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https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2015/may/19/the-week-in-aussie-tv-the-good-the-bad-and-the-eurovision-song-contest | Television & radio | 2015-05-19T00:25:08.000Z | Jazz Twemlow | The week in Aussie TV: the good, the bad and the Eurovision song contest | Readers, I’ve finally succumbed to the allure of paid-for, streamed TV. My steadfast loyalty to the Aussie schedules of old finally broke when I channel-hopped three times last week, not once escaping footage of people in hard hats video-calling their loved ones to argue about lampshades.
When the options are this dire, and the streamed alternatives so Saulingly, Kimmy Schmidtedly appealing, sticking with scheduled television seems as wilfully self-hating as clinging to the Titanic while a nudist pleasure cruise drifts past.
So expect a wider range of telly picks and previews from here on, as I tumble down a blissful binge-hole. And have no fear: I’ll still be bobbing for apples in the septic tank of scheduled television. I’m sure there’ll be the occasional royal gala that makes it all worth it.
The Good ... Full Metal Alchemist
Before gorging on the big-name dramas and comedies, I thought I’d take the time to pig out on an old favourite, the Japanese animation series Full Metal Alchemist. An odd first foray, perhaps, but then you don’t need me to point out that Mad Men exists, nor to remind you that things come and go on Netflix, so while there are 64 episodes to work through, there’s little time to waste organically bonding with my own pants in a total slothathon.
It’s an exceptional series, brimming with philosophical musings, slapstick humour, heart-wrenching tragedy, an occasionally irreverent animation style, and absurdly exaggerated violence: even a papercut in this universe would result in a crimson reservoir jetting across the screen. Even better, it’s set in a fictitious old Europe, so the aesthetic isn’t as alien to western viewers as other Japanese series.
Watch the big American stuff, sure, but don’t forget there are hidden treats worth digging out too.
The bad ... Married At First Sight
Who knew that instead of scraping the bottom of the barrel you could kick through it and wear the barrel as a splinter-riddled one-piece? Some TV exec must have looked at The Bachelor and thought, “You know what? This doesn’t make the institution of marriage look nearly ridiculous enough,” to have come up with Married At First Sight (Channel Nine), soon to be followed by its spin-off, Divorced A Few Minutes Later. At this rate we’ll be able to adopt a kid using SnapChat by 2020.
The show’s promo desperately tells us that MAFS (please let’s get this going as shorthand for “worse than your mind can handle”) is setting Twitter alight. Then again, so did the hashtag #HowToSpotAFeminist. It’s not so much praise as proof that people on Twitter are about as discerning as a drunk in McDonald’s.
The clip goes on to tell us that arranged marriages “tend to last longer”. Lasting longer is also a quality ascribed to vegetables doused in pesticides, The Hobbit movies, and people called Lance Armstrong who have taken a load of drugs. I’m not entirely sure the ends justify the means.
... And the Eurovision
If you’re one of those people whose musical tastes oscillate between drab ballads and terrifying Scando metal, then the Eurovision song contest is here to tick both of those diametrically opposed boxes.
During the worst audio offerings, my advice would be to mute the TV and pretend you’re watching Cirque Du Soleil on a bad day. It’s where the enjoyment is: embracing Eurovision’s constant and precarious flirtation with the utterly naff.
To get a general idea, you can watch all the semi-finalists here. My marks for most underwhelming lyrics go to Estonia’s Elina Born and Stig Rästa.
I woke up at 6am
My eyes were closed but my mind was awake
Pretended I was breathing in a deep sleep pace.
Got dressed so quietly
I was frozen by the jingle of my keys at the door
As I got outside, I smiled to the dog.
Nul points or douze? You decide. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/jul/13/future-energy-bills-government | Opinion | 2011-07-13T13:06:00.000Z | Michael Pollitt | No end in sight for Britain's rising energy costs | Michael Pollitt | In a week that has seen the announcement of major price rises for UK households and the launch of the government white paper on electricity market reform (EMR) – with a horizon to 2030 – it is worth considering what the prospects are for energy prices in the UK.
In the latter half of 2010 the UK had the lowest household gas prices in the EU-15, thanks to the UK having the most competitive wholesale gas market in Europe. On electricity, the UK was in a less favourable position, with pre-tax prices around the average for the EU-15, partly as a result of the continuation of cross-subsidies towards households in other European countries. However, including consumer taxes on electricity, the UK had the fourth lowest electricity prices in the EU-15.
A number of factors will be key to the future evolution of individual household bills. First, international commodity prices for gas. Here the supply-and-demand balance globally is subject to large uncertainty due to the discovery of new sources supply (ie shale gas). Gas is predicted to get somewhat more expensive to 2030, but there is a significant possibility that it might be cheaper in real terms than now.
Second, additional support costs for renewables, demand reduction and low-carbon generation. Total policy support costs are envisaged to be a higher share of the electricity bill in 2030 than now. Given the problems of actually delivering renewable and nuclear investment on budget, there would seem to be a strong risk that households will pay more than currently envisaged, if the planned levels of investment are achieved.
Third, competition in the retail and generation market. Since privatisation, the UK has developed competitive wholesale and retail energy markets which have put pressure on companies to keep costs down and passed these reductions on to consumers. Government focus on facilitating particular investments rather than on outcomes for consumers seems almost certain to reduce competitive pressures on companies relative to now.
Fourth, the exploitation of demand reduction potential. A major assumption in the EMR is that household electricity demand will fall by 10% to 2030. This cuts the headline impact on the household bill. We all hope this will be true on average, but there will be substantial variance across households in their ability to meet the average and there will be significant household investment necessary to achieve this.
Fifth, taxation of energy. Currently, VAT on household electricity and gas is only 5% and household energy taxation is low. The future will see higher taxation via the introduction of the carbon price support and government auctioning of EU carbon allowances. Any move towards electrification of transportation would make higher taxes on household energy more likely to make up for the loss of tax revenue from liquid fuels.
Putting these drivers together, it is clear that future energy bills are substantially in the hands of the government. Assuming international commodity prices do not fall, energy subsidies and energy taxation and the moderation of competition will push household bills up. Households will react as best they can by reducing energy demand. Richer households will have more scope to do this and to exploit subsidies (ie installing solar panels) to household energy production.
Politics will intervene if household bills rise substantially. Fuel tax protests and recent pressure to reduce fuel duty set uncomfortable precedents for policy-inspired energy price rises (particularly those clearly labelled as tax rises). There will be pressure to raise winter fuel payments and increase cross subsidies to fuel poor households. In this case, it will be the "squeezed middle" that will see the largest negative impact on their real incomes. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/dec/14/nono-risonanze-erranti-cd-review-ensemble-prometeo-swr-experimental-studio-shiiin- | Music | 2017-12-14T12:33:48.000Z | Kate Molleson | Nono: Risonanze Erranti CD review – ominous music of cloaks and daggers | There is nowhere to hide in Risonanze Erranti, a stunningly tough and confrontational vocal work from 1986 by the late Italian composer and political agitator Luigi Nono. This is music of silence and surprise, of cloak and dagger. Scored for the low-lit combination of contralto, bass flute, tuba, percussionists and live electronics, the texts (Herman Melville, Ingeborg Bachmann, along with snippets of Renaissance polyphony) are drenched with implication, but it’s the spaces that feel most ominous: violent outbursts made all the more alarming because of the emptiness around them. The voice shrieks and whispers and sometimes sneaks between the instruments as though seeking camaraderie. This performance from 2014 by the Nono specialists Ensemble Prometeo is ultra-focused, pristine and sung with immense gravitas by contralto Katarzyna Otczyk. The disc also includes the original recording from 1987 and it’s fascinating to compare – the electronics sound dated, but Susanne Otto’s vocal gestures are as gripping as ever. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2013/apr/07/top-ten-sun-spots-escape | Travel | 2013-04-07T05:31:01.000Z | Beverley Fearis | The top 10 sun spots to escape Britain's endless winter | We can't go out at the moment, obviously, what with this tantrum of a weather, so what we do is sit on the sofa under a blanket in our slipper socks and browse Whereisitsunny.com. The website is on Twitter, too, updating us British masochists with news of Acharavi, Luxor, Delhi and Puerto Plata. Places where you can breakfast outside, where you have to shower twice a day because it's just too hot. Places where you hang your swimming costume on a tree and it dries in the time it takes for you to cut up a mango. I want to go to there.
This was the coldest March in 50 years. Do you remember sun? What it feels like to be warm? As I write, there is ice on the window ledge, and my colleague is wearing double fleece. Never have we been more in need of half an hour lying in dappled sunlight with a book and a drink.
So here. Here you go. Here is a list of the places where it is sunny, because they do exist. If you go, please send a postcard. For us to burn for heat.
1 Morocco
April highs 24C; sunshine hours 10
After all the rain in Blighty, where better to escape to than the desert? A camel safari in the Sahara is just one of the wonderful experiences promised on this eight-day guided Morocco and Sahara tour which also takes in the medieval medinas of Marrakech and the Gorges du Dades.
Camel trekking in the Moroccan desert on an eight-day tour
Getting there The £720 price includes six nights' accommodation, overnight camel safari, most meals, excursions, transfers and flights from Heathrow to Marrakech, departing 20 April (tucantravel.com, 020 8896 1600)
2 Northern Cyprus
April highs 22C; sunshine hours 9
If the heat gets too much at this hillside resort, there are not just one but three pools to cool off in. The family-run Riverside Garden Resort in Alsancak, close to Kyrenia, has studio and villa-style accommodation and is set in pretty gardens.
Getting there Stay seven nights half-board for £299pp, based on two sharing, with transfers and flights from Stansted. Northern Cyprus uses the Turkish lira so is unaffected by the euro crisis that has hit the south (cyprusparadise.com, 020 8343 8888)
3 Egypt
April highs 27C; sunshine hours 11
Mix sunshine with culture on an eight-night Nile Explorer tour. Expert guides introduce you to the pyramids and Sphinx at Giza, Cairo's mosques and the Egyptian Museum, the temples and markets of Luxor, the Valley of the Kings and more. The tour also includes a two-night cruise down the Nile in a traditional felucca.
Getting there The price is £794pp, including accommodation and flights with British Airways from London leaving 27 April (egypt-uncovered.com, 0845 130 4849)
4 Tenerife
April highs 20C; sunshine hours 7
Catch some rays at the Finca el Lance in Tenerife's north-western Teno mountains. This rural retreat is on the edge of a nature reserve and a 10-minute walk from the village of El Tanque Alto. It has five houses, all with views of the coast and of Mount Teide, Spain's highest mountain.
Getting there A week's self-catering costs from £119pp, based on five sharing. Flights with BA (ba.com) from Gatwick to Tenerife start at around £200 per person (spain-holiday.com, 020 3384 7066)
5 Dubai
April highs 33C; sunshine hours 10
Jet off to Dubai for a luxurious beach-and-shopping break at the four-star Ocean View Hotel. This beachside hotel overlooks the Arabian Gulf and Dubai's famous manmade island, the Palm Jumeirah. If the 30C-plus temperatures get too much, take the free shuttle to the city's air-conditioned shopping malls.
Getting there Departing on 22 April, a three-night trip costs £699pp, including half-board accommodation, return Emirates flights from London Gatwick and transfers (hayesandjarvis.co.uk, 0844 415 1918)
6 Alicante
April highs 21C; sunshine hours 5
For those who can't keep still, this eco campsite could be the perfect solution. The Marjal Costa Blanca Resort, just 25 minutes from Alicante Airport, has mobile homes for up to six people, plus a large outdoor pool with waterfall and slides, a heated indoor pool complex, spa, fitness area, and tennis and basketball courts.
Getting there Seven nights cost from £148pp, based on two sharing a mobile home, while flights with Ryanair to Alicante cost from £66, based on 1 May departures (europarcs.com, 08448 24 35 36)
7 Paxos
April highs 19C; sunshine hours 7
Hide yourself away in a waterfront house on the sunny but wonderfully sleepy Greek island of Paxos. Mermaid Cottage, in the pretty fishing village of Loggos, has a balcony with direct views of the sea.
Getting there A week's self-catering costs from £250pp, based on two sharing. Flights with EasyJet (easyjet.com) to Corfu cost around £120; the hydrofoil ride to Paxos is £17pp each way (ionian-villas.co.uk, 01935 477196)
8 Sicily
April highs 18C; sunshine hours 7
Turn up the heat on a romantic break at the 16th-century Badia Tower, on Sicily's west coast. Set in the lush gardens and grounds of an aristocratic estate, this self-catering tower is straight out of a fairy tale. Take an evening stroll around the nearby medieval town of Erice but remember: once the sun goes down you might need a cardigan.
The romantic Badia Tower in Sicily is 'straight out of a fairy tale'
Getting there A three-night stay, with EasyJet flights from Gatwick to Palermo departing 18 April, costs £320pp, based on two sharing (solosicily.com, 020 7097 1413)
9 Gran Canaria
April highs 22C; sunshine hours 10
Treat yourself to an all-inclusive week's holiday at the four-star Seaside Sandy Beach Hotel in Gran Canaria. It's in Playa del Ingles, the island's most famous resort. The hotel's 10th-floor wellness centre has wonderful sea views and offers lemon and lavender body scrubs, Cleopatra baths and other indulgences.
Getting there Seven nights, with flights from Luton on 20 April and transfers, cost from £625pp, based on two adults sharing on an all-inclusive basis (firstchoice.co.uk, 0871 200 7799)
10 Malta
April highs 20C; sunshine hours 8.5
Explore underwater caves and some of the best wrecks in the Mediterranean on a diving holiday in Malta. Stay at Hotel Roma on the Sliema seafront, a short walk from Selkies Dive Centre and from the resort's shops, bars and restaurants.
Getting there Seven nights' B&B, with return flights, transfers and a Dive Pack (five days' diving, 10 boat dives, tanks and weights), costs from £645pp, based on two sharing, throughout April (diveworldwide.com, 01962 302087) | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2003/nov/28/germany.television | Media | 2003-11-28T07:55:17.000Z | Luke Harding | Greatest ever German? Try a man with a British sense of humour | Konrad Adenauer, Germany's grey, postwar leader, is likely to emerge as the greatest German ever, beating off stiff competition from Martin Luther, Albert Einstein, Johann Sebastian Bach and Karl Marx, among other heavyweights.
Adenauer - the first chancellor of West Germany after the second world war, and the man responsible for its economic miracle - is favourite to be confirmed today as the surprise winner of a poll for Germany's ZDF television station, based on the BBC's Great Britons contest, which was won last autumn by Winston Churchill.
Over the past three weeks more than 1.5 million Germans have voted in the series, which has been called Our Best rather than Great Germans to avoid accusations of jingoism.
Einstein took an early lead. But over the past two weeks Adenauer has overtaken him, pursued by Luther, who is currently second, and Willy Brandt, Germany's charismatic social democratic chancellor from the 70s, now in third place.
Last night several leading German commentators said Adenauer's popularity could be explained by the fact that Germans are fed up with their current political leadership and the country's economic woes.
As well as bringing about reconciliation with France and the US, and creating unprecedented prosperity, Adenauer led West Germany to a state of "inner peace", they said.
"For many Germans the 1950s and 1960s were a golden era," said Christian Hacke, a professor of political science at Bonn University. "Everything was getting better. Adenauer was a kind and elderly father figure. He was seen as selfless and incorruptible. He also had a rather British sense of humour, which was unusual for a German politician."
Prof Hacke added: "I would put him No 1. Everything about him is positive. There are no contradictions."
German celebrities and historians have clashed on primetime television over the merits of Germany's most famous sons and daughters. The chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, scraped into the top 100 at 82 - way below Daniel Küblböck, a contestant in the dire talent show Germany Seeks a Superstar, at 16.
The top 10 offered few surprises: Bach, Goethe, Einstein, Marx and Luther were all on the list as well as Otto von Bismarck, the man who unified Germany in the late 19th-century.
The only unexpected entries were Sophie and Hans Scholl, the student resistance fighters executed by the Nazis in 1943, who were in fifth position last night. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/food/2019/may/15/blumenthals-pubic-bacteria-is-this-the-future-of-food | Food | 2019-05-15T16:22:12.000Z | Mark Brown | Blumenthal’s pubic bacteria: is this the future of food? | At the end of a show which includes decorative ceramics glazed with evaporated human urine, serving bowls made from used toilet paper and a comté cheese cultured by bacteria in Heston Blumenthal’s pubic hair, the V&A is offering its visitors canapés.
And they are tasty. Who knew a mould discovered in the soil of Harlow would go so well with tomatoes too ugly for shops and restaurants?
The V&A will open a major exhibition on Saturday exploring the story of food and how people are reinventing how we grow, distribute and experience it.
The museum’s director, Tristram Hunt, said the V&A wanted to take visitors on “a sensory journey through the food cycle” from compost to table.
The show, which is three years in the planning, includes things the museum has never done before, including asking celebrities for their bacteria. “I did let down the curators,” Hunt admitted. “In the end I couldn’t face signing the letter to David Attenborough saying: ‘Can we make cheese with your feet?’ I felt it was not suitably respectful of a national treasure.”
Personalised canapés made to order at the V&A. Photograph: Yui Mok/PA
Ruby Tandoh: how I was turned into a human cheese
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There was no such queasiness about getting samples from the pubic hair of Blumenthal for a comté, or the belly button of Professor Green for a mozzarella, or the nose of Guardian columnist Ruby Tandoh for a stilton, and the cheeses will quietly develop in front of visitors.
Elsewhere, mushrooms are growing on upright beds that include coffee grounds from the V&A’s cafe. When they are fully grown, the mushrooms will go back to the cafe.
The canapés are provided by the Center for Genomic Gastronomy and are made to order once visitors choose three of their food priorities from a 15-strong list. So an “efficient, affordable and zero-waste” canapé was made from cucumber, tomato, mould microprotein, dried anchovy and indian salad hydroponically grown in Clapham.
The exhibition is showing about 70 projects and commissions, often involving artists and designers.
Mushrooms growing on upright beds. Photograph: Neil Hall/EPA
They include the designer Carolien Niebling, whose project explores sausages, asking what they might look like in the future; Nienke Hoogvliet, whose Waterschatten range of products is made from reclaimed used toilet paper; and Sinae Kim, who has created human bladder-shaped vessels glazed with some of the 280 litres of human urine she collected over five months.
Her aim is to show that urine can be a sustainable alternative to the metal oxide glazes commonly used in the ceramics industry.
The artist Laura Wilson’s project is about Veda bread, a dark brown savoury malt loaf which lights up the faces of people from Northern Ireland but leaves others generally baffled.
The bread was invented 100 years ago by a Scotsman and it became popular all over the UK because it was nutritious and had a long shelf life. Today it can only be found in Northern Ireland and Wilson, with a new recipe, is on a mission to popularise it more widely, working with a network of bakeries and galleries.
The project reflects Wilson’s interest in trade and labour and how things are passed on, but also her passion for Veda bread. “I love it. I remember the first time I devoured a loaf. I think I was 11 and I remember it very well. It tastes really good and I want more people to enjoy it.”
Food: Bigger Than the Plate is at the V&A 18 May-20 October. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/29/susie-orbach-poetry-of-therapy | Books | 2016-10-29T08:30:15.000Z | Susie Orbach | Susie Orbach: the poetry of therapy | Freud instructed his patients to say what was on their minds – to “free associate”. As he moved on from the practice of hypnosis and published the first results of the talking cure in 1895, he was asking his patients to replace a doctor’s words and instructions with words of their own. Unlike other medical practitioners of the time, he would not tell. He would first listen and then listen some more.
With this instruction he disrupted the conventional doctor-patient relationship as well as the back and forth of polite conversation. Patients were to lie on the couch out of his sightline and they were to say whatever came into their minds.
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By allowing for space around the utterances of his patients, he hoped to free them from traumas that were buried, unconscious or expressed through hysterical symptoms. At that time, the occurrence of non-biologically based physical symptoms, such as a paralysed arm or leg, was widespread. Each age throws up its own complaints. Think of the pervasiveness of bulimia, anorexia and eating troubles today, while the 19th century was replete with hysterias. Freud’s aim was to enable the individual to encounter the conflicts these hysterias held, and experience, rather than repress, the knowledge of them. He believed that through talking freely, the difficult conflict could be borne and the symptom would dissolve. His liberatory aim created a revolutionary practice: the idea that patients could, through their own speech, discover what so troubled them and in turn, heal themselves.
Freud had followed the associations of his own night-time dreams wherever they led his mind. The jumble of seemingly incongruous images and words were analysed to reveal the desires repressed in daily life. He found the workings of his own psyche fascinating and illuminating and, as he deployed the method with his patients, he began to build the theories that became the cornerstone of psychoanalytic practice: listening, observing, feeling, reflecting. The interpretations he was to offer have now, alas, become so culturally cliched that they can hide the revolutionary nature of the talking cure, a practice which has endured and developed over the past century.
Words are the most exquisite example of the unity of mind and body. Speech is a physical and mental production and the tone, rhythms and forms in which words are spoken in the analytic session are of great interest. Do the words come tumbling out and then stop abruptly? Are they slow to come? Are they staccato or interrogative in the stereotypical manner of the “valley girls”, whose every utterance ends in a high? Are they halting or sparse? Like music’s tempo, melody, chords and notes, words in an analytic session – how they are used and the way they are said as well as the spaces between – form a structure.
In the early stages of therapy, as the words are spoken, the therapist may wonder to whom they are addressed. In tonal terms they perhaps express grievances that can’t be articulated to the mother, the teacher, the father, the grandparent or the sibling. The therapist has become a proxy for someone else and may hear judgments projected on to her or him that only make sense if the therapist is understood as a stand-in, an “as if” relationship.
As accusation gives way to feelings and new understanding, words take on a different weight. They are pruned and examined until they are just right: spare and evocative like words put together for a poem.
The therapist listens to the words, to what they aim to convey, to the vocabulary and to the rhythm. She also listens to constraints in the vocabulary and the repetitive manner in which the stories or incidents are told. She asks herself: why this refrain? Why this slip of the tongue here? Why this chain of associations?
For the therapist, the refrains of repeated stories are both clue and trope. They can conceal and reveal the individual, or analysand, at the same time. An oft-repeated story by a younger sister overshadowed by her older sister, which remains unrelieved in the telling or in the sharing of the feelings, cues the therapist into the words and feelings that are unexplored.
Woody Allen on the psyhciatrist’s couch, in Bananas. Photograph: Allstar/United Artists
The telling has become a cover story. It’s not that the older sister’s behaviour didn’t cause hurt, but it is a story that is insufficient. It is decontextualised; severed from the larger familial and cultural set-up in which that hurt was able to prosper.
Each person’s clues are idiosyncratic and entirely personal. Defence structures – those aspects of the self which aim to protect the psyche from what has been unmanageable – have recognisable forms, but the ways in which they develop are distinctive and individual. Finding the right words to interrupt these patterns requires close listening. The therapist needs to feel the words as though they were his or her own in order to find a response that respects their rhythm, yet is able to offer something sufficiently novel to break the psychic log jam.
Like works of literature which introduce us to characters with increasing complexity and depth, the psychoanalytic endeavour involves the analyst and analysand in a quest to understand a multi-layered inner world. The analysand is consciously in search of change, even as she or he may resist it. The tension between the discomfort of the known and the fear of the as‑yet‑not-experienced is part of therapy’s dialectic.
As the deconstruction of known senses of self occurs, the words, timbre and tone may change. The therapist becomes alert to movement in language, to the disruption in the speech pattern, to the elements of surprise or reflection that halt a well-honed tale in its tracks, so that story or incident can be thought and felt about anew. The therapist’s language is particular to encounters with that individual. It is not therapy speak or psycho-babble. It is a bespoke relationship with a bespoke language.
And within that bespoke relationship, as words are discarded and new words found, the therapeutic couple create an aesthetic with its own unique colour, temperature and shape. The stormy moments give way to an adagio, not just one but several, which build and then turn back to re-examine understanding and mood. There are resting points and times of quiet which hold the therapeutic couple in their work together.
Together, these undergird the challenges and struggles that psychological change demands. The aesthetic emerges out of the in vivo study of mind and emotion and creates its own satisfying forms. Amid the pain, sweat, struggle, times of confusion and misunderstanding, small pleasing connections and new understandings occur which have their own beauty – not dissimilar to the elegance physicists and mathematicians talk of when they find pleasing explanations.
Curiously, the technical language of psychoanalysis is quite ugly and crude, but the words and ideas that emerge in sessions sing. Therapists discover that their own vocabularies are enriched by stretching to understand the subtlety of their analysands’ feelings and ways of being. The therapist may utter words they never knew they knew or had spoken before. The concepts that were suddenly urgent to explain, or the feeling that required meeting, produce new language and words in an order outside of ordinary conversation. That too has its beauty and its satisfactions.
In everyday chatter we can on occasion be surprised by what we say, but the structure and purposeful endeavour of the analytic hour creates a space in which surprise can occur frequently. One notices what one says and what one cannot say. The therapist, too, notices not just what the analysand says or doesn’t say but what she or he can and cannot say.
The injunction to speak freely does not mean that words necessarily flow for either party. It means that out of the jumble or the silence, words will in time be found, feelings will be recognised. Interestingly, the therapist’s interrogation of his or her responses is part of deepening the understanding of the analysand’s story; how is it, the therapist asks herself, that I feel silenced, inarticulate or perhaps garrulous? What does it say about me, but more importantly what does it say about the kind of relationship the analysand has experienced and is now creating with me in the therapy?
What is made of it at the level of the analysis contributes to the talking cure and is an essential aspect of clinical theory-making.
Ugly, harsh, malevolent, envious, cruel words can tell us about difficulties often too painful to bear
As one who both writes and listens, I am often struck by how the talking/listening cure is not dissimilar to what happens with words when one is writing. Writing takes us to places we had not anticipated and shocks us with its new, unthought knowledge. This is why many of us write. We want to find out what we didn’t know we were thinking and feeling. We want to give shape to inchoate thoughts that need gathering and sorting.
The exhilaration of a new idea or wisdom, or a different emphasis, is what can relieve the often hard work of putting words on the page. It is the nuance, the refashioning, that catches our breath, while it subtly resituates us inside ourselves.
But as in any attempt to articulate what feels right, words in therapy aren’t all cosy or satisfying. Thoughts and feelings can be saturated with malice and sometimes this is directed at the therapist. The therapist can’t escape this if she is to do her job. She needs to find the resilience to experience the blow, and then think about what it expresses. Ugly, harsh, malevolent, envious, cruel words can tell us about difficulties often too painful to bear. Instead they are projected out (and on to the therapist) with fury, because difficult feelings –perhaps of need or dependency or helplessness – have been internally rejected.
This is the work of therapy: to find the words which can enable the individual to encounter the complexity of feelings that they find fearful and to then risk experiencing them. This can be initially for no more than a moment, but gradually for longer, until such feelings can live inside them without being a source of terror. Or, as Freud would have said, they can turn from hysteria into ordinary human unhappiness.
Susie Orbach’s In Therapy is published by Profile books and Wellcome Collection. The second series of In Therapy begins on BBC Radio 4 on 7 November at 12.04pm. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/australia-culture-blog/2014/jun/19/breaker-morant-rewatching-classic-australian-films | Film | 2014-06-19T08:50:04.000Z | Luke Buckmaster | Breaker Morant: rewatching classic Australian films | If great cinema can be defined as a collection of memorable moments, the veteran Australian director Bruce Beresford created an unforgettable one in his 1980 magnum opus, Breaker Morant. After an intense military court trial that finds two Australians guilty of murder during the Boer war and sentenced to death by firing squad, audiences watched a cliff face-set sequence that would be forever emblazoned in their memories.
Two men walk hand in hand towards two chairs. A soldier offers each a piece of material – a blindfold –and both refuse. The sun slowly sets and the air around them takes on an orangey crimson colour, as if the gates of the afterlife are creeping open. Ten soldiers with rifles aim towards them. The doomed men look at their killers. One, Harry “Breaker” Morant (British actor Edward Woodward), shouts words that would become synonymous with classic Australian films: “Shoot straight you bastards. Don’t make a mess of it!”
The film is based on a true story but – as is often the case with real-life adaptations – historians had a thing or two to say about dramatic embellishment. Craig Wilcox observed that Morant never yelled those famous words and the two men (the other was Lieutenant Peter Handcock, played by Bryan Brown) died in far less visually arresting surroundings, in the grounds of a jail in the middle of a town.
Non-fiction films inevitably struggle to justify the label of “true” or “factual". The rhythms required for interesting drama, after all, are different from the rhythms of real life. The rousing finale to Breaker Morant is a great case study in why storytelling liberties are often placed ahead of fidelity to fact: if Beresford had remained true to the real story, we would never have experienced one of the greatest scenes in Australian cinema. And, arguably, we wouldn’t have experienced a finale reflective of the characters’ tumultuous emotional state.
The moments that lead to Breaker and Handcock’s state-sanctioned death are a series of sequences alternating between taut courtroom drama and wartime re-enactments. The two men and a third, George Witton (Lewis Fitz-Gerald), are court martialled and tried for the murder of seven Boer prisoners and a German missionary. As witnesses recount their stories, the film cuts back in time to illustrate them; many of these scenes are graded with a low-lit blueish tint, as if they are being viewed through a fog of war.
The courtroom where the characters' fates are determined is bare and understated – no flags, no reams of books, no witness box – which intensifies the audience’s focus on the performances. Jack Thompson plays the lawyer for the defence, Major JF Thomas, who initially seems passionate but out of his depth, like Tom Cruise in A Few Good Men with a whiff of Dennis Denuto.
It doesn’t take him long to warm into the role. Thomas’s first cross-examination sets the tone for a fiery performance from Thompson, who at the time of Breaker Morant's release was in the middle of a remarkable run of classic Australian films – among them Sunday Too Far Away (1975), Mad Dog Morgan (1976), The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1978), The Club (1980) and The Man From Snowy River (1982).
“We all admire your zeal in defending your fellow Australians,” says one of the judges, Lieutenant Colonel Denny (Charles Tingwell). “But intemperate speech and wild accusations do not further your cause." It clearly does from an audience perspective. Adapted by Beresford and two other writers (Jonathan Hardy and David Stevens) from Kenneth G Ross’s 1978 play Breaker Morant: A Play in Two Acts, the screenplay – nominated for an Academy award – is littered with great lines. Many of them ruminate on the nature of war with a sardonic, quintessentially Australian gallows humour.
“He’ll never get to heaven if he doesn’t die,” says one character. “This is a war, not a debutante’s ball,” remarks another. When Handcock hears the sound of men constructing the coffins he and Morant will soon be buried in, he complains that “they didn’t even have the courtesy to measure us first”.
But the best line – and the very best scene – is saved for last. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/oct/12/loneliness-as-bad-for-health-as-long-term-illness-says-gps-chief | Society | 2017-10-11T23:01:24.000Z | Denis Campbell | Loneliness as bad for health as long-term illness, says GPs' chief | Being lonely can be as bad for someone’s health as having a long-term illness such as diabetes or high blood pressure, the leader of Britain’s GPs will warn on Thursday.
Patients who visit their family doctor because they are suffering from loneliness and want some human contact are adding to the pressures the NHS is under, Dr Helen Stokes-Lampard will tell the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP).
But she will also urge GPs to make the time to see such patients, so that they have someone to talk to, despite being overworked because of the growing demands on their schedules.
The estimated 1.1 million Britons to be lonely are 50% more likely to die prematurely than people with a good social network, making loneliness as big a mortality risk as diabetes, the college says.
“Social isolation and loneliness are akin to a chronic long-term condition in terms of the impact they have on our patients’ health and wellbeing,” the college’s chair will tell its annual conference.
“GPs see patients, many of whom are widowed, who have multiple health problems like diabetes, hypertension and depression, but often their main problem isn’t medical, [it’s that] they’re lonely.”
Acting as a sympathetic listening ear is often more useful than giving someone a prescription for drugs or offering lifestyle advice, Stokes-Lampard will add. “The guidelines say we should be talking to them about their weight, exercise and prescribing more medication. But really what these patients need is someone to listen to them and to find purpose in life.
“Loneliness and social isolation are not the exclusive preserve of the elderly. They are not something that can be treated with pharmaceuticals or that can be referred for hospital treatment”.
Three out of four GPs say they see between one and five lonely people a day, according to research among over 1,000 family doctors undertaken in 2013 by the Campaign to End Loneliness. One in 10 said they saw between six and ten patients daily who had come in mainly because they were lonely. But only 13% felt well equipped to help them.
Lonely people are known to consult their GP more than others.
“The health impacts of loneliness can be devastating; it is worse for you than obesity, and as bad as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Chronic loneliness is cutting lives short, and the problem is growing,” said Laura Alcock-Ferguson, the campaign’s executive director.
Recent research it undertook with the London School of Economics found that £3 in health costs was saved for every pound spent tackling loneliness. Local NHS bodies should invest in services that will stop lonely people needing to see their GP in the first place, she added.
Age UK said that about a million older people suffered from loneliness, “an often devastating state of profound unhappiness”, and that feelings of isolation could be a sign of underlying ill-health.
“Loneliness can sometime be the face of more serious underlying issues and should not be disregarded as a minor problem. GPs should be alert to any underlying mental health problems such as depression,” said Caroline Abraham, Age UK’s charity director. GPs should do more to direct lonely people to services that can support them, she added.
NHS England agreed with the RCGP chief that GPs spending time with lonely people was a good use of their time.
“Older people can sometimes decide to soldier on through illness, which can then lead to more serious health problems,” a spokesman said.
“Just having someone to talk to makes it more likely that health problems are mentioned and help sought early, which is particularly important as we move into winter, as elderly patients make up the largest number of hospital admissions.”
But Stokes-Lampard added that GPs needed to have less pressurised schedules so that they had enough “time to care” for socially isolated patients.
Other research by the Campaign to End Loneliness found that 52% of lonely people miss being together with someone, 51% miss laughing with someone and 46% miss not having a hug.
Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, will use his speech at the conference in Liverpool to announce an extension of a scheme in which newly-qualified doctors are given £20,000 in return for becoming a trainee GP in areas of England with acute shortages of family doctors. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/26/share-your-reaction-to-irelands-abortion-referendum | World news | 2018-05-26T10:20:03.000Z | Guardian readers | Share your reaction to Ireland's abortion referendum | Ireland has voted overwhelming to repeal the eighth amendment, which prohibited abortion in the country. Legislation to allow for safe, legal terminations within Ireland is now set to be enacted by the end of the year.
Ireland has changed utterly: the cruel eighth amendment is history
Ivana Bacik
Read more
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https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/apr/02/wet-leg-wet-leg-review-absurdist-delights-and-damp-squibs | Music | 2022-04-02T13:00:51.000Z | Kitty Empire | Wet Leg: Wet Leg review – absurdist delights and damp squibs | Wet Leg are a band whose greatest power comes from unexpected contrasts. Their Mona Lisa smiles offset by steely-eyed glee, Rhian Teasdale (most vocals, guitar) and Hester Chambers (other vocals, guitar) paired wholesome bonnets with lobster claws in the video for 2021’s Wet Dream. Earlier this year, they offset a glam rock strop about smartphone anomie – Oh No – with yeti suits made of mop heads.
Then there’s the name itself. Former folk-leaning musicians, Teasdale and Chambers seem as though butter would not melt in their mouths. But their name hints at a sloppy mishap with a drink or, worse, of bodily fluids oozing where they shouldn’t.
Sex is a topic they dance around savvily and Wet Leg’s initial approach to getting sticky offered something of a wry, absurdist Gen Z update on Carry On. Their debut single, 2021’s Chaise Longue, was full of double entendres.
“Is your muffin buttered?” they asked, quoting Mean Girls. “You should be horizontal now.” Chaise Longue’s commitment to a kind of oblique punky breathlessness, meanwhile, recalled both Rock Lobster by the B-52s and Where’s Me Jumper by the Sultans of Ping FC. Going from nought to ubiquitous in a short space of time, Chaise Longue also echoed the previous successes of Arctic Monkeys and Franz Ferdinand, Wet Leg’s Domino labelmates. But Wet Leg’s appetite for upending normality also recalls another earlier Domino band, Pavement.
There seem to be two Wet Legs… the absurdist outfit and a band that turn out to be like a lot of other bands
The slick of bodily fluids squelching around Wet Leg’s muse was only reinforced by their second release, Wet Dream. But despite some surface roustabout jollity, it took a more fed-up turn. “What makes you think you’re good enough to think about me when you’re touching yourself?” wondered Teasdale in response to some explicit texts from an ex. He’s the kind of guy who’s quite keen to take you home to watch “Buffalo 66 on DVD”. Still, all seemed to bode well for a debut album that satirised all things moist and skewered the icky fantasies of windscreen-licking men.
A handful more tracks and now, the full monty, reveals that there seem to be two Wet Legs high-kicking for supremacy: the knockabout, sly, absurdist outfit and a band that turn out to be quite like a lot of other bands.
Watch the video for Angelica.
Despite dedicating Wet Leg to not taking themselves too seriously – a song called Supermarket larks about, shopping for bogofs while much the worse for wear – Teasdale and Chambers’s debut album turns out not to be the hoped-for collage of inspired juxtapositions and best friend energy. Rather, it is a tuneful indie rock album about being in your 20s, a conventional record that’s quite happy to lift the guitar line from David Bowie’s The Man Who Sold the World for I Don’t Wanna Go Out.
So there’s some disappointment here at this slew of perfectly good, but distinctly un-odd tunes about how terrible it feels to be in love or how confusing it is to be alive (Too Late Now).
Expectations sharply managed, Wet Leg’s charm and wit still serve them well. There has, in truth, rarely been a better time to be a female artist with a sharp tongue. From Self Esteem to CMAT via Dry Cleaning, British pop is teeming with clever women flinging zingers about.
Teasdale has a good few more up her bouffant calico peasant sleeve. Angelica – about hating a party – is rich with putdowns. “I don’t wanna follow you on the ’Gram/ I don’t wanna listen to your band,” she sighs.
Ex-partners come in for particularly quotable tongue-lashings. Teasdale can be blunt or entertainingly specific, conjuring up an entire scene with a few words. “Why don’t you just suck my dick?” she fumes on Ur Mum, shortly before making an exit. “When you’re getting blazed/ Spooning mayonnaise/ Yeah I know it’s time to go.” As she leaves, she takes the metaphorical pin out of a grenade with her teeth and throws it over her shoulder. “Well, if you were better to me then maybe I’d consider fucking you goodbye.” She’s got some terrible lines, too, though: “You’re so woke/ Diet Coke.”
Chambers, meanwhile, sings a track called Convincing and makes one last bid for skew-whiffness on a line about swimming at night in “bioluminescent plankton shit”. Conceived at one remove from mainland scenes on the Isle of Wight, Wet Leg’s unself-conscious art seemed initially to foreground the ridiculousness of everything (especially weird stains). Their album, by contrast, drills down hard into how rubbish exes are. Relatable, of course, understandable too, but perhaps not what was originally indicated by those lobster claws. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/1950-1959 | World news | 2014-07-30T23:30:10.000Z | Harry Slater | Guardian Century: how the Guardian saw the 20th century | 1899-1909
1899 - American Imperialism
Fighting at Manila
“The Filipinos attacked the American position around this city at half-past eight last night. It began with sharp firing on the outposts from several quarters at once, and grew to a furious conflict as the night advanced. The insurgents fought savagely, but the defending lines, which have been ready for this for weeks, held their own steadily. At this hour there is still hot firing. The Americans are still successfully repelling the assault.”
1900 - The Boer War
The relief of Ladysmith
“To describe with any degree of adequacy the excitement in London, and indeed throughout the country, consequent upon the announcement yesterday of the relief of Ladysmith would be an almost impossible task. The news was made known a few minutes before ten o’clock at the War Office, and soon after the hour the welcome intelligence was proclaimed by the Lord Mayor from a window of the Mansion House.”
1901 - Queen Victoria dies
Death of the Queen
“The Lord Mayor of London last night received the following:- Osborne, Tuesday, 6.45pm. The Prince of Wales to the Lord Mayor. My beloved mother the Queen has just passed away, surrounded by her children and grandchildren. (signed) Albert Edward.”
1902 - End of the Boer War
Conclusion of peace
“The announcement of peace was made at the evening service at St. Paul’s Cathedral to a fairly large congregation. Apparently the message came as a surprise, as evensong had commenced before the gratifying tidings were generally known even in the central parts of the City. There was an audible murmur of satisfaction when the telegram from Pretoria was read by the Bishop of Stepney.”
1903 - Race hate in the US
Anti-negro riots in the United States
“The town of Evansville, in Indiana, has been the scene for several days of anti-negro riots, which have been attended by the loss of ten lives. A negro was imprisoned in the gaol on a charge of murdering a policeman who was endeavouring to arrest him, and on Sunday a mob set out to break into the gaol and lynch the negro.”
1904 - The Russo-Japanese War
The war in the Far East
“According to a St. Petersburg telegram, the Russians are far from intending to allow the Japanese to advance unmolested from the Yalu to Feng-huang-cheng - General Kuropatkin’s first line of defence. On the contrary, it is declared they mean to offer serious resistance either at Antung or Shakhedz.”
1905 - Pogroms in the Ukraine
Days of terror
“The events in the Odessa suburbs of Moldavanka, Slobodka, and Bugaieoka last night were of a most terrible nature. Immense bands of ruffians, accompanied by policemen, invaded all the Jewish houses and mercilessly slaughtered the occupants.”
1906 - The Big ‘Quake
Earthquake in San Francisco
“San Francisco has been devastated by an earthquake. The shock occurred shortly after five o’clock yesterday morning, and lasted three minutes.”
1907 - Millions starve in China
The famine in China
“It is estimated that four millions are starving and tens of thousands reduced to utter destitution wandering over the country, in the North of Anhui, the East of Honan, and the whole of the North of Kiang-Su provinces of China.”
1908 - The Persian civil war
Fighting in Teheran
“Fighting between Royalist and Parliamentary forces began at Teheran yesterday morning. The Shah and his ministers have been preparing for a coup d’etat for the last week or two.”
1909 - Bleriot’s cross-channel flight
Airship feat
“The feat of flying across the English Channel in a heavier-than-air machine, a thing which had never before been done, was accomplished yesterday morning by M. Louis Bleriot, in a monoplane of his own construction.”
1910-19
Franz Ferdinand, archduke of Austria, and his wife Sophie riding in an open carriage at Sarajevo shortly before their assassination in 1914. Photograph: Henry Guttmann/Getty Images Photograph: Henry Guttmann/Getty Images
1910 - The murderous Dr Crippen
Crippen & Miss le Neve
“A great crowd assembled early yesterday morning outside the famous police court in Bow street, London, where Dr. Crippen and Miss Le Neve were to be brought before the magistrate later in the day in connection with the mystery surrounding the discovery of human remains in the cellar of 39 Hilldrop Crescent, Camden Road.”
1911 - Churchill, have-a-go Home Secretary
Murderers’ siege in London
“A raid made by London police early yesterday morning on a house in Stepney - 100, Sidney-street - in which two of the gang that murdered the three police offficers in Houndsditch last month were believed to be hiding, developed into a pitched battle or siege.”
1912 - Sinking of the Titanic
The Titanic sunk
“The maiden voyage of the White Star liner Titanic, the largest ship ever launched, has ended in disaster. An unofficial message from Cape Race, Newfoundland, stated that only 675 have been saved out of 2,200 to 2,400 persons on board.”
1913 - Scott of the Antarctic
Captain Scott’s last journey
“Captain R. F. Scott, the famous Antarctic explorer, and four other members of the British South Polar Expedition have died amidst the Southern ice. The five men were the whole Southern party. They had reached the Pole on January 18, 1912, just over a month after Captain Amundsen, the Norwegian, and had struggled far back towards safety when they were overcome.”
1914 - The Great War
Assassination of the Austrian royal heir and wife
“The Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria, nephew of the aged Emperor and heir to the throne, was assassinated in the streets of Sarayevo, the Bosnian capital, yesterday afternoon. His wife, the Duchess of Hohenberg, was killed by the same assassin. Some reports say the Duchess was deliberately shielding her husband from the second shot when she was killed.”
1915 - Sinking of the Lusitania
The Lusitania disaster
“The death roll in the Lusitania disaster is still not certainly known. About 750 persons were rescued, but of these some 50 have died since they were landed. Over 2,150 men, women and children were on the liner when she left New York, and since the living do not number more than 710, the dead cannot be fewer than 1,450.”
1916 - The Easter Rising
Sinn Fein outbreak in Dublin
“A very serious outbreak organised by Sinn Feiners occurred in Dublin on Monday. A large body of men, mostly armed, seized St. Stephen’s Green and the Post Office, and also houses in St Stephen’s Green, Sackville Street (where the Post Office is situated), the adjacent Abbey Street, and on the quays along the Liffey. The telegraph and telephone lines were cut.”
1917 - The Russian Revolution
How the Bolsheviks took the Winter Palace
“The Palace was pillaged and devastated from top to bottom by the Bolshevik armed mob, as though by a horde of barbarians. All the State papers were destroyed. Priceless pictures were ripped from their frames by bayonets.”
1918 - The Armistice
The end of the war
“The war is over, and in a million households fathers and mothers, wives and sisters, will breathe freely, relieved at length of all dread of that curt message which has shattered the hope and joy of so many.”
1919 - First transatlantic flight
Manchester men first to fly Atlantic direct
“The first direct Transatlantic flight from America to Europe has been achieved by Captain Alcock, D.S.C., a Manchester pilot flying the Vickers Vimy-Rolls aeroplane with Lieutenant A. W. Brown as navigator.”
1920-29
After Lenin’s death in 1924, a power struggle ensued, with Stalin emerging as his successor. Photograph: AP Photo/Sovfoto Photograph: AP Photo/Sovfoto
1920 - The Prohibition
America ‘dry’ tonight
“One minute after midnight tonight America will become an entirely arid desert as far as alcoholics are concerned, any drinkable containing more than half of 1 per cent alcohol being forbidden.”
1921 - Speech hits the movies
The talking kinema
“The invention of the talking kinema - reported the other day from Sweden - promises to endow the art of the actor with some sort of immortality.”
1922 - The rise of Fascism
Italy in Fascist control
“At the moment when Mussolini, the leader of the Italian Fascisti, was seizing control of the country by force, the governing authority has been placed in his hands by the King, who yesterday asked him to form a Cabinet.”
1923 - The Beerkeller putsch
Bavarian monarchist rising broken
“The German reactionaries have struck and failed. News of their overthrow comes close upon the heels of the announcement of the coup, which appeared in our later editions yesterday. The coup’s leaders, Ludendorff and Hitler, were captured.”
1924 - Stalin succeeds Lenin
Death of Lenin
“Lenin, who was at Gorki, a village twenty miles from Moscow, had a sudden relapse yesterday, became unconscious, and died an hour later, just before seven in the evening.”
1925 - Advances in atomic science
Remarkable claims for new ray
“The remarkable discovery of Dr. Millikan, a Nobel prize-winner for physic, of new penetrating rays far shorter and more powerful than any hitherto known, has aroused the keenest interest of authorities in this country.”
1926 - The General Strike
Ugly disturbances
“The first day of the strike passed off, in a sense, uneventfully. The absence of trains and trams is not a new thing; it was borne good humouredly, and in no part of the country did any kind of serious disturbance occur. Already, by the second day, there have been ominous signs that this peaceful state of affairs is gradually giving way to a more dangerous temper.”
1927 - Lindbergh flies the Ocean, solo
Alone across the Atlantic
“Captain Lindbergh, the young United States airman, reached Paris at 10.22 on Saturday night on his non-stop flight from New York. He is the first pilot to have crossed the Atlantic by himself, the first to fly from America to France, and the first to make an uninterrupted flight of 3,600 miles. The journey took 33 hours.”
1928 - Hirohito takes the throne
Japan’s emperor
“The enthronement of Emperor Hirohito was the culminating ceremony here to-day. It was cold but bright with a passing shower. Over a thousand people assembled at the Shishinden, or Throne Hall, your correspondent being one of a privileged group viewing the ceremony through the Kemei Gate.”
1929 - The great Crash
£1,000,000,000 crash on New York stock exchange
“The heavy break on the New York Stock Exchange, which began on Saturday and has been increased on each succeeding day except Tuesday, when there was a slight recovery, reached catastrophic proportions yesterday with a crash described as the worst in the history of the Exchange. It is estimated that £1,000,000,000 in paper values had been swept away by the close of the market.”
1930-39
Neville Chamberlain, prime minister of Great Britain 1937-1940. Photograph: Getty/Hulton Archive Photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty
1930 - Gandhi and civil disobedience
Gandhi’s march to the sea
“At 6.30 yesterday morning “Mahatma” Gandhi left Ahmedabad on foot at the head of a band of civil resistance volunteers on a 100-mile march to the sea at Jalalpur, on the Gulf of Cambay.”
1931 - The depression
Huge increase in unemployment
“The unemployed total on Monday, December 29 - 2,643,127 - was the highest recorded since the unemployment insurance statistics began in 1921.”
1932 - The Five-year Plan
Soviet output to be trebled
“Instructions by the Soviet Premier, Mr. Molotoff, and head of the State Planning Commission, Mr. Kuibisheff, for the second Five-year Plan were published to-day.”
1933 - Persecution of Jews begins in earnest
Anti-semitism in Berlin
“Demonstrations against the big stores in Berlin to-day developed later in the evening into an active outbreak of anti-Semitism.”
1934 - A foretaste of Nazism
Dachau concentration camp
“The concentration camp at Dachau is often represented as a model of its kind. The truth is that this camp is in no sense a model, although it is no worse than many of the Hitlerite concentration camps. The total number of prisoners who have been killed or who have died of their injuries at Dachau cannot be far short of fifty.”
1935 - Fascist expansionism begins
Fascist troops march into Ethiopia
“Mussolini’s Fascist troops marched into Ethiopia today - and as the war-drums called Emperor Haile Selassie’s people to fight, the League of Nations in Geneva was facing its greatest test since it was formed in 1919.”
1936 - Franco’s rebellion in Spain
Civil war in Spain
“On July 12 Calvo Sotelo was taken from his house by night and shot. There is some mystery in this assassination.”
1937 - The Middle Eastern question
Partition of Palestine
“Partition of Palestine between Arabs and Jews and the termination of the mandate are recommended by the Royal Commission, whose unanimous report is published to-day.”
1938 - “Peace for our time”?
Return from Munich
“Mr. Chamberlain went to a first-floor window and leaned forward happily smiling on the people. ‘My good friends,’ he said - it took some time to still the clamour so that he might be heard - ‘this is the second time in our history that there has come back from Germany ‘peace with honour.’ I believe it is peace for our time.’”
1939 - The declaration of war
Britain at war with Germany
“Britain and France are now at war with Germany. The British ultimatum expired at 11 a.m. yesterday, and France entered the war six hours later - at 5 p.m.”
1940-49
A mushroom cloud rises more than 60,000 feet into the air over Nagasaki, Japan after an atomic bomb was dropped by the US bomber Enola Gay, 9 August 1945. Photograph: Everett Collection/Rex Feature Photograph: Everett Collection / Rex Feature
1940 - The Battle of Britain
Never in the field of human conflict ...
“The gratitude of every home in our island, in our Empire, and indeed throughout the world goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by odds, unweakened by their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of world war by their prowess and their devotion. Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”
1941 - The attack on Pearl Harbor
Japan declares war on United States and Britain
“The Japanese, without any warning, yesterday afternoon began war on the United States with air attacks on the naval base at Pearl Harbour, Hawaii, and the adjacent city of Honolulu.”
1942 - The Holocaust
The German massacres of Jews in Poland
“The Note on Jewish persecution in Poland which the Polish Government in London has addressed to the respective Governments of the United Nations contains a comprehensive account of the horrors being perpetrated by the Germans on Polish soil.”
1943 - Italy defeated
Italy surrenders unconditionally
“Italy has surrendered unconditionally to the Allies, and hostilities between the United Nations and Italy ended early yesterday evening. There were unconfirmed reports this morning of new Allied landings at several points north and south of Rome.”
1944 - D-day
Weather held up invasion for 24 hours
“There is a feeling of confidence at this headquarters to-night. No one imagines that the supreme battle which began on the beaches of of Normandy early this morning will be won by the Allies without bitter fighting against a determined and desperate enemy, but there is a general sense that the ‘first hurdles’ of invasion of the European Continent have been successfully surmounted.”
1945 - The atomic bomb
Destruction at Hiroshima
“One hundred thousand Japanese may have been killed or wounded by the single atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. This was the unofficial estimate at Guam to-night after reports of the tremendous devastation wrought had come in.”
1946 - The Iron Curtain descends
The Cold War
“In Czechoslovakia life is normal. This does not seem so surprising if you go from London to Prague by air, travelling more easily and more quickly, than from London to Edinburgh. It is incredible and bewildering if you come to Prague overland through the chaos and starvation of any of the surrounding countries.”
1947 - Independence for India and Pakistan
India and Pakistan celebrate
“British rule in India ended at midnight last night after 163 years. To-day the new Dominions of India and Pakistan are in being. At midnight in Delhi, capital of India, Lord Mountbatten ceased to be the Viceroy and became Governor General of India.”
1948 - The State of Israel proclaimed
The Jewish state born
“The Jews yesterday proclaimed in Tel Aviv the new State of Israel. It was formally recognised last night by the United States. In Jerusalem firing began as soon as the Army and the police left and increased steadily as the Jews began to take buildings in the central zone and to hoist the Zionist flag on them.”
1949 - The Berlin airlift
Blockade of Berlin over
“The blockade of Berlin ended at one minute past midnight this morning when a British convoy started its journey through the Soviet zone. Less than two hours later the first cars had reached Berlin without incident.”
1950-59
Black students are escorted into Little Rock High School, Arkansas in 1957 having previously been prevented from entering by the state governor. Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis
1950 - TV viewing habits
Television tastes
“Owners of television sets seldom switch off even programmes which they admit to disliking, so that the extent to which television is watched seems to depend only to a limited extent upon the nature of the programme transmitted, said Mr Robert Silvey, head of Audience Research, B.B.C., when he addressed the Manchester Statistical Society last night on methods of viewer research employed by the corporation.”
1951 - Theft and return of the Stone of Destiny
Return of the Stone
“Three and a half months after its removal from the Coronation Chair in Westminster Abbey early on Christmas morning, the Stone of Scone was to-day deposited in Arbroath Abbey in Scotland. Three men drove up to the abbey and carried the stone, which was draped in a St. Andrew’s flag along the main aisle before laying it at the high altar.”
1952 - The death of Evita
Eva Peron’s lying-in-state
“Senora Peron’s body was brought to the Ministry to-day from the Presidential Palace. It will lie in state, in a coffin draped with the Argentine flag and white orchids and other flowers, until Tuesday.”
1953 - The death of Stalin
How Moscow broke the news
“The news of Stalin’s death had just been released to the outside world by Moscow’s foreign services. Now, surely, was the moment for the Russians to be told. But they were not told anything - except perhaps by implication.”
1954 - The four-minute mile
The mile in 3min. 59.4sec.
“Roger Bannister, aged 25, to-day became the first man to run a mile in less than four minutes. His time at the Iffley Road track, Oxford, in the annual match between the Amateur Athletic Association and Oxford University, was 3min. 59.4sec.”
1955 - ITV launched
ITV makes its bow
“One thing must be said immediately. In 365 days’ time, Independent Television will have been with us for a year. So far, it has been with us for a bare hand-count of hours, and although the conclusions are crying to be jumped to, the temptation to jump must be resisted.”
1956 - The Hungarian rising
Soviet tanks crush resistance
“At 8 p.m. yesterday the Soviet High Command in Hungary ordered Mr Nagy’s Government to surrender by noon “or Budapest will be bombed.” Soviet armoured forces then went into action.”
1957 - Little Rock
Heavier guard for negroes
“About 75 white pupils walked out of the Central High School in Little Rock after eight Negroes went in to-day, and one boy hung a straw effigy of a Negro from a tree.”
1958 - Music in stereo
Stereophonic sound
“Within a few months, so we are promised by the big record companies, stereophonic discs will be available in this country. The question all record-collectors will want to ask is whether we are going to be faced with yet another gramophone upheaval on the scale of the L.P. revolution.”
1959 - The Cuban revolution
Castro in control of Cuba
“All of Cuba to-day was under the precarious control of Fidel Castro, the 31-year-old rebel whom the Batista Government pictured to its graceless end as a ragamuffin hiding in the scrub hills of Oriente Province.”
1960-69
Neil Armstrong walks on the moon, 1969. Photograph: Neil Armstrong/AP/Press Association Images Photograph: Neil Armstrong/AP/Press Association Images
1960 - UK seeks entry to Europe
Britain will ask to join EEC
“Mr Macmillan, a weary-looking father figure, at last held out his hand yesterday and offered to try to lead the Commons and the country into Europe, if he can find the way. There was a good deal of kicking and screaming and this was to be expected.”
1961 - Russia puts a man in orbit
What it feels like in space
“Major Yuri Gagarin described today how it felt to be the first man in space - how he was able to write and work and how he burst out singing for joy as his ship plunged back towards the earth. ‘Everything was easier to perform? legs and arms weighed nothing,’ he told an interviewer.”
1962 - The Cuban missile crisis
The Cuban crisis
“People who thought the Cuban crisis was easing - and who sent Stock Exchange prices rising - had better think again. The situation is still full of danger.”
1963 - The shooting of JFK
President Kennedy assassinated
“President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, was shot during a motorcade drive through downtown Dallas this afternoon. He died in the emergency room of the Parkland Memorial Hospital 32 minutes after the attack. He was 46 years old.”
1964 - Beatlemania
Beatle hysteria hits US
“Physically, the Beatle invasion was launched just after 1 p.m. when their air liner touched down to pandemonium at Kennedy Airport. But in fact New York has been in the tightening grip of Beatlemania for some weeks.”
1965 - The Vietnam war
US paratroops go into attack against Vietcong
“An Australian battalion joined United States paratroops and South Vietnamese forces today in an attack on a Vietcong stronghold about 30 miles north of Saigon. This was the first time US troops were employed in an offensive role.”
1966 - England wins the World Cup
Let Us Now Praise Famous Footballers
“To the accompaniment of expressions of praise, thanksgiving, and, in some cases, undisguised disbelief, England became football champions of the world by defeating West Germany 4-2 on Saturday at Wembley.”
1967 - The six-day war
Israeli forces hit back - and cut off Gaza town
“Fighting broke out today on all Israel’s borders with its Arab neighbours. Official Israeli statements said that attacks had been launched in the area of the Negev, in Jerusalem, and along the Syrian border near Dagania.”
1968 - The soixante-huitards
Paris gripped by insurrection
“An insurrection, there is no other word for it, swept a stupefied Paris last night in the hours that followed General de Gaulle’s television address.”
1969 - Neil Armstrong takes one small step
The Moonwalkers
“Men are on the moon. At 3:39 am this morning - nearly four hours ahead of schedule - Armstrong, the lunar module commander, opened the hatch and clambered slowly down to the surface of the moon.”
1970-1979
Margaret Thatcher, with husband Denis Thatcher, waves to well-wishers outside 10 Downing Street following her election victory, on 4 May 1979. Photograph: Tim Graham/Getty Images Photograph: Tim Graham/Getty Images
1970 - Beginning a decade of industrial action
Hospitals work by candle
“Nationwide power cuts averaged 31 per cent yesterday, with 40 per cent in some areas, and hospitals faced their most critical 24 hours of the strike so far with staff struggling to keep going by candle and battery power.”
1971 - The Vietnam war drags on
What Vietnam does to a man
“The men of D company were discussing the question of why in hell they had had no beer, or at least soda, for a whole month when I arrived on their hill. They wanted to tell me about those in the rear who were stealing the beer and soda from them, but I wanted to talk about ‘the action.’”
1972 - Bloody Sunday
13 killed as paratroops break riot
“The tragic and inevitable doomsday situation which has been universally forecast for Northern Ireland arrived in Londonderry yesterday afternoon when soldiers firing into a large crowd of civil rights demonstrators, shot and killed 13 civilians.”
1973 - Britain joins the EEC
We’re in - but without the fireworks
“Britain passed peacefully into Europe at midnight last night without any special celebration. It was difficult to tell that anything of importance had occurred, and a date which will be entered in the history books as long as histories of Britain are written, was taken by most people as a matter of course.”
1974 - The end of Tricky Dicky
Nixon resigns
“The last that we saw of him as President was his limp right hand flapping occasionally like a dying fish, trying to wave a laconic farewell through the bulletproof glass of the shiny green helicopter.”
1975 - Indonesia invades East Timor
Indonesians capture capital in air-sea invasion of Timor
“An Indonesian-supported force launched a full-scale attack by air and sea on the former Portuguese colony of Timor at dawn today. More than 1,000 army commandos parachuted into the capital of Dili in the first wave of the attack.”
1976 - The death of Chairman Mao
Power vacuum after Mao’s death
“The Chinese people, sad but hardly surprised, began to consider their future last night without their country’s great helmsman.”
1977 - Punk hits Britain
Punk record is a load of legal trouble
“The manager of a record shop in Nottingham who displayed in his window the new best-selling LP record by the Sex Pistols, which displays on its sleeve the title ‘Never mind the Bollocks, here’s the Sex Pistols’ has been charged with offences under the 1889 Indecent Advertisement Act.”
1978 - The Met’s attitude to race relations
Race causes an initial confusion
“The man who answered ‘human race’ when asked to what race he belonged would get short shrift at West End Central police station, London. For there human classifications have achieved an elaborate formality, as a bemused magistrate heard yesterday.”
1979 - Thatcher in power
Thatcher takes over No.10
“Mrs Margaret Thatcher looks certain this morning to be the next tenant of 10 Downing Street and the first woman prime minister in the western world.”
1980-89
A man stopping a column of tanks in Tiananmen Square, 5 June 1989. Photograph: Stuart Franklin/Magnum Photos Photograph: Stuart Franklin/Magnum Photos
1980 - The Iran - Iraq war
Open war as Iraq is bombed
“The border conflict between Iraq and Iran turned into a full-scale war yesterday after both sides bombed each other’s airbases and clashed repeatedly on the ground and at sea along the 720-mile frontier.”
1981 - The Brixton riots
How smouldering tension erupted to set Brixton aflame
“On Friday afternoon, a police patrol in Brixton stopped to help a black youth who had been stabbed in the back. The incident marked the beginning of a build-up of police strength and a confrontation began which erupted into violence on Saturday afternoon when a black youth was arrested outside a minicab office.”
1982 - The Falklands war
Patriotism has worked its old magic
“A thousand dead, terrible wounds; the Union Jack flying again over the Falklands (pop. 1,800); rejoicing and mutual congratulation in the House of Commons; champagne and Rule Britannia in Downing Street - each must draw his or her own balance sheet and historians must decide where to place the Falklands War in the annals of Britain’s post-1945 adjustment to her reduced circumstances as a declining power.”
1983 - The AIDS epidemic
The lurking killer without a cure
“Aids surfaced in Haiti. West Coast homosexuals brought it back to San Francisco. Cheap transatlantic travel flew it into England. And next year the handful of known cases will become hundreds as the four-year incubation period comes to an end for gays, and maybe even for their heterosexual partners.”
1984 - The apogee of Thatcherism
Commentary
“One of Thatcherism’s most startling gifts to British society is to have thoroughly politicised it. Little now occurs, in large reaches of public and sometimes private life which does not have political importance and is not subjected to a test of its relevance to the prevailing ideology.”
1985 - The miners’ strike
Pit strike ends in defiance and tears
“One of the most significant chapters in Britain’s trade union history was closed last night when the miners reluctantly agreed to call off their strike in a mood of bitterness and tears, almost a year after it had begun.”
1986 - The Chernobyl meltdown
Russia admits blast as death fears rise
“After three days of virtual news blackout, the Soviet authorities finally admitted last night what Scandinavia had already deduced from radioactive fallout - that the Chernobyl nuclear accident is a “disaster”, that some people have been killed and thousands evacuated.”
1987 - The Stock Market crash
Black Monday
“A record #50.6 billion rout on the London Stock Exchange yesterday was followed by a fall on Wall Street which far exceeded the 1929 crash.”
1988 - Reagan’s second term ends
Goodbye, Ronald Reagan
“As Ronald Reagan journeyed triumphally from Texas to California in the closing hours of campaign ‘88, tipping his stetson to the crowds lining the streets for a glimpse of the Gipper on his last hurrah, it was plain that, whatever his failings, the American people are both forgiving and adoring.”
1989 - The Tiananmen Square massacre
The horror of a people attacked by its own army
“Students had been bayoneted to death, others had set fire to two armoured personnel carriers and trucks, tanks had crushed to death 11 students who had left the square and were lagging behind the others, more students had been crushed to death in their tents. ‘How could the Communist Party do this? How could they shoot children?’ asked a worker in blue overalls.”
1990-99
Nelson Mandela and his then wife Winnie Madikizela-Mandela raising fists upon his release from 27 years of imprisonment, 11 February 1990. Photograph: Alexander Joe/AFP/Getty Images Photograph: Alexander Joe/AFP/Getty Images
1990 - South Africa releases Mandela
Mandela free after 27 years
“Mr Nelson Mandela walked out of prison a free man yesterday, and within hours told an ecstatic crowd of supporters in Cape Town that the armed struggle against apartheid would continue.”
1991 - Allies attack Iraq
Kuwait’s liberation begun, says US
“Bombs rained down on Baghdad and other targets in Iraq and Kuwait early today as the long months of waiting in the Gulf crisis finally ended. Allied planes launched wave after wave of air attacks on the city and on Iraq’s Scud missile bases.”
1992 - War in Bosnia
Escape from Sarajevo
“Jordi had his doubts on Sunday morning. He wanted to leave. At 12.10 on Sunday afternoon a mortar bomb dropped out of the sky like a shot putt and killed him.”
1993 - The middle-east peace process
Symbolic gesture seals hopes to end blood and tears
“With faith, hope and a careworn charity, Yitzhak Rabin of Israel and Yasser Arafat of the Palestine Liberation Organisation shook hands on a joint accord at the White House yesterday and rolled the dice of history in what President Bill Clinton called ‘a brave gamble for peace’.”
1994 - Genocide in Rwanda
Rwandan PM killed as troops wreak carnage
“The Rwandan capital of Kigali descended into chaos yesterday as troops, presidential guards and gendarmes swept through the suburbs killing the prime minister, United Nations peacekeepers and scores of civilians.”
1995 - Unstoppable rise of Microsoft
Bill Gates: The world’s richest private individual
“Bill Gates, founder of the Microsoft Corporation, is the world’s richest private individual, with $12.9 billion ($8.3 billion).”
1996 - The Dunblane massacre
Schoolchildren shot dead
“The small Scottish town of Dunblane was racked with grief and horror last night as details emerged of the killer who had lived in their midst until yesterday, when he shot dead 16 small children and a teacher in three minutes of carnage in a primary school gym.”
1997 - Hong Kong transferred to China
A last hurrah and an empire closes down
“With a clenched-jaw nod from the Prince of Wales, a last rendition of God Save the Queen, and a wind machine to keep the Union flag flying for a final 16 minutes of indoor pomp, Britain last night at midnight shut down the empire that once encompassed a quarter of the globe.”
1998 - Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky
Zippergate is a scandal for him, for her and for us
“Insomniacs and obsessives couldn’t wait till the morning. They stayed up until 3am to watch Bill Clinton give his TV address live - and they weren’t disappointed. It made gripping viewing.”
1999 - Allies attack Serbia over Kosovo
Defeating Milosevic: Troops may be needed
“As the bombers go in, for the first time in the long evolution of the Balkan crisis, the outside powers are directly confronting the author of that crisis. Always before, the Serbian leader has distanced himself from the tragic situations which he has played such a large part in creating.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/oct/17/uk-teenager-charlie-condell-on-solo-cycle-trip-around-world-has-bike-stolen | UK news | 2018-10-17T11:31:44.000Z | Steven Morris | UK teenager on solo cycle trip around world has bike stolen | A British teenager who is trying to become the youngest person to cycle solo around the world has had his bike stolen in Australia.
Charlie Condell, 18, has pedalled through Europe and Asia since embarking on an eight-month, 18,000-mile journey in July.
He woke up in Townsville, Queensland, on day 103 – Tuesday – to discover his bike, camping gear, passport and other equipment had vanished. All he was left with was the shirt and shorts he stood up in and one bag.
Condell, who set off on his expedition the day after leaving Clifton College in Bristol, said he was determined to find a new bike and carry on.
Writing on social media, he described the loss of his bicycle – which he had named Colin – in an understated way:
Day 103. Today has been rather mixed. Started of in a rather sub-ideal manner with my realization that the bike had been stolen. Rather conflicted emotions throughout the day, as I've… https://t.co/79i7vjbIIR
— Charles Condell (@RTWCharlie) October 16, 2018
Instead of falling into gloom, he decided to take a trip to the nearby Magnetic Island. Suitably cheered, he sent a defiant message to his supporters: “Amazing day seeing wild koalas and feeding the birds of paradise! I do love Australia, and one bastard isn’t going to change that option! Have a great day with whatever you’re doing, and don’t stop – ever!”
Condell has cycled through 17 countries, riding up to 125 miles per day, and flown between continents. Usually he camps wild but on Monday night he treated himself to a night at a hostel and a game of volleyball on the foreshore in Townsville after a tough couple of days cycling in searing heat.
He estimated that at least £4,000 in equipment had been stolen but he said he still hoped to complete his trip by March and break the record.
Condell’s bike was a lightweight carbon fibre Cervélo. Condell is funding his trip from his savings and he has also set up a crowdfunding page for people to support him.
He has already had offers of help from people and is working out the best way to carry on with his journey.
Another British man, Tom Davies, is believed to hold the record for the youngest person to cycle around the world unassisted. He was 19 when he completed his journey in 2015. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2024/mar/24/dont-make-tea-review-traverse-theatre-disability-benefits-satire | Stage | 2024-03-24T20:00:00.000Z | Mark Fisher | Don’t. Make. Tea. review – the disability benefits interview as Kafkaesque comic nightmare | It is 2037 and the government has instituted a new system for assessing claims for disability benefits. Having listened to complaints about the old questionnaire, it has reframed its evaluation in more positive terms. This, goes the slogan, is “accessible Britain: a country we can all use”, and now everyone can be provided with work that suits their ability.
For Chris (Gillian Dean), the very thought is excruciating. A former police officer, she reluctantly quit her job because of oculopharyngeal muscular dystrophy (OPMD), which is causing her body to progressively weaken and her eyesight to fade. The interview with her upbeat assessor, Ralph (Neil John Gibson), blandly following Department for Work and Pensions protocol, is a cat-and-mouse game of evasion and entrapment. Chris cannot win.
As set-ups go, it’s a long one. The whole first half in fact. Before the interval, Rob Drummond’s script has a satirical sting as it skewers a benefits system designed to penalise rather than help. But it is grimly true more often than it is funny.
Likewise, Robert Softley Gale’s production for Birds of Paradise feels uncharacteristically timid. Ralph’s cross-questioning of Chris as she sits on the couch on Kenneth MacLeod’s living-room set is a largely static conversation, domestic and untheatrical. It has witty sparks but fails to establish a comic momentum.
Photograph: Andy Catlin
But the playwright and director are playing a long game. With the second half, Don’t. Make. Tea. explodes gloriously into life. Suddenly we see this Kafkaesque nightmare in all its comic grotesqueness, not least because Chris’s condition is causing her to hallucinate.
‘We bring something fresh’: the theatre companies exploding myths about disability
Read more
At once playful and subversive, the production’s audio-describer (Richard Conlon) and BSL interpreter (Emery Hunter) switch from passive to active, no longer simply providing a running commentary but becoming participants in Chris’s struggle with a callous system … not to mention the small problem of disposing of a body.
Employing her police skills in an attempt to pull off the perfect crime, she is confronted by Jude (Nicola Chegwin), the self-hating architect of the Work Pays system. In her one-sided battle against the power of the state, Chris makes a persuasive case for underhand action in a funny and political broadside for disability rights.
At Soho theatre, London, 26 March to 6 April. Then touring until 19 April | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/feb/24/alexandria-quartet-lawrence-durrell-rereading | Books | 2012-02-24T22:55:00.000Z | Jan Morris | Rereading: The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell | The Alexandria Quartet, Lawrence Durrell's celebrated tetralogy from the 1950s, was defined by its author as "an investigation of modern love", but has often been regarded by its readers more as an evocation of a city – the Greco-Arab, multi-ethnic Alexandria of its title. Almost infinite variations of love are certainly explored in its 1,000-odd pages, and the presence of Alexandria certainly permeates the work, but I think the legendary fascination of the quartet is essentially existential. The work itself is greater than its themes, and casts a spell that is neither precisely emotional nor specifically topographic.
It is actually neither specific nor precise about anything. It was an experimental novel of its day, perhaps related to the work of Durrell's friend Henry Miller, perhaps to Ulysses. It was based on the premise that people and events seem different when considered from different angles and periods, and that they can best be recorded, as Durrell himself put it, stereoscopically. The four volumes concern the same characters, but each of the several narrators tell the novels' complex tales from their own viewpoint, and they write at different times. It is a device, Durrell claimed, amounting to a new concept of reality, reflecting the ideas of Freud and Einstein and a convergence of western and eastern metaphysics.
If that sounds over-blown, well, the Quartet itself is not without pretension, in concept as in performance. As has generally been admitted, it is often ornate and over-written, sometimes to an almost comical degree. The high ambition of its schema can make its narratives and characters inexplicably confusing, and its virtuoso use of vocabulary can be trying ("pudicity"? "noetic"? "fatidic"? "scry"?). But if there are parts of the work that few readers, I suspect, will navigate without skipping, there are many passages of such grand inspiration that reaching them feels like emerging from choppy seas into marvellously clear blue Mediterranean waters.
For it is true that the city of Alexandria does colour the entire work. Durrell lived and worked in the city from 1942 to 1945, and he believed strongly in the effect of place on human temperament. Alexandria's peculiar Levantine character, as it existed during Durrell's time there, is insistently summoned into these pages. His responses to the place were moulded partly by EM Forster's elegant Alexandria, A History and Guide, first published in 1922, and more especially by the greatest of Alexandrine poets, Constantin Cavafy – who had died in 1933, but whose drifting presence in the books is almost as haunting as the presence of the city itself.
It was Cavafy who wrote of Alexandria "There's no new land, my friend, no / New sea; for the city will follow you, / In the same streets you'll wander endlessly …" One of this work's narrators goes further still: "Man is only an extension of the spirit of place," says Nessim (I think it is) in Justine. The several narrators of the Quartet are certainly enslaved by Alexandria's genii loci, and readers are likely to be entrapped too, because the work, so opaque is other contexts, is clear enough when it deals with the city. We soon learn the geography of the place, from the handsome Rue Fuad to the meshed Arab backstreets, from the elegance of L'Etoile or the Cecil Hotel to the hashish cafés of the slums or the sandy approaches to the Western Desert. We see inside the mansions of rich cosmopolitans and diplomats, we visit stifling attic bedrooms, brothels and pleasure pavilions by the sea.
Much of all this is factual. Durrell based much of his fiction on personal experience, reminiscence and tittle-tattle, which gave the Quartet, for his contemporaries, something of the allure of a roman-à-clef, not least in its sexual allusions. In fact a general sensuality is the most Alexandrine aspect of the Quartet, but it does shows itself, too, in somewhat hazy illustrations of individual sex – "modern love", as Durrell put it. These "dark blue tides of Eros" are far from pornographic. Sometimes, it is true, we are unsure who is loving whom, and now and then there are homosexual and cross-dressing deviations, but mostly the love elements are straightforward and moving, and really do dominate, as Durrell implied, the devious goings-on of the plot.
Which is full of surprises. Some, I dare say, really are Freudian or Einsteinian in origin, or metaphysically intercultural, but they seem to me more like twists in a skilful thriller, closer to Le Carré than to James Joyce, and sometimes embroiled in melodrama – "the slime of plot and counterplot", as another of Durrell's characters defines it. He was particularly admired for his descriptive writing, and these books are rich in masterly set-pieces, but he was also a fine storyteller, adept in techniques of suspense and deception. Reader, watch out! Shocks are always around the dusty corner.
The four books of the tetralogy originally appeared separately – Justine in 1957, Balthazar and Mountolive in 1958, Clea in 1960. They were immediately recognised as remarkable works of art, but the verdict on the whole work, while always respectful, was mixed. French critics adored it. Americans lapped it up. English reviewers were not so sure. Durrell, a lifelong expatriate, never was an admirer of English culture, and his elaborate prose did not greatly appeal to more austere littérateurs such as Angus Wilson, who called it floridly vulgar. Its pretensions were mocked, its avant-garde excesses parodied, and although the books were commercial triumphs, he wrote nothing so publicly successful again.
But the whole thing itself, this immense imaginary construction, has stood the tests of time and taste, and has never been out of print – probably never will be. Half a century after its completion, those florid vulgarities, those modernist pretensions, seem no more than incidental to its unique flavour, which lingers in the mind long after its labyrinthine plots (for they are myriad, and muddling) have been forgotten. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2013/jul/18/tv-black-british-female-actors | Life and style | 2013-07-18T11:09:00.000Z | Dami Abajingin | Where are the TV roles for black British female actors? | Even the trailer for Scandal made me feel euphoric – after all, this show has the first black female protagonist in a network drama in nearly 40 years. Even better, in the show itself race does not assume a character of its own – it is not the epicentre, it is merely incidental and I, and many others (at least, my twitter feed) are thankful for this.
Scandal, which recently started its second series on More4, stars Kerry Washington as the powerhouse that is Olivia Pope, a middle-class, Republican (don't hold it against her), elite crisis manager in Washington DC. She fixes problems: not run-of-the-mill ones, but problems on a colossal scale. The show has been praised for having a racially diverse cast. The characters are defined by the essence of who they are, not by the pigmentation of their skin. Pope is a host of contradictions: unapologetically bold but not above reproach; formidable but not immune from the pang of vulnerability. Pope is a fully realised person, which, in regards to roles given to black actors, is a rarity.
There is Luther, of course, starring Idris Elba as the eponymous detective chief inspector. Elba plays quite possibly the most complex role in British television of any actor at the moment, let alone black British actors. While his success should be celebrated, there is still much progress to be made, especially when it comes to black British female actors.
We do not have black British female protagonists on our televisions, let alone ones who display the layers and depth of Olivia Pope. The last time one graced our screens was circa 199never, and this needs to be both challenged and resolved. Not only is there a need for roles for black British female actors, these roles need to be cultivated within a post-racial context.
Luther may provide the genesis of this change. Like Scandal, the critically acclaimed thriller could also be described as post-racial. He is a fantastically flawed detective who happens to be black, not a black fantastically flawed detective. Does the fact that Elba is the associate producer of the show ensure that his race is not the focal point? Would Olivia Pope be the Olivia Pope we know and love if she was not the creation of Shonda Rhimes (head writer and executive producer of Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice)?
This is not to say that white writers are incapable of creating roles for black actors that do not adhere to the same tired narratives of gun crime, for example — but if the likes of Channel 4's Top Boy is anything to go by, that seems to be a truism. In Hollywood, there is a generation of female actors rising up and creating the roles they want to play – roles that are free from male domination and do not reduce them to one-dimensional subordinates. There is no reason why black British female actors cannot also rise up and do the same on this side of the Atlantic – the onus is on them, and existing black writers, to do so.
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Film producer and screenwriter Sheila Nortley, who we have to thank for the remarkable short film Zion, says: "Black screenwriters can improve the representation of black females on TV by simply being great writers and applying the due diligence and care needed to cultivate any believable character in a narrative to their black characters. This should maybe come from a sense of responsibility not only to their race, but also to their art as writers."
Hopefully, the next time I see a trailer starring a black female protagonist, her accent will be British. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2021/may/05/case-covid-compliant-mousetrap-snapping-back-agatha-christie-whodunnit | Stage | 2021-05-05T05:00:06.000Z | Mark Lawson | The case of the Covid-compliant murder: how The Mousetrap is snapping back to life | The London West End is filled with ghost shows. Frontages still advertise productions that were frozen on 16 March last year, when the government advised against theatre-going. Some of the shows would have finished long ago, such as John Kani’s Kunene and the King, starring Antony Sher, which was on a limited run. Others, including Come from Away and Les Misérables, might reasonably have been expected to survive a hiatus. Both are making plans to reopen.
But only one play was entitled to assume its survival until the end of quarantining: Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap, at St Martin’s theatre. The whodunnit opened in 1952, and endured the cold war, IRA, al-Qaida and Islamic State terrorism to become the world’s longest-running show. Due to Covid, its 69 years are no longer continuous, but the show is scheduled to resume, after a 15-month pandemic gap, on 17 May: British theatre’s most invincible hit leading the return to work.
Seven decades on … The Mousetrap in the 21st century
“It’s a symbol of the West End,” says Adam Spiegel, the play’s producer, sitting masked beside an open window in the St Martin’s bar. “So it needs to be at the front of theatre’s reopening. I don’t think there is another show or theatre that can so personify the defiance of the industry.” However – appropriately if alarmingly – there is suspense: “It won’t actually be confirmed until the 10th whether we can open on the 17th.” If that date is pushed back, that would surely be a shattering blow? “It would be an enormous inconvenience – an act of real vandalism against the industry. Our view is that 17 May can’t slip.”
Actors will be temperature-checked at the stage door then stay masked until they go on
Outside the theatre, a board lists in gold paint the names of the actors who were appearing in the show in March 2020, when it closed. This feature will be redesigned with a sliding panel that can be quickly changed, as this is a production in which every performer is also an understudy. Spiegel has employed two casts who will rehearse and work completely separately, and appear in alternating runs of three performances. If an actor were to test positive, the other cast – contracted to be available and in reach of the theatre in their time off – will immediately take over for 10 days while the other group recuperates. Quarantine rules would prevent the usual theatre practice of one absentee being replaced by a stand-in.
You done it … Richard Attenborough presents Agatha Christie with an award to mark the longevity of her play. Photograph: Bentley Archive/Popperfoto/Getty Images
“It doubles the costs,” says Spiegel, “but it’s the only way of doing it.” Duplicate actors are only plausible for small-cast shows, so the producer hopes there will be new Covid guidelines, published before theatres reopen, that will allow the business to function without losing a whole cast when someone has a positive or false positive test.
The capacity of St Martin’s is 550. Under social distancing, around half the seats can be occupied, although the exact figure depends on the pattern of bookings. “If you come on your own, you use up three seats. So I would ideally like people to come in groups of exactly six. Under the rule of six, that’s the magic number, but six is the least likely group of theatre-goers, which averages out at two point something or other.”
Spiegel expects to get around 250 in on an average night “which is financially unsustainable in the long term but I think is worth doing for a shortish period.” The scattered audience will be watching action that is also socially distanced. Actors will be temperature-checked at the stage door, then stay masked until on stage. The blocking (positioning of people on the set) will keep the characters at least three metres apart. Actors pride themselves on hitting their marks on stage, but if they don’t in this production, they might be arrested. “A kiss was taken out,” says Derek Griffiths, who plays Major Metcalf in the resumed production. “And a few hugs,” adds Paul Hilliar, cast as Detective Sergeant Trotter.
Such precautions are crucial because producers cannot insure shows against loss. Spiegel says no underwriters will insure against a show closing down as a result of Covid cases among cast or crew, or a new government ruling: “What we want is insurance, underwritten by the government, that means producers and promoters will be reimbursed the costs of reopening if there is another lockdown.”
‘There’s a huge shakiness in the business’ … Derek Griffiths. Photograph: Sarah Lee/The Guardian
This request has so far been refused. “Because of that, some producers aren’t reopening,” says Spiegel, but he has decided to “take the risk myself without insurance” on both the Christie and his revival of the musical Hairspray at the London Coliseum, which is rehearsing for a 21 June opening. That’s the government’s target date for the earliest lifting of all restrictions.
Financial indemnity is a huge issue in showbiz’s attempted comeback. “I was free to do this,” says Griffiths, “because I lost a movie.” After a five-decade career, from Play School on TV to Driving Miss Daisy on stage, the 74-year-old was due to shoot a low-budget film but, although the actor is double-vaccinated, “they couldn’t afford to insure me so I had to pull out”.
Hilliar is another stark example of the jeopardy many face in a profession where most are freelance so ineligible for furlough. He was first cast as DS Trotter 14 months ago and was due to perform from May last year. “I’m at the start of my career,” he says, “and it’s the biggest job I’d had. So there were several months of gut-wrenching pain.” He was rehired for a planned reopening last October that was prevented by the second lockdown. “So this is the third contract I’ve had for The Mousetrap and never actually done the job yet.” Financially, he says, “there was some help from Adam and the team. But they weren’t getting any money in, so they couldn’t fulfil the contract.”
With restricted audiences, a full house will now be a half-full one, but Griffiths says: “I don’t think that’s a problem. In my career, I’ve played to audiences that all came in the same taxi! And I’ve known small audiences be more of a group, pushing the show on, than a big audience which can sit on its hands.”
Spiegel’s determination to bring back The Mousetrap feels apt because it has always been a producer-driven phenomenon, says Laura Thompson, author of an insightful biography, Agatha Christie: A Mysterious Life. “When people ask why the play is so popular,” she says, “I’d probably answer, ‘Peter Saunders.’” After opening the show in 1952, the impresario “made The Mousetrap the subject of one of the cleverest publicity campaigns of the 20th century, as Agatha herself recognised. ‘Hell at the Savoy’ was what she called the annual parties thrown to celebrate another year of the play’s run. But she liked Saunders very much and fully acknowledged he was a genius in a particular field.”
Gambling on a domestic audience … The Mousetrap. Photograph: Neil Juggins/Stockimo/Alamy Stock Photo
Thompson points out an irony in the extraordinary longevity of this Christie tale: “The Mousetrap was never highly regarded by her agent.” He much preferred two other stage works, The Hollow and Witness for the Prosecution, written on either side of this snowbound house mystery. “He actually expressed a fear that The Mousetrap might damage her stage reputation in the US were it to be produced there.”
Christie was much more prolific as a novelist than as a dramatist, but Thompson sees a connection: “Her books are very theatrical in themselves – very little description, a lot of dialogue with scant interconnective tissue. That was the way in which her mind naturally worked. She had an instinctive theatrical sensibility.”
Whodunnit? Did Agatha Christie ‘borrow’ the plot for acclaimed novel?
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The Mousetrap is generally regarded as a lure for tourists, of whom there will inevitably be fewer this summer, but Spiegel says: “That The Mousetrap is a tourist destination is a bit of a myth. Our analysis of the data is that a third of the audience is foreign tourists, a third domestic tourism, and a third Londoners. One of the gambles the industry is taking is that – for the next 12 months – domestic tourism will take the place of international visitors.”
Griffiths is aware of other concerns. “I’ve had a lot of calls from actors saying, ‘I’m not sure I could do theatre any more – it’s been so long.’ There’s a huge shakiness in the business.” Hilliar, however, does not expect audiences to be nervous: “Going to the theatre in that brief period last year when they reopened, there was an amazing cathartic response from people at theatre being back. I hope and think that will happen again.”
The Mousetrap is scheduled to reopen at St Martin’s Theatre, London, on 17 May | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/gamesblog/2011/jul/22/call-of-juarez-cartel-review | Games | 2011-07-22T15:05:04.000Z | Steve Boxer | Call of Juarez: The Cartel – review | What is it about Wild West games? We know they can be highly enjoyable, as the two previous iterations of Call of Juarez and last year's Red Dead Redemption proved, so why have they always been so rare?
Still, we foolishly thought, at least here's a new Call of Juarez game to satisfy our craving for Sergio Leone-style grit and shoot-outs. But such expectations were cruelly dashed, as it is set in the present day, featuring a storyline that teams a DEA agent, an FBI agent and an LA Homicide cop as a makeshift task-force taking on a Mexican drug cartel.
Completely changing the essential nature of an established franchise is an unprecedented move for the games industry, and one struggles to fathom the reasoning behind it. In the case of Call of Juarez: The Cartel, you even suspect that it may have been moved to the present day at some point during its development, as it still sports a number of missions set in places like Death Valley and Juarez itself, in which the meticulously created environments are straight out of a Western, yet the modern characters and weaponry seem incongruous.
Once you get your head around Call of Juarez's abrupt reverse-ferret, though, you find a game that is well executed and pretty enjoyable to play, without really excelling in any particular area.
The environments, admittedly, are fantastic, and state-of-the-art visual trickery such as depth of focus imparts an impressively high-tech feel. The controls are great, aided by a Concentration mode that you can trigger after killing a certain amount of enemies, which causes everything to enter slow-motion for a period.
Perhaps the most imaginative aspect of the game is that each of the three characters – tank, sniper and all-rounder – have their own agenda. The DEA man, for example, is in hock to the bookies, and must collect drugs (unseen by the other two) for his man in the cartel to shift.
Call of Juarez: The Cartel
The storyline is basic but functional: the trio are drafted in to go after the Mendoza cartel after it bombed the DEA offices. The action begins in an impressively believable rendition of LA's dodgiest environs, but soon branches out into more countrified territory.
The gameplay doesn't vary enormously, mainly consisting of shooting hordes of enemies whose AI is sufficiently honed that you have to take a careful approach, making heavy use of cover (the game uses a manual rather than automatic system, which is sensible and works well).
There are plenty of set-pieces reminiscent of Call of Duty's Breach and Clear sequences, in which you kick in doors and take on a roomful of drug-runners, with a slo-mo period giving you the edge. There are car-chases galore, and helicopters armed with rockets and machine-guns provide the equivalent of boss-battles.
In other words, it's a perfectly decent game (although in no way spectacular), with a three-player drop-in co-op mode and the characters' different secret agendas adding some replay value. But all the way through, the abandonment of the Western theme nags at you. Can we have our six-shooters back, please?
Game reviewed on Xbox 360 | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/media/mediamonkeyblog/2013/dec/18/bbc-reporter-fonz-richmond | Media | 2013-12-18T10:39:33.000Z | Monkey | BBC reporter goes on a Q & Aaaay | Media Monkey | Happy days for the BBC's James Landale when he was tasked with going out to Richmond to find residents' views about the possible expansion of Heathrow. Who should he stumble across but actor Henry Winkler, AKA the Fonz, who is starring as Captain Hook in the town's panto, Peter Pan. "Are you a voter?" asked Landale, who didn't take too long to realise who he was talking to. The BBC reporter ploughed on regardless (later admitting he became a "gabbling, star-struck idiot"), Winkler gave the prospect of another runway the thumbs up. The Happy Days star then wandered off before he could be asked whether London mayor Boris Johnson, backing controversial plans for a brand new airport in the Thames estuary, had jumped the shark. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/dec/01/women-can-be-real-gamers | Games | 2010-12-01T22:00:01.000Z | Naomi Alderman | The player: Are casual games the victim of sexism? | Ioften remind my non-gaming friends that gaming now has a good claim to be – financially at least – the biggest entertainment industry in the world. It causes raised eyebrows when I explain this statistic includes entertainment which many people don't really think of as "games", such as casual or social games including Farmville and Solitaire. But, say my friends, those aren't games. Games are the multimillion-pound titles you play on a console.
This attitude is prevalent across our culture: when news media or TV dramas discuss gaming we know they're not talking about people playing Hearts or Peggle. "Real" gamers play Halo or Call of Duty, not The Sims and Bejewelled.
Because those "real" games have one thing in common: they're games played more by men than by women. Time-poor women tend to play shorter games, which require less commitment. As Margaret Robertson, development director of Hide and Seek and a games journalist, pithily remarks: "How do you get women to play your game? Tell them it'll only take 20 minutes." She says many women enjoy longer games, but "swear off them after losing four hours to them one night unexpectedly".
Our culture tends to denigrate things that are associated with women. It's OK for women to wear trousers, for example, but not OK for men to wear skirts. Transmedia writer Andrea Philips has pointed out this carries over into gaming – because our society tends to think "girl stuff sucks", so "games that girls or women play more are less valid. Maybe even . . . inferior."
But of course this is sexist nonsense. All games are "real" games. And all gamers are "real" gamers.
This article was amended on 7 December 2010. In the original, the heading said: Can women be 'real' gamers?. This has been changed because it did not accurately reflect the content of the piece. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2011/dec/05/foxfinder-review | Stage | 2011-12-05T18:24:10.000Z | Michael Billington | Foxfinder – review | In a wan year for new writing, Dawn King’s play shines out like a beacon. Winner of the Papatango playwriting competition, it may display the influence of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible and have echoes of Kafka, but it remains an arresting and individual work that haunts the mind long after you’ve seen it.
King’s setting is an English countryside on the brink of crisis and subject to rigorous official inspection. One farming couple, Samuel and Judith Covey, who are already troubled by the death of their son and failing crops, find themselves under investigation by 19-year-old William Bloor, a designated foxfinder. For Bloor, the fox is the deadly enemy of mankind, with the power to contaminate farms, influence the weather, unsettle the mind and kill children. We see how Bloor’s fox fixation leads neighbours to betray each other, and drives the innocent Samuel into a state of deluded guilt.
Clearly the play is a parable, but one that works because of the openness of King’s central symbol. At times, the fox represents a wild, untamed sexuality of which monastic, self-flagellating Bloor is keenly aware. But the fox also symbolises the irrational search for scapegoats to explain the ills that haunt mankind. If I had to pin it down, I would say the play is an attack on the danger of fundamentalist certainties. What stops it toppling into gothic absurdity is King’s sharp sense of humour, narrative drive and realism: she locates her dark fable in a plausible world where cattle have to be fed, leeks harvested and meals cooked.
Director Blanche McIntyre follows last year’s dazzling Finborough revival of Accolade with another first-rate production. She keeps the staging stark and simple, and makes chilling use of prolonged silences. There are fine performances from Gyuri Sarossy as the quietly truculent Samuel, Kirsty Besterman as his anxious, raw-boned wife and from Tom Byam Shaw, who has the wit to play the foxfinder not as a raging hysteric but as a conscientious official terrified of his own repressed emotions. Any rural tragedy has to overcome the memory of Cold Comfort Farm, but King’s play easily transcends that and – along with Mike Bartlett’s 13 – is the most compelling new work I have seen this year. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2017/jan/09/serie-a-atalanta-papu-gomez-leads-by-example | Football | 2017-01-09T11:26:59.000Z | Nicky Bandini | Atalanta captain Papu Gómez leads by example as his club let young talent go | Not for the first time, Papu Gómez’s biceps stole the show. The Atalanta captain has made headlines all season with his unconventional armband designs. First there was the Mother’s Day tribute, then the Spiderman logo, the Holly & Benji cartoon and, most famously, a celebration of Pro Evolution Soccer’s original Master League XI. As Serie A returned to action on Sunday, he unveiled a new design, inspired by the movie Frozen.
It was chosen to mark his daughter Constantina’s second birthday, with her face appearing alongside those of Anna, Elsa and Olaf. But he might unintentionally have also captured the spirit of the footballing moment. Frozen was a fitting theme for a weekend when one game – Pescara v Fiorentina – was snowed off, while the status quo at the top of the table was perfectly preserved.
Juventus, Roma, Napoli, Lazio and Milan all won – even if some of them did make hard work of it. Napoli required a 95th-minute goal from Lorenzo Tonelli to squeeze past Sampdoria. Milan failed to puncture Cagliari’s defence – which had previously conceded 42 times in 18 games – until the 88th.
Gómez’s Atalanta began the weekend just behind them, in sixth place. Rarely has this club flown higher; the 53 Serie A points that they earned in 2016 were their most ever in a calendar year. But the build-up to Sunday’s game at Chievo was overshadowed by news that the midfielder Roberto Gagliardini was to be sold to Internazionale.
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The 22-year-old only broke through into a regular first-team role at the end of October, but with his long limbs and powerful stride had already drawn comparisons to Paul Pogba. Playing alongside the similarly dynamic Franck Kessié, Gagliardini had helped to propel Atalanta to seven wins in his eight starts – a run that included triumphs over Napoli and Roma.
Nobody in Bergamo wanted to see him depart so soon, but Inter refused to take no for an answer. A reported transfer fee of close to €28m (£24.3m) would represent an exceptional return on a player developed by Atalanta’s own academy.
Still, with Kessié away representing Ivory Coast at the Africa Cup of Nations, they had effectively lost two-thirds of their starting midfield. Gagliardini had been training apart from the rest of the squad ahead of his anticipated move, but as it became clear that nothing would be settled before Sunday, the manager Gian Piero Gasperini told reporters that he might select the player to face Chievo anyway.
Perhaps it was a glance at Gómez’s armband that finally persuaded him to Let It Go. Instead of Gagliardini, the manager chose another homegrown player, the 21-year-old Alberto Grassi, for a first-ever start in midfield. It turned out to not really matter as Atalanta raced to a 4-1 win.
Grassi himself struggled, collecting an early yellow card and otherwise failing to impose himself on the game before being subbed in the second half. But this was a day for Gómez to remind us that his team’s successes this season should not solely be attributed to bright young things.
Set to turn 29 next month, Gómez is hardly getting set to collect his pension, but he is one of the oldest regulars in Gasperini’s starting XI – as well as the shortest, at a shade under 5ft 5in. He might also be the single most important player in the side, pulling the strings from his position just behind the attack.
Gómez opens the scoring for Atalanta against Chievo. Photograph: Filippo Venezia/EPA
Gómez has described his own role as a “false second striker”, typically lining up just behind Andrea Petagna but with licence to roam out to either flank. It is a new dynamic for a player who has spent most of his career as a conventional winger, and he is the first to insist that Atalanta’s early-season struggles – they lost four of their first five games – were caused by the failure of himself and his team-mates to grasp the movements Gasperini required.
Increasingly, it is clear that the manager’s vision was a fine one. With his low centre of gravity, brilliant dribbling and endless roaming, Gómez has bamboozled opposing defenders in a way that would not have been possible if he were confined to one side of the pitch.
He did it again on Sunday, finding space inside the box to score simple goals twice in the first 25 minutes. Only a sharp save from Stefano Sorrentino stopped him from completing a first-half hat-trick and even then Andrea Conti was on hand to slot home the rebound. Sergio Pellissier pulled one back for Chievo before Remo Freuler grabbed Atalanta’s fourth.
Gasperini described it afterwards as one of his team’s best performances of the season. It was all the more impressive for the absences of not only Gagliardini and Kessié, but also brilliant the young centre-back Mattia Caldara, who was suffering with a fever. Atalanta recently agreed a deal to sell the latter player to Juventus – but not until 2018.
Gómez, too, has been the subject of transfer speculation. His whole career to date could be written as a tale of missed opportunities, with Inter, Atlético Madrid and Milan all close to signing him at different times, only for deals to fall through due to changes of manager or the excessive transfer fees demanded by his clubs.
Chelsea’s £21m offer for midfielder Franck Kessié rejected by Atalanta
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There has been similar frustration on the international stage. Overlooked by Argentina ever since helping them to win the Under-20 World Cup in 2007, he obtained Italian citizenship this May only to subsequently find out that he was still ineligible to represent his adopted home. Fifa regulations require any player switching nation in this manner to hold passports for both at the time when they first represent either.
Gómez, though, is a glass half-full kind of guy. A quick glimpse of his social media accounts – packed with videos of him goofing around with his wife, Linda, or scything down his four-year-old son in a game of beach football – give a clear picture of a man who enjoys his life just fine.
That mindset ought not to be interpreted as a lack of seriousness about his profession. In a recent interview with Corriere della Sera, Gómez outed himself as a rarity among Argentinians in not admiring Diego Maradona. “He was a bandiera on the pitch,” Gómez said. “But he lived a life that had nothing to do with sport. I have other models: [Pablo] Aimar, [Juan Román] Riquelme and above all [Juan Sebastián] Verón: a true player, a man, a leader.”
He aspires to provide a similar example himself now to Atalanta’s youngsters. The tricky question is: how many will still be there by the time this transfer window closes?
Talking points
Juventus set a new Serie A record by winning their 26th consecutive home game on Sunday. They blew away the cobwebs from the Supercoppa defeat to Milan by cruising to a 3-0 victory over Bologna, and could take particular satisfaction from seeing Paulo Dybala grab his first goal since October. The Argentinian had missed his penalty during the shoot-out in Doha, but converted confidently from the spot after Stefano Sturaro was brought down.
It was actually the top seven teams that all won in Serie A, with Inter keeping pace behind Atalanta as well. The Nerazzurri were fortunate to take all three points against Udinese – they fell behind early and might easily have been three down before Ivan Perisic equalised from their first real chance There is encouragement to be taken from the ability to prevail without playing well, when it was so often the other way around in the recent past. One way or another, Inter have now won four on the bounce.
Lazio were yet another team who left things late, Ciro Immobile finally breaking the deadlock in injury time after a previously frustrating afternoon at home to Crotone. Only once in their history (in 2012-13) have the Biancocelesti had more than their current 37 points at the midway stage of a 20-team Serie A season.
It was a tale of two keepers at the Marassi as Wojciech Szczesny pulled off a series of impressive saves to help Roma defeat Genoa. Mattia Perin made one of his own for the home side early on but tore a cruciate ligament minutes later, and was seen weeping on the bench after he was helped from the field. It is a cruel blow for a player who had only returned from the same injury in August.
Results: Chievo 1-4 Atalanta, Empoli 1-0 Palermo, Genoa 0-1 Roma, Juventus 3-0 Bologna, Lazio 1-0 Crotone, Milan 1-0 Cagliari, Napoli 2-1 Sampdoria, Sassuolo 0-0 Torino, Udinese 1-2 Inter. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/aug/30/tv-tonight-david-dimbleby-confronts-a-history-of-bbc-scandals | Television & radio | 2022-08-30T05:20:16.000Z | Hollie Richardson | TV tonight: David Dimbleby confronts a history of BBC scandals | Days That Shook the BBC With David Dimbleby
9pm, BBC Two
As it celebrates its centenary, the BBC is under more scrutiny than ever. In this weekly three-part series, the former Question Time stalwart David Dimbleby shares his views on the broadcaster’s various controversies over that time, including the fallout after the contentious decision not to air an interview with a victim of Jimmy Savile. First up, though, the focus is on the BBC’s relationships with those in power, from former prime ministers to the royal family. Hollie Richardson
Celebrity MasterChef
9pm, BBC One
“In a word: pretty rough,” confesses the drag queen Kitty Scott-Claus about the disappointing fish tacos she serves to John Torode and Gregg Wallace in the first task of the cooking show. Tonight’s episode also sees cauliflowers under the cloche, while dinner party favourites beguile. Danielle De Wolfe
Night Coppers
9pm, Channel 4
On the beat … Night Coppers. Photograph: Blast Films/Channel 4
More Hogarthian scenes from the mean streets of Brighton as this series continues to showcase the endless patience of the after-dark police force. There is festive horror as Father Christmas is pelted with sweets by local youths. More seriously, an unpleasant street brawl culminates in an arrest for suspicion of grievous bodily harm. Phil Harrison
The Pyrenees With Michael Portillo
9pm, Channel 5
Leg two of the Tory wanderer’s latest jolly takes him through the French Pyrenees. After a look at the limestone wall of the Cirque de Gavarnie, a moment in a peaceful mountain landscape prompts the former defence secretary to muse on the war on Europe’s eastern edge. Jack Seale
Irma Vep
9pm, Sky Atlantic
This tantalisingly metatextual film drama uses the gap between the eras of its various productions to interesting effect. Might a scene that was merely risque decades ago now be considered beyond the pale? The director, René (Vincent Macaigne), is on the defensive as the crew worry that the star, Mira (Alicia Vikander), has been taken advantage of. PH
Rosie Jones’ Trip Hazard
10pm, Channel 4
The “national liability” continues to “splurge Channel 4’s cash” on her adventure across Great Britain, this time on a stop-off at Blackpool with her comedian guest Guz Khan. “I once punched her,” Jones says, pointing to Joanna Lumley’s name printed on the beachfront Comedy Carpet. Incidentally, Lumley narrates the show. Her reply? “I did throw the first punch.” HR
Film choice
Royal role … Helen Mirren in The Queen. Photograph: Pathe/Sportsphoto/Allstar
The Queen (Stephen Frears, 2006), Tuesday, 8pm, ITV
Just in time for the 25th anniversary of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, a showing of Peter Morgan’s 2006 precursor to The Crown. The film follows the events of 1997 through the eyes of the royal family. The unprecedented outpouring of national grief after the fatal car crash nonplusses Elizabeth II (a note-perfect Helen Mirren) and her lack of public reaction causes disquiet. However, her new prime minister, Tony Blair (Michael Sheen), realises that it is a critical moment for the monarchy. A fascinating snapshot of a moment in British history in which tradition faced up to the modern world – and lost. Simon Wardell
Live sport
Premier League football: Leeds v Everton 7pm, BT Sport 1. Amid a sticky patch, the Toffees travel to the high-flying Peacocks. (Tonight’s three other matches – Fulham v Brighton, Crystal Palace v Brentford and Southampton v Chelsea – also air on BT Sport.) | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/oct/04/nobel-prize-in-chemistry-winners-2023 | Science | 2023-10-04T10:19:48.000Z | Hannah Devlin | Scientists share Nobel prize in chemistry for quantum dots discovery | Two American scientists and a Russian have been awarded the 2023 Nobel prize in chemistry for the discovery and synthesis of quantum dots, which helped drive a revolution in nanotechnology.
The prize is shared equally between Moungi Bawendi, Louis Brus and Alexey Ekimov for discoveries on the unique properties of nano-materials, and how to make them, that paved the way for wide-ranging applications in consumer electronics, biochemistry and medicine.
Bawendi is an American chemist of French and Tunisian descent, based at MIT, Brus is based at Columbia University and Ekimov is chief scientist at Nanocrystals Technology, a New York-based company.
The official announcement came after the three names were leaked in an email to a Swedish newspaper earlier on Wednesday morning, in an embarrassing incident for the academy. Johan Åqvist, the chair of the academy’s Nobel committee for chemistry, said that at the time of the inadvertent email, the academy had not yet made a decision about the prize winners and, when asked, did not rule out the uncomfortable possibility that other scientists had been under consideration at the time.
“There was a press release sent out for still unknown reasons,” he said. “We deeply regret that this happened. The important thing is that it did not affect the recipients in any way.”
Åqvist said a decision on the winners was taken only at the morning meeting of the academy, which “is not just a formality”. “A decision is not made until the whole academy has met,” he said. The precise decision-making procedure is confidential and, according to Nobel practice, will only become public 50 years from now.
The laureates themselves were oblivious to the drama, however, with Bawendi saying he had been woken up by the academy. “I very surprised, shocked, sleepy and very honoured”, he said. “It’s a field with lots of people who have contributed to it from the beginning,” he added. “So I didn’t think it would be me that gets this prize. We’re all working together.”
Ekimov was reached by phone, while on a trip to Mexico, but Brus had not been reached by the time of the official announcement.
Quantum dots are nanoparticles so tiny that their size determines their properties. They are widely used in television screens, LED lamps and to guide surgeons removing tumour tissue.
In chemistry, the properties of a material are normally governed by its chemical makeup. But when material comes in nano-dimensions – as is the case with quantum dots – its size affects its colour and other properties.
This was known theoretically, but Ekimov made a crucial experimental demonstration while studying coloured glass. He observed that when glass was tinted with copper chloride, its colour varied depending on how long and how hot it was heated. X-ray imaging revealed this was because the manufacturing process affected the size of tiny crystals of copper chloride that had formed inside the glass. He published the discovery in 1981 in a Soviet scientific journal, but his research was not widely known to scientists on the other side of the iron curtain.
A few years later, Louis Brus was working at Bell Laboratories in the US, looking at using solar energy to drive chemical reactions of tiny cadmium sulphide particles floating in solution. He noticed that the optical properties of the particles changed after he left them on the lab bench for a while and guessed it was because the particles had grown. He also realised this was due to a size-dependent quantum effect.
In 1993, Moungi Bawendi revolutionised the methods for the chemical production of quantum dots, resulting in almost perfect particles whose size could be controlled. This high-quality production method paved the way for their wider commercial and medical application.
In a press briefing, the committee was asked about the choice to reward a Russian scientist, given Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “When it comes to selecting the prize we simply follow the procedure of identifying the most important discoveries and identifying the most important contributors to those discoveries. Nationality doesn’t matter here. That’s in accordance with the will of Alfred Nobel.”
Prof Gill Reid, the president of the Royal Society of Chemistry said: “The recognition of this work on quantum dots is really exciting and shows how chemistry can be used to solve a range of challenges. These remarkable nanoparticles have huge potential to create smaller, faster, smarter devices, increasing the efficiency of solar panels and the brilliance of your TV screen.”
“Great science benefits from diverse viewpoints as part of a collective endeavour, and this year’s prize is a great example of that – people working in different labs, in different countries, approaching a problem from different angles,” she added.
“We don’t work in isolation in chemistry – teamwork is both a fundamentally important aspect of how science is actually done, and one of the most fun!” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/nov/18/rubens-landscapes-to-be-reunited-national-gallery-titian-wallace-collection | Art and design | 2019-11-18T15:57:12.000Z | Mark Brown | Rubens landscapes to be reunited for display after centuries apart | Two landscapes by Peter Paul Rubens intended as companion pieces are to be reunited for public display for the first time in more than 200 years thanks to a decision most thought improbable.
The National Gallery is loaning A View of Het Steen in the Early Morning to the Wallace Collection for reunification with Rainbow Landscape. Going the other way will be a Titian, allowing for the first time in more than four centuries the complete display of six paintings known collectively as the “poesie”.
The reciprocal agreements were announced on Monday and follow the recent announcement by the Wallace Collection that it would begin loaning works for the first time.
Gabriele Finaldi, the director of the National Gallery, praised the Wallace for taking the “landmark … momentous, I would say” decision to begin lending.
“We are hugely supportive of this because the general public is the beneficiary,” he said. “Things can happen now that couldn’t happen before that will be extraordinarily interesting and exciting for the public and scholars.”
A View of Het Steen in the Early Morning by Peter Paul Rubens. Photograph: National Gallery, London
The Rubens landscapes were painted while the Flemish artist was living in retirement in a beautiful property between Antwerp and Brussels. They were painted for his own enjoyment and remained with him until his death.
The two works were last together in public at a British Institution exhibition in 1815; and privately together for study purposes at the National Gallery’s conservation studios in the mid-1990s. “It was so secret, I was a curator at the time, that even I didn’t know,” said Finaldi of the conservation study.
“By bringing them together we will be able to see what Rubens intended. We’ll be able to see how the two pictures work together.”
The Wallace’s Titian, Perseus and Andromeda, will travel across London to the National Gallery for the latter’s big spring show Titian: Love, Desire, Death.
Other Titian loans from the Prado in Madrid, the Gardner Museum in Boston and the Duke of Wellington means the six mythological paintings he was commissioned to paint by Philip II of Spain will appear together.
Perseus and Andromeda is heading to the National Gallery for a major Titian show. Photograph: The Wallace Collection/PA
Bray said the Titian and Rubens events would be an “unprecedented moment in art history, made possible by the Wallace Collection’s decision to works for the first time”.
Recognised as one of the world’s finest collections of art, armoury, furniture and porcelain, the Wallace includes superstar paintings such as Frans Hals’ The Laughing Cavalier, Diego Velázquez’s The Lady with a Fan and Nicolas Poussin’s A Dance to the Music of Time.
It was always considered a closed collection, because of the terms of a will left by Lady Wallace, but a re-examination by lawyers and art experts recently overturned that – a decision endorsed by the government and the Charities Commission.
The Wallace said future loans and collaborations would happen on an “exceptional basis”. One of the next projects, a result of the loan change, could be an in-depth study of the French painter Jean-Honoré Fragonard.
Bray was asked whether the changes could open the door to restitution claims – for example, the collection’s magnificent Asante head, a gold trophy object made in what is present-day Ghana.
He said there had been no requests from Ghana but the collection would consider loaning it under the terms of the bequest to the nation – that items could not be deaccessioned (permanently removed from the collection) or sold.
Titian: Love, Desire, Death is at the National Gallery in London from 16 March to 14 June. The Rubens will hang together at the Wallace Collection between next May and January 2021. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/apr/24/wales-poll-suggests-labour-could-lose-century-long-dominance | Politics | 2017-04-24T16:57:59.000Z | Steven Morris | Corbyn has 'work to do' to show voters he can be PM, says Welsh Labour leader | Labour’s first minister in Wales has warned that Jeremy Corbyn has “work to do” if he is to win over voters and maintain the dominance the party has enjoyed in the nation for almost a century.
On the eve of a visit by Theresa May, who has been buoyed by polls showing the Conservatives could gain 10 seats and become the largest party in Wales, Carwyn Jones added that Labour had “a mountain to climb” .
Labour would end free movement but not 'sever ties' with EU, Starmer says
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In an interview with the Guardian, Jones said: “It is clear Jeremy has work to do to convince people he is a leader. He knows that and, over the next few weeks, he has to show people he is a good candidate for prime minister.”
Asked if he thought Corbyn was a good candidate, Jones said: “From the public’s perspective, they haven’t seen his best side yet. I’ve gone round with Jeremy on the doorstep; I’ve gone round town centres with him.
“He’s not someone that puts people off when they meet him. Far from it. It’s the exact opposite. I think he just needs to do more of that, going around, meeting people, listening and I think people will be impressed by what they hear.”
A poll on Monday suggested the party faced losing a general election in Wales for the first time since 1918.
The YouGov poll suggested the Tories could win a majority of Welsh seats at a general election for the first time since the 1850s – before the era of mass democracy. The apparent shift seems to be in part the result of Ukip voters switching to the Tories.On her visit to Wales, the prime minister will urge voters to stop thinking about old allegiances and consider the Conservatives. Attacking both Labour and Plaid Cymru, she will argue that the Brexit referendum “should have been a wake-up call for a generation of politicians who have taken the people for granted for too long”.
During the visit, May will seek to paint Labour, the Liberal Democrats and Plaid Cymru as out to frustrate her plan for Brexit, knowing that 52.5% of Welsh voters backed leaving the EU.
At last year’s assembly elections, Welsh Labour managed to distance itself from the UK-wide party and held on to power, but party sources worry that at a general election it is much harder to repeat that trick.
On Labour’s prospects in Wales, pretend things are easy. We’ve a mountain to climb but mountains are there to be climbed.
The way to fight the Tories in June’s election is to turn Brexit against them
Tony Blair
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“When the going is tough you get down to it and work hard. That mountain will have to be climbed – otherwise it’s austerity for ever and a day, more and more cuts, less money for the NHS, less money for education.
“It’s hugely important that we don’t allow the Tories to walk all over us. If they think they are in a strong position, they will try to run all over the Celtic nations and impose their own brand of nationalism on the rest of us.”
Corbyn has faced criticism over defence, particularly whether he would use the Trident nuclear deterrent if he was prime minister. Jones said: “One of the things you have to do in leadership is give a straight answer. Otherwise people will interpret your answer in many different ways. My answer is quite simply, yes, we do replace Trident.
“It’s hugely important as a party that you are able to convince people you are going to keep them secure. Trident is a deterrent. It doesn’t keep us secure against terrorism. That’s why it’s so important that we need to bolster our armed forces to meet the immediate threat that exists in Europe at the moment.”
The YouGov poll, carried out for ITV Cymru Wales and Cardiff University’s Wales Governance Centre, asked people how they would vote at the general election: 40% said the Conservatives, an increase of 12 percentage points; 30% Labour, down three points; and 13% Plaid Cymru, unchanged from 2015. That would give the Conservatives 21 seats against Labour’s 15 – a 10-seat swing.
Roger Scully, professor of political science at the Wales Governance Centre, said: “Something extraordinary could be about to happen. Wales is on the brink of an electoral earthquake.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/nov/29/copa-libertadores-boca-juniors-river-plate-real-madrid-santiago-bernabeu-rescheduled | Football | 2018-11-29T22:49:36.000Z | Michael Butler | Postponed Copa Libertadores final to be played at Bernabéu in Madrid | Conmebol has confirmed that the postponed second leg of the Copa Libertadores final between River Plate and Boca Juniors will be played at the Bernabéu stadium, more than 6,000 miles away from the original venue, on 9 December. Fans of both sides will be given an equal allocation of tickets.
How Argentinian football had the chance to prove it had changed – and blew it
Jonathan Wilson
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Argentina’s two biggest teams drew the first leg 2-2 at Boca’s ground and were due to play the second match in South America’s equivalent of the Champions League final at River’s El Monumental stadium on Saturday. However, three Boca players, including the former Manchester City and Manchester United striker Carlos Tevez, were left needing medical attention when River fans attacked Boca’s bus as it approached the stadium and the game was delayed until Sunday and then postponed indefinitely.
Thursday’s decision to play the second leg in Madrid came after Conmebol’s meeting in Asunción on Tuesday. The South American confederation also confirmed that River will be fined $400,000 (£310,000) and have their ground closed for two games.
“Those of us who know the beautiful game, know that it is only about winning or losing – not killing or dying for,” said the Conmebol president, Alejandro Domínguez. “I would like to begin by thanking Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, [the Fifa president Gianni] Infantino, [the Uefa president Aleksander] Ceferin and my good friend [Real Madrid president] Florentino Pérez.
Boca Juniors v River Plate: the fiercest rivalry in football – video explainer
“The administration has elected to hold the Copa Libertadores final return leg, in front of both sets of supporters in Madrid, at the Santiago Bernabéu on 9 December at 8.30pm local time [7.30pm GMT]”. Real Madrid are due to play an away match in La Liga at Huesca that day.
Sánchez tweeted: “Spain is ready to organise the final of the Copa Libertadores between Boca Juniors and River Plate.
“The security forces have extensive experience of these situations and are already working on the necessary deployments to ensure the event is secure.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/22/what-do-i-want-for-posh-at-50-happiness-she-and-the-spice-girls-deserve-it | Opinion | 2024-04-22T16:00:25.000Z | Zoe Williams | What do I want for Posh at 50? Happiness. She and the Spice Girls deserve it | Zoe Williams | The Spice Girls are like German biscuits in reverse. They don’t remind you of the seasons – the seasons remind you of them. On the eve of St George’s Day, our minds turn inexorably to Geri Halliwell’s union jack dress. The approach of the Summer Olympics in Paris makes you wonder who the French could possibly find in their musical pantheon to match London’s closing ceremony, and its full-ensemble performance of Spice Up Your Life. And the weekend marked the start of birthday season, with Victoria Beckham holding a party for her 50th at the private members’ club Oswald’s in London. She is not the oldest Spice Girl, even though she always acted like the one who wished everyone else would grow up: that’s Geri, who turned 50 two years ago.
Memories of Ginger and her performative patriotism are bittersweet: she loved red, white and blue and she really loved Margaret Thatcher, and it felt a little bit underexamined at the time – like, what was it exactly that she loved about Thatcher? Rapid deindustrialisation and utility privatisation? Yet given the choice between Geri’s capers and what came later – public figures cosplaying the Iron Lady to baby talk a stupefied electorate while causing havoc to the nation’s wellbeing – I would take Geri any day, not just as a Spice Girl, but also as prime minister. In fact, I would take any Spice Girl over any of the last five prime ministers, and Mel C in particular. She seems like a person who gets stuff done.
Halliwell-Horner, as she is now, is currently clouded by words such as “difficulties” and “travails”, which, if I have understood correctly, revolve around her husband, Christian Horner, and a situation at his work that was resolved by a woman being suspended. Whatever the optics of that, it cannot conceivably be a Geri-created problem, and yet she is the one who is rumoured to be in talks with Netflix about a fly-on-the-wall marriage documentary, because once you are in travail, the best disinfectant is a load of flies.
The blueprint for that was, of course, the Posh and Becks documentary (and arguably the blueprint for that was the Harry and Meghan forerunner), which brought Netflix its highest audience for the form last year, 3.8 million viewers in its first week. That was billed as, among other things, warts-and-all about David Beckham’s long-past affair with Rebecca Loos (because once there’s an ancient wound, the best remedy is a load of warts), but what really won the crowd over was a sweet exchange about how posh Posh was. She said she was working class, then David pointed out that her dad drove her to school in a Rolls-Royce. So the answer, clearly, was “somewhere between posh and not posh”. The nation wasn’t questing after a definitive account of the British class system and one celebrity’s place in it – rather, everyone wanted to know whether Posh and Becks still liked each other, and it appeared that they did.
Emma Bunton tied the knot with Jade Jones after more than 20 years in a relationship: yup, she must be happy enough. Both the Melanies are settled with guys who don’t muster a trace of gossip between them, so they must be OK. Mel B revealed in February that she had been so skint after divorcing her “abusive” ex-husband (Stephen Belafonte denies that he was abusive) that she had to shop in Lidl, and there was a lot of faux-outrage on behalf of the budget supermarket (What in God’s name was wrong with Lidl?), underneath which was a very strong current of: “Thank God she’s back on her feet and can now shop at Waitrose.” They don’t all have to be billionaires, but they are, after all, Spice Girls: you couldn’t put a number on the amount of clover they have to be in for the universe to appear just, but it is definitely “some”.
This is all building to the weird realisation that all anyone wants for the Spice Girls is for them to seem moderately happy. If they can still remember their dance routines and turn up for each other’s birthdays, great; if they have one more tour with all five of them, even better (for Mel B, definitely). But the ambient goodwill that goes into long-term celebrity is like compound interest: you don’t really notice it, and then it’s massive.
Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2017/jun/26/how-we-made-rita-sue-and-bob-too-max-stafford-clark-george-costigan | Film | 2017-06-26T15:52:15.000Z | Phil Hoad | How we made Rita, Sue and Bob Too | Max Stafford-Clark, artistic director of the Royal Court theatre
Rita, Sue and Bob Too really happened. Andrea Dunbar, who wrote the play and the screenplay, had an affair with a married man, having sex with him in his car, along with her friend Eileen. I commissioned the play as a follow-up to her 1980 drama The Arbor. Andrea was the most talented and original young writer I’d ever come across.
When she was writing it, she said: “What can you do in theatre?” I knew she didn’t want a lecture on Brechtian alienation. What she really meant was: “Can you put shagging on stage?” She found the sex – and even the violence – on the Buttershaw estate, where she was from in Bradford and where her work was set, exciting. When the play got a certain amount of disapproval from her community for being so smutty, she was quite vigorous in saying these things happen, people should face up to them.
Alan Clarke, who directed the film adaptation, cannily gave it an upbeat ending, which Andrea hated. She said: “You’d never go back with somebody who had betrayed you.” She told me not to go and see it. But the judgment of people involved with the film had been astute. It was successful, which did us a great service in terms of reviving the play, even if their version is a bit Carry On Up the Council Estate.
Andrea’s life was much grimmer. The incidents in Rita, Sue and Bob Too were sandwiched between a brutal childhood and a grim, hopeless adulthood. She died at the age of 29.
George Costigan, actor
I almost messed things up with Siobhan Finneran and Michelle Holmes, who played Rita and Sue. At the start, I was too smug. Alan was still auditioning me but I was sure I’d got the gig. Then when I left, I thought: “You’ve blown it.” So I rang him up and asked for another chance. I’m not really sure why they chose me, though later someone said how ridiculously vain my character is in the film – to which Alan replied: “Well, George is a bit of a check-the-mirror actor.”
Alan’s life was devoted to working-class culture, but he’d never made a film that was funny. He insisted we didn’t get heavy and gritty. He wanted to make a film that celebrated the working classes. The message was: “Look, we’ll laugh through anything.”
We did seven takes of me urinating against a wall after the car sex – apparently I wasn't pissing triumphantly enough
George Costigan
We rehearsed for two weeks in a Bradford school during the summer holidays, doing an entire run-through on the last day. And we practised the shagging in the car. Michelle and Siobhan were 19 or 20 and I was nearly 40. If I’d stopped to think about it, I’d have gone: “This is a bit weird.” But there was nothing to do but go for it. It was almost like enacting somebody’s fantasy, which is sometimes how the film is received: I’ve met blokes to whom Bob is some sort of a hero. But he was a gas to play, because his point of view was so narrow. It starts with his dick and ends there as well.
The scene Alan spent the longest talking to me about was when I take a piss against a wall after the car sex. He did seven takes – just for a shot of me from behind. The budget was only £800,000 and I thought we didn’t have enough money for that kind of thing, but he kept saying I wasn’t pissing triumphantly enough. He spent more effort on that than anything else in the movie.
I don’t think we were particularly integrated into the Buttershaw estate. The residents were nice, but their lives were so different to all these people swanning around making a film. The contrast between the rates of pay we were getting and the lives of everyone around us was so shamefully different that we fled as soon as we finished.
I was not prepared for the reaction of what you might call the southern press when we opened the film at the Brighton film festival. They couldn’t believe it was like this in the north. We said: “Do you think we’ve made this up as some kind of romp?” I watched the finished film with my wife on one side and my mother on the other. My mother said: “I’m very glad I’ve seen it, but I won’t be telling many people about it.”The film is still relevant today. Apart from the fact the girls would have mobile phones glued to their hands and a lot more makeup, nothing’s changed. We’re still a divided country.
Rita, Sue and Bob Too is showing at the Bradford Literature festival on 1 July. A revival of the play, directed by Max Stafford-Clark, tours from September. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/07/a-royal-conspiracy-against-john-bercow-perhaps-im-imagining-it | Opinion | 2020-06-07T09:01:47.000Z | David Mitchell | A royal conspiracy against John Bercow? Perhaps I'm imagining it | David Mitchell | Do Jacob Rees-Mogg and the Duchess of Cambridge think John Bercow should get a peerage I wonder? Individually, I mean. I’m not expecting the two of them to have an agreed line. I doubt they’ve even discussed it. I have no idea what they talk about, if I’m being totally honest. In fact, have they actually met? Well, I imagine so. In fact, I’m imagining so now.
“So, Your Royal Highness, do you think that the former Speaker of the House of Commons should be granted a peerage?”
“Well now… ”
So they did talk about it!
If you’re doubting whether the text of my imagined encounter between Jacob Rees-Mogg and the Duchess of Cambridge is a sound basis for inferring anything about them then you’re clearly not a Tatler reader because the profile of the duchess in its July/August issue, published at the end of May (magazines are so weird!), is a majestic demonstration of the insightful power of guesswork.
It is filled with quotations from people explaining the various strengths and weaknesses of the duchess and her circle (as the duke calls it), but virtually the only attributed statement in the whole long, long feature is something Cecil Beaton once said about the Queen Mother. And neither of them is likely to sue. At least not without access to one of the psychics whom, according to the article, “both William and Kate consult”.
This last snippet of information appears to have come from “a medium who went to Kensington Palace to ‘channel’ for them” (the gutters in those old buildings can be a nightmare) and that’s pretty much the most specific citing of a source that Anna Pasternak, the author of the piece, goes in for. Otherwise, it’s all phrases that could mean almost anyone: “royal insiders” and “society figures”, “a good friend”, “another friend”, “one member of the young royal set”, “a friend of Donna Air”, “another country grandee” and “Hilary Mantel”.
In that context, my own imaginings about the duchess’s chats with Rees-Mogg seem completely valid. So perhaps we should see how the two of them are getting on…
“No I don’t want to look at it, thank you Mr Rees-Mogg and I think you should probably show it to a doctor.”
Damn! The conversation’s moved on. Now we’ll never know what I imagine they both think about John Bercow’s suitability for elevation. By which I mean ennoblement, not special shoes he’s taken to wearing.
The issue of Bercow’s peerage has been controversial because, while it is customary to offer outgoing Speakers peerages, Bercow is particularly hated by the Tories even though he sort of is one. He made all their attempts to force Brexit through before the last election really difficult and, entirely coincidentally no doubt, has been referred to the parliamentary commissioner over allegations of bullying. But that provides Downing Street with the excuse not to approve his nomination to the Lords and thereby mete out a historically unprecedented humiliation.
It’s this breach of precedent that leads me to speculate about Rees-Mogg and the duchess’s views. They seem to be real precedent junkies. For example, it’s at Rees-Mogg’s insistence, in his role as leader of the house, that from last week MPs are once again voting in person. Hundreds of them have been distance queueing all over the parliamentary estate as if there were something at the end of it even a tenth as interesting or important as a branch of Ikea. Instead, there’s just the opportunity to either cravenly do Boris Johnson’s bidding or impotently oppose it, in a slightly more infectious and hugely more time-consuming way than before.
There's something about someone exclaiming: 'That's pure horseshit' that can make you think again
It’s happening despite the fact that the parliamentary remote-voting system was probably the only wholly competent aspect of the government’s entire pandemic response. The development also effectively removed democratic representation from the millions whose local MPs are self-isolating. That’s now been tweaked to allow proxy voting but we’ve learned what Rees-Mogg is willing to sacrifice for tradition. In that context, a peerage going to a man he dislikes is surely a tiny price to pay to conserve the ancient convention of former Speakers always getting peerages?
As for Kate Middleton (I prefer her old name – it sounds less like a boat), she’s also a big fan of protocol if “another friend of the Cambridges” is to be believed. This was the juicy Tatler revel-/alleg-ation that she’d had a disagreement with the Duchess of Sussex, as she then wasn’t, at the latter’s wedding rehearsal, over whether the bridesmaids should wear tights. “Kate, following protocol, felt that they should. Meghan didn’t want them to.”
Before we conclude too much from this about the all-important Bercow situation, it should be noted that Kensington Palace has taken an unusually dim view of the Tatler unattributed-sourceathon, saying: “This story contains a swathe of inaccuracies and false misrepresentations which were not put to Kensington Palace prior to publication.” Interesting. To me, the article initially read like pure horseshit, but there’s something about someone pointing at some horseshit and exclaiming: “That’s pure horseshit, there are no diamonds of truth in there at all!” that can make you think again.
Tatler’s response to this response, incidentally, was: “We can confirm we have received correspondence from lawyers acting for the Duke and the Duchess of Cambridge and believe it has no merit.” But I don’t think that would stop them from printing it in their September/October issue if it hadn’t gone to press last March.
So let’s play it safe and assume everything in the Tatler article is 100% true. This surely means that, as a protocol and precedent obsessive, albeit one who dabbles in the supernatural, Kate’s all for the Bercow peerage? She’s bound to be. She must have been putting enormous pressure on Rees-Mogg, in the part of the conversation we somehow missed, not to entirely forsake his integrity in unthinking obedience to the prime minister and to push for the precedential peerage.
But we’re forgetting something. John Bercow was the first Speaker of the House of Commons not to wear court dress. He broke with protocol and refused to put on tights. He’s dead to her. Maybe he can make a go of it in Hollywood. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/05/michael-gove-lifting-england-onshore-ban-wind-energy-faces-hurdles | Environment | 2023-09-05T15:25:13.000Z | Helena Horton | Gove may be lifting England onshore ban, but wind still faces hurdles | Michael Gove’s plans to lift the onshore wind ban are finally here, after what campaigners have termed a “Tory obsession” with blocking the form of renewable energy.
Since 2015, it has been almost impossible to erect wind turbines in England because the planning system was changed so even one objection from a local resident could derail an entire project – an incredibly stringent interpretation of community consent. Just 20 turbines have been approved since 2014 as a result.
It has taken years of campaigning – and squabbling – within the government and the backbenches to get to this point, which could make it slightly easier to build renewables.
Though what the housing secretary has proposed is better than the previous situation, it still leaves onshore wind at a disadvantage compared with any other infrastructure project and campaigners say developers will still not invest in building windfarms if their proposals could be squashed by local councillors.
It will also confine onshore wind to certain areas of the country, which Gove defined in his statement on Tuesday as “suitable locations”. He is loosening the requirement for a location to be deemed suitable, but other infrastructure projects are not confined to certain places in this way.
Luke Clark from the trade body RenewableUK said: “Previously, the government said that suitable areas had to be identified in a local development plan. Today they have announced new ways of identifying suitable areas, as it can take some time for local development plans to be published. But other forms of energy and electricity generation do not have that requirement to only be in ‘suitable areas’. As a result, we don’t think that it’s going to make a change to increase investment at a level we need to cut bills and increase energy security.”
The updated National Planning Policy Framework statement says: “Except for applications for the repowering and life extension of existing wind turbines, a planning application for wind energy development involving one or more turbines should not be considered acceptable unless it is in an area identified as suitable for wind energy development in the development plan or a supplementary planning document; and, after consultation, it can be demonstrated that the planning impacts identified by the affected local community have been appropriately addressed and the proposal has community support.” Experts say these area-based restrictions are unique to onshore wind.
The shadow energy secretary, Ed Miliband, and the Labour party have been calling for onshore wind to be brought in line with other infrastructure projects, which do not face the same barriers.
Gove’s plans to give discounts on energy bills to those who live near the developments are interesting, but the truth is that all of our bills will be reduced if cheaper forms of energy are given the green light, and we rely less on expensive and planet-destroying fossil fuels.
This loosening of planning rules only came about because of strong campaigning from a large group of Tory MPs, including the widely respected former Cop26 president, Alok Sharma.
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Even those green Tories who have been pushing for the amendment have only given lukewarm support to Gove’s words. Sam Hall, the director of the forum Conservative Environment Network, said: “Although not a full normalisation as some have called for, these revised tests open the door to new onshore wind investment in England, which will reduce consumer bills, emissions and gas imports.”
Critics will point out that, although the government says it is prioritising growth, the fact is that it has taken years of campaigning to achieve a tweak to a document that will still discourage cheap, clean energy from being built. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/jun/12/the-australian-beach-tragedy-that-inspired-a-global-rip-safety-movement | Life and style | 2022-06-11T20:00:29.000Z | Dwayne Grant | The Australian beach tragedy that inspired a global rip safety movement | Steve Kudzius is not comfortable talking about himself. He would love nothing more than for this story to be told with only the most fleeting of references to his input. Better still, no mention at all.
The only problem for Kudzius is that without him and his heroics and his PTSD and his several-hundred-thousand dollars, there is no Rip Current Rescue International.
“One thing I know after decades in this game is getting funding for a project like this is so difficult, almost impossible,” says Gold Coast film-maker Jason Markland, who created a grassroots rip safety documentary following a drowning at northern New South Wales’s Fingal Head in 2016 and is now producing an international version thanks to the financial support of Kudzius, one of the key rescuers that day.
“It’s such a slog and that’s why it’s a blessing to have someone like Steve come onboard. He’s incredibly humble and reluctant to be pushed to the front of anything. He’d rather be behind the scenes but he understands people connect with his story.”
Erin and Steve Kudzius (left) with Gold Coast film-maker Jason Markland at Fingal Head, where the rescue of a young girl turned to tragedy, inspiring the trio to create rip current safety documentaries. Photograph: David Maurice Smith/The Guardian
Kudzius’s story is filled with so many of the things readers connect with – drama and tragedy, heartache and hope.
On Good Friday 2016, half a dozen people rushed to the aid of a young family when their seven-year-old daughter was swept out to sea by a rip at the unpatrolled Dreamtime Beach. In chaotic scenes lasting up to 30 minutes, their bodies took a battering as they shielded Rihanna Milabo from jagged rocks and 2m waves.
A day at the beach: ‘In the sea, I lost my hold on my daughter’
Read more
Kudzius, a Fingal local, played a vital role by getting a boat in the water and rushing the girl and a rescuer to shore, where the latter was revived. He then returned to pick up another rescuer and retrieve the body of Ryan Martin, who drowned while saving the young girl’s life.
The 30-year-old’s death was one of several rip current tragedies that has impacted the small Fingal community. Watching from across the border, Markland launched a campaign to create what he says was the world’s first dedicated rip current safety documentary.
He teamed with rip current expert, Professor Robert Brander – AKA Dr Rip. He secured a production deal with National Geographic Australia. He then tracked down Kudzius and asked him to help bring the tragic events of Good Friday 2016 to life on the screen.
Ryan Martin drowned in 2016 while trying to rescue a seven-year-old girl, inspiring a series of rip current documentaries.
“I was apprehensive initially because the Martin family had lost a loved one and I wasn’t going to get involved unless we had their support,” says Kudzius, who has three young children and suffers PTSD in the wake of the drowning. “However, we met with Ryan’s brother and he gave us their blessing.”
It’s brought some peace knowing I’m playing a role in helping others avoid the nightmare we encountered
Steve Kudzius
Kudzius then had to face his own mental demons.
“Dealing with my memories of the day Ryan died is a rollercoaster,” he says. “Some days I’m good. Others I’m not. I’m on edge all the time when I’m around water and I don’t think that will ever go away.
“It rattled me to see the tragedy play out on screen but working on the doco forced me to face some things I needed to. It’s been a healing process and brought some peace knowing I’m playing a role in helping others avoid the nightmare we encountered.”
Silent killer
Rip currents are the number one coastal hazard in Australia, contributing to an average of 26 deaths each year, while 3.7 million Australian adults have been unintentionally caught in a rip.
“That’s a higher death toll than a lot of the natural disasters we get in Australia,” says Surf Life Saving Australia lead researcher Jasmin Lawes. “In the last five years we’ve seen evidence that more Australians are becoming aware of the rip current hazard … but research has repeatedly shown people are no good at identifying them.”
Professor Rob Brander – AKA ‘Dr Rip’ – uses dye in the water to demonstrate how a rip works. Video: ripcurrentsafety.com
According to SLSA research, one in three Australian adults do not know how to identify a rip, while 56% are not confident in their ability to do so. In 2020-21 alone, Surf Life Saving volunteers and lifeguards performed more than 8,000 rescues around Australia, and while there was no breakdown of causes, Brander says there is no doubt most were due to rips.
The sad reality is we’re an aquatic nation filled with people who can’t identify a rip
Jason Markland
“The sad reality is we’re an aquatic nation filled with people who can’t identify a rip,” says Markland, who has spent 30 years creating factual content for the likes of National Geographic and Discovery channels.
“When I heard about Ryan’s death, it struck me that I didn’t know how to spot a rip and I would have panicked like hell if I got caught in one. I wanted to change the conversation surrounding rips and that’s why this was the most important documentary I’d ever make. I knew it would save lives.”
Blending science with stories of survival and tragedy, Rip Current Heroes aired on National Geographic Australia, and was later screened by Qantas and Jetstar on domestic and international flights. Rip current study guides were also made available to every school in Australia free of charge.
Markland then set his sights further afield, seeking to produce a version for the US. Kudzius and wife Erin, whose company Pinnacle Scientific Australia supplies equipment to hospitals and laboratories, once again answered the call to arms.
“They began to see we could make a significant impact because there are so few rip current safety resources out there,” Markland says.
Having helped fund a short documentary for Curiosity Stream in the US, the couple then told Markland they’d fund a feature-length version.
“Steve looks like a laid-back guy but he’s a very dynamic entrepreneur,” Markland says. “He and Erin are the kind of people who say, ‘Shoot for the moon, don’t do anything small. Make it as big as you can imagine.’”
Rips are not an undertow or a tide, says Professor Robert Brander, and can occur in all surf conditions
Going global
The resulting documentary, Rip Current Rescue United States, premiered on America’s biggest public broadcaster – PBS network – in May, taking in scenes from the Great Lakes to the beaches of Florida and California as it examined rip current safety in a nation that records up to 100,000 rescues each year.
The Kudziuses also funded the creation of a website, and are now supporting the production of Rip Current Rescue International, which sees Markland working with beach safety authorities in Mexico, South Africa, Costa Rica, France, the US, Brazil, the Philippines and the UK to bring the rip current safety message to the global stage.
All of which brings solace to the family whose loved one’s death has inspired the journey.
“Nothing can bring Ry back and that’s heartbreaking but knowing that what he did hasn’t been forgotten is really important to us,” says Josh Martin, whose brother’s heroics will feature prominently in Rip Current Rescue International.
“It’s fantastic to hear the project is going global. I’ve also stayed in contact with Steve and to hear he’s still dedicating time and funds to help save people is incredible.”
And what of the now-teenage girl who owes her life to his brother?
“Rihanna’s family has stayed in touch,” Martin says, apologising for his tears. “Sorry if I’m emotional but they reach out every year and send us photos of her, and to see her so much bigger reinforces what Ry did and shows that they’ve never forgotten him.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/nov/22/uk-borrows-energy-support-economy-inflation | Business | 2022-11-22T08:55:19.000Z | Larry Elliott | UK borrows more as energy support begins and economy slows | Government help with energy bills and the impact of a slowing economy helped push UK public borrowing last month to the fourth highest level for an October on record, official figures have shown.
The Office for National Statistics said the gap between the state’s spending and its revenues widened by £4.4bn to £13.5bn last month as payments began under the energy support scheme.
Higher debt interest caused by rising inflation and the first payments by the Treasury to indemnify the Bank of England for losses made on its buying and selling of government bonds also caused borrowing to be higher than a year ago.
Five-year mortgage rates drop below 6%; UK lagging G7 rivals; European stocks at three-month high – as it happened
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The October total was well below the £21.5bn expected by City economists – partly because the figures did not include estimates of government support provided for business.
A breakdown of the ONS figures showed the energy bills support scheme – which provides a £400 discount off bills – cost the government £1.9bn in October, while the energy price guarantee, which caps the average household bill – cost £1.1bn.
Public borrowing was £84.4bn in the first seven months of the 2022-23 financial year – a £21.7bn drop on the same period of 2021-22 but £35.6bn higher than in the period to October 2019, immediately before the public finances were affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Ruth Gregory, a UK economist at Capital Economics, said there were “growing signs” that the weakness in economic activity was hitting the state’s finances. “Total tax receipts in October, at £70.2bn were £700m lower than last October’s level,” she said.
Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor of the exchequer, said: “It is right that the government increased borrowing to support millions of business and families throughout the pandemic, and the aftershocks of Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine.”
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Hunt, who used last week’s autumn statement to raise taxes and reduce spending, added: “But to tackle inflation and ensure the economic stability needed for long-term growth, it is vital that we put the public finances back on a more sustainable path.
“There is no easy path to balancing the nation’s books, but we have taken the necessary decisions to get debt falling while actively taking steps to protect jobs, public services and the most vulnerable.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/jun/15/tv-tonight-how-prison-can-rehabilitate-rather-than-just-punish | Television & radio | 2020-06-15T05:20:05.000Z | Ammar Kalia | TV tonight: how prison can rehabilitate rather than just punish | College Behind Bars
10pm, BBC Four
An inspirational and moving documentary, executive produced by Ken Burns, on the Bard Prison Initiative, a rigorous and highly competitive American programme that aims to allow inmates to gain college degrees while incarcerated. Amid the chaos of prison, we meet prisoners who are part of the 300-person programme – many of whom have been in jail since they were 16, and most of whom are people of colour. It is a timely reminder on how far the prison system is built to punish rather than rehabilitate. Ammar Kalia
Sun, Sea and Selling Houses
4pm, Channel 4
Series four of the breezy property show, which is more about two families of British estate agents in Spain than the punters who are looking to buy new homes. This week, the Garners help a couple from Coventry find a villa in Almería, while the Rodriguez clan assist with a flat hunt in Alicante. Jack Seale
Inside the Factory: Keeping Britain Going
8pm, BBC Two
Rhapsody in brew: cups of tea have undoubtedly been a comfort for millions over the past few months. Gregg Wallace first toured Typhoo’s factory in 2017, and, after looking back at some of those highlights, he revisits workers to find out how they have adapted. Graeme Virtue
Murder In The Car Park. Photograph: Lucinda Marland/UNP 0845 600 7737
Murder in the Car Park
9pm, Channel 4
The brutal axe murder of private investigator Daniel Morgan has remained unsolved since he died in March 1987. In this new series we gain an unprecedented insight into the multimillion-pound, 33-year investigation that traced Morgan’s killing from the ranks of the London Met to the tabloid press. AK
Comedians: Home Alone
10pm, BBC Two
The lockdown sketches continue with appearances from Tim Key, who provides a noirish spoken-word interlude on social distancing, Morgana Robinson’s Cheryl Cole on snoozing self-care and the return of Charlie Higson’s lascivious Swiss Toni. Plus Tez Ilyas has some absurdist tips on solo exercise. AK
I May Destroy You
10.45pm, BBC One
Episode three of Michaela Coel’s exceptional rollercoaster ride of a drama about consent, relationships and the pressures of success. Terry (Weruche Opia) visits Arabella (Coel) in Italy, where their partying takes them to both unexpected and uncomfortable places. Continues tomorrow. Hannah J Davies
Sausage Party. Photograph: Allstar/SONY PICTURES RELEASING
Film choice
Sausage Party, 11pm, 5Star In Seth Rogen’s tastelessly entertaining animated comedy, frankfurter Frank (Rogen) and bun Brenda (Kristen Wiig) are among the food products yearning to be trolleyed from the supermarket shelves to the Great Beyond – or, as it turns out, the kitchen, to be flayed, fried, chopped and chomped. Paul Howlett | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/michaeltomasky/2011/apr/27/usdomesticpolicy-abortion-indiana-planned-parenthood-mitch-daniels | Opinion | 2011-04-27T12:22:46.000Z | Michael Tomasky | Mitch Daniels and Planned Parenthood | Michael Tomasky | You'll recall the Planned Parenthood dust-up in Washington around government-shutdown time. Now it's moved to Indianapolis in a gruesome manifestation.
The state senate there has passed a bill, which the lower chamber is now considering and which seems likely to pass, stripping Planned Parenthood in Indiana of all taxpayer funding. This would affect poor women in various ways, notably with regard to other, non-abortion birth-control related services (probably resulting in more unwanted pregnancies). But since nobody seems to care about that, let's talk about the fiscal ramifications. From today's Washington Post:
But family planning in Indiana is a fiscal as well as a social issue. Half of all births in the state are covered by Medicaid. If Daniels signs the Senate version of the bill, he would likely be giving up $4 million in federal dollars and bringing the state into a costly legal battle.
Because federal law blocks states from choosing which organizations can provide family planning services to Medicaid patients, the measure could cost the state all federal funding for family planning. Planned Parenthood is prepared to sue if the proposal is signed into law. They also estimate that the move would cost the state $68 million in Medicaid expenses for unintended pregnancies by reducing birth control access.
It's not completely clear from reports I've read so far whether the measure would affect cancer screenings and all the other completely unobjectionable and good things Planned Parenthood does. But presumably it would. They're talking about all federal dollars, after all.
Now, for those of you who think Planned Parenthood has every right to exist and do what it wants but should not receive a dime of federal money, I'd like to try to persuade you that that is in fact a pretty radical view if you were to take it consistently across the board.
The federal government funds all kinds of local and regional health-services providers. It provides funds to hospitals (except those that refuse federal funding like many Catholic hospitals), regional health clinics that treat all manner of illnesses and public-health issues, and state and local government facilities. Should the federal government stop funding all of those?
There are migrant healthcare clinics that provide the only access to healthcare for the poorest and most shat-upon people in America, those who pick our lettuces and our fruit. Should the federal government not pay for care for them? If you believe that, you espouse a really radical position: it's been settled law for 40 or 50 years, or more, that this kind of activity is within the legitimate purview of the federal government.
And if you think that's okay but funding for Planned Parenthood is not, well, why? Because of abortion? But no public funds go to pay for abortion. Public funds pay for breast-cancer and cervical-cancer screenings, and for other non-controversial family planning services - for mostly poor women, but for all women who need these services. Should the federal government not support that?
And if it should but not via Planned Parenthood, thenwhy should Planned Parenthood be singled out? According to this survey from the Guttmacher Institute, Planned Parenthood receives just 11% of all federal family-planning dollars that are dispersed to clinics and hospitals across the US. So if Planned Parenthood should be X'd out, does that mean these other places should be too?
And finally, if health-service providers should do without federal money, well, then why not small-business incubators, federal agencies that provide seed money for start-ups, federal underwriters of community development projects and so on? What's the difference in principle between providing health services and providing local development assistance? It's all federal money spent on domestic priorities that were debated and agreed upon through the political process. Why is a local health clinic different from a local senior citizen center built with federal money?
I go into all this because on the surface, it seems like a moderate position to say, "Okay, I have no problem with letting Planned Parenthood go about its business, just without federal money." But healthcare service providers for the poor have been receiving federal money for decades. So that position in fact represents a very radical reversal of standing policy that has been wholly bipartisan, or had been until the GOP went into High Jihad mode these past couple of years.
The Washington Post story puts emphasis on Governor Mitch Daniels' political dilemma. He said a few years ago that he wanted a "truce" on culture wars. Now he is staring down the business end of culture-war issue number one. If he signs the bill, he has embraced an extremely radical premise that will probably widen the gender gap by at least 10 points if he's the GOP presidential nominee. If he vetoes, which any fiscally responsible governor would do, he's probably dead in the water in terms of the GOP presidential primary gauntlet.
So he'll probably sign. But I'm less concerned about his fate than the fate of the women who don't matter anymore in this country, some of whom in the future Indiana won't be getting the usual and customary nutritional help with their actually born babies because the money that used to be there for that has been denied.
No, not denied: the feds are still willing to give it. Refused - by a state government so in thrall to ideology that it must act against that which isn't even happening (federally funded abortion) by preventing women from receiving services that work to lessen the very activity the state claims to hate. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/may/07/lack-interpreters-deaf-people-risk | Society | 2013-05-07T14:00:02.000Z | Kate Murray | Lack of British Sign Language interpreters putting deaf people at risk | It is traumatic enough being rushed to hospital in an emergency, but what if you couldn't understand the doctors talking to you about what was wrong – and you woke up after an operation still not knowing the full story? That is what happened to profoundly deaf patient Elaine Duncan when she was admitted to Dundee's Ninewells hospital. Although British Sign Language is her first language, Duncan wasn't given access to a sign language interpreter at any point during her 12-day stay, which included surgery to remove her appendix. "I repeatedly pointed to an interpreter services poster on the wall, and I handed staff a BSL interpreter's card on two separate occasions, but I was left abandoned and ignored," she explains. "It was a terrifying experience, leaving me feeling scared and alone, like I was in prison."
Duncan's experience is one of many examples of deaf people being put at risk because they are not given the interpreters they need to communicate with doctors, police and other public sector professionals, says charity Signature, which campaigns to improve standards of communication for deaf and deafblind people. It says the problem is partly caused by a national shortage of BSL interpreters. Latest figures suggest there are 800 registered interpreters for 25,000 sign language users in the UK. But Signature chief executive Jim Edwards says there is also an attitude problem among public service professionals, who expect deaf people to be able to lip-read or to use the written word. "For a deaf person, that won't be their first language, and they won't always follow it," he says. "Sometimes they might have a member of their family there, but their sign language may be limited – and is it appropriate that they should be interpreting when they may be distressed themselves? You need someone independent and professionally trained."
Equality legislation requires "reasonable steps" to be taken to ensure deaf people are not at a "substantial disadvantage". But Signature is urging the government to make the provision of regulated BSL interpreters a legal requirement across the public sector. Edwards says the Francis report into the Mid Staffordshire hospital scandal – which recommended regulation for all those who directly care for patients – provides added impetus. "In the future, if you're a sign language user, the doctor treating you will have to be regulated, but the person affecting your communication – where it really can all go wrong – won't have to be," he points out.
Duncan's case was taken to the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman, which upheld her complaint. NHS Tayside says it has since improved its procedures. But Alana Trusty, manager of the Deaf Links advocacy service, which supported Duncan with her case, says: "This is happening all the time, across all types of service provision. If you were in hospital in France, would you be able to read a consent form or understand someone speaking French at your bedside? That's what it's like for deaf people." | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2011/aug/11/tiger-woods-us-pga-championship | Sport | 2011-08-12T00:27:00.000Z | Lawrence Donegan | Rory McIlroy's rollercoaster round at US PGA ends in wrist injury worry | Great golf, bad golf, injured wrist, rules controversy and, finally, to hospital – just another day in the life and times of Rory McIlroy, who did not lead after the opening day of the PGA Championship in Atlanta but certainly garnered all the attention.
Poor Steve Stricker. The likeable and talented American shot a record-equalling 63 to lead the field by two – a wonderful effort on a difficult course that in the end proved good enough to be only a footnote.
For that he can blame McIlroy's decision to play a shot close to a tree root on his third hole of the day. It was a daft move and, as he dropped his club and grabbed his wrist in pain, its effects were obvious. He immediately called for a physiotherapist, who was then followed out on to the course by his own personal physio, Cornel Driessen.
The Northern Irishman played three more holes – and to his credit, birdied two of them – before a strapping was applied to the wrist. He reached the turn in 35 shots, level par, and edged into red numbers at the 12th, when he completed the par-five in four shots. Alas, the second of those shots, a wonderful recovery shot from off the fairway, provided a moment of controversy, with an ensuing debate over whether or not he had received "coaching" – which is against the rules.
Officials reviewed the incident and gave McIlroy the all-clear. The question is will the doctors do the same.
"I felt a sharp pain up the forearm and then there's a little bit of swelling, just on the inside of my wrist. And then it was going up into my elbow and my shoulder. So just going to go and get an MRI now and see if there's no damage to it," the Northern Irishman said after signing for a level-par 70. A decision on whether he will take part in Friday's second round will be made overnight.
The injury was a terrible pity for the Northern Irishman, to say the least, but it made for great theatre as he played a succession of brilliant recovery shots while completing his swing with one hand on the club. It was not pretty but it was compelling stuff. Even US television, which is notoriously parochial, hardly diverted its gaze as he battled his way back to the clubhouse.
"The physio said it's your decision, if you want to play on and you feel comfortable doing that; but if not, there's no point in risking it," McIlroy said, conceding he had thought about pulling out midway through the round.
""But it's the last major of the year. I've got, what, six or seven months to the Masters. So I might as well try and play through the pain and get it over and done with."
McIlroy has now lost a major (the Masters), won a major (the US Open) and competed in a major with a bad injury. A star truly has been born this year in golf and it has come at a moment when another star appears to be fading.
Tiger Woods began the week with the intention of securing an improbable victory but instead will spend his Friday chasing the more modest goal of making the cut after hacking and chopping and sweating his way to a round of 77.
That seven-over-par effort was Woods's worst first round at a major and his worst opening round at any tournament since 1996. He finished the day 14 shots behind Stricker and sounding bereft. He has sacked his caddie, lost his temper and misplaced his swing. "I have been through this before but this is a major championship and once you get to a major championship you just let it fly," he said.
Alas, for the former world No1 he sank like a stone. Still, there is always tomorrow, although that might be more of a curse than a blessing. "It's a laundry list," he replied when asked what adjustments he intended to make for his second round. Woods finished the day with his hopes of an improbable victory gone.
Stricker may not be the most dominating player to grace the PGA Tour but he is no mug. He hits the ball straight and he putts as well as anyone. A bogey-less round is always an achievement, even at a professional level, but to negotiate this brutish 7,463-yard course without dropping a shot was truly impressive.
Indeed he might have broken the record low score at a major but for a 12-foot putt on the final green that slipped past the hole. "The record didn't even register. I was just trying to hole that putt and get to eight under par. I never thought of the history," he said afterwards.
Jerry Kelly, another PGA Tour lifer, led the chasing hordes with a 65 while the Italian teenager Matteo Manassero was the leading European with a two-under par 68.
The world No1, Luke Donald, was two shots worse than the Italian and a great deal more disappointed. "I thought if you could get the ball in the fairway today, you could make a score out there. The greens are receptive from the fairway, and they're rolling so nice. It's a course you can attack from the fairway," the Englishman said. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/15/food-strategy-for-england-calls-for-big-cut-in-meat-consumption | Environment | 2021-07-14T23:01:25.000Z | Damian Carrington | Food strategy for England calls for big cut in meat consumption | The new food strategy for England, commissioned by the government, lays out in stark detail the damage the current food and farming system wreaks on the environment, as well as our health. It is the biggest destroyer of nature and a major source of climate warming, it says.
The report takes aim at overconsumption of meat. “Our current appetite for meat is unsustainable,” it says. “85% of farmland is used to feed livestock [and] we need some of that land back.”
That 85% of land provides only 32% of the calories we eat, it says: “By contrast, the 15% of farmland that is used to grow plant crops for human consumption provides 68% of our calories.” The report also tackles the myth that grass-fed livestock are greener, saying: “The more intensively you rear some animals, the more carbon-efficient they tend to be.”
It recommends meat consumption is cut by 30% within a decade. If the government accepted this, it would be a world-leading goal. But while it is consistent with the advice from the government’s official advisers, the Climate Change Committee, many scientific studies have concluded much higher cuts in rich, western nations are needed if the climate crisis is to be halted.
One major analysis concluded Europeans and North Americans need to cut meat eating by 80% for their diet to be both climate friendly and healthy. Another said a 90% cut in beef eating was required to beat global heating. Avoiding meat and dairy products is the single biggest way to reduce your environmental impact on the planet, according to some researchers.
The report proposes the 30% target is met by “nudges” to behaviour and replacement of meat by plant-based alternatives, ruling out a meat tax. Food is deeply embedded in culture, and the environment secretary, George Eustice, said in June that lecturing people on their diets is the wrong approach. The fake claims in the US that Joe Biden wanted to ban beef burgers shows the dangers.
But Marco Springmann, at the University of Oxford, said: “The report shies away from recommending decisive policies that would help citizens reduce their meat consumption by highlighting the public opposition to meat taxes. However, its own polling indicated that 75% of respondents either supported or were not opposed to taxes on some meats.”
“Behavioural science suggests targeted dietary changes are unlikely to be achievable without comprehensive measures, including fiscal incentives and mandates,” he said, alongside clear recognition from policymakers of the damage that meat causes.
In November, the UK’s health professions called for a meat tax. Polling for WWF-UK published on Thursday also shows almost 80% of people hold the government responsible for ensuring healthy, environmentally friendly food is cheap and easily available.
Change is happening anyway, with most people already accepting they should eat less meat, be that for environmental, health or animal welfare reasons. Public sector caterers serving billions of meals a year in schools, universities, hospitals and care homes pledged in April 2020 to cut the amount of meat they serve by 20%.
Younger consumers and farmers are leading the way from feasting on meat towards greener food production and rewilding of land. The government is also providing incentives for older farmers to retire. But the question is whether this generational turnover will be fast enough to halt the accelerating climate crisis.
The rapidly growing impacts of global heating being seen around the world suggest not, meaning political action will be needed. Leaders have had to win battles over unpopular windfarms, expensive electric cars and more. But the battle of the beef burger may be the toughest of the lot. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/dec/15/how-john-le-carre-changed-television-and-paved-the-way-for-box-set-culture | Television & radio | 2020-12-15T12:00:04.000Z | Mark Lawson | How John Le Carré changed television and paved the way for box-set culture | In polls of the greatest British TV drama series, the BBC adaptation of John le Carré’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy ranks highly, alongside ITV’s version of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited.
Curiously, though, the first of these landmarks in upmarket screen drama owed its existence to the second.
In the 1970s, the BBC, during one of its periodic crises over justifying the licence fee to politicians and the media, craved a starry, classy, filmed book, and had been negotiating the rights to Waugh’s story of a Catholic aristocratic family. When, unexpectedly, the estate sold the book to Granada Television, Jonathan Powell, running BBC Drama, was asked to quickly find a replacement brainy treat. He settled on the 1974 first volume of Le Carré’s trilogy (later umbrella-titled The Quest for Karla) about the search by George Smiley, a Sherlock Holmes of the spook world, for Russian double-agents in the British secret service.
Healing some BBC wounds by reaching TV in September 1979, two years before ITV’s Brideshead, BBC Two’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, had Alec Guinness’s Smiley taking reaction shots to new levels of attentive reflection in episodes of such deliberative pace that, at this early stage in the era of home video recorders, viewers sometimes wondered if they had accidentally engaged the freeze-frame function.
Guinness’s signature mannerism in the role was taken from the novels – where Smiley was observed to “polish his spectacles with the fat end of his tie” – but, on TV, it served the purpose of animating the long silences necessary to show the spy’s slow laying of interrogational traps into which his quarry might fall.
The pacing was so radical that even as clever a reviewer as Clive James declared the first episode “dull … turgid … incomprehensible”, and, after the third, dismissed the series as “a concerted attempt to inflate a thin book into a fat series”.
In retrospect, as confirmed by recent re-screenings on BBC Four, the show was a harbinger of “box set TV”, decades before the concept existed. Few viewers now would think to complain that a show is too convoluted, involving or leaves space for actors to unravel layered characters: the epic suspect-quizzing scenes in Jed Mercurio’s police corruption series Line of Duty are clearly influenced by the Le Carré series.
The then pioneering experiment continued with a sequel, Smiley’s People (BBC Two, 1982), with Guinness bringing his glasses to an even brighter shine, and A Perfect Spy (BBC Two, 1987), an adaptation of the author’s most autobiographical novel, in which Magnus Pym (Peter Egan) becomes a secret agent after learning the dark arts of deceit from his conman dad, Rick (Ray McAnally).
Tom Hiddleston and Elizabeth Debicki in The Night Manager. Photograph: Des Willie
Revolutionary for TV, these series were also rehabilitative for Le Carré. As Peter Bradshaw notes elsewhere, the writer was in demand from cinema in the early and later stages of his output. However, those three big BBC series saved him from a mid-career period of screen exile.
That gap began when, in the early 70s, the novels became progressively more serpentine and lengthy, panicking the movie industry about their adaptability. Adam Sisman’s 2015 biography of the novelist quotes a letter from the director Karel Reisz (This Sporting Life, The French Lieutenant’s Woman) rebuffing a producer who was interested in filming Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
“[His] plots are enormously intricate and complex,” Reisz wrote, “and adapting them always involves one in very painful and unsatisfactory reducing, which I don’t think ever quite works.”
The middle book of the Smiley trio, The Honourable Schoolboy (1977), at three times the length of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963), was even more cinematically challenging. Sisman reports that a producer who asked his staff for a “one page breakdown” of the book, a standard early stage in film-making, was told this was simply impossible.
John le Carré, author of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, dies aged 89
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Television, though, could offer six hours (the standard series length at the time) to depict the long waits and watches that are a feature of spycraft, and the methodical, labyrinthine nature of the interrogation of practised liars and deceivers. Added together, Guinness’s pauses in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Smiley’s People would last the length of an average feature film.
Le Carré was an admirer of Harold Pinter, who had started work on an abandoned version of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy for ITV, in which Paul Scofield was mooted to play Smiley, and the trademark interrogation scenes share Pinter’s fascination with the significance of silence and the unsaid in so much English speech.
TV had the room to show that happening. The books also proved naturally adaptable in another way. Screen versions often struggle with “voice” writers, whose prose style carries the energy of the novel. But, though Le Carré has a jauntily taut narrative manner – “Two seemingly unconnected events heralded the summons of Mr George Smiley from his dubious retirement,” Smiley’s People starts – the books are voice-led in a more dramatic sense. The centrality of questioning demands sustained dialogue sequences, driven by the sharp ear of a writer who was a gifted mimic, and made thrilling audiobook recordings of most of his canon.
Also perfect for the medium – and the great depth of British acting – is a Dickensian richness of characterisation. As in Jacobean drama, the characters often have defining names – Smiley is, ironically, very glum; spy Oliver Lacon, is, indeed, laconic; Rikki Tarr a growly smoker; and there are two submerged sexual puns under Connie Sachs, a rare woman in the spy ring.
In 2010, two of the author’s sons, Stephen and Simon Cornwell, formed a TV production company, The Ink Factory, beginning a second major phase of Le Carré television. A UK-US co-productions of the novel The Night Manager (BBC One, 2016), with Hugh Laurie as a satanic arms dealer and Tom Hiddleston playing a reluctant spy, became a huge success in the box-set culture that the author had helped to create.
Typically, the writer brought the same meticulous integrity to work for screen as for the page. The BBC and its American partner in The Night Manager, AMC, hoped for multiple further seasons, but the source author pointed out that he had only written one novel about the characters. Instead, the same teams made a six-parter from another novel, The Little Drummer Girl (BBC One, 2018), with Florence Pugh as an actor who infiltrates a Palestinian terror cell.
‘Few viewers now would think to complain that a show is too convoluted, involving, or leaves space for actors to unravel layered characters ...’ Guinness in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Photograph: BBC
John le Carré remembered by writers and friends: 'He always had a naughty twinkle in the eye'
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While posthumous publication of novels is thought unlikely, much more screen-JLC seems assured. A multi-episode version of The Spy Who Came in from The Cold is in production at The Ink Factory. It is also reported that the author, between recent novels, had worked on various scripts, original and adapted.
Of his known works, the one that got away remains The Honourable Schoolboy. The BBC filmed only the first and third books in the Smiley trilogy because, in the 80s, the settings – Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam – made the middle story logistically and financially impossible. The layered narrative would also have required at least a dozen hours of screen time.
Now, though, the active search of streaming networks for long, complicated content, and the scope for international co-funding and casting, make Le Carré’s most difficult fiction feel ideal for Netflix treatment.
And, if the various film rights can be untangled, there must be scope for an epic multi-season mashup of all 10 books in which Smiley appears, from Call for the Dead (1961) to A Legacy of Spies (2017). Drawing out the central thread of Le Carré’s writing – Britain’s deluded attempt to maintain its imperial significance, from Suez to Brexit – such a series could be one of the greatest achievements of the style of intricate long-form television that the BBC Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy effectively began.
Mark Lawson Talks To … John Le Carré is on BBC iPlayer | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/sep/14/westminster-attack-stabbing-fifth-victim-likened-to-horror-film-inquest-pc-keith-palmer | UK news | 2018-09-14T16:49:53.000Z | Aamna Mohdin | Westminster attack: armed police 'nowhere to be seen' for 46 minutes | Armed officers were “nowhere to be seen” when a terrorist wielding two foot-long knives cut down PC Keith Palmer in scenes likened to a horror film, an inquest heard.
Khalid Masood, 52, repeatedly stabbed PC Palmer at the gates to the Palace of Westminster and appeared “animated and frenzied” as he headed towards the MPs’ entrance looking for more victims.
For 46 minutes before, there were no signs of the “roving” firearms squad near the open Carriage Gates into New Palace Yard, where PC Palmer was killed.
Some colleagues, with batons and CS spray, ran away when confronted by the “robot-like” attacker, who had a large knife in each hand, the Old Bailey heard.
Dominic Adamson, representing the officer’s widow Michelle, said it was an “understandable” reaction to what was “not an equal fight”.
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He said the gates were “vulnerable” to attack and one of the most “identifiable and exploitable weaknesses”.
He said: “The evidence will show that for at least 46 minutes there is no evidence of authorised firearms officers [AFOs] being present or in close proximity to the gates in the CCTV footage.”
He told the court that when they were needed, they were “nowhere to be seen”.
The inquest heard that the attack on Palmer was like something from a horror film. CCTV footage showed the moments the police officer was stabbed outside the Houses of Parliament. In the footage, Masood appears to bear down on Palmer with a knife in each hand.
In an audio recording played during the hearing, muffled shouts for a medic could be heard and someone said Palmer’s “pulse is weak”. A man could be heard urging the officer to stay alive, saying: “Keith, come on son.”
Palmer was one of five people killed by Masood, who carried out a car and knife attack on 22 March last year. Over the course of 82 seconds, Masood drove his SUV into pedestrians, killing Kurt Cochran, 54, Leslie Rhodes, 75, Aysha Frade, 44, and Andreea Cristea, 31, before fatally stabbing Palmer at the gates to the Palace of Westminster.
A witness statement from Carl Knight, who was sitting on the top deck of a bus at the time of the attack, was read out to the inquest. He said he saw Masood get out of the SUV and tell an approaching pedestrian: “Fuck off. You don’t want to mess with me.”
Masood passed through the carriage gates to parliament and was confronted by Palmer. The inquest heard that Palmer fell to the ground and Masood stabbed him. In his witness statement, Knight said it looked like the “knives were bouncing off the officer’s jacket”, and he thought Palmer was stabbed around five times.
James West, a charity worker who witnessed the attack from Portcullis House, told the inquest he saw Masood stab Palmer a number of times. West described the stabbing as something “you see in a horror film”. He said he was amazed that Palmer had managed to get up after being “stabbed so many times”.
The inquest heard that Masood was momentarily distracted by other police officers while he was attacking Palmer, which gave the officer some time to run further into New Palace Yard. Palmer soon collapsed and then received medical attention.
Westminster attacker Khalid Masood. Photograph: Metropolitan Police/PA
Antonia Kerridge, a parliamentary assistant working in Portcullis House, told the inquest she saw Masood “lumbering” around that day. She saw the attacker following police officers into New Palace Yard. She saw Palmer fall to the ground, but was unable to say why he fell.
After Palmer fell, Masood continued towards him, she said. She said Masood leaned towards Palmer “and raised the knife quite high” before stabbing him multiple times. She could not say how many times Palmer was stabbed because she looked away.
Westminster victims remembered on first anniversary of attack
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Masood was shot by plainclothes armed officers. An ambulance arrived for Palmer just before 3pm but efforts to save him stopped at 3.15pm, the inquest heard.
Earlier, a request by Palmer’s family to adjourn the inquest and call a jury was refused. The inquest heard that Palmer’s sisters Angela Clark and Michelle Palmer were extremely distressed that no one from the Metropolitan police had let them know there was an issue surrounding the absence of armed officers in place to protect their brother.
PC James Ross, who was also unarmed and on duty close to Palmer, told the inquest that the Met had moved from having armed officers on the gate to roving patrols around the area.
In the afternoon, PC Doug Glaze, who was unarmed and on duty during the attack, told the inquest he initially heard what he could only describe at the time “as an “explosion”.
Adamson asked Glaze whether by having armed officers patrol the whole yard, instead of by the gates, the chance to save Palmer’s life “was lost”. If firearm officers were there, “the threat could have been neutralised quicker,” Glaze replied.
When asked what he was thinking when Masood entered the grounds, Glaze replied: “I thought I was possibly going to die that day.”
The inquest into the attack, which opened on Monday, is expected to last until 17 October. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/feb/13/drake-if-youre-reading-this-its-too-late-review-surprise-album-release | Music | 2015-02-13T14:44:28.000Z | Paul Lester | Drake: If You're Reading This, It's Too Late review | On Thursday night, Drake did what is increasingly becoming known as “a Beyoncé” and dropped, without warning, If You’re Reading This, It’s Too Late, the album that fans were expecting to be Views From the 6. That album is still mooted to be coming out later this year. Meanwhile, the follow-up to 2013’s Nothing Was the Same is this 17-track – that’s 17 tracks, not 10 tracks and seven skits – collection, with much of the production courtesy of Drake mainstays Noah “40” Shebib and Matthew Jehu Samuels aka Boi-1da. And if you liked the dolorous electronica they brought to bear on Drake’s 2010 debut Thank Me Later, you’ll love this dense, downbeat affair.
There’s a lot of music to absorb, and a lot of lyrics that, even for Drake, are self-absorbed and existentially wracked. If you’ve seen the video, Jungle, that accompanies this release, you’ll probably know that If You’re Reading This, It’s Too Late isn’t going to be an album of party bangers.
Scored by 40, Jungle is a gloomy travelogue that has already drawn comparisons with Homer’s Iliad, if Odysseus had been a mixed-race Jewish rapper from Toronto. Whatever the scenario – being driven in a limo through the Hollywood Hills at night, wandering sad, dejected and alone through his home city by day – the mood is blue. Apart from when it all goes red at the end for a dream sequence in which a disconsolate Drake descends through a mist into what appears to be the seventh circle of hell.
In between, there is poignant footage of a young Drake singing with his dad and rapping the Fugees’ Ready or Not, and various scenes of him with old friends, who can only momentarily distract him from whatever it is that is troubling him, although at a guess the price of fame and the meaninglessness of it all are fairly high on his list of concerns. “The whole energy out here is changing, you know?” Drake reflects from the back of that limo. “It’s getting dark, quick … It feels like anybody’s a target – you don’t know where it’s going to come from … I’m drinking more, smoking more … I’m not losing it, though. I’m just venting.”
If You’re Reading This, It’s Too Late features yet more venting that will make you wonder whether Drake is losing it, a feeling enhanced not a little by the album title, and its clear allusion to suicide. If he already seemed close to the end of his tether back in 2010 (“Man I couldn’t tell you where the fuck my head is, I’m holding on by a thread,” he claimed on The Resistance), here Drake is a beleaguered figure indeed. Sometimes he’s more belligerent – on Energy, the former child TV star comes out fighting, amid machinegun fire, complaining about everyone from his peers (“I got rap niggers that I gotta act that I like/ But my actin’ days are over”) to his family – but he convinces more as the original sad rapper.
No one moans more captivatingly than Drake, and on If You’re Reading This … he doesn’t disappoint, with complaints including his dissatisfaction with socialising (“I’m making millions to work the night shift …” - 6 Man), even his two mortgages, which we are told on Energy amount to a cool $30m. Lack of candour has never been his problem, and this is no exception. After the sensation caused by his “outing” of Courtney Janell, the Hooters waitress who was the subject of his affections on 2013’s Jhené Aiko team-up From Time, this album offers You & the 6, an open letter to his mother in which he alludes to the girl she tried to set him up with at her gym.
Intimate, intense, wistful, endlessly questioning, open-hearted Drake, backed by pristine machine beats, with aching chord sequences and lovely synth codas – longtime Drake fans will find much to appreciate here. If anything, the beats are more angular and experimental than anything he’s recorded since Thank Me Later (the chopped and screwed voices on the track Madonna nod to his Houston-loving roots), further adding to the sense of If You’re Reading This … as a stopgap. Still, with mixtapes of this quality, who needs official collections? There are a few tracks that have seen the light of day before – 6 God, Used To featuring Lil Wayne, which appears to have wandered in from another record entirely, and the gorgeous Jungle – but mostly this is as fresh and fabulous as an hour-plus of Drake bleating could ever hope to be. He actually steps aside for two of the best tracks – Preach and Wednesday Night Interlude – allowing his OVO imprint signee PartyNextDoor to swoon with his exquisite Auto-Tuned croon like a man in thrall to his own heartache: it is 3:32 of sheer billowing beauty. Miguel, Future, the Weeknd – deathlessly sorrowful male R&B has a new star.
As for Drake, “What’s next for me?”, he wonders on closing track 6pm in New York. “Longevity?” You can count on it, if he can keep converting narcissistic navel-gazing into music as complex and compelling as If You’re Reading This, It’s Too Late.
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https://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/jan/10/miserables-review | Film | 2013-01-10T15:01:00.000Z | Peter Bradshaw | Les Miserables – review | Like a diabolically potent combination of Lionel Bart and Leni Riefenstahl, the movie version of Les Misérables has arrived, based on the hit stage show adaptation of Victor Hugo's novel set among the deserving poor in 19th-century France, which climaxes with the anti-monarchist Paris uprising of 1832. Even as a non-believer in this kind of "sung-through" musical, I was battered into submission by this mesmeric and sometimes compelling film, featuring a performance of dignity and intelligence from Hugh Jackman, and an unexpectedly vulnerable singing turn from that great, big, grumpy old bear, Russell Crowe. With the final rousing chorus of "Do you hear the people sing?", the revolutionary-patriotic fervour is so bizarrely stirring, you'll feel like marching out of the cinema, wrapped in the tricolour, and travelling to Russia to find Gérard Depardieu and tear him limb from limb.
Just as some celebrities are so successful they come to be known only by their first names, this is known everywhere by its abbreviation: Lay-miz, impossible to say without a twinkle of camp. It's enjoyed staggering global success on stage since 1985. This version, directed by Tom Hooper, of The King's Speech fame, has all the singing recorded live on set, with actors listening to a pianist via earpieces, and the orchestral soundtrack added later. The result is a bracing, rough-and-ready immediacy from performers who can and do hold a tune.
Les Misérables tells the story of Valjean (Jackman), a proud and decent man imprisoned for stealing bread to save his sister's family from starving. Once released, he is viciously pursued by police officer Javert (Crowe) for breaking the terms of his parole, but makes a Hardyesque career leap into respectability, becoming a mayor and factory owner. His path crosses that of his poor employee Fantine (Anne Hathaway) whose grownup daughter Cosette (Amanda Seyfried) is to fall fatefully in love with revolutionary firebrand Marius (Eddie Redmayne) just as Paris erupts in violence, and as Valjean must make his final reckoning with Javert.
Peter Bradshaw, Xan Brooks and Catherine Shoard review Les Misérables guardian.co.uk
It conquers its audience with weapons all its own: not passion so much as passionate sincerity, not power so much as overwhelming force. Every line, every note, every scene is belted out with diaphragm-quivering conviction and unbroken, unremitting intensity. The physical strength of this movie is impressive: an awe-inspiring and colossal effort, just like Valjean's as he lifts the flagpole at the beginning of the film. You can almost see the movie's muscles flexing and the veins standing out like whipcords on its forehead. At the end of 158 minutes, you really have experienced something. What exactly, I'm still not sure. But just as the inquisition got Galileo to recant just by showing him the instruments of torture, I felt that Hooper had stepped from the unparted curtains before the feature began, fixed my gaze, pointed at a large wringer he had brought on stage and said: "Whinge all you want. You're going through this."
The most affecting scene comes in his movie's opening act, as Valjean is astonished and moved by the Christ-like charity of the Bishop (Colm Wilkinson) who takes him in, and forgives him for attempting to steal silverware, making him a present of it and protecting him from arrest ("I have saved your soul for God"). Jackman sings a soliloquy directly to camera ("Why did I allow this man to touch my soul and teach me love?"), eyes blazing with a new knowledge. There's no doubt about it, this scene packs a massive punch.
Other moments are less successful. Hathaway's fervent rendition of the SuBo standard I Dreamed a Dream, in extreme close-up, has been much admired, but for me her performance and appearance is a bit Marie Antoinette-ish. Her poverty-stricken character is supposed to have pitifully sold her teeth to a street dentist. Conveniently, this turns out to mean just her back teeth: her dazzlingly white front teeth are untouched. Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter are great as the dodgy innkeepers M and Mme Thénardier, but the crowd scenes have a thumbs-in-the-waistcoat feel, and when smudgy-faced urchin Gavroche (Daniel Huttlestone) addresses grownups in Cockney as "my dear" then we really are in Jack Wild territory.
The star is Jackman. But Crowe offers the most open, human performance I have seen from him. His singing is so sweetly unselfconscious that there is something paradoxically engaging about his Javert, even when he's being a cruel, unbending law-officer and royalist spy. I'll never love Les Misérables the way its fans love it, and I'm agnostic about Claude-Michel Schönberg's surging score, with its strange, subliminal weepiness. But as big-screen spectacle, this is unique. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/sep/05/tony-blair-journey-christopher-hitchens | Politics | 2010-09-04T23:06:50.000Z | Christopher Hitchens | Christopher Hitchens: 'The righteous will evidently never tire of the pelting and taunting of Tony Blair' | The righteous will evidently never tire of the pelting and taunting of Tony Blair, and perhaps those like him who choose to join the Roman choir of extreme unctuousness must expect their meed of abuse. But I cannot forget the figures of Slobodan Milošević, Charles Taylor and Saddam Hussein, who made terrified fiefdoms out of their "own" people and mounds of corpses on the territory of their neighbours. I was glad to see each of these monsters brought to trial, and think the achievement should (and one day will) form part of the battle‑honours of British Labour. Many of the triumphant pelters and taunters would have left the dictators and aggressors in place: they too will have their place in history. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2020/oct/08/bosnia-herzegovina-northern-ireland-euro-2020-play-off-match-report | Football | 2020-10-08T21:56:37.000Z | Andy Hunter | Northern Ireland savour shootout win over Bosnia-Herzegovina to reach final | Pat Jennings texted Steven Davis before kick-off to congratulate the Northern Ireland captain on breaking his record of 119 international appearances. Another upbeat message may well follow from the legendary goalkeeper after Davis’s 120th cap, and 120 absorbing minutes against Bosnia-Herzegovina produced a night to savour in Sarajevo for Ian Baraclough’s determined team.
The dream of a second successive appearance at the European Championship remains alive for Northern Ireland following a penalty shootout victory over Edin Dzeko, Miralem Pjanic and company. Bailey Peacock-Farrell, the Burnley keeper who made several important interventions in normal time, is also due congratulations from Jennings after he made the only save of the shootout from Haris Hajradinovic. When Edin Visca struck his penalty against the crossbar the visitors’ excitement rose, but so did George Saville’s next spot-kick, high into the Bosnian sky. Enter Conor Washington and Liam Boyce and the astute influence of Baraclough in only his third game in charge of Northern Ireland.
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In the final seconds of extra time the Northern Ireland manager withdrew two substitutes for two others with more prowess from the penalty spot. Washington slotted into the top corner. Boyce, to win it, sent the goalkeeper Ibrahim Sehic the wrong way and a play-off final against Slovakia now awaits at Windsor Park next month.
This was a proper Northern Ireland performance, built on an impressive response to an apprehensive start and falling behind to Rade Kunic’s early goal. Niall McGinn showed at 33 that he remains a man for the big occasion by drawing the visitors level in the second half. Both teams had chances to win it before the first competitive penalty shootout in Northern Ireland’s history ended in despair for Dusan Bajevic and his players and ecstasy for those piling on to Hearts striker Boyce.
“We had a game plan, something we’ve spoken about and worked on,” said Baraclough. “Who are the best penalty takers and are confident stepping up? We were desperate to get the ball out of play to get Boycie and Washington on the pitch.”
Northern Ireland made an ominous start with players struggled to keep their feet from the first whistle onwards – Paddy McNair slipped taking the kick off and had to retake – and problems with the surface contributed to the home side claiming an early lead. But the pitch was not the only factor, as the visitors allowed Bosnia-Herzegovina to dominate until the moment Krunic made the breakthrough.
The opener was galling from Baraclough’s perspective. Branimir Cipetic, the Bosnia-Herzegovina right-back, was released in space down the right by a simple ball out of defence and over Jamal Lewis.
Jonny Evans came across to cover but lost his footing at the crucial moment, one of several Northern Ireland players to do so. That left Cipetic free to pick out Krunic arriving in the penalty area and the Milan forward converted low between the legs of Peacock-Farrell, to the delight of almost 2000 home supporters allowed in the stadium.
Agony for Republic of Ireland as they lose penalty shootout in Slovakia
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It served as a wake-up call for Northern Ireland, who almost levelled immediately when Corry Evans crossed for Josh Magennis to head goalwards. Sehic saved superbly down to his left. Though Pjanic went close from distance and Peacock-Farrell saved from Krunic there was more purpose and intent in Northern Ireland’s attacking play after falling behind. The hosts, missing several defenders through injury, were visibly uncomfortable under pressure and Saville should have equalised on the stroke of half-time. Paddy McNair’s back post header found the midfielder unmarked in the area but, having controlled with his chest, he volleyed wildly over from close range.
The interval did not break the momentum or increasing menace in the Northern Ireland performance. Baraclough’s side started the second half in the ascendency and were rewarded with the equaliser they craved when Magennis flicked Craig Cathcart’s long ball into the path of McGinn. The 33-year-old, who sealed his country’s famous win over Ukraine at the last European Championships in Lyon, nicked the ball past two defenders, benefiting from a kind ricochet off each, before beating Sehic with a cool finish.
Pjanic hit the bar from a free-kick as the hosts reacted strongly and forced Peacock-Farrell into several important stops before tiredness, and perhaps the prize at stake, produced a cagey extra time. But there was just enough time for Baraclough’s double substitution, and it is Northern Ireland who, in the words of McGinn: “Are ready to rock ‘n’ roll in Belfast next month.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2012/nov/12/buy-to-let-investors-renters | Money | 2012-11-12T07:30:00.000Z | Graham Norwood | Buy-to-let investors win as renters lose | A string of new surveys show increasing numbers of investors returning to buy-to-let as restrictions on mortgages continue to force would-be first-time buyers into the private rented sector.
Data from the Council of Mortgage Lenders reveals that in the first nine months of 2012 £11.8bn worth of buy-to-let mortgages were agreed, a 19% rise on the £9.9bn in the same period of 2011.
A survey for the National Landlords Association shows that four out of five buy-to-let investors regard their property income as their pension. About 61% plan to live entirely off their rental income when they retire, and 39% say they will choose a retirement date based on the state of the housing market and their investments' value.
Research for Paragon Mortgages shows more than one third of brokers reporting that it is easier to obtain buy-to-let mortgages in the third quarter of 2012 than at any point earlier in the year – a higher figure than on similar surveys at any time since 2008.
The surge in interest in buy-to-let comes as average rents in the private sector in England and Wales hit a high of £741 per month, according to LSL Property Services, which owns lettings and estate agency chains including Reeds Rains and Your Move.
The lowest average rents are in northeast England at £529 and the highest in Greater London at £1,092.
"Every pound monthly rents go up, there's another pound renters cannot save for a deposit for their first home," says LSL director David Newnes. "This is lengthening their stay in rented accommodation and increasing competition in the private sector."
Landlords get more good news from Savills, the estate agent. In its forecast for the 2013 housing market, released on Friday, it says average rents across the UK will rise 2.5%, and there will be a cumulative hike of 18.2% between now and the end of 2017.
The biggest rises will be in Greater London, where population and economic growth will be the highest in the UK. Savills says rents will grow 26.4% in the next five years.
"In London the number of households in the private rented sector has risen 90% over the past 10 years while the population of 20- to 34-year-olds has grown by 18%," says Savills' research head, Yolande Barnes. "At the same time, the average first time buyer deposit has risen from £12,000 to £58,000."
The type of property which produces the best annual yield for landlords is likely to be houses in multiple occupation (HMOs) according to Mortgages for Business, a mortgage broker. It says yields on buy-to-let houses across the UK now reach 6.7% – thanks to recent rent increases and falling values of homes in most areas – but HMO yields are 11%.
"The owner-occupier market is sinking deeper into the mire and dragging property prices down," says David Whittaker, managing director of Mortgages for Business. "It's great news for buy-to-let investors, able to snap up cheaper property, usually at a higher loan to value ratio because lenders are willing to advance more when property prices are lower."
Such landlord optimism is based on the assumption that mortgages will remain hard to secure, particularly for first-time buyers.
But investors who believe they can enjoy a double benefit of high rents and long-term capital appreciation, twin benefits of buy-to-let until the downturn, may have to think again. Estate agent Knight Frank is forecasting that house prices – which across the UK are already an average of 10% below pre-downturn peak levels – will slide further in 2013. Falls will vary from 0.6% in Greater London to 3.8% in Wales.
"A further correction is needed as the relationship between average earnings and average house prices is well above the long-term average," says Grainne Gilmore, Knight Frank's head of research.
In a warning to the entire market, she says average prices seen in 2007 will not be regained until 2019 at the earliest, making this the longest housing downturn for six decades. Even more startling, Gilmore claims: "Once inflation is stripped out, average UK house prices are unlikely to hit 2007 levels again in real terms until 2031."
The emphasis for landlords will therefore be on rental income and not capital growth, a fact which means only one thing – hard-pressed tenants will have to pay even more in future. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/20/notebook-dont-blame-me-if-my-driverless-car-crashes-into-you | Opinion | 2020-12-20T07:00:10.000Z | Tim Adams | Don’t blame me if my driverless car crashes into you | Tim Adams | Five years ago, I was invited to test one of Google’s prototype driverless cars on the streets near the company’s headquarters in California. The car, alive with tech and sensors, navigated the traffic faultlessly and, sitting passively inside it, I could see only a couple of reasons why, by 2020, the vehicles wouldn’t be everywhere.
One stubborn problem was the insurer’s question of who would be liable in the event of an “autonomous car” being involved in an accident. That came closer to being resolved last week with a framework government legal report suggesting, logically, that responsibility for all motoring offences, even fatal accidents, should transfer from the driver (now the “user-in-charge”) to the car-maker or its software.
What the report did not resolve, though, was another potential difficulty that had struck me. Given that the cars had no choice but to stop if they detected unusual movement in front of them, and were predictably perfect at it, what was to prevent pedestrians continually walking into the road knowing the algorithm was on their side? Wouldn’t cars be stranded in a permanent limbo of giving way?
When I raised this with the driverless gurus at Google, high on their “rational mobility solutions”, they looked puzzled. Why would anyone step out like that?
“Have you ever met a British teenager?” I wondered.
We are not a muse
Celia Paul photographed at her studio in London. Photograph: Antonio Olmos/The Observer
In the current issue of the London Review of Books, the artist Celia Paul reviews the second volume of William Feaver’s life of Lucian Freud. In it, Feaver catalogues the changing cast of young “neurotics” who became the ageing Freud’s lovers.
Paul, now 61, who had a son with Freud at 25 before he lost interest in her, was one of those women. I spoke to her about that one-sided relationship last year. If there was one description of her she liked less than “muse”, it was “in her own right”, as in “she is now a painter in her own right”. In her LRB piece, Paul writes poignantly of how female artists – Gwen John was another – become footnotes in the biographies of the controlling men who “discovered” them. It is a “cellar life”, Paul writes. Quite rightly, she believes coming up for air is long overdue.
Last rites
Signpost to the Federal Correctional Complex, in Terre Haute, Indiana, USA, where two executions took place in December. Photograph: Tannen Maury/EPA
Most presidents use their farewell months to grant clemency to prison inmates with dubious sentences. Donald Trump, never knowingly unsociopathic, appears determined rather to make the Christmas period the most lethal of a presidency that, since federal executions were restored in July, has killed more prisoners than any for 50 years. Execution orders on five inmates are being rushed through before he quits the White House in January.
The urgency reminded me of a sentiment of the US justice campaigner Bryan Stevenson, who has overturned the unsafe convictions of dozens of prisoners on death row. “The question is never whether these people deserve to die for what they have done,” he said. “The question is whether, given our history, we deserve to kill them.”
Christmas miracle
The Pfizer-BioNTech Covid vaccine. Photograph: Rex/Shutterstock
My mum and dad, both well into their 80s, were among the fortunate first recipients of the initial dose of the Pfizer Covid vaccine last Wednesday. After they’d had the jab, they were told to wait for 15 minutes to make sure there were no immediate side-effects in a makeshift marquee in the clinic’s car park. “Is that where the drinks are?” my mum joked, characteristically, to the nurse. Certainly, after our year of prohibitions, it felt like a rare – hopefully increasingly familiar – champagne moment. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jul/28/surveillance-law-france-uk-kafka | Technology | 2015-07-28T10:19:53.000Z | Julia Powles | France and the UK are on the edge of Kafkaesque surveillance | The problem of our laws, wrote Kafka, is that they can involve arbitrary, secretive acts on the part of elites. The law, on this view, has “brought only slight, more or less accidental benefits, and done a great deal of serious harm, since it has given the people a false sense of security towards coming events, and left them helplessly exposed”.
“We live”, Kafka concluded, “on the razor’s edge”.
Most would find Kafka’s parable, published in 1931, a mischaracterisation of the rule of law. In democracies with a separation of powers, there are checks and balances between legislative, executive and judicial branches of government. There is transparency, rigour and reason, rather than secrecy. There is accountability and oversight.
Finally, the high court puts a brake on snooping on ordinary Britons
Carly Nyst
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Or so we would hope. But if ever there were a set of laws at the thin edge of the world, reeling back the swath of advances in civil rights and liberties during the century since Kafka resolved his thinking, and embodying his diagnosis with terrifying precision, they are the laws surrounding surveillance and counter-terror in the digital age.
Two decisions, one 11 days ago in Britain, and another last Thursday in France, highlight key concerns about the rule of law, cognitive dissonance around terror, the fated pursuit of a false sense of security, and the disassembled balance of power between citizens and the deep state.
Rory Kinnear as Josef K in the Young Vic’s production of The Trial, Franz Kafka’s novel on the unknowability of law and the brutality of power. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian
Channel, chasm and gulf
The first story appears to contain a glimmer of hope. Two British MPs, Tom Watson and David Davis, crossed the party divide and with campaigning organisation Liberty, won a legal challenge against the rushed, undemocratic Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act (Dripa), passed in July 2014.
The High Court found that Dripa was unlawful because it did not adequately ensure that access to, and use of, communications data (though not its collection) was limited to what was necessary, appropriate and proportionate for preventing and detecting serious crime.
The law attracted impassioned cries about incursions on civil liberties – despite this, the French council approved it
The decision has been welcomed for, finally, recognising in the UK what a number of other countries and a slew of independent examiners have demanded: proper judicial oversight of a “general retention regime on a potentially massive scale”. Where it falls down, as do many of those reports, is in accepting, implicitly or explicitly, the euphemistic re-characterisation of mass surveillance as “bulk interception” or “bulk collection”, thus endorsing an incursion into our private lives, papers, thoughts and communications that has no precedent in the law of the land.
Disappointingly, however, the Dripa victory is likely short-lived. Immediately, the Home Office declared its disagreement with the High Court’s decision, pledging to appeal. And of course, the Conservative government has already made abundantly clear its intention to enact a single, comprehensive law – the so-called “snooper’s charter” – which many fear would unleash a tidal wave of surveillance at political and executive discretion.
This is where the other side of the channel comes in. Late on Thursday 23 July, in France’s highest constitutional body, the last safeguard of the rule of law fell, approving what is, by all measures, an intrusive, comprehensive, virtually-unchecked surveillance law.
A pipe-dream for two years, the French law gathered momentum in March this year in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attack, and was put together in the French parliament under emergency procedures, drastically reducing discussion time and preventing any meaningful debate. The law was overwhelmingly approved by parliament in June and immediately referred to the constitutional council by nearly everyone who could do so, including François Hollande – the first time the president has deferred a law voted by parliament in the Fifth Republic.
France approves 'Big Brother' surveillance powers despite UN concern
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The case also attracted an unheard of number of amicus briefs, many of which were made public, and most of which involved an impassioned cry about the unprecedented incursion on civil liberties that the law mandates.
And yet, despite this, the French council approved, with very few exceptions, a law that allows intelligence agencies to monitor phone calls and emails without prior judicial authorisation; to require internet service providers to install “black boxes” that filter all internet traffic, combing everyone’s metadata in order to identify deviant behaviours based on unknown parameters and provide access to the agencies; and to bug cars, homes and keyboards for images, sound and data.
All of this, of course, is discussed as being targeted at “suspected terrorists”. But all of it, equally and more significantly, touches us all; anyone and everyone who traverses the internet. The law’s goal is to improve the agencies’ tools for a large variety of vaguely stated purposes: terrorism, but also political surveillance, competitive intelligence for France’s major economic, industrial and scientific interests, the fight against organised crime, and goodness knows what else to come.
The French case shows that the long-cherished secrecy of communications – a notion dating at least as far back as the French Revolution – has no constitutional priority. It shows the gripping appeal of laws that, in Kafka’s terms, provide a false sense of security and leave the people – particularly people in certain communities – helplessly exposed. On Sunday 26 July, the law came into effect.
Effective intelligence is critical to the challenges we face. But that intelligence must be targeted
The reality is that the French and British governments have discerned that a potent combination of public fear about extremism and political appetite for tough national security measures have cleared the path for draconian overreach and surveillance of all our communications. This is enacted even without proof that such tools will prevent the unpreventable, nor any cost-benefit analysis of all of the other ways that they leave us exposed, and society fragmented.
Effective intelligence is critical to the challenges we face. But that intelligence must be targeted, and it must be subject to due process, transparency and meaningful independent oversight. Measures that inhibit all of our freedoms must be subject to open, fair, evidenced-based debate, rather than cynical emergency procedures. And even if an individual is prepared to surrender all privacy in order to accept a minute reduction in risk of a catastrophic event, what safeguards are in place to prevent even greater catastrophes, in the hands of a state, oft-captured and oft-brutal, knowing and seeing all?
The tools that France and Britain are currently seeking are too blunt and intrusive for modern democracies. They stifle dissent with the same chilling turn uttered by Robespierre, one of the main leaders of the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution in condemning his former friend and close ally Danton to the guillotine for alleged counter-revolutionary activities: “anyone who trembles at this moment is guilty; for innocence never fears public surveillance”.
We live, it seems, on the razor’s edge. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/government-computing-network/2012/jan/20/byod-staff-cuts-socitm | Guardian Government Computing | 2012-01-20T11:43:00.000Z | Sade Laja | Bring your own device and staff cuts: Two key trends for local authorities | More than 90% of councils and other local public authorities are happy to allow their workforce to use their home PC to carry out work functions, according to a report by Socitm.
The report into IT trends in local public services 2011-12 also found 30% of organisations surveyed said they also allow the use of personal smartphones to carry out local authority business while 60% permit staff to use their own laptops for work tasks.
Public organisations will become more reliant on staff using their personal devices to support their roles as they look to become more efficient, Socitm said.
Speaking at the launch of the report, John Searle, IT trends editor at the association, said there has been a huge shift to attitudes around 'bring your own device' in a relatively short period of time.
"In 2009 local public services would have said 'Over my dead body,' if you asked them about staff using their own technology," he said.
Socitm's report, which surveyed around 600 councils, police and fire authorities, housing associations, and passenger transport organisations, also found a dramatic reduction in the number of IT workers in local public services.
Staffing levels were down by 5,000 in 2011-1, taking the number of IT workers to just over 22,000, according to the report. It's the largest reduction in 25 years, Socitm said.
"We've talked about big cuts in [IT] staff before. There are massive cuts in staff headcount, forecast for through the year, to the end of the year, and of course that is very much in line with what is happening across the whole of the sector, not just in IT," said Searle.
Public service providers were having to live with downsizing which came from years of a "neverending, upward-looking, growing public sector", he added.
"It's all coming to a shuddering halt and people are having to come to terms with that going into reverse and now downsizing," said Searle.
Despite this, spending on contracted services, including shared services, as a percentage of the total IT budget increased in this financial year. Socitm believes that this is because IT functions appear to be playing a more strategic role than in previous years.
Glyn Evans, Socitm's president, said: "The influence of ICT continues to rise as more services are directly delivered through lower cost ICT assisted channels. Technology is also helping reduce accommodation costs as the workforce becomes more mobile.
"However, with greater dependence on ICT, organisations must ensure processes and procedures are kept up to date, and greater attention is paid to accuracy, provenance and security of information."
This article is published by Guardian Professional. For weekly updates on news, debate and best practice on public sector IT, join the Government Computing Network here. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/oct/03/star-trek-into-darkness-jj-abrams-lens-flare | Film | 2013-10-03T08:47:00.000Z | Ben Child | JJ Abrams apologises for lens flare on Star Trek: Into Darkness | JJ Abrams's fondness for lens flare on the new Star Trek movies has become such a running joke that there is even a drinking game based on taking a sip each time the technique pops up.
Now the US director has taken the unusual step of apologising for over-use of his signature style on his reimagining of the long-running sci-fi saga.
Abrams, who will next hop franchises to Star Wars: Episode VII, told Crave Online he became so addicted to the use of lens flare that evidence of its use had to be removed in post-production for this year's Star Trek Into Darkness.
"This is how stupid it was," said Abrams. "I actually had to use Industrial Light & Magic to remove lens flare in a couple of shots, which is, I know, moronic. But I think admitting you're an addict is the first step towards recovery."
Further detailing his fixation, Abrams added: "I'll tell you, there are times when I'm working on a shot, I think, 'Oh this would be really cool… with a lens flare.' But I know it's too much, and I apologise. I'm so aware of it now.
"I was showing my wife an early cut of Star Trek Into Darkness and there was this one scene where she was literally like, 'I just can't see what's going on. I don't understand what that is.' I was like, 'Yeah, I went too nuts on this.'"
Star Trek Into Darkness was well-reviewed and performed strongly at the box office, but apologies from its makers are nevertheless becoming quite commonplace. In May screenwriter Damon Lindelof said he was sorry for a "gratuitous" scene during the sci-fi sequel in which British actor Alice Eve appears in her underwear. The Lost co-creator took to Twitter after fans pointed out the unnecessary nature of a segue in which science officer Carol Marcus strips down to a bra and knickers while preparing to pull on a special torpedo disarming outfit.
Nobody has yet apologised to incensed hardcore "Trekkie" fans of the series who voted Into Darkness the worst film in the entire canon at a US convention earlier this year. But the new Scotty, Simon Pegg, did tell them to get lost in August. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/healthcare-network/2016/may/03/sunshine-rule-quick-guide | Healthcare Professionals Network | 2016-05-03T10:37:38.000Z | Anna Isaac | The Sunshine rule: a quick guide | What is the Sunshine rule?
The rule, or rather set of initiatives, will mean senior medical staff in England and Wales will have to declare gifts and hospitality received from pharmaceutical companies, or they could be dismissed and or prosecuted under the Bribery Act. If found guilty, they may face unlimited fines or imprisonment. NHS clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) and NHS hospital trusts will be responsible for maintaining registers that will document the pharma-related business interests of medics, rather like the UK parliament’s register of MPs’ financial interests.
Why was it created?
A Telegraph investigation revealed that many NHS workers were directly benefiting from hospitality, gifts and payments or even directly working for pharmaceutical companies. It discovered that more than 130 NHS officials involved in assessing which drugs are given to patients were also acting as paid consultants to pharmaceutical companies. Even members of the government panel responsible for NHS drug procurement, the Pharmaceutical Market Support Group, were revealed to be receiving payment as consultants for large pharmaceutical companies.
Don’t they have something like this in the US already?
Yes. US manufacturers of drugs, medical devices and other biological products are required under federal law – the Physicians Payments Sunshine Act – to disclose payments and items of value given to physicians and teaching hospitals. The legislation applies to a range of doctors, operating in areas from dentistry to chiropractors. But medical residents (junior doctors), nurse practitioners and office staff are not included.
How does the pharmaceutical industry work with healthcare professionals? Event
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When will it come into force?
This is difficult to establish. Different parts of the Sunshine rule will be coming into force at different times. As of 1 April 2016, there is a new clause in the NHS standard contract around conflicts of interest and transparency on gifts and hospitality. NHS England said it is still consulting on whether or not to introduce strengthened statutory guidance for CCGs, which would set out how they should “reinforce their own internal arrangements so that conflicts of interest are managed effectively”.
NHS England is also setting up what it describes as a “task and finish group” to be chaired by Sir Malcolm Grant, which will “develop a set of rules on how conflicts should be identified and managed, to be adopted across the health system”.
How do healthcare professionals feel about it?
GPs are the most likely group of healthcare professionals to be affected by any rule changes, given their increased responsibilities for the commissioning of primary care services.
Prof Nigel Mathers, honorary secretary of the Royal College of General Practitioners, told the Guardian Healthcare Professionals Network: “Conflicts of interest (COIs) are inevitable but they are manageable. The important thing is that any COIs are declared and managed appropriately and transparently in order to maintain public confidence in healthcare professionals.”
He added that GPs are the most trusted healthcare professionals in the UK and that “as a college we trust our members to declare COIs without the need for introducing new legislation, but of course, GPs will abide by any laws that are passed”.
What does the pharmaceutical industry have to say about it all?
The pharmaceutical industry has welcomed the Sunshine rule initiatives. The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) represents companies supplying around 90% of all medicines used by the NHS and it’s happy to encourage what it describes as “a common ambition for greater transparency in our relationships”. It also points to efforts to promote openness about relationships between healthcare workers and the pharma industry, including the industry’s longstanding code of practice. This code includes a range of activities from the appropriate use of direct mail to “the sponsorship of scientific and other meetings including payment of travel and accommodation expenses”.
And the Department of Health?
Having tasked NHS England with addressing issues of transparency around relationships with NHS workers and medical businesses, the Department of Health felt it was inappropriate to comment on the progress being made on the Sunshine rule. It highlighted previous comments made by the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, in March outlining his hopes that new rules with stop extravagant hospitality and gifts from influencing commissioning in the NHS: “Further transparency in the way that decisions on how precious NHS resources are spent is welcome. These tough new rules will ensure every penny possible is directed to providing frontline patient care.”
Join the Healthcare Professionals Network to read more pieces like this. And follow us on Twitter (@GdnHealthcare) to keep up with the latest healthcare news and views. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2020/may/15/i-wish-more-people-would-read-damon-runyon-short-stories | Books | 2020-05-15T08:00:22.000Z | Sam Leith | I wish more people would read ... Damon Runyon's short stories | Damon Runyon was a Depression-era New York newspaperman who wrote, I think, some of the funniest short stories ever published. Yet he’s been only patchily in print in the UK over the last few decades, and inasmuch as most people know his work it’ll be through a vague sense of him as the writer behind the musical Guys and Dolls.
I don’t denigrate that musical, but Runyon’s stories are their own thing. No musical can capture their special quality, for they are magical to the sentence level. I don’t think there’s anyone who wouldn’t benefit from reading him. He’s as funny as PG Wodehouse and, like Wodehouse, Runyon creates entirely his own idiom and entirely his own comic world. But unlike Wodehouse, who is always sunshine and innocence, Runyon’s world is wry and coloured with exquisite melancholy.
His is a world of gangsters and hustlers and conmen, ill-starred professional gamblers and diners serving blue-plate specials and gefilte fish – all observed by a narrator “known to one and all as a guy who is just around”. The characters seldom ever have normal names: they are called things like Harry the Horse and Rusty Charley and Dream Street Rose. And this narrator speaks in an inimitable slang that is at once vernacular and almost comically circumlocutory, where a gun is a “roscoe” and money is “scratch” or “potatoes”, and women are “dolls” or “Judies” or “ever-loving wives”. If you are inconveniencing a citizen as he goes about his unlawful business there are such guys as will lay you plenty of six-to-two that you will receive a “bust in the snoot”.
The famous thing about Runyon’s stories is that they are infallibly (or nearly infallibly; scholars scour the text for the handful of rare slips) narrated in the present tense. Hence the typically talky opening of The Snatching of Bookie Bob:
Now it comes on the spring of 1931, after a long hard winter, and times are very tough indeed, what with the stock market going all to pieces, and banks busting right and left, and the law getting very nasty about this and that, and one thing and another, and many citizens of this town are compelled to do the best they can.
There is very little scratch anywhere and along Broadway many citizens are wearing their last year’s clothes and have practically nothing to bet on the races or anything else, and it is a condition that will touch anybody’s heart.
When talking about Runyon, sooner or later all you want to do is quote him. Here, for instance, is a passage from The Hottest Guy in the World, in which Big Jule describes how he passed the time shooting rats for target practice while holed up in a barn:
Well, sir,’ Jule says, ‘I keep score on myself one day, and I hit fifty rats hand running without a miss, which I claim makes me the champion rat shooter of the world with a forty-five automatic, although of course,’ he says, ‘if anybody wishes to challenge me to a rat shooting match I am willing to take them on for a side bet. I get so I can call my shots on the rats, and in fact several times I say to myself, I will hit this one in the right eye, and this one in the left eye, and it always turns out just as I say, although sometimes when you hit a rat with a forty-five up close it is not always possible to tell afterwards just where you hit him, because you seem to hit him all over.
For belly laughs from darkness, you will struggle to beat Sense of Humor. And that streak of melancholy I mentioned? Man alive. Try The Lily of St Pierre. And not for nothing is the title of one of his best stories All Horse Players Die Broke.
There are dozens of these stories, and the standard omnibus edition is called On Broadway (bundling the collections More Than Somewhat, Furthermore and Take It Easy). It’s in Penguin Modern Classics. Go get it. You won’t regret it. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/oct/25/we-are-more-than-just-the-scream-inside-oslos-mega-munch-museum | Art and design | 2021-10-25T05:00:30.000Z | Oliver Wainwright | ‘We are more than just The Scream’ – inside Oslo’s mega tilting Munch museum | How fitting that a building dedicated to the life and work of Edvard Munch may make you want to scream.
The £235m mega museum of the tormented Norwegian artist stands as an ominous grey tower on the Oslo waterfront, lurching out at the top like a military lookout post, keeping watch over the fjord. It is a location scout’s dream for the ultimate villain’s headquarters, an almost comically menacing structure, bent over the pristine white iceberg of the city’s beloved opera house with a thuggish hunch. It may seem like an apt container for the tortured soul of Munch, whose shadow looms large over the city – but the anxiety-inducing effect wasn’t wholly intentional.
“We wanted to create a welcoming vertical symbol,” says Juan Herreros , the Spanish architect behind the 13-storey complex. “It may be against the local tendency for modesty, but we thought the city needed a statement in a prominent location for this astonishing artist. It creates a new vantage point where people can discover a different view of the landscape.”
Architect Juan Herreros: ‘I am of the generation that has consumed too many horizontal museums.’ Photograph: Jan Khür
More than a decade in the making, and subject to intense political wrangling over its cost, form and location, the museum finally opened on Friday, one of the largest in the world dedicated to a single artist. It is a mighty mall of Munch, a towering stack of 11 galleries connected by zigzagging escalators, crowned with a rooftop restaurant and bar.
“Forget everything you know about museums,” says its director, Stein Olav Henrichsen. “This is totally different.”
The word museum has been dropped for a start. In an attempt to attract new audiences, who may be put off by the m-word, this is just MUNCH. Its punchy all-caps logo is slanted back 20 degrees to match the tilt of the tower, emblazoned across the facade in glowing, full storey-high letters. A promotional video sets the youth-oriented tone, featuring teens skateboarding towards the building, texting each other with scream emojis, on their way to hang out, not just look at paintings. Henrichsen promises that a brimming programme of events and performances will “make this house lively from 10am to 10pm every day”.
They won’t be short of visitors, thanks to global Munch-mania. But the impending crowds seem to have dictated the design: the whole place feels like it has been designed to process the hordes as efficiently as possible. A functional foyer, with shop and cafe, leads through big glass doors to the ranks of escalators and lifts, where visitors are funnelled up between the landings and into the galleries. It is a relentlessly airport-like world of grey floors, grey walls and grey ceilings, with glass balustrades, steel trim and aluminium mesh cladding completing the cold, clinical palette. Seats are placed at the end of these long landings, with monitors adding to the departure lounge vibe, but it is not a place you would care to linger, or wander aimlessly. It feels like a vertical conveyor-belt of art.
“I am of the generation that has consumed too many horizontal museums,” says Herreros, “where there are more people walking around, not knowing where they are going, than actually looking at the paintings.” In contrast to these free-flowing, public space-filled museums, he says, which are often more about spectacular architecture than content, “we wanted to make a paradise for curators, where the art is the protagonist.”
A vertical conveyor-belt of art: the escalators of the Munch building. Photograph: Einar Aslaksen
He has succeeded in the sense that the galleries themselves are all neutral, rectangular, black-box spaces, designed with a range of different heights, with no architectural whimsy getting in the way. “We are not like Zaha,” he says, referring to the late Zaha Hadid who designed galleries with impractical angled walls, “killing curators every day”.
The star of the show is indeed not the building but Munch, whose 26,700 works now enjoy four times the amount of space than at the previous 1960s museum in Tøyen, 2km to the north-east. Five thematic exhibitions introduce the many facets of the artist, from a gallery of his monumental canvases (so big they had to be craned through a hole in the side of the building), to a floor that focuses on his woodcuts, complete with a textured table where you can rub your own Munch relief. Another room shows his early experiments with selfies, made after acquiring a Kodak Brownie camera in 1902, including an arresting photo of himself power-posing in a loin cloth on the beach, paintbrush in hand.
Another escalator ride brings you to a temporary exhibition that pairs the work of Tracey Emin with Munch across two floors (partly shown at the Royal Academy last year). They make for surprisingly good bedfellows, indulging each other’s bed-bound misery with their anguished, smeary canvases. Emin’s filthy bed looks exactly the kind of place Munch would have been at home in, the detritus of used tissues and tampons echoing his habit of leaving his paintings outside in the forest to get covered in muck and bird droppings.
Further windows into his domestic life are provided on a floor that recreates ghostly black scenes from his home and studio, displaying his paintbrushes, palettes and even the breathing equipment he used to alleviate his lifelong lung problems. You may need similar aids if you’re planning to see the entire museum in a day. It’s a feat of endurance, but it creates a rich picture of the artist. As Henrichsen puts it: “We are more than just The Scream.”
Everyday objects from the the artist’s life sit alongside his work. Photograph: Beate Oma Dahle/NTB/AFP/Getty Images
It is the fate of that twisted, gaping face – now a global staple of Halloween costumes and emoji keyboards – that they have mainly to thank for their new home. One of The Scream paintings was stolen (and later recovered) from the Tøyen museum in 2004, sparking debate around the need for a more fortified facility. Along with the increased security and climate-controlled galleries, a theatrical trick has been employed to heighten the drama of Munch’s best-known work. The museum has three different versions of The Scream – painting, crayon and lithograph – hung in a dimly lit shrine on the seventh floor, but only one is ever visible. The other two remain hidden behind black doors, each taking its turn to be revealed for an hour at a time. The earliest and most famous version of the painting may belong to the National Museum (reopening in a new home across town next year), “But now we are giving them some competition,” says Henrichsen. They’re certainly upping the gift-shop stakes. You can buy the tormented, quivering face on everything from tote bags and pens to glasses cases, paintboxes and even a diamond-encrusted ring – yours for £17,800.
The limited-edition Scream ring, priced £17,800. Photograph: Langaard.no
The Munch marathon ends with an open-air roof terrace, flanked by a penthouse bar and restaurant (sadly not called Munchies), where the building leans out to take in the view of the Bjørvika waterfront. The area has been transformed over the last two decades from a container port to the cultural heart of the city, with the opera house, an astonishing new library and now MUNCH, all flanked by the brash “barcode” development of high-rise offices and hotels behind – with which the museum’s tower was partly designed to compete.
For a space intended to provide panoramic vistas, the roof terrace does a good job of blocking the view, with its layers of chunky steelwork and angled glazing creating the feeling of being hemmed in, trapped in a zone of consumption. Munch was never free from his torments, and neither shall the visitor be. “Without anxiety and illness,” he wrote, “I am a ship without a rudder. I want to keep those sufferings.” Little did he know how his trauma would endure – and end up being wrought in a 60 metre-high anxious monolith of aluminium and glass. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/oct/23/mitt-romney-barack-obama-debate | US news | 2012-10-23T19:17:05.000Z | Jonathan Freedland | Barack Obama wins last debate – but Mitt Romney may still end up victor | If Mitt Romney is elected president of the United States on 6 November – an outcome which is no longer the statistical implausibility it once was – then historians will say it was the October debate season, that turned it around.
Before he came face to face with Barack Obama in Denver three weeks ago, Romney existed in much of the American public mind as a cartoonish figure, a comic-book plutocrat so rich his wife had two Cadillacs and his cars had an elevator of their own. Extravagantly out of touch, he was "Mittens", the pampered son of privilege who refused to come clean about his taxes and whose personal rate turned out to be a measly 14%. Ideologically, he was either unpalatably extreme – a "severe conservative" by his own description, whose message to America's undocumented immigrants was that they should "self-deport" – or an insincere flip-flopper who had reversed countless previous positions – first supporting, then opposing, abortion rights, for instance – to curry favour with the hardcore faithful who pick Republican presidential candidates.
And he was useless to boot: clumsily embarking on a summer overseas tour that alienated a string of allies, including Britain, whose imminent Olympics he hinted would be a flop. As late as September his candidacy seemed doomed to failure. He had condemned himself out of his own mouth, thanks to a covert video of a fundraising speech in which he wrote off 47% of the American electorate as feckless parasites who would never vote for him anyway.
The conventional wisdom deemed Romney perhaps the most inept nominee of a major party ever to seek the presidency. Obama was on course for a blowout, tipped to retake states that, when he won them in 2008, had seemed like an unrepeatable fluke.
But that was before the debate season. Now that it's over, with Monday's encounter the last time the two men will clash directly, the landscape looks utterly different. Before the first debate on 3 October, the national poll average showed Obama consistently ahead, usually with a four-point cushion. Now Romney has a lead: tiny, but a lead.
Obama's cheerleaders used to point to his "firewall", his advantage in the key nine or 11 swing states. But now the uber-pollster Nate Silver deems that firewall "brittle", Obama's previous edge in Florida, Colorado and Virginia steadily melting away. Today a different Romney has succeeded in lodging himself in the public imagination: sane, reasonable, even moderate.
He seems energetic and capable, his experience in business no longer a liability – evoking questions about the vulture-like conduct of his private equity company, Bain Capital, along with his record of outsourcing American jobs – but an asset, a qualification for turning around the ailing enterprise that is USA, Inc.
Monday's performance completed that new picture. Democrats had been painting Romney as the heir to George Bush, noting the hawks and neo-conservative outriders who form his circle of foreign policy advisers. That left the Republican with a single task for a debate dedicated to international affairs: he needed to reassure the American people that he was no warmonger, out to reshape the world with US force, but a cool-headed realist. Accordingly, he lashed himself to his opponent, offering a me-too echo of Obama's foreign policy. He too would withdraw troops from Afghanistan by 2014. He too had no plans to intervene militarily in Syria. He too regarded war to halt a nuclear Iran as a "last resort". Why, the only differences were ones of style: he would show Vladimir Putin "backbone", rather than the "flexibility" Obama had promised. And he would never apologise for America, or say it had dictated to other nations. Instead he declared – in what was his best moment, one already spliced into a new TV commercial – "Mr President, America has not dictated to other nations. We have freed other nations from dictators."
Most neutrals gave the debate to Obama, either on points or more convincingly, who regularly exposed Romney's inconsistency on Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran – "you've been all over the map" – and used humour to devastating effect when he rebutted the Republican's lament that the US Navy had fewer ships now than at any time since 1917. Obama's reply: "Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military's changed." But for Romney, none of that much mattered. He was not aiming for a win; he merely needed to avoid disaster. As David Frum, former speechwriter to Bush, tweeted: "Romney reassured voters who fear he might be too hawkish; otherwise gave nobody reason to vote against him. Mission accomplished."
That goes for the whole debate season. Romney needed to use October to transform himself from a near joke-figure into a plausible president – and he did. That's why Republicans like to recall Ronald Reagan in 1980. Early that autumn, too many voters regarded Reagan as unfit or too extreme to be president. But during the TV debates, Reagan laid their fears to rest. This autumn also began with the US electorate disappointed in the occupant of the Oval Office. But it first needed to be reassured that it was safe to vote for the alternative. Romney may have lost two out of the three debates but it doesn't matter – he did what he needed to do. Now a campaign that began nearly two years ago enters its final stretch. There will be no more grand set pieces, just the hard graft of on-the-ground organisation, as both parties sweat to get out their vote – with all eyes on one must-win state.
"It will all come down to Ohio," says one former Democratic strategist close to the Obama campaign. "Both know it. And it will be a district by district street fight." While Romney looks to energise miners in the south of the state, Obama's hopes will rest on bailed-out car workers in the north. America's future now rests in the narrow statistical space the pollsters call the margin of error. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/dec/05/avatar-2-james-cameron | Film | 2022-12-05T15:30:45.000Z | Ben Child | Pandora’s box office: will Avatar 2 compel the crowds it needs? | It may be the fourth most expensive movie of all time at a reported $350m (£285m) but there seem to be few worries in Tinseltown about Avatar: The Way of Water being able to recoup that huge figure.
Mainly this is because we are talking James Cameron – and indeed Avatar. Disney long ago bet the mouse house that the sequel to the highest-grossing film of all time, now just a few weeks from release, is going to once again deliver us into glorious, high-end stereoscopy.
The Way of Water is currently predicted to take only $150m on its opening weekend in the US, but if it performs anything like the original, people will be turning up to the multiplexes for years to come hoping to grab their fill of 12ft blue space elves, sentient trees and evil human invaders in mech-suits.
Cameron is certainly counting on people going multiple times; in a new interview he even suggests it doesn’t matter if we all need the loo half way through the three-hour film, because we can catch the bits we missed the next time around. This is some level of confidence, but perhaps we’re all forgetting how much of a Big Deal the first Avatar was.
I remember catching the film four times at the cinema, twice at Imax cinemas in London and twice on standard screens elsewhere. Watching Sam Worthington’s Jake Sully enter the spectacular world of the Na’vi in glorious Imax 3D was like having one’s eyes popped full of sugar serum and dosed with premium LSD. On normal screens … well, you would probably have had a better time at home in front of the telly.
This, I suspect, is the real reason that the hype surrounding The Way of Water has been middling to say the least. Where once Avatar was a majestic, psychedelic and spine-tingling big-screen trip into 3D sensuality, for the last five years or so it has been the silly-looking space fantasy that pops up every now and again as an option on Amazon Prime. We needed a sequel to get us excited about the forest moon of Pandora all over again, and Cameron roundly refused to give us one until it was ready.
‘Storytelling has become the art of world building’: Avatar and the rise of the paracosm
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The Canadian film-maker told the Hollywood Reporter about how his own parenting problems inspired him to centre The Way of Water on family. “I thought, ‘I’m going to work out a lot of my stuff, artistically, that I’ve gone through as a parent of five kids,’” he says. “The overarching idea is, the family is the fortress. It’s our greatest weakness and our greatest strength. I thought, ‘I can write the hell out of this. I know what it is to be the asshole dad.’”
It has to be said, this doesn’t sound quite as inspiring a premise as some of Cameron’s previous sci-fi offerings. Bunch of cocky Yank space marines get mullered by relentless, acid-blooded, multiple-jawed extra terrestrials from the seventh layer of Hades? Sign me up! Robot from the impending AI apocalypse comes back in time to murder the future leader of the human resistance? I’ll buy that for a dollar!
Family matters … Avatar: The Way of Water. Photograph: 20th Century Studios
Giant blue space elves vie to fend off the same human meanies we saw last time while learning a lot about the importance of family in the process? It somehow doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.
Yet we should give Cameron the benefit of the doubt. At the age of 68, the arch sci-fi storyteller is ready to make at least another three of these films and even has plans for a further two episodes that will probably be directed by other people. Having moved into Peter Jackson’s old office in Wellington, Cameron is contemplating taking New Zealand citizenship as he searches for the perfect working environment to keep pumping out more tales of Pandora. Frankly, he couldn’t be more invested in Avatar if he tattooed himself from head to toe in cyan like Ben Stiller in that infamous Oscars sketch, especially when the film-maker himself admits he’ll probably be close to 90 by the time we find out how all this ends up.
Goodness knows how many sentient trees will have had to die, not to mention how many Na’avi great-grandchildren Sully and Neytiri will have spawned by the time we get to Avatar part seven. It frankly doesn’t bear thinking about.
But if Cameron really expects us to keep paying good money to see these films, he’ll need to ensure that The Way of Water fires up synapses and short-circuits photoreceptors like Avatar did. It won’t be long before we get to find out if the last 13 years were nothing but a tedious 2D fever dream, and the real action was taking place on a gorgeous, phosphorescence-dappled moon somewhere out there in the Milky Way … | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/feb/19/what-universities-for-collini-review | Books | 2012-02-19T00:05:02.000Z | Peter Conrad | What Are Universities For? by Stefan Collini – review | The rhetorical question is a hollow-sounding device, much favoured by monologuising dons: asked for the sake of effect, it doesn't feel obliged to provide an answer. Stefan Collini addresses the empty air in his title but then loses his nerve in the first paragraph of his book, which gives in to qualms about that interrogatory preposition. Is to ask what universities are for the same as asking what love or a country is for? "Any answer," Collini sighs, "is bound to be a tiresome combination of banality and tendentiousness." Further questions proliferate, "spiralling down into an endless regress".
Can this be his reply to the titular question? What universities are for, we gather, is to house the talking heads who pace round in circles as they play linguistic games. Many pages pass before Collini, now cordoning off the suspect preposition inside quote marks by "asking what universities are 'for'", confesses that he isn't even sure what a university is, though he decides that – in a world where the name applies to former polytechnics, hairdressing academies, and mail-order firms that will sell you a PhD for a few pounds – we had better not "be insistently purist about the usage of the term 'university'". At least, unlike Bill Clinton extricating himself from charges of sexual hanky-panky by mobilising the skills he learned at Yale Law School, Collini refrains from asking "what the meaning of 'is' is".
He is a little clearer about what universities are not. Officially at least, they no longer function as social clubs for the sons of the landed gentry, or as seminaries to train Anglican priests; after "the Thatcher government's Kulturkampf against universities" – Collini's German term for cultural war is probably accompanied by a self-admiring little smirk – they are required to operate like business organisations, although Collini, who jeers at the notion of HiEdBizUK, thinks that they're not that either. A long chapter about Cardinal Newman's notion that universities exist to "raise the intellectual tone of society" also ends by deciding that Newman is no help.
The fog momentarily clears when Collini calls the contemporary university "a marriage of convenience between a type of school and a type of research laboratory", but this too is dismissed as "the most frequent, because the most plausible, misconception" about the matter. Plausibility, in the heady realm of academic discourse, is enough to make a thesis untenable. Trying to follow Collini's contortions, I was reminded of a remark made by a former Oxford colleague of mine during a discussion of some newfangled theoretical addition to the syllabus. "You just invent some problems," he shrugged, "and then you've got a subject." Or, in Collini's case, a book to add to the bibliometrical index on his CV.
Another attempt at a definition – disqualified in advance as "neat, but therefore only partly adequate" – says that "schoolchildren are taught, university students study". (In my recollection, the latter also bunk off, drink, dance, act, play sports, have sex, get the flu with astonishing frequency, pee on war memorials and sometimes toss the odd fire extinguisher off the top of a public building.) And how do dons occupy themselves while the students are purportedly studying? "What they, we, are doing most of the time," says Collini, "is worrying." Not having done much of this during my 38-year academic career, I felt curious about the source of Collini's gnawing anxiety. Eventually he lets slip a diagnosis of his condition: he and his kind are "prone to waking up too early in the morning worrying about the paragraph they wrote yesterday". Ah, the onerous workload of the intellectual: yesterday's output was one whole paragraph!
Collini groans about the "upper-body workout" he gets from lugging around the agenda papers for a Cambridge meeting, and expects commiseration when he complains about spending Saturday morning in the office writing references. Yet my erstwhile Oxford colleagues eagerly volunteered for administrative chores, which brought with them the bonus – locally known as a "buy-out" – of dispensation from teaching. You earn promotion by this kind of busybodying; if you do enough favours for others, you can be rewarded with "research leave", which will enable you to write a ponderously footnoted article on a subject of interest only to your fellow obsessives.
Preoccupied by worry, Collini doesn't mention the joy of discussing novels and poems with those he teaches. Perhaps the problem is the so-called "crisis in the humanities", which has dehumanised the study of literature by reducing authors to producers of texts and reducing those texts to position papers with agendas that interest us only if they contribute to contemporary debates about gender, sexuality and ethnic difference. And since Collini is free to write, why doesn't he enjoy that? No, the daily paragraph is meant to be forced out with the costive pangs suffered by those whose internal plumbing is stodgy.
Things brighten up in the second part of his book, when polemics replace the academic filibustering, though most of this section has been previously published, some of it more than a decade ago when the circumstances about which it protests were different.
At one point Collini risks another rhetorical question. As he trudges around the quad, he wonders "what happened to youthful dreams of intellectual excitement and literary glory". Since he gives no answer, let me do so for him. Youth passes, but if excitement expires it's your own fault. As for literary glory, it's not acquired by afternoons spent at "a meeting of the Cambridge University Press syndicate" or trips to London "to chair a meeting of the Modern Literature section of the British Academy". What universities are emphatically not for is to subsidise the self-pity of those they employ. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2023/jun/05/stokes-must-maintain-all-round-status-to-rival-green-in-ashes-showdown | Sport | 2023-06-05T07:00:22.000Z | Taha Hashim | Stokes must maintain all-round status to rival Green in Ashes showdown | Taha Hashim | Before the unbeaten 135, Ben Stokes’s Headingley rescue act in 2019 began with the ball. It remains the somewhat forgotten preamble, the EP of promise before the first album that went platinum.
Stokes was skilful in his 24.2-over spell in Australia’s second innings, but it was his ferocity that stood out, his unwillingness to step aside as an already significant lead grew into what should have been a match-winning one. The final figures were three for 56, tidy but hardly reflective of what he had produced. Marnus Labuschagne, who took the brunt of it, said later that it was one of the best spells he had faced.
England could make call to Moeen Ali after Jack Leach ruled out of Ashes
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Australia’s then head coach, Justin Langer, remembered it too when speaking before the last Ashes. While still haunted by the final-day innings, what had come before was an even greater source of frustration. “I probably have more nightmares about his spell on day three of that game.”
For years, this has been our default image of Stokes: the all-action hero batting till the final ball, bowling with both fire and a grimace, the centre of our collective attention. Against Ireland at Lord’s, though, it went completely the other way, with Stokes not required with the bat and not bowling either. His one catch was at short fine leg. The man who occasionally becomes the game, hovered on its margins.
This is in keeping with his time as captain. Others have thrived under Stokes with the bat, reducing the requirement for him to don a cape. His attack has shown they can take 20 wickets without him, allowing him to rest his body. He is conducting the orchestra perfectly. But England still need him to put on the bowling boots this summer. Sure, there is his ability to prize one out when nothing else is working, the pitch is flat and heart becomes more important than line and length. It felt that way while Andy McBrine and Mark Adair piled them up on Saturday afternoon as Stokes turned to everyone but himself. He had only just returned to bowling for the first time in weeks earlier that morning, putting his body through the test in the warm-ups.
But it’s not just that. It feels vital that Stokes maintains all-round status because of what Australia have packed for the holidays: a way-too-tall baby-faced machine by the name of Cameron Green. If Australia felt any jealousy four years ago it would have been while watching Stokes, wishing they had one of those. Now they do.
These are early days for Green; 24 years of age and 20 Tests so far, the numbers to go with it not outrageous but more than solid. Crucially, the batting average trumps the bowling one, which means we are allowed to say “genuine” before all-rounder. The past six months have brought him a five-fer against South Africa, a first Test century in India and, as is modern life, a ton in the Indian Premier League. He already has one successful Ashes series behind him, too.
Cameron Green has made a solid start to his Test career, taking a five-fer against South Africa and scoring a century in India. Photograph: Graham Denholm/CA/Cricket Australia/Getty Images
Green is an altogether different sight to Stokes: a more hulking presence with the bat, his bowling a touch more mechanical having been refined after back stress fractures halted his early development. There is a shyness to him, a sense that he would like to keep his genius hidden from the rest of the world. But one look at him – high-end pace to go with an ability to hit both the red and white – and the secret is out the bag.
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If there is a caveat to throw in here, it is that he hasn’t played here before. The rhythms of Ashes cricket in Australia stand in stark contrast to those in England. But at the bare minimum, he will offer a breather to a top-class attack that lacks youth. Having made substantial scores on all three of his Test tours so far, he will probably find a way to do it on his fourth.
We are at the point where we turn a team game into a battle of one-on-ones. Broad v Warner, Cummins v Root, Robinson v Labuschagne, all on the fight card. “This is where the Ashes will be decided,” comes the shout for each one, as if it really is that simple an equation. The winner in Stokes v Green will not necessarily confirm the direction the urn travels in either, but it may well be the most enticing subplot of them all. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/oct/23/buffalo-nichols-buffalo-nichols-review-carl-nichols | Music | 2021-10-23T15:00:44.000Z | Neil Spencer | Buffalo Nichols: Buffalo Nichols review – urgent, steeped-in-tradition blues | As an aspiring teenage guitarist, Carl Nichols was drawn to the blues discovered in his mother’s record collection – Robert Cray, Corey Harris – while his hometown of Milwaukee offered gigs playing everything but the 12-bar bible. Instead, Nichols played in punk bands, in church, in hip-hop outfits and more, only returning to his first love after a European jaunt landed him in a Kiev blues club. On his return home, he made the demos that became the basis of this impressive debut, an album steeped in tradition but with an urgent, contemporary edge.
The tumbling lines of the 30-year-old’s finger-picked guitar carry echoes of the blues pioneers of the 1920s, but while the likes of Robert Johnson and Willie McTell sang with high, pungent voices, Nichols’s vocals are husky and intimate, which makes the anger of his lyrics the more biting. Another Man addresses the US history of lynching and police killing (it was written before the murder of George Floyd), remarking “Why wear a hood when a badge is just as good”. Overtly political numbers such as the harrowing Living Hell sit alongside more personal pieces; the desolate Lost and Lonesome, the rueful Sorry It Was You. Bleak but compelling.
Watch Buffalo Nicholls perform How To Love (Live In Mississippi). | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2014/jan/19/zosia-mamet-shoshanna-girls | Television & radio | 2014-01-19T20:00:00.000Z | Alexis Petridis | Zosia Mamet: 'People freak out over my dad' | Zosia Mamet says she knew Girls was a huge success when people started coming up to her in the street and talking to her as if she were Shoshanna Shapiro, the character she plays in the show. Worse than that, because of what she calls Girls's "incredibly intense confessional nature", people started coming up to her in the street and telling her about their sex lives. "They feel like they can tell us anything," she sighs. "I've had people say crazy shit to me. Like, I had a girl come up to me and thank me, because she said she and her boyfriend have sex after they watch the show, and then she told me she was worried about what would happen to their sex lives when the show goes off the air."
Leaving aside the question of what kind of person finds the sex in the show arousing – there are sex scenes in Girls that leave you glumly wondering whether you'll ever feel like having it off again – Mamet says the most immediately pressing issue is what you say in response. "I mean, you have to sort of take it in your stride. You never want to embarrass people. But what do you say to that? I don't know. I think I just went, 'Oh.' People are strange."
Such are the perils of starring in one of the most discussed TV series of recent years. You could argue that the amount of ink spilt on Girls is wildly disproportionate to the number of people who've actually seen it. But anyone doubting that the show, about to return for its third series, is held to be a very big deal might cast an eye over the circumstances in which I meet Mamet. Sky Atlantic appear to have taken over an entire floor of a London hotel. There are PRs everywhere running things with a zeal that borders on the demented. When I ask if I can nip to the toilet en route to meeting Mamet, a woman with a clipboard looks aghast. "You'll have to hurry up. Really, be very quick. We're on a very tight schedule." But I'm here early, I protest. "You're only 10 minutes early actually," she snaps. "You should have been here at that time anyway." Suitably chastened, I'm permitted to go for a wee.
Amid all this, Mamet herself is an ocean of calm. For a 25-year-old who claims to have had difficulty adjusting to the simultaneously "wonderful and awful" experience of fame ("Losing your anonymity is an incredibly bizarre thing and I don't think you can ever prepare for it"), she's quite the pro at interviews: polite, warm and adept at avoiding questions she doesn't want to answer. Last year, she attempted to raise $32,000 on Kickstarter to make a video for her band Cabin Sisters – or, as their Kickstarter page put it, "realise through the visual artistry of some very talented people the universal feeling of unrequited love". The appeal provoked a storm of protest about successful actors appealing for funds through a crowdsourcing website, and only £2,783 was raised.
Enquiries about this are met with polite equanimity. "You know," she sighs, "it was something we tried that didn't work, that I also think was an incredibly charged topic at the time." The actor Zach Braff had just raised $3m to make the comedy drama Wish I Was Here through Kickstarter. "People warned me against it, because of what Zach was doing, but my point was that we were incredibly different, and our careers have been incredibly different. But you know, everyone is going to have an opinion and sometimes people are an easier target than others. I didn't really take it to heart."
When I ask about the controversy surrounding Girls – the suggestions that its first series was insufficiently racially diverse and focused exclusively on a privileged world full of entitled characters – she claims "not to really know much of what it is, because I honestly don't read much about it". Her father, the writer and director David Mamet, told her never to read anything about her work, she says. "He was incredibly controversial at times and I was really taught, growing up, not to read reviews. He said the good ones are never good enough, and the bad ones are the only ones you'll remember." Oh come on, I say, you must have some basic idea of what the criticisms of the show were and whether you think they were valid. "Maybe that sounds incredibly sheltered of me," she smiles, politely but firmly closing that door.
Mamet had high-profile television roles before, not least as hip lesbian photo editor Joyce Ramsay in Mad Men, but none of them garnered the kind of attention she has received for Girls. She was, she says, "completely unprepared" for the show's success. For one thing, Shoshanna was only supposed to appear in the pilot episode. A kind of wide-eyed and virginal foil to the other characters' moodiness, cynicism and self-assurance, she was originally conceived largely to point up that Girls was different to Sex and the City, Shoshanna's favourite show.
No sooner had she got the part than she thought she had lost it. She was ill at her first read-through and took a potent over-the-counter cold remedy called NyQuil. "I forgot how incredibly strong it is. I went to the reading so drunk on Nyquil that I couldn't remember any of it afterwards, although I had a vague recollection that I'd thrown up on the table. I called my agent and said, 'I don't know if this happened or not, but I'm pretty positive it did and I'm going to lose my job.' And it turns out I didn't actually throw up. I like dreamt it in a NyQuil haze. And then they called and asked if I wanted to be a series regular."
A cynic might suggest that Mamet fitted perfectly into the cast purely on the grounds of also having famous parents – she stars alongside Jemima Kirke, daughter of Free and Bad Company drummer Simon Kirke, and Alison Williams, whose father is an anchorman on NBC. But Mamet insists that being the daughter of a Pulitzer prizewinning playwright and the actor Lindsay Crouse, best known for appearing in Hill Street Blues and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, was a mixed blessing (the two divorced when she was a baby). On the one hand, she never wanted to be anything other than an actor. She hated school: first a "very strict and really awful" Christian school and then an exclusive and "very Hollywood" secondary school called Crossroads, which tried to expel her.
She doesn't elaborate on precisely what she did, beyond "being a teenager and having a difficult time", but mention of the school causes her air of serenity to momentarily vanish. "They sort of had this reputation for being really liberal and open and accepting, and I was a kid who had sort of a hard time in high school and they really didn't care. Instead of trying to help me, they tried to kick me out because they didn't want to deal with me. So I found them incredibly hypocritical, which I also felt was quite awful."
By contrast, she says, "growing up with my mum and dad, I was at rehearsal with them at theatres and on set with them all the time, and I thought it was the most magical place on Earth". But despite the occasional leg up – she appeared in her father's TV drama The Unit aged 17 – her career started slowly. When she began auditioning for parts, "a lot of people gave me a much harder time because they didn't want me to have it easy. And some people were overly welcoming. A lot of it was quite odd, just people freaking out over my dad." In addition, as a child, she'd been forbidden from watching American TV (British comedy, including, a little improbably, Are You Being Served?, was apparently allowed). "It was frustrating for my agent, because I would go in for TV shows and be like, 'I don't know what this show is.' I honestly didn't even own a TV until I met my boyfriend."
Her big concern now is typecasting. During her annual hiatus from the show, she "makes a conscious effort to choose roles that are different to Shoshanna". Despite the Kickstarter incident, she has ambitions for her band, which used to proffer a self-styled "unique brand of folk via body percussion, banjo and harmonies", but now is apparently "poppier".
If they make it, perhaps people will stop coming up to her in the street and talking to her as if she's Shoshanna – or informing her that Shoshanna is about to be killed off. "I was in the store and two girls came up saying, 'We're so sad you're not coming back next year.' I was like, 'I'm sorry? What?' They showed me this thing that had been written." Dunham had mused that, if forced to kill off a main character for dramatic effect, it would be Shoshanna. "It was a kind of off-the-cuff remark that people took and ran with. So I emailed Lena and said, 'Should Shoshanna be nervous around elevator shafts?' And she assured me I shouldn't."
Girls is on Sky Atlantic tonight at 10pm. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/aug/10/public-services-need-another-44bn-by-2025-to-cope-with-inflation-says-ifs | Society | 2022-08-09T23:01:35.000Z | Phillip Inman | Public services need another £44bn by 2025 to cope with inflation, says IFS | The government will need to spend an extra £44bn over the next three years on public services to keep pace with rising inflation and avoid steep cuts, according to analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
In a review of the rising costs facing the public sector, the IFS said that without further funding, Whitehall budgets faced being overwhelmed by rising cost pressures that would force departments to cut staff and services.
The government said in its November spending review that it would increase departmental budgets by 3.3% on average above the then inflation rate. But with prices soaring since then, the tax and spending thinktank is forecasting the rise in budgets is now unlikely to be more than 1.9%.
“In other words, higher inflation is expected to wipe out more than 40% of the planned real terms increases,” it said.
Most of the increase in public spending budgets last year was targeted at the health service and social care sector and paid for with the £39bn raised over three years by a 1.25% rise in national insurance contributions.
In other areas of government that were due to receive allocations above inflation, including education and defence, settlements that reversed large cuts made over several years preceding the pandemic would be less generous.
Education spending would “barely increase over the three-year spending review period”, the IFS said, while “the Ministry of Defence’s day-to-day budget would, on these estimates, be more than 8% lower in 2024−25 than in 2021−22”.
Inflation across the public sector was forecast to be 2.3% on average over three years at last year’s spending review. In March this year the figure was revised upwards to 2.8% and the real terms increase in spending dropped to 2.8%. The IFS has now increased the three-yearly inflation average to 3.7% and in response, the real terms spending increase shrank to 1.9%.
In what will be seen as a warning to the Tory candidates vying to be the next prime minister, the IFS said the Treasury will need to increase spending by more than £8bn in the financial year to April 2023 and around £18bn in each of the next two years to April 2025 to bring the average real terms increase back to 3.3%.
Ben Zaranko, a senior research economist at the IFS and author of the report, said the government’s spending plans were now less generous than they were originally intended to be when set out last autumn, “while public services – most notably the NHS – are under considerable, and visible, strain”.
He said: “Choosing not to compensate departments for unexpectedly high cost pressures would be one possible response to a cocktail of global economic shocks that leave us poorer as a nation, but would heighten the considerable pressures on public services heading into the winter.”
Both Conservative leadership challengers have committed funds from the £30bn of financial headroom over the next four years calculated by the Office for Budget Responsibility in its March assessment to support their political and economic programmes.
However, the IFS review shows this headroom is likely to be absorbed by Whitehall departments if the government is to maintain public spending at current levels.
“It is notable that neither of the Conservative leadership contenders have said whether they intend to spend additional money to top up current spending plans or, if not, how they would manage the resulting pressures on public services,” said Zaranko.
The Bank of England has forecast that the consumer prices index (CPI) will rise to 13% before the end of the year and remain high during 2023. It is predicted to fall back during 2024 and by the end of that year settle below the central bank’s 2% target.
The next prime minister will have some flexibility because inflation boosts tax revenues, as the incomes and spending on which taxes are levied grow more quickly, the IFS said.
“But higher inflation also means a squeeze on public services, whose budgets are set in cash terms and therefore do not automatically increase in the face of higher-than-expected inflation.”
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James Jamieson, chair of the Local Government Association, said inflation, energy costs and projected increases to the “National Living Wage” will add £2.4bn in extra cost pressures to council budgets this year alone, rising to £3.6bn in 2024/25.
“[These] pressures are putting council services at risk. Budgets are having to be reset with potential cuts to the essential services people rely on, in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis,” said the Conservative councillor and former leader of Central Bedfordshire council.
With inflation expected to remain high over the next year, he said the impact on our local services “could be disastrous”.
He added: “This will stifle our economic recovery, entrench disadvantage, and undermine government ambitions to level up the country.”
A spokesperson for the Treasury said it was usual for budgets to be agreed in cash terms and for departments to manage in the years ahead the impact of inflation.
“The plans announced at Spending Review 2021 mean that total departmental spending is set to rise to £566bn in 2024-25 – a cash increase of £150bn.
“The government has a continued focus on delivering our priorities efficiently and within budget, providing good value for money for the taxpayer,” they added. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/may/18/pfizer-lay-out-final-astrazeneca-takeover-proposal | Business | 2014-05-18T22:27:02.000Z | Julia Kollewe | Pfizer raises stakes with final AstraZeneca takeover approach | US drugsmaker Pfizer has raised the stakes in its much-contested quest to buy British rival AstraZeneca by lodging a fresh £69bn takeover approach.
The new proposal of £55 a share piles pressure on AstraZeneca's board to enter negotiations to create the world's largest pharmaceutical company in the face of considerable opposition from politicians and Britain's scientific community.
In a bid to force AstraZeneca to accept what would be the biggest foreign takeover of a British company, Pfizer said the improved offer is "final and cannot be increased". It added that it will not make a hostile offer directly to AstraZeneca shareholders and will only proceed with an offer with the recommendation of the AstraZeneca board.
Pfizer boss Ian Read, who addressed political concerns over the mooted takeover in two parliamentary appearances last week, said: "We believe our proposal is compelling for AstraZeneca's shareholders and that a Pfizer-AstraZeneca combination is in the best interests of all stakeholders. We are excited at the opportunity to create a scientific powerhouse, delivering great benefits to patients and science in the UK and across the globe. We stand by our unprecedented commitments to the UK government."
In an attempt to persuade AstraZeneca investors to force the board to negotiate, he flagged the company's apparently implacable opposition to a deal. He said he did not believe the "AstraZeneca board is currently prepared to recommend a deal at a reasonable price. We remain ready to engage in a meaningful dialogue but time for constructive engagement is running out."
The New York-based Viagra maker raised its cash and shares proposal by 15% to £55 a share, from £50 a share at the beginning of the month. It raised the cash element of the approach – viewed as a significant factor in whether the deal will go through – to 45% from 33%, with the rest payable in Pfizer shares. AstraZeneca's shares ended last week trading at £48.23.
Pfizer has until 5pm 26 May to lodge a formal offer and meet a "put up or shut up" deadline imposed by the Takeover Panel, or walk away for six months.
AstraZeneca chief executive Pascal Soriot told the Guardian last week that AstraZeneca's reputation could be damaged by Pfizer's tax avoidance plans, which will see Pfizer base the company in the UK in order to keep its cash pile from the US taxman. He also raised concerns about the proposed break-up of the business, which would see AstraZeneca's assets split between three new Pfizer divisions.
In an emotional appeal at parliamentary hearings last week, Soriot said a deal could endanger lives by interrupting work on new cancer drugs. "What will we tell the person whose father died from lung cancer because one of our medicines was delayed – and essentially was delayed because in the meantime our two companies were involved in saving tax and saving costs?" But he also acknowledged his duty to shareholders, saying the board would have to consider a credible bid.
Pfizer wants to move its tax domicile to Britain to cut its tax bill, which has sparked controversy in Britain and among US lawmakers. The company has also worried British politicians and trade unions with the admission that it would cut global research and development spending and jobs.
AstraZeneca has spent the last two weeks talking up its drug pipeline, in particular a new generation of cancer treatments that target the body's immune system.
A tour of AstraZeneca shareholders by the Pfizer chief executive last week left the impression among City institutions that the US group is strongly committed to securing a takeover, a view confirmed by the renewed approach on Sunday night.
Two of AstraZeneca's top ten shareholders, Sweden's Investor AB with a 4.1% stake and Aberdeen Asset Management with a 2.4% holding, had publicly backed the board's rejection of Pfizer's advances.
The influential fund manager Neil Woodford, who controls a £350m stake in AstraZeneca on behalf of investment firm St James's Place, has also backed the firm's fight for independence, prior to the sweetened offer. But other big investors want it to start negotiations. Pfizer's Read is thought to have met a dozen institutional shareholders in AstraZeneca last week, including two hedge funds.
Pfizer is under pressure from the UK government to extend from five years to 10 years its commitment to keep 20% of the combined research and development workforce in Britain.
Meanwhile, British civil servants have begun exploratory talks with the EU over amending the terms of the public interest test to include continued investment in research and design as grounds on which the government could threaten to block the takeover.
Vince Cable's business department is also interested in using the test to obtain stronger commitments from Pfizer on jobs and R&D. The Labour party has also said it would subject any deal to an amended public interest test if it won the general election. Any takeover would be vetted on competition grounds by the European commission and regulatory authorities in the US and China, which competition lawyers say could take more than a year.
AstraZeneca's chairman, Leif Johansson, has pointed to regulatory uncertainties, particularly in China. "We identified a big execution risk," he told the Sunday Times. "It could be over a year or more before the transaction happens."
Sir Tom McKillop, who ran AstraZeneca from 1999 until 2006 and is a former president of the Science Council, became the latest senior industry figure to voice serious concerns about the takeover. Writing in the Sunday Times, he urged the firm's directors and shareholders to "protect the 'soul' of this great business". McKillop oversaw the 1999 merger between Sweden's Astra and Britain's Zeneca, which he described as a "genuine merger of equals" that "allowed increased investment in R&D, not the reduction that Pfizer proposes".
McKillop said Pfizer and AstraZeneca, by contrast, have "different visions and conflicting cultures; it is unlikely that they will make a good fit together". He concluded by telling AstraZeneca's directors that they must remember that their fiduciary duties extend not just to shareholders, but to the wider society – "including the millions of patients hoping for new treatments that can only come from a commitment to research."
The Swedish trade unions Unionen, Akademikerföreningen and IF Metall, representing workers at AstraZenca's sites in Sweden, echoed concerns voiced by British unions Unite and GMB. They said: "Pfizer's historical track record on mergers and acquisitions is quite scary.
Takeover after takeover has been followed by redundancies and closures all over the world."
It was also reported this weekend that the US drugstore chain Walgreens is reportedly preparing to take full control of Britain's biggest chemist, Alliance Boots, in a £10.5bn deal. It is the latest attempt by a US company to redomicile to Britain to save billions in tax. Walgreens already owns 45% of Boots and has an option to buy the remaining 55% from next February with a six-month window. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/nov/13/disgraced-tory-mps-shame-our-politics-will-rishi-sunak-keep-promise-clean-up-house | Opinion | 2022-11-13T09:00:06.000Z | Andrew Rawnsley | As disgraced Tory MPs shame politics, will Rishi Sunak keep his promise to clean up the house? | Andrew Rawnsley | Scandal is a motif of extended periods of Tory government. The longer the stretch of uninterrupted Conservative rule, the bigger the scandals tend to get. At the fag end of Harold Macmillan’s premiership in 1963, the most lurid of them was the Profumo affair. The story is well known and can be summarised in two sentences. Jack Profumo was secretary of state for war and shared a lover, Christine Keeler, with a military attache at the Russian embassy. Profumo lied about it to the Commons, was forced to admit to the lie and resigned for committing what was then an unpardonable offence in British politics. All very sensational, but it is what happened next that is most remarkable to the contemporary eye. Profumo did not hang around in politics hoping that the clouds of disgrace would dissipate and he might contrive some kind of comeback. He did not try to worm his way back into government or bag himself a seat for life in the Lords or reinvent himself as a media celebrity. Profumo accepted that he had obliterated his political career, quit parliament, devoted the remainder of his life to charitable endeavours and ultimately secured some rehabilitation of his reputation from these good works.
Representing his constituents is less important than showing the public 'who I am'. Matt, mate, no one is interested
This penitential model for the shamed minister is not followed by disgraced politicians of the modern era. They do not dress themselves in sackcloth and seek redemption through exemplary service to others. Exhibit number one is Matt Hancock. Lest we forget, he was the health secretary who was caught on his own department’s CCTV exploring how far he could get down the throat of his lover and busting the Covid rules that he had told everyone else to obey to contain a lethal disease. He’s jetted down under to trouser a large sum from an unreality TV show and justifies going absent without leave from Westminster on the grounds that representing his constituents is less important than showing the public “who I am”. Matt, mate, no one is interested in discovering the “real” you. There is no evidence that such a thing exists. I guess he calculated that getting showered with liquid excrement on TV might persuade voters to like him a little more, but you can stuff him with Australia’s entire supply of crocodile cock and it will not assuage the justifiable anger of the relatives of Covid victims. They are not alone in their fury that he is alchemising his disrepute into a payday rumoured to total £400,000.
Our next exhibit is Gavin Williamson, the pound-shop Machiavelli whose one genuine talent was exploiting the neediness of successive Tory leaders by persuading them that he could grub together support in parliament so long as they weren’t squeamish about how he did it. A single cabinet career was one too many for him, but he was on his third when he was forced to resign last week, pursued by complaints of bullying and accusations from a former deputy that he employed “unethical and immoral” methods when he was chief whip.
Gavin Williamson, the pound-shop Machiavelli with a talent for persuading successive Tory leaders he could grub together support for them in parliament. Photograph: Leon Neal/Getty
The only people to be saddened by his removal are Rishi Sunak, who looks like a weak fool for putting “Sir” Gavin in his government, and punters who had laid bets that Suella Braverman would be the first minister to be ejected from the Sunak cabinet. During her initial, brief stint as home secretary, she gave the department’s officials an unanticipated feeling of nostalgia for Priti Patel. Ms Braverman was then forced to quit for security breaches that violated the ministerial code. Did she gracefully retire to reflect on her mistakes from the backbenches? No. After less than a week in the sin bin, she was back in post thanks to a devil’s bargain struck with Mr Sunak when he was desperate to secure the Tory leadership without a contest. One may be an oddity, two a coincidence. Three is a pattern. The slimy antics of Mr Hancock, the revolving disgraces of “Sir” Gavin and the continued presence in high office of Ms Braverman epitomise a culture of shamelessness.
Fear of being shamed used to be an important regulator of the conduct of politicians. And politicians who shamed themselves generally accepted that they had to express their regrets and depart the scene. On the rare occasions when people were given a second chance in cabinet, the usual rule was that they had to face an election before there could be the possibility of a return to the top table. Now there is no transgression so appalling that the perpetrator cannot scheme for a rapid comeback – often successfully.
This culture of shamelessness helps to explain why this protracted period of Tory rule has been splattered with so many and such a variety of scandals from Partygate to lucrative Covid contracts delivered to Tory mates by the crony express. The propensity for long-ruling parties to degenerate was accelerated during the squalid reign of the last-but-one prime minister. The Conservatives broke a threshold that they should never have crossed when they gave the leadership of their party to the moral vacuum called Boris Johnson. Only a few weeks after he was finally prised out of Downing Street for debasing the office of prime minister, he was trying to blag his way back into Number 10. He is under live investigation by the privileges committee for deliberately misleading the Commons, the punishment for which could be his ejection from parliament. Yet he feels entitled to demand a resignation honours list that is longer than those of David Cameron and Theresa May combined. He has reportedly nominated about 20 new peers. Among those he seeks to cloak in ermine are Number 10 underlings who collaborated in his misrule and a pair of Tory donors, one of whom funded a tropical island holiday when he was prime minister. In a classic case of Johnsonian cakeism, he wants to give berths in the Lords to Conservative MPs who stuck with him to the end, but post-date the peerages to after the next election so the Tories don’t have to face the verdict of voters at byelections. There have been dodgy honours lists before, but this sets a new low for boundary trampling. As you would fully expect from Mr Johnson.
Mr Sunak should tear up Mr Johnson’s shopping list of baubles and peerages for his sugar daddies, courtiers and cronies
This asks a big question about Rishi Sunak. He arrived in Downing Street advertising himself as the disinfectant who would cleanse the Conservatives of the putrefaction of the Johnson years. When he first stood in front of Number 10, Mr Sunak breathed pieties about restoring “integrity, professionalism and accountability” at “every level of government”. That promise has already been deeply sullied by his decision to give cabinet seats to “Sir” Gavin and Ms Braverman. The prime minister will now have to do a lot to persuade us that he is at all serious about standards in government.
I have three suggestions for him to be going on with. First, there should be no further delay in fulfilling his pledge to appoint a new independent invigilator of ministerial ethics, a position that has been vacant since June when the last holder of the office resigned in disgust with Mr Johnson. Mr Sunak should also implement the recommendations of the committee on standards in public life, one of which is that the invigilator should be equipped with powers to initiate investigations into misconduct and announce conclusions without interference from Number 10. Another thing the Tory leader can do – and this would be enormously popular with people of all political tastes – is to make a salutary example of Mr Hancock. For going absent without leave from parliament, he has been deprived of the Tory whip. He will be thinking that this is just a light slap on the wrist and he will be restored as a Tory MP when he returns from Australia, which will allow him to stand as a Conservative candidate at the next election. Mr Sunak can announce that there’s no way back into the Conservative fold for the former health secretary. That would send a message of no tolerance for any MP who so blatantly absconds from their duties in parliament and responsibilities to their constituents.
Then Mr Sunak should tear up Mr Johnson’s shopping list of baubles and peerages for his sugar daddies, courtiers and cronies. Honours are awarded in the name of the crown and with advice from the prime minister. There’s no law that entitles ex-prime ministers to hand out gongs and reserve seats in the upper chamber of the legislature. It’s just a custom. When a custom is grossly abused by a man who was fired in disgrace from Number 10, the custom can and should be overridden.
We know that Mr Johnson is a man without shame. Mr Sunak, how about you?
Andrew Rawnsley is Chief Political Commentator of the Observer | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2021/jan/24/everton-sheffield-wednesday-fa-cup-match-report | Football | 2021-01-24T21:57:29.000Z | Aaron Bower | Dominic Calvert-Lewin ends drought as Everton sink Sheffield Wednesday | There are some nights where an FA Cup upset can almost be felt in the air around you. This, from a very early stage, was not one of them. Everton and Sheffield Wednesday have contested the final on two occasions but here, you only ever felt that it would be the Premier League side whose ambitions would continue for at least another round.
In truth, things could not have gone much better for Carlo Ancelotti against a side whose performance and recent form is much more impressive than their league position suggests. As such, that made this a potentially tricky tie to navigate, but the manner in which Everton got the job done will have been mightily encouraging. Dominic Calvert-Lewin’s return from injury marked with a goal, James Rodríguez once again looking back to somewhere near his best, and debuts for academy graduates Thierry Small and Tyler Onyango – the former becoming the club’s youngest-ever player in the process, aged 16 years and 176 days.
Everton 3-0 Sheffield Wednesday: FA Cup fourth round – as it happened
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This was, all things considered, as seamless a night as any Everton supporter could have hoped for. “We were dominant from start to finish,” Everton’s assistant manager, Duncan Ferguson, said after they set up a tie with either Wycombe or Tottenham in the next round. “We were a bit worried at half-time we hadn’t got the second one, but through the course of the 90 minutes we were really dominant.”
Credit must go to Sheffield Wednesday, in the Championship’s relegation zone but on a recent run of form since Tony Pulis’s dismissal which suggests they are capable of getting out of trouble. The way they applied themselves here against a far superior side suggests their season is by no means beyond turning around under their interim manager, Neil Thompson.
But this was always a case of when, rather than if, Everton put this tie to bed. In the end, it was two goals in three minutes either side of the hour mark that answered that question. Sheffield Wednesday’s keeper, Joe Wildsmith, had done a fine job of keeping them in the tie to that point, but he was powerless to prevent the goals that ended it as a contest.
Thierry Small came off the bench to become Everton’s youngest ever player. Photograph: Peter Byrne/PA
Rodríguez, whose passing looked at its measured best all night, provided the deliveries: first for Richarlison to head home, before Yerry Mina followed suit two minutes later, seconds after a stunning save from Wildsmith denied Richarlison his second. Sheffield Wednesday gave it a real go, but they could do little about the flair and attacking prowess of their opponents.
“We know they’ve loads of quality all over the pitch,” Thompson conceded. “You’ve got to be full tilt all across the pitch, but we just needed to penetrate them a bit more and have a bit more quality in the final third. We just came out of the blocks too slowly after half-time.” His side certainly were punished for that lethargy in ruthless fashion by the second and third goals.
Yet Everton could, and perhaps should, have been further ahead than the one-goal lead they had scored by half-time. When Calvert-Lewin turned home André Gomes’s pinpoint ball across the face of Wildsmith’s goal for his 15th of the season, and first since early December, the hosts had long since seized the initiative. “We’re delighted for him,” Ferguson said of Calvert-Lewin, who led Everton’s line impressively.
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Richarlison had already seen a goal ruled out for offside, while Calvert-Lewin came within a whisker of turning home a Gylfi Sigurdsson cross. At the other end, Robin Olsen parried away an Adam Reach strike in the early moments, but that was arguably the most serious threat he faced all evening. The visitors, as their manager conceded, lacked the potency in attack to really trouble Everton, but their energy will give them hope.
However, this was a night when Ancelotti’s side were back to somewhere like their best, with Richarlison and Mina’s headers no less than their dominance deserved. There are quite a few sides in the last 16 who will fancy their chances of ending their lengthy wait to lift the Cup. Why not Everton? There was certainly nothing to argue against that prospect here. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/09/egyptian-death-football-rioters | World news | 2013-03-09T17:05:00.000Z | Patrick Kingsley | Egyptian court confirms death sentences for Port Said football rioters | A court has upheld the death sentences of 21 people found guilty of causing Egypt's worst ever football riot at a match in Port Said in February 2012, sparking renewed unrest.
Thousands of football fans took to Cairo's streets in protest, before setting fire to the football federation headquarters. In Port Said, residents tried to block the canal and attacked the football stadium.
In Cairo, a man died of teargas inhalation during a confrontation between police and anti-government demonstrators.
The court in Cairo also announced verdicts on Saturday for the other 52 defendants in the case, with 24 being sentenced to jail, including two senior police officers who received 15 years. The remaining 28 were acquitted, including seven police officers.
Police in Port Said retreated to their stations, fearing for their lives after weeks of violent clashes with supporters of the local football team, al-Masry. More than 50 people have died and hundreds more have been injured in the Mediterranean city during protests against the trial over the past month.
The sentences, broadcast live on television, were met with howls of protest from Port Said residents. Many felt their friends had been convicted for nothing.
"Twenty-five years for someone helping to carry the dead outside the stadium," said Mohamed Ataya, a football fan describing the case of his friend, convicted on Saturday. "What we need now is to separate from the rest of the country," he said, voicing the sense of estrangement from the rest of Egypt that is felt by many in Port Said.
Hundreds gathered outside the local government headquarters after the verdict carrying flags that called for an independent republic of Port Said.
Residents said they felt scapegoated by both the verdict and the military curfew enforced in the city since violence erupted in January when the death sentences were first announced.
Some protesters dragged a donkey through the streets daubed with the words "Fuck Ahly" – a reference to the Cairo-based fans of al-Ahly FC, whom al-Masry supporters claim were favoured in Saturday's verdict. Many in Port Said feel those sentenced to death were framed by police whom they believed favoured the al-Ahly fans.
But in Cairo, al-Ahly fans were also angered by the verdict. They initially set off fireworks in celebration that more Port Said supporters had been convicted. But sourness set in as they realised that only two of the nine police officers had been convicted.
In both Cairo and Port Said, many believe the February 2012 riots, in which 74 people were killed, were provoked by police. They began after al-Masry fans invaded the pitch and attacked al-Ahly supporters during a match between the two teams. Police stepped back from the trouble and turned off the stadium's electricity. In the darkness, fans were crushed at locked doors.
On Friday, two protesters were buried in back-to-back funerals after allegedly being shot by police. There are multiple reports from human rights activists and local campaigners of police firing indiscriminately at Port Said residents over the past few weeks.
But police holed up in the al-Sharq police station denied responsibility, blaming the deaths on criminals taking advantage of the chaos. "There are a lot of thugs beside the demonstrators," said Mohamed el-Adawy, the station's deputy commander. "Maybe they shot them by accident."
The case has highlighted worsening law and order in much of Egypt since President Hosni Mubarak was overthrown two years ago.
The government of President Mohamed Morsi is struggling to halt the slide in security, hampered by a strike by some police in protests that are likely to be further fuelled by Saturday's jail sentences for the senior officers.
This article was amended on 10 March 2013. An editing error added "in an unrelated protest" to the original article. This has been corrected. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/jul/25/polyphony-conservatory-nazareth-arab-jewish-orchestra | Music | 2014-07-25T16:59:00.000Z | Maya Jaggi | Polyphony Conservatory: uniting Arab and Jewish musicians in Nazareth | In a music room on the slopes of Nazareth on a sweltering late-June afternoon in Galilee, the violinist Nabeel Abboud-Ashkar coaches a group of young musicians through a Dvořák piano quintet. After hours of sweat and graft, the players are still rapt as the 35-year-old maestro gives pointers on dynamics in Hebrew flecked with "crescendo" and "pianissimo". Raising a pencil, his Arabic "Yalla" ("let's go") could also be Hebrew slang.
The string players are a local Palestinian Arab violinist, Feras Machour, aged 18, and three Jewish players in their early 20s – all four Israeli. The Jewish students have come from Tel Aviv, a two-hour bus ride away, to the country's biggest Palestinian Arab city. Although Nazareth's pinkish-stone Ottoman mansions now host gourmet restaurants, Ohad Cohen, a violinist, says that, for most Israelis, the city is still synonymous with falafel joints. "We're trying to compete with the food," Abboud-Ashkar interjects drily, "and attract people for the music."
"The first time I stood in front of Jewish kids, coaching a quartet," he tells me later, "it was one of the most unusual moments of my life. There's so much separation between the communities here, so little interaction, and so many stereotypes and misconceptions" – not least that "an Arab can't play Mozart well." Yet "after an hour or two, it felt like any other rehearsal".
Abboud-Ashkar was speaking during rehearsals for the chamber music festival Incontri in Terra di Siena, in Tuscany. Earlier this week, he telephoned me from Italy to say the rehearsals had continued, despite mounting tensions within Israel due to the military operation in Gaza. Demonstrations in Nazareth and other Palestinian Israeli cities against civilian deaths brought clashes with the police. "This is the worst I can recall in terms of the level of anger and hatred I've witnessed," he says. "But despite what parents were hearing on the news about 'riots' in Nazareth, the students still came. We continued working together."
The quintet is led by Abboud-Ashkar's elder brother, the concert pianist Saleem Ashkar, aged 37, who is to resume his Beethoven sonata cycle at the Sage Gateshead this autumn. The brothers from Nazareth are alumni of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra of young pan-Arab and Jewish musicians co-founded in 1999 by Edward Said and Daniel Barenboim. Their youth ensembles are one spinoff of a groundbreaking programme of music education aimed primarily at Palestinian Israelis – who number more than one in five Israeli citizens – and led from within that community. Inside Israel – where the Divan has never performed – "every past effort to bring people together through classical music miserably failed," Nabeel says, "because there was not enough investment in the Arab community so they could meet as equals. This is what we're doing: creating equal opportunities for the Arab community, and using that to bring Arab and Jewish together."
The violinist spoke to me at his home in Nazareth as tensions were already flaring over the killings of three Israeli teenagers and a teenage Palestinian. "Whenever there's an attack on Gaza, a kidnapping, it causes things to polarise here. But that makes it even more important to continue doing what we do."
The younger brother returned from music studies in Germany to found the Barenboim-Said Conservatory in Nazareth in 2006, with 25 students. It was renamed the Polyphony Conservatory two years ago (and is now financially independent of the Barenboim-Said Foundation). Though still housed in makeshift premises, it has 130 students, 30 of them in a branch in Jaffa. More than 90% are Palestinian Israeli. Its annual budget is $900,000, one third of which is covered by an three-year EU grant; a third by donations to the Polyphony Foundation in New York, set up in 2011 with financiers Craig and Deborah Cogut; and another third generated locally. Nabeel, Polyphony's artistic director and previously a soloist with the Jerusalem Camerata and Haifa Symphony orchestras, received the Yoko Ono Lennon Courage Award for the Arts in 2012.
Saleem Abboud-Ashkar (back left) and Nabeel Abboud-Ashkar (back right) with the Polyphony Ensemble at La Foce, Val d’Orcia, Tuscany. Photograph: Paul Flanagan
One lesson he took from the Divan ("I never missed a year") is that music is "not just something in a concert hall, but an influence on society outside". Western classical music is "part of the identity of so many communities globally. That's why it's the best medium to work with. It enables young people to create something beautiful together that needs commitment – to music and to each other." This, for him, is the common ground from which to explore differences. The impetus is "an urge coming from our region. It's a survival need – because what's the alternative?"
It was the divided response to Israel's military assault on Gaza in 2008/9 that spurred on their move beyond the conservatory. "As an Arab-Israeli citizen I felt the need to step up," says Nabeel. Houses in Nazareth are crammed on to its hillsides. Across a bypass is the more expansive Nazareth Ilit (Upper Nazareth), built as a Jewish city overlooking the Arab one. In the rest of Galilee – where more than half of Palestinian Israelis live – Arab and Jewish towns are also distinct. Under an official policy to "Judaise the Galilee", settlements were built here before those in the territories occupied after the 1967 war. It was an "ongoing effort to balance Arabs and Jews," Nabeel says, driving through the countryside. "The two communities are physically close, but there's no interaction." That divorce is mirrored in the school system, where Arabic schools stress science to the neglect of the humanities.
Nabeel and his wife, Lilian, a science teacher, share with his parents the house built by his grandmother. Its garden of fig and apricot trees is a rare oasis in a city whose residents are obliged to build on every spare patch of land. As children, the brothers were the only classical pianist and violinist in Nazareth, ferried to lessons and concerts in Haifa, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Their father, Duaibis, a telecoms engineer, was a communist (at a time when many progressive Arabs were) with a printing press and a passion for classical music. Their mother, Mahaa, taught in a school for the deaf and blind. Nabeel, a graduate of Tel Aviv University in music and physics ("the mentality of the minority – I had to secure Plan B"), built on Orpheus, the non-profit music education foundation that was a labour of love for his father.
Nazareth is steeped in Arab music (the hometown of oud players Trio Joubran). The Polyphony conservatories teach western classical. "For Arab people, it's a way of being heard," Nabeel says. "By mastering it, they become part of a larger world." Despite its being "new to the Arab community in Israel," they now have a waiting list. In a city with bilingual Arabic-Hebrew signage, the muezzin also vies with church bells: some 55% of Nazarenes are Muslim; 45% are Christian. There is rough religious and gender parity in the student intake. A dozen Jewish students have joined from nearby towns and kibbutzim. In 2012, two violin students, Feras Machour (of the aforementioned quintet) and Yamen Saadi, won Israel's biennial Paul Ben-Haim competition, the first Palestinian Israelis to do so. There is, Nabeel says, "no compromise on the musical level to do a social project".
Saleem, who came to the Yehudi Menuhin school in Britain aged 13, before music school in Jerusalem and London's Royal Academy of Music, was a soloist with the Israel Philharmonic at 17. "If I stand on stage in Tel Aviv and they clap," he says, "they're realising how a Palestinian can become part of the country. If we hide, it doesn't play into our hands, but into those who want us away from here." Some people would see his presence on stage as proof of equal opportunity. "That's absolute rubbish," he responds. "I didn't come out of the system. There was no system. I had to leave to develop. I want a child who wants to study piano or violin to live in this city. It's not about pretending inequality doesn't exist; it's about correcting it."
The pianist (who lives in Berlin) is artistic director of the Galilee Chamber Orchestra, formed in 2012. Of its 32 professional musicians from across Israel, six are Palestinian Arab – though the aim is an "equal presence". In the Youth Orchestra also under Polyphony's umbrella, half of the 50 players are Jewish, from the Jerusalem Music Centre. They come to Nazareth for seminars on music and society. "It's to stimulate the kids, not force them," Nabeel says. "We trust they'll ask the questions – and they do." As well as playing in Israel, the ensembles tour abroad, cementing friendships. Saleem sees the project as "anything but cosmetic. We're not aiming for symbolic value; it's not about Arabs and Jews playing at weekends. We're investing in our youth."
During weekend exams at the conservatory, Nabeel instructs a flautist and a trumpeter in Arabic, switching to Hebrew for the French horn player. Younger children, such as the recorder player in a flowery jumpsuit, may not yet have mastered Hebrew. Whole families are present, sitting on the edge of their seats, filming on smartphones. Nabeel is the sole Arabic speaker on the panel. Of 27 teachers, only two are Palestinian Israeli. Most drive from Tel Aviv each week – drawn, they say, by the students' talent and discipline. Nabeel hopes the imbalance will shift as graduates return to teach.
But Polyphony goes beyond professional musicianship. Another lesson Nabeel learned from the Divan was "how little Arab and Jewish people know about each other, and how difficult it is to change what they think they know when they're 24 or 25". The Alhan ("melody" in Arabic) programme brings non-instrumental music appreciation to 2,400 children in 12 Arabic primary schools. Next year it extends to a total of 30, including four Hebrew schools, reaching up to 5,000 children; and to 25 Hebrew and 15 Arabic kindergartens. Not only will children study the same syllabus of western classical, Arab and Israeli music, but the groups come together during the year for classical music concerts, creating what Nabeel sees as "rich interaction in a way that hasn't happened before". The Arab-Jewish Galil School in Eshbal, 40 minutes' drive north of Nazareth past sunflower fields and olive groves, is one of only a handful of bilingual schools in Israel, and a harbinger of the scheme. The principal, Kemal Al Munis, tells me the music input has markedly improved the atmosphere: "Music nurtures the soul of the students."
At his home in Tel Aviv, Dan Sagiv, Polyphony's pedagogic adviser from the Levinsky College of Education, hails this as a "historic moment". In a system so split, he is training 70 teachers together in an identical music curriculum for Hebrew and Arabic schools. Sagiv, 37, a saxophonist and "music activist" who spent six years in Arabic schools in Galilee, says: "I believe with my skills I can change how society looks. There's a lot of people doing political discussion, and not enough doing structural work from the bottom." The Levinsky College and Jerusalem Music Centre are among partners sought out by Polyphony. The Ministry of Education recommends its programmes, though it gives no direct funding. As Nabeel sees it, "the Arab community in Israel is torn. There's a strong, natural connection to the Palestinian cause while trying to integrate into Israeli society. The fact that I'm reaching out as a citizen to Israeli Jewish institutions to create a better, alternative reality doesn't compromise my own identity." One aim is to "empower the people who believe in finding ways to live together. Their voices are not heard enough. The events are far louder."
While music education is sometimes dubiously advocated as a counter to militancy, for Nabeel it is "every child's right. Music will definitely take people away from violence: it will help them listen and respond in a more measured way. But it doesn't take them away from what they believe in. If you educate people, you give them more efficient tools to express what they believe, and stand up for themselves."
One gifted graduate of Nazareth, Mais Hriesh, a flautist aged 19, has just finished her first year's scholarship in the US, studying for a double major in human rights and music. Recalling an argument with Jewish friends in the Youth Orchestra about a drive she opposes to enlist Palestinian Christians in the army, she says: "They know my position. But afterwards we respected each other. We have different perspectives, but that doesn't prevent us from playing together. We don't pretend everything's pink and perfect. We just try to create the best musical masterpieces we can."
The Italian festival Incontri in Terra di Siena takes place every summer at La Foce, Val d'Orcia, Tuscany. Polyphony ensembles will take part in the finale on 27 July. Details: itslafoce.org. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2014/jun/02/angelina-jolie-maleficent-film-retiring-cleopatra | Film | 2014-06-02T17:35:00.000Z | Peter Bradshaw | Angelina Jolie: Hollywood won't be the same without her | She is the Sophia Loren of our age, a Hollywood star of hyperreal beauty, statuesque presence and queenly hauteur. She had been away from the screen for a few years, facing down a bit of snarkery for her UN ambassador work and the alleged trouser-wearing prerogative in her relationship with Brad Pitt. But she stunned everyone with her courage and candour in announcing pre-emptive surgery in light of a genetic predisposition to breast cancer. Then this month Angelina Jolie made that sensational return with the new Disney fantasy Maleficent – smacking those uppity X-Men down to second place at the US box office, and showing beguiling new touches of humour and self-awareness that made her more of an icon than ever.
Yet now, at the moment of her comeback triumph, she hints that after one more film, a Cleopatra biopic, her acting career might be over, and she's concentrating on being a director and UN ambassador. It's the Queen of the Nile – and then that's it. Oh Ange! Oh no! Say it ain't so!
Jolie has been an A-list movie star for 15 years, although it's true to say a recent couple of movie credits haven't met with great acclaim. In 2010, in The Tourist, she played a woman of mystery in a supposedly glamorous caper set in Venice co-starring Johnny Depp; it looked in danger of sinking into the lagoon. Another movie was Wanted, in 2008 – an aggressive boys-own action picture with unlovely touches of misogyny. But I very much enjoyed her spy thriller Salt, in which she played secret agent Evelyn Salt – a role originally conceived for Tom Cruise. I see that Salt 2 is scheduled for production. It won't be the same without Jolie.
She made her break in 1999 with two terrific performances in pretty good movies. She won a Golden Globe and a best supporting actress Oscar for her turn as the super-cool bad girl Lisa in James Mangold's Girl, Interrupted, the inmate of a psychiatric care facility whose exuberant defiance inspires her fellow patient Susanna, played by Winona Ryder. That same year she was excellent in Mike Newell's comedy drama Pushing Tin, as the beautiful young wife of an air-traffic controller (Billy Bob Thornton); she has an affair with her husband's colleague, Nick (John Cusack). There is a lovely, relaxed spark between feline-sexy Jolie and goofy-unthreatening Cusack.
As her career began, the resulting movies were a mixed bag. She was inspired casting as Lara Croft, the action heroine whose screen career predated the modern predominance of superheroes and Marvel studios. If Jolie were starting out now, she would almost certainly have to don the lycra – and probably find herself playing second fiddle to some superhero male.
In Oliver Stone's Alexander (2004) she played the imperious and oedipally sexy mother to the great warrior himself, Alexander the Great, played by Colin Farrell. Farrell looked a little out of his depth next to Jolie, like she might at any moment order him up to his room with no supper.
Then the second breakthrough: Doug Liman's comedy thriller Mr and Mrs Smith in 2005, with Jolie and Pitt playing professional assassins who learn that their next assignment is to kill each other. It's a movie I didn't like much on first release, but every time I see it on television, its energy and knockabout humour keeps me watching. The much-yearned-for "chemistry" is there; it looked very much as if Jolie and Pitt really did fancy the bejeepers out of each other. They got together in real life, their mutual celebrity went supernova, and the cheeky title "Brangelina" was applied to them, like "Bennifer" to Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez. (Some incidentally claim the couple-combo handle was invented by celebrity journalists in the noughties. Not true. It was invented by F Scott Fitzgerald in his 1934 novel Tender Is the Night: the golden couple Dick and Nicole sign themselves "Dicole".) Mr and Mrs Smith was a key Jolie role: tough, dynamic, sexy, with a tenderness that did not compromise a muscular heroism.
Jolie won some respect for her performance in Michael Winterbottom's true-life movie A Mighty Heart in 2007, playing Mariane Pearl, wife of the kidnapped journalist Daniel Pearl. She did a terrific job as Grendel's gigantic mother in Robert Zemeckis's Beowulf, and was nominated for a best actress Oscar as the doughty mom in Clint Eastwood's drama Changeling in 2008.
It could be that Jolie herself regarded that as the natural break, and from that point she has been foreseeing a post-acting career. Certainly, her feature-film directing debut in 2011, a Bosnia war drama called In the Land of Blood and Honey, was respectfully received. Jolie wrote the screenplay too, and defied the doubters with a film that my colleague Andrew Pulver found "sombre, powerful, and undeniably gripping".
So how about that Cleopatra movie? Jolie is the only possible star for this role. And as for who gets to play Mark Antony, my hunch is that our very own Dominic West will climb into the Roman tunic and Ralph Fiennes will play Cleo's former lover Julius Caesar. I'm already looking forward to seeing Jolie making a triumphal entry to Rome. But will she really leave it there? Surely she can intersperse her directing projects with juicy acting roles. A whole new vista of drama and comedy, not to mention romance, is opening up for her in her 40s. This is her time! | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/mar/06/stable-hand-beekeeper-trainee-spy-the-unorthodox-apprenticeships-filling-a-niche | Education | 2018-03-06T15:45:31.000Z | Liz Lightfoot | Stable hand, beekeeper … trainee spy: the unorthodox apprenticeships filling a niche | Want to try something different? Apprenticeships are a way into unusual careers that you may not have heard of. Employers in niche parts of the economy are looking for people prepared to break the mould and step into their sometimes very different worlds. And you don’t have to be a school leaver. Career changers, too, can become apprentices and learn whole new skills.
How apprenticeships moved out of the workshop
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Take the wine industry, for example. England has 502 vineyards and 133 wineries according to the Wine Standards Board and it’s a growing industry. If you have a taste for the finer things in life and want the chance to work outdoors, then training to run a vineyard might be the one for you. The chance to work the land attracted Lucy Walker when she saw an advert for an apprentice vineyard operative. “I had an administrative job in an English language college,” she says, “and then went to Egypt to teach English. While I was there, I volunteered at a sustainable farm in the Sinai and started to think about growing things and living off the land and ecology.”
She is now at Plumpton College, East Sussex, on the two-year apprenticeship, working alongside a former apprentice who now has a full-time job at the vineyard. The college offers a range of courses linked to the wine industry and has its own vineyards, producing 40,000 bottles of wine a year.
“There are a lot of vineyards around here and they do need workers,” says Walker, 39, who lives in Hove. “And once I have qualified, I will be able to get work and potentially become a vineyard manager. I studied French and Spanish at university and that might come in useful if I want to work in different parts of the world, such as the south of France or northern Spain.
“It’s a change of lifestyle for sure. I’ve given up a salary of £26,000 a year to live on £5.60 an hour for a 37-hour week. Next year, it will go up to £7.50 an hour. It will be a struggle financially but I’m getting paid to learn and I should be able to get a well-paid job in the end so it’s worth it. Also, it’s nice to be out in the field in the college vineyards, especially on a sunny day, and it pleases my dad! He has a huge wine cellar and while my mother was worried about my pay cut, he said: ‘It’s really interesting, go for it,’” she adds.
There are lots of other unorthodox apprenticeships around. Here’s a taster:
Automotive clay modeller
Today’s cars are designed with the use of sophisticated computer technology, but when it comes to a model of the finished product they turn to old-fashioned clay. Modellers transform the design drawings into quarter or full-size 3D models.
Working on a clay model of Nissan’s Fairlady Z sportscar. Photograph: Kiyoshi Ota/Getty Images
Farrier
Blacksmiths can make horseshoes but, by law, only registered farriers and their apprentices or qualified veterinary surgeons are allowed to fit them. It’s an ancient craft but it is unlikely to be taken over by technology.
Radio plugger
You might think that hit singles get to the top on pure merit. Think again. Behind the scenes is an army of radio “pluggers” employed by artists and labels to lobby radio stations and get on their playlists. It can be a lucrative career, but not one for the fainthearted.
‘It was hypnotic; I fell in love’ – the apprentice glassblower's story
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Glass blower
An apprenticeship with a master glassblower is the best way to learn this traditional craft which is still in demand today. It’s not all puff though. You will need a good eye for design and a grasp of the industry and the market.
Stable hand
If you love riding, then this is a way to make your passion your career. You train to manage the yard, which means responsibility for the overall welfare of horses. But you will also deal with trainers and vets, so you’ve got to like people as well.
Computer games tester
A dream job for gamers, but it could be a test of your patience. Testers need to check different levels, detect and find the cause of faults, compare games with others on the market and even check the spelling.
Beekeeper
You’ve heard of dairy farming and pig farming but what about bee farming? The UK produces only 14% of the honey it consumes compared with the European average of 60%. Bee farmers are taking on apprentices to help them improve crop yields, so this could be a growth area post-Brexit.
Diamond mounter
Once you’ve mastered the skills of jewellery making, you can take a leap into the luxury market through an advanced level apprenticeship in diamond mounting. You will be handling valuable stones and, one day, you might be able to afford them.
Trainee spy
Get an insight into the hidden world of national security and help keep the country safe. Learn to code break, build electronic equipment and run telephone interceptions. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/jan/17/chess-carlsen-secures-record-but-victory-chances-threatened | Sport | 2020-01-17T15:43:00.000Z | Leonard Barden | Chess: Carlsen secures record but draws threaten chances of victory at Wijk | Magnus Carlsen’s streak of 113 games without defeat is a new landmark in the 29-year-old Norwegian’s career but its climax has been six lacklustre draws at Wijk aan Zee which threaten to derail his impressive record there.
Carlsen’s halved games in the first four rounds completed an unbeaten sequence which broke Sergei Tiviakov’s 2004-05 record of 110 against weaker opposition. Arguably the champion’s splendid run at the elite Tata Steel Wijk tournament of seven victories and a second place in eight attempts is a still more outstanding achievement.
Magnus Carlsen breaks record for longest unbeaten streak in chess history
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Carlsen has been struggling and his Wijk record is in serious danger. His fifth draw, scored on Thursday against his former aide Daniil Dubov, followed a similar pattern to his four previous halves. Dubov stood better for most of the game, despite playing Black against Carlsen’s favourite 3 Bb5 Sicilian. After his fourth draw, against Jorden van Foreest, 20, Carlsen quipped “I’m saving bad positions every game. What’s not to like?”
In Friday’s sixth round Carlsen halved as White in only 28 moves and less than two hours’ play with his old rival Fabiano Caruana, America’s world No 2 and Carlsen’s 2018 title challenger.
Nine points from 13 games is the normal winning score at Wijk, a total which Carlsen achieved in 2015, 2016, 2018 and 2019. To reach it in 2020 he now needs five wins and two draws.
Meanwhile Alireza Firouzja, 16, who recently quit Iran due to its policy of banning games against Israeli opponents and is widely tipped as a future world champion, scored another important win when he outplayed the Netherlands draw specialist, Anish Giri, in a delicately skilled endgame.
After five of the 13 rounds Firouzja (stateless) and Wesley So (US) led with 3.5/5, followed by three players on 3/5 and another five, including Carlsen, on 2.5/5. Firouzja v Carlsen, eagerly awaited following their controversial game at the World Blitz, will be in round nine on Tuesday.
Even now, with Carlsen’s record seemingly done and dusted, there is a rival grandmaster claimant. GM Bogdan Lalic, who represents Croatia but is a longtime English resident, played 175 games unbeaten between September 2010 and October 2011, including 151 against opponents with official Fide ratings.
The quality of Lalic’s opponents was lower even than Tiviakov’s, and he agreed many short draws with weaker rivals. Once the player sitting on the adjacent board had difficulty writing down the long name of his own opponent on the score sheet, and by the time he had done so Lalic had agreed his draw and departed.
At the end of the 13-month period Lalic’s Fide rating was lower than when it started. His performance is not in the same league as Carlsen, nor with Ding Liren’s earlier 100-game streak, but Lalic is a solid GM, currently unbeaten after seven rounds of the Prague Open, and there is no official requirement of the parameters for an unbeaten record.
Almost everyone attributes the longest winning streak of 19 or 20 games to Bobby Fischer at the 1970 interzonal and his 1971 candidates matches against Mark Taimanov, Bent Larsen and Tigran Petrosian (one opponent, Oscar Panno, resigned on move one as a schedule protest).
The longest top level winning streak is actually 25 games by the first official world champion Wilhelm Steinitz. It took him nine years, Steinitz won his final 16 games at Vienna 1873, crushed Joseph Blackburne 7-0 in their 1876 match, then won his first two games at Vienna 1882.
A record of a different kind was created this week when Quique Setién became the new Barcelona manager. The 61-year-old has played chess at a sufficiently high level, although more than 20 years ago, to have an official Fide international rating of 2055, expert standard.
Magnus Carlsen: ‘You need to be very fortunate to be No 1 in fantasy football’
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His game in a 2002 simultaneous display by the then world champion Vlad Kramnik has been preserved and shows that Setién knew theory well and kept the Russian legend at bay until he was eventually overrun by a crushing attack.
Setién very likely ranks as the all-time chess No 1 among football managers, with his only rival Ossie Ardiles of Tottenham and Argentina. The competition is much stronger among professional GMs and IM players, where Carlsen’s former coach Simen Agdestein, Bela Soos of Romania, and Vlastimil Jansa of the former Czechoslovakia all played soccer internationally.
In 1992 when Agdestein competed at Hastings after drawing a match 2-2 against Anatoly Karpov, he stated in an interview with the Guardian that he had found it harder to play against the ex-world champion than against the legendary Italian defender Franco Baresi, who had been Agdestein’s direct opponent on his international debut.
3654 1...g4+! 2 Qxg4 (if 3 Kxg4 Qf5 mate) Qf5! and Black won the pawn ending after 3 h5 c4! 4 h6 Qxg4+ 5 Kxg4 Kf6 6 h7 Kg7 and Black’s b pawn queens. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/may/31/here-is-how-to-survive-winter-mainly-in-tasmania-but-also-anywhere | Opinion | 2023-05-31T06:19:30.000Z | First Dog on the Moon | Here is how to survive winter (mainly in Tasmania but also anywhere) | First Dog on the Moon | null | Partial |
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/mar/28/parole-board-chair-sacrificial-lamb-nick-hardwick | Society | 2018-03-28T12:10:12.000Z | Alan Travis | How Parole Board chair became a sacrificial lamb | Nick Hardwick’s letter to the justice secretary, David Gauke, after their meeting on Tuesday to prepare for the Worboys’ high court ruling makes clear that he was forced to resign in the biggest criminal justice sacking since Michael Howard’s involvement in the dismissal of prisons chief, Derek Lewis.
“You told me that you thought my position was untenable,” he toldGauke. “I am sorry for the mistakes that were made in the case but I have always made it clear that I will support the members and staff of the board in the very difficult individual decisions they make and I will accept accountability for the work of the board. I will not pass the buck to those who work under me. In these circumstances I inform you of my decision to resign with immediate effect.”
The high court ruling in the case was actually on quite a narrow legal issue. The three judges did not try to put themselves in the place of the experienced parole board members who made the decision to recommend release on the basis of the evidence that they had before them.
Instead, the judges said the experienced Parole Board panel was mistaken in not going beyond the attacks on 12 women for which Worboys, aged 60, had been convicted and served 10 years in prison and taking into account up to 100 other offences for which he had not been convicted.
The court ruled that the Board panel was mistaken in this “misapprehension” in a case which they described as “difficult, troubling” and with “many exceptional features”.
Minister rejects call for in-depth inquiry into John Worboys case
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In his letter to the justice secretary, Hardwick, who had no role in the decision taken by the panel to recommend Worboys’ release, makes clear he shared that misapprehension which was supported by the legal advice he had received: “We were wrong,” he accepts bluntly. It is a ruling that could now overturn years of parole board practice and lead to even longer sentences in the future.
Hardwick has had a selfless career in public service. He was involved in setting up Centrepoint, the homeless charity. He led the Refugee Council, which was never a popular cause. He chaired the Independent Police Complaints Commission and then took on the tough job of chief inspector of prisons before his appointment to the parole board.
None of these jobs was straightforward and in each post he demonstrated a principled approach to the difficult issues involved. As soon as the Worboys decision became the centre of an intense public debate, Hardwick made clear he had been pressing to increase the transparency of parole board decisions, and the official inquiry made clear it was not a failing of the parole board that victims were not properly kept informed.
Q&A
What is the Parole Board?
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But he is also right in his letter to the justice secretary to raise his concern about the independence of the Parole Board: “I believe this matter raises very troubling questions about how the board’s independence can be safeguarded. I hope parliament will consider what structural changes are necessary to ensure this independence is protected in future.”
He was right to raise the issue. The new justice secretary only weeks before swore an oath to protect the independence of the judiciary. Yet Gauke was prepared, egged on by the chairman of the Conservative party, to consider launching a legal action himself to overturn the decision of the Parole Board.
It was right – as has been proved – that the victims’ legal action should go ahead, but for the justice secretary to take his own steps in response to a media-fuelled campaign to overturn the Parole Board in the courts was a step way over the line for a lord chancellor. In the event Gauke didn’t go ahead because the Ministry of Justice lawyers advised that such a high court action was unlikely to succeed. They too got it wrong.
If Gauke felt the Parole Board had made a mistake in not taking into account Worboys’ unconvicted offences, he should have initiated the necessary reforms rather than make a sacrificial lamb out of a Parole Board chair who was only too willing to reform the board.
The role of the Parole Board has grown significantly in the past 20 years, matching the increase in the public’s appetite for more punitive sentencing, which in turn has been reflected in the growth of indefinite sentences. The board’s secrecy – although an essential part of the justice system – has always stood apart from the judicial system. It is time it also enjoyed the independence of the courts and protection from populist politicians. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2022/jan/11/sleeping-with-polar-bears-in-southern-belgium-zoo-pairi-daiza-brugelette | Travel | 2022-01-11T07:00:10.000Z | Daniel Boffey | We’re going to the zoo: sleeping with polar bears on a trip to southern Belgium | Polar bears snore. Perhaps not all of them, but certainly the hulking beast that slept near me, my wife, Nicola, and our two young children. Deep, growly exhalations, not dissimilar to my own, I was cheerfully informed by George, nine, and Lottie, seven.
The nocturnal habits of the world’s largest land-living carnivore were revealed to us during a stay over at Pairi Daiza (Persian for paradise), a peculiarly beautiful zoo and botanical gardens in a most implausible location: deepest Wallonia, the Francophone and economically struggling region of southern Belgium.
Founded in 1993 as a humble bird sanctuary around the remnants of a 12th-century Cistercian abbey and a neighbouring stately home, today Pairi Daiza is home to 7,000 animals, along with the largest Chinese and Indonesian gardens in Europe, spread across 65 hectares (160 acres) of picture-perfect landscape.
A bear’s-eye view
To put this in context, London zoo houses 16,000 animals on just 15 hectares on the edge of Regent’s Park. Pairi Daiza, voted Europe’s top zoo for the past three years by the Diamond Theme Park awards, the Oscars of the zoological world, is vast and ever-expanding.
It was the park’s latest growth spurt into the Belgian countryside in the municipality of Brugelette, an hour’s drive from Brussels, that offered the opportunity for us to hear a polar bear’s nightly snorts.
Daniel Boffey and his children have a close encounter with a sea lion. Photograph: Daniel Boffey
Two years ago, in recognition that its sheer size makes it difficult for even the most sprightly of wildlife spotters to cover in a day, let alone a young family, Pairi Daiza opened 50 rooms with views of the bears, wolves, deer and seals.
Last year they went further. A new section of the zoo, entitled the Land of the Cold, was opened, complete with a further 50 bedrooms sharing glass walls with the polar bears, walruses, penguins and Siberian tigers.
The new high-spec accommodation includes sub-aquatic rooms, so you can watch water-dwelling animals swim underwater and feed, all from the comfort of your bed, or indeed your own whirlpool bath.
The rooms are not recommended for those who fancy a lazy start to their day, although the polar bears were courteous enough to keep their roars around us to a minimum. We experienced the snoring during a rather eerie walk, late at night, back from one of the zoo’s restaurants. But the new “immersive” accommodation has proven immensely popular, and it is easy to see why in a setting like this.
Pairi Daiza is the “childhood dream come true” of former lawyer and financial consultant Eric Domb, 61, who is obsessive enough about the place to live in it, and keep a treehouse holiday home for himself among the red pandas.
Domb is, to put it mildly, a collector. His favourite animal is said to be the elephant. The zoo has 23 – two African and 21 Asian – the largest herd in Europe. He also has a fascination with China: he travelled to Shanghai and brought over a team of landscapers to help build his Middle Kingdom world – home to five giant pandas – and Chinese garden, full of pink and purple flowering azaleas, camellias and maples. Visitors are advised that it is best enjoyed barefoot.
You can watch water-dwelling animals swim underwater from the comfort of your bed, or your own whirlpool bath
On a trip to Vancouver, Domb spotted a Twin Beech seaplane that he thought would inspire his guests. After multiple stops, the plane arrived in 2015 at Lac de la Plate Taille, south of Charleroi, the only water surface in Belgium big enough for the landing, before being transported to sit alongside the zoo’s lake, where it is a cause of curiosity for both the visitors and the harbour seals that live in that part of the zoo. Like many theme parks, Pairi Daiza has a train encircling it, but this one is run by a fully functioning, early-20th-century steam engine salvaged from Poland that whistles along at a pace just on the right side of alarming.
Zoos need to work hard to justify their existence, and the image of an eccentric Belgian collecting baubles from around the world for a European audience could be offputting to some. I arrived as a zoo-sceptic, and my son wanted to know where the animals had been taken from. But the stated purpose of Pairi Daiza is to save species from extinction and introduce them into the wild if possible, while seeking to educate visitors about the wider culture of the lands the animals originate from – and why all of that matters.
Full Moon Lodge at Pairi Daiza
The zoo has been a member of the European Association of Zoos and Aquariums since 1994, coordinating breeding programmes for endangered species to ensure a healthy gene pool. There are fewer than 26,000 polar bears in the wild, with numbers diminishing quickly as their sea-ice habitat shrinks. Pairi Daiza is currently introducing two males and two females. The NGO Polar Bear International has granted the zoo “ambassador” status in recognition of its efforts. Scientific programmes include finding a cure for elephant herpes and inventing a pregnancy test for pandas.
Two underweight walruses arrived from a zoo in St Petersburg that closed during the pandemic. They are now doing well
It is also a place of refuge. Two underweight walruses recently arrived from a zoo in St Petersburg that closed during the pandemic, and they are now doing well. This autumn, the local media was full of a story about a stowaway racoon offered a home after being found onboard the Dutch freighter Singelgracht on its return from a trip to Baltimore. Last year, 477 turtles, snakes, lizards and caiman crocodiles, discovered by border control or left abandoned by owners, were taken in by the zoo’s Mersus Emergo, a former whaling ship anchored by the lake as accommodation for the park’s reptiles and amphibians.
Polar Bear House
There is no set route around the park – guests are encouraged to get a little lost, find something new. Waterways or steep landscapes are used wherever possible as a means to parcel off enclosures. As we arrived, and a flock of pelicans soared overhead, my first impression was of something akin to Jurassic Park, albeit with a brewery and a replica wood-framed Taoist temple that serves Chinese food, as two of nine catering outlets.
As part of the accommodation package, visitors have two full days of access to the park, which we fully exploited. But we will have to return. There was simply too much we did not have time to see or, indeed, hear. I wonder if Siberian tigers snore?
The trip was provided by Pairi Daiza: Le Jardin des Mondes. A one-night stay for a family of four in a room overlooking the sea lions costs from €373, including half-board and unlimited entry to the zoo over two days. A sub-aquatic room close to the polar bears costs from €630 | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2012/jun/05/don-giovanni-garsington-review | Music | 2012-06-05T17:01:01.000Z | George Hall | Don Giovanni – review | Garsington opens its second season at Wormsley with a new production of Mozart's opera by Daniel Slater, whose imaginative staging of Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream was the final highlight at the festival's previous address. This time around, Slater seems to have fallen victim to the curse of an opera notorious as a directors' graveyard.
It doesn't help that Leslie Travers' set, a multi-level assembly of rooms in what could be a modern apartment block or hotel, is so vague about what they are and to whom they belong; the characters wander through them as if it's communal property. In Da Ponte's original libretto, Giovanni's attempted rape of Donna Anna takes place off stage. Here, instead of pursuing her assailant, we see her take the lead in a piece of sexual roleplay that involves him being chained to a table; predator becomes victim. Throughout, Grant Doyle's Giovanni registers more as a secondary member of the group than the anarchic instigator of unbridled sexuality in whose vortex the rest of the characters are swept along.
There are other dubious moments. Callum Thorpe's Masetto takes Mary Bevan's Zerlina literally during her disarming aria Batti, Batti, and strikes her hard in the face; she bears the scar for the rest of the show. But there are also some good jokes, such as Leporello's catalogue of his boss's conquests pouring out of a printer in a single, seemingly endless sheet.
Douglas Boyd's conducting provides solid propulsion, and there's some fine vocalism, especially from Natasha Jouhl's pro-active Anna and real-life sisters Sophie and Mary Bevan as Elvira and Zerlina respectively, while Joshua Bloom's Leporello proves livelier than Giovanni himself. But the action is often confused and occasionally perverse, its rewrites weakening the narrative.In rep until 2 July. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2013/sep/01/best-standup-comedy-2013-alexei-sayle-liam-williams | Stage | 2013-09-01T17:00:00.000Z | Brian Logan | The best standup comedy for autumn 2013: from Alexei Sayle to Liam Williams | Liam Williams
At last month's Edinburgh fringe, the best newcomer award was won by the wig-wearing, false-teeth-wearing eccentric John Kearns. But the cutting edge of standup was elsewhere, courtesy of another act on that shortlist. Liam Williams is one-third of sketch troupe Sheeps, now breaking out on his own under the auspices of indie comedy super-producer the Invisible Dot. With his act – and that of the American wunderkind Bo Burnham – the comedy of today's disenfranchised twentysomethings announces its arrival. Williams, 25, is downbeat, intelligent, unimpressed by anything (least of all himself), and a writer of rare lyrical power, whether discussing sex, selfhood or BBC4's historical documentaries. Michael McIntyre has nothing to fear; fans of provocative comedy should celebrate. Invisible Dot, London, 1-9 November, theinvisibledot.com
Robin and Josie's Shambles
Absent from this year's Edinburgh fringe after three previous comedy award nominations in a row, Josie Long takes to the road alongside fellow champion of creative comedy Robin Ince for a night of politics, science and "some mucking about and nonsense". Stand comedy club, Glasgow, 2 September, then touring, robinince.com
Stewart Lee
He has had his fun, disguised in a meaty wrestling mask as the, ahem, cult Canadian standup Baconface for the duration of the Edinburgh fringe. Now Stewart Lee gets serious(ish), with a national tour of his new solo show Much A-Stew About Nothing. Rose Theatre, Kingston, 10 September, then touring, stewartlee.co.uk
Alexei Sayle
We thought he was lost to standup. But in January, the godfather of alternative comedy returned to his first love after 17 years. Now, Sayle takes his show on the road. Expect 1981-era bolshie politics, now with added thoughtfulness – even vulnerability. Town Hall, High Wycombe, 4 October, then touring, alexeisayle.me
Susie Essman
She was called "the most foul-mouthed woman in sitcom history" when she starred as Susie Greene in Curb Your Enthusiasm. But the woman behind "you fat fuck!" is also a standup of 30 years' experience, who this autumn makes a rare UK appearance. Soho Theatre, London, 9-13 October, sohotheatre.com | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/may/01/young-people-passionate-politics-vote | Opinion | 2024-05-01T11:00:55.000Z | Joyce Yang | I’ve been restricted from voting my whole life – I can’t bear to see apathy disenfranchising my friends | Joyce Yang | Local elections are coming this week. After receiving far-right leaflets (“Close the borders! Pause all immigration!”) through my letterbox and paying taxes to an underwhelming council, I can’t wait to vote – except that I’m not eligible. As an immigrant with no settled status, voting isn’t one of my rights.
And while most of my friends here can vote, many say they won’t. My best friend, for example, keeps his electoral registration up to date, but rarely goes to the polling station.
This is probably no surprise. Historically, younger people are less likely to vote than older people, but the gap has widened since the 1990s. Only 54% of 18- to 25-year-olds voted in the last general election; and like other groups, their turnout rate in local elections is even lower.
But that doesn’t mean today’s youth are politically disengaged. Quite the opposite. The British Election Study shows that people under the age of 25 are the most likely to participate in political activities. They started activism at a younger age; they have brought social movements to social media; they care about the environment and the climate crisis; and most recently, they have been among the loudest in Gaza protests. It is partly because of such sustained political activity by young people that the Tories despair that the country’s future will be plagued by “wokeness”.
And yet, when I ask young people why their politics don’t extend to voting, the most common answer is disillusionment.
“I just don’t see a point,” my best friend told me. He is worried about the cost of living crisis, but sees the problem as almost intractable. “I doubt a single vote will change anything,” he said. Yes, the cost of living crisis sucks, as does the cost and state of housing (I’m sitting under a leaking ceiling as I write this). And with the Tories stirring up culture wars and denying the mental health crisis, the government is letting young people down. Politicians are old – the average age of UK MPs is about 55 – and they don’t usually try to understand what the younger generation needs.
But not voting isn’t a solution. Because when you give up the ballot paper, others will fill it out and claim your voice. Older people are the most likely to vote; they are also more likely to be right-leaning and pro-Brexit. In the EU referendum, the turnout gap between 65- 74-year-olds and the under-25s was 22 percentage points – given the difference between the leave and remain vote was only four points, I wonder whether things could have been different if more young people had voted.
Another friend told me he doesn’t think the UK is democratic enough. “The whole idea of having an unelected House of Lords is bonkers,” he said. “And the House of Commons doesn’t feel very common – I don’t even know those people!”
Call me naive, but I think the fact that people can vote in this country already leaves it much better off than most places in the world. I hate to say voting is a privilege when it should be a basic human right. However, if you look outside the west, how many countries are full democracies? More than a third of the world’s population still live under authoritarian rule.
Growing up in China, I never voted once. In school, my teacher always told us that staying away from politics is staying safe. Young people in China are politically disengaged by force rather than by choice. Like the UK, the country is facing severe economic challenges, but complaints are censored. And even if there’s an election, the results will unanimously celebrate the you-know-who.
It’s Sunak’s doom loop: the more desperate and cruel the Tories become, the more voters reject them
Polly Toynbee
Read more
There, the future isn’t for the people to decide. The right to vote, then, isn’t something to be taken for granted. It’s a precious gift and a duty. A Chinese friend of mine is relinquishing her Chinese citizenship to apply for British citizenship this year, just so she can vote for Labour in the general election. Having lived here for years, she said she wouldn’t feel a sense of belonging until she had the full right to vote. I hope to be in her position in a few years.
Young people today do care. All my friends believe in democracy and social justice, just as previous generations of young people did. But by not voting, they risk throwing their future into uncertainty – remember, we’ll be here cleaning up the mess in a decade. Voting may seem old-fashioned compared with online social movements, but until young people turn out in high enough numbers, politicians won’t listen to us, or make policy decisions in our interests. Ultimately, democracy doesn’t work properly if the participation is disproportionate.
Even if I don’t have a vote, I’ve done what I can for democracy by persuading my boyfriend to go to our local polling station in the London mayoral election. Hope to see you there, too.
Joyce Yang is a freelance writer based in London | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2006/jul/21/citynews.pressandpublishing | Media | 2006-07-21T12:20:38.000Z | Chris Tryhorn | Metal Bulletin spurns £188m approach | Metal Bulletin has rejected a £188m bid approach from financial publishing and exhibitions business Euromoney Institutional Investor.
The business publisher said it considered the approach, which represented a 12.6% premium on last night's closing price, as "derisory".
Instead it is recommending that shareholders back its proposed merger with rival publisher Wilmington, which is subject to a vote at an extraordinary general meeting on August 2.
Euromoney, which is 70%-owned by Daily Mail & General Trust, said in a separate statement it had approached Metal Bulletin on Monday with a cash and shares offer.
"Euromoney continues to consider its position," it said.
Shares in Metal Bulletin - which supplies information to the metals, mining and minerals industries - were up 12% to 338p at 10.45am today, a five-year high for the stock.
· To contact the MediaGuardian newsdesk email [email protected] or phone 020 7239 9857
· If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication". | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jan/25/how-doctors-measure-pain | Science | 2017-01-25T06:00:29.000Z | John Walsh | Sickening, gruelling or frightful: how doctors measure pain | John Walsh | One night in May, my wife sat up in bed and said, “I’ve got this awful pain just here.” She prodded her abdomen and made a face. “It feels like something’s really wrong.” Woozily noting that it was 2am, I asked what kind of pain it was. “Like something’s biting into me and won’t stop,” she said.
“Hold on,” I said blearily, “help is at hand.” I brought her a couple of ibuprofen with some water, which she downed, clutching my hand and waiting for the ache to subside.
An hour later, she was sitting up in bed again, in real distress. “It’s worse now,” she said, “really nasty. Can you phone the doctor?” Miraculously, the family doctor answered the phone at 3am, listened to her recital of symptoms and concluded, “It might be your appendix. Have you had yours taken out?” No, she hadn’t. “It could be appendicitis,” he surmised, “but if it was dangerous you’d be in much worse pain than you’re in. Go to the hospital in the morning, but for now, take some paracetamol and try to sleep.”
Barely half an hour later, the balloon went up. She was awakened for the third time, but now with a pain so savage and uncontainable it made her howl. The time for murmured assurances and spousal procrastination was over. I rang a local minicab, struggled into my clothes, bundled her into a dressing gown, and we sped to St Mary’s Paddington at just before 4am.
The flurry of action made the pain subside, if only through distraction, and we sat for hours while doctors brought forms to be filled, took her blood pressure and ran tests. A registrar poked a needle into my wife’s wrist and said, “Does that hurt? Does that? How about that?” before concluding: “Impressive. You have a very high pain threshold.”
The pain was from pancreatitis, brought on by rogue gallstones that had escaped from her gall bladder and made their way, like fleeing convicts, to a refuge in her pancreas, causing agony. She was given a course of antibiotics and, a month later, had an operation to remove her gall bladder.
“It’s keyhole surgery,” said the surgeon breezily, “so you’ll be back to normal very soon. Some people feel well enough to take the bus home after the operation.” His optimism was misplaced. My wife came home the following day filled with painkillers. When they wore off, she writhed with suffering. After three days she rang the specialist, only to be told: “It’s not the operation that’s causing discomfort – it’s the air that was pumped inside you to separate the organs before surgery.” Once the operation had proved a success, the surgeons had apparently lost interest in the fallout.
During that period of convalescence, as I watched her grimace and clench her teeth and let slip little cries of anguish until a long regimen of combined ibuprofen and codeine finally conquered the pain, several questions came into my head. Chief among them was: “Can anyone in the medical profession talk about pain with any authority?” From the family doctor to the surgeon, their remarks and suggestions seemed tentative, generalised, unknowing – and potentially dangerous: Was it right for the doctor to tell my wife that her level of pain didn’t sound like appendicitis when the doctor didn’t know whether she had a high or low pain threshold? Should he have advised her to stay in bed and risk her appendix exploding into peritonitis? How could surgeons predict that patients would feel only “discomfort” after such an operation when she felt agony – an agony that was aggravated by fear that the operation had been a failure?
I also wondered if there were any agreed words that would help a doctor understand the pain felt by a patient. I thought of my father, a GP in the 1960s with an NHS practice in south London, who used to marvel at the colourful pain symptoms he heard: “It’s like I’ve been attacked with a stapler”; “Like having rabbits running up and down my spine”; “It’s like someone’s opened a cocktail umbrella in my penis …” Few of them, he told me, corresponded to the symptoms listed in a medical textbook. So how should he proceed? By guesswork and aspirin?
There seemed to be a chasm of understanding in human discussions of pain. I wanted to find out how the medical profession apprehends pain – the language it uses for something that’s invisible to the naked eye, that can’t be measured except by asking for the sufferer’s subjective description, and that can be treated only by the use of opium derivatives that go back to the middle ages.
When investigating pain, the basic procedure for clinics everywhere is to give a patient the McGill pain questionnaire. Developed in the 1970s by two scientists, Dr Ronald Melzack and Dr Warren Torgerson, both of McGill University in Montreal, it is still the main tool for measuring pain in clinics worldwide.
Melzack and his colleague Dr Patrick Wall of St Thomas’ Hospital in London had already galvanised the field of pain research in 1965 with their seminal “gate control theory”, a ground-breaking explanation of how psychology can affect the body’s perception of pain. In 1984, the pair went on to write Wall and Melzack’s Textbook of Pain, the most comprehensive reference work in pain medicine. It has gone through five editions and is currently more than 1,000 pages long.
In the early 1970s, Melzack began to list the words patients used to describe their pain and classified them into three categories: sensory (which included heat, pressure, “throbbing” or “pounding” sensations), affective (which related to emotional effects, such as “tiring”, “sickening”, “gruelling” or “frightful”) and lastly evaluative (evocative of an experience – from “annoying” and “troublesome” to “horrible”, “unbearable” and “excruciating”).
You don’t have to be a linguistic genius to see there are shortcomings in this range of terms. For one thing, some words in the affective and evaluative categories seem interchangeable – there’s no difference between “frightful” in the former and “horrible” in the latter, or between “tiring” and “annoying” – and all the words share an unfortunate quality of sounding like a duchess complaining about a ball that didn’t meet her standards.
But Melzack’s grid of suffering formed the basis of what became the McGill pain questionnaire. The patient listens as a list of “pain descriptors” is read out and has to say whether each word describes their pain – and, if so, to rate the intensity of the feeling. The clinicians then look at the questionnaire and put check marks in the appropriate places. This gives the clinician a number, or a percentage figure, to work with in assessing, later, whether a treatment has brought the patient’s pain down (or up).
Some men may find it hard to imagine anything more agonising than toothache or a tennis injury
A more recent variant is the National Initiative on Pain Control’s pain quality assessment scale (PQAS), in which patients are asked to indicate, on a scale of 1 to 10, how “intense” – or “sharp”, “hot”, “dull”, “cold”, “sensitive”, “tender”, “itchy”, etc – their pain has been over the past week.
The trouble with this approach is the imprecision of that scale of 1 to 10, where a 10 would be “the most intense pain sensation imaginable”. How does a patient “imagine” the worst pain ever and give their own pain a number? Some men may find it hard to imagine anything more agonising than toothache or a tennis injury. Women who have experienced childbirth may, after that experience, rate everything else as a 3 or 4.
I asked some friends what they thought the worst physical pain might be. Inevitably, they just described nasty things that had happened to them. One man nominated gout. He recalled lying on a sofa, with his gouty foot resting on a pillow, when a visiting aunt passed by; the chiffon scarf she was wearing slipped from her neck and lightly touched his foot. It was “unbearable agony”.
A brother-in-law nominated post-root-canal toothache – unlike muscular or back pain, he said, it couldn’t be alleviated by shifting your posture. It was “relentless”. A male friend confided that a haemorrhoidectomy had left him with irritable bowel syndrome, in which a daily spasm made him feel “as if somebody had shoved a stirrup pump up my arse and was pumping furiously”. The pain was, he said, “boundless, as if it wouldn’t stop until I exploded”. A woman friend recalled the moment the hem of her husband’s trouser leg snagged on her big toe, ripping the nail clean off. She used a musical analogy to explain the effect: “I’d been through childbirth, I’d broken my leg – and I recalled them both as low moaning noises, like cellos; the ripped-off nail was excruciating, a great, high, deafening shriek of psychopathic violins, like nothing I’d heard – or felt – before.”
It seems a shame that these eloquent descriptions are reduced by the McGill questionnaire to words like “throbbing” or “sharp”, but its function is simply to give pain a number – a number that will, with luck, be decreased after treatment, when the patient is reassessed.
This procedure doesn’t impress Professor Stephen McMahon of the London Pain Consortium, an organisation formed in 2002 to promote internationally competitive research into pain. “There are lots of problems that come with trying to measure pain,” he says. “I think the obsession with numbers is an oversimplification. Pain is not unidimensional. It doesn’t just come with scale – a lot or a little – it comes with other baggage: how threatening it is, how emotionally disturbing, how it affects your ability to concentrate. The measuring obsession probably comes from the regulators who think that, to understand drugs, you have to show efficacy. And the American Food and Drug Administration don’t like quality-of-life assessments; they like hard numbers. So we’re thrown back on giving it a number and scoring it. It’s a bit of a wasted exercise because it’s only one dimension of pain that we’re capturing.”
Illustration: Matthew Richardson
Pain can be either acute or chronic, and the words do not (as some people think) mean “bad” and “very bad”. “Acute” pain means a temporary or one-off feeling of discomfort, which is usually treated with drugs; “chronic” pain persists over time and has to be lived with as a malevolent everyday companion. But because patients build up a resistance to drugs, other forms of treatment must be found for it.
The Pain Management and Neuromodulation Centre at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital in central London is the biggest pain centre in Europe. Heading the team there is Dr Adnan Al-Kaisy, who studied medicine at the University of Basrah, Iraq, and later worked in anaesthetics at specialist centres in England, the US and Canada.
“I’d say that 55 to 60% of our patients suffer from lower back pain,” he says. “The reason is, simply, that we don’t pay attention to the demands life makes on us, the way we sit, stand, walk and so on. We sit for hours in front of a computer, with the body putting heavy pressure on small joints in the back.” Al-Kaisy reckons that in the UK the incidence of chronic lower back pain has increased substantially in the last 15 to 20 years, and that “the cost in lost working days is about £6 to 7 billion”.
Elsewhere the clinic treats those suffering from severe chronic headaches and injuries from accidents that affect the nervous system.
Do they still use the McGill questionnaire? “Unfortunately yes,” says Al-Kaisy. “It’s a subjective measurement. But pain can be magnified by a domestic argument or trouble at work, so we try to find out about the patient’s life – their sleeping patterns, their ability to walk and stand, their appetite. It’s not just the patient’s condition, it’s also their environment.”
The challenge is to transform this information into scientific data. “We’re working with Professor Raymond Lee, chair of Biomechanics at London South Bank University, to see if there can be objective measurement of a patient’s disability due to pain,” he says. “They’re trying to develop a tool, rather like an accelerometer, which will give an accurate impression of how active or disabled they are, and tell us the cause of their pain from the way they sit or stand. We’re really keen to get away from just asking the patient how bad their pain is.”
Some patients arrive with pains that are far worse than backache and require special treatment. Al-Kaisy describes one patient – let us call him Carter – who suffered from a terrible condition called ilioinguinal neuralgia, a disorder that produces a severe burning and stabbing pain in the groin. “He’d had an operation in the testicular area, and the inguinal nerve had been cut. The pain was excruciating: when he came to us, he was on four or five different medications, opiates with very high dosages, anticonvulsive medication, opioid patches, paracetamol and ibuprofen on top of that. His life was turned upside down, his job was on the line.” The utterly stricken Carter was to become one of Al-Kaisy’s big successes.
Since 2010, Guy’s and St Thomas’ has offered a residential programme for adults whose chronic pain hasn’t responded to treatment at other clinics. The patients come in for four weeks, away from their normal environment, and are seen by a motley crew of psychologists, physiotherapists, occupational health specialists and nursing physicians who between them devise a programme to teach them strategies for managing their pain.
Many of these strategies come under the heading of “neuromodulation”, a term you hear a lot in pain management circles. In simple terms, it means distracting the brain from constantly brooding on the pain signals it is getting from the body’s periphery. Sometimes the distraction is a cunningly deployed electric shock.
“We were the first centre in the world to pioneer spinal cord stimulation,” says Al-Kaisy. “In pain occasions, overactive nerves send impulses from the periphery to the spinal cord and from there to the brain, which starts to register pain. We try to send small bolts of electricity to the spinal cord by inserting a wire in the epidural area. It’s only one or two volts, so the patient feels just a tingling sensation over where the pain is, instead of feeling the actual pain. After two weeks, we give the patient an internal power battery with a remote control, so he can switch it on whenever he feels pain and carry on with his life. It’s essentially a pacemaker that suppresses the hyperexcitability of nerves by delivering subthreshold stimulation. The patient feels nothing except his pain going down. It’s not invasive – we usually send patients home the same day.”
When Carter, suffering from agonising pain in the groin, had failed to respond to any other treatments, Al-Kaisy tried his new combination of therapies. “We gave him something called a dorsal root ganglion stimulation. It’s like a small junction-box, placed just underneath one of the bones of the spine. It makes the spine hyperexcited, and sends impulses to the spinal cord and the brain. I pioneered a new technique to put a small wire into the ganglion, connected to an external power battery. Over 10 days the intensity of pain went down by 70% – by the patient’s own assessment. He wrote me a very nice email saying I had changed his life, that the pain had just stopped completely, and that he was coming back to normality. He said his job was saved, as was his marriage, and he wanted to go back to playing sport. I told him, ‘Take it easy. You mustn’t start climbing the Himalayas just yet.’” Al-Kaisy beams. “This is a remarkable outcome. You cannot get it from any other therapies.”
The greatest recent breakthrough in assessing pain, according to Professor Irene Tracey, head of the University of Oxford’s Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, has been the understanding that chronic pain is a thing in its own right. She explains: “We always thought of it as acute pain that just goes on and on – and if chronic pain is just a continuation of acute pain, let’s fix the thing that caused the acute and the chronic should go away. That has spectacularly failed. Now we think of chronic pain as a shift to another place, with different mechanisms, such as changes in genetic expression, chemical release, neurophysiology and wiring. We’ve got all these completely new ways of thinking about chronic pain. That’s the paradigm shift in the pain field.”
Tracey has been called the “Queen of Pain” by some media commentators. She was, until recently, the Nuffield Professor of anaesthetic science and is an expert in neuroimaging techniques that explore the brain’s responses to pain. Despite her nickname, in person she is far from alarming: a bright-eyed, enthusiastic, welcoming and hectically fluent woman of 50, she talks about pain at a personal level. She has no problem defining the “ultimate pain” that scores 10 on the McGill questionnaire: “I’ve been through childbirth three times, and my 10 is a very different 10 from before I had kids. I’ve got a whole new calibration on that scale.” But how does she explain the ultimate pain to people who haven’t experienced childbirth? “I say, ‘Imagine you’ve slammed your hand in a car door – that’s 10.’”
She uses a personal example to explain the way perception and circumstance can alter the way we experience pain, as well as the phenomenon of “hedonic flipping”, which can convert pain from an unpleasant sensation into something you don’t mind. “I did the London Marathon this year. It needs a lot of training and running and your muscles ache, and next day you’re really in pain, but it’s a nice pain. I’m no masochist, but I associate the muscle pain with thoughts like, ‘I did something healthy with my body,’ ‘I’m training,’ and ‘It’s all going well.’”
I ask her why there seems to be a gap between doctors’ and patients’ apprehension of pain. “It’s very hard to understand, because the system goes wrong from the point of injury, along the nerve that’s taken the signal into the spinal cord, which sends signals to the brain, which sends signals back, and it all unravels with terrible consequential changes. So my patient may be saying, ‘I’ve got this excruciating pain here,’ and I’m trying to see where it’s coming from, and there’s a mismatch here because you can’t see any damage or any oozing blood. So we say, ‘Oh come now, you’re obviously exaggerating, it can’t be as bad as that.’ That’s wrong – it’s a cultural bias we grew up with, without realising.”
Recently, she says, there has been a breakthrough in understanding about how the brain is involved in pain. Neuroimaging, she explains, helps to connect the subjective pain with the objective perception of it. “It fills that space between what you can see and what’s being reported. We can plug that gap and explain why the patient is in pain even though you can’t see it on your x-ray or whatever. You’re helping to bring truth and validity to these poor people who are in pain but not believed.”
But you can’t simply “see” pain glowing and throbbing on the screen in front of you. “Brain imaging has taught us about the networks of the brain and how they work,” she says. “It’s not a pain-measuring device. It’s a tool that gives you fantastic insight into the anatomy, the physiology and the neurochemistry of your body and can tell us why you have pain, and where we should go in and try to fix it.”
Some of the ways in, she says, are remarkably direct and mechanical – like Al-Kaisy’s spinal cord stimulation wire. “There are now devices you can attach to your head and allow you to manipulate bits of the brain. You can wear them like bathing caps. They’re portable, ethically allowed brain-stimulation devices. They’re easy for patients to use and evidence is coming, in clinical trials, that they are good for strokes and rehabilitation. There’s a parallel with the games industry, where they’re making devices you can put on your head so kids can use thought to move balls around. The games industry is, for fun, driving this idea that when you use your brain, you generate electrical activities. They’re developing the technology really fast, and we can use it in medical applications.”
Illustration: Matthew Richardson
Pain has become a huge area of medical research in the US, for a simple reason. Chronic pain affects over 100 million Americans and costs the country more than half a trillion dollars a year in lost working hours, which is why it has become a magnet for funding by big business and government.
Researchers at the Human Pain Research Laboratory at Stanford University, California, are working to gain a better understanding of individual responses to pain so that treatments can be more targeted. The laboratory has several study initiatives on the go – into migraine, fibromyalgia, facial pain and other conditions – but its largest is into back pain. It has been endowed with a $10m grant from the National Institutes of Health to study non-drug alternative treatments for lower back pain. The specific treatments are mindfulness, acupuncture, cognitive behavioural therapy and real-time neural feedback.
They plan to inspect the pain tolerance of 400 people over five years of study, ranging from pain-free volunteers to the most wretched chronic sufferers who have been to other specialists but found no relief. The idea is to find people’s mid-range tolerance (they’re asked to rate their pain while they are experiencing it), to establish a usable baseline. They then are given the non-invasive treatments – such as mindfulness and acupuncture – and are subjected afterwards to the same pain stimuli, to see how their pain tolerance has changed from their baseline reading. MRI scanning is used on the patients in both laboratory sessions, so that clinicians can see and draw inferences from the visible differences in blood flow to different parts of the brain.
A remarkable feature of the assessment process is that patients are also given scores for psychological states: a scale measures their level of depression, anxiety, anger, physical functioning, pain behaviour and how much pain interferes with their lives. This should allow physicians to use the information to target specific treatments. All these findings are stored in an “informatics platform” called Choir, which stands for the Collaborative Health Outcomes Information Registry. It has files on 15,000 patients, 54,000 unique clinic visits and 40,000 follow-up meetings.
The big chief at the Human Pain Research Laboratory is Dr Sean Mackey, Redlich professor of anaesthesiology, perioperative and pain medicine, neurosciences and neurology at Stanford. His background is in bioengineering, and under his governance the Stanford Pain Management Center has twice been designated a centre of excellence by the American Pain Society. A tall, genial, easy-going man, he is sometimes approached by legal firms who want him to appear in court to state definitively whether their client is or is not in chronic pain (and therefore justified in claiming absentee benefit). His response is surprising.
“In 2008, I was asked by a law firm to speak in an industrial injury case in Arizona. This poor guy got hot burning asphalt sprayed on his arm at work; he had a claim of burning neuropathic pain. The plaintiff’s side brought in a cognitive scientist, who scanned his brain and said there was conclusive evidence that he had chronic pain. The defence asked me to comment, and I said, ‘That’s hogwash, we cannot use this technology for that purpose.’
“Shortly afterwards, I gave a talk on pain, neuroimaging and the law, explaining why you can’t do this – because there’s too much individual variability in pain, and the technology isn’t sensor-specific enough. But I concluded by saying, ‘If you were to do this, you’d use modern machine-learning approaches, like those used for satellite reconnaissance to determine whether a satellite is seeing a tank or a civilian truck.’ Some of my students said, ‘Can you give us some money to try this?’ I said, ‘Yes, but it can’t be done.’ But they designed the experiment – and discovered that, using brain imagery, they could predict with 80% accuracy whether someone was feeling heat pain or not.”
Mackey finally published a paper about the experiment. So did his findings influence any court decisions? “No. I get asked by attorneys, and I always say, ‘There is no place for this in the courtroom in 2016 and there won’t be in 2020. People want to push us into saying this is an objective biomarker for detecting that someone’s in pain. But the research is in carefully controlled laboratory conditions. You cannot generalise about the population as a whole. I told the attorneys, ‘This is too much of a leap.’ I don’t think there’s a lot of clinical utility in having a pain-o-meter in a court or in most clinical situations.”
Mackey explains the latest thinking about what pain actually is. “Now we understand that pain is a balance between ascending information coming from our bodies and descending inhibitory systems from our brains. We call the ascending information “nociception” – from the Latin nocere, to harm or hurt – meaning the response of the sensory nervous system to potentially harmful stimuli coming from our periphery, sending signals to the spinal cord and hitting the brain with the perception of pain. The descending systems are inhibitory, or filtering, neurons, which exist to filter out information that’s not important, to “turn down” the ascending signals of hurt. The main purpose of pain is to be the great motivator, to tell you to pay attention, to focus. When the pain lab was started, we had no way of addressing these two dynamic systems, and now we can.”
Mackey is immensely proud of his massive CHOIR database – which records people’s pain tolerance levels and how they are affected by treatment – and has made it freely available to other pain clinics as a “community source platform”, collaborating with academic medical centres nationwide “so that a rising tide elevates all boats”. But he is also humble enough to admit that science cannot tell us which are the sites of the body’s worst pains.
“Back pain is the most reported pain at 28%, but I know there’s a higher density of nerve fibres in the hands, face, genitals and feet than in other areas,” Mackey says, “and there are conditions where the sufferer has committed suicide to get away from the pain. Things like post-herpetic neuralgia, that burning nerve pain that occurs after an outbreak of shingles and is horrific; another is cluster headaches – some patients have thought about taking a drill to their heads to make it stop.”
Like Irene Tracey, Mackey is enthusiastic about the rise of transcranial magnetic stimulation (“Imagine hooking a nine-volt battery across your scalp”) but, when asked about his particular successes, he talks about simple solutions. “Early on in my career, I used to be very focused on the peripheral, the apparent site of the pain. I was doing interventions, and some people would get better but a lot wouldn’t. So I started listening to their fears and anxieties and working on those, and became very brain-focused. I noticed that if you have a nerve trapped in your knee, your whole leg could be on fire, but if you apply a local anaesthetic there, it could abolish it.
“This young woman came to me with a terrible burning sensation in her hand. It was always swollen; she couldn’t stand anyone touching it because it felt like a blowtorch.” Mackey noticed that she had a post-operative scar from prior surgery for carpal-tunnel syndrome. Speculating that this was at the root of her problem, he injected botulinum toxin, a muscle relaxant, at the site of the scar. “A week later, she came up and gave me this huge hug and said, ‘I was able to pick up my child for the first time in two years. I haven’t been able to since she was born.’ All the swelling was gone. It taught me that it’s not all about the body part, and not all about the brain. It’s about both.”
Main illustration by Matthew Richardson
This is an edited version of an article that appears on Mosaic. It is republished here under a Creative Commons licence.
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https://www.theguardian.com/Guardian/world/1988/sep/12/eu.politics | World news | 1988-09-12T12:35:02.000Z | Jonathan Steele | Estonians push Moscow's tolerance to the limit by taking Gorbachev at his word | Halfway through this autumn's Baltic Fleet manoeuvres off the Estonian coast, the deputy fleet commander held a press conference to explain each day's procedures. After it was over, a reporter for Estonian television asked to put an extra question direct to comera.
'By all means,' the rear admiral replied. 'What's the question?'
'Can you tell us,' the reporter asked, 'whether there is any truth in the rumours going round town that you have sent all these warships here because of the rising nationalism in Estonia ?'
To his credit, the admiral was unfazed. 'Of course not. We could have had the manoeuvres off Leningrad or Latvia. It's pure coincidence that they are here.'
By any standards, the Estonian reporter's question was extraordinary, a sign not only of the boldness of this republic's glasnost but also of local fears that comparisons between Estonia in 1988 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 are not fanciful.
A festering economic crisis, growing resentment over the high levels of Russian immigration, fears that Estonians would soon be a minority in their own land, and anger at the way Moscow continues to monopolise all decision-making broke out this spring and summer into a series of huge demonstrations.
Rank and file communists joined non-communists in taking calls for political reform in every sphere of Soviet life. They have called for Estonia to have its own citizenship, the restoration of the pre-war national flag, and full economic independence.
One suggestion was that Estonia should become like one of China's special economic zones with special rights for foreigners to invest and a transferable currency.
Estonia 's only senior diplomat, Mr Vaino Valyas, told the central committee last week that there was a 'crisis of confidence between the party and people' and that unless they gave in to most of the popular demands they would lose control of the situation. More than 200,000 people gathered yesterday for a mass rally and festival of national songs in celebration of the party's concessions.
In his speech on Friday Mr Valyas warmly approved the recent creation of a 'People's Front in support for perestroika,' describing it as a vital way for defeating the opponents of perestroika and enlisting the political energies of people who are not party members. Efforts to get official approval for similar movements in other Soviet cities have not yet succeeded, and Estonia for the moment remains an exception.
Mr Valyas also praised the newly-formed 'Green' movement in Estonia , although he did not expressly endorse its plans to run candidates in local elections. This too is a unique development.
On the surface, tension between Russians and Estonians is not apparent, and there is no comparison with the conflict between Armenians and Azerbaijanis earlier this year. But there is anger over the recent high rates of Russian immigration, and the fact that few Russians bother to learn Estonian or understand its history.
No one knows whether the plan to give Estonia economic independence will lose it more than it gains, at least in the beginning.
Estonia is obliged to send much of its food to the rest of the Soviet Union at low prices fixed by Moscow, and imports consumer goods at high prices,. With proper xozrashchet, or cost-accounting, the republic could charge market prices for its food, and trade freely with the rest of the world.
This part of Estonia 's aspirations has won Mr Gorbachev's approval, at least on an experimental basis. Estonia hopes to move to it by January next year. Mr Gorbachev's reaction to the political developments is less clear, but so far Estonians are optimistic, and there have been no anxious missions from leading Moscow politicians to Tallinn to check the situation.
The central Soviet press has been generally quiet. In the first full analysis of the situation, Pravda ran an article a fortnight ago, and its tone was positive, describing xozrashchet as a way of resisting nationalism and keeping developments in Estonia on socialist lines. The article also praised the People's Front and the Greens. But it warned that under the cover of the various movements some people were 'spreading the poison of hatred towards socialism.'
For the moment there is broad unity between the reformist majority in the Estonian party leadership and the popular movements. Talk of outright secession is ruled out as an impractical option by all but the small group which recently formed an Estonian National Independence Party.
Meanwhile, the Estonian spring is still on course, and the Baltic Fleet's unconnected warships have steamed away. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/crossword-blog/2014/nov/25/unexpected-treat-fans-araucaria-guardian-crossword-setter | Crosswords | 2014-11-25T15:25:15.000Z | Alan Connor | Araucaria’s final crossword: one last treat from the master | If you are a regular solver of the Guardian’s cryptic crossword, you are advised to click away now. If you have already solved it, then a) congratulations and b) pour yourself a cup of something soothing, if you didn’t do so as soon as you saw the name of the setter.
It is, to put it mildly, a surprise to see Araucaria’s name underneath a puzzle on Wednesday. This is a pseudonym known even to those Guardian readers who are not addicted to the paper’s puzzles.
Araucaria – also known as the Rev John Galbraith Graham – is the only Guardian crossword setter to have received the MBE and chosen a set of Desert Island discs. He crossed over from the puzzle to the news pages last January when he announced that he had oesophageal cancer.
With characteristic chutzpah, this announcement took the form of Guardian cryptic crossword No 25,842, which first appeared in 1 Across magazine, and came with the special message “Araucaria has 18 down of the 19”. I found solving it an experience which was at first sombre, but finally cheering, not least because of the thought of Araucaria responding to the prognosis by looking for anagrams.
He went on to set a further 25 puzzles and died on 26 November 2013. So there’s nothing the least cryptic about the appearance today of a final Araucaria puzzle: No 26,427 is a memorial and was, as the rubric explains, “finished by a friend”.
That friend is fellow Guardian setter Philistine. Araucaria had completed a grid which, Philistine remembers, he “tore out carefully from a sheet of A4 while I was at his bedside in hospital”. He had completed a grid full of answers, but didn’t feel he had the concentration to complete it with the clues. So the two men did what setters do; they discussed the words (solvers look away now). Araucaria was delighted to have constructed a grid with a top row containing ADMIRAL and SKIPPER – both nautical terms, of course, and also both butterflies (the theme of the puzzle). Philistine queried a couple of entries: SHIRRALEE and IN SE. Not expressions we use everyday, to be sure, but Araucaria insisted that Guardian solvers would know them both already, or would benefit from discovering them in the course of solving.
(This is reminiscent of his puzzle No 20,014, a tribute to South African anti-apartheid campaigners including Ruth First, Steve Biko and Chris Hani. Araucaria described them as “martyrs” in the puzzle and explained that they “were people I thought Guardian readers should know”.)
I wondered whether Philistine attempted to write the clues in the style of his late friend. He told me that he did, but that the same “probably applies in most of my puzzles and possibly in those of many other crossword compilers”.
The most touching clue is surely the one which also gives the theme: 25 across. BUTTERFLY is clued as “It’s what it does to another Rev (9)”. Our Rev is the Rev John Graham; the other is William Archibald Spooner, in whose fabled phrasing the insect in question might “flutter by”. Here a lover of wordplay expresses our love for another – in wordplay.
The emotional part of the process didn’t hit Philistine until he saw the proof copy of the completed puzzle. “It put into sharp relief the magnitude of the loss to the crossword community of his departure,” he says.
This article was amended on 27 November 2014 to credit 1 Across magazine. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/nov/22/welsh-labour-and-plaid-cymru-to-cooperate-on-almost-50-policy-areas | UK news | 2021-11-22T17:10:22.000Z | Steven Morris | Welsh Labour and Plaid Cymru to cooperate on almost 50 policy areas | Radical plans ranging from strict restrictions on second home ownership to setting up a publicly owned energy company and driving forward a free nationwide social care system have been announced in an agreement between the Labour-led Welsh government and the nationalists, Plaid Cymru.
Details of the “cooperation agreement” were unveiled by the Welsh first minister, Mark Drakeford, and the leader of Plaid, Adam Price, on the steps of the Welsh parliament building, the Senedd, on Monday.
The three-year agreement covers almost 50 policy areas and also includes the delivery of free school meals to all primary school pupils, a commitment to bolster the Welsh language and understanding of the country’s history, and exploring an increase in the number of Senedd members.
Drakeford said: “We do not have a monopoly on good ideas and we will work with progressive parties where we have shared and common interests to benefit people in Wales.”
Welsh Labour won 30 of the 60 seats at the last election, one short of an absolute majority. Working with Plaid, which has 13 seats, will create what Drakeford called a “stable Senedd” capable of delivering “radical change and reform”.
Drakeford refused to be drawn on whether the three-year lifespan of the deal indicated how long he intended to remain first minister. He said he stuck by his pledge to remain as first minister and make sure the party was “thoroughly established” in this Senedd term.
Price said the agreement was a “historic” step forward to Wales and a “radical counterpoint” to the confrontational nature of Westminster politics. “We’re setting out a new way of doing politics,” he said.
The Plaid leader also said his party would have the best of both worlds, pushing forward some of its most important priorities while still opposing Labour in areas not covered in the agreement.
The parties emphasised that it was not a coalition, but a “bespoke agreement”. No Plaid members join the government as ministers or deputies, but is understood Plaid special advisers will be allowed to work within the Welsh government’s offices.
Among the plans outlined are:
“Immediate and radical action” to address the crisis of second homes and unaffordable housing, using the planning, property and taxation systems. Actions being planned include a cap on the number of second and holiday homes.
A publicly owned energy company for Wales could be created to encourage community-owned renewable energy generation.
Appoint a commission of independent advice to examine potential pathways to net zero by 2035 – the current target date is 2050.
Set up an expert group to support the creation of a “national care service”, free at the point of need. Implementation plan to be agreed by by the end of 2023.
Extend free school meals to all primary school pupils, over the lifetime of the agreement.
Establish a national construction company to support councils and social landlords to improve the supply of social and affordable housing.
Support plans to reform the Senedd, increasing its membership to between 80 and 100 members and having gender quotas enshrined in law.
Improve the teaching of Welsh history and make its delivery mandatory in the new curriculum for Wales.
Set new ambitions and incentives to expand the proportion of the education workforce who can teach and work through the Welsh language.
Prof Laura McAllister, of the Wales governance centre at Cardiff University, described the agreement as a “curate’s egg”, important, radical policies sitting alongside promises to explore and investigate.
She said she believed Drakeford was keen to make sure his legacy was not confined to his handling of the Covid crisis. For Plaid, which finished third at May’s elections, it was a foothold in power.
The Welsh Conservative shadow minister for the constitution, Darren Millar, said: “This deal fails to deliver on the priorities of the people of Wales. It does nothing to address the crisis in our NHS; nothing to improve our ailing Welsh infrastructure; and nothing to fire up our sluggish economy.”
The agreement is subject to ratification by the Plaid Cymru membership at its annual conference on Saturday. The cooperation agreement is due to come into force on 1 December. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/nov/04/if-chatbots-can-ace-job-interviews-for-us-maybe-its-time-to-scrap-this-ordeal | Opinion | 2023-11-04T17:30:00.000Z | Martha Gill | If chatbots can ace job interviews for us, maybe it’s time to scrap this ordeal | Martha Gill | In the evolutionary arms race between interviewer and interviewee, I think it is inevitable that both roles will at some point be played fully by robots. AI is already helping us to filter through CVs – one day, we will be able to leave chatbots entirely to it: everywhere, in pockets of cyberspace, one large language model will be offering another a seat and asking about the last challenge it faced at work, while we humans get on with something more useful.
We came one step closer to this utopia recently, when one – clearly quite brilliant – job candidate was revealed to be using AI to feed her answers during a Zoom interview. A phone app recorded the questions in real time and delivered “perfect” replies, which she calmly read off the screen, thus demonstrating innovation, resourcefulness, and a healthy disrespect for the whole interview process. I hope she gets the job.
This disrespect is, after all, long overdue. It may be time to get rid of the job interview altogether. Since at least the early 1900s, it has squatted in the centre of the hiring process, where it has revealed – primarily – that we like to think ourselves “good at reading people”, when in fact we really aren’t. We know this because the interview has been the subject of a swathe of research. And what has this research told us? In sum, that if one candidate outperforms another in an informal interview, the chances that they will do better in the job are little better than flipping a coin.
How do we get people so wrong? Well, one major problem is bias . How a candidate looks tends to matter more than it should – the beautiful always do better, even when the job involves data input or working for radio. People also tend to give jobs to those most similar to them in terms of background, gender, age and race (there are now attempts to train recruiters out of this, but biases are hard to shift). When recruiters aim to find someone who is a “cultural fit” for their workplace, this is often what they are doing, consciously or not.
People tend to give jobs to those most similar to them in terms of background, gender, age or race
Then, too, minds are often made up during the first few minutes of an interview, in the bit where you chat about the traffic or the weather, supposedly to get the candidate to relax. This suggests superficial qualities weigh heavily in hiring decisions, whether or not recruiters are aware of it. The firmness of a handshake can be used to predict offers, even when grip strength has little to do with the job itself. Apparently, this is in part because first impressions can dictate the direction of the rest of the interview. If recruiters feel apprehensive about a candidate at first glance, they might be inclined to ask them tougher questions, or look for evidence that their impressions are correct.
In his book Noise, psychologist Daniel Kahneman provides a telling example of this sort of bias. Two colleagues interview the same candidate, who explains that he left his last job because of a “strategic disagreement with the CEO”. But the colleagues interpret this differently. One, who starts with a positive view of the interviewee, takes it “as an indication of integrity and courage”. The other, who has formed the opposite impression, believes that instead it shows “inflexibility, perhaps even immaturity”.
This wouldn’t matter, perhaps, if interviews were treated as a relatively small part of the hiring process – the final flourish. But they tend to leave vivid impressions, which can override CVs, references, and even test scores. Yes – performance in one highly artificial situation seems to matter more than actual data.
Despite all this, employers are deeply attached to the process – they remain convinced that they cannot really “get a feel of a candidate” without it. Like driving or sex, we all seem to have a deeply held belief that we are good at interviewing. Structured interviews – where every candidate is asked the same question and evaluated according to an algorithm, rather than according to the guts of their interviewers – are better at predicting job performance but have been fiercely resisted by employers. They prefer to trust their intuition to tell them whether a candidate is right or not. They “just know”.
One answer, then, as to why the interview remains in the hiring process, is that it massages the egos of recruiters. I think that this might also explain another puzzle – a fad for off-the-wall questions that have nothing to do with the job.
Such questions have long infuriated job seekers. When in 1921 the American inventor Thomas Edison interviewed graduates at his plant, the questions included “Who wrote Home Sweet Home?” and “What is the weight of air in a room 20x30x10?”. “ ‘Victims’ of test say only ‘a walking encyclopedia’ could answer questionnaire” ran a headline in the New York Times. But, of course, the trend didn’t end there. “If you could be remembered for one sentence, what would it be?” Google once asked candidates for an associate account strategist position. Goldman Sachs, meanwhile, had this question for prospective bankers: “If you were shrunk to the size of a pencil and put in a blender, how would you get out?”
Of course, one effect of such questions is to make a profession seem far more interesting than it is – thus flattering the interviewers.
But hiring is too important for this sort of nonsense; a nation’s success, after all, rides on the quality of its employees. Getting the right people into the right jobs is where fairness and productivity meet. We should start by making job interviews more structured. We could end by getting rid of them altogether.
Martha Gill is an Observer columnist | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/mar/13/coneygree-wins-gold-cup-cheltenham-festival | Sport | 2015-03-13T15:44:03.000Z | Chris Cook | Coneygree all-the-way winner of the Gold Cup at Cheltenham Festival | Coneygree became the first novice to win the Cheltenham Gold Cup in 41 years after making nearly all the running under Nico De Boinville. As in his previous handful of races, the horse put up a superb display of jumping and remorseless galloping to beat a big field of talented rivals.
The result is a total vindication of the decision by Mark and Sara Bradstock, the training team behind Coneygree, to send their horse for the biggest prize of all. The much more orthodox alternative was to keep him to novice company in the RSA Chase here on Wednesday and many in racing were set against the idea of running such an inexperienced horse in such a famously tough contest.
The winner was bred by the late Lord Oaksey, who spent many years as a popular pundit on Channel 4 Racing. Sara Bradstock is his daughter.
“Words can’t describe it without using expletives, but it’s unbelievable,” said De Boinville, who had previously been best known as the regular work-rider of Sprinter Sacre. “I knew I had a lot of horse left.”
The first circuit of this Gold Cup proved undramatic, though Lord Windermere, last year’s winner, dropped even further to the rear than he had then and this time there was no recovering. Going out on the back stretch for the second time, Coneygree wound up the tempo mercilessly and, within two or three fences, half the field was plainly beaten.
Silviniaco Conti, who was sent off favourite to win the race at the third time of asking, was running on empty by the final downhill run, along with another fancied runner, Many Clouds. By the turn for home, Djakadam, Road To Riches and Holywell looked like the only ones still with a chance of catching the pace-setter.
Djakadam’s challenge lasted longest and it seemed he might give his trainer, Willie Mullins, a first success in the race, as he stayed on up the far side of the run-in. But Coneygree, who hung towards the stands, somehow found the reserves to keep pounding up the famous hill and he held a winning margin of a length and a half at the line.
Mullins has now had the runner-up five times in this race. Road To Riches was third and Holywell fourth as the old order that produced such a muddled finish last year was swept aside.
The outcome means four of the week’s five major races have been won by horses who made all the running, Coneygree following Faugheen in the Champion Hurdle, Uxizandre in the Ryanair and Cole Harden in the World Hurdle. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/nov/22/dont-look-back-in-anger-did-britpop-cause-brexit | Music | 2018-11-22T14:30:41.000Z | Michael Hann | Don't look back in anger: did Britpop cause Brexit? | Part of what makes pop music great is unintended consequences. The French musician Michel Bernholc could not have conceived that, a decade after his 1971 novelty hit Burundi Black, British pop would be in thrall to that sound, reconfigured by a man who dressed as a highwayman or a hussar; when Dave Davies stuck his guitar through an amp, drastically altering its tone, he could not have imagined that he was inventing heavy metal, and that Norwegians would end up burning down churches as a result. So was Brexit one of the consequences of Britpop more than 20 years ago?
It’s a thesis that has been cropping up recently – suggested by the cultural historian Jon Savage, in a closely argued review of Damon Albarn’s new album with The Good, the Bad & the Queen, and a year ago in Vice. Even the official chronicler of Britpop, the Guardian’s John Harris, was moved to ask in the New Statesman last year: “If, from 1995, people were giddily messing around with flags and endlessly evoking a past Britain that probably never existed, where did that lead?”
Is the answer: to Nigel Farage, Michael Gove and Jacob Rees-Mogg?
No. Of course not. Menswear didn’t tell all those lies about what Brussels was up to, Boris Johnson did – then no one called him out about it. Northern Uproar didn’t go around the country complaining about immigration, Nigel Farage did – and the BBC kept putting him on Question Time. Ocean Colour Scene’s tour bus didn’t promise an extra £350m a week for the NHS, the Leave campaigners’ did – then they shrugged it off when their sums were found to be wrong.
Gallagher meets Blair at Downing Street. Photograph: Rebecca Naden/WPA rota/PA
Nevertheless, what Britpop originally was – a way of reclaiming an identity for gaudy, magpieish British music from the grey blanket of grunge, then slapped on the cover of Select magazine in April 1993 – was not what it became. Of course it wasn’t: the essence of every pop movement is altered by exposure, when it becomes about its consumers’ interpretations rather than its creators’ intentions. Punk went from art school kids seeking to shock to blokes with mohicans drinking cider outside shopping centres. Britpop went from something arch and wry and awkward to beery singalongs with arms around shoulders.
In that transformation, though, Britpop did give new vigour to a strand of conservatism that has long existed in pop music – the one that believes there is A Proper Way To Do Things (And It Usually Involves Blokes With Guitars, and that Black People Should Not Headline Glastonbury). Combine that with a sense of national musical identity that was usually explicitly English – not British, and certainly not internationalist – and fundamentally nostalgic, and you do have a potent cultural brew. The whole point about pop is that it has social force, which is why people so often try to co-opt it. Britpop had more social force than most pop movements – which was why it was co-opted all the way to Downing Street.
But Britpop is not the be-all and end-all of British music. If you want a real hit of no-nonsense, hidebound nostalgia, look instead to the bestselling single of 1995, Britpop’s annus mirabilis: Robson and Jerome’s Unchained Melody/The White Cliffs of Dover (they also had the bestselling album of the year). No one is suggesting Robson and Jerome were the cause of our current woes. And remember, too, that dance music was more popular than Britpop: Everything But the Girl’s Missing outsold Wonderwall.
Britpop was not a monolithic force. It certainly was a thread in the new, respectable nationalism of the 1990s, beginning with the rehabilitation of the England football team in 1990 and culminating with Vanity Fair’s Cool Britannia cover. And, doubtless, some of the people who still have feathercuts and wear Pretty Green did vote Leave. But some – not at all. So did Britpop lead to Brexit? As Noel Gallagher would say: “I’m not ’aving that.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/26/theres-nowhere-else-for-children-walsall-locals-react-to-library-closure-plans | Books | 2016-10-26T06:00:05.000Z | Hannah Ellis-Petersen | There’s nowhere else for children': Walsall locals react to library closure plans | The comforting tap of knitting needles, clink of teaspoons in mugs and excitable chatter fills Blakenall library in Walsall, where a group of 17 has gathered for the weekly Knit and Natter session.
Knitting patterns and sewing books are passed around the group, whose members range from giggling octogenarians to nine-year-olds with their brows furrowed in concentration over their cross-stitching.
Yet a sword of Damocles hangs over the gathering. On Monday, Walsall council put forward proposals to close 15 of the 16 libraries in the area in a bid to save £2.9m per year. Should it go ahead, Blakenall library – and its Knit and Natter group – would be no more.
The news of the potential mass closures came as a devastating blow to residents, who have come to rely on the library for more than borrowing books. Janet Hodson, 71, who sat with Chloe, six, Lilly, nine, and Kylie, 11, at her feet as she corrected some missed stitches in a yellow blanket they had been working on, described the proposal as diabolical.
“It’s absolutely devastating,” she said. “For an area the size of Walsall to just have one library, which for older people like me is hard to get to, is absolutely ludicrous.
“This library means everything to me. We’re here once a week at our Knit and Natter, we’re here for our over-50s clubs and we have people come in for talks. It gets you out of the house for a couple of hours. Especially for my sister, who is also here; if she didn’t have this group she’d be sitting in the flat all day on her own.”
She added: “Where do we go if they close the libraries? And just look, it’s half-term and I’ve got three youngsters here learning to knit. These spaces disappear and they’ve got nowhere to go.”
Indeed, figures show that the 16 libraries are not underused. Over the past two years, the libraries have had about 1 million visits, with approximately 775,000 books borrowed each year.
Walsall’s New Art Gallery also faces proposed cuts. Photograph: Andrew Fox
The news of the potential closures came as a particular blow to Kylie, 11, who promptly sat down to write the council a letter.
“They can’t close it down,” she said. “We come here every day, it’s just up the road so our mum lets us walk. It would be so sad if we couldn’t come, we spend all our time here with the books. I love it here.”
The drastic proposal to cut all but one of the libraries is an embarrassing back pedal for the Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition council that, while in opposition, had made an explicit proposal not to cut any library services. In February, five Walsall libraries were saved from planned closures by Labour and Lib Dem councillors, who then gained control of the council in May as a coalition.
However, this week the council was forced to admit that budget restrictions were “more severe” than anticipated and £86m needs to be found to balance the books by 2020. Cuts are also being proposed to Walsall’s New Art Gallery and other services.
“The council fully appreciates that the art gallery and libraries are much-loved by those that use them,” the council said in a statement. “However, like many councils across the country, this authority can’t ignore the fact that savings have to be made.”
Another suggestion being put forward is that five Walsall libraries will be kept open, but all run on a budget of £1m. Both proposals will be opened up to local residents for discussion over the next few weeks. A petition to save the libraries and art gallery had more than 2,500 signatures on Tuesday.
For mother-of-five Louise Taylor, who home-schools her children, it would “devastate” her family if Blakenall library was to shut.
“We don’t have the internet at home so we use the internet here and the children have done computer courses here and they always take out books,” she said, with son Ruben, 11, sitting diligently knitting beside her.
“For us it’s really important and in this area, where there’s not much in the way of money, having a resource where you can get on the internet, where you can borrow books and where you can meet other people, it’s just essential. If this place closes where are the children going to go? There’s nowhere else.”
Child poverty is a particular problem in Walsall with figures showing that in the borough there are 16,000 children living in poverty – and in some areas 40% living in extreme poverty.
Sonia O’Brien, 52, a regular at Blakenall library, said the council should be “ashamed” about proposing to close one of the few services available to children in the area.
She added: “I’m a kidney patient and I’m on dialysis three times a week and I just wouldn’t be able to travel all that distance to the central library. To be able to come here, just up the road, is ideal.
“There are quite a few people who come here who have disabilities and to close the local library means they are the ones who will suffer the most.”
At nearby Bloxwich library, Beverley Horton, 27, looked crestfallen at the news it was on the brink of closure. She indicated to her four children who rushed ahead excitedly through the library doors.
“All my children would be gutted if it shut,” she said. “They love coming here, religiously every week and getting books and bringing them all back home. Even when I was pregnant, I’d read library books to the eldest when he was just a bump.”
Horton sighed deeply. “We never miss coming, it such a big part of their life. I don’t know how I’d explain to them if it was suddenly gone.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/dec/12/the-poseidon-adventure-1972-movie | Film | 2022-12-12T06:16:53.000Z | Scott Tobias | The Poseidon Adventure at 50: Gene Hackman brings dignity to disaster | In an interview with Vanity Fair, Ben Stiller talked about working on The Royal Tenenbaums with Gene Hackman and finally getting up the nerve, two days before the shoot ended, to tell the intimidating Hackman how much he loved The Poseidon Adventure and how it changed his life and made him want to become a film-maker. As Stiller recalled, Hackman gruffly responded: “Oh yeah, money job.”
The exchange did not go as Stiller hoped, but he was firm in his conclusion: “Even if it was a money job for Hackman, it was the most incredible money-job performance I’ve ever seen.”
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Both men have a point. In the grand arc of Hackman’s career, The Poseidon Adventure is not a work of art like The French Connection or The Conversation, but a tacky Irwin Allen production, to be followed later by another enormous disaster movie, The Towering Inferno. It’s a lumbering ensemble piece, with Ernest Borgnine screaming at the top of his lungs, Shelley Winters swan-diving into floodwaters and an annoying little boy who happens to know that the engine room on a capsized ocean liner has a steel hull that’s only one-inch thick.
And yet Hackman is legitimately extraordinary. For actors that prolific – he would appear in over 100 movies in his career – there’s usually a temptation to “phone it in” on the junkier projects, but as a troubled preacher who leads 10 passengers up to the bottom of the ship, Hackman commits himself so fully to the role that you’d never imagine he’d ever shrug it off. He was a pro’s pro: in a cast full of hams and gams, Hackman creates a character whose will to live – and to save other’s lives in the process – is a matter of religious devotion, a Job-like burden against a spiteful or indifferent God. He strives to make the movie deserve his performance.
Fifty years later, The Poseidon Adventure remains an irresistible relic of the pre-blockbuster era, before Steven Spielberg came along and proved that productions of this scale didn’t have to feel so ungainly. But Allen and director Ronald Neame turn a simple fight for survival into an action showcase that nonetheless goes to greater lengths than necessary to develop its characters and make their survival (and sacrifices) meaningful to the audience. They’re making sure they earn their paychecks, too, just like Hackman.
Based on Paul Gallico’s novel – which would be adapted two more times subsequently, most notably in a 2006 flop from the Das Boot director Wolfgang Petersen – the film takes place on the SS Poseidon, an old luxury liner that’s taking a final journey from New York City to Athens. And much like a cop on his last day before retirement, the ship is about to get popped. When an undersea earthquake near Crete triggers a tsunami, the captain (Leslie Nielsen) tries to steer away from the 100ft wave, but the ship lists so badly from the impact that it flips around entirely. Gathered in the promenade room for a New Year’s Eve party, the surviving passengers are the top of a ship that has now submerged, which means they’re at the bottom.
As the Rev Frank Scott, a minister who argues that people should help themselves rather than rely on God to do it, Hackman spends the film turning doubters into disciples, which is never easy. While the ship’s representative advises everyone to stay put and wait for help, Frank believes that the only chance for survival is to climb the six levels “up” to the bottom, but few are convinced. Among the 10 that join him are a cop (Borgnine) and his wife (Stella Stevens), retirees (Shelley Winters and Jack Albertson) en route to meet their infant grandson in Israel, the singer (Carol Lynley) in the house band, an injured waiter (Roddy McDowall), and a vitamin-popping haberdasher (Red Buttons).
Save for the occasional cutaway to the capsized ship rumbling underwater from an explosion, the effects in The Poseidon Adventure are mostly limited to Dutch tilts, shots of bolted furniture hanging upside down, and intermittent bursts of water as the flooding breaches the lower (upper) levels. Mostly, it’s Hackman trying to rally the others to stick to the plan and leading them through flame-filled galleys and ducts that may or may not be too tight for the plus-sized Winters to get through. (A scene where Winters gets the opportunity to show off her prize-winning swimming skills is a glorious bit of redemption.) The film is also shameless in doling out low-angle shots of the three leggiest women on board, who are told, in sobering terms, that they cannot possibly survive in their evening gowns.
For the film to open with Nielsen sternly issuing warnings about the ship’s stabilizers holding up in storm conditions already makes The Poseidon Adventure seem like the Nielsen-led spoof Airplane! eight years later, especially when a boy turns up acting just like Joey, the freckle-faced kid who interrogates Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. But Hackman just keeps on providing the urgency and gravity that keeps the film from sinking the depths of self-parody. His Reverend Frank refuses to resign himself to an early afterlife, and his constant efforts to rally his weary, doubtful followers is a preview of what he’d pull off later as coach of a rural basketball team in Hoosiers. Few performances have done more to dignify a film that cares so little about dignity. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2021/nov/13/preschool-san-antonio-texas | Education | 2021-11-13T07:00:05.000Z | Alexandra Villarreal | Most US parents struggle to find affordable preschool. One Texas city has them covered | Even after Malik Johnson turned four years old, he would scream, trying desperately to communicate despite his speech delay.
His mother, Jennifer Emelogu, a former English teacher, knew he wouldn’t be ready for kindergarten.
So Emelogu transferred Malik from his daycare to Pre-K 4 SA, San Antonio’s grassroots model for high-quality early childhood education. Funded through a ⅛-cent local sales tax, the program has become a point of pride for the Texas city – a place where students and parents can actually get the support they need.
“Every school in the world could take a page out of Pre-K 4 SA’s book. For real,” Emelogu said. “There’s no kid that fell through the cracks here.”
By the end of last academic year, Malik had learned how to calm himself down and his speech therapist felt certain he was prepared for elementary school.
“I’ve seen so much progress,” Emelogu said.
Jennifer Emelogu with her son Malik. Photograph: Ilana Panich-Linsman/The Guardian
Now, through the Build Back Better agenda, Joe Biden wants to give every three- and four-year-old in the United States access to high-quality early childhood education like Pre-K 4 SA. The plan would save the average family thousands each year on childcare, while making good preschool available to millions more kids.
When Biden announced his trimmed-down Build Back Better framework late last month, universal Pre-K was still a prominent feature, even after the administration cut its original $3.5tn wishlist to $1.75tn. But the bill still faces an uncertain future in Congress, where conservative and progressive Democrats have been sparring over which social programs to preserve.
Free, universal preschool could radically reform the country’s status quo, where high-quality early childhood education is a luxury, not a right. For many families, childcare – sometimes as costly as college tuition – has become a formidable barrier to career growth and economic stability.
Some parents are spending most if not all of their earnings on daycare or preschool. Others have dropped out of the workforce to become full-time caregivers.
“The fact is, today, only about half of three- and four-year-olds in America are enrolled in early childhood education,” Biden said last month. “In Germany, France, and the UK, even Latvia, the number of children in those countries enrolled is 90% – 90%.”
In fact, the US trails much of the world in enrollment in pre-primary education, even though there’s clear evidence that high-quality programs pay off. Their rates of return often mirror or exceed stock market returns, especially among less privileged children.
Possible benefits of good quality early childhood education are far-reaching, including, but not limited to, better health, higher incomes and less crime.
“If the United States is gonna be competitive economically around the world in the years to come, it’s absolutely essential that we invest in universal Pre-K and get our young people off to a much better start in their educational journey. So it’s a pressing need,” said Julián Castro, the former San Antonio mayor who spearheaded Pre-K 4 SA.
Universal Pre-K is wildly popular as a policy, with recent polling showing that as many as 73% of Republicans and 95% of Democrats support free preschool for three- and four-year-olds. It’s also nothing new: in the 1970s, Congress almost made childcare an entitlement, and in the intervening decades prominent politicians including Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have championed the cause.
Under Biden, the White House is staffed by top experts like the treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, long an outspoken advocate for how high-quality early learning can bridge socioeconomic and educational disparities.
“It’s a policy that we should really focus on ensuring that there is high-quality provision, and we should really ensure that, you know, the access is given to those who stand to benefit the most,” said Parag Pathak, a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
‘We aimed very high’
In San Antonio, Pre-K 4 SA is a stunning example of the difference preschool can make.
Since the initiative launched in 2013, it has expanded to four campuses and serves 2,000 four-year-olds a year, while also providing professional development and competitive grants to promote quality early education throughout the city.
“We aimed very high. Our goal was to be better than the best programs in the state and the country,” Castro said.
Students learn through play, empowered with problem-solving techniques. They find solutions when conflicts arise, learn practical skills like following recipes, and plant seeds that grow into sunflowers taller than their own teachers.
They also give back to their community, creating San Antonio-inspired art for auction. Proceeds go to a local non-profit the kids choose during elections in the fall – a tradition that teaches them the importance of voting.
“You’re four years old, but there are so many things that you can do,” said Jessica Cruz, a master teacher. “And I think just giving them that sense of confidence, like, ‘I can do things. Even though I’m small, I still have a voice.’”
Jessica Cruz hugs her student goodbye on the last day of school. Photograph: Ilana Panich-Linsman/The Guardian
An impact study on the initiative’s first cohort found that alumni had better attendance records than their peers and didn’t need to repeat grades between kindergarten and second grade. By third grade, reading and math scores eclipsed the state average.
“It’s not that the kids aren’t capable. It’s not that the families aren’t capable. When they have access to highly skilled teachers, evidence-based curriculum and all the supports, the success speaks for itself,” said Sarah Baray, Pre-K 4 SA’s CEO.
Done right, early childhood education “sets children up for success throughout life”, she said.
“When we invest in the people of the community, that has exponential potential to benefit not just that child, not just that family, but the entire community. And that’s how we build a strong future.”
‘Parents are left scrambling’
Briana Saussy and her husband could be saving thousands more a year for their three-year-old’s college fund if they didn’t have to spend so much on part-time childcare.
The couple has intentionally shaped their life in San Antonio so they can be present for their kids’ early years. Both work from home – Saussy as an author, her husband as a freelance teacher – and their younger son goes to preschool just three times a week.
They still pay more than $600 a month to a local children’s center, rates that climb higher if their little boy ever needs to go in early one morning or attend a few extra days.
Living on their children’s schedule also carries a cost: less publicity for Saussy’s books, fewer classes picked up by her husband.
“For us, that was a choice that we were happy to make. But I would be very resentful if it wasn’t a choice … and I had to have him home because I couldn’t afford it,” Saussy said.
Parents across the country are constantly having to weigh options, which affect their careers, incomes and financial wellbeing. In Mesa, Arizona, Cinthia Alaniz and her husband work full-time. They pay for their four-year-old twins’ daycare through state assistance, plus the money they are getting from the child tax credit.
“If we weren’t getting that, we would have to reconsider our whole entire situation,” Alaniz said.
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When Alaniz found out she was pregnant with twins, she stopped working. With three older kids, some of whom would have also needed childcare, it made more sense for their family to live on a single income than for her entire wage to go toward daycare.
Alaniz went back to work in 2019, while her mother and mother-in-law looked after the twins. If both caretakers were too busy, Alaniz switched around her schedule or brought the toddlers to work, which made it difficult to get much done.
Then, she found a role as a family support specialist at an elementary school, where she’s on the same schedule as her school-aged children. But she worries that if she gets a raise or her husband starts working more, they’ll no longer qualify for assistance – a devastating prospect when twins effectively mean double the childcare costs.
“I would have to stop working until they were ready for kindergarten, and we would just be back in the boat that we were in before, where we would just be managing off of one income for a family of seven,” Alaniz said.
For parents, universal pre-k begins to resolve these non-choices. Alaniz wouldn’t have to worry about giving up her career because of childcare costs, while her twins would be guaranteed a free, high-quality education. And Saussy would find more flexibility helpful, even if she still wanted her son at home a few days a week.
“Parents are left scrambling to try to figure out, like, what to do, and how to afford what seems like the best options,” Saussy said. “And I think programs like Pre-K 4 SA are filling a very needed gap.
“I think that if we can have more of that – and more options and more choices for parents – that’s always a benefit.”
‘Excellence on the cheap’
While “universal” has a nice ring to it, the truth is the most affluent families already have access to pre-k, tutors, and at-home care.
But “the real fear that people have is that if it’s targeted, it’s stigmatizing,” explained James J Heckman, a Nobel prize-winning professor of economics at the University of Chicago.
“Making it universal makes it less stigmatizing,” he said, even though “it’s a strictly political criteria”.
Ultimately, the kids who consistently get the most out of accessible early childhood education are the ones who start at a disadvantage, Heckman said. In Pre-K 4 SA’s first cohort, for example, those who were economically underprivileged or limited English proficient benefited the most.
Although Pre-K 4 SA is still a relatively young initiative with limited data, research on other high-quality programs reveals even longer-term positive effects for children and their parents, including on high school graduation, blood pressure, drug use, employment and income.
Those benefits trickle down to the community through a reduction in crime and social spending, and an increase in productivity, Heckman’s work shows.
“Compared to the cost of other things the federal government is doing,” Castro said, “this is excellence on the cheap.”
‘Beyond our wildest dreams’
For Pre-K 4 SA, the federal government’s unprecedented commitment to preschool would be “miraculous,” Baray said.
It would provide an opportunity to “expand far beyond our wildest dreams”, not by opening new learning centers on every corner, but by supporting other programs with teacher training, materials and curriculum.
“If the funding came in through this federal initiative, oh my gosh, we’d be ready to go,” Baray said. “We’ve got the infrastructure to do it, to expand tomorrow. It’s really a matter of funding issues.”
As more seats in other programs open up to four-year-olds, Pre-K 4 SA also hopes to expand its programming to three-year-olds so educators can deepen their relationships with the families they serve.
“One year, and they’re gone. It just seems so fast. They’re out the door. And they change so much within that one year,” said Tonda Brown, director of one of the education centers.
“I can only imagine what they’ll gain in two years.”
Last May, for the end of the school year, Pre-K 4 SA’s students gathered and danced outside in the Texas heat. All the kids seemed happy to be there – and sad to leave. One stopped crying only to take a student-teacher photo.
Proud parents drove up one by one for a parade, their cars decked out to celebrate all their children’s accomplishments.
“I really do feel that our families feel it when they leave,” Brown said. “Their child’s been loved on, and they’ve gotten all the things that they’re gonna need.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/11/pope-francis-revolution-even-started-catholic-church-vatican | World news | 2014-03-11T18:55:39.000Z | Paul Vallely | Pope Francis: has his revolution even started? | After a full year in office it ought to be fairly clear what kind of pope the new man in the Vatican is turning out to be. Yet if you survey the raft of commentaries on the first 12 months of Pope Francis, which have appeared all around the world in recent days, you discover a surprising lack of agreement. A battle is underway for the soul of the pope.
All the verdicts share a standard litany of anecdotes. He is the pontiff who lives in a hostel, carries his own bags, is driven round in an old Ford Focus, and makes unexpected phone calls to strangers that open: "Ciao, sono Papa Francesco." He is a priest who practises what he preaches: he embraces the disfigured; invites the homeless for breakfast; suspends bishops with opulent or self-regarding lifestyles; and follows a regimen of ostentatious frugality.
But is there anything more to this shift in papal style than a cosmetic rebranding of a global corporation that has undergone massive reputational damage in recent decades?
There is a carefully cultivated ambiguity about the man who is the 266th successor to St Peter. And it is producing a war of words between conservatives and liberals, inside and outside the Catholic church, with each trying to claim the pontiff for their side in a religious culture war. The stakes are high. This is a pope who has attracted almost seven million visitors to papal events in the 12 months since he took office – triple the number who turned out to see Benedict XVI the year before.
A glance at his Wikipedia page reveals one side of the battleline. It has clearly been written primarily by religious conservatives. Its entries seek predominantly to accentuate the religious orthodoxy of the man who was born Jorge Mario Bergoglio. Throughout his papacy, it insists, Pope Francis has been a vocal opponent of abortion. He has asserted that he is a "son of the church" and, therefore, loyal to existing doctrine. He has maintained that divorced and remarried Catholics may not receive holy communion (a totemic issue in the traditionalist v progressive divide). The reason he does not sing Gregorian chant during mass is because he had part of one lung removed as a young man.
The casual reader would be advised to take all that as a large dose of spin. Francis's opposition to abortion has hardly been vocal; indeed, he has proclaimed that the church has hitherto "obsessed" too much about it. There is an artful inscrutability to what he means by "a son of the church"; it is a statement about the past, not the future. He has repeatedly hinted that he wants to end the policy of banning divorced and remarried Catholics from communion. He does not chant in Latin because he feels traditional styles of worship do not connect with ordinary people in the wider non-European world.
But what about the other side of the argument? Liberal Catholics, like the new pope's many enthusiasts in the secular world, look to the first non-European bishop of Rome for 1,200 years and see something altogether different. He is "a miracle of humility in an age of vanity", to quote Elton John. He has shown his readiness to break with tradition by washing the feet of women and Muslims. He has told atheists they can get to heaven so long as they "obey their conscience". Most onlookers are attracted by his demand for "a poor church, for the poor" and his letter scolding the rich and powerful at Davos for neglecting the "frail, weak and vulnerable".
Pope Francis kissing the feet of a young offender during a mass at the church of the Casal del Marmo youth prison on the outskirts of Rome in 2013. Photograph: AFP
The world was taken aback when the head of a church whose key document on the pastoral care of gay Christians is called Homosexualitatis Problema asked: "Who am I to judge?" Yet he has shown no such reticence in adjudging the shortcomings of the medieval monarchy that is the Vatican, describing its courtly Curia (officials) as the "leprosy of the papacy".
All of which, conservatives counter, is a wish-fulfilment Fantasy Francis. It mistakes style for substance and ignores the fact that the new pope's actual teaching demonstrates what the prominent US conservative George Weigel, a biographer and confidante of John Paul II, has called a "seamless continuity" with the German and Polish popes who preceded him.
So where does the truth lie? Is Francis a conservative or a liberal? Three areas offer pointers: politics, sex and governance, on each of which there are separate and distinct axes within the world's 1.2 billion Roman Catholics.
Politically, ever since 1891 and Pope Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum, the church has routinely excoriated the excesses of unregulated capitalism and sought to find a third way between it and what it feared as atheistic communism. Francis has been blasted by the US religious right for "pure Marxism" but Pope John Paul II said much the same thing in his day, condemning the "idolatry of the market" and arguing that Marxism was right in its identification of the "exploitation to which an inhuman capitalism subjected the proletariat since the beginning of industrial society".
Jorge Mario Bergoglio as a seminarian in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1966. Photograph: AP
What is different about Francis is that, where previous popes saw the issue as one of theological abstraction, his condemnations of capitalism come from living with its direct impact on the poor. After Argentina became the centre of the world's biggest debt default in 2001, almost half the population was plunged into poverty. "Not to share one's wealth with the poor is to steal from them," Francis proclaimed.
He has rehabilitated liberation theology. Rome sought in the 1970s and 80s to emasculate the movement, which grew up in South America and aimed to place the church on the side of the poor in struggles for justice and social change in the developing world. Bergoglio, as leader of the Jesuits in Argentina three decades ago, was part of the move to suppress it as a cover for Marxist class struggle. But as pope he has invited the father of the movement, Gustavo Gutierrez, to Rome and had the Vatican pronounce that liberation theology can no longer "remain in the shadows to which it has been relegated for some years". He has also asked another key figure, Leonardo Boff, who was once condemned to "obsequious silence" by Rome, to contribute his writings on eco-theology to a document Francis is planning on the environment.
It is on Catholic attitudes to sex that Pope Francis has been at his most ambiguous. The interview he gave to Corriere della Sera last week has only added to the opacity on contraception, divorce, homosexuality, gender and paedophile priests.
One of Francis's most innovative acts has been to issue an unprecedented questionnaire to discover what lay people around the world think of the church's handling of issues around sexual ethics. Early indications – from Germany and Ireland, to the Philippines and Japan – are of a seismic gap between official teaching and what ordinary Catholics believe and do. The exercise, ahead of two decision-making synods of bishops this and next year, has raised big expectations of change.
The pope appearing in a selfie taken by young pilgrims in St Peter's, Rome. Photograph: AP
But in Corriere della Sera, Francis praised Pope Paul VI's encyclical Humanae Vitae of 1968, which reaffirmed the church's longstanding ban on the use of artificial contraception. Pope Paul did this in the teeth of a major consultation with scientists, doctors and theologians who recommended lifting the ban. His decision undermined the credibility of the church in the eyes of many, if not most, Catholics. Last week, Francis said Pope Paul's "genius was prophetic, he had the courage to side against the majority, defend moral discipline, put a brake on the culture, oppose neo-Malthusianism, present and future" – though he added that the church should take care to apply its teaching against artificial birth control with "much mercy".
There was equivalence, too, in what he had to say on gay marriage. He reiterated the official line that marriage must be "between a man and a woman", but added that the church needed to "look at" the issue of civil unions to protect the civil and legal rights of "diverse situations of cohabitation". Then, in a classic Catholic one-step-forward-two-steps-back, Vatican officials insisted that in Italian "civil unions" refers to non-church weddings rather than same-sex ones.
And there was vagueness in another area where the pope will be judged by actions not words. "Women can and must be more present in the places of decision-making in the church," he told Corriere della Sera. What does that mean? He has previously said "the door is closed" on the ordination of women and he has ruled out female cardinals, saying "women in the church must be valued not clericalised". But it is unclear whether that is a deft deflection or an aspiration for change at a deeper level, since he clearly sees clericalism as a profound problem in Catholicism. He needs to appoint women to head Vatican departments – or create a council of lay advisers with women members to parallel his new Council of Cardinal Advisers – before anyone will take seriously his talk of "a more capillary and incisive feminine presence in the church".
But the most depressing aspect of the interview came with the pope's remarks on clerical sex abuse – his first since February's withering United Nations report denounced the Vatican for continuing to protect predator priests. Francis argued that most abuse takes place inside the family rather than in churches and added: "The Catholic church is perhaps the only public institution to have acted with transparency and responsibility. No one else has done more. And yet the church is the only one to be attacked." It felt as if the new pope was reading from Rome's same old script of myopic apologia and self-deception.
Transferring to Rome strategies he developed as archbishop of Buenos Aires has largely served Francis well. Yet in Argentina – although Bergoglio pursued a policy of zero tolerance for abusers and was scathing of the solution in the church in the US and Europe of just moving paedophile priests to a different parish – his policy was to deal with the matter internally. He did not call the police. The world has made it clear that is not acceptable. Dirty linen must be washed in public.
He may simply be buying time on these big issues. But there is a limit to how long he can pursue the strategy of one of his predecessors, John XXIII, who famously said: "I have to be pope both for those with their foot on the accelerator and those with their foot on the brake." Equal pressure on both results in getting nowhere.
Pope Francis addresses the Vatican Curia in December 2013. Photograph: Claudio Peri/ANSA pool
It is in the third area of disagreement within the church that it is clear Pope Francis, whether he is, at core, liberal or conservative, is most certainly a radical. For several centuries, the Vatican has acted as the master of the church around the world rather than its servant. Many in Rome hold firmly to that model. Francis wants that to change. It is in this area that transformation is proceeding with greatest speed.
He has sacked the cardinals running the Vatican Bank, brought in outside consultants who are closing dodgy accounts and set up a team to propose long-term structural reform. Management consultants are reviewing the Vatican's accounting, communications and management systems. He has set up a new finance department headed by an outsider, Cardinal George Pell, whose ruthlessness has earned him the nickname "Pell Pot" in his native Australia.
He has removed key conservatives from the body that appoints bishops. And he has set up the powerful Council of Cardinal Advisers from the world's five continents (all of them past critics of the Curia) to draw up a radical decentralisation of the papacy. He has instructed it to find more collegiate ways of decision making. Collegiality was the great upheaval advocated by the revolutionary Second Vatican Council in the 1960s but its vision was never implemented and was, indeed, undermined by the Vatican bureaucrats and popes who followed and who did not want to see doctrinal authority dispersed.
Many see the questionnaire of lay people and priests as the pilot for a new process of governance within the church that will inspire fresh and creative discussions by the Synod of Bishops, whose support staff has been doubled in Rome.
Certainly, the climate of conformity and fear that gripped Catholicism has lifted. Last month, Francis invited cardinals to debate the emblematic issue of communion for the remarried and chose Cardinal Walter Kasper, a liberal who has argued against the present ban, to address the meeting. When "intense discussion" followed, the pope declared himself delighted. "Fraternal and open confrontations foster the growth of theological and pastoral thought," he said. "I'm not afraid of this; on the contrary, I seek it."
To outsiders, that may sound like glacial progress, given the scale of the problems yet to be tackled. But within the Catholic church, it feels as if a revolution has begun. Pope Francis has done a lot in his first year. He still has much to do. But, at 77, he is an old man in a hurry.
Pope Francis – Untying the Knots, by Paul Vallely, is published by Bloomsbury.
This article was amended on 12 March 2014. The original stated "Liberal Catholics, such as the new Pope's many enthusiasts in the secular world ..." This has been corrected. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/23/biden-sushi-pacific-lobster-cheeseburgers-japanese-food-fit-for-a-president | World news | 2022-05-23T13:50:05.000Z | Justin McCurry | Sushi, Pacific lobster … cheeseburgers: Japanese food fit for a president | North Korea, China, trade and security. When US presidents visit Japan, the summit agenda practically writes itself. Deciding what to give them to eat, though, is a different matter altogether.
When the White House is occupied by someone with as unadventurous a palate as Donald Trump, the scope for showcasing the delicate flavours and aesthetic beauty of its cooking, or washoku, is limited.
That was the case during Trump’s first visit to Japan in 2017, when he and the then prime minister, Shinzo Abe, sat down to cheeseburgers and fries at a golf club – a choice that spurred a run on burgers at the Tokyo restaurant that made them.
Treating presidents and their delegations to some of Tokyo’s finest food – in a city with more Michelin stars than Paris – hasn’t always gone to plan.
In 1991, George HW Bush interrupted a Japanese banquet to vomit into the lap of his host, the then Japanese prime minister Kiichi Miyazawa. The incident, in which Bush fainted, was blamed on a bout of flu, not the food.
There was greater success in 2014, when Barack Obama and Abe discussed trade at the world’s best sushi restaurant, Sukiyabashi Jiro.
Despite reports that Obama had failed to complete the 20-piece course, the owner’s son, Yoshikazu Ono, said the president had polished off every morsel.
“He seemed to like chu-toro [medium fatty tuna] very much because he winked when he ate it,” Ono said. “He said three times, ‘This is the best sushi I’ve ever had in my life.’”
Shinzo Abe pours sake for Barack Obama as they have dinner at the Sukiyabashi Jiro sushi restaurant in Tokyo, in 2014. Photograph: Cabinet Public Relations Office/Reuters
In 2002, Japan’s maverick prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, eschewed a formal state dinner and instead introduced the teetotal George W Bush and first lady Laura Bush to the delights of an izakaya Japanese-style pub.
Days before Biden’s arrival in Tokyo on Sunday, the Asahi Shimbun reported that Japanese officials were fretting over how to combine Japanese cuisine with the president’s penchant for the “food of the common folk”.
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Biden is known to have a taste for ice-cream, and reportedly devoured two – chocolate chip, then vanilla and chocolate – in quick succession while chatting to US troops and their families at Osan airbase in South Korea at the weekend.
Dinner at a restaurant serving okonomiyaki, a savoury pancake from Hiroshima, where the Japanese prime minister, Fumio Kishida, has his constituency, was ruled out over “security concerns”, the Asahi said.
Kishida and Biden, who is travelling without the first lady, Jill Biden, were due to dine at Happo-en, a traditional Japanese restaurant that serves multiple-course kaiseki banquets.
The seafood-heavy menu for the two leaders includes simmered Pacific lobster – accompanied by dried sea-cucumber ovary – crab, squid and scallop and, in a nod to the guest of honour, a “special gelato” for dessert. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/feb/12/how-to-be-single-review-rebel-wilson-dakota-johnson | Film | 2016-02-12T14:05:37.000Z | Nigel M Smith | How To Be Single review – Rebel Wilson underused in diverting singleton comedy | Whether it was her intention or not, Dakota Johnson has cornered the market for Valentine’s Day fodder.
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Fifty Shades of Grey, released this time last year, catapulted the actor to the A-list thanks to a seemingly effortless and uniquely charming performance. Johnson is back this Valentine’s Day with How to Be Single, another flick pitched to the date-night crowd and lonely singletons.
Like her last major offering, her latest is silly and fun until it wears out its welcome. Still, Johnson comes out unscathed with a naturalistic performance that provides a wonderful counter to Rebel Wilson’s brazenly outlandish turn as her boozing best pal. The two make for an unexpected and lovable pair of lovelorn misfits.
Based on the book of the same name by Sex and the City show writer and story editor Liz Tuccillo, How to Be Single plays like a reboot of the HBO hit for a younger generation adept at communicating through emojis and partying till the wee hours.
Johnson plays Alice, a young woman in a happy relationship with her college boyfriend, who longs for something more – except she’s not quite sure what she wants. In an effort to find out, she forces them go on a “break”. “I need to know who I am alone,” she pleads.
Newly single, she moves to New York to room with her single sister, Meg (the ever-reliable Leslie Mann), and work as a paralegal at a law firm, where she becomes immediate besties with Robin (Wilson), the rowdy receptionist.
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Christian Ditter’s comedy is strongest in these rapid-fire introductory passages that feature Wilson at her raunchy, unbridled best. The movie dips in energy whenever she’s not around – which, unfortunately, is often.
Johnson’s storyline is of the Eat, Pray, Love variety: singleton slowly discovers her true self once she learns to stop catering to the needs of the confused men in her life. She invests her proceedings with enough warmth to make you care.
But it’s hard to feign interest in a tangential side plot involving Alison Brie as Lucy, a desperate single woman who will use any means necessary to secure a partner. Brie is appealing as always, but her story barely connects to that of the film’s three other women – and her predicament is desperately rote by romantic comedy standards.
More successful is Meg’s section, which tenderly explores what happens when a woman, sure that she’s settled in life, finds love without seeking it. Obvious Child’s Jake Lacy makes for the adorable love interest.
Wilson is the standout, nailing every pratfall she’s dealt, but How to Be Single doesn’t make strong use of her character, instead treating Robin like a Disney sidekick: there to provide some chuckles when matters start to sag. Strangely, out of the four women, Robin’s the only one not afforded her own thread. As written by Abby Kohn, Marc Silverstein and Dana Fox, she likes to party hard and screw around – and that’s about it. It’s to Wilson’s credit that she makes the life of the party the defining reason to check out this otherwise familiar romp.
How to Be Single is released in the US on 12 February and in the UK on 19 February. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/jun/23/can-i-cook-like-margaret-thatcher | Food | 2018-06-23T07:00:07.000Z | Stephen Bush | Can I cook like ... Margaret Thatcher? | Jacques Chirac, when president of France, is said to have provoked peals of laughter from both Vladimir Putin and Gerhard Schroeder, his opposite numbers at the heads of the Russian and French governments at the time, by asking, of the British, how you could trust a people whose cuisine was so bad.
Although Chirac may have been unfairly tarring the whole country with the same brush, he was right as far as Margaret Thatcher was concerned. Her dietary regime – released under the 30-year rule and re-published in full in her fansheet, aka the Daily Mail – has to be seen to be believed.
She began every Monday morning with two slices of grapefruit, a boiled egg – the first of a staggering 28 eggs she would eat over the course of a single week – and a cup of black coffee or tea. So much about the word “grapefruit” is exciting, containing as it does two of the most exciting words in food: “grape” and “fruit”. The more accurate name for grapefruit, of course, is “the worst and least appealing of all the citruses” – and the clear tea did nothing to improve the experience.
Monday lunch gave me an unpleasant feeling of déjà vu: it was two boiled eggs and some grapefruit. Monday dinner included a mysterious meal known as “combination salad”. Perhaps this refers to the combination of incredulity, anger and despair I felt upon realising that I would be eating grapefruit and eggs for the third meal in succession, with only a piece of dry toast to liven things up.
Breakfast on Tuesday is … you guessed it, grapefruit and eggs. I don’t think anyone has ever been as happy to eat a tomato as I was that Tuesday, when the grind of grapefruit and eggs was broken up by tomato (and yet more eggs). Dinner is a surprisingly varied meal of steak, cucumber, lettuce, olives and coffee. History does not record if the coffee was served as a drink or as a jus, but I decide to assume the former (decaff, so I can get to sleep easily). I head to bed, where I have bad dreams about grapefruit.
On Wednesday morning, I crack – both literally and metaphorically. Literally, I crack two eggs for the usual breakfast of eggs and grapefruit. Metaphorically, I decide that enough is enough. I’ll stick to eating what I want, thank you very much. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jun/01/is-australias-election-result-a-real-revolution-or-an-old-story-of-centre-right-flight | Opinion | 2022-06-01T02:58:31.000Z | Van Badham | Is Australia’s election result a teal revolution or an old story of centre-right flight? | Van Badham | It’s been almost two weeks since Australia parted ways with its nine years of conservative Coalition government.
The new Coalition leadership fight for burnt scraps on a scorched landscape. Though the Nationals held their heartland, the Liberals lost more seats in 2022 than when John Howard was decimated by Kevin Rudd in 2007. Even with their own lowest primary vote since federation, preferences have flowed Labor into government with the largest parliamentary majority since Tony Abbott’s in 2013.
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The novelty of the federal election is not the seats that Labor won in the suburbs and the regions, but those the Liberals lost across its own old urban heartlands to non-Labor candidates from the “teal” independents and the Greens. Even the impressive 10.94% primary swing that won the Greens the former Labor seat of Griffith tells this story. Labor’s Terri Butler lost a fatal 1.98% from her primary but it was Griffith’s Liberals who lost a whopping 10.04% from theirs.
Former Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce and former prime minister Scott Morrison are both insisting voters merely wanted to “change the curtains” after nine years of a Coalition government. Flames and floods lapping at such curtains strongly suggest that what drove old Liberal votes to teals and Greens was electoral desperation for action on climate said government refused to provide.
As the Liberals will – or not – recriminate, 16 crossbenchers now sit amid the 151 seats of our House of Representatives. It is unusual and significant, but it is neither “unprecedented” or a “revolution”.
Friends, we have been here before – specifically, at the collapse of Stanley Bruce’s centre-right Nationalist government in 1929 and then the collapse of the centre-right United Australia party government in 1941. Note the dates: both were ideological character tests failed by governing centre-right parties at the height of Australian emergency.
A civics lesson with this history: our geographically based lower house electorates are represented by single members. This structurally encourages major party groupings to coalesce around broad centre-left and centre-right positions to assemble the parliamentary majority necessary to form government.
The implications of this within a system of compulsory voting is that – unlike the contests of mobilised polarity that now define elections in the United States – Australian elections are all fought around the ideological centre. Preferences from the edges dribble towards each side, but winning the centre determines who gets the power of government.
History shows Australia that when a governing centre-right party drifts from the priorities of their “broad church”, it’s not only their support that fractures, it’s their party structure, too.
In 1929, Bruce’s bitter pursuit of unions despite the approaching Depression resulted in not only the fall of his government but the loss of his own seat; a right-leaning independent’s preferences flowed against him. Bruce’s Nationalists splintered and shattered, yet a centre-right that thirsted for government soon reformed their parliamentary presence into the UAP.
By 1941, the UAP had achieved government, but then-PM Robert Menzies unwisely dashed to the UK rather than face encroaching military threats at home. His resignation was demanded, leadership chaos followed. Two right-leaning independents threw support behind Labor and John Curtin. Labor crushed a riven UAP in 1943.
Yet Menzies learned from his Waikiki-holiday-level misjudgment. The Liberal party he led to creation in 1944 re-amalgamated those on the centre-right into a liberal-dominated movement rather than a conservative one. The “old survivor” knew that while conservatives would always grudgingly vote for liberals, he’d seen the reverse was not guaranteed. We are seeing the return of this phenomenon now.
Anthony Albanese’s government must learn from Labor’s last breakup with electoral power
Peter Lewis
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Menzies’ Liberals regathered their disaffected centrists and went on to win non-conservative voters with tealish support for unions, welfare measures, expanded public education and even the maintenance of Curtin’s full-employment policy.
Menzies regained government in 1949. His party retained it for 23 unbroken years. On the other side, Labor’s most enduring government similarly encouraged the aspirations of the ideologically centrist small-business-curious. The Hawke-Keating partnership clocked up 13 years of government – something of which Anthony Albanese is very well aware.
Can Albanese gateway a centre-right who this time voted teal or Green towards his party? Maybe. Some.
Peter Dutton is unlikely to scoop up the Liberals’ misplaced moderate voters and chart a winnable course for the middle. He’s already in insistent pursuit of a “silent” conservative majority out there no demographer can find.
This centre-right flight could bring about the destruction of Dutton or his party. Ideological velocity and personal ambition have ever spurred non-Labor politicians to amalgamate. Governing is beyond them otherwise – and rarely does a protest movement arise without a thirst for the power that lies elsewhere. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/apr/10/robert-altman-the-player-at-30 | Film | 2022-04-10T06:07:12.000Z | Noah Gittell | ‘The enemy is the audience’: Robert Altman’s The Player at 30 | Watching Robert Altman’s The Player nearly 30 years after its release is like buying a ticket for a time-traveling Hollywood tour bus. There’s Jack Lemmon playing piano at a party and Martin Mull eating lunch on an outdoor patio. Look, John Cusack and Anjelica Huston are sitting together at that restaurant, and isn’t that Cher entering a charity event in a stunning red dress? These actors, and many more, play themselves in The Player, and most have just one line of dialogue. Some have none. Brief as their appearances may be, they play a vital role, situating the incisive and absurdist showbiz story in the real world. Or at least in the real Hollywood. How did Altman get them to work for nothing in such minuscule roles? He only told them, “I’m making a film about a studio executive who murders a screenwriter and gets away with it.” According to Altman, each response was identical. They laughed and asked when they should show up.
Robert Altman’s 20 best films – ranked!
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Much like Sunset Boulevard, the best film ever made about Hollywood, The Player initially presents itself as film noir. Its protagonist, Griffin Mill (Tim Robbins), is a classic antihero, a studio executive who kills a man he believes has been sending him death threats, only to discover it was the wrong guy, and his harasser is still out there. The police are closing in on him, but just when you have a handle on the film’s tone, Altman swerves. Next, it’s an insider’s look at office politics in Hollywood, then an absurdist comedy, a sleek thriller and eventually a postmodern fairytale with the most twisted happy ending you’re ever likely to see. One of the great achievements of The Player is how steady it stays on its feet as it navigates these tonal twists and turns.
Ultimately, The Player is remembered as Hollywood satire, a film about film-making, and its meaning is relayed through its form as much as its content. Altman constantly reminds us that we’re watching a movie, and that The Player is a deeply Hollywoodified version of the events it depicts. The eight-minute tracking shot through a studio backlot that opens the film features characters musing about cinema’s all-time great tracking shots (including Touch of Evil, Rope and The Sheltering Sky), while posters of obscure film noirs and B-movies paper the walls of every room. A key scene is set at a screening of Vittorio De Sica’s neorealist masterpiece Bicycle Thieves, the kind of bleak, artful film the characters in The Player claim to love but would never make. It’s a neat trick that eradicates any sentimentality – a must for satire – and allows viewers to both indulge in the film’s conventionality, like the happy ending for its main character, while also feeling superior to it.
No wonder it was such a hit within the industry. The Player was considered a triumphant return for Altman, a seminal figure of New Hollywood who, like most of his compadres, got a bit lost in the 80s. Before that, he built his career by poking holes in the most self-important American myths, the war movie (M*A*S*H) and the western (McCabe and Mrs Miller). The Player is closer in feel to Nashville, his 1975 film set in the country music world that cuts between biting irony and earnest scenes of loneliness and human connection. It was also his return to the Oscar race, as The Player earned nominations for best director, best adapted screenplay and best editing. That’s no surprise. Hollywood is always game for a good-natured ribbing because it reinforces the industry’s place atop the culture. Only the most powerful institutions are worth satirizing.
For Altman, however, The Player was barely about the movie industry at all. It was about the corporatization of Hollywood, with the director using his chosen industry as a metaphor for, as he put it in an interview, “the cultural problems with western civilization”. Altman saw in Hollywood dealings a reflection of merciless boardroom culture that invaded the American economy in the 1980s, when a little harmless greed curdled into sociopathy. For most of the film, Griffin Mill is on the verge of being arrested for murder, but he is equally concerned with the new hire at work, an up-and-comer named Larry Levy (played with effortless smarm by Peter Gallagher) who never makes an overt move for Griffin’s job but nonetheless creates a maddening distraction. To Griffin, a murder rap is as threatening as a demotion, and he’ll stop at nothing to beat them both.
Griffin is an empty suit, a violent criminal and possibly a lunatic – his interactions with his girlfriend (Cynthia Stevenson) are chillingly dispassionate – but he passes for a sympathetic figure in The Player because he at least pretends to care about film. He is even known around town as a “writer’s exec”, a moniker that over the course of the movie starts to feel like an epitaph. Levy, on the other hand, is all business, no show. He believes writers are overrated and overpaid, and that studio execs could easily do the creative work themselves. He routinely attends AA meetings, even though he’s not an alcoholic, because “that’s where the deals are made these days”. He represents the new evil, and Griffin is the old. As played by Tim Robbins, a master at manipulating his innate earnestness, it’s impossible to tell if he’s a sociopath pretending to be human or vice versa, but as the fear pools behind his glacier-blue eyes, we can convince ourselves he is just another everyman who has fallen out of step with the world. We can’t help but root for him to win.
Dean Stockwell and Richard E Grant in The Player. Photograph: Spelling International/Kobal/Rex/Shutterstock
In The Player, he does. In the real world, not so much. Looking at the state of the movie business today, it’s hard not to feel that the Larry Levys of the world are now in charge. Franchise film-making, the dominant movie trend of our time, inherently devalues the writers and empowers the producers. You probably can’t tell me who wrote the last Spider-Man movie, but I bet you know the name of Kevin Feige, the producer and architect of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Nowadays, the struggle between commerce and art isn’t decided by office politics and individual greed. It’s the cold, hard macroeconomics of the global marketplace and corporate synergy. That’s the part that The Player didn’t foresee.
What does play well today is Altman’s outright refusal to blame it all on the suits. The Player wraps up with a contrived happy ending its characters don’t deserve, but Altman draws attention to the artifice, reminding us once again of its phoniness and implicitly pointing his criticisms back at the viewer. “The enemy in a film like this is the audience,” Altman said in an interview. “If people don’t go see these manufactured films, they’re not going to get made.” It’s a bit like a bully hitting you with your own fist, asking you all the time why you’re punching yourself, but he’s not wrong. His equal-opportunity approach to the satire – Altman even admitted that he sees much of himself in Griffin – is what makes The Player so endearing. It pinpoints the beaten, bloodied state of American decency at the end of the 20th century and blames us all for the carnage. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2024/mar/29/watford-leeds-championship-match-report | Football | 2024-03-29T22:10:01.000Z | Simon Burnton | Joseph salvages late point for Leeds at Watford but his side end day in second | A late onslaught on a tiring home defence brought Leeds an equaliser and several near misses, but not the third goal that would have rewarded them with victory and first place in the Championship. Instead Watford became just the second league opponents this calendar year they have failed to beat, the home side twice taking the lead and holding it until the 85th minute when Mateo Joseph, just 25 seconds after coming on as substitute, levelled the game with his first league goal.
Leeds arrived at Vicarage Road in extraordinary form, a phenomenal three-month surge having taken them from fourth at the end of 2023, 17 points behind Leicester and nine away from Ipswich, to the top of the table at the start of the Easter weekend. Since the turn of the year Leeds had taken 37 of a possible 39 points; in the same time Watford had dropped 26 points and a manager, Valérien Ismaël paying for his side’s poor form earlier in the month.
This was Tom Cleverley’s first home game as interim manager and he used the opportunity to spring a tactical surprise, Watford unexpectedly starting with both a back three and a front two and even more unexpectedly dominating much of the opening half. While Cleverley spent the international break working on a fresh formation Daniel Farke was reeling from a succession of disappointments: Connor Roberts, Willy Gnonto and Ilia Gruev all returned injured and several others came back exhausted, leading to an under-par performance.
Championship roundup: Chaplin strikes early at Blackburn to send Ipswich top
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“We played this game in the worst possible moment,” he said. “First of all Watford, a new manager comes in, there’s new belief, a bit of fresh air. And for us the international break had the worst possible outcome. We had not one session with the whole team and you could feel this in the first half, we were not in our rhythm. If there was a day when perhaps there was a chance to beat us, it’s tonight.”
For half an hour the Hornets created little for all their possession, but in the 31st minute Edo Kayembe stole the ball from Ethan Ampadu in midfield, Yáser Asprilla was played in down the left and his pull-back picked out Emmanuel Dennis. Though Illan Meslier excellently saved the Nigerian’s shot the rebound looped to Vakoun Bayo, who lashed it in on the volley. Three minutes later it took a phenomenal challenge from Joe Rodon to stop Dennis scoring a second, again after Ampadu had been dispossessed.
Leeds’s only shot at that point had come from Crysencio Summerville, who cut in from the left in the 16th minute and sent a right-footed shot towards the far post, which Daniel Bachmann tipped to safety. In the 37th minute he did it again, ghosting past Andrews far too easily and this time, from further out, curling a delicious shot that left Bachmann helpless.
Emmanuel Dennis acrobatically celebrates scoring Watford’s second goal. Photograph: Alex Pantling/Getty Images
But Watford reacted excellently to this setback and seven minutes later they were back in front, Dennis executing a reverse Summerville from their right flank, cutting inside Rodon and Liam Cooper before shooting hard and low beyond Meslier.
“Everyone wants to play front-foot football but you have to be structured,” Cleverley said. “Against a team like Leeds if you’re a bit gung-ho they can slice you open. We looked a really controlled team. It’s a tough task to come up against the league leaders but we showed we can more than compete. I want everyone to leave at the end of the season thinking we’ve got a promotion push in us next year.”
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Leeds made no changes at the interval except perhaps to their attitude, and in the first 10 minutes of the second period fashioned two excellent chances, Sam Byram releasing the excellent, effervescent Summerville, whose shot was turned around the near post by Bachmann, and then having a header cleared off the line, though the referee’s assistant had erroneously decided the ball had gone out of play in the buildup.
Soon it was the home side that was flagging, and Leeds pushed players forwards and added impetus from the bench. Most obviously Joseph came on in the 84th minute and scored with his second touch, running onto Summerville’s low centre, benefiting from Junior Firpo’s fine dummy, and burying the rebound after his first attempt was blocked. A minute later another rebound fell to another substitute, Jaidon Anthony, only for Bachmann to complete a superb double save. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2015/jul/31/how-to-put-on-a-mega-gig-the-caterers-story | Music | 2015-07-31T15:38:52.000Z | Dave Simpson | How to put on a mega-gig: the caterer's story | If you’ve seen This is Spinal Tap, you’ll know the funny things bands ask for. Iggy Pop’s rider is famous: “We like tasty food that isn’t full of mad cow disease”, “We need all this food but God forbid you give us something that’s organic”, “Nurse shark with a nurse provided, in case one of us gets bitten.” He takes the mickey out of himself.
My company, Popcorn, is 25 years old, and I worked for two other companies before that. We’ve catered for people such as Robbie Williams and Kylie for years. Kylie eats little and often: she looks – and is – amazing. The first tour I did with my own company was REM. Michael Stipe had apparently always refused to eat catering – he had his own beans on the bus – but once he found out how nice it could be, he was appreciative and tucked in. The bands do appreciate us. You don’t bite the hand that feeds you.
I’ve catered for bands all my adult life. After I left Sheffield Polytechnic, where I studied home economics, I didn’t have an interview for any other job. I was on the student entertainment committee, where the stage crews used to be helped by weedy students who’d been up all night and would trap their fingers in the gear. Rather than collect tickets, which meant you couldn’t get ratted and watch the gig, a few of us volunteered to collect the rider. We’d go to supermarkets to get the food and beer, and shove it in the band’s dressing room. Some of the bands brought their own caterers. We got to know them, so when we all left university, we ended up joining them. All my old entertainment pals run catering companies now, feeding everyone from Erasure to One Direction. We’ve still got a strong bond between us, although the food has definitely improved.
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If a band have sold 100 tickets, they’re not going to be given £500 of booze. I don’t think artists’ demands are as ludicrous as they used to be – gallons of whiskey and snow white goats – because most of the worst offenders have stopped drinking and are on the wagon. You’ll get told things such as, “No booze in the dressing room. Give to the production manager” – but that’s great for us because it saves lugging 10 cases of beer. Coconut water is so much easier to get than a goat. It can get a bit Spinal Tap when everyone’s very green and environmentally minded, but then they get on their private jet and fly to the next gig. The bigger the artists are, the less they want.
One of the odder ones I got was a request for photographs of local models accompanying the food, so the catering girls cut a load of photos out of a local magazine. They turned it into a skit and pasted it on a wall with little arrows and notices reading: “Hello, I’m a model. Look at this lovely coat.”
It’s quite a difficult life to get into and really difficult to get out of. When you’re on tour with someone, you live and breathe it, and it can form strong friendships. There’s a different tour every few weeks, so it never gets mundane. Things go wrong all the time. For instance, traffic problems – just driving to places and getting stuck can play havoc with your shopping and cooking times. The skill is sorting out problems. Coffee machines always need descaling and sometimes the power goes off in the kitchen, trucks have tipped over meaning that a gig is cancelled, but all that is out of our hands. If something goes wrong, food is usually available somewhere: it’s not like trying to find a lighting desk in the middle of a forest.
You try to give people a different choice of food every day. We do “teenage food”: fish finger sandwiches for younger bands. Sometimes an artist will have a nutritionist and give you all sorts of specialist demands: Atkins diets, gluten free, peanut allergies and so on. The job has become harder because menus are much more varied and healthy – edamame beans and stuff. In my student days, a vegetarian meal meant curry or beans and chips. In Germany, any “vegetarian” meal would contain a sausage.
I get Christmas cards. The Depeche Mode one is always a bit wacky. One year, it didn’t arrive and people were saying, “Does that mean we won’t do the next tour?” I wasn’t as worried about the tour; I just wanted that Christmas card again.
Cod fillet Bird’s Eye fish finger Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian
Everyone knows Popcorn for its pink flight cases, which I started in the 80s because it was unusual, but they’re a nightmare to keep clean. Some of our chefs have been with us for years. The kitchen is full of middle-aged ladies, although a lot of the bands and crews are older now.
If I was doing a gig at Manchester Arena, we’d usually have four people on our team and then some local people hired by the promoter: we have to get a runner to take us shopping. It’s a frantic rush. It’s usually the same people, so you catch up with them where you left off: “How’s your mum?” and so on.
At the moment, Chris Rea is touring, which means 20 caterers. Erasure are on the road too: there’s only two of them in the band, but about 30 in the crew and entourage. We do Madness, Example and Elton John. Elton likes his flowers, obviously, and a particular flavour of Gatorade which is difficult to get in the UK.
Bands have to trust us, because one bad tummy and you’ll never work again. There has to be wastage , you can’t carry stuff around. You go to the supermarket, cook it, serve it and you’re on your way again. The biggest risks are when you’re on one site for two weeks: you’ve got to be very strict on hygiene.
When you work with an artist, you get a few clues from the manager as to what they like, and when you’ve known them for years, it’s like having your mates round for tea every night. The Manics are ridiculously fussy, but not in a bad way: they just like plain stuff. Sometimes you need two menus: one written in the plain way and the other a bit fancy. The crew are fussier than the band. On the other hand, you don’t want fancy restaurant stuff every night. Sometimes you just want a shepherd’s pie. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/apr/25/biden-reelection-2024-white-house-opinion-panel | Opinion | 2023-04-25T13:42:38.000Z | LaTosha Brown | ‘Safety beats idealism’: our panel reacts to Biden’s decision to run again | LaTosha Brown, Jill Filipovic, Osita Nwanevu, Bhaskar Sunkara | LaTosha Brown: ‘Biden can hold together a big tent’
After surviving the Trump debacle, it was important that we had an administration that could re-establish some level of credibility in the political arena. Given the volatility of the current political environment and the depth of political division in America, Biden has demonstrated he is able to hold together a big tent of diverse groups and push an agenda.
We need political leadership from someone who believes in democracy, can navigate the intense political polarization of this moment, and bring some sense of civility back to American politics.
While I remain a critic of Biden’s criminal justice reform policies, it is astounding, given the obstructionist efforts of the Republican party to block any measurable progress, that he has been able to get so much of his agenda through a deeply divided Congress. Whether or not one agrees with all his policies, he has been an effective president.
We live in a country that is riddled with “isms” – including ageism. Aside from the false and fear-based narratives planted by rightwing Republicans, there is nothing in Biden’s leadership, decision-making or policies that indicates he is incapable of leading or serving as president.
LaTosha Brown is the co-founder of Black Voters Matter
Jill Filipovic: ‘Safety beats idealism’
It pains me to say this, but Joe Biden should run for re-election.
Biden was toward the bottom of my picks during the 2020 Democratic primary. He’s a moderate Democrat, and he’s lackluster when it comes to the issues I care most about: women’s rights, abortion rights, LGBT rights, immigration. While Biden has become more adept at using the right language on these issues, his administration’s policies have ranged from largely absent (abortion) to terrible (immigration).
Still: he should run, and I will vote for him if he does.
The specter of another Donald Trump presidency, or a Ron DeSantis presidency, is a national emergency. Trump attempted to foment a coup; he is on the campaign trail making clear that, if he wins, he will lean even harder into American fascism than he did the last time around. DeSantis, who seems less and less likely to win the Republican nomination by the day, is well into the process of turning Florida into an authoritarian state, where the government is seizing everything from the right to one’s own body to the right to knowledge.
Biden has proven he is capable of beating Trump. He’s also been a surprisingly good president, pushing through legislation that fights climate change, supports American job growth, and helped Americans stay afloat during the pandemic.
There are other candidates I would be excited about: Senator Elizabeth Warren; Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer; and Congresswomen Katie Porter and Ayanna Pressley. But I worry that any of those women would lose to Trump, despite their superior intelligence and qualifications.
Joe Biden is not the most thrilling choice. But he’s the safest one. And with the country facing a grave threat from Donald Trump, safety beats idealism.
Jill Filipovic is the author of the The H-Spot: The Feminist Pursuit of Happiness
Osita Nwanevu: ‘Too late to change course’
Is it a good idea for Biden to run again? Well, let’s think through what would happen if he didn’t. While most Americans and a substantial proportion of Democrats don’t want to see him in office again, bowing out would still take most of his party by surprise. Harris hasn’t cemented herself as a natural successor; a chaotic, unwieldy, and wide-open primary would begin immediately. There’d be a mad scramble for donors and attention followed by months and months of doubtlessly amusing heat and noise that would end with the nomination of a candidate that would be perhaps unknown to most of the public and lack the advantages of incumbency.
Republicans would argue that Biden’s about-face reflected a lack of confidence in Democratic accomplishments and the Democratic agenda; many Americans, already rather unimpressed with Biden’s substantively respectable legislative record, would probably agree.
There might have been an opening for an alternative – if Biden had signaled that he’d step away last year or even earlier in his term, there would have been more time for a primary field to develop and introduce itself to the electorate in an orderly way. But it’s simply too late now. Joe’s the guy, for better or for worse.
Osita Nwanevu is a Guardian US columnist
Bhaskar Sunkara: ‘There appears no real successor to Biden’
If the goal is the surest route to beat Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, or whatever Republican emerges out of the 2024 primary, then the answer to whom the Democrats should run should be clear. Joe Biden is an incumbent who just beat a sitting president in an election less than three years ago.
Even if he doesn’t always take advantage of it, Biden commands the White House’s bully pulpit. And, amid the backdrop of an improving economy, Trump’s legal issues, and the public outrage at the Republican party’s crusade against abortion rights, he would enter any contest as a favorite.
Still, we should be very clear that Biden will only be favored to win an election because of the people he’s up against. The president is unpopular, he hasn’t made good on his self-proclaimed “New Deal-sized” ambitions, and a large majority of Americans don’t want him to run again.
Yet at the national level, there appears to be no real successor to Biden. Even if health were to prevent him from running again in 2024, among mainstream Democrats Kamala Harris is also unpopular and plagued by reports of mismanagement within her office. On the left, the situation is just as bleak. Bernie Sanders is even older than Biden, and none of his vaunted successors, such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have proven electorally viable beyond deep-blue districts or managed to emulate the Vermont senator’s plainspoken class-warrior language.
Hopefully, that will change by 2028. In the meantime, however, both centrist and progressive Democrats alike have a lot of work to do cohering a base and getting candidates ready to contest for power. Biden may be the best answer to 2024’s stupid question – and that’s an indictment of the Democratic party’s last few years.
Bhaskar Sunkara is the president of the Nation, the founding editor of Jacobin, and the author of The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequalities | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/jul/16/fred-vargas-scandinavians-international-dagger | Books | 2009-07-16T14:52:10.000Z | Alison Flood | Fred Vargas holds off Scandinavians at Dagger awards | Scandinavian crime fiction might be all the rage in the book charts but French writer Fred Vargas has seen off competition from a cluster of Nordic authors to take the Crime Writers' Association's International Dagger award.
Vargas, who has won the prize in three out of the last four years, took the £1,000 award for the first in her series of Adamsberg novels, The Chalk Circle Man. It took the prize ahead of three Swedish crime novels – including Steig Larsson's bestselling The Girl Who Played With Fire – one Norwegian, and one Icelandic novel. A bestselling author in France as well as a medieval archaeologist, Fred Vargas is the pseudonym of Frédérique Audoin-Rouzeau. Her translator, Sîan Reynolds, won £500.
Published in France as L'Homme aux cercles bleu, it follows the story of unorthodox policeman Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg as strange blue chalk circles start to appear on the pavements of Paris, containing increasingly strange objects, from a pigeon's foot to a doll's head. The news is covered with wry amusement by the press, but Adamsberg is uneasy, and soon the body of a woman who has been brutally murdered is found in one of the circles. Judges said the book was "a remarkable demonstration of Vargas's ability to open with an odd event and follow it into an unhappy past".
The CWA caused controversy in 2005 when it took the decision to bar foreign language authors from competing for its top award, after the £3,000 Golden Dagger was won by translated novels in three out of eight years. It restricted the prize to books originally written in English, establishing the International Dagger to reward foreign works.
Yesterday evening also saw the CWA announce the winner of the £1,500 Dagger in the Library prize, which goes to a body of work rather than a single title and was this year won by Colin Cotterill, putting him in the company of previous winners Stuart McBride, Craig Russell and Alexander McCall Smith. The £500 Debut Dagger for new writing went to Canadian writer Catherine O'Keefe for The Pathologist – "an uncomfortable, sophisticated read that also manages to be suspenseful", according to the judges – while Sean Chercover's One Serving of Bad Luck took the £1,500 short story prize with a tale judges said provided "a new take on the private eye". | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/dec/05/nigel-farage-ukip-claridges-breastfeeding-mothers | Politics | 2014-12-05T16:30:00.000Z | Patrick Wintour | Nigel Farage says breastfeeding women should sit in a corner | Nigel Farage has backed the decision of Claridge’s hotel to ask a breastfeeding woman to cover up, saying that mothers should “perhaps sit in the corner” when they breastfeed.
The UK Independence party leader said he thought a lot of people felt uncomfortable about women breastfeeding in public and that breastfeeding mothers should be discreet – although it was not an issue he felt strongly about.
Speaking on LBC radio, he said: “I’m not particularly bothered about it, but I know a lot of people do feel very uncomfortable, and look, this is just a matter of common sense, isn’t it? I think that, given that some people feel very embarrassed by it, it isn’t too difficult to breastfeed a baby in a way that’s not openly ostentatious.
“Frankly, that’s up to Claridge’s, and I very much take the view that if you’re running an establishment you should have rules.”
When asked on LBC if women should be told to go to the toilet to breastfeed, Farage replied: “Or perhaps sit in the corner, or whatever it might be – that’s up to Claridge’s. It’s not an issue that I get terribly hung up about, but I know particularly people of the older generation feel awkward and embarrassed by it.”
...SO much more obvious with it than without! Such a shame I can never go back.... @ClaridgesHotel #breastfeeding pic.twitter.com/1DyNQUMYL4
— Lou Burns (@Andysrelation) December 1, 2014
Reacting to Farage’s position, No 10 said it was “totally unacceptable” for mothers to be made to feel uncomfortable about breastfeeding in public.
Prime minister David Cameron’s spokesman said: “It’s for Mr Farage to explain his views. The prime minister shares the view of the NHS which is that breastfeeding is completely natural and it’s totally unacceptable for anybody to be made to feel uncomfortable while breastfeeding in public.”
Labour’s shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper suggested Farage himself should sit in a corner.
Farage later attempted to clarify his comments, hitting out at “media fabrication” about his remarks, saying he had never said breastfeeding women should sit in a corner, but it was reasonable for an establishment to ask them to do that.
“Let me get this clear, as I said on the radio and as I repeat now, I personally have no problem with mothers breastfeeding wherever they want,” he said. “What I said was - and it is immensely frustrating that I have to explain this - is that if the establishment in question, in this case Claridge’s, wants to maintain rules about this stuff, then that is up to them, as it should be. I remarked that perhaps they might ask women to sit in a corner. Did I say I believe they should have to? No. Did I say I personally endorse this concept? No.
“We do however have to recognise that businesses have a responsibility to all of their customers, some of whom may well be made uncomfortable by public breastfeeding. It’s a two-way street: breastfeeding women should never be embarrassed by staff asking them to stop, and most mums will recognise the need to be discreet in certain, limited, circumstances. It just a question of good manners, and in this case, accurate journalism.”
Claridge’s sparked controversy earlier this week by asking Louise Burns, 35, to breastfeed under a cloth. Burns has told how she burst into tears after a waiter rushed up to her with a “ridiculous shroud” while she breastfed her 12-week-old daughter. She was apparently told that it was hotel policy for mothers to cover up while breastfeeding – something Claridge’s has since denied.
Downing Street initially made no comment about the incident on Tuesday before later saying it echoed the NHS guidance that women should be free to breastfeed in public.
But after the Ukip leader expressed his opinion, Cameron’s spokesman said: “It’s for Mr Farage to explain his views. The prime minister shares the view of the NHS which is that breastfeeding is completely natural and it’s totally unacceptable for anybody to be made to feel uncomfortable while breastfeeding in public.”
The London hotel has been condemned by the Liberal Democrat equalities minister, Jo Swinson, who said: “It’s depressing that when there are such well-documented benefits of breastfeeding, officious policies like this make new mums feel uncomfortable for doing nothing more than feeding their baby.
“Many babies don’t like feeding under a tent and mothers shouldn’t be forced to cover up, as if they are doing something illicit or wrong. Suggesting breastfeeding mothers should not be seen in society is archaic.”
In protest against the hotel’s decision, the campaign group Free to Feed is organising a “nurse-in” outside at 2pm on Saturday. The group described it is a peaceful demonstration in support of breastfeeding mothers. “Enough is enough. Claridge’s have had ample time to apologise for their mistake and rectify the situation by changing their ‘policy’, which states that they allow nursing mothers ‘as long as they are discreet’. Claridge’s seem to think that they are above the laws and legislation of this land,” a statement on the group’s website said.
At the time, a Claridge’s spokeswoman declined to discuss the incident, but said it did allow breastfeeding. “It is our policy never to talk about our guests,” she said. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2010/dec/07/apprenticeships-local-newspapers | Media | 2010-12-07T12:58:39.000Z | Roy Greenslade | Campaigning newspapers secure hundreds of apprenticeships | Several regional daily newspapers have launched campaigns to find 100 apprenticeships in 100 days in order to help tackle the problem of youth unemployment.
The idea appears to have originated with a joint campaign by the Gloucestershire Echo and The Citizen in March this year.
It proved to be an overwhelming success, registering 123 apprenticeships by July, and prompting the papers (published by Northcliffe Media) to launch a second campaign.
The idea was then taken up by Northcliffe's Bristol title, the Evening Post, which launched its campaign in June and then managed to achieve its target within hours.
The response encouraged the paper to redefine its ambition, setting itself the challenge of persuading 100 businesses to take on apprentices.
In the following weeks and months, the Post continued to plug away at its campaign until it achieved its target in early September.
The paper succeeded in getting 103 companies to offer apprenticeships, providing more than 150 young people with the prospect of a bright future.
The Post's success encouraged other papers to have a go. The Grimsby Telegraph (also Northcliffe) launched its campaign in late September. It is still up and running.
The News in Portsmouth (Johnston Press) also launched a similar campaign in September. After 50 days it had 87 places pledged and it reported yesterday on its latest recruit.
Last month, the Ipswich Evening Star (Archant) announced its campaign to find 100 new jobs in the city and soon reported backing from business leaders.
I guess other papers may have done something similar. Anyway, the campaigns have certainly proved their worth. So hats off to the Citizen and the Echo for setting the agenda. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/oct/28/mike-leigh-another-year | Film | 2010-10-28T21:00:01.000Z | Xan Brooks | Mike Leigh: buddha of suburbia | It's 9am at a Soho production office, downstairs from a flat occupied by a trio of French glamour models. The tea is served, the seats are taken and now, for the sake of argument, Mike Leigh and I are playing Hollywood deal-makers. The director has come to pitch his latest picture, Another Year, and I'm here to listen, puffing on a metaphorical cigar as he outlines the plot. "Another Year," he says. "Well, it's about a very nice couple who are really, really happy. And they have an allotment and a friend who's a drunkard and a son who doesn't have a partner." He breaks from the script to peer over his teacup. "This is moment where you're meant to show me the door."
Leigh is conducting this charade to illustrate a point. The point, I think, is that he makes his films from the gut, and that these stories of human ebb and flow are not easily pinned, pitched and pigeonholed. So yes, Another Year is ostensibly about a happy couple and the lost souls that orbit them. But beyond that we're in the dark, like the apocryphal blind men working our way around the elephant. I tell him I saw it as a film about the pursuit of happiness, and he tells me he's not sure it is, exactly. I confess that, from time to time, I found the couple to be insufferably self-satisfied, and he says he doesn't see them that way at all. "Did you even like the film?" he barks. I assure him that I did and he nods, briefly mollified. So at least we agree on that.
In fact, I'd go further still. Another Year is one of Leigh's best pictures in a rousing 40-year career; a bittersweet paean to the pleasures and terrors of growing old. Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen give terrific performances as contented Tom and Gerri, whose amble towards retirement is complicated by visits from various sad-sack friends and widowed relations. Chief among these is Mary (Leslie Manville), a constant, clamouring presence, half-petrified by the thought that life might already have passed her by. Another Year is mordant, absorbing and profound. It skirts on the rim of so much human mystery.
Back at the office, Leigh appears to be sliding down his armchair. He starts out bolt-upright and then inches south, shifting and settling to the point where his chin is on his chest. "The problem, at least for me, is that it's a very personal film," he explains. "There are personal issues that manifest themselves in all the principal characters. I wanted to make a film that started where I am now. I'm 67 and I've got mates who are about my age and, you know, you sit and talk with them and then all of a sudden you look around and realise you're just two old geezers talking about the 60s." In particular, he adds, Tom and Gerri's relationship with their offspring (loving, with a hint of smother) mirrors his own treatment of his two adult sons.
Then, wait: a clarification. All his work is basically the same film, he suggests. Film in, film out, the same preoccupations: having children, not having children; the thorny thicket of social interaction. That, after all, is what has always fascinated him. I ask if he's a compulsive people-watcher off screen as well as on, and he admits that this is so. "Oh absolutely. I've been doing that since world war two. Even as we speak." He inches down another notch and regards me over his belly. "Why walk in the room and stop it here?"
Mike Leigh was born in Salford, a doctor's son. As a child, he says, he used to sit in the local fleapit and think: "Wouldn't it be great to have a film in which the characters are like real people?" The kitchen-sink school of British cinema was an early inspiration, but he found it too script-bound, too hobbled by plot, and preferred the films of the French new wave. He also liked comedies and vaudeville, and these filtered through to his work and continues to confound those who would like to view him as a cut-and-dried social realist. How, exactly, does one square Leigh's lurid yuppies or suburban grotesques with the more nuanced, minor-key figures that populate his work? It's like listening to an exquisite string symphony and hearing the occasional clash of cymbals, or the parp of a comedy kazoo.
"Yes, I do engage in these heightened juxtapositions," he admits. "And it tends to confuse people. I have a natural affection for Ken Loach, but we tend to get lumped together and that's never felt right. The convention is realism, but it's not propaganda. They're tragicomedies, for want of a better term. And the influence of comedy, vaudeville, pantomime and circus are just as important to me as the hard, social way of looking at the world."
The phone trills in the pocket of his fleece, and he hastens to answer it. The caller, it transpires, is a mate from the old days. Up from the west country, makes toys for a living. Leigh is meeting him later for a drink and a catch-up. "There," he says happily. "That's a source of the film right there."
The director famously starts his films without a script, casting his actors and then corralling them through a rehearsal period that can last for months as the characters are fleshed out and the story takes shape. Even then, there is ample room for manoeuvre. He can't conceive of shooting a scene, for instance, until he is actually on the set and can see it for himself. "The notion of getting out there and making it up as you go along. That comes out of the 1920s, before the arrival of talkies. It's not like I invented it."
It sounds like a high-risk approach. There must be moments when he fears it is all leading nowhere. "Oh, absolutely. Always. And it happens all the way through, at every stage of the production. I'll ring up friends and say: 'It's a disaster, it's never going to work,' and they say, 'Oh, you say that every time.' But of course it's risky. Alison Chitty [his sometime production designer] describes my way of working as the solidarity around a black hole. It's very dangerous territory."
That said, it's served him well. Leigh made his feature debut with 1971's Bleak Moments and then enjoyed a heady run on the small screen throughout the 70s before returning to cinemas with the likes of High Hopes, Life Is Sweet, the bristling Naked and the Palme d'Or-winning Secrets and Lies. Another Year is his 19th picture and he has, he says, been fantastically lucky. "You compare that to someone like Terence Davies, who can barely get a film made. He's quite a quirky fellow, but that's neither here nor there. Admittedly, I don't have as high a turnover as Ken Loach, but there's reasons for that. Tell Ken about the six-month rehearsal period and his hair falls out."
Leigh's regular collaborators paint him as a kind of Rumpelstiltskin figure, spinning straw into gold. "His area is the glory of everyday nothingness, which he elevates into great drama," says Timothy Spall. "The minutiae of people's lives becomes of the utmost importance."
Just lately, however, he has longed to paint on a bigger canvas. He wants to make a film about the landscape artist JMW Turner, but that would need period details, bold exteriors, and thus far the budget has been unforthcoming. So for the time being he's sticking to the old terrain; the humdrum stomping grounds of Another Year, All or Nothing or Happy-Go-Lucky. "I remember when we were shooting the scene in Happy-Go-Lucky where Poppy goes to visit her pregnant sister in Southend. I said to Dick Pope, my director of photography, 'This is the last time I stand outside a suburban house.' But then came Another Year and we were shooting in Wanstead. Dick turned to me and said, 'I thought you said that was the last time you'd shoot outside a suburban house.'"
But look, says Leigh, it's not so bad. Unlike many directors, he loves the vast bulk of the films he's made. They feel like his, like family members. On occasion he'll find himself idly thinking of the old characters – of Cyril, the Marxist courier in High Hopes, or the anguished Johnny out of Naked – and wondering what became of them when the frame moved off and the credits rolled. Films, he says, should have a life beyond the running time. In that way, perhaps, they become as much ours as his.
Last week, the director was attending a retrospective in New York when a member of the audience stood up stood up with a query. "Mr Leigh," he said, "Do you think that Johnny will be dead an hour after the film is over?"
Slumped on his Soho armchair, Mike Leigh chuckles at the memory. "It's a great question," he says. "But obviously it's not one that I can answer. Is he dead? That's up to you."
Another Year is released next Friday | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/katine/2010/oct/30/story-of-katine-introduction-aid | Katine | 2010-10-29T23:05:00.000Z | Madeleine Bunting | The story of Katine: introduction | Patricia Asio is 13 and is coming to the end of her primary schooling, two years ahead of her peers. In her last exams, she attained the second highest grade. Such achievement in Ogwolo school in the sub-county of Katine is remarkable, and it owes much to the work of the African Medical and Research Foundation (Amref) over the last three years. The school has benefited from new desks, books and classrooms.
In virtually every hamlet scattered across the sub-county there are now heartening stories such as that of Patricia. In Ominit, a new borehole saves women such as Edith Apiango a 4km walk through an often flooded swamp to collect water. Apiango knew that the swamp water was dirty and gave her children diarrhoea; once, it nearly killed her small son. The gratitude of the women at the new water sources around Katine is overwhelming; they know all too well that the clean water which gushes from the pump has saved young lives. After malaria, dirty water (and the infections it brings) is the biggest killer of children under five.
These are the heartwarming stories of individual lives that have been transformed in a remote rural community in north-eastern Uganda over the past three years. They bring to life the reports and evaluations which have tracked the implementation of a development project focusing on five aspects of deprivation: health, education, water and sanitation, livelihoods and governance.
In this supplement, reporters have returned for a final assessment of what has been achieved since the Guardian's editor, Alan Rusbridger, launched the project in October 2007 and appealed to the generosity of Guardian readers. Barclays pledged to match-fund donations up to £1m and, with the help of Care International, added a microfinance strand to the project. Farm-Africa was brought in to provide agriculture expertise. Our team tells the story of how this expertise and your money have wrought change for a community of 29,000 Ugandans.
Read how 150 village savings and loans associations have been set up in Katine. With a starting membership fee of just 8p, residents have had access for the first time to small loans. Some have borrowed to set up small businesses, others to pay for medicines. In one year, a total of £22,482 has been banked.
Hear how a grain store has been built and a co-operative established to market farmers' agricultural surplus, ensuring they get a better price. Learn how farmers have been trained to use a new, disease-resistant strain of cassava.
More than 7,000 malaria nets have been distributed to families with small children, and village health teams (VHTs) have been instrumental in more than doubling the immunisation rate, to above 90%. The testing rate for HIV/Aids has increased nearly fourfold.
These are the facts and figures a donor needs to be reassured money has been well spent, but the binding element of this project was subtler, something harder for journalists to report on, and it will be crucial to the long-term sustainability of the project. Every one of the achievements listed above has necessitated slowly building up the community's ability to organise and run itself. Over three years, a network of committees has been nurtured: VHTs, parent-teacher associations, water source committees, farmers' groups, parent-teacher associations, and village savings associations.
Each group has been trained, with chairs appointed and basic equipment, such as bicycles, provided. VHTs have been taught basic diagnostic skills, how to gather data and how to spread the word throughout the community about hygiene, handwashing and how to dig pit latrines. It's the essence of development: giving people the skills to help their communities, encouraging leadership so they can interact and lobby their political representatives in local government. This work of building relationships and helping communities to tackle their own needs was particularly pressing in Katine. The area had experienced decades of violence and instability, most recently in 2003, when the rebel Lord's Resistance Army swept through, leaving a legacy of bitterness and suspicion.
This community rebuilding is essential to the project's sustainability. The water source committees will determine whether the boreholes are well maintained and repaired on time. Can they collect the small water user fees for the repair fund? Will the VHTs still be supervising the immunisation of babies in five years' time?
The Guardian's day to day reporting of the project on its dedicated website – www.theguardian.com/katine – comes to an end today, but Amref will stay for another year to consolidate and strengthen the community structures. We will periodically return to see how well they last and whether the Katine project achieves the ultimate measure of success: sustainability.
The project has also pioneered a new model of reporting on development and aid. Every aspect of the venture has been exposed to public scrutiny – the budgets, the reports and the evaluations. In addition, two Ugandan journalists have been based in the community, filing frequent progress reports. The result is a remarkably detailed account of how aid and development work; of what goes wrong and what succeeds, warts and all.
Readers have learned of the very high costs of the new school building in Amorikot, a strike by the VHTs when their modest remuneration was cut, and villagers' loss of confidence in the water quality of the new boreholes. Visitors to the website have asked tough questions and have made very clear their disappointments and frustrations. Villagers in Katine have added their voices, explaining what they think the project should do. Amref and Farm-Africa staff have explained what they were doing and why.
The website offers an extraordinary picture of the ups and downs, strains and stresses of a development project. Most importantly, it has set a new standard for telling the complex story of how communities can change. This task was part of the original ambition outlined by Rusbridger, who pointed out that some stories are crucial but lack the drama or crisis to push their way into the headlines. It is in the detail of these slow-moving stories that the huge issues of development and environment emerge. How does Africa feed its growing population? How will the burden of disease be eased in a continent where millions of children never reach their fifth birthday?
The project has won several awards that recognised the unique collaboration between its partners. It has won admiration for pioneering unprecedented transparency, a model which many believe will influence the increasing desire among donors to know exactly where their money has gone and how it has been used.
Lastly, a personal note from those involved in the project. Not one of us who has visited Katine over the last three years has returned untouched. Each of us has memories of the warm welcome we received, the friendships made, the dignity we witnessed in lives full of hardship. Our hearts have been inspired by the sheer delight of the children we have encountered. The aim was to change a village, but we found ourselves changed in the process. Thank you, Katine. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/jul/04/labour-womens-safety-yvette-cooper-fgm-revenge-porn | Politics | 2014-07-04T17:14:12.000Z | Jane Martinson | Labour would appoint women's safety commissioner, says Yvette Cooper | Labour plans to appoint a new commissioner to improve women's safety and promises to put violence against women and girls at the heart of its crime-tackling agenda, the shadow home secretary told the Guardian.
Yvette Cooper also intends to propose that a future Labour government would introduce a violence against women and girls bill in its first Queen's speech, which would create a new position along the lines of the children's commissioner.
The proposed watchdog role would have a remit to inspect and report on women's safety – including the traditionally difficult-to-prosecute issues of female genital mutilation and forced marriage.
The children's commissioner, with a executive team and office established under the Children Act 2004 to promote the views and interests of all children, particularly the most vulnerable, has led research in several areas, including gang culture and the impact of pornography.
Cooper is to unveil the proposed bill at the Placing Women's Safety Centre-stage event in London on Monday. She will say: "Women are being let down – by this government, by the criminal justice system, and by those who turn a blind eye when women are abused … A Labour government will put women's safety centre stage – with new laws, higher standards, stronger prevention work."
Cooper has also told staff that she wants the issue of sexual and domestic violence will be one of the Home Office's "core pillars" alongside terrorism, immigration and policing in what amount to her first concrete legislative proposals ahead of next year's election.
Other measures to be proposed by Cooper include:
People who post intimate pictures of their former partners online in so-called revenge porn attacks, or who blackmail them with such images, could face new criminal charges
Sex and relationship education would be made compulsory in schools and will be updated to tackle online safety and online exposure to pornography.
A ban on the use of community resolutions by the police for perpetrators of sexual violence and domestic abuse. A community resolution resolves a minor offence or antisocial behaviour incident through informal agreement between those involved. Instead, those found guilty of such behaviour could end up with a criminal record.
Cooper's proposals will also be seen as a criticism of the work done by the police, particularly as she plans to introduce spot checks for the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to monitor rape cases that have been dropped by the police and not passed on.
Despite recent slight improvements, CPS statistics from 2012-13 revealed a 30% drop in rape cases referred by the police, at the same time as an increase in the number of reported rapes. Campaigners believe the rise was due to increased media attention.
"When more women are going to the police with allegations of rape and yet fewer cases are reaching court, let alone ending in conviction, we need to look at reforming the criminal justice system," says Cooper.
With two women a week killed by a partner or former partner, and some areas reporting that 20% of 999 calls are made regarding domestic violence, Cooper is to heavily criticise the current government for its focus on the issue, describing the extent of it as hardly "a fringe issue".
Previously announced Labour proposals would also force every police force across England and Wales to publish performance tables for cases relating to domestic abuse and sexual violence, in a bid to expose the areas where convictions rates are falling.
Although the coalition government has won plaudits for its work on combatting sexual violence abroad, it has failed to improve conviction rates in the UK. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/dec/06/suncatcher-romesh-gunesekera-review | Books | 2019-12-06T08:58:37.000Z | Barney Norris | Suncatcher by Romesh Gunesekera review – coming of age in Sri Lanka | Kairo is growing up in 1960s Sri Lanka at a moment of gathering political repression and destabilising social change. His father is a dyed-in-the-wool communist, in an armchair sort of way. His mother is trying to work out what to do about her son’s education now the schools have been suspended. But Kairo doesn’t care too much about all this. He’s just met Jay – be warned, it’s never a coincidence when the glamorous, wealthy character with the gilded life is called Jay – and he’s going to appear in a coming of age tale.
Jay has a life that Kairo finds intoxicating. His family are rich and live in a beautiful house; he has an attractive, unstable mother and a gangsterish uncle with a farm and a classic car collection; he likes to cycle, drive, shoot, build, skinny-dip, defend the helpless and all the other things boyhood heroes do. His bedroom is filled with metaphors for the contained experience of childhood – fish tanks, in this case, which also give us a hint of Jay’s possible fetish for control – but Jay and Kairo are growing up, and need a new, more apt metaphor for the half-freedom of adolescence. So they build a cage for Jay’s budgies, where Jay also keeps a sutikka, a bird native to Sri Lanka that he’s caught, which he calls his “Sunbeam”. The title of Romesh Gunesekera’s novel invites us to draw parallels between this bird and Jay. And if you haven’t worked out how the book ends already from the character’s name, you’ll have a second opportunity to see the story’s destination heavily foreshadowed in the fate of the bird.
A series of metaphors for the dangers waiting in the adult world assail the cage Jay and Kairo build – a monitor lizard, some crows – and when the boys go away for a weekend at Jay’s uncle’s farm, we begin to see how these dangers can assail them in the real world. Jay’s urge to control comes up again, and we’re asked to question his attitude towards all these things he cages when something really gruesome happens to a local farm boy whom Jay treats as part friend, part moving target. This harrowing incident, the most successful passage in the novel, appears and disappears without particularly affecting the plot, besides providing a metaphor for the way the rich treat the poor in Sri Lanka. The book carries on to its inevitable conclusion, one family falling apart, the other not seeming so tawdry after all, a schematic romance subplot being sketched in and the cage metaphor coming up again and again.
Romesh Gunesekera. Photograph: Murdo Macleod/The Guardian
Gunesekera is an internationally acclaimed writer with a significant body of work, but his new novel is a programmatic piece of genre fiction, the coming-of-age storyline that launched a thousand films. An interesting sociopolitical setting is offered up but sketched so lightly that it doesn’t feel as though the book would need to change more than a few nouns in order to move to Australia, America or anywhere, really. This is partly because Kairo is an intentionally naive narrator – there’s a funny moment where he confuses “aviaries” with “ovaries” – but elsewhere, characters’ digressions on the theme of communism read like pub chat, interchangeable with any other political hot topic. The writing is sometimes clumsy – what does “he relied on a comfortable compromise between idealism and action which now, with socialism back in the fray, was beginning to show some strain” mean? Why can’t socialism accommodate both idealism and action? Should “action” perhaps be “pragmatism”? Has anyone ever really said “Beauty needs appreciation, and the adoration of the young is a wonderful thing” when talking about going for a drive in a car? Why has a sentence like “a fishing trip involved more deliberate deaths, and this time I would be the one doing it” not been sharpened up? It’s not possible to “do’deliberate deaths: they’re not a verb. And when a Bible falls open, entirely by chance, at the most apposite possible verse (Proverbs 30:17), I despair. A writer just can’t be this paint-by-numbers and invite comparisons with F Scott Fitzgerald.
Glimpses of a lyrical and soulful voice flicker occasionally – Gunesekera touches universality when he writes “I was convinced that we were more than what we seemed: that we were boys whose bodies were dross, whose bodies would one day be discarded”. Ultimately, though, Suncatcher gives off the strangest air of not actually being a novel. It’s the plot of a teen movie reheated, all detail planed away to make room for the conventions of genre. It makes one ask what stories are actually for – aren’t novels called novels because they should contain something new?
Barney Norris’s latest book is The Vanishing Hours (Doubleday). Suncatcher is published by Bloomsbury (RRP £16.99). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com. Free UK p&p over £15. | Full |
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