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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/17/japan-pm-fumio-kishida-gives-g7-security-pledge-after-pipe-bomb-attack | World news | 2023-04-17T07:14:51.000Z | Justin McCurry | Japan’s PM gives G7 security pledge after pipe bomb attack | Japan’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida, has vowed to ensure the safety of politicians and officials attending this year’s round of G7 meetings, days after he escaped unharmed after apparently being targeted in a pipe bomb attack.
The incident on Saturday came as foreign ministers began three days of talks in Japan, this year’s G7 president, that will be followed by other high-level meetings culminating in the leaders’ summit in Hiroshima in May.
The attack was an uncomfortable reminder of last summer’s assassination of Shinzo Abe, and again called into question security arrangements for senior politicians and other dignitaries.
Japan’s environment minister, Akihiro Nishimura, who hosted the G7 climate, energy and environment meeting in the northern city of Sapporo this weekend, said security was noticeably tight.
“My security has become even heavier this morning,” he told reporters at his hotel. “It’s so tight I think it is going to be difficult to go out into the city.”
A police officer received minor injuries in the incident involving Kishida, and a suspect – identified by police as Ryuji Kimura, 24 – was arrested on the spot. Kimura was also carrying a knife when he was arrested, as well as a possible second explosive device he dropped at the scene after being tackled by bystanders and police officers, Kyodo news agency reported.
He was initially confronted by local fishers after he reportedly threw what appeared to be a pipe bomb at Kishida, who was visiting a fishing port in Wakayama, western Japan, to campaign for his party’s candidate in an upcoming lower house byelection.
A 54-year-old fisher told Kyodo he had jumped on the suspect “instinctively” after the device had been thrown, as the suspect was “still doing something with his hands”.
Police believe Kimura was armed with two explosive devices, including the one used in the attack, Kyodo said, citing investigative sources. The device exploded as the suspect was being held on the ground, while bodyguards quickly removed Kishida from the scene.
The fishers said they had been surprised by the lack of security surrounding Kishida.
“I never thought a crime like this would happen in my home town, which is a rather small fishing port,” said Tsutomu Konishi, 41, who had been among about 200 people waiting to listen to Kishida’s speech on Saturday.
“I’m still shocked and stunned. At a time when Japan’s prime minister was visiting, perhaps there should have been a metal detector,” added Konishi, who held on to the suspect’s leg while police officers pulled him to the ground.
Another fisher, Masaki Nishide, said Kimura, who had been carrying a silver-grey rucksack, stood out as most of the people attending the speech were local residents.
“People here all dress like me, and nobody carries a backpack; it was only him,” Nishide said. “If I had been in charge of security, I would have asked for a bag check.”
Abe, too, was addressing voters ahead of an election when he was shot dead with a homemade gun fired at close range outside a railway station in Nara, western Japan, last July. The suspect in Saturday’s incident was also able to get within 10 metres of his apparent target.
The suspect in Abe’s murder, Tetsuya Yamagami, has been charged with murder and several other crimes, including violating Japan’s strict gun-control laws.
An investigation revealed serious flaws in the security arrangements for Abe – Japan’s longest-serving prime minister – but most politicians have continued the tradition of making public speeches and mingling with voters.
Kishida, who resumed campaigning immediately after the incident, said it should not be allowed to derail the democratic process. “A violent act taking place during elections, the bedrock of democracy, can never be tolerated,” he told reporters at his residence on Sunday.
The chief cabinet secretary, Hirokazu Matsuno, said police had been instructed to boost G7 security, adding that the government would do everything necessary to ensure that foreign leaders and delegations visiting Hiroshima next month would be kept safe.
Grant Shapps, Britain’s secretary of state for energy security, who attended the Sapporo meeting, said he was confident the leaders’ summit would pass off without incident.
“As politicians, we have to go out and campaign sometimes … it means we have to be exposed to the public,” he told Reuters. “But I am quite sure that in the context of the G7 with our prime minister and other world leaders coming to Japan, we are perfectly safe.”
Police retrieved metal pipes and tools, as well as powder-like substances that could be gunpowder in an eight-hour search of Kimura’s home on Sunday, Kyodo quoted investigative sources as saying.
The motive behind the attack remains unknown, and Kimura has reportedly refused to answer questions until he is accompanied by a lawyer. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2019/jul/26/car-free-east-sussex-coast-modern-art-tour-coastal-culture-trail | Travel | 2019-07-26T05:30:06.000Z | Phoebe Taplin | Show stoppin': a car-free art tour along the East Sussex coast | Eastbourne seafront on a sunny day – palm trees, blue water and a whitewashed, gold-domed pier. The sea breeze brings a honey breath of broom flowers, yellow as highlighter pens, and the plangent sound of seagulls. The kids are cheering up after delayed trains and overcrowded London tubes. I’m hoping for a weekend of art and sea views.
My last trip to Sussex was in February, when I watched a murmuration of starlings swirling over Eastbourne pier at sunset. The area in front of the Congress Theatre’s new glass-fronted reception was then a building site. Now there are pristine paths and plazas with neat, purple banks of Russian sage and lavender, like an architect’s drawing come to life. It’s all part of the revamped Devonshire Quarter, a £54m upgrade to attract conferences.
Next door, Eastbourne’s free Towner gallery, has been in its current building for 10 years. To celebrate, the sinuously geometric chalk cliff of its facade has exploded into prismatic technicolour with a huge, jubilant mural by German artist Lothar Götz. The museum is part of a Coastal Culture Trail, linking three modern art galleries along 18 varied miles of East Sussex shore.
There’s a mind-expanding view of the new mural from the Devonshire Park Hotel, where we’re staying, two minutes from the sea. We stroll on the shingle past the moated Wish Tower, one of the Martello forts built as defences against Napoleon. A new seafront cafe is opening by the tower later this year. For now, we walk on in search of dinner, through fragrant, tamarisk-fronded seaside gardens. Of the “kids” (a teenager and a 21-year-old), one’s vegan and one’s fussy, but the Tuk Tuk restaurant serves Indian-style street food, including pani puri with chickpeas (£4.50) that hits the spot.
Lothar Götz’s Dance Diagonal mural at the Towner gallery
Next day, we head for the 1930s De la Warr pavilion (also free) in Bexhill-on-Sea. Designed by Erich Mendelsohn and Serge Chermayeff, its modernist escarpment of steel and concrete is a magnet for architecture fans. We arrive as the summer exhibitions open, including cartoon-like works by the Chicago Imagists and “a space for learning and unlearning”, where the kids play a cheerful game of table tennis. The balcony cafe alone is worth the trip – shining ocean, salty breezes and a vegan slate with beetroot falafel (£14).
You can travel from Eastbourne via Bexhill to Hastings by train, bus, bike or on foot. With showers forecast, we opt for the 99 bus (adult day rider £7.30), a cheap and leisurely way of connecting the three galleries. From the window, there are glimpses of ruined Pevensey castle across the marshy levels.
The De La Warr Pavilion, with balcony cafe. Photograph: Alamy
The weather clears for a hazy afternoon in Hastings. The trail’s third gallery first opened in 2012 and reopened this month as the newly independent Hastings Contemporary, with a bigger programme of exhibitions, including international artists (£9, under-16s free). Its glazed black bricks reflect the nearby boats and rows of tall wooden net shops. Inside, the cool white rooms host colourful exhibitions and a playful new series of sketches by gallery patron Quentin Blake. An impasto beach scene and row of blue boat pictures by Copenhagen-based artist Tal R echo the fishing fleet and pebbly strand outside.
Nearby are a pair of wonderfully ramshackle free museums, looking as though the tide has washed them up. The Fishermen’s Museum has sawfish blades and scallop dredgers, a crumpled doodlebug bomb and a suit sewn with silver winkles, all beached in a former church round a huge sailing lugger visitors can climb on. Next door, the larger Shipwreck Museum is a salvaged trove of rusted muskets and barnacle-crusted bottles.
Hastings Contemporary, with the funicular in the background
The East Hill funicular railway opposite (adult £2.50) carries us up the steep cliffs to the panoramic Country Park, where we climb over a gorse-grown iron age hillfort and, eventually, down the palm-flanked steps of Old Humphrey Avenue to the half-timbered pubs and cottages of All Saints Street. It’s easy to see why Hastings old town was voted Britain’s best walking neighbourhood by the Ramblers in 2018.
A nap on the bus back to Eastbourne revives me for the Towner summer party. In the Eric Ravilious room (the gallery has lots of works by Ravilious, who lived locally) a watercolour of the winding river at Cuckmere Haven hangs next to a newly acquired one of Beachy Head lighthouse.
We explore these South Downs scenes on the way home to Essex the next day. We start with an open-topped bus ride from Eastbourne (adult day ticket £10) through fields of ox-eye daisies to Birling Gap. The on-board commentary tells us about wartime code-breaking and shipwrecked sailors escaping through chalk-cut tunnels in the cliff.
Seaford Head, overlooking the Seven Sisters. Photograph: Stuart C Clarke/Alamy
One advantage of car-free travel is that, so long as you pack light, you can set off on a linear adventure without worrying about where you parked. This theory is tested to its limits as we climb the wild-thyme-carpeted cliffs of the Seven Sisters. The kids manage the trek without puffing, even though they insisted on bringing big bags and laptops.
Heading for Brighton, we turn inland at Cuckmere Haven and follow the meandering river towards the red-roofed barns of Exceat village, with its Saltmarsh cafe and frequent buses. Behind us, the sound of surf on pebbles fades slowly into the distance.
Train travel was provided by Southern (London Victoria to Eastbourne from £5 one-way). Accommodation was provided by the Devonshire Park Hotel (doubles from £110 B&B). For car-free directions to all three galleries see goodjourney.org.uk
Looking for a holiday with a difference? Browse Guardian Holidays to see a range of fantastic trips | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/may/21/metronomy-review | Music | 2017-05-21T12:01:47.000Z | Danny Wright | Metronomy review – winsome English funk that says please and thank you | On Metronomy’s last album, Summer 08 (2016), Joseph Mount reminisced about the time just before the breakthrough success of their second album, Nights Out (2008). In those intervening years, Mount has shifted from bedroom producer to playing sold-out Brixton Academy shows. This tour is a reminder to fans, and perhaps to Mount himself, that Metronomy are one of the most clever British singles bands of the last 10 years. From lush odes to the beauty of the south coast to nostalgic lounge-pop, Mount has created his own idiosyncratic brand of wistful and winsome English funk.
Watch the official video for Metronomy’s Night Owl
On stage tonight the group are sharply dressed in gleaming white (only bassist Olugbenga has forgotten the memo and turned up in a snazzy green gown). And, like their outfits, there is a cool precision to what they do. At times it almost seems too polite. Sure, it is immaculately controlled and pristine, but you keep waiting for the moment they’ll cut loose. Of course, parts of the show glow with a brightness to match their outfits. The Bay is all propulsive, watery synths and elastic funk. The “shoop-doop-doop”s of I’m Aquarius remain bewitching. There is even an outing for old favourite My Heart Rate Rapid. And The Look has taken on a life of its own; an anthem that in a parallel universe would have been No 1 for four years. Tonight, its fairground synth line is screamed back at the band as people in the audience scramble to climb on friends’ shoulders.
But reminders that Mount is more studio savant than rock star are never far away. Before Love Letters, he tells the crowd he has forgotten his percussion glove, drolly proclaiming: “For you London, I’m gonna get a blister.”
At Liverpool Sound City festival, 27 May. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/feb/02/france-values-republic-veil-women | World news | 2010-02-02T19:14:31.000Z | Lizzy Davies | France denies citizenship to Moroccan man who forces wife to wear full veil | France is to refuse to grant citizenship to a Moroccan man who forces his wife to wear the full veil, arguing that his adherence to a strict strand of Islam is incompatible with the country's values, the immigration minister said today.
Eric Besson said he had signed a decree explaining that the man, whose identity was not made public, was being denied citizenship because his behaviour towards his French wife contravened secularism and women's rights.
"It emerged during the inquiry and the interview process that this person forced his wife to wear the full veil, deprived her of freedom of movement with her face exposed and rejected the principles of secularism and equality between men and women," Besson said in a statement.
According to Le Figaro, which obtained a copy of the ruling handed down by the council of state, France's highest legal body, the man behaved towards women in a way which made him "incompatible" with the values of France.
"Monsieur X displays in an everyday manner a discriminatory attitude towards women, going as far as refusing to shake their hands and advocating the separation of boys and girls including, at home, of brothers and sisters," the ruling read.
"The lifestyle he has chosen may be justified by religious precepts but is incompatible with the values of the Republic, notably the principle of equality of the sexes."
This is not the first time France has cited the niqab – a veil that leaves only the wearer's eyes showing – as grounds for the refusal of citizenship. In 2008, a Moroccan woman, Faiza Silmi, was told she could not become French because her veil and "radical" interpretation of Islam were obstacles to assimilation.
Last week, a committee of MPs voted to support a parliamentary resolution condemning the niqab, and called for a ban on the garment in public facilities such as hospitals and post offices, and on public transport. They shied away, however, from recommending a ban on women covering their faces anywhere in public.
The decision to reject the application for citizenship comes after a demand last month by the justice minister, Michele Alliot-Marie, that Muslim men who force their wives to wear the full veil be denied the right to become French.
Amid debate over the niqab in December, the interior minister, Brice Hortefeux, echoed her sentiments, saying that allowing supporters of the full veil into "the national community" was not a "desirable" course of action.
"Nothing would be more normal than to systematically refuse access to residency permits to the person wearing the veil and to her husband," he said. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/26/the-gambias-new-president-adama-barrow-to-return-home | World news | 2017-01-26T18:55:01.000Z | Jason Burke | New Gambian president Adama Barrow returns home to joyous scenes | The Gambia’s new president, Adama Barrow, returned to his country on Thursday afternoon, prompting a noisy and joyous wave of hope and excitement at the prospect of a brighter future for the small, poor west African state.
By late afternoon, thousands of people had lined the streets of Banjul, the capital, blowing whistles, dancing, banging drums and singing “We welcome you, our president, our hope, our solution” in the local Fula language.
Hundreds more thronged the airport, cheering when Barrow emerged from the plane that had brought him from neighbouring Senegal in a flowing white robe, accompanied by his wife and children. He walked slowly along a red carpet, greeted by military officials and members of his coalition government.
“I am a happy man … I think the bad part is finished now,” the 51-year-old former property developer told reporters at the airport.
The arrival of Barrow brings to an end a prolonged political crisis in the Gambia.
Fatou Jagne Senghor, the west Africa director of Article 19, a pro-freedom of expression organisation, said the development was very welcome. “The Gambia has been waiting for this. Everyone has been ... looking forward to the new era where people’s voices are heard,” said Senghor, who is from Gambia.
Ebrima Bah, who was waiting at the airport, said: “The arrival is long overdue. His arrival is raising my confidence in the new government.”
People hold Gambian flags along a street as they prepare for Adama Barrow’s return. Photograph: Thierry Gouegnon/Reuters
The former British colony was thrown into chaos in December when the autocratic president, Yahya Jammeh, refused to step down after unexpectedly losing elections to an alliance of opposition parties, despite repeated efforts at mediation by powerful regional states including Nigeria.
Jammeh eventually left the Gambia, which he had ruled for 22 years, at the weekend after thousands of troops from other west African nations entered the country and he secured a deal that allowed him to escape prosecution and keep much of his assets.
Adama Barrow. Photograph: Seyllou/AFP/Getty Images
Low-flying fighter jets and the presence of Nigerian and Senegalese troops at the airport on Thursday were a reminder of the turbulent transition and of the major challenges which face Barrow.
“The transformation will not be easy,” said Senghor. “To bring security, stability and fundamental freedoms when institutions are broken, the judiciary is not functioning, is going to be a major challenge.”
A senior government official in Banjul said people were “very happy” and that Barrow’s priority would be to put into place “the pillars of reform and human rights”.
During the election campaign, Barrow promised wide-ranging reforms to overturn many of the authoritarian policies of Jammeh, who was accused of imprisoning, torturing and killing his political opponents.
Last year, a series of protests led to the detention of more than 90 opposition activists and supporters. One prominent opposition politician, a father of nine, was beaten to death in custody.
Kanamo Sansou, who was sitting with his friends in a market in Serrekunda, near Banjul, said: “I’m 100% a Barrow supporter and I’m more happy than I can say.”
Ibrahima Gaye, a pensioner, added: “He will be different in all aspects … we have been living under dictatorship for 22 years. You can go home at night and sleep without worrying you will be arrested before daybreak.”
Earlier in the day, Swiss prosecutors confirmed they had detained the former Gambian interior minister after allegations that he must have been aware of grave human rights abuses.
Ousman Sonko, described as one of Jammeh’s top aides, fled the Gambia for Europe after being sacked by the authoritarian ruler in September.
Barrow has asked the force of about 7,000 west Africa troops to remain in his country for six months.
Diplomats had urged him to return quickly to curb the impact of the political crisis on the tourist-reliant economy, which is already in a fragile state.
People celebrate in Brusubi, Gambia. Photograph: Thierry Gouegnon/Reuters
After languishing in geopolitical obscurity for decades, the Gambia has produced a wave of refugees, focusing more attention on the country. The combination of repression and poverty has driven tens, possibly hundreds, of thousands of young people out of the country in recent years, many of whom have head across the Sahara to the Mediterranean coast in a desperate attempt to start new lives in Europe.
The route, known locally as “the back way”, is extremely dangerous, with many perishing in the Sahara or during the hazardous sea crossing.
Aid agencies have spoken of significant humanitarian need in poor areas of the Gambia.
Barrow, who will be staying at his own residence until the State House, Jammeh’s former seat of power, is declared safe, will have to overcome years of economic isolation and lack of investment.
His first job is to deal with an internal crisis after it emerged his pick for vice-president, Fatoumata Jallow-Tambajang, may be too old for the role under the country’s constitution.
Barrow must also deal with latent ethnic tensions between Jammeh’s minority Jola people and the majority Mandinkas, to whom the new president belongs. Many of the upper ranks of the military are Jola.
There is some controversy over the relatively lenient terms under which Jammeh left the Gambia for exile in Equatorial Guinea. Barrow has reportedly assured the former ruler he will have all the legal rights given to a former president, which includes immunity from prosecution barring a vote by two-thirds of the national assembly.
The new government has confirmed Jammeh will be permitted to keep a fleet of luxury cars, despite the accusation by authorities that he looted $11.4m (£9m) from state coffers before his departure.
A witness told Agence France-Press that two Rolls-Royces and one Mercedes Benz were loaded on to a Chadian cargo plane, while others await shipment. The source said 10 cars were earmarked for future shipment. Diplomats and others familiar with the matter confirmed the collection included a Bentley, Land Rovers, a red Mini Cooper and another Mercedes.
Jammeh’s entourage struggled to choose between the two larger Bentleys or three smaller cars, according to the source, before eventually opting for the Mercedes and the Rolls-Royces on the night he left the country. “They were trying to check which one fits. If they took the bigger cars, they could only take two,” he said.
Alex Vines, the head of the Africa Programme at London thinktank Chatham House, said a key lesson was the importance in west Africa of “youth and civil society pushing for change”. He added: “This played a role in Nigeria and Ghana and now Gambia ... technology has helped.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/nov/02/the-left-lane-on-a-motorway-is-for-the-virtuous-and-the-good-thats-why-i-love-it | Opinion | 2023-11-02T07:00:33.000Z | Adrian Chiles | The left lane on a motorway is for the virtuous and the good. That’s why I love it | Adrian Chiles | “Don’t hog the middle lane,” beseeched motorway signs all over the UK last weekend, at least on the sections of the M1, M42, M5 and M40 I had the pleasure of using.
Lane discipline is a particular thing for particular people. I’m most definitely one of those people. I’ll keep to the left-hand lane so assiduously that if it was a contest I’d undoubtedly be in contention for the title. Proceeding along a quiet motorway at a stately 70mph, I will move into the middle lane only to overtake, before neatly slotting back into the left-hand lane. For this is the lane of the worthy, the disciplined, the considerate. It is the lane of the good.
Perhaps, during my time in the middle lane, I will notice another vehicle ahead in the left lane that I will also soon have cause to overtake. If this good soul is hundreds of metres away, I will, of course, return to the left lane, even though I know I will soon have to move out of it again in order to go past. Even if this slower vehicle is nearer, I will, with the stickling devotion of a true believer, return to the left lane, however briefly. In fact, to be honest, even if there’s not much more than a car’s length between those I’m overtaking, I will try to slot back in there for what will be the most fleeting of moments. And here’s the thing: I will do all this even if there is nobody, but nobody, behind me in the middle lane wanting to get past.
This is virtue-signalling of the very barmiest order because – apart from the possibly alarmed drivers of the two vehicles I’m overtaking – I’m in effect signalling my virtue to no one at all. If there’s no one in my rear view mirror to appreciate the gesture, it can only be between me and my God. Does a tree falling in a forest make a noise if there’s no one within earshot? Of course it does.
Such piety is never a good look. Like anybody who considers themself to be without sin, I find it quite impossible to forgive the sinner. If I’m motoring worthily in the left lane and come across someone in the middle lane overtaking no one at all, the simmering cauldron of righteous indignation inside me starts to bubble towards boiling point. My fury threatens to spiral out of control. “Ooh,” as the comedian Stu Francis used to put it. “I could crush a grape.”
Suppressing my rage into a death-like stillness as I close in on this embodiment of evil, I stick fast to the left lane of virtue. I do so in the spirit of generosity, giving this sinner a last chance to mend their ways and get into the correct bloody lane. They rarely do – which is a great joy to me, to be honest, as I can then execute the most satisfying manoeuvre in the repertoire of every sinless motorist.
Seeking to instil shame, nothing less, I move into the middle lane behind them, pause for a quick harrumph, and then move into the fast lane to overtake them. As I do so, I shake my head in derision. If the dog’s in the back, he shakes his head too. And then in one majestic sweep, cutting through the thin air of the moral high ground, I pass in front of them and return to the slow lane. Frequently, chastened, they sheepishly fall into place behind me, in which case I nod to indicate my forgiveness and their absolution. If they do not do so, later, when I’ve calmed down, I will pray for their souls.
Once, on the M40 heading north, I was engaged in this merry dance of the road with my mum in the passenger seat. “What on earth are you moving about like this for?” she demanded, alarmed. “This is dangerous.” She had a point.
Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster, writer and Guardian columnist | Full |
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jun/14/brian-cox-interview-royal-society | Science | 2015-06-14T06:30:05.000Z | Nicola Davis | Brian Cox: ‘Scientists aren’t priests of knowledge. They’re like plumbers’ | Summer’s here, students are heading off – what are you working on?
The last paper I published was a really theoretical paper with three colleagues and it was stimulated by a popular book I wrote with Jeff Forshaw about quantum mechanics. [There is] this strange feature of quantum theory that it appears to not care about Einstein’s theory of relativity – it does care about it but it appears that you can do things at some place in the universe and in principle the whole universe seems to respond. We got interested in using all the modern machinery of quantum field theory [to ask] how does that play out, how does it actually work? What stops you from doing strange things and influencing the whole universe from your little position here on Earth? We are still working on it. We’ve published one of the papers; there are another couple in the pipeline.
Do people forget that you are a researcher as well as a presenter?
Yes, people do. It doesn’t matter though, does it? It’s really for my own sanity. The thing I enjoy most outside of television is lecturing – I lecture first years in special relativity and quantum mechanics which is something that would seem not too difficult, because we are talking about first-year, first-term undergraduate physics. But actually in doing so, if you take it seriously, you can end up deepening your understanding massively. Paradoxically, what this second career [in television] has done, it’s given me more time to think about really foundational physics.
There’s now a shiny new graphene institute at Manchester University. You’ve been enthusiastic about the “wonder material” - is there not a risk it’ll end up being an enormous anticlimax?
It is certainly true that potentially this material is revolutionary. So what do you do when faced with that? It was discovered in Manchester, it has the potential to be a multi-billion dollar, if not more, industry. If you sit there until someone else shows that you can replace silicon in integrated circuits with graphene, you’ve missed the boat.
Brian Cox’s guide to becoming a citizen scientist
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Are you optimistic that the new universities and science minister, Jo Johnson, will keep the money coming for science?
Yes. I think the intellectual argument – and the economic argument – for the investment in science and more broadly in education at all levels has been won in government. It’s obvious that we are a knowledge-based economy and in the future we are going to be more knowledge based. It is the only way we can compete. My view is that politicians can accept things intellectually, but find it politically difficult to deliver on what they know to be the right thing to do. If [George Osborne] wants to focus on making Britain “the best place in the world to do science” which is a slogan that he has used, and it’s a good slogan, if he wants to do that then he needs permission. And to get permission from the electorate, the electorate need to understand what science is, understand the value of it and back investment of it at the expense of something else. That’s where I think institutions like the BBC have a very important role.
The Higgs Boson, Curiosity rover and Rosetta mission have all whipped up public enthusiasm for science. Is that down to savvy PR or has physics become cool?
I think science is popular again, and this comes in waves. You look back to [Humphry] Davy and people like that and they were colossally important, cultural figures. So I think it is not an unusual time in that respect, but I think it is more popular than it has been for some time. The Higgs particle is a genuinely transformational discovery; it is not just another particle, it is a completely new kind of particle. It tells us something very deep about what happened less than a billionth of a second after the big bang. [Also] the prediction being verified tells us that we understand physics very, very well. So it’s not hype – it is one of the great discoveries of the last 100 years.
Large Hadron Collider makes first proton collisions in two years
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Cern has just rebooted. Will the next wave of experiments be as exciting?
We are always guessing. But there is a chance there is going to be a revolution in cosmology and particle physics and the overlap between the two. There is a chance that the LHC will discover a whole new family of particles – basically dark matter. That would be a revolution on the scale of the Higgs, arguably even more important than the Higgs particle.
What about breakthroughs like the discovery of gravitational waves that amounted to nothing? Was that just a fiasco or the way science works?
The way science works. It was a legitimate measurement. It turned out they hadn’t taken everything into account. Some people take the view that these things shouldn’t be aired in public, but I think science is not about absolutes, science is about honesty. It’s about making measurements, doing the best you can and then usually showing that there is something not quite right about it. The idea that scientists are some kind of priests that have unique access to knowledge about nature is nonsense – in many ways I see it as the codified application of common sense. It’s like plumbing.
There’s also a lot of excitement about plans to put people on Mars. Would you sign up?
No.
You’re happier looking at it from a distance?
It’s incredibly dangerous and challenging – and that is absolutely not to say we shouldn’t do it. But it takes a special breed of individual. I have had the pleasure of getting to know quite a few Apollo astronauts and they are just unique, almost superhuman individuals. I am amazed at the way their brains work. It is not the way my brain works.
Ben Miller, Brian Cox and Robin Ince - crew of the Infinite Monkey Cage - at The Times Cheltenham Science Festival in 2010 Photograph: Adrian Sherratt/Rex Features
Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk seem to think we should fear AI – are you worried about the robots coming?
It’s one of the areas I don’t think about too much. Particularly with military drones, I can see that you have real regulatory problems around whose fault it is if it goes wrong or it makes mistakes – which it will do. It is fairly easy to build an artificially intelligent device that isn’t a threat to you – because you don’t give it a gun. I wouldn’t be worried if my iPhone was artificially intelligent because I can always put it in a box and turn it off. If they gave my iPhone a laser maybe I’d be more worried about it.
I hear there is a new TV show in the offing …
It’s called Six Degrees, part of the BBC’s coding season. The idea is to have two panels with three people on each and at least two of them will be university professors. The idea is to allow the professors to demonstrate how they think. So the questions have to be sufficiently challenging, esoteric and interesting that they won’t just get them immediately.
What the most ridiculous TV idea you’ve been asked to present?
I do get some wild ideas from America or Australia – there might be astrology involved or something like that – a complete misunderstanding of my rather violent opposition to anything that isn’t science. If anything I am trying to do a little bit less [television] because I have got this new position now at the Royal Society, professor for public engagement, which takes some time.
Your popstar past often crops up in interviews – does your time in D:Ream seem like a bit of a millstone?
I have a really bad memory; it was 20 years ago so I’ve kind of forgotten. It’s getting less and less relevant because if I do an event a good fraction of the audience weren’t born when I was in D:Ream. You get blank faces now [laughs].
You are pretty active on Twitter. I notice your backdrop is a scene from Dad’s Army – I take it you are a fan?
I strongly believe that universities are places where all ideas should be debated and discussed, so I retweeted an article about that and got put on a list of people who are, I don’t know, frowned upon for this statement. That Dad’s Army backdrop is Pike being put on “ze list” [by the Germans to give to Hitler]. I put it there when I got put on “ze list”. It was for my own amusement really. It’s that famous scene where [the U-boat captain] goes: “What’s your name?” and [Mainwaring] goes: “Don’t tell him, Pike!”
You’ve had a few Twitter spats, like your battles with Deepak Chopra …
The most important attribute for a 'real scientist', as you put it @DeepakChopra , is to actually understand some science.
— Brian Cox (@ProfBrianCox) June 21, 2014
It’s entertainment for me. I can’t help it. It’s funny how people perceive you, especially when you present documentaries. Obviously there is a particular style that you use, and people find it surprising sometimes that I’m not like that. I like taking the piss. And I don’t really consider the fact that I have got 1.5 million Twitter followers watching what I am doing. You could intellectualise it and say there is a problem with pseudoscience and all these things, but, honestly, I’m just taking the piss.
It also says you are a master of karate and friendship…
There is a line [in a song in the TV show It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia] about the “Nightman” and that he is “a master of karate and friendship”. So I just put it there because I thought it was funny. Master of karate and friendship – what the hell? I love it when people look at it and go: “Is that how you see yourself?”
You’ve got an OBE but not an FRS [Fellowship of the Royal Society] – does that annoy you?
It doesn’t annoy me. There are very few people who have FRSs. The Royal Society is the oldest and most prestigious scientific institution in the world and you’ve got to make a significant contribution before you are elected as a fellow. It is harder to be an FRS than it is to be an OBE [laughs].
Is the Infinite Monkey Cage really infinite?
I hope so. If there is one thing I want to be doing when I am 80 it’s still being on Radio 4 trying to be slightly belligerent.
Human Universe by Brian Cox and Andrew Cohen is out in paperback, published by HarperCollins. Click here to order a copy for £7.19 | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/nov/03/labour-gaza-keir-starmer-israel | Opinion | 2023-11-03T15:16:52.000Z | John McDonnell | Labour’s response to the crisis in Gaza is a test of whether it’s fit to govern | John McDonnell | The degeneration of the Conservative party under Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak – corrupt, incompetent and irrelevant – looks increasingly certain to deliver an electoral victory for Labour.
So, the question now is whether Labour is capable of effective government – not just in managing the day-to-day administration, but in responding to potentially world-changing events that require moral judgments and fundamental political choices. Gaza has been the most significant test to date of whether Labour is fit to govern.
When Hamas launched its appalling pogrom on innocent Israelis, there was unanimous condemnation across the Labour party and the trade union movement. There was also unanimity that Israel has the right to defend itself.
It is in determining how Israel exercises that right to defend itself that finer moral and political judgment comes into play. Some people would consider that it is here that Labour’s judgment is found to be significantly wanting, alongside a display of inexperience in the political frontline in a time of crisis and a failure of political delivery.
When the Israeli government took the decision to blockade Gaza, preventing the supply of food, water and medicines, it was an absolutely clear breach of Article 8 of the Rome Statute determining war crimes. The article stipulates it is a crime to intentionally use “starvation of civilians as a method of warfare by depriving them of objects indispensable to their survival, including wilfully impeding relief supplies as provided for under the Geneva convention”. More significantly, it was morally indefensible.
Having been in parliament for the past 26 years and witnessed many government decisions to go to war, the Rome statute and Geneva convention have become ingrained in my political decision-making. A lack of this experience may well have been the reason for Keir Starmer responding to the question of the legality of the blockade of Gaza in a way that caused such anxiety and anger.
There isn’t one of us in politics who hasn’t at some stage misspoken in an interview. The problem with this incident was that other frontbenchers were sent out to defend the line, and it then took nine days to attempt to put the record straight. Even then, there was no questioning of the morality of starving civilians.
As the bombs rained down on Gaza, we wept as we witnessed on our television screens the heartbreaking scenes of children and entire families being killed. More than 3,700 Palestinian children have been killed in the first 28 days of the conflict, according to the health ministry in Gaza.
Labour has betrayed British Muslims over Gaza – that’s why I resigned from the party
Shaista Aziz
Read more
The recitation of ineffective calls for Israel to abide by international law when the indiscriminate effects of its bombing are self-evidents calls into question yet again the moral judgments being made at the centre of the Labour administration.
The same question is being asked about the decision to shelter behind the US’s call for a pause in the bombing and invasion, rather than a ceasefire. When the loss of life has reached more than 9,000 people, how can we morally even consider the proposal that, after a short break in combat, we support the return to the inevitable mass killing of civilians and more children that will ensue from the street-by-street attack on Gaza City?
If there is to be a pause, I would suggest it should be a very brief pause within the Labour party to assess the moral basis upon which decisions are being taken, and for reflection on whether they align with the moral compass that has directed our party since its foundation.
Political mistakes and poor judgment in opposition can cause political problems, but in government they can have disastrous consequences. So it’s best to adjust the moral and political tiller now.
John McDonnell is Labour MP for Hayes and Harlington and a former shadow chancellor
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/17/why-wonga-exist-no-one-on-left-asks | Opinion | 2013-12-17T20:35:00.000Z | Zoe Williams | Why does Wonga even exist? It's a question no one on the left asks | Zoe Williams | "D
oes Christmas have to start with a payday loan?" Doh, it's a rhetorical question, stupid. But in case you didn't get that, the poster campaign launched by the bishop of Manchester spells it out: "No! Christmas starts with Christ!"
It is impossible to doubt the empathy and sincerity behind this message: no one has launched stouter criticisms of poverty in the past three years than assorted churches, whether highlighting the food-bank boom (and in many cases, meeting the need) or protesting at the "systematic misrepresentation of the poorest in society", as a laudable coalition of non-conformists did earlier in the year. Yet the message here is fundamentally conservative, bordering on Victorian. Look to Christ for your solace; John Lewis isn't for you.
Meaning well, indisputably, churches and charities and civic-minded bystanders fixate upon the cruddy financial decisions of poor people; don't they realise what the annual interest rate is on one of those loans? Don't they understand that, before you go to BrightHouse, you have to make sure your rent is paid? Haven't they figured out how much more that appliance will cost them than if they just saved for it, nicely, like people did during the war? It's the right-thinking person's version of wondering whether a single mum on benefits has a 52in telly or can afford to smoke. The veneer of criticising the corporation – usually Wonga – masks what would otherwise be the straightforward attribution of poverty to stupidity. In this reading, it's not your fault that you're at the stupid end of a phenomenally stupid deal; it's the fault of that cunning organisation.
But what I always find missing from this kindly soft left is the question: "Why do you need a payday loan? Could there be something wrong with your actual pay?" It's not because nobody is asking; it is because nobody in politics is asking. And therefore the accepted parameters of the debate are mechanistic. What can we do to rein in the rapacity of the payday loan company? How can we tackle the shortages in food banks? How can we convince the poor that Christmas is a time for spiritual reflection and not, as so commonly supposed, a time to buy your children the overpriced Furby they so desperately desire?
Of course, it is the job of Christians to remind us about Christ, and naturally (it's a broad church) many of even their left-leaning leaders prefer a message of anti-consumerism to one of revolution. This is why the left should never delegate their work to the faithful. Religions take the approach that there's more than one way to skin a cat when it comes to injustice, particularly economic injustice. Too often it involves persuading the cat that it would be happier without skin.
Politically, an anti-payday loan message is fine, but it's liberal or, at a stretch, one-nation Tory territory (as evinced by the fact that George Osborne took it up, with no more than the regular amount of contradiction). A leftwing that fails to ask about the causes of loan use is just a husk of itself. The more it complains about corporate irresponsibility, the more resolutely it seems to be averting its gaze from the underlying realities of those bank accounts.
And yet everyone, from the high command to local councillors, is dancing a jig about the success of this campaign, how rattled the industry is with its stupid promo videos, how seamlessly the anti-Wonga message has settled itself into a centre-ground position. A young Labour councillor was hailing this as his party's big success recently, when I said I found it depressing and a bit 80s, the way politics had been reduced to consumer choices and anti-consumerist rhetoric.
He said, kindly (if a bit slowly): "People need answers to problems they've got today." Unaffordable rent, rising every year while wages stagnate; housing benefit that doesn't cover housing; childcare credits that don't cover childcare; food and energy going up by amounts that, if they were echoed in salaries, would look astonishing, golden-egg good; the certainty that you will never buy a house unless you win the lottery or inherit money; the plain insufficiency of the money coming in to the demands that life makes of it; the knowledge that your working life will be ever extended as pensionable age gets farther away, and both will be lived in a penury that would have astounded your parents … these are not today's problems. These are problems for some nameless tomorrow, some years hence, after our commitment to trivia has been so unswerving for so long that all the trivial problems have been solved. Then, ladies and gentlemen, only then can we turn our attention to the fact that – for reasons that today, unfortunately, we are not ready to address – you cannot afford to live from one payday until the next payday.
The Brazilian philosopher Roberto Mangabeira Unger came to London recently to lecture on the global political deadlock. "We have lost faith in any of the large available understandings of how structural change takes place in history," he noted, "and as a result, we fall back on a bastardised conception of political realism, namely that a proposal is realistic to the extent that it approaches what already exists. This false view then aggravates [our] paralysis." What hits you like a hammer is that word "realistic" – it's the thing people say when they actively don't want change. It's the avoidant atrophy of the miniscule reform, the circularity of entitlement – "Who decides what's realistic?" "Me, because I'm in charge." "Why are you in charge?" "Because I'm so realistic."
The irony is that this idea – reining in short-term loan companies will somehow solve the poverty trap – is utterly fanciful; so widely accepted, in such disparate quarters; and such a pipe dream.
Twitter: @zoesqwilliams | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/mar/03/laura-trott-world-track-cycling-championships-becky-james | Sport | 2016-03-03T20:45:15.000Z | William Fotheringham | Laura Trott takes world gold but Bradley Wiggins forced to settle for silver | After black Wednesday, when Great Britain’s sprinters flopped, this was comeback Thursday with Laura Trott, Becky James, Ed Clancy and Sir Bradley Wiggins taking centre stage. Wiggins was riding in his first Track World Championship final in eight years to anchor the team pursuits to a solid silver medal, Trott’s gold in the scratch made up for a disastrous fifth place in qualifying for her and her pursuit team-mates in the afternoon, while Clancy and James were just glad to be on the boards after serious injuries.
GB women’s team pursuiters left aiming for world championship bronze
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“I was thrown in at the deep end,” said the London and Beijing gold medallist Clancy, who had a major back operation at the start of December and was a surprise inclusion in the line-up for the final after the team had qualified fastest and then convincingly won their semi-final against Italy. “It’s fair to say we’re not flying but we’re not far off. I rode well there, just couldn’t quite hang on to Brad on the last lap. I was hoping that he and [Owain] Doull would take it to the finish but they came up a little bit short and I was hanging on.”
The final was a close-run affair with the Australian quartet marginally ahead for most of the four kilometres – never more than a second – but with Wiggins and company pulling slightly in front with three laps to go, before Clancy slipped off the pace in the final metres. The gap he left meant the margin looked more convincing than it was, and given that Clancy is well off his best, there is ample reassurance for Rio later this year although equally it could be said that Australia may not have fielded their best line-up even though their 3min 52.727sec was the second fastest time ever ridden, just over 1sec outside the world record Great Britain set here in 2012.
“We can make all the excuses in the book, we didn’t have it tonight but we have got another four or five months to go away and come back for the big one,” concluded Wiggins.
Trott, on the other hand, had only a few hours to turn things around after what was probably the worst qualifying round the team have produced in a world championship, with Joanna Rowsell-Shand finishing behind Trott and Elinor Barker after a split in the group when the fourth rider, Ciara Horne, was unable to maintain the pace set by her team-mates.
In round two on Friday, they will face the Chinese, who qualified eighth, and if they can produce one of the best two times of the six teams ranked outside the gold and silver positions, they will have a chance of a ride-off for bronze. Questions will be asked, but the reality is that even though the best squads make a team pursuit look seamless, the smallest alterations in pace have a disruptive effect.
“In the team pursuit unless you race on the limit you don’t know what your limit is and it was disappointing that we found our limit in a world championship,” said Trott. “I just had to put it to the back of my mind.” The scratch – a non-Olympic event, but a vital part of Trott’s speciality, the omnium – went completely the other way.
For much of the 40-lap event, the Briton was heavily marked by the Belgian Jolien D’hoore and Kirsten Wild of the Netherlands, and with five laps remaining a quintet enjoyed a half-lap lead, with Trott trailing in the peloton. She made her move with four laps remaining, linked up with the leaders almost single-handedly within two laps to go, and was fortunate to receive a handy lead-out from Canada’s Stephanie Roorda, going, as she put it, “flat-out and hoping for the best”.
Laura Trott during her victory lap after wining the gold women’s scratch final. Photograph: Adrian Dennis/AFP/Getty Images
With a finish line in her sights, Trott is unstoppable. “I felt really good,” she said afterwards. “To be honest, this velodrome feels like home. I really wanted to win … when the group was away I tried to bide my time, and with two to go I thought: ‘Got to go now.’ ”
James was in her pomp at the world championships in Minsk during 2013, and that quality is clearly still there, as en route to her bronze medal here in the keirin she twice had to come from behind, slotting between her rivals at speed, holding the bottom line in both the second round and final to finish behind Germany’s Kristina Vogel, a result which is worth a gold given where she has come from in the last 18 months.
Becky James: I was in a really unhappy place, my world was upside down
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The Welsh woman has had a nightmarish run since taking her last world championship medals in Cali, Colombia, in 2014, with a lengthy spell off her bike to fix a knee injury, and a cancer scare. Her comeback has been slow, but she has never wavered.
After all she has been through it was never likely that her return to the world stage would be smooth-running, and she had to fight her way back through the repechage after taking third in the qualifier, watched throughout by her family and her boyfriend, the Wales rugby union wing George North, who was taking time out thanks to a handy break in the Six Nations schedule.
“For me it’s about being back at my first world’s. Everything is a bonus after that,” said James. “To get top three in the semis was unexpected, to get bronze is unbelievable. I can’t get my head round it. The last four weeks I’ve seen rapid improvements. It’s the best I’ve been since before my injury, and there is more to come.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/07/taliban-name-afghanistans-new-government | World news | 2021-09-07T18:34:58.000Z | Emma Graham-Harrison | Taliban name all-male Afghan cabinet including minister wanted by FBI | The Taliban have announced an all-male caretaker government including an interior minister wanted by the FBI, on a day when at least two people were killed by violent policing of street protests against the new authorities.
The leadership unveiled on Tuesday is drawn entirely from Taliban ranks, despite promises of an inclusive cabinet, and many of its senior figures are on UN sanctions lists, which is likely to complicate the group’s search for international recognition.
Late on Tuesday, a US State Department spokesman said: “We note the announced list of names consists exclusively of individuals who are members of the Taliban or their close associates and no women. We also are concerned by the affiliations and track records of some of the individuals.”
“We understand that the Taliban has presented this as a caretaker cabinet. However, we will judge the Taliban by its actions, not words.”
The State Department renewed its call on the Taliban to offer safe passage to US citizens as well as Afghans looking to leave.
Afghanistan will once more be officially known as an Islamic emirate, as it was under Taliban rule in the 1990s, and its chief, Hibatullah Akhundzada, will be supreme leader.
The Taliban have also brought back the ministry for promotion of virtue and prevention of vice, a notorious enforcement body that was one of the most hated institutions when they last controlled Afghanistan. Its main function was to police the Taliban’s extreme interpretation of Islamic law.
The prime minister will be Mullah Mohammad Hassan Akhund, one of the founding members of the group who was close to its original leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar.
The Taliban leaders in line to become de facto rulers of Afghanistan
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He has had far less international exposure than other senior Taliban leaders, but as head of the group’s powerful leadership council he is one of its most influential members. Mullah Omar’s son Mullah Yaqoob will be defence minister, and the acting interior minister is Sirajuddin Haqqani, who is on the FBI wanted list with a $5m (£3.6m) bounty on his head.
In his first statement since the Taliban seized power last month, Akhundzada said Afghanistan’s new rulers were committed to all international laws, treaties and commitments not in conflict with Islamic law.
“In the future, all matters of governance and life in Afghanistan will be regulated by the laws of the holy Sharia,” he said.
The Taliban face a major economic crisis, domestic pressure from political opponents and an uprising in the Panjshir valley that has not been entirely stamped out despite their capture of the provincial capital.
The internal pressures were highlighted by protests in Kabul that drew hundreds of people and which – although initially peaceful – ended in the Taliban firing guns into the air, beating protesters and journalists, seizing equipment and detaining some people.
A smaller protest in western Herat ended with two dead and at least four injured, according to the Afghan newspaper Etilaatroz. The Guardian saw video of Taliban dispersing protesters with gunfire.
With domestic reserves frozen, and the country long dependent on international aid, there is also a desperate search for international legitimacy that may allow funds to keep flowing. The government lineup is unlikely to offer progress on any of those fronts.
Instead it appears primarily designed to prevent internal fractures within the movement, after weeks of heated internal discussions about power sharing, said Haroun Rahimi, a law professor at the American University of Afghanistan.
“It won’t help with domestic legitimacy, it won’t help with international recognition, it will not help ease the resistance, and they will not help government run more smoothly,” he said, pointing out that few ministers had expertise in their portfolios.
“So I have to conclude that the only reason they chose this kind of makeup was to make sure there will be no internal fractures.”
The new cabinet is also heavily dominated by the Pashtun ethnic group that formed the Taliban’s original power base but which makes up only about 40% of Afghanistan’s population. Just three appointees appeared to be from other ethnic groups.
It was unveiled by the government spokesperson, Zabihullah Mujahid. Asked about the lack of inclusivity, he could offer only vague promises that the minor portfolios outstanding may be awarded in a way that broadens the government.
‘The soul of Kabul’: Taliban paint over murals with victory slogans
Read more
“Some ministries and deputies and many top positions are remaining. We will try to include people from across the country into it. It’s not a permanent cabinet and we will try to make it more inclusive,” he said.
In another sign that Taliban promises of change, including respect for media freedom, were being tested by the reality of governing, Mujahid said people should not be protesting because the country “had recently emerged from a crisis”.
He also suggested that some protesters were incited “from abroad”, a possible reaction to the fact that many of those on the streets were attacking the Taliban as an instrument of the Pakistani government.
For two decades Pakistan provided the Taliban with safe haven, and the head of its influential Inter-Services Intelligence agency spent three days in Kabul this week as negotiations about the new government were hammered out, but the Taliban and Islamabad deny any significant ties.
There was no immediate response to the new government from the countries that have bankrolled Afghanistan’s aid in the past, and now face the prospect of engaging with a leadership dominated by figures who are on UN sanctions lists for terrorist activities.
There is pressure for the international community to work with the Taliban to try to stave off disaster for the most vulnerable of the country’s 38 million inhabitants. The United Nations has warned that access to food aid and other life-saving services is close to running out, as concerns mount that the country is facing a looming humanitarian catastrophe.
The grim assessment from the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs came amid an appeal for an extra $200m in emergency funding in Afghanistan after the Taliban’s takeover sparked a host of new problems.
The UN says 18 million people are facing a humanitarian disaster, and a further 18 million could quickly join them.
This article was amended on 13 September 2021 to remove text that breached the Guardian’s editorial guidelines on references to disability. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jun/11/cab-drivers-europe-protest-taxi-app-uber-london-madrid | Technology | 2014-06-11T19:20:40.000Z | Alexandra Topping | Angry cab drivers gridlock Europe in protest at 'unregulated' taxi app | Several major European cities ground to a halt on Wednesday as licensed taxi drivers took to the streets in mass protests against the smartphone taxi app Uber.
Demonstrations in London, Paris, Madrid, Barcelona, Berlin, Milan and Rome caused travel chaos and long tailbacks, as taxi drivers protested against the app, which they argue is unregulated and threatens their livelihood.
In London, Trafalgar Square and Whitehall were jammed from the start of the planned "go slow" at 2pm, as thousands of black cabs gathered honking their horns, bringing total gridlock to the centre of the capital, while supporters waved banners and started occasionally chanting: "Boris, out!"
A spokeswoman for Uber, the US start-up which links minicab drivers to passengers via a GPS-based smartphone app, said the protests had boosted new users in London by 850%, as people tried to cope with the gridlock.
But the company, based in San Francisco and backed by Google and Goldman Sachs, came under increasing pressure to be more transparent about its tax set-up.
Taxi associations claim Uber routes its payments through headquarters in the Netherlands to minimise its corporation tax payments in France, the UK and Germany – in a similar manner to Apple and Starbucks, which have found themselves in the firing line for the practice.
Steve McNamara, the general secretary of the Licensed Taxi Drivers' Association – which was joined by the London Cab Drivers Club and the transport workers' union RMT – said the cab drivers were not demonstrating against Uber but against Transport for London.
By using a driver's mobile phone to track a journey and charge a fare on the distance and time travelled, Uber was operating with a meter, he said, which under current regulations only licensed black cabs are allowed to do.
"The problem here is that Uber is operating outside the law. There is no question about that. But someone on high has made a decision to leave Uber alone. Why? It is sinister," McNamara said.
Taxi associations argue that black cab meter rates are fixed, whereas Uber's fares are set by the company, which enables it to charge a "surge" fee during busy periods. They add that they have to undergo criminal checks and medicals, be wheelchair accessible, and pass the Knowledge test, but that Uber drivers need only a minicab licence and commercial insurance.
Transport for London has now referred the matter to the high court. McNamara questioned the issuing of a licence to Uber when its tax status was unclear. "Why do Uber's invoices go through Holland? I don't particularly care if Uber are paying enough tax in the UK, but that is something that should concern Boris."
In a statement, the company said: "Uber complies with all applicable tax laws, and pays taxes in all jurisdictions, such as corporate income tax, payroll tax, sales and use tax, and VAT."
Jo Bertram, the UK & Ireland general manager for Uber, said the number of people downloading the app in London had increased by 850%, compared with the same time on Wednesday last week. "The results are clear: London wants Uber in a big way," she said. "Unsurprisingly, the LTDA, which is stuck in the dark ages, is intent on holding London to ransom and causing significant economic impact to Londoners."
Asked what specific tax the company paid in the UK, and why its invoices go through an office in the Netherlands, she said she had nothing to add to the statement.
Leon Daniels, TfL's managing director of surface transport, said the strike had been "good natured" and he estimated the number of cabs at around 5,000.
"As a result of close co-operation between TfL and the Metropolitan Police Service the number of other road users caught in the congestion was minimised," he said. "The important thing now is continue with the process to get legal clarity on the issue of taxi meters. I hope that the industry will join us in taking that to a conclusion with all due speed."
In Italy, where Uber has been provoking protests from taxi drivers in Milan and Rome since last year, strikes and protests were held not only in the app's two Italian strongholds but also in other cities keen to stave off its arrival.
About 150 drivers protested in Naples, the Ansa news agency reported, while in the northern city of Verona drivers staged a one-hour strike – in solidarity with their Milanese colleagues but "above all against the possibility that the Uber app could spread to Verona too," a statement said.
In Milan, where the strike was due to last until 10pm local time, organisers said the action was about "not surrendering a sector to a multinational which cares about revenue and not service, without even paying taxes in Italy".
Spain saw similar scenes, as Madrid's ubiquitous white taxis began a 24-hour strike to protest against Uber and other similar smartphone apps. The two main taxi associations said 100% of their members had parked their cars for the day in an effort to raise awareness over what they called unfair competition. While taxi licences in Spain cost between €80,000 and €200,000, there is no such requirement for drivers with Uber.
Protests were also held in Barcelona, the only Spanish city where Uber is currently in use. On Tuesday, two months after the app was introduced there, the Catalan government announced it would demand Uber "immediately" cease its activity in Barcelona, and drivers who use it could be fined up to €6,000 and see their vehicles impounded.
Uber has expanded rapidly since it was launched in 2010 by two US technology entrepreneurs, Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp. The company, which was last week valued at $18bn (£11bn) in an oversubscribed fundraising, operates in London, Manchester and more than 100 cities in 37 countries and has faced opposition in most of them.
It is banned in Las Vegas and Miami and is facing lawsuits in Chicago, San Francisco and Washington, DC.
Speaking from his stationary cab in Whitehall, Carl Williams said cab drivers welcomed competition. "We've been in competition with minicabs for 40 years. This is not about competition, it's a regulation issue: if you want to give Uber meters fine – but, like ours, that meter should be regulated." | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2010/jun/02/1 | Environment | 2010-06-02T08:09:17.000Z | Environment editor | Environment Today - tell us what to cover | Welcome to our daily blog series, Environment Today.
This is your space to post your links and tips below on the big stories we should be covering today.
It's also a place for you to debate the day's environmental news and comment, and send us suggestions for topics on our regular series, such as green living column Ask Leo & Lucy, Greenwash and our You ask, they answer reader web chats.
You can post below, message us on Twitter, or share your thoughts on our Facebook page. We'll do our best to respond.
Comments close at 5pm today. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/feb/08/philip-green-accused-of-racial-physical-and-sexual-abuse | Business | 2019-02-08T23:23:34.000Z | Kevin Rawlinson | Philip Green accused of racial, physical and sexual abuse | Sir Philip Green allegedly subjected people working in his business empire to abuse and other inappropriate behaviour that was at times racial, physical and sexual, according to a report.
A host of serious allegations were published on Friday evening by the Daily Telegraph after an injunction obtained by the businessman was lifted.
The paper said some of the people involved had made complaints about Green but they had been covered up. In some cases, Green is alleged to have paid people large sums of money in return for their silence.
He was accused of making racist remarks to black employees, of groping female employees and of being physically aggressive and abusive towards both male and female members of staff.
The paper made the allegations public on Friday evening after Green dropped legal action against it in the high court earlier the same day.
The paper reported last October that an unidentified businessman had obtained an injunction against it. Peter Hain, operating under cover of parliamentary privilege, later revealed that figure to be Green. As a result, the businessman’s lawyers argued there was no longer any point in pursuing legal action and a judge agreed to allow him to withdraw it on Friday, ordering him to pay the Telegraph’s costs. The paper has estimated his bill to be in the region of £3m.
In one of the claims reported by the Telegraph on Friday, it was alleged that Green mocked a black employee’s dreadlocks and accused him of smoking cannabis, as well as telling him his “problem” was that “everyone else is firing guns and you’re still throwing spears in the jungle”. The employee later accepted a £1m payment on condition that he signed a gagging order, the Telegraph reported. The man refused to comment when contacted by the paper.
The report said other staff had raised concerns about Green, with some claiming the need to be “careful about hiring” had been discussed because Green felt there were “too many black people” in his Arcadia business.
Green denied any “unlawful … racist behaviour”, the paper said.
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Peter Hain names Sir Philip Green as businessman in 'British #MeToo scandal' - video
In another claim reported by the Telegraph, Green is alleged to have groped a senior female executive, called her a “naughty girl”, as well as kissing her face in full view of other staff and making comments about her weight. It was alleged that she was later paid more than £1m to keep quiet. The Telegraph said it had chosen not to name the woman, who had declined to comment when contacted by the paper.
Other women told the paper they had also been the objects of inappropriate behaviour. Green’s lawyers admitted he acted in a “tactile” way and has “prodded and poked individuals”. He has said he “categorically denies any unlawful … sexual behaviour”.
According to the Telegraph’s coverage, an Arcadia employee also accused Green of “grabbing” her face and making comments that made her feel “uncomfortable”. At one point, she told him “not to come any closer”, it said.
The paper reported that the woman had complained to HR that she felt sexually harassed and intimidated and was later paid hundreds of thousands of pounds.
According to court documents, Green’s lawyers said his “style is predominately jovial in nature” and that he “has in a playful way poked and prodded individuals with whom he has worked closely”. His lawyers added that he “has also been known to put his arms around individuals at times in a totally non-sexual way”.
In addition, the Telegraph reported that an Arcadia executive had complained about Green’s behaviour, including an incident in which he had allegedly held her in a “headlock” in front of numerous witnesses.
Sources told the paper he had also allegedly “groped” her, leaving her feeling “intimidated”. The Telegraph said she had been paid hundreds of thousands of pounds after making a formal complaint.
Green’s lawyers told the paper he was a “passionate businessman, who can at times be overexuberant and hot-headed”. They said he can be “perceived at times as aggressive with senior and trusted staff”.
They added: “It is further denied that any of Sir Philip’s conduct towards employees amounted to any type of crime, or anything that would amount to gross misconduct, or a serious risk to health and safety.”
Green was also accused of acting aggressively towards another member of staff, including smashing the person’s phone. The Telegraph reported that, when it put the allegations to Green, he said the executive had been paid “one month’s salary” when he left and had recently asked for a reference.
Asked to respond to the Telegraph’s report on Friday evening, Green’s representatives told the Guardian they would not expand on a statement released earlier that day in response to the high court’s decision in which they said the paper had a “vendetta” against Green. “The Telegraph has pursued a vendetta against Sir Philip Green and the employees and management of Arcadia Group for the past nine months, harassing many of its staff and their families at their homes, often at night and at weekends.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/jan/10/dababy-boom-controversial-rapper-taking-over-america | Music | 2020-01-10T06:00:29.000Z | Jeff Weiss | DaBaby boom: meet the controversial rapper taking over America | It’s impossible to know where to focus your attention. On the six members of Jabbawockeez, the dance troupe wriggling on stage like breakdancing stormtroopers? The wobbling pair of blowup kewpie dolls? Or maybe the man with “DaBoy Baby” carved in Carolina blue script on his chest?
Then DaBaby’s track, Bop, explodes from the loudspeakers and a new sensory assault begins: backflipping dancers in black “Billion Dollar Baby” tracksuits; synchronised routines from people in Nasa flight outfits; a dancer with red booty shorts who bounces on her head, splits her legs akimbo and twerks.
DaBaby performs at Rolling Loud in Oakland, California. Photograph: Tim Mosenfelder/Getty
We are at Rolling Loud in Los Angeles, the world’s largest travelling rap festival, held in the teeming stadium car park of the Los Angeles football club. Almost all of the genre’s biggest names are here, from Young Thug to Future, A$AP Rocky to Lil Uzi Vert. Yet the most claustrophobic it gets all weekend is for a 28-year-old rapper from Charlotte, North Carolina, who practically none of the 55,000 attendees had even heard of at this time last year. And despite the frenetic chaos and Where’s Wally panorama, your attention ultimately fixates on the ringleader at the centre of this circus, the PT Barnum of bop, DaBaby.
“I like pushing the envelope and being creative,” he tells me the next day. “I’m a high-level performer – [it’s about] how I can take it to another level. I try not to be complacent in my music or with my performances. I gotta keep it fresh and rock out.”
In the past 12 months, DaBaby has become the hottest rapper in the US. He has released two acclaimed albums, with the latest, Kirk (his full name is Jonathan Lyndale Kirk), debuting at No 1 in September. Four singles reached the Top 10 – Suge, Bop, Intro, and his assist on Post Malone’s Enemies – with the biggest, Suge, up for two Grammys this month. Another 18 songs crashed the charts, including collaborations with Nicki Minaj, Chance the Rapper, Migos and J Cole. Not bad for a new rapper from a mid-sized US city with no previously notable hip-hop scene, who as recently as 2017 was walking around SXSW festival in an adult nappy demanding that people pay attention to him (under his old alias, Baby Jesus). If DaBaby isn’t the best rapper alive, he’s at least in the conversation.
Yet, he also has a darker streak that inevitably shrouds discussions about him: most infamously, the late-2018 incident when DaBaby was involved in an incident when a 19-year-old was killed in a North Carolina Walmart, while DaBaby was shopping with his then one-year-old daughter, her mother and her mother’s five-year-old son from a previous relationship. He claimed in an online video to have acted in self-defence after a gun was pulled on him and the state ultimately dropped charges against the rapper for carrying a concealed weapon.
To understand his meteoric rise it helps to see DaBaby in his element. A 5ft 8in speedball, he hurtles across the Rolling Loud stage like a basketball player. He raps at whiplash speeds, as if he is plugged into a power grid, and attempts to plough through the packed crowd. Then he basks in the moment of triumph and screams: “It’s pandemonium!”
DaBaby is heir to the lineage of Busta Rhymes, Eminem, Missy Elliott and Ludacris – virtuosic inventive rap stylists unafraid to make videos full of funny parodies and rubber-faced camera goofs – but there is another side to him, that I only witness briefly: the trash-talking hustler who grew up poor.
‘I gotta keep it fresh and rock out’ … DaBaby. Photograph: Cooper Neill/Getty
It is the night after Rolling Loud, inside Snoop Dogg’s studio compound in Inglewood, California. Upstairs in the game room – decorated with silkscreens of the Las Vegas skyline and the Rat Pack – DaBaby is running the dice table, recklessly shaking a rattan craps stick.
“I was doing this when I was pissing in the bed,” he smirks to six friends gathered around the blue felt table. He is wearing a purplish luxury hoodie-and-sweats combo. A half-smoked blunt dangles from his mouth. “I’ve been doing this way longer than rapping,” he adds. “I used to do it like this up against the wall!” He mimes throwing the dice into a mural of Casino.
There are things that DaBaby deems off-limits in interviews, namely, what he did between dropping out of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and starting to take rap seriously five or so years ago. It is filed euphemistically as stuff done “in the streets”. If you accept his early mixtapes as confession, there is plenty of drug-dealer talk, but watching this side of DaBaby you understand the hustler streak, the confidence and ability to make money, and the shrewd wariness that allowed him to stay alive and out of jail.
After a few minutes, his manager Arnold Taylor interrupts to tell him: “We got work to do.” Silently tossing the dice over his right shoulder, DaBaby instantly changes his facial expression from carnivorous glee to a solemnity that’s largely absent from his recorded output. To listen to a DaBaby record, you might assume that his life was circumscribed by hedonism, violence and the desire to be the best rapper alive. But there is also a meticulousness to the way he moves.
“I’ve studied the greats,” DaBaby says. He leans back on an overstuffed couch, his voice pitched to a near-whisper, the exhaustion of the past 12 months hitting the moment he finally slows down. “I studied people like Future, Lil Wayne and Kanye, who came up and consistently progressed. I’ve studied all the genius marketers throughout the rap game. I borrow from anybody with something to offer.”
“I never studied marketing,” he adds, his eyes half-closed. “I’ve just always been a hustler. I didn’t even have a major decided at college. I only went to school for my parents.”
Even before he was famous, DaBaby acted like he was, rolling 50 deep in branded outfits to the Charlotte clubs. “The idea of being a locally famous rapper was never real to me. I was immediately trying to get on the same charts as Drake.” His career received a massive boost when he signed to Arnold Taylor, the president of South Coast Music, the biggest radio promoter in the state, who was instrumental in the early rise of southern rap stars including Yo Gotti and Future.
“We wanted to show his fun side but also the street side,” says Taylor, who guided DaBaby from a gifted but obscure regional street rapper to a major label bidding war that ended with a seven-figure deal from Interscope. “We’re from the hood and are serious and real, but at the end of the day, that don’t get you anywhere. He can be a worldwide artist; he can act and do comedy. He can really spit with the best of them, but he can also make songs. Some spitters can’t make songs.”
In this sense, DaBaby reflects an anachronistic approach to the rap game. If the charts are filled with opiated threnodies about addiction and sadness, he eschews singing in favour of raps that could take your head off (“I can’t sing, but I’ll hit some notes here and there”), usually starting the second the beat hits. It helps that he gets beats from his nascent fellow Carolina star, JetsonMade, whose productions blend post-trap grit with a springy trampoline bounce.
His most poignant song, Intro, from Kirk, intersects with another less-seen side of DaBaby: the devoted family man. It’s a tribute to his father, a veteran of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, who died the same week that his son reached No 1 in the charts. And in conversation, DaBaby’s eyes most readily light up when talking about his love for his father and mother (who worked for a finance company), his older brothers and his young daughter. When I ask what he would be doing today if he didn’t have any work responsibilities, he immediately answers: “Whatever my daughter wants to do. She’s bright and brilliant. I’m just blessed to be able to establish a path for her before she even knows how to tie her shoe.”
I’ve studied all the genius marketers throughout the rap game. I borrow from anybody with something to offer
Yet he doesn’t seem to have escaped his previous life entirely. Last month, Charlotte police cited him for marijuana possession and resisting arrest, overshadowing the earlier part of the day where he had given out hundreds of Christmas toys to underprivileged families; DaBaby claimed the arrest was “illegal” and tweeted: “Black Excellence right here in our own city, & they hate it.” Earlier this week, authorities detained and questioned DaBaby in Miami in connection with a robbery investigation, and later arrested him after police discovered an outstanding warrant pertaining to a battery charge in Texas. His team declined to comment on the Miami arrest, but he took to Instagram to tell people to “please stop talking to me about that weak ass 48 hours I spent in jail and that failed attempt to break my spirits and interrupt the path I’m taking to my God given success”.
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Back in that room in Inglewood last month, he was similarly undeterred in his plans for world domination. “I’m just a quick learner – I learned to cook watching the cooking channel,” he says. There are plans to act, the growth of his Billion Dollar Baby label, and vague ambitions about using his platform for real change. When I ask where he thinks he will be in five years, he says that is way too far ahead for him to think about. Fifty years? He beams. “Fifty years, man? I better be damn near the president of the United States.”
When the time is up, DaBaby thanks me then excuses himself to go back upstairs. He has been so busy that there has been no time to record, but for the next few hours he has Snoop’s studio all to himself. I ask Taylor and his representatives if it’s possible to watch him make a song or two. It becomes quickly clear that it might not be the best idea. “It’s probably for the best,” Taylor tells me politely. “DaBaby doesn’t really like surprises.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2024/mar/11/leigh-francis-review-london-palladium | Stage | 2024-03-11T06:00:23.000Z | Brian Logan | Leigh Francis: My First Time review – cacophonously unfunny with the emphasis on cack | Is he funny, or is his comedy the nadir of western civilisation? Not being a close follower of the storied TV career of Leigh Francis, AKA Keith Lemon, I arrived at his maiden live show an agnostic in this lively critical conversation. Reader, I am agnostic no more. My First Time is not a show for the comedy connoisseur, nor for anyone whose sense of humour occasionally strays above the waistband. Francis’s comic enthusiasms are perhaps best distilled in the words of his Urban Fox alter ego shortly prior to engaging in vulpine sex: “I love a shitty bum bum.”
Lest I understate the 50-year-old’s range, I must concede: he also loves a wank joke. The show revives an assortment of characters, usually rubber-masked, from Francis’s small-screen output, from celebrity stalker Avid Merrion, visiting the present day from 2004, via Keith Lemon himself, to Amanda Holden’s supposed gran Myrtle. These personae, like Francis’s celebrity impressions (David Dickinson, Stephen Mulhern, Louis Theroux), variously burp, fart, drink “bin juice” and talk porn. Joe Wicks appears, and shits himself. Dec “bums” Ant with a TV award. James Corden licks Adele’s arsehole.
It’s all cacophonously loud, with the emphasis on cack. Francis is a capable performer, brash, slightly bullying, without charm or subtlety. Video interludes book-end each sketch. As two audience members are invited on stage to “fuck a balloon”, and another to recite a smutty children’s story, I began to think: is there more to this than there seems? But contorting myself to give credit to Francis’s creative project, to situate his scatological vision somewhere on the spectrum between Ubu Roi and The Human Centipede, didn’t get me very far. The jokes were still predictable, repetitive and unimaginative.
Flickers of interest? There were a few. Hostile audience booing at the idea, as expressed to the time-travelling Merrion, that “there’s a lot you can’t say and do any more” in 2024. Some musical mimicry by Jess Robinson, one of Francis’s two co-stars. The show briefly being stopped while unruly audience members were made to leave. To really punish them, they should have been made to stay.
Touring until 7 April | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2013/jul/22/bolshoi-ballet-nikolai-tsiskaridze | Stage | 2013-07-22T18:00:00.000Z | Judith Mackrell | Bolshoi acid scandal: 'I'm just asking for proof' | Please don't make this story personal." That's the last thing Nikolai Tsiskaridze says to me as he's whisked away to catch a flight back home. The Tbilisi-born dancer, notorious for his flashy stage presence and his equally flashy head of hair (of which more later), has just finished a brief guest appearance at London's Coliseum, his first major performance since he was sacked from the Bolshoi in June. And although our hour-long interview, conducted through a translator, is almost entirely focused on the dancer himself, the story is, as he says, far bigger.
Even before sulphuric acid was thrown in the face of artistic director Sergei Filin in January, the Bolshoi had been suffering a tumultuous few years. There had been stories of alleged financial corruption, involving the £500m-plus renovation of the theatre building between 2005 and 2011; illegal conspiracies with ticket touts; even rumours of preferential payments to certain dancers. The brutal attack on Filin was allegedly ordered by a disgruntled dancer, Pavel Dmitrichenko, who was arrested and charged in March, but rumours persist of Tsiskaridze's role in fomenting discontent at the company. He dismissed the renovation as "tacky", and for several years lambasted general director Anatoly Iksanov for his "ignorant" meddling in artistic policy, while making it plain that he himself would be ready to replace him (in November 2012, a public petition calling for exactly that even made its way to president Putin). Now the scandal has claimed them both: in early July, Iksanov was forced to resign; only weeks earlier, Tsiskaridze was told his contract would not be renewed.
Sergei Filin leaves hospital after the acid attack. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
Whatever else it may have done, the affair doesn't seem to have dented the dancer's self-confidence: when I ask him to describe his relationship with the company he joined in 1992, he says, quite naturally, "The Bolshoi is the best in classical dancing. And for years I have been the face of that company." And when we discuss his hostility towards a previous director, Alexei Ratmansky, who ran the ballet between 2004 and 2008, it focused mainly on what Tsiskaridze saw as a "lack of respect" to senior ballerinas, and to himself. "The prime minister doesn't tell the queen what to do," he says patiently. "He can only offer polite advice."
But he insists that he has never courted his own publicity, nor positioned himself for the top job at the Bolshoi. "Other people put me forward. All I said was that I could do it if I was asked."
For all that he was critical of Filin's management style and his attempts to rein in major dancers, Tsiskaridze also denies he had any personal animus against the director himself. "When the attack happened," he says, "I said nothing about it for three months. Anything you heard that I said was a lie. It was a nightmare. Photographers were at my door, journalists kept ringing me up at night."
Despite the terrible pictures that have come out of the German clinic where Filin is being operated on, Tsiskaridze also believes the attack was nowhere near as serious as it has been represented. "I'm just asking for proof," he says. "Normally a person who has had an acid attack has burnt hands, has no eyelashes or eyebrows, and they can't use their voice." But isn't Filin said to be on his 18th operation, having lost 95% of his sight? "Look at women who've had chemical peels. How can those statements come from the doctors? It would be against their oath."
Even discounting the apparent callousness of Tsiskaridze's attitude (and the unlikeliness that police, doctors and theatre management would collude in such a conspiracy of deceit), it's true that waters at the Bolshoi are muddied, to say the least. Virtually none of the company believe Dmitrichenko was guilty – after his arrest, more than 300 staff signed a public letter of support – and the dancer has since denied that he made any actual confession. The police have so far made no further arrests.
Pavel Dmitrichenko. Photograph: Novoderezhkin Anton/Corbis
Tsiskaridze claims that fears of reprisals among the dancers will make it impossible for the truth to come out, and cites several members of the company – including his own proteges Angelina Vorontsova (Dmitrichenko's girlfriend) and Denis Rodkin – who've suffered as a result of staying loyal to him. "In the theatre, people in dark corners hugged me and said they were are on my side, but they were too frightened to say so in public." His own theory is that the whole affair has been exaggerated by the Bolshoi, describing it as "a witch hunt" to force him out of the company.
Despite his enormous ego, it's easy to see why Tsiskaridze has such a huge popular following in Russia, both for his dancing and for his frequent appearances on television. He has theatrically Georgian colouring, golden skin and a head of thick black hair so impressive that it deserves a dressing room to itself. Even when he's irritated, his charm is a force of nature.
And his identification with the Bolshoi has been, in its own way, unflagging. He began coaching younger dancers when he was 29, and is still performing a full schedule. When I ask his hopes for the future, his first answer is that he "would like the festivity to return to the Bolshoi". But he shakes his head when I ask if he will return, too; at least, he implies, not as a dancer. Now 39, he has no desire to emulate Nureyev, who "should have given up 15 years earlier".
When the Bolshoi comes to London for its regular summer season next week, hoping to erase the horrors of recent headlines, Tsiskaridze says he'll be more than happy to be relaxing on his first holiday in ages. "I have my dreams," he says enigmatically, "and I don't want to talk about them in case I destroy them." | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/jan/20/mahmood-jamal-obituary | Television & radio | 2021-01-20T10:30:59.000Z | Farrukh Dhondy | Mahmood Jamal obituary | Mahmood Jamal, who has died aged 72, was one of the pioneers of multicultural television in Britain. As a producer of films and documentaries Mahmood sought to bring talent and material from minority-ethnic communities to the screen.
The launch of Channel 4 in 1982, and its remit to feature programmes and concerns that the BBC and ITV had not, led Mahmood and his brother, Ahmed Jamal, to form the all-Asian Retake Film and Video Collective, the first of its kind in the UK.
Two years later, while continuing to work with Retake, Mahmood formed his own production company, Epicflo, and began to make films set in, and of interest to, British-Asian communities.
Among these was The Peacock Screen (1991), a four-part history of Indian cinema, Turning World (1996), a drama series set in a psychiatric hospital starring Art Malik and Roshan Seth, which Mahmood also wrote, and Quarrels (1996), a documentary series that featured and mediated disputes between different groups of people in Britain.
One programme centred on the relatively new Muslim community of Highfields, Leicester, whose representatives objected to the sex workers who had traditionally worked those streets for decades, if not centuries. Another mediated between the residents of a village in south-east England who objected to the hundreds of Hindu worshippers arriving each weekend to attend ceremonies at Bhaktivedanta Manor, a temple newly endowed by the former Beatle George Harrison.
As the commissioning editor at Channel 4 for these series, I had to fend off criticism that some of these programmes, through their exposure of some possibly repressive traditions, inflamed racism against Asians.
However Mahmood believed that an honest, truthful approach was the most acute weapon against race prejudice, and could only contribute to the assimilation of the new communities of Britain.
Characters from Family Pride, the only Asian soap to be made for British television, 1991-92, which was co-written by Mahmood Jamal. Photograph: ITV/Rex/Shutterstock
In the early 1990s Mahmood’s Epicflo also brought a series of concerts by international qawwali singers, such as Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Abida Parveen and Aziz Mian, to British television for the first time. When I approached the Channel 4 scheduler for time-slots for these performances, I was asked when and for what duration I wanted them. I said a start of 11pm through to 2am, as is traditional for such concerts in the Indian subcontinent. I was told by a bewildered boss that that would entail extending the channel’s broadcasting hours. Still, in the interests of authenticity, it was done.
Another snag occurred prior to the performances, when Mahmood spent hours at the airport rescuing the accompanying choric singers from British immigration. Some of them, much to the astonishment of the director of programmes at the time, Liz Forgan, were, as medically certified heroin addicts, carrying their prescribed supply. They were eventually admitted into the country and the live performances were nevertheless a landmark in the channel’s history.
Mahmood was also a published poet and the co-writer (with Barry Simmer) of the only Asian soap opera to be made for British TV, Family Pride (1991-92, Central Television). Though his import of certified addicts had been unwitting, Mahmood did have a mischievous sense of humour: the European names of several characters in Family Pride doubled as salacious Urdu puns; while the channel received a few protests, Mahmood played innocent.
Mahmood Jamal on the set of Rahm, 2017, a Pakistani adaptation of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure directed by his brother Ahmed Jamal, with Faris Khalid playing Gulzar
Born in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, into a leading Muslim family who lived in the monumental Firangi Mahal, Mahmood was the son of Jamal Miah, an Islamic scholar, and his wife, Asar Fatima. He attended St Mary’s school in the city, then, after his family moved to Dhaka in what was then East Pakistan (later Bangladesh), St Joseph’s high school.
He came to Britain in 1967 to study chartered accountancy as an articled clerk in the London firm Prince Simon and Co, but his creative and political inclinations led him to enrol in London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies (Soas), from which he graduated in 1982 in South Asian studies.
He taught accountancy at Lansdowne College in Notting Hill Gate, but from his undergraduate days Mahmood wrote poetry and had his work widely published in, among other periodicals, the London Magazine. He was invited to read his verses on BBC radio and in 1984 published his first collection of poems, entitled Silence Inside a Gun’s Mouth. He had a dozen collections published in total, including Sugar-Coated Pill (2007) and The Dream and Other Poems (2020), and was widely anthologised.
One of the prominent poetry platforms he joined was Apples and Snakes, which features the voices of scores of poets from the minority-ethnic communities of Britain. This poetry collective has brought the benefit of new oral traditions, dialects, and poetic forms to contemporary English poetry.
Mahmood also produced several volumes of translations from Urdu into English, including the Penguin Book of Modern Urdu Poetry (1986) and Islamic Mystical Poetry (2009).
Mahmood’s latest film, Rahm (2017), a Pakistani adaptation of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure directed by Ahmed, won the annual award of the Tongues of Fire British-Indian film festival in 2018.
He is survived by six siblings, Bari Mian, Ahmed, Moin, Farida, Amina and Humaira.
Mahmood Jamal, writer, poet and producer, born 11 March 1948; died 23 December 2020 | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/jan/27/britain-could-lose-access-to-eu-data-after-series-of-scandals | Politics | 2020-01-27T05:30:43.000Z | Daniel Boffey | Britain could lose access to EU data after series of scandals | British hopes of maintaining a post-Brexit flow of data with the EU, judged vital for security and the economy, have been thrown into doubt after a behind-the-scenes intervention from the Netherlands over Britain’s record in protecting personal information.
As the UK prepares to leave the EU at 11pm on Friday, it can be revealed that the UK’s closest ally in the bloc raised concerns over the robustness of British checks and controls after a series of scandals, including abuse of an EU system for monitoring the movement of people at borders.
According to a minute of a board meeting of the UK’s Acro criminal records office – deleted from publicly available archives after the Guardian posed questions to the Home Office – the Netherlands made its issues with the UK known last year.
The UK had been seeking to share criminal convictions data outside EU structures in the event of a no-deal exit but both the Netherlands and France declined to be involved.
“France are currently not engaging for political reasons, and Holland will not engage due to concerns around the UK’s data adequacy status,” the minute records.
The doubts held by the Dutch over the UK’s record offers compelling evidence that the current flow of data with the rest of the EU could be in peril.
The European commission is expected to make a so-called adequacy decision this year to potentially allow Britain’s security services and industry to continue to benefit from the transfer of vast volumes of personal data across Europe after Brexit.
The political declaration – a document agreed by the EU and the UK as a guide to this year’s negotiations on the future relationship – states that “adequate protection of personal data” is an “essential prerequisite” for “enabling the cooperation envisaged by the parties”.
The member states will agree on the adequacy of the UK’s protections of European citizens data by qualified majority, meaning that more than half of the member states must give their approval.
This month the European parliament’s justice and home affairs committee was provided with evidence of “deliberate violations and abuse” by the UK of the Schengen Information System (SIS), an EU database used by police and border guards across the border-free Schengen zone.
The British authorities had made “unlawful” full or partial copies of the database that were said by an EU report to pose “serious and immediate risks to the integrity and security of SIS data”.
The Guardian has also revealed in recent weeks that the UK failed to pass on the details of 75,000 convictions of foreign criminals to their home EU countries and concealed the scandal for fear of damaging Britain’s reputation.
A police national computer error went undetected for five years, during which one in three alerts on offenders – potentially including murderers and rapists – were not sent to EU member states. The Home Office opted not to inform its partners due to “reputational damage”.
A Dutch government spokesman said: “Given the broad and comprehensive ambitious relationship that the Netherlands strives for with the UK in the field of internal security, there must be absolute trust in each other’s practices and systems.
“The SIS case only serves to underline this. Given its ambitions the Netherlands actively supports the commission’s approach to achieve an adequacy decision with the UK on data protection in the field of security cooperation.”
The Labour peer Lord Kennedy of Southwark, who has pressed for a government inquiry into the latest data failings by the UK government, said: “This latest revelation is deeply concerning and highlights the complete loss of confidence other partners have in the UK in respect of data handling and our data adequacy in general.
“The only people this sorry situation benefits is criminals. What is needed is an urgent inquiry to establish what are the failings, how they were allowed to happen and to set out a programme to regain the trust and confidence of partners.”
A Home Office spokesperson said: “These were discussions about a no-deal Brexit and are no longer relevant for 31 January. We have some of the highest levels of data protection in the world and are fully committed to meeting our legal obligations. We have a very close security partnership with EU countries, and are engaging with the commission on our future data-sharing arrangements.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/20/russia-luna-25-space-craft-crashes-into-the-moon | World news | 2023-08-20T14:42:45.000Z | Andrew Roth | Russia’s Luna-25 spacecraft crashes into the moon | Russia’s first moon mission in 47 years has failed after its Luna-25 spacecraft spun out of control and crashed into the moon, dealing a significant setback to the embattled Russian space programme’s attempt to revive its Soviet-era prestige.
The state space corporation Roscosmos said it had lost contact with the craft at 1157 GMT on Saturday after a problem as the craft was shunted into pre-landing orbit. A soft landing had been planned for Monday.
“The apparatus moved into an unpredictable orbit and ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the surface of the moon,” Roscosmos said in a statement. It said a special interdepartmental commission had been formed to investigate the reasons behind the loss of the Luna-25 craft.
Pavel Luzin, an expert on the Russian space programme, said before the mission that Russia needed Luna-25 “to demonstrate that it is capable to do something even without the west”.
The failure underscored the decline of Russia’s space power since the glory days of cold war competition when Moscow was the first to launch a satellite to orbit the Earth – Sputnik 1, in 1957 – and the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man to travel into space in 1961.
The Luna-25 mission sought to land near the south pole of the moon, collecting geological samples from the area, and sending back data for signs of water or its building blocks, which could raise the possibility of a future human colony on the moon.
But the first goal was to prove that Russia still can launch a lunar landing mission after numerous failures in the past, generations of turnover among its scientific experts, delays due to western-imposed sanctions and now isolation because of its war in Ukraine.
Russian state television put news of the loss of Luna-25 at number eight in its lineup at noon and gave it just 26 seconds of coverage, after news about fires on Tenerife and a four-minute item about a professional holiday for Russian pilots and crews.
Russia has been racing against India, whose Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft is scheduled to land on the moon’s south pole this week, and more broadly against China and the US, which both have advanced lunar ambitions.
“India’s Chandrayaan-3 is set to land on the moon on August 23,” the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) posted on X, formerly Twitter, around the time news of the Luna crash broke.
Anatoly Zak, the creator and publisher of the website RussianSpaceWeb, which tracks Russian space programmes, described the flight control system as a “vulnerable area, which had to go through many fixes”.
Zak said Russia had also gone for the much more ambitious moon landing before undertaking a simpler orbital mission – the usual practice for the Soviet Union, the US, China and India.
Russian scientists have repeatedly complained that the space programme has been weakened by poor managers who are keen for unrealistic vanity space projects, corruption and a decline in the rigour of Russia’s post-Soviet scientific education system.
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Post-Soviet Russia has launched two failed space landing missions, the Mars-96 in 1996 and Phobos-Grunt in 2011, both of which crash-landed into the Pacific Ocean.
Eventually, in the early 2010s, Russia settled upon the idea of the Luna-25 mission to the south pole of the moon. Luna-25 did manage to exit the Earth’s orbit.
But its failure means Russia may not be the first country to sample the frozen water scientists believe the south pole holds.
It was not immediately clear what long-term impact the failed mission would have on the country’s moon programme, which envisages several more missions over coming years.
“The future of the subsequent launches of Luna-26, Luna-27 and beyond is now in question. Even before the accident, they were promised to be launched no earlier than 2027, and now the deadlines can be shifted more or cancelled altogether,” wrote Vitaly Egorov, a blogger who writes extensively on space exploration.
Reuters contributed to this report | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/25/eiffel-tower-reopens-to-visitors-after-strike-by-workers-who-complained-of-rust | World news | 2024-02-25T13:51:30.000Z | Jon Henley | Eiffel Tower reopens to visitors after strike by workers who complained of rust | The Eiffel Tower has reopened to visitors after a six-day strike by employees demanding changes to the landmark’s business model and better maintenance of the 330m (1,083ft) structure, which is showing widespread traces of rust.
The tower’s operator said in a statement it had reached an agreement with unions “under which parties will regularly monitor the company’s business model, investment in works and revenue through a body that will meet every six months”.
It added that both sides had also agreed to “an ambitious €380m (£325m) up to 2031” towards maintenance and renovation of the 135-year-old attraction, which is visited by up to 7 million people a year and will feature prominently in the 2024 Paris Olympics.
The operator, SETE, which is 99% owned by the city of Paris, has also launched pay negotiations that are expected to be concluded in March. It apologised to ticket holders and said they would be reimbursed if they were affected by the strike.
The stoppage was the second in three months. Unions maintain SETE is “heading for disaster” because its business model is based on an over-estimation of future revenue from ticket sales and an underestimation of escalating maintenance and repair costs.
Stéphane Dieu, of the CGT union, said the company was pursuing “short-term profitability”. He also criticised plans by Paris city hall to nearly treble the slice of the tower’s ticket revenues that it takes each year to €50m (£43m) from 2025.
“There are numerous areas of corrosion, symptoms of significant disrepair,” Dieu told FranceInfo radio. “She’s a 135-year-old lady, she needs a step up in terms of repairs. Given city hall’s plans, it’s hard to see where that investment will come from.”
France’s culture minister, Rachida Dati, suggested last week that the tower, which was built for the 1889 Paris world fair and was only ever intended to last 20 years, be classified as a “historical monument” to allow the state to help fund works.
Denis Vavassori, another CGT member who works at the attraction, said paint was falling off the tower and rust spreading. “I’ve worked here for 21 years and I’ve never seen it in such a state,” he said. “The more time goes by, the bigger the repairs will need to be.”
Gustave Eiffel, the structural engineer whose company built the tower, recommended that the tower be repainted roughly every seven years. However, the current 20th repainting campaign, begun in 2019 – a decade after the previous one was completed – has been significantly delayed.
The pandemic, and high levels of lead in previous coats, meant only 3% of the paint that was meant to be stripped in this repainting round had actually been removed, Vavassori said, and 70% of the actual repainting remained to be done.
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While several recent reports have identified areas of concern, experts insisted the tower is safe. “The iron we’ve uncovered so far is in an exceptional state of conservation,” said Pierre-Antoine Gatier, the historic buildings architect in charge of the repaint.
Gatier said patches of rust pointed out by employees and visitors were “strictly superficial” and “in no way affect the solidity” of the 18,000-odd iron bars that make up the tower.
“We all want the tower to be magnificently preserved,” he said. “It’s the image of France, and the image of Paris. It’s essential for all of us.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/dec/10/intelligent-food-expiry-label-waste-bump-mark | Technology | 2014-12-10T10:00:06.000Z | Corinne Jones | Young inventor’s intelligent expiry label could save tonnes in waste | In September this year, 22-year-old Solveiga Pakštaité won the national leg of the James Dyson award for a tiny yet remarkable design that was only ever meant to be her final major project at university. The product? Bump Mark: a super-smart, super-simple, gelatine-filled expiry label for food packaging, designed primarily for visually impaired people to feel when their food has gone off, but with the added universal benefit of being significantly more accurate than the dates currently printed on our food packaging.
Small and triangular in design, the bio-reactive Bump Mark is designed to be stuck on to packaging at the time the food is packaged. If the label feels smooth, your food is fresh - but if it feels bumpy, then it’s better off in the bin. Bump Mark is made up of four layers: a bumpy sheet of plastic is covered by a squidgy layer of gelatine and sandwiched between two sealing layers of plastic film. Gelatine, being a natural substance, reacts to factors such as temperature, oxygen and sunlight in the same way as food, and if attached to fresh food as a sealed label, it mimics the food’s process of decay. When the product inside the packaging is fresh, the gelatine in the label stays solid. But as the food starts to go off, the gelatine breaks down and becomes a liquid, making the bumpy layer beneath evident to anyone running their finger along the Bump Mark label.
The label’s genius resides in its accuracy with any type of food. “All you have to do is alter the concentration of the gelatine formula,” Pakštaité explains. “Say you wanted to put Bump Mark on a pack of strawberries, you’d measure how many days they’d last at the optimum temperature and match the gelatine formula so it would also last the same amount. The more gelatine per water in the formula, the more bonds there are, so the longer it will take for the gelatine to break down. For items that don’t last as long, like meat and milk, you’d lessen the amount of gelatine in the formula.”
Pakštaité’s design has come along at the right time. Food waste has become a concern in recent years, and a sizeable portion of the thousands of tonnes of consumable food we throw out in this country has been blamed on the often overly cautious “best before” and “use by” dates on our food packaging. “A lot of the solutions that retailers are being pushed to look at – and they are being pushed to look at solutions that will help people waste less food – are mostly electronic-based,” Pakštaité tells me. “Some cost at best 2p a label, which is very expensive. Bump Mark doesn’t contain any electronics, so it’s going to be far more low-cost.”
Since winning the award, Pakštaité’s inbox has been overflowing with requests from companies large and small desperate to employ her design. She’s used her award money to apply for a patent (still pending), and in November, she ran a big retail trial with Asda. If the results are good, it’s very likely Bump Mark will be in our fridges and cupboards around the country in 2015.
Pakštaité is passionate about her product, and about the need for smarter food labelling. “I’ve come from a family that does not waste food” she tells me emphatically. Born in Norway to Lithuanian parents who moved to England when she was five, Pakštaité, like many other recent graduates, is currently living with her parents, and commutes to her job at a behavioural insight company in Shoreditch. How have her family reacted to her success? “They’re really proud,” she smiles. “I think my grandma’s told all of Lithuania about me.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/feb/28/country-diary-this-quarry-will-once-again-become-the-land-of-the-living | Environment | 2024-02-28T05:30:27.000Z | Derek Niemann | Country diary: This quarry will once again become the land of the living | Derek Niemann | Today’s dinosaurs in Bedfordshire are digging up the seabed that their flesh-and-blood forebears paddled over a hundred million years ago. The metal arms of liberating machine bodies have brought up the sands of prehistoric beaches to flow free for the first time, after aeons of compression. The loosened sands have settled – for now – in two great conical mounds looking like orange tumuli, where living creatures once more make an impression. A trail of rabbit footprints scrabbles all the way up to the top of one. Bunny king of the sandcastle!
In this shapeshifting part of the quarry, nothing is fixed, not even the flat ground under our feet. The scatter of ironstone fragments, looking like bits of broken tiles, and biscuit-coloured knobbly stones that we might kick without thinking, are remnants of a mid-Victorian gold rush, when an army of picks and shovels scalped the earth in a thin band stretching between Buckinghamshire and the Norfolk border.
Those miners were surface-excavating for the mineral-rich layer of phosphatic sediment that would fertilise a nation’s crops. The lumpy nodules resembled fossilised dino dung, hence they were mistakenly called coprolites by the men who dug them up.
Twenty-first-century earth movers with steel jaws do more than lift off the top five metres. They sink into deep time, cracking open layers of long-crushed strata to a depth of 20 metres. Beyond the fence, past the mounds and out of our sight, creative intelligence is at work. The construction company Tarmac is being guided and encouraged by the RSPB, whose headquarters on a hill of sandstone sits across the road, to produce instant geology with heavy machinery.
In the working part of the quarry, they are carving out ravines and dry river valleys, raising little drumlins, shaping creases and folds, sheltering hollows and exposed faces that will, eventually, populate denuded landscapes. In parts of the quarry worked out decades ago, nourishing breezes have feathered the slopes and grooves with heather, lichens and mosses – the earliest makings of a habitat on a moonscape. The bare land I stand on may be dug out too, but what comes afterwards promises to be a miracle of inspiration and vision.
Country diary is on Twitter at @gdncountrydiary | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/oct/11/lil-wayne-hammersmith-apollo-review | Music | 2009-10-11T20:45:00.000Z | Angus Batey | Lil' Wayne | Pop review | Lil' Wayne's first British tour last year did not go well, his debut London gig being cut short after a fight on stage. Back home in the US, his Tha Carter III album made him a superstar, but a scheduled return to the UK in July was cancelled amid rumours that his label had refused to release a new, rock-oriented album. Happily, the New Orleans rapper wasted no time putting the past behind him.
Backed by a bruisingly loud band, he opened with A Milli, the song's sci-fi hip-hop given a startlingly effective guitar-led recharge. The last year of him constantly declaring "I am a rock star" suddenly made perfect sense.
Wayne's capriciousness hasn't always been reliable. You are never sure whether he's so brilliant that it's all too easy for him, or whether he's just lazy. On the Apollo stage, though, even the 27-year-old's most wilful indulgences worked.
The hilarious Michael Jackson tribute finale – Wayne and associates swaying and waving their arms while the crowd sang along to I'll Be There – was ridiculous, yet inspired. After show-offishly soloing on a bright red guitar, turned down below audibility because he doesn't really know how to play it, he brooded on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in Tie My Hands, then hammed it up in the lascivious Mrs Officer, and sold each emotion as genuine.
Fans fret because so many of hip-hop's favourite sons – Kanye West, Pharrell Williams, Timbaland – seem to have to move outside the genre to satisfy their creativity; but this was a reminder that hip-hop is a magpie music, built without inhibition from other sounds, styles and attitudes. Yes, Wayne is now a rock star, but only because he is hip-hop to the core – being whatever he wants. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/feb/16/the-king-of-st-kilda-fred-negro-on-cult-comic-pub-and-melbournes-lurid-underbelly | Film | 2023-02-15T14:00:13.000Z | Andrew Stafford | ‘The king of St Kilda!’: Fred Negro on cult comic Pub – and Melbourne’s lurid underbelly | Fred Negro has just knocked off his shift cleaning toilets. One of the best cartoonists in the world – according to some – doesn’t mind his day job. He’s done it for a long time. “It’s just a gig,” he says. “I always wake up early anyway, and I’m finished by 10 or 11.”
Negro, artist and musician, is a Melbourne icon. He is the creator of Pub, the comic strip that ran for decades in street press which chronicled in lurid, scatological and frequently pornographic detail the ratbags and raconteurs of the bayside suburb of St Kilda.
For a long time in the 1990, Negro lived in the suburb’s Esplanade Hotel. “I had the key to the pub. I was like the king of St Kilda! I just had to clean the joint,” he tells me. At the Espy, you could reliably find him drinking and drawing everything going on around him.
‘The ratbags and raconteurs of St Kilda’ provide a wellspring of inspirations for Fred Negro’s comics
The late Rowland S Howard once said you hadn’t made it in Melbourne until you’d appeared in one of Negro’s Pub strips. That was quite something coming from the Birthday Party guitarist, who had his own laneway in St Kilda named after him after his death.
Now Negro is the subject of a documentary – or, if you will, a “Fredumentary” – by the film-maker Andrew Leavold. Also called Pub, it’s finally getting a national release after a sold-out run at the Melbourne international film festival last year.
Fred Negro at the Melbourne international film festival screening of Pub – with his beloved toy horse. Photograph: Jim Lee
Pub is Leavold’s third film. His first was 2013 cult hit The Search for Weng Weng, the story of cinema’s shortest leading man (the obscure Filipino actor stood just 82cm tall). Negro’s story furthers the underdog theme: “It’s a celebration of the marginalised and misunderstood,” Leavold says.
Even Negro’s name is a source of contention. His ancestors are Spanish. Once, faced with accusations of racism, he produced a family tree spanning four generations. “Fred Negro Sr was one of the dodgiest tax accountants in Richmond, but he was definitely a ‘Negro’,” Leavold says.
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Negro’s exploits go beyond the page to the stage. He is also the drummer and frontman of I Spit on Your Gravy – easily the most punk band Richard Branson signed to Virgin since the Sex Pistols – as well as the Band Who Shot Liberty Valance, Squirming Gerbil Death and, later, the Fuck Fucks.
There was also the country band Shonkytonk, who once supported Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Billie Joe Shaver at Rod Laver Arena. It is safe to say the outlaw country legends met their match in Fred Negro that night.
Negro in the 80s, as frontman of Melbourne punk outfit I Spit on Your Gravy. Photograph: Joe Holzer
Negro’s bands purveyed a very Australian variant of shock-rock that had its roots in performers like Screaming Lord Sutch and Alice Cooper. Cooper once threw a live chicken into the audience. Negro took it a step further: he simulated intercourse with a (roast) chicken on stage, giving new meaning to the term “bachelor’s purse”.
In the film, Graham Hood (bass player for another country punk band, the Johnnys), can only shake his head in wonder at the memory. “I mean, you’ve got to respect someone with those talents,” he says.
Sam Crassweller, one half of the Spitettes (the two backing singers in the Gravys) admits people came to their gigs more for the spectacle than the music. But Negro’s reputation and infamy – as a kind of Australian equivalent to Robert Crumb – really rests on his artwork.
“There are Dada-esque and surrealist elements to his work, there’s also mad pop art, collage and satirical elements that are worthy of Swift,” Leavold says. “But if you choose not to see that, it’s just a bunch of puerile scribbles.”
Panels from Negro’s long-running series Pub
That’s what many people saw. But Pub (the film) mounts a strident defence of Negro’s life and work, with prominent, passionate witnesses. “True art makes you feel uncomfortable,” Crassweller declares.
And then there’s You Am I’s Tim Rogers, who spent a period “managing” another of Negro’s bands, the Twits: “If you can’t look past the cocks and balls and tits and not see the humanity behind it, well, maybe you’re the pervert,” he says in the film.
In his autobiography, Frank Zappa wrote that the most important thing in art was the frame: “Without this humble appliance, you can’t tell where the art stops and the real world begins. Otherwise, what is that shit on the wall?”
The drawing on which a painting by Negro was based; the painting ended up selling for $500.
Negro took this advice to heart. At an exhibition of his work in 2014, we see a mounted painting of a turd on canvas, bearing the inscription “Shit sells”. It did – for $500.
But in that moment, Leavold says, Negro had crossed over in public perception from serial pest to serious artist. The Port Phillip council funded the exhibition. “They were putting a frame around Fred, saying this is a local artist worthy of our support,” Leavold says.
The irony was not lost on anyone, particularly Negro, whose work has become collectible and who now finds himself teetering on the edge of social respectability. But then, he says: “I never wanted to be a renegade artist. I was just making a record of what was going on.”
And Leavold’s film works as a piece of social history. Like the strip, Pub is on one level totally geo-specific. During the film, we see Negro giving informal tours of St Kilda to gawping, giggling fans, telling tall tales about what (and sometimes who) went down where.
But Pub is not just the story of Negro and St Kilda, nor is it only about kicking against the pricks and raising hell. Negro points out that pub stands for “public house”: a place of love, friendship and community. In that way, Leavold says, Pub is as universal as Dickens’ London.
Heroin, on top of alcoholism, ripped St Kilda and its fabled music scene apart. There was a price to be paid for what Leavold calls “the wages of fun”. Dozens of people who should have appeared in Pub didn’t make it to see themselves immortalised on screen. Crassweller breaks down as she remembers her 61 dead friends. She’s still counting.
‘I never wanted to be a renegade artist’: Negro in his studio
Living in a pub nearly did it for Fred, too. “People say that it’s a miracle he was actually there for the premiere,” Leavold says. “Fred has faced his maker many times.” The first was in 1991, when Negro – then barely in his 30s – was admitted to hospital with a burst ulcer.
That slowed him down for a little while but pretty soon he was back in Fred mode (Leavold’s words) and head-butted a tram (Negro’s words). He walked away with a metal plate in his head. “You should have seen the fuckin’ tram,” he says.
Though he kept himself out of the story, Leavold says he sees himself in Negro’s. It’s about growing old disgracefully, fighting off feelings of invisibility, and he happily admits that he has his own complicated relationship with alcohol to address.
At the after-party following Pub’s premiere, he says, he and Negro gave it a good nudge. “We were sitting in his lounge room the next night with the biggest hangovers, going: ‘Do you want a beer?’ ‘No, I’d rather not’ … I think that was the first time I’d seen Fred refuse a drink.”
Commendably, Leavold’s film doesn’t judge anyone’s lifestyle choices but nor is it blind to the danger that comes with them. “Flirting with the Grim Reaper is something that seems romantic in your 20s and 30s, and it lingers from your teenage years,” Leavold says.
A snippet from Pub, the comic, which has chronicled St Kilda in all its debauchery. ‘You haven’t been able to take Fred out of St Kilda since the late 70s’
“It’s when you get to your 40s and your own bits start dropping off, and you seem to be going to more funerals than birthday parties, that it really strikes home that we’re not going to be around forever. So, let’s try to keep the party going as long as we can.”
The party looks different for St Kilda too, which has long since been gentrified beyond recognition. But Negro has stayed. He says he doesn’t miss the old days. “I don’t really think about it much,” he says. “It’s just my suburb.”
There’s no place like home. “You haven’t been able to take Fred out of St Kilda since the late 70s,” Leavold says. “I think if you even tried, he’d curl up like a leaf and blow away.”
Pub: The Movie is screening in small cinemas around Australia from 16 February. Find out more here
This article was corrected on 16 February. An earlier version incorrectly listed Pub as Leavold’s second film; it is his third. Negro’s 2016 exhibition was funded by the the Port Phillip council, not the Port Arthur council. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/apr/01/uk-holidaymakers-airport-delays-easter | Business | 2022-04-01T14:26:05.000Z | Jane Clinton | UK holidaymakers brace for delays at airports this Easter | Passengers expecting delays at UK airports this Easter holiday are taking extra precautions including arriving early, with some even staying in nearby hotels the night before they fly.
Sallyanne Glynn, 52, decided to stay in a hotel near Heathrow with her family the night before a flight to New York to celebrate her daughter’s 21st birthday, at a cost of £1,000. “It was to make things easier for us,” she said. “I don’t think anybody is back to normal yet. The airport is a huge operation with thousands of staff and you can’t just switch that on and off.”
Sallyanne and Stephen Glynn with daughter Izzy 21, sons George 18, and Monty 10. Photograph: Sophia Evans/The Observer
Airports are expecting a huge surge in passenger numbers as people jet off on longed-for Easter breaks after the lifting of Covid travel restrictions. Travel company Tui said demand was “strong” for school holiday getaways. Hays Travel also said it was “very busy” for overseas departures over Easter.
Many airports have recruited more staff to help cope after layoffs during the pandemic and other staff leaving during the so-called “Great Resignation” have resulted in shortages. With a tight and competitive labour market, airports are struggling to fill vacancies.
Heathrow has deployed extra colleagues to help people get on their way as quickly and smoothly as possible, in expectation of passenger numbers “not seen since early March 2020”.
Manchester airport, which is reopening its second runway next Tuesday, said it was working to put measures in place. A spokesperson said that during the pandemic there was a reduction of about 25% in staff numbers and that it began a “bumper” recruitment drive in January to “fill hundreds of roles in its security operation”. The airport’s partner organisations, such as airlines and ground handlers, have also been recruiting.
Stansted began a major recruitment drive in January. It has teamed up with Tottenham Hotspur football club to hold a jobs fair at their stadium next Tuesday. A spokesperson advised passengers to leave plenty of time to get to the airport and through the checks and to be aware of all security restrictions before leaving home.
Queues at Heathrow Terminal 5 earlier today. Photograph: Sophia Evans/The Observer
At Heathrow, passengers at Terminal 5 last week complained about “quarter-mile-long” queues at immigration. Environment minister Richard Benyon, who was caught in the delays, called it a “shambles”.
A spokesperson for the Home Office, which is responsible for UK Border Force, said it was “clear that queue times may be longer” with the reopening of international travel and a rise in passenger numbers. It said it was working to “ensure passengers have the smoothest possible journey” including deploying its staff flexibly.
Problems at Heathrow continued when a technical issue with British Airways on Wednesday left passengers affected by long delays, with some cancellations. The airline said the IT failure was resolved by the afternoon. However, there was a knock-on effect, with “a reduction in schedule” on Thursday compounded by bad weather.
British Airways said it had offered refunds, hotel accommodation and refreshment vouchers, or to rebook people on alternative flights where needed.
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At Gatwick, where the second of two terminals reopened last weekend after 21 months, a spokesperson said there were no staffing issues but added that the terminals “may be busy during peak periods, such as weekends and the Easter holidays”.
DAA International, a subsidiary of the company responsible for Cork and Dublin airports, said it too was working on “recruitment, training and necessary background checks” to address the issue of long queues and disruption. But a spokesperson said these processes take several weeks.
Passengers, perhaps out of practice at taking flights, have been advised to check their airline’s guidelines and to refamiliarise themselves with security rules including those on carrying liquids in hand luggage.
Meanwhile, a report published this week by industry trade body the Airport Operators Association (AOA) found that “UK airports lost £10bn in revenue since the first lockdown in March 2020 and have taken on more than £4bn in debt”. It added that 2021 was worse than 2020 with UK airports seeing “the lowest passenger numbers since 1983”.
It called for more help from the UK and devolved governments and a “comprehensive aviation recovery plan”. Airports in Germany, Italy, Ireland and the US got up to eight times as much financial support as UK airports did, the trade body said.
Karen Dee, the chief executive of the AOA, said that while airports have been preparing for the return of greater numbers of people travelling, “at peak times passengers may not have the experience they are used to”.
Unite national officer Oliver Richardson said an overhaul was needed to make the industry more resilient. “The problems facing airline passengers are set to get worse,” he said. “The model that the aviation sector operates on is broken and unless it becomes more attractive for potential employees it won’t be able to recruit the workforce that is needed to meet demand as flights steadily increase.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/08/oil-and-gas-not-the-problem-for-climate-says-uks-net-zero-minister | Environment | 2023-11-08T18:45:05.000Z | Fiona Harvey | Oil and gas ‘not the problem’ for climate, says UK’s net zero minister | Oil and gas are “not the problem” for the climate, but the carbon emissions arising from them are, the UK’s net zero minister has told MPs.
In words that suggested the UK could place yet more emphasis on technologies to capture and store carbon, Graham Stuart said fossil fuel production was not driving climate change, but demand for fossil fuels was.
His statements were a bullish defence of the government’s much-criticised stance.
“I don’t think supply is the key driver – it is demand we need to focus on,” said Stuart, who will attend the Cop28 UN climate summit that begins later this month, where the future of oil and gas production will be under scrutiny.
Earlier this week, in the king’s speech, the government set out plans for new oil and gas licensing in the North Sea, which opposition parties and green campaigners said ran contrary to the UK’s climate goals.
UK forests face catastrophic ecosystem collapse within 50 years, study says
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Stuart said the UK had “no problems” on climate policy and was leading the world, in response to questioning from parliament’s environmental audit committee on Wednesday.
“If you really care about climate change, the last country you need to worry about is the UK,” he told MPs. “We are not the problem, it’s encouraging others to follow us on the net zero pathway, that is the biggest challenge.”
The UK’s statutory advisers, the committee on climate change (CCC), has warned that the UK is not on a pathway to meet its net zero goals. However, Stuart said the CCC had found aspects of climate policy that were improving.
A group of more than 80 countries, including the UK, called for the phaseout of fossil fuels at the Cop27 UN climate summit in Egypt last year, and are expected to make the same demand at Cop28 in Dubai.
However, Stuart’s comments to the committee raised questions over whether the UK would take such a strong position this year.
He told MPs: “There is nothing fundamentally wrong with oil and gas, it’s emissions from oil and gas that are the problem and that we must focus on.”
Focusing on emissions rather than fossil fuels is regarded as a distraction by many campaigners, or as cover for relying on technology for carbon capture and storage, which is not yet used at scale and may never be.
Neet zero minister Graham Stuart.
Jamie Peters, climate coordinator at Friends of the Earth, said: “Thank goodness Graham Stuart has enlightened us that there are no fundamental problems with continuing to back oil and gas, because it’s only the government’s own climate advisers, the International Energy Agency and the world’s top scientists who’ve strongly stated otherwise.”
Ami McCarthy, political campaigner at Greenpeace UK, called Stuart’s remarks “laughable”.
They said: “This government is completely failing on both supply and demand. It scrapped its own energy efficiency taskforce that was established to reduce demand through schemes like insulating our heat-leaking homes and upgrading boilers.
“To put the blame on demand from consumers, who have been left unsupported by this government, is a new low for a Conservative party who are hell-bent on attempting to weaponise climate action to sow division.”
Robbie MacPherson, political lead at the campaigning group Uplift, said the government was not a world leader on the climate while it was pursuing the expansion of fossil fuels.
“Greenlighting fields like Rosebank tells the world that the UK cannot be trusted in phasing out fossil fuels at exactly the time we need the world to come together at Cop28 to make progress on this issue,” he said.
“The UK has been and can again be a world leader in reducing emissions but for that to happen the government must rapidly end its political gameplaying on oil and gas.”
This article was amended on 9 November 2023 to correct some personal information. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/sep/19/harith-augustus-exhibit-invisibility-institute-chicago | US news | 2019-09-20T06:00:51.000Z | Eric Lutz | Reconstructing a killing: exhibit challenges police narrative of Chicago man's death | In the video that Chicago police released to calm outrage over another killing of a black man by a white police officer, Harith Augustus appears to be unholstering a gun as he’s shot dead in the street.
But a new art exhibit by the Invisibility Institute and Forensic Architecture, unveiled as part of the Chicago Architecture Biennial, reveals a more complex case, uncovering what appear to be a number of missteps by police and challenging the official narrative of the 2018 shooting.
It is a seemingly unlikely medium for seeking social justice, but one that might become more common.
16 Shots: behind a shocking film about an unlawful police shooting
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“I hope this project demonstrates how much can be learned if the right quality attention and tools are brought to bear on these cases,” said Jamie Kalven, a journalist and the founder of the not-for-profit Invisibility Institute.
Augustus was a barber with a legal firearm who was detained by police in 2018 as he apparently ran errands in his predominantly black South Shore Chicago neighborhood. While Quincy Jones, a black officer said to be trusted within the community, talked with Augustus, two white officers lunged at Augustus’s hands. He pulled back, stumbled between two cars and was shot dead by an officer as he appeared to run away.
Police said he was reaching for his gun. A video released by the Chicago police superintendent, Eddie Johnson, after significant protest in the neighborhood, freeze-framed on his holstered weapon. “The video speaks for itself,” he said in a news conference at the time.
The city-released videos tell a story favorable to police, the project’s investigators say.
People protest against the shooting of Harith Augustus by a Chicago police officer. A new art exhibit examines the case from a different perspective. Photograph: Tannen Maury/EPA
“The narrative starts to form the moment the body hits the ground,” said Kalven, whose reporting helped bring the Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke to justice for the killing of teenager Laquan McDonald. “What we’re arguing is that you have to consider the totality of the circumstances.”
The exhibit tells a different story.
In a series of short, documentary-style films, researchers combine raw footage from the scene of the incident with on the ground reporting and 3-D modeling to more deeply examine the way the incident unfolded.
The videos, which deconstruct the shooting in granular detail, suggest breaches in protocol by individual officers at the scene and by the Chicago police department, which Kalven alleges improperly withheld a dash-cam video from an earlier Freedom of Information Act request.
Dash-cam video, which is included in the exhibit, shows the shooting from a different angle than the widely seen footage from officer Dillan Halley’s body camera – and raises questions about the police narrative that the shooting was “textbook legitimate”.
“One perspective is not enough,” said Christina Varvia, the deputy director of Forensic Architecture. “Being able to change perspective is a really powerful thing.”
Body cameras have been presented as an important tool for police accountability in the wake of high-profile shootings of black Americans by police officers, but, as Kalven and Varvia note, they are also “narrative devices”, depicting the event in question from the point of view of the police officer.
In one of the most powerful videos, which are available online, the investigators use computer simulation to present the incident from Augustus’s viewpoint – depicting, through computer animation, how Halley raising his gun could have appeared to Augustus and the view of 71st Street as he lay on the ground after being shot.
The video investigations also examine the broader context of the killing – including the demonstrations that followed in which police clashed with protesters.
Kahari Blackburn, a film-maker at Invisible Institute, had been at those demonstrations following the killing. “It felt like chaos,” said Blackburn, who worked on the project.
The careful, detailed interrogation of the official narrative could be a blueprint for activists, investigators, and even government and law enforcement agencies to analyze similar cases, its creator say.
“We want people to be able to do similar work,” said Varvia.
Investigators also hope the exhibit – which will be hosted at the Invisibility Institute’s office on Chicago’s South Side, in the shadow of University of Chicago and not far from where Augustus was killed – will challenge the narrative of “split second” decisions that is frequently used to justify police shootings.
“We care above all about justice for Harith Augustus and some kind of comfort for his family,” Kalven said. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/jun/24/30-musical-acts-to-see-before-you-die | Music | 2023-06-24T10:55:05.000Z | Laura Barton | The 30 bands and artists to see live before you die … or they split up | Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift tours have quickly become the Marvel blockbusters of the live circuit, stuffed with famous cameos, era-specific multiverses and very online intertextual readings. At the heart of the maelstrom, however, is modern pop’s biggest megastar, deftly flitting between delicate folk balladry, heavyweight pop and empowered country, all tied up with a lyrical precision that can make a stadium feel like a theatre. Catch her – if you can – in the UK next year. Michael Cragg
Beyoncé
When Beyoncé proclaimed herself “the bar” on Alien Superstar from 2022’s Renaissance album, the pop icon was not exaggerating. From show-stopping production and multiple glittering costume changes to breath-snatching choreography executed with laser precision – and, of course, that peerless vocal talent – there is simply no other artist who matches her calibre of stadium-filling performance. See it to believe it. Grace Medford
Turnstile
Hardcore punk meets hard cardio: there can’t be many bands who burn more calories per gig than these boisterous Baltimorians, constantly bobbing, weaving and roundhouse-kicking away. But that’s not the limit of Turnstile’s talents: they’ve also got one of the best shoutalong songbooks in the business, full of exuberant call-and-response choruses. You’re guaranteed to leave the pit with grin on your face. Gwilym Mumford
Hood energy … Kendrick Lamar. Photograph: Theo Wargo/WireImage
Kendrick Lamar
Even as his music has become more strange, obtuse and ornery, Kendrick Lamar has become a better and better performer. His latest tour was a sleekly designed melodrama, complete with Kendrick puppets and winky set-pieces; his festival headline sets are crowd-pleasing affairs, opportunities for Lamar to flex his deep catalogue of hits. No matter where you see him, one thing is guaranteed: a surgically precise showcase of some of the greatest rap music of all time. Shaad D’Souza
Joanna Newsom
There aren’t many singer-songwriters who could silence a room of discerning indie types with just harp and vocal, but then Joanna Newsom isn’t just any performer. With the intricate, fantastical lyricism of a children’s story-book writer, audiences are invited to listen closely, creating a concert environment of rarely experienced attentiveness. She doesn’t tour often, but with rumours of a new album afoot, it’s worth putting aside some pennies now. Jenessa Williams
Thundercat
Watching Thundercat is much like seeing the most progressive funk-rock act you’ve ever heard if they were playing on the set of Wacky Races. The California bass player takes a nod from his stage name and injects the cartoonish – cat ears, sparkly clothing, and equally jocular attitude – into the live setup for his feelgood tracks: stunning blends of R&B, funk, rock and exceptional falsetto vocals. Expect cracking jokes, gags, and meandering instrumental solos that show off incredible talent. Christine Ochefu
Bruce Springsteen
Springsteen is as much illusionist as rock’n’roll performer: he can make a vast stadium feel like a front room; three hours feel like 30 minutes. He can make you feel as if you are hearing even the most well-worn radio hits for the very first time. I can think of no other artist who can conjure such intimacy, joy, devotion. Laura Barton
Some wizardry … Self Esteem on stage at Hammersmith Apollo, London 2023. Photograph: Gus Stewart/Redferns
Self Esteem
With playful costume, dry banter and emotive lyricism, Self Esteem (and her exuberant live band) are the art-pop equivalent of a pep talk in the smoking area, belting and double-drumming through stories of comparison culture, unkind exes and learning to love yourself in spite of patriarchal pressure. Her show offers cathartic fun, but also a healthy dose of provocation, daring every man in the audience to learn from her potent message. JW
Fever Ray
Where once there were hooded figures, thick fog and strobes, now the Fever Ray live experience is a riot of bald-caps, muscle costumes, rocking keytars and girls, girls, girls. Committed to a radical, kinky, queer and celebratory take on feminist pop, Karin Dreijer’s post-Plunge roadshow – with its all-female band and crew – is a sublime example of politics turned into praxis. Chal Ravens
J Hus
An MC and DJ can be an appealingly lean setup, but rap also pairs so well with live instrumentation – and an artist as sensually in-the-moment as J Hus can honour both forms. Pacing and skipping, albatross wingspan reaching to the crowd, he is so clearly electrified by his own artistry – one of the great sensations of live music. With a third album this year following up two British classics, the stage is set again. Ben Beaumont-Thomas
Eddyfying … Steve Harris, Janick Gers and Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden on stage in Sofia, Bulgaria. Photograph: Mick Hutson/Redferns
Iron Maiden
Forty-three years after the release of their debut album, Iron Maiden are still one of the hottest tickets around. With a giant catalogue of anthems and, in Bruce Dickinson, a frontman with seemingly endless energy, their gigs are always celebratory affairs, but it’s the band’s eye-melting stage sets, pyro and assorted visuals that seal the deal. If you want to see a Big Metal Show, Maiden are the undisputed kings. Dom Lawson
Stevie Wonder
Backed by a band of at least 10 impeccably drilled musicians, toting a six-decade-long songbook and a set of pipes that can still replicate his tween years as Little Stevie, Stevie Wonder live is a masterclass in slick showmanship. Come for the singalong sections to Sir Duke or Superstition but stay for the moments when Stevie cuts loose, such as when his harmonica improvises over Miles Davis’s All Blues. Ammar Kalia
DJ Koze
Electronic music’s Willy Wonka, German DJ and producer Stefan Kozalla can make a drab, humdrum world seem like a psychedelic wonderland; his canny fusion of deep house, 90s hip-hop and minimal techno is always a welcome anomaly among electronic lineups. While his sound is always gorgeously expansive live, seeing him outdoors, in the daytime, during the height of summer is nothing short of magic. SDS
The Bronx
Whether they’re playing a straight punk show or masquerading as their alter egos, Mariachi El Bronx (complete with full costume and castanets), this LA rock group deliver each song with total sincerity, respecting the cultural cues and energy of their respective genre traditions. Whether you know their material or not, the mix between moshing and waltzing makes for a pretty unforgettable, feelgood night out. JW
Electric lady … Janelle Monáe on stage in Rotterdam, Netherlands, 2019. Photograph: Dimitri Hakke/Redferns
Janelle Monáe
Monáe is a Prince-like proposition: she can sing, rap, dance and act with dazzling precision. That undeniable talent once seemed a little too tightly wound but retiring her cyborg alter ego, Cindi Mayweather, has loosened the joints and let the light in. Her costumes have become more eye-popping, her activism more pronounced and her stage presence warmer, making her 21st-century soul revue a fireworks display of creativity and joy. Dorian Lynskey
Mdou Moctar
Tuareg guitarist Mdou Moctar has been given the title “Jimi Hendrix of the desert” for good reason. Channelling a ground-shaking distortion while finger-picking his way through intricate melodies on his electric guitar, Moctar’s live shows are that ineffable combination of searing noise and embodied groove. With his latest album, 2021’s Afrique Victime, earning accolades for its explosive energy, Moctar and his band have become a unique presence to behold. Earplugs recommended. AK
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Kelis
Kelis’s career spans more than two decades and multiple genres, which can make for an eclectic setlist at her shows. More casual fans would do well to put one of her festival appearances on their bucket list. Kelis sets a relentless pace during these crowd-pleasing performances, rolling her distinctive, husky tone over the hits. It’s impossible to leave disappointed. Grace Medford
Malamente as anything … Rosalía on stage in San Francisco, California, 2022. Photograph: Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images
Rosalía
U2 had their giant lemon, Pink does acrobatics and Beyoncé’s got a flying disco horse. What’s a superstar gotta do to stand out these days? The answer, as Rosalía proved on her momentous Motomami tour, is to ditch the outfit changes and get intimate with the fans, filling the stage with selfie-style cameras for TikTok realness. Shifting from viral reggaeton to windswept ballads, the flamenco disruptor can make arenas feel cosy – all the better to spotlight her avant-pop songwriting, extraordinary voice and poreless skin. CR
SZA
Like her albums, SZA’s live shows are immersive trips that add cinematic textures to emotional catharsis. Or, as the Missouri-born singer, songwriter and habitual collaborator would have it, the aim of her current, nautical-themed SOS tour – which sees her emoting on the end of a diving board, dancing on a boat and being tracked by a lighthouse – is to “pop ass and cry and give theatre”. Sometimes that’s all you need. MC
Lonnie Holley
For Lonnie Holley, every performance is a spontaneous creation. Arriving late to fame, the Alabama-born artist has an almost childlike ability to make a song out of anything he imagines, like a freestyling MC crossed with a jazz improviser. Fusing on-the-spot poetry and cascading piano, he plunges us into deep pools of memory – his own and that of his ancestors in the American south – in order to emerge spiritually recharged. CR
Underground Resistance
To see Underground Resistance is to see legends in real time. Mainstay headliners on the electronic festival circuit, the mythic techno outfit is comprised of various performers who’ve helped make the city of Detroit synonymous with the genre, including Mad Mike Banks and the formidable Jeff Mills. Their approach to techno often involves combining performances and lectures, as well as a heady mix of new and legacy electronic tracks in mixes. An education in itself, exploring new, transformative frontiers of music. CO
Sudan Archives
Sudan Archives attends Glastonbury with her latest album, Natural Brown Prom Queen, the prize gem in a criminally underrated catalogue packed with far-reaching influences: sufi fiddle players and 90s R&B to 80s golden-age electro hip-hop. Her countercultural approach bleeds into her stage presence, which is deliciously wanton, often partially freestyled, and filled with spirit. Do not miss her otherworldly violin solo. CO
Brandy
Next year marks 30 years since R&B innovator Brandy released her debut album. In that time she’s toured a grand total of three times, hiding that peerless voice from the general public. With a bulging back catalogue – What About Us?, Afrodisiac, The Boy Is Mine – and the ability to properly sell the bangers as well as the ballads, run don’t walk to a venue near you should the fan-anointed Vocal Bible ever leave the US again. MC
Sunn O)))
With the obvious caveat that bowel-dislodging drone metal is not for everyone, Sunn O))) are the great showmen of experimental, heavy music. Seeing the duo in the flesh is an overwhelming physical experience. As extended notes hazily fragment into a hypnotic barrage of elegantly nuanced sound, it’s hard not to feel stoned, even when one is not. Complete surrender is recommended. Dom Lawson
Let love in … Nick Cave meets his people on stage at Victoria Park, east London, 2022. Photograph: Ash Knotek/Rex/Shutterstock
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
How many live bands peak in late middle age? Fans may argue about the quintessential Bad Seeds lineup but the current incarnation has the greatest range, and such intensity that every night feels like a matter of life and death. Cave, who spends half the time eyeball to eyeball with the front rows, has never been more emotionally available. More than a spectacle, it’s akin to a communal exorcism. DL
Makaya McCraven
Few drummers hit harder or with more purpose than Chicago-based sticksman and producer McCraven. Known for his self-sampling technique – where he chops together onstage jams to form jazz-referencing records – his live sets are a whirlwind of improvised force. Frequently collaborating with jazz talents such as harpist Brandee Younger and vibraphonist Joel Ross, McCraven is a master of dynamic control, building from meditative quietude to bursts of hip-swaying groove and head-nodding freakouts. AK
Black Midi
Hardly shy and retiring on record, Black Midi are even more outre off it. In a live setting the virtuosic south London trio twist their avant-prog compositions into strange new shapes, throwing in extended sax solos, improvised interludes and bizarre cover versions (Kate Bush, Limp Bizkit, the Bugsy Malone theme). The whole circus seems to constantly be on the verge of collapsing, but that’s the fun of it. GM
Manara
A British-Pakistani DJ and true child of the anything-goes internet, Manara blends culture across continents with so much agility and wit. Built on garage and Desi pop but with an OHHHH!!-inducing juxtaposition roughly every 90 seconds – Leona Lewis over breakbeat house! – her sets involve the kind of methodical stimulation of pleasure neurohormones normally conducted in a medical research facility. BBT
John Grant
The boy from Michigan has many lanes – the grand sweep of an orchestra, the crunch and buzz of electropop, the soft-rock intimacy of a duo – which means he’s at home in both a club and a church. In every setting, though, Grant combines sonic luxury with an emotional rawness that sometimes takes him to the brink of tears, giving every show an unfakeable crackle of urgency and truth. His jokes are great, too. DL
Sleater-Kinney
There’s a power and an urgency to the way Sleater-Kinney play that makes you feel somehow invincible. Over the course of 10 albums, their sets have spooled out from taut punk rock to incorporate disco, pop and electronica, but the central pairing of Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein has remained: guitar lines weaving, voices tangling across songs of anguish and defiance and desire. It’s as galvanising as it is mesmerising. LB | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2015/jan/30/mutton-chops-or-sideburns-ask-joaquin-phoenix-stylewatch | Fashion | 2015-01-30T17:25:16.000Z | Guardian fashion | Mutton chops or sideburns? Ask Joaquin Phoenix – stylewatch | What’s the difference between mutton chops and sideburns? We only ask because Joaquin Phoenix is wearing the former in Inherent Vice, and what Phoenix does, fashion follows (see Her and To Die For).
“Sideburns,” explains Mike Harding, a men’s hair expert at Radio hair salon in Shoreditch, east London, “start at the hairline and run to the ear. Mutton chops are a few inches longer.” The difference is key, he says, because “very, very few men can pull off mutton chops and, as a result, they have come to represent a sort of status or power thing.” Or masculinity? “If you like that sort of look, sure”.
He cites Elvis, who started with sideburns but “progressed to mutton chops as he got more famous” and Wolverine (“very masucline, very powerful”) . Sideburns, however, are a decent variation. “I get a lot of men asking for a Chris Isaak or a James Dean, especially now that serious facial hair is giving way to something neater and more groomed,” says Harding.
Mutton chops and sideburns are a modern, alternative way to tackle facial hair without committing to something fuller. Sadly, Harding doesn’t have the capacity to grow either “and this is my burden”. Or blessing, depending on how you look at it? | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/jun/19/gareth-southgate-attacking-options-england-extra-hope | Football | 2018-06-19T08:00:06.000Z | Dominic Fifield | Gareth Southgate says attacking options off bench give England extra hope | Gareth Southgate has pointed to the depth of England’s attacking options as cause for optimism after praising the impact made by his substitutes, Marcus Rashford and Ruben Loftus-Cheek, in the Group G victory against Tunisia on Monday.
Two from Harry Kane eventually saw off stubborn opponents, with England eventually rewarded for their second-half patience having been pegged back by a soft penalty, conceded by Kyle Walker. Rashford and Loftus-Cheek staked their claims to be included from the start against Panama on Sunday with eye-catching cameos after replacing Raheem Sterling and Dele Alli in the second period, though it was deep into stoppage time before the captain nodded his side’s winner.
Kane double ensures England defeat Tunisia in World Cup opener
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Southgate had resisted switching systems in pursuit of a winner, but instead flung on fresh personnel who carried a different threat to pluck victory at the last. Loftus-Cheek barged forward at will down the right, while Rashford combined smartly with Kane and injected yet more pace into the frontline. “We talked about this with the players at St George’s Park over the last few weeks before coming to Russia,” the manager said. “The way we’ll change the game is by bringing on a different profile of players, who carry a different sort of threat.
“When you are attacking, you need some structure to your play. You can put attacking players on in various positions, but you can lose shape and be counterattacked. Against Tunisia we kept control and the composure, but the guys who came on had a different threat. The freshness of Marcus and Ruben brought energy and a different threat to the one we’d posed.
1:16
England fans ecstatic after late Harry Kane winner during group stage clash with Tunisia – video
“They had a good impact on the game. That’s all you can do as a team. Keep working. We could have run out of time, but we would have been the dominant team. The best sides keep their belief in what they’re doing and break the opposition down in the end.”
The win moved England level with Belgium at the top of the group before the second fixture against Panama in Nizhny Novgorod on Sunday, with Southgate – who will check on the fitness of Alli back at the team’s base in Repino after he complained of discomfort in his quadricep muscles – wary of the threat that will be carried by the central Americans.
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“We have to prepare as perfectly for Panama as we did here to get the result we need,” he said. “It’s hard to win a match in the World Cup against anyone. Tunisia were respected. Panama were obdurate opponents against Belgium for 45 minutes [before losing 3-0], so we’ll have to prepare 100% for that game to get the right result. And remember, we are a team who are improving and developing. There will always be things we can get better at. We’re a long way from perfection.
“What pleased me was there has been a long period of work gone into tonight’s result, from the players and the support team. If you don’t get the win, that can breed a bit of doubt. There’d be a different feel from the outside looking in, and the next few days would be a lot less comfortable. Now we have to enjoy this, but make sure we don’t stay too comfortable.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/12/beto-o-rourke-2020-disappearing-act-what-happened-popularity-texas-politician | US news | 2019-05-12T06:00:26.000Z | Ed Pilkington | The astonishing disappearing act of Beto O’Rourke | When Beto O’Rourke travelled to Yosemite in California to unveil his $5tn plan on climate change, a ripple of surprise crossed America. How did the tall white guy with the funny first name known for his punk past, Beatnik road trips and fondness for campaigning atop counters get to be the first Democratic candidate to proclaim on the crisis of our age?
This wasn’t the O’Rourke that the country had grown used to during his battle with Ted Cruz last November for a US Senate seat. Then, the Texas Democrat had propelled himself to within three percentage points of victory, and with it national stardom, by making viral speeches about NFL players taking a knee and by instilling hope through a feel-good but rather wishy-washy call to unity.
Now here he was framed against the beauty of Yosemite Falls, delivering a granular plan of action worthy of the most nerdish policy wonk. Coming from a politician from oil-rich Texas who has been criticized for his track record on fossil fuels, his proposals for the largest 10-year investment in history and a goal of net-zero emissions by 2050 caught many off guard.
“We were pleasantly surprised,” said David Turnbull of the climate advocacy group Oil Change US. “When you see someone like Beto O’Rourke calling for the elimination of fossil fuel subsidies and an end to fossil fuel leasing on public lands – that’s moving in the right direction.”
There was another group of people hoping to be pleasantly surprised by the Yosemite announcement that day – O’Rourke himself and his team of campaign advisers. They have been wrestling with one of the great magical mysteries of the early phase of the 2020 presidential election.
That is: the astonishing disappearing act of Beto O’Rourke.
Beto O’Rourke listens to environmental advocates on 29 April 2019, in Yosemite national park, California. Photograph: Marcio José Sánchez/AP
Like Houdini, O’Rourke has gone from front of stage to a puff of smoke in six short months. #Betomania morphed into #Betofatigue, seemingly overnight.
Look back on the events of 7 November 2018, when he delivered his concession speech, having lost to Cruz in a packed sports stadium in El Paso, and you can see the contrast. At that time he was lauded as the politician who could do the impossible: challenge a virulent Republican like Ted Cruz in a solid red state like Texas and come within an inch of victory.
Next stop Donald Trump? But from the moment he launched his presidential bid in March, he has been struggling. Those very qualities that had been the recipe of his relative success in Texas suddenly became liabilities.
Who is running for president? The full list of 2020 Democratic candidates
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His charming ways and good looks were thrown back in his face as white privilege. That wasn’t helped when he gave Vanity Fair a gift of a one-liner on the eve of launch – “Man, I’m just born to be in it” – that made many Democrats wince.
The mere decision to run for the White House was interpreted as chutzpah. As the Daily Beast cruelly put it: “Reacting to losing to Ted Cruz by running for president is like failing to land a role in a community theater production and deciding to take your talents to Broadway.”
In the latest poll from Quinnipiac university, O’Rourke is drawing a glum 5% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters. He is being outgunned on 10% by Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who has stolen much of his thunder.
“We’ve seen Mayor Pete take the lead in the newcomer department,” said Quinnipiac’s Peter Brown who predicted worse to come. “We’ve got 18 months to go and I bet there will be other fresh faces taking the spotlight.”
So what happens next to O’Rourke now that the spotlight has swung away from him? Can he complete the Houdini trick and make a reappearance? And if he can, what kind of potential president would he present to the American people?
‘He was always very focused’
Examining those questions, it quickly becomes clear that all roads Beto lead to El Paso. That’s the dusty, sunbaked border town in Texas where he was born Robert Francis O’Rourke in 1972.
His father, Pat, was a businessman and judge, and his mother, Melissa, ran a furniture store. They were comfortably off and formed part of the white middle class elite in a city that is 80% Latino.
O’Rourke’s opponents have tried to depict his youth as one of fecklessness and debauchery. Rightwing pundits like to poke him for the name “Beto”, claiming it is a conceit designed to suggest that he has Latino roots, which he does not.
They also point to a drunk-driving episode in 1998, his teenaged flirtation with his punk band Foss and to the period when he floundered around in New York City working as a glorified maid. Reuters recently contributed to that pile of potential negative attack material with the revelation that O’Rourke had secretly belonged to the prominent “hactivist” group Cult of the Dead Cow.
But those who have known O’Rourke for years say they do not recognize this caricature of the spoilt wild boy from the border town. Take Maggie Asfahani, a writer and El Paso restaurateur, who had a teenaged romance with O’Rourke when he was at an all-male boarding school in Virginia.
Asfahani clearly recalls their first encounter in an El Paso mall when he was back on holiday. Her memory instantly puts to rest any suggestion that “Beto” was an adult affectation. “I’d imagined this Mexican kid, given the name, but there was this really tall white guy. I can categorically dismiss all that speculation – he was ‘Beto’ at least since I’ve known him in high school.”
Asfahani can also, incidentally, put to rest any scurrilous talk about a much reproduced photograph of O’Rourke flanked by his Foss bandmates in which he wears a long floral dress.
“I want to put on the record, that is my dress he’s wearing,” she said. “There’s nothing particularly complicated about it – we were all hanging out, and someone thought it would be funny if we switched clothes, the girls and guys. That was all, just being different.”
What struck Asfahani then as now was something that’s been lost amid the presidential chatter – his seriousness. “He was always very focused. He was this fiercely intelligent, curious person who was into things, always wanting to learn things, always with a book in his hand.”
Asfahani remains in touch with O’Rourke to this day. She thinks the flak he has taken over unearned entitlement since he entered the 2020 race, based on her knowledge of the man, has been unfair.
“It strikes me he is finding his way on the national stage,” she said. “He’s being open and honest and vulnerable, hoping people will relate to that and see themselves in it. That’s not a fault: it has been his personality since I’ve known him.”
‘He learned how to take energy from crowds’
O’Rourke’s entry into politics followed his return to El Paso, the prodigal son, at age 26. Having been largely away since his teens, he re-engaged with the city, setting up Stanton Street, an internet company combined with a short-lived alternative newspaper.
His political ideas formed around his ambitions for El Paso, which in the late 90s was economically depressed and suffering from a brain drain of young people. O’Rourke forged a bond with four friends who came to be known as the Progressives, one of whom, Veronica Escobar, now occupies the El Paso congressional seat vacated by O’Rourke.
“What motivated him was the idea that El Paso didn’t have to settle for being a low-key, down-at-heel city which was fine with exporting its children,” said Bob Moore, former editor of El Paso Times who has known O’Rourke since his return in 1998.
The Progressives’ aspirations for their city led all four friends to stand for local office. All four won, with O’Rourke joining the El Paso city council in 2005.
Moore recalls that in his political infancy O’Rourke cut a paradoxically diffident figure for a man now competing for the White House. “By nature he’s a deeply private person. He was very awkward when he first ran for office, uncomfortable in large groups. Then he learned how to take energy from crowds, and that has changed him.”
Despite such initial reticence, O’Rourke championed some radical and highly contentious causes. He became a passionate advocate of legalization of marijuana long before it was de rigueur, authoring a book with fellow Progressive Susie Byrd, Dealing Death And Drugs, that argued powerfully that the US war on drugs was a disaster for both sides of the US-Mexican border.
He also fought to extend health benefits to unmarried and same-sex partners of city workers, then a hot potato in heavily Catholic El Paso.
You will hear O’Rourke projecting his track record on marijuana and LGBT rights on the presidential campaign trail. You are much less likely to catch any reference to a third controversy that dogged him as city councilor, and still does to this day: the redevelopment of downtown El Paso.
The plan to revitalize downtown with a new sports arena, Walmart and other facilities preceded O’Rourke’s time on the council, having been initiated in 2004. But he embraced it keenly.
Beto O’Rourke walks with his wife, Amy Hoover Sanders, and his three children, Ulysses, Henry and Molly in El Paso on 6 November 2018. Photograph: Paul Ratje/AFP/Getty Images
His involvement became problematic for two main reasons. The first was his family ties to the mastermind behind the plan, multi-millionaire real estate magnate William Sanders. Months after O’Rourke joined the council, he married Amy Sanders and William Sanders became his father-in-law.
The downtown project was a private-public partnership. The private side involved a civic organization called the Paso del Norte Group, PDNG, which Sanders set up with some of his super-wealthy friends from El Paso.
Controversy erupted when it emerged that O’Rourke was also a member. Did his position, with one foot in the private PDNG side of the deal and another on the public council side, amount to a conflict of interest? He was slapped with an ethics complaint, later dismissed.
O’Rourke initially voted in the council to go ahead with the development plan, but as local resistance grew he recused himself from several key votes. Further cries of foul play descended on him in 2012, when O’Rourke made an insurgent’s bid to unseat the incumbent Congressman for El Paso, Silvestre Reyes.
A company owned by Sanders contributed $40,000 to a Republican-backed Super Pac that invested in attack ads against Reyes, contributing to O’Rourke’s underdog victory and giving him a leg-up to Washington.
In a recent interview with the American Prospect, O’Rourke denied any conflict relating to his father-in-law. Sanders “made it a rule that he religiously followed, never to talk politics”, he said.
But the Sanders connection still rankles with activists opposed to the downtown scheme such as David Romo, a leading member of the main protest group Paso del Sur. He said that O’Rourke’s connections to Sanders takes the shine off his current claim that as a presidential candidate he eschews big money and is running a “people’s campaign”.
Romo told the Guardian that in his view O’Rourke’s role in the redevelopment casts doubt on his 2020 candidacy. “What happened in El Paso tells me that the solution to our national problems does not come from a multi-millionaire funded by billionaires who does their bidding.”
Romo is a celebrated historian of El Paso’s revolutionary past and as such is an articulate exponent of the second criticism leveled at O’Rourke over the redevelopment scheme – that he sided with gentrification despite the harm it would inflict on poor Latino residents and historic El Paso. “He was the pretty face of ugly gentrification.”
O’Rourke denies that he sided with gentrifiers, insisting his intention was to breathe new life into the dilapidated heart of a major city. He did tell the American Prospect, though, that in hindsight he accepts that he did “a really poor job of listening to that criticism”.
‘He really does need to answer questions’
Similar controversy followed O’Rourke to Washington. Whether it originated from his innate pragmatism as a politician who tends to decide each issue as it comes rather than following ideology, or whether it was because of his roots in Texas, a state that has been dominated by Republicans for the past 20 years, his voting record in Congress was striking for its lack of party purity.
Although El Paso veers overwhelmingly Democratic, a fivethirtyeight.com tracker shows that he voted 30% of the time in line with Trump. Compare that to his presidential rivals: Kamala Harris (17%), Bernie Sanders (14%) or Elizabeth Warren (13%).
That didn’t matter much in his senatorial race last November. But then he was running against Ted Cruz, one of the most toxic rightwing senators who even fellow Republicans call “Lucifer in the flesh”.
In that race he proved himself to have several of the qualities that might appeal to Democratic voters looking for a presidential nominee capable of beating Trump, first and foremost his ability to turn out the vote. He showed himself adept in appealing to young people, African Americans, Latinos and suburban white women – electoral groups all likely to play a crucial role in 2020 in deciding Trump’s fate.
But the road to the presidential nomination is proving to be a stonier path for O’Rourke than his route last year. By taking his campaign national he has moved on to much more fertile ground for a Democrat than the traditionally arid soil of Texas, yet it has come at the price of sharply intensified scrutiny.
Which brings O’Rourke back to his climate change announcement amid the splendor of Yosemite Falls. Fossil fuel activists may have been pleasantly surprised by O’Rourke’s robust policy, but that doesn’t mean they have forgotten that his relationship with the oil industry has been complicated.
He hesitated for weeks before agreeing to sign the No Fossil Fuel Money Pledge in which candidates forego all donations above $200 from Pacs, lobbyists and executives of fossil fuel companies. The pledge was particularly sensitive for O’Rourke, who according to Open Secrets accepted more contributions from oil and gas in 2018 than any congressional candidate other than Ted Cruz.
Beto O'Rourke raises $6.1m in first 24 hours, smashing Bernie Sanders' record
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He has said his hesitancy was out of concern for ordinary workers in the industry who should be allowed to participate. The organizers of the pledge however stressed that only the donations of top bosses were excluded.
In the end, he did sign the pledge, two days after his Yosemite declaration.
Another sticking point is that O’Rourke voted twice in Congress to lift a 40-year ban on US exports of crude oil. He tried to justify the vote in October 2015, two months before the Paris Agreement on combating climate change was adopted by 195 nations, by arguing that US crude was cleaner than that of other countries and “the oil that supplies the current dominant mode of transportation will have to come from somewhere”.
The lifting of the ban has led to a massive spike in US crude exports, from well under 1m barrels per day to more than 3m per day currently. “There’s been a dangerous and problematic increase in the extraction of crude oil driven by exports in the US. He really does need to answer questions about that vote,” David Turnbull of Oil Change US said.
It all points to the steep uphill climb that Beto O’Rourke faces if he is to claw his way back into the Democratic spotlight. The Yosemite announcement made a solid start, introducing American voters to a more serious, focused politician than they had previously been shown.
Now the real scramble begins. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/29/snowflakes-sarah-huckabees-perfect-smokey-eye | Opinion | 2018-04-29T21:57:22.000Z | Jean Hannah Edelstein | Since when did 'perfect smokey eye' become an insult, America? | Jean-Hannah Edelstein | If you’re not familiar with the common parlance of cosmetics, you might not know that ‘a perfect smokey eye’ is a very nice way to describe a woman’s makeup – glamorous, well-applied, nicely smudged. But on the morning after the White House Correspondents’ Association (WCHA) dinner on Saturday night, you might have thought otherwise.
Comedian Michelle Wolf was slammed by a wide range of commentators for saying just that about the press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, during her keynote roast: “I actually really like Sarah,” Wolf said. “I think she’s very resourceful. But she burns facts and then she uses that ash to create a perfect smokey eye. Like maybe she’s born with it, maybe it’s lies. It’s probably lies.”
White House correspondents’ dinner: Michelle Wolf shocks media with Sarah Sanders attack
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“Watching a wife and mother be humiliated on national television for her looks is deplorable,” wrote MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski, overlooking the crucial fact that Wolf was in fact complimenting the appearance of Sanders’ makeup. Wolf was mocking the fact that Sanders is a liar. Which is something that she definitely is.
There’s a bit of a backlash after every WCHA dinner, and well there should be: it’s quite a pretentious event. Known among insiders as the ‘nerd prom’, it’s a back-slappy, navel-gazing black tie affair, a scholarship fundraiser and an opportunity for a certain elite in media and politics to see and be seen and laugh at inside jokes and wear far fancier clothes than they do on the beat.
2:36
Comedian Michelle Wolf stuns media with attack on Trump's team - video
The comedian brought in to deliver the roast is expected to strike a bit close to the bone. Feathers are always ruffled a bit, but in general it’s accepted that it’s part of the fun to be a target of the jokes. It shows, after all, that you are important.
But maybe the most dark and hilarious thing about the fallout from Wolf’s performance is that her barbs against the president, his family, and close members of his administration were far more cruel and vulgar than what she said about Sanders, but no one is objecting to that. How could they, when the president himself is a man who has compelled new anchors across the land to utter the word ‘pussy’ again and again? How could they, when her jokes about his sexual encounters with adult film actresses were taken from life?
In olden days, like 2016, there was a common understanding that you couldn’t be the president and also cast vulgar and personal insults at people on Twitter. You had to choose one. But in 2018 that’s no longer the case, and the fact that Wolf’s jokes about Stormy Daniels evoked titters and shrugs is yet another sign that we’ve forgotten that the current political climate is anything but normal.
“Enough of elites all mocking us,” tweeted noted member of the conservative elite Matt Schlapp, who demonstrated his disgust by walking out of the roast, but not out of his association with the Trump administration.
It’s a shame that those on the right have used the concept of ‘snowflakes’ as an insult against those who oppose them, because time and time again it’s clear that no one is more sensitive than the far right who follow Trump in lock step and can’t take a compliment from the other side about eye shadow. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/mar/15/how-loving-fame-academys-alex-parks-made-me-unembarrassable | Music | 2021-03-15T15:00:03.000Z | Laura Snapes | How loving Fame Academy's Alex Parks made me unembarrassable | Ialways had violent passions, incapable of liking something moderately. I wished I could grow a tail and swim with the Little Mermaid. My Spice Girls obsession lasted until the bitter end, lights off, party over. When I eventually moved on, there was Avril Lavigne, punctually deployed by the record industry to scoop disaffected preteens on a pop comedown into her sweatband-clad arms.
Fandom for me was nearly always solitary. Friends who liked the same music never liked it quite as intensely, as needily. I didn’t really care. I supercharged the intimacy. I wanted my obsessions to be reciprocated and felt certain that they would be if I could just meet their subjects in person. Growing up in Cornwall, there was little chance. Nobody toured there. The only celebrity I had ever met was the actor who played Melody in CBBC drama The Queen’s Nose, signing autographs outside Tesco to promote the panto.
The author in her teenage bedroom (and best friend’s clothes). Photograph: Laura Snapes
Then, suddenly, there was a pop star in our midst. The local papers reported that 18-year-old Alex Parks had got into Fame Academy, the BBC’s wholesome equivalent to Pop Idol. She grew up in the next village along from where my grandparents lived. I had to walk past her brother’s house when I got the bus. I’m sure that kind of rare proximity would have made me root for anyone, but she had a distinct allure. She had short spiked hair and wore baggy clothes and skate shoes. She was shy and pretty. A national paper splashed on her sexuality before the show started. Like Lavigne, she arrived right on time.
At 14, I became more consumed than ever. I had a Saturday job, which allowed me to save up for her clothes – thick brown corduroy trousers, pre-weathered Mickey Mouse T-shirts – sourced on the messageboard where I posted intensively as alexparksrocks. (Typing that now, for the first time in probably 17 years, the muscle memory fizzes.) I got caught with a picture of her stuffed up my sleeve on a mum-supervised trip to the hairdresser; after an argument about not being allowed short hair, I was allowed a half-measures pixie cut. I spent lunchtimes in the IT room printing out every picture of her online, until I had about 300, from penny-size to poster, plastered across my bedroom. Musically, at that stage, she was just a collection of covers – B-52s, Soft Cell, Blondie – becoming something different week by week. (Her subsequent solo material was suitably filled with longing.)
When Radio 1 held a competition for one lucky winner to go to the Fame Academy, I had to enter. Why they asked hopefuls to write an original rap about the show, I will never know. I confess that my dad wrote mine. I got on the show. I rapped live on Radio 1 to Colin and Edith, in for Chris Moyles. I got through to the final. I rapped again, this time over the beat to Get Ur Freak On. It was hard to hear it over the phone. I lost to another girl, and resented Missy Elliott furiously for a while.
The experience had the strange effect of making me unembarrassable, especially as I noticed which sides of my obsession were cheered by adults and which made them uncomfortable. After Parks won Fame Academy, I wrote to a local radio station to ask if I could interview her, reckoning that this would produce a better conversation than simply trying to get noticed as a fan (though I did that whenever possible). They agreed. This was encouraged: it was professional, good, grown up.
Alex Parks: Maybe That’s What It Takes – video
In German, we were learning how to discuss likes and dislikes. I didn’t yet understand that you couldn’t say “so-and-so is my favourite”: you had to prefix “favourite” – “Liebling” – to a noun to say “my favourite singer/actor/etc”. “Alex Parks ist mein Liebling,” I said when called on. The teacher stiffened. “No – that means, ‘Alex Parks is my darling.’” She seemed embarrassed, probably because she knew I had accidentally said exactly what I meant.
One day when I was off sick, our form teacher remarked to the class that we were “probably off gallivanting together”. I wasn’t humiliated, but angry that she would be so inappropriate. The next day, I confronted her and she apologised. Learning what was considered acceptable behaviour for a girl made me bristle against it, from the systemic to the superficial, in ways trenchant and moronic: for a while I routinely cut off my eyelashes.
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Inevitably, I would leave Parks behind. I redecorated my room with pictures of the Libertines, Kings of Leon, Razorlight. (“Great,” said my mum. “From lesbians to drug addicts.”) Brazen, gleeful adoration was replaced by trying to prove my worth on indie messageboards. The strain of defence stripped some of the joy. I shrank for a while.
A few years into my career, an infamous troll circulated a link to my teenage interview with Parks to embarrass me. I shared the link myself, reasoning that it was less embarrassing to try something when you’re young and inexperienced than it is for a grown man to mock those attempts. If I was embarrassed about anything, it’s that I would probably never again be so audaciously myself as I was then. That 14-year-old pretty much wanted to be who I am now. But I could always do with more of her. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/nov/29/it-looks-like-fresh-sewage-we-taste-test-christmas-dinner-flavoured-foods-from-soup-and-crisps-to-sarnies | Life and style | 2021-11-29T08:00:50.000Z | Stuart Heritage | ‘It looks like fresh sewage!’: We taste test Christmas dinner flavoured foods – from soup and crisps to sarnies | Something has gone badly, wildly wrong in the world of Christmas cuisine. Where Christmas dinner used to be a once-a-year extravagance, the concept has become nebulous and all-encompassing. “Christmas dinner” is no longer a meal – it is a flavour, spread indiscriminately across every foodstuff imaginable in a desperate bid to seize upon good cheer.
There have long been Christmas dinner sandwiches, but now we also have Christmas dinner crisps, Christmas dinner pizza, Christmas dinner pasties, Christmas dinner soup. And, while the thought of someone sullenly microwaving a bowl of Christmas soup barefoot in their kitchen between Zoom calls on a Thursday in November is genuinely the most dispiriting thing you could think of, it is possible that some of these products are actually good. There’s only one thing for it: time to put on a novelty jumper and try them all at once.
Starbucks ’Tis the Season turkey sandwich (£3.79)
Photograph: Alicia Canter/The Guardian
There is a lot to be disappointed about here. First, nobody has ever travelled to Starbucks specifically to eat a sandwich, and this is because no sandwich made by Starbucks has ever been palatable. Second, in a world that has long since diversified beyond the Christmas sandwich, this just seems old hat. Third, this sandwich tastes exactly like every pre-packed chicken-and-stuffing sandwich you have ever bought from a petrol station in a fit of self-loathing. Please try harder, Starbucks.
How nice is it? 2/5
How much like Christmas dinner is it? 3/5
Sainsbury’s Rudolph’s Christmas Feast sandwich (£2.50)
Photograph: Alicia Canter/The Guardian
Although the name of this sandwich might suggest that Sainsbury’s has completely lost the plot and started selling venison sarnies at Christmas, the happier truth is that this is a vegan festive sandwich. Served in a Christmassy star-shaped bun, it comes filled with a root-vegetable patty, along with carrot strips and carrot chutney. Not that you would know, of course, because the bread-to-filling ratio here is so catastrophically out of whack you don’t so much eat it as get suffocated by it.
How nice is it? 3/5
How much like Christmas dinner is it? 2/5
Tesco Free From turkey and stuffing tortilla chips (£1)
Photograph: Alicia Canter/The Guardian
While everyone was distracted by sandwiches, the humble Christmas crisp has been quietly reaching its apex. These tortilla chips are everything you could possibly ask for. Are they crunchy? Yes. Are they moreish? Yes. Does their gluten-free nature represent the dawning of a more inclusive snacking landscape? Yes. Are they shaped like little Christmas trees? Probably at first, but they will be smashed into unrecognisable smithereens by the time you open a packet. Do they taste like turkey and stuffing? Well, no, not really. But, hey, you can’t win them all.
How nice is it? 4/5
How much like Christmas dinner is it? 2/5
Tesco Finest crinkle-cut pigs in blankets crisps (90p)
Photograph: Alicia Canter/The Guardian
Here’s a question: do you like smoky bacon flavoured crisps? If you do, you should buy some of these. If you don’t like smoky bacon flavoured crisps, you shouldn’t buy these, because they are basically smoky bacon flavoured crisps. They are crisps that someone has chucked a load of pork-flavoured powder on, and that doesn’t seem particularly Christmassy to me. But does everything you eat have to be relentlessly festive? Can’t you just be happy eating some crisps for once? Honestly, you people.
How nice is it? 3/5
How much like Christmas dinner is it? 2/5
Greggs festive bake (£1.60)
Photograph: Alicia Canter/The Guardian
This won’t surprise anybody who has ever seen me, but I love Greggs. A warm Greggs pastry slice in your hands on a cold winter’s morning is one of life’s great joys. As such, my expectations for its festive bake – chicken, stuffing and bacon in a sage-and-cranberry sauce – were through the roof. But those expectations were firmly dashed when I ate one. All the ingredients had been reduced to an unidentifiable mush inside the slice, and the sauce carried the faint taste of wax. Only buy this in an emergency.
How nice is it? 2/5
How much like Christmas dinner is it? 3/5
Cornwall Hamper Store Christmas Cornish pasty (£18.99 for four)
Photograph: Alicia Canter/The Guardian
This, on the other hand, was an unexpected treat. It arrives at your house frozen, to be heated in your oven for 45 minutes, so you can eat it freshly baked. I’m a little worried about the filling, though. The pasty contains ham, turkey and stuffing, which is nothing like a traditional Cornish pasty. Nothing makes Cornish people angrier than a devil-may-care attitude towards Cornish pasty tradition. Anyway, it’s quite peppery.
How nice is it? 3/5
How much like Christmas dinner is it? 3/5
Domino’s The Festive One pizza (£18.99)
Photograph: Alicia Canter/The Guardian
One of the big benefits of Domino’s pizza is that, no matter what you order, it all tastes the same. You could blindfold yourself and jab wildly at the Domino’s app, and you can reliably assume that whatever turns up at your home will taste just like every other Domino’s pizza you have ever ordered. As such, despite being topped with bacon, sausage and something called “turkey sage and onion”, the Festive One is just a generic pizza. You wouldn’t buy it to celebrate Christmas. You wouldn’t buy it to avoid Christmas. It just exists, like dust or clouds.
How nice is it? 2/5
How much like Christmas dinner is it? 2/5
Costa pigs in blankets mac and cheese (£4)
Photograph: Alicia Canter/The Guardian
Costa sells mac and cheese boxes all year round, and they generally taste like something that gets slid underneath prison doors during budget cuts. But now that it is Christmas, Costa has unveiled its pigs in blankets mac and cheese, which is – brace yourself – regular mac and cheese, but with some cocktail sausages balanced on top. First, this isn’t remotely Christmassy. It’s the sort of thing that restaurants put on children’s menus for kids who don’t yet know how to chew. Second, eating it made me so miserable that my soul gave up and left my body. Thanks a lot, Costa.
How nice is it? 1/5
How much like Christmas dinner is it? 1/5
Itsu Christmas gyoza (£3, ocado.com)
Photograph: Alicia Canter/The Guardian
We should hate Itsu for making these. They are gyoza filled with bacon, turkey, cranberry and sage, and therefore constitute several hundred simultaneous cultural appropriations. There is nothing remotely Japanese about these gyoza. I’m sure nobody in Japan celebrates Christmas by ramming measly little teaspoons of pureed turkey into dumplings. However, to my utter astonishment, these were a hit. They’re unbelievably Christmassy to eat, and I think I’ve figured out why. As a society, we have become obsessed with padding out our Christmas dinner ingredients with bread, pastry and who knows what else. Here, though, only the thinnest sliver of dough separates you from your turkey. The filling just explodes in your mouth. Delightful.
How nice is it? 5/5
How much like Christmas dinner is it? 4/5
Heinz Christmas dinner Big Soup (£1.50)
Photograph: Alicia Canter/The Guardian
This, meanwhile, is a travesty. It’s a tinned soup that contains turkey, stuffing balls, potatoes, brussel sprouts and pigs in blankets, and, not to be indelicate, it looks like fresh sewage. It smells bad. I can’t accurately describe the mouthfeel because I have never had to swallow contraband human organs to sell on the black market. It tastes like punishment. Heinz, you invented the precise opposite of Christmas. It is genuinely impossible to eat this nightmare with even a trace of festivity in your body. Merry Christmas to nobody.
How nice is it? -50/5
How much like Christmas dinner is it? 0/5 | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2009/may/22/seven-deadly-sins-football-women-s-football-kelly-smith | Football | 2009-05-21T23:00:00.000Z | Tony Leighton | Seven deadly sins of football: Kicking against the prejudice | Aged seven, Smith was the top goalscorer for Garston Boys Club. At the same age, she was ordered to stop playing for the team because the opposition had realised for the first time that she was a girl. Smith has now turned 30 and is the finest English player of her generation. She recently left England's top team, Arsenal, to join Boston Breakers of the new Women's Professional Soccer league in America.
"I was absolutely devastated when my dad told me I was being kicked off the boys' team," she says now of her first taste of the outmoded sexual politics that still bedevils the women's game. "It was nothing to do with the boys. I was just one of the players and they were my buddies. It was the parents who were the problem. Maybe they were embarrassed at seeing a girl dribble past their boys. Whatever the reason, they resented me."
Before her gender was discovered, Smith, her hair cropped short and with a physique to match that of her team mates – who included her brother Glen – had been admired by all who watched her.
Her father, Bernard, remembers: "People would say, 'he's a good little guy,' and they were astounded when I introduced them to Kelly. But then it became, 'you've got that girl playing again,' and they wouldn't put their team on the field."
Smith's father responded by founding his own team, Pinner Girls, from where his daughter went on to play for Arsenal during the most successful period in the team's history. Still, the old prejudices surfaced periodically, even at her home club. Smith recalls: "When we paraded one of our trophies round the Arsenal ground at half time in a Premier League match there was a part of the crowd chanting that old one: 'get your tits out for the lads', and it made me not want to be there.
"The situation doesn't really exist in America, where the women's game is really big and totally accepted. It has got better in England. Hopefully, with more and more young girls coming into the game, we'll be free of prejudice in the not-too-distant future." | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2006/dec/21/whichseasonaltunessendyou | Music | 2006-12-21T12:29:28.000Z | Caroline Sullivan | Which seasonal tunes send you on a magic Sleigh Ride? | Drifting through Superdrug this morning, I was oblivious to the loop of Christmas songs the shop has been playing since late August. But as I made to leave, the Ronettes began to sing Sleigh Ride, and I had to stop and pretend to examine lipsticks so I could hear the tune in its unsurpassable entirety. Have the words, "Ding-a-ling-a-ling-a-ding-dong-ding" ever meant more than they do here, rendered by a trio of Manhattan teenagers in 1963 on the crowning moment of Phil Spector's A Christmas Gift for You album?
Those were the days. Forty-odd years later, Christmas songs are no longer high-quality fare made by top artists under the aegis of top producers. No, they're the moment when Westlife come into their own, and something evil this way comes.
However, taking Sleigh Ride as the standard to which all Christmas songs should aspire, I've compiled a nine-of-the-best list. (Note: I like 'em warm and fuzzy, so you won't find MacGowan/MacColl's ubiquitous Fairytale of New York here.)
1. Sleigh Ride, The Ronettes
2. Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, Judy Garland This has been recorded by at least 66 other artists, but this version, sung by Garland in the 1944 film Meet Me in St Louis, is deeply poignant, and definitive.
3. Santa Claus Is Coming to Town by Bruce Springsteen "Hey, Clarence, you been practicin' real hard, so Santa'll bring you a new saxophone!" Springsteen bawls at Clarence Clemons, kicking off this raucous live recording.
4. Blue Christmas by Elvis Presley The King's "blue" period was fertile, yielding not just Suede Shoes, Hawaii and Moon but this slinky seasonal thing.
5. Carol of the Bells by Wynton Marsalis The beautifully melancholy opening track from the 1989 album Crescent City Christmas Card, the New Orleans-born trumpeter's salute to his home town.
6. Merry Xmas, Everybody by Slade For its use of "Xmas".
7. Christmas Will Be Just Another Lonely Day by Brenda Lee Ain't it the truth.
8. Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree by Brenda Lee The proper version, not the defilement wreaked by Kim Wilde and Mel Smith.
9. Santa, Baby by Eartha Kitt Kitt turns her erotic attentions to the dude in the red suit. Play it to the kiddies to confuse them.
Over to you - what song makes Christmas for you? | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/feb/02/lawyers-raise-alarm-at-struggle-to-tackle-uk-local-government-corruption | UK news | 2024-02-02T05:00:39.000Z | Jessica Murray | Lawyers raise alarm at struggle to tackle UK local government corruption | Lawyers have raised alarm at the lack of oversight in local government, as a Guardian analysis found almost one in 10 councils in the UK have been subject to a corruption investigation in the past decade.
Across the UK, 36 local authorities have had councillors and staff accused of economic crimes including fraud and the misuse of public funds, with dozens arrested and convicted.
Many other councils are being scrutinised for potential financial mismanagement leading to huge losses in councils funds. One of those is Thurrock council, found to have recklessly put hundreds of millions of pounds into commercial investments, where an accountant is being investigated by the Financial Reporting Council.
Rachel McKoy, the president of Lawyers in Local Government, said they raised concerns about the “complete lack of sanctions” to help keep local authorities in check and clamp down on misbehaviour.
“We don’t have an effective sanctions regime in this country. The government says the sanction is at the ballot box but that doesn’t help if there’s rotten pervasive behaviours that create toxicity in a council,” she said.
A recent report on the role of monitoring officers – the person responsible for legal governance in each council – found they are often powerless “even when dealing with proven cases of rule breaking … including serious, harmful and criminal actions by councillors or staff”.
Under current sanctions, councillors can be barred from cabinet, committees or representative roles and be removed from their political party for wrongdoing, with criminal matters referred to the police.
“Monitoring officers need the teeth, they need the sanctions,” said McKoy, adding that increasingly toxic cultures within councils were pushing monitoring officers out of the industry. “We’ve got no real proper protections. You’re in this situation where you’re trying to speak truth to power and you’re really vulnerable,” she said.
One of the most high-profile corruption scandals in recent years was at Liverpool city council, where a number of officers were arrested after allegations of bribery and witness intimidation linked to building deals in the city. Each of the individuals deny the allegations.
A government-commissioned report found as much as £100m of public money could have been squandered by the “dysfunctional” council and that senior councillors flouted the code of conduct by not declaring gifts or hospitality on a register of interests.
In 2022, four men at Lancashire county council were charged in an investigation into allegations of financial irregularity relating to a £5m contract. Each of them deny the allegations.
In other cases, council staff have been convicted and in some cases imprisoned for corrupt behaviour.
A boss at Surrey county council was jailed in 2019 for stealing almost £94,000 from a taxpayer-funded hardship scheme, a former council worker was sentenced to prison last year for stealing almost £1m from Birmingham city council, and a Derbyshire county council employee was given a suspended sentence for claiming £90,000 worth of vouchers from a charity scheme to help children living in poverty.
In October, a senior officer at Newham council was charged after being accused of plundering £250,000 to spend on laptops, phones, and tablets for himself. He has pleaded not guilty. Meanwhile, a fraud investigation is under way at Bolton council after close to £1m of its budget could not be accounted for.
Serious cases of criminal corruption at councils are still relatively rare, said Jonathan Carr-West from the Local Government Information Unit, but there are concerns about the “ability to ensure councils are well run and people are behaving properly”.
“Our ability to hold councils to account on a day-to-day level – making sure appropriate decisions are being made, the right questions are being asked, ensuring councils are conforming to legal and regulatory duties – that is where the pressure is in a way that it hasn’t been before,” he said. “And it’s because councils have less money. Everything they do is happening in a more stretched, shoestring fashion than it once was.”
Ed Hammond, the deputy chief executive at the Centre for Governance and Scrutiny, said the problem has been compounded by the failure of the local audits market.
“We’ve seen all these instances recently where bad financial governance have led to local authorities failing, and a lot of that has been because of failures in behaviour and culture,” he said. “These councils have all got external auditors now, but it’s failing. The system is just not working. And there are meant to be other systems as well, providing oversight, but the behaviours aren’t there to support them to work.”
Almost all councils in England (99%) failed to get their 2022-23 financial accounts signed off by auditors by the deadline last year, and more than 900 sets of accounts for councils and other public bodies going back to 2017 remain unaudited.
A spokesperson for the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities said: “We are committed to ensuring accountability and scrutiny across local government and that monitoring officers are equipped with powers to robustly tackle breaches of conduct, including barring councillors from cabinet, committees or representative roles.
“While councils are ultimately responsible for their own finances, we will not hesitate to intervene and protect taxpayers’ money where they do not meet the high standards we set.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/feb/01/big-hero-6-review-scott-adsit | Film | 2015-02-01T08:00:08.000Z | Mark Kermode | Big Hero 6 review – enjoyable geek romp | Having bagged their first best animated feature Oscar last year with Frozen, Walt Disney Animation Studios are back in the ring with this visually dazzling and very enjoyable geek romp which may well triumph over the likes of How to Train Your Dragon 2 and The Boxtrolls on 22 February. Taking its lead from a lesser-known Marvel Comics title (Disney acquired parent company Marvel Entertainment in 2009), the action follows 14-year-old Hiro Hamada as he cuts an adolescent swath through the streets of “San Fransokyo”, a sublime mash-up of America and Japan with future-retro designs to make a Blade Runner replicant weep. Encouraged by older brother Tadashi to stop small-time bot-battling and enlist at a whizzo robotics lab, Hiro finds himself retooling huggable healthcare droid Baymax to do battle with a Kabuki-masked fiend, aided by a small but tightknit nerd army.
While Baymax’s transformation from inflatable-latex squishiness to body-armoured warrior is delightful, the real treats here are in the incidental detail of this beautifully designed world. A lovely thread of gentle slapstick runs through even the most explosive sequences, while Baymax’s Siri-like delivery provides deadpan counterpoint and Scott Adsit’s lyrical lilt lends delicious comedy to phrases like “hairy baby”. An origins story ripe with innocence and loss, this anime-inflected treat harks back to Disney’s big-hearted heritage even as it looks forward towards new worlds of innovation. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/jan/19/sky-ferreira-elvis-and-nixon-film | Music | 2015-01-19T09:32:01.000Z | Guardian music | Sky Ferreira scores role in forthcoming Elvis and Nixon film | Sky Ferreira has been enlisted for the forthcoming Kevin Spacey film Elvis and Nixon.
Starring Spacey as Nixon and Michael Shannon as Elvis, the film is a recreation of the meeting at the White House between the rock’n’roll icon and then-president on 21 December 1970.
As previously reported, the screenplay riffs on the bizarre real-life event which took place after Nixon received a six-page letter from Elvis which found him asking to be made a “Federal Agent-at-Large” in the bureau of narcotics and dangerous drugs. At the subsequent meeting in Washington DC, Elvis brought along family photos and a Colt 45 pistol as a personal gift to Nixon.
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Ferreira is said to be playing the love interest of Jerry Schilling, a friend of Elvis who joined him on his trip to meet Nixon. She marked the news by posting an image of the two public figures with the comment, “Feeling #BLESSED to be apart of this.”
Aside from her new acting venture, the singer has started work on her next album, the follow up to Night Time, My Time, an album temporarily shrouded in controversy following the arrest of Ferreira and boyfriend Zachary Cole Smith, of shoegaze band Diiv.
While this is her first major role, the singer has appeared in a number of films, such as 2008’s A Cross the Universe, 2010’s Putty Hill, 2011’s The Wrong Ferarri, 2013’s IRL and The Green Inferno.
The rest of the Elvis and Nixon cast reportedly includes Colin Hanks, Alex Pettyfer, Johnny Knoxville and Tracy Letts. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2024/may/01/laughing-boy-review-jermyn-street-theatre-connor-sparrowhawk | Stage | 2024-05-01T07:53:15.000Z | David Jays | Laughing Boy review – Connor Sparrowhawk’s story told with love and fury | In a church down the road from this theatre you can see a quilt, a loving tribute to Connor Sparrowhawk, who drowned in a bath in an NHS unit in 2013 aged 18. Each square was made by someone touched by Connor’s death and his mother’s campaign to uncover what happened.
Sara Ryan’s memoir Justice for Laughing Boy has been adapted by writer-director Stephen Unwin. The show itself is a bit of a patchwork quilt – heartfelt, colourful, bitty – held together by campaigning zeal.
Connor was autistic and had learning disabilities, and many charged with his care never saw beyond his diagnosis. On stage almost throughout, Alfie Friedman gives him a rockstar quiff, quizzical eyebrow and radiant sense of curiosity. He’s often cradling a big red London bus – Connor loved buses, not to mention coaches, lorries and laughter.
Alfie Friedman (Connor Sparrowhawk) and Janie Dee (Sara Ryan) in Laughing Boy. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian
The condescension shown towards Connor by experts extends towards his family too – Ryan is routinely addressed as “mum” – and swift, brief scenes detail the ways he was failed. Faced with Connor’s turbulence as a teenager, the family hope a dedicated unit near their Oxford home will help. Instead, he died at Slade House (now closed) and a report concluded that his death could have been prevented.
On a curved white wall behind the tiny stage, video designer Matt Powell throws up blurry street scenes, texts and messages, documents and buzzwords, and damning phrases from the reports that finally vindicated the battle for justice.
In Unwin’s unvarnished staging, the four actors playing Connor’s convivial siblings also embody the medics and bureaucrats who fumble his care and then disclaim responsibility. In some ways a smart choice – casting youngsters as figures who lack empathic maturity – the faux-fruity accents and pomposity are jokey but rarely funny, and can’t meet Janie Dee’s level of fury as Sara.
‘People like Connor are still left to die in squalor’: the truth, joy and tragedy behind Laughing Boy
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Dee – paired with a rumpled Forbes Masson as her partner – has a voice husky with distress, eyes sore with loss. Sara is targeted by the defensive Southern Health Trust. “When the shit hits the fan,” she says wearily, “they blame the mum.” If indifference can kill, the play insists on recognising and championing individuality, bright and loud as a Routemaster bus.
At Jermyn Street theatre, London, until 31 May. Then at Theatre Royal Bath, 4-8 June. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jun/13/maybots-reboot-stumbles-as-pm-struggles-with-self-deprecation | Politics | 2017-06-13T17:42:47.000Z | John Crace | Maybot's reboot stumbles as PM struggles with self-deprecation | Sic transit gloria mundi. Only a few of the most loyal Tory backbenchers could bring themselves to raise a lacklustre cheer as the Maybot entered the chamber for the re-election of the Speaker, while the father of the house, Ken Clarke, was greeted with full-throated roars from both sides of the house. Seldom can a prime minister have appeared quite so diminished on a first day back in parliament after a general election.
May strikes conciliatory tone as Corbyn gently mocks her 'coalition of chaos'
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Even John Bercow couldn’t resist a gentle dig as he did his best to appear reluctant to be chosen as Speaker for a third time. He talked of his willingness to serve “the government of the day”. With rather too much emphasis on the word day. The Maybot’s head went down at that. She had been counting on making it to the end of the week at least.
Once Tory MP, Cheryl Gillan, had completed the Bercow formalities with the obligatory reminder that seven former Speakers had been beheaded to which everyone had roared: “More, More” – it’s the same gag every time but MPs never seem to tire of it – the Supreme Leader rose to address the nation. She began by congratulating Bercow on his re-election. “At least someone got a landslide,” she said. Even with “SELF-DEPRECATING JOKE” clearly marked in capitals in the margins of her speech, she couldn’t quite manage to coordinate the words with a genuinely warm smile.
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John Bercow 'dragged to the chair' after re-election as Speaker – video
With the newly installed Stumble – Strong and Humble – programme still showing signs of teething problems, the Maybot went back to her default setting of denial. The election had actually turned out pretty well, she suggested, because parliament was now more ethnically diverse than it had ever been in the past. So well done her. That was one in the eye for everyone who was under the impression she had called the election out of naked party political self interest.
“The country is still divided and some people blame politicians for this,” the Supreme Leader continued, sounding mystified as to why this might be. No one dared point out that this could have something to do with her having spent the past seven weeks making highly personal attacks on her opponents, while promising those who voted for her nothing but more pain and more austerity. It’s still early days in the Maybot’s intensive grief counselling sessions and there’s only so much reality she can take.
She concluded by asking the house to come together “in the spirit of national unity”. That would be a national unity that puts keeping a Tory government in power above the Northern Ireland peace process. And involves going back on almost everything that had been promised in her manifesto. The Maybot sat down to almost total silence from her backbenchers, most of whom went out of their way to avoid eye contact. One even chose to look at half naked women playing chess on his mobile rather than look up. Start as you mean to go on.
Jeremy Corbyn was in an altogether better mood. No one has yet told him that he didn’t win the election and there was a swagger to the way he ripped into the Maybot. “Democracy is a wondrous thing,” he observed, before going on to say he hoped the “coalition of chaos” would eventually manage to come up with a Queen’s speech. In the meantime, though, he’d be quite happy to chill out with his mates.
“We look forward to this parliament, however short it might be,” he sniggered. And if everything didn’t work out for the Tories, “Labour is ready with strong and stable leadership in the national interest.” Had this been delivered with slightly more grace it would have been all the more effective. But it was still far too devastating for the Maybot who was in full Stumble mode and staring blankly at her feet.
She did look up when Nigel Dodds got to have his say. In the past she had never given the DUP’s leader in the Commons a second glance, but now she listened in rapture as he spoke of the interesting times ahead in the next five years. Not to mention all the dosh that would now start finding its way into Northern Ireland. Suddenly the Maybot was aware of how clever, how handsome and how statesmanlike Dodds was. How could she not have noticed this before? | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/may/03/billy-bang-obituary | Music | 2011-05-03T17:58:12.000Z | John Fordham | Billy Bang obituary | As the instrument often taken to represent the soul of western classical music, the violin has seemed untouchable to many jazz artists. However, a few have sidestepped its symbolic status to put this dazzling sound-source to their own improvisatory uses. The swing musicians Joe Venuti, Stuff Smith and Stéphane Grappelli were jazz-violin pioneers in the 1930s and 40s; Jean-Luc Ponty and Didier Lockwood introduced a rock-influenced fusion in the 1970s; and others took the violin into the sometimes abrasively uncompromising world of free improvisation: Billy Bang, who has died of lung cancer aged 63, was one of the most respected, skilful and influential.
Bang's playing sometimes erupted with a jackhammering, snaredrum-like percussiveness, his solos jostling with undertones, unexpectedly baroque flourishes and implied harmonies that darted like shoals of fish around and under the dominant melodic line. But as well as a "sheets of sound" approach that could suggest the saxophone soliloquies of John Coltrane, Bang could also exhibit a wheedling, mischievous quality, reminiscent of the soprano sax lines of Steve Lacy. Bang was a genuine original, whose radicalism of method was always balanced by a powerful lyrical sense, a driving inner beat and the earthiness of the blues.
He was born William Vincent Walker in Mobile, Alabama, and in early childhood moved to Harlem, New York, with his mother. He learned the violin at the prep school he attended on a scholarship. There, he gained his nickname (from a cartoon character), played with the folk singer Arlo Guthrie and taught himself drums and flute. Frontline military service in Vietnam had a seismic effect on Bang; being small in stature, his job was to confront North Vietnamese soldiers in boobytrapped tunnels with just a flashlight and a .45 pistol.
Drugs, alcohol and mental distress dogged Bang on his return to the US. While living in the Bronx, New York, he became involved with a revolutionary political group. On a trip to a pawnshop to buy guns, he ended up choosing a $25 violin instead. An older violinist, Leroy Jenkins (an early free-jazz exponent who became his teacher), inspired him to believe that through music he could express his harrowing experiences of racism, violence and isolation.
With Jenkins's encouragement, Bang became a key figure in New York's informal "loft jazz" scene of the 1970s – though at the outset he knew comparatively little of the jazz tradition and was yet to embrace the work of Coltrane or Ornette Coleman, the saxophonists who were to become powerful influences. In a 2005 interview with Jazz Times, Bang recalled his epiphany as being a simple realisation: "I'm determined to become a musician now. Not a violinist, but a jazz musician who happens to play that instrument."
In 1977, following sessions at the experimental La MaMa theatre, Bang co-founded the String Trio of New York, with the guitarist James Emery and the bassist John Lindberg. This was to become a seminal group operating on the borders of classical chamber music and free improvisation. It passed through several incarnations after Bang left in 1986, with the jazz-violin star Regina Carter becoming one of its most celebrated later members.
Throughout the 1970s and 80s, Bang performed in America and Europe, often with senior figures from the first wave of free jazz (including the trumpeter Don Cherry, the saxophonists Frank Lowe and Sam Rivers, and the drummer Dennis Charles). He also played in the avant-funk drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson's group Decoding Society in the late 70s, and alongside the fierce, Hendrix-like guitarist Sonny Sharrock in Bill Laswell's fearsome punk-jazz ensemble Material in 1981.
Bang formed several genre-crossing jazz and improv co-operatives, such as the free-bop group the Jazz Doctors (with Lowe) and the rap-influenced Forbidden Planet. He was popular in Europe, having regularly toured the continent from 1977 onwards. The Italian label Soul Note released much of his best work, including the mercurial Rainbow Gladiator in 1981 (with the saxophonist Charles Tyler and the pianist Michele Rosewoman) and Tribute to Stuff Smith (1992), which featured the free-jazz bandleader Sun Ra, another experimenter with deep traditional roots, in a rare sideman's role. Bang had performed with the Sun Ra Arkestra in the 1980s.
He relocated to Berlin in 1996, and also shifted to the Canadian label Justin Time – a move that brought the violinist closer to a lyrical standard-song style than at any time in his career. At Justin Time, the producer Jean-Pierre Leduc encouraged Bang to make the Asian-influenced album Vietnam: The Aftermath (2001), for which he enlisted a gifted band including Lowe and the trumpeter Ted Daniel, another Vietnam veteran. Leduc recently observed that the players were often overcome by emotion during that session, although the leader was at pains to balance music that was reflective of Vietnamese life with representations of the traumas of combat. The tracks Tunnel Rat and Tet Offensive reflected the latter.
The follow-up album, Vietnam: Reflections (2005), included the composer and saxist Henry Threadgill, four American Vietnam war veterans and two Vietnamese musicians. The violinist went back to Vietnam for a documentary film, Redemption Song (2008), which introduced him to a new audience.
Bang continued to tour Europe and the US regularly, sometimes working with the Art Ensemble of Chicago's bassist Malachi Favors Maghostut, the saxophonist David Murray, the fusion ensemble Sonicphonics, and his long-term collaborator Lowe, until the latter's death in 2003. Their last concert together was issued – as Lowe's dying wish – on the CD Above and Beyond: An Evening in Grand Rapids (2007).
Bang is survived by his partner, Maria; his daughters, Hoshi and Chanyez; his sons, Jay and Ghazal; and a granddaughter.
Billy Bang (William Vincent Walker), musician, born 20 September 1947; died 11 April 2011 | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/jul/24/anna-calvi-mercury-prize-nomination | Music | 2011-07-23T23:05:57.000Z | Killian Fox | Anna Calvi: 'I'm not afraid to be vulnerable and strong at the same time. You have to have those two opposites' | Congratulations on being shortlisted for the Mercury music prize. Where were you when you found out?
I was lying in bed in a hotel room in France and I was in a really bad mood. Then my manager called me with the news and my mood completely changed. I was ecstatic. I think the prize is very important, especially for musicians outside the mainstream. It's not about being commercially successful, it's about doing good work, and I'm really happy to be recognised. It was difficult though, because the band found out a few days before the announcement and we couldn't tell anyone else. So we had to celebrate in secret.
Where are you right now?
In Venice to play at a festival called Sexto 'Nplugged – funny name. Tomorrow I'm going to Switzerland, then back home to London for a few days, and then I'm off to New York for a show. I'm going to be on the road for a long time. It's festivals for the rest of the summer and then I'm doing an autumn tour.
Your shows are very intimate and intense. Doesn't it get exhausting, baring your soul night after night?
No, not really. It's the equivalent of doing a sport that could be exhausting but actually leaves you feeling energised. Playing music just feels like a really natural way to express myself. I get in touch with a side of me that I'm not sure I can express in any other situation. I have a kind of fearlessness on stage, and I'm not afraid to be vulnerable and strong at the same time. You have to have those two opposites really, to engage fully as a musician and a performer.
Did it take a while to achieve that fearlessness?
As a singer, yes. I started singing only about five years ago, and at the beginning I was really secretive about it. I'd only practise when I was sure no one else was in the house. I worked on it five or six hours a day, and listened to singers I love like Maria Callas and Édith Piaf, until I found that I had the strength to do what I really wanted to do. It's an amazing feeling, being able to express yourself in such an elemental and intimate way. Even if I don't feel strong in other ways, at least I always have this voice.
Your music has a very cinematic feel. Do you think of it in a visual way?
Yes. I've always been drawn to the visual side of creativity. I've always painted – I nearly went to art school. It definitely affects the way that I write because I really see music as well as hear it and I always try to make sure that the music is telling a story as much as the lyrics are.
Have you drawn on specific films for inspiration?
There's a film called My Winnipeg about a guy who really wants to leave a town but he can't because everyone keeps falling asleep. It's a really dreamlike film with surreal images of frozen horses in white snow. I had that in mind when I wrote "Suzanne and I", but that's the only time I've taken literal reference from a particular film.
Watch Anna Calvi in an exclusive live performance of Blackout, from her self-titled debut album. guardian.co.uk
Your visual sense also comes through in the way you dress. What was the thinking behind those striking red-and-black flamenco-style outfits you wear on stage?
I always make decisions based on what I feel the music demands. When I was thinking about how to dress I really wanted to express the passion and drama in the music, which is why I took inspiration from flamenco outfits. I've always found flamenco very beautiful and moving. I wouldn't dress like that if it didn't feel right for the music.
Do you have a style guru?
Not really. My interest in fashion is purely from a musical point of view. I don't have a clue about fashion, really – I'm very new to it – but it definitely intrigues me. I've met some really nice people in that world and had only good experiences, and I got to work with Karl Lagerfeld…
Really? Doing what?
I was asked if I'd be up for him taking some photos of me. It was for a collection of his that hasn't come out yet, so I don't know if I can say too much about it, but it was an interesting experience. It felt very much like two artists collaborating.
Given that fashion isn't your area of expertise, did you feel under pressure to learn about his work?
No not really. I was doing it because of my music and that perspective was all I needed. It's like being very sure and direct with your vision and nothing can sway you from it. That's how I feel and that's what gives me the strength to go into situations like this. I'm quite a shy person, and if I was to go in there without my music to hold me up I wouldn't be able to do it.
What's been the most surreal experience of your career so far?
Meeting Brian Eno, probably. His friend saw me play at the Luminaire in Kilburn and told Brian about me, and then he just looked me up on YouTube, I think, and asked if I wanted to meet up. It was great because he was exactly how I hoped he would be: very intelligent and really interesting. He has a passion for music that's almost naive, and very pure. It's really rare to find that.
Did he offer you guidance?
He's not really a "you should do this and this and this" kind of person. He felt that I'd already kind of got it happening, so he didn't really need to come in and change things. I think he liked the music the way it was. I got him to do some backing vocals on the album and play piano on a couple of tracks, which was great.
A lot has changed for you in the last year: signing to Domino, getting on to BBC's Sound of 2011 poll in December, releasing your debut, and now the Mercury nomination. What advice would you give yourself 12 months ago?
Just continue to be brave. There were moments before I was signed when I wondered: "Who on earth is going to listen to this?" The music was making me happy but I felt it was completely out of sync with everything else. I thought: "I could do all this and no one would ever hear it and what would be left of me?" Because I completely gave my soul to it. So I'm relieved that I can stand behind what I made and feel proud of it. I did the best that I could and that's all you can really ask of yourself. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/04/number-of-potential-modern-slavery-victims-in-uk-hits-record-high | World news | 2023-05-04T14:41:17.000Z | Rajeev Syal | Number of potential modern slavery victims in England and Wales hits record high | The number of potential victims of modern slavery in England and Wales is at the highest levels since records began, according to official statistics.
A total of 4,746 people were referred to the Home Office from January to March as potential victims of exploitation, figures show – a rise of more than a quarter compared with the same period last year.
The figures have been released as the government prepares to fight attempts in the House of Lords to alter the illegal migration bill, which critics say will make it harder to rescue modern slavery victims. Senior MPs, including Theresa May, claimed last month that the bill would scrap protection and support for those in forced labour.
Although it is impossible to know exact numbers of victims, the police have said modern slavery victims, including children, work across many sectors, from construction and agriculture to the sex industry, and in places such as nail bars, car washes and cannabis farms.
The number of people referred into the national referral mechanism (NRM) – a system that identifies potential victims of modern slavery and human trafficking so their cases can be considered – in the first three months of this year was the highest since the scheme started in 2009, the Home Office said.
This is an increase of 27% from 3,773 in the first quarter of 2022, and a rise of 7% on the period October to December.
Albanian nationals accounted for almost one-third (31%) of all potential victims, making up 1,452 of the total number. British nationals were the second-most commonly referred at 1,163, making up 25% of the total, while the third-most common nationality was Sudanese at 226 (5%).
The Home Office said referrals for Albanian nationals had reached the highest number and proportion since the NRM began, and were higher than UK nationals for the fifth consecutive quarter.
Referrals for British nationals reached their highest quarterly number and have been growing since the July-September 2021 period.
The illegal migration bill is expected to face close scrutiny in the Lords next week. Under the bill’s measures, potential victims may be removed from the UK before they are conclusively identified as victims of modern slavery, affecting their safety from traffickers and their recovery from exploitation.
Critics claimed the bill would penalise people affected by modern slavery with irregular immigration status, which would make it more difficult for people who are trafficked and escape to come forward to authorities.
In October, Suella Braverman, the home secretary, attributed a rise in modern slavery claims to people falsely trying to register as trafficking victims. She said: “The hard truth is that our modern slavery laws are being abused by people gaming the system. We’ve seen a 450% increase in modern slavery claims since 2014.”
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Her claims have been contradicted by the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority and by senior Conservatives, who have argued that the vast majority of claims are found to be valid.
The role of anti-slavery commissioner remains vacant after Dame Sara Thornton left the post in April 2022.
Last month, speaking during the opening session of the home affairs committee’s new inquiry into human trafficking, she described the failure to find someone to replace her as “deeply regrettable” and suggested there could be a conflict of interest with the Home Office being in charge of the appointment.
A Home Office spokesperson said the government was committed to reforming modern slavery policies “to make sure that genuine victims are receiving the support that they need and deserve, whilst cracking down on those who seek to exploit the world leading support we provide for genuine victims”.
They added: “In December, the UK and Albania made a commitment to improve the provisions in Albania to support victims of modern slavery. These improved protections and services have allowed Albanian nationals who are confirmed victims of modern slavery to be returned to Albania to have their protections met there.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/10/brexit-legacy-is-just-the-start-of-incoming-pms-problems-as-cost-of-living-crisis-spirals | Opinion | 2022-07-10T07:00:29.000Z | Will Hutton | Brexit legacy is just the start of incoming PM’s problems as cost of living crisis spirals | Boris Johnson has left the Conservative party in policy la-la land. “Cakeism” has run riot – vast, incoherent ambitions detached from political, economic and business realities. Thus the aim is to be “Global Britain” but an ultra-hard Brexit ensures shrinking exports, falling inward investment, dwindling financial muscle and inevitably global retreat.
Britain is to be a high-wage, high-innovation economy but there is only one hi-tech company in the FTSE 100, and no strategy to add any more. We are to be a science superpower but there is little chance when we are excluded from the biggest transnational scientific organisation on earth – the EU Horizon programme. There are targets to level up Britain’s glaring geographical inequalities but with scant resources – with what little there is directed at Tory constituencies.
As the cost of living crisis intensifies, the government consistently offers too little, too late. A mid-ranking European power must collaborate with others to have leverage over any significant policy area: instead, rancour, rows and delusions of a capacity to go it alone dominate. There are commitments to fiscal responsibility while simultaneously advocating more spending and lower taxes. It is an intellectual black hole.
The incoming PM’s problems start with the legacy of Johnson’s Brexit – the unchallenged, sacred verity of Conservative politics. But this allegedly “oven-ready” deal paid no attention to the realities of the 21st-century economy, now dominated by products and services that compete on their knowledge content, resilience and compliance with the highest regulatory standards. To exclude ourselves from the EU single market, which sets the standards for the whole of the EU, is thus a ball and chain around Britain’s growth potential – and by menacing our exports worsens the deficit in our current balance of payments so that a sterling crisis is an ever-present risk.
Importantly, the attempt to shoehorn Northern Ireland back into the UK market and suspend its relationship with the EU by unilaterally rewriting the NI protocol had led to no new contracts being awarded in the EU Horizon programme, and to existing ones being cancelled. It is a self-defeating debacle.
Beyond that, Johnson was an opportunistic policy jackdaw – backing whatever seemed attractive to whatever audience but with no sense of how it was to be delivered or financed, or how it fitted with a larger vision. Levelling up was his commitment to the former Labour “red wall” seats in the Midlands and north which turned Tory in the 2019 general election. They deserved better, he rightly insisted, from life expectancy and public transport to career prospects: but how?
The levelling up white paper set 12 interlinked economic, social and political priorities – but their achievement demands a mobilisation of resources, strengthened institutions and serious devolution. Johnson, obsessed with favouring only Brexit Tories and their constituencies, could deliver none of it. Above all, no serious creative thought had been given to how the UK could find the billions necessary, over many years, to fund levelling up. In the event, the HS2 link from Birmingham to Leeds was cancelled. The entire strategy needs urgent attention if it is not to collapse.
Yet in principle it should be a national priority. So should developing lifelong learning, placing big bets on innovative projects, renewing our infrastructure, confronting digital monopolies, securing energy resilience consistent with lowering carbon emissions, and offering a national social care system for our elderly.
To none of these challenges did Johnson give sustained attention. Is the health and social care levy even going to survive, let alone deliver what was promised? Energy policy in the wake of the crisis in prices after the Ukraine war is a particular jumble; grandiloquent impossible ambitions to build eight new nuclear power stations in the decade ahead sit alongside drawing back from commitments to renewables. Any chance of meeting net zero commitments by 2050 (and capping energy bills) means insulating a million homes a year: the figure runs at a derisory 30-40,000, with no commitment to improvement.
Looming in the background – and undermining all of it – is the commitment to a smaller state and lower taxes. Rarely has any government or any party faced in so many contradictory directions at once, with so little chance of achieving any of its goals. Exit Johnson – leaving behind a mess for others to clear up. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jul/11/left-bank-agnes-poirier-review-existentialism-jazz-paris-1940s | Books | 2018-07-11T11:00:11.000Z | Stuart Jeffries | Left Bank by Agnès Poirier – existentialism, jazz and the miracle of Paris in the 1940s | In August 1943, the sales team at Gallimard noticed something odd. The publisher’s new 700-page philosophical tome was selling unexpectedly well. Was it because Jean-Paul Sartre’s thoughts on freedom and responsibility in Being and Nothingness resonated with Parisians enduring Nazi occupation? Not quite. It was because the book weighed exactly one kilogram and so was a perfect substitute for copper weights, which had been sold on the black market or melted down for ammunition.
Agnès Poirier’s engaging romp through the decade in which Paris rose from wartime shame to assert its claims to be world capital of art, philosophy and turtlenecks teems with such vignettes. When Ernest Hemingway arrived in Paris with fellow allied liberators in August 1944, for instance, he parked his Jeep outside 7 Rue des Grands Augustins – Picasso’s wartime studio. No one was in, so he left his impeccably butch calling card – a bucket of grenades, plus a note reading: “To Picasso from Hemingway”. Poirier never tells us what happened to those grenades.
In one of my favourite moments Simone de Beauvoir pauses on the Pont Neuf after a nuit blanche of drinking with Sartre, Arthur Koestler and Albert Camus. Looking sadly into the Seine, she sobs over the tragedy of the human condition. “I do not understand why we do not throw ourselves into the water!” she wails to Sartre who, also crying, replies: “Well, let’s do it!” It would take a heart of stone not to laugh.
But what is the human condition? Sartre defined it shortly after the liberation. “We were never freer,” he wrote, “than during the German occupation. Since the Nazi venom was poisoning our very own thinking, our every free thought was a victory. The circumstances, often atrocious, of our fight allowed us to live openly this torn and unbearable situation one calls the Human Condition.” But, Poirier points out, that freedom was dubiously won. De Beauvoir signed a form denying she was Jewish so she could continue teaching in occupied Paris. While she and Sartre were never freer, Parisian Jews were being rounded up by Parisian cops and murdered in Nazi death camps.
Celebrity collaborators, too, in on-trend if unwitting existentialist fashion, defined their moral characters through what they did rather than what they thought – and later came up with shameless rationalisations. Arletty, star of Marcel Carné’s film Les Enfants du Paradis, justified sleeping with the enemy by mapping her body as semi-autonomous regions. “My heart is French, but my arse is international,” she said. During interrogation by the resistance, actor and playwright Sacha Guitry was asked: “Why did you have dinner with Hermann Göring?” “Out of curiosity,” he witlessly replied.
Poirier, though, risks soft pedalling these evasions and self-delusions since, ardent Parisienne that she is, she wants to tell a love story. In her narrative, everyone who is creatively or intellectually anyone is seduced by Paris. Her enviable cast of characters – not just existentialist philosophers but Samuel Beckett, Alberto Giacometti, Juliette Greco, Jean Cocteau, Simone Signoret, and wave after wave of oversexed, overpaid Americans – are libidinous multi-taskers, overturning bourgeois norms while philosophising, be-bopping, pill-popping and bed-hopping.
Cafe culture … the Café de Flore in Paris in 1946. Photograph: Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images
In her first book, Touché: A French Woman’s Take on the English, Poirier was unexpectedly captivated by repressed, anti-intellectual, ill-groomed rosbifs, but here she returns to her first love, Paris, and, as happens when you’re besotted, allows herself much poetic licence and novelettish prose. Here are Norman Mailer and his wife on their way to French classes. “Every morning, wearing layers of woollen sweaters, they walked through the Luxembourg Gardens towards the Boulevard Saint-Michel and the Sorbonne, all the while conjugating subjunctive verbs and kissing.” Oh come on. Every morning?
Mailer was one of many Americans bankrolled by the fabulous-sounding GI Bill. That legislation, so far as I understand it, paid for veterans to return to Paris, learn French and get laid. The Americans in Paris who prove most sympathetic in Poirier’s story are black. She traces the experiences of three African Americans – Richard Wright, James Baldwin and Miles Davis – each blindsided by finding romance and creative stimulation away from the US. Poirier, though, doesn’t nail why Paris, today hardly a byword for racial harmony, was then so appealingly colour blind.
She is also, unusual for a Parisienne, philosophy light. If you want to know how Sartre regaled Café de Flore waiters with his “phylogeny recapitulates ontogeny” monologue, try Sarah Bakewell’s recent At the Existentialist Cafe. Poirier is more infectious in her enthusiasms than Bakewell, though – so much so that when grumpy Saul Bellow arrives in town as everyone else is partying like it’s 1949, it’s hard not to share her exasperation. His New World ressentiment for Paris’s charms makes him determined to have no fun.
And yet, in Poirier’s story, Paris seduces even Bellow in the end. She writes: “On the first bright spring day of 1949 the Paris street cleaning system gave Saul Bellow the breakthrough that would lead directly to the Nobel prize in literature.” He had an epiphany while contemplating the waters with which Paris gutters are daily swilled. Those free-flowing rivulets released his writer’s block, helping him realise the “untamed and unabashed” sentences of his first masterpiece, The Adventures of Augie March. That “directly”, though, typifies Poirier’s tendency to overstate how Paris shaped postwar culture.
Only twice did her love letter make me choke on my citron pressé. While I tip the proverbial beret to 1940s Paris for creating circumstances for De Beauvoir to write The Second Sex, I refuse to follow Poirier in taking Brigitte Bardot as De Beauvoir’s feminist sister. It was Bardot, after all, who recently called the #MeToo movement “ridiculous”, adding: “I found it charming when men told me that I was beautiful or I had a nice little backside.”
Throughout, too, Poirier describes Paris as the place where everyone from Sartre to De Gaulle was working out a third way between the twin cold war barbarisms of American consumerism and Stalinist totalitarianism. That idealism, she argues, resulted in the European Union, an outfit conceived by the visionary civil servant Jean Monnet in Paris in the late 40s. That something is awry with this story becomes clear when Poirier invokes Harold Macmillan, who wrote the 1938 book The Middle Way, as intellectual precursor. It’s implausible that the existentialist Marxist Sartre was even then on the same page as Britain’s future Conservative prime minister, still less De Gaulle, France’s future reactionary president.
The EU could be seen not the way Poirier sees it, as Paris-created bulwark, but as sociologist Wolfgang Streeck envisioned it – a deregulation machine exposing its citizens to capitalism gone wild. I would argue that, were Sartre and De Beauvoir alive, they would share Streeck’s view. But let’s not leave Paris without yielding, just a little, to Poirier’s rose-tinted image of its charms. Interviewed for the book, Juliette Greco recalled evenings 60-odd years earlier, strolling with Miles Davis from jazz club to bistro, as their love blossomed. She was white, he black, she had no English, he no French. “I have no idea how we managed,” she laughed. “The miracle of love.” Or the miracle of Paris, which is much the same thing.
Left Bank is published by Bloomsbury. To order a copy for £21.25 (RRP £25) go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2018/mar/15/musical-chicago-john-kander-london-phoenix-theatre | Stage | 2018-03-15T06:00:15.000Z | Emma Brockes | Razzle dazzle 'em! Chicago's creators on how to make a billion-dollar musical | In the spring of 1924, Maurine Watkins, a young reporter for the Chicago Tribune, covered a murder trial in which a 24-year-old woman stood accused of shooting her lover. While Harry Kalstedt lay dying, prosecutors claimed, Beulah May Annan played jazz records and drank cocktails over his cooling body. Even after she was acquitted, the Tribune continued to refer to her as “Chicago’s Jazz Killer”.
That same month Belva Gaertner, a 40-year-old cabaret singer, was acquitted of killing her lover and told Watkins: “Gin and guns – either one is bad enough, but together they get you in a dickens of a mess, don’t they?” If it sounds a little too neat to be true, who cares? Two years later, Watkins wrote a stage play in which Belva became Velma, Beulah became Roxie and the basis for the longest-running American musical of all time was born.
Cuba Gooding Jr as Billy Flynn in the forthcoming West End revival.
Chicago is still playing on Broadway and returns to London’s West End this spring, after a six-year hiatus, with Cuba Gooding Jr as Billy Flynn, the lawyer who defends both women. It brings with it that strange combination of the familiar and the modern. The fishnets, the backbends and the formation dancing are so engrained in our ideas of what showbiz is, they risk running into cliche or kitsch. And yet, when you revisit John Kander and Fred Ebb’s songs, you are reminded of how Chicago floats free from both its mid-1970s inception and its 1990s revival in a way that rescues it from nostalgia.
It probably helps that – unlike Liza Minnelli and Cabaret, another Kander and Ebb musical – Chicago is less emphatically associated with a single star or song. Bob Fosse, who co-wrote the book and choreographed, died in 1987, and Fred Ebb in 2004. But John Kander, at 90, continues to work – most recently, on an off-Broadway production of his new musical, The Beast in the Jungle. On the question of why Chicago is still popular four decades on, he is somewhat mystified.
“Really?” he says, over the phone from his apartment in Manhattan, when I mention that Chicago has now made over $1 billion worldwide. “I should get my windows cleaned! It sounds corny, but the excitement lies in doing it. Not that you don’t feel lucky if a piece works, or sad if it doesn’t, but I tend to move on. I think being allowed to make art and see it through to its completion is an extraordinary piece of luck.”
The luck was partly timing. Chicago was well received when it opened on Broadway in 1975, running for two years and a respectable 936 performances. But it was the 1996 revival that really caught fire. Its initial popularity may have had something to do with the fact that it opened in the aftermath of the OJ Simpson trial. “You just didn’t know if life was imitating art or art was imitating life,” says Ann Reinking, the dancer who played Roxie in 1977 and again during the revival, which she choreographed in Fosse’s style. “The message was potent right then.”
The message is that no corner of American life is exempt from corruption, and the satire is as subtle as a sledgehammer
Chicago’s message is broad – balanced on the homily that no corner of American life is exempt from corruption – and the satire is about as subtle as a sledgehammer. “Murder’s a form of entertainment,” says a character at one point. It can, at first, be hard to love. Like a lot of people, I came to the show via Rob Marshall’s 2002 movie, in which Catherine Zeta Jones plays Velma and Renée Zellweger is Roxie.
There is something almost amateurish about how nakedly Zeta Jones seems to identify with her character – I mean that in a good way – while Zellweger, the superior actor, plays her character as half winsome, half unhinged. The fact that neither sings particularly well is a limitation that, perversely, helps the film overcome its tendency towards tiresome slickness, as does John C Reilly as Amos, Roxie’s faithful but terminally dull husband – and the heart of the movie. Meanwhile, one has at least in theory to approve of Richard Gere, twinkling away as Billy Flynn.
Renée Zellweger, Richard Gere and Catherine Zeta-Jones in the Oscar-winning 2002 film. Photograph: Circle/Sto/Rex/Shutterstock
Still, it struck me as overly stylised – easy to admire for its cleverness but difficult to warm to. Ben Brantley, reviewing the 1996 revival in the New York Times, said Fosse had given the 1975 cast this advice: “Dare the audience to look at you – and then look back at them with murder in your eyes.”
What wins one over in the end is the quality of the music and the way it speaks to Fosse’s choreography. Reinking, who now lives in Arizona and starred in the Fosse biopic All That Jazz, can remember exactly how she felt the first time she saw it. “I thought I was watching something brilliant, quietly strong. I couldn’t get it out of my mind. Mr Fosse was obviously influenced by Brecht and Weill, as well as Bergman and Fellini, and you could see the influence of vaudeville and African American hoofing – and Fred Astaire, too.”
If its naughtiness can sometimes seem dated, its underlying bones are still strong. “I don’t know if at any point in Chicago, anyone does anything you approve of,” says Kander. “Maybe Amos. After he’s sung his little song about nobody ever watching him, he says, ‘I hope I haven’t taken up too much of your time.’” What remains radical about Chicago’s amoralism, perhaps, is its ability to wrong-foot its audience, suckering them into sympathising with two murderers. There is no innocence to be squandered in the show, says Kander, because “everyone is rotten”. On his desk, he says, is a picture of Judi Dench as Sally Bowles in a 1968 production of Cabaret: Chicago implicates its audience in ways that built on that earlier musical.
He mentions the song in Cabaret called Tomorrow Belongs to Me, which opens with the lines: “The sun on the meadow is summery warm / The stag in the forest runs free / But gathered together to greet the storm / Tomorrow belongs to me.” Says Kander:“The feeling we were trying to create was, ‘Isn’t that lovely and wouldn’t you like to be part of that?’ Then, hopefully, when it’s repeated at the end of the second act” – as a Nazi anthem – “you know what it really means – and you’re not only horrified, but you’re complicit.”
‘It should always be sensual’ … Chita Rivera and Gwen Verdon in the first production in 1975. Photograph: AP
A similar dynamic is at play amid the snap and hustle of murderer’s row. This is something Kander and Ebb are very good at: using the audience’s weakness against them to underscore the themes of the piece. The musical’s target – the celebrification of American life – is broader than Cabaret’s. Although it is somehow a less personal musical, it reaches more deeply into American life in a way that can feel like the country turning around to talk to itself. As Kander says in his self-effacing way: “I’m afraid Chicago is timeless not because of any talent involved, but because of the subject.”
The danger, says Ann Reinking, was never that Chicago would be too cheesy, but that it would be too crass. “Every step is basically a word,” she says, “especially with musical theatre, because you’re not doing it for dance’s sake, you’re promoting a story – and, more than that, a moral. You’re propelling a story. So the steps – as well as the lyrics and the music – combine always to progress the story. They really are another form of language.”
The show, says Reinking, has to be careful in how it makes a political and moral statement. “It should always be sensual,” says Reinking, “but it should never get bawdy, unless you’re the most brilliant burlesque person in the world, where it’s so over the top you don’t care because it’s so funny. But it has to have a certain amount of taste. It needs to be elegant. And it’s definitely a paradox, but you work in the paradox. You don’t go overboard in one direction or the other.”
‘It has to be elegant’ … Ann Reinking, right, with Bebe Neuwirth in the 10th anniversary performance on Broadway. Photograph: Bryan Bedder/Getty Images
In other words, if the show has any shock factor at all, it should not be in the salaciousness of the dancing but in the force of its moral. “The odd thing about Bob,” says Reinking, “is that even though he’s known as really taking chances and being very sensual, he was also a very moral man.”
Kander looks in on the New York production occasionally and says they keep it “in pretty good shape”. Why hasn’t it dated? “I think about that,” he says. “And I start to wonder why. And of course I know why – because corruption in society never seems to go out of style. Every once in a while, it becomes more obvious than not. And – God – just when I thought ‘Is Chicago still going to be pertinent?’, we have our lovely president and everything that comes with him. All of a sudden, it feels brand new again. Isn’t that awful?” He sounds delighted.
Chicago is at the Phoenix theatre, London, from 26 March. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/nov/26/labor-cleaning-up-mess-left-by-peter-dutton-on-national-security-tony-burke-says | Australia news | 2023-11-26T03:11:39.000Z | Amy Remeikis | Labor ‘cleaning up mess’ left by Peter Dutton on national security, Tony Burke says | The government will introduce laws into parliament this week which will give courts the power to strip dual nationals of their Australian citizenship if convicted of terrorism offences.
The bill is expected to pass through both the house and the Senate before parliament adjourns for the final time this year. The Coalition supports the bill but a war of words has erupted between the government and opposition on the home affairs front after a high court ruling found indefinite detention to be unconstitutional.
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Opposition leader Peter Dutton has seized on the decision and the subsequent release of detainees to accuse the government of being negligent on issues involving law and order.
The government rushed through legislation in the last parliamentary sitting to address some of the concerns Dutton raised regarding the release of detainees, not all of whom hold criminal records. Those laws, which impose strident conditions on people who have been released, are already the subject of a challenge in the court.
This next round of legislation to be introduced this week addresses the issue created when convicted terrorist Abdul Nacer Benbrika won his bid to strike down Coalition-era powers which allowed ministers to cancel Australian citizenship.
Dutton’s strongman persona matches our grim times – but has he fired up his opponents as well?
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Faced with questions about the Coalition controlling the agenda, Tony Burke, the leader of the house, said the government was still “cleaning up the mess” left by Dutton.
“We’re introducing legislation because we want to get it through, and we want to get it through quickly, because there is a massive problem that has been left by Peter Dutton’s neglect,” he said.
“This isn’t something where he wasn’t warned. This isn’t an issue – on the citizenship issue – it’s not something where he didn’t have reason to know.
“Peter Dutton was told in debate at the time by the Labor party, by the now attorney general of Australia, that there was a high risk of this being unconstitutional. Peter Dutton decided to go all tough guy and say that doesn’t matter, somehow anyone who disagrees with him is soft.
“Ultimately, what Peter Dutton did was incompetent. Peter Dutton was told the risk and decided to roll the dice on national security anyway.”
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The government believes its legislation will hold up to constitutional challenges as it leaves the power to decide citizenship with the judiciary rather than a minister.
Dutton has made immigration and border security two of the biggest political issues since the high court decision was handed down this month, and has kept the government on the back foot with accusations it was unprepared for the ruling.
Dutton raised questions over whether or not enough security checks had been performed on Palestinians who had been granted temporary Australian visas, while not questioning the timeline of Israeli citizens who were approved at the same time.
The home affairs minister, Clare O’Neil, accused Dutton of politicising national security for his own benefit.
“Peter Dutton is a reckless politician who will do and say anything to score political points – even if it puts the national security of Australians at risk,” she said. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/apr/23/living-on-the-disability-pension-its-like-the-slow-dimming-of-the-light | Australia news | 2019-04-22T18:00:29.000Z | Royce Kurmelovs | Living on the disability pension: 'It's like the slow dimming of the light' | When Amethyst DeWilde had a stable job in the public service, she kept a wardrobe full of power suits. Though she was time poor, she was money rich. Everything she wore matched. If she didn’t feel like cooking, she could always eat out. She had a favourite restaurant.
Then in 2003 she quit her job after she stood up for another person in her workplace who was struggling with their own mental health. A year later DeWilde was formally diagnosed with bipolar disorder and made an application for the Disability Support Pension.
“When you have a mental health condition, you can be great, and you have good days, but the stress involved in day-to-day situations, it can push you over the edge,” she says.
Ever since, the DSP has been her life and after housing costs, she has $331.20 a week – a figure which the Australian Council of Social Services says sits below the poverty line of $352.29 a week.
If you read Life on the breadline, you got to know the humans behind the headlines
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Almost one-in-five Australians are living with a disability. DeWilde is one of around 750,000 people currently receiving the DSP.
The vast majority have been on the payment for longer than 10 years. Those living with a mental health condition, 257,828 people, made up the largest group on the DSP. The next largest were those living with a physical disability and “other” conditions not easily grouped.
Over the last decade the system has evolved in a scattergun fashion since the Gillard government changed how applications are assessed to refocus the system away from a persons’ medical condition and made it about their capacity to work.
Dr Yvette Maker from the Melbourne Social Equity Institution who specialises in disability and human rights law says that since 2012, the number of successful applications have been driven down as the criteria for eligibility has grown increasingly complex.
“We’ve seen more and higher hurdles for applicants to get over to qualify for the DSP in the last decade plus,” Maker says. “Reform by parties on both sides has created a lot of variation, depending on when you went onto the payment, as different criteria apply to you.”
While 63% of applicants were successful in 2002 – around the time DeWilde applied – that number had fallen by 2017 to 43%. Last year 103,005 people applied for the payment but just one-in-three – or 30,729 applications – made it through.
Those who aren’t successful end up on Newstart.
Data from the Department of Social Services records 199,907 people on the Newstart payment as having “partial capacity to work”. Matthew Bowden, co-chief executive of People with Disability Australia, says this is code for people living with a disability or other illness.
“The monetary difference alone is enormous,” Bowden says. “People are barely able to eat and keep a roof over their head [on Newstart] let alone go and visit friends or take part in the community.”
The other way people find themselves on Newstart is through a review. In 2016 the Turnbull government announced it would find those it alleged had wrongly obtained the DSP, by conducting 90,000 reviews over three years.
Carolyn Odgers oversees the Welfare Rights Centre’s free legal clinic for DSP applicants and says when the program began, the service started getting calls from distressed people looking for help.
Life on the breadline: $4.50 on a coffee? Who can afford that?
Amethyst DeWilde
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“If they’ve been reviewed off, first of all, there’s emotional distress because some people interpret that decision as saying they don’t have a disability or their disability doesn’t meet the requirements for disability. That’s a shock. The other shock is the financial difference between DSP and Newstart,” Odgers says.
By 18 October 2018, the policy was abandoned and the Department of Social Services revealed during a Senate Estimates hearing that just 2% of cases – 555 of 28,784 reviews – were ineligible under the current rules.
“It’s difficult enough with a mental health issue, regardless, and then to have this overwhelming fear that it’s going to be taken away. It stops you from doing things,” DeWilde says.
While she understands there is a perception that people on DSP have it easy, the reality, she says, is anything but.
There have been times when money was so tight she has picked mould off food and eaten it anyway. Having no capacity to build savings has sometimes meant she can’t afford reading glasses or has struggled in emergencies.
“The hardest thing was, at one point, not having the money – my dog Mojo, the dog I had, who unfortunately isn’t with me any longer, he got really sick one week with a terrible ear infection,” she says.
Life on the breadline: poverty silenced me, but you helped me find my voice
Amethyst DeWilde
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“I took him to the vet and I asked how much it was. They said $1,500 and I nearly fainted. I asked about the level of pain he would be in and they said it was excruciating.
“I loved him so much and I thought it was so unfair that I couldn’t help him.”
Mojo recovered thanks to help from her uncle, and “it made me realise, what are other people doing who don’t have a Mojo? Or an uncle Brian?” she says.
DeWilde says she is just thankful for a stable income and a home that is rent-controlled through a local housing association. Still, the 51-year-old can remember a time when those things were expected.
For many, she says, they are now a luxury.
Reporting in this series is supported by VivCourt through the Guardian Civic Journalism Trust | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/may/24/confused-pension-option-retiring | Money | 2014-05-24T06:00:09.000Z | Patrick Collinson | Confused about your pension? What to do with £300,000 | It sounds like a huge amount of money – of a size that would leave anyone comfortably off in their later years. A £300,000 pot is 10 times the median sum the typical person in a private pension has saved over their lifetime. So what should you do with it if you are in this bracket? Each week we have put this question to a variety of financial advisers, and asked readers to contribute their thoughts, too.
We gave our financial advisers a few more details about our case study with £300,000 – let's call him Arthur – in that he and his wife also qualify for the full state pension, and his wife has her own final-salary based pension worth £5,000 a year.
Obtaining advice
Firstly, you will probably want some specialist advice. If you need to find a financial adviser, the best source is to ask trusted friends and colleagues for a recommendation.
If that draws a blank, try unbiased.co.uk, which will give you the contact details of those in your postcode that deal with the financial issues you are facing.
Avoid advisers charging a percentage fee of your fund, unless it is small. For large funds, it's best to seek those charging per hour – but be prepared for some steep rates. Phillip Bray at Investment Sense says that for a £300,000 fund "the complexity of the case would take 12 to 15 hours at a typical hourly rate of £125 to £175".
There are also free do-it-yourself resources on the web. Start with the Money Advice Service, which is independent and set up by the government (moneyadviceservice.org.uk).
Taking a quarter out entirely tax-free
Everyone is entitled to take 25% of the money saved in the private pension scheme instantly, as a tax-free lump sum. In Arthur's case that means he can access £75,000 immediately and spend it how he wants.
But the tax-free cash lump sum is not some sort of "use it or lose it" deal. Many people do not realise they are free to take the tax-free money on a phased basis over many years, says Jonathan Watts-Lay from Wealth at Work. In other words, you can draw down a portion of your pension each year, and 25% of it will be tax-free. Depending on how much money Arthur takes out each year from his fund, it can be an efficient way to stagger the tax-free part and keep his overall tax bill down.
Taking all the £300,000 as cash
This is the new freedom that people retiring will have from April 2015, following the reforms announced in the budget – and which prompted pensions minister Steve Webb to say that affluent people approaching retirement should be free to blow their pension pot on a Lamborghini should they wish.
The big drawback is the tax charge. Arthur will be treated as if he earned all the money in that tax year, which means he will have to pay HMRC 45% on everything above £150,000.
Arthur won't even benefit from the £10,000 personal allowance as this tapers off on incomes above £100,000. In total, he would expect to pay £121,127 in tax – leaving him with just £178,873.
Buying an annuity
Just because annuities are no longer in any way compulsory, it doesn't mean they should be entirely ruled out – although the income on offer will strike many people as poor.
Illustration: Eastwing/Warwick Johnson-Cadwell
Assuming Arthur takes the £75,000 as a tax-free lump sum, the best annuity he could obtain, according to a search on the Money Advice Service, would be an income of £12,268 a year from Canada Life. That assumes Arthur wants to ensure that his wife receives an income of half that amount if he dies before she does. And once they have both passed away, the money will be kept by the annuity provider and won't go to his children.
If Arthur wants his income in retirement to grow in line with the retail prices index, the initial annual pension will be substantially lower – with a "best buy" £6,934 from Standard Life. Some advisers are recommending that individuals put just a part of their pension into an annuity – almost as an insurance against living longer than expected.
For example, Arthur could take £75,000 tax free, leave £100,000 invested in the pension plan, and spend £100,000 on an annuity that would pay around £5,400 a year in income.
Some advisers recommend that individuals first calculate what their unavoidable costs will be in retirement – from food and heating, through to running a car and paying council tax – and then buy an annuity to cover that bit of planned expenditure which is not covered by their state pension.
"Firstly, if the current [state] pensions do not provide sufficient income to meet their essential outgoings, a proportion of the £300,000 fund could be used to buy an annuity, guaranteeing that the household bills are met. The balance could then be placed into income drawdown, to allow additional income to be taken as and when needed," Bray says.
Withdraw the money gradually
Leaving the money invested and withdrawing it gradually is likely to be the option preferred by many more affluent pension savers.
But how much should you take out each year, how much do you leave invested – and where do you leave it invested?
Justin Modray, of Candid Financial Advice, says that, assuming Arthur has taken the 25% tax-free lump sum, he'll be free to draw down whatever he likes from the rest of the pension after April 2015, but urges caution.
What if Arthur takes out £20,000 a year? "Taking this amount would seriously risk the pension fund running out during the couple's lifetimes, so I would suggest drawing the natural income produced by underlying investments to reduce the risk of having to eat into capital, at least in the earlier years.
"As a rule of thumb, generating a 3-4% annual income that is likely to rise with inflation over time, should be achievable, so between £6,750 to £9,000 a year in this example."
Last week we asked readers what they would do with the £300,000. Eddie Montreaux in Brighton, urged taking out the maximum because "You never know if the government will move the goalposts again and put restrictions on withdrawals."
He suggested taking the £75,000 tax-free sum out first, then drawing down £30,000 a year from the re maining cash, keeping Arthur below the 40% tax band, until all the pension is exhausted in about seven years. He recommends that the couple don't spend it all, but move some of the money into tax-free Isas each year and live off that in their later retirement years. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2024/mar/21/3-body-problem-review-the-creators-of-game-of-thrones-have-done-it-again | Television & radio | 2024-03-21T05:00:23.000Z | Lucy Mangan | 3 Body Problem review – the creators of Game of Thrones have done it again | Well, hello again to Game of Thrones’ David “Unfilmable books a speciality!” Benioff and DB “Likewise!” Weiss! This time they are on Netflix, with an adaptation of the hardest of hard sci-fi tomes, Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem (the first in a trilogy called Remembrance of Earth’s Past). The eight-part series is near-named after the book as 3 Body Problem and opens with a truly harrowing scene of a Maoist struggle in which an eminent professor of physics, who has fallen foul of the Chinese Cultural revolutionaries for teaching the principles of western science, is beaten to death on stage in front of his wife – who denounces him as he is killed – while his appalled daughter and protege, Ye Wenjie (Zine Tseng), watches in the audience. One of the timelines follows her as she is sent first to a forced labour camp in Inner Mongolia and then, when her astrophysicist skills are needed, to a mysterious scientific project (lots of buttons, big satellite dish) on its outskirts.
In the present day, particle accelerators around the world have started delivering results that make a mockery of all known physical laws and eminent scientists are killing themselves – or looking as if they’ve killed themselves – at what is mathematically known as a rate of knots. These “suicides” are being investigated by ex-cop Da Shi (Benedict Wong, the acceptance of whose transition to dramatic roles after 15 Storeys High I still find harder than understanding the three body problem itself, regardless of his excellence here). He reports to Thomas Wade (Liam Cunningham), a shadowy figure who is working for (or is possibly the head of) an even more shadowy secret authority bent on preserving humanity. Or not. I think.
Anyway. One of the mysterious deaths brings a group of five former students of the deceased teacher back together. It comprises underachieving borderline nihilist genius Saul (Jovan Adepo), engineering supremo Auggie (Eiza González) who is on the verge of a world-changing breakthrough in nanofibre technology, brilliant theoretical physicist Jin (Jess Hong), relative dropout Will (Alex Sharp), who now teaches science to high schoolers but is as in love with Jin as he was in their university days, and Jack (John Bradley), who sold out to make a fortune from snack foods and whose wealth is going to come in handy later. And who was their late teacher? Vera Ye (Vedette Lim), the daughter of the daughter in the audience who watched her father being killed in 1966 Beijing. The first of what promises to be many, many links looping together, back over themselves, and round about again is forged.
Soon, Auggie is visited by or starts hallucinating a countdown to what appears to be her own death – and only renouncing her nanofibre ambitions will halt it. An impossibly advanced virtual reality game comes into play and may or may not be connected with the death of Vera and the other scientists. Characters appear who don’t show up on CCTV and who seem to know more about other characters and the future than they should. More worryingly, an increasing number of whiteboards and blackboards start being wheeled out by people purporting to explain a growing number of higher dimensional geometric operations, orbital mechanics, the “Wow! signal” and all sorts of other reminders of something very important. No matter how much human interest an adaptation team brings to a book about abstruse and abstract physics there will still be knotty problems we are all going to have to do our best to understand.
Nevertheless, 3 Body Problem does well to pull us onward, as much through the relentless, but never overplayed, suffering and hardening of Ye Wenjie as she endures her effective imprisonment in the project grounds – and the stealing of her work by others – as by the present day mystery. It looks great, it soon has Jonathan Pryce joining proceedings as Mike Evans, an eco activist turned reclusive oil tycoon billionaire, and the answers to the mystery of who (and what) the extraordinary forces are, what they want and who summoned them are doled out at a fair pace.
But it can’t quite get rid of the cold abstraction that was at the heart of the books and which is revered by its fans. It’s impressive, it is – at its best – intriguing, but the threat is distant metaphorically and literally. There are puzzles to solve, if you are capable, but nothing and no one to root for. Even its design as a metaphor for the climate crisis and human inertia in the face of potential doom doesn’t give it enough heft – in fact, such is the way of these things, it may even serve to alienate us further from emotional engagement. It won’t be Netflix’s answer to Game of Thrones. But Benioff, Weiss, and their collaborator Alexander Woo have undoubtedly proved yet again that there is no such thing as an unfilmable novel.
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3 Body Problem is on Netflix | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2016/may/26/nine-ways-to-use-technology-to-reduce-corruption | Global Development Professionals Network | 2016-05-26T16:16:39.000Z | Rachel Banning-Lover | Nine ways to use technology to reduce corruption | 1 | Remember deterring corruption is the best solution
A few years ago, I advised the people behind the Trade Route Incident Mapping System (TRIMS) in Nigeria - a crowdsourced whistle blowing system which allowed truckers and small traders stuck at border check points (some real, some artificial, set up to harass and extort bribes) to report corrupt officials using a mobile phone. There may have been no direct link to officials being punished, but there were stories of a deterrent effect: some truckers mentioned TRIMS and they were let go without being harassed for bribes. Hari Mulukutla, managing director, Stream House, New York, United States
2 | Use technological tools to develop institutional trust
My observations in an east African country recently were that despite decent anti-corruption institutions, an active civil society and a relatively free press, corruption seemed to be ingrained. Leadership in government, media and NGOs seemed cynical. One of my recommendations was to use secure case management systems with audit trails and secure workspaces so investigators can trust these tools and that their work won’t be undermined or leaked. Hari Mulukutla
3| Automate tax collection
Is fighting corruption like fighting zombies?
Read more
Automation is playing an important contribution to reducing discretionary practices in tax collection. Taxpayers hoping to pay less and tax administrators hoping to earn more can easily lead to bribery and corruption in the tax office. In Afghanistan, we implemented an automated tax administration system that moved taxpayer information from being hidden in a desk drawer to being recorded electronically and only accessed by the people who need it. This helped reduce opportunities for corruption, built public trust in the tax system, and increased revenue collection from $250m to almost $2bn since 2004. Iker Lekuona, senior manager, Adam Smith International, Kampala, Uganda @AdamSmithInt
4 | Share information across borders
Corruption doesn’t stop at national borders. Sharing information internationally on aid, public contracts, or company ownership, for example through a public registry of beneficial owners, can be really powerful to compare, identify, and prosecute. Agreeing an open data standard also reduces discussions on which information should be public and this being different in different countries. In Ukraine, implementing the standard has led to 14% in savings. Georg Neumann, senior manager, Open Contracting Partnership, Washington DC, USA @georg_neu @opencontracting
5 | Digitise public services
Due to the fact that there is a 40% unemployment rate in Kosovo, recruitment is very often prone to bribes. One way we are helping local governments to prevent corrupt practices by public service personnel is to put their entire recruitment process online. We’ve also used social innovation challenges and hackathons to build tools that show budget expenditures in real time. Shqipe Neziri Vela, manager of the Anti-Corruption Programme at UNDP Kosovo, Prishtina, Kosovo @Shqipe_Neziri @UNDP_Kosovo
6 | Take inspiration from other initiatives around the world
From a UK point of view, I think the OCCRP, OpenCorporates and mySociety really stand out as organisations who’ve used technology to prevent, detect and deter corruption. OpenCorporates, for example, pulled together a global register of companies, and partnered with Global Witness to do some great research into corruption in the jade trade in Myanmar. Steve Goodrich, senior researcher, Transparency International UK, London, UK @SteveJGoodrich @TransparencyUK
7 | Pay attention to local contexts
Anti-corruption protests around the world - in pictures
Read more
Replicability is a tricky issue. I think mySociety and Fundación Ciudadano Inteligente have done a great job at creating tools that are easily adjustable to local contexts because they are very specific. The risk is sometimes with tools like Ushahidi that provide a great technology, but when implemented locally, people’s motivation for why they would or wouldn’t use the service is overlooked. Georg Neumann
8 | Be aware using technology to fight corruption is not risk free
In countries where the state tightly controls the internet and other communication networks, it is possible that some governments could try to block or censor anti-corruption campaigns, particularly as many corrupt acts are often committed by state actors. Kwami Ahiabenu II, executive director, Penplusbytes, Accra, Ghana @kwamigh @penplusbytes
9 | And remember technology doesn’t always democratise access
In India, in order to access subsidised fertilisers and seeds farmers have to submit their land registration certificates which they have to obtain from the land registration department, providing ample opportunities for corrupt officers. The government of Karnataka initiated a project called ‘Bhoomi’ where technology was used to load all details about land ownership and copies of these documents could be obtained though an IT booth. However, lack of literacy meant that middlemen were still able to use the vulnerabilities of the service seeker to demand money. Professor Indira Carr, research professor of law, University of Surrey, Guildford, UK
Read the full Q&A here.
Join our community of development professionals and humanitarians. Follow@GuardianGDP on Twitter. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2005/may/15/philipfrench | Film | 2005-05-15T01:22:30.000Z | Philip French | This sporting life | Some years ago, when I was teaching at the University of Texas, I asked my students, while talking to them individually, to tell me about their backgrounds, beginning with their home towns. Three-quarters of them said much the same thing: 'You won't have heard of it, but have you seen The Last Picture Show?' Peter Bogdanovich's picture had clearly hit a nerve throughout Texas and, in fact, far beyond.
You may recall that it begins one sad, late November Saturday, the morning after the local high-school football team has lost yet again and the movie's young heroes are mocked by everyone they meet. Their sporting failure is closely associated with the forlorn town's spiritual and economic depression.
Based closely on a bestselling non-fiction book by HG Bissinger which has been enjoying steady sales in America for 15 years, Peter Berg's Friday Night Lights is an epic treatment of what Bogdanovich so subtly handles in his opening sequence. The year is 1988 and the setting is Odessa, a dreary city of 90,000 people out on the flat, scrubby plains of west Texas, connected by a dead-straight road to its twin city of Midland, where George W Bush made his fortune.
Standing above the flat surroundings, amid scrubland and oil pumps that constantly rise and fall like grazing prehistoric creatures, is an immense football stadium. When it was built in 1982 at a cost to rich local boosters of $6 million, it was the largest high-school sporting facility in America. This is the home of the Permian Panthers, nicknamed the Mojos, from Permian High School. Between September and December, Odessa closes down as a quarter of the city packs the stadium for floodlit Friday night home games and the rest of the inhabitants watch the contest on television.
The Panthers, it becomes clear, are central to the morale and identity of the local citizenry in a town so apparently devoid of cultural opportunities that, by contrast, Peyton Place resembles Periclean Athens at its zenith. To become top team in west Texas and then go on to the state championship game at Houston's Astrodome (known locally as 'the Eighth Wonder of the World') will raise the spirits and self-esteem of the town and guarantee the players a ticket to another world by way of lucrative athletic scholarships. Success will keep chief coach Gary Gaines (Billy Bob Thornton) in his job for another season, where he'll continue to earn more than the school's principal.
There are new movies virtually every couple of weeks about football and basketball coaches at high schools, universities and professional clubs, played as role models and father figures by the likes of Robert Duvall, Gene Hackman and Al Pacino. In fact, they have become something of a genre with a predictable dramatic arc from start-of-season training to climactic final game.
The conventions include the coach turning a group of individuals into a team; outside pressures from rich alumni; the coach's wife providing a voice of reason; problems with parents demanding too much of their children (often a drunken dad vicariously recapturing his youthful triumphs); macho posturing from star performers; quiet lads who need drawing out; key players confronting injuries that might ruin their careers; the machinations of competitors; unexpected defeats and games to be won or lost in the final seconds; the coach's inspirational speeches at half-time. All of these elements are here in Friday Night Lights
But what gives them a certain freshness is the absence of stars (Thornton, a fine, versatile actor, never looks like a star), the relative lack of sentimentality and the semi-documentary air that the director and his crew create. What Friday Night Lights brings to mind is Richard Leacock's classic 1961 cinéma vérité football documentary, Mooney v Fowle, about the annual competition between two rival high-school coaches in Florida. Also the basketball film Hoop Dreams
This film looks right and rings true. 'Why don't we go to Alaska - for 20 years?' coach Gaines's wife suggests. 'Are we going to be moving again?' asks his daughter plaintively when things are going badly in mid-season.
During a phone-in radio programme on the Panthers's failing fortunes, an indignant listener suggests that 'there's too much learning going on in this school', though, in fact, we never see the principal, a teacher or a book (except those containing codes and plays) during the whole film. There's a curious, apparently authentic scene in which three coaches are forced to toss coins to see which of their equally placed teams will continue in the competition.
The final game has disturbing racial undertones which are not glossed over. The Panthers, mainly white but with a couple of blacks and Hispanics, confront a wholly black team of city boys from Dallas, most of them resembling Mike Tyson and Mr T, and serious questions of prejudiced officials arise.
A good film then, and nobody in our currently sport-obsessed society is in a good position to sneer at the dubious values on display or dismiss as ridiculous much that goes on in it. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/may/28/peculiar-ground-lucy-hughes-hallett-review-family-saga | Books | 2017-05-28T06:00:02.000Z | Stephanie Merritt | Peculiar Ground by Lucy Hughes-Hallett review – a well-marshalled family saga | You can’t help wondering if Lucy Hughes-Hallett realised, when she began her first novel, how prescient its themes would turn out to be. Peculiar Ground is concerned with walls and borders, and the significance of land – what it means to appropriate it, to enclose it, to fence certain people in or out; ideas that feel particularly pertinent in the present.
Hughes-Hallett has already enjoyed critical acclaim as a biographer; her third and most recent book, The Pike, a life of Gabriele D’Annunzio, won the Samuel Johnson prize and the Costa biography award in 2013. She might have been expected to attempt a repeat of this success, but instead she announced her intention to become “the world’s oldest first-time novelist”. At 65, she hasn’t quite broken the record, but it seems extraordinary that she should have taken so long to come to fiction, when she writes so instinctively with a novelist’s imagination.
Peculiar Ground is an ambitious and accomplished debut that follows four centuries of English life through the eyes of an ensemble cast, in a narrative that switches between historical periods and characters and from first to third person, intercut with letters, newspaper articles and snatches of dialogue arranged like a play script.
At its centre is Wychwood, an Oxfordshire country house and estate remodelled after the Restoration by John Norris, a landscape designer charged with reshaping nature in a park newly enclosed by a vast wall. “I wonder, are we making a second paradise here, or a prison?” Norris asks the architect, who replies that their employer, Lord Woldingham, “…has been out, as a vagabond is out. Now, it seems, he chooses to be walled in.”
Tragedy arrives quickly at Wychwood in this first part, which works as a prelude to the 20th-century story, and introduces a hint of mysticism that echoes through the following sections, reinforcing the idea that Wychwood is a place of myth and enchantment, separate from the outside world. From Norris’s 1663 account the narrative jumps to 1961, beginning with a house party thrown by the current landowners, Lil and Christopher Rossiter. There is an edge of anxiety among their guests; local activists demand the restoration of an ancient right of way across Wychwood park, threatening a breach in their secure enclosure, while in Berlin half a city is walled off and turned into a prison overnight.
“Frontiers are drawn on maps as lines, but in experience they are broad smudges, gradual transitions… Yet here was a nation throwing up a palpable wall along an impalpable division. It was eerie. The materialisation of the imaginary. A haunting.”
Meanwhile, Wychwood’s guests and residents struggle with the desire to transcend or shore up more personal borders. Further sections take them through 1973 and 1989, to the fall of the Wall. They grow up, grow old, fall in and out of love, betray friendships and countries, defy tradition or make a commercial enterprise of it. In 1989 the estate is opened to the public and rented out for a TV show to make ends meet; one older regular, Antony, laments the intrusion: “The trippers and shoppers and weekend renters are a host of Gorgons. The thing they come to see is killed stone-dead by their gaze… But Woldingham made something precious here, something that is now, or so it feels to me, being unmade.”
Hughes-Hallett marshals her large cast with sensitivity, succeeding in making even her minor players invite empathy. The fragmentary, non-linear style that made The Pike so original also works well here to create a polyphonic narrative, and she has a sharp ear for dialogue that allows her characters to sound distinctive and convincing, though I found myself most immersed in the 1663 sections, which are recounted by a single voice.
At times it feels that she tries to cover too much ground, but the novel is rich with detail, made vivid by meticulous research. The result leaves you hoping that this late conversion to fiction will prove only the beginning.
Peculiar Ground by Lucy Hughes-Hallett is published by Fourth Estate (£16.99). To order a copy for £12.74 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/commentisfree/2022/sep/28/liz-truss-kwasi-kwarteng-financial-crisis-poorer | Opinion | 2022-09-28T17:25:55.000Z | Aditya Chakrabortty | This is Truss and Kwarteng’s crisis, not yours – but you’re already a lot poorer because of them | Aditya Chakrabortty | British politics is being reshaped this week – but not because of Keir Starmer. After only 22 days as prime minister, Liz Truss is already facing her demise. Party conferences, those jamborees of suited choreography and confected excitement, look utterly irrelevant beside the financial meltdown engulfing the country. Yet politics and finance are, in this moment, deeply bound up with each other. This crisis was largely manufactured by our failing political class and it will now determine their terms of trade. For the rest of us, the result threatens to be austerity 3.0: the third big wave of spending cuts to follow the third crisis in the last 12 years, with even more social wreckage and human misery in tow.
I covered my first financial crisis 25 years ago, in 1997, and I have never before seen one so entirely avoidable as this is. It began with the Tory leadership election in the summer, when Liz Truss promised tax cuts of £30bn in order to win the keys to No 10. It picked up last Friday, as Kwasi Kwarteng unveiled his “plan for growth”, which turned out to be a further £15bn of handouts – and mainly to people who didn’t need them.
It wasn’t just bad economics, it was bad faith. And when it bombed in the next day’s papers, the chancellor promised yet more tax cuts. This was on top of the emergency support on energy bills, costing £60bn for just this winter. The difference being that the energy package was essential and temporary, while these permanent tax cuts were supposed to buy voters and influence party donors.
What was intended as mere bribery has turned out to be a gigantic financial bomb. The pound dived so far that it won a new name: shitcoin. (One wag mused on Reddit: “Apparently britbongs use it to purchase crumpets and tea, but other than that doesn’t have any usage.”) Lending rates in the markets soared, so Halifax and other big mortgage firms had to pull some of their products. The Bank of England essentially lost control over interest rates, while pension funds and other investors began scrabbling around for cash. Finally, today, the Bank started buying government bonds in a bid to quell panic.
A week is a long time in financial wreckage. Thanks to Kwarteng and Truss, you have just got a lot poorer. If you’re a homeowner on a standard variable mortgage or looking to renew, your bills have spiralled. If you have a money-purchase pension or a nest-egg Isa, you probably don’t want to check your balance. Prices for pretty much anything from overseas – from food to T-shirts to cars – have just gone up.
Institutionally, the Treasury’s credibility has been ruined and the Bank of England’s monetary policy destroyed. It was meant to be reversing quantitative easing, just as Truss and Kwarteng had demanded. Then came this afternoon, when to bail out the hapless blunderers at No 10 and 11 it was forced to turn on the money-printing machine again.
Despite our newfound impoverishment, this debacle has provided moments we can all relish. Kwarteng handed a big tax cut to the very people who shorted the arse out of his policies. Among his helpers were the free-market thinktanks, most prominently the Institute for Economic Affairs, which has spent decades claiming to be the master of capitalist science. All it has taken is a few days to expose its members as charlatans, expert only at cloaking who actually provides its funding.
Chris Philp, the chief secretary to the Treasury who describes himself as a “serial entrepreneur” and looks like Patrick Bateman if he’d gone into selling timeshares, spent part of last Friday afternoon crowing about the pound’s slight rise. Ever since, he has gone awfully quiet. Finally there is Truss, the third Brexit prime minister in six years to vow to “take back control”, and the third to exhibit precisely as much control as a gap-year student after their first meal in Delhi.
Even after all the Tories’ efforts to wreck standards in public life, one assumes consequences will follow. At the very least, I can’t see how Kwarteng can stick around to deliver the next budget, due in a few weeks. But there are more profound issues here. Truss got into power with almost zero scrutiny from the political-media class. Countless MPs swallowed their scruples and backed a woman they knew was wrong but assumed would win. The Conservative membership showed all the interrogative skill of a flock of sheep, and much of the press focused more on her Instagram profile than her policies.
The checks and balances that stood between us and this national humiliation failed. And for what? The Saga-going classes, on whom the Tories depend for their core vote, will find their foreign holidays are now vastly more expensive. The hard-pressed, heavily mortgaged families who read the Mail have just been landed in further debt by the woman their newspaper chose to be prime minister. And the BBC, which duly puts on the Institute for Economic Affairs and the rest on its news programmes, stands once again guilty of pretending corporately funded know-nothings are “economic experts”. This is not just a moment of reckoning for the people in charge of our democracy: it is a moment to recognise just how dangerously corroded our democratic institutions are.
That’s not what the Tories, the rightwing press and the lobotomised thinktanks want. They’re already pushing for spending cuts by November, and for the next two years to be about austerity, dismantling the NHS and squeezing those on social security. If Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves are suckered into this as the “sound money” politics they promised this week, that turns the next election into the party of the small state versus the party of the even smaller state.
A country in which you can’t see a GP for months and your mum can’t get an operation for years, where the beaches have been covered with sewage and the trains don’t work, is not one that can stand another round of spending cuts. And an economy that relies on imports and debt to get by needs investment and redistribution, not more of the same old policy slop. Even the winners in the UK today live a worse life than their counterparts in Europe. They drive their Audis over potholed roads to drop their kids off at overcrowded schools, then go home to wonder how they’ll pay their groceries and energy bills.
This is their crisis, not ours. You didn’t benefit from these big tax cuts, the Tory donors did. Truss can reverse her stupid, cynical budget, resign, and force a general election – and Labour should demand she does so.
Aditya Chakrabortty is a Guardian columnist | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2006/nov/16/games.guardianweeklytechnologysection | Technology | 2006-11-16T23:57:58.000Z | Steve Boxer | Gears Of War | Call of Duty 3 | Star Wars Empire At War: Forces Of Corruption | Gears Of War
Xbox 360, £44.99, cert 18
Epic Games/Microsoft, 5/5
So here is Microsoft's biggest gun this Christmas - the game that will, it hopes, persuade vast quantities of people to buy an Xbox 360. Although it seems designed for the sort of people (invariably men) who already own Xbox 360s, it is an undeniable tour de force. You play Marcus Fenix, sprung from jail to fight the Locust, heavily armed aliens who have emerged from the core of the game's Earth-like planet. But this time around, typical first-person shooter tactics do not apply. You must hop from cover to cover, work with your (usually four-strong) squad to outflank the enemy and generally adopt a tactical approach. And it mixes first-person and third-person views cleverly, so it's in no way a conventional FPS. Gears of War has incredible graphics, although its grim, dark comic-book look and copious blood-spatter effects aim it squarely at macho adult males, while its compelling co-operative multiplay and two-player co-op play modes add longevity. A true glimpse of the Xbox 360's capabilities.
SB
Call of Duty 3
Xbox 360, £49.99, cert 15+
Treyarch/Activision, 4/5
Call of Duty 3 is visceral, intense and sporadically terrifying, but it's also very similar to Call of Duty 2. Veterans of that game will feel right at home as they battle the Nazis again. This time the action is centred on a specific part of the Normandy campaign, allowing greater narrative focus. The story is unimportant, though - Call of Duty is all about the action. And when you are crouched behind a wall with bullets fizzing past and grenades exploding nearby, make sure you loosen your grip on the joypad and shuffle back in your seat. Unfortunately, enemy soldiers display a total lack of self-preservation and often ruin the atmosphere generated by the fantastic graphics and sound. The multi-player compensates, with new options allowing you to play as a medic or scout. The best WW2 shooter ever, but we need new ideas next time.
GH
Star Wars Empire At War: Forces Of Corruption
PC, £19.99, cert 12+
LucasArts, 3/5
Empire at War was a bold attempt to replicate the success of space operas such as X3. It was also flawed - particularly through a realtime galactic map where you never had enough time to plan your moves correctly. Thankfully, this add-on addresses some of those problems while introducing a new storyline that straddles the events of Episode V. The scale is huge as your fledgling crimelord pits his wits against Alliance, Empire and mercenary forces. And although the planet-side battles remain cumbersome and shallow, the tactical complexity of conquering more than 50 planets should have RPG fans salivating. However, despite the presence of Luke Skywalker and friends, there's no doubt these franchises are losing their link to the essential Star Wars ethos.
MA | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/feb/02/heathrow-airport-boss-john-holland-kaye-quits-turbulent-year | UK news | 2023-02-02T16:51:44.000Z | Gwyn Topham | Heathrow airport boss quits after turbulent year | Heathrow’s chief executive has announced his resignation after a difficult year for Britain’s biggest airport. John Holland-Kaye will leave his £1.5m role at some point in 2023 after nine years in charge.
His tenure included the long battle to win the right to expand, with the third runway still officially back on the table after court battles and lukewarm government approval.
The airport has suffered billions in losses during the Covid pandemic and has had a chequered recovery, briefly losing its spot as Europe’s busiest airport and coming in for heavy criticism from its main airline customers for imposing a cap on passengers in the peak summer season.
John Holland-Kaye at a conference in London last summer. Photograph: Yui Mok/PA
Heathrow’s chair, Paul Deighton, said Holland-Kaye had been “an extraordinary leader of Heathrow”, adding: “During the past nine years, he has worked tirelessly and collaboratively with shareholders, ministers, airlines and other stakeholders to ensure the country can be proud of its front door.”
Holland-Kaye took over in 2014, being promoted from development director when he oversaw the building of Terminal 2. He was credited with improving customer satisfaction, while his idiosyncratic leadership included making workforce “mojo” one of the airport’s official four strategic priorities.
A smooth public operator, he won government backing for a third runway to be built, despite widespread opposition from environmental groups. However, a new government, judicial reviews, falling passenger numbers during the pandemic and concerns about investment levels stalled the project.
Heathrow still hopes to expands its capacity by around 50% by building the runway, raising the prospect of more than 240,000 additional flights a year over London. Speaking at an aviation conference earlier this week, Holland-Kaye said that more details of renewed plans for the controversial plan would be unveiled later this year.
Meanwhile, relationships with some major airlines soured in a blame game for the turbulent 2022 summer, as passenger demand soared for international travel after the pandemic. Emirates criticised Holland-Kaye and initially refused to comply with Heathrow’s capacity limits in the summer, amid rows over who was responsible for the staffing shortages that caused cancellations and delays in 2022.
Holland-Kaye will also be stepping down after a bitter row over landing charges, with old frenemies such as Iata boss Willie Walsh – ex-CEO of British Airways’ owner IAG – accusing him of “gouging” airlines. A final decision over the level of charges will be confirmed by the regulator, the UK CAA, in March.
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Heathrow’s board has started looking for his successor. Leading internal candidates are Emma Gilthorpe, the chief operations officer, who was previously a director overseeing strategy and planning, including the expansion of the airport. Chief financial officer Javier Echafe is also a possible contender, with Madrid-based Ferrovial remaining the largest single shareholder.
Holland-Kaye will remain in post to ensure a smooth handover later in 2023. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2020/oct/11/scotland-slovakia-nations-league-match-report | Football | 2020-10-11T20:56:40.000Z | Ewan Murray | Lyndon Dykes sees off Slovakia to keep Scotland's feelgood factor growing | Scotland have no justification whatsoever to complain about the inconvenient complications of the Nations League.
Last week’s penalty shootout win over Israel, an upshot of this much-discussed competition, has taken the Scots to within a game against Serbia of a first major tournament since 1998. As Slovakia visited Hampden Park, Scotland were perfectly entitled to relish the challenge of strengthening their position at the summit of their latest Nations League section. They duly did precisely that, thereby stretching an unbeaten run to seven matches.
Scotland one win away from Euro 2020 but still the doubters remain
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It would be gross exaggeration, and a distortion of history, to suggest Scotland can head to Belgrade next month expectantly. There, a position in Euro 2020 will be determined. Still, there are now signs of steady progress. Whisper it, but some of Scotland’s play in the second half of Slovakia’s visit was highly impressive. Their win was deserved.
“It was a game we pretty much controlled from start to finish,” said Scotland’s manager, Steve Clarke. “I always felt comfortable.”
Clarke does not seem the type to indulge in euphoric celebration. It was no surprise, then, to hear the manager confirm his thoughts had turned to Slovakia in the immediate aftermath of exhausting success over Israel.
Scotland made four changes to their starting XI, which included a debut for the 33-year-old Aberdeen defender Andrew Considine. Slovakia’s Thursday evening had been similar to the Scots – and involved a shootout win over the Republic of Ireland – but what happened next was more dramatic in respect of the teamsheet. Pavel Hapal swapped nine starters but, disappointingly for Clarke, retained the evergreen Marek Hamsik.
A generally forgettable opening half-hour was notable only for an injury to Slovakia’s Matus Bero – who received a lengthy spell of treatment before being carted towards the tunnel – and a fine defensive recovery from Scott McTominay. The Manchester United player, initially deceived by Hamsik’s terrific pass to Lukas Haraslin, regained composure sufficiently to deny his opponent a shot at goal.
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In what bore ominous resemblance to the Israel game, Scotland were struggling to make inroads anywhere close to the visiting goal. When a sighting did appear, Ryan Fraser booted a 25-yard free-kick against the defensive wall. This rather summed up Scotland’s first period. Slovakia, while pretty in possession, were similarly blunt.
Football has an uncanny habit of throwing up goals that are not at all in keeping with what has happened previously. So it proved, as a crisp Scotland move delivered a second international strike for Lyndon Dykes. Ryan Fraser combined well with Stephen O’Donnell, whose chipped cross found a perfectly timed Dykes run. The Queens Park Rangers forward, who only formally chose Scotland over the country of his birth, Australia, this year, supplied a first-time finish from close range.It must be recognised that this was fair reward for a more adventurous start to the second half by the hosts.
Lyndon Dykes scores Scotland’s goal against Slovakia. Photograph: Ian MacNicol/Getty Images
Oli McBurnie, in search of a maiden goal for Scotland, came within the width of the crossbar of doubling his side’s lead. Fraser, clearly revelling in game time after a long and recent spell in club cold storage, set the Sheffield United man up brilliantly with delightful wing play. McBurnie’s wait goes on but it’s not for the want of trying.
Bookings and substitutions stemmed the flow of the closing 45 minutes but David Marshall in the home goal was barely troubled. Scotland’s three-man defence is emerging as a timely success story. With Fraser increasingly effective, Clarke’s men offered elements of menace not apparent earlier in the game.
If the Czech Republic – who have been beset by Covid-related problems – can be seen off in Glasgow on Wednesday, thereby rounding off a highly profitable international window for Clarke, the Serbian challenge will not look nearly as daunting as many were originally happy to predict. “We don’t look to next month,” Clarke insisted. “The focus is on getting as many points as we can in this section.” Full steam ahead, at last, on multiple fronts. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/aug/05/englands-dreaming-jon-savage-book-that-changed-me | Opinion | 2014-08-05T20:18:45.000Z | Owen Hatherley | England’s Dreaming introduced me to power, urbanism and London | Owen Hatherley | At some point in Jon Savage’s England’s Dreaming: Sex Pistols and Punk Rock, Chrissie Hynde explains why she quit the NME as a music journalist in 1974. She was commissioned to write a piece “looking back at the Velvet Underground”. “Why always looking back?” she asked, and went off to work in a situationist fetish shop in Chelsea instead. The Velvet Underground had split up a mere four years earlier, in 1970. When I first read this, I was reading Jon Savage writing in 1991 looking back at her refusing to look back in 1974; and to remember why this interested me, I suppose I have to look back at myself in 1997.
I bought England’s Dreaming with a book token in the basement of Southampton’s branch of Waterstones in the summer when I received unexpectedly decent GCSE results – mostly Cs, Ds and Es, but top heavy with A*s in history and English literature. The book token was a reward for this achievement, although from which parent I can’t remember.
I’d had my eye on the book for a while, dipping into it while doing work experience at the local radical bookshop. Over the next two years I would read and reread it until the spine broke, and do what it implored me to do: move to London.
The first two of the book’s many epigraphs were from Jonathan Raban’s Soft City – “In the city we can change our identities at will” – and Lionel Bart’s Oliver! – “We wander through London, who knows what we might find?” How could you refuse?
The meat of England’s Dreaming is a great pop tragedy: spoilt brat, ultra-leftist art student Malcolm McLaren starts shop, makes clothes, meets kleptomaniac glam rock fan Steve Jones, meets hyperintelligent London-Irish krautrock fan John Lydon, starts band “to sell a lot of trousers”, succeeds way beyond expectations, and makes “cash from chaos” before it all dissolves under media pressure and speed psychosis into acrimony, litigation and murder. But after finishing the story, it was the extraneous detail, the interweaving scene-setting on fashion, pop, far-left terrorism, psychoanalysis, the avant garde and the termination of the postwar consensus that I would compulsively reread.
Unlike Greil Marcus’s similar Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century, with its fanciful marriage of John Lydon and John of Leiden, all this was concrete, as real as the stories of puking and gobbing.
The book built a picture of, to quote Savage quoting McLaren, “the human architecture of the city”, and provided an apocalyptic vision of England on the eve of Thatcherism – for Savage, a mirror image of punk’s suburban sado-masochism and its contempt for the woolly compromise of the welfare state. First of all, the book made me notice London. Suburban Southampton is an interminable, Americanised sprawl.
I remember in May 1997, the morning after the Labour landslide, when I was allowed to stay up most of the night, going to an Asda somewhere on the M27 and moping around the aisles thinking: “Nothing here is going to change.” Savage, meanwhile, described a landscape everyone apparently found unbearable, but which sounded thrilling to me – “after Ballard’s High Rise and Crash, it was possible to see high-rises as both appalling and vertiginously exciting”. This appalling excitement he perhaps too kindly ascribes to the sound of the early Clash.
The summer I bought the book, we moved from a large, dull, casually violent 1930s estate in the suburbs to Shirley, closer to the docks and the town centre. You could walk around Shirley, with its enormous tower blocks and its endless high street of caffs and charity shops, and pretend the 1970s had never ended. This was something a bit like the “urbanism” England’s Dreaming constantly talked about, but it wasn’t London. When I made it there, to study – like McLaren! I thought – at Goldsmiths College, the saggy apoliticism of late-90s London was crushingly disappointing, and I wouldn’t discover the traces of Savage’s city until some years later.
I also wanted to hear the apocalyptic records mentioned, which widened my listening from the retro rock bands – Suede, the Manic Street Preachers and the like – whose citations had made me want to read England’s Dreaming in the first place.
This music did not look back: Prince Far I’s Under Heavy Manners – “as Far I chanted, a synthesiser made otherwordly sounds that resolved into the wail of a police siren”, writes Savage; or Pere Ubu’s 30 Seconds over Tokyo, “a suicide ride so enveloping that you were dissolved in a future that was at once hopeful and dread”. The effect of Savage’s book in praise of pop and the “now” was that I now listened to more old music than new.
England’s Dreaming’s conundrum is the pop-modernist dialectic, and the only writer who caught it as well as Savage was Marshall Berman, who wrote about Hollywood both offering a “dream of escape” from capitalism to his parents’ generation and a “force that bound them to it”. So too with punk: this generation – that of my parents – owed everything to the welfare state, yet they destroyed as much of it as they could.
Decades later, I’d find its remnants a lifeline in a society otherwise dominated by privilege and capital. They fucked it up because it wouldn’t let them express themselves, and in the process destroyed all the preconditions – indulgent art schools, a decent rate of dole, a cheap London and Manchester of council flats and squats – that made punk possible. Savage explained why they did so, but also instilled an obsession with the roads not taken.
This article was amended on 6 August 2014 to correct an editing error. M2 has now been changed back to M27. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/may/12/chernobyl-review-jared-harris-emily-watson-line-of-duty-sex-on-trial | Television & radio | 2019-05-12T06:00:26.000Z | Euan Ferguson | The week in TV: Chernobyl; Line of Duty; Sex on Trial and more | Chernobyl Sky Atlantic
Line of Duty BBC One | iPlayer
Sex on Trial Channel 4 | All 4
Victoria ITV | ITV Hub
Trust Me BBC One | iPlayer
For a week in TV that arguably relied too heavily on the power of abbreviations – AZ-5, AC‑12 – my oh my, it was a breathless belter of a one. AZ-5 was, as you would come to appreciate if you dared immerse yourself in the true horrors of Chernobyl – and I would fiercely urge that you do so – the safety cut-off button employed in 1986 at Chernobyl and its “nuclear city”, Pripyat. And AZ-5 didn’t work. So egregiously did it not work that pressing the button, in fact, blew up the reactor core.
This enthralling, quietly spectacular, meticulously researched five-part series landed a mite irritatingly on Sky Atlantic, which many people don’t have. But I would still urge you – leapfrog your qualms, and invest at least in a Now TV stick, which will let you get it (and Game of Thrones). It was slow burn, at first: the lovely Jared Harris, in a mournful dank Moscow flat two full years later, just feeding his cat and just hanging himself. And then we got, in fast succession, the control room of the accident itself with clever, clever men in thrall to one vainglorious bully; the squalid lies of the party machine; the proud sense of nationalism (for which read “denial”), which led to the refusal to evacuate Pripyat; and the proud sense of nationalism (for which read “astounding, suicidal valour”), which led directly to the saving of probably millions of European lives and prevention of a 100-year poison cloud.
Above all, the production – Brit-heavy in fine actors, mercifully unburdened by any attempted Russian accents – quietly reminds throughout of the full horrors of severe radiation poisoning. The production’s makeup designer, Daniel Parker, explained a couple of weeks ago that “the only thing I can compare it to is putting salt on to a slug. You have little atoms inside you, and they’re suddenly flying around like bullets. Eventually the cells can’t handle it any more: everything turns to jelly. There is nothing holding your skin on; it literally slips off like a sock.” Blessed morphine cannot be injected, because a vein cannot be found. This and more – fires, decapitation – were risked, daily for months, by the firemen, scientists, miners, army and thousands of others who worked to close down bitter, toxic, sprawling Chernobyl: this is their legacy, and for many their tomb.
There is much beauty, much ugliness. The children dancing on the bridge at midnight, dancing in the dust, bathed in the glow of high-mauve fire tinged with unhealthy bruise-yellow. There’s a soundscape throughout – not music as such, just crackling and plinks, unsettling yet oddly ethereal – by Hildur Guðnadóttir. The washing left hanging in Pripyat after (eventual) evacuation, the food left rotting, the many truths left untold. Emily Watson plays an amalgam of all the honest scientists who banded together to refuse to believe the lies. Stellan Skarsgård, as the party-apparatchik-gone-good, is winning in his growls; Paul Ritter is the shitweasel. Above all Harris, as whistleblowing scientist Valery Legasov, achieves a tour de force. The final episode, when all is over bar the shouting, is one of the best, and allows him to angrily denounce one inescapable fact: It wasn’t the atom that devastated Chernobyl. It was the lie. It goes on. Estimates range from 4,000 to 93,000 total deaths throughout Ukraine and Belarus. The official Soviet death toll is 31. Best television I’ve seen this year.
In this I include Line of Duty. Red herrings, Ted herrings, Jed herrings… well, finally, the herring has landed. First, let me say that Mr Mercurio’s edge-of-the-seat drama has been worth every moment’s watching, and then some. Compston, McClure, Dunbar of course – all now run like a well-oiled, nicely chewy machine, though poor Vicky Mac got some clunkers of lines in this series. Yet the very thing that had bound record numbers of viewers together – that tiny niggling piece of the puzzle, that constant scratch at the back of the mind, which has you shouting ‘I want an answer, no matter how filthily mundane or unlikely’ – who is H – let us down.
Anna Maxwell Martin and Adrian Dunbar in Line of Duty: ‘brilliant, but not Jed’s best written’. Photograph: Aidan Monaghan/BBC/World Productions Ltd
Because no one was H. Perhaps. Sure, lawyer Dirty Gill was unmasked – but now there might not even bloody be an H, Dot Cottan’s dying scrabble-groans and hand-taps now revealing him to have also indulged in a bit of Morse code. Do we now keep going back to the death vid to seek ever further clues? Eyebrow semaphore, anyone? Whatever: brilliant, but not Jed’s best-written series ever, though Stephen Graham and Anna Maxwell Martin lifted it immensely. At least another’s been commissioned, hurrah. And if nothing else, it might larn some people to spell. I have fond visions of schoolrooms throughout the nation, whenever someone types “definately”, rising in post-pubescent indignation to finger-point: “You are Aitch!” Or Haitch.
Channel 4’s Sex on Trial was a strange one, but I’ll watch more in the three-part series. We never really got answers, just truly appalling statistics about the difficulty of a rape trial ever resulting in any kind of conviction. On the one hand we would seem to have (in the US anyway) a justice system that is at least trying harder to listen to victims, while conscious of the fact that “listening to” should never mean “giving blind credence to”, and increasingly conscious, too, of the grim fact that any mistake will be leapt on by a vast army of “incels” (“involuntarily celibate” men) as proof of general female sluttiness, witchiness, they’re all evil, drown them etc. It’s a fraught tightrope, which I reckon in this real-life case, of a dangerously cotton-woolled middle-class 18-year-old politely browbeaten (but nevertheless browbeaten) into retracting her allegation by a vastly experienced male officer, correct in his law if not in his heart, resulted in justice lurching off a little worse for wear.
Spare a thought for Victoria, somewhat left on the shelf on Sundays in contention to Line of Duty, a still charming aunt nonetheless shooed out of the room with some dry crackers. It possibly didn’t help that this series’ story arc has chiefly comprised the waxing and waning love between Vicky and Albert, who would appear to be one of the dullest characters in history – hats off to Tom Hughes for playing him with such dry-stickery, but I’m still learning to hate the bore. Jenna Coleman and Lawrence Fox continue to excel, as does Daisy Goodwin’s writing, though the Duke of Monmouth, packing his wife off to an asylum for an affair, is altogether too cartoonishly Baron Baddy for her usual subtle surprises. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/sep/14/bbc-has-settled-at-least-700-female-employees-equal-pay-claims | Media | 2020-09-14T20:12:38.000Z | Jim Waterson | BBC has given rises to 700 female staff since start of pay scandal | The BBC has given pay rises to more than 700 female employees since the start of its equal pay scandal, as the broadcaster looks to draw a line under the issue.
As the corporation prepares to unveil its first annual report under its new director general, Tim Davie, on Tuesday, the BBC has been rushing to settle most of the remaining equal pay cases in an attempt to give the new boss a clean slate on an issue that infuriated staff and damaged the corporation’s reputation.
In total at least 84 women were given pay increases through formal processes between July 2017 and March 2020, according to a freedom of information request made by Caroline Barlow, a former BBC employee who received £130,000 in an equal pay dispute. During the same time period 608 women received a pay revision or increase through an informal pay enquiry process started in the wake of the equal pay scandal. The BBC said not all of these cases related to women being paid less than men and an unknown number of men had also seen their pay increase through the same procedure.
In the most high profile case, Newswatch presenter Samira Ahmed successfully took the BBC to an employment tribunal to seek more than £700,000 in back pay after she was paid substantially less than Jeremy Vine for presenting an equivalent programme. The hearings were deeply embarrassing for the BBC, as internal emails about pay negotiations were made public.
New deals over the summer have now pushed the combined number of equal pay settlements and pay revisions for women to over 700, according to sources at the corporation. Following these recent settlements there are now fewer than 10 equal pay cases outstanding but there is still concern among staff that in some cases women are still earning less than the men they are managing. The BBC is still braced for the imminent publication of an investigation by the Equality and Human Rights Commission into its historic pay practices.
The BBC has been keen to promote its progress on equalising pay for on-air stars who take home more than £150,000 a year from the corporation. When these figures were first made public in 2017, at the behest of the Conservative government, they revealed that just a third of top-earning presenters were women.
The fall-out resulted in many high-earning men such as Chris Evans and Jeremy Vine either departing the corporation or taking substantial pay cuts. BBC sources say the new annual report will show that 45% of top-earning presenters are now women, including the likes of 6Music presenter Lauren Laverne.
However, these figures have been aided by the removal of high-earning male actors who make shows for the BBC’s drama department as they are now classed as working for a commercial organisation. Match of the Day’s Gary Lineker is expected to top the list yet again.
BBC sources have already made it clear that they will force presenters to declare external income, in a bid to curb moonlighting on behalf of corporate brands. Many BBC stars are regulars on the events circuit, hosting interviews at away days – although this has come under growing scrutiny after North America editor Jon Sopel gave a talk to tobacco firm Philip Morris and BBC Breakfast host Naga Munchetty undertook promotions for NatWest and Aston Martin.
In another incident, Boris Johnson confirmed he was running for the Conservative party leadership in 2019 while being interviewed by News At Ten host Huw Edwards at an insurance industry conference in Manchester. This left the BBC trying to report on a scoop obtained by one of its most high-profile journalists in his spare time.
What to look out for in the annual report
The BBC’s finances
Figures released alongside the report are expected to show a decrease in the number of homes with a TV licence, even as the number of households in the UK continues to rise. Although this annual report – delayed by the pandemic – only covers the 12 months to April 2020, it is still likely to be accompanied by detail of how coronavirus has hit the BBC’s commercial income and if further cuts are required.
Channel closures
Davie has already made it clear that he will not be expanding the BBC’s broadcast channels any further and he feels the corporation should do fewer things better. One of the first possibilities is a long-expected announcement on the return of BBC3 to traditional linear television, four years after it went online-only.
Diversity
The national broadcaster is still struggling with the response to the Black Lives Matter protests, with many staff from a BAME background pointing out there is still not enough diversity at management level. At the same time Davie is coming under substantial pressure from Conservative politicians who complain of a “woke” London-centric mentality to show the BBC represents voters across all parts of the country.
Impartiality
BBC News staff are awaiting a report by former corporation executive Richard Sambrook making recommendations on how they should handle themselves on social media. A crackdown on Twitter use – seen as a major driver of complaints about breaches of BBC impartiality – is expected.
This article was amended on 14 September 2020. It originally stated that all 608 pay increases for women achieved through an informal review process related to equal pay claims. The BBC has said this is the number of women who received a pay increase through the pay review process but not all were relating to equal pay. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/food/2023/aug/19/vegan-peach-almond-cardamom-basil-puff-tart-recipe-meera-sodha | Food | 2023-08-19T09:00:15.000Z | Meera Sodha | Meera Sodha’s vegan recipe for peach, almond, cardamom and basil puff tart | The new vegan | Summer fruit puddings, for me, are all about ratios. I want my tastebuds to be flooded with beautiful fruit first, then chased down with the merest hint of cream, pastry, crumble or whatever. The puff pastry tart boasts the largest surface area of all tarts, so lends itself perfectly to the job, in that you can cover every inch of the pastry with fruit. Stone fruits are best, and peaches are my favourite, especially when layered over a thin cardamom and almond frangipane, as they are in today’s recipe. When the peach roasts down, it tastes like a more intense and concentrated version of itself. Like summer, distilled.
Peach, almond, cardamom and basil puff tart
The basil adds a citrus and floral flavour to the lime glaze that tops the tart. Keep the pastry in the fridge until the last minute, so it doesn’t soften too much before it heads into the oven.
Prep 5 min
Cook 1 hour 10 min
Serves 6-8
75g unsalted vegan butter, softened at room temperature
90g caster sugar
¼ tsp fine sea salt
½ tbsp plain flour
1 lime, zest finely grated, and juiced, to get 2 tbsp
80g ground almonds
1 tsp ground cardamom
10g basil leaves
1 x 320g pack pre-rolled puff pastry (suitable for vegans), chilled
6 ripe peaches, halved, stoned and cut into 1cm-thick wedges
Vegan creme fraiche or ice-cream, to serve
Heat the oven to 220C (200C fan)/425F/gas 7. First make the almond frangipane that will sit under the peaches. Cream the butter and 50g of the sugar until well mixed, then add the salt, flour, lime zest, almonds and cardamom, mix again and set aside.
Next make the lime syrup. Put the lime juice and the remaining 40g sugar in a small saucepan on a low heat and cook for three minutes, until dissolved, reduced and thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. Take off the heat, add the basil leaves and leave to cool.
Take the pastry sheet out of the fridge and unroll onto a baking tray (use the paper that comes with it as a lining). Prick all over with a fork to stop the pastry from puffing up in the oven, then spread the frangipane over the top, leaving a ½cm border around the edges.
Arrange the peaches neatly and slightly overlapping on top of the frangipane, again keeping the ½cm border, until it’s fully covered (I like to change direction with each row). Squeeze the syrup out of the basil leaves – use the back of a spoon or your (clean) hands – then brush all over the top of the peaches.
Pop the tray in the oven, turn down the heat to 190C (170C fan)/375F/gas 5 and bake for 35 minutes, or until the fruit is soft and the pastry golden. Check it halfway through – if any part of the pastry has puffed up a lot and is forcing the peaches up and off the tart, use the tip of a knife to release the air and nudge the fruit back into place.
Serve warm with vegan creme fraiche or vanilla ice-cream. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/05/burnt-out-britain-workers-management-strike-sick | Opinion | 2024-03-05T10:00:33.000Z | James Timpson | Burnt-out and taken for granted: Britain’s workers need upside-down management | James Timpson | Looking around at the state of businesses in Britain, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the way we work now isn’t working. According to the Office for National Statistics, 2.8 million people in the UK are off work with long-term sickness – 700,000 more than before the pandemic. Employees at Deliveroo and Uber Eats are striking over pay and conditions. Teachers complain that the hours of unpaid overtime they are expected to work amount to “daylight robbery”. In February, the government responded to a huge trial of reduced working hours by 61 organisations by saying, “We have no plans to introduce a four-day working week,” regardless of how successful the pilot had been. It seems that, across sectors, many workers are feeling disrespected and burnt out, and neither bosses nor policymakers can imagine doing anything differently. But in my experience, work doesn’t have to be this way.
Timpson, the business I joined in 1995, is both successful and takes care of its employees. In fact, I’d argue that we are successful precisely because we take care of our employees. This year we will open 50 new shops, on high streets and in retail parks, recruiting an extra 160 colleagues. I believe that in any business, if you have a strong culture and keep investing in your colleagues, you can survive disruptive times.
We call this culture “upside-down management”. If you sat in one of our board meetings you wouldn’t hear much from Paresh, our finance director, about money, but you’d hear a lot about our colleagues’ happiness, and the levers we use to inspire and care for them. The more money we invest in our culture of kindness, the better the business performs. And so, those colleagues who serve customers have complete authority to do what they think is right. They can ignore guidelines from the office, as long as they stick to our only two rules: put the money in the till and look the part. Everyone else in the business is there to help them, not tell them what to do.
Many businesses that are struggling don’t seem to realise that their most valuable asset isn’t the stock on the shelves, it’s the loyalty and passion of their colleagues. When sales fall, directors usually demand that costs are cut, prices are raised, investment shelved and training ignored. It’s the start of a slippery slope that often leads to higher sickness, low morale and even strikes. While struggling business leaders are locked in meetings planning store closures and job cuts, maybe they could consider another approach.
How might Britain’s employment landscape look if bosses wondered: what if I tried to lead the best company our colleagues have ever worked for? If they offered staff carrots instead of sticks – like free trips to company-owned holiday homes, extra days off on their birthdays and their kids’ first days at school, or even when their pets die? None of these things is impossible, or even difficult to offer. This month, for example, Timpson paid for one colleague to get new teeth, bought another a garden play area for their grandchildren, and a family facing major health issues went on a special trip to Disneyland Paris. It’s not surprising that these colleagues stay with us, and give customers amazing service. To get a lot from workers, it’s only fair to give a lot first.
And what if companies completely changed their leadership style? Did away with budgets, kept meetings to a minimum and banned memos? Timpson’s only standing committee is the “cut the crap” committee, which hunts down pointless reports and processes. You may think it’s old fashioned but I also send a lot of handwritten letters to colleagues to say thank you, and to wish them well in new roles. I doubt any of this is taught in business school.
The best upside-down management techniques will be different for every business, but I wish more managers would start experimenting with doing business a different way, and seeing their colleagues as valuable human beings, not expendable units of production.
Employment statistics aren’t just bellwethers of the economy and changing times; they also say a lot about the way we treat each other and the kind of country we want to live in. Running any business is difficult, but it helps when colleagues love their jobs, feel trusted and are valued. The happier they are, the better the customer’s experience will be, and the more likely the name above the door will survive – and workers in Britain won’t have to feel broken.
James Timpson is the CEO of the five-generation, family-owned company Timpson and the author of The Happy Index: Lessons in Upside-Down Management | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/feb/08/cgi-kissing-you-people-movie-jonah-hill-lauren-london-kiss | Film | 2023-02-08T15:20:57.000Z | Stuart Heritage | French miss: is the future of movie kissing in jeopardy? | As a film, Netflix’s You People raises all manner of questions. Questions like “Do we really need an update of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner in 2023?” and “Shouldn’t a 2023 remake of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner have more to say than this?” and “Shouldn’t the leads of an expensive streaming romcom have more chemistry than Jonah Hill and Lauren London, two actors who for much of the film look like strangers who literally just met in an elevator and don’t particularly like each other very much?”
You People review – charmless Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner update
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But the question “Did they actually kiss?” probably shouldn’t be one of those questions. Because, after all, we can see that they do. Right at the end, Hill and London get married, and they lean into each other, and they kiss. Confetti falls from the sky and lands on them. A supporting character even negatively critiques the kiss, pointing out that Jonah Hill is using more tongue than is generally considered acceptable. Regardless of anything else you think about the film, which should be a lot because it isn’t very good, they kiss at the end. They definitely kiss.
Except maybe they don’t. On a recent episode of The Brilliant Idiots podcast, comedian Andrew Schulz revealed that the whole kiss was nothing but a CGI construction. “I don’t even know if I should share this shit,” Schulz said, before immediately sharing the weird staging of the kiss on set. “It’s CGI. Swear to God. I’m there, I’m watching the wedding, and I see them go in for the kiss, and their faces stop like this far. And I’m like, ‘I wonder how they’re gonna play that in the movie. Oh, they’re probably just gonna cut right there.’ But in the movie, you could see their faces come close, and then you could see their faces morph a little bit into a fake kiss.”
If this is true, it’s hard to know what to make of it. On the one hand, of course you can make two characters fake kiss with CGI. You can do anything with CGI. CGI helped Thanos throw a moon at Iron Man, so it only stands to reason that it should make Jonah Hill kiss Lauren London. But on the other hand, it does feel a bit like cheating. You People is a romcom, after all, and people do kiss each other in romcoms. Depriving us (the viewers) of that moment (a climactic romantic gesture) in favour of something much worse (mashing two clumps of pixels together with a computer) robs the moment of intimacy.
Obviously this is not the first time that a kiss between leads has been faked. As recently as last year, Netflix’s big Lindsay Lohan comeback movie Falling For Christmas ended with a kiss between Chord Overstreet and what was very obviously Lohan’s stand-in. And in his fleet of Christian movies, Kirk Cameron will only ever kiss his wife – even if she has to dress up as his co-star – so as to not destroy the foundations of their marriage.
Post-Covid, this isn’t really that much of a big deal. During the pandemic, when movies didn’t know if they could ever show regular kissing scenes again, all sorts of workarounds were schemed up. Although they eventually settled on a consensus involving actors thoroughly disinfecting their mouths after each kiss, in the thick of it continuing dramas like EastEnders made their stars kiss through perspex screens that were subsequently airbrushed out and, perhaps taking their queue from Cameron, brought in the actors’ real-life partners to dress up and kiss.
So this has been done before. But at least all those examples were real kisses, whether through stand-ins or through plastic. CGI is a whole new level up. That’s taking two people and making them do something that they did not, and that raises a lot of issues about the future of acting. If you’re signing on for a project, how can you trust the director not to rush out and make you do things you didn’t physically film? Is the future of intimacy in Hollywood going to be deepfaked sex scenes? Will actors need to seek out specific contractual clauses promising them that they won’t be turned into a horny avatar in post production? There are a lot of legitimate questions to be asked here. How strange that it was 2023’s dumbest romcom that started asking them. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/jun/10/big-little-lies-season-two-review-its-the-meryl-streep-show-now | Television & radio | 2019-06-10T15:06:52.000Z | Lucy Mangan | Big Little Lies season two review – it's the Meryl Streep show now | Warning: this review contains spoilers for season one and season two, episode one of Big Little Lies.
Meryl Streep in the new season of Big Little Lies (Sky Atlantic) almost makes me believe in homeopathy. No matter how tiny the performance dosage in a scene or episode, she leaves the whole thing somehow charged with her presence long after she has vanished into the wings. You can believe the very molecules of the air are still humming with her memory.
Big Little Lies recap: season two, episode one - What Have They Done?
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By God there’s something about the woman. Here, she plays Mary Louise, the mother of Celeste’s (Nicole Kidman) abusive late husband Perry, who – unconvinced by the story of an accidental fall off the balcony by her blue-eyed boy – is now gliding round Monterey like Mrs Danvers in sensible slacks, seeking the truth. Sometimes she is merely viscerally disconcerting; for example, when she bumps into Madeline (Reese Witherspoon) and takes a few casual moments out of her day to note how short she is and how untrustworthy she finds “little people” to be. Other times she is simply terrifying. Mary Louise’s perfectly paced descent at the family dinner table from platitude (“Your daddy was the most amazing man”) to literally howling rage and grief was worth the price of Streepmission alone.
Among the rest of the characters/cast it was, for the opening episode at least very much business as usual. Or at least, business as you would expect it after one of your number pushed said abusive husband to his death and the rest of you covered up for her. Madeline (in slight danger of morphing entirely into a grown-up Tracy Flick) is dealing with her post-accomplice-y feelings by becoming ever more frenetically busy and controlling, making it the very worst time for her daughter to reveal that rather than go to college she wants to take up a job offer with a start-up building homes for the poor and vulnerable. Madeline is barely able to pretend even momentarily that this could be incorporated into her life plan.
Celeste (tall enough not to attract Mary Louise’s ire on height grounds at least) is drifting round the place like a haunted pencil, consumed by guilt for not escaping her marriage before someone was driven to kill for her. Renata (Laura Dern) is still Renata, and we pity the new school teacher who looks as if he is going to be Renata’d to death before half term. Jane (Shailene Woodley) is dancing happily on the beach, the knowledge that the world has been purged of the rapist who fathered her son outweighing her part in that purging. Poor Bonnie (Zoë Kravitz), however, the one who did the actual pushing/purging, is struggling. She would rather, she tells Maddie, have confessed but Madeline took that choice away from her when she started spinning lies to the police.
Business as usual: Shailene Woodley, Zoë Kravitz, Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman and Laura Dern in Big Little Lies. Photograph: HBO
Like the first season, it is sensationally slick and beautiful to look at. It still has its fun with the insanity of the (self-imposed) demands of modern motherhood, womanhood and the politics of the school gate. This is neatly encapsulated, as the new term begins, in Madeline’s opening explanation of how you have to earn your “good mom points” all over again, especially if you have become older or fatter over the summer.
But it has not lost its underlying focus, which is the complexity and minutiae of women’s lives and how radically they are affected – whatever the level of surrounding privilege – by men’s actions. Perry is as present now – in Celeste’s guilt and rubble-strewn psyche, in Mary Louise’s grief for a monster (though her ability to gaslight Celeste and her friends where necessary suggests where he learned at least some of his skills) and Bonnie’s suffering – as he was when he was alive. Even Jane’s freedom now throws into relief the circumscription of her life before.
In addition, there is also a rather rewarding – for the viewer at least, less so for the men involved – relationship developing between Madeline’s ex-husband Nathan and her new one Ed. In an oblique but neat commentary on the sexes’ personal/emotional lives, the women (who have become known locally as “the Monterey Five”) have each other to call on even in cases of murder, while Nathan (James Tupper) has only Ed (Adam Scott) to call on for advice when he finds himself baffled by Bonnie’s sudden change of mood. And even more concerned by her withdrawal from the marital bed.
Still. It is ultimately – and effortlessly, for this is not a grandstanding or selfish performance, just unavoidably brilliant – going to be one woman’s show now. To everything there is a season, and this is Streep’s. Monterey belongs to Mary Louise now. God help the five.
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/22/europe-ukrainian-victory-alexei-navalny-vladimir-putin | Opinion | 2024-02-22T06:00:44.000Z | Timothy Garton Ash | ‘Not losing’ is not enough: it’s time for Europe to finally get serious about a Ukrainian victory | Timothy Garton Ash | As we approach the second anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine this Saturday, ask yourself a simple question: is Europe at war? When I put this to a room full of participants at the Munich security conference last Sunday, most of them raised their hands to say yes, Europe is at war. But then I asked a second question: do you think most people in your own country have woken up to this? Very few hands went up.
This was a Munich of painful contrasts. Here, at the conference, were badly wounded Ukrainian soldiers giving us stories from a frontline hell. Yuliia Paievska, a veteran military medic, told us she had seen “streams of blood, rivers of suffering”, and that “children have died in my arms”. “We are the dogs of war,” she said, recalling how she herself was captured in Mariupol, imprisoned for three months and tortured by the Russians. “Give us the weapons,” she concluded, “to kill this war.”
Here, too, was the courage of a Russian Yulia. Yulia Navalnaya came on stage even before the news of the death of her husband, Alexei Navalny, had been fully confirmed, to call for Vladimir Putin to be brought to justice – and to remind us that there is still another Russia, fighting the tyrant. She went on to record a deeply moving, defiant video that you can watch on YouTube.
But stepping outside the conference venue in the Bayerischer Hof hotel, I found weekend crowds enjoying the unseasonal sunshine in nice cafes and bars, shopping in luxurious boutiques or booking a winter break to some attractive holiday destination. Prosperous, even pampered, peacetime life. Europe at war? You must be joking.
At this year’s conference, western leaders acknowledged the reality of a long war more clearly than they did last year, but most are still failing to communicate a sense of existential threat to their own societies. Nor are they taking the urgent actions needed to save Ukraine from more battlefield defeats such as its recent withdrawal from Avdiivka.
There are notable exceptions. Kaja Kallas, the Estonian prime minister recently placed on a criminal wanted list by the Kremlin, has long been one. Mette Frederiksen, the Danish prime minister, is urgent, direct, and matches deeds to words. “We decided to donate our entire artillery,” she told the gathering at which the Ukrainian Yuliia spoke. Denmark has also sent F-16 fighter jets.
Then there’s Petr Pavel, the former Nato general who is now the Czech president. He told us that, working with the Danes and others, the Czechs have identified on world markets 500,000 rounds of 155mm ammunition and another 300,000 rounds of 122mm calibre that could be bought and sent to the hard-pressed Ukrainian forces in the next few weeks. That would enable the Ukrainians to hold the line, Pavel explained, until increased western defence industry supplies come through later this year.
Members of the public show their support for Ukraine outside the Scottish parliament, Edinburgh, 3 March 2022. Photograph: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images
It would also give time for the US House of Representatives to overcome its shameful Trumpian blockage and vote for further military funding for Ukraine. (The most grotesque moment of the conference came when the Republican senator Pete Ricketts compared Putin’s invasion of Ukraine to the “invasion” of illegal immigrants from Mexico.)
Yet on their own, countries such as the Czech Republic and Denmark can’t possibly do what it takes to enable Ukraine to hold off Russia. As the US fatefully hesitates, this requires Europe’s big boys – Germany and France above all – to step into the breach, rapidly buying that ammunition the Czechs have found; acting fast, unbureaucratically and at scale; and explaining to their publics why it’s vital that they do.
President Emmanuel Macron didn’t even come to Munich. His grand rhetoric about the rearmament of our European sovereignty and a “war economy” is not matched by the scale and speed of actual French support for Ukraine.
The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, is a different story. Since I was highly critical of his “Scholzing” in respect of arming Ukraine a year ago, I want to acknowledge a big change that has happened over the past 12 months. Germany is now the second biggest supporter of Ukraine after the US. This shift to full-hearted support was a kind of Wende (turn) within the Zeitenwende (epochal turning point) that Scholz originally promised just three days after the full-scale invasion in 2022. I will never forget talking to friends in Kyiv last summer who told me how reassured they felt at night when they heard the distinctive, deep boom-boom of the German Gepard air-defence gun. German guns saving lives.
Now it needs a second Wende within the Zeitenwende. The Scholz administration must recognise that if you’re supporting one side in a war against a murderous dictator, you must really want them to win and not merely “not to lose”, the formula to which Scholz and Macron have often reverted. That is not the language of strength, which is the only one Putin understands. As the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, observed, speaking in Munich directly after Scholz: “It’s not just a question of weapons. The question is, are you ready psychologically?” The peacetime logic of negotiation, compromise and “win-win” simply does not apply.
Minutes before Zelensky came on stage, the German chancellor dodged a question about why he hasn’t sent Germany’s Taurus missile to Ukraine. Yet leading military experts tell us that deploying long-range missiles such as the Taurus – and its US, British and French counterparts – is the only way in which Ukraine can rapidly put the military pressure back on Russia, by threatening the supply lines through Crimea.
So, the leaders of the larger European countries should take a lesson from smaller ones such as Denmark, the Czech Republic and Estonia. Given the critical situation on Ukraine’s frontline, they must be bolder, faster, more decisive. And they need to find a more direct, more passionate, more inspiring language – the kind of language that would certainly have been used by Scholz’s personal hero, former chancellor Willy Brandt. Societies that are still enjoying a comfortable peacetime lifestyle, and where many apparently believe this war can soon be over with a negotiated compromise peace deal, must be shaken awake. As President Pavel put it, the one sacrifice we can all bring is “the reduction of our own comfort”. Physical comfort, but also psychological.
Europe is at war. It’s not fully at war in the way it was 80 years ago, when most European countries were directly engaged in combat, but it’s certainly not at peace in the way it was 20 years ago, before Putin set out on his path of confrontation with the west. If we don’t face up to the urgency of enabling Ukraine to consolidate its defensive positions, regroup and ultimately win the war that it’s fighting on behalf of all of us, then a few years down the road we will face an even more direct attack from an emboldened, revanchist Russia. So listen to Ukrainian Yuliia and Russian Yulia. Putin must be defeated. That’s the only way to “kill this war”.
Timothy Garton Ash is a historian, political writer and Guardian columnist | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/nov/02/streaming-giants-cut-spending-on-australian-dramas-by-47m-ahead-of-incoming-local-content-rules | Australia news | 2023-11-01T19:00:17.000Z | Amanda Meade | Streaming giants cut spending on Australian dramas by $47m ahead of incoming local content rules | The amount spent on Australian dramas by streaming companies including Netflix, Foxtel and Disney+ has fallen by 11% or $47m ahead of the federal government’s promised introduction of local content obligations in the new year.
Labor has vowed to impose tougher rules on streamers to ensure Australian stories are told by the international platforms, but the legislation has been delayed until the new year.
Netflix in particular has had success with Australian content, but the industry has rejected the idea of a quota. A reboot of Heartbreak High was a global hit and the streaming service has commissioned a second series.
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The platforms, which also include Amazon Prime, Binge, Paramount+ and Stan, now dominate Australian viewing habits: 58% of adults use them in a given week, compared with 54% who viewed Nine, Seven, Ten, SBS or the ABC.
However, they are not subject to the same local content obligations as the free-to-air broadcasters.
Last financial year, the streamers contributed $398m of the total $680m spent on TV drama programs, defined as scripted narratives of any genre, according to Screen Australia’s annual drama report. That was down $47m on the previous 12 months.
The free-to-air broadcasters, which now prioritise reality programs and sport over drama, spent $277m, up from $219m last year.
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Most of the commercial TV drama hours comes from long-running series Home and Away and Neighbours. But free-to-air titles include the ABC’s Total Control, Seven’s Royal Flying Doctor Service, Nine’s Warnie and Ten’s Paper Dolls.
The outgoing Screen Australia chief executive, Graeme Mason, said the streaming platforms were down in the number of hours they produced, falling from 136 to 114, and the number of titles produced, which fell from 30 to 21, but he said they still spend more than the traditional broadcasters.
“This year’s drama report showcases the dynamic landscape of drama, with significant expenditure coming from a number of different categories,” Mason said.
Seven out of 21 subscription and streaming titles had budgets in excess of $20m, in contrast to just eight out of the 30 titles in 2021-22.
Nine Entertainment’s streaming service Stan made the most shows and produced the highest number of hours in line with its selling point as an original content producer.
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When feature films and the growing category of online drama – released on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube – are included, Australian drama totals $1.13bn.
While Neighbours screens in Latvia, Australian TV writers still get paid – but for how much longer?
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The ABC continues to commission the majority of children’s programming, with the public broadcaster producing nine out of the 12 titles. Screen Australiacontributed finance to ten titles.
The Australian Children’s Television Foundation funded four titles. In the past five years, the ABC’s share of all children’s television has increased from 45% to 75% after the commercial broadcasters abandoned the sector.
The chief executive of Screen Producers Australia, Matthew Deaner, warned that the figures in the drama report looked good but the dominance of the streaming platforms was “having a profound effect on our viewing habits, what stories we get to see and the business dynamics that underpin investment”.
“The weight of evidence and data from our industry is that business conditions are getting tougher, the rewards are declining and the foundations that we have built a successful industry sector on are highly unstable,” Deaner said.
A record $809m was spent by foreign films and television shooting in Australia, including big-budget theatrical features The Fall Guy, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire and Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/jul/08/andy-murray-reaches-wimbledon-final-win-tomas-berdych | Sport | 2016-07-08T18:11:43.000Z | Kevin Mitchell | Andy Murray reaches Wimbledon final with straight-sets win over Berdych | Sunshine bathed Centre Court on Friday evening to embroider a win by Andy Murray that catapulted him into the Wimbledon final for a third time, a couple of hours after Roger Federer had departed under a cloud.
He has now reached 11 finals in the four grand slam tournaments, one more than Fred Perry. The History Man is on the move again. Meanwhile the Swiss’s defeat over five sets by Milos Raonic earlier in the afternoon no doubt dismayed everyone from Sir Alex Ferguson in the Royal Box to that fabled author of fiction, Jeffrey Archer, consigned to the paid seats – but Murray’s win over the world No7, Tomas Berdych, was a thing of joy, an uplifting conclusion to a ragged day’s entertainment.
Murray was well worth his 6-3, 6-3, 6-3 win in just under two hours and could hardly be in better shape to face Raonic, a major final debutant at 25. He has a 6-3 career edge over him, the latest in the Queen’s final three weekends ago.
Milos Raonic beats Roger Federer in five sets to reach Wimbledon final
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The Scot will also experience something new : a grand slam decider without the company of either Federer or Novak Djokovic. They have been his only opponents at the end of a major – twice at Wimbledon, where he lost to the Swiss in 2012 and beat the Serb the following year.
Murray has stuttered eight times in the ultimate test but, at 29 and with Ivan Lendl by his side again, he is playing the best tennis of his career. He will start favourite against Raonic and not just on sentiment, according to Berdych.
“The fact that probably his biggest rival, Novak, is not in the draw any more definitely helps him,” the Czech said. “He has the tools to go all the way. Andy is one of the best in eliminating the big [serving] weapon of an opponent. I think he actually likes to play the big guys, to come up with his creative game, try to break their rhythm.”
Raonic was a not altogether convincing winner. Federer fell – metaphorically and literally – for the first time in his career, according to his own recollection, while Murray stood tall against a near contemporary who he said beforehand used to “bully me a bit on court” when they were young – and whom his wife, Kim, had famously bad-mouthed during their semi-final at the Australian Open last year.
Was Murray shocked by Federer’s defeat? “Yes and no. Roger’s won here I think seven times, and been in the final I think a couple more times. So anytime he loses, it’s somewhat of a surprise. But Milos has been playing really good tennis this year – and also on the grass.”
In a match of even quality but not many dramatic moments Murray and Berdych exchanged early breaks before they hit any sort of rhythm.
Murray, once he had settled, took the first set with his second ace after 35 minutes. There were few early highs, fewer lows.
A careless forehand and a couple of other poor choices cost him two break points in the long sixth game but he served his way out of trouble.
There was a sense that Murray could get the job done in good time if he put more consistent pressure on the fragile Berdych serve and he duly broke again to lead 4-3. Berdych all but handed him the second set with a loose and lazy service game, Murray sinking the dagger, a forehand that left the Czech clueless at the net, after an hour and 22 minutes.
From there to the line was pretty straightforward, as Murray held his nerve and Berdych scrambled about vainly for an opening under pressure. Murray just closed him down.
Centre Court needed something to rebuild shattered spirits after the first semi-final, in which Federer fell before the crude power of the young Canadian, his country’s first finalist in a men’s grand slam event. It was not a great match – certainly not in the same neighbourhood as the Swiss’s exhilarating comeback from two sets down to beat Marin Cilic in the quarter-finals on Wednesday – and, after he crashed to the turf in the third game of the fifth set, banging the left knee that required surgery in February, we were witness to the pain-filled collapse of a legend.
He had his chances – most notably three break points in the ninth game of the fourth set, as well as going 40-0 up on his serve at 5-6 before serving two double faults to hand Raonic parity in the match – and he was heroic in batting back most of Raonic’s machine-gun serves. But time did for him in the end. This was his best, and perhaps final, chance to reach for an 18th major title.
As he described his performance later, “It wasn’t bad. It wasn’t outstanding. It was something I can live with.” He was “sad and angry” at himself, he said. “I don’t slip a lot. I don’t ever fall down.”
He fell here. Can he rise up again? Not even he knows. “This one clearly hurts because I felt I could have had it. So close.”
But, even if Federer had made the final – as the entire place was willing him to – it is uncertain if his body would have survived a third searching examination in a row.
Indeed he expressed concern about how his battered knee and the right thigh that he tweaked late in the fourth set might react overnight. Federer is 35 next month.
As for Raonic, he found his best tennis at the end – but there was some patchy stuff before it.
He did not properly start building points until the last set. If he cannot find more consistency in the final, he will do well to extend Murray.
“Today I sort of persevered,” was the winner’s prosaic summary. “I was plugging away. I was struggling through many parts of the match.”
He will have no such luxury on Sunday. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/oct/09/david-bowie-lower-third-bbc-verdict-documentary-the-first-five-years | Music | 2018-10-09T13:21:18.000Z | Laura Snapes | Devoid of personality': BBC verdict on early Bowie audition unearthed | The makers of a new BBC documentary about David Bowie’s early years as a musician have revealed the corporation’s dim view of his work at the time. In November 1965, his group the Lower Third failed their audition for the BBC’s Talent Selection Group, which was responsible for checking that any act angling for BBC radio play met their quality standards, the Times reports.
One judge described Bowie – then known as Davy Jones – as “a singer devoid of personality”. Another said: “Singer not particularly exciting. Routines dull.” A third said: “I can’t find fault with them musically – but there is no entertainment in anything they do.” Bowie was described by one as an “amateur sounding vocalist who sings wrong notes and out of tune”.
A snippet from the BBC’s audition report. Photograph: BBC
The Lower Third comprised Bowie, joined variously by guitarist Denis Taylor, bassist Graham Rivens, drummer Phil Lancaster and Tony Hatch on piano and background vocals. Their tracks Out of Sight, Baby That’s a Promise and a cover of Chim Chim Cher-ee from Mary Poppins were not deemed fit for public broadcast. One member of the panel expressed no hope for the group’s future: “I don’t think they’ll get better with more rehearsals.”
The audition took place four years before Bowie found fame with his eponymous 1969 album and the single Space Oddity. While the BBC’s decision looks comic in retrospect, no Bowie aficionado would suggest that his mid-60s output contained much intimation of his future genius.
Davy Jones (David Bowie): You’ve Got a Habit of Leaving – video
The documentary, David Bowie: The First Five Years, will be shown on the BBC in 2019 to mark the 50th anniversary of Space Oddity. It features a clip of Phil Lancaster reading the audition report for the first time. The film concludes the BBC’s Bowie Five Years trilogy, directed by Francis Whately: The Last Five Years was broadcast in 2017, while Five Years, which focused on five key years in his career, was shown in 2013. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jul/28/french-archaeologist-finds-tooth-dating-560000-years-tautavel | Science | 2015-07-28T12:11:21.000Z | Angelique Chrisafis | French student finds tooth dating back 560,000 years | A French student has found an adult tooth dating back around 560,000 years in south-western France, in what researchers are hailing as a major discovery.
Valentin Loescher, 20, was volunteering alongside Camille Jacquey, 16, on his first summer archaeological dig at the Arago cave near Tautavel, when he discovered the tooth. The tooth could be the oldest human remains found in France. It predates by 100,000 years the famous Tautavel man, a 20-year-old prehistoric hunter and ancestor of Neanderthal man, who was discovered at the site in 1971 and whose remains dated back about 450,000 years.
A closeup photo of the tooth found by Valentin Loescher at the Arago cave near Tautavel. Photograph: Denis Dainat/EPA
Amélie Vialet, a paleoanthropologist overseeing the excavation at the cave, told Agence France-Presse: “A large adult tooth – we can’t say if it was from a male or female – was found during excavations of soil we know to be between 550,000 and 580,000 years old, because we used different dating methods. This is a major discovery because we have very few human fossils from this period in Europe.”
The tooth before it was removed from the soil. Photograph: Denis Dainat/EPA
Yves Coppens, professor of paleoanthropology and prehistory at the Collège de France, who was part of the 1970s team that discovered the remains of the famous early human ancestor known as Lucy in Ethiopia, told France Info radio: “A tooth can tell us a whole range of things. Its shape and wear and tear tells us about the eating habits of the person in question; the tissue reveals a lot of information. The DNA can give an idea as to who this person was.”
Loescher, a history of art student from Metz, told France Television that while Jacquey was on a break he had been carefully brushing a mound of soil in his excavation area that featured lots of remains of large animals, when he found the small remains of a tooth.
He and Jacquey weren’t sure of the tooth’s significance, so took it to Vialet. Its profile was examined by computer and it was sent to a laboratory. “At that moment, there was a lot of excitement,” Loescher said.
“I’m not sure if it has sunk in yet. I’m happy, but there’s nothing to be proud of. I was just in the right section at the right time.”
He said he would finish his three-week stint at the site.
The Arago cave at Tautavel, north of Perpignan, is one of the world’s most important prehistoric sites, and has been excavated for about 50 years. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/jun/05/mother-inquiry-air-pollution-daughter-asthma-death | Society | 2016-06-05T16:49:43.000Z | Robert Booth | Mother wants inquiry into role of pollution in daughter's asthma death | A woman whose daughter died from an asthma attack wants an investigation to find out whether worsening air pollution in London contributed to the death.
Ella Kissi-Debrah, nine, from Hither Green near the capital’s busy south circular road, died in February 2013.
Through a lawyer, her mother, Rosamund, is calling on the attorney general to order a second inquest or to set up an independent inquiry to determine the impact of pollution on her child’s asthma and death. She is also calling for immediate action to reduce exposure to toxic air for children such as her son, Robert, whose lives she believes, remain at risk.
The moves could pave the way for ground-breaking legal action against the Greater London Authority and other government bodies for failing to protect her child and others from air pollution.
Jocelyn Cockburn, a human rights lawyer who is working with the family, said: “There are strong grounds to believe that our government may be in breach of its duty to protect life in Ella’s case.”
Concern is growing about air pollution in London, which is currently ranked 15 out of 36 world cities, behind Paris, Berlin and Chicago. According to City Hall, almost 10,000 Londoners die every year because of polluted air and the capital does not meet the legal requirements for pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide. Research published by the World Health Organisation in May showed that London has breached safe levels of pollutant particles known as PM10.
Kissi-Debrah attended Holbeach primary in Lewisham. She died suddenly, having suffered several seizures following coughing fits which resulted in her being treated in hospital. In a narrative conclusion, the original coroner, Phillip Barlow, ruled that Ella had suffered a severe asthma attack followed by a seizure.
“Three years after Ella’s tragic death there are still unanswered questions about why she died,” said Cockburn. “The inquest did not identify the cause of Ella’s asthma and the pathologist confirmed that this was unknown although he suggested that it may be an allergic reaction to an inhaled antigen from something in the air. What is striking is that the issue of air pollution has been overlooked both in the inquest and, so far as the family is aware, in the ongoing child death review into Ella’s death by Lewisham council.”
She added: “Article 2 of the Human Rights Act requires government bodies to take reasonable steps to protect those such as Ella from the effects of air pollution if they are aware, or should be, that it poses a real and immediate risk to their lives. There is now ample evidence that air pollution does pose a risk to life – in fact it causes around 9,500 early deaths in London per year. We also know that the air in many parts of London, as well as cities beyond, is so dirty that we have been in breach of EU air quality limits since 2010.”
If it is proved that air pollution played a significant role in Kissi-Debrah’s death, it could trigger a compensation claim and a legal challenge to force government bodies to take immediate steps to curb pollution.
In a statement, the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said: “I would like to extend my condolences to Ella’s friends and family. Her death is truly tragic. I am determined to get to grips with air quality, something that has not been a high enough priority until now. I was elected with a mandate to tackle London’s dangerously polluted air and make sure that breathing clean air is a right, not a privilege.”
In one of his first acts as mayor, Khan launched a consultation on extending London’s ultra-low emission zone to the north and south circular roads and the possibility of bringing forward the introduction from 2020. He also published a report that was never released by the previous mayor Boris Johnson, which showed that schools in the poorest areas of the capital experienced the worst pollution. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/dec/01/channel-4-news-unlikely-survive-privaisation-chair-terry-burns | Media | 2015-12-01T15:25:37.000Z | Jasper Jackson | Channel 4 News in current form 'unlikely to survive privatisation' | The outgoing Channel 4 chairman Terry Burns has said he struggles to see how the broadcaster’s 7pm news bulletin would survive at its current length in a primetime slot if the channel were privatised.
“It is no secret that as an economic proposition Channel 4 [News] doesn’t really do terribly well,” Burns told the Voice of the Listener and viewer conference in London. “You can see this by the absence of adverts in the breaks.
Channel 4 sale would jeopardise news output, says chief executive
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“I struggle to see any alternative ownership that would be able to put on an hour-long news programme at that point in the day and of the quality it is.”
It was revealed in September that the government is considering the privatisation of Channel 4 after a civil servant was photographed in Whitehall carrying a document laying out options for the state-owned but commercially funded broadcaster.
Burns’ comments echo those of David Abraham, Channel 4 chief executive, who said last month that “asset strippers” looking at Channel 4 as an investment would cut back drastically on news and current affairs programming such as Dispatches.
Burns said uncertainty over Channel 4’s future had been disruptive to the channel’s ongoing operations.
He said: “It is a very disruptive process. People’s attention is distracted. Advertisers begin to worry about what is going on, programme makers start to worry about what it is going on.”
However, the former Treasury mandarin said a Channel 4 sell-off would not be especially appealing to the government from a financial perspective as it would raise far less than offloading other assets owned by the state.
Channel 4 sell-off would have little financial benefit, says chairman
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The broadcaster is valued at around £1bn, but that figure would be reduced significantly if a private Channel 4 retained its public service remit. John Whittingdale, the culture secretary, is on the record saying that if the channel were sold the remit would remain in place, meaning any new owner would have continue meeting commitments to cater for minority audiences and take risks.
Burns has proposed that if the channel is to be taken out of public ownership, it should be turned into a non-profit organisation to avoid commercial pressures that would undermine the quality of programming. He said he had long considered the proposal as a way of dealing with previous debates about whether the channel should be privatised.
His six-year stint as chairman of Channel 4 comes to an end in January after ministers rejected a suggestion by the regulator Ofcom that he stay on for another year after the end of his second term. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jun/11/jeremy-corbyn-labour-will-call-on-other-parties-to-defeat-government | Politics | 2017-06-11T16:05:27.000Z | Jessica Elgot | Jeremy Corbyn: Labour will call on other parties to defeat government | Jeremy Corbyn has said Labour will invite parties to defeat the government and vote for Labour’s manifesto in a “substantial amendment” to the Queen’s speech, as well as suggesting the party would also kill off the “great repeal bill”.
“We are ready and able to put forward a serious programme which has great support in this country,” he said, though the Labour leader conceded his party “didn’t win the election”.
“We are going to put down a substantial amendment to the Queen’s speech which will be the main points of our manifesto, so we will invite the House to consider all the issues we’ve put forward – jobs-first Brexit, policies for young people and on austerity,” he said.
Election 2017: Michael Gove appointed environment secretary in cabinet reshuffle – as it happened
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Corbyn said the great repeal bill, designed to transfer EU law into British law to enable changes to regulations, “has now become history” and said Labour would offer something different. “We will put forward a position in which we negotiate tariff-free access to the European market and legislate after that,” he said.
Labour has not yet begun reaching out to other parties for support in either defeating the government or gathering support for policies in its own manifesto.
Both the SNP leader, Nicola Sturgeon, and the Lib Dem leader, Tim Farron, suggested before the election that they would be prepared to lend support to legislation, but said it would be done on merit, rather than as a result of any confidence-and-supply arrangement similar to what Theresa May is seeking with the Democratic Unionist party.
A senior Labour source said the party needed to wait and respond to the arrangement May came to with the DUP. “If they are able to get as far as a Queen’s speech we will amend it to take into account as much of our manifesto programme as possible, deleting, removing the absolute worst aspects of theirs,” the source said.
“We feel we can build a parliamentary majority for a whole range of proposals and against a whole range of their ones.”
Passing Labour amendments to any Queen’s speech is fraught with difficulty and would likely require support from some rebel Conservative MPs. The source said those conversations had not started and would hinge on how upset some Conservative MPs might be with the DUP deal.
Another Labour source close to the leadership said they felt the party was still fighting to form a government. “We’re in extra time at the moment. We haven’t lost,” the source said. “Now it’s about who is the party that can put an agenda to parliament that will gain the most support.
“Given the fact our manifesto was far the most popular, I think we’ve got far more chance. Half of the Tories reject their own manifesto. We are in a position to put forward policies to parliament and command support for them.”
The shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, also said he believed there was a majority in parliament to maintain the winter fuel allowance and triple-lock pension, two issues the Conservatives proposed changing in their manifesto.
“I believe the DUP is in favour of scrapping the bedroom tax,” he said. “There’s a whole range of issues like that where we think there’ll be a majority in parliament.”
McDonnell said the party planned to keep up its campaigning momentum across the country, which saw scores of young people turn out to rallies, both in preparation for a potential snap election and as a way of galvanising opposition to unpopular Tory policies.
“As soon as the prime minister said there wouldn’t be a snap election, we thought there would be,” he said. “And so we, we will continue on campaigning all throughout the country.
“That’s the nature of the party we are now – we’re a social movement. But we’ll be campaigning on those individual issues that we’ll force votes in parliament on as well, so we can demonstrate popular support for those issues.”
The shadow foreign secretary, Emily Thornberry, said Labour was seriously preparing for an opportunity to form a minority government if May’s Queen’s speech should fail.
Theresa May squatting in No 10, says Emily Thornberry Guardian
“We’ve got Theresa May squatting in Downing Street. We’ve got a full rebellion going on in the Conservative party. We’ve got no idea as to what’s going to be in this Queen’s speech. They have a manifesto that’s been completely repudiated by the public and indeed by Tory MPs themselves, and no idea what the DUP will agree to or not,” she told Sky News’ Sophy Ridge on Sunday.
Corbyn said he expected there would be another election before the end of the year. A new Survation poll for the Mail on Sunday put Labour ahead on 45% and the Tories on just 39%. It also put May and Corbyn neck-and-neck on who would make the best prime minister, with both leaders on 39%, showing a surge in personal support for Corbyn.
The Labour leader said the country could not continue with such unstable government: “We have a programme, we have support and we’re ready to fight another election campaign as soon as may be, because we want to be able to serve the people of this country on the agenda we put forward, which is transformative and has gained amazing levels of support.”
Asked if he was prepared to lead the party for the long term, Corbyn smiled and joked: “Look at me, I’ve got youth on my side.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/26/colombia-tax-the-rich-plan-poverty-gustavo-petro | World news | 2022-08-26T09:30:25.000Z | Megan Janetsky | Colombia’s leftwing government unveils tax-the-rich plan to tackle poverty | Colombia’s new leftist government has proposed an ambitious plan to tax the rich in an effort to combat poverty in one of the most unequal countries in the Americas.
If implemented, the Piketty-esque legislation proposed by President Gustavo Petro could raise more than $11.5bn annually to fund anti-poverty efforts, free public university and other social welfare programs.
Petro, a former urban guerrilla who became the country’s first leftist leader, rose to power on a raft of promises centered around social progress at a time when the South American country is still plagued by pandemic-fueled economic turmoil.
If passed, the plan would raise taxes on the country’s highest earners – approximately 2% of Colombia’s population – cut tax benefits for the richest and fight tax evasion.
The tax hikes would progressively increase as income increases. It would add an annual wealth tax on savings and property above $630,000, and would add a 10% tax on some of Colombia’s biggest exports – oil, coal and gold – after prices rise above a certain threshold.
“This should not be viewed as a punishment or a sacrifice,” said Petro. “It is simply a solidarity payment that someone fortunate makes to a society that has enabled them to generate wealth.”
The wealth tax was among Petro’s chief promises during his campaign and would mark a significant step toward achieving his bold policy agenda, which has inspired hope in some and skepticism in others.
It is also part of a larger debate playing out around the world at a time of deepening global inequalities.
“This is not just Colombia,” said economist Álvaro Pardo. “This is a large conversation in any country – the ideas of equity and progress, the idea that those who have the most have to pay more. These are universal concepts we’re drawing upon.”
Petro’s proposal has prompted alarm in the country’s private sector and political elite who argue the tax will dampen investment, push job creators out of the country and – according to the arch-conservative former president Álvaro Uribe – potentially deepen poverty.
“We support all these efforts for the country to overcome poverty,” Uribe said following a meeting with Petro this summer. “But not at the cost of withering away the private sector.”
But at the height of the country’s decades-long armed conflict, Uribe imposed a similar temporary tax in order to fund his war with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) guerrilla group.
Last year, amid stewing resentment for Petro’s predecessor, Iván Duque, another tax reform proposal ignited months of anti-government protests, which became symbolic of deeper social unrest and endemic inequalities.
“It was sort of a perfect storm from political opposition to the government, post-pandemic economic hardship and the government’s response,” said Sergio Guzmán, director of Colombia Risk Analysis. “Under this government, things are different.”
A supporter displays a banner saying ‘Don’t let us down’ at the inauguration of President Gustavo Petro in Bogotá on 7 August. Photograph: Mauricio Dueñas Castañeda/EPA
This bill, he said, “is more progressive in nature”, doing away with key exemptions that he and economists say have allowed richer individuals to pay lower taxes than the average Colombian.
It’s also more permanent than other wealth taxes. The measure will now have to go through congress, where it is likely to pass.
The proposal was a welcome move for many Colombians who have felt like they have been on the outside looking in.
Marlon Mendoza, an Afro-Colombian entrepreneur on the Caribbean coast, was one of 1.6 million Colombians who, during the pandemic, were knocked out of the middle class and back into poverty.
“The poor got poorer, and the rich got richer,” he said.
After 50 years, could Colombia finally have awoken from its nightmare?
María José Pizarro Rodríguez
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He went from having an office and a home in the city of Cartagena to returning to the unpaved streets of his town of birth on the outskirts of the city, struggling paycheck to paycheck.
Some observers warn that the tax plan will only address the tip of the iceberg.
Pardo said: “The challenge is gigantic because it means breaking a structure that has been in place for decades, a structure that favors rich sectors and big companies. It’s going to be very difficult.”
But it’s that painful growth that needs to happen, says Mendoza.
“This is a new idea. Human beings, not just Colombians, we’ve gotten used to the status quo. Down the line, if that thing is hurting us, it’s hard to branch away from what we’re used to.” he said. “But if we don’t do that, there will never be change.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/feb/18/jimmy-carter-hospice-care-health | US news | 2023-02-18T22:12:16.000Z | Edward Helmore | Jimmy Carter, 98, opts for hospice care after string of hospital visits | Jimmy Carter has “decided to spend his remaining time at home” in hospice care after a series of short hospital stays, the 98-year-old former president’s family said in a statement on Saturday.
The statement, issued by the Carter Center, said the ex-president’s choice had “the full of support of his family and his medical team”. It also said the family “asks for privacy during this time and is grateful for the concern shown by his admirers”.
Carter, a Democrat, is the longest-lived president. He served as the 39th president from 1977 to 1981. He was preceded by Gerald Ford and succeeded by late Ronald Reagan, a Republican who defeated him at the end of his lone term, during the Iran hostage crisis.
Carter won the 2002 Nobel peace prize for work to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, advance democracy and human rights, and promote economic and social development. He is known for a devotion to the Baptist faith.
Born and raised in Plains, Georgia, Carter joined the US navy in 1946, serving on submarines. In 1953, he left the service and returned home to Georgia to run his family’s peanut farm.
'Visionary success': Jonathan Alter makes the case for Jimmy Carter
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As he embarked on a political career, he became an activist Democrat who opposed racial segregation and supported the nascent civil rights movement. From 1963 to 1967, Carter served in the Georgia senate and was elected governor in 1970.
In a surprise turn after he left the governorship in 1975, he won the 1976 Democratic presidential nomination and – as an outsider candidate later that year – the presidency itself. Carter won the Oval Office by 297 electoral votes to Ford’s 241.
His presidential run, he later said, was helped by the Allman Brothers Band. His campaign was $300,000 in debt when the band raised $64,000, allowing Carter to double that with matching government funds.
“Gregg Allman and the Allman Brothers just about put me in the White House,” he said in 2015.
The former Egyptian president Anwar al-Sadat, left, shakes hands with the former Israeli premier Menachem Begin, as Jimmy Carter looks on at Camp David in 1978. Photograph: Consolidated News/AFP/Getty Images
Carter said he aspired to make government “competent and compassionate” – and responsive to the electorate.
In domestic affairs, he dealt with the energy shortage by establishing a national energy policy. He sought to improve government efficiency through reforms and deregulation and began to establish the environment as a matter of national importance, including by expanding the national park system.
Carter also created the federal education department, strengthened the social security system, and appointed record numbers of women as well as Black and Latino people to government jobs.
In foreign affairs, through the Camp David agreement of 1978, he helped bring accord between Egypt and Israel; established full diplomatic relations with China; and completed negotiation of a nuclear limitation treaty with the Soviet Union. However, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan caused ratification of the treaty to be suspended.
Outside his high ideals, political forces beyond his control marked his term, including rising energy costs, mounting inflation and the 1979 seizure of 52 US diplomats and citizens at the US embassy compound in Tehran by student supporters of the Iranian revolution.
The Iran hostage crisis dominated the last 14 months of Carter’s administration and – it is widely believed – led to his electoral defeat to Reagan.
Carter is married to Rosalynn Smith, 95. The couple have three sons – John William (Jack), James Earl III (Chip) and Donnel Jeffrey (Jeff) – as well as a daughter, Amy Lynn.
Ramon Antonio Vargas contributed reporting | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/jun/12/these-days-by-nico | Music | 2009-06-11T23:01:00.000Z | Laura Barton | Laura Barton on These Days by Nico | There was a video posted on the Blogotheque website recently, one of their Concerts a Emporter, in which musicians perform impromptu shows in unusual places. This time it was the Tallest Man on Earth, muddling around a vintage guitar shop in New York. He sings one of his own songs first, and then a cover of These Days, his voice rising up among the guitar bodies and the banjos and the cowbells. "I've been out walking," he draws his voice back and seems to catapult the line: "I don't do too much talking these days ..."
Jackson Browne wrote this song when he was 16. In those days, he called it I've Been Out Walking, but by the time it had been recorded and released by Nico in 1967, it had been retitled. There would be more covers over the years, by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and Tom Rush, Gator Creek and Iain Matthews, and then, in 1973, Greg Allman recorded the song for his first solo record. That is the one many view as the definitive version.
"It became musically a whole lot deeper thing when Greg Allman sung it," Browne told Paul Zollo in 1996. "He slowed it down, and I sort of copped his phrasing - the way I sing it now." Browne's own version was first released in the same year as Allman's, on his second album, For Everyman.
A few months back I became mildly infatuated with another version of this song, posted on YouTube last July by a woman named Sailor Sylvia, along with an explanation which seemed to sum up all the regret and loss contained within These Days: "Just sittin around with some vermouth and remembering the old days of when i was young and in love, we don't talk anymore ... not by choice, i just havent heard from you, babe, i feel so much like giving up."
Reading the comments on her post, full of lols and snide remarks, and several viewers questioning the wisdom of putting anything on the internet when you have a belly full of vermouth, the song's final line seemed to rise up all the louder: "Please don't confront me with my failures/ I have not forgotten them."
That line has always struck me as remarkable; words so dark and cold and embedded, the entire song seems to be rooted in them. In Allman's casting of the song, that line was redrawn slightly: "Please don't confront me with my failures/ I'm aware of them." I can't entirely approve of this; there is something in the not-forgetting that seems to ache a little more. In Browne's version, there is an air of the chided teenager about the line, a sense of burden and guilt, a weariness and disappointment at the world into which he is growing.
I like Nico's delivery of the line best. She brings something resigned to Browne's words, makes it a song sung later in life, as if looking back at how the years have shaped her. That haughty voice pushing against the brittle sweetness of the guitar, strings, flute - her version is full of the lonely resolve of a life-long dreamer, a late-night sweet vermouth-drinker, the sound of a woman who finally knows herself.
In that same interview with Zollo, Browne compared the art of songwriting to the craft of building guitars. I smiled at the comparison as I thought of the Tallest Man in that New York guitar shop, delivering his own beautiful version of These Days. "The metaphor is beautiful," Browne explained, "because a song is like an instrument in that it can be played by somebody else, and it can lay around for years and somebody can pick it up and play it again." | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2024/feb/17/india-england-third-test-day-three-cricket-joe-root-ben-duckett | Sport | 2024-02-17T15:00:24.000Z | Ali Martin | Ben Duckett defends Joe Root after dismissal sets tone for England’s day | This England team have each other’s backs so when Ben Duckett sat in front of the dictaphones after stumps on the third evening in Rajkot – a day later than his century deserved – it was inevitable that he would leap to the defence of Joe Root.
Unfortunately for Duckett, Root was among the chief talking points on the English side of the ledger. His attempted reverse scoop off Jasprit Bumrah in the morning continued an uncharacteristic run of low scores, the trigger for England handing India the advantage with a collapse of eight for 95 in just over two hours.
Yashasvi Jaiswal and India make shoddy England pay after tourists’ collapse
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Root’s top score so far on tour is the 29 made on the opening day of the series in Hyderabad, an alarming run for a player of such pedigree. Duckett, recalling the reverse-scooped six he lifted over the slips off Pat Cummins on day one of last summer’s Ashes series, was keen to take on any critics.
“I’d be interested to know if those people were against it when he was doing it to Cummins,” Duckett said. “Rooty’s a freak: he does things a lot of us can’t do. In my eyes, that’s the same as playing a drive and nicking off to second slip. Rooty plays that shot so well. It’s the same as me playing a reverse sweep and getting caught at point.
“Options are practised and that shot has been very successful for him over the past year, so next time it may go over slip.”
While Duckett added 20 runs to his overnight 133, the opener was quieter than on the second day. His diagnosis for the slow down at the back end of an innings he still ranked as his best to date was tighter lines from India’s seamers and more protection on the boundary for their spinners.
Ben Duckett defended Root’s choice of shot against India. Photograph: Punit Paranjpe/AFP/Getty Images
“It was one of those days when I feel we have to give credit to India,” Duckett said. “I do think they had a very good day, which they didn’t yesterday, and they bounced back today and were superb.”
England crumbling from 207 for two to a below-par 319 all out on a day that should have allowed the bowlers to rest was simply the rough that comes with the smooth for Duckett. He is a player fully invested in the ever-upbeat talk that runs through the current squad and happy to share some of the more surprising elements publicly.
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After India closed on an ominous 196 for two, a lead of 322, he added: “[Ben] Stokes spoke to us before we went out to field and said he actually wanted us to get out today, have a bowl at them and get cracking with it. It was slightly earlier than we planned but we wanted to get out there and get at them. Whatever the situation is, we’ll try to throw punches back at them.”
Asked about a realistic target in the fourth innings, Duckett replied: “The more the better. This team is all about doing special things and creating history. They can have as many as they want and we’ll go and get them.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2011/apr/30/saturday-interview-jean-shrimpton | From the Guardian | 2011-04-29T23:06:00.000Z | Alex Wade | The Saturday interview: Jean Shrimpton | Jean Shrimpton is nonplussed. She has just discovered that Karen Gillan, of Doctor Who fame, is to play her in a forthcoming BBC4 drama about her love affair with photographer David Bailey. Filming of We'll Take Manhattan, which reprises a heady Vogue photoshoot in 1962, is due to start next month, but the world's first supermodel could hardly be less interested.
"I don't live my life through the prism of the past," she says. "I know vaguely about the BBC's drama, but I don't look back on my life." While Gillan chattered excitedly about her delight at "playing somebody who had such a lasting impact on the fashion world", Shrimpton said she was not in the least bit "bothered" who played her. "It's of no interest," she added.
Shrimpton's lack of enthusiasm about the film is no surprise. She has been reticent to the point of reclusive ever since she quit fashion, once and for all, in her early 30s. A clue to the reasons for her withdrawal from the world that made her famous comes early in our conversation in the drawing room of the Abbey Hotel in Penzance, which she has owned and run for over 30 years.
"Fashion is full of dark, troubled people," she says. "It's a high-pressured environment that takes its toll and burns people out. Only the shrewd survive – Andy Warhol, for example, and David Bailey." We are talking about British fashion designer John Galliano, who was sacked by Dior last month after allegedly making antisemitic comments. Shrimpton, dressed in a simple, unostentatious black dress – more bohemian than haute couture – is quick to lament the fashion world's excesses. "No one can condone what he said – it's reprehensible. But it's hypocritical to pretend that fashion is normal, that people in it are role models. And it's stupid to deny that people behave badly."
We have heard little of "The Shrimp" since she vanished from swinging London and took off to the West Country. She recently popped up in Channel 4's Country House Rescue, and in 1990 a ghostwritten autobiography appeared, but Shrimpton makes no bones about why she played ball. "I needed some money to renovate the roof of the hotel," she says, her blue eyes flashing, arms firmly folded. She adds, curtly: "I didn't want the book to appear. I've hated publicity all my life. I didn't even like it when I was a model."
So quixotic a statement must be mischievous; after all, Shrimpton travelled the world for a decade, enjoyed a life of luxury and appeared so often on the covers of the likes of Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Vanity Fair, Time and Glamour that she, more than any other model of the 60s, can lay claim to having been the world's first supermodel. And now, aged 68 and despite, as she puts it, having done "precisely nothing" to preserve her looks, her face is still remarkable – high cheekbones, retroussé nose, arched eyebrows above large, dramatic eyes, and a body as willowy as it was in her heyday. But no, Shrimpton is adamant. "I never liked being photographed. I just happened to be good at it."
But the High Wycombe-born, 5ft 10in Shrimpton was not merely good at modelling – she was a revelation. Steve McQueen, with whom she was photographed by the legendary American photographer Richard Avedon for American Vogue, quickly spotted her preternatural poise in front of the camera. "You just turn it on and off," he said, after a photoshoot. Shrimpton shrugged. "I told him it was just my job, and it was. The ability to turn on and off again until the photographer is happy is what all the best models have. It's an automatic reflex."
David Bailey was the first photographer to capitalise on this quality, taking an ingenue from Buckinghamshire to stardom almost as quickly as the click of a camera. The pair became emblems of London in the early 60s, but little in Shrimpton's early life suggested that she was destined for international acclaim. "My upbringing was very rural," she says. "I was brought up on a farm, surrounded by animals. To this day I can remember Danny, a black Labrador we owned. He was trained by my father to collect eggs and bring them to the kitchen." She recalls a happy childhood, one in which she lived her life for animals – horses were a passion – and did just enough to get through school, without really feeling that she fitted it. "I was a reserved girl. I was never part of a gang, and yet I wanted to please, too."
Without any real sense of purpose, Shrimpton enrolled at Langham Secretarial College in London when she was 17. "I managed to get 140 words a minute for shorthand and 70 for typing, just about scraping through," she says, but already her looks – waifish and coltish, she calls them – had been noticed by the film director Cy Endfield. "I was dawdling at a zebra crossing near Langham Place when an American voice asked if he could talk to me. It was Endfield, and he thought I might be suitable for Mysterious Island, a film he was shooting based on a Jules Verne novel. He told me to go along and see the producer." Shrimpton, mindful of Lana Turner's discovery in a drugstore, took up the offer, but Mysterious Island's producer wasn't keen.
"I left feeling crushed," she recalls, but took up Endfield's alternative suggestion – that she enrol on the Lucie Clayton modelling course. Before long, Shrimpton was on Clayton's books and, while still a teenager, worked as a catalogue model. Magazine work soon came her way, and it was on a shoot for Vogue that she met one of the most influential men in her life, David Bailey.
"'Bailey' was how he introduced himself," says Shrimpton. "And that was all I ever called him." Aged 18, Shrimpton rapidly found herself entwined with the East End boy on the up, who was five years her elder. "We were instantly attracted to each other," she says. Shrimpton broke off a relationship and Bailey ended his marriage so they could be together. "He was a larger-than-life character, and still is. There's a force about him. He doesn't give a damn about anything. But he's shrewd, too. He made a lot of money out of me.
"I'm not bitter," adds Shrimpton. "But I'm irked. That's all. Bailey was very important to me. I'm sure today's models are a lot more switched-on than we were. Image rights didn't exist back then. What happened – the creation of the fashion industry – just happened."
Shrimpton's romance with Bailey did not last long. It was the heady, early days of the swinging 60s and the couple worked tirelessly together, but Shrimpton left Bailey to begin a relationship with Terence Stamp. "Our paths first crossed when Bailey photographed us together for Vogue, and then we met again at a wedding. I was aware of him because he was so good-looking. But it was Bailey who accidentally brought us together. Stamp seemed ill at ease, self-conscious and standoffish, but Bailey talked to him, as he always does with people, and ended up inviting him to come with us to see my parents in Buckinghamshire later that day."
But if Stamp's looks captivated Shrimpton, his personality was less straightforward. The beautiful duo were soon an item – to Bailey's dismay – but their three years together left Shrimpton puzzled. Certainly, there is no love lost now: "Terry has said that I was the love of his life, but he had a very strange way of showing it. We lived together in a flat in Mayfair, but he never gave me a set of keys; one day I walked into his room to talk to him and he simply turned his back on me, swivelling his chair to stare silently out of the window. That sort of thing was typical. He was very peculiar."
Why, then, did she stay with him? "His otherness was a challenge," is Shrimpton's reply, but she is deadpan about being one half of London's most gorgeous couple: "We were two pretty people wandering around thinking we were important. Night after night we'd go out for dinner, to the best restaurants, but just so that we could be seen. It was boring. I felt like a bit part in a movie about Terence Stamp."
Work, though, was good. By her mid-twenties Shrimpton was known the world over, and she'd also made a major, if unwitting, contribution to fashion when she was hired to present prizes for the Melbourne Cup in Australia. Shrimpton's dressmaker, Colin Rolfe, was given insufficient fabric, but pressed ahead regardless, making four outfits which were all cut just above the knee. The miniskirt was born – to the shock of conservative Australia at the time.
But for all the fame, the exotic travel and approaches from famous stars such as Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson – "they're the kind who can't help themselves, it's in their nature, though Jack was more subtle than Warren" – Shrimpton was not happy. She loathed the name "The Shrimp" and felt disenchanted with the fashion world. With hindsight, she says her true self only began to emerge in her next relationship, with photographer Jordan Kalfus, 12 years her senior, in New York. "I discovered museums, art and literature. It was an awakening. There was so much happening in American literature at the time. Mailer, Bellow, Burroughs, Ginsberg – they were all the rage."
She began to read voraciously, and bought fine art. Back in Britain a turbulent relationship with the anarchic poet Heathcote Williams was followed by another with writer Malcolm Richey, with whom she moved initially to Cornwall. By now, in her early thirties, Shrimpton was only too pleased to forsake modelling completely. She opened an antiques shop in Marazion and took a series of intriguing black-and-white photographs of local Cornish characters. She has never exhibited the images, and has no intention of doing so, but one was of Susan Clayton, then a waitress at the Abbey Hotel. After Shrimpton met her husband, Michael Cox, and became pregnant with their son, Thaddeus, she was told by Clayton that the Abbey might be up for sale.
"I jumped at it," she says. "If we'd had a survey, we wouldn't have bought it, and running it has been a labour of love, but it's been my life for over 30 years." She and Michael had their reception at the Abbey, a milllion miles from the fashion-world weddings of St James's. "We had champagne with fish'n'chips, but the only guests were our two registry office witnesses."
Shrimpton loves the raw, wild beauty of the far west of Cornwall, but does she have any regrets about turning her back on the life she once led? "No," she says, "but I am a melancholy soul. I'm not sure contentment is obtainable and I find the banality of modern life terrifying. I sometimes feel I'm damaged goods. But Michael, Thaddeus and the Abbey transformed my life."
Around us, in the Abbey's drawing room, are the books she and Michael have collected. There is The Rings of Saturn, by WG Sebald; Russian Criminal Tattoo, an outre encyclopaedia; René Gimpel's Diary of An Art Dealer and a collection of British short stories featuring The Burning Baby, by Dylan Thomas, one of Shrimpton's favourite works. It's an unusual collection, not what you'd expect to find in the homes of the likes of Kate Moss. But Shrimpton is a fan. "I like her. She's a free spirit. Somewhere in herself she's honest. She's a naughty girl – but you've got to have a few naughty girls." | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2024/mar/28/rail-route-of-the-month-switzerland-montreux-lake-geneva-gruyeres | Travel | 2024-03-28T07:00:28.000Z | Nicky Gardner | Rail route of the month: cheese, chocolate and a magical ride to the Swiss town of Gruyères | It was a handpainted sign on a wooden barn that piqued my interest in Gruyères. I was travelling from Emmental to Montreux last year, following the wonderful Golden Pass rail route. Our train paused at Montbovon, the start of a steep climb up to the line’s final dramatic mountain pass. There was the prospect of stunning views of Lake Geneva ahead. To the right of the railway, I spotted the bold sign: “La Gruyère vous salue” (the region, like the cheese, lacks the village’s final “s”).
With time to spare earlier this month, I returned to Montbovon to explore the branch railway that runs from there down the Sarine valley to Gruyères and beyond. This time I arrive on one of the new Golden Pass trains which now run through from Montreux to Interlaken, relying on some technical magic to slip from narrow-gauge to standard-gauge tracks along the way. The tourists in the posh prestige class are tucking into platters of charcuterie accompanied by Swiss wine. The climb up from Montreux is as magical as ever, twisting and turning up into the hills with Lake Geneva far below. Forty minutes out from Montreux, the train makes its first scheduled stop. This is Montbovon, a village that my old Baedeker guide advises is “noted for good cherry brandy”. I am the sole passenger alighting from the train, which after a brief stop is on its way again, now following the Sarine valley upstream towards Gstaad.
The lakeshore towns of the Montreux Riviera makes perfect starting points for our slow travel train journey exploring the hills in Fribourg Canton above Lake Geneva. Photograph: Michal Ludwiczak/Alamy
Valley of La Sarine
On a side platform, another train awaits. It is a humble local service, with none of the flair of the Golden Pass train, which can be heard tooting its horn as it climbs up the ravine carved by the Sarine River. The local train is signed for Palézieux via Gruyères. Soon we are on our way and within a minute rattling right down the main street of Montbovon, passing the dairy and the baker to our left.
The local train to Palézieux waits to depart from Montbovon. Photograph: Hidden Europe
So perhaps this isn’t a train at all! Is it really a tram that masquerades as a train while waiting by platform 3 at Montbovon station? It is in fact a hybrid, sometimes running alongside roads, but elsewhere looping through forests and skirting chasms and gorges. These hills are the Prealps, a series of folded ranges that give real character to Switzerland’s Fribourg Canton. Not quite the real deal, you may think, but very special in their own way. The journey of 27 miles from Montbovon to Palézieux skirts the eastern, northern and then the western flank of Le Moléson, one of the most prominent peaks of the Fribourg Prealps. For Baedeker, Le Moléson was “the Rigi of western Switzerland,” an allusion to the mountain by Lake Lucerne that achieves no great height but affords stunning views of many Alpine ranges. You don’t need to climb to the summit of Le Moléson to appreciate the scenery. Even from the train there are remarkable views of distant, snow-covered peaks.
“People come for the landscape, but also for the cheese,” says a woman on the train who tells me she is travelling to visit a friend in hospital in Riaz. “But not on days like this,” she adds, alluding to the vagaries of weather on this early March day that has seen threatening clouds and hail showers.
The Sarine valley in the Fribourg Prealps. Photograph: Alex Schleif/Alamy
Dams control the river flow down the Sarine valley and we cruise along the edge of a reservoir with turquoise-blue waters. We pass the hydroelectric dam at Lessoc then pause at Albeuve where the pink station building has bright green shutters. Our train slips by meadows with plenty of cows and beehives. Then comes the announcement: “Prochain arrêt: Gruyères”.
Cheese and chocolate
I take the cue and alight from the train to discover that we are actually not in Gruyères at all, but in a community called Pringy. But the station name Gruyères pulls the crowds, even though very few of the cheese lovers who flock to Pringy ever visit Gruyères village itself, which is on a hilltop about a 20-minute walk away to the east.
La maison du Gruyère, just by the station in Pringy, has plastic cows on the roof while inside there are cheese-themed tours and tastings. For real devotees of all things Swiss, it’s even possible to buy a special Gruyère edition of Toblerone chocolate.
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A plastic cow welcomes visitors to La Maison du Gruyère, which offers cheese-themed tours and tastings. Photograph: David Taljat/Alamy
Back on the train towards Palézieux, the scenery gets better and better as we skirt the northern flank of Le Moléson, its steep, forested slopes rising up to the left of the railway. Now there are snow fences alongside more exposed sections of the track as the train traverses high pastures with old farmsteads dotted here and there across the landscape. The heavy clouds are clearing to give late afternoon sun, so I break my journey at the highest station on the line in the village of Semsales where a sign on the wooden station building proclaims that we are now at 858.1 metres above sea level.
Smoke on the water, and music in the air: the magic of Montreux, Switzerland
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With a couple of hours in Semsales, I hike up into the hills, gaining sufficient altitude to gaze across to the distant French Alps on the far side of Lac Léman away to the south. Closer to hand is the craggy summit of Le Moléson, its northern slopes still holding the last of the winter snow. I am chased down by gathering dusk, making haste back to the village to catch a train before night falls. From Semsales, it is just 20 minutes down to Palézieux, where our train arrives not in the main railway station but on a platform by the street outside. This being Switzerland, there is a fleet of waiting buses offering connections to surrounding villages. But I walk to the station and catch the local train down to Lausanne.
There are many wooden railway stations on this route. Semsales is the highest station on the line. Photograph: Hidden Europe
I loved this journey, and I would happily do the same again. It makes a perfect round trip for anyone staying in Lausanne or along the Montreux Riviera, travelling out from Montreux via Montbovon and then returning via Palézieux. Serene, pastoral landscapes with superb views of mountains make a winning combination.
The journey from Montbovon to Palézieux takes just 80 minutes. The full circuit from Lausanne or Montreux, out via Montbovon and back via Palézieux, takes three hours, but do allow time to stop off once or twice along the way. Trains run at least hourly on the entire circuit, with a half-hourly service on weekdays between Gruyères and Palézieux. The cheapest one-way fare from Montbovon to Palézieux is 17.40 Swiss francs (£15.75). Buy tickets at Montbovon before boarding. This ticket is valid for three hours, giving time for a short stopover along the way. A return ticket is 34.80 francs (£31.50), and is valid an entire day with unlimited stopovers, not merely on this route but on most public transport in Canton Fribourg. When exploring this line as part of a wider itinerary, an Interrail pass is often the best deal. Adult passes valid only in Switzerland are €165 for three days’ travel within a month, while a pass valid for 33 countries is €283 for four travel days within a month.
Nicky Gardner lives in Berlin. She is co-author of Europe by Rail: the Definitive Guide (Hidden Europe, £18.99). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy of the 17th edition from guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/apr/19/black-lives-matter-fence-mural-minnesota-row | US news | 2021-04-19T10:30:08.000Z | Amudalat Ajasa | Black Lives Matter fence at center of row in Minnesota city on edge | A simple suburban fence in Minnesota that has become a local attraction and a symbol of the battle for equality – but has also drawn critics – is now at the center of a row with the authorities.
Ryan Weyandt and his husband, Michael Hainlin, keep bumping up against deadlines to obey a city order to paint over the vivid statement adorning their fence declaring that Black Lives Matter.
The message has endured outside their house in West St Paul, with block capital letters about 6ft high, since not long after George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, was killed by a white police officer just a few miles away in Minneapolis last May.
The timing of the row is especially sensitive as the trial of former officer Derek Chauvin, charged with murdering Floyd, approaches its conclusion.
The entire Minneapolis-St Paul region was already on edge as a result, and tension was only heightened earlier this week by the fatal shooting of Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man, by a white police officer in Brooklyn Center on the outskirts of Minneapolis.
For months, the couple’s fence has been a magnet for people to drop off flowers, leave balloons or just swing by to take pictures or to thank them, in what has largely been a positive public response, Weyandt, a realtor, said.
“We didn’t want to stir a pot, it wasn’t about angering neighbors or aggravating anyone or trying to get under anyone’s skin,” Weyandt told the Guardian.
“We put this up so we could provoke at least one conversation and help someone get to a different thought level,” he added.
The mural also pays homage to the Black LGBTQ+ population, with the word “lives’’ painted with rainbow colors, especially to represent Black LGBTQ+ people who have been attacked and killed in the US, Weyandt said.
And last fall, Weyandt told the West St Paul Reader: “We feel that it’s our responsibility to lend voice and further legitimacy to our Black and brown brothers and sisters who are literally being murdered in broad daylight, in the middle of the street, in the center of the busiest cities, across America.”
A sign reading ‘stop state terror’ hangs on a perimeter security fence as protests over the fatal shooting of Daunte Wright by a police officer continued on Saturday. Photograph: John Minchillo/AP
However, the authorities of West St Paul had other ideas. After the fence message had been up for almost five months, the city sent Weyandt a letter stating that it violated ordinances, or local laws.
“The ordinance Ryan’s fence violates isn’t one about signs; the ordinance is about fences,” said West St Paul city council member Wendy Berry last week.
The fence ordinance prohibits fences from being more than one color or containing images or letters.
However, communications Weyandt originally received from the authorities in late November stated that he was in violation of different city laws.
These included one known as the non-commercial signs ordinance, which effectively bars public displays of messages that can be interpreted as political, unless it’s within a specified election cycle, and the signs ordinance which bars signs from being attached to fences.
In a mind-boggling train of events, Weyandt explained that he only recently learned that he was also in violation of the fence ordinance.
The city previously told Weyandt that he had to remove the mural by 11 December, but then gave him an extension due to winter weather conditions in Minnesota.
“Because it was November and it was cold, we didn’t expect them to try to repaint that fence in the cold,” Mayor Dave Napier of West St Paul told the Guardian, adding: “We allowed them until April 15 to remove their sign.”
Since 2017, Weyandt said he and Hainlin have put multiple signs on their fence for long periods without penalty, although they had not painted a mural on the fence before.
“At no point in time prior to the Black Lives Matter verbiage had I received anything from the city,” Weyandt said, adding: “It wasn’t until this particular message came up that they decided to take action.”
Discussions swirl within the city council regarding updating or removing the ordinances.
“The apparent consensus has been to stick with the current sign ordinance,” the West St Paul city manager, Ryan Schroeder, said, adding: “I’m told we have received multiple complaints about the sign.”
But Lisa Eng-Sarne, another city council member, spoke in favor of relaxing the relevant ordinances at the last meeting and said she doesn’t want to ban art from signs.
There have been some direct negative reactions.
The couple have been flipped off and threatened and have endured homophobic comments, Weyandt said.
“We actually left the house for five days … and went to my in-laws. We were afraid that the house was going to get set on fire in the middle of the night and we’d die in the house,” he said.
Council member Dick Vitelli emailed Weyandt to suggest the couple have the mural on the inside instead of the outside of the fence, saying: “You will be in compliance with our ordinance and more importantly you won’t be driving a wedge into our West St Paul community. But it seems like you are having more fun breaking the law and causing chaos.”
The city most recently said the mural had to go by 15 April and the couple has been considering painting the fence black when the weather improves. Meantime, they face a penalty and Weyandt said he was “OK paying some form of fine for the right of expression”.
Then in a twist earlier this month, West St Paul’s Republican former mayor, David Meisinger, painted on his fence two blocks away “Blue Lives Matter”, the pro-police slogan that emerged as a backlash to the Black Lives Matter movement.
Both ultimately face removal but not before a battle of the murals plays out amid simmering tension. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/jul/16/mexico-coronavirus-municipalities-of-hope | Global development | 2020-07-16T09:15:40.000Z | Madeleine Wattenbarger | Inexorable spread of coronavirus snuffs out Mexico's 'municipalities of hope' | As the coronavirus pandemic advances across Mexico, leaving thousands dead in its wake, Tepango de Rodríguez has – so far – remained untouched.
The town of about 4,000 people sits high in the mountains of the Sierra Norte in Puebla state, and was quick to apply strict preventive measures, closing its food market and installing health checkpoints.
“The local health councillor put in a lot of effort to remind people to stay home and use face masks,” said Ismael Domínguez Ruiz, a historian who runs a Facebook page in the town. “She was practically going door-to-door to remind people what to do.”
In May, Tepango de Rodríguez was included on a list of 324 towns that the Mexican government decided were eligible to reopen early, as part of a program called “Municipalities of Hope”.
The plan allowed places with no Covid-19 cases – and with no cases in surrounding areas – to start lifting restrictions, in an attempt to mitigate the shutdown’s devastating economic impact.
But less than two months later, Mexico has become one of the worst-affected countries in the world, with at least 311,000 cases and 36,000 deaths. And the list of Municipalities of Hope has dwindled to a few dozen.
One town – Ometepec, Guerrero, lasted less than 14 days on the list. “In just a few weeks, we went from zero to 47 confirmed cases and six dead,” said Ulises Moreno Tabarez, a postdoctoral researcher who lives in the town.
According to Dr Carlos Magis Rodríguez, a professor of medicine and a public health researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, a lack of serious lockdown measures doomed the strategy from the beginning. “If there were strict control of entrances and exits, a quarantine upon arrival, it could have worked,” Magis Rodríguez said. “The places this has worked are practically islands.”
The shutdown of the country’s capital has further complicated matters, sending thousands of potential carriers back to rural areas. Even in remote towns where residents installed their own health checkpoints, “they block entrances to block visitors with the virus – but not to residents who returned from Mexico City,” said Magis Rodríguez.
Lockdowns leave poor Latin Americans with impossible choice: stay home or feed families
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Across Latin America, poor families have faced an impossible choice – between obeying quarantine measures and starving, or venturing out to work despite the danger of infection.
But unlike other leaders, Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has not introduced stimulus measures to help the most vulnerable population, instead pushing through a string of severe austerity measures – even as he emphasized the need for the economy to stay open.
The president, popularly known as Amlo, has also downplayed the pandemic – claiming in April that Mexico had “tamed” the virus – and repeatedly emphasized the need for the economy to stay open, striking a notably more relaxed tone than warnings from the country’s Covid-19 tsar, Hugo López-Gatell.
Mexico’s Covid-19 tsar, Hugo López-Gatell, has clashed with the president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, over reopening the economy. Photograph: Marco Ugarte/AP
This week, López-Gatell expressed concerns about the virus’s resurgence in areas that had reopened too quickly – only to be contradicted by the president, who insisted that “going out to the street is necessary, if we earn our living on the street”.
Mexico has one of the lowest testing rates in the world, at approximately 2.5 tests per confirmed case, compared with the US rate of 12.52, the UK’s 22.57 – and New Zealand’s rate of 359.2.
Officials have admitted that lack of testing contributes to an undercounting of Covid cases and deaths, even in the country’s capital.
But even as they were allowed to reopen, most of the Municipalities of Hope had not applied Covid tests.
Nearly all of them were small, rural towns with limited transportation and health infrastructure, but the same factors that slowed the virus’s arrival also make it difficult to identify and treat Covid-19.
Even in towns with hospitals, local health infrastructures do not guarantee a speedy testing response.
“Here, they only test you if you have quite intense symptoms,” said Moreno Tabarez, who in May was tested at the local health center in Ometepec after experiencing Covid symptoms.
“They take the tests from here all the way to Acapulco, and they only send you results if you are positive, leaving everyone else who is tested in suspense.”
After several weeks of self-treatment, Moreno Tabarez recovered fully. He assumed he hadn’t had Covid. On 30 June he finally received a positive result.
Members of Mexico’s national guard keep watch on 2 July during the reopening of the beaches and hotels in Acapulco. Photograph: Javier Verdin/Reuters
The town of Juchitán was the last in the Pacific coast state of Guerrero to maintain its status as a Municipality of Hope. In late June, cases were diagnosed in neighbouring towns – but by then life in the town had returned to normal, with open stores, churches and restaurants.
“People are already careless about it,” said Edgar Liborio Huerta, who works as a construction company administrator in the town of roughly 2,000. “Very few people use face masks.”
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No Juchitán residents have yet been diagnosed with Covid-19 – not least because patients would have to go to a hospital either in Acapulco, about three hours away, or Ometepec, a 40-minute drive away, for testing.
Nonetheless, there are rumours of covid deaths. Elizabeth Liborio Magaña, a Juchitán resident, said that a relative of her husband was one of the suspected cases. “He had asthma problems and they were acting up,” she said. “He got a fever and died of respiratory failure, but they haven’t said if it was because of covid.”
To ward off their own outbreak, Juchitan’s authorities continue to take preventive measures. They cancelled the town’s patron saint festivals, usually held in July and August, which tend to attract visitors from all over the region.
Meanwhile, the struggle between health and solvency continues. “We have to go back slowly to normal,” said Liborio Huerta. “It’s not because the pandemic is over, but because of the economy.”
This article was amended on 18 July 2020 to correct the spelling of the surname of Dr Ulises Moreno Tabarez. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/07/the-guardian-view-on-abortion-northern-irelands-shame | Opinion | 2016-01-07T19:30:34.000Z | Editorial | The Guardian view on abortion: Northern Ireland’s shame | Editorial | To grasp the real meaning of the law on abortion in Northern Ireland, put out of mind the finger-jabbing abstractions of the Protestant politicians and the Catholic priests, and instead listen to the voices of the women who have lived with the practical consequences. This week they have been sharing their stories through the Guardian: tales of racking up debts to fund clinic fees in England, of lonely flights taken without the partner who should have been there to hold a hand, tales of seeking advice from doctors too fearful of prison to say anything useful, of sourcing illicit pills on the internet and fervently hoping that you’ve read the instructions right, and of the need to get your story straight before making a judgment about whether the bleeding has got to the point where A&E cannot be avoided.
Such terrible things are happening within the UK of 2016. One lesson is the sheer futility of presuming to second-guess the ethical and practical judgments that women make about their own wombs. However much a moralising lawmaker may wish to force a woman to carry on with a pregnancy she does not want, whatever obstacles he may put in the way of her taking control, he will often fail. When an unwanted pregnancy can warp a whole future, neither the travel costs nor the dangers of self-administered treatment will be a decisive deterrent, any more than the occasional horrors of the backstreet abortion prevented them happening back in Britain’s own Vera Drake days. The rest of the UK woke up to this reality half a century ago, with the Abortion Act of 1967. But such is the macho, sectarian politics of Northern Ireland that the province remains saddled with Victorian law, and indeed, in certain respects, the last few years have seen the regime of criminalisation become harsher.
A woman qualifies for an exceptional termination only where continuing with a pregnancy would render her a “physical or mental wreck”. As well as being shot through with misogyny, this anachronistic legal test is hopelessly ambiguous. And so it left doctors room, until a few years ago, to invoke maternal mental health in justifying the abortion of abnormal foetuses already fated not to survive. But after some alarmist noises from the attorney general, John Larkin – a man who once likened abortion of deformed foetuses to “putting a bullet in the back of the head of the child two days after it’s born” – the executive issued draft guidelines in 2013, which precluded any automatic exception for fatal foetal abnormalities, and also highlighted the legal threat hanging over practitioners giving advice. Although this was only draft policy, doctors were cowed, and the tiny number of abortions performed in the province dived in 2013-14. It was in this context, with the state effectively mandating women to go through with stillbirths, that a high court judge ruled in November that the near-blanket ban breached the Human Rights Act. It was, Mr Justice Horner explained, no use weighing the rights of the unborn child against the rights of the mother when that child was anyway doomed. It was not “unborn life” that was being protected, only the certainty of unborn death down the road.
The political will may, perhaps, be mustered to fix the specific problem of fatal foetal abnormalities. But even that is not guaranteed: Mr Larkin’s reaction to November’s ruling was to seek out grounds for appeal. Beyond that, the judgment may also move things along on rape cases, where the unspoken aim of some anti-abortionists, restricting female sexual autonomy, does not apply. But even as a female first minister takes up the reins, there are few hopes for any wider recasting of reproductive rights.
Several women who had an abortion relayed to the Guardian the burden of living with painful secrets, and the dread, or the experience, of having that secret betrayed. The concern of the old political order may very well be to lock this shame culture in place. In doing so, however, it brings nothing but shame on Northern Ireland. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/may/22/liberal-mps-yet-to-concede-to-teal-independents-as-outcomes-hinge-on-postal-votes | Australia news | 2022-05-22T03:07:18.000Z | Paul Karp | Tim Wilson admits defeat but other Liberal MPs yet to concede to teal independents | Tim Wilson has conceded defeat to independent Zoe Daniel in Goldstein, after a string of Liberal MPs indicated they could hold out while postal votes are counted despite a slim theoretical path to victory.
Independents are leading with margins of at least 4,000 votes in the blue-ribbon inner-city seats of Goldstein and Kooyong in Melbourne, as well as North Sydney. Josh Frydenberg and Trent Zimmerman are yet to concede after the teal sweep that appears to have wiped out a generation of moderate Liberals.
On Sunday the independent in Wentworth, Allegra Spender, revealed she “hadn’t heard from [the Liberal MP] Dave Sharma today”. Spender said she would be the next member for Wentworth. She currently has a lead of 7,681 votes and is up 56.7% to 43.3% in two-party-preferred terms.
In the Perth seat of Curtin, Celia Hammond is yet to concede to Kate Chaney, despite trailing by 3,746 votes.
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Guardian Australia understands that Liberal MP Jason Falinski called his opponent in Mackellar, Sophie Scamps, leaving a message to concede defeat on Saturday evening.
With 69.5% of the vote counted, Zoe Daniel led in Goldstein by 5,617 votes on Saturday evening, a two-party-preferred result of 53.8% for the independent to Wilson’s 46.2%.
Wilson suffered a 13.3% swing against him, bringing the Liberal primary down to 39.4%. In Goldstein, there were 21,374 valid postal applications, of which 15,256 postal votes have been returned.
On Sunday, Wilson told reporters in Melbourne that based on the first batch of postal votes it was “increasingly unlikely I’ll be in a position to be re-elected”. “I’m formally conceding defeat.”
Wilson said it “wasn’t as though” he had lost the seat due to factors unique to his representation of Goldstein, noting the Liberals had suffered swings to independents in Kooyong, Wentworth, Mackellar, and North Sydney, and to Labor in Higgins.
Earlier on Sunday Frydenberg told reporters in Melbourne that postal votes were about “12% of the overall vote” in Kooyong and that he would wait until more are counted before commenting on the “particular results” his electorate.
“It is mathematically possible that I could retain Kooyong but it is obviously very, very difficult,” the treasurer said.
With 67.8% of the vote counted in Kooyong, Frydenberg trails Monique Ryan by 4,946 votes, down 45.6% to 54.4% in two-party-preferred terms.
According to the Australian Electoral Commission, some 23,380 electors in Kooyong applied for postal votes, with 16,676 returned but not counted and the rest not returned.
Frydenberg said he would “take some time to reflect on my future plans”, promising to “spend more time with the kids and with my wife”, but did not rule out a future political tilt.
“Well, I am 50 … What is it they say, ‘50 as the new 30’? I definitely have got plenty of fire in my belly, plenty of time to do other things.”
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Earlier, Daniel told reporters in Melbourne that “obviously counting is still to happen”.
“But [ABC psephologist] Antony Green has called it. And we’ll go with that, with confidence in the numbers as much as there is some counting still to come,” the former ABC journalist said.
“It’s a big life change for me. It’s exciting though, and it’s a way of making a contribution to community that I never necessarily expected.
“But I have been so embraced by the volunteers who’ve worked on my campaign – that has been wonderfully positive. And I look forward to providing honest, sincere representation for the people.”
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Wilson told Guardian Australia: “Time in parliament shouldn’t be measured in terms or years but outcomes. I’m immensely proud of everything we achieved in the last six years for the nation.”
In North Sydney, independent Kylea Tink leads Zimmerman by 4,397 votes, up 53.7% to 46.3% in two-party-preferred terms. Electors in that seat applied for 19,994 postal votes, of which 8,290 have been returned. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jan/27/who-chief-backs-neil-young-over-covid-misinformation-row-with-spotify-joe-rogan | Technology | 2022-01-27T17:34:48.000Z | Harriet Sherwood | WHO chief backs Neil Young over Covid misinformation row with Spotify | The World Health Organization chief has backed the veteran rock star Neil Young in his dispute with the music streaming behemoth Spotify, thanking the musician for “standing up against misinformation and inaccuracies” around Covid vaccinations.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO’s director general, tweeted that “we all have a role to play to end this pandemic and infodemic” – in particular social media platforms.
Spotify has begun removing Young’s music from its platform after an ultimatum issued by the star earlier this week to the company. Referring to controversial podcasts by Joe Rogan hosted by Spotify, Young said: “They can have Rogan or Young. Not both.”
Spotify swiftly made its choice, triggering an almighty storm over anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, cancel culture and the policing of social media.
Many of Young’s fans and supporters of his stance called for a boycott of the streaming platform, and for other artists to follow his lead. “I stand with Neil Young” and “#CancelSpotify” became rallying calls on social media on Thursday.
The actor and activist Mia Farrow tweeted: “Wow @Spotify you chose to keep creepy, dangerous liar Joe Rodan over the magnificent Neil Young ?”
There was no immediate sign of other big names in the music industry siding with Young against Spotify – an indication perhaps of its market dominance. Between 2010 and 2020, Spotify’s share of the US music market rose from 7% to 83%.
The controversy began with an open letter from Young to his manager and record label, posted earlier this week but since taken down. The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, hosted exclusively on Spotify and with an estimated audience of 11 million, had “tremendous influence”, the letter said.
“Spotify is spreading fake information about vaccines – potentially causing death to those who believe the disinformation being spread by them,” Young wrote. The streaming platform had a responsibility to “mitigate the spread of misinformation on its platform.”
He instructed his manager to “let Spotify know immediately TODAY that I want all my music off their platform. They can have Rogan or Young. Not both.”
In a statement issued on Wednesday, Spotify responded by saying: “We regret Neil’s decision to remove his music from Spotify, but hope to welcome him back soon.”
The company also said it had “detailed content policies in place and we’ve removed over 20,000 podcast episodes relating to Covid since the start of the pandemic”.
Rogan signed a $100m deal in 2020 giving Spotify exclusive rights to his show, which features conversations with guests on a range of issues, including politics, comedy, conspiracies and cancel culture. It is Spotify’s most popular podcast and one of the biggest in the world.
Three months ago, the company reported its revenue had grown 27% over the previous year, and it named the Joe Rogan Experience as a factor in the double digit growth in its podcast business.
Last year, Rogan was criticised by the White House chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci for suggesting that young, healthy Americans did not need to be vaccinated against Covid. The comment was “incorrect”, said Fauci.
In the past few weeks, hundreds of scientists and medical experts have signed an open letter to Spotify, saying that Rogan had “repeatedly spread misleading and false claims on his podcast, provoking distrust in science and medicine” and had “spread a number of unsubstantiated conspiracy theories”.
They highlighted a three-hour episode of Rogan’s podcast, in which Robert Malone, a scientist and vaccine sceptic, claimed that “a third of the population” had “become hypnotised” through “mass formation psychosis” as if in Nazi Germany and “totally wrapped up in whatever Fauci in the mainstream media feeds them”.
Despite Spotify’s claim that it has removed thousands of podcasts relating to Covid since the start of the pandemic, Rogan has repeatedly said the company has not policed his content.
“Spotify has asked me to change nothing. They’ve never – they’ve been amazing. I’m very happy with them, I’m very happy,” he said last year.
Young, 76, whose hits include Heart of Gold, Harvest Moon, Helpless and Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World, has a long if inconsistent political history. His album, Living With War, released in the aftermath of the Iraq war, called for the impeachment of President George W Bush.
Donald Trump, he said, had “betrayed the people, exaggerated and amplified the truth to foment hatred” and that “social media … is crippling our belief system, turning us against one another.”
Last year, he sold half of the rights to his song catalogue to Hipgnosis for an undisclosed amount, but believed to be nine figures.
A clue to his views on viruses and vaccines may be found in his autobiography, Waging Heavy Peace, published in 2012. He recalls contracting polio as a five-year-old before a vaccine was widely available, quoting his brother, Bob: “It was obvious that his life was on the line.”
Young wrote: “We had a quarantine sign on our house that said Poliomyelitis on it, and warned people about not entering or something to that effect. No one wanted to be near me for a while.”
He has had other serious health issues during his life, including epilepsy and a brain aneurysm.
A spokesperson for Young said it was not known whether the star would make any further comment on the issues concerning Spotify and Joe Rogan. “He’s very much his own person on things like this,” the spokesperson said.
Spotify has been contacted for comment. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/apr/03/ian-mckellen-10-best-shakespeare-roles-on-film | Film | 2016-04-03T06:30:25.000Z | Kate Kellaway | Ian McKellen’s favourite Shakespeare roles on film | It is 400 years since Shakespeare died and, as part of the festivities, Ian McKellen is spearheading a selection of Shakespearean films at the BFI in London that will tour 110 countries, including Cuba, Iraq, Russia and the US, in the most extensive film programme ever undertaken. We will be able to revel in Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo & Juliet (were star-crossed lovers ever more swooningly starry?), in Akira Kurosawa’s Ran – a compelling Japanese reinvention of King Lear – and salute a masterly, and remastered, Richard III, which will be presented live on stage for a UK-wide simulcast starring McKellen himself.
The 10 best modern takes on Shakespeare – in pictures
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I met McKellen at the BFI last month to quiz him about his choice of the 10 best Shakespearean performances on film. I found him in good form and in possession of a dashing green hat of the sort a South American gaucho might wear – or a knight of the theatre. I asked whether he thought Shakespeare would have been a man of the cinema, and he said he thought he would have preferred theatre, if only because playwrights tend to be better regarded than screenwriters.
I also asked whether it was necessary, if you were to be a great actor, to perform Shakespeare? For English actors, he said, it probably was. He added: “Shakespeare was an actor, you know.” And then, with obvious delight: “It is sometimes said that the greatest Englishman was an actor…which is rather sweet, isn’t it?” And with that, we sat down to business.
Your first choice is Judi Dench as Lady Macbeth (1979), directed by Trevor Nunn. This film started life as a theatre production in which you played Macbeth.
It began on stage at the Other Place, Stratford. It was two hours long and played without an interval. Trevor Nunn told us he would “photograph the text”, by which he meant there would be no distractions in the film – no Scotland, scenery or even much costume – it was all in closeup. And this suited Judi because that was how she had played it in the theatre. She did not have to adapt her performance on film and was able to retain its intensity.
Judi Dench in Macbeth (1979)
What’s interesting for actors is that this was a performance Judi had given hundreds of times, yet in front of the camera it seems actually to be happening to her – that is the trick of acting I suppose. Usually, in film, you are inventing in the moment but she was remembering. At the heart of her Lady Macbeth is the love for her husband, a need for that relationship – no matter how wrong it had gone in the past. Judi made sense of everything.
I can remember suggesting to Trevor Nunn that the Macbeths were like the Nixons. He said: “No, no, no, no – the Kennedys.” The Kennedys were the most popular and glamorous of couples. The Macbeths are too, in their own way. No one could believe they could go so madly off the rails.
Your second choice is Ralph Fiennes in Coriolanus (2011), which was also his directorial debut. This was a film set in what could be seen as 1990s war‑torn Serbia…
Like Olivier, Branagh and me, Ralph Fiennes was working on a play he had done in the theatre. He was able to translate a story set in the ancient past and bring it up to date. Fiennes achieves a wonderful immediacy as Coriolanus. This is big-hearted acting, yet small enough for the screen. Fiennes and Gerard Butler’s Tullus Aufidius are, in this film, twinned as powerful fighting machines.
All film-makers have to remember that the camera is almost a character and that is where you can potentially (although they avoided it here) run into problems. There is, after all, no character in Shakespeare called Camera.
You have cheated a bit by choosing three actors: Maggie Smith, Kristin Scott Thomas and Annette Bening from Richard III (1995), which you adapted and starred in and which is now being remastered for the BFI.
My initial feeling was gratitude that they all agreed, for very little money, to be involved in a project that was a bit crazy, and to slot into a production they had not been part of before. Maggie Smith played my mother. I had always thought she was the crucial person in Richard’s life, the one who sent him off-kilter. She hated him even before he was born and said so – and you can’t have your mother say that to you without being affected by it. Richard returns hatred for hatred. Maggie brought considerable experience in handling Shakespeare’s verse and honoured the metre and did everything else that I approved of (I began acting at Cambridge, where they were very concerned about blank verse speaking). Maggie spoke with all that inner force she has, and indignation and power.
Richard III (1995) trailer
Kristin Scott Thomas was great too. She realised Lady Anne was on her uppers when Richard woos her. He promises her a return to the corridors of power. On film, we were able to continue to imagine the story of Lady Anne, in silent moments. Coming over to work with British actors playing Shakespeare, as Annette Bening did, was very brave and she was terrific. They all were. Women are terribly important to that story.
Patrick Stewart as Lear in King of Texas (2002) – this is a more unconventional choice.
I don’t know if there is a word of Shakespeare in it. But it is wonderful. It takes the story of King Lear and pops it into a modern Texan setting. Patrick plays the Texan master rancher, the king of Texas, and it is great.
You see there are three sorts of Shakespeare on film. One is the direct photographing of a theatre production (as with Trevor Nunn’s Macbeth), then there is running away with a Shakespeare – like Kurosawa or Uli Edel [director of King of Texas] – so that it is more cinema than theatre and, third, there is a category in between in which I would include my Richard III, Ralph Fiennes’s Coriolanus and Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet. They would not be the films they are were the people who made them not steeped in Shakespeare. These directors might cut Shakespeare’s words but never his intentions.
We also have to remember that many of these plots were themselves pinched by Shakespeare. He only invented one plot – The Tempest. Tom Stoppard once told me the most difficult thing about writing a play was coming up with the plot, which was why he liked to adapt things. It was the same for Shakespeare. So we have to be careful when we say the most wonderful thing about Shakespeare is his plots because they are not his.
Paul Scofield in King Lear (1971)
You have chosen Paul Scofield twice – first in Peter Brook’s King Lear (1971)…
This was an example of a stage production brought to the cinema with a full-ish text: you get a lot of the play. If you couldn’t see Lear on stage, this would be a very good substitute. I don’t know whether Brook’s film will stand the test of time. It might look a bit old-fashioned quite soon, but I don’t think Scofield’s performance will date. He could draw an audience into his soul. He did it with a remarkable voice and this beautiful face, even though he was far too young to play Lear – he was in his 40s. He looks grizzled in the film but doesn’t really look old.
And you have chosen him again as the ghost in Zeffirelli’s Hamlet (1990).
You might think: right, with poor old Shakespeare on stage – how do you do ghosts? And you might then assume that with cinema and its technological magic there would be an opportunity to conjure a believable and frightening ghost. But all Scofield does is sit there – an apparently three-dimensional person, leaning exhausted against the battlements as he tells the story of his murder. What he has to say is almost whispered. It is a brilliant translation of the part on to the screen. You could not have got away with that whispering on stage. It still makes me shiver. Scofield is frightening by being very ordinary – very normal. He doesn’t play a ghost at all. But I suppose if you are a ghost, you don’t know that about yourself, do you?
Orson Welles as Falstaff in Chimes at Midnight (1965)…
Orson Welles was a considerable man of the theatre and learned his trade assisting Micheál Mac Liammóir, the flamboyant Irish actor. But you couldn’t say Chimes at Midnight was Shakespeare, the whole script was an adapted concept. I suppose you could try to perform the filmed version on stage, but you would be robbing the audience of the thrill of Henry IV: Parts I and II, where you see all of society.
Here, you just get Falstaff’s life. Why is it special? It is just that the screen is full of that big man and you watch him with a lot of joy. There are not a lot of Falstaffs that convince. And Welles was a master, wasn’t he, of giving very big performances on screen – Citizen Kane, Othello, The Third Man…
Romeo + Juliet trailer
You have chosen “everyone” in Baz Luhrmann’s wildly inventive Romeo + Juliet (1996), set on Verona beach starring Claire Danes and Leonardo DiCaprio.
What I like about this film is that Baz Luhrmann seems to have read the play, understood it and translated it into a piece of cinema. That does not mean he slavishly follows Shakespeare’s text or that he does not have all sorts of inventions of his own – such as introducing guns instead of swords. But the characters are right there, you do not have to go looking for them. They are vibrant and present. The fact that the script deviated and that there were shocking things designed to scare and excite the audience seems to me to be in the spirit of the play.
The most touching thing was that I had enjoyed it so much and when I eventually met Baz Luhrmann, he said: “I would have lost heart and never made Romeo + Juliet if I hadn’t seen your Richard III.” So that was nice. We are all of a breed, the people I have been talking about – theatre people. It does not mean that theatre people are necessarily going to be good film-makers, but it does mean that when putting Shakespeare on as cinema they are going to go to the heart of what Shakespeare is – the words and the intensity of feeling. They are not going to use Shakespeare, they are going to try to translate him.
Laurence Olivier in Richard III (1955), which he also directed…
Olivier’s Henry V, Richard III and Hamlet are rooted in the theatre but broadened out to accommodate the cinema screen. It is difficult for me to judge but I am very glad to see those three performances up close. Olivier was too old to be playing Hamlet. It wouldn’t be allowed nowadays. He doesn’t look like an undergraduate, does he? But his Richard III is totally successful because the character is larger than life. You can sniff the fact that it began its life on stage.
Olivier used to say that he worked from the outside in, and what you get on the outside of his Richard III is the monstrous confidence of a bad man. It is not easy to play villainy with relish, but Olivier knew it worked because he had played it in the theatre so many times. When I was playing Richard III, I was interested as much in the world in which Richard functioned as I was with him himself. In our production, you know what everyone does for a job and get a sense of society having been corrupted. In the Olivier version, it is all costume and lords and ladies and rank is unclear. There were no soldiers’ uniforms in the 15th century.
Titus trailer
Anthony Hopkins in Titus (1999).
This film was directed by Julie Taymor and was another richly theatrical enterprise, an Italian-American-British historical thriller adaptation of the play. You know Julie Taymor – she directed The Lion King [the stage musical]. Anthony Hopkins’s performance is tremendous. It bursts out at the seams on screen – in a good way. Watching it you just feel: the pain, the pain, the pain… Anthony Hopkins is a new friend of mine and so I wouldn’t want to say anything critical about him – but that is all right because there is nothing critical I have to say.
BFI Presents Shakespeare on Film runs until 22 May. Richard III will be simulcast to UK cinemas from BFI Southbank on 28 April, alongside a live on-stage discussion between Ian McKellen and director Richard Loncraine. The remastered Richard III will be available on DVD from 20 June | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/oct/18/lankum-review-dark-raucous-poetry-from-irish-folk-miscreants | Music | 2018-10-18T14:02:40.000Z | Jude Rogers | Lankum review – dark, raucous poetry from Irish folk miscreants | Indie label Rough Trade’s latest signings are a full-throttle lot: punks Amyl and the Sniffers, sludge-rockers Starcrawler, and an Irish quartet who play uilleann pipes, harmonium, fiddle and accordion. But discard any thoughts about folk’s gentility. Lankum sing murder ballads, drinking songs and originals about the modern world’s terrors as blackly and beautifully as the Watersons, throwing in eerie drones for good measure. Imagine the perfect house-band for a Coen brothers’ folk-horror movie.
Still, their tour’s opening night is raucously celebratory stuff, thanks to younger fans in the crowd (unusually for folk gigs), and brothers’ Ian and Daragh Lynch’s hilarious between-song rapport (they review both the beer and the applause; the group’s original name, Lynched, came from them). Cormac MacDiarmada’s stunning fiddle speaks for him, while singer Radie Peat initially looks stonier, cupping her ear with one hand. When her heartbreakingly brutal voice arrives, it’s like an earthquake opening the ground. The band harmonising together, on songs such as resistance anthem Peat Bog Soldiers, has a similarly bracing, pulse-quickening effect.
First world war street song Salonika sounds bruisingly relevant to contemporary conflicts. An original, The Granite Gaze, about the Catholic church’s treatment of Irish women, also startles with its dark poetry. Peat points out a lyric she wrote about women’s experiences before Ireland’s abortion referendum: “Our daughters sneak across the foam.” “I burst with joy when I sing that now,” she says.
After a tender take on the traditional Hares on the Mountain, the night ends with the band on their feet, blasting out drinking song Fall Down Billy O’Shea to a wild, whooping crowd. A younger, darker Pogues with more astonishing power, Lankum deserve to get even bigger.
On tour until 28 October | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/jan/07/oprah-winfrey-speech-lifetime-achievement-golden-globes | Film | 2018-01-08T13:35:10.000Z | Jake Nevins | Oprah Winfrey's stirring Golden Globes speech prompts talk of White House run | Oprah Winfrey brought the Golden Globes audience to their feet with a powerful speech as she accepted the Cecil B DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award on Sunday night, prompting speculation about a run for the White House.
Golden Globes 2018: Three Billboards wins four but Oprah steals the night
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The notion of the talkshow host and entrepreneur running for president against Donald Trump in 2020 was raised by the awards’ host, Seth Meyers, in his opening monologue.
“In 2011, I told some jokes about our current president at the White House correspondents dinner, jokes about how he was unqualified to be president,” Meyers said. “And some have said that night convinced him to run. And if that’s true, I would just like to say, ‘Oprah you will never be president.’”
After Winfrey’s speech her partner, Stedman Graham, told the Los Angeles Times: “It’s up to the people. She would absolutely do it.”
Celebrities used Twitter to urge Winfrey to run. The comedian Sarah Silverman tweeted “Oprah/Michelle 2020” while the actor Leslie Odom Jr wrote: “She’s running. A new day is on the way.”
After an introduction by Reese Witherspoon, the actor and philanthropist took to the stage to address racial injustice and sexual abuse on an evening in which women wore black to show support for the #MeToo movement.
Winfrey began by discussing Sidney Poitier, who won the 1964 Academy Award for best actor and, in doing so, became the first black man to win an Oscar. Eighteen years later, he received the Cecil B DeMille award at the 1982 Golden Globes.
Winfrey said: “In 1982, Sidney received the Cecil B DeMille award right here at the Golden Globes and it is not lost on me that at this moment, there are some little girls watching as I become the first black woman to be given this same award.
“It is an honor – it is an honor and it is a privilege to share the evening with all of them and also with the incredible men and women who have inspired me, who challenged me, who sustained me and made my journey to this stage possible.”
Oprah Winfrey’s speech in full.
She continued: “I want to thank the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. We know the press is under siege these days. We also know it’s the insatiable dedication to uncovering the absolute truth that keeps us from turning a blind eye to corruption and to injustice.”
Addressing victims of sexual abuse, Oprah noted that the recent revelations about Hollywood’s endemic sexual misconduct go well beyond the entertainment industry, noting that the issue “transcends any culture, geography, race, religion, politics, or workplace”.
The Rape of Recy Taylor: behind one of the year's most vital documentaries
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She went on: “So I want tonight to express gratitude to all the women who have endured years of abuse and assault because they, like my mother, had children to feed and bills to pay and dreams to pursue.
“They’re the women whose names we’ll never know. They are domestic workers and farm workers. They are working in factories and they work in restaurants and they’re in academia, engineering, medicine and science. They’re part of the world of tech and politics and business. They’re our athletes in the Olympics and they’re our soldiers in the military.”
Winfrey then referenced Recy Taylor, a black woman who was abducted in 1944 in Alabama and raped by six men. When her story was reported to the NAACP, Winfrey explained, Rosa Parks investigated her case but was unable, in the Jim Crow era, to bring her abusers to justice.
“Recy Taylor died 10 days ago, just shy of her 98th birthday,” Winfrey said. “She lived as we all have lived, too many years in a culture broken by brutally powerful men. For too long, women have not been heard or believed if they dare speak the truth to the power of those men. But their time is up. Their time is up.”
“So I want all the girls watching here, now, to know that a new day is on the horizon!” Winfrey concluded, as the audience gave her a standing ovation.
“And when that new day finally dawns, it will be because of a lot of magnificent women, many of whom are right here in this room tonight, and some pretty phenomenal men, fighting hard to make sure that they become the leaders who take us to the time when nobody ever has to say ‘me too’ again.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/25/brett-kavanaugh-second-accuser-testimony | US news | 2018-09-26T00:34:57.000Z | Lauren Gambino | She has nothing': Trump attacks second woman to accuse Brett Kavanaugh | Donald Trump has disparaged one of two women to accuse Brett Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct, saying she “has nothing” on his supreme court nominee and was “messed up” when the alleged incident took place, as he accused Democrats of running a “con game” to stop the nomination.
Trump, seated next to the Colombian president at the United Nations in New York, cast doubt on allegations brought by Deborah Ramirez, who claimed that she was harassed by Kavanaugh when they were first-year students at Yale.
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“The second accuser has nothing,” Trump said. “The second accuser thinks maybe it could have been him, maybe not. She admits she was drunk. She admits time lapses.”
“She was totally inebriated and all messed up and she doesn’t know,” he continued, adding sarcastically: “Gee, let’s not make him a supreme court judge.”
In Washington, the Senate judiciary committee scheduled a vote on his nomination for Friday morning, just one day after the panel will hear public testimony from Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford about her claim that he sexually assaulted her when they were in high school.
Kavanaugh has vigorously denied the allegations. “I had never sexually assaulted anyone, not in high school, not ever,” he said in an interview with Fox News.
Dianne Feinstein, the ranking Democrat on the committee, called it “outrageous” to schedule a vote before hearing from Ford.
Chuck Schumer said it was ‘galling’ for Mitch McConnell to blame Democrats for playing partisan games when he has done ‘more than maybe anyone to politicize the supreme court nomination process’. Photograph: Drew Angerer/Getty Images
“First Republicans demanded Dr Blasey Ford testify immediately. Now Republicans don’t even need to hear her before they move ahead with a vote,” she said. “It’s clear to me that Republicans don’t want this to be a fair process.”
The committee chairman, Chuck Grassley, insisted that scheduling the vote was only a precautionary measure in the event that members were prepared to move forward on Friday.
“Still taking this 1 step at a time,” he wrote on Twitter. “After [hearing] Dr Ford & Judge Kavanaugh’s testimony – if we’re ready to vote, we will vote. If we aren’t ready, we won’t.”
The move sets the stage for a vote in the full Senate sometime next week and comes as Republicans increasingly express confidence that Kavanaugh will be confirmed.
'I'm not going anywhere': Kavanaugh defends himself on Fox News
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In a speech on the Senate floor on Tuesday, the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, promised a swift vote after Thursday’s hearing, arguing that “vague, unsubstantiated and uncorroborated allegations of 30-plus-year-old misconduct” were “nowhere near grounds to nullify someone’s career or destroy their good name”.
He also continued his attacks on Democrats, accusing them of failing to afford Kavanaugh any “presumption of innocence” in their effort to keep him off the court.
Speaking after McConnell, the minority leader, Chuck Schumer, said the Kentucky Republican should “apologize immediately” to Ford for calling her allegations against the judge part of a “smear” job led by Democrats. He said it was “galling” for McConnell to blame Democrats for playing partisan games with the accusations when he has done “more than maybe anyone to politicize the supreme court nomination process”.
“Don’t they want the truth?” Schumer asked of Republicans.
On Tuesday afternoon, Schumer reiterated Democrats’ demand for an FBI investigation into the allegations against Kavanaugh.
The Alaska senator Lisa Murkowski, seen as a crucial Republican swing vote, appeared to agree. Asked if the FBI should reopen its background investigation into the judge, she told reporters: “Well, it would sure clear up all the questions, wouldn’t it?”
Senate Republicans hardened their defense of Kavanaugh even as they sought to assure Ford that she would receive “fair and respectful” treatment when she testifies on Thursday. McConnell announced on Tuesday that Republicans had hired an unnamed female attorney to handle questioning during the hearing, with Democrats saying the move was inconsistent with the GOP pledge to avoid a “circus”.
Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican member of the committee, said rejecting Kavanaugh’s nomination on the basis of Ford’s allegation alone would send a strong signal to future supreme court nominees.
1:47
White House suggests ‘left wing conspiracy’ as third Kavanaugh allegation set to emerge – video
“If this is enough – 35 years in the past, no specifics about location and time, no corroboration – God help the next batch of nominees that come forward,” he told reporters. “It’s going to be hard to recruit good people if you go down based on allegations that are old and unverified.”
But Kavanaugh’s fate rests with a handful of Republican senators: Murkowski, Susan Collins of Maine and Jeff Flake of Arizona. Republicans hold a narrow 51-49 majority in the Senate.
Collins and Murkowski, who are not on the Senate committee, told reporters this week that they would wait for the hearing to make up their mind. Flake, who is retiring, was among the first to call for delaying a committee vote to hear from Ford.
Conservative women uneasy with Kavanaugh in wake of sexual assault claims
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Ford has alleged that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her at a party more than three decades ago, when he was 17 and she was 15, saying he put his hand over her mouth to stop her screaming as he attempted rape. Ford reluctantly came forward after pieces of her account began leaking to the press and she later agreed to appear before the Senate committee.
There is no plan yet for Ramirez, the second accuser, to testify before the panel. In an interview with the New Yorker magazine, Ramirez accused Kavanaugh of thrusting his genitals in her face at a drunken dorm party during the 1983-84 academic calendar.
Earlier on Tuesday, the White House indicated that it was open to the idea of hearing testimony from Ramirez at that hearing before the Senate judiciary committee.
“Certainly we would be open to that, and that process could take place on Thursday,” Sanders said during an appearance on ABC’s Good Morning America. “The president has been clear, let them speak.”
A third woman is expected to step forward with new allegations this week. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jul/21/days-of-awe-am-homes-review | Books | 2018-07-21T08:00:35.000Z | Tessa Hadley | Days of Awe by AM Homes review – disorienting stories | Reading AM Homes’s new collection of stories, I’m brought up against that dull old chestnut: do we need to like characters in fiction in order to enjoy reading about them? Well no, of course not, again and again of course not. It’s pretty near impossible, for instance, to like Homes’s collapsed, incompetent, self-pitying couple Elaine and Paul in her 1999 novel Music for Torching – and yet the funny awfulness of their dialogue and their doomed attempts at self-improvement are compelling and page-turning; when their child is taken hostage in a shoot-out, they are sublimely craven. It’s not only Elaine and Paul; it’s their whole set. “Saturday afternoon at the cookout, regardless of the fact that they were all together the night before, they act glad to see each other. Perhaps they are not acting, perhaps they are genuinely glad to see each other. Perhaps it was that difficult being left to their own devices for twenty-four hours.” Fiction needs some meanness in its mix; even in the most wholehearted writing, a grain of it can ward off fatuousness. Homes is a mean writer, at her merciless satirical best in skewering the comedy of disappointment and dread, the squirm of self-indulgence and self-justification.
AM Homes interview: 'I write the things we don't want to say out loud'
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But here in this new collection of stories I’m having a problem. It feels as if it’s to do with liking the characters, but perhaps it’s just that the rhythm of the writing has lost its elasticity somewhere. In the long title story, a war correspondent and a novelist meet at a summit on genocide, and although the novelist is in a relationship with another woman, they have sex and a lot of conversation. It isn’t clear at first whether we’re supposed to admire them for their sassy talk and crazy lives or get some comic leverage on their self-importance: unfortunately, I think it’s the former. “‘Why are we here?’ she asks. ‘Why do you and I choose to live in the pain of others?’ ‘It’s who we are,’ he says.”
The back-and-forth timing of this comic exchange feels wrong in a context that surely requires something more faltering and realist, more circumspect: tonally, this is insecure. And the satire, or the point of the story, is dispersed around too many targets at once. Is it a risk-taking send-up of Holocaust-studies earnestness, or a soul-searching quest for meaning? In the textures of fiction on the page, down among the sentences, those different things are oil and water. On the one hand a comic plot revolves around some chocolate penises, on the other the protagonists’ “kiss is deep and filled with a thousand years of longing, a thousand years of grief”.
Some of the stories are so light they’re fantastical and hardly make contact with real earth
Other stories are much lighter, so light they’re fantastical and hardly make contact with real earth. In “All Is Good Except for the Rain” two women go out for lunch – “a pocket of olive juice, a mustard-ginger foam on the top” – and swap tales from their awful, idle lives, almost too awful to be amusing: the husband who left one of them, and told her he loathed her and that her tits were hard like rocks, has come back home. They console themselves with pudding.
In “Hello Everybody” and “She Got Away”, recurring characters Cheryl and Walter try to survive a toxic California cocktail of cosmetic surgery, anorexia and death denial. If the characters in the story “Days of Awe” overspill their satiric frame, then these seem shrivelled inside it, set to work as puppets acting out dreadful tidings. We don’t need to like the characters in a story, but we need to like the writer’s relation to her characters, to feel she’s caught them in their act with wit and poise. Sometimes the writing here just isn’t funny enough to help us enjoy them.
The first story, “Brother on Sunday”, is the best in the collection, and there are some gorgeous things in it. As it opens, Tom, a cosmetic surgeon, is injecting his own face with filler in the bathroom unbeknown to his wife, while she’s on the phone to her friend.
“Are you sure?” she whispers. “I can’t believe it. I don’t want to believe it … If I knew something, I’d tell you … If he knew, he’d tell me. We vowed we wouldn’t keep secrets.” … Later, when someone says, “You look great,” he’ll smile and his face will bend gently, but no lines will appear.
Later Tom sits on the beach with his feet buried in the sand and a US flag flutters overhead: somehow this whole set-up and the supple rhythms of the writing, its compression, seem to work together to capture something strange in contemporary America. In the last paragraph of the story there’s no Cheever-esque lift of insight, only two stupid grown men tussling like spoilt babies.
Tessa Hadley’s Bad Dreams and Other Stories is published by Vintage. Days of Awe is published by Granta. To order a copy for £10.49 (RRP £14.99) go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2007/oct/12/3 | Business | 2007-10-11T23:04:16.000Z | Terry Macalister | Solicitors make millions from sick miners' claims | Beresfords, a tiny firm of solicitors in Doncaster, has received £123m from the taxpayer by winning compensation claims on behalf of coal miners for work-related diseases, new government figures show.
The head of the firm, Jim Beresford, had a personal salary of £16.7m in 2006 and two partners - one of whom was his daughter Esta - shared a further £3.7m between them last year.
The largesse ultimately came out of a high court victory by miners nearly 10 years ago when British Coal and the National Coal Board were found to be negligent with the health of their staff.
Beresfords is just one law firm that has transformed its fortunes through the government-backed compensation schemes. But the schemes have also led to many partners facing the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal in what has become the biggest single-issue set of cases handled by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA).
Other solicitors to benefit from the compensation schemes include Thompsons, which made £131m, Raleys, of Barnsley, with £77m, and Watson Burton, which received £32m. The payments come from representing miners' claims for compensation for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and vibration white finger, said Lord Drayson, a business minister, in response to parliamentary questions from Lord Lofthouse of Pontefract.
The government confirmed last night that more than £1bn has been paid to lawyers while £3.4bn has gone to 566,000 miners. More than 150,000 claims have still to be processed.
Lord Lofthouse said it was "staggering" that nearly 70% of claimants received less than the cost of administering them under the Coal Health Compensation Schemes.
Lord Drayson blamed it on the way the high court rulings were worded. "Each claim is assessed individually and takes into account a number of factors including employment and medical histories. The department has sought to minimise the administrative costs of the scheme but these costs indicate the scale and complexity of the process required," he said.
The department of business, enterprise and regulatory reform has already taken steps to cut by £100m the legal cost of claims for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease through a fast-track compensation scheme and is negotiating a lower tariff for vibration white finger claims, he added.
The SRA said that Jim Beresford and his partner Douglas Smith were among those who must face the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal. That particular case involved "relationships with third parties", but the SRA declined to give further details.
Mark Farrell, chief executive of Beresfords, said his firm had represented more claimants than any other - 92,482. "Beresfords received many claims over a number of years. It is fair to say, therefore, that the fees generated reflected several years' work which has been truncated into a short period of time due to the introduction of a fast-track scheme."
Asked about the investigation, Mr Farrell said: "The Solicitors Regulation Authority are looking into the handling of claims with a number of solicitors firms across the UK. Beresfords are one of approximately 60 firms who have been or who are waiting to hear from the SRA in relation to the scheme."
A handful of disciplinary cases have already been heard by Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunals. On June 25 the senior partner at Gabb & Co of Abergavenny was fined £15,000 plus costs. MLM Solicitors of Cardiff was also successfully referred to the tribunal in March by the SRA, it said.
Some politicians are trying to amend the Legal Services Bill in the final stages of parliament to raise the money that can be levied on those firms guilty of malpractice.
Alongside specific complaints for malpractice there have also been more than 2,000 allegations of poor service to the legal complaints service.
A critical report by the National Audit Office released in July estimated that the total cost of administering the compensation schemes was likely to reach £2.3bn.
Disquiet about the compensation cases reached the Law Society in 1999 when an MP brought a complaint on behalf of two former miners.
The row forced Fiona Woolf, president of the Law Society, to defend her profession. "I am determined not to allow all solicitors involved in the miners' compensation cases to be tarred with the same brush as a result of the misdeeds of a minority," she wrote to one MP, Kevan Jones. "The great majority of solicitors engaged in this work have not been guilty of misconduct of any sort." | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2024/feb/28/new-zealand-australia-test-cricket-the-spin | Sport | 2024-02-28T12:23:32.000Z | Tanya Aldred | The Spin | New Zealand public embrace chance to set record straight against Australia | It is easy to be sucked into the narrative that Test cricket lives and breathes courtesy of England fans, whether they’re stocking up at Birmingham New Street or playing the trumpet in technicolour shirts alongside the Barmy Army in Rajkot.
But Test cricket is quite capable of slipping off its jandals and falling into a deckchair far from the strains of Jerusalem. The first Test between the New Zealand and Australia men’s sides, which starts on Thursday at the beautiful Basin Reserve, Wellington, is a sell-out, with the Hagley Oval, Christchurch, venue for the second Test, expected to follow suit.
Ollie Robinson’s Test future in doubt after ‘disappointing’ return in India
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It’s been a while since the Australians played a Test over the Tasman Sea. Such a while that neither Mitchell Starc nor captain, Pat Cummins, have played one. In fact, England have flown around the world for three New Zealand tours since Australia last played a five-day game on Kiwi turf, back in 2016. Somewhere along the line, politics and profit have added together to come up with cold porridge – but that’s the strange machinations of the International Cricket Council for you.
Nevertheless the New Zealand public, who have just watched the Black Caps beat an understrength South Africa side 2-0, are ready for the challenge of their noisy neighbours, despite the odds. Somehow, from a population of just over five million, most of whom are obsessed with rugby union, the New Zealand cricket side not only won the World Test Championship in 2021 but head the current table (with England languishing down in eighth).
But for all the outstanding, unexpected, success of the New Zealand Test team, the Australians are their brain fart, their soft underbelly, their recurring naked nightmare. The Black Caps have beaten Australia only once in a Test since 1993 – at Hobart in 2011. And they have have lost nine of their 10 home Tests against Australia in the 21st century. They followed on in the 10th, and saved it thanks to bad light and persistent rain rather than any memorable rearguard action.
“This team has done amazing things,” says Winston Aldworth, sports editor of the New Zealand Herald, “but the team they can’t beat in Tests is Australia. The greatest ever New Zealand team couldn’t get a foot in the door in the MCG that Boxing Day Test, there’s something of the little cousin, big cousin about it.
Pat Cummins and Tim Southee pose with the series trophy in Wellington on Wednesday. Photograph: Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images
“And the Kiwis are obsessed with hating on David Warner and Steve Smith, they buy into the unlikability story a bit, we always have, just like we hated Greg Matthews in the 1980s. We hate them because they’re so damn good.”
Collective pantomime loathing apart, there is something else that might be bringing people along to the grounds – after many years behind a paywall, New Zealand cricket is being shown on free-to-air television till 2026, after the collapse of the streaming service Spark Sports.
Aldworth says: “That period behind a paywall coincided with the greatest period of New Zealand cricket, when they were the number one side, full of all-time greats. Lots of people were denied that process of just taking in the Test match by osmosis from the television at the other side of the room, while our golden generation were playing.
“And now Ross Taylor is gone, the beating heart of New Zealand cricket [Neil] Wagner has gone, Trent Boult and Tim Southee are on the decline – though obviously Kane [Williamson] goes on forever – so this feels like the last chance for Kiwis to see this great generation of Test cricketers.”
Wagner, the great enforcer, announced his retirement on Tuesday after being told that he wouldn’t be picked for the series against Australia. The big man thwarted England just a year ago with four for 62 to help New Zealand to snatch the Test at the Basin Reserve, becoming only the fourth side to win after following on.
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He had come across to New Zealand from his native South Africa to further his cricketing career – and it paid off. He retires with 260 Test wickets at just over 27 – only Sir Richard Hadlee has a better strike rate of New Zealand bowlers to have taken 100 wickets. And if the New Zealand public have been denied another battle with Smith, whose wicket he took four out of five times in the Kiwis’ 2019-20 tour of Australia, they can forever fortify themselves with visions of Wagner banging the ball in with full-hearted fury.
The great enforcer Neil Wagner announced his retirement after not being picked for the Australia series. Photograph: Andrew Cornaga/AP
Incidentally, the White Ferns’ wait for a Test goes on – it has been 20 years since they last pulled on their whites, in a drawn Test against England at Scarborough. Amelia Kerr said recently in an interview how much she would love to play the five-day game – but it doesn’t seem to be a priority for the authorities, despite the popularity of the men’s Tests.
Cricket in New Zealand will always play second fiddle to the All Blacks, no matter how many more glorious Test centuries Williamson can add to his collection, without fanfare or fireworks. Aldworth tells a story of his wife bumping into Trent Boult in a sandwich shop and asking for a photo for their son. His nice friend took a picture for her and it was only when she got to the counter and the guy serving asked her why she didn’t want Williamson in her photograph that she realised exactly who the nice friend was.
“The New Zealand public don’t love the All Blacks, they are obsessed by them,” he says. “But cricket followers have a real affection for these guys.”
This is an extract from the Guardian’s weekly cricket email, The Spin. To subscribe, just visit this page and follow the instructions. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jan/23/chinese-workers-gangnam-style-protest | World news | 2013-01-23T16:09:57.000Z | Tania Branigan | Chinese workers dance Gangnam Style to protest over unpaid wages | They have occupied factories and taken to the streets. But Chinese workers chose a more unusual form of protest when they highlighted their unpaid wages by dancing Gangnam Style outside the nightclub they had built.
The construction workers from Wuhan said they had concluded it was the only way to draw attention to their problems.
Confrontations over unpaid wages are common in the runup to the lunar new year, often the only time when migrant workers can return home. Many fear they may never be paid if they leave their cities without their wages.
The leader of the dancers, who gave his name only as Mr Lu, told the Wuhan Evening News that in total 40 workers were owed 233,000 yuan (£23,300).
"There have been many creative protests over the last few years. Younger workers in particular are very media-savvy and clued-in," said Geoff Crothall of the Hong-Kong-based China Labour Bulletin.
"They have weibo [microblog] accounts and make sure people are aware of the fact they are going to do this performance and get the local media on board … It's fair to say you have a better chance of success if you can get publicity for your case."
Last year, children as young as five protested over their parents' unpaid wages, holding signs with slogans such as: "I want to eat, go to school, drink milk and eat biscuits."
More recently, a migrant worker became an internet hit by imitating a bureaucrat calling for the payment of overdue earnings in a video, after other attempts to win redress failed.
Crothall said delayed payment was "absolutely routine". Many workers end up permanently out of pocket if bosses with financial problems decide to flee.
"We are talking hundreds of billions of yuan a year [tens of billions of pounds]," he added.
The problem is particularly acute in the construction industry, where workers often have to wait for a single lump sum payment at the end of the year and money trickles down through tiers of subcontractors to the labourers – if it appears at all.
But Crothall said there were also a growing number of factory cases.
The manager of the Wuhan construction company said it was still awaiting full payment from the developers of the nightclub, who said they would pay up once problems with the project were resolved. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/25/richard-ashcroft-verve-stones-bitter-sweet-symphony | Opinion | 2019-05-25T14:00:04.000Z | Rebecca Nicholson | Richard Ashcroft making up with Mick can’t change the mould | Rebecca Nicholson | Richard Ashcroft received an outstanding contribution to British music accolade at the Ivor Novello awards last week, and took the opportunity to confirm that the rights to the Verve’s Bitter Sweet Symphony had been transferred back to him after a 22-year dispute with the Rolling Stones.
Famously, the soaring strings that propel the song are a sample of an orchestral version of the Stones’ The Last Time, and the Verve had been granted permission to use part of it in return for 50% of the track. However, the Stones’ late manager Allen Klein eventually sued, claiming a larger portion than agreed had been used, and royalties and joint songwriting credits were passed to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.
Bittersweet no more: Rolling Stones pass Verve royalties to Richard Ashcroft
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“As of last month, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards signed over all their publishing for Bitter Sweet Symphony, which was a truly kind and magnanimous thing for them to do,” said Ashcroft, who had to relinquish credit for the melody and lyrics. “Of course there was a huge financial cost, but any songwriter will know that there is a huge emotional price greater than the money in having to surrender the composition of one of your own songs. Richard has endured that loss for many years,” a spokesperson for the Stones told Music Week. It is a good look for both parties: the Stones appear generous and gracious (though I can’t imagine the loss of these particular royalties will do much to dent their bank balances), and Ashcroft gets the satisfaction of a wrong being publicly righted, at last. But this looks like a rare moment of optimism in an increasingly thorny and overgrown field.
The OneRepublic frontman and songwriter Ryan Tedder, who has created monster hits with and for Beyoncé, Adele and Ariana Grande among others, told the BBC of his concerns about copyright lawsuits. “It’s a conversation in every writing session,” he said. “The odds of getting sued in this day and age are so high, we’re going to get to a point where nobody can write anything, because everything will be derivative of something else.”
Once again, the damage caused by the Blurred Lines case, in which Marvin Gaye’s estate successfully sued Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams, radiates outwards.
The blurring of lines between what is considered to be inspiration and what is deemed intentional copying is dangerous, and contradicts the generosity of spirit that often motivates artistic endeavours in the first place. It is a bizarre state of affairs, surely, when Jagger and Richards prove to be the voices of reason and common sense.
Linda Hamilton, will be back with Arnie – and so will I
Linda Hamilton in Terminator: Dark Fate: ‘I did not know that the sight of a grey-haired 62-year-old woman firing a machine gun could bring such joy.’ Photograph: PR
My relationship with the Terminator films resembles a long, troubled marriage. The early days were heart-stopping, thrilling and eye-opening. The Terminator and T2: Judgment Day are responsible for any number of terrifyingly vivid post-apocalyptic dreams – and yet the three following films proved to be po-faced, crushing disappointments.
But I feel we’re about to get back on track. The trailer for Terminator: Dark Fate has been released, and the signs are tentatively conciliatory. Dark Fate does the decent thing and pretends that Terminator 3, Terminator Salvation and Terminator Genisys never really happened. Just as Will & Grace was forced to ignore its original ending, which saw the pair separated for decades, in order for the comeback to make any sense whatsoever – never complain, never explain – this is a chance for the Terminator franchise to make amends. It worked for Halloween, the continuity of which has always been haphazard, so I look forward to seeing what the clean-slate approach does here.
Crucially, though, the band are back together. Like me, Arnie has been unable to walk away, so of course he’s there, but the real news is that James Cameron has produced it, and the original Sarah Connor, Linda Hamilton, seems to have a significant role. How wonderful that she’s back and at the centre of it.
I did not know that the sight of a grey-haired 62-year-old woman firing a machine gun and then a rocket launcher at an evil killing machine could bring such joy until this trailer showed me the light.
Quentin Tarantino, not exactly on a charm offensive
Margot Robbie and Quentin Tarantino at the Cannes film festival Photograph: Benainous+Catarina+Perusseau/REX/Shutterstock
Quentin Tarantino showed off his petulant side at the Cannes film festival, where he was promoting his latest movie, Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood. A journalist from the New York Times asked him why Margot Robbie, who plays Sharon Tate, did not get more dialogue, given Robbie’s high billing and star status. “Well I just reject your hypothesis,” replied Tarantino curtly, leaving Robbie to answer the question with tact, while the director appeared to visibly stew.
Tarantino had not been stopped in the street or caught off-guard on his doorstep. He was being pressed about his film at a press conference where journalists had been invited to ask him questions. He may not have agreed with the point, but to sulk, rather than refute it with eloquence or analysis, is beneath him, and that’s to say nothing of the irony in letting Robbie pick up the slack on his behalf.
But he has form in this area. “I’m here to sell my movie, this is a commercial for the movie, make no mistake,” he told Krishnan Guru-Murthy on Channel 4 News in 2013, when promoting Django Unchained. If that is his sales approach, he might consider rethinking the creative brief.
Rebecca Nicholson is an Observer columnist | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2002/oct/22/broadcasting.bbc2 | Media | 2002-10-22T15:59:52.000Z | Dan Milmo | Only Fools finally set to end | Hit BBC comedy Only Fools and Horses will definitely draw to a close this Christmas, according to its writer.
Del Boy and Rodney will be back for two final episodes, but after that the show will be consigned to TV history. Writer John Sullivan claims the Christmas episodes will be the last - although viewers may be forgiven for thinking they've heard that one before.
The long-running classic was supposed to have ended in 1996 when a windfall made the Trotters multi-millionaires.
But David Jason and Nicholas Lyndhurst were back last year for a Christmas Day special, which drew in an audience of over 20 million.
The pair were seen enjoying the high life in Monte Carlo but ended up back in Peckham when a business crash left them bankrupt.
Sullivan told the TV Times: "When we finished in 1996 we thought it was the end, but there was a lot of pressure to bring Only Fools back, and I think everyone missed the camaraderie of being part of what had become a family.
"You never say never, but I can't see us doing any more after these two episodes."
The final episodes will be called Strangers on the Shore and Sleepless in Peckham.
Sullivan said: "They were a pleasure to write. The first episode is an old-style Only Fools and a good laugh, while the last one contains some revelations involving the family."
He is now writing a book about the Trotter family before 1981, which was when the first episode of the TV series was screened.
"I'm going back to 1962 and concentrating on the Trotters' mother and father. Del will feature as a Mod," he said.
Sullivan named his favourite of the 62 episodes screened so far as Dates, where Del meets Raquel; The Unlucky Winner, in which Rodney wins a painting competition for under-15s; and Tea For Three, where Del goes hang-gliding. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/oct/17/killing-kubrick-crime | Film | 2010-10-17T10:43:00.000Z | John Patterson | The Killing: No 13 best crime film of all time | With this lean black-and-white racetrack robbery thriller, Stanley Kubrick found the high style and astringent tone that would serve him for the rest of his career. Like John Huston's The Asphalt Jungle (and featuring that film's lead, the rock-like Sterling Hayden), it is a forensic depiction of the planning and negotiation preceding a big hold-up, and of the treachery and violence that ensue.
Shot in a taut, quasi-documentary style, and evincing not one ounce of sentimentality, the movie features a cast of seasoned B-movie gargoyles. These include Timothy Carey's racist sniper (who shoots the favourite horse mid-race), Jay C Flippen and Elisha Cook Jr's sleazebag co-conspirators, and noir staple Marie Windsor as the perfidious moll who sends the whole caper spiralling into internecine slaughter. The presence of legendary pulp scribbler Jim Thompson as co-screenwriter probably ensured this level of coruscating cynicism and brute realism, and the stark visuals surely hark back to Kubrick's experiences as a news photographer. Great fatalistic ending too, with Hayden's last words, existentially shrugged out as his stolen millions spew uselessly across the airport runway and the cops close in: "Aw, what's the difference?" | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/29/argentina-death-flight-pilots-sentenced-for-deaths-including-popes-friend | World news | 2017-11-29T22:17:28.000Z | Uki Goñi | Argentina 'death flight' pilots sentenced for deaths including pope's friend | Two former Argentinian military pilots have been given life sentences for their part in the death of a close friend of Pope Francis, who was hurled to her death from an aircraft during the country’s 1976-83 dictatorship.
Argentina death flights: a son's fight for the right to testify against his father
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The ruling on Wednesday marked the first Argentinian judgment against participants in the so-called “death flights”, in which opponents of Argentina’s military regime were thrown into the freezing waters of the South Atlantic in an attempt to hide the murders.
The court heard that former coastguard pilots Mario Daniel Arrú and Alejandro Domingo D’Agostino were in the crew of the Skyvan PA-51 plane from which Esther Careaga and 11 other people were thrown to their death on the night of 14 December 1977. Careaga was a close friend of Jorge Bergoglio, who decades later became Pope Francis.
The pilots were among the 54 defendants in the huge trial, which also involved the cases of 789 victims of the Navy Mechanics Higher School, ESMA, in Buenos Aires, where up to 5,000 people are estimated to have been killed.
The victims included leftwing opponents of the regime and members of Argentina’s tiny urban guerrilla groups, but also human rights activists and relatives of people who had already been “disappeared” by the military.
Naval intelligence operatives infiltrated activists groups – such as the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo human rights group, made up of mothers of missing persons such as Careaga, who were drawing the attention of international media to the human rights abuses in Argentina.
Careaga was seized by the military after denouncing the disappearance of her pregnant 16-year-old daughter Ana María. Along with two French nuns and nine others, she was thrown from a plane that left the city’s airport on the night of 14 December 1977. The court found that Arrú and D’Agostino had piloted the three-hour flight.
Careaga’s body, along with those of one of the nuns, Léonie Duquet, and two other mothers, Azucena Villaflor and María Bianco, washed ashore six days later and were buried in a common grave. Their remains were only identified via DNA testing in 2003.
Jorge Bergoglio met Careaga when he worked as an apprentice at a pharmaceutical laboratory in Buenos Aires in the early 1950s. Careaga was a feminist far ahead of her time, a biochemist and Bergoglio’s boss.
Bergoglio and Careaga developed a close friendship that they maintained up to the moment of her kidnapping by an ESMA death squad on the evening of 8 December 1977.
“Careaga was a good friend and a great woman,” said Beroglio, then archbishop of Buenos Aires, when the bodies of the three mothers were identified in 2003.
The scope of the crimes under investigation in the five-year trial was mind-boggling. A total of 484 cases corresponded to persons who were either murdered or made to “disappear” at the ESMA.
How an Argentinian man learned his 'father' may have killed his real parents
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The remaining 305 cases involved survivors of kidnapping and torture as well as children born in captivity at the camp.
In most cases, the babies were handed over to military couples who raised them as their own while their real parents were murdered. It was only decades later through patient detective work by another human rights group, the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, that many of these victims were reunited with their biological families.
A total of 830 witnesses gave evidence, including Pope Francis, who testified in 2010 over the disappearance of two Jesuit priests, Orlando Yorio and Franz Jalics.
“At that time any priest who worked among the poor was the target of suspicion from some sectors,” said Bergoglio when he testified in 2010. “It was very common, if someone went to work with the poor they were considered a lefty.”
Arrú and D’Agostino’s participation in the death flights was discovered by Argentinian journalist and ESMA survivor Miriam Lewin, who in 2011 managed to track down the Skyvan PA-51 aeroplane to its new owner in Miami.
Incredibly, the original 1977 flight logs of the plane were intact and named the crew on the night of Careaga’s death. A third crew-member, Enrique José de Saint George, died during the trial.
“The human rights community has worked tirelessly and creatively for decades to make this verdict possible,” says Ram Natarajan, an anthropologist and professor at the Univeristy of Arkansas who is writing a book on the ESMA trial.
Former navy lieutenant Alfredo Astiz, a naval commando who specialised in infiltrating activist groups was also sentenced to life in prison on Wednesday for kidnapping, torture, murder and child-stealing. Astiz – who became known as the “Angel of Death” in the ESMA jail – was already serving a life sentence on other charges.
Pope Francis and the missing Marxist
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The monumental trial started with a single case almost 40 years ago. In 1978, Arturo Lorusso went to court to report the disappearance of his younger sister María Esther.
Esther Lorusso was targeted because she belonged to a group of youths and priests who worked with the poor in the Bajo Flores slum of the Buenos Aires. She was taken to the ESMA navy base that night and was never heard from again.
Presenting charges against a death squad kidnapping was not something tolerated by the dictatorship. “My brother, my mother and another sister all had to go into exile in Belgium because of the threats they received,” said younger brother Luis Lorusso, now 63.
Speaking before the sentencing, Lorusso told the Guardian he was no longer seeking punishment for the officers responsible. “I want to know the truth more than seeing them in jail. I would prefer to know what actually happened. I don’t have my sister’s bones. It’s something awful,” he said.
This article was amended on 29 November 2017 to correct María Bianco’s first name. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/oct/04/saba-sams-wins-bbc-national-short-story-award-for-transportive-tale | Books | 2022-10-04T19:00:46.000Z | Sarah Shaffi | Saba Sams wins BBC national short story award for ‘transportive’ tale | Saba Sams has won the BBC national short story award for a tale described by the judges as having a “transportive atmosphere” and “masterful telling of complex family dynamics”. The 26-year-old has received the £15,000 prize, run by the BBC with Cambridge University, and the audio version of her winning story Blue 4eva is available to listen to on BBC Sounds.
Blue 4eva is taken from Sams’ debut collection, Send Nudes, and is about a newly blended family’s summer holiday. It was inspired by Sams’ memories of her own childhood holidays in Formentera, Spain, and focuses on 12-year-old Stella as she navigates the power play between her voyeuristic new stepfather, her 18-year-old stepsister Jasmine, and Jasmine’s best friend, Blue.
Chair of judges Elizabeth Day said she was engrossed by the story’s “transportive atmosphere, its masterful telling of complex family dynamics and the sense of building tension”.
Send Nudes by Saba Sams review – sex and solitude
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Sams drafted the story when she was 19 while studying creative writing at the University of Manchester, returning to it when she came to write Send Nudes a few years later.
“I’m always thinking about what it looks like to be a young woman: about bodies and power, about friendships and family, about the ways we’re constantly looking to break free,” Sams said. “Blue 4eva engages with sexuality, too, particularly with queerness, in a subtle way that I found interesting to write.”
Madeleine Feeny in her Guardian review called Send Nudes an “exhilarating collection” which “captures the light and dark of negotiating relationships, solitude, sexuality and loss”.
Joining Day on the judging panel were Costa first novel award-winning novelist Ingrid Persaud; writer, poet and editor, Will Harris; Booker prize shortlisted novelist and professor of creative writing, Gerard Woodward; and returning judge Di Speirs, books editor at BBC Radio.
Speirs said the judges loved the “freshness and the spirit in the writing” and felt the story “brilliantly captures the nuances of blended family dynamics, the jealousies and stresses, the efforts and the rejections”.
The other shortlisted stories were And the Moon Descends on the Temple That Was by Kerry Andrew; Flat 19 by Jenn Ashworth; Long Way to Come for a Sip of Water by Anna Bailey; and Green Afternoon by Vanessa Onwuemezi. Each of the five shortlisted stories are available to listen to on BBC Sounds and have been published in an anthology.
Last year, the award was won by Lucy Caldwell for her story All the People Were Mean and Bad.
Also announced today was the winner of the BBC young writers’ award with Cambridge University, an award created to inspire and encourage the next generation of short story writers. The award was won by Elena Barham, 19, from Barnsley for a story set in the 1940s, Little Acorns.
Blue 4eva by Saba Sams
Stella’s lying on a sun lounger, and then her book is wet. She watches the dots darken the paper as they sink in. On the surface of the pool, tiny blue waves ricochet out, the sun skittering off them. Underneath is the dark silhouette of a girl. She swims the whole length without coming up for air. When she breaks the surface, she puts her arms on the tiled edge and rests her chin in the crook of her wrists. Stella looks back at her book.
Hey, you. I see you.
The girl is Blue, a friend of Jasmine’s from school. Her eyes are narrowed to the sun. Under her armpit, Stella notices a tangle of dark hair, slicked down like a clump pulled from the plughole.
You the baby, then?
Guess so.
Blue pushes off into the water again, floating on her back with her head lifted. Stella can’t think of anything good to say, and eventually Blue lets her ears slip under. The cicadas sing in the background like a phone vibrating.
Stella’s mother married Jasmine’s father in February. Stella was twelve, Jasmine was eighteen. For their honeymoon, Claire and Frank went to Costa Rica. Stella and Jasmine weren’t invited. When they returned home, Frank announced that he’d booked three weeks in a villa on the smallest island in the Balearics, to make up for it. Jasmine was over from her mother’s. Claire had baked a lemon drizzle.
Cake’s for children, said Jasmine. And I’m not coming.
They’ve been on holiday for five days. No one asked what it was that made Jasmine change her mind and join them. Stella suspects she’s only here to ensure that everyone has as difficult a time as possible. Jasmine knocks hard on the bathroom door whenever Stella’s in the shower. She steals Stella’s sun lounger the moment she gets in the pool. This is my spot, Jasmine says, waving to the strip of shade where the other lounger waits.
There are other things too, little things that Stella can’t prove. She woke up one morning itchy with bites, and discovered a tiny hole in her mosquito net that she was sure hadn’t been there when she’d fallen asleep. Another time, someone moved her book into the sun and left it for hours, so the glue in the spine melted and the pages started falling out.
Back in England, Stella’s bedroom used to be Jasmine’s. Everything in it is either white or beige. There’s a low bed, a rug made of woven straw, and a pale, angular desk beneath a desktop computer, the monitor the size of a plasma television. Stella had never had her own computer, before this.
I don’t know if that’s a good idea, Claire said, when she saw.
Frank only winked at Stella. She’s at secondary now. She might need it for homework.
It was the day they’d moved in. Frank had already ordered pizzas for dinner, and opened up the shed in the garden to reveal an expensive-looking bike, bright green with yellow lightning bolts across the handlebars. If this was what having a dad was, Stella could get used to it.
In fact, Stella’s school made a point not to set homework on the computer. When Stella found out about the holiday, it was the first time she used the desktop for anything other than video games. She looked up the island and sat for hours, hovering her mouse over the images. She didn’t go downstairs again all evening, and Jasmine left without saying goodbye. The water looked so clear Stella could see the shadows of the boats on the sand at the bottom of the sea. She thought that when she swam in it, she’d be able to watch the fish drifting beneath her, an aquarium without the glass.
O
ut here, Stella spends most of her time with Frank and Claire, while Jasmine stays alone in the villa. In the mornings, they set up on the beach and eat peaches in the shade of a parasol. Stella climbs onto Frank’s shoulders and dives off them into the sea. In the afternoons, they wander the dusty towns, stopping in cafes and stone churches to drink coffee or light candles, Frank’s camera swinging around his neck. Frank buys Stella little gifts wherever they go: a keyring with a lizard on it, a pair of canvas espadrilles. Sometimes, he puts his hand on Claire’s waist while they’re walking, and pulls her into him. Claire looks at Stella sideways, a little embarrassed.
‘In the afternoons, they wander the dusty towns, stopping in cafes and stone churches to drink coffee or light candles.’ Photograph: Patrick Frilet/Rex Features
In the evenings, back at the villa, the three of them sit on the veranda. Frank cuts slivers of manchego with a satisfying contraption while Claire mixes sangria in a big glass jug. Last night, for the first time, Jasmine came outside and poured herself a glass.
Ok kids, she said. Fun’s over. You can all stop pretending to be functional now.
Frank cut a slice of manchego and lay it down in front of her. Jasmine didn’t touch her cheese. After some minutes, she announced that she’d invited Blue out to join them. Frank threaded his fingers together on the table. The point of this trip, he said, was to spend time together as a four.
Right. And how is that working out for you?
Frank went quiet after that, and Blue wasn’t mentioned again all evening. By morning, Stella had forgotten all about her. By afternoon, here she was.
Blue lifts herself out of the pool and sits on the edge, leaning back on her long arms to feel the sun on her chest. She spreads her legs like a man, not seeming to worry that the flesh of her thighs looks bigger pressed against the tiles. Fuck me, it’s hot.
Stella loves it when people swear in front of her. Tell me about it, she says.
A sound comes from behind the dry stone wall that separates the villa from the farm land around it. The sound is like a tiny sneeze, or the extending of a plastic straw. Stella’s used to these sounds by now, but Blue whips her head over her shoulder to look.
No. Sorry, no. As you were.
Blue turns her head back to its previous position. Frank appears from behind the wall.
Damn, he says. Lost it.
Blue laughs. Am I going to feature in an upcoming exhibition, Franklin Royce? Franklin Royce is Frank’s public name. Stella’s never heard anyone call him that in real life before.
Frank comes over to Blue and kisses her on both cheeks. Only if you’re very lucky, and if you keep still when I ask you to.
You’ll be the lucky one. I’m far too hyperactive to model.
I’ve no interest in models, he says. He nods towards Stella. Have you met my latest muse?
I thought she was your stepdaughter.
She is. But she also happens to be a dream in front of the camera. Unfussy, almost child-like.
That’s because she is a child, says Blue. She turns to Stella. How do you feel about all this?
It isn’t a question Stella’s been asked before. Frank’s interest in taking photographs of her only developed this holiday. I don’t mind, she says. It’s fun.
There you go then. Your girl loves the limelight.
In school, Stella’s not one of the pretty girls. Her face is round and freckled, with a low, square forehead. She isn’t particularly tall or thin. The limelight is a place in which she’d never imagined finding herself. Claire, on the other hand, modelled when she was younger. Stella’s seen some of the editorials hung up in her grandparents’ bathroom.
A few months ago, Stella attended one of Frank’s shows. It was full of blurred, bare skinned women against a blue sky, and those translucent, dusty-looking bubbles that sunlight sometimes creates in a lens. His photographs were printed large enough to take up an entire wall on their own, and people seemed to be able to stand in front of them for hours, just staring. Stella knows her grandparents don’t have that much space in their house, or that much patience.
Frank lifts his camera and snaps it a few times at Stella. She isn’t sure if he’s seriously taking photographs, or if he’s performing for Blue.
Jasmine’s voice carries over from the veranda. Stella hadn’t realised she was there. Will you two stop treating this whole place as your fucking studio?
It was me who paid for this villa, says Frank, and I’ll treat it how I like.
Whatever. We’re heading into town, right Blue?
Blue pulls her legs out of the pool and stands up. Stella thinks that if she had a camera, she’d take a photograph of Blue right there, on the edge of the pool like that.
You wanna come?
Hell no, calls Jasmine.
It’s ok. I’m fine here.
Blue’s hair is made up of tight curls that skim the waistline of her bikini bottoms. When she turns to leave, beads of water spray out from the ends and catch the sun.
Neither Blue nor Jasmine have a license to drive the car that Frank’s rented, so they take the old mopeds that belong to the house. Stella hears the exhausts flare and then fizzle as they drive away. She swims for a while. Claire and Frank set up on the veranda and start eating tuna niçoise.
Come try this, calls Claire. Have you been drinking enough water?
The salad has green beans in it, and the water next to Stella’s plate has been poured into a pint glass. She takes a sip.
Drink it all, says Claire. Show me you can.
I’m not eight.
No, says Frank. You’re eighteen. Now down that pint. Down it.
Something about having Frank around makes her a better daughter
Stella drinks the entire glass of water in one. She splutters as she finishes, trying not to laugh. By the time she gets around to her salad, Claire and Frank are done eating. Frank gets his camera out and holds it to his eye, twisting the lens very slowly so that it ticks like a clock.
Frank’s camera is newly fitted with something called a Dream Lens, a rare piece of kit that he bought specifically for the intense sunshine of the holiday. A month before, he’d sent the lens to Japan, along with his film camera – purchased for thousands of pounds at an auction the previous year – to be modified to fit.
Stella only knows such details because Frank has told her. Frank is obsessed with his photography equipment. The day before they caught their flight out here, Stella watched him line up his camera, lenses and film canisters in the rectangle of light coming in through his bedroom window before taking a photograph of them on his phone.
I’m shooting the tools I use to shoot, he’d said over his shoulder. How meta.
Stella finishes eating and gathers up the plates to take inside to wash. Something about having Frank around makes her a better daughter, and she can feel it happening. This seems to work the same for Claire too; since she married Frank, she remembers things like how much water Stella’s drunk that day.
Stella stacks Frank’s plate on top of the rest. He reaches out and puts his hand on her forearm. He’s leaning back in his chair with his linen shirt undone, his camera still unzipped from its case. His chest hair is silver, the skin on his bare stomach thick and red-brown.
Jasmine should lay off you, he says, now Blue’s here as distraction.
Stella thinks of Blue, standing on the edge of the pool in the midday sun. Maybe, she replies.
That evening, all five of them go out for dinner, to a restaurant on the beach.
Stella sits at the head of the table, Jasmine and Blue on either side. Jasmine’s wearing a baby-pink sun dress, and has picked out each of her eyelashes with a lot of mascara. Blue isn’t wearing any makeup, but her dress is made of gold sequins that throw rainbows across the drinking glasses. Her bare feet are dirty with red dust, and she has a few long, dark hairs growing out of her toes. On her wrists, she’s wearing thick silver jewellery that rings when she moves.
Stop looking at my friend, says Jasmine. It’s like, super weird.
Stella feels the inside of her mouth get dry. She pours herself a glass of water from the bottle and takes a sip.
Now, now, says Frank. Don’t be jealous.
As the waiter pours Blue’s wine, she leans back in her chair and starts speaking to him. Her Spanish is soft and low. The waiter gets his notebook out.
Hey small fry. You want what the grown-ups are having?
Stella nods. I eat everything. There’s nothing I don’t eat.
My kinda girl.
‘Blue teaches Stella how to rip the head from a prawn and suck the brains out of it.’ Photograph: Toni Sanchez Poy/Alamy
There’s a huge steel dish of paella with wedges of lemon, a pile of calamari, and a platter of tiny green peppers, scorched black and sprinkled with rocks of salt. Blue teaches Stella how to rip the head from a prawn and suck the brains out of it, and use the shell of one mussel as a pincer to pull the flesh from another. For pudding, there are entire lemons that have been scooped out and filled with ice cream, and a plate of purple figs.
You know, says Blue. Every fig you eat still contains the corpse of the wasp that pollinated it.
For real? says Stella.
Jasmine hasn’t spoken for almost the entire meal, just moved the rice from one side of her plate to the other. Now, she lifts her napkin to her mouth and spits a chewed fig into it. That’s fucking gross, she says.
Blue shakes her head. It’s nature, baby. That prawn you just ate spent most of its life nibbling a bunch of parasites off larger sea creatures to keep them clean. What d’you think of that?
Jasmine takes a long pull on her wine. Just stop talking.
Claire and Frank laugh. They like Blue, Stella can tell.
Are you planning to go to university in September? asks Claire.
Jasmine rolls her eyes, as she does every time Claire speaks. She’s hoping to go to Sussex, although there’s some doubt around whether she’ll get the grades.
My first choice is Glasgow, says Blue.
You and Jasmine’ll be living at opposite ends of the country, says Frank. How on earth will you cope?
Oh, I’ll have a whole new crew by then, says Blue. I won’t still be wasting my time with this one.
Everyone laughs at that, apart from Jasmine. Stella laughs so hard she nearly falls off her chair. When the laughter dies down, Jasmine’s looking right at her.
Oh yeah? Because you’ve got so many friends yourself.
Oi, says Blue. Lay off. I’m her friend.
Yeah, says Stella. She’s my friend.
Jasmine shakes her head. She’s just using you to wind me up. Blue and I have been best friends since we were practically babies.
That’s what she thinks, says Blue. I’m just in it for the free holidays.
Claire and Frank laugh more. Stella bites down on the insides of her cheeks.
Blue leans forward, catches Stella’s eye, and winks. Hey bestie, she says. You wanna split the last fig?
T
he next day, Stella wakes late. The sun filters through the wooden shutters. A mosquito, fat with her blood, swims lazily around the top of the net. There’s no air con in the house, so Stella spent the night thrashing about in the wet heat, re-angling the fan so that it was pointing at her face.
The door opens, and there’s Blue, dressed in a pair of fluorescent orange bikini bottoms and a white crop top, her dark nipples just visible underneath. One of her hands is full of cherries, the other full of stones.
Morning lazy bones. We’re going to the beach.
Me and you?
Yup, and Jazz.
Blue swings the door closed behind her. Woah. These are so cute.
She drops the cherry stones in a small pile on the dresser, and reaches down for a pair of trainers that are peeking out from under Stella’s bed. She holds them up to the soles of her feet, then tosses them back down again. Too small, she says.
Blue picks up other items of Stella’s clothing from the floor and holds them against herself. Can I borrow this?
Blue pulls the t-shirt over her head. It’s green, with little frills at the sleeves. On it is stitched a felt bumble bee and the words Bee Kind.
I only ever wear that as pyjamas.
Really? I love it.
The t-shirt is tight on Blue, but in a good way. It rides up to show a strip of stomach, her bellybutton as dark and perfect as the cherries she was eating.
By the time they leave the bedroom, Blue’s dressed head to toe in Stella’s clothes. She’s wearing sunglasses decorated at the edges with plastic daisies, and a pair of stretchy shorts so small for her they look like knickers.
Jasmine’s waiting on the sofa, swinging a set of moped keys in her fingers. What the fuck are you wearing? she says.
Blue gives a twirl. Stella knows that most grown women in that outfit would look crazy, but Blue manages to pull it off.
Come on, says Jasmine. We’re going.
Stella’s coming too.
Seriously?
Blue underlines the slogan on her t-shirt with her finger. Read it and weep, baby, she says.
T
he first time Stella met Jasmine, Frank had just left Jasmine’s mother for hers. It was winter, and they went out for breakfast in a new café that had opened near Stella’s school. Stella got a hot chocolate with marshmallows that melted and gave a sweet, chemical taste to the milk. Jasmine was wearing foundation so thick her skin looked prosthetic. She looked at her phone under the table the entire time. If Stella closed her eyes, it was almost like Jasmine wasn’t there at all.
Come on Jazzy, said Frank. Say something. Say anything.
Claire touched him lightly on the arm. It’s ok, don’t push it. She’ll talk when she’s ready.
The bill had to be paid at the counter. When they got up to leave, there were lots of people in the queue. Jasmine and Stella went and stood outside. The wind was cold, and Stella pulled her scarf up around her ears.
Your dad’s really nice, said Stella, through the material.
Jasmine was standing with her body facing the road, not looking at Stella. Well your mum’s a fucking homewrecking fucking whore.
She spoke at an even volume, as if she was saying something completely normal, still looking out over the road as the cars went by. Stella didn’t reply. The words stayed in her head like an echo, and she couldn’t think of anything else.
When Frank and Claire came outside, they all got in the same car. Jasmine was still living in the house Stella lives in now, and Frank was staying in the flat that Claire and Stella had lived in all Stella’s life. Frank gave Jasmine a lift home, and she made him drop her off a block from the house.
I don’t want you setting her off again, she said, before she climbed out.
Blue swings her leg over the moped, slots the key into the ignition, and slaps the empty part of the seat behind her. Hop on, she says. Let’s make this pussy roar.
Blue drives fast. The paths are bumpy and full of sharp turns. Her body feels solid and strong, like hugging a snake. The wind combs Stella’s hair. They drive through the pink salt flats, past fields of dry, ploughed earth, pulling over intermittently to let Jasmine catch up. Jasmine’s nervous on the moped, whirring along at the speed of the bicycles, looking over her shoulder constantly to check for approaching cars.
It isn’t long before they’re lost. The beach is small and deserted, with gritty sand. The sea is choppy, mauve jellyfish bobbing like single-use plastic. Blue and Jasmine take their bikini tops off and lean back on the puckered grey rocks to tan.
You’re in my light, Jasmine says to Stella, though she isn’t.
Once the girls become so hot and thirsty that they have to brave the sea, Jasmine devises a game in which Stella has to paddle around her and Blue in circles to make sure they don’t get stung.
Oh please, says Blue. That’s practically child labour.
I wasn’t planning on paying her.
It’s ok, says Stella. I don’t mind.
In fact, she doesn’t. There’s something heroic-sounding about the set up to her. She’d never been stung by a jellyfish, and doesn’t imagine it could hurt that bad. Although Stella sticks to the plan, it’s Jasmine that gets stung. Her scream is throaty.
You’ve got to piss on it, says Blue, back on the sand.
Jasmine is hopping on one foot. That’s disgusting, she says. Her eyes are wet with tears and a hot-pink rash has flared up on her ankle.
I swear, says Blue. It neutralises the sting.
Jasmine frowns, but she lifts her ankle. Fine. You do it.
Sorry, babe. I went when we were swimming. Small fry might have something to offer.
Stella sucks her bottom lip.
Go on then, says Jasmine.
Stella squats. It takes a while for the piss to come. She’s nervous with them both watching over her like that. Her aim isn’t particularly good, and she only manages to get a little bit on Jasmine’s sting. The rest splashes up around her ankles and across Jasmine’s shins. Jasmine squeezes her eyes shut and retches.
There, says Blue. Wasn’t that good bonding?
Back at the villa, Frank and Claire have left a note on the table saying they’ve gone into town for dinner, but there’s fish from the market in the fridge that the girls can barbeque.
Blue enrols Stella to help. She says she’s seen a bunch of samphire down by the lagoon. Stella doesn’t know what that was, but she follows. They walk barefoot in silence. Geckos scuttle in the dry-stone walls, and the yellow grass creaks. Blue teaches Stella how to pick the more tender stalks of samphire by snapping them to check the thickness of their stems. They collect them in a sandcastle bucket that Blue found in the garage. When they have enough, they leave the bucket on a low wall and go swimming. The lagoon’s warm, and only as deep as Stella’s waist. The sun sinks into it as they swim, leaving the sky and the water the same orange-pink.
‘The beach is small and deserted, with gritty sand. The sea is choppy, mauve jellyfish bobbing like single-use plastic.’ Photograph: agefotostock/Alamy
Back in the shallows, they stand to walk out. The bottom is smooth, slimy clay, and Stella feels her feet sink into it with every step. The swim has shifted Blue’s swimming costume, revealing the lighter shade of skin beneath. Water gathers over her body in droplets and runs down her legs. On the thin slip of sand at the shore of the lagoon, Blue carves the words Stella & Blue 4eva with a stick.
In the kitchen, they boil the samphire and chop it fine with other ingredients, like capers and red onion, to make a relish. There’s a barbeque on the veranda, and Blue lines fillets of white fish over the coals. The flood lights are on in the pool, and the water looks like a huge turquoise crystal.
Jasmine comes out and sits on the veranda, swatting at her ankles to get rid of the mosquitos. She’s wearing a beach kaftan made of sheer cotton, and the outline of her bikini can be seen underneath. Her body has wide, soft curves like a Kardashian, whereas Blue is gangly and narrow, with the bones sticking up out in her shoulders. Blue serves the fish, and Stella spoons the relish. Blue and Jasmine drink wine.
Blue talks for a long time about one of the boys she’s dating back home, and Stella can’t understand half of what she’s saying. He’s a total stoner, but he goes down on me whenever I want.
After the fish is gone, Stella takes a scoop more relish and eats it plain off the spoon.
What d’you reckon, small fry?
Most delicious thing I’ve ever tasted. Zingy!
Glad you like.
Stella almost takes another spoonful, but changes her mind. Let’s save the rest for mum and Frank. I want them to try it.
Jasmine sniffs. They’ll be full up on posh shit.
Like what?
Lobster, probably.
A vibe, says Blue. Maybe I should start fucking your dad.
Gross, says Jasmine. Please don’t.
Blue licks the length of her knife. I’d fuck anyone for a lobster.
T
he following day, Frank drives all five of them out to the edge of the island, where the caves have created little swimming pools from the sea. The rocks are sand-coloured and craterous from the spray. Blue and Jasmine swim off to explore the caves, while Frank gets his camera out and waits on the rocks above for the sun to move a fraction. Stella stays below, trying to forget the camera is on her, and watches Claire, who’s lying out towels in a sheltered section of the cave for everyone to sit on. She’s bought a cool box filled with water bottles and beers, as well as a few bags of salted almonds. The freckles have come out on her face, some of them joining together into age spots. She’s wearing a black swimming costume with a green sarong tied around her waist, and the soft skin on the underside of her arms has concertinaed into lots of tiny wrinkles.
The rock edge of the pool is covered in sea urchins, and Frank swims next to Claire as she climbs in, his face close to the water, pointing out the safest spots to step. The sea is teal, and Stella can see a bike wedged in the sand at the bottom.
Blue is always moving. Even when she sunbathes, she jitters one of her ankles, or ties little plaits into her hair
What did you guys eat last night? asks Stella, once they’re out.
Frank is wearing expensive sunglasses, and the lenses blink in the sun. Lots of things, he says. Tapas.
But what? Specifically. Tell me every single thing.
Claire laughs.
Alright, says Frank. Um. We had some big fat prawns, Spanish omelette, patatas bravas.
Those marinated anchovies that I like. We had lots of those.
There was bread and aioli, and some olives.
We had an aubergine thing as well. And some delicious little croquettes. So no lobster?
Lobster? says Claire. Not that I can think of. Why d’you ask?
No reason, says Stella. Just wondering.
Jasmine and Blue get back a little after that. Jasmine sits down with a beer while Blue climbs up over the rocks. Stella’s noticed that Blue is always moving. Even when she sunbathes, she jitters one of her ankles, or ties little plaits into her hair.
Look, shouts Blue. This is the perfect place to jump.
Stella isn’t so sure. It’s high where Blue is standing, and the rock curves outward, so that if Blue didn’t push herself off far enough, she could scrape her body on the way down.
Jazz, get your ass up here. You too, small fry.
‘In the mornings, they set up on the beach and eat peaches in the shade of a parasol.’ Photograph: Nachosuch/Getty Images/iStockphoto
Even getting over to the platform is a little scary, and both Stella and Jasmine have to use their hands to support themselves as they climb. There’s just enough space for all three girls to stand side by side on the ledge. The rock bulges beneath them, the sea so far off it looks solid. A cloud passes over the sun, and the water flashes black. It occurs to Stella that Jasmine might push her off, and she shifts slightly towards Blue.
Below, Claire and Frank stand to watch. Be careful, Claire calls.
On three, says Blue. Ok? Three. Two. One.
It’s only Blue that jumps. Jasmine and Stella stay standing. Blue’s body is in the air for whole minutes before the sea swallows her whole. Stella watches the white foam spit on the surface and waits.
Fuck, says Jasmine.
Blue comes up whooping. Come on, pussies, she shouts.
Jasmine has her arms folded across her chest. I’m not doing it.
She starts to make her way back down the rock. Stella stands on the platform, contemplating. Underneath her, Blue treads water and waves. The sea sloshes lightly against the rocks. Stella thinks about how if she died when she jumped, it would be all Blue’s fault, and their names would be tied together forever.
Stella jumps. The bulge of the rock passes so close to her body she can hear it, like a bus driving too fast down the street. Someone screams, probably her mother. The air feels hard, and the surface of the water even harder. When Stella comes up, she’s shaken, certain that her organs have swapped places inside her body. Blue swims to her.
You good?
Stella’s panting so loud she can barely hear. She grins. Yeah, she says, between pants.
That was great. That was so, so great.
Blue puts her thumb in the air so that the others can see. Claire’s had her hands over her face, and she takes them down.
Again? says Stella, though she doesn’t want to.
You’ve got balls, small fry. I’m impressed.
In the car on the way back to the villa, the seats are so hot they burn. Stella puts her head on Blue’s shoulder and closes her eyes.
What shall we eat tonight? says Frank. I can drive via the shop.
It’s Blue’s last night, says Jasmine. We were planning to go out.
Stella lifts her face to Blue’s. No. That went way too fast.
Light comes through the sun roof and shows a faint, dark moustache on Blue’s upper lip. Only a few weeks ago, Stella noticed her own in the zoom-in mirror that Frank has in the bathroom, and used his razor to shave it off.
Come with us, says Blue. You’re invited. Isn’t she, Jasmine?
Jasmine doesn’t respond, and Frank coughs to fill the silence.
See, says Blue. I told you she’d be cool with it.
Frank laughs then, and so does Claire. Stella wonders if Blue was born exceptional, or if it’s the kind of thing that happens gradually.
At the villa, Stella sits on the veranda with the adults while Jasmine and Blue shower and get ready to go out. It’s almost like before Blue arrived: Claire leafing through a book, Frank loading a new film into his camera. He puts the previous canister carefully into his bag, and lets out a long, low whistle.
There’s some great shots on that sucker, he says.
Quickly, Stella prays that the best photographs are of her.
Stell, says Claire. You’ll be careful tonight, won’t you? Those girls are adults. You don’t have to do the things they do.
I know, mum.
A shout comes from inside the house. Hey, small fry. Come try this. I think it’ll suit you.
The dress is made of velour in a muted gold colour. Stella puts it on in her bedroom, and Blue tightens the spaghetti straps by tying them in knots on Stella’s shoulders. On Blue, the dress would have been shin-length, but on Stella it trails the floor, and she has to lift it every time she takes a step.
Guapa.
What’s that?
It means gorgeous.
Stella looks in the mirror.
Go ahead, says Blue. Play dumb. Act like you don’t know.
I didn’t know! I’d never heard that word before.
I mean you’re acting like you don’t know you’re gorgeous.
Frank drives the girls into town, pulling into a bus stop to drop them off. He passes Stella a roll of notes through the window, to pay for dinner.
What about me? says Jasmine.
I was getting to you.
The cobbled streets are strung with fairy lights, and the tiny church is flood-lit. Lots of men run their eyes over Blue as she walks. Stella follows directly behind and pretends it’s her that the men are looking at. When they come to the restaurant, Jasmine picks a table that’s set up on the street outside. The moon is big and yellow in the gap between the buildings, and Blue orders red wine that comes in a carafe with short, stubby glasses.
Have a sip, says Blue.
Stella shakes her head and shivers. I’ve tried wine before. It’s horrible.
It’s not how it tastes, small fry. It’s how it makes you feel.
Blue pours her a glass, and Jasmine picks it up and drinks. Hey, says Stella. That was for me.
When Jasmine puts the glass back on the table, it’s empty. You’re twelve years old. Remember?
How could I forget.
Jasmine laughs, for the first time Stella’s ever heard. It feels nice.
Blue orders an entire fish that comes on an oval platter, swimming in its own juices. She pops the eyeball out with her fork and places it carefully in the middle of Stella’s empty plate. That’s your dinner. If you’re good, you can have the other one after.
I know you’re joking.
I’m deadly serious.
Stella picks the eyeball off her plate. In her fingers, it feels like the balls of polystyrene that had protected Frank’s new lens when it arrived in the post. Stella tosses the eyeball into her mouth and swallows.
No one speaks for a moment. Stella worries she’s done the wrong thing. Then Blue slips low into her chair, throws her head back and laughs and laughs. I fucking love this kid, she says.
Stella feels her body float upwards, a little off the seat. Jasmine cuts a fillet away from the fish and places it on Stella’s plate. Here, she says. To get the taste out. I’ll get you some water as well.
The girls begin to eat. Blue and Jasmine talk about learning to drive, which Jasmine is doing and Blue is avoiding.
Dad took me out to practice once, says Jasmine. I guess he thought it was a good opportunity for bonding.
A good opportunity for mansplaining, says Blue.
Literally. The only person he was bonding with was himself.
Like that’s necessary.
Jasmine nods. He’s a shit driver, too.
Fuck driving anyway, says Blue. I’d rather get driven.
That’s probably best for everyone, pipes up Stella, thinking of her ride on the moped.
Jasmine laughs at that, too.
They’re midway through the meal when Blue waves at someone. Stella looks over her shoulder to see a man a few tables away. Jasmine looks too.
This guy’s been eyeing me for ages, says Blue, not breaking her smile.
The man has hair that looks matted on purpose, and there’s a guitar propped against his chair. He’s fit, says Jasmine.
He’s alright, says Blue.
Yeah, says Stella. Nothing special.
What do you know about it, small fry? says Blue. She calls the man over. You fancy buying us a drink? she says, when he arrives.
How old is she? says the man. His accent is maybe French or Italian.
That’s Stella. She’s nineteen.
And your name?
Blue.
Ok. Now I’m sure you’re lying.
Blue reaches over and pulls the empty chair back from their table. We drink vodka, she says. Vodka and orange.
What are you doing? asks Jasmine, once the man is inside the restaurant, standing at the bar.
What does it look like? You said you fancied him.
I said he was fit. It’s different.
Is it?
The man comes back with a round tray. He puts the drinks down on the table. Jasmine moves Stella’s glass next to hers. This time, Stella doesn’t protest. The man sits down. He tells them his name is Nico.
We have a question for you, Nico, says Blue.
Go on.
D’you think there’s a difference between fancying someone and thinking they’re fit?
Under her makeup, Jasmine goes pink. Nico doesn’t notice; he’s looking at Blue. My English might not be good enough for this question, he says.
Just answer. We’re having a debate.
Nico picks up his guitar and starts plucking at the strings. What’s fit?
It means hot, says Blue. Sexy, attractive. It’s what Jasmine thinks of you.
Jasmine blushes even more then. She has her eyes on her empty plate, and she looks to Stella like she might start to cry. Nico is smiling a little, amused.
So, what’s your answer?
I’d say they’re the same.
Blue grins. That means you’re with me.
Nico looks at Blue, and she looks back. The evening is balmy, and their faces are shimmering. Stella thinks that the sounds coming from the guitar are sort of tinny, perhaps out of tune. That look lasts a long time.
The screech of Jasmine’s chair against the paving makes Stella jump. She has to run to catch her.
Are you ok?
I’m fine. Leave me alone.
That was kinda unfair.
What was?
You know.
Jasmine stops. They’re at the bottom of the street by now. The fairy lights have run out and things are a shade darker. Jasmine’s face is mostly covered by her hair, but Stella can see that her mascara is running.
I’m used to it, she says. I’m never the first choice.
Stella rolls the window down, sticks her head out, and watches white stars run through the sky like streamers
Blue arrives then. She’s jogged down, and her breathing’s loud. I’ve always wanted to do a runner, she says.
Jasmine wipes the mascara from under her eyes with her index finger. Fuck’s sake, she says, turning to make her way back to the restaurant.
At their table, Nico has gone. Perhaps Blue sent him away, or perhaps he was simply afraid of being lumbered with their bill. Stella hopes it is the former. She pulls Frank’s money from inside her trainer, and leaves the lot in the middle of the table. Neither Blue nor Jasmine make signs of contributing.
The taxi ride home is taken in silence. Stella rolls the window down, sticks her head out, and watches white stars run through the sky like streamers.
A
t the villa, Frank and Claire are in bed already, and the girls sit out on the veranda. There’s a box of cigarettes on the table, so Jasmine and Blue help themselves to a couple. After Jasmine lights the cigarettes, she uses the matches to light the candles on the table. The girls’ faces flicker.
Isn’t it past your bedtime? says Jasmine.
Blue takes a drag of her cigarette. Can you put your insecurity on hold for like, five minutes?
Fuck off, Blue.
We all know it’s not small fry you’re pissed off with, or me.
Jasmine doesn’t reply to that. Stella can see the milky way behind her head.
It’s not even Claire, says Blue. It’s your arsehole of a dad.
Jasmine keeps refusing to meet Blue’s eye. The ash falls from the end of her cigarette onto the table and scatters.
He spent ten years of his marriage sleeping with Claire, says Blue. He clean broke your mum’s heart. She can’t get out of bed for weeks at a time, and he’s out here with his new wife and his flash camera. He’s an arsehole, Jazz. He’s a fucking arsehole. Say it with me.
He’s an arsehole. He’s a fucking arsehole.
Jasmine stands up and goes into the house. Stella cranes her neck, but the lights are off all through the villa. When Jasmine comes back, Frank’s camera bag is slung over her shoulder. No, says Stella.
Jasmine takes the steps down from the veranda. Stella stands up and follows. Blue falls into step behind her. The cool air opens around them, and Stella’s eyes adjust as she walks.
Throw it, says Blue. Let it go.
Blue’s enjoying this, Stella can tell. There’s something like laughter in her voice. That camera’s worth thousands, says Stella. Think of the films. They’ll be ruined.
The splash is big enough to set the sensors off. The pool lights up to show Frank’s bag sinking to the bottom. It quivers gently as it hits the tiles, its strap settling around it like a rosary.
Fuck, says Jasmine.
Blue laughs. I didn’t think you were actually gonna do it.
I’ll get it, says Stella. I’ll get it now. It might be ok.
Nah. Blue lies her hand on Stella’s shoulder. It’s over. That camera’s fucked.
No one says anything for a while. Stella can feel her pulse in the ends of her fingers, all up her neck. A bat sweeps down from the sky, drinks a sip of water from the pool, and flies off into the dark.
Alright, says Blue. Let’s get you kids to bed. That’s enough excitement for one night.
Stella barely sleeps at all. It’s just past nine when she hears Frank’s voice, slightly raised, through the shutters. What the, he says.
In a short space of time, everyone’s out on the veranda. Stella supposed that staying in her room would look guilty, and it seems that Blue and Jasmine thought that too. By this point, Frank is already in the pool.
What is it? calls Claire. She looks at Stella, and Stella looks away.
In the pool, Frank splutters as he surfaces. Blue chews on her nails.
My god, says Claire. Is that your camera?
Frank swims with his bag held above the surface. In her mind, Stella sees the water seeping into all the round outlines of the buttons, the ridges where the Dream Lens has been carved to fit, the film canisters sloshing aqua.
Frank climbs out of the pool and walks back to the veranda. Drops fly off him, and the wet camera slaps at his chest. He passes by Stella, Claire and Blue, until he’s standing in front of Jasmine. His face is a strange colour, like something cooked. He leans very close to Jasmine, and she squints back at him. She stands a foot shorter than him, her head angled upwards. It’s like that for what feels like hours: nose-to-nose, both shaking, silent but for Frank’s ragged breaths. A single tear runs down Jasmine’s cheek. The sound of the camera dripping slows to a rhythm.
It was me, says Stella. She has the same feeling she had when she ate the fish eye. It was me, she says again.
Jasmine and Blue look at Stella. Jasmine is crying more now. Frank lowers himself slowly into a chair. The thick skin on his belly makes narrow rolls, and he hangs his head low over them.
What? says Claire.
Stella turns and runs through the house. In her bedroom, Blue’s velour dress is a loop on the floor. On the dresser, the cherry stones have lost their shine. Stella crawls into bed, pulls her knees up beneath her chin, and waits.
Some hours later, Stella wakes to Blue shaking her gently. Small fry. Hey, I’m outta here.
In the airless garage, Stella climbs into the car. She didn’t see Frank on the way through the house, but Claire is sat in the driver’s seat, next to Jasmine. Blue’s in the back with Stella, her suitcase jammed into the footwell, her legs folded on either side. No one says a word as they drive. The day’s so hot the tarmac on the roads is melting. The whole car smells like Blue: coconut oil and Hawaiian Tropic. Stella watches Claire in the wingmirror. It’s clear from her eyes that she’s been crying.
Jasmine and Stella stay a little too far apart after Blue walks away, leaving space for her to change her mind
The drive to the port takes fifteen minutes. When they arrive, Claire waits with the car while Stella and Jasmine walk Blue to the ferry. The boat is huge and white, chugging black smoke into the cobalt sky. The girls stand on the concrete jetty to say their goodbyes, their shadows long and thin in the afternoon sun.
You’re pretty badass, small fry, you know that?
Stella shoves her hands deep into the pockets of her shorts. Thanks.
Behind Blue, the edges of the jetty ripple in the heat. There’s a slope set up for boarding, and a man checking tickets. He waves Blue over. The boat’s scheduled to leave any minute. It’ll take Blue to the mainland, where she’ll catch her flight back to London.
Well, says Blue. It’s been real.
She pulls Jasmine and Stella into a hug, and they stand like that for a while, sticky against each other. Stella can feel her heartbeat pressed up to Blue’s body.
Jasmine and Stella stay a little too far apart after Blue walks away, leaving space for her to change her mind. Instead, the ramp lifts and the boat starts to pull out of the port. After a minute or so, Blue appears on the flat roof of the ferry and stands with her hands on the railings, a black silhouette against the wide sky. Stella waves and waves as Blue gets smaller. When the ferry is unintelligible from the other boats in the distance, Stella and Jasmine turn back to the car park.
Hey. Thanks, by the way.
Stella slows, uses her hand to shield her face, looks at Jasmine, and nods. Through the car windscreen, Stella can see her mother fanning herself with a map of the island. Shotgun, says Stella.
Jasmine doesn’t fight her, only gets into the back seat without a word. Stella stands for a moment in the heat, looking out at the horizon, before cracking open the passenger door and climbing in herself.
Blue 4eva is available to listen to on BBC Sounds, appears in the BBC National Short Story Award 2022 (Comma Press, £7.99) and in Saba Sams’ debut collection, Send Nudes (Bloomsbury, £14.99). To support the Guardian and the Observer buy copies at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/may/20/brexit-not-going-to-plan-did-we-ever-have-a-plan | Business | 2018-05-20T06:00:49.000Z | William Keegan | It’s said Brexit is ‘not going to plan’. Did we ever have a plan? | William Keegan | Your correspondent is not as well up on social media as his wife and children, but I could not help noticing a slogan posted beneath a London traffic light the other day. It claimed to be from the Instagram project Notes to Strangers – new to me, I must confess – and confidently proclaimed: “Having a Plan B will make your Plan A unsuccessful”.
This was on yet another day when the press was full of reports about the chaos within Theresa May’s hapless government about the Brexit “negotiations” – negotiations that seem to be taking place mainly within her warring cabinet rather than with the rest of the EU. And – surprise, surprise – neither of the proposals supposedly being discussed is in any case considered remotely viable by most, indeed all, of the experts I have talked to.
But back to the traffic-light slogan. It is of course an absurd statement, if mildly amusing. And, goodness knows, don’t we need some light relief as an irresponsible government proceeds with its apparent mission to tear itself and the country apart? The situation is so potentially dire that I often meet intelligent people who just cannot face hearing about Brexit – a development which may have something to do with an apparent decline in the audience for the Today programme, which commentators like myself have to listen to, however annoying it is that the presenters confuse the referendum result, which happened, with Brexit, which has not and one hopes never will. Also, our much-loved BBC gives far too much scope to the likes of Mr Farage.
It is abundantly clear that this dreadful government does not have a Plan B, or even a Plan A that might be rendered unsuccessful by a Plan B. Last week there was even talk of a Plan C, which had already been dismissed by the Irish government.
Now, mention of Farage reminds me of one of the more intriguing recent statements from another member of the Dishonourable Company of Brexiters. Daniel Hannan, who, like Farage, draws a comfortable salary from the EU he wishes us to leave, is a veteran Leaver but managed to merit the newspaper headline “Brexiteer Hannan says leaving the EU not quite going to plan”.
As for the Irish border problem, I have yet to meet any serious person who thinks it is soluble
It wasn’t entirely clear whether my acquaintance Mr Hannan had Plan A or Plan B in mind. But, he tells us: “I had assumed that, by now, we’d have reached a broad national consensus around a moderate form of withdrawal that recognises the narrowness of the result.”
At least, unlike the prime minister and the cabinet Brexiters, he recognises that the referendum result was not an “overwhelming” vote to abandon a 45-year achievement in integrating our economy with the rest of Europe. Along with the majority of the Lords, and the more enlightened Tory and Labour MPs, Mr Hannan sees the advantages of access to the single market and the fallback position of Efta, the European Free Trade Association.
But why bother? The Brexiters, and those who have caved in to them, keep trying to cherry-pick advantages, such as involvement in the Galileo navigation system, which are threatened by Brexit. But, as the EU’s patient chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, says: “We are not kicking the UK out … The UK decided unilaterally and autonomously to withdraw from the EU. This implies leaving its programmes as well.”
The farce deepens. Recently the Department for International Trade had to appeal for funds from the Treasury. Why? Because it was cutting back on services that help our exports to tried and trusted markets in order to waste resources on trying to realise the trade secretary’s fantasy of new agreements elsewhere.
The dream of a wonderful trade deal with Trump’s America has been exposed in a study, entitled On The Rebound by Ed Balls and others for the Harvard Kennedy School. It concludes: “All things considered, both US and UK officials are doubtful that a meaningful deal can be reached.”
As for the Irish border problem, I have yet to meet any serious person who thinks it is soluble. The incompatibility of May’s “red lines” on the customs union and the single market while somehow preserving the status quo in Ireland was a theme of a high-powered discussion at the Irish embassy last week.
As Frances O’Grady, general secretary of the TUC, said to the audience: “Staying in the single market and customs union would protect jobs, rights and peace. If anyone’s got a better plan, then let’s hear it.”
No one has. We definitely need a Plan B, and it is the status quo. I am beginning to think that, however much – rightly or wrongly – they are fearful of a Corbyn government, the Tories are heading for the cliff. I just hope they don’t take the rest of us with them. Brexit is pointless. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/apr/02/three-things-with-jessica-rowe-whenever-i-buy-a-coffee-out-its-not-hot-enough | Life and style | 2023-04-02T15:00:23.000Z | Katie Cunningham | Three things with Jessica Rowe: ‘Whenever I buy a coffee out, it’s not hot enough’ | Jessica Rowe has previously penned memoirs about mental health, motherhood, and parenting. But for her new book, the media personality decided to keep things light with a collection of family-friendly gags titled Mum Jokes. So why the foray into questionable comedy?
Three things with Colin Lane: ‘There’s always little mountains of salt around the house’
Read more
“I think I’m hilarious. My family doesn’t, but I crack myself up all the time,” Rowe says. “I thought, there’s plenty of dad jokes around, but what about a mum jokes book?”
Rowe has worked as a TV presenter since the 1990s, but despite her natural warmth on screen, the Sydneysider was a very shy child. She credits the ballet lessons she took as a young girl with helping her find her confidence, and wishes she had kept her pointe shoes as a memento. Here, Rowe tells us about that pair of long-lost footwear, as well as some other important belongings.
What I’d save from my house in a fire
‘It’s like an encyclopedia of my life’: Jessica Rowe’s wardrobe. Photograph: Ted Minted
Let’s throw all practicality out of the window and say my wardrobe. It’s like an encyclopedia of my life. Each outfit reminds me of an event, a time, a feeling. Clothes are very powerful: they can lift your mood, they can be your armour for the day, they can protect you and they can build you up when you might be feeling a little insecure.
There’s also the simple joy that they bring me. A sequin, something bright, or a fun pattern has the ability to make me smile, and also make other people smile – I think that’s something you can never have too much of.
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My most useful object
My Nespresso coffee machine – I just cannot start the day without a coffee. I have a very thoughtful husband, who is a morning person, and I’m not. He’s always up much earlier than me and brings me a coffee in bed – I feel very lucky! And I have a real sweet tooth. I know that for true coffee aficionados this would be sacrilegious, but I love a caramel syrup in my coffee.
I must be morphing into my mother because whenever I buy a coffee out, it’s not hot enough. If I’m at a cafe, I tell the barista to make it “nice and hot”. And that’s what my mum said. I used to tease her so much – I’d roll my eyes – and I now do it as well. So having the coffee machine at home, there’s no need for any of that, because it’s just the way you like it.
The item I most regret losing
My ballet pointe shoes. I did ballet from age six to 12 and I loved it. It was incredibly nerve-racking because I was quite a nervous and shy little girl. But I loved the poise that ballet taught me.
I went to a ballet school called Hallidays and there were two teachers, called the Mrs Hallidays. They were almost little pixies in terms of their height, but they were fierce. One of them had a stick that she’d use to whack you behind the legs if your legs weren’t straight.
You’d always have to have your hair pulled back, and you’d wear a boring black leotard and skin-coloured stockings – there were no tutus, none of the pretty stuff you see little girls wear now in ballet class. It was really rigorous and strict. But the Mrs Hallidays were such fabulous women; I look back and think of them now as businesswomen who were strong and determined and passionate.
A young Jessica Rowe with her pointe shoes: ‘I still love daydreaming about being a ballerina’
When I finally got to the stage where you could wear pointe shoes, because you had to be old enough, I could not get over how painful they were. I’d always watched ballerinas on stage and they looked so light. Whereas when you actually put the shoes on, you are crushing your toes – it’s like dancing on your bones, and physically it was excruciating. It was too painful so, in high school, I stopped ballet.
I do wish that I’d kept those pointe shoes as a memory of ballet and the magic of a ballet studio – all the mirrors and the music; there’d be a pianist there playing every lesson. It was really quite something, even though this studio was in Haymarket, which was really grotty at the time.
I still love looking at black-and-white photos of Margot Fonteyn and reading about the Sadler’s Wells ballet school in London and daydreaming about being a ballerina. It was magic. That word is overused. But for me, it was magic. | Full |
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