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https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/may/16/age-verification-for-adult-websites-may-involve-australian-government-digital-id | Australia news | 2023-05-16T06:31:05.000Z | Josh Taylor | Age verification for adult websites may involve Australian government digital ID | Age verification for adult websites may incorporate the rollout of government ID, the communications minister, Michelle Rowland, has said.
In March, the eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, delivered a long-awaited report outlining a potential roadmap for verifying that Australian users visiting websites hosting pornography and other adult content are over 18 years old. The roadmap has yet to be released.
On Tuesday, Rowland said the government would release the report in the “near future”, but would first need to determine how the government response might cover other reforms, including changes to the Privacy Act and the rollout of government digital ID.
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“We’re working through this methodically,” she said. “We are considering this as a whole within government because of course we’ve got other portfolios, we’re looking at digital identifiers, so really drawing all this together. We will do this expeditiously.”
The federal government allocated $26.9m in the budget to the development of digital government ID. The project is likely to advance this year off the back of the Optus and Medibank data breaches and concern about businesses holding so much personal information about customers.
Critics of age verification systems say that if businesses are forced to set up their own systems that require people to share identity documents it could lead to online “honeypots” and open people up to blackmail. Rowland said she acknowledged people had those concerns, and it was something the government was considering in its response.
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“We’re in an environment in Australia where people are reticent to give over their data … We have every intention of bringing this to a conclusion and releasing the report,” she said. “But we’re doing it methodically and within those parameters, and we understand how important this is.
“We do not want young people having unfettered access to pornography.”
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Inman Grant said the roadmap sought to strike the right balance in preventing children from accessing pornography but also ensuring people – particularly older teens – can find information about sexual identity or gender identity online.
“It’s a very contextual thing. We’re not looking at a blunt force type approach and that wouldn’t be something that minister would support anyway, we’re also looking at holistic approach,” she said. “Making sure that we’re balancing the three legs of stool of privacy, security and safety.
Inman Grant said the review had assessed all the current available technologies for age verification or age estimation, and their limits, adding that there had been a wide set of views among those consulted and there would never be one agreed position. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/20/time-for-clean-energy-sustainability-mark-ruffalo | Opinion | 2015-12-20T09:30:48.000Z | Mark Ruffalo | It's time to transition to 100% clean energy: the wind is now at our backs | Mark Ruffalo | The climate agreement reached in Paris is provoking a flurry of caveats, criticisms and cautions. Many of those criticisms are warranted and there’s a lot of work ahead to make sure countries live up to their promises. But we should not miss a chance to celebrate a historic turning point.
World leaders finally made commitments to clean, renewable energy that will help to ensure a safer, healthier and more prosperous future for us all. The agreement signals that the age of fossil fuels is coming to a close, and the age of renewable energy is dawning.
In many ways, the Paris deal is the mother of all market signals. To deliver on the promises world leaders made, we will need to leave coal and oil in the ground and move toward a complete reliance on clean energy. Let’s not miss the writing on the wall: fossil fuels are a losing bet, while renewables offer economic opportunity.
This is true for all segments of society – from energy investors to individual households that can save money on their energy bills by switching to rooftop solar power.
The Paris pact ratifies an ongoing renewable energy revolution spreading across the globe. Each year since 2013, the world has added more power-generating capacity fueled by renewable sources than from coal, natural gas and oil combined. Global investment in renewable energy hit $310bn last year, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. And major companies are pledging to go 100% renewable, too.
Much of that growth in clean, renewable energy has come from the subnational movement, in which cities, states and regions are banding together and leading even if their national governments are lagging. This bottom-up approach – one that so many people around the world are already part of – is what was most alive about Paris.
It is what drove so many people to COP 21 this year, and is the driving force that makes so many hopeful. In my home state of New York, for example, we have a robust movement to ban fracking, courageously embraced by governor Andrew Cuomo, and we support his leadership on renewable energy. We have found a new way of approaching this problem. Whole towns, communities and cities are racing to a full reliance on renewable energy, despite the gridlock in Washington, DC. This is where so many sense real hope coming out of Paris.
Meanwhile, cities from London to Los Angeles, from Jakarta to Rotterdam, are pioneering innovative approaches to cutting their own carbon footprints. Momentum is growing, too: following the meeting, Republicans and Democrats in San Diego, America’s eighth largest city, unanimously agreed to transition to 100% clean energy.
What cities are doing, countries can do, too. As my co-founder at The Solutions Project, Stanford professor, Mark Jacobson, told the US Congress last month, transitioning to 100% clean energy is not only good for the environment, human health and the economy, it is doable. His team has developed roadmaps showing exactly how 139 countries can each completely transition to renewable energy by 2050 using technology we have right now.
The Paris climate agreement brings that vision – of a world where all people have access to 100% clean energy – closer to reality. Much more has to go right if nations are to fulfill their promises over the coming years. But finally, the wind is at our backs.
The voices of people gathered in Paris – from big-city mayors intent on making urban life better, to indigenous people and small island countries fighting for their right to live in some of Earth’s most unspoiled places – echoed hundreds of millions of voices, all around the world, demanding action.
In response to those demands, world leaders have finally agreed to steer us away from a climate disaster. This is a moment of real hope. It is a recognition, at long last, that we’re all in this together.
And as negotiators in Paris acknowledged, some countries will need financial help to move to renewable energy. But the payoff for investing in them – through mechanisms such as the UN’s Green Climate Fund – will be tremendous. Just as poorer nations skipped landline phones for mobile telephones, they can skip generations of coal-fired power plants for clean, renewable power.
In wealthy nations we benefit from the switch to renewables, too. The United States has tripled wind and solar capacity since 2008, and last year, we installed as much solar-generating capacity every three weeks as we did in all of 2008. That translates into job growth – the solar industry already employs more people than the coal industry, by some measures – as well as cleaner and healthier air.
Critics of the Paris deal are right to point out that it cannot “solve” climate change on its own. Countries will have to work hard to fulfill the promises they made last week, and set even more ambitious targets in the future. And the people of the world must stay engaged, doing their part to tackle climate change while holding political and economic leaders accountable.
There is much to be done. But after years of walking in circles, Paris was a giant step in the right direction. Now the renewable energy race is on, and we need to run – not walk – to the finish line. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/feb/21/country-diary-caught-in-a-web-of-late-winter-branches | Environment | 2024-02-21T05:30:06.000Z | Elizabeth-Jane Burnett | Country diary: Caught in a web of late winter branches | Elizabeth-Jane Burnett | Before the deciduous trees come into leaf, walking underneath them is dizzying. It is like moving through a large, deconstructed nest – one that expands from tree to tree. Without leaves, the nest is airy and flooded with light, made from whole branches and lined with the sky.
The trees lose some of their familiarity when leaves do not reveal their names, and it is their silhouettes that speak. A crown of fine twigs reveals a beech. The horse chestnut’s branches, upturned at the ends, hang like chandeliers. There is something intimate about moving through these shadow portraits, seeing a level of exposure that is not, for most of the year, available. There is an invitation to drift under all this uplift, to trace new pathways through wooden cobwebs.
A large English oak draws me to a standstill. For a moment, I am caught in the web as I follow the outstretched branches. High up, a larch’s twigs brush against its own; lower down, sun soaks the bark in bronze. The width of the trunk denotes an old age, and with many oaks of this kind not producing acorns until they are more than 40 years old, there is a message of slow and steady growth fitting to the season preceding the sudden spurts of spring.
Although there are other silhouettes to trace, it is here that I stay as the sky streams through the branches. I stay as the blue, without leaves to hide it, is at its brightest. A green woodpecker chatters from the larch and a jay flashes turquoise feathers as it passes. I stay until the cold forces me to move.
At ground level, there are scatterings of snowdrops and winter aconite. A little higher, camellias pour in colour from the fringes. Higher still, red catkins dangle from the hazel. The message of coming brightness is clear. Yet, just before the showiness begins, before the riot of unfurling and of green, there is a clear, and no less striking, shape to the darkness, looking skywards through webs of bare branches.
Country diary is on Twitter at @gdncountrydiary | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2023/mar/26/andy-warhol-new-plays-books-exhibitions | Art and design | 2023-03-26T11:00:16.000Z | Larry Ryan | Stretching his 15 minutes of fame: why Andy Warhol still has the power to inspire | When he appears in Nicole Flattery’s recently published novel Nothing Special, Andy Warhol is a spectral presence. “I never saw him come in but I felt the atmosphere change when he did,” Flattery writes from the watchful point of view of the teenage narrator of the book.
The coming-of-age novel set in the mid 1960s, with some flashes into the present, follows Mae, a lonely teenager who drops out of school after finding herself drawn into the new world of Warhol’s storied Factory in Manhattan. While art and drama and debauchery happen around her among the artist and his acolytes, Mae has the more prosaic job of typist. She is transcribing recordings of conversations that will form the basis of a: A Novel, Warhol’s (real) experimental book from 1968.
“I feel things work if you just don’t often see that person,” Flattery says of her version of Warhol. “It’s in their interest to remain out of your eyeline. They’ll only have the power if they make themselves like a distant, inaccessible figure.”
Flattery’s reimagining of Warhol might see him as distant, but 36 years after his death, he is ever-present in the public’s imagination. In fact, the recent obsession with him in theatre, film and books can make it seem as though you are never more than 6ft away from a Warhol-related event.
Happy Butterfly Day, silk dress with a Warhol design, circa 1955. Photograph: © 2022 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc
Opening on 31 March at London’s Fashion and Textile museum is Andy Warhol: The Textiles, a survey of his lesser-seen textile designs made in his time as a successful commercial artist in the 1950s and early 60s. In April, the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris will launch a show of the mid-1980s paintings he made with Jean-Michel Basquiat. Last year The Collaboration, Anthony McCarten’s play, which premiered at the Young Vic and later transferred to New York, explored the relationship between the two artists – a film version, directed by Kwame Kwei-Armah, is in the works.
Last year also brought a high-profile six-part documentary series on Netflix made by Ryan Murphy, based on Warhol’s diaries, which were published posthumously in 1989. At last September’s New York fashion week, Tommy Hilfiger’s catwalk show was indebted to the artist. Perhaps we are seeing the long tail of his incessant industriousness and boundless influence.
“Warhol is omnipresent. Somehow he seems to, in this digital, internet age, strike a chord with people,” says Richard Chamberlain, co-curator of the textiles exhibition, and co-author of the book Pop: Design, Culture, Fashion 1956-1976. “I think his subject matter, although it can be quite deep and thought-provoking, is quite accessible. And there’s so much about the man and what he was involved with, which is interesting to people.”
Flattery says that she was particularly influenced by the artist’s experimental films from the 1960s. The Hilfiger fashion week show also called on the Factory years, with broader nods to Warhol’s silver clouds installation, his superstar muses and his nous for branding. The pair were friends in the 1980s – “you could say it is a meeting of preppy minds” Hilfiger said in September.
Anything that draws on the Factory is immediately evocative of the era. It was in the mid-1960s when a Warhol look first solidified in the public consciousness: jeans and a Breton or black top, with a leather jacket and sunglasses, all presented with an inscrutable gaze.
The move away from the homogeneity of the 1950s into an outfit of the counterculture isn’t unique to Warhol. “To me, it’s a perennial popularity of mid-1960s bohemian modernist style,” says Nathanial Weiner, lecturer in cultural studies at Central Saint Martins, London . “People really liked that era, because it’s sort of the pinnacle, almost of western casual dress.”
Andy Warhol self-portrait with Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1982. Photograph: The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc
After he was shot by Valerie Solanas in 1968, Warhol withdrew from some of the free-wheeling aspects of the Factory, and honed his outfits into a more toned-down uniform of blue jeans and shirt, blazer and tie. It managed to seem both unremarkably plain, yet uniquely Warholian. Andy the worker. His life and work started to revolve around more established versions of celebrity, rather than around his own creations. By the 1980s Warhol was often clad all in black, in jeans, polo neck and a jacket, with New Balance or white Reebok Classic trainers. Ever more rake-thin and with his silver-blonde wig at its most shocking, this is a stark vision of Warhol – perhaps indicative of a scramble for relevancy in his friendship with then up-and-coming art star Jean-Michel Basquiat.
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This latter look, particularly the hair, has become a signifier of Warhol. It is the version that actor Paul Bettany plays in The Collaboration. David Bowie performed it in Julian Schnabel’s 1996 Basquiat biopic. “I really didn’t want him to overshadow the book,” says Nicole Flattery of Nothing Special. “I could go back through the appearances of Andy Warhol in films: he’s in the film The Doors [played by Crispin Glover] and Factory Girl [played by Guy Pearce]. I feel with a presence like that, if you don’t get it fully right it can really mess up everything.”
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It’s not just his look but also his personal life that seems to continue to capture people’s imagination. “I thought that the recent mini-series, The Andy Warhol Diaries, was very interesting,” says Scott King, a graphic designer and creator of The Debrist Manifesto, a book on art-world failure and the pursuit of perfectionism.
“It showed him as an active participant in love and disappointment and – quite boring-looking – weekends away in the Hamptons. It humanised him and showed a tenderness, a sadness. I mean, the best work he made was incredibly melancholic wasn’t it? But we don’t usually associate him with tenderness.”
But, as photographer Nat Finklestein’s 1999 book The Factory Years displays, Warhol and his 1960s coterie had already long since created a vision of indelible debauched cool. “The Warhol stance,” says Chamberlain, “the very sort of hip, Velvet Underground attitudes, that is still very refreshing, and very vital to people. I think there is a Warhol that still has an edginess.”
Nothing Special by Nicole Flattery is published by Bloomsbury (£16.99) | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/feb/21/morgan-sindall-profits-fall-12-per-cent | Business | 2012-02-21T11:42:06.000Z | Julia Kollewe | Morgan Sindall profits fall 12% | Construction group Morgan Sindall, which is involved in Crossrail and is also installing a cooling system at Green Park tube station in London, has warned of a tough few years for the industry as it suffered a 12% drop in profits.
Executive chairman John Morgan, who founded the company in 1977, said the office refurbishment market is "pretty flat" and the recovery will be later and slower than expected. In urban regeneration – which the group does in partnership with landowners, mainly local authorities – the picture is brighter. "We have secured considerably more work for 2020 than for 2012," he said.
As the government's austerity drive takes hold, Morgan Sindall's public sector-related work has dwindled to 50% of the total, compared with 70% in 2009. This is set to fall further, to around 45% this year – which is close to the long-term average, Morgan said.
Profits before tax and one-off items fell 12% to £45.3m last year, while revenues increased 6% to £2.2bn. The group's order book is down slightly from last year at £3.4bn.
Morgan talked of "challenging markets".
"This year is going to be much the same," he said. "But even if the [construction] market doesn't improve, we have been working in regeneration."
The company is involved in 30-40 regeneration projects, including revamping the city centres in Salford, Doncaster and Wakefield as well as Manchester Victoria station. It hopes to capitalise on the release of public sector land – the government is pushing the release of land assets such as car parks from public bodies to fund regeneration – and the £200bn national infrastructure plan.
Morgan Sindall bought collapsed care provider Connaught's social housing arm in 2010, which has been fully integrated into the group. While it has 7,000 employees, only about 15 work in the head office in London.
Numis analyst Howard Seymour said: "A significant shift away from the public sector is taking place as the group also develops greater integration of its operations into infrastructure, maintenance and regeneration markets and will underpin profits in the short term ahead of recommencing growth in 2013 and beyond." | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/jan/14/benefits-street-viewers-channel-4 | Media | 2014-01-14T11:07:00.000Z | John Plunkett | Benefits Street adds nearly 1 million viewers for second episode | The controversy around Channel 4's documentary series Benefits Street did nothing to harm its ratings, its second episode adding nearly a million viewers on last week's opener to more than 5 million on Monday night.
With an average of 5.1 million viewers, a 20.8% share between 9pm and 10pm on Monday, the series about the residents of James Turner Street in Birmingham gave Channel 4 a rare win over BBC1 and ITV.
Monday night's episode focused on two sets of Romanian immigrants who had moved into the street in the Winson Green area of the city, after the opening episode looked at crime.
Critics branded the first episode "poverty porn", accusing it of demonising people on benefits at a time when the welfare state is being further cut back by the government, with nearly 1,000 complaints to Channel 4 and Ofcom by the end of last week. More than 30,000 people have signed a Change.org online petition calling for the show to be axed.
Channel 4 said it was a "fair and balanced observational documentary series".
Benefits Street beat ITV drama The Bletchley Circle and BBC1's Panorama, I Want My Baby Back, which investigated the Family Courts and four cases in which parents were accused of abuse and had their children taken away.
The five-part series of Benefits Street, made by Love Productions, whose other credits have included Boys and Girls Alone, Tower Block of Commons and The Great British Bake Off, debuted last week with 4.3 million viewers, a 17.2% share.
Love Productions' London offices were picketed on Monday afternoon by around 30 protestors unhappy at the show in a protest organised by the Unite union.
ITV drama The Bletchley Circle had 4.2 million viewers, a 17% share, also between 9pm and 10pm, down from 4.5 million viewers (18%) last week.
BBC1's Panorama had 2.2 million viewers (8.8%) between 9pm and 10pm. In the same slot last week, Sheridan Smith and David Morrissey drama The 7.39 had 5.7 million viewers, a 22.6% share.
At the same time on Channel 5, Celebrity Big Brother had 2.3 million viewers, a 9.4% share.
From the makers of Benefits Street – Bake Off's back!
Ahead of the next full series of The Great British Bake Off, celebrity charity spin-off show The Great Sport Relief Bake Off returned for a four-part series to BBC2 with 3.7 million viewers, a 14.8% share, between 8.30pm and 9.30pm.
The baking show, which is also made by Love Productions, was up against the first half of Benefits Street and the closing half hour of another Channel 4 documentary, Dogs: Their Secret Lives, watched by 1.6 million viewers (6.5%) between 8pm and 9pm.
Bake Off followed the first quarter-final of University Challenge, the quiz was watched by 3.1 million viewers, a 12.7% share between 8pm and 8.30pm.
From 9.30pm on BBC2 Sacred Wonders of Britain averaged 1.6 million and a 7.5% share.
All ratings are Barb overnight figures, including live, +1 (except for BBC channels) and same day timeshifted (recorded) viewing, but excluding on demand, or other – unless otherwise stated. Figures for BBC1, BBC2, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 generally include ratings for their HD simulcast services, unless otherwise stated
To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email [email protected] or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication".
To get the latest media news to your desktop or mobile, follow MediaGuardian on Twitter and Facebook. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2007/jul/31/guardianobituaries.obituaries | Film | 2007-07-31T22:57:04.000Z | Brian Baxter | Obituary: Ingmar Bergman | Ingmar Bergman, who has died aged 89, was an undisputed colossus of world art cinema. From the 1940s into the 21st century, he directed more than 60 films, wrote even more and created some, like The Seventh Seal (1956-57), Wild Strawberries (1957) and the autobiographically inspired Fanny and Alexander (1982), that were stunningly successful. He astonished people with his willingness to recognise cruelty, death and, above all, the torment of doubt.
From the late 1950s to the late 1970s, Bergman would have been on any film buff's list of great movie directors. Similarly, no critics' poll would have omitted from their list of greatest movies either Wild Strawberries or The Seventh Seal, which, with Smiles of a Summer Night (1955), made up a dazzling hat trick produced in under three years. His work was in severe contrast to the neo-realist school that dominated postwar cinema, employing a surgeon-like precision to analyse the intellectual disquiet that seemed at odds with the hedonistic nature of the times.
His films had a grim obsession with physical confrontation; he once remarked that he would like to have made a film entirely in close-up. The results, although immaculate, remain somewhat heartless and one might easily - in the lesser films - confuse technical skill with mechanical bravado. Bergman seemed unable to forget that he was examining a theme or topic, rather than creating a film where the medium itself can unwittingly reveal - in the hands of a great artist - an inner truth. The result is an occasional lack of spontaneity, compounded by the skill of the performances. On occasion, the actors so busily suggested improvisation and naturalness that, unlike the greatest screen figures - Spencer Tracy or Trevor Howard, say - they achieved the opposite.
In his native Sweden, Bergman was also a prolific theatre director and, from 1963 to 1966, head of the Royal Dramatic Theatre, Stockholm. The two strands in his career were crucially interrelated. He surrounded himself with devoted actors - Harriet Andersson, Gunnar Bjornstrand, Bibi Andersson, Max von Sydow, Liv Ullmann and many more - making a film each spring or summer with a superb team of technicians. The acting was stylised rather than natural, highly self-conscious and moulded. Yet in the theatre his aim was always equally cool and precisely detailed. As a film director, he, no doubt unwittingly, obliterated the great past and much of the then present Scandinavian cinema, so that his eminence may be seen to have been a mixed blessing for Swedish cinema, especially for its would-be directors.
Following on that fame and comparative fortune came a long period of self-doubt and seeming decline. As he observed in his Images, My Life in Film (1990), even the finest directors lose their credibility if they continue making movies that are only too recognisably their own.
As with Federico Fellini, so with Bergman, talent overwhelmed inspiration. An element of self-reference (and self-reverence) came into play, while waiting in the wings were satirists and, worse still, Woody Allen, an admirer whose homages lapsed into parody. Bergman did not lack humour, but his serious intentions and angst could become ponderous. In March 1983, after the return to form represented by Fanny and Alexander, he announced that he would not direct again. "I want peace. I don't have the strength any more, neither psychologically nor physically. And I hate the hoopla and the malice. Hell and damnation."
Of course, other works followed, some for television, After the Rehearsal (1983), The Blessed One (1985), a documentary about Fanny and Alexander (1986) and Karin's Face (1986), a short film about his mother. And there were works from his novels and screenplays, The Best Intentions (1991) and Sunday's Children (1992). Plus his autobiography, The Magic Lantern (1988), and the intriguing Images, My Life in Film.
With his death, a reassessment of Bergman's output puts him among such talents as Michelangelo Antonioni, Akiro Kurosawa (obituary, September 7 1998), Satyajit Ray, Billy Wilder (obituary, March 30 2002) and Luchino Visconti. These directors hover fitfully behind the handful of geniuses - Robert Bresson (obituary, December 22 1999), Carl Dreyer, Yasujiro Ozu, Jean Renoir, Roberto Rossellini - where poetry and originality transcend matter and realism. What Bergman and the others lack is the (seeming) simplicity of expression that belies inspiration: an inspiration that makes true what would not otherwise have been apparent. In short, there is an over-emphasis, an over-weaning power of expression, that obscures the counter currents of emotion lying beneath the surface of the work of those five pantheon directors, in such of their masterpieces as Voyage to Italy (Rossellini), Gertrud (Dreyer), or Lancelot du Lac (Bresson) which are beyond criticism.
Bergman wrote and directed some 35 features. He made other films credited only as director, and provided screenplays for Alf Sjoberg, Gustaf Molander, Alf Kjellin and Bille August. He also directed extensively for television later in his career, and made documentaries, The Faro Document (1969 and 1979), sequences in compilation films, plus plays for radio and novels. His theatrical career included Strindberg, Shakespeare, Ibsen, Edward Albee and Tennessee Williams, though little controversial except Mishima's Madame de Sade (1989). He also directed opera, including a famous version of Stravinsky's Rake's Progress. The immaculate visual surface of his films was guaranteed by his loyalty to those great cinematographers Gunnar Fischer and Sven Nykvist (obituary, September 22 2006).
Apart from his melancholy exile in the late 1970s, Bergman did not travel extensively for work. I remember the excitement of his production of Goethe's Urfaust, which came to London from the Malmo Theatre. It played to packed houses (in Swedish), partly because of his fame and partly because of its use of "deep focus" on stage creating a fluent, cinematic pace. This technique he was still using in 1984, for the highly regarded production of King Lear, where no actor left the stage throughout the performance - but remained in shadows or "out of focus".
When he did dabble with American finance or other influences, the results were nearly disastrous, as in the case of The Touch (1970) and The Serpent's Egg (1976). The intrusion of imported stars - Signe Hasso in This Can't Happen Here (1950) and Elliott Gould in The Touch - proved embarrassing. Happily, when he finally worked with Ingrid Bergman in Autumn Sonata (1977), the film was in Swedish and helped his return home. As an artist owing his origins to the severest aspects of Scandinavian culture - the theatre of Strindberg and the silent films of Victor Sjostrom - he was always happiest on home ground.
Bergman grew up in the first heyday of Scandinavian cinema, which flourished alongside American and Soviet silents. With the advent of sound, this international prestige vanished. The likes of Sjostrom, Mauritz Stiller, Benjamin Christensen left for the US, along with Greta Garbo; Dreyer remained behind but was reduced to comparative obscurity. Thus Bergman became easily the most important director to emerge in the second wave of Scandinavian international fame. For a good while after the second world war, he eclipsed directors even of the stature of his first collaborator Sjoberg and Arne Mattson, as well as later figures like Bo Widerberg, Jan Troell and Vilgot Sjoman. Even Dreyer remained in his shadow, though today that situation is reversed.
It is hard on Bergman to blame him for being powerful, prolific and internationally successful. He stated his serious concerns briefly in his introduction to Wild Strawberries and had the intellect and vigorous film technique to carry out his aims: "I try to tell the truth about the human condition, the truth as I see it." As he used cinema to examine - strip bare - life, he used life to examine cinema. Few directors have interwoven their persona and inner turmoil so powerfully as Bergman. His cinema was truly autobiographical, not simply in details and drama, but in its spiritual and artistic responses to marriage, the church, duplicity, illness, the nature of women, and death.
Bergman traced the obsession with film to his childhood when, aged 10, he acquired his first projector and a strip of film showing a girl waking in a field - he ran that nine feet of fantasy into oblivion. Yet it seems to have been a childhood hardly known, let alone enjoyed. He noted, "I myself never felt young, only immature." But he created at least one film, The Silence (1962), which stands alongside Rossellini's Germany, Year Zero, as one of the masterpieces concerned with childhood. Arguably his finest work, it also contains monumental performances from Ingrid Thulin (obituary, January 10 2004) as the lesbian intellectual attracted to her sister, Gunnel Lindblom, the mother of the boy who is the catalyst of this disturbing film.
Some of Bergman's own demons sprang from his early years in a comfortably-off household in Uppsala. His father, a Lutheran pastor physically punished his elder brother Dag and was capable of publicly humiliating the younger boy for minor misdemeanours. The boys and their sister Margareta were obliged to attend all of their father's Sunday services. Erik Bergman was later to become chaplain to the Swedish royal family and they left the northern university town where Ingmar had spent much of his time in a state of refuge in his maternal grandmother's huge apartment. This powerful woman - whom he was to describe as his "best friend" - also accompanied him on visits to the cinema, a far cry from the religious lantern slide shows organised by his father.
He rebelled against his upbringing, becoming a "vagabond", seeing movies (as he had done illicitly as a child) and working in the theatre. With Sweden neutral in the second world war, he was able to continue his studies and find work as a "script doctor" at the studios - a job that led to his first major credit. He married Elsa Fisher, the first of his five wives, though the relationship did not last long and in 1945 he married a dancer, Ellen Lundstrom, by whom he had four children.
In 1944, he co-wrote, with director Sjoberg, the screenplay for Frenzy. Sjoberg had unwittingly been an important influence on Bergman as early as 1930, when - after seeing one of his stage productions - the 12-year-old Ingmar and his sister were inspired to construct a theatre in the family nursery. Frenzy made Mai Zetterling a star, and did the same for Alf Kjellin, who later turned to direction.
This extraordinary film about a young student's obsession with a beautiful prostitute allowed Bergman to turn director, and after a feeble start - Crisis (1945), adapted from a Danish play - he wrote and/or directed 11 features before the enchanting Summer Interlude, which he regarded as his first truly personal film, and the misguided This Can't Happen Here (both 1950). On many of these films, Sjostrom, who had befriended the novice durin g the making of Crisis, receives credit as artistic consultant. In 1952 Bergman directed the best of his early films, the autobiographical Summer with Monika, but this story of adolescent love and betrayal hardly prepared audiences for the study in sexual humiliation that followed.
Sawdust and Tinsel (1953) marked the beginning of Bergman's maturity and shocked many (including British critics) with its seeming cruelty and pessimism. Two years later, the Christmas premiere of Smiles of a Summer Night - a stylish comedy of manners - changed Bergman's fortunes, proving an enormous critical and financial success, and giving him the artistic freedom he needed. It inspired Stephen Sondheim's musical A Little Night Music and Woody Allen's A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy, and had a successful cinema revival in 1995.
But Bergman's reputation as a "gloomy Swede" was not dented for long, and subsequent films confirmed his seriousness and seeming lack of humour. The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries endorsed his stature. For a long while, his star continued to shine. An Oscar for The Virgin Spring in 1960 was echoed the following year when Through a Glass Darkly received the best foreign film statuette. Great works followed after The Silence, notably Persona (1965) and Cries and Whispers (1971). This was the year of his marriage to Ingrid von Rosen, which followed a long relationship with Liv Ullmann. It was a fifth marriage, since he had also been married - very briefly - to Gun Grut in 1951 and to the pianist Kabi Laretei in 1959. Between those two events, there had been long affairs with the (unrelated) actors Harriet Andersson and Bibi Andersson.
A later highlight presented itself when he directed Mozart's The Magic Flute (1974) for Swedish television; the lavish budget ensured that it was far more than a record of the opera.
Within two years, however, Bergman was to be temporarily toppled from his eminence when, during rehearsals for Strindberg's Dance of Death, he was arrested on alleged tax offences going back several years. Although subsequently cleared, he suffered a nervous breakdown and left Sweden for Paris, Los Angeles and finally Munich, where he directed The Serpent's Egg, (1977) and the rather sour Life of the Marionettes (1979-80). In between these he made the melancholy Autumn Sonata and the second Faro Document, about his much loved island and "home base".
As for the final phase of his directing career, it is notable for the magnificent Fanny and Alexander, shown worldwide in two versions - at 312 and 197 minutes. The period is 1907; the setting is a Swedish university city. Arguably the most optimistic of his works, it proved an international success and received four Oscars, including one as best foreign film in 1983.
It was the culmination of a cinema career that had few equals in terms of quality, volume and integrity. For, as David Thomson so aptly remarked, "Bergman never set out to be less than demanding." As an artist, he had worked through that seriousness, and presented us with many works of subtlety and depth in their presentation of the human condition. As a man, he had often led a troubled existence, once declaring his life "a fiasco". Possibly within this lies some of the reason for his immense output and drive to achieve in cinema and theatre what he had failed to do in life.
In 1995 Bergman wrote the screenplay for Private Conversations - the third film to be directed by Ullmann. He was also honoured in New York that year with the $25,000 Dorothy and Lillian Gish prize. As part of the 50th anniversary celebrations of the Cannes film festival in 1997 he was awarded a unique Palme d'Or designed by Cartier. He had been chosen by his peers, all winners of the best director award, as the living film-maker most deserving of this special honour. Yet he declined to attend the ceremony, and Ullmann and their daughter Lynn collected the award.
In 1998, after a movie silence of 14 years, Bergman - then nearly 80 - allowed the premiere of a new, made-for-television work at the Cannes festival he had so studiously ignored the previous year. Philip French described The Presence of a Clown as "a magisterial meditation on the function of theatre and cinema, as well as on life and death". It seemed that the great director had decided to round up many of his collaborators of the past 50 tears for a valedictory work on the subjects which had concerned him. Two television productions followed, Bildmakarna (2000) and Saraband (2003), his last film, in which Ullmann and Erland Josephson reprised the main characters from his 1973 Scenes from a Marriage.
He is survived by eight children; one son predeceased him.
· Ernst Ingmar Bergman, film and stage director, July 14 1918; died July 30 2007 | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jan/17/tory-backbenchers-white-paper-theresa-may-brexit-priorities | Politics | 2017-01-17T20:24:51.000Z | Heather Stewart | Tory backbenchers to push for white paper on No 10's Brexit priorities | Conservative backbenchers have not given up the battle to force the government to publish a white paper spelling out its priorities for Brexit, despite No 10 making clear Theresa May’s speech is the only plan they intend to produce.
With the government awaiting the verdict in the supreme court appeal over whether it must give parliament a vote on triggering Brexit, MPs said they could seek to amend any bill that comes to parliament to force the government to table a formal white paper. Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs would be likely to back such a move and plan to coordinate their approach with moderate Conservatives.
The call for a white paper to be published – rather than the broad principles set out in the prime minister’s Lancaster House speech – was endorsed by the cross-party Brexit committee at the weekend.
But Downing Street believes May has satisfied demands, set out in a motion passed by the House of Commons and backed by the government last year, to reveal its plan.
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Anna Soubry, the de facto leader of the group of Conservatives seeking to retain the closest possible relationship with the EU, urged the Brexit secretary, David Davis, to “commit to putting those 12 objectives into a white paper and bringing it to this house so that we can finally debate the single market, the customs union and the free movement of people. So far, we have not, and many of us feel that parliament has been deliberately precluded from all this.”
May’s speech, which set out a vision of a “global Britain”, was widely regarded at Westminster as politically shrewd. One senior Brexit strategist said the Vote Leave campaign could have written much of it and wouldn’t have disagreed with a word.
The prominent leave campaigner Dominic Raab, MP for Esher and Walton, said: “This is a detailed and positive plan for an ambitious post-Brexit Britain. As an independent, self-governing democracy, we want to be a firm friend to Europe but a global player with the broadest horizons. It’s time to turn the page from the referendum and unite as a country, so Britain can go from strength to strength.”
Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, who led the leave campaign, praised a “fantastic speech” on Facebook. He has been keen for the prime minister to make a clean break with the EU rather than seeking to remain inside the single market.
The former Ukip leader Nigel Farage said: “I can hardly believe that the PM is now using the phrases and words that I’ve been mocked for using for years. Real progress.”
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That could make it hard for Ukip to compete with the Conservatives in the forthcoming byelections in Copeland and Stoke on Trent Central by claiming May was backsliding on Brexit.
But pro-remain Tory backbenchers also welcomed the speech, believing that while May had conceded Britain wouldn’t remain a formal member of the EU single market, her pledge to seek a “bold and ambitious” free trade deal – to “allow for the freest possible trade in goods and services between Britain and the EU’s member states” – could allow her to replicate many of the key elements of the single market without the name.
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Ben Howlett, the MP for Bath, said: “I’m pleased the prime minister has listened to Conservative backbenchers who have called for a vote on the final deal in parliament. I still want to see Britain retain all the benefits of a single market, and call on the government to hold a full debate.”
Labour’s shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, went further, suggesting the prime minister was “ruling out a hard Brexit at this stage” and had caved in to Labour demands to seek tariff-free access to the single market.
“For many months, we in Labour have been demanding fullest possible access to the single market, emphasising the risks of leaving the customs union, arguing for a collaborative relationship with our EU partners, emphasising the need for transitional arrangements and the entrenchment of workers’ rights. Today the prime minister has rightly accepted these in her plan and I acknowledge that.”
Labour’s shadow cabinet has accepted that it is not practical to continue to argue for full membership of the single market, which Starmer said would formally lapse when Britain left the EU anyway.
But the Liberal Democrats, who still hope Brexit can be averted, accused Labour of falling in line behind the government. Alistair Carmichael, the MP for Orkney and Shetland, said: “The government has identified two mutually exclusive objectives. On the one hand they want to leave the customs union and the single market while at the same time they say they want to maintain tariff-free access to the single market. Any opposition worth their name would point out that these goals are mutually exclusive.”
The shadow home secretary, Diane Abbott, who has suggested that Labour should be willing to accept continued free movement as the price of a good deal on single market access, struck a markedly different tone to Starmer, saying May was “putting controls on immigration above any anything else, including the health of the economy and the British people’s living standards”. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/11/who-should-be-the-next-british-pm-its-time-to-think-outside-the-box- | Opinion | 2022-07-11T06:39:38.000Z | First Dog on the Moon | Who should be the next British PM? It’s time to think outside the box … | First Dog on the Moon | null | Partial |
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/nov/24/private-schools-labour-warning-tax-breaks-tristram-hunt | Education | 2014-11-25T08:23:58.000Z | Patrick Wintour | Tristram Hunt warns private schools to help state pupils or lose £700m in tax breaks | Britain’s private schools will lose £700m in tax breaks unless they agree to break down the “corrosive divide of privilege” and do more to help children from state schools, Tristram Hunt, shadow education secretary, writes in the Guardian.
Labour, on winning the general election in May next year, would prevent private schools accessing business rate relief worth £700m over the next parliament unless they do more to improve the quality of education in state schools.
Hunt argues that private schools have been asked politely to cooperate with the state sector, with limited effect. He warns: “The next government will say to them: step up and play your part. Earn your keep. Because the time you could expect something for nothing is over.”
He accuses the Tories of having “done nothing to breach this Berlin Wall in our education system”.
Previously, Labour had advocated depriving independent schools of charitable status if they did not meet a clear public benefit test, but a 2011 court case brought by the Independent Schools Council in effect closed that route. However, 2,570 fee-charging schools can claim an 80% cut in their business rates on the basis that they are charities, and in 2013 they saved £165m through this route.
Labour has been given legal advice that ministers have the power to take away that business rate relief without challenging their charitable status. Labour would amend the 1988 Local Government Act, making business rate relief conditional on a school signing a partnership agreement.
Hunt’s plan amounts to an assault on the privileges of the elite. It was in the pipeline before recent claims that Labour is out of touch with its working-class base, but his plan may reassure those wanting the party to make a clearer attack on inequality. In his Guardian article, Hunt argues: “Created in a culture of philanthropy and Christian duty, too many independent schools have become barriers to British educational success. The division between state and private education corrodes our society, stifles opportunity and, by wasting talent, inflicts damage upon our economy.
“Some private schools want to overcome this division, but most do not. It is time to stop asking politely.”
Hunt claims many private schools are failing to earn the subsidy, often providing only token benefits to their communities such as the entrance to art exhibitions for three hours a day, hiring out a hall at a large annual profit, putting on a community fashion show or allowing infrequent use of a football field.
Hunt says that this is not good enough and that a Labour government would hold individual schools to account under a new, stringent set of standards. The subsidy via business rates will only be payable when schools meet a new “Schools Partnership Standard”, Hunt says.
These will require them to provide qualified teachers in specialist subjects to state schools, share expertise to help state school students get into top universities and run joint extracurricular programmes in which the state school is an equal partner so that children can mix and sectors learn from each other. They should also make more of their sports facilities available to local state pupils.
Hunt stresses he admires many aspects of the way in which private schools teach, arguing: “In subject knowledge, pupil confidence, co-curricular activity, staff development and alumni networks, independent schools have lessons for those in the state sector. In turn, private schools have a great deal to learn from mainstream schooling on whole-class teaching, modern British values, student engagement and, indeed, value for money. This has to be a relationship of respectful, advantageous interaction.”
Hunt’s intervention comes, by chance, in the week that a headteacher at one of England’s top fee-paying schools claimed some private schools have become so expensive that lawyers, doctors and teachers can no longer afford to educate their children privately, and have “become nothing more than finishing schools for the children of oligarchs”.
Andrew Halls, the head of King’s College school, in Wimbledon, south-west London, told the Sunday Times that said fee-paying schools were requiring £30,000 in taxed income to pay for just one child a year, and the increase in fees “was caused by a rise in demand from an apparently endless queue of wealthy families from across the world”.
Critics of Hunt’s plan will complain that the loss of business rate relief would only increase fees.
Hunt – himself the product of a private school, University College School, in London – insists: “If we are to prosper as a country, we need to be a more equal country. If we are to make the most of the wealth of talent that exists in every school and every community, we need to give every child a chance.
“And if we are to be a country which works for most people, we need to break down divisions in our school system with concerted, collaborative and co-ordinated action from the entire English educational landscape – including the private sector.”
Research by the Sutton Trust suggests that an independent day-school pupil is 22 times more likely to attend a Russell Group university than a state school student from a disadvantaged background.
Sir Michael Wilshaw, chief inspector of schools, has likened the current model of partnership between independent and state schools to “crumbs off your table”.
Hunt himself points to figures showing just 3% of private schools sponsor an academy, while only a further 5% loan teaching staff to state schools.
Barnaby Lenon, chairman of the Independent Schools Council, said: “Independent schools are committed to helping widen access to their schools and to improving social mobility. Already 90% of our schools are already involved in meaningful and effective partnerships with state schools and their local communities. Independent schools generate £4.7bn in tax and save the taxpayer a further £4bn, equivalent to building 460 schools, by educating children out of the state school sector.
“To subject independent schools to one-size-fits-all regulations does not take into account the diverse nature of our sector – many are small local schools. … Clawing back business rate relief on independent schools seems a very ineffective tool to improve social mobility in any meaningful way.”
Tristram Hunt: private schools have done too little for too long | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/sep/10/nuisance-calls-could-lead-to-multimillion-pound-fines-in-uk | Technology | 2021-09-10T10:08:37.000Z | Dan Milmo | Nuisance calls could lead to multimillion-pound fines in UK | Multimillion-pound fines could be imposed for nuisance or fraudulent calls and texts under a proposed overhaul of the UK’s data rules.
Companies behind nuisance communications can be fined £500,000 by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) but ministers are considering bringing the punishment in line with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which can issue a fine of up to £17.5m or 4% of global turnover.
The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) said bringing fines up to the level of the GDPR regime “could help to ensure that the enforcement regime is dissuasive”. Last year, the ICO imposed the maximum £500,000 penalty for the first time against a Glasgow-based business that made more than 193m automated calls in 2018.
Victims of persistent calls can block some by registering their number with the Telephone Preference Service, but it only blocks calls made by people, not computer-generated calls.
The proposal was published in a 10-week government consultation on a new data regime for the UK, with a specific emphasis on leaving behind EU rules in the post-Brexit era.
“Data is one of the most important resources in the world and we want our laws to be based on common sense, not box-ticking,” said the culture secretary, Oliver Dowden. “Now that we have left the EU, we have the freedom to create a new world-leading data regime that unleashes the power of data across the economy and society.”
The 147-page document also proposes removing the need to seek user consent for analytics cookies, which track data such as how long someone dwells on a website. The DCMS said the impact on privacy from such a move was likely to be “minimal”.
“The government also welcomes evidence on the risks and benefits of … [an] option which could permit organisations to store information on, or collect information from, a user’s device without their consent for other limited purposes. This could include processing that is necessary for the legitimate interest of the data controllers where the impact on the privacy of the individual in likely to be minimal,” said the DCMS.
The document also flags computer and mobile phone users being able to enter their cookie preferences into browser or device settings once so that it applies to all sites, thus reducing the number of pop-up notifications they see. However, the DCMS also acknowledged that such a move could strengthen data access for companies such as Apple and Google.
The consultation also confirmed that ministers would consider a recommendation from a government taskforce to scrap the right to have a human review a decision made by a computer algorithm – such as being prioritised for Covid vaccination.
That right is covered by Article 22 of the EU data protection regulation, which became part of UK legislation as part of the switchover to a post-Brexit statutory. The taskforce on innovation, growth and regulatory reform, whose members include the former prime minister Theresa May and Iain Duncan Smith, described Article 22 as being “burdensome” for companies seeking to use artificial intelligence. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/oct/05/ten-problems-with-rishi-sunaks-network-north-announcement | UK news | 2023-10-05T17:43:54.000Z | Helen Pidd | Ten problems with Rishi Sunak’s Network North announcement | Life moves fast when you’re Rishi Sunak. On Tuesday, he insisted he was not going to be bounced into making a quick decision on HS2. Within 24 hours he was standing up at Conservative party conference heralding a new transport network.
Not only did he scrap HS2 north of Birmingham, dismissing it as “the ultimate example of the old consensus”, but he had somehow found time to sign off a 40-page prospectus for Network North. Subtitle: Transforming British Transport.
Though no one could possibly believe the document was actually drawn up during a conference all-nighter, it did bear all the hallmarks of something rustled up in a hurry. And some of the things Sunak has said since have illustrated a significant lack of understanding of the realities of transport in the north of England and/or a forgetfulness around what he or his predecessors had already announced.
Here are 10 dodgy bits in and around the Network North announcement:
1 – At first glance, the front-page map of the prospectus seems to relocate Manchester to Preston.
2 – It says new funding to Greater Manchester could mean the Metrolink tram network being extended to Manchester airport. The airport link opened in 2014.
3 – Labour analysis of Sunak’s promises found 85% had already been promised or committed to during the Conservatives’ 13-year reign.
4 – In a promotional video to promote Network North, Sunak said he would quadruple the number of trains between Sheffield and Leeds. As the travel journalist Simon Calder pointed out, there are already five an hour each way, and so Sunak appeared to be promising 20 trains an hour – one every three minutes – which would essentially turn the route into a tube line. Great news for God’s own county! Alas, it seems the prime minister failed to read the small print of Network North, which promised to increase the number of fast trains between these two Yorkshire cities to three or four an hour.
5 – After Sunak’s speech on Wednesday, the government issued a list of projects to which it was committed. One of these read: “The Leamside line, closed in 1964, will also be reopened.” Come Thursday morning, the promise to reinstate the 21-mile route in County Durham had mysteriously disappeared from the Network North prospectus. The transport minister Richard Holden told the local democracy reporting service the government was now only “committed to looking into it”.
6 – Sunak has a very elastic definition of the “north”, with Network North promising to improve rail connections to Plymouth, which is 250 miles from Crewe – the Cheshire town that many people see as the gateway to the north of England.
7 – Speaking of Crewe, it went from being a key hub on HS2 to being probably the biggest loser of the cancellation debacle. This once great railway town is mentioned only in passing in Network North, when there is talk of £1bn investment in the north Wales main line, which starts in Crewe.
8 – There is little in Network North about creating new capacity on the chockablock west coast main line north of Birmingham, particularly the Castlefield corridor into Manchester, which is classed by Network Rail as “officially congested”. According to Craig Browne, the deputy leader of Cheshire East council, “the rail journey from Crewe to Manchester on the west coast main line is mostly two tracks [one in each direction], which means you can only go at the speed of the slowest train.” HS2 was supposed to take the fastest intercity services off the main line, freeing up space for far more local stopping services.
9 – Bristol – which is north of Devon and Cornwall and not a lot else in England – also had its opportunities snatched away with a quick swipe of the delete key. On Wednesday, government documents promised “£100m for a mass transit system for Bristol to revolutionise travel in and around Bristol”. On Thursday, that pledge had vanished. It appeared to have been replaced with a broader pledge to give the West of England combined authority £100m, which it could spend on various things in their region.
10 – Network North committed to upgrading the A259 from Bognor Regis to that well-known northern city of Southampton, but on Thursday ministers admitted they actually meant Littlehampton, 45 miles away. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2013/nov/25/fresh-meat-comedy-vod-jack-whitehall | Television & radio | 2013-11-25T12:57:55.000Z | Scarlett Cayford | Have you been watching … Fresh Meat? | We've reached the halfway point of Fresh Meat's third series, and if you've been spending your Monday nights doing anything other than soaking up Vod's new narrative and JP's best lines, then this truly is the winter of your self-inflicted discontent.
This time around, our hero is Vod – Zawe Ashton has finally been given a real storyline to sink her teeth into, having been left a bit high and dry after the expulsion. In the past, Vod has too often been used as a foil to the drunken high-jinx of her housemates, but not any more. Her relationship with Javier (of the egg-cracking abs) has been by turns exasperating and hilarious, from Oregon's translations, to her decision to marry him in order to break up with him, to the moment she abandoned him on an escalator. "You fly-tipped a Mexican in a busy department store," exclaims a predictably affronted Oregon, in one of her best lines of the series so far.
Everyone but Kingsley breathed a sigh of relief when Josie moved off campus for a bit, relocating to Southampton to study zoology after her dramatic departure from dentistry. Absence – if you could call it that, with the running gag of her iPresence in every early scene – did make the heart grow fonder. But their renewed relationship doesn't seem likely to last. When confronted with some of Kingsley's poetic prattle – "Later I thought we might just sit by the light of the moon and explore every inch of each other, mentally, physically and emotionally" – Josie's face was the picture of someone trapped and contemplating escape.
The writers are clearly revelling in Jack Whitehall's JP this year, making him even more obnoxious than he has been in previous series, if such a thing is possible. Despite naming the house Pussy Haven, he has even enjoyed a spot of romance. His pursuit of Howard's friend Sam has been perfectly pitched – in last week's episode, we saw a humanity we haven't seen since his father's death. As long as he doesn't sleep with Josie again, he might even become likable.
It's not perfect. Both Howard and Oregon are in need of a little more substance, in the way of plot and script, with Oregon stranded at the edge of Vod's non-relationship and Howard far too predictable in his pursuit of Sam. Candice, too, as this year's Sabine stand-in, has about a line per episode, and deserves something better. No one's even tried to sleep with her yet. A quiz scene in episode three, though, gave rise to some academic tension between Candice and Howard that might result in something more, if only Howard can continue to refrain from bringing home body parts.
Far from butchering the series' formidable reputation, there have been moments to suggest that this year's Fresh Meat may even better what has come before it. The narrowly avoided orgy, for example. Or any scene with Vod. In the immortal words of JP: I'm on it, something chronic. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/may/23/its-cold-and-wet-but-scarborough-is-a-beacon-of-normality-for-families | UK news | 2021-05-23T08:00:23.000Z | Robyn Vinter | It’s cold and wet, but Scarborough is a beacon of normality for families | The sky was overcast, a chill wind blew in from the sea, and everyone was wearing coats. But for four-year-old Caitlin and two-year-old Jim, there was little to complain about – they were on a beach and they were building sandcastles.
For their parents, Lindsay and Jim Roger, a week’s holiday in the North Yorkshire seaside town of Scarborough was a blessed relief. Lindsay is a nurse who has been working on Covid wards, while Jim works in construction. As key workers with young children, lockdown has been difficult but they were “really pleased” to be able to travel again. “It’s just nice to get out and nice to see the sea,” Jim said. “It makes such a change from the house and the garden.”
This is the first weekend hotels and guest houses have been able to open and, despite the weather, the amusement arcades and chip shops are filling up with holidaymakers grateful for a break and a change of scenery.
“We actually booked this last year. It’s a good place to bring the kids, they love the beach and there’s lots to do,” said Lindsay. “We have a timeshare in Lanzarote and were supposed to go there this year but obviously that hasn’t happened.”
Elsewhere in Scarborough, many hotels and bed-and-breakfast residences were welcoming back their first guests in more than a year. “We reopened Monday and it’s been very good. It’s like a bank holiday weekend and lots of guests have arrived saying the traffic has been really bad,” said Kevin Makepeace, who owns Blands Cliff Lodge B&B with his wife Carys.
“People are so glad to be here, even though the weather isn’t very nice. They just want a break. They want to get away and they don’t mind where they go.”
The guesthouse has been closed since the start of the first lockdown last March, but has survived thanks to the support of “generous” government grants, which Makepeace said have been a lifeline for leisure and hospitality businesses in the town. Not only is their guest house surviving, he said, “we’re looking at a really good year.”
The couple have run the guesthouse for 20 years and have noticed that bookings for this year have come from much further afield than before the pandemic. The number of people coming from the south of England has doubled, he estimates. “We have someone staying from Dover, and someone who just left came from Portsmouth.”
The seafront at South Bay Beach, Scarborough, on Saturday. Photograph: Gary Calton/The Observer
As an archetypal seaside resort, Scarborough’s arcades, donkey rides and chip shops have always attracted families but these days they are also home to a thriving surfing community, which includes Karl Jones, a surf instructor at Dexters in North Bay.
“It’s brilliant seeing people out. You can feel the excitement because of the freedom coming back. People are more friendly and happy,” he said.
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He is expecting to be very busy during the summer – Dexters is training up two additional surf instructors — as more people are attracted to the idea of lessons.
His pupil, Daniella Poyner, an ex-servicewoman who now works in IT, was visiting from Leeds for her lesson after starting surfing only a couple of months ago. “I’m hooked now,” she said. “I’ve started looking at houses here.”
The conditions were excellent for surfing but the nine-foot waves meant RNLI lifeguard Cade Dickinson was considering closing the road that leads to the bay.
Though he said his job had been fairly quiet over the winter, having carried out only a couple of rescues, he was alert to people taking more risks than usual after being cooped up at home. “People can get a bit silly. A lot of them don’t realise the danger,” he said. “But we’ve been doing a lot of training and educating people so hopefully we’ll have a good summer.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/feb/04/tran-anh-hung-the-taste-of-things-juliette-binoche-benoit-magimel | Film | 2024-02-04T09:00:40.000Z | Jonathan Romney | The Taste of Things director Tran Anh Hung: ‘Cinema needs to be very sensual, very physical’ | The current menu for film and TV stories about cuisine is all conflict and crisis – kitchens as battlefields, dishes forged in the white-hot skillet of raging tempers. But new French film The Taste of Things couldn’t be further from The Bear or Boiling Point. A controlled simmer is more the temperature of this piece by Vietnamese-born director Tran Anh Hung – the most rapturous hymn to culinary art since such beloved gourmet outings as Babette’s Feast or Eat Drink Man Woman.
Set in the 1880s, the film – which won Tran the best director award at Cannes last year – is about the relationship between cook Eugénie (Juliette Binoche) and her gourmet employer and lover Dodin (Benoît Magimel). But the film is ultimately about creativity, says Tran. “I wanted to make a movie about art and I chose food, because this art is very concrete. For me, cinema is something that needs to be very sensual, very physical.”
Speaking in English on Zoom from Ho Chi Minh City, his camera off because of a bad connection, Tran describes the pleasures of a film whose characters not only delight in eating, but in the almost sculptural handling of their materials: fish, poultry, celeriac, a miraculously ethereal cloud of pastry. In long, elegantly choreographed sequences, we see Binoche and Magimel meticulously preparing complex dishes, for real. “It was quite easy for us,” says Tran, not altogether plausibly, “because I’d just give them a chicken or lettuce, and – let’s do it! And when they did, it immediately produced for them a pleasure of something being transformed.”
Juliette Binoche and Benoît Magimel in The Taste of Things.
If The Taste of Things comes across as quintessentially French – it was the nation’s entry for the Oscars, although it didn’t make the final nominations – that is because Tran wanted to make a film about the meaning of food in the country that he migrated to when he was 12. “In France, a meal is where people gather – they talk, not only about food but about culture. In Vietnam, we don’t talk much around the table, but in France, you always see parents asking their children, ‘What have you read recently?’”
Tran also points to the systematic, formal history of French food culture. “They defined everything – how to set a table, how many glasses, how many forks.” That’s why Dodin in the film is known as “the Napoleon of the culinary arts” – because he codifies, establishes culinary protocols. In that sense, he’s a version of Auguste Escoffier, who formalised modern French cuisine in his 1903 book Le Guide Culinaire. “Before that, it was quite a mess. Today you know that you need 20 grams of this and one kilo of that. But at that period, a recipe looked like a poem and you had to be able to interpret it.”
In France, a meal is where people gather – they talk, not only about food but about culture
Along with Escoffier, Tran looked into Brillat-Savarin’s 1825 gastro-philosophical classic The Physiology of Taste, while his on-set consultant was the Michelin three-star chef Pierre Gagnaire. Yet Tran has never cooked much himself, and only since making the film has he really risked venturing behind a stove – and only with French food. “French is less complicated. You have to make a lot of different dishes to build a Vietnamese meal.”
The truly distinctive blend of ingredients in The Taste of Things is the combination of Binoche and Magimel: once a real-life couple, they haven’t acted together since 1999. The result is a palpable on-screen tenderness and respect between their characters, two mature people who have known each other for years. Tran says that Binoche was initially sceptical about whether the pairing would work, or whether Magimel would accept the role. But the result was perfect, he says. “Benoît has this fragility in him. You know he has these doubts in front of this very strong woman – Eugénie, Juliette.” Tran’s favourite scene between the two characters involves them simply sharing an omelette. “Somehow she’s telling him that she loves him, but in a way that he can’t completely understand. The moment is not completely clear – I really like that.”
Tran Anh Hung’s 1993 feature debut, The Scent of Green Papaya, starring his wife, Tran Nu Yen Khe. Photograph: Everett Collection Inc/Alamy
His new film may seem a departure for a director who made his name with Vietnamese dramas, yet it very much chimes with Tran’s 1993 debut, The Scent of Green Papaya, set in 1950s and 60s Saigon, in which a young domestic servant is enraptured by the textures of the world around her, food included. That film caused some controversy in its apparent glorification of a woman’s life in servitude, although its sheer poetry somewhat subverts the surface meaning. With The Taste of Things, some critics have similarly bridled at the theme: a woman preparing meals for the pleasure of her lover and his male epicure chums. Conversely, we also see Dodin devotedly cooking for Eugénie, and in awe of her as an artist. “It’s Eugénie who determines the nature of this relationship,” says Tran.
T
ran grew up in Laos, the son of parents who made uniforms for the French army; the family moved to France when it became clear that Vietnam and Laos would be taken over by the communists in 1975. In Paris, he studied cinematography before making The Scent of Green Papaya, recreating old Saigon on a French studio set. That film and At the Height of Summer, about three sisters in modern Hanoi, established his reputation as a meticulous screen poet – but in between, Cyclo was an intense, violent drama about street life in Ho Chi Minh City, based on what Tran saw on returning to Vietnam in the early 90s.
All the beauty you see in my movies really comes from Yen Khe
The star of Tran’s first four films was his wife Tran Nu Yen Khe, one of the most captivating presences in 90s art cinema. She has since worked with him behind the camera, and is art director on The Taste of Things. The couple, who have a son and daughter in their 20s, are in Ho Chi Minh City for an exhibition of Yen Khe’s paintings and sculpture. “All the beauty you see in my movies really comes from her,” says Tran. “She’s always next to me behind the monitor, she checks everything.” Tran remembers meeting her in Paris when he was casting a short film, and feeling as if he was suddenly discovering Vietnam: “It was like an ancestor touched my shoulder and said, ‘You know, she’s the right person.’” Is The Taste of Things a veiled portrait of the couple’s own relationship? “Yes, it’s obvious,” Tran says – and though I can’t see him smiling, I suspect he is.
With The Taste of Things, Tran seems to have reinvented himself as a hyper-French director. Binoche tells me: “It doesn’t mean that he’s lost his Vietnamese side, but he loves the raffinement français, the refinement – it’s part of who he is, his sensibility. There are many different ways of being French, but he found the most refined.”
Watch a trailer for The Taste of Things.
For now, Tran is relieved to be back in Vietnam. “It’s a good place for me to relax – it’s hot and I’m not tense, like in a cold country. In Paris, all my muscles are tense.” The projects he is currently planning are Asian again – a Vietnamese all-female drama, a life of Buddha – and seem likely to pursue Tran’s line in meticulous aesthetics. “I feel that today movies are too focused on themes and story. We see less and less of the language of cinema.” He believes in the miniature, he says: “Something very small and at the same time, a deep, deep meaning about the feeling of life.” The feeling, you might say, and the flavour.
The Taste of Things will open in cinemas in the UK and Ireland on 14 February | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/13/trump-nafta-g7-sunset-clause-trade-agreement | Opinion | 2018-06-13T05:57:55.000Z | George Monbiot | Trump was right. The rest of the G7 were wrong | George Monbiot | He gets almost everything wrong. But last weekend Donald Trump got something right. To the horror of the other leaders of the rich world, he defended democracy against its detractors. Perhaps predictably, he has been universally condemned for it.
Trump may seek separate Nafta talks with Canada and Mexico
Read more
His crime was to insist that the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) should have a sunset clause. In other words, it should not remain valid indefinitely, but expire after five years, allowing its members either to renegotiate it or to walk away. To howls of execration from the world’s media, his insistence has torpedoed efforts to update the treaty.
In Rights of Man, published in 1791, Thomas Paine argued that: “Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself, in all cases, as the ages and generations which preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies.” This is widely accepted – in theory if not in practice – as a basic democratic principle.
Even if the people of the US, Canada and Mexico had explicitly consented to Nafta in 1994, the idea that a decision made then should bind everyone in North America for all time is repulsive. So is the notion, championed by the Canadian and Mexican governments, that any slightly modified version of the deal agreed now should bind all future governments.
But the people of North America did not explicitly consent to Nafta. They were never asked to vote on the deal, and its bipartisan support ensured that there was little scope for dissent. The huge grassroots resistance in all three nations was ignored or maligned. The deal was fixed between political and commercial elites, and granted immortality.
In seeking to update the treaty, governments in the three countries have candidly sought to thwart the will of the people. Their stated intention was to finish the job before Mexico’s presidential election in July. The leading candidate, Andrés Lopez Obrador, has expressed hostility to Nafta, so it had to be done before the people cast their vote. They might wonder why so many have lost faith in democracy.
Nafta provides a perfect illustration of why all trade treaties should contain a sunset clause. Provisions that made sense to the negotiators in the early 1990s make no sense to anyone today, except fossil fuel companies and greedy lawyers. The most obvious example is the way its rules for investor-state dispute settlement have been interpreted. These clauses (chapter 11 of the treaty) were supposed to prevent states from unfairly expropriating the assets of foreign companies. But they have spawned a new industry, in which aggressive lawyers discover ever more lucrative means of overriding democracy.
The rules grant opaque panels of corporate lawyers, meeting behind closed doors, supreme authority over the courts and parliaments of its member states. A BuzzFeed investigation revealed they had been used to halt criminal cases, overturn penalties incurred by convicted fraudsters, allow companies to get away with trashing rainforests and poisoning villages, and, by placing foreign businesses above the law, intimidate governments into abandoning public protections.
Under Nafta, these provisions have become, metaphorically and literally, toxic. When Canada tried to ban a fuel additive called MMT as a potentially dangerous neurotoxin, the US manufacturer used Nafta rules to sue the government. Canada was forced to lift the ban, and award the company $13m (£10m) in compensation. After Mexican authorities refused a US corporation permission to build a hazardous waste facility, the company sued before a Nafta panel, and extracted $16.7m in compensation. Another US firm, Lone Pine Resources, is suing Canada for $119m because the government of Quebec has banned fracking under the St Lawrence River.
As the US justice department woke up to the implications of these rules in the 1990s, it began to panic: one official wrote that it “could severely undermine our system of justice” and grant foreign companies “more rights than Americans have”. Another noted: “No one thought about this when Nafta implementing law passed.”
Nor did they think about climate breakdown. Nafta obliges Canada not only to export most of its oil and half its natural gas to the US, but also to ensure that the proportion of these fuels produced from tar sands and fracking does not change. As a result, the Canadian government cannot adhere to both its commitments under the Paris agreement on climate change and its commitments under Nafta. While the Paris commitments are voluntary, Nafta’s are compulsory.
Were such disasters foreseen by the negotiators? If so, the trade agreement was a plot against the people. If not – as the evidence strongly suggests – its unanticipated outcomes are a powerful argument for a sunset clause. The update the US wanted was also a formula for calamity, that future governments might wish to reverse. But this is likely to be difficult, even impossible, without the threat of walking out.
Those who defend the immortality of trade agreements argue that it provides certainty for business. It’s true that there is a conflict between business confidence and democratic freedom. This conflict is repeatedly resolved in favour of business. That the only defender of popular sovereignty in this case is an odious demagogue illustrates the corruption of 21st-century liberal democracy.
There was much rejoicing this week over the photo of Trump being harangued by the other G7 leaders. But when I saw it, I thought: “The stitch-ups engineered by people like you produce people like him.” The machinations of remote elites in forums such as the G7, the IMF and the European Central Bank, and the opaque negotiation of unpopular treaties, destroy both trust and democratic agency, fuelling the frustration that demagogues exploit.
Trump was right to spike the Trans-Pacific Partnership. He is right to demand a sunset clause for Nafta. When this devious, hollow, self-interested man offers a better approximation of the people’s champion than any other leader, you know democracy is in trouble.
George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2008/aug/13/olympics20084 | Sport | 2008-08-13T07:26:43.000Z | Andy Bull | Olympics: The Beijinger: day five | Phelps good, Britain Great
In the 112-year history of the Games only four athletes had ever won as many as nine gold medals. The USA's Carl Lewis and Mark Spitz won lasting worldwide fame doing it; Finland's Paavo Nurmi and Russia's Larysa Latynina weren't quite so acclaimed (we couldn't U-S-A! U-S-A! possibly guess U-S-A! U-S-A! why) but at least they have a place in the Olympic annals.
This morning Michael Phelps won not just his 10th gold, but his 11th too, and did so with truly breathtaking ease. Or at least breathtaking for everyone watching. Phelps himself didn't seem to even break sweat. At 10.23am local time he eased home in (yet another) world record in the 200m butterfly. And less than an hour later he was leading his team out in the 4x200m freestyle. How many Americans does it take to win a relay? One, apparently. Phelps opened up a two-metre lead on the first length and the gap only grew from there. Oh yes, it was another world record.
The only things between Phelps and the indisputable 'greatest of all time' tag that would come with breaking the record for most golds at a single games (seven) are the Stars and Stripes speedos of Mark Spitz and the slippery tiles on the walk to the pool.
Phelps 5-2 Britain then. Team GB can take the same kind of desperate consolation being drawn on by CNN and other stateside networks covering the ever-worsening hooning they're being given in the medal table by China - we may be losing in the league, but we're ahead in the overall medal tally.
This morning Emma Pooley took some of the limelight away from team-mate Nicole Cooke by taking silver behind an American cyclist named (Kristin) Armstrong in the women's road time-trial. No shame in that. And yesterday Britain added a pair of bronzes with the horses in Hong Kong, the overall eventing team taking one and Tina Cook bagging the other in the show jumping. At Shunyi, as far from Hong Kong as the Games get, David Florence won silver with a fine final run in the C1 (solo canoe) slalom. Just three months ago Florence applied to become an astronaut with the European Space Agency, thus forcing headline writers across Britain to either resist or indulge their finest punning instincts, depending on their level of self-restraint.
What you missed overnight
British journalist detained by Beijing police
John Ray of ITV News was detained by Beijing police after he covered a Free Tibet protest close to the city's main Olympic zone. He has since been released.
Pooley takes silver in cycling time-trial
Great Britain's Emma Pooley was second in the women's road time-trial, picking up GB's second cycling medal of the Games. The winner of the first, Nicole Cooke, finished 15th.
Phelps wins two more gold medals
Michael Phelps won his fourth and fifth gold medals with ridiculous ease, in the men's 200m butterfly and 4x200m freestyle relay, setting two more world records to boot.
Chinese gymnasts reign supreme
China made it two out of two in the team finals, their women – sorry, girls – beating America in a keenly-fought competition.
Taiwan baseball player fails drugs test
The IOC says pitcher Chang Tai-Shan is the latest sportsman to test positive for a banned substance. Diary
While David Florence was celebrating his silver medal yesterday, a lot of other eyes were on Benjamin Boukpeti, who won Togo's first ever Olympic medal with a bronze in the K1 slalom. The world's hacks were understandably thirsty for the story of this piece of history. The only problem? Boukpeti had lived in France all his life, and only ever visited Togo once. Undeterred the hacks asked Boukpeti what he thought of his time in Togo. He said he'd been too young to recall. Asked again, and again, Boukpeti finally fed them this gem: "I remember my brother had a red ball which he refused to leave behind for my cousins to play with, he threw a huge tantrum. Other than that my mother tells me I mistook every black man there for my father."
On similar lines, there were plenty of journalists at this morning's Georgia v Russia beach volleyball game. You might expect the Georgian duo were extra pleased with their victory because they were playing the country they have been fighting over the last few days. Only, the Georgian duo were actually from Brazil.
Li Ning has had a pretty good week. Not only did the former gymnast get to fly around the Bird's Nest on Friday night before lighting the Olympic flame, a spike in the share prices of his company, Li Ning, has earned him around £15m.
There's trouble brewing in the baseball competition which started today. The US, who play Korea in their opener, have kicked up a right old fuss over the refusal of their opponents to name their starting pitcher the night before the game, a common courtesy in Major League Baseball.
The best from our Beijing blogs
Why swimmers keep hammering their way to new heights
What is it with all these world records in the Water Cube? Swimming guru Robert Kitson thinks he has the answer.
From Phelps' shadow emerges perhaps a greater American idol
He's not done there either, Robert Kitson that is. He also wants to tell you all about Eric Shanteau, the American swimmer diagnosed with testicular cancer.
The songs may strike false note but Games are in harmony
The Beijing Olympics kicked straight into top gear and after four and a half days it shows little sign of letting the pace drop, reckons Steve Cram, and he should know.
Passion by numbers is the order of the day
There is nothing more loathed than a Mexican Wave, but the Olympics abounds with such staged dramatics, says Jonathan Watts.
A cultural revolution to make London sit up and take notice
China's elderly exercising in Beijing parks provides London's organisers with their legacy for 2012, writes page-12 stunnah Marina Hyde.
What's coming up
WEDNESDAY
Sailing (6am/1pm)
Ben Ainslie and the yngling trio of Sarah Ayton, Sara Webb and Pippa Wilson return to the water in Qingdao after a rest day.
Rowing (7.45am BST/2.45pm Bei)
How sick must the British men's four be of hearing the words "no Pinsent or Redgrave but ..."? Their chance to make their own names comes a step closer in the semi-finals today. Also on the lake in Shunyi, highly-rated single sculler Alan Campbell is in a semi.
Boxing (1.30pm/8.30pm)
After bantamweight Joe Murray's disputed exit, Britain's team captain David Price hopes to get the boxers' Games back on track in his super-heavyweight bout with the Russian World No1 Islam Timuryiev.
Baseball (Midday/7pm)
In a sport making its last Olympic appearance for a while, defending champs Cuba take on what could be their toughest test against Japan.
THURSDAY MORNING
Swimming (3am/10am)
There must be something wrong with the schedule, as it claims Michael Phelps isn't taking part in any finals. Instead most of our gaze will be directed on Eric Shanteau in the 200m breaststroke, and Rebecca Adlington et al in the 4x200m freestyle relay.
Boxing (6.45am/1.45pm)
Billy Joe Saunders, so impressive in his first bout, will have his work cut out when he comes up against the fighter considered by many to be Cuba's finest at present, Carlos Banteaux.
· To receive the Beijinger direct to your inbox at 7.30am (ish) every day, click here | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2018/mar/11/candoco-dance-company-review-sadlers-wells-london | Stage | 2018-03-11T10:40:13.000Z | Judith Mackrell | Candoco Dance Company review – compelling document of human possibilities | It’s always great to witness the buzz that choreographers get from working with Candoco. Throughout the company’s 27-year history there’s rarely been a work in which its mix of disabled and non-disabled dancers has felt like a limitation. On the contrary, each new commission seems to revel in showboating the particular range of skills, stories and bodies these dancers bring to the stage.
In his gabbily mischievous Let’s Talk About Dis, Hetain Patel unleashes the company’s collective voice in a discussion of how they deal with the bogeymen of political correctness and prejudice. Righteously angry Laura Patay complains (in French) about the people who gawk at the stump of her left arm. Squirmingly euphemistic Toke Broni Strandby tries to pretend that the only physical difference between the Candoco dancers lies in their heights. Megan Armishaw mildly points out that as a non-disabled dancer she rarely gets to feature on the company’s poster; Joel Brown retorts that he’s not on it, even though he’s paralysed from the chest down.
Flamboyant … Candoco perform Face In by Yasmeen Godder. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian
While Patel elicits verbal comedy from his dancers’ experiences, Yasmeen Godder makes flamboyant choreographic capital out of their bodies. In her raucous, challenging and tender work Face In she sets wheelchair user Joel Brown on a recklessly spinning, tilting course around the stage, while Mickaella Dantas bourrées with skittering grace on her one foot and two crutches. Most impressive is the dancers’ blithe indifference to amputated or paralysed limbs as they furiously ride on each other’s backs, wrestle and embrace. Structurally the work may feel too much like a scattershot of effects, but as a document of human possibilities it’s compelling to watch.
At Winchester Theatre Royal, 17 April. Box office: 01962 840440. Then touring. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2013/oct/17/grand-budapest-hotel-wes-anderson-movie-trailer | Film | 2013-10-17T16:22:00.000Z | Andrew Pulver | The Grand Budapest Hotel: first look at Wes Anderson's new movie | Nothing gets us going more than the promise of a new Wes Anderson film. Will it be a funny as Rushmore? As inventive as Fantastic Mr Fox? As ambitious as The Royal Tenenbaums? Well, another one is on the way: The Grand Budapest Hotel, which despite its title seems to have less to do with Anderson's tenderly mysterious short film Hotel Chevalier than an amalgam of Anderson's predilection for jewel-box environments, giant major-name casts, and arch pseudo-professional patter.
That's not to say The Grand Budapest Hotel doesn't look great: we can safely say this is a return to the mentor/apprentice relationship that Anderson has done so well before. Here, Ralph Fiennes, not immediately recognisable in a rather impressive 'tache, is chef d'hotel Gustave H, a devil with the mature guests and, as the trailer, reveals, the beneficiary of one such in her will. His pupil is the yet-to-be-heralded Tony Revolori. Anderson's plan here seems to be to jam together Rushmore's institution-reverence with Moonrise Kingdom's chase histrionics - but I could be wrong, of course. That's the beauty of trailers. And what's with the Academy ratio - is he trying to get some of that Meek's Cutoff/Wuthering Heights roughness?
What do you think? Does this trailer make you desperate to see Anderson's new film? Or break out in hives at the exquisiteness of it all? Feel free to comment below.
Wes Anderson and Ed Norton on Moonrise Kingdom: 'I would like to be Joseph Cotten to his Orson Welles' | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/03/parents-satisfied-school-lunch-quality | US news | 2024-04-03T18:23:52.000Z | Guardian community team | Parents in the US: are you happy with your child’s school lunch? | Across the US, parents, kids, educators and public health advocates are pushing to change the multibillion-dollar school meals industry.
At the same time, public schools have to contend with government requirements for nutrition, decreases in funding, religious and dietary restrictions and parent and student opinion.
We’d like to know how you feel about your child’s school lunch – and we’d like to know how those lunches vary across the country.
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https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/dec/31/escape-your-comfort-zone-i-am-on-a-diving-board-the-height-of-a-two-storey-building-can-i-take-the-plunge | Life and style | 2021-12-31T09:00:15.000Z | Adharanand Finn | Escape your comfort zone: I am on a diving board the height of a two-storey building. Can I take the plunge? | I’m standing on a five-metre diving board – about the height of a two-storey building – preparing to throw myself off, headfirst. And I’m terrified. I take a determined step towards the end, lock my arms above my head and begin to tip forward.
I have always admired people who can dive, and secretly wished that I could do it. I watch them taking off from great heights, seemingly floating for a second, before arrowing smoothly into the water. How do they do that? When I get up there, the thought of leaping headfirst short-circuits my brain. Won’t my neck snap? So I’ve come to one of the world’s best diving centres, the Life Centre in Plymouth, the former training pool of diving superstar Tom Daley. Hopefully, with a little help, I can become one of those elegant, effortless diving types.
My instructor, Fito, a former champion cliff diver, starts by getting me to dive from the side of the pool, before moving me on to the one-metre board. Following his instructions, I find myself plopping easily into the water. After just three dives, he says I’m ready for the three-metre board. I look up. Really? Already?
He comes up on to the board with me and we stand at the edge. It feels higher up here than it looks from below.
“It’s exactly the same process,” he says. Hands above my head, thumbs locked, tip forward and then jump. Except it’s not the same at all. I start to bend forward, but just at the tipping point, before the point of no return, I stop. I stand up, take a breath.
But Fito doesn’t give me time to overthink it. We start again. “Arms locked, bend … one, two … go.” Following his calm instructions I tip forward – and I’m gone.
It’s over in less than a second. I hit the water smoothly, going straight through it as if it’s made of soft foam. No smack or slap, just a soft embrace sucking me in. Then I’m straight out of the water and back up the steps, like a child. This is incredible. It’s so much easier than I expected. Again, I pierce the water cleanly, straight as an arrow.
Adharanand Finn making another dive. Photograph: Jonny Weeks/The Guardian
On the third dive, however, my concentration slips, my hands flail apart on impact, and my head hits the water with a smack. Fito tells me not to worry, that I have to do it wrong a few times in order to remember to do it right.
After about 10 more dives, some better than others, he motions to the five-metre board. If I can dive from there, I think, I’ll have cracked it. I’m feeling confident as I scale the steps. But then I get on to the board and look down.
“You’ll be fine,” Fito says from below. I nod. Arms locked, legs locked. But it’s so high. I suddenly feel dreamy. I have to remind myself where I am, that I’m about to dive. I step forward … but I can’t do it. I step back.
Fito encourages me again. “You can do it”, he says.
“OK, I’m doing it,” I shout. I take a purposeful step forward, bend at the waist, look down at the shimmering water.
A childhood memory flashes through my mind. I’m sitting on my bike, about to tip over the edge of a stupidly steep woodland slope, about to smash myself to pieces. “No,” I say. Something, some invisible force, pulls me back.
“Take your time,” says Fito. But a safety alarm is ringing in my head. Earlier, talking about his cliff-diving days, Fito had told me that he is a thrill-seeker. But I’m not. I like to challenge myself, but rather than hurling myself out of my comfort zone, I prefer to expand its limits from the inside.
So I step back. Maybe after another session on the three-metre board, I would be ready. Maybe then it would feel like a natural progression. But this is as far as the road goes today. I dived from platforms three times higher than ever before. I’m content with that.
It’s only later, on the way home, that I feel a little pang of disappointment. Why didn’t I do it? In my memory, the platform height has already shrunk.
“Next time,” I think. “Next time.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/feb/13/ibeyi-ibeyi-exclusive-album-stream | Music | 2015-02-13T09:55:58.000Z | Tim Jonze | Ibeyi - Ibeyi: Exclusive album stream | Talent clearly runs in the family of French-Cuban sisters Ibeyi. Their father was famed conguero Miguel “Angá” Díaz, who played as part of the Buena Vista Social Club, while their love of Yorùbá choirs was inspired by their mother.
Meet Ibeyi: French-Cuban twins with a musical sixth sense
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Not that Lisa‑Kaindé and Naomi Diaz are simply following in the footsteps of others. This self-titled debut album, produced by XL’s Richard Russell, is an inventive collision of the old and the new – stark, electronic production nestles up against melodies inspired by slave chants to produce what Ibeyi themselves have dubbed “contemporary negro spirituals”.
The music can be deeply soulful and is unafraid to deal with difficult subjects – Yanira, for example, is dedicated to their sister who died in 2013.
Have a listen using the widget below and let us know your thoughts!
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/oct/17/the-australian-war-memorials-intransigence-on-depicting-the-frontier-wars-speaks-louder-than-words | Opinion | 2022-10-17T03:46:25.000Z | Paul Daley | The Australian War Memorial’s intransigence on depicting the frontier wars speaks louder than words | Paul Daley | The Australian War Memorial’s recent vague commitment to a “much broader, a much deeper depiction” of colonial violence against Indigenous people risks being compromised by an absence of detail and sound historical context.
In late September Brendan Nelson, the chairman of the memorial’s council, said the organisation had decided on a “much broader, a much deeper depiction and presentation of the violence committed against Indigenous people, initially by British, then by pastoralists, then by police, and then by Aboriginal militia”.
Note: Nelson did not say the memorial was committed to a broader and deeper depiction of the “frontier wars”. That is because he and others associated with the memorial – while acknowledging frontier violence against Indigenous people by military regiments, police, pastoralists and militias – do not accept that the violence equated to “war”.
Instructively the minister for veterans affairs, Matt Keogh, also chose his words carefully. He said: “I think it’s important to recognise that the war memorial already has some recognition of frontier conflict, and I’m aware that as part of the expansion program there will be some greater reflection on that.”
“I think that the recognition and reflection on frontier conflict is a responsibility for all of our cultural institutions, not just here at the war memorial.”
No mention of frontier wars there either. The most interesting thing about Keogh’s remarks was his assertion that the responsibility for reflecting frontier conflict ought to be spread among the war memorial and other cultural institutions. While this is true, it seems to ignore the fact that all of the other major Canberra-based national institutions have for decades already significantly and meaningfully reflected the frontier wars and conflict against Aboriginal people, which killed by conservative estimate at least 60,000 Indigenous men, women and children, upon which the white Australian federation was founded.
The Anzac cloak has shielded the Australian War Memorial from criticism. Its recognition of frontier violence is long overdue
Paul Daley
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The plain truth is that the war memorial has long been the obstinate outlier in that space. It has pushed back under the directorships of Nelson (director for seven years before leaving and recently returning as council chair before outlining his departure at the end of 2022 to become president of weapons manufacturer Boeing International) and others, against widespread suggestions the institution ought meaningfully reflect, as part of its mandate to chronicle the Australian societal impact of warfare, frontier “conflict” and “war”.
Nelson, current director Matt Anderson and the memorial more generally defend what they insist is a record of chronicling frontier violence by pointing to the institution’s collection of 63 artworks that reference the issue. But the truth is that few such items are often displayed and that merely having such works in the collection does not translate to a meaningful depiction of frontier violence, war or conflict (call it what you will – sound research doesn’t hide behind semantics!) in the context of Australia’s martial history.
Nelson had also consistently insisted that the story of frontier conflict was the duty of the National Museum of Australia, not the memorial.
Precisely what the memorial intends to do in this space has been subject to quite some verbal contortion. As the Honest History organisation recently pointed out, Anderson, in his appearance on Rachel Perkins’ remarkable documentary The Australian Wars, said: “what we [the memorial] seek to do is to tell the story of frontier violence in the way in which it affected the men and women who joined the Australian Imperial Forces and went away”.
This makes little sense at all, in my view. It is as nonsensical as the memorial’s attempts in the past to use the story of “Black diggers” (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who have served Australia in the defence force) as some sort of fig-leaf for its intransigence on frontier wars.
I started writing about the memorial’s intransigence on meaningfully representing frontier violence as part of Australia’s military history well over a decade ago. I still recall the response I got nine years ago when I asked the memorial if, under then newly appointed director, Nelson, the memorial would consider depicting frontier conflict.
I got what might be called a “look over there”-type response.
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Indeed, back then a spokeswoman responded that the memorial “holds a rich collection of material related to Indigenous servicemen and women from the first world war”.
“This includes embarkation information, prisoner of war records, Red Cross files, personal letters, service details, works of art, photographs and medals. We also have a significant project under way. ‘The Guide To Indigenous Service Collections at the Memorial’ will identify Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders who served during the first world war and display records and collection material related to their individual service.”
It is little wonder that right now, while the war memorial figures out precisely how it might chronicle frontier conflict or war or violence, it finds itself simultaneously challenged from progressives and somewhat besieged by conservative defenders of what many consider to be a “sacred” institution that should, they believe, dedicate itself solely to the equally sacred (and white) story of Anzac.
Apparently echoing Anderson from The Australian Wars, the RSL Australia president, Greg Melick, recently said: “While some frontier conflicts have been featured in Australian War Memorial galleries and touring exhibitions, these have been mounted to provide some context to the subsequent service of First Nations personnel in the ADF. The Australian War Memorial honours the sacrifice of those who have served our nation in armed conflicts and peacekeeping operations, and it is right and appropriate that this is exclusively maintained.”
So, any meaningful shift in the war memorial’s policy on frontier conflict under the Labor government will need to amount to more than acquiring and hanging new artwork in a dedicated space. It must memorialise those 60,000-plus Indigenous people killed on the frontier in the same way as it does the 100,000-plus Australian personnel who died on overseas operations.
In the words of Henry Reynolds, the living Australian historian who has perhaps done more than any other to reveal the extent of Australian frontier violence: “We will certainly know that we are entering a new era when a tomb of an unknown warrior is placed next to the grave of the unknown soldier in the Memorial’s inner sanctum.”
Paul Daley is a Guardian Australia columnist | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/feb/26/galatasaray-chelsea-champions-league | Football | 2014-02-27T00:17:00.000Z | Dominic Fifield | Galatasaray 1-1 Chelsea | Champions League last-16 first leg report | Aurelien Chedjou, right, celebrates his equaliser for Galatasaray. Photograph: Carl Recine/Action Images
This tie lacks the dread that will accompany the other three English clubs going into their respective return legs and Chelsea have retained a sense of authority with Stamford Bridge to come. But events in Istanbul probably exposed their challenge for what it is. José Mourinho publicly considers his team outsiders to win this competition and, in failing to kill off Galatasaray at the first attempt, his players probably proved him right.
Profligacy, not for the first time this season, cost them on the banks of the Bosphorus and a tie that should have been settled early remains on edge. Aurelien Chedjou's equaliser just after the hour, bundled in at a corner as Chelsea's defence momentarily froze in the face of the first real hint of concerted home pressure, has offered the Turks unlikely hope.
Chelsea may have departed with a draw, the like of which Manchester City, Arsenal and Manchester United could only dream of, but this still seemed like a missed opportunity.
Chelsea couldn't kill off the game against Galatasaray after going 1-0 up. SNTV
The worry is that it also had a familiar ring. The wastefulness conjured up memories of The Hawthorns earlier this month or the Britannia stadium in December. West Bromwich Albion and Stoke City had rallied to recover points from those games and Chelsea have had near-misses in other games where dominance did not yield a healthy advantage. Gala should have been buried in the opening exchanges, so open and vulnerable were they as the visitors poured through their ranks on the break, but they were able to revive themselves once the Chelsea boot had been removed from their throat. John Obi Mikel and Samuel Eto'o even had to be summoned from the bench in the latter stages to help Chelsea cling on to what they had.
Chedjou's volley from close-range had whipped the locals into a frenzy, the centre-half untracked at a corner with Gary Cahill distracted by Didier Drogba and indecision gripping John Terry and, for once, Petr Cech. Seconds earlier Chelsea had creaked just as alarmingly when Drogba was allowed to nod down and across goal, where Selciuk Inan darted in at the far post and prodded on to the woodwork from a yard out.
In that respect Chelsea could be grateful for a draw, with Cech denying Emmanuel Eboué and Alex Telles before the end, and the rather frenzied finale suggested that the momentum was all Turkish. "After our second half, the players probably understand we can go through," said Roberto Mancini. "It will be difficult but that second half was really important for us."
Galatasaray's late injection of hope was deceptive, however. Chelsea need only remind themselves of how comfortable they had been for the first hour to give themselves heart. A certain trepidation had prompted Hakan Balta and Chedjou to push far too high up the pitch early on, leaving tantalisingly wide open spaces at their back. With Eboué and Telles also too eager to gallop upfield, almost blindly at times, Chelsea could nick possession deep and spring at will. Headed clearances by their centre-halves suddenly became penetrative through-balls, and the visiting trio of creative midfielders relished the regular opportunities to burst into space on the counter.
Mourinho's selection had made that possible, the decision to pick Fernando Torres for a first start since 11 January justified by his slippery running where Eto'o might not have prospered so readily. André Schürrle, too, appeared fresh and eager on only his second start since New Year's Day. Eboué had been hopelessly out of position when the German collected from César Azpilicueta nine minutes in and, having glided into the Turkish half, liberated the marauding full-back inside his marker. The Spaniard charged towards the byline and drew out Fernando Muslera before pulling back for Torres to convert first-time into a gaping net. It was his sixth goal in his last five Champions League starts and a reminder that this team do have striking options.
It still felt like a novelty given the scoreless performances endured by the other English clubs in their respective first leg defeats. Indeed, it was the first goal scored by a Premier League club in any European competition since 12 December, when Roberto Soldado scored against Anzhi Makhachkala. But Chelsea should have had others. Willian might have capitalised on Muslera's scuffed clearance but saw his lob deflected over the bar by the goalkeeper's leap and header. Ramires, too, should have scored but lifted a shot from Schürrle's pull-back high and wide. Then an Eden Hazard pass sent Torres beyond Chedjou and the substitute Semih Kaya but his low shot was turned aside by Muslera.
That save seemed to increase in significance, given that it would have been hard to envisage Galatasaray coming back from two goals down. A draw, therefore, was frustrating and Mourinho wore that seen-it-all-before expression through his post-match duties. He warned that an awkward second leg awaits next month, yet Chelsea remain the most likely of the English contingent still in this competition to progress into the last eight. Whether they can progress much further while still letting opponents off the hook remains to be seen. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/jul/18/roman-holiday-review | Film | 2013-07-18T22:11:00.000Z | Peter Bradshaw | Roman Holiday review – charm and innocence by the bucketload | William Wyler’s film from 1953 is a modern fairytale whose two leads have a charm and innocence that irradiate the whole movie – a kind of neofabulism to set aside the Italian neorealists. Gregory Peck plays Joe, a US news stringer in Rome who one night stumbles across the story of the century: a beautiful, shy young woman, eager for some adventure with him as her guide. She turns out to be demure Princess Ann, from an imaginary European country, who has escaped from all the embassy stuffed shirts and is now incognito and on the town.
Audrey Hepburn was perfectly cast here, as she was perfectly miscast in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Perhaps her superb poise emboldened Grace Kelly three years later to face a similar trial as Princess Grace. While Joe’s snapper buddy Irving (Eddie Albert) sneaks pictures of Ann smoking, dancing and getting into scrapes, Joe exults in his imminent scoop. But then he starts falling for Ann. Can he really betray her? Richard Curtis wittily paid homage to Roman Holiday in his Notting Hill. Maybe Nanni Moretti intended the same in his Habemus Papam. A lovely film.
Roman Holiday is released on 3 February in UK cinemas. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/feb/24/featuresreviews.guardianreview25 | Books | 2007-02-24T23:50:17.000Z | Sarah Crown | Review: Look We Have Coming to Dover! by Daljit Nagra | Look We Have Coming to Dover!
by Daljit Nagra
55pp, Faber, £8.99
To say it is rare for a debut poet to find himself the subject of media buzz is to test the boundaries of understatement. Yet such is the case for Daljit Nagra, whose first full-length collection was greeted with a slew of interviews, articles and broadcast appearances when it was published earlier this month, rather than the customary deafening silence. More remarkable still is that the poems live up to the hype. Nagra, whose parents arrived in the UK in the 1960s, uses his collection to explore the experiences of second-generation British Indians with captivating exuberance and genuine, striking originality.
At heart, this collection is an exploration of an identity crisis. Modern British icons - Dulux, Sugar Puffs, Hilda Ogden - jostle for room with chapatis, saris and sitars, creating a patchwork landscape that mirrors the incoherence of the immigrant's experience. The nations unite uneasily but vibrantly under the umbrella of Nagra's "Punglish", a freewheeling hybrid in which syntax is protean and parts of speech dynamic. At times, his language makes thematic statements: nouns, for example, regularly edge out conventional verbs (a young girl yearns "To Aeroflot the savage miles / in a moment", a "bent-neck / man ... trays us with milky sweets") in a manoeuvre that acknowledges the sway of materialism in wealthy, capitalist Britain, where possessions are worth more than actions.
Elsewhere, the effect is straightforwardly poetic. "Darling is so pirouettey with us/ for whirlwind married month" says the husband in "Darling & Me!"; the transformation of the technical French "pirouette" into an adjective gives a rapturous lift to the line, its freshness reflecting the startling joy the newly-married couple have discovered in each other. Like his stylistic forebear Dylan Thomas, Nagra's creative latitude with words lends the surfaces of his poems colour and movement and opens up new vistas for his readers, transforming language from the barrier it was for his parents' generation into a conduit, a space in which the duality of the immigrant's experience can reside.
Despite this linguistic merging, the collection remains riven with cracks; cultural gaps in which violence breeds. In "Parade's End" an Indian boy boasts of his prosperous father's Granada, resprayed "champagne-gold" - but the poem ends with the car vandalised, paint turning back "from gold to the brown of our former colour". Furthermore, the act of merging is itself far from unproblematic; questions remain over what is gained and what lost, whether what we are witnessing is true integration or merely assimilation. In one poem the narrator tries and fails to cook a "dish from my past" for his English lover and is swamped by feelings of guilt and loss: "my body craves / taste of home but is scolded / by shame of blood-desertion". In another the speaker rejects his heritage, announcing that "Just for kicks I was well in with the English race", but his inapt use of the colloquial "just for kicks" undermines his claim. The tension between the blending of languages and the ongoing social differences crackles through the volume.
Pressing as these tensions are, it is easy to be distracted from them by the wonderful deluge of sensuous detail that forms the backcloth of this collection. Cafés are filled with "brickwork trays of saffron sweets / brass woks frying flamingo-pink syrup-tunnelled / jalebis networking crustily"; a woman "with purple / nails and henna soles ... softs / the parquet of lemon petals". From the title down, the volume prickles with exclamation marks, intensifying the impact of the decorative adjectives. Even here, however, a dichotomy is revealed: while the exclamation marks brighten the lines, they also at times make that brightness brittle. In the poignant "Bibi & the Street Car Wife!", in which the problems arising from a clash of cultures are distilled in an individual, Bibi mourns the changes in her daughter-in-law "since we loosened our village acres / for this flighty mix-up country". Where before the girl was compliant, now "like moody / actress she buy herself a Datsun, with legs of KFC microphoning her mouth / ... / she manicured waves men ..." The poem ends with a baffled, plaintive cry: "O my only son, why will she not lie down / for us, to part herself, to drive out babies?" The agonising emotions - loneliness, selfishness, confusion - are thrown into relief by the title's ironic exclamation mark, its inappropriate jauntiness emphasising Bibi's deracination.
By choosing to cast so many of these poems in this playful dialect, Nagra takes a risk: a cursory glance might have led to them being dismissed as simplistic, gimmicky even. In fact, the dialect is just the point of entry to poems that are heartfelt and subtle. This is visceral, life-affirming poetry that is, to borrow the Matthew Arnold quote with which Nagra prefaces his Forward prize-winning title poem, "so various, so beautiful, so new". I defy anyone not to come away from this volume feeling gladdened, afflicted, revitalised. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/mar/21/kraft-new-company-mondelez-international | Business | 2012-03-21T18:50:15.000Z | Dominic Rushe | Kraft spins off snacks business into new Mondelez International company | What do you get if you combine Cadbury's chocolate, Trident gum and Dairylea? A "delicious world", according to the US food giant Kraft.
The company is spinning off its global snacks business and seeking shareholder approval to call the new entity Mondelez International.
The company said the name (pronounced mohn-dah-leez) was inspired by suggestions from two Kraft employees after a global competition. The name combines "monde", the French for world, and "delez", which is supposed to suggest "delicious". None of the brands under Mondelez's control will change their names. The US business will also remain as Kraft, and there will be no Mondelez Creme Eggs or Mondelez Philadelphia Cream Cheese.
The two firms will be listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
"The Kraft brand is a perfect fit for the North American grocery business and gives it a wonderful platform on which to build an exciting future," the chairman and chief executive, Irene Rosenfeld, said.
"For the new global snacks company, we wanted to find a new name that could serve as an umbrella for our iconic brands, reinforce the truly global nature of this business and build on our higher purpose – to 'make today delicious'. "
The company announced last year that it was splitting its business.
Kraft, the world's second-largest food manufacturer, bought Cadbury in January 2010, and the split is intended to create a snacks business with the flexibility to make additional acquisitions.
It remains to be seen how delicious Kraft's shareholders will find Mondelez. They will get the chance to vote on the name at the company's annual general meeting in May. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/oct/14/classic-fm-absolute-radio-talksport-licences | Media | 2014-10-14T13:13:06.000Z | John Plunkett | Classic FM, Absolute Radio and TalkSport to have licences rolled over | The three big national commercial radio stations will have their analogue licences automatically rolled over for a second time by the government, after the prospect of an imminent digital radio switchover disappeared over the horizon.
Global Radio’s Classic FM, Bauer-owned Absolute Radio and TalkSport, owned by UTV Media, along with more than 60 local and regional stations will benefit from culture minister Ed Vaizey’s announcement on Tuesday that they will not have to compete for their licences, which are due to expire by 2017.
The decision, which will be subject to consultation and could be ratified as early as spring next year, is likely to anger critics such as former TalkSport owner Kelvin MacKenzie, who threatened legal action last time the national licences were rolled over without going to auction.
Vaizey told the Radio Festival in Salford on Tuesday that it would be the “second and final rollover” of licences but declined to say, when questioned, that it would not happen again in the event of further delays to digital switchover.
He said the Department for Culture, Media and Sport had “concluded there are benefits to commercial radio from having a period of stability and not having to recompete for licences which may only last a couple of years up to the point where switchover is likely to take place”.
The issue of digital radio switchover was effectively put on the back burner by Vaizey in December 2013 after the growth in digital radio, now just over a third of all radio listening, failed to match early estimates.
Vaizey flagged up the decline in listening among young people, from 18 to 15 hours a week among 15- to 24-year-olds, as a serious concern and said social media and multiplatform approaches were essential for broadcasters seeking to stem this decline.
He welcomed the BBC’s announcement that it was researching a new generation of “hybrid” radio, combining the robust, free-to-air reception of broadcast radio with the digital enhancements and interactivity of internet radio.
The “hybrid” radio project, a joint initiative between the BBC, UK commercial radio and overseas broadcasters under the umbrella of the Universal Smartphone Radio Project, would combine internet and broadcast radio for use in mobile phones.
It followed research that the majority of smartphone users wanted radio in their devices but were concerned about data costs, battery use and reception issues when using online services.
To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email [email protected] or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly “for publication”.
To get the latest media news to your desktop or mobile, follow MediaGuardian on Twitter and Facebook. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2003/oct/06/guardianobituaries.usa | US news | 2003-10-06T01:36:18.000Z | Christopher Reed | Obituary: Robert Kardashian | With the death from cancer of lawyer Robert Kardashian at the age of 59, nobody is ever likely to know what was inside the Louis Vuitton clothing bag he carried out of OJ Simpson's Los Angeles home the day after the actor and football star's former wife and an LA waiter were found stabbed to death in June 1994.
Under California bar association rules, lawyers must take their clients' confidences to the grave. So unless Simpson decides to tell all about his 1995 acquittal for the murders, the contents of the bag - once rumoured to include the murder weapon - will remain secret. (When LA police received the bag six months later, they retrieved no evidence from it.)
Few would have heard of Kardashian, a friend of Simpson's since college days, had he not sat beside him during the 10-month trial seen on television all over the world. Their friendship ended only after Kardashian expressed serious doubts about Simpson's innocence after the trial.
Kardashian's role in the "dream team" did not require him to plead before the court, so all the audience saw was his ravaged but handsome face as he sat wordlessly week after week. Yet he played a key part in the saga that gripped America from the day the two bodies were found outside Nicole Simpson's house in Brentwood.
It was Kardashian's home in Encino to which Simpson went after his return from Chicago the day after the murders, and from which he fled when police came to arrest him a few days later. Then came the extraordinary car chase, in which police followed Simpson's Ford Bronco for 60 miles along LA's freeways. During the chase Kardashian spoke to his old friend by cell phone, when Simpson gave the appearance of being suicidal.
It was Kardashian who read Simpson's self-pitying letter on television, which some interpreted as his farewell. But when Kardashian was later interviewed on Barbara Walters' television show, he expressed his concerns over the DNA blood evidence that linked Simpson to the murder site.
Kardashian was born to a prosperous Armenian-American couple in LA, but was not interested in joining the family meat-packing business. Instead he earned a law degree from the University of San Diego and practised for about a decade before going into business. He did not enter a courtroom again until Simpson asked for his help.
The two met on a tennis court, played golf and dated women together and took joint trips to fashionable resorts. Kardashian was present when Simpson met Nicole Brown in 1977, and he went to the wedding.
Before that, Simpson lived with Kardashian and his elder brother in Beverly Hills during an off-season in his football career, and the house was known for its parties. Kardashian and Simpson also invested in a frozen yoghurt business which capitalised on the footballer's nickname - it was called Juice Inc.
But when Walters asked if Simpson had ever thanked him for his help during the trial, Kardashian said: "No."
He is survived by his second wife of six weeks, Ellen Pierson, three daughters and one son.
· Robert George Kardashian, lawyer and businessman, born February 22 1944; died September 30 2003 | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/mar/14/nigel-slaters-smokehouse-recipes | Food | 2010-03-14T00:06:54.000Z | Nigel Slater | Nigel Slater's smoked meat and fish recipes | Quick pasta with smoked chorizo and cream
This recipe is Roni's answer to my enquiry about what she does with her smoked chorizo. Some parsley won't go amiss.
SERVES 2-3
250g small pasta, such as orrechietti
6 small smoked chorizo
1 red or orange pepper
2 courgettes
350g mushrooms
2 tbsp groundnut oil
350ml cream
Put the pasta into boiling water with a good pinch of salt and cook till tender.
Slice the chorizo about 1cm thick. Cut the peppers and courgettes into large chunks. Chop the mushrooms, again keeping them fairly chunky.
Heat the oil in a wok or large frying pan, throw in the chorizo, toss around for a few minutes then add the peppers and courgettes. Continue cooking and tossing the vegetables until they start to soften, finally adding the mushrooms.
Drain the pasta then add it to the chorizo and vegetables, then pour in the cream and bring to the boil. Season with a little salt and black pepper.
'Elephant' stew
I like the rough and ready simplicity of this dish. The elephant in question is the Richardson's smoked ham hocks that Veronica insists resemble elephant's feet. I should add that it is worth cooking this the day before and reheating it.
SERVES 4-6
1 smoked ham hock
3 or 4 carrots
4 medium-sized potatoes
2 medium-sized onions
1 or 2 bay leaves
thyme sprigs and a few peppercorns
250g brown lentils
pepper and a few herbs, if you want
Peel and roughly chop the carrots, potatoes and onions.
Put the vegetables and ham hock into a deep saucepan and cover with water.
Bring to the boil, skim off any froth that comes to the surface, then add any aromatics.
Partially cover with a lid and simmer for a good hour until the meat will easily come away from the bone.
Pull the meat off the bone and cut into large pieces then return to the pan with the lentils. Continue cooking for 20 minutes or so till the lentils are cooked. Check the seasoning and serve.
Smoked mackerel and bacon cakes
SERVES 4
400g floury potatoes
150g smoked streaky bacon
3 spring onions
1 tbsp olive oil or melted bacon fat
250g smoked mackerel flesh
oil for cooking
flour for dusting
lemon halves, to serve
Peel the potatoes and boil them in deep, salted water. When they are tender, drain and mash them thoroughly. I like to do this in the kitchen mixer, which I think gives a smoother result than by hand. Don't be tempted to add butter or oil.
Discard the rind from the bacon rashers. Put the bacon into the bowl of a food processor with the roughly chopped spring onions. Blitz till you have a rough, crumbly mixture. Pour the oil into a shallow pan and fry the onions and bacon till golden and fragrant. Tip into the mashed potato.
Crush the mackerel lightly with a fork and stir it into the mash. Check the seasoning, adding salt and black pepper as you think fit, then, with floured hands, make 8 thick patties with the mixture. Leave them on a floured tray for 20 minutes in a cold place.
Heat a couple of tablespoons of oil in a frying pan. Dust each cake with flour then slide into the hot oil. Fry for a few minutes on each side till golden. They will probably take about 8 minutes. Serve with the lemon halves.
Richardson's Smokehouse, Baker's Lane, Orford, Suffolk IP12 2LH;
mail order 01394 450103; www.richardsonssmokehouse.co.uk | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/dec/09/stranded-electric-car-ev-range-anxiety-charging-network | Business | 2023-12-09T06:00:13.000Z | Jasper Jolly | Is it right to be worried about getting stranded in an electric car? | Of all the reasons car buyers give to avoid buying an electric car, two words stand out above all: range anxiety. Drivers wary of making the switch from petrol or diesel to electric overwhelmingly cite a concern that batteries will not last the journey. Our EV mythbusters series is taking a closer look at some of the most common criticisms of electric cars, highlighting the myths, the realities and the grey areas.
We have asked whether we should be more concerned about fires in electric cars and whether cars have a mining problem. This article asks whether fears about battery range mean the transition away from internal combustion engines never reaches its destination.
The claim
Range anxiety has two components: that batteries don’t have enough capacity for journeys and that there is a lack of chargers.
The Sun newspaper warned of “EV misery” in a report citing Auto Trader polling that found less than half of drivers said they were willing to switch, with range anxiety the top factor. The Conservative MP John Redwood, who has campaigned against the ban on petrol and diesel cars, said recently: “Many people are put off buying EVs by the absence of reliable charging points, the short range and the time it takes to charge a car.”
Donald Trump, who is hoping to regain the US presidency, has repeatedly criticised the Democratic White House’s push for electric cars, which he has claimed need to charge every 15 minutes.
The science
There is no doubt that range anxiety is real. Polling by Bloomberg Intelligence in September found that range anxiety and the closely related concern over finding a charger were the two biggest fears cited by people across Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the UK.
Whether that anxiety is justified is a very different question. Figures on average driving ranges can help. The US Environmental Protection Agency (in its own handy mythbusting page) notes that the average American household covers 50 miles a day, and only 15% of households do more than 100 miles in a typical day. In Europe average driving distances are generally lower. UK government data shows 99% of car journeys are less than 100 miles.
The energy company Octopus says the average EV range in the UK is 211 miles, and more expensive models can reach 300 miles. If you can charge overnight (when energy prices are cheapest) then there is simply no need to worry about typical usage.
UK government data shows 99% of car journeys are less than 100 miles. Photograph: Sjoerd van der Wal/Getty
For longer trips, drivers are dependent on the charger network. The International Energy Agency says the number of public charge points grew by 55% worldwide in 2022 to 2.7m. That is rapid growth, and means that in places like the UK or western Europe longer trips are gradually turning into a non-issue, with a quick toilet break doubling as top-up time. Edmund King, president of the AA, said 2.5% of its EV customers’ breakdown callouts are for flat batteries, and he expects that to fall to 1%, in line with the proportion of people who run out of petrol or diesel.
Maurice Neligan, the co-founder of Jolt, a public charger company in Germany that is expanding to the UK, said: “My view is there’s no reason why we won’t have enough chargers. There may be a bit of a bottleneck in the next three to four years but there’s no reason that it can’t be solved.”
Melanie Shufflebotham, the chief operating officer of ZapMap,the UK’s authority on charger numbers, said the network “has taken great strides forward in the past year”, with 43% more rapid chargers and double the number of hubs. She acknowledged that “there are still concerns around finding a reliable charging point, particularly on longer journeys”, but she expected the quick pace of new installations to continue.
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Any caveats?
The main problem for the EV transition is for people who do not have access to off-street parking, such as this reporter. The relatively widespread public charger network in south London meant there were no problems with charging a Kia EV6 and a much shorter-range Citroën Ami in public, but it was more effort when charge points nearer home were occupied (and prices and parking tariffs can be tricky). In many other cities around the world it is a still bigger challenge.
For rapid chargers on longer journeys there could still be issues when the public charger network has to deal with absolute peak periods, such as public holidays, when millions of people are doing the 1% of journeys that are more than 100 miles.
The number of ultra-rapid chargers is rising quickly in countries such as the UK to address this. Nevertheless, issues with the electricity grid are holding back progress on chargers across Europe, says Quentin Willson, former Top Gear presenter turned campaigner at FairCharge. He said the number of chargers needs to be “much, much more or else you’ll get people starting to queue”.
The verdict
Banishing range anxiety is tricky because it relies on electric vehicles’ use patterns as well as the charging network. It is not yet possible to say that every journey is well served.
And governments cannot afford to get complacent about charging, or else those anxieties will turn into reality for more people as increasing numbers make the switch to EVs.
Most authorities are clear, however, that range anxiety should not be a problem for most people. If you only carry out the occasional journey of more than 200 miles, you are very unlikely to be caught short in areas such as the UK, western Europe and parts of the US where the number of chargers is already large, and rapidly growing. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/nov/05/her-randb-star-her-i-wanted-to-be-anonymous | Music | 2018-11-05T12:00:07.000Z | Leonie Cooper | R&B star HER: ‘I wanted to be anonymous’ | Interviewing HER isn’t quite as odd as it should be. Even though the anonymous-ish slow-jam queen doesn’t remove her mirrored sunglasses throughout our meeting. Even though this means for a whole hour I’m basically looking at my own reflection as we sit in the sweet breeze of an air-conditioned hotel lobby in Midtown, Atlanta. Even though I kind of have to go along with the idea that I don’t know the real identity of HER, despite the fact that the most rudimentary Google brings up her full name, age and detailed career history.
HER is in fact Gabi Wilson, a singer and multi-instrumentalist from Vallejo, California, who was discovered, aged 10, performing on daytime TV in the US, scooped up by Alicia Keys’s management company and signed to RCA at 14. Although it doesn’t seem to have turned her into a Kids from Fame brat, it isn’t hard to work out that this semi-retreat from the spotlight is about her regaining agency over her identity.
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Like Sia, Daft Punk and pre-mega fame the Weeknd, HER is as much about the commodification of mystery as she is the music, and like Clark Kent, sunglasses are always worn. This is despite the protestations of her 1.2 million Instagram followers, who are constantly flooding her comments with pleas to “show your face!”. “I wanted to be anonymous,” says HER, dressed down like any other 21-year-old on a Saturday afternoon in jeans, a black T-shirt and trainers, the only concessions to her ludicrous streaming stats and star status apparent in her huge glossy curls and aforementioned sunglasses. The decision certainly wasn’t due to a lack of confidence on HER’s part – just check YouTube for clips of Gabi Wilson performing on telly to millions as a kid, as relaxed as can be. Instead, she says it was down to how open her lyrics were. Though not especially candid, there’s a lot of gloomy heartbreak here: there’s wasted emotions, plenty of “if I can’t be with you what’s the point, really?”. This is music to mope to. Music to dump and be dumped to. This is in no small part down to the first two HER EPs being written from the ages of 14 to 18, a time when even an ignored WhatsApp message can result in weeks of sobbing into a pillow.
“Living my truth was very hard – I felt vulnerable,” she says of her reasoning behind releasing music as HER. “Some people ask me: ‘Is it an alter ego, is it another version of yourself?’ But it’s just my inner self. It’s all the thoughts and feelings that sit in the back of my mind and I’m afraid to say.” With this approach to privacy and self-protection, then, it seems strange that HER would want to speak to journalists at all. In fact, it’s only in the past year or so she’s actually felt comfortable talking to the press. “It took me a while to want to do interviews,” she explains. “People always make me uncomfortable when they ask me: ‘Who’s this song about?’ I feel like I let you read my diary and now we have to have a conversation about it! I already let you read it, let’s just leave it at that.”
So what is HER’s life like beyond the music? She has three pet snakes that live with her in her apartment in Brooklyn (she shows me pictures on her phone of her favourite, Mike). She’s all grins when she recounts the tale of how her mother wooed her father by cooking him meals from her native Philippines when they lived in opposite apartment buildings in the Bay Area. And she practically floats when speaking about taking her 12-year-old sister on tour. “When I mean private I mean I don’t have a clique,” she says, positioning herself away from the Justin Biebers of the world. “You won’t see me out with so and so. All the gossip – I’m not about that at all. The drama.”
Yet, despite HER’s commitment to being low-key, the big names can’t keep away. An invaluable co-sign from Rihanna bought her tune Focus to the attention of millions; Alicia Keys has been coaching her for the past decade; and she’s here in Atlanta to pay tribute to her latest fan, Janet Jackson, at a glitzy industry ceremony. It was backstage at KOKO after a sold-out London show earlier this year that HER found the 52-year-old pop icon waiting in the wings to say how much she loved her music. “I’ve had many big sisters in the industry and it’s a beautiful thing to have so many mentors,” says HER, reverentially. “It’s easy to feel pressures being a female artist – pressure to look a certain way, to act a certain way, to conform. And having that support from another woman is confirmation that you’re doing exactly what you’re supposed to be doing, which is to stay true to yourself.”
But there is a contradiction here. She may be outspoken about how her music can empower women, but she also went on tour with Chris Brown, the man who pleaded guilty to violently assaulting his girlfriend Rihanna in 2009. “He has a past … We’re all human, we’re all imperfect – not excusing or justifying anything – but he admires my art and I admire his, and that’s what it’s about, the celebration of art,” she says of the rapper. Adjusting her glasses, she pauses to reflect on her own approach as soberly as she does on Brown’s. “I don’t focus on the controversy. I don’t focus on anything other than the art.”
That “art” is part of a new wave flooding R&B. Indie and dance have always had a place for the loners – James Blake, Burial, Aphex Twin et al – but it’s a stance that seems at odds with soul’s more boombastic roots. Yet since the Weeknd uploaded his first tracks to YouTube in 2011 under the cryptic username xoxxxoooxo, confusing and delighting music bloggers in equal measure, the genre hasn’t been as reliant on star power as it once was. More recently, there’s been the shy, almost reclusive Bryson Tiller, who guests on HER’s latest EP, I Used to Know Her: The Prelude EP, and SZA, who’s less about TMZ headlines and more about making you cry about your ex from sixth form.
“It’s not even about the glamour and the crazy personality any more, it’s just about what do you make me feel with your music and your words,” explains HER. “[It’s about] all the underdogs, the people who weren’t the most popular in school or the people who were told they weren’t gonna be anything. But they really have a story to show the world and people can identify with them.”
She chuckles throatily when I ask if she’ll ever remove the glasses. Is it part of a marketing plan? Are there meeting rooms filled with label interns figuring out tactics to launch a star? “Eventually you’re gonna have to see my face. But there’s no PowerPoint presentation involved.”
I Used to Know Her: The Prelude EP is out now | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/oct/13/lola-in-the-mirror-by-trent-dalton-book-review-a-misguided-bootstraps-story-drowning-in-sentimentality | Books | 2023-10-12T14:00:11.000Z | Jack Callil | Lola in the Mirror by Trent Dalton review – a misguided bootstraps story drowning in sentimentality | After reading Lola in the Mirror, the newest and third novel by Australia’s most marketable literary sensation, one thing is clear: Trent Dalton is not a subtle writer. It’s not that he’s incapable of plucking heartstrings (have a gander at any Goodreads reviews), it’s that his tool of choice – piping-hot sentimentality – boils to oblivion any remnants of nuance. It’s not that he can’t spin a yarn either (he’s a journalist, after all), it’s that he flattens complexity into a slurry of platitudes – “The light of our lives is formed by the darkness we place around it”, “The world turns for us all” – ad nauseam. Most concerningly though, his ideas aren’t just merely lazy; when placed under scrutiny, some are misleading, if not dangerous.
Edenglassie by Melissa Lucashenko review – Miles Franklin winner slices open Australia’s past and present
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If you’ve been under an Australia-sized rock and haven’t heard of Dalton, his works span his award-demolishing debut Boy Swallows Universe (adapted for the stage and an upcoming Netflix series), its follow-up All Our Shimmering Skies, and a nonfiction collection titled Love Stories. A News Corp journalist for the Courier-Mail before becoming a staff writer for the Weekend Australian in 2021, Dalton was stirred to fiction by his tumultuous childhood and stalwart mother. Boy Swallows Universe was clunky, dripping in schmaltz and – as former Sydney Review of Books editor Catriona Menzies-Pike deftly noted – engrained with a conservative worldview of a distinctly Scott Morrison flavour. It was at least alive with some memorable characters.
But Lola in the Mirror charts nowhere new and has little compelling to say. Like Dalton’s other novels, it features an embattled protagonist yanking on their bootstraps with misty-eyed fervour: in this case, a 17-year-old girl without a name who is living “houseless” in Brisbane, where she and her mum eke out a life in a Toyota Hiace van in a riverside scrapyard. The teenager is a rapacious drawer with aspirations of becoming an artist, holding herself aloft with dreams of exhibiting in the Met. Early in the book, her mother abruptly dies, forcing her to take up work as a courier for a drug kingpin called Lady Flo. Things go pear-shaped, unsurprisingly – and it wouldn’t be Dalton without a whole-heart-falling-out-of-sleeve love story too.
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Dalton says this novel was inspired by his 17 years of social affairs journalism, which contributed to works such as his 2011 nonfiction book, Detours: Stories from the Street, the proceeds of which he donated to a shelter. His heart is undoubtedly in the right place, having spent countless hours with members of Australia’s most vulnerable communities, hearing their stories of hardship in conditions incomprehensible to most of us.
But Dalton’s heavy trafficking in dewy-eyed earnestness pushes Lola in the Mirror into reckless territory, romanticising and condescending to the very people he’s writing about. Take this passage, for example, describing the apparent intimacy that houseless people have with dirt.
I’m talking about dirt that you can taste on your fingertips when you eat a Burger Ring … Epidermal dirt. Dirt as armour. Dirt as shield. Sounds screwy, I know, but sometimes the intimacy with dirt gets so deep that you start feeling earth intimacy, a soil connection in you, and then you start feeling like you’re part of the ground. Like you can sleep on any patch of grass, anywhere on earth, because that’s what you are now.
Putting aside the use of the word “screwy” as a stand-in to describe almost every anodyne character eccentricity – which he uses 15 times throughout – passages like the above trivialise homelessness. Dalton does confront darker elements – violence, addiction, suicide – but these moments are almost always denuded by his preoccupation with “community, hope and love”, mentioned in his author’s note as the book’s impetus. Even if this “dirt as armour” view comes anecdotally from a person living houseless, contextlessly elevating it in fiction as an object of imaginative charm betrays a lack of authorial care. It sanitises, shifting the readers’ understanding away from the experiential reality of hardship towards the refuge of an anaesthetising optimism.
As with Dalton’s other works, there’s also no shortage of bad guys in Lola in the Mirror. Abusers, violent men, people doing abhorrent things – each are described repeatedly as “monsters”, “tyrant lizards” forcing their victims into dancing the “Tyrannosaurus waltz”. As the author said: “My mum, my real-life mum, totally danced the Tyrannosaurus waltz for the best part of 20 years.” It’s understandable, then, the urge to depict repugnant behaviour as the spawn of a beast. But when a novel centres on domestic violence, carrying with it an implication of how we recognise perpetrators, it’s vital to interrogate it. Domestic violence prevention representatives warn against peddling the “monster myth”, as have the partners of victims. Aside from reducing human behaviour to unhelpful categories of good and evil, it also implies offenders are easily spotted, when they often are disturbingly innocuous, everyday people. To dress abuse, however abhorrent, in a villainous costume doesn’t aid understanding – it impedes it.
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Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood review – a masterful novel of quiet force
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Throughout Lola in the Mirror, Dalton also repeatedly sentimentalises the conduit between suffering and creativity. The author has spoken of his origins in community housing, and this understandably offers a personal context for his thinking. But where he missteps – amid all his protagonist’s trivialising, cartwheeling-through-the-dirt wonder (literally: at one point the houseless protagonist whimsically executes “thirty-six consecutive cartwheels” down Queen Street Mall) – is in his glamorisation of pain as a prerequisite to good art. “There are so many beautiful paintings that come from things like love and happiness,” the novel’s protagonist proclaims, in one of many such references, “but I still reckon the really, really great paintings come from really, really great pain.” This elevation of the artist as perennial sufferer has damaging implications: namely that financial, physical and mental stability are not aides for meaningful expression, but strictures.
Trent Dalton is no mere airport pulp writer, though he is that, too. He’s one of Australia’s most widely read cultural exports, having sold more than 1,000,000 copies in a country where the majority sell far, far fewer. His foundational messages – intentional or not, conveyed overtly or by omission – matter. Dalton is earnest, compelled to the page from personal hardship and a heart teeming with good intentions. But his books, of which Lola in the Mirror is the worst, don’t just fail to live up to waffly ideas of literary value (with a waft of anti-intellectualism, his author’s acknowledgment assures readers, twice, that he’s “Not trying to be all clever-like”). They are conduits for simplistic, fantasy-driven ways of thinking about human nature that placate our desire for immediacy, simple explanations and a quick emotional sugar hit.
Lola in the Mirror is out now through HarperCollins | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/business/marketforceslive/2010/jul/02/danapetroleum-marketforces | Business | 2010-07-02T16:16:16.000Z | Nick Fletcher | Dana bid lights up oil sector as FTSE 100 edges higher | Confirmation of a bid approach for Dana Petroleum has lit up the whole oil sector as analysts immediately began looking for the next takeover target.
Dana, which has oil and gas fields in the North Sea, Egypt and Morocco, jumped 263p to £14.40 after state-owned Korea National Oil Corporation said it was in very early stage talks about a possible cash offer for the company. Traders suggested cash rich KNOC could offer up to £18 a share, valuing Dana at nearly £17bn as it vies with Chinese oil companies to buy up exploration companies. There is also the prospect of rival bidders, including the Chinese and Austria's OMV which has previously been linked with Dana. But some City analysts believe the suggested price may be too high. Richard Griffith at Evolution Securities said:
If the shares reach £15 we would recommend selling on the grounds that its far from certain the deal will go through.
Nick Copeman at Oriel Securities said:
KNOC appears a credible bidder as it stated in late 2009 that it was eyeing five to ten overseas companies producing 50,000-100,000 barrels of oil per day. However the price appears challenging as we doubt KNOC would be willing to pay for exploration upside and our risked net asset value stands at 1191p a share (or 1443p a share with the core developments derisked). Overall we see Premier Oil as a more likely bid target given the strong production growth profile.
Premier put on 97p to £13.23 while Tullow Oil - which has just held an investor day extolling the virtues of its operations in Ghana - added 54.5p to £10.46. RBS analyst Phil Corbett said of the Ghana presentation:
Despite one or two hitches, we still believe it is more likely than not that oil can be delivered by the end of 2011, which will not only set a benchmark for a development of this type, but will burnish Tullow's credentials when it comes to future large scale projects (particularly onshore Uganda). The scale of the exploration upside continues to excite us, and we look forward to a busy drilling programme across the second half of 2010 and the first quarter of 2011 which will test a large proportion of the Equatorial Atlantic upside. Tullow remains a key buy in our coverage universe.
Cairn Energy climbed 20.8p to 422.1p as it announced it had started drilling operations off the west coast of Greenland. Richard Slape at Canaccord Genuity said:
Clearly, the commencement of operations in Greenland is an exciting step for Cairn and, despite the fact that it has a market capitalisation of nearly £6 billion, has the potential to transform the company's outlook.
Our base case valuation for Cairn, assuming a long-term oil price of $70 per barrel and a 10% discount rate, is 346p a share. However, we set our target price at a 15% premium to this at 398p a share [partly] to reflect .....the activity in Greenland and ...its status as a potential takeover candidate.
We believe that any future buyer of Cairn would likely be a major or a national oil corporation with a much lower cost of capital than our assumed 10%.
Lower down the market there was also takeover speculation surrounding Bowleven, 8.75p better at 135p.
But BP missed out - despite JP Morgan recently mooting a possible bid from US group Exxon Mobil. It fell 5.95p to 322p despite hopes relief wells would succeed in halting the Gulf of Mexico spillage by the middle of August.
Mining shares were in demand as investors welcomed a compromise deal over the Australian government's controversial supertax on the sector. With the arrival of new Australian prime minister Julia Gillard, previous proposals for a 40% tax have been watered down. Now a new resource tax of 30% will be introduced in July 2012, and will apply only to mined iron ore and coal. Projects will be entitled to a 25% extraction allowance which will reduce the profits which are subject to the new tax.
Mining groups had warned the original proposals could put investment of $20bn at risk, but now they appear to be happier. In a statement Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton and Xstrata said they were encouraged by the new proposals and added that they would work with the government to hammer out the details.
Rio rose 30p to 2934.50, BHP was 28.5p better at £17.23 and Xstrata added 25.3p to 871.1p.
The rise in commodity companies helped push the market higher despite slightly disappointing US non-farm payroll numbers and a 90 point fall on Wall Street by the time London closed. The FTSE 100 finished 32.34 points higher at 4838.09, although it is still more than 16% down from its recent peak in April.
Banks were higher on talk that none of the major German banks were likely to face problems in the forthcoming stress tests on the finances of European financial institutions. Joshua Raymond, market strategist at City Index said:
There had been some rising fears over the last few weeks that the subsequent stress tests of a number of European banks may bring to the surface liquidity holes, and the speculation that this would not be the case for German banks, is giving banks a lift today.
So Lloyds Banking Group was lifted 20.8p to 422.1p while Barclays added 11.6p to 266.95p. Royal Bank of Scotland rose 0.59p to 40.06p as it sold its Indian retail and commercial banking businesses to HSBC, 1p higher at 600.1p.
Aviva added 9.3p to 315.1p after the insurer gave an encouraging presentation in the City on its capital generation and operating profit stability.
Among the mid-caps, Kesa Electricals, the Comet owner, climbed 3.5p to 125.1p as analysts speculated on the intentions of activist investor Knight Vinke, which has been revealed as a 3.05% shareholder. UBS said it would be difficult for a major restructuring, but Knight Vinke could push for tougher targets for management incentive schemes.
Chloride, the uninterruptible power supplier, rose 2.9p to 373p as it recommended a 375p a share offer from US group Emerson Electric, following the withdrawal of a rival bid from Swiss group ABB.
Brit Insurance added 12.5p to 900p as the Lloyd's of London insurer turned down a revised £10.50 a share approach from US buyout group Apollo Management. But Ben Cohen at Collins Stewart said:
We are surprised and disappointed that Brit's board does not consider £10.50 a reasonable basis for discussions, especially in current market conditions. We think there is a real risk now that Apollo walks away. The lack of alternative bidders and the recent discount to book at which Brit has traded suggests that the stock would fall to around the £8 level were Apollo to walk away.
Finally Regal Petroleum rose 3.75p to 29.25p after it said a ministry order to halt its operations in Ukraine had been suspended following a court injunction order. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/feb/19/should-charities-use-shock-tactics | Opinion | 2012-02-19T00:06:00.000Z | Alex Clark | Should charities use shock tactics? | Last week the animal rights campaign Peta caused a stir with an online advert that suggested you don't have to eat meat to be a red-blooded male. The evidence? A girl wearing a neck brace as a result of injuries caused by her vegan boyfriend who could "bring it like a tantric porn star". But is it fair to outrage viewers to get a message across?
Peter Stanford, broadcaster and director of the Longford Trust
Yes, they should use shock tactics, and perhaps we need to do it more. The two "causes" that I have worked on most – prison reform and disability rights – are both good examples of where measured, reasoned, sensible tactics have delivered meagre results. Everyone now knows why prison doesn't "work", but we still allow our politicians to lock up more people than anywhere else in Europe. That is shocking. So why not harness some of that, and shock back, so as to make people sit up and pay attention. The very fact that we are discussing Peta's ad shows how effective this no-holds-barred approach is in pushing this organisation and its otherwise let-me-think-about-that-tomorrow message to the top of the agenda.
Alex Clark, journalist and writer
Well, we might be talking about it, but I'm not sure we can say how far that will translate into people a) putting their hands in their pockets or b) taking up the cudgels, as it were, on behalf of the world's oppressed animals. In fact, I'd guess that it's more likely to kickstart an awful lot of chatter about the medium, and rather less about the message. Their digital ad "Boyfriend Went Vegan" shows a young woman in a neck brace hobbling home with the groceries – strictly animal-free, of course. "Jessica" is suffering from a syndrome called "boyfriend went vegan and knocked the bottom out of me"; in other words, so infused with energy and strength is her partner since eschewing pork chops that their sex life leaves her looking like a victim of domestic violence.
And therein lies the problem: the reason people have taken offence at Peta's ad is that it's essentially a parody of the campaigns run by charities working with the victims of physical and sexual abuse. Shock tactics are one thing: but is bending the work of other organisations to your subversive will really the answer?
PS There are clearly good and bad shock tactics. Peta is an old hand here, having used them effectively over a number of years to raise itself head and shoulders above animal welfare charities – in terms of public impact and the fund-raising that goes with that. And, yes, this one does sail very close to the wind. What they are challenging here is the popular stereotype that vegans are insipid, pale and limp. They have mixed in a fashionable patina of sex, presumably to appeal to a younger audience. Whether it parodies sexual violence is debatable. You could just as easily argue that it simply borrows the language of raunchy sex movies. I am not well-qualified to judge, but don't immediately feel the ad is belittling the very important issue of sexual abuse.
AC Close to the wind, indeed! I must say I think they could have made just as raunchy and irreverent an ad without resorting to the neck brace and the faux earnest voiceover. But I take your point that they're playing with perceptions of vegans (who, we must assume, are as likely to be able to "bring it like a tantric porn star" as the heartiest of meat eaters). Nonetheless, how far do you think shock tactics in general actually work for charities or public information campaigns?
I ask because it strikes me that what they're utilising – particularly in ads like this that are designed to go viral – is the tendency for something to create a moment of mass outrage and debate, and shoot whoever's done the outraging to the top of the agenda. The problem is that the debate ends up being about the ad and not the issue. Do you think it's worth it?
PS It may be in poor taste, but to tackle your wider point: charities, like businesses, need to "build brand" so that there is that instant association in the public mind between the charity's name and the issue. Think animal welfare, think Peta. And this charity has been very successful at that. Once the link is made, it can exploit it by putting over a more measured and detailed case. But shock tactics have also clocked up some notable victories on issues. Think the pregnant man ad from the Family Planning Association in 1970 that changed male attitudes to their responsibility for contraception, or the many shocking campaigns around drink-driving that have dramatically shifted notions of what is acceptable behaviour when you are behind the wheel of a car.
AC Undoubtedly there are some issues that benefit from being addressed with great immediacy and vigour, and the way that widespread permissiveness about drink-driving has shifted to an almost total intolerance of it is a good example. But I think those tactics work less well when people feel that they're being lectured to on a subject they quite reasonably have their own opinions about; veganism is one such. We might not mind being provoked to think; but I reckon we feel less open to being either bossed about or having our emotions manipulated. And when you have the suspicion that an organisation is more intent on trending on Twitter than engaging in a debate, I think the whole thing falls apart.
PS It all comes down to the quality of the thinking behind adopting shock tactics. They should never be used casually. If you are going to risk causing profound offence, you must first be sure that the cause you are drawing to the public's attention is worthy of the potential controversy.
I'm a bit compromised on animal rights as a meat-eater (organic only, if that mitigates it) but think that Peta's cause here is not the joys of veganism (hardly a show-stopper in itself) but animal welfare. And that is something many feel absolutely passionately about, over and above any other issue. I suppose the suspicion that Peta's ad generates comes because they have used shock tactics so often in the past. What is that phrase about keeping your powder dry so it is still there when you really need it? Shock tactics can and do work, but the more you resort to them, the less their impact will be.
AC And, of course, shock is relative – when we're surrounded by explicit imagery and highly sexualised language, where is there left to go? I wouldn't describe myself as "shocked" by "Boyfriend Went Vegan": I do understand that people have rough sex. But I did think it was silly and crude, and I also felt that there was a kind of needless cruelty to it, in the sense that it would be upsetting to people who had suffered domestic violence.
I also think it fuels a weird cultural phenomenon, in which we seem to lurch from one offence storm to the next, which either results in the offending person or agency backing down and apologising or defiantly standing by their guns. With a vast increase in the numbers of ways that we can interact with one another, we seem to have set aside reasoned debate in favour of bombing raids and distress flares. Enough! I think I'm a bit over shock. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/oct/23/universities-do-not-challenge-racism-says-uks-first-black-studies-professor | Education | 2016-10-23T19:55:45.000Z | Alice Ross | Universities do not challenge racism, says UK's first black studies professor | Institutional racism in Britain’s universities is harming the performance of minority ethnic students, the UK’s first professor of black studies has said.
Kehinde Andrews, an associate professor at Birmingham City University (BCU), told a conference last week marking Black History Month that universities are “no less institutionally racist than the police”, and criticised the curriculum for being overly “white”.
“Universities produce racism,” Andrews told the Guardian. “It’s only since the 1960s there have been any black or Asian people – or women – at all.” In the intervening decades, little has happened to challenge ingrained attitudes and approaches, he said. “Are universities producing knowledge that challenges racism? I would argue that they are not.”
Dr Kehinde Andrews Photograph: Vimeo
Last year a report by the Runnymede Trust, an equalities thinktank, warned that universities had proved “remarkably resilient to change in terms of curriculum, culture and staffing, remaining for the most part ‘ivory towers’ − with the emphasis on ‘ivory’”.
Speaking after his comments at the Black History Month event were reported by the Sunday Times, Andrews said there had been a persistent “attainment gap” between white and non-white students, even among ethnic minorities that tend to perform well at school.
“Something’s happening in those three or four years of education to institute the gap,” he said.
Three-quarters of white students achieve a 2:1 degree or higher, compared to 60% of minority ethnic students. This is the same at universities up and down the league table, he said.
“Somewhere like Oxford or Cambridge, you might expect people to feel marginalised and excluded: there’s very few minority students. But actually at BCU 50% of students are ethnic minority … You might think surely it wouldn’t be the same as in Cambridge. But you still have exactly the same situation,” he said.
“There’s obviously something about what’s happening in the way things are organised and the way things are run … it’s institutional. It’s beyond an individual place or act.”
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Andrews believes the curriculum is a key factor. In his own discipline – sociology – the canon taught as the foundation of the subject is “a collection of dead white men”, he said. “And that’s the same at every university.”
He is not alone with these concerns. Last year, the National Union of Students backed a student campaign, “Why is my curriculum white”, highlighting the lack of diversity in the texts assigned to students, prompting discussions within some of the UK’s top universities on the issue.
At Cambridge, academics are running a research group on “decolonising the curriculum”. One of the group’s organisers, African politics lecturer Adam Branch, told the Guardian that this aims to acknowledge the colonial roots of many of the institutions and approaches that make up a university.
The decolonising approach examines how this affects universities today, “from what texts are read, to who is admitted, employed, and promoted, to the relation between the university and the community, to what knowledge is valued and what is dismissed or ignored,” Branch said.
Andrews says that in humanities subjects, which are largely self-guided, the impact of studying authors who not only fail to interest but sometimes “actually alienate” students can harm their education. “So if you’re reading Kant and Kant’s talking about European enlightenment and talking down about Africa and the rest of the world … it’s really difficult to get into that stuff.”
The most glaring illustrations of racial inequality in universities is in their staffing, Andrews said: just 60 of the UK’s 14,000 professors are black.
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“It’s unbelievable it’s that bad. And that’s not just at redbrick universities – it’s replicated across the entire sector,” he said.
Minority ethnic staff frequently experience micro-aggressions – small acts of discrimination, Andrews said. “I get this all the time. In my first job I went to go to a staff part of the university and someone put their hands physically on me and pushed me out of the room – they had assumed I must be a student.”
He described how he adopts a “dress code” of smarter shoes and trousers whenever he goes on to campus, after persistently being questioned by security guards early in his career. “It’s at the point where if I’m near university dressed like I would normally dress, if I have to go into university I will always go home and get changed, just because if I don’t I will get hassled,” he said.
Andrews is currently working on a paper counting how many black sociologists are permanently employed in the UK. “I’ve so far counted 15 – and that includes the five sociologists at BCU. Outside of BCU you’re very unlikely to see a black sociologist anywhere in the UK and that must be caused by institutional racism: I don’t have any other explanation,” he said. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/18/public-sector-workers-24-hour-strike-northern-ireland | UK news | 2024-01-18T14:29:18.000Z | Rory Carroll | Thousands of public sector workers stage 24-hour strike in Northern Ireland | Thousands of public sector workers have staged pickets and marches across Northern Ireland in the biggest strike in living memory.
The combined action by nurses, teachers, bus drivers, carers, cleaners, civil servants and other sectors brought parts of the region to a standstill on Thursday and raised the stakes in a political crisis that has paralysed devolved government.
An estimated 150,000 workers joined the 24-hour strike action, which caused widespread disruption and coincided with icy conditions, prompting many businesses to shut for the day.
Picketers joined groups of people who chanted and waved banners as they streamed into central Belfast, Derry, Enniskillen and Omagh in a show of force by 16 unions.
“People are very angry. We’ve had enough,” said Paul Andrews, Unison’s branch chair for Belfast City hospital. “No one wants to be out here on a freezing day fighting for pay parity. But we are fed up having to beg for equality.”
Striking workers march towards Belfast city hall. Photograph: Mark Marlow/EPA
The strike by approximately 80% of the public sector led to schools closing, buses and trains being left idle, and hospitals operating skeleton services. Road service workers, including gritters, launched a week-long strike.
The Department for Infrastructure urged people not to travel unless it was essential, saying there would be limited gritting on only a handful of roads including the M1, M2, A1 and A4. Some bus drivers privately expressed reservations at driving routes that lacked gritting, saying they would be held responsible for any accidents.
The coordinated protests followed months of separate strikes by individual unions and underscored growing frustration over crumbling public services and political dysfunction.
Deadlock at Stormont, which collapsed two years ago after the Democratic Unionist party (DUP) quit power-sharing, has resulted in public sector workers not receiving pay rises granted to colleagues in the rest of the UK.
In December the government offered £600m for public sector pay claims as part of a £3.3bn financial package for Northern Ireland, but made it conditional on Stormont’s restoration, saying only a devolved government had the authority to disburse the pay rises.
The DUP continued its boycott, leaving Stormont mothballed, but said the secretary of state, Chris Heaton-Harris, could and should disburse the money. It accused him of trying to blackmail the party into abandoning its protest at post-Brexit trading arrangements, which collapsed Stormont in February 2022.
Striking workers directed their ire towards the secretary of state, not the DUP. “Heaton-Harris is using us as hostages to try to force through political change,” said Andrews, as Unison members prepared to march on Belfast city hall. “This is the outcome of treating people as pawns in a greater game.”
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Paul Andrews, Unison’s branch chair at Belfast City hospital, picketing on Thursday. Photograph: Rory Carroll/The Guardian
Craig Gill, Unite’s lead representative at Belfast City hospital, echoed the accusation. “He wants to use us as a political battering ram. I think today will help him realise that public sector workers are not willing to be used.”
Sonia Ferris, a nurse with the GMB union, said chronic underfunding of the health service had demoralised staff, who felt their sacrifices and commitment counted for little. “The government has forgotten what we did during Covid. For us, it’s not just about pay, it’s working conditions and retention of staff.”
Gerry Murphy, the assistant general secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, told the Belfast rally that workers had overcome many obstacles and that one more remained. “That obstacle is Heaton-Harris and his refusal to accept reality and his continuing to pursue a failed political strategy. We will overcome that strategy too. This fight continues until we win – and we will win.”
In a statement, Heaton-Harris said the government had offered a “fair and generous package” that would address public sector pay and that it remained available for an incoming Northern Ireland executive. Without naming the DUP he said it was “regrettable” that a recall of Stormont on Wednesday failed to reboot power sharing. “The people of Northern Ireland deserve local political leadership from representatives they have elected to govern on their behalf.”
Other political parties have blamed both Heaton-Harris and the DUP leader, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, for the impasse. Michelle O’Neill, Sinn Féin’s deputy leader, told the BBC: “I can only hope that Jeffrey Donaldson is listening and hears the plight of the workers and, even at this late juncture, makes the right call and joins with the rest of us around that executive table and let us do our best to try and support these workers.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/sep/13/uks-high-street-banks-are-accident-waiting-to-happen-says-report | Business | 2017-09-12T23:01:48.000Z | Jill Treanor | UK's high street banks are accident waiting to happen, says report | The UK’s high street banks are an accident waiting to happen and could struggle in another financial crisis, according to a report published on Wednesday to mark the 10th anniversary of the run on Northern Rock.
The report criticises the annual health checks – stress tests – that have been conducted by the Bank of England since the crisis and concludes that the methodology used by Threadneedle Street is flawed and the tests not gruelling enough.
Queues started to form outside Northern Rock branches across the UK on 14 September 2007 after the BBC reported that the Newcastle-based lender had received emergency funding from the Bank of England. It was the first run on a high street bank in the UK since Overend & Gurney in the 1860s and after attempts to find a buyer failed, the bank was nationalised in February 2008.
Kevin Dowd, a professor of finance and economics at Durham University and a long-standing critic of the stress tests, said the Bank does not use the correct measures to assess the health of the banking system. Dowd is also a senior fellow at the Adam Smith Institute, a rightwing thinktank.
His analysis – which the Bank of England has previously rejected – focuses on the health check of the major lenders published last November . Those tests were based on a number of hypothetical scenarios including house prices falling and the global economy contracting by 1.9%. Royal Bank of Scotland failed the test and Barclays and Standard Chartered would both have struggled to cope.
Dowd argued that the scenarios were “hardly doomsday” and disputes the way banks’ capital strength is measured.
“The stress tests are about as useful as a cancer test that cannot detect cancer. They seek to demonstrate a financial resilience on the part of UK banks that simply isn’t there,” said Dowd in the report. “Our banking system is an accident waiting to happen.”
The Bank uses the value of assets as calculated by the banks rather than their value on the markets which, he argued, would give a more accurate assessment of their financial health.
The leverage of banks has fallen by about a third since 2006 on the first measure but, according to Dowd, has increased by a half on the second.
“It is disturbing that 10 years on from Northern Rock, the best measures of leverage – those based on market values – indicate that UK banks are even more leveraged than they were then,” said Dowd.
The Bank of England did not comment on the new report but the subject was the topic of a hearing of the Treasury select committee in January. Bank officials had said the amount of capital in the system in the crisis had been increased and defended the stress tests as being as tough as during the financial crisis. Some of Dowd’s calculations included double counting, officials said.
Dowd said he had met the Bank officials after that select committee meeting but did not disclose the details of their discussions. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/oct/14/the-guardian-view-on-women-in-theatre-a-leading-role-please-not-just-a-bit-part | Opinion | 2016-10-14T17:31:38.000Z | Editorial | The Guardian view on women in theatre: a leading role please, not just a bit part | Editorial | In London, the Donmar Warehouse has just opened its all-female The Tempest, in a cast led by Dame Harriet Walter and with Phyllida Lloyd as director. It is the culmination of a project that started with a production of Julius Caesar in 2012 and continued in 2014 with a Henry IV. The plays were a collaboration with the theatre company Clean Break, an organisation that works with female prisoners and former offenders. Completists can see all three dramas performed over the course of a day this autumn. For many who saw Julius Caesar in 2012, there was shock – and joy – in seeing female actors grapple energetically with Shakespeare’s heftiest roles. The way the women uninhibitedly occupied stage space (“manspread” was not yet in the Oxford English Dictionary) was a revelation.
That same year, Pentabus Theatre’s artistic director, Elizabeth Freestone, in partnership with the Guardian, conducted research into the gender balance in the 10 theatres most generously subsidised by the public, and found that at every level – from boards of trustees to designers and actors – there was a 2:1 ratio in favour of men. Shakespeare, in fact, is part of the problem. Only 16% of his characters – and of course he was writing for male companies – are female. And they have fewer lines: his most garrulous woman is Rosalind, with under half Hamlet’s lines. Such is the cultural entrenchment of Shakespeare in British theatre that this paucity of women can seem normal. We have internalised a gender imbalance on our stages. And that is a problem. Not for the obvious reason that publicly accountable theatres ought not to be employing fewer women than men, but because the theatre is the art form above all that promises to reflect our world and show it as it is; and because theatre feeds so strongly into related, and much more culturally pervasive, media such as television and film.
Since 2012, some important steps have been taken. Vicky Featherstone, artistic director since 2013 of the Royal Court, England’s most important new-writing theatre, has championed work by and about women, not least the joyful Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour, which started life in Edinburgh last year and ran at London’s National Theatre in the summer. Ms Lloyd – who, as the director of the wildly successful stage and film musical Mamma Mia, has great clout – has undertaken only to direct work with a 50-50 gender balance. Emma Rice, too, has undertaken to even out casting at Shakespeare’s Globe, whose helm she took this year. Director Katie Mitchell, playwright Alice Birch and designer Chloe Lamford created Ophelias Zimmer, a version of Hamlet seen entirely from Ophelia’s point of view. Tonic Theatre, under the leadership of Lucy Kerbel, has supported theatres in examining and addressing gender imbalance on stage and backstage.
Great female actors have taken on the great Shakespeare roles for ages but now it is becoming less of an oddity – one thinks of Maxine Peake’s Hamlet at the Royal Exchange in Manchester in 2014; and Glenda Jackson’s Lear, which opens next month at the Old Vic in London, directed by Deborah Warner. Art and life do not exist unmixed. It is important that women see their possibilities, their capabilities and their wildest imaginations reflected on stage – even if that means some judicious rethinking of Shakespeare’s texts. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2011/jun/07/video-tapes-rewind-tv-history | Television & radio | 2011-06-07T14:43:00.000Z | Darragh McManus | Video tapes: a rewind through TV history | I am the proud owner of a VCR. While most people have long since disposed of their clunky old machines and now rely on a PVR, or catchup services, I still have hundreds of video cassettes. Some of them have been copied over and over; some still show the first thing recorded on them, decades ago. One is so ancient that the audio has been erased. (Ironically, it is a collection of music videos.) All of them offer more than just a glimpse at an old programme.
Part of the joy of watching a creaky old video, stored for many years, is that, as well as the eclectic mix of programmes collected on one tape, you get all the junk that comes between them: ads half-remembered, trailers for shows long-forgotten, station idents.
All those adverts, my God. They say you've seen 16,000 TV murders by the age of 18; how many brain-killing commercials, though? Remember that hugely distasteful Pot Noodle ad where the floppy-haired toff trawls the red light district? I wanted to kill him then. I still do now.
There are so many others: Dervla Kirwan taking over as Kenco boss. Barry Scott screaming. A dog cleaning with Febreeze. A Miller ad with some granite-jawed fool doing something heroic but pointless. That great Clarke's commercial where the little girl with the Wednesday Addams vibe spends all day hula-hooping.
The station idents are more pleasurable, a little tickle of nostalgic nerve-centres. BBC2's nicely subdued logos, stuck in the ground or filled with fluorescent lights. BBC1's obsession with the colour red and people dancing. Channel 4, as usual, trying too hard: the Big Brother voiceover guy with the cool-because-it-was-uncool accent, a sneery promo for E4. I recently came across a decades-old ident for the Irish Network 2, since reverted to its former name of RTE2.
Old tapes also give an interesting history of the viewer, jumbling your viewing together in a sometimes decidedly odd playlist. Movies from Fellini to Last Boy Scout to Picnic at Hanging Rock sit alongside Alan Partridge, The Simpsons, Beavis and Butthead, Harry Enfield when he was good, interspersed with Gaelic games coverage and music shows.
The result is a lovely "pot luck" element to video. Something will pop up you didn't recall taping: 10 minutes of The Highlife, one episode of House of Cards, some music vid you recorded in a hurry. There's not the same element of surprise with a PVRs – in 10 years will people stumble upon unexpected televisual highlights in the same way?
Rewatching my old tapes is the equivalent of televisual mystery tour: the end of some Graham Norton show about Japan – who the hell taped that? A few minutes of the news: murder, strike, crash…plus ca change. The start of a documentary about the KKK. An old MTV Headbanger's Ball from 1992 or 1993. A Britpop doc from 10 years later.
It's enough to make you nostalgic for those ramshackle pre-digital days. So do you still have a stash of videotapes? An old VCR you keep going in the face of iPlayer and your PVR? And if so, what gems have you unearthed among your tapes? | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/jun/12/sam-allardyce-still-in-charge-england-world-cup-john-stones | Football | 2018-06-12T10:00:46.000Z | Jacob Steinberg | John Stones out, Phil Brown in: what if Sam Allardyce kept the England job | Discards Stones
“You hipsters in the media keep telling me we need to have defenders who can pass the ball out from the back,” Sam Allardyce said after announcing his squad for the friendlies against Brazil and Germany in November. “But as my good friend José says, there are a lot of poets and philosophers in football these days, and John Stones will not be part of my squad until the words ‘Get’, ‘Rid’, ‘Hit’ and ‘Andy’ become part of his vocabulary. We have a certain way we want to play and, unfortunately, John doesn’t fit into that at the moment. The door is always open for any player to fight their way back in but I haven’t seen anything this season that would make me want to pick him instead of Chris Smalling and Michael Keane. I couldn’t give a shite if Pep Guardiola thinks I’m wrong. You can bang on about him all you want but do you think I would have lost a Champions League semi-final to Roberto Di Matteo? Not bloody likely!”
Falls out with Guardiola, Klopp and Pochettino
Tired with being asked about the positive effect foreign managers have had on young English players, Allardyce points out he also has a strong track record in youth development. “Ravel Morrison wouldn’t be the man he is today if it wasn’t for my guidance,” he said. “And I’m not taking any more questions on Pep, Jürgen and Mauricio. Do you know who Dele Alli reminds me of? A young Kevin Nolan. And who brought Kevin through at Bolton? Exactly. Pochettino hasn’t done anything special with Dele. He’s just watched old videos of how I taught Kevin to make late runs into the box back in 2001. But the press don’t talk about that.”
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Fabio Capello had David Beckham as a talismanic figure on the bench; Allardyce has Phil Brown. The perma-tanned lover of life has already made his presence felt around the camp, announcing himself by delivering a half-time team talk on the Wembley pitch during the 3-0 friendly defeat to Italy in March. “The players appreciated my honest approach,” Brown said. “Joe Hart told me I am a breath of fresh air. Raheem Sterling said it was a bit different to how Pep operates, which I took as a compliment.” But pundits cast doubt over Brown’s methods and Allardyce finds himself under pressure to part with his most trusted ally after it emerges that the former Hull manager has hired Danny Dyer to deliver motivational talks to the squad during the tournament. “I just think Danny will help the players connect with the man on the street,” Brown explained.
Theo Walcott, left, Andy Carroll and Wayne Rooney: : key to England’s World Cup hopes under Sam Allardyce.
Builds attack around Carroll
More problems develop when Harry Kane retires from international football after being dropped for Andy Carroll. “We needed more physicality,” Allardyce said. “We just need to get the ball to Andy and make sure the midfielders support him properly. If Andros and Theo can supply him with quality service, defences won’t be able to handle us. Then it’s up to Wayne to feed off Andy in the positions of maximum opportunity.” Pundits round on Allardyce, accusing him of dragging England back into the dark ages, but he responds by pointing out that he has a Plan B. “There aren’t many strikers with as strong a record for England as Peter Crouch,” he said.
Agrees deal to launch the Allardyce Aggregator
Having named a provisional 30-man squad for the World Cup, Allardyce faces accusations that he created needless trouble by agreeing a deal with a notorious betting company to lend his image to a website that allows members of the public to rank each England player. Word of unrest in the squad spreads. Several players pull out with minor knocks and the Allardyce Aggregator (tagline: ‘Help Big Sam Make The Big Calls!’) goes the way of the Capello Index. The mood calms down after a while – until footage emerges of Allardyce criticising FA bigwigs and making off-colour remarks about Harry and Meghan during a lucrative speaking tour in the Far East, sparking a public outcry and a debate in parliament. It is announced that Allardyce will step down after the World Cup. He is immediately linked with a move to Hebei China Fortune on a contract worth at least £10m a year. Sol Campbell becomes favourite to replace him. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2020/nov/10/waiting-in-the-wings-how-a-second-lockdown-halted-theatres-comeback | Stage | 2020-11-10T12:30:21.000Z | Chris Wiegand | Waiting in the wings: how a second lockdown halted theatre's comeback | Two of this autumn’s most anticipated UK theatre shows opened last Wednesday – and promptly closed that night. A revival of the classic musical Rent at Manchester’s Hope Mill and a sequel to the hit play Death of England at the National Theatre in London were scuppered by the introduction of a second lockdown in England on 5 November. Their sold-out runs ended after a handful of previews and a press night.
This month was supposed to find England’s theatres welcoming back audiences, albeit at reduced capacity, and plotting a path through the turmoil wrought by coronavirus. Perhaps they would even learn of the long awaited date for stage five of culture secretary Oliver Dowden’s roadmap to fully reopen venues. Instead, productions around the country have been cancelled, postponed or streamed for an online audience instead.
Michael Balogun in Death of England: Delroy. Photograph: Normski Photography
Hope Mill’s artistic director, Joseph Houston, and National Theatre boss Rufus Norris are relieved they were able to open their shows at all, and that they had time to film the productions for future release. Rent will be back on stage, says Houston, but not this year. Death of England: Delroy will also have a further life in the theatre. Closing early has been frustrating and further affected their theatres’ finances during straitened times, but Norris and Houston say it has been valuable to bring socially distanced audiences into their newly reconfigured spaces. Going into this lockdown, they at least know how to operate a Covid-secure theatre environment when they are once more permitted.
Before the coronavirus outbreak, Rent had been scheduled to open in July. When the pandemic closed theatres in March, it was postponed until October. “We were being optimistic that lockdown would be a month or two at the most,” says Houston. As opening night approached, the tension was compounded by Manchester mayor Andy Burnham’s standoff with Westminster over Greater Manchester entering tier 3 restrictions. “We didn’t know what tier 3 would mean for us,” says Houston, who was already feeling “the stress and anxiety of welcoming back an audience in a Covid world – you want to make sure everyone’s comfortable and happy”.
Rent opened on 30 October, amid a leak of an imminent national lockdown, confirmed the following night in a government briefing. The Rent cast heard the news just before going on stage. “It was very emotional,” says Houston. “We knew the show would be closing soon.” The four-week lockdown covers almost the entirety of Rent’s planned run. Did they think about resuming next month and continuing through December? “I don’t think it’s realistic right now,” says Houston. “I love that people are being very optimistic about December and things going back to normal but that’s a massive gamble. Is everything going to open up on 3 December? Are we going back to the tier system?”
Joseph Houston, Hope Mill theatre’s artistic director.
These are questions that all businesses are asking, with no one able to predict what future restrictions may look like. “I can’t imagine what pressure Rishi Sunak and Johnson and co are under, so it’s not for me to make judgment calls on how they’re reaching their decisions,” says Norris. “But what is for sure is that we can’t rely on having any foreknowledge of what those decisions are going to be because they happen very quickly and without warning. So we just have to take agency of what we can … That realisation of your own agency is, in its own way, empowering.”
Advance notice of a reopening date would be invaluable, says Norris. “There’s the amount of time it takes to get a production up and running, to rehearse it, but more than anything to actually sell it. There’s no point opening a show if you don’t have an audience.” Producer Nica Burns agrees that advance notice, and government-backed insurance, would hugely benefit the industry. While some audiences will gift the price of the ticket back to the theatre, or exchange it for a later date, others prefer a refund if a production is postponed. “You’ve just got to take that hit because there’s no insurance,” acknowledges Norris. Closing early has exacerbated the financial burden of Hope Mill producing Rent in-house, although they will raise revenue from streaming the show online.
Rufus Norris, artistic director of the National Theatre. Photograph: David Levene/the Guardian
For most theatres, operating at a heavily reduced capacity makes productions financially unviable – the shows resuming their runs at Burns’s Nimax venues aren’t opening to make a profit but to provide opportunities to the workforce and bring audiences back into the West End, boosting the local economy. Covid restrictions affect more than box-office sales, too. Hope Mill has relied heavily on bar income and preshow dining in the past. But during Rent’s run, alcohol could only be served with a meal, which meant interval drinks sales were down. As the show ended at 10pm, the new mandatory closing time for bars in England, there was no postshow bar income either.
Hope Mill has received a grant from the government’s culture recovery fund which should see them through to the spring. The National applied for a loan from the fund and is waiting to hear the outcome. Norris is aware that the National is in “a much more fortunate position than almost any other theatre. We’ve got a great support system – a lot of our income is raised through philanthropy. We keep those people close. They’re very supportive of our decision to put activity first and foremost.” It is crucial, says Norris, that the National continues to create work through the lockdown. Without rehearsals and theatre-makers at work in the venue, “there’s no fresh air coming through. The purpose goes. It’s just a concrete building if there aren’t any artists here.”
Many freelance artists have fallen between the cracks in the government’s self-employment income support schemes this year and the precarious living for many in the arts was laid bare in March. Actor Misha Duncan-Barry says that the first lockdown was frightening: “I didn’t know if I’d ever work again.” Like many performers, she has a second job that has helped provide some stability, but she still felt “like everything was being pulled away” in her theatrical career.
Misha Duncan-Barry in rehearsals for My Voice Was Heard But It Was Ignored. Photograph: Anthony Robling
But as theatres began to reopen, she was cast in a tour of a new play, My Voice Was Heard But It Was Ignored, written by Nana-Kofi Kufuor and produced by Red Ladder. Duncan-Barry had been involved in an R&D of the play at the beginning of the year. “It was exciting knowing that we’d be getting back in a room with creatives and exploring such a fantastic piece,” she says. But the announcement of the second lockdown came just before they began rehearsals. Most of the tour, which was to begin with three nights at Leeds Playhouse, has been postponed; two shows in December are still on sale. At the time of Johnson’s briefing, the company weren’t sure if rehearsals would still be able to go ahead. Gradually, the picture became clearer and they are now rehearsing in a Covid-secure environment. There’s a silver lining of sorts, she says: “It gives us a bit more breathing room to explore it.” She credits Red Ladder with being “so open and communicative that it’s put me at ease”.
Duncan-Barry recognises the scale of the government’s £1.57bn emergency arts fund but says “it took so long for them to start sharing that out”. The package was announced in July; two-thirds of applicants to the first round were awarded funding in October. Meanwhile, anxiety has soared throughout the industry, she says, as people ask “if and when things are going to change”.
With rehearsals under way and a considerable number of productions still planned for December, theatres are steeped in uncertainty. The extension of the furlough scheme to spring was welcomed but many fear it also suggests an extension to the current lockdown period. Nevertheless audiences remain hungry for live performance – Houston says that Rent tickets sold out in 48 hours (“seeing that demand for live theatre was incredible”) and Burns points out that the majority of those who booked for a now-postponed Nimax show exchanged tickets for a different date rather than requesting a refund. Audiences and theatre’s vast workforce are poised to return when they can. Not performing has been disheartening, says Duncan-Barry. “For a lot of us, this is what we’ve wanted to do since we were children.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/aug/25/traingate-latest-jeremy-corbyn-gets-seat-on-glasgow-virgin-service | Politics | 2016-08-25T13:00:46.000Z | Peter Walker | Traingate latest: Jeremy Corbyn gets seat on Glasgow service | Whatever Jeremy Corbyn’s destiny as Labour leader, one element of his future now seems certain: every time he gets a seat on a train, someone will take a photograph for posterity.
Two days after the eruption of Corbyn’s unlikely if bitter row with Virgin Trains about whether there were empty seats on a London to Newcastle service, he was on another of its routes, this time heading to Glasgow.
A Twitter user, David Rose, posted a photograph of a smiling Corbyn, safely berthed in a window seat, next to a pair of children.
My kids just got on @VirginTrains from Euston to Glasgow with @jeremycorbyn. He has a seat. Good job @richardbranson pic.twitter.com/UETWdZehNW
— David Rose (@roseyboy17) August 25, 2016
Eager perhaps to improve relations with the Labour leader, Virgin Trains wished Corbyn a “great trip” to Glasgow. In a Twitter message the operator said: “Welcome onboard! Hope you all have a great trip to Glasgow this morning.”
It was not immediately clear if Corbyn and his colleagues had sought to reserve seats.
Earlier this week Richard Branson, the founder of the Virgin group, tweeted his 8.2 million Twitter followers to publicise the company’s response to a video of Corbyn shot when the Labour leader was en route to Newcastle on 11 August to take part in a leadership hustings against Owen Smith.
In the video, made by a Corbyn-supporting filmmaker travelling with him, the Labour leader is shown sitting on the floor in a vestibule area, and says the service is “completely ram-packed”.
Jeremy Corbyn sits on floor of overcrowded train Guardian
Virgin’s delayed rejoinder was to release selected CCTV stills from the train showing Corbyn and his team walking past what appeared to be empty and unreserved seats shortly after the train left.
Amid a deluge of social media speculation about who was telling the truth, it eventually emerged that both sides actually agreed about much of the convoluted narrative.
On Wednesday, Corbyn confirmed there had been some available seats, but not two together, and that he was hoping to sit next to his wife.
As a series of passengers came forward to confirm they, too, had not been able to find seats at the start of the trip, Virgin trains agreed the service had been busy, and that they had been making a very specific point about some seats being free.
One of the problems appeared to be passengers not sitting in seats that had been reserved by other people who did not get on the train. About 45 minutes into the three-hour trip, train staff moved people into free seats to clear some of the blockages.
Corbyn said he was seated after staff upgraded a seated family to first class, allowing him space. The Labour leader said he had refused an upgrade earlier.
Corbyn’s new trip is also before a Labour hustings, taking place in Glasgow on Thursday evening. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/sep/02/next-pm-urged-to-reset-westminster-culture-after-new-sexual-assault-claims | Politics | 2022-09-02T16:42:28.000Z | Peter Walker | Next PM urged to ‘reset’ Westminster culture after new sexual assault claims | Trade union leaders have called for Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak to “reset the culture” at Westminster and properly tackle abusive behaviour, after two women alleged they had been assaulted by a minister now in the cabinet, and by a Downing Street aide.
Mike Clancy, the general secretary of Prospect, a trade union representing civil servants and parliamentary staff, said whoever took over from Boris Johnson as prime minister next week had a duty to take the issue seriously.
Sky News reported that one woman was sexually assaulted by someone who subsequently became a cabinet minister, while the other was groped by a man who later got a role inside No 10.
Clancy said such complaints needed to be properly handled: “Now we have a new prime minister, potentially from Monday, and this is an opportunity to reset the culture and show the leadership that hasn’t been there in the past. And I’m hoping that the new prime minister will be able to clean this up and deal with a toxic culture.”
Jawad Raza, a national officer for the FDA, which represents civil servants, said: “The latest reports of alleged sexual misconduct are hard to hear, but unfortunately not surprising. They act as a stark of reminder that things still need to change.
“Politicians, including the next prime minister, need to show some leadership in addressing these issues, and enforcing standards both in parliament and across government.”
The woman who said she was assaulted by the minister told Sky: “I was in my early 20s and didn’t really know how to deal with it. I was super drunk, he is feeding me more wine and I am already quite obviously tanked, but after a while I was like, ‘You know what? Would you mind if I just went to bed?’ So I went to bed, but obviously he didn’t leave me alone.”
She told colleagues and the MP she was working for at the time of the incident, who encouraged her to report it to the police. But after initial discussions with the police she chose not to proceed further and did not make a formal complaint to the Conservative party.
The other woman interviewed by Sky’s The Open Secret podcast said that after the man who groped her got a job in Downing Street she made a series of complaints, but no action was taken.
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She also alleged that on hearing of the allegation, the man’s boss dismissed it on the grounds that the accused person was “good-looking and had women throwing themselves at him”. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/jan/15/david-o-russell-slavery-comparison-apologises | Film | 2014-01-15T10:43:18.000Z | Ben Child | David O Russell apologises for 'stupid' Jennifer Lawrence slavery comparison | Oscar-tipped director David O Russell has apologised for comparing American Hustle star Jennifer Lawrence's punishing schedule on the Hunger Games films to slavery.
Russell, whose fictional retelling of the FBI's famous Abscam sting of the 1970s and 80s won two Golden Globes on 12 January, had praised Lawrence's industriousness in an interview with the New York Daily News at the Australian Academy's AACTA awards on 10 January. Unfortunately his off-the-cuff comment included an injudicious reference to British director Steve McQueen's harrowing 12 Years a Slave, a rival for Oscars contention in March.
"I'll tell you what it is about that girl – talk about 12 years of slavery, that's what the franchise is," Russell said, immediately adding: "And I'm going to get in so much trouble for saying that."
The reference played on the fact that Lawrence has been fulfilling duties on the second, third and fourth Hunger Games films, while still finding time to shoot American Hustle and other projects.
"Clearly I used a stupid analogy in a poor attempt at humour," Russell said in a statement. "I realised it the minute I said it, and I am truly sorry."
Both American Hustle and 12 Years a Slave are expected to be among the nominees for the 2014 Oscars, which will be announced on 16 January. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/jul/05/jessy-lanza | Music | 2013-07-05T12:25:00.000Z | Paul Lester | New band of the day (Jessy Lanza 1,547) | Hometown: Hamilton, Canada.
The lineup: Jessy Lanza (vocals).
The background: A reader of this column wondered the other day whether "new music has been a bit weaker this year than the last couple of years". We're guessing he won't have that sinking feeling today (we have a database on all our respondents and their individual tastes) because Jessy Lanza is one of those new artists that does indeed make us unreservedly exclaim, "This is the best thing ever - you must listen now!"
Well, there is one reservation, although it's hardly a criticism as such. And it's that Lanza is the latest in a line of solo female musicians of the sort we have been praising round these parts recently - we're talking about Phlo Finister, Jhené Aiko, Kid A, SZA and the new wave of ethereal R&B females. She's one of several, rather than a bolt out of the electronic pop blue. But, boy – girl, whatever – is she good. Hers are our kind of vocals: high, a series of careless whispers, vaporous not vapid, and dispassionate meant as a compliment, as though passion itself can be measured in spittle and spume. And the production – which runs the gamut of computer-dance styles from disco, house, techno and electrofunk to glitchy R&B – is sublime.
Reading on mobile? Click here to listen
Who supplies said production? That Ontario hometown mentioned above is a clue: why, alongside Jessy it's none other than Canadian synthpop whiz Jeremy Greenspan of Junior Boys who co-produces. He pretty much invented the idea of an indie take on UK 2step and Timbaland/Rodney Jerkins-style avant-R&B with the 2004 release Last Exit. That was an album of the decade. The one he's recorded with Jessy Lanza, Pull My Hair Back, is an album of 2013, right up there in our personal pantheon with Disclosure, Daft Punk, Breakbot, Toro Y Moi and Jensen Sportag.
And it's on Hyperdub! It's something of a departure for the label, but with digressions like this who needs reiterations? Pull My Hair Back is a classic of post-Cassie sighing over beats and sounds that nod to what Lanza calls "the golden age of R&B – the 90s – with Ginuwine, Aaliyah, etc" while taking into account developments, some of them instigated by Hyperdub, in postdubstep studiotronics. As the title suggests, Pull My Hair Back is an essay in eroticism, but it's never overt – none of what Todd Rundgren termed in the Guardian "R&B histrionics". Sex isn't shoved in your face – Lanza plays it cool, glacially so, even when she's singing about doing it Against the Wall. The beats aren't quite as billowy and deconstructed as Felix Snow's ones for SZA, say, but they are uniformly excellent.
There are faster tracks whose sci-fi sonics never cease to surprise and then a number like Kathy Lee will come along like a dream of an '80s slow jam. Eras are drawn on, because that's what they're there for: Strange Emotion is brilliantly soulless, with prog keyboards and an acid bassline, like Teena Marie meeting Timbaland and Tangerine Dream during the techno era. Keep Moving is just perfect, like Aaliyah being haunted by the ghost of Sharon Redd, Sharon Brown or Vicky D – one of those postdisco girls – on the Prelude label in 1982. Pull My Hair Back finds Lanza lost in spaciousness, declaring, "I don't give a fuck what you do," over a startlingly spare production like the Weeknd if he was a woman realising hedonism comes at a price. If 2011-12 was all about the boys – Tyler, Abel, Earl, Drake, A$AP, Danny Brown – then 2013 is all about the ladies. And few things have been as enjoyable this year as Jessy Lanza's girl powerlessness as she succumbs to sex and the studio.
The buzz: "Damn, Jessy Lanza was amazing."
The truth: It's a minor masterpiece of postdubstep disco, or postdisco dubstep.
Most likely to: Put the record on repeat.
Least likely to: Pull our hair back.
What to buy: Pull My Hair Back is released by Hyperdub on September 9.
File next to: Nite Jewel, Junior Boys, Cooly G, Sally Shapiro.
Links: Facebook.com/Jessy-Lanza
Monday's new band: Kill J. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/30/climate-battle-cutting-down-on-meat-animal-products-dairy-carbon | Opinion | 2021-04-30T06:00:26.000Z | Gaby Hinsliff | The low-hanging fruit in the climate battle? Cutting down on meat | Gaby Hinsliff | Something is cooking in the world of climate politics. Or, perhaps more accurately, something isn’t.
This week, the American recipe website Epicurious announced that, for environmental reasons, it wouldn’t publish any new beef recipes. No more steaks, burgers or creative ways with mince; no more juicy rib. Since about 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions come from livestock farming, with beef responsible for nearly two thirds of those, it wanted to help home cooks do their bit.
All this seems guaranteed to trigger the sort of people who get very emotional about roast beef and yorkshire pudding, particularly in the same week that the White House had to quash some wild scare stories about Joe Biden banning burgers to save the planet. (Spoiler alert: not happening.) But the twist in the tale is that Epicurious actually stopped publishing beef recipes a year ago without telling anyone, and it says its traffic numbers show the vegetarian recipes offered instead were gobbled up. Those who scream loudest don’t, as ever, speak for everyone.
Cheap and relatively painless ways of tackling the climate crisis are rare, as Boris Johnson may discover once he actually spells out the detailed implications of Britain’s ambitious pledge to cut carbon emissions by 78% by 2035. Swapping gas boilers for environmentally friendly heat pumps will cost thousands, and they won’t be suitable for every home; so far, an awkward silence hangs over what the owners of those houses are supposed to do.
The Treasury, meanwhile, has still yet to rule on the potentially politically toxic question of introducing pay-as-you-go road charges, to replace the fuel tax that the increasing number of electric or hybrid drivers won’t be paying. Johnson’s preferred green solutions are ones that magically allow life to carry on much as before, while new technology does all the heavy lifting – a strategy he described at last week’s climate summit as “cake have eat”. But that was his Brexit strategy, too, and we’ve all seen how well that worked out. Dietary changes, however, are one of the few climate change measures where the biggest obstacle to change isn’t economic but cultural, and where doing the right thing potentially saves rather than costs individuals money.
People hate being told what to eat, which is why social media is still full of furious Republicans shouting at Biden to “get out of my kitchen”. But the Epicurious episode suggests it’s the idea of being nagged or lectured that really hurts; the actual reality of eating other things instead of meat can be surprisingly palatable. Progress may, in short, be easier than it sometimes sounds.
Eating habits are already changing, if not fast enough for climate scientists then faster than angry burger warriors suggest. One in eight Britons claim to be vegetarian or vegan and another one in five flexitarian, eating meat-free sometimes; and although meat consumption rose over the last decade the big rise was in chicken, not red meat. Going veggie for the sake of the planet, rather than the animals, might have sounded eccentric a generation ago but it barely raises a millennial eyebrow now. By the time generation Z are their age, counting dietary carbons may seem no stranger than counting calories.
As a lifelong carnivore, even I’ve been slowly reducing red meat for a while. It started with one vegetarian day a week, then substituting fish for a couple of meat meals, then swapping in more chicken, and so far none of the family has actually noticed. (Like Epicurious, I’ve chosen not to advertise the strategy until someone complains.) We still eat beef and lamb sometimes, but it’s becoming more of an occasional treat, less of a routine midweek spag bol. Taking it gradually, meanwhile, has made the whole thing feel doable rather than daunting.
True, if the entire planet went vegan by 2050, we could save nearly eight billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent a year, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Realistically, that’s not going to happen, but even the 4.5 billion tonnes saved by everyone eating according to healthy dietary guidelines (more fruit and veg but less sugar, meat and dairy) or the three billion plus saved on a “climate carnivore” diet that replaces three-quarters of red meat currently consumed with alternatives such as chicken, would be worth having. As with any diet, avoiding making the perfect the enemy of the good means people are less likely to give up halfway through, as does encouraging rather than hectoring.
Ministers have shied away from calls for a “carbon tax” on red meat for not entirely illegitimate reasons; taxing food is toughest on low-income households, because they spend proportionately more of their income on it. But if this government or its successors are reluctant to wield the big stick then they must dangle juicier carrots, starting with a public education campaign making the connection between healthy eating – something Johnson has finally agreed to push, after a near fatal brush with Covid shocked him into losing weight – and helping the climate. (Research commissioned by the Department for Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs found carbon emissions could fall by 14% if everyone in Britain stuck to healthy eating guidelines, which would also help reduce heart disease and cancer rates – although some cattle and sheep farmers would need financial help to find alternative uses for their land, with their markets taking a potentially painful hit.)
And that’s just the start. A handful of restaurants are now experimenting with carbon labelling on their menus to highlight environmentally friendly choices. There’s no reason that couldn’t be extended to food sold in supermarkets, encouraging producers to cut unnecessary carbon emissions and earn better ratings. The food industry will protest, but it’s that or stiffer tax and regulatory changes in years to come, which they’ll like even less.
Even tiny changes such as putting the veggie dish at the top of restaurant menus, rather than at the bottom like a reluctant afterthought, can shift ordering habits – as could a few primetime TV shows on climate-friendly cookery, fronted by the kind of celebrity names capable of causing a run on ingredients. A plant-based menu for heads of state at this year’s Cop26 climate crisis summit, showcasing adventurous meat-free cooking, should be a no-brainer, and so should providing more communal spaces to grow our own fruit and veg, building on a surge of enthusiasm for allotments in lockdown. In a culture war it’s soft power that ultimately counts, and progressives may hold more of it than they know on this one. “Let them eat chickpeas” may not be a winning electoral strategy. But nor is burning down the planet just to make dinner.
Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/19/extinction-rebellion-reports-hundreds-of-people-signing-up | Environment | 2019-04-19T20:08:40.000Z | Jonathan Watts | Extinction Rebellion day five centres on tussle for control of Oxford Circus | The siege of the Berta Cáceres started started shortly after noon when police in high-vis jackets surrounded the bright pink boat in Oxford Circus, central London, with two cordons and then steadily peeled off the Extinction Rebellion activists stuck to it.
Officers with angle grinders cut through the bars below the hull of the vessel, named after the murdered Honduran environmental activist, which protesters had chained and glued themselves to.
Five hours later, however, the tables had turned as hundreds of activist reinforcements swarmed into side roads and blocked the end of Regent Street. The police were surrounded. As officers attached the Berta Cáceres to a lorry, the crowd chanted: “We have more boats.”
By 7pm police had managed to move the boat just two streets away, only to find themselves pinned in by more rows of demonstrators singing the Beatles’ All You Need Is Love. After much obstruction the vessel was eventually driven away up Regent Street followed by jogging uniformed officers.
Greta Thunberg hopes to join climate protests during London visit
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Welcome to the fifth day of the Extinction Rebellion, the escalating but still methodically polite campaign of disruption that has turned several of central London’s best-known locations into a giant game of territorial to-and-fro.
Despite more than 100 arrests on Friday, taking the total to 682 by early evening, the demonstration which has blocked four major London landmarks looked set to continue beyond the weekend, with organisers preparing to extend their disruption on Monday to “picnics on the motorway.”
The activists reported an influx of supporters as the Easter holiday, balmy weather and gestures of support from school strike leader Greta Thunberg and the actor Emma Thompson injected new momentum into the weeklong climate protest.
0:17
Police drag climate change activists near Regent Street in London - video
As on previous days, the mood was largely respectful on both sides, but video later emerged of activists being dragged roughly across the concrete near Regent Street.
Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish activist and founder of the school strikes for climate movement, will visit parliament on Monday and Tuesday and said she was also keen to join the campaigners on the streets.
The Metropolitan police has admitted that it is overstretched and officers said additional forces were called in from Wales and other regions to prevent Heathrow from becoming a target, but fears proved exaggerated. A group of 15 youth activists staged a two-hour peaceful protest at a road junction close to the airport.
At the biggest of the camps at Marble Arch, organisers said they had had about 300 signups in the afternoon alone, with dozens of people volunteering to work as brochure distributors. Wolfgang Wopperer-Beholz, who manned the sign-up desk, said there had been a marked increase compared with the previous day. “Earlier, the people who put their names on the list were already knowledgeable. Now we are seeing more people who don’t know so much, but are pretty enthusiastic.” He said many had mentioned the David Attenborough documentary on climate change that had aired on the BBC on Thursday night.
Induction sessions at a tent in Parliament Square were so packed that the attendees spilled outside. “It’s growing at an amazing rate. I think the Attenborough documentary lit a fire in people’s bellies,” said one of the activists, who gave only the name Archer. “They are not just the usual dirty hippies either. There are doctors, architects, and the ethnic diversity is getting wider.”
“I’ve campaigned on this for 30 years with very little effect. It’s only with Extinction Rebellion that I have a sense that we are getting somewhere,” said Bing Jones, a retired doctor from Sheffield, who was arrested and placed in a police cell in Belgravia on Thursday night. “When I was released, there was a volunteer waiting for me outside with a Mars bar and big smile. He had signed up that day, been trained, and then sat outside the police station for four hours until I came out. This is a wonderful, strange movement and new people continue to come along.”
Among the newcomers on Friday was actor Sonera Angel, who was waving a yellow banner marked with the Extinction Rebellion symbol near the police perimeter at Oxford Circus. She said she had come by train with a big group from Southend. She planned to return over the weekend and persuade more of her friends to join. “There is no excuse now it is a holiday,” she said. “Climate change is such a huge issue and governments all over the world are doing almost nothing about it.”
Emma Thompson on the Berta Cáceres boat at Oxford Circus. Photograph: Tolga Akmen/AFP/Getty
Thompson also joined the Oxford Circus camp on Friday morning as activists read “poems to the Earth”. Later the actor gave a speech from the Berta Cáceres.
Thompson said her generation had failed young people: “We have seriously failed them and our planet is in serious trouble. We have much, much less time than we thought. I have seen the evidence for myself and I really care about my children and grandchildren enough to want to be here today to stand with the next generation.”
Organisers say the protests will continue for another week, bolstered by Thunberg, who will arrive in the UK on Sunday as part of a European tour that has included a meeting with Pope Francis and an excoriating address at the European parliament.
Climate campaigners may sound naive. But they’re asking the right questions
Gaby Hinsliff
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Thunberg, whose strike sparked a global movement of more than a million students in less than a year, was also one of the signatories to the declaration that launched Extinction Rebellion in October. She had previously arranged to be in London after Easter to speak in parliament to party leaders and other MPs, meet fellow student activists and talk at a public event co-hosted by the Guardian.
“I would love to participate in their protests while in London if there is time and if they are still protesting,” Thunberg said. “I think it’s one of the most important and hopeful movements of our time. Civil disobedience is necessary to create attention to the ongoing climate and ecological crisis.”
Extinction Rebellion protests: photos from day five
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Activists and politicians say she and other young campaigners had a key role to play. “She is abso-bloody-lutely important. I thank her from my heart,” said Ronan McNern, a spokesman for the group. “It’s not Extinction Rebellion that people should watch out for. It’s the school strike for climate, it’s the youth. This is their moment.”
The climate campaigners have also been boosted by a host of prominent supporters from the science and academic communities and the entertainment world. In an open letter on Friday, the former Nasa scientist James Hansen spelled out the growing dangers of climate change and noted that he too has conducted “highly respectful acts of nonviolent civil disobedience – on occasion leading even to my arrest”.
The Extinction Rebels have got their tactics badly wrong. Here’s why
André Spicer
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Linguist and activist Noam Chomsky is among those who have sent a statement of support. “It is impossible to exaggerate the awesome nature of the challenge we face: to determine, within the next few years, whether organised human society can survive in anything like its present form,” he said. “The activists of Extinction Rebellion are leading the way in confronting this immense challenge, with courage and integrity, an achievement of historic significance that must be amplified with urgency.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2024/mar/09/max-verstappen-cruises-to-dominant-victory-in-saudi-arabian-f1-grand-prix | Sport | 2024-03-09T18:34:02.000Z | Giles Richards | Max Verstappen cruises to dominant victory in Saudi Arabian F1 Grand Prix | Max Verstappen’s future at Red Bull Racing may be in question as the turmoil engulfing his team once more overshadowed the racing but his value as a driver is emphatically not, as he proved with an absolutely commanding drive to win the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.
Indeed, as machiavellian machinations contort the team around him, Verstappen gave a salutary reminder that he might be the most powerful bargaining chip of all in the power struggle threatening to tear Red Bull apart.
Verstappen won from pole, with a dominant drive that felt all too predictable even only two races into the season. He beat his teammate, Sergio Pérez, into second by a full 13 seconds and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, the first non-Red Bull challenger, into third by a country mile of 18secs.
Verstappen wins Saudi Arabia Grand Prix with debutant Bearman seventh – as it happened
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Having held his led into the first corner he disappeared into the distance just as he had done at the first round in Bahrain, with ominous ease in a season that has 22 more meetings to run.
Britain’s Oliver Bearman, making his F1 debut with Ferrari as a stand-in for Carlos Sainz, who is recovering from appendicitis, was enormously impressive. He earned a deserved round of applause in the Scuderia’s garage to take seventh place as, at only 18 years old, he became the youngest British driver to compete in F1.
A worn out Bearman, having dealt with one of the fastest and most physically demanding circuits of the season, after being called up by Ferrari at the last moment on Friday morning, rightly declared himself happy with the result.
“It was a fantastic race, I was pushing all the way,” he said. “I was shocked at how hard we were pushing. It was incredible, especially at the end when I had the two guys on softs bearing down on me. I couldn’t relax, I was pushing flat out, it was really fun and I felt good confidence.”
It was another consummate – if uninspiring competitively – drive from Verstappen that demonstrated a relentless precision and flawless execution and left him unchallenged out front. A fine performance then, but perhaps only brief succour from the furore overwhelming the world champion and his team.
Verstappen shone under the floodlights of Jeddah, but no matter how fast he drives he simply cannot escape the controversy that has engulfed Red Bull and in which he himself is now embroiled.
By the time he took to the track for his second emphatic victory of the season, extraordinarily the only question being asked was whether the Dutchman’s future even lay with the team with which he has won the last three world championships and will probably comfortably deliver a fourth this year.
What was an unthinkable prospect only two months ago after title number three was delivered with assured ease, is now openly debated as the tumult at Red Bull continues.
Red Bull’s motorsport adviser, Helmut Marko, revealed on Friday he was under investigation and threat of suspension for, it is believed, the leaking of confidential information relating to the investigation into the team principal, Christian Horner, who was exonerated after an inquiry into allegations of inappropriate behaviour.
Oliver Bearman on his way to an impressive seventh in his debut grand prix. Photograph: Clive Rose/Getty Images
Verstappen, who has been equivocal in support of Horner, was far more forthcoming in backing the man who has brought him into the Red Bull programme, suggesting that if Marko was removed he could well follow him. Verstappen’s contract is believed to include an exit clause allowing him to do so.
On Saturday Marko met Oliver Mintzlaff, the CEO of Red Bull Racing’s parent company, Red Bull GmbH, in Saudi Arabia and Mintzlaff attempted to pour oil on troubled waters. When asked if Verstappen would stay with Red Bull, he declared: “Of course, he has a contract.”
Marko too said his intention was to stay with the team after the talks, stating that “everything has been cleared” but without revealing any details of what had been discussed. As has been the case with almost every aspect of this messy, acrimonious and divisive affair, it is difficult to accept any statement at face value.
The employee who raised the complaint has now been suspended, it is understood as a result of the findings of the investigation into Horner. Verstappen’s father, Jos, has openly called for Horner to go, a demand he chose to reiterate all the way from Belgium on Friday where he is taking part in the Hannut Rally, as he and his son backed Marko across what appear now to be clearly delineated battle lines.
Amid all of this tumult, F1 went racing – an activity which F1’s owners and the FIA are concerned feels like something of a sideshow to Red Bull’s operatic and very public Götterdämmerung.
In Jeddah, Verstappen again delivered notice of quite what an asset he is. It will be a message not lost on any of the parties mired in this messy and turbulent struggle.
On a far more edifying note for the sport, Bearman, at only 18 years, 10 months and one day old, acquitted himself enormously well. It was all the more impressive given that until Friday practice and qualifying he had never driven the car before.
The teenager from Chelmsford is the first Englishman to drive for Ferrari since Nigel Mansell in 1990 and he showed huge promise. With only two hours in the car under his belt and starting from 11th on the grid on the enormously testing and unforgiving circuit, Bearman was immense.
Threading the needle through the walls and the pack with alacrity, he showed no fear and drove as if he were a seasoned pro, making a series of decisive passes and holding his nerve to see off a late charge from McLaren’s Lando Norris.
Bearman, under intense pressure – not least by making his F1 debut in Ferrari scarlet – delivered with authority and made his case for an F1 drive next season. After this weekend, Verstappen would doubtless look back on such heady, uncomplicated times in his career with a covetous eye.
Mercedes struggled to find more pace once more, with George Russell sixth and Lewis Hamilton ninth. Oscar Piastri was fourth for McLaren, with Norris eighth. Fernando Alonso was fifth for Aston Martin, and Nico Hülkenberg in 10th for Haas. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/blog/2008/feb/26/michaelwhitespoliticalblog83 | Politics | 2008-02-26T10:07:00.000Z | Michael White | No Country for Old Men was a worthy winner | Normally we're pretty indifferent in our house to the annual jamboree in Tinseltown. But we were delighted to hear the Oscar verdicts on the kitchen radio this year. Why? Because the Cohn Brothers strangely-compelling No Country for Old Men creamed There Will Be Blood - over-hyped as "the new Citizen Kane". It had me bothered after five languid minutes and looking at my watch from about half way through despite the ever-watchable Daniel Day-Lewis being on screen virtually all the time. That Oscar was for stamina.
A lot of people hated No Country for its violence and the explicit conclusion that psychotic killers like Oscar-winning Javier Bardem's character (why wasn't Tommy Lee Jones in with a chance?) are on the loose every day in America. Sadly true, but the film was redeemed by humour and humanity, lots of it, as well as being a pretty gripping thriller. Only occasionally did I feel that about There Will Be Blood. On this site we predicted - quite possibly a world exclusive - its defeat at the Oscars. Ha ha.
Though barely noticed by much of our chauvinistic media, John Carney's low-budget (130,000 euros) Irish film, Once, also got an Oscar for the music devised by its stars, Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova. A very warm little film, romantic but not sentimental, Mrs White and I thought when No 3 son recommended we watch it on DVD at the weekend.
Next night we caught the Bafta-not-Oscar-winning Diving Bell and the Butterfly, another of Peter Bradshaw's five-star recommendations (so was There Will Be Blood), but one which you might try to see if it's still on the circuit. Most people know the story of the editor paralysed in all but one eye who used it to write a book about his condition, "locked-in syndrome" caused by a stroke. But Ronald Harwood's richly humane script and Julian Schnabel's startling direction make an unusual and powerful film. Prepare to be surprised. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/oct/07/tesco-hit-by-533m-covid-costs-but-sales-jump-during-pandemic | Business | 2020-10-07T16:12:33.000Z | Zoe Wood | Tesco defends £315m dividend plan despite business rates holiday | Tesco has defended plans to pay a £315m dividend to shareholders at a time when the supermarket chain is benefiting from a business rates holiday worth £249m.
The UK’s biggest retailer reported a 4% increase in operating profits to £1.2bn in the six months to 29 August, as booming food sales coupled with the tax break helped offset a £533m bill for extra staff and safety measures in its stores.
Alan Stewart, the finance director of Tesco, said the board decided that paying dividends was the “right thing to do” for shareholders.
Over a full year Tesco said its Covid-related costs would add up to £725m while the rates relief – which was introduced by the government to help bail out retailers banned from trading in lockdown – would be worth £532m.
The half-year dividend Tesco is paying out is 20% bigger than in 2019.
“We have incurred very, very significant extra cost in running the business in the year,” said Stewart. “It is against a backdrop of keeping people fed and supporting government initiatives against the vulnerable, that the business’s performance should be measured.”
The major supermarkets have all reported strong sales since the pandemic began. Last month Morrisons said it was also paying a dividend. Sainsbury’s is yet to decide whether to make a payout based on last year’s earnings.
Positive Money, a campaign group, criticised the Tesco move. Fran Boait, its chief executive, said: “There needs to be conditions to ensure that any company receiving public support in a time of crisis isn’t wasting money on paying out dividends to wealthy shareholders.”
The New Economics Foundation thinktank said the money from business rates was used by local government to fund the vital local infrastructure needed for Tesco stores to function, such as refuse collection and the bus services that workers use to get to work.
“For Tesco to accept this relief, and then be able to turn around and pass the benefit straight on to shareholders, shows that the system is not fit for purpose – public funds should not be captured as private profit,” said senior economist Sarah Arnold.
However, the dividend decision pleased the City. Richard Hunter, head of markets at Interactive Investor, said the cash would be welcomed by investors “given the dearth of payouts at present”.
“The increase is a healthy sign of confidence from the company in its prospects,” he said. After an initial rally the shares closed marginally down at at 213p.
Tesco said UK food sales climbed more than 9% in the period as the pandemic triggered big changes in shopping behaviour. Sales in its convenience stores were up 7.6%. In large stores, Tesco said sales grew by 1.4%, as customers made fewer trips but bought more on each visit. The average “basket size” – the amount spent by shoppers per visit – increased by 56%.
The biggest change was Tesco’s online business, where sales grew at 90% over the summer months. The boom reflects the rapid expansion of the delivery service with the number of slots doubling to 1.5m a week.
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The retailer said the pandemic had hit the performance of its bank as it issued fewer loans and credit cards, and set aside more money for bad debts. This resulted in an operating loss of £155m, down from a profit of £87m last year. The bank’s performance pulled down overall group operating profits by 16% to £1bn.
The update was the first outing for Ken Murphy, who last week succeeded Dave Lewis as the chief executive of the UK’s biggest retailer. The Irishman had previously spent 25 years in senior positions at the Boots owner, Walgreens Boots Alliance.
Murphy said he was “really happy with the strategy and the direction of the company”. He added: “As far as I’m concerned my job is to maintain momentum in the business.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/oct/15/uk-poised-to-confirm-funding-for-mini-nuclear-reactors-for-green-energy | Business | 2021-10-15T15:23:27.000Z | Rob Davies | UK poised to confirm funding for mini nuclear reactors for carbon-free energy | The government is poised to approve funding for a fleet of Rolls-Royce mini nuclear reactors that the prime minister hopes will help the UK reach his target of zero-carbon electricity by 2035.
A consortium led by the British engineering firm had already secured £210m in backing from private investors for the small modular reactor (SMR) project, a sum that the government is expected to match or better. Confirmation is expected before the spending review on 27 October, according to well-placed sources.
The consortium, known as UK SMR, will rebrand as Rolls-Royce SMR to coincide with Westminster’s blessing.
Tom Greatrex, the chief executive of the Nuclear Industry Association (NIA), said: “Match-funding for Rolls-Royce would be a huge signal to private investors that the government wants SMRs alongside new large-scale stations to hit net zero. It would also show investors that the government believes in nuclear as a green technology.”
Backing from the government will pave the way for the consortium’s multibillion-pound plan to build 16 SMRs around the country, the first of which could be plugged into the grid by 2031.
Each reactor, designed to be easy to build and install, will have a capacity of 470 megawatts (MW), enough to power nearly 1.3m homes, based on average household usage.
Boris Johnson visited Rolls-Royce’s Bristol factory on Friday, where he was shown round the facility by the engineering firm’s chief executive, Warren East. Neither Rolls-Royce nor No 10 would comment on whether the future of SMRs was discussed during the visit but the firm this week touted the technology as a means of providing carbon-free power for producing sustainable aviation fuel.
SMRs are understood to be a key component of the prime minister’s pledge to eliminate fossil fuels from electricity generation by 2035, a landmark promise he made last month in the run-up to the UK’s hosting of the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow.
Rolls-Royce is being advised by HSBC, which has helped it secure £210m from private investors, a condition of the government stumping up the same amount.
Confirmed support for SMRs could signal a concerted effort within government to reverse the scheduled decline in the UK’s nuclear power capacity. About 20% of the nation’s electricity comes from 13 nuclear reactors capable of producing 7.8GW of power. But more than half of that capacity comes from reactors due to retire by 2025, and plans to replace them have stalled.
Toshiba pulled out of a plant at Moorside in Cumbria in 2020, and Hitachi withdrew planning consent for a project at Wylfa Newydd, on Anglesey, this year. While Hinkley Point C is due to start generating electricity from 2026, only one new project, Sizewell C, is now in the works, with no final investment decision yet made.
Britain’s ability to build new nuclear reactors has been further complicated by the government’s unwillingness to allow any further involvement from the state-backed China General Nuclear. CGN has a 20% stake in Sizewell C but ministers have been looking into ways to remove it from the project before it moves to the construction phase. The Chinese company was due to take a lead role in the Bradwell reactor in Essex, which is now highly unlikely to go ahead.
The business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, said last week that weaning the nation off fossil fuels would involved building at least one new nuclear project, alongside renewables such as wind and solar.
The prediction is likely to hinge on whether the Treasury, which has clashed Kwarteng’s department over household support for energy suppliers, backs a new funding model for the industry.
Industry players are keen to see the government legislate to approve the regulated asset base (RAB) model, which allows private investors a more reliable stream of revenues from nuclear power plants – which typically require tens of billions of pounds to build – by piling costs on to household energy bills.
Greatrex said RAB funding “could at last mobilise the funding for nuclear large and small to restore a backbone of clean, reliable British power to our energy system”.
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Rolls-Royce has said it could create 6,000 UK jobs within five years if the government backs its SMR plans. It has also reportedly held discussions with customers overseas, including companies such as Amazon that operate energy-hungry datacentres.
The nine-strong consortium also includes the National Nuclear Laboratory and Laing O’Rourke, the construction firm, alongside Assystem, SNC Lavalin/Atkins, Wood, BAM Nuttall, the Welding Institute and Nuclear AMRC.
Small modular reactors were first developed in the 1950s for use in nuclear-powered submarines. Since then Rolls-Royce has designed reactors for seven classes of submarine and two separate land-based prototype reactors.
Rolls-Royce did not return a request for comment.
This article was amended on 17 October 2021 because an earlier version referred to “the Bradwell reactor in Suffolk”. Bradwell is in Essex. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2015/nov/06/tv-show-secrets-directors-of-photography | Television & radio | 2015-11-06T09:00:14.000Z | Eric Thurm | Scene and heard: directors of photography spill the beans on TV's biggest shows | Warning: this post contains spoilers
Richard Rutkowski on the ‘tooth scene’ from The Americans
‘Yes, I’m a dentist. It’s bring your own anaesthetic though.’ Photograph: FX Network/Everett/Rex
The scene is built around the idea of sex – it’s the most intimate and physical connection we’ve seen between the characters played by Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys for a while. It’s tender. He doesn’t want to hurt her, but it clearly is going to hurt.
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Thomas Schlamme, the director, was clear he wanted very close shots on their eyes. And part of this is the idea that they’re breaking themselves down into physical parts.
The shot I am most in love with comes after he gets the second half of the tooth out, and we’re on Keri’s face, and there’s some unbelievable brilliance between where the camera was, where the focus held, what she did with her face – she practically wept on command. I was crouched on top of her with a handheld camera and a 100 macro lens. And we got that shot where you go from one of her eyes to the other. She’s looking at Philip, but as an audience member you feel like she’s looking at you. You feel like you are totally right there. For lack of a better word, that’s the scene’s climax.
There is no special effect in the sequence. There are some sounds that obviously wrench the ear in combination with pliers in someone’s mouth. There’s a fake bit of a tooth that comes out of a mouth. Keri Russell bit down on cork, and gave Matthew the cork as a place to put his pliers. But there’s no special effect or trick that makes this work. What makes it work is the stellar performers, the situation is well set up, and you’re close enough with the camera that you feel like you can hear her heart beating faster.
This scene is graphic so we chose to not embed it. You can watch it here if you don’t suffer from odontophobia
Charles Papert on the ‘Pirate Chantey’ from Key & Peele
That song (the feminist pirate shanty) is, essentially, a musical number. So there are certain forms of vocabulary, visually, that augment the music. The first beat of that shot, where we start with the other guy throwing a knife, which becomes a whip-pan over to the dartboard, really ends that verse of the song with a punctuation mark.
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There’s kind of a nice symmetry to it visually, in terms of the action, and also a bit of rhythmic aspect to the whip-pan of the knife landing. It has a different result the second time, which is where the comedy comes in. What I like about the overall vibe of that shot is in comedy, the way you move the camera has to be very carefully thought of. Dramatic pieces, there’s a lot of license in how you can move the camera, especially if you’re shooting a TV show that’s like a one-hour drama. Very often, you can move the camera no matter what, if it’s interesting. In comedy, you can’t do that, because it hurts the joke. You have to be very judicious about how and when you move the camera, so things like whip-pans in the middle of the shot need to be very specific.
After a few seasons, we got to know each other so well that our shorthand – and the amount of work we did, with a limited amount of prep – we rarely sat around and thought of stuff ahead of time. This sketch was originally written to take place on a pirate ship at night, and when I read that I laughed, because we couldn’t do that on a basic cable budget. Instead, we shot at a warehouse in the marina with a vaguely nautical theme. People assumed our budget must have continued to grow, because the show kind of got bigger and more ambitious-looking, but we just got better at working with what we had.
Andrij Parekh on the council meetings from Show Me a Hero
In Show Me a Hero there are a number of city council meetings. At this point in episode two, we’ve kind of been introduced to all of the players, all of the city council members who are voting on this issue. This moment, this shot, for me, was sort of emotionally building up to the moment where this measure is supposed to pass, where the mayor believes he has all of the votes, and then is betrayed by the Judas character, Oxman. We’d covered these voting scenarios in the city council in a number of ways, and I wanted to get away from traditional coverage, where you cover each person who speaks and each person who votes. There’s supposed to be a very strong buildup, and then we see Nick’s defeat.
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What I wanted to do was basically land on Nick as the final “no” moment happens. So having shot a number of these sequences, we know what the timing was from when the vote is called – it happened over, I think, 12 or 13 seconds. We’d rehearsed the shots to start when the roll is called and land on Nick when the “no” happens. It was fairly deliberate in terms of its timing.
At certain moments we want to try to get as subjective as possible. The sound design changes slightly in the shot, which I think allows the viewer to get into Nick’s head. But the whole idea behind that shot was to make it as subjective an experience as possible. In the beginning, when we’re laying out the groundwork for how the council meetings work, it’s sort of more objective in the shooting style. Then, later, when we sort of know the rules and the logic of it, we’ve sort of allowed ourselves to get more subjective with it.
That moment for me is one of the strongest of the show, because the camera works incredibly well in concert with what’s happening dramatically. We’re with Nick as a character through a lot of the show. He probably has half the screen time, I imagine, maybe 40-50% of the screen time of the entire show, which is a huge amount for a show with this many characters. So to be with him in this moment of defeat was very important, and I think it sort of allows you to understand what happens to him at the end. If you didn’t have these very subjective moments, the end would come out of left field.
Matthew Lloyd on the ‘Cut Man’ scene from Daredevil
The shot was written in the original draft of what was then the combined script for episodes one and two, and it was designed to kick the show off. On some level it was probably part of a Marvel mandate to have something in there that said, “We mean business,” to announce this was a high-end program, and kind of take it to the next level.
The script is written in this third-person creepy, slow, omniscient tone, where it felt like you didn’t want to do the obvious thing where you’re in the hallway whipping around and it feels like The Raid or something – it wanted to feel almost clinical. Basically, the conceit was to build a real hallway, it shouldn’t feel movie-wide, so that we’re accomplishing a very difficult task in a very narrow field. And I think that’s what gives the scene a lot of its gusto, is the fact that you’re sort of scraping these two walls the whole time.
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It was rehearsed for half a day and shot for probably six or seven hours and we did maybe eight or nine takes of it – despite the internet frenzy, it is actually one take, except for the very last moment of that kid walking out. That’s a separate shot, but everything else in that section is all timed out to be one moment. It was such a long take that Chris Brewster, who was Charlie’s stunt double for the whole show, was becoming physically exhausted at the end. So there’s a moment where he can barely stand up, and that’s kind of a real moment.
The one thing we knew for sure was that it needed to be surreally slow, that you should never feel like the camera was reacting to anything, it should just be like slowly moving through. There’s one moment where we do this big hinge, where someone throws something at one of the guys, and we kind of hinged around superfast. Moments like that are all about creating visual kinetics that would be interesting. It really was sort of a ballet, whatever direction we needed to go in to sell the movement, that’s what we did. And then sort of keeping it absolutely calm, letting the action play out and creating the frenzy on its own without entering into it with the camera. Everyone bought this idea that it’s creepier and more epic if it just slowly creeps through the hall.
This was sort of the foreign film version of the scene. The goal with the shot is to strip out, in a very strange way, the cinematic experience. By removing the cinema and making it a purely POV experience – by placing the audience in the hallway with no attachment to the emotion of the characters, without any of the visual continuity that would go into making a sequence like that – by stripping all that away you really let the viewer experience the sheer physicality of the piece. It’s one man against an army, and you’re watching that unfold with no visual trickery. You’re just there.
Jim Hawkinson on ‘The Great Red Dragon’ from Hannibal
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A shot can convey a lot about the show, and the philosophy behind doing something. Like, the first time that we see Hannibal in the pilot, it’s filmed very dramatically from the top and kind of like a death’s head – there’s a lot of moments like that. That’s sort of how we wanted to approach introducing Francis Dolarhyde. There’s this dramatic crane shot behind him, where we see that he’s looking at the full moon, and then we jib up and we see his full face. That was a great shot, that highlighted how feral he could be. In that shot, and other places during the season, there was a lot more introduction of the color red with Dolarhyde, which you see with the coloring of the moon in that shot – that’s the thing that stands out as being different from everything else in the show. Like, when we introduce him in Hong Kong and use big red neon lights with a smoker outside the door.
He murders around the full moon, which gave us a great opportunity to use that light, and nobody knew what Richard Armitage was going to do when we pulled back. It was a hell of a reveal, terrifying for us as well as the audience. I just think that shot really symbolized the character’s lunacy – his descent into madness and his transformation into the Great Red Dragon. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/sep/21/josh-gordon-may-turn-out-to-be-bill-belichicks-greatest-ever-trade | Sport | 2018-09-21T12:26:28.000Z | Oliver Connolly | Josh Gordon may turn out to be Bill Belichick's greatest ever trade | Josh Gordon is the latest example of a calculated Bill Belichick gamble. He may turn out to be the greatest of them all. The New England Patriots head coach has a habit of grabbing 24-karat players for the price of 24 carrots. The Patriots officially acquired Gordon from the Browns this week, in exchange for a fifth-round draft pick. The Pats will also receive a seventh-rounder from Cleveland.
How do other teams routinely allow New England to get away with this kind of trading witchcraft? Belichick just acquired one of the most gifted playmakers of this, or indeed any, generation for almost nothing. The trade recalls the Randy Moss deal Belichick struck a decade ago. Back then, Moss was seen as a troubled star: he didn’t fit in Oakland and he was often injured. Belichick flipped a fourth-round pick in exchange for the Hall of Famer and New England ripped off a 16-0 regular season while Moss broke the regular-season touchdown record, grabbing 23 TDs from Brady.
Belichick’s gambles don’t always play out that way. Like everyone, he’s had hits and misses. Moss, Corey Dillon, Aqib Talib, and Darrelle Revis worked out in their own way. Aaron Hernandez, Albert Haynsworth and Chad Johnson didn’t.
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Each of those players came with varying degrees of baggage. Some carried the diva label. Others were branded distractions. A few were considered over-the-hill. One or two, it was claimed, did not love football. Hernandez’s legal troubles in college were well-documented. Yet Gordon is unlike anyone Belichick has had roll through his door. Gordon is a Hall of Fame talent in an addict’s body. This isn’t your normal character guy problem, to use football parlance.
The success or failure of this deal has little to do with whether Gordon can fit into New England’s cult of no personality or not. It’s a medical issue. Adjustment flows in both directions. Belichick and the Patriots are going to have to help, support and nurture Gordon if they want to see him succeed.
Gordon hasn’t played a full season in the NFL since 2012. Prior to the start of the 2013 season, the receiver was suspended two games for violating the NFL’s substance abuse policy. In 2014, he was suspended for the entire season for a repeat offence. He appealed, with the league reducing his suspension by a game. He missed the final game of that season due to a violation of team rules. Gordon says he blacked out the night before and missed the team flight, not uncommon during his Cleveland days.
The league suspended him again for the entire 2015 season for violating the substance abuse policy. This time, it was alcohol, not marijuana. 2016 was wiped out after the NFL refused to reinstate him. Gordon had failed another drug test. He was fully reinstated in 2017. He played five games.
Concerns brewed throughout this past offseason. It culminated in an announcement that Gordon would miss the start of training camp to focus on his health and recovery. His absence was “part of [his] overall health and treatment plan,” he said.
These are deep seated issues. Gordon’s problems stem back to middle school. In a profile with GQ, Gordon said he began to self-medicate with a cocktail of Xanax, marijuana, and codeine to help deal with “adolescent trauma-based fear.” He never finished a full year in college. He transferred from Baylor to Utah after violating team rules (Gordon subsequently admitted that he cheated drug tests while in college). He never suited up for Utah, where he failed a drug test.
Gordon estimates he has had something in his system for “probably every game of [his] career,” including those in college. He remains in Stage 3 of the NFL’s substance-abuse program, which means he is subject to random drug testing. If he fails a test, he faces another indefinite suspension. The Patriots represent the last chance for Gordon’s football career.
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Cleveland finally pulled the plug on Gordon last weekend. He is alleged to have hurt his hamstring at a Friday night promotional event prior to the team departing for its game in New Orleans the following day. There is no greater sin in the NFL than being perceived as unreliable. The Browns had waited four full seasons and umpteen regimes to get the most gifted player on their roster back onto the field. One game into his new stint, they bailed.
Naturally, Belichick pounced. Implicit in this deal is the idea that Gordon’s bad habits could seep into the rest of the locker room. But Belichick knows that if Gordon fails another drug test, he’s suspended from the league indefinitely. He wouldn’t have time to infect a side’s precious ecosystem. And if one player can have that much of an impact on your roster before you cut bait, perhaps your culture isn’t that strong to begin with.
The other 31 teams seem to afford Belichick the kind of reverence that gives him a decided, competitive advantage. Bill’s culture can survive that, I’m not sure ours can. What nonsense. It feels like Cleveland should have squeezed for more. NFL teams preach culture, culture, culture above all else. Except for talent. Talent always wins.
And Gordon is an extraordinary talent. He has all the unteachable traits. Gordon is as physically imposing as any wide receiver this side of Julio Jones. His agility, in and out of breaks, is rivaled only by Antonio Brown. His downfield, jump ball, chuck-it-to-me and let-me-go-get-it intuition, is on par with peak-Dez Bryant. He’s the total package.
You may think that’s hyperbole. Consider this for a minute: Gordon led the league in receiving in 2014 with 1,646 in just 14 games. Oh, and the quarterbacks throwing him the ball were Jason Campbell, Brian Hoyer, and Brandon Weeden. Brandon Weeden! How does a defense go about matching up with an offense that includes Rob Gronkowski, Julian Edelman (who returns from his PED suspension in Week 5), and Gordon? And then there’s all the funky stuff Tom Brady and company are doing with their running backs and fullback. Who do you double?
It’s fair to wonder whether we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Gordon is one failed test away from being out of the league. It’s not Belichick’s decision to make. Gordon looked good in his lone game this season. Understandably, he wasn’t at the peak of his powers just yet. And the Patriots run a complex system. It requires a deep knowledge of the opposing personnel, anticipation, instinctual football IQ, and in-sync communication. It could take some time for Gordon to get going.
Still: acquiring players this talented usually requires a sack full of money or a high-end draft pick. Belichick just pulled one of the NFL’s most devastating receivers for what’s tantamount to robbery. And they’re paying him less than a million dollars, pittance for a player of his talent.
Jacksonville showed last week that the Patriots cannot subsist on a steady diet of man-beater concepts against the best of the best. They need another player who can win one-on-one matchups without the assistance of crafty play-designs. Gordon is that guy. Adding him might be Belichick’s shrewdest move to date. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2001/feb/25/features.awardsandprizes | Film | 2001-02-25T10:27:33.000Z | Edward Helmore | Ed Harris: The ultimate splasher movie | There's little the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences likes to see more than one of its own directing himself in the role of an egomaniacal, preferable tortured and self-destructive, hero. That was the case with Robert Duvall three years ago in The Apostle and it's true again this year with Ed Harris's best actor nomination for his portrayal of the abstract expressionist artist Jackson Pollock.
Pollock, which opened in America two weeks ago to largely favourable reviews, may be one of the few films about a painter to transcend the clichés so often found in movies that try to unravel the mysteries of artistic endeavour. 'No actor is better suited than Mr Harris to portray the artist,' declared the New York Times.
In Harris's muscular portrayal there's no room for the limp-wristed, nor for any dreamy scene where a painter receives the muse of creation. But a ruinous end? Of course.
After a career of highs - among them playing John Glenn in The Right Stuff - and lows such as The Rock, Absolute Power and Stepmom, Pollock is Harris's labour of love, the culmination of a 10-year quest to bring the painter faithfully to the screen. 'It's this thing I've been thinking about for years,' the 50-year-old actor said recently. 'My little girl's been hearing about it since before she was even born.'
He delivers a Pollock who experiences tremendous, agonising self doubt and despair - even when he's out buying cornflakes.
It's surprising that no one has attempted to make a film of Pollock's life before now. He was, after all, the American painter whose search for unmediated self-expression ended up changing the course of modern art and wrestling the crown from the Europeans. And beyond his penchant for flinging, dripping or pouring paint on gigantic canvases, his life was full of the psycho-theatrics that actors adore - anger, alcoholism, twisted love, abuse and violent death.
Pollock died aged just 44 in a car crash on Long Island in 1956 with a mistress half his age.
For Harris to play Pollock required total immersion of the kind method actors love. First he read every biography (Jackson Pollock: An American Saga by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith provided the core of the script). He went to galleries and stared at the paintings. He switched to the unfiltered Camel cigarettes favoured by the artist. And he even gained weight to portray him in his final, dissolute years.
He visited the Pollock-Krasner House in East Hampton, NY, slept in the artist's bed and flirted with mental disintegration in the studio-barn.
'Pollock said several times that he couldn't separate himself from his art,' says Harris. 'Not knowing much about modern art when I began to read about him, it was much more his persona - his struggles as a human being - that was interesting to me.'
To better understand what it is to be a painter, Harris learnt how to paint. In 1994 he built a studio at his home in Malibu and began to mimic Pollock's drip technique, laying a sheet of canvas on the floor and walking around all four sides as he tossed and flung liquid pigment from a stick. Harris managed to capture Pollock's athletic, agitated battle with the canvas by watching Hans Namuth's 1950 film of the painter in action. It was that film, which includes a sequence shot from beneath a plate of glass as the painter sets to his dribbling, which cemented Pollock's legend.
'Pollock tried to put the act of painting on canvas. That was his revelation. I began early on, at the tail end of the Eighties and through the Nineties,' Harris recalls. 'I painted on wood. I did relatively abstract stuff. I tried to create things that had harmonics and rhythms. I didn't always succeed, but it was about the effort. I got an inkling of what it was about to look down at that board.'
The fascination with Pollock had begun after his father sent him the Naifeh-White book in 1986. Harris was drinking at the time, and he believes it was meant as a warning. 'I certainly have been, uh, an abuser at times, to the degree where I've been aware I have a problem. That's all stuff I'm not unfamiliar with.'
The photo on the book cover immediately struck the actor: 'The initial thing was that I resembled him.' That surface resemblance soon gave way to a deeper affiliation, and Harris decided it would not be enough to simply play Pollock. He would have to direct the film too. 'It wasn't intended to be my picture, but I was so intimate with the material that I didn't want to hand it over,' he says. Co-star Jeffrey Tambor, who plays art critic Clement Greenberg, says: 'It was a lifetime's achievement. I think he became Pollock.'
Harris hired screenwriters to come up with a script, and after the usual difficulties finding financing he managed to get Interview magazine owner Peter Brant and newsprint tycoon Joe Allen to come up with the cash. Then he secured permission from Pollock's estate to film at the artist's house.
The film accurately captures Pollock's New York in the Forties and Fifties, a world dominated by Peggy Guggenheim (played by Harris's real-life wife Amy Madigan), who became Pollock's benefactor and dealmaker. Other players include Guggenheim's art scout Howard Putzel (played by the old Harold and Maude star Bud Cort) and Lee Krasner (played by Marcia Gay Harnden, also nominated for an Oscar), who, though aware of his unpredictable nature and sexual infidelities, suppressed her own painting career to foster his.
The film starts in 1941 when Pollock and Krasner meet in New York. Pollock is a struggling artist and already a deeply troubled man with a serious drinking problem. 'I get overwhelmed thinking about how much pain Jackson was in,' Harris says. 'This is a guy who needed a mother. Lee didn't give him love or warmth. She nurtured him as a professional artist, but she didn't nurture him as a man.
'He was the most frail character I've ever played. His dad basically left home when he was 10. His mother, while they were close, was more frightening than nurturing. He was a young man at odds with the world. He was the youngest of five, and the family moved around from dirt farm to dirt farm. He never fitted in. And all the brothers left, one by one, and all of them were painters. He was looking for something. You look at his early paintings and drawings and you see him searching for something to fulfil his purpose. He pursues it intently. He fights through the influence of others. And finally he arrives at something truly original, and he did all this despite having the emotional maturity of a 12-year-old.'
Harris has shot the film very simply: 'I tried to do a subtle job. I was not interested in exploring innovative techniques. Whenever I was in doubt I simply trusted simplicity. Most of the ideas I had that I thought were "cool", you don't see them in the movie. They just didn't work. Everything had to appear non-forced, realistic.'
Of course, there's a parable of fame in playing the artist-hero as a death-haunted loser that anyone who has spent a career in Hollywood would surely recognise. Pollock exhibited a desperate need for recognition but when he achieved it he found it did little to diminish his anxieties, and if anything exaggerated them.
'Pollock was desperate for approval,' Harris says. 'But when he got to where he wanted to get, it wasn't what he thought it would be.'
Pollock will be released in the UK later this year | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/mar/05/electric-malady-review-dreamlike-study-of-one-mans-debilitating-illness | Film | 2023-03-05T11:00:51.000Z | Wendy Ide | Electric Malady review – dreamlike study of one man’s debilitating illness | This impressionistic documentary takes us into the insulated world of William, a sufferer of a debilitating condition that has forced him to retreat from the world to a barricaded cage in a cabin, deep in a Swedish wilderness. Once a musician and master’s student, a young man who approached life with curiosity and joy, he now suffers from chronic electromagnetic hypersensitivity – a reaction to the electronic radiation that surrounds us all in this age of digital connectivity. With his head shrouded in protective fabrics, he cuts a spectral figure that would be absurd if it wasn’t so desperately sad.
Partly shot on a hand-cranked Bolex camera, to avoid further triggering William’s illness, there’s a glitchy, fluttering quality to the film’s visuals. Film-maker Marie Lidén sidesteps the medical science around this somewhat contested disease, instead adopting a creative, dreamily poetic approach to evoking William’s lonely existence. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/mar/29/tenants-face-70m-rent-rise-as-social-housing-converted-to-affordable-homes | Society | 2015-03-29T17:53:24.000Z | Robert Booth | Tenants hit by £50m rent rise as social housing converted to 'affordable' homes | London’s poorest households have been hit by a £50m rent rise as housing associations quietly switch thousands of tenancies to higher rates to make up a shortfall in government funding.
About 11,000 homes in the capital have been converted from “social” housing to “affordable” since 2012, according to latest figures from the Greater London authority, and thousands more are to follow in a policy that has sparked tenants’ rebellions. Annual rents have risen by £29m, but the total cost to tenants over the three years to date has been £49.7m.
Social rents are typically half market rate, while so-called affordable tariffs are up to 80% of private rents, leading to complaints that the definition of affordable is Orwellian.
Many housing associations have exploited the category change to set rents at the highest possible level, with the effect that only relatively wealthy people can afford to live in homes originally meant for poorer tenants. Over half of the housing associations set the converted rents higher than 70% of market rate in the last recorded period in the City Hall figures. Others, determined to keep housing genuinely affordable, have charged much lower rents.
The system of changing the housing category when new tenants move in to a property means neighbours in identical flats can pay vastly different rents. The trend has accelerated since 2010, when the government made a 63% cut in capital investment budgets for housing associations, in effect a £3bn reduction in available funding.
“It is diabolical,” said Warren Levy, 70, a retired railway worker and chairman of the tenants’ association at Sutton Dwellings in Islington, owned by landlord Affinity Sutton. “My three-bed flat is £128.41 a week and they want to take that up to £300. They even asked if I wanted to move to one of their estates outside London, I presume so they could charge more for my place.”
Affinity said it had halted conversions at the estate after a protest by residents and said it would suggest tenants consider moving only if they had surplus room. In the past year it has converted 295 homes across its portfolio.
Among other associations, in the past three years, London and Quadrant switched 1,673 tenancies earning an extra £4.2m, Circle Housing switched 1,337 earning £3.8m more and Notting Hill Housing Trust switched 853 earning an extra £3.3m.
“These figures reveal what is happening across London: homes that should be genuinely affordable are not, when Londoners are desperate for rents to be lower,” said James Murray, executive director of housing at Islington council. “This change has been somewhat under the radar, but it is profound and very damaging for the future of the capital.”
The National Housing Federation (NHF), which represents housing associations, said its members were being forced to convert tenancies because of George Osborne’s deep cuts in investment budgets. The government has also demanded that any taxpayer investment in new housing should be in affordable rather than social rented homes.
“Our members are frustrated that they can’t build genuinely affordable homes as part of the government’s programme,” said Kathleen Kelly, assistant director of policy and research at the NHF. “Housing associations are now having to fund up to 85% of the cost of developing new homes from their own resources. They are not driving up rents because they want to, but are being forced to respond to the pressure on public spending.”
But a spokesman for the London mayor, Boris Johnson, said the policy of using the additional rents to build new houses had been a success.
“In 2011 the government identified the conversion of re-lets of existing social housing to ‘affordable rent’ as an important source of capacity in delivering the affordable homes that London needs. The mayor is on track to deliver his target of 100,000 low-cost homes over two terms, with 85,000 already completed.”
“The government and the mayor have been pushing housing associations to raise rents and ultimately this is a very political choice – and those responsible are the mayor and the government,” said Murray. “But some housing associations are putting the rents up more than others when they need to do more to keep rents down.”
Housing: are we reaching a tipping point?
Zoe Williams
Read more
Robert Kerse, finance director of Circle Housing, which has already converted 11% of its stock to affordable, said: “We would much rather the government continued to subsidise new affordable homes rather than raising rents, which is a future burden on the public purse through increased housing benefit costs, which could potentially outweigh the savings they are currently trying to make.”
He added that Circle tries to keep affordable rents below 60% of market rates, but said other social landlords had chosen to charge the full 80% allowed by the government.
Roger Harding, director of communications at Shelter, the housing charity, said the “so-called affordable rents are often way beyond the reach of many ordinary Londoners”.
“This is yet another example of London’s shrinking stock of genuinely affordable homes,” he said.
This article was amended on 31 March 2015 and 1 April 2015. In an earlier version some figures were aggregated in error. The GLA has since said that its database was not presented clearly. Since the start of the 2012/13 financial year total extra rent charged has been £50m, not £70m. Annual rents have increased by £29m. The number of homes converted over that period is 11,000 not 25,000 . London and Quadrant converted 1,673 homes, earning £4.2m (not more than 3,000 and £7.4m). Circle Anglia converted 1,337, earning £3.8m extra (not almost 2,500 and £6.5m) and Notting Hill converted 853, earning £3.3m extra (not almost 2,000 and £6.4m). Affinity Sutton converted 295 homes (not nearly 1,000) over the past year. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/sep/17/russia-trade-halliburton-equipment-export-us-oil | Business | 2023-09-17T13:37:02.000Z | Daniel Boffey | Halliburton equipment worth $7.1m imported into Russia in past year, customs records show | US oil and gas multinationals are facing fresh questions over their trade with Russia after customs records revealed that more than $7.1m (£5.7m) worth of equipment manufactured by Halliburton has been imported into the country since it announced the end of its Russian operations.
Last September Halliburton, one of the world’s largest providers of products and services for oil and gas exploration, sold its Russian office to local management amid pressure on all US companies to cease their trade after the invasion of Ukraine.
Russian customs records seen by the Guardian show that despite this move to sell up on 8 September, Halliburton subsidiaries exported equipment of a value of $5,729,600 to its former operation in Russia in the six weeks that followed the sale.
The equipment was largely shipped from the US and Singapore although the records show it originated in a range of countries, including the UK, Belgium and France.
The bulk of exports from the subsidiaries ended on 6 October but the last shipment to Russia from a Halliburton company, recorded as Halliburton MFG in the records, was of a sealing element priced at $2,939.40 on 24 October 2022 from Malaysia to a firm called Sakhalin Energy, a consortium that is developing the Sakhalin-2 oil and gas project in eastern Russian. Its investors include Gazprom. Shell disinvested from the consortium after the invasion of Ukraine.
After a short pause, imports of Halliburton equipment to Russia then resumed in December 2022 from two companies unrelated to the US multinational.
The products were imported from Turkey, bringing the total value of exports of Halliburton equipment to Russia since the company closed its operations to at least $7,163,317.
Of all the exports to Russia made since last September, 98% were supplied to Halliburton’s newly independent former operation, known as BurService, whose clients have included Gazprom, Rosneft, TNK-BP and Lukoil.
According to customs records, exports to Russia of Halliburton equipment, which range in type from pumps, to wrenches for the drilling of wells, and cement additives, continued until at least the end of June this year. More recent records are yet to be made available.
There is exasperation in Ukraine at the lethargy of many large industrial players in the west in extracting themselves from the Russian economy.
The findings illustrate the difficulties multinational companies have had in unpicking their trading relationships and in controlling the distribution of their products via third parties.
Some of the world’s largest US oil and gas field service companies are already facing questions over their conduct. The Kremlin is heavily dependent on its oil and gas sector for the revenue that funds its military.
Earlier this month, the head of the US Senate foreign relations committee, Bob Menendez, wrote to Halliburton and their competitors SLB and Baker Hughes, after reports that the companies had continued to trade with Russia to various degrees after the invasion of Ukraine in February last year.
Menendez, in letters to the chief executives of the three companies, said he was “extremely disturbed” by an AP report that sales had continued in 2022. He accused the management of seeking to “make a profit” rather stand in solidarity with Ukraine.
Baker Hughes sold its oilfield services business in Russia nine months after the invasion. SLB, which reportedly had 9,000 employees working in Russia, announced only in July this year that it would stop exporting technology to Russia.
There is no suggestion that any of the companies breached the sanctions regime of the US or its western partners.
It is understood that the sale date of Halliburton’s operations in Russia was not fixed until late in the day, which may account for those shipments from its subsidiaries that left for the country shortly before and soon after 8 September.
A spokesperson for Halliburton said: “Halliburton was the first major oilfield services company to exit Russia, in full compliance with sanctions. It has been more than a year since we have conducted operations there.
“Halliburton wound down its Russia operations and completed the sale of its Russia business in less than six months while prioritising safety and securing the necessary government approvals, including for shipments to Russia. Halliburton no longer conducts operations in Russia.”
Halliburton, which was led by the former US vice-president Dick Cheney, posted a gross profit for the 12 months ending 30 June 2023 of $4.052bn, a 63.19% increase year-on-year despite writing off $300m on the sale of the Russian operation.
Glib Kanevskyi, chief executive of the Kyiv-based thinktank StateWatch, said that western governments needed to do more to persuade their large companies to better control the distribution of products which could be useful to the Russian economy.
He added that companies such as Halliburton should be encouraged to be transparent about how they are ensuring their products are being kept out of the Russian market.
Kanevskyi said: “When we talk about the Halliburton case, we need to understand that it cannot be effective if, for example, the USA or other countries will try to punish some company involved in this scheme to ship Halliburton equipment to Russia. It cannot be effective in my opinion.
“If the international community will collaborate and involve businesses then it can be helpful. It’s not easy. What countries can do today is dialogue with its own businesses. If we talk about Halliburton it is a serious player in the world and the US government can have a conversation with it and see how it can better control its distribution process”. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2012/oct/17/uefa-serbia-international-ban-racism-england | Football | 2012-10-17T10:35:59.000Z | Owen Gibson | Serbia deny racism in England U21 game amid calls on Uefa to issue ban | The Football Association is considering boycotting matches in Serbia, as pressure grows on Uefa to ban the country from international football over the racist abuse suffered by England's Under-21 players and the brawl that followed the final whistle.
Uefa last night confirmed it had opened disciplinary proceedings over the "improper conduct" of both teams and racist chanting by Serbian fans. But the governing body is likely to face renewed criticism over the fact the matter will not be considered until its disciplinary panel next meets on November 22.
As the Serbian FA said it "absolutely refuses and denies that there were any occurrences of racism", despite loud monkey noises being clearly audible at the final whistle, the country's prime minister Ivica Dacic, who is also Serbia's police chief, risked infuriating the situation further after reportedly claiming that all those who took part in scuffles on the pitch in Krusevac should be identified and "brought to justice".
The FA general secretary, Alex Horne, said the events of Tuesday night had led it to "question the validity of sending a team to Serbia in the future".
"We were shocked and appalled by the disgraceful events that occurred in Serbia," Horne said. "Our players and staff were subjected to racial abuse, violence as well as missiles being thrown at them throughout the match. What occurred is inexcusable and not acceptable."
On Wednesday night the FA presented a formal complaint to Uefa cataloguing "numerous instances of violence and abuse" Racist abuse was aimed at England's black players throughout the match, and was reported to the referee at half-time along with evidence of missiles being thrown, before reaching a climax at full time as the game dissolved into chaos following Connor Wickham's last-minute goal and the final whistle.
Danny Rose, the Tottenham full-back who is on loan at Sunderland, was sent off after eventually reacting to the abuse by kicking the ball into the crowd. The Serbian FA said his behaviour towards supporters was "inappropriate, unsportsmanlike and vulgar" but Rose said he had been targeted from the warm-up onwards. "The first half was no way near as bad as the second half. I had two stones hit me in the head when I went to get the ball for a throw-in. Every time I touched the ball I heard monkey chants," he said.
While apologising for the ugly scenes at the final whistle, when Serbian players and staff attacked their English opposite numbers, the Serbian FA denied there had been any racism. "Making connection between the seen incident – a fight between members of the two teams – and racism has absolutely no ground and we consider it to be a total malevolence," said the Serbian FA, which claimed the entire match had been played in a "sports atmosphere full of respecting fair play spirit".
The FA and sports minister Hugh Robertson have written to Uefa, which next week will feature anti-racism messages before Champions League ties as part of a "week of action", calling for the strongest possible sanctions. Players and anti-racism campaigners said that only a ban for Serbia would suffice.
Robertson said: "The scenes at the end of the game were disgraceful. I have written to Uefa president Michel Platini, in support of the FA, urging them to investigate immediately. Racism in any form is unacceptable and must be stamped out. We would expect tough sanctions from Uefa on anyone found guilty of racist abuse." The prime minister, David Cameron, was said to be "appalled" by the ugly scenes. "We are determined to stamp out racism internationally and at home and we are giving our full backing to the FA's complaint on this issue," said his spokesman.
The FA's complaint outlined in detail the racist chanting, which was heard in isolated pockets during the match before reaching a peak at the end, as well as the missiles hurled on to the pitch from the stands and unprovoked attacks on players and coaching staff at the final whistle. It is believed that the Uefa delegate was hit by a missile from the crowd during the match, and the goalkeeper Jack Butland was targeted by lighters, coins and seats thrown from the stands. The scenes at the end of the match were described as "unprecedented" by those present. The Serbian staff were unapologetic afterwards, apart from the former Aston Villa striker Savo Milosevic, present as a match delegate, who is believed to have apologised to the manager Stuart Pearce.
Lord Ouseley, the chair of Kick It Out, joined calls for "serial offenders" Serbia to be banned from international competition. "The fact Uefa has been so woefully weak in the past in administering punishments makes it easy to reoffend," he said. "The jury is out on Uefa's capacity and willingness to tackle racism on the scale necessary. If they don't do what is appropriate in this instance, everyone will lose confidence in Uefa."
Ouseley, who has spearheaded attempts to drive racism out of British football grounds, said that not only was Uefa imposing insufficient punishments but was failing to be "proactive" in working to change attitudes.
"Personally speaking, I think they have to take a stand and throw teams out of competitions. They have to take action against Serbia. It is a serial offender – it doesn't control its fans, its players or its officials," he said.
Clarke Carlisle, the chairman of the Professional Footballers' Association, also called for Serbia to be thrown out of international competition. Others, including Phil Neville, called on players to take matters into their own hands and leave the pitch when subjected to racist chanting.
In 2007, the Serbian FA was fined £16,500 following misconduct by fans and players in another European Under-21 Championship match against England. Serbian fans were heard making monkey chants at England's black players, leading the referee to hold up the match while an announcement was made over the stadium's public address system. Trouble then broke out between the two sets of players as they left the pitch, with the English FA later saying there had been further racist abuse from Serbian players. The issue is a sensitive one for Uefa, roundly criticised for its derisory fines after previous allegations of racism, which claims to have a "zero tolerance" policy on the matter. Following a meeting of its executive committee in December 2005 it said tackling racism was a "top priority" and recognised "that racism and discrimination have their roots in society but are often articulated through our sport". | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/may/14/lg-watch-urbane-review-big-bold-and-a-bit-gaudy | Technology | 2015-05-14T08:50:40.000Z | Samuel Gibbs | LG Watch Urbane review: big, bold and a bit gaudy | The LG Watch Urbane is the Korean company’s third smartwatch in under a year, a shiny, metal-covered, round Android Wear watch to compete with Apple’s Watch – and with a price tag to match.
The Urbane is a follow-up to the chunky G Watch R and LG’s second round smartwatch to use its 1.3in plastic OLED screen.
It is the first watch to ship with Google’s new Android Wear 5.1, which is a big step forward for the wearable operating system.
Android Wear 5.1 review: simple, useful and the best – for now
Big and shiny
The Watch Urbane is a big, chunky watch, here pictured on a medium-sized wrist and a small wrist. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian
Big. Chunky. Shiny. Gaudy. These are all adjectives that can be thrown at the Urbane. It is the largest Android Wear smartwatch I’ve had the pleasure to use, even though its screen is actually smaller than the 1.6in Moto 360.
The frame surrounding the watch is shiny stainless steel, in a choice of pink gold or grey. I’ve been testing the pink gold version for a week. To say that it stands out is an understatement.
The Urbane is not unlike in size to many men’s watches, which tend to be big.
However, it’s too plain for a watch, with a lack of detail in the body that makes it look bulky and featureless. The block pink gold could be considered a bit gaudy, but while I wouldn’t have chosen it, I have grown used to it.
When compared with a Rolex Submariner, left, the lack of detail in the Urbane’s body design, right, emphasises its bulky form. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian
The round screen is clear, bright and can be read outside without problems. It isn’t as sharp as a smartphone screen, but rivals the best currently available on a smartwatch. It does not have an ambient light sensor, however.
The button on the side lights the screen or puts it to sleep. Double press it to trigger cinema mode and stop the screen from lighting. Holding it down brings up the settings menu.
The Urbane is IP67 rated, which means it’s waterproof to a depth of 1.5m for 30 minutes. The leather strap prohibits getting it wet, however, but you can easily change the strap for a metal or rubber one. The supplied strap is stiff and requires a week to break in, but feels well made.
Battery life
The Urbane charges fast via any microUSB charger, but requires a special little magnetic dock to do so. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian
With the screen on all the time, the Urbane lasted around a day and a half per charge. Without the screen always on, it lasted a lot longer, well into the third day.
You need a little magnetic dock to charge it, which is another thing to lose, but the watch charges at about 1.7% a minute, which means a full charge takes under an hour.
Wi-Fi and heart rate
The back hides a heart rate sensor and contacts for the charging dock. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian
Above and beyond the features standard to Android Wear 5.1, the Urbane includes Wi-Fi for connecting remotely to your smartphone and a heart rate monitor, which must be manually activated.
The heart rate monitor proved about as accurate as most other smartwatches, although it frequently rated my pulse slightly higher than dedicated heart rate monitors.
LG’s apps
The LG Pulse app shows a continuous heart rate reading and can show heart rate in ambient mode, when the watch is not in use, although this impacts battery life. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian
LG includes several apps that duplicate functionality with the standard Android Wear apps. LG Pulse takes heart rate readings and displays a live beats per minute, which works better than the built-in Google Fit one.
LG Call also allows users to trigger phone calls on the connected smartphone if they download a separate app on their phone and connect Bluetooth headphones. Given Android Wear 5.1 now includes a contact list that you can use to make calls, send text messages or emails, I’m not sure why it bothered.
The Urbane also includes Android Wear’s new lockscreen, but I could not get it to show up when the watch was taken off, and only occasionally when the watch was charging.
Price
The LG Watch Urbane is the most expensive Android Wear watch yet, costing £260. This is £60 more than the Moto 360 and Asus Zenwatch and £35 more than the G Watch R. The Urbane is £40 cheaper than the lowest-priced Apple Watch, however.
Verdict
The Watch Urbane is the best smartwatch LG has made to date, but it’s also the most expensive and its styling isn’t everyone’s cup of tea – it certainly suits a larger wrist. One to try before you buy.
Its battery life could also be better. A full two days would make weekend getaways easier.
But it is fast, Android Wear 5.1 is great, the always-on screen is decent and the strap can be replaced for any standard 22mm watch strap.
The Urbane is a close tie with the Asus ZenWatch and Sony Smartwatch 3 for the best Android Wear watch available at the moment, but it’s certainly not perfect.
Pros: Fast, always-on screen, latest Android Wear, heart rate monitor, Wi-Fi, quality leather watch strap.
Cons: Really big, styling is divisive, less than two-day battery, no ambient light sensor, expensive.
The Urbane lacks tapered edges down to the strap featured on many watches. The two small holes visible are the microphones. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian
Other reviews
LG G Watch R review: chunky, masculine, and fast
Asus ZenWatch review: a sophisticated-looking Android smartwatch
Sony Smartwatch 3 review: great design, good screen and decent battery
Apple Watch review: beautiful hardware spoiled by complicated software | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/20/western-australias-eucalypt-forests-fade-to-brown-as-century-old-giant-jarrahs-die-in-heat-and-drought | Environment | 2024-04-19T15:00:01.000Z | Graham Readfearn | Western Australia’s eucalypt forests fade to brown as century-old giant jarrahs die in heat and drought | A couple of weeks ago, Joe Fontaine stood in the middle of one of Western Australia’s eucalypt forests on another hot and dry day that was stripped of the usually raucous backing-track of bird calls.
“I could hear this scratching-crunching noise coming from the trees,” says Fontaine, a forest ecologist at Perth’s Murdoch University.
Peeling back the bark, a handful of beetle larvae “about the size of your pinky” were eating away at the dead and dying wood. “When the trees are stressed, the beetles get the upper hand,” he says.
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Above Fontaine, the forest canopy was turning brown. Trees more than a century old are barely alive. Some of these giant jarrahs might survive, but some won’t.
It’s a scene that’s being replicated in forests and coastal shrublands spanning more than 1,000km (620 miles) across the state’s south-west after drought and baking heat.
Many of these ecosystems are dominated by eucalypt trees such as jarrah and marri, and coastal shrublands spread with banksias, the likes of which are found nowhere else on Earth.
Pictures of dead and dying shrubs and trees have been flooding Fontaine’s inbox. One of the earliest signs came in February when Perth’s street trees started dying after a record run of days above 40C. The city had its driest six months – from October to March – since records began.
There were similar scenes in the state’s south-west eucalypt forests in 2010 and 2011 – a die-back event that prompted more than a dozen studies. Drought-hit forests were hit by fire years later, releasing carbon dioxide, and raising concerns the forests could switch to become a source, rather than a store, of carbon.
Drone video shows Western Australia’s forests dying in heat and drought – video
Dr Katinka Ruthrof, a senior research scientist in the state government’s Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions, says the current die-off has similar characteristics to the 2011 event. The department is assessing the damage using imagery from satellites, fixed wing aircraft and drones, along with field checking.
“Some plants may be able to survive and resprout when conditions improve, but many may die,” she says. “This depends on how much longer the dry season lasts.”
Ruthrof says changes to the structure and composition of the habitats would have flow-on effects for some species, including the provision of habitat and food resources for wildlife.
Dr Mark Harvey, curator of spiders, millipedes and centipedes at the Western Australian Museum, says the south-west has hundreds of invertebrate species found nowhere else.
“The south-west corner of Western Australia has been isolated from other parts of the continent for the last three million years. That’s allowed species to develop in isolation.”
Those species have been used to moist conditions for many thousands of years, he says.
The trapdoor spider (Proshermacha sp.) from south-western WA relies on moist habitats. Photograph: Mark Harvey/WA Museum
“We’re quite concerned about this drying event. If the animals don’t have a coping mechanism like burrowing to escape the heat, they literally die.
“They become locally extinct. They have nowhere to go. It will take thousands of years to recolonise, even if the habitat came good again. The prognosis is not good.”
Fontaine says seeing the death of shrublands and forests is “distressing” and he’s worried about the wildlife.
“I’m going hell for leather now to get people to go ‘oh shit, we need to document this’,” he says.
Clear climate signal
Fontaine’s Murdoch University colleague, atmospheric scientist Dr Kerryn Hawke, says the region’s trees and plants are used to a Mediterranean-style climate with cold fronts from the ocean to the south bringing good rainfall in the winter.
But studies have shown these fronts have been shifting further south, away from the coast.
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She says: “These fronts no longer reach as far north, and that means we’re seeing less frontal rains and, when they do reach us, it’s not as intense. And we’re seeing more and more very hot days because of climate change. The vegetation just isn’t used to such low rainfall.”
Over the past 12 months, much of the state’s west has seen rainfall well below average and in some places the lowest on record, while temperatures have been among the highest on record.
“It’s a perfect storm of temperature and rainfall. But the stand out was the heat we had very early on,” she says, pointing to heatwaves in September and November.
The conditions in recent months are part of a distinct drying that scientists have seen in the region since the 1970s.
Compared with the period from 1901 to 1960, cool season rainfall in the last two decades has dropped by 20%. Very wet years have almost completely disappeared.
About half of this change has been blamed on rising greenhouse gas emissions, which could be an underestimate, according to one study led by Bureau of Meteorology scientists.
Even with rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, the study suggested, the drying trend would probably continue for the rest of this century.
Dr Michael Grose, a climate scientist at the Australian government’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, says as early as the 1970s scientists were seeing a drying trend.
“It is one of the clearest and strongest signals in mean rainfall anywhere in the world,” he says.
Fire and fear
There appears little relief on the horizon, with forecasts for the next three months suggesting more hot and dry weather to come.
Fontaine says with so much dead vegetation around, the risk of bushfires is rising.
Fire authorities will need to be cautious, he says, as they carry out prescribed burning to try to reduce the risk of larger out of control fires.
About 430km south-east of Perth is Walpole, where David Edmonds has a beef and orchid farm while volunteering with the Walpole-Nornalup National Parks Association.
He grew up in Walpole and this year has watched parts of the wilderness region – including giant 90-metre karri trees – turning brown.
“The rain just stopped really early. The die-off is becoming really obvious on the granite outcrops,” he says.
“It’s saddening. You worry if this is a one-off or something that’s going to be more common. We can’t start watering the trees.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/food/2024/apr/05/what-wine-goes-best-with-thai-food-fiona-beckett | Food | 2024-04-05T13:00:08.000Z | Fiona Beckett | What wine goes best with Thai food? | Fiona Beckett on drinks | Using the words “wine” and “Thai food” in the same sentence is, I realise, a risky proposition, and one that’s almost always greeted with a chorus of “Why would you want to drink anything other than beer?!” But bear with, as they say, because there’s Thai and there’s Thai, and I’m guessing that the beer drinkers (of whom I am often one) aren’t always eating the real deal – more Thai-ish, with the emphasis on the “ish”.
Supermarket ready meals, for example, are quite mild and/or bland, depending on how pejorative you’re being. Ditto many takeaways. It’s really only in more authentic restaurants that you’ll find the characteristic combo of sweetness and heat that makes Thai food quite challenging for a wine match, yet many do have ambitious wine lists. At Kolae, for example, a new London restaurant I visited a couple of months ago, they serve several orange wines with their kitchen offerings, though I preferred a halbtrocken (or off-dry) German riesling from Rheinhessen, Köster-Wolf 2022 (12%), which is currently on offer at Strictly Wine for £12.59 a bottle.
The other consideration, of course, is that even when you’re cooking at home, you’re probably not matching a single dish, but several, so it’s the overall level of heat you need to take into account. If you’re dealing with anglicised Thai, that’s pretty easy, actually – I’d go for a crisp white, including New Zealand sauvignon blanc, which generally works really well with Thai salads, pad Thai and green curries. Rosé, too, is surprisingly good with such milder dishes – maybe a pinot noir, though, rather than one from Provence.
Once you ramp up the heat, however, you should also ramp up the sweetness, which is where aromatic whites come into play. I’m not an automatic fan of gewürztraminer with Thai food, not least because it can be a touch cloying, but there are more subtle gewürzes and gewürztraminer blends that are more flexible. Tanners have a delicious Italian one, for example: Tiefenbrunner Merus Gewürztraminer 2022 from the Alto Adige region, on offer at £16.70.
The right serving temperature also helps. If you think about why lager works so well with spicy food, it’s generally because it’s icy-cold, so I’d be inclined to serve the whites in my pick below a little cooler than usual, too.
And what about red? To be honest, I’m not a fan of it with Thai food; it tends to overwhelm lighter reds such as pinot noir and beaujolais, so I’d probably go for a more full-bodied but slightly softer red such as Aldi’s Cigales Crianza (£9.99, 14%), from its new Unearthed range. But, as usual with food and wine pairing, it’s a matter of personal taste. If you swear by beer, then by all means stick to it.
Five wines to try with Thai food
Tukituki Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc 2022 £8.50 Asda, 12%. Classic punchy Kiwi sauvignon, and spot on with a green curry.
Zelna Olaszrizling 2022 £10.95 The Wine Society, 13%. A pretty, light, fragrant Hungarian white with a touch of white peach that works with snacks such as Thai fish cakes.
Animaliens Viorica Feteasca Alba 2022 £12.50 (£9.50 if you buy 3 or more) Tanners, 12.5%. A floral Moldovan white that you’ll like if you’re into gewürztraminer.
Steve Bird The Whanau Reserve Pinot Gris 2023 £14.99 (or £12.99 on “mix six”) Majestic, 14.5%. Fragrant, lush pinot gris with a touch of sweetness that works with hotter curries.
Adam. Who? Eden Valley Riesling 2023 £13.95 Corney & Barrow, 11.5%. Adam. Eve. Garden of Eden. Geddit? A classic limey Aussie riesling with that tell-tale kerosene note. Another good one for a green curry.
For more by Fiona Beckett, go to fionabeckett.substack.com | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/30/china-royal-navy-south-china-sea-warning-beijing | World news | 2021-07-30T15:00:26.000Z | Dan Sabbagh | UK says it has no plans for South China Sea confrontation after Beijing warning | Britain has said it has no plans to stage a naval confrontation with China in the South China Sea and that it aims to send its carrier strike group in the most direct route across the contested body of water from Singapore to the Philippine Sea.
The cooling message emerged hours after China’s military and state media warned the UK against provocation as the group, led by Royal Navy aircraft carrier Queen Elizabeth, undertakes what had been expected to be a more assertive deployment.
British defence sources said HMS Queen Elizabeth would sail “tens of miles away” from the disputed Spratly and Paracel Islands, which are claimed by China. The aircraft carrier and allied ships entered the South China Sea earlier this week and are expected to leave by the end of Saturday.
It is understood there is no intention to repeat the decision to sail HMS Defender through disputed waters off the coast of Crimea in June, which led to the warship being followed by the Russian coastguard and being buzzed by low-flying planes.
Instead the Queen Elizabeth and its support ships will go on to take part in exercises with the US, Australia, France, Japan in the Philippine Sea, in a multinational show of strength aimed at Beijing.
One source said those exercises could include British warships visiting Japan’s Senkaku Islands, which are also claimed by China, in the East China Sea, as part of an effort by the UK to bolster its post Brexit-relationship with Tokyo.
But expectation had built up that Britain could sail closer to disputed islands in the South China Sea, which China has been accused of militarising, following the Black Sea episode and longer history of tensions between the two countries over the issue.
In August 2018, another British warship, HMS Albion, was ordered by the then defence secretary, Gavin Williamson, to sail close to the Paracel Islands, prompting a diplomatic row. Talk that the Queen Elizabeth might go to the South China Sea in 2019 led to China cancelling a round of trade talks with the UK.
Earlier, a spokesperson for China’s Ministry of National Defence, Wu Qian, said it respected freedom of navigation but firmly opposed any naval activities that aimed to provoke controversy.
“The action should never try to destabilise regional peace, including the latest military collaboration between the UK and Japan,” he said. “The Chinese navy will take any necessary actions to counter-measure such behaviour.”
The passage marks the first time Britain’s new strike group, which includes two destroyers and two frigates, has been deployed to the Asia-Pacific region.
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The mission has also prompted multiple reports and commentary in China’s hawkish state media tabloid, the Global Times, which said “the very idea of a British presence in the South China Sea is dangerous”.
“If London tries to establish a military presence in the region with geopolitical significance, it will only disrupt the status quo in the region … And if there is any real action against China, it is looking for a defeat.”
Later this year, the UK will also permanently assign two warships to the region. “We are not going to go to the other side of the world to be provocative. We will be confident, but not confrontational,” the defence secretary, Ben Wallace, told parliament in April.
Increased Chinese militarisation and expansionism in the region, particular towards Taiwan, which Beijing claims is a Chinese province that it will retake, have worsened tensions between China and many of its neighbours.
But even some British allies have questioned whether the UK can have an effective presence in the region. On Tuesday the US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, warned military resources were scarce and the UK could perhaps “be more helpful in other parts of the world”.
Additional reporting by Jason Lu | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/13/e3-2014-six-things-we-learned-nontendo-sony-playstation-xbox | Games | 2014-06-13T14:09:43.000Z | Keith Stuart | Nintendo is back, virtual reality is hot - and other things we learned at E3 2014 | It's finally Game Over for this year's E3, which has seen 50,000 games fans and 2000 exhibitors pack into LA's convention centre over three days to play the latest console and PC titles, meet the biggest developers and immerse themselves in the maelstrom of the modern games business.
E3 is not quite the swaggering force it once was. The industry has moved away from its focus on blockbusting boxed software, the arrival of smartphones and online distribution, bringing in new business models, companies and players. But this is still the easiest and best place to get a handle on where games are.
Here's everything you need to know about this year's E3.
The big publishers are getting the hang of PlayStation 4 and Xbox One
In their line ups for late-2014 and 2015, Microsoft, Sony, EA, Activision, Ubisoft, etc, showed that their developers are mastering the new console hardware. Wandering around the major stands at E3's two largest halls, the massive screens provided a spectacle of astonishing visuals. Far Cry 4, Assassin's Creed Unity, Metal Gear Solid: the Phantom Pain and fantasy adventure Witch 3, all combined intricate environmental detail with convincingly lifelike human characters and immersive physics and lighting effects.
But important too, were the titles that took a more subjective and offbeat approach to next-gen visual design. Sunset Overdive is a woozy, almost hallucinogenic thrill ride, all brash, bright colours, weird weapons and dizzying movement. And then the smaller titles, the surreal Hohokum, the maudlin Ori and the Blind Forest – these titles showed that "next-gen" aesthetics doesn't have to mean volumetric smoke effects and real-time dynamic lighting.
Favourite graphics boast of show: the gorgeous Forza Horizon 2 has its own simulated weather climate and when it rains, the water gathers into puddles, which reflect passing cars, and then dry out in real time.
The mainstream game genres are evolving
For the past five years, action adventures and first-person shooters have dominated the output of the major studios. We've seen dozens of taut military blasters and earnest science fiction and fantasy epics, all joining the familiar game design dots. This year, there were subtle signs of disruption and even innovation. Assymetrical multiplayer titles like Evolve and Fable Legends allowed one participant in a game to play as the baddie, bringing in interesting new strategies and mechanics. In Evolve, the lone protagonist is a monster that the others hunt, in Fable Legends, they're the Dungeon Master setting traps and controlling enemy monsters. This isn't a new idea, of course, but it's going to become more important as developers seek to engage a wider range of players in online gaming.
Elsewhere, sci-fi games are moving out of rigid action-RPG conventions and going truly intersteller in scope. Elite: Dangerous, the new space trading game from Frontier Developments boasts over 400bn star systems; No Man's Sky from Hello Games lets players discover planets that generate whole unique eco-systems; Destiny wants to combine FPS, role-playing, exploration, co-op and multiplayer into one vast experience; in Sunset Overdrive you can walk into any phone boother during the single-player campaign to kickstart a multiplayer match. These are baby steps toward new visions of epic, seamless game design.
Favourite example of shooter innovation: Apart from the mutating monster in Evolve? In Rainbow Six Siege, the co-op multiplayer campaigns can be tried in any order, and will be filled with dynamic destruction and smart AI enemies, moving away from scripted, linear events and choreographed "chokepoints", toward truly emergent showdowns. A close second is the "keys to Kyrat" drop-in co-op mode in Far Cry 4, which allows you to invite PSN pals into the experience even if they don't own the game.
Indie doesn't really exist anymore
Well, not in the way it used to – as an entirely seperate counter culture, indulged/tolerated by the big publishers. As with last year's show, games by smaller studios were front and centre during the Microsoft and Sony press conferences, and the likes of Ori and the Blind Forest, Hyper Light Drifter, No Man's Sky, Night in the Woods and Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number were causing just as much excitement and buzz on the show floor as their multimillion dollar peers.
Importantly, too, we're seeing major innovations from the independent sector, as smaller teams of really bright, quirky individuals experiment with things like artifical intelligence, procedural content generation and device/web interconnectivity. Those unconvinced by, say, "second screen" concepts, should check out the beautiful and thoughtful adventure Night in the Woods; the PS4 version is looking to use the Vita as the lead character's journal, in a really cute interesting way.
Favourite innovaton by an indie developer: each time you start a match of the fast-paced eight-player jetpack sports game, #Idarb, it generates a unique Twitter hash tag. Spectators can then tweet that tag, together with a specific code, and it'll effect the game – for example, you can make it snow. Genius.
Nintendo is back
Of course, Nintendo never really went away, but for the last couple of years, E3 attendees have rather pushed the veteran publisher to one side, its Wii U console seen as a confusing failure. This year, we saw super cute titles like Yoshi's Woolly World, Kirby and the Rainbow Curse, and Captain Toad's Treasure Tracker, as well as the intriguing Mario Maker, that lets you create your own Super Mario platformer. Oh and Bayonetta 2 and 3DS adventure Persona Q are looking sharp, idiosyncratic and ridiculous. And later in 2014, Super Smash Bros should completely build upon the restorative wonders provided by Mario Kart 8.
People in this business always say two things: "never write off Nintendo" and "it's all about the games". These two cliches pretty much got married and had babies at E3 2014.
Favourite Nintendo thing: it has to be the return of Zelda, with a lovely new look – even if we know virtually nothing else about it.
The old issues are still around
Representation. It's a word that triggers huge arguments and bitter controversies in the game creation and fan communities – and it is still an issue in mainstream development. In the Microsoft E3 press conference, it was 50 minutes before a woman developer took to the stage. It was 20 minutes for Sony, but both events were absolutely dominated by white male executives, producers and creative directors. This of course represents the worringly skewed demographics in Western game development, but you feel the console giants could have tried a little harder to make other people feel included during their events which are watched online by millions of gamers across the world.
Meanwhile, Ubisoft bucked the trend again by employing Aisha Tyler as its E3 press conference presenter. However, it stumbled into a bitter social media controversy, when one of its developers explained that female characters had been left out of Assassin's Creed Unity co-op mode because the extra work involved in designing and animating them was considered too expensive. A Twitter storm raged and Ubisoft released a statement to clarify its position. Many gamers pointed to the dual gender options in titles like Mass Effect, and the custom character creation modes in the likes of Sunset Overdrive (which is being marketed with a male character but that allows free customisation in-game). It was easy to write this off as another insular new media bun fight, but inclusivity and diversity are vital in such a large creative industry – even if only on the business level of engaging with emerging markets.
Favourite contrast to the mainstream monoculture: Never Alone is a fascinating project by a team of ex-Activision execs . They worked with Native Alaskan storytellers to produce what looks to be a mythological adventure of real grace and understanding. The lead character is a young girl who sets out on a heroic mission to find the source of an endless blizzard threatening to destroy her village.
There might be something in this whole virtual reality idea
With Project Morpheus making a brief appareance at the Sony press conference and Oculus taking up a large stand in one of the main halls with its Rift device, it looks like the idea of a mainstream virtual reality headset is gainging momentum. There were some excellent demos at E3, too, especially CCP's Eve Valkyrie and Elite: Dangerous.
Some industry pundits are still worried that people won't sit in their living rooms with massive crash helmets on, staggring around and bumping into the furniture for five minutes before being sick. But that sentence shows a lot of the misconceptions about VR, and its history as a geeky sideline rather than a mainstream possibility. Now, Facebook owns Oculus and Sony is looking at making Morpheus a key part of its consumer electronics offering.
Best VR experience: Creative Assembly was showing off its terrifying Alien: Isolation adventure running on Rift, in a behind closed doors E3 demo. This was easily one of the most talked about experiences among games journalists with many of them discovering an unfortunate truth: in E3, everyone can hear you scream...
E3 2014: new games unveiled for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One - video | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/18/hakeem-al-araibi-bahrain-says-refugee-footballers-life-is-not-in-danger | World news | 2019-01-18T05:32:51.000Z | Helen Davidson | Hakeem al-Araibi: Bahrain says refugee footballer's life is not in danger | Hakeem al-Araibi’s life is not under threat and he could appeal his conviction if he returned to Bahrain, the Bahraini government has said in its first significant response to the international outrage at its efforts to reclaim the dissident refugee.
Al-Araibi, who is a permanent resident of Australia, has been detained in Bangkok for almost two months while Thai authorities process an extradition request from Bahrain. The 25-year-old has said he fears Bahrain authorities will imprison and torture or possibly kill him if he is returned.
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In response to an opinion piece published on Thursday, the Bahrain government told the Guardian there was “no threat to his life”.
“Activists claiming to speak on his behalf suggest his life is in danger if he returns to Bahrain, but he has only been sentenced to imprisonment,” a spokesman said.
“Had Al-Araibi remained in Bahrain, he would also have had the chance to appeal alongside his co-accused. Instead he fled Bahrain after being released on bail to play professional football.”
Al-Araibi has been granted refugee status by Australia, which determined he had a well-founded fear of persecution in his country of origin, and travelled to Thailand with his wife intending to honeymoon. He claims he received Australian government advice that he was safe to travel.
He was arrested in Bangkok after Interpol erroneously approved Bahrain’s request for a red notice warrant, against its own protocols to protect refugees from the countries they fled.
The 2014 conviction, delivered in absentia and with a 10-year jail sentence, was based on the alleged coerced confession of his co-defendant and brother, that they committed an act of vandalism against a police station.
The act occurred at the same time, or very soon after, Al-Araibi was playing in a televised football match, and the trial judge – a member of the royal family – has been accused of ignoring key evidence.
Human Rights Watch’s deputy south-east Asia director, Phil Robertson, described the conviction as “bogus”.
The government spokesman, who described the vandalism as “terrorism-related”, said all Bahraini individuals were entitled to legitimate legal representation and appeals, and convictions in Bahrain’s criminal court related to the penal code and “do not in any way relate to political views or the right to expression”.
“In all cases brought by the public prosecutor, litigants are accorded their full legal rights and guaranteed an independent and transparent trial in line with international standards that insure fair and equal treatment for all,” he said.
Amnesty International Australia said it had repeatedly recorded and exposed repressive tactics by the Bahraini government against civil society including travel bans, dissolution of opposition groups and media, and arbitrary detention of human rights defenders.
“As recently as December, the conviction and sentencing of prominent human rights defender Nabeel Rajab has demonstrated Bahrain’s farcical justice system,” Amnesty’s national director, Claire Mallinson, told the Guardian.
“To assert that he ‘has only been sentenced to imprisonment’ does not reflect the real danger of torture that Hakeem will face if returned, and that he himself has previously attested to.”
In 2016 Al-Araibi detailed his previous imprisonment and torture in a Bahrain prison.
Bahrain’s spokesman said the kingdom took allegations of mistreatment “very seriously” and had established a special investigations unit and ombudsman which he claimed had received “international recognition”.
“Bahrain remains committed to upholding the rule of law and safeguarding individual rights protected by the kingdom’s constitution.”
However according to the Gulf Institute for Democracy and Human Rights, Al-Araibi’s claims of abuse and torture were never investigated and no security personnel were held accountable.
“The Bahraini government are trading on the legal procedures to distract the international public opinion,” Yahya Alhadid, president of the GIDHR, told the Guardian.
“If Hakeem is extradited back to Bahrain, he will face continuous electric shocks, because he dared to criticise a member of the royal family.
Why Hakeem al-Araibi's plight is a test of the Olympic movement itself
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“We had previous experience with the political detainee the athlete Hamad Al-Fahed, whose sentence was [increased] from 15 years in prison to a life sentence after speaking out about the torture he was subjected to: electric shocks, and stripping him naked.”
GIDHR’s Fatima Yazbek said security forces were considered infallible in Bahrain, the UN special rapporteur was still banned from entering the country, and the ombudsman was essentially a public relations exercise.
The Australian government, international NGOs, and football player associations are among countless groups lobbying for the release of Al-Araibi back to Australia, particularly in light of Thailand’s decision not to return 18-year-old Rahaf Al-Qunun back to Saudi Arabia last week.
Key questions about the complicated case remain unanswered, including the actions of the Australian federal police and its officers seconded to the country’s Interpol bureau, which alerted Thailand to Al-Araibi’s travel plans because of the red notice against him. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2016/apr/29/silicon-valley-satire-mark-zuckerberg-san-francisco-tech-bay-startup | Television & radio | 2016-04-29T15:31:36.000Z | Sarah Hughes | Silicon Valley: the whip-smart satire that's Mark Zuckerberg's favourite show | The last time we saw Richard Hendricks, the painfully awkward computer programmer at the heart of tech sitcom Silicon Valley, he had just won a lawsuit to keep ownership of his startup company, only to be immediately ousted as CEO. Showrunner Mike Judge, the man behind animation hits King of the Hill and Beavis and Butt-Head, admits the moment was inspired by the endless changes at the top of Twitter: “One guy said to me: ‘We have a saying here: it’s never too early to fire the founder.’”
It’s that kind of whip-smart, self-aware joke that has made Silicon Valley the biggest show in San Francisco Bay. It’s the story of Hendricks (Thomas Middleditch), who invents an app called Pied Piper that accidentally has a revolutionary data-compression algorithm. The show follows him as he finds himself both adored and attacked by every tech player in the valley. Everyone wants to crack his coding.
Unsurprisingly, Silicon Valley has been embraced by those it so brilliantly skewers. “Someone had a hackathon where they basically built the Pied Piper compression platform,” says executive producer Alec Berg, who cut his teeth writing for Seinfeld before moving to Curb Your Enthusiasm. “Mark Zuckerberg apparently wears a Pied Piper shirt to work and Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the Google guys, did their ice-bucket challenge wearing shirts from our show …”
“It’s very timely. [Until recently] there hadn’t really been any shows set in the tech business, and now there’s Halt and Catch Fire, Mr Robot … but a comedy set in this world feels right.”
‘It’s like Animal House: those guys are outsiders.’ Photograph: HBO
But as any failed internet entrepreneur will tell you, it’s not enough to have a great idea if the execution is wrong. Silicon Valley resonates because Berg and Judge are so sharp about this absurd, almost hermetically sealed world. “It’s crazy the amount of money they’re making in the real Silicon Valley,” says Judge. “You look at the WhatsApp deal with Facebook … [The social media giant bought the mobile messaging service for a reported $19bn.] It’s just a giant bubble. I don’t want to see that bubble burst, but it really does seem it will have to.”
For Judge, the show is funniest when it pits DIY idealism against big-business budgets. “If you’re in Wall Street you’re kind of unashamed about how much money you’re making,” he says. “But in the tech world, it’s not enough to be making money – you’ve also got to be saving the world and that’s kind of funny.” Berg agrees. “Any time you say you’re making the world a better place and you’re also putting $35m in your own pocket, there’s a conflict …”
It helps that both men understand the industry – Judge worked as a programmer in Silicon Valley in the 80s, Berg’s father and brother were computer scientists – and feel comfortable with its jargon. That pays off in surprising ways: one of the highlights of the first season was an elaborate mathematical dick joke, in which the actual maths was entirely correct.
‘There are cool people in the tech industry and then there are our guys.’ Photograph: John P Johnson/Sky
One of the funniest moments at the start of the new season involves a tech startup with a top-secret project to give users virtual facial hair, from a Hitler style to the Peter Sellers and the Fu Manchu. It’s perfect, because it’s just the sort of horrible idea someone probably is working on right now in some glass-and-chrome incubator.
But if Silicon Valley were just in-jokes, it would have remained an industry obsession. Its wider appeal comes because it’s also a carefully constructed workplace comedy. We all know someone like TJ Miller’s brash, credit-stealing Erlich Bachman, who runs the incubator that Richard and the gang work from, or Zach Wood’s ultimate people-pleaser, Jared Dunn.
“I feel as though The Big Bang Theory has a slightly condescending view of nerds,” says Berg. “Our guys aren’t so much nerds as well-meaning outsiders … it’s like Animal House: those guys are outsiders. There’s the cool fraternity, then there’s Delta House – and in the same way, there are cool people in the tech industry and then there are our guys.”
Certainly Richard is very, very awkward, and remains so even when success knocks on his door. “Even if he did become a success, that awkwardness wouldn’t disappear,” says Middleditch, who plays the reclusive programmer. “That’s who he is and that’s true to people you meet in the real Silicon Valley – I met Craig from Craigslist and he’s a very successful guy but he’s still kinda awkward.”
The third season of Silicon Valley runs every Sunday at 10pm in the US. UK viewers can watch the first episode online on Sky Go now, then weekly on Sky Atlantic from 12 May at 10.10pm. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2015/oct/05/a-league-2015-16-season-preview-part-i-the-bottom-rungs-of-the-ladder | Football | 2015-10-04T19:00:05.000Z | Rob Brooks | A-League 2015-16 season preview part I: the bottom rungs of the ladder | 10. Central Coast Mariners
Meet the early wooden spoon favourites. Promising a more attack-minded approach this term, the Mariners have been steadily working on pressing high and playing quick forward passes in pre-season. It’s a philosophy which is sure to bring goals in Gosford, but unfortunately a disproportionate amount of those seem certain to be scored against Tony Walmsley’s men. In September preparations alone, Central Coast lost to Melbourne Victory and fellow predicted strugglers Brisbane Roar and Newcastle Jets.
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Despite the positive game plan, it is hard to see where the goals will indeed come from, with Roy O’Donovan, Fabio Ferreria or Mitch Austin needing to hit a real purple patch in order to produce results. Even if that does eventuate for a player in the final third, there is a worrying lack of quality in the midfield, which is already leaning too heavily on veteran Nick Montgomery.
With Liam Reddy between the posts, and Storm Roux, Eddy Bosnar, Jacob Poscoliero and Josh Rose in front of him, there is reason to believe the Mariners will at least put up a fight in defence. However, the loss of former skipper John Hutchinson leaves the team somewhat rudderless, not to mention lacking a little craft, which is likely to see them without possession for extended periods. Surely there is only so long the backline can hold on.
The Mariners are synonymous with graft, team spirit and perseverance. They will need all of these qualities on show if they are to lift themselves out of the doldrums this season. In short, there just doesn’t appear to be enough depth or quality in this squad to see them challenge the majority of A-League sides. RB
9. Brisbane Roar
Ten years ago John Aloisi carved his name into the pantheon of Australian sporting legends by firing the Socceroos into the World Cup with a nerveless penalty. Now, Aloisi faces a different kind of pressure, perhaps one that can potentially take a heavier toll, and yet conversely offer far less reward. Aloisi has stepped into the hot seat at Brisbane Roar, a club that seems on an alarmingly downward spiral. Just 18 months ago Brisbane won their third championship in four seasons, and they seemed set to continue in a similar vein into the foreseeable future. The club’s quick drop through the A-League pack began with the bizarre dismissal of coach Mike Mulvey just a handful of games after winning the 2014 title.
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Now the club start a new season with another new coach, an ageing squad and want-away owners. It has been a messy off-season for the Roar with the Bakrie Group accused of unpaid wages and debts, resulting in the exit of key midfielder Luke Brattan after an arbitration hearing found in favour of the Socceroo squad member.
Unsurprisingly, the Roar have been one of the less active clubs during the off-season. Jamie McClaren will add pace and verve to the forward line, while Spanish midfielder Corona comes with a decent résumé and high praise from Aloisi. Andrija Kaluderovic has departed, as has loanee Adam Sarota. However, plenty of the old-stagers – and their winning mentality – remain, including Matt McKay, Thomas Broich, Jade North, Michael Theo and Shane Stefanutto. The basic ingredients are there, but the challenge for Aloisi is not only to distance the squad from the off-field distractions, but find the right rhythm in his second spell as coach of an A-League club. PS
8. Newcastle Jets
If the remedy for finishing bottom of the pile is to instigate change, then Newcastle may finally be on the road to recovery. Since collecting last season’s wooden spoon, former owner Nathan Tinkler has been ousted, with a new consortium led by Dundee United chairman Stephen Thompson reportedly set to take over. Head coach Phil Stubbins was shown the door, replaced by promising young tactician Scott Miller.
During his brief tenure, the former Fulham youth coach has brought a new sense of unity to the dressing room, which will be led by the likes of Nigel Boogaard, David Carney, Mateo Poljak, Daniel Mullen and Labinot Haliti. Added to this core leadership group are experienced players such as Jason Hoffman, Cameron Watson, Mark Birrighitti and Lee Ki-je. Suddenly there’s a bit to like about the Jets.
If this recuperating club is to make their first finals appearance in six years, however, much will hinge on late signings Leonardo Santiago and Milos Trifunovic. This duo will be charged with providing some flair in attack, which was an ingredient lacking in the Jets’ squad prior to their respective arrivals.
This leaves Newcastle as a wildly unpredictable prospect. New owners are potentially coming in, a new coach without A-League experience is at the helm, and two largely unseen imports hold the key to their goalscoring hopes. It’s not exactly the recipe most clubs would want to follow, but after the Jets’ experience last season, it genuinely seems they could be on the up.
Miller’s message is all about belief, and that can already be seen in the pre-season performances of his new-look squad. Whether that translates into competition points when the pressure is on remains the great unknown. RB
Predicted placings were determined by aggregating the verdicts of a seven-strong panel of Guardian Australia football writers comprising Richard Parkin, Joe Gorman, Jack Kerr, Rob Brooks, Pete Smith, Mike Hytner and Paul Connolly. The full breakdown of that process will be published in Wednesday’s final preview. Tomorrow: part II – the mid-table hopefuls. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2009/nov/08/cheque-fraud | Money | 2009-11-08T00:05:13.000Z | Lisa Bachelor | The cheque fraud's in the post | We are bombarded with adverts for insurance to protect us against identity theft, reminded numerous times not to let credit cards out of our sight at restaurants and warned of the dangers of "phishing", where fraudsters steal our details online. But who thinks about falling victim to fraud by way of the humble cheque these days?
It was almost exactly six years ago that I had the misfortune to be on the receiving end of cheque fraud, losing £920 when an HSBC chequebook I didn't know was being sent to me was stolen in the post. The fraudster made a cheque out to himself and signed it with a name and signature completely different to mine. The money was nevertheless his and I had to undergo a protracted battle with the bank to get my money back.
Roll forward six years to October 2009 and 19-year-old Cambridge student and Cash reader Suzanne Burlton was shocked to find herself the victim of a similar scam, also losing £920 via a cheque from an HSBC chequebook she didn't know was in the post to her.
"I think of myself as quite careful with money," she says. "My general banking practices tend to be that I keep a mental tally (and often a written tally) of how much I ought to have in my bank account and then every week or so check that it matches up with how much I have.
"Just before going to bed on Monday 19 October, I checked my bank balance online and was surprised to see it was £700 overdrawn. I knew I hadn't spent anything like that much, so I started going through my bank statement online to find out what on earth had happened. I found one large transaction that I didn't remember, a cheque paid out on 15 October to the tune of £920."
She continues: "HSBC promised to raise an investigation into what was evidently cheque fraud and I was told it would get in touch within two working days. Three days later I had heard nothing, and so began a cycle in which I telephoned the bank and asked for an update and the person on the other end appeared to have no information whatsoever. I received a generic letter on 20 October informing me the matter was under investigation and that HSBC would 'keep [me] updated with progress', although it may take 'several weeks'."
Suzanne heard nothing more but checked her account on 29 October and found the money had been reimbursed. However, when she opened her post she was incensed to find another chequebook had been sent to replace the stolen one. "Obviously it is convenient to get your chequebook in the post but it seems odd there is no kind of security procedure to stop this kind of fraud. I rarely use my chequebook and didn't know another one was being sent," she says.
A spokeswoman for HSBC said: "HSBC's standard practice is that we will automatically send out chequebooks to customers, unless they request we don't. HSBC will refund any customer who is a genuine victim of fraud."
The amount lost to cheque fraud was £15.6m in the first six months of this year, although this is down on the £21.2m in the first six months of last year. More than half of the £15.6m – £8.6m – is down to "forged cheque fraud", which covers chequebooks that go astray in the post. Although banks send out chequebooks automatically you can ask any of them not to send chequebooks to you until you request them.
"About 90% of cheque fraud gets stopped before there is a victim," says Jemma Smith, a spokeswoman for UK Payments. "Banks don't tell you when chequebooks are coming so it is up to the customer to keep an eye out for them when they get down to the last 10 cheques in their book."
■ Have you ever fallen victim to cheque fraud? How did your bank respond? Let us know your views at [email protected] or by writing to us at Cash, The Observer, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London, N1 9GU. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/sep/24/cormac-mccarthy-blood-meridian-digested | Books | 2009-09-24T13:01:39.000Z | John Crace | Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy | See the child. The mother dead at his birthing. At 14 he runs away. A year later he is shot in the back in New Orleans. So what. He walks. He walks. He is divested of all that he has been. He sees a parricide, the body hanging while urine darkens the trouser. In the spring of 1849 he rides into Nacogdoches.
The Reverend Green had been playing to a full house daily when a seven foot giant entered the tent.
The impostor had congress with young girls and a goat before he came to preach here, said the Judge. The teamster puller out a knife and killed the reverend, with 79 other members of the congregation trampled in the affray. The kid looked on eagerly.
How dya know he was an impostor? the kid asked.
I didnt. I just made it up.
It had been raining for three months and the kids was sitting in the hotel with Toadvine, when a man asked him to get out the way. The kid pulled out a gun and blew his head off, the arterial blood spraying the walls.
Wed better get out of here, cried the Judge and Toadvine.
Sure, said the kid. But how come we got not speech marks or apostrophes?
Cos punctuation is for pussies.
They met a hermit that hated niggers. Even worse than Mexers, he said. We gotta get to Californy, they answered, disembowelling the barman and treading his intestines into the floorboards. Wed better join the irregulars and get us some mules.
For two long weeks they rode through the arid burnt pumice of the desert sucking on antelope bones, dying of starvation. They passed a solitary jackal, the inhabitants all multilated save an old man pissing himself, before they were caught in a hail of Commanche arrows. Only eight survived. The rest were burnt in a bush on which hung the carcasses of dead babies scalped by the heathen.
Dying of thirst in the terra damnata, they were taken prisoner in Chihuauha and walked the gauntlet of flung offal. Let us go, said Glanton, and well kill you injuns and get Gomez. They drank mescal, stove in the skull of a crippled woman, said nigger a lot and left town. Nine days out they got ambushed by Apaches. The Judge laughed, plucking the arrows from his side before pulping the Indians against the rocks.
Whats he the Judge of? asked the kid.
Hes the Judge of American history, the expriest replied. The blood depravity and lawlessness thats been airbrushed by the victors.
So this is like a XXX-rated Spaghetti Western?
Clint Eastwood is a Disney shithead.
So its an anomic existential tale with no character development or revelation. We just gotta find new ways to kill or be killed in ever more remorseless graphic detail.
They rode back into the white heat of the desert, killing indiscriminately. The kid shot a man from 25 miles, watching his head explode in a ball of carmine, while the Judge and Toadvine drank the menstrual blood of scalped women and slit the bellies of pregnant horses.
They returned as heroes in harlequin hats to Chihuahua, dragging a half-mile chain of scalps behind them. They drank, they whored, they peeled skulls like polyps bluely wet, they pulled a dead man from a coffin and hacked him in pieces, knowing the desert would salt their bones back to nothingness.
The Judge pissed in the sulphur, fashioning gunpowder from the earth, and the sand ran crimson with the blood of 7,000 Mexers.
Who we killing now? asked the expriest.
We aint bothered. We killing everyone, the Judge spat. There is a purity in violence. War is the truest form of divination.
Dya reckon that kind of quasi-mysticism will have some critics falling for a high-brow Gnostic interpretation of all this killin? The kid spat back.
The lord moves in mysterious ways. Might also help if we put the odd bit of Spanish in somewhere, the expriest muttered spitting further than anyone.
Eres mozo del caballado?
They resumed their massacres bathing their arms in scarlet torrents of exsanguinations, boiling brains in their skulls, filleting infants and throwing their livers to the wolves. They double-crossed the Yuma at the river crossing and the Indians came after them, spearing Glanton through the throat till his tongue appeared out of his chest. The kid and Tobin escaped by mule, the kid taking an arrow in the leg. Tobin a bullet in the neck.
You gotta shoot the Judge, cried the expriest. The kid shot once and missed. The judge laughed. Aint no one that can shoot me, he spat. They travelled on through the cold of the desert night, passing pile upon pile of desiccated corpses, the charred coagulate of preterite lives.
The kid made it to San Diego in time to see Toadvine swing, his leg dripping with urine as he breathed his last from the noose. He had lost all sense of who he was, who he was killing, as he was put in prison for his crimes. The judge had him sent away, but the kid got released when he promised his jailers gold.
For seven long years, the kid travelled back east through the desert where bison carcasses lay rotting in their millions stopping only to plug innocent bystanders with lead in their rancid pelvises.
The kid entered a bar in Texas to find the judge, wearing the blackened ears of Mexers as a necklace and making a cross out of an imbeciles femur while crushing 1,129 children between his thighs.
You a disappointment to me kid, he said. Before remembering to spit. You just don't enjoy killing quite as much as me. You at times shown an indecent humanity to the heathen.
The kid spat back. It was the first hed heard of it. He looked on disinterestedly as the dancing bear's head was ripped off, before absent-mindedly whoring and butchering the penitents and the pilgrim in a final attempt to add meaning by using the language of faith. The Judge towered over him.
You don't wanna go in there, said one bloke having a piss in the latrines to another. Indoors the Judge was dancing. Fame, he spat. I'm gonna live for ever. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/mar/24/the-sun-records-51m-loss-as-publisher-fights-costly-phone-hacking-cases | Media | 2022-03-24T11:38:06.000Z | Mark Sweney | The Sun records £51m loss as publisher fights costly phone-hacking cases | The Sun recorded a loss of £51m last year as the Covid pandemic and a shift of advertising spend online hurt its newspapers, while its parent company sought to end the phone-hacking legal cases that have cost it hundreds of millions of pounds over the past 15 years.
Rupert Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers, which publishes the Sun and retains liability for the activities of the defunct News of the World, spent £49m on legal fees and damages relating to historical phone-hacking allegations in the year to 27 June 2021. This compares with the £80m NGN spent the previous year.
The financial filings show the unnamed highest-paid director of NGN – most likely Rebekah Brooks, the chief executive of parent company News UK – received a 50% increase in remuneration last year to £3.6m.
On Thursday, NGN is beginning a two-day hearing at the high court in an attempt to bring an end to the ongoing managed hearings where new potential claimants start legal action each year.
There have been hundreds of cases lodged over the past 15 years – in December NGN agreed a substantial settlement with the actor Sienna Miller to ensure her hacking claims did not go to trial – with lawyers saying there could be thousands of potential victims still to come forward.
In terms of the Sun’s financial performance, the company said turnover fell from £324m to £318.6m in the past year. Digital advertising and other customer revenues, including its betting and gaming operations, were able to partly offset the losses in print, it added.
“The decrease in turnover was primarily due to adverse print market conditions exacerbated by the pandemic, particularly in Monday to Friday sales, though performance has continued to improve since the first lockdown and throughout the financial year,” the company said, in its filing to Companies House.
“There were declines in both newspaper circulation and print advertising revenues owing to an industry-wide acceleration in the shift in spend towards online.”
By contrast the Times and Sunday Times, also News UK titles, reported record profits over the same financial period, as digital revenues and cover price increases enabled them to buck the wider industry decline.
Their parent group, Times Newspapers Limited (TNL), said pre-tax profits more than tripled from £10m to £34m year-on-year, the highest since the titles started making a profit in 2014. Revenues jumped from £310m to £327m.
“The increase in revenue was underpinned by strong growth in digital subscription revenue and digital advertising revenue which, supported by the impact of cover price increases across both titles during the period, were more than able to mitigate industry-wide declines in both newspaper circulation and print advertising,” TNL said.
Digital-only paid subscribers hit 399,000 as at the end of last year with total subscriber numbers, including print, passing 600,000.
Robert Thomson, the chief executive of News UK’s overall parent News Corporation, said at the publisher’s most recent trading update that the UK operation made its highest profit contribution for the company’s second quarter to the end of December since 2011.
The Christmas quarter also proved to be a milestone for the Sun, which reported that digital advertising income overtook print advertising for the first time.
However, the scale of the challenge facing publishers was made clear this month when Reach, the owner of the Daily Mirror and Daily Express as well as hundreds of regional brands, announced that its market value had plunged by a quarter as it warned of significant cost increases.
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Reach said the existing issue of rising newsprint costs, caused by growing distribution costs and supply issues, was being exacerbated by soaring energy prices.
NGN, which employed an average of 543 editorial staff last year, reported a total wage bill of £42.5m. The subsidiary’s three directors, including the News UK chief operating officer, David Dinsmore, were paid a combined £6.7m, up from £4.5m in 2020.
Last June, it emerged that Rupert Murdoch had written down the value of the Sun newspapers to zero. And last year, in a piece of Fleet Street symbolism, the Sun lost its title of UK’s bestselling newspaper to the Daily Mail. It had been the nation’s most popular paper since 1978.
Most of the costs accrued relating to phone hacking are covered by Murdoch’s US-listed Fox Corporation, which agreed to indemnify News Corporation when the businesses were separated in 2013. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jul/21/alaska-assistant-attorney-general-twitter-far-right | US news | 2021-07-21T12:10:20.000Z | Jason Wilson | Revealed: assistant attorney general in Alaska posted racist and antisemitic tweets | The Guardian has identified an Alaska assistant attorney general as a supporter of the Mormon-derived extremist group the Deseret nationalists who has posted a series of racist, antisemitic and homophobic messages on social media.
The Guardian’s investigation has triggered a review in the Alaska department of law, where the lawyer works.
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Matthias Cicotte, whose job means he works as the chief corrections counsel for Alaska’s attorney general, has acted for the department of law in a number of civil rights cases.
But evidence from his Twitter output allowed Cicotte to be identified by anti-fascist researchers, whose evidence was confirmed and augmented by a Guardian investigation.
After the department was presented with the information last week, Alaska’s deputy attorney general, Cori Mills, wrote in a statement shared with the Guardian: “The department of law takes the allegations raised here seriously, and we uphold the dignity and respect of all individuals and ask that all of our employees do the same.”
Mills added: “Having just learned about this late last week, we are gathering information and conducting a review. Since this involves personnel issues, we are very limited in our ability to comment further.”
Matthias Cicotte did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Online, Cicotte, under the moniker J Reuben Clark and the Twitter handle @JReubenCIark, has expressed extreme positions on race, criminal justice and religion.
Since-deleted tweets archived by anti-fascists reveal that he advocated various extreme positions including the summary imprisonment of Black Lives Matter protesters; vigilante violence against leftwing groups; and a punishment of execution for acts including performing gender reassignment surgery.
The JReubenCIark account was also one of the earliest and most prominent accounts to promote Deseret nationalism on Twitter using hashtags like #DeseretNationalism and #DezNat.
Deseret nationalists or DezNats are a loose association of rightwing Mormons. Previously they have been noted for harassing perceived enemies online, such as progressive Mormons, LGBTQ Mormons, former Mormons and political progressives.
Some who identify with the movement wish to recreate Deseret, the region which is now much of the interior of the western United States, which Mormons sought to have admitted to the union, and effectively ruled between 1862 and 1870.
Some DezNats advocate the creation of a theocratic secessionist Mormon state, and some have proposed that this be a white ethnostate, a desire which is reminiscent of the proposals of some white nationalists for a white ethnostate in the Pacific north-west.
Many DezNats flirt with accelerationist neo-Nazi imagery, and pass around memes and catchphrases that are adaptations of imagery and verbiage associated with the “alt-right” movement.
The account is pseudonymous, but it left a trail of evidence regarding Cicotte’s identity which were archived by antifascist activists.
The moniker not only references a prominent 20th-century Mormon leader and attorney, but is the name of Brigham Young University’s law school, from which Cicotte graduated in 2008.
The account revealed a number of biographical details that match Cicotte’s, from the length of his marriage, to the identity of his criminal law professor, to his frequent moves, to the dates of his various stints in higher education, to his ownership of a Minivan, to the date of his house purchase.
There are other clues based on the course of his life or contemporaneous events. In August 2020, the account’s owner remarked that he had been overweight but lost a significant amount of weight, which matches a long chronological sequence of photographs obtained from his wife’s Facebook page.
The most compelling evidence comes from photographs posted by the account, presenting them as depictions of the interior of the owner’s house. One reveals a distinctive patterning on the brickwork, and another a similarly distinctive pattern on wood paneling in a kitchen.
The first matches a fireplace pictured in two photographs of Cicotte’s house posted to the realtor.com website; the second matches several pictures of Cicotte’s kitchen on the same site. The pictures of the kitchen also reveal a matching layout and countertops to the image posted to Twitter.
In a telephone conversation that took place after he had viewed the photographs posted to Twitter, Ellsworth Warner, who lived in the house until 2014 when it was sold to Cicotte, said, “Yep, it is the same house,” and identified the cabinets as having been installed by his mother, Renee Warner.
Another description of the disposition of his house on Twitter also matches satellite images.
Many of the tweets under the JReubenCIark moniker suggest antipathy towards Jews, who are the subject of hundreds of tweets that suggest that they are involved in conspiracies against white people, or that they already control the commanding heights of the economy, the media or education.
In 2016, the account sent a tweet evoking a past time when “real history was taught in school, angry yentas didn’t rule, white men didn’t play the fool”.
The tweet – which suggests the malign influence of Jewish women and the decline of white men as problems in the contemporary world – tagged in two then prominent alt-right accounts at a time when that movement was at the height of its influence on social media.
In February this year, JReubenCIark wrote in reference to the Republican Jewish Committee’s push for the expulsion of Marjorie Taylor Greene that he supported their efforts “to combat the conspiracy theory that Jews run everything by getting any member of Congress they don’t like expelled from Congress”.
The account also regularly denied the reality of anti-Black racism, attacked Black public figures and showed an extraordinary hostility towards anti-racist protesters associated with the Black Lives Matter movement. He also made casually racist remarks about other groups including Mexicans and Native Americans.
In a March tweet, JReubenCIark claimed that accusations of racism were “purely a tool to control people on the right”, going on to ask “try to think of example of an accusation of racism that helped the right, or Christians, or whites in the last 10 years”.
On 15 June last year, he riffed on a catchphrase of the so-called Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, tweeting: “The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and its Consequences Have Been a Disaster for the Human Race.”
The account also repeated familiar white nationalist talking points about the relationships between race, crime and IQ. He tweeted: “Is it ‘white supremacy’ to note that some racial groups have higher IQs than others based on IQ tests? I believe that and I am only a Deseret supremacist.”
JReubenCIark also evinced a dismissive animus towards Latinos. On 25 June last year he wrote: “I can’t believe there’s a faithful Latter-day Saint out there who can look at the collapse of birthrates among the Latter-day Saints and say, ‘Well, hey, at least lots of Catholic Mexicans are coming to the US.’”
On 30 June, as the protests in the wake of George Floyd’s murder were in full swing, the account told a Utah BLM supporter he was arguing with on Twitter: “You and all of your lying violent criminal friends belong in prison.” He later added: “#BlackLivesMatter is a criminal enterprise that murders people and destroys property. In a sane world you would all be in prison or worse.”
On 2 July, discussing an incident in Provo, Utah, in which a man appeared to drive his car into a crowd of BLM protesters, he remarked: “No one had a right to block his car. You all belong in jail.”
The account tweeted about violence against trans people.
On 17 October 2017, responding to news of a Drag Time Story Hour event in Long Beach, California, Cicotte wrote: “This demon should be burned to death and everyone responsible for that library event should be in prison.”
On 16 August 2019, he tweeted: “People who encourage a kid to think he’s a different sex than what he is (including parents) go to jail for child abuse”, adding that “people who perform or abet sex change operations on kids get the death penalty.”
The account was more forgiving of accused murderers with rightwing political sympathies.
Discussing the case of Kyle Rittenhouse, accused of a double murder of protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, last August, it wrote: “The justice system will fail. He’s not a cop, he’s gonna get screwed like James Fields.”
James Fields was convicted last year of the murder of Heather Heyer, who he killed in a car attack after marching with white supremacists at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017.
The account regularly advocated vigilante action against political opponents.
In June 2017, JReubenCIark concluded a thread on how best to respond to the left’s characterizations of conservatives with the remark: “If brute violence is the only way to be free of them, what do they expect us to do?” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/dec/06/10-great-food-books-of-2020 | Books | 2020-12-06T11:00:08.000Z | Allan Jenkins | 10 great food books of 2020 | The Flavor Equation: The Science of Great Cooking Explained in More Than 100 Essential Recipes
Nik Sharma
(Chronicle Books)
Sharma, a former molecular biologist, turned food writer and photographer, explores the science behind the food we eat. This isn’t Heston-esque chemistry, but the hows and whys divided into seven fundamentals: brightness; bitterness; saltiness; sweetness; savoriness; fieriness and richness – with dishes to showcase each. The recipes themselves are a delightful mashup of Indian and American flavours: “I use food as a way to connect my past with my present and future – to weave a thread between my life in India, my life in America, and the people and places I’ve seen and met along the way,” says Sharma. Favourites include a masala cheddar cornbread and a garlic and ginger dal with greens. MT-H
Buy it for the insights – and the cornbread
To order a copy of The Flavor Equation, go to guardianbookshop.com
The Pie Room
Calum Franklin
(Bloomsbury)
A recipe book for the enthusiast and the obsessive from Calum Franklin, the chef who turned the Holborn Dining Room into a shrine to pies. They are all here: fish pies, pork pies, chicken pies, cheese and onion pies, beef pies, cottage pies, game pies … though the book starts with most every kind of pastry (too exhaustive and long to begin to list) with puddings ranging from tarts, cobbler and clafoutis. It comes into its own with the chapter devoted to “grand party pieces”. Here are the two-day, eight-page pie masterpieces such as the ultimate beef wellington and coronation chicken pie, well presented, painstakingly and patiently told. An engaging trip into the mind and kitchen of a cook who found his voice. AJ
Buy it for its authority and clarity. Henry VIII would approve.
To order a copy of The Pie Room, go to guardianbookshop.com
Ottolenghi Flavour
Yotam Ottolenghi & Ixta Belfrage
(Ebury)
The third in his vegetarian series with Plenty and Plenty More: 100 new recipes, 45 of which are vegan, and others which can be so with little effort. “How many more ways are there to fry an aubergine?” he asks. “The answer, I am delighted to say, is many.” Co-writer/creator Ixta Belfrage has widened the Ottolenghi world. The spices have become spicier, from further afield, the shift a little further from core old-school Ottolenghi, but there is nothing here to frighten the faithful. The recipes read beautifully, the flavour profiles are carefully constructed, the warm voice in the writing reassuring. The wider world it inhabits is made comforting and accessible. In short, another Ottolenghi triumph. AJ
Buy it for your kitchen shelf
To order a copy of Ottolenghi Flavour, go to guardianbookshop.com
The Pastry Chef’s Guide: the Secret to Successful Baking Every Time
Ravneet Gill
(Pavilion)
Gill grew up above a corner shop, and it was there that a love for chocolate raisins, Crunchies and Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut began. Gill loves sugary things: “I try to eat something sweet every single day,” she says. This book is full of this enthusiasm – and an obsession with perfection. The perfect chocolate chip cookies were, rightly, a runaway hit during the banana-bread madness of lockdown and her sassy Instagram videos serve as a fitting accompaniment to the title. What makes the book special is that Gill makes patisserie feel easy. From caramel and creme pat to marshmallow, meringue and puff pastry, there’s no better guide. MT-H
Buy it for the rice pudding – Gill’s ratio is 1:1 rice pud and creme anglaise
To order a copy of The Pastry Chef’s Guide, go to guardianbookshop.com
Fäviken: 4015 Days, Beginning to End
Magnus Nilsson
(Phaidon)
There are cooks who can write and, of course, writers who can cook. Often, here, Magnus Nilsson is both. Something of a hybrid, too, the book is a collection of musings, memoir and a completist list of every dish cooked at his decade-defining cult restaurant Faviken, with many Phaidon-era photos. The first piece of writing is already post-Faviken, titled “How to care for an apple tree” (Nilsson now works an orchard in the south of Sweden far from his frozen north). Perhaps the most compelling piece chronicles the breakdown that preceded the decision to close the restaurant after 11 years. Sometimes the book’s separate identities sit less easily together and you might wish it was one or the other, although Nilsson excels at both. You leave the book feeling he will likely also make an excellent gardener. AJ
Buy it for dipping in and out. No need to read it beginning to end
To order a copy of Fäviken, 4015 Days Beginning to End, go to guardianbookshop.com
Jikoni
Ravinder Bhogal
(Bloomsbury)
The joy is in the subtitle: “Proudly inauthentic recipes from an immigrant kitchen.” Born in Kenya to Indian parents (Jikoni, also the name of her smart Marylebone restaurant, means “kitchen” in Swahili), Bhogal came to the UK as a child. There is a playfulness in these pages, an openness backed by rigour, an authentic celebration of diversity, heritage and flavour. It is there to be found in the voice and recipes: an inviting blending of cross-culture favourites, such as oyster pani puri, spicy scrag end pie, or paneer gnudi with saag. A book that wears its influences lightly but with imagination and respect. AJ
Buy it to feed people
To order a copy of Jikoni, go to guardianbookshop.com
Chaat
Maneet Chauhan & Jody Eddy
(Random House US)
Essential India via the US where chef Chauhan and writer Eddy live. Chaat crisscrosses India by train from north to south, east to west, in search of the country’s quintessential snacks. The reader is transported via railway stations, markets and home kitchens. Puris, dosas and pakoras scent the pages from Lucknow, Srinagar, Jaipur, Kolkata and more, with each city’s signature street food recipes. In a year when the world has shrunk, this book may go some small way to expand it. More than any other this year, it reignited a deep hunger to travel. AJ
Buy it for its evocative call, and to conjure the magic of an Indian railway.
To order a copy of Chaat, go to guardianbookshop.com
The Rangoon Sisters: Authentic Burmese Home Cooking
Amy and Emily Chung
(Ebury Press)
Bright and beautiful and full of dishes I want to eat: khayan jin thee thoke (tomato and crunchy peanut salad); khayan thee hnat (stuffed baby aubergine curry), and hsi jet khauk swe (garlic oil noodles), now a favourite midweek meal. South London-born sisters Amy and Emily Chung are NHS doctors who began a supper club in 2013 to great success. “Our food isn’t fancy; we don’t present it in rings or do saucy drizzles or foams. The recipes in this book are all our home-cooked recipes,” they say. Many of the dishes come from watching their mother and grandmother cooking. Well-crafted and accompanied by enticing, colourful pictures, this book is a joy. MT-H
Buy it for the condiments
To order a copy of The Rangoon Sisters, go to guardianbookshop.com
Dirt
Bill Buford
(Jonathan Cape)
In which the storied founder of Granta, fiction editor of the New Yorker, author of Among the Thugs and Heat, gives up his literary life to decamp to France so he can learn to cook like a French chef. And not for months but for five years with his young family in Lyon, an unlovely town though home to Paul Bocuse and the famed La Mère Brazier restaurant. His kids adapt the quickest. Their father doesn’t speak French. Meanwhile Buford cannot get a top chef to take him on so he apprentices to kindly Bob the baker and learns to make bread. He also learns to kill a pig up close. Finally, he studies at L’Institut Paul Bocuse and achieves his dream to work at Brasier where he and a younger female stagiere are bullied. All this, of course, brilliantly written over endless drafts and many more years. We won’t see its like again. AJ
Buy it for the obsession, the humour, and to disabuse you from following your dream
To order a copy of Dirt, go to guardianbookshop.com
Cook, Eat, Repeat
Nigella Lawson
(Chatto & Windus)
First some numbers: 22 years after How To Eat was first published, book number 12, 150 recipes. It can be hard sometimes to separate Nigella the writer from Nigella the cook, or Queen Nigella the personality. And they are all here in this knowing meditation on food and her relationship with it. The mindful mindlessness of peeling a potato, plus stacks of recipes. It is apparent on the contents page: the first chapter titled What is a Recipe?. And others: A Loving Defence of Brown Food, and Much Depends on Dinner. The recipes are reassuring, almost timeless. No need now to be too modern. Deliciousness is all. It is subtitled Ingredients, Recipes and Stories – and for me, it is the story writing that transcends. Like the best Nigel Slater, our other first-name, long-time domestic deity, Cook, Eat, Repeat is a seasoned, luxurious read. My food book of the year. AJ
Buy it for the people you love who love food
To order a copy of Cook, Eat, Repeat, go to guardianbookshop.com | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/sep/15/japan-england-rugby-world-cup | Sport | 2023-09-15T17:36:32.000Z | Robert Kitson | Japan in mood to write new chapter of sporting romance against England | The most memorable Rugby World Cups are created by performances that no one saw coming. Uruguay’s splendid effort against France was another classic example, reminding everyone that nothing is ever wholly guaranteed. Few anticipate a Japan victory over England on Sunday but a significant shock is brewing at this tournament at some stage.
While the Brave Blossoms have slipped backwards since reaching the quarter-finals four years ago, they have a decent track record of snaring the unwary. In 2015 they upset South Africa and four years ago they saw off Ireland and Scotland in the pool stages. They may not be the host nation on this occasion but there are worse places for some sporting romance than a sultry night on the French Riviera.
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It was on the Côte d’Azur that F Scott Fitzgerald finished The Great Gatsby and started Tender Is The Night. It was put to the great Michael Leitch that the sunny coastal vibe was not dissimilar to Brighton eight years ago. Leitch did not disagree, revealing the Uruguay game had finally made him appreciate the magnitude of what Japan achieved on that day of days under the tutelage of Eddie Jones and a certain Steve Borthwick.
Even now, incidentally, Jones still hails Borthwick’s role in Japan’s stunning success over the Boks as pivotal. “He created a lineout that could compete at a world level even though the tallest guy we had was 6ft 3in tall.” Something else Jones said at the end of last year also lingers. “The thing that still sticks out the most is that you can’t be limited by traditional thoughts. Your ability to look beyond what everyone thinks you’re capable of doing is always there.”
Where there is sufficient determination and commitment, in other words, there is hope. Japan are expecting a full frontal assault – “England have been playing the same way for the past 100 years,” suggested Japan’s scrum coach Shin Hasegawa in midweek – but have duly bolstered their own pack with some experienced muscle in the form of Shota Horie, Pieter Labuschagne and the captain, Kazuki Himeno.
Amato Fakatava, scorer of two tries against Chile, is a handful in the second row and so is Warner Dearns on the bench, prompting their head coach, Jamie Joseph, to suggest England might not have things all their own way. “We like our forward pack. I think it’s the best forward pack we can name but we also understand that’s where England will come.
Michael Leitch takes inspiration from Uruguay’s effort against France with Japan eyeing another major upset. Photograph: Yuka Shiag/AFLO/Shutterstock
“It’s where they come against every team and it’s going to be a big challenge for us. They played very well against Argentina. That was England at their best but prior to that we’ve also seen they’ve got a few weaknesses. If we can find them and are able to play our game that can create opportunities for us.”
The former All Black back-rower also relished the Uruguay game – “their performance is inspiring for tier-two teams, I really enjoyed that match” – but believes England are generally harder to knock over than certain other nations because of their tactical approach. “They play differently to everyone else at the World Cup. They control the game through their kicking game and their set piece, and for all tier-two teams that’s a real challenge. I think we can expect a lot of high balls. We’ve got to accept that pressure’s coming and deal with it as best we can.”
On the flip side, Japan have been working intensively this week on their aerial catching and scrum solidity and, as Hasegawa put it in midweek, intend to take the game to England and “smash them before being smashed”. The assistant coach, Tony Brown, also believes the tempo of the game will have to be quick. “England had the lowest error rate of the first round at 22% but they didn’t do anything with the ball. We cannot go that way, we need to play fast to win and we can’t make errors.”
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And, lest we forget, Japan also have the remarkable Leitch, the ultimate rugby warrior whose contribution over the years has been colossal. While he still greatly admires Borthwick – “Steve is very intelligent, he’s a great coach” – the 34-year-old does not sound a man resigned to defeat before his 15th World Cup appearance, a new national record. “We just have to be ready,” he said coolly. “For the scrums we think we have a nice strategy.”
Samoa could yet be the team who inconvenience England most in Pool D but anyone who saw Japan take the game to an admittedly below-strength All Black side in Tokyo just under a year ago knows how dangerous they can still be. The Brave Blossoms may not be the force of old but, equally, it would be foolish to underestimate them.
“We’re looking forward to creating new history for the Japanese jersey,” insisted Leitch. England can only hope the next chapter is not written this weekend. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/mar/18/david-cameron-bbc-licence-fee | Media | 2014-03-18T18:01:41.000Z | Rowena Mason | Cameron may back decriminalisation of licence fee non-payment | David Cameron believes it is an "interesting idea" to remove the threat of prosecution from those who do not pay the BBC licence fee, raising the prospect that the government could support the more than 140 backbench MPs who are trying to change the law.
Before a Commons committee debate on the issue on Thursday, the prime minister's official spokesman suggested Cameron was open to the idea of decriminalising evasion of the annual £145.50 fee, meaning those who do not pay would only face action in the civil courts.
"His view is that this is an interesting idea and we will listen carefully to MPs' views on it," the spokesman said. "The charter review process does offer a regular opportunity to consider these types of issues, of course. But we will continue listening to MPs."
A cross-party group of more than 140 parliamentarians have signed up to the Tory MP Andrew Bridgen's amendment to the deregulation bill on decriminalising licence fee non-payment.
They include the Tories Bernard Jenkin, David Davis, Zac Goldsmith and Cheryl Gillan, the Liberal Democrat Sir Menzies Campbell, and the Labour politicians Austin Mitchell and Frank Field.
The idea was first raised by the justice secretary, Chris Grayling, who was quoted in the Daily Telegraph this month as saying Whitehall officials were engaged in "serious work" on the idea. Licence fee evasions accounted for 12% of the workload in magistrates courts in 2012.
The culture secretary, Maria Miller, has signalled that she is prepared to put the idea on the table during upcoming talks on the licence fee deal and renewing the BBC's royal charter agreement, which sets out the corporation's scope and remit.
This would give her department a useful bargaining chip in negotiations with the BBC between now and the end of 2016, when the existing 10-year charter and licence fee agreements end, that would disappear if Bridgen's amendment is adopted.
The BBC maintains that decriminalising TV licence fee evasion – which currently incurs a £1,000 penalty and potentially jail – could cost up to £200m a year in lost revenue and lead to the axing of channels including BBC4, CBBC and CBeebies.
James Purnell, BBC director of strategy and digital, said last week that it would be a "huge risk" to push through such legislation. The corporation argues that the idea would be better debated as part of the forthcoming charter review process.
In its discussions with politicians, the BBC has been highlighting the fact that 0.3% of court time is taken up with licence-fee evasion cases and they are often dealt with in batches, with the average time spent lasting around three-and-a-half minutes.
In addition, the BBC argues that for every 1% reduction in penetration of the licence fee there would be a £35m loss of income, and that enforcement would be much more difficult if non-payment was a civil rather than a criminal offence as it would be harder to use detection equipment.
It also maintains that the criminal justice and courts bill, laid before the Commons in February, will further improve the efficiency with which licence fee cases are handled.
A BBC spokesman said: "Our position is the same as laid out by James Purnell. We think it should not be done in isolation. We do not oppose the debate, but think there should be a proper assessment … rather than rushing forward with it." | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2019/nov/05/reading-group-november-the-french-lieutenants-woman-john-fowles | Books | 2019-11-05T10:00:54.000Z | Sam Jordison | The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles is our Reading group book for November | ‘T
he French Lieutenant’s Woman is immensely interesting, attractive and human,” declared the New York Times in its front page review of John Fowles’ third novel, which came out 50 years ago this month. Since then, the book has been turned into a successful film (starring Meryl Streep) and sold hundreds of thousands of copies. But there’s another reason to read it in 2019.
The audacious conceit of The French Lieutenant’s Woman was that it was a novel of 1867 written a century later. Fowles had his Victorian characters act within the constraints of their own time period, but he judged them by the standards of the late 1960s – and made a point of telling us about it.
“What are we faced with in the 19th century?” he asked. “An age where woman was sacred; and where you could buy a 13-year-old girl for a few pounds – a few shillings if you wanted her for an hour or two. Where more churches were built in the whole previous history in the country; and where one in 60 houses in London was a brothel …”
All good questions, even another 50 years later in 2019. After all, weren’t Victorians also fond of saying “judge not, that ye be not judged”? I’m curious to see how Fowles measures up now. How will he fare in our own puritanical and hypocritical times? Will we share his concerns, or will we feel as removed from Fowles as he did from the Victorians?
There’s certainly the potential for some interesting frisson. And even if it turns out that we get along with Fowles just fine, I’d still be keen to re-engage with him. Like plenty of other writers who turn up on this Reading group, his current reputation seems uncertain. I haven’t read anything negative about him recently, because I haven’t read anything much about him at all. Not so long ago, he was everywhere. Even in 2010, the Times named him as one of the 50 greatest novelists since 1945. Would he make such a list nine years later? Perhaps we’ll have a better idea after revisiting The French Lieutenant’s Woman.
It’s also worth saying that it’s not all about judgment. There’s also plenty of fun to be had in this book. One of the things I most clearly remember from when I read The French Lieutenant’s Woman as a teenager is that it has a cracking story, a real emotional heart and a good sense of humour. The book may have a few metafictional fireworks and at least three endings (we’ll look at them later in the month), but Fowles was also very good at the fundamentals. He makes you care and he makes you want to read on. The first sentence is a case in point:
An easterly is the most disagreeable wind in Lyme Bay — Lyme Bay being that largest bite from the underside of England’s outstretched southwestern leg — and a person of curiosity could at once have deduced several strong probabilities about the pair who began to walk down the quay at Lyme Regis, the small but ancient eponym of the inbite, one incisively sharp and blustery morning in the late March of 1867.
I hope you’ll join me in deducing strong probabilities this month. Thanks to Vintage, we have five copies to give to the first five people from the UK to post “I want a copy please”, along with a nice, constructive suggestion in the comments section below. If you’re lucky enough to be one of the first to comment, email the lovely folk on [email protected], with your address and your account username, so they can track you down. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jan/22/first-industrial-action-at-amazon-uk-hopes-to-strike-at-firms-union-hostility | Technology | 2023-01-22T00:05:20.000Z | Heather Stewart | First industrial action at Amazon UK hopes to strike at firm’s union hostility | Amazon workers at a vast depot in Coventry will stage a historic strike on Wednesday – the first time the delivery giant’s UK operations have ever been hit by industrial action.
The immediate cause of the dispute was a 50p-an-hour pay rise offered to warehouse staff in the summer, which many felt was insulting – particularly after they had worked throughout the Covid pandemic.
But staff also complain of gruelling round-the-clock shifts and constant, nitpicking monitoring by management.
One worker recently told the Guardian that it was impossible to make ends meet without signing up for a 60-hour week. “I don’t want Jeff Bezos’s boat,” he said. “I definitely don’t want his rocket. But I just want to live.”
It’s a story heard in campaigns by Amazon workers worldwide, including in the US, where there have been some notable recent successes in winning union recognition.
Derrick Palmer, a vice-president of the US Amazon Labor Union, which recently won a recognition battle at an Amazon fulfilment centre in Staten Island, New York, has backed this week’s action in Coventry.
The local Labour MP Taiwo Owatemi is also supportive, having listened to the experiences of workers at the warehouse, which is on a site previously occupied by carmaker Jaguar Land Rover.
Since the Coventry result was announced, the GMB has heard from frustrated workers at many other Amazon facilities
The company claims to be relaxed about the stoppage, insisting that the strikers represent a small proportion of its workforce in Coventry, and that their action will have little or no impact on its operations. It also points to a £500 cost-of-living payment offered to all staff over the busy Christmas period.
Amazon is right about the numbers: the GMB union has signed up about 300 members at the Coventry site, and estimates that total staff numbers 1,400 or more.
But the union nevertheless regards Wednesday’s action as a historic step in a 10-year battle to organise inside Amazon’s warehouses across the UK, in the face of the company’s well-documented hostility to trade unions.
The GMB’s £15-an-hour pay demand appears punchy, to say the least. It says its members are currently paid £10.50 an hour, so that would represent a 45% rise. And unlike thousands of nurses, doctors, teachers or train drivers, industrial action by these 300 warehouse workers is unlikely to have an impact that impinges on anyone’s daily life.
The economic backdrop has also darkened since the union first began organising, last summer: retail sales fell by 1% in volume in December, which underlines the tough challenges facing the sector.
Amazon recently announced plans to close three warehouses in the UK, as well as seven smaller delivery sites, putting 1,300 jobs at risk.
But the GMB members hope that they can draw the public’s attention to the conditions faced by some of those whose work lies behind the brown cardboard parcels arriving daily at doors up and down the UK.
Stuart Richards, the GMB’s organiser for the West Midlands, says that since the results of the Coventry strike ballot were announced in December, the union has been hearing from a growing number of frustrated workers at other Amazon facilities, keen to make their voices heard.
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He highlights the lengths the company appears to have gone to in order to frustrate efforts to organise its staff, saying the Coventry depot has been turned into a “mini-fortress,” compared with other facilities, with CCTV and security guards. The company says these are standard security precautions, and that all visitors to Amazon sites must be escorted.
“I’ve been involved in the union now for about 25 years and I have never come across an employer that just blanket refuses to enter into any kind of engagement at all,” he says. “Ultimately, the real aim is just getting one step closer to dragging Amazon bosses, kicking and screaming, to talk to us”. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/food/2019/feb/13/celery-juice-health-tonic-or-just-another-wellness-fad | Food | 2019-02-13T14:56:01.000Z | Morwenna Ferrier | Celery juice: health tonic or just another wellness fad? | The year had barely begun when I started seeing celery juice everywhere. On social media, in articles, at small, bouji cafes. Obviously I ignored it. It was 2019 and the wellness industry had long called a moratorium on “green juice” and moved on to solids. No one was juicing any more.
Except they were, at least in the US, where celery juice has been selling at four times the rate of kale juice since October. And now it’s coming here.
It will come as no surprise that the man behind this trend is a friend of Goop. Anthony Williams, the “Medical Medium” and the self-described originator of the Global Celery Juice Movement, is a wellness empire unto himself. He has sold millions of books and counts Robert De Niro as both friend and client. Because of Williams, Pharrell drinks celery juice, and so does Elle Macpherson.
Williams didn’t discover celery juice, but he has rebranded it as something of a potent health tonic, or “a healing tool for every symptom and condition imaginable”, he says. If you’re unsure about Williams’s qualifications, he was, according to his biography, born with the ability to converse with the “Spirit of Compassion” and successfully diagnosed his grandmother with lung cancer when he was four years old. So there you go.
By email, he lists some of the ailments celery juice can treat, in what I presume is in order of sexiness: “Autoimmune conditions, acne, eczema, psoriasis, migraines, acid reflux, addictions, anxiety, depression, fatigue, weight issues, bloating, constipation.” (Though he does not offer any evidence to back this up.) The juice is also very “hydrating” – unsurprising, given celery is 95% water. Sadly, “sore back” is not listed, but I figure there’s no harm trying.
For a panacea that has recently seen a 454% increase in sales in the US, celery juice is surprisingly hard to find in the UK. I eventually track some down at Wild By Tart, a concept restaurant in central London, which sells 200ml of pure celery juice in neat reusable glass bottles for £2.75.
Williams suggests drinking it in the morning on an empty stomach, and waiting 15 minutes before eating anything else. Mixing it with other items of wellness – apple cider vinegar, collagen, activated charcoal – are vetoed. Nothing, he says, brings the “same benefits as 16oz [1 bunch, about 450ml] of pure, straight celery juice consumed on an empty stomach”. Hardier drinkers can go up to a litre a day. I stick to my 200ml and wait, for an absolution, or at least my back to stop hurting.
This is a food column so all benefits are meaningless if it tastes bad. The funny thing about celery is that it’s tricky to describe. Celery is a texture, a soup base, and a vehicle for peanut butter or cream cheese. Juiced, it mostly tastes of health and grass. It’s very pleasant. But, alas, my back still hurts. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/aug/16/feline-lucky-match-the-cat-to-the-movie-quiz-nine-lives | Film | 2016-08-16T08:15:14.000Z | Benjamin Lee | Feline lucky? Match the cat to the movie – quiz | 1.
Panic Room
The Gift
Gone Girl
The Glass House
Reveal
2.
The Third Man
Cat People
Pygmalion
The Black Cat
Reveal
3.
Let the Right One In
Catwoman
Insidious
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Reveal
4.
The Getaway
Willard
The Long Goodbye
Harry and Tonto
Reveal
5.
Fallen
Pet Semetary
Needful Things
The Thing
Reveal
6.
An Unmarried Woman
Listen Up Phillip
Hannah and Her Sisters
The Squid and the Whale
Reveal
7.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
What Lies Beneath
Taking Lives
Side Effects
Reveal
8.
Mean Girls
Sixteen Candles
Scream
Drag Me to Hell
Reveal
9.
Cats and Dogs
Stuart Little
Babe
Charlotte's Web
Reveal
10.
Hocus Pocus
Jumanji
Death Becomes Her
The Witches
Reveal | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/oct/05/downs-syndrome-baby-disabled-child-aborting-foetus-abnormalities | Opinion | 2016-10-05T08:00:58.000Z | Frances Ryan | Whether to have a baby with Down’s syndrome – it’s not a simple choice | Frances Ryan | There’s a scene in BBC2’s A World Without Down’s Syndrome?, which airs tonight, in which Sally Phillips, Bridget Jones’s Diary actor and mother of a son with Down’s, shows a video of a disabled girl competing at a gymnastics competition to a woman who chose to end her own pregnancy. The interaction isn’t designed to guilt-trip the woman who made a different decision – Phillips is an empathetic presenter and describes herself as pro-choice – but it is a snapshot of how the conversation around disability and abortion is routinely set up: one woman’s choice versus another’s.
We see this in articles praising women who choose to have their child despite the fact a foetal abnormality has been detected, often asking other female readers: what would you do? Or the tone of news items in which women express doubts or fears about raising a disabled child. Katie Price was described as having “confessed” when she said she probably would have had an abortion if she’d known her son Harvey was going to be severely disabled, as if the thought, let alone the act, was a heinous crime.
On the other hand, I’ve seen women with disabled children – and disabled people themselves – be asked incredulously (often by complete strangers) why an abortion wasn’t chosen. Such attitudes are particularly alarming in a climate where disabled people are increasingly perceived as a costly burden to the state.
When it comes to disability and pregnancy, we are routinely stuck in this sort of black-and-white dichotomy: having a disabled child is said to be a tragedy or inconvenience that should always be avoided, while women who do choose to abort a foetus with abnormalities are vilified as “shallow” and “selfish”. Neither is accurate nor addresses the issues that really matter.
The truth is there is still considerable prejudice around disability. We live in a culture where disabled people’s lives are often said to be worth less, and difference is equated with failure or negativity. Even Paralympians are described in some media reports as “suffering” from their disability. It’s not alarmist to accept that the way as a society we understand disability can directly impact on how individuals feel about bringing up a disabled child.
Medical professionals – the very people pregnant women rely on – are not exempt from spreading such attitudes. Phillips has spoken of the way that, after her son was born with Down’s, her doctor broke the “bad news” and the nurse cried. (Her child’s disability wasn’t detected during pregnancy.) As the NHS looks set to introduce a more effective screening for Down’s syndrome, it’s a valid moment to question how we view disability as a society, and to accept that women, and of course men, deserve accurate information in order to make an informed decision.
But in doing so, we should be vigilant of how quickly this conversation can be derailed. It is an ongoing strategy of anti-choice groups to hijack disability, generally as a way to reduce women’s reproductive rights. This sort of faux concern tends to be less about disabled people’s equality and more about women’s inequality. (And though we’re often cut out from the discussion, disabled women can be the ones who are pregnant.) Days before Phillips’ documentary was even set to air, the Mail used it as an opportunity to run an article claiming women “are being pressured to abort babies” with Down’s.
And yet anti-choice campaigners and media organisations who purport to wish to “protect” disabled foetuses tend to be very quiet – or in the Mail’s case, very vocal – about the support disabled people should receive once they are out of the womb. Raising a child with a severe disability can be exhausting and difficult, as well as wonderful, and this is much harder when the state cuts play centres for disabled children, respite care and transport. Phillips herself admits she was lucky to be able to afford to hire a live-in nanny to help with her disabled child, an advantage women on low incomes struggling alone can only imagine.
And we need to talk about that too, if we are going to really have this discussion. We need to admit that things such as economic and gender inequality, as well as perceptions of disability, impact on our supposedly free choices. And we need to argue for positive change, such as more government support for disabled children (and adults), and more inclusion of disabled people in all parts of society.
As we all know, life, let alone disability or raising children, is not black and white but rather filled with multiple shades of grey. I hope Phillips’ documentary starts a long overdue and nuanced conversation. Both women and disabled people deserve better than simplistic judgments.
Comments on this article will be pre-moderated | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2021/mar/29/san-marino-dont-need-derision-of-fans-suffering-delusions-of-grandeur | Football | 2021-03-29T07:00:04.000Z | Barry Glendenning | San Marino need support, not derision from fans with delusions of grandeur | Barry Glendenning | By no means the first football grandee to assert that playing international cannon fodder such as San Marino ought to be beneath the England team, Gary Lineker was the most recent and high profile. During the Wembley rout on Thursday, the man who served his country with so much distinction mused aloud on social media, tweeting: “Surely we’ve reached the stage where the lowest ranked nations should play among themselves to qualify for the right to play at this level. It’s become absurd.”
While one suspects a younger Lineker would have happily looked past the absurdity of such a mismatch and seen instead an opportunity to fill his Adidas Copa Mundials, the current incarnation seemed unenthused by the spectacle of England piling the hurt on a team who have never won an international match and boast a car salesman and graphic designer among their number. As with much of Lineker’s social media output, responses to his tweet were as plentiful as they were mixed.
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Many concurred, with some suggesting with varying degrees of vehemence that San Marino were not worthy to breathe the same air as their exalted hosts, a team so famously successful that they have failed to reach let alone win the final of any of the 26 most recent major tournaments they have contested. Words such as “rubbish”, “abject” and “embarrassing” peppered the responses, adjectives readers of a certain age may recall being used to describe England’s effort when they were dumped out of Euro 2016 by Iceland.
Others, this column included, accused Lineker of condescension, a charge he denied, pointing out San Marino had every right to turn up and take their inevitable hiding. Their largely amateur status and a winter of Covid‑enforced dormancy meant their players had been forced to get the band back together at short notice. All things considered, including the wealth of talent at Gareth Southgate’s disposal, it could be argued it was not San Marino who ought to have been embarrassed by the 5-0 scoreline. Besides, this season alone in England, six top-flight teams have lost matches by five goals or more; one of whom sit second in the league table.
Of course any team can have a bad day at the office but it is the relentlessness of the slaughters to which countries such as San Marino, Faroe Islands, Liechtenstein and Moldova are subjected that have prompted calls for these minnows to be consigned to their own “pre-qualifying” groups. Rather than waste the time of Europe’s pre-eminent sides, they would duke it out among themselves, with only the strongest one or two winning the opportunity to compete with their betters.
San Marino’s Manuel Battistini heads clear under pressure from Jesse Lingard. The visiting squad were returning from a lengthy period of inaction. Photograph: Carl Recine/AFP/Getty Images
It is an eminently sensible idea. At a time when the international football calendar is already too busy and increasingly legitimate concerns around the climate emergency dictate that we have no option but to play fewer football matches, any reduction in the number of qualifiers would be welcome. Furthermore, such change in format would significantly increase the number of competitive games played by Europe’s minnows, helping them to improve, enjoy the rare experience of playing on the front foot and increase their chances of taking a half-decent scalp should they qualify for the qualifiers proper.
Whether Europe’s lowest ranked teams would be open to such a scheme remains to be seen, but Uefa should make it its business to at least canvas the national associations in question and offer a financial inducement in the way of compensation for any drop in revenue they might encounter on the back of being relegated to the minor leagues. It is, however, imperative that any such plan should be put in place because it is in the best interests of all concerned and not just because countries such as England are tired of playing against them.
Such a system already exists in the Oceania Football Federation and the compelling documentary Next Goal Wins chronicles the commendable attempts of the utterly hapless American Samoa to make it through pre-qualifying for Brazil 2014. Still embarrassed by the famous 31-0 humiliation visited upon them by Australia in a qualifier for Japan and South Korea 2002, the team from the tiny US territory were almost comically inept when it came to the basics of football and went into the competition ranked joint bottom of Fifa’s world rankings after 30 consecutive defeats.
Jaiyah Saelua of American Samoa, the first transgender player to appear in a men’s World Cup qualifier, is featured in the documentary Next Goal Wins. Photograph: Pua Tofaeono/The Guardian
Unpaid amateurs, one of them a trans woman who went on to be the first of her gender to play in a men’s World Cup qualifier, American Samoa drafted in an abrasive Dutchman, Thomas Rongen, to give them some proper coaching. Their modest ambitions? To score a goal, win a game and perhaps emerge victorious from the round robin in which they were pitted against Samoa, Tonga and Cook Islands. Scheduling double training sessions around their day jobs, Rongen transformed his devoted charges into a passable impersonation of a football team who made international headlines upon ticking the first two boxes. Almost miraculously, they came within a lick of goalpost paint of achieving all three aims.
In a football environment increasingly mired in toxic abuse, snark, entitlement and cynicism, the uplifting Next Goal Wins ought to be mandatory viewing for anyone who would belittle the forlorn attempts of the American Samoas or San Marinos of this world to mix it with the big boys. These proud players neither need nor deserve the pity, scorn or derision of fans of more established teams suffering from delusions of grandeur. All they want is some encouragement and perhaps a little outside help. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/nov/12/private-uk-health-data-donated-medical-research-shared-insurance-companies | Technology | 2023-11-12T07:00:14.000Z | Shanti Das | Private UK health data donated for medical research shared with insurance companies | Sensitive health information donated for medical research by half a million UK citizens has been shared with insurance companies despite a pledge that it would not be.
An Observer investigation has found that UK Biobank opened up its vast biomedical database to insurance sector firms several times between 2020 and 2023. The data was provided to insurance consultancy and tech firms for projects to create digital tools that help insurers predict a person’s risk of getting a chronic disease. The findings have raised concerns among geneticists, data privacy experts and campaigners over vetting and ethical checks at Biobank.
Set up in 2006 to help researchers investigating diseases, the database contains millions of blood, saliva and urine samples, collected regularly from about 500,000 adult volunteers – along with medical records, scans, wearable device data and lifestyle information.
Approved researchers around the world can pay £3,000 to £9,000 to access records ranging from medical history and lifestyle information to whole genome sequencing data. The resulting research has yielded major medical discoveries and led to Biobank being considered a “jewel in the crown” of British science.
Biobank said it strictly guarded access to its data, only allowing access by bona fide researchers for health-related projects in the public interest. It said this included researchers of all stripes, whether employed by academic, charitable or commercial organisations – including insurance companies – and that “information about data sharing was clearly set out to participants at the point of recruitment and the initial assessment”.
But evidence gathered by the Observer suggests Biobank did not explicitly tell participants it would share data with insurance companies – and made several public commitments not to do so.
When the project was announced, in 2002, Biobank promised that data would not be given to insurance companies after concerns were raised that it could be used in a discriminatory way, such as by the exclusion of people with a particular genetic makeup from insurance.
In an FAQ section on the Biobank website, participants were told: “Insurance companies will not be allowed access to any individual results nor will they be allowed access to anonymised data.” The statement remained online until February 2006, during which time the Biobank project was subject to public scrutiny and discussed in parliament.
The promise was also reiterated in several public statements by backers of Biobank, who said safeguards would be built in to ensure that “no insurance company or police force or employer will have access”.
This weekend, Biobank said the pledge – made repeatedly over four years – no longer applied. It said the commitment had been made before recruitment formally began in 2007 and that when Biobank volunteers enrolled they were given revised information.
This included leaflets and consent forms that contained a provision that anonymised Biobank data could be shared with private firms for “health-related” research, but did not explicitly mention insurance firms or correct the previous assurances.
Biobank also said commitments that “insurance companies ... will not be given any individual’s information, samples or test results” – repeated in leaflets over a 17-year period – meant to refer to identifiable information, such as that which is linked to a person’s name, rather than to other data about Biobank participants.
The exact nature of the data shared with the insurance industry is not clear because Biobank does not routinely publish this and has declined so far to say. Summaries of the projects published online suggest it included de-identified, participant-level data on diseases, lifestyle and biomarkers.
One company granted access, ReMark International, is a “global insurance consultancy” that underwrites a million policies a year and lists clients including Legal & General and MetLife. In its application to Biobank, approved in December 2022, the company said it needed data to develop an algorithm to predict diseases and death, using hospital records and smartwatch data to examine the relationship between lifestyle, mental health and biomarkers.
Another firm given Biobank data, Lydia.ai, is a Canadian “insurtech” firm that wants to give people “personalised and predictive health scores”. The company says insurers work with it to “leverage new sources of data to make risk predictions”. It was granted access to Biobank data in January for a project linking health records to lifestyle data to “predict chronic diseases”.
Club Vita, a “longevity data analytics company for pension funds & their advisors, insurers, reinsurers and asset managers” – whose clients include 400 pension funds and 25 insurers – was also granted access. Its project sought to assess data on morbidity outcomes using a range of risk factors such as gender, diseases, treatment, location and lifestyle.
Prof Yves Moreau, a genetics and AI expert who has worked on projects using data from UK Biobank, said the data-sharing appeared to be a “serious and disturbing breach of trust”. He said the idea that Biobank’s public commitments could be “silently superseded” by leaflets was “weak”, and questioned whether participants understood that data could be shared with insurance firms. “The data looks very mundane – a bunch of measurements. But there are really major impacts,” he said.
Prof Sandra Wachter, an expert in technology and regulation at the Oxford Internet Institute, said the cases risked eroding the trust of volunteers who “donated their data for a good cause”. She said the development of insurance products to “predict if someone will get sick” raised serious ethical concerns.
Sam Smith, coordinator of medConfidential, which campaigns for the privacy of health data, said people gave data to Biobank to “help cure diseases”, not so it could be used by the insurance industry. He said: “Biobank must tell every participant what data was shared with insurance companies and why.”
Biobank said it rejected any suggestion that data had ever been shared for uses that volunteers had not consented to, and said it was wrong to suggest that prior promises – which pre-dated formal enrolment at Biobank – should still apply.
It added that researchers worked for “all manner of companies”, and that provided they passed its “stringent access protocols”, they could conduct research using Biobank data. Research by insurance companies into how lifestyle behaviours can improve health or help identify health risks was “consistent with being health-related and in the public interest”, it said. It added that it had consulted independent ethicists “at length” about commercial data sharing, and that “complex” applications were referred to an expert committee.
Prof Naomi Allen, chief scientist at UK Biobank, said: “Our careful processes have been followed in all these cases. De-identified health data has been shared because these are bona fide researchers working on health-related research, including looking at what impacts human health and longevity – and that is what our participants signed up to help with.”
There is no suggestion that Biobank data has ever been used by insurers to make direct decisions about individual policies. No physical biological samples were shared.
As well as insurance sector firms, Biobank data has also been given to other companies that are not directly health-related, including pension funds and investment firms, project records show.
In another case that has raised questions for Biobank, a California company whose website is covered in spelling mistakes was granted access to data. Flying Troika LLC’s website says it is a “pure research lab” offering “deep larning” solutions in sectors including insurance, pharma, manufacturing and retail. It says it has teams in 13 cities, including “Maimi” and Edinburgh. The company is understood to have sought genetic data, MRI scans and other information in April 2021, to develop a “novel AI model” that can predict ageing processes.
Prof David Leslie, director of ethics and responsible innovation at the Alan Turing Institute, said: “Making explicit … just how each of these projects counted as data being used for medical projects in the public interest would seem essential for maintaining public trust.”
The Information Commissioner’s Office, the UK’s data privacy watchdog, is considering the matter. It said: “People have the right to expect that organisations will handle their information securely and that it will only be used for the purpose they are told or agree to. Organisations must provide clear, accurate and comprehensive information … especially where sensitive personal information is involved.”
Fears over China’s access to genetic data of UK citizens
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https://www.theguardian.com/stage/dance-blog/2016/feb/05/benjamin-millepied-quits-paris-opera-ballet | Stage | 2016-02-05T08:00:24.000Z | Judith Mackrell | Benjamin Millepied and Paris Opera Ballet: a step too far | Benjamin Millepied’s decision to quit his job as director of the Paris Opera Ballet has been shocking in its abruptness, not just because he’s only been in the post for little more than a year, but because so much was promised by his appointment.
Benjamin Millepied resigns from Paris Opera Ballet
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Millepied arrived in Paris with grand plans for revitalising the company’s repertory. As a choreographer himself, he planned to create new ballets in-house; but he was also planning a dramatic increase in the number of new commissions, bringing in works from choreographers such as Wayne McGregor, Justin Peck and Crystal Pite whom he regarded as central to 21st-century ballet-making.
Millepied also spoke of restoring music and music-making to the heart of the company, with commissioned scores for some of the new works and collaborative productions with the opera company. Meanwhile, he identified the importance of stimulating dance-making talent from inside the company ranks, and with the appointment of William Forsythe as an associate artist, he set in place an academy with a training programme to develop young choreographers.
Most ambitiously, Millepied aspired to free the company from what he saw as its hidebound adherence to tradition. He planned to loosen its competitive system of grading and promoting the dancers, and to challenge complacency over its signature style. Paris dancers have been renowned the world over for their elegance, precision and grace, yet they can also appear mannered and Millepied was urging his company to more expression, freedom and musicality in their performances.
He seemed to be succeeding, as even in his first season, critics began to note a new zest and fluency. Yet Millepied, who was born in France but spent his adult career dancing and choreographing in America – was trying to deliver these changes with a bluntness that many in Paris found hostile. He pulled no punches when he spoke in public about his mission to “bring a breath of air to ballet”. During a television documentary broadcast just before Christmas, he said that the company was in a rut, too attached to its strict hierarchical structure and far from being as “excellent” as it believed. It was sometimes as boring to watch as “wallpaper”.
Not surprisingly, a lot of the dancers took offence; one told Le Monde that the atmosphere in the company had became “very stormy” in the wake of Millepied’s attack, another senior principal said he’d never experienced anything like it. Millepied, however, in explaining his motives for leaving the company has barely touched on these disagreements. Instead, he has focused on the fact that the demands of running as large a company as Paris have proved incompatible with his personal ambitions to choreograph. “I want to regain my freedom and I want to create,” he says.
Benjamin Millepied and his wife, Natalie Portman. Photograph: Valery Hache/AFP/Getty Images
To that end Millepied will return in July to Los Angeles, where he still directs the LA Dance Project, a small contemporary dance company that he founded in 2012. With him will be his wife, Natalie Portman, and their son, and while Millepied has said that Portman did not influence his decision, there have been rumours that the actor was unhappy in Paris and was keen to base herself professionally back in America.
Whatever the motives of Millepied’s decisions, there’s a wider issue here, which is the challenge faced by any outsider in trying to reform an organisation as large and inherently conservative as POB. With 150 dancers and three centuries of proud tradition, the company is as hard and cumbersome to turn around as a giant ocean liner. Millepied seems genuinely to have misunderstood the beast he was dealing with when he came to Paris, to have underestimated the complexity of its politics, and the sensitivity of its internal dynamics.
There’s a parallel here to the situation created by the Royal Ballet when it experimented with its own “breath of air” – Australian artistic director Ross Stretton. Setting aside – if we can – the ugliness with which his appointment ended, with allegations of sexual harassment from some of the dancers, Stretton’s problem as director was that he simply didn’t get the company who’d hired him. During the 13 months he was in post, he made some good repertory choices – the Royal got its first Mark Morris ballet, for instance. But Stretton never understood what gave the company its identity. Key dancers such as Sarah Wildor, Zenaida Yanowsky and Irek Mukhamedov were sidelined, because they were too idiosyncratic for his taste; the classics were overlooked and in general there was a sense of dissatisfaction and disconnect within the company, who threatened to strike over his management style.
Aurélie Dupont and Jean-Guillaume Bart, in Rudolf Nureyev’s production of La Bayadere. Photograph: Don Mcphee/The Guardian
Back in Paris, former ballerina Aurélie Dupont has now been named as Millepied’s successor. Trained at the Paris ballet school and up to 2015 a beloved star of the company, Dupont has the POB ethos bred in her bones. In her first public statement, she stressed that her vision for the company will maintain some continuity with Millepied’s, and there are hopes that the latter will return as a guest choreographer. The director of Paris Opera, Stephane Lissner is adamant that Millepied’s brief tenure should not be regarded as a mistake, remarking with classically Parisian aplomb: “I have no regrets over appointing Millepied. He leaves too soon but others leave too late.” However, those whose sensitivities have been wounded by Millepied will take comfort from the fact that Dupont’s style promises to be more respectful, more emollient even – as she said to the assembled press: “It’s a love story with the Paris Opera Ballet. You lose your soul when you join it. It takes time for things to change.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/she-said/2014/jun/18/am-i-one-of-danny-cohens-box-set-snobs | From the Observer | 2014-06-18T15:00:05.000Z | Sarah Hughes | Am I one of Danny Cohen's box set snobs? | My first response reading Danny Cohen’s comments about box set snobs overrating US dramas was boredom. “Yet another attempt to generate controversy,” I sniffed before returning to my Orange Is The New Black marathon. “Any fool knows this is a golden age in US television…”
And then I stopped, hit pause and remembered how I felt when I first moved to the US in 2007 and, crucially, how I felt on my return in 2012. Because Cohen has a point: this is just as good a time for UK television as it is for TV in the US, and sometimes it’s hard to remember that.
Cohen, the BBC's head of television has said British shows were being maligned by "box-set consumers who have a larger voice in Britain's cultural dialogue than the average family". Their perceptions were skewed because "only the very best" US shows come to the UK, he wrote on a BBC blog. The big ITV and BBC dramas were of world-class quality as well as having wide appeal, he added.
When my husband and I moved to New York in 2007 the list of shows I yearned for was long: Peep Show, The Thick of It, Spooks, Shameless, Green Wing, Coronation Street. American TV seemed alien. Yes, there was some great stuff – The Sopranos ended the week we arrived in New York (thanks New York Daily News for running the ending on the front page before we’d caught up), Mad Men started soon after – but there was also a great deal of dross. Long-running procedural shows in which immaculately coiffed women stared meaningfully into the distance while rugged men ran through this week’s plot; endless makeover series; the slow-dawning realisation that Charlie Sheen really was a big star on US TV.
We adjusted and American television became the best thing ever. On trips back to the UK we boasted smugly about our access to HBO, about the great shows starting on AMC (“There’s this drama called Breaking Bad, I can’t believe they’re not showing it here.”), about the dry, clever comedies on NBC (“You guys should really watch Community...”)
Then we moved home and, thanks to the arrival of Netflix and the launch of Sky Atlantic, it was simpler than ever to watch US shows in the UK. Parks and Recreation turned up on the BBC, Homeland came to Channel 4, Sky fed us a steady diet of HBO’s most brilliant dramas from True Detective to Game of Thrones. It was easy to become one of Cohen’s snobs because these were the shows we’d been watching over the past five years, and any way didn’t UK shows look a bit cheap in comparison, a little under-invested in, unless you happen to love period dramas about imperious dowagers, of course.
Then last summer something changed. I don’t know whether it was because I readjusted to the rhythms of UK TV, as I’d once adjusted to those in the US, but suddenly I found myself thrilled by British television again. I loved Line of Duty’s twisting tale and Utopia’s weird worldview; Sally Wainwright warmed my heart in Halifax and tore it apart in Hebden Bridge; I thrilled to Top Boy’s swagger and Peaky Blinders’ style and wept almost as much as Olivia Colman when Broadchurch came to its bleak, bruising end. I realised, in short, that there is good television made everywhere in the world, that there’s nothing to be gained from lauding America and condemning the UK. Am I still one of Mr Cohen’s box set snobs? Probably, habits are after all hard to change, but these days my box sets are just as likely to come from the UK as from elsewhere and that can only be a good thing. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/small-business-network/2018/apr/13/storm-in-a-teacup-could-instant-tea-overtake-the-classic-bag | Guardian Small Business Network | 2018-04-13T06:30:29.000Z | Anne Cassidy | Storm in a teacup: could instant tea overtake the classic bag? | Simon Cheng’s grandfather turned 102 this year. The secret to his longevity? “He drinks three cups of tea a day,” says Cheng, a former hedge fund manager who ditched the corporate life to focus on his mission to heal the world with tea. Tea crystals to be exact.
Cheng is the founder of Pique Tea, a crystallised tea that instantly dissolves in hot or cold water. He believes Pique, which claims to deliver six times the antioxidants as the tea brewed from teabags, will replace the teabag one day. “I would equate tea crystals to the teabag, which was invented more than 100 years ago, as being the new format of how people will be drinking tea,” he says.
Tea: have I got brews for you
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For Cheng, who was born in Hong Kong, tea drinking was a beloved family ritual growing up. But, after moving to the US in his teens, he became more consumed with getting into top schools and highly-paid jobs. “I was working very long days for years without taking much care of my body, which just left me constantly in and out of the doctor’s clinic,” he says. He developed health issues, and had to undergo surgery for collapsed lungs. A turning point came on his 30th birthday, which he spent in hospital being treated for an infection. “It was a real wake-up call for me,” he says. “I just took a look at myself and wondered what I was going to do to heal myself.”
He started practising chi kung meditation and turned to Chinese medicine. “On a physical level I never felt better, but I also felt energised emotionally and spiritually,” he says. He travelled to Asia, visiting Tibet, Indonesia and Yunnan province in south-west China, meeting experts in plant-based medicine. In Yunnan province he discovered an ancient method for turning tea leaves into a form of medicine through a process of boiling and reduction known as Cha Gao, or tea paste. “It’s a 1,300-year-old preparation they’ve been doing,” he says. “I was so amazed that I became very inspired to share that with the world.”
Simon Cheng, founder, Pique Tea. Photograph: Kacy Johnson
Intent on creating his own version of this tea, Cheng developed a cold-brewing process whereby leaves are brewed at low temperatures for up to eight hours to fully extract the nutrients and produce crystals. Pique Tea was born. Pique, which launched in 2016, won three gold medals earlier this year at the tea industry’s equivalent of the Oscars, the Global Tea Championship. The organic tea, with flavours including organic jasmine green and English breakfast, is sold online and stocked in 1,500 stores in the US, including Whole Foods Market.
The US may be a famously coffee-loving nation, but tea is finding fans in the younger generation, with a poll last year showing coffee and tea were equally popular among millennials. Cheng feels he’s part of this tea revolution. “In California, we supply [the offices of] Facebook, Airbnb and Snapchat and the tea drinking ratio [to coffee] in these places is two to one, because a lot of people drink a bottled tea in the afternoons and a tea in the morning. It’s pretty surprising.”
If you talk to tea farmers, the stuff they sell the teabag manufacturers is not of the highest quality
Instant tea, however, has had an image problem. “[Instant tea] likely appears more processed than other offerings in the [tea] category,” says Beth Bloom, associate director for Mintel’s US food and drink reports. Major brands such as PG Tips and Nestea offer instant teas, but brands that focus as much on health as convenience are beginning to emerge, such as Cusa, an organic instant tea that launched in the US last year. In the UK, fewer than one in five people drink instant tea, but younger tea drinkers are more keen, with 34% of consumers aged 25-34 trying instant, according to Mintel’s 2017 UK tea report.
Most of us see the teabag as an already perfectly convenient way of making a brew, with teabags accounting for 96% of the 165m cups of tea drunk every day in the UK. Manufacturers have also begun to address environmental concerns by switching to plastic-free biodegradable bags. But Cheng argues that the quality of tea in the bag, particularly for green tea, can be inferior. “Teabag makers understand that users of teabags want to see the colour of their brew change within a matter of a minute,” he says. “The only way to accomplish that is to have very finely ground up leaves, almost powderised in a bag. If you talk to tea farmers, the stuff they sell the teabag manufacturers is not of the highest quality.”
Cheng believes tea drinkers are ready for something new. “My goal is actually to deliver on the health benefits and the quality parameters of loose leaf tea, combined with the convenience of something that’s in a crystal form,” he says. “We’ve seen a great deal of interest from the UK. I think the desire for convenience on a daily basis is something people want in this day and age regardless of the culture.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/jun/11/joel-tomkins-resigns-wigan-joins-hull-kr-super-league | Sport | 2018-06-11T14:40:08.000Z | Aaron Bower | Joel Tomkins quits Wigan for Hull KR after ‘embarrassing’ bar incident | Joel Tomkins’s Wigan career is over after the forward agreed to cut ties with his hometown club and join Hull KR less than a week after being suspended following an “embarrassing” off-field incident.
The 31-year-old has signed a deal until the end of next season after Wigan accepted the player’s resignation following footage that emerged this month of him and his younger brother Sam being abusive towards staff in a bar in the town.
Tomkins was fined £10,000 and stood down from selection for four weeks. Last night Wigan announced the arrival of Joe Greenwood from the Gold Coast Titans on a three‑and‑a‑half-year deal.
Tomkins said: “I’m sure everybody is aware of what’s gone on at Wigan and I accepted the punishment from them. I decided the best thing for all parties would be for me to leave.
Tommy Makinson’s fine form earns England call-up to face New Zealand
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“There were a few other Super League clubs interested as well as Rovers but Tim [Sheens, the Hull KR coach] called me personally and really sold the club to me, both for the back end of this year and next season.
“It has been embarrassing for me, there’s no doubt about that, and it’s a sad situation for me to leave Wigan in this way, but it’s also an opportunity to move to a club that’s on the rise.”
Jake Connor, Luke Thompson and Tommy Makinson are the three new inclusions in Wayne Bennett’s England squad for the Test against New Zealand in Denver on 23 June. Connor and Thompson, who have impressed for Hull and St Helens respectively this season, have been promoted from the England Knights squad.
England squad v New Zealand on 23 June, Denver J Bateman, G Burgess, S Burgess, T Burgess, J Connor, J Graham, R Hall, C Hill, J Lomax, T Makinson, J McGillvary, S O’Loughlin, M Percival, S Ratchford, J Roby, L Thompson, G Widdop, G Williams, E Whitehead. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2000/sep/10/features.review17 | From the Observer | 2000-09-10T21:44:35.000Z | Nick Paton Walsh | An artist's home is his studio | At the Saatchi Gallery's Ant Noises 2 exhibition stands a curious series of glass cages. The innermost cage contains an easel, a smock and a roll of toilet paper and the outer box two tables, painter's palettes and brushes. This is Contemplating A Self Portrait (As A Pharmacist) by Damien Hirst, his take on the artist's studio. The only sign of recent life is the faint smell of white spirit emanating from the gaps between the glass plates of the cage.
Hirst didn't want to talk about his piece; he is very busy in New York. But as an artist who has already exerted a huge influence on the art world, might this piece herald a new fashion for giving the public a glimpse into the inner sanctum?
For many, the studio is a sensitive issue; Tracey Emin also didn't want to talk about hers let alone allow a stranger near such a 'private place'. Lucian Freud has painted his studio with its sagging sofa and pile of paint rags into his pictures for years. Picasso once referred to his workplace as the 'scaffold', hinting that each time he approached the canvas it was like meeting the hangman; that any public execution of him as an artist would begin at the canvas. Last year the sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi transported a replica of his entire studio to the Dean Gallery in Edinburgh.
So is the studio the hub of all creation? Or is it as relevant as the printing press where a novel becomes a bound set of papers?
Just off a busy main road in south London lies a near-condemned warehouse, home to the Chapman brothers, Jake and Dinos. On the second floor, above a busy furniture workshop, they rent two rooms. The roof leaks. The floor is covered in dust. There is a big gap in the larger of the two rooms where a wall should be, along with a table-tennis table and their latest work - destined for the Royal Academy's forthcoming Apocalypse exhibition - the sprawling vision of a gruesome battlefield that is Hell . The fumes from the resin glue and spray paint they use for their work are strong enough to make visitors squint. When they first moved in to the building, four years ago, Jake and Dinos could smell the fumes. Now they are immune.
'It's a depressant,' says Dinos. I point to the half-finished sculpture of Siamese twin boys with penises for ears, and ask if the fumes have influenced their work. 'Oh no,' he grins 'those are our happy things.'
This studio is a mess, one that suggests its two occupants don't pay much heed to the consequences of their work.
'The mess is the consequence of us working,' says Dinos. 'We could fill this with rubbish in a week.' The pair talk incessantly as they work. 'When you work on your own, you work for an imagined audience,' says Jake, 'and they present the work and receive feedback. But, working together, we're constantly viewing each other's work and hence have constant feedback. In some sense that writes out the audience and makes us quite indifferent to them.'
Jake finds the fascination that buyers and critics have with the Chapmans' studio now palls. He recalls how a group of buyers once came to their old premises in Brick Lane. They were delighted to find that the lights didn't work and that they had to trample down a steep drop to get to some of the pieces.
'They loved it,' he says, disapprovingly. 'But it's like going to Tesco, buying some beans and wanting to go to the factory to see where they are made. Mess, in some naff analogy, equals toil, which buyers find attractive.'
The McDonald's just down the road has, for them, been the biggest geographical influence on their work. This is the 'McOffice', where most of their business gets done; where a rich buyer once approached the counter, ordered a coffee and then asked where he should sit to be served; and where they find 'the shallow end of the gene pool' that inspires the physiology of much of their work.
Jake insists that a 'geographical psychoanalysis' of their warehouse as an influence on them won't wash, and that their studio is just a place like any other, irrelevant to their work.
'If I could buy a machine, press a button on it and have the work come out, that would suit me down to the ground,' says Dinos. Neither of them shows any emotion when they say that within months the whole block will be knocked down to make way for a massive Asda supermarket. They'll move on. 'We'll just have less space and higher bills,' grumbles Dinos.
Insouciance is something of a calling card for Young British Artists, so I approached some of art's more senior figures. Patrick Caulfield, who lives in an exclusive square in north London, has a bare, white-walled studio on the second floor. He also has a few hang-ups about the room.
The work in progress, which he says is about 'hotels', faces the wall. Unfinished works remain private. The sign on the shelf, reading 'Absolut Caulfield' referring to the vodka, is in keeping with the faint smell of whisky that warms the place. Among the limited clutter is a stereo, a set of country and western tapes, and a book of nineteenth-century battles. There is a Wild Bunch poster on the wall, in Spanish. In his time Caulfield has worked in basements, in Soho studios and with half of his painting stuck out into the hallway. 'It doesn't matter what circumstances you work in. It's your job so you have to do it,' he insists. But the space has its effect on the mind. 'If I haven't got an idea of what to paint, I can hardly bear to climb the stairs to the studio. It's terrifying, because you're in competition with the last works you've done. I go to a pub, sit there and think before I come back - then it's as though I made a journey to get here.' But for Caulfield the contents and dynamics of the studio seldom influence the process of making the final product. 'I work from memory; I observe things. When I paint, the image is already in my head.'
A close friend of Caulfield, Peter Blake, works in a very different environment. Blake, whose varied canon is often rather unfairly dismissed with a nod to his Sergeant Pepper sleeve for the Beatles, works in a 3,500 sq ft studio in west London.
Full of what he calls 'works in progress', the space comprises a series of rooms where he sculpts, paints, or does woodwork surrounded by a huge variety of objects, from antique midget cowboy boots to Elvis lamps. While Caulfield requires blank space, Blake surrounds himself with objects. Both say that the ideas evolve in their head regardless of materials in a studio, yet nonetheless have completely different workplaces.
Sculptor Richard Wentworth offers a clear perspective on the relationship between the workplace and the work over the phone from a gallery in Munich. 'It's never to do with art,' he begins. 'Studios are incredibly articulate, but really no more so than a kitchen. It's rather like anything else people do in life: much is limited by what their economic parameters support, much is limited by what they can bear. But these spaces are born of the equation of somebody's life.'
It is a pretty tall order to convincingly tie the equation Wentworth mentions to somebody's work. But a more straightforward connection between the place and the artist became apparent when I went to see Gavin Turk, whose contribution to Ant Noises 2 is Death of Che. Turk spends his day in a room about 20 feet above the bustle of one of London's busiest and most littered streets. The staircase is dark and decrepit; the room caked in dust.
Turk is explaining how sculpture, for him, is more involved in the process of physical creation than what surrounds him, when our attention turns to his latest project. In the middle of the floor, lies a piece of bronze sheet metal, that Turk has covered in dust and beige paints, and contorted so that it now closely resembles, in both shape and texture, one of many items on the street below: a cardboard storage box. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/mar/07/readers-world-book-day-costumes-from-the-cat-in-the-hat-to-mr-tickle | Books | 2019-03-07T15:41:06.000Z | Guardian readers | Readers' World Book Day costumes – from the Cat in the Hat to Mr Tickle | We asked you to send in your best efforts for World Book Day and you did not disappoint. Below are some of the photographs we received (we wish we could include more) and your inspiration behind the costumes.
‘There were some late nights on the sewing machine’
Fakhrul from Walsall sent in a great photo of his son Raheem’s costume (pictured above in the main image).
“It was my 17-year-old daughter Aleemah’s idea, actually. She’s a fan of Dr Seuss so she suggested the costume for her 11-year-old brother. My wife made the whole costume herself from scratch at home. It took her about a week, including some late nights on the sewing machine for the costume as well as the hat. Raheem’s over the moon with the final result.”
‘Who doesn’t love a beret?’
Nell from Essex as Claude and Sir Bobblysock. Photograph: James
James from Essex got in touch to tell us about his daughter Nell, who dressed up as Claude and Sir Bobblysock (from the Claude book series by Alex T Smith).
“I saw the beret in a shop a few months back, which started it all off. Nell wasn’t sure if she was going to definitely go as him but I bought it anyway as she looked good in it. Over the weekend we started the papier-mache for Sir Bobblysock and the ears and we had a trial run on the makeup last night. So this morning everything went smoothly.
“I’m relieved at the way it has turned out and Nell loves it. Also, who doesn’t love a beret?”
‘She was pleased she could tickle her teachers’
Anaiah, 6, from Milton Keynes as Mr Tickle. Photograph: Ria
Mr Tickle is one of six-year-old Anaiah’s favourite characters, said her mum, Ria, from Milton Keynes.
“We made the costume together yesterday evening after school. It took around 30 minutes to draw and cut the paper into the correct shapes, paint it orange and allow it all to dry. We then taped up the hands and shoulder straps to the front and back pieces.
“Anaiah was very pleased with the result, especially when she realised she could tickle her class teacher this morning.”
‘We found most things searching through wardrobes’
Tom from Worcestershire as Dolores Umbridge. Photograph: Katie
Katie from Pershore, Worcestershire, sent in this great transformation of her son Tom into Dolores Umbridge from Harry Potter.
“Tom is obsessed with all things Harry Potter, and was always adamant he wanted to dress as Dolores Umbridge. We found most things searching through wardrobes – my skirt and scarf, my late mother’s jacket. Shoes from a charity shop. My old handbag, with a kitten notebook. His father made the magic wand using wooden beads. The most fun was getting out the curling tongs and make up.
“We are both incredibly happy – the response he got from his classmates was so worth the effort. He couldn’t stop smiling! Tom has always loved dressing up and acting. He spends nearly five hours a week at drama clubs. I am so proud that he has the confidence to carry this off.”
‘It’s really important for children to have books that reflect their different cultures’
Ben, 8, from West Sussex as Salim in The London Eye Mystery. Photograph: Nikki
Ben, 8, from West Sussex, told us why he wanted to go as Salim in The London Eye Mystery.
“I chose Salim because he is English and Indian like me. My mummy gave me an old-fashioned camera from a jumble sale to help with the costume. I then stuffed a pillow in a rucksack and wore blue trousers like Salim. The story doesn’t say what colour his T-shirt was so I just chose one of mine. I’m very happy!”
His mum, Nikki, said: “It’s really important for children to have books that reflect their different cultures, ethnicities and identities. Ben loved this book, partly because he can see himself in the brave and handsome Salim.”
‘She always seems to pick baddies’
Izzy, 11, from Derbyshire as the Demon Dentist. Photograph: Adrian
Izzy, 11, from Hadfield, Derbyshire, went to school as the Demon Dentist from the David Walliams book.
“She’s reading the book at the moment and loving it. She always seems to pick baddies, too – she’s been Mrs Twit (Roald Dahl’s The Twits), Cruella de Vil (101 Dalmations) and Maleficent (Disney’s Sleeping Beauty) previously. Baddies are much more interesting characters! Her costume is made up of a lab coat borrowed from my wife’s work, some silver hair spray, some hair-styling, face paint and makeup, and that’s it, really. We put it all together between 7am and 8am this morning,” said her dad, Adrian.
‘Decorating a potato has worked out to be far more economical and fun’
Rowan, 7, from Nottinghamshire with his Captain Underpants potato. Photograph: Laura
Rowan, 7, from Nottinghamshire, may not have dressed up today but we just had to include him and his Captain Underpants potato.
His mum, Laura, said: “The idea came from Pinterest, of course, but we adapted the design, which was originally for a pumpkin. No costumes were required from his school this year, which has been a blessing. Instead, the children were asked to decorate a potato as their favourite book character, which worked out to be far more economical and more fun. We are both delighted!”
‘We had a lot of fun’
Teachers and staff at Featherstone high school, Southall, London, including Fern from Charlotte’s Web, Mary Poppins, the Phantom of the Opera and Lady Macbeth. Photograph: Featherstone High School
Teachers have also been in touch to show us the fun they’ve been having with their creations.
Alexandra Thompson who works at Featherstone high school in Southall, London, sent in a photo of teachers and support staff dressed up as various literary characters. Thompson is dressed as Fern from Charlotte’s Web: “Everyone had a lot of fun and we are all thrilled with how the costumes turned out.” Can you tell who they are? | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/apr/10/george-osborne-conservative-party-election-pledge-extra-8bn-nhs | Politics | 2015-04-10T21:15:56.000Z | Nicholas Watt | Conservative party pledges extra £8bn a year for NHS | George Osborne has moved to address concerns that the Tories have abandoned compassionate Conservatism by pledging to protect the “precious” NHS with a guarantee of an £8bn increase in spending per year above inflation by 2020.
The Conservatives will plug the NHS funding gap
George Osborne
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In a week that has seen signs of a slip in Tory poll ratings and claims that the Conservative party is running a highly personalised campaign against the Labour leader, Ed Miliband, the chancellor has moved to issue an “absolute commitment” to deliver the resources required by the NHS.
Writing in the Guardian, the chancellor claims the Conservatives will pledge in their general election manifesto, to be launched next week, to meet a £30bn per year funding gap by the end of the decade identified by Simon Stevens, the chief executive of NHS England.
The Stevens plan says that the gap would be filled through £22bn in efficiency savings, requiring an extra £8bn in governmental spending a year by 2020 over and above increases in line with inflation. This will come on top of the extra £2bn announced in the autumn statement.
NHS England currently has an annual budget of £102bn. With Osborne’s pledge factored in, this is forecast to increase in cash terms to £122bn by 2020.
The NHS is something precious, we value it for the security it provides to everyone in our country
George Osborne
Osborne writes: “We back the NHS’s plan, but there’s no point having a plan without the funding to deliver it, so today we commit to deliver what the NHS needs ... I can confirm that in the Conservative manifesto next week we will commit to a minimum real terms increase in NHS funding of £8bn in the next five years.”
The chancellor adds: “Decisions about spending go to the heart of our politics because they reflect our values. We in the Conservative party are in no doubt about our approach: the NHS is something precious, we value it for the security it provides to everyone in our country, and we will always give it the resources it needs.”
Downing Street will hope that the funding pledge may provide a poll boost to the Tories, and go some way to meeting – or at least neutralising – Labour’s lead on the NHS. The public health service is regularly listed by voters as the most important issue in the election campaign.
The Stevens plan applies to the NHS in England, but Osborne’s proposed funding increases also mean that extra cash would be sent to the devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland who are free to spend the money as they see fit.
The Tories will also move to show they can deliver tangible changes in the health service by announcing that pensioners aged over 75 will be given the right to same-day access to a GP and everyone will have access to a GP and the weekends and in the evenings by 2020. “By supporting the most vulnerable we can improve their lives and ease the pressures on the NHS by reducing the number of unnecessary and often distressing visits to A&E,” the chancellor writes.
The announcement by Osborne is designed to take the wind out of the sails of Labour which has warned in a recent campaign poster featuring an x-ray of a broken leg that the Tories would cut the NHS “to the bone”. Tory sources said that the extra £8bn pledged by the chancellor also went further than the £2.5bn Time to Care fund launched by Ed Miliband in his speech to the Labour conference last year.
David Cameron, who had built up Tory trust on the NHS before he became prime minister in 2010, acknowledges in private that the Conservative party inflicted immense political damage on itself with the bungled delivery of the Andrew Lansley health reforms, which prompted Labour claims that the Tories want to privatise the NHS.
In his Guardian article, the chancellor pledges unequivocal support for the NHS, in a bid to address concerns that the Tories are less than enthusiastic about a universal health service that is free at the point of delivery.
He writes: “The National Health Service is there for you throughout your life: from the day you are born, to your final days. It is something to be valued, protected and improved, and that it is what David Cameron and the Conservatives have done in this parliament.
Election 2015: polls show NHS poses greatest challenge for Tories
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“Our absolute commitment to the NHS is supported by a strong economy so that it’s there, free at the point of use, for the future, able to cope with an ageing population, and able to offer the best healthcare in the world.”
Chris Leslie, Labour’s shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, said: “Nobody will believe a word of this. The Tories have tried to announce this five times before, but they still can’t say where the money would come from. And they haven’t been able to say how they will pay for any of their panicky promises over the last 24 hours.
“George Osborne’s extreme plan to double the pace of spending cuts next year means he cannot credibly claim to protect the NHS. Other countries which have tried to make cuts on this scale have ended up cutting their health services. That’s why he wasn’t able to announce any extra NHS funding in his Budget last month. And the Tories have £10bn of unfunded tax promises which they also can’t say how they will pay for and are ahead of the NHS in the queue.
“Only Labour has a fully-funded plan to raise an extra £2.5bn a year to recruit 20,000 more nurses, 8,000 more GPs and 3,000 more midwives – paid for by a mansion tax on properties over £2m, closing tax loopholes and a levy on the tobacco companies.
“As Ed Balls has said, Labour will do whatever it takes to save our NHS. But after their broken promises of the last five years, nobody will trust the Tories with our NHS ever again.”
The chancellor, whose announcement is expected to be welcomed by Stevens, makes clear that the extra funding can be delivered by the Tories for three reasons.
NHS funding: plenty of manifesto pledges, but fewer firm figures | Letters
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In the first place, he argues, the party is best placed to deliver strong economic growth. Second, he says, the Conservative party track record since 2010 shows it can deliver extra funding to the NHS after new Treasury figures showed that the coalition has delivered real terms increase in NHS spending of £7.3bn.
Third, overall public spending towards the end of next parliament – by which time the extra £8bn will kick in – will be more benign than over the past five years. Spending cuts between 2016-2017 and 2017-2018 will be followed by a year of spending increases in line with inflation in 2018-2019, followed by rises in line with the growth of GDP from 2019-2020.
Osborne also takes a swipe at the shadow health secretary Andy Burnham, who raised questions before the 2010 election about ringfencing NHS spending, to reinforce the Tory argument that funding can only be delivered if the economy continues to grow.
He writes: “Those who urged us to cut the NHS also fail to understand the most important thing of all – all of this is only possible because of a strong economy. Harm the economy with higher taxes and higher debts and not only do you put millions of jobs at risk, you undermine the NHS and all the vital public services that a strong economy pays for. Countries like Portugal and Greece lost control of their economies, and each cut their health budgets by more than 10%.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2014/jan/31/cult-80s-film-back-to-the-future-adapted-west-end-musical | Stage | 2014-01-31T18:41:15.000Z | Mark Brown | Time-travel film Back to the Future to be adapted for West End as a musical | Back to the Future, which starred Michael J Fox as Marty McFly, is to become the latest film to be adapted as a West End musical.
Jamie Lloyd, a rising star of theatre, is to direct and co-write a new version of the 1985 movie that will also involve the original men behind it: Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale.
Lloyd said he was five when he first saw the film "and I have been a huge fan ever since". Back to the Future is due to open in 2015, the 30th anniversary of the original film – and the same year that McFly visited in Back to the Future II.
The producers said it was not a matter of simply transporting a successful film to the stage. Gale, who co-wrote and co-produced all three Back to the Future films with Zemeckis, said it had been important to get the right team and to "create a show that is true to the spirit of the film without being a slavish remake.
"With all of us working together, we know the integrity of the material will be preserved in a production that will be a wonderful companion to the trilogy."
He said they had been exploring the idea of a musical for a decade and would include new music and lyrics by Alan Silvestri (the film's original composer) and Glen Ballard, as well as original songs in the film such as Huey Lewis & The News's The Power of Love and Chuck Berry's Johnny B Goode.
Back to the Future tells the story of Marty McFly who gets sent back in a time machine DeLorean from 1985 to 1955 by his mad scientist friend Doc Emmett Brown. Once there he becomes embroiled in the lives of his real parents, including his mother, who develops a crush on him.
It was a phenomenal hit, taking $360m ($783m now or £476m) at the box office, while the takings for it and its two sequels totalled more than $936m.
The West End version will have producers that also include Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment and the London-based producer Colin Ingram, who was behind Ghost the Musical.
Casting has yet to be announced but it has been confirmed that Andrew Willis, who built a skatepark in Hackney Wick using reclaimed materials from the Olympics, will be the production's skateboard consultant.
The production continues a long established trend of taking popular movies and adapting them as musicals for the stage – with mixed results.
The list includes Carrie, which is often ranked among the worst-ever musicals, to Little Shop of Horrors, La Cage Aux Folles, The Producers, Ghost, Legally Blonde, Flashdance, The Full Monty, Lord of the Rings, The Bodyguard, Dirty Dancing and Billy Elliot.
The next one coming down the line is Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, starring Robert Lindsay and Rufus Hound.
There has also been a glut of films adapted into dramas, including the National Theatre of Scotland's Let The Right One In, The Ladykillers, Rain Man and the soon to open Fatal Attraction.
One theatre industry expert, Terri Paddock, said the project was helped by having Lloyd – "the hottest director of any age at the moment" – on board.
She said there was a reason producers often turned to film. "Musicals are such a risk and such an expensive proposition so of course producers are looking to de-risk it as much as possible so if you have a familiar name, be it a movie name or a back catalogue of songs, then the idea is audiences have something to hook in to.
"But it brings another challenge in that audiences have pre-conceived ideas of what to expect."
Paddock was optimistic about Back to the Future. "They have a smart director and they have a lot of time, and if they cast well and have good music, it could be a lot of fun."
On song and off key
The good
Billy Elliot the Musical The director Stephen Daldry and writer Lee Hall teamed up with Elton John for a musical that has now been seen by 9.5 million people worldwide.
Michael Billington's verdict: "A model of fluidity and intelligence."
Legally Blonde Adapted from the 2001 romcom with Reese Witherspoon, the West End version won three Oliviers, with Sheridan Smith revealing herself as a major theatrical talent.
MB: "For all its absurdity I found this Broadway musical much more enjoyable than the Hollywood movie."
The average
Ghost the Musical Dave Stewart was brought in to co-write the songs for a show based on the 1990 film. You'd be hard pushed to remember any.
MB: "The people were largely secondary to the optical pyrotechnics."
The Bodyguard Some critics loathed this adaptation of the 1990 film, which starred Whitney Houston but audiences love it. It opened in December 2012 and is booking until August this year, if not beyond.
MB: "One more example of the necrophiliac musical morbidly attracted to a cinematic corpse."
The terrible
Gone with the Wind Early pPreviews of this Trevor Nunn-directed 2008 flop were running at a "how the hell do I get home" four hours and 20 minutes. A cut to 3hr 40min did not prevent early closure.
MB: "Feels like a hectic, strip-cartoon account of a dated pop classic."
Carrie the Musical For four audience-scarring weeks in 1988, in the birthplace of Shakespeare, the RSC staged a musical based on the Stephen King horror story and Brian de Palma film. It closed after five non-preview performances.
Nicholas de Jongh's verdict: "A resounding mistake." | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/12/man-sentenced-bomb-threat-arizona-state-election-official | US news | 2024-03-13T01:23:53.000Z | Ed Pilkington | Man who sent bomb threat to Arizona election officials jailed for 42 months | A Massachusetts man who threatened to blow up the secretary of state of Arizona in 2021 has been sentenced to three and a half years in prison, one of the most severe federal punishments yet handed down for the wave of violent threats against election officials unleashed by Donald Trump’s stolen election lie.
James Clark, 38, was sentenced in federal district court in Phoenix on Tuesday to 42 months of imprisonment, to be followed by three years on probation. Judge Michael Liburdi said that his online bomb threat had inflicted “emotional and psychological trauma” on government employees and required a deterrent sentence to protect democracy.
Arizona Republican who resisted pro-Trump pressure in 2020 to stand down
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Liburdi remarked that there had been so many recent threats in Arizona against election officials that people were quitting their jobs. “If we do not have good people to fill these positions who are committed to the delivery of fair elections, we lose our ability to govern ourselves,” the judge said.
The prosecution was handled under the auspices of the election threats task force, a specialist unit within the justice department. The task force was set up in 2021 in response to the plague of intimidation of election officials that has erupted since the former president made his baseless claim that the 2020 presidential election was rigged.
Tuesday’s sentence of three and a half years in prison is on a par with the previous harshest sentence secured by the task force. In August, Francis Goetz from Texas was given a similar punishment for posting several threats against Arizona election officials on far-right social media platforms.
Clark made his bomb threat a week after the January 6 attack on the US Capitol. In his plea agreement he admitted to logging into the website of the then secretary of state, Katie Hobbs, who is now Arizona’s governor.
He demanded that she resign within two days or an “explosive device impacted in her personal space will be detonated”. Within minutes of sending the threat, Clark searched online for Hobbs’s home address and put her name against the search term “how to kill”.
Four days after the bomb threat, he searched for details of the 2013 Boston marathon bombing.
After Clark’s bomb threat was discovered, two floors of the Arizona government building were evacuated and the then Republican governor Doug Ducey was forced to shelter in place. Security sweeps were conducted of Hobbs’s home and car.
Before the sentence was handed down, a statement from the current Arizona secretary of state, Adrian Fontes, was read out to court. He said that the bomb threat had made employees in his office suffer fear and anxiety.
“It makes each of us feel vulnerable, and that trauma does not abate over time. This type of threat is anti-American and a threat to democracy,” Fontes said.
Tanya Senanayake, a trial attorney with the public integrity section of the justice department who prosecuted the case, had pressed for an even longer prison sentence of almost five years. She said that a deterrent punishment was needed to protect public officials from “a growing trend of threats to their lives and to the safety of their families”.
Defense attorney Jeanette Alvarado emphasized that Clark was in the throes of alcohol and drug abuse at the time he committed the offense. He was now in recovery and has been clean and sober for three years, she said.
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Clark himself addressed the judge and said that when he made the bomb threat “I was not the person I wanted to be … I am deeply, deeply ashamed.”
Since Trump became the first president in US history to refuse to cede power, election administrators and their families have come under a barrage of verbal and online attacks. A study by the Brennan Center last year found that almost one in three election officials had been threatened or abused, and almost half were concerned about the safety of their colleagues and staff.
Arizona has borne the brunt of much of the wave of harassment. In two separate incidents last month, the FBI arrested individuals in Alabama and California alleged to have made violent threats against election officials in Maricopa county, the largest constituency in Arizona that covers Phoenix.
On 25 March, a further federal sentencing hearing will be held in Phoenix in the case of Joshua Russell, 44, of Bucyrus, Ohio. Russell pled guilty to having left three threatening voicemails in August 2022 targeting an unnamed election official in the Arizona secretary of state’s office.
The messages accused the victim of perpetrating election fraud and said: “America’s coming for you, and you will pay with your life, you communist fucking traitor bitch.”
The US attorney general Merrick Garland has made combating threats against election officials a priority for the justice department. In a speech in January he said: “These threats of violence are unacceptable. They threaten the fabric of our democracy.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/aug/07/luck-review-disgraced-former-pixars-chiefs-enjoyable-if-clunky-comeback | Film | 2022-08-07T10:00:42.000Z | Wendy Ide | Luck review – disgraced former Pixar’s chief’s enjoyable if clunky comeback | The story of orphaned Sam (Eva Noblezada), the unluckiest person in the world, Luck is the first release from Skydance Animation, the new home of disgraced former Pixar and Disney executive John Lasseter, who clearly knows a thing or two about falling on his feet. As such, Pixar comparisons are inevitable. In the design of the film, both in the real world and the “land of luck”, there’s a kinship with Inside Out. But while Pixar movies tell their stories visually, Luck finds itself wielding densely detailed exposition about the process of deploying luck to the human world.
Still, there’s much to enjoy – a chase sequence with a lucky black cat (Simon Pegg) is a giddy delight, displaying Jacques Tati levels of audacious inventiveness. And the hazmat bunnies who clean up spilt misfortune are both functional and adorable.
In selected cinemas and on Apple TV+
Watch a trailer for Luck. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/aug/13/eton-master-wants-pupils-learn-slow-education-mike-grenier | Education | 2019-08-13T06:15:36.000Z | Peter Wilby | Eton master who wants pupils to learn very slowly | You may not have heard of slow education but you probably know about the slow food movement, founded in Italy in 1986 and hugely popular worldwide. Slow food is the opposite of fast food: it promotes local ingredients and traditional cooking in place of processed ready meals and takeaways. After its success, along came slow fashion (buy clothes that last), slow TV (spend hours watching a boat drift down a river) and so on.
To learn about slow education, I go to see Mike Grenier, a 49-year-old English teacher at Eton who founded a UK movement to promote it in 2012. “Slow education”, Grenier explains in his disappointingly modern and nondescript Eton classroom, “means developing lasting relationships between student and teacher and between student and learning”. It means more time for discussion, reflection and learning in depth, he says.
“At the moment, we’re giving them packaged subject syllabuses and feeding them bite-sized dollops. It’s like a GP handing out pills. When you’ve taken them all and completed the course, you’ll be ‘better at’ whatever subject it is. Children from age four to at least 18 are required to prove themselves on a series of tests. It is a very impoverished view of what human beings are.”
Slow education means cutting down on curriculum content. “The total sum of knowledge we now have on most subjects is enormous. Think of biology and the developments in genetics and neuroscience over the past 25 years, or physics and the increased understanding of quantum theory and how the universe works.
“It’s all being crammed into syllabuses and it’s reached saturation point. Teachers say to students that ‘we have got to get through it’. The generation we are teaching now will live to at least 85 or 90. Why are we in such a hurry?”
The idea of slow education was developed in the US early this century by Maurice Holt, who headed a pioneering comprehensive in Hertfordshire in the 1960s and later moved to the University of Colorado. He and Joe Harrison-Greaves, a musician and creative education consultant in the north-west, were among those who helped Grenier found the UK’s slow education movement.
US idea of 'cultural literacy' and key facts a child should know arrives in UK
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Holt argued that, just as it was “better to eat one portion of grilled halibut than three king-sized burgers”, so it was “better to examine in detail why Sir Thomas More chose martyrdom than to memorise the kings of England”. He was reacting to the worldwide growth in what he called “standards-driven education” and “test-shaped knowledge” – all of which has increased in recent years, thanks largely to Michael Gove’s curriculum and examination reforms.
Does slow education mean returning to “learning by discovery”, “child-centred education” and other 1960s ideas? “No,” Grenier replies with a slight shudder. “Some of the fundamental tenets of slow education are conservative.”
He argues that slow teaching should be underpinned by a version of the classical “trivium” described by Plato, comprising the basics of language, thought and analysis, and communication.
“It’s not throwing everything up in the air and having a Woodstock-style let-it-all-hang-out. There are times when the most effective way to convey concepts and ideas is to use direct instruction and put things up on a whiteboard. Give students five, six, seven key concepts that they really need to know and then, because they can keep returning to these, it is easier for them to explore.”
The stereotype of child-centred learning, he says, is that “you say to students: here’s Romeo and Juliet, tell me what you think of it”. It’s better, he says, first to introduce basic concepts of Shakespearian drama such as tragedy.
So where does he stand on the “knowledge-rich” curriculum currently in vogue? “Knowledge-rich is clearly better than knowledge-poor but it is how the knowledge is used that is critical.” He wants his pupils to learn what a sonnet is, but also to explore how the form can be used effectively.
How much slow education goes on at Eton? “We nail down the things we have to do, while also taking every opportunity to do things in new ways. Because we are a boarding school, students have a huge amount of additional time to do independent reading and show self-motivated love of a subject or skill.”
If ministers really want to trust teachers it’s time to ditch the number fairies
Michael Rosen
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Grenier, whose father was an investment manager and his mother a teacher, was a pupil at Eton before he went to Oxford. After leaving university he intended to take a course in teaching English as a foreign language but, “covering bases”, wrote to about 25 schools in England to tell them he was “keen on teaching”. Eton offered him a term as sabbatical cover – and there he still is 25 years later. To most of us, it may seem extraordinary – but not perhaps at Eton where, until the 1940s, pupils were taught almost exclusively by old Etonians.
So is Grenier (whose son is also an Eton pupil) living in a bubble? Is slow education just a luxury, affordable only at schools where pupils have so much economic, social and cultural capital that they will succeed however you teach them?
He says he is closely involved in Eton’s outreach programme and works in a variety of state schools in the Thames Valley.
With Harrison-Greaves, he helped set up a network of schools that have explored introducing slow education in largely working-class Lancashire towns, such as Blackburn and Rochdale. He says that School 21, a free school opened in a deprived area of east London by Peter Hyman, a former Tony Blair aide, also embodies slow education ideas.
But can he convince the mass of middle-class and aspirational working-class parents, desperate for their children to acquire certificates that will propel them into professional careers, of the merits of slow education?
“More often than not,” Grenier replies, “parents want their children to be happy at school as well as to achieve. But we have a system that separates those things. It measures how well schools are doing in terms of numbers but it doesn’t take account of personal and social development.”
Shouldn’t he set up a slow free school? “That’s not a plan at the moment. They’re not really free. To set one up, you’d have to tick so many boxes that you wouldn’t want to tick.”
So how can slow education move forward? “We need a royal commission into our education system,” he says. I point out that royal commissions are out of fashion – none has been set up this century – mainly because they take so much time. “It should be a slow process. There’s lots that needs to be thought about: what we now know about child development and how the brain learns, children’s mental health, the effects of social media and so on.”
I admire Grenier’s refusal to be rushed. The economist Milton Friedman started preaching the virtues of free markets in the 1950s; governments finally embraced his ideas in the 1980s. I have a hunch Grenier’s time will eventually come. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/dec/06/liam-gallagher-down-by-the-river-thames-review | Music | 2020-12-06T14:26:10.000Z | Alexis Petridis | Liam Gallagher: Down By the River Thames review – barging through his back catalogue | Other livestreams have sold themselves on everything from dazzling displays of the latest technology or promises they could somehow recreate the atmosphere of a club, but – not entirely unpredictably – Liam Gallagher’s offers up allusions to rock history. It comes advertised with Jamie Reid ransom-note graphics and a cartoon that apes the poster displayed outside cinemas when The Great Rock ’n’ Roll Swindle was showing: the obvious inference is that it’s an event spiritually akin to the Sex Pistols’ infamously chaotic July 1977 performance on a River Thames pleasure cruiser, which ended prematurely with police boarding the boat, scuffles and multiple arrests.
Of course, the reality of Down by the River Thames is absolutely nothing like that. Filmed a month ago, its footage of passing landmarks and the London skyline illuminated at dusk is so beautifully shot and edited, it could be an advert for Visit Britain. The closest it comes to authority-baiting insurrectionary fervour is when Our Kid unaccountably takes against the sight of the London Eye between songs. “Arsed about you, big wheel,” he bellows, curiously. “Big round daft thing sitting there all lit up. I couldn’t give less of a fuck about you.” On another occasion, he’s momentarily distracted by another denizen of the river. “This one’s for all the beautiful people on Earth,” he begins, before something catches his eye: “CANOE!”
It takes a moment to realise that the grey-bearded, bespectacled figure stage left is former Oasis guitarist Paul “Bonehead” Arthurs: never the greatest exemplar of rock star glamour even at Britpop’s height, he’s clad in a waterproof bucket hat and jacket that gives him the air of a man who’s about to set up a camping chair, get out some sandwiches, order the boat to stop and cast off over the side. He joins the band for As You Were’s Once – a song that wistfully stares out of the car window on the school run and reflects on 90s hedonism – and an intriguing selection of Oasis tracks.
Always the most bullish defender of Oasis’ discography from Be Here Now onwards, tonight Gallagher sticks fast to their mid-90s oeuvre, largely avoiding the most obvious songs – no Wonderwall or Live Forever, Champagne Supernova delivered in a truncated piano-and-vocals version – in favour of a trawl through their heavier, punkier moments: Hello (its interpolation from Gary Glitter’s similarly titled 1973 hit unexpectedly intact), Morning Glory, Columbia, Headshrinker, Fade Away. The latter is a highlight, the snarling, get-me-out-of-Burnage-I’m-going-to-be-a-somebody lyrics acquiring an oddly melancholy quality in middle age: “We only get what we settle for … dream it while you can”.
What ended Britpop: Oasis, Diana or Euro 96?
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If they’re not as good as that, the songs from Gallagher’s solo albums sound fine – there’s certainly less of a noticeable drop-off in quality than there would be if he’d played stuff off Oasis’s later albums – as does his voice: the horrible strained whine he inexplicably took to singing in during his former band’s final years is a distant memory. He pretends to play a recorder during Halo, then spits it out, but that’s as far as surprises go, the aforementioned London Eye/canoe incidents notwithstanding. But in fairness, a certain predictability is Gallagher Jr’s brand these days.
In an uncertain world, his devotees can temporarily rest easy, knowing exactly what you’re going to get from him: a Never Mind the Bollocks-derived wall of distorted guitars, drums that occasionally tend to glam stomp, the odd yearning ballad tacked on to the end of the performance – Christmas single All You’re Dreaming Of is a sweet example – and some swearing.
He delivers on all counts. Sitting at home, Clarks-shod feet up, feather-cuts illuminated by their Christmas tree lights, his fanbase are doubtless thoroughly enjoying it. For anyone else, the novelty of watching a band playing on a barge does wear off some time before the livestream ends, Gallagher shouting at inanimate objects or not. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/mar/05/anatomy-of-a-rain-bomb-scientists-study-phenomenon-2022-australia-east-coast-floods | Australia news | 2022-03-04T19:00:04.000Z | Graham Readfearn | Anatomy of a ‘rain bomb’: scientists strive to understand phenomenon that caused Australia’s east coast floods | It was dry and sunny in Melbourne 10 days ago when Kimberley Reid was looking at images being spat out by a weather forecasting model – all isobars, arrows and splodges of orange.
The phenomenon forming in the atmosphere off Queensland’s coast – about 1500 kilometres (930 miles) north-east of Reid’s computer screen – was nothing remarkable yet, but the channels of moisture she saw in the pictures are the subject of her PhD.
“Atmospheric rivers are quite easy to see,” she says. “I thought it didn’t look that strong. I was holding back from tweeting. I didn’t think it was going to get that big.”
A few days later, the river got stuck over an area of the Pacific Ocean a few hundred kilometres north of Brisbane.
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Rain became torrential – like a tsunami from the sky. Politicians called it a “rain bomb”.
Towns and cities – tens of thousands of homes and businesses, as well as bridges, roads and dreams – went under water, leaving Australians wondering if they’d been smashed once more by the climate emergency.
Rivers in the sky
There were other things happening around the river that Reid saw on the computer weather model.
The Bureau of Meteorology says a cold weather system in the upper atmosphere – between eight and 10 kilometres up – had moved north from waters to the south of the continent and was mixing with warmer air from the tropics.
An area of low pressure – known as a trough – formed in the Coral Sea, causing moist air to be lifted up, condense and then fall as rain.
Usually systems like this pass through and out over the ocean, but the bureau says another atmospheric phenomenon – an area of high pressure much further east – acted as a block. Now all that was needed was the winds that pushed all that moisture over Queensland’s south-east.
Reid says atmospheric rivers are long, narrow regions between one and three kilometres up “characterised by really strong water flow. It is like a running river in the sky.”
Reid has calculated how much water was in the river as it was flowing over Greater Brisbane.
The city itself got almost 80% of its annual rainfall in only six days up to 28 February, when the system started to move south. Brisbane had only ever recorded eight days of more than 200mm before the 2022 floods. But it saw three in a row.
Reid says over the course of the two heaviest days of rain, 26 and 27 February, enough water flowed in the atmospheric river above the city to fill Sydney harbour – that holds about 500bn litres – almost 16 times.
Before and after aerial pictures show how floods swept through Queensland and NSW towns
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Reid wants to know how these atmospheric rivers could be influenced by global heating. She thinks these systems could move south along Australia’s east coast and when they do occur, “there’s more moisture in the atmosphere and they’re going to be quite intense.”
Reid’s research has looked at an atmospheric river that caused flooding over Sydney in March 2021. “I’ve found that over Sydney, the frequency of these long duration events will increase by 80% by the end of this century,” she says.
Atmospheric rivers are under-studied in Australia and her university seniors think she is the first to do a PhD on them.
“In the US they fly aeroplanes through them. Here, it’s mostly me doing [the research],” she says.
Weather on steroids
The unprecedented flooding that raised many rivers above record highs moved south, leaving towns underwater.
Residents in parts of western Sydney were told to evacuate for the second year in a row as the city’s Warragamba Dam overflowed. But the system stalled before it passed over Sydney.
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But the bureau added the combination of atmospheric events was “not unusual in itself.”
Australia’s east coast was already wet. A La Niña had pushed warmer ocean water closer to the continent’s east, increasing cloud and rain. So why did it rain so much?
The event has seen a flurry of communications between scientists this week, discussing plans to launch different studies to understand what role a changed climate could have had.
Burning coal, oil and gas and chopping down forests has loaded the atmosphere with extra greenhouse gases, causing heating. There is now 50% more CO2 in the atmosphere than before the Industrial Revolution. Australia has warmed by 1.4C since 1910.
“We’ve added steroids to the climate system that have amplified the rainfall,” says Prof David Karoly, a veteran Australian climate scientist based at the University of Melbourne.
While it’s known the atmosphere can hold 7% more moisture for every degree of warming, Karoly explains the extra CO2 could have played several roles.
As the moisture condenses into rain droplets, energy is released in the form of heat. Karoly says this sets off a feedback cycle in the atmosphere that amplifies the uplift from the oceans, which are also warmer than they used to be. So the extra 7% could, in real terms, add more than that in rainfall – in some cases more than double, he says.
“These weather systems have occurred in the past. But now we have a hotter ocean and a hotter atmosphere and the feedback can give you much bigger rainfall events,” he says.
Shark warnings at popular Sydney beaches as rain and floods muddy the waters
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Dr Andrew King, also at the University of Melbourne – a main centre for climate studies in Australia – says scientists will look at what happened from multiple angles.
“There’s a thermodynamic part – the moisture – and with that it’s easier to say climate change has enhanced that a bit.
“But you also need the lifting motion that produced the rainfall and that is so much more complicated. We don’t fully understand how these weather systems are changing.
“Fundamentally, we have altered the planet a huge amount. Every event that occurs in our altered system would look different if we hadn’t done that.”
Brisbane’s last major flood was 2011. The city’s river swelled and engulfed suburbs. The images and footage were seen around the world.
Mathematician Dr Kate Saunders was living in one of those suburbs. That extreme event was the catalyst for a decade of study into “extreme value theory” – a way to understand things that have never been witnessed. She’s applying that to extreme rainfall using climate models.
Saunders left Brisbane to study after the 2011 floods, via CSIRO and the University of Melbourne, and is now back in her home city at QUT in time to witness another tragedy.
“What’s really challenging from a statistical perspective is you only have about 110 years of data. But if that climate signal is only becoming stronger, then you’re getting more risk.
“For example, how many times have we had to evacuate Brisbane and parts of Sydney in the same week? When you look at how widespread this was, it makes it an outlier in our records.”
As the rain fell over Brisbane, houses, parks and $1m mansions around her street went under. This was going to generate a flood of scientific inquiry.
“I thought – uh, oh. There’s a lot of work coming here.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/23/enezuela-trump-president-juan-guaido-maduro-recognition-news-latest | World news | 2019-01-24T08:48:26.000Z | Joe Parkin Daniels | Trump says 'all options on table' as Venezuela crisis deepens | Venezuela’s opposition leader, Juan Guaidó, has secured significant international support after declaring himself interim president in a bid to force out Nicolás Maduro as two nights of unrest gripped the country, leading to the deaths of 14 people.
Guaidó was quickly recognised by the US, Canada, Brazil, Colombia and other US allies in the Americas, while the European Union said the voice of the people “cannot be ignored”.
Donald Trump warned that “all options are on the table” if Maduro – who has overseen the country’s slide into authoritarianism and economic collapse – responded with force against the opposition. Mike Pence later made clear the US would use “the full weight of our diplomatic and economic pressure”. US officials said the US would look at ways to transfer Venezuelan assets and oil revenues to Guaidó and the opposition-run national assembly.
Nicolas Maduro speaks to a crowd of supporters flanked by his wife Cilia Flores to announce his government is breaking off diplomatic ties with the United States. Photograph: Luis Robayo/AFP/Getty Images
Maduro responded with defiance, cutting off relations with the US and ordering all US diplomats to leave the country within 72 hours.
“We are defending the right to the very existence of our Bolivarian republic,” Maduro told supporters at a rally outside the Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas. He urged them to resist “at all costs” what he called a coup attempt being orchestrated by “the coup-mongering, interventionist gringo empire” and the “fascist right”.
“They intend to govern Venezuela from Washington,” Maduro shouted from the palace’s people’s balcony. “Do you want a puppet government controlled by Washington?”
Guaidó issued his own statement, urging foreign embassies to keep their diplomats in the country. The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, later said the US would abide by Guaidó’s directive and ignore Maduro’s order to withdraw its diplomats.
Venezuela: who is Juan Guaidó, the man who declared himself president?
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MPs in Russia, a major Venezuelan ally, criticised US moves against Maduro. “The United States is trying to carry out an operation to organise the next ‘colour revolution’ in Venezuela,” Andrei Klimov, the deputy chairman of the foreign affairs committee of the upper house of parliament, said, using a term for the popular uprisings that unseated leaders in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan.
Another committee member, Vladimir Dzhabrailov, said: “I do not think that we can recognise this – it is, in essence, a coup.”
Turkey and Cuba and Bolivia’s Evo Morales have also offered their support for Maduro.
In a statement, 11 of the 14 members of regional bloc the Lima Group said they supported the start of a democratic transition in Venezuela “in order to hold new elections, in the shortest time”. The three holdouts included Mexico, which has maintained a principle of non-intervention under leftist president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, as well as Guyana and St Lucia.
The EU’s foreign affairs representative, Federica Mogherini, called for work to begin on holding free and credible elections. She said: “The people of Venezuela have massively called for democracy and the possibility to freely determine their own destiny. These voices cannot be ignored.”
On Wednesday, thousands of protesters clogged the streets of the capital, Caracas, with further demonstrations across the country.
The protests came as Guaidó, the head of the national assembly, raised his right hand and said: “I swear to assume all the powers of the presidency to secure an end to the usurpation.”
Venezuela protests as two leaders vie to be president – in pictures
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The 35-year-old lawmaker, said his surprise move was the only way to rescue Venezuela from “dictatorship” and restore constitutional order.
“We know that this will have consequences,” Guaidó, 35, told the cheering crowd. “To be able to achieve this task and to re-establish the constitution we need the agreement of all Venezuelans,” he shouted.
Oil-rich Venezuela is mired in economic and political turmoil, with hyperinflation rendering the bolivar currency practically worthless. Shortages in food staples and basic medicines are rampant, and crime is widespread. More than 3 million Venezuelans have fled, causing consternation across the continent.
The country’s opposition has struggled to find a strategy against Maduro, however, and analysis warned that Guaidó’s gutsy move was potentially dangerous: the opposition may have won international recognition, but it has no control over state bodies or the security forces.
Opposition demonstrators clash with security forces during a protest against the government of Nicolás Maduro in Caracas on Wednesday. Photograph: Yuri Cortéz/AFP/Getty Images
“It is absolutely clear that the strategy was decided by the US government and the Venezuelan opposition, so they share the risk,” said Dimitris Pantoulas, a Caracas-based political analyst and consultant. “The government reaction will come shortly and it remains unclear if the people are ready to defend Guaidó with their lives”
In a statement, Trump described the national assembly as the “only legitimate branch of government duly elected by the Venezuelan people” and warned Maduro not to resort to violence.
“We continue to hold the illegitimate Maduro regime directly responsible for any threats it may pose to the safety of the Venezuelan people,” he said.
Asked if would consider a military option if Maduro refused to cede power, the US president said: “We’re not considering anything but all options on the table. All options, always, all options are on the table.”
Pence was more specific in a television interview on Wednesday night. “The United States is going to continue to bring the full weight of our economic and diplomatic pressure until freedom and democracy and fair elections are restored for the people of Venezuela,” he told the Fox Business Network.Canada’s foreign minister, Chrystia Freeland, said Maduro’s government was “now fully entrenched as a dictatorship”, and called on him to hand power to the national assembly until new elections were held.The sudden developments came as tens of thousands joined marches across the country, which followed two nights of violent protests in working-class neighbourhoods of Caracas – once bastions of support for the government – and the apparent foiling of an armed uprising by members of the national guard.
Opposition supporters react during a rally against President Nicolás Maduro’s government in Caracas on Wednesday. Photograph: Carlos García Rawlins/Reuters
Morelia Armini, a saleswoman from Caracas, could barely contain her joy at the day’s developments. “This is a wonderful thing,” she said, after watching to Guaidó take the oath. “Like a phoenix, this is the rebirth of Venezuela.”
Wednesday also marked the anniversary of the 1958 uprising that overthrew the military dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez – symbolism that was not lost on María de Jesús, a social worker from Caracas who was born on the day of the 1958 rebellion.
“I was born in democracy,” she said on her way to the march in Caracas. “I want my freedom; this is a dictatorship.”
Across town, several hundred supporters held a rival march in support of Maduro. Though it was dwarfed in size by the opposition protest, those in attendance were in a buoyant mood.
“We are here to support our president and defend our resources,” said Ana Medina, who works for the state oil company PDVAs, as salsa music blasted from loudspeakers. “We know that other countries are against Maduro because they want to take over our resources.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/dec/06/turnbulls-department-head-says-tony-abbott-damaged-public-service | Australia news | 2017-12-05T19:00:01.000Z | Katharine Murphy | Turnbull’s department head says Tony Abbott damaged public service | The head of Malcolm Turnbull’s department says he has no “personal animus” towards Tony Abbott, but he says the former prime minister damaged the public service when he sacked him for following the legally mandated directions of the Rudd and Gillard governments.
Martin Parkinson was sacked by Abbott from the Treasury department after he came to power in 2013, alongside a handful of other departmental heads. He was brought back to the public service by Turnbull to be secretary of the department of prime minister and cabinet.
In a wide-ranging interview with the Policy Shop podcast, hosted by Glyn Davis, the vice-chancellor of the University of Melbourne, Parkinson says the brutal treatment he experienced had a broader impact.
Abbott's removal of top public servants smacks of ideology, not values
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He says Abbott could have achieved the same outcome he wanted to achieve “far more subtly if people had stopped to think about it, and without the damage I think it did to the public service because there were instances after that happened of senior colleagues reporting their staff saying, well I’m not going to put my hand up for a controversial role because this is what happens”.
“You follow on the democratically elected, legally mandated directions of the government of the day and you get sacked as a result.”
From the tail end of the Howard government, through the Rudd and Gillard periods, Parkinson was prominent in bureaucratic efforts to implement an emissions trading scheme, setting up a climate change department, before returning to the Treasury.
Abbott, who was part of the Howard government at the time the then prime minister supported emissions trading, later campaigned vociferously against the so-called carbon “tax”, which was not a tax but a carbon price with a fixed period.
Abbott sacked Parkinson after winning the 2013 election, against the advice of senior Liberals, but Parkinson was asked to stay on in Treasury on an interim basis, serving for a further 15 months.
He says in the interview he had a “perfectly professional” and “very open and honest” relationship with Abbott, who listened to his advice, sometimes agreeing and sometimes disagreeing. “You couldn’t ask for anything more.”
Parkinson said the damage Abbott had caused by the sacking had been subsequently “ameliorated, but there’s no question that for the service as a whole, I think it came as quite a shock”.
The departmental head also reflected in the conversation with Davis about the breakdown in consensus over carbon pricing which has plunged the Australian parliament into a decade-long deadlock over climate policy.
Parkinson describes “almost a conspiracy of silence between the true believers of climate change and the true deniers of climate change”.
“The true believers did not want to talk about adaptation because they felt that that would take away from a focus on mitigation, and the true deniers didn’t want to talk about adaptation because to do so you would have to talk about the fact that climate change was real,” he says.
“So the debate became one around the merits of a particular approach to mitigation which was an emissions trading scheme.”
Parkinson says the global financial crisis prompted a shift in the position of the business community to carbon pricing. “Suddenly a lot of people in the business community who had been supportive of action on climate change, found themselves in a much more existential situation of trying to save their businesses ... In that environment, they were much more focused on that than on supporting action around climate change.
He also reflected on the disruption technology has caused to the media cycle, and how that has affected the public policy debate.
Parkinson says in the 1980s journalists had more time to write longer, more analytical pieces about policy debates, which helped inform public debates but “if you look around now, the journalists don’t have the opportunity, they don’t have the time to do those thoughtful pieces”.
A clean energy target is not 'unconscionable', Tony Abbott. Wrecking climate policy is
Katharine Murphy
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He says the media cycle is focused on “gotcha” moments and sensationalising routine internal processes. “You begin to try and have a conversation with stakeholders about an issue and all of a sudden the social media campaigns are running either for or against the policy option.”
Parkinson says stakeholders now take definitive positions on policy before it is finalised, and the tempo has increased as a consequence “and that makes it much, much harder to do this sort of thoughtful, careful analysis and policy design that in the past we were able to do”.
“Now it doesn’t mean it can’t be done, but it means we have to do it in different ways,” he says. “We have to find different groups of trusted interlocutors. We have to find different vehicles in which we can engage.
“I’m not sure that we’ve quite found our equilibrium yet. I think it’s still a work in progress.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/feb/23/a-grim-find-led-to-a-worse-end-the-case-of-two-missing-men-that-horrified-sydney-over-three-days | Australia news | 2024-02-23T14:00:52.000Z | Elias Visontay | A grim find led to a worse end: the case of two missing men that horrified Sydney | It began when some blood-covered clothes, a phone, watch and wallet were discovered in a skip in the beachside suburb of Cronulla in Sydney’s south on Wednesday morning.
A day after announcing that the find had raised “grave concerns” for two missing men in a relationship, New South Wales police charged one of their own constables – a former partner of one of the men – with two counts of murder.
Ballistic tests showed he had used a force-issued handgun, police alleged. They believe he then hired a white van to dispose of their bodies.
Sydney police officer charged with murder of Jesse Baird and his partner Luke Davies
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Beau Lamarre, 28, turned himself in to colleagues at a local police station and was charged with the murder of Jesse Baird – his ex-boyfriend and a former Channel Ten presenter – and Baird’s new partner, 29-year-old Qantas flight attendant Luke Davies.
But police said Lamarre had not assisted them as they sought more information.
The bodies of Baird and Davies had not been found by Friday evening, as Lamarre appeared in court for the first time.
The selfie-enthused former celebrity blogger turned member of a specialist police force spoke only once during the five-minute hearing – to clarify the date of his next court appearance.
He did not apply for bail and will remain behind bars for the next eight weeks while police prepare a brief of evidence and search for the bodies of his alleged victims.
‘Grave concerns’
Baird, a 26-year-old AFL goal umpire, had previously presented on the morning program Studio 10, but finished up at Channel Ten in January.
He had only recently entered into a relationship with Davies – police believe Baird and Lamarre had broken up only a couple of months ago. Baird’s former workplace, Channel Ten, reported Lamarre had struggled with Baird’s decision to end their relationship.
Photos from the social media accounts of Baird and Davies show them enjoying life together in Sydney, including at a Pink concert in February.
Another snap of the pair, taken at the lighthouse at Palm Beach earlier this month, reads: “Perfect start to a long weekend.”
NSW police officer Beau Lamarre takes part in the 2020 Mardi Gras parade in Sydney. Photograph: James Gourley/EPA
Police did not get wind of the couple’s disappearance until Wednesday morning, but they believe the alleged murders took place on Monday in Baird’s Paddington terrace share house in the city’s east.
At about 9.30pm that night, Lamarre is alleged to have hired a white van from the southern suburb of Mascot to move their bodies.
“From the evidence we’ve gleaned today we believe that the fate of both Luke and Jesse was at the house in Paddington and at some stage the white van was [allegedly] used to transport their bodies to another location,” Det Supt Daniel Doherty, of the New South Wales homicide squad, told reporters on Friday.
Lamarre did not report for duty on Tuesday or Wednesday.
Police have now located the van – a white Toyota HiAce – but are still seeking CCTV footage or other information about where it was between Monday evening and when it was found at Grays Point, not far from Cronulla, on Friday.
“It’s important we get the movements in relation to that van, as hopefully we can find the bodies, and this is important for the family,” Doherty said.
Exactly what happened between Monday evening and Friday is still the subject of investigation.
2:36
NSW police officer Beau Lamarre charged with murder of Jesse Baird and Luke Davies – video
Officers arrived at Baird’s Paddington home – a 30km drive from Cronulla – shortly after the bloodied possessions were found.
There police found “a large amount of blood” as well as the casing of one bullet, and by 1pm had established a crime scene.
Police alleged ballistic tests later showed the firearm that had allegedly been discharged was owned by police, and had been returned to a storage locker at a station after Monday’s alleged murder.
Locals interviewed on Wednesday reported having heard shouting from the vicinity of the house on Monday morning, police alleged.
That afternoon, investigators searched Davies’ home in nearby Waterloo, but found no trace of him or Baird.
Neither had used their bank accounts in recent days. Baird’s WhatsApp account had shown as active on Tuesday night, which led police on Wednesday to issue a plea for him to come forward.
It would prove fruitless.
By Thursday, police said they were looking for a third person in connection with the couple’s disappearance. They suspected it was someone known to the couple, announcing investigators would “continue to look at all past relationships and associations” of the pair.
That evening, reports emerged that a police officer was involved.
Detectives executed a search warrant at a home in Balmain, which property records suggest was Lamarre’s family home.
Officers seized a number of items during the raid just before midnight.
On Friday, waking up to a 36C and humid Sydney with his face all over the newspapers as a suspect, Lamarre turned himself in.
Timeline of the disappearance of Jesse Baird and Luke Davies. Graphic Mike Hohnen
He reported to Bondi police station at 10.30am wearing a black T-shirt and cap, footage later released by police shows.
Hours later, police charged Lamarre with two counts of murder, announcing they believed they had sufficient evidence.
Unorthodox route
The path of Beaumont Lamarre-Condon, as he is formally known, to the NSW police force was unorthodox.
He ran a now defunct celebrity website called That’s The Tea and another called the Australian Reporter, which was deregistered in 2016.
In videos posted online he can be seen interviewing celebrities, including Russell Crowe, at red carpet events.
Social media photographs depict Lamarre with a range of show business personalities including Selena Gomez and Miley Cyrus.
On one occasion in 2013, he attended a media call for a Qantas gala dinner, interviewing celebrities such as Miranda Kerr about her love for the airline and career plans.
Baird had the brightest of futures stolen from him
Lachlan Kennedy
“What is it that you love about Qantas airways?” he asked John Travolta at the event. “Well, uh, everything,” Travolta told Lamarre.
His first notable brush with fame came in 2014, when he was a teenager.
Lamarre was at a Lady Gaga concert in Sydney when he reportedly threw a note on the stage in which he came out as gay. He was later invited backstage by the singer, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.
“Through your music, you have helped and will continue to set free many people. If possible, I would love to come and personally give you a hug and thank you backstage for finally setting me free. My life will then be forever complete,” Lamarre wrote to the pop star. “Gaga, you’re not just my idol but LITERALLY my saviour,” he said.
Lamarre did not shy away from his identity as a gay man or a police officer. He was pictured in the police contingent marching in the Sydney Mardi Gras parade in 2020.
Lamarre appeared before Waverley local court for an initial hearing on Friday afternoon, accompanied by two police officers.
He was expressionless, blinking slowly, as he sat in the dock.
Meanwhile, the families of Baird and Davies are “devastated”, police said.
“His talent was undeniable and energy infection,” one of Baird’s former colleagues, Channel Ten reporter Lachlan Kennedy, said on Friday. “For years we chatted footy, utes and country music,” he said of Baird who “had the brightest of futures stolen from him”.
Qantas said it was providing support to Davies’ colleagues.
A friend of Baird’s, Jermaine, paid tribute to the couple on X.
“Jesse … You would’ve fit in so well as a friend of the household,” he wrote. “Rest, darling.”
The case will next be heard on 23 April.
This article was amended on 24 February 2024 to clarify that a tribute to the couple on X was posted by a friend of Jesse Baird’s, not Luke Davies’ brother. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/05/living-alone-single-person-households-uk | Opinion | 2019-04-05T11:19:12.000Z | Paul Fleckney | The joys (and pains) of living alone | Paul Fleckney | “H
ell is other people,” wrote Jean-Paul Sartre in 1944 – a quote whose meaning has been the subject of hot debate ever since. Some say it should be taken literally; some clever dicks say it’s more about the loss of identity we suffer via the company of others. But are we absolutely sure he wasn’t referring to his chambre-mate who ate the last of his Cathedral City? Because that is seriously annoying.
We may never know what prompted his existential zinger, but what we do know is that the number of people living alone is rising fast, at least in the UK. According to the Office for National Statistics, the figure went up by as much as 16% between 1997 and 2017, and will hit 10.7 million people by 2039. That’s a lot of unanswered “honey, I’m home”s. But as someone who lives alone I can attest to the joys of such an arrangement. And so, with apologies to the genuinely brilliant housemates I had for many years, who could reasonably see this as a needlessly passive-aggressive revenge article, and with apologies to my temporary cohabitee, Dan, who is clean, considerate and coherent (“the three Cs”), here are six reasons why living solo is easily the best thing I’ve ever done, bar none:
Peace and quiet
Hear that? Exactly. The sound of silence. The front door is closed. Now, you can sit back and relax, and listen to the tick-tock of the clock. No responsibilities, no one to answer to. So long as you don’t check your email, your texts, your Twitter …
Less stress
Houseshare scenario: why is your bag of porridge oats suddenly lighter? Will the culprit cough up the 20p per 50g fine as agreed, or will you have to send one of your emails? Why has the CCTV stopped working? These questions are stressful, but they can be eliminated simply by living alone. Plus, you’ll save a fortune in Post-its.
No bad compromises
Eating alone isn’t good for you – but you do get to read at the table
Read more
You want to watch Hollyoaks, they want to watch Morse. You settle on Bergerac. The evening is wasted.
You can truly be yourself
This is where things get really interesting. Who are we really behind closed doors? Exactly the same as out in the big, wide world? Come off it. Kick off your shoes and unleash the full suite of songs, kitchen jigs, catchphrases and whatnot, safe in the knowledge that, if you’ve got your angles right, no one can see you.
The joy of pets
A wiser man than me said that, with people, you share yourself; with pets, you share your solitude. OK, it may have been a Hallmark card, but either way, it’s pretty good. Living alone is the perfect excuse to get a pet – in my case, Zelda the cat. And with a pet comes everybody’s favourite type of conversation: the one-sided one. (Quick diversion, but what’s all this about cats knowing what they’re called? Zelda’s a 10/10 cat but there’s absolutely no way she knows her name. Let’s just say she … isn’t overly blessed with cognitive prowess.)
Gratuitous nudity
Padding about in the buff is one of life’s great joys, don’t @ me. What a shame that your average houseshare denies people this. Admittedly, Dan and I like to hang out outside the bathroom and discuss politics or our fantasy football teams, wearing nothing but towelling, but it would be nice to go the whole hog. I’ll have a word with him tomorrow.
But it’s not all roses. And this is where the subject gets necessarily serious. I admit I am in an extremely fortunate position here. I can afford to live alone, and after being in London for 15 years I’ve got absolutely loads of friends, anything between three and five. The broader reality is that rent is taking ever bigger chunks out of our wage packets, and work is increasingly insecure. So how many trainee curmudgeons like myself would love to live alone but simply don’t have the option?
More important is the issue of isolation. The rise in solo living is only among those aged over 45, in part because of more people being divorced and/or single. Meanwhile, loneliness among older people is at distressingly high levels, and it appears that knowing your neighbours is a thing of the past. Without wishing to make trite jibes about “the government” and “the modern age”, this is a massive indictment of the government and the modern age. So if anyone comes to mind who fits this bill, it may be worth popping round sometimes. Better still, volunteer for Age UK.
There is also a knack to living alone that applies to us relative young ’uns too. At what point does that sweet, sweet independence tip over into isolation, and withdrawal? This sort of thing requires constant vigilance and renegotiation, and for people who aren’t strangers to mental health problems, the stakes can be high.
So to describe living alone as a minefield is an understatement. But at least you can watch Morse in peace.
Paul Fleckney is a Guardian subeditor. He tweets at @fleckaz | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/oct/16/arts.artsnews | UK news | 2003-10-16T14:47:19.000Z | Adrian Searle | Olafur Eliasson's the Weather Project | A huge, yellow, artificial indoor sun hangs in the east. It is hard not to feel cowed. Looking up, we see ourselves, inverted and a very long way off, on the distant mirrored ceiling.
Up on the Turbine Hall bridge, people are shadowed in sickly, misty gloom. The ominous and the numinous are hard to tell apart here.
The previous artist in the Unilever series of installations in Tate Modern's Turbine Hall, Anish Kapoor, wanted to invoke a sense of a new, technological sublime. Eliasson wants to revoke it. But it is difficult to ignore the intimations of the sublime, and of religious feeling here.
I think, inevitably, of JMW Turner's purported dying exclamation that "the sun is God"; of Rothko's half-lit heavy breathing, of first light on Planet Serota, on the outer rim of a distant galaxy.
Eliasson has been careful to make us aware of the mechanics, that what he has done is a trick, a thing of smoke and mirrors, and an 18,000-watt bank of sodium yellow streetlight bulbs. You can walk under the sun, and see behind the backlit screen, the weather wafting from the smoke generators. But nor do we forget that a Turner is just paint.
Eliasson wants us to consider why we talk about the weather so much, and how weather impinges on our culture and our sense of ourselves.
He wants us to ask what the weather's doing in here.
In all his projects, he wants us as conscious spectators rather than a passive, awestruck audience. But first of all, he has to captivate us.
In this regard the Weather Project succeeds almost too well, not least because it toys with a Sublime which Eliasson himself finds deeply troubling. It is a disturbing, powerful work.
· Adrian Searle is the Guardian's art critic | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/nov/09/security-agencies-probe-chinese-approach-to-ex-australian-defence-personnel | Australia news | 2022-11-09T01:46:46.000Z | Daniel Hurst | Security agencies probe Chinese approach to ex-Australian defence personnel | Australian security agencies are investigating allegations that highly skilled former Australian defence force personnel may have been approached to provide military training to China.
The deputy prime minister, Richard Marles, revealed on Wednesday that the counter foreign interference taskforce, led by the Australian federal police and spy agency Asio, was “currently investigating a number of cases”.
Marles also announced a review by the Department of Defence into “any weaknesses” in policies that applied to former ADF personnel.
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He did not say whether these cases were former Royal Australian Air Force fighter jet pilots, but the announcement followed reports that Beijing had been seeking help from retired western pilots to train China’s air force, an issue that prompted British defence intelligence to issue a rare “threat alert” last month.
About 30 former British pilots were reported to have taken advantage of “very generous” recruitment packages offered by China to work for the country’s air force through third parties, including a flying academy in South Africa.
Last week, a lawyer for Daniel Edmund Duggan, a former US fighter pilot detained in Australia under a veil of secrecy, said his client would “vigorously” fight his extradition to the US. The Australian citizen was arrested in New South Wales on 21 October.
Marles declined to say on Wednesday whether there was any connection between his review and the extradition case. “I’m not going to answer that question for obvious reasons,” he said.
Marles and his department did not reveal exactly how many Australians may have been targeted, but he said there were “enough concerns in my mind” to spark a more detailed review.
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Celia Perkins, a deputy secretary at the Department of Defence, later told a Senate committee hearing: “We are aware and have been made aware through engagement with security agencies that former ADF personnel may have been approached to provide military-related training services.”
Perkins said they were “quite sensitive national security matters” and so she was limited in what she could say. But she said “all our people but particularly our highly trained people” were “attractive targets”.
Perkins said there was an “onus on us” to support former ADF personnel and build deep awareness in the community that “foreign actors will target our people for the unique skills they have”.
Defence officials said they were aware of the recruitment concerns before they became the subject of media reporting last month.
The secretary, Greg Moriarty, told the committee that if his department became aware of any potential breaches of the law, it would contact and assist law enforcement agencies.
Speaking generally about the obligation of former ADF personnel to protect official secrets, Moriarty said: “That sticks with them for the rest of their life.”
British ministers have flagged plans to change the law in the UK to prevent former Royal Air Force pilots from training the Chinese military.
The UK proposal is for a two-strike rule which would result in British pilots being given one warning before they were prosecuted.
But Marles played down suggestions there was a loophole in Australian law, saying former ADF personnel and any other commonwealth officials had “an enduring obligation to maintain those secrets for as long as they are secrets, which persists well after their engagement with the commonwealth”.
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“To breach that obligation is a very serious crime – and that is clear and unambiguous,” he said.
When the reports emerged last month, Marles asked his department to investigate and provide him with “clear advice on this matter” within two weeks.
Wednesday’s announcement signalled that this work was now escalating, with a new reporting deadline of 14 December and a focus on policies concerning employment after ADF personnel leave the force.
The counter foreign interference taskforce, led by the domestic intelligence agency Asio, was set up in early 2020 with the mission “to disrupt and deter hostile actors attempting to undermine Australia’s national interests through foreign interference and espionage”.
The Australian government regards foreign interference as being activity by or on behalf of a foreign actor that is coercive, corrupting, deceptive or clandestine.
The Australian foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, spoke with her Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, on Tuesday. An official readout of the call said they discussed “a range of bilateral issues, including trade and consular matters”.
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has left open the possibility of meeting the Chinese premier, Li Keqiang, or the president, Xi Jinping, on the sidelines of forthcoming regional summits.
These include the G20 in Bali, the East Asia summit in Cambodia and the Apec summit in Thailand.
Albanese said on Wednesday his trip would be a “very busy nine days” and the government was still finalising the program – but he did not rule out such a meeting.
“I’ve made very clear that dialogue is a good thing,” the prime minister told reporters in Canberra. “And so if a meeting is arranged with Xi then that’s a positive thing moving forward. We are organising a range of meetings, but they haven’t been finalised ... We’ll make an announcement if and when meetings with various leaders are locked in.”
Comment has been sought from the Chinese embassy. | Full |
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