests a different series, in which a beloved actor receives a concussion then forlornly attempts to navigate Google Maps, this is actually a culinary travelogue. Tucci visits a different Italian region in every episode and contentedly samples its food. It is a formula you will have seen thousands of times before, albeit with a couple of key differences.
The first is its timing. Searching for Italy was filmed last summer, in that near-mythical lull when Covid eased off and people were briefly allowed out of their houses again. As such, the whole series is perpetually dazzled by the possibility of travel. Every restaurant, every mountain, every cobbled street is captured with a sense of awestruck wonder, as if it were a newly rediscovered treasure. That it’s being broadcast now, when we’re still not allowed to go abroad, only exacerbates this sensation. If you have missed European travel even slightly over these last 15 months, you’re going to feel this show in your bones.
The second difference is its host. Shows like this tend to have a limited range. There are only so many times you can look at a tomato farm, or visit a lemon grove. As such, they heavily rely on the personality of whoever is in front of the camera. Anthony Bourdain’s shows were ragged with the spirit of adventure, for instance, while Phil Rosenthal’s are like watching a sugar-crazed toddler go wild in a supermarket. But Searching for Italy has Stanley Tucci, for crying out loud, a man who cannot help but radiate elegant calm from his pores.
Tucci, by all accounts, has had a smashing pandemic. Early on he became a breakout viral star, thanks to videos of him making cocktails in his kitchen. There was something about his unflappable presentation – teasing yet authoritative – that not only cut through the chaos of those initial months, but inspired wave after wave of ferocious lust in just about everyone who watched it. And then, if that wasn’t enough, last May he wrote an hour-by-hour breakdown of lockdown life for The Atlantic that acted as perhaps the first convincing summary of family life in lockdown. Had Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy been made before lockdown, if it had been the bloke with the wig from The Hunger Games eating risotto on a bench, it would have been fine. But this is the new and improved sexy post-viral Tucci. As such, his show is unmissable.
A big slice of charm … Stanley Tucci at a pizzeria in Naples. Photograph: CNN
In Searching for Italy, Tucci basically makes it his business to charm the pants off every Italian he meets, in Italian. Episode one takes place in Naples, and early on he visits a tiny, century-old hole-in-the-wall pizzeria. He takes a bite of his calzone, then gazes at the middle-aged woman who made it for him. “Fernanda,” he purrs, “You’ve changed my life.” “You’ll get fat!” she barks back flirtatiously, fully ready to leave her family for this stylish new stranger.
Tucci does this to everyone: chefs, farmers, old friends. They all fall under the powerful Tucci hypnodazzle. The purring is a constant, too. At one point, a violent hailstorm hits and the camera crew rush inside to save their equipment. At this point, Tucci became the only person I have ever heard to purr the phrase “Holy shit”.
This is the sort of show he was made to host. Tucci knows food, and he knows Italy, and he carries himself with such assurance that you sort of want him to give up acting and dedicate himself to this full-time. There’s already a sense that he could be the next Bourdain, so he’ll probably be allowed to make as many shows like this as he wants. Whether that happens or not is another matter. My feeling is that this works so well because Tucci is completely aligned with Italy, and a sequel called something like Stanley Tucci: Searching for Belgium would lose its charm. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy is what we’ve got, and we’d be silly not to savour every morsel. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2024/mar/15/womens-football-must-act-urgently-on-coach-player-relationships | Football | 2024-03-15T15:12:35.000Z | Suzanne Wrack | Women’s football must act urgently on coach-player relationships | Suzanne Wrack | “I
t’s unacceptable”, “it’s crazy”, “it shouldn’t happen” – these are some of the words of condemnation from Women’s Super League managers on the possibility of relationships between players and coaches.
Their words were prompted by questions from journalists after Leicester suspended Willie Kirk while investigating him over an alleged relationship with one of his players. It also comes just over a month after Sheffield United sacked Jonathan Morgan for an alleged relationship with a player during his time at Leicester – before the team was professional and affiliated with the men’s side.
‘I let myself down’: Hayes clarifies comments on players’ relationships
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Many fans, players and staff have waited a long time for questions to be asked about inappropriate relationships between managers and their players across women’s football. There are several reasons why it has taken so long – including legal hurdles involved in reporting on the issue. Those that have come to light have been when formal investigations take place.
Critically, these relationships include many female managers and members of staff. There is a risk of a perception that women’s football would be a safer space without male coaches and that would be a very dangerous picture to paint.
There may be fears that, at an important juncture for the women’s game with NewCo set to take ownership of the top two tiers from the Football Association this summer, shining a light on what many believe is endemic could be destabilising. But this needs to come out, urgently, at a time when rules are being rewritten and foundations for the new professional leagues being laid.
The US Soccer-commissioned Yates Report into allegations of abusive behaviour and sexual misconduct in the NWSL resulted in four managers being permanently banned from coaching in the league, others getting temporary bans and some required to acknowledge their misconduct and participate in training should they wish to return to the league. The investigation – which had to be fought for – has put the NWSL in a healthier, safer and stronger position. The strongest plants can and will emerge from the most vicious fires.
Action needs to be taken. As Bristol City’s manager, Lauren Smith, said: “We’ve seen other instances across the world where things get pushed under the carpet. It’s not time for that, it’s time for action and consequences.”
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Part of the difficulty is deciding where to draw the line. It wasn’t until June 2022 that the law changed to make sexual relationships between “those in a position of trust in sports organisations, such as a coach” and “young people they look after, under 18 years old” illegal.
So, do two consenting adults have a right to privacy? The issue is that there is a power imbalance between a coach and a player of any age. Managers have control over contracts, wages, team selection, captaincy, internal and public promotion of players, and are responsible for engendering the trust of the group and building a safe and positive team environment. They hold the futures of players in their hands. That is a huge responsibility and forming relationships with players you have that level of control over is hugely inappropriate.
There has been some suggestion that the line should be whether a manager has had a relationship with a player before or after the professionalisation of the top two divisions. That is a flawed argument. First, because what the term professional means is a grey area, with many allegedly professional and semi-professional sides unable to provide a livable wage to their players. Second, because it implies that player-manager relationships in the amateur game are acceptable. I have spoken to the manager of a grassroots club who will, as a rule of thumb, not give a lift to a player from their women’s team alone, for his own protection as much as for theirs. The power dynamics in the amateur game may be different and potentially less acute financially, but imbalances still exist.
Is the line a timeframe then? Is it that society’s general view of what is unacceptable, what is frowned on and what is sort of OK has changed over time? I don’t know. If that is the line, where do you draw it? How do you attempt to pinpoint a moment in time in a process that has taken place over some time?
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What do we know about the depth of the problem? The Guardian has been told of at least 18 staff members – including coaches, head coaches, assistant coaches and managing directors, across the football pyramid – who have had relationships with players in their teams within the past 10 years.
I have spoken to a senior leader of a club in the top two tiers who has seen two staff members let go and another undergo disciplinary processes in four years, for blurring the professional lines with players.
I have spoken to players, managers and staff from across the pyramid who have talked about the impact of player-coach relationships on club environments including, in one case, how players felt in the spotlight for poor results or performances while the context – that underlying it was a culture that had become horrifically toxic and divided because of player-coach relationships – was unknown and unreported.
What needs to happen? An independent investigation akin to the investigation that led to the Yates Report would be hugely valuable. Many players and staff are fearful of reporting inappropriate behaviour to their clubs or to governing bodies because they do not feel protected enough or do not believe proper action will be taken. Aston Villa’s manager, Carla Ward, described a lack of trusted reporting mechanisms as “the biggest problem”.
Alongside this, the FA and NewCo must ensure safeguarding and trusted reporting mechanisms are central pillars of the developing WSL, Championship and National League. There can be no compromise, and there must be transparency.
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/oct/06/african-countries-urge-rich-nations-to-honour-100bn-climate-finance-pledge-cop27 | Global development | 2022-10-06T15:18:29.000Z | Edmund Bower | African countries urge rich nations to honour $100bn climate finance pledge | Ministers and high-ranking officials of African nations have urged rich countries to do more to combat the climate crisis, and called the failure to meet a funding promise from 2009 “shameful”.
At a conference in Giza, Egypt, on Wednesday in the run-up to next month’s UN climate summit, Wael Aboulmagd, Egypt’s special representative for Cop27, attacked wealthier nations for not honouring an agreement to provide $100bn (£87.5bn) a year to developing countries by 2020.
The sum was pledged during Cop15 in Copenhagen to help cut greenhouse gas emissions and cope with the impact of the climate crisis on those most affected, and for which the developed world had an “added responsibility”, Aboulmagd said. It was predominantly carbon emissions from Europe and the US that were “responsible for where we are right now”, he said.
3:46
Why is Africa bearing the brunt of the climate crisis? – video explainer
Aboulmagd said the $100bn target – itself “a drop in the ocean” of what was needed – had never been met since it was agreed 13 years ago.
The failure of rich countries to meet their climate commitments is likely to dominate Cop27, which will be held in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.
At an official preparatory meeting in Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo yesterday, speaker after speaker echoed Aboulmagd’s frustration.
The UN deputy secretary general, Amina Mohammed, said investment in climate adaptation in developing countries “must be a priority” for Cop27. Speaking of the decision made at Cop26 to double the climate funding for adaptation to $40bn by 2025, Mohammed said that $40bn was “only a fraction of the $300bn that will be needed annually by developing countries for adaptation by 2030”.
Hit $100bn target or poor countries face climate disaster, the Gambia tells Cop26
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DRC’s environment minister, Eve Bazaiba, said a lack of climate finance from rich countries put poor countries in Africa in a difficult position, whereby agreeing not to exploit natural resources needed for development in accordance with climate crisis commitments could amount to letting “our children and grandchildren die because we must protect the environment”.
One of the biggest criticisms of last year’s Cop26 was its failure to make significant progress on climate finance. In addition to continued short fallings on the 2009 financial commitments, developed countries blocked the creation of a “loss and damage fund” to help those affected by climate crisis-related disasters.
Ève Bazaiba (centre), the DRC’s deputy PM, with Amina Mohammed, UN deputy secretary general, at the meeting in Kinshasa this week. Photograph: Courtesy of Précop27 RDC
Reuters reported last month that Egypt would work to make loss and damage a key part of the Cop27 agenda.
The issue carries particular weight at the moment after floods in Pakistan destroyed more than 700,000 homes and affected as many as 33 million people. Pakistan’s planning minister has put the costs of the floods at $10bn, almost 4% of the country’s GDP. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/sep/24/corinne-bailey-rae-black-rainbows-review-an-extraordinary-new-sound-stony-island-arts-bank-chicago-theaster-gates | Music | 2023-09-24T12:00:00.000Z | Damien Morris | Corinne Bailey Rae: Black Rainbows review – an extraordinary new sound | Corinne Bailey Rae’s most popular songs on Spotify are coffee-shop staples such as Put Your Records On and Like a Star. Nothing to wake the neighbours. By contrast, this is a scream through the letterbox. Bailey Rae originally planned Black Rainbows as a side project, a freewheeling meditation on the history of Black experience she discovered at the Stony Island Arts Bank archive in Chicago. Now it’s her best work yet. Although just 45 minutes long, its audacious mix of rock, electronica, jazz and Afrofuturism forms an epic soundtrack narrating journeys to freedom.
It’s not perfect. The first two songs are a sluggish entry point to the Bailey Rae renaissance, before the album explodes with post-punky Erasure, its transgressive fury a pure catharsis mediated through her distorted voice. Next, a smart sequencing of mostly great songs, including the astonishing He Will Follow You With His Eyes, a coquettish, jazzy number that transmutes into something wild and magical as she blankly intones lines such as “my black hair kinking, my black skin gleaming” while the song disintegrates around her. Even better is closer Before the Throne of the Invisible God, on which, metamorphosis complete, she becomes an east Pennine Alice Coltrane. An extraordinary album.
Watch the video for Peach Velvet Sky by Corinne Bailey Rae. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jul/08/ivf-in-vitro-fertilisation-louise-brown-born | Society | 2018-07-08T07:00:19.000Z | Philip Ball | Seven ways IVF changed the world – from Louise Brown to stem-cell research | 1. Normalising conception in a petri dish
It sounds rather perverse and archaic today to call a child born by IVF a “test-tube baby”. The technique of assisted reproduction has become so widespread and normalised, more than 6 million babies down the road, that there’s nothing so remarkable or stigmatising in having been conceived in a petri dish (“in vitro”means in glass, although test tubes were never involved). In many countries worldwide, 3-6% of all children are now conceived this way.
Given how much scepticism and opposition IVF faced when it was still an untried and somewhat speculative field of research in the late 1960s, it’s surprising how quickly it became accepted. The technique was pioneered by the Cambridge physiologist Robert Edwards, working with obstetrician Patrick Steptoe of Oldham general hospital, who first reported successful fertilisation of a human egg cell in vitro in 1969. The pair faced immense opposition. Eminent biologists and doctors, including Nobel laureates, dismissed their work as scientifically worthless, unnecessary and ethically questionable, and the Medical Research Council would not fund it. Physiologist Martin Johnson, Edwards’s graduate student in the 1960s, admitted that he was initially reluctant to join him and Steptoe because “it was quite unsettling … to see the sheer level of hostility to their work”. Nevertheless, after achieving conception in a petri dish, the researchers refined the method for clinical use, culminating in the birth of Louise Brown in Oldham on 25 July 1978. Edwards was awarded the Nobel prize in medicine or physiology for his work in 2010, but Steptoe died in 1988.
Physiologist Robert Edwards holding Louise Brown and (right) the obstetrician Patrick Steptoe at Oldham General hospital on 25 July 1978. Photograph: Keystone/Getty Images
The birth of Louise Brown transformed public opinion. People could now see that a “test-tube baby” was like any other. Newspapers that had previously warned how IVF threatened human welfare and dignity suddenly became sentimental baby-worshippers, announcing the “baby of the century”. “She’s beautiful”, said the Daily Express, “ – that’s the test tube baby.” After their dystopian forecasts, the media was confused by the normality of it all. Witness the cognitive dissonance in Newsweek’s headline: “She was born at around 11.47pm with a lusty yell, and it was a cry round the brave new world.”
2. Putting the UK at the forefront of embryology
As Edwards and Steptoe established the first IVF clinic at Bourn Hall near Cambridge, it soon became clear that fertility treatment was going to be big business. At last there was hope for people who had been expected previously to suffer their infertility in silence, and there was no shortage of clients. The procedure needed regulating.
But given how controversial it still was, politicians were reluctant to get involved. It wasn’t until 1982 that the British government appointed a committee to recommend regulatory guidelines, headed by the moral philosopher Mary Warnock. The Warnock report was delivered in 1984, but still the government prevaricated, taking another three years to draw up a white paper. This eventually became the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act of 1990. It created the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) to adjudicate and license all work on human embryos, whether for IVF or for scientific study.
Today, the HFEA is responsible for overseeing a vast range of research well beyond the boundaries of what was initially envisaged for IVF. It has taken a permissive stance that has made the UK a world leader in embryology and related research – showing that, if done with care and sensitivity to balance welfare and social concerns against the importance of medical advance, strong regulation enables research. “Parliament has decided that the regulation of IVF and research involving human embryos in the UK is, in effect, a bargain between science and society,” says HFEA chief executive Peter Thompson. “Our regulatory oversight protects patients and provides the essential conditions for public trust, which in turn allows clinicians and scientists to innovate responsibly.”
The infertility crisis is beyond doubt. Now scientists must find the cause
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3. Opening the gateway to a deeper understanding of human reproduction
By creating more fertilised eggs than are generally reimplanted in the uterus, IVF produces “spare embryos” that may be used, with consent, for scientific research. This notion of “spares” that might have the potential to become a human being (though many do not) still seems morally repugnant to some people. Others accept that “excess” embryos are inevitable if IVF is to achieve good success rates, and feel there is justification for using them to advance scientific understanding and bring medical benefits, rather than discarding them. In any event, IVF has made possible an entire field of human embryo research.
Such studies not only might help to improve IVF itself but may lead to insights into, for example, the causes of early miscarriage or growth defects. “Research on human embryos has changed our fundamental understanding of the genetics of cell biology,” says Alison Murdoch, professor of reproductive medicineat Newcastle University. “As well as helping us understand why fertility of the human species is so uniquely bad, the research has extended applications of human embryology beyond the clinical treatment of infertility into prevention of other medical problems.”
The HFEA places strict limits on what can be done with human embryos. The Warnock report advised that they should not be used in research beyond 14 days from fertilisation – a cutoff that was always acknowledged as somewhat arbitrary, although it was chosen partly because there is a clear biological marker. At this stage, embryos develop the “primitive streak”, the first sign of what will become the spinal column, after which they can no longer potentially become twins. So in a crude sense, after 14 days the “personhood” of the embryo becomes determined. But recent advances have made it possible in principle to keep embryos viable in vitro for longer than 14 days, reopening discussion about whether the 14-day rule should be extended. Currently there are no plans to do so.
An early-stage embryo made up of non-specialised stem cells. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo
4. Paving the way for stem cell research
Because of theological and ethical opposition to embryo research, stem cell research started long after IVF began in 1978. It really only began to take off after the isolation of human embryonic stem cells (HESCs) in 1998. “Suddenly all the funding agencies wanted to fund research, and clinics were encouraged to participate by asking their patients to donate surplus embryos,” says Murdoch.
In their earliest stages, embryos are made up of stem cells, which can develop into any tissue type in the body. Later generations of cells become specialised: heart cells, muscles, neurons and so on. Because of their versatility, HESCs can be used to grow tissues for regenerative medicine. Efforts to treat conditions such as heart disease or Parkinson’s by injecting stem cells into the respective tissues are now undergoing human clinical trials. In the US, such stem cell therapies have been hampered by the ruling of the George W Bush administration in 2001 that research using new HESC lines taken from IVF embryos could not be federally funded. Such uses of embryos were deemed unethical by Bush’s conservative bioethics advisory panel.
Despite such obstacles, says Murdoch, since 2000 “the science of HESCs made good progress, and the UK was prominent in this research”. Murdoch’s group at Newcastle has pioneered mitochondrial transfer techniques, the offspring of which are misleadingly dubbed “three-parent babies”, to combat heritable and debilitating mitochondrial diseases. “If we had not had the prior experience in [in vitro] human embryology and in the management of the ethical and regulatory challenges from HESC research, we would probably never have been able to achieve this,” she says. Such advances have been aided by the HFEA’s permissive but tight regulatory framework. “It is no accident that the UK is the first country in the world to license gene editing in research and mitochondrial donation in treatment,” says Thompson.
The fertility expert Robert Winston in 1990 announced, with Alan Handyside, that they had analysed embryos to determine their sex. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian
5. It forced us to think about genetic screening
In 1990, shortly before the Commons debate of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, the British fertility experts Robert Winston and Alan Handyside revealed they had analysed embryos to determine their sex, raising the possibility of screening embryos for a serious disease specific to one sex. This helped to persuade some sceptics that embryo research did, after all, have sound medical motivation.
In fact more detailed genetic analysis of cells removed from embryos to look for disease-linked genes had already been reported. This method, called preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), is now permitted by the HFEA to screen for around 400 serious diseases associated with single genes (such as cystic fibrosis), so that embryos carrying disease-related gene variants will not be implanted – eliminating the risk of passing on the condition for couples who know they are carriers of the gene. But the gene-screening technology also fuels fears of designer babies, selected not to avoid disease but because they have genes thought to be linked to desirable traits such as intelligence and athleticism. That practice is illegal in the UK, but there’s no binding international legislation.
DNA editing in human embryos reveals role of fertility 'master gene'
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6. It gave us a new view of human conception
The fertilisation of a human egg cell by a sperm was first observed under the microscope 99 years before Louise Brown was born, by the Swiss zoologist Hermann Fol. But it was only when the fertilised egg’s development could be sustained and followed, with the inception of IVF in 1969, that the human embryo, that suggestive little cluster of cells, became emblematic of the start of life. Few media stories on assisted reproduction are now complete without a photograph of one. The equally iconic image of a sperm being injected through a micropipette into the soft, yielding egg in the variant of IVF called intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) is itself a kind of stylised recapitulation of sexual intercourse. These pictures are displayed as miraculous images of hope – even while, paradoxically, confronting us with a view of human life deeply alien to our experience. Sociologist Sarah Franklin of the University of Cambridge says that micrographs of ICSI reconfigure our notion of life as something that may be technologically mediated. “Having passed through the looking glass of IVF, neither human reproduction nor reproductive biology look quite the same,” she says. “IVF has changed scientific understandings of what life is.”
The technique has changed traditional notions of family structure, too. Egg donation and surrogacy, the freezing of embryos, and techniques such as mitochondrial transfer and genome editing alter long-held views about biological relations, kinship and the constraints of time, space, gender and genetics on procreation.
Intracytoplasmic sperm injection: ‘a kind of stylised recapitulation of sexual intercourse’. Photograph: Image Broker / Rex Features
7. It sparked a new debate about the moral status of the embryo
So long as the embryo stayed out of sight, all kinds of narratives could be spun about its moral status – traditionally, for the Catholic church, revolving around the issue of when it acquired a soul. But when the biology was laid bare, new stories were required. As the political scientist Rosalind Petchesky has pointed out, anti-abortionists have increasingly framed these in biological terms. Is personhood a matter of unique genetic identity? (Identical twins pose problems there.) Is it granted when the sperm and egg combine? When the embryo begins to acquire shape in the process called gastrulation? Implantation in the uterus? Formation of the nervous system?
The irony is that, even while biology becomes yoked to moral arguments, it shows our development as a series of contingent steps, none obviously more “fundamental” than the others. Thus the embryo’s moral status remains contentious. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/sep/08/charlie-kaufman-im-thinking-of-ending-things-discuss-with-spoilers | Film | 2020-09-08T10:29:43.000Z | Jordan Hoffman | The ballet, the janitor, the parents: discuss I'm Thinking of Ending Things with spoilers | In the 1982 comedy masterpiece Tootsie, Bill Murray co-stars as a playwright who says his ideal fan encounter is with one who says: “I saw your play. What happened?” If confounding the audience is a metric for success then Charlie Kaufman’s adaptation of Iain Reid’s novel I’m Thinking of Ending Things for Netflix can proudly hold its head high.
I'm Thinking of Ending Things review – another superb nightmare courtesy of Charlie Kaufman
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For those who come to the film, as I did, without reading the book, it is unlikely you will truly understand the ending, or even the central hook. We know to expect weirdness with Kaufman, whether it’s his mindscrambling script to Being John Malkovich, his exploration into the futility of artistic creation in Synecdoche, New York, or the frustrations of human connection in Anomalisa. (Recently, there’s also hilarious psychological slapstick in Antkind, a 700+ page novel that defies all descriptions.)
You’ll get a general sense of the themes Kaufman is going for in I’m Thinking of Ending Things, but once you read what he’s stripped out of the story, it makes it feel a little hollow. Imagine watching The Usual Suspects but without the shot of Chazz Palminteri recognising all the names and places on the bulletin board behind him.
So let’s take a long drive through snowy Oklahoma (without safety belts!) and talk about this weird move. This is a safe space to admit we got confused.
What the hell is going on?
Here goes: the entire movie is a daydream inside the mind of the janitor you see periodically. The woman (or women, perhaps more accurately) that Jessie Buckley plays is a fantasy. The man Jesse Plemons plays, Jake, is a projection of the janitor decades earlier. (Even though they have iPhones in the vision; that’s the least of the confusing bits.)
You can kinda-sorta intuit that there is a connection between the janitor and what’s happening at the time-shifting farmhouse with William Morris print wallpaper (his clothes are in the washing machine), but having the movie told, with voiceover, from the perspective of Buckley’s character, only to actually be from the mind of the janitor is a leap my puny mind never made. Maybe yours did.
Inside the daydream … Jessie Buckley in I’m Thinking of Ending Things. Photograph: Mary Cybulski/NETFLIX © 2020
Here’s more: the entire purpose of the daydream is because the janitor is contemplating killing himself. Before he can decide, he’s trying to imaging “other roads taken.” In the book, the story about the trivia night is true. Buckley’s character smiled at Jake, but in reality Jake lacked the nerve to speak to her. So the “meet the parents” scenario not only never happened, but he didn’t know anything about Buckley’s character other than she was cute, hence the changes in names, occupations and attitudes.
There are some very small breadcrumbs to suggest this. When Buckley’s character meets the janitor and says she can barely remember meeting Jake, that he’s a mosquito from 40 years ago, this is reflective of reality. But who’s to know this? A few scenes earlier, she was channelling the spirit of Pauline Kael (we’ll get to that) and later Jake is going to channel Russell Crowe from A Beautiful Mind and Jud from the musical Oklahoma!
I’m Thinking of Ending Things being told from inside the Buckley character’s head and not Jake’s makes this pretty difficult to suss out. So if you didn’t get this, don’t feel too bad.
Does not understanding the whole point of the movie make it bad?
In this case, no. I found myself riveted throughout I’m Thinking of Ending Things. All of the performances (also including Toni Collette and David Thewlis) are terrific, and maintaining a tone of edgy nervousness for over two hours takes some heavy duty shooting and editing worthy of huzzahs. Buckley’s performance, thanks in part to all the shifting her character does, is certainly the most showy, which is funny since there’s the whole monologue, taken from film critic Pauline Kael, condemning Gena Rowlands’s (mostly) treasured similar feat in John Cassavetes’s film A Woman Under the Influence.
Why did she become a film critic in the middle of the movie? And was that poem hers?
Terrific … Toni Collette and David Thewlis in I’m Thinking of Ending Things. Photograph: Mary Cybulski/AP
Something that isn’t in the book is a moment that is actually quite reminiscent of the aforementioned Usual Suspects gag. Since the janitor doesn’t really know anything about the Buckley character, he fills her up (and his younger self, too) with whatever was laying around his bookshelf. So that’s a collection of Kael’s film reviews, some of Eva H.D.’s poems, paintings by Ralph Albert Blakelock, the novel Ice, a Wordsworth volume, physics texts, and a DVD of A Beautiful Mind. The musical Oklahoma! is in the air since he’s at a high school in Oklahoma that frequently puts on the show. (Typical of Kaufman to include a song that was cut from the movie version, leaving many of us to wonder: “Wait, is this from Oklahoma!? I don’t remember it too well.”)
The collection of David Foster Wallace essays and the subsequent discussion of suicide is there to help the narrative segue from the suggestion that the film’s title isn’t about the end of a bad relationship, but a person’s life.
There are so many stray lines that later become foreshadowing (a Bible quote later visualised in a ballet dream sequence) or that act as commentary on what Kaufman is doing. Blakelock’s paintings are described as evoking sadness, even though they are not explicitly sad. The same can be said for nearly every scene in this movie.
Of course, all this tricky stuff isn’t the end-all-be-all of the movie. What it effectively expresses is the unease some people feel in a new relationship to fit expectations with that person’s family. It’s gaslighting to the nth degree, and extremely uncomfortable to watch.
Why the diss against Robert Zemeckis?
Charlie Kaufman: 'Making people laugh makes me feel validated as a human'
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The “directed by Robert Zemeckis” title card from the corny film-within-a-film, according to Netflix began as a placeholder from an assistant editor. Kaufman thought it was hilarious, asked Zemeckis’s permission and the rest is history.
As it happens, the long-in-development film Chaos Walking, based on Patrick Ness’s book The Knife of Never Letting Go, was once adapted by Kaufman. His name remains as one of the six writers on the version shot but not yet released by Doug Liman. But in 2012, Robert Zemeckis was supposed to direct. Whether the snarky inclusion is a comment on this project will stay forever buried deep in Kaufman’s mind. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2011/mar/06/girl-x-review | Stage | 2011-03-06T17:07:36.000Z | Mark Fisher | Girl X - review | Robert Softley is telling the true story of a girl whose parents put her through surgery rather than let her face the onset of an adulthood which, they felt, would only make her profound disabilities worse. The actor is surrounded by a 16-strong community chorus and, as he describes the girl's condition, they break into sympathetic song. With a look of horror, he asks them what they're doing. "We're a choir – that's what choirs do," they reply in unison.
It's one of several laugh-out-loud moments in this politically thrilling production created by Softley and director Pol Heyvaert for the National Theatre of Scotland. "I hate choirs," says Softley as he rails against the mainstream sentimentalisation of people with disabilities. In an already emotive debate about disability rights, he has no time for the manipulative choral soundtracks so beloved of Hollywood.
The actor, however, is outnumbered. When the choir arrive on stage – a brilliantly realised concrete underpass enhanced by pencil-drawn animations – they point in our direction and say they are here with the audience. Softley, a wheelchair user, is taking on the lot of us, with our common-sense opinions ranging from patronising liberal compassion to anti-PC indignation.
What's so compelling about Girl X – adapted from heated discussions on internet forums and frequently going off on funny tangents in the way such discussions do – is the argument never settles. Softley is the most articulate, the best briefed and the most inclined to challenge conventional thinking ("Would you fuck me?" he demands of those who claim to respect him as a human being), but the choir frequently seem more pragmatic and less extreme. The conflicting and contradictory viewpoints create the opposite of agitprop and, in its way, something more politically radical, opening up a complex, unsettling debate that does not stop at the curtain call. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2017/may/29/league-two-fans-24-clubs-review-season-football-league | Football | 2017-05-29T10:46:36.000Z | Guardian readers | League Two: fans from all 24 clubs review their season | (C) Portsmouth, 1st
Four years of obscurity and uncertainty in League Two and not only are we moving back up, we did it in style. We won the league and after last year’s play-off heartbreak, it’s a feeling that you can’t really describe. It feels like we’re back.
Paul Cook has been an amazing manager for us. He’s built a revitalised squad full of young talent and there’s finally some financial stability at the top. We’re owned by the fans, meaning every decision has been made with the club’s best interests at heart. That’s something we’ve really lacked over the years. Jeremy Abbott
Portsmouth fans celebrate after winning the league . Photograph: Mark Kerton/Action Plus/Getty Images
(P) Plymouth Argyle, 2nd
We finally did what had to be done to reach League One. It hurt that we lost the title like that on the final day to Portsmouth, but promotion was the goal and we achieved that. The team worked well, loan signings were strong, and at times we were more like the team we were seven years ago. Dan
Plymouth Argyle players celebrate their promotion. Photograph: Nigel French/PA
(P) Doncaster Rovers, 3rd
It was always a lose-lose situation for Doncaster. Going down last season was a huge step down. We achieved the bare minimum of going up automatically, however a post-promotion slump cost us what was looking like an easy title win. At least the club is lucky enough to have a board that has a clear, concise direction and who are not afraid to spend the cash when needed. Darren Ferguson did well to manage expectations, but the board deserve credit for sticking by him. Holding on to John Marquis will be key now, and to build a team that can encourage fans back to The Keepmoat next season. SeparateJam
Luton Town, 4th
In August, fourth would probably have been acceptable, but our incredibly poor home form has left us wondering “what if” when we failed in the play-off semis against Blackpool. The home leg against Blackpool summed up our season perfectly. We were excellent in patches, but gave Blackpool a 2-0 aggregate head-start before deciding to play and dominate. Then the fear hit, as it often does when we have big crowds at home, and we threw away a winning position through individual errors. It’s all very Luton at the moment!
We had the best away record in the league but the manner of our many draws and defeats at Kenilworth Road indicates a group of players that struggle with an expectant home crowd. Nathan Jones’s preference for a diamond midfield is very frustrating, as it offers so little penetration. Top three next season is a must. Adam Shortland
Luton manager Nathan Jones Photograph: Tom Jacobs/Reuters
Exeter City, 5th
I expected the play-offs this season and the club delivered. We deserved our day out in the Wembley sun, after beating Carlisle over two exciting semi-final legs. Unfortunately Blackpool got the better of us on the day, but there’s plenty to be positive about for the future - if we are able to keep hold of the likes of Ollie Watkins. Stephen
Carlisle United, 6th
I was delighted to have reached the play-offs on the final day in dramatic fashion, but having stayed in the top three from October until March, and spent a week top, it’s a little disappointing to fall short. But Exeter deserved to go through in the play-off semis. We’ve ridden our luck a lot this season, and you can’t expect to progress to Wembley after falling two behind in both legs. Still, there has rarely been a dull moment this season, with numerous high-scoring games and comeback victories to enjoy and a club record unbeaten stretch at the start of the season. I hope Keith Curle stays and most of this squad stays together. With an improved defence and a top striker, we could well go up automatically next season. Mathew
Carlisle United’s Jamie Proctor celebrates after his team’s game against Exeter City. Photograph: Adam Holt/Reuters
(P) Blackpool, 7th
At least it was respectable on the field this time! Our triumph in the play-off final proves Gary Bowyer has stopped the rot. The manager brought the best out of Brad Potts, uncovered a potential gem in Kyle Vassell and put Bright Osayi-Samuel on the track to a bright future.
The problem is, no one’s been paying much attention this season. Instead we’ve been watching as the owners continue to treat those fans they’re not already suing with contempt. Gates have barely remained in four digits and the suspicion is they’ve been counting every seagull that flies past. Even a run to the play-offs has done little to inspire interest. Steve
Blackpool manager Gary Bowyer gives the fans the thumbs up. Photograph: Alex Dodd/CameraSport/Getty Images
Colchester United, 8th
Following relegation last season the consensus among fans was probably that this season would be one of drama-free consolidation. However, for seven months of the season, our form was that of a play-off team, even one flirting with the fringes of automatic promotion. Sadly, the other two months produced results more akin to a team looking to leave the division at the wrong end. At one point we were just about rock bottom. There’s hope for next season though - but isn’t there always. Archiebunker
Wycombe Wanderers, 9th
Wycombe’s season was a series of peaks and troughs that ultimately fell just short of the League Two play-offs. Injuries to a small team meant we were 21st before playing Doncaster in October, but then went on a 16-game unbeaten run that catapulted us up to fourth. The run only finished when we lost 4-3 to Spurs at White Hart Lane in the 97th minute.
Seven consecutive losses from February led to us dropping out of the play-off positions. It’s frustrating to have beaten both Doncaster and Portsmouth, who have been promoted automatically, but struggled against Crawley and Notts County. The shortcomings of our limited finances shone through again, though our debt has been cleared thanks to our sell-on clause with Jordon Ibe (thanks Eddie Howe!) Michael
Stevenage, 10th
We started the season poorly, but the team went on a superb run taking them to fourth place in March. Unfortunately the season tailed off, but we were still within a good shout of the play-offs before the last game. I’m happy we stuck with previously untried manager Darren Sarll, who is well respected in the club. Bringing in the experience of Glenn Roeder to help with coaching was also helpful. The signing of Matt Godden from non-league was a stroke of genius. Pete Tomlin
Stevenage manager Darren Sarll. Photograph: Craig Mercer/CameraSport/Getty Images
Cambridge United, 11th
We were hanging on to the coattails of the play-offs without ever really looking like we were going to cement a place there. At least the first half of our televised FA Cup tie against Leeds showed what we are capable of. Manager Shaun Derry’s stupefyingly dull tactics worked reasonably well away from home, but consistently failed to translate into performances at The Abbey. Frustratingly, we had the sixth best away form in the division but were a mediocre 13th at home. Derry deserves at least one more season, although he needs to be told that our baffling safety first approach needs to be ditched. SteveinSoCal
Mansfield Town, 12th
This season was a bit of a waste. We were always one or two results away from challenging the play-off pack, and never showed enough consistency to be anywhere near escaping the division. Steve Evans is now seeking assurances from the owner, claiming he’s “not a League Two manager.” It’ll be interesting to see where such bold statements get him in the long run. But if his ambitions are matched by the board, next season should at least be interesting. Adam
Accrington Stanley, 13th
The strong finish to the season bodes well for next year. John Coleman is a great manager and is yet again getting the best out of a limited playing squad. If we are to have a better season next year, and push for promotion again, Shay McCartan and the solid midfielders Séamus Conneely and Scott Brown need to stay. Chrissy
John Coleman has done well at Accrington Stanley. Photograph: Craig Mercer - CameraSport/CameraSport via Getty Images
Grimsby Town, 14th
Mid-table mediocrity was the best we could hope for having lost our manager and top scorer Omar Bogle to higher division clubs mid-way through the season. I was also disappointed it didn’t work out for Marcus Bignot. Now we need to trim the squad and look at bolstering our attacking options ahead of next year. Don
Barnet, 15th
We made a promising start and an unprecedented spending spree in January took us to the verge of the play-offs. But then everything went down the pan in quite typical Barnet fashion. Martin Allen left the club for a fourth time. He was then replaced by two of the club’s youth coaches, Rossi Eames and Henry Newman. They were replaced by the permanent appointment of Charlton assistant Kevin Nugent, who was then sacked in April, leaving Eames to pick up the pieces again. I would like Eames to be given a chance to claim the job for himself, but no doubt Allen will be back for a fifth stint as our chairman only seems to have four numbers in his black book. Steve
Will Martin Allen return? Probably. Photograph: James Baylis/AMA/Getty Images
Notts County, 16th
Useful start, disastrous middle, promising finish. John Sheridan came in at the start of the season with a handy record in League Two but a run of nine defeats in a row – and a remarkably sweary tirade at a linesman – persuaded new owner Alan Hardy to replace him with Kevin Nolan. While Sheridan had all the motivational powers of Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh, Nolan has transformed the team from relegation certainties to mid-table comfort, with the help of some astute loan signings and a remarkable change in atmosphere round Meadow Lane.
Kevin Nolan must continue to build a team in the mould of how he was as a Premier League player; industrious, tenacious and getting more out of them than their individual talent may suggest. His apparent eye for a decent loan player will be vital. Expectations will be great next season, not least from the ambitious chairman. Andy Flanagan
Jorge Grant celebrates after scoring for Notts County against Newport County. Photograph: Athena Pictures/Getty Images
Crewe Alexandra, 17th
It’s been a very forgettable season, both on and off the pitch at Crewe. The less said the better to be honest. Manager David Artell has at least started planning for next season already by releasing six players (including ex-boss Steve Davis’s son). Chris Dagnall’s performances were a beacon of light, but overall this has been a miserable year for the club. Stuart
Morecambe, 18th
Another season looking nervously over our shoulders, huge questions over club ownership and wages being paid late on more than one occasion. There really hasn’t been much to shout about this season. No wonder club legend Jim Bentley is considering his future this summer. It’s a total shambles at the moment. If we’re really as cash-strapped as we’re led to believe, then 18th place in League Two might be as good as it will get for now. Lucas
Crawley Town, 19th
This season was a little bit disappointing. With new owners, a new manager and 20 new signings, we looked like we had the quality to hit the ground running fairly well. As the season grew, the team began to struggle. We have a decent squad of players, but the job seemed too big for head coach Dermot Drummy, who has since departed. On the pitch we should do better next season. Mark Underwood
Glenn Morris of Crawley Town saves a shot from Joss Labadie of Newport County. Photograph: Athena Pictures/Getty Images
Yeovil Town, 20th
We were in danger of being involved in a relegation scrap but pulled clear just when a last weekend dogfight looked ominous. A lack of investment meant we had a high turnover of players this season. Darren Way has done his best, considering the resources, but some ambition needs to be shown by the board to build a spine in the squad once more. Our successful years were built on a core of contracted players, who offered continuity and thus, were able to support the sprinkling of loans and short-term signings that are necessary for a club like Yeovil. We need that sense of direction and ambition from the boardroom. Chris
Cheltenham Town, 21st
After the massive high of winning the National League, many of our fans were hoping for a challenge for promotion or at least consolidation in mid-table. What we ended up with was a relegation battle. We finished the season losing 6-1 at champions Portsmouth, highlighting the massive gap in quality between the top and 21st.
We won the National League title by a fair distance the previous year so keeping the squad together was the fair thing to do. Unfortunately, too many of the players couldn’t make the step up to League football. The January transfer window enabled us to shore up the team and there was a definite improvement over the final few months. How much of this improvement was down to the awful state of the Whaddon Road pitch, which gave us a significant advantage, is up for debate and the end we did just about enough to survive. Paul
James Rowe goes close for Cheltenham against Portsmouth. Photograph: Mark Kerton/Action Plus/Getty Images
Newport County, 22nd
Well, that was close! We were shocking for the first 34 games, but the last 12 were unbelievable. With one minute left on the clock this would be an entirely different post, but against all the odds we’re still here. Hopefully the attention The County provoked will be enough to entice a bit of investment. We also need to sort the pitch at Rodney Parade out. Ian Morgan
(R) Hartlepool United, 23rd
This season was a disaster. Absolutely the worst ever. But it has been coming for years now, the club has been run terribly for the last decade. The National League will be a tough slog now. We need a miracle. Steve
Tough times for Hartlepool United. Photograph: Robbie Jay Barratt/AMA
(R) Leyton Orient, 24th
Orient fell out of the Football League after 112 years and it has been a heartbreaking campaign. Fans have watched helplessly as owner Francesco Becchetti has frozen out player after player and been accused of interfering in team selection. The team is made up largely of youth team members who were given the impossible task of trying to save the club from relegation. Mr Becchetti has not been seen since fans staged a mild mannered protest round the local high street.
We’ve also been dreadfully let down by the EFL. The fans’ trust has been raising a regeneration fund for the club should it be needed and fans have been selling off their personal prized memorabilia to raise money for the fund so Orient can survive in some form should the club be liquidated. The National League is difficult to get out of and it’s possible Orient may be there for a couple of seasons at least. At least recent events have brought the fans closer together than I would have thought possible and there is a sense of community and pride in this fanbase that is all the more remarkable for a club in such crisis. Roxanne
Leyton Orient fans let their views be known. Photograph: Tom Jacobs/Reuters | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jun/12/yahoo-fined-hack-ico-uk-accounts-russia | Technology | 2018-06-12T14:53:16.000Z | Samuel Gibbs | Yahoo fined £250,000 for hack that impacted 515,000 UK accounts | Yahoo has been fined £250,000 over a hack from 2014 that affected more than 515,000 UK email accounts co-branded with Sky, the Information Commissioner’s Office has announced.
The personal data of 500m user accounts worldwide was compromised during a state-sponsored cyber attack in 2014, which was only revealed in 2016. The stolen data included names, email addresses, telephone numbers, passwords and encrypted security questions and answers, the ICO said on Tuesday.
The ICO said the fine related to the impact on 515,121 accounts that were co-branded as Sky and Yahoo services in the UK, for which Yahoo! UK Services Ltd is the data controller.
The data protection watchdog said the internet firm had “failed to prevent” the Russia-sponsored hack, following an investigation carried out under the Data Protection Act 1998. James Dipple-Johnstone, ICO’s deputy operations commissioner, criticised “inadequacies” that had been in place for a long time at Yahoo without being “discovered or addressed”.
ICO said Yahoo had failed to take appropriate measures to prevent the theft of data and failed to ensure that data was processed by Yahoo’s US arm with appropriate data protection standards.
Dipple-Johnstone said: “The failings our investigation identified are not what we expect from a company that had ample opportunity to implement appropriate measures, and potentially stop UK citizens’ data being compromised.”
Yahoo declined to comment. The firm has since been acquired by US cable operator Verizon and was merged with fellow original internet firm AOL to form Oath, an operator of various specialists sites and internet services.
“We accept that cyber-attacks will happen and as the cybercriminals get shrewder and more determined, the protection of data becomes even more of a challenge,” said Dipple-Johnstone. “However, organisations must take appropriate steps to protect the data of their customers from this threat.”
Yahoo also suffered a larger data breach in 2013 that affected 1bn accounts but it was only revealed in 2016, after the disclosure of the 2014 hack. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/may/28/peaky-blinders-cillian-murphy-i-was-in-awe-of-how-helen-mccrory-lived-her-life | Film | 2021-05-28T05:00:48.000Z | Ryan Gilbey | Cillian Murphy: ‘I was in awe of how Helen McCrory lived her life’ | Cillian Murphy, star of the new horror sequel A Quiet Place Part II, is something to behold: X-ray eyes at once penetrating and ethereally blue, cheekbones so pronounced you could stretch out and go to sleep on them. Unfortunately, the beholding will have to wait. We have barely exchanged greetings over Zoom when his voice breaks up, the screen freezes and the room falls silent. A quiet place, indeed.
We switch to phones. We can do this, I tell him. “I have faith,” he replies, in a soothing Cork accent that compensates for the lack of visuals. Murphy’s gift for intensity has made him a natural fit for characters damaged (Dunkirk, The Edge of Love) or outright villainous (Batman Begins, Red Eye), but today he is quick to laugh and keen to talk. He is speaking from a flat in Manchester, where he is staying while he shoots the sixth and final series of Peaky Blinders. That stylish crime drama, which rocketed from BBC Two cult success to global phenomenon, revolves around a 1920s Birmingham gang led by Murphy as the vicious Tommy Shelby. With his eyes, looks could kill – although he keeps razor blades in the brim of his cap, just in case.
With Helen McCrory in Peaky Blinders. Photograph: Matt Squire/BBC/Caryn Mandabach Productions Ltd 2019
Last month, Helen McCrory, who played Tommy’s formidable aunt Polly, died of cancer at the age of 52. When I ask Murphy what she meant to him, he sighs fondly. “Oh, man. She was my closest colleague on Peaky, and one of the finest actors I’ve ever worked opposite. Any material, any scene … she made it special. She could do power and vulnerability, one after the other. She was just so cool and fun, and had such compassion for everyone she met. I was kind of in awe about how she lived her life – the way she balanced her work and her family so beautifully.”
In A Quiet Place Part II, the threat comes not from Brummie thugs in newsboy caps but sightless carnivorous monsters that hunt their human prey by sound alone. Murphy was impressed enough by the original 2018 film to compose a congratulatory email to its star and director John Krasinski, though not bold enough to send it. “I got a bit embarrassed,” he says. “I thought: ‘He’s going to think I want something.’ And I didn’t.”
Does he often write fanmail? “I used to when I was younger. Actors are so cosseted and no one ever reaches out. But I think it’s a good thing to do. I always tell that to younger actors: if there’s someone you admire, write them a letter.” Has he had much correspondence himself, then? “Hahaha! No!” He will be inundated once this article comes out. “That was not my agenda,” he says, squirming through his giggles.
In the new film, he plays Emmett, a grieving father holed up in an abandoned factory away from the monsters. Not long after he loses his own family, another one stumbles into his life: a mother (Emily Blunt) and her three children. The picture marks a return for Murphy to the mayhem of the 2002 zombie horror 28 Days Later, which began with unforgettable scenes of him wandering through an eerily deserted London. He remarked at the time that the true star of Danny Boyle’s movie was its premise. The same could be said of A Quiet Place Part II. Did he find enough as an actor to sink his teeth into?
In Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later. Photograph: www.ronaldgrantarchive.com
He mulls this over. “Well, it felt like enough for me to try to give a performance. And I don’t think it’s a bad thing if the premise is the star of a movie, if it’s a good premise. If the job is to serve the concept the best you can, I’m totally down with that.”
Hints of Emmett’s past can be found in his reading matter: Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson. “He was another man before all this,” the actor explains. Dickinson also provides a link to the project Murphy was working on immediately before A Quiet Place Part II. She wrote the poem “Hope” is the thing with feathers; Murphy, by coincidence, was coming fresh – or, as he tells it, not so fresh – from Enda Walsh’s devastating stage adaptation of Grief is the Thing with Feathers, Max Porter’s novel about a father raising his sons after their mother’s death. The actor doubled up as the lone parent and Crow, the creature that personifies his torment. For that alter ego, he took inspiration from some eclectic sources: Tom Waits, Beetlejuice and Dr Evil from the Austin Powers series.
“It was one of the most satisfying things I’ve ever done,” he says. “But it destroyed me. I was 43 at the time, and your body doesn’t always live up to your demands. Mine was telling me: ‘Please stop jumping up on to a bunk bed every night on stage!’ That and the emotional trauma meant I couldn’t sleep, so I wasn’t bouncing back the way I normally would.” He is in the market for something more sedate next time. “A sitting-down play,” he says.
But then none of his work with Walsh (who is his most frequent collaborator aside from Christopher Nolan) has exactly been a cake-walk. He made his professional acting debut in 1996 in the playwright’s feverish two-hander Disco Pigs, about a pair of mutually obsessive teenage delinquents. Between that and Grief is the Thing with Feathers, he has also toured Walsh’s frantic solo show Misterman and his kinetic comedy Ballyturk. The critic Michael Billington in these pages marvelled at him in Ballyturk, “jumping on to a high ledge with the agility of a gazelle”.
With Eileen Walsh In Disco Pigs. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian
Eileen Walsh, Murphy’s co-star in Disco Pigs, tells me that acting in that play “felt dangerous, and yet at the same time we were safe because we trusted each other so much”. They went from sweaty, sellout runs in Cork and Dublin to the Edinburgh fringe and beyond. “We felt we could do anything. It was like being inside a firework.”
Murphy’s career took off like a Roman candle. He was on stage in The Seagull and The Playboy of the Western World, and on screen as assorted reprobates and misfits: in the film version of Disco Pigs, in the comic thriller Intermission with Colin Farrell and in On the Edge, a kind of Boy, Interrupted, which begins with Murphy knocking on the coffin lid at his father’s funeral (“Nope, still dead”) before driving off a cliff.
Cillian’s a special animal. To go from playing Kitten to Tommy Shelby shows an extraordinary range
Neil Jordan
It was as Kitten, a transgender dreamer searching for her mother in Breakfast on Pluto, that he first proved his remarkable versatility. The film’s director and co-writer, Neil Jordan, wasn’t sure if the role was even playable until he did some early tests with Murphy. “Cillian brought absolute conviction to the part,” he says. “I realised that perhaps it could work if I had someone like him to bring the character to life. After that, he kept calling me – ‘When are we doing it?’ – and eventually kind of wore me down.”
Why was he so tenacious in pursuing that role? “The thought of working with Neil was huge,” Murphy says. “And the transformative aspect was very appealing. I was young. You have a lot of stuff to prove to yourself.” His high, strained voice and fluid physicality eliminated any trace of the conventionally masculine. “Cillian’s a special animal,” says Jordan. “To go from playing Kitten to Tommy Shelby – who is such a savage, muscular character – shows an extraordinary range.”
He was in pester mode again when he auditioned for Peaky Blinders. The creator, Steven Knight, had boiled it down to two candidates and was leaning toward the other one, Jason Statham. “There was a bit of convincing needed,” says Murphy. “Initially, there may have been some doubts about whether I had the requisite physicality, which I understand. I’m not the most physically imposing individual.” Legend has it that he sent Knight a text that said simply: “Remember I’m an actor.” He gives a little snort. “It’s a cool story. If I was that succinct, I’ll take it.” But was he dissing the Stath? Did he mean: “Remember I’m an actor … and Statham isn’t”? He bats the idea away with a laugh. “They are entirely unconnected.”
What he strives for these days is the unselfconscious immediacy he experienced as a young actor. “I felt fearless doing Disco Pigs. I didn’t realise how good it was because I had nothing to measure it against. Then, as you go on, you think: ‘Ah, not quite there now. Not quite there with this one.’ The thing I’m always chasing as a performer is being in the moment.” He saw that in Millicent Simmonds, the 18-year-old star of both Quiet Place films. “Millie has it. I suppose you’d call it presence. As you get older, you want to get back to that transcendent thing – that point where you’re no longer thinking: ‘I’m going to hit my mark now and then she’s going to say her line.’ You’re just existing.”
He witnessed it recently in his youngest child, Aran, who was 11 when he played Shakespeare’s son in the one-boy show Hamnet, which toured New York, Boston and Hong Kong in 2019. “He was so chilled about it, you know? He would come off stage and ask what the score was in the Liverpool game. And, again, you’re slightly jealous of that! There’s the danger that overanalysing everything can erode the simplicity.” The nearest he has come to that state since Disco Pigs, he thinks, was in The Wind That Shakes the Barley, Ken Loach’s 2006 Palme d’Or winner about the beginnings of the IRA. “It was the most I’ve ever learned about film acting,” he says. “Ken sets up an environment where you can’t intellectualise. All the research and preparation is useless unless you react truthfully on the day.”
Murphy in A Quiet Place Part II. Photograph: Jonny Cournoyer/AP
Peaky Blinders and five films with Nolan, including Inception, have made Murphy famous. But Eileen Walsh singles out the little seen 2010 thriller Peacock, in which he plays a man with a dissociative personality disorder, as an example of the actor at his best. “The layers of character work that Cill does in that are incredible,” she says. “It made me think: ‘Yes, you’re handsome. Yes, you’re cool. Yes, you get the Batman films and all that. But doing this level of work in something where you can’t even guarantee it’ll be seen? You are fucking good.’”
If Murphy is to be believed, he has barely even started. “Early on, I read that it takes 30 years to make a good actor,” he says. He has been at it for a quarter of a century now. “So hopefully I’m approaching … well, something.” This summer, he will be the main attraction at the Manchester international festival, where All of This Unreal Time, a new film in which he stars (and which teams him with the musician Jon Hopkins and Grief author Max Porter), will be screened as part of an immersive installation. He will also turn 45 a few days after we speak, so I wish him a happy birthday as we wrap up. “Oh, God,” he groans, as though he has just been reminded of a large outstanding bill. “Yeah. Thanks.” Here’s to a few more sitting-down roles. “I’ll take that all right.”
A Quiet Place Part II is released on 4 June. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2020/jul/07/theatres-that-made-us-shakespeares-globe-curve-leicester-emma-rice-angela-barnes | Stage | 2020-07-07T11:00:27.000Z | Chris Wiegand | Theatres that made us: from Shakespeare's Globe to Leicester's Curve | ‘It feels like an electric current into the audience’
‘The excitement is palpable’ … Paul Chahidi. Photograph: Ian Gavan/Getty Images
Paul Chahidi: I’ve always loved seeing a play at Shakespeare’s Globe where the best view in the house costs only £5. It’s also where I got many of my earliest breaks as an actor. Performing a play there is unlike anywhere else. Walking out on to the stage for the first entrance, the jig at the end, the roar of the crowd (yes, really), the palpable excitement – it all feels more like being at a rock concert than a play. A soliloquy suddenly becomes a simple, direct conversation with an audience that you can actually see and even touch. It always feels like there’s an electric current running from the playwright, through the actors, into the audience and back again. And at the heart of any production there’s one extra character – the Globe theatre itself, the wooden O that brings 1,500 strangers together to listen and see; how we were, how we are and how we could be.
Paul Chahidi is in all three series of This Country, available on BBC iPlayer. Read more about Shakespeare’s Globe.
‘I had an idea – it was on stage two months later’
‘I’ve cried, I’ve laughed, I’ve been challenged’ … Gary McNair. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian
Gary McNair: I’ve so many great memories of being in Edinburgh’s Traverse: crying, laughing and being presented with world views that challenge and enhance my own. But it’s the morning of 9 November 2016 I’m thinking of today. I’m there for a meeting and, with the news that Trump is president elect, it’s all a bit of a downer, to say the least. We sit in silence before Orla O’Loughlin, then artistic director, says: “We need to do something.” “Sorry,” I reply, “let’s focus.” “No,” she said, “we need to do something!” I shared an idea that captured my anger. It captured hers, too. Locker Room Talk was in development that day, on the stage two months later and has since been performed in Scotland, England, Ireland, Germany, Portugal, Russia and in parliament, to name a few places. That, for me, is theatre: urgent, responsive, connecting with people beyond yourself. That, for me, is the Traverse.
Gary McNair’s plays include Locker Room Talk and After the Cuts. Read more about the Traverse.
Connecting with people … Locker Room Talk at the Traverse in 2017, with Rachael Spence, Maureen Carr and Jamie Marie Leary. Photograph: Murdo Macleod/The Guardian
‘It shows what theatre can achieve beyond the stage’
‘I’d run back to work there’ … Danny Mac. Photograph: Joseph Sinclair
Danny Mac: I was given my first principal role, in Legally Blonde, at Leicester’s Curve in 2016. I broke through my own boundaries as Joe Gillis when we created Sunset Blvd here in 2017 and was put through my paces as Bob Wallace when we built White Christmas here, before transferring it to the West End in 2019. All this was thanks to the support, hard work and exceptional talents of the finest teams I have ever worked with. Led and run impeccably by Nikolai Foster and Chris Stafford, the care of artists and visitors throughout Curve is exceptional. It is a breeding ground for talent and proudly reflects the local community. Curve sets an example for what theatre can achieve beyond the stage, through youth groups and charity work. I would run back to work there. For Curve or regional theatres like it not to exist would be a tragedy of epic proportions.
Danny Mac’s last role was in Pretty Woman: The Musical at the Piccadilly theatre, London. Read more about Curve.
‘Home to exceptional talent’ … Curve in Leicester. Photograph: Will Pryce
‘Theatre was just something else that happened in that building’
‘WYP changed my life’ … Emma Rice. Photograph: Sarah Lee/The Guardian
Emma Rice: West Yorkshire Playhouse changed my artistic life and inspired me as a creative leader. In the early 2000s, it was WYP that committed to Kneehigh and, over several years, built us a loyal and passionate audience. We became part of the family, and Leeds our second home. The workshops were world-class with prop, set and costume makers weaving, sticking and nailing magic into the bones of the theatre. The building was democratic and porous with community groups such as Heydays and The Beautiful Octopus Club showing us how to create, enjoy and treasure life.
The cafe was delicious and cheap, the foyer buzzed with school groups, and the bar opened late with staff and audiences mixing with the company. Theatre was just something else that happened in that building, an easy extra step to take – and it thrived and we prospered. WYP (now Leeds Playhouse) epitomised the word “welcome” and the people came. Astonishing.
Emma Rice is the artistic director of Wise Children. Read more about Leeds Playhouse.
‘Art felt necessary – and supported’
‘I never looked back’ … Adjoa Andoh with her brother, Yeofi Andoh, on the day she arrived in London. Photograph: courtesy Adjoa Andoh
Adjoa Andoh: At 20 I bailed on my law degree, made my father cry and headed for an uncertain future. I was a member of Bristol Black Women’s Group, where fellow member actress Deb’bora John Wilson first got me into her drama class, and then got me to audition for a play she’d written, that Ken Livingstone’s GLC was funding in London. I did so immediately, got the job and never looked back. The theatre that became my touchstone from 1984 until its demise in 2012 was where we opened. The Drill Hall on Chenies Street, central London. Built in 1882 as a drill hall for The Bloomsbury Rifles, and now part of Rada, its arts pedigree was established as the place Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes rehearsed with Nijinsky in 1908.
We opened in 1984, directed by Sallie Aprahamian: a play with music with a cast of five black women, Where Do I Go From Here. Incomparably helmed by Julie Parker and Mavis Seaman, the Drill Hall became an oasis and creative hub for LGBTQI artists, artists of colour and all marginalised creatives. I have memories of being in the Snow Queen with playwright Bryony Lavery in fur coat, high heels and antlers; of In the Bunker With the Ladies – Vera Lynn meets lesbian panto, directed by Nona Shephard, one of my favourite ever jobs; Jackie Kay’s Twice Over, playing a bereaved teenager who discovers her grandmother’s beloved was a woman; and working behind the bar with childcare upstairs till 11.30pm for all of us staff with children. What a privilege to come up then – when art felt creatively and socially so necessary and supported, when theatre’s lasting meaning and discovery held people close and sent them braver out into the world. We need our Drill Halls now more than ever.
Adjoa Andoh can next be seen in Bridgerton on Netflix. Read more about the Drill Hall.
‘I found my voice on that stage’
‘Brilliant magic happens’ … Angela Barnes.
Angela Barnes: Comedians love to play the Komedia in Brighton. It’s so much more than a room with a bar and stage. Some brilliant magic happens that can make it one of the most exhilarating places in the country to watch and to perform live comedy. But for me, it’s not just my favourite gig; it’s my saviour and a little bit of my heart lives there.
After a year where I had a relationship breakdown and lost my dad, I did something that changed my life for the better and for ever. I signed up to do the Jill Edwards standup comedy course there. So on a Tuesday night in May 2009, after 12 weeks of learning the ropes, I stood on that Komedia stage for the first time and told my jokes to an audience. It went … fine. They laughed. A bit. That was enough for me, there was no going back. I’d crossed over from punter to performer whether I liked it or not. I found my voice on the Komedia stage, and I relish every single time they let me get back on it.
Angela Barnes and John O’Farrell’s podcast We Are History is available now. Read more about the Komedia. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/20/the-guardian-view-on-mrs-mays-chequers-plan-dead-in-salzburg | Opinion | 2018-09-20T17:41:09.000Z | Editorial | The Guardian view on Mrs May’s Chequers plan: dead in Salzburg | Editorial | The short shrift given to Theresa May’s Chequers plan for Brexit by the president of the European council, Donald Tusk, was a foreseeable and therefore avoidable wounding. It is a personal rebuff to the prime minister, who has staked her reputation on sealing a deal with the European Union on terms she sketched out this summer. Chequers is high-stakes politics: the result of months of bitter internal negotiation which Mrs May has said cannot be deviated from because the alternative is a highly damaging no-deal Brexit. That bluff has been called by Mr Tusk, who said Chequers “will not work”.
Mrs May got 10 minutes to address Europe’s 27 leaders on Wednesday night. The EU plainly has more pressing issues to deal with than Brexit. The EU governments had delegated the substance of talks to the EU’s Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, for that reason. A charitable interpretation is that Mrs May was naive to believe she could appeal to European leaders personally, above the head of Mr Barnier. If this was the plan, it did not work. Chequers contains many elements that are unsellable to EU leaders, most obviously that Brexit Britain could not enjoy the benefits of an internal market on goods alone. It was obvious that if this was pressed too hard, the EU would reject it out of hand. In doing so, Mrs May has killed off Chequers in its current form.
As reality bites, more turmoil is in store. Mrs May remains a prisoner, trapped by her party’s divisions, unable to command the Commons, and now it is out in the open that she is at odds with the EU over Brexit terms. She chose, for perhaps internal political reasons, to raise the stakes with Europe – calculating maybe that a showdown would work in her favour. However, her attempt at scripting a drama has been undone by noises offstage: on Thursday there were persistent squeaks from Brexiters that they could scrap EU food standards agreed under Chequers to win a Brexit trade deal with Donald Trump. It is hardly a surprise that European leaders might view this as a negotiation mired in bad faith. Mrs May and the EU both have good reason to ensure that Brexit does not descend into anarchy, but time is running out. The moment of truth for Brexit negotiations will be next month’s European council meeting.
Before then, Mrs May and Brussels will have to find a way of resolving the Northern Ireland border problem. In July, the UK parliament voted through several amendments that contradict the EU’s legal draft of the so-called “Irish backstop”, which suggested Northern Ireland should be treated as part of the European Union’s customs territory. Any such special status for Northern Ireland is viewed by Brexiters as a threat to the unity of the United Kingdom. The obvious solution, which could be sold to the EU, is a customs partnership with the UK. But hard-Brexit delusionists say that future British trade policy cannot be tied down by Europe and have vetoed such sense. Britain could crash out of the European Union because Brexiters are chasing a mirage of a unfettered Britain able to do trade deals.
The danger for Europe’s leaders and those in London is that the break-up could become so much more severe than was desired by either the EU or the UK. Each must be careful not to misread the other’s intentions. Both sides must reflect on what sort of relationship they want and how they could achieve it. Let us hope that in the month ahead Downing Street and Brussels show the sort of wisdom required to ameliorate the error of Brexit without recourse to the bitter rancour that we had all thought the continent of Europe had left behind. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/food/2024/mar/16/mushroom-shawarma-sumac-cucumbers-vegan-recipe-meera-sodha | Food | 2024-03-16T12:00:04.000Z | Meera Sodha | Meera Sodha’s vegan recipe for mushroom shawarma with sumac cucumbers | The new vegan | Reviews and ratings are very much a part of our daily lives. Most of them I disregard, but occasionally something cuts through and it feels as if people have truly voted with their hearts. That was the case when I stumbled across Sam Sifton’s New York Times recipe for chicken shawarma with 19,624 five-star ratings. I had to try it, but there were two problems: I didn’t want chicken (I wanted mushrooms) and, being a serial tinkerer in the kitchen, I tinkered with it. With thanks and apologies to Sam, I’m happy to report that I’d give this five stars, too.
Mushroom shawarma with sumac cucumbers
You need king oyster mushrooms in the mix to get the right texture – the ideal split is a third of each type of mushroom; you’ll also need two large baking trays (mine are 30cm x 40cm). The hot smoked paprika adds a good hit of heat, so if you prefer something a bit friendlier, use sweet smoked paprika instead.
Prep 10 min
Cook 55 min
Serves 4
1kg mixed mushrooms – equal quantities of oyster, king oyster and chestnut, ideally
2 red onions, peeled and cut into 1cm wedges
1 tbsp smoked hot paprika, or sweet smoked paprika
1½ tbsp ground cumin
2 tsp ground cinnamon
6 garlic cloves, peeled and minced (25g)
100g olive oil
3 lemons, 2 finely zested and all 3 juiced, to get 6 tbsp
2 tsp fine sea salt
250g cucumber (ie ⅔ of a large one), thinly sliced
1½ tsp sumac
20g picked flat-leaf parsley, chopped
4-8 pittas, split open
Vegan garlic mayonnaise, to serve
Pickled green chillies, to serve
Heat the oven to 240C (220C fan)/475F/gas 9, and line two large baking trays with reusable paper or greaseproof paper.
Pull the oyster mushrooms into ½cm-wide strips, score the king oyster mushrooms deeply with a fork and use your fingers to tear them into strands, and break up the chestnut mushrooms into 2cm pieces. Put all the mushrooms and the onion wedges in a large bowl.
To make the marinade, put all the spices in a small bowl and add the garlic, oil, lemon zest, four tablespoons of the lemon juice and a teaspoon and three-quarters of salt. Mix well, pour over the mushrooms and onions, then toss with your hands to coat. Tip the mushroom mix on to the baking trays, and make sure everything is sitting in a single layer. Bake for 20 minutes, stir, then bake for another 10 minutes, until some of the mushrooms are turning crisp at the edges.
While the mushrooms are roasting, make the cucumber. Put the cucumber, sumac and a quarter-teaspoon of salt in a bowl, stir in the remaining two tablespoons of lemon juice and the chopped parsley, and set aside.
To serve, spread the insides of each pitta with garlic mayonnaise, add the mushrooms and pickled chillies, then wedge in a little cucumber and eat. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/aug/09/afternoon-update-cba-makes-record-profit-home-affairs-chatgpt-bungle-and-france-prepare-for-matildas | Australia news | 2023-08-09T06:38:51.000Z | Jordyn Beazley | Afternoon Update: CBA makes record profit; Home Affairs’ ChatGPT bungle; and France prepare for Matildas | Good afternoon. Australia’s biggest lender, Commonwealth Bank, has posted a record $10.16bn cash profit, even as more of its customers succumb to rising borrowing rates, prompting a sharp increase in bad debts.
The bank’s 2022-23 results were 6% higher than a year earlier, buoyed by expanding profit margins generated during a period of fast-rising interest rates.
Top news
The Australian Antarctic Division’s plan to cut dozens of climate science projects due to a budget crunch is to be investigated by a Senate inquiry. Photograph: Mario Tama/Getty Images
Inquiry into axed Antarctic climate science projects | The Senate, with backing from the Greens and Liberals, will investigate the Australian Antarctic Division’s plan to cut dozens of crucial climate science projects due to a budget crunch, as revealed by the Guardian earlier this month. Leaked internal documents revealed the affected programs included studies of record low sea ice, rapidly declining penguin populations due to ecological change and a program that cleans up damage caused by human activity, including oil spills.
Man accused of rape seeks access to alleged victim’s old phone data | Prosecutors in the case of a high-profile man accused of rape will decide within a week how much data from the alleged victim’s mobile phone can be disclosed to the defence. The lawyer representing the man, who cannot be named and faces two counts of rape in Toowoomba in October 2021, requested access to six months of data, despite the pair not knowing each other until the date of the alleged offence.
Locals fear more fish kills in the Darling-Baaka river at Menindee. Photograph: Graeme McCrabb
More fish kills as temperatures rise | The Darling-Baaka River at Menindee is on the brink of another environmental catastrophe, with dead fish already appearing along 30km of the river compromised by the last fish kill in March, according to experts.
Homes affairs department kept no real-time record of ChatGPT use | Staff in the home affairs department have said they could not recall what prompts they had entered into ChatGPT during experiments with the AI chatbot, and documents suggest no real-time records were kept. In May, the department told the Greens senator David Shoebridge it was using the tool in four divisions for “experimentation and learning purposes” and said the use was “coordinated and monitored”.
Eugenie Le Sommer of France (centre) celebrates her goal with her teammates during the Fifa Women’s World Cup match between France and Morocco in Adelaide on 8 August. Photograph: Eurasia Sport Images/Getty Images
France plays down pre-tournament defeat to Matildas | France are steeling themselves for a hostile atmosphere in Brisbane for their Women’s World Cup quarter-final against Australia on Saturday, as Les Bleues seek to play down the significance of a pre-tournament friendly defeat to the Matildas.
Culture of silence endures in Taiwan’s MeToo movement | In late May, a former staffer in the ruling Democratic Progressive party (DPP) named Chen Chien-jou accused a film director working with the party of having groped and harassed her in 2018, and the head of the party’s women’s affairs department of having dismissed her claims. Chen’s post went viral overnight, prompting hundreds of other complaints and started a national reckoning over harassment in Taiwan, though activists say generational divides and entrenched social expectations still threaten to hold it back.
Win for reproductive rights in Ohio | Ohio voters on Tuesday rejected a proposal that would have made it considerably harder to amend the state constitution in a major win for reproductive rights and democracy advocates in the US state.
Full Story
Walter Sofronoff led an inquiry into the handling of the prosecution of Bruce Lehrmann. Photograph: Jono Searle/AAP
Leaks and a ‘lapse of judgment’ in the Sofronoff scandal
Last year the then ACT director of public prosecutions, Shane Drumgold, called for an inquiry into Bruce Lehrmann’s criminal trial, which was abandoned due to juror misconduct. Now Drumgold has resigned amid allegations of his own serious misconduct, and the head of the inquiry, Walter Sofronoff, is facing possible legal action over his early release of the findings.
Reporter Christopher Knaus speaks to Jane Lee about the controversy surrounding the Sofronoff report and its findings.
Full Story
Leaks and a ‘lapse of judgment’ in the Sofronoff scandal – Full Story podcast
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What they said …
Prof Megan Davis, one of the architects of the Indigenous voice to parliament. Photograph: Dean Sewell/Oculi/The Guardian
“The Uluru statement from the heart is one page. It is 439 words.”
Prof Megan Davis, one of the architects of the Indigenous voice to parliament, responding to claims, which were pushed by the Coalition in question time yesterday, that the Uluru statement from the heart is secretly 26 pages.
The claims were first aired by conservative commentator Peta Credlin on her Sky News program last week and have been pushed by no campaigners since.
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In numbers
The idea that a sedentary lifestyle is linked to poorer health is now well-established, yet until now it has been unclear what the optimal number of steps people should aspire to.
The largest analysis to date has found walking just 4,000 steps a day may reduce your risk of dying from any cause, although the more you walk, the greater the health benefits.
Before bed read
Sam Kerr heads the ball during an Australia Matildas training session during the Fifa Women’s World Cup. Photograph: Bradley Kanaris/Getty Images
With the Matildas’ quarter-final clash against France just days away, the Matildas face a Sam Kerr-nundrum.
The basic dilemma is this, writes Kieran Pender: with Kerr returning to fitness and the Matildas having dispatched Canada and Denmark in consecutive games without her (bar those final minutes on Monday), how does coach Tony Gustavsson return his captain to the starting lineup with disrupting the cohesion that has emerged?
Daily word game
Today’s starter word is: ERA. You have five goes to get the longest word including the starter word. Play Wordiply.
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If you would like to receive this Afternoon Update to your email inbox every weekday, sign up here. And start your day with a curated breakdown of the key stories you need to know. Sign up for our Morning Mail newsletter here. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/nov/02/rather-be-the-devil-by-ian-rankin-review | Books | 2016-11-02T12:00:18.000Z | Cathi Unsworth | Rather Be the Devil by Ian Rankin review – Rebus is on the case and off the cigarettes | Arecent editorial in the Oldie bemoaned the fact that this book heralds a turning point for John Rebus that Philip Marlowe would never have countenanced – his giving up smoking. The full horror is made explicit in the painful opening chapter when Rebus, seven days off the fags and screaming inside for one last, lingering smooch with his smoky siren, receives instead a specimen jar containing a diseased lung from his pathologist girlfriend Deborah Quant. She is unaware of the results he is waiting on after an x-ray that he refers to, with typical morbid wit, as Hank Marvin. Shadows and time are the big themes that weave through this novel.
Ian Rankin: ‘Rebus is out there right now, on some Edinburgh street’
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Still wrestling with the notion of retirement, Rebus attempts to distract himself by taking Quant for a meal at the Caledonian Hotel – the location of an unsolved murder. Here, in 1978, Maria Turquand was strangled as she awaited a liaison with a faithless lover. At the same time, local rock star Bruce Collier was visiting the hotel to play a gig with his band, Blacksmith. Collier’s return to Edinburgh – and his residence close to the scene of the crime – has spurred Rebus’s choice of venue, and he borrows the cold case file from his former workmate, DI Siobhan Clarke. She in turn needs advice on another matter of historical weight: gangland upstart Darryl Christie has been beaten unconscious on his doorstep and it’s whispered on the street that “Big Ger” Cafferty is behind it.
Christie has been under observation by HMRC, which is how DI Malcolm Fox, newly transferred to the Scottish Crime Campus at Gartcosh, finds himself also back in Edinburgh, gatecrashing Clarke’s case. The three former colleagues form an uneasy alliance, which events rapidly strengthen. An alcoholic known for confessing to crimes he didn’t commit cops for the Christie beating and provides accurate details held back from the press. A link is discovered between Christie and Anthony Brough, scion of the elite banking family for whom Turquand’s much cuckolded husband was working at the time of her death. A smug Big Ger offers Rebus cryptic clues. “Look for a Russian,” he says.
Rebus gets to kick serious bankster arse, his rage finely honed by the absence of cigarettes
Rankin has spent nearly three decades in the company of Rebus, about 10 years longer than Chandler with Marlowe, and this relationship shows no sign of medical emergency. Following novels establishing the characters of Clarke and Fox alongside Rebus and his archenemy, Big Ger, the more recent cast members now feel as credible as Rebus himself and the sparks of their interaction create an atmosphere as rich as the plot, boding well for the future.
Rankin neatly compares the rock star excesses of the 70s to the outrages of today’s financial larcenists, while Rebus gets to kick serious bankster arse, his rage finely honed by the absence of cigarettes. Though it moves at pace, what makes this tale so deeply satisfying is that its protagonists have had time and space to develop. Rebus’s input serves to highlight the benefits of age, experience and keeping a sense of community.
So will the author really allow “Hank Marvin” to bring down a creation at the height of his powers? That would be telling. Though, he still has another decade to go to match Conan Doyle and Holmes …
Cathi Unsworth’s Without the Moon is published by Serpent’s Tail. Rather Be the Devil is published by Orion. To order a copy for £16.39 (RRP £19.99)) go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/games/2024/may/01/an-online-emulator-is-helping-gamers-replay-old-classics-from-their-youth-but-for-how-long | Games | 2024-05-01T14:00:31.000Z | Keza MacDonald | Pushing Buttons: The emulator app helping gamers replay classics from their youth – for now | Anew app has been at the top of the charts on Apple’s store for a couple of weeks now: Delta. Its app store page is illustrated with shots of very Nintendo-esque on-screen controls, framing screenshots from Game Boy, Snes and Mega Drive games. The reviews are glowing: “I’ve been downloading tons of games I played when I was a kid, it’s so nostalgic!” “This has saved me so much money.” And yet neither Sega nor Nintendo has anything to do with the app, and until recently, software of this type was banned from Apple’s platforms. How can this be?
Delta is an emulator: that is, a piece of software that can successfully mimic a games console, and can run code designed for that games console (ie, games). Delta can run ROMs (digital copies, basically) of games for all the different iterations of the Game Boy, the Nintendo DS, the Nes, Snes and the Sega Mega Drive. This is not illegal. However, downloading those copies of games themselves is illegal. This is an imperfect analogy, but imagine Delta like a Kindle: it imitates a book, and you can read books on it, but only if you have the PDFs.
How are the 4.4 million people who’ve downloaded Delta obtaining the ROMs that they need to actually play anything on it? Are they using a special tool to extract a copy from an old cartridge that they own? Or are they downloading copies of them from places you can very easily find through a Reddit thread or Google search? I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions there – Delta did not respond to a request for comment on how gamers are using the app.
Emulators have always occupied this legal grey area. The software is usually made and maintained by teams of enthusiasts, working together to crack a console and then making the results available for free online. Generally, nobody is making money out of emulation – we’re talking about arcade machines and games consoles that are decades old. Emulation, you can argue, is a way of preserving gaming history. The companies that once owned these machines, or the games played on them, are sometimes long gone. Nobody owns them any more. Emulation is broadly seen as harmless both by its proponents and by most current games companies.
But there are exceptions. When it comes to emulating current consoles, which are actively on sale, emulation is more dicey because it enables piracy. Yuzu, an emulator for Nintendo Switch, was recently shut down by the Nintendo, and its operators paid a $2.4m settlement. All those dodgy 500-games-in-one machines that you see advertised on Facebook are definitely Not Legally Okay. And when Nintendo and the FBI cracked down on the R4 cartridge that enabled piracy on the Nintendo DS, it led to prison sentences and fines in the tens of millions.
Screenshot of the app store page for the Delta game emulator on iPad. Photograph: App Store
What Delta has done, via Apple’s app store, is bring emulation into the mainstream. Anyone who’s ever used arcade game simulator Mame knows that emulation used to involve a lot of fiddling about with specialist software, troubleshooting on forums and general techy tinkering; it was not something most laypeople who fancied a quick go on Mario Kart would be interested in.
But Delta makes it so easy that, surely, something is going to be done about it. Nintendo, as you might have gleaned from the previous paragraph, is notoriously litigious when it comes to protecting its intellectual property, and still makes even its oldest games available via its own Nintendo Switch Online service, through which you can play a selection of Snes and Game Boy classics – ironically, through emulation. Surely it will not love the idea of millions of people playing its older games for free on an iPhone instead.
If you’re wondering why Apple has decided to involve itself in this potential legal nightmare scenario, after years of banning emulators from its App Store: it’s because it is currently fighting a bunch of anti-monopoly lawsuits and has been ordered to allow third-party app stores on the iPhone. Apple does not want anybody downloading these third-party app stores. So rather than risk people turning to them to download emulators, Apple has decided to allow retro game emulators on its own store instead, while placing responsibility on the app developers to ensure everything contained within complies with the law.
Nintendo has so far said nothing whatsoever about Delta, and neither has Sega, but we can be sure these companies are preparing a response. Could this provoke a sea-change in the legal status of emulation as a whole? One thing that Delta proves is that there is a simply enormous audience of people nostalgic for older games that they have no other way of playing, save for hunting down an old cartridge on eBay. Delta’s developers have created something that’s much better at playing older games than anything available through a game company, including Nintendo’s own Switch Online service. The experience is excellent. But how much longer will people get to enjoy it?
What to play
You’re not alone down there … Endless Ocean Luminous. Photograph: Arika
I am a bit of a thalassaphobe – the ocean is vast and full of things that might kill me, including the water itself, and I want nothing to do with it, thank you. As well as making ferry crossings challenging, this fear has made it difficult for me to play through the underwater bits of games from Assassin’s Creed (sharks? Nope) to Horizon (robot pliosaur? Also nope).
Endless Ocean Luminous, a game about diving to the ocean floor and studying the creatures of the deep (including extinct ones), is very much not for me, but it’s so pretty and interesting that I’m going to recommend it anyway. The ocean changes with each dive, so sometimes you’re under the ice and sometimes in a coral reef or in the pitch-black deep (once again, not thanks). Plus, in a team of other online divers, at least you’re not alone down there.
Available on: Nintendo Switch
Estimated playtime: 10 hours+
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What to read
‘Older and older’ … Sonic the Hedgehog. Photograph: Sega
In what will one day be used as a textbook example of the broken internet, some poor social media intern at Google Play (or possibly some nascent AI, I can’t decide) tried to post a lighthearted thread of Sonic the Hedgehog through the ages and got absolutely everything wrong.
If your interest in Fallout has been piqued by the TV series and you’d like to get started with one of the games, Ash Parrish at the Verge spent some time with all the modern Fallout games (including the much-maligned online one, Fallout 76, which is actually alright now) to see which is best for newcomers.
Why, Claire Jackson quite reasonably asks for Kotaku, are games obsessed with puzzles that make you slowly drag around big boxes?
What to click
Schoolgirl impresses at Japanese gamer event with win in retro game
My undying love for the painfully uncool Amiga | Dominik Diamond
TopSpin 2K25 review – game, set and match to an engrossing tennis sim
Question Block
Fallout 3, a game we were perhaps too harsh on. Photograph: Bethesda
This week’s question comes from reader Kenny:
“Are there any games you haven’t really enjoyed, but are still glad you played? I ask because I played most of the FromSoftware games before Elden Ring. I loved them all except Sekiro, which I found a bit of a chore, but I’m glad I know it well enough to recognise its DNA in Elden Ring.”
I had the same experience with Sekiro, Kenny. It’s a game I wish I liked a lot more than I actually did like it. I had to play that one for work, though, so here’s another timely example: Fallout 3. I played it for 40 hours in 2008, restarting it twice just in case, and I simply didn’t love it.
I was a huge fan of the original duo of Fallout games and I found the third instalment overly grey, awkward to play, and lacking bite in its storytelling. (I maintain that “Do you want to detonate the nuclear bomb in the middle of this town, or… not do that?” is one of the most patronising “moral choices” I’ve been presented with in a game.) I also thought it betrayed the spirit of Fallout 1 and 2, which were overtly anti-militarism, anti-capitalist and anti-nuclear, by doing things like including a cool weapon that fires miniature nukes. But I’m glad I played it, because the ways in which is disappointed me were at least quite interesting.
If you’ve got a question for Question Block – or anything else to say about the newsletter – hit reply or email us on [email protected]. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2021/feb/06/on-my-radar-jackie-kay-cultural-highlights | Culture | 2021-02-06T15:00:44.000Z | Kadish Morris | On my radar: Jackie Kay's cultural highlights | Jackie Kay is a Scottish poet, novelist and writer born in 1961 in Edinburgh. She is the author of numerous books of poetry, short story collections and novels. Her first book of poetry, The Adoption Papers, published in 1991, won the Saltire Society Scottish first book award and she has been Scotland’s national poet laureate since 2016. Her debut novel, The Trumpet, won the Guardian fiction prize in 1998. Later this month, Bessie Smith, Kay’s portrait of the American blues singer, is being rereleased by Faber with a new introduction.
1. Music
Ella: The Lost Berlin Tapes
Ella Fitzgerald performing in 1962. Photograph: NBC/Getty Images
These tapes come from a concert that Ella Fitzgerald recorded back in 1962. They were sealed and lay unopened for 58 years. They were sent to me as a Christmas present by my dear friend Ali Smith. We share a love of Ella. I grew up listening to her. When I was 14, I was lucky enough to see her in Glasgow. She was a real favourite of mine because her voice is just joy and energy. In The Lost Berlin Tapes, she sings Mack the Knife and forgets the words and has to make up her own version, but hers was kind of even better.
2. TV
Adjoa Andoh in Bridgerton (Netflix)
Adjoa Andoh as Lady Danbury and Regé-Jean Page as Simon Basset, the Duke of Hastings, in Bridgerton. Photograph: Liam Daniel/Netflix
There’s been much talk about whether Bridgerton is historically accurate. I’d say it’s more accurate having black people in it than not. We need to put back the missing black faces from the past. It gave me the greatest buzz to see Andoh at her elegant, flamboyant and wicked best. She’s the moral conscience of the show. The scene where she says to [the Duke of Hastings, played by Regé-Jean Page] that she has to make people frightened of her, to find a way to own her own power… that was really powerful. She’s his spirit guide – another relationship we don’t get to see often. It feels fresh and fizzes with energy.
3. Theatre
Home, Manchester
‘I really hope to be back in the audience again soon…’ Photograph: Mark Waugh/Alamy
Since the first lockdown, I’ve been impressed by how much theatre has adapted and made a fusion out of film and theatre to create this other kind of theatre. I’ve been interested in all the collaborations that have happened, and Home Manchester has just been great. You can go on their website and watch a film a week, you can still get taken around exhibitions. They’ve set up theatre pieces called Homemakers, where artists create new works at home. I really hope to be back in the audience again soon.
Photograph: HarperCollins
4. Nonfiction
No Boys Play Here: A Story of Shakespeare and My Family’s Missing Men by Sally Bayley
I like books that play around with form and surprise you. This just landed on my doorstep. Bayley uses Shakespeare’s plays to talk about her own family: it’s a memoir of missing men and of violence. I’ve just started it and can’t wait to get my teeth into it. The sentences are tight and crisp and she has this child’s perspective, but it’s such a fantastic idea to try to intersect memoir, family history, literary criticism and Shakespeare. My book on Bessie Smith is memoir and biography, so I’m really interested in people that mash up the form.
5. Place
Unicorn Grocery, Manchester
Unicorn grocers. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian
This worker-led cooperative grocery runs on the ethos that they’re creating a sustainable world environment and economy. They use locally sourced produce. In the first lockdown, it was my place – in there, you have a sense of theatre, community, art and benevolence. Even the vegetables seem kind! They had chairs for people who couldn’t stand outside, they prioritised NHS workers, they teamed up with Chorlton Bike Deliveries to deliver to people who couldn’t get out. Mainly it’s just a joy going in there for the range of produce. They even have a little book stand where you can recycle your old books.
6. Fiction
Luckenbooth by Jenni Fagan
‘A phenomenal Scottish writer’: Jenni Fagan. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian
I was really impressed that the Edinburgh international book festival managed to put on a festival last year. One event with Jenni was buzzing. She’s a phenomenal Scottish writer. She was brought up in the care system, but in her writing she manages to break free using myth and history. Luckenbooth tells the story of a house, the people that have lived in it and the people that have haunted it. It’s a book that deals with violence and different women’s stories. She’s a writer that always offers you open doors and takes you into the past, but leads you to a very different future. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jun/09/boris-johnson-warns-wage-price-spiral-workers-demand-higher-pay | Politics | 2022-06-09T17:27:37.000Z | Jessica Elgot | Boris Johnson warns of ‘wage-price spiral’ if workers demand higher pay | Boris Johnson has raised the spectre of a 1970s-style “wage-price spiral” that could force the Bank of England to push up interest rates dramatically if workers demand to be compensated for rocketing prices.
Instead the prime minister promised a return to lowering taxes, cutting government spending and slashing regulation, after a renewed push by backbench Conservative MPs.
In the speech in Blackpool on Thursday, billed as a reset of his premiership after MPs forced a bruising no-confidence vote in his leadership, Johnson said the current tax burden was an “aberration” and the state must reduce its spending.
It came as Conservative MPs prepared to formally launch a tax-cutting lobbying group, which some Tories claimed had already influenced the prime minister’s speech.
MPs who are promoting the renewal of the Thatcherite lobbying group, Conservative Way Forward, said key talking points from its pre-launch memo had influenced Johnson’s warnings on “tax and spend”.
The memo, drafted by key Johnson critic Steve Baker and leaked to the Guardian, was widely shared among MPs before conversations with Johnson in the run-up to the confidence vote on his leadership on Monday.
It says the government’s current policies were “contributing to the cost of living crisis and increasing the chance of Labour winning the next election”. Its six points urge Johnson to address the tax burden on families and business, soaring inflation, intergenerational unfairness, government borrowing and public sector debt.
In his speech, the prime minister said the government should reject what he called the “Covid mindset” that more state spending was the answer to every problem, and instead focus on cutting regulation to unleash growth.
In a nod to the pressure from his own backbenchers and within cabinet, Johnson suggested the government was considering bringing forward tax cuts, adding: “I would much rather it was sooner than later; that burden must come down.”
He said: “The answer to the current economic predicament is not more tax and more spending, the answer is economic growth.” The government had been “straining at the leash” to do “reforms that will cut costs for government, cut costs for business and cut costs for people across the country”.
As rail workers prepare to go on strike later this month, and with inflation running at 9%, Johnson claimed that if wages continued to chase prices upwards it could unleash an economic crisis.
“When a wage-price spiral begins, there is only one cure and that is to slam the brakes on rising prices with higher interest rates,” he said at Blackpool and the Fylde college.
In a wide-ranging speech about the economy, the prime minister acknowledged that the UK would be “steering into the wind” in the coming months, as he blamed “global pressures”, including the war in Ukraine, for soaring inflation and weak GDP growth.
The prime minister said the government would announce several more measures aimed at cutting costs in the coming weeks, from making it easier to become a childminder, to cutting tariffs on imported food.
He acknowledged that the UK would need to move faster to speed up growth. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) thinktank forecast this week that the UK economy would grind to a halt next year, making it the weakest in the G20 aside from Russia, while inflation would remain above 7%.
At the heart of the speech, the prime minister voiced a desire to tackle housing, which he described as being the highest cost burden for the majority of people.
Johnson’s flagship announcement was that lower-paid workers would be allowed to use housing benefits to make mortgage payments, as well as extending right to buy for housing association tenants – which he termed turning “benefits to bricks”.
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“Just as no generation should be locked out of home ownership because of when they were born, so nobody should be barred from that same dream simply because of where they live now,” he said.
Johnson said an independent review would report by the autumn with the aim of widening access to low-cost, low-deposit mortgages, and opening the market to renters paying hundreds more a month in private rent than they would in mortgage payments.
“We have a ludicrous situation whereby plenty of younger people could afford to make monthly mortgage payments – they’re earning enough to cover astronomical rent bills – but the ever-spiralling price of a house or flat has so inflated deposit requirements that saving even just 10% is a wholly unrealistic proposition for them,” Johnson said. “First-time buyers are trying to hit a continually moving target.”
He said the review “will look at how we can give our nation of aspiring homeowners better access to low-deposit mortgages”.
The plans have been greeted with trepidation by some housing campaigners, with warnings that the right to buy reforms would deplete the housing supply, and that allowing those on benefits to use them for mortgage payments would help only a small number.
Polly Neate, the chief executive of the housing charity Shelter, said the right to buy plans were “baffling, unworkable, and a dangerous gimmick”.
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Lindsay Judge, the research director at the Resolution Foundation, said the changes to mortgages for those on benefits was likely to have limited impact. “More than four in five families on means-tested benefits have no savings at all and high cost of living pressures means a second change that allows benefit recipients to save into certain savings accounts without seeing their benefits cut is unlikely to lead to a surge in savings.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/oct/01/rembrandt-light-game-of-thrones-dulwich-picture-gallery | Art and design | 2019-10-01T16:17:46.000Z | Jonathan Jones | Rembrandt's Light review – glorious art needs no gimmicks | If Rembrandt were alive today, claims Dulwich Picture Gallery, he’d be a cinematographer. It’s a very precise posthumous career choice. Why not a director, special effects wizard, installation artist … or even painter? But this inventive exhibition, which marks the 350th anniversary of Rembrandt’s death, is certain he’d be photographing films. It has even brought in Peter Suschitzky, cinematographer of The Empire Strikes Back, to help craft the show in a way that brings out the great artist’s genius for telling stories with light.
I can’t help thinking that, as a cinematographer, Rembrandt would annoy audiences hugely. When the Game of Thrones makers dared to light a nocturnal battle scene as it might look in a world without electric light, many viewers expressed outrage. I liked it, not least because it was reminiscent of Rembrandt – you won’t find a more mysterious night than the one that engulfs the people hunched around a campfire in his wonderful Landscape With the Rest on the Flight into Egypt. What would those complainants make of a scene in which a maester sat reading in an inky-black room, as a philosopher does here? Or an elderly couple all but disappearing in the gloom of a chamber, lit just by a dwindling fire? These are typical of the extreme lighting effects that Rembrandt uses in this exhibition, in sublime paintings and prints lent from such great collections as the Louvre and Rijksmuseum.
Telling stories with light … The Denial of St Peter, 1660, by Rembrandt. Photograph: Rijksmuseum
This is a show to delight art snobs with loans of the sheer quality of the Queen’s Christ and Mary Magdalene at the Tomb – except that it wants to be popular, and accessible, and to do so will kick Rembrandt blinking into the age of blockbuster film. Every exhibit has a screenplay-style caption that treats paintings as movie scenes. “INT. TEMPLE – DAY,” says the text for The Woman Taken in Adultery, lent by the National Gallery in London. “A WOMAN crouches on shallow stone steps in a pool of cold light, surrounded by a group of men. A PHARISEE lifts her veil … CHRIST listens.”
It’s a nice gag, but it is done for every single picture in a way that verges on the obsessive. At the end of the exhibition, the wheeze climaxes in film-style credits for everyone involved. I half expected a post-credit joke in which the aged Rembrandt is slumping along a street in 17th-century Amsterdam when Captain America materialises to take him to paint a deathbed portrait of Iron Man.
A show surrounded by visual clutter … Self-Portrait, 1642, by Rembrandt. Photograph: Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II
Rembrandt needs no movie references. What does it mean to present him as a kind of film-maker, telling stories in light? It is true as far as it goes, but inadequate. With Rembrandt, any such partial view misses the big picture of a truly universal artist. The exhibition ends with a selection of portraits including Dulwich’s own harrowingly dark-eyed melancholy youth, which may well be a picture of Rembrandt’s son Titus before he died at the age of 26. Nearby is Self-Portrait in a Flat Cap, from the Royal Collection. From 1642, the year he painted The Night Watch, Rembrandt depicts himself in black velvety headgear and a gold earring which displays his success. Then your gaze is grabbed by his lucid, all-seeing orbs which measure you up with that commanding mixture of judgment and compassion and you feel the full sense of inexplicable awe.
At least Dulwich didn’t take a lead from that flat cap to compare Rembrandt with Peaky Blinders. With loans of this calibre by one of the greatest artists ever to hold a maulstick you can’t go wrong – but they have a damn good try. All we need is to have the paintings clearly lit and a chance to look at them in our own way. That is lost in at least one part of the show where I watched Suschitzky finalise a lighting scheme for Christ and Mary Magdalene at the Tomb. The audience sit on a bench to watch as we begin in darkness, then light gradually increases on the painting in a dawn effect. It holds at full lighting for a minute or so before plunging into gloom to restart the sequence. You’re supposed to listen to an audioguide for the accompanying soundtrack. But what if I don’t want an audioguide? And what if I want to look closely at the furrows and crinkles of Rembrandt’s paint? I’ll get asked by other visitors to move because I’m spoiling the film.
Challenging … detail from Girl at a Window by Rembrandt. Photograph: courtesy Trustees of Dulwich Picture Gallery
That’s what the exhibition achieves: it replaces the self-directed effort of engaging with painting with the much more passive and remote experience of watching a film or video art. Ultimately, to claim that Rembrandt is a cinematographer and give his paintings arty mood-lighting is to try and reduce his genius to our own slipshod standards. Walter Benjamin once said that every document of civilisation was also a document of barbarism. Well, every celebration of past genius is also a reckoning with the dead. How do we measure up to Rembrandt’s light?
Not very well, if we can’t tell the difference between what movies and television do and what Rembrandt did. It is precisely because he is more challenging and more satisfying than the visual clutter that surrounds us that we come back to him year after year and century after century. At its core, this exhibition does not seem to grasp the true uniqueness of Rembrandt. That’s a bad look in any light.
At Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, from 4 October until 2 February. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2014/apr/20/rubin-hurricane-carter-boxer-dies-76 | Sport | 2014-04-20T15:57:47.000Z | Martin Pengelly | Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter, US boxer wrongly convicted of murder, dies at 76 | Rubin Carter dies at the age of 76. Guardian
Rubin Carter, a former middleweight world title contender known as "the Hurricane” whose wrongful conviction for murder became a cause célèbre, died in Toronto on Sunday at the age of 76.
The boxer's death was confirmed by a caregiver and associate, John Artis.
Carter, who as a young man escaped from reform school, joined the army and had a career as a petty criminal, had a professional boxing career that began in 1961 and ended in 1966.
He won 27 times, with 19 knockouts, and lost 12 times, one of them a knockout. He tied one bout. In 1964 he fought Joey Giardello for the WBC and WBA middleweight titles, losing on a unanimous points decision.
In 1967 he was convicted, alongside Artis, for three murders at the Lafayette Grill in New Jersey the year before. The murder victims were white; the perpetrators black. Carter and Artis were convicted by an all-white jury, largely on the testimony of two thieves who later recanted their stories.
Carter was jailed until 1985, when his convictions were set aside. In 1975, a year before a second trial confirmed Carter's conviction – after a brief period of freedom – Bob Dylan released the song Hurricane, detailing the allegedly racial motivations behind the boxer's imprisonment. In 1999, Denzel Washington played Carter in a film of the same name.
A number of books also dealt with the case, including Carter's autobiography, The Sixteenth Round, which attracted Dylan's attention.
In later years, living in Canada, Carter worked with the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted. In 2000, speaking to the Guardian on the eve of the release of Hollywood's version of the story, he said: “Many innocent people are locked up, and somebody ought to be held accountable.”
The sleeve cover photograph of Bob Dylan's single Hurricane. Photograph: Blank Archives/Getty Images Photograph: Blank Archives/Getty Images
In February, Carter wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Daily News, in which he sought freedom for David McCallum, a man he said had been wrongly convicted.
In the piece, Carter wrote that he was “quite literally on my deathbed”, and added: “If I find a heaven after this life, I’ll be quite surprised. In my own years on this planet, though, I lived in hell for the first 49 years, and have been in heaven for the past 28 years.”
It was reported at the time that Carter was suffering from terminal cancer. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/mar/21/rebecca-solnit-interview-recollections-of-nonexistence-hope | Books | 2020-03-21T15:00:40.000Z | Stephanie Merritt | Rebecca Solnit: 'I came to the idea of hope as an activist and writer of history' | Rebecca Solnit is one of America’s leading writers on art, culture and politics. She’s been called “the voice of the resistance” by the New York Times, and her 23 previous books include Wanderlust, Hope in the Dark and the 2008 essay Men Explain Things to Me, which gave rise to the term “mansplaining”. Her new book, Recollections of My Non-Existence, is a memoir of her early life as a writer in San Francisco, where she has lived for four decades.
Your writing has always drawn on personal experience; why did you decide this was the time to write a proper memoir?
I felt that after years and years of writing feminist essays about violence against women and the suppression of women’s voices, there was something essential I hadn’t gotten at yet, which is: what is the real psychological effect on you, even if you’re not a victim of the very worst things that can happen, but you still live in a regime where violence against women is so common that it impacts you daily? I wanted to use myself as a case study to say, even as somebody who escaped the worst things that can happen to women, I was still so profoundly impacted and here’s what it looked like.
You felt that the threat of male violence was so pervasive that at times you wanted to become invisible: is that what the title is about?
I think there’s a dread and a constant presence in your imagination if you’re a young woman, of: “I can’t wear this, I can’t go here, I can’t be out at this hour, I can’t trust this person, I have to watch whether this will lead to something uncomfortable or dangerous.” I wanted to connect that to the broader question of how this particular form of assault on women’s agency and choice also takes place in other more polite arenas, like publishing. So it felt like this was a very particular story of how I found a voice, and also a very generic story of what it means to be a woman in a society that doesn’t want women to have a voice.
Was it harder or more painful to write than your previous books?
It wasn’t the painfulness so much, it was more that it felt like a very artless book. And it felt ugly in a way, because I was talking about some of the worst things that had happened to me and my natural impulse is to want to give people something beautiful. It was interesting because this was so personal that it felt like I didn’t know what I was doing and whether it was any good.
You grew up with a family background of domestic violence but you don’t talk about that in great detail here – why not?
I feel that we as a culture have talked about domestic violence and there have been lots of memoirs of childhood abuse. It’s not very interesting to me, in that I feel there’s no new light to be shed. I feel like we haven’t talked about what I really wanted to talk about in this book, which is this ambient threat of harassment, so I chose to begin it with me at 19.
Were you prepared for the way your essay Men Explain Things to Me reached such a huge audience?
Absolutely not. I had no idea it would resonate with so many people because that experience was so ordinary and so infuriating. More than infuriating, it was really interfering with women being able to testify to what happened in a personal situation, or being able to be respected in their professional capacity. In relating my own perception of a really common experience, I stumbled on something that was really significant in a lot of women’s lives.
That piece went viral; do you feel that social media has been a force for good in giving people a voice?
I’ve never felt like I can weigh up the two sides. I think the people who own Google and Twitter and Facebook have chosen to violate our privacy, monetise our personal data, they’ve chosen to tolerate propaganda, disinformation, corruption of elections. A lot of really good people have used these technologies for good, back to the Arab spring and Occupy Wall Street, but the people who own them and profit from them don’t give a damn about human rights and democracy, or equality of voice and accuracy of information. There are so many reasons why Donald Trump is president but I think a large part of it is social media and the vulnerabilities they created for all sorts of forms of misinformation.
Your 2016 book Hope in the Dark gave encouragement to progressives during the Iraq war and again after the Trump election. Have you always been an optimist?
I was a pretty depressed young person. I came to the idea of hope as an activist and a writer of history, seeing that things were better than we were often told, that actually ordinary people can have a great deal of power and often succeed in using it in ways that change the world for the better. I have to say the last few years have dampened my hopefulness a bit, not just because of runaway climate change and Donald Trump, but because the kind of collective madness that allowed Donald Trump to happen.
Your UK tour has been cancelled because of the pandemic. Are there writers or artists whom you turn to when things are bleak?
There are specific writers and poets I find encouraging – I read Jack Gilbert, Robert Hass, Philip Levine. But I’m also always looking out for what’s happening around me that contains some sense of possibility, or where something positive is taking place. For example, how do we come together in mutual aid in a time of quarantine? But I was so looking forward to coming to the UK and I was agog at the idea of being in conversation with Mary Beard. I’m definitely going to come as soon as I can to collect on my Mary Beard date.
Recollections of My Non-Existence is published by Granta (£16.99). To buy a copy go to guardianbookshop.com. Free UK p&p over £15. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jul/09/bournemouth-council-accused-of-casino-capitalism-over-beach-hut-sale | UK news | 2022-07-09T18:27:56.000Z | Jon Ungoed-Thomas | Bournemouth council accused of ‘casino capitalism’ over beach hut sale | The multicoloured wooden beach huts lining the golden sands of Bournemouth and Poole were in full use once again this weekend as adults basked in deckchairs and children built sandcastles.
These simple structures on this famous stretch of the Dorset coastline are highly sought-after, with typical waiting times for a long-term rental ranging from five to 20 years. However, some users are now worried about plans by council bosses to cash in on the huts by selling them to a “special purpose vehicle” (SPV) to boost their budget with a £54m windfall.
The financial scheme proposed by the Conservative-led Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole (BCP) council involves selling the huts to a company controlled by the authority. It will generate a large capital receipt for the council for new investment.
The proposed arrangements face mounting scrutiny, with questions raised in parliament over the scheme and a local backlash.
Mike Cox, a local Liberal Democrat councillor, said: “This is the worst kind of casino capitalism and people are appalled by it.” He described it as the type of scheme which would be devised by Gordon Gekko, the anti-hero in the 1987 film Wall Street.
The value of many of Britain’s beach huts has climbed steeply in recent years. The council has already built 131 larger “super huts” over the last decade which have sold for about £40,000 each, raising more than £5m.
Some of the UK’s most expensive beach huts are located at Mudeford Sandbank in Christchurch. The Observer has been told one of them recently sold for more than £500,000. It is about 20 minutes walk from the road, with a fitted kitchen, a seating area which can be converted into two double beds, and a mezzanine level.
Lizzie Manetta, 60, who pays £2,700 a year to rent a hut at Poole, is among the long-term beach hut users anxious about the proposed scheme. She said: “I am concerned because it’s already expensive to have a beach hut and it’s going to limit who can rent them if they put the prices up.”
She added the huts needed to be looked after and were a treasured asset for the local community. She said: “One night this week, I went down to the beach, had a swim, made supper and then watched the sky go from this lovely blue to pale pink. It’s amazing.”
Holidaymakers and beach huts on Boscombe Beach, Bournemouth. Photograph: Adrian Sherratt/Alamy
Under the plan, the 3,605 beach huts at Poole, Bournemouth and Christchurch would be transferred to the new company in a deal mostly funded by third-party debt.
The huts are rented from the council or privately owned with annual ground rent.
The new structure would provide a device under which the council could exchange the annual rental income – worth about £5m a year – for a large one-off payment. The council has not disclosed the financial and advisory fees involved or any proposed rent increases.
The scheme, devised with the support of professional services firm KPMG, was approved in principle in a council budget meeting in February. The detailed proposals will be discussed later this month.
A council document outlining the scheme states: “As the SPV is owned by the council, and once the senior debt has been repaid, this means that at the end of the 20-year period the council could collapse the entity and return the assets to council control or could choose to refinance the assets again.” The project is described as a “bold, nontraditional approach to the financing of local government”.
It is proposed the money is used for adult and children’s services, and for the council’s “transformation programme”, which is increasing the digitisation of services.
A “save our beach huts” group has been launched on social media in response to the plans. Campaigners want to see the KPMG report on the scheme, two independent valuations of the beach huts and a full business plan of the proposed SPV.
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Sir Christopher Chope, the Conservative MP for Christchurch, last week raised questions in parliament about the proposal. He wants it to be reviewed by officials to check whether it complies with local authority guidance on capital receipts.
Chope said: “This seems an extraordinary way of behaving because it seems at odds with the principles of local government to protect the interests of council tax payers.”
He said the concern would be about the quality of services provided to beach hut users by the new company, and the possible rent rises.
BCP council said: “The proposal to explore a [SPV] to make our beach huts more commercial was approved as part of the 22/23 budget. No formal decision has been made.
“We are working through the details of how we could use a special purpose vehicle and a report is scheduled to go to cabinet [this month]. This includes any impact on rents and investment opportunities.”
KPMG declined to comment. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/may/19/kings-college-london-cuts-ties-with-opioids-linked-sackler-family | Education | 2023-05-19T14:24:15.000Z | Matthew Weaver | King’s College London cuts ties with opioids-linked Sackler family | King’s College London has become one of the latest UK institutions to sever all ties with the Sackler family amid outrage over its role in the deadly opioids epidemic in the US.
Several other UK organisations that have recently been funded by Sackler cash, including the Royal Opera House, continue to take active steps to distance themselves from the family and expunge all records of their previous ties.
King’s said it planned to change the name of its Sackler Institute on developmental brain disorders because it no longer receives money from the family’s charitable foundations.
In 2021 the college accepted £750,000 from the Dr Mortimer and Theresa Sackler Foundation, which helps fund 22 doctoral research students. King’s confirmed to the Guardian that this was the last grant from the family.
In a statement it said: “King’s College London and the Dr Mortimer and Theresa Sackler Foundation have mutually agreed that, as funding has now ended, the research the foundation supported will no longer carry the Sackler name.”
The move comes after Oxford University confirmed this week that it was also ending its lucrative funding arrangements with the Sackler family and removing its name from buildings, galleries and positions funded through their donations.
Members of the Sackler family are the owners of Purdue Pharma, which reached a multibillion-dollar bankruptcy settlement over its role in an epidemic that is estimated to have killed more 500,000 people since 1999. It was accused of aggressively marketing OxyContin and playing down its addictiveness.
The family’s other UK-based charity, the Sackler Trust, currently highlights its support for 17 UK organisations on its website. All have been contacted by the Guardian to clarify if they are still accepting Sackler cash. Thirteen responded and said they had now cut ties with the trust. At least three of the charities listed – Ballet Black, the Prison Education Trust and the Spitalfield Crypt Trust – have asked the Sackler Trust to remove their name from their websites.
In a statement Ballet Black said it had made a decision in April last year not to seek or accept any more money from the Sackler family “in light of its proven involvement in the opioid crisis in the USA”.
It added: “We have also written to the Sackler Foundation to ask them to remove Ballet Black from the website and any other materials.”
On Friday the Royal Opera House (ROH) removed from its website the name of Dame Theresa Sackler, a former board member of Purdue who is identified in several US lawsuits, who on Thursday had been listed as a honorary director.
In a statement a spokesperson said: “The ROH no longer receives support from the Sackler Foundation, and will not be accepting support in the future. All donations and philanthropy received is assessed through the board of the ROH’s donation and income acceptance committee and is kept under constant review. We have historically received support from the Sackler Trust and Dame Theresa Sackler, which is why they were referenced in this way on our website.”
The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, confirmed that last year it had changed the name of its 2006 Sackler crossing, a 70-metre winding path across a waterway, to the Lake crossing.
In a statement, a spokesperson said the decision was “based on feedback from members, donors, visitors and staff over time and following meetings with our board of trustees and the Sackler family”. She added: “We have not accepted funds from the Sacklers since 2016 and have no plans to make any requests for funding in the future.”
Chris Garrard, a co-director of the campaign Culture Unstained, said: “With King’s College now severing its ties to the tarnished Sackler name, it has joined a near wholesale rejection of the family’s toxic philanthropy in the UK, one that has unfolded over just a few years as Nan Goldin and others shone a spotlight on the harmful ways Purdue’s profits were made.
He added: “The days where a museum or gallery might simply ‘take the money and run’ are over. Whether it is dirty money from the Sacklers or cynical sponsorship from fossil fuel companies, numerous cultural and educational organisations are now stepping up and showing that it is possible to draw an ethical red line and reject funds from those that do not share their values.”
The Sackler Trust has been approached for comment. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2023/oct/18/tig-notaro-hello-again-review | Stage | 2023-10-18T11:40:42.000Z | Brian Logan | Tig Notaro: Hello Again review – all the right notes, except on piano | Tig Notaro has never had an interval onstage until now – “intermissions”, in her word, not being a thing for standups in the US. So it’s apt that Hello Again really is a show of two halves. The first finds Notaro at the top of her game, reporting back in her studied, laconic style on new parenthood, her health (albeit not as dramatically as in the show that made her name) and unexpected crushes. The second finds her taking to the piano – a medium for which, and here’s the gag, she has no aptitude whatsoever.
I admired the playfulness of that second act, the beaming impertinence with which the 52-year-old pushes the joke of her tunelessness right to the end of the show. But it tested my patience, too.
The first half is stronger. Here is an instrument, standup comedy, from which Notaro can summon any tune she likes. The opening set-piece, about being scooped out of her marital bed by a moustachioed emergency-services hunk, plays deliciously against “old-fashioned lesbian” type. An anecdote about Notaro’s faulty hearing is a masterpiece of comic productivity, as she returns over and again, from different angles, to the humiliation of her misapprehending a throwaway remark about Nicole Kidman’s height.
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Scarcely a word is wasted, as our host paces the stage, each step as deliberate as her itemising – detail by excruciating detail – this or that moment of everyday indignity. Here, a gesture of social panic by her chiropractor, momentarily uncertain of Notaro’s gender, is worked to yield a rich comic load. There, a trip to her physio becomes, thanks in part to her physio’s blindness to humour, a display of ritual public ignominy.
Notaro even gets to show her crowd-work chops, when her glitching microphone prompts a cack-handed heckle from the stalls. After this standup masterclass, Notaro’s sub-Les Dawson, duff-pianist act can’t help but feel like a comedown. Yes it’s sweetly silly, and her pleasure in straying this far off-piste is fun to share. But the joke of Tig’s talentlessness makes less impact than the talent for joking that lights up the first hour of her show.
Touring the UK until 26 October. Then touring the US until 4 November. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2019/apr/24/football-transfer-rumours-cristiano-ronaldo-juventus-spending-spree | Football | 2019-04-24T08:13:27.000Z | Michael Butler | Football transfer rumours: Cristiano Ronaldo demands Juve spending spree? | Cristiano Ronaldo has issued Juventus with a six-man list of transfer targets, according to the Mirror, seemingly unaware the main reason Juventus won’t be able to buy those players is because they pay him too much money. At £26m a season Ronaldo earns around five times more than the next best-paid player at the club, but that hasn’t stopped him slapping a piece of paper on Massimiliano Allegri’s desk, scrawled with the names of Real Madrid’s Raphaël Varane and Isco, Benfica’s João Félix, Fiorentina’s Federico Chiesa, Lyon’s Tanguy Ndombélé and Roma’s Kostas Manolas.
Euro roundup: De Ligt scores in Ajax win as Barcelona edge closer to title
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Marko Grujic, Jürgen Klopp’s first signing at Liverpool, cost only £5.1m in January 2016 and has since failed to break into the first team. A couple of unconvincing loan spells and 20 appearances for Hertha Berlin this season later and Liverpool are demanding £40m from Atlético Madrid for the 23-year-old. Makes perfect sense!
In another bizarre story concerning Diego Simeone’s side, Manchester United have been linked with the goalkeeper Jan Oblak, who signed a new Atlético contract only last week, reportedly with an £87m release clause. The Mill can’t see how Ole Gunnar Solskjær is going to convince the best goalkeeper in the world to leave Madrid for the north of England, especially if there is no Champions League football at Old Trafford next season, but we’re just here to tell you the hearsay.
Unai Emery has taken one look at Arsenal’s squad and decided what they desperately need is not a replacement for Shkodran Mustafi but a Brazilian 17-year-old winger. Gabriel Martinelli, currently playing in the fourth tier in Brazil at Ituano, is being flaunted around Europe by his Mr 15% and it appears the Gunners have bitten, in the hope Martinelli can become the new Denílson or André Santos at the Emirates.
Stoke think Jack Butland is still worth £30m and remarkably, Crystal Palace and Bournemouth are not yet put off.
The Mail is reporting Norwich will take a leaf out of Cardiff’s book last summer and spend around only £20m in the close season, should their promotion to the Premier League be confirmed. Their head of recruitment, Kieran Scott, believes the squad is mostly good enough to compete in the top tier, with much of the summer set to be spent on securing new contracts for players such as Max Aarons and Onel Hernández.
Elsewhere Wolves are hoping to beat Arsenal and West Ham to the signing of Hoffenheim’s Kerem Demirbay with a £22m offer and Everton are keen on Chelsea’s Tammy Abraham, currently on loan at Aston Villa, but will have to wait to see the extent of the London club’s transfer embargo before making a move. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2024/feb/06/afcon-semi-finals-nigeria-ivory-coast-south-africa-dr-congo | Football | 2024-02-06T17:23:00.000Z | Jonathan Wilson | Hope and miracles: Afcon’s unlikely semi-finalists carry weight of history | Atournament of extraordinary drama has thrown up two semi-finals that each match one of the continent’s current giants against a team that has distant memories of glory. Neither South Africa nor Democratic Republic of the Congo arrived at the Africa Cup of Nations with especially elevated hopes but on Wednesday they face Nigeria and the hosts Ivory Coast respectively for a place in the final.
Ivory Coast, whose golden generation spent so long narrowly missing out on the trophy, are, like their opponents, looking to win the tournament for the third time. The difference is that it is 50 years since DRC last triumphed. They were one of the early powers of African football, winning the tournament in 1968 and then again, as Zaire, in 1974, the year in which they became the first sub-Saharan African side to play at the World Cup.
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That story, thanks to Mwepu Ilunga charging from the wall to belt away a free-kick, is all too well-known and, even if it is now fairly widely recognised that he was trying to waste time to stave off the sort of heavy defeat that might have brought recriminations from the Mobutu government, the sense of farce tends to overshadow just how good Congolese football was at the time. TP Englebert (now TP Mazembe) appeared in four successive African Champions League finals between 1967 and 1970, enjoying a ferocious rivalry with the Ghanaian club Asante Kotoko. AS Vita of Kinshasa also lost to Kotoko in the final in 1973.
DRC has the 16th-highest population in the world. Given that, and such a proud history, three semi-final appearances in the past 50 years is thin gruel. Mobutu and his recognition of the value of sport, which led most famously to the Rumble in the Jungle in 1974, proved first a stimulus and then a toxin. It never sat easily with the regime that Englebert were based in Lubumbashi, the heartlands of support of Patrice Lumumba, the first post-independence president, who was murdered by Mobutu as he seized power in 1961. The divide between players from Lubumbashi and Kinshasa was a major problem at the 74 World Cup.
The conflicts that have followed Mobutu have ravaged not only DRC, now desperately reliant on Chinese investment and ranked 186th out of 189 by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for GDP per capita, but also its football, with clubs now commonly owned by political and military figures. Although the UN peacekeeping mission is withdrawing, fighting has recently intensified between government troops and the M23 rebels in the east of the country, while attacks by Islamist groups on civilian targets go on.
In such circumstances, football takes on a curious role, simultaneously entirely trivial but also a vital symbol of life going on, of possibility and of engagement with the wider world. “We know the importance of the game for us and for the country,” the DRC head coach, Sébastien Desabre, said. “We have to make sure those who are suffering in the country are proud of us. We have a responsibility to provide joy and hope.”
DR Congo players celebrate after Arthur Masuaku’s goal seals a quarter-final victory against Guinea. Photograph: Luc Gnago/Reuters
There is an odd sense that Ivory Coast don’t feel much responsibility at all, despite the more than $1bn expenditure on the tournament, as though the thought of elimination was processed after their defeat by Equatorial Guinea. Having then snuck through as a best third-place side, they have needed late equalisers and winners to drag them past Senegal and Mali. “These provide us with more mental strength,” said the head coach, Emerse Faé, who took over after the group phase. “If you do not have that mindset, you cannot achieve those miracles.”
The other semi-final pits the two best defences in the tournament against each other. Both South Africa and Nigeria have kept four clean sheets in a row. South Africa’s glorious past is more recent than DRC’s, having won on home soil in 1996 and followed that with defeat in the final and then in the semi-final in the following two tournaments. With a strong domestic league there was an assumption they would at least be regular challengers but this is their first semi-final since.
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The likelihood is that eight of their starting XI will come from a Mamelodi Sundowns side that has won the last six league titles. That may provide cohesion in the short term, but the domination of the team owned by the president of the Confederation of African Football (CAF), Patrice Motsepe, isn’t necessarily a sign of long-term health.
Nigeria are seeking a fourth title that would put them level with Ghana as the third-most successful side in African history, but no side has lost more than their seven semi-finals. And they may to face this one without Victor Osimhen, who didn’t fly to Bouaké with the rest of the squad on Monday because of “abdominal discomfort”.
Recent form and status says it should be an Ivory Coast versus Nigeria final, but very little that should have been has been in this most unpredictable of tournaments. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/25/planting-trees-global-warming-natural-forests-plantations | Opinion | 2019-12-25T10:00:39.000Z | Bibi van der Zee | Planting trees is only a good news story if it’s done right | Bibi van der Zee | Afew years ago I went to the Kilombero valley in Tanzania to find out why the elephants there had disappeared. It was still beautiful; a long, green plain with red earth, lined by mountains on either side. But, as recently as the 1990s, people kept telling me, it had been a wildlife paradise. One man remembered sitting in the mountains at sunset, watching the elephants cross the valley through the miombo forest, while the lions roared.
On one road there was a teak plantation on one side and a miombo forest on the other. The plantation was quiet, symmetrical, empty: there was no undergrowth because teak leaves kill whatever they fall on. The miombo forest was more familiar to anyone who loves to be out in the woods: the smell of earth, rotting leaves, the hum of bees, dove calls, an abundance of complexity and energy.
The valley is now a patchwork of teak plantations, rice and sugar fields and huge herds of cattle, so the lions and elephants have all but vanished. The most telling remains we saw were the burned stumps, like stripped bones, of the forest.
‘The forest is shedding tears’: the women defending their Amazon homeland
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The same thing is happening everywhere. On the one hand, huge amounts of energy are going into reforesting the world. The amount of tree cover is actually rising. The 2011 Bonn challenge aims to bring 350m hectares (864.5m acres) of degraded land into restoration by 2030, and countries have already signed up 170m hectares. A impressive number of sometimes surprising countries have increased their forest cover by more than 20% over the last 25 years: China, Belarus, Chile, France, Greece, India, Iran, Morocco, the Philippines, Spain, Thailand and Turkey. It can really, at moments, seem like some kind of success story.
But the ancient forests, the original, complex, messy forests, continue to disappear, and some of the most enthusiastic signatories to the Bonn challenge have seen some of the worst losses. Argentina, for example, has committed to planting 1m hectares, but meanwhile the ancient Gran Chaco in the north continues to vanish, replaced by huge fields of soy to feed the farm animals of the world.
Cameroon, which holds part of the precious Congo basin rainforest, is offering to create 12m hectares of tree cover by 2030, but since 1990 more than 20% of Cameroon’s forests have been cut down to make way for subsistence farmers and now, increasingly, for banana and palm oil plantations, to create products that end up in our supermarket shopping baskets. Nigeria may feel better about itself after pledging to plant a million hectares, but the fact is that over the last 25 years it has lost more than 10 times that amount, more than half its forests. For a number of years it even had the highest deforestation rate in the world, but it was overtaken this year by Ghana, where cocoa bean crops for our chocolate are replacing the rainforests.
And let’s not dwell too long on the countries where the rate of loss is just as high and dramatic but are not even bothering to sign up to Bonn such as Bolivia (80,000 square kilometres gone between 1990 and 2015), North Korea (33,000), Paraguay (58,000) and Indonesia (a breathtaking 275,000km – an area larger than New Zealand).
Even the apparently cheering news that global tree cover is growing is less than it seems, explains Tim Rayden,who works for the Wildlife Conservation Society, part of the Trillion Trees partnership. “There is a big difference between tree cover and forests.” A large number of countries, for example, are planning to fill their commitments with commercial plantations – but plantations, which are harvested every 10 years or more regularly, are very much less effective than tropical forests at capturing carbon. He points to recent research where scientists worked out the carbon capture potential of three different reforestation scenarios under the terms of the Bonn challenge. If the 350m hectares of reforestation are all natural forest, they can capture as much as 42 petagrams of carbon. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change believes that to keep global warming below 1.5C 199 petagrams must be removed from the atmosphere this century, so that is a significant contribution from the world’s forests.
‘Argentina, for example, has committed to planting 1m hectares, but meanwhile the ancient Gran Chaco in the north continues to vanish.’ Photograph: Courtesy of Mighty Earth
However, if the trajectory of the plans already submitted carries on, at least 45% of that cover will be commercial plantation. If our natural forests are protected under that scenario, the storage potential will be 16 petagrams. But if we continue to chop into them in the same way that we do at present, the storage potential will dwindle to just three petagrams.
We wipe out whatever is complex and other and difficult to manage, and replace it with nice, easy farms and plantations full of monocultures of pigs and corn and wheat and palm oil. We like things nice and simple and symmetrical and easy to control, that’s the problem.
The Amazon is a matter of life and death for all of us. We must fight for it
Jonathan Watts
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One possible attempt to staunch some of the flow that is being seriously considered in the EU is a due diligence law. France already has a law that places a civil liability on large companies that fail to monitor their supply chains for human rights and environment issues, and support for Europe-wide regulation – although not necessarily in that form – is coming from the oddest quarters such as Nestlé and Mondelez.
There are other green shoots of optimism too. Consumers are increasingly aware of the problem, according to Chris West of the Stockholm Environment Institute at the University of York. Politicians know that something has to change. Brazil, for example, came in for serious criticism over the Amazon fires during the Madrid climate change talks. In many ways, say campaigners, the terrible Amazon fires last summer have helped to focus the world’s attention on these incredibly precious living organisms that we take so very much for granted.
But, as usual with this environment lark, there is a dangerous time lag between becoming aware of the problem and stopping it from happening. Trees may quite literally grow on trees (all right, just beneath them). But they grow slowly – and fall before the axes so quickly.
Bibi van der Zee is a Guardian journalist
This article was amended on 3 January 2020: Tim Rayden currently works for the Wildlife Conservation Society, part of the Trillion Trees partnership, not the Oxford Forestry Institute, as we said in an earlier version. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2016/jul/04/gurgaon-life-city-built-private-companies-india-intel-google | Guardian Sustainable Business | 2016-07-04T03:00:33.000Z | Vidhi Doshi | Gurgaon: what life is like in the Indian city built by private companies | The first thing you notice when you come to Gurgaon is the number of skyscrapers. The second is the pigs.
In the past few decades, Gurgaon, a city 32km outside the Indian capital New Delhi, has risen from a former agricultural wasteland. But it wasn’t the government, or even individuals, that led Gurgaon’s growth. The city was built almost entirely by private companies.
According to census data, Gurgaon’s population doubled between 2001 and 2011, from 876,000 to more than 1.5 million. Its people are made up of the two extremes of India’s developing society: rich, well-educated urban professionals who work for some of the biggest firms in the world live side by side with urban slums, home to villagers who used to own the land where Gurgaon now stands and migrants, who come to do blue-collar jobs for corporations.
Gurgaon has golf courses and shopping malls but it also has mountains of uncleared garbage, leaky pipes and potholes along government roads.
Water logging and patholes in Gurgoan. Photograph: Ravi Batra
The companies have created a city to suit their needs. Big multinational firms, including Google, HSBC, Nokia and Intel, all have offices there. Startups too like to base themselves in Gurgaon, so they can be close to the huge network of corporates.
Because the city appeared so quickly, there was no basic infrastructure to make them work. The company buildings were built before the roads, electricity, sewage, waste disposal, security – and even emergency services – could be established.
Employees on their way to the Cyber Hub in Gurgaon. Photograph: Ravi Batra
Instead of waiting for the Haryana Urban Development Authority to set up the services they needed, the companies improvised, bringing in private builders to pave roads and drill borewells, and buying privately owned backup diesel generators. Private companies, they felt, would do the job faster and better than the government could.
Take the privately run fire service, managed by real estate company DLF for residents of its properties. “Many of the buildings here are over 90m tall. The government’s fire brigade doesn’t have hydraulic platforms that can reach that height. We do. In fact, we were the first in the country to get them,” says SK Dheri, DLF’s head of fire safety.
Fire drill in Gurgaon. Photograph: Ravi Batra
Residents’ organisations and private developers who manage Gurgaon’s elite residences do all the work that governments are normally responsible for. “We all used to pitch in around 3,000-4,000 rupees a month (£30-40),” says Surendra Lunia, a former resident of the DLF private colony. “The residents’ organisation uses that money to fix roads, build parks, pay for security and any other needs. If we left it to the government, it would never get done.”
India’s municipal governments are infamously inefficient. Slow bureaucratic process and corruption have left many parts of urban India without basic infrastructure. Even in megacities such as Mumbai and Delhi, chronic water shortages and power cuts are common. The idea of private companies running public services is not new, but it has never been done on a scale like Gurgaon’s.
“If a streetlamp breaks in Gurgaon,” says Manjit Rajain, another resident, “a private technician will come and fix it the next day. If the government were in charge, you could be waiting for a month or more.”
Yet private services are far from ideal. Gurgaon has no sewage system, so private companies collect the sewage in septic tanks and dump it in nearby rivers or on open land. Privately drilled borewells have quickly depleted the amount of groundwater in the city. Other problems, where solutions are less obvious, such as the city’s roaming pigs and aggressive monkeys, are ignored.
Garbage dump in Gurgaon. Photograph: Ravi Batra
Gurgaon was built because the northern state of Haryana cut red tape in the land acquisition process in the 1970s, allowing private developers to buy land quickly and cheaply in an area that was close to the capital. “Once the developers had the land, they built all the infrastructure. Gurgaon grew so fast that the government would not have had the ability to meet its needs,” says Rajain.
The wastelands have gone, but the pigs have stayed. The villagers whose lands were bought and then developed, were squeezed into ghettoes near the high rises of Gurgaon. Their hogs and livestock wander freely through the maze of skyscrapers and private fences. “The private colonies in Gurgaon are some of the best homes available in India,” says Lunia. “The other colonies, in Old Gurgaon, are the worst.”
Sakuina lives in a temporary shelter, in Gurgaon. Photograph: Gurinder Osan/AP
Municipal government exists but is relatively small. Residents of Old Gurgaon have huge problems getting water, power and basic public sanitation, but have no-one to provide it.Shruti Rajagopalan, an economist who has studied the region says, “Even the poor in Gurgaon are willing to pay for public utilities. Poor women are willing to pay for clean water that is reliable. Same for electricity. The urban poor in India so desperately needs access to utilities, they don’t seem to care who provides them. And they are even willing to pay higher charges.”
Some of the former villagers have accused Gurgaon’s developers of pushing them out. “There are fights all the time. The villagers say their land was undervalued, the developers say the land wasn’t worth anything until they came and built it up,” said Rajain.
Women walk through Old Gugaon. Photograph: Ravi Batra
In contrast Gurgaon’s private colonies feel surreal. “Entering a private colony is like crossing an international border,” says Rajain. “Firstly, the checks you go through at the gate with the private security guards. And when you do eventually cross the gate, its like you’re in America ... with perfectly manicured lawns, and sprinklers and picket fences.”
Municipal government is relatively new in the city. It was formed in 2008, and has been playing catchup ever since. New plans to solve Gurgaon’s problems are regularly floated: electricity from recycled waste, GPS on garbage trucks to make sure waste is being removed, a new mobile app so residents can report problems easily. But despite these hi-tech aspirations the corporations face the most basic problems: supplying water, removing sewage and fixing potholes.
In the past two years, developers have started handing utility services over to the state, leaving many of Gurgaon’s private residents with a reduced quality of service. In exchange, the municipal government has started charging property taxes to all 368,000 owners of private properties in the city, for the first time this year.
Plastic roads: India’s radical plan to bury its garbage beneath the streets
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Haryana’s chief minister has said the Gurgaon model – allowing private companies to buy land directly from villagers and develop it as they choose – can be replicated in other parts of the state.
In the western state of Maharashtra, a similar experiment, a city called Lavasa – which is run without any state involvement – has sprung up. And in 2011, Afghanistan sent a delegation of officials to Gurgaon to study its development model with the aim of replicating elements in Kabul, the Afghan capital.
The model has yet to be tried outside India but has inspired similar ideas such as Paul Romer’s “charter cities”, where urban settlements in developing nations could be run entirely by other nations or private companies. In Honduras, where the idea was floated, courts quickly rejected plans, fearing companies’ ambitions could undermine the constitution. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/07/skiing-holidays-school-fees-second-homes-the-rich-are-truly-deserving-of-our-pity | Opinion | 2024-04-07T06:00:24.000Z | Catherine Bennett | Skiing holidays, school fees, second homes… the rich are truly deserving of our pity | Catherine Bennett | Perhaps it’s down to upbringing, maybe it’s a fault in their education: for whatever reason, struggling high earners are apt to be their own worst advocates.
Assuming the financial pain is as severe as some are claiming, you wonder if they wouldn’t do better to invite cameras and a celebrity, following in the footsteps of Matthew Parris and Michael Portillo, to join their community and experience what life’s really like on a salary of £100,000, even £200,000 a year.
Then viewers could see for themselves what it is to tell the kids they can’t go skiing, to not replace three-year-old cars, to stop heating a pool or cut down on other luxuries wealthier families can still take for granted. Yes, poverty safaris are wrong and no visitor can hope, in a week, to plumb the depths, but if Down and Out in Windsor and Salcombe is the only hope of public understanding, so be it.
Until then, with limits to available compassion in a cost of living crisis, rich complainants will find themselves competing for sympathy against the more observably deserving poor. Historically, this may have gone pretty well, but a generally callous response to recent comments by Jeremy Hunt, about constituents struggling on £100,000, indicates increased difficulty for the high salaried trying to be heard, above the clamour about food banks, on problems such as unsubsidised childcare, higher taxes on second homes and the coming agony of private school VAT. Last week, some Times readers had to be reminded, when a “livid” mother of two in a double-lawyer household earning over £200,000 raged lengthily about the cost of childcare, that it’s only poor women who should be asked why, if they can’t afford kids, they were careless enough to have any. It probably made sense to her. And the author was no more guilty than many of her peers in failing to conceal what the philosopher Michael Sandel calls “meritocratic hubris”.
To be fair to the more entitled, self-pitying and tone-deaf representatives of the professional managerial class, there has probably never been a worse time to explain why you have an inalienable right to, say, a second home. They may even be struggling to comprehend, after years in which poorer residents have been cleared from the most picturesque rural and coastal zones, with only occasional protests about vacant properties, how little their occasional spend in local Spars has been appreciated.
From such a fluent campaigning group, it’s concerning to find the case for special treatment being so counterproductively made
Then there is the challenge of explaining why this demographic deserves levels of protection and subsidy not available to lesser earners no longer able to afford an amenity. True, people on over £100,000 a year have always – outside the pages of the Telegraph, the Times, the Daily Mail, the Express, Sun and Spectator – faced obstacles, in comparison with the technically unfortunate, to being considered deserving. But even so, from such a fluent and meritorious campaigning group, it’s concerning to find the case for special treatment being so counterproductively made. Where did they all go to school?
Some recent special pleading from second-home owners – as in, they’re actually poor, they’re doing the countryside/local community a massive favour – could have been composed by unusually resourceful Trots. Along with hyperbolic headlines about “raids” or “attacks” on taxpayers, another common objection to affluence-depleting charges, that of being “taxed twice”, could be advanced by anyone buying a can of beer out of taxed income.
To be sure of alienating the formerly indifferent reader, there is nothing, however, like arguing that wealthy targets of long overdue taxes should enjoy a sort of moral immunity. They have “worked hard” for their privileges, shown “aspiration”, made “sacrifices” – or what less heroic consumers might think of as not buying things. Anyone who supports additional taxes is an exponent, on the other hand, of the “politics of envy”.
In a classic of the genre, TalkTV journalist Isabel Oakeshott, owner of “a little place on the Isle of Wight” – and a credit to Gordonstoun – once invited Telegraph readers to walk a mile in her shoes. Increased taxes, she wrote, will never work being “based on a complete misunderstanding of the psychology of second-home owners, many of whom already make huge sacrifices to hold on to their special places because they are such a source of wholesome pleasure”. Many people, she added, will just “do what they did in order to afford the property in the first place, and work harder”.
In contrast to rival claims to consideration from people pointing out they can’t afford anything as special as food, heat or rent, the scale of these sacrifices is often obscure. Are they huge enough to include that certified marker of profligacy, avocado toast? Is the alternative of a rented holiday cottage or state school necessarily worse? If Oakeshott knows people who’ve sold a kidney to keep a second home, apologies are of course in order. But given how often the sacrifice turns out, when specified, to be comically manageable, her vagueness is understandable.
“We do without fancy holidays, clothes and meals out to pay for it,” one parent shares on a website created by a recently formed private school parents’ group, “Education not Taxation”. Long before the threat of VAT, private school fees had soared above inflation, becoming increasingly impossible for all but the wealthiest. So it was possibly shortsighted for – inevitably – “hard-working parents” to wait until Labour’s proposed removal of VAT exemption to protest that rising fees endanger, as well as the wellbeing of poorer pupils and the equilibrium of a state system forced to take in refugees, the very existence of some schools. But even if this were (contrary to predictions) plausible, the response might be disappointing. Successive surveys indicating majority support for VAT in private school fees suggest the public could not care less.
And if the afflicted sector can’t teach even their most able product to control meritocratic hubris, the public probably has a point.
Catherine Bennett is an Observer columnist | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/oct/26/cambridge-student-accuses-telegraph-of-inciting-hatred-in-books-row | Education | 2017-10-26T17:13:49.000Z | Nadia Khomami | Cambridge student accuses Telegraph of inciting hatred in books row | A Cambridge student has accused the media of a “very targeted form of harassment” after she was “flooded” with racist and sexist abuse for criticising the lack of black and ethnic minority authors on the university’s English course.
Lola Olufemi, the women’s officer at Cambridge University student union, said press coverage of an open letter to the English department, signed by dozens of students, was designed to incite hatred.
“This is a trend we see over and over again, hypervisible black and brown student activists on the left are subjected to the intellectual dishonesty of mainstream media,” Olufemi told the Guardian.
A 'decolonised' syllabus: the BAME authors you think students should read
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“Our attempts to make progressive change are misconstrued, taken out of context and reframed to make us into targets of racialised and gendered harassment.”
Speaking earlier on Thursday on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, Olufemi said she was disappointed by the Telegraph’s coverage. After the newspaper ran her photograph on its front page, she said “all of my Facebook, my email were flooded with racist and sexist abuse. And that’s not by accident. That is a very purposeful thing that you’re doing.
“I think it is very telling that they chose to place a photograph of me, a student, a highly visible young, black woman student, on the front of their newspaper, as if to incite this kind of abuse, and incite hatred, and make me into a figure that people could attack.”
The article itself, she said, was “riddled with factual inaccuracies and attempts to misconstrue what the task of decolonising is and delegitimise me as a co-author of the open letter by using out-of-context quotes in an attempt to turn me into a ‘controversial figure’.”
The row this week followed the publication of an open letter to academics at the university asking them to “decolonise” the English Literature syllabus by including more black and ethnic writers. English students signed the letter after concerns that the department’s reading list was dominated by white, male authors.
Olufemi said the letter was written with the intention of pushing the faculty to give the same moral and intellectual weight to BME authors and stories from the global south.
“It was written by a group of students who think that it is a serious injustice that many go through their entire degree without formally studying any authors who are not white,” she said. “Decolonising is about critiquing the current curriculum in order to make it better, it is about expanding our notions of ‘good’ literature so that it doesn’t always elevate one voice, one experience, one way of being in the world.”
The Telegraph published a small correction about its front-page story on page two of Thursday’s edition, saying that its article had “incorrectly stated” that Cambridge University would be forced to replace white authors with black writers. It added: “The proposals were in fact recommendations. Neither they nor the open letter called for the university to replace white authors with black ones and there are no plans to do so.”
Hollie Berman, a 19-year-old English student who signed the open letter, said: “Student representatives have been campaigning for more diversity for a long time. You can’t ignore the colonial history of Britain. It’s so important to have this conversation – you’re confronting the elephant in the room.”
Another English student who signed the letter, Isadora Dooley Hunter, 20, said it was long overdue. “This term is the first time our suggested reading list has been vaguely gender-balanced, let alone racially diverse.
“People react negatively because it makes them feel uncomfortable but you need to make feel people feel uncomfortable for them to address their privilege.”
Marcus Ansley, 19, an English literature student, said: “It would always come down to the quality of literature for me; if there’s a scholarship for it and it has value, then I’d be open to change. It broadens things and puts the rest of literature in perspective, its limiting to have literature coming from a select group of people.”
However, not everyone agreed. “I’m in favour of maintaining a classic canon of authors,” said Matti Thal, 18, a classics student. “It’s about the history of the country. For me literature is part of our culture and our society. What should be taught, at first, are the great authors. It’s a case of how much room there is on the syllabus.”
His friend retorted: “‘Great authors’ comes from a perspective of privilege – they don’t represent who our country is anymore,” she said. Earlier this week, Cambridge University made the rare move of responding directly to national media reports, making it clear it was at a “very early stage” of discussion, and “changes will not lead to any one author being dropped in favour of others – that is not the way the system works. We condemn the related harassment directed towards our students on social media as a result of the recent coverage,” the university added.
The debate came after it emerged that one in three Oxford colleges failed to admit a single black A-Level student in 2015. The university was accused of “social apartheid” over its admission policies by MP and former education minister David Lammy.
“Discussions are wilfully misrepresented and we have to question what the agenda behind that is,” Jason Osamede Okundaye, president of Cambridge Black and Minority Ethnic campaign, told the Guardian. “People get scared by the word ‘decolonised’ but it’s just about inclusivity and recognising that intellectual thought doesn’t only come from the west.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/05/cost-of-living-crisis-what-governments-around-the-world-are-doing-to-help | World news | 2022-09-07T12:10:34.000Z | Sam Jones | Cost of living crisis: what governments around the world are doing to help | The Covid pandemic, soaring food and fuel prices, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have dealt a triple blow to people around the world. Here is a look at what governments are doing to try to help citizens and companies weather the cost of living crisis.
Americas
The US will help millions of indebted former students by cancelling $10,000 of their outstanding student loans. The move follows the $430bn Inflation Reduction Act announced last month, which includes cuts to prescription drug prices and tax credits to encourage energy efficiency. President Joe Biden has also proposed an income-driven repayment plan that would cap loans for low-income future borrowers and introduce fixes to the loan forgiveness programme for non-profit and government workers.
Brazil’s government has cut fuel taxes and raised social welfare payments. The country’s largest oil firm, Petrobras, last week announced a 7% cut in refinery-gate gasoline prices – its fourth consecutive such reduction since mid-July
In July, Chile announced a $1.2bn aid plan including labour subsidies and one-time payments of $120 for 7.5 million of its 19 million residents.
Asia, Africa and Middle East
Japan’s average minimum wage is set for a record 3.3% increase for the year ending March 2023. The government is also due to refrain from raising the price of imported wheat it sells to retailers, as part of a planned broader relief package. The steps follow a $103bn bill passed in April.
Indonesia will reallocate 24.17 trillion rupiah ($1.6bn) of its fuel subsidy budget towards welfare spending, including cash handouts to 20.6 million households. The government will also instruct regional administrations to subsidise transport fares.
Tariff shields and turning off lights: how Europe is tackling the energy crisis
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Four months ago, India imposed restrictions on exports of food items including wheat and sugar, which account for nearly 40% of the consumer prices index, and cut taxes on imports of edible oil.
Malaysia is expected to spend a record 77.3bn ringgit ($17.25bn) in subsidies and cash aid this year to temper the effects of rising prices.
In July, South Africa announced a cut in the pump prices of fuels.
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have raised their social welfare spending. The UAE doubled financial support to low-income Emirati families, while Saudi Arabia’s King Salman ordered the allocation of 20bn riyals ($5.33bn).
Turkey has increased its minimum wage by about 30%, adding to the 50% rise seen at the end of last year.
Europe
A man fills his petrol tank at a forecourt in Ajaccio on the French Mediterranean island of Corsica. Photograph: Pascal Pochard-Casabianca/AFP/Getty Images
Austria plans to partly reimburse consumers for the cost of power from 1 December. The energy ministry said households would receive on average about €500 a year.
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France has frozen gas prices at October 2021 levels and capped electricity price increases at 4% until at least the end of the year, and handed out €100 to low- and middle-income households to help pay energy bills.
In Germany, the government is paying all people in regular employment a one-off rebate of €300 in September. Students and welfare recipients have already received double their usual lump-sum payment to assist with heating private homes.
Spain will cut VAT on gas from 21% to 5% from October until the end of the year to help people with their energy bills.
In June, the EU approved an €8.4bn Spanish and Portuguese plan to reduce wholesale electricity prices in the Iberian market by capping the price of gas used to produce electricity. Operating as a direct grant to electricity producers, it should save households 15% to 20% on their energy bills, the Spanish government says.
In Poland, which relies heavily on coal for domestic heating, the government has announced a one-off payment of 3,000 złotys (about €630, or £540) for each coal-burning household, with smaller subsidies for different types of heating fuel such as liquefied petroleum gas.
The Netherlands is offering the lowest-earning households a one-off energy subsidy of €1,300, hiking the minimum wage and lowering VAT on energy to 9%.
Norway has capped electricity bills at 0.7 krone (€0.07 or £0.06) per kWh, with the state covering 80% (rising to 90% in October) above that.
The UK government has yet to announce its plans to deal with the cost of living crisis. But the Treasury is working on a menu of options in readiness for an emergency mini-budget.
This article was amended on 7 September 2022 to correct the level of Norway’s electricity price cap. It is set at 0.7 krone per kWh, not 7 krone as an earlier version said.
Additional reporting by Jon Henley, Philip Oltermann and Lorenzo Tondo. Reuters contributed to this report. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/22/gaza-doctors-save-baby-womb-mother-killed-israeli-airstrike-rafah | World news | 2024-04-22T09:54:56.000Z | Ruth Michaelson | Gaza doctors save baby from womb of mother killed in Israeli airstrike | Doctors in Gaza have saved a baby from the womb of her mother as she lay dying from head injuries sustained in an in Israeli airstrike. The girl was delivered via an emergency caesarean section at a hospital in Rafah.
The woman, Sabreen al-Sakani, was 30 weeks pregnant when her family home was hit by an airstrike. Her husband, Shoukri, and their three-year-old daughter, Malak, also died.
“We managed to save the baby,” Ahmad Fawzi al-Muqayyad, a doctor at the Kuwaiti hospital in Rafah, told Sky News. “The mother was in a very critical condition. Her brain was exposed, so we saved one of the two.”
On Sunday the baby lay wriggling and crying in an incubator in the neonatal unit of the nearby Emirati hospital. The tag around her wrist bore her dead mother’s name.
The baby would stay in hospital for three to four weeks, Dr Mohammad Salama, the head of the unit, told news agencies on Sunday.
“After that we will see about her leaving, and where this child will go, to the family, to the aunt or uncle or grandparents. Here is the biggest tragedy: even if this child survives, she was born an orphan,” he said.
The baby’s grandmother Mirvat al-Sakani told Associated Press that she would take care of her.
“She is a memory of her father. I will take care of her,” she said. “My son was also with them. My son became body parts and they have not found him yet. They have nothing to do with anything. Why are they targeting them? We don’t know why, how? We do not know.”
At least two-thirds of the more than 34,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza since this war began have been children and women, according to the territory’s health ministry.
Another Israeli airstrike in Rafah overnight killed 17 children and two women from an extended family.
The children came from the Abdel Aal family, according to Palestinian health officials. “Did you see one man in all of those killed?” said Saqr Abdel Aal, a Palestinian man whose family were among the dead, grieving over the body of a child in a white shroud. “All are women and children. My entire identity has been wiped out, with my wife, children and everyone.”
Mohammad al-Behairi said his daughter and grandchild were still under the rubble. “It’s a feeling of sadness, depression. We have nothing left in this life to cry for, what feeling shall we have? When you lose your children, when you lose the closest of your loved ones, how will your feeling be?” he said.
Asked about the casualties in Rafah, an Israeli military spokesperson said various militant targets were struck in Gaza.
More than half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have crowded into Rafah, seeking shelter from the Israeli offensive that has laid waste to much of the Gaza Strip over the past six months.
Israel is threatening a ground offensive into the area, where the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has said fighters from the militant group Hamas must be eliminated to ensure Israel’s victory in the war.
Netanyahu has said a date for a Rafah ground invasion has been set, but is yet to publicly present a plan to protect the people sheltering there.
Reuters and Associated Press contributed to this report | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/18/rachida-dati-far-right-front-national-france-european-elections | World news | 2014-05-17T23:05:46.000Z | Kim Willsher | Rachida Dati warns French to stop far right by turning out in European polls | Rachida Dati, a French centre-right MEP and former justice minister under President Nicolas Sarkozy, who now represents French people living in Britain, has appealed to voters to turn out in this week's elections to the European parliament to combat the threat of "ultra-violent, ultra-racist and populist" parties.
Opinion polls in France suggest the far-right Front National (FN) could win up to a quarter of votes and a record number of seats in the European parliament, with the opposition UMP in second place and the ruling Socialists trailing in third.
Dati, who is standing for re-election, told the Observer: "It's the level of abstention that worries me. Non-participation will be the key. If people don't go out and vote there's the risk that Europe speaks for no one, which raises questions about its legitimacy and that boosts extremes."
She added: "What we are seeing with the extremes across Europe is that they are not a homogenous group. They are very different and they don't agree among themselves. Britain has its parties as does France and other countries. But if people don't vote, we risk having a bloc of extreme parties, some of whom are ultra-violent, ultra-racist and populist."
She said: "People are exasperated and disgusted with Europe, not by conviction but because of its caprices. They hear European officials saying 'well yes, we know you are suffering but you have to accept it's going to take another 10 years to get out of this' and they ask themselves what these people know about suffering.
"The politicians are seen as remote… they don't very often come into contact with voters. Even in France we have MEPs who are standing for the fifth time and French people haven't a clue who they are. These are people who consider they don't have to give an account of themselves to the electorate and so they don't. So we should not really be surprised if voters aren't interested in Europe or vote for extremes."
France's UMP party, which won a majority of seats in the 2009 European elections, is campaigning on a broadly conservative manifesto that calls for reform of the Schengen travel area (it opposes Romania and Bulgaria being part of it), tighter European borders to keep out EU and other immigrants and no further enlargement in general (or admission for Turkey in particular).
Sitting in her office in the wealthy 7th arrondissement of Paris, Dati said: "Campaigning is complicated. France is going through an extremely hard crisis, unemployment is rising daily. What advances can we offer the public?"
Dati's one-time cabinet colleague, the former prime minister François Fillon, warned that voting FN would bring France country nothing but "a detestable image". "Whether it's a national or an European election, if an extreme party wins, then it gives a detestable image of that country's political class."
Dati spoke as polls showed that a majority – 62% – of French people were "interested" in the elections, but that 75% thought they would "change nothing" in their country. She would like to see a complete overhaul of European institutions. "Brussels and its technocrats have been rejected by the French," she said recently.
She told the Observer: "We cannot throw the baby out with the bathwater. I'm a committed European and believe Europe is necessary for France and other nations in order to remain at the world table. "France is still the motor of Europe, as it should be given that the idea of Europe was French. But I consider the future of France's influence [in the world] depends on its presence in the European Union." | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/nov/16/george-saunders-interview-booker-prize-short-story | Books | 2018-11-16T12:00:02.000Z | Emma Brockes | George Saunders: ‘A lot of my extended family are Trump supporters' | When George Saunders began writing “Fox 8”, he imagined it might be for children. The story, published in the Guardian in 2017 and reprinted now as a book, is told from the point of view of a fox who has learned to write, phonetically, by gazing through windows at “yumans” reading to their kids. As one might expect from Saunders, it is very funny. (“Yumans wud go: You kids stop fighting, we’re at the Mawl, kwit it, kwit it, if you don’t stop fiting how wud you like it if we just skip the Mawl and you can get rite to your aljubruh, Kerk?”). As it turned out, it is completely inappropriate for children. “The sweet tone leads you to believe that the author is going to protect the innocent fox, because he made him,” says Saunders. “And then, as is the case in the real word, the most innocent person is just as susceptible to violence as the least.”
It’s the kind of reversal that the 59-year-old excels at, not merely thwarting the reader’s expectations, but yanking the narrative into such sudden, brutal turns that the experience of reading him can be thoroughly disorienting. In his short story collection Tenth of December every story seems to hinge on a more shocking upset than the last, while Lincoln in the Bardo, Saunders’ debut, Booker prize-winning novel of 2017, is in the first instance so weird as to be almost unreadable. With Fox 8, Saunders does something one might, in isolation, think it almost impossible for a book to do, which is to resensitise the reader to violence. “I realised that somehow, especially in film, you’re allowed to root for the violence a little bit, even if it’s supposed to be terrible,” he says. “But this is like: I’m a fox who can’t spell, and I have trauma.”
Fox 8 has learned to write phonetically from by gazing through windows at ‘yumans’ reading to their kids. Illustration: Chelsea Cardinal
The trauma arrives, of course, at the hands of the yumans, who take Fox 8’s trust and stomp it to death with one heel. The story has an environmental portent, and also makes a deep underlying point about kindness, something that Saunders returns to repeatedly; his 2013 commencement speech at Syracuse University – “What I regret most in life are my failures of kindness” – justifiably went viral and still feels like something one should check in with and read once a year.
And we do not live in kind times. The polarised political climate in the US is tricky for someone whose stock in trade is nuance, and for whom political engagement has never been a primary urge. “I read something really interesting that said satire is very difficult when the opposition doesn’t accept Enlightenment values,” says Saunders. “It’s the one question that won’t close for me, quite. It changes, so right now I’m feeling tired of ugliness and sordidness and I want to go back and write fiction. But it’s temporary. You can’t live like that. I’ve got a lot of people in my extended family who are Trump supporters. The easy stance of progressive disdain is not really available to me.”
Nor should it be, surely? “No, it’s way too easy. So many of the things that Trump exploited were liberal ideas. Income inequality, shitty education, the degradation of the middle class. You go out into middle America and the lives there are really sort of ... I don’t know what the word is, but they’re not easy, and they’re not nice. Most of the food sucks. The physical environment is decaying. So I think Bernie Sanders had it, and Trump put on a bit of a racist hat and slipped in front of him, but that doesn’t mean that the original problems aren’t still there. It’s a sad time, I think.”
The irony is that not only does Saunders’ work thrive against dark backgrounds, but he is never more nimble than when writing his way out of a tight corner. “For me,” he says, “the constraints help the beauty to happen; as soon as I say there’s a fox and he can’t spell, I go, ‘Oh yeah; we can do something with that.’ And as a reader, you may go, ‘OK, I don’t know.’ And that’s a perfect relationship – for me to be saying, ‘I think this’ll be fine,’ and for you to be saying, ‘I don’t think it’ll be fun.’”
If a story has charm that’s one model. If it has a bit of oh-you’re-being-a-dick about it then I won you over? That’s more powerful
The tension introduced by setting up, in the first few pages, a premise that may cause the reader anxiety is one of the primary ways in which Saunders achieves his effect, an approach fraught with risk but that, when it works, has the power to blow the reader’s head off. “I talk to my students about this all the time – you are in an attempted intimate conversation with someone and you’re constantly repelling them somehow. And then you’re pulling them back in. I think most of us have the dream of writing the perfect story in which the reader just likes us from the beginning and stays with us. But I don’t think that’s really art. Gregor Samsa [in Kafka’s The Metamorphosis] finds he’s been transformed into a large beetle and part of you goes: ‘Bullshit. No, Franz.’ But another part of you goes: ‘Well, all right.’ You have faith. That’s the exciting thing.”
It is, he says, a question of resisting the urge towards easy charm. I remember being quite angry at the start of Lincoln in the Bardo – Saunders’ wild account of a purgatorial realm inhabited by Abraham Lincoln’s young son after his death, which opens with a set of short paragraphs so baffling they seem to upend the transaction between writer and reader. “That’s right. If a story has immediate charm and continues to, that’s one model. If a story has a little bit of oh-you’re-being-a-dick about it – that’s a technical term – and then I won you over? That’s a more powerful relationship. Just like in a real relationship.”
As an approach, this only works in fiction and, over the last few years, Saunders has been tempted into reportage, notably his long piece for the New Yorker in 2016 in which he attended a series of Trump rallies. He found it a tough story, artistically and psychologically, and spent a large portion of the piece struggling with the ethics of how far to go in terms of empathising with Trump’s base. “I have so much complicated allegiance. When I first started writing, I was coming from the midwest and I always felt a bit below the other writers I knew, who were Ivy League people, and I had a real feeling that what I had to say was about working-class people. And it turned out that I was right. I sometimes feel around progressives, you’re not being nuanced, you’re not being kind. And then you go back to the midwest and see that they’re not being nuanced about us, either.”
In terms of Trump, what depressed Saunders most was the disconnect between the humanity shown by his supporters in individual circumstances, and the way in which this failed to challenge their allegiance to Trump. In trying to understand this, he found Gregor von Rezzori’s 1969 novel, Memoirs of an Anti-Semite, very useful. “He’s an antisemite in Germany before the war, and mostly he’s not that interested in antisemitism. Mostly he’s interested in women, and his career, but he doesn’t ever stop being a casual, likable antisemite. At the end of the book you go: ‘Oh my God, multiply that by 4 million Germans and you’ve got a movement.’ It’s like in my generation we were culturally trained to be misogynists, homophobes and racists. I guess my thought is that these political movements are mostly made up of millions of people who don’t really care that much, but they slightly lazily err on the side of acquiescing. And when I look at the people who support Trump, they don’t care about politics as much as I do. They’ll say: ‘Well, he’s not racist.’ Or: “How is that racist?’”
‘So many of the things Trump exploited were liberal ideas’ … A rally in Missouri on the eve of the midterm elections. Photograph: Carolyn Kaster/AP
These contradictions caused Saunders such difficulty when writing the piece that, he says, “it got rejected three times by the New Yorker. And the first time it was fucking me up so much that I submitted it as an operatic libretto – it was a Trump rally and the immigration advocates were flying overhead, singing – and [the editor] David Remnick was like, ‘I don’t know about this.’ I think the phrase he used was, ‘I appreciate your attempt to be open minded, but I think you’re avoiding the hard work of analysis.’” Saunders bursts out laughing. “Damn straight I am.”
How does he think the political situation might change? “I think what’s probably needed is some amazing figure who can somehow straddle those two worlds as a temporary Band-Aid. If you and I are fighting, for me to continue to insist that you’re wrong – I might be completely justified, as I think the left is – isn’t going to change the dynamic. So if the building is on fire, suddenly that binary changes and we’re saying we gotta get out of here, together. It maybe sounds a little anti-progressive or enabling; I don’t mean that. But if we could get a way of remembering that we’re more than just a left/right divide ... The big hope is that there’d be a transitional figure, a Rorschach that the right would look at and say, ‘Oh, he’s a centrist,’ and the left would say, ‘One of us.’ Biden, maybe? I don’t know.”
The bigger problem, he says, is America. “At some point a great country has to have a great animating principle. And somewhere along the line we mistook materialism for our great animating principle. We’re gonna make so much money, have so many successes – and that isn’t enough, as we know, as human beings. So the way that philosophy or spiritual life got out of our animating principle is interesting. I think [nothing will change] until the country says: ‘Actually, we do believe in a big, moral and ethical principle.’”
In the meantime, Saunders wants to return to writing fiction; it feels to him, in some way, like defiance. Trump governs so much of our attention and time, but “he can’t have that, too”, he says. After he wrote Tenth of December, for a brief period Saunders felt: “I’m getting more mature, and older, and I’m trying to get more positive.” This is not where he is, now. And yet, as his feelings about the US darken – “which career-wise is great, because that comes very naturally to me” – it also throws into definition all the stuff Trump can’t touch: the joy of the book one is writing; the love one has for one’s family. “There’s a lot of hypocrisy, and a lot of power getting more power by shitting on little people, which is the oldest American story.” And yet, he says, “for me the question is: can I get out ahead of that and have a world where all that is true, and yet it is beautiful? And that’s the world we live in. That’s the artistic challenge.”
Fox 8 is published by Bloomsbury. To order a copy for £7.99 (RRP £9.99) go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/nov/17/mali-dog-hero-brave-belgian-malinois-dickin-medal-kabul | Opinion | 2017-11-17T17:29:21.000Z | Julian Baggini | Mali is surely a hero. But can a dog really be brave? | Julian Baggini | If ever a member of Her Majesty’s armed forces deserved a medal for bravery, it was surely the hero who dodged booby-traps and helped clear militants from a Kabul tower block, despite sustaining horrendous shrapnel injuries. This was a battle-hardened warrior who had already “shown his mettle and built a reputation among all the guys”, according to a brother in arms in the Special Boat Service.
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There are only 68 other recipients of the medal this “guardian angel” was awarded on Friday. When you find out who those other winners were, however, the award becomes more questionable. Mali, an eight-year-old Belgian malinois, joins the 32 pigeons, 31 dogs, four horses and one cat who have received the Dickin medal since 1943. Described as the animals’ Victoria Cross, it is awarded by the People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals, a charity founded 100 years ago by Maria Dickin.
Can a dog really – as the dispensary’s director general, Jan McLoughlin, said – exhibit “gallantry and devotion to duty”? Does it makes any more sense to call Mali “brave” than it would to call him “proud” for receiving the medal? Is this zoological correctness gone mad?
I’m quite sure that whatever qualities the 32 pigeons displayed to earn their medals, bravery wasn’t one of them. With dogs, however, it’s more complicated. It seems bizarrely anthropomorphic to award medals to animals who have no idea what the shiny bit of metal actually is. But it’s also heartless to treat animals as though they were no more than fleshy automatons who have nothing in common with sentient human beings at all. Seeing animals as too like or too unlike ourselves are equal and opposite mistakes.
The way to avoid this error is not to imagine that other animals are more human-like than they really are, but to accept that we are more like other animals than we generally believe. This was the remarkable claim of David Hume’s short chapter Of the Reason of Animals, in 1748. Hume was clear that animals did not use any “process of argument or reasoning”. But neither do human beings most of the time, not even philosophers. Most day-to-day “reasoning” is little more than an application of learning from experience, in which we expect things to behave as we have seen them behave before.
The way this works is “unknown to ourselves” – unconscious rather than consciously reasoned. In animals we call this “instinct”, not noticing the instinctive nature of most of our own thoughts and actions, “on which the whole conduct of life depends”. Recent work in psychology by the likes of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky suggest Hume was spot on.
Brave actions are one example of how this works. Of course Mali didn’t think about what he was doing, or make some kind of conscious choice to act. But nor do many, perhaps most, human heroes. They rarely sit down, think and conclude that their moral duty requires they risk their lives. Rather, a kind of instinct kicks in, and it is only later that they tremble retrospectively at what they have done.
Take another recipient of a medal for action in Afghanistan, Lance Corporal Kylie Watson, who received the Military Cross in 2011 for trying to save two comrades under heavy fire. “I just got on with it,” she said. “There was no option.” Or the Gurkha Dipprasad Pun, who received the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross for single-handedly fighting off more than 30 Taliban, but felt there “wasn’t any choice but to fight”.
Human and animal bravery may not be as different as we think. Both are often kinds of instinctive impulses to help
Such soldiers are no less heroic because their actions are in some sense automatic. In a way, the fact that they put their lives at risk without a second thought is precisely what makes them so admirable.
Hume was not saying that there is no difference at all between human and animal intelligence. His point was that a lot of the time the difference is more a matter of degree than kind. Many of the features of the human mind are simply more sophisticated versions of those found in our genetic relatives. Similarly, human and animal bravery may not be as different as we think. Both are often kinds of instinctive impulses to help, rather than calculated acts of self-sacrifice.
Far from being a comic story of the Disneyfication of war, the award of Mali’s medal is a more complicated example of how humans struggle to understand animal consciousness. The Dickin medal might err on the side of anthropomorphism, but I’d prefer that to the more common mistake of treating other animals as senseless brutes. As Hume recognised, seeing some of our own qualities in our fellow creatures is an important way of reminding ourselves that we are animals too.
Julian Baggini runs the website Microphilosophy | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2012/apr/24/barcelona-chelsea-champions-league | Football | 2012-04-24T21:03:43.000Z | Daniel Taylor | Barcelona 2-2 Chelsea (2-3 agg) | Champions League match report | Chelsea players discuss Champions League victory over Barcelona Reuters
There are many emotions inspired by Chelsea's arrival in the final but, more than anything, it is sheer wonder. They refused to be cowed after John Terry's red card and deserve their place in Munich on 19 May because of the heroism that went into a night of rare achievement and glory. As triumphs in adversity go, the night they went down to 10 men and knocked out Barcelona on their own ground will take some beating.
Terry will not be in the team to play either Bayern Munich or Real Madrid in the final because of the knee he callously delivered into the back of Alexis Sánchez's legs after 36 minutes. Branislav Ivanovic, Raul Meireles and Ramires, who all received yellow cards, will also be suspended but that told only part of the story on a night when Chelsea looked for all the world like they had blown it during that eight-minute spell towards the end of the first half when Sergio Busquets and Andrés Iniesta scored either side of Terry's final, senseless act.
To recover against the most devastating attacking team on the planet, a side that have now accumulated a staggering 104 goals at the Camp Nou this season, was nothing short of extraordinary and, for Roberto Di Matteo, these are the moments when it is increasingly difficult to comprehend how he cannot be closing in on the manager's job on a permanent basis.
His was a victory sprint down the touchline that revived memories of José Mourinho's famous celebration, with Porto, at Old Trafford in 2004. Now Di Matteo may get the chance to pit himself against the former Chelsea manager courtesy of Ramires's brilliant finish just before half-time and, in the final seconds, the finest moment of Fernando Torres's time with the club, running clear to round Victor Valdés and roll the ball into an exposed goal.
Chelsea have to be commended for their spirit of togetherness. They had survived a fearsome onslaught. They tackled and they harried, they ran and they chased and when the pressure was close to intolerable they simply refused to buckle. There were moments of substantial fortune, most notably when Lionel Messi thumped a penalty against the crossbar. The same player also struck the upright and Barcelona will reflect, once again, on a plethora of missed chances. Over the two legs, they must be bewildered that it has been so complicated and, ultimately, harrowing.
Yet they came up against an inspired goalkeeper in Petr Cech and a team whose ethos was epitomised by Didier Drogba appearing in both full-back positions. Torres also slotted into defence after replacing the Ivorian on 81 minutes. Then consider that Chelsea, already without the injured David Luiz, also lost Gary Cahill throughout the opening stages with a hamstring problem.
Their supporters, on the highest rows of this vertiginous stadium, could never have imagined the team would have to play the majority of this match with a midfielder, Ramires, at right-back and two full-backs, Ivanovic and José Bosingwa, in the centre‑half positions. The Camp Nou is no place for a team with these kind of disadvantages, faced by a team that have made an art-form of picking off opponents who sit on the edge of their own penalty area.
Terry had badly let down his team-mates, felling Sánchez with no provocation, and it was difficult to sympathise regardless of the traumas he must now endure. Two minutes earlier, Isaac Cuenca had turned the ball across the penalty area for Busquets to open the scoring.
Barcelona were threatening to overwhelm their opponents and it was a complete dereliction of duty from such an experienced captain. The apology Terry later issued would have carried greater substance had he not already claimed it was an accident.
It was difficult not to fear for Chelsea at that point and even more so, seven minutes later, when another burst of short, incisive passing saw Sánchez and Messi combine to put Iniesta through to make it 2-0. Barcelona were suddenly in utter control and then, almost out of nowhere, Frank Lampard's pass had released Ramires and he was bearing down on goal. The Brazilian's finish was audacious and wonderfully executed, chipping his shot over Valdés.
Even then, the temptation was to favour Barcelona. Guardiola had started the match with three defenders and Busquets as the only classic holding midfielder. The other six players were all, in essence, attackers.
The movement, anticipation and speed was a blur and Chelsea would surely have been defeated if Messi, two minutes into the second half, had made the most of Drogba's trip on Cesc Fábregas inside the penalty area.
Messi has now failed to score in any of his eight games against Chelsea.
Barcelona have not beaten them in their last seven attempts. It was a desperate backs-to-the-wall operation and, for long spells, Barcelona's superiority was so marked the 10 men were just grateful for the breaks in play when they could catch their breath. But they survived and, in the process, reminded us why the Camp Nou was the place where "football, bloody hell" was formed. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2022/jan/17/england-ashes-series-shambles-australia-cricket | Sport | 2022-01-17T11:29:06.000Z | Ali Martin | Excuses can be made for England’s Ashes shambles, but the status quo cannot hold | Ali Martin | Day four in Hobart was one of potentially beautiful batting conditions, the sun shining down on the Tasmanian state capital as the ferries pootled in and out of Brooke Street Pier on the shimmering harbour and tourists wandered around Salamanca Square with barely a care in the world.
Unfortunately for England’s cricketers the Ashes series was already over, with their surrender of 10 for 56 under lights the previous evening at Bellerive Oval for a 4-0 defeat leaving two days of soul-searching before the flight home. There were a couple of escapees, at least. As promised upon answering the SOS, Sam Billings was jetting off to the Caribbean to play for the Twenty20 team, while Dawid Malan was hastily en route to the UK after missing the birth of his first child due to an unexpected but thankfully complication-free early arrival.
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The rest, however, were left to chew over the past seven weeks while Australia basked in the afterglow of a job clinically done. There was also an appreciation of England travelling over during a pandemic from the home side too, Marnus Labuschagne making this point on Twitter alongside a nice picture of Mark Wood celebrating his demise in Sydney.
It goes down as the friendliest men’s Ashes in recent times – two likeable captains in Joe Root and Pat Cummins deserve credit for that – but what recriminations follow from an English perspective remain to be seen. There has been much talk of systemic issues with the sport back home. So, too, the draining effects of bubble life. But while these are undoubtedly true, and few expected England to regain the urn when the squad was announced last October, it was hard not to think that a better-run side might have offered a closer contest, rather than simply a whitewash averted through rain and a final day rearguard in Sydney.
The shortcomings were myriad and too often self-inflicted. Preparation was minimal and unfortunately ruined by rain on the Gold Coast, but then why did the tour start in Queensland, one of the few states still demanding hard quarantine upon arrival? England held aces during the negotiations but used them all to ensure families could join the tour, only for a good number of those connected to the multi-format players – ie those facing four months away from home due to T20 World Cup – to stay home anyway.
Then came the Gabba, where England were bogged down by the past and future at the expense of the present, shouldering arms to two possible advantages by denying Stuart Broad an early sighter at David Warner and batting first (dreadfully) on a green-top. As Robert Craddock, the longstanding and highly-respected doyen of Brisbane’s Courier Mail put it: “Broad is a fighter. You can never recreate things but if England fielded first, it could have been game on. Broad gets a nick [off Warner], the whole vibe of the Ashes is set”.
Come Adelaide they then opted to leave out Mark Wood on a pitch his pace might have transcended despite him bowling just 25.3 overs the week before, citing the need to keep him fresh for “later in the series”, and they also dispensed with Jack Leach on a surface that eventually spun. Despite putting so much stock in the pink ball, an attack of five right-arm fast-mediums that looked remarkably similar to the one picked on the same ground four years ago delivered a not-so remarkably similar outcome.
Stuart Broad celebrates dismissing David Warner for a duck in Hobart. How might the series have turned out if the veteran paceman had played, and England had bowled first, in Brisbane? Photograph: Darren England/EPA
Both selections smacked of overthink by Root and the head coach, Chris Silverwood. James Taylor, the head scout who wasn’t on tour, is strangely said to have had an input, too. “It’s a marathon not a sprint” was the oft-said mantra, ignoring the fact there would be no “later in the series” at 2-0 down. And so it proved, Broad again missing out on another seamer’s paradise in Melbourne that saw Australia select a specialist fast-medium in Scott Boland – and what a series he had – before completing a series win inside 12 days.
That Wood and Broad, England’s two leading wicket-takers, bowled more overs than any others yet more than half came after the destiny of the urn was settled said plenty. There was also Silverwood’s promise this would be the fittest England team to ever tour Australia only for Ollie Robinson, so skilled and incisive, to look short of international standard here, aborting three spells in three separate Test matches. To hear that one player also successfully pushed back on having a pre-series skin-fold test citing “fat shaming” backed up a wider sense of a soft environment.
Other basics – some would call them non-negotiables – went awry, with at least 17 catches of varying difficulty going down, Jos Buttler failing to justify the investment in him behind the stumps and three wickets falling off no-balls. When Silverwood was asked about the first of these after Brisbane, in light of the one-day team not overstepping for two years, he put it down to a “lack of consequence” in Test cricket, just three days after Warner was dropped halfway through a defining 94. In another contrast with Australia, England’s Test fielders also appeared consistently incapable of hitting when shying at the stumps.
Behind the scenes there were enough gripes about clarity of selection and communication to players before matches to suggest an issue. Australia also made more of the scant red-ball cricket available, with Scott Boland, Usman Khawaja and Michael Neser all featuring for Australia A against the Lions in Queensland – two of whom went on to make a significant impact in the series – while the supposed supremo, Silverwood, was somehow unable to persuade his performance director, Mo Bobat, to select any of his reserve batters for the shadow fixture. Dom Bess, a spinner unlikely to feature, was the only inclusion from the main squad. That Jonny Bairstow overcame this for the only century on tour was, frankly, remarkable.
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Jofra Archer was a huge loss, no question, while Ben Stokes’ disappointing displays should be put in the context of his time off this year. And perhaps none of the above would have changed the destiny of the series when England’s batting against the red ball has been so callow and so collapsible for so long. Australia averaged more runs per innings in every position, and in a series that saw Warner, Labuschagne and Steve Smith all kept relatively quiet, a hungry support cast stepped up. Even in the low-scoring dogfight in Melbourne the hosts had seven batters, not all specialists, with the wherewithal to hang in for 50 minutes or more, while England were Lord Flashheart’s 20-minuters all tour, so regularly were they shot down in flames.
This has been largely put down to the system that underpins the Test team (and in the case of Tom Harrison, a chief executive who has been in place for seven years). And Root was right to highlight the gulf that needs to be overcome. Yet improvement once beamed to the supposed elite England coaching environment still rarely occurs. Ollie Pope and Haseeb Hameed went backwards, while Zak Crawley has only just hinted at some green shoots of recovery.
All of which begs the question as to whether the exact same set-up should remain in place come the Test series in the Caribbean in March. Plenty has been out of England’s control, Australia were superb and pandemic touring is hard. But it’s hard to make a case for a continuation of the status quo. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/michaeltomasky/2011/apr/27/barack-obama-obama-administration | Opinion | 2011-04-27T16:08:00.000Z | Michael Tomasky | Birthers and the persistence of racial paranoia | Michael Tomasky | Let's stipulate at the outset that this whole birth certificate thing is madness, and that the madness comes down to the fact that the president is, for a certain depressingly high percentage of Americans, an Other with a capital O – the kind of person who, to their way of thinking, could not possibly have been legitimately elected the president of any United States they know.
So, there have to be other explanations. Acorn, a voter registration and poor people's rights group, stole the election for him. A cabal of shifty liberal journalists, many of whom merely happen to be Jewish (and – full disclosure – of which your correspondent was a member), allegedly conspired to vault him into our land's highest office. The well-meaning but naïve American people simply could not and would not have made this choice without being duped into it.
In one sense, it's understandable. After Ronald Reagan won, Nora Ephron joked that she didn't see how, as she didn't know a single person who voted for him. So it is with the birthers. They likely know no one who voted for Barack Obama, so all the information they received in 2008 that they trusted – not from the media, but from friends and co-workers – led them to search for explanations fair and foul. Acorn and the journalists helped them feel a little better, but they didn't solve the basic problem: that the man occupied the office.
And so, the birther story. Perfect. Explained everything. A conspiracy of immense proportions, concocted all the way back in 1961, had to be the only explanation for how this black man got to the White House. And if you think race isn't what this is about at its core, ask yourself if there would even be a birther conspiracy if Barack Obama were white and named Bart Oberstar. If you think there would be, you are delusional.
But today, the question is: should Obama have acknowledged the madness?
I think so, and probably earlier. The so-called long-form birth certificate, just a page, could not have taken long to dredge up from its Hawaiian storage coffin. There existed any number of occasions in 2009 and 2010 on which to deal with this. Why not then? I suspect there's no good reason. It's just another example of this White House's slowness of foot on so many political matters.
It is certainly a victory for Donald Trump, the maybe presidential candidate who's been banging on about this. And it's manna from heaven for the birther movement. Far from being satisfied that this ends the matter, the bloggers who depend on this "controversy" for their daily bread will obviously keep at it, finding more and more baroque angles to explore. It is possible, and maybe even probable, that the existence of this certificate will make them – and the Republicans who pander to them – look sillier to a larger percentage of people.
But the problems here are racial paranoia and the bald willingness of politicians to lie in order to stoke it. In at least this one respect, the election of the first African American president, rather than taking us forward, has drawn us back into a cobwebbed and pitiless past, from which there seems no escape. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/apr/06/uk-loudest-bird-bittern-bumper-breeding-season | Environment | 2023-04-06T05:00:14.000Z | Helena Horton | UK’s loudest bird finds its voice again after bumper breeding season | The UK’s loudest bird has had a bumper breeding year after previously being driven to extinction in the country.
Bitterns became locally extinct in the 1870s due to persecution and draining of their wetland habitat for agriculture. Now the RSPB has revealed that thanks to conservation work, the bird, which has a distinctive “booming” call, has had one of its most successful breeding seasons.
Last year, the secretive member of the heron family bred successfully for the first time at RSPB Saltholme nature reserve in Teesside – their most northerly breeding record. Although most of the records are in England, with some in Wales, bittern were once found in Scotland and Northern Ireland, and there is hope that they will once again have a presence there.
0:21
The boom of the UK’s loudest bird, the bittern (video by RSPB)
Conservationists counted 228 booming males during the last breeding season, one of the most successful years to date. The wetland-dwelling birds depend on reedbed habitats, where they move, camouflaged, to hunt fish, insects and amphibians.
The males are easiest to count as you hear them before you see them; they are the loudest bird in the UK with their far-carrying “foghorn” boom being detectable up to three miles away. Men of the species make this noise in spring to attract female mates.
Bitterns returned to Norfolk, coming over from the European mainland, in 1900, but after their wetlands were drained for agriculture in the 20th century their population dropped again and fell to just 11 males by 1997.
Since then, the restoration of their habitat has caused the species to recover, though it is still amber-listed, meaning it is under threat.
Conservationists continue to try to restore their habitat so they can have a secure future in the UK.
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Britain’s loudest bird is back! How the once extinct bittern is booming
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Simon Wotton, an RSPB senior conservation scientist, said: “Many wetlands were drained in the 19th and 20th centuries to make space for agriculture, leaving the bittern fewer and fewer places to breed.
“One of the aims of the bittern work since 1990 was to create and restore suitable wetlands away from the coast – to create safe sites that wouldn’t be affected by the effects of climate change such as rising sea levels.
Rewetting these spaces also helps prevent flooding and fights the climate crisis – wetlands are incredible carbon sponges, with coastal wetlands locking in more carbon that forests. A win-win for the nature and climate crises.”
Though there are only a few hundred of them in the country, bitterns can be seen – and heard – in spring at locations including Minsmere in Suffolk, Avalon Marshes, Somerset and the Ouse Fen in Cambridgeshire. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2020/nov/04/craig-charles-this-is-my-midlife-crisis-i-should-have-just-bought-a-porsche | Culture | 2020-11-04T10:00:14.000Z | Simon Hattenstone | Craig Charles: 'This is my midlife crisis – I should have just bought a Porsche!' | Craig Charles calls it his midlife crisis. There he was sitting at home, mid-pandemic, in a fuddle. Because of social distancing rules he could no longer DJ his live music gigs. Sure, there were still the other jobs – hosting his fabulous funk and soul Saturday show on BBC Radio 6 Music, acting on TV (notably Red Dwarf and, in the past, Coronation Street), co-presenting The Gadget Show, writing poetry – but it was the live gigs that gave him most pleasure and brought in the big money.
Like so many of us, he began to feel life was on hold, and wondered what his purpose was. He started indulging his vices. “My wife, Jackie, and my kids were having a go at me because I’d put so much weight on. I was doing nothing but getting a suntan from the light inside my fridge, and drinking copious amounts of new-world wines.”
That was when his agent rang and told him he had been invited to compete alongside Olympic athletes on Don’t Rock the Boat, an endurance reality show that would involve rowing the length of Britain and climbing down waterfalls. Charles was a good 2st overweight, had had a heart attack a couple of years ago and had four stents inserted, was still a heavy smoker and had only rowed once in his life (when he fell into the Serpentine lake in London). Of course, he jumped at the opportunity. “I was like, yeah, I’ll do that; that will show them!”
Don't Rock the Boat review – all aboard for the vomit Olympics!
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“Doing Don’t Rock the Boat was my midlife crisis moment. I should have just bought the fucking Porsche! Hehehehe!” He laughs that distinctive scouse-Muttley laugh. “I was trying to prove to myself that I could do all these things that perhaps I can’t do any more, really.”
Did he prove himself? In some ways, he says. “I felt a success and a failure. I got through it, but I was scared and disappointed in myself on many occasions. I realised that I’m not a young man any more. I used to be able to party all night, work all day and nothing would really have an effect on me.” On the show, Charles is a sight to behold – within an hour on the boat he has mastered the art of synchronised puking and pooing.
When we Zoom, Charles is sitting in his wood-like garden surrounded by towering trees. He still can’t quite believe he lives in this footballers’ paradise in Cheshire. “All the guys around here drive Maseratis or Lamborghinis and all the women drive daisy blue Bentleys. We’re definitely the poor relations.” Having said that, he’s hardly struggling. What does he drive? “Just a Mercedes.”
He lights a fag, and tells me how much he has cut down since the heart attack. “I’ve gone down from two packs a day to maybe half a pack a day.” He looks to his left, where Jackie is, out of Zoom’s view. “Jackie’s gone like that, as if I’m Pinocchio.” He strokes his nose. “It’s true, though.”
Red Dwarf in 1991 … (from left) the Cat (Danny John-Jules), Kryten (Robert Llewellyn), Lister (Craig Charles) and Rimmer (Chris Barrie). Photograph: UKTV
Charles, 56, has had an incident-packed life – so many highs, more than his share of lows. “I can’t believe I’m still here, to be honest,” he says. He is known for his boyish enthusiasm and exuberant cackle. As an actor, he tends to be cast as characters close to home. In the cult sci-fi comedy Red Dwarf he plays Dave Lister – a mischievous curry-guzzling, lager-loving Liverpudlian slob. In Coronation street, Charles’s cabby Lloyd Mullaney is a laddish Liverpudlian cabby and funk enthusiast. In person he’s more nuanced. Yes, the cackling joie de vivre is part of the package, but there is also a more reflective side – mellowness and melancholy.
He grew up in Liverpool, the third of four sons born to a father from what was then British Guiana and an Irish mother. His father, a merchant seaman turned lorry driver, liked to tell him they met outside a boarding house that said: “No blacks, no Irish, no dogs.” Was it true? “He was a terrible liar, my dad, so it could be all false. He would never let the truth get in the way of a good story.”
It was a tough, often violent childhood – they were the only black family on the Cantril Farm estate, which was notorious for crime. On the school bus, kids would chant racist rhymes. And then there were the beatings. “You go to school and sometimes people would beat you up. Then my mum would tell my dad when he got home from work what I’d done wrong and he’d beat me up, so I spent a lot of time getting beaten up.”
I have read that his father was a violent alcoholic. No, Charles says, that’s not quite right – or not how he likes to remember him. “He was a beer drinker and he died at 81 from cirrhosis of the liver, but hadn’t drunk for many years before that. As he got older he calmed down and was a much quieter, more loving, friendly man.”
The young Charles loved words. At the age of 12, his teacher entered him for a poetry competition and he won. Can he remember the poem? He ums and ahs, plays coy, then recites it word-perfect.
“I knew this kid at school by the name of George McGee.
He was always passing wind and blaming it on me.
He’d kick me in the classroom and hit me in PE.
He’d wait for me to get the ball while playing in the gym
Then he’d push me over or kick me in the shin.”
At the end of the poem, Charles fast forwards to imagine himself as a young man being pulled over for speeding – yet again a victim of McGee, who by now is a police officer.
In fact, by the time he was a young man he was living a very different life. At 17 he was opening gigs with his poetry for the post-punk band the Teardrop Explodes, and before long he was resident poet on Terry Wogan’s TV chatshow, married to the actor Cathy Tyson (they divorced in 1989, and have a musician son, Jack), touring the country as a standup with the anti-Thatcher collective Red Wedge, starring in Red Dwarf – and struggling with success. “Like most young working-class men I handled it badly. Everything just came so fast. I moved from Liverpool to London, bought my first flat in Camden when I was 19 and my head disappeared quite firmly up my arse for many years.”
In what way? “Partying all night, drugs, alcohol. Just believing your own hype. Then I’d be late for things or not show up at all. I didn’t put the work in, didn’t have the ethic, didn’t give things the full attention that they deserved. I just flew by the seat of my pants. I could have been so much better if I’d tried, Simon. I promise you.”
Performing poetry on Friday Night Live in the mid-80s. Photograph: ITV/REX/Shutterstock
He was earning silly money, and didn’t know what to do with it. Is it true that he would come across cheques for £200,000 that he had forgotten to cash? “Yeah,” he says sheepishly. “Probably more than that. I’d just stick them in the bedside cabinet. Every now and then, I’d go to the bank and pay them in.” He pauses. “There was a lot of money around in the 80s, wasn’t there?”
In 1994, while in his early 30s, Charles was charged with rape. Although he was acquitted, it was humiliating – he was remanded in Wandsworth prison for three months, and the tabloids had a field day with stories about his drug consumption and his penchant for strip clubs. Did he ever think he would be convicted? “No. No, no, not at all,” he says adamantly. “I knew I would get my day in court. You can’t prove something that didn’t happen when all the evidence proves the opposite, so I just needed to get the evidence out there.” He winces. “To be honest, I try not to think about it. I kind of lock it up in a box. It’s too painful for me to visit. Sometimes I do wake up in the night, or something will happen, that triggers a memory.” How did it change him? “It streamlined my life. You really think about what situations and what people you let into your life. You become wary and distrustful of people’s intentions, and keep it tight, keep it family, keep it close friends.”
In 2005, by which point he was married to Jackie and had two young daughters, AJ and Nellie, there was another disaster. Pictures of him smoking crack and ogling porn mags in the back of a car were splashed over the red-tops, followed by headlines that he had spent £250,000 on the drug. His driver had sold the photos.
It was another humiliation, and this time it was his fault. Charles was suspended from Coronation Street, although a few months later he returned and all was forgiven. He has said the exposé was the best thing that could have happened to him – it forced him to straighten himself out, join Narcotics Anonymous and fight to regain the trust of his family.
Not many careers would have survived that, I say. Again he winces. Did he think his was done for? “Maybe … I think …” He stutters to a stop. The thing is, he says, however stupidly he behaved, he has never been nasty. “I’ve always had a good relationship with the people I work with. So it’s really nice when you go through something like that to see people rally around you. I guess if I’d been an arsehole then it would have done for my career.”
Since then, he has not looked back and seems to be more in demand than ever. Is he happier? “Erm, yeah, I think so.” He says it’s complicated – his family life is wonderful, but there is so much he is disillusioned with. In some ways, he believes the country is even more bigoted than it was when he was growing up. He talks about the home secretary Priti Patel’s hostility towards migrants. “Her parents are first-generation immigrants who emigrated to this country and gave her opportunities beyond their dreams. How must they feel about the way she’s treating immigrants and the way she talks about immigration now? It’s disgusting. I don’t have faith in any of our great institutions. I don’t believe politicians, I don’t believe priests, I don’t believe the press, I don’t believe the police. The backbones of our society need to be incorruptible, and my respect for them has all gone.”
DJing in Newcastle in September. Photograph: David Wala/REX/Shutterstock
Charles was so shocked by antisemitism in the Labour party that he didn’t vote in the last general election. “What I find alarming is that they can’t even listen to the Jews when they say: ‘D’you know what? That was antisemitic.’ What I also find alarming now is white people are telling me what’s racist. Some white guy is telling me I can’t play historical records by prominent black artists because they have a racist word in them, and you think: ‘What?’”
He cites as an example Curtis Mayfield’s Pusherman, which includes the N-word in the lyrics. “I played it at a 6 Music live event, and then when it went on to the BBC Sounds app there was a warning saying some people might find this offensive.”
Charles is baffled by the culture wars – and cancel culture. Is it tough as a comic to be told what you can and can’t make jokes about? “Sometimes I feel I don’t want to stick my head above the parapet,” he says. Isn’t it dangerous if somebody like him becomes scared of saying what he thinks? He smiles. “Simon, I’ve been scared to say what I think since I was born.”
He’s not joking. And this is what makes Charles fascinating – so outspoken in some ways, cautious in others. “You choose your battles and choose them wisely,” he says.
A moment later, he’s talking about Black Lives Matter, and he’s certainly not holding back. “I don’t mind take the knee, but they are just gestures, and I’m not that big on gestures. Once you’ve finished gesturing, you need to do something about it.” Take casting, he says – there’s plenty to be done. “We need people in positions of power to turn round and say, when you’re reading the script, stop thinking in white and black. Most parts can be played by a white woman or black woman, a white man or black man. Stop thinking of Caucasian actors. And especially these days posh, Caucasian actors. I think it’s very difficult for working-class actors and performers to get a foot in today on telly. It’s all just posh bastards. D’you know what I mean? It really is.”
He points out that Red Dwarf was radical because half the cast were black, but race was never mentioned. Is that because it is set 3m years in the future? He laughs. “Yeah, we were hoping racism in 3m years’ time would not exist any more!”
Charles is still not done with worrying. He fears that live music may never return to what it was. “I’m taking bookings for next summer, but I’m doing it fairly halfheartedly because I don’t think people are going to be comfortable enough to go partying and raving and mingling all those body juices in a nightclub or at a festival any time soon. I think it’s going to take a long time.”
A couple of years ago, while Charles was in the Australian outback for I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here!, his brother Dean died of a heart attack. After Dean’s death, Charles decided to quit Coronation Street. “I’d been there 10 years and thought: ‘Would I be happy if that was my career trajectory?’, and came up with the answer that no, I wouldn’t. I wanted to go and have new adventures.”
Don’t Rock the Boat ... (from left) Jodie Kidd, Craig Charles, Adam Thomas, Fleur East, Victoria Pendleton and Tom Watson. Photograph: ITV/REX/Shutterstock
Since then he has presented The Gadget Show and made a film-length episode of Red Dwarf. He says there are adventures aplenty in Don’t Rock the Boat – not least a bromance with the former Labour deputy leader Tom Watson, and a row with an overly competitive contestant. And he’s not stopping there. He has written a series of epic “Scary Fairy” poems that he’s determined to turn into an animated film, and has compiled an album of classic funk and soul songs.
As for his biggest ambition, that’s simple, he says. “I suppose it’s a slog trying to stay relevant. I just want to be relevant, you know. I don’t want to be a footnote. I’m more tired, I’m saggier, and this is a young man’s game. You’ve got young thrusting bucks who want my job, and they’re probably cheaper than me. So it’s a struggle to just stay on point, and you gotta fight for your right to party.” And now the smile is back on his face, and he’s singing. “The Beastie Boys were never wrong,” he says.
Don’t Rock the Boat started on Monday and is on every night this week at 9pm on ITV. The Craig Charles Trunk of Funk Vol 1 is released on 6 November. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/jan/18/observer-poll-osborne-cameron-economy | Politics | 2014-01-18T20:44:42.000Z | Daniel Boffey | Economy 'safe in Cameron and Osborne's hands' | David Cameron and George Osborne are increasingly regarded by the public as the best team to handle the British economy, a new poll suggests.
One in three believe the Tory leadership provides the best option for the country as it emerges out its economic downturn. This compares to just 18% who believe Ed Miliband and his shadow chancellor Ed Balls would be the best custodians of the economy - down 3 points on polling carried out last summer.
Just 7% said the Nick Clegg and business secretary Vince Cable were the ones they would trust the most with the economy while 30% said they do not trust any of the leadership teams and the rest told pollsters they do not know.
The Opinium/Observer poll will come as a major blow to Labour who last week sought to flesh out their economic vision.
Miliband has promised he has the strength to tackle the vested interests in Britain and force the big five banks to sell branches to at least two new challenger banks.
His proposals put Lloyds and RBS in the line of fire, and his promise to break them up hit their share price on Friday, as the shadow business secretary Chuka Umunna had predicted might happen.
However it would appear that Miliband faces an uphill struggle to persuade the public that Labour can be trusted to look after the economy.
It would appear that even many of its own voters are not convinced that the two men at the top of the party are the best option for the country. Half (53%) said they would choose Miliband and Balls over the rest to handle the economy but that compared to 88% of Conservative voters who choose the prime minister and chancellor.
A quarter of Labour voters said they did not trust any of the mainstream parties in a finding that may give hope to Nigel Farage's Ukip, which often proves to be the choice of the voters disaffected with Miliband's party. Meanwhile Labour has dropped one percentage point over the last two weeks to 36% in the polls - just six points ahead of the Tories on 30%. The Liberal Democrats remain at 8%. Ukip is on 17%. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/nov/29/rishi-sunak-pushed-hard-for-lifting-of-covid-rules-inquiry-hears | UK news | 2023-11-29T18:35:33.000Z | Ben Quinn | Rishi Sunak pushed hard for lifting of Covid rules, inquiry hears | Rishi Sunak pushed “very hard” for a lifting of all lockdown restrictions during a meeting in July 2021 where Boris Johnson referred to people as “malingering” and “workshy”, the Covid inquiry has heard.
The then chancellor and prime minister were pitted against the “more cautious” approach of Michael Gove and Sajid Javid during the meeting, which took place when Covid-19 cases and hospital admissions were rising, according to a diary entry by the then chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance.
“PM looks downbeat and talks of grim predictions,” the entry read. “[Javid] says ‘we are going to have to learn to live with it’, ‘and die with it’, PM says.”
Javid, who was the health secretary from June 2021 to July 2022, told the inquiry on Wednesday it was “possible” that Johnson had said the words attributed to him.
“The prime minister in these meetings often said things that were hard to determine what he actually thought versus a joke,” he said. “Even when you were discussing something as important as this.”
The same entry recorded: “[Sunak] pushes very hard for faster opening up and fuller opening up. Getting rid of all restrictions. Repeats his mantra ‘we either believe in the Vx [vaccine] or we don’t’. I pointed out we would be facing a lockdown now if it was not for the Vx.”
Referring to Johnson, it added: “He says he wants everyone back at work ‘we can’t have the bollocks of consulting with employees and trade unions. They need to come back to work. All the malingering workshy people.’”
Vallance concluded in the entry that the whole meeting was “political posturing” and that civil service officials were worried. He said he and the chief medical officer for England, Sir Chris Whitty, had made the risks “very clear”.
However, a claim by Javid that Johnson was not in charge of the government during the pandemic and that his chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, was “prime minister in all but name” was later contradicted when Dominic Raab gave evidence.
“I just don’t accept the characterisation that there was some sort of puppet regime,” the former foreign secretary told the inquiry.
Raab, who resigned this year after a report on alleged bullying behaviour towards civil servants, mounted a defence of Cummings, who has been accused of contributing to a toxic environment at No 10.
Cummings was there to “galvanise the direction of travel” and act as “some grit in the oyster”, Raab told the inquiry.
In tetchy exchanges, he accused the counsel for the inquiry Andrew O’Connor KC of being “dismissive” when O’Connor suggested Raab was resorting to “management speak” as Raab told the inquiry about his theory of taking what he called a “perpetual beta” approach to decision-making in crises.
“In any crisis it’s not going to be a manicured response and there will certainly be people who feel bruised by the pressure. Sometimes that will be because someone has behaved inappropriately. I get it,” Raab said, adding that there was a broader problem of delivery in Whitehall.
Raab defended his going on a series of overseas government trips and on a family skiing holiday as the pandemic loomed and as initial cases were appearing in Britain, insisting he very rarely went on holiday in what was a “gruelling” role and that he would have been umbilically linked to chains of communication no matter what.
The former minister also told of how he was given “five minutes’ notice” in April 2020 that he was to deputise for the prime minister, who had been hospitalised with the virus. Planning before it had been “pretty sparse”, he said, but there had been an understanding when he was first appointed as deputy prime minister by Johnson, who he said had told him: “You’ve got my back.”
Raabs said one of his first acts was to “get the team together” and convene a cabinet meeting, and he insisted he was aware of how the moment was perceived.
He said: “I didn’t want anyone saying that Dom Raab’s enjoying this a bit too much, because I wasn’t, and I was there to do a job.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/dec/30/national-archives-thatcher-vetoes-anglo-irish-agreement | UK news | 2014-12-30T00:04:07.000Z | Owen Bowcott | Archive files show how Thatcher vetoes shaped 1985 Anglo-Irish agreement | Margaret Thatcher’s repeated veto of Dublin’s proposals proved a decisive force in shaping the Anglo-Irish agreement in 1985, newly released files from the National Archives in Kew show.
The word “No”, usually in Thatcher’s preferred blue or black felt-tip pen, recurs in the margin of letters and documents circulating between Belfast, London and Dublin. In the context of Anglo-Irish relations, however, history has awarded Ian Paisley, rather than Thatcher, the epithet Dr No.
The signing of the agreement on 15 November 1985 was preceded by intensive diplomatic exchanges as Thatcher tried to assuage unionist fears that the Republic was being offered partial control over Northern Ireland.
On a report from Dublin in November 1984 containing plans to establish a “standing joint committee”, the prime minister noted: “Bad – too near joint sovereignty.”
An Irish suggestion that there should be joint north/south courts was dismissed by Thatcher’s handwritten “No” and the note: “They are asking far too much. Possibly this is deliberate.”
Lord Lowry, the lord chief justice of Northern Ireland who had escaped an IRA assassination attempt, was known to oppose judicial cooperation. “[He] has consistently taken the position that all the judges in Northern Ireland would resign if joint courts were introduced,” Thatcher was informed by her officials.
Garret FitzGerald, the Irish taoiseach, or prime minister, knew he had an uphill task in persuading Thatcher of the need for an agreement. Charles Powell, Thatcher’s chief adviser on foreign affairs, left a detailed note of a meeting they had on the fringes of an EU gathering in Milan.
“Speaking with considerable emotion,” Powell recalled, “the taoiseach said that he wanted the prime minister to understand that the Irish government and people did not want a role in Northern Ireland. He was the only person willing to take risks and force the Irish people to face up to the need for an agreement. He did so because he believed that otherwise Sinn Féin would gain the upper hand amongst the minority in the north and provoke a civil war which would drag the Republic down as well.
“There were people on the sidelines, like Colonel Gaddafi who were ready to put up millions of pounds to achieve this aim [arming the IRA]. For 800 years Britain had occupied Ireland to protect its flank. There was a now a serious risk of ending up with what we had always tried to avoid, an Ireland under hostile and sinister influence.”
Robert Armstrong, the cabinet secretary, suffered frequent rebuffs. He pointed out that the Irish had “pressed us to indicate in the communique that we would be making changes concerning the Ulster Defence Regiment.” Thatcher indicated her objection in capital letters: “NO.”
Armstrong sought support for an early release scheme, informing her that “if this leads, as both governments hope, to a real and sustained reduction in the level of violence, that will be among the factors to be taken into account by the secretary of state for Northern Ireland in reviewing the release of prisoners … who have been convicted of terrorist offences. This proposal has been agreed with the NIO [Northern Ireland Office].” The prime minister vetoed it, replying: “Not with me.”
By August 1985, Thatcher was clearly frustrated, puncturing one of Armstrong’s drafts about changes to military deployments with the putdown: “Shouldn’t dream of putting my name to such terrible English.”
The prime minister’s relations with female inmates in Northern Ireland – contained in a file on the republican Price sisters, Marian and Dolours – show how her attitudes to the Troubles fluctuated. Both sisters were jailed for their part in the IRA’s 1973 bombing of the Old Bailey.
In 1980, Thatcher agreed to both being released on compassionate grounds, at one point mistakenly believing they were twins. But when Dolours moved to the Irish Republic and the Northern Ireland secretary, Jim Prior, cancelled her residence requirement because it was impractical to force her return, Thatcher wrote on the letter: “I think the decision is wrong.”
By 1985, Dolours had married the actor Stephen Rea and the prime minister was informed that they had been stopped at Folkestone. Thatcher wrote on the letter: “I do not think that Mrs Rea should be allowed to live here. She was transferred to NI on conditions which should continue to apply. If, understandably, she and her husband wish to be together, they should reside in Northern Ireland.”
When the Northern Ireland Office and Home Office attempted to regularise Price’s position by altering her required residence to England, Thatcher responded: “No. Do nothing. She got out of prison on false pretences.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2014/apr/23/jk-rowlings-casual-vacancy-hbo-bbc-miniseries | Television & radio | 2014-04-23T20:32:31.000Z | Katie Rogers | JK Rowling's The Casual Vacancy to become HBO/BBC miniseries | Like most of JK Rowling's literary projects, The Casual Vacancy's release in 2012 was shrouded in secrecy. But an announcement that the book will be turned into a miniseries? Not so much.
Her "pretty little town of Pagford" will get the small-screen treatment as a three-hour miniseries, to be co-produced by HBO and the BBC. The BBC announced in 2012 that the book would be adapted for television.
The novel was Rowling's first attempt to write for an adult readership, and while it received mixed reviews, it became a bestseller. As scandal takes centre stage, the material certainly seems in keeping with its HBO bedfellows, such as True Blood, True Detective and Game of Thrones: "Pagford is of course a hot-bed of seething antagonism, rampant snobbery, sexual frustration and ill-disguised racism," wrote the Guardian's Theo Tait in his initial review. "The Casual Vacancy has all the satisfactions and frustrations of this kind of novel."
HBO is owned by Time Warner Inc, and Rowling has a fruitful history with the company: her Harry Potter films grossed upwards of $7.7bn/£4.6bn worldwide. Even though The Casual Vacancy is aimed at an adult readership, the miniseries may well broaden the book's fanbase, as Harry Potter readers enter their 20s (or 30s, or 40s). Diehard Potter fans – like @Jess_The_Muggle – are already tweeting their casting wishes.
Imagine if David Tennant or someone got cast in The Casual Vacancy though, i would DIE
— Jess Margiotta (@Jess_The_Muggle) April 23, 2014 | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2017/feb/13/trial-loophole-should-not-be-excuse-to-shame-victims-says-minister | Law | 2017-02-13T18:15:47.000Z | Alan Travis | Rape trial loophole should not be excuse to shame victims, says minister | The justice secretary, Liz Truss, is looking to change the law to prevent the cross-examination of rape victims in open court on their sexual history.
Truss and the attorney general, Jeremy Wright, started a review on Monday of the impact on rape victims of the operation of section 41 of the 1999 Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act, under which a rape complainant’s sexual history can be admissible in court.
“I do not want this [legislation] to be used as an excuse to shame victims of serious crimes,” Truss said in a speech.
Last week the Plaid Cymru MP Liz Saville Roberts introduced a private member’s bill calling for a US-style “rape shield law”, with strong cross-party support including from two Conservative former ministers.
Ministers say that having listened to the concerns of victims’ groups, they want to look at how the law is working in practice.
Under the current rules, the bar for the disclosure of a complainant’s sexual history is high, and the disclosure is at the discretion of judges. In the past, most serious sexual cases were heard by an experienced group of specialist judges. But it is understood that a sharp rise in the number of such cases coming before the courts in recent years has led to a wider group of judges with less training in the operation of the law being involved. Truss said some courts now spent half their time dealing with sexual offence cases.
Harry Fletcher, of Voice4Victims, which provided evidence of widespread use of the section 41 loophole, said: “The cross-examination of rape victims on their sexual history is unacceptable. Too many victims are being humiliated and degraded through this process. The justice secretary’s announcement is therefore timely and most welcome.”
Fletcher said he wanted to see the “rape shield law” adopted, similar to those in use in the US, Canada and Australia which restrict cross-examination in open court to the personal history of the complainant with the alleged perpetrator.
Truss’s announcement came during a speech on prison policy in which she also made clear she would reject “dangerous quick-fix solutions” to the prison crisis, including a deep cut in prison numbers.
She said that although prison numbers had remained stable since 2010 there were now 3,000 more sex offenders locked up in jails, and 60% of those now in jail had been convicted of violent, sexual or drug offences compared with only 40% in 1995.
Some of Truss’s predecessors including Ken Clarke and Michael Gove have said far too many people are locked up in England and Wales. Truss particularly singled out for criticism the shadow attorney general, Shami Chakrabarti, for suggesting the prison population should be halved.
The Liberal Democrats’ Nick Clegg said that instead of attacking those who proposed solutions, Truss should focus on concrete steps to relieve overcrowding.
“It would take many years to bring about a large-scale change. But it would be possible to make modest short-term reductions in prison numbers without changing sentencing practice, by reducing the number of days added on to sentences for breach of rules in prison and by recalling fewer offenders to prison post-release,” he said.
“If the secretary of state hopes that prisons can pull themselves up by their bootstraps and reduce numbers without the need for hard policy choices then she is mistaken. We need to see immediate steps to alleviate overcrowding together with a long-term plan for a smaller, more sustainable and effective prison system. This requires leadership and cross-party cooperation.”
The shadow justice secretary, Richard Burgon, denied it was Labour’s policy to halve the prison population and tweeted that there was “nothing new from Truss on overcrowding or understaffing. Violence surging and message is don’t expect change soon.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/apr/30/there-is-despair-fears-for-scotlands-green-policies-as-power-sharing-ends | Politics | 2024-04-30T17:41:14.000Z | Sandra Laville | ‘There is despair’: fears for Scotland’s green policies as power-sharing ends | From the collapse of its ambitious target to cut carbon emissions by 75% by 2030, to the mothballing of a world-leading deposit return scheme for drinks containers, the much-heralded environmental objectives of the Scottish government appear to be falling apart.
As political opponents gather to exploit the fallout from Humza Yousaf’s departure as first minister, amid admissions he mishandled his Green party coalition partners, more long-term but pressing climate and environmental policies risk being sidelined at best, and buried at worst.
Patrick Harvie, who, along with his Scottish Green party co-leader Lorna Slater, was dumped unceremoniously from the power-sharing government by Yousaf, said many key environmental bills were at risk, including the natural environment bill to restore and regenerate biodiversity across Scotland by 2045; the introduction of more and better public transport; and the heat in buildings bill, to move all homes and businesses to a clean heating system by the end of 2045.
As a result, the optimism that greeted the 2021 SNP power-sharing deal – which put the Green party into ministerial positions in Scotland and involved key climate policies included in a Bute House agreement between the parties – is turning to despair.
Dr Richard Dixon, a former chief executive of Friends of the Earth Scotland and a former Scottish Environment Protection Agency board member, said: “There are lots of pressures [facing green policies] depending who becomes the next first minister; there could be major backsliding on green measures. There’s a great need for the non-governmental organisations and also opposition parties to keep the SNP’s feet to the fire on lots of these things.”
Some believe the fallout from the leadership tussle within the Scottish National party and potential moves away from an ambitious climate agenda have already started to happen.
This week, the stage 2 debate at Holyrood on the the circular economy bill – which would give ministers the power to set targets for local recycling, ban the disposal of unsold consumer goods, and place charges on single-use items, such as coffee cups – was delayed.
“There is despair amongst environmentalists,” said Kat Jones, of Action to Protect Rural Scotland (APRS).“There is so much urgency on environmental issues.”
The ambitious deposit return scheme (DRS), under which consumers would be asked to pay a returnable 20p deposit on drinks containers, had strong public support, consistently around 78%, and cross-party backing when the regulations were agreed by Nicola Sturgeon in 2017. Its demise is a sign to many that even key environmental policies, which were lauded and celebrated when they were forged, are at risk.
“A deposit return scheme is the simplest, most widely used circular economy measure in the world, which is used by half a billion people every day, yet it now won’t come in until at least 10 years after it was first agreed,” said James Mackenzie, of APRS.
A combination of politics, Scottish and national, vested interests and opportunism can be blamed for pushing the DRS into the long grass, and the same combination could scupper other climate policies, according to experts.
Jones said rumblings of discontent from some small businesses about the cost of the DRS had combined with a concerted media campaign that pushed far-fetched claims.. When she argued that small businesses would not shoulder the cost as there were measures to support them, few listened to the facts.
Instead, the adjective “controversial” began to routinely replace “popular” whenever the scheme was mentioned in the media or by politicians. Maurice Golden, a senior Tory MSP, likened the introduction of the scheme to Armageddon.
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Meanwhile, industry bodies against the scheme were intensely lobbying Scottish politicians behind the scenes, according to Transparency International. Some believe this pushback against the deposit scheme is part of a wider culture war on all things green within Scottish politics.
After ministers scrapped the target to cut carbon emissions by 75% by 2030, Friends of the Earth Scotland said it was “the worst environmental decision in the history of the Scottish parliament”. And with a centre-right grouping inside the SNP opposed to many green measures, including Sturgeon’s move to call a climate emergency and accept that North Sea oil and gas drilling had to be cut, environmentalists are bracing themselves for a further backlash.
Many fear the crumbling of the totemic DRS – now pushed back to the end of 2027 – is the latest of many U-turns to come on the environment and climate.
“If we cannot get a simple, popular and tried-and-tested recycling measure over the line to implementation, what is the likelihood we could make the scale of changes that we need to make to deal with the climate and nature crises?” said Jones.
Rebecca Newsom, the head of politics at Greenpeace, said: “Political leaders come and go but public concerns about climate change and plastic pollution remain. The lesson from the Holyrood debacle is not that governments shouldn’t set ambitious targets to cut planet-heating emissions, but that targets need to be backed up by a clear action plan to meet them.
“Whoever becomes the next Scottish first minister should roll up their sleeves and get to work on climate solutions that can bring down energy bills, boost energy security and create jobs.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/09/the-guardian-view-on-labours-conference-message-win-by-focusing-on-the-economy | Opinion | 2023-10-09T17:46:46.000Z | Editorial | The Guardian view on Labour’s conference message: win by focusing on the economy | Editorial | It’s the economy, stupid. That was the message from Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, to her Conservative opponents in her speech to Labour’s party conference. Ms Reeves is not a showy politician. Her style is to be all substance, and her message was that she is capable and decent. This is smart politics. The Conservative party has proved to be incompetent in its stewardship of the economy just when the issue topped the political agenda.
Ms Reeves set out her party’s stall by promising to boost business investment, build homes and ease planning rules – especially around green industries – to spur growth. Often seen as a hard-headed pragmatist, the shadow chancellor played on her party’s heartstrings with a call for a Labour government to rebuild public services and create jobs. She also hit home by creating dividing lines with the Tories by contrasting her plans for stable growth with the Conservatives’ record of wasteful, corrupt and inept administration. The biggest cheer was for her proposed anti-corruption commissioner to recover money lost to fraud during the pandemic.
Labour’s restrictive fiscal rules are unlikely to survive contact with reality. It would be better if Ms Reeves could be bolder and less in thrall to economic orthodoxy. But she does see the government as having a key role in a green transition. Labour is right that Britain will need an activist state to reach net zero. Earlier this year the energy regulator said that it was “unacceptable” that there were decade-long waits to connect low-carbon projects to the electricity grid. Housing developers are also facing delays in getting power to new homes. Working with Ed Miliband, the shadow climate secretary, Ms Reeves appears determined to get a grip on the situation.
This will be a key electoral battleground as the Conservatives under Rishi Sunak pivot to weaponise voters’ fears that net zero will impose costs today, even if in the long term they reduce household bills. The rash of headlines in the Tory-supporting papers about “Labour’s plans to rewire Britain with electricity pylons across countryside” aims to energise not-in-my-backyard sentiment in swathes of rural England. Labour has chosen to fight back by using what were once Tory arguments – that wind and solar are competitive sources of energy, they help to reduce electricity costs and will make Britain independent of petrocrats in Russia and the Middle East. This is a winnable argument for Labour. Mr Miliband says that by 2030, his party’s plans will take up to £1,400 off the annual household bill. Internal party polling suggests Labour’s idea of a publicly owned national champion in clean power generation, known as GB Energy, is a vote-winner.
The Labour conference has felt giddy at times, with delegates openly discussing a big Labour win – even a landslide – at the next general election. This feels premature. There is a long way to go. Ms Reeves knows that, unlike in 1997, the nation is stuck in an economic rut. She has to break with a failed model of economic governance. She cannot fix the country’s problems by sticking to Tory plans and cutting deeper into the budgets of “non-protected” departments. Taxes will have to go up, though it would be injudicious for Ms Reeves to admit that now. Labour has been largely engaged in party management since 2019 rather than ideological development. Ms Reeves’ speech is a welcome recognition of how that is changing. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/21/tilda-swinton-releases-margaret-cho-emails-about-film-role-diversity | Film | 2016-12-21T16:38:33.000Z | Esther Addley | Tilda Swinton releases Margaret Cho emails about film role diversity | The Hollywood actor Tilda Swinton has published the full text of an email exchange she shared with the American comedian Margaret Cho, after the comic said Swinton had treated her “like her house servant” during a discussion about diversity in the Marvel film Doctor Strange.
Swinton released the email conversation to a US website after Cho told a US podcast that she and Swinton had had a “fight” over the fact that the British actor had been cast in the movie as the Ancient One, a character who was Asian in the original comic book series.
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Cho, a stand-up comic whose work frequently focuses on race and gender issues, told TigerBelly last week that Swinton had contacted her to say “she didn’t understand why people were so mad about Doctor Strange and she wanted to talk about it, and wanted to get my take on why all the Asian people were mad”.
Margaret Cho on stage. Photograph: PR
“[She] was like, ‘Could you please tell them … ’” Cho told the podcast. “I’m like, ‘Bitch, I can’t tell them … I don’t have a yellow phone under a cake dome.’”
But after an account of the podcast was published by the website Jezebel, Swinton’s representative forwarded what he called “the entire unedited and only conversation she has ever had with Margaret – with her gratitude for the opportunity to clarify”.
While Cho had characterised their conversation as a “fight”, the tone of the emails, on the surface at least, is more cordial. Swinton first contacted Cho on 13 May this year, saying that while they had never met, “I’m a fan”, and she wanted to ask a favour.
“The diversity debate – ALL STRENGTH to it – has come knocking at the door of Marvel’s new movie DR STRANGE,” Swinton wrote, but said she was unaware of the debate since she didn’t use social media. “I would really love to hear your thoughts and have a – private – conversation about it.”
In response, Cho declared herself in turn “a big fan of yours”, then wrote: “The character you played in Dr Strange was originally written as a Tibetan man and so there’s a frustrated population of Asian Americans who feel the role should have gone to a person of Asian descent.”
The broader debate, Cho wrote, was to do with the “whitewashing” of Asians in American films. “Our stories are told by white actors over and over again and we feel at a loss to know how to cope with it.”
Marvel has repeatedly been forced to defend Swinton’s casting, with the film’s screenwriter hinting the character’s race was changed from Tibetan to avoid upsetting China.
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Similar accusations have been made by Asian-American actors about a range of films including Ghost in the Shell, in which Scarlett Johansson was cast as the manga character Major Motoko Kusanagi, renamed Major for the movie, and Aloha, in which the part of a quarter-Chinese, quarter-native Hawaiian called Allison Ng was played by the blonde, blue-eyed Emma Stone.
In her response to Cho, Swinton wrote that Marvel had made “a conscious effort to shake up stereotypes” by casting Chiwetel Ejiofor in a role that was originally white, and that she had personally been cheered by the fact the “wise old Eastern Geezer Fu Manchu” part had been offered to her as a woman in her 50s.
“Diversity is pretty much my comfort zone,” she wrote. “The idea of being caught on the wrong side of this debate is a bit of a nightmare to me.”
Cho responded by saying that she accepted that as an artist Swinton was “about diversity”, “but this particular case of the Ancient One is just another in a long list of ‘whitewashed’ Asian characters, and so you’re likely to feel the heat of history.” She suggested that Swinton could help by producing more films with roles for Asian-Americans, to which the actor replied that she was currently developing a part Korean-language film with a number of Korean leads.
Contacted for a response after Swinton published her emails, Cho released a statement saying: “Asian actors should play Asian roles. I believe my emails stand on their own and should be taken for the spirit in which they were intended.” She remained a “huge fan” of Swinton, she said. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/28/el-paso-texas-ciudad-juarez-mexico-border-fence | Society | 2016-06-28T11:00:06.000Z | Chris Arnade | Life looking across the US-Mexico border in El Paso: 'You are glad you are here' | Efren Macias, 70, lives in a one-room rented apartment, only 1,000ft from a 15ft-high fence splitting El Paso from Mexico. His apartment is immaculately kept, the walls decorated with religious icons and pictures of his family, many of whose members live in Mexico.
Efren and his wife do not have a lot of money. They make about $1,000 a month from a small pension he receives and from her occasional home-care work. Yet they are content. “I am happy. I have a roof. I have food. I am safe. I see my family. I am not sure what more you need.”
Efren Macias in his one-room rented apartment. Photograph: Chris Arnade/The Guardian
He is clear about another reason for his happiness: he is a US citizen. He was born and raised in Mexico but came to the United States as a young man. When asked why, he points to his injured left foot, the toes missing after a construction accident. “There is work here. Even if it is dangerous work.” Then he shapes his hands into pretend guns, gestures towards the border, and sprays the neighborhood while making shooting noises. “It isn’t safe in Mexico. Here, it is safe.”
In a time when many Americans, especially lower income Americans, are angry, frustrated, and unhappy, polls show Latinos in the US are more optimistic.
Happiness in El Paso is less about how much you have today than how much you have compared with the past
I have spent much of the last three years documenting poverty across the US, and those polls seem to hold true. El Paso, Texas, is one of the poorest cities in the US. It is over 81% Latino and is one of the happiest places I have visited. Happiness in El Paso is less about how much you have today, than about how much you have compared with the past. It is about finding meaning beyond the material, about having family and religion.
El Paso lies in a narrow space between rugged mountains and the Rio Grande. From almost anywhere, you can see into Ciudad Juárez, a city of 1.3 million people just on the other side of a tall border fence. You can see its homes, its residents. They are constantly on display, a semi-silent drama playing out beyond the fence. The noises that are heard are often the sounds of violence, gunshots, sirens and yells.
Church and store: El Paso, Texas. Photograph: Chris Arnade/The Guardian
The proximity to Ciudad Juárez’s violence and poverty is a reminder to residents of El Paso of what they have, what they could lose, and what comes with being a US citizen: safety, family and freedom. As one resident, who was born on the other side of the fence, told me: “I might be on the bottom of the escalator, but I am on the escalator, and it is going up.”
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That happiness and pride is also reflected in a strong community – and in the statistics. El Paso has some of the lowest rates of crime and drug abuse in the country.
When you walk through the neighborhoods, the signs of poverty are there, simple homes next to vast tracts of dull low-income housing, cars atop cinder blocks, corner stores with thick bulletproof shields. Yet throughout even the poorest neighborhoods you see a sense of community; you see neatness and order. There are well-kept homes, active churches and parks filled with families. Many of the businesses are locally run, which helps provide a sense of ownership.
Rodolfo Villarreal inside his store. Photograph: Chris Arnade/The Guardian
Across the street from Efren’s apartment is a corner store owned by Rodolfo Villarreal. Painted bright yellow, it flies both the American and Mexican flags. The store inside is well-stocked, clean and filled with religious icons, including a shrine resting on a Monster Energy drink display. Rodolfo is busy, splitting his time between stocking the shelves, running the register, and chatting with everyone who comes into the store.
Rodolfo bought the building and started the grocery seven years ago, after giving up running a similar store in Mexico. “I was robbed too many times. Had too many demands for protection money.” He gestures across the fence: “There is too much violence over there. I couldn’t do my business, or live that way.”
Rodolfo Villarreal’s store. Photograph: Chris Arnade/The Guardian
“I came here with very, very little. I only knew how to work. We didn’t have food stamps in Mexico, so my customers had to teach me about them.
At first, I had many rough years. But even then, I didn’t ask for help or complain. I was safe, and I have my hard work and my religion. Others in this neighborhood came here for the same reasons: to work and to be safe. They are very good people.”
As in any large town, there are still plenty of drugs and people dealing with addiction. Veronica and Vito, both in their 30s, are trying to remove themselves from a past filled with drugs (crystal meth), prison and poverty. Vito removes his shirt, and points down to a large “Fuck All” tattoo on his stomach. “I guess this is how I felt growing up.”
They live in an apartment only yards from the border fence. Through it they can see Ciudad Juárez. For them, Mexico is more than a distant drama.
Vito, an El Paso resident, demonstrates how easy it is to cross the border. Photograph: Chris Arnade/The Guardian
“At night, we hear lots of gunshots coming from the hills. Pop-pop-pops of gun battles. Sometimes you hear sirens, sometimes you don’t. Almost always we hear the helicopters overhead. In the mornings we find stuff from people who have climbed over, ladders, boots, old knit caps. Sometimes they slingshot over packages of drugs. You hear a thud, and we know not to go outside.
“It is easy for people to come over. They just do it like this.” Vito shimmies up the fence, touches the top, and slides back down. “I understand why they come. I mean, you hear what goes on over there and you are glad you are here.”
Despite the fence dividing El Paso from Ciudad Juárez, the two cities are mutually dependent, thanks to a steady stream of legal border crossings over the three pedestrian bridges. The immediate streets on either side have businesses for those crossing over.
In El Paso, the downtown is always crowded, filled with shoppers and workers coming from Mexico. Some, like Concepcion Hernandez and Azucena Rodriguez, come to shop at the lines of stores selling push-up bras, $10 jeans and dresses for celebrations. Others come into El Paso for work, although they might not be fully permitted to do so. Priscilla (name changed), 45, crosses twice weekly to clean houses. When she enters, she tells guards she is only there to shop, and returns to Mexico each evening. “There are no good jobs in Ciudad Juárez. Just ones that pay badly.”
Priscilla, Downtown El Paso. Photograph: Chris Arnade/The Guardian
US citizens go Ciudad Juárez for cheaper professional services such as lawyers, pharmacies and doctors’ offices. Naomi Torez crosses twice weekly to get physical therapy. Her job is also dependent on the traffic crossing the border. She sells bus tickets to Mexicans travelling to visit their relatives far beyond El Paso.
The tight bond between El Paso and Mexico has not only created plenty of opportunities for residents, but it also provides El Paso with energy, and a sense of success and optimism, by comparison. As much as residents love visiting Mexico, they especially love being back.
Hector Bernal, 28, stands with friends only yards from the border crossing. He was born in El Paso to parents from Ciudad Juárez. “I haven’t crossed the border into Mexico in two years. I mean, some stuff is cheaper over there, and I got relatives there. But stuff is just cooler over here.” He stops and points to all his friends. “I mean, this is where my people are.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2019/sep/15/cricket-ashes-england-australia-world-cup | Sport | 2019-09-15T08:00:21.000Z | Emma John | Champagne moments have popped up everywhere in an intoxicating summer | Emma John | There has been some suggestion, when analysing the individual performances at the Oval Test, that certain players are looking tired from their long summer of international cricket. It is easy to empathise with them – it’s been an epic one for all of us. Some of England’s players will be rested during the T20 series in New Zealand and it is tempting to follow their lead. When else are we supposed to take stock of all we’ve seen?
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You could sense a little spectator fatigue set in after the false ending at Old Trafford, when Australia retained the Ashes. For Australians, the prospect of their first series win on English soil in 18 years, a prize every bit as valuable as a World Cup – hey, they’ve lifted that six times already, no biggie – led Tim Paine to dub this their Grand Final. A series win would also be a great way to stick it to anyone who ever booed Steve Smith.
But for England fans, the best-case scenario of a two-all draw scarcely seemed a reason to put the Moët on ice, not after a summer that had given us so many champagne moments already. We’d been spoiled for storylines and the realisation that the Ashes weren’t coming home – and England could still finish on the pointy end of a 3-1 scoreline – was as deflating as sitting through seven series of your favourite TV show only to discover that Bran Stark had won the Game of Thrones. (Still not over that, no.)
As it is, the Oval has provided us with a well-balanced finale. Its pacing has been slow enough to foster plenty of in-game chat about who should be England’s next coach and how the county schedule can better prioritise red-ball cricket. For all our vaunted love of nostalgia, it’s impressive how quickly sports fans move on. Hindsight, that backhanded gift from the gods, is already staking its claim on a cricketing summer that was, for some, the greatest we’ve known.
It’s at times like these that I wish I was on trend enough to indulge in scrapbooking. I could do with something tangible to put some perspective on a hectic few months of drama and discovery. It is, after all, bizarre to think that it was only in May we were talking about how Ben Stokes was looking disappointingly quiet with the bat. Or whether Jofra Archer, an unknown unknown, should be selected at all.
It is not just that this has been one of the longest international seasons this country has witnessed in the men’s game. So much has happened in those matches that even the second Ashes Test at Lord’s seems pretty distant now. Remember when Smith got knocked on the head? Remember when people thought that might scupper his series? I am beginning to assemble a mental scrapbook. There are too many Headingley images begging for inclusion – so far I’ve chosen the second after Stokes scooped Pat Cummins and the toe end of his bat reached his lips like he was blowing smoke from the barrel of a gun. I’ve also pasted in the scorecard from the World Cup semi-final against Australia – the last time we saw an England top-four in full flight. It might take me several weeks to sift through my mental souvenirs from the final, although that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.
Those are the pieces of action it’s impossible to forget. Just as joyous are the alternative moments from a sporting timeline that has spanned the sublime and the ridiculous. After all, where else should this scrapbook start but the World Cup opening ceremony, an event that successfully veiled the exhilarating tournament to come behind a curtain of drizzle and awkward celebrity match-ups? I, for one, never wish to forget that I once watched Freddie Flintoff interview the Nobel peace prize winner Malala Yousafzai. Or that the ICC’s version of David Beckham delivering the 2012 Olympic torch by speedboat was Graeme Swann carrying the trophy through a mostly empty Mall in a tux.
Malala Yousafzai plays a spot of cricket at the ICC Cricket World Cup 2019 Opening Party on The Mall. Photograph: Luke Walker/IDI via Getty Images
Considerable space in this scrapbook will be devoted to spectacular catches: Jimmy Neesham and Fabian Allen’s diving caught‑and-bowleds, Martin Guptill’s left-handed screamer off Smith, Joe Denly doing a cartwheel to get rid of Paine during the Lord’s Test. If much of the recent evolution of the professional cricketer has been about power hitting and biceps that can rocket the ball into the mesosphere, then this was the summer that showcased the players’ increasingly superhuman athleticism in the field. Yet these physical paragons haven’t lost their characterful quirks, so I’m also giving a page to favourite run-ups. These include Adam Zampa’s pigeon-step shuffle, Lockie Ferguson’s starting shimmy, and Jasprit Bumrah, hurrying his invisible tray of drinks to the crease while trying not to spill them.
Mostly, I’m keen to recall the games and performances that have been superseded by all that followed. Three months ago we thought Carlos Brathwaite’s spectacular World Cup century against New Zealand, bringing West Indies within a single hit of an impossible victory, had given the tournament its most heart-stopping finish. Some even thought that the inexplicable implosion of tournament favourites India in their semi-final against New Zealand – at one stage to the tennis score of 5-3 – was one of the most dramatic collapses we’d witness all year. Little did we know what was coming in the England v Ireland Test match. Connoisseurs may claim – and justifiably so – that the summer of 2005 beats this one for dramatic narrative(Smith aside, this Ashes series can’t match the quality of those performances, either). The summer of 2019 has been a very different prospect, but it has been no less emotionally involving – or, frankly, exhausting – for that. From the greatest World Cup final to an Ashes series with three breathlessly tight finishes, we couldn’t have asked for any more and we won’t want to forget a minute of it. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/20/jennifer-coolidge-golden-globes-white-lotus-mike-white | Opinion | 2023-01-20T08:00:33.000Z | Emma Brockes | All hail the fearless and funny Jennifer Coolidge – and the glorious art of not giving a damn | Emma Brockes | The Golden Globes is a demoralised brand, voted for and organised by people who, as Tina Fey once joked, operate out of “the back booth of a French McDonald’s”. Still, we have last week’s 80th awards show to thank for Jennifer Coolidge, winner of best supporting actress for her role in The White Lotus, rambling through a speech as hilarious as anything Mike White has ever written for her. Prior to the success of her role as Tanya McQuoid (“Mc-Kwaaaad”), Coolidge – breathless on stage – characterised her acting career as one that had been “fizzled out by life”. Her triumph at the age of 61 isn’t the kind Hollywood often supports. It was an uplifting, joyful spectacle.
It was also a moment of drama the unlikeliness of which underscored the various obstacles Coolidge had to clear to get there. After the awards, the most shared photo of Coolidge was one in which she struck a friendly pose with Jean Smart, who won best actress in a musical/comedy series at the Globes last year for her role in Hacks, and who, at 71, is enjoying an even more unlikely renaissance. It has been stated so often as to be tedious, but that any female actor north of 50 – let alone 60, or my god, 70 – can float back into public consciousness in a form other than the daffy Betty White model, is a rare enough phenomenon to supercharge the celebration.
Golden Globes 2023 key moments: Kevin Costner shelters in place and Tom Cruise gets a kicking
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For those who watch a lot of British TV, Coolidge’s win felt particularly satisfying, perhaps, coinciding as it did with the return of Sarah Lancashire in Happy Valley, a performance that encourages one to conclude that TV shows should be peopled exclusively by middle-aged women (in high-vis jackets). The vibe that animates Lancashire’s performance is one we saw displayed by Coolidge; that is, one redolent of someone who cares deeply and sincerely about her work and her peers, while – I don’t know how either of them pulls this off – assuming a position of being fully beyond giving a shite about any of it.
To this end, the actor broke a bunch of rules about what you do and don’t say in public at awards dos. Over the last few decades, Coolidge’s career has been made up of a patchwork of small roles that were rarely equal to her talent. She had a small part in two episodes of Glee; she had cameos in the comedy sketch show, Inside Amy Schumer; she made an appearance in three episodes of Nip/Tuck. Or, as she put it last Tuesday night, “there were like five people that kept me going for, like, 20 years with these little jobs” – an honest admission of something to which her peers in Hollywood avoid reference to with the fervour of medieval superstition: failure. As Brad Pitt gurned his slightly baffled appreciation from the front row, Coolidge talked, with brilliant, breathy incredulity, about never being invited to parties in her neighbourhood. One upshot of her recent success, she said, was that “my neighbours are speaking to me, things like that”.
‘Coolidge’s win coincided with the return of Sarah Lancashire in Happy Valley, a performance that encourages one to conclude that TV shows should be peopled exclusively by middle-aged women.’ Photograph: Matt Squire/BBC/Lookout Point
The charm of this performance was rooted in what felt like Coolidge’s off-the-cuff stream of consciousness, which may, of course, be just another level of her acting skill. But it’s very weird to watch something as cynical and debased as the Golden Globes and find oneself genuinely moved. It wasn’t only Coolidge’s unanticipated rise, but her tribute to White, creator of The White Lotus and a man who, if Ryan Murphy espouses a certain kind of Hollywood nightmare personality, seems, even after his success, still to embody the homespun decency of Mr Schneebly (White’s role in School of Rock). “He is worried about the world,” said Coolidge, as White got all teary. “He’s worried about people; he’s worried about friends of his that aren’t doing well. He’s worried about animals, all of that.” These moments at awards shows are usually unbearably fake, but I believed her.
There was so much else to love. Coolidge’s reference to the giant hook pulling her off stage at the Emmys (“I thought it left when vaudeville ended”); her early dreams to “be queen of Monaco, even though someone else did it”. Above all, what one assumes was her unintentional rebuke to all the actors a third of her age and half her size squinting up at her with appreciation and puzzlement.
Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/aug/16/camping-in-wheelchair-not-easy-but-escapism | Society | 2016-08-16T13:00:34.000Z | James Coke | Camping in a wheelchair isn’t easy, but it’s a fantastic escape | James Coke | Camping in a wheelchair is never a bed of roses. A signed picture of Clint Eastwood inscribed with the words, “Best to James, A man’s got to know his limitations” stares down at me from my kitchen wall. The words taken from Magnum Force, the second of the Dirty Harry films, have real meaning. Confined to a wheelchair, I sometimes need assistance and excursions from home - my comfort zone - require careful planning, and the heeding of Harry Callahan’s advice. However every August for the last 16 years, I’ve thrown caution to the wind and gone on a camping holiday with close friends and family. We always return to the same field in Devon. It is not accessible, there are no disabled toilets – at times it is hell on earth, but it is always the highlight of the year.
Maybe it’s the call back to the hunter-gatherer way but nothing quite beats a camp fire and living life on the edge. As a child, sleeping out in the open was about adventure and freedom – and later, on hedonistic trips to Glastonbury, and north Devon I noticed things hadn’t changed. I was determined that the onset of primary progressive multiple sclerosis, 30 years ago, would not be its death knell, especially as I was now a single dad and keen to share the pleasures of the great outdoors with my son, Connor.
Transfers to my camp bed can be hilarious, always failing health and safety guidelines
Our first sortie was to Scotland. Buying a cheap train ticket and hiring a car, we set out to explore the highlands with little more than a tent and camping stove. My symptoms were not too bad then and I could hobble around, as we were accosted by midges on Skye and stood like warriors in Glencoe. We both loved the experience and returning to London eagerly discussed our next adventure, even though silent reservations about my condition weighed heavy.
It was Louis, my best mate, who provided the safety net. He was Connor’s godfather and with two children of his own, he was only too happy to join us on our next trip to northern Spain. Again with little equipment and a frisbee doubling as a chopping board, we jammed into my car and set off with high hopes.
The holiday was a learning curve. I fell over in a butcher’s – everybody thought I was drunk. However cooking stew with the setting sun glinting off the Cantabrian mountains, and telling the kids stories was magical. Louis and I knew we were on to a good thing but were equally aware of the pitfalls. We decided to find a safer haven – Devon was the obvious answer.
The following year we camped on a cliff face. This was a little extreme but by chance an advertisement for a cream tea led us to our future base. South Allington House, a magnificent Georgian structure set in spacious grounds, provided B&B and self-catering accommodation. It offered the perfect rural getaway with Lannacombe beach close by, but its hidden gem was its campsite. Set in a picturesque secluded valley, surrounded by rolling hills, its set up was basic, quite raw even, but the feel of the place was enchanting – it was perfect.
Over the years my mobility has deteriorated, but we have adapted. More mates got wind of our find and joined us with their children and it wasn’t long before we were calling ourselves the OS tribe – a name drawn from Talos, the bronze giant in Jason and the Argonauts – and sacrificing a pineapple every night on a roaring fire. After howls of laughter, we’d all fall to the floor, to gaze at the night sky and the Perseids meteor shower we tried to coincide our visits with.
A storm coming in off the Atlantic is never far away, often resulting in carnage throughout the camp. Then there are the nightly excursions, which can be dangerous in a wheelchair, often resulting in crashes, and transfers to my camp bed can be hilarious, always failing health and safety guidelines. There’s no time however to worry about minor flesh wounds, bee stings, or burns.
There is method to the madness, though, as I watch Connor, now a strapping lad, load the car for this year’s jollies. All of us have grown from our experiences. I could never hope to attend the gathering now without the support of my friends but everyone has their part to play.
Camping isn’t for everyone with a disability. Some of the UK’s 3,000 sites are accessible, but it is hit and miss. However given the chance to break out of one’s comfort zone with the necessary support, it offers escapism that is hard to beat.
I will always return home, bedraggled and vowing never to return. However, come August, I’m back in that field in Devon, with everything I’ve got.
James Coke blogs at thedisabledchef.com | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/05/matthew-todd-growing-up-gay-trapped-inside-cultural-straitjacket | World news | 2016-06-05T07:00:33.000Z | Matthew Todd | Matthew Todd on growing up gay: "We are strapped inside a cultural straitjacket" | It was probably coincidence that Robert Goddard killed himself on the same day that Margaret Thatcher died. On 8 April 2013, at the offices of Attitude (the UK’s bestselling gay magazine, of which I am editor), as we watched the world’s reaction to the passing of a leader who had famously attacked schoolkids being taught they “had an inalienable right to be gay”, 30 miles away Rob was reaching the end of his ability to cope.
Rob was the younger brother of Attitude’s advertising manager, Andy. In 2001, Rob stepped in to cover his brother’s position while Andy went on his honeymoon. He was cocky, bubbly, laughed a lot and he embodied what it meant to be a young gay man at the turn of the millennium: physically fit, athletic, happy. He also had that most important thing on the gay scene: sexual currency.
In May 2008, I was working more closely with Andy, and I asked after Rob from time to time. Andy said he wasn’t doing well. He was drinking too much. He couldn’t stop taking drugs. He had split from his latest boyfriend. He had suffered a homophobic attack after getting off a bus. He was HIV positive and not coping. He had lost his job and moved back in with his parents. Together these things sound like a huge alarm bell, but spread across years they didn’t feel like an emergency; lots of gay men, like straight people, had transient relationships. Lots of gay men, like straight people, drank a lot and took drugs. Indeed, gay culture seemed to celebrate partying as a central tenet of our identity and Rob was smiling and laughing in the sexy Facebook pictures of him out clubbing, surrounded by friends.
The day after Thatcher’s death, Andy called the office to tell us that Rob had written notes to his parents and a birthday card to Andy, then gone to the seafront where he and his brothers and sister used to play as children, and hanged himself. He was 34 years old.
I share Rob’s story with you because his experience is not unusual. Despite how it may look, something isn’t working. I didn’t have to go looking for Rob’s story. Despite more LGBT people than ever leading happy, successful lives (thank goodness), it is becoming increasingly clear that a disproportionate number of us are not thriving as we should.
Talk of this is painful and flies against the zeitgeist. Culturally, homosexuality and misery have been linked so tightly by the haters over the years that they have become an offensive cliché to the point where any discussion is dismissed as prejudice. But discuss it we must.
What’s wrong is not our sexuality but the damage done by growing up inside a cultural straitjacket
More and more statistics reveal that LGBT people have higher levels of depression, anxiety, addiction and suicidal thoughts. The British Crime Survey 2009 showed that gay men used illicit drugs three times more than heterosexual men. It’s hardly a surprise. As therapist and author Joe Kort states so well in his book 10 Smart Things Gay Men Can Do to Improve Their Lives, what’s wrong is not our sexuality, but our experience of growing up in a society that still does not fully accept that people can be anything other than heterosexual and cisgendered (ie born into the physical gender you feel you are). It is the damage done to us by growing up strapped inside a cultural straitjacket – a tight-fitting, one-size restraint imposed on us at birth – that leaves no room to grow. It makes no allowances for the fact that, yes, indeed, some people are different and we deserve – and need – to be supported and loved for who we are, too.
Despite the extraordinary social changes, homophobia is still rife. Many LGBT people, especially those who are white, wealthy and live in big cities, may rarely encounter prejudice. Well-meaning straight people with gay friends don’t meet the young people who tell me they are spat on and homophobically abused every day in the street or, as one man recounted, that his father stops him from dining with his siblings in case he turns them gay, too. Go online and you will see that large numbers still struggle to accept their gayness. For many, it is still hard being different. This was typified for me by an email a young man suffering from severe anxiety disorder sent me last year expressing his frustration. “If there has been some massive change or revolution in the past few years,” he wrote, “it has passed me by.”
‘Despite the extraordinary social changes, homophobia is still rife’: protestors at a London Gay World Pride march. Photograph: Yanice Idir/Alamy Stock Photo
Though increasing numbers of young people spring out of the closet with confidence, many of us still live with the emotional scars of growing up hated. The generation before mine was decimated by HIV and Aids, and we were subjected to the accompanying extreme homophobia of the British media – most notably the tabloids, and most extremely by the Sun under the editorship of Kelvin MacKenzie.
I have met parent after parent whose children have been bullied to death. We just don’t seem to care
People have forgotten that we endured a seemingly neverending propaganda campaign of breathtaking intensity. Considered public enemy number one, gay men and women were painted as dangerous monsters at every opportunity.
Today, years after Section 28 was repealed, its influence still lingers. Some schools have progressive policies and actively stamp out homophobic bullying. But many do not. During my time at Attitude, I have met parent after parent whose children have been bullied to death. One of them was Mark Houghton, a young man from Bournemouth whose mother was told he should toughen up when she complained about homophobic bullying. Years later, Mark died of an unintentional heroin overdose at the age of 27. Or Anthony Stubbs, a 16-year-old from Leyland, Lancashire, who took his own life as he struggled to accept his sexuality. Or 15-year-old Dominic Crouch, who was bullied after he kissed a boy on a school trip, and then jumped off a building, his devastated father also taking his own life the year after. And yet the media, unable to understand that young children can know they are gay (and be bullied for it – I was 10 or 11 when I realised) almost never explicitly address homo/bi/transphobic bullying or examine its consequences, such as the families that are left devastated. We – the media, parents, the country – just don’t seem to care.
As gay people, we tend to think we’ve escaped once we leave school, but it is becoming clearer and clearer that severe bullying can change the course of an adult’s life. The ongoing Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (ACE), carried out by a care consortium based in Oakland, California, claims to have found “staggering proof of the health, social and economic risks that result from childhood trauma”. It found that a child with four or more negative childhood experiences (such as having an addicted or mentally ill parent, or experiencing emotional, physical or sexual abuse) was five times more likely to become an alcoholic, 60% more likely to become obese, and 46 times more likely to become an intravenous drug user.
Of course childhood trauma can affect anyone, regardless of sexuality. If we go by numbers alone, more straight people are suffering. Poverty, divorce, abuse, not having demonstrative parents and many other things can cause problems. But the studies show that specific types of trauma increase the chances of adopting addictive behaviour and developing dependencies. In Time magazine, one of the ACE study’s founders, Dr Vincent Felitti, when discussing what type of childhood trauma did the most damage, said: “The one with the slight edge, by 15% over the others, was chronic recurrent humiliation, what we termed ‘emotional abuse’.”
Fly the flag: a Gay Pride Parade in Reykjavik, Iceland. Photograph: Arctic-Images/Getty
Gay people are extremely lucky if we do not grow up experiencing chronic recurrent humiliation. For most of us, absorbing other people’s beliefs that we are worthless, disgusting, sometimes evil, and then suppressing our true selves is, simply put, our childhood.
For me, childhood trauma triggered the fight-or-flight reaction, and left me stuck in a constant state of high alert, never feeling safe or good enough. Trying to outrun those painful feelings, I bolstered my ego with achievements and a need for validation: trying to be the best at this or that, with a belief that I was either perfect – or a worthless loser. As with so many other traumatised people, I found myself swinging from feeling worse than everyone else to better than everyone else. It is an exhausting and confusing place to be.
For LGBT people, coming out is crucial, but it is not always the path to utopia that we expect. Many experts on shame believe that, as John Bradshaw says in his book Healing the Shame That Binds You, LGBT children “are the most viciously shamed and oppressed in our society”. Kort says that gay people suffer “covert cultural sexual abuse”. If we accept that, then coming out means mixing with other people who are, in a way, also abuse survivors. Usually this takes place in a network of bars and clubs, surrounded by booze, sex and drugs. What’s not to like, you might reasonably ask, and my 25-year-old self would wholeheartedly agree. But being a kid in a sweet shop soon loses its appeal. On coming out, what I needed was therapy – not (as the homophobic Christian speaker told me at school) to erase my homosexual inclinations, but to accept and come to terms with them.
Gay people are often said to be at the head of trends. If we could lead on trauma recovery, we could change the world
Instead, I attempted to get over my dysfunctional childhood by drinking, bitching, partying and getting under as many dysfunctional adults as possible. I don’t think I’m alone. As last year’s Vice documentary Chemsex showed, the new wave of super-powerful drugs, such as crystal meth, G and mephedrone, are bringing these problems to the surface among a minority, albeit a significant one, of gay and bisexual men. I have lost count of the reports of friends of friends whose drug use has killed them, either by overdose or the results of the comedowns – so powerful that some refer to them as “suicide Tuesday”. Often families do not want to talk about what has killed their loved ones, but I would urge them to do so that we can address this problem.
The time has come for a root-and-branch revolution of the LGBT experience. I am calling for a government enquiry to look at the experience of LGBT children in school and how that correlates with their disproportionate mental health problems. We need to look at what’s working and what’s not, including the role of the gay media, and straight people need to step up to the plate. Most bullied LGBT kids have straight parents. Heterosexual people need to speak up and force an end to this barbaric situation where too many gay kids are so overwhelmed by shame that they take their own lives.
‘I am making progress and others are, too’: Matthew Todd. Photograph: Chris Floyd/Observer Magazine
Most of all, we need a discussion about solutions and community. There is another way. I am happy to say that I am a recovering alcoholic and haven’t had a drink for more than two years. My life has transformed. Things aren’t perfect – I have many other issues, but I am making progress and others can, too – gay or straight. I have had life-saving help from amazing people and I want to share what I’ve learned with as many as possible. Gay people are often said to be at the head of trends. If we could lead on trauma recovery, we could change the world. Changing ourselves first is where the real solution lies.
Next year is the 50th anniversary of the (partial) decriminalistion of sex between men. I like to think that those men and women who lived before 1967 would be overwhelmed by the progress we have made. But I’m certain they would want us to live our lives to their greatest potential and not throw away the thing they could never dream of: the opportunity to love not only each other, but, ultimately, ourselves. If we really have the gritty determination that is so popular in the diva-ish anthems of gay clubs across the world, then the time has finally arrived to face the storm and find our way out the other side.
Straight Jacket by Matthew Todd (£16.99, Bantam Press) is published on 16 June. To order a copy for £13.59, go to bookshop.theguardian.com
Phone the Samaritans free from any phone on 116 123. Call the LGBT Switchboard on 0300 330 0630 or email [email protected] | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/small-business-network/2014/nov/21/tackling-late-payments-reduced-my-stress-levels | Guardian Small Business Network | 2014-11-21T12:46:29.000Z | Emma Featherstone | Tackling late payments has reduced my stress levels' | Collumbell began offering her marketing expertise – from setting out a strategy for growing a brand to running social media accounts – to small businesses from a range of sectors. She runs Bojangle Communications as a sole trader and relies on client payments to keep her business viable and make a living. When it comes to getting paid on time, small businesses and larger corporations bring their own distinct challenges. For example, she has been told by small businesses in the past that they can’t afford to pay her that month. She jokes that her response is: “You don’t pay me, I can’t eat.” Meanwhile, when dealing with larger clients, payments to smaller companies can get waylaid.
To combat the stress late payments cause, Collumbell brought in an early payment initiative. If a client pays an invoice within 10 days, Collumbell offers them a 5% discount on their next invoice.
While the majority of clients don’t pay within the 10-day window to receive their discount, the knock-on effect on cashflow has been positive. Previously, Collumbell’s longer-term clients (those on six-month contracts) were given 28-day payment terms, and invoices were settled in an average of 36 days. The worst case she experienced was a client taking 71 days to pay. She has seen a significant improvement in payment times since the incentive was introduced – the average waiting period is now 23 days and the longest has been reduced to 39.
The discount is also a gesture of goodwill for potential clients. “When I’m talking or pitching my services to them, they will say, ‘this is a really good idea’ – it’s another tick in the box.”
As part of her new payment approach, Collumbell now asks clients to pay one month in advance, instead of a fortnight, and she offers a 5% discount if clients sign up to her services for six months.
Alongside discounts, she has also invested in some new accountancy software in order to make her payment system smoother. She uses Kashflow’s accounting package and finds the email notifications feature – when a notification is sent alerting her to the fact a client’s invoice is overdue – particularly helpful. The package also includes template letters for client-payment reminders and final demands, which helps to keep all Collumbell’s correspondence on payments uniform. Moreover, the programme keeps a log of everything sent, so Collumbell has a reliable record to hand.
She says: “The discount has meant a slight reduction in turnover, but the balance is a reduction in my stress levels as clients take less time to pay, cashflow moves faster, and I don’t need to pay a virtual assistant to do any chasing for me.”
With the worries of late payments allayed, Collumbell is now free to focus on her business. She has moved towards consulting on marketing for business awards. And she continues to invest in her training, and attend courses to broaden her skills set. “I read articles and books, plus take part in webinars, such as on Google Analytics, Wikipedia, HTML and coding. There’s always business development work to do.”
Find out more about the Small Business Showcase competition here
Sign up to become a member of the Guardian Small Business Network here for more advice, insight and best practice direct to your inbox. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2012/sep/14/billy-corgan-smashing-pumpkins-tea-shop | Music | 2012-09-14T10:01:31.000Z | Sean Michaels | Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins opens tea shop | Billy Corgan has started a tea shop. The Smashing Pumpkins leader and self-described "tea guy" has cashed in his oolong, opening Madame ZuZu in Chicago.
Corgan spent most of Thursday hanging around Madame ZuZu, playing acoustic songs and sipping herbal infusions. The shop is intended as a "salon", he said, "a place with no age boundaries … [that will] attract everyone from young students to seniors." Talking to the Chicago Tribune, Corgan gave the place a high-brow spin: "I wanted … [somewhere that] like-minded people can discuss ideas and performance art."
Located in Highland Park, the converted post office boasts jazz age decor, vegan pastries and a 30s Bosendorfer piano. Corgan selects the tea himself. "I grew up drinking Lipton," he told the Sun-Times. "I didn't know there was other tea to drink." He was introduced to "the subtlety of tea" only as he began touring the world, with his band. "We were in Japan once where they had 30 kinds of green tea. I [had] thought there was [only] one."
When he isn't putting the kettle on, Corgan continues to make music with Smashing Pumpkins. The singer also has another, less serene, role: wrestling promoter. As the creative director of Resistance Pro, he helps schedule matches across Chicago.
Corgan is not the first rock star to open his own tea room. Moby's Teany launched in 2002 in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/sep/14/labour-nhs-health-tax-ed-miliband | Politics | 2014-09-13T23:05:17.000Z | Patrick Diamond | Promising a new health tax is brave. Labour must show that courage | Like it or loathe it, Ed Miliband has a voter-friendly offer for 2015. But if he is to win and govern with purpose, he needs to discover qualities of political bravery.
His opposition Labour party promises a shift in the burden of austerity from low- and middle-income Britain to the wealthy. To become prime minister next May, however, the Labour leader doesn't just require the populist touch. He needs that precious electoral commodity: governing credibility coupled with an ability to be politically bold. Miliband has to convince the electorate he has a coherent strategy acknowledging the painful choices that lie ahead, starting with a radical funding solution for the NHS.
That is far from easy. In a tightly fought contest, conceivably the closest election in postwar history, the temptation for Labour will be to hunker down, saying as little as possible. Miliband's strategists will remind the leader that oppositions don't win elections – governments invariably lose them. And the coalition is unpopular across swaths of Britain, having spent four years cutting into the social fabric while reversing tax rises for the rich.
That said, for Miliband, a "safety first" strategy would be a costly error. For one, Labour must show it is capable of making tough choices if voters are to trust its economic management credentials six years on from the crash. There is little future as a fight-the-cuts party that will magically wish the misery away. Voters aren't stupid. They can tell a false governing prospectus when they see one. An instinct to be open and transparent with citizens is crucial to maintaining trust. The long-term threat to centre-left politics is the continuing decline of confidence in collective action, reflected in plummeting electoral participation among the young, the economically marginalised and the politically disaffected.
Miliband has decreed that he wants to win on the strength of Labour's ideas. Aside from this week's momentous vote on Scotland's future, the UK in 2015 will face strategic challenges of unprecedented scope and complexity. The first evidently concerns the task of deficit reduction and managing public spending in a climate of constraint. A second relates to long-term threats to the UK's growth potential, given emerging markets, automation, global competition, and the outsourcing of middle-class jobs. But the most politically potent challenge is the financial sustainability of Britain's NHS and social care system.
In 2010, 11,000 people in the UK lived to the age of 100. By the end of the century, it will be 1.1 million. In the meantime, the working-age population is declining as ageing trends kick in, further depleting tax revenues. New systems for integrating care and improving productivity will have to be found. But the question of long-term funding cannot be avoided.
Doubtless, few politicians will rush to address issues like NHS funding ahead of an election. They involve unenviable trade-offs and dilemmas. There are few "quick wins" for leaders desperate to claim credit for success while avoiding blame for failure. But if voters are to entrust it with the keys to 10 Downing Street, Mr Miliband's party must demonstrate it is capable of facing up to long-term challenges and being brave, not just telling voters what they want to hear.
On the NHS and social care, Labour should be bold. A solution to financing a universal, 'free at the point of use' system has to be found for a society where as people get richer, they want greater quality from public services. At the next election, Labour should propose a hypothecated insurance fund to finance the NHS and social care so voters can see a direct link between the earmarked taxes they pay, and investment in a prized national institution. Taxpayers could be issued with an annual statement, detailing precisely how their money has been used.
The discussion in Scotland last week underlines that the threat to the NHS has become a pivotal issue in the independence debate. If Labour were to commit to a long-term financing solution for the NHS ahead of the general election, the promise to revitalise Britain's unique system of socialised medicine could provide further glue to bind the UK together.
Patrick Diamond is a lecturer in public policy at Queen Mary, University of London and former adviser to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/aug/07/the-guardian-view-on-englands-universities-a-summer-of-campus-discontent | Opinion | 2023-08-07T17:25:46.000Z | Editorial | The Guardian view on England’s universities: a summer of campus discontent | Editorial | Rightly rejecting the idea of lifting the cap on tuition fees in English universities, the higher education minister, Robert Halfon, last week urged the HE sector to read the signs of the times. “I just think we have to be real,” said Mr Halfon, “that we have to live in the world as it is, which is an incredibly difficult one faced by cost-of-living challenges.”
He was responding to increasingly loud warnings from vice-chancellors that a university funding crisis is becoming acute. Given the mounting level of debt already being taken on by less well-off students, it would indeed be wrong to pile yet more financial pressure on them. But when it comes to addressing the wider context of festering discontent on England’s campuses, it is Mr Halfon and the Conservative architects of a failing system who need to get real.
This summer, thousands of unhappy graduates emerged from Covid-blighted degree courses with blank certificates, their work ungraded due to a marking boycott by lecturers. Some vented their frustration publicly during graduation ceremonies.
The bitter industrial dispute between academics and their employers – which has now lasted five years – is not over. Next week, the University and College Union will hold an emergency meeting to decide whether to ballot over further strike action in the autumn. Having suffered substantial real terms pay cuts for 13 years, lecturers are demanding a double-digit pay rise. The casualisation of teaching contracts for younger academics has also contributed to unprecedented levels of disaffection, along with fears of a coming wave of redundancies.
The ongoing bargaining process with university employers is complicated, however, by a looming financial crisis at dozens of institutions. Had annual tuition fees, capped at £9,250, risen in line with inflation since 2012, they would now stand at £12,000. According to one analysis, universities are making a loss of £2,500 on every home undergraduate. An overreliance on international students increasingly looks like a hostage to fortune, as countries such as China look to boost their own HE sectors.
It takes a funding model of rare dysfunctionality to alienate and poorly serve all the major stakeholders in the system. A demographic boom in the number of 18-year-olds between now and 2030 will further ratchet up the pressure.
So what now? The pseudo-marketisation of England’s universities, theoretically turning them into competing businesses and students into fee‑paying consumers, helped create this mess. It also allows politicians such as Mr Halfon to distance themselves from it. But Conservative governments’ determination to get the state off the financial hook for HE has delivered underfunded institutions, underpaid lecturers and stressed students.
By fuelling growth and fostering innovation, universities provide a vital public good for society as well as a private one for individual undergraduates. They need better public backing and a new conversation about how that can be done. A decade after the marketising experiment began, a reimagining of the role of central government in a strategically crucial sector is long overdue. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/sep/20/miliband-pledges-rise-poorest-workers-labour-uk | Society | 2014-09-20T20:53:11.000Z | Toby Helm | Ed Miliband pledges big pay rise for Britain's poorest workers | Labour would significantly boost the national minimum wage to more than £8 an hour during the next parliament, giving many of Britain's lowest paid workers an increase of about £60 a week, Ed Miliband has announced.
The plan, revealed in an interview with the Observer on the eve of Labour's annual conference in Manchester, would see the minimum wage climb by at least £1.50 an hour from £6.50 an hour (the rate from 1 October this year) by 2020. The substantial rise would throw down the gauntlet to the Conservative party on low pay, as Miliband prepares to fight next May's general election on a platform of raising living standards for the less well-off.
Miliband says the rise, which would be implemented in stages by the Low Pay Commission in consultation with business, is part of Labour's plan to ensure that hard-working people gain better rewards, and more of the proceeds of economic growth.
The flagship policy reflects Labour's belief that the benefits of economic recovery have failed to cut through to significant swaths of the population and it will be accompanied by a commitment to promote the living wage through public procurement contracts.
One in five UK workers – more than five million people – are categorised as being on low pay, defined as wages of less than £7.71 an hour, or two-thirds of the hourly median wage of £11.56.
Under Labour's proposals – a key plank of its manifesto for government – the minimum wage would increase from 54% to 58% of median earnings by 2020 and then 60% in the following parliament. Miliband said the announcement underlined his commitment to build an economy that rewards all hardworking people, not just the wealthiest at the top.
"It is about values," Miliband says. "It is about saying that this country does not work for millions of working people and we are going to change it. It is not business as usual. It is a proper plan for your future."
Asked whether he felt able to give any credit to the chancellor, George Osborne, and the coalition for restoring the economy to growth, Miliband refused to do so, saying that growth had stalled for three years, having been growing at the last election.
The coalition had also failed to prevent a dramatic fall in living standards, the Labour leader said.
"Their record is perhaps one of the worst ever in terms of the longest fall in living standards, wages falling, wages rising slower than prices – and this isn't an accident. This is what a Tory economy is like," he said.
By setting out a policy for the long term, Labour says businesses will have time to plan and adapt to boost productivity and support higher wages.
Miliband will argue that international evidence shows that countries can support minimum wages at this level with no adverse impact on employment.
The move would give this country a minimum wage similar in median terms to those in Australia and European Union countries such as Belgium and Germany, but would still be lower than in France and New Zealand.
Under the plan the Low Pay Commission will be given powers to advise the secretary of state for business, innovation and skills if, in the face of economic shocks, the goal cannot be met without risking jobs and economic growth.
Addressing Labour activists in Manchester on Saturday, Miliband set out plans to ensure the construction of 200,000 homes a year. Drawing on lessons from the success of the 2012 Olympics, where a specific site was identified and then developed on time and on budget, all communities will have similar powers at their disposal as part of an extended devolution to English local government and its city and county regions.
A network of "new homes corporations" will be accountable to their communities and will work closely with private sector partners and housing associations to deliver more ambitious home building projects.
Miliband said: "The last few months have been about keeping our country together. The next eight months are about how we change our country together. And we know that yearning for change is there right across our country. Constitutional change matters, but we know that something else matters even more: this country doesn't work for most working people and we, the Labour party, are going to change it."
A Conservative spokesman said: "This is just an empty promise from Ed Miliband. The last Labour government also promised to build over 200,000 homes a year – but in reality housebuilding collapsed to its lowest level since the 1920s. Labour left our housing market and economy on its knees – and would do it all over again." | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2012/jan/28/rangers-hibs-motherwell-st-johnstone-spl | Football | 2012-01-28T19:02:14.000Z | Nial Briggs | SPL round-up: Steven Davis scores two goals as Rangers beat Hibs 4-0 | Rangers moved to within a point of Celtic at the top of the Scottish Premier League with a convincing 4-0 home victory against Hibernian .
Their top goalscorer, Nikica Jelavic, missed the match at Ibrox through illness but the captain, Steven Davis, scored twice and David Healy and Sone Aluko scored a goal apiece against a Hibs side who were reduced to 10 men in the second half.
With Celtic in Scottish League Cup action on Sunday, the victory allowed Rangers to give their title hopes a much-needed boost.
It proved to be a debut to forget for Hibs' James McPake, who was shown a second yellow card for a challenge on Maurice Edu after 71 minutes, with the American midfielder withdrawn for Lee McCulloch.
The afternoon got worse for the Edinburgh club when Rangers netted their third goal from the resultant free-kick three minutes later. Aluko had been instrumental in much of the game and was rewarded with a goal of his own when he sent a curling effort into the top corner, leaving Mark Brown with no chance.
Davis then put the gloss on the win deep into injury-time when he drove home from 10 yards .
Scott Vernon's 10th goal of the season helped Aberdeen move into the top six of the SPL with a 1-0 victory over Dunfermline.
With Kilmarnock on cup duty and Dundee United without a fixture, the Dons took full advantage to move above the pair and into the top half of the table for the first time under Craig Brown's tenure.
The Dons striker Vernon capitalised when Dunfermline's goalkeeper, Iain Turner, raced from his line to try to collect Mark Reynolds's searching ball upfield and headed the ball over the stranded Turner to score the only goal of the game after 24 minutes.
Joe Cardle should have earned his side a point two minutes from time when he latched on to Rory McArdle's slack backpass, but Brown denied the Dunfermline substitute to ensure the Dons held out for the win.
Henrik Ojamaa struck twice as Motherwell defeated St Johnstone 3-2 in a thrilling match.
Ojamaa opened the scoring midway through the first-half before Jody Morris levelled for Saints on the stroke of half-time.
The Estonian restored the hosts' lead after 65 minutes. Having regained the lead, Motherwell began to show more of an attacking threat and Tom Hateley flashed a shot well wide after good build-up play between Omar Daley and Ojamaa.
The hosts doubled their advantage with 15 minutes remaining when Keith Lasley ended a swift breakaway with a 25-yard effort that looped over Peter Enckelman.
Murray Davidson blazed over the bar from six yards as Saints attempted to find a way back into the game before they were handed an even better chance when the referee, Calum Murray, pointed to the spot after Davidson was fouled by Lasley. Sandaza converted it to set up an exciting conclusion, but St Johnstone could not find an equaliser.
Inverness's new signing Claude Gnakpa was the star of a goalless draw with St Mirren – the first scoreless game in the Highland capital for three years.
The Frenchman – who signed on Saturday – came on with 25 minutes to go and came closest to scoring with a low shot that struck the inside of the post. St Mirren's Steven Thompson was the visitors' main threat. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/07/keyon-harrold-jr-police-to-interview-woman-who-falsely-accused-musicians-son | US news | 2021-01-07T22:27:00.000Z | Adam Gabbatt | Police to interview woman who falsely accused black musician's son of theft | Detectives from the New York City police department are traveling to California to interview a woman who was filmed trying to tackle a black teenager who she falsely accused of stealing her phone.
News of the incident was widely shared in late December after Keyon Harrold, a well-known jazz trumpeter, posted a video online.
Jazz trumpeter Keyon Harrold claims woman assaulted his son after false theft accusation
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The footage, filmed in the lobby of a Soho hotel, shows a woman angrily accusing Harrold’s 14-year-old son, Keyon Harrold Jr, of stealing her cellphone. Surveillance footage later shared by police showed the woman grabbing at Harrold Jr in an apparent attempt to take his phone.
The woman’s phone was returned to her by an Uber driver shortly after she had accosted Harrold Jr.
The woman did not explicitly mention race in the video, but the incident offered a grim reminder of the problem of racial bias in the US.
Harrold said his son was racially profiled, and the civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who is representing the Harrolds, said the video “documented the persistent truth of racism in America”.
The NYPD confirmed to the Guardian on Thursday that detectives would send officers would speak to the woman, although it was unclear if she would be charged.
In the days following the incident more than 100,000 people signed a petition demanding that the Manhattan district attorney charge the woman with a crime.
“Keyon Harrold Jr will live with this trauma for life, the weight of racism on the shoulders of another generation. He deserves better than this treatment,” Crump wrote in a statement accompanying the petition.
In an opinion post for USA Today, Harrold said the manager of the hotel had initially sided with the woman who accosted his son, and said that as a black man he faced bias in society.
“What if I had lost my cellphone, walked into an upscale establishment and wrongfully accused a 14-year-old white child of stealing my phone, then assaulted that child and his father?” Harrold wrote.
“Would the establishment’s manager have enabled me to attack them and allowed me to leave the establishment only to realize later that I lost my phone in an Uber?” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/jul/31/the-handmaids-tale-will-the-relentlessly-menacing-dystopian-fable-lose-its-way | Television & radio | 2017-07-31T06:00:41.000Z | Mark Lawson | The Handmaid's Tale: will the relentlessly menacing dystopian fable lose its way? | Future cultural historians may be puzzled that the two most discussed and media-covered TV shows of early summer 2017 in Britain were one in which semi-naked women chose partners for on-air sex and another in which the female characters were smothered in nun-like garments and coupled only when commanded by the state.
A week after the former – ITV2’s Love island – reached its multiple climaxes, the latter – Channel 4’s The Handmaid’s Tale – ended its first season last night, with Offred, one of the brood-mares corralled by a misogynistic religious dictatorship in North America, being taken off in a van to an uncertain fate.
The 10-part drama was adapted by the American streaming service Hulu from the novel by Margaret Atwood, and its success should probably not be a surprise, as, since its publication in 1985, the novel has proved unusually adaptable. The Handmaid’s Tale belongs to the small group of fictions that have become a movie (with a Harold Pinter screenplay), an opera (by Danish composer Poul Ruders), a ballet (choreographed by Lila York) and now a TV mini-series.
'Horror in its purest sense': is The Handmaid's Tale the most terrifying TV ever?
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There are two reasons why so many people have seen in Atwood’s pages possibilities for other media. Although the novel is in one sense very literary – the novel takes the form of a samizdat memoir written by Offred for posterity – it is also vividly visual. Atwood’s prose always knows if it is night or snowing, while the wives of the male rulers wear blue tunics and the child-bearing slaves known as handmaids dress in red: a colour scheme derived, the author has said, from pictorial iconography of the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene, those very opposite Biblical templates of femininity.
The resulting circles and swirls of colour-coded women across wintry landscapes make televisual images that could hang in a gallery. Atwood’s dystopian fable was also filled with scenes that become naturally dramatic on screen: such as The Ceremony, a euphemism for the rape of a handmaid by her master, and A Salvaging, the regime’s term for a punishment stoning. The TV version achieves an atmosphere of such relentless menace that The Handmaid’s Tale, though officially science-fiction, earns on Channel 4’s website the social-support link: “If You Have Been Affected By Issues In This Programme.”
The other explanation for the story enthralling so many audiences in different forms over the last 32 years is Atwood’s prescience in realising that a strain of politics assumed to have been killed by the feminism of the 1960s and 70s – paternalistic control of women’s bodies and minds – could become renascent.
Written at the mid-point of Ronald Reagan’s administration – and clearly reflecting fears of the takeover of the Republican party by religiously driven opponents of fertility rights – Atwood’s work has shown a striking tendency to coincide with rightwing revivals in the US. The North American premieres of the film, opera and TV drama occurred respectively during the presidencies of George Bush in 1989, George W Bush in 2004 and, most recently, Donald Trump.
Though starkly divided by their attitudes to female desire and attire, The Handmaid’s Tale and its fellow Twitter-trender Love Island are united, not only as the talked-about shows of the UK moment, but in suggesting a change in what it means for a TV series to make an impact.
Neither was a ratings success in the traditional empty-the-pubs way. The Handmaid’s Tale has averaged 1.5 million viewers and Love Island just over 2 million. But – through catch-up viewing, social media, and the attraction of a fiercely loyal core audience – both series have felt as hot as ratings-toppers.
The second season of The Handmaid’s Tale is scheduled to begin shooting this autumn. It faces the obstacle of having used up the source literature from which it was adapted, but a number of book-based series – including Call the Midwife, Dexter, Inspector Morse and Game of Thrones – have continued to flourish with the screenwriters working from blank pages. The novel ends with an epilogue set in a future where the female-hating regime has been replaced, and it will be intriguing to see whether and how the TV show heads to the same destination.
Perhaps a bigger problem is whether a series that became accidentally topical to American politics – its makers would logically have expected the show to go out during a Hillary Clinton presidency – should now attempt to force parallels with Donald Trump’s America, or, looking elsewhere, threats to legal and reproductive freedoms in Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey and Beata Szydło’s Poland.
The only problem for The Handmaid’s Tale in the future might be, in contrast to its female characters, having too much freedom to go anywhere. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/mar/30/donald-trump-revokes-pledge-to-support-republican-nominee | US news | 2016-03-30T03:14:03.000Z | Ben Jacobs | Donald Trump withdraws pledge to support Republican nominee | Donald Trump has backtracked on his much ballyhooed pledge to support the eventual Republican nominee as he deals with swirling controversy after his campaign manager was charged with assaulting a reporter.
In a television town hall in Milwaukee with CNN on Tuesday night, Trump insisted he had been “treated very unfairly” by the Republican National Committee and the establishment and revoked the commitment he signed in September. Although the Republican frontrunner previously hinted that he might do so, saying the RNC was “in default”, he had never explicitly revoked his commitment until Tuesday.
The statement came as Trump stood by Corey Lewandowski, his embattled campaign manager, who was captured on tape forcibly grabbing a reporter for the right-wing website Breitbart after a press conference. Trump suggested that the reporter, who had been screened by the secret service in order to be allowed in the candidate’s vicinity, may have been carrying a bomb.
CCTV appears to shows moment Corey Lewandowski grabs Michelle Fields Guardian
Lewandowski’s arrest dominated the CNN town hall, which featured anchor Anderson Cooper questioning all three Republican candidates. Texas senator Ted Cruz, when asked if he would fire his campaign manager for the same behavior, replied “of course”. John Kasich said: “I haven’t seen the video but they tell me the video is real and of course I would.”
Trump struggled with policy questions. While calling Nato “obsolete,” Trump bemoaned the fact that the international alliance doesn’t deal with terrorism. Nato has taken a lead role in the war in Afghanistan against the Taliban. He also said nuclear proliferation “is going to happen anyway” and seemed comfortable with Japan developing nuclear weapons.
On domestic policy, Trump challenged conservative orthodoxy by stating education and healthcare were two of the three key functions of the federal government along with security. Both are controversial as many Republicans call for the abolition of the Department of Education as well as repealing Obamacare and severely limiting the federal role in healthcare. The Republican frontrunner was also chastised for his tone by Cooper, who compared Trump’s argument to that of a five-year-old, when he defended his jibes towards Ted Cruz’s wife.
Trump was not the only candidate to leave the door open to not backing the GOP nominee in November. Ted Cruz who pledged in March to support the party’s nominee regardless, said of Trump: “I am not in the habit of supporting someone who attacks my wife and my family and I think our wife and kids should be off limits.”
Donald Trump: I renounce my pledge to support GOP nominee
This repeated previous statements that Cruz has made in recent days after Trump’s threat to “spill the beans” on his wife and accused the frontrunner of spreading lies about him in a supermarket tabloid. This was echoed by Kasich, appearing after Trump, who said: “I gotta see what happens. If the nominee’s somebody who’s hurting the country I can’t stand behind them.” The Ohio governor had also previously pledged to support the party’s eventual nominee.
Don't blame it all on Donald Trump – politics has entered uncharted territory
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Both Kasich and Cruz were asked if they had paths to victory. Cruz insisted that he could pick up the nearly 800 delegates he needed to win on the first ballot by noting “most of the races are winner-take-all or winner take most”. The Texas senator said Trump had a ceiling and faced “a difficult time reaching over 50% of the vote” and dismissed Kasich as having “no path to winning”. Kasich, who insisted that the nomination would be decided by a contested convention, referenced the history of the Republican party. He noted that often the party’s nominee did not arrive at the convention with a plurality of delegates.
Kasich took a firm stance criticizing Cruz and Trump for their policies towards Muslims in the United States. The Ohio governor sneered at Trump’s proposal to ban Muslims from entering the United States, “raise your hand if you’re a Muslim, that doesn’t work”, he said, while also criticizing Cruz’s proposals to increase police presence in Muslim neighborhoods. Kasich quoted New York police commissioner Bill Bratton who described Cruz’s plan as “ridiculous”. He also was the only candidate to reference the Easter Sunday terrorist attack in Lahore when he said “when people in Pakistan die, we all die a little bit”.
The candidates also were asked personal questions which they answered to varying degrees of effectiveness. When Trump was asked about the last time he apologized, his response was “oh wow” and he was left briefly speechless before recalling apologizing to his mother for using foul language and his wife for not behaving in a “presidential” manner. Cruz said his biggest weakness is that “I am a pretty driven guy” while criticizing other politicians for “running around behaving like they are holier than thou”. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/small-business-network/2015/sep/12/small-business-spotlight-littles-coffee | Guardian Small Business Network | 2015-09-12T06:50:07.000Z | Kitty Dann | Small business in the spotlight … Little’s Coffee | Describe the business
We are a coffee manufacturer specialising in a range of flavoured instant coffee. It is a family-run business that was started by my parents in 1987. My wife Caroline and I came on board five years ago.
What’s the story behind how the business started?
To go right back to the beginning, my dad is American and my mum is Finnish and they met in Sweden. They ended up moving to Finland together and starting a family. We used to spend winters in California – winters in Finland were pretty horrible.
In the 1980s, there there was an artisan renaissance going on in California. The artisan food producer trend was really kicking off, and there was nothing like it in northern Europe at the time. People were using natural flavours like vanilla in coffee, and they tasted amazing. When they returned to Finland one year, my parents bought a roasting operation and started to make their own flavoured coffee.
As a family we decided to move to England when I was 11. Back in 1999 my dad started to think: “Everyone in the UK is drinking instant coffee and we are flavouring coffee beans.” So he started to play around with flavouring instant coffee. He persevered and by about 2002 had found a supplier who was freeze-drying quality coffee. A few years later they launched a range of flavoured instant coffee.
So why did you get involved?
After two years working in London, I was getting into coffee myself. For the first time I could see how to improve the family business. I had been doing work in graphic design, marketing and advertising, and with my new-found skills I thought I knew what we could do with the flavoured coffee. I knew that my parents’ product was great and there was this artisan coffee movement in London. The supermarket offering at that point was pretty dreary.
Doesn’t instant coffee have a bad reputation?
Instant coffee is a mainly British hang-up. By its very nature it was always lower grade. To make one kilo of instant coffee you need at least three kilos of roasted coffee beans. So to make it financially viable many of the big manufacturers have always used the cheapest grade coffee you can buy.
Our coffee is not just better quality but we use more coffee beans to make it. Instant coffee has a bad rep, but it doesn’t have to be that way.
We are calling our products “flavour-infused” instant coffee. Our heritage is in coffee roasting so we respect the coffee.
What are the challenges of running a second-generation family business?
It is a unique experience. The way of communicating is different with family members. That can be a really good thing, or it can sometimes be a challenging thing.
All the changes that Caroline and I have implemented have always been openly accepted by my family. They are not marketers or natural salespeople, so they need help with that. We have all this heritage and we are trying to channel that, but you don’t want to force the family thing down people’s throats.
What’s the thought process behind your rebrand?
We started a rebrand in November and decided to roll it out in April. We enlisted the help of a branding agency called This Way Up. The brief was to take our products and really tell the story.
We have two hands on the front of the pack to represent the husband and wife team and the second-generation theme. We wanted to call on Scandi style and the US influence in our brand.
What about your export strategy – why target Russia and South Korea?
The UK market is super important to us and we are proud to be British, but the rest of the world is a big market opportunity. In Korea, a law has been passed to limit the number of coffee shops permitted on one street – there’s a lot of coffee being consumed there. In Russia, there’s a lot of affluence in Moscow and people are looking for imported products. We are aware of where the hotspots are, and we want to grow the export market.
What’s next for the business?
We are still a small company. Last year we turned over about £700,000. We have been steadily growing at about 15%. Now is the time to start hitting it a bit harder. We are looking at doubling our turnover in the next two years and doubling it again two years after that.
We have just completed on a new unit that gives us a lot more space. We are going to completely redesign our manufacturing space. It is super exciting, it is going to give us much more room.
What advice would you give to budding entrepreneurs?
Get your house in order, get your brand right. That’s something which has taken us a couple of years to understand fully. Who are you marketing the product at, and how do you talk to them in the right tone?
If you have the right product and the right brand, everything falls into place from a sales point of view.
Will Little is the managing director of Little’s Coffee
Sign up to become a member of the Guardian Small Business Network here for more advice, insight and best practice direct to your inbox. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/feb/09/beavis-butt-head-return-mtv | Opinion | 2011-02-09T11:00:00.000Z | Darragh McManus | Beavis and Butt-head are back … cool | Darragh McManus | In theory, there isn't anything humorous about two pubescent little jerks sitting on their couch and sniggering at music videos. But the first time I heard Butt-head croak, while watching a promo of pomp-rock hero Yanni, "Hey, Beavis: did you know that this guy is your dad?", I nearly peed myself. And watching it on YouTube a good handful of years after, I still laugh like a drain.
Beavis and Butt-head – which returns to MTV this summer – is truly funny. The brainchild of the criminally underrated Mike Judge (really, this guy should have Judd Apatow fetching his coffee and doughnut), it ran from 1993 to 1997 at a time where there weren't many "grown-up" cartoons, bar Ren and Stimpy and The Simpsons. Now that 14 new episodes have been produced, it will be interesting to see how this MTV generation will react to it.
Beavis and Butt-head back in 1996. Illustration: Paramount/ Rex Features
Yes, the show's premise is stupid: two idiots do nothing but skip school, waste time, punch each other, annoy their neighbour and comment on videos. But, for some reason, it really works. The scratchy animation looks like something produced by a drunken crow staggering around an ink spill. In many ways, the joke is that there is no joke at all. But that's the joke, fart-knockers. Beavis and Butt-head amuses because, not in spite, of all those things.
Watching it is a weird experience: a character says, "huh-huh-huh" and the other replies, "shut up, butt-munch", which is followed by a flat comeback: "Uuh … cool." Your mind insists there isn't a whole lot going on that could be objectively identified as funny, but your pleasure centres aren't listening. It's like being drunk or high, without the chemical influence: you laugh for no reason.
How could you not chuckle at the line, "What if a dingo bit off your dingo? That'd be cool." Or the delicious skewering of U2's pretentious video for One: "Uh … is this art?" What about the moment, 40 seconds in, in their critique of The Cure? If it doesn't make smile, you either have no soul or are Robert Smith. Or both.
I have in the past tried to justify my love for the show by formulating some complicated, preposterous theory involving postmodernism or meta-irony: how Beavis and Butt-head is actually so clever that it transcends dumbness and re-materialises as a subtle commentary on modern America ... but nah, I don't buy it either. Maybe it's just a 90s thing: I'm nostalgic for the TV of my salad days. I'll always bat for that decade as the high-water mark of popular culture (I'm writing this while wearing a flannel shirt and beanie cap, listening to the Afghan Whigs). A show this meaningless, this sublimely moronic, is bound to be timeless. You either got the joke back in 1994, or you didn't. Beavis and Butt-head was one of the era's defining creations and I'm confident it will find a devoted, albeit smallish, new audience.
Even today, when buzzing someone's intercom, I have to resist the urge to say, in full Tom Anderson baritone: "Large fries, pie, large coffee. You got me, good buddy?" | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/aug/06/weatherwatch-we-need-to-fix-leaks-and-use-less-water-too | Environment | 2018-08-06T20:30:47.000Z | Jeremy Plester | Weatherwatch: we need to fix leaks and use less water, too | London, the south-east and East Anglia have escaped a hosepipe ban. Thanks to a wet winter, there is enough groundwater for supplies, despite the recent lack of rain. But unless there is another wet winter, water supplies next year will be stretched.
In any case, London and the south-east can often be at risk of water shortages, with a surprisingly dry climate – London has less rainfall on average each year than Rome or Istanbul. Added to that, the water pipes in London are antique and bursting, wasting huge amounts of water. In May 2018, Thames Water leakage losses amounted to 680m litres a day, 14m litres more than it had planned for.
London’s population is expected to grow, and so will demand for water. According to the Greater London Authority, the city is close to capacity for water demands and is likely to have supply problems by 2025 and serious shortages by 2040.
It is no use crossing fingers and hoping winters will always be wet to recharge water reserves. Water companies need to fix more leaks and build more infrastructure for water supplies, and consumers need to cut down on water use. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/oct/31/american-pharoah-breeders-cup-classic-keeneland-found-golden-horn | Sport | 2015-10-31T22:37:32.000Z | Greg Wood | American Pharoah in spectacular Breeders’ Cup Classic win at Keeneland | American Pharaoh, the first horse to win the US Triple Crown for 37 years, ended his career in emphatic style with an imperious success in the Breeders’ Cup Classic in Kentucky.
Victor Espinoza sent American Pharoah straight into the lead and while the outsider Efinex tried to harry him on the pace, he could not lie up with Bob Baffert’s colt, who was sent off as the odds-on favourite.
American Pharoah turned for home with a useful lead, and to a great swell of cheers from the crowd he stretched further clear all the way down the straight, leaving Efinex and Honor Code, the second favourite, to fill the places at a respectful distance. The winner paid $3.40 for a $2 stake, though few here expected many of the winning tickets to be cashed, but kept instead as a souvenir of a great moment in American racing.
The winner passed the line six-and-a-half lengths clear of the runner-up, and Espinoza waved his whip in the air as American Pharoah headed into retirement as the first horse to win what the Americans are calling the sport’s grand slam: the Triple Crown plus the Classic.
Ahmed Zayat, the owner of American Pharoah, who retires to Coolmore’s Ashford Stud in Kentucky, said: “What a horse, the kindest, friendliest, happiest, easiest, most brilliant horse I have ever seen in my life. He just does it all, he runs with his heart. He is a different kind of animal. He connects with people, he loves people.”
Baffert said: “I feel so proud of the horse, but also a sense of relief. It was very emotional, this horse has brought so much to racing. It’s been a privilege to train him. He gave everyone what they wanted to see today.”
“I’m just glad the Pharoah goes out as the champ he is. I think he has done enough, he’s proved enough. We’ll miss him – he’s going to be a tough act to follow.”
Gleneagles, whose trainer Aidan O’Brien had earlier won the Turf on the same card with the filly Found, did not face the kickback and trailed home in last place.
Found, who was beaten behind Golden Horn in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe after finding trouble in running, denied the season’s outstanding colt a final victory in the Turf, finishing half-a-length in front of John Gosden’s Derby winner.
Ryan Moore rode a perfectly judged race on Found, who was having her third start in a Group One race this month having also run in the Champion Stakes at Ascot.
Frankie Dettori soon had Golden Horn settled close to the head of the chasing pack as Shining Copper, a habitual frontrunner, set a suicidal pace on the lead. Golden Horn lost a little ground on the tight turn after the field passed the stands for the first time, but was still ideally positioned as the runners started to close on Shining Copper towards the end of the back stretch and swing towards home.
Found, though, was also in a good position to strike, and after Dettori sent Golden Horn into the lead at top of the stretch, Moore moved through to deliver a winning challenge inside the final furlong. There was just half a length in it at the line, but it was still a decisive success.
“I talked to Frankie and he said it was just too soft,” Anthony Oppenheimer, the owner of Golden Horn, said afterwards. “We were very lucky in the Arc, we had the right ground, but today it just wasn’t quite right for us. But full marks to the filly that beat us, she’s had a fantastic career and we knew she was the danger. He ran a very good, tough, honest race.”
Aidan O’Brien, Found’s trainer, paid tribute to the three-year-old’s durability and talent.
“She’s an amazing filly and Ryan gave her a great ride,” O’Brien said. “A lot of people have put a lot of hard work into her to get her here. We trained her for the Arc and she didn’t have much luck in the Arc, but I couldn’t be happier. All credit to the lads [Found’s owners] who said to let her go if she was well.”
Earlier on the card, Moore had endured a frustrating near-miss in the same colours as Legatissimo, the hot favourite for the Filly & Mare Turf on the nine-race card, could finish only second behind Stephanie’s Kitten after stumbling badly at the start.
Legatissimo, three times a Group One winner in Europe this season including in the 1,000 Guineas in May, was an odds-on chance to end her season with another success at the highest level. She was almost on her nose as the stalls opened, however, and Ryan Moore did well just to stay in her saddle before settling her against the rail in mid-division.
“She ran a good race, but she’s had a long season,” her trainer, David Wachman said. “I was pleased with her run. She met a good horse today. No excuses.” Queen’s Jewel, another European-trained runner, finished third for Freddy Head while Ralph Beckett’s Secret Gesture was seventh.
There was disappointment too for a strong European challenge in the Mile, which included Make Believe, the recent winner of the Prix de la Forêt at Longchamp, Karakontie, the winner of the race last year, and Time Test, who recorded an impressive success at Royal Ascot in June.
They had no answer to the finishing kick of Mark Casse’s filly Tepin, however. Julien Leparoux kicked her into the lead at the top of the stretch and she then stayed on strongly to the line to win by two-and-a-quarter lengths. Mondialiste, who gave David O’Meara his first Grade One winner in the States earlier this season, emerged from the pursuing pack to finish second. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/apr/28/samsung-ad-featuring-woman-running-alone-at-2am-criticised-as-naive | Society | 2022-04-28T14:33:19.000Z | Hibaq Farah | Samsung ad featuring woman running alone at 2am criticised as ‘naive’ | A Samsung advertisement featuring a woman jogging alone at 2am has been criticised as “unrealistic” and insensitive.
The ad, titled Night Owls, which was promoting the Galaxy Watch4, Galaxy Buds 2 and Galaxy S22 phone, features a young woman running at 2am, with earbuds in, through dark streets and alleyways. At one point she runs past a man on a bike on a deserted bridge.
While the young woman is running, the voiceover says: “Sleep at night. Run faster. Push harder. Follow the herd. Not for me, I run on a different schedule: mine.”
The advert comes after the death of 23-year-old Ashling Murphy, who was attacked while out running along a canal near Tullamore, west of Dublin, earlier this year, and the murders of Sarah Everard and Sabina Nessa.
Jamie Klingler, the co-founder of Reclaim These Streets, said the ad was “completely and utterly tone deaf, especially in light of Ashling Murphy”.
“It’s the Kendall Jenner Pepsi moment for Samsung. It isn’t safe for us to run at night and the last thing I want is for anyone to violate our space while we are trying to exercise. It’s almost laughable how bad this ad lands,” she said.
Klingler said it was difficult to imagine a woman who would feel safe running at that time of night, and that was what made the ad “beyond unrealistic”.
‘We can’t wait any longer’: anger over Priti Patel’s ‘inaction’ on violence against women
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Sahra-Isha Muhammad-Jones, the founder and head of partnerships of Asra running club, a group for Muslim women, said: “There seems to be an unawareness of how unsafe it is for women running at this time. As a woman who is running, it’s not safe already, but as a Black Muslim woman, it’s even more unsafe. This advert felt like what would happen in an ideal world.”
“It can be triggering for women watching this advert and then having to come to terms with what is actually happening in reality to women in this country.”
Muhammad-Jones added that the advert felt like a missed opportunity to spark a meaningful discussion on women’s safety.
“My first reaction was to laugh. The ad is completely unrealistic and totally blinkered,” says Esther Newman, the editor of Women’s Running magazine.
“We have worked for years on the issues of women’s safety when it comes to running and the vast majority of women in our audience have felt unsafe whilst running, from heckling to actual abuse. We know that women often think about stopping running because of this,” says Newman.
“Women feel unsafe when it comes to running at any point of the day. Seeing a woman choosing to run at 2am, with headphones, it’s just ludicrous.”
Newman said that the ad was not empowering and instead was “shortsighted, naive and comical”.
Samsung said: “The Night Owls campaign was designed with a positive message in mind: to celebrate individuality and freedom to exercise at all hours.
“It was never our intention to be insensitive to ongoing conversations around women’s safety. As a global company with a diverse workforce, we apologise for how this may have been received.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/17/libya-trial-gaddafi-senussi | World news | 2013-09-17T18:03:13.000Z | Chris Stephen | Libya prepares for its trial of the decade | It is Libya's trial of the decade, the playboy scion and the sinister spymaster facing their accusers in a case that promises to lift the lid on both the horrors and the excesses of the former regime.
Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, son of former ruler Muammar Gaddafi, and Abdullah al-Senussi will go on trial on Thursday facing a litany of charges and possible death penalties if found guilty. But the case has also put the new, precarious Libya itself on trial as it defies the international criminal court, which has ordered that the pair be transferred to The Hague.
Officials are eager to reassure the world that Libya will be able to stage a fair trial and is justified in wanting to mete out justice to its own, rather than handing over the pair to face international justice. "We will not have Mickey Mouse trials under this government," the justice minister, Salah Marghani, told the Guardian. "We had Mickey Mouse trials in the past and we saw the results. We had trials in sports stadiums and town squares with terrible results."
Yet the authorities have been unable even to bring Gaddafi to Tripoli from western Libya, where rebels captured him in November 2011.
The government has failed to persuade the city of Zintan's powerful militia to hand Gaddafi over, and he will not appear alongside Senussi and 28 other former regime officials on Thursday.
For three decades Senussi was Muammar Gaddafi's chief enforcer, accused of oppression at home and terrorism abroad. Senussi, 63, shared the Bedouin and army background of his boss and was chief hatchet-man to one of the world's most brutal and idiosyncratic regimes. In official photographs of the flamboyant dictator, Senussi's heavy, dark face is a constant feature, characteristically standing off-camera, eyes scanning the crowd.
Married to Muammar Gaddafi's sister-in-law, Senussi oversaw an oppression that revelled in public displays of brutality. Sport stadiums were used to stage mass executions that were broadcast on live television.
The brutality was the signature of a regime that ruled by terror. One film, viewed by the Guardian, shows a political opponent being beaten to death in one of the ruler's compounds by a swarm of soldiers, each competing to land the most savage blows. The man is shown being dragged through the throng, one soldier pushing through the crowd, brandishing a knife for the camera, which he uses to hack at the victim.
Senussi is most reviled for one particular crime, the massacre of 1,200 political prisoners at Tripoli's Abu Salim prison in 1996, which witnesses say he personally supervised.
Azerdin Madani, jailed at Abu Salim in the 1980s for his part in a failed assassination attempt against Muammar Gaddafi, remembered Senussi patrolling the corridors: "He was responsible for all that happened there, all bad things. He was the worst. When he was walking outside [the cells], you would know, you would feel the shiver along your back."
Madani suffered torture and near-starvation at the hands of Senussi's jailers, but says: "I want to see him have a proper trial; he should have justice. I want him to see that this is the difference between his way and ours."
Abroad, Senussi is linked to a wave of killings, including the 1984 shooting of British PC Yvonne Fletcher and the Lockerbie bombing; France has already convicted him in absentia over the destruction of a French airliner over the Sahara in 1989.
The case against Gaddafi opens a very different box – that of the excesses and wild years of the former ruler's children. After Tony Blair ushered in the end of international sanctions on Libya by meeting his father in 2004, Gaddafi, 41, moved to a luxurious mansion in Hampstead, London, to enjoy the high life.
Slim and boisterous, he numbered Lord Mandelson, financier Nathaniel Rothschild and Prince Albert of Monaco among his friends. The royal family entertained him at Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle. The London School of Economics awarded him a controversial doctorate and a charity foundation he controlled later pledged a £1.5m donation to the university.
Gaddafi was also an intermediary in his father's foreign dealings, arranging with British authorities the return in 2008 of the convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and giving big oil concessions to BP shortly afterwards.
In the early days, Gaddafi portrayed himself as a reformer. That vanished with the coming of war, when he famously wagged his finger at rebels on state television. That finger is now missing; Gaddafi insists it was severed by a Nato bomb as he fled Tripoli at the end of the revolution.
Prosecutors say both men will face a four-page charge sheet featuring crimes from the time of the civil war and the dictatorship that preceded it.
But with the country fragmenting amid spiralling violence, many wonder whether Libya can hold an effective trial. Gaddafi's ICC-appointed lawyer, John Jones QC, called for this week's trial to be cancelled. He told the Guardian: "None of the prerequisites for a fair trial are in place."
Earlier this month, a unit of gendarmerie kidnapped Senussi's daughter, Anoud, from the custody of justice ministry police in Tripoli, underlining the government's inability to control its own security forces.
Human rights groups say the kidnapping puts a question mark over Libya's ability to hold a fair trial. "The abduction of Senussi's daughter sends a very chilly message on the threats to potential witnesses," said Richard Dicker, director of Human Rights Watch's international justice programme in New York. "The stakes for Libya are very high, in terms of projecting, in this trial, that the rule of law is being applied."
Libya's decision to go ahead with the trial may also see the patience of ICC judges snap.
Since Gaddafi and Senussi were captured, The Hague has repeatedly castigated the Libyan authorities for failing to hand over both men to face charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Last year ICC official Melinda Taylor was detained for several weeks by Zintan militia after trying to visit Gaddafi.
Holding a trial in defiance of ICC rulings may see the court complain to the UN security council, which ordered the Libya investigations two years ago.
Back then, Libya's rebels were desperate for international support for their uprising, requesting the UN to order the ICC into action. Now, a more confident government insists neither man will be sent to The Hague.
Marghani said he hoped the ICC would be patient with Libya, emphasising that all would depend on whether the world sees a fair trial. "It is very important for the Libyans now that all the conditions of a fair trial are met. It is how we will be judged by history," he said.
This article was amended on 18 September 2013. An earlier version said the London School of Economics awarded Saif Gaddafi a doctorate after a charity foundation he controlled donated £1.5m to the university. Gaddafi was awarded the doctorate in 2008, and the donation from the foundation was pledged in 2009. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2010/sep/06/environment-weekly | Environment | 2010-09-06T08:31:06.000Z | Environment editor | Environment Weekly - tell us what to cover | Welcome to our new blog series, Environment Weekly.
This is your space to post your links and tips below on the big stories we should be covering this week.
It's also a place for you to debate the day's environmental news and comment, and send us suggestions for topics on our regular series, such as green living column Ask Leo & Lucy, Greenwash and our You ask, they answer reader web chats.
You can post below, message us on Twitter, or share your thoughts on our Facebook page. We'll do our best to respond.
Comments close at 5pm today. You can keep in touch with us throughout the week on Twitter and Facebook | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/mar/12/glastonbury-defies-coronavirus-threat-to-announce-lineup-with-kendrick-lamar | Music | 2020-03-12T19:00:39.000Z | Ben Beaumont-Thomas | Glastonbury defies coronavirus threat to announce lineup with Kendrick Lamar | Glastonbury is pressing ahead with preparations for its 50th anniversary year despite coronavirus fears, announcing a wave of more than 90 artists including Friday-night headliner Kendrick Lamar.
The festival is still scheduled to take place 24-28 June in its usual home of Worthy Farm, Somerset. At 15 weeks away, it would happen just after when Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s chief scientific adviser, placed the likely peak of the outbreak in the UK during a Downing Street press conference today, at 10 to 14 weeks.
Emily Eavis, who heads Glastonbury festival along with her father Michael, said they were still “working hard” to deliver it, and were announcing the lineup “after much consideration given the current circumstances, and with the best of intentions … No one has a crystal ball to see exactly where we will all be 15 weeks from now, but we are keeping our fingers firmly crossed that it will be here at Worthy Farm for the greatest show on Earth!”
Earlier this week, the festival put out a statement to say its team was “closely monitoring developments” in the spread of the disease.
The UK government is not currently planning to ban large-scale events, though Boris Johnson has warned of future events being cancelled because of the burden they would place on emergency services. In Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon has brought in a ban on gatherings of over 500 people to come into force on Monday.
Other stage headliner … Dua Lipa in performance. Photograph: Kevin Mazur/WireImage
If Glastonbury does go ahead, headlining the Other stage will be Pet Shop Boys, Dua Lipa and Fatboy Slim, though their respective days have not been announced.
Other newly announced artists include major pop stars Camila Cabello, Mabel, Burna Boy and Robyn; soul legends the Isley Brothers and Candi Staton; and 90s indie-rockers Manic Street Preachers, Primal Scream, Supergrass, Lightning Seeds, and Noel Gallagher with his band High Flying Birds, who will play the Pyramid stage set before headliner Paul McCartney on the Saturday night.
Thom Yorke brings his Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes electronic solo work, while Radiohead bandmember Ed O’Brien performs solo as EOB, billings that will spark hopes for a secret Radiohead set (Yorke and Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood performed a secret set together in 2010). Another regular Glastonbury visitor, Jarvis Cocker, will appear with his band Jarv Is.
AJ Tracey, whose verse on his track Thiago Silva went viral at Glastonbury 2019 when performed by bucket-hatted teenager Alex Mann, will appear along with other British rappers including Dizzee Rascal, Aitch and Kano. From further afield will be the Avalanches, Herbie Hancock, Seun Kuti, Tinariwen, Black Uhuru and the re-formed Crowded House, who will appear as part of their first tour since 2011.
Brazilian singer-songwriter Gilberto Gil, 77, lived at Worthy Farm during his exile in the UK in 1970, and played the very first festival that year – he will return to perform with four generations of his family.
They all join the previously announced headliners Paul McCartney and Taylor Swift, plus Diana Ross playing the Sunday teatime “legend” slot, and Lana Del Rey, who is scheduled to play the set before Lamar on the Pyramid stage.
Lamar will be the fourth rapper to headline the Pyramid stage, following Jay-Z, Kanye West and Stormzy, whose 2019 set was widely hailed as one of the greatest ever. Lamar recently announced a new company, pgLang, described by his business partner Dave Free as “focused on cultivating raw expression from grassroots partnerships”, and he is expected to release new music this year.
Further names will be announced closer to the festival.
Kendrick Lamar. Photograph: Ian Laidlaw
Glastonbury 2020 lineup so far
Kendrick Lamar, Friday headliner
Paul McCartney, Saturday headliner
Taylor Swift, Sunday headliner
Diana Ross, Sunday teatime “legend” slot
Aitch
AJ Tracey
Anderson .Paak & the Free Nationals
Angel Olsen
Anna Calvi
The Avalanches
Banks
Baxter Dury
Beabadoobee
The Big Moon
Big Thief
Black Uhuru
Blossoms
Brittany Howard
Burna Boy
Cage The Elephant
Camila Cabello
Candi Staton
Caribou
Cate Le Bon
Celeste
Charli XCX
Clairo
Confidence Man
Crowded House
Danny Brown
Declan McKenna
Dizzee Rascal
Dua Lipa
EarthGang
EOB
Editors
Elbow
Fatboy Slim
FKA twigs
Fontaines DC
Gilberto Gil & Family
Glass Animals
Goldfrapp
Greentea Peng
Groove Armada
Haim
Happy Mondays
Herbie Hancock
Imelda May
The Isley Brothers
Jarv Is
Jehnny Beth
The Jesus and Mary Chain
Kacey Musgraves
Kano
Kelis
Khruangbin
Kokoko!
La Roux
Lana Del Rey
Laura Marling
Lianne La Havas
The Lightning Seeds
London Grammar
Mabel
Manic Street Preachers
Metronomy
Nadine Shah
Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds
Nubya Garcia
The Orielles
Pet Shop Boys
Phoebe Bridgers
Primal Scream
Richard Dawson
Robyn
Rufus Wainwright
Sam Fender
Sampa The Great
Seun Kuti
Sinéad O’Connor
Skunk Anansie
Snarky Puppy
Soccer Mommy
The Specials
Squid
The Staves
Supergrass
Suzanne Vega
Thom Yorke Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes
Thundercat
Tinariwen
TLC
Tom Misch & Yussef Dayes
Tones and I | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/sep/12/fit-in-my-40s-can-busy-person-learn-tai-chi | Life and style | 2020-09-12T06:00:23.000Z | Zoe Williams | Fit in my 40s: can a busy person like me lean tai chi? | Zoe Williams | Tai chi used to be something you’d see people do in parks, two decades before anyone did any other kind of exercise in parks. The natural world is psychically important to the practice. If you see an image of a pose, it’s always someone beneath a glowing sun, on top of a majestic rock. But sure, parks have nature, too, and they are better than your living room.
I always thought tai chi looked ridiculous – the movements are so slight and distinctive and smooth: “Move like the water that flows, without any hesitation,” instructs tai chi master Chris Pei (on YouTube). You simply couldn’t mistake it for anything else, and to a busy, frenetic sort of person, it looks pointless. Then I asked an aunt why she did it and she said it was good for period pain and I thought, truthfully, this is the most ridiculous thing ever.
Why am I so judgmental? It has a wide range of benefits, roughly aligned with those of yoga. It’s good for sleep, flexibility, mood, weight loss and especially for later-life conditions: poor balance that might make you afraid of falls, Parkinson’s, chronic heart conditions, arthritis, COPD. However, while people don’t explicitly say as much, it’s way better to start it before you get to those conditions, if you want to reap any benefits.
In an ideal world, you would start at a class, not because the moves are complicated, just because it helps bring your overall tempo down. This being a world so far from ideal it’s not even funny, I started with Pei’s online tutorial and was tickled by the terminology: parting the wild horse’s mane, separating the way the wild crane spreads its wings.
The opening moves will be familiar to anyone who has practised yoga, breathing, meditation or mindfulness. “Learn how to feel. Learn how to stand,” Pei summarises. I thought, well, I already know how to stand, but learning how to feel could take years.
Close your eyes. Focus on how you breathe. Concentrate on your body, one part at a time. Feel the blood rushing into your hands. Concentrate harder. Breathing is just so gigantic, isn’t it? You take three minutes out of your schedule to exhale more slowly, and inhale more deeply, and wham, you’re a different person – more present, less buzzing. I think back to the time I learned just to breathe a couple of years ago and castigate myself for not sticking at it.
Fit in my 40s: I’m doing yoga at home. It’s free, but can I ignore the carpet stains?
Read more
So it’s a good few minutes before actual moving starts, one leg lifted, infinitely slowly, at the knee, planted a small distance away, before the arms come up – again, the movements are so distinctive (in what other activity would you be flexing your hands up from the wrists, then back again?). But they don’t process as exercise. It is more about learning how to feel, reconnecting with your body via the focus it takes to transition smoothly from one movement to another. I was right, this could take years – but hopefully, before I start to fear a fall, I have a few years.
What I learned
Do it daily, even if for just five minutes, rather than intermittently, to make concentration second nature. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/careers/live-q-a-careers | Guardian Careers | 2011-12-23T12:56:09.000Z | Alison White | Live Q&As: What's coming up in the new year | Wednesday 4 January - CV and job applications clinic
Thursday 5 January - Keeping your new year's career resolutions
Friday 6 January - Predictions for the job market in 2012
Tuesday 10 January - Careers in magazine publishing
Wednesday 11 January - Routes into copywriting
Thursday 12 January - Social media surgery
Tuesday 17 January - Breaking into the environment sector
Wednesday 18 January - Thinking about a career in event management?
Thursday 19 January - Starting a career in accounting
Tuesday 24 January - Careers options in the health sector
Wednesday 25 January - Opportunities in mobile technology
Thursday 26 January - How to become an architect
Tuesday 31 January - What to do with a degree in computer science
Thursday 2 February - Working in PR in the fashion industry
Tuesday February 7 - Thinking about becoming a tefl teacher?
Thursday February 9 - Careers in the games industry
If you want to be kept up to date with all our live Q&As, advice features and job seeking resources, you can now sign up here for free. Let us know the sectors and topics you're interested in and we'll email you a weekly round-up of what's coming up on the Careers site. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/mar/06/mesut-ozil-jeered-germany-chile | Football | 2014-03-06T10:13:21.000Z | Marcus Christenson | Arsenal's Mesut Özil jeered by Germany supporters during win over Chile | Mesut Özil's season went from bad to worse on Wednesday night as he was whistled by a section of Germany fans when substituted during his side's victory over Chile.
Jogi Löw's side won 1-0 but, despite setting up the only goal of the game, the Arsenal midfielder was singled out by the home crowd in Stuttgart, being jeered as he was taken off in the 89th minute. Özil's team-mates reacted angrily to the crowd's reaction, Jérôme Boateng saying: "They have some nerve. You can't shine all the time."
The team manager, Oliver Bierhoff, added: "I don't understand the whistling. I find it a shame that a player such as Mesut is picked out [for that kind of reaction]. I would hope for different support for a game like that."
Löw, meanwhile, was more concerned with his side's performance. "We weren't capable of dominating the game. It is always good when one can see that Germany is not the only country to have good players."
Mario Götze struck against the run of play in the 16th minute after Özil eluded three defenders on the edge of the area. Götze took the Arsenal midfielder's pass with his right foot and then scooped it over the Chile goalkeeper Johnny Herrera with his left.
Eduardo Vargas came closest for Chile when he struck the crossbar in the second half. Arturo Vidal should have equalised in the first as the dominant visitors failed to capitalise on a stuttering performance from the home side.
"You can say it was a lucky win," the Germany captain Philipp Lahm said and it was far from convincing ahead of the World Cup in 98 days, and Löw was unable to hide his frustration, even before his side drew whistles from fans at the end.
The national coach has had to tear up his first-choice lineup due to injuries and poor form. He shifted Lahm to defensive midfield, with Kevin Grosskreutz filling in at right-back. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/womens-blog/2014/jul/01/nudie-tee-sexism-golf-sport-female-bodies | Life and style | 2014-07-01T14:52:44.000Z | Jane Martinson | The Nudie Tee: the new embodiment of sexism in sport | Was it the play on words that made all those marketing folk agree that this "Nudie Tee" was the perfect gift for golfers? How they must have congratulated themself that a "tee" was not just a tiny piece of plastic driven into the ground to support your balls but, you know, the last syllable of the word "nudi-ty".
Few products underline the fact that golf is still largely considered a man's game than a tee designed to look like a naked female torso. Such a small, insignificant thing that you can knock the head off it with just one swing of your big manly arms.
Joanna Sharpen was surprised that the image of the tiny packet of plastic torsos – available for just £2.99 from Amazon and Ebay – upset her so much. After all, her day job as project manager for charity AVA means that she has become pretty inured to examples of physical violence and abuse. As an adviser and moderator on the government's This Is Abuse campaign she has also spoken to some 3,000 young people, a third of whom reported being raped. Some, she says, were as young as 10 years old.
Trying to explain her visceral response to a "novelty gift", she points out that she saw it just after having read a list of the names of women recently killed by their partners. "The product resonated with me because of the fact that the bodies are headless and two women this year were decapitated," she says. "They have no arms, as if women are purely sexual objects and have no need of a head or arms. People see them as a gimmick, a novelty. But they do so much damage."
In response to the Dunlop tees, Karen Ingala Smith, whose website project Counting Dead Women marks murder victims, compiled a list of the six UK women who have been decapitated since January 2012 here.
Sharpen launched an online petition on Saturday in a bid to get the "nudie tees" withdrawn. She directly links the casual objectification and trivialisation of women's bodies with studies that prove it increases physical violence and abuse. "People turn a blind eye to it but, for me, it was the final straw," she says.
Having got nowhere trying to get a response from Dunlop UK – their website suggests writing a letter and gives a non-working phone number – Sharpen has written to the owner of its parent company, Mike Ashley.
The Guardian found a working PR number but is still waiting for a response. While we wait, I could use past experience to guess what it could be. When Mike Ashley was previously accused of sexism over a pink cleaning kit ("It's girls' stuff"), the controversial billionaire just seemed to have decided that ignoring the criticism would make it go away.
This sort of it's-a-silly-fuss-from-humourless-harpies-and-will-die-down attitude has probably helped in all sorts of corporate imbroglios, from the sale of novelty T-shirts that exhort men to Keep Calm and Hit Her and proclaim "I'm feeling rapey", to the case of Richard Scudamore, chief executive of the Premier League, using vile language to discuss women.
At first glance, I thought this was just another example of sexism in sport to add to the growing heap – the John Inverdale comments about Marion Bartoli, the Grey/Keys double-act; I could go on – but the online sale of such garbage is part of a larger picture, one in which sport is simply the easiest playing field for men to behave badly on. Just shut up, have a laugh, take the joke, stop moaning.
Or take a minute and sign this petition. No one is guaranteeing a proper response, but what's the alternative?
This article was amended on 2 July 2014, to add the paragraph beginning: "In response to the Dunlop tees, Karen Ingala Smith, whose website project Counting Dead Women marks murder victims …" It also stated that Joanna Sharpen compiled the list of dead women. This has been changed. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2015/jan/12/kelvin-mackenzie-berates-islamic-apologists-in-new-sun-column | Media | 2015-01-12T11:53:39.000Z | Roy Greenslade | Kelvin MacKenzie berates Islamic apologists in new Sun column | Kelvin MacKenzie launched his new Sun column with a lead item suggesting that if the Charlie Hebdo-style massacre happened here, then Nigel Farage would end up forming the next government.
But the main thrust of his article is about “the liberal classes” (including the Times’s columnist, Matthew Parris) supposedly acting as apologists for Islam.
He highlights two incidents of Islamist repression - the lashing of a blogger in Saudi Arabia and the slaughter of 2,000 people by Boka Haram in Nigeria - plus the flight of Jews from France in fear of Islamic terrorism.
He points also to “aspects of Islam... which are wholly unacceptable to the majority of Sun readers... the demeaning of women... [and] the treatment of gays”.
He concludes: “If our political leaders value our vote they need to address our fears and do something about them”.
I cannot overlook the fact that another item is devoted to me. He takes me to task for a sin I committed 25 years ago when editor of the Daily Mirror. I obeyed the paper’s proprietor, the late unlamented Robert Maxwell, by fixing a Spot the Ball competition to ensure no-one could win the £1m prize.
I owned up to the fact in a book I wrote about Maxwell, which was published in 1992. I had previously revealed the deceit in a Panorama months before Maxwell’s death in 1991.
I apologised at the time and have been apologising ever since. But, unlike Kelvin’s response to his greatest sin, also of 25 years’ standing - the grotesque insult to Liverpool fans over the Hillsborough tragedy - I have never retracted my apology.
His item on me was clearly aimed at spiking my guns. It won’t work. I will continue to treat his column on its “merits” as I will his contentious journalistic history. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2014/aug/12/laura-muir-tears-heat-european-championships-zurich | Sport | 2014-08-12T10:03:57.000Z | Sean Ingle | Laura Muir ‘gutted’ after going out in European Championships heats | Britain’s opening day at the European Athletics Championships got off to a disappointing start as Laura Muir, who was expected to be in the medal mix for the women’s 1,500m, was unable to make it through her heat.
But there was better news in the women’s 100m as Desiree Henry and Ashleigh Nelson both set personal bests to make tomorrow’s semi-finals, while Asha Philip also qualified comfortably.
Matthew Hudson Smith, the highly-promising teenage 400m runner, was also impressive as he came from fifth to first on the final bend to make Wednesday’s semi-finals while Martyn Rooney qualified second-fastest in a time of 45.48 sec.
But it was Muir, who has run 4:00.07 – the third fastest time in Europe this year – who provided the morning’s defining image. She seemed to get it tactically wrong and was several metres behind at the bell, despite it being a slowly run race, and only finished sixth in her heat in a time of 4:14.69.
With only the top four in each heat plus the four fastest losers qualifying, she was always going to up against it. Afterwards Muir held back the tears but admitted her performance had been “pretty gutting” and “below par”.
“I knew it was going to be tough but it should have been more straightforward for me than the other girls,” she said. “Given I’m ranked third at the moment I’m disappointed not to come top 12 to get into the final. Maybe I expected a bit too much of myself.
“It was a very slow run race for the first 800m. It was very bunched. I tried to keep them inside but I just ended up running in lane two for the majority of the lap. I almost fell as well a couple of times, trying to get past people. It was just a messy race.”
However there were no such problems for Commonwealth Games silver medallist Laura Weightman, who finished fourth in her heat in 4:10.55 easing down, or Hannah England, who got through as a fastest loser after coming fifth behind Weightman in 4:10.73.
Meanwhile Paula Radcliffe, who mentors Weightman, has denied ever saying that Mo Farah “chose the easier option” by missing out on the Commonwealth Games in favour of the European Championships.
Radcliffe, who watched Farah struggle through a training session at his European base of Font Romeu in France, had said that Mo would be “kicking himself” after watching the men’s 10,000m at the Commonwealth Games won in such a slow time. But this morning she insisted: “I’ve been one of Mo’s biggest supporters over the years. Mo’s maybe seen the headline and not read further in the article.”
Elsewhere on the opening morning, British athletes Niall Flannery, Sebastian Rodger and Tom Burton made it through to the semi-finals of the men’s 400m hurdles – as did the the exciting young Irishman Thomas Barr. But James Wilkinson, who had run so well to finish fifth in the Commonwealth Games 3,000m steeplechase final, was annoyed with himself after missing the final after finishing sixth in his heat.
“I’m disappointed,” he said. “It was a messy race and I didn’t hurdle very well. I tried making the right moves and I thought I was there with 600m to go but I just got battled out of it. I thought I might have got a gift and got through with the Spanish guy going down at the last hurdle but I didn’t.
“I was run down after Glasgow and I don’t think being late on the BBC programme there helped, but then getting a cold on Thursday just wasn’t great either.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2024/jan/17/english-national-opera-strike-cuts | Music | 2024-01-17T14:51:22.000Z | Nadia Khomami | English National Opera employees to strike over cuts | Musicians and performers in the English National Opera have voted to strike in a dispute over planned cuts to the workforce.
ENO chorus members, orchestra and music staff will walk out on 1 February, on the opening night of the company’s production of The Handmaid’s Tale. If the strikes go ahead the show is not expected to take place.
The Musicians’ Union and Equity said plans to axe 19 orchestra posts and make other staff members work part-time would threaten musicians’ livelihoods.
It will mark the first time that Musicians’ Union members have taken full strike action in 44 years. The union’s general secretary, Naomi Pohl, said the vote was “a sign of extremely difficult times for the orchestral sector and opera and ballet in particular”.
She added: “This has been caused by underfunding of the proposed move to Manchester. The management have decided to cut our members down to six months of work per year and this risks a wonderful, talented and specialist orchestra dissipating. It is heartbreaking to see the impact on the individuals affected.”
The ballots were conducted after ENO management announced plans to make all of the chorus, orchestra and music staff redundant and re-employ them for six months of the year. It was proposed that some musicians in the orchestra would be offered ad hoc freelance work only.
‘This could be really interesting’: Manchester and English National Opera may yet suit each other
Read more
Equity’s general secretary, Paul Fleming, said: “The heart of this dispute is about who opera in this country is for: should there be stable, accessible jobs for people from every background, or precarious jobs limited to the few. The ENO chorus and creative workforce believe opera is for everyone, that opera is nothing without a stable dignified workforce and jobs which are open to all.”
He said ENO management were “throwing the artists who audiences pay to see under the bus whilst protecting the pay of senior management. They are proposing fire and rehire, 40% cuts in wages, and no permanent jobs in a new Manchester base”.
The ENO said on Wednesday the dispute “could be best resolved around the negotiation table”. It said while it “respects trade union members’ right to industrial action as part of our ongoing negotiations”, it was “disappointed that it means audiences will miss out on an opportunity to experience the work and talent of the entire ENO company”.
The ENO’s music director, Martyn Brabbins, announced his resignation in October after the announcement of the cuts – which came after the ENO was removed from Arts Council England’s (ACE) national portfolio last year, losing its £12.8m annual grant, and told it must move outside London to qualify for future grants. ACE’s decision was condemned as “cultural vandalism”.
ACE later announced extra money and more time for the ENO to transition to a new home. It also said a new business model would allow the company to deliver a substantial opera season every year in London.
Last month, the ENO announced it had chosen Greater Manchester as its future home. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/jul/01/iggy-azalea-criticises-press-stirring-row-with-britney-spears | Music | 2015-07-01T09:53:44.000Z | Guardian music | Iggy Azalea criticises press for stirring row with Britney Spears | Iggy Azalea has blamed the media for creating a “beef” between her and Britney Spears. Following reports on 30 June that the two singers were blaming one another for the failure of their collaborative single Pretty Girls, Azalea posted a series of messages on Twitter to clear up the speculation surrounding their relationship, claiming the obsession with her feuds stem from an inherent sexism in the media.
“I am honestly not surprised but still really saddened that the media is trying to create a ‘beef’ between @britneyspears and myself,” she wrote on Twitter. “We remain friends and i haven’t said anything negative at all about her. Does wishing we had promoted a single more make me the bad guy?”
A number of publications picked up statements made by the rapper during a Azalea’s Twitter Q&A on 28 June. In it, she said it was “difficult to send a song up the charts without additional promo and TV performances,” suggesting that it had been down to Spears’s lack of commitment to promoting it.
The response to these comments, she says, are a result of the press’s desire to create a “teen drama” between female musicians. She posted:
i feel like the media wants women in music to get out and mud wrestle each other. As a woman i take great offense.
— IGGY AZALEA (@IGGYAZALEA) June 30, 2015
Women in the media should be able to have a grown up and subjective opinion without it being anything more than that. its disappointing.
— IGGY AZALEA (@IGGYAZALEA) June 30, 2015
No one is throwing "shade" or "shots" on either side of the table. The girl is my friend and i support her 100%.
— IGGY AZALEA (@IGGYAZALEA) June 30, 2015
i feel like the press just wants to see girls be overtly sexual to one another, and have no real opinion other than "i love it! ^.^"
— IGGY AZALEA (@IGGYAZALEA) June 30, 2015
Im over it. Women in music are not the same as a teen drama. Stop making us all out to be, we are business women & artists. Not mean girls.
— IGGY AZALEA (@IGGYAZALEA) June 30, 2015
Pretty Girls, released in May, was not picked for the annual Songs of the summer playlist last week created by Spotify, and has failed to crack the top 20 in the US. It reached No 16 in the UK charts. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/18/hurricane-iota-killed-evacuated-nicaragua-joe-biden-climate-emergency-damage | World news | 2020-11-18T12:15:57.000Z | Tom Phillips | Hurricane Iota: at least six killed and 60,000 evacuated in Nicaragua | At least six people have been killed and more than 60,000 evacuated after Hurricane Iota struck Nicaragua, prompting Joe Biden to say the surge in the number of powerful storms meant fighting the climate crisis was vital.
Reports in the Nicaraguan press said at least three children were among the victims as the hurricane hammered the Central American country on Tuesday after making landfall the previous night.
La Prensa newspaper reported that two of the victims, siblings aged eight and 11, were swept away by a raging river south of the capital, Managua. Thirteen people were reported missing after a landslide near the city of Matagalpa, including a 12-year-old girl.
Images from the Caribbean town of Bilwi showed the terrifying punch of a hurricane that wrenched utility poles from the ground and tore zinc roofs from seaside homes.
1:39
Hurricane Iota lashes Central America – video
“The kids were screaming with fear. It was horrible,” Fatima Thomas Pérez told La Prensa, recalling the moment a tree came crashing down in her garden. “The ground shook just like an earthquake. We thought we were all going to die.”
As the hurricane swept west towards Honduras and El Salvador, Nicaragua’s vice-president said “catastrophic” physical damage had been caused by what authorities called the most powerful storm ever to hit the country. “Thank God more lives have not been lost,” Rosario Murillo said.
Meteorologists say this year’s Atlantic hurricane season, which runs from June to November, is the most active in history. There have been 30 named storms and 13 hurricanes in the six-month period, six of which had the potential to cause significant loss of life and damage.
Uprooted trees on the shore of the El Muelle neighbourhood in Bilwi. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
Two of those major hurricanes, Iota and Eta, have struck in the past two weeks, with the latter killing scores of people and causing widespread destruction after making landfall on 3 November. Experts believe the climate crisis has contributed to the record-breaking number of powerful storms.
Biden tweeted on Tuesday: “I’m keeping in my prayers all of our friends and neighbours in Hurricane Iota’s path and those impacted by Hurricane Eta across Central America.
“The increasing frequency of these powerful storms is another reason that fighting climate change will be one of my top priorities.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/datablog/2013/apr/08/britain-changed-margaret-thatcher-charts | Politics | 2013-04-08T13:57:46.000Z | Simon Rogers | 15 ways that Britain changed under Margaret Thatcher | What is the the legacy of Margaret Thatcher, who died today?
The 1980s is increasingly being seen as deep history - 50% of the Datablog team were born in the late 1980s and were just toddling into school when she resigned in November 1990.
If the past is a foreign country (they do things differently there), there is nowhere more foreign than May 1979, when the Conservatives entered Downing Street. In fact, it’s getting increasingly difficult to tell - many of the datasets we rely on now weren’t compiled until the early 1990s. So what kind of Britain did the country’s first woman prime minister come to rule in 1979 - and how has it changed?
These are some of the datasets which actually go back that far - mostly from the Office for National Statistics, and some from the excellent British Political Facts.
She may or may not have caused it, but Britain under Thatcher saw huge economic, demographic and cultural change. These are just some of the facts.
Population
The UK was a smaller country then - 56.2m people lived here, compared to 62.3m people in 2010. That had been pretty stagnant since 1970, actually going down for four years before 1979 as the economy faltered. During the first years of Thatcher’s reign, fewer people came to live in the UK - acceptances for settlement went down from 69,670 in 1979 to 53,200 by the time she resigned in 1990. Since then, the economy has boomed and eastern European countries have joined the EU. In fact, for much of the decade there were more people leaving the UK than coming here. Now it is the reverse. Net migration now is at a record high.
The population has changed too. There are no accurate figures for the UK’s ethnic breakdown before the 1991 census, so we can’t say what Britain’s ethnic mix was. By the 2001 census, four years after the end of the Conservatives in power, the UK’s population was 92.1% white. According to the latest ONS estimates, that figure has gone down now as Britain becomes more diverse; 83.35% of England and Wales is now defined as “white British”.
We’re living longer - life expectancy overall went up from 70.3 for men and 76.4 for women in 1979 by three years for both sexes by 1990. In a developed country, life expectancy should go up as medicine improves and the economy grows. But in 1985 it went down briefly, as it did again in 1993, both after huge recessions.
There are more of the super-old around now. Some 15% of babies born in 1979 would live to reach 100 - that figure is 26% now.
Families
Ironically for a prime minister who focused so much on family life, the 1980s saw the end of the traditional family unit for many. Divorce rates reached 13.4 per 1,000 married population in 1985, although that wasn’t as high as the peak of 1994 after the recession. They have gone down now. The most recent figures show that 119,589 people got divorced in 2010, roughly half of the number of people who got married the same year.
Of course, fewer people are getting married now - only 231,490 in the latest year, down from 368,853 in 1979, which was the highest figure since the war brides of 1940.
Which also means less babies being born to a traditional family unit too - in 1979, only 12.5% of babies were born outside marriage. By 1991 that had gone up to 29.8%.
Unemployment
As Britain learnt to come to terms with the idea of “no such thing as society”, unemployment shot up under the Conservatives to levels not seen since the Great Depression. The figures show how it lags behind the economy - even after the recession was over, many were unemployed.
The economy
Britain got hit by two major recessions under Thatcher, which sandwiched the boom of the 1980s but even that boom never saw GDP grow by more than a couple of percent. Obviously in 2013, George Osborne would kill for growth of 2.2%.
If the deficit is the obsession of this government, in 1979 it was inflation, which had rocketed into the twenties in the 1970s.
The figures show how it went down under the Conservatives - after a struggle as it rose to 21% in the 1980s - decreases which largely continued under Labour and have only just started to reverse.
Perceived wisdom is also that manufacturing disappeared under Thatcher. If so, it was something that had already started. In 1970, manufacturing accounted for 20.57% of UK GDP. By 1979 that was down to 17.62% of GDP. By the time she left office, that decline had continued - albeit at a slightly slower pace, down to 15.18%. Now it is much lower, according to the ONS - down to 9.68% in 2010.
Public spending
Thatcher never tried the scale of austerity cuts facing the UK coalition government now. In fact if you look at spending as a percentage of GDP it actually rose in her first years of power, going down during the 1980s before rising in the early 1990s under John Major and chancellor Kenneth Clarke. Her reign actually ended with more of the workforce employed in the public sector than now - 23.1% as opposed to around 20% now.
The pay gap
She may have been our first prime minister but men still ended her decade paid a lot more than women - especially if you look at the bald figures.
However, if you change it and look at women’s full-time pay as a percentage of male full time pay it shows women working full time in 1990 paid 76% male full-time pay - up from 73%. It has improved since then - in 2011 it was 84.8%.
House prices and interest rates
One of the defining features of the 1980s was the rise of the house price economy, especially with the sales of council houses.
At the same time, interest rates rose to record levels of 17% and repossessions rose to match.
In 1991, 75,500 properties were repossessed, the peak, and 186,649 cases reached the courts.
The unions
The unions were a major force in 1970s Britain, with around one in four of the UK population a member - 13.2m people. Those numbers went down significantly by 1990 to 9.8m - and in 2008/9 to 7.4m or one in eight of the population.
At the same time days lost to industrial disputes shot down too - from around 900,000 a month when Thatcher became prime minister to 183,000 in November 1990 - albeit with millions of days lost in the miner’s strike.
Poverty and inequality
Poverty went up under Thatcher, according to these figures from the Institute for Fiscal Studies. In 1979, 13.4% of the population lived below 60% of median incomes before housing costs. By 1990, it had gone up to 22.2%, or 12.2m people, with huge rises in the mid-1980s.
With it came a huge rise in inequality. Take the gini coefficient, which is the most common method of measuring inequality. Under gini, a score of one would be a completely unequal society; zero would be completely equal. Britain’s gini score went up from 0.253 to 0.339 by the time Thatcher resigned.
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This article was amended on 5 December 2022 to remove a number of charts that were created using technology that is no longer compatible with the page. The headline and text have been changed to reflect this. The information contained in the charts can be found here. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/12/could-lockdown-be-the-death-of-bullfighting-in-spain | World news | 2020-05-12T06:30:11.000Z | Ashifa Kassam | Could lockdown be the death of bullfighting in Spain? | For months the ranchers had laid the groundwork; grazing and exercising a select crop of half-tonne fighting bulls to be transported to arenas and festivals across the country. Then – just as Spain’s bullfighting season was set to kick off – the country was plunged into lockdown.
“It was dreadful,” said Victorino Martín, a second-generation breeder of fighting bulls. “The coronavirus came at the worst possible moment.”
The lockdown brought the bullfighting sector to a standstill as Spanish authorities scrambled to control one of the world’s deadliest outbreaks, with more than 26,000 lives claimed. Weeks later, though urban hotspots like Madrid and Barcelona remain under lockdown, elsewhere measures have eased, and industries ranging from travel to car manufacturing have turned to the government for help in navigating Spain’s new normal.
No request has been as controversial as that made by the bullfighting sector. Long reviled by animal rights campaigners who see it as cruel and outdated, bullfighting’s fight for survival has triggered a fierce debate over its future in Spanish society.
“The bullfighting sector is – and will be – one of the most affected by the dramatic situation that we’re living through,” bullfighter Cayetano Rivera said recently on social media, after dozens of events, including Pamplona’s running of the bulls, were cancelled.
Bullfighter Cayetano Rivera in the ring in Jaen, southern Spain, in October 2019. Photograph: SALAS/EPA
With the virus threatening to wipe out much of the season, which runs until October, he appealed to Spaniards to consider the tens of thousands of people thrown out of work as the industry struggles. “We can’t forget the many people and families who depend, either directly or indirectly, on the bullfighting world to live.”
The estimated loss of income so far is at least €700m (£797m), said Martín, who also heads the Fundación del Toro de Lidia, which was created in 2015 to defend the industry. “Even more concerning is that we don’t know when we’ll be able to restart our activities,” he said. “Meanwhile, the animals continue to eat. You have to take care of them and the employees.”
The industry is in discussions with television networks about broadcasting bullfights behind closed doors – a measure Martín hopes could help the beleaguered industry.
But with little chance that crowds will be allowed to return to the streets for bull fiestas or into arenas for bullfights, he was steeling himself for his worst-case scenario: cancellation of the entire season. “What industry could survive a year and a half without any income and still cover its costs?”
Animal rights activists protest against bullfights before the San Fermin annual running of the bulls in Pamplona in 2018. Photograph: Pablo Blázquez Domínguez/Getty Images
A handful of ranchers have already given up, he said. “There are breeders that have slaughtered all of their animals … I know there was a week where more than 400 were killed.”
The economics of that make little sense, as it can cost up to €5,000 to rear a bull while the slaughterhouse pays €500, he noted. But for those who have bulls that will outgrow the strict age limits on bullfighting and street festivals if they are not used this year, it is one of the few options.
The Unión de Criadores de Toros, which represents the interests of some 345 breeders of fighting bulls, estimates that more than 7,000 bulls had been raised for this year’s season.
The industry has turned to the Spanish government for help, outlining a list of requests that include a rollback of the sales tax on fighting bulls and grants to help breeders. “We want them to treat us as they would any other cultural industry,” said Martín, citing the economic spinoffs for hotels, restaurants and bars generated by events.
Their request has been met with stiff opposition. More than 100,000 people have signed an online petition urging the government not to use public funds to prop up bullfighting.
“It’s outrageous – particularly at this moment, when there are families that don’t have enough to eat and hospitals that have been decimated by cutbacks,” said Aïda Gascón of AnimaNaturalis, an animal rights group that is one of the organisations behind the petition. “Public funds should not be used to promote and pay for spectacles based on the abuse and mistreatment of animals.”
Similar petitions have been launched in Portugal and France, where the local bullfighting industries have also asked for government help. “Bullfighting is facing the most critical moment of its existence,” the petition noted. “We have a unique opportunity … to build a world without bullfighting.”
The assertion is borne out by Spain’s last economic crisis, which saw cash-strapped municipalities shift funds away from festivals involving bulls. In 2007, one year before the financial crash, Spain held 3,651 events featuring bulls. Just over a decade later, this number had more than halved, with 1,521 such events held in 2018.
Spain’s economic minister, Nadia Calviño, predicts that Spain’s GDP could shrink by 9.2% this year and animal rights groups are pushing for bullfighting to be cut off from public funding.
“What we’re looking for is the total abolition of this practice of torturing animals as a form of spectacle,” said Gascón. “One way to do that is to choke off their subsidies … it wouldn’t get rid of the industry completely but it would reduce it to 5% or 10% of what we have today.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/sep/16/ric-ocasek-obituary | Music | 2019-09-16T16:28:49.000Z | Garth Cartwright | Ric Ocasek obituary | The American musician Ric Ocasek, who has died aged 75, led the new wave band the Cars to huge international success from 1978 until 1988. The Cars reached their highest UK chart position, No 3, with My Best Friend’s Girl in November 1978 and enjoyed hits with Just What I Needed, Let the Good Times Roll, You Might Think, Let’s Go and, best and biggest of all, the aching ballad Drive.
They were the first American band to successfully take a punk/new wave aesthetic into the US charts – their use of irony, downbeat imagery, synthesisers, impassive vocals and European cultural references standing in contrast to the shrill hard rock then dominant – and Ocasek’s exceptional talent as a songwriter ensured they enjoyed a decade of hit singles and albums.
Patient and focused, Ocasek was already in his 30s when the Cars released their debut album, The Cars, in 1978. Although his favourite musicians were artists such as the Velvet Underground and Captain Beefheart, he proved an astute pop songwriter: his best songs employ repetitive hooks, powerful rhythms, melodies that hang in the listener’s head and a clever use of instrumental motifs. The Cars’ hits were not just distinctive but, as the Village Voice critic Robert Christgau has noted, their arch, glossy pop helped shape the sound of the 1980s. The finest Cars songs have an eerie quality akin to Roy Orbison’s best work – melodramas that convey a quiet intensity.
Ric Ocasek attending the premiere of the 1989 film Great Balls of Fire! in New York. Photograph: Ron Galella/Getty Images
Ocasek was born in Baltimore, Maryland. When he was 16 his family moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where his father worked as a systems analyst at Nasa’s Lewis Research Center. Ric graduated from high school in 1963 and briefly attended college but dropped out, determined to succeed as a musician. In 1965 he met the singer Benjamin Orr and they began forming bands, playing across the midwest before settling in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1971.
As Milkwood, a folk rock band, they released an album in 1973 to little attention. Ocasek and Orr continued making music together under a variety of names while working at day jobs, slowly recruiting the musicians who would come to be known, in 1976, as the Cars – their drummer David Robinson named and dressed the band. The Cars made a demo tape of Ocasek’s songs in 1977 and it received regular airplay on two Boston radio stations. Record labels began bidding to sign them up, with Elektra Records winning. The British producer Roy Thomas Baker – whose work with Queen had helped the band achieve superstardom – was assigned to the group.
Their eponymous debut album contained three international hit singles. Ocasek wrote all the songs, and played guitar and sang the lead vocal on the majority of them (Orr, the bassist, sometimes sang lead vocals, including on Just What I Needed). The band enjoyed a brilliant trajectory, with their albums Candy-O (1979), Panorama (1980) and Shake It Up (1981) all hits. Robert Palmer, the New York Times’ pop critic, wrote of the Cars: “They have taken some important but disparate contemporary trends – punk minimalism, the labyrinthine synthesiser and guitar textures of art rock, the 50s rockabilly revival and the melodious terseness of power pop – and mixed them into a personal and appealing blend.”
Ric Ocasek, left, with the Cars. From left: Elliot Easton, Greg Hawkes, Benjamin Orr and David Robinson in the late 1970s. Photograph: Ebet Roberts/Redferns
Ocasek, enjoying his status as a new wave figurehead – and one with commercial clout – produced the second album by the New York electronic duo Suicide in 1980 and Rock for Light, the debut album by the African American hardcore band Bad Brains, in 1983. Then, after almost three years outside the studio, he chose the South African producer Robert John “Mutt” Lange to produce Heartbeat City (1984) – which became the Cars’ greatest success.
The album’s lead single Drive, sung by Orr, produced one of the MTV era’s standout videos, became the Cars’ biggest hit and was employed as background music to footage of the Ethiopian famine shown during the Live Aid concert (at which the Cars performed): Ocasek donated his songwriter’s royalties to the Band Aid Trust.
A Greatest Hits album in 1985 sold more than six million copies in the US alone but Orr now demanded the Cars record songs he had written with his girlfriend, and Ocasek refused. The album Door to Door (1987) crawled to No 26 in the US charts – No 72 in the UK – and the following year the Cars disbanded.
Ocasek released seven solo albums – none was particularly notable but he said he was happy to be making music. He appeared as a beatnik painter in John Waters’ 1988 film Hairspray, published a book of poetry in 1993 and produced young bands. The two albums he produced for the US band Weezer, in 1994 and 2001, sold more than a million copies each.
Ocasek reformed the Cars in 2010 to record the album Move Like This – it reached No 7 in the US charts and the band undertook a brief tour. Orr had died of pancreatic cancer in 2000, he and Ocasek never having made peace. In 2012 Ocasek released Lyrics and Prose, a complete collection of his lyrics. Recently he had begun exhibiting his paintings.
He is survived by his third wife, the model Paulina Porizkova, whom he met on the set of the video shoot for Drive, and married in 1989 – she announced their separation last year. He is also survived by their sons, Jonathan and Oliver, and by four sons, Christopher, Adam, Eron and Derek, from two previous marriages that both ended in divorce.
Ric Ocasek (Richard Theodore Otcasek), musician, songwriter and record producer, born 23 March 1944; died 15 September 2019
This article was amended on 17 September 2019 to correct the spelling of the name of Ocasek’s son Adam. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/garethmcleanblog/2009/may/15/television | Culture | 2009-05-15T14:41:29.000Z | Gareth McLean | Gareth McLean on Sharon Horgan's comedy Pulling | In a disused hospital in the wilds of west London, there's a man in a coma. Two women sit, pensive by his bedside. Outside in the corridor, there is a peppering of plastic chairs occupied by people in dressing gowns and on the wall a clock is stuck at quarter-to-eight and a poster encourages understanding of testicular cancer ("Know your balls. Check 'em out"). In the room I'm in, a gang crowd around a monitor, as a woman with an impressive array of felt tip pens scribbles on a script and make-up women nurse giant plastic holdalls. On a windowsill, sandwich edges curl like old carpet. Someone yells cut, there's a round of applause and Sharon Horgan, one of the women in the other room, comes through. She's just filmed her last scene ever of Pulling.
For I'm on the set of Horgan and Dennis Kelly's hour-long special that will conclude visits to the hilariously scabrous, Rabelaisian world of Donna, Karen and Louise. Regular readers will know how exciting this is for me. Set visits are usually dull as dull things (if I wanted to sit around doing nothing but looking interested, I'd stay at work) but this is giddy indeed.
Giddy and a bit sad. For reasons only known to themselves - probably involving the tyranny of demographics that apparently govern creative choices made by BBC3 - the BBC declined to commission a third series of Pulling. But let us not dwell on that (besides to say, BBC be fools) and instead acknowledge that Pulling is the best British comedy of the last five years. And this special is the show's swansong.
And what a song it is - soaring, filthy, funny and, well, triumphant. (It won't be spoiling things too much to say that after Horgan's last scene, there is call put out for "the puppy" and sure enough a dog turns up. Given what happened to a cat in the second series, I half-wonder if I should avert my eyes/call the RSPCA). There's always a worry when you so enjoy a show that its finale can be something of a let-down but that's not the case with Pulling. For me, it exceeded expectation, managing to both poke about the murkier recesses of the human condition and be moving – and not in a sentimental way. For all its filthiness, Pulling has enormous warmth to it. In its depiction of relationships, situations and characters, Pulling is refreshingly honest. And, of course, bloody funny. One of the most hilarious thing I've ever seen was Karen battering an apple in the second series. Horgan tells me that she used to do this when, in her 20s, she'd come home drunk and in possession of that mad hunger you only get when you're pissed, she'd deep fry bits of bread and whatever else she could lay her hands on.
Weeks after the set visit, I'm sitting in Horgan's (very lovely) office while she and Kelly concede that they're disappointed and miffed about the untimely demise of their show but, ultimately, that they're grateful that they got the chance to make it, and with minimal interference from the BBC. Kelly says that they never set out to shock or be contentious but they did want to be truthful – and sometimes people think and do shocking things. He continues to say that though the situations in which Pulling's characters find themselves can be cartoonish, it was really important that the characters themselves never became cartoons. And even in the wildest excesses of Karen or in Louise's loopier moments (cocklollees, anyone?), there's a truthfulness there. And it's there in Donna as a character too. She's a selfish, flawed individual but through the writing and Horgan's performance, she's almost loveable because we empathise with her. There is, I'd wager, a bit of Donna in all of us. (If there isn't, I don't want to know you.)
With Pulling behind them – Horgan says she almost doesn't want the special to go out because that will be the end of it – the pair are, professionally at least and at least for now, going their separate ways. Horgan is writing a comedy pilot with comic Holly Walsh and awaiting news of a second series of Channel 4's Free Agents. Kelly, who has written an array of cracking plays such as After The End and Osama the Hero, has just written an episode of Spooks. I almost choke on the chocolate that Horgan has been handing out since I arrived. "Expect Ros to get pissed and end up in a threesome with Malcolm and Harry," Kelly grins.
When you spend your time critique-ing telly and generally coming across as a bit of a grumpy bugger who's impossible to please, inevitably you get asked "Well what do you like then?" Well, Pulling is a show that I love – and feel the need to become a cheerleader for because it was so underrated and, moreover, unloved by the BBC. So I'll miss it. I urge you not to. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2005/jun/24/1 | From the Guardian | 2005-06-24T01:26:12.000Z | Peter Bradshaw | Kung Fu Hustle | When Crouching Tiger made martial arts mainstream-fashionable here, dissenters claimed the whole genre had been castrated and merchant-ivorised with a western-style joke-free magic-realism and people floating through the air, their silk-clad legs bicycling prettily as they hovered over picturesque Chinese scenery, cheongsams and rattling wooden carts. Long-time fans groaned at the dinner-party-class newcomers rhapsodising about the wonderfully Chinese slowness of the dialogue, heedless of the fact that Cantonese-speaking stars were having to do their lines in Mandarin.
Well, perhaps we were indeed being served up pre-packaged exoticism - though that's always the way, and it didn't stop the movies from being great - and now Stephen Chow's outrageously enjoyable action comedy Kung Fu Hustle helps to redress the balance. It's the celluloid equivalent of a gallon of espresso. Not for nothing is Hong Kong megastar Chow rivalling Jackie Chan in popularity, although he relies more on digital effects than the Master himself.
This movie delivers a savage karate-chop to the funny bone. Like Chow's wackily eccentric comedy Shaolin Soccer last year, about a football team keen on martial arts, and also Jeff Lau's supremely zany Chinese Odyssey, this is pure silliness. But unlike those two, the silliness achieves a kind of critical mass. The mixture of fun, slapstick action and acutely judged dabs of sentimentality is managed with great energy by writer-director Chow. He's working with fight choreographer Yuen Wo Ping, who modifies his style to provide something less obviously beautiful, but very spectacular and inventive.
Chow himself plays Sing; he's an appalling waster who hangs out with a fat and torpid mate and dreams of being a mobster with the Axe Gang, a sinister and faintly Kubrickian bunch who dress in top hats and carry hatchets in their belts. We see them first in a Wild West faceoff with a visiting wiseguy who in a bravura single travelling shot is shown trashing a police station and terrorising the cops who have had the temerity to pick up his girlfriend for spitting.
Sing is obsessed with the memory of being inducted into the mysteries of kung fu by a wise old man who, in flashback, sells him a pamphlet on the subject and says: "The duty of upholding world peace and punishing evil will be yours" - a destiny that the saucer-eyed Sing does not consider in any way inconsistent with his current career in petty crime.
But he becomes embroiled in the Axe Gang's attempt to subdue the only place that has not yet submitted to their tyranny: Pig Sty Alley. This bizarre neighbourhood is a hyperreal courtyard as realistic as a crumbling Hollywood set for cowboys, and is ruled over by a cantankerous landlord, played by Hong Kong veteran Yuen Wah and his Ena Sharples-ish wife, who sports hair-rollers, a demurely opaque baby-doll nightie and ever-present fag dangling out of the corner of her mouth. She is played by Yuen Qiu, who was once a Bond girl opposite Roger Moore in The Man With the Golden Gun.
This double-act is a joy: especially when the ferocious landlady throws her husband out of the window and Chow and his fight director contrive an extraordinary overhead shot in which the poor man simply plummets, limp as a ragdoll, crashing through an awning and landing heavily on the ground, where a flower pot crashes on his head, like Oliver Hardy. Later we see the landlady chasing the hapless Sing, her legs becoming a blur. If Enter the Dragon could be directed by Tex Avery, it might look like this.
Chow's visual gags are very cheeky, especially when they centre on his reprehensible cowardice. Blustering, he challenges the Pig Sty crowd to come out singly, and fight him one-on-one. Sing points to a short-looking guy in the back; he turns out to be a freakishly large guy (with digitally stretched legs) who happened to be sitting on a stool. But strangely, the Pig Sty populace turns out to have three mighty kung fu fighters in their midst, including one extraordinarily camp middle-aged man wearing unattractive shorts who is given to temperamental episodes, clutching the furniture and sobbing: "Is it a crime to be good at kung fu?" There is something very irresistible about his drama-queen display. The landlord and landlady emerge as doughty fighters and it isn't long before Sing himself enters into his mystic destiny as the One, a good guy on the side of the angels who is a supreme master of martial arts.
You would have to be very po-faced and hard-hearted not to enjoy this knockabout adventure in surreal fun. Chow also augments the action sequences with cute smaller moments, such as one in which the Axe Gang's charmless young leader manages to set his own hair on fire in the back of the car. There's also a piece of deadpan drollery when the gang bully Sing into rescuing a hired killer from a prison which calls itself an Atypical Pathology Centre. The mayhem and anarchy that Chow serves up are pretty atypical and pretty pathological, but it's exuberant, exhilarating entertainment. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jan/19/the-wall-john-lanchester-review | Books | 2019-01-19T09:00:12.000Z | Tom Holland | The Wall by John Lanchester review – ‘The Others are coming’ | “I
t’s cold on the Wall.” What kind of story might be signalled by such an opening sentence? An adventure set in Roman Britain, perhaps – something by Rudyard Kipling or Rosemary Sutcliff, complete with centurions and mists over northern crags. Or a fable of the sort that Jorge Luis Borges or Italo Calvino might have written: a sombre meditation on the correlation between civilisation and frontier systems, composed in the voice of a Confucian scholar exiled to the steppes, plangent with echoes of Chinese poetry. Most obviously, in 2019 any mention of a chilly wall with a capital W is bound to conjure up images of George RR Martin’s Night’s Watch, standing guard amid the snows of northernmost Westeros. Historical fiction, fable, fantasy: the wall is an image potent enough to serve the needs of an entire range of genres.
John Lanchester, in the first pages of his new novel, makes knowing play with this. It is not immediately clear where his wall is, nor why it should be so cold. A mention of trains and lorries is soon a signpost that we are not on Hadrian’s Wall, but beyond that the setting remains opaque. There are Captains, there are Sergeants, there are Corporals. Our narrator, it gradually emerges, is a man called Kavanagh, sent to the Wall for an obligatory two-year term of service. As a Defender, his duty is to stare out to sea, and keep watch for people referred to only as Others. Much hangs on his ability to spot them: for every Other who makes it across the Wall, a Defender will be expelled from the country, put out to sea on a boat. The ominous sense of jeopardy that this establishes hangs like a shadow over the entire book.
At this point in my review, however, I should issue a caveat. Even to write what I have written risks dissipating for readers the sense of dislocation that I – not having read any pre-publicity – felt as it gradually dawned on me what the setting for the novel actually was. Those who would like to share in the experience are strongly advised to look away now. Or perhaps, in the wake of a new year when the home secretary proclaimed a state of crisis after a few Iranians had tried to cross the Channel in dinghies, readers will already have guessed. Kavanagh, Lanchester lets slip, is serving on a stretch of the Wall called “Ilfracombe 4”. Clearly, he has been posted to Devon. Later, he is transferred to Scotland. The Wall, it turns out, is a great mass of concrete that girds the entire coastline of Great Britain.
John Lanchester. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian
This, as the clock ticks busily down to Brexit, might seem a pointed and timely satire. Lanchester, however, is not writing as a satirist; his ambitions are altogether more dystopian. Like The Time Machine or Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Wall packs its punch by extrapolating a terrifying future from present trends. As HG Wells did in The Time Machine, Lanchester portrays a world divided into two classes of people: those who still enjoy a modicum of civilisation, and those who have been excluded from it. As George Orwell did in Nineteen Eighty-Four, he portrays a Britain in which rights and liberties have been sacrificed for reasons that seem all too chillingly plausible. Lanchester’s horizons, though, are not merely British. No country – not even one immured behind concrete – is an island entire of itself. If The Wall is only incidentally a satire on Britain’s current political crisis, then that is because, viewed through the prism of Lanchester’s dystopian vision, Brexit itself is bound to appear incidental.
Kavanagh, gazing out to sea on the north Devon coast, knows perfectly well why he has to serve his time as a Defender. “Occasionally there would be some big-picture news about crops failing or countries breaking down or coordination between rich countries, or some other emerging detail of the new world we were occupying since the Change.” What has happened is evident from the besetting cold and the fact that Britain appears to have lost 2,000 miles of its coastline. The ice caps have melted; the Gulf Stream has switched; sitting on sandy beaches has become a thing of the past.
While in Britain much has been preserved from the ruin – there is still public transport, pubs are still open, people still go on holiday to the Lake District – elsewhere the effects of the “Change” have been more devastating. The whole world is on the move. “The Others are coming”: so a government official, visiting a training camp, warns Kavanagh and his fellow Defenders. “We have had years of relative peace and calm, but that time is now over. You will be busy.”
The Wall, then – for all its obvious echoes of Donald Trump and his own wall, of Viktor Orbán and his barbed wire fences, of Matteo Salvini and his refusal to allow ships carrying migrants into Italian ports – is ultimately no more focused on immigration than it is on Brexit. Both are cast as symptoms of its ultimate theme: climate change.
As an attempt to dramatise an existential threat that seems impossible for humanity properly to conceptualise, The Wall is a signal achievement. Lanchester’s talents as a novelist – his judicious blending of realism and metaphor, his remarkable ability to render tedium gripping, and his mastery of narrative tension – have been put to estimable use. The result is a novel that ranks alongside Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake and the oeuvre of Kim Stanley Robinson as a fictional meditation on what climate change may mean for the planet. Even if its value as a work of prophecy is as yet unknowable, it will certainly provide future generations with a mirror held up to the anxieties and forebodings of the early 21st century.
Anxiety about the fertility of migrants has been a constant in apocalyptic fiction
For all that, though, The Wall also bears witness to something else: how difficult it is for even the most talented novelist to imagine the future in an original way. Echoes of other dystopias are everywhere. Humans, although not rendered sterile by the Change, have lost the will to breed: and so, as in Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale or PD James’s The Children of Men, are haunted by the dread of a terminal demographic collapse. Equally, those huddled behind their concrete fortifications live in fear of the opposite; anxiety about the teeming fertility of migrants has been a constant in apocalyptic fiction. Long before Jean Raspail wrote The Camp of the Saints (1973), a novel about mass immigration to western Europe, Victorian novelists were imagining a time when population growth in Asia and Africa would, as Raspail put it, require Europeans to unleash “a rain of awful death to every breathing thing, a rain that exterminates the hopeless race”.
The Wall is, of course, no paean to racist or eugenicist fantasies – indeed, it is just the opposite – but it is sobering to reflect that the terms of dystopia should seem barely to have altered in a century and a half. This is not to criticise Lanchester, whose novel is so unsettling precisely because it goes so effectively with the grain of contemporary fears; but it is certainly to regret that our fears should seem so impossible to ease.
Tom Holland’s Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind will be published later this year. The Wall is published by Faber. To order a copy for £9.99 (RRP £14.99) go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £15, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/nov/02/i-hate-internet-jarett-kobek-review | Books | 2016-11-02T09:00:15.000Z | Steven Poole | I Hate the Internet by Jarett Kobek review – the best ‘bad novel’ around | Iknow, right? Who doesn’t? We all hate the internet, even as we can no longer imagine life without it, unless we’re one of those people who go ostentatiously offline for a few months and then write a lengthy report about internet-free life that is posted to the internet so we can read it and carry on hating the internet while still actually using it. I mean, you’re probably reading this on the internet. If you’re reading it in print you’ll probably get bored halfway through and check the internet on your phone in case there’s something more interesting to skim. Such is life.
This book about hating the internet calls itself a novel, and it is, in a way – it features (presumably) made-up characters saying (presumably) made- up things – but one of its manifold charms is that it repeatedly insists it is a “bad novel”. This is a good thing, at least in this bad novel’s satirically paranoid scheme, for it argues that the “good novel” – the American literary novel, “which paired pointless sex with ruminations on the nature of mortgages” – was an invention of the CIA, which funded influential magazines such as the Paris Review. Also, the narrator insists, literary novels of our day simply cannot handle the internet. They don’t know what to do with it. Their attempts to incorporate it are just embarrassing.
So, a bad novel, then: one that, it promises, will mimic the internet “in its irrelevant and jagged presentation of content”. Its heroine is 45-year-old Adeline, who is a bit famous because of some comic books she drew in the 1990s. The novel opens with her receiving rape and death threats on Twitter, as pretty much any woman will these days who expresses strong opinions on the internet. It then flicks back and forth between the present day and the 90s, filling in the backstory and introducing an agreeable supporting cast of writers and eccentrics hanging out in New York or San Francisco. There is a lot of smart, cynical chat, but not much in the way of dramatic suspense or well-formed story. Those things, after all, are for good novels.
What there is instead is a quite thrillingly funny and vicious anatomy of hi-tech culture and the modern world in general. The book’s governing rhetorical device is to explain everything about the world it is describing, as if to aliens, or to people far in the future after the collapse of our own civilisation. Thus: “Wars were giant parties for the ruling elites, who sometimes thought it might be great fun to make the poor kill each other.” Or: “Thomas Jefferson was the rare slave holder who enjoyed raping his property while writing declarations and essays and letters about the dignity of man.” Or: “The Internet was a wonderful invention. It was a computer network which people used to remind other people that they were awful pieces of shit.” (Such descriptions of the internet recur throughout the book, in an appallingly accurate running joke.)
Most contemptuously skewered are the Silicon Valley crowd. “Like many of the men who worked with technology in the information economy, Erik Willems had a deep affection for juvenile literature.” (He means works of fantasy, for example those by Tolkien or Ayn Rand.) Actual people are also named and mocked – Steve Jobs and Sheryl Sandberg, author of Lean In: she is “the billionaire who worked for Facebook and thought that the way women who weren’t billionaires could get respect in the workplace was to act more like the men that disrespected them in the workplace”. Most reviled of all is the libertarian ideology of tech’s flagwavers. “The illusion of the internet was the idea that the opinions of powerless people, freely offered, had some impact on the world. This was, of course, total bullshit… The only effect of the words of powerless people on the internet was to inflict misery on other powerless people.”
Eventually, this novel that is possibly only pretending to be a bad one (occasionally Jarett Kobek lets his guard slip and commits some literary beauty) culminates in a chapter explaining why the chapter that used to be in its place was a complete failure in its attempt to tie up all the book’s themes. In a rather virtuosic display of via negativa, the new chapter mentions lots of things that were in the old chapter that we can’t read, “Like a description of Thanksgiving as a holiday in which America celebrated the genocide of its indigenous peoples through the gathering of extended families for a meal during which young people were made to feel awkward by their elders expressing thoughts of casual racism and homophobia”. Or an explanation (quite convincing) of why the 20th-century comics industry is the perfect analogue for the 21st‑century media world.
Kobek has been compared to the French enfant terrible Michel Houellebecq by none other than Jonathan Lethem, the Brooklyn-based writer of “good novels”, though this book’s cleverly casual style, apparently eschewing literary artifice, reminded me much more of Kurt Vonnegut.
But it’s the enraged comedy of its cultural diagnosis that really drives the reader onwards. There are so many brilliant one-liner definitions that it’s hard not to keep quoting them. (“Science fiction was a dying genre in which writers with no personal understanding of the human experience posited many theoretical futures of the species.”) If Ambrose Bierce woke up today from suspended animation and decided to write a sequel to his Devil’s Dictionary in the form of a sort-of fiction, it would look a bit like this. And when a bad novel is this good, who needs a good one?
I Hate the Internet is published by Serpent’s Tail. To order a copy for £10.65 (RRP £12.99) go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/nov/16/week-in-britain | UK news | 2010-11-16T13:59:02.000Z | Derek Brown | Fairycakes and the national character | The government has at last caught up with the age-old truism that money can't buy happiness. It is proposing to measure our psychological and environmental wellbeing with detailed subjective surveys. The results will be an important influence on policy makers, alongside drier statistics such as gross domestic product.
The prime minister has long championed the idea of a wellbeing index. Back in 2006, when he was opposition leader, David Cameron told a conference: "Wellbeing can't be measured by money or traded in markets. It's about the beauty of our surroundings, the quality of our culture and, above all, the strength of our relationships. Improving our society's sense of wellbeing is, I believe, the central political challenge of our times."
To that end, the coalition is to task the independent national statistician, Jil Matheson, to draft questions to be added to the existing household survey by as early as next spring. The new data will be used alongside current measures to indicate our quality of life.
The exercise will draw on similar initiatives in France and Canada, but government sources say that the UK wants to go further than simply measuring subjective happiness by collecting more objective data, for example, on recycling and sustainability. It remains unclear how widespread the surveys will be, or how the sample will be broken down geographically and by socio-economic groups, but the findings are sure to offer rich pickings for interpreters of the national mood.
Pontin's calls it a day
Bad news for holidaymakers (if you enjoy seaside camps, that is): Pontin's has called in the administrators and could disappear from our coastline. The holiday camps firm has been in decline for years, and its demise was hastened by a devastating BBC documentary featuring dirt and squalor in at least two of the five remaining sites.
The firm was as British as fish and chips. Fred Pontin founded it in 1946, when war-weary Brits longed for an affordable break from austerity. As late as 1965, a week with full board at a Pontin's camp cost just £10 ($16), and up to the end the company offered extraordinarily cheap weekends and other bargain breaks.
Pontin's, alas, did not keep up with the times. It was battered by the growing taste for overseas holidays, and then by the recession, which made people stay at home. Unlike its more famous rival Butlins, which developed its sites into hotels and so-called holiday centres, it stuck to the old few-frills formula. The receivers still hope to find a buyer, but a new owner would have to have deep pockets and bottomless nostalgia for the 1950s and 60s.
Beaches improving
Good news for holidaymakers (if you like to take your clothes off): a record number of beaches in England and Wales have met the highest European standards for water quality this year.
Figures from the Environment Agency showed that 86.2% of bathing places met the grade set by the European commission. That is a tremendous increase since 20 years ago, when fewer than a third of beaches made the top grade.
Just 10 out of 493 beaches and other bathing places failed to meet the minimum EU standard this year, a slight increase from seven in 2009. But that year's excellent figures came after two miserable years of heavy rain and flooding flushed pollutants into the seas.
Attic art
It was, put simply, the sale of the century. A 40cm-high Chinese vase, sent for auction after a house clearance, has fetched £43m – probably the highest price ever paid for an auctioned Chinese work of art.
And art it certainly is. The stunningly beautiful 18th Qianlong dynasty vase is double-walled, so that a second vessel can be seen through the perforations in the exquisitely painted outer one. The owners were a brother and sister who had inherited it on the death of their parents. They were no doubt bucked when their local auction house in Pinner, Bainbridge's, put an estimate on the vase of between £800,000 and £1.1m.
But when it came to the day, the auction room was packed with wealthy Chinese collectors, all hell-bent on acquiring the unique treasure. The unnamed top bidder, said to be a private buyer, had to lash out £53,105,000, including value-added tax and a 20% buyer's premium. Don't all rush to the attic at once.
Beat the tweet
Paul Chambers, who tweeted a threat to blow up Robin Hood airport at Doncaster, has lost his appeal against his conviction for menace. Chambers used the Twitter social networking site to express his dismay when the airport was closed by bad weather last winter, a week before he was due to fly to Northern Ireland to meet the woman he now lives with.
"You've got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!" he wrote, later describing the sally as a "foolish prank". He was fined £1,000 and ordered to pay costs in his first court case. In his second, he was ordered to pay another £2,000 legal bill, after Judge Jacqueline Davies described the offending tweet as "menacing in its content and obviously so. It could not be more clear".
Even so, Chambers is considering yet another appeal, and if he does he will doubtless be supported by the Twitter community. After the latest hearing, the site was flooded with thousands of messages repeating the original 'joke' threat, complete with the hashtag #IamSpartacus, to show their solidarity with Chambers.
That's a lot of bricks
For what seems like the millionth time, the owners of Battersea power station on the south bank of the Thames have won planning permission for a £5.5bn revamp of the London landmark.
The old coal-fired power station has been derelict since it closed 27 years ago, but even in its sad, battered condition the cathedral-like pile has retained a good deal of public affection. There have been numerous attempts to redevelop the 16-hectare site, including one from the present owners, featuring a 300-metre tower.
That was blocked by London mayor Boris Johnson, who has yet to review the revised plan, capped at 60 metres. The redevelopment of the largest brick building in Europe will, it is said, create 3,400 homes and 15,000 jobs.
Base in Britain
Warner Brothers has become the first big Hollywood studio to have a permanent base in Britain since the 1940s. It has bought the Leavesden Studios outside Watford in Hertfordshire, which it has used for several years to film the wildly successful Harry Potter series of movies.
The company says it will invest £100m in the 70-hectare site. The film business is booming in Britain, in spite of the recession and the government's much-criticised plan to scrap the UK Film Council, which organises funding for British-made movies.
Warner's announced its plans for Leavesden after it was reassured that the coalition government had no plans to scrap the film tax credit scheme introduced by Gordon Brown. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/feb/18/newcastle-liverpool-premier-league-match-report | Football | 2023-02-18T19:41:08.000Z | Louise Taylor | Pope sent off for Newcastle as Núñez and Gakpo score in Liverpool’s victory | As dress rehearsals go it could hardly have been worse for Newcastle. Eight days before their long-awaited Carabao Cup final date with Manchester United, Eddie Howe’s team not only lost a Premier League game for only the second time this season but had Nick Pope sent off. The resultant suspension means the England goalkeeper will miss out on a Wembley appearance.
Newcastle remain fourth yet Liverpool, who beat them at Anfield in August, are now only six points and four places behind with a game in hand. Not that such encouraging statistics necessarily mean Jürgen Klopp’s side are totally renascent, let alone set to win the race for Champions League qualification.
Newcastle United 0-2 Liverpool: Premier League – as it happened
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Perhaps significantly there were long periods when the visitors and prolonged possession appeared strangers and Liverpool’s pressing was more Europop than heavy metal.
Tragically this was the day the music stopped for one north-east based family and it all began with a minute’s heartfelt applause for the former Newcastle and Ghana winger Christian Atsu who died in the Turkey-Syria earthquake. Atsu’s widow, Marie-Claire Rupio, had brought their three children to the ground and they witnessed an outpouring of emotion from Newcastle’s fans, players and backroom staff which emphasised precisely how much loved a 31-year-old described as “a beautiful person” by his final club, Hatayspor, was on Tyneside.
Atsu experienced some tough battles with Liverpool defenders during five years at St James’ Park and his old friends were soon up against it here when Trent Alexander-Arnold’s incisive 12th-minute through ball prefaced Darwin Núñez shooting, right footed, beyond Pope.
There was a suspicion of handball about the manner in which Núñez controlled Alexander-Arnold’s dropping delivery but a VAR review found no rule infringements and the goal stood.
Five minutes later Klopp was celebrating again. Liverpool’s second goal was a good one too. It all began with Stefan Bajcetic stealing possession from Sean Longstaff and concluded with a glorious chipped pass from Mohamed Salah precipitating Cody Gakpo’s shot punishing the advancing Pope. Again, a VAR review ensued but Gakpo had timed his run to perfection and there was no illegitimacy about his finish.
It was not the home goalkeeper’s day. In the 22nd minute Pope reminded the watching England manager, Gareth Southgate, that footwork is not his forte by dashing out of his area in an attempt to see off the danger posed by the onrushing Salah.
Nick Pope covers his face in disbelief after his red card for Newcastle. Photograph: Vagelis Georgariou/Action Plus/Shutterstock
Pope stooped to head the ball clear of the Egyptian but, instead, fell over, instinctively extended an arm and ended up handling outside the area. Anthony Taylor, the referee, had no hesitation in brandishing a red card.
It all meant that poor Elliot Anderson’s Premier League debut was restricted to just 23 minutes with the midfielder being sacrificed to allow Martin Dubravka to take over in goal.
Dubravka, though, cannot deputise for the suspended Pope after appearing for Manchester United in an earlier round of the League Cup during an early season loan stint at Old Trafford.
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Instead the former Liverpool keeper Loris Karius, currently Newcastle’s third choice, is in contention to play in his first big game since the 2018 Champions League final. Might redemption beckon for a man whose confidence was shattered by that showpiece?
Afterwards Howe said Pope was “visibly upset” by “a huge blow for us” and revealed that he had still to decide whether Karius or Newcastle’s supposed fourth choice keeper, Mark Gillespie, will start at Wembley.
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Howe’s 10 men caused their guests problems and Alisson needed to be at his best to tip a shot from Allan Saint-Maximin, who had turned Andy Robertson inside out, on to the crossbar while a Dan Burn header subsequently struck the same piece of woodwork but Salah, in particular, was impressing on the break.
Yet Howe, whose side are now without a win in their last four league games, could take heart from an outstanding, indefatigable, performance on the part of the recently out-of-sorts Saint-Maximin who combined very well with Alexander Isak. Tellingly, the Frenchman’s delivery prompted Isak to send a shot swerving narrowly over the bar following a defence-disorientating swivel as Liverpool began losing their way – along with the ball – in a second half Klopp did not seem to relish watching.
Or at least not until Newcastle finally ran out of steam and Geordie thoughts turned to Wembley. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jul/17/labour-mps-urge-starmer-rethink-two-child-benefit-cap-npf | Politics | 2023-07-17T19:40:57.000Z | Pippa Crerar | Labour MPs urge Starmer to rethink two-child benefit cap decision | Keir Starmer’s decision not to scrap the two-child benefit cap if Labour wins power has exposed deep splits within the party, as he faces mounting calls to rethink the policy.
Facing the prospect of a battle at this week’s national policy forum (NPF) over the controversial decision, shadow cabinet ministers were sent out to defend his position. They argued that if Labour wanted to appear fiscally credible at the next election, it could not make any spending commitments without saying how they would be funded.
But at a bad-tempered meeting of the parliamentary Labour party on Monday, almost every question to the deputy leader, Angela Rayner, was about Starmer’s stance on the two-child benefit limit. Some frustrated MPs called it a mistake and urged party leaders to reconsider.
Senior party figures, including Anas Sarwar, the leader of the Labour party in Scotland, which sets its own policy, publicly broke ranks and suggested they would fight the policy, while several shadow cabinet ministers said they were “despairing” at the decision.
The Labour leader faces further challenges to his stance at the NPF, a key meeting that is part of the manifesto process. Sources said that “multiple” amendments to scrap the cap had been tabled to draft policies.
On a difficult day for Starmer, a leftwing regional mayor who has been blocked from being Labour’s candidate for the north-east mayoralty announced that he was quitting the party to try to run as an independent.
Jamie Driscoll said in a statement on Monday that “people are tired of being controlled by Westminster and party HQs” as he hit out at Starmer over broken pledges.
Keir Starmer told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg on Sunday that Labour was ‘not changing that policy’. Photograph: Jeff Overs/BBC/Reuters
However, it was Starmer’s confirmation on Sunday that Labour was “not changing” the two-child benefit cap policy, which has been widely criticised as unfair, cruel and ineffective, and one of the biggest drivers of child poverty, that caused him the biggest headache.
Sarwar said he would press him to scrap the two-child limit. “We continue to believe that it exacerbates poverty, and we continue to believe that it needs to change,” he told the Daily Record.
“What we recognise is, an incoming Labour government will inherit economic carnage, and that means we will not be able to do everything we want, and we won’t be able to do everything as fast as we want.
“But we will continue to press any incoming UK Labour government to move as fast as they can within our fiscal rules to remove this heinous policy.”
Meg Hillier, the Labour MP for Hackney South and Shoreditch, and chair of the Commons public accounts committee, told the BBC: “Well, I was never comfortable about having the child benefit cap come in … Personally, I’d be lobbying for a lifting of that.”
Rosie Duffield, the Labour MP for Canterbury, who is on the centre-right of the party, responded to Starmer’s comments by describing the two-child policy as “one of the most unpleasant pieces of legislation ever to have been passed in the UK”.
She tweeted: “It’s very rare for someone to enter the House of Commons having been on tax credits, but myself and a few others did in 2017; scrapping this cruel policy was one of our shared political motives.”
One Labour frontbencher said that even if the policy was popular with focus groups, it was “toxic, morally wrong and doesn’t work”. Other MPs, including those who backed Starmer’s leadership bid, said there was a lot of unhappiness across the party.
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House of Commons library research last week showed that scrapping the cap would lift 270,000 households out of poverty at a cost of £1.4bn.
Experts said the two-child benefit limit, which restricts welfare payments to larger families in an attempt to force parents to find work, has failed to increase employment levels – but left hundreds of thousands of households in poverty.
However, senior Labour figures are anxious about the Conservatives “totting up” any promises they make before the election as unfunded spending commitments, as they did to brutal effect before the 1992 general election.
The shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, told Sky News that Labour needed to “be clear about what we can fund”, adding that “anything that we might want to change, anything we might not like that the Tories have done, we’ve still got to say how we’d fund it”.
Sources close to Starmer said his view on the policy – which he said in 2020 he wanted to scrap to help “tackle the vast social injustice in our country” – had not changed, but that he was not willing to make pledges without saying how they would be funded.
One said: “You can’t on one hand say that you want fiscal responsibility and on the other say there’s all these things you want to do but not how you’ll pay for them.”
Shadow cabinet ministers, some of whom have been publicly scathing about the two-child cap during Starmer’s three years as leader, are said to have raised concerns directly with him. One source said he could revisit the policy when public finances improve.
However, Starmer will come under further pressure when Labour MPs, members and unions meet at the NPF in Nottingham to thrash out draft policy as part of the manifesto process. Proposed additions include commitments to ending “punitive” benefit sanctions.
The shadow welfare secretary, Jonathan Ashworth, who last month described the policy as “heinous”, will chair a session where NPF members will thrash out “consensus language” on the party’s position, but without a vote, on the two-child limit. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/aug/25/michael-parkinson-suffered-impostor-syndrome-son-says | Media | 2023-08-25T04:00:12.000Z | Rachel Hall | Michael Parkinson suffered from ‘impostor syndrome’, son says | Michael Parkinson’s son has said the broadcaster suffered from “impostor syndrome” and “working-class guilt” over the shift from growing up in a mining town to becoming a celebrity interviewer.
Mike Parkinson said his father was less self-confident than he appeared, and had struggled with feelings of insecurity and “constantly questioning himself” despite his media success.
Michael, known for his intimate interviews with the world’s biggest celebrities, including Muhammad Ali, John Lennon and Dame Helen Mirren, on his famous BBC chatshow Parkinson, died earlier this month aged 88.
He was born in South Yorkshire in 1935 and grew up in a council house in Cudworth, near Barnsley.
Speaking to John Wilson on BBC Radio 4’s obituaries programme Last Word, Mike Parkinson said his father had remained “still very class-ridden” despite his fame.
Mike, a TV producer, said: “There were people in positions of authority, at the BBC, that were questioning his talent, questioning his right to be an interviewer. He was always acutely aware that he was with people that he felt were brighter than
him, were more educated than him.”
Despite going on to success at Granada Television and ITV, Michael harboured “an innate distrust of the establishment” and had “no interest in politics”, believing that the political system had mistreated people like his father, who worked as a miner, Mike said.
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An all-time great: how Michael Parkinson changed British television
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He said: “He wasn’t interested in politics … he was interested in policy. He always was quite suspicious of people who wanted power for power’s sake. What he was was very socially aware, and he was very political in that sense. And he always carried it through life – incredibly principled about things. Even to the end of his days he was very principled.”
Mike added that, despite his anti-establishment views, his father had accepted a knighthood from the Queen in 2008 because he felt it meant something to his parents. “In the end, he couldn’t honestly turn down something that would have made his father in heaven smile and beam with pride, and also not allow his mum to have a day at the palace.”
Michael was especially proud of his writing and journalism, after starting out in local papers in Yorkshire before moving to Fleet Street. “It gave him the most pleasure and it gave him the most feeling of satisfaction. He always said that ‘the day job was journalism, the fun job was interviewing’, because he loved it,” his son said.
After Michael’s death, tributes poured in from around the world from fans and high-profile figures, many of whom had been guests on Parkinson. He was hailed as being “beyond region or class” and “irreplaceable” by the broadcaster David Attenborough, the former cricket umpire Dickie Bird and the actor Michael Caine.
Mike Parkinson said the family had struggled to find space for their own grief. “The difficulty with having a public figure as a father is that you feel you can’t grieve until everyone else has. It’s a silly thing to say, but that’s the truth – you feel that everyone else must express what they feel about him because he meant so much to them.”
He thought this was because his father had been “a selfless man” who spent his career making “other people look good”.
He said: “As a family, it’s hard because your experience is overshadowed by noise and an outpouring that you feel almost that you have to step back from and allow that to happen, and allow that wave to subside. And then you, as a family, can remember him as a father, as a husband.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2021/nov/15/san-marino-england-world-cup-2022-qualifying-match-report | Football | 2021-11-15T21:56:32.000Z | David Hytner | England confirm World Cup 2022 spot with 10-goal demolition of San Marino | It was a night when it felt prudent at an early juncture to consult the record books. What was England’s biggest ever win? Because it was in real danger of being overhauled as Gareth Southgate’s team cut San Marino to shreds.
In the end, the 13-0 victory over Ireland from 1882 would survive but this was a beating that even San Marino, the international game’s lowest ranked side, will remember for an awfully long time.
There had been a power cut a few hours before kick-off at the Olympic Stadium, plunging everything into darkness, but it was superseded by an awesome surge, with Harry Kane, inevitably, leading the England charge.
‘Queuing up to score’: Southgate hails hunger of his 10-goal England team
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The captain, who had begged Southgate to start him and got his wish, plundered four goals in 15 minutes leading up to half-time, including two penalties, meaning that he moved to 48 for his country – five shy of Wayne Rooney’s record. On the back on his hat-trick in last Friday’s 5-0 win over Albania at Wembley, Kane became only the fourth England player to score three or more in consecutive appearances. He also set a new mark for goals in a calendar year with 16.
There was a moment with about 10 minutes to go when the big screen, briefly, stopped showing the time, making those present wonder whether it was a ploy to end things early. It was that painful for San Marino and it was a struggle to accommodate the names of all the England scorers.
England were always going to win to rubber-stamp direct qualification to the World Cup finals in Qatar next year, with the only question concerning the margin. Were it not for VAR, it might have been even more, further imperilling the Ireland result, with Jude Bellingham and the substitute, Tammy Abraham, having goals ruled out.
Emile Smith Rowe celebrates after scoring his first England goal to make it 7-0. Photograph: Antonio Calanni/AP
There were first England goals for Emile Smith Rowe and Tyrone Mings, with Harry Maguire, Abraham and Bukayo Saka also getting in on the act. Filippo Fabbri also put through his own goal. Southgate substituted Kane just after the hour, joking that had he left him on, “we’d have had Rooney’s family on the phone” and San Marino were forced to play out the final 22 minutes with 10 men, after having Dante Rossi sent off.
England’s superiority all over the pitch was so pronounced that it was almost uncomfortable. Saka, who started at left wing-back but played as an auxiliary winger, gave everyone he came up against a torrid time, blazing a trail with his pace and directness. It was easy to fear the very worst for San Marino, especially when VAR made a surprise intervention midway through the first half.
Phil Foden had gone close with a scissor kick and nobody inside the stadium noticed anything untoward. But the all-seeing eye had spotted the ball slamming into the hand of Rossi. “Fuck VAR,” came the cry from the crowd. And this was the England fans. Kane went up the middle with the penalty.
England’s young guns add verve and meaning to an absurd mismatch
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That made it 3-0, with Maguire having opened the scoring with a meaty header from Foden’s corner – San Marino’s Motherwell-tribute shirts having parted obligingly – then Fabbri stuck out a leg to divert Saka’s shot past his own goalkeeper.
Kane was in no mood to show even the slightest bit of mercy. That is just not a part of the 28-year-old’s makeup. Smith Rowe, working to good effect up the inside left channel, cut back for Kane to steer a first-time shot into the far corner for 4-0 and it was almost incongruous to see Aaron Ramsdale, on his debut, forced to make a scrambling save to deny Nicola Nanni on 33 minutes.
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Kane’s second penalty was for a second handball, this one much more obvious by Alessandro D’Addario, and he duly walloped the kick into the roof of the net, while his fourth was lovely. He danced into heavy congestion inside the area and seemed to freeze-frame the San Marino defenders one by one with his quick feet. The finish was guided into the far corner.
Southgate’s starting 3-4-3 system had represented a statement and it was easy to feel that if he was using it against San Marino, it might be here to stay for Qatar.
He did reconfigure to 4-4-2 for the second half, introducing Conor Gallagher for his debut in central midfield, and there would be further shifts of shape as more substitutes came on.
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As well as everything else, it was England’s physicality that stood out. It was on another level, with Kalvin Phillips, for example, winning his challenges with consummate ease. It was men against boys, pros against non-leaguers – and at least a couple of steps down at that level.
Abraham lifted a good chance high before touching back cutely for Smith Rowe to ram home the seventh and every England player wanted to get in on the act, Southgate revelling in the refusal to relent.
Gallagher should have scored from close range and, after Rossi was sent off for pulling him back, Mings met Trent Alexander-Arnold’s free-kick for the eighth. Abraham and Saka would complete the rout It was England’s biggest win since 1964. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/nov/19/how-tech-leaders-delivered-us-into-evil-john-naughton | Opinion | 2017-11-19T07:00:54.000Z | John Naughton | How a half-educated tech elite delivered us into evil | John Naughton | One of the biggest puzzles about our current predicament with fake news and the weaponisation of social media is why the folks who built this technology are so taken aback by what has happened. Exhibit A is the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, whose political education I recently chronicled. But he’s not alone. In fact I’d say he is quite representative of many of the biggest movers and shakers in the tech world. We have a burgeoning genre of “OMG, what have we done?” angst coming from former Facebook and Google employees who have begun to realise that the cool stuff they worked on might have had, well, antisocial consequences.
Put simply, what Google and Facebook have built is a pair of amazingly sophisticated, computer-driven engines for extracting users’ personal information and data trails, refining them for sale to advertisers in high-speed data-trading auctions that are entirely unregulated and opaque to everyone except the companies themselves.
The purpose of this infrastructure was to enable companies to target people with carefully customised commercial messages and, as far as we know, they are pretty good at that. (Though some advertisers are beginning to wonder if these systems are quite as good as Google and Facebook claim.) And in doing this, Zuckerberg, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and co wrote themselves licences to print money and build insanely profitable companies.
It never seems to have occurred to them that their engines could be used to deliver ideological and political messages
It never seems to have occurred to them that their advertising engines could also be used to deliver precisely targeted ideological and political messages to voters. Hence the obvious question: how could such smart people be so stupid? The cynical answer is they knew about the potential dark side all along and didn’t care, because to acknowledge it might have undermined the aforementioned licences to print money. Which is another way of saying that most tech leaders are sociopaths. Personally I think that’s unlikely, although among their number are some very peculiar characters: one thinks, for example, of Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel – Trump’s favourite techie; and Travis Kalanick, the founder of Uber.
So what else could explain the astonishing naivety of the tech crowd? My hunch is it has something to do with their educational backgrounds. Take the Google co-founders. Sergey Brin studied mathematics and computer science. His partner, Larry Page, studied engineering and computer science. Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard, where he was studying psychology and computer science, but seems to have been more interested in the latter.
Why Facebook is in a hole over data mining
John Naughton
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Now mathematics, engineering and computer science are wonderful disciplines – intellectually demanding and fulfilling. And they are economically vital for any advanced society. But mastering them teaches students very little about society or history – or indeed about human nature. As a consequence, the new masters of our universe are people who are essentially only half-educated. They have had no exposure to the humanities or the social sciences, the academic disciplines that aim to provide some understanding of how society works, of history and of the roles that beliefs, philosophies, laws, norms, religion and customs play in the evolution of human culture.
We are now beginning to see the consequences of the dominance of this half-educated elite. As one perceptive observer Bob O’Donnell puts it, “a liberal arts major familiar with works like Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty, or even the work of ancient Greek historians, might have been able to recognise much sooner the potential for the ‘tyranny of the majority’ or other disconcerting sociological phenomena that are embedded into the very nature of today’s social media platforms. While seemingly democratic at a superficial level, a system in which the lack of structure means that all voices carry equal weight, and yet popularity, not experience or intelligence, actually drives influence, is clearly in need of more refinement and thought than it was first given.”
All of which brings to mind CP Snow’s famous Two Cultures lecture, delivered in Cambridge in 1959, in which he lamented the fact that the intellectual life of the whole of western society was scarred by the gap between the opposing cultures of science and engineering on the one hand, and the humanities on the other – with the latter holding the upper hand among contemporary ruling elites. Snow thought that this perverse dominance would deprive Britain of the intellectual capacity to thrive in the postwar world and he clearly longed to reverse it.
Snow passed away in 1980, but one wonders what he would have made of the new masters of our universe. One hopes that he might see it as a reminder of the old adage: be careful what you wish for – you might just get it. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/aug/27/the-by-zadie-smith-review-a-trial-and-no-errors | Books | 2023-08-27T06:00:13.000Z | Abhrajyoti Chakraborty | The Fraud by Zadie Smith review – a trial and no errors | Early on in Zadie Smith’s exuberant new novel, Eliza Touchet – the housekeeper, cousin by marriage and sometime lover of the Victorian novelist William Ainsworth – wonders why fictional characters and events are often pale facsimiles of their real-life inspirations. Ainsworth, for instance, can’t help basing a minor character on Mrs Touchet every now and again – be it as a dark-haired “mystery woman” in his first book of stories (“She was not, perhaps, what many might call beautiful, but I never knew anyone who possessed so much the power of interesting at a first look”), or a certain Mrs Radcliffe in one of his late novels, “with her ‘rich black tresses’, decided opinions, Amazonian height and skill with a horsewhip”.
In his mid-60s, Ainsworth has churned out a novel partly set in Jamaica, Hilary St Ives, though he’d never once visited the island. Mrs Touchet can trace back the gist of his knowledge about Jamaica to a propaganda booklet of the 1820s, when much of England could delude themselves into thinking that the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade in 1808 was tantamount to the freedom of enslaved populations in British colonies. Ainsworth ignored the regular reports of tragic rebellions and vengeful colonial reprisals coming out of the Caribbean in the decades since to paint a prelapsarian portrait of “long savannahs fringed with groves of cocoa-trees”. Eliza finds this entire business of borrowing, and omitting, recognisable details from life rather stale: “From such worn cloth and stolen truth are novels made. More and more the whole practice wearied her, even to the point of disgust.” Years later, Eliza goes on to write a novel of her own – the theme is noticeably more contemporary than her cousin’s compulsive efforts.
The Claimant in the Tichborne case arriving in court in 1871. Illustration: Chronicle/Alamy
Fans of Smith will pick up on the familiar laundry of her sensibility within the first few pages of The Fraud: the boisterous narrative intelligence; the ear for dialogue; the chronic absence of boring sentences. I’d wager that this is her funniest novel yet and the best lines are all at Ainsworth’s expense: “Even as an adolescent, William fatally overestimated the literary significance of weather.” Or this one, about his onanistic writing process: “He always appeared entirely satisfied with every line.”
In reality, Ainsworth was once hailed as “the English Victor Hugo”, and one of his novels even outsold Dickens’s Oliver Twist. Smith captures him in his dotage, after the money has dried up, forcing his family to change houses every few years. His novels, more than two dozen of them, have fallen out of print, and publishers aren’t too keen to “look over” his new manuscript. He has recently knocked up a maidservant from Stepney, Sarah – who happens to be a decade younger than Ainsworth’s three daughters from his first marriage – and it falls on Mrs Touchet to make arrangements for a hasty wedding at the local Anglican church. Ainsworth did indeed have a housekeeper named Eliza Touchet, who died around the time The Fraud begins, in 1869. Smith reimagines her as a late-in-life novelist, a Catholic, an abolitionist, an observer of the London literary scene in the 1830s, a chronicler of the discernible changes in English society through the 1870s – someone who both belongs and doesn’t belong to the establishment.
At the centre of the novel, however, is another bit of “stolen truth”: the Tichborne case, still among the longest trials in English legal history. Sometime in 1866, a cockney-speaking butcher in Australia claimed he was Sir Roger Tichborne, heir to the Tichborne baronetcy, presumed to be lost at sea years ago. The Claimant, as he came to be known, was 200 pounds heavier than Sir Roger, couldn’t speak a word of French (Tichborne’s first language as a child), and yet the fact that he became an icon for the working classes was a testament to not just the capitalistic turn of 19th-century Britain, but also its venal dependence on slavery, indentured labour and other forms of colonial exploitation. In the novel, Sarah, the new Mrs Ainsworth, is fervid in her belief in the Claimant’s upper-class antecedents. Accompanying her to the trial, Eliza is amused by her uncouth comments and begins to understand that the masses don’t see the butcher from Wagga Wagga as an impostor, but as someone deserving of a fair day in court. The Claimant’s staunchest witness is one Andrew Bogle, a servant of the Tichbornes, formerly enslaved in a Jamaican plantation. His family story – how the Bogles went from being “high-born men” in an African village to captive overseers in a sugar estate – unfolds over 100 pages midway through the novel.
Every few pages I was struck by how light the novel feels, despite its length and epic themes
Smith presents a coruscating picture of twin societies in flux, the ways in which 19th-century England and Jamaica were “two sides of the same problem, profoundly intertwined”, joined at the hip by Andrew Bogle’s “secret word”: slavery. But she is also devastatingly good on the lesser delusions, the ways in which we are consistently blind to our own privileges. We see Ainsworth raucously debate the abolition of slavery with Charles Dickens, William Thackeray and other prominent literary men in his Kensal Lodge drawing room, while Mrs Touchet quietly refills their glasses with port. For years, the young Ainsworth disappears abroad, apparently to do “research” in Rome, leaving the women – his first wife, Anne Frances, and Eliza – to take care of the household. Decades later, he can’t understand why Eliza likes Middlemarch: “No adventure, no drama, no murder… Is this all that these modern ladies’ novels are to be about? People?” How could he? He has spent much of his life avoiding people, passing off almost all his responsibilities to women.
The late Martin Amis once wrote about Middlemarch that it is a “novel without weaknesses”. You might say something similar about The Fraud, except perhaps Andrew Bogle occasionally feels a bit two-dimensional, too benevolent. The first time Eliza sees him in court, she thinks he has an “honest” face, and the reader has no subsequent reason to disagree with her assessment. He is the one simple soul in a story otherwise littered with complicated portraits. Every few pages I was struck by how light the novel feels, despite its length and epic themes. The short chapters glide tellingly between decades and scenes.
The Fraud by Zadie Smith is published by Hamish Hamilton (£20). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/apr/14/bhutan-face-difficult-task-to-continue-their-2018-world-cup-adventure | Football | 2015-04-14T10:46:54.000Z | Guardian sport | Bhutan face difficult task to continue their 2018 World Cup adventure | Bhutan have been handed a difficult group in their attempt to qualify for the 2018 World Cup in Russia after being paired with China, Hong Kong, Maldives and Qatar.
The remote Himalayan kingdom, which started the first round of qualifiers as the world’s worst team, according to Fifa rankings, battled past Sri Lanka over two legs to make it to the second round. Bhutan’s ranking has since risen from 209 to 163 but they will be up against it having been drawn in a difficult group with the world’s most populous nation and the 2022 World Cup hosts.
Elsewhere, the Asian champions Australia will face Jordan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Bangladesh after the draw was made in Kuala Lumpur on Tuesday.
South Korea, runners-up at this year’s Asian Cup, fared well, drawn in the same group as Kuwait, Lebanon, Burma and Laos. Japan were drawn in Group E with Syria, Afghanistan, Singapore and Cambodia, while Iran, Asia’s top-ranked country, ended up in Group D with Oman, India, Turkmenistan and Guam.
The 40 teams that made the second round were split into eight groups of five. Each country will play home and away against the other sides in their group. The second round starts in June and runs until March next year.
The eight group winners and the four best runners-up will advance to the next stage of World Cup qualifying in Asia. They will also qualify automatically for the 2019 Asian Cup in United Arab Emirates.
The teams that miss out will go into another phase of Asian Cup qualifiers. | Full |
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