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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/25/everyone-was-in-the-streets-i-just-felt-happiness-portugal-recalls-the-carnation-revolution | World news | 2024-04-25T05:00:18.000Z | Clea Skopeliti | ‘Everyone was in the streets. I just felt happiness’: Portugal recalls the Carnation Revolution | At 4am on 25 April 1974, Filipe Villard Cortez got the signal. He barricaded the door of the Monte Real air base commander’s room and cut his phone line. A few hours earlier, Portugal’s Carnation Revolution had begun.
Cortez was 21 at the time, a commissioned air force officer who wanted the democratisation of Portugal and the end of its colonial rule. In the weeks before the revolution, he had become involved in meetings with the Armed Forces Movement (MFA) – the group that instigated the military coup that toppled Portugal’s authoritarian Estado Novo regime, ending its war to prevent independence in Angola, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique.
Filipe Villard Cortez in the early 1970s. Photograph: Guardian Community
After Cortez stationed soldiers at the commander’s door, air force generals contacted the base, instructing the squad to fly over Lisbon. “We refused, saying there was fog, which was totally bogus – an air raid would have destroyed half of Lisbon. I think then the generals pretty much realised it was a lost situation,” remembered Cortez, now 71 and a retired airline captain in Sintra.
“The most operational base was ours – if we were with the MFA, it meant that was it. The whole thing collapsed that day.”
Portugal on Thursday marks 50 years since the non-violent Carnation Revolution which brought down the fascist Estado Novo regime and led to the liberation of Portugal’s colonies. While the 50th anniversary will be celebrated across the country, it comes against the backdrop of an election last month that returned 50 members of the far-right Chega party to the Portuguese parliament.
The recent success of Portugal’s far right was on Anabela Brito’s mind as she prepared to head out to the streets of Lisbon on Thursday – like she did 50 years ago. “I was there when Marcelo went down in Largo do Carmo,” she said, referring to the capitulation of prime minister Marcelo Caetano at the main military police station in the capital on the day of the coup.
Brito was a student in 1974, and a member of a leftwing political party. In the days before the revolution, she had heard that a coup was coming. “At 2am, I received a phone call and they said: ‘It’s now, they’re in the streets.’ On the TV and radio, they were saying stay at home – but people didn’t listen. Everyone was in the streets. I just felt happiness.”
She said the fight continues in Portugal for housing and a robust public health service among other issues, noting amid Chega’s rise that “the far right knows how to profit from these problems”.
Residents of Lisbon’s Boa Vista district stand in front of a building sprayed with slogans of the Portuguese Workers’ Communist party shortly after the revolution. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
Student Afonso Filipe also recognised the importance of commemorating the day. At 21, Filipe’s knowledge of the Estado Novo regime and the revolution comes largely from stories his grandparents have passed down; his grandfather, who was stationed in Mozambique in 1974, has told him of his elation on hearing the news of the coup, while his grandmother described Lisbon’s streets as “full of people cheering – almost like a parade with the military leading the charge”.
“This year, I will walk down the Avenida da Liberdade, something that many people and all the leftwing parties do,” he said. Amid the rise of Chega, Filipe believed “it’s important to make a stand and show that we, as a country, will not allow them to pass and make all the sacrifices our grandparents [made] useless”.
Filipe was concerned that the memory of the regime was fading from younger generations in Portuguese society. “Today I live in a free country, capable of expressing myself. I have the liberty that my grandparents didn’t have,” he said. “Sadly, [some in] Portugal don’t know what the last regime did and were. My concern is that people forget the good that democracy brought.”
But life remains tough for many young people in Portugal, with soaring housing costs, particularly in Lisbon, and comparably low salaries. “Sadly, the reality is that it is becoming harder to work and live in Lisbon. Even people like me, that love the capital, have to seriously think about [moving]. I still remain hopeful that I am wrong and that the government will be able to fix these problems,” he said.
Maria Carneiro, a 35-year-old arts manager in Lisbon, agreed that the election had cast a shadow over the anniversary. “We’ve come all this way symbolically, and this year was meant to be a year of joy and celebration … Then the election had this [result] of the far right having a big presence in parliament,” she said. “The celebrations are a little haunted.”
Maria Carneiro’s mother writing a letter to her brother in Angola in the early 1970s during Portugal’s colonial war. Photograph: Maria Carneiro
She added: “I think people feel very disappointed at the political class – there are issues of corruption, transparency and accountability The average 35-year-old like me, we’re not very hopeful of future – we have very low salaries, live in a city that’s very expensive. We went through our first big economic crisis in 2010, made it, got jobs in 2015 – but then our salaries didn’t go up and prices are rising all the time. We feel a bit trapped.”
But she stressed the tangible legacy of the revolution. “Without the revolution, I would probably be at home and couldn’t have studied abroad. I still hear a lot of stories in the first person – people who were in jail or had to move abroad.”
Tiago Silva, a 39-year-old software developer in Porto, described himself as a “product of one of the revolution’s most significant triumphs”. “As the first person in my working-class family to complete a university education, culminating with a master’s degree, I embody the opportunities that were scarcely imaginable before 25 April 1974. The generation before mine, the ones who actively participated in and were shaped by the revolution, experienced a Portugal that was very different from the one I know.
“Their youth was marked by mandatory conscription and the turmoil of a fading empire, with many, including my uncles, sent to fight in colonial wars across Africa in their 20s. My uncles experienced long-lasting trauma. Both had trouble adapting when they came back and they never were properly supported by the government,” he said. Silva is grateful that, in contrast, his 20s were spent “navigating algorithms instead of battlegrounds”.
Portuguese sailors, with carnations on their uniforms and in their gun barrels, stand guard in Lisbon on 29 April 1974. Photograph: Bettmann/Getty Images
Life in Portugal today is not perfect, he said, and economic difficulties continue to plague the country in particular. “But before the revolution, I have a picture of a country that was really behind compared with the rest of Europe. What I see now is a country open to the world.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/healthcare-network/2015/may/13/physiotherapist-uses-laughter-to-tackle-taboos | Healthcare Professionals Network | 2015-05-13T12:14:52.000Z | Linda Jackson | Physiotherapist uses laughter to tackle taboos | Comedian Elaine Miller walks across the stage, picks up the mike and tells how she used to wet her pants – frequently. To howls of laughter, she says: “One day it was really bad, I was standing on my neighbour’s doorstep and suddenly there was this tsunami.”
Her show, Gusset Grippers, won an award for the weirdest act at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2013. But prizes mean nothing to the part-time physiotherapist, who is using laughter to tackle the taboo surrounding urinary incontinence.
Drawing on her own experience, Miller is on a mission to help the one in three women in the UK with the condition, in what is seen as a silent epidemic. Figures from the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (CSP) show that three-quarters of women with the condition have never sought help from a health professional; 56% felt too embarrassed with the problem; and 16% felt ashamed.
Yet urinary incontinence is easily treatable with exercises designed to strengthen the pelvic floor – muscles designed to support the internal organs. Miller (42) says: “I had three children in four years and after my third baby I just wet myself every time I laughed, coughed or sneezed.”
The answer was three different pelvic floor exercises, three times a day. While Miller’s condition improved, a chance conversation at the school gate highlighted how little women knew about the benefits of the exercises, so she decided to use humour to sell the message.
It is something Miller feels passionate about: she hopes to take part in a research study about comedy and health; has developed a smartphone app reminding people when to do their pelvic floor exercises; and wants to see the exercises taught at school in sex education lessons.
For some women, seeing a physiotherapist who specialises in obstetric and gynaecological health can be the solution. There are about 700 in the UK working in the NHS and the private sector. Katie Mann, spokeswoman for the CSP’s pelvic obstetric and gynaecological physiotherapy professional network, says: “This is a huge problem, yet it gets trivialised. The media doesn’t talk about bladder leakage but refers to it as an ‘oops moment’, which can be addressed by using incontinence pads.
“We offer a personalised service and can see, using ultrasound, whether women are doing the exercises correctly: 50% of women can do the exercises following verbal instruction, but 50% get them wrong. That is why it can be useful to see a specialist.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2021/oct/24/manchester-united-liverpool-premier-league-match-report | Football | 2021-10-24T17:49:09.000Z | David Hytner | Mohamed Salah hits hat-trick as Liverpool thrash Manchester United | When the half-time whistle sounded, with Liverpool 4-0 up and everybody inside Old Trafford well aware that it could have been seven, the boos from the Manchester United fans rang out.
At half-time against Atalanta in the Champions League last Wednesday night, with United 2-0 down, there had been a volley of jeers before the support for the team and the manager, Ole Gunnar Solskjær, came through. United rallied to win 3-2.
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Not here. The boos were sustained in their intensity, the anger bubbling, and it was certainly a long and lonely walk for Solskjær back along the touchline and into the tunnel. At that moment, it felt as though we were witnessing the end of a manager who is well liked by the United diehards but has struggled to keep his head above increasingly choppy waters this season. Never in the Premier League era had the club been four goals down at home by the break.
The second half was played out to a soundtrack of goading from the travelling Liverpool fans. They chortled about Ole being at the wheel and chanted that he must stay. Their requests for a wave from him went unheeded.
Mohamed Salah scored his team’s fifth on 50 minutes – his third of another hay-making day – and at that point it seemed as if the final scoreline could have been anything. The feeling gathered pace when Paul Pogba, on as a half-time substitute for United, was sent off just after the hour for jumping into a nasty tackle on Naby Keïta. The Liverpool midfielder was carried off on a stretcher.
Liverpool, though, left it at that, which was a relief for Solskjær, as was the fact that the jeers from the crowd at full-time were not as vitriolic. Most of the Norwegian’s detractors had long since left the ground.
Paul Pogba walks off after he was given a red card for a foul on Naby Keïta. Photograph: Tom Jenkins/The Guardian
Liverpool were excellent. Again. They remain unbeaten this season and the statistics show they have scored a minimum of three goals in every away game, with Salah’s hat‑trick continuing his club‑record scoring run. It is now an astonishing 10 matches on the spin in which he has found the net.
For Solskjær and United, the humiliation was total. Liverpool pressed brilliantly and they were ruthless in the final third, shredding Solskjær’s gameplan early on, and some United fans were heading for the exits in the 38th minute when Salah added to goals from Keïta and Diogo Jota to make it 3-0.
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Sir Alex Ferguson was pictured in the stands, shaking his head slowly, and the only question on everybody lips was whether Solskjær could survive from here. United find themselves eight points behind the league leaders, Chelsea; the hoped-for title challenge in tatters before the clocks go back.
It was not as if this result had come out of nowhere, with United having got away with it on several occasions this season. But for David De Gea saves at Southampton, Wolves and West Ham, the team would already have been down a fistful of points. This was the day when everything fell apart and, after what was a heaviest home defeat against Liverpool, the board’s faith in Solskjær will be tested as never before.
Solskjær’s double pivot of Fred and Scott McTominay was overwhelmed, with Liverpool able to do pretty much whatever they wanted during a first-half that made the United fanbase squirm with embarrassment. Time and again, the visitors played up through the United lines. Where were the challenges, the pressure on the player in possession?
Mo Salah (left) celebrates with Trent Alexander-Arnold and Andy Robertson after putting Liverpool 4-0 up in added time at the end of the first half. Photograph: Tom Jenkins/The Guardian
The game might have been shaped differently had Bruno Fernandes not fluffed a glorious chance on four minutes, snatching at his shot when well placed, and Liverpool piled on the agony thereafter.
Keïta’s opener came after Luke Shaw had played Salah onside – the first sign that United’s last line was all over the place. Salah’s assist was simple and so was the finish and the second was probably the worst of the lot from a United point of view.
Harry Maguire got himself into a dreadful tangle with Shaw on the edge of the United area and it allowed Keïta to go wide for Trent Alexander-Arnold. He crossed low and hard; Jota, preferred to Sadio Mané, slid in unmarked at the far post.
When United had to defend, their supporters were left to watch through their fingers. Liverpool were quicker and smarter, and it almost went under the radar that Roberto Firmino missed two great chances in the first half and De Gea made a save to deny Salah.
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When Salah flicked in the third, following a Keïta cross and more statuesque defending, Sir Kenny Dalglish and Ian Rush could be seen almost doubled over with laughter in the posh seats.
Cristiano Ronaldo lost his head after he failed to beat Alisson from a Mason Greenwood pass and he kicked out at Curtis Jones, who had come on for the injured James Milner. Ronaldo was shown a yellow card. Liverpool responded by working yet another opening, which Salah finished off from Jota’s pass.
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Solskjær just wanted it to end – a darkly comic detail coming on 53 minutes when VAR ruled out a Ronaldo finish for a hairline offside. By then, Salah had run onto Jordan Henderson’s magnificent throughball to score again and it was all much for Pogba, who was dismissed after a VAR review.
De Gea would make a fine save to deny Alexander-Arnold. United had suffered enough. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/mar/17/taylor-swift-eras-best-album | Music | 2023-03-17T13:50:04.000Z | Shaad D'Souza | Taylor Swift eras deathmatch! Making the case for the superstar’s best album | Taylor Swift (2006)
Taylor Swift: Our Song – video
In a pair of cowboy boots, 16-year-old Taylor Swift stepped into Nashville’s country music scene, released her eponymous debut album and changed pop music. Swift’s debut is often written off for her excessive vocal twangs and banjo flourishes, but singles such as Tim McGraw, Teardrops on My Guitar and Our Song, which rocketed up both the country and pop charts in 2006, have stood the test of nearly two decades.
Many of the lyrical motifs that recur throughout Swift’s discography have roots in her debut: Cold as You’s pouring rain; Mary’s Song’s 2am time check; Our Song’s meta take on artistic inspiration. The sophisticated songwriting of her debut remains impressive but it was Swift’s expression of adolescent emotional intensity that connected with young listeners like me.
Today, with the likes of Olivia Rodrigo and Billie Eilish dominating pop, the idea of a teenager making music for other teenagers is commonplace. But in 2006, it was cohorts of middle-aged men who were writing the songs that represented the adolescent experience – the High School Musical soundtrack was the best-selling album of that year. For a generation, Swift’s debut was the first time we heard our experiences – painful loneliness, romantic yearning, even body dysmorphia – taken seriously in songwriting by one of our own. Katie Goh
Fearless (2008)
Taylor Swift: Fearless – video
Call the world’s great physicists and tell them to stop trying to invent a time-machine: it exists, and it is Swift’s second studio album, Fearless. Press play and you’re immediately transported back to high (OK, secondary) school, back to – as Swift herself puts it – “the bliss and devastation of youth”. Like school itself, the entire album feels like a cusp – not only was this an important step in Swift’s transition from country to pop, but the lyrics capture the push and pull of teenage life, a time when fairytales still seem possible but boys regularly lie about loving you.
Nowhere is this better reflected that in the song Fifteen, with a lyric so belt-able that you should be able to hook it through your jeans: “In your life, you’ll do things greater than dating the boy on the football team. But I didn’t know it at 15!” (And OK, elsewhere there is more than a little misogyny in this album – but it is the catchy kind!)
Also, we cannot and should not judge an artist’s greatest era by their hair, but it would be remiss not to shout out locks so golden and bouncy that you half expect three bears to storm the stage, promise to let Swift finish and tell her off for eating their porridge. There is a reason Fearless propelled an 18-year-old Swift to global superstardom and it’s because songs about fancying boys and them not fancying you back are the world’s greatest art form. I know it now – and I knew it at 15. Amelia Tait
Speak Now (2010)
Taylor Swift: Mean – video
Speak Now is the Fast & Furious of Swift albums: even its ballads move with a breakneck momentum. Largely forgoing the swooning country of Fearless in favour of driving, muscular power-pop, the songs here – written entirely by Swift, without co-writers – are finely and tightly constructed, heavy with tension and filled with surprising final-act perspective shifts. The near-seven-minute Dear John, a brutal and righteously vengeful assassination in ballad form, is just as spectacularly gripping as The Story of Us, a racing pop-punk kiss-off. Even the songs that are clear fantasies, such as the twee wedding-crashing title track, build to propulsive finales.
Swift in 2010. Photograph: Matt Sayles/AP
Each time I return to Speak Now, I find myself caught off-guard by just how exacting Swift’s knife was at this point in time. On Mean, she eviscerates critics with the same sharp, plainspoken poetics of her idol Natalie Maines of the Chicks. Enchanted pulls the wide-eyed fairytales of Fearless into the real world. Even the sneering pop-punk track Better Than Revenge – which has since been dinged by fans for its somewhat retrograde gender politics – is vastly better than it gets credit for, landing some brilliantly bratty blows (“No amount of vintage dresses gives you dignity”) and showing an early example of Swift’s skill for slipping into seemingly disparate genres at will.
Speak Now may be the forgotten middle child of Swift’s albums, landing right between beloved juggernauts Fearless and Red, but with each passing year it feels more and more like my favourite of her records: a breathless, exhilarating thrill ride. Shaad D’Souza
Red (2012)
Taylor Swift: I Knew You Were Trouble – video
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If Swift’s early-career flip of fairytale narratives had felt a little Disney, then Red is a Nora Ephron movie, assembling and magnifying precise details into swooping storytelling arcs. There’s a breathtaking sense of scale to its forward-thinking forays into EDM, dubstep and country-rock, with grand swells of emotion masterfully calibrated to hit pop’s bullseye. The notion of “happily ever after” is a false god, she had realised; what was real was to write a heroine bruised by love and holding on to fragments of hope, as she does on Begin Again. Or, in All Too Well, to deliver a relationship postmortem so richly devastating that Stanford university now runs a course on it.
She would later lean into villainy, but Swift during her Red era knew that a burn is most savage when masquerading as aloe: “Loving him is like driving a new Maserati down a dead-end street,” as she sings on the title track. And the album marks the birth of a Swiftian signature: the indelible goofy aside. There is no “I’m the problem it’s me” without We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together’s “like, ever”. It takes a 22-year-old’s brilliant audacity to claim a whole colour of the rainbow, and on Red, Swift seemed made of starlight, channelling intense emotion and creative hunger into her first truly great era. Owen Myers
1989 (2014)
Taylor Swift: Blank Space – video
When Swift announced 1989, she described it as her “very first documented, official pop album”. And what a pop album it is. Polished and precise, 1989 eschewed contemporary musical and cultural touchstones, its nostalgic bent towards stadium-sized power pop and crisp synthesised electronics helping Swift carve out her own niche in a landscape that was dominated by R&B crossover and EDM.
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While such grand musical vaults and gimlet-eyed determination to conquer the charts resulted in Swift dialling down some of the diaristic specificity found on Red, it also made for huge, all-encompassing choruses: the impeccable Italo disco of Style (one of her best songs), the swooning heartbeats of Wildest Dreams or the euphoric chorus of New Romantics. Swift’s storytelling also bled into the production: the fizziness of Blank Space, with its winking pen-click, allowed her to self-mythologise with humour rather than bitterness, while the musical world created in Out of the Woods transports you to the moment in her relationship when the brakes were hit too soon.
Of course, 1989 was also the slightly regrettable era of girl squads, feuds and “please welcome to the stage”. But it should be remembered for being Swift’s boldest musical leap. It’s a risk that few pop stars would take today. Alim Kheraj
Karma (2016)
Taylor Swift on the red carpet for the 2016 Met Gala. Photograph: Justin Lane/EPA
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Reputation (2017)
Taylor Swift: Look What You Made Me Do – video
When I first heard Look What You Made Me Do, the lead single from Reputation, I cringed. Gothic melodrama sounded so gauche on Swift: the lyrics’ emphatic cadence didn’t suit her voice, and its brattiness was completely out of sync with her usual ingratiating sleekness. In time, I realised that was part of its genius, especially when taken as part of Reputation. Made following Swift’s annus horribilis (backlash against her surface-y feminism and accusations that she was some sort of Trumpian accessory; her beef with Kim and Kanye pushed to boiling point) Reputation was a comic heel-turn that refigured Swift’s embattled persona as a panto villain. But her dragged-up sixth act ended up freeing her from some of the strictures – personally and societally imposed – that had landed her there in the first place.
Swift performing in 2017. Photograph: John Shearer/Getty Images for DIRECTV
Feeling hated gave Swift less to lose. It let her grow up: she discarded the likability and chasteness that had defined her career to take bigger swings, unleashing emotions she had previously held in: carnal desire, rage, unfettered vindictiveness, F-you-I’ll-take-my-ball-home. She tried out different voices and welded her songwriting to rap’s hard edges in a way that, unlike most pop star-goes-rap grifts, actually worked. On her next album Lover she would sing explicitly – and somewhat obviously – about the double standards that women face; but it’s more effective here, where you feel her anger in the deliciously petulant smack of I Did Something Bad, Don’t Blame Me and that furious lead single. (The big tantrum energy, at least on Reputation’s first half, feels pretty reasonable now when you think about what she was subjected to in the media.) It also generated her most fun live show, taking Kim Kardashian’s “snake” barb and blowing it up into a gigantic inflatable serpent called Karyn that loomed from the back of the stage.
Being at rock bottom, of course, also gave Swift everything to gain. Reputation dodges bitterness because of its devotional second half, where she seems stunned and grateful to have found love in the middle of all this angst. The gasping Dress (her first actually sexy song) and the joys of quiet privacy in New Year’s Day are among her very best. Swift thrives when she feels things extremely deeply, as she does here: Reputation is the flash of her armour and the wounded heart behind the breastplate; she lashes out but lacerates herself as much as anyone else. The title of Swift’s sixth album reflected on how perceptions of her had “never been worse” – but today she can stake her creative reputation on it. Laura Snapes
Lover (2019)
Taylor Swift: Lover – video
As the quote-tweets on that viral Wango Tango performance of Me! from 2018 can attest, Lover is not necessarily the album that most Swift fans are most desperate to hear live. Nevertheless, when you pluck away the layers of radioactive Kraft-slice cheese, Swift’s seventh effort is a record of endearing significance, a kitschy moment of triumph after she left her old record label, a move that prompted her to re-record her back catalogue.
Taylor Swift: ‘I was literally about to break’
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Shedding the reptilian skin of Reputation, Lover is all about rebirth, swapping moody revenge for synthy fun. Whether showing love to the LGBTQ+ community (You Need to Calm Down), poking fun at unhealthy gender norms (The Man) or espousing the virtues of dating someone British with knowing anglophone references (London Boy), Swift readily embraces sunshine and rainbows, leaning into the affirmation of newfound love.
There is some balance: Soon You’ll Get Better, about her mother’s cancer diagnosis, is a sobering moment of vulnerability, while the fragility of Cruel Summer, about the early dating stage of a relationship, is easily one of her finest songs, building to the kind of earnest staccato hook that is now her signature finishing move: “I don’t wanna keep secrets just to keep you!” Not every track is a must-hear but the beauty of Lover is what it brings to Swift’s sonic sandwich: texture, bite and a generous sprinkling of sugar. Jenessa Williams
Folklore and Evermore (2020)
Taylor Swift: Cardigan – video
At some point in the last decade, I resigned myself to the fact that I will follow wherever Swift leads me. Never has this been truer than on Folklore/Evermore, a two-album era containing many elements that I would usually find profoundly triggering – acoustic guitars! Self-conscious lowercase titles! Male vocalists! – yet continues to captivate me.
It didn’t hurt that Swift’s most introspective albums arrived during a time of great turmoil for me personally (yes, I am referring to the pandemic). But they also found her at her most relaxed. Minus the exhausting parade of Easter eggs and corporate tie-ins that preceded Lover, Swift’s surprise lockdown albums marked an unexpected but welcome handbrake turn. Whereas her storytelling had typically centred on autobiography, Folklore saw her expand her reach to encompass eccentric heiresses, murderous husbands and a three-song story arc about a teenage love triangle. (It is a testament to her evolution as a songwriter that listeners are as invested in the fictional Betty’s cardigan as they were in the much mythologised scarf of Red’s All Too Well.)
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Alim Kheraj
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Elsewhere, familiar themes – longing, the loss of innocence, the moral decrepitude of Scooter Braun – are accompanied by cinematic orchestrations and sweeping melodies, not to mention three career-best bridges on August, My Tears Ricochet and This Is Me Trying. Suddenly staying indoors didn’t seem so bad. Joe Stone
Midnights (2022)
Taylor Swift: Lavender Haze – video
Swift has made so many albums in so many different genres that comparing them is tough. But if you had to nominate one as her best, Midnights has a strong claim. It doesn’t have the immediate impact of the fizzing, angry Reputation or the sudden left-turn appeal of Folklore. It’s surprisingly subdued by modern pop standards: low on certified bangers, big on muted atmospherics (there’s even a hint of shoegaze about the guitars on Maroon) and restraint, as evidenced by the Lana Del Rey duet Snow on the Beach, which is so low-key that it upset Del Rey fans expecting a showstopping guest appearance.
But what it has in profusion is fantastic songs: You’re on Your Own Kid’s sharp depiction of the teenage Swift struggling to break out in Nashville; Anti-Hero’s small-hours self-loathing; the impressive combination of sweet tunefulness and spite on Karma. There are songs that display Swift’s skill as a writer – her depiction of a drunken conversation on Question…? suddenly speeds up and stops rhyming – and songs that deal in experimentation, not least the warping of her voice until it sounds male on Midnight Rain. It’s an album that doesn’t need to adhere to modern pop’s rules and standards because the material on it demonstrates Swift is miles ahead of her peers: a confident, mature victory lap. Alexis Petridis
What’s Swift’s best era? Don your fighting gloves and state your case in the comments. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2017/may/03/monaco-juventus-champions-league-semi-final-first-leg-match-report | Football | 2017-05-03T21:09:51.000Z | Dominic Fifield | Juventus set for Real in final after Gonzalo Higuaín double against Monaco | This was ruthless, a systematic and shrewdly executed dismantling of one of the brightest, young attacking sides in Europe. And it showcased everything that is impressive about Juventus. After 21 years in which they have come close only to stumble at the last too often, Italy’s dominant club side can sense a third European Cup is close, even if Real Madrid await in Cardiff next month.
An authoritative display on the Côte d’Azur, with Monaco dismissed in an arena where they have recently proved untouchable, has merely fuelled confidence. This side’s time seems close.
There is such conviction to Max Allegri’s players that they would surely not wilt even if confronted by Real’s current crop of seasoned galácticos. This team have struck the perfect balance between defensive surety and attacking pizzazz. They remain unbreached in the knockout phase of this year’s Champions League – five matches and contests with Barcelona and a normally irrepressible Monaco already played – and teased out their decisive goals every time the home side were just convincing themselves their own reward was imminent. There was strength at the back, bite on the break and in Gonzalo Higuaín, an £85m forward justifying his fee.
Monaco v Juventus: Champions League semi-final, first leg – as it happened
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The Argentinian’s double was neatly taken here while the Monaco defenders, always a split second behind the play as they heaved to suffocate Juve’s threat, gasped at the brutality of it all. “I fight so hard for these moments,” said Higuaín, who had scored only three times in Europe this season before this tie. “I’m delighted with the goals. I just had to stay calm and keep working hard, and it has paid off. But this isn’t over yet.”
That seemed diplomatic. More telling were the celebrations, hands linked with Juve players strung out in a line in front of a delirious away support, after the final whistle. Beating another of the most potent attacking forces in European competition felt like a statement of intent.
Giorgio Chiellini and Leonardo Bonucci were tested by Kylian Mbappé and Radamel Falcao, but they also demonstrated that canny, occasionally sly, ability to leave rival strikers with bruised egos as well as bodies. Mbappé, the home side’s brightest attacking force, will be a better player for having experienced this suffocation of his talent. Gianluigi Buffon was in a World Cup squad before the 18-year-old forward was born, but the Italy goalkeeper celebrated his 100th Champions League appearance with a 44th clean sheet, a fine stop at his near-post from the striker’s volley and, late on, a sharp save to turn away Kamil Glik’s header.
“In every game I want to show that I deserve to play at this level despite my age,” he said afterwards. “I work hard every day for this. The day I quit, I want people to be sad about it. We played a great game today, exactly the game that we needed to survive at Monaco because they have a great attack. We want to improve day by day. We are close to our objective and it would be naive not to work as hard as possible now.”
Further forward there was the menace of Paulo Dybala and the energy of Claudio Marchisio. Any lingering suspicions that Dani Alves might be a spent force at this level post-Barca can be shelved too, given his blistering performance on the flank, but this is a collective laced with quality. It seems perverse that this club have not won this competition for so long. On this evidence, and barring something outlandish in the semi-final second legs, they can aspire to end that run against Real at the Millennium Stadium.
It was a painful education for Monaco to endure. There had been moments of promise, particularly when Nabil Dirar exploited space from right-back to feed Mbappé in the centre, or when Falcao wriggled away from his markers. But Juve would not be pierced, and the more potent threat was always theirs on the counterattack.
Juventus’ Dani Alves back to his attacking best and far from finished
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Both goals were exquisite in their construction. The first had actually stemmed from Buffon’s short throw to Andrea Barzagli but, via a few sharp touches from team-mates, Dybala was soon flicking Alves free for the Brazilian to slip a pass infield for Higuaín.
While the forward gathered possession, Alves was already darting with purpose up the flank to collect the return and as Glik trundled across hoping to intercept, back-heeled the ball into space behind a wrong-footed and stumbling Jemerson.
There was Higuaín, permitted a free run by Tiemoué Bakayoko, to sweep a first-time finish across Danijel Subasic and into the corner before Dirar could summon a block. Bakayoko, coveted by Chelsea, endured a torrid evening in a protective mask after breaking his nose in training. His suitors would acknowledge he, like so many of this young team, is still a work in progress.
Falcao had missed the best opportunity to force parity, but Leonardo Jardim, pacing his technical area in frustration, must have feared his team would be wounded again. There had already been one warning, Marchisio eluding Djibril Sidibé to force Subasic into a smart save with his feet, but lessons were not learned. Bakayoko was duly robbed by a combination of Dybala and Alves on the right touchline, the Brazilian easing free of that tangle of legs and with space away from Jemerson, floating a gorgeous centre over Glik to the far post. There Higuaín slid in to score on the half-volley. “This could become an extraordinary season for us,” Allegri added.
Juventus have not conceded three goals at home since November 2012. Optimism abounds. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/oct/26/ai-weiwei-internet-modern-church-lego-bricks | Art and design | 2015-10-26T14:22:39.000Z | Louise Osborne | Ai Weiwei says internet is like a modern church after flood of Lego offers | The artist Ai Weiwei has likened the internet to a modern church, with a community that can rally round and “share your problems”, as he described being inundated with offers of Lego bricks after the Danish toymaker refused to sell him a bulk order.
“The internet is like a modern church. You go and complain to a priest and everybody in the community can share your problems. So some clever people took up the issue and had the idea to fundraise for the Lego,” he said at a press conference on Monday about his plans to create the Lego work for an Andy Warhol/Ai Weiwei exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia, in December.
After Lego said it would not supply him with the bricks he needed, Ai denounced its stance as “an act of censorship and discrimination” stemming from the political nature of his work. The Chinese artist said he had since been flooded with offers from all over the world and would try to find a way to accept them.
Artist Ai Weiwei vows to accept offers of Lego from around the world
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Ai was speaking at the Berlin University of the Arts, where he is to begin a three-year guest professorship he was offered in 2011 while detained for 81 days by the Chinese authorities. Three months after China lifted travel restrictions on him, he said he was thankful for the role but would not use it to encourage his 16 students to follow his path.
“I will not put political or humanitarian concerns in my teaching,” he said. “Those concerns are in me, but I won’t put pressure on my students over those kinds of issues. I think everyone has the right to decide on their own principles.”
However, one of the projects Ai said he was planning to set students would focus on the refugee crisis: “I don’t want to make the students activists for helping refugees, but confront them with this issue so they can better understand the realities and how to integrate them into their artistic works.”
Ai has been granted a three-year visa for Germany. Asked after the press conference what he thought of Berlin’s efforts to help the refugees coming into the country, he said it was a challenge for everybody.
Ai Weiwei free to travel overseas again after China returns his passport
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“It’s a difficult situation and we have to think about ourselves and our west civilisation and think about the world. This as a condition is not going to be finished by one effort; it has a long history and is going to last some time.”
He said he did not think of himself as a refugee, his situation being “too good” compared with that of others arriving in the city.
Ai said artists become victims of their media, and he was a “victim of the internet”. Despite that, he said neither his native China nor his adopted home of Germany was where he belonged.
“I think my home is on the internet. Twitter is my home and my nation and I feel very comfortable there. Otherwise, I don’t care that much about material life. Sometimes there are materials lacking, such as I need Lego for my work, but that is fine,” he said. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/01/eu-malta-european-union | Opinion | 2016-06-01T08:18:00.000Z | Jessica Abrahams | The EU has opened Malta up to a new, progressive identity | Jessica Abrahams | South of Sicily and north of Libya, a collection of small, rocky islands protrudes from the blue of the Mediterranean. The Republic of Malta is the European Union’s smallest member state. Its three inhabited islands have a combined area of roughly half the size of the Isle of Man, and a population similar in size to that of Bristol.
Twelve years of EU membership have been strongly felt on many aspects of life. But a report by the Today Public Policy Institute, Malta’s only independent thinktank, suggests that “the most pervasive and far-reaching change has been wrought by the rich exchanges with Europe at every level – schoolchildren, teachers, students, workers, civil servants, diplomats, politicians, local government officials and more. These people have been exposed to new ideas, new thinking, often a new scale of doing things.” Combined with developments in technology and travel, the experience has opened up the archipelago as never before.
Malta has only been an independent country since 1964. Before then it had been ruled by the British, the last in a long line of foreign governors, including Napoleonic France, the Hospitaller Knights of St John, the Normans, the Arab empire and others. The result is a melting pot of cultures, mainly from Europe, but also the Middle East; geographically, Malta sits on the edge of the two worlds.
It was by no means a given, following independence, that the country would choose to join the developing union of liberal nations to its north. During the four decades leading up to EU accession, Maltese governments explored many options, including cooperation with their resource-rich but largely authoritarian neighbours to the south. There were discussions about joining the Arab League and close ties forged with Gaddafi’s Libya. Remnants of that relationship remain, such as the island’s so-called Gaddafi Garden, a public space that was officially opened by the dictator during a visit in 1984. This year, it was renamed Mediterranean Garden.
By the time Malta finally joined the EU in 2004, after years of hesitating, the country had changed significantly. It had built up a strong free-market economy (a shift from its more protectionist years, in part at the encouragement of the EU), a booming tourism industry and a long stint with a pro-European government. Since then the economy has continued to grow, so far surviving the financial and eurozone crises relatively unscathed. EU funds have enabled everything from road improvements to heritage protection, while membership has prompted action on issues such as the environment that might otherwise have been postponed for years.
Not all elements of EU membership have been welcomed, though. In particular, there are complaints that life on the islands has become too expensive, and many feel that the union has not done enough to help this tiny country, unaccustomed to immigration, manage the arrival of boats carrying refugees and migrants from north Africa.
But Malta’s new EU identity endowed it with a clear sense of direction that has been embraced. Despite its doubts about joining, the latest Eurobarometer data shows that EU identity is now stronger in Malta than almost anywhere else – especially among a more internationally connected younger generation reaping the benefits of free movement – and that positive feelings towards the EU are also high. The prime minister, Joseph Muscat, who once campaigned against EU membership, now says it was the best decision the country could have made.
Malta is still a place of firm national pride; Maltese society will always be distinctively Maltese. It remains socially conservative by European standards. Religion is an important part of public life, although the advance of secularism throughout the developed world has reached these islands too. It was the last country in Europe (and one of the last in the world) to legalise divorce, just five years ago. It is the only EU country where abortion is illegal in all circumstances (having obtained a guarantee against EU interference in its abortion laws during the accession negotiations).
But recent years have seen big and often unexpected changes. The divorce legislation of 2011 was followed by the introduction of same-sex civil unions (with talk, now, of altering that to same-sex marriage). Last year, the government introduced some of the most progressive gender recognition laws in Europe. And social taboos, such as those surrounding sexuality and non-traditional families, are also subsiding.
There are many reasons for this – not least, on the legislative side, a change of government in 2013 to the more socially liberal Labour party. Economic development, the internet, widespread knowledge of English (an official language alongside Maltese) and other factors have all been important.
However, the EU has played its part, opening the country up to wide networks of interaction and exchange. The proportion of Maltese students taking part in the Erasmus study abroad programme grew by almost 80% between 2007 and 2013; the islands welcome well over a million EU tourists each year – more than double the size of their own population; and three-quarters of Maltese people say they have recently socialised with citizens from other European countries, far higher than the EU average.
The result, concludes the Today thinktank report, is that “as a people we [Maltese people] are far less insular, far more open, and less resistant to change than we were just 10 years ago” – and the EU has helped to shape its direction. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/09/italy-moves-closer-fresh-elections-bolster-far-right | World news | 2019-08-09T12:53:45.000Z | Angela Giuffrida | Italy moves closer to fresh elections that could bolster far right | Italy appears set for fresh elections that could push the country further toward the far right.
Matteo Salvini, the deputy prime minister, reiterated his calls for a snap vote on Friday, adding that any attempt to block his wishes and install a new ruling coalition would be unacceptable. His League party said it would present a no-confidence motion in the senate in its push to dismantle the tempestuous coalition with the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S).
The developments follow Salvini’s demand for the prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, to reconvene parliament to collapse the administration.
Salvini has already announced his candidacy to be the next prime minister, even though elections are yet to be scheduled. “Give us the strength to take this country in hand and save it,” he told supporters during a rally in the coastal city of Pescara on Thursday night.
Backing for the League has flourished over the past year, with recent polls putting it at 39%, while support for M5S has halved to 15%.
Salvini said his party would run for elections alone, and if it fell short of the 40% majority required to govern it would “choose a travel companion”. The most likely partner is seen as the Brothers of Italy, a party with a neo-fascist lineage that together with the League would create a fully far-right government in a major western European nation.
Giorgia Meloni, the Brothers of Italy leader, said new elections could bring about a government set on making the “politically incorrect reforms that Italy needs”.
Both Salvini and Meloni have whipped up support with their anti-immigrant, “Italians first” rhetoric, and by attacking Pope Francis and his calls to help migrants. The pontiff expressed his concerns over nationalism in an interview with La Stampa on Friday.
“I am concerned because we hear speeches that resemble those of Hitler in 1934. ‘Us first, We … We … ’ These are frightening thoughts,” he said.
Salvini’s political ascent has been aided by his relentless campaigning, using social media and rallying on piazzas and beaches across the country with what he presents as a ‘man of the people’ style and a defence of Italian ‘identity’. His demonising of a succession of so-called enemies – migrants, Roma people, Muslims, leftwing ‘do-gooders’ – has also formed a reliable component of his success.
The political turmoil caused European stock markets to fall as they opened on Friday, with Milan’s exchange dropping 2.3%.
The rift between the League and M5S widened on Wednesday when parliament rejected a motion by M5S to block a high-speed rail project linking Italy and France. M5S has built most of its popularity on vehemently opposing the long-stalled project but was outvoted by the League and opposition parties.
The League’s motion said “too many no’s are bad for Italy” and that “those who waste time, harm the country”.
Conte, who does not belong to either party, reacted angrily to Salvini’s demands. “This government wasn’t at the beach but working from morning until night,” he said late on Thursday, referring to Salvini’s seaside escapade last week.
Conte, who had held separate talks with Salvini and the country’s president, Sergio Mattarella, said it was not up to the deputy prime minister to summon parliament and “dictate the steps of the political crisis”.
The decision to dissolve the government and call new elections rests with Mattarella. He could also choose to install a technical government in order to pass the 2020 budget in the autumn, but that option is unpopular with all parties.
Luigi Di Maio, the M5S leader and co-deputy prime minister, said he was ready to return to the polls as “the League has mocked Italians”. Nicola Zingaretti, who heads the centre-left Democratic party, said elections were the only option.
Francesco Galietti, the founder of the Rome-based political consultancy Policy Sonar, said: “The crisis is now a fully fledged one and nobody, not even Mattarella, can put the genie back in the bottle.
“The reality is that Salvini caught everyone by surprise, even his own people, but by doing so he’s cornered Mattarella into a very nasty position.”
Parliament could be reconvened by 20 August to confirm the end of the administration. Elections would then have to be held within 50 to 70 days. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/oct/04/callum-hawkins-doha-marathon-world-championships-athletics | Sport | 2019-10-04T21:00:26.000Z | Sean Ingle | Callum Hawkins relying on shedloads of preparation for Doha marathon | The last time Callum Hawkins tried to win a marathon gold medal he went viral – with the images of him collapsing with heatstroke and dehydration at last year’s Commonwealth Games in Australia spreading around the world.
But as the 27-year-old Scot prepares to run 26.2 miles in the 32C heat and 50% humidity of Doha he has revealed a secret weapon: using a stack of heaters while on a treadmill in his shed to replicate the desert conditions at the world championships.
“I’ve been doing a bit of work in a heat chamber to prepare as well as getting the Aldi heaters,” he says. “I got it up to 39 degrees at one point. It’s a big proper shed and not a wee tiny one.”
Hawkins, who finished fourth at the 2017 world championships in London, insists he is not worried about a repeat of the Gold Coast – despite nearly half the field in the women’s marathon being forced to pull out due to the extreme conditions.
Dina Asher-Smith’s short sprint from an ice-cream bribe to a gold medal
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When asked what were the odds of him buying a one-way ticket back home after seeing that race, he laughed. “Never even thought of it,” he said.
“I’ve prepared well or at least I think I’ve prepared well. I learned a lot from watching it and I’ve got eight years of learning. It’s mainly about being patient – make sure I’m close enough but not doing too much or overheating.
“I’ve run well in the heat in the past – I ran decent in Rio and London in 2017 was not roasting but it was getting up there, into the 20s in the sun. Everyone is in the same boat. It’s about who prepares best and making sure your race plan matches the conditions.”
Most of the world’s top marathon runners will not be here – Eliud Kipchoge, the Olympic champion, is preparing to go under two hours in Vienna while Mo Farah will run at the Chicago marathon on Sunday week. However, Hawkins insists he is still facing a strong field.
“It’s got two Ethiopians who were second and third in London, the former world champion and the Kenyan team is always strong,” he said. “But we saw at the women’s that times don’t really matter, what you’ve done in the past doesn’t really matter. The women were 15 minutes off their best; it’s about who can get closest to their actual best. With the conditions it’s anyone’s race.”
Laura Muir says she is hopeful of adding a third British gold medal in Saturday’s 1500m final following the victories for Dina Asher-Smith in the 200m and Katarina Johnson-Thompson in the heptathlon.
“It would be great to get three from three,” said Muir, who showed no signs of the torn calf muscle that kept her out for six weeks in the summer. “That is not to discount any other athletes. I know Dina, KJT and myself have been figureheads for this team and I would love to get that medal.
“This is the one piece of the puzzle I’m missing. I’ve got world indoors, Europeans indoors and out. To get a global outdoor medal would be fantastic.”
Elsewhere Dina Asher-Smith could become the first Briton to ever win three world medals at the same championships after the women’s 4x100m team of Asha Philip, Imani-Lara Lansoquot, Ashleigh Nelson and Daryll Neita qualified for Saturday’s final in second place.
Britain’s men’s 4x100m relay team of Adam Gemili, Zharnel Hughes, Richard Kilty and Nethaneel Mitchell-Blake also look well placed to retain the world title from 2017 after running fastest time of the heats, 37.56 sec, even with Mitchell-Blake easing up.
On the best night of the Championships so far, a packed crowd were also fortunate enough to see two races for the ages. First the American 400m hurdler Dalilah Muhammad broke her own world record, running 52.16 sec to hold off the new star of the sport, Sydney McLaughlin, who finished just 0.07 sec back.
And then, just a few minutes later there was an even closer race as world 3,000m steeplechase champion Conseslus Kipruto, who has had injury problems this year, retained his title by 0.01 sec on the dip after a stunning comeback to pip the Ethiopian Lamecha Girma in a desperate last 100m sprint.
However the biggest cheer of the night came in the men’s high jump as the local favourite Mutaz Barshim cleared 2.37m to take gold for Qatar. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/may/01/uk-house-prices-fall-unexpectedly-for-second-month-in-a-row | Business | 2024-05-01T08:07:16.000Z | Jack Simpson | UK house prices fall unexpectedly for second month in a row | UK house prices have fallen unexpectedly in April for a second consecutive month, according to the building society Nationwide, as interest rate uncertainty and more expensive mortgages put a dampener on the traditional spring homebuying season.
With some economists saying that two month-to-month falls in the closely watched index “start to look like a trend”, and new fixed mortgage rates continuing to creep up, the data will put further pressure on the Bank of England before next week’s interest rate announcement.
The average house price in April was £261,962 – down by 0.4% on March, when the lender’s monthly index recorded a 0.2% month-on-month drop.
A typical UK home is now worth £11,700 less than it was in August 2022, weeks before Liz Truss’s disastrous mini-budget prompted financial chaos.
Nationwide also said the rate of annual house price growth fell to 0.6% in April from 1.6% the previous month. Robert Gardner, the lender’s chief economist, said: “The slowdown likely reflects ongoing affordability pressures, with longer-term interest rates rising in recent months, reversing the steep fall seen around the turn of the year.”
Nationwide stops lending on some flood-risk properties
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He added: “House prices are now about 4% below the all-time highs recorded in the summer of 2022, after taking account of seasonal effects.”
Last week, major lenders including Barclays, HSBC and NatWest increased the rates on their fixed mortgage deals in response to some economists pushing back their forecasts for when the Bank of England will start to cut interest rates.
More lenders put up the cost of their new deals this week: on Tuesday, Nationwide lifted some of its fixed rates by up to 0.25 percentage points. Meanwhile, Moneyfacts, the financial data provider, said the average new two-year fixed mortgage rate was continuing to creep up and now stood at 5.91%.
The Bank is expected to announce an interest rate cut later this year, and while some economists believe this could come as soon as June, many others believe August or September is more likely.
Commenting on Wednesday’s figures, Tom Bill, the head of UK residential research at the estate agent Knight Frank, said the house price growth seen in the first two months of this year “is going into reverse” as higher mortgage rates take their toll on demand.
However, he added: “We believe demand and house price growth will pick up later this year as a rate cut moves on to the horizon.”
The Nationwide analysis pointed to some moderation in the recent recovery in housing market activity, in which mortgage approvals rose in March to their highest level since September 2022.
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In a survey of first-time buyers commissioned by the building society, 49% of those hoping to take their first step on the property ladder in the next five years said they had delayed plans over the past 12 months.
Of those holding back on buying their first home, 53% said it was because house prices were too high, while 41% said higher mortgage costs were preventing them from buying.
Of those surveyed, 55% said they would be willing to buy in a different part of the country where house prices were cheaper, or they could get a bigger home.
Tomer Aboody, a director of the property lender MT Finance, said: “With a drop in house prices said to be created by a lack of affordability among buyers and uncertainties around interest rates and inflation, some stability or help is needed.
“Whether this comes from reduced interested rates, more flexibility on mortgages or potentially some stamp duty reform, buyers need to feel confident that they can commit to a purchase and move.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/jun/26/world-cup-luis-suarez-ban-biting-uruguay | Football | 2014-06-26T14:40:00.000Z | Owen Gibson | Luis Suárez banned for four months for biting in World Cup game | In an unprecedented move Fifa has banned Uruguay’s Luis Suárez from all “football-related activities” for four months for biting Italy’s Giorgio Chiellini, ruling the striker out of the rest of the World Cup and the start of the domestic season – although not a potential move to Barcelona.
The Liverpool player will not be able to play or train for his club or country for four months after Fifa’s disciplinary committee handed down the hefty sanction, which will be appealed against and has provoked dismay from Uruguay and a guarded response from Anfield. The biting incident, the third in which Suárez has been involved in his career, has also led Fifa’s disciplinary committee to prevent the player from entering any football stadium during the ban.
• Suárez adds to story of violence and deceit
• Poll: is Suárez’s four-month ban harsh, lenient or fair?
• Uruguayan FA claims bite marks are Photoshopped
• What Suárez’s ban means for Liverpool
• Uruguay hit out at ‘excessive and disproportionate’ ban
Suárez has also been banned for nine competitive international matches, beginning with Uruguay’s last-16 game with Colombia on Saturday, and fined £66,000. However, Fifa clarified that Suárez’s ban from all “administrative” tasks related to football did not block any possible sale from Liverpool during the period. Any potential deal would not be done on the cheap, though, with only Barcelona and Real Madrid realistically having the financial resources to buy the forward.
Suárez signed an improved £200,000-a-week long-term deal last December, which included a buy-out clause thought to be around the £80m mark. Liverpool are understood to be calm about the prospect of being without their main asset for 13 matches – nine league games, three Champions League ties and one Capital One encounter – and are not looking to offload the forward. It is not known if the club will continue to cover Suárez’s wages or if he will be fined for his latest misdemeanour. Liverpool will review the full disciplinary report from Fifa before making any decision or comment on what they will do next.
“Such behaviour cannot be tolerated on any football pitch, and in particular not at a World Cup when the eyes of millions of people are on the stars on the field,” said Claudio Sulser, the chair of the disciplinary committee, which met late into the night in Rio de Janiero.
“The disciplinary committee took into account all the factors of the case and the degree of Mr Suárez’s guilt in accordance with the relevant provisions of the code. The decision comes into force as soon it is communicated.”
Italy's Giorgio Chiellini, left, shows an apparent bitemark, as Uruguay's Luis Suárez holds his teeth. Photographs: Daniel Garcia/AFP/Getty Images Photograph: Daniel Garcia/AFP/Getty Images
Although Uruguay will appeal against the decision, it will not stop Suárez being banned from Saturday’s match because under article 124 of the Fifa disciplinary code the appeal does not have a “suspensive effect”. Before Fifa announced their judgment, the Uruguayan FA and even the country’s president had weighed into the issue in support of Suárez. They claimed that Suárez was the target of a conspiracy among the Italians, the English media and the Brazilian hosts to make more of the incident than it warranted.
“We are preparing our appeal now, we have three days to do it,” Uruguay federation president, Wilmar Valdez, said following the verdict. “It is an excessive decision and there was not enough evidence and I have seen more aggressive incidents recently. It is a severe punishment.
Uruguay will appeal against Luis Suárez ban – video Guardian
“I don’t know exactly which arguments they used but it is a tough punishment for Suárez. It’s feels like Uruguay has been thrown out of the World Cup. We all know what Suárez means to Uruguay and to football around the world – not having Suárez would be a loss to any team. Luis in the next few hours will travel to Montevideo to be with the rest of his family to recover.”
Asked about rumours that Uruguay would now boycott the Colombia game in protest Valdez added: “No, that is not a possibility. Uruguay continues playing at this World Cup. We have good players who can come in.”
Television pictures of the incident seemed clear. The ban – added to previous penalties for racially abusing Manchester United’s Patrice Evra and for biting Chelsea’s Branislav Ivanovic, mean that Suárez will have been suspended for 48 matches since 2010 without receiving a red card on the pitch.
Fifa vice-president Jim Boyce, from Northern Ireland, said the sanction was deserved. “I think the punishment handed out by Fifa to Luis Suárez is fully justified,” he said. “Hopefully he will realise now that behaviour of this type will not be tolerated under any circumstances.’’
While online gambling company 888.com were still reviewing their relationship with the striker, one of Suárez’s main sponsors, Adidas, said they would be reminding the player of his responsibilities but made it clear that they would not be dropping him. In a statement the company said: “Adidas certainly does not condone Luis Suárez’s recent behaviour and we will again be reminding him of the high standards we expect from our players. We have no plan to use Suárez for any additional marketing activities during the 2014 Fifa World Cup.”
Uruguay captain, Diego Lugano, describes Luis Suárez's bite during their final World Cup group match against Italy as inconsequential Guardian | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/mar/02/labour-rattled-by-galloway-win-as-sadiq-khan-slams-pm-over-racist-poison | Politics | 2024-03-02T20:00:39.000Z | Michael Savage | Labour rattled by Galloway win as Sadiq Khan slams PM over racist ‘poison’ | Sadiq Khan has condemned Rishi Sunak for failing to call out “racist, anti-Muslim and Islamophobic” remarks by a senior Tory MP, following the prime minister’s Downing Street address in which he criticised political extremists.
In a blunt response to Sunak’s unusual intervention, the London mayor said the prime minister had still not fully addressed the nature of the remarks made by former Tory vice-chair Lee Anderson, who said Islamists had “got control” of Khan and London. Khan, one of the most powerful Muslims in public life, warned that the past few weeks had seen “a concerted and growing attempt by some to degrade and humiliate minorities for political and electoral gain”.
This follows another fractious week, in which George Galloway won the Rochdale byelection after a bitter contest. Following the result, the prime minister made an impromptu speech on Friday night stating that democracy was under attack and criticising voters for backing Galloway – whose pitch was focused on Gaza and heavy criticism of Israel.
However, Khan said Sunak and his team had still not fully addressed the remarks made by Anderson last month. While the Ashfield MP was suspended from the Tory party, ministers have refused to say the remarks amounted to Islamophobia. “We are a week on from the racist, anti-Muslim and Islamophobic remarks made by a senior Tory MP,” Khan told a London Labour conference last night. “The prime minister has failed to condemn them for what they are – even as he stood outside No 10 and spoke out against extremism – and neither has anybody around him.
Sadiq Khan said some were trying to humiliate minorities for electoral gain. Photograph: Danny Lawson/PA
“What we are witnessing is a concerted and growing attempt by some to degrade and humiliate minorities for political and electoral gain. We have been here before – in 2016, when the Tories waged a disgraceful campaign against me, against us. We cannot let them try it again.. As the poison of antisemitism and Islamophobia continues to infect our politics, now more than ever, we need to display our best values rather than our worst fears.”
The Conservatives received further criticism after reports that Anderson, who has refused to apologise for his comments about Khan, appeared with former prime minister Liz Truss at a party fundraiser in Nottinghamshire on Friday. Many Tory MPs suspect Anderson is planning to defect to Reform UK, the successor to the Brexit party.
Jonathan Ashworth, shadow paymaster general, said it “beggars belief” that Anderson continues to attend Tory party events. “Given that Rishi Sunak deems Mr Anderson unfit to be a Tory MP, he now needs to bar him from fundraising for the Tory party,” he said. “Unless he takes action, Rishi Sunak will again be exposed as weaker than ever, and out of control of his chaotic, divided party.”
It may be that they don’t have the votes to win seats, but as we always see, when it comes to it, people panic
Labour MP
Meanwhile, Galloway’s victory in Rochdale has caused nervousness among many Labour MPs. Some are already under local pressure to strengthen their criticism of Israel. While many see Galloway as a unique character with a track record of by-election victories, some believe a coalition of Muslim and leftwing voters concerned about Labour’s stance on Gaza could cost the party seats.
A slate of independent candidates to run against those Labour MPs who failed to back a Gaza ceasefire in a vote last year is being drawn up, with the first tranche of names set to be announced soon.
While few of those who stand will have a chance of winning a seat, some Labour MPs are concerned that Keir Starmer’s team are underestimating the threat posed by such candidates, because they could take Labour votes and let in the Tories in tight contests. There are also concerns about their impact on party management. “It may be that they don’t have the votes to win seats, but ... when it comes to it, people panic,” said one Labour MP.
The row comes as Khan is warning that his chances of claiming another term as London mayor have been exaggerated by polls suggesting he has a significant lead over Susan Hall, the Tory candidate. His team believes the impact of the switch to a first-past-the-post system, as well as changes to voter ID that they believe will suppress the Labour vote, will effectively erase the 5% winning margin Khan enjoyed at his last election.
He said last night that he was in what he believed was the toughest contest of his political life. “With no second preferences, the choice is between me and the most divisive, hard-right candidate the Tories have ever put up in London,” he said. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/shortcuts/2017/dec/06/johnny-hallyday-france-elvis-who-is-their-version-kanye-west | Music | 2017-12-06T16:25:18.000Z | Jeremy Allen | If Johnny Hallyday was France’s Elvis, who is their version of Kanye West? | Johnny Hallyday, who died this week, was known by two epithets on the British side of la Manche: “the biggest rock star you’ve never heard of”, which assumes you’re not from one of the 29 countries that recognise French as a spoken language, and “the French Elvis”. The latter got us thinking: which other Francophone pop singers have Anglophone equivalents?
Serge Gainsbourg = Kanye West
Controversialists ... Serge Gainsbourg and Kanye West. Composite: Redferns; Kevin Mazur/WireImage
Comic book artist and film director Joann Sfar says that Serge Gainsbourg was as controversial in France as Johnny Rotten was in the UK, but perhaps his modern-day equivalent is Kanye West. Burning 500 francs on television in 1984 to protest against tax increases was as much belligerent theatre as it was disappointing; the same could be said for West’s meeting with Donald Trump. What’s more, Serge and Jane were the Kanye and Kim of their time, while Gainsbourg would borrow regularly from Chopin in much the same way that West plunders the back catalogue of Nina Simone.
Mylène Farmer = Madonna
Like minded ... Mylène Farmer and Madonna. Composite: Sipa/Rex Features; Alamy
Pop singer Mylène Farmer isn’t averse to controversy, either. The Quebec-born, Paris-based chanteuse released a series of provocative chansons during the 80s. These included debut single Maman a Tort, about a young girl’s obsession with her female nurse, and Libertine, which, in 1986, was the first major pop promo to feature full-frontal female nudity from the star – proving that she was out Madonna-ing Madonna at the time. The French were no doubt cooler about the whole thing than we were about Madonna’s Sex book, mind you.
Les Rita Mitsouko = Sparks
Cerebral ... Sparks. Photograph: David Sillitoe/The Guardian
Les Rita Mitsouko.
Catherine Ringer, lead singer of Les Rita Mitsouko, caused a ripple, rather than a cause célèbre, in France when her previous work in films such as Corps Brûlants (where she played “girl in orgy”) was revealed. Les Rita Mitsouko’s musical equivalent is quirky, cerebral legends Sparks; indeed, they collaborated in 1988 on the madly catchy Singing in the Shower, produced by Tony Visconti.
Jacques Brel = David Bowie
Highly correlated ... Jacques Brel and David Bowie. Composite: INA/Getty Images; Redferns
Aside from their obsessions with death, and the fact David Bowie covered Jacques Brel a few times, the connection between the pair might seem superficial. However, there’s a striking correlation in their concluding years. Both stopped playing live 11 years before they died; both disappeared from public view and were subjected to press rumours about their health; both were in remission from cancer while recording their final records; both declined to talk to the press in their last days; and both released final records without their images on the covers for the first time.
Present day
All metaphors break down somewhere, of course, but there are interesting comparisons to be made in modern French pop. Sébastien Tellier recently approached burlesque artist Dita Von Teese to record her first pop album; that collaboration will be with us next April. Such a seemingly incongruous match recalls the time Elvis Costello wrote a whole album for Wendy James. Elsewhere, Fishbach is an artist for our times; her debut album, À Ta Merci, features some of the greatest songs Abba never got around to writing.
Picking up where ABBA left off ... Fishbach. Photograph: Loic Venance/AFP/Getty Images
Then there’s Belgian Europop genius Stromae, who released Racine Carrée to wide acclaim in 2013 – it became France’s 16th-bestselling album of all time. Stromae has been compared to Morrissey for his wry, sometimes overwrought lyrics, but to hear him spit on a track like Bâtard is like hearing the zeitgeisty Eminem in full flow. As a Brusselian whose father was killed in the Rwandan genocide of 1994, he’s also more worldly than both of them. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2023/jul/19/walking-the-ridgeway-in-wiltshire-oxfordshire-wessex-downs | Travel | 2023-07-19T06:00:41.000Z | Mary-Ann Ochota | The wonder of Wessex: walking the Ridgeway in Wiltshire and Oxfordshire | I’m settled in the shade of a hawthorn bush at the edge of the trail. Banked cow parsley waves in the breeze, elderflowers are breaking bud and the white chalk line of the footpath draws the eye on through the landscape. As I sit, a hare hops out of the hedge just metres away and pauses on the path. For a long moment it is still and calm, eyes shining golden. I hold my breath. Then it notices me and bursts into action, launching off the track and through the undergrowth to the field beyond, quicker than my eyes can follow. I exhale. Walks are made for moments like these.
I’m walking a stretch of the Ridgeway national trail across the high chalklands of the North Wessex Downs, an area of outstanding natural beauty. Sometimes known as Britain’s oldest road, the whole route is 87 miles between Ivinghoe Beacon in Buckinghamshire and Avebury in Wiltshire.
The Ridgeway is all about rolling chalk hills, rare grasslands, ancient woods, quaint villages and intriguing history
This year is the 50th anniversary of the Ridgeway being designated a national trail, joining the likes of the Pennine Way, Offa’s Dyke and South West Coast Path in a family of trails designed to showcase the variety and beauty of our national landscapes. The Ridgeway is all about rolling chalk hills, rare grasslands, ancient woods, quaint villages and intriguing history.
An aerial view of the Uffington White Horse. Photograph: Iconpix/Alamy
The whole path is accessible to walkers, and the western half is a bridleway and restricted byway, so open to horse riders and mountain bikers, too. Hikers walking the trail in one go usually take six days to complete it, but the beauty of the Ridgeway is that it’s easy to break into chunks of shorter day walks and weekends, or to combine it with other paths to make a circular route. And despite being relatively close to towns such as Swindon, Reading and Luton, it delivers breathing space and a real sense of escape. Hares included.
Ridgeway rider: my 360-mile cycle ride from Dorset to Norfolk
Read more
I’ve got a couple of days so I’ve picked a stretch in the middle that takes in the Uffington White Horse and neighbouring Wayland’s Smithy, Segsbury Hillfort and plenty of gentle rolling hills. By weaving some extra footpaths, public transport and a taxi together to deliver me to one spot and get me home from the second, with a B&B stay en route, I’ve created a two-day adventure that feels much further from home than it actually is.
From Swindon, it’s a 20-minute bus ride east to Hinton Parva, which, like so many other villages on this route, sits on the low ground below the Ridgeway, with holloway paths and green lanes that lead uphill to meet the trail. Since the first farmers arrived in Britain some 6,500 years ago, communities have settled around natural springs and streams in the valley floor that offered shelter, reliable water and better land for agriculture. They used the sweeping chalk downlands above them for seasonal summer grazing, and the Ridgeway itself for travelling – during conflict, for trade and for pilgrimage.
Mary-Ann Ochota walking the Ridgeway. Photograph: Mary-Ann Ochota
Once off the bus, I start my march north-east, following the path. It’s well marked, with fingerpost signs located at every junction. They’re emblazoned with the distinctive acorn symbol showing you’re on a national trail. In principle, it should be possible to walk the whole route without relying on a map, but just in case I’ve got the lightweight Harvey Maps Ridgeway map, as well as the OS Maps app on my phone.
My first stop is Wayland’s Smithy, four miles from Hinton Parva, near Ashbury. This chambered tomb was constructed about 5,500 years ago during the late stone age, and consists of a long earth mound with a grand edifice and stone-lined tomb at its southern end. A narrow passageway leads to three cramped compartments where the jumbled remains of men, women and children were placed. I clamber along the passage and feel the weight of the stone and earth around me. The tomb is now surrounded by a stand of majestic beech trees and at this time of year, it’s like you’ve entered a green cathedral. The breeze whispers ancient voices and it feels otherworldly.
The ancient horse is still visible in the landscape because people have maintained it for 3,000 years
As I continue my journey, I see a distinctive hill ahead. Its edges are shaped, clearly not natural – these are the ramparts of Uffington Castle, an iron age hill fort (although probably never actually defended as a “fort”, rather used as an enclosure for gatherings, and re-used by the Romans, who built a small shrine in the middle). Below the fort, on the shoulder of the hillside, is one of the most iconic archaeological sites in southern England: the Uffington White Horse. Sinewy and abstracted, this hill figure, or “geoglyph”, has been dated to around 1,200BC. The ancient horse is still visible in the landscape because people have maintained it for 3,000 years – weeding out the grass, and packing the trenches with fresh chalk to keep the outline sharp and the colour bright. If a generation of people had neglected it, the horse would have grassed over and been lost. Nowadays, National Trust rangers invite members of the public and local schools to help clean the horse every year and be part of the tradition. Turn up, do some grooming, be part of history.
A view of Dragon Hill, below the Uffington White Horse Photograph: Stephen Iles/Alamy
I head back to the trail and stride on. As the temperature creeps up, the birds quieten and my pace slows. By virtue of it following the tops of the high ground, the Ridgeway is exposed. In winter this means it can be wind-blasted, and the chalk underfoot slippery. In high summer, you’re more likely to find yourself sunburned and thirsty. Today, the warm currents bring honeyed air wafting up from yellow fields of oilseed rape below me and and I realise I should have put my hat on two hours earlier.
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A map of the route Mary-Ann Ochota walked part of. Photograph: geogphotos/Alamy
There isn’t an abundance of accommodation along the route, so it’s advisable to plan your overnights and book in advance. I’ve called ahead and though I’ve not walked an exhausting distance, I’m still happy to reach Hill Barn Farm (doubles £100 for two) at Sparsholt Firs, four miles east of Wayland’s Smithy. The trail is at the top of the driveway, a satisfying proximity after a day walking. Padding after bright-eyed and practical proprietor Jo in my socks, I feel like a houseguest rather than a paying guest. Portraits featuring well-loved hairy ponies and jolly grandchildren adorn the walls. After a gloriously hot shower, I don my clean top and spare socks, and pad back downstairs. Over dinner I chat to Craig, a fellow walker who’s also doing a chunk of the trail. We agree that, compared with hiking in more challenging terrain, the Ridgeway lets you switch into a more meditative rhythm. The white line of the clear path leads you along, freeing your mind to wander where it likes.
Wayland’s Smithy neolithic long barrow, Ashbury Photograph: David Chapman/Alamy
After a hearty breakfast, I’m on my way again. The hedgerow birds are trilling and chirruping, skylarks ascending to the blue heavens. This is racehorse country, and the rolling hillsides are dotted with gallops. I see a few flighty thoroughbreds heading out for exercise, jockeys perched on top. Part of the Ridgeway marks the edge of King Alfred’s Wessex, and some of the bridleway routes are likely to have also been used by soldiers hurrying across territory to defend their lands against Viking attack. On a day like today, you can see how useful this high level trail would be – clear views, swift movement, space enough to organise yourselves.
In later, more peaceful eras, these same routes were used to gather and drive livestock to market, from as far afield as Wales, Cornwall and the Scottish borders. Now, farmers are managing these chalk grasslands for wildlife – hundreds of bird, insect and plant species need these habitats to survive. I walk for a few more hours, devour my sandwiches and pick a village to walk down to, to be collected by taxi and deposited at Didcot Parkway train station. It’s been 36 hours but I feel I’ve been away for ages.
Just as for the generations before us, this rolling chalk route can serve whatever purpose we need or choose. People of the past were nipping over to the next hillfort, or making pilgrimage to the great stones of Avebury in the west; heading to the coast or city, with goods, people and ideas. Nowadays, folk run the Ridgeway for charity or personal challenge, others picnic and paint with friends just a few yards from the car. For me, it’s a route that can be all things – wild and windy, or a source of quiet and contentment, family jaunt or archaeological adventure. Follow the acorn icon and the white chalk line, and see where your mind takes you.
This article was amended on 19 July 2023. An earlier caption on an embedded image said it was of Uffington Castle, when it showed Dragon Hill.
Mary-Ann Ochota is a broadcaster, archaeologist and keen walker. She’s patron for the Ridgeway National Trail’s Anniversary year. If you want to help National Trust rangers weed and re-chalk the horse, join them on 22 or 23 July (“scouring” or cleaning the horse) and 26, 27, 28 August (chalking the horse) | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2017/apr/19/2vcs-will-the-tef-do-serious-damage-or-just-puncture-a-few-egos | Education | 2017-04-19T06:30:14.000Z | Anna Fazackerley | 2VCs: Will the Tef do serious damage or just puncture a few egos? | The government’s new system for rating university teaching, the Teaching Excellence Framework (Tef), has raised temperatures across the sector. The first results are expected in June, but there is already little doubt that the new ranking could shake up traditional hierarchies, as it accords gold, silver or bronze status to each institution.
Early modelling of likely outcomes suggests that some modern universities – such as Aston, De Montfort and Coventry – could be thrust to the top of the table. Meanwhile world-renowned members of the Russell Group – including the London School of Economics, Bristol, and King’s College London – could find themselves ignominiously near the bottom.
Will the effects be more serious than some bruised institutional egos? What will students make of it all? And can we trust this process to evaluate teaching in a meaningful way?
Sir Steve Smith, vice-chancellor of Exeter University, and Professor Tim Blackman, vice-chancellor of Middlesex University, talk to Anna Fazackerley about what’s at stake.
The University of Exeter is currently ranked highest of all the Russell Group universities for “overall student satisfaction” in the National Student Survey. Steve Smith has argued for years that research-intensive universities like his should strive for excellence not only in their research, but also in the teaching and the student experience they provide.
Middlesex is a different sort of university from those in the Russell Group. It prides itself on preparing students – many of whom are the first in their families to go to university – to get good jobs when they graduate. Unlike Exeter, Middlesex mostly attracts students from the local area, and three-quarters of its students live at home.
Tef: don't equate contact hours with teaching quality
Read more
Should the government be ranking universities?
I start by asking the two VCs how they feel about the government ranking universities based on the Tef. Blackman has reservations, and he is scathing about the gold, silver and bronze “medals for levels” – a policy tweak that emerged just after the last Olympics left our television screens.
“These medals will have big implications for how the sector is seen internationally. But it’s a rough and ready assessment, he says. “You are talking about three broad categories with a cliff edge between each award, based on metrics that still leave much to be desired. I think there are lots of question marks about their use in any kind of league table, and some real dangers for the sector.”
Smith is more diplomatic. He points out that the government has ranked universities on the quality of their research for 31 years – via the Research Excellence Framework (Ref) and its predecessors – and this has helped the UK lead the world in publications and citations.
“I think the Tef is an attempt by the government to say that teaching matters,” he says. “There are anecdotal stories about universities not taking teaching seriously and that’s not just under this government, that’s going back at least a decade in my experience. So I can see what’s being attempted here. The government is actually trying to rebalance the focus of institutions towards teaching.”
Should the metrics be benchmarked?
While Smith says he welcomes the Tef, and Blackman definitely doesn’t, both share the same anxieties about what they see as its simplistic metrics.
One of the controversial issues is benchmarking. Universities’ scores are benchmarked based on the kind of students they teach – taking into account their entry qualifications, background, age, ethnicity and subject area.
“I worry because it’s banding against a benchmark, rather than looking at absolute performance,” Smith says. “I do think there could be some unintended consequences here.”
I ask them what those consequences might be. Are we talking about hurt pride or something different?
Smith gives an example, based on two hypothetical universities: one a famous Russell Group university, and the second a strong modern university. The second university gets positive flags in the Tef because it exceeds its benchmarks, which score in the 60s, 70s and 80s. It gets a gold ranking. The Russell group institution doesn’t exceed its benchmarks and doesn’t get a gold, but its raw scores are in the 80s and 90s.
Smith explains: “A student – and after all the Tef is supposed to be about supporting students – may look at that and think, ‘You know what, I will be better off going to the second institution’. But when you look at the lifetime earnings data, you find that they may have been better off going to the first institution, the one that doesn’t exceed its benchmarks.”
So are absolute scores the answer?
Blackman thinks not, because Russell group universities start with such a big advantage – they get to pick their students from the top school-leavers. “Of course students coming out of Russell Group universities are accessing jobs in high-paying parts of the economy because these are selective institutions,” he says.
Middlesex has a different brief. “We’re taking students up to graduation who are often the first generation to go to university, and we are putting them into jobs their parents could never have imagined. That is a task that any fair system of assessment needs to reflect, but it’s exactly the opposite of an absolute measure. The sector is differentiated by selectivity, and any fair assessment of teaching has to reflect that.”
Will the Tef help students?
Blackman says: “I don’t think there is a valid comparison with the Ref because there is already data on the Unistats website students can use to evaluate performance on things like employment prospects and student satisfaction. And the Ref is a sophisticated array of measures whereas the Tef is a blunt instrument.”
Unlike the Tef, the Unistats data is supplied at course level, so students can actually look at data for every course.
“What the Tef isn‘t doing for students is telling them what the quality of teaching will be on their programme, because it’s a measure of the whole institution,” Blackman points out. “Students have not asked for their fees to be spent on this – the data is already there for them. This is basically about accountability to government for a set of high-level metrics at an institutional level. Perhaps that has some role – of course we should be accountable – but we shouldn’t pretend it is going to inform students.”
Will the Tef help school pupils draw the right conclusions about the university they should choose? Photograph: Alamy
Smith agrees. “The students I am worried about are those who don’t have the social capital, the parental influence, and the school environment where someone will say ‘Well look, I know you are thinking of going to this institution because of its positive flags, but you do need to look at overall performance’.”
Everyone’s talking about the Tef, but no one is listening to students
Read more
What are you doing to give students a better experience?
Since the introduction of higher fees universities have all been careful to stress that they are working to deliver a brilliant student experience. Can our two VCs come up with a good example of a practical change that is making a difference?
“We offer our particularly high-achieving third-year students part-time employment as student learning assistants,” Blackman says. “They work alongside lecturers in first-year classes to help students who are struggling. It’s fabulous because it puts something positive on the CVs of the assistants, and it helps the attainment of students who are finding their feet at university.”
Smith says that his university notches up high scores in the National Student Survey every year partly because his staff really want to teach, rather than just burying their heads in their research. But he thinks students also like being included in how the place is run.
“At every executive meeting bar one, students are involved,” Smith says, “though we don’t always agree with them on everything.”
When fees tripled in 2012, Smith set up a budget scrutiny group, with alternate meetings chaired by the president of the guild of students, to agree where the additional income should be spent.
“Since we are allowed to raise fees by inflation this year, we’ve worked with the student guild to decide exactly where that additional fee income will be spent. They had two major concerns – staff/student ratios and support for employability – and 95% of the additional fee income is going into those two areas.”
Is it right to link Tef success with the right to raise fees?
Of course the debates about the Tef aren’t just about teaching or the student experience. They are also about money.
The government’s plan is to allow good scores in the Tef to be the basis for further fee increases. And privately, vice-chancellors agree this was the main reason there wasn’t a long line of universities refusing to sign up for the Tef at the start of the year. But the linkage is now in doubt. The House of Lords has forced an amendment saying that Tef rankings can’t be used to set variable fee levels, arguing that the exercise isn’t ready.
“If the funding link goes, I think there will be a different attitude towards the Tef,” Smith says. “The calculation is that [allowing fees to rise with inflation] is worth about £1.6bn a year to universities for the next decade. And from the discussions we’ve had with the government, it is clear that this is about something for something. The something for them is a rebalancing of attention on to teaching, and the something for us is life at the end of that funding tunnel.”
Blackman is adamant that linking the Tef with fees is wrong. “The financial issue that the sector faces in terms of a margin squeeze, and costs increasing faster than income, should be addressed properly. To link it with the Tef is a mistake.”
Will the Tef actually reflect teaching quality?
Blackman agrees with Smith that the exercise will succeed in focusing attention on teaching. “There is no doubt that if an institution thinks it should get a gold and gets a silver, that’s going to get management action,” he says.
He insists, though, that there are better ways of measuring teaching quality. “The government could pay much more attention to learning gain. The distance that one of my students travels from modest A-level or BTec results to actually becoming a lawyer or an accountant is value added, which is how we would expect to be assessed,” he says.
“There will be all sorts of arguments about the fairness of this. But I think the fundamental point is that the Tef is not actually measuring anything meaningful at the moment.”
The VCs’ CVs
Steve Smith: football and crisps
Steve Smith
What was your first degree and where did you study?
BSc international relations and politics, University of Southampton
What is your secret vice?
A pint and a packet of crisps
Name three things you love about your university city, Exeter
Idyllic campus, supportive city council, beautiful cathedral
What book is on your bedside table?
Tim Shipman’s All Out War
What did you want to be when you were 18?
Playing for Norwich City
Best way to spend a Sunday?
Drinking coffee, reading the papers and watching the football
Tim Blackman: walking and listening
Tim Blackman
What was your first degree and where did you study?
BA geography, Durham University
What is your secret vice?
Listening to the BBC World Service during the night
Name three things you love about your university city, London
Walking in London is always an experience, its diversity, the Royal Festival Hall
What book is on your bedside table?
Jasmin Alibhai-Brown’s Exotic England: The Making of a Curious Nation
What did you want to be when you were 18?
A town planner
Best way to spend a Sunday?
Sunday lunch with friends or family
Join the higher education network for more comment, analysis and job opportunities, direct to your inbox. Follow us on Twitter @GdnHigherEd. And if you have an idea for a story, please read our guidelines and email your pitch to us at [email protected] | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2014/feb/27/readers-recommend-songs-about-holes-peter-kimpton | Music | 2014-02-27T22:00:00.000Z | Peter Kimpton | Readers recommend: songs about holes | Peter Kimpton | Does a dark opening attract fear, surprise, disgust or excitement? And what is a hole? The void in the middle, what's around the outside of it, or both?
This year's latest phobia is the sinkhole, the sudden collapse of a ground's surface layer. They can be very deep and destructive, swallowing people, cars and houses. Perhaps like in the Kevin Bacon film – Tremors. Or a banker's salary. Only sinkholes are not caused by giant worms. And there has been a spate of them appearing the UK recently, brought about, some say, by the unseasonably wet weather. But it's best not to get paranoid or go on about this. That would be too embarrassing. So embarrassing you'd just want the ground to just open up and … oh hang on.
This week, as I peer down the dark opening into the Readers Recommend cellar, taps glinting in a shaft of sunlight, barrels brimming and ready to serve, I find myself mixing a cocktail of the topical, abstract and primeval.
When early humans first looked into a hole, did it inspire fear? Was it a gaping black chasm, a cave of hell, horror and death? Or was it a wondrous watery world inviting them to dive, teeming with colourful fish, rich in life and possibility? Whatever the experience, holes present a potent topic recurring in song. Many songs are written and driven by the desire to fill a hole of some sort or another. So perhaps they can be put into roughly two groups: good holes and bad holes.
Good holes might be cosy nests and nooks, associated with animal warmth and safety hibernation and nurturing. A good hole can be a opening, an opportunity. And there is also a common satisfaction associated with putting holes into things and things into holes, as it were. Such as? Well, planting seeds, samplings and trees, holes in woodwork that fit pieces together, placing objects in boxes (or indeed filling up playlists) and – so on. And there are other good associations, such as being placed in the protective surround of a life belt – through the hole in the middle – or being the ace in the hole with the golfing hole in one, or the satisfying plop of a snooker ball into a pocket, of course.
Good holes? Polo mints. Photograph: David Sillitoe for the Guardian
Holes can also be associated with adventure – the gateway to another world, such as thorough CS Lewis's wardrobe, or a worm hole in space in science fiction. And you can dig yourself out of a hole, but then again you can also dig yourself deeper.
From arseholes to earholes, peepholes to plugholes, holes can go, and be seen, in all sorts of forms and functions. Earthworms make holes and in doing so, fertilise soil, but the holes they make are also associated with rotting, decay and death. Buttonholes are useful, but some people have a phobia about them too. And then there's omphalophobia – the fear of another kind of hole – the belly button. And holes in the head? Surely a bad thing, unless of course you suffer from bad headaches and are a fan of the ancient medical practice of trepanning.
Really bad holes? Aside from sinkholes, melancholy songs talk about a hole in one's heart or life, but that can inspire a great song. Holes can also be wounds, bullet holes, something to fall into, a dole hole, a predicament, a squalid dwelling, a hole in one's pocket, shoes, or other items of clothing. And black holes? Yes, these too are somewhat inconvenient.
But who better to round off holes than the bard himself, not Salford's John Cooper Clarke alas, but William Shakespeare? Out of the ale-and-cakehole of playful Falstaff in Henry IV Part 2 emerge two of life's fundamentals – sex and death: "Wilt thou make as many holes in an enemy's battle, as thou hast done in a woman's petticoat?" Indeed one might.
And so this brings me to this week's very welcome guest guru HoshinoSakura, who, filling in the gap, will deftly gather up your hole song nominations and present them as a new whole on Thursday 6 March, so please put them forward in comments by last orders 11pm GMT on Monday 3 March.
To increase the likelihood of your nomination being considered, please:
Tell us why it's a worthy contender.
Quote lyrics if helpful, but for copyright reasons no more than a third of a song's words.
Provide a link to the song. We prefer Muzu or YouTube, but Spotify, SoundCloud or Grooveshark are fine.
Listen to others people's suggestions and add yours to a collaborative Spotify playlist.
If you have a good theme for Readers recommend, or if you'd like to volunteer to compile a playlist, please email [email protected] or [email protected]
There's a wealth of data on RR, including the songs that are "zedded", at the Marconium. It also tells you the meaning of "zedded", "donds" and other strange words used by RR regulars.
Many RR regulars also congregate at the 'Spill blog. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2017/oct/29/kathy-burke-interview-lifelong-member-of-the-non-pretty-working-classes | Culture | 2017-10-29T08:00:22.000Z | Stefanie Marsh | Kathy Burke: ‘Lifelong member of the non-pretty working classes’ | Midday at a café in Finsbury Park, north London: the Harvey Weinstein story has just broken and, less widely reported, the revelation that Margaret Thatcher knew about Cyril Smith’s child sex abuse during her tenure as prime minister, but had him knighted anyway. Kathy Burke, who came of age in the 1970s, is mulling over recent events; thoughtful seriousness cut through with bursts of laughter. What she has to say makes me think that when women complain that there aren’t any female role models, perhaps they’re looking in the wrong places: here she is.
“Growing up in the 70s,” she says, “if you were a girl or woman, a man could tell you what to do – if you were sitting on the bus: ‘Get up,’ ‘Move,’ whatever. You did what you were told.” But Burke’s doing-as-she-was-told phase didn’t last long. “I got some backbone and realised, no, I don’t need to be spoken to like this.”
The turning point came in her late teens, when a director asked her to feign masturbation in a play where she’d been cast as a mentally ill patient in a psychiatric hospital who was being abused by one of porters. “I was only 18. And I’m so proud when I look back because I just said no: ‘No it’s not in the script so, no, I’m not going to do it.’
“The thing with me is that I’m quite arrogant. I’ve got faith in my own talent and I always have. And if anyone turned around and said to me: ‘You’re never going to work again,’ I used to say ‘I will.’”
Role model: as Linda in Gimme Gimme Gimme. Photograph: BBC
Also, when she was in her teens, Burke took up acting, a delicate age to discover she was, allegedly, “unattractive”. “In fact, I didn’t realise I was ‘unattractive’ – in inverted commas – until I started acting. It was, ‘Oh no, you’re not right for the part – we’re looking for a pretty girl.’”
It’s a crushing write-off for many young actresses; water off a duck’s back for the teenage Burke. “It’s true!” she grins, “I look at myself in the mirror and think I’m gorgeous. It’s other people that tell me I’ve got a face like a smacked arse.”
The worst thing that anyone’s ever said to her is: “Don’t take this the wrong way but you look like Kathy Burke.” Burke finds this very funny. At 53, she’s proud of her achievements.
The café we are in belongs to the Park Theatre, where she’s in rehearsals for The Retreat, a three-hander she’s directing. It’s by Sam Bain, who created Peep Show with Jesse Armstrong. It is his first play, and Bain was anxious to find it the right home. Jonathan Harvey, who wrote the sitcom Gimme Gimme Gimme for which Burke, playing Linda, wore a dog-eaten orange perm, talked filth and was twice nominated for a Bafta, suggested her. The Retreat is about a well-educated, successful man who has crashed and burned, finds Buddhism and checks himself into a spiritual retreat. “But then his elder brother, Tony, pays him a visit…” says Burke. If you saw the last thing she directed, Once a Catholic, in 2014, you’d know that The Retreat is likely to be beautifully timed and very funny.
New horizons: the stars of The Retreat, the play she is directing. Photograph: Craig Sugden
Mid-career, Burke, then well known for her comedy work on television, decided to try directing. It was a pivotal choice born out of advice she was given when she was 17. She grew up in Islington, north London, under difficult circumstances. Her two brothers and godmother were rocks, but her mother died when Burke was two; her father was on the scene only intermittently. A fluke, in the form of a supply teacher, introduced her to acting, when he taught her class improv. Burke was 13. He suggested she train at the community-based Anna Scher Theatre, around the corner. Scher has described Burke as “the kindest girl, a very spiritual person”, whose talent as a performer stood out for miles.
That life-changing piece of advice came when the Swedish actor and director, Mai Zetterling, spotted her at a Scher performance and cast her in the film Scrubbers. “I was extremely lucky,” says Burke, “Mai Zetterling, she wouldn’t put up with anything. She grew up in Sweden and the Swedish film industry and didn’t like the way she was treated in Hollywood or here; with people like Peter Sellers and Danny Kaye – she didn’t enjoy the experience. She gave me great advice: ‘You need to be strong. You need to not just be an actress, you should write, you should direct, you need to get power and that’s the only way you’ll get power and some control in your career.’”
When Burke was 17, she says: “I didn’t mind being the clown in the corner, but within just a couple of years I was beginning to understand what she meant.” Except for the government-sponsored anti-heroin television campaign in which Burke was the drug addict, “I was always playing the same character which was Fat Friend of The Lead.” She laughs.
If you look at how frequently her career trajectory pivots in unexpected directions, you realise how Zetterling influenced its path. In 1988, Burke started playing bit parts in French and Saunders. Four years later she began working with Harry Enfield, and Waynetta Slob was born. By the mid-90s she had a go at writing and directing then, suddenly, in 1997, she caught everyone by surprise as the female lead, a woman abused by her husband, in Gary Oldman’s directorial debut, Nil by Mouth, winning best actress at Cannes.
Comedy duo: as Waynetta Slob with Harry Enfield. Photograph: BBC Archives
In 1998 she was Mary I in Shekhar Kapur’s Elizabeth, which won a Bafta for best film. Then in 2011 Burke rematerialised as an MI5 researcher, Connie Sachs, in the John Le Carré adaptation, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – that film went on to be nominated for three Oscars, as well as winning two Baftas and more than 20 other awards.
It’s quite a high when things work, but also I take it to heart if a play hasn’t gone well
Before directing, Burke had been frustrated by all the sitting and waiting to get parts, “So I thought, ‘This is a load of bollocks,’ and I started working backstage and doing script reading. Doing assistant directing. Just wanting to learn. And it did change people’s minds. It was just a way of showing I’ve got a brain in my head: yes, I’m very good at playing the fat, stupid one in the corner, but that isn’t because I am the fat, stupid one in the corner.”
What does power mean to Burke? “As a director you choose your team.” For example, in Once a Catholic, she says: “There were four very young girls in that. I could choose who played the male characters. I didn’t want anyone perving over the girls. That’s very important to me.”
It’s illogical that the transition from comedy to straight acting is still considered a step up when the evidence shows that attempts by “serious actors” to do comedy end in an awkward no-man’s land. But it’s because of this prejudice that some people didn’t know what to make of Burke, a woman getting tons of work but who didn’t wear make-up, crave red carpets or like champagne (she only drinks vodka); an actor from a working-class background, coming to prominence in the era of Merchant Ivory. Unfortunately for Helena Bonham Carter, this was also when Kathy Burke found her voice.
Behind the scenes: ‘I started working backstage, doing assistant directing – and it changed people’s minds. It was my way of showing I’ve got a brain in my head’. Photograph: Lee Strickland/The Observer
Burke revisits the incident. The year was 1996 and Bonham Carter complained on record that people didn’t take her seriously because she was pretty and middle class.
“At that time it was only actresses like Helena that were getting interviewed: people thought all actors or actresses thought the way they did,” Burke says. “Helena was doing a lot of work – and I think that’s where my umbrage came from. So I just wrote a letter to Time Out, that’s the only way I could think to express what I felt.”
The letter, which was printed, said: “As a lifelong member of the non-pretty working classes, I would like to say to Helena Bonham Carter (wholly pledged member of the very pretty upper-middle classes): shut up you stupid cunt.” “It was meant to be funny. It wasn’t aggressive, even though I used the word cunt,” says Burke innocently. Working-class actors loved it: “They were, like, ‘At last!’ The posh actors were a bit, ‘Helena’s my friend.’ Well, you should be a better friend to Helena and tell her to stop being so fucking stupid. Yeah, it needed to be said and I was the person that said it.”
Has Burke also been at the receiving end of sexual harassment? “Ha ha ha!” she cackles. “You’re so sweet to ask – No! Listen, I’m not… I was never the sort of girl that those sorts of men were interested in. I’m not conventionally pretty and I’m also quite coarse and I’ve also got a very big mouth, and if anyone had tried that with me I would have probably head-butted them and reported them to the police.
Friends in high places: winning best actress at Cannes for Nil by Mouth. Photograph: Patrick Hertzog/AFP/Getty Images
“It’s in every industry, not just ours. Look at Cyril Smith – and Thatcher let him get away with it. I find that more scary, particularly because she was a woman. She just didn’t give a fuck about the working classes.” It’s a big deal, she says, that “things like this are being exposed. This is why I like things like social media because everybody has a voice.”
Has she ever headbutted anyone? “I have punched one person, but it wasn’t to do with that. They were just getting on my nerves.”
If anyone had tried to sexually harrass me I’d have probably headbutted them and reported them to the police
She’s single, has many close friends, chose not to have kids and “keep myself to myself”, still in Islington. Ten years ago she contracted a bacterial infection during an operation. “So that really changed my life in the way I am, my health. I’ve got Addison’s disease now. The bug killed my adrenal glands so I nearly died about four times. I’m overweight because of the steroids and that can sort of get me down a bit, but there’s only so much I can do. I’m vegetarian, I walk everywhere and it just doesn’t shift. I’ve just had to accept it. I could stop eating bread, but life’s too short.” (Ditto cigarettes.)
The thing she really likes about herself, she says, “is that I’m now an older woman who really likes young women. All my young female friends are starting to have babies now, so that’s great.” Years ago, she adds: “I definitely got moody-broody at some point, but not enough to go ahead and have a child.”
‘I didn’t mind being the clown in the corner’: Kathy Burke at home in northeast London. Photograph: Lee Strickland/The Observer
She has made the choice to remain single. “I don’t get involved with men in that way any more. It was a decision,” she says. “The last relationship I had was quite a while ago and then I just thought: ‘Fuck this for a game of soldiers.’ I’ve been lucky. The blokes that I’ve been with have been really decent people, apart for one in 1993 – that was a long time ago, but some people can have an effect; if you hear their name it can make you feel a bit… weird.” She’s fallen in love since, but, “a very long time ago and I’ve not really had those feelings again. So I’ve had some shags – you can get laid whenever you want but… I love being in love even though it’s quite disruptive and I’ve just really not felt that way again. Of course, people fall in love when they’re older, but I’ve come to accept that, OK, that was it and it didn’t work out. So it’s a shame, but my life didn’t stop.”
She’s clearly happy, very settled and very good at her job(s). Straight after The Retreat she’s directing Lady Windermere’s Fan at the Vaudeville, with more projects next year – but they’re top secret. “It’s quite a high when things work, but also I take it to heart if a play hasn’t gone well. I do feel it’s my responsibility, so that can make me feel a bit shit. I did a Sam Shepard play a few years ago and, Jesus, they fucking hated it.”
I feel it’s almost pointless at this stage to ask her whether those vicious reviews didn’t bump her confidence – maybe just a little bit? “I sort of love all the plays I’ve directed,” she says, smiling broadly. “[When things have gone pear shaped] I just ignore it. I never got frightened. I just thought, no: I’ve always had faith in my own talent. I always knew I would work. I’ve always stood up for myself.”
The Retreat is at The Park Theatre, London, from 2 November (parktheatre.co.uk) | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/media/media-blog-australia/2014/nov/19/netflixs-australian-launch-subscribers-may-look-in-vain-for-the-big-titles | Media | 2014-11-19T05:25:28.000Z | Dan Barrett | Netflix's Australian launch: subscribers may look in vain for the big titles | With more than 200,000 Australians believed to subscribe to Netflix, many locals are familiar with the on-demand streaming service it offers. When the service launches locally in March 2015, many subscribers are likely to be disappointed by a smaller library that will miss several key titles.
Netflix is best-known for the popular premium drama series House of Cards and Orange Is the New Black. But it will not offer either of these shows when it launches in Australia, instead putting out the yet-to-launch Marco Polo and BoJack Horseman – an animated comedy about a depressed sitcom actor/horse.
While Foxtel has confirmed that the third season of House of Cards will not be screened on Foxtel in Australia, as the two previous seasons had, the show was curiously absent from Netflix’s launch announcement. Foxtel has confirmed that it will be screening the third season of Orange Is the New Black on its service, so it will be some time before that series is available on Netflix.
The Australian library at launch will seem much smaller to subscribers who are used to the US Netflix library. The size of the Australian market is considerably smaller and therefore it simply doesn’t demand same high volume of titles. When Netflix launches into a new region, it holds back many of its titles and introduces new movies, TV shows and documentaries in the months that follow.
Last month Netflix launched in France with a library of content that was just enough to justify its monthly €8.99 cost (almost A$13), but offers considerably fewer titles than other more established Netflix services across the globe. Australians can expect to see a similar small library launch, with the volume of titles set to expand throughout 2015.
The value proposition for Netflix will increase in 2015 with the streamer set to launch a number of new original series including one based on the Marvel superhero Daredevil, a new sci-fi series by the Warchowski siblings (best known for The Matrix) called Sens8, and a new Lily Tomin/Jane Fonda comedy, Grace & Frankie.
Providing a strong point of comparison for Australians, is the service Netflix offers in the Netherlands. The Netherlands, with a population of 16.8 million people, launched in September 2013 with a library that was similar in size to the French launch, but has grown substantially over the past 14 months. It doesn’t match the volume one would expect from the US or Canadian services but it does offer a sizeable and compelling range of titles.
A price for the Australia/NZ Netflix service is yet to be announced, but Netflix has promised it will be at a “low price”. In view of the €8.99 monthly fee, one would expect Australian pricing to rest between $10-$14, with a $12.99 price most likely.
Australian TV providers have been gearing up for the launch of Netflix. Early this month Nine Entertainment and Fairfax Media announced their joint venture service Stan, which will stream a mix of movies and TV shows for a monthly price. Foxtel is expected to revamp its movie streaming service Presto soon to include TV series. While the subscription TV company has been tight-lipped about the plans so far, the Foxtel chief executive Richard Freudenstein suggested at the Foxtel 2015 launch this month that a newly signed deal with HBO would factor into a Presto revamp. One should expect a marketing blitz from Presto, heavily featuring Game of Thrones, when that shows returns in 2015.
Australian viewers have often complained about the quality of local TV services and the time it takes for shows to make it to Australian screens. With the launch of local streaming services, it seems these complaints may soon be at an end. Australians will, however, need to get used to paying for television. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/sustainable-fashion-blog/adidas-garment-workers-world-cup-profit-cambodia | Guardian Sustainable Business | 2014-07-11T15:59:00.000Z | Tansy Hoskins | Will Adidas garment workers share in its World Cup profit? | The World Cup represents a huge pay cheque for corporate sponsors – the chance to associate products with athleticism and global excitement. Official sponsor Adidas has kitted out both teams in the World Cup final, as well as officials, referees and volunteers. Screens will be filled with their logo and as such, Adidas predicts that it will make €2bn in football-related sales, in large part thanks to its association with the tournament as sports fans rush to buy merchandise.
But behind each football boot or shirt is an assembly line of garment workers in countries such as Cambodia who have crafted each item. Can they expect to receive any part of this €2bn windfall? Will they receive a bonus cheque for propelling Adidas to the top of the sports market?
While football merchandise sells on a vision of good health, in Cambodia factory workers are struggling to get by on wages so low that malnutrition and fainting fits are rife. The accepted number of calories needed for an adult to carry out a day's labour is 3,000, yet research by Labour Behind the Label and the Community Legal Education Centre in Phenom Penh has shown that Cambodian garment workers are only able to afford an average of 1,598 calories a day – half the required amount.
The problem is that the minimum wage in Cambodia is just 25% of the living wage. A living wage is the amount needed to adequately cover food, rent, education, transport, healthcare and which allows for a small amount of savings to begin to break the cycle of poverty. It is a standard enshrined in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. According to Tailored Wages (pdf), a report from the Clean Clothes Campaign, a living wage in Cambodia would be €285.83 whereas the minimum wage is just €72.64.
Jyrki Raina is the general secretary of global trade union IndustriALL, and believes brands can have an impact on the setting of wages by agreeing to pay higher prices for products. It is a concession that would only have a 'fractional' impact on the cost of each item for consumers. "We've been working intensely with around 30 brands, including Adidas," Raina says. "We're in negotiations with the Cambodian government, garment employers and unions to secure a process that moves people from poverty wages towards living wages."
Adidas confirms that it is one of a number of brands working with IndustriALL, the list also includes H&M, Puma, and Inditex. "Our task as we see it is primarily to encourage and induce our suppliers to structure their salary system in a transparent manner, through regular dialogue about wages and social contributions, and to allow the employees to have direct input, ideally through wage negotiations," explains Katja Schreiber, director of corporate communications at the Adidas Group. "Our objective is for our suppliers not only to comply with the legal regulations but to also take the cost of living into account, and to reward employees for increasing their productivity."
But not everyone is convinced that Adidas plays fair. The Clean Clothes Campaign point to a recent article by Adidas CEO Herbert Hainer which stated that the increased cost of wages in China has prompted Adidas to grow production elsewhere. This kind of implied threat – by a corporation whose annual sales ($19.24bn) outstrips the GDP of a country like Cambodia ($15.25bn) – fuels the race to the bottom. The message to governments everywhere is clear – raise wages and we'll leave.
Earlier this year strikes and protests calling for the minimum wage to be raised to $160, resulted in five garment workers being shot dead. Labour Behind The Label interviewed Van Piseth a garment worker and trade union organiser at the New Orient factory which supplies Adidas, for its Payfair Playfair project. Piseth told the organisation that the arrival of Adidas brought a certain amount of improvement with regards to safety conditions and workers' rights but the lack of change to wages is what caused hundreds of thousands of people to take to the streets.
IndustriALL, along with its affiliate unions in Cambodia, is continuing to push for a minimum wage of $160 – one that would allow garment workers to afford enough food to be able to do their job.
The factories of Cambodia are a far cry from the $3.34m a year sponsorship deals Adidas signs with players like Argentina's Lionel Messi. It is only fair that the workers who create the merchandise and generate the billions of pounds in profit are paid a wage that doesn't mean starvation.
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https://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/jul/21/beware-mr-baker-dvd-review | Film | 2013-07-20T23:05:10.000Z | Mark Kermode | Mark Kermode's DVD round-up | Jay Bulger's boisterous rock-doc Beware of Mr Baker (2012, Curzon, 15) opens with the infamously cantankerous drummer Ginger Baker striking the director hard across the nose with a cane, drawing blood. The rest of the movie is interspersed with Baker regularly telling Bulger that he's an idiot. This would be more problematic were it not for the fact that, with very few exceptions, Baker seems tirelessly hostile to everyone. No wonder his closest associates – friends, family, band members – struggle to find anything nice to say about him, with Jack Bruce's assessment that "he's the best Ginger Baker in the world" coming as close as it gets to a personal endorsement.
Only on the subject of his drumming is there agreement that he's a genius, which is fitting, since the sole quality that Baker appears to admire in others is "time" – natural rhythm, of which he has plenty. Tracing his anger back to the lost father who told him that his best friends were his fists, this portrait of the artist grapples with the thorny question of whether you have to like someone to love their music, to which the answer seems to be a resounding "no".
Primitive animations bring the young Ginger to life, while ample archive footage (from concerts to newsreels to clips from the pop movie oddity Gonks Go Beat) covers his rise to fame and travels around the world; recording in Lagos, working with Fela Kuti and refining his polo skills – his other real (incongruous) love. As for that whack across the nose, it's a bloody gift to Bulger – an act of on-camera aggression that speaks volumes about his combative relationship with the fearsome Mr Baker.
With an Argentinian pope in the Vatican, Pablo Trapero's White Elephant (2012, Axiom, 15) seems particularly timely. Set in the Villa Virgin barrio of Buenos Aires, this grippingly ground-level drama finds social worker Luciana (Martina Gusman) struggling to deal with drugs and poverty in the shadow of the titular TB hospital. Joining her in battle are Father Julian (Ricardo Darín), who has been instructed to promote the cult of Marxist priest Father Mugica, killed (in real life) in 1974; and Father Nicolás (Jérémie Renier), an idealistic young man struggling to put a terrible tragedy behind him.
As with Carancho, Trapero's earthy, honest drama has its feet firmly rooted in its location – there's nothing touristy about his approach, which has the Loach-like smack of authenticity. Approaching matters both physical and spiritual with an admirably even hand, Trapero draws us into the world of his disparate characters, allowing us to witness events through their eyes, burying himself in the midst of the action while simultaneously standing back from it to create an impressive blend of immersion and perspective.
Emerging from the abyss-like darkness of Gomorrah, Matteo Garrone brightens his palette with Reality (2012, Independent, 15), a smart satire upon the sub-lebrity obsessions of the Big Brother era in which an outgoing fishmonger is mesmerised by a TV show that becomes his new religion. Captivated by the cathode ray, Luciano (a note-perfect Aniello Arena) starts to disengage from reality, retreating into increasingly paranoid delusions, obsessed with the fleeting possibility of fame.
Without resort to caricature, Garrone's latterday Shock Treatment paints a precise portrait of modern madness in which the world contracts from the sweeping cinematic vistas of the opening shot to the vacuum-sealed confinements of the televisual malaise. The result is a bright black comedy, pitched somewhere between the shrieking horror of Friedkin's Bug and the woozy affectlessness of Sofia Coppola's The Bling Ring.
There's a distinct whiff of "Fee-fi-ho-hum" about Jack the Giant Slayer (2013, Warner, 12), upon which director Bryan Singer has singularly failed to stamp his distinctive imprimatur. Instead we get a passably run-of-the-mill rehash of fairytale legend enlivened by some likable performances (Nicholas Hoult, Ewan McGregor) and blessed with accents that suggest that the whole thing is some arch imperialist parable about Northern Ireland – which it isn't. Giants go smashing, beanstalks come crashing and the scenery (both real and conjured) is royally chewed. Not bad, then, but not particularly good either.
As with all horror portmanteaus, The ABCs of Death (2012, Monster, 18) is only as strong as its weakest link, and with 26 alphabetised segments the weaknesses are numerous. Each director was given free rein and a $5,000 budget. In the case of Ti West's abominable "M is for Miscarriage", one is forced to ask: "What did you do with the other $4,995?" | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/dec/08/hacksaw-ridge-dominating-the-aactas-is-no-surprise-blockbusters-always-do | Film | 2016-12-08T00:13:42.000Z | Luke Buckmaster | Hacksaw Ridge dominating the Aactas is no surprise – blockbusters always do | Luke Buckmaster | Comedian Tom Gleeson was the first to go there. Drawing uncomfortable laughter from the crowd at the Aacta industry awards on Monday, the host of Hard Quiz joked: “Hacksaw Ridge has been nominated 13 times, so it’s safe to say that in Australia the film industry isn’t run by Jews.”
Gleeson was referring to the director Mel Gibson’s well-publicised antisemitic rants. They have caused many commentators to wonder whether the once A-lister will ever be able to bounce back, or can ever be rehabilitated.
In the Aacta ceremony proper, held last night at Sydney’s Star casino, there was no mention of such matters – from Gleeson or anybody else. There were, however, lots of cheers and support for Gibson and his fifth feature film as a director, Hacksaw Ridge.
The gut-busting second world war movie scooped this year’s awards, winning nine including best film, best actor, best supporting actor, best original screenplay and best director. There were many cheers for Gibson and heartfelt speeches made in his honour.
Some may wonder why a biographical war film about an American hero, set in the US and Japan, was judged by the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts as the best Australian film of the year but such a decision is not unprecedented. In 2013, The Great Gatsby – Baz Luhrmann’s glitter-doused adaptation of what many believe to be “the great American novel” – took a record 13-gong haul.
The Australian film industry is a flexible beast, forever contracting and expanding depending on the size of the body of water it’s dropped into. Marquee-name directors such as Gibson, who can bring the big bucks, will always be welcome here.
When the mega budget movie circus comes to town, our world-class practitioners get to work with state-of-the-art equipment and our actors get a grand stage. It’s therefore hardly surprising that the industry’s big thumbs up tend to reflect where the work and glory lies.
A hell of a ride: a scene from Hacksaw Ridge. Photograph: PR
Needless to say, Hacksaw Ridge is a hell of a ride: very well directed, with a sense of pain practically weeping from its pores. But I reckon Goldstone (also nominated for the top prize) is a superior film. It’s a sumptuously shot outback noir with an extraordinary allegorical punch, from writer/director Ivan Sen. Unquestionably, it’s a great deal more Australian.
Simon Stone’s expertly calculated drama The Daughter was another ripper; he was swindled out of a nomination for best director. Odessa Young did, however, win best lead actress for her faultless performance as the titular daughter. Young, an exciting presence, has a bright future ahead.
In commercial terms, Goldstone and The Daughter made chump change compared with Hacksaw Ridge. That doesn’t bode well at this particular ceremony, given the Aacta award for best film has always gone to the biggest hit at the box office.
In the six-year history of the event, there has been one exception, sort of. In 2014 director Jennifer Kent’s stylish creepy crawly The Babadook tied for best film with Russell Crowe’s much more successful (commercially speaking) The Water Diviner. The Aacta chief executive, Damian Trewhella, initially described the result as a “freakish outcome” and “a mathematical tie”. Results leaked to the Sydney Morning Herald revealed the Aacta board, in fact, decided the top prize would be shared.
Isla Fisher’s zinger-laden acceptance speech was one of the highlights of the evening. Photograph: Caroline McCredie/Getty Images for AFI
Director Eva Orner’s gut-wrenching detention centre exposé Chasing Asylum took best feature-length documentary. It was good to see the under-recognised Remembering the Man nominated in this category. Ecco Homo and The Baulkham Hills African Ladies Troupe weren’t but would have made worthy contenders.
The Aactas don’t just honour Australian cinema; TV, of course, is also very much in its purview. Foxtel’s terrific Tasmania-set mystery-thriller The Kettering Incident, co-created by Victoria Madden and Vincent Sheehan, collected two small-screen awards: best telefeature or miniseries and best lead actress (Elizabeth Debicki). Bizarrely, the eight-part series lost best screenplay in television to The Letdown – a 27-minute episode in ABC’s Comedy Showroom.
Samuel Johnson rightly won best lead actor in a television drama for his uncanny incarnation of music maestro Ian “Molly” Meldrum in the Seven Network’s excellent two-parter Molly, which drew a staggering 2.6m viewers. Isla Fisher was presented the trailblazer award, whatever that means, by Geoffrey Rush, who is also Aacta president and whose hair now deserves its own postcode.
Fisher’s zinger-laden acceptance speech was the best of the night, by a country mile. The actor noted that when she started out, “I had everything against me. I was a redhead. I was five foot two. I was a woman. I was from Perth. Nothing’s changed.”
Fisher explained that “there aren’t many roles for gingers, particularly because Amy Adams stole them all”. She thanked Donald Trump “for showing the world that it’s OK for unqualified orange people to win things”. Glorious. The next Aacta ceremony should have an MC, as long as it’s her.
The night’s big winner, however, was unquestionably Gibson. He is a director with enormous presence behind the camera, whose films (particularly Hacksaw Ridge, Apocalypto and The Passion of the Christ) are, among other things, immensely confronting portraits of pain, rendered in sometimes excruciating aesthetic detail.
From standing ovations at the Venice film festival to terrific reviews and great word of mouth, Hacksaw Ridge is the sort of production that would ordinarily at this point in the calendar have “Oscar buzz” written all over it. But Hollywood, however, is – as Gleeson said, somewhat more controversially – very different to the Australian film industry. Gibson will be hoping the work speaks for itself. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/26/obama-charleston-eulogy-pinckney-amazing-grace | US news | 2015-06-26T20:39:58.000Z | Ed Pilkington | Obama gives searing speech on race in eulogy for Charleston pastor | The Charleston shooting victims: a poet, a politician, a librarian, women of faith
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Wrapping his words in the cloak of a church sermon, deploying the inflections and oratorical rhythms of a pastor, Barack Obama delivered one of his most searing speeches on modern race relations in America at a funeral service in Charleston on Friday.
In the course of eulogising Reverend Clementa Pinckney, the pastor of the Mother Emanuel African American church who was shot dead in his own sanctuary along with eight of his flock last week, Obama addressed several of the most contentious debates that have erupted since the shooting.
He referred to the gun rampage by an avowed white supremacist as an act of terrorism, linking it to America’s long history of racist church bombings and arsons.
He said the shooting was not a random act, “but a means of control, a way to terrorize and oppress”. He said the alleged shooter, who he did not name, had imagined his deed would “incite fear and recrimination, violence and suspicion”, as “an act that he presumed would deepen divisions that trace back to our nation’s original sin”.
In the course of a eulogy in which Obama had the audacity to sing Amazing Grace in front of a rapt audience of 5,500 mostly African Americans in the College of Charleston TD Arena, the president also made a robust case for the tearing down of the Confederate flag. As debate continues to rage over the enduring presence of the old secessionist symbol across much of the deep south, Obama said bluntly that the flag was a “reminder of systemic oppression and racial subjugation”.
The flag did not cause the murder of nine churchgoers at a Bible-study meeting on 17 June, Obama said. “But as people from all walks of life – Republicans and Democrats – have acknowledged, the flag has always represented more than just ancestral pride.”
He said taking down the flag from the grounds of South Carolina’s state capitol in Columbia “would not be an act of political correctness, it would not be an insult to the valour of Confederate soldiers, it would simply be an acknowledgement that the cause for which they fought – the cause of slavery – was wrong.”
Obama speaks at Clementa Pinckney funeral – read the eulogy in full
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Speaking in front of political leaders from both sides of the partisan divide, including Hillary Clinton and the Republican leader John Boehner, as well as African American household names such as Jesse Jackson and the Reverend Al Sharpton, Obama also called for action to address what he called the “mayhem” of gun violence in America.
He also touched on police brutality towards black communities, endemic poverty in many African American neighbourhoods and Republican attempts to introduce new voting laws that would make it more difficult for people to cast their vote.
“None of us can or should expect a transformation in race relations overnight,” Obama said, adding that whenever a tragedy happened such as the massacre at the Mother Emanuel church in Charleston there were calls for a debate.
“We talk a lot about race,” he said. “There is no short cut, we don’t need more talk. People of goodwill will continue to debate the merit of various policies as our democracy requires. There are good people on both sides of these debates. Whatever solutions we find will be incomplete. But it would be a betrayal of everything Reverend Pinckney stood for if we allow ourselves to slip into a comfortable silence again. To go back to business as usual as we so often do.”
He said that after a week of reflection on the Charleston shooting he had concluded that what was required now was “an open heart. That more than a particular policy or analysis, that’s what I think is needed.”
Then, after what must be one of the longest pauses he has ever held in the middle of a public speech, the president of the United States began to sing Amazing Grace. The arena burst into song alongside him.
Obama first met Pinckney in 2007, during the early stages of his first run to the White House. Pinckney was an early supporter of Obama’s bid for the presidency.
The president said he did not know Pinckney well, but he did a little. He described the pastor as a “man of God who lived by faith … when Clementa Pinckney entered a room it was like the future had arrived.”
Pinckney, 41 when he died, made an impact on those around him from an early age. He was only 13 when he had what he took to be a message from God calling him to preach and by 18 he enjoyed his first appointment as pastor. He was elected to the South Carolina legislature in 1996, aged 23, the youngest African American to hold a seat in the assembly, going on to become a state senator just four years later.
A massive crowd of mourners descended on the College of Charleston well before the official funeral service began. Thousands came in hope of securing a place inside the arena, standing from soon after dawn in a line that ran down three blocks and snaked all the way around the corner.
In the blazing heat, mourners huddled under umbrellas and relied on bottles of water handed out among the crowd.
“We expected a large turnout,” a White House official said. “But this is overwhelming.”
The tone of the funeral service that preceded Obama’s eulogy was one of celebration of Pinckney’s life rather than dwelling on the unconscionable act of racial hatred that ended it.
“Senator Pinckney’s last act was to open his doors to someone he did not know, who did not look like him,” said the Honorable Reverend Joseph Neal, referring to Dylann Roof, the suspected shooter. “So let us not close the doors. Do not let race and politics close the doors that Senator Pinckney opened.”
A succession of speakers from South Carolina’s church as well as political circles remembered Pinckney for his booming voice, his skills as a preacher, and his loyalty as a father, husband and friend.
“Tell the people that Reverend Clementa Pinckney walked the talk,” said Reverend George Flowers. “He was the embodiment of the sermon. He was humble, caring, compassionate, supportive, a man of integrity.”
Only one speaker referred directly to Roof, albeit without using his name. Reverend John Gillison told the crowd: “Someone should have told that young man! He wanted to start a race war, but he came to the wrong place.”
In moving messages to their father published in the official order of service, Pinckney’s two young daughters said their goodbyes. Malana, who hid with her mother Jennifer in a side room in the Mother Emanuel church while her father was being killed along with eight others, wrote in her message:
“Dear Daddy
I know you were shot at the Church
And you went to Heaven.
I love you so much!
I know you love me” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/nov/13/malcolm-turnbull-suffers-five-point-drop-in-newspoll-better-pm-rating | Australia news | 2017-11-12T19:27:02.000Z | Katharine Murphy | Malcolm Turnbull suffers five-point drop in Newspoll better PM rating | Malcolm Turnbull has suffered a five-point drop in the better prime minister rating in the latest Newspoll, a result which will compound his political woes after his government lost its lower-house majority at the weekend.
In an otherwise largely static poll, which has Labor maintaining an election-winning lead, the gap between Turnbull and the Labor leader, Bill Shorten, as preferred prime minister narrowed substantially, with the margin now two points, with the Liberal leader ahead 36% to Shorten’s 34%. Labor inched forward to improve its lead on the two-party-preferred vote, leading the Coalition by 55% to 45% compared with 54% to 46% in the last poll.
Turnbull faces fraught week as citizenship threatens to derail government
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The movement outside the poll’s margin of error on a metric where Turnbull has consistently dominated his opponent will embolden the prime minister’s internal critics, who have been taking regular pot shots as the dual citizenship debacle spirals on multiple fronts.
The Senate is due to sit for a week from Monday in what will be a high-octane few days, which will include intensifying political debate within the Coalition over marriage equality, with the results of the postal survey due on Wednesday.
Conservatives have been positioning in the lead-up to an anticipated yes vote in the same-sex marriage survey, preparing to bring forward a rival bill to increase protections for religious freedom.
Dean Smith, the Liberal senator, who created a marriage equality bill with government moderates which triggered the postal survey process, confirmed at the weekend he would bring his bill forward on Thursday, after the survey result was known.
As well as navigating the marriage debate, the government on Monday will have to resolve on a new Senate president to replace Stephen Parry, who resigned in the citizenship debacle, and later in the week the high court will also hear a challenge to the eligibility of the Liberal Hollie Hughes, who was supposed to replace the former Nationals deputy leader Fiona Nash.
Turnbull is still overseas, attending two international summits, and at the weekend said he intended to see those visits through despite the resignation of the Liberal John Alexander, which has triggered a snap byelection in the Sydney seat of Bennelong and cost the government its lower-house majority.
Alexander will have to clear his citizenship problems by the close of nominations to run in Bennelong, which he holds by a margin of just under 10%. Labor is already fundraising to contest the snap poll, which is expected before Christmas.
Barnaby Joyce is already contesting a byelection in the seat of New England after being ruled ineligible by the high court, in a field with 17 candidates, which will make it hard for him to gain a primary vote over 50%.
With senators due back in Canberra on Monday, the major parties are locked in an escalating standoff over a new disclosure regime to ensure parliamentarians meet the eligibility requirements set out in the constitution.
The government has threatened to send Labor MPs under a cloud to the high court, although it now lacks the numbers in the House of Representatives to follow through on the threat.
Of the 148 remaining members of the House, 74 are from the government, including the Speaker, Tony Smith. Labor has 69 members and there are five crossbenchers.
That means the government cannot win a vote on the floor of the House without the support of at least one crossbencher. This is because winning a vote among the 148 remaining members requires 75 votes.
Labor MPs will 'definitely' be referred to high court, says Pyne
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If Labor and the crossbench voted together, they would have a combined 74 votes, which would be enough to defeat the government, but Turnbull has support for confidence votes and supply from two independents, the Victorian Cathy McGowan, and Rebekha Sharkie from the Nick Xenophon Team – although Sharkie may also end up in the high court to clarify her eligibility.
Turnbull has accused Shorten of running a “protection racket” to prevent a handful of Labor MPs being referred to the high court to test their eligibility.
On Sunday the manager of government business, Christopher Pyne, declared the government would refer Labor MPs to the high court if the ALP refused to do the right thing.
But Labor is making threats in return, declaring it will “go nuclear” and target five government MPs – Julia Banks, Nola Marino, Alex Hawke, Tony Pasin and Ann Sudmalis – if the Coalition refers any Labor MPs to the high court. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/apr/04/james-baldwin-the-fire-next-time-steve-shapiro | Books | 2017-04-04T09:00:47.000Z | Steven W Thrasher | How James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time still lights the way towards equality | There is never a bad time to encounter James Baldwin, and as the wide success of the Oscar-nominated documentary I Am Not Your Negro has made clear, the appetite in Trump’s America for his prescient brilliance on race and civil rights is fierce and growing.
His 1962 classic The Fire Next Time was originally a letter, written by Baldwin to his nephew on the 100th anniversary of the so-called emancipation of black America. In the letter’s penultimate paragraph, Baldwin writes: “This is your home, my friend, do not be driven from it; great men have done great things here, and will again, and we can make America what America must become.” It is rhythmically similar to Trump’s red-hatted mantra – but there’s a big difference between trying to make America “great again” and focusing on what it once was, rather than what it “must become”.
More than 50 years on, The Fire Next Time has been reprinted by Taschen in a beautiful new edition that pairs his text with images by the civil rights-era photographer Steve Schapiro. Baldwin was “the scribe of the movement, our illustrious griot, who knew our struggle because he lived it”, as congressman John Lewis writes in the foreword. But before mobile phone videos and Twitter allowed black Americans to directly telegraph their plight to the world, it was up to photojournalism to visualise the message, as Schapiro’s images did in Life magazine.
The Baldwin-Schapiro juxtaposition is an effective and powerful literary-visual pairing, not unalike the combination of Richard Wright’s words in the 1941 classic 12 Million Black Voices with black-and-white photos from the Security Farm Administration’s Great Depression archive. Schapiro intimately captures many familiar faces – Lewis as a young activist in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Harry Belafonte and Martin Luther King – at a time when he “was not aware that [King] was going to be one of the most important people of our time”, as he writes in the afterword. He also photographs a nameless nun, and countless black children and activists whose names are either lost to history or deserve to be as well known as Schapiro’s beautiful portrait of Fannie Lou Hamer, or the gorgeous depictions of Baldwin and his smile.
A spectator at the Selma to Montgomery march with a sign condemning police killings presages the grievances of today’s Black Lives Matter movement. Photograph: Steve Schapiro
Many of Schapiro’s images – such as a woman at the 1965 Selma march with a sign reading “Stop Police Killing” – could have come from any Black Lives Matter protest in the past three years. And despite their slightly less robust military equipment, the line of cocky, almost gleeful, police officers waiting to confront protesters could have come from any news story from modern Anaheim, Ferguson or Baltimore.
Photograph: Taschen
However much love and sympathy Schapiro may have for his subjects’ black faces, his images are often of horrific violence: bombed houses, bombed cars, bullet holes, search parties looking for missing people who would all too often turn up dead. Baldwin’s words, too, channel both a love of black people and an urge to document white violence: “When I was 10,” he writes, “two policemen amused themselves with me by frisking me, making comic (and terrifying) speculations concerning my ancestry and probable sexual prowess, and for good measure, leaving me flat on my back in one of Harlem’s empty lots.”
Reading that made me reassess the fact that Carolyn Bryant – the woman who accused Emmett Till of whistling at her, triggered his lynching, helped his murderers go free and recently admitted that she lied – will not face punishment. While we know the name Emmett Till because of photos of his open casket (which his mother, Mamie Till, insisted upon), his voice was silenced. However, Baldwin’s words give us some insight into the pain of being considered hypersexualised and dangerous by the same world that killed Till and Tamir Rice and Trayvon Martin.
Ralph Abernathy (rear) and Martin Luther King lead the way on the road to Montgomery in 1965. The American flag was a natural symbol for a movement that called on the nation to live up to its principles. Photograph: Steve Schapiro
With the media under assault in the US, and when even the most nuanced conversations about the role of subjectivity and identity in the press can cause good journalists to lose their job, Schapiro’s afterword in this new edition of The Fire Next Time is clarifying, revelatory and admirable: “Photojournalism did make a difference in bringing attention to the civil rights movement and in helping to change attitudes around the country.” He does not say journalists must be neutral: “As press members – and white men – we were often called on to investigate a situation or find out someone’s condition in a hospital when the organisers felt they couldn’t.” There is no false equivocating with bigots.
Schapiro and Baldwin showed the possibility of what strong writing and photography could achieve in their time. In ours, we’d do well to look to them.
The Fire Next Time is published by Taschen. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/dec/19/i-never-wanted-a-normal-life-billie-eilish-the-guardian-artist-of-2019 | Music | 2019-12-19T13:00:49.000Z | Alexis Petridis | I never wanted a normal life': Billie Eilish, the Guardian artist of 2019 | Billie Eilish was a star long before 2019. For a lot of 13- and 14-year-olds she was a game-changer the moment her song Ocean Eyes appeared on Soundcloud in 2015: an artist who spoke directly to her audience because she was her audience, a teenage girl who had co-written the song as a piece of homework and uploaded it for her teacher to access. But 2019 was the year that Eilish’s impact on pop became unavoidable: a show-stealing performance at Coachella; the youngest person to be nominated for all four biggest Grammy categories; the loud praise of fellow musicians from Tyler, the Creator to Thom Yorke; and a raft of younger artists operating under her influence.
Most importantly, the release of her debut album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, confirmed her as the most exciting pop artist of her age: a dark, adventurous, eclectic set of songs, that appeared blithely unconcerned with chasing trends. Recorded at home by Eilish and her elder brother Finneas, without co-writers or big-name producers, it showed that, in a world of pop stars desperate to be seen as auteurs, Eilish genuinely is one – a fact underlined by her directing the impressively disturbing video for single Xanny. She turned 18 yesterday.
Billie, you’re the Guardian’s artist of the year and 2019 looks like when your career went crazy. Does it feel that way?
It was pretty steep, but it still felt gradual to me, even if it didn’t seem that way to the public. Everyone suddenly thinks I’m famous, but, you know, I was 13 when Ocean Eyes came out. Then again, that’s a lot faster than some people. They spend 20 years and for me it happened in three. But every moment this year has made me feel – “What the fuck is going on?” – in good ways and bad.
You’ve been very open about struggling with depression at the start of the year. Was there a moment where you thought you might give up making music, or was that what kept you going?
I don’t know. People talk about how making music is healing; I think listening to music is healing, but I don’t think making music is. It doesn’t heal to make music for me, but there are so many other things that do. The main thing is thinking about what I do for a living, having that be the thing that makes me remember what I have.
The fandom you inspire is intense. Is it difficult to deal with?
It’s crazy. Fandoms are a really insane thing. It’s strange growing up as a fan, wishing my favourite artist would do this or that, and now being on the other side. Now I understand why my favourite artist couldn’t do this, or couldn’t be this way when I wanted them to be. And it’s a big responsibility, but the fans are the reason that you’re anywhere, pretty much, and they actually have my back most of the time. So yeah, I love them. It’s a lot of responsibility, but I just live with it, you know?
You clearly don’t have a standard teenage life. How do you find space to live a “normal” one?
A normal life – I never wanted that. It’s not like this life is what I was dreaming of growing up, but all the things that were considered normal growing up I never liked doing … I can’t explain it without sounding so annoying! I’m pretty OK with the way things are. I wouldn’t want anything else. Even when parts of what I have now aren’t what I want, I don’t really care – it all goes into having this other thing that I literally couldn’t have dreamed of having.
‘I don’t enjoy working with other people’ … Eilish. Photograph: Kenneth Cappello
You directed the video for Xanny – do you want to do more of that?
Since the beginning of my career I wanted to direct videos. I told everybody that immediately and they were like: “Well, you don’t have any experience and you don’t have the time.” There’s this weird world of “You don’t have any experience so you can’t have the job” – it’s like, well, how am I supposed to get the job if I can’t get any experience? I think that’s a big problem in the world with women. I don’t think people like us being the boss, especially because I was 13, 14, 15 years old: they really didn’t want a 14-year-old girl to direct a music video. But I knew I wanted to and I convinced them, I got their trust, and from here on out I want to do my own videos, and I eventually want to make a movie. I’ve wanted to direct my whole life. I love cinematography, the camera angles, the visuals. I think We Need To Talk About Kevin is shot so beautifully – a movie like that is my goal in life, even though it’s about the most fucked-up shit ever. Whatever my movie’s about, I want it to make someone feel the way I felt when I watched that.
Your brother was saying your next album is going to be more experimental …
It’s funny, he actually called me right after that article came out: “Billie, I did not say you are making experimental music, I literally just said we’d been experimenting on new stuff.” We’re just, like, seeing what we can and can’t do; we’re making the same Billie Eilish shit, it’s just growing.
He’s been working with other artists – Selena Gomez, Camila Cabello. Do you see a point where you could work with someone else, or is your relationship too close?
I don’t enjoy working with other people. Finneas is really good at writing music, really fast, so he can sit down with anyone and write something. For me, it’s never been a comfortable thing, so it can’t be someone random I work with. I’m not opposed to it, I just don’t see the need right now. You know, he’s not working with other people because he hates me.
You’re inundated with offers to collaborate – everyone from Alicia Keys to BTS. Who would you most like to work with?
Collaborating doesn’t really interest me. It’s a question I get asked all the time and I genuinely don’t want to. It’s nothing against anyone, I just don’t feel the need. I love music, I love other artists, but I hate that as soon as I meet an artist the entire world is like “Billie Eilish and so-and-so might be doing a song together!” Why can’t I just be a friend with them? I’m not saying it’s never going to happen, but it’s not something I’m looking for.
Plans to celebrate your birthday?
I’ve wanted to be 18 my entire life, and a couple of months ago I realised how much I like being 17. And I’m worried at the same time that people who like me, like me because I was young. And now I’m not going to be, they’ll all be like “meh”. So I don’t know. I’m confused. It’s like when somebody turns 18, the whole world’s against them. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/feb/01/magical-mysterious-electrifyingly-intimate-van-gogh-self-portraits-review-courtauld | Art and design | 2022-02-01T15:15:29.000Z | Adrian Searle | ‘Magical, mysterious and electrifyingly intimate’ – Van Gogh: Self-Portraits review | One of the star attractions in the collection of the Courtauld Gallery in London is Vincent van Gogh’s Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear, which was painted in January 1889. The artist had mutilated his left ear two days before Christmas, following a quarrel with Paul Gauguin, with whom he had been sharing a house in Arles. Van Gogh looks pale and introspective, clean-shaven, dressed for the winter chill in his yellow room, an easel behind him and a Japanese print on the wall (the Courtauld owns this print, too, but it was stolen in the 1980s and never recovered). The Dutch artist has the hunted look of a man not yet ready to re-enter the world, except through his painting. The open blue door on the right is the same blue door that appears in the picture of his straw-bottomed yellow chair, which now hangs in the same room at the Courtauld. You can take the chair as a kind of self-portrait, too. It is as if he has stepped out for a second, leaving his pipe and tobacco pouch on the seat.
Van Gogh: Self-Portraits, the new exhibition at the recently reopened Courtauld gallery in London, is filled with presences, absences, substitutions, and echoes of different kinds. It is a magical and at times mysterious show. An exhibition of electrifying intimacy, it shows the artist at his most self-aware and at his most vulnerable. Every painting is both a kind of analysis and a rescue attempt. During the three and a half years before his death in 1890, Van Gogh painted around 35 self-portraits: some may have disappeared or been painted over. Fifteen are here (not counting that chair), as well as a sheet of three graphite, pen and ink drawings. Some are too fragile to travel, others from private collections could not be borrowed. The curators also wished to avoid unnecessary repetition. Some others were considered too clunky or otherwise unsuccessful. As it is, all the above are illustrated in the catalogue.
‘He may only be pushing the paint about, but this is very beautiful’ … Self-Portrait as a Painter (1888). Photograph: Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation
Van Gogh was described variously by people who knew him as “well built” and “a rather weedy little man, with pinched features”. His appearance in these portraits – bearded or not, hair clipped short, shaved, unkempt, ill, better fed, on the mend, confident, nervous, withdrawn, sunken-cheeked (he had 10 teeth removed in Antwerp, making him look older than a man in his 30s) or wearing his vulcanised rubber dentures – provides an index of his physical well-being, self-image and psychological state.
The multiple ways he paints himself are also complicated by his artistic intentions and development, not to mention his material circumstances. The paints and canvases he could afford, as well as his diet, whether he was on or off the drink, his thoughts about colour and touch, the ways he wanted to present himself to others and the state of his mind, all leave their trace. Most works were completed in a single session. He’d paint then move on.
Head turned a little to the left, turned slightly to the right, then full frontal – many of his self-portraits, especially the 22 he completed in Paris, might be seen as studies, experiments in artistic and personal style, all played out on a small scale, all derived from looking at his reflection in a small mirror. No chance to step back for a bigger view, or to see himself in profile, which would have needed a second mirror.
The earliest here, painted in the winter of 1886-87, has him done up in a heavy coat and dark felt hat: red beard, blue and white cravat, looming out of the gloom, one side of his face in shadow. A couple of months later and he’s already turned up the colour, loosened up the brushwork and let the white of the canvas show through. Then the brushwork gets more rhythmic and he’s playing with the patterning and contours of his jacket, the interplay between drawing with the brush and tonal modelling.
Looming out of the gloom … Self-Portrait with Dark Felt Hat (1886-87). Photograph: Vincent van Gogh Foundation
In one, his head is surrounded by a swarm of little blue flecks and dabs. He used these notes of colour to affect a transition between the shorthand modelling of his jacket and the dark purplish background, which has since entirely disappeared – the cheap crimson pigment he used contained cochineal, and has faded to nothing. Colour and tonality have gone out of whack in other works too, over time.
His beard is well-trimmed and then it isn’t. His eyes go in and out of alignment and he paints himself head-on in a wonky grey felt hat (a bit more sporty and louche than the black number he had on in winter). He’s both serious and natty, but something has gone seriously awry with one side of his face in this one: an eye and a cheekbone warp out at you in a disconcerting way. Once you see it, you can’t stop staring. He must have had to keep turning his head in the mirror to see himself and lost track of the relationship between self and canvas.
Next he’s in a painter’s blouse and looking at us over his shoulder. Then he’s in a peasant’s straw hat. The brushwork is speeding up and then hits a gallop, pitter-pattering all over the place. By September, he seems to have reined it in, before beginning to cover everything – jacket, face, hat, background – with bristling arrays of parallel marks, a sort of rhythmic painted tattoo. He looks as prickly as a hedgehog or a werewolf. The painting ran away with him, as if it were mapping unseen energies flowing through everything, and he is trying to weave a self-portrait out of it all.
All the while, Van Gogh is trying to do something other than capture brute likeness or appearance, something more like vivid living presence. “I would like to do portraits which would look like apparitions to people a century later,” he wrote. He first turned to portraiture as a possible means of earning a living, and to counter the boom in portrait photography, which he saw as mechanical. But these paintings weren’t made with any eye for the market. Painting himself gave Van Gogh much more trouble than portraits of other people. He’s checking in on himself, in more ways than one.
Mapping unseen energies … Self-Portrait, autumn 1887. Photograph: Patrice Schmidt/© Rmn Grand Palais/Dist Photo Scala, Florence
At the beginning of 1888, Van Gogh completed a larger painting in which we see the artist before his canvas, holding his palette and a fistful of brushes. The lumps of pigment on the palette feed into the cross-hatchings he uses to describe the weave of his jacket, the wooden support of the canvas in front of him, his head and his hair. They even fill the background, though the colour is almost flat. Light catches on the textured vertical and horizontal strokes. He may only be pushing the paint about, but this is very beautiful. By the time he leaves for the south, Van Gogh has assimilated all the experimentation of the previous year and this painting has a peculiar dignity and sense of solitary concentration, almost a kind of monumentality. He isn’t looking at us. He isn’t discernibly looking at anything.
Next we leap a year to the artist with his mutilated ear and then two final portraits, which have not hung together since he painted them in the asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. The first is overworked, the impasto strokes delineating his face scraped down and giving his appearance a haggard, ruined look. The shadows are muddy and flat. The doctors had only reluctantly let him paint at this time, fearing he’d eat the paint and try to poison himself. He’d done this before. The second self-portrait, painted a week or so later, sees him holding his palette, his beard and hair trimmed, his expression alert, the brushwork lively, confident and assured, the colour singing and luminous. It might almost be a different man.
Van Gogh: Self Portraits is at The Courtauld, London, 3 February until 8 May. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/gnm-press-office/2022/jun/09/letter-to-brazilian-government-from-uk-media-organisations | World news | 2022-06-09T16:54:07.000Z | GNM press office | Letter to Brazilian government from global media organisations | 9 June 2022
To:
President Jair Bolsonaro
Carlos Alberto França, Minister of Foreign Affairs
General Paulo Sérgio Nogueira, Minister of Defence
We write to express our extreme concern regarding the safety and whereabouts of our colleague and friend Dom Phillips, and Bruno Araújo Pereira, with whom Dom was travelling. Dom is a globally respected journalist with a deep love for Brazil and its people.
As you will know from numerous press reports, Dom and Bruno have now been missing in the Amazon for more than three days. Their families, friends and colleagues have repeatedly requested assistance from local, state and national authorities and emergency services.
We are now very concerned by reports from Brazil that search and rescue efforts so far have been minimally resourced, with national authorities slow to offer more than very limited assistance.
We ask that you urgently step up and fully resource the effort to locate Dom and Bruno, and that you provide all possible support to their families and friends.
Katharine Viner, editor-in-chief, Guardian News & Media
On behalf of:
Sally Buzbee, executive editor, the Washington Post
Dean Baquet, executive editor, the New York Times
Sérgio Dávila, editor-in-chief, Folha de S.Paulo
Nancy Barnes, senior vice-president of news and editorial director, NPR
John Micklethwait, editor-in-chief, Bloomberg News
Julie Pace, SVP & executive editor, the Associated Press
Juan Forero, South America bureau chief, Wall Street Journal
Marina Walker Guevara, executive editor, Pulitzer Center
Rozina Breen, editor-in-chief and CEO, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism
Stephen Engelberg, editor-in-chief, ProPublica
Paul Webster, editor, the Observer
Jason Ukman, managing editor, Stat
Thiago Domenici, director, Agência Pública de Jornalismo Investigativo
Rhett Butler, founder and CEO, Mongabay
Peter Wolodarski, editor-in-chief, Dagens Nyheter
Roger Hodge, deputy editor, the Intercept
Felipe Maciel, executive director, epbr agency
Phil Chetwynd, global news director, AFP
Roula Khalaf, editor, the Financial Times
Emmanuel Colombié, Latin America director, Reporters Without Borders
Lynette Clemetson, director, Wallace House Center for Journalists
Quinn McKew, executive director, Article 19
Jodie Ginsberg, president, Committee to Protect Journalists
Gregory Feifer, executive director, Institute of Current World Affairs
Lindsey Hilsum, international editor, Channel 4 News
Christina Lamb, chief foreign correspondent, Sunday Times
Krishnan Guru-Murthy, presenter Channel 4 News
Jon Lee Anderson, biographer and staff writer, the New Yorker
Leonardo Sakamoto, director, Repórter Brasil
Nelly Luna Amancio, editor-in-chief, OjoPúblico
Katia Brasil, executive director, Amazônia Real
André Petry, editor-in-chief, Revista Piauí
Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief, The Atlantic
Danielle Belton, editor-in-chief, HuffPost | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2020/feb/16/funeral-cremation-spiralling-costs-bills-saving | Money | 2020-02-16T09:00:25.000Z | Jo Thornhill | Forget the rules, there are meaningful ways to bury spiralling funeral costs | It is getting more expensive to be put to eternal rest. The cost of funerals has risen by up to 10% in the last year – meaning that if the deceased does not have enough money in their estate, their death could be met with a growing bill for their relatives.
SunLife’s annual Cost of Dying Report puts the average bill for a death in the UK at just under £10,000 when estate and professional fees and the reception are factored in. Such is the concern about the spiralling price – up 130% in the last 15 years – that the Competition and Markets Authority has launched an investigation after years of above-inflation rises.
However, leave aside a cortege of limousines, pallbearers and an oak coffin, and the bill will be less onerous. It can be reduced even more by having a cremation with no service. But is worrying about the bills at a hugely emotional time going to create more problems than it solves?
Cutting cremation costs
No family, no friends, no ceremony – a grim farewell for some, but a necessary saving for others. Direct cremations, where there is no service and the ashes are kept or delivered to loved ones, cost from £1,000.
David Bowie, who died in 2016, famously helped raise awareness of this option when he chose to be secretly cremated without family or friends present after telling loved ones he did not want a funeral service. His ashes were scattered on the Indonesian island of Bali.
But direct cremations still account for only 4% of all cremations each year. David Collingwood, director of funerals at Co-op Funeralcare – which handles one in six deaths –says interest is growing. It charges £1,395 – but he says the decision is often led by practicality more than cost, particularly if family members are overseas.
“The service can be ordered over the phone or online,” he explains. “And families often have a ceremony with the ashes at a later date.”
Costs are relatively low – less than a third of a cremation with a service. The body goes straight to the crematorium in a plain coffin, and the process takes place at a time convenient to the facility. “For some, it is appropriate to have a full service with family carrying the coffin and laying flowers,” Collingwood says. “For others, that is not the priority. They choose to focus on a memorial service or a ceremony to scatter the ashes.”
Keeping a sense of occasion
There are, of course, other ways of keeping costs down while maintaining a traditional sense of occasion.
The average burial cost is £4,975, according to SunLife, and a memorial service, flowers, order of service sheets, venue hire, catering and limousines will add around £2,300.
Fran Hall, chief executive at the Good Funeral Guide – a not-for-profit organisation offering impartial advice about the industry – says it is best to discuss plans in advance.
“Families often feel shame in trying to keep costs down,” she says. “We need to move away from that idea. People can create a meaningful service and still maintain the rituals without spending a fortune.”
Families should consider whether they need limousines, while the first slot of the day at the crematorium is often cheaper. Using a bamboo or wicker coffin can result in lower bills as they are cheaper than solid wood.
There are a glut of companies offering prepaid funeral plans for those who want to put aside cash monthly. Using a comparison site to find the best value allows people to weigh up if it is worth the outlay. But paying in instalments over a number of years will result in much higher bills, as interest is charged.
Natural burials
An undertaker or funeral director is not an absolute necessity.
Rosie Inman-Cook, manager of the Natural Death Centre, a charity which offers impartial advice on family-organised, environmentally friendly funerals, says more people are looking at natural burials – there are now around 350 sites in the UK.
“Some people find it hard to get their heads around the fact there are no rules when it comes to a funeral,” she says. “Families can collect the body from the mortuary, bring it to a natural burial ground under their own transport, dig the plot themselves if they wish, then bury the body and plant a tree. It is very moving. Families can add whatever personal touches they like. In my 20 years of working in this area I have never heard anyone say they regretted doing the funeral themselves.”
Amy House runs the Eden Valley Woodland Burial Ground in north Kent with her husband, Martin. Burial plots are £770 and interment, including tree planting, is £400 to £500. Plots for the interment of ashes start from £300 and House says many people buy a family plot in advance that has space for multiple burials or ashes.
The shrouds, coffins and linings used must be made from natural, biodegradable materials, such as cardboard and bamboo. There are no headstones or memorials.
Religious services are permitted and ground can be consecrated. House says they have held ceremonies for many different religions.
“It can be cathartic for families to be practically involved,” she adds. “Many want to take ownership of the day. You don’t have to spend a lot to make it feel personal.”
Who pays?
Typically, if the funds are there, the funeral is paid out of the deceased’s bank account. The executor or estate administrator will access the money, as accounts will be frozen after the person’s death.
Jane Morgan: ‘Just talking through the issues can be a relief.’
The government’s Funeral Expenses Payment (Funeral Support Payment in Scotland) is available for people on certain benefits who need help paying, but it is unlikely to cover the full amount.
Coffin Club’s flat-pack option
Independent funeral celebrant Jane Morgan believes people can spend too much on funerals - sometimes even ending up in debt - because they don’t know about possible options.
She runs courses to discuss and plan for death, including ways to spend less – with people even building and decorating their own coffin.
Morgan has been delivering end-of-life ceremonies for eight years and ran London’s first “Coffin Club” in Tottenham, north London, in October with the aim of helping people understand more about the funeral market and dispelling myths.
As part of the six-week course, which includes talks from various professionals in the industry, members can buy and decorate their own £250 “flat-pack” wooden coffin.
The Coffin Club concept was started by a palliative care nurse in New Zealand, and set up in the UK in 2017.
“Some people might have had bad experiences with family funerals. Just talking through the issues can be a big relief,” says Morgan. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/mar/21/book-clinic-melissa-harrison-climate-crisis-fiction | Books | 2020-03-21T18:00:44.000Z | Melissa Harrison | Book clinic: are there any novels about the climate crisis? | Q: Can you recommend some climate crisis fiction? The nonfiction is too depressing and fiction often helps the heart cope with the world
Peggy Duesenberry, 61, Massachusetts, US
A: Melissa Harrison is a novelist and nature writer whose books include At Hawthorn Time and All Among the Barley. She writes:
There are plenty of dystopian cli-fi novels out there, designed to jolt us out of our current complacency – but it doesn’t sound as though that’s what you need. The American poet and climate activist Kate Schapira believes we must “imagine – and learn about! there are precedents! – the structures that would allow us to live well enough without hurting ourselves and each other, and without helping the people currently hurting us”.
Fiction can help us do that imaginative work.
The brilliant Jenny Offill’s new novel Weather is a great place to start, as it explores what it’s like for ordinary people to move from fear and denial to concrete action. Emily St John Mandel’s haunting Station Eleven (2014) takes us into a near future where disease has led to a breakdown of society, but not a world devoid of hope, for Shakespeare’s plays survive, and art and love remain central to the human experience. Set in an Australia ravaged by climate change, Alexis Wright’s richly strange, genre-bending The Swan Book (2016) is a reminder that other, older cultures may have healthier and more connected relationships to the natural world than the destructive western capitalism currently in the ascendant. Since writing The Dispossessed (1975), Ursula K Le Guin has concluded that an “anarchist utopia” such as the one she describes would eventually destroy itself – but as a way of envisioning a society organised on different principles to ours, it continues to inspire.
Finally, Tove Jansson’s gorgeous, sparklingly simple The Summer Book (1972), in which a little girl and her grandmother spend a season on a Finnish island, has two vital lessons for today: how to live a rich, creative life with very few resources, and how to remain clear-eyed and full of courage in the face of grief and loss.
The work we need to do now is as much moral and imaginative as it is practical. These are novels that can shift our values and priorities, if we allow them to.
Submit your question for bookclinic below or email [email protected] | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/nov/03/nick-xenophon-rejects-ex-girlfriends-allegations-of-manipulative-behaviour | Australia news | 2017-11-03T03:28:27.000Z | Amy Remeikis | Nick Xenophon rejects ex-girlfriend's allegations of 'manipulative' behaviour | Former Senate powerbroker Nick Xenophon has been forced to reject allegations he acted inappropriately during a long-term “secret” relationship with a younger party staffer, as the South Australian state election campaign becomes personal.
Jenny Low, who worked in the office of John Darley, who sensationally quit as Xenophon’s representative in the South Australian parliament earlier this year ahead of his expulsion, accused her former partner of “manipulative and controlling” behaviour during their seven-year relationship.
Xenophon, who formally resigned from the federal Senate last week to focus on his bid to return to state politics, released a statement denying Low’s allegations.
Nick Xenophon and the political art of keeping everyone guessing
Read more
“I absolutely reject and am most distressed by any suggestion my relationship with Jenny was abusive or predatory in any way, manipulative or controlling. I deeply regret that we couldn’t make the relationship work,” he said.
Nick Xenophon "deeply saddened" that a failed long-term relationship has been used by Advance SA Party for "blatant political gain" #auspol pic.twitter.com/0RsQxtxIyE
— Political Alert (@political_alert) November 3, 2017
Low, who said her relationship with Xenophon ended three years ago, rejected suggestions she was coming forward for political gain, at the launch of a Darley’s new political party, Advance SA.
She said she had stayed quiet about the relationship until she was approached by a journalist from the Australian newspaper.
“Nick is a person ... people will look at this and make up their own minds about what they think of this,” she said at the party launch, in a press conference published by the Advertiser.
“It is not normal to be in a seven-year relationship with somebody and for his family not to know.
“This is what we are seeing worldwide of men, in positions in power, and the way that they treat young women.”
Low said she would rather the focus be on Advance SA’s bid for upper house seats and said while there were “many other details I could go into” she wanted to keep the focus on politics.
Xenophon accused his former allies turned political rivals of using his failed relationship for “blatant political gain”.
Low said she was 23 years old when she began a relationship with the then 48-year-old Xenophon, and said she had now matured and in hindsight “I can see how some of the things he did are inappropriate”. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/26/housing-bill-right-to-buy-queens-speech-housing-association-tenants-conservatives | Politics | 2015-05-25T23:01:05.000Z | Frances Perraudin | Housing bill to include right-to-buy extension in Queen's speech | Plans to allow housing association tenants to buy the homes they live in at a discount will be included in the Queen’s speech on Wednesday, the government has announced.
The housing bill, which contains a number of key Conservative election pledges, will include an extension of Margaret Thatcher’s right-to-buy scheme, allowing England’s 1.3 million housing association tenants to purchase their homes with the same discounts offered to council tenants.
About 800,000 housing association tenants already have a right to acquire their homes with smaller discounts, but the government’s plans would see them able to take up discounts that are capped at just over £102,700 in London and £77,000 for the rest of England.
The policy attracted significant criticism when it was first announced before the general election earlier this month. The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) and property company Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) joined many housing associations in warning that the Tory plan would not address the chronic housing shortage.
The National Housing Federation said the policy could cost up to £5.8bn a year because compensation would have to be paid to housing associations for forcing them to offer stock to tenants at below-market rates.
The proposed discount would be worth 35% of the market value of a house after a housing association tenant has been in it for three years, with the discount rising 1% for every extra year the tenant has rented in the public sector. In the case of a flat, the discount would be worth 50% of the market value after the first three years, rising by 2% each year afterwards.
Councils will also be forced to sell about 5% of their most valuable housing once it becomes vacant and build more affordable, cheaper properties with the proceeds. The government argues that this will mean the number of affordable homes will double for each home sold, thereby increasing the national housing supply.
The remaining funds raised from the sale of valuable council stock will go towards freeing up brownfield land for development. Right-to-build plans, which will also be in the housing bill, would give people the right to be allocated land with planning permission to self-build or commission a home to be built for them.
The bill will also include the Tory manifesto pledge to build 200,000 starter homes, which will be available at a 20% discount to first-time buyers under 40.
Greg Clark, the communities secretary, said the bill would give more than a million people a helping hand on to the housing ladder. The housing minister, Brandon Lewis, said: “Anyone who works hard and wants to get on the property ladder should have the opportunity to do so, which is why the Queen’s speech will include measures so a million more people have the chance to do that.
“And with housing starts at their highest since 2007, we’ll take steps that will get workers on sites and keep the country building.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/apr/17/gaz-coombes-honest-playlist | Music | 2023-04-17T06:00:34.000Z | Rich Pelley | ‘Freak Scene made me want to be in a band’: Gaz Coombes’s honest playlist | The first song I remember hearing
I recall being sat on the floor playing with my Fisher-Price car park, and my mum putting on Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite! from Sgt Pepper by the Beatles. It’s very fairground and circusy.
The song I can no longer listen to
My eldest daughter was obsessed with One Direction, so we’d listen to Best Song Ever over and over. I have a bit of a soft spot for 1-D, but I could happily never hear that song again.
The song I inexplicably know every lyric to
I was fascinated with The Needle and the Damage Done by Neil Young when I was 11 or 12, even though I didn’t understand the heavy connotations behind the lyrics. It has quite a light, sweet, fluffy, whistley little melody.
The first single I bought
Summer 1985, nine years old, I jumped on my Grifter and bombed it to Solo supermarket in Wheatley in Oxfordshire, where they had this cool little music section in the corner with cassettes and vinyl, and bought Into the Groove by Madonna.
The best song to have sex to
You think there’s time to put music on? Maybe Young Americans by Bowie because it’s such a sexy song.
The song that I do at karaoke
I’ve only done karaoke in some far-off land: like the time I did Come Together by the Beatles with Sebastian Bach from Skid Row when we were playing this mad festival in Beijing. We did a verse each and it was glorious.
The best song to play at a party
Teardrops by Womack & Womack is a solid party favourite. During Covid, my wife and I got fed up with having a drink, so we’d make a cup of tea and watch Top of the Pops reruns on BBC Four. This came on and it’s so cool.
The song I secretly like but tell everyone I hate
Everyone thinks Dancing in the Street by Mick Jagger and David Bowie is a bit of a joke, but there’s something about the abandonment of it … I don’t know where their heads are at, but they’re having a great time.
The song I wish I had written
I reckon the perfect song is the Tammi Terrell and Marvin Gaye version of Ain’t No Mountain High Enough. The verses, chorus and middle eight are just glorious. The key change is one of my favourite moments in music.
The song that changed my life
Freak Scene by Dinosaur Jr was one of the first songs we learned to play in my first band, the Stone Heads. It was the song that made me want to be in a band, plus it’s pretty simple.
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The song I want played at my funeral
(Just Like) Starting Over by John Lennon would make things a bit less intense. Lennon’s got that beautiful light touch. I’ll be starting over, so can everyone else.
Gaz Coombes’s new album, Turn the Car Around, is out now. He is on tour to 26 May. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/feb/18/express-and-star-titles-continue-to-reap-benefit-of-price-cuts | Media | 2016-02-18T13:16:53.000Z | Jasper Jackson | Express and Star titles continue to reap benefit of price cuts | Richard Desmond’s Express and Star titles continued to reap the benefits of recent price cuts, recording small rises in daily circulation during January as the rest of the market stayed broadly flat.
The Daily Star recorded a 4.1% rise in sales to 470,369, having halved its price from 40p to 20p during the week and also slashing the cost of its Saturday edition from 60p to 30p. The Express, which has slashed the price of its Saturday edition from 85p to 45p at the start of the month and has been prominently advertising its weekday 55p price as 10p less than the Mail, saw a rise of just under 2% to 408,700.
Though the price cuts have boosted sales, additional revenue from advertising is not thought to have made up for lost circulation income. Just days after the Express price cuts emerged in December, Desmond’s Northern & Shell announced it was seeking to cut £4m from its editorial budget.
Express Newspapers seeks almost £4m in editorial budget cuts
Read more
Most of the remaining paid-for dailies saw little movement, with most recording modest month-on-month falls, with only the i and the Times showing an increase. However, the Financial Times experienced a big drop, down more than 5% tobelow 200,000.
The Sun 1,787,096 (-0.75%)
Daily Mail 1,589,471 (-0.56%)
Metro 1,348,033 (0.19%)
London Evening Standard 898,407 (4.82%)
Daily Mirror 809,147 (-0.32%)
The Daily Telegraph 472,033 (-0.92%)
Daily Star 470,369 (4.12%)
Daily Express 408,700 (1.99%)
The Times 404,155 (-1.1%)
i 271,859 (1.28%)
Financial Times 198,237 (-5.27%)
Daily Record 176,892 (-0.51%)
The Guardian 164,163 (-1.13%)
The Independent 55,193 (-1.57%) | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/sep/24/amazon-refuses-to-end-sales-of-tommy-robinson-merchandise | UK news | 2019-09-24T14:42:39.000Z | Ben Quinn | Amazon refuses to stop selling Tommy Robinson merchandise | Amazon has refused to pull merchandise in support of Tommy Robinson after it and other online companies were accused of profiting from products promoting far-right extremism.
Items including T-shirts bearing the image of Robinson – whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon – were removed by eBay after the Guardian approached the company about the listings. The former English Defence League (EDL) leader was released this month after serving nine weeks of a nine-month sentence for contempt of court.
On Amazon, a plethora of books, posters and T-shirts – in some cases given an “Amazon’s choice” designation, which the company accords to “highly rated, well priced products” – continue to be sold.
The company said it had no comment when it was approached about the sale on its platform. The array of Robinson-related paraphernalia appears to have been limited since he was jailed earlier this summer although Amazon continues to sell T-shirts with logos such as #IamTommy and #freeTommy against a union flag logo.
Tommy Robinson banned from Facebook and Instagram
Read more
The anti-racism campaign group Hope Not Hate said: “While individuals have every right to buy and sell Tommy Robinson merchandise, the real question here is why global brands such as Amazon and eBay appear happy to share in the profit from products promoting a far-right extremist.
“Are they comfortable with the fact that merchandise being sold on their platform is being worn and distributed at far-right demonstrations, some of which turn violent?”
EBay said the items breached its offensive materials policy, which prohibits the sale of “items that promote or glorify hatred, violence, racial, sexual or religious intolerance, or promote organisations with such views”.
An spokesperson for eBay, said: “Listings of this nature are strictly prohibited on our marketplace. We have removed these items and have taken enforcement action against the seller.”
Google Shopping continues to sell a range of T-shirts emblazoned with the slogan “Free Tommy Robinson”, including some inspired by the Tommy Hilfiger logo.
Robinson was jailed for broadcast reports that encouraged “vigilante action” and “unlawful physical” aggression against defendants in a sexual exploitation trial, according to the judges who found him guilty
Earlier this year, YouTube defended its decision to keep Robinson on its platform, arguing that the far-right activist’s content on its site is fundamentally different from the posts that led Facebook and Instagram to delete his account last week.
Amazon also removed one of Robinson’s books, Mohammed’s Koran: Why Muslims Kill For Islam from sale. But his autobiography remains on the site, along with books about Robinson, including one entitled Tommy Robinson and the Coming Civil War.
He has been permanently banned from Twitter after falling foul of the platform’s rules governing “hateful conduct”. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2024/feb/02/bank-agrees-payout-over-mortgages-that-ruined-lives | Money | 2024-02-02T07:00:41.000Z | Rupert Jones | Bank agrees payout over mortgages that ‘ruined lives’ | One of Britain’s biggest high street banks has agreed a payout to settle a case involving “unfair” mortgages – giving hope to thousands of people who have been left owing huge sums.
On the eve of a trial set to last six weeks, Bank of Scotland – part of Lloyds Banking Group – and a law firm representing 160 current and former customers reached an out-of-court settlement that means the bank will not face a public grilling.
The case involves a Bank of Scotland product called the shared appreciation mortgage (Sam), which has been accused of ruining lives by leaving some people owing 10 or 12 times the sum they originally borrowed.
Teacher Stern, the law firm behind the action, had claimed that Sams were “entirely unfair” products that have left borrowers trapped in their homes, unable to sell up.
The settlement is cloaked in secrecy, with the bank and the law firm only saying they had “agreed a commercial settlement, without any admission of liability”.
Nothing was disclosed about how much money has changed hands, although some of the affected borrowers have been saddled with debts of several hundred thousand pounds – and some owe in excess of £1m.
Individuals who join a claim of this type will sometimes be asked to pay a fee of perhaps £10,000. That may suggest the affected borrowers would not have agreed to forgo their day in court unless they secured a reasonable payout.
Those who were eagerly awaiting the court case – which was due to start on 31 January – included Gary Cooper, whose case was featured in Guardian Money just before Christmas.
Gary Cooper’s parents ended up owing £500,000 on a £42,500 loan. Photograph: Gary Cooper
His parents took out a £42,500 Sam loan that has ballooned into a debt currently estimated at more than £500,000. The amount owed is so large because the deal they signed entitled the lender to 75% of any house price rise over the life of the loan.
Bank of Scotland sold thousands of Sam mortgages between late 1996 and early 1998, and an estimated 2,000-plus people still have one. The other bank that sold Sam loans for a brief period was Barclays.
They typically allowed people to borrow up to 25% of the property’s value, and usually there were no repayments to make during the lifetime of the loan.
In return, borrowers were required to pay back the original amount plus a share of any increase in the value of their home when the mortgage was repaid, or when they died and the house was sold.
This share was usually worked out on a three-to-one basis – so if someone borrowed 25% of the value, they would be in line to hand over 75% of the future growth in value.
Cooper – who is not one of the 160 claimants – is hopeful that the settlement may provide a way forward that will help others.
A joint statement from Bank of Scotland and Teacher Stern said: “The terms of the settlement agreement are confidential. There are no changes to the mortgages or their terms and conditions.”
The bank has previously said that it recommended borrowers took financial advice to ensure they understood the product and that it was suitable for their needs, and added that all borrowers were advised by their own solicitor. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/oct/02/medea-review-rupert-goold-kate-fleetwood-almeida | Stage | 2015-10-02T11:42:19.000Z | Michael Billington | Medea review – Rupert Goold directs a ferocious Kate Fleetwood | Reimagining the classics is fine. There is, however, a massive contradiction in Rachel Cusk’s alternately exhilarating and baffling new version of Euripides’s Medea. Cusk preserves the outward form of a drama about a woman driven to kill her own children but radically alters the climax to deny us cathartic satisfaction.
In Cusk’s updated version, Medea is a writer dumped by her actor-husband, Jason, for a younger woman, and left with the two kids. Far from scaling down the heroine, however, Cusk preserves her passionate intensity. As played by the remarkable Kate Fleetwood, this Medea is as strong, wild and witchy as in Euripides.
Rejecting the compromises of the middle-class chorus, she announces, “I’d rather be dead than unfree.” She angrily tells Jason, “you’ve taken away my history”, and frequently turns her fierce, baleful stare on the audience. Fleetwood gives a ferocious, soul-baring performance. But, having initially followed the Euripidean model, Cusk bolts at the final fence. She allows her heroine to exact an artistic, rather than a physical, revenge on her husband and his new bride in a way that substitutes bathos for fear and pity.
Blood-red, barren landscape … Ian MacNeil’s set design for Medea. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian
Rupert Goold’s production is visually inventive. Ian MacNeil’s design transforms a modern duplex into a barren, blood-red landscape, the chorus are wittily played as baby-clutching mums, and Fleetwood’s Medea and Justin Salinger’s Jason conduct their mutual hostilities via their mobiles. There’s also good work from Richard Cant as a gay showbiz fixer anxious to join the parental club, Andy de la Tour as the daughter-fixated Creon and Michele Austin as a straight-talking Brazilian cleaner.
But the climactic Messenger, who delivers the crucial plot information, is distractingly played as a mixture of man and woman. I also felt that Cusk ultimately dilutes the play’s tragic impact by striving to turn Medea into an identifiable modern woman who eschews actual violence.
Sometimes, when you pour new wine into old bottles, the vessel simply explodes.
At the Almeida theatre, London, until 14 November. Box office: 020-7359 4404. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2023/may/13/martin-lewis-graduates-student-loans-finance-graduate-tax | Money | 2023-05-13T18:06:33.000Z | Jon Ungoed-Thomas | Martin Lewis: ‘We must stop calling it a student loan’ | The consumer finance champion Martin Lewis has highlighted the impact of the new arrangements for student loans, saying some school-leavers may no longer consider a degree is worth the cost.
“There is a fundamental misunderstanding about how student loans work, because they are demonised as debt, but under this plan they will work far more like a graduate tax. For most people, it will be like a 9% additional tax burden above the £25,000 threshold.
“Many university-leavers will end up repaying more than double what they do under the current conditions. In practice, the majority of graduates will be paying their student loans for most of their working lives.
“What we have to do as a society is decide where the pendulum should swing between the individual who benefits from their education and the state. This is a clear shift away from the state and towards the individual paying for their own education
“There are many people who, even under this system, will be paid back by the increased earnings they have. There will equally be quite a chunk for whom it is no longer good value. It’s going to cost you more, so it has got to be worthwhile.
“If university is right for you, then under this funding model, while it will be more expensive than it was before, it still does enable people from lower-income backgrounds to go to university.
“We should stop calling it a student loan. This is a tax. It is a hypothecated, limited form of taxation.
“We should rename this. This is a graduate contribution system.
“Students will be repaying under the new plan for 40 years compared with the current 30. The amount that is owed does not dictate what you repay each year. All it dictates is when you clear it off. The interest rates are lower, but the main beneficiaries of this will be the highest-earning graduates because they will pay off their loans more quickly.
Revealed: richer graduates in England will pay less for degree than poorer students
Read more
“Those on lower to middle incomes are going to pay a lot more because they are repaying for longer. And those on the highest incomes are going to repay more quickly, and are going to pay less.
“Most people will be clearing their loans in years 30 to 40. A lot of the numbers are based on modelling, but we won’t know how it works for quite a long time. The aim is that the state pays less.”
The headline of this article was amended on 14 May 2023 to clarify that the view that Martin Lewis expressed about the student loan is that “it works more like a tax”. An additional comment was added to reflect his rview that it should be more accurately named a graduate contribution system. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/jul/06/once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-by-quentin-tarantino-review-from-auteur-to-author | Books | 2021-07-06T06:00:20.000Z | Rob Doyle | Once Upon a Time in Hollywood by Quentin Tarantino review – from auteur to author | Quentin Tarantino’s most recent film, Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, seemed to split audiences along generational lines. Despite its charms and Tarantino’s customary flair, I came out of it frustrated and a bit bored, wondering if it was finally time to divorce this film-maker who’d shaped the sense of cinematic possibility of anyone who grew up in the 1990s. Tarantino’s essential shallowness, which in the past he has alchemised as aesthetic vitality, and his adolescent moral outlook had come to seem dismayingly inflexible: I didn’t feel he could surprise me any more. But everyone a couple of decades older than me, who remembered the late 1960s televisual and cinematic golden-age Hollywood so lovingly elegised, seemed to adore the film.
Now Tarantino has surprised us all by turning his hand to writing books, beginning with this novelisation. It’s far better than I expected it to be. Anyone who admired the movie will have a great time with this spin-off work. Interestingly, it is not a straightforward translation of the events in the film. The two versions of Rick and Cliff’s story do share a number of scenes, but even those are altered and lengthened and there numerous new scenes and characters, some of them real-life figures (Steve McQueen has a cameo).
I haven’t read a film-to-book novelisation since I was a teenager; among disreputable genres it’s down there with the reality TV star autobiography. Yet Tarantino has such fun expanding his fictional world, and the results are sufficiently intriguing, as to suggest that more auteurs might consider becoming authors. As a pop culture polymath, he exploits the novel format to lay on thick his lavishly detailed, period Hollywood shop talk and industry gossip. With its garrulously omniscient third-person narration, the book serves as an essay on cinema and televisual history. Sometimes, the fictive mask comes off and it’s unmistakably Tarantino talking right at us: “When it came to how to do a modern-day Hitchcockian thriller for a with-it audience, that pulsed to a swinging London beat, with Repulsion Roman [Polanski] cracked the code.” His zeal and insider’s savvy indicate that Tarantino can write decent pop-cultural nonfiction too; in fact, he has a memoir on the way (he has signed a two-book deal with HarperCollins).
There is probably little point reading this book if you haven’t seen the film, in which actor Rick Dalton (the Leonardo DiCaprio character) and his stunt double, chauffeur and buddy Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), come to terms with their advancing years and a changing cinematic culture in which tough guy leading men are being replaced by a new generation of androgynous long-hairs. Meanwhile, Polanski and Sharon Tate are enjoying their status as Hollywood’s royal couple, as Charles Manson and his “family” of lost girls plan to trigger social upheaval by way of murderous carnage. Disorientingly, the film’s climactic scene of fantasy violence – Rick torching the killer hippies with a flamethrower – is dispatched in a flash-forward sequence 100 pages in.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood review – uneven ode to a lost era
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Throughout, the process of novelisation anchors the meandering story. There is little actual structure here, but the backlighting provided by the film means it doesn’t really matter: the characters and settings benefit from a charisma emanating across media.
Tarantino is no Henry James. He over-explains, repeats himself and dishes out stock phrases to get the descriptive job done: films “strike a chord with audiences”; industry moguls are “head honchos”; victims issue “bloodcurdling screams”. So it goes – Tarantino is inventive and playful in other ways: for instance, with metafictional gestures such as giving himself a directorial credit in the résumé of a child star on the cowboy show Lancer (we also get a long account of the show’s plot line, which I felt I could skim to no great loss).
As in his films, Tarantino’s insatiable enthusiasm for pop culture trivia is infectious and thrilling. I will be reading the memoir.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood by Quentin Tarantino is published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson (£8.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/18/heartbleed-bug-will-cost-millions | Technology | 2014-04-18T10:51:30.000Z | Alex Hern | Heartbleed bug 'will cost millions' | Revoking all the SSL certificates leaked by the Heartbleed bug will cost millions of dollars, according to Cloudflare, which provides services to website hosts.
SSL, the technology used to secure much of the internet, relies on private keys that must be kept hidden, but the Heartbleed flaw allows an attacker to steal them by pummelling a server with carefully crafted requests.
Cloudflare initially speculated that such an attack was impossible on the type of web server they use, but after opening it up to the public to test, the firm was soon proved wrong. As a result, it has decided to revoke and reissue all SSL certificates for its customers – well over 100,000 of them.
The company also responded to queries as to why it had not done so earlier, as a preventative measure. "The answer," cofounder Matthew Prince writes, "is that the revocation process for SSL certificates is far from perfect and imposes a significant cost on the internet's infrastructure."
In revoking their customers' SSL certificates, CloudFlare caused the size of the file which contains a list of all revoked certificates to grow by more than 200 times, from 22KB to 4.7MB, still held by CloudFlare's certificate authority Globalsign, which issues the certificates. That list has to be served to every single internet user, to ensure that their browsers know to reject stolen certificates.
As a result, Prince writes, "if you assume that the global average price for bandwidth is around $10/Mbps, just supporting the traffic to deliver the CRL would have added $400,000USD to Globalsign's monthly bandwidth bill … The total cost to Globalsign if they were using [Amazon's] infrastructure, would be at least $952,992.40/month"
Cloudflare had an extra reason to hesitate, because the firm was one of the few given forewarning about Heartbleed. The company was told about the flaw a week before researchers from Codenomicon disclosed it publicly – even before it was given a name, which is why CloudFlare's initial release on the matter just refers to "a new vulnerability … in OpenSSL". Since no patch was available, it fixed it by simply turning off the affected functionality altogether.
But even with that early warning, the company still had to act. The Heartbleed flaw has been in OpenSSL for two years, and with no way of telling whether it had been hit, the safest option was to replace all the certificates.
Tor may be forced to cut back capacity after Heartbleed bug | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/04/britain-society-inequality-trade-brexit-is-not-the-way | Opinion | 2018-06-04T05:00:07.000Z | Will Hutton | Brexit is unnecessary. We have a plan to build a modern Britain | Will Hutton and Andrew Adonis | Brexit Britain is right. The status quo is insupportable. But the solution is not to leave the European Union. Our problems are made in Britain; they can only be solved in Britain. Europe does not impede this mission; rather it is indispensable. The imperative is to transform the way our country works.
The poverty, inequalities and hopelessness that propelled the Brexit vote – seven out of the 10 poorest areas in northern Europe are in England, and all voted for Brexit – must be decisively addressed. Britain must simultaneously recommit to full EU membership as its benefits and the colossal costs of exit become ever clearer, and stand solidly with Europe as dark and menacing forces stalk the globe – not least an imminent transatlantic trade war and the wider threats of Donald Trump.
Brexiters hit back at no-deal 'armageddon' warning
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To chase the economic moonbeams peddled by Brexiters while the values we prize are under global assault, to cower behind borders that shut out the rest of our continent, and to seek to resurrect an unachievable island sovereignty: this is a dead end that can only result in widespread suffering. That could even begin the day after Brexit next year, with widespread shortages of medicines, fuel and food as the port of Dover collapses with no Brexit deal – according to Whitehall departments’ risk assessments leaked and paraded in the Sunday Times yesterday.
Brexiters dodge these truths. Intent on completing the Thatcher revolution, they want us out of the EU at any cost. While feigning concern for the state of Britain, their real agenda is wholly to embed a Thatcherite world of self-organising free markets and minimal social provision that will bring unalloyed benefit – whatever the baleful track record. They want out of Europe because it stands in their way.
But two years after the referendum, the Brexiters’ “have your cake and eat it” fantasies have evaporated. There is no Brexit dividend, rather the prospect of dismal economic growth and tax rises. The extra £350m a week supposedly available for the NHS turns out not to exist and instead we have an exit bill of £39bn (and rising). Then there is the up to £20bn a year cost of observing customs obligations after Brexit – an avalanche of self-imposed red tape – along with as much or more again as UK organisations expensively relocate to the European mainland.
Virtually no one still claims, as they did during the referendum campaign, that we can retain the economic benefits of EU membership while leaving the European customs union and the single market. The prospect of “quick and simple” trade deals outside the EU is now recognised as delusory, particularly with Trump’s protectionist US and Xi Jinping’s China. It is the “global” EU that already has the trade deals, either done or in the making, with at least 60 countries, including Canada, Japan and South Korea – which are all in jeopardy for the UK on Brexit day. The EU is the citadel of rules-based international free trade and the international standard-setter that Britain did so much to create – and at whose centre we stood. “Global Britain” is a chimera.
The economic warnings are there for those prepared to see them. Inward investment has collapsed by some £130bn over the last 12 months. The car industry fears “Carmageddon”. There is no open-skies deal with the US. Being frozen out of the Galileo project endangers our space industry. Universities fear being cut out of EU research budgets. It is the same in sector after sector.
‘Two years after the referendum, the Brexiters’ “have your cake and eat it” fantasies have evaporated.’ Photograph: Jack Taylor/Getty Images
Europe’s achievements have not been driven solely by an economic calculus: they belonged to a bigger, nobler cause of representing European values, rooted in democracy. This is why any form of Brexit is a mistake. We want to share a continent where Europeans don’t fight each other, don’t prevent trade and where we allow its people to live and work wherever they like across their region. Never has Europe been so peaceful, democratic and prosperous as in the era of the EU.
But too much of Britain was hurting for it to hear this message, inflamed by fears over immigration. The 30 social mobility “coldspots” identified by the Social Mobility Commission all voted Brexit. So did areas where property prices were stuck, where life expectancy was falling, where antidepressants were widely prescribed and where life chances were thin. In too much of the UK beyond London and the south-east, economic performance is mediocre or downright bad. The social contract has become for many people effectively nonexistent. Unemployment may be at a 40-year low, but so are savings to maintain living standards: insecure, poorly paid work is at a record high. Real wages are 7% lower than they were at the time of the financial crisis – an unprecedented squeeze. Of course immigration seemed menacing.
Saving Britain is a twin-pronged task: transforming our economy and society so they work for all while recommitting to an EU that covers our backs better than we know. Today’s laissez-faire, sink-or-swim approach to economics and society has to end; instead our hijacked capitalism must be populated with repurposed businesses, motivated by a desire to produce goods and services that better humanity. New technology needs to be mobilised for the public good, while great institutions that serve the mass of people – such as trade unions, public-benefit companies to run utilities and building societies – must be reinvigorated and reshaped.
A refashioned social contract should invest public money where desperately needed and raise the necessary taxes fairly. The centrepiece should be an educational Marshall plan. Part of this contract should be a stronger notion of citizenship, including a national identity card system to assure citizens that we know exactly who is here and what they are entitled to.
A Great Charter for Modern Britain would hand power from Westminster to the cities, towns and counties of Britain so as to transform their localities, represented in a senate to replace the House of Lords, located in the north of England. This should be the foundation of a fully fledged written constitution.
Trump’s trade war threatens global peace
Martin Kettle
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It is the Labour party – firmly pro-European and credible in its commitment to social reform – that could rally the country. The present policy of colluding in Brexit, while trying to make sure it is a Tory-authored disaster, will impose unnecessary suffering on too many. The great power of democracy is that citizens can change their minds as facts change: the Brexit refusal to countenance a second vote on grounds of its divisiveness is born of fear that the people will reassess their decision. The worse divisiveness is to press on regardless.
Great countries find the political resource to turn around epic mistakes. The Labour party has the chance to save Britain, stand by Europe at a critical juncture in world affairs and form a great reforming government. It is an opportunity that must be seized.
Saving Britain by Will Hutton and Andrew Adonis is published by Abacus, price £8.99. To order a copy for £6.99, go to guardianbookshop.com | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2015/jul/03/science-of-resistance-heinrich-wieland-the-biochemist-who-defied-the-nazis | Science | 2015-07-03T18:24:16.000Z | David Cox | Science of resistance: Heinrich Wieland, the biochemist who defied the Nazis | Despite finding international fame as one of Germany’s most renowned scientists in the first half of the 20th century, Heinrich Otto Wieland always shied away from the limelight, so the man now regarded as the father of modern biochemistry would probably have approved of the low key manner in which his 1927 Nobel prize was sold in April.
Auctioned off by a small memorabilia company in Los Angeles amongst a random collection of showbiz items such as curtain costumes from the Sound of Music, Wieland’s medal received just a single bid, raising a princely $395,000.
Few today will recognise Wieland’s name, but his work played a key role in defining our modern understanding of metabolism and the structure of steroids, vitally important biological molecules which are the precursors of hormones such as testosterone and oestrogen. Understanding steroid structure eventually led to the development of drugs such as the contraceptive pill.
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It was Wieland’s work on bile acids, a fiendishly complex family of steroids, which won him his Nobel Prize. At the time their clinical relevance was not fully understood but we now know that bile acids are involved in vital bodily functions ranging from digestion to absorption of fat, while malfunctions in their mechanisms of action have been linked to increased cholesterol and heart disease, the development of gallstones, and even the onset of colorectal cancer.
“We can now see how his work has led to many medications for a variety of diseases and with the advance of genetic research we know that steroid hormones have huge consequences in the cell,” says Wieland’s grandson, of the same name, himself a Professor of Medicine at the University of Freiburg. “Testosterone alone influences about 350 different genes. But back then it was the skill involved in finding the chemical structure which was acknowledged by the Nobel committee. The bile acids were a very complicated puzzle and the methods available at the time were extremely basic. There were none of the advanced machines we can rely on today. Instead they had to observe chemical reactions, see what happened and draw conclusions.”
In many ways, Wieland was the last of his kind, chemists who were able to command an almost universal knowledge of their entire field. By the time his academic career was ended by the flurry of Allied bombs which destroyed his laboratory in 1945, the breakthroughs made over the past three decades had led to increased specialization and the growth of an entirely new field, biochemistry. This would captivate the world eight years later when James Watson and Francis Crick made their landmark discovery of the structure of DNA.
Wieland operated in an era when academic research was only just beginning to be bankrolled by the chains of pharmaceutical companies which had emerged at the end of the 19th century. Rather than being driven by the search for new drug targets, science was often focused on solving fairly abstract questions. Wieland himself was fascinated by natural substances, from the pigments which made up the colours of butterfly wings, to the lethal poison of the world’s most deadly mushroom Amanita phalloides.
But it meant that well-paid university positions were still few and far between, and Wieland conducted much of the work which would eventually win him the Nobel prize, in relative poverty, unable to afford to marry his wife for many years. He was 48 when he received his first well-paid job in 1925, the prestigious position of Professor of Chemistry at the University of Munich. He had been nominated by the previous incumbent, a famous chemist called Richard Willstätter.
Willstätter was a brilliant scientist who won the Nobel prize in 1915 for discovering the structure of chlorophyll, but he was Jewish and despite his stature he found Munich in the early 1920s an increasingly toxic world.
“Willstatter had a fine feeling for German society and anti-Semitism and even though the Nazis had not yet come to power in 1924, he anticipated what was coming,” Wieland’s grandson says. “Since he could afford it, he retired and later emigrated to Switzerland. No one could understand him at the time, but he just said ‘I don’t like it anymore’ and refused all offers to stay.”
Wieland always Willstätter in very high regard, later writing, “I find it agonising how much this poor man suffered throughout his life from these illusions of racial inferiority.” During the 1920s he had developed his own deep disgust for the Nazi party, becoming aware of the impending atrocities from an early stage.
“He always said that if you were an intellectual, well-educated German, you couldn’t fail to notice the type of people the Nazis were,” Wieland’s grandson says. “He couldn’t understand their hatred for the Jews. For him they were just people with a different religion. He didn’t see why all of a sudden they should be facing these problems.”
Wieland was a liberal, free-minded person who was used to doing as he pleased, and as a young man he had rebelled against his strict Protestant upbringing. When his parents did not approve of his choice of wife, he proceeded regardless. They weren’t invited to the wedding, and he then refused to baptise his children.
Despite living in Munich, the centre of the rise of fascism, he became determined to make his own outspoken stance against the Hitler regime, often dropping subtle political jokes into his lectures.
During one public talk in 1935, he was discussing the large amounts of phosphorus contained in the brain’s lipids. “These days Germany has become a country lacking in phosphorus,” he quipped, to the initial shock and then applause of his audience.
He had great distaste for the official ruling that the fascist salute should be mandatory. During a meeting, one of Wieland’s new students rushed into the room declaring, “Heil Hitler”.
Wieland instantly apologized, “I am sorry. This young man just arrived yesterday. In a few days he will have learnt how to greet correctly.”
On finding that a bronze bust of Willstätter, placed in the lobby of the university building, had been destroyed during Kristallnacht in 1938, Wieland promptly ordered the destruction of his own bust, sculpted after his Nobel prize award ceremony in 1927. It was a deliberate show of solidarity with Willstätter which could have seen him arrested or threatened with a lawsuit, but Wieland had already risked far more both secretly and publically in support of the Jews.
“To study chemistry at Munich, you had to pass a strict entrance exam and he invited a group of Jewish students to sit it at his house,” Wieland’s grandson says. “At the end, he wrote down that they had passed, wrote them each a letter of recommendation, gave them a sum of his own money and said, ‘Now you disappear to the United States.’ And they escaped, and went on to become successful scientists themselves.”
For Jewish students who were unable to escape, Wieland offered places in his laboratory, aware that it was becoming increasingly difficult for them to study. He even went to the authorities personally, insisting that it was imperative to his research efforts that they were allowed to work with him.
“At that time students were extremely vital to any lab as there were no machines, so everything had to be done by hand,” Wieland’s grandson says. “Of course, it was not a problem to get students but not many Nazis were in Wieland’s intake. It was quite open that he was anti-Nazi but as he had a Nobel prize, he felt it was manageable to have that stance. But you never know just how close he was to being in danger.”
From 1938 onwards, the situation became progressively more desperate for Jews in Munich. After witnessing deportations to concentration camps, Wieland began to hide Jewish students in his laboratory, in the cellar and the storage rooms.
With his laboratory under constant surveillance, Wieland knew that if discovered, he faced arrest and possibly worse. A Munich professor called Kurt Huber was executed in 1943 for his involvement in the White Rose resistance group which anonymously distributed anti-Nazi graffiti and leaflets throughout the city.
“I think he felt that compelled to act,” Wieland’s grandson says. “He was already 60 in 1937, all his children were already had their jobs, nobody really depended on him anymore and so he could risk much more than some others.”
Two of Wieland’s own students were involved in the White Rose movement – Marie-Luise Jahn and an Austrian of Jewish heritage called Hans Leipelt. When both were arrested in late 1943, Wieland helped select defense lawyers, organize potential plea bargains and when Leipelt’s trial began in late 1944, he travelled to the public tribunal where he refused to perform the fascist salute and testified on his student’s behalf, arguing at length for his exoneration.
It was ultimately in vain. Leipelt was executed in January 1945. “Whoever is caught by this murderous machinery is lost,” Wieland commented afterwards.
While Wieland was certainly not alone in his steadfast and very public opposition to the Nazi regime, he was in the minority among German scientists. The common belief was that academics should remain detached from politics, and anything which could prove troublesome or disruptive for the university and the autonomy of scientific research.
While he won lasting recognition and respect for his work, which earned him virtually every major scientific honour going, perhaps Wieland’s refusal to back down from his beliefs even during the height of Nazi oppression, remains his greatest legacy.
As he wrote in 1938, “By 1933 I had already decided to follow a strategy of resistance that could be carried right to the end.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/05/russia-ukraine-war-at-a-glance-what-we-know-on-day-559-of-the-invasion | World news | 2023-09-05T17:49:56.000Z | Tom Ambrose | Russia-Ukraine war at a glance: what we know on day 559 of the invasion | A battlefield video circulated overnight on social media appeared to show the destruction of a British Challenger 2 in Ukraine, which would be the first time one of the tanks has been destroyed in combat.
More than 900 people were killed or injured by cluster munitions in Ukraine last year amid broad Russian use of the widely banned weapons, propelling global casualty figures to record levels, according to the Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC).
The Kremlin refused to confirm a possible summit between Russian president Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, which US officials have said they expect.
Ukrainian lawmakers voted to restore a requirement that officials declare their assets, a measure sought by the International Monetary Fund, but included a loophole critics say dampens its effect.
Russia‘s pipeline natural gas exports to the EU may fall to 21 billion cubic metres (bcm) this year, almost two-thirds lower than last year and a more than a six-fold drop from 2021, Russian state bank Veb said in a forecast.
Cuba identified an alleged human trafficking ring aimed at recruiting its citizens to fight in Russia’s war in Ukraine, its foreign ministry has said. It was working to dismantle a “trafficking network that operates from Russia to incorporate Cuban citizens living there.”
Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, spoke of the intense toll of the war on her family as her husband, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has emerged as a “historical figure” during the 18 months of conflict so far.
Kim Jong-un will reportedly travel to Russia this month to meet Vladimir Putin and discuss the possibility of supplying weapons to the Kremlin for the war in Ukraine. A US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said details of the expected meeting were still unclear, but added that it was likely to take place in the Russian port city of Vladivostok, given its proximity to North Korea.
Russia shot down at least three Ukraine-launched drones early on Tuesday that were targeting the country’s capital, the Russian defence ministry said. The ministry said that its air defence systems destroyed two drones over the Kaluga and Tver regions, which border the Moscow region, as well as one closer to the capital, over the Istra district of the Moscow region.
Moscow’s two major airports, Vnukovo and Sheremetyevo, as well as the Zhukovksy airport, resumed normal operations from 7.30am (0430 GMT) after a temporary traffic suspension early on Tuesday, Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency said. Earlier, Russia’s defence ministry said its forces shot down at least three Ukraine-launched drones that were targeting the country’s capital.
Russian air defences destroyed a Ukrainian aeroplane-style drone over Crimea on Tuesday morning, the Russian defence ministry said in a statement. It comes after Russia said it had shot down at least three Ukraine-launched drones early on Tuesday that were targeting Moscow.
The Kremlin said on Tuesday it did not think Ukraine’s decision to appoint a new defence minister would change the nature of the Ukrainian government. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Sunday he was sacking defence minister Oleksii Reznikov and proposed Rustem Umerov, a Crimean Tatar and ex-lawmaker, to replace him.
The governor of Russia’s western Bryansk region said border guards and security forces had “thwarted” an attempt by a Ukrainian sabotage group that tried to cross into Russia. Russia has this year repeatedly reported Ukrainian sabotage attempts on its borders, and sent helicopters to put down a cross-border incursion in the Belgorod region in May.
Gen Sergei Surovikin, who had not been publicly seen since Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin’s abortive mutiny in June, has apparently resurfaced. Ostorozhno Media published a picture, reportedly taken on Monday in Moscow, of the former aerospace commander alongside his wife.
There was no evidence of a breakthrough in the Black Sea grain deal. The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, concluded face-to-face talks with Vladimir Putin by claiming a deal to export Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea could be revived, but Putin again accused the west of reneging on promises.
Ukraine said its troops had regained more territory on the eastern front and were advancing farther south in their counteroffensive against Russian forces, Reuters reported.
US, British and EU officials are planning to jointly press the United Arab Emirates to halt shipments of goods to Russia that could help Moscow in its war against Ukraine, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.
Ukraine said on Monday that Russian drones had detonated on the territory of Nato member Romania during an overnight airstrike on a Ukrainian port across the Danube River. Romania’s government denied its territory had been hit. Reuters could not independently verify either account. It is a rare report of stray fire from the war in Ukraine hitting a neighbouring member of Nato.
Rustem Umerov is poised to become Ukraine’s new defence minister after Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s decision to replace Oleksii Reznikov.
Ukraine on Monday named a Russian helicopter pilot it said defected over his opposition to Moscow’s invasion after flying across the border in a “long-term special operation” led by Kyiv. The intelligence wing of Ukraine’s defence ministry identified him as 28-year-old Maxim Kuzminov from the 319th separate helicopter regiment based in Russia’s far eastern Primorye region. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/aug/11/evening-standard-reliant-owner-evgeny-lebedev-funding-losses-widen-newspaper | Media | 2023-08-11T12:43:51.000Z | Jim Waterson | Evening Standard reliant on Evgeny Lebedev’s funding after losses widen | The Evening Standard has lost a further £16m and said it was reliant on extra funds from its owner, Evgeny Lebedev, to continue publishing.
The former GQ boss Dylan Jones recently became the editor tasked with reviving the fortunes of the free London newspaper amid questions over its long-term sustainability.
Revenues at the Evening Standard increased to £31m in 2022, up from £28m in 2021, according to accounts filed at Companies House. But losses grew from £14.4m to £16.4m. This took cumulative losses to £84.5m in the last six years, with the company now carrying twice its annual revenue in debt.
The business received additional shareholder loans worth £16.8m in recent months, with Lebedev pledging to maintain funding for at least 12 months.
The company’s auditors said it had “adequate resources to continue in operational existence for the foreseeable future” but warned that “should the financial support be discontinued the going concern basis may not be valid”.
The business model of printing hundreds of thousands of free newspapers aimed at commuters has been hit hard, and there is little sign it will revive any time soon.
Print advertising revenue is collapsing, many office workers are working from home, and 4G phone signal is starting to arrive on the London underground. Meanwhile, the cost of physical paper has skyrocketed, forcing the Evening Standard to reduce the number of copies and pages it prints in recent years.
Lebedev was given a seat in the House of Lords by the former prime minister Boris Johnson, despite concerns from high-level government officials about his links to Russia. In recent weeks Lebedev has used the Evening Standard to launch a campaign against “cancel culture”, declaring he has “donned my body armour” to defend freedom of speech.
Lebedev, who also owns the online-only Independent, bought the Evening Standard with his oligarch father, Alexander, in 2009. Alexander Lebedev, who is no longer involved in the titles, was placed under Canadian sanctions last year after Ottawa accused him of “directly enabling” the Russian war in Ukraine.
The other major shareholder in the Evening Standard’s parent company is a bank with close links to the Saudi Arabian government.
We’ve sat by and witnessed the emergence of a culture where we shut down opposing viewpoints, almost by default. We at the @EveningStandard will fight against this. pic.twitter.com/RZpoVSCi1d
— Evgeny Lebedev (@mrevgenylebedev) August 2, 2023
The Evening Standard said it would double-down on building a digital-first newsroom, but added that online revenues were performing “poorly” and its web audience was stagnating.
Revenue from the company’s events business almost halved in 2022. This was despite it being the first year that in-person events could be held since the start of the Covid pandemic.
Staff numbers at the newspaper have been slashed in recent years, with the journalists who remained having to deal with an extended period without a permanent editor.
The entire British media industry is suffering badly, with advertising revenue collapsing as companies cut back on marketing spending because of the sluggish economy and cost of living crisis. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2024/feb/06/killer-mike-releases-statement-following-grammys-arrest-i-have-confidence-i-will-be-cleared-of-wrongdoing | Music | 2024-02-06T08:54:50.000Z | Ben Beaumont-Thomas | Killer Mike releases statement following Grammys arrest: ‘I have confidence I will be cleared of wrongdoing’ | American rapper Killer Mike has released a statement after his arrest at the Grammys.
The 48-year-old beat major stars such as Travis Scott, Nas, Drake and 21 Savage to win best rap album, while his track Scientists & Engineers earned him two awards: best rap song and best rap performance. But shortly after his wins he was pictured being escorted in handcuffs from the Crypto.com Arena, the LA venue where the awards were being hosted.
The Los Angeles police department confirmed that he had been arrested and booked for misdemeanour battery and was later released.
An unnamed “senior law enforcement source” told Rolling Stone that a security guard claimed that Killer Mike allegedly pushed her to the floor after he tried to make his way around her at a venue entrance.
Following the incident, Killer Mike – whose real name is Michael Render – said in comments to Rolling Stone: “As you can imagine, there was a lot going and there was some confusion around which door my team and I should enter. We experienced an overzealous security guard, but my team and I have the upmost confidence that I will ultimately be cleared of all wrongdoing.”
A member of the rapper’s team added: “We hit a speed bump in that Mike was detained and charged with a misdemeanour after collecting his awards. On the way into the venue, there was considerable confusion around where to go. He encountered an overzealous security guard and continued moving towards his destination. The situation has been overblown but we are confident that the facts of the case, when laid bare, will show that Mike did not commit the alleged offence and he will be exonerated.”
Regarding his wins, Render added: “We are incredibly proud and are basking in this moment.”
As well as a solo career dating back to a 2000 appearance on Outkast track Snappin’ & Trappin’, Render is known for his duo Run the Jewels, who have released four studio albums. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2010/jun/21/frank-sidebottom-creator-chris-sievey-dies | Culture | 2010-06-21T18:51:32.000Z | Maev Kennedy | Frank Sidebottom creator Chris Sievey dies aged 54 | The creator of the man with the biggest head in showbusiness, Frank Sidebottom, has died.
Sidebottom was the bulbous-headed alter-ego of comedian and musician Chris Sievey, who eclipsed the fame of his creator. Sievey, 54, died today after collapsing at his home in Hale, Greater Manchester, where he was recovering from surgery for a tumour on his chest.
Sidebottom, an aspiring pop star from neighbouring Timperley whose style was cramped by a lack of talent, an old-fashioned suit and the fact he lived at home with his mother, was intended as a one-off promotional gimmick for a band.
The character took on a life of his own and became a major star in the late 1980s and early 1990s through television, radio and live appearances.
Only last week he launched a World Cup anthem, Three Shirts on my Line.
Another invented monster, Caroline Aherne's Mrs Merton, began life as a sidekick to Sidebottom on his radio show, and Chris Evans was at one point billed as driver for his band.
Sievey kept his fans up to date with his cancer progress in cheerful blogs in character: "I've got a few weeks off from live shows now to have a couple of ops and get shut," he explained. His last communication was a tweet on Sunday, in which he admitted: "I'm still feeling very poorly."
Mark Alston, 34, a close friend for many years who helped organise Sievey's appearances as Frank Sidebottom, said: "He was a big comedy name in Greater Manchester, one of the biggest. He was also a musical genius and a good friend to many. He was a legend in the region and will be missed. He was saying that he was going to get shut of the cancer and not to cancel any more bookings." | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/04/centre-court-ovations-limbo-dancing-grans-its-all-been-humbling-say-oxford-vaccine-creators-sarah-gilbert-catherine-green | World news | 2021-07-04T06:30:14.000Z | Robin McKie | Centre Court ovations, limbo-dancing grans – it’s all been humbling, say Oxford vaccine creators | Sarah Gilbert’s experiences at Wimbledon last week clearly had a profound impact on the medical researcher – though it was not the standing ovation that the vaccine pioneer received on Centre Court that turned her head. It was the sleekly efficient operations she experienced at the tennis championships that most impressed her.
“Everything goes really, really smoothly there because they’ve got years of experience at Wimbledon,” she told the Observer last week. “They have also got extremely well trained staff and have had years of investment in infrastructure.”
And that list of attributes provides an unexpected but intriguing contrast with vaccine development in the UK, added Gilbert, professor of vaccinology at Oxford University. “Yes, we’ve got the years of experience and yes we’ve got the fantastic staff. But we have not had the investment in the infrastructure and that made our efforts in developing our Covid-19 vaccine so much more difficult.”
In particular, she complained about the lack of vaccine manufacturing plant in the UK that made it hard to make enough supplies to begin their clinical trials. “You need an excellent supply of vaccine right from the beginning and not be trying to work out where your doses are coming from while you’re beginning your trials. That is still a big problem in the UK.”
Oxford vaccine scientists Catherine Green, left, and Sarah Gilbert. Photograph: Lewis Khan
Gilbert was speaking last week with her colleague Catherine Green. The pair will publish their book, Vaxxers: The Inside Story of the Oxford AstraZeneca Vaccine and the Race Against the Virus (Hodder & Stoughton) on 8 July. Given the mighty efforts involved in producing a Covid-19 vaccine on its own, finding time to write a book on their work seems exceptional.
“There are complexities and nuances that can’t always be captured in a headline or a newspaper article,” said Green. “We wanted the opportunity to tell the story in a complete version.”
It is an extraordinary story with a remarkable beginning and an astonishing denouement. On New Year’s Day 2020, Gilbert read about four people in China suffering from a strange pneumonia. Within two weeks, she, Green and colleagues had designed a vaccine against a pathogen that hardly anyone had heard about. A year later, it was rolled out across the world and is destined to save millions of lives.
Yet, as the book makes clear, the story was anything but unmitigated joy. In their own words, their vaccine was treated as a political football. Americans attacked their trial data, the French accused the vaccine of lack of effectiveness and the Germans dithered about whether to give it to old or young people.
“Yet this had been a huge undertaking,” added Green. “You would normally spend 10 years ramping up production of a brand new vaccine. To do it in 10 months was phenomenal.”
And both were at pains to praise AstraZeneca for taking on the vaccine they had developed. “It was a massive commitment for a pharmaceutical company to take on a bunch of academics like us and work with us to deliver a vaccine at cost so that it could be given to lower income countries,” said Green. “When Boris Johnson says we only have vaccines because of greed and capitalism that is entirely unfair. There was no greed or capitalism in our case.”
In general, both scientists say they have avoided the harassment that has been the occasional problem for other public figures such as Chris Whitty, England’s chief medical officer.
A series of knocks: Oxford/AstraZeneca's bumpy road to Covid vaccine confidence
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“The emails and thank you notes we get have been humbling, really,” said Green. “We received one video recently of a grandmother doing a limbo dance with her granddaughter at a birthday party they didn’t expect to be able to hold had it not been for the vaccine. It was lovely.”
Gilbert and Green are now working with AstraZeneca on versions of the vaccine that have been designed to tackle the beta (first discovered in South Africa) virus variant with trials starting in the UK and several other nations last week. “The original vaccine is still very effective against the alpha and delta variants but the beta version is antigenically different. And so that’s why we testing that one as a different vaccine,” said Gilbert.
In general, both Gilbert and Green are optimistic that vaccines have broken the link between Covid-19 infections and admissions to hospital. “However, a new variant could arise, one that is both highly transmissible and antigenically different from previous ones. So we’re not completely out of the woods,” said Gilbert.
“And that’s why I’m very worried about getting vaccines around the rest of the world, because we need to stop the virus being transmitted and halt its continued evolution so that a new variant that is really difficult to deal with does not emerge.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/feb/25/bill-bratton-british-police-fewer-arrests | UK news | 2013-02-25T13:01:01.000Z | Vikram Dodd | US 'supercop' Bill Bratton: British police should make fewer arrests | The American "supercop" who could be Britain's first foreign police chief has said officers should make fewer arrests and send fewer people to prison to achieve big falls in crime.
In an interview with the Guardian, Bill Bratton said alternatives to imprisonment had helped deliver large falls in crime and in prison populations in the US, where he led the New York and Los Angeles police departments. This had been achieved despite budget cuts, which UK police chiefs have warned will lead to rising crime.
Bratton was targeted by the prime minister, David Cameron, to be Met commissioner in 2011 when there was a vacancy, but was blocked by a rule barring foreigners from being police chiefs in Britain. The government says that rule is now to be abolished.
Bratton said he was still interested in British policing's top job and revealed that, had the rule not been in place, he would have applied last time.
Police chiefs had to be open to ideas from other countries, Bratton said, adding that a radical new approach to crime fighting was needed and had proved successful in the US.
"You can't arrest your way out of the crime problem," said Bratton. "In the US we probably used arrest practices too extensively in the 80s and 90s. In the 21st century we are understanding that often alternatives to incarceration might be the better way to go.
"Arrest and incarceration … is appropriate for some people, the most violent among us, but it is not appropriate for a lot of others who can be dealt with more successfully and effectively with alternative means of rehabilitation, training, mentoring, monitoring and ministering."
Bratton said the priority for police should be changing behaviour and crime prevention. His tenure in New York began with a crackdown on minor offences, which he said was needed to show there was a penalty to pay for breaking the law. But, he added, there was then a "bell curve" effect where arrests first rose and then tailed off as people were more willing to comply with the law.
Bratton said any new approach should be applied case by case, with those involved in the drug trade being considered for alternative treatment, as well as pickpockets, thieves and car thieves. "If you put the more significant criminal in jail, the career criminal, the violent criminal, in jail, that prevents that person preying on society.
"But many other people, if given a second chance, understanding if they break the law there is going to be a penalty, choose not to."
Bratton pointed to big falls in crime and jail populations in New York, where prisons have since been closed. He said Los Angeles, where he was police chief for seven years until 2009, would see the same. All this was possible to achieve while police budgets were being cut, he said.
"I suggest you can look at other places, for example, New York – how New York [has] successfully been able to reduce its jail population, while at the same time reducing the size of police force, while at the same time reducing the amount of criminal behaviour."
Bratton said his interest in the Met commissioner role was as strong as ever and that his credentials "speak for themselves" in the "leadership and success I'm known for" in US policing.
The Met job became vacant in 2011 when Sir Paul Stephenson resigned in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal.
Bratton said that, had there been no bar to foreign nationals being commissioner, "it is quite likely I would have applied". He said the prospect of a vacancy was several years away, and that the current commissioner, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, was a friend whom he respected.
But with the last two commissioners having departed mid-term, and with some Tory MPs furious at the Met over "Plebgate", Bratton remains a contender in the wings.
Bratton praised Hogan-Howe, but said he was unfamiliar with the commissioner's flagship policy of "total policing". He insisted his age, 65, was no bar to becoming the Met commissioner if and when a vacancy arose.
Bratton's first 100 days in LA and New York had seen him conduct a "cultural diagnostic" of the departments, the precursor to root-and-branch reform.
On gangs, he said he favoured using ex-gang members as "gang interventionists", who work with, not for, the police to head off trouble.
Bratton called for policing to remain open to new ideas, and said social phenomena that affected police forces tended to happen up to two decades earlier in the US: "What your country is experiencing tends to be about 10 to 20 years behind the experiences of the US, whether it's on issues of race or crime."
He said this meant Britain could learn from what had worked and what had failed in the US, while adding that British policing was significantly ahead of the US in areas such as the use of DNA to detect crime and that he had borrowed ideas from the UK during his policing career.
Bratton said he admired the fact that British police remained unarmed and added that the Met was one of three police departments in the world whose actions had an impact on the wider policing profession – the others being New York and Los Angeles. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/may/21/scorsese-de-niro-cannes-film-festival-killers-flower-moon-osage-nation | Film | 2023-05-21T16:19:42.000Z | Vanessa Thorpe | Scorsese and De Niro reunite at Cannes for Killers of the Flower Moon | Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro have reunited at the Cannes film festival to present a feature together for the first time in almost half a century, discussing their acclaimed new movie, Killers of the Flower Moon, on Sunday.
“We haven’t been here together since 76,” said De Niro, recalling the premiere of Taxi Driver, the second of their 10 collaborations, which won the festival’s top prize, the Palme d’Or.
Killers of the Flower Moon review – Scorsese’s remarkable epic about the bloody birth of modern America
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Both men spoke of the importance to them both of sensitively telling the story of a succession of murders that terrorised the Osage people in Oklahoma in the mid-1920s. These killings were motivated by a desire to ensure the new wealth created by oil found on the Osage reservation fell into the hands of white incomers.
Scorsese said he had been so deeply influenced by his encounters with the Native Americans that he switched the film’s focus and decided to tell the story of the crimes from the victims’ perspective.
The 80-year-old director, whose Catholicism has been a dominant theme in many of his films to date, attended a series of Osage council sessions in which he observed their prayers and rituals. “I was so affected and so moved,” he said. “I know what their values are and [that they are] really understanding how to live on this planet. It reoriented me every time they spoke.”
Joining Scorsese at the press conference was Chief Standing Bear, leader of the Osage Nation, who said that his people still suffer to this day. “But I can say on behalf of the Osage Nation that Scorsese and his team have restored trust,” he added.
Killers of the Flower Moon was rapturously received at its premiere on Saturday evening at Cannes, where it is showing out of competition. Scorsese’s 26th feature – and, at almost four hours, one of his longest – is adapted from David Grann’s nonfiction book of the same name.
Questioned about his radical approach to this source material, much of which was rejected in favour of a revisionist take on the case, Scorsese said: “As far as taking risks at this age, what else can I do? Do a comfortable film? Like sitting on a set in the heat is comfortable? We might as well be risking something.”
The director credited the film’s star, Leonardo DiCaprio, with steering much of the story, saying that he and the actor had first imagined the film as being told from the point of view of the FBI. “I felt it is not a whodunnit, but a who-didn’t-do-it. But then Leo asked me: ‘Where is the heart of this story?”
The pair, who had already worked together on five feature films, then concentrated on a real-life character who was “least written about”: an apparent chancer called Ernest Burkhart, who married into the Osage community and became embroiled in the murders.
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“I said: ‘Let’s create Ernest as a template for that tragedy of love, trust and betrayal,” said Scorsese, “and what happened to the Indigenous people.’”
De Niro plays DiCaprio’s uncle, and said some of the “systemic racism” shown in the film became clearer to him after witnessing reactions to the killing of George Floyd almost three years ago. “It is the banality of evil, the thing we have to watch out for,” he said, adding: “We see it today.”
The actor has long been a vocal critic of the former president Donald Trump and compared public reaction to his election to the casual inhumanity depicted in the film. “There are people that think he could do a good job – imagine how insane that is.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jan/21/labour-coalition-nhs-hospitals-casualty-cuts-tories-lib-dems | Society | 2015-01-21T00:00:04.000Z | Denis Campbell | Labour blames coalition cuts for huge increase in A&E patient numbers | The number of extra people seeking accident and emergency care has increased almost 10-fold under the coalition because the government has made major mistakes with the NHS, Labour has said.
The party will reveal on Wednesday that a House of Commons library analysis shows that while total A&E attendances in England rose by 64,000 during its last four years in power, arrivals at emergency departments increased by 595,000 people during the coalition’s’s first four years in office – 930% more than under Labour.
In a Commons debate on the growing pressure on A&E units, Labour will blame the rise under the coalition on cuts to social care services, the removal of the right to see a GP within 48 hours and the closure of NHS walk-in centres.
According to the Commons library the number of patients going to an A&E unit at a hospital increased from 13.554m in 2005-06 to 13.618m in 2009-10, a rise of 64,000. Attendances rose much faster under the coalition, which took power in May 2010, reaching 14.213m in 2013-14 – 595,000 more than the 13.618m in Labour’s last year in government.
Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, recently said that the ageing population and changing consumer behaviour, especially among young people, were drivers of the surge in recent years.
But Andy Burnham, shadow health secretary, will claim Hunt is overlooking factors related directly to decisions by the government. He will say an extra 289,551 patients a year turn up at A&E compared with 2011 because they cannot get an appointment with a GP and that at least 98,000 patients aged over 90 go there because they have lost social care support as a result of cuts in local council budgets.
An NHS England spokeswoman said: “This winter our local health services are responding to far and away the highest-ever number of ambulance and NHS 111 calls, A&E attendances and emergency admissions in the NHS’s history.”
Even though an extra £700m has been given to the NHS to help it deal with winter pressures, “it’s crystal clear we need a fundamental redesign of the urgent care ‘front door’ – A&E, GPs, 999, 111, out of hours, community and social care services – as part of the broader programme of care transformation set out in the NHS Five Year Forward View”, she added.
The Department of Health said its extra investment in the NHS had paid for extra doctors, nurses, beds and treatment, and that it was transforming out-of-hospital care.
Other figures reveal that hundreds of thousands of vulnerable, often isolated older people have lost access to key services – such as meals on wheels – as social care has been pared back under the coalition.
Only half of those who need help to wash or get into their bath now receive it, while one in three who need assistance in using the toilet are denied it, according to evidence collated by the charity Age UK from official sources.
Similarly, 80% of those who need help to take medication do not get it, while more than two-thirds of those who struggle to eat on their own – 160,000 people – do not receive such assistance.
The number of people receiving care at home has fallen by 32% from 542,965 in 2010-11 to 370,630 in 2013-14, while numbers receiving meals on wheels have plummeted from 81,460 to 29,560 – down 64%.
Caroline Abrahams, Age UK’s charity director, said its analysis “lays bare the fact that our state-funded social care system is in calamitous, quite rapid decline.
“The more preventive services like meals on wheels and daycare are being especially hard hit, leaving the system increasingly the preserve of older people in the most acute need, storing up big problems for the future.”
Hundreds of thousands of older people are “being left high and dry” as a result of Whitehall cuts to town hall budgets across England, Abrahams added.
A Department of Health spokesperson said: “Like healthcare systems around the world, the NHS is busier than ever. That’s why we have given almost £1bn this year for almost 800 more doctors, 4,700 more nurses, 6,400 more beds and treatment for an extra 100,000 patients, and why we are transforming out of hospital care.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/mar/21/pro-brexit-ministers-relaxed-about-leaving-eu-without-trade-deal | Politics | 2017-03-21T19:59:05.000Z | Anushka Asthana | Pro-Brexit ministers 'relaxed about leaving EU without trade deal' | Brexiters in the cabinet and other Conservative frontbenchers have privately told colleagues they are relaxed about the prospect of Britain crashing out of the EU on to World Trade Organisation rules, the Guardian understands.
Senior figures within the party have been persuaded by the argument that members of the WTO are less likely to try to punish the UK, while the European Union is looking to exact a political price for Brexit.
They now want to convince others that they should embrace the idea. “People are being told that WTO rules would be the end of the world. We need to explain to them why it isn’t,” said a senior government source. The foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, has also suggested the outcome would be “perfectly OK”.
But with opponents within the Conservative party who previously supported remaining in the EU branding the stance as “ideological baloney”, and even cabinet ministers expressing concerns, the issue looks set to be one of the most divisive facing Theresa May during the EU negotiations.
The tensions over the future trading relationship come as it was revealed that the EU would not hold its first Brexit summit until 29 April, a month after Theresa May triggers article 50 next week.
Donald Tusk, the president of the European council, announced that he would call a summit on the last Saturday in April to allow the EU’s 27 remaining members to agree on Brexit guidelines, a broad-brush outline of the political principles that will guide them through the next two years of negotiations.
May told a cabinet meeting on Tuesday that the triggering of article 50 would be a “historic event and will precipitate a shift in our role in the world and see Britain begin a bold new chapter as a prosperous, open and global nation”.
The issue of the future trading relationship is causing tensions behind the scenes, with some ministers said to be almost banging the drum for no deal.
A briefing by a senior WTO official in Westminster stressed that the Geneva-based organisation offered a different tone to Brussels, with “no undercurrent of tension [and it is] more pragmatic and commercial”. They claimed WTO rules would only pose challenges at the margins, and there need not be a “cliff edge [or] drama”.
The former cabinet member and Brexit supporter, Theresa Villiers, told the Guardian that it was in the best interests of the EU and the UK to secure a trade deal before the end of negotiations, but admitted it was not guaranteed. “If it isn’t possible, WTO rules would still allow us to do billions of pounds of business in goods and services with the EU,” she said, arguing the option was “by no means disastrous”.
But a source close to a cabinet minister disagreed, saying a number of senior figures were still warning of the impact of not having a deal. Others revealed that senior civil servants were still trying to persuade their political masters to keep open the prospect of a transitional deal, with some suggesting it could take five years after the 2019 Brexit date for a final trade deal to be hammered out.
Some Tory MPs believe that now the Brexit bill has become law, they face a major battle in preventing the government from caving into Eurosceptic backbenchers’ demands to walk away from the negotiating table without a deal.
They are alarmed that the idea of diverting to WTO trading terms is becoming widely talked about, and fear it is the preferred option for hardened Eurosceptics.
Bath MP Ben Howlett said: “Anyone that suggests that WTO would be a good thing is bonkers. This ideological baloney has to stop before we face an absolute disaster.”
Anna Soubry added: “There is nothing to be blase or relaxed about choosing for Britain to trade with our biggest economic partner under WTO rules. Every credible assessment done says this would be the worst trading arrangement possible for jobs, investment and growth.”
In the run-up to the referendum, Treasury research suggested reverting to WTO rules would knock between 5.4% and 9.5% off GDP after 15 years, and blow a £45bn hole in the public finances — though the basis of those forecasts was fiercely contested.
“Relying solely on the WTO rules would result in a significant reduction in the openness of the UK economy to the outside world,” it said. “It would be the alternative with the most negative long-term impact.”
But the campaign group Economists for Free Trade, which was known as Economists for Brexit during the referendum campaign, has been making the intellectual case for leaving the EU without a trade deal in place.
Labour’s shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, said the issue was likely to define the “ideological split” between the most ardent Brexiters and others. He said that the most vociferous out campaigners wanted a deregulated economy, without the EU’s social protections or rights.
“Under this view, not having a full collaborative and co-operative relationship with social Europe is a positive, not a risk,” he said.
The Liberal Democrat leader, Tim Farron, argued that WTO rules would be like “Britain falling into the abyss. But ministers, frankly, don’t seem to care.”
It comes as David Davis, the Brexit secretary, is due to appear before a Lords EU committee. Its chair, Lord Boswell, said that most people believed a reversion to WTO rules would have a significant impact.
He said his committee would push Davis on the process after article 50 is triggered. “We are interested in the nuts and bolts of the process, indications of the timescale, any indications of how that might work and interest in flow of information,” he said, insisting that parliament wanted to play a “constructive part rather than requiring a running commentary or micromanaging”. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/feb/13/death-of-zamalek-fans-in-riot-stirs-political-conspiracies-in-egypt | Football | 2015-02-13T10:37:21.000Z | Patrick Kingsley | Death of Zamalek fans in riot stirs political conspiracies in Egypt | Sitting outside Cairo’s main mortuary on Sunday night, as the bodies of dead football fans were carried in and out for their autopsies, Saad Abdelhamid thinks he knows why they have died. “The massacre that took place today was revenge on those who took part in the revolution,” says the 27-year-old salesman.
“Witness this,” shouts another mourner, raising his bloodied hands. “Witness what our government is doing to our kids.”
To outsiders, the death of at least 22 fans of Zamalek SC in a stampede outside a stadium on Sunday evening might appear to be simply a footballing tragedy. To the police, what happened was the fault of fans trying to break into the ground.
But the circumstances that prompted the stampede – police fired teargas and shotgun pellets into the midst of thousands of fans confined in a narrow passage lined with barbed wire – has led traumatised survivors like Abdelhamid to claim their friends were targeted on purpose. And for political reasons.
Amateur footage of Sunday’s stampede in Cairo.
To understand how such a perception might be formed, Abdelhamid says you have to rewind to 2011. Fans from Cairo’s two main clubs, Zamalek and their arch rivals, Ahly, had long clashed with police and each other for footballing reasons. But from 2011 onwards, their members – often middle-class students – began to play a more political role, even if to this day the groups themselves publicly maintain that they are apolitical.
As protesters battled Egypt’s notorious police force in January 2011, in demonstrations that led to the overthrow of then dictator, Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s hardcore football fans were a key mobilising force.
“They made a difference in the street in Port Said, Alexandria and Cairo,” argues Abdelhamid, who, as a revolutionary himself, fought alongside them. (A Zamalek fan, he has also attended games with the ultras since 2007. But he is not a Ultras White Knights (UWK) member himself, and so is not subject to their longstanding media boycott.)
A member of the Ultras White Knights cries during Zamalek’s match with and ENPPI in Cairo. Photograph: Ahmed Abd el-Gwad/AP
After Mubarak made way for an army junta, ultras from Ahly and Zamalek continued to make their presence felt, chanting against the regime’s new leaders inside the stadium, and taking part in protests outside it.
They were and are by no means a unified block, says James Dorsey, author of The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer. But their numbers mean “they constitute one of the largest social groups in Egypt”. And their ability to mobilise, even inside a stadium, poses an inherent threat to the authoritarian state.
The Egyptian regime, says Dorsey, “do not tolerate any uncontrolled public space – which means that both the mosque and the soccer pitch are potential problems. They are two of the institutions that evoke the deepest-seated passions of a significant section of the Egyptian public, and you can’t permanently shut them down.”
But depending on who you believe, this didn’t stop the regime from trying to do so. In February 2012, days after Ahly’s ultras chanted that Egypt’s military junta were “dogs like the police”, over 70 of them were killed in clashes that followed a game in Port Said.
Ostensibly, this was a case of fan-on-fan violence: Ahly’s supporters were attacked and killed by locals from Port Said. But for the ultras, there were too many smoking guns to rule out the state’s involvement – and parts of what happened seemed to have been planned. Someone switched off the stadium lights as soon as the attack began. Someone else locked the doors that represented the ultras’ only escape route. And as the fighting raged, the police simply stood and watched.
For Abdelhamid, it was obvious who was behind what happened in Port Said. “With that massacre, the regime made it very clear that it was against the ultras,” he says. “It was punishing them for their participation in the revolution against Mubarak regime.”
Almost exactly three years on, Abdelhamid claims that Sunday’s stampede was Zamalek’s Port Said moment. Having been trapped himself in what he calls the “passage of death”, it is hard for him to attribute the manner in which fans were hemmed into such a tiny space, and then sprayed with teargas, to simple negligence.
Amateur footage of Sunday’s stampede in Cairo.
Others can’t be sure. “There’s always a chance that it’s politicised in some way,” says Islam Issa, an Egyptian football analyst, academic, and players’ agent. “But it’s pretty impossible to pinpoint things at this stage. I don’t think there’s an established account yet of the Port Said massacre three years ago, so we can’t even be close to understanding what happened this week.”
Certainly, the ultras, as a collective, pose a slightly smaller threat to the police than they did three years ago. One result of Port Said was that subsequent games were played behind closed doors – Sunday’s match was one of the first to be reopened to the public – and so the group’s ability to gather and mobilise has been diminished.
A return to Mubarak-era authoritarianism has also constricted their activities. And their potency as a united political force was undermined by the fallout from the overthrow of the ex-president Mohamed Morsi in 2013, a move that left Egyptians highly polarised. Zamalek’s White Knights were no exception, and so in an attempt to maintain their unity, in recent months UWK mobilised around internal club issues, and stayed away from national ones.
But the particulars of those internal struggles also hint at why the ultras might once again be in the crosshairs of the state.
A Zamalek supporter wearing a Guy Fawkes mask near a burning police car outside the stadium in Cairo. Photograph: STR/EPA
For much of the past year, the ultras have been at loggerheads with Zamalek’s chairman, an oddball, loudmouth lawyer named Mortada Mansour. A self-proclaimed counter-revolutionary, Mansour has made no secret of his hatred for ultras and protesters in general. For their part, some of the ultras tried to douse him in urine. In return, the pro-regime Mansour tried to get them listed as terrorists.
“They are not fans, they are criminals,” Mansour claimed in an interview with the Guardian late last year. “They are using bombs, live ammunition and shotgun pellets … but I continue because this is part of the nation’s battle against terrorism.”
Given this context, the idea that Zamalek’s White Knights were intentionally targeted is, for James Dorsey, “not an unreasonable conclusion, but I don’t think it’s an established fact.”
But for the likes of Abdelhamid, there are just too many coincidences, and UWK represent too much of a potential threat to the regime, for Sunday’s stampede to have happened because of incompetence alone. “I think the regime was shaking with fear,” says Abdelhamid. “To the degree that it imagined that the entrance of fans at this time of clear political upheaval might cause embarrassment to the regime in Egypt, that the chants of the fans would convey the facts about the political regime in Egypt.”
Additional reporting: Manu Abdo | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/jul/28/health.nhs | Opinion | 2008-07-27T23:01:00.000Z | Rebecca Front | Rebecca Front: Who better to judge doctors than hypochondriacs? | The following correction was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and clarifications column, Tuesday August 5 2008
This column implied that the duty of regulating doctors lies with the British Medical Association. In fact this responsibility belongs to the General Medical Council.
Like all hypochondriacs, I was relieved to hear that the BMA has agreed the need for a regular reappraisal of doctors' competence. As a fellow neurotic said to me recently, anyone who has ever sat through a medical student revue can't help but feel insecure about putting one's life in these people's hands. How can we be sure that the very moment we leave the consulting room, our GP isn't setting our catalogue of woes to a jaunty Donald Swann-style ditty?
I'm intrigued, however, by the decision to allow other doctors to carry out the reappraisal. Of course, it makes sense on clinical grounds; patients' comments about a doctor can only be based on the flimsiest of evidence, such as whether we get better or not. But as lay people, we are presumably better placed to judge a doctor's desk-side manner - no GPs visit beds any more, do they? - and how well they explain our condition.
We know if we've been mildly insulted, for instance, as I was when a doctor described my ovaries as "nothing to write home about". And we know if we've been blinded with science or patronised. Some years ago, my mother and I visited the same doctor with the same symptoms. I, a recent graduate, was told I had a urinary tract infection; she, a middle-aged mother of two, was diagnosed with "a bit of trouble with your waterworks".
I personally think hypochondriacs should be drafted in to do these assessments. After all, we see more doctors than most in a wide range of desperate, panic-fuelled consultations. We know the ones who are thorough, but not too thorough; the ones who send you straight to a specialist; and the ones who tell you to go home and take an aspirin. We know when they're bluffing, because the chances are we'll have seen several doctors in several different practices with exactly the same set of symptoms, and heard a different diagnosis from each one. They can't all be right, can they?
In fact, the likelihood is, as any true hypochondriac will tell you, that none of them knows a damn thing anyway. They're all just waiting for you to leave the room so that they can put on a wig and funny glasses and practise the dance routine for their next hilarious performance of "boom diddy boom diddy boom diddy boom, well goodness gracious me".
But I digress. There is another reason why it seems to me shortsighted of the BMA to allow doctors to appraise each other. Surely, this is a little like allowing actors to review each others' performances. Oh sure, to your face they're going to be full of praise: "Darling you look marvellous in that white coat, and the stethoscope gives you that touch of butch. And I loved the way you slapped the prescription pad down and looked over your half-moons and said, 'I think we can sort this out for you.' It gave me shivers down my spine, honestly. Now I wonder what that's a symptom of?"
But behind your back it'll be a different story, I can assure you. They'll be bitching about your over-prescribing, criticising your handwriting and the way you pronounce tricky Latin names. They'll see your thoroughness as time-wasting, your brevity as a dereliction of duty. Nothing you do will be right because ... well, because it's not the way they would do it.
There is already a move by many doctors to prevent GPs from embracing, as many do, the use of alternative therapies. Think of the eye-rolling disbelief from a senior partner if they actually witness a junior one suggesting acupuncture.
You may have heard the story of Sir Laurence Olivier watching Dustin Hoffman as he ran around furiously to create an impression of breathlessness in the film Marathon Man. Olivier, disdainful of such alternative acting techniques, reportedly said: "Try acting, dear boy." Such waspishness will be commonplace, I fear, in every surgery in the land. You only have to look back at the student revues to see that they're all just frustrated actors, after all.
· Rebecca Front is an actor and writer [email protected] | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/nov/02/yahoo-withdraws-from-china-as-beijings-grip-on-tech-firms-tightens | Technology | 2021-11-02T15:05:23.000Z | Vincent Ni | Yahoo withdraws from China as Beijing’s grip on tech firms tightens | Yahoo has announced its withdrawal from the Chinese market in the latest retreat by foreign technology firms responding to Beijing’s tightening control over the industry.
“In recognition of the increasingly challenging business and legal environment in China, Yahoo’s suite of services will no longer be accessible from mainland China as of November 1,” the company said on Tuesday.
The timing of the pullout coincided with the implementation of China’s new data protection law, which came into effect on Monday. The legislation, which was years in the making, was likened by some to the Chinese equivalent to the stringent GDPR in Europe.
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The law limits the conditions under which companies can gather personal information and sets rules for how it is used. Chinese laws also stipulate that companies operating in the country must hand over data if requested by authorities, making it difficult for international firms to operate in China as they may face pressure at home over giving in to Beijing’s demands.
In the run-up to the implementation of the new legislation, foreign tech companies have been informing their users of the changes in their services in recent months.
Yahoo’s withdrawal came less than a month after another US tech company, Microsoft’s professional networking platform LinkedIn, announced it was shutting down operations in China.. In public, the company blamed a “significantly more challenging operating environment” as well as “greater compliance requirements in China”.
On Tuesday, Yahoo users in mainland China were told the company’s services would no longer be accessible. The products affected included Aol.com and news outlets such as TechCrunch. Users of apps such as Yahoo Weather were told in October that it would be discontinued this month, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Yahoo has had a tumultuous and controversial existence in mainland China. In 2007, the company was criticised by lawmakers in the US after it handed over data on two Chinese dissidents to the the authorities, eventually leading to their imprisonment.
In recent years, as regulations toward foreign tech companies hardened and domestic competition grew, Yahoo began to downsize its operations in China. In 2015, it closed its Beijing office.
Analysts say Yahoo’s withdrawal from China is largely symbolic as at least some of Yahoo’s services, including its web portal, have already been blocked. China has also blocked other US internet services, such as Facebook and Google. Mainland users who wish to access these websites use a virtual private network (VPN) to circumvent the block.
The Associated Press contributed to this report | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2011/jan/06/cassie-growing-cult | Music | 2011-01-06T13:26:06.000Z | Ben Beaumont-Thomas | The growing cult of Cassie | Posting a picture of your new tattoo to Twitter on 1 January generally means that your New Year's Eve got a bit out of hand. But for Robin Carolan, who runs the Tri Angle record label and tweeted a "Me & U" design freshly emblazoned on his arm, it was a considered and sober homage to an unsung R&B legend ... Cassie.
"Getting the tattoo was a sincere thing", he tells me. "I genuinely view her as someone who in 20 years' time will be re-evaluated. I'm stunned [that] she can be making such good songs but still be in complete limbo."
Cassie is the model and singer who scored a hit with Me & U in 2006, but who has since seen her second album shelved (Electro Love is apparently due this year, but don't hold your breath) despite the beauty of leaked tracks such as My House and Stray. Tri Angle puts out records by acts who have been tagged with the "witch house" label that did the blog rounds last year; but while there are (sometimes literally) echoes of R&B in their work, it's a long way from Cassie's expensive American studio sheen and makes Carolan perhaps an unlikely person to etch permanent loyalty to her on his skin.
But he's just one in a whole cult of Cassie fanatics. Last year Deadboy released Cash Antics Vol 1, which reworked the singer into throbbing 2-step. Skydiver, a free download of Cassie "remixes, tributes and marriage proposals" by post-dubstep producers such as Jacques Greene and Brackles was released by Local Action records in December. Other recent remixers in thrall to her include Brenmar, Kastle, CFCF and Four Tet, who threaded Me & U through his remix of Joe Goddard's Apple Bobbing. "People like the xx and all these UK dance producers love her," says Carolan. "For my artists, such as oOoOO and How to Dress Well – the idea of Cassie singing on their tracks is a dream. Others might view her as a has-been, but in this world she's a legend."
"In her vocals there's a lot of space; from a producer's point of view that's what you want, you can completely mash it up and reconstruct it," Carolan says. But she is more than just a vehicle for producers wishing to showcase their own talents. "It sounds like she's trapped in ice. There's this stillness to [her voice]. Even though she's not forcefully singing she still demands your attention."
Caught between the club-banger bellowing of Kelly Rowland and Rihanna, the fearsome spitting of Nicki Minaj and the melismatic arsenal of Beyoncé, Cassie has fallen through the cracks, scorned by R&B fans who, according to Carolan, "can be snotty about [lack of] technical ability". But her sad, sing-song vocals work on a different level, meaning that, despite not having the strongest vocal chords, she nevertheless has one of the strongest voices in pop. "There's a melancholy quality to a lot of her music. Maybe because of that and the fact that her career has stalled, people like myself can't help develop this vaguely tragic narrative around her," Carolan says. "We all feel the world doesn't deserve her." | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jan/24/philip-hammond-urges-business-leaders-to-accept-brexit-result | Business | 2019-01-24T18:54:58.000Z | Larry Elliott | Philip Hammond urges business leaders to accept Brexit result | Philip Hammond has told business leaders they need to accept the result of Britain’s EU referendum and warned that a failure to implement it would damage the country’s political stability.
The chancellor told increasingly restless business leaders that he was working for a deal that safeguarded the economy, and said he understood their frustration but companies had to accept that changes were coming – such as an end to the free movement of people and business models built on a supply of cheap labour.
“We need to get the politics right,” Hammond said at a Confederation of British Industry (CBI) lunch in Davos. “Even from the narrowest interpretation of business interests, it would be a pyrrhic victory to meet the needs of the economy, but by shattering the broad economic consensus behind our country’s political and economic system.”
Hammond said a promise had been made to voters in 2016 that they were choosing a more prosperous future. “Not leaving would be a betrayal, but leaving without a deal would also be a betrayal.”
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The chancellor is one of several senior members of Theresa May’s government who have become increasingly concerned about the risks of a no-deal Brexit.
The business minister Richard Harrington said on Thursday that he was even prepared to be sacked, after welcoming comments from the Airbus chief executive criticising the government’s handling of Brexit.
“I was delighted to read Airbus’s comments this morning because it is telling it like it is,” Harrington said, adding that a no-deal Brexit would be “a total disaster for the economy”.
Meanwhile, the work and pensions secretary, Amber Rudd, renewed her demand for Conservative MPs to be given a free vote on Tuesday – when MPs will consider amendments to the government’s Brexit motion – so that she could back an extension to article 50.
Rudd said that over the next few days she was “going to stick to trying to persuade the government to allow it to be a free vote. There is a lot taking place and there are a lot of new amendments. We’ll have to wait and see.”
After last week’s crushing parliamentary defeat for May’s Brexit plan, Hammond and the business secretary, Greg Clark, had reassured business leaders that Britain would not leave the EU on 29 March with no deal.
But the chancellor said businesses had to accept that free movement was coming to an end and urged companies to rethink business models based on cheap, low-skilled labour.
The CBI and other employer organisations have expressed concern at some of the proposals contained in the government’s immigration white paper, particularly the idea of strict curbs on entry for people in jobs paying less than £30,000 a year.
Hammond urged the business leaders to engage with the government’s consultation on the white paper, hinting that ministers were open to reducing the £30,000 cap. “Free movement is ending. The detail of what is to replace it has yet to be decided. Business has to seize the opportunity to engage with the process and come up with constructive, consistent and evidence-based solutions.”
The chancellor said businesses had to come up with creative ways of ensuring they had access to people with intermediate skills but would also have to help change Britain’s economic model so it was less dependent on cheap labour.
He said the economy was in good shape, pointing to record employment and growth forecasts that were “perfectly respectable” provided there was an EU deal.
“The only credible and sustainable solution is to leave the EU, to honour the referendum decision, but to do so in a way that allows us to deliver the future prosperity voters were promised when they voted to leave the EU. The only way forward is a negotiated settlement,” he said.
Asked about the comments of Harrington and the chancellor, May’s spokeswoman said the cabinet was “working very closely with the PM on delivering a deal which works for the British economy and for employees”.
Mark Carney, the Bank of England governor, at Davos, where he said the UK’s border infrastructure was not ready for Brexit. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England, told a separate Davos event that business was not ready for a no-deal Brexit. “There are a series of logistical issues that need to be solved and it’s quite transparent that in many cases they’re not,” he said.
Border infrastructure was not ready for the possibility of “jumping from an absolutely seamless trading environment to one with frictions that aren’t just tariffs but are rules of origin on products, safety standards on products and other actions that need to be done”, he said.
Referring to cross-border supply chains and the companies that rely on parts reaching them just in time for production, Carney stressed that “minutes matter in this world”.
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Business leaders meeting in Davos have said they were implementing no-deal Brexit plans, but Carney said: “There is a limited amount that many businesses can do to prepare if there are going to be substantial delays on the logistical side. These eventually will be worked out over time, but you can’t build up the inventories.”
Meanwhile, union leaders who met with May were critical of her stance. The TUC general secretary, Frances O’Grady, said she had not received the guarantees she was seeking that there would not be a no-deal Brexit, and added: “I was looking for guarantees on workers’ rights now and into the future.
“We have a prime minister on a temporary contract. She cannot bind the hands of a future prime minister.”
Tim Roache, general secretary of the GMB union, said: “I’m afraid to say the prime minister failed to give us the guarantees we need over protecting jobs and rights at work.
“As this crisis worsens, pretending nothing has changed is simply not good enough.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2011/oct/27/specsavers-founder-mary-perkins-interview | Business | 2011-10-27T18:39:59.000Z | Sarah Butler | Specsavers founder sees plenty of challenges ahead | Dame Mary Perkins, the co-founder of Specsavers, was one of only two girls in her A-level science class at school. If she had not been inspired by her father, who in middle-age trained to become an optician, she says she would probably have followed most of the other girls in her year and taken English or another arts subject and become a librarian.
Instead of becoming a bespectacled bookish type, Perkins did go to Specsavers, and is now credited with being Britain's first self-made female billionaire. The Sunday Times rich list suggests she and her family are worth £1.15bn, though Perkins says this is an over-estimate based on the turnover of Specsavers.
If she is sitting on a billion, she is not shouting about it. Although perfectly coiffed and with a neat figure, apparently from her love of hill-walking and cycling to work, she does not tote a designer handbag or extravagant jewellery. When she delves in her sensible, capacious bag at one point, out tumble two pairs of spectacles (of course) and a pair of flat shoes.
She will not let on how much profit the business makes but with nearly 1,600 outlets and a turnover of £1.5bn, it's unlikely she is short of change for the bus. Still, at 67 Perkins is not ready to put her feet up. She goes into the office near her home in Guernsey most days and has the role of consumer champion, trying to ensure that any decision made by the business will be good for its customers. Until a few years ago, she was famous for checking up on service in Specsavers stores by pretending to be a customer, disguised by a variety of wigs.
Sadly, she says, this ruse no longer works. "I've still got the wigs but they'd all recognise me now," she says. These days the company checks service standards using hired "mystery shoppers" and online surveys.
Perkins's latest way to pass on her expertise to Specsavers staff is through a book on the history of the company and its keys to success. Although she has not tested a pair of eyes since the late 1980s, she has an in-depth understanding of the industry, having worked in it since she was a girl. She used to help out on reception at her father's opticians in Bristol in school holidays.
She met her husband, Doug, on her first day at Cardiff University and the couple set up their own opticians when they were in their early twenties. Back in the 1960s it was still rare for women to train as opticians, let alone start their own businesses. Dame Mary was one of four women on her optometry course in a class of 30.
Advocate
Now more girls take science subjects at school than boys. "They're better at it," Perkins says. Optometry is a popular choice of career for women. "There's been a complete reversal. "It's a good career, it's clean and the hours are OK, so they can get back home if they have children," she says.
Perkins believes that it is this kind of consideration, more than any glass ceiling, that is keeping women out of the boardroom. A keen advocate of women in business, she leads a board of 20 leading female chief executives who are building a network of female business bosses, the everywomanClub. At a recent meeting, this group discussed the lack of female chief executives. "We came to the conclusion that not all women want to get to the top of the board. They want to reach a certain level with a fantastic job, but with time for family and life outside the business. Being at the top is not always the best position to be in," Perkins says.
In retail, the tiny number of women at board level compared with those working within the business is quite shocking. But, Perkins says, in her experience "women aren't terrible concerned about it".
"In some companies the board is a bit of an old boys' network and women say 'I don't fancy going there'. They say 'We are really running the company and all they are doing is answering to shareholders and the stock market.' That's the last job they want."
She says that the demands of family life also mean that many women are unwilling to work abroad, often a key stepping stone to the top in large companies. She is also not a fan of quotas. "They mean you get people who have not got the right skills."
Still, she describes the situation in industries such as finance, where women tend to be paid considerably less for doing the same job as men, as "pretty piggy".
Women need more confidence to get top posts and better pay, Perkins says. "Men say 'we can do it' and see it as a God-given thing. They expect to be there but women choose whether they want to do it or not."
But through the everywomanClub, Perkins helps mentor young business graduates and ensure they have the skills to succeed at the top level in business. "We want to give younger women bigger aspirations," she says.
Perkins and her husband were never short of ambition for Specsavers. They had retired to Guernsey to live near her parents, after selling their first small chain of opticians in 1980. She worked for the local Citizens Advice Bureau and he took an accountancy course. But after a few years they were a bit bored. When the Thatcher government changed the rules so that opticians could advertise, the couple decided to go back to what they knew best.
They started Specsavers in 1984 with a small store in Guernsey and another in Bristol. By the end of the first year they had five.
Partnership
Perkins says: "We always intended to go right across the country but we've just opened our 700th UK store. If someone said we would have all those stores in the UK when we started out I would've said 'what?' We thought 200 was a really big figure."
She thinks the key to success is that each store is run and owned by an optician under a joint venture partnership with Specsavers. The branch owners keep their profits and pay a fee to central office for a range of about 50 different services, from marketing and training to accountancy.
"There's a lot more to running an optical business than testing the eyes and being nice to people," says Perkins. Lone operators struggle to stay on top of all the back-office stuff. Specsavers deals with that problem and so has never had to close a branch.
The company has thrived during the economic difficulties of the past year with sales up 10% globally and 2.4% in the UK. On the first signs of recession they brought in more low-priced spectacles, raising customer numbers and grabbing market share. Specsavers now has more than 40% of the UK market, but Perkins admits: "People are spending less and margins are squeezed."
Those problems are reflected in payments from Specsavers' UK stores to the services business from which Dame Mary and her family draw their income.
Turnover rose 14% to £389m in the year to the end of February 2010, but operating profits dipped 14% to £22.2m, according to the latest figures filed at Companies House.
The group is now operating in 10 countries, including the UK and Ireland. Its biggest overseas business is in Australia, where it is already market leader after just four years. This year there are plans to expand in Spain and to extend new services, such as hearing tests and hearing aids, beyond the UK. Dame Mary says that hearing aids are a "huge growth area". They already make up 15-16% of Specsavers' business and tight NHS funding means more people are prepared to pay out for a hearing aid.
So is she ready to cash in her 50% share of the billion pounds the company is apparently worth? She says that Specsavers is keeping it in the family. While husband Doug remains chairman, son John is managing director and one daughter is manager of the Dutch business, while another works in the finance department. "It's purposely not structured to be sold," she says. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2019/sep/27/my-beautiful-laundrette-review-curve-leicester | Stage | 2019-09-27T09:33:53.000Z | Michael Billington | My Beautiful Laundrette review – an iconic movie cleverly reimagined | Making plays out of films is a tricky business but Hanif Kureishi has successfully adapted his landmark 1985 movie for the stage with the aid of linking music from Tennant/Lowe of the Pet Shop Boys. The production still pins down the pervasive impact of entrepreneurial Thatcherite values while charting the growth of a gay relationship. But what is fascinating is how deftly Kureishi has heightened the story’s racial and gender politics.
We see a young British Pakistani man, Omar, turning a run-down laundrette into a thriving business aided by his chum, Johnny, on whom he dotes. But the muddled fascism of Johnny’s hangers-on is much clearer than in the movie, with one of them spouting toxic anti-immigrant rhetoric and another brandishing a banner proclaiming: “British jobs for British workers.” Tania, the cousin to whom Omar is briefly engaged, also launches a fierce attack on the passivity of her mother’s generation and a culture in which marriages are seen as business mergers. Significantly, her bid for freedom is now supported by her father’s ex-mistress, Rachel, who in this version is no longer a white trophy girlfriend but a victimised woman of colour.
Fierce attack ... Cathy Tyson as Rachel, Nicole Jebeli as Tania and Omar Malik as Omar. Photograph: Ellie Kurttz
The piece retains its 80s ethos while speaking to today’s world. But at the heart of the story is Omar’s longing for Johnny, which is vividly realised: the real eroticism lies less in that love’s consummation than in the pre-sexual banter between Omar Malik and Jonny Fines who capture perfectly the hesitancy of two young men unsure where their passion will lead them. It is also touching to see Gordon Warnecke, the original movie Omar, now skilfully playing his drink-stained socialist dad. Nikolai Foster’s bustling production boasts fine performances from Cathy Tyson as the exploited Rachel, Nicole Jebeli as the defiant Tania, Kammy Darweish as her profit-hungry father and Hareet Deol as Salim who sees selling drugs to white kids as a form of “reverse colonialism”. That line typifies the way an iconic movie has not simply been replicated but sharply reimagined.
At Curve, Leicester, until 5 October. Then touring. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/mar/15/emma-barnett-to-join-bbc-radio-4-today-programme-presenter | Media | 2024-03-15T13:23:24.000Z | Alexandra Topping | Emma Barnett to join BBC Radio 4’s Today programme | Emma Barnett, the presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, will join the Today programme from May.
Barnett, who had been tipped for the role with the BBC’s flagship morning radio show after Martha Kearney announced last month she was to step down, said she was “delighted to be joining a programme that occupies such a unique space in British life”.
Barnett said she hoped to ask the questions that listeners wanted to hear while also “raising many smiles along the way”. She said: “We are living in volatile times where sometimes even asking a question can seem risky – wrongly so.”
Today’s editor, Owenna Griffiths, said Barnett was “a truly great radio talent”, adding: “She consistently puts the audience at the heart of her programmes and her unique combination of warmth, energy and persistence will be a fantastic addition to the lineup.”
Barnett, the main host of Woman’s Hour since January 2021, will join Mishal Husain, Nick Robinson, Justin Webb and Amol Rajan on Today’s presenting team.
Born in Manchester, she began her eponymous show on BBC Radio 5 Live in 2016 and won the radio broadcaster of the year award in 2018. As well as being on BBC Two’s Newsnight roster, she has presented Question Time, the Andrew Marr Show and Politics Live.
Her recent book, Period, documented her struggles with endometriosis and adenomyosis, where endometrial tissue grows into the uterus’s muscular wall.
She said she would miss Woman’s Hour and its “mighty army of listeners”, and would carry certain moments for the rest of her life, such as conducting the first interview with Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe after her release from prison in Iran.
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“My time on Woman’s Hour means a great deal to me and I want to thank the team and our mighty army of listeners for how much we have shared – the joy, wisdom, sorrow and sometimes sheer rage,” she said. “I will greatly miss being within the rare and unique space Woman’s Hour provides, where most days anything can happen and routinely does. All power to the next person gifted the opportunity.”
It will leave a sizeable hole to fill at Woman’s Hour, with BBC executives saying they are actively looking for a new presenter and inviting “expressions of interest from experienced live broadcasters who have strong journalistic credentials, warmth and gravitas to lead this flagship Radio 4 programme”.
Deborah Turness, the chief executive of BBC News, said: “Emma is a formidable, fearless and ferociously intelligent journalist and I’m delighted that she will be showcasing her considerable talents across all of BBC News’ platforms.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/healthcare-network/2018/mar/23/more-cash-will-force-the-nhs-to-address-tougher-questions-than-money | Healthcare Professionals Network | 2018-03-23T13:11:25.000Z | Richard Vize | More cash will force the NHS to address tougher questions than money | Richard Vize | Indications that the government is edging towards a radical, long-term funding settlement for the NHS – as pressure grows from its backbenchers to get a grip on the problem – are raising hopes of a solution to the funding crisis. But more cash will force the health service to address even tougher questions than money.
With NHS trusts running an underlying deficit in the region of £3.7bn, there is a serious risk that the acute sector will rapidly soak up any new cash while primary, mental health and community services will again be left fighting over the scraps.
It would be folly to take even more taxpayers’ money – inevitably at the expense of other public services – without a concerted effort to drive out inefficiencies in the system, integrate more effectively, deliver on the numerous promises around prevention and early intervention and improve accountability to the public. A new funding settlement could prove the catalyst for yet another round of reforms. The trick will be to make them about patients rather than structures.
A royal commission is not the way to solve the problems facing the NHS
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Many hospitals are beset with serious inefficiencies, from unacceptable variations in clinical performance – exposed by data from the Get It Right First Time drive – to wasting money on everything from pointless outpatient appointments to poor procurement of medical devices. Much of this information has been around for years. Hospitals are finally starting to get a grip on managing their estates long after local and central government took a robust approach to their property. Other parts of the NHS pay the price for this wastage.
Securing a new funding settlement would be a hollow victory if it simply reinforced the existing distribution of resources. First in the queue for new cash should be community-based services for physical and mental health, which would maximise the benefit to patients from the new investment.
The drive for integration is bringing further wastage in time and money as each local area tries to bend legislation designed for fragmentation and competition towards collaboration. This is spawning an ever more complex array of Heath Robinson legal structures, which even lawyers specialising in this field find tortuous and opaque. Entire senior management meetings can design and debate these arcane arrangements without once mentioning patients. Decisions are being driven by considerations such as VAT liabilities rather than how best to meet patient needs.
These structures are inefficient to construct and manage, seem irrelevant to clinicians, undermine accountability through their opacity and make the public (and growing numbers of Labour councillors) suspicious.
The astonishing amounts of time absorbed by structural issues prevent NHS leaders from focusing on the cultural and system changes among clinicians where the real integration of patient services happens and from where the best ideas will come.
The NHS is under threat. Only a new model of care will save it
Kailash Chand
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This raises the spectre of another round of primary legislation – a horrifying thought. It is difficult to conceive of anything the prime minister would like less than to provide Labour with months of parliamentary time to attack the government over the health service. But the Conservatives could calculate that their decisive action on NHS pay, coupled with a new funding settlement and a bill to facilitate easier integration of services and improve public accountability, may deprive Labour of its key electoral advantage around the NHS.
It could even provide an opportunity to dispense with the purchaser/provider split, which the chief executive of NHS England, Simon Stephens, said last year would effectively be ended by local integration of NHS organisations.
Any legislation would need to avoid the pitfall of laying out a grand design for the whole country, instead allowing local areas to evolve their structures to meet local circumstances rather than to fit a central prescription.
With last year’s election gamble ending so badly, the odds must still be against a major NHS bill. The endless promises of action on social care funding complicate the decision further. But with or without legislation, any new financial settlement must be used to reshape the NHS, not perpetuate history.
Richard Vize is a public policy commentator and analyst
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https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/feb/11/reason-is-non-negotioable-steven-pinker-enlightenment-now-extract | Books | 2018-02-11T08:00:42.000Z | Steven Pinker | ‘Reason is non-negotiable’: Steven Pinker on the Enlightenment | What is enlightenment? In a 1784 essay with that question as its title, Immanuel Kant answered that it consists of “humankind’s emergence from its self-incurred immaturity”, its “lazy and cowardly” submission to the “dogmas and formulas” of religious or political authority. Enlightenment’s motto, he proclaimed, is: “Dare to understand!” and its foundational demand is freedom of thought and speech.
What is the Enlightenment? There is no official answer, because the era named by Kant’s essay was never demarcated by opening and closing ceremonies like the Olympics, nor are its tenets stipulated in an oath or creed. The Enlightenment is conventionally placed in the last two thirds of the 18th century, though it flowed out of the Scientific Revolution and the Age of Reason in the 17th century and spilled into the heyday of classical liberalism of the first half of the 19th. Provoked by challenges to conventional wisdom from science and exploration, mindful of the bloodshed of recent wars of religion, and abetted by the easy movement of ideas and people, the thinkers of the Enlightenment sought a new understanding of the human condition. The era was a cornucopia of ideas, some of them contradictory, but four themes tie them together: reason, science, humanism and progress.
Foremost is reason. Reason is non-negotiable. As soon as you show up to discuss the question of what we should believe (or any other question), as long as you insist that your answers, whatever they are, are reasonable or justified or true and that therefore other people ought to believe them too, then you have committed yourself to reason, and to holding your beliefs accountable to objective standards.
War was no longer thought of as a divine punishment to be endured and deplored
If there’s anything the Enlightenment thinkers had in common, it was an insistence that we energetically apply the standard of reason to understanding our world, and not fall back on generators of delusion like faith, dogma, revelation, authority, charisma, mysticism, divination, visions, gut feelings or the hermeneutic parsing of sacred texts.
Many writers today confuse the Enlightenment endorsement of reason with the implausible claim that humans are perfectly rational agents. Nothing could be further from historical reality. Thinkers such as Kant, Baruch Spinoza, Thomas Hobbes, David Hume and Adam Smith were inquisitive psychologists and all too aware of our irrational passions and foibles. They insisted that it was only by calling out the common sources of folly that we could hope to overcome them. The deliberate application of reason was necessary precisely because our common habits of thought are not particularly reasonable.
That leads to the second ideal, science, the refining of reason to understand the world. That includes an understanding of ourselves. The Scientific Revolution was revolutionary in a way that is hard to appreciate today, now that its discoveries have become second nature to most of us.
The need for a “science of man” was a theme that tied together Enlightenment thinkers who disagreed about much else, including Montesquieu, Hume, Smith, Kant, Nicolas de Condorcet, Denis Diderot, Jean-Baptiste d’Alembert, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Giambattista Vico. Their belief that there was such a thing as universal human nature, and that it could be studied scientifically, made them precocious practitioners of sciences that would be named only centuries later. They were cognitive neuroscientists, who tried to explain thought, emotion and psychopathology in terms of physical mechanisms of the brain. They were evolutionary psychologists, who sought to characterise life in a state of nature and to identify the animal instincts that are “infused into our bosoms”. They were social psychologists, who wrote of the moral sentiments that draw us together, the selfish passions that divide us and the foibles of shortsightedness that confound our best-laid plans. And they were cultural anthropologists, who mined the accounts of travellers and explorers for data both on human universals and on the diversity of customs and mores across the world’s cultures.
The idea of a universal human nature brings us to a third theme, humanism. The thinkers of the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment saw an urgent need for a secular foundation for morality, because they were haunted by a historical memory of centuries of religious carnage: the Crusades, the Inquisition, witch-hunts, the European wars of religion.
They laid that foundation in what we now call humanism, which privileges the wellbeing of individual men, women, and children over the glory of the tribe, race, nation or religion. It is individuals, not groups, who are sentient – who feel pleasure and pain, fulfillment and anguish. Whether it is framed as the goal of providing the greatest happiness for the greatest number or as a categorical imperative to treat people as ends rather than means, it was the universal capacity of a person to suffer and flourish, they said, that called on our moral concern.
Steven Pinker. Photograph: Scott Nobles
Fortunately, human nature prepares us to answer that call. That is because we are endowed with the sentiment of sympathy, which they also called benevolence, pity and commiseration. Given that we are equipped with the capacity to sympathise with others, nothing can prevent the circle of sympathy from expanding from the family and tribe to embrace all of humankind, particularly as reason goads us into realising that there can be nothing uniquely deserving about ourselves or any of the groups to which we belong. We are forced into cosmopolitanism: accepting our citizenship in the world.
A humanistic sensibility impelled the Enlightenment thinkers to condemn not just religious violence but also the secular cruelties of their age, including slavery, despotism, executions for frivolous offences such as shoplifting and poaching and sadistic punishments such as flogging, amputation, impalement, disembowelment, breaking on the wheel and burning at the stake. The Enlightenment is sometimes called the Humanitarian Revolution, because it led to the abolition of barbaric practices that had been commonplace across civilisations for millennia.
If the abolition of slavery and cruel punishment is not progress, nothing is, which brings us to the fourth Enlightenment ideal. With our understanding of the world advanced by science and our circle of sympathy expanded through reason and cosmopolitanism, humanity could make intellectual and moral progress. It need not resign itself to the miseries and irrationalities of the present, nor try to turn back the clock to a lost golden age.
The ideal of progress also should not be confused with the 20th-century movement to re-engineer society for the convenience of technocrats and planners, which the political scientist James Scott calls Authoritarian High Modernism. The movement denied the existence of human nature, with its messy needs for beauty, nature, tradition and social intimacy. Starting from a “clean tablecloth”, the modernists designed urban renewal projects that replaced vibrant neighbourhoods with freeways, high-rises, windswept plazas and brutalist architecture.
“Mankind will be reborn,” they theorised, and “live in an ordered relation to the whole.” Though these developments were sometimes linked to the word progress, the usage was ironic: “progress” unguided by humanism is not progress.
Rather than trying to shape human nature, the Enlightenment hope for progress was concentrated on human institutions. Human-made systems like governments, laws, schools, markets and international bodies are a natural target for the application of reason to human betterment.
In this way of thinking, government is not a divine fiat to reign, a synonym for “society”, or an avatar of the national, religious or racial soul. It is a human invention, tacitly agreed to in a social contract, designed to enhance the welfare of citizens by coordinating their behaviour and discouraging selfish acts that may be tempting to every individual but leave every one worse off. As the most famous product of the Enlightenment, the US Declaration of Independence, put it, in order to secure the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, governments are instituted among people, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
The Enlightenment also saw the first rational analysis of prosperity. Its starting point was not how wealth is distributed but the prior question of how wealth comes to exist in the first place. Specialisation works only in a market that allows the specialists to exchange their goods and services and Smith explained that economic activity was a form of mutually beneficial cooperation (a positive-sum game, in today’s lingo): each gets back something that is more valuable to him than what he gives up. Through voluntary exchange, people benefit others by benefiting themselves; as he wrote: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love.” Smith was not saying that people are ruthlessly selfish, or that they ought to be; he was one of history’s keenest commentators on human sympathy. He only said that in a market, whatever tendency people have to care for their families and themselves can work to the good of all.
Exchange can make an entire society not just richer but nicer, because in an effective market it is cheaper to buy things than to steal them and other people are more valuable to you alive than dead. (As the economist Ludwig von Mises put it centuries later: “If the tailor goes to war against the baker, he must henceforth bake his own bread.”) Many Enlightenment thinkers, including Montesquieu, Kant, Voltaire, Diderot and the Abbé de Saint-Pierre endorsed the ideal of doux commerce, gentle commerce. The American founders – George Washington, James Madison and especially Alexander Hamilton – designed the institutions of the young nation to nurture it.
This brings us to another Enlightenment ideal, peace. War was so common in history that it was natural to see it as a permanent part of the human condition and to think peace could come only in a messianic age. But now war was no longer thought of as a divine punishment to be endured and deplored, or a glorious contest to be won and celebrated, but a practical problem to be mitigated and someday solved. In Perpetual Peace, Kant laid out measures that would discourage leaders from dragging their countries into war. Together with international commerce, he recommended representative republics (what we would call democracies), mutual transparency, norms against conquest and internal interference, freedom of travel and immigration and a federation of states that would adjudicate disputes between them.
For all the prescience of the founders, framers and philosophers, Enlightenment Now is not a book of Enlighten-olatry. The Enlightenment thinkers were men and women of their age, the 18th century. Some were racists, sexists, antisemites, slaveholders or duellists. Some of the questions they worried about are almost incomprehensible to us, and they came up with plenty of daffy ideas together with the brilliant ones. More to the point, they were born too soon to appreciate some of the keystones of our modern understanding of reality, including entropy, evolution, and information.
They of all people would have been the first to concede this. If you extol reason, then what matters is the integrity of the thoughts, not the personalities of the thinkers. And if you’re committed to progress, you can’t very well claim to have it all figured out. It takes nothing away from the Enlightenment thinkers to identify some critical ideas about the human condition and the nature of progress that we know and they didn’t.
Enlightenment Now: The Case for Science, Reason, Humanism and Progress is published by Allen Lane. To order a copy for £21.25 (RRP £25) 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/books/2022/mar/02/these-days-lucy-caldwell-review-haunting-novel-belfast-blitz | Books | 2022-03-02T07:30:33.000Z | Joseph O'Connor | These Days by Lucy Caldwell review – a haunting novel of the Belfast blitz | This fine novel by one of Northern Ireland’s most accomplished contemporary writers is set against the Belfast blitz, a series of attacks on the city by the Luftwaffe in 1941. Lucy Caldwell’s evocation of the violence and destruction is terrifying. Familiar avenues and buildings become a dystopia out of a Hieronymus Bosch painting. “There are dogs who have survived their owners, congregating now in cowering, starving packs in the brickfields and the mill fields and the parks.”
Dread builds by day. Whole streets disappear by night. “The Germans will come again, everyone knows it. It’s just a question of when.” The citizens bargain with fate; perhaps the bombers will only attack the city’s factories and shipbuilding yards, not its residential neighbourhoods and acres of Victorian working-class housing. An exodus of evacuees is heading for the countryside: “Cars, carts, bicycles, perambulators, bath chairs … anything with wheels. The rag and bone men, the coke men, the auldfellas with their ice cream trikes.” And at the heart of the story are more personal disturbances, making the book something richer than a well-wrought historical novel.
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These Days is a tale of two sisters, “flighty, impulsive, earnest Audrey” and “kind, stubborn, awkward Emma”. Audrey is engaged to be married to a doctor, Richard, an only child whose sexual reticence is becoming problematic, as is his plan for the couple to move in with his elderly parents after the wedding, since there’s no point in buying a house that might be blown up.
Meanwhile Emma is falling in love with Sylvia, a woman 11 years older, a radiant, life-loving character, then an absence so sharp that she feels like a presence. Like flames reflected in windows, in this novel love is real but elusive. No one’s ever quite sure where it’s coming from.
Lucy Caldwell: one of Northern Ireland’s most accomplished contemporary writers. Photograph: BBC/Tom Routh/PA
The great Belfast-born novelist Brian Moore volunteered as an air raid warden during the second world war and served during the Belfast blitz. The pristine clarity of his prose finds occasional echoes in Caldwell’s strong and unshowy writing, though her vivid voice is all her own. She doesn’t describe characters: with great deftness she incarnates them on the page. There are few metaphors or similes. Empathy lights the words.
The eye for detail is sharp and the insight into family, especially parenting, is striking. “There comes a time, she thought then, that’s the last time you’ll carry your children, and it comes without you knowing, without you marking it.”
These Days is a brilliantly shaped and organised novel. The narrative standpoint shifts but the change is never jarring. About a third of the way in, a remarkable chapter takes the story in a completely unexpected but inescapably logical direction, opening a room that the reader didn’t notice was there. Written in close third person from the sisters’ mother’s point of view, this sequence deepens the book with great subtlety, a sort of writerly tact. The quiet stoicism of these pages is so at odds with the heartbreak and loss they describe, the accommodation to a painfully imperfect world, that the effect is breathtakingly poignant.
Lucy Caldwell on Belfast: ‘Coming from a notorious place feels like a curse’
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Caldwell, winner of the 2021 BBC national short story award for All the People Were Mean and Bad, is also well known as a playwright. The drama of this novel is intense. Timing is exquisitely handled; the revelation of information is well paced. The thriller-ish elements meld well with scenes of domestic life in middle-class wartime Belfast, a place of “yesterday’s leek-and-potato pie” and “limp leaves of lettuce in the crisper with a lump of coal to revive them”. It’s a Northern Ireland not often seen in novels, but Caldwell mines its bleakness for beauty.
Those of us with family connections to Ulster will recognise the flint and saltiness of some of the dialogue. Local words and phrasings bring a pleasing music. “Guldered”. “Buck-eejit”. “I want to hear yous.” “They’d eat pails of willicks, hoking out the periwinkles from their shells.” “See me, missus? If I’d brains I’d be dangerous.” “D’ye think I came up the Lagan in a bubble?” Nothing conjures characters to life more powerfully than getting down how they speak, and Caldwell does this with cool confidence.
The surrealism of wartime violence drifts like smoke from the writing. In the city’s improvised morgues, workers use watering cans to sprinkle disinfectant. “Bulging hessian sacks” hold dismembered limbs. One house has had its entire front blown away. “A looking glass on the half-landing glinting blankly. The hallway glittered: the wallpaper, the walls, were stuck with daggers of glass.” Haunting such passages are the images of subsequent violence in the same city, ghosts from Belfast’s future. Caldwell does not point to them explicitly, but they hover in this impressive novel’s margins.
Joseph O’Connor’s novel Shadowplay is published by Vintage. These Days by Lucy Caldwell is published by Faber (£12.99). To support the Guardian and the Observer order a copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jun/23/kenyan-elephant-reserve-fighting-back-against-poachers-amboseli | Environment | 2015-06-23T11:12:25.000Z | Stanley Johnson | The Kenyan elephant reserve that's fighting back against poachers | Iwas lucky to find Cynthia Moss at home. Though she has studied elephants in Kenya’s Amboseli national park for over 40 years in the longest-running elephant research project in Africa, she is now not able to spend us as much time in the field as she would like, given other commitments in Nairobi and elsewhere.
“I have that horrible déjà vu feeling,” she told me as we sat together outside her tent at her camp in the park’s heart. She compared elephant deaths from poaching today to the 15 years before the international ivory ban in 1989, when Kenya lost almost 90% of its elephants.
Moss is director and founder of the Amboseli Elephant Research Project and, like many others, recognises that dealing with ivory demand is crucial in the battle to save elephants.
And China, of course, is the key. The Chinese, she said, had been involved in the construction of two major roads in southern Kenya, establishing big camps for their workers. Illegal ivory had been exported through Mombasa and other ports. China’s ivory factories were back in business and with the seemingly insatiable demand for ivory, fuelled by China’s ever-growing middle-class, the future for the elephants seemed bleak.
Cynthia Moss, director of the Amboseli Elephant Research Project in Kenya. Photograph: REX Shutterstock
“In the 1990s there was no Chinese middle class. You weren’t allowed to own pretty things. But now we have the big boom. Ivory in China is the big status symbol. Companies give it to other companies. People who don’t know about Cites think it’s a conservation group. It’s not. It’s a trade-based organisation.”
Moss reminded me that the next Cites meeting would be held in South Africa in 2016. The prospect filled her with gloom. President Robert Mugabe, who chaired the 1997 Cites meeting in Harare that critically weakened international measures to protect elephants, would be attending the South Africa session too. And there would certainly be further proposals from Southern African countries, for example Namibia, Zimbabwe and South Africa itself, that could worsen the problem.
Gloomy though the immediate outlook may seem, what is happening in Amboseli offers some hope that the sickening rate of slaughter – over 30,000 elephants a year on a worldwide basis – can be stemmed, at least temporarily, while the crucial battle to curb demand for ivory continues.
Amboseli’s elephant population is around 1,600. The Amboseli Elephant research project has established that it consists of 55 families. During my brief stay there, I must have seen many of them out in the savannah or roaming the great salt pans in the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro.
Attacks on the last elephants and rhinos threaten entire ecosystems
George Monbiot
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That population of 1,600 is currently stable, or even increasing. The poaching which has had such an impact elsewhere in Kenya has been largely absent here.
As Moss explained that morning, outside assistance has undoubtedly made a difference. The Big Life Foundation, for example, set up by wildlife photographer Nick Brandt, is supporting 350 scouts or community rangers. Big Life also runs a ‘consolation’ programme, aimed at compensating Masai pastoralists for the loss of stock. Another NGO, the Born Free Foundation has helped to construct so far nearly 200 predator-proof ‘bomas’, hardened wooden posts and chain-link fences, thus further strengthening the rapport between farmer and conservationist.
While I was in Kenya, I had a chance to meet Stefano Cheli and his wife, pioneers in the battle to bring sustainable tourism to Africa.
“The community must benefit from the tourist dollar if wildlife is to survive,” Cheli told me. “From the outset, we partnered with the local community, leasing a 12,000-hectare [30,000-acre] wildlife corridor between Amboseli national park and Tanzania from 3,000 collective landowners.”
Tortilis, the safari camp where I stayed, employs at least 60% of its permanent staff and dozens of additional staff from the local community.
Since 2011, the Cheli and Peacock Community Trust, supported by tourist donations, has funded schools and medical centres, as well as conservation education, not only in the Masai Mara but in other parts of Kenya too, as well as in Tanzania.
Elephants graze in the Amboseli national park in southern Kenya. Photograph: Dai Kurokawa/EPA
With 70% of Kenya’s wildlife roaming outside protected areas, measures to strengthen community involvement and to create ‘parks beyond parks’, are of fundamental importance. Combined with continued efforts to deal with poaching through monitoring and enforcement, such measures provide grounds for hope that it may be possible to stem the current slaughter of elephants on the African continent.
On my last morning in Kenya, I telephoned an old friend, Iain Douglas-Hamilton, who fought hard and successfully for the 1989 ivory ban and who probably knows more about elephants than any man alive. When I rang, he was ‘up-country’ in Samburu, a national reserve relatively near the Somali border.
“Shall I tell you the good news?” he began. “This is the first year in a long while that we have seen more elephants born in Samburu than there are elephants killed.”
China agrees to phase out its ivory industry to combat elephant poaching
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Community-based conservation measures of the kind introduced in Kenya, admirable though they are, may still not be enough to save the elephant.
More effective action has to be taken on the demand side as well. There is a marvellous opportunity here for the new UK government to take a stand. The Conservative manifesto, which David Cameron has pledged to implement, commits the UK “to press for a total ban on ivory sales”.
Now is the time for newly-empowered ministers to step up to the plate. Britain should enforce a domestic ban on the sale, or transit, of both raw and worked ivory. And we should make every effort, by diplomatic and other means, to ensure that other key players, such as the EU, US, China and India, follow suit.
Stanley Johnson is an author, conservationist and former Conservative MEP. The second volume of his memoir ‘Stanley I Resume’ is published by Robson Press | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/apr/01/elsa-peretti-obituary | Art and design | 2021-04-01T10:22:30.000Z | Veronica Horwell | Elsa Peretti obituary | Silver was fashionable for Arts and Crafts and art nouveau jewellery around the turn into the 20th century, but then fell back into second-best position, fine for folkwear and cigarette cases, but thought too common for a chic neck, wrist or lapel. That was not the belief of Elsa Peretti, who has died aged 80. She began her long career designing jewellery in 1969 when, in a market, she bought an old silver vase that looked like a classical amphora and worked with a smith in Catalonia to produce a miniature copy. She wore it slung on a thong as a necklace, filled with a single flower.
Like most of her plentiful ideas, it was fresh when new, and did not become stale because of imitations or decades in production. Peretti took time over her designs, more in their simplification than their invention: a “bean” that slid along its chain; a “yard of diamonds” – a concept from the New York designer Halston, for whom she was muse and model – tiny real stones set in mounts irregularly along a fine necklace; a cast “cuff” bracelet, inspired by her memory of smooth knobs of human bone in a Capuchin crypt. They were both modern (the heroine of the film Wonder Woman 1984 is all the stronger for a Peretti “bone cuff”) and ancient; when the British Museum added her work to its collection, it looked at home.
Elsa Peretti’s work on display at Tiffany in 2009. She generated about 10% of its turnover. Photograph: Getty
They were also pieces, especially the silver teardrop earrings that softened Peretti’s short hair, that she would have bought for herself. This was crucial to her success. Women had long shopped for costume jewellery made of base metals, bakelite or acrylic, but lacked their own money and social permission for precious metals or stones; it was acceptable to buy your own diamante, but not diamonds. Peretti ignored the boundaries between fine and costume jewellery and her pieces became trophies for working women, affordable from their own earnings.
In 1974, Halston introduced her to the CEO of Tiffany & Co, retailer of big and little luxuries, which was looking for a wider – if lower-spending – customer base. Tiffany’s was not snobbish about silver – it paid for Peretti’s travel to meet craftworkers and choose natural materials around the world, and contracted her to design regular collections. Over decades, she generated about 10% of Tiffany’s turnover and when she threatened to withdraw her name and ideas in 2012, it signed her up for 20 more years and paid her $47m.
“I’m very happy with what I’ve done [in life],” she told Vanity Fair in old age. “I knew a man wasn’t going to give me money.”
Jewellery that Elsa Peretti designed for Tiffany. Photograph: Getty
Peretti had, in fact, been born into wealth, in Florence, Italy, but was almost penniless at 21. Her father was Ferdinando Peretti, founder of an oil business that in the postwar years had grown into a huge corporation, and she was brought up, with schooling in Switzerland, among the best materials and craftsmanship. But she escaped her family’s stuffy milieu and her father, and mother, Maria Luigia, cut contact and financial support.
Elsa went to Barcelona, and started to model; for the rest of her life, she worked regularly with Catalan craftsmen, and came to own much of an underpopulated village a drive from the city. In 1968 she moved to New York, working for Wilhelmina Cooper’s agency, which recruited stylish if difficult models. Peretti was a character and became an international favourite.
She had befriended Halston before he turned from designing hats to clothes, and created that vase necklace for a show by Giorgio di Sant’Angelo; for much of the 70s she was muse and disrupter of a pack that also included Andy Warhol.
Peretti was afterwards candid about her disco years (the clique was trouble in residence at Studio 54) and the vodka, cocaine and Gauloises that provoked her outbursts, as recorded in Warhol’s diaries and gossipy memoirs. The fusses were also about her wanting to be recognised for her own design talent – she threw a fur coat Halston had given her into a fire because she felt it inadequate recompense for creating the famous bottle for his bestselling perfume.
A wild life, its dissipation concealed behind trademark enormous glasses, was good publicity for her work, as were the photographs by her then-lover, Helmut Newton, of Peretti as a parody Playboy bunny on a Manhattan balcony.
Elsa Peretti at work in New York in about 1978. Photograph: Images Press/Getty
Yet she was disciplined enough always to deliver commissions, and kept enough distance to retreat regularly to her adopted village, Sant Martí Vell, making her main home there from the early 80s. She employed local artisans for her own-label brand, as well as Tiffany’s, and spent her big fashion-world profits on restoring the village’s buildings over almost 50 years as well as setting up enterprises, including wine-making.
Peretti had other big money to spend too. Her father at last appreciated her worth after reading about her design success in the US, and they met before his death in 1977; he left her sister Mila more than half the shares in his business, and the rest to Peretti. She sued for more, and was eventually awarded 49%; their sale funded the diverse international projects of her charitable foundation.
Her crazy-years lovers were many, but the durable romance was with a truck driver, Stefano Magini. They met when he delivered building stone to one of her very many houses in 1978 and were together for 23 years.
She is survived by her sister.
Elsa Peretti, jewellery designer, born 1 May 1940; died 18 March 2021 | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2014/nov/04/how-we-made-this-life-amy-jenkins-jack-davenport | Culture | 2014-11-04T07:00:04.000Z | Andrew Dickson | Amy Jenkins and Jack Davenport: how we made This Life | Amy Jenkins, creator/writer
Weird as it sounds, This Life came out of a focus group. The BBC had asked what its TV channels would look like if they were brands. The people surveyed said BBC1 resembled Marks & Spencer, while BBC2 was like Aquascutum, the upmarket menswear label. Michael Jackson, then BBC2 controller, was terribly dejected. He wanted it to be younger, more hip. So he decided the answer was a drama about young trainee lawyers.
I was touting this script around about young people on the rave scene. I was doing a lot of it myself at the time – I’d sort of dropped out. The BBC didn’t want it, but when I said I’d done a law degree and been a lawyer, their ears pricked up. Then I said I hated the Beatles. I was trying to make a point about the Beatles generation, the way they were so smug, how nothing could ever be better than the 1960s, how annoying that was if you were my age. Michael looked like he’d never heard anyone say that before. I got the commission.
I’d hated law. I found it boring and left after a year. So, though This Life was about young lawyers sharing a house, I didn’t want them in court. I was watching American cop shows like Hill Street Blues, where the police work seemed almost incidental. And I wove in ideas from my other script, real flatshares I’d been in and the bohemian characters I was mixing with. My favourite thing was always the relationship between Anna and Miles: whether it was on or off. Anna was my alter ego, as damaged as she was, although in real life I’m much more Milly, much more dutiful. And Miles stood for the men I fancied: slightly narcissistic, pleased with themselves, but charming and successful. A twat, but a likable one.
We wanted it to look real. We kept the camera handheld, documentary-style, and the only music was when people listened to the radio or CDs. The other radical thing was that it was all middle-class characters, people who’d been to university, and they were drinking, swearing, taking drugs, having sex. We didn’t want to make this stuff a big issue, though. If someone took drugs, they wouldn’t die; if there was a gay man, he wouldn’t get Aids. The BBC were worried about the swearing – we were given a quota of “fucks” per episode – and apparently a senior executive went into the edit one night and trimmed three seconds off a blowjob scene. But it was going out after the watershed and generally they let us get on with it. Anyway, we were cheap.
That’s life … the original cast of This Life, from left, Jason Hughes as Warren, Amita Dhiri as Milly, Jack Davenport as Miles, Daniela Nardini as Anna and Andrew Lincoln as Egg. Photograph: BBC Photo Archive
When it first went out in 1996, a lot of reviews accused the show of being obsessed by sex. I was really surprised: I didn’t think there was that much. It was just a normal part of life. I got a letter from a young gay man working for the Post Office. He said he saw himself in it. I’m really proud of that.
Jack Davenport, actor
I was 22, I’d just left university, had got the world’s smallest part in a film, and was trying to get a break. I auditioned more times than I care to remember, over weeks. Then I had to do what in American TV is called a “chemistry read”: a script read-through with Daniela Nardini, who got the role of Anna . I guess they were trying to figure out what we’d be like together.
Miles was a twat in a lot of respects, an unreconstructed public schoolboy, but I loved playing him. I’d been surrounded by them at school and university. And it’s always a laugh to expose your raging id. Also, I think most of the characters in the show were flawed: pretty selfish and unthinking. They were young, still being formed. They weren’t comfortable television archetypes.
The first series was filmed on location near Southwark Bridge in London, in an abandoned Victorian terrace. At one end was the house itself, in the middle were the production offices. If we needed to film on the street, we just went out and did it. It was hugely low-budget, shot at crazy speed – 10 pages of script a day, which is mad – but most of us hadn’t done anything like it before, so we didn’t realise. We were just grateful to be working at all, and excited to be doing something good.
Initially no one watched it, but gradually it built into this huge thing. For the second series in 1997, we did 21 episodes, which is unheard of in British TV. Then the BBC repeated the first series, so we were on nearly all summer. We were getting 3-4 million viewers and we were popular with the cool kids. People were writing about it all the time.
It came back to haunt us, though, when we reunited 10 years later for a one-off special. We knew it would get a kicking. But I don’t regret it – we’d stayed friends, and how often do you get to be in a series that impinges on the collective psyche? Maybe it was a bit Spinal Tap-ish, but we embraced our inner Nigel Tufnel.
I’ve always been curious about what drove the obsession with the show. It’s the only time I’ve ever been in something that was universally adored. Obviously, the writing was great, but I guess it’s because people saw themselves, and because it presented life as messy. I love it that when the second series ended, Miles is marrying the wrong woman and Egg has just found out that his partner’s had an affair. Basically, everyone is miserable, apart from Ferdy, who’s getting a blowjob in the toilets. That really is life. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2016/oct/31/improving-transport-systems-electric-cars-technology | Guardian Sustainable Business | 2016-10-31T06:00:10.000Z | Adam Forrest | The costly gridlock: how can we keep our cities moving? | Cities around the world confront a huge and pressing problem: how do you accommodate growing numbers of people? It is forecast that by 2050, two-thirds of the world’s population will live in urban areas, and transport planners face the daunting task of making sure everyone can move around without too much of a struggle.
The UK’s population is expected to grow by almost 10 million over the next 25 years – London’s population could reach 9.8 million by 2025. Since many of our cities already suffer from overcrowding on trains, congestion on roads and worsening air pollution, there is an urgent need to find new ways to adapt to the demographic changes.
How will our transport systems cope? How might we best utilise new technologies to make our journeys more productive and less polluting? The Guardian, supported by Heathrow, recently hosted a roundtable discussion to address some of these issues.
While the scale of the challenge is formidable, there is optimism cities can handle peak populations and even be made more liveable, the roundtable heard. “Transport is a force for change,” said Susan Claris, associate director at Arup, the engineering, planning and design firm. “It can help shape better cities, and make them more socially inclusive.”
Many of the experts on the panel identified the humble car as holding huge potential for a more efficient transport system. “Cars are amazingly efficient vehicles when they have four or five people in them, and we should be doing more to encourage more efficient use,” said Ali Clabburn, CEO of Liftshare, a social enterprise offering commuters the chance to organise shared car journeys. “At peak hours, every train or bus is full, and there are millions of empty [car] seats on the road. It’s a crazy situation,” she added.
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There is also greater potential for shared ownership of cars, according to Martin Uhlarik, Tata Motors’ UK head of design. “The shared economy opens up the potential for people to share the product and use [each car] three or four times as much,” he said.
Self-driving cars
Uhlarik believes advances in self-driving technology could change the nature of long car commutes. “Autonomous vehicles will be arriving,” he said. “And once they come, we might still spend two hours in traffic, but it’s a chance to question how you are spending that quality time. Are you working? Are you entertaining yourself? It might be about managing your time better.”
Working life in Britain today still revolves, largely, around a nine-to-five schedule. Debra Charles, CEO of smartcard company Novacroft, would like to see business and government get behind a major programme to promote flexible working, leading to fewer peak time journeys. “We’ve got flexible working to some degree in the UK, but what if that was better incentivised? The rigidness of the way people work – if we could change that it would make a difference.”
Shifting the nature of short journeys will also be vital. A recent report by the Greater London Authority found that more than one third of all car trips in the capital are less than 2km, and could be walked in 25 minutes or less. The same report shows 2.7m daily car trips in London could be cycled. Getting people out of their cars and walking or cycling could boost health and reduce congestion.
Many cities have made bold moves to encourage active lifestyles. Both New York and Paris have made efforts to repurpose parking spots for walking, biking, and public space. In Copenhagen, pedestrianising shopping streets and raising parking prices has seen the proportion of people driving to work fall from 22% to 16% (pdf). Claris would like to see more trials run by local authorities in the UK to assess the benefits of pedestrianisation. “If you make cities more pleasant to walk around in, then even the most reluctant walkers will think, ‘It’s not actually so bad,’” she said.
Tom Cohen, deputy director of the UCL Transport Institute, agreed. “People are dying because of inactivity. Whatever we might say about the future of transport in cities, it has to incorporate physically active travel.”
Cutting unnecessary road trips
Some business leaders on the panel believe commuters can be usefully nudged into streamlined routines to cut down on unnecessary road trips. Parcel service Doddle, for instance, offers commuters the chance to pick up their online orders from its stores in train stations, saving delivery vans from making so many repeated trips to customers’ doors when they’re out at work. “If you’re trying to change behaviour, it’s about how intuitive and accessible you make things for people,” said Tim Robinson, Doddle’s CEO.
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Rail commuters are already getting their grocery shopping done at major station supermarkets on their way home, and some are also choosing to hold business meetings at station restaurants and cafes. Tim Hedley-Jones, major projects director for Virgin Trains East Coast, said larger train stations are becoming “the focus of their community”.
Hedley-Jones also said the UK could alter planning policy to make better use of the “huge quantities” of brownfield land near train stations. “If you can give people good quality housing next to good quality public transport, then you can start to break the cycle of car dependency for short journeys.”
There remains, however, the almighty task of making sure public transport is ready to cope with increased passenger numbers. Despite major infrastructure projects such as HS2, Crossrail 1 and Crossrail 2, Frank Kelly, professor of environmental health at King’s College London, said even more capacity was needed in the south east, particularly across south London. “In London, we have a world class transport system, but it’s still not good enough,” he said. “We need to get more people in our underground systems, we need to think about tram systems, and getting it all joined up with the National Rail network in a much better way.”
John Holland-Kaye, CEO of Heathrow, which is waiting for parliamentary approval for its third runway, said his airport is experimenting to make sure increasing passenger numbers does not mean more congestion. There are improved links to public transport, a large staff car-sharing scheme, and driverless pods that carry people to Terminal 5. “We can pioneer with some of these things, make them happen, and hopefully develop models that can be applied elsewhere,” said Holland-Kaye.
If some major, energy-intensive engineering works are inevitable, there are high hopes new ways of sharing data can make the transport system as sustainable and efficient as possible.
Making better use of data
In Bristol, the city council has developed a web-based service, the Bristol API, that allows any developer to connect their app to existing transport data: route maps, live train and bus times, and car park occupancy. “Once you build transport infrastructure, it just gets full again, quickly,” said Stephen Hilton, Bristol city council’s futures director. “So the real challenge is about trying to use every bit of spare capacity within the infrastructure that’s not being used effectively.”
Data might also be better used to give walkers and cyclists the chance to choose the least health-harming journeys. Londoners have become particularly conscious of poor air quality. Almost all of this year’s mayoral candidates offered measures to tackle air toxicity, and Sadiq Khan has pledged to bring in an ultra-low emission zone in central London in 2019.
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Researchers at King’s College London have designed the London Air app for the iPhone, which visualises air pollution levels in the city and allows users to check how much longer a less pollution-choked route might take. “The technology is there to give people an informed choice,” said Kelly. “But we need to do more and we need to do it more quickly.”
The experts on the panel agreed government and business need to work together to support innovation. In Bristol, waste-to-energy company GENeco has partnered with Wessex Bus to apply for a government grant to bring 20 “poo-powered” bio-buses to the city by 2019 – the buses will run on biomethane gas generated from sewage and food waste. “We felt in our wacky way we could demonstrate there’s a form of transport that reduces noxious emissions,” explained GENeco’s managing director Mohammed Saddiq.
Uhlarik said the particularly rapid growth of London and the south east presents an opportunity for businesses in the UK to spearhead international solutions. “The growth of big urban centres is a phenomenon that’s accelerating,” said Uhlarik. “It’s a global issue, but London could be a test bed because of the higher level of technology here and, potentially, the organisational skill.”
At the table
Gwyn Topham (Chair) Transport correspondent
Debra Charles CEO, Novacroft
Ali Clabburn CEO, Liftshare
Claire Haigh CEO, Greener Journeys
Tom Cohen Deputy director, UCL Transport Institute
Susan Claris Associate director, Arup
Tim Hedley-Jones Major projects director, Virgin Trains East Coast
Stephen Hilton Futures director, Bristol City Council
John Holland-Kaye CEO, Heathrow
Tim Robinson CEO, Doddle
Prof Frank Kelly Professor of environmental health, King’s College London
Mark Jenkinson City director, London, Siemens
Mohammed Saddiq Managing director, GENeco
Martin Uhlarik Head of design UK, Tata Motors | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/dec/24/wilder-stunned-parker-riyadh-joshua-wallin-boxing-saudi-arabia | Sport | 2023-12-24T00:49:41.000Z | Donald McRae | Wilder stunned by Parker in Riyadh before Joshua outclasses Wallin | Drama and hubris, those familiar staples of boxing, returned to the ring in Riyadh when the heavily favoured Deontay Wilder lost his heavyweight contest against Joseph Parker. In an embarrassingly one-sided fight, with Wilder looking a shell of his former self as his technical flaws were accentuated more graphically than ever before, Parker boxed with composure and belief to receive the unanimous verdict by overwhelming margins of 118-111, 118-110 and 120-108.
The grand plans of Saudi Arabia and some of boxing’s most famous promoters have been ruined for this was meant to be the last remaining obstacle in Wilder’s path before he sealed an immensely lucrative fight against Anthony Joshua in Riyadh next March. Joshua kept his side of the deal when, in a contrasting performance of controlled brutality and mean intent, he beat up and outclassed Otto Wallin before the trainers of the disconsolate Swedish heavyweight waved the fight over at the end of the fifth round.
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An impressive display by Joshua, however, would have earned him even more plaudits had Wilder, rather than Wallin, been in the opposite corner. There could be little doubt that Joshua would have added the far more illustrious name of the American to his resume had their heavily anticipated fight not been pushed back to March. But the arrogant assumption that Wilder and Joshua would both prevail, and earn even more money for everyone in the process, was shredded by the admirable and much improved Parker.
Wilder had walked to the ring with a heavy gold crown on his head as if he was already the supreme fighter of the night. Yet he barely threw a punch in the first round as he took a long and circumspect look at Parker who had previously won a version of the world title. Parker was marginally more aggressive, fighting on the front foot, in the opening couple of rounds and his trainer, Andy Lee, urged him to take more risks. Lee stressed to his fighter that he could knock out Wilder if he backed him up against the ropes. But Parker knew he needed to retain resolute concentration as Wilder, more than any other heavyweight in the world, has the capacity to score a chilling one-punch knockout at any time.
In the fourth round Parker attempted to follow Lee’s advice and, with Wilder pinned against the ropes, he let his hands go in a brief flurry. He nailed Wilder more effectively with an overhand right close to the end of the round and, momentarily, it looked as if the American was unsteady on his long, spindly legs. Midway through the fifth Parker again landed a solid blow as Wilder struggled with his timing after boxing just a single round since he lost to Tyson Fury in an epic fight in October 2021. That savage trilogy against Fury, who knocked him out twice, had clearly been damaging for Wilder.
Parker celebrates a memorable win that could get him a fight against Anthony Joshua. Photograph: Mark Robinson/Matchroom Boxing/Getty Images
Wilder shaded the sixth round but he was far behind on the scorecards as they moved into the second half of a strangely lopsided bout. He was clearly hoping to detonate a huge right which would knock Parker cold. But the best punch of the round again came from Parker.
Wilder finally caught Parker with a heavy blow in the eighth but the New Zealander absorbed the impact. A minute later Parker unleashed a ferocious barrage of punches – beginning with a huge right hand which rocked Wilder. Parker followed up and Wilder reeled against the ropes. It was a bold yet assured attack which showed the belief coursing through him as the bell sounded to the relief of Wilder.
It took most of the ninth round for a passive Wilder to gather himself because he again hardly threw a meaningful punch. In the final 30 seconds he at last looked to have cleared his head and, on the bell, he landed his best right hand of the night. Parker remained alert and calm as the fight approached its conclusion. Wilder won round 10 but he was in dire need of a trademark knockout.
He swung desperate punches in the last round, finally finding the urgency which had been missing throughout his woeful performance. But, once again, the hardest punch which landed came from Parker. Wilder raised his fist in the air at the end but deep down, he knew that he had lost badly.
Twenty minutes later, just before 2.30am in Riyadh, Joshua and Wallin finally entered the ring. Joshua, looking crisp and focused, started much more positively than he had done in recent fights. His left jab looked fluid and he went both to the body and head with his heavier right hand as Wallin was tentative against the former world champion. The Swedish heavyweight began to bleed from his nose midway through the second round as Joshua’s clubbing punches took their immediate toll. Now trained by Ben Davison, who used to work in Fury’s corner, Joshua cut a different figure to the cautious fighter he had been in his two previous bouts this year.
Joshua lands a crunching right hand on to the jaw of Otto Wallin. Photograph: Str/AP
Wallin had performed creditably against Fury in 2019 but he is a relatively limited boxer whose southpaw stance is his only distinguishing feature. He again failed to test Joshua in the next two rounds as the British fighter dominated in methodical fashion. Wallin took in great big gulps of breath as he returned to his corner, looking lost and weary, at the end of round four.
He was badly hurt in the fifth as the combination of a crunching right cross and left hook landed with brutal consequences. Wallin was shaken to the core and he had to withstand much more punishment before the bell brought him merciful respite. The beating administered by Joshua was certain to lead to a knockout but Wallin’s corner made the wise decision to end the fight soon after he sank down on his stool with his face cut, bruised, swollen and forlorn. Joshua’s victory had been his most impressive performance in years – but it should be reiterated that Wallin is nowhere near the calibre of Fury, Oleksandr Usyk or even Parker.
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Having lost his world titles to Usyk, who beat him in successive bouts in 2021 and 2022, Joshua has been in the slow process of rebuilding his career. He can look forward to 2024 – and the hope that he will eventually fight the winner of February’s world title unification bout between Fury and Usyk which will again be held in Riyadh.
Eddie Hearn, his promoter, is again calling him the best heavyweight in the world. Yet, now that his showdown against Wilder will be abandoned, Joshua will need to prove that he can produce a performance of similar authority against far superior opposition to Wallin. Parker is the obvious next step but that potential rematch between the two men would again be a risk for Joshua.
In the ring afterwards Joshua remained calm as he described boxing as “a treacherous business”. Wilder will understand the painful truth of those words as his explosive if deeply flawed career is surely much closer now to a sad ending. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/may/28/labors-secret-weapon-defeated-liberal-mp-claims-barnaby-joyce-even-less-popular-than-scott-morrison | Australia news | 2022-05-27T20:00:12.000Z | Paul Karp | Labor’s secret weapon? Defeated Liberal MP claims Barnaby Joyce even less popular than Scott Morrison | Barnaby Joyce has hit back after a defeated Liberal MP claimed the Nationals leader was an even bigger drag on the government’s vote in metro areas than the prime minister, Scott Morrison.
Joyce told Guardian Australia the Liberals should not “wallow in their loss” after the outgoing Liberal MP claimed women in blue-ribbon metro seats were “not for turning” and “deserted” the government because independents successfully linked Liberals to Joyce.
The MP also revealed that after Joyce returned as Nationals leader, the prime minister’s office attempted to persuade him to stay off national and metro media. The move was designed to avoid outings such as Joyce speaking over Tanya Plibersek on Sunrise, which the MP said was a big turnoff for metro constituents.
The comments heap further pressure on Joyce ahead of a Monday party room meeting, at which Victorian MP Darren Chester will put up his hand to replace him as Nationals leader.
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The intervention echoes sentiments from former deputy prime minister Michael McCormack, who has said there were “no campaigns against my name and my reputation in inner-city seats” – a clear reference to warnings from independents and Greens that a vote for Liberal moderates was a “vote for Barnaby Joyce”.
Other defeated Liberals have pointed the finger at Scott Morrison’s unpopularity and the trio of issues on which teal independents campaigned: climate, integrity and women.
But the Liberal MP, who asked to remain anonymous, said they were told internal polling showed Joyce had “even lower” popularity in their electorate than Morrison, who himself registered double-digit negative net approval.
The MP said they approached about 10 women at pre-polling who cited Joyce “shouting at” Plibersek over Labor’s housing policy on Sunrise, and that they remarked “there was no way we were going to vote for you after that performance”.
“A woman said ‘I like you, I have no problem with you but I can’t vote for the Liberals’,” the MP said.
“Another said they didn’t like how Scott Morrison smirks, but the greater one by far was the reaction to Barnaby Joyce.”
The MP said voters recalled that Joyce had not voted for same-sex marriage (he abstained) and that past comments about the sanctity of marriage were contradicted by his extra-marital relationship with Vikki Campion, with whom he now has two sons.
“Climate 200’s major attack line was a vote for me is a vote for Barnaby Joyce, or I vote the same way as Joyce in parliament,” the MP said.
“Clearly women deserted us because of the behaviour of the leadership. Women were not for turning. Nobody thinks I, or any of the other Liberals, or Josh Frydenberg, is a misogynist, but it just didn’t matter.”
The MP claimed that “when Barnaby Joyce became leader, he was asked to please stay out of metro media”. “It lasted about 10 days – he kept doing Today, Sunrise, and ABC24.”
Barnaby Joyce says all is well with the Nationals’ vote – but a deeper dive suggests trouble lies ahead
Gabrielle Chan
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The MP cited the Nationals’ Colin Boyce describing net zero as “flexible” on Radio National Breakfast and senator Matt Canavan’s pro-coal messages on ABC TV appearance as “unhelpful”.
“Imagine if I’d done ABC far north Queensland and said net zero helps us transition out of coal,” the MP said.
Asked about the prospect Joyce could be replaced as Nationals leader, the MP replied: “The problem is he’ll still be there as a backbencher, reminding the women of Australia the sorts of people we put into parliament.”
The outgoing Liberal MP was more upbeat about the party’s prospects under Peter Dutton, who they described as a “practical Liberal, a live-and-let-live Liberal” rather than a “conservative”.
“Dutton is under no delusions that we can somehow ignore the Climate 200 seats [won by teal independents].
“He asked me if we need to up the target from net zero and I said it would be good, but it’s not the issue. People don’t feel we’re sincere about climate change.
“Dutton should say to the joint Coalition party room: if you can’t sign up to that [net zero], you can’t be a member of the party room.”
The Liberal MP argued the party had an opportunity to outflank Labor from the left on climate, arguing that a 43% reduction by 2030 is not enough.
“We should say, ‘you promised us ambitious climate action – this is it?’ By 2025 we’ll be close to on track for a 50% reduction by 2030.”
Joyce told Guardian Australia the Nationals “are not the Liberals’ excuse and they must look at their own ship and own it”. He argued that voters in the city were “not so stupid” to think they were voting against Joyce and the Nationals in seats they weren’t on the ballot.
Joyce did not dispute the account he was ordered off metro stations, but said it was “unlikely the leader of one party would take instruction from the staffer of a different party”.
“I’m the leader of a different party that stands in different seats. I respect the leader of the Liberal party, but they are not leader of the National party. It’s a business partnership, not a marriage.”
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Joyce disputed claims he was unpopular, citing the fact the Liberal party asked him to campaign in Leichhardt, Herbert, Longman, Blair, Solomon, Eden-Monaro and Paterson – a clutch of Coalition and Labor-held seats, none of which changed hands.
“The Nationals held every seat [16] when the Liberals lost 19” and was “within striking distance” in two more, Lingiari and Hunter, he said.
“An internecine brawl in the New South Wales Liberal party that went nearly all the way to the call of the election and the strong following of [Western Australian] premier [Mark] McGowan probably were issues, and just the plain fact that people after a while want change.”
The NSW Liberal party failed to select candidates in a handful of seats until the last minute, which moderates blamed on Morrison ally Alex Hawke’s refusal to attend candidate-vetting meetings, triggering a takeover of the preselection process.
Morrison and a three-person committee selected the candidates just days out from calling the election, prompting a Liberal member to challenge all the way to the high court, which declined to hear the case.
Labor picked up four Liberal held seats in Western Australia (Swan, Pearce, Hasluck and Tangney), defeating two ministers (Ken Wyatt and Ben Morton) with swings of more than 11%. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/nov/22/elon-musk-twitter-business-politics-right | Opinion | 2022-11-22T14:09:26.000Z | Richard Seymour | Elon Musk never cared if Twitter was a business failure – he wants a political win | Richard Seymour | Why bother reinstating Donald Trump’s Twitter account? Twitter owner Elon Musk, having said that no such decisions would be made until a content moderation council was established, made the decision after running a quick Twitter poll. He also reactivated the accounts of Kanye West, who was dumped by advertisers after delusional antisemitic comments, and Andrew Tate, the misogynist “influencer” who was banned in 2017 for violating the terms of service.
This puts already nervous advertisers, who account for about 90% of the company’s revenue, in a precarious position. The NAACP has called for big firms to halt advertising on Twitter. Many of them have already done so. The Trump decision also risks a wider political backlash for the platform, especially among users. Musk is already under federal investigation for his conduct during the takeover.
Despite Musk being the world’s richest man, very little of what he has done since purchasing Twitter looks remotely like good business sense. Some of this is down to his management style playing out in a more public forum: he notoriously rules by fear, breaking the law, busting unions and firing employees who criticise him. He appears to want to establish the same pattern at Twitter, based on his apparently unassailable conviction that he knows best. But his interest in Twitter is not just commercial. He is clear that he thinks Twitter’s old management had a left bias, and that he would like to restore a friendly climate for rightist agitators. The goal appears to be to redesign Twitter, and to change its perceived politics.
So, Musk bought a platform of whose workings he knew little and began to “move fast and break things”, as the Silicon Valley motto has it. The purchase itself, adding $13bn to the company’s debt, was the first financial wound inflicted on the company. The second was the axe taken to staffing, making advertisers nervous and drawing the ire of the Federal Trade Commission. He has sacked enormous numbers of staff, beginning with a purge of about half of employees, before begging some of them to return. Meanwhile, a senior Twitter executive made it clear how little those who did return were valued, and how soon they would get the boot again. In leaked Slack messages, he called them “weak, lazy and unmotivated”, and he said they could easily be sacked again.
Musk has driven out a further estimated 1,200 staff members, including engineers responsible for managing content and ironing out bugs, after imposing a de facto loyalty oath. He has demanded engineers bring him examples of their own coding work to determine their value to the company – odd, given that the code is written collectively – and he has drafted 50 Tesla employees with no obvious experience with social media software or design to look at Twitter’s code. Recently, having got into a Twitter dispute with an engineer who knew more about the platform’s performance issues than he did, he fired him by tweet.
His online behaviour makes the company look terrible. Twitter’s factchecking service humiliatingly corrected him after he falsely tweeted that Twitter “drives a massive number of clicks” to other websites, being the “biggest click driver on the internet by far”.
However, nothing about Musk’s conduct suggests that the Twitter chaos is primarily about business. In fact, according to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), Musk’s takeover was encouraged not just by the deposed executive Jack Dorsey but also by a network of rightwing libertarian billionaires close to Musk, including PayPal founder Peter Thiel. They argued that Twitter would be better run as a privately owned business.
One reason for the libertarians’ interest in Musk, says the WSJ, may have been his political evolution. Although he was once a centrist who backed Andrew Yang, he vehemently rejected the banning of Trump, believed that Twitter’s content moderation policies were being driven by politics, and claimed that Twitter was “far-left-biased”. (This is quite untrue: Twitter’s own internal research found that it amplified rightwing content.) He has become a purveyor of disinformation, for example on Covid-19, and the attack on Paul Pelosi (husband of House speaker Nancy Pelosi). As Twitter CEO, he used the platform to encourage voters to support the Republicans in the US midterm elections and, when they lost, spread a conspiracy theory that Sam Bankman-Fried laundered money for the Democrats. He is, though hardly a Trumper, cheerfully adjacent to the culture war politics of the American far right.
This would suggest that the billionaire takeover was, in part, a political move aimed at “disrupting” communications networks that the American right has repeatedly claimed are biased against it. Twitter, as a political entity, punches well above its business weight. In its early days, it thrived on its association with the Obama White House, and its presumed role in “Twitter revolutions” (a phrase minted by the state department). It was seen as a means of projecting US influence abroad. It didn’t cause those revolutions any more than it did the Trump presidency, or Black Lives Matter, but it was central to those political battles because of the way activists, politicians and reporters used the platform. Despite having many fewer users than Facebook or TikTok, it was and remains a powerful tool for shaping public discourse. Whoever controls it, whether or not they know what they’re doing, wields real political power.
Despite what Musk thinks, Twitter’s old board didn’t wield this power for the left, or even for liberals. Their content moderation policies evolved over time to placate advertisers and governments. They did not want to get rid of the various fascist microcelebrities and far-right disinfotainers, let alone the lucrative big beasts of the far right such as Trump and Alex Jones: they were forced to. Now, under Musk’s one-man rule, Twitter is being realigned. This is partly for Musk’s own recreation. He likes to “trigger the libs” and laps up the purveyors of incitement, disinformation and far-right propaganda on his platform. But it’s also to rebalance online information ecologies further in favour of the right.
The reinstatement of Trump’s account will not bring back the days when the former president was worth $2bn to Twitter in a single year. But it is indicative of where Musk wants to take the platform.
Richard Seymour is a political activist and author; his latest book is The Twittering Machine | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/jul/20/miriam-margolyess-arnold-schwarzenegger-fart-feud | Film | 2022-07-20T11:59:28.000Z | Stuart Heritage | Something about Miriam Margolyes v Arnold Schwarzenegger smells funny | The 1999 film End of Days has almost zero redeeming features. Slung together out of a cynical desire to cash in on premillennial angst, it is known as the movie in which Arnold Schwarzenegger literally fights Satan. It is dismal, it effectively signalled the decline of Schwarzenegger as an action star and it does not deserve to be remembered by anyone at all.
Except perhaps it does. Because, thanks to an anecdote from one of the film’s actors, End of Days deserves to go down in history for one very important reason. It was, allegedly, the film during the making of which Arnold Schwarzenegger deliberately farted in the face of Miriam Margolyes.
Obviously the anecdote-provider here is Margolyes herself, a woman whose status as a national treasure grows every time she grumpily says anything at all. Recently she appeared on the I’ve Got News for You podcast, and regaled the listeners with a truly disgusting anecdote. “He was actually quite rude,” she said. “He farted in my face. Now, I fart, of course I do – but I don’t fart in people’s faces. He did it deliberately, right in my face. I was playing Satan’s sister and he was killing me, so he had me in a position where I couldn’t escape and was lying on the floor. And he just farted. It wasn’t on film, it was in one of the pauses, but I haven’t forgiven him for it”.
Schwarzenegger in End of Days. Photograph: Alamy
The story, as brilliantly horrible as it is, looks set to reignite a one-sided feud that has rolled along for more than two decades. Margolyes has been quick to express her dislike of Schwarzenegger thanks to their experiences on End of Days. Back in 2016 she told the Guardian that he is a “pig of a man”, and claimed that “although he was relatively professional with me – because he didn’t fancy me – he was awfully gropey with women”. And she has referenced the farting incident before, telling Reader’s Digest that “I had my throat sliced by a glass table at the end [of the film], and I remember Schwarzenegger farted right in my face when I was down on the floor, trying not to move. I shouted, ‘Fuck you, Arnie!’ I was really cross”.
But this time, the story has really started to pick up traction. The fart has been covered by publications as esteemed as Variety, who reached out to Schwarzenegger for a reaction (a reaction was not forthcoming). There could be any number of reasons for this new interest. It could be because attitudes towards male-female power dynamics in the movie industry have shifted considerably in the last five years.
Or it could be that Margolyes herself is enjoying something of a renaissance, thanks to her habit of saying whatever happens to be on her mind at any given point. Her stories on The Graham Norton Show are legendary, the memoir she published last year cemented her reputation as a world-class storyteller, and she recently went viral on TikTok for saying: “England is fucking shite at the moment, they’re all cuntfaces and I hate it.”
Of course, a cynic might suggest that Margolyes told a story about someone deliberately farting on her for a different reason. Now, the search engines are swamped with news outlets breathlessly reporting the Schwarzenegger fart, so much so that searches for ‘Miriam Margolyes fart’ will throw up an impenetrable wall of Schwarzenegger fart reportage. But it wasn’t always like this. Oh no. If you had performed the same search two days ago, you would have found video after video of Margolyes farting.
‘He had me in a position where I couldn’t escape’ … Margolyes meets her maker in End of Days. Photograph: You Tube
There was the time she farted on This Morning during an ad break, prompting a shoulder-shaking fit of laughter from Philip Schofield. There was the 2017 BBC Four sitcom Bucket, in which she farted during a yoga class. There was the time she farted on command during a Cameo message for the reasonable price of £141. Could the Schwarzenegger story be Margolyes’s attempt to quash her own fart videos with an even grabbier fart story about someone she doesn’t like?
Unlikely. Instead, we just need to ask ourselves two questions. First, does Arnold Schwarzenegger look like the sort of person who would deliberately fart on someone’s face? It’s plausible. Second, should we protect Miriam Margolyes with everything we have because she is such a relentlessly wonderful woman? Certainly. So, based on nothing but hearsay and instinct, I choose to believe Margolyes. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/21/january-6-hearings-georgia-elections-workers-mother-daughter-testify | US news | 2022-06-21T21:52:57.000Z | Martin Pengelly | ‘There’s nowhere I feel safe’: Georgia election workers on how Trump upended their lives | In powerful and emotional testimony about the sinister results of Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, a mother and daughter who were Georgia elections workers described how Trump and his allies upended their lives, fueling harassment and racist threats by claiming they were involved in voter fraud.
Giuliani told Arizona official ‘We just don’t have the evidence’ of voter fraud
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Testifying to the January 6 committee in Washington, Shaye Moss said she received “a lot of threats. Wishing death upon me. Telling me that I’ll be in jail with my mother and saying things like, ‘Be glad it’s 2020 and not 1920.’”
That was a reference to lynching, the violent extra-judicial fate of thousands of Black men in the American south.
Moss also said her grandmother’s home had been threatened by Trump supporters seeking to make “citizen’s arrests” of the two poll workers.
No Democratic presidential candidate had won Georgia since 1992 but Joe Biden beat Trump by just under 12,000 votes, a result confirmed by recounts.
Tuesday’s hearing detailed Trump’s attempts to overturn that result via pressure on Republican state officials and vilification of Moss and her mother over video supposedly showing them engaged in voter fraud, a claim swiftly debunked.
Moss’s mother attended the hearing. In taped testimony, she said: “My name is Ruby Freeman. I’ve always believed it when God says that he’ll make your name great. But this is not the way it was supposed to be.”
“For my entire professional life, I was Lady Ruby. My community in Georgia, where I was born and lived my whole life, knew me as Lady Ruby. I built my own business around that name: Ruby’s Unique Treasures. A pop-up shop catering to ladies with unique fashions.”
“I wore a shirt that proudly proclaimed that I was and I am Lady Ruby. I had that shirt in every color. I wore that shirt on election day 2020. I haven’t worn it since and I’ll never wear it again.
“I won’t even introduce myself by my name anymore. I get nervous when I bump into someone I know in the grocery store who says my name. I’m worried about people listening. I get nervous when I have to give my name for food orders. I’m always concerned of who’s around me.
“I’ve lost my name and I’ve lost my reputation. I’ve lost my sense of security, all because a group of people starting with [Trump] and his ally Rudy Giuliani decided to scapegoat me and my daughter Shaye, to push their own lies about how the presidential election was stolen.”
Freeman also said: “There is nowhere I feel safe. Nowhere. Do you know how it feels to have the president of the United States target you?
“The president of the United States is supposed to represent every American. Not to target one. And he targeted me, Lady Ruby, a small business owner, a mother, a proud American citizen who stood up to help Fulton county run an election in the middle of the pandemic.”
Freeman said she had been forced to leave home for two months.
Moss described threats also made to her grandmother.
“That woman is my everything,” she said. “I’ve never even heard or seen her cry, ever in my life. And she called me screaming at the top of her lungs, like ‘Shaye, Shaye, oh my gosh, Shaye’, freaking me out, saying that people were at her home.”
“And they knocked on the door and of course she opened it, seeing who was there, who it was, and they just started pushing their way through, claiming they were coming in to make a citizen’s arrest. They needed to find me and my mom, they knew we were there.
“And [my grandmother] was just screaming and didn’t know what to do. I wasn’t there so I just felt so helpless and so horrible for her. And she just screamed and I called her to close the door. Don’t open the door for anyone.”
Moss was asked how her own life had been affected.
She said: “My life was turned upside down. I no longer give out my business card. Don’t want anyone knowing my name. Don’t want to go anywhere with my mom because she might yell my name out over the grocery aisle or something. I don’t go to the grocery store anymore.
“I haven’t been anywhere. I’ve gained about 60lb. I don’t want to go anywhere, I second-guess everything that I do. It’s affected my life in a major way, every way.
“All because of lies.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2016/jul/13/the-out-laws-is-this-the-blackest-comedy-ever | Television & radio | 2016-07-13T12:52:42.000Z | Gabriel Tate | The Out-Laws: is this the blackest comedy ever? | ‘I
called a specialist to ask how long it takes to freeze a large piece of meat,” says Malin-Sarah Gozin. “When I explained that it was 1m 85cm long and 80kg, the line went silent.” Gozin is the creator of The Out-Laws, a devilish new Belgian drama about four sisters who conspire to kill the husband of their fifth sibling, Goedele – only to find out that he has as many lives as a cat. “I had to come up with nine different murder attempts,” she laughs. “I saw a lot of doctors and forensic experts, because it was essential that each attempt really could happen. Eventually, I found out the perfect murder doesn’t exist. Maybe I should write a ‘How Not To …’ book.”
Belgian pop culture long ago dragged itself out from under the extravagantly quiffed shadow of Tintin, but Flemish TV is only now making an impression beyond its borders. The Out-Laws is the kind of black comedy that has given Belgian cinema the best sort of bad name, with films such as Man Bites Dog and Kill Me Please. A hit in its home country, it won most popular series and best drama in the Belgian version of the Baftas.
The show opens in the small town of Vredegem, at the funeral of the universally despised Jean-Claude Delcorps – a crank-calling, racist, misogynist described as a “despicable turtle’s fart”. It flits between flashbacks of his four sisters-in-law, as a childhood blood pact to protect each other becomes real and they vow to bump off the man making Goedele’s life a misery, and the present day, as two insurance investigators uncover the murder plot in their desperate attempt not to bankrupt their family firm.
Goedele, with her four sisters, at the funeral of her husband. Photograph: Caviar/Channel 4
In the flashbacks, we see Jean-Claude’s behaviour gets worse all the while. He takes grim delight in tormenting people with hoaxes that play on their foibles (hypochondria and latent pederasty in the first episode alone). Eldest sister Eva, channelling the pain of romantic disappointments and infertility into a flourishing career, and Birgit, a former crossbow champion who lost an eye in an accident, are the first to act against their appalling brother-in-law. Veerle is a nurse, wife and mother having an affair with a family friend, and Bekka, the youngest and a masseuse desperate to start her own business, are soon targeted by Jean-Claude and his eye for weakness.
A New Year’s Eve dinner is a masterpiece of exquisite awkwardness, as he picks apart the sisters’ resolutions, wonders aloud whether Eva is pregnant and suggests that Bekka’s “brains are in her arse”. From this moment on, he is nicknamed “The Prick” and his card is marked. Each failed murder attempt sees the humour sharpen, as the gulf between planning and literal execution widens. Death by paintball, gas explosion or hitman, it transpires, are easier to dream up than carry out.
A despicable turtle’s fart … Jean-Claude. Photograph: Channel 4
“I didn’t mean to write a comedy, it just turned out funny in a dark and disturbing way,” says Gozin. And it is disturbing – like the social horror of Todd Solondz and uproarious satires of John Waters brought to bear on the homicidal antiheroines of Desperate Housewives. Indeed, Gozin paid a visit to that show’s writers’ room when she was developing The Out-Laws. But in spite of the thematic similarities, The Out-Laws is stripped of the stifling camp of Wisteria Lane; instead, she cites Danny DeVito’s Hitchcockian throwback, Throw Momma From the Train, as a key inspiration.
How did she conjure up such an evil character? “The five sisters are all part of me, but writing Jean-Claude was a huge challenge,” she admits. “I imagined my head was like a house: I could invite you into my living room, my best friends could come into my bedroom, but I don’t let anyone in my cellar. For Jean-Claude, I had to spend a lot of time in there and it was intriguing what I found.”
She sees my consternation and laughs again. “I was trying to explore how far I would go to defend my brother and sister, and I got scared by my feelings. But those doors are locked again now …”
Mission accomplished … the sisters with the dead Jean-Claude. Photograph: Sofie Silbermann/Channel 4 Picture Publicity
An American remake is on the cards, though given the botch job made of The Returned in the US, this may not be good news. “It’s going well,” Gozin begins, before a revealing sigh. “At one point, they wanted it to be a real-crime series and turn the insurance inspectors into criminals. Another network wanted to make the sisters younger, but then you’d lose the midlife themes. But if they want to make it better, be my guest!”
Gozin credits the rise of the antihero on American television with helping Belgian TV drama out of its straitjacket of crime shows and “shows about farming”. Ditto the American concept of the showrunner, now freshly minted in the low countries by The Out-Laws. “Alan Ball is a big hero of mine,” she says. “Six Feet Under still hasn’t been topped. It gave me the drive and inspiration to write something similar, focusing on the small and big things in life.”
Gozin talks with the ease and confidence of a veteran, but her accession has been a long time coming, after years working in television documentaries. “I’d never written for TV before, though I’d worked on travel and cookery shows. When I came up with the idea for The Out-Laws, I worked up a bible for it and the network told me I’d done a great job – then said they would start looking for screenwriters! But I stood my ground and they took a risk on me. Fortunately, it’s paid off.”
The Out-Laws starts on More4 on Friday at 9pm | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2019/nov/26/the-french-lieutenants-woman-how-did-a-good-book-make-such-a-bad-film | Books | 2019-11-26T11:20:28.000Z | Sam Jordison | The French Lieutenant’s Woman: how did a good book make such a bad film? | John Fowles’s novel The French Lieutenant’s Woman has presented a unique challenge to film-makers since it came out in 1969. There’s the authorial figure who frequently interrupts his own text to rewrite key scenes. There’s the authorial figure of Fowles himself, who has a scene where he sits in a train carriage with a lead character. And, as Fowles put it in an essay from 1981, the book describes “all those aspects of life and modes of feeling that can never be represented visually”. The novel journeyed deep into “inner space” where cameras couldn’t follow.
In spite of such obstacles – or perhaps because of them – plenty of famous film-makers have attempted to get it on screen. Fred Zinnemann tried, with a Dennis Potter script. Mike Nichols briefly took the helm. Franklin Schaffner was also approached to direct. (Fowles once said: “A Hollywood screenwriter came over to do that one, I’m told he had a nervous breakdown after six weeks.”) John Frankenheimer was also offered the director’s chair, but concluded: “There is no way you can film the book. You can tell the same story in a movie, of course, but not in the same way. And how Fowles tells his story is what makes the book so good.”
Fowles was inclined to agree that his book was unfilmable until “whatever fickle gods rule the cinema decided to smile on us”. That time came 10 years after the book was published, when Karel Reisz was lined up as director, renowned playwright Harold Pinter took on the script, and actors including Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons were attached.
Pinter’s involvement was especially pleasing to Fowles. “I do not need to dwell on his universally acknowledged qualities as a playwright,” he purred. He was a fan of Pinter’s solution to the metafictional problems the book posed: instead of having the author step into the narrative, Pinter had the action move outside the period frame. The film starts with a shot of a clapper board and the action frequently moves from the Victorian love story of the novel’s heroes Charles and Sarah to portray an affair that is happening between the two actors playing them in 1981. For Fowles, this was a brilliant metaphor for the novel.
Plenty of critics shared his pleasure. The venerable cinema critic Roger Ebert called it “a beautiful film to look at, and remarkably well-acted … it entertains admirers of Fowles’s novel, but does not reveal the book’s secrets.”
If I were finishing this article here, I might be describing it as a success. Unfortunately, I can’t do that because I’ve just seen it and: oh dear …
It hasn’t aged well. I won’t argue with Fowles about Pinter’s ability as a playwright – but it’s worth remembering that Pinter was also responsible for this poetry about the disastrous 2003 invasion of Iraq:
Here they go again
The Yanks in their armoured parade
Chanting their ballads of joy
As they gallop across the big world
Praising America’s God.
There’s nothing quite that bad in his adaptation of The French Lieutenant’s Woman, but it gives an impression of the heavy stomp Pinter takes through the story, the resolute humourlessness of his script and the overripeness of his dialogue. Some of the latter I could just about forgive as faithful reproductions of Fowles’s Victorian pastiche. Sadly, the “I want you” histrionics also spill into the present day narrative, aided and abetted by some surprisingly poor performances from Irons and Streep. It got to the point that whenever the camera panned out to the modern-day film set, I was half-expecting to see shots of Irons chewing on the scenery. Some won’t be surprised about how hammy he is, but even Streep tucks into the proverbial pig, spending most of her screen time gazing wistfully into the middle distance while mangling an English accent.
The French Lieutenant’s Woman: John Fowles's meta games are unexpectedly fun
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On the plus side, there are some fine shots of Lyme Regis town and Dorset country. There’s also plenty to enjoy if you like lingering shots of period clothing. But the pacing feels so slow that I often found myself wondering how the make-up department managed to attach the mutton-chop sideburns on to Victorian Charles as much as anything he was thinking or saying. In the 1980s narrative, I was reduced to looking out for Ford Cortinas. There were some nice old Rovers, too. But such fleeting pleasures don’t detract from the central truth that the film is now interesting only as a period piece, while the book remains fresh and vital. It turns out that the cameras couldn’t follow far enough. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2012/jul/01/una-stubbs-curious-incident-interview | Stage | 2012-06-30T23:05:22.000Z | Elizabeth Day | Una Stubbs: 'I just think, Oh, I hope I can be good enough' | | Una Stubbs can't quite believe she's being interviewed. "So who else are you speaking to from this production?" she asks when we meet backstage at the National Theatre. No one, I tell her. Just you. Behind her round-framed spectacles, Stubbs's eyes widen anxiously. "Oh," she says, brow crinkling. "Really?"
You might expect Una Stubbs to be more convinced by her own reputation. At 75, she has starred in some of the most memorable television programmes of the past four decades (Till Death Us Do Part, Give Us a Clue, Worzel Gummidge, Sherlock) and been directed on stage by such theatrical luminaries as Sir Peter Hall and Michael Grandage. At an age when most actors would be hanging up the periwig, she is still working: we meet during a lunch-break in rehearsals for her role in the forthcoming National production of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, adapted for the stage by Simon Stephens from the award-winning book by Mark Haddon. After all these years making a successful living in a notoriously fickle business, Stubbs should be fairly confident in her own abilities, shouldn't she?
"Oh no," she says in a small, whispery voice. "My agent gets furious when I say this, but, with work, I've always stepped over. I was a chorus girl, then I was an individual dancer, then I stepped over from being a dancer into sitcom. I hadn't had any acting training, so I was very aware of that, and now I just think, 'Oh, I hope I can be good enough.'"
Even in the Bafta-award-winning BBC drama Sherlock, where Stubbs has been casually stealing scenes over two series as the maternal landlady, Mrs Hudson, she is worried about ruining things for her younger co-stars. "With Benedict [Cumberbatch] and Martin [Freeman], I just think, 'I don't want to let the side down.'" She leans forward in her seat, splaying her legs awkwardly like a nervous foal. In person, Stubbs is slight and girlish, her trim frame accentuated by a black-and-white polka-dot jumper, black jeans and white Converse trainers; her nails painted a fashionable sludge-brown.
"Some people say to me, 'Oh, did they tell you to play Mrs Hudson like that?'" she says. "Well, no, I just came up with it. I was given the script and I got on with it. I just saw her more like a mother figure to these two boys. There's so much nastiness going on [in the series] that maybe to introduce something a little nicer is a good thing."
Can she see why Benedict Cumberbatch has become a sex symbol? "Yes, I can because he's just so unusual. He's joli laid. One minute, you think [she breaks off and does a little moue of distaste], but then the next minute you think, 'Oh, you're so gorgeous.'"
Her role in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time once again sees her surrounded by actors several decades younger. Christopher, the teenage protagonist with Asperger's who wishes to solve the mystery of a dead dog found on his street, is played by the 27-year-old Luke Treadaway, and her other co-stars include Niamh Cusack and Paul Ritter. Stubbs takes on the part of Mrs Alexander, a meddlesome neighbour – "She's not a clichéd dotty old woman. She's just somebody who feels she wants to help" – and the play is directed by Marianne Elliott, who co-directed War Horse.
Rehearsals have been extremely physical. "We have two hours' warm-up and it's really fierce, like being trained for the SAS," says Stubbs. "There are press-ups and a lot of leaping and jumping."
So far she has taken it all in her stride. "I get teased a lot [by the rest of the cast] when I can do things they can't physically," she giggles. "Because I'm a dancer, obviously I've still got a bit of that and they all go, 'Wow'. It's like Granny Takes a Trip!
"A lot of people say to me, 'Can you still dance?' Yes!" she shrieks. "Although I think if you do dance when you're older it's better to dance with a little restraint. I can't bear it when you see those old dears flinging themselves around, going, 'I'll show 'em.'"
She is loving being back at the National – the last time she was here was in Pillars of the Community six years ago. "It's like a dream come true, just the efficiency of everything which is sort of staggering. Whenever a prop is mentioned – there it is!"
But her delight is also due to the fact that she occasionally sees Helen McCrory (currently starring in The Last of the Haussmans) walking around backstage. It seems Stubbs has got a bit of a girl crush. "If I was asked in an interview, 'Who do you want to play you in a film of your life?' it would be her," Stubbs says. Has she told McCrory this? Stubbs shakes her head. "I've met her once, only very briefly. You know how it is when you admire someone so much you avoid them because you don't want to come over all unnecessary."
Stubbs pauses. Someone has put a club sandwich on the table beside her. I tell her she should go ahead and eat it. "Would you mind?" She takes a dainty bite, then politely puts her hand over her mouth as she chews. "It seems so rude to sit here eating in front of you."
Everyone who has ever met Una Stubbs tells you how nice she is. Her co-stars rhapsodise about her. She is, depending on who you speak to, "a delight", "a sweetie" and "a treat to work with". Such unanimity of opinion among actors for one of their own is almost unheard of and is, perhaps, the consequence of Stubbs's endearing disbelief at her own success. But it is also because Stubbs has worked hard to earn her stripes.
She was born in Hinckley, Leicestershire, one of three children. Her father worked in factories – including stints making Shredded Wheat and stockings – and her mother had a job in the cutting room at the Denham film studios. At the age of 14, Stubbs was sent to the La Roche dance school in Slough. "I loved dancing," she says now, "and, because I was so hopeless at school, my parents thought, 'What are we going to do with her?' They were clever at encouraging all of us to do something we enjoyed."
At La Roche, she would often get picked to appear on stage in local productions. One of her first television jobs was advertising Dairy Box chocolates in the late 1950s and from there, Stubbs became one of Lionel Blair's dance ensemble before snagging a major screen role in Cliff Richard's 1963 film Summer Holiday. By 1966, she was playing Rita, the daughter of Alf Garnett in the long-running BBC sitcom Till Death Us Do Part.
For the following 30 years, Stubbs became one of the most recognisable faces on the small screen: in the 70s she was the fearsome Aunt Sally in the children's TV series Worzel Gummidge; in the 80s she was team captain in the weekly game show Give Us a Clue; in the 90s, she was Miss Bat in The Worst Witch; and in the noughties, she appeared on The Catherine Tate Show, EastEnders and Benidorm.
Along the way, Stubbs married and divorced twice, both times to actors – Peter Gilmore, then Nicky Henson – and had three sons whom she was left to raise more or less single-handed.
"I had to earn money," she says. "So I took the jobs which would pay the most, which weren't the best quality often… Luckily, there was work I could do, but some of the jobs were pretty pathetic."
Give Us a Clue was a godsend because it was "a quick job on a Sunday for seven years while I was bringing up children". Her parents would often look after the children when she couldn't take them on set.
Does she consider herself a feminist? "I don't know," she says, with a vague shake of the head. "I just get on with life really."
At home, she was a strict mother: "I like good manners. I used to say, 'If you just let me sleep in, then when I wake up I'll be really happy. If not, I'll be really grumpy.' Then of course they did it and you had to be incredibly cheerful."
But it wasn't until her sons left home – they are now 44, 38 and 36 – that Stubbs felt she could take a few professional risks. In 1989, she took the role of Mrs Hardcastle in a production of She Stoops to Conquer at the Royal Exchange in Manchester.
"I knew that people considered me very lightweight and that I'd have to do something about it. I knew I couldn't expect to go, 'Here I am! Classics, please', and that meant being prepared to do tiny parts."
Was there a snobbery among the theatrical fraternity about her transition from popular television? "I suppose there was a little bit. One is aware of that at first. You really have to prove yourself."
Stubbs did just that – her theatrical credits include several Shakespeare plays directed by Grandage (formerly artistic director of the Donmar Warehouse) as well as runs at the Old Vic and Chichester Festival Theatre, where a young Emily Blunt played Juliet to Stubbs's Nurse in a 2002 production of Romeo and Juliet. Cannily, Stubbs had the foresight to carve out a niche for herself playing the comedic older woman, beloved of Shakespeare and Restoration farce.
"I remember years ago asking my husband [Nicky] why such and such an actress worked and why another didn't. He said, 'Because she has done comedy.' Much older, as I am, there are the barmy women – there are so many odd, odd women in Shakespeare that when you're older, you definitely can get parts. There is a period, in your late 40s and early 50s where perhaps you're a bit betwixt and between, but I realise I've been lucky."
Does she have any regrets?
"I wish I'd been tougher at times with certain people," she says. "I think later in life you become much stronger about that."
And yet, in some parts of her life, Stubbs has shown extraordinary strength and courage. Twelve years ago, her middle son, Christian, a film-score composer, suffered a brain aneurysm. Although he is now fully recovered, it was a frightening time. "I think, for any parent, having a child who is dangerously ill is the worst nightmare," she says quietly. "Because he was fit, he pulled through, but a lot of young men on his ward didn't."
These days, Stubbs is an adoring grandmother to four grandchildren and spends her free time sitting in cafes, sketching people. "I think happiness is a choice," she says. "Some people decide to be miserable and you just think, 'Why?'"
Is she happy? "I am a lot of the time, but I also can be quite melancholy, but that's in private."
Does she know how to deal with it?
"Yes, I sense it approaching." She stops. For a fraction of a second, I wonder if Stubbs is going to confess that she retreats under the duvet for days on end, losing herself in a fog of existential hopelessness. "And then I get out and go for a walk," she concludes briskly.
She smiles brightly, eyes twinkling behind her spectacles. If there is a dark side to Una Stubbs, it remains extremely well hidden.
The National Theatre Live cinema broadcast of Curious Incident is on 6 September | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/sep/20/martin-short-obituary | Media | 2020-09-20T15:29:54.000Z | David Boardman | Martin Short obituary | The journalist Martin Short, who has died aged 76 of cancer, investigated and reported for television for over 40 years. He will be remembered for his work uncovering police corruption in London and exposing the secret world of Freemasonry. He also chronicled the history of organised crime on both sides of the Atlantic in television series and books.
Between 1969 and 1984 he worked for Thames TV’s This Week and Granada’s World in Action as a researcher and then, on screen, as a reporter, with The London Programme at London Weekend Television and Thames TV’s Thames Report.
During his time on This Week he researched an early profile of the Rev Ian Paisley as Northern Ireland began to dominate the headlines. He later investigated the Kent State University killings, in 1970, by the US national guard in Ohio. Most of the guard, he discovered, had joined up to avoid the draft for Vietnam. The students they shot were protesting against that war and the bombing of Cambodia.
The books and the television documentaries were regular. The Fall of Scotland Yard (1977), co-authored with Barry Cox and John Shirley, was shattering in its revelations of corruption in the Metropolitan Police. In 1984 Martin co-produced and wrote the book of the Thames TV series Crime Inc on the history of organised crime in the US.
Inside the Brotherhood (1989), was a TV series and book on the Freemasons. The exposure of the influence of Freemasonry on our major institutions – especially the police force – was explosive. He appeared on countless television and radio programmes and was an expert witness to the parliamentary select committee on Freemasonry in the police and the judiciary in 1996.
There were several books on British crime and the people involved with the Kray brothers. Lundy: The Destruction of Scotland Yard’s Finest Detective came out in 1991, and the following year Martin produced The Last Days of Aldo Moro about terrorism and subversion in Italy. The Times called it “a near perfect documentary”.
The youngest of three children, Martin was born in Wookey, Somerset, to George Short, an aircraft engineer, and Hazel (nee Johnson), a nurse. The family later moved to London, where Martin attended St Dunstan’s college in Catford, before going to Cambridge in 1962 to read history. His thespian talents soon led him to the Footlights Revue. There were also Shakespeare plays and a theatrical tour of Germany with the university’s drama society – Miriam Margolyes recalled that his “smiling face and passion about everything made him the perfect Falstaff”.
Martin Short, far left, rehearsing at Cambridge in 1964 for a theatre tour, with Miriam Margolyes, front right, and John Stuttard conducting
He travelled and did freelance work for the BBC in the Middle East before he arrived at Thames TV. The Middle East fascinated Martin. He wrote a booklet for the Minority Rights Group on the Kurds in the 70s that shone an early light on to their situation. A research trip to the Lebanon in the early 70s led him to the house of the Saidi family – a leading liberal Shia family. They asked that Martin take a letter to their daughter, Sana, who was then studying child psychology in London.
Their first meeting was with a chaperone, but the relationship grew over the following years and they were married in Beirut in 1974 by a Lebanese-Iranian imam, Musa al-Sadr (later kidnapped to Gaddafi’s Libya and never seen again).
Martin got to know more about Arab politics and the Palestinian issue much earlier than most of us. He produced and narrated the documentary Lebanon: A Family at War, about his wife’s family, for Yorkshire TV in 1985.
In 1995, Martin helped found the pressure group the International Campaign for Jerusalem with the British Palestinian activist Ghada Karmi. The group held public meetings, lobbied British politicians and produced the book Jerusalem Today. The monthly newsletter Jerusalem File continued until 2001, when the organisation folded through lack of funds – though no lack of will. Martin joined the board of the Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding in 2007 and served until 2012, striving to impress on the political class the realities of the dispossessed and militarily occupied Palestinians.
Martin loved jazz, wrote songs and was a keen gardener. First diagnosed with cancer four years ago, he retained his humour and geniality throughout his treatment, as those of us who met with him for World in Action reunions can confirm. He was, typically, writing about his experience all the time.
He is survived by Sana and their children, Ramsay, Alexander and Jumaan, two grandchildren, Lamia and Sami, his brother, Terry, and sister, Micaela.
Martin John Short, journalist, born 22 September 1943; died 27 August 2020 This article was amended on 24 September 2020 to note that Musa al-Sadr was a Lebanese-Iranian imam, rather than an Iranian sheikh as an earlier version stated, and to revise details of Martin Short’s time at This Week. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/13/us-election-most-secure-history-voter-fraud-false-claims | US news | 2020-11-13T17:11:44.000Z | David Smith | Officials condemn Trump's false claims and say election 'most secure in US history' | The presidential election was the “most secure in American history” with no evidence that votes were compromised or altered, a coalition of federal and state officials has said, offering the clearest repudiation yet of Donald Trump’s false claims of fraud.
Trump repeats false Covid claims and attacks New York governor Cuomo in first remarks since election loss – as it happened
Read more
The statement backed repeated assurances by experts and state officials that, despite the coronavirus pandemic and record numbers of voters, the election went smoothly without irregularities.
Yet almost a week after Democrat Joe Biden was declared the winner, Trump continues to refuse to accept defeat and to hamper an orderly transition of power. In a newspaper interview on Friday, he insisted without evidence that the election was stolen from him and that his quixotic legal challenges will succeed.
The latest blow to his case came from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which led federal election protection efforts. “While we know there are many unfounded claims and opportunities for misinformation about the process of our elections, we can assure you we have the utmost confidence in the security and integrity of our elections, and you should too,” it said.
“When you have questions, turn to elections officials as trusted voices as they administer elections.”
The statement was tweeted by Chris Krebs, the agency’s director, who just hours earlier had been the subject of a media report that said he had told associates he expects to be fired by Trump.
Krebs has been vocal on Twitter in repeatedly reassuring Americans that the election was secure and that their votes would be counted. “America, we have confidence in the security of your vote, you should, too,” he wrote.
The officials who signed the statement said they had no evidence that any voting system had deleted or lost votes, had changed votes, or was in any way compromised.
They said all the states with close results have paper records, which allows for the recounting of each ballot, if necessary, and for “the identification and correction of any mistakes or errors”.
“The election was the most secure in American history. Right now, across the country, election officials are reviewing and double checking the entire election process prior to finalising the result,” the statement added.
The message delivers a fresh blow to the credibility of Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of fraud and widespread problems that he insists could yet tip the election in his favour.
His campaign have seized on issues that are typical in every election: problems with signatures, secrecy envelopes and postmarks on mail-in ballots, as well as the potential for a small number of ballots miscast or lost. With Biden leading Trump by wide margins in battleground states, none of these would have any impact on the outcome.
Trump’s campaign has also launched legal challenges complaining that their poll watchers were unable to scrutinise the voting process. Many of those challenges have been thrown out by judges, some within hours of being filed. Again, none of the complaints showed any evidence that the outcome of the election was affected.
In a further sign that Trump’s “legal strategy” is unravelling, the law firm Porter Wright Morris & Arthur withdrew from a case in Pennsylvania that challenged nearly 2.65m votes that were cast by mail, the majority by Democrats. It said in a memo: “Plaintiffs and Porter Wright have reached a mutual agreement that plaintiffs will be best served if Porter Wright withdraws,” but did not offer further explanation.
Donald Trump on Wednesday at a Veterans Day remembrance service. Photograph: REX/Shutterstock
Yet even as he suffers loss after loss in court, the president remains defiant and in denial. He gave the Washington Examiner newspaper a state-by-state breakdown of how he thinks Biden’s victory can be overturned.
The Examiner reported: “At one point in the conversation, the president seemed to consider and then quickly reject the idea of losing. ‘I’m a guy who realizes – five days ago, I thought, “Maybe,”’ he said, pausing for just a second. ‘But, now I see evidence, and we have hundreds of affidavits,’ referring to the testimonials included in his lawsuits.”
The president continued to push the baseless allegations on Friday. He tweeted: “For years the Dems have been preaching how unsafe and rigged our elections have been. Now they are saying what a wonderful job the Trump Administration did in making 2020 the most secure election ever. Actually this is true, except for what the Democrats did. Rigged Election!”
The Trump administration’s unwillingness to comply with a presidential transition has raised national security concerns. Some Republicans have called for Biden to have access to classified intelligence briefings, but the majority of Republican officials still refuse to publicly accept the former vice-president’s victory.
Kevin McCarthy, the Republican minority leader in the House of Representatives, argued on Thursday that Biden does not need intelligence briefings because Trump might remain president in the new year. “He’s not president right now, don’t know if he will be January 20, but whoever is will get the information,” he told reporters.
The resistance is complicating Biden’s effort to lead a smooth transition to the January inauguration, keeping him from the funding and agency resources typically afforded to an incoming administration. Former president Barack Obama, promoting a new memoir, has told CBS News’s 60 Minutes next programme that he is troubled by the false claims of widespread election fraud.
“They appear to be motivated – in part because – the president doesn’t like to lose and never admits loss,” Obama said. “I’m more troubled by the fact that other Republican officials who clearly know better are going along with this, are humoring him in this fashion. It is one more step in delegitimizing not just the incoming Biden administration, but democracy generally. And that’s a dangerous path.”
Some cracks are emerging in the Republicans wall. George W Bush, the only living former Republican president, acknowledged Biden’s victory on Sunday. On Thursday, Bush’s former chief strategist Karl Rove penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal entitled, “This Election Result Won’t be Overturned.”
Making America grrr-eat again: Major and Champ, the Bidens' 'first dogs'
Read more
The New Hampshire governor, Chris Sununu, who endorsed Trump’s re-election, told reporters: “Joe Biden is the president-elect, and I think like most Americans, we suspect he’ll be taking the oath of office in January.”
Trump has kept a lower profile over the past week than at any time during his presidency. He was seen on Veterans Day, attending a service at Arlington National Cemetery, but has not spoken publicly apart from the Washington Examiner interview and dozens of tweets and retweets.
Critics accuse him of “going awol” at a critical moment during the coronavirus pandemic with cases surging to all-time highs. The US reported 153,496 Covid-19 cases on Thursday, according to Johns Hopkins University – the first time the number of coronavirus infections have exceeded 150,000 in a single day.
Biden, meanwhile, continues to receive congratulatory calls from around the world. A lifelong Roman Catholic, he spoke to Pope Francis on Thursday. His transition team said in a statement that the president-elect thanked Francis for “extending blessings and congratulations and noted his appreciation”. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2015/jan/30/choose-february-reading-group-book-recent-favourites | Books | 2015-01-30T15:39:38.000Z | Sam Jordison | Choose February’s Reading group book: Recent favourites | What is your favourite book published in the last five years? Let us know in the comments below, I’ll put the nominations into a hat in a few days time, and then we’ll all read it together.
Easy.
Hopefully.
Of course, I’m aware that choosing just one might be hard. But I guess I could stretch to two. My various, delightful and multi-coloured experiences on the Not the Booker prize have also taught me that this process could be open to a certain amount of log-rolling. I did wonder about imposing certain rules to mitigate against ending up with someone’s best mate’s worstseller. I thought I might ask that you only nominate books that have been widely reviewed or have sold more than 500 copies. But that’s too hard to monitor – and I think that the best restriction should be that the book is more than one year old and still widely available. Besides, some of the very best books sell hardly anything at all – and the other thing I’ve learned from the Not the Booker is that it’s sometimes great to be surprised. I’m just going to go on trust that you’ll put forward something that you think everyone will benefit from reading. I’d also be very grateful if you could supply a small explanation of why this book matters to you – and why we should read it. Maybe we’ll find an as-yet-undiscovered future classic. Or maybe we’ll just end up looking at Jonathan Franzen. Either way, I’ll be happy.
Nominations will be printed out, put into a hat in a few days’ time, and I’ll report back with news on the winner. I can’t wait to see what happens!
Finally, a bit of forewarning: this month’s advance for democracy will be balanced up next month with a temporary retreat. One hundred years after it was first published, we’ll be returning to Ford Madox Ford’s Good Soldier. It’s one hell of a book, so you might want to get stuck in early. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/19/kazakhstan-president-nursultan-nazarbayev-steps-down-after-30-years-in-power | World news | 2019-03-19T13:54:47.000Z | Andrew Roth | Kazakhstan president Nazarbayev steps down after 30 years in power | Kazakhstan’s president has announced his retirement after nearly 30 years as leader of the central Asian nation – but he will likely remain a power behind the throne, analysts said, as he retains key posts in Kazakhstan’s military and political bureaucracy.
Nursultan Nazarbayev has led the oil-rich country since the fall of the Soviet Union, first as its Communist leader and then as president after independence.
The 78-year-old leader announced his resignation in a surprise public address on national television on Tuesday evening.
“I have taken a decision, which was not easy for me, to resign as president,” Nazarbayev said, noting he was the “first president of independent Kazakhstan”.
But he would remain the chairman of the country’s powerful security council, the leader of the Nur Otan party, which dominates parliament, and his legal title as “leader of the nation”, he said.
While Nazarbayev’s resignation “comes as a surprise, it does not signal any immediate major policy shifts,” said Kate Mallinson of Chatham House. His control of the security council, which sets guidelines for foreign and security policies, would enable him to “continue to rule Kazakhstan as the power behind the throne”.
In his speech, Nazarbayev said he saw his task now as mentoring a new generation of leaders. He is expected to hand-pick a successor.
“I am staying with you,” Nazarbayev said on television. “Caring for the country and its people will remain my concerns.”
The manoeuvre may answer a key question for ageing post-Soviet autocrats, including Vladimir Putin: how to safely relinquish power in the winner-takes-all political systems that they have created.
Nazarbayev led the country through the economic turbulence of the 1990s while consolidating his hold on power in a series of elections that began to resemble coronations. He was last elected in 2015 with 97.7% of the vote. Though credited with maintaining stability and ethnic peace in Kazakhstan, he has faced criticism for suppressing dissent and sidelining the opposition.
Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, the speaker of the upper house of parliament, will take over as the country’s acting president for the remainder of his term in line with the constitution, Nazarbayev said.
“Tokayev is a safe pair of hands; he is a loyal presidential lieutenant,” Mallinson said. Presidential elections are set for 2020 but could be moved up to install a successor sooner, she added.
13:10
The new green superpower? Oil giant Kazakhstan tries to wean itself off the black stuff – video
Kazakhstan, despite having a population of only 18 million, is the ninth largest country in the world with an area of about one million square miles. It borders Russia to the north and China to the east and has extensive oil reserves that make it strategically and economically important.
The resignation comes just weeks after the strongman dismissed the country’s government. Last month Nazarbayev announced a spending package of several billion dollars on social programmes and state salaries. He also promised major investments in infrastructure.
As head of Kazakhstan, Nazarbayev pioneered a softer authoritarianism than his neighbours, eschewing the golden statues of Turkmenistan’s Saparmurat Niyazov or some of the brutal excesses of Uzbekistan’s Islam Karimov. But he grew eccentric in his 29 years in power, and his security forces committed atrocities, such as a bloody crackdown on striking miners in the city of Zhanaozen in 2012 that left at least 15 dead.
He also ordered the construction of Astana, a futuristic capital city built from scratch in 1997 at exorbitant cost. The city now boasts a Norman Foster-designed shopping centre and an artificial beach, with sand specially imported from the Maldives, but lacks the culture and class of the country’s former capital, Almaty.
Putin spoke with Nazarbayev by phone shortly before he announced his resignation, a Kremlin spokesman said. He declined to release details of the call.
Mark Galeotti, a security analyst and the author of We Need to Talk About Putin, said that Nazarbayev’s exit strategy could provide a preview of a similar plan in the Kremlin.
“[Putin] needs to guarantee the security of his person but also his legacy,” Galeotti said. Without a successor, he would seek a “constitutional position giving him both protection and the scope to intervene in politics if he feels he has to, without keeping him responsible for the tedious duties of day to day governance.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/oct/03/labour-mp-tulip-siddiq-car-vandalised | Politics | 2021-10-03T12:11:52.000Z | Jessica Murray | Labour MP Tulip Siddiq ‘defiant’ after her car vandalised | The Labour MP Tulip Siddiq has said she is “remaining defiant” after her car was vandalised in a targeted attack outside her family home.
Siddiq, the MP for Hampstead and Kilburn since 2015, said the attack happened early on Thursday morning shortly after she returned from the Labour party conference in Brighton.
That morning she woke to find the window had been smashed and a political message scrawled on the roof. Nothing had been stolen. She declined to say what the message was but said: “The wording made it clear that it was a targeted attack.”
“I’m not going to be intimidated, I’m not going to stop doing my job. It has to stop but at the end of the day I’m not going to give in,” Siddiq told the Guardian. “As soon as I saw the car I just thought, I don’t know what you guys are trying to achieve – you’ve underestimated me.”
She said she had received support from across Labour and a call from the Speaker of the Commons, Lindsay Hoyle.
A number of female politicians have spoken out about a rise in abusive language and threats directed at them in recent years. In July, the leader of Oldham council, Arooj Shah, was targeted in a firebomb attack on her car.
Shah was elected the north’s first female Muslim council leader in May. No one was injured in the incident, which damaged nearby property and was condemned by politicians as appalling and cowardly.
In April, a white supremacist was jailed for more than two years after sending hundreds of violent, misogynistic and racist messages to the Labour MP Jess Phillips. Tony Eckersley, 52, from Salford in Greater Manchester, sent Phillips more than 300 threatening messages over nine months including a threat to “have her dealt with”.
“I feel that this intimidation of women has just got to stop. Women are targeted because of the jobs they do, because they’re in the public eye and, in light of everything that’s happened with the Sarah Everard case, it really feels like we need a cultural change,” said Siddiq.
She called on social media companies to take more action to prevent abuse from happening: “Abuse online can manifest into things offline, and we need to nip it in the bud,” she said. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2024/mar/07/pauline-caulfield-patrick-edinburgh-exhibition | Art and design | 2024-03-07T15:10:19.000Z | Joanna Moorhead | ‘I was awed’: Pauline Caulfield on her glittering life with Patrick and his painter pals – then going back to art after he left | When Pauline Caulfield graduated from the Royal College of Art in 1968, her bold, brightly coloured, screenprinted panels were considered by some to be the strongest pieces in that year’s show. At that point, the textile artist’s name was still Pauline Jacobs but, one week after graduating, she married the artist Patrick Caulfield, seven years her senior. The two had met a few years earlier when he was her tutor at the Chelsea School of Art in London. “My fellow graduates were working out what they wanted to do and how they were going to afford to live,” she says. “And I was buying champagne and choosing a dress for the wedding.”
We knew people like Peter Blake and David Hockney – all this greatness
Pauline Caulfield: Cannonballs Altar frontal (2020). Photograph: Kangan Arora
The marriage lasted a little over 20 years, during which time the couple had three sons and were at the centre of the glittering London art set. “John Hoyland was our close friend and neighbour,” she says. “We knew people like Peter Blake and David Hockney. I was overawed by all this greatness – I was happy not to have to put my head over the parapet. No one stopped me from making art, but I was busy raising the children – and that’s how it went on, for decades.”
Then Patrick left her for another artist, Janet Nathan, whom he would marry and remain with until his death in 2005. It was, Caulfield says, “a catalyst”. She had never entirely given up her craft and now she felt its pull. “I knew I wanted to go back to art,” she says – not full time, though, because she needed to earn money. So for 25 years, she combined art with working as a receptionist and then a librarian. And then, 10 years ago, she was made redundant: another catalyst. More than half a century after being one of the brightest stars of the Royal College of Art, Caulfield’s moment had come: she became a full-time artist. And this week, a show of her work opens at Dovecot Studios in Edinburgh.
Poignantly, eight of the pieces in the show are remakes from her original 1968 Royal College collection: pairs of screenprints including Airmail, edged with the trademark red and blue edging of an airmail missive; Bunting, a riot of turquoise spiked with cherry red; and Garden, grass-green bordered with flower-coloured blocks of orange, yellow and blue. “When I came back to it, I decided to remake everything from my graduation collection,” says Caulfield. “It felt like I was completing something I’d started years ago. I still loved the work.” Glance at her website and you’ll see why: those 1968 pieces are as breathtaking now as they were then. There is also a film about her latest piece, Noren Curtain, powder blue intersected with pink wavy lines.
Another work in the Edinburgh show is more curious: a priest’s chasuble, bright red with wavy blue lines, looking as much like a poncho as a religious vestment. Caulfield was raised Catholic – her parents were converts, friends of Evelyn Waugh in fact – and when she returned to her art, she made vestments for, among others, the Catholic bishop of Plymouth, Christopher Budd. As well as the red chasuble, Caulfield was very keen to borrow another, a stunning gold number, one of her favourite ever pieces of vestment art. But when she asked the diocesan offices in Plymouth if she could borrow it, word came back that it wouldn’t be possible: Budd had loved it so much that, when he died last year, he was buried in it.
Return to sender … Pauline Caulfield: Airmail (1968). Photograph: Yeshen Venema
Today, Caulfield is much in demand for her stunning wall hangings and statement curtains: when I visit her studio-cum-home in London, she shows me how she creates her pieces, spreading pigment on to giant pieces of canvas like icing on a cake. Strong colour is everywhere in this house where she lived with Patrick for so long, and where he created his art as well.
Caulfield seems way younger than her 80 years – which is good, she says, given that she’s still at the dawn of her career. Does she feel, as her reputation blooms late in the day, that she should have taken the initiative earlier and not left the stage to Patrick? “Absolutely not. I was the person who drove the car and organised the birthday parties and looked after the children, and I enjoyed all of that. I’m certainly very glad I had Patrick in my life. I wouldn’t have wanted it otherwise.”
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All the same, she remembers during her schooldays setting down what she wanted to do with her life. “I wrote a big A then three possibilities: author, artist and actress.” While she didn’t write M for mother or W for wife, she enjoyed those roles. Now, in her ninth decade, she’s back to A for artist.
Pauline Caulfield Textiles is at Dovecot Studios, Edinburgh, 8 March to 20 July | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/may/01/blackbird-blackbird-blackberry-review-a-gentle-gem-about-late-life-love-and-loneliness | Film | 2024-05-01T08:00:51.000Z | Peter Bradshaw | Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry review – a gentle gem about mid-life love and loneliness | Here is a marvellously tender story of loneliness and love which starts with a bigger bang than most thrillers. Etero, played by Eka Chavleishvili, is a middle-aged single woman in a remote Georgian village who is out walking near a steep ravine, collecting blackberries for the cakes she likes to bake. She looks up, transfixed by the beauty of a blackbird – having been, we are perhaps invited to assume, only waiting for this moment to arrive – when she loses her footing and disappears from the frame; film-maker Elene Naveriani switches the viewpoint to something terrifying and vertiginous: straight down to a near death experience.
Etero sees her own corpse in a parallel universe of her own stricken imagining, but this heartstopping near-miss, together with the unwelcome new symptoms of what appear to be menopause, coincide with what could be a whole new lease of life. While listlessly minding the family shop, Etero receives some stock from flirtatious new delivery driver Murman, played by Temiko Chichinadze, and soon she is having a gloriously passionate, sensual and thrillingly secret affair with this man. And in the long stretches of solitude while he is away, now filled with gorgeous wondering instead of dullness, the film shows how Etero must now absorb the paradox – what has ended is not her life, but her 48 long years of virginity. Her life has not been easy. She has desperately missed her late mother, who died of cancer when she was just three months old. But now life has repaid her with a miracle.
Naveriani’s movie, adapted from a 2020 novel by the Georgian writer and activist Tamta Melashvili, has a cool and even rather deadpan self-assurance which shows the influence of Aki Kaurismäki or Elia Suleiman. The characters sometimes hold each other’s (and the camera’s) gaze emphatically – but Naveriani insists on something realer and more naturalistic. It’s a film which tells us what most films contrive to ignore: love and sex is not just for the lovely and the sexy and the young. This is a gentle, sensual gem of a film.
Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry is in UK cinemas from 3 May | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/apr/04/delete-online-profile-readers-panel | Technology | 2013-04-04T14:51:18.000Z | Guardian readers | How easy is it to delete yourself from the web – your experiences | There are many reasons you may want to try and delete yourself from the web from fake social media accounts and compromising photographs to long outgrown views.
Guardian readers share their experiences of attempts to delete an unwanted online presence.
Anonymous
One day, about 2 years ago now, I googled my own name and was horrified that in the first 4 google results it was possible to track me on the electoral roll for 8 years, uncover my full date of birth, full address including house number, names and ages of my brothers, sister and partner (who I later went to live with after leaving my parents house after university).
I work with with injecting drug users and my mother is a senior probation officer. Its very easy now for people to find out very personal information about me. At the click of a mouse. That reason alone is not enough to have your details hidden by Companies House. You need evidence of a very real threat such as (violence and an accompanying police report) to have this information suppressed.
The same applies for web sites such as radaris, peek you, 123 people...indexing online copies of the electoral roll, facebook accounts etc.
I was made a company secretary for my fathers very small part time business and did the occasional work for him during my holidays at university- over ten years ago. The company has since been wound down but my full name, date of birth and parents address are readily available on the internet if you enter my name into google. Third party indexing sites have taken this information from Companies House and sell it on the internet. I used to write requests to have my personal information taken down. Some complied, others didn't - they expect you to pay (around 20) to have the information hidden. As soon as one website goes down, another company pops up. Its impossible to control the indexing of your online presence.
I have nothing to hide, but I feel very vulnerable with all this personal information about me so readily accessible. I have a very unusual name, so everything that comes up in a search result is actually just about me and my family!!
I'm now also very mindful about creating online accounts. l feel that there is way to much information about me out there!!"
Sable
I tried to delete my ancient myspace profile because it contained some pictures of me from my art degree. They were not sexual but, there was nudity. I was working in a secondary school at the time and I was very uncomfortable with the images possibly being discovered by pupils. Unfortunately, I had forgotten my password and my profile was so old that my email address was no longer in existence. I emailed them numerous times but I never managed to get the page deleted. To my knowledge it is still there.
Gervase
Frustrating beyond belief. A number of fake profiles of me were created on Bebo, Flikr and other social networking and sharing sites after I had criticised the BNP online. The profiles lifted pictures of me from elsewhere on the web and photoshopped them, and made me out to be an ultra-nationalist gay transvestite (I know; funny in a WTF sort of way and almost flattering), and would have been laughable if they hadn't started creeping up my Google rankings to the point where, if someone Googled me, the fake profiles would appear on the first page. I have repeatedly asked Bebo and the other sites to remove these profiles, but with limited success. The results seem to be arbitrary; some are removed, but others are left in place.
The problem was brought home to me when an ex-girlfiend contacted me out of the blue to say how brave she thought I was in acknowledging what had clearly been a difficult position by coming out, and that she now quite understood why the relationship had ended, what we me being gay an' all, but she thought my politics had become a bit creepy.
Anonymous
I have been on the Internet since 1985. I used to have about 130,000 Google hits on my name (and I have a unique name), due to a lot of online professional work.
I have been successful in removing my online presence by deleting almost all accounts, doing online (public open source) work via an alias, though I still have a GMail account under an alias. I'm now down to about 3000 hits. Time has helped. There's still wayback information but much less live.
I think most people don't realise how their online information is being used/abused. They also don't know how data can be crossed from various sources, don't know how online advertisers, Google, Facebook, etc. buy and sell data, how facial recognition software permits other data crosses. Nor do they realise photos posted by their friends online can be tracked to them. Nor do they know the extent of surveillance and criminal use of online data. If they did they probably wouldn't get on the Web with their own identity. It sounds paranoid but it's reality, and will only get worse over time.
Sara
On a forum, where I've talked for a number of years in a birth club and about interiors etc but then realised over time that I have revealed myself in a combined way more than I'd have liked. But I've six years of chat to my name there, but about three people recognised me and it gets a bit scary when you can't erase yourself! There really is a false sense of security when you're hidden on an annoymous chat room, until you realise you've been 'virtually' chatting to three other women at the same school gates as you! It has a good side two as I can look back and see what my first child was like at this age etc, sort of a diary done without realising but also found myself going back deleting those comments about my sister in law in 2010!! Then wishing I could just start over!
Anonymous
A distant cousin with my same first name and surname (but different middle name) committed a murder 10 years ago but the articles are still lingering about, such that the first things associated with my name on a Google search is this crime. I wrote to the publications in question, and they agreed to add the middle initial to the remaining texts. I now also always use my middle name in all correspondence, invoicing, etc. The only advantage to this ""double identity"" mix-up is that my invoices are paid on time (clients must worry about what will happen to them if payment is late!). Facebook deletion was difficult to navigate to the particular button to push to close the account. Easy to push the button (but apparently the actual data is never deleted, just ""unpublished""...)
Anonymous
About ten years ago I wrote a response on an article in a well known newspaper (broad sheet) in the Netherlands. A few years after that I googled myself and saw the response came up in the archive section of the newspaper. I called and wrote the newspaper because I wanted the article removed. It contained personal history about my mental health. After some more calls and e-mails the paper agreed to take the article out of their online database. Because of the nature of the item and the possible damage it could do to my future career. Because I didn't have any other online presence this would be the first and only thing about me when future employers saw about me online. It took some time, but I was successful and grateful to the people of the newspaper for their understanding.
May
I like many other people provided content for tv.com (reviews etc) on the understanding that it was a site for television fans to discuss their favourite shows. Then the site was sold (for significant money I am guessing) and ads started appearing on the site. Since I was not paid, nor did I want to be paid - I worked for free happily in the spirit of sharing amongst the online community - I wanted to delete the reviews I had written. I didn't see why the site should sell my work. Guess what? I couldn't delete them. Or even edit them (planning to just change content to gobblydegook)
This annoys me. I understand the same thing happened to the Huffington Post journalists. I think there should always be facility to delete your work, especially if it is going to be sold by someone else.
Liz
I was bullied when I was 15 after I published some opinions on my Facebook profile. I deactivated my account after a few days and have subsequently deleted it. I left school and last year, when I was 17, I got Twitter and reinvented my online persona. I only followed new friends and ignored all the people in my 'previous' life. It took time to establish a new life, and my old account and experiences still haunt me. I think the more new friends I make and people I follow, the more the bad memories of the old life will fade.
Anonymous
I had a profile on LinkedIn and I felt I had control of it. When I decided to remove my profile (and did a Google search for my name / role) I noticed that my details appeared on numerous 'crawler' based sites such as Yatedo, Zoominfo, 123 people, Pipl, peekyou, etc.
Trying to remove each and every listing took hours of my personal time (trying to claim each profile, contacting the site asking for removal, etc) and months of waiting for the cached versions to be updated and disappear. I would say I am 90% complete in this task. Some sites were easier to work with then others.
My details had also appeared in some newspaper articles but I have had no success in being able to remove these pages (most were many years old).
Have you ever tried to delete yourself from the internet? Share your story in the comment thread below. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/lostinshowbiz/2019/jan/10/life-a-beach-party-lindsay-lohan-reality-tv-queen-of-cabanas | Life and style | 2019-01-10T17:11:51.000Z | Marina Hyde | Life’s a beach party for Lindsay Lohan, reality TV’s queen of the cabanas | Exciting developments in televised Mykonos, as the Lindsay Lohan universe formally expands into different properties. Time was that Lindsay featured in the news primarily as the person picking up DUI charges when Paris Hilton wasn’t, but she swiftly grew too large for the mid-00s Los Angeles party scene. There were unpaid hotel bills. There were failures to show up on film sets. There was a stolen necklace, and community service at a morgue. There was BBC3’s decision to get her to front a documentary on human trafficking in India.
In overview, then, Lindsay’s has always been a story in the picaresque style – perhaps this is inevitable, given her terrible parents pushed her on stage at 11, when she made her debut in Disney’s remake of The Parent Trap.
During the second decade of the millennium, however, the Mean Girls star has certainly added to the gaiety of various nations. She resided on our own shores during the EU referendum, and the night the results were dropping in saw Lindsay unleash a series of tweets so ancien regime they could only have been the direct inspiration for Theresa May’s subsequent “citizens of nowhere” speech. “Sorry #Kettering,” ran one of these, “but where are you?”
Local MP Philip Hollobone was so incensed that he used the occasion of a Commons question to the then leader of the house Chris Grayling to assert that “everyone knows where Kettering is”. A Grayling reply was forthcoming. “Lindsay Lohan – as a star of child and teen movies, a very entertaining actress at the time – hasn’t necessarily fulfilled her professional potential,” judged Chris, who would certainly know about not achieving one’s professional potential. “Perhaps now we know the reason why,” he went on. “She should visit the fine town of Kettering and find herself returned to stardom.”
Well, there’s careers advice gold right there. That said, this exchange did appear to elicit an apology from Lindsay, and a pledge to switch on the town’s Christmas lights. A broken pledge, as it would turn out. But hey: it’s hardly the most significant pledge to have been broken in the two and a half years since.
By that stage, in any case, our heroine had moved on. East, in fact, to Turkey, where she fulfilled her obligations as the face of an energy drink by handing out cans of it to Syrian refugees in a camp. From there, it was a short hop to Athens, where she and a Greek business partner opened a nightclub called LOHAN. Filmed on its steps on opening night, Lindsay debuted a mixed European accent best described as the full Steve McClaren. Speaking only haltingly in the strange American tongue, she announced that this was only the start of an empire. “There’s bigger things to be done with the LOHAN club,” she told reporters. “There is spas, there is refugee camps.” Sure.
Actually, no: what?
“We create peaceful locations where we can all be happy,” Lindsay went on. “And we start with the refugees, and then we open nice places, and maybe one of the refugees will open a place with us … I want LOHAN to be a celebration of everybody coming together, in the European nations.” Mmm.
It wasn’t entirely clear – it rarely is – but Lindsay did assert of the Lohan club brand that “we can make it a good purpose” and it “will fix bad things in the world”. “We have to help people,” she elaborated. “And if we can do it with a nightclub, or with a spa, or with refugee camps, or with containers …”
Was the Enigma machine in one of the containers? Because I struggled to decode the business model here. Luckily, all has become clear with madam’s current venture. Having surfaced in the headlines only briefly in 2017 (“I was racially profiled at Heathrow and asked to remove my headscarf”) and in 2018 (“Lindsay Lohan accuses homeless Moscow family of trafficking their own children”), Lindsay has now returned to the primetime cable schedules with an MTV show called Lindsay Lohan Beach Club: Paradise Boss.
The premise? Lindsay Lohan has opened a Mykonos beach club. Either by MTV’s design or by Lindsay’s, the beach in question is the one on which she was publicly hit by a former boyfriend in 2016. As Lindsay explains it, the club is the result of a promise she made to herself at the time. “I said I’m going to own this beach one day because I always want everyone to feel safe.”
To work in it, she has summoned 15 MTV-hot young contestants who need to be “the best of the best”. At what? Serving expensive drinks, I think. Serving clients. Getting them to upgrade from loungers to cabanas and so on. But mainly at all the reality-TV things: fighting, backstabbing, partying and hooking up.
In her new role as hardnosed entrepreneur businesswoman, Lindsay has to be appalled at this behaviour, for instance when she shows up unannounced at the group house and finds one of the contestants swimming in her underwear. “When you meet your boss, don’t show up in a bra,” Lindsay rules. “It’s like me going to Steven Spielberg in a bra and wet hair.”
That … feels like a real thing that might have happened in about 2004?
All in all, the show is going to struggle to resolve its central tension: that Lindsay is a professional beach club owner who prizes the reputation of her business above all; and that the people who staff it are only pretending to be dedicated beach club workers on reality TV.
Still, this isn’t the only fish the growing Lohan brand has to fry. As Lindsay revealed to Jimmy Fallon this week: “There will eventually be an island.” So happily – or rather, less sadly – the universe has other plans for expansion. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/nov/23/uk-no-earnings-growth-budget-brexit-productivity-ifs | Business | 2017-11-23T19:23:12.000Z | Phillip Inman | UK faces two decades of no earnings growth and more austerity, says IFS | Britain’s leading financial thinktank has warned workers to expect an unprecedented two lost decades of earnings growth and many more years of austerity as a result of the marked slowdown in the economy announced in Philip Hammond’s budget.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies said in its traditional post-budget analysis that forecasts slashing productivity, earnings and growth in every year until 2022 made “pretty grim reading”, and predicted that even by the middle of the next decade, Britain’s public finances would still be in the red.
The Treasury said the reforms and investment announced by the chancellor were designed to build a country “fit for the future”, but opposition parties said the gloomy IFS report undermined the chancellor’s claims.
In its analysis of the budget and the report from the independent Office for Budget Responsibility, the IFS said:
GDP per person will be 3.5% smaller in 2021 than forecast in March 2016. The loss of growth will mean the economy is £65bn smaller in 2021 than previously thought.
Average earnings are on course to be £1,400 a year lower in 2021 than forecast in 2016. That means the recovery in wages will have failed to materialise and average earnings will be below their 2008 level adjusted for inflation.
Borrowing will be £12bn higher in 2021 than was forecast in March.
Despite a spending increase over the next five years, the NHS is facing its tightest funding constraints since the 1980s. Annual spending growth of 4% a year after inflation before the financial crisis has fallen to 1% a year at a time when the NHS is being stretched by an expanding and ageing population.
Paul Johnson, the IFS director, said the OBR’s decision to reduce its growth forecasts by one-quarter over the next five years would delay deficit reduction, limit Hammond’s ability to ease pressure on welfare and public services and harm living standards.
“We are in danger of losing not just one but getting on for two decades of earnings growth,” he said. “We will all have to get used to the idea that steadily rising living standards may be a thing of the increasingly distant past.”
Public services face real-terms spending cuts of up to 40% in decade to 2020
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The nascent recovery in earnings, which were growing through 2014 to the first half of 2016, had been choked off, Johnson said. “That they might still be below their 2008 level in 2022 as the OBR forecasts is truly astonishing. Let’s hope this forecast turns out to be too pessimistic,” he added.
John McDonnell said the IFS analysis “exposed the appalling failure of seven years of this government’s austerity economics and its grim consequences for working people”.
“Seven years of austerity has not only blighted lives and plunged our public services into crisis, it has also trashed productivity growth and dragged down living standards,” the shadow chancellor said.
“This is a government and an economic policy that has completely failed by any conventional standard; they can serve no further purpose in office.”
The Liberal Democrats said the chancellor was bringing down the public spending deficit by “balancing the books on the backs of the poorest”.
Although Hammond announced extra money for the NHS and scrapped stamp duty for first-time housebuyers in his budget, the package was overshadowed by the OBR’s announcement that the economy would never recover from the damage caused by the financial crisis and its aftermath. It put long-term productivity growth at 1%, down from 2% before the crash.
A Treasury spokesman said an increase in the “national living wage” would be worth an extra £600 a year to low-income workers, while freezing fuel duty for the eighth year in a row and raising the income tax personal threshold would support hard-pressed families.
“The only way to improve living standards in the long term is to improve our productivity, which is why we are investing £30bn across the country in new infrastructure and skills, and delivering an ambitious industrial strategy,” he said.
Q&A
What is productivity and why does it matter?
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Johnson said that despite the extra cash for the NHS, the government’s main austerity plans were still in place.
“This is not the end of austerity. It is not even nearly the end of austerity. There are still nearly £12bn of welfare cuts to work through the system, while day-to-day public services spending is still due to be 3.6% lower in 2022-23 than it is today,” he said.Hammond appeared to have satisfied his Conservative colleagues by avoiding politically controversial measures that then have to be unpicked, as in March, when his planned increase in national insurance contributions for self-employed people was ditched within a week. One senior Tory said: “It seems fine. It’s not unravelled, which is a win at the moment. We plough on.”
The chancellor held scores of face-to-face meetings with Tory MPs in the run-up to the budget on Wednesday, to allow them to voice their concerns, and was well-received at the 1922 Committee of backbenchers afterwards.
The former permanent secretary to the Treasury, Nick Macpherson, said: “There are some perfectly sensible policies in this budget. The sad thing is they will have very little impact because they are so small.
“It’s a perfectly reasonable political choice – you’ve got to fill up a budget speech, and there’s always that choice between one big measure and spreading your largesse rather more thinly, and that is what the chancellor has done. It makes perfect sense in political terms, perhaps less sense in economic terms.”
Macpherson, who ran the Treasury until last year, added that abolishing stamp duty was best understood as a sweetener for Conservative voters. “I wouldn’t get too hung up on the impact on transactions and first-time buyers: this is a relieving tax on the government’s core supporters,” he said.
“The vast majority of young people can’t afford to buy any house and probably won’t for many years to come, but the proportion of the population who can – no doubt with the help of their parents – stump up the odd £250,000-300,000, is the sweet spot of Tory middle England. So people who claim it’s bad value for money get it slightly wrong. It’s all about shoring up political support.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/23/spainish-election-conservative-party-ahead-but-unlikely-to-win-majority | World news | 2023-07-23T23:09:03.000Z | Sam Jones | Spain elections: hung parliament after conservatives fail to secure expected majority | Spain’s opposition conservative party secured the most number of seats in national elections but looked unlikely to secure a coalition rightwing majority after a vote that had raised fears of the far right entering government for the first time since the country returned to democracy after General Franco’s death five decades ago.
Although the polls had consistently predicted that the opposition conservative People’s party (PP) would cruise past the Spanish Socialist Workers party (PSOE) to secure an emphatic win in Sunday’s election, early results quickly established that the race was going to be much tighter.
With 100% of the vote counted, the PP had won 136 seats to the PSOE’s 122. The conservatives’ potential coalition partners in the far-right Vox party had taken 33 seats – well down on the 52 they picked up in the last election – and PSOE’s allies in the new, far-left Sumar alliance were in fourth place with 31 seats.
The count showed that the political hue of the next government is far from a foregone conclusion, with the left and right blocs running almost neck and neck in their race to get as close to 176 seats as possible. As Monday approached, the PP and Vox had secured 169 seats to the PSOE and Sumar’s 153, suggesting Spain is in for weeks of negotiating and horse-trading as the rival camps explore their options for government.
Negotiations by the two blocs to form governments will start after a new parliament convenes on 17 August. King Felipe VI will invite the PP’s leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, to try to secure the prime ministership. In a similar situation in 2015, PP leader Mariano Rajoy declined the king’s invitation, saying he could not muster the support.
If Feijoo declines, the king may turn to the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, with the same request. The law does not set a deadline for the process but if no candidate secures a majority within two months of the first vote on the prime minister, new elections must be held.
Pedro Sánchez, Spain’s prime minister, votes in the elections. Photograph: Juan Carlos Rojas/Shutterstock
Sánchez said late on Sunday that the “reactionary” parties of the Spanish right had failed at the polls.
“We’ve won more votes, more seats and a bigger share of the vote than we did four years ago,” he told crowds gathered outside the PSOE’s headquarters in Madrid.
“The retrograde, reactionary block that sought to undo the advances of the past four years has failed.”
The PP’s leader, Feijóo, thanked those who had helped his party to victory and said he intended to try to form a government as soon as possible.
“Our duty now is to stop a period of uncertainty opening up in Spain,” he said. “As the candidate for the party that won the most votes, I believe my duty is to open up the dialogue as soon as possible and to try to govern our country in accordance with the election results and the election victory.”
Sanchez – who gambled on the snap election after the PSOE suffered a drubbing in May’s regional and municipal elections, had billed the poll as a stark choice between the forces of progress and the forces of reactionary conservatism. He had argued that only the PSOE and the Sumar alliance, which includes Podemos and is led by his deputy prime minister and labour minister, Yolanda Díaz, could defend and deliver the progressive agenda he has pursued over the past four years.
On Sunday night, Díaz told Sumar supporters: “We’ve won. Today we have a better country. From tomorrow, we have to keep winning rights and we are committed to doing that – more rights for women, for LGBTI people and for workers.”
Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s People’s party had been tipped to form a majority in the vote. Photograph: Oscar J Barroso/AFP7/Shutterstock
Vox’s leader, Santiago Abascal, congratulated the PP’s Feijóo on his victory but added: “I’d like to point out something that’s bad news for many Spaniards: despite losing the election, Pedro Sánchez can block the formation of a new government. Worse still, Pedro Sánchez could even be invested as prime minister with the help of communists, [Catalan] independence supporters and terrorists.”
Although the PP had consistently led the polls and waged an aggressive campaign, it suffered a poor final week as the focus shifted to Feijóo. He had already been left looking awkward after his claims about the PP’s track record on pensions turned out to be untrue, but was then criticised for the sexist tone of an apparent reference to Díaz’s makeup.
Feijóo had urged Spaniards to vote “to bring our country together again” and said that, unlike Sánchez, he was beholden to no one.
“I’ve got no debts or deals with anyone,” he told supporters in the Galician city of A Coruña on Friday. “I don’t need to answer to anyone except the Spanish people.”
An Ipsos poll for La Vanguardia this month found that the economy was the single biggest issue for voters, with 31% of those surveyed putting it at the top of their list. Next was unemployment (10%) and healthcare (9%). Immigration, one of Vox’s favourite talking points, was the most important issue for just 2% of those polled. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2010/mar/24/freesat-millionth-customer | Media | 2010-03-24T07:13:16.000Z | Mark Sweney | Freesat claims millionth customer | Freesat has claimed it is winning over BSkyB customers – with almost 400,000 defecting to date – and Ofcom's pay-TV review is expected to provide an additional surge in new signings for the fledgling digital satellite TV service.
The joint venture between the BBC and ITV announced today that it has passed 1 million customers. The company, which provides a free-to-air alternative to Sky's pay-TV digital satellite service, claimed that 40% of Freesat customers are former Sky subscribers.
"Freesat is a great opportunity for the millions of homes with existing satellite dishes who are used to quality TV but no longer want to pay a monthly subscription for it and we continue to see an increasing number of viewers moving across from pay TV," said Emma Scott, managing director of Freesat.
Scott added that Ofcom's pay-TV investigation, which is expected to conclude that BSkyB must cut the price it charges rivals for its premium sport and movie channels when the final version is published later this month, will lead to a further surge for Freesat as new services are launched.
"We are watching [the pay-TV review] with great interest as we are very interested in [third-party retailers] offering pay TV services," she said. "The review is an opportunity for all TV platforms in the UK to offer undbundled sports and movies. It is also an opportunity for BSkyB in the process; this could be another market for their channels."
Freesat also claims it has the edge on Freeview, which as a digital terrestrial TV service does not have the high definition TV capability for as many channels or UK-wide coverage.
The satellite operator claims that 200,000 fewer households had Freeview as their only source of digital TV at the end of last year, compared with the end of September. This equates to 2% of the digital terrestrial television service's customer base, putting it at 9.7 million households getting digital TV via Freeview at the end of 2009. BSkyB put on 172,000 customers in the same period to move to 9.7 million subscribers in the UK.
Freesat will also be launching the ITV Player this summer and a full ITV HD channel from 2 April.
"Much of what we're now working on is paving the way for next generation free TV with innovations like BBC iPlayer and ITV Player," said Scott. "We will continue to add value to the service by integrating Canvas if approved by the BBC Trust and we are following Ofcom's pay TV review with interest.
"From our customer panel survey we know that 40% of Freesat homes had Sky before getting Freesat. The majority tell us they have replaced Sky with Freesat. 30% of Freesat customers claim they were paying Sky subscribers and 10% claim to have been Freesat from Sky viewers."
To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email [email protected] or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000.
If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication". | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/may/30/the-ben-roberts-smith-allegations-war-crimes-domestic-violence-defamation-case-trial | Australia news | 2023-06-01T05:46:34.000Z | Ben Doherty | Ben Roberts-Smith: the explosive allegations of war crimes at the heart of defamation case | In 2018, after the Age, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Canberra Times published a series of stories alleging Ben Roberts-Smith committed murder and other crimes, he sued the three newspapers for defamation.
Roberts-Smith alleged the stories falsely portrayed him as a criminal who “broke the moral and legal rules of military engagement” and “disgraced” his country and its army. Healleged the newspapers made 14 defamatory imputations against him, including that he “murdered an unarmed and defenceless Afghan civilian, by kicking him off a cliff and procuring the soldiers under his command to shoot him” and “committed murder by machine gunning a man with a prosthetic leg”.
Over a year-long trial, the newspapers defended their reporting as true. Justice Anthony Besanko delivered his judgment on Thursday – and ruled that the papers had proved the truth that Roberts Smith was responsible for multiple murders.
These were the key issues in the case.
Death at Darwan
The most dramatic allegation was that Roberts-Smith, on a mission to the southern Afghan village of Darwan in 2012, marched a handcuffed man named Ali Jan to stand above a 10-metre-high cliff that dropped down to a dry riverbed below.
A former comrade of Roberts-Smith, a junior member of his patrol, told the court in evidence that Roberts-Smith then “walked forward and kicked the individual in the chest”.
Death in Darwan: the day that could decide the Ben Roberts-Smith defamation trial
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“The individual was catapulted backwards. I saw the individual’s face strike a large rock, [he] sustained a serious injury. He knocked out a number of his teeth, including his front teeth.”
That account was supported by evidence from Afghan witnesses also arrested in Darwan on that day.
The court heard the man survived the fall but was significantly injured. Roberts-Smith then allegedly ordered a subordinate soldier to shoot Ali Jan dead before the body was dragged into a cornfield.
Roberts-Smith and the soldier who allegedly shot Ali Jan, also subpoenaed to give evidence, denied the allegations. They told the court the man killed was a “spotter” – a forward scout for enemy insurgents – found hiding in the cornfield and carrying a radio. He was a legitimate target, lawfully killed, the court heard.
Whiskey 108: the men in the tunnel
Another prominent allegation concerned a raid on a bombed-out compound codenamed Whiskey 108, in 2009, within which a secret tunnel was found.
The newspapers allege two men were found hiding in the tunnel: one an elderly man, the other a younger man with a prosthetic leg. The men allegedly came out of the tunnel unarmed and surrendered.
Roberts-Smith allegedly ordered a junior soldier on his patrol to execute the old man, before manhandling the man with the prosthetic leg outside the compound, where he threw him to the ground and fired his Para Minimi machine gun into his prone body.
The man’s leg was later souvenired by another soldier and used by Australian SAS troops as a macabre celebratory drinking vessel at their on-base bar, the Fat Ladies’ Arms.
The tunnel referenced in the case, located at the Whiskey 108 compound
Roberts-Smith told the court the allegation could not be true, because “there were no men in the tunnel”. He was supported by some members of his patrol, contradicted by others.
On Roberts-Smith’s evidence, two Afghan men were killed at Whiskey 108 legitimately, in accordance with the Australian troops’ rules of engagement: they were “squirters” – Taliban members trying to flee the compound.
Roberts-Smith said he had shot one of the men dead. The other Afghan was killed by another Australian soldier whose identity, Roberts-Smith told the court, remains unknown to him to this day. He credits the mystery soldier with saving his life.
Several soldiers gave evidence that they witnessed Roberts-Smith throw the disabled, unarmed prisoner to the ground and kill one: one testifying it was “an exhibition execution”.
But, in an illuminating aside, one soldier volunteered to the court: “I still don’t agree with the fact BRS [Roberts-Smith] is here [in court], under extreme duress, for killing bad dudes we went there to kill.”
Claims of domestic violence
Also interrogated in court was an allegation that Roberts-Smith punched a woman with whom he was having an affair after an argument after a dinner at Parliament House in Canberra in 2018.
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She told the court that she had fallen down a set of stairs at Parliament House. Back at their hotel room, when she told him her head hurt, “He said something like, ‘It’s going to fucking hurt more,’ or, ‘I’ll show you hurt’... and then he punched me with his right fist on the left side of my face.”
Roberts-Smith denied ever hitting her, and told the court he had nursed the woman’s injuries through the night, including putting an icepack on her head. He said the black eye she sustained was the result of falling down the stairs earlier in the evening.
“The whole story is a fabrication,” he told the court. “I’ve never hit a woman. I never would hit a woman. And I certainly never hit [her].”
Months of extraordinary evidence
Over more than 100 days of evidence, the trial heard extraordinary testimony from dozens of former and serving SAS soldiers and officers, including several who continue to serve in the regiment, some at senior operational levels.
The court heard: of a quavering teenager shot in the head described as “the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen”; of a laptop potentially containing evidence being burnt in a suburban back yard; of threatening anonymous letters being sent to soldiers; of a woman being surveilled and filmed in intimate moments; and of clandestine evidence being buried in a child’s lunchbox.
A prosthetic leg, an affair and burnt laptops: Ben Roberts-Smith case hears extraordinary evidence
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Dramatically, three SAS soldiers – each accused of murder on separate missions – refused in court to answer questions about what they did in Afghanistan, objecting on the grounds that any truthful answer they gave would be self-incriminatory. Each was permitted by Besanko not to answer.
What was at stake?
The newspapers’ lead barrister, Nicholas Owens SC, told the court that, for all its chaos, laws applied to war. Soldiers were not free to kill indiscriminately.
“Not a single one of the murders we allege … involved decisions that were made in the heat of battle … the ‘fog of war’.”
Ben Roberts-Smith leaves the federal court in Sydney in March 2022. Photograph: Dan Himbrechts/EPA
The allegations of murder before the court were the deaths of civilians or insurgents who had been placed hors de combat (no longer able to fight), Owens said.
“One matter is perfectly and unambiguously clear … once a person has been placed under control, no matter that he may be the most brutal, vile member of the Taliban imaginable, an Australian soldier cannot kill him. To do so is murder.”
Roberts-Smith’s barrister, Arthur Moses SC, told the court in his closing submissions:
“This trial, which has lasted over 100 days, has been called a great many things: the trial of the century, a proxy war crimes trial, and an attack on the freedom of the press. It is none of these. It is a case which has been brought because the respondents chose to defame Mr Roberts-Smith.
“This has been a case about how Mr Roberts-Smith, the most decorated Australian soldier, and a man with a high reputation for courage, skill and decency in soldiering, had that reputation destroyed.”
Guardian Australia will publish a special episode of the podcast Ben Roberts-Smith v the media on Friday morning. Subscribe to Ben Roberts-Smith v the media to catch up on the court case and be notified of new episodes | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jul/01/bbc-wrong-right-to-be-forgotten | Technology | 2015-07-01T11:57:19.000Z | Julia Powles | Why the BBC is wrong to republish ‘right to be forgotten’ links | The BBC really doesn’t like the right to be forgotten. Director of editorial policy, David Jordan, has termed it “unsearching – an ugly word for an ugly process”. Big data advisor, James Leaton Gray, says it makes him nervous. And now Neil McIntosh, managing editor of BBC Online, has republished a list of 182 BBC links that have been partially obscured by Google over the past year, after Europe’s highest court commanded Google to start respecting European data protection law.
Crucially, the BBC links are not removed from Google or the web, as McIntosh’s post misleadingly implied. Instead, as Google corrected, they are only delisted in a very selective way - from top search results on particular individuals’ names, where those individuals have made a solid case for obscurity.
They are a modest correction against failures in algorithmic prioritisation on the indelible web. Before the requests go to the BBC, individuals must prove to Google – which has every interest in rejecting their claim – that the links contain personal information that is inaccurate, irrelevant or out of date, and holds no public interest.
Google must be more open on 'right to be forgotten', academics warn in letter
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McIntosh wrote that the decision to republish the links was “primarily as a contribution to public policy”, made out of concern for the “integrity of the archive”. It is an important move, from a weighty institution. But it needs to be viewed with considerable caution.
Placed in its proper context, as representing a tiny proportion of right to be forgotten requests (182 out of more than one million links), the BBC’s list – and the media’s response to it – only accentuates the demand for data protection rights. It mandates a much richer public debate, and deeper introspection from the media, than we’ve seen to date.
The ‘man bites dog’ problem
The reaction to McIntosh’s post was predictable, inaccurate and devastating. The Times led with “BBC lists stories on abusers and rapists hidden under ‘right to be forgotten’”, gratuitously highlighting two stories.
The first was a 12-year-old story about a settlement between an alleged rape victim and the Catholic church, over incidents that occurred a half-century ago. The long-deceased abuser clearly couldn’t have filed the obscurity request with Google – leaving, rather less salaciously, the victim.
The second case concerned a nanny jailed for child abuse. Even a cursory Google search coupled with the basics of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act would have told the journalist that an unspent conviction for such an offence clearly denied any reasonable claim to delisting. Caution raised, a bit more searching would have revealed the truth: that the conviction was overturned by the Court of Appeal. That former nanny has been exculpated under the law of the land – but not by Google and not, it seems, by the press either.
Other publications followed suit. Boing Boing drew attention to a rape story. Given it concerned a fairly recent conviction in 2012, clearly the sex offender has no entitlement to be delisted.
Acquittals and people moving on with their lives are boring – they are not news
But what about his friend who was also named in the article because he happened to be in the house where the attack took place? His Google page is now plastered with the incriminating word ‘rapist’, albeit in reference to his convicted friend. There is no suggestion of wrongdoing on his part, does he not have a right to be forgotten in this context?
These examples shine a light on the very problem that the right to be forgotten in part addresses, even if only imperfectly (other solutions could have been, and should still be, explored). Journalistic logic is curiously asymmetrical. “Dog bites man” is not news; “man bites dog” most certainly is. Similarly, arrests are more newsworthy than exculpations.
If the former nanny, or the rapist’s friend, are otherwise unremarkable, publication by a reputable press outlet will rocket to the top of their results, and effectively stay forever. Acquittals, and people moving on with their lives, are boring – they are not news, and they are rarely reported with the same intensity as crimes, arrests and convictions. And court records are often not online or readily searchable.
How Google determined our right to be forgotten
Julia Powles
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So what’s the result, in the imperfect mirror of reality that is the web? Next time you search for these people – or a potential employer or possible date does, as we all do – these results come up.
Compounding damage in an age of public shaming
The BBC is not the first publication to republish links, hazarding collateral damage, and undermining data subject’s rights. Wikipedia is maintaining a public list, and the Daily Mail and Telegraph have consistently republished requests – even going so far as to rewrite new stories about them, directly undermining and compounding the challenge of complainants and other parties, often in an entirely unfair manner.
This is not some inherent or natural consequence of the web - the Streisand effect beloved of cyber-libertarians. It is deliberate journalistic choice that causes public shame, and has not meaningfully contributed in any way to better policy making. It looks petulant, not constructive. And in some cases, it deceptively withholds crucial details, like certain Telegraph stories that have been republished, without also identifying that the original story has been modified simultaneously to remove the complainant’s name. So much for transparency.
Post-Leveson, the British press has a potent vitriol for anything it deems a limitation or restriction on its freedom
Here, it is worth noting that the British press is an outlier in Europe. No other countries have been republishing requests. Post-Leveson, the British press has a new, potent vitriol for anything it deems a limitation or restriction on its freedom. There is also a strong tinge of Euroscepticism about rights emerging from the cultural sensibilities of continental Europe.
But some healthy British humility wouldn’t go astray here. In many countries, the press only publishes partial names on stories concerning accused criminals. In others, archives and official bulletins are delisted from Google as a rule, to prevent situations like those that are traced in the quiet pathos of those dull BBC links.
What a more constructive press approach looks like
Burrowing further into the BBC’s own policies reveals considerably more sensitivity to the issues at stake, and suggest that the organisation’s petulance is a result of being disempowered in Google’s delisting process, rather than a more fundamental objection to individual interests.
The BBC’s detailed guidelines include a willingness to consider small modifications, such as the pseudonymisation of an abuse victim’s name, which, ultimately, is all that a lot of people are requesting.
However, the idea expressed by the BBC that the entire archive should be completely and timelessly accessible through search interfaces (as opposed to available, through the BBC front page, which it most certainly should be, and will continue to be), shows an unwillingness to engage with the required nuance regarding the dangers of the internet’s perpetual present, and removal for lesser reasons than harm. No one here is burning archives.
The BBC is unwilling to engage with the required nuance regarding the dangers of the internet’s perpetual present
A salutary contrast with the BBC here is the British Library’s measured response after the European ruling, clearly rejecting the inapt book-cutting, or library-burning, analogies erected by opponents of the right to be forgotten, and stating, simply, that it is unlikely to affect the Library’s practices, but they are keeping a watching brief.
At present, press outlets like the BBC have lavished praise on Google for notifying it of delisted articles. This is partially because of a perceived threat to the ongoing availability of notifications, given that the chief body of European regulators have advised that this should be a selective practice only, rather than routine.
What regulators are concerned about is precisely what the BBC has done - republication, and ready reidentification, of complainants in a way that directly undermines their demand for practical obscurity, not notoriety, on old or irrelevant personal information. But the regulators’ solution of dramatically reducing notification is clearly inadequate. Far better is to make earlier, more robust, more informed, productive and considerate contact between Google and the press.
As a litmus test of the societal response to how we deal with the digital traces of our lives, the story of the right to be forgotten over the last year has been a rather sorry tale. The BBC, in republishing this list and misjudging even the most basic details, does little to assure that the debate has advanced. It would do better to agitate for a robust and confidential pre-decision procedure with Google to assure that good decisions are made in the public interest.
And if the BBC is really interested in public policy, then let’s have a deep debate about the public interest itself, about the role of archives, and about information retrieval and sedimentation that is appropriate to our digital present.
Dear Google: open letter from 80 academics on ‘right to be forgotten’ | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2008/apr/07/rugbyunion.heinekencup | Sport | 2008-04-07T11:16:18.000Z | Robert Kitson | Rugby union: Hill clips Ospreys wings as resurgent Saracens soar | As England showed in last autumn's World Cup there is no such thing as a totally lost cause in top-level rugby. Barely a fortnight ago Saracens were thumped 30-3 by the Ospreys and their chances of European glory seemed embarrassingly remote. In terms of reviving a barely-twitching corpse their deserved passage yesterday into the Heineken Cup semi-finals has to rank among the more startling transformations in the competition's history.
Given the success Welsh rugby has enjoyed lately and the presence of 12 grand slammers in the visiting side it was also a reminder of the imperishable law of rugby gravity. Teams that soar as close to the sun as many of the Ospreys players have done can still be vulnerable if their opponents prepare well, tackle incessantly and take their chances. Saracens did all three and were rewarded with the biggest result in the history of the club.
No one exemplified the extraordinary Lazarus-type effort more than Richard Hill who, at 34, is playing on virtually one leg after nine knee operations and is only running around courtesy of a ligament taken from a dead body after he suffered the second ruptured cruciate of his career in 2005. The former England flanker was at the heart of a defensive performance that knocked the Ospreys completely out of their stride.
Even an improving Munster side should take nothing for granted in the semi-final in Coventry later this month. "Particularly in the first half I thought the performance of the pack was awesome," said Hill, as aware as anyone the club have not won any silverware for a decade. "People ask why you carry on... it's for days like this."
Yesterday, appropriately, Hill's surgeon Fares Haddad was in the crowd, as was the Saracens owner Nigel Wray. It is a dozen years since Wray spoke of his vision of a sold-out European Cup tie involving the north London club, since when he has invested around £15m to make it happen. It is fair to say his considerable faith was gloriously rewarded.
It was not as if Saracens enjoyed much assistance from the referee, Alan Lewis, who frequently made life harder for them. Just before the interval he declined to come back for an advantage to Saracens in front of the posts after Paul Gustard had been held up over the line, instead blowing the whistle for half-time.
"He adjudged that the advantage was over, which I thought was a little bit strange," said the captain Neil de Kock. He also declined to award a second-half try to Hugh Vyvyan despite eye-witness testimony from his touch-judge that the ball had been grounded, allowing the Ospreys to retain a foothold in a game in which they rarely appeared comfortable.
The Ospreys head coach, Lyn Jones, was adamant afterwards that complacency had not been a factor, an argument rather undermined by his Wales fly-half, James Hook.
There is no question Hook is a special talent but his show-boating attempt at catching a high ball behind his back in his own 22 with his side under the cosh was not exactly a sign of total concentration. Even when Andy Farrell departed with a season-ending shoulder dislocation and Brent Russell limped off with a strained hamstring, the Ospreys came nowhere near attaining the kind of forward domination they had enjoyed in Cardiff two weeks earlier.
That, in turn, allowed the canny home half-backs, De Kock and Glen Jackson, to manoeuvre their big forwards around the field and the little piece of good fortune they required arrived a minute after the restart when Lee Byrne's fingertips made contact with De Kock's hasty clearance. At a stroke a whole phalanx of Saracens were played onside and Adam Powell set his fellow replacement Francisco Leonelli sprinting away from Ryan Jones to score in the right corner.
With Cobus Visagie dominating the scrums and Richard Haughton giving Shane Williams a run for his elusive money - "How Richard is not in the top 64 players in England is quite amazing," said his director of rugby, Alan Gaffney - there was further discouragement for the Ospreys when Byrne was sin-binned for a deliberate knock-on and Jackson kicked another three points. Gavin Henson was also forced off with a knee problem. "If we could stop them getting quick ball we knew we had a chance," said De Kock.
Saracens will need more than sheer bloody mindedness against Munster but the power of Visagie and the inside knowledge of Gaffney, who coached the Irish province for three years, are not insignificant weapons. Even when the Ospreys' replacement prop Paul James battered his way over with five minutes left, the home side responded instantly with a drop goal from Jackson that made victory safe. Saracens' pre-match instruction from Gaffney - "Don't walk off and look your mate in the eye and say I could have done better" - had been triumphantly heeded.
Saracens Russell (Leonelli, 30; Rauluni, 69); Haughton, Sorrell, Farrell (Powell, 32), Ratuvou; Jackson, De Kock (capt); Lloyd, Cairns (Ongaro, 76), Visagie, Vyvyan, Chesney (Ryder, 78), Gustard (Barrell, 52), Hill, Skirving.
Try Leonelli. Con Jackson. Pens Jackson 3. Drop-goal Jackson.
Ospreys Byrne; Vaughton (Brew, 65), Parker, Henson (Bishop, 58), S Williams; Hook, Marshall; D Jones (James, 52), Bennett (Hibbert, 52), A Jones, Gough (Evans, 59), A-W Jones, Thomas (Tiatia, 48), Holah, R Jones (capt).
Try James. Con Hook. Pen Hook.
Sin-bin Byrne 57.
Referee A Lewis (Ireland). Attendance 18,214. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/nov/27/junior-doctors-leader-johann-malawana-nhs-strikes-interview | Society | 2015-11-27T15:31:36.000Z | Amelia Gentleman | Junior doctors’ leader Johann Malawana on NHS strikes: ‘No doctor wants to do what we are being pushed into’ | It has been hard to catch a moment to sit down with Johann Malawana, chair of the British Medical Association’s junior doctors’ committee, whose decisions during the next three days will help determine whether hospitals and GP surgeries operate a skeleton service on Tuesday across England, as junior doctors go on strike for the first time in 40 years.
Our first appointment is cancelled before it begins by an apologetic press officer, who says the committee has just discovered (in a roundabout way, on Twitter) that the prime minister has agreed to Acas mediation talks, aimed at averting the three days of strike action. It’s a crucial and testing development; as well as the more substantive matters at stake, the government’s refusal to take part in mediation has been presented as a key sticking point since strikes were announced. Although he knows he has the full backing of the junior doctors he represents, Malawana’s job is perhaps now entering its trickiest phase. Not surprising, then, that a rearranged meeting that evening is cut short by BMA officials, who need him to begin drawing up a strategy for these conversations.
Given the enormity of what he is dealing with, Malawana, 36, appears relaxed when he does finally get to sit down, breezily declaring that while his job, representing 37,000 of the 50,000 junior doctors in England in negotiations with the government, is undeniably stressful, “lots of people have stress in their jobs, I guess”.
Considering how new he is to his role, this calm demeanour is remarkable. He was elected on the morning of 26 September; just a few hours later, he found himself chairing the crucial committee meeting at which a decision was taken to ballot for industrial action, in protest at Jeremy Hunt’s decision to impose a new, very unpopular contract on junior doctors: a contract they characterise as unsafe and unfair. In the circumstances, you could forgive him for seeming a bit frazzled, but he shows no signs of strain.
Jeremy Hunt disappointed after junior doctors vote to strike – video Guardian
What better training for the relentless pressure of Acas negotiations than his previous job, working punishing hours as a junior doctor? Until September he was working full-time as an obstetrics registrar, delivering up to eight babies a shift, in a busy, understaffed London teaching hospital, where the decisions he was taking were arguably even more critical. “In obstetrics, you are often presented with scenarios where you have to make instantaneous decisions based on evidence of a baby being in trouble,” he says. “The decisions I made had an impact on babies and families that were profound. If I made mistakes in those decisions, then the consequences would have lived with that family or with me for ever. Because of the nature of the job, you have to learn to deal with the general stress of life. If you can’t, as an obstetrician, that’s a pretty bad sign. So at work, you put your blinkers on and you focus on the job in hand, and you keep doing it.”
During the course of two months, he has been catapulted from comfortable obscurity into the public eye, enduring along the way the now-traditional rites of passage: abuse on Twitter and a brutal savaging in the pages of the Daily Mail, where one article suggested he wanted doctors to walk out over Saturday hours because he once had a weekend business as a wedding photographer. He was later interrogated on the issue on Newsnight. More recently he was cast by the health secretary as a “militant” ideologue. The personal nature of the attacks have left him “bemused”.
Slouched over a desk in a shabby backroom in the BMA’s Euston headquarters, he doesn’t come across as militant in the least. He is smiley, friendly and calm; you’d be relieved and delighted if he turned up to deliver your baby. His kindly bedside manner even prompts him to say he feels “empathy” for Hunt, whom he thinks must be “going through a difficult period”. This is not the kind of language Arthur Scargill would have used about Thatcher. But mostly, he points out, he can’t be described as a militant because he represents the views of the 98% of junior doctors who voted on 19 November in favour of a full walk out.
He knows how angry junior doctors are feeling because he felt the same anger in the summer when the contract issue came to a head. He talks passionately about how the pressure he experienced in his old job convinced him that a worsening of conditions for junior doctors would be disastrous for them and for patient safety. Although he and his wife, a GP, haven’t themselves seriously considered abandoning the NHS or quitting the UK to take their skills elsewhere, they have many doctor friends who have already left for Canada, Australia and South Africa.
“You don’t get any breaks, you don’t get any downtime, you get the bleep and that’s it; you know for the next 12 and a half hours, at least, you are going to be constantly on the run, making decisions that are potentially really stressful and have massive consequences. In the recent job I did, we were incredibly short-staffed; we were meant to have 30 junior doctors to cover the department safely, and we were 11 short. That’s true in maternity units across London; there are massive staff shortages across the NHS, it’s endemic. There are slots in the rotas that are completely empty, they’ve just never been filled, so the doctors that are left are just picking up the pieces,” he says.
Both the government and the junior doctors argue that the dispute is, at heart, about patient safety. The government presents changes to the contract as part of the move towards seven-day working; Hunt said the dangers of lower weekend hospital staffing under the current arrangement were comparable to flying without a co-pilot. While junior doctors are angry that the contract will redefine their normal working week to include Saturday, and will remove overtime rates for work between 7pm and 10pm on weekdays, they are more concerned that safeguards preventing the NHS from overworking them will be removed.
Jeremy Hunt offers junior doctors 11% pay rise – video Guardian
Malawana doesn’t talk about pay, but focuses on the threat that an overworked workforce poses to patients. “As a doctor you are thinking: hang on, this job is already starting to become completely undoable, so if you are taking away some of the few controls that are left, how on earth are we actually meant to do this job?”
In the past two months, he has tried to convey some of these concerns to Hunt, but there has been very little direct contact – a one-and-a-half hour conversation in September, a brief encounter at a fringe meeting at the Conservative party conference. There have been no discreet phone calls or off-the-record chats. Malawana is surprised that even though the NHS is about to be hit by a strike, the contact has been so limited.
“He talks very openly about his door always being open,” he says, “but it is always done via the media. There has been no attempt to engage with us, apart from through press releases.” I got an insight into the absence of direct communication with the Department of Health when our meeting was rescheduled . It was cancelled because Malawana’s team had spotted that Conservative MP and doctor Sarah Wollaston tweeted that she is “pleased to hear” from the prime minister that the government had agreed to Acas conciliation. The team only got the direct confirmation later.
Malawana has an idea about how negotiations should go, from considerable experience in medical student politics; he was president of Barts medical school, head of the University of London’s medical students for two years, and on the board of the of General Medical Council for four years. “I was under 30 when I did that. There were 12 people, they were all like professors and old people,” he smiles. “So I was the youngest person there.”
Four years ago he went back to full-time training. “I got married, my wife had a baby. I was essentially just a normal doctor. I wasn’t involved with the BMA, any of this stuff,” he said. But the medical profession had a difficult summer. I got back involved.”
Hunt, meanwhile, has attempted to demonstrate his own commitment. Last week, he revealed that he had been making regular visits incognito to the hospital “frontline”, working as a porter or an ambulance man. “I’ve washed commodes in Harrogate hospital, done tea rounds in Worthing hospital, taken blood pressure at Royal Surrey, washed beds in Watford A&E, done ward rounds in the Salford Royal, witnessed brain surgery in UCL,” he told the Mail on Sunday.
While he commends Hunt for wanting “to learn about what is going on in the frontline of the NHS”, Malawana worries that he is trying to equate these “secret experiences, going and washing basins” with the experiences of 50,000 junior doctors. “There’s almost a sense that [he is] trying to balance that out with a conversation in passing at a photo opportunity,” he says.
A junior doctors’ protest against health service cuts and contract changes in October. Photograph: Tolga Akmen/LNP
In the same interview, Hunt said he couldn’t rule out the possibility of people dying as a result of strikes. Malawana makes some sympathetic “hmmm” noises, and says: “I do understand from his perspective that this is a very difficult period. I totally empathise with what the secretary of state has to go through. I understand he must be under a lot of stress – but this was stress of his own making. I wish that rather than having to go through all of this, we could have sat down and tried to find a solution. The first thing we said when we went into the meeting is that no doctor wants to do what we are essentially being pushed into doing.”
Even when he is reciting formulaic union position statements, he does so in a gentle way, with an upward, questioning lilt to his sentences, hard to combine with a fist-thumping delivery. “The safety of patients will be much worse affected if we don’t try to find a meaningful solution to the issue of the contract?” he says, beseechingly. “What we really hoped is that the secretary of state will see that this is a genuine concern that doctors have?”
He rebuts the suggestion that the NHS will become unsafe on Tuesday if the strike goes ahead. The BMA has given the government more time than necessary to organise replacement cover, and because consultants are so sympathetic to their junior colleagues, they have so far been ready to step in. In any case, he thinks one day of reduced care is better than what he believes will be a permanent introduction of lower standards, should the contract go ahead.
“While Jeremy Hunt tries to paint this very bleak picture, that’s again trying to induce fear in the general public, actually that time could be better spent trying to address the concerns that we are putting to him. We’re talking about one day, but actually this contract could have a negative impact on patients for so much longer than that,” he says.
He knows that the decisions of the next few days will be crucial, not just in deciding whether strikes go ahead, but in determining whether public opinion remains sympathetic to the junior doctors. Getting the government to agree to Acas involvement is a victory of sorts for the doctors, but not one he relishes. “I don’t think there are really any victories to be had. I think all junior doctors feel that where we’re at is a very unfortunate set of circumstances,” he says.
The decision to continue towards strikes is a risky one from a PR perspective. He appreciates that the concept of consulting Acas for “talks about talks” is a head-spinning notion for most people, but he is convinced that if strikes go ahead, the public will understand that this is the fault of the government. “Everything suggests that the public do understand that doctors are not the kind of people who do this kind of thing. We have been pushed quite firmly into a position we do not wish to be in and it’s really quite difficult,” he says.
And then duty calls. In the end, we have to finish the conversation as he walks through the corridors of the BMA headquarters, hurrying to his next strategy meeting. In the lift, he says his family and friends have been both shocked and amused by the personal nature of the attacks on him. He thought the exposé of his wedding photography business was a bit of barrel-scraping.
“It was a hobby. I bought a camera. I enjoyed taking pictures, put them on social media, and my friends liked the pictures. I often took photos of friends’ weddings, friends’ children, and it turned into a very, very, incredibly small business,” he says, pointing out that it was done at a time when he was doing research, rather than working on a labour ward. “Of all the things that someone’s attacked for, being attacked for your hobby just struck me as … I was flabbergasted.”
Before standing for election in September, he had discussed with his wife the possibility that things might get nasty if he took on the job. “My wife obviously doesn’t want to live our life in the public eye, but at the same time she is very supportive of what we’re doing – she’s a doctor as well. I’ve had lots of support from friends and family.” But he thinks the personal attacks have detracted from the real concerns doctors have about the contract.
“It suggests that the government isn’t actually taking the concerns of doctors seriously when they try to turn it so personal. That, essentially, to many doctors stinks of politics.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2015/mar/31/cult-heroes-tom-t-hall-country-music-star-johnny-cash | Music | 2015-03-31T10:12:50.000Z | Angus Batey | Cult heroes: Tom T Hall, the singer who wrote of real lives and changing times | It might seem odd to consider someone who’s written almost 40 top 10 hits as little known, but in the UK at least, Tom T Hall’s name isn’t one most music fans will be familiar with. The majority of those songs were on the US country music charts, and it’s only been the rarest country star who’s made it to household-name status in Britain. Yet to consign Hall and his treasure trove of songs to oblivion doesn’t just do the man and his work a disservice, it impoverishes our globalised culture immeasurably.
As the title of a 1990s-released best-of compilation album suggests, Hall is as much a poet and philosopher as he is a songwriter. To that you can add that he is a peerless observer of the human condition, an author of precision-tooled short stories, possessed of a set of skills that could have seen him carving out an enviable career in literature had Nashville proved immune to his charms. As it was, when the 27-year-old native of tiny Olive Hill, Kentucky, turned up on Nashville’s Music Row on 2 January 1964, Thomas Hall had found his spiritual home. Offered a $50-a-week post with Jimmy C Newman’s publishing company, Newkeys Music, he spent the next few years writing songs as a nine-to-five job, and saw his stock rise in 1968 when Jeannie C Riley took his Harper Valley PTA to the top of the Billboard pop charts (it reached No 12 in the UK). By that stage he’d added the “T” – he doesn’t have a middle name – at the suggestion of Newman’s business partner, Jimmy Key, who had lined up an album deal for his writer client and felt plain old Tom Hall wouldn’t cut it as a recording artist.
Hall is as much a poet and philosopher, a peerless observer of the human condition, as he is a songwriter
Hall had a string of country hits as a writer before things really began to fall into place. In 1968, he was asked to write a prison song for country artist Stonewall Jackson, who was looking to ride the wave of popularity of Johnny Cash’s live recordings in jails. But Hall – who’d been writing up to half-a-dozen songs a day for Newman and Key – found himself struggling because he’d never had any experience of heavy-duty incarceration. His wife, Iris, known throughout the country music industry as Miss Dixie, suggested he try writing about what he knew. That triggered a memory of an unexpected spell behind bars in a small town, when his being detained following a traffic violation coincided with the death of the local judge’s mother, and thus several nights in jail before his case could be dealt with. “So I wrote a song about a week I spent in a country jail,” he explained in his phlegmatic, down-home and riotously entertaining 1979 memoir, The Storyteller’s Nashville. The process was to prove transformative. “I didn’t much care for it,” Hall wrote of the song. “It seemed to come too easy. I was just writing about something that happened to me.”
Hall knew the song wouldn’t work for Jackson’s album and, in the end, never even pitched it to him. Instead, A Week in a Country Jail became the third single to be taken from Hall’s second album as an artist, and his first No 1 on the country chart. It bears all the hallmarks of what would become his signature style. A gentle, meandering shaggy-dog story of a song, it has no chorus and laces its matter-of-fact tone with dry humour, allowing the listener to get carried along by the narrative. Crucially, there’s no spite or bile or anger: each fresh twist in the ludicrous situation is met with simply expressed, clear-headed description, the song’s narrator a baffled observer merely chronicling the story, letting the listener carry out the interpretation. The words are simple and direct, with a gimlet-like eye for detail. Every piece of information, every snatch of dialogue, feels utterly believable, and the song’s warmth and humour spring from the language used as much as from the laid-back delivery.
Hall discusses the responsibility he felt to tell people's stories with care, sensitivity and respect
The success of this approach led Hall to embark on a journey with a friend, the pair heading out into the Kentucky hills to find the people and the stories Hall knew were out there to provide grist to his writing mill. The trip provided the basis for his 1971 album, In Search of a Song, and set both a template that Hall continued to work from over the following decades, and the ethics for how that approach would work. What’s most curious about songs that sound so relaxed and easygoing is how much angst some of them seem to have caused their creator. In his memoir, Hall devotes a chapter to a discussion of the responsibility he felt to tell others’ stories with care, sensitivity and respect, and of the conflicted emotions he experienced over using his gift for songcraft. It is an extraordinary passage of writing, and offers a rare glimpse deep into the heart of the creative process.
“I felt a tinge of guilt putting real live people into my songs,” he wrote. “There were some judgments to be made, and I often wondered if it was fair to sort of prostitute the lives and legends of my hometown for a song … There were debts to pay for every song I wrote from my travels. I had escaped my environment, and yet I longed for the simplicity and the independence that was demonstrated by the people that I had left behind. I had to learn that we never escape who we are.”
Partly as a consequence, Hall also learned to cover his tracks. The Year Clayton Delaney Died, a song about a teenage guitarist who had been a vital inspiration to him as a child, sticks to the facts of his subject’s life as Hall knew them, but he changed the man’s name: uncomfortable with creating an unrelated pseudonym, he chose “Clayton” after a hill near where the man had lived, and “Delaney” after a family who lived on the hill. The song implies that death is not something that happens one day and is dealt with the next, and for a child, the impact may be particularly long-lasting. He never mentions it in the lyric, but Delaney died the same year as Hall’s mother did, so this eulogy to an early musical mentor also stands as a meditation on how a child deals with bereavement in a broader sense. And regardless of the care he took to disguise his subject, those close to him still knew. Years later, killing time in a bar in Kentucky between gigs, Hall saw a rock band with an exceptional guitarist: struck by something in his playing style and presentation, he went up to introduce himself between sets. The guitarist turned out to be Delaney’s son – and Hall wrote a song about that, too.
In his memoir, Hall said that he never wanted to be great, just to be good, and you believe him
Hall’s best-known song in Britain is probably (Old Dogs, Children and) Watermelon Wine. He wrote it in 1972 following a gig at the Democratic National Convention in Miami: improbably, the party had felt a good way to avoid a repeat of the violence that had broken out at its 1968 convention in Chicago was to hold a free country gig in a local park. After the show, Hall stopped for a nightcap; in a scene that sounds like an Edward Hopper painting come to life, he was the only customer, and a conversation took place with an “old, grey black gentleman” who was cleaning the bar. The song relates their ensuing conversation. Hall wrote it on a flight the next day, scribbling the lyric on the only paper to hand – an airline sick bag. It topped the US country chart but was never a hit in the UK: Terry Wogan played it on his BBC Radio 2 show, though, and it struck enough of a chord to end up at No 2 in a poll the station conducted in 1998 to identify the best easy-listening song. It’s not difficult to hear why many people were touched by it: its homespun philosophy may seem overly sentimental, but it offers reassurance that life’s most urgent needs can be met with things that are commonplace and simple, if only we allow ourselves to look for joy in the everyday. It works because of Hall’s tremendous humility – in his memoir, he says that he never wanted to be great, just to be good, and you believe him – and the judgments he hated making are entirely absent, though the listener is left in no doubt where his sympathies lie.
Hall's writing has remained characterised by its detail as by its refreshing lack of ego
His brilliance at observation and his determination to remove himself from the songs and let the stories tell themselves became key traits of his lyrics. His writing has remained characterised by its detail as by its refreshing lack of ego. Introductions and openings are constructed with particular care, always placing the listener at the heart of the subject, encouraging you to observe the story as it goes on around you, rather than plonking you in a seat and showing you a film someone might have made about it. There is no way someone who listens to music (as opposed to just hearing it) can come across a song that starts with the line “The man who preached the funeral said it really was a simple way to die” (Ballad of Forty Dollars) and not want to know what happens next. His two books on songwriting (The Songwriter’s Handbook and How I Write Songs, Why You Can) are as direct and to the point as his best lyrics, and the novels he’s published have been pretty fine, too. Famous fans have included Johnny Cash and Kurt Vonnegut, and you can see why titans of American letters would have felt a kinship with the guy from Olive Hill.
Acclaim from within the country establishment has run the gamut, from an armful of BMI awards and election to the Country Hall of Fame, to a 1998 tribute album where his songs were covered by everyone from Cash and Ralph Stanley to Calexico and Ron Sexsmith. Hall retired eight years ago, but his final album, Tom T Hall Sings Miss Dixie and Tom T, might well be his best. Played superbly, with the settings all redolent of the bluegrass music he grew up with, the album included new songs that underscored everything that was great about Hall’s work: matter-of-fact explanations of how changing times and old songs can make someone feel blue, stories of ordinary people from the Kentucky hills, and wry looks at how life sometimes doesn’t work out as expected. In A Hero in Harlan, he wrote what was then and remains today, hands down, the best song about the US’s 21st-century wars, which cuts through the bile and anger and gets to the humanity at the core of the matter.
Despite songs such as Watergate Blues or The Monkey That Became President, Hall has never been a dogmatic or large-P “Political” writer: A Hero in Harlan shows both the wisdom of that approach and how necessary a voice like his is today, amid the increasing clamour between embedded ideologies, where the substance gets lost in the point-scoring. Even if age wasn’t a factor – and there is something tremendously affecting when you hear him sounding older on that final LP – you sense today’s pop culture landscape is too cynical a place for songs like these to exist. Perhaps he got out at the right time. But it’s a great pity that Hall is no longer making music, because we’ve never needed a voice and a mind like his more. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/dec/12/neil-young-claims-victory-in-fight-against-concert-sponsor-barclaycard-bob-dylan-british-summer-time | Music | 2018-12-12T15:33:38.000Z | Laura Snapes | Neil Young claims victory in protest against Barclaycard | Neil Young has claimed victory in his protest against Barclaycard, which was due to sponsor his Hyde Park concert with Bob Dylan in London next summer.
He said on Tuesday that the show, on 12 July 2019, would proceed without the sponsor. “We are so overjoyed, so happy to be playing the show!” Young wrote in a new post on his website, Neil Young Archives (NYA), titled: “Sponsored by nobody.”
Young had previously criticised promoter British Summer Time (BST), which stages a series of high-profile concerts, all sponsored by Barclaycard, for working with what he called a “fossil fuel funding entity” and for announcing the event before he had agreed to the details. “That doesn’t work for me,” he wrote in a now-deleted post on NYA.
The promoter confirmed that the co-headlining performance with Dylan would go ahead, but would no longer be a BST show. A spokesman said: “Neil Young and Bob Dylan will play a standalone concert in Hyde Park on the same date, 12 July. All tickets will remain valid.”
The promoter said the rest of the BST festival programme, including performances by Florence + the Machine and Robbie Williams, would be unaffected by the decision. Young performed at the festival in 2014 under Barclaycard sponsorship.
Barclaycard told the BBC it would not comment on the situation.
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Barclays received a D+ rating in a 2018 report by the non-profit group Banking on Climate Change, which listed the bank as a major funder of fossil fuel extraction.
Young’s manager, Elliot Roberts, apologised to the NYA community for not ensuring that they could purchase tickets first. A new post on NYA indicates that followers will receive early access to tickets.
Young recently criticised US president Donald Trump for his reluctance to act on climate change after California wildfires destroyed his home. “California is vulnerable – not because of poor forest management as DT (our so-called president) would have us think,” Young wrote . “We are vulnerable because of climate change; the extreme weather events and our extended drought is part of it.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/dec/18/asif-kapadia-interview-amy-winehouse | Film | 2015-12-18T08:30:42.000Z | Henry Barnes | Amy director Asif Kapadia: ‘When you look at it now, she was a kid doing stupid things’ | How does it feel to have Amy in our “best of 2015” list?
It’s great. Her friends have said the film puts Amy back where she belongs: as an amazing talent, but also a funny, beautiful human being. That’s not always the way she came across in the media.
The film gives everyone a chance to atone for how she was treated …
Yes. It wasn’t just about her, it was about us – how we treat people. We build them up and rip them down. So it was about getting the audience to think about our complicity. When you look at it now, she was a kid doing stupid things. You needed a grownup to come in there and stop it.
Releasing Amy: the inside story of the Winehouse documentary
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Are there too few grownups in the music industry?
There must be some responsibility. These people are growing up in public. When it’s going well there are a lot of people around them – when it’s not they’re not around. My agent in America saw the film and said it’s the first time he’s felt guilty about what he does for living. I was like: “Good!”.
A still from the film Amy. Photograph: Jeff Kravitz
Do you think you and Amy would have got on?
No. I’m 10 years older. But I got along with a lot of her friends, so maybe we could have. She might not have thought much of “that film director bloke”.
Are you sick of her music?
I’m not. I love the live music we’ve got in the movie. I sometimes play it while I’m working. I’m more in love with her as an artist than I was before. The meaning of the music is deeper now. It’s not just pop music, which is what we all thought. It’s heavy listening.
Does success like this give you a taste of what she experienced?
I’ve had films that everyone hates. If you’ve had ups and downs, maybe you’re toughened. She made two records: the first one did OK, the second one was a mega hit. What she needed was a failure. One of those difficult third albums that are banged out and nobody bought. Then she’d have had a bit of freedom. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/apr/15/richard-desmonds-stan-myerson-northern-shell | Media | 2016-04-15T13:47:55.000Z | Mark Sweney | Richard Desmond's right-hand man Stan Myerson to leave after 21 years | Richard Desmond’s right-hand man Stan Myerson is to leave Northern & Shell after 21 years.
Myerson joined Northern & Shell from Express Newspapers in 1995, prior to Desmond’s takeover of the parent of the Daily Express, Sunday Express, Daily Star and Daily Star Sunday in 2000.
The South African, who turned 65 in March, has decided to step down from his role as group joint managing director to spend more time with his family.
“My old friend Stan has been a great colleague and brother-in-arms for many years and through his dedication, hard work and support, he has played a significant part in the growth and ultimate success of Northern & Shell,” said N&S chairman Desmond.
“I have thanked him for all he has done to help take the business through massive periods of change over the years and he leaves the commercial side of the group in a great shape that’s future-ready. Personally, I will miss him enormously and wish him well as he spends more time with his close family.”
Myerson, who qualified as a barrister in South Africa before heading to the UK and joining the Daily Star in 1979, leaves his role in July.
“For the last 21 years, Richard, my fellow directors and the team at Northern & Shell have been more than colleagues and through the natural rhythm of high-profile business, we been have privileged to enjoy success beyond our imagination and have faced huge challenges together,” said Myerson.
“We faced huge challenges together. But we won through-and-through each time! I have enjoyed every moment of it and as such, my decision to step down was not an easy one to make. But just like our shared philosophies about business, Richard and I share similar attitudes about life in general and he has been very understanding about my next chapter. The business is in a fantastic shape and I look forward to watching its future onward success.”
The commercial side of the business will be handled by commercial director Toby Morris, who joined from AOL last year, who will report to Rob Sanderson, N&S’s group finance director.
Stan Myerson CV
2000: Group joint managing director, Express Newspapers and Northern & Shell
1999: Group joint managing director, Northern & Shell
1995: Group ad sales director, Northern & Shell
1994: Assistant to managing director, Express Newspapers
1983: Group advertising contracts controller, Express Newspapers
1981: Ad manager, Daily Express
1979: Group head, Daily Star
1974: Solicitor in his native South Africa | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/jul/29/the-week-in-classical-itch-jonathan-dove-opera-holland-park-semele-glyndebourne-adele-thomas-prom-16-halle-mark-elder | Music | 2023-07-29T11:30:37.000Z | Stephen Pritchard | The week in classical: Itch; Semele; Prom 16: Hallé/Elder – review | It’s amazing what a bit of holiday reading can achieve. Unwinding in the sun, James Clutton, the enterprising artistic director of Opera Holland Park (OHP), reached for one of Simon Mayo’s adventure yarns and was immediately struck by its operatic potential. Last week, that poolside inspiration burst into sparkling, vivid life with the world premiere of Itch, an exciting, moving, relevant new opera – and an undoubted hit.
Composer Jonathan Dove and librettist Alasdair Middleton have devised a compelling piece of music theatre, telling a fast-paced story with power, grace and wit that will surely go into the repertory. Clear direction from Stephen Barlow and stylish design by Frankie Bradshaw add hugely to the whole experience.
Itch is Itchingham Lofte, an endearingly nerdy schoolboy desperate to collect all the elements in the periodic table. His obsession translates to the ingenious set: the periodic table itself, made up of illuminated boxes that spell out the element symbols while doubling as a screen for some impressive video images. Itch’s quest leads to the discovery of a rock containing a previously unknown element, a source of energy that could end the climate crisis or – in the wrong hands – be a danger to the entire planet. In a week when people voted against Ulez while swathes of Europe went up in flames, this piece could hardly be more timely.
‘Mozart didn’t have explosions’: Simon Mayo on how his book Itch became an opera
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Dove’s pulsing, shimmering score imbues Middleton’s strong, direct libretto with a hectic urgency, pushing the narrative along, with only rare moments of traditional operatic introspection. It’s an exhilarating ride, one made all the more intense by the startling range of colour Dove extracts from just 12 members of the City of London Sinfonia; wind, brass with percussion and a single violin, cello and bass, all tightly controlled by conductor Jessica Cottis.
Clean-toned tenor Adam Temple-Smith makes an impressive OHP debut as the irrepressible Itch, one half of a splendid daring duo with his kleptomaniac sister, Jack (bright soprano Natasha Agarwal). Seasoned American baritone Eric Greene also makes a welcome debut at Holland Park, giving a tender portrayal of their father, Nicholas.
Dove’s hugely successful opera Flight (1998) features a coloratura soprano as a domineering air traffic controller and a mystical countertenor who wanders lost in an airport. Characters who mirror those originals turn up in Itch: spectacular Rebecca Bottone is the permanently angry boss of a dodgy energy company, Greencorps, and lyrical James Laing is an eco-conscious beach bum. There’s excellent support from soprano Victoria Simmonds as teacher Miss Watkins and baritone Nicholas Garrett as a scheming Flowerdew, the villain of the piece.
The never-ending slate-grey skies of her Port Talbot childhood form the backdrop for Adele Thomas’s debut production at Glyndebourne. To her, those skies represented a hemming in of her ambition, a paradoxical limitless horizon that gave no opportunity to move out into it. She translates that feeling of claustrophobia to ancient Thebes in Handel’s Semele, where the eponymous heroine feels trapped by her father’s demands that she make a loveless marriage. Semele has other ideas. She doesn’t want to just leave Thebes, she wants to live with the gods, and she sees Jove, king of them all, as her passport to immortality – an ambition that is to be her fiery undoing.
Disappointingly, those grey skies rarely clear. They permeate Annemarie Woods’s stage design and Hannah Clark’s costumes. Chilly blacks and greys inform the mood of the whole piece, which feels strangely subdued and withdrawn, even when Jove is in his pastoral paradise – though his fetching citrus suit does relieve the gloom.
‘Vocal vibrancy’: Joélle Harvey in the title role, and Stuart Jackson as Jove, in Semele. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian
Part of the problem is the work itself. It was conceived as an English oratorio, which is a different animal from Handel’s other great oeuvre, Italian opera. Yes, it features spectacularly operatic showpiece arias in the Italianate da capo style, but the greater emphasis on chorus numbers, however beautifully sung, slows the narrative and weighs down the drama. Thomas attempts to alleviate this by giving the chorus stylised movements and gestures, but on a raised platform strewn with debris that inhibits their ability to move about freely.
A fine cast of principals bring a refreshing range of vocal vibrancy to this drab scene, aided by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, under Václav Luks, making his Glyndebourne debut. American soprano Joélle Harvey in the title role is a bright, vivacious star, while her Jove, tenor Stuart Jackson, rarely thunders. Instead, he is all tender sensitivity (Where’er Ye Walk is almost a whisper). Mezzo Stephanie Wake-Edwards is an implacable Ino, sister to Semele, and Jennifer Johnston makes a scarily imperious Juno, who wakes Somnus (splendid Clive Bayley) to wreak her revenge on Semele. Yet Thomas’s cult-like Thebans turn Semele’s immolation into a disturbing, distasteful spectacle, as far from an ecstatic death as can be imagined.
The annual Proms visit by Sir Mark Elder and the Hallé is always an event, but this year’s Russian programme was exceptional. Can there be a current British orchestra with a better string sound? The sheer finesse they brought to Shostakovich’s fifth symphony was ravishing, particularly in their wondrous handling of the pianissimo passages in the first movement and the central largo. The romping bombast of the finale was terrifying, but again it was the glistening pianissimos within that movement that really impressed.
‘Always an event’: Mark Elder and company at Prom 16. Photograph: Chris Christodoulou
We began with Rachmaninov’s curiously dark choral symphony The Bells, based on the florid poetry of Edgar Allan Poe, which honours the bells that mark the joys and sorrows of life. Even with 220 singers, the combined Hallé and BBC Symphony choruses struggled at times to be heard above the huge orchestra, but the glorious voices of soprano Mané Galoyan, tenor Dmytro Popov and baritone Andrei Kymach rang through the texture with appropriate bell-like insistence.
Star ratings (out of five)
Itch ★★★★★
Semele ★★★
Prom 16 ★★★★
Itch is at Opera Holland Park, London, until 4 August
Semele is at Glyndebourne, East Sussex, until 26 August
All Proms are available on BBC Sounds. The Proms continue until 9 September. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/jul/06/robert-mcnamara-obituary | US news | 2009-07-06T16:01:53.000Z | Harold Jackson | Obituary: Robert McNamara, former US defence secretary | The career of the former US secretary of defence Robert McNamara, who has died aged 93, had few parallels in American history. During his lifetime he was perceived as a high-flying academic, a widely admired business executive, a ruthless killer of innocent women and children, and the man who did most to alleviate the developing world's chronic poverty. There was some validity in all these perspectives.
From his earliest years in San Francisco, McNamara was obviously exceptionally talented. He was one of the brightest pupils to come out of Piedmont high school, but the Depression left his family little money for his further education. When he discovered that tuition at the University of California, Berkeley, would cost only $52 a year, McNamara enrolled for courses in economics, mathematics and philosophy. He wrote later that "the defining moments in my education came in my philosophy and mathematics curricula. The ethics courses forced me to shape my values; studying logic exposed me to rigour and precision in thinking."
In 1939 he emerged with first-class honours in economics and, after securing a master's degree from Harvard business school, became an accountant with Price Waterhouse. But he had left such a strong impression at Harvard that in 1940 it invited him to join its faculty as assistant professor of accounting. That year, he married his teenage sweetheart, Margaret Craig.
War was already raging in Europe and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor came a year after McNamara assumed his new post. Poor eyesight precluded him from military service, but he volunteered to train air force staff in the statistical control of the nation's vast programme to provide aircraft, munitions and crews for global warfare. The effectiveness of this work led to his transfer to Britain in 1943 to set up a control system for the Eighth Air Force's bombing campaign in Europe. His skill in ensuring that planes were ready when needed, loaded with the appropriate bombs and with the required pilots, navigators, bomb-aimers and gunners won him the Legion of Merit and the rank of lieutenant-colonel.
Just after the war had ended, Margaret contracted a severe case of polio that required medical treatment he could not afford. Instead of returning to Harvard, and with his reputation as an administrator, he joined nine of his military colleagues in a team offering management expertise to commercial organisations. Henry Ford II, whose motor company was in deep trouble at the time, took up the team's offer and let its members loose on a root-and-branch shake-up of his firm. The so-called "whiz kids" were deeply unpopular with other executives, but their reorganisation and decentralisation of Ford was later cited as one of the business triumphs of postwar America.
McNamara rose steadily up the company ladder: assistant general manager of the car division, group executive, and eventually the first non-member of the Ford family to become the company's president. This attainment coincided with John F Kennedy's election to the White House and, seven weeks after starting his new job, McNamara was offered a choice of posts in the new administration – treasury or defence.
He opted to become defence secretary on the understanding that he could select his own senior staff, a promise Kennedy kept in spite of the political difficulties some choices presented. In fact, it soon became evident that the new cabinet officer had much to learn about politics.
One of Kennedy's major campaign issues had been America's supposed "missile gap" with the Soviet Union. McNamara, once confirmed by the Senate, conducted an urgent inquiry into how this gap could be closed. At his first press conference he was asked about his findings and responded briskly that the gap was really heavily in America's favour. The Republicans went crazy, some even demanding that the election be rerun.
Such hiccups apart, the new secretary settled in to take control of the military bureaucracy that had burgeoned during the Eisenhower years. The Pentagon had 3.5 million people in uniform and 1 million civilian staff. Its annual expenditure was higher than the national budget of any other Nato country and it was a maze of warring fiefdoms. However, the strategic posture of this vast empire, which McNamara accused of "buying every bright, shiny new gadget that comes along", was to meet any external attack with massive nuclear retaliation. This doomsday approach made no sense to McNamara and he set about reorientating America's defence policy and persuading other members of Nato to concentrate on building up their conventional forces.
He secured funds from Congress to augment US ground forces by 300,000 and to equip them for rapid deployment around the world. He also rationalised procurement policies to stop one service spending vast sums on items only marginally different from those used by another. Along with these changes he restructured the US nuclear arsenal to give the country what he called a "second strike capacity". The prospect of mutual annihilation, he argued, would effectively curb any temptation for Moscow to launch a pre-emptive nuclear attack.
Not long after this realignment had begun, McNamara became increasingly embroiled in the war in Vietnam, stemming from Kennedy's belief that America's reputation with Nato and the non-aligned world would be undermined if it seemed unwilling to protect a small Asian nation from communist subversion. By the time of Kennedy's assassination in 1963 this doctrine had brought 10,000 American "advisers" to South Vietnam. When President Lyndon B Johnson took office, he retained McNamara at the Pentagon and repeatedly sent him to assess the military and political situation on the ground. As McNamara freely acknowledged later, his belief in the domino theory in South-East Asia – that a communist victory in Vietnam would lead to the successive collapse of all surrounding governments – was "limited and shallow".
America became mired ever more deeply in the conflict. A year into Johnson's presidency the number of American troops had doubled. The following year saw a further fourfold increase and American deaths reached 500. By the time Johnson decided to leave the White House, more than 180,000 American troops were involved and 16,000 had been killed. (By the time of the Paris Accords in 1973, the American toll reached 58,181, the South Vietnamese army's about 200,000 and the North Vietnamese army's and Viet Cong guerrillas' about 900,000. Vietnamese civilian deaths totalled more than one million.)
As the anti-war movement swelled, protesters began to dub the conflict "McNamara's war". He was constantly reviled in public. Once, while lunching with his wife during a Christmas break in Colorado, another diner came to their table to scream: "Baby burner. You have blood on your hands." He acknowledged in his memoirs, In Retrospect (1995), the emotional strain such incidents generated. In fact, his own disenchantment with the war was growing rapidly. He had argued for some time that only the Saigon government could offer a political solution. The Thieu regime's continued vacillation and corruption convinced him that it was time for America to disengage.
On 1 November 1967 he expressed his reservations in a confidential memorandum to President Johnson. "I never received a reply," he recalled later. "Four weeks later President Johnson announced my election as president of the World Bank and my departure from the defence department at an unspecified date. I do not know to this day whether I quit or was fired." In spite of the initial military resistance to his structural and doctrinal reforms at the Pentagon, his departure brought widespread expressions of regret. One of the most fervent came from the army's chief of staff, General Harold Johnson, who said that McNamara was the only defence secretary who had ever actually run the Pentagon.
His tenure at the World Bank lasted for 15 years and was equally momentous. The organisation's principal function is to provide cheap funds for developing nations which, at the time of McNamara's accession, were directed primarily at large industrial projects. Unfortunately, the main effect of such schemes was to enrich local elites and leave millions as deprived as ever. McNamara set out to find new sources of revenue for the bank and to impose conditions on future loans to ensure their benefit was spread more equitably. He embarked on a strenuous campaign to raise money, not only from member countries but from the international capital markets and from the newly affluent Arab oil states.
The effect of his financial initiative was that an institution that had been lending about $1,000m a year when he joined was disbursing $12,500m a year when he left. The bank's total commitment to developing nations rose in those 15 years from $13,000m to $92,000m.
He also shifted the emphasis of its funding from the grandiose to the practical. Some 70 per cent of the new loans went on projects designed to assist rural development. Even so, when he retired in 1981, McNamara said that the bank "had barely begun to develop its full potential" and he spent his later years strenuously writing and lecturing about the dangers of world poverty.
He also continued as a campaigner for arms reduction. In a study published in 1990, he argued: "We can enter the 21st century with a far more stable relationship between east and west and with a totally different military strategy ... vastly smaller nuclear forces, conventional forces in balance and in a defensive, rather than offensive, posture."
His wife Margaret died in 1981. In 2004 he married Diana Byfield; she survives him, along with a son, Craig, and two daughters, Margaret and Kathleen, from his first marriage.
This article was amended on 10 July 2009 to correct the identities of South Vietnamese leaders in the picture caption.
Robert Strange McNamara, public administrator, born 9 June 1916; died 6 July 2009 | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/jan/23/american-sniper-propaganda-political-row | Film | 2015-01-23T19:21:33.000Z | Andrew Pulver | American Sniper: propaganda movie or tale the nation needed to hear? | The record-breaking box office figures achieved by the new Clint Eastwood film American Sniper over the past week have caused consternation among Hollywood liberals and bitterly divided critics, some viewing it as Republican propaganda while others argue that it celebrates a true American hero.
When the big-screen adaptation of the bestselling memoir by former Navy Seal Chris Kyle went into wide release on 16 January, after a limited initial opening on Christmas Day, box office analysts were confident it would be a big hit. The industry expected it would take around $42m (£28m).
But when the dust settled after the weekend, box office reports showed the film had accrued almost double – some $90m (£60.1m) – the sort of figure more usually associated with special effects summer blockbusters. The US public holiday on 19 January, Martin Luther King Day, helped swell coffers even further, taking the total past $107m.
American Sniper’s commercial success immediately became a political issue, with high-profile commentators taking the opportunity to excoriate “Hollywood leftists” who supposedly underestimated the interest of the so-called “flyover states” in a heroic presentation of a serving US soldier.
Sarah Palin, former governor of Alaska, wrote a Facebook post telling them: “Just realise the rest of America knows you’re not fit to shine Chris Kyle’s combat boots.” The documentary film-maker Michael Moore, best known for the anti-George W Bush film Fahrenheit 9/11, tweeted “Snipers aren’t heroes” – though later denied he had meant to criticise the film itself.
American Sniper has split critics too. In New York magazine David Edelstein bluntly called it a “scandalously blinkered … propaganda film” and “a Republican platform movie”; the National Review, on the other hand, judged that American Sniper is “a phenomenal movie … [that] reached a great nation with a story it needed to hear”. But if the success of the film has taken many by surprise, some suggest it is not entirely unexpected. Steven Gaydos, executive editor of Variety, suggests that politics has played less of a part in its popularity than has been surmised.
“Hollywood options bestselling books all the time,” he says, “and they turn them into blockbusters quite frequently. Bradley Cooper is a major movie star and he’s been driving this project. Clint Eastwood has two best picture Oscars and is a revered star and film-maker. Does any of that sound like this is an accidental hit?”
Gaydos also points out that Steven Spielberg – largely identified with the Hollywood liberal cause – was originally due to direct the film, but dropped out in 2013 over budget issues. What the film would have looked like with Spielberg in the director’s chair is open to debate, but the Hollywood Reporter’s analysis of the marketing of the film suggests that it certainly helped having Eastwood, overtly aligned with the political right, on board.
The notion that American Sniper only appeals to “red state” cinemagoers now appears to be overstating the case. While eight out of the 10 best-performing markets for the film are in the south or midwest US, New York Post film editor Lou Lumenick pointed out the film’s fourth top-grossing theatre is in Manhattan and its top-grossing state is California, suggesting it’s “clearly not just a Red State phenomenon”.
Added to which, the suggestion that American Sniper’s resonance with the mass audience is leaving the Oscar voters to scrabble to catch up also looks to be unfounded. The Academy award nominations – which saw it take six nods, including best picture, best actor for Bradley Cooper and best adapted screenplay, but not best director – were announced on 15 January, the same day as its wide release began, meaning the voting happened before word got out of the massive figures.
Gaydos says: “I know a lot of Oscar voters, so anecdotally, I know there’s real respect for what Eastwood and Cooper and the creative team have achieved. Also, if you will notice, the reviews have been very strong, not unanimous, but clearly favourable.”
Gaydos also points to the efficient Oscar campaign run by its backers as an additional reason for its awardsseason clout. “It’s my understanding that Sniper got screeners into the hands of voters almost immediately after premiering at the AFI Film Fest in Los Angeles in mid-November.”
This is in sharp contrast to Selma, the civil rights drama starring David Oyelowo as Martin Luther King that had anticipated Oscar success – and presumably using Martin Luther King Day as a springboard – but found itself largely shut out of the nominations.
Gaydos says that, owing to “technical issues”, Selma screeners did not go out “until the cusp of the Christmas break”. Selma was released in theatres on the same day as American Sniper, but failed to gain anything like the same traction, despite attracting near universal critical adulation.
Can we read American Sniper’s success and Selma’s downturn as a sign that the Oscars are out of touch, only a year after giving 12 Years a Slave the top prize? Gaydos scoffs at such theories, suggesting that Sniper’s extraordinary popularity makes it a special case. “Keep in mind that American Sniper has made twice as much money in theatres in one weekend in America than 12 Years a Slave made in its entire run.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/03/scientology-linked-uk-rehab-centre-left-vulnerable-people-traumatised | World news | 2024-02-03T17:25:54.000Z | Shanti Das | Scientology-linked UK drug rehab left vulnerable people ‘traumatised’ | An unregulated rehab centre linked to the Church of Scientology put mentally ill people through intense psychological drills that allegedly left them “traumatised” and in “trance-like” states, an investigation by the Observer can reveal.
Former patients and staff at Narconon UK say vulnerable people seeking help for addiction were expected to complete mental exercises, similar to methods used in Scientology’s controversial “auditing” process, at a secluded compound in rural Sussex.
Before arriving, they had thought Narconon was offering a holistic approach to rehabilitation and were drawn in by promises it could help them get “drug free for good”.
In a call with an undercover reporter, a Narconon salesperson also claimed the programme was “not related” to Scientology. But over a three-month period, participants were allegedly subjected to methods near identical to those used by the religious movement.
In some cases they took part in the repetitive “drills” for so long, while in vulnerable states due to their mental health or past substance use, that they would zone out, become paranoid or break down, according to corroborating testimony from people familiar with the programme. Participants were also allegedly left feeling suicidal and as though their minds had been “shattered” by the exercises – which often involved following commands such as “stand up, sit down”, or pointing at different objects. The drills could last up to five hours a day, for several weeks.
Narconon said the drills, based on writings by L Ron Hubbard, Scientology’s founder, were “mentally strenuous” and required discipline but had helped save lives. It said they were not a religious doctrine but had a “positive secular application”.
Experts and witnesses likened the methods to a form of obedience training. People working at the facility were also expected to complete the programme.
The allegations raise questions over how a rehab with links to one of the world’s most controversial religious movements, accused of abusive practices, is able to operate unregulated in Britain.
Marketed as “world class”, and listed in an NHS directory, Narconon’s Sussex facility, on a nine-acre campus near the town of Heathfield, opened in 2015. But it has not been inspected since 2016, and has never been assessed to ensure its programme is effective or safe. Instead, it has been operating without oversight for the last five years due to a regulation loophole, the Observer’s investigation has found, and remains free of the same scrutiny that other addiction programmes face.
While the Care Quality Commission (CQC) oversees substance misuse services, it says Narconon’s programme is not within its remit and suggested this was because its approach was “alternative”.
It said the service was not known to be providing any regulated activities and had been considered dormant since 2019.
Records released under freedom of information laws show that in that time, the watchdog has received 14 complaints which it did not formally investigate, saying it had no duty to do so. Despite this, Narconon continues to display a “good” CQC rating on its website, from a prior inspection which assessed its accommodation, management and provision of personal care – but not the programme itself.
Dr David Bremner, medical director at addiction charity Turning Point, said the loophole showed the need for better regulation. The Department of Health declined to comment.
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The Observer’s investigation also suggests Narconon is more closely linked to Scientology than it lets on. Its operations are supported by the Narconon Trust, which is principally funded by the International Association of Scientologists. Senior staff are members of the church.
‘My mind had been shattered into a million pieces’: inside the Scientology-linked UK rehab centre
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In Scientology’s “auditing” process, Scientologists complete exercises they believe will help them become spiritually enlightened. To learn the skills Scientology says are needed for auditing, followers take part in a series of drills known as “training routines”. These include following repetitive commands, sitting perfectly still or undergoing persistent questioning – closely resembling drills used at Narconon.
Prof Sally Marlow from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College London, said the approach did not sound therapeutic. “It is extremely concerning,” she said.
Narconon UK, the charity behind the facility, said its “students” were assessed by a GP before the programme, which also includes long sauna sessions, high doses of vitamins and costs about £15,000. It said it was not a medical treatment and did not have patients, so did not need to be registered with the CQC as a substance misuse service. Sheila Maclean, Narconon UK’s manager, said it was “deeply regrettable” that some people did “not get on” with its methods but insisted they were safe. “Even the best-run services have their critics,” she said. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/nov/23/companies-still-investing-too-much-in-fossil-fuels-global-energy-watchdog-says | Business | 2023-11-23T05:00:48.000Z | Jillian Ambrose | Companies still investing too much in fossil fuels, global energy watchdog says | Fossil fuel companies are investing twice as much in oil and gas as they should if the world hopes to limit rising global temperatures to avert a climate catastrophe, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
The world’s energy watchdog said that the sector still had “minimal” engagement with the global clean energy transition, and continued to contribute just 1% of clean energy investment globally.
In a special report before the Cop28 climate talks in Dubai, which begin on 30 November, the agency called on the oil and gas industry to show commitment to tackling pollution by balancing its investments in clean energy and fossil fuels.
Grangemouth oil refinery to shut down, raising concern for 500 jobs
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The IEA executive director, Fatih Birol, said the industry faces “a moment of truth” in which it must “make profound decisions” about its role.
“With the world suffering the impacts of a worsening climate crisis, continuing with business as usual is neither socially nor environmentally responsible,” he said.
If governments deliver on their national energy and climate pledges then demand for fossil fuels would fall 45% below the current level by 2050, the IEA said. If climate policies are accelerated to meet the goal of limiting global heating to within 1.5C of pre-industrialised levels then fossil fuel use would decline by more than 75% by 2050.
Birol said rising public outrage against the fossil fuel industry was likely to grow as the link between extreme weather events and carbon emissions became better understood.
“This is a very important development. The more we see these extreme weather events the harder it will be for the industry to justify a failure to act. Many claim that they want to be part of the fight against climate change but it’s time that they show this,” he said.
Oil and gas companies spend about 2.5% of their capital on clean energy technologies such as renewables and electric vehicle charging, compared with 97.5% on traditional business areas, according to Birol.
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He said the split should be at least 50% on clean energy, and that companies should also take action to cut the emissions from their fossil fuel production.
Oil and gas companies have reported annual revenues of almost $3.5tn (£2.8tn) in the past five years, according to the IEA. The agency said about half of this was paid to governments, and 40% went back into investment, leaving about 10% to be returned to shareholders or used to pay down debt. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/nov/24/peter-gleeson-leaves-news-corp-after-multiple-instances-of-plagiarism-discovered | Media | 2022-11-24T07:57:58.000Z | Amanda Meade | Peter Gleeson leaves News Corp’s Courier-Mail and Sky News after multiple instances of plagiarism | The Sky News presenter and Courier-Mail columnist Peter Gleeson has left News Corp after multiple instances of plagiarism were uncovered.
The Courier-Mail announced his fate on Thursday, and it did not pull any punches: “In a personal note to The Courier-Mail editor Chris Jones today Mr Gleeson said: ‘I apologise for breaching News Corp’s Code of Conduct and instances where I have not met the standards required’.
“This follows recent examples of material first written by others appearing in articles published under Mr Gleeson’s byline.
Courier-Mail columnist Peter Gleeson caught out plagiarising for third time
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“In his note Mr Gleeson said he had had extraordinary career opportunities during a 34-year career with News Corp and added that ‘it is a fantastic company for which I have the greatest respect’.”
It is a humiliating end for Gleeson, a former editor of several Murdoch newspapers and a rightwing mouthpiece for Sky News where he is close to the CEO, Paul Whittaker.
Earlier this week the Guardian reported he had filled almost half a column with the unattributed reporting of a regional ABC journalist.
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The plagiarism was identified by Australians for a Murdoch Royal Commission which has been trawling through Gleeson’s work since he was caught out for similar offences – including by Guardian Australia, which revealed he filled 62% of an article with copy from a Queensland parliament factsheet.
In his Gleeso Confidential column, the former editor of the Sunday Mail used hundreds of words from the official document without quotation marks.
“The Queensland Parliament is unique among Australian state parliaments as it is unicameral, that is, it only has one chamber,” he wrote without attribution.
“Unicameral legislatures are uncommon in Westminster parliamentary democracies.
“The standard parliamentary model in Westminster democracies includes two chambers consisting of a lower house and an upper house of review.”
The article then goes on to copy 21 further paragraphs from the factsheet.
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Gleeson’s plagiarism first came to attention when he was caught lifting four paragraphs of political analysis from the then ABC Brisbane reporter Josh Bavas.
Gleeson’s feature formed part of a 12-page “Special Investigation by Peter Gleeson” in the Saturday paper headlined “Power and Palaszczuk”. It was a hit job on the Queensland premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk.
After Bavas posted his article side-by-side on Twitter with Gleeson’s article, Courier-Mail staff demanded to know what Jones was going to do about the plagiarism.
Jones told them he was taking it seriously and posted an uncharacteristically frank note for a News Corp editor on the offending online article: “Editor’s note: A previous version of this story included four paragraphs which were not the author’s work. News Corporation’s Code of Conduct states that ‘plagiarism is theft’. The Courier-Mail apologises for this error.”
The Courier-Mail published a page-four apology from Gleeson in which he claimed the plagiarism was “unintentional”.
“I deeply regret the fact that material written by another journalist appeared under my byline in The Courier-Mail last Saturday,” he said. “This was not a deliberate act by me to use another person’s work and present it as my own.”
But after further revelations of plagiarism, including by the ABC’s Media Watch which found Gleeson took big chunks of a 2015 story by the ex-Courier-Mail journalist Jason Tin, he was let go. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/aug/14/a-little-history-of-religion-richard-holloway-review | Books | 2016-08-14T07:30:29.000Z | Peter Stanford | A Little History of Religion by Richard Holloway – review | Those who write about religion tend to have an axe to grind. Believers strain credulity to prove that gods exist, or at least their version of them. Meanwhile the violently anti-religious burn an equivalent amount of energy in seeking to demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt that such claims are plain bunkum – and damaging, cruel, sometimes murderous bunkum at that.
Thank God, then – if I can use that phrase in a neutral way – for Richard Holloway and his carefully weighted, beautifully written and strangely compelling brief history of world religions. For he takes no sides but instead manages to be fair to all in his wise judgments, while instinctively understanding both the appeal of faith and its pitfalls.
As well he might, for Holloway is famously a bishop who stopped believing in God. A former head of the Anglican (Episcopal) Church in Scotland, he has spoken since his resignation in 2000 of a lifelong struggle to believe. Today a popular broadcaster and prolific writer, he is an agnostic, but bears no grudge against the religious calling that took up so much of his adult life.
What threads the book together as it travels around the globe and through millennia, charting the growth and (sometimes) the decline of religions, is Holloway’s parallel search for what it is in the human situation and psyche that has made us hanker after religion in the first place. He puts it down to us still wanting to know where we come from as a species, what our place is in the universe, and most of all a fear of being alone. In the simplest of terms, religion feeds our appetite for hope – whether it be building communities around shared rituals and beliefs, creating an ultimate dispenser of justice, or just imagining life after life.
Holloway tells his story in more or less chronological order from 130,000BC – the era when evidence of religious belief in the way our ancestors buried their dead first emerged – right through to today’s Scientologists, secular humanists and scary fundamentalists. Most writers who attempt such a sweep end up giving the religions they know best – by upbringing, culture or preference – too great a prominence. Not Holloway, though: he shows no favouritism to the various branches of the Christian family and is just as authoritative on Islam as he is on Anglicanism.
And as clear-sighted. In the current, polarised climate in the Middle East, it is often deemed politic to avoid pointing out how derivative much of Muhammad’s message was when he started to preach it in 613, or indeed the large debt that Islam owes to Judaism. Holloway, though, has no time for such fudging. “There was,” he states plainly, “nothing original about his message and Muhammad never claimed there was. It was a reminder [to his hearers, the first Muslims] of what they had forgotten. It was the message of the prophet Abraham; idols were dupes and there was no God but God.”
Methodists and Baptists might feel slighted at being entirely overlooked when Quakers get a whole chapter to themselves
He is just as blunt about anyone who claims to have a brand new insight into the divine mind and sets up his own religion (and they are almost entirely men). “Religions are a dime a dozen,” he writes, as ever giving the overview, even in the midst of an avalanche of detail. “And there’s always room for another in the spiritual marketplace. The game changes when the new creed starts threatening the profits and privileges of the established set-up.” That, he points out, is what happened with Jesus in first-century Jerusalem, just as surely as it did with Muhammad in seventh-century Mecca.
Which brings us neatly to the question of religious violence. It is a commonplace in the west today that religion is the cause of all the violence in the world. Some experts, though, have argued persuasively against this view, among them the eminent religious historian Karen Armstrong – another person formerly of faith (she was a Catholic nun) who now stands back and takes a dispassionate view. Violence purportedly carried out in the name of God, she holds, is nearly always in reality caused by other factors – political, social, racial and economic.
Holloway half accepts Armstrong’s point, but is less inclined to absolve religion itself. It has still caused, he insists, some of the worst violence in history. “So if we mean by God the loving creator of the universe,” he writes, “then either he doesn’t exist or religion has got him wrong.”
There are, inevitably, drawbacks in trying to cram 130,000 years of history, and the theology that underpins it, into fewer than 260 pages. Methodists and Baptists, for example, might feel slighted at being entirely overlooked when Quakers, much smaller in number, get a whole chapter to themselves.
Equally, compressing the essence of elaborate systems of belief, which have evolved over thousands of years, into pithy and transparent sentences can cause corners to be cut. Next year sees the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther “starting” the Reformation by nailing his 95 theses to the door of a church in Wittenberg, in Germany. Most historians now accept that he never brandished his hammer, but Holloway includes the detail anyway, with no disclaimer. Religions, after all, like their myths and legends.
But these are venial rather than mortal sins. If the book has a message for our times, it comes when Holloway notes the fact that religion has an extraordinary instinct for survival. It is, he writes, “the anvil that has worn out many hammers”.
Since, on such a basis, it is here to stay for the foreseeable future, there can be no better place to learn more about it than in the pages of this enlightening book.
A Little History of Religion is published by Yale University Press (£14.99). Click here to order it for £12.29 | Full |
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