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https://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/mar/08/tv-licence-fee-decriminalise-miller-bbc | Media | 2014-03-08T02:09:00.000Z | Ben Quinn | Non-payment of TV licence fee may be taken out of criminal law | Plans to decriminalise the non-payment of the TV licence fee are being considered by government departments in a move designed to ease pressure on the courts, but which could have major repercussions for the BBC.
A cross-party group of MPs is pushing for a change in the law to make non-payment a civil offence, and the culture secretary, Maria Miller, has signalled she is prepared to put the idea on the table during talks about reviewing the BBC's charter.
"She has made clear that the BBC needs to get its house in order, particularly when it comes to governance and transparency. Having decriminalisation on the table during the negotiations will focus the BBC's minds," said a spokesperson for Miller.
Her office added that Miller's view was shared by the justice secretary, Chris Grayling, who is quoted in the Daily Telegraph on Friday saying Whitehall officials are engaged in "serious work" on the idea.
Offenders at present face a £1,000 fine and a criminal record, as well as the prospect of jail if fines are not paid. More than 180,000 people appeared in court last year after being accused of not paying the £145.50 fee – accounting for over one in 10 of all criminal prosecutions. Of those, 155,000 were convicted and fined.
Tory MP Andrew Bridgen, who is spearheading Commons efforts to change the law, said for some cash-strapped families the current law was "criminalising them for being poor".
However, the BBC has warned that decriminalisation could encourage more people not to pay, leading to further cuts to programming.
A BBC spokesperson said: "Legislation is a matter for the government, however changing the law could lead to higher evasion. Just a 1% increase in evasion would lead to the loss of around £35m, the equivalent of around 10 BBC local radio stations."
In a statement released by her officer, Miller said: "This is an interesting idea but timing is crucial and decriminalisation of the licence fee should be on the table during charter review, not separate to the process."
Her spokesman added: "We know that the justice secretary shares her view. Maria will put decriminalisation of the licence fee on the table during charter review discussions, but to do it before makes no sense."
Grayling told the Telegraph: "The culture secretary and I both agree that this is a really interesting idea – particularly given the pressure on our courts system. Our departments will be doing some serious work on the proposal."
A deal hastily negotiated with the government in 2010 saw the licence fee frozen at £145.50 until 2017 – a 16% cut in real terms. The fee brings in some £3.6bn for the BBC
The BBC director general, Tony Hall, said recently that he wants the licence fee extended to include the estimated 500,000 UK homes where viewers do not have a TV set but watch corporation programmes on demand on the iPlayer.
The move would enable the BBC to start charging the estimated 2% of households – 500,000 – in the UK which only consume on-demand TV content, rather than watching programmes live. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/11/labour-voting-tactically-stop-boris-johnson-steve-coogan | Opinion | 2019-12-11T17:30:43.000Z | Steve Coogan | I’ve always been Labour, but tomorrow I will be voting tactically | Steve Coogan | If you’re happy with the prospect of a Conservative government led by Boris Johnson, read no further. This article-cum-rant is not for you. But if, like me, you’re terrified of the hard Brexit and Trump assault on our NHS that would inevitably follow, please read on. I’m going to ask some of you to do something you may never have contemplated before.
I used to deliver leaflets for my Liberal councillor father but voted Labour. Now, in a sense I’m doing the opposite. I’m a traditional Labour voter living in Lewes, East Sussex, where even the most optimistic Corbynista recognises that the most effective way to stop Johnson wreaking havoc on our country is to vote Liberal Democrat. I have met their candidate, Oli Henman, a young man with a beard, whom I liked. I told him I would vote for him. I don’t think I have ever voted Lib Dem before, but I understand how vital it is in this election to “box clever” and vote tactically. I’m hoping in my own small way to set an example to other Labour supporters, however uncomfortable they may find it to break their traditional loyalty.
But no armchair preaching from me. On Sunday I went to Hastings to campaign with Labour and there I urged Liberal Democrats, Greens (and one-nation, moderate Conservatives) to vote Labour. The Labour candidate, Peter Chowney, is a very likable middle-aged man (also with a beard) who leads the council. Labour are seeking to overturn the Conservatives’ 2017 majority of 436 in what used to be Amber Rudd’s Tory seat, and the new Tory candidate is being investigated for alleged antisemitism. She is also known for implying that below-minimum-wage salaries for learning-disabled workers are acceptable because “they don’t understand money”. The nasty party is well and truly back. Happily, a busload of Labour activists from Lewes had also arrived in Hastings to try to help Labour win.
On Monday evening I headed to Chipping Barnet, north London, where the Labour candidate, Emma Whysall, is close to winning that seat from another Brexit hardliner Tory, Theresa Villiers. Her majority in 2015 was fewer than 400 votes, and I urged Lib Dems and Green to lend Emma their vote to get her over the line. Then I went on to St Albans, where another rightwing Brexiteer, Anne Main, won this firmly remain seat by just a few thousand votes in 2017 from Daisy Cooper, a Lib Dem and still the main challenger for the seat. Daisy’s views are as progressive as mine, though her personal life is probably less eventful. She is the only candidate who can unseat the Tory, and there is a sizable third-place Labour vote who should back her to ensure we have one more MP who will campaign vigorously against Brexit and for social justice.
Daisy Cooper, the Liberal democrat candidate for St Albans, pictured with Jo Swinson, ‘is the only candidate who can unseat the Tory, and there is a sizeable third-place Labour vote who should back her’. Photograph: Vickie Flores/EPA
We have seen Nigel Farage and Johnson essentially making a pact (though pretending not to) while Labour and the Lib Dems continue to bite chunks out of each other, unable to cast aside past rivalries. But we – the voters – can triumph over tribalism if we live in a marginal seat and are prepared – this once – to lend our vote to the candidate best placed to defeat an incumbent Tory. If you’re not sure which is the best-placed candidate in your constituency, there are several online tactical voting sites.
Tactical voting across the UK: a region-by-region guide
Read more
Some in the Labour party, the party I support, may not be happy about my advocating widespread tactical voting. I know that, and I understand that in some cases a tactical vote will mean ignoring some policy differences past and present. But, guys, come on! Imagine waking up on Friday morning and realising that, were it not for the well-intentioned idealism or the overcooked obstinacy of a few thousand voters whose preferred candidate never stood a chance, we could have avoided five years of misery under Johnson. Perhaps, when Labour throws its weight behind reform of the electoral system, and so abolishes any need for tactical voting, I may accept that the country’s interests lie in unbending loyalty to the party. In the meantime, fellow voters, let’s all use our heads rather than just our hearts. Please, if you live in one of those marginal seats, lend your vote to the candidate who could help stop Boris Johnson and avoid a hard Brexit.
Steve Coogan is a comedian, actor, writer and producer
3:31
Election night 2019: what to watch for – video explainer | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2019/may/24/10-best-alternative-mountain-walks-climbs-snowdon-highlands | Travel | 2019-05-24T11:05:08.000Z | Carey Davies | 10 of the UK's best alternative mountain and hill walks | Lake District
Skip Helvellyn via Striding Edge
Give this a go instead High Street via Long Stile ridge
Helvellyn is a wonderful mountain, a huge throne of stone carved by glaciers, but the Lake District’s third-highest peak is yet another victim of the honeypot effect. Erosion has already wiped out some rare Arctic-alpine plants and is endangering the likes of the schelly fish, an ice age remnant found in the mountain’s Red Tarn.
Climbing High Street fell from Haweswater via Long Stile ridge shares ingredients with the ascent of Helvellyn via the famously airy arête of Striding Edge. You get a superb ridge and a stern glacial cirque, topping out on a broad plateau with the Lakeland fells laid out around you, but without the long procession of people. Long Stile is a mild scramble, but well within the abilities of most hill walkers, and the top of High Street (named after the Roman road that crossed its summit) is one of the finest vantage points in the Lake District.
A lone figure on a pinnacle on Scafell. Photograph: Nigel Wilkins/Alamy
Skip Scafell Pike
Give this a go instead Scafell
Climb Scafell Pike on a sunny bank holiday, and you have to jostle for the summit cairn with a crowd the size of a small festival. But those who climb to the top of England’s second-highest peak, its silent sibling, Scafell – less than a mile away and only slightly lower (14 metres) – can enjoy the same huge views, quite possibly from an empty summit and in a silence broken only by the occasional croak of a raven.
This contrast is remarkable, and partly thanks to Broad Stand, a treacherous crag that acts as a bulwark stopping people hopping between the two peaks. The most direct route up Scafell is from Wasdale, but the best is the long, challenging ascent via the Esk gorge, which is studded with waterfalls tumbling into icy blue plunge pools, perfect for the aquatically inclined – and thermally resilient – on a broiling summer’s day. Upper Eskdale feels like England’s answer to a Himalayan sanctuary, a spectacular hanging valley reached only by the dedicated pilgrim of the Lake District’s wilder corners.
The Highlands
The view across Loch Morlich to Cairn Gorm and the northern corries. Photograph: Julian Cartwright/Alamy
Skip Ben Nevis
Give this a go instead Cairn Gorm and the northern corries
The most popular path up Ben Nevis – the Mountain Track from Glen Nevis – is perfect if you just want to tick the “Britain’s highest mountain” box. Getting up it is an achievement but the route can be a bit purgatorial – a series of switchbacks up the most formless side of the mountain. And it’s usually heaving.
For adventure on a similar size and scale but with fewer people, the circuit from the Cairngorm Mountain ski centre car park up to Cairn Lochan, over the awesome crags of the northern corries to Cairn Gorm (Britain’s sixth-highest mountain), and down via Sròn an Aonaich ticks several boxes. It takes in some of the most spectacular mountain architecture in Britain and skirts the Cairngorm plateau, the highest terrain in Britain beyond Ben Nevis itself. As on any hill walk, proper equipment, a close look at a mountain weather forecast and good navigational skills are essential.
Skip The Cobbler (AKA Beinn Artair or Ben Arthur)
Give this a go instead The Tarmachan Ridge
View from Ben Lawers summit, showing Beinn Ghlas, Meall Corranaich and Meall nan Tarmachan. Photograph: Julian Cartwright/Alamy
Most Scottish hills never see anything like the crowds of some of their counterparts in England and Wales, but the Cobbler, in the southern Highlands, is one of the few exceptions to the rule. Though a splendid mountain, its proximity to Glasgow and the Central Belt, combined with the pull of its Tolkienesque, rock-fortress summit (the origin of its “nickname”) means the summer crowds are rarely absent.
Meall nan Tarmachan, a little further north, lacks such an unmistakeable profile but the traverse of its full length, balancing along rocky ridges and grassy arêtes surrounded by a sea of summits, is one of the best mountain walking experiences in the Southern Highlands. The mild –and avoidable – scramble on the descent from Meall Garbh does not quite offer the thrill of “threading the needle” (the head-swimmingly exposed scramble to the top of the Cobbler), but it adds a bit of spice to the mix.
Brecon Beacons
View from Twmpa towards Hay Bluff. Photograph: Cody Duncan/Alamy
Skip Pen y Fan
Give this a go instead Hay Bluff and Twmpa
Last Good Friday, as the sun beat down on the top of Pen y Fan, highest peak in south Wales, saw an increasingly common phenomenon: walkers formed an orderly line to get that all-important summit selfie. The queue was a quarter of a mile long. Take a bow, Britain – we have literally taken our queuing habit to new heights.
If you don’t fancy the sound of this, head east, to the wonderfully overlooked Black Mountains. Hay Bluff, just south of Hay-on-Wye on the mountains’ main north-east-facing escarpment, and nearby Twmpa (which also goes by the unfortunate monicker of Lord Hereford’s Knob) provide a similar “top of the world” feeling, but with a fraction of the crowds. Semi-wild ponies roam the ridges, and kestrels and buzzards hang in the updraft. Go on a day of far-reaching visibility to make the most of the vast views over the rural patchwork of Herefordshire and into the hilly heart of Wales.
Yorkshire Dales
The summit of Buckden Pike, Upper Wharfedale. Photograph: David Forster/Alamy
Skip Yorkshire Three Peaks
Give this a go instead Wharfedale Three Peaks
More than a mere long walk, the magnificent 23-mile circuit of Pen-y-Ghent, Whernside and Ingleborough in the middle of the Yorkshire Dales is a sort of cultural rite of passage. But in the 130 years or so since the original “Three Peaks” walk was devised, the troubling effects of its popularity – overcrowding, erosion and parking chaos – have reached near-crisis levels.
The Wharfedale Three Peaks, a high-level horseshoe around the top of glacier-gouged Upper Wharfedale, is a very worthy alternative, and of similar length and sternness. The “summits” of Birks Fell, Buckden Pike and Great Whernside (confusingly smaller than its namesake) are more like wide whaleback ridges, but you stay up in the sky for longer, and on a sunny day sinking a pint outside the White Lion at Cray, around the 10-mile mark, is a simple piece of paradise. By the end you will be tired, happy and saturated with wonder.
The Upper Wharfedale Fell and Rescue Association will run a marshalled Wharfedale Three Peaks challenge on 29 June, with the full 22-mile route, plus shorter options.
Skip Malham Cove and Gordale Scar
Give this a go instead Warrendale Knotts and Attermire Scar
Warrendale Knotts and Ribblesdale, between the town of Settle and Langcliffe village. Photograph: John Bentley/Alamy
This may not be “mountainous” territory in the strictest sense but the sublime karst architecture of the Yorkshire Dales can be as jaw-dropping as anything found at higher altitudes. The echoing enormity of Malham Cove is the world-famous A-lister, and neighbouring Gordale Scar gets its fair share of attention, too, as cars choking the fields and roads around Malham at weekends attest.
Nothing really comes close to the scale of Malham’s limestone spectacles but there are some remarkably overlooked gems around the Dales. Warrendale Knotts and Attermire Scar rise spectacularly from the folds of the landscape near Settle, their rippling layers of rock reflecting the ebb and flow of the tropical sea they were born in. And nearby Victoria Cave, where the bones of hippos, rhinos, elephants and hyenas were excavated in the 19th century, is another poignant location to contemplate lost worlds lying underfoot.
Peak District
The summit of Parkhouse Hill looking across to Chrome Hill in upper Dovedale. Photograph: Steve Taylor/Alamy
Skip Mam Tor and the Great Ridge
Give this a go instead Chrome Hill and Parkhouse Hill
Chrome Hill and Parkhouse Hill are what might happen if you took a pair of Alpine mountains, shrunk them to about a 20th of the size, and plonked them amid the green pastures of the White Peak. They are, rather mind-bendingly, the calcified remnants of huge coral reefs which existed in a teeming tropical sea about 330 million years ago – vividly illustrating the wonder of limestone formation – and their crags and slopes are a botanical treasure trove.
As mini-mountains with wide-ranging views, they make a fitting and far quieter alternative to Mam Tor and the Great Ridge – the sweeping edge separating Edale and the Hope Valley which is probably the most popular hill walk in the Peak District, which is in turn one of the most popular national parks in Britain. I would offer a word of warning, though: those who are sensitive to heights may find Parkhouse Hill packs quite a punch for its small size.
Snowdon
Sign and stone marker for top of the Watkin path. Photograph: Alamy
Skip Snowdon via the Llanberis, Pyg or Miner’s paths
Give this a go instead The Watkin Path
The previous descriptions of overcrowded hills are just a warm-up for Snowdon, which by the last count receives almost half a million visitors a year. Ascending via one of the popular paths, such as the Miner’s or Pyg, can sometimes feel like an exercise in queuing for the summit from the first step you take. Yet here as elsewhere, the honeypot effect is concentrated into a smallish area: even on a sunny bank holiday it is possible to climb Snowdon in relative peace. (Remember, though, that none of its paths will offer anything like perfect isolation, and the approach to the summit is always likely to be bedlam).
A few years ago, I would have hesitated to recommend the Watkin Path, with its idyllic series of pools and waterfalls near the start, because it involved a steep and rather scrappy final climb to Snowdon’s summit, but a new path has now been laid on key sections thanks to the British Mountaineering Council’s fundraising efforts. Descend to the south via Bwlch Main and Allt Maenderyn for a fantastic and lesser-trodden circuit.
Skip Tryfan and the Glyderau
Give this a go instead The Carneddau
The outlying Carneddau peak of Yr Elen. Photograph: Julian Cartwright/Alamy
The wind-ravaged tops of the Carneddau are a world apart: a series of wide, whale-backed mountain ridges that could easily be mistaken for Arctic tundra. Despite being the UK’s largest continuous expanse of high ground south of Scotland, the Carneddau are easily overlooked in favour of the more “glamorous” Glyderau, on the opposite side of the Ogwen valley, which entice walkers en masse with pulse-racing scrambles and bristling ridges. But in the great Carneddau, once you get up high on those roomy ridges you can stay high on them for hours, striding along in a lofty place – where ravens, dotterels and certainly sheep often outnumber people – soaking up the sheer joy of space. You can’t go wrong with the circuit of Pen yr Ole Wen, Carnedd Dafydd, Carnedd Llewelyn and Pen yr Helgi Du. The Carneddau even hide a lesser-known classic scramble, the Llech Ddu Spur – perfect for the adrenaline-seeker looking to dodge the crowds of the Glyderau.
Looking for a holiday with a difference? Browse Guardian Holidays to see a range of fantastic trips | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/jan/09/labour-would-link-services-data-for-children-in-england-to-boost-standards | Education | 2024-01-09T19:05:45.000Z | Richard Adams | Pupils to get unique ID number linking service records under Labour | Children in England should be given a unique number to link their records held by schools, health visitors and councils, allowing governments to harness artificial intelligence and data-mining to improve standards, according to the shadow education secretary, Bridget Phillipson.
In a keynote speech, Phillipson also praised the former Conservative education secretary Michael Gove for his high expectations, in contrast to the “merry-go-round” of ministers that have followed him.
Phillipson told an audience of education policymakers that current levels of pupil absences were “frankly terrifying”, and backed legislation for a register of home-schooled children as well as making data more available for those in school.
“Information about children isn’t shared in the way it needs to be. Today, too often, for too many children, that simply isn’t happening.
Labour vows to tackle school absences and ‘broken relationship’ with families
Read more
“We need, and Labour will bring, a simple single number – like the NHS number – that holds records together, and stops children’s needs falling through gaps within schools and between them, between all the services that wrap around them,” Phillipson said.
“The vast opportunities of the technology we have today, of artificial intelligence, of data-mining, of the automated search for patterns and learning, [offer] the promise of a country and a culture where the drive for high and rising standards is embedded in all that we do.
“All of that is useless if we don’t even collect and collate the information we have.”
Labour’s policy was announced by the party’s leader, Keir Starmer, in July, when Labour said it would pilot the use of a “children’s number” for use in education, social care and other support services.
A unique identifier has also been backed by Rachel de Souza, the children’s commissioner for England, who has called for a “consistent child ID” number to allow data sharing and highlighting areas such as attendance, safeguarding and special education needs.
Phillipson confirmed proposals that Labour would use to tackle slipping attendance rates in England’s schools, ranging from free breakfasts in primary school to increasing mental health support in secondary schools.
She also accused the government of bungling its efforts to repair the life chances of children affected by the Covid-era lockdowns that saw schools closed to most pupils. “If I’m secretary of state for education, if and when such a national crisis comes again, school should be the last to close and the first to open,” she said.
While Phillipson did not mention the current education secretary, Gillian Keegan, by name, she did offer rare praise for Gove, who was education secretary for England from 2010 to 2014, and piloted a wave of divisive reforms including the creation of free schools and imposing more academic curricula.
School leaders in England feel lockdown ‘broke spell’ of bond with parents
Read more
“What Michael Gove brought to education, for all of our disagreements about many of the approaches that he took, was a sense of energy and drive and determination about education being central to national life,” Phillipson told an audience that included Sir Michael Wilshaw, the former Ofsted chief inspector appointed by Gove, and Lord Nash, who served under Gove as schools minister in the Lords.
“But what we’ve seen in recent years with this merry-go-round of education secretaries – I’ve had five in my time as shadow education secretary – is the lack of priority being given to education.
“I think it speaks to a wider truth about how far education has been deprioritised since Michael Gove’s time. I want to make sure, and Keir wants to make sure, that Labour will ensure education is front and centre of national life.”
Asked about attempts by private schools to avoid Labour’s policy of adding VAT to tuition fees by encouraging parents to pay years in advance, Phillipson said she would look at closing the loophole with provisions used by the government in 2010, when the VAT rate was raised from 17.5% to 20%. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2024/may/01/sons-fathers-hand-valery-poshtarovs-best-photograph | Art and design | 2024-05-01T14:35:09.000Z | Chris Broughton | Sons, when did you last hold your father’s hand? Valery Poshtarov’s best photograph | Afew years ago, while walking my sons to school, I found myself thinking that, although I held their hands daily, one day they wouldn’t need me alongside them, that we would lose that sense of physical closeness. I decided to photograph my own father and grandfather holding hands – but it was the start of the pandemic, my grandfather was 95 and we wanted to keep him safe. We couldn’t meet for over a year.
In the meantime, while walking around Bulgaria’s capital Sofia, where I live, I stopped to photograph a house that caught my eye and a woman came out pushing a man in a wheelchair. I assumed they were going to chase me away, but instead she showed me a framed picture of a young man, aged about 30. She said he was their only son and he had died eight months before. She asked if I would photograph her husband with the portrait.
I was stunned – it felt like a sign. This was exactly the kind of picture I’d been thinking about. I did as asked and later took the portrait I’d planned – of my father and grandfather holding hands. My grandfather passed away shortly after. It’s the only image my father has of just the two of them.
In some cases, estrangements have even been overcome
That became the first in an ongoing series. So far, I have photographed fathers and sons holding hands in Bulgaria, Georgia, Turkey, Armenia and around the western Balkans. Many live far apart. Sometimes, the whole community joins in – someone might suggest a neighbour who has his son around and say maybe we could bring them together. People also call me asking for a portrait.
Other pictures are the result of a chance encounter, which is how I prefer them – when I’m somewhere nobody knows me and I have to approach people as a stranger. That was the case with this image. While travelling around Georgia, I saw these two on the road. I had only a minute or two to explain the idea and convince them to take part. When I took the picture, I had just a few seconds before it got too awkward for them. There’s always the challenge of choosing the right background, one that’s somehow relevant to the participants, and of preserving the authenticity of this very special act.
There are cultural differences between countries, of course, and the gap between generations seems bigger in places that have had recent conflict or a change in political systems.
Even the hardest guys seem to accept that father and son relationships are somehow sacred
There are various reasons, too, why fathers and sons might not want to take part. For the older generation, perhaps there’s a feeling that men shouldn’t express emotion. For sons, there can be timidity and awkwardness, related to stereotypes about masculinity and openness. If it’s so hard for a father and son to hold hands, I wonder how difficult it would be for strangers.
I send everyone a copy of their portrait and they sometimes reply with their stories. Some haven’t held hands for decades, or ever. In some cases, relationships have been changed for the better – and even estrangements have been overcome. In others, the father and son already had a close relationship. Even the hardest guys seem to accept that father and son relationships are somehow sacred: there’s something incontestable about them. I’ve been distributing free postcards of my portraits and, even when looking at pictures of strangers, people can recognise themselves.
I see all these images – even the one of my father and grandfather – as icons, representations of something bigger than individual identities. I’m trying to bring in as many countries and cultures as possible. I wouldn’t be surprised if it becomes a lifelong journey.
Valery Poshtarov is winner of the portraiture category of the Sony World Photography awards at Somerset House, London, until 6 May
Valery Poshtarov’s CV
Valery Poshtarov. Photograph: Florian Demirev
Born: 1986, Dobrich, Bulgaria.
Trained: National High School of Arts in Varna, Bulgaria, and Plastic Arts at the Sorbonne, Paris.
Influences: August Sander and Alec Soth.
High point: “I have evolved from capturing candid shots to more deliberately preserving the lives of those who consciously stand before my camera. The encounters with these individuals – this merging of souls that transcends personal identity to collaboratively build a shared vision of humanity – represent my true reward from photography.”
Low point: “Early in my career, I made a choice to maintain my integrity by rejecting commercial projects. This decision meant years away from photography, during which I supported my family by dealing art, not creating it.”
Top tip: “Artists dedicate their days to creating art, and their nights to doubting it. Ensure that each new day brings experimentation and growth.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/voluntary-sector-network/2014/sep/29/poverty-porn-charity-adverts-emotional-fundraising | Voluntary Sector Network | 2014-09-29T07:00:02.000Z | Aimee Meade | Emotive charity advertising – has the public had enough? | When was the last time you watched a charity advert the whole way through and then donated? Was it last night after the soaps or before the news? No, me neither.
In a world so saturated with adverts, we often switch off at the best of times, never mind when we are being asked to eradicate poverty in the whole of the Southern Hemisphere for just £3 a month.
Yes, those adverts are from charities who are doing incredible work, but are they the most effective way to grab our attention? I spoke to fundraising experts, charities and a psychologist to find out.
Co-founder of Regarding Humanity, Linda Raftree believes that adverts we’ve previously been used to seeing – of hopeless people in poverty – aren’t effective in solving the issues charities are seeking to address. They don’t empower or create sustainable change, she says.
“We know that organisations need to raise funds for their work, but when it comes to such advertising and campaign imagery, they’re often acting detrimentally to their long-term goals,” says Raftree.
“The third sector needs to modernise and mature a little in terms of how it represents the people is supporting and supposedly helping,”
Raftree, talks of such adverts as “poverty-porn” and as being part of much larger issues in the aid industry.
She is part of the Rusty Radiator Awards panel - a Norwegian initiative which takes a comical look at charity videos that overdo stereotyping. Golden Radiator Awards are given to those who do the opposite.
The awards were founded in 2013 after a tongue-in-cheek Africa for Norway video created by The Norwegian Students’ and Academics’ International Assistance Fund (SAIH) became a viral hit.
In the video, created to make charities think about the way they represent their beneficiaries in the developing world, Africans are seen watching images of cold Norwegians and are donating radiators to help during the Nordic winters. So far, the video has 2.4m views on Youtube.
Kristoffe Kinge, vice-president at SAIH, says that stereotyping of this nature in the media and in fundraising, creates an “us and them” feeling about beneficiaries and serves to divorce people from feeling connected to those who might need charity assistance.
“When we start to think that we are so substantially different from other people, it becomes easier to accept that people are suffering – we believe these images that are shown in advertising and fundraising campaigns create apathy rather than action,” he says.
Being humorous, creative, or both, without over-simplifying the issues and also showing the structural reasons behind poverty, is the way forward, he says.
“Humour is universal – if you look at the nominees for the Golden Radiator award they have done lots of different things. They’re very good at humour and they let people tell their own stories,” offers Kinge.
Making it relevant to users and donors
Plan UK, which won a Golden Radiator Award last year for its “I’ll take it from here – because I am a girl” campaign, believes that empowerment of beneficiaries is the key to good charity advertising campaigns.
The multi-awarding winning stop-motion animation film is about the importance of education for girls.
It’s narrated by, and follows the journey of, 12-year-old Brendar from Malawi. She talks about her hopes and dreams and what she could achieve by staying in school, then shows a sobering insight into the reality of her day-to-day life.
The film ends by explaining how the audience can make her dreams come true and empower her to help others like her by “giving her a chance and letting her take it from here.”
Sally Wrench, brand and marketing communications manger at Plan UK, says: “If we are trying to empower children to realise their rights we need to make sure they feel empowered by the way we talk about them.”
The psychology behind giving
Psychologist Nathalie Nahai is in agreement. She believes that if a charity creates a story like the one featuring Brendar, the public can then draw similarities between their own lives and hers. They can attempt to somehow relate.
“The public now responds much better if they can follow a concrete and tangible impact in a charity advert,” she says. “The most effective charity adverts feature just one person. If the advert shows just one single person, it feels more real and therefore has more of an impact.”
The future
Raftree agrees: “I think the challenge for the charity sector is to really open up platforms and spaces to hear authentic stories from the forefront.”
She refers to the work of photographer Brandon Stanton who has been out in Iraq and Syria to tell people’s stories. “He has a very to-the-point way of telling the story and it is very dignified,” she says.
“That type of storytelling is great – where you can support from the outside. It means you are not hijacking the cause or stepping in and showing yourself as the hero, that is the way charities should work going forward.”
If you work in the charity sector, please join our free network for charity professionals. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2021/may/29/labour-pledges-to-outlaw-redundancy-for-pregnant-women | Money | 2021-05-29T06:00:17.000Z | Alexandra Topping | Labour pledges to outlaw redundancy for pregnant women | Labour would make it illegal to make women redundant during pregnancy and for six months after their return to work, as part of a slew of policies to protect and promote gender equality in the recovery from the pandemic.
The party also called on the government to review the UK’s “failing” shared parental leave policy and to introducing ethnicity pay gap reporting. It has also pledged to modernise equal pay laws to give women the right to know what their male colleagues earn.
Plea to ease Covid maternity rules as women continue to get bad news alone
Read more
Labour is calling for the government to disclose the number of jobs that have been created by schemes such as Kickstart, Restart and Jets by sex, ethnicity and disability.
The move will put pressure on the government to do more to boost equality in the workforce and protect pregnant workers as the end of the furlough scheme draws closer.
Experts have warned that women, who often dominate the industries hardest hit by Covid, are at particular risk when the furlough scheme ends in September, with the Office for Budget Responsibility warning that sectors dominated by women are likely to face the slowest recoveries.
As of March, 2,124,500 women were on furlough, compared with 1,945,600 men, according to government figures, while in May last year the Institute for Fiscal Studies found that mothers were one and a half times more likely than fathers to have either lost their job or quit since the lockdown began.
With Saturday marking the 51st anniversary of the Equal Pay Act, Marsha de Cordova, the shadow women and equalities secretary, said urgent action was needed to prevent a “two-tier recovery” from the pandemic. “Labour want to see data on the number of jobs created, the impact of the pandemic on the gender and ethnicity pay gaps, and an urgent review of the failing shared parental leave system,” she said.
“Making it illegal to make a new mother redundant during pregnancy and maternity leave, except in very specific circumstances, is a simple, robust way to end discrimination.”
The charity Maternity Action welcomed the move, saying government ministers had been promising reform since January 2017, after research by the Equality and Human Rights Commission found widespread non-compliance by employers. The study found that 11% of mothers – 54,000 working women – lost their job as a result of maternity discrimination each year.
Shared parental leave: scrap ‘deeply flawed’ policy, say campaigners
Read more
It was “shocking” that the government had not taken action to address the gendered impact of the Covid19 pandemic, identified by the women and equalities select committee, said Ros Bragg, director of Maternity Action.
“With the shelving of the repeatedly promised employment bill, and with women facing a wave of unfair redundancies as the furlough scheme winds down this summer, women need action now,” she said.
The charity also accused the government of falsely claiming that it had made reforms to redundancy policy to prevent discrimination in the 2019 Conservative manifesto, which stated: “We have reformed redundancy law so companies cannot discriminate against women immediately after returning from maternity leave.” Bragg said there was no evidence to support this.
A government spokesperson said: “Pregnancy and maternity discrimination is unlawful and has no place in the workplace, which is why we have already announced plans to extend the redundancy protection period afforded to mothers on maternity leave.
“Our plans will extend the existing redundancy protections to pregnant women and for six months after a mother has returned to work. This will also apply to those taking adoption leave and shared parental leave.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/may/21/jean-luc-godard-goodbye-to-language-cannes-review | Film | 2014-05-21T17:33:00.000Z | Peter Bradshaw | Cannes 2014 review: Goodbye to Language - Godard's dog, in 3D | The old provoc/auteur is back — this time in 3D. Jean-Luc Godard has made another film, and the simple fact of his productivity is startling. Finding out about a new Godard movie is like discovering that Che Guevara survived the CIA assassination attempt in the Bolivian jungle, and has just pulled off another bank robbery in some La Paz suburb, raising cash for the imminent revolution. (Che and Mao are both invoked here, in a spirit of respect for their enduring relevance.)
At 83, Godard has lived long enough to see his ideas and procedures migrate to conceptual art and video art, leaving him alone in the cinema. Yet his energy and intensity and difficulty are eerily undiminished. He appears to be bidding an agonised farewell to types of language, including the language of cinema and the language of love — though with the habitual Godardian sense that language and communication were never anything other than a delusion.
It is an uncompromising and exasperating 70-minute cine-collage placed before us on a take-it-or-leave-it basis, composed of fragments of ideas, shards of disillusionment. There are quotations and maxims. Figures will sonorously address each other, as if talking to themselves, or to the non-existent fourth wall, without meeting each other's eye. There are clips from classic movies, video clips in which classic movies are playing on TV in the background; there is video with super-saturated colour, sudden angular stabs and screeches of music from nowhere, musical phrases which cut out into silence and are then repeated.
A quasi-Nazi security guard starts screaming and shoving and is sharply dealt with off camera. Hitler is grimly remembered, Solzhenitsyn invoked. A Swiss pleasure boat peacefully steams in and out of harbour: a reminder of his previous film, Filme Socialisme which had cruise-ship scenes remarkably shot aboard the Costa Concordia — which later sank.
Godard's inspired quasi-amateurism and untutored approach, which once gave us the jump-cut, have now given us his outrageously patchy sound-design. You can hear the join, as if he has edited it on some very obsolete software. 3D allows Godard to overlay words and phrases on top of each other, yet it sometimes looks like a problem with the electronic subtitling. You can see the camera-crane shadow in one shot. Yet it is all deliberate. It is there to jolt, to challenge, to disrupt: the old Brechtian imperative. Yet amidst this bewildering swirl, a central idea and even a story of sorts is discernible — and it is a classic Godard theme, going back to the 60s: a man and a woman. They live together, they have sex, yet they are profoundly alienated and appear not be able to communicate.
In the press programme distributed to festival delegates, there is the director's fantastically unhelpful summary of the film, which inevitably bears only the loosest relationship to what happens on screen. The wording is however interesting: "a married woman and a single man meet". It recalls the film titles of his great 60s heyday, and the woman's nakedness is an echo of Bardot's in his film Le Mépris, or Contempt.
Touchingly, the couple and the film itself finds some solace in a great love of dogs. Farewell To Language quotes Darwin to the effect that a dog is the one animal that loves you more than it loves itself. The canine star is Roxy, played by Godard's own dog called Miéville — though it is surely ungallant of him to name his dog after his partner, Anne-Marie Miéville. The presence of Roxy/Miéville casts an interesting light on Godard's own rumoured misanthropy and even misogyny.
And what is it all about? Perhaps it is about humanity's agonised sense — which gets worse as death approaches — that making sense of things is impossible, that language, art and the act of love offer a unity which is a mere transient confection. Often, Godard's camera lens seems to me like the lens of a futuristically powerful telescope. He sees everything from a very great distance and vast detachment, on a planet of his own, and his communications are garbled and frazzled from being transmitted intergalactic distances. Farewell To Language is chaotic and mad, with longeurs. But it has its own baffling integrity and an arresting, impassioned pessimism. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/10/this-is-the-end-people-who-fled-icelandic-volcano-fear-town-not-survive | World news | 2024-02-10T06:00:34.000Z | Clea Skopeliti | ‘This is the end’: people who fled Icelandic volcano fear their town will not survive | As lava sprayed out of a volcano on Iceland’s Reykjanes peninsula for the third time in as many months on Thursday, Sigurdur Enoksson felt the eruption spelled an end to his life in the town he had called home for three decades.
“This did it. I think we lost this battle,” said Sigurdur, who owns a family bakery employing 10 people in Grindavík. “After 29 years of having my bakery, I think this is the end. I think we are not coming back [to] Grindavík.” The latest eruption did not pose a direct threat to the town, but caused lava to hit water pipes in the region, affecting hot water supply for more than 20,000 people.
Sigurdur, 59, was planning to wind down towards retirement before the onset of the cataclysmic eruptions that have destroyed homes and wrenched gaping cracks in the Earth. The town’s future has since been thrown into question, with scientists fearing volcanic outbreaks could continue for years. “They’re saying eruption [could] be part of our lives for maybe years. How can you [run] a business with that?
Sigurdur Enoksson with his family in their bakery. Photograph: Guardian Community
“I own my bakery and my house and have no debts – then suddenly something happens and you’re up in the air. The question is if the government will pay us out. They’re doing their best but it’s slow. Those people whose houses were completely ruined are lucky, because they got paid,” he said. Last month, the prime minister, Katrín Jakobsdóttir, said the government was considering taking over the properties and offering compensation.
Like many other residents, Sigurdur is living in a rented flat with his family, in a town near Reykjavík. The government has offered the town’s residents financial help for accommodation costs after its evacuation on 10 November, as well as economic support to affected workers. “Lots of people have it worse than us – but we want to know where our lives are going,” Sigurdur said.
After this week’s eruption, Sigurdur feared this may be the final straw for many people from the town, particularly those with children. “I’m not sure if Grindavík will ever be safe. The town is full of cracks everywhere. It was built on lava that has opened up. That happened 800 years ago, too. We can’t control it. You don’t mess with nature.”
For Sigurdur, this could mean the end of the home he has known for half his life, with his family business at its centre. “I’ve built my small bakery with a big heart for 29 years and all that seems gone. I am so sad.”
A police officer stands by a crack in a road in Grindavík which was evacuated in November due to volcanic activity. Photograph: Marko Đurica/Reuters
Iceland’s president, Guðni Jóhannesson, said his thoughts were with the people of Grindavík as lava again burst through the ground on Thursday. “This too shall pass,” Guðni said.
Some residents also held such quiet, conditional optimism close as they heard the news on Thursday. Eva Lind Matthiasdottir, 39, an IT professional with five children aged between 11 and 21, and a two-year-old grandchild, is desperate to return as soon as it is declared safe. But she was clear-eyed about the importance of business, especially the fishing industry, remaining in the town for such a return to be viable.
While she can work remotely, Eva Lind’s husband is a steelworker employing six people working on local boats. This week, 130 employees of a fishing company based in the town were removed from the company’s payroll and will receive state aid.
Grindavík residents have not been given a return date, and it is unclear when, if ever, the town will be safe to inhabit. Eva Lind said the uncertainty of the situation meant many in her community were going back and forth in their minds about whether they would regain their old lives.
Eva Lind Matthiasdottir is desperate to return to Grindavík as soon as it is declared safe to do so. Photograph: Guardian Community
She said that while she would feel confident returning if the authorities ruled it safe, she understood that others may not feel the same. “People will always ask: when will this happen again? People will be afraid of it happening again.
“As soon as the town is declared safe, we want to help rebuild our community. We want teachers and kindergartens so we can have families come back.”
The family of eight are renting a home in Reykjavík, after spending two months in a two-bedroom flat owned by a relative. “[I believe] those kids can do anything because of how they handled the situation. They are just heroes.”
For Eva Lind, who moved to Grindavík eight years ago, there is no place like it. “This community is just magical. That saying: ‘It takes a village to raise a child,’ – Grindavík is that village. If there’s bad weather and I can’t pick up the kids, I don’t have to worry, some other parent will say: ‘I can pick them up for you.’ Everyone is always ready to help.
“Some of us want to go back straight away, others can’t imagine ever going back; they’ve cleared their houses. We just have to support each other. Nobody can tell you [what to do] after you lived through the evacuation and saw lava flowing into the town. Your feelings are as valid as mine.”
Páll Erlingsson in Fagradalsfjall with his son in 2021. Photograph: Guardian Community
Páll Erlingsson, 58, has taught in Grindavík’s school for 25 years and was hoping to finish his career there. But after being evacuated, he has been teaching in a school in the capital that has given his oldest year – the 16-year-olds in year 10 – three rooms in which to complete their education together. Páll, who lived with his 27-year-old son in Grindavík, is living out of a suitcase with his girlfriend in Reykjavík.
“If we give up on the school, then it’ll be even more difficult to come back – we’d have to build up from scratch,” he said. “The kids are really positive, they’ve still got that smile.” However, he acknowledged the psychological impact the natural disaster had had on some, adding that he had been offered professional support through his employer. “It’s like having a form of PTSD.
“I try not to think too much of the future – if I think too much, it’ll bring me down. In another day, the sun will come up. My dream is to go back. But think it’ll be one or two years before we can.
“I can’t even think of it if Grindavík becomes a ghost town – that will break my heart.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/nov/16/hear-here-where-its-at-girlbands-spice-girls | Television & radio | 2023-11-16T09:45:11.000Z | Alexi Duggins | Best podcasts of the week: From Spice Girls to Sugababes, how Britain’s girlbands conquered the world | Picks of the week
Springleaf
Widely available, episodes weekly
James Acaster is the award-winning standup comic behind one of the UK’s biggest podcasts – or is he? In this comedy crime series, he claims he’s actually an undercover cop called Pat Springleaf who has spent years using a career as a funnyman as a cover story. We’re plunged into the supposed wire recordings of his biggest ever case for a surreal and inventive slice of scripted comedy that cocks more than the odd snook at the true crime genre. Alexi Duggins
Where It’s At: A Short History of Girlbands
BBC Sounds, all episodes out now
Spice Girls, Little Mix, Cleopatra: this new series hosted by the Saturdays’ Mollie King is a lively look into the history of all-female musical groups. From archive clips of the Wannabe stars making vibrator jokes to interviews with the likes of All Saints’ Melanie Blatt, it’s a breezy, fun listen. AD
Afua Hirsch, one half of the new Legacy podcast. Photograph: Suki Dhanda/The Observer
What Now? With Trevor Noah
Widely available, episodes weekly
Have people become too scared of uncomfortable conversations? Trevor Noah thinks so – that’s why he’s pushing the intimate celebrity format to the next level. First up: Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson opens up about parenting worries, depression and, err, running for president. Hollie Richardson
Legacy
Widely available, episodes weekly
Napoleon: brutal dictator and warmonger or visionary leader? Thought-provoking duo Afua Hirsch (pictured above) and Peter Frankopan look at historical figures through a fresh lens in this new podcast. Upcoming episodes feature Nina Simone’s contribution to civil rights and the “should Picasso be cancelled?” debate. Hannah Verdier
Sue Perkins Presents: Carrie Jade Does Not Exist
Widely available, episodes every Tuesday and Thursday
Perky and positive TikTok influencer Carrie Jade Williams built a supportive community by sharing her life with Huntington’s disease. But, as Sue Perkins and Katherine Denkinson document in this addictive and well-paced podcast, she lied about her identity and spun a viral yarn about a nonexistent ableist Airbnb host. HV
There’s a podcast for that
Caviar, one of the finer foods discussed on Gastropod. Photograph: Sophia Evans/The Observer
This week, Rachel Aroesti chooses five of the best underrated podcasts from a high-budget foodie affair to a comedy imagining what would happen if Britain brought back capital punishment.
Til Death Do Us Blart
It is, admittedly, rather hard to build up a head of steam popularity-wise when you only release one episode a year, but, alas, that’s a key part of the premise of this single-minded and giddily in-jokey podcast from the makers of the popular comedy advice pod My Brother, My Brother and Me. Since 2015, the trio – plus New Zealand comedians Tim Batt and Guy Montgomery – have spent Thanksgiving rewatching Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2, Paul Blart: Mall Cop’s even less illustrious sequel, before reconvening to (re)discuss the intricacies and idiocies of one of the most derided films of the century.
Gastropod
Presented by two accomplished journalists – Cynthia Graber and The New Yorker’s Nicola Twilley – this dense, fact-saturated and incredibly slick series is far more reminiscent of a high-budget audio documentary. Focusing on the science and history of food, each episode delves into a different gastronomical subject with the help of extensive interviews, on-the-ground reportage and intellectual but accessible insight from our extremely well-read hosts. Covering everything from individual foodstuffs – caviar, pineapples, ketchup – to wider trends (plant-based meat, edibles), there is no topic these two can’t turn into mind-blowing brain food.
Artists on Artists on Artists on Artists
A disorientating title and an incredibly specific conceit – each episode sees a team of comics improvise a roundtable set in the world of a particular media niche (food stylists, in-flight safety video directors, difficult actors, celebrity apology masterminds, you get the idea) – might have limited this podcast’s appeal, but anyone willing to overcome these obstacles will be rewarded with one of the most hilarious shows on the market. Working as both a pitch-perfect satire of the entertainment world and as a vessel for intense, corpsing-punctuated silliness, it is proof that when improv is this good, there’s nothing better.
Capital
Did you know that one of the best British sitcoms of the past decade is actually a podcast? Helmed by comedy writer Freddy Syborn and starring Liam Williams, Charlotte Ritchie and Harry Enfield, Capital is set in an alternative universe in which the people of this country have decided to bring back capital punishment via a controversial referendum (yes, it’s a Brexit satire). We follow the hapless and terrifyingly inexperienced civil servants tasked with orchestrating the big comeback of capital punishment as they quarrel and crisis-manage their way through this horrendous task. The end result is like a surreal, millennial-authored, doom-times version of The Thick Of It. In other words: incredible.
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Budpod
You probably think the last thing you need at this stage is yet another podcast featuring two male stand-ups shooting the proverbial, but if you do have room for just one more, consider this offering from Phil Wang and Pierre Novellie. Instead of dealing in straightforward British banter – despite both establishing their careers over here, Novellie was born in South African and Wang grew up in Malaysia – the pair come across as simultaneously more erudite and more scatological than their peers, cracking wise about anything and everything with professional-grade wit and an eye for the grotesque.
Why not try …
Love-Bombed, in which Vicky Pattison heads home to north-east England to investigate how a man maintained a relationship with a woman he met online while secretly still living with his wife and three children.
The team behind Radio 4’s series Sliced Bread brings you Toast, a study of wonder products and businesses that ended up failing.
Film critic Wendy Lloyd investigates how we talk about movies, who gets to do it and why it matters with fellow critics and social commentators in Open to Criticism.
If you want to read the complete version of the newsletter please subscribe to receive Hear Here in your inbox every Thursday | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2013/feb/16/hillsborough-families-sue-kelvin-mackenzie | Football | 2013-02-16T20:52:48.000Z | Mark Townsend | Hillsborough families to sue Kelvin MacKenzie over 'reckless' coverage | Kelvin MacKenzie, the former editor of the Sun, faces being sued for malfeasance over his newspaper's coverage of the Hillsborough football disaster.
Lawyers have indicated that they will issue a civil claim against the 66-year-old whose front-page story, headlined "The Truth", gave credence to a smear campaign and cover-up orchestrated by police in the wake of the tragedy, in which 96 people died. Although MacKenzie offered "profuse apologies" last September after the report of the Hillsborough Independent Panel exposed the article's allegations as wholly unfounded, lawyers for the families also accuse him of adopting a different approach privately.
One lawyer for the Hillsborough Families Support Group said that despite public displays of contrition by the individuals and groups implicated in the 1989 disaster, the reaction to the panel's damning report was disappointing.
He said: "We have written to all these people asking what their proposals are, and none of them, none of them, have said: 'Look, can we talk in order to find out how we can take responsibility for what we did?'
"It's not just Kelvin MacKenzie – the South Yorkshire police should be coming forward to take responsibility, so should the FA, so should Sheffield Wednesday [at whose ground the game was staged]. It's not enough just to say we paid damages, all of which were tiny amounts, and not to take responsibility now." Families received payouts as low as £3,500 for the deaths of loved ones, sums later dwarfed by settlements to policemen, who were awarded up to £330,000 after suffering post-traumatic stress from witnessing the crush on the stadium terracing.
A meeting at Liverpool's Anfield Road ground last Sunday, attended by many families of the victims, heard details of the civil claims that will be levelled at individuals and organisations involved in the cover-up. One of the targets is MacKenzie, whose newspaper falsely alleged that drunken fans urinated on police who were resuscitating the dying and picked the pockets of the dead.
MacKenzie did not issue an unequivocal apology in the 23 years until the panel report prompted David Cameron to condemn the "despicable untruths" in the Sun story. Lawyers – who will meet tomorrow to discuss their next steps – believe MacKenzie is guilty of malfeasance, which is legally defined as intentional conduct that is wrongful. They say they do not have to prove he knew the material was not true, simply that "he was recklessly indifferent as to whether it was true or not".
The families are very keen to press ahead with civil claims, even before fresh inquests into the deaths begin. The original accidental death verdicts were quashed by the high court in December.
Part of their action will include damages claims against South Yorkshire police following the emergence of new medical evidence that shows that most of those who died suffered and did not die quickly, as had been initially contested.
Trevor Hicks, the chairman of the Hillsborough Family Support Group, who lost two teenage daughters in the disaster, launched a legal action in 1992 to determine whether compensation was payable for the pain and suffering of those who died.
At the time, South Yorkshire police argued that there was no pre-death suffering because the then available medical evidence indicated that victims would have lost consciousness within seconds before they died.
It is now established that the courts' decision to agree with South Yorkshire police was based on inaccurate information, and that 58 of the dead might have been saved had the authorities reacted differently.
Meanwhile, the Independent Police Complaints Commission has begun recruiting a team of up to 100 to work on the criminal inquiry into police corruption surrounding Hillsborough.
It is also setting up an independent "challenge panel" which will advise the investigations and the Crown Prosecution Service as it weighs evidence against officers. A source said that the panel had yet to encounter any obstruction in its search for the disclosure of fresh evidence, adding: "So far, everybody has been helpful." .
A spokesman for the Football Association said it would not comment because it had not been issued with an official civil claim. Neither South Yorkshire police nor MacKenzie replied to requests for a response. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/sep/08/city-of-hope-and-fear-life-in-africas-youngest-capital | Global development | 2023-09-08T05:30:47.000Z | Florence Miettaux | From garrison town to goldrush city: life in Africa’s youngest capital | Kettles steam on charcoal stoves in the cool morning breeze. It’s a rainy day in Juba, South Sudan’s capital. There are few customers at the tea stall where Kiden Mary, 19, works on the corner of Bilpam Road – one of the city’s asphalted thoroughfares – and a muddy street leading to a residential area where houses are mostly rented to NGOs.
“I came here to look for money,” she says, pouring thick coffee boiled with ginger through a strainer. She provides for her mother and siblings at home in Kajo Keji, a village 70 miles to the south, near the border with Uganda. “Sometimes I work until 9pm. The little I get, I send to them.”
Kiden Mary at her tea stall on the corner of Bilpam Road
Kiden’s is a familiar story in Juba – a city of incomers. The lack of security or basic services in rural South Sudan, a country the size of France with a population approaching 12 million, pushes people to seek opportunities in the capital.
Since April, when war broke out in neighbouring Sudan, more than 6,000 of the country’s refugees have arrived in Juba. Most ended up at Gorom, south-west of the city, a camp created years ago to host Ethiopian refugees. Here, food is scarce. Refugees share the little humanitarian assistance they get with some support from the Sudanese community in Juba. The lack of aid has already driven some young people back to Sudan, or even to Libya.
The Gorom refugee camp, 15km from Juba, where 6,000 internally displaced South Sudanese people now live, receive humanitarian aid, and gather in cafes
In many ways, Juba tells the story of South Sudan. The country broke away from Sudan in July 2011, after a period of autonomy that started at the end of the second Sudanese civil war (1983-2005). By then, Juba was a small garrison town of the Sudan armed forces (SAF) that had been surrounded for years by the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) rebels, led by John Garang. When he died in a helicopter crash in July 2005, weeks after being sworn in as Sudan’s first vice-president, Juba opened up for his funeral; the former rebels entered the city they had besieged but never captured, and the rest of the world followed.
A passing out parade for unified forces after the South Sudan peace agreement of 2018
The soon-to-be youngest capital city in the world became the centre of a new “goldrush”. With oil money flowing into the coffers of a nation that needed to be built from scratch, and the financial backing of western donors, Juba attracted a large influx of well paid humanitarian workers and diplomats, traders, investors and jobseekers from neighbouring Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia. They flocked into Juba to claim their share of this new market for imported food and goods, but also for lucrative contracts in services and infrastructure.
From left, President Salva Kiir, Kenyan politician Raila Odinga and vice-presidents Riek Machar and Taban Deng Gai, at the inauguration of the Freedom Bridge in Juba in May 2022
The new capital was called the fastest-growing city in Africa until civil war broke out in December 2013, exposing the fragility of South Sudan’s new institutions, the deep-rooted divisions of its leaders, and the flaws of the nation-building programmes put in place by the UN. A peace agreement was signed in 2018 to end the conflict, which had resulted in nearly 400,000 deaths and twice ravaged the capital, including when, in July 2016, a first attempt at a peace deal collapsed. Guards of the two warring rivals – the president, Salva Kiir, and the vice-president, Riek Machar – started shooting at each other in front of the presidential palace, leaving hundreds dead. The bullet holes were only repaired when Pope Francis visited Juba in February this year.
The Freedom Bridge in Juba is South Sudan’s first permanent bridge over the Nile
But in 2018, Juba started to grow again. It is now hosting a unity government aiming to organise elections at the end of 2024. While instability continues in rural areas of South Sudan, Juba has been thriving, with freshly paved roads and improved services, a new airport terminal and a variety of buildings under construction. New hotels and clubs open every week catering to the children of the elite. The city is expanding upwards and outwards. While online estimates set its population at 459,000, “it is at least a million”, says Martin Simon Wani, the Juba city council CEO. And that’s not taking into account the city’s suburbs, where perhaps another million or two have now settled.
Our husbands are either dead or drunkards, we’re doing this to put our children to school so we can get out of poverty
Martha Angeth Mayen, fish seller
In the ever-changing city landscape the very rich, the very poor and a growing middle class coexist. Shiny expensive cars with tinted windows drive past old women crushing stones to sell in bags along the road. Herders from the countryside use sticks to guide their long-horned cattle across town, and at weekends weddings take place on the medan (squares) of the city, with tents, music and dancing.
Afex River Camp is popular with international visitors. In July 2023 they held a celebration to mark the 12th anniversary of South Sudan’s independence
Juba is where South Sudanese entrepreneurs and NGO workers mingle with khawajat (foreigners) on hotel rooftops and at expensive restaurants overlooking the Nile. Behind high fences and swirls of barbed wire, expats, mostly working with the humanitarian agencies, gather around their pools.
The rooftop terrace of the 360 Bar and Restaurant, opened on Juba’s busy Seven Days roundabout in June 2023
Juba keeps spreading far beyond its limits on the west bank of the White Nile, where it was established by the British colonisers a century ago. A foreign creation from the beginning, Juba is quick at forgetting its history. Colonial-era landmark buildings are destroyed or transformed, such as the Greek-built Juba cinema that was turned into a church. The Indigenous Bari community of Juba resent the loss of their ancestral territory to the capital, where land grabs by powerful members of the military can lead to violent confrontations. These tensions were one reason a new capital at Ramciel, 150 miles to the north, was announced as soon as South Sudan became independent. So far it has not materialised.
Maguen Aleth Alith, at the cattle market in Gumbo district, is one of those benefiting from Juba’s development
On the east bank of the Nile, Gumbo-Sherikat is now densely populated. Tens of thousands of people, coming mostly from the Bor area in neighbouring Jonglei state, have settled in what is still considered the countryside by the city’s administration. The main cattle market operates there, by the newly constructed Juba-Bor highway. As hundreds of cows are driven to grazing, Maguen Aleth Alith, 52, a chief elected by the traders, is one of those benefiting from Juba’s development. “The demand for cows is increasing, and when there are issues on the roads, we face shortages of cattle,” he says. He has “traded cattle around Juba since 1994”, he says. By then, the second Sudanese civil war was at its peak. “We used to dodge the Sudan army,” he recalls.
Juba’s main cattle market is in Gumbo district, which is also home to thousands of people from the Bor area in neighbouring Jonglei state
Young people are less familiar with the history but it resonates for many older residents who gave years to the liberation war and who are now barely surviving. Under an umbrella on the side of the road in Sherikat, Simon Anei Madut, 37, from Warrap in the north-western Bahr el Ghazal region, recalls being “around Juba” with the SPLA as a teenager. Today, he is still a soldier in the government army, but his salary is “very low”. He sells charcoal to pay his children’s school fees.
It’s the same struggle for the women in Sherikat’s fish market. “Our fish used to rot,” says Esther Yom Mabior, 35. They formed a co-operative, built a roof and acquired secondhand freezers to preserve the fresh fish they bring from Bor. “Our husbands are either dead or drunkards; we’re doing this to put our children to school so we can get out of poverty,” says Martha Angeth Mayen, 43.
Top left: Simon Anei Madut, a charcoal seller in Sherikat district; right, fish seller Esther Yom Mabior; bottom, women of the Sherikat fish market, who formed a co-operative and invested in freezers
Through the green canopy of neem and mango trees, half-finished apartment blocks rise up. Juba neighbourhoods comprise concrete buildings alongside mud houses and shelters of plastic sheeting. Mahad, near the Konyo Konyo market, is one of the capital’s camps housing 3,700 internally displaced people. Chol Anok teaches there at a school built in the 1970s. “All the tribes of South Sudan are here,” he says, “most displaced by the 2013 crisis.”
Chol Anok, a teacher in the Mahad IDP camp, is optimistic for South Sudan’s future
Teaching in a public school is more of a vocation given the meagre salary. Most of the teachers have left, looking for jobs with the NGOs, he says. But not him. “We need to raise our young ones so they can change this nation.” Convinced that with education, peace will eventually come, he says: “Farmers will go back to farm and South Sudan will be one of the best countries in Africa.”
But for the people in Mahad, life is getting tougher. Food rations stopped in November 2022. NGOs and UN agencies are cutting programmes due to the shortage of funds. Only 45% of the humanitarian response plan is funded this year so far in South Sudan, although food insecurity levels have never been higher, with 76% of the population in need of assistance.
Joseph Gurloch, 32, from Mahad, was a child soldier with the SPLA and was shot while fighting in 2002. He now has a prosthetic leg. Displaced from the Pibor area by conflict in 2013, he has no means to get back home. “We survive on garbage,” says Roda Racho, who also lives at the camp. “We collect plastic bottles and sell them.” Others collect leftovers to eat from the Konyo Konyo market.
Clockwise from top left: Hassan Gain, left, and Joseph Gurloch, community leaders at the Mahad IDP camp; vegetables and leftovers collected from Konyo Konyo market; camp leaders James Baboy, Roda Racho and Charles Nykuam; a man scouring the rubbish at the side of the street in Konyo Konyo district
When the little aid they receive runs out each month, it’s the same ordeal for the people living in the Hai Malakal cemetery. “Life here is difficult,” says Joyce Sunday Juan, 17, dressed in a checked skirt and a bra topped by a lawa, a flowery piece of cloth tied on the right shoulder. “Sometimes we eat and sometimes we don’t.”
Fleeing conflict and cattle raids in their homeland around the village of Terekeka, 45 miles north of Juba, this community has lived among the graves since 2008. Two five-star hotels, opened in recent years, overlook the plastic shelters of the cemetery. “We have been forgotten,” says chief James Jelle Pitia, 45. “Without guns or money, you can’t get land in Juba,” he says.
Five-star hotels tower over the IDP camp at the Hai Malakal cemetery in Juba, South Sudan, August 2023. Graves can be seen in the foreground | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2021/mar/08/mother-and-son-the-great-australian-sitcom-is-a-masterclass-in-the-art-of-the-squabble | Culture | 2021-03-07T16:30:08.000Z | Luke Buckmaster | Mother and Son: the great Australian sitcom is a masterclass in the art of the squabble | Fans of Seinfeld understand the perverse pleasures of spending time with the Costanza family – watching these pugnacious people bicker and yell and jump down each other’s throats, turning what might have been sedate occasions into epic shouting matches. I daresay that the Beare family in Mother and Son – particularly the titular characters, brilliantly played by Ruth Cracknell and Garry McDonald – could give George and his folks a run for their money. This great Australian sitcom is so devoted to capturing their arguments that watching it feels almost like a form of assault.
Retrospectively viewed through the prism of a proto-Seinfieldian exercise in narrative minutiae, this terrifically spiky and shouty series – which ran for six seasons, between 1984 to 1994, collecting much acclaim and popularity – is in some respects more devoted to matters of inconsequence than the famous “show about nothing”. Created and written by Geoffrey Atherden, and produced and directed by Geoff Portmann, Mother and Son is more pared back than Seinfeld, with a very small cast and a huge portion of it taking place in the house where Maggie (Cracknell) and Arthur (McDonald) live.
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But does Arthur really live there? I recall a moment in the first episode of the fourth season, when the show’s bitterly funny sentiment is neatly articulated. A police officer, sussing out what Arthur is up to after Maggie called the cops on him (for no good reason, of course) asks this lovable, ever-pressed upon character: “You live at home with your mother, do you sir?” To which Arthur responds: “I wouldn’t call it living.”
Ruth Cracknell (centre) as Maggie, Garry MacDonald as Arthur (left) and Henry Szeps as Robert in Mother and Son. Photograph: ABC
The core reason for Arthur’s non-liveable existence is indeed Maggie. She is one hell of a piece of work, which might sound a little mean – unless you’ve spent time with her. A central tension of the show concerns the question of whether, and to what extent, the ageing Maggie is being manipulative or experiencing senility.
This is established from the outset, when Maggie in the first episode walks around with a bowl of milk looking for her cat, only for Arthur to inform her it is dead: “Dad backed the car over it.” Aghast, she breathlessly retorts: “Your father died years ago!” To which Arthur responds: “I know, but before he did he ran over the cat.”
This tense and pointless conversation is followed by another tense and pointless conversation, with Maggie distracting Arthur by reciting Banjo Paterson’s classic poem The Man from Snowy River (“There was movement at the station …”). Her son calls her out, offering an important observation: “Every time someone wants to talk to you about something serious, you pretend to be vague.”
The point is often made that Maggie really is losing her marbles, including through visual gags such as her vacuuming the front lawn (season six) and spraying deodorant on flowers (season two). But often the humour manifests in Maggie’s manipulative genius. In the first episode of the third season, for instance, she attempts to put the kibosh on a party poor old Arthur has planned, erecting a sign on the front lawn reading “PARTY CANCELLED, DEATH IN THE FAMILY”.
Arthur, a journalist, is the kind of bloke people used to call a “sensitive new age guy” – who lives with his mother, does all the cooking and cleaning and is sometimes mistaken for being gay. As is often the case in real life, particularly for full-time carers, time has recast the pair’s roles: while Arthur still calls Maggie “Mum” he is now the parent figure, dealing with an irascible “child” always determined to get her way through any means possible.
The core reason for Arthur’s non-liveable existence is his mother, Maggie. Photograph: ABC
Occasionally – very occasionally – the gods of adversity show Arthur some mercy, but it’s always hard fought and he’s always the underdog. Unlike George Costanza, we feel for him and want him to catch a break. Sympathy certainly never comes from his older brother Robert, a selfish and egocentric dentist played in the perfect “love to hate” key by Henri Szeps; Judy Morris is also great (such a good cast!) as Robert’s caustic wife, Liz.
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The script pushes the actors into full throttle, straight-for-the-jugular mode, with a flow of very skilfully written dialogue that has real bite, real edge, real oomph. Underneath their rancour-filled interactions, broader points are made about the curse of family: not just how we can’t pick ’em, but how most, maybe all of us, feel forced into certain roles defined since a young age. The harsh parent; the caring younger sibling; the lefty with a social conscience; the staid conservative; etc. Are our entire lives forms of typecasting?
These themes and ideas will never age. Nor will the timeless art – for want of a better word – of the squabble, the quarrel, the beef, the bicker. There’s so much arguing in Mother and Son. And, all these years later, it’s still so good. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/jan/05/rapid-help-needed-for-covid-babies-who-fell-behind-says-former-ofsted-chief | Education | 2024-01-05T13:42:15.000Z | Richard Adams | Rapid help needed for Covid babies who fell behind, says former Ofsted chief | Babies born in England during the Covid crisis have been slower at developing key language, cognitive and social skills, and the veteran education policymaker Sir David Bell is warning that rapid intervention is needed to stop those children being left further behind.
More than 80,000 children born in 2020 or 2021 did not reach one or more of the key measures of progress for their age group last year, according to official data highlighted by Labour’s education team, including 60,000 very young children who did not develop communication abilities usually seen in children their age.
Writing in the Guardian, Bell – who is chairing Labour’s review of early childhood education – said nursery closures and “eye-watering” childcare costs meant many two-year-olds were unable to receive high-quality early years education to make up for the “crucial experiences” they missed during the Covid crisis.
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“It’s no wonder that headteachers have spoken of children arriving at school who are still wearing nappies, whose communication abilities are limited, or who are still unable to use a knife and fork,” said Bell, a former primary school teacher who later served as the permanent secretary at the Department for Education and the chief inspector of Ofsted.
“Despite the best efforts of teachers, gaps in learning and development widen as children grow older, becoming embedded and therefore more difficult to overcome.
“Prevention is better than cure, which is why we need to intervene early to prevent educational gaps from developing before they can grow. This will require a clear plan from the government. Yet its support has so far been lacking.”
Bell said creating a “new, modern childcare system” to eradicate those gaps would not be easy.
“Britain has a broken economy, an exhausted workforce and rising child poverty. Local government and public services have been hollowed out. But we cannot afford to fail,” he said.
The official data showed that national rates of child development last year were lower among two-year-olds than in 2018-19, before the pandemic, with London reporting the worst rate of development among children surveyed.
There were also sharp disparities between England’s local authorities. Nearly 95% of children aged between two and two and a half in Wokingham, Berkshire achieved or bettered all five development targets including problem solving and social skills, compared with 44% of the same age group in Brent, north London.
With the general election approaching, Labour is pushing early years education and post-Covid recovery as one of its key policy offers with a wide appeal to parents and grandparents as well as employers.
Bridget Phillipson, the shadow education secretary, said: “That so many of our youngest children are missing the crucial building blocks that lay the foundation for their future life chances is nothing short of a modern-day scandal.
“Labour’s plan for reform of early years will be informed by a review led by the respected former Ofsted chief inspector Sir David Bell but we will also work with early years settings to develop ‘maths champions’ and offer innovative early speech and language interventions to help children still affected by the impacts of the pandemic.”
The government has also been active with increased funding for the early years sector in England. In last year’s autumn statement, it announced an additional £400m funding for the sector to cover staff pay increases and up to £1,200 for new childminders joining the profession, in an effort to tackle longstanding staff shortages.
And earlier this week applications opened for the government’s expansion of funded childcare provision in England, with working parents able to claim 15 hours a week during term time from April. By September 2025 the government aims to offer 30 hours of childcare a week, for 38 weeks a year, to all eligible children from nine months old.
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Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, said the latest expansion would make sure that “parents no longer have to choose between a career and a family”, getting more people into work and growing the economy.
But Bell said while the expansion to children as young as nine months old sounded appealing on paper, in reality the government’s promises would be undeliverable.
“Many nursery providers are already saying they will not offer these new entitlements, meaning families will continue to struggle to get the childcare they need. The government rushed out an announcement in an attempt to score political points. It is the equivalent of saying, ‘We’ll treat 100 more patients – we just have to build the hospital first.’”
“There is no plan to recruit the staff needed to care for more children. There are no proposals for how these new nursery places will be delivered, nor how to solve the problem of childcare deserts that exist across the country,” Bell said. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/aug/17/becky-james-retires-cycling-rio-olympic-silver-medals | Sport | 2017-08-17T11:06:19.000Z | William Fotheringham | Becky James retires from cycling at 25, one year after Olympic silver medals | In a major blow for Great Britain’s women’s sprint medal hopes at the Tokyo Olympics, the country’s leading sprinter Becky James, a double silver medallist in Rio and former double world champion at the sprint and keirin, announced her retirement on Thursday at only 25 years of age. A year out from the Commonwealth Games, her absence will also be strongly felt by the whole of Welsh sport.
James had taken an extended break after the Rio Games last year to decide her future. The Guardian understands her decision was based around the fact she has had to make multiple comebacks from illness and injury during her career, and that she felt there were no guarantees a further push for Olympic glory would be met with success.
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“I have given cycling 100% and know how much commitment it takes to make it to the highest level in elite sport,” James said in a statement. “The pressure of competing at the top can be mentally and physically draining but the rewards have been incredible and I have absolutely no regrets. I now want to enjoy my life without the strict training regime, while at the same time continuing to lead a healthy lifestyle both in body and mind.”
James also announced she plans to pursue her passion for baking as a business, and that she intends to remain in cycling as a member of the Abergavenny Road Club.
Having started racing seriously as an under-16 in 2007 – when she won the junior women’s national championship at 500m – James can reflect on a career which has lasted for a decade, putting another perspective on her decision to hang up her wheels with, most probably, her best years yet to come. Given that she was very much a protege of the former technical director Shane Sutton, who quit in controversial circumstances in April 2016, her retirement has to be seen as part of the turmoil that has followed his departure.
In an era when cyclists begin taking their sport seriously at an ever-younger age, she is not the only Team GB member to quit in her twenties. In March this year, the team pursuit mainstay Joanna Rowsell Shand announced her retirement, while the omnium and team pursuit star Laura Kenny is currently on an extended break to have her first child.
James’s retirement will leave a void in British women’s sprinting, with the Rio bronze medallist Katy Marchant most likely to step into her shoes. Post Rio, the cycling squad is undergoing a wider process of transition following the crises of last year, with a new performance director in Stephen Park and uncertainty over the intentions of the multiple men’s sprint medallist Jason Kenny.
Tall and rangy, with an aggressive way of crouching over her bike, James was seen at her very best on only two occasions. The first was the world championships in Minsk in 2013, where she achieved her breakthrough to win gold medals in the sprint and keirin, plus bronze in the 500m time trial and team sprint.
Aged only 21, she was a model of composure and tactical mastery in the sprint final against the far more experienced Kristina Vogel of Germany, while the keirin final saw courage, as she fought the pain that had accumulated during five days of racing to snatch gold with a late surge.
James had already overcome glandular fever and an appendectomy to make it to her best in Minsk – and had to deal with the disappointment of being overlooked for the London Olympics in 2012 – but the health issues that probably impacted the most on her decision to retire came in 2014 and 2015.
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After she took bronze medals in the keirin and team sprint at the world championships in Colombia in February 2014, James struggled with a serious knee injury which eventually required rehab from October 2014 until February 2015. She also endured a cervical cancer scare and a shoulder injury which required keyhole surgery.
Given that background, her comeback for Rio was a delicate business, so much so that she only competed in the keirin in the world championships in London that spring. Given all that had gone before, it was a triumph that she managed a brace of silver medals in Rio, with a characteristic late surge in the keirin to finish close behind Elis Ligtlee of Holland, before going down 2-0 in the sprint final to Vogel.
Those three days of racing promised much for Tokyo but there is further context that helps explain James’s decision to leave early. Along with her continual fights against injury and illness, James – who is in a long-term relationship with the Wales rugby player George North – has been affected by a serious cycling accident involving her mother. That background points to what seems like a level-headed decision by a rare breed: an athlete of exceptional talent able to put her sport into personal and familial perspective. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/nov/27/james-webb-space-telescope-launch-delays-cost-big-bang | Science | 2021-11-27T16:00:03.000Z | Robin McKie | The James Webb space telescope: in search of the secrets of the Milky Way | In a few weeks, the most ambitious, costly robot probe ever built, the £6.8bn James Webb space telescope, will be blasted into space on top of a giant European Ariane 5 rocket. The launch of the observatory – which has been plagued by decades of delays and massive cost overruns – promises to be the most nervously watched liftoff in the history of unmanned space exploration.
The observatory – built by Nasa with European and Canadian space agency collaboration – has been designed to revolutionise our study of the early universe and to pinpoint possible life-supporting planets inside our galaxy. However, its planning and construction have taken more than 30 years, with the project suffering cancellation threats, political controversies and further tribulations. In the process, several other scientific projects had to be cancelled to meet the massive, swelling price tag of the observatory. As the journal Nature put it, this is “the telescope that ate astronomy”.
Now scientists are about to discover if those sacrifices and soaring costs are justified when, according to current schedules, the telescope is fired into space on 22 December. “It’s the launch of a generation,” says Daniel De Chambure of the European Space Agency (Esa).
The flight mirrors of the telescope undergo cryogenic testing at Nasa’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Photograph: Alamy
Designed as a replacement for the Hubble space telescope – still in operation after its 1990 launch – the James Webb is a far bigger, much more complex instrument with many more ambitious goals. For a start, it will not study the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum – as does the Hubble and most ground-based telescopes – but will gather only infrared radiation.
“There are many reasons for this,” says Prof Gillian Wright, director of the UK Astronomy Technology Centre in Edinburgh. “For a start, infrared is the perfect part of the spectrum for looking through dust, and that is important because stars and planets form in regions full of dust. So if you want to understand where and how other solar systems are being created, the James Webb should provide crucial data.”
In addition, atmospheres of planets that might contain chemicals such as methane – a gas associated with biological processes – are also best studied by gathering infrared radiation and could indicate if they are capable of supporting life.
A telescope is a time machine. It lets you see what the universe was like in the past
Prof Martin Ward
“Spectroscopy is an important way of looking at the formation of promising planets in our own galaxy,” adds Wright, who is the European principal investigator for the team that built one of the Webb’s four main instruments: the MIRI or Mid-infrared instrument. (The other three devices will also study the infrared spectrum but at differing wavelengths.)
This part of the James Webb’s operations is essentially a local affair and will involve looking at stars in our own galaxy. However, astronomers also want to study the very early universe in the period that followed the birth of the cosmos in the big bang 13.8bn years ago. That means focusing on very, very distant galaxies. And again studying infrared radiation provides key advantages.
“A telescope is a time machine. It lets you see what the universe was like in the past – because light takes a finite time to reach us from a distant object,” says Prof Martin Ward of Durham University, who is a member of the MIRI science consortium. “However, light gets fainter and redder the further back you look into the universe until its wavelength reaches the infrared part of the spectrum. So if we want to study how the first stars, black holes and galaxies formed, you also need an infrared telescope.”
Ground observatories can operate at infrared wavelengths but for prime-quality observations telescopes really need to be lifted above Earth’s warm, wet atmosphere, which blocks much of the infrared radiation that reaches us from space. Unfortunately, putting such a telescope into orbit has been so demanding it has led to countless delays as thousands of scientists and engineers have struggled to overcome the technical hurdles thrown up by the James Webb’s ambitious design.
One problem has been the simple fact that the telescope will not be able to rely on human aid once launched. Hubble still flies in low Earth orbit, where astronauts on the space shuttle were able to repair and service it. But the shuttle was grounded a decade ago and so the James Webb has been designed to operate without any prospect of hands-on help from humans.
Instead, it will be fired on a trajectory that will take it into orbit round the sun – to a region known as the second Lagrange point (L2), where, 1m miles from the Earth, the gravity of our planet and the gravity of the sun align in such a way that the telescope can be kept almost stationary in roughly the same position and can operate continuously for 24 hours a day. In addition, small gas engines will be burned to ensure the craft remains at L2.
At Lagrange 2, it will also be easier to keep the James Webb cold. The telescope has been designed to operate at around 40C above absolute zero (about -233C) so that its instruments do not generate spurious heat signals that could swamp the faint infrared radiation it receives from the other end of the universe. Far away from its warm home planet, the telescope will be protected by a five-layer-thick shield that will block out radiation from the sun and Earth, and its MIRI will also be chilled by a liquid helium refrigerator, the James Webb should be able to keep its cool for up to a decade, its designers hope.
But first the observatory will have to overcome a journey riddled with risk. For a start there is the danger of launcher failure. The Ariane 5 has notched up a total 111 liftoffs since 1996, 106 of which were successful. More importantly, its failures occurred early in the rocket’s development schedule and it is now rated as a highly reliable launcher. Nevertheless there is a chance it could fail as it lifts off from Esa’s space port at Kourou in French Guiana. And given the amount of money, time and effort already expended on the project, that is still a scary prospect.
Those who are not worried or even terrified about this are not understanding what we are trying to do
Thomas Zurbuchen, Nasa
And that is just the beginning. On its months-long journey to its new home at Lagrange 2, the telescope will be slowly unfurled as it cruises across space. First to be released will be huge sheets of wafer-thin foil that will act like giant parasols for keeping the telescope cool. Next to appear will be James Webb’s main mirror, the heart of the telescope that will collect that infrared radiation from across the universe. It is seven times bigger than Hubble’s mirror – far too large to be accommodated as a single item. As Wright says: “It is a simple fact that putting large objects in space is a lot harder than launching small ones. That has been a key technical challenge for the telescope.”
To get round the size issue, the James Webb’s designers have built a mirror that is constructed of 18 hexagons of gold-coated beryllium mirror. These will unfurl like a blooming flower and slot together automatically to create a 6.5-metre (21ft) mirror.
Everything to do with this unfolding, this unprecedented automated self-assembly, will have to work flawlessly, a process that will take around six months to complete. Only then will astronomers find out if the James Webb is going to be one of the great technological triumphs of the 21st century or a dollar-devouring disaster. As Thomas Zurbuchen, Nasa’s associate administrator for science missions, puts it: “Those who are not worried or even terrified about this are not understanding what we are trying to do.”
The Ariane 5 rocket being prepared for launch in French Guiana. Photograph: NASA
A different perspective on the caution and delay that has affected the telescope is provided by Faye Hunter of Airbus, who acted as project manager for the MIRI instrument 10 years ago. “I was just going into secondary school when the idea of the James Webb telescope was agreed,” she says. “Now I am a mother, and a successful project manager and the telescope still has not been launched.”
However, Hunter stresses the care and attention that has been taken to make sure the observatory operates perfectly once in orbit, a process that has involved more than 200 engineers and scientists working on MIRI alone. “A European consortium provided the components and MIRI was assembled from these at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire,” she adds.
“Then it was put in test chambers, which had all air sucked from them, and temperatures were reduced to levels that the telescope will experience in space. After it passed these tests, MIRI was sent to Nasa, integrated with the telescope’s other three infrared detectors and again put through more cryovac tests. It takes a long time to do this sort of thing but it will be worth the effort.”
The decades-long delay inflicted on the James Webb has had other consequences, however. Since it was originally named in 2002, politics has moved on. In 2021, many scientists regard the name as inappropriate since they accuse James Webb – a former Nasa administrator – of purging gay and lesbian people from jobs in Nasa in the 1950s and 1960s and have pressed for the telescope to be given another name. The space agency has refused such demands, though the controversy is likely to linger.
The telescope’s 21 mirrors were packed by Ball Aerospace in canisters before being shipped to Nasa. Photograph: NASA
It also remains to be seen what the James Webb will discover. In its three decades of operations, Hubble helped pin down the age of the universe to 13.8bn years ago; determined the rate at which the universe is expanding; and showed that nearly every major galaxy is anchored by a black hole at its core.
This time, astronomers will be expecting even more. Among their hopes is the prospect of imaging the first galaxies to form after the big bang, understanding how stars are born and evolve, and investigating the potential for life to appear in planetary systems. All this will have to be done in a decade, the maximum likely lifetime of the James Webb. After 10 years, it is expected that it will run out of fuel and the telescope will no longer be able to keep itself located at L2. Then it will drift off course – to become the most expensive piece of space junk ever built.
“It is unlikely an observatory as costly and complex as the James Webb will be constructed again for a very long time,” says Ward. “Big observatories like these are like Christmas trees. They are fitted with so many different instruments that are attached like baubles. In future, we can expect that smaller and cheaper telescopes with more specific roles will be preferred by space agencies. So yes, in a sense, this could be the last Christmas for space astronomy.”
This article was amended on 1 December 2021. An earlier version referred to “the second Lagrange point (L2), where ... the gravity of our planet and the gravity of the sun cancel each other out“. In fact it is the case that the gravity of Earth and the sun align at L2 in such a way that the telescope can be kept almost stationary in roughly the same position. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/feb/27/final-piece-in-700m-overhaul-of-bank-tube-station-in-london-opens-to-public | UK news | 2023-02-27T14:00:07.000Z | Gwyn Topham | Final piece in £700m overhaul of Bank tube station in London opens to public | The £700m upgrade of Bank station has been completed after seven years of construction, transforming London Underground’s major hub in the City into a “like-new, world-class” station.
The opening of a spacious, accessible entrance and ticket hall marks the end of an overhaul that has increased the station capacity by 40% and unpicked a notoriously labyrinthine and busy interchange.
Andy Lord, London’s transport commissioner, said it was “a hugely important moment for the Square Mile, which is now served by a modern, accessible station with vastly improved capacity”.
Tube passenger numbers on weekdays are now at about 75-80% of pre-pandemic levels, but journeys to City stations such as Bank are still lower, at about 70%. At weekends, some central London stations are busier than before Covid, according to Transport for London.
London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, said the works had “transformed Bank station into a world-class station”, adding it was “like brand-new, just fantastic”. He said: “It serves arguably the most important financial district in Europe and it’s right and proper that it’s got public transport [fit for] the importance of this area.”
However, he warned: “The government’s failures to invest in public transport could mean this is the last big infrastructure project we have. The government’s got to realise, you can’t stand still as a city – or with public transport.
“The worry is, at the moment, we’ve got support for capital for this year, but it dries up next year, which means unfortunately, the progress we’ve made in our capital over the last six, seven years stopping.”
Khan is currently pressing through the expansion of the ultra-low emission zone in London, in the face of opposition from some Conservative-led councils. He said: “I understand why some people are concerned. I’d encourage them to check whether their vehicle is compliant – the reality is that 94% of vehicles are compliant in inner London, 85% in outer London.
“What’s happened is a small vocal minority have used misinformation in their campaign. We’re determined to clean up the air in our city – toxic air is a killer, it’s a matter of life and death.”
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The new Cannon Street entrance is the fifth at Bank, which with the adjoined Monument station serves five tube lines and the Docklands Light Railway. More than 1,000 metres of new tunnel were built during the upgrade to allow much quicker interchanges between the lines, while Bank now has 27 escalators, more than any other station on the tube network. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2016/jul/24/comic-con-2016-brie-larson-to-play-captain-marvel | Film | 2016-07-24T04:20:56.000Z | Sam Thielman | Comic Con 2016: Brie Larson to play Captain Marvel | The word of the day at Marvel Studios’ San Diego Comic Con panel on Saturday was showmanship: at the very last second of the nearly two-hour presentation, the film company announced it had cast the star of its next franchise-hopeful film Captain Marvel, and that the title character will be played by Room star Brie Larson.
The actor, who won an Oscar in February for her portrayal of a kidnapped mother in Room, later confirmed the news on Twitter, to a warm reception. The casting, which had been rumoured for a couple of months, will see Larson take on the role of air force pilot Carol Danvers, whose DNA is fused with that of an alien following a traumatic accident. This leaves her with powers including energy projection, flight and super strength.
The film’s director has not yet been named; the script will be by Meg LeFauve (Inside Out) and Nicole Perlman (Guardians of the Galaxy). Kevin Feige will produce – true to form, the Marvel Studios head also emceed his outfit’s Comic Con presentation on Saturday, including a discussion with the cast of Black Panther, footage from next summer’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, a light show for Doctor Strange, and a comedy short by Thor: Ragnarok director Taika Waititi suggesting some of the things Thor might have done rather than fighting alongside his fellow Avengers in Captain America: Civil War – mostly annoying his non-superhero roommate.
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When the audience was dismissed, they were told they’d each get the hat Feige was wearing, emblazoned with the studio’s new logo, and so thousands of people left the hall cosplaying as one of the most powerful men in entertainment – and reminding everyone who saw them why he held that position.
But it was another film that generated the most audience excitement: Spider-Man: Homecoming, the first film starring the character in Marvel’s own cinematic universe. Feige thanked Amy Pascal, until recently his opposite number at competitor Sony, for making possible the unorthodox no-cash deal to return Spider-Man to the Marvel fold after five big-budget movies and diminishing returns under Sony’s banner. “She is the reason that this happened because she put aside everything except what was good for the character.” The Sony title card played first during the trailer.
“I look like a female, not a really long baby.”
Director Jon Watts described his Spider-Man film as “a straight-up high school movie about a 15-year-old kid”.
“This is the ground level of the Marvel Universe,” he said. “We know what it’s like to be a billionaire, we know what it’s like to be a god, we know what it’s like to be on the astral plane and now we’re going to find out what it’s like to be going through puberty and in tenth grade.”
True to form, there were Easter eggs for fans of the comics the movies are based on — Hulk in the costume he wears in his comics’ Planet Hulk stories during the Ragnarok preview, a glimpse of the Green Goblin at the end of the Homecoming trailer, and the name of Kurt Russell’s character in Guardians 2: Ego, better known to comics fans as Ego, the Living Planet. Michael B Jordan will play villain Erik Killmonger in Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther film, as rumored.
The casts of each of the films appeared briefly on stage to talk about their experiences, and the Guardians panel gave way quickly to a discussion of costumes. Karen Gillan said she was happy not to have been asked to shave her head for the sequel: “I have my own hair, it’s wonderful, I look like a female, not a really long baby,” she told the audience. Zoe Saldana, who plays her sister, confirmed the description: “You did,” she said.
“Thank you for being honest,” Gillan replied.
Next year Marvel will have a new ride at one of Disney’s parks based on the movie franchise called Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: Breakout, featuring the entire principal cast of the first film, though Feige didn’t say at which park the ride would be built.
‘Any of us could be the Ancient One’
The Doctor Strange cast was more interested in discussing the politics of representation, which have been a sore spot as the filmmakers struggled to change the way the story’s Asian characters in particular were represented. “I think when I had my one-on-one with Kevin I did discuss that I wasn’t really comfortable being the manservant tea-maker,” said Benedict Wong, who plays a character also named Wong, described in the original comics as a “houseboy.” Feige and Wong came up with a more equitable solution: “I was happy being the master of the mystic arts’s drill sergeant,” Wong said with a smile.
“It’s very different,” said star Benedict Cumberbatch by way of describing the movie. “The scale of it is just something else. I feel that a lot of the heavy lifting is done by the comics, a lot of the origin story — some of which we use and some of which we don’t — is quite well known.”
Doctor Strange stars Mads Mikkelsen, Tilda Swinton, Benedict Cumberbatch, Benedict Wong, Chiwetel Ejiofor and actress Rachel McAdams with director Scott Derrickson (second right) at Comic-Con. Photograph: Albert L. Ortega/Getty Images
“Different” was the word: before the Doctor Strange segment the lights went down, fog poured from the ceiling, and psychedelic lights and sounds sprayed over the wall of smoke and the vast series of screens around the room and on the walls. The filmmakers previewed a clip from the movie, too, in which the Ancient One sends Doctor Strange on a cosmic journey to teach him some humility.
For her part, Tilda Swinton, whose character the Ancient One is an elderly man from the Himalayas in the comic books, said she wanted her character to be universal. “Any of us could be the Ancient One,” she said. “That’s the amazing thing about what’s in the comics is that ‘The Ancient One’ is a title.”
The difference between the previous panels and the Marvel presentation was a striking one: much of the fun in the cast reunions and actor discussions came from costumed fans asking odd questions, or actors speculating wildly about new projects and old grudges. The Marvel panel was a well-oiled promotional machine the length of a feature film, hard at work on exactly the people who appreciate it most, right down to the hat. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/nov/06/arsenal-tottenham-hotspur-premier-league-match-report | Football | 2016-11-06T14:18:09.000Z | Daniel Taylor | Harry Kane spot-on to claim draw for Tottenham at Arsenal on return | There was no doubt, judging by the unmistakable frustration in Arsène Wenger’s voice, which team could be the more satisfied with the result. Arsenal’s manager briefly tried to argue that Victor Wanyama should have been sent off and made an even less convincing case that Tottenham Hotspur’s penalty should not have been awarded on the basis that Laurent Koscielny’s foul was not deliberate, dangerous or denying Mousa Dembélé a scoring opportunity – absolutely none of which matter a jot if one is going to be old-fashioned and apply the rules.
Thankfully Wenger did eventually return to a far more legitimate point, accepting that Arsenal had lost their way in a second half that was a reminder of Tottenham’s competitive qualities. “Our level dropped,” Wenger said. “We looked flat, physically.” The same could not be said of their opponents and, though Tottenham have now gone seven games without a win in all competitions, on this evidence it would be misleading to think Mauricio Pochettino is overseeing a team in distress.
Pochettino’s men showed the kind of togetherness that made them authentic title contenders last season. They are not passing the ball as fluently but Dele Alli was ruled out with a knee injury and Harry Kane is still short of fitness, lasting only until the 72nd minute on his first start in seven weeks. Spurs still look better with him back in the team and perhaps a fully firing Kane would have accepted one of the chances he missed either side of scoring their penalty.
Liverpool v Watford: Premier League – as it happened
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The second one, in particular, looked like the kind of chance Kane would usually accept and Tottenham could also reflect on the moment, late on, when Christian Eriksen’s free-kick curled beyond everyone and bounced off a post. That would have been lucky but Pochettino’s men had finished as the more likely winners in a compelling, fluctuating match when the speed and frequency with which the game swung from one end of the pitch to the other created an absorbing spectacle.
Arsenal, however, undoubtedly finished with the greater sense of exasperation. Spurs had started encouragingly but the home team produced some thrilling attacking football when they took command during a 20-minute spell of sustained pressure late in the first half, bringing an own goal from Kevin Wimmer and several other chances. “In the first half we looked like we could score every time we crossed the halfway line,” Wenger said.
Pochettino was certainly taking a gamble by experimenting for the first time with an unorthodox 3-3-2-2 formation in such a key fixture and it was not easy at that stage to remember the visitors had the best defensive record in the league. Theo Walcott and Alexis Sánchez caused them plenty of problems, with Mesut Özil always in close proximity, and Alex Iwobi really should have given Arsenal the lead after the best passing exchange of the first half. Iwobi trundled his shot into the arms of Hugo Lloris with so little conviction it was tempting to question his big-game mentality. The same player later chose the wrong pass from another threatening break, provoking a rare show of anger from Özil, before Walcott almost scored a beauty with a rising 25-yard shot that rattled Lloris’s left post, close to its point with the crossbar.
Arsenal 1-1 Tottenham Hotspur: Premier League – as it happened
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Tottenham did, however, have legitimate grievances about the opening goal on the basis that Sánchez and Shkodran Mustafi had both strayed offside when Özil curled over the free-kick that led to Wimmer heading into his own net. Wimmer was making his first appearance in the Premier League this season, brought in as part of a new-look three-man central defence, and his only possible mitigation could be that the two offside players were in his line of vision. Even then the Austrian defender should have avoided what happened next.
Arsenal have lost only one of these fixtures at their own stadium in the last 23 years but there is another statistic that says they have not beaten Spurs in the league during the Pochettino era and Wenger did not really find wholehearted support in his post-match complaints about Wanyama’s first-half clash with Walcott.
Dembélé’s switch to a slightly more deep-lying position was a subtle yet important change for the second half. Eriksen became more influential and Son Heung-min was prominently involved, with Danny Rose operating as a wing-back and Kyle Walker doing the same on the other side until he was forced off in the second half with an injury.
“You need to be flexible,” Pochettino said of the new system. “In the last month we’ve had some small problems so we tried to find a better solution with our full-backs higher up the pitch. We showed a strong performance and we worked hard.”
Dembélé still had the licence to roam forward and it was his run from right to left, eluding Francis Coquelin and then coming inside Nacho Monreal, that prompted Koscielny to make the challenge that led to the penalty five minutes after the interval. Koscielny had clipped the player, rather than the ball, however much Wenger tried to argue it was unjust. Kane took advantage of Petr Cech diving out of the way by aiming his shot down the middle and, ultimately, the draw felt like a fair outcome. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/aug/12/dina-asher-smith-european-championships | Sport | 2018-08-12T14:07:28.000Z | Sean Ingle | Dina Asher-Smith has stunned Berlin. Other Britons must now grab baton | Fourteen years ago, during the Athens Olympic Games, Dina Asher-Smith drew a picture of herself with six words scribbled underneath: “I want to win the Olympics.” After what we have seen in Berlin this past week, that increasingly looks like a precocious act of prophesy.
It isn’t just that the 22-year-old’s stunning 100m gold on Tuesday was followed by an even more emphatic performance in the 200m on Saturday night. Or that her old British records were hung, drawn and quartered in the process. It is the fact that she has soared into a hyper-rarified atmosphere, running times – 10.85sec for the 100m and 21.89 for the 200m – that would have won gold medals at last year’s world championships in London.
Have no doubt about it, Asher-Smith, who won a third gold in the sprint relay on Sunday night, is the real deal. Not only is she the fastest female sprinter in the world this year – but she is also the youngest ever member of the exclusive sub-10.9 seconds for 100m and sub 21.9 for 200m club. “I have obliterated my own expectations,” she admitted, beaming from ear to ear. The question for British athletics now is how many other members of their 102-strong team in Berlin will be able to take a similar leap from European to world level by the time of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics?
Dina Asher-Smith wins 200m gold in British record for European double
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Katarina Johnson-Thompson, who went toe-to-toe with the Olympic champion Nafi Thiam and scored a brilliant heptathlon personal best, is certainly one. Laura Muir, who has set multiple British records from 1,000m to 5,000m is another. In the men’s 100m Zharnel Hughes and Reece Prescod clearly have something about them. And I wouldn’t discount Lorraine Ugen, despite only finishing ninth in Berlin, given she has jumped a world leading 7.05m this year.
Dina Asher-Smith after her 200m victory. Photograph: Martin Meissner/AP
Yet history offers a reminder that attempting the great leap forward from European success to world success can often lead to the track and field equivalent of falling flat on your face. After all, it was only four years ago that the British team left the European championships in Zurich with their best ever medal haul – 12 golds and 23 medals – after which UK Athletics’ performance director Neil Black began to dream of global glories at the 2015 and 2017 world championships and at the Rio Olympics.
“We know there’s a hell of a lot of work to do,” he admitted. “But what this is telling us is that we’ve raised our game. I’m sure that the rest of the world are looking and going ‘bloody hell, perhaps these guys are going to give us a fright’. From here on, we go global.”
At the time Black’s excitement was understandable. Victories for James Dasaolu and Adam Gemili meant Britain had won both European men’s 100m and 200m titles for the first time in 16 years, while Jodie Williams’s 200m silver was the fastest run by a Briton since 1984.
It was also encouraging that a huge number of youngsters were blasting through together. Matthew Hudson-Smith, who won 400m silver, was 19, Gemili and Williams 20, Asher-Smith, who reached the 200m final only for her hamstring to rip like a zip, was just 18.
The stage was set for more athletes to go global. Yet at the 2015 world championships in Beijing only the familiar names from London 2012 –Jessica Ennis-Hill, Mo Farah, Greg Rutherford – along with long jumper Shara Proctor were able to win individual medals.
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A year later, at the Rio Olympics, the pattern largely repeated itself with only the hammer thrower Sophie Hitchon – who claimed bronze – joining the Super Saturday trio when it came to success outside the relays. And in London 2017, with Ennis-Hill retired and Rutherford injured – it was only Farah, in his final year on the track, who won individual medals.
There is another statistic that is telling. In Zurich 16 British athletes won individual medals – and all bar Mo Farah and Jo Pavey were in their 20s. You might have expected the majority to kick on and improve their personal bests in their best events. Yet only six of them – Gemili, Hudson-Smith, Andy Vernon, Chris O’Hare, Lynsey Sharp and Eilidh Child did so.
That tells you two things. First, that because athletics is a truly global sport it is punishingly hard to be a world or Olympic champion. And second, that progress is not a smooth arc upwards. Some people hit their peak wildly early. Others experience false dawns and multiple failures or just get desperately unlucky injuries. That, unfortunately, is life as a track athlete.
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True, Britain have made an impressive habit of hoovering up relay medals including a gold and two silvers and a bronze at last year’s world championships in London. And you can’t blame British Athletics for targeting them given they are low-hanging fruit, allowing it to hit the medal target set by UK Sport.
But these relay successes, as rewarding as they are for the athletes, realistically are not going to attract new people to watch track and field. They are the petit fours at the end of a major championships, not the hearty main course.
That is why Asher-Smith’s stunning performance in Berlin has been so important. The sport in Britain desperately needs fresh heroes with eloquent stories to tell – especially as the 2012 Olympics and London 2017 fade to grey. Luckily the 22-year-old has the supreme talent to step up, break out, and go global. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/mar/23/italy-england-euro-2024-qualifying-group-c-match-report | Football | 2023-03-23T21:59:41.000Z | David Hytner | Harry Kane becomes England’s all-time record scorer in qualifier win over Italy | It was a night when a Harry Kane penalty conversion positively overflowed with narrative drama. It was his first attempt for England since his notorious miss in the World Cup quarter-final exit against France last December and so goodness knows what was going through his mind as he shaped to take it, after the VAR had spotted a Giovanni Di Lorenzo handball on a corner.
When he scored it took him clear of Wayne Rooney as England’s all-time leading scorer with 54 goals. What a moment it was for the captain. It put England 2-0 up and to describe them as rampant at that point late in the first half would have been no exaggeration.
Italy 1-2 England: Euro 2024 qualifier – as it happened
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Declan Rice had scored the first and the Euro 2024 qualifying campaign looked set to begin with a bang. It ought to have been 3-0 in first-half stoppage time only for Jack Grealish to miscue wide of a gaping goal.
Instead, Gareth Southgate’s team followed an age-old template. First half good, second half not too good, as one of his predecessors, Sven-Göran Eriksson, would have put it. Italy leapt up off the canvas, scoring through the debutant Mateo Retegui, and came to control the tie just as their opponents had done previously.
England sat deeper, their passing sloppy, inviting Italy on – just as they had done in the Euro 2020 final when they surrendered the initiative and eventually lost on penalties. The rather key difference this time was that England had scored the first two goals.
England had to dig in, especially after Luke Shaw was sent off in the 80th minute for a trip on Retegui. His first caution had come 54 seconds earlier for time-wasting. England, though, got over the line. Despite what amounted to an Italy siege after the interval, Southgate’s team were able to restrict them to precious few clearcut chances.
A win is a win and this was a big one, England’s most difficult assignment of the group passed already. It was Southgate’s first victory over Italy as manager at the fifth attempt and England’s first on Italian soil since 1961. Revenge for the Euro final was a part of it. At full time, Kane slumped to his knees, exhausted but elated. He was the man of the match, his link-up play superb, ditto his passing; his running with and without the ball relentless. He and England are off to a flyer.
The first thing to say about the occasion – Naples’s first senior international in 10 years – was that it was not a Napoli game. When they play at this stadium – especially this season, the Scudetto so close that everyone in town has started to prepare for the party of the millennium, connecting the buildings in those narrow streets with blue and white sheets – it can feel like an out-of-body experience.
There was still excitement, still a crowd that needed to be subdued, but it probably said a lot that there were empty seats and the 2,500 travelling fans were able to make themselves heard.
They could celebrate an early tonic after England moved up the field very smartly – and not for the first time. Or the last. It was Kane to Grealish and he did well to release Jude Bellingham, who advanced and unloaded a vicious drive that Gianluigi Donnarumma tipped over. Bukayo Saka’s corner reached Kane beyond the far post and, when he shot, the ball ricocheted off Di Lorenzo and broke for Rice. He always looked like finishing, the spin and shot assured.
It has been said before but it had to be said again. How is Bellingham only 19? He was central to England’s barnstorming start as they controlled the tempo and the ball, looking extremely confident on it. Bellingham showed his quick feet in possession, his strength and rangy stride plus his passing ability. He won the ball; he made things happen. Above all, he looked fearless.
Declan Rice celebrates after giving England the lead against Italy. Photograph: Michael Regan/Getty Images
Italy are, of course, the reigning European champions, although it feels as if their second failure in a row to qualify for the World Cup is defining them more at present. Local optimism had not been high before kick-off, especially with Roberto Mancini being without a clutch of injured players including Leonardo Bonucci, Federico Chiesa and Giacomo Raspadori. It is not a vintage Italy, although it is still Italy.
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England dominated the first half. They enjoyed themselves. Italy could not get near to them on the ball, the combinations up through the thirds easy on the eye. From back to front – and that included the goalkeeper, Jordan Pickford – the passing was on point.
It was incredible to see the spaces that England were able to create and the chances flowed before the interval, a further clutch coming before Kane’s record-breaking goal. Italy were made to look toothless. Saka got into dangerous areas and even Kalvin Phillips, who was recalled in a nicely balanced midfield, fizzed a shot just wide.
The only frustration of the first half was Grealish’s miss – and it was a horrible one – after Kane’s low cut back from the right. Grealish held his head for some time.
Italy 1-2 England: player ratings from the Euro 2024 qualifier in Naples
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England were guilty of offering encouragement to Italy, which was ridiculous. It was still Italy. Retegui’s goal came when Harry Maguire lost possession and Italy worked the opening expertly, Marco Verratti prominent. Lorenzo Pellegrini played the killer pass and Retegui, the Argentina-born striker, finished clinically.
The turnaround was remarkable. Italy pushed high and looked composed on the ball, threatening with it, too. England made errors and they were indebted to John Stones for some important interventions. When Shaw saw red, it was easy to fear the worst. England would celebrate upon the full-time whistle with real feeling. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/apr/05/scott-morrison-says-nsw-preselection-intervention-was-him-standing-up-for-the-women-in-my-team | Australia news | 2022-04-05T11:43:26.000Z | Katharine Murphy | Scott Morrison says NSW preselection intervention was him standing up ‘for the women in my team’ | Scott Morrison has declared he pursued contentious captain’s picks in New South Wales – sparking a destructive internal Liberal party brawl culminating in election-eve legal challenges – because he wanted to stand up “for the women in my team”.
After the NSW court of appeal on Tuesday confirmed Morrison’s preferred candidates were valid, clearing the way for the federal election to be called, Morrison told the ABC he intervened in the process because “I’m asked all the time why won’t the prime minister do more about getting good women in parliament and stand up for the women in parliament”.
“I stood up for the women in my team,” the prime minister told the 7.30 program.
Court ruling on NSW Liberal preselections could end chaos although high court action looms
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“Sussan Ley, one of my finest cabinet ministers and one of our most successful women members of parliament, was under threat … from factions within the Liberal party.”
When it was pointed out to Morrison that his preferred candidates in his home state were demonstrably not all women, the prime minister said defending female candidates had been his primary motivation “and people know that”.
Morrison said of the candidates selected during the federal intervention “50% were women and 50% were men”.
The prime minister said his agenda was “ensuring we put the best candidates in the field to ensure that our government could put the best foot forward to ensure we continue to have a strong economy”.
He decried “factional games” in the Liberal party. When it was pointed out to the prime minister he had his own allies and agendas, as everyone in professional politics does, Morrison declared he had “always stood up to the factions” – in the process accumulating enemies – because he did not allow people to “bully their way into getting the outcomes they want”.
The calling of the election is now only days away but the government is struggling to find clear air to sell its cash-splash budget – in large part because of the roiling in NSW.
Morrison on Tuesday night attempted to downplay recent public excoriations from colleagues.
The conservative stalwart Concetta Fierravanti-Wells chose budget night to brand the prime minister an “autocrat [and] a bully who has no moral compass” – an intervention sparking renewed debate about Morrison’s character.
Fierravanti-Wells – who has recently been relegated to an unwinnable spot on the Liberal party’s NSW Senate ticket – on Tuesday night dismissed Morrison’s suggestion he was protecting women.
“Great women? What bilge water! This is his code for ‘I want groupthink’! Morrison is simply using the ‘gender card’ to conflate captain’s picks to trash democratic processes in NSW,” she told 7.30 in a statement.
Catherine Cusack, a NSW Liberal who announced two weeks ago she would resign from the state Legislative Council over her anger about flood relief, had lambasted the prime minister earlier on Tuesday.
Cusack accused Morrison of having “ruined” the Liberal party, declaring he had “trashed” its values over two decades, first as state director, “then as a scheming MP and now as prime minister finding loopholes in our constitution to delay preselections in order to get his way”.
I’m a Liberal MP and I cannot vote for the re-election of a Scott Morrison government
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Morrison told the ABC on Tuesday night he had known Cusack “for a long time” and suggested she had made similar criticisms of the former NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian.
When it was put to Morrison that Berejiklian, too, had branded him “a horrible, horrible person” in a leaked text exchange, the prime minister said the former premier had denied saying that. Berejiklian actually said she couldn’t recall the exchange.
As well as the public blasts from some colleagues, Morrison is also being dogged by renewed controversy about his own controversial preselection for Cook in 2007.
Morrison said his critics were people with axes to grind.
The prime minister said people had a tendency to lash out when they became “frustrated in the political process”. He suggested the recent interventions were timed to inflict maximum damage.
Morrison said “as prime minister, you’ve got to take all the slings and arrows and I do”. He added: “I never lose my focus on the job … and I’ll always stand up to the things that are trying to take our government off in the wrong direction.
“As a prime minister, you can’t just say yes to everybody and give everybody what they want.”
While Morrison’s captain’s picks were upheld by the court of appeal, Guardian Australia understands the unsuccessful plaintiff, Matthew Camenzul, who is a member of the NSW state executive, will seek to appeal to the high court – although time is running out.
The Liberal party crisis is not a dysfunctional family soap opera – democracy is at stake
Anne Davies
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Tuesday’s NSW court of appeal decision backed the preselection of two ministers, Ley and Alex Hawke, as the candidates for Farrer and Mitchell, respectively.
Sitting MP Trent Zimmerman was confirmed as the candidate for North Sydney where he is facing a challenge from independent Kylea Tink and from Labor candidate Catherine Renshaw.
Lawyer Jenny Ware will run in the winnable seat of Hughes, where she is up against two independents and the former member, Craig Kelly, who defected to the United Australia party.
In Warringah, another lawyer, Katherine Deves, who has campaigned against transgender women being included in women’s sport, will run against independent Zali Steggall.
The court of appeal case unsuccessfully challenged the actions of a three-person committee appointed by the federal Liberal party which included Morrison. The committee intervened in March after factional brawling within the NSW Liberal party had stalled the usual preselection processes, leaving the party without candidates in several important seats.
The committee twice briefly took over the troubled NSW branch and bypassed rank and file preselections to confirm candidates.
The major parties are now in full campaign mode, with the leaders and frontbenchers barnstorming marginal seats around the country. Morrison is expected to call the election over the coming days. The latest batch of opinion polls suggest the Coalition will begin the campaign trailing Labor.
Additional reporting by Paul Karp | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/dec/18/uk-carbon-tax-steel-imports-iron-ceramics-cement | Environment | 2023-12-18T10:24:18.000Z | Rob Davies | UK to introduce carbon tax on steel imports from 2027 | Imported raw materials such as steel and cement will incur a new carbon tax from 2027 under UK plans designed to support domestic producers and reduce emissions, but the government is facing criticism for not moving fast enough.
The Treasury said the tax would help address the phenomenon of “carbon leakage”, in which UK manufacturers are undercut on price by foreign rivals whose governments do not impose levies on businesses that emit a lot of carbon.
The result is that emissions are simply displaced to other countries, while greener UK producers lose out because they have to pay carbon-related charges.
Carbon pricing would raise trillions needed to tackle climate crisis, says IMF
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The chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, said: “This levy will make sure carbon intensive products from overseas – like steel and ceramics – face a comparable carbon price to those produced in the UK, so that our decarbonisation efforts translate into reductions in global emissions.
“This should give UK industry the confidence to invest in decarbonisation as the world transitions to net zero.”
The Treasury said charges under the carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) would depend on the amount of emissions in the manufacture of the imported product, as well as the gap between the carbon price applied in the country where it is produced and that paid by equivalent UK manufacturers.
Industry groups welcomed the plan but warned that the proposed start date of 2027 was too late.
The trade body UK Steel pointed out that a similar mechanism will be put in place by the EU in 2026, meaning high-carbon steel from countries such as China could be dumped on to the UK market for a year, until the CBAM is in effect.
“With more than 90% of global steel production facing no carbon cost, it is only right that a new carbon border policy is put in place to create a level playing field on carbon pricing,” said the UK Steel director general, Gareth Stace.
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“However, implementing the UK scheme one year after the EU CBAM starts is hugely concerning.
“Despite the steel sector repeatedly warning officials how exposed the UK would be if it did not mirror the EU implementation timetable, government today seems to be actively planning for just that scenario.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/feb/18/david-relies-on-christina-for-247-care-but-the-ndis-wont-fund-her-help-because-shes-his-wife | Australia news | 2024-02-17T23:00:27.000Z | Cait Kelly | David relies on Christina for 24/7 care, but the NDIS won’t fund her help – because she’s his wife | When Dr David Squirrell, a deafblind advocate talks about the NDIS, he calls it the “national divorce initiating scheme”.
Squirrell, 68, needs around-the-clock support. After starting to lose his senses in his 30s, the former physician has very limited vision and uses hearing aids. He’s also lost his taste and smell.
He relies on his wife, Christina – a qualified nurse, who can sign and has certificates in disability and aged care – to look after him 24 hours a day and help him communicate when they leave the house.
“I need 24-hour surveillance,” Squirrell says. “Say if it was nighttime, if I was alone, no hearing aids in, if there was a fire, how would I know?
Squirrell uses a Merlin electronic magnifier desktop. Photograph: Sia Duff/The Guardian
“I need all my meals done, I need hygiene supervision … I can’t see gas [flames], I can’t use a cooker.
“I need my pills given to me, if I drop them on the floor I can’t see them, and I don’t want my guide dog to eat them. If I am in a discussion, Christina has to help me.”
Although Christina left her job to look after him, Squirrell can’t get NDIS funding for a simple reason: they’re married.
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The NDIA says the NDIS will only fund family members to provide support in “exceptional circumstances”. But Squirrell, who is vice-president of non profit advocacy group Deafblind Australia, argues because he can’t find anyone else, his situation is exceptional and his wife is best placed to care for him.
According to advocates, there is a lack of skilled workers in the deafblind community, and Squirrell has struggled to find anyone else who can provide him with the help he needs. In the last three years, he has contacted more than 20 service providers in the Adelaide region and has been rejected by every one.
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The emails he received in response say they cannot adequately provide the support he needs or do not service his region.
He jokes that if he and Christina were to get a divorce, he would finally be able to fund her through his NDIS.
‘The issue is that the NDIS do not understand and do not cater for systemic issues across the whole of Australia with deafblind’, says Squirrell Photograph: Sia Duff/The Guardian
“Deafblind isn’t a large volume of people. And the skill base needed to support those is … even lower,” he says.
An NDIA spokesperson said the service would help try to find Squirrell a support worker. But while it carefully considered all requests for funding for family members, it said it could fund family members to provide support in “exceptional circumstances”.
Lack of skilled workforce
Justine Lorenz works alongside deafblind colleagues at the Community Disability Alliance Hunter, in New South Wales, to help run Deafblind Connect, one of the only peer-led programs in the nation.
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Extra $25bn needed to make NDIS sustainable by boosting other disability services, actuary says
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Lorenz says the only two states where there are specific deafblind services are Victoria and Western Australia.
“There is a lack of skilled workforce for the deafblind community in general,” Lorenz says. “Interpreters have been on the national skills shortage list for over 10 years.”
She says cases like Squirrell’s are common, where deafblind Australians struggle to find suitable carers and communication guides - the name given to interpreters.
There’s a big difference between being an Auslan interpreter and a communication guide, she says, but they often get treated as interchangeable because of the shortage.
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Deafblind people rely on communication guides to use tactile Auslan or finger spelling. Guides need mobility and orientation skills, so they can safely take people through spaces and communicate what’s happening around them.
“There’s a whole range of skills that are [needed] that just aren’t implemented with normal support workers – and so they are actually are putting deafblind people at risk,” Lorenz says.
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“It seems simple and common sense, but it’s actually rocket science to support somebody well.”
National policy and advocacy officer at Deafblind Australia, Ben McAtamney, says there is “a serious issue of thin markets of support” for deaf-blind people.
Squirrell says he is exhausted from the battle for funding. Photograph: Sia Duff/The Guardian
He says they are “not asking for a rule to be broken” or “legislation change”. But they do want clarity on why Squirrell’s case isn’t seen as an exceptional circumstance, as there is no other qualified support worker near him.
“I don’t know what is more exceptional than there being no one else,” McAtamney says.
Squirrell says he is exhausted from the fight and does not understand why he isn’t afforded more agency over where he can access support.
“The issue is that the NDIS do not understand and do not cater for systemic issues across the whole of Australia with deafblind.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/feb/06/what-is-female-genital-mutilation-where-happen | Society | 2014-02-06T07:00:00.000Z | Sarah Boseley | What is female genital mutilation and where does it happen? | Between 100 million and 140 million women and girls are thought to be living with the consequences of female genital mutilation, according to the World Health Organisation.
FGM is defined by the WHO as "all procedures that involve partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons". It is recognised as a violation of the human rights of women and girls. In December 2012, the United Nations general assembly unanimously voted to work for the elimination of FGM throughout the world.
"It reflects deep-rooted inequality between the sexes, and constitutes an extreme form of discrimination against women," says the WHO. "It is nearly always carried out on minors and is a violation of the rights of children. The practice also violates a person's rights to health, security and physical integrity, the right to be free from torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, and the right to life when the procedure results in death."
Just how many girls and women have been subjected to FGM is hard to know. The data is not easy to collect for obvious reasons. Last year Unicef published what it described as the most comprehensive compilation of data and analysis on the prevalence of FGM in Africa and the Middle East. Using more than 70 national surveys, produced over a period of more than 20 years, the report focused on the 29 countries where the practice is most common.
In eight countries, almost all young girls are cut. In Somalia, the prevalence is 98%, in Guinea 96%, in Djibouti 93% and in Egypt, in spite of its partly westernised image, 91%. In Eritrea and Mali the figure is 89% and a prevalence of 88% was reported in both Sierra Leone and Sudan.
In some countries, FGM has been medicalised. In Egypt, most of the cutting is undertaken by trained healthcare professionals, which reduces the risk of infection, pain and bleeding, but serves to make the procedure appear acceptable within the country, in the face of the UN resolution.
But in countries where more than one survey has been done, it does appear that the number of girls who have been cut is slowly reducing. The UN population fund and Unicef, the UN children's fund, say 8,000 communities in Africa have agreed to abandon the traditional practice. They have been involved in supporting awareness of the health and human rights issues, in negotiations and discussions with the leaders of the communities and in suggesting alternative rituals. Where this process is successful, the social status and marriage prospects of young girls are not damaged as they could be if their families acted alone.
In some countries, FGM is a rite of passage, which marks a girl's transition to womanhood and her readiness to marry. It is also motivated by beliefs about sexual behaviour and virginity and chastity. "FGM is in many communities believed to reduce a woman's libido and therefore believed to help her resist 'illicit' sexual acts. When a vaginal opening is covered or narrowed [as is the case in the more extreme forms of FGM], the fear of the pain of opening it, and the fear that this will be found out, is expected to further discourage 'illicit' sexual intercourse among women with this type of FGM," says the WHO. There is also a belief in some cases that women's genitalia are unfeminine, ugly or unclean.
Apart from the pain and distress involved in the procedure at the time, there can be long-term health consequences, even sometimes involving infertility. Bladder and urinary tract infections and cysts are not uncommon. There is an increased risk of problems during childbirth, which could in extreme cases lead to the death of the baby. Where FGM involves sewing up or narrowing the vaginal opening, this must be undone to allow sexual intercourse and then before the woman can give birth. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/jul/22/oppenheimer-review-christopher-nolan-volatile-biopic-is-a-towering-achievement-cillian-murphy | Film | 2023-07-22T14:00:14.000Z | Wendy Ide | Oppenheimer review – Christopher Nolan’s volatile biopic is a towering achievement | It’s billed as a biopic of theoretical physicist J Robert Oppenheimer, dubbed the “father of the atomic bomb”. But “biopic” seems too small a word to contain the ambition and scope of Christopher Nolan’s formidable if occasionally unwieldy latest. Oppenheimer is a dense and intricate period piece, playing out in a tangle of timelines. It weaves together courtroom drama, romantic liaisons, laboratory epiphanies and lecture hall personality cults. But perhaps more than all of this, Oppenheimer is the ultimate monster movie. Cillian Murphy’s Oppenheimer is an atomic-age Frankenstein, a man captivated by the boundless possibilities of science, realising too late that his creation has a limitless capacity for destruction. Ultimately, however, the monster in this story is not Oppenheimer’s invention but the appetite for annihilation that it unleashes in mankind. It’s a realisation that plays out, inexorably, in Oppenheimer’s hollow, haunted face as the film unfolds. Murphy’s far-seeing ice-chip eyes have never been put to better use.
In fact, Murphy’s physicality as a whole is one of the most potent weapons at the film’s disposal. He seems impossibly slight, a theoretical idea of a man in contrast to the robust certainties of the military figures he works alongside (Matt Damon’s Lt Gen Leslie Groves, for example, is bullish and solid, a clenched fist looking for something to punch). In one shot we see Oppenheimer hauling an armful of books into a new classroom, and it looks as though he’s buckling under the weight of his accumulated knowledge. At other times he’s calm and glassily composed, somehow removed from jostling egos and the fusion of ideas that will take shape into the ultimate weapon.
Given Nolan’s preference for shooting on Imax 70mm film, the picture has a depth of detail you could drown in
The version of Oppenheimer that we see on screen at any given time is a marker, an indication of which timeline we are currently inhabiting. Insights into his stellar early academic career are punctuated by glimpses of a later humiliating security clearance hearing that picked over every aspect of his life; the development of the bomb – the so-called Manhattan Project – is cut together with another hearing, this time in the Senate, to establish whether Oppenheimer’s former colleague Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr, excellent) should be appointed in a federal government role. It’s a knotty mesh of a structure. Time in Oppenheimer doesn’t feel entirely linear – there are moments, in particular a pivotal encounter with Albert Einstein, that seem unmoored from the rest of the film. Nolan’s films frequently require a couple of viewings to unravel fully, and while it lacks the baffle-factor of Tenet, Oppenheimer is no exception.
‘A clenched fist looking for something to punch’: Matt Damon, left, as Lt Gen Leslie Groves, with Cillian Murphy as Oppenheimer. AP
There are other problems: the cursory treatment of the female characters is one. Florence Pugh, as Oppenheimer’s mistress Jean Tatlock, gets short shrift. And Emily Blunt, as J Robert’s wife Kitty Oppenheimer, spends much of the first two hours mutinously clutching a martini on the edge of the frame. She does, however, claim a couple of terrific moments later on: a skin-flaying interrogation scene; a wordless glare that conveys the full nuclear winter of her animosity towards a disloyal colleague.
But, for the most part, the film is a towering achievement. Not surprisingly, given Nolan’s preference for shooting on Imax 70mm film, the picture has a depth of detail you could drown in. There’s no shortage of scenes of furious blackboard scribbling, the accepted cinematic signifier of scientific genius. But more interesting are the abstract moments; it’s as though we are venturing into the heart of the atom itself. Equally inventive is the way the sets seem to quake at moments of tension. Oppenheimer’s world is literally rocked by the shockwaves of the reaction that has been set in motion.
Most effective, however, is the use of sound and music. Like Jonathan Glazer’s upcoming The Zone of Interest, this is a film in which the horrors of war are not shown but conveyed inescapably through what we hear. Ludwig Göransson’s score is masterful and mercurial, surely one of the finest of the year. And there’s a recurring motif in the soundscape, a crescendo of thunderously stamping feet. It’s taken from a moment of triumph and glory, the high point of Oppenheimer’s career. But it takes on a mounting sense of threat with each use, as the catastrophic potential of the physicist’s work becomes clear.
Watch a trailer for Oppenheimer. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/sep/01/iraq-war-whistleblower-katharine-gun-national-security | UK news | 2019-09-01T07:00:10.000Z | Mark Townsend | Iraq war whistleblower’s trial ‘was halted due to national security threat’ | She was the whistleblower who risked her freedom to try to prevent war. By leaking to the Observer details of a secret American dirty tricks campaign to spy on the UN before the invasion of Iraq, Katharine Gun hoped she could stir the public’s conscience, ratcheting up political pressure to the point that conflict could be avoided.
It was not, and Gun, then a 28-year-old working for GCHQ, the government’s eavesdropping centre in Cheltenham, was later charged with breaking the Official Secrets Act. The case against her, however, was abruptly and mysteriously dropped.
Now, before the release of a new film charting one of the most explosive episodes of the run-up to the invasion, the former director of public prosecutions has explained for the first time why he suddenly abandoned the case against Gun.
Sir Ken Macdonald told the Observer he had realised that it would be impossible to give the whistleblower a fair trial without also risking national security. Gun “could only get a fair trial if we disclosed material to the defence that would compromise national security,” he said.
Previously the government has said that the decision was taken “solely on legal grounds”, but failed to explain why the prosecution elected to offer no evidence during her trial.
Macdonald’s reference to secret material prompted calls for the documents to be declassified and the specific reason for dropping the case made public.
On Friday the film Official Secrets, starring Keira Knightley as Gun, opened in Los Angeles and New York, revealing to US audiences how Gun leaked the revelations in March 2003. Her actions prompted an international furore that saw her arrest and sacking. Macdonald then decided that she should face trial.
The film also strays into controversy by alleging that Macdonald paid a private visit to Ben Emmerson QC, who represented Gun, following the whistleblower’s arrest. During the visit, which according to the film occurred at Emmerson’s coastal Norfolk home, Macdonald is alleged to have told Emmerson that Gun had committed a “deliberate act of betrayal” and “should have kept her mouth shut”. In the film, Emmerson responds: “If you charge her, then I will defend her to the best of my ability.” Macdonald is understood to have denied that such a meeting took place.
The film, directed by Gavin Hood, suggests that the case against the GCHQ whistleblower was dropped in February 2014 because Gun’s defence team had asked for disclosure of the attorney general’s initial legal advice to Tony Blair before the invasion.
Abandoning the prosecution against Gun fuelled speculation that the case was dropped to spare the publication of the legal advice. It also left Gun demanding an explanation of why it took eight months after her arrest for her to be charged with breaching the Official Secrets Act.
But Macdonald has now categorically said that the decision to drop the case did not relate to the attorney general’s Iraq war advice.
This obsfuscatory statement from Lord Macdonald raises more questions than it answers
Gavin Hood, director, Official Secrets
He said: “The case against her was subsequently discontinued because it became clear to me that she could only get a fair trial if we disclosed material to the defence that would compromise national security. I concluded that in the absence of this material being disclosed to her, her trial would be unfair, and so I terminated the case. This was my decision, which was notified to the AG [attorney general] in the usual way.”
The explanation, however, did not satisfy Hood, who spent three years researching and making the film and is known for the Helen Mirren thriller Eye in the Sky and the acclaimed South African crime drama Tsotsi.
“This obfuscatory statement from Lord Macdonald raises more questions than it answers. At the time, by denying Gun her day in court Macdonald and [attorney general Lord] Goldsmith effectively drew the shutters down over what Goldsmith’s legal advice to Blair had been in the run-up to war.”
Hood added: “But Macdonald now suggests that the case was not dropped because Goldsmith did not want his advice revealed. Rather he says there were other ‘national security’ reasons for doing so. If that is true, then one is compelled to ask when this material might be declassified and the real reasons for dropping the case made known to the public,” he added.
Martin Bright, the Observer journalist who received the leaked memo from Gun and was part of the team of reporters that broke the story, said: “Official Secrets raises serious questions about the treatment of Katharine Gun at the hands of the legal system. As the director of public prosecutions at the time, Lord Macdonald must take responsibility for this.”
The film, which opens in the UK next month, has led some critics to point out its relevance, eulogising the bravery of whistleblowers in an era characterised by disinformation and fake news.
Keira Knightley as Gun in the forthcoming film Official Secrets. Photograph: IFC Films | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/oct/14/mitski-review-her-dark-materials | Music | 2023-10-14T13:00:43.000Z | Kitty Empire | Mitski review – her dark materials | In blues mythology, the musician Robert Johnson met the devil at a crossroads and sold his soul to him in exchange for increased guitar proficiency. On the left-field pop auteur Mitski’s song The Deal – from her most recent album, The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We – the song’s narrator goes on a similar midnight ramble.
Keen to be rid of her suffering soul, she offers it up to the night, asking for nothing in return. A bird unexpectedly appears – her liberated soul, though analyses may vary – who archly informs her: “Your pain is eased but you’ll never be free.” Mitski is just “a cage” without the bird singing in it. On the studio album, released last month, a cavalcade of drums and a storm of groaning strings bear witness to how dire this deal is.
Tonight, on this low-key tour of smaller spaces, Jeni Magana’s foregrounded bowed acoustic bass and Patrick Hyland’s intensified strumming on acoustic guitar provide a surprisingly good approximation of the horrified crescendo. “There’s a deal that I made,” intones Mitski repeatedly, her pure voice rising into the ecclesiastical acoustics of this repurposed church.
This intimate performance consists of her newest album in full, plus a handful of old songs, all squeezed into an hour. It feels like a conscious retrenchment after the bigger venues, more epic sound and studied choreography of Mitski’s last two UK tours. And while tonight’s arrangements of the songs from The Land Is Inhospitable lack the wallop of the gospel choir, the sweetness of the pedal steel guitar and the stately brass and strings of the studio versions, this bijou gig is not short of intensity, both romantic and existential – or humour. Normally a reserved performer whose angst comes wrapped by in exquisite control and careful choreography, Mitski chats between songs – about loving the venue so much, she would like to “haunt it” after death. “Back into character!” she quips afterwards, resuming her slow pacing around the stage.
All performers make a deal of some kind with renown, of course. But Mitski – seven albums into a burgeoning career – has been more candid than most about the cost/benefit analysis of being an intense solo singer-songwriter with an ever-increasing army of ardent fans. Signed to an independent label, Dead Oceans, the Japanese-American music college graduate has come closer to the churn of the mainstream, and further from her original indie rock crucible, with every release.
Bigger audiences have brought her dividends, but this thoughtful artist’s ambivalence has kept in lockstep with her rise
It was the pandemic that accidentally made Mitski a TikTok phenomenon when her 2018 song Nobody captured the lonely understimulation of lockdown. Despite considering quitting music after suffering from burnout with her 2018 album Be the Cowboy, Mitski’s next LP, Laurel Hell, made overtly lush, synthetic overtures to a pop audience. Tonight, in the encore on the Laurel Hell song Love Me More, Mitski’s narrator demands to be “drowned out” by love. The request could be addressed to a romantic partner – or to a fanbase. The crowd, of course, plump for the latter, greeting it with ecstatic applause.
All these overtures towards bigger audiences – all these deals – have brought Mitski dividends: she opened for Harry Styles on his 2022 UK tour. But this thoughtful artist’s ambivalence has kept in lockstep with her rise.
A number of Laurel Hell songs critically editorialised her job as a performer. By contrast, one of The Land Is Inhospitable’s most skewering tracks, I Don’t Like My Mind, appears to come around full circle. “Please don’t take / take my job from me,” howls Mitski at its mesmerising peak. In a July statement, the artist concluded that, having renegotiated her contract, she would continue to make music.
Watch the video for My Love Mine All Mine by Mitski.
In the weeks since The Land Is Inhospitable’s release, TikTok has once again got hold of one of Mitski’s songs – My Love Mine All Mine, a melody that sounds like a lullaby, but contemplates the insignificance of the human lifespan – and its Spotify streaming numbers have become decidedly pop: 3.39m globally. Mitski has been propelled into the UK Top 40 for the first time, then, seemingly moments later, into the Top 20. There are at least four separate Reddit threads analysing the song’s lyrics. Clairo has covered it. The UK Official Charts website – usually busy with Doja Cat and BTS – has reacted to this uptick with a piece entitled Who is Mitski?
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The singer-songwriter herself makes no specific reference to Mitski mania 2.0 this evening, treating My Love Mine All Mine like any other song: with dulcet care. Cocooned this evening in warm guitar and resonant bass, she wonders tenderly if her love might endure after death, shining down like moonlight on “her baby” left behind on Earth (this is an album full of serene celestial imagery, contrasting with the “inhospitable” Earth).
As with her thoughts about whether her art is worth making, death is a frequent visitor to Mitski’s work. She concludes the gig with a short solo guitar encore from the pulpit and clarifies her previous thoughts about haunting the Union Chapel. If she died tonight, she says, she would die happy. This restless artist was able to do “her favourite thing”. And more than that, she says, beaming: “I am satisfied.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/commentisfree/2021/dec/12/deaths-attributable-to-alcohol-air-pollution-and-flu-must-be-modelled-rather-than-counted | From the Observer | 2021-12-12T10:00:35.000Z | David Spiegelhalter | Deaths attributable to alcohol, air pollution and flu must be modelled rather than counted | David Spieghalter and Anthony Masters | After years of stability, the Office for National Statistics reported that alcohol-specific deaths in 2020 had increased by 19% from 2019, counting 8,974 deaths coded as caused by alcohol misuse, with three in four being from alcoholic liver disease. The national lockdown saw an increase in abstention, but also in heavy drinking. Harm can increase without greater total consumption: the distribution matters, not just the average.
Drinking too much alcohol raises the risks of many diseases, so analysts try to estimate total numbers of deaths attributable to alcohol consumption – they modelled about 19,200 alcohol-related deaths in England in 2019, around four times the direct count of number of alcohol-specific registrations. The method requires many assumptions, such as 11% of breast cancer deaths in women over 75 being due to alcohol, and a major recent change in such attributable fractions cut estimated alcohol-related death figures by around 23%.
People might like a single number to settle an issue but we cannot count everything directly and analysts may need to construct a range of statistics to improve our understanding. Many tens of thousands of deaths every year are attributed to air pollution, but until an inquest in 2020, it was never given as an official cause of an individual death.
Influenza also demonstrates the limitations of counting. Between 2013 and 2020, only around 600 people in England and Wales died with influenza as the direct underlying cause each year. Yet England’s public health agency estimated in 2020 that there were around 15,000 “influenza-attributable deaths” in the 2016-17 season alone. That figure comes from the FluMomo model, which picks out periods with high mortality over a curved seasonal baseline, attributing those deaths to influenza or extreme temperatures. This approach has some weaknesses, including potential overestimation and insufficient corrections for registration delays.
In essence, FluMomo tries to estimate how many fewer deaths would occur if flu were eliminated. That just about happened last winter, contributing to a deficit in non-Covid-19 deaths and our continued distancing behaviour means, once again, flu is running at a very low level. That’s currently about the one bit of good news for the NHS.
David Spiegelhalter is chair of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication at Cambridge. Anthony Masters is statistical ambassador for the Royal Statistical Society | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jan/14/ces-booth-babes-women-tech | Opinion | 2012-01-14T16:00:01.000Z | Kate Bevan | Why do we still get booth babes at CES? | Kate Bevan | Sex sells: you don't have to look very far to see implicit promises of sex in a lot of advertising. In general, I don't have a problem with that - I'm not one of the brigade yelling about "pornification" as I think that's a poorly thought-out label for a moral panic based on puritanism. Most adults, and indeed kids, can tell the difference between fantasy and reality; and most of us are capable of judging what's appropriate and what's not.
However, the key word is always "appropriate". There is one area where plain old-fashioned inappropriate objectification of women still rules the roost: technology. This week in Las Vegas geeks, marketers, chief execs, journalists and bloggers have gathered for CES, the annual giant trade show where many of the forthcoming year's gadgets and trends are debuted. But wandering around, you'd be forgiven for thinking you'd accidentally stumbled into the annual adult-entertainment show that's held at the same time every year in Vegas (NSFW). Sprinkled liberally among the stands are the "booth babes", the models who sometimes seem to be wearing more makeup than clothing who are ostensibly there to answer questions from punters and give out information.
Tech remains an industry that's perceived to be male-dominated. Yet women buy tech, use tech, write about tech and are senior players themselves in the tech industry – so every year, I continue to be baffled as to why the booth babes are still considered acceptable. It's perhaps unfair to single out CES: the habit persists elsewhere in tech, particularly in publishing. Go into any newsagent and there, up among the lads' mags, are Stuff and T3. Both are glossy consumer technology publications that are considered authoritative, yet on the covers are leggy models who look as though they wouldn't know one end of a DSLR from another, pouting and making eyes at some new piece of kit.
Editors say that if they want to reach their target (male) audience in the newsagent, they have to be at eye-level with the other lads's mags and men's mags. But that's disingenuous: all the other, dare I say it, more serious tech magazines are at knee-level, sporting pictures not of hot babes, but of very hot and desirable technology. Chris Lowe at Haymarket, which publishes Stuff, says: "We regularly review the use of a model on the cover, based on reader research, and will continue to do so". Make of that what you will, and don't expect to see a change soon.
So what's the point of booth babes? Well, to draw in the mostly male punters, of course. Does it work? Maybe. When I threw open the question to my Facebook and Twitter followers, one man in the tech industry commented: "An attractive girl handing me a leaflet or asking me to enter a draw is probably going to get a better reaction than a nerdy geek in a suit." However, that's disingenuous: if you're really interested in the information, it doesn't matter who gives it to you – and it can be counter-productive. Another friend commented: "They may get traffic to your booth but those are the people that aren't interested in your product – they're the saddos taking pictures with said scantily clad girls – so you have a busy booth but you aren't going to increase sales or brand awareness."
Back in 2006, the Entertainment Software Industry said that it would actually enforce its rules about booth babes at E3, a leading gaming conference. However, that seems not to have stuck: last year's E3 seemed to be as replete as ever with scantily dressed young ladies. Fortunately, not all geeks are equal: the gaming blog Rock, Paper, Shotgun published a wonderful pisstake (safe for work).
Porn and technology have long been, um, in bed together. Porn led the development of much of the technology we take for granted, including cheap and easy videomaking kit, analogue and then digital video, online payment systems. However, that doesn't mean it's appropriate to bring porn memes into technology. As Terence Eden, an independent mobile consultant, noted to me on Twitter, it "cheapens the product but – more importantly – cheapens the industry". It's demeaning to the men, too: to assume that they're simple creatures who only respond to naked female flesh is offensive to any half-sentient bloke who also happens to like technology.
It also creates a series of expectations around the women who are there to work. Helen Keegan, a mobile industry specialist, said to me: "I've had my bottom pinched at industry networking events. I've had a very senior lawyer unable to speak to anything but my breasts. I've been asked for a business meeting – in a man's hotel bedroom. This is why women don't hang out at these events. There are a lot of women working in tech, they just don't want to be exposed to morons." | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/05/election-aftermath-british-democracy-leaders-lack-statesmanship | Opinion | 2015-05-05T18:12:09.000Z | Rafael Behr | The election aftermath will be a delicate moment for British democracy | Rafael Behr | Elections are not generally decided in the last days of a campaign. Even in April 1992, when a Labour lead in opinion polls on the eve of voting became a Tory majority the morning after, the outcome revealed longer-standing reservations about the opposition.
The “shy Tories” who put John Major back in Downing Street may have kept their allegiance secret until the moment of marking the ballot paper but that doesn’t make their motives whimsical. The gut expresses in a second judgments that have been years in digestion.
The prospect of a ’92-style below-the-radar surge in support has sustained Conservative hopes in recent months. It is not a baseless fantasy. Polls show plenty of voters yet to make up their minds and, when they do so, aversion to risk is sure to be a potent factor.
The one success of the Tory campaign has been ramping up fear that an Ed Miliband administration, reliant on Scottish nationalists in parliament, would bring disorder where, it is argued, Cameron bequeaths stability. It may be a desperate, last-ditch argument but it could only gain traction (and privately Labour politicians admit that it does) because of a long-held unwillingness to gamble on regime change.
Miliband has had a better campaign than Neil Kinnock in 1992 – confounding low expectations, and demonstrating a strength of character that allows former sceptics to envisage him as prime minister. But the hapless caricature was banished late in the day. Labour candidates report a shift from visceral rejection to mere wariness of Miliband among the undecided.
Improvement in Miliband’s image will be felt in the morale boost it has given to Labour activists, and as a catalyst for firming-up “soft” support. From what I have seen in English constituencies, Labour’s campaign is better organised on the ground: better prepared for knocking on the right doors to make sure amenable voters make it to the polling booth on the day. There may well be an untapped pool of potential Conservative votes that isn’t showing up in the polls, but Labour’s known vote is keener. It is impossible to say which factor will be decisive.
Then there is Scotland. The Tories’ hopes of retaining power thanks to a Caledonian collapse in Labour support is one of the most paradoxical developments in recent politics. If Cameron has the most seats in a hung parliament he will declare himself the only possible prime minister. Yet the opportunity to make that claim will have been granted by SNP voters whose aversion to Conservative rule could hardly be clearer.
It is a strange logic that uses militant hostility to the Tories in one part of the country to bolster their entitlement to power. It is stranger still to assert that a Miliband administration supported by the SNP would hasten the end of the union, when it is Cameron who seems to think Scottish MPs don’t count at Westminster.
But if Labour won neither the most seats nor the most votes, it would look just as peculiar for Miliband to declare himself the nation’s choice. He could only then become prime minister if it was clear that Cameron was unable to muster an endorsement in the Commons – a scenario that could take days to play out.
As that messy endgame comes into view, campaign rhetoric has shifted from the usual question of who would govern best, to the less familiar problem of whether a leader whose party is not the biggest in parliament, but who can legislate anyway, can be the rightful prime minister. The rules, written in statute and unwritten in precedent, say clearly that he can. But public opinion, inflamed by a hysterical press, cannot be expected to defer to parliamentary protocol, especially when the uncertain election result would be in large part a product of support for the SNP and Ukip – parties that promise to disrupt the old Westminster ways.
This could be a delicate moment for British democracy, requiring statesmanship and humility that have been lacking in the campaign. Labour and the Conservatives have tried to present the race as a binary choice, but the evidence of the past five years – and the trend dating back even further – suggests voters no longer see politics in those terms. That is one way in which 2015 is unlike 1992. The Lib Dems were on the scene but Major did not have a Ukip threat to contend with, and Kinnock could bank some seats in Scotland without his candidates having to get out of bed before polling day.
The default settings have changed. Cameron cannot presume that Conservative rule is a cultural norm to which Britain reverts in the absence of an extraordinary swing to Labour; and Miliband cannot presume a moral right to be the natural leader of everyone who hates Tories. Yet those outdated beliefs have underpinned their campaigns. No wonder a wobbly win is the best either side can hope for.
Whoever finds a route to Downing Street, his government will be instantly unpopular with millions of people who wanted something else, but that is not unusual. Since 2005 Britain has had prime ministers whose party was rejected by at least six out of 10 voters. Inflammatory talk of constitutional crises and coups is plain dangerous.
There is no magic proportion of votes or seats that confers instant legitimacy, which is anyway not the same as popularity. The challenge for the under-mandated leader is to earn both by showing deference to the arguments of his rivals: to demonstrate some grasp of why he didn’t do better in the election.
In 2010, Cameron did that by making a “big, open, comprehensive” coalition offer to the Lib Dems, but since then he has too often retreated to a narrow trench of dogmatic Conservatism. Nothing in the campaign, least of all his scorched-earth approach to Scottish sensibilities, suggests he can rediscover that generous, bipartisan tone.
Whether Miliband can better articulate a claim to govern on behalf of the whole country, when his freedom of parliamentary manoeuvre is heavily constrained, is something we shall probably discover on Friday. But if the arithmetic allows it, he will surely have earned the right to try.
Jonathan Freedland is hosting Guardian Live: Election results special, on Friday 8 May at 6pm in Kings Place, London. Polly Toynbee is a panellist. For full details and to book tickets, see here | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2024/feb/25/manon-review-royal-ballet-50-years-royal-opera-house-london-five-stars-bracewell-naghdi-hayward-sambe-nunez-bolle | Stage | 2024-02-25T10:00:53.000Z | Sarah Crompton | Manon review – Kenneth MacMillan’s 50-year-old masterpiece still bewitches | In 2011, at the age of 46, when she had barely danced a classical work for four years, Sylvie Guillem returned to the role of Manon in Kenneth MacMillan’s three-act ballet. She said she wanted to make sure there was nothing new she could find in this, his 1974 dance interpretation of Abbé Prévost’s story of a convent girl who becomes a courtesan and dies when her love for a penniless student overwhelms her determination to make her way in a venal world.
The richness of the ballet, together with its trajectory from rags to riches and back again, is one reason it’s performed around the world. For its 50th anniversary, its home company, the Royal Ballet, is putting a strong array of casts through its emotional wringer.
William Bracewell and Yasmine Naghdi. Photograph: Foteini Christofilopoulou
Each brings something different to the tale. As the lovelorn and loyal Des Grieux, William Bracewell thrillingly finds emotional force in every movement so that each elegant extension or high jump becomes an expression of feeling. His Manon, Yasmine Naghdi, is technically astonishing, but you don’t always know what she is thinking. Francesca Hayward and Marcelino Sambé bring a tender complicity to the roles. Hayward carefully charts Manon’s journey from innocence to despair, her thoughts as quicksilver as her movement; Sambé brings easy grace and deep passion.
Then there was the pairing of Marianela Nuñez and Italian guest Roberto Bolle, experienced dancers who know how to wrench every ounce of feeling out of the story. She is like liquid, so soft and sensual; he brings star presence, acting with intensity, even if his dancing has lost some of its flow.
Marianela Nuñez and Roberto Bolle. Photograph: Andrej Uspenski/© 2024 ROH
Around them, in various casts, different dancers flicker into different lights. Gary Avis makes the corrupt Monsieur GM odious; in Thomas Whitehead’s reading he is bored by his own ability to buy everything; Christopher Saunders is just grumpy at being thwarted. Alexander Campbell finds rakish charisma and real danger in Manon’s brother Lescaut; in another cast, Itziar Mendizabal suddenly emerges to make his girlfriend a perfect picture of exasperation. Gentlemen leap, courtesans cavort, each giving their all. It’s a company triumph, night after night.
Manon is at the Royal Opera House, London, until 8 March | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/aug/19/gina-miller-rise-life-lessons-in-speaking-out-brexit-hatred-interview | Politics | 2018-08-19T07:00:13.000Z | Andrew Anthony | Gina Miller: ‘I was absolutely shocked, I didn’t know those attitudes still existed’ | Before we start the interview at her plush offices bang in the middle of South Kensington’s fashion district, Gina Miller has a question. “So,” she says, fixing me with a searching look, “was it the book you were expecting?”
The truth is, I had few expectations, because before I read her book, Rise: Life Lessons in Speaking Out, I hadn’t thought of Miller as a writer. To me, she was the woman who took the government to court over Brexit, succeeding in her bid to maintain the principle that parliament is sovereign. I admired her guts and resolve, but didn’t necessarily feel compelled to know her “story”. However, no one comes to public prominence these days without also being offered a book contract.
Unlike many famous people, Miller set out to write her book herself but, realising how difficult a task that was – what with being a businesswoman, campaigner, and mother – she recruited the journalist and novelist Elizabeth Day as a ghostwriter. Day, she says, is someone with whom she struck up an instant bond of trust, which she needed to speak honestly about her life.
If I look smart and I feel confident, other people’s bigoted assumptions have less power to harm me
Before I get to what I thought about the book, it’s perhaps more important to say what it made me think about some of my countrymen. There is a version of the modern British story that is all about reaching out, to use an annoyingly ubiquitous phrase. In this open and welcoming place, people are inclusive, tolerant, opposed to sexism, racism and all forms of bigotry, and discreetly proud of a tradition that honours justice and fair play. It’s a self-image many would like to see when a mirror is held up to the nation at large. Yet reflect for a moment on the examples Miller quotes from files of online comments about her, and that image quickly cracks.
“From the colour of your skin, you’re just a piece of shit,” reads one. “And shit should just be trodden on and I’m going to do that to your face.” Another informs her she is nothing “but a rich man’s whore”, who should be “locked up and taken out once a day for a good banging”. Then there is the warning that a “Jo Cox killing would be too good for you”, and the declaration that Miller is “not even human, just an ugly ape who needs whipping into obedience”.
“I was absolutely shocked,” Miller says about reading the files her lawyers had compiled for her. “I just didn’t know that those attitudes still existed, and I still find it shocking now.”
She writes in Rise that since going through the files, she has become “wary of walking down the street, of using public transport, of going out to public places”.
Well you would be, wouldn’t you?
In the book she refers to these messages as a “river of hate”. But that’s far too sanitising. They really constitute a cesspit of malice, containing all the very worst and most ignoble of human instincts. But what prompted this outpouring of moral sewage? Three things. First, Miller’s principled legal battle to uphold the rule of law following the Brexit referendum. Second, she was born in British Guiana (later Guyana). Finally, she is a woman.
Those three facts added together, two decades into the 21st century, made Miller a figure of toxic hatred. It probably didn’t help that she is an elegant-looking woman, and can sound a little haughty – or, at least, too carefully composed – when speaking on matters of constitutional importance. But they are minor issues, the kind that only take on significance once you’ve already decided you dislike someone.
‘I knew there would be a backlash, but I never thought that it would get that bad’: Gina Miller outside the supreme court after winning her Brexit case. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA
In person, Miller is not haughty. She’s neatly dressed, as you’d expect of someone in her line of work – she co-founded the investment firm SCM Direct and set up the True and Fair Campaign to monitor the City. The campaign’s aim is to “limit the possibility of future misselling or financial scandals through greater transparency”.
She places a firm emphasis on appearance in Rise. Her parents were fastidious people, and she describes her father, who became attorney general of Guyana, as “stately looking”, someone who “always prided himself on being beautifully turned out”. For her, clothes are more like armour. “If I look smart and feel confident,“ she writes, “other people’s bigoted assumptions have less power to harm me.”
This observation is delivered, like much else in the book, as a mixture of self-revelation and seasoned advice to other women. You could say Rise is a kind of old-fashioned feminist guide to corporate or professional advancement. In that respect, it’s no doubt pitched at the readership that bought Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In in such vast numbers. It’s full of tips for women, gained through experience – often harsh experience – and backed up with statistics from various psychological studies of the kind that tend to reaffirm the blindingly obvious. Sample: “In 2014, Professor Karen Pine from the University of Hertfordshire also found that what you wear can boost or lower your self-esteem.”
But Miller’s story turns out to be an unusual and impressive one, and, if it were down to me, I would have preferred to have learned more about her life and received fewer life lessons. That said, I’m not her intended audience. When she writes “we”, she is usually referring explicitly to her fellow women.
The bare bones of her biography are that she grew up in Guyana in a strict (corporal punishment was used) but loving household, and she idolised her handsome and accomplished father. But aged 11, she was sent to England to board at an all-girls school in Eastbourne on the Sussex coast. She was bullied, but she “reached out” to her bully and they became friends. Her aim, she writes, was to “disarm” her tormentor with kindness. At 13, owing to currency restrictions in Guyana that meant a shortage of money at home, she worked as a chambermaid while still at school.
After school she studied law at the University of East London. Her ambition was to become a criminal barrister, but she quit the course following a vicious attack in the street – of which more later. She and her boyfriend, who was 10 years older than her, moved to Bristol and set up a photographic service for estate agents. They got married and had a child, Lucy-Ann. It was a difficult pregnancy and the baby suffered brain damage, which resulted in symptoms of autism, dyslexia and dyspraxia. The marriage ended in divorce five years later.
Now a single parent, she enrolled at the University of North London to study marketing, but also worked as a waitress and did several other jobs, including some modelling. In the final year of her degree, she met Jon Maguire, a City financier, and after she graduated they moved to Wiltshire and got married, which, she writes, “turned out to be one of the biggest disasters of my life”.
Even in that brief summary – and I haven’t come to the high drama and lowering fallout of the supreme court’s Brexit judgment – it’s apparent that Miller is more than familiar with life’s ups and downs. You can’t help but marvel at how she has ridden them out with what looks very much like poise and equanimity.
Yet there is also the suspicion that Miller skates over some of the more disturbing episodes of her life. The book is in large part a rallying call to women who have suffered setbacks, particularly at the hands of men, and yet the two major incidents of actual physical abuse she describes are dealt with so quickly that you could almost miss them, or certainly misunderstand what they entailed.
The first came with that attack when she was a student, which she describes in the book as “brutal”. She didn’t report it (not unusual for victims of violence) and recalls feeling “dirty, violated and in shock”. But what did the assault involve and why did it come about? Of this she says nothing in the book, except that some of the men who attacked her were students at her college. And even though the incident caused her to give up her degree course, and turn her back on her long-held dream, that’s all we learn of it.
Why the cursory retelling?
“I didn’t want people to feel sorry for me,” she says. I say that it’s perfectly possible, indeed common, to empathise with someone’s suffering and still admire them.
“But I have lots of detractors and they could use that,” she shoots back. “All the way through writing this book I had to have a sixth sense of how every word could be manipulated and used against me.”
I say that that sounds like a self-defeating way to go about writing a candid account of her life. She says she originally wrote a more graphic account, but decided she wanted the message to be about surviving rather than the assault itself. But, I learn, it is more complicated than that. She says there was a racist element to the attack. I try to establish what this means and, after a while, she says: “Well, I was attacked because I was not behaving like I was supposed to be behaving.”
But this doesn’t take us much further.
“I was being too western,” she says, when I ask her to explain.
So, I ask tentatively, the racism was not from a white group of students?
She shakes her head. They were Asian, she says, and they had mistaken her for being Indian. “That brings up a whole different element, and I thought, especially in the time we’re living in at the moment, I just don’t feel that’s the right thing to talk about right now.”
The sensitivity seems misplaced, not least because the book puts a high premium on speaking your mind and telling the truth, regardless of how people might respond. Indeed, she goes so far as to suggest that the way to go forward towards hope in life is by “shaming the abusers and the bullies; by calling out and shaming people who do bad things”.
I say I’m not so sure about the value of “shaming”, but perhaps she could have shown solidarity with people living in communities where they are obliged to follow codes of behaviour that they do not wish to follow. Perhaps they too want to rise above the social constraints placed on them.
“That’s something that I’m learning about,” she says, ”but I was totally unaware when I was student and I didn’t know what was going on. I’m realising now that it’s much more prevalent than I thought it was.”
The other alleged incident involves her second husband, Jon Maguire. It is written in an oblique, impressionistic style.
“I remember the coldness of the floor. I remember the hardness of the slate pressing against my side,” is the key image of the relevant passage. It comes from the chapter in which, she says, she had most help from Day.
Elsewhere, she mentions “emotional abuse”, but she obviously intends the reader to derive more than that from the scene. When I put this to her, she says that “the message in that chapter is that domestic violence does not happen to just stupid women”.
Maguire disputes Miller’s claims of abuse, and counters with an allegation that she had a drink problem during their marriage, which she in turn denies.
Gina Miller: ‘It’s part of my culture to speak out. It’s a lot healthier’
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Whatever happened, she fled him, taking Lucy-Ann. They slept in B&Bs and sometimes in her car in a multi-storey car park. Eventually she approached Lucy-Ann’s father, who found a flat for them in the same block in which he lived in Tooting. Thereafter she had no more to do with Maguire, but in 2010 he stood as a candidate for the English Democrats at the general election. Their manifesto called for an end to “so-called asylum seekers”, and a separate parliament for England.
He doesn’t sound like a perfect match for Miller, yet she fell head over heels with the man. As she writes: “For the first and last time in a relationship, I was completely honest with my partner, revealing all my weaknesses.”
I ask her what her third husband and business partner, Alan Miller, thinks of that. She says she told him from the outset that she would never be able to reveal herself so fully again. “I said to him: ‘You’re not going to get the full, soft Gina.’”
She says this is a common self-protective reaction among survivors of domestic violence. If she had met Miller first, she believes things would have been different.
“But I can’t wind back the clock and change that. I can only say this is what happened.”
Her marriage to Miller, with whom she has two children, is a happy one. She was keen to acknowledge his decency in the book because she wanted to say that “there are good men out there as well”.
It’s for this reason that she is not fully signed up to #MeToo – a movement that she says has “conflated too many things”. Yet she writes a whole chapter, entitled #MeToo, detailing sleazy behaviour she has suffered at the wandering hands of predatory men.
“I just want people to be equal and fair to each other,” she says.
Of course, the problem is what to do when people are not equal, or not fair to each other. Rise doesn’t really get to grips with that question – or rather, it gives contradictory advice. Be nice to bullies, she argues at one point, because they are likely to be hurting themselves and an act of kindness can break the cycle. She also, as mentioned, talks about shaming them. Yet, in the two cases she cites where she was on the wrong end of men trying to sexually exploit their corporate power, she did neither. On the first occasion, she was shocked into horrified retreat from a Harvey Weinstein-type hotel-room-and-bathrobe scenario. In the second, she kept quiet to protect an “obnoxious fund manager’s” family from the fallout of a public allegation. She says both men have since changed their behaviour – partly, she suggests, because they know that she knows. If so, that hasn’t been the pattern of behaviour among sexual predators who have come to light in recent times. In those cases, close shaves have only emboldened them.
What of the current paralysis over Brexit? She is alarmed that the government is running out of time to secure a deal. And no deal, she says, is something she doesn’t see “how we would survive”. But because she also doesn’t see a way to reach a deal that will satisfy enough people, she thinks there is a good chance of a second referendum. “I think it’s the only way out. Politicians want to get out of this mess unscathed and preserve themselves, because that means they fight another day. The way you do that is you take the decision and you give it back to people and say: ‘Well, it’s not our decision. It’s their decision.’”
Perhaps, but how will that change the situation, especially if, as seems likely, it would be a close call once more? “I think there needs to be an amnesty,” she says.
I silently contemplate what that might mean – perhaps people can declare their offensive tweets to the authorities without fear of sanction – before asking her.
“Whatever the outcome,” she explains, “everybody is going to have to agree, that’s it. We stop campaigning until the next election or whenever the time is, and we actually have to find a way through it together, because you can’t carry on like this. I mean everyone is feeling either exhausted, stressed, resigned. These emotions are very destructive.”
Regardless of the outcome, she says, there should be no further referendums after the second one. It’s an idea, certainly no more fanciful than many of the measures the government has put forward. But whatever its merits, I can’t imagine the current leader or government could make the case for it and continue in office. So if it were to happen, it probably would not be as a result of political self-preservation.
Still, it would be wise to take note because, according to Miller, she saw where the last referendum was heading before the Remain campaign realised what was going on. She worked for the Remain team but, she says, was sidelined in the run-up to the referendum because she believed its facts-and-figures approach wasn’t working outside London.
“I was replaced by more ‘obedient’ women,” she writes. Is that true? “Yes,” she says. “Because I wasn’t speaking to the script, I stopped being asked to speak.”
Miller has also left the Labour party, for whom, she says, she and her husband worked on the 2015 manifesto, drafting the section on pension reform. She quit Labour more than a year ago, “when the antisemitic stuff started coming to the surface”. She insists that she has no ambition to become a politician in any existing or new party, and nor, if it were offered, would she join the House of Lords.
“I’m more interested in policy than politics, and I can do that as an independent person,” she says. She is at pains to point out that she never sought the public spotlight. The reason she became a figurehead for the legal challenge to the government was because she was approached by the law firm Mishcon de Reya, who asked if she would be a claimant in the case. There were two other claimants at that stage, men she describes as “very powerful, successful and publicly known”. But they dropped out, fearful of the repercussions.
“It’s completely the right thing for them to have done,” she says. “It would have destroyed them. I mean, it’s all very well me getting what I was getting, but for them to do it, it would have been disastrous.”
Why would it have been worse for them than you?
“Because at that time I wasn’t as publicly known. I knew there would be a backlash, but I never thought that it would get that bad.”
That, in a nutshell, is the overriding message of Rise: stand up for your beliefs, don’t be cowed by bullies, face down your fears. It’s repeated throughout, and the role model for this behaviour, of course, is Miller herself. That could easily come across as boasting, but she offsets the self-promotion with the various setbacks, self-doubt and failures with which she’s also had to deal.
The idea of the book is that all women are a bit like Gina, or could be. But despite the rousing, Hollywood-style rallying call – “dare to dream, dare to aim high, we must dare to also face our weakness” – the reader is inevitably left with the impression that Miller is a good deal more resilient, principled and determined than most people.
And in many ways, she is. It cannot have been easy to come to a foreign land as an 11-year-old without your parents, or to get on with life after being attacked and dropping out of her law degree, or to be a single parent of a child with disabilities, or to survive the abuse that she has. But to withstand being public enemy No 1 to the Brexit half of the country, and the terrifying threats and appalling insults aimed at her, takes real courage; to do so while maintaining a calm and collected exterior requires a very large bank of sang-froid.
For all her coolness, I warmed to Miller, if not her book. It sings a familiar song of triumph over adversity, but has too many missing notes to be wholly convincing. She is someone who keeps herself together by holding back her innermost self. That’s probably quite wise in a public figure, not entirely ideal in a romantic partner, but seldom a quality that’s welcome in an author.
“I believe in you. I believe in us. I believe we all can rise,” are the final sentences of the book, sounding like a Whitney Houston lyric.
It would be nice if that were true. But I believe that the trajectory of the extraordinary Gina Miller is set to continue upwards.
Rise: Life Lessons in Speaking Out is published by Canongate (£16.99). To order a copy for £11.99 go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99
Gina Miller will be in conversation with Zoe Williams at a Guardian Live event on Wednesday 29 August at Cadogan Hall in London. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/nov/21/english-class-system-shaped-in-schools | Education | 2017-11-21T07:14:52.000Z | Donna Ferguson | ‘Working-class children get less of everything in education - including respect’ | When Diane Reay, Cambridge University professor of education, started researching her book about working class children’s experiences of education, she had no idea just how much inequality she would uncover in state schools today. “The most important thing I found out was that we are still educating different social classes for different functions in society.”
She expected to find the English state system was providing roughly the same education for all. “But it doesn’t. Even within a comprehensive school, when they’re all in the same building, the working classes are still getting less education than the middle classes, just as they had when my dad was at school at the beginning of the 20th century.”
Reay’s background informs her book and her opinions. The daughter of a coalminer, and the eldest of eight, she grew up on a council estate and received free school meals. She then spent 20 years working as a teacher in London primary schools before moving into academia and ending up at Cambridge.
“My parents had a strong sense that the educational system hadn’t been fair to them and they had missed out. I learned as a small child I had to work at least twice as hard as the middle class children to achieve the same result. When I did show ambition – to go to LSE [the London School of Economics and Political Science] to be a political researcher – I was told it wasn’t appropriate.”
How much has changed? “This government is making inequality in education worse, not better,” she says.
Reay carried out more than 500 interviews and identified most with the children who were difficult and out of place: the “fighters”, she calls them. “That was the sort of child I was in school.”
Is the British education system designed to polarise people?
Danny Dorling
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Now she hopes to open up a national debate about what a socially just education would look like. “There’s this incessant babble from the government about social mobility. But the academy and free school movement has made things worse for working class children, with more segregation and polarisation.” In spite of free schools and academies receiving more funding per pupil than state comprehensive schools, they typically educate fewer children in receipt of free school meals, she found. “Free schools and academies have a more advantaged intake than the comprehensive schools do.”
England does not have an education system that is serious about realising the potential of all children, she argues, with those on free school meals and receiving pupil premium 27% less likely to achieve five or more GCSEs at grades A*-C including English and maths. Four-fifths of children from working-class minority ethnic families are taught in schools with high concentrations of other immigrant or disadvantaged students – the highest proportion in the developed world, according to a report by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. Half of all free school meal children are educated in just a fifth of all schools.
“There are predominantly middle class comprehensives and predominantly working class and ethnically mixed comprehensives – and despite all the rhetoric around pupil premiums, pupils in the more working class comprehensives get less money per head. They get less qualified teachers. They get higher levels of teacher turnover and more supply teachers. Even if they are in the same schools as middle class children, they are in lower sets and yet again they get less experienced teachers.”
All the children she interviewed had a powerful sense of their position in the academic hierarchy. “Right from reception now some children are in sets aged four and they can tell they’re only in ‘the monkeys’ and that’s not a very good group to be in. That means they’re not very clever.” She was shocked by the anxiety displayed by very young children, who, she says, blame themselves if they are put in the lower sets.
Research suggests it is the wealth and inclination of parents, rather than the ability and efforts of the child, that have the most bearing on a child’s educational success today. “If you’re a working class child, you’re starting the race halfway round the track behind the middle class child. Middle class parents do a lot via extra resources and activities.”
‘There’s lots of lining up and standing to attention. It’s about disrespecting working class young people.’ Photograph: Getty Images
Less affluent children also get a more restrictive educational offer, she discovered. “It wasn’t until I talked to young people about their experiences that I realised how different and unequal their educations were. Because the schools that working class children mostly go to are not doing well in the league tables, there’s a lot of pressure on their teachers and heads to increase their league table position. That means they focus ruthlessly on reading, writing and arithmetic.”
Some children in these schools talked wistfully about hardly ever doing art, drama or dance: “These children come from families where their parents can’t afford to pay for them to do those activities out of school. It almost feels criminal. It feels very unfair.”
The difference between amounts spent on educating children privately or in the state sector is stark. She cites research from University College London that found £12,200 a year is the average spending on a privately educated primary pupil, compared with £4,800 on a state pupil. For secondary, it’s £15,000 compared with £6,200.
“Society has got more unfair, and the gap between the rich and poor is a lot greater than it was even 30 years ago. We’ve got to move back instead of going further in the direction of austerity, which seems to be punishing the poor.”
She believes the government’s support for academies and free schools is powerfully ideological. “It’s about opening up education to the markets. I found it particularly shocking – and I had to read some quite boring parliamentary reports to get the information – that masses of money has gone into the academy and free school programme, and it’s been taken out of the comprehensive school system.”
Reay found that free schools receive 60% more funding per pupil than local authority primaries and secondaries, and that £96m originally intended for improving underperforming schools was redistributed to academies.
Social mobility: radical reform urged to repair divided Britain
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To make things worse, an analysis of Department for Education data reveals that schools with the highest numbers of pupils on free school meals are facing the deepest funding cuts: in secondary schools with more than 40% of children on free school meals, the average loss per pupil will be £803. That’s £326 more than the average for secondary schools as a whole. And primary schools with high numbers of working class pupils are expected to lose £578 per pupil.
Another blow being inflicted on working class children is through the way they are treated in some super-strict schools, argues Reay. She says some academies operate on the principle that working class families are chaotic and children need school to impose control. “There’s lots of lining up in silence, standing to attention when an adult comes into the room, and mantras. I think it’s about disrespecting working class young people and their families.
“There’s one academy where the children have to say: I aspire, he aspires, she aspires, we all aspire.”
Another issue is widespread setting and streaming. “There’s masses of research that shows it doesn’t work – that, actually, if you put children in mixed ability groups, the majority make greater progress.
“Plus, research on wellbeing shows that you need to decrease the social distance between people. There’s mistrust, wariness and anxiety about people who are different from us. That obviously came out in the Brexit vote. If you put children together in their classroom, they start to learn that what they share is much greater than the differences between them.”
After her own schooling at Ashby grammar school, Leicestershire, Reay went to Newcastle University to study politics and economics before getting a job as a primary teacher in Islington. She took her master’s in 1985 at the Institute of Education then went back to teaching. She was the main breadwinner in her family, and managed to get funding to do a sociology PhD at South Bank University when she was in her mid-40s.
She took up her first research post at King’s College London a few years later and in 2001 was given a chair at the Institute for Policy Studies in Education at London Met. After collaborating on a research project on school inclusivity with academics at Cambridge, she was asked to apply for her current job in the faculty of education in 2004. “If I hadn’t worked with colleagues at Cambridge already, I don’t think I’d have dared.”
As a Cambridge professor, she is also highly critical of Oxbridge’s failure to attract students from working class backgrounds and ethnic minorities. But lowering entry requirements is not the solution, she believes. “Focus just at the admissions level isn’t really going to change very much. We’re never going to have a critical mass of those students who are non-traditional to make a difference.”
Instead of blaming non-traditional students for not applying, which she finds hypocritical, she’d like the elite universities to look at their whole culture and ethos. “Maybe they need to ask: how can we make ourselves more attractive to non-traditional applicants? The courses, for example, need to be brought into the 21st century, instead of staying in the 17th.”
She was feeling positive that a debate about the diversity of Cambridge University reading lists was opening up – until the Telegraph ran its inaccurate front page story claiming a black student, Lola Olufemi, was forcing the university to drop white authors from its syllabus. “That poor woman was subject to so much negative feedback. The attitude of the Telegraph was: who does she think she is?”
Reay says she felt compelled to write this book because she believes things cannot go on as they are. “There needs to be a sea change in public opinion, for us to say this is too inequitable and unfair. There needs to be a new collective effort to make things fairer.”
Miseducation: Inequality, education and the working classes by Diane Reay (£12.99) can be ordered from the Guardian Bookshop | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/feb/20/the-return-of-baftassowhite-three-years-after-diversity-outcry | Film | 2023-02-20T19:27:56.000Z | Geneva Abdul | The return of #BaftasSoWhite, three years after diversity outcry | Three years after the outcry over an all-white acting nominations lineup overshadowed the Bafta film awards, 2023’s event might have been the one where it was just all about a celebration of cinema.
Yet, despite a complete overhaul of its system after being denounced for a lack of diversity in nominations, viewers and critics have once again been voicing disapproval – albeit while also laying blame on the industry at large.
“I watched clips of the #BAFTAS and didn’t see a single black or brown person win. Not because they’re not white but because they’re good, really good and the best,” the Sky News presenter Saima Mohsin wrote after the event, as the hashtag #BaftasSoWhite resurfaced on Sunday night. “Overlooked and ignored time & again. So depressing Unconscious bias & systemic. #BaftasSoWhite.”
Criticism came swiftly as some shared images online of the awardees, with not a single actor of colour photographed. Others noted the performances of the rapper Little Simz and the actor Ariana DeBose, and the presence of co-host Alison Hammond, saying their stage appearance was not enough.
Is Bafta’s work to increase diversity in danger of being undone?
Read more
In his opening remarks, the Bafta chair Krishnendu Majumdar told viewers how the academy had “responded to the lack of diversity in the film awards nominations and set about transforming Bafta from within”.
“It was a necessary and humbling process that brought about over 120 significant changes to our organisation and our awards,” he said, insisting that the action had engendered a significant cultural shift.
But while criticism once again saw #BaftasSoWhite reportedly trending on Twitter, a university professor who was among those consulted and interviewed by Bafta for its review in 2020 said Monday night’s event reflected “a much, much bigger structural issue, which is our inability to decouple racism from diversity and inclusion”.
Clive Nwonka, an associate professor of film, culture and society at UCL, told the Guardian that something more substantial than visibility was needed to measure change.
Nwonka accepts more time needs to pass in order to assess the impact of the raft of changes the academy introduced in 2020, including new members from under-represented backgrounds, a diversity survey, changes to its voting system and an increase in film nominations.
“The reason why I’m not convinced that we will ever see anything beyond the cyclical nature of diversity and inclusion is because these aren’t new problems,” said Nwonka. For there to be an industry free from discrimination, exclusion and racism, he said, it would require the complete dismantling of the industry’s very nature.
“I just wonder whether we were wrong to invest so much of our energies, our hopes, aspirations and faith in the abilities of Bafta, just one organisation in the film industry, to make a radical change,” Nwonka said.
After Bafta’s review in 2020, there were successes for actors and films with non-white identities. In 2021, the multiracial drama Rocks led the nominations count. In 2022, Will Smith and Ariana DeBose won best actor and supporting actress respectively.
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However, at this year’s film awards, the diverse nominations – Viola Davis for best actress and Naomi Ackie for rising star, among others shortlisted – did not translate to wins for minority ethnic actors.
Ian Manborde, the equality and diversity officer of Equity, a union representing the majority of the UK’s performing arts workforce, said it welcomed the work the academy had done, but saw it as one part of a global industry.
“The difficulty is that no matter the changes that the Baftas has made, our position as a trade union is that the pool of individuals from which nominees would be selected is still not diverse enough,” said Manborde, bringing up the exclusion of actors with disabilities and those from working-class backgrounds. Equity was one of many industry organisations consulted for Bafta’s review.
The wider issue of exclusion within the industry, Manborde said, begins with the process of determining what stories are created and who gets the opportunity to portray the characters in those stories. “It’s actually a bigger political issue than just the awards industry itself.”
Bafta has declined to comment. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2023/oct/30/claudio-ranieri-leonardo-pavoletti-comeback-cagliari-frosinone-serie-a | Football | 2023-10-30T13:51:34.000Z | Nicky Bandini | Miracle-man Ranieri and action hero Pavoletti pull off ‘impossible’ again | Nicky Bandini | Call that a comeback? Napoli recovered from 2-0 down to draw with Milan in a barn-burning Sunday night game, Matteo Politano and Giacomo Raspadori setting the Stadio Diego Armando Maradona ablaze with spectacular second-half goals to cancel out Olivier Giroud’s pair of first-half headers. A giddy, seesawing clash between the reigning champions and opponents who hope to dethrone them, yet still only the second-best turnaround of the Serie A weekend.
That is because Cagliari did something no team had ever done in the Italian top-flight: recovering from three goals down after the 70th minute to win against Frosinone. Their manager, Claudio Ranieri, has achieved greater miracles in his career, but not many. His team had previously collected three draws and six defeats from nine games.
Of the three newly promoted sides, Cagliari had looked most out of their depth. In part that could be blamed on the absence of Gianluca Lapadula, Serie B’s leading scorer last season, who underwent ankle surgery in the summer. But the Sardinians were also frequently overrun in midfield, where only Antoine Makoumbou seemed capable of protecting and advancing possession.
Not that Ranieri was ever worried. Before Sunday’s game, he told reporters: “I’m sure we’ll keep ourselves in Serie A the same way we got here: in the last second of the last game of the season.”
Veteran striker Leonardo Pavoletti, an old-fashioned target man, contorts his body to fire Cagliari to their first win of the Serie A season. Photograph: Fabio Murru/EPA
Cagliari were joint-12th in Serie B when Ranieri took over last December. They climbed to fifth in time for the promotion playoffs, which they then navigated in the most dramatic way possible. After recovering from 2-0 down to beat Parma 3-2 in the semi-final, they were drawing 1-1 on aggregate with Bari in the 94th minute of the final’s second leg.
In effect, they were losing. There are no away goals or penalty shootouts in the Serie B playoff final – in the event of a draw, the team who finished higher in the table are promoted. Bari, who placed third, only needed to hold on a few more seconds. But under torrential rain at their Stadio San Nicola, Leonardo Pavoletti, who had only been on the pitch five minutes, delivered victory for Cagliari instead.
Frosinone’s path to promotion was far more serene. They finished seven points clear at the top of Serie B and made a bright start to life in the top flight too, beating Atalanta and Sassuolo in their first two home games.
Despite spending just €4.4m in transfer fees, they made several smart additions in the summer. Walid Cheddira, star of that Bari team whose hearts were broken by Cagliari, was picked up on loan, as was the promising Brazilian playmaker Reinier Jesus from Real Madrid. Both had flashed their potential already this season, but the real star of the show has been Matías Soulé.
Another loanee, this time from Juventus’s Next Gen team, the Argentinian winger has dazzled in almost every game he has played at Frosinone: showcasing not only lightning acceleration and dizzying dribbles but also a rare capacity to read a defence and thread the needle with his passing at 20 years old. He has even excelled in the air, his first two goals arriving from headers.
For 71 minutes on Sunday, it appeared Soulé’s performance would be the story of the game against Cagliari. He both created and converted the game’s opening goal, pouncing on an underhit pass from Alberto Dossena and playing a one-two with Reinier before finishing coolly at the near post.
A left-footer, Soulé lines up as an inverted winger on the right of Frosinone’s formation, and it was no accident that almost all his team’s play was channelled down that flank again on Sunday. Yet his second goal came from the opposite side. Soulé had drifted across to receive another pass from Reinier and tormented Dossena once again as he feinted left and then cut the other way, scoring off his weaker right boot.
Marco Brescianini made it 3-0 to Frosinone just after the interval. That scoreline did not reflect the balance of play – Marco Mancosu hit the woodwork twice for Cagliari in the first half, the first time from a penalty – yet any comeback now appeared impossible.
Good thing they have Ranieri as manager. “I always hope for impossible things,” he would tell reporters after the game. “You must never give up; you have to battle until the last second. If you give up sooner than that you have not done your job.”
Claudio Ranieri unleashes Leonardo Pavoletti from the bench, no doubt with instructions to achieve the unthinkable again. Photograph: Gianluca Zuddas/LaPresse/Shutterstock
He had been forced into a substitution before half-time, Nahitan Nández exiting with an injury. He made a second during the break, sending Pavoletti on to replace Alessandro Deiola – a centre-forward for a midfielder. After Brescianini’s goal, he continued with three more changes, introducing Gaetano Oristanio, Nicolas Viola and Paulo Azzi.
It was the first of that trio who provided the spark, curling an excellent finish into the bottom corner in the 72nd minute. This was Oristanio’s first Serie A goal, but the 21-year-old, on loan from Internazionale, did not celebrate, simply turning and running back toward the halfway line as a teammate went to retrieve the ball from the net.
Four minutes later, Cagliari scored again, Makoumbou stealing possession from an inattentive Brescianini and side-footing the ball past the goalkeeper, Stefano Turati. Now the stadium was rocking. Only one more goal was needed to draw the home team back level.
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Cagliari thought they would get their chance almost immediately, when the referee, Luca Pairetto, pointed to the penalty spot after Turati went through Pavoletti. But the decision was overturned by the VAR booth, who judged that the goalkeeper had got to the ball first.
Instead, they had to wait until the fourth minute of injury time for an equaliser. When Pavoletti rose to head home Viola’s cross, the impossible comeback appeared to have been completed.
Only, Cagliari still weren’t finished. They wanted to win this game, not just to draw it. Makoumbou lifted one last ball into the Frosinone area, Dossena nodded it down and Pavoletti – somehow, always Pavoletti – hooked it home to unleash pandemonium at the Unipol Domus stadium.
Aged 34, Pavoletti has become the symbol of a team that never quite knows when it’s beaten. Ranieri compared him on Sunday to the former Milan, Napoli and Juventus striker José Altafini, saying that: “Whenever Juve really needed a goal, they would stick him on and he would score it.”
A knowingly generous comparison. Altafini won a World Cup with Brazil as well as a European Cup and four Serie A titles in his club career. Pavoletti is a journeyman No 9 who sometimes looks as if he belongs to a different era: a tall, physical target man who never quite smoothed off the rough edges, producing some prolific seasons but also too many quiet ones.
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He is enjoying this chapter as Cagliari’s last action hero. Pavoletti posted a picture of himself grinning to Instagram on Sunday night with the caption: “The face of someone who still believes in dreams.”
Who better to chase those with than Ranieri, the man who led Leicester to an impossible league title and decided not to leave it at that?
Pos Team P GD Pts
1 Inter Milan 10 20 25
2 Juventus 10 10 23
3 AC Milan 10 7 22
4 Napoli 10 10 18
5 Fiorentina 9 5 17
6 Atalanta 9 7 16
7 Bologna 10 3 15
8 Roma 10 7 14
9 Lazio 9 0 13
10 Monza 10 0 13
11 Lecce 10 -2 13
12 Frosinone 10 -2 12
13 Torino 10 -5 12
14 Genoa 10 -3 11
15 Sassuolo 10 -4 11
16 Verona 10 -6 8
17 Empoli 9 -13 7
18 Udinese 10 -8 7
19 Cagliari 10 -12 6
20 Salernitana 10 -14 4 | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/apr/23/hopes-raised-for-new-genetic-therapy-to-prevent-inherited-diseases | Science | 2015-04-23T17:52:01.000Z | Ian Sample | Hopes raised for new genetic therapy to prevent inherited diseases | Researchers in the US have raised hopes for a simple genetic therapy that could prevent devastating diseases being passed on from mothers to their children.
A team at the Salk Institute in California demonstrated in mice that a single injection into embryos could rewrite faults in the DNA of mitochondria, the biological batteries that are needed to keep tissues healthy.
Most cells in the body carry hundreds or thousands of mitochondria which are inherited only from mothers. Harmful mutations in mitochondrial DNA cause progressive and often fatal diseases that typically affect the heart, brain and muscles.
There are no cures for mitochondrial diseases, but recent changes to UK law permit an experimental procedure called mitochondrial transfer, in which embryos are created with healthy mitochondria from a female donor. The procedure is controversial because the embryos carry DNA from three people, and the medical risks - which are not fully known - would affect many generations hence.
The US researchers showed that simple and widely-available genome editing procedures could correct faulty mitochondria in mouse embryos and dramatically reduce the number they passed down to future generations.
The study came out just as Chinese scientists claimed to have used similar procedures to genetically modify human embryos for the first time. The Chinese group tried to correct the genetic defect that causes beta-thalassaemia, a life-threatening blood disorder, but found that the technique used was inefficient and unsafe. The embryos used for the experiment were not able to grow into healthy babies and would have been discarded by IVF clinics.
In the US experiments, scientists first injected freshly-fertilised mouse embryos with enzymes that cut DNA at specific points. The mice had two types of mitochondria that differed by one letter of the genetic code. When the enzymes were injected, they behaved like molecular scissors that cut out the target letter in one type of mitochondria, leaving the rest largely untouched.
In a second series of experiments, the scientists inserted faulty human mitochondria into mouse eggs and then tried to correct the mutations. The human mitochondria carried defects that cause two different types of debilitating disease: Leber’s hereditary optic neuropathy (LHOND), and neuromuscular weakness, ataxia, and retinitis pigmentosa (NARP).
This time, the researchers created bespoke enzymes in the lab that targeted the harmful mutations without damaging DNA elsewhere in the cells. These were less effective than those used in the first experiments, but still reduced mitochondrial mutations by around half, the scientists write in the journal Cell.
Many mitochondrial diseases only take hold if the person, or their specific organs, carry a sufficiently high proportion of faulty mitochondria, said Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, who led the work. Belmonte explained that mitochondrial diseases are negligible if at least half of the mitochondria are healthy.
Buoyed by their findings, the US group has begun tests on surplus human eggs donated by fertility clinics. The modified eggs will be used to create stem cells which in turn will be grown into muscle, brain and heart cells to see if they function properly.
“This technology is not perfect, it cannot eliminate all the bad DNA, but by eliminating some, it’ll be enough to prevent the transmission of these diseases to the kids of affected mothers,” said Belmonte.
The next round of experiments should reveal any problems caused by accidental cuts made to healthy genes. These are almost inevitable, and predicting how serious these “off-target” changes could be is a major hurdle scientists.
“Only when we are sure that the muscle, brain and heart cells function properly, can we can put this on table,” Belmonte said. “Society needs to decide if we want to go forward with techniques like this.”
Belmonte believes the new procedure, if found to be safe and effective, has major advantages over mitochondrial transfer. The procedure is simple, meaning it could be performed at hundreds of labs around the world, rather than only a handful. And it does not call for a donor and the creation of babies with DNA from three people.
Joanna Poulton, professor of mitochondrial genetics at the University of Oxford, said that while genome editing could one day become viable for women at risk of passing on mitochondrial diseases, egg donation and pre-implantation diagnosis of embryos were still the best options.
She also cautioned that genome editing might not be suitable for all women. Some mitochondrial diseases, such as LHOND, do not have a well-established threshold below which the mutations are not a serious problem, so it is hard to know how much reducing the mutated mtDNA will help, she said.
Bruce Whitelaw, professor of animal biotechnology at Edinburgh University’s Roslin Institute, said: “Conceptually this is an alternative to the ‘three person embryo’ strategy.”
“Society needs to grapple with this,” he added. “You could imagine every IVF clinic in the country being able to do this. But is the genome editor technology robust enough yet? I think that’s an open question. I genuinely believe it will be in the near future, so we have to have the debate now: what applications are beneficial and which ones does society has concerns about?” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/oct/03/first-you-write-sentence-joe-moran-review | Books | 2018-10-03T06:30:05.000Z | John Mullan | First You Write a Sentence by Joe Moran review – how good writing makes sense of the world | On the first page of this book, Joe Moran quotes Gustave Flaubert’s claim (in a letter to his lover, Louise Colet) that his mind is always “itching” with sentences. Flaubert is Moran’s natural literary authority, because for him literature was style, and style came down to the shape and wording of sentences. Later interpreters might read Madame Bovary as an anatomy of sexual hypocrisy or class conflict or the pains of bourgeois marriage, but what the novelist really cared about were its sentences – their rhythm, their wit, their beauty.
Moran shares Flaubert’s values. His book recommends the pleasures of the well-made sentence, to writers and readers. For both, the sentence is the essential unit of expression. Moran remembers the Struldbruggs, the cursed immortals in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, who as they age lose even the solace of reading, “because their Memory will not serve to carry them from the Beginning of a Sentence to the End”. A sentence is what you hold in your head, whether it be Ernest Hemingway or Marcel Proust. A sentence is where you make sense of the world.
Moran says he wants to “hearten, embolden and galvanise the reader”, in order that he or she, as a writer, should take pains over making sentences. He does not want to call his book a style guide, a genre he associates with “prescriptions and proscriptions”. It is, rather, “a style guide by stealth”, “a love letter to the sentence”. It offers us bracing – and often sententious – sentences. “A good sentence gives order to our thoughts and takes us out of our solitudes … A sentence should feel alive, but not stupidly hyperactive.” Moran suggests good habits. He tells us to love verbs and to go easy with nouns, to “cut syllables where you can”, to think about ending a sentence on a stressed syllable, to alternate short and long sentences.
A first edition of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. Photograph: Sotheby's
He also tells us what not to like. He eloquently laments the rise and rise of “the argot of modern managerialism”, with its “nouny sentences”. As an academic, he feelingly deplores the bad habits of academic prose, with its conjunctive adverbs (“Moreover …”, “However …”) and its twitchy meta-comment (“I will argue that …”). Yet he equally knows that less is not always best. In a brisk chapter called “Nothing Like a Windowpane”, he unpicks the doctrinaire plainness of Ernest Gowers and George Orwell. He even advocates the expressive subtlety of the subjunctive.
Moran is a thoroughly sane, thoughtful commentator. It took me a long time to find something to disagree with in his book, but about two thirds of the way through I succeeded. He is celebrating the prose of John Donne’s sermons, which seems to feel its way forward experimentally, improvising analogies and snatching at allusions as it goes. He contrasts this with the studied prose of the “high Augustan stylists” of the 18th century, writers such as Samuel Johnson and Edward Gibbon. They apparently “sliced the world into logical sequence and served it up like a cold cut”. Yet the sentences of Johnson and Gibbon are also often beautiful. You can admire Donne’s sonorous amplifications, and also relish the mournful irony of Johnson’s style, or the witty patterns of Gibbon’s elaborate periods. There are different kinds of good sentence – if the writer is good enough.
He does not want to call his book a style guide, a genre he associates with 'prescriptions and proscriptions'
Moran knows this perfectly well, but he does not have to face up to the different virtues of different styles because he often avoids examples. His book is rather sparing with quotation. Pondering the nature of a paragraph, Moran reaches for the “wonderful paragraphs” of Ralph Waldo Emerson: “he amassed them in ways that made oddly compelling and persuasive shapes”. These ways will remain obscure to almost all Moran’s readers, as we do not get to see any example of an Emerson paragraph, in all its odd compellingness. The writer quoted most often is William Tyndale, the first great translator of the Bible into English. Most of what is best in the much revered King James Bible was in fact first coined by Tyndale, and Moran relishes his beautiful pithiness. We cannot write like Tyndale, yet he memorably shows us how to combine “stateliness” with colloquial rhythms.
Without more examples, you fear that Moran’s precepts will slip from the memory; even the best of readers have Struldbrugg tendencies. Perhaps that is why he condenses his advice into 20 sentence-long precepts that he lists in a final appendix, a handy summary of all that he has argued. When he reaches the end of his book, Moran goes back to Flaubert, quoting his mother’s comment as he painstakingly worked on Madame Bovary. “Your mania for sentences … has dried up your heart.” In fact, he argues, a delight in good sentences is a kind of restorative, a way of finding pattern and purpose in the world.
First You Write a Sentence: The Elements of Reading, Writing ... and Life is published by Publisher. To order a copy for 12.89 (RRP £14.99) go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2006/nov/22/publicvoices.crime | UK news | 2006-11-22T00:18:00.000Z | Julie Bindel | Julie Bindel on Reclaim the Night | In 1977, when the first Reclaim the Night march was held in Leeds, I was just 15 and remember watching it on the news with a growing sense of excitement and political conviction. The Yorkshire Ripper was still terrorising the north of England and the police had been advising that, to avoid attack, women should stay inside after dark. The march responded directly to this warning (placards read "No curfew on women - curfew on men") and hundreds of women shouted about their anger at being kept off the streets - the supposedly public highways, after all - by the threat of male violence. Marches occurred simultaneously in 12 English locations, from Manchester to Soho.
And the marches continued for more than a decade, becoming a fixture in towns and cities worldwide (in the US they termed them Take Back the Night) before the British version fizzled out in the 90s.
It wasn't until 2004 that a group of women decided to revive the event. That first year wasn't hugely promising, just 30 women turning up to march through the London streets. The following year, though, numbers swelled to almost 1,000 women. And this Saturday - the International Day to End Violence Against Women - well over 1,000 women are expected to troop through the capital, starting at Trafalgar Square and ending at the University of London Union on Malet Street. There will also be marches in Oxford, Cornwall, Cardiff and Leeds. Organisers say they have been inundated with inquiries from all over the country.
And despite regular pronouncements that feminist activism has long since curled up and died, that it has become a turn-off and an irrelevance to young women more interested in glamour modelling, the Reclaim the Night movement is being spearheaded and bolstered by younger women. The woman largely responsible for Reclaim the Night's revival, for instance, is 29-year-old Finn Mackay, a long-time political activist and founder of the London Feminist Network (LFN), a women-only networking and campaigning organisation. Why did she decide it was time to renew these street protests? "I think women have had enough misogyny and violence, and young women are aware of the early feminist battles and know they are far from won," she says.
She has a point. In Britain, it is estimated that one in two women will experience domestic violence, sexual assault or stalking during their lifetime, and rape convictions are at an all-time low - just 5.6% of all reported rapes end in a conviction. Every week, two women die at the hands of a former or current partner and new cases of child sexual abuse are reported weekly.
And the idea that women should protect themselves by staying inside after dark seems to carry as much weight as ever. Recent coverage about women being "irresponsible" if they drink to excess and then report rape has given the distinct impression that the streets are only safe for very well-behaved, sober women, and then only if they venture out in daylight hours. Police still routinely warn women to "be careful" when out late at night, an approach that puts the onus on women to protect themselves, rather than pinpointing their would-be attackers. (It's strange, isn't it, that if a man is physically attacked on the streets after dark, there is never any question of blaming him or branding him irresponsible?) A recent survey in a magazine aimed at young women found that only 5% of women feel safe on the streets at night. Two thirds admitted they worry about being raped, and almost half said that on occasion they choose not to go out because they fear for their own safety.
Growing up with a feminist mother, Rebecca Mordan, a 30-year-old actor, spent many weekends as a child at Greenham Common peace camp and was influenced by older generations of protesters. "I was a feminist from four years old," she says, "and refused to play with Barbie dolls because of that."
As an adult, Mordan became involved in feminist activism when she "got fed up with the so-called ironic rise in 'laddism'". Tired of seeing sexualised images of women and children within popular culture, and particularly those featured in magazines for young men, such as Nuts and Zoo, she began to feel "unsafe around men".
"I remember someone saying to me, 'If you go out on the town, you have to expect to get your tits grabbed," says Mordan. "I couldn't believe it. We are supposed to have made progress, but sexual assault was being seen as inevitable."
Gemma Ellis, 28, a children's charity worker, has been "passionate about women's rights" since primary school. At university she did her dissertation on child sexual abuse and prostitution, but became inspired to campaign against sexual violence when she volunteered for the organisation that stages the one-woman play, the Vagina Monologues. There she heard about the 2005 Reclaim the Night march and decided to go along.
"I was with a friend who had been arguing with me about pole dancing, saying it was empowering for women," she says, "but after the march, having spoken to several inspiring young feminists, she changed her mind." The friend has since become an active campaigner against male violence.
Ellis says that she is constantly persuading her friends that it is "OK to be a feminist", disabusing them of the stereotype of man-hating, hairy lesbians. "What's wrong with hairy lesbians?" Mackay interrupts with a sardonic glint.
The women on the 1977 march were visibly angry, shaking their fists at men, demanding they "get off the streets". Will the women on the march this year be as angry? "I would love to be able to say no," says Ellis, "but the truth is, I face at least one major irritation every day, whether it is the sight of pornography on TV or some stupid comment from a man."
What do they think puts some women off the type of radical feminism these women subscribe to? "This false notion of choice, which is increasingly used to justify the oppression of women," says Ellis. "We are constantly told that prostitution is a positive choice for women, as is wearing the veil and becoming a lap dancer. Feminists are accused of denying those 'choices' to women." Rather, she says, only feminism offers women the choice of liberation and equality.
The organisers say that most of those on Saturday's march will not have been directly involved in feminist campaigning before. What about the accusations of man-hating that are often levied at women who rage against men's violence to women? The table erupts in protest. "Men are the ones raping, beating and killing and yet we are accused of hate?" says Mackay.
Although the march is women-only, men are welcome at the Reclaim the Right to Party rally afterwards, which includes live music, DJs and dancing. "Feminists do fun really well," says Mordan. "The image of the humourless feminist is far from the truth."
The London march is not the only one planned for Saturday. Events to mark International Day to end Violence against Women are being held from Scotland to Devon, and in many countries worldwide. In the two years since its formation, the LFN, the main organiser of the march, has achieved much, and members are energised rather than jaded. Last year it organised protests against the screening of the pornographic film Deep Throat, worked with Trades Unions to encourage good practice in dealing with harassment in the workplace, and is planning a major feminist film festival for next year.
As the final preparations for the march get underway, Mordan tells me she is looking forward to seeing, "some of the most famous roads in London being closed for us women, so that everyone around will be forced to take notice of what we are demanding".
For Mackay, today's radical feminism amounts to basic common sense. "I believe the march will grow and grow," she says. "I want to see double the number of marchers next year, and double that the year after. By focusing that anger constructively, together as women, there are no limits to what we could achieve".
· Reclaim The Night 2006, Saturday November 25, assembling in Trafalgar Square (next to Nelson's Column) at 6pm for women-only march. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jul/01/scientists-artists-give-young-people-a-say-in-shaping-brexit | Politics | 2017-07-01T23:03:12.000Z | Stephen Pritchard | Scientists and artists unite to warn: ‘give the young a say in shaping Brexit’ | Leading European figures in culture, science and education, including physics professor and TV presenter Brian Cox and artist Mark Wallinger, will warn Britain’s EU negotiators this week of the damage that a hard Brexit would do to the UK and the rest of Europe.
They will make a striking plea to David Davis’s team: involve young people in your policymaking. They will say that the youth of both the UK and the EU – “effective agents for positive change” – must play a meaningful part in shaping what will be their futures.
A two-page communique, seen by the Observer, will be published on Tuesday by the British Council – the body funded by the Foreign Office to promote cultural relationships and the understanding of different cultures between the UK and other countries. It said the day after the referendum that it would “find ways to continue to work in partnership with other European countries”.
The council drew up the document after running three major Brexit conferences this year in Berlin, Madrid and London, involving 500 leaders in education, culture and science from 32 European countries – described by one young participant as “an exercise in political imagination”.
The communique is endorsed by more than 400 arts, academic and scientific institutions and individuals, including the Creative Industries Federation, British Museum, the Science Museum, the Tate, the National Portrait Gallery, the Royal Academy, the Royal Philharmonic Society, Rada, the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Bristol and St Andrews, and – among others – Cox, Tristram Hunt, the director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the cellist and principal of Birmingham Conservatoire, Julian Lloyd-Webber. Wallinger, also endorsing the communique, told the Observer: “There should be no tariffs on the exchange of knowledge and ideas; no borders to creativity and research.”
Rebecca Walton, the British Council’s regional director, EU, said the three conferences had been held because while there was a close focus on Britain’s position in the negotiations, there had been little analysis of the consequences of Brexit for the rest of Europe.
Artist Mark Wallinger, Professor Brian Cox and Julian Lloyd Webber are among signatories to the communique. Photograph: Getty Images; Andrew Fox
Laying out a vision of continued collaboration across the Channel, the communique says: “For centuries, British scholars, scientists and artists have worked and shared ideas with their European counterparts, producing an untold number of scientific breakthroughs, academic achievements and great works of art, enriching us culturally and economically. This exchange of ideas and creativity has survived wars and revolutions. We must ensure it survives Brexit.”
To achieve this, the signatories – which include representatives from leading galleries and museums across Europe, the universities of Venice and Siena, the National Gallery of Ireland, the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Cern research centre – want residency rights guaranteed for EU nationals living in the UK and British nationals living in the EU.
Maintaining that the cultural, scientific and educational worlds are by their nature international and mobile, they call for ease of movement across borders and, if necessary, for “cultural and educational permits” that would enable academics, curators, artists and musicians to continue to move easily between the UK and other EU countries.
They want to see UK institutions and individuals benefiting as now from educational programmes such as Erasmus+, and they call for the UK government to carry on contributing to their funding.
“We envisage a European open zone for intellectual and creative endeavour. Students, artists, academics, scientists, teachers, researchers and young people travel, operate, collaborate and innovate easily across borders, supported through funding and resources, opportunities and international exchanges. Society as a whole prospers across Europe as a direct result of this growth in talent, expertise and shared values. Young citizens are empowered, skilled and become capable leaders of our shared future,” it says.
They see young people as key to the Brexit negotiations. “We call on UK and other European leaders to give serious consideration to empowering and engaging young people as effective agents of positive change. If Europe is to prosper, young people must play a meaningful part in shaping what will be their futures. We therefore urge EU and UK leaders to proactively engage youth in Brexit policymaking.”
The communique says it can demonstrate a widespread consensus that cooperation and innovation must be prioritised during negotiations. Enhanced collaboration in cultural, scientific and educational endeavour would enable European economies to remain prosperous in an increasingly competitive world. “EU and UK leaders should take note of such a clear and strong consensus across Europe, which is rarely seen in the context of Brexit,” it says. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/jul/15/pink-floyd-the-wall-film-review-1982 | Music | 2016-07-15T04:30:31.000Z | Derek Malcolm | Pink Floyd's The Wall film review – archive, 15 July 1982 | No American director would or could have made Pink Floyd The Wall (Empire, AA). It is simply not the sort of project the Spielbergs, Scorseses and Coppolas would interest themselves in. Which is a very good reason why people like Alan Parker should exist, even if his collaborators on this extraordinary film, Roger Waters of Pink Floyd and Gerald Scarfe, the artist, found his conception of it different to their own. At least something exists on celluloid, and millions who bought the album will see it.
The tensions between Parker, Waters and Scarfe have been well advertised, mostly by Parker. But he obviously doesn’t think they have resulted in a botch-up, and nor do I. I found the album inflated, uneven but still quite something and that’s exactly what the film is. Except that, as a piece of pure cinematic technique, it is touched with an originality of expression and a thunderous conviction that lifts it a little beyond what is was as simply as aural tour de force. Perhaps tension is sometimes a good thing to have around.
A poster of the film. Photograph: Alamy
There is, of course, a reason why few Americans would touch it. There are virtually no words, there is no conventional narrative and the whole thing exists as a series of images, linked to a theme of manic breakdown. A rock star sits mute, except for the occasional scream, in his hotel suite somewhere in Los Angeles. The television is permanently on, and his eyes watch it almost sightlessly. He remembers his father, killed at Anzio, his suffocating mother, his childhood sweetheart whom he married and who then fell for someone else.
Finally broken by the melange of memories, and by a lifestyle that has successfully erected an impenetrable wall between him and any kind of tangible reality, he imagines himself a rock ’n roll Great Dictator, strutting in front of a ghoulish skinhead audience. A kind of affirmative ending suggests that perhaps he will break down the wall and start to live again.
A fire scene from the film. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo
All this is not actually desperately original. Pink (Bob Geldof, impersonating Waters himself, who was writing from hard experience) is so familiar a figure from rock’s drugged and drooling past that the moment when he flings the telly set through the window only gives one a sharp sense of deja vu. But if Parker’s masterstrokes sometimes alienate rather than proving very much about alienation, his smaller visions, amply detailed by the camera, seem remarkably real. And the concert that is really the film’s finale, the natural summation of Pink’s neurosis, is as powerfully filmed as anything in Tommy, the other British success in this area.
Above all, Parker’s visual synthesis with the music, much aided by Scarfe’s rip-roaring visions of doom and destruction which turn light into darkness at the flick of a pen rather than a switch, is almost perfect. He has got rhythm all right, and if you want to know how to cut a film to it, watch this one. It is a very carefully constructed shambles, as it was intended to be – a chaotic pointer to chaotic times, hyped up beyond the point of no return, so that you finally accept almost every enormity as possible.
Bob Geldof as “Pink” Pinkerton. Photograph: Alamy/MGM/Entertainment Pictures
The brilliance, however, is never quite enough, and only in sections of the film is the depth of focus as impressive as the width. But since that’s precisely what one feels about Pink Floyd, one can hardly blame the film-maker for that. His achievement is considerable; 95 minutes is not playing safe. Parker has risked practically everything, and should be rewarded with a palpable hit.
Read on for other reviews, including Eastwood’s latest and ET: Extra Terrestrial | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/gnm-press-office/2022/feb/21/the-guardian-wins-george-polk-award-for-pegasus-project-investigation | GNM press office | 2022-02-21T15:20:24.000Z | GNM press office | The Guardian joint winner of George Polk Award for Pegasus Project | The Pegasus Project, a special investigation by the Guardian, Washington Post, and the Forbidden Stories Network of media partners, has won a prestigious George Polk Award in Journalism in the Technology Reporting category.
Established in 1949 by Long Island University (LIU), the George Polk Awards commemorate CBS correspondent George Polk who was murdered in 1948 while covering the Greek civil war. The annual awards focus on investigative and enterprising reporting that gains attention and achieves results, honouring special achievement in journalism.
The Pegasus Project, a collaborative investigation into NSO Group which sells hacking spyware to governments, was an unprecedented leak that revealed how the spyware technology had been used by repressive governments to commit widespread human rights abuses.
Katharine Viner, editor-in-chief, Guardian News & Media says:
“This award is a huge honour for the Guardian and our reporting partners who helped bring this powerful, global investigation to millions of readers around the world.
Rigorous investigative reporting is the lifeblood of the Guardian and the Pegasus project was one of the biggest and boldest investigations in our history, resulting in major impact around the world. In an age when public interest journalism faces more threats than ever, this is a timely reminder of the power of investigative reporting and the importance of independent, quality journalism.”
Paul Lewis, head of investigations, Guardian News & Media says:
“The Pegasus Project revealed widespread abuse of a powerful surveillance tool – and showed what can be achieved with collaborative investigative reporting. Thanks to Long Island University and the George Polk Awards for this accolade, and recognition of this vital journalistic effort that held both people and power to account.”
This is the third time that the Guardian has won a George Polk Award. The Guardian also won in 2014 for investigative stories on NSA surveillance based on top-secret documents disclosed by former intelligence analyst Edward Snowden, and in 1960 for a foreign correspondent dispatch. In 2019, Guardian and Observer reporter Carole Cadwalladr was also named as part of the New York Times’s Polk award for her reporting on the Cambridge Analytica Files.
The award win follows the publication of the Guardian’s latest investigation, Suisse secrets, a global journalistic collaboration into a leak of data from the Swiss bank, Credit Suisse.
Notes to editors
About Guardian News & Media
Guardian News & Media (GNM) publishes theguardian.com, one of the world’s leading English-language news websites. Traffic from outside of the UK now represents around two-thirds of the Guardian’s total digital audience. In the UK, GNM publishes the Guardian newspaper six days a week, first published in 1821, and the world’s oldest Sunday newspaper, The Observer. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/aug/27/until-the-end-of-the-world-review-wim-wenders | Film | 2015-08-27T16:36:33.000Z | Jordan Hoffman | Until the End of the World review – visionary techno-futurist nightmare | The end of the world won’t come from a nuclear blast, but from an abundance of selfies. That’s part of the message gleaned from Wim Wenders’s Until the End of the World, the 1991 film that is only now getting a US theatrical release for its full, almost-five-hour version. Back when smartphones, GPS devices and open European borders were considered sci-fi, the two-and-a-half-hour version of this futurist’s detective story was impressive. But this movie has always had its eye on the future’s potential.
The multinational co-production was enormous in its scope, especially considering the director’s roots as an arthouse film-maker. Budgeted at more than $20m (£13m) and shot all over the world, it was conceived as the “ultimate road picture”. It was a logical progression for the travel-obsessed director of Alice in the Cities, Kings of the Road and Paris, Texas; a planet-wide victory lap for the German auteur after Wings of Desire, his masterpiece set in a divided Berlin. Until the End of the World takes place in late 1999, with most of the globe in a panic about an out-of-control nuclear satellite. But our protagonist Claire (Solveig Dommartin, who co-authored the story with Wenders; the film was later scripted by Peter Carey) is unfazed. We meet her at a decadent Venetian party that is raging into morning, Talking Heads videos swirl on large Nam June Paik-style televisions as women adjust their Jean Paul Gaultier-like gowns. While driving home to Paris – where her nice-guy boyfriend, Gene (Sam Neill), struggles to write a novel – she crashes into two bank robbers. She ends up agreeing to smuggle money for them, but meets Trevor McPhee (William Hurt), an American straight out of a film noir who is being followed by an Australian in a similar trench-coat get up.
The first half of the film is, essentially, Claire hunting Trevor down – from Paris to Berlin to Lisbon to Moscow to Beijing to Tokyo to San Francisco, with other stops along the way. The film has an eye on then-futuristic technology, most of which has come to fruition. Wireless devices, easily searchable electronic footprints, voice-activated word processing, video faxes and computerised maps are ubiquitous in the film, even if they don’t look quite like they do now. (Lots of data on thin plastic cards; Bluetooth and Dropbox are less cinematic.)
Joining Claire is Gene and Rüdiger Volger’s Phillip Winter, a crappy private investigator seen in some of Wenders’s earlier films, and goofy bank robber Chico (Chick Ortega). The whole gang ends up in the Australian outback just in time for an atomic explosion – and for the movie to take a wild detour. Trevor (whose real name is Sam) was on the road collecting images with a strange device his mad scientist father (Max von Sydow) had created for his blind wife (Jeanne Moreau). The camera records images while plugged into a wearer’s brain. When that person rewatches the tape, a processor compares the two brainwaves and spits out some sort of cognition, which can then be plugged into another person’s head. He has invented a way for the blind to see.
With satellite and radio transmissions down, the assembled westerners and tight-knit Indigenous Australian tribe bunker down for months, playing music, doing science experiments, creating a community that is inclusive of all customs. Things get weird, though, when it is discovered that the technology can be used to record a person’s dreams. Scrutiny of these images becomes psychologically addictive, and eventually physically destructive, to the dreamer.
The second half of Until the End of the World always felt a little lopsided to me. Now, in this full version, it’s the first half that’s less interesting. The lengthy sequences of pixellated , almost inscrutable images that project ecstatic glee and existential frustration on to the characters are breathtaking. What begins as a natural desire to understand one’s own past becomes an addiction to nostalgia. In 2015, their zombie-like wanderings, as they clutch handheld screens, take on new meaning. Of all the predictions Wenders made, this is by far the most striking.
Wim Wenders: Places, Strange And Quiet – in pictures
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I was lucky to be at the perfect age when the shorter – and still remarkable – version came out in 1992. As a budding cinephile in New Jersey, I rejected the mainstream and embraced anything “alternative”. Laugh now, but at the time the soundtrack album, with artists including REM, U2 and kd lang, still fit that bill. I was idealistic and about to leave home for college. It was a wonderful moment to be into the arts: Nirvana were vanguards at destroying popular rock music; the first Sundance graduates were revolutionising independent American film; the fall of the Berlin Wall erased the nuclear panic of childhood. “World music” – best represented by folks such as Sting and Peter Gabriel, who were then considered cutting edge – was going to lead us to a borderless, global utopia.
Rewatching the film’s third act, light on narrative as our characters tussle with the heartbreak of their lost youth, brought all these memories back. The scenes of artistic, scientific and communal triumph were significant. The isolated, solipsistic anger of each character, lost in their own identity loop, seemed like a perfect analogy for the conflicts in eastern Europe in the mid-1990s.
Of course, Wenders could not have known about any of that when he made this film, which was a financial flop on its initial release. (The soundtrack album did much better.) But watching it now, even with its dull patches, it seems like a miracle. Today, a director of evocative arthouse cinema would never be given such a wide canvas to make such a sprawling and undefinable film. But 1991, as this portrait of 1999 shows us, was a different time.
The director’s cut of Until the End of the World is part of a Wim Wenders retrospective at New York’s IFC Center, 28 August-24 September, then touring 15 cities in North America. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/jan/17/the-revenant-review-leonardo-dicaprio-alejandro-gonzalez-inarritu-tom-hardy-domhnall-gleeson | Film | 2016-01-17T08:00:04.000Z | Mark Kermode | The Revenant review – a walk on the wild side | The legend of American frontiersman and fur trapper Hugh Glass, who was left for dead after being mauled by a bear in the early 1820s, inspired Richard C Sarafian’s 1971 film Man in the Wilderness, in which Richard Harris starred as “Zachary Bass”. Now it returns to the screen in a film based in part on Michael Punke’s 2002 book The Revenant: A Novel of Revenge.
The Revenant is meaningless pain porn
Carole Cadwalladr
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Leonardo DiCaprio delivers a barnstorming performance as the embattled Glass, whose quest for survival takes him on a Herzogian odyssey to the very borders of life and death. Having previously been Oscar-nominated for What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, The Aviator, Blood Diamond and most recently The Wolf of Wall Street, it’s clearly DiCaprio’s turn to triumph with a performance which relies more upon physicality than the spoken word. Academy voters like to see their actors suffer, and there’s a tangible mondo tinge to scenes of Leo plunging into icy waters, being buried alive, chomping down on raw bison liver, and crawling into a still-warm animal carcass to sleep. Meanwhile, the freezing temperatures of the breathtaking environment (all filmed in natural light) seem to seep into his very bones; by comparison The Hateful Eight looks like a summer holiday.
Having swept to Oscar victory with the faux one-shot gimmickry of Birdman, director Alejandro González Iñárritu once again hitches his wagon to the technical brilliance of cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, working wonders with his digital Arri Alexa cameras. Via Lubezki’s sweeping widescreen lenses we find ourselves viscerally dragged through the wilderness, violent ambushes and life-threatening confrontations caught in superbly orchestrated lengthy takes, the camera following on foot, on horseback, through woods and plains, air and water, often without apparent edits. This is muscular film-making, and much has been made of the punishing physicality of the “living hell” shoot in Canada and Argentina, with a digital grizzly bear one of the few obvious concessions to artificiality.
The Revenant director Alejandro González Iñárritu: ‘So much pain was implanted in that time’ – video interview Guardian
There is hokey spirituality too, as Glass’s traumatised mind drifts back to the Native American mother of his Pawnee-speaking son, Hawk (Forrest Goodluck), offering life lessons from beyond the grave. The stalwart supporting cast is headed up by a partially scalped Tom Hardy who chews the rugged scenery with spittle-flecked gusto as the wretched John Fitzgerald, while Domhnall Gleeson is spot on as the strait-laced Captain Andrew Henry. Hats off, however, to Will Poulter who all but steals the show from his more heavyweight co-stars as the naive and increasingly embattled Jim Bridger. A chameleonic presence, Poulter is shaping up as one of the UK’s most versatile screen actors, a man for all seasons whose achievements deserve to be trumpeted a little louder. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2018/aug/24/tessa-coates-funniest-things | Stage | 2018-08-24T13:00:15.000Z | Harriet Gibsone | Tessa Coates: ‘The funniest TV show? The Royle Family’ | The funniest standup I’ve ever seen …
Eddie Izzard. He’s wonderful now, but the really early stuff is something else: babies on spikes, le singe est dans l’arbre, cake or death, Agatha, Bagatha and Tabitha. Oh, he’s the best.
The funniest sketch I’ve ever seen …
There was this Smack the Pony sketch in a clothes store where someone has accidentally put a “skirts” sign on a rail of jumpers. Sarah Alexander just plays it like they’re skirts and keeps trying them on.
The funniest TV show I’ve ever seen …
The Royle Family.
The funniest item of clothing I’ve ever owned …
I went to the costume sale after the London 2012 Olympics and bought some insane items, including a one-piece Lycra catsuit that’s supposed to look like a flame. I’m sure in the stadium with hundreds of other flames it looked amazing. On its own, in the kitchen, the effect is not quite the same.
The funniest hairstyle I’ve ever had …
I once tried to get a fringe but I chickened out at the last minute and instead bought one on eBay for 99p. It made me look like a 17th-century monk.
The funniest word …
Flan.
The funniest joke I’ve ever heard …
Q: What did Pablo Escobar say when he was arrested?
A: I would have got away with it if it weren’t for those Medellín kids.
Tessa Coates: Witch Hunt is at Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, to Sunday 26 August | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2020/jun/07/comedy-at-the-covid-arms-review | Stage | 2020-06-07T11:51:05.000Z | Brian Logan | Comedy at the Covid Arms review – the perfect formula for lockdown standup | The Covid Arms started life as an online “pub” where a group of friends met during lockdown. Then comedian Kiri Pritchard-McLean was invited to perform there, and it became one of the success stories of pandemic-era comedy. Eleven shows later, it has featured several stellar acts and raised £86,000 for struggling comedians and The Trussell Trust, a food bank charity.
You can see why the format took off. It’s the quality of the comics – on Saturday we got Dane Baptiste, Dan Nightingale and Frankie Boyle alongside musician Fran Lobo – and it’s that “front-row” ticket holders (who pay more) get to chat with MC Pritchard-McLean between sets, evoking the club-night vibe. It’s also down to Pritchard-McLean’s compering. She doesn’t just do the links – she stays on screen during the other acts’ sets, giving them someone to play off and cackling at their jokes.
Jen Brister: Meaningless review – a furiously funny blast of rage
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It’s an odd role: the visible avatar for a silent, unseen audience. But she plays it without self-consciousness, and it gives the show lift-off. (At other online gigs, the audience silence can be deafening.) Lancashire-born comic Nightingale bounces his whole set off her, and you can’t see the joins between his material – about new fatherhood, lockdown drinking and Mancunians – and the pair’s sparring.
Beyond compere … Kiri Pritchard McLean. Photograph: Murdo Macleod/The Guardian
Did I see her expression curdle at Baptiste’s questionable gags about “pussy-grabbing”? If so, only a little. Elsewhere, one “crowd-work” section found her negotiating the cancellation of her student loan with a staffer from alma mater Salford Uni.
Cut to Glasgow, and a rare flash of the real “francis boyle” (his Zoom handle) behind the scorched-earth cynic. The format finds Boyle in an unfamiliar state, halfway between a public performance and a catch-up with a friend. He reads us the first chapter of a novel he’s writing. It’s more literary than his standup, of course. But as its deadbeat hero is grilled by police about a mysterious death, sparks of unmistakable Boyle-ese (one cop shouts “at the volume of a pensioner’s telly”) fly off the text. It ends in Glasgow noir, then – but these Covid Arms gigs look like a real bright spot in lockdown-era comedy.
The next Comedy at the Covid Arms event is on 13 June. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/apr/18/senior-police-officer-sacked-over-secret-files-stolen-for-car | UK news | 2018-04-18T15:21:59.000Z | Frances Perraudin | Senior police officer sacked over secret files stolen from car | A senior counter-terrorism police officer who had top-secret documents stolen from his car has been dismissed without notice for gross misconduct.
After a special case hearing on Wednesday, the chief constable of West Midlands police, Dave Thompson, ordered that Asst Ch Con Marcus Beale be dismissed after a briefcase of papers disappeared from the boot of his vehicle.
“The conduct in this case is a serious criminal conviction for improperly caring for documents,” Thompson said. “I agree (with a previous disciplinary panel decision) that the misconduct in this case is serious and is very likely to undermine public confidence in policing.”
Beale, 54, who was due to retire next week, pleaded guilty last year to an offence under the Official Secrets Act and was fined £3,500. He argued that he should not be dismissed and should only receive a final written warning.
Addressing the hearing at the West Midlands police headquarters in Birmingham, Beale’s counsel, John Beggs QC, said a dismissal would be “merely symbolic” in light of the officer’s imminent retirement. Beale will retain a £215,000 tax-free pension lump sum.
Beggs argued that Beale had reported the documents as missing immediately and his failing had been unintentional with no malice or premeditation.
“Mr Beale’s response to this ghastly realisation (that documents had been stolen) was swift, professional, selfless, and imbued with the characteristic that runs through him like Brighton rock – honesty and integrity,” he said.
In February, a disciplinary panel recommended that Beale be dismissed by the force, but the final decision was left to the West Midlands police chief constable.
The disciplinary panel heard how Beale left the documents in the car boot for five days, during which he went to the pub, spent a weekend away in London with his wife, and went supermarket shopping. The documents were never supposed to leave police premises.
The case contained four documents, which included minutes from a high-level counter-terrorism meeting, counter-terrorism local profiles, details of regular organised crime and sensitive information about a high-profile investigation. Beale only discovered that the briefcase was missing when he stopped at Warwick services on 15 May 2017 while on the way to Oxford.
During the previous hearing, Fiona Barton QC, representing the force, said there was no sign of a forced entry to the car and that it was “an extraordinary mystery” how the documents had been stolen.
She said the impact of the incident could have been catastrophic and it was “a matter of luck the documents do not appear to have seen the light of day”.
This article was amended on 19 April 2018. An earlier version incorrectly said that Beale would lose a £215,000 tax-free pension lump sum when in fact he will retain it. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2000/apr/11/londonmayor.uk | Politics | 2000-04-11T01:34:05.000Z | Lucy Ward | Livingstone attacks 'killer' capitalism | Ken Livingstone's attempts to win credibility with the City of London for his mayoral campaign appeared to backfire last night when he claimed that global capitalism killed more people annually than Hitler.
The former GLC leader, standing as an independent candidate and by far the front-runner in the capital's mayoral contest, made the claim in the New Musical Express, published today.
Answering a series of readers' questions, he said: "Every year the international financial system kills more people than world war two. But at least Hitler was mad."
In a further comment seized on by the Tories last night as evidence that Mr Livingstone is unfit to run London, the Brent East MP suggested decriminalising ecstasy and cannabis to curb the international drugs trade. He argued that "ecstasy is clearly not addictive, cannabis is clearly less damaging than booze".
Mr Livingstone's confirmation that he stands by past comments that the leaders of the International Monetary Fund should "die painfully in their beds" came amid attempts to restore his reputation with the capital's financial sector after he expressed common cause with rioters in the City of London.
In an interview in the style magazine The Face in January, not long after police-protester battles at the World Trade Organisation conference in Seattle, the Brent East MP said he had "always been in favour of direct action", adding that he would not invite the WTO to London "unless we can get vast stocks in so we can throw stuff at them in an organised way".
He later laughed off the remarks as media misrepresentation, but campaigners for Labour's official candidate Frank Dobson sought to capitalise on the gaffe, claiming business and city organisations had been "very angry".
Mr Livingstone says in today's NME: "The IMF and the World Bank are still appalling, and now the World Trade Organisation too. All over the world people die unnecessarily because of the international financial system." The economist Susan George has estimated that in any year since 1981 between 15-20m people have died as a result of the debt burden on developing countries.
Asked by another questioner whether cannabis should be legalised "sooner rather than later", Mr Livingstone predicted the drug will be de criminalised, arguing that the war against drug barons had been lost and that young people recognised that, contrary to the view of the government drugs tsar, Keith Hellawell, drugs are "not all the same".
He added: "I do think we could consider decriminalising things like ecstasy and cannabis, but I would never do anything to encourage people to take drugs any more than I would encourage people to drink".
A spokesman for the Conservative mayoral candidate, Steven Norris, said last night: "These comments prove that Livingstone is a hardline leftwing extremist who cannot hide his own agenda from sensible Londoners or from business. The mask always slips at the most important moment. London can ill afford the kind of danger to which Ken Livingstone is quite prepared to subject it. Londoners want safe streets and a safe transport system and not anarchy in the UK."
Meanwhile police officers heckled Frank Dobson yesterday as he outlined his vision for policing in the capital.
Mr Dobson, speaking at a specially-convened meeting into the issue of police pay, was forced to halt his speech, despite backing calls for improved pay for Metropolitan officers.
The response for Mr Dobson was in contrast to Mr Livingstone, who received a warm ovation from the audience of rank-and-file officers. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/jun/02/prince-died-opioid-overdose-tests | Music | 2016-06-03T06:04:27.000Z | Ryan Felton | Tests confirm Prince died of opioid overdose, says medical examiner | Tests have shown that Prince died of an opioid overdose, the Midwest medical examiner’s office confirmed on Thursday.
Prince's final days: few clues pointed to secret behind star's untimely death
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In the weeks since the 57-year-old singer was found dead at his suburban Minneapolis compound, on 21 April, investigators have been looking into whether he had a prescription drug problem.
This surprised friends and family members, who said Prince avoided alcohol and drugs and maintained a healthy lifestyle.
On Thursday, however, medical examiner A Quinn Strobl released the office’s assessment of Prince’s cause of death: “self-administered fentanyl”, a powerful opioid. The office said it could not offer further comment.
In a press release, the Carver County sheriff’s office said it “continues its investigation”.
Earlier on Thursday Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that Prince died of a painkiller overdose.
The official autopsy and toxicology reports have yet to be released.
Prince was last seen alive around 8pm on 20 April, when he was dropped off by an acquaintance at Paisley Park, his sprawling compound in Chanhassen, Minnesota, his longtime hometown. Two staff members appeared at the residence early on the following day, and discovered his body in an elevator on the first floor.
Prince: a look back at his extraordinary career Guardian
Law enforcement officials have said there were no “obvious signs” of trauma on Prince’s body, and there were no indications of foul play or suicide.
A deadly crisis: mapping the spread of America's drug overdose epidemic
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Prince’s team was organizing treatment with a California addiction doctor to help him kick an addiction to painkillers. According to a search warrant obtained by news agencies, the day before Prince’s death a local doctor treated him for fatigue and anemia, stemming from apparent opioid withdrawal.
The doctor, Michael Todd Schulenberg, treated Prince twice in April and prescribed him medication. The warrant did not specify the type of medication.
An attorney, William Mauzy, later told reporters Prince’s representatives contacted the California addiction doctor, Howard Kornfield, on 20 April. Kornfield, who could not immediately fly to Minnesota, sent his son, Andrew, to meet Prince the day the singer’s body was found.
According to a transcript of the 911 call, a caller stated he did not know the address of Paisley Park and, at first, mistakenly said it was located in Minneapolis. Mauzy confirmed that Andrew Kornfield made the 911 call.
The younger Kornfeld, who is not a doctor, was carrying buprenorphine, a medication that can be used to treat opioid addiction by easing cravings and withdrawal symptoms, Mauzy said, explaining that he intended to give the medication to a Minnesota doctor who had cleared his schedule to see Prince on 21 April.
Mauzy has refused to identify that doctor. Schulenberg is not authorized to prescribe buprenorphine.
Prince’s death followed a chaotic scene after his last shows, on 14 April in Atlanta. Following the shows, Prince boarded a private jet to return home. Just over an hour into the flight, the plane was abruptly diverted, descending 45,000ft in 17 minutes for an emergency landing.
A bodyguard carried an unconscious Prince from the plane, records show, and the singer was sent to a local hospital to be treated for a suspected overdose of painkillers.
The Associated Press contributed to this report | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/apr/22/elon-musk-hits-back-at-australian-court-order-against-x-images-of-stabbing | Technology | 2024-04-22T17:58:52.000Z | Martin Farrer | Elon Musk hits back at Australian court order against X images of stabbing | Elon Musk has hit back at the Australian internet watchdog’s attempts to force his social media platform X into blocking users from seeing violent footage relating to the Sydney church stabbing.
On Monday evening the Australian federal court ordered Elon Musk’s X to hide posts containing videos of a stabbing at a Sydney church last week from users globally, after the eSafety commissioner launched an urgent court case seeking an injunction.
Some hours later the American billionaire posted on his personal X account a cartoon showing the platform as a Wizard of Oz-style path to “freedom” and “truth” with a darker, alternative path to “censorship” and “propaganda”.
Above the cartoon Musk has written the message: “Don’t take my word for it, just ask the Australian PM!”
Don’t take my word for it, just ask the Australian PM! pic.twitter.com/ZJBKrstStQ
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 22, 2024
He also reposted a post on X highlighting a quote by Anthony Albanese on Monday in which the prime minister talked about the fact that “by and large” most social media sites had responded positively to the Australian attempts to block the footage.
However, the post added the words “for censorship” to the prime minister’s quote and claimed Albanese had taken time to “advertise for Elon”.
Above the post, Musk added the comment: “I’d like to take a moment to thank the PM for informing the public that this platform is the only truthful one.”
I’d like to take a moment to thank the PM for informing the public that this platform is the only truthful one https://t.co/EM0lF6n7SC
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 22, 2024
On Tuesday, Albanese said the government would “do what’s necessary to take on this arrogant billionaire who thinks he’s above the law, but also above common decency”.
He said the eSafety Commissioner was doing her job to protect the interests of Australians.
“The idea that someone would go to court for the right to put up violent content on a platform shows how out-of-touch Mr Musk is,” Albanese said. “Social media needs to have social responsibility with it. Mr Musk is not showing any.”
It followed a successful court bid on late on Monday by the eSafety commissioner to secure the order against X.
X, along with Meta, were ordered by the eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, on Tuesday last week to remove material deemed to depict “gratuitous or offensive violence with a high degree of impact or detail” within 24 hours or potentially face fines.
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The material was footage of the alleged stabbing of bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel last Monday evening while he was giving a livestreamed service at the Assyrian Christ the Good Shepherd church in Wakeley.
In a hearing late on Monday afternoon, barrister for eSafety Christopher Tran told Justice Geoffrey Kennett that X had geo-blocked the posts containing the video, meaning Australians could not access them. However, the posts were still accessible globally, and to Australians who used a virtual private network (VPN) connection that made their IP address appear outside Australia.
During a hastily arranged hearing, Tran said the “graphic and violent” video remained online on X, formerly known as Twitter.
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It would cause “irreparable harm” if it continued to circulate, Tran said. “That was a choice, they could have done more.”
At the least, X should shield the footage from all users, not just Australians, he submitted.
Anticipating an argument about the United States’ right to free speech, Tran said it appeared that right did not extend to depictions of violence.
Musk had earlier branded the eSafety commissioner the “Australian censorship commissar” while his company raised free speech and jurisdictional concerns over the takedown order.
X also branded the internet cop’s move an “unlawful and dangerous approach”.
Australian court orders Elon Musk’s X to hide Sydney church stabbing posts from users globally
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Marcus Hoyne, appearing for X Corp, urged the court to postpone the matter until he could seek “sensible and proper instructions” from his San Francisco-based client.
The eSafety commissioner’s court application was served at the last possible moment, he said.
Granting the order would affect international users “in circumstances where it has no impact on Australia,” he said.
His appeal failed, however. The judge granted the interim order sought, suppressing the footage to all users on X until at least Wednesday afternoon.
The case will return to court on Wednesday for an argument about a permanent suppression. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/22/progressive-politics-capitalism-unions-healthcare-education | Opinion | 2019-11-22T10:46:00.000Z | Jason Hickel | It’s not thanks to capitalism that we’re living longer, but progressive politics | Jason Hickel | In recent years prominent pundits including Steven Pinker, Jordan Peterson and Bill Gates have invoked the progress in global life expectancies to defend capitalism against a growing tide of critics.
Certainly there’s a lot to celebrate on this front. After all, average human life expectancy has improved a great deal. “Intellectuals are apt to do a spit take when they read a defense of capitalism,” Pinker writes in his recent book, Enlightenment Now. But it’s “obvious,” he claims, that “GDP per capita correlates with longevity, health, and nutrition.”
It’s a familiar story. The prevailing narrative is that capitalism was a progressive force that put an end to serfdom and set off a dramatic rise in living standards. But this fairytale doesn’t hold up against the evidence.
Progressive political movements have harnessed economic resources to deliver robust public goods
Serfdom was a brutal system that generated extraordinary human misery, yes. But it wasn’t capitalism that put an end to it. As the historian Silvia Federici demonstrates, a series of successful peasant rebellions across Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries overthrew feudal lords and gave peasants more control over their own land and resources. The fruits of this revolution were astonishing in terms of wellbeing. Wages doubled and nutrition improved. It was a period of dramatic social progress by the standards of the time.
Then the backlash happened. Upset at the growing power of peasants and workers, and angry about rising wages, a nascent capitalist class organised a counter-revolution. They began enclosing the commons and forcing peasants off the land, with the explicit intention of driving down the cost of wages. With subsistence economies destroyed, people had no choice but to work for pennies simply in order to survive. According to the Oxford economists Henry Phelps Brown and Sheila Hopkins, real wages declined by up to 70% from the end of the 15th century all the way through the 17th century. Famines became commonplace and nutrition deteriorated. In England, average life expectancy fell from 43 years in the 1500s to the low 30s in the 1700s.
In short, the rise of capitalism generated a prolonged period of immiseration. It was among the bloodiest, most tumultuous times in world history. Yet Pinker behaves as if none of this happened. Instead he jumps straight to the modern industrial period. It was industrial capitalism, he says, that really delivered progress in life expectancy.
But here too historians have a more complex story to tell. Simon Szreter, one of the world’s leading experts on historical public health data, shows that industrial growth through the 19th century triggered not an improvement in life expectancy but rather a striking deterioration. “In almost every historical case,” Szreter writes, “the first and most direct effect of rapid economic growth has been a negative impact on population health.”
‘Costa Rica and Cuba beat the US on life expectancy with only a fraction of the income. How?’ Nicolás Estévanez Murphy school, Havana. Photograph: Enrique de la Osa/Reuters
“The evidence of this trauma,” he continues, “remains clearly visible in the form of a generation-long, negative discontinuity in the historical trends of life expectancy, infant mortality, or height attainments.” Drawing on a wide range of studies, Szreter shows that populations directly affected by industrial growth in Britain experienced a steady decline in life expectancy, from the 1780s through the 1870s, down to levels not seen since the Black Death in the 14th century.
In fact, it was precisely where capitalism was most developed that this disaster was most pronounced. In Manchester and Liverpool, the two giants of industrialisation, life expectancy collapsed compared with in non-industrialised parts of the country. In Manchester it fell to a mere 25.3 years. In rural Surrey, meanwhile, people could expect to live a full 20 years longer.
And it’s not only in Britain that we see this pattern playing out. According to Szreter, the same thing happened in “every one of the countries where it has been researched”, including Germany, Australia and Japan. Similar catastrophes occurred during this same period in colonies such as Ireland, India and the Congo, as they were forcibly roped into the European industrial system.
It would be difficult to overstate the suffering that these figures represent. They tell the story of whole populations that were dispossessed by the capitalist class and reduced to servitude in the sweatshops and plantations of the industrial revolution. And yet none of this appears in Pinker’s rosy narrative.
It wasn’t until the 1880s that urban life expectancies finally began to rise – at least in Europe. But what drove these sudden gains? Szreter finds it was down to a simple intervention: sanitation.
Public health activists had discovered that health outcomes could be improved by separating sewage from drinking water. And yet progress toward this goal was opposed, not enabled, by the capitalist class – libertarian landlords and factory owners refused to allow officials to build sanitation systems on their properties, and refused to pay the taxes required to get the work done.
Their resistance was broken only once commoners won the right to vote and workers organised into unions. Over the following decades these movements leveraged the state to intervene against landlords and factory owners, delivering not only sanitation systems but also universal healthcare, education and public housing. According to Szreter, access to these public goods spurred soaring life expectancy throughout the 20th century.
Pinker makes no mention of this movement. His argument relies instead on a scatter plot known as the Preston curve, which shows that countries with higher GDP per capita tend to have higher life expectancies. But he asserts causation where there’s no evidence for it. In fact, new research finds that the causal factor behind the Preston curve isn’t GDP at all, but education.
Why is life expectancy faltering?
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Of course, social services require resources. And it’s important to recognise that growth can help toward that end. But the interventions that matter when it comes to life expectancy do not require high levels of GDP per capita. The European Union has a higher life expectancy than the United States, with 40% less income. Costa Rica and Cuba beat the US with only a fraction of the income, and both achieved their greatest gains in life expectancy during periods when GDP wasn’t growing at all. How? By rolling out universal healthcare and education.
“The historical record is clear that economic growth itself has no direct, necessary positive implications for population health,” Szreter writes. “The most that can be said is that it creates the longer-term potential for population health improvements.”
Whether or not that potential is realised depends on the political forces that determine how income is distributed. So let’s give credit where credit is due: progress in life expectancy has been driven by progressive political movements that have harnessed economic resources to deliver robust public goods. History shows that in the absence of these progressive forces, growth has quite often worked against social progress, not for it.
Jason Hickel is an economic anthropologist and author of The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/aug/07/a-level-result-predictions-to-be-downgraded-england | Education | 2020-08-07T15:30:43.000Z | Richard Adams | Nearly 40% of A-level result predictions to be downgraded in England | Nearly 40% of A-level grades submitted by teachers are set to be downgraded when exam results in England are published next week, the Guardian has learned, as criticism intensifies of this year’s makeshift results.
Analysis of the algorithm and data used by the exam regulator Ofqual to distribute grades after the cancellation of exams amid the coronavirus pandemic found that a net 39% of assessments of A-level grades by teachers are likely to be adjusted down before students receive their results.
That would mean nearly 300,000 A-levels issued are lower than the teacher assessment of the more than 730,000 A-level entries in England this summer.
How are exam grades being decided in England this year?
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Including GCSEs, which are expected to have a similar downgrade rate, close to a net 2m teacher assessments will be adjusted downwards and in many cases ignored completely.
There was uproar in Scotland this week when the exams authority rejected nearly 124,000 grade recommendations from teachers – a quarter of the total – but unlike in Scotland, English pupils are barred from appealing against their results on academic grounds.
Grades will instead be issued according to Ofqual’s statistical model, relying on a school’s recent exam history and each pupil’s previous exam results, to replace the exams scrapped by the government after schools were closed because of the coronavirus lockdown.
Those most at risk of receiving revised grades appear to be students on the border between B and C grades, and between C and D grades, and pupils at comprehensive schools with wide variations in attainment or patchy outcomes in courses over the three previous years of data that Ofqual is using to cap individual school results.
SQA under fire after downgrading 124,000 predicted exam results
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Teachers will still have a significant influence on how grades are distributed in each school, having compiled the rankings that will determine which pupils receive the final grades allocated by Ofqual for their course.
Headteachers and exam officials in England say they fear a storm of controversy even worse than that which has engulfed Scotland, where a quarter of teacher predictions were adjusted by the Scottish Qualifications Authority.
Experts say that as Ofqual has barred individual pupils from appealing against their grades on academic grounds, families should not waste time complaining but instead contact college or university admissions offices to confirm their places in the event of unexpectedly poor grades.
Tim Oates, group director of research and development at the exam board Cambridge Assessment, said: “Grades have been awarded this year by combining lots of data, including the rank order and the grades submitted by teachers. We have seen from Scotland’s press coverage that it’s all too easy to fixate on the difference between the teacher-assessed grades and the final grades. But it’s a misleading distraction and misinforms the public. The teacher grades were an important part of the process but always only going to be a part.
“On results day, energy should be channelled into how each young person can progress swiftly with what they have been awarded, rather than time lost on agonising over an apparently controversial but fundamentally misleading difference between teacher grades and final grades.”
Statisticians have criticised Ofqual’s algorithm, saying it does not have sufficient data to award grades fairly to most state schools in England, because of wide variations in results within schools and between years.
The Royal Statistical Society has called for an urgent review of the statistical procedures used in England and Scotland, to be carried out by the UK Statistics Authority. “This should consider both the substantive issues of the data used and the adjustment algorithms of the various nations, but also whether greater transparency would have been possible and beneficial,” the society said.
Huy Duong, the parent of an A-level candidate and a former medical statistician, said he has analysed Ofqual’s published data and comments to calculate that 39% of grades between A* and D will be lower than the teacher assessments. Duong’s findings were privately confirmed to the Guardian by exam officials.
'Judged on how we used to be': improving schools cry foul over GCSE and A-level grading
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Duong’s analysis is based on Ofqual’s statement that A-level grades overall will improve by 2% this summer, and that the submitted teacher assessments, known as centre-assessed grades, would have resulted in 12% inflation in higher grades.
“It gives the public the impression that in most cases the grades the student receive would still be the predicted grades. However, closer analysis shows that this is not true,” Duong said.
In response, a spokesperson for Ofqual said: “From the data that we have reviewed we expect the majority of grades students receive will be the same as their centre assessment grades, and almost all grades students receive will be the same as the centre assessment grades or within one grade. The exact proportions vary by subject and we will publish the figures on results day.”
But Duong also found that a comprehensive secondary school can have a huge annual variation in results for individual courses, with the small numbers of entries involved suggesting that Ofqual’s decisions are statistically invalid.
'Against natural justice': father to sue exams regulator over A-level grades system
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For instance at Matthew Arnold school in west Oxford, a comprehensive academy, the proportion of A* grades achieved by pupils in a popular subject such as English literature varied from one in 19 to three in 10, or from 5% to 30%, between 2017 and 2019.
Duong said: “These fluctuations mean that Ofqual’s statistical modelling cannot make sense. The problem is that any statistical model is only as good as the data you feed it, and for a typical comprehensive school, there simply isn’t enough A-level data from 2017 to 2019 for any statistical modelling.”
In response, Ofqual said: “For A-level, three years of historical results inform the standardisation of grades. You can think of this as an averaging across the years of data.”
Uncertainty over the grades being awarded has led universities to say they will relax offers to prospective students and make use of other data.
Admissions officers for Peterhouse College, Cambridge, said during a Q&A on the Student Room website: “We are looking into which schools (from among our offer holders) are most likely to be adversely affected by the system of awarded grades so we are in a better position to make nuanced decisions when we get the results.”
In a significant sign that it recognised the controversy likely to erupt on Thursday when students receive A-level results, Ofqual this week changed its position and said schools would be able to appeal if they expected “a very different pattern of grades to results in previous years”. But Ofqual will not allow individual students to appeal against their grades on academic grounds, as they can in Scotland.
For A-level pupils, teacher assessments will only be used to help set grades on small courses, with five or fewer candidates. On larger courses, teacher assessment will play little or no role, with grades being awarded instead based on a school’s recent exam history and each pupil’s previous exam results.
Schools able to appeal over students' GCSE and A-level results
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The pupils most likely to benefit from teacher assessments will be those taking courses with very small entries of five pupils or less, such as German or music. Those taking popular subjects such as maths or biology, with more than 15 pupils, will be exposed to Ofqual’s algorithm and the teacher assessment will be ignored.
Kate Green, Labour’s shadow education secretary, said: “The government should have ensured that Ofqual had a robust appeals system in place from the beginning, instead of announcing one a matter of days before A-level results. They must do far more to ensure the system is genuinely fair.”
Students unhappy with their results have the option of sitting exams in autumn. But with students entering university or college, few are expected to do so. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/14/super-spreading-long-covid-professor-press-coverage | Opinion | 2021-04-14T09:00:36.000Z | George Monbiot | Apparently just by talking about it, I’m super-spreading long Covid | George Monbiot | Rejoice! A mystery has been solved. We now have an explanation for long Covid, a condition afflicting many thousands of people. A super-spreader has been identified. Important as this finding is, I’m reluctant to call for the vector to be eradicated. Why? Because it’s me.
In a presentation to the reinsurance giant Swiss Re, Michael Sharpe, a professor of psychological medicine at the University of Oxford and founder of a long Covid clinic, proposed that one of the causes of the syndrome was “social factors”. The social factor at the top of his list was an article I wrote for the Guardian, describing the suffering of patients with the condition.
I listed the symptoms of long Covid and compared some of them to myalgic encephalomyelitis or chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), the debilitating condition that afflicts around a quarter of a million people in the UK. Press coverage like this, Sharpe claimed, as well as the work of support groups and sympathetic doctors, could induce people to believe they had the illness, thereby spreading it. Long Covid, he appeared to suggest, is partly a psychological condition, so “the best treatment is psychologically informed rehabilitation”. This, we can only hope, will cure people of the fearful pox of Guardian journalism.
I’ve covered many terrible issues. I might be responsible for more suffering than the cast of Alvin and the Chipmunks
I was bemused by the fact that none of the references he gave at the end of the presentation supported these claims. So I wrote to Sharpe asking for his sources. He told me the evidence consisted of “patient reports”, and that “we are seeing many improve with reassurance about the absence of damage and with supported rehabilitation”. But assertions like this do not meet the standard of scientific evidence. Unfortunately, he told me, “I am unable to engage in further correspondence”.
A scientific assessment of the use of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) – a form of “psychological rehabilitation” that Sharpe has repeatedly championed – suggests that it’s of no use in treating other post-viral syndromes, and is unlikely to “reduce disability or lead to objective improvement in long Covid”.
But what if, despite the lack of evidence, he happens to be right? What if, by discussing the problem, I’ve caused it? As I look back on my work, my heart sinks. I’ve covered many terrible issues, and the more I’ve written about them, the worse they’ve got. I might be responsible for more human suffering than the entire cast of Alvin and the Chipmunks.
Until now, I’d never heard of Michael Sharpe. But as I began to investigate, I stumbled into one of the most astonishing scientific stories I’ve ever encountered. Sharpe was one of the authors of the famous Pace trial, part-funded by the UK’s Department for Work and Pensions, and published, in 2011, in the Lancet. It claimed to show that CBT and graded exercise therapy (GET) were effective treatments for ME/CFC.
Patients questioned this. When they and other researchers began exploring the methods behind the trial, they discovered some remarkable anomalies. According to an article in the Journal of Health Psychology, after the Pace trial began, the investigators altered assessment thresholds at which they claimed patients had improved or recovered. When the original markers were used, the effectiveness of CBT and GET fell from the reported 59% and 61 %, respectively, to just 20% and 21%. Results were also contaminated when investigators promoted their treatments as successful to the people they were studying.
A group of patients launched a five-year campaign to obtain the trial data, which should have been in the public domain from the outset. Their requests were repeatedly refused until a tribunal ordered Queen Mary University of London to release it. In 2016, the patients, with the help of academic researchers, reanalysed the data and found it did not support the conclusions of the Pace trial: there was no statistically significant difference between the outcomes for people who received CBT and GET and those who did not. Their findings were published in two peer-reviewed journals. It was an astounding victory for citizen science. The suppression of the data and subsequent collapse of the study’s claims has been dubbed PaceGate in the scientific press. In November last year, the National Institute for Health And Care Excellence published its analysis of the Pace trial findings and other claims that CBT and GET can treat ME/CFS. It found without exception that the quality of the science was either “low” or “very low”. As a result, it has now changed its draft clinical guidelines, advising doctors not to promote CBT or GET as treatments or cures for ME/CFS.
Will vaccines protect us from 'long-haul Covid'? We need answers
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There seems to be a strong case for the retraction of the Pace trial papers. In 2019, Sharpe did reflect on Pace’s scientific processes, but doubled down on its conclusions. When Carol Monaghan, a Scottish National party MP, questioned Sharpe’s work, he said her behaviour was “unbecoming of an MP”. And when the Journal of Health Psychology sought to engage the trial’s authors in a reanalysis of their findings, its editor reported “a consistent pattern of resistance to the debate”.
In the presentation in which he named me as a cause of long Covid, Sharpe promoted the original Pace trial paper, without explaining that its findings had been undermined. In a paper in 2019, he claimed that chronic fatigue syndrome was an “illness without disease”, prompting other researchers to accuse him of “medical indifference” and of failing to acknowledge that CBT and GET had been rejected as treatments. Now he seems to have transferred his claims about treatments for ME/CFS to long Covid.
It feels to me like the entirely apocryphal story about Bono. This claims that he once announced from the stage: “Every time I clap my hands, a child in Africa dies.” Whereupon someone in the audience shouted, “Well, fucking stop doing it then.”
George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jul/14/itv-closing-in-naming-easyjet-ceo-carolyn-mccall | Business | 2017-07-15T13:55:51.000Z | Mark Sweney | ITV closes in on naming easyJet's Carolyn McCall as CEO | ITV is closing in on naming Carolyn McCall as its new chief executive after it emerged that the man many considered her main rival is out of the race.
McCall, who has been chief executive of easyJet for seven years, is understood to be ITV’s preferred choice to take over from Adam Crozier, who left the company at the end of June.
Two sources believe that McCall has finally accepted the role after weeks of negotiations as it emerged that Paul Geddes, the chief of Direct Line and a Channel 4 board member, who was an early favourite, is out of the process.
It is thought that the three-person shortlist also included Sebastian James, the chief executive of Dixons Carphone.
EasyJet's Carolyn McCall is favourite to take over at ITV
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It is not known if James is still involved in the process but numerous sources believe McCall is poised to be declared the chief of the UK’s biggest free-to-air commercial broadcaster.
However, it is understood that ITV has been locked in tricky negotiations to persuade McCall to take the role, with her remuneration package thought to be a major sticking point.
She has made £30m from easyJet since she joined in July 2010, according to figures for the end of the last financial year. Sources say she has been seeking more than Crozier, who made £27m from his appointment in April 2010 until the end of last year.
McCall has about £5m worth of unvested performance share awards, at easyJet’s current share price, that she would have to give up upon resigning and which will have formed part of her negotiations with ITV.
It appears that a deal is all but done with the successful candidate understood to have held “chemistry meetings” with members of the board beyond those directly involved in the recruitment process.
The ITV chairman, Sir Peter Bazalgette, the former creative chief and chairman of the Big Brother maker Endemol, is understood to be keen to announce the new chief executive before the broadcaster’s interim results on 26 July.
ITV is facing commercial headwinds including tough advertising conditions set to be highlighted when it reports its interim financial results.
If McCall emerges as the new chief executive of ITV, which is 25% bigger than easyJet by market capitalisation at £7bn, she will become Britain’s most powerful female TV executive.
She was previously the chief executive of Guardian Media Group, the owner of the Guardian and Observer newspapers, and comes with a strong background in media sales. She came up through the commercial ranks at the Guardian after joining in 1986.
Bazalgette, who took over last year from Archie Norman, who is to start as Marks & Spencer’s new chairman in September, has been keen to appoint a heavyweight executive with strong experience at a listed company. Bazalgette had no experience chairing, or running, a public company. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2013/aug/02/summer-voyages-coastin-jonathan-raban | Books | 2013-08-02T14:31:12.000Z | Andrew Dickson | Summer voyages: Coasting by Jonathan Raban | Early in Jonathan Raban's Coasting, the author attempts a thumbnail sketch, or perhaps a small-scale nautical chart, of the voyage so far:
I got drunk in Torquay, had a fit of memoirs in Portsmouth, turned lyrical in Brighton and philosophical off Beachy Head, was affronted in Dover, ill in Harwich, happy in Grimsby, maudlin in Bridlington, was pleased with myself on Holy Island, got drunk again in Leith, was superior in Inverness, fell in love in Oban and out of love by Stranraer, was at my wits' end in Dublin, said some very clever things in Fishguard, lost my temper off Lands' End and summed things up pretty neatly in Falmouth. The End.
If only a story about a year circumnavigating the British isles, single-handed, were that simple. Or maybe we should be pleased it isn't. This narrative squaring-away is deeply uncharacteristic of Raban. If most books about sailing aspire to be racing yachts – spruce, yare, the rigging taut, every story folded neatly in its locker – Coasting is a more mysterious vessel, sailing under a tattered and grubby flag of convenience. Psychological barnacles cling to its hull; its rudder is dickery and unreliable. The emotional radar and depth-gauge are on the blink. This might, in fact, be the only book about an antique boat whose captain cheerfully admits that he's the wreck.
The clue is in the title: "coasting", Raban tells us, quoting wryly from a 19th-century handbook, is "the act of making a progress along the sea-coast of any country, for which purpose it is necessary to observe the time and direction of the tide, to know the reigning winds, the roads and havens, the different depths of water, and the qualities of the ground". The author admits it's not a bad analogy for his own life, as he bobs towards 40. As in many travel narratives, there are shadowy background hints of midlife crisis, perhaps even a breakdown; relationships gone sour, a struggle with childhood demons, a sense of being shunted to the margins, into exile. "For years, I coasted," he tells us:
from job to job, place to place, person to person. At the first hint of adverse weather I hauled up my anchor and moved on with the tide, letting the reigning winds take care of the direction of the voyage. In writing I found a good coaster's occupation, unloading my mixed cargoes at one port after another. The writer, sitting alone in a room, watching society go past his window and trying to recreate it by playing with words on a page, has his own kind of sea-distance.
It was merely a matter of time before he bought a boat and ran away to sea – even if, as Raban ruefully says, he's rather too old and short of breath for such a teenage adventure. So it is that, on 24 February 1982, in an overlarge blue-and-white vessel loaded with a happy disorder of hardbacks, wine bottles, antique engravings and unfinished personal business, he sets out from Fowey in Cornwall to sail. And write.
We realise it only gradually, but Raban could hardly have chosen a more opportune time. A matter of months after he weighs anchor, Britain plunges into the Falklands crisis: Argentinian troops raise their flag in Port Stanley, and the country is immediately on a war footing, with Thatcher resplendent and ferocious at the helm. When a naval task force is dispatched to the south Atlantic, we find the author in Plymouth, eavesdropping on yacht-club chatter ("I'd take my tub out there at the drop of a hat", froths one armchair admiral); he is stormbound in Dartmoor's lovely River Yealm when parliament is recalled. When news comes through of the sinking of the Belgrano, he learning sextant with a fellow yachtsman set adrift in Maggie's Britain. As Raban's own modest, drifting voyage progresses, he finds himself steering at an increasingly oblique angle to the recession-hit, war-mongering country he's sailing around – wondering, even, whether there'll ever be a berth for him back home.
Home is the leitmotif of Coasting; if not exactly its guiding star, more a distant lighthouse seen intermittently through fog. It's a cliche to describe travelogues as voyages into the self, but here the metaphor is absolute. Raban drops in at the naval college in Dartmouth, and is transported immediately back to the traumas of his boarding school. We have miniature discursions on the author's obsessions with fluid mechanics, the nature of religious belief, postwar left-wing British politics, and the battle between wooden boats (old, good) and GRP (new, bad). Father figures loom large; sometimes comically, often less so. There is a gloriously funny evening out with Philip Larkin, Raban's old university librarian in Hull, which culminates in Raban accompanying the deaf and all-but-blind poet on an expedition to a local Lebanese eatery ("he drove us to the restaurant as if the one-mile drive was a hazardous adventure and Hull a city as foreign as Beirut itself").
Raban's encounter with his real father, a Church of England vicar and former soldier, is painted in darker shades. With Raban's mother along for the ride, they go on a day trip from Lymington intended to show off a son's mastery of his boat – and, by extension, his life – but which leaves him feeling more footling and childlike than ever. Nautical adventures customarily feature a scene in which the hero grapples manfully in storm-force conditions, fighting to keep his vessel afloat; here, Raban's reckoning is with the heavy weather inside himself.
All this would be hard going if it weren't for the joyous surge and leap of his writing, stippled with mordant humour and rippling with rueful asides. Raban's earlier travel books, Arabia (1979) and 1981's Old Glory (an account of a trip down the Mississippi), are fine pieces of writing, but the prose sometimes feels parched, under-expansive; Raban, you sense, needs seawater to lubricate his pen. I can't think of another writer who captures the stuff in all its exquisitely magical differences, or who is able to achieve such crystalline beauty in the summoning of an aquatic image. He leaves behind the haunting calm of a small river, "scrolled by the tide and current with loops and whorls of teasingly near-legible Arabic," and enters "a broad stretch of water … rippling, off-white, like a field of grazing sheep". Later, he encounters the stormy English Channel, the waves at first "a loutish show of undirected energy", building relentlessly to a sea "lined with dark troughs [that] stretched away out of sight, as closely ruled as harp strings".
I could go on, but this would be to get in the way of you casting off with the book yourself. Coasting is a summer voyage to relish, even if you'd rather jump overboard than go anywhere near a real-life boat. Perhaps especially if you're a landlubber, in fact: it's a book for anyone struggling to stay afloat right here, on dry land. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/29/sexual-harassment-claims-dealt-with-too-slowly-in-politics-says-caroline-nokes | World news | 2023-06-29T10:37:33.000Z | Aubrey Allegretti | Sexual harassment claims dealt with too slowly in politics, says Caroline Nokes | Sexual harassment complaints in parliament are dealt with too slowly and opaquely, the chair of the Commons equalities committee has said, after concerns were raised over a former Downing Street special adviser.
Caroline Nokes said she believed Daisy Goodwin, who has accused Daniel Korski of touching her breast in No 10 in 2013.
Goodwin claimed she was making the allegation because Korski had trouble controlling impulses and she wanted to draw attention to his alleged behaviour given he was running to be the Tory candidate for mayor of London.
Korski pulled out of the mayoral race on Wednesday, saying he categorically denied wrongdoing but that the row had become a distraction. Nokes called for all political parties to draw up a code of conduct for future candidates.
“Women are expected to get on with the rough and tumble of politics or get out,” the Conservative MP told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “We need to have a zero-tolerance approach to inappropriate behaviour by men in politics towards women.”
Nokes stressed that she believed Goodwin. She said: “I think there have been all sorts of questions raised as to whether she’s telling the truth, whether she misremembered what happened. Women do not make mistakes when they know a man has touched their breast.
“I’m really disappointed that I seem to spend my time talking about the fact that I believe Daisy Goodwin.”
Political parties had about a year to draw up a code of conduct explicitly making clear that Class A drug-taking, watching porn at work and harassment were unacceptable, said Nokes.
“We’ve seen all three of those things over the course of the past 12 months and who would have ever imagined that,” she said, adding a new code of conduct should be in place by the time of the next general election.
The code should apply to people standing at all levels of public office, including councillors, she added.
Nokes said current complaints systems were too slow and opaque, and called for them to be sped up and more transparent in the interests of the alleged victims and those accused.
Goodwin has submitted a formal complaint to the Cabinet Office, but the government has yet to confirm an investigation has been launched.
In a statement on Wednesday, Korski said: “The pressure on my family because of this false and unproven allegation and the inability to get a hearing for my message of ‘the London Dream’ makes it impossible for my campaign to carry on.
“I am proud of having run a positive campaign that championed new ideas, technology and talent.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/shortcuts/2019/sep/11/david-hockney-is-right-five-reasons-its-better-to-live-in-france-than-britain | Art and design | 2019-09-11T13:56:52.000Z | Emma Beddington | David Hockney is right: five reasons it's better to live in France than Britain | In an interview with the Wall Street Journal this week, David Hockney announced he is moving to France. Enthusing about €13 lunches and claiming “the French know how to live”, Hockney expresses the traditional British belief that – with its charming village markets, sexy public intellectuals, endless cheese and lunchtime wine – France does things better.
As a fellow Francophile, I applaud his decision, but not his reasoning (his apparent belief that he can smoke in restaurants is wrong for a start). France is superior, but not because they don’t shed Pret crumbs over their keyboards. These are the real reasons.
TV news
Skip the first 10 minutes, a bore-fest of deferential presenters letting politicians drone on unchallenged. The remainder is an addictive insight into the minutiae of La France Profonde: cherrystone-spitting contests, the weight of school bags, or a crone whittling goat bells in the Massif-Central. In the summer, news is entirely replaced by interviewing holidaymakers on beaches and surveying traffic jams: slow TV at its finest.
Medical matters
A hypochondriac’s paradise, in France, there is no 8:01am pleading with intransigent receptionists or languishing in a pestilential walk-in clinic. You can see a doctor, even a specialist, whenever you like. And oh, the pharmacies. Those ubiquitous green crosses are a neon promise of in-depth ailment chat, good drugs and aisles of mad, pseudo-medical snake oil. I am obsessed with the French belief that “heavy legs” is a legitimate medical condition and pharmacies feed this collective delusion with herbs, gels, devices and suppositories. It’s far more fun than a Boots meal deal.
National anthem
By far the best national anthem of any country, La Marseillaise is bloodthirsty, rousing and utterly memorable, so much so that a Belgian prime minister confused it with his own country’s in 2007.
Workers’ rights
The 35-hour week and some of the highest levels of worker protection in Europe aside, a ruling by the Paris appeal court last week held that an employee who died on a work trip having sex with a stranger was the victim of a workplace accident. It is the kind of defence of workers’ rights that Brits can only dream of (President Félix Faure died in the arms of his mistress, so there’s probably residual sympathy for this kind of event).
Protest
French protest is the real deal: it is practically a baccalauréat subject, with everyone from pensioners to accountants giving 110%. I have watched my French husband’s mounting frustration at our feeble British protests in recent months with shame. “We need protesters blocking every roundabout, there should be a bonfire with sausages, 10:30 is a terrible time for a demo, no one is drunk yet, why aren’t these windows broken?” he laments, as someone gently waves an “Eton mess” placard, while we queue to sign another petition and a ‘Remain Choir’ warbles Bulgarian protest songs. He’s not wrong. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/tvandradioblog/2008/nov/18/celebrity-doll-image | Television & radio | 2008-11-18T12:45:55.000Z | Darragh McManus | Darragh McManus: Celebrities who have the doll factor | You know you've really made it as a supermegastar when someone fashions a small doll in your likeness. Just ask Snoop Dogg, the late Steve Irwin or the entire cast of Saved by the Bell (yes, even the skinny weirdo, whose Brillo-pad hair looked more unnatural on him, eerily, than on the doll).
Great must have been the relief, therefore, of grindingly mediocre tune-molesters Boyzone, who were pictured fondling their little selves in China. Any doubts they may have had about the success of their reunion were surely laid to rest on being presented with miniature plastic versions of themselves.
And the Boyz aren't the only onez. Even politicians like Sarah Palin, Barack Obama and Nicolas Sarkozy have recently been immortalised in doll form (though Sarko's came with voodoo pins, so presumably it was something of a bittersweet feeling).
If the world's most boring people can make a dent on the celebrity doll market, surely the public is ready to pay for a flood of others, such as:
The Eamonn Holmes ShutthehelluporI'llcutyougood doll
Frighteningly lifelike replica of the much-mocked broadcaster, made out of moulded latex and hair cut from the heads of Filipino children, lovingly machine-painted with an inhuman pallor. Press a button on Eamonn's hand to start him spinning out his distinctive brand of smug rubbish at a rate of knots. Note: the Eamonn doll will yammer on non-stop until you place its head full of impoverished-child-hair under the voracious blade of a powerful angle grinder.
My First Little Ian McEwan
A beautifully crafted but rather cold and uninviting doll, fashioned from Venetian porcelain, pure silks and a certain frosty hauteur. Inside the exquisite outer shell you'll find an absence of warmth or humanity, carefully non-inserted by the manufacturer. Ideal for intellectually precocious children with emotional issues, the Ian doll will stare at you unnervingly through its cold glassy eyes, wherever you go and whatever you do. Guaranteed to be at least 20% more chilly and distant than rival John Banville dolls.
The Gillian McKeith Disgustipation Station
Enjoy/endure a series of intrusive faecal examinations, colonic irrigations and ritualised humiliations in the privacy of your own home! The Disgustipation Station comes with a polymer waste collection apparatus, pinhole camera, box of superstrength laxatives, stool analysis kit and solar-powered Gillian figurine, which will hector and admonish you like some sort of coprophiliac evangelical as you poke through the detritus of the preceding two days, wearing a nose-clip and a facial expression somewhere between amused revulsion and self-abasing bafflement.
The Stupid Acronymic Moniker Babushka Collection
Combining the doll-within-a-doll format popular throughout 18th-century Russia with the annoying penchant among modern-day celebs for making their name sound like a package delivery service. A-Rod pops into J-Lo pops into Li-Lo pops into K-Fed ... and the whole lot pops nicely into your bag! (Note: bag must have a cubic volume of 12 litres.) Accessories include foam pillow for when Li-Lo doll is feeling "tired". So don't be a T-sser, get the full collection T-day!
The Robert Mugabe FunVolt Playtime Pal
This cheeky teddy bear puts the "fun" back into "mass funerals", educating as well as entertaining with his patented mix of roguish charm and brutal intolerance of dissidence. Bash his head to hear Robert's pre-programmed set of loaded questions which you're bound to get wrong because there is no right answer, then clasp his furry little electrode-filled paw for a "shockingly" vigorous handshake! Once your heartbeat returns to normal, repeat the process. Accessories: inadequate food supplies for your family and "play" voting papers that have already been filled in.
COMING SOON: The Sarah Silverman Potty-mouth Lame-shock Controverso-brat, the Springloaded Beyoncé Ass-wobbler, the Jolie Roger Fully Inflatable Pervert's Delight. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/may/23/why-cant-we-sleep-darian-leader-review | Books | 2019-05-23T08:00:37.000Z | Josh Cohen | Why Can’t We Sleep? by Darian Leader review – understanding our sleepless minds | The complaint has become all too familiar: the phones by our bed are Trojan horses, brimming with enemy soldiers (demands, anxieties, distractions) laying siege to our sleep. The risk of a culture with no off switch is that sleep becomes an inconvenience, an obstacle to the ideal of 24/7 productivity. This is the context for the widely proclaimed insomnia epidemic that, according to sleep scientists such as Matthew Walker, threatens a public health emergency of catastrophic proportions, with dire consequences for our health, safety and productivity.
Few would argue with the basic premise that the digital age is menacing our sleep. But as psychoanalyst Darian Leader’s bracing and important intervention in the debate makes clear, this is a narrow point of agreement amid many points of contention. The most basic concerns the nature of insomnia itself: is it a psychosocial malaise, or a neurobiological one?
The hasty assurance that it is both may be superficially correct, but it’s also disingenuous; most of the contemporary sleep science that determines the parameters of research and leads public discussion of the problem screens out the environmental conditions that shape our sleep, reducing the sleeper to the sum of their neural signals.
Take those research labs that monitor the nocturnal activity of their subjects. Rigidly recumbent on single beds, hooked up to EEGs and other devices, substituting a sterile, anonymous lab for the familiar habitat of their own homes and beds and night-time rituals, the subjects are contrived artefacts of science, resembling ordinary sleepers in much the same way as a Love Island coupling resembles an ordinary relationship. And yet it’s these subjects, Leader notes, whom “we expect to give the real facts about sleep”.
Psychoanalysis has long been accused of lacking scientific precision, ducking the ultimate test of falsifiability and taking refuge instead in untestable speculations. Leader’s example of the sleep lab neatly turns the criticism back on itself – what kind of precision can we expect from measurements that screen out most of the relevant factors?
Darian Leader. Photograph: Angus Muir
We sleep next to, down the hall from, or in the felt absence of parents, siblings, lovers, flatmates, whose proximity induces our craving or comfort or disgust. We might be kept awake by the cold, by anxiety that we can’t pay this month’s gas bill, by guilt at having shouted down the complaints of freezing loved ones. There’s no end to the sheer intricacy of the physical, emotional and economic knots in which our sleepless bodies and minds get caught.
It’s impossible, in other words, to extract a discrete biological sleeper from the network of familial, social and economic relations in which sleep and sleeplessness are embedded. But in Leader’s account, this biological reductivism is more than unhelpful; it’s become a symptom of the very malaise it claims to address. He cites the proliferation of ads for the perfect mattress, each ascribing your insomnia to your imperfect one and, in a seemingly deliberate confusion of mattress and soulmate, promising a bed that “remembers” and “contours” itself to the dimensions of your musculoskeletal system. “Your insomnia,” Leader remarks, “is caused less by your worries than by the fact that your mattress is not gold standard.”
In a grimly comic illustration of how the quest for sleep itself becomes a cause of insomnia, we can now spend our sleepless hours on the web, anxiously adjudicating the claims of 12 different mattress brands. Maximising sleep becomes a kind of performative challenge along the lines of (and often related to) maximising productivity. Leader cites the chilling instance of the US insurance giant Aetna, whose 50,000 employees are promised “a bonus for getting more sleep, based on a sleep tracker they can wear”.
Pegged to success and productivity, sleep has become a competitive sport, a prime source of bragging and shaming on social media. As the Aetna example shows, good sleep, supposedly the one irreducibly workless and private region of our lives, is now something we owe to our employers. Insomnia in this model is less an affliction than a personal weakness, something else to feel bad about: “Many people wake to a sense of failure, starting their day with an internal judgement that they have not succeeded in a task, and worrying about how this will affect them.”
Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams, the founding work of psychoanalysis, introduces a conception of the sleeping psyche as the nodal point of unconscious life. Casting the findings of modern sleep science in its light, Leader’s deftly imaginative readings in the book point the way to a richer and more humane understanding of our problems with sleep. He suggests that the most unbearable contents of our dreaming mind might be concealed in Stage 4 NREM (non-REM), the phase of sleep most resistant to waking recall. REM stages of sleep, in contrast, weave the more symbolically intelligible contents of dreams.
The dream that emerges across these phases of sleep is an intricate weave in which impossible desires (incestuous or murderous wishes, for example) form the warp and their symbolic cover stories (often remade in myths and fairytales as well as dreams) the weft. Freud shows us, in other words, the ways in which guilt at our impermissible wishes is perpetually insinuating itself into our dreaming minds, threatening the fragile internal equilibrium of our sleep. The anxieties that keep us from going to sleep share much in this sense with the nightmares that jolt us awake.
Leader persuasively links the sleep-disturbing effects of guilt to a crisis in what he calls “the interpellative, summoning function of language”. Put simply: in order to sleep, we need to switch off the voices urging, rebuking and warning us about everything we should or shouldn’t have done or said or finished or remembered – including, with particularly ticklish irony, the obligation to get an unbroken eight hours. No mattress is going to proof us against those punishing demands.
If any concrete counsel can be inferred from this absorbing and refreshingly sane polemic, it’s that we should ditch the aspiration to turn our sleep into an impregnable fortress, to acknowledge instead its intrinsic fragility. Perhaps we’d manage those passages of wakefulness better if we experienced them less as an enemy than as an integral part of our nocturnal lives.
Josh Cohen’s Not Working is published by Granta. Why Can’t We Sleep is published by Penguin (£6.99). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £15, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/mar/07/disney-hand-drawn-animation | Film | 2013-03-07T11:27:19.000Z | Ben Child | Disney turns away from hand-drawn animation | Disney, the Hollywood titan which brought the world classics such as Fantasia, Bambi and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, has admitted it has no current plans to make hand drawn animated films.
Speaking at an annual shareholder's meeting in Phoenix, Arizona, on Wednesday, chief executive Bob Iger revealed that none of the studio's animation companies was working on 2D, hand-drawn material for the big screen. While Iger did not rule out returning in the future to the style which made the company famous, the long gestation period for Hollywood animated productions means a gap of several years before any new film might emerge.
"To my knowledge we're not developing a 2D or hand-drawn feature animated film right now," said Iger. "There is a fair amount of activity going on in hand-drawn animation but it's largely for television at this point. We're not necessarily ruling out the possibility [of] a feature but there isn't any in development at the company at the moment."
The news will upset fans of traditional hand-drawn animation, who had been cheered by the revival of the form under John Lasseter, the Pixar boss who also became Disney Animation's chief creative officer in 2006. Lasseter told a London audience for a 2009 screening of Bolt (a CGI animation) that he had re-hired many of the animators who were ditched by the previous regime because of the emergence of computer-generated technology in the 1990s.
"Unfortunately 2D became the excuse for poor storytelling," said Lasseter, who pioneered the CGI animation revolution with Toy Story in 1995. "The general consensus was that audiences did not want to watch hand-drawn animated films, which is of course completely ridiculous. The day I stepped in we got in touch with these guys and set about bringing back the artists that Disney had laid off."
The studio subsequently put the hand-drawn animation The Princess and the Frog into production. The traditional musical, based on the Brothers Grimm story the Frog Prince but relocating the action to 1920s New Orleans, was well-reviewed but failed to mirror the astounding success of Pixar at the box office with a middling return of $267m (£178m). Another hand-drawn animation – 2011's Winnie the Pooh – drew praise from critics but pulled in just $33m across the globe. Meanwhile, Disney CGI efforts such as 2009's Bolt and 2010's Tangled grossed $310m and $590m respectively.
It may not all be hard lines for the style that made the studio famous, however. One US blogger covering the news of hand-drawn animation's demise has pointed to rumours that Disney is planning a feature using similar techniques to the Oscar-winning short film Paperman. That film was produced by animators working with computers who were drawing rather than modelling images. The studio's animated film arm is also offering an eight-week intern program specifically in 2D animation this summer. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2008/may/01/rugbyunion.premiership | Sport | 2008-05-01T02:25:04.000Z | Paul Rees | Rugby union: Europe in disarray over trial of new rules 'to make union more like league' | The International Rugby Board today faces potentially the biggest split in the game for more than 10 years, since the days when the big southern-hemisphere nations jumped the gun to signal the start of professionalism. Its council members meet in Dublin to discuss if experimental law variations adopted in part in this year's Super 14 series should be trialled in Europe next season.
Wales, Ireland and England oppose the variations. France and Scotland should join the three big southern unions to vote in favour, not through any great belief in the changes but out of loyalty to key figures from their own unions who hold influential positions at the IRB and are in favour. That leaves the balance of power with the smaller countries.
The board needs 75% support to get the European trial, 20 votes out of 26. Wales, Ireland and England had hoped to persuade Canada to join them, but the IRB, which uses World Cup profits to assist the emerging nations, has applied pressure. The trio's best hope lies in Japan, who fear the changes would have an adverse effect on the way they play, with the breakdown turning into a wrestling match.
"I cannot emphasise just how much we are talking about the future of the game as we know it," said one delegate last night. "The European nations are being asked to vote through a series of proposals, the majority ill-conceived, because the powers in the south, Australia especially, are looking for a financial stimulus.
"In short, we are being asked to make union more like rugby league and we owe it to people who pay to watch rugby, to the army of amateurs who play the sport for love and to the smaller nations, who I believe would struggle under the variations because of the emphasis the changes place on physicality and power, to resist. It is time we put principle before money."
The IRB has waged a propaganda war in Europe in recent weeks, but the indications are that the meeting will lead to Europe testing fewer of the variations than the tri-nations agreed to. Only a few changes hold a modicum of appeal for Wales, Ireland and England: making backs stand five metres off at scrums, permitting quick lineouts to be thrown backwards and preventing a player kicking directly into touch from his own 22 if the ball is passed to him by a team-mate outside the area.
Even the south balked at changes allowing handling in rucks and deliberately collapsed mauls. In addition Wales, Ireland and England are resolutely opposed to making offences beyond foul play and off-side punishable by free-kicks not penalties, as well as to awarding free-kicks against teams who take the ball into the breakdown and fail to get it back.
The IRB wants the variations to be voted on individually, knowing that it stands a better chance of retaining some that way, but there is concern among the home unions that the board would regard it as a battle lost, rather than the war, and try to push the whole package through again next year.
"Some of our group have been surprised by the apparent commercial reasons why these critically important issues have been driven through so relentlessly," said the Welsh Rugby Union chief executive, Roger Lewis. "We want good sense to prevail so that the integrity of the game is upheld. We firmly believe that it would not be in the best interests of rugby if these changes are introduced en masse next season."
The backdrop to the pressure for change is a dramatic fall in television audiences for the southern-hemisphere Super 14 over the past two years, so dramatic that the big southern nations are committed to changing the format of the tournament, with television's blessing, in 2010, two seasons before the end of the current deal. Provincial unions in New Zealand are under financial pressure, with only the All Blacks proving a big draw.
The IRB's message is that by simplifying a complex game, referees will become less influential. But the main proponents of change in the south keep referring to European rugby as a boring, kicking game which, as Toulouse's New Zealand scrum-half Byron Kelleher has remarked, is an obsolete view. "One of union's strengths is the contrast it offers," said the Wasps and Wales coach Shaun Edwards, who made his name in league. "There is beauty in slow parts of the game and I am wary of these proposals." But the France outside-half Frédéric Michalak, who spent the year with Natal Sharks in the Super 14, believes Europe should vote for the changes. "They enhance attacking rugby," he said.
Law changes are not the only concern of the council members today, who will also vote on changes over the release of players for international duty. It could impact on countries with players abroad, who may have to pay compensation to clubs to get them released for training sessions outside international weeks and for Tests outside the official window. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/sep/09/rosewater-review-jon-stewarts-iran-interrogation-drama-toronto | Film | 2014-09-09T16:27:16.000Z | Paul MacInnes | Rosewater review – Jon Stewart's Iran-interrogation drama creaks at the edges | Jon Stewart has been one of the draws of the Toronto international film festival. Speaking to packed auditoria and hailed by adoring crowds, he’s been treated more like a movie star than a satirist. With his debut film as a director, he’s choosing to cash in some of that cultural kudos.
Rosewater is the story of the journalist Maziar Bahari who, while covering the Iranian elections in 2009 was imprisoned for 118 days by the Ahmadinejad regime. He was ultimately freed, but only after a publicity campaign that inspired an intervention by the then US secretary of state Hillary Clinton. Put simply, it’s not a story with a lot of laughs.
The jokes that do make it are among the best bits of the film. After being arrested in his mother’s home Bahari –played as something of an innocent by Gael Garcia Bernal – is confronted with his DVD collection as evidence of a debauched Western lifestyle. Pasolini’s Teorema: it’s a porno, says the inquisitor. No, says Behari. The Sopranos: it’s a porno. No, says Behari. Empire magazine with Megan Fox on the cover: it’s a porno. Well, says Behari, it could be...
Watch a review of the film Guardian
The inquisitor is called Rosewater. Played by Kim Bodnia, aka Martin Rohde from The Bridge, he will interrogate Bahari every day over the course of the next four months. He will attempt to force a confession to various crimes; from being a spy to simply a cog in a vast Zionist media conspiracy. There are further flashes of comic absurdity, as when Bahari is told he’s to be shot, but that he can also have a Nescafé. It’s what you might hope for from Stewart, who adapted Bahari’s book for the screen himself.
It’s the bits around the laughs that are the problem. Aside from his disgust (ahem) at matters pornographic, the character of Rosewater is something of a blank. Which is a bit problematic when the dynamic between himself and Bahari is the heart of the film. As the internment goes on the scenes between the pair feel repetitive, despite Bernal and Bodnia’s best efforts to inject some emotional resonance. Another drain on the drama is the knowledge that Behari is eventually released. It’s something of an ask to create nailbiting tension when you already know the outcome, and Stewart isn’t quite able to pull the trick off.
Kim Bodnia and Gael Garcia Bernal in Rosewater Photograph: PR
Add in a substantial amount of plain, expositional dialogue, and cinematography which (no doubt for reasons of verisimilitude) is dull and dreary on the eye and Rosewater begins to creak at the edges. It’s saved, though, by another series of interrogations; that of Behari by his dead father. Once himself a detainee at the hands of the Shah, Behari senior (Haluk Bilginer) is not one to compromise, even as a ghost. Each time he pops up he provokes Behari into being stronger, but not without infuriating him first. Behari can’t stand his dad’s pomposity and doesn’t share his ideology, but also misses him terribly. It’s a nuanced, moving relationship which shows Stewart has promise as a film-maker should he ever choose to stand down as America’s satirist in chief. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/may/11/olivia-williams-bruce-willis-sixth-sense-nevers-victorian-supernatural | Television & radio | 2021-05-11T05:00:08.000Z | Zoe Williams | Olivia Williams: ‘I’ve been close enough to stardom to see how horrifying it is’ | What I wouldn’t have given to be in an actual room with Olivia Williams, rather than down a Zoom. For all her early-90s RSC pedigree, she is forever the surprise find of The Postman, Rushmore and The Sixth Sense, films in which her casting seemed so idiosyncratic.
How did this British actor, with her amused detachment and her totally rose-garden, tan-resistant complexion, end up in Hollywood? I always saw her as an ambassador for the nation, roaming around the end of last century, giving the world the impression that we were all incredibly graceful and surprisingly tall. She, conversely, maintains that she only ever got those parts because they’d blown the budget on their male lead and needed someone cheap. I just won’t have that, I’m afraid. Surely it’s faux modesty? Nope, she’s pretty dug in – all those films, “they needed people who were just going to get on with it. Because they didn’t have any budget or time to worry about people who were overly concerned with vanity or how long their trailer was.”
She will, however, allow that there was a bit more to it: “I had a sort of theatrical fearlessness that I think stood me in good stead. They were looking for someone in Sixth Sense who could square up to Bruce Willis. They were looking for someone in The Postman who could square up to Kevin Costner. For Rushmore, Hope Davis suddenly became unavailable, God bless her. I’m not proud, my father was a barrister and he always said his best cases were returns, the ones that nobody else was available for.”
‘They needed people who were just going to get on with it’ … with Bruce Willis in The Sixth Sense. Photograph: Buena Vista/Allstar
We’re here to discuss The Nevers. I can’t tell you much about Williams’s character because of spoilers; let’s just say she is stunningly austere. The show has had a rocky entry on to the screens: some time between conception and delivery, several actors from previous shows by its creator, Joss Whedon, accused him of creating a “toxic environment”. What was originally slated as a 12-episode first season of The Nevers has become two six-ep mini-seasons, with Whedon replaced by Philippa Goslett as showrunner and executive producer for the second. Whedon cited the level of commitment necessary and the “physical challenges of making such a huge show during a global pandemic”, saying it was “more than I can handle without the work beginning to suffer”.
It’s had mixed reviews. I thought it was wonderful: an intricately built universe of magnetic inventiveness, its tempo almost like a teen drama, its themes unbelievably dark and densely allegorical. I thought about it for days afterwards. At one point, I became convinced that its premise – “touched” people, mainly women, with freakish abilities, demonised and feared in Victorian London – was actually a metaphor for the pitfalls of third-way progressive politics. Williams wasn’t really having that. When she thinks a question is stupid, she sort of nods, and moves along.
But she will tell me what attracted her to the role. “It was Joss calling me up and saying, ‘I’ve got a new job for you.’ Because the last time he did that it was a fabulous role in Dollhouse.” Yes, about Joss Whedon … “I know I brought him up, but I don’t want to dwell on it,” she says. “There’s nothing I can say that couldn’t be twisted into something on Twitter. I don’t speak in 240 characters. Everything I say takes 24,000 characters.” She’s deeply suspicious of social media. “Very early on, I read something racist about my elder child on an IMDb message board. And I thought, ‘OK, we’re not going to be doing that any more.’” (She has two teenage daughters, Esme and Roxana, with the actor and writer Rhashan Stone.)
Stunningly austere … Williams in The Nevers. Photograph: HBO/Warner Brothers
More than that, though, Williams is extremely chary of talking about what is currently the hot button issue of acting: sexism, sexist pay scales, sexual harassment, sexist bullying – the lot. She won’t go anywhere near it (I get a lot of brisk nods), and it’s frustrating, since when she does talk freely about politics or her industry, she does so with such openness and precision that you get a really strong sense of who she is. You could predict that she’d be anti-Brexit, for instance, but not the extent of her self-recrimination: “I just can’t believe how negligent I was, all those years between the ages of 18 and 48, when Brexit came up, when I didn’t vote for an MEP”, nor her anguish at the human consequences. “I feel like weeping about Northern Ireland. I was over there making a radio play recently and it seemed so transformed, so hopeful and so positive a place, with a chance of being the great city it should be, and it’s just been cut off at the knee.”
She also has a stout critique of her industry, but it’s quite tailored. “The thing that’s bruising is business affairs. The director wants you, the casting director wants you, the producers love you. And then the deal goes from your agent to business affairs, and some little shit who’s just got out of law school says, ‘What have you been in?’ They will say anything, no matter how offensive it is. ‘Well, she’s not looking so great … well, she’s had cancer.’”
In 2018, Williams was diagnosed with a very rare pancreatic cancer, which had taken four years of miserable ill health to identify. She wrote about it at the time, concluding with mournful wit: “Soon after my six-month all-clear, I was asked to be an ambassador for Pancreatic Cancer UK. I … pointed out I wasn’t really famous enough to raise lots of money. They replied that I wasn’t being asked because I was famous. I was being asked because there are so few survivors.”
Finery … in the Nevers. Photograph: Album/Alamy
She talks about it very briskly now, but it’s left its scars. “I don’t have a spleen. So we got out of London before lockdown and stayed out of London for both lockdowns. I had a good war with my delightful family in a small place far from infection.”
Between those early cinematic performances and her recent television work – before The Nevers, she was in the US sci-fi thriller, Counterpart, for two years – Williams made a number of British films that you might call classic but discreet: An Education (2009), based on Lynn Barber’s brilliant memoir; The Heart of Me (2002), adapted from a Rosamund Lehmann novel; The Ghost Writer (2010), Robert Harris’s thinly veiled take-down of Cherie Blair (Williams played Ruth Lang, who’s the Cherie in my highly personal interpretation). She resolutely claims that there’s never been any plan; she’s always simply taken what she was offered. Yet she has a visceral aversion to stardom. “I’ve been close enough to it to see how horrifying it is. It’s like some sort of dream.”
Antonio Banderas and I went out for lunch and, within an hour, he'd had to be escorted out with a blanket over his head
She describes shooting in Rome with Antonio Banderas, trying to persuade him to go to a gallery, which he said was just impossible. So they went to a tiny place for lunch instead. “When we sat down, it was just us, and within an hour he had to be escorted out by security with his head in a blanket. And I thought, ‘How fucking miserable is that?’ If you love acting, is celebrity necessarily part of acting?” Surely on some level she prioritised privacy over blockbusters? “No, absolutely not,” she says staunchly. “If the money or the location or the leading man had been right, I’d have ditched my privacy and taken the job.”
If there were a throughline to both her career and her conversation, it may be that she’s always drawn to the subtle and complex, and faintly repelled by the obvious and splashy. “There was a wonderful drama teacher [at the Bristol Old Vic theatre school], who was old enough to be Prussian. My favourite admonishment of his was, ‘Ducky, your subtext is showing.’ In the age of therapy, subtext becomes text, but I think it’s much more interesting to keep your subtext sub.”
In spite of her fierce denial of ever having had a plan, she has “navigated the way through, past the Scylla and Charybdis of either not working at all or a celebrity that stops you going about your business unmolested. I don’t know how that’s happened and I’ve earned a living at the same time. So I feel truly blessed by that.” Perhaps more the point: “Between action and cut, between curtain up and curtain down, I’m just about as happy as I can be.”
This article was amended on 12 May 2021. An earlier version misspelled Hope Davis as “Davies”.
The Nevers is on Sky Atlantic and Now TV from 17 May. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2016/jan/25/zika-virus-mosquito-bites-brazil-caribbean-south-america-advice | Travel | 2016-01-25T16:08:22.000Z | Isabel Choat | Zika virus: what travellers need to know | What is Zika?
Zika fever is a mosquito-borne viral disease caused by Zika virus (ZIKV). One out of four people may develop symptoms similar to dengue fever and consist of mild fever, a bumpy rash, headaches, joint pain and conjunctivitis, that can last between two and seven days. The World Health Organisation says people affected should drink plenty of fluids, ensure they rest regularly and treat pain and fever with common medicines.
In some states in Brazil where Zika virus has been circulating in recent months, there has been a marked increase in cases of newborns with microcephaly, a condition that causes abnormal brain development, which can occur in the womb or during infancy. According to a preliminary analysis of research carried out by Brazilian authorities, the greatest risk of microcephaly and malformations is associated with infection during the first trimester of pregnancy.
Zika virus likely to spread throughout the Americas, says WHO
Read more
Is it treatable?
There is no vaccine or medication available to prevent or treat Zika infections.
Which countries are affected?
Barbados, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Martinique, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Puerto Rico, Saint Martin, Suriname, Venezuela. A map on the Pan American Health Organisation website is updated weekly.
What’s the official travel advice for pregnant women?
Nathnac (the government travel health advisory body) “urges” pregnant women to consider avoiding travel to areas where Zika outbreaks are currently reported. Pregnant women should inform their obstetrician or midwife if they have recently travelled to a country where Zika is known to occur.
If travel is unavoidable, or you live in areas where Zika is reported, you are strongly advised take scrupulous insect bite avoidance measures, both during daytime and night time hours. More information on the WHO website.
What if I am planning to get pregnant?
Women who are planning to become pregnant should discuss their travel plans with their healthcare provider to assess the risk of infection with Zika virus and receive advice on mosquito bite avoidance measures.
If you are trying to get pregnant and have visited a country with an ongoing Zika outbreak, it is recommended that you wait at least 28 days before trying to conceive, even if you have not felt unwell. If you have experienced Zika symptoms during or within two weeks of returning home, it is recommended that you wait at least 6 months before trying to conceive.
Sexual transmission of Zika virus has occurred in a small number of cases. Though this is considered a low risk, if your partner has travelled to a country where there is an ongoing Zika outbreak, condom use is advised for 28 days after his return if he had no Zika symptons and for 6 months following recovery if he experienced Zika symptoms or a Zika virus infection has been confirmed by a doctor. Tailored advice for pregnancy and travel is available at Nathnac’s website as well as from the NHS.
What’s the advice for general travellers?
All travellers planning to visit these areas should seek travel advice from their GP or travel clinic well in advance of their trip and check its website for up to date information on outbreaks.
Should I cancel my holiday?
Only if you are pregnant. If you are you should be able to change your booking free of charge. Last week Thomas Cook announced that it would allow pregnant women and the party they are travelling with to switch to an alternative destination. ABTA said it believed other tour operators would “do their best to be flexible”, and the Latin American Travel Association (LATA) which represents 60-70 UK tour operators to the region confirmed that its members will allow pregnant women to change their travel plans. However, LATA chairman, Byron Shirto, said the opportunity to change to an alternative destination did not extend to women planning to get pregnant.
Will my travel insurance cover me if I have to cancel my trip?
If you are already pregnant and have a doctor’s certificate saying you should not travel, it should be a straightforward insurance claim. That is because news of the rise of Zika and its potential effects is a new development. If you are pregnant and book in a month or two, you may find your insurance company refuses to reimburse you on the grounds that you should have been aware of the dangers, says Sean Tipton, spokesperson for travel association Abta. He adds that the best advice is to always check the Foreign Office advice, which is constantly updated.
This article was updated on 27 January 2016 to include new information about Thomas Cook’s booking policy.
This article was updated on 1 February 2016 to include latest health advice for travellers. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/20/microsoft-xbox-one-review-roundup-ps4 | Games | 2013-11-20T10:48:29.000Z | Stuart Dredge | Microsoft Xbox One review roundup: powerful, but not the finished article | Microsoft's Xbox One console goes on sale at midnight on 22 November in the UK, as part of its wider global launch. It's going head-to-head with Sony's PlayStation 4 – as well as the newly Super Mario 3D Worlded-up Nintendo Wii-U – in the next-generation console battle.
So, is it any good? The Guardian's games team is hard at work putting the Xbox One through its paces for a review, but in the meantime, other outlets have published their initial verdicts. And that's the trend across the board: a recognition that Xbox One at launch is still a work in progress, with plenty more evolution in store over the coming years for its features, services and games.
Bouquets go to its familiarly-excellent controller; deeper integration of Kinect voice commands to control the system; the ability to flip quickly between TV and games, or do both simultaneously; the handy SmartGlass second-screen app for smartphones and tablets; and Skype video calls.
Brickbats are flung at the console's launch lineup: some decent exclusives, but also some flawed titles; the fact that it costs $100 more than Sony's PS4; the delayed ability to stream your gaming feats live using Twitch; and the lack of backwards compatibility with Xbox 360.
Broadly, though, the first reviews are very positive, while warning that unless you're a hardcore PlayStation or Xbox-phile, the sensible approach would be to wait a few months before deciding between them. Read on for some of the key verdicts on Xbox One, as it gets set for launch.
Polygon (8/10)
"In many ways, the Xbox One's bold direction for the future is well in place. The integration of voice controls and its media strategy are a boon to everyone, and the ability to run apps while playing games is something we now want on every gaming console we have. That it has a handful of strong, exclusive games at launch only supports its legitimacy as a gaming console and not just an entertainment hub.
The Xbox One is an impressive marriage of software and hardware that raises the bar in terms of what we expect from a living-room machine. Looking forward more than it looks back, the Xbox One feels like it's from the future."
Pocket Lint (5/5)
"In the course of putting a finger in every pie, however, Xbox One will face many challenges: gamers who don't like the dilution, TV fans who feel the same way, AV enthusiasts who are left scratching their heads over exactly how it all fits together, while having to accommodate all the app needs from gaming, to TV, to everything else.
But this is the first salvo in a assault on your living room. On day one, you're faced with a platform digging in for the future. This is the Xbox One."
Gizmodo
"For now, the Xbox One is one impressive living room box machine—and it more than justifies its $500 dollar price with the inclusion of at least $100-worth of set-top boxitude—but you're going to be better off waiting for a little while to see how things shake out.
But—and this is admittedly a sizable but—if the Xbox One can straighten the few little quirks it has with some software tweaks, this thing is going to be unstoppable in a way the PS4 could never touch. It's too versatile, too feature-ridden, too future."
Joystiq
"The success of the Xbox One is largely dependent on what you need for the living room, and whether you intend to use the system for multiple forms of media, with multiple people in mind. The user interface feels cluttered at times, and it has a definite learning curve, but it's also easy to carve out a quick and comfortable groove for yourself as you jump between a game and a few different applications. The Xbox One's app-driven interface is full of possibilities, living alongside quirks to be learned or updated in future."
TechCrunch (7/10)
"It’s important to stress that one key term: “Day One”. The current state of the Xbox One — and the PS4, for that matter — is quite likely very, very different from what the same consoles will look like when we all move on to the next next generation. Compare the Xbox 360 on Day One to the 360 today; from the games to the interface, it’s almost unrecognizable. Both Microsoft and Sony are laying the runway for the next few years, so make your decisions as progress unfolds."
Boing Boing (8/10)
"If you need guidance, all I can suggest is to be patient. The Xbox One and the PS4 are similar, and both have unexciting launch titles. If you're not sure which to get, wait a week or two; see what games get good buzz from players as well as critics. If you're not sure whether to get either, there's no harm waiting until there's more to do with the next-gen consoles, period, before making a choice. And if you're waiting for validation on a decision you've already made: go buy it already. The Xbox One is fine. 8/10! You'll be happy with it. Eventually."
The Verge (7.8/10)
"Nearly everything that could be great someday isn't great right now. The Kinect is an incredible piece of raw machinery and engineering, but it's not implemented well into games, nor does its voice control provide a truly fast, seamless way to navigate the operating system. The TV integration is an awkward hodgepodge of menus and overlays and dead ends. There's a massive opportunity for Windows apps to turn the Xbox into something no one could have imagined, but it's as yet gone unexplored. Some of these are easily solved problems, but others — cable integration in particular — are a much steeper uphill climb."
TheNextWeb
"The Xbox One’s $499 price will deter many potential customers, but Microsoft has built so much more than a gaming console. If you already have an Apple TV or other set-top box, you’ll find much of the functionality to be redundant, but the Kinect’s voice control features make it worth consolidating TV, Netflix, games and Skype all onto a single input.
When the Xbox One arrives on Friday, its combination of exclusive gaming content with a next-generation media consumption experience will make it one of the most exciting gadgets around this holiday season."
Telegraph (4/5)
"After a week in the company of the Xbox One, their all-on-one posturing makes far more sense to me than it did several months ago. Even those that demand their console to be focussed on games first and foremost may be quietly impressed by the Xbox One’s functionality, a seamless dashboard serving up gaming, movies and music in a fluid and easy fashion. But there are caveats, a sense that the demands of the next-generation can bog down the core pursuit of playing a video game."
Mashable
"Among the titles available at launch, there isn't a clear blockbuster, but with huge games like Titanfall and Destiny coming in March 2014, it won't be too long until that changes. The streaming services are just as good as they were on the Xbox 360, although the Live TV offering comes with a few caveats. The Kinect integration, however, really is a novel way to switch between apps. Overall, the Xbox One experience is polished and stimulating, and it sets the groundwork for great gaming in the years to come."
Mirror (5/5)
"Potentially groundbreaking titles like Titanfall, Watch Dogs and Destiny aren’t due for release until next year, so you won’t be missing out on too much should you decide to defer splashing out until after the Christmas rush.
That said, early adopters will still have plenty to show off, though. Xbox One is an impressive and powerful piece multimedia machine with the potential to change the way you interact with home technology forever."
Engadget
"The Xbox One may not be exactly what Microsoft thinks it is, but it's still a strong start for a powerful game console. Its sheer speed, versatility, horsepower and its ability to turn on and off with words make it a relatively seamless entry into our already crowded media center. What determines whether it stays there is the next 12 months: Exclusives like Titanfall and Quantum Break will help, as will gaining feature parity with the competition (we're looking at you, game broadcasting!).
For broader success beyond just the early adopter's living room, the NFL crowd must buy in to Microsoft's $500 box. But will they? That remains to be seen. What's there so far is a very competent game box with an expensive camera and only a few exclusive games differentiating it from the competition."
Ars Technica
"As a video game console, the Xbox One offers about what you'd expect from a new Microsoft console: a big, heavy box (though quieter than you might expect), more impressive specs (though less than what you might expect after eight years), an improved controller (though still with a few odd oversights), and some good exclusive games (more reviews are coming but look into Dead Rising 3, Forza 5, Powerstar Golf, and Zoo Tycoon).
As the central hub of a living room entertainment complex, though, Microsoft has a much harder sell. The company needs to prove the Xbox really adds enough value to be worthwhile and to justify the extra cost of the included Kinect over its similar competition."
Kotaku
"I admire what Microsoft is trying to do with the Xbox One, and I'm rooting for them to give their console that final push to get it to where it needs to be. The whole thing is almost there. The Kinect almost works well enough to get me to use it all the time. The TV integration is almost smooth enough to make me plug it into the heart of my living-room setup. Multitasking almost works well enough to get me checking the internet while I play games."
Time
"$500 buys you more than a souped-up gaming portal: the Xbox One is a content assimilation engine, a vanguard move into a market the competition’s still toying around in by comparison. It’s an immature, somewhat glitchy content assimilation engine at this stage, sure, and it shares the PS4′s launch game weaknesses if you’re coming at it from the gaming side, but if you’re an early adopter or you’re already invested in Xbox Live’s social ecosystem, think of it as the jumping off point for a fascinating experiment.
If it’s successful — and I’m not saying it will be; ask me again in four or five years — it has the potential to change everything about TV and streaming media and the living room as we’ve known it for decades."
CVG
"For consumers who use Netflix and Skype as much as Forza, Xbox One presents an attractive multimedia offering this Christmas. But for core gamers Sony's package is perhaps more attractive at the moment, with more visually impressive exclusives (Killzone and Resogun are not matched by anything currently on Xbox One) and the options to stream and share game footage straight away.
Whichever system you chose, neither will entirely fulfil the vision laid out in those bombastic press events earlier this year. The seeds of next-gen gaming have been planted, but they'll need time to flower before your $500 (or $400) purchase can bear fruit."
Fortune
"Microsoft and Sony are positioning their consoles as multi-purpose entertainment hubs for the living room, and some consumers may make their decision simply based on price. (After all, the PlayStation 4 is $100 less.) But if Microsoft can iron out some performance quirks around voice recognition and Snap, the decision won't be too hard: it's far easier to glimpse the future potential in the Xbox One, starting with 10 seconds of time and the simple two-word voice command: 'Xbox on.'"
Huffington Post
"If their old consoles haven't gotten too much mileage, Xbox 360 owners may hold off for a bit and feast on the system's hearty back catalog and new games, none of which will be backwards-compatible with the One.
For home entertainment purposes, those with a more complex setup may want to research how the One could integrate with their needs. For families with a TV and a love of streaming content, the One's customizable profiles that let you pick and choose your favorite channels and apps will be useful." | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/oct/17/fred-again-interview | Music | 2022-10-17T10:00:01.000Z | Michael Cragg | In-demand producer Fred again.. : ‘I was fortunate not to be good at anything else’ | Stretched out on the sun-dappled balcony of his fancy LA rental, Fred Gibson looks every inch music’s go-to super-producer. Even dressed down in an embroidered oversized sweatshirt, Gibson’s Zoom screen-dominating smile suggests things are going Quite Well. Having overseen hits for everyone from Stormzy to Rita Ora, Ed Sheeran to AJ Tracey, Gibson was responsible for a third of 2019’s UK No 1 singles. A year later he won the Brit award for best producer, before launching his own dance-leaning artist project, Fred again.. in 2021, the same year as spending 15 weeks at No 1 via two Ed Sheeran co-productions.
But looks can be deceiving. When I suggest he got the better deal vis-a-vis interview locales the 29-year-old south Londoner replies with a misty-eyed “I long for where you are”, which is too nice a thing to say about the south-east London suburb of Brockley. He balks, too, at the super-producer tag (“That’s quite gross”), while mention of his Brit is met with a polite shrug. “I’m not really fussed,” he says. “I don’t want to shit on something that matters to people but it’s just so not why I do it.”
Gibson is in LA as part of a sold-out US tour ahead of his third Fred again.. album, Actual Life 3 (January 1 – September 9, 2022). Formatted like a musical diary – his first two albums are similarly time-stamped – the tactile, deeply personal Actual Life series is not made up of big-hitting guests like typical producer-turned-artist projects, but a tapestry of ambient audio recordings, taken from Gibson’s phone, featuring friends and strangers, as well as viral social media posts and snatches of poetry. These are then cocooned in delicate piano, percolating beats and, when a specific mood can’t be found online, fresh lyrics sung in Gibson’s hushed tones. A key character throughout is a construction worker called Carlos whom Gibson met in Atlanta. His exuberant, life-affirming phrases such as “we gon’ make it through” now adorn the bodies of Gibson’s fervent fans (his forthcoming three shows at London’s O2 Academy Brixton sold out in under a minute). “I’ve seen hundreds of tattoos of Carlos’ words on people,” he smiles proudly.While Gibson started thinking about turning his cache of recordings into a musical project pre-pandemic, Actual Life part one – subtitled April 14 – December 17 2020 and released in April 2021 – chimed with a collective sense of digital saturation post-lockdown. With all the recordings compressed through his phone, and the tracks then finished on his laptop, there’s a palpable feeling of close comfort that reflects our months spent communicating remotely. “For a lot of people the albums are lockdown records,” he agrees, “but I was already right down the rabbit hole with it [by that point]”.
The trio of albums also carry an overarching sense of emotional purging, another big lockdown mainstay. Eloquent, thoughtful and buoyed up by a music nerd-like enthusiasm throughout our conversation, Gibson seems on less solid ground when discussing personal specifics, his answers becoming fragmentary. “Essentially it’s about falling in love with someone who got very unwell and then …” He drifts off. Later he mentions how difficult it was visiting hospitals during lockdown. Actual Life 3, he says, is about “drawing a line in the sand … because I need to give myself permission to do something else. And write about something else.” Initially he assumed he would be able to neatly chart his process through grief with each album, ending in resolution, “but it’s not how this aspect of emotion works”. On the album’s gorgeous single, Bleu, a ghostly voice sings “I just know that it gets better with time”.
Even as Actual Life 3 became more club-focused than its predecessors, naturally influenced by the last year of “playing out in raves again”, it maintains a sense of dancing through the pain. It has been a process of creative catharsis that’s ultimately helped shift Gibson’s mindset from producer-for-hire to artist. “The messages I read from people telling me how much [the albums] mean to them have changed my life,” he says, full-beam smile switched back on. “I now make music in a totally different way to how I did before.”
The thing of ‘what type of music do you like?’ is such a dated concept. Everyone I work with sees it in the same way
Born in London, but educated at the Wiltshire boarding school Marlborough College, Gibson’s focus rarely shifted from music. At the age of eight he started making classical piano pieces on his aunt’s tape recorder, while at school he’d often bunk off lessons in favour of decamping to the music room. “I was fortunate enough to not even be slightly good at anything else,” he says, “so I had clarity of focus.” When Gibson was 16, a family friend invited him to a neighbour’s a cappella group rehearsals. That neighbour was Brian Eno, and that a cappella group would often include the likes of Annie Lennox. Gibson helped make tea and tidy away the song sheets, often grabbing time with Eno to discuss new synths he’d uncovered. “I’d then not sleep for six nights making 100 song sketches,” he smiles, giddy at the memory. “I’d come back the next week and try to make it look really casual.” After two years of mentorship, Eno asked Gibson, then just 18, to co-produce his two 2014 collaboration albums with Underworld’s Karl Hyde.
Further production work quickly followed for UK rap heroes such as Roots Manuva, Flowdan (who gave him his artist moniker), J Hus and Stefflon Don, before pop came calling via Charli XCX, Clean Bandit and George Ezra. In 2019 he co-produced the majority of Ed Sheeran’s guest-heavy No.6 Collaborations Project, as well as three songs on Stormzy’s Heavy Is the Head, highlighting an ability to flit between genres. “The whole thing of ‘what type of music do you like?’ is such a dated concept and I’m so thrilled that’s the case,” he says. “Everyone I work with has grown up listening to everything and seeing it in the same way.” He is not interested in any sniffiness towards pop, and Sheeran specifically. “I can’t remember the last time I spoke to someone who thought what someone like Ed does is easy. It’s just so obviously ignorant.”
Fred again.. performs at the Electric Picnic festival in Ireland. Photograph: Kieran Frost/Redferns
Prior to becoming pop’s go-to producer, Gibson had struggled to make various artist projects work. “Essentially there was something I needed to make that I couldn’t do via the lenses I was looking through,” he says. It was Eno who gave him clarity. Utilising Gibson’s preferred medium of the voice note, Eno sent him a message saying that, while cleaning his kitchen to the soundtrack of a shuffling iTunes, he’d race to check what amazing song was playing only to find it was something Gibson had sent him. “He was like: ‘Enough now Fred, you have to go back to this stuff, it can’t just be sat on my laptop.’”
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There is more than a hint of Eno’s influence in Gibson’s unique approach to finding inspiration and how that connects to the practical side of music-making. Much of the Actual Life albums were made while on the move, be it via long train journeys, or on meandering tube excursions (“I’ve had a lot of pointless flat whites in Harrow and Wealdstone” he laughs). This sense of restlessness is reflected in the artwork, with each album featuring a filtered selfie of Gibson either walking, on a tube, or sitting in the back of a cab. He’s also prone to wirelessly sending works in progress to unsuspecting people’s phones, be they fans at his shows or strangers on planes.
While most people utilise a phone camera to document a day out, Gibson’s preferred medium is sound recording. “I think it’s about finding places where you get a conveyor belt of humanity to subconsciously affect you,” he says, recommending London’s South Bank. “You can’t help but be excited by hundreds of excited humans.”
Actual Life 3 is released on 28 October on Atlantic Records. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jan/08/lets-talk-sex-northern-ireland-teenagers-sex-education | UK news | 2016-01-08T07:00:03.000Z | Sally Weale | How Northern Ireland's abortion laws affect the way pupils are taught about sex | Six teenage boys dressed in tracksuits are sitting in a classroom in a training centre in Coleraine, Northern Ireland. Lined up in front of them are bottles of Vimto and Mountain Dew energy drinks – and a number of colourful plastic penises.
The boys, aged 17 and 18 and on a construction course, are having a condom relay as part of a sex education session. It’s a boisterous lesson – the boys crack non-stop jokes and laugh uproariously at each other’s quips. “This is the best class ever,” says one boy, gasping for air between gales of laughter.
They play a game called “Who’s the Daddy?” where they all receive the results of a pregnancy test sealed in an envelope and are asked to consider what they would do in the event of a positive result. They are appropriately solemn as they peel open the envelope.
“I’d try my best to explain it to my mum, then I’d run out of the house crying,” says one. Others coo over the idea of having their own baby. Not one of them would consider having an abortion.
Girls would start their course in September and they’d be pregnant by Christmas, says Fiona Johnston, an outreach worker at the Brook clinic in Coleraine. Photograph: Paul McErlane/The Guardian
“That’s sick, because ... that’s a child,” says one, and they all agree. They know it’s not legal in Northern Ireland, and not one of them is in favour of legalising it.
Expect more teenage pregnancies and STIs as public health cuts kick in
Mary O’Hara
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The young men in Coleraine are fortunate. Thanks to the sexual health charity Brook, which provides community-based sex education for young people in the province, they have had three half-day sessions to talk openly and honestly about every aspect of relationships and sex – including abortion – which is highly controversial in this part of the UK.
During this particular session, they have handed around 15 different types of contraception, discussing the pros and cons of each; they have squirmed in front of graphic pictures of every sexually transmitted infection (STI) known to humankind, as well as having considered the consequences of an unplanned pregnancy.
Relationships and sexuality education (RSE) is compulsory in schools in Northern Ireland, but – as in England where it is not compulsory – some schools do it better than others. What makes Northern Ireland different is that the restrictive laws on abortion and the conservative, faith-based approach in many schools make it difficult for teenagers to openly discuss issues around sex, relationships, sexuality, contraception and abortion.
“Young people know when they are not being given the full picture in terms of sexual health but like any other issue it only becomes important to them when they find themselves needing help and advice,” says Mary Crawford, director of Brook NI which used to be regularly picketed by anti-abortion campaigners.
More generally, Crawford says, sex education in Northern Ireland is different from elsewhere in the UK because “the moral, conservative nature of our political, educational and social mores does not allow for open discussion on a number of issues, including abortion, homosexuality or pleasure.
“The result of this means our young people are disadvantaged in terms of being able to make informed choices when they may be feeling most vulnerable,” she adds.
Fiona Johnston is an outreach worker for Brook who previously worked in the Coleraine training centre where she now delivers sex education. There used to be a familiar pattern of pregnancies among the students – the girls would start their course in September and they’d be pregnant by Christmas, she says. One year, in a class of 21 trainee hairdressers, seven were pregnant within a matter of months, with only two completing the two-year course without getting pregnant.
“All of them kept their babies and they never returned to education. Most of them are still stay-at-home mums,” says Johnston. The teenage pregnancy rate is going down in Northern Ireland, as it is elsewhere in the UK (839 pregnancies in 2014, compared with 1,524 in 2001) but there is still ignorance. One girl, Johnston says, didn’t know whether ovaries were male or female organs; another didn’t know that men ejaculate.
“It’s supposed to be taught in schools,” she says, “but it’s done around the ethos of the school. If it’s a church school that doesn’t believe in contraception, they won’t teach it.”
Love for Life, a Christian charity, is the biggest external provider of sex education in Northern Ireland’s schools. Last year more than 30,000 young people in both primary and secondary schools received a Love for Life programme, which is intended to support the curriculum already taught in schools. The Guardian recently sat in on a two-hour session in a boys’ grammar school in Belfast.
Unlike the Brook approach, which focuses on smaller groups, the Love for Life programme was delivered to more than 100 boys aged 14 and 15 sitting in the school hall, by two programme leaders armed with microphones and a white screen. The session is called Icebergs and Babies – icebergs, it turns out, refers to STIs – and it explores relationships and sex through two cartoon teenagers called Oscar and Martha.
It’s approaching the end of the school day, but the boys are brilliantly attentive, even when members of the rugby team have to shuffle out early for a match. They are invited to ask questions and they bravely contribute throughout, but the hall is too big and the numbers too great for any real honesty.
The presentation is lively and slick. We hear about the laws surrounding sexting and the sexualisation of society; about the pressure on young people to have sex; about choice and virginity; how the media unfairly portrays virgins as “geeks and freaks” and how you can get pregnant without having full penetrative sex if there is “skin to skin contact in the genital area”.
‘It was the scariest thing I've ever done’: the Irish women forced to travel for abortions
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“What about gay sex?” one boy asks unexpectedly. “There’s no chance of pregnancy,” the programme leader responds quickly, but no real discussion follows.
Then it’s on to STIs and contraception, but it’s nowhere near as comprehensive as Brook, although the pupils are younger. And the issue of faith keeps popping up. “There are lots of ways to reduce the risks of pregnancy and STIs,” the presenter tells the boys, adding, “If you follow a faith, that might have something to say to you about these things.”
Later, the issue of abortion is raised in the event of an unplanned pregnancy. “Obviously it’s illegal in this country and would involve a journey across the water, which would have financial implications,” the presenter says, before turning once again to faith, religion, morals and what your family might teach you.
“Faith-based RSE is moralistic,” says Mark Breslin, director of the NI Family Planning Association. “It’s not our job to tell a young person what to think. It has to be an open, honest discussion. People talk about RSE being about young people having morals or values, but whose? It’s about giving a young person the opportunity to make an informed choice.”
The Coleraine boys have enjoyed the Brook sessions. At the end of the morning they grab their high-energy drinks and a few sample condoms and proceed to peel them out of their packets and on to the handlebars of the nearest parked moped, gigging all the while. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/business/nils-pratley-on-finance/2023/mar/07/labours-messaging-on-business-tax-is-right-just-dont-leave-a-long-term-plan-until-the-last-minute | Business | 2023-03-07T17:33:19.000Z | Nils Pratley | Labour’s messaging on business tax is right. Just don’t leave a long-term plan until the last minute | Nils Pratley | It was easy to spot the gaps that Labour needs to fill in the review of business taxation announced by the shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves. On the rate of corporation tax, Labour wants to be “in lockstep with the G7”, which is a terribly vague formulation. On long-term tax breaks to boost investment, Reeves is enthusiastic but has committed to nothing specific. Any role for windfall taxes, where Labour is still calling for a “proper” additional levy on North Sea producers, was not mentioned in her speech to the trade body Make UK.
The “to-be-decided” list, then, is long. In the meantime, Reeves said Labour would support “a genuine boost to investment … if it is affordable”, if that’s what the government produces in next week’s budget. There was nothing here to frighten business – but, equally, nothing much to excite.
Yet one core principle was definitely worth spelling out: a sensible regime for business tax must be capable of lasting the length of a parliament. High taxes deter investment but so does fear of the unexpected. “In recent years, corporation tax has gone up and down like a yo-yo while the government has papered over the cracks with short-term fixes like the super-deduction,” argued Reeves, overdoing her metaphors but accurately describing the Conservative experience.
George Osborne arrived as chancellor in 2010 with a mission to lower corporation tax, taking it down in stages from 28% to 19% in 2017 (although the last shove was by Philip Hammond). Now, barring a monumental U-turn, Jeremy Hunt will move the rate to 25% at the start of April – that pledge was one of the key elements in the overthrow of Trussonomics last autumn.
The crack-covering manoeuvres are well known. They were the yearly fiddles with investment allowances and R&D (research and development) tax credits that ensured that, even as the headline corporate rate tax fell, the government’s overall tax-take from business was remarkably stable as a percentage of GDP. Companies have had a job to see the wood for the trees.
Reeves could also have pointed at Brexit because business investment in the UK only truly stalled versus G7 countries after 2016. But, yes, it is plainly true that companies tend to spend less on long-term projects if they cannot be confident about what’s coming round the next tax corner. Stability matters.
It is one reason why the super-deductions referenced by Reeves have only half succeeded. Launched by Rishi Sunak as chancellor in 2021 as a way to boost investment as the economy emerged from lockdown, they allowed companies to offset 130% of investment spending on plant and machinery against profits for two years and clearly had some impact: exhibit A is BT’s acceleration of its fast-fibre rollout. But the two-year cut-off inevitably created a “cliff edge” moment that has now arrived.
Thus the wailing from boardrooms as super-deductions disappear just as corporation tax is hiked. Take your pick from the many tallies of where the UK will sit in international league tables but the Confederation of British Industry calculates a fall from fifth-most competitive tax system in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development for capital investment to 30th place out of 38 if nothing changes.
Hunt, one assumes, is not blind to the statistics and will replace super-deductions with something. Since the increase in corporation tax will generate an extra £15bn-£18bn annually and, given that overall economic forecasts look rosier (or less horrible) than six months ago, he has some room for manoeuvre. Full expensing of capital investment in plant and machinery, costing an initial £11bn, is probably out of the question but a less generous 50% formula feels possible.
If so, though, Hunt would also be guilty of the “chaotic 11th-hour approach” cited by Reeves. Covid and the Truss interregnum obviously didn’t help but hosting an annual guessing game on allowances is no way to encourage long-term investment. Boards don’t only take decisions at budget-time.
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Note, too, that President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act programme in the US is a 10-year project, which is the other reason – aside from the lavish subsidies for green energy and manufacturing – why companies are cooing over it. The UK can’t compete with US largesse but it can vow to be roughly consistent on business tax and incentives.
Reeves, then, has read that particular breeze correctly. It’s a start. But actual tax and investment policies, as opposed to tonal shifts, are still required. If long-term planning is your pitch to business, you cannot wait until a month before a general election to unveil what you’d do differently. A review is welcome. Don’t take ages to complete it. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/16/jimmy-lai-editors-from-around-the-world-call-for-release-of-hong-kong-media-mogul | World news | 2023-05-16T04:00:02.000Z | Amy Hawkins | Jimmy Lai: editors from around the world call for release of Hong Kong media mogul | More than 100 journalists and editors have signed an open letter calling for the immediate release of Jimmy Lai, a British media mogul detained in Hong Kong on national security charges.
Leading global media figures including the Guardian editor-in-chief, Katharine Viner, and Nobel peace prize winner Maria Ressa called for the charges against Lai and other journalists in Hong Kong to be dropped.
Lai, who is 75 and was first arrested in 2020, is the founder and publisher of Apple Daily, a liberal newspaper that was forced to close in 2021 after the Chinese Communist party cracked down on pro-democracy protests. A longtime critic of the party, Lai is now one of the most high-profile activists in Hong Kong to have been arrested since the Chinese government imposed a sweeping national security law on the territory in 2020.
Lai was charged with violating the national security law in August 2020. His trial for that case is scheduled for September, but since his arrest he has been convicted on separate charges of fraud and organising illegal protests – charges that his supporters say are politically motivated.
Hong Kong passes law to limit work of foreign lawyers amid ongoing Jimmy Lai case
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The signatories to the letter, which was organised by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), said: “We, as publishers and editors of news media organisations from around the world, are united in support of Apple Daily founder and publisher Jimmy Lai, and his fight for media pluralism and press freedom in Hong Kong.
“Jimmy Lai has stood for these values his entire life … In a tremendous act of courage, he chose to stay in Hong Kong and continued to publish as long as he could, despite the severe crackdown taking place around him.”
Hong Kong is ranked 140th out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2023 World Press Freedom Index, down from 58th place 10 years ago.
In March, Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC, Lai’s international lawyer, said the tactics used by Hong Kong’s authorities amounted to “lawfare” – the use of legal mechanisms to suppress opposition – citing the fraud conviction as a tool to smear Lai’s character.
On 11 May Hong Kong passed a law allowing authorities to ban foreign lawyers from working on national security cases, as a means of preventing Lai from engaging Tim Owen, a UK barrister, in his coming trial.
Lai’s supporters have also criticised the UK government for not doing enough to advocate for Lai’s release. Last week Sebastian Lai, the elder Lai’s son, said the UK government was “incredibly weak” for failing to call for the release of his father.
A spokesperson for the UK Foreign Office said it had “regularly” brought its concerns to Chinese and Hong Kong authorities, including the foreign secretary raising Lai’s case at the UN Human Rights Council in February.
“We have made clear our strong objection to China’s imposition of the national security law in Hong Kong, which is being used in a deliberate attempt to target and silence pro-democracy figures, including Jimmy Lai,” the spokesperson said. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/jul/20/australia-ethnic-segregation-minister-alan-tudge | Australia news | 2018-07-20T02:38:17.000Z | Amy Remeikis | Australia could add 'values test' for migrants, Malcolm Turnbull says | Australia will consider adding a “values test” for those considering permanent residency in order to protect its “extraordinarily successful” multicultural society, Malcolm Turnbull said.
The prime minister confirmed what his citizenship and multicultural minister Alan Tudge told the Australia/UK Leadership Forum overnight, where he floated the idea of a “values” test to fend off “segregation”.
Tudge told his London audience “our ship is slightly veering towards a European separatist multicultural model and we want to pull it back to be firmly on the Australian integrated path”.
“Some of the challenges to social cohesion that we are facing today are similar to ones that the UK is facing – such as ethnic segregation and liberal values being challenged.”
Speaking in Tasmania on Friday, Turnbull said testing potential migrants on values made sense.
“That is certainly one of the issues that we are considering but I have to say to you that we are the most successful multicultural society in the world,” he said.
Malcolm Turnbull to add hurdles for 'privilege' of Australian citizenship
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“One of the reasons we are is because we put an enormous amount of effort, in Australia, into integration, into ensuring that our form of multiculturalism is one where we can all benefit from the diversity of cultural and religious and ethnic backgrounds that Australians have.
“This is a country where 28% of Australians were born outside of Australia, over half have a parent born outside of Australia – but isn’t it remarkable that we live together is so much harmony because of the values we share and those Australian values, of democracy, freedom, the rule of law, respect for women, equality between men and women.
“All of these values are vitally important and we must never, ever take them for granted and we should always ensure that we maintain them because that is what creates this extraordinary successful multicultural society that we have.
“We look around the world, and we should do that from time to time, and you look at all of the tensions and dissent and conflict, you can see what a great achievement 25 million Australians have made.”
Senior Labor frontbencher Anthony Albanese criticised Tudge’s speech, saying ministers should promote Australia while overseas.
“It’s pretty odd that an Australian government minister goes to the UK and talks our country down,” Albanese told the Nine Network on Friday.
He said Australia was an incredibly successful multicultural nation.
“Australia, I think, is a bit of a microcosm for what the world should be. People from different religions, races and backgrounds living together overwhelmingly in harmony,” Albanese said.
Tudge said Australians should never be complacent about social cohesion, and advocated “modest incremental policy” changes now rather than “dramatic initiatives down the track”.
“If we want Australia to continue its multicultural success, we must take active steps now to ensure that social cohesion remains strong,” Tudge said.
The government has already proposed an English-language skills test, for potential permanent migrants, which last month Turnbull said would aid with integration.
The government’s attempts last year to make achieving citizenship harder, including requiring all applicants to have lived in Australia for four years on permanent residency visas, as well as an advanced English-language test, were rejected by the Senate.
Immigration is shaping up as one of the upcoming election’s biggest issues, as the government faces pressure from conservative members of its backbench, and crossbenchers such as Pauline Hanson, to cut Australia’s immigration rate to ease population pressures in major centres.
Australian Associated Press contributed to this report | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/sep/01/leeds-hull-kr-super-league-the-qualifiers-match-report | Sport | 2018-09-01T17:19:00.000Z | Aaron Bower | Craig Hall hat-trick helps Hull KR hand Leeds a first defeat in Qualifiers | There are still plenty of twists and turns to come in the Qualifiers but when the dust settles in a month’s time and the remaining four places in Super League for next year are decided, this could stand out as a significant afternoon for Hull Kingston Rovers’ survival hopes.
Defeat here would have been by no means fatal but, given the manner in which they were relegated two years ago, a start yielding one victory from the first three games would have certainly set alarm bells ringing.
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But this is a different Hull KR side to the one two years ago: illustrated by the fact that when they twice fell behind in the second half they still found a way to win.
“It was a must-win and to beat a top-notch Super League side is big for us,” said their coach, Tim Sheens, following a rollercoaster 80 minutes.
With 13 tries in all and the lead changing hands six times, victory was never assured for Rovers until the final seconds. They join Leeds with two wins from the opening three fixtures and, realistically, both should be good enough to survive the Qualifiers and take their place at the starting line next February.
Despite their matching records, the mood in both camps was quite different. “When you concede 38 points at home and you get what you deserve,” said Leeds’s director of rugby, Kevin Sinfield.
Leeds led three times and had they held on for victory, they would have been all-but secure in the coveted top three given their fixtures to come.
However, the frailties that led to Brian McDermott’s eight-year tenure ending midway through this season are still there for all to see: particularly, as Sinfield pointed out, in defence – with the tackling from both sides resembling a game of touch‑and‑pass on occasions.
Rovers responded well to Joel Moon’s early try, scoring three high-class efforts through Adam Quinlan, Craig Hall – who finished with a hat-trick – and Robbie Mulhern. That made it 16-4 to Rovers but by half-time, a three-minute spell with tries by Nathaniel Peteru and Richie Myler for the hosts looked as though it would be crucial as it put Leeds ahead 22-16.
Previously, Hull KR would have collapsed in that situation, but not this group. It was a seesaw second half; Hall’s second and third put them back ahead before Matt Parcell and Tom Briscoe scored to put the Rhinos in front.
The visitors finished stronger, though, and after Chris Atkin’s superb try, Junior Vaivai – coupled with two goals from Hall – ensured a vital victory for the Robins.
Warrington’s Bryson Goodwin racks up five tries in Hull thrashing
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Powell salutes comeback stars in Castleford victory
Daryl Powell saluted his comeback stars Luke Gale and Ben Roberts as Castleford virtually guaranteed a top-four finish with a 36-4 win over the Challenge Cup winners, Catalans Dragons, in the Super 8s.
Man of Steel Gale kicked six goals from seven attempts and was involved in four of his team’s six tries having not played since 27 April while recovering from a fractured kneecap.
Hamstring and knee problems forced the versatile Roberts to sit out 11 matches but he came off the bench to contribute to Tigers’ success.
“They fitted in seamlessly,” said the head coach Powell. “Galey has trained like he has never been away. He is an experienced player, an international footballer and Benny did way more minutes than I expected. It’s great to have them both back.”
The Widnes coach, Francis Cummins, accused some of his players of “giving in” during their latest damaging Super 8s Qualifiers defeat. A 42-22 loss to Toulouse in the south of France leaves the Super League wooden spoonists without a win so far in the Qualifiers and staring at the prospect of relegation to the Championship.
“We had a few players who had given in by then, which is the worst feeling in the world,” Cummins said. “It’s a strange one because we dominated field position and worked really hard to win the ruck, but we didn’t have enough quality down the other end.”
Toronto are back on course for promotion after gaining a 34-22 win over London Broncos in the third round of the Super 8s Qualifiers. The Wolfpack, who began their campaign with an away victory over Halifax, bounced back from their home defeat by Hull KR with a routine victory over the Broncos in front of a crowd of 7,557 at the Lamport Stadium. PA | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2024/jan/26/our-flag-means-death-cancelled-fan-campaign-new-season | Television & radio | 2024-01-25T14:00:06.000Z | Patrick Lenton | Our Flag Means Death was cancelled. Its fans are fighting back: ‘Unhinged – in a good way’ | In 2019 a woman named Emperial Young went on an eight-day hunger strike outside the Netflix building in New York, protesting against the streaming giant’s decision to cancel the cult hit TV show The OA.
“Entertainment is food for the human soul and Netflix’s algorithm isn’t measuring that right now,” Young told Insider. “And by not taking physical food, I’m saying that this show is more important food to me than actual food.”
Fan campaigns to renew cancelled shows are nothing new. From the outcry after the cancellation of the cult sci-fi cowboy show Firefly to the incredibly successful mission to fund a Veronica Mars movie, fandoms have often rallied around the shows they love, and attempted to keep them alive. But going on hunger strike? These aren’t your grandparents’ fandoms any more.
Anne With an E fans wage digital war with Netflix over cancellation
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These groups have got far more organised and creative – like the incredibly passionate fandom behind Our Flag Means Death, who are now settling in for a fight.
After two seasons, the queer pirate romcom starring Taika Waititi and Rhys Darby was cancelled by HBO’s Max this month – and its fans quickly mobilised. They raised more than US$21,000 for the campaign, which was used to purchase a billboard in Times Square and have a plane fly over Hollywood with a banner reading “Save Our Flag Means Death”. They also flooded Max’s social media, phone lines and customer feedback inboxes en masse, and launched a petition that has just under 80,000 signatures at time of writing.
Eloise M is a copywriter from Sydney who is using her marketing and communications background to help the campaign, known as Renew as a Crew. A large portion of the campaign revolves around finding a new streamer to give the show a home, and she advises fellow fans how to engage with streamers and brands online.
Along with raising funds for their campaign, Renew as a Crew has also raised money for charity, with A$25,821 going to RainbowYOUTH in New Zealand (where the second season was filmed), and A$15,174 being sent to Care for Gaza. “It’s been great to be involved in, not just to see everyone’s dedication, but how creative and hilarious some community members are in their tactics, which span from ‘respectful and sincere’ to ‘fairly unhinged’ – in a good way,” Eloise M says.
One more view coming up in 1 minute!
Thank you to everyone who donated and worked hard to make this weekend happen.#SaveOFMD #Adop pic.twitter.com/UAbPoEtB9w
— Renew as a Crew - #SaveOFMD (@RenewAsACrew) January 21, 2024
Our Flag Means Death is the latest in a spree of cancellations happening in the streaming world. In 2023 alone cancelled shows included Disney+’s Willow, Netflix’s Shadow and Bone and Mindhunter, Paramount’s Star Trek: Prodigy and Max’s Gossip Girl, to name just a handful. “It’s a shame because TV shows just aren’t given the time, season lengths and breathing room to establish themselves and their fanbases in this environment,” Eloise M says.
The OA was a precursor in 2019; that same year, Netflix’s Anne With an E was cancelled after three seasons – and its fans mobilised accordingly. “Our petition (as far as I know) remains the biggest fan-made petition to renew a show, ever – something we are still proud of,” says Lisa E, who was instrumental in the campaign to save the cult favourite.
“It started the moment the cancellation was announced. We trended very quickly on Twitter that day, I think we amassed something like 1m tweets in a matter of hours, with over 13m tweets sent to Netflix and CBC in the first week.”
‘We were kicking a dead horse’: Anne With an E fans had to give up their campaign to save the show. Photograph: Netflix
There have been some success stories from these campaigns. In 2018 the cop sitcom Brooklyn Nine-Nine was saved by NBC a day after it was cancelled by Fox, amid huge outcry. The sci-fi show Sense8 was given a two-hour feature finale after a passionate campaign. The Sapphic favourite Warrior Nun is returning as a trilogy of films, thanks to its fans.
But it doesn’t always work. Anne With an E fans used many of the same tricks as Our Flag Means Death, including buying billboards and social media strategies; they even had Ryan Reynolds tweeting his support. But they gave up in 2020.
“We threw our hands up and decided we were kicking a dead horse,” Lisa E says. “I think every fandom has a right to fight for what they love, even if it’s a battle they won’t win. Because oftentimes this leads to some great stuff – friendships, money raised for charities, etc. And hey, you never know, right?”
Butshe has a warning for people who are getting ready to fight for their favourite show. “Make sure this is worth the energy and time you’re about to spend,” she says. “The odds of your campaign being successful are probably zero, so if you’re willing to take that risk and go for it, then by all means go for it – but don’t say I didn’t warn you.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/mar/03/oscars-fan-favorite-academy-awards-hashtag | Film | 2022-03-03T15:40:28.000Z | Stuart Heritage | #OscarsFanFavorite: how the Academy’s plea for popularity fell into chaos | Unless you happen to have a vested interest in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, it’s plain to see that the Oscars are trapped in a death spiral. Viewers are abandoning the ceremony in record numbers and, after last year’s debacle – a bizarre jokeless gushfest held in a train station – it’s hard to see how they will ever return.
The big question at this year’s Oscars – will anyone watch the ceremony?
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Fortunately, the Academy braintrust has schemed up two dramatic changes to this year’s ceremony that should help to bring things back into line. The first is that a bunch of awards won’t actually be televised live but edited into the broadcast, which will help to make the show’s runtime far less punishing. The second change, though, has already backfired.
The biggest complaint about the Oscars has always been that it celebrates a narrow stratum of middlebrow dramas that only exist to win Oscars, while anything too expensive or popular is bizarrely shunned. And so this year the Academy decided to address this by creating a new “fan favourite” category, where real people were asked to vote for the sort of films that real people enjoy. And they did this via a Twitter vote. You’re already way ahead of me here, aren’t you?
Introducing #OscarsFanFavorite and #OscarsCheerMoment!
How To Vote:
• Tweet your favorite film of 2021 with #OscarsFanFavorite
• Tweet the movie scene that made you cheer the loudest (ANY movie/year) with #OscarsCheerMoment
• OR vote on https://t.co/dadD2i7Cy0 pic.twitter.com/HJclTiYGni
— The Academy (@TheAcademy) February 17, 2022
That’s right. The Oscars chose to popularise their ceremony by handing the reins over to the social media platform that once voted to call a government polar research vessel Boaty McBoatface. As such, at least as things currently stand, the #OscarsFanFavorite hashtag has become a nightmarish mishmash of bad choices, joke entries and protest votes. I say this as an impartial observer, but it has the potential to be absolutely hilarious.
In fairness, some of the films you expected to be included in #OscarsFanFavorite are present and correct. Spider-Man: No Way Home, the runaway sensation that single-handedly shocked the post-Covid box office back to life, is among the choices. As is The Suicide Squad, arguably the only other standout superhero movie of the last 12 months.
The punctuation nightmare of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Tick, Tick… Boom! has also made the shortlist, presumably because it makes up roughly a third of all TikTok videos in circulation. Dune is there, too, as well as The Power of The Dog – a sign that the thinnest of slivers exists between popularity and critical acclaim.
And then we get into the weirdness. Sing 2 is the only animated film to make the cut – in the year of Encanto and The Mitchells vs the Machines – but that can probably be forgiven due to the fact that Sing 2 is a non-stop start-to-finish blast. There is also Malignant, which is essentially the scientific opposite of Sing 2. Its inclusion here is probably down to the wild plotting decisions that occur in the latter half of the movie – no spoilers here – so perhaps it gained its place as revenge for the lack of awards won by its twisty cousins Fight Club and The Sixth Sense.
Dave Bautista and Ella Purnell in Army of the Dead. Photograph: Clay Enos/AP
Then there’s Army of the Dead. Now, Army of the Dead is not a particularly good film. It’s slapdash and forgettable, and wouldn’t normally feature on anyone’s best of list. But you know who directed Army of the Dead? That’s right, Zack Snyder. And you know who has an army of angry, revved-up keyboard warriors who still froth with anguish over the end results of Justice League? That’s right, Zack Snyder. The inclusion of Army of the Dead is a vote of a support, plain and simple. Zack Snyder could have released a YouTube video of a kitten farting into a jar this year, and it would have still made the shortlist.
The same goes for Minamata, a tiny film that has yet to make $2m. Again, Minamata is only on the list because it stars the newly “cancelled” actor Johnny Depp, a man who inspires a huge swell of support from a relatively small group of people online. A vanishingly small amount of people have actually seen Minamata, but nevertheless it exists here as a protest vote against cancellation, against Amber Heard, against the Fantastic Beasts franchise, against anyone that turned their back on Depp after a court labelled him a domestic abuser (which is to say everyone except the crew of Minamata and whoever made that perfume ad he’s in).
Weirdest of all, though, is Cinderella. Honest to God one of the worst films ever made, you suspect that Cinderella only made the list because it stars Camila Cabello, and lots of people follow Camila Cabello on social media. That can be the only logical explanation. Cinderella cannot win this vote. It must not. For Cinderella to be considered in any way a success would tear a hole in the fabric of reality as we know it. We must stop this with all our power.
Cinderella won’t win #OscarsFanFavorite, though. This is a popularity contest, and No Way Home is convincingly the most popular of the lot. Unless something terrible happens on the night, this is the way that things will go. But I hope the Academy has learned an important lesson here. As bad as your show might be, you must never ever hand the reins to the internet. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/social-care-network/social-life-blog/2017/nov/01/details-of-care-cases-are-concealed-for-good-reason-the-press-must-respect-that | Social Care Network | 2017-11-01T09:07:32.000Z | Joanna Nicolas | Details of care cases are concealed for good reason. The press must respect that | The recent debate around the reporting of the Muslim fostering row has reignited an impassioned subject – the perceived, and sometimes real, hostility of local authorities when working with the press. Why are local authorities so unwilling to engage with the media?
Muslim fostering row: Careless press must be held to account
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I know some journalists are contacted almost daily by aggrieved and desperate parents who allege poor, and sometimes dangerous, practice by social workers. I also understand that journalists can be frustrated if “no comment” is the only response they ever receive from a local authority after requesting details about a case. But in the face of relentless criticism about this brick wall, it is time to take a step back and consider the reasons why local authorities rarely share details of cases with the press.
I believe few journalists write about children’s social care with integrity; few are interested in the truth or facts. It seems the majority are only interested in shocking stories about inept social workers, and when they do check the facts, the local authority will not speak to them. In my experience, some journalists then report inaccurately and irresponsibly. One journalist once said to me: “We’re going to write the story anyway and if they won’t talk to us we will make it up.” Local authorities then become even more wary of speaking to the press, and so the cycle continues.
It is important, of course, to differentiate between a journalist who just wants a shocking headline and one who wants to expose poor practice and improve children’s lives. I have met both in the 10 years I have been working with the media as a child protection consultant and trainer. By reporting responsibly, journalists can play a vital role in informing and educating the public. On that point, I agree with every word David Niven wrote recently.
But when journalists request comments on individual cases, what is sometimes forgotten is that local authorities cannot break the confidentiality of the people concerned. The priority is not the local authority, the court or the press – it is the child and their family. Some journalists may want the local authority to explain its actions, but it would be wrong for a council to give the press or anyone else intimate details about that family.
Why can't social workers share success stories with the media?
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Most parents who abuse their children do not set out to deliberately harm them. Many are vulnerable themselves for a variety of reasons, and their children even more so. In most homes where children are at risk of harm there are issues of domestic abuse, unmet mental health needs or substance misuse – increasingly linked with homelessness and poverty. These are the most private, intimate and often shameful aspects of people’s lives, so the priority should not be satisfying the curiosity of a journalist or the public to know what’s going on. As Niven wrote, some people confuse confidentiality with secrecy.
A mother I worked with told the press her child had been removed because she had a medical condition. There was outrage among the media and the public that social workers would penalise this poor, defenceless mother because of her condition. She gave numerous interviews and sections of the press lapped it up. It would have been wrong, indeed immoral, if the local authority had told journalists the real reason the court granted the order to remove the child – that she left her child alone to have sex with men for money to buy drugs. She did also have a medical condition. It is absolutely right that the local authority gave a “no comment” response in this case because that young woman was so vulnerable herself and had come from an abusive background.
So sometimes local authorities take the flak and that is the way it should be. The priority must always be the child and their family, and journalists should recognise and respect that. Ofsted inspects and regulates children’s social care and there are mechanisms for parents to complain about how they have been treated by the local authority. I do not deny the importance of investigative journalism, but the media should not be mistaken for judge and jury.
We do need to find a way to break the cycle of mistrust between local authorities and the press. It would be constructive to create a mechanism for journalists to inform local authorities when they believe they have substantial evidence from a parent or carer that there has been poor practice, perhaps through the local safeguarding children board (LSCB). Claims could be considered by the LSCB, appropriate action could be taken and Ofsted could see all the referrals.
Fostering is complex. Lurid headlines stoking fear of Muslims don’t help
Esmat Jeraj
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But let’s allow the experts, those in possession of all the facts, to decide if there has been poor practice, not the press.
Joanna Nicolas is a child protection consultant and social worker
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If you’re looking for a social care job or need to recruit staff, visit Guardian Jobs. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2013/jul/20/top-10-music-venues-denver-colorado | Travel | 2013-07-19T23:10:00.000Z | John Wenzel | Top 10 music venues in Denver, Colorado | Paramount Theatre
Denver is a relatively young town with a shortage of truly historic venues, but the Paramount Theatre, which opened in 1930 as a grand movie house, is a well-preserved art-deco marvel and a legitimate historic site. The red-curtained stage regularly hosts national (if often sedate) touring acts, stand-up comedians and bestselling authors, as well as the occasional theatrical or musical production. The 1,700-capacity space doesn't look much from the outside but its vertical neon marquee hides one of the most charming rooms in the region.
1621 Glenarm Place, +1 303 623 0106, paramountdenver.com
Gothic Theatre
Gothic Theatre
A few minutes south of downtown Denver, this 1920s art-deco theatre has a wide, inviting floor, a tiered balcony and excellent views throughout. Adding to the backlit cabaret vibe is the recently muscled-up booking and promotion of the Gothic, following its takeover by live music promotor AEG Live. Few venues deliver as much atmosphere and comfort with such a range of shows.
3263 South Broadway, Englewood, +1 303 789 9206, gothictheatre.com
Swallow Hill Music
Arron "Ukulele Loki" Johnson leads hundreds of ukulele players in a mass ukulele lesson Photograph: Andy Cross/Denver Post via Getty Images
It's easy to tap into Denver's storied folk-music heritage with a show here: it's a non-profit school and complex that grew out of the Denver Folklore Center to host more than 200 shows annually at on-site venues such as Daniels Hall and the Tuft Theatre. Bluegrass banjo jams, Native American singer-songwriters and touring artists such as Leon Redbone share rooms with calm, appreciative audiences at this all-things-acoustic haven.
71 East Yale Avenue, +1 303 777 1003, swallowhillmusic.org
Bluebird Theater
Photograph: Brian Brainerd/Denver Post via Getty Images
Denver has no shortage of mid-size music venues, but the Bluebird Theater, a neon-ringed former movie house and rehabbed porn theatre, is arguably the best. Excellent sightlines and a chest-rattling sound system complement a mix of heavy metal, indie acts and singer-songwriters at this always-busy, 500-capacity room. Think Art Brut, Kurt Vile, Hank III, Apples in Stereo and Mason Jennings. Don't let the sometimes-surly staff dissuade you from throwing your best devil signs. A small but homey balcony offers a darkened spot from which to sip your lager in anonymity. Be sure to explore the colourful bars and restaurants along this hip stretch of Colfax Avenue before the show.
3317 East Colfax Avenue, +1 303 377 1666, bluebirdtheater.net
The Grizzly Rose
Photograph: Karl Gehring/Denver Post via Getty Images
Cowboy hats and Levi's are the uniform at this sprawling country-and-western nightclub north of downtown. It devotes as much space to mechanical bulls and pool tables as line-dancing floors and a live music stage (filled with country and hard rock acts six nights a week). Sundays are all-ages, so if you've got a little buckaroo looking to hear some twang, it's the ideal place to push the limits of their bedtime.
5450 North Valley Highway, +1 303 295 1330, grizzlyrose.com
Beta Nightclub
Beta Nightclub Nightclub, Denver
Denver's Lower Downtown neighbourhood (LoDo to locals) is packed at weekends, but Beta Nightclub is an oasis in the dude-bro desert. The spare, multi-tiered space is frequently voted among the best electronic music clubs in the world thanks to its top-notch touring DJs and fantastically calibrated sound system. Denver boasts a surprisingly robust dance music scene, but Beta has no competition when it comes to its live roster and sound quality. Chalk it up to the fact that its owner is the co-founder of Beatport, the popular website that doubles as iTunes for DJs.
1909 Blake Street, +1 303 383 1909, betanightclub.com. Open Thurs-Sat 9pm-2am
Meadowlark Bar
Photograph: Hyoung Chang/Denver Post via Getty Images
Before their 2012 Grammy nominations, New York transplants The Lumineers honed folk-pop songs like Ho Hey at the Meadowlark's cozy open-mic scene. The handsome, subterranean bar has a ground-level patio that looks a bit like an exploded garage sale, providing respite from the often shoulder-to-shoulder crowds inside. From DJ-led dance parties to standup comedy and art rock, Meadowlark shows feel like insider affairs for the lucky few who can find it in Denver's rapidly gentrifying warehouse district.
2701 Larimer Street, +1 303 293 0251, meadowlarkbar.com
Dazzle Jazz
Ron Miles performing at Dazzle Jazz Photograph: Hyoung Chang/Denver Post via Getty Images
The purple neon that rings the outside of this Capitol Hill lounge are reflected in the windows of the surrounding buildings, and truly, Dazzle is a beacon for jazz lovers. A performance and dinner space, it hosts the region's best mix of local and national jazz talent, from avant garde to big band and solo artists. But the classy, inviting front room (or Dizzy Room) is equally popular with its liver-testing martini list and appetizer menus constructed from old gatefold LP covers. The Dizzy Room also offers free live jams and pop-in artists, so don't be surprised if your happy-hour drinks are suddenly soundtracked by a sax solo or torch singer.
930 Lincoln Street, +1 303 839 5100, dazzlejazz.com. Mon-Wed 4pm-midnight, Thurs 4pm-1am, Fri 11am-1am, Sat 4pm-1am, Sun 9.30am-midnight
Larimer Lounge
Photograph: Kathryn Scott Osler/Denver Post via Getty Images
The dear departed 15th Street Tavern was one of Denver's go-to places for punk, indie and alternative acts, so when co-owner Scott Campbell founded the Larimer Lounge a little over a decade ago, all eyes were on the scummy, warehouse-district venue. After dozens of clever remodels and barn-burning indie rock shows (including Arcade Fire and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club) the Larimer has proved itself as a catalyst for the revitalisation of Denver's underground music scene, and the entire surrounding warehouse district.
2721 Larimer Street, +1 303 291 1007, larimerlounge.com. Mon-Fri 4pm-2am, Sat 6pm-to close, Sun, dependent on show
Hi-Dive
This sweaty, Pabst Blue Ribbon-soaked room is the heart of hipsterdom along Denver's bustling South Broadway corridor, hosting touring indie acts on their way up (think Vampire Weekend and Fleet Foxes) and an eclectic assortment of the Mile High City's best bands. The 300-person capacity club is also the home base for Marcus Mumford's pal Nathaniel Rateliff, who plies his delicate folk – and, lately, raucous soul side project The Night Sweats – from its tiny wooden stage. Before the show, pop in next door at sister bar/restaurant Sputnik to hear DJs spin vintage wax while you nosh on banh mi Vietnamese baguettes and housemade vegetarian corn dogs.
7 South Broadway, +1 303 733 0230, hi-dive.com
Unless opening times are stated, check listings for details
John Wenzel is an arts and entertainment critic at The Denver Post and columnist for The Post's music site, HeyReverb.com. Follow him on twitter @johntwenzel
For more information on holidays in the USA, visit DiscoverAmerica.com | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/jan/22/oscar-nominations-2019-roma-and-the-favourite-deserve-acclaim-but-no-female-directors-is-woeful | Film | 2019-01-22T16:00:31.000Z | Peter Bradshaw | Oscar nominations 2019: Roma and The Favourite deserve acclaim, but no female directors is woeful | Once again, the mysterious consensus-accretion of awards season has done its work and the Oscar nomination list has a big showing for Alfonso Cuarón’s magnificent Roma, with 10 nominations — and, notably, just as big a score for critics’ darling and perennial talking point Yorgos Lanthimos’s bizarre Restoration comedy The Favourite. This also has 10 nominations, including of course a best actress nomination for Olivia Colman, who this year has become (justly) catapulted to international treasure status. (An upgrade from national to international treasure status might also be due for Richard E Grant, who has a best supporting actor nomination for his venal Brit boozehound in Can You Ever Forgive Me?) These are the prestige products, the blue-chip movies that the Academy hivemind has decided are the headline successes.
As for the snubs, complaining about these has evolved to such an extent in recent years that they have become the pundits’ alternative refusenik fantasy league. But the lack of women directors in the best picture and best director lists is woeful, at least partly because they exclude one of the very best films: Debra Granik’s superb Leave No Trace. There is also the exclusion of Lynne Ramsay’s You Were Never Really Here, her excellent variation on the Taxi Driver theme starring Joaquin Phoenix. Barry Jenkins’s fine If Beale Street Could Talk has been largely overlooked, although I am confident that Regina King will win best supporting actress for her delicate, intelligently judged performance in that movie. Nicole Kidman deserved a shot at an Oscar for her very interesting performance in Destroyer, and Steve McQueen’s terrific thriller Widows is turning into this awards season’s Cinderella, bafflingly excluded from ball after ball. The biggest and most deplorable snub was however that Ari Aster’s brilliant scary movie Hereditary received nothing: with a lead performance from the wonderful Toni Collette which could go toe-to-toe with any of the current contenders.
Glenn Close, left, in The Wife. Photograph: Graeme Hunter/Allstar/Sony Pictures Classics
Bubbling under the big two are the more middleweight/commercial contenders: eight nominations for Adam McKay’s flashy satire Vice, with its entertaining latexed turn from Christian Bale as Bush-era vice-president Dick Cheney. Eight nominations also for Bradley Cooper’s terrific new sugar-rush version of A Star Is Born, which I continue to think is one of the very best films of the year, despite some medium-sized reservations raised elsewhere; more of a sidelash than a backlash. But I should now concede a minor fault in this film which I should have spotted from the beginning. It is of course — I admit it — highly implausible that Lady Gaga’s character should be so against taking pictures of celebs on mobile phones; in the real world, an ambitious singer-songwriter like her would be selfie-ing, Instagramming, SoundClouding etc non-stop.
Quick Guide
Oscars 2019
Show
Just behind with seven nods, Marvel makes its Academy Awards debut with the highly entertaining Afro-futurist extravaganza Black Panther: an entirely justified nomination for an excellent film which has demonstrated extraordinary popularity and resounding box-office clout.
There’s five for Green Book, the true-ish story of African-American pianist Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali) being ferried around in the 60s by a “goombah” Italian-American white driver (Viggo Mortensen). The liberal white/black balance narrative has not found universal favour, Don Shirley’s surviving relatives have complained about inaccuracies contrived, evidently, in the services of this fifty-fifty approach, and nominee Ali was reported to have remarked: “I did the best I could with the material I had” — which has to be the most self-deprecating personal publicity campaign in the history of the Academy awards.
Gwilym Lee, left, Rami Malek and Joe Mazzello in Bohemian Rhapsody. Photograph: Alex Bailey/AP
Hilariously, the Freddie Mercury feelgood biopic Bohemian Rhapsody continues on its triumphal progress with five nods, including one for its undeniably impressive turn from Rami Malek – and very much none for its disgraced credited director Bryan Singer, who unrepentantly posted a “thank you” message on Instagram after its Golden Globes success in which he, again, did not personally participate. There is an excellent chance of Bohemian Rhapsody converting some of these nominations into wins and indeed of Singer embarrassing the industry again with another pointed thankbrag on social media.
And what of the wunderkind Damien Chazelle? His First Man, a very stirring, if conservative account of Neil Armstrong and the moon landing, starring Ryan Gosling and Claire Foy, has picked up four nominations, but is not predicted to trouble the scorer much, or at all, on the night. There’s no doubt about it: First Man somehow hasn’t got the momentum. Can this really be because of a dirty-tricks social media campaign to signal-boost Republican complaints about Chazelle failing to show the American flag being planted on the moon? Stranger things have happened.
The best actor race is anyone’s guess. Almost any of the contenders could win: and it could even be Willem Dafoe’s year for his straightforwardly earnest portrayal of Vincent Van Gogh in Julian Schnabel’s At Eternity’s Gate. Christian Bale could pinch it for his Dick Cheney, perhaps because the Hollywood establishment is nostalgically/masochistically yearning for a rightwing Republican bad guy of the pre-Trump old school. Bradley Cooper is great in A Star Is Born. Only snobs deny it.
Willem Dafoe in At Eternity’s Gate. Photograph: Lily Gavin/AP
As for lead actress, this has to be Glenn Close’s year. Her performance, in The Wife, as the enigmatically reserved wife of the conceited Saul Bellow-style Nobel laureate novelist is a high-IQ treat. But every one of the other nominees (including Colman, Roma’s Yalitza Aparicio, Lady Gaga in A Star Is Born and most interestingly the outstanding Melissa McCarthy in Can You Ever Forgive Me?) is entirely plausible.
Elsewhere, the director’s list is interesting. Spike Lee actually makes his debut as a director for BlacKkKlansman (his 1990 nomination for Do the Right Thing was as a screenwriter). Lee is an extremely popular nominee and he could well win this category, despite the heavy-hitter competition from Paweł Pawlikowski, Cuarón, McKay and Lanthimos.
The nearest thing to a shoo-in of this Oscar season, apart from Regina King, has to be Free Solo in the documentary list, a gasp-inducing study of Alex Honnold who climbs terrifyingly high rock faces without a rope. It is, however, disappointing that Tim Wardle’s Three Identical Strangers didn’t make it on to this list, or indeed Peter Jackson’s marvellous first world war film They Shall Not Grow Old. Also, many will have been hoping that Joe Pearlman and David Soutar’s Bros: After the Screaming Stops might have got a nomination. If that had won, the Goss brothers could have got up on the Oscar stage and sentimentally demonstrated their boyhood “dart-throwing” game.
Regina King in If Beale Street Could Talk. Photograph: Tatum Mangus/AP
The other clear shoo-in is Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse for animation — a film which is witty, freaky and mind-bending and probably the best superhero film of all time.
An intriguing, and wide-open Oscar race. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/aug/13/if-men-find-three-minutes-in-a-menopause-simulator-is-no-joke-imagine-a-decade | Opinion | 2022-08-13T13:15:00.000Z | Catherine Bennett | Now our ‘menopause allies’ really know how we suffer. Isn’t that right, Iain Duncan Smith? | Catherine Bennett | Shortly before his relaunch as a lead apologist for Liz Truss, Sir Iain Duncan Smith had enough time on his hands to try on a MenoVest, a kind of heated gilet now enjoying a moment. This successor to the pregnancy simulator, with its understated hint of the “This is what a feminist looks like” T-shirt, is advertised as converting its male wearers into “menopause allies”.
Last week’s best known recruit was the BBC presenter Jeremy Vine. After moments in the gilet, he told a campaigner: “I’m now suffering what you suffered.” In fact, Vine suspected, he was already cognitively struggling, just like an actual menopausal woman having a hot flush: “I can’t even think of a question now.” Mercifully it had passed before management got to hear about it.
The response among MPs was equally gratifying. Tim Loughton, a Tory who once said Sarah Teather, a woman with no children, should not be a families minister, is now another qualified ally, inducted into “the challenges that so many women have to go through”. As for IDS, after his simulated hot flush it came home to him, he reported to BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, “that we sometimes make a joke about it really – ‘oh well, she’s menopausal or something’ – then dismiss behaviour as though there’s no other reason to dig into that”. Suddenly, you get the inevitability, in 2019, of his all-male Johnson leadership campaign.
Was some inner imbalance, I wonder, to blame for IDS’s insulting comments about Labour’s women-only shortlists?
Had IDS personally encountered sufferers? Well, his mother,, he said, but also “just women, you know”, when “we could have been a lot more sensitive to this, and we weren’t, and I just recall some sometimes slightly erratic behaviour, uh, difficulties, but people just kind of glossed over it really”.
While it’s unclear what his epiphany will mean in practical terms, given IDS’s known hostility to working from home, he can presumably continue to attribute a hormonal cause to middle-aged female behaviour he judges erratic or difficult, but in a way that is certifiably empathetic. Maybe the erratic Liz Truss is already getting the benefit? “If women go through this and they’re trying to work,” IDS mused, “it must lessen their capability, productivity, their abilities at times.”
We await some similarly illuminating device to help women better understand the occasionally incapable, difficult or erratic behaviour of middle-aged male co-workers and public figures. In the absence of a male simulation suit, we are left guessing why, say, so many senior male politicians in Duncan Smith’s party can seem distracted, even cognitively deficient, to the point that this must lessen their capability and productivity. In terms of empathy, it would help to know that a middle-aged Tory minister’s absences, lapses or confusion might not be something to mock or dismiss as a classic midlife crisis but painful symptoms of hormonal turmoil.
Was some inner imbalance, I wonder, to blame for the pre-empathetic IDS’s memorably insulting comments about Labour’s women-only shortlists (“people who haven’t really performed as politicians”)? Could it explain his fluctuating attitudes to, for instance, Boris Johnson, who went from “capable of [also] capturing a mood of optimism for too long missing”, to “hugely damaging”, to “Johnson must stay”, to “Liz Truss has inner steel”.
It might be argued that three minutes in an IDSVest is too short to appreciate the complexity of the 68-year-old’s predicament as he struggles for status in a culture where occasional brain fog and the mature acquisition of sports cars and a motorbike can still invite heedlessly cruel comments. Some women, certainly, have already recoiled from the proposal that three minutes in the MenoVest offers a man any meaningful insight into the experience of menopause, with its other symptoms potentially including night sweats, insomnia, forgetfulness and depression, along with the inescapable message that much of society considers you superfluous. As for creating women’s allies, any vest that can make those out of recent supporters of Johnson needs to be not so much educational as miraculous.
Inevitably, as with the recent glut of celebrity menopause literature, the gilet’s focus on the extreme, sometimes disabling, discomfort experienced by some women can look unhelpful to those who escaped more lightly, or with manageable symptoms, or who even report feeling liberated by the event. If three out of five women say they’ve been negatively affected at work, as detailed in a new government report, Menopause and the Workplace, that’s two out of five who might consider the MenoVest a virtuous-looking pretext for the new allies to patronise women before, during and after the menopause.
It’s worth considering similar techniques to generate male interest in female experience habitually classified as ignorable
But given the revelatory impact on Vine, IDS and others, there’s possibly something to be said for performative, vest-style male learning, in place of less exciting illustrations of poor health and workplace provision. Women have, after all, been campaigning for years against ignorance about the menopause and inadequate treatment, without IDS concluding that the menopause might not be, contrary to his lived experience, a joke.
Supposing, unlike the now largely discredited homeless-for-a-night, poor-for-a-week and fat-for-a-day media stunts, the menopausal-for-a-moment contraption does make any difference, it’s worth considering similarly immersive techniques to generate male interest in female experience habitually classified as intractable or ignorable. Could some prominent men agree, for instance, to try out working for, say, 10.4% less, or whatever the local gender pay gap is? After a few seconds Vine could discover “I’m now suffering what you suffered!”
Much, then, depends on the allies. While Carolyn Harris, the chair of the menopause taskforce, has been justly congratulated on her MenoVest session, we can’t be sure any related conclusions about female debility were not, for certain parliamentarians, a dream come true. And if that’s unfair, what is it about the menopause that brings out a tender side in figures who have never, until now, done anything for women?
Catherine Bennett is an Observer columnist | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/aug/06/three-daughters-and-no-sons-isnt-a-bad-omen-i-should-know-i-had-four | Opinion | 2023-08-06T07:03:04.000Z | Joanna Moorhead | Three daughters and no sons isn’t a bad omen. I should know, I had four | Joanna Moorhead | The morning after the birth of our fourth daughter, my husband bumped into a neighbour in our street and announced the news. Her response surprised him. “Are you very disappointed?” she asked.
Gary headed indoors and reported the news to me, whereupon we cackled with laughter and had another glass of champagne. The previous morning, I’d finished reading Little Women with one of my older daughters; I’d already had an excited inkling I was about to become Marmee, a mother of four girls, and now I’d been proved right.
We were thrilled to have another daughter to add to our brood; but it quickly became apparent that the world, like our neighbour, had other ideas. And that view seems to be backed up by research published last week, which found that the birth of a third daughter, in a family with no boys, was a downer on parental wellbeing – especially the mother’s psychological wellbeing. The findings, published in the Journal of Behavioural and Experimental Economics, suggest that it takes the mother a whole decade to entirely recover their sense of wellbeing after the arrival of a third girl. The research doesn’t extend to the arrival of a fourth daughter, but its logical conclusion is that a mother like me is in for an even rougher ride.
None of this corresponds to how I felt about having a fourth daughter. Pregnant with my first, I remember thinking I’d probably be having a boy, which I put down to inbuilt patriarchal bias – boys come first, in the sexist world that surrounds us. The baby was Rosie. Second time around, my expectation was that I’d have a boy this time, which was perhaps based on the law of probability; the new arrival was Elinor. Third time around, I was convinced I was having a boy, but the person who emerged was Miranda. And by the time I got to Catriona, I was absolutely certain I’d be having another girl – and I was.
The inference is that a mother is somehow programmed to become envious of, or undermined by, her daughters
What I don’t remember, though, was any sense of preference in all this. But, definitely, others assumed I’d had a preference – and their assumptions were eerily similar to the trends revealed in this study. Our neighbour who thought we’d be disappointed was the first of many to assume we’d been hoping for a boy; and, indeed, we’d already had plenty of similar comments after the birth of our third daughter. One friend, who had a boy after four girls, encouraged us to “keep trying”. Even the Nigerian friend who told me that “you’d be the luckiest mother in the village where I was born” seemed to be trying to cheer me up, assuming that I’d be wishing my fourth child’s sex was different.
I found it all slightly mystifying, because what felt very real to me was that gender is only one aspect of what makes your child interesting, and it certainly isn’t the most crucial element. The authors of this new study write of the assumption that parents with two children of the same sex want a third child of the opposite sex, and say it may be the case that some parents want a third child of the same sex. How about parents like me and my husband, who simply wanted another child?
I resisted any opportunity to find out whether I was having a girl or a boy on the grounds that this information would tell me only one small thing about the individual person I was going to shortly meet – and with that would come expectations and assumptions and biases that I could perhaps swerve if I waited to see what sort of personality I’d given birth to, rather than what sex. Twenty-one years on from the birth of my last child, the fact that they’re all girls doesn’t give much clue as to who they all are. One is a keen football fan, and has been since she was a small child; two earn as much, or more, as their (male) partners. In the partnerships of at least two of them, I wouldn’t be surprised if the partners become the main early carers of any children they might go on to have.
I can’t help wondering – and, in fact, hoping – that this new research has already been overtaken by a more enlightened approach: it uses data from two studies, one based on people born in 1958, the other based on people born in 1970.
Could it be simply that the trends the researchers have discovered are already outdated and that, for a contemporary cohort of parents, the arrival of a third girl might not be associated with what the academics in this paper describe as a “negative hit”? I’d be interested down the line to read the views on this of participants in the Millennium Cohort Study, which focuses on people born around 2000: maybe they will have a different take on it.
It’s hard to understand what a piece of research such as this has to offer, beyond “fancy that” and a flurry of headlines. In a society that’s increasingly aware of how blurred the boundaries can be between “male” and “female”, and is far less limited by biology (all very positive directions, in my view), research like this feels a bit out of its time. So, too, does the assertion that: “In our results it seems that mothers do not want to have too many children of the same sex as them. It is possible this reflects not just an issue of children, but one of household composition, with the mother not wanting too many females in the household.”
The inference is jealousy: that a mother is somehow programmed to become envious of, or undermined by, her daughters. That’s not a feeling I’ve ever experienced: it seems to me to belong to a different place and time, and happily not the space in which I’ve been raising my children.
Joanna Moorhead is a Guardian and Observer journalist
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at [email protected] | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/05/opcw-chemical-weapons-watchdog-special-session-russia-syria | World news | 2018-06-05T15:42:22.000Z | Patrick Wintour | Chemical weapons watchdog to hold special session in June | The world’s chemical weapons watchdog is to hold a special two-day session in late June in response to Britain’s call to hand the body new powers to attribute responsibility for chemical weapons attacks.
The Hague-based watchdog, known as the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, has until recently been seen as a scientific technical backwater, but as the controversy over the use of the weapons has grown, the OPCW has found its methods under attack from Russia and other supporters of the Syrian regime.
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British ministers have accused Russia of blocking the UN from blaming the Syrian government for repeated chemical attacks on its citizens.
In a speech at the Chatham House thinktank last month, the OPCW’s director general, Ahmet Üzümcü, called for his organisation to be given the ability to identify the individual, group or country behind chemical attacks, saying the international community needed to address the gap.
At a meeting this week, Britain won the support of 64 OPCW member states for the special session, and the OPCW confirmed in a statement on Tuesday that this would now go ahead on 26 and 27 June.
Britain’s national security adviser, Mark Sedwill, said: “We recognise that the global norm against chemical weapons use is being threatened.”
British support for a strengthened role for the OPCW grew after the UK concluded that a Russian-made military nerve agent was used in Salisbury in March in the poisoning of the former Russian double-agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter.
The Salisbury incident followed an impasse in November last year at the UN security council when Russia blocked the renewal of the mandate for the body, known as the joint investigative mechanism, responsible for attributing chemical weapons attacks to groups or countries. Russia claimed the body’s procedures, including the chain of command over samples, was too lax.
Russia has also mounted attacks on the technical methods of the OPCW’s investigations into the Salisbury attack.
Speaking at the thinktank, Üzümcü said: “Today there might be good reasons actually to clarify the role of the OPCW itself in terms of attribution once it has the necessary information at its disposal. Wilful defiance of a valued norm should not be allowed to go unchallenged.”
He told the Guardian: “I don’t think the international community can afford to continue without an attribution mechanism to identify perpetrators of the use of chemical weapons. If accountability is avoided the potential acceptance of the use of chemical weapons as weapons of war and terror will not be deterred.”
An OPCW fact-finding team is due to report on whether chemical weapons were used in an attack in rebel-held Douma in Damascus. The attack led to US, French and British reprisals, including cruise missile strikes on alleged Syrian chemical weapons sites. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/media/commentisfree/2023/nov/10/rupert-murdoch-eases-into-retirement-as-lachlan-takes-up-baton-of-philosophical-integrity | Media | 2023-11-10T02:48:35.000Z | Amanda Meade | Rupert Murdoch eases into retirement as Lachlan takes up baton of ‘philosophical integrity’ | The Weekly Beast | News Corp will “stand on the shoulders of a giant” when Rupert Murdoch transitions to “chairman emeritus” next week, the company’s chief executive, Robert Thomson, told its fiscal first-quarter earnings call on Friday as he welcomed Lachlan Murdoch as sole chair.
“His thoughtful engagement with our teams already enhances the business each working day and his passion for principled journalism is obvious to all who work with him,” Thomson said. “There is no doubt that Lachlan’s multidisciplinary expertise and his philosophical integrity will be invaluable as we continue to the next phase of our crucial journey.”
Earlier in the week Lachlan Murdoch used his speech to the troops at the annual News Awards to outline just what his philosophical approach is all about.
He called on journalists and editors to be courageous in addressing the “distressing events such as the horrific October 7th terror attack on Israel”.
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“When it comes to antisemitism there is no room for equivocation,” Murdoch told guests at the Roslyn Packer Theatre in Walsh Bay. “There is no fence-sitting.
“From Brisbane to Broome, from Launceston to Lakemba, antisemitism does not belong in Australia.
“It is our duty to address and tackle it, as it is to address and tackle all forms of hatred.”
The executive, who divides his time between Sydney and the US, called for journalists to “expose the disturbing wave of hatred against Jews around the world and in our own communities”.
All praise for voice coverage
Lachlan Murdoch also made clear his dislike of the Albanese government’s proposed legislation designed to combat misinformation and disinformation on digital platforms, which has already been opposed by Sky News commentator Peta Credlin as an “assault” on freedom of speech.
“It is ironic that at a time when our country is rightly vigilant and proactive in resisting foreign interference in our politics, media and communication infrastructure, the federal government is proposing misinformation laws that will position them, the government, as the arbiter of truth,” Murdoch said.
“This comes after we learned that federal agencies, under both Coalition and Labor governments, secretly used such methods to suppress and censor debate during the pandemic.”
Murdoch praised the company’s coverage of the Indigenous voice referendum, claiming News Corp “provided more context, more facts and more diversity of opinion than any other media organisation”.
“Our balanced approach fairly represented the nation’s differing perspectives,” he said.
Personal opinions not welcome
The ABC’s head of news, Justin Stevens, addressed the Israel-Hamas war in an email to staff yesterday, telling journalists the public broadcaster was not a platform for pushing an agenda because the public expects it to be impartial.
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“There are many jobs that allow you to operate from your personal convictions,” Stevens told staff in an email seen by Weekly Beast. “Journalism is not one of them. There are many media outlets whose stock in trade is partisanship, personal opinion, campaigning and trying to wield influence. The ABC is not one of those.
“To quote NBC News president Noah Oppenheim: ‘If you choose journalism as your route, you are giving up some other options that are available to the general public.’ This is especially true of the national public broadcaster.”
Stevens, who was responding to internal concerns from both Palestinian and Jewish staff about the approach taken to the war, announced a new Middle East coverage advisory panel will be meeting regularly and has established a new central point for editorial guidance on the story which will be constantly updated.
Challenging times
At Nine Entertainment’s annual general meeting on Thursday, its CEO, Mike Sneesby, also addressed the war. Sneesby, whose editorial teams include those on Nine News, 60 Minutes and the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age, said the conflict was “probably one of the most challenging news stories that our teams have had to cover”.
Gleeson draws a blank
It was this time last year that Courier-Mail columnist Peter Gleeson left News Corp after multiple instances of plagiarism were uncovered and he apologised for breaching News Corp’s code of conduct. He was also sacked by Sky News.
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So some Nine journalists in Queensland were somewhat astounded when the local radio station, 4BC, gave Gleeson a lifeline in June, first in a temporary role and then as the permanent 4BC Drive host.
Now Gleeson finds himself the butt of jokes at the company after he failed to recognise one of Nine’s senior journalists, Mark Burrows, when he came on the program to give an update on a repatriation flight bringing Australians home from Israel.
Gleeson, who was taking talkack calls on the cost of living, introduced the reporter as if he was a punter: “Mark Burrows has given us a buzz 13 38 82. Mark, you’ve got some thoughts?”
Burrows, on the line from Sydney airport, said: “Sorry, what is this about?
Gleeson: “I’m asking you: have you got some thoughts?
Burrows: “Regarding what?
Gleeson: “Ah, you’ve rung into 4BC. you’re on the open line.”
Burrows: “You’ve got me mixed up with somebody else, I’m sorry.”
An increasingly tetchy but still clueless Gleeson told listeners that was “interesting, very interesting” after Burrows hung up. Nine Radio told Weekly Beast that Gleeson texted Burrows to apologise when made aware of his blunder.
Burrows told Weekly Beast: “But the good thing is that I have been dining out on it ever since, and it has provided a lot of merriment in the newsroom.”
Power moves
The ABC’s yet untitled three-part documentary about the Coalition’s nine years in power – announced at the broadcaster’s TV showcase on Thursday – has got some competition.
Sky News Australia has beaten the public broadcaster and will air its own two-parter, Liberals in Power, over two nights next week. Billed as an in-depth investigation into the inner workings of the Liberal party, the program is presented by Chris Kenny.
Kenny says the doco will generate “crucial discussions”.
While former prime minister’s Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison sat down with investigative journalist Mark Willacy for in-depth interviews for the ABC documentary, the broadcaster is yet to convince Tony Abbott to agree to take part. Abbott was the only major player not to appear in the sizzle reel which was played for guests at the 2024 showcase.
ABC appointment
The ABC News executive in charge of diversity, Gavin Fang, has been appointed editorial director, responsible for setting and interpreting editorial standards.
Gavin Fang is the ABC’s new editorial director. Photograph: Emmy Reyna
Fang replaces Judith Whelan, the former director of regional and local who was appointed but unable to take up the role.
“It is a privilege to be entrusted with a role helping to ensure the ABC remains Australia’s most trusted media organisation,” Fang said on Friday.
“Brave, accurate, fair and independent public interest journalism and storytelling, built on the bedrock of our high editorial standards, is a critical service we provide to all Australians.”
Fang has been deputy to both Stevens and his predecessor Gaven Morris, who left the position two years ago. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/dec/16/cambridge-university-reportedly-could-drop-barclays-in-favour-of-greener-bank | Education | 2023-12-16T23:40:01.000Z | Vivian Ho | Cambridge University reportedly could drop Barclays in favour of greener bank | Cambridge University could cut ties with Barclays after more than 200 years over the bank’s refusal to stop financing new oil and gas projects, according to the Financial Times.
It reported that Cambridge is looking for an institution with robust climate policies to manage “several hundred million pounds” in cash and money market funds – a mandate expected to cover more than £200m in assets and generate about £10m in fees a year.
The university said it was “exploring opportunities to find financial products that do not finance fossil fuel expansion” as part of its “net zero engagement strategy with the banking sector”.
Though Barclays has provided financing to the university for centuries, the bank was also the top European funder of fossil fuels between 2016 and 2022, according to a report by the Rainforest Action Network.
In September, Leeds University switched to Lloyds because it “has the lowest fossil fuel investments of any of the major UK banks”.
Cambridge’s students and staff have been demanding a greener lender and the university has already pledged to divest its £3.5bn endowment from all direct and indirect investments in fossil fuels by 2030.
“We’re dealing with people who are likely going to be leaders of tomorrow,” a college bursar told the Financial Times. “And the biggest of their concerns is climate change.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/22/cytus-ii-game-removed-in-china-over-links-to-pro-hong-kong-morse-code-message | World news | 2020-07-22T03:13:43.000Z | Helen Davidson | Cytus II game removed in China over links to pro-Hong Kong morse code message | A popular mobile music game has been removed in China for “rectification and internal evaluation” after it emerged its music director wrote a song containing a pro-Hong Kong message hidden in morse code.
Cytus II, a game by Taiwan’s Rayark Games, would be relaunched soon, its Chinese distributor Dragonest said, following the discovery of the phrase “Liberate Hong Kong, the revolution of our times”, a message that China considers secessionist.
Wilson Lam, Rayark’s musical director and a Hong Kong musician known as Ice, uploaded a song, Telegraph 1344 7609 2575, to his personal SoundCloud and YouTube accounts in March. Neither Soundcloud nor YouTube are accessible in mainland China, but the discovery of the phrase prompted widespread online reaction.
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Following the backlash, Lam resigned from Rayark, saying that while the song had no relation to Rayark or his job there, “I raised my resignation so that all criticism regarding this piece of private work could be targeted to me as the creator of this piece of work, not Rayark and my colleagues who didn’t know [of its] existence.”
Dragonest Games said on Weibo neither it nor Rayark had knowledge of Lam’s song, and they had accepted his resignation. “We are extremely sorry for the adverse effects caused by this and we strongly condemn the actions of the composer,” it said.
Lam said he had worked for Rayark since 2014, producing musical works for various games.
The phrase “Liberate Hong Kong, the revolution of our times” had been an increasingly common slogan at Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests, but was outlawed as seditious content under the draconian national security laws imposed by Beijing late last month.
On 1 July, the first full day under the new laws, about 10 people were arrested, including some for carrying or waving a flag bearing the slogan.
In April the popular Nintendo Switch game, Animal Crossing, was also removed from sale in some Chinese websites after it was used to spread pro-Hong Kong democracy messages. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/19/u-boat-wreck-could-be-sea-monster-victim-of-internet-folklore | World news | 2016-10-18T23:01:15.000Z | Maev Kennedy | U-boat wreck could be sea monster victim of internet folklore | A first world war German submarine, which folklore insists was disabled by a sea monster before the commander and his entire crew surrendered to a British patrol boat without firing a shot, has been rediscovered during survey work for a new power line.
The story of UB-85 is still being told and re-told on websites focusing on alleged paranormal events, though one historian believes it dates back not to the war but to a club armchair and too much pink gin in the 1920s. “It has been perpetuated by credulous journalists,” said Innes McCartney, historian and marine archaeologist at Bournemouth University.
HMS Coreopsis in 1917. Photograph: Scottish Power
According to the yarn, Captain Günther Krech explained to his captors on 30 April 1918 that his vessel was cruising on the surface because he could not dive, due to damage caused by “a strange beast” that leaped out of the water. The monster had horns, small deep-set eyes, glinting teeth, and was so heavy that when it scrambled up the side of the U-boat, the whole vessel listed sideways. It then viciously attacked the forward gun, chomping lumps out it. The damage forced the entire crew to surrender to the British patrol: the men were taken off and the submarine scuttled.
The wreck was found 104 metres down, off the coast of Stranraer, during survey work on behalf of Scottish Power for the Western Link, an underwater cable which, at 239 miles (385km) long, will be the longest of its type in the world. The cable is a £1bn joint-venture with National Grid to take renewable power from Scotland to England.
From the murky scans and sonar images, McCartney says the submarine matches the description of UB-85, but could equally be its sister vessel, UB-22. “This wreck lies roughly halfway between the recorded sites for the two submarines – but they were virtually indistinguishable apart from the painted letters and numbers, and it seems to me inconceivable that anyone would think it worthwhile to mount a dive to establish which it is.”
Sea monster attack stories are surprisingly common, he said. “You’ve got to remember that after the war the records were sealed, but there were all these people with some connection to British intelligence who yearned to boast of mighty deeds at sea but couldn’t tell the true stories. The true sea monsters of the first world war were the submarines themselves.”
Seabed scan image of U-boat wreck found off Scotland. Photograph: Scottish Power
However, Gary Campbell, who keeps the Official Sightings Record for the Loch Ness Monster – there have allegedly been six so far in 2016, most recently in August – prefers to cling to the other explanation, that UB-85 was attacked by a sea monster.
“The area of sea where the attack took place has a history of sea monster sightings – they have ranged from the north coast of Wales to Liverpool Bay,” he said. “What the German captain said could well be true. It’s great to see how Nessie’s saltwater cousin clearly got involved in helping with the war effort – she even managed to do the damage without anyone being killed.”
Peter Roper of Scottish Power is less convinced: “I am probably on the side of the historians who believe that the capture of the vessel was more straightforward than a sea monster attack. ‘A sea monster attacked my submarine’ is maybe one of the most fanciful excuses of all time. Thankfully we have had no monster-related health and safety incidents in the project yet.”
This article was amended on 20 October 2016 to correct the location of the wreck. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2023/oct/13/runaway-asteroid-rooney-emerges-at-birmingham-as-a-genuine-survivor | Football | 2023-10-13T16:00:17.000Z | Barney Ronay | Runaway asteroid Rooney emerges at Birmingham as a genuine survivor | Barney Ronay | There were some excellent bits in the David Beckham documentary, which was genuinely absorbing despite feeling at times like two hours of really good clips of football, music and beautiful people from the 1990s, padded out with another two hours of sombre, auteurish close-ups of current-day Beckham thinking about things.
Just give us more bits where a wired-looking Rio Ferdinand says “fuck” a lot. Plus all available footage of prime years Alex Ferguson where he seems to be bathed in a vengeful cold white light, like a 17th century witch-finding puritanical priest being asked questions about haircuts by sullen men with dictaphones.
Perhaps the most notable part, and a point that always got slightly lost in the fame-haze, was the reminder of what an authentically brilliant, high-craft footballer Beckham was. And brilliant at a time when the game was far less complex tactically, more linear and straight-line, but also more open to flights of fancy. Beckham basically invented his own way to play, bent the game to his gifts, created passing angles, lines, trajectories, right down to a basic way of kicking the ball. His celebrity took him to Real Madrid. His talent carried him through it.
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Equally striking was the absurdity of the public response to his sending-off against Argentina, really one of the most piss-poor weak, nothing red cards imaginable. It seems amazing now that people in the late 1990s didn’t have anything else to get so upset about. But then, it was, apparently, the end of history. Bad things only happened far away. Blur versus Oasis was the headline on the Six O’Clock news. The intensity of human feeling doesn’t diminish. It just finds something to attach itself to.
Otherwise the main energy source in Beckham was the same fuel the Beckham Identity has been burning ever since, the spectacle of his still-startling youthful beauty and charisma, the golden-halo excitement that such a stage and such a personage should exist, a perfect expression of the plastic prosperity of the millennial years.
Nothing the current Beckham has to say on screen is very candid or new. Why should it be? The final scenes seem to suggest he spends most of his time now in a kind of bespoke luxury tent-shed cooking things on his grill and looking like a handsome, whiskery badger. Which is a happy outcome, but perhaps not something it’s necessary to know.
Otherwise, the most interesting thing about the final instalment of Beckham, was the fact it coincided with a far more significant real-world event: the return from America of Wayne Rooney, in his new role as Birmingham City manager. Another reprise, another new chapter. And the two things feel quite naturally linked.
Rooney is 10 years younger than Beckham, although frankly he seems to have spent an age being bruised and buffeted by this world, a man hurtling through time like a runaway asteroid. Nobody knows if this will turn out to be a good appointment, or if Rooney has a genuine talent for management. It is a hire based on the classic intangibles of name and status.
Wayne Rooney has just become the Birmingham City manager, having left his job at DC United. Photograph: Jacob King/PA
But it feels good. Birmingham is a great opportunity, a club with energy and heart and a vague sense of some Bluesy big-city fit with the new manager, albeit based on nothing more than colours and vibes. And for all his rawness as a manager, Rooney is a persuasive presence at any level. He knows this game so well, has spent his life inside the beast.
It was great to see him back at the press conference table. He looks so wise and sandpapery these days, thrillingly bearded, like a Nordic god wandered down out of the hills. Beyond that he remains a unique figure in English football, and distinct from Beckham, for all the shared staging points. We may be done with the past, but the past isn’t done with us. And clearly this is all still a matter of deep personal importance.
A theme in Beckham’s film is a sense of unfinished business with the football of his youth, a sense that the collateral damage of those early years being monstered by the press and blowtorched with public rage has never really been balanced out, dues paid, accounts settled.
In that sense Rooney and Beckham are uniquely tied together: the first English male footballers to be fully and relentlessly processed through the modern machine of celebrity and mass media.
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This doesn’t happen any more in the same way. Footballers have more control of their profile. They’re also richer. Football is enough. Beckham at his Manchester United peak was on almost £100,000 a week. Kevin De Bruyne gets four times that much without having to sell crisps in Japan or appear shirtless on the cover of Ape magazine covered in Tabasco. Why bother?
More to the point, football celebrity was an unusually cruel new world in the Beckham-Rooney years. This was an industry that had run ahead of itself, bloomed into a rapacious human-talent grinder before it had the time or the will to develop support or protection for those at its centre.
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At least with Beckham, there was the sense he had some other place to escape into. He actually wanted to be a celebrity. Rooney was younger and more vulnerable when these forces were applied to him. And that world treated him so roughly, from the early hysteria when he was portrayed as a kind of foundling footballer, discovered crawling out of a Croxteth dustbin, to being rushed back constantly from injury, to mocking front-page pictures of his family on holiday, to having his teenage sexual misadventures gleefully fanfared by the adults of the press (what, seriously, was all that about?), to the sense he was basically left alone to deal with all this.
Rather than a lost talent, Rooney is a genuine survivor. He adapted and evolved, from that perfect galloping teenager skittering about the place, as though some genius-level pitch invader had come barrelling out over the advert boards; through the unmannered brilliance of Euro 2004, when he was, in that moment, the most exciting player in the world; to that sublime period at Manchester United, the Ronaldo years, when all those doors were still open to him.
He remained a wonderful goalscorer before injuries and intake began to bite. He was vilified with England for what felt like an eternity, the most visible face of a decade of structural decline. But there is a genuine well of affection for Rooney out there. The match-going support at Old Trafford loved him to the end. England fans on a train in some distant capital will routinely chant his name before anyone else’s.
Perhaps this is because he speaks to something that has become slightly lost. Arsène Wenger observed recently that there are more players of high technique around now; but fewer untamed talents, players with the kind of brilliance that takes you into strange and exhilarating places. Rooney was one of these. Football, in its modern-but-not-modern state, treated him brutally at times. It feels like a small kind of victory that he’s still here wanting more. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/apr/30/cape-town-apartheid-ended-still-paradise-few-south-africa | Cities | 2014-04-30T10:45:27.000Z | Oliver Wainwright | Apartheid ended 20 years ago, so why is Cape Town still 'a paradise for the few'? | Sitting on a salvaged sofa in the centre of her small tin shack, Nomfusi Panyaza looks increasingly worried, as heavy clouds gather in the sky outside. “When it rains, the public toilets overflow into my living room,” she says. “Water comes in through the ceiling and the electricity stops working.”
Outside her makeshift home in the sprawling township of Khayelitsha, on the eastern edge of Cape Town, barefoot children play on the banks of an open sewer, while cows roam next to an overflowing rubbish heap. Panyaza shares this tiny cabin with her two daughters and four grandchildren, a family of seven with two beds between them. “We can't sleep at night because of the smell,” she says, speaking in Xhosa, a language peppered with clicks that echo the droplets beginning to drum on the corrugated metal roof. “I'm worried that the children are always getting sick.”
Twenty minutes' drive to the west, the seventh course is being served at a banquet of assembled journalists, here to celebrate Cape Town's title of World Design Capital 2014 on the terrace of a cliff-top villa. An infinity pool projects out towards the Atlantic horizon, as the setting sun casts a golden glow across the villa's seamless planes, their surfaces sparkling with Namibian diamond dust mixed into the white concrete. Guests admire how the bath tub is carved from a solid block of marble, while security guards keep watch in front of a defensive ha-ha down below, ringed by an electric fence.
Apartheid may have ended 20 years ago, but here in Cape Town the sense of apartness remains as strong as ever. After decades of enforced segregation, the feeling of division is permanently carved into the city's urban form, the physical legacy of a plan that was calculatedly designed to separate poor blacks from rich whites.
“The social engineering of apartheid came down to a very successful model of spatial engineering,” says Edgar Pieterse, director of the African Centre for Cities at the University of Cape Town. Tracing his fingers over a map of the city in his office, he explains how both natural landscape features and manmade infrastructure were employed as physical barriers to keep the different racial communities as isolated as possible.
“Cape Town was conceived with a white-only centre, surrounded by contained settlements for the black and coloured labour forces to the east, each hemmed in by highways and rail lines, rivers and valleys, and separated from the affluent white suburbs by protective buffer zones of scrubland,” he says.
Urban planning under apartheid used strict zoning principles. Source: David Kay Photograph: David Kay
From 1948, when the apartheid administration began, South Africa's cities adopted the strict zoning principles of modernist urban planning, taking inspiration from Ebenezer Howard's garden city movement and Le Corbusier's Ville Radieuse, only repurposing their dogma of functional segregation towards racial ends.
The process of relocating Africans to peripheral townships would not only cleanse the white centres, but create new blank sites, sterilised of any reference to indigenous culture and tradition. These modern, orderly settlements, it was thought, would mould the black labour force into an orderly, submissive underclass. With security and control, rather than health and happiness, as the chief motivations, the townships were designed along the lines of military barracks. Streets of grim “matchbox houses” were laid out in strict grids and surrounded by a fence, with only two or three points of entry, allowing the police to seal off entire neighbourhoods with minimal effort.
Driving along the main road from the airport to the city, through the barren and windswept Cape Flats that roll out to the east, this militaristic planning is still very much in evidence. Thirty-metre high lighting masts loom above the homes at regular intervals, with floodlights glaring down all night over the wide streets, so the area can be easily surveyed from a helicopter. Housing is set back at least 60 metres from the road, a dimension, like the lighting masts' height, that is governed by the distance you can throw a stone.
During the years running up to the 2010 Fifa World Cup, this drive into town was spruced up. Either side of the motorway, as part of the N2 Gateway Project, shanty-town shacks have been replaced with neat brick and render houses, each topped with a bright orange pan-tile roof. But look beyond this thin crust of decent homes – a block-deep Potemkin facade of regeneration – and a sea of jumbled shacks continues to stretch endlessly into the distance.
For all the city's attempts at a cosmetic makeover, which was roundly condemned by international NGOs for the accompanying programme of forced evictions, this route into town still provides a striking object lesson in the power of apartheid planning. Beyond the townships, which appear increasingly titivated the closer towards the city you progress, stands the site of a former power station. Then there is a sewage treatment plant, followed by the neatly manicured mounds of a golf course, the bend of a river, a deep valley and a tangle of intersecting roads. The black communities were separated from whites not only by distance, but by as many physical obstacles as possible, the more polluting the better.
“Points of contact invariably produce friction and friction generates heat and may lead to a conflagration,” declared South Africa's minister of the interior, Dr T E Tonges, in 1950, when he introduced the Group Areas Act, the law that enforced the division of cities into ethnically distinct areas. “It is our duty therefore to reduce these points of contact to the absolute minimum which public opinion is prepared to accept.”
Bulldozers at work in District Six, Cape Town. The area was declared white only and 60,000 former residents were forcibly removed. Photograph: AP Photograph: AP
While it saw the savage separation of mixed-race families, and the wholesale demolition of non-white areas – such as Cape Town's vibrant District Six, which still stands as an overgrown wasteland in the centre of town – the Act only cemented a tendency of white settlers retreating behind barriers that had been present in the Cape for over 300 years.
In the mid-17th century Jan van Riebeeck, leader of the first Europeans to settle in South Africa, proposed the typically Dutch solution of digging a canal across the Cape Peninsular to separate the white paradise as a self-contained island, cut off from the rest of “darkest Africa”. Unable to realise this ambitious project, he instead decided to plant a bitter almond hedge to keep the “black stinking dogs” out of his settlement, accompanied by brambles and thorny bushes designed to ward off this “savage set, living without conscience”.
Systematic segregation continued into the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the British colonial government forcibly resettled black communities under the pretence of curbing an outbreak of the bubonic plague. Further acts of parliament prevented the acquisition of land by “natives” and limited movement by a draconian system of internal passports, preceding apartheid legislation by 25 years. The Urban Areas Act of 1923 ordered the removal of Africans from desirable city centres to “locations”, one of the first of which in Cape Town, Langa (which ironically means “sun”), was sited right next to the sewage works.
Since 1994, when the African National Congress came to power and apartheid was finally ended, South Africa has struggled to even begin to undo these centuries of divisive planning. In some cases, misguided initiatives have only served to strengthen it.
“The time to build is upon us,” declared Nelson Mandela in his inaugural speech as president, launching what would become one of the biggest state housing development projects in the world. The Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) has seen over 3.6 million new homes built across the country since then, provided free of charge to those on monthly incomes of less than 3,500 rand (£200). But these have come with their own problems: despite the improvements in individual living conditions, there is a growing realisation that the RDP housing programme has reinforced apartheid era segregation, continuing to consign the poor to ghettos at the furthest edges of the city. Building is one thing, but time for planning might have been helpful first.
Walking past these identical single-story sheds, marshalled into grim repetitive rows (not nicknamed dog kennels for nothing), it is often hard to distinguish the RDP buildings from the hated matchbox houses built in the townships under apartheid. They have been thrown up quickly and cheaply, and many have already come crumbling down, while their dreary layout reinforces the sense of living in an open-air prison. They also have the tendency to spawn their own informal buildings next door, fuelling the development of choked streets of unplanned shacks.
A VPUU 'active box' in Khayelitsha. Photograph: Joy McKinney Photograph: PR
“When many people finally get an RDP house, often after 10-15 years of waiting, they realise it makes more economic sense to build a shack in the backyard for themselves and sell the house,” says Pieterse. “They sell them illegally for about 40,000 rand (£2,300), a third of what it costs the state the build them, and then they can use this cash to set up a business from the shack. It makes a lot more economic sense than living in the RDP house, where you're not allowed to trade.”
Wandering the potholed streets of Khayelitsha today provides such a tale of two cities, where the planned and unplanned jostle for position. On one side of the road stands an orderly row of RDP houses, their gable ends neatly rendered in pastel shades of peach and tangerine. But turn the corner and a jumble of shacks spills out behind, an energetic collage of corrugated sheeting held up with salvaged fenceposts. There are gates cleverly constructed from plastic crates and mail boxes fashioned from a oil cans, all liberally doused in bright blues and pinks, greens and yellows, tying each assemblage into a carefully crafted home.
It is easy to romanticise this vibrant, makeshift culture – indeed township tours regularly shuttle groups of tourists out here for a dose of shanty-town chic – but the reality of life inside belies the picturesque surface and beaming welcome. Over a quarter of households have no access to electricity, while each outdoor tap is shared between around twenty families, each toilet between ten.
Every plot, whether from the RDP programme or dating from when the township was first laid out in 1984, is now often home to four or six other dwellings, each sharing the minimal amount of electricity provided to the original legal household.
“Sometimes my neighbours just turn off the power and hold me to ransom,” says Panyaza, staring at a blank television in front of her sofa, the principal possession around which the rest of her small home is organised. In one corner of the room, a gas canister and pile of pots indicate the kitchen area, while behind a flimsy screen of fibreboard panels are the two bedrooms, each no bigger than a mattress. Possessions are piled in boxes and suitcases, as if they could be ready to leave at a moment's notice.
“We've been forgotten,” says Panyaza, who built her home ten years ago, when she first moved here with her family from the Eastern Cape in search of work in the city. They have been on waiting list for an RDP house ever since.
Nomfusi Panyaza in her home. Photograph: Joy McKinney Photograph: Joy McKinney
Their story is shared by thousands of families who arrive here each year from the poorer eastern province, an influx that sees around 10,000 new shacks built annually in Khayelitsha alone. Originally planned as a community of 200,000, the population now numbers around one million, half of whom live in informal housing, making it one of the biggest and fastest growing townships in the country.
It is a speed of growth and level poverty, with over 50% unemployment, that has also brought Khayelitsha one of the highest crime rates in the country, and a reputation as a place ruled by gang violence. Police say they deal with an average of four murders a weekend, while the local hospital is overrun with stab-wound and gunshot victims every night.
“It's so bad in some areas that the police won't even go in,” says Sonwabile Swartbooi of the Social Justice Coalition, a local community NGO focused on improving safety and sanitation in the area. “Children are often too scared to walk to school in case they get caught in crossfire.”
With a Commission of Inquiry under way into alleged police inefficiency in Khayelitsha, there is little confidence in the justice system, and vigilante mobs sometimes take matters into their own hands. “The mobs punish suspected criminals with 'necklacing',” says Swartbooi. “They chase them down and beat them, then trap them inside petrol-filled tyres and set them on fire.”
It is within this fraught context that German urban designer Michael Krause has been working since 2008 on a series of projects that aim to tackle violence through simple improvements to the township's streets and spaces.
“Our approach is to positively occupy places that are perceived to be dangerous,” he says, standing outside a construction site, where local workmen clamber atop a structure of bright red shipping containers and rendered sand-bag walls, soon to be a new community centre. Across a dusty lot sits a heap of scrap metal, patrolled by a couple of emaciated dogs, while a toddler squats in the street, examining the sole of a discarded shoe.
“This used to be the site of an illegal chop shop,” says Krause. “Hijacked cars would be brought here to be dismantled and sold on. The community wasn't strong enough to stand up to the criminal elements, so we took them through a leadership process to give them the strength to do it themselves. The choice was either build a community centre, or be ruled by criminals. That's sustainability.”
The centre is one of a number of “active boxes” that have been built in the area over the last few years, conceived as hubs of 24/7 activity – part community centre, part safe haven, manned by volunteers from the nascent neighbourhood watch initiative. Each has a multi-purpose room, used for meetings and youth groups, along with a caretaker's flat, as well as spaces for shops and start-up businesses or a creche. Positioned every 500 metres along a route through the township, with their slender red watchtowers rising above the rambling rooftops, the active boxes now stand like a line of proud church spires.
“They are like the blue cheese in a gorgonzola,” says Krause, walking through a huddle of market stalls, where chickens are being plucked and corn is roasting on smoking coals. “They are safe nodes, connected by paths that thread their way through the township, from the market to the station to the schools and so on, defining well-lit routes monitored by passive surveillance.”
Leading the Violence Prevention through Urban Upgrading programme, an initiative jointly funded by the provincial government and the German Development Bank, Krause and his team spent months working with the community to map crime hotspots and work out the safer, regularly used routes through the area. The active boxes are accompanied by a package of public realm improvements, from street lighting to new paving and recreation spaces, along with “active citizenship” programmes, empowering residents to drive these projects forward themselves.
Khayelitsha township's library and youth centre. Photograph: Joy McKinney Photograph: Joy McKinney
It is a community-led approach that contrasts with the blunt hand of previous top-down interventions, such as the Khayelitsha shopping mall, a cluster of out-of-town retail sheds airlifted into the township in 2005, but hopelessly cut-off, sited the wrong side of a railway line. “They call it our new town centre, but it's in totally the wrong place,” says one local resident, walking back across the bridge over the tracks. “It may be shiny and new, but it doesn't feel safe to go there.”
Just a short way to the south, in the neighbourhood of Harare, the biggest VPUU project shows how things can be done differently. In the centre of the area now stands a tarmac square, lined either side with new red-brick buildings, carefully designed to frame this new civic space with active frontages. There is a big new library to one side (which now claims to be the busiest public library in Cape Town) next to a building called the Love Life youth centre. Lining the other edge of the square is a neat row of live-work units, with what looks like the beginnings of a high street, complete with a hair salon, internet cafe, co-op bank, TV repair shop, security company and a restaurant – all things that would have been unimaginable 20 years ago, when independent business was outlawed in the townships.
“It's completely changed the feeling of the area,” says 18-year old Bongi Qwesha, walking through the square on her way back from school. “It wouldn't have felt safe to hang around here a few years ago, but now we all come here after school to meet in the square and go on the internet.”
Krause says there has been a 33% reduction in the murder rate in Harare since the programme began in 2005, along with an increase in the general perception of safety (if only from 2 to 2.8 on a 5-step scale), figures which have seen the programme already expanded to other townships around the city.
But it hasn't come without a fight. Krause's team, and those who rent the new business units, face regular intimidation from the gangs, whose iron grip over the local economy is being slowly displaced by these initiatives. “That's why we never just wade in and move people on,” says Krause. “It's a very long and intense process of giving the community the confidence to do it for themselves. The city could just continue to airlift these spanking new facilities on to empty sites around the township, but when we do it, we take the time to make sure it's in the right place. It can take up to two years, just to assemble the land for a small project.”
The VPUU's work has yet to reach the peripheral lanes where Panyaza and her family reside, but she has heard that new flushing pubic toilets are on their way, to replace the chemical portaloos – prone to being locked from the outside and tipped over while someone is inside. “If they stop overflowing, we'll sleep better at night,” she says. “But I'm not holding my breath.”
Back in the centre of Cape Town, the World Design Capital entourage returns from the Veuve Clicquot Masters Polo tournament, “South Africa's most exclusive luxury lifestyle event,” where celebrities mingle with designers in the impossibly picturesque surroundings of the Val de Vie estate, in the rolling winelands to the north of the city. High on a cliff above the city, a cocktail reception awaits at another hilltop mansion, where a manicured lawn commands panoramic views across the bay – and from where guests notice billowing clouds of smoke rising in the distance. “Don't worry,” assures their guide, reaching for another glass of champagne. “It's probably just a fire in one of the townships.”
Following Torino, Seoul and Helsinki, Cape Town is the fourth city to be awarded the title of World Design Capital, an accolade bestowed by the Montreal-based International Council for Societies of Industrial Design, which charges a hefty fee to honour a different city with its logo each year. Cape Town has pumped around £3m of public money into its year of design, but it's hard to tell quite where all the cash has gone. There are craft fairs aplenty, showcasing fine ceramics and bespoke furniture, and open studios demonstrating bronze casting and elaborate taxidermy, but most of the funds appear to have been directed at a launch event in London, a New Year's Eve party, a gala dinner and a weekend conference. As a result, many of Cape Town's more established designers and architects have decided to boycott the bonanza.
Cape Town's central business district. Photograph: Eric Nathan/Alamy Photograph: Eric Nathan/Alamy
“I am offended that the word 'design' can be used so loosely, without any consideration for the damage it is doing,” says architect Jo Noero, who has built a body of work across the country over the last 30 years that is deeply embedded in serving the urgent needs of its poorest communities. From schools and community centres, to low-cost housing designed to be partially self-built and adapted by residents, his buildings are made “with the same integrity in the townships as they would have anywhere else,” he says. “Only that way will we ever begin to dismantle the idea of there being two different worlds in South Africa. Buildings must be designed to engage the enthusiasm and creativity of people – that's the only way a tradition of fine building will develop.”
He says that apartheid utterly destroyed the capacity of people to think about upgrading their own homes, and the reconstruction and development programme programme is only doing the same. “The government is still very paternalistic, so people expect it will provide everything,” he adds. “And they still fear that the more freedom you give people, the less easy it is to control them.
“In South Africa there is a horrible lack of imagination about the future. There are grand plans to build whole new satellite cities outside Cape Town, but they're following the same model of putting the poorest people furthest away. It seems like we're just repeating all the mistakes of the past.”
A few streets away, Noero's former partner, Heinrich Wolff, sits at a desk surrounded by a plethora of models of schools and housing projects, as well as a scheme for a dramatic transformation of a dockside warehouse into a new public-facing “innovation hub” for the university.
“We have massive spatial injustices in our city and we've just been sitting and staring at it for the last 20 years,” he says. “When Mandela came to power we had an incredible moment of change. Optimism gripped us all about a future that would happen – through ongoing transformation, not revolution. We are still busy with that project, but there is now a real urgency.”
He says the voices calling for immediate change are fast growing in strength and volume, with radical groups like Julius Malema's Economic Freedom Fighters surging in popularity, as more and more grow disaffected with the ruling ANC. The incendiary red beret-wearing politician, who fires up frenzied crowds with his song “Kill the Boer” at township rallies, promising to unleash a reign of violent retribution, is what keeps white South Africans awake at night.
“Cape Town is a paradise for the minority, but I could hope for a city where everyone has access to the same opportunities that I have,” says Wolff. “Mandela may have postponed revolution – but for how much longer is the question.”
Glasgow faces up to reality of a divided Commonwealth Games legacy | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2024/jan/15/talking-horses-tracks-cash-spat-takes-another-twist-with-newbury-switch-horse-racing | Sport | 2024-01-15T15:42:50.000Z | Greg Wood | Talking Horses: tracks cash spat takes another twist with Newbury switch | With plotlines that involve huge sums of money, deep-rooted suspicions and thinly veiled antipathy, racing’s continuing squabble over how much the tracks are trousering from media rights payments – and, by extension, how much they are giving back in prize money – has many of the elements of a Netflix potboiler, and last week, one of the leading players added some punchy dialogue to match.
In an interview with the Racing Post’s industry editor, Bill Barber, Martin Cruddace, the chief executive of Arena Racing Company (Arc), offered a robust response to those – including Julie Harrington, the British Horseracing Authority’s chief executive – that have called for more “transparency” about Arc’s media rights income, from online betting in particular.
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“It’s very difficult to argue with people who leave rational thought at the door and are not prepared to change their view no matter what you say and I won’t engage with those people,” Cruddace said.
“We run 586 fixtures and all but 100 make a substantial loss without media rights so that’s our business model. This fixation on one income line is economically illiterate. What I am not ever going to allow is for a trainer or an owner to tell this company how it should be run and what it should spend money on.”
The interview was published two days after a pledge by Nevin Truesdale, the Jockey Club’s chief executive, to provide at least some of the “greater transparency” over its tracks’ finances that the Thoroughbred Group (TG) – representing owners, trainers, jockeys and stable staff – has long been demanding. Cruddace, it seems, is highly unlikely to follow suit and that, in turn, is only likely to fuel the TG’s belief that there is something he is eager to hide.
Cruddace and Truesdale are the public faces of the two main groups selling the racecourse’s media rights. Arc’s 16 tracks, along with four smaller independents, pool their rights via The Racing Partnership (TRP), while the Jockey Club’s subsidiary, Jockey Club Racecourses (JCR), which includes Cheltenham, Aintree, Epsom and Newmarket, is a member of Racecourse Media Group (RMG), alongside some of the bigger independents including Goodwood and York.
Both TRP and RMG have struck media rights deals with the big off-course betting operators based on the payment of a fixed percentage of the turnover – rather than profit, as is the case with Levy payments – on their races. As things stand, however, the precise percentage involved is a closely guarded secret, and everyone privy to the information will have signed a contract that requires them to keep it that way.
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But that, of course, only encourages speculation and rumour, and one persistent suggestion – as has been mentioned in this column in the past – is that Cruddace has secured a significantly higher slice of online turnover for TRP tracks than those with RMG. More than double, in fact, according to some sources.
If this is indeed the case, and became public knowledge, it would pose some difficult questions for both sides. Cruddace and Arc would come under renewed pressure to justify the current levels of prize-money at their tracks, while the RMG side could stand accused of woefully underselling some of the sport’s biggest events, including the Grand National and the Cheltenham Festival.
It could also be argued, of course, that Cruddace is simply doing his job and securing the best possible return on investment for his shareholders. If his commercial nous and instincts have indeed led him to strike a much better deal than his JCR counterparts, then in a dog-eat-dog capitalist world, fair play to him, and his comments about telling owners and trainers where to go if they want to interfere in Arc’s business still stand.
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But it is an argument too that he would surely prefer to leave for another day (or, ideally, a different decade). Whether that will be a sustainable tactic, though, is unclear, not least as a result of Newbury’s decision to jump ship from RMG to TRP from the start of this year.
Weather permitting, Wednesday’s meeting at the Berkshire track will mark its debut on Sky Sports Racing, which broadcasts the action from TRP courses, and the track announced on Monday that its prize money in 2024 will rise to a record £7m, which is “a 13% like-on-like increase on 2023”.
The 2023 figure, meanwhile, was up 16% on 2022, as a result of the anticipated boost in media rights income from this year, and Newbury confirmed on Monday that “the rise in prize money has come about as a direct result of the increased media income Newbury anticipates earning from the move to Sky”.
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Helpfully for those seeking greater transparency on revenue streams, Newbury is an independent track which publishes its accounts in considerable detail each year. The full accounts for 2024 will arrive in May 2025 but its interim results are normally published in September, when it should be possible to gain much better idea of precisely how much of a boost its media rights income has received and whether the rumoured disparity between the two groups’ respective slices of the turnover pie is indeed the case.
Cruddace’s fighting talk over media rights income is no more or less than you would expect from one of the sport’s brightest and sharpest operators. Whether it is a line that can hold forever, though, remains to be seen. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2015/aug/20/readers-recommend-songs-about-mood-changing-music | Music | 2015-08-20T19:00:02.000Z | Peter Kimpton | Readers recommend: songs about mood-changing music | Peter Kimpton | “A
s soon as I hear a sound, it always suggests a mood to me,” said Brian Eno. As an artist who works in many forms, including an endlessly shifting visual project created with designer Nick Robertson, 77 Million Paintings, he is an experimentalist fascinated by constantly shifting nuances and states of mind. But all music changes mood to a greater or lesser extent. Our moods are constantly on the move. As often as philosopher and historian Thomas Carlyle put it, with a calm perspective: “There are good and bad times, but our mood changes more often than our fortune.”
A sample of 77 Million Paintings by Brian Eno
But this week’s topic isn’t about songs that affect mood per se, as that might simply include every song ever written. And what musician or songwriter isn’t associated with mood swings? Instead the focus is on songs that, in their lyrics, mention other music or a specific song to describe how that music changes an emotional state. It might make raise spirits or make someone cry. It might give courage or send into despair. It might be the style of the music, or a voice, or a lyric, or a moment when circumstances and sound combine. Your song, in its lyrics, might also refer to a film. Film music is absolutely designed to manipulate mood, from the great Bernard Herrman, who did the soundtracks to Hitchcock’s Psycho and Vertigo, to Scorsese’s Taxi Driver among many, to Ennio Morricone’s spaghetti westerns or John Williams and Jaws.
Moody and magnificent … Bernard Herrman’s music from Taxi Driver
Many things affect mood and these may also feature in lyrics – smells, food, lighting, the presence of other people, memories, the weather, doing some exercise, walking down the street, entering a bar, reading or seeing something, hearing something on the radio, even putting on certain clothes. All of these elements may be described in lyrics of how the other music changes mood. And externally that includes making playlists and connections. Or it might be a combination of things - a cacophony, or loud volume, or combinations of sounds. Or simply a phrase, witnessing an act of violence or injustice, an argument, or, by contrast, suddenly seeing a kitten.
What mood does this put you in? Couldn’t resist … Photograph: Alamy
Animals can certainly affect mood in ways that are deep-seated and hardwired. The photographer Frans Lanting said: “I become different once I start to work with animals. My movements become different, my mood is different. It involves letting everything fall behind you, becoming intuitive in your dealings with wild creatures in a way that bypasses reason. Sometimes it’s more like a dance than anything else.”
There’s nothing like a morning stretch to help your mood, as this bonobo demonstrates. Photograph: Frans Lanting/Corbis
But does mood help make music or the other way round in the creative process? “The subject dictates the mood of the songs I write,” said blues man John Mayall. “I try to read the audience, see what they’re in the mood for,” said surf-style king Dick Dale. “Music is sunshine. Like sunshine, music is a powerful force that can instantly and almost chemically change your entire mood. Music gives us new energy and a stronger sense of purpose,” said the upbeat Michael Franti. And Kate Smith, who the peak of her fame in the 1940s when known as “the First Lady of Radio” and as a singer or Irving Berlin songs was the Songbird of the South, put it that: “In nearly all ballads, the words set the mood and meaning, while the music intensifies or enhances them.” And Alison Goldfrapp summed it up with “The two have to go hand in hand - the atmosphere and the music. I actually get rather worried if I can’t see the music first. There always needs to be a mood, a feeling, a story, even if it is abstract. There’s got to be a narrative to guide things before they’re even created.”
Mood and music … Alison Goldfrapp and Will Gregory perfoming in Munich in 2010. Photograph: Stefan M. Prager/Redferns
So the probable answer is that neither leads the other, but that mood and music dance around each other like a pair of magnets. The music industry, very artificially is awash with compilations to give you energy, pump you up, make you happy, or relax. Yet the very idea of a “chill out” album sends my blood pressure rising, and has the same affect as patronising online algorithms that suggest what I might want to read, listen to, or buy next. Perhaps that’s just me. There have been numerous studies on why music affects mood, including a recent one by the British Academy of Sound Therapy that the song, Weightless by Marconi Union, is the most relaxing ever. Does it do it for you?
Is this really the most relaxing song of all time?
And yet many people, including stubborn artists who are unlikely to be told what to consume, do use music as a mood manipulator. The novelist Chuck Palahniuk, who wrote the novel on which the film Fight Club was based, and who may well be no stranger to a rush of blood, described how “while writing, I tend to repeat the same song, endlessly, for thousands of times. This helps me ignore any lyrics, and helps create a consistent mood for each book.” So in addition to suggesting songs that talk about mood in other music, after the deadline, feel free to share how what kind of music helps affect your moods.
Way back in 2006, RR had a general topic of songs about songs, but aside that short list, your remaining mood board is broad and colourful. The task of mastering mood references and finessing feelings goes this week to RR’s fabulous Fuel. Please place your songs in comments below, and optionally in the Spotify list, by last orders (11pm BST) on Monday 24 August in time for a menu of magnificent mood-related songs published on Thursday 27 August. I hope that gets you in the mood.
Songs about mood-chaning music Spotify
To increase the likelihood of your nomination being considered, please:
Tell us why it’s a worthy contender.
Quote lyrics if helpful, but for copyright reasons no more than a third of a song’s words.
Provide a link to the song. We prefer Muzu or YouTube, but Spotify or SoundCloud are fine.
Listen to others people’s suggestions and add yours to a collaborative Spotify playlist.
If you have a good theme for Readers recommend, or if you’d like to volunteer to compile a playlist from readers’ suggestions, please email [email protected]
There’s a wealth of data on RR, including the songs that are “zedded”, at the Marconium. It also tells you the meaning of “zedded”, “donds” and other strange words used by RR regulars.
Many RR regulars also congregate at the ‘Spill blog.
This September 2015 the glorious Guardian Readers Recommend blog is going to be 10 years old. There will be an informal celebration of this during the weekend of Saturday 19 September, with a meeting up from lunchtime onwards on that Saturday in London, near the Guardian’s offices. For more details, and possible other meet-ups around this time, please email [email protected] or keep an eye out on the Readers Recommend topics appearing here each Thursday. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2024/jan/01/i-am-dreaming-darts-prodigy-luke-littler-16-takes-aim-at-world-title | Sport | 2024-01-01T18:23:54.000Z | Mark Brown | ‘I am dreaming’: darts prodigy Luke Littler, 16, takes aim at world title | Luke “the Nuke” Littler, a 16-year-old darts prodigy, kept a remarkable sporting dream alive on Monday, imperiously defeating a player three times his age and becoming the youngest player, by some margin, to get to the semi-finals of the world championships.
Littler, from Warrington, beat the 50-year-old Northern Irishman Brendan “the History Maker” Dolan in his quarter-final match at Alexandra Palace in London.
It was a confident, devastating performance in front of 3,500 vocal darts fans. “Luke doesn’t need to use the Force,” said Sky Sports commentator Dan Dawson. “He is the Force.”
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Afterwards, Littler exuded confidence. “Wow, I’m in a semi-final on my debut,” he said. “I’m glad to get here … I’ve earned it.”
Asked if he could win the tournament outright, Littler said: “If I keep it up, I’ve got a good chance. I am dreaming. I’m two days away so I’m definitely thinking about lifting the title.”
Littler is making darts history by being so young but also professional sporting history. Martina Hingis was 15 when she won her first tennis grand slam and Pelé was 17 when he won the Fifa World Cup with Brazil.
The 16-year-old got to Monday’s quarter-final by defeating one of his heroes, Raymond van Barneveld, a player he idolised even as a three-year-old.
On Tuesday Littler will face Rob “Voltage” Cross in the semi-final and pundits see no reason he won’t go all the way. “He goes on and on and on and it is going to take something spectacular to stop the Nuke,” said Dawson.
John Part, a three-times world champion, said: “He is absolutely at home on this stage, that’s the best way to put it. He loves it up there … he’s an artist.”
Littler seems to thrive on the sport’s traditionally rowdy, boozy crowds. At one point in the quarter-final match he turned to the crowd and nonchalantly asked if he should try to win the leg with a bullseye.
He appears to love it even when the crowd chants “you’re going to school in the morning”, which occurs regularly and, technically, is inaccurate since Littler has officially left school.
There seems little need for him to go back. He wins £100,000 for winning on Monday and will pick up £500,000 if he wins the PDC World Darts Championship outright.
Luke Littler in action during the quarter-final match against Brendan Dolan of Northern Ireland at the World Darts Championship. Photograph: Kin Cheung/AP
Littler has described himself as an ordinary teenager away from darts. “Just wake up, play on my Xbox, have some food, have a chuck on the board and go to bed, that’s it,” he said.
A Manchester United supporter, Littler accepted invitations to watch Arsenal last Thursday and, at the invitation of the footballer James Maddison, he watched the Tottenham Hotspur game on Sunday.
The rise of Littler from the Cheshire county darts team to such success on his world championship debut is undeniably an extraordinary one. But it does not surprise people who know him.
“Look at his eyes,” said Karl Holden, who co-founded St Helens Darts Academy, where Littler learned his craft. “He is focused when he gets to the oche. He is always thinking and working out which way to go.”
With school finished Littler has said: “It’s darts, darts, darts now.”
Away from football, the Xbox and darts superstardom, Littler has also admitted a love of kebabs, something not lost on Warrington’s local food ordering app, Warrington Eats, which has promised him on social media: “Free takeaway on us any time that you want it. Doing Warrington Proud.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2012/jan/29/mark-kermode-dvd-round-up | Film | 2012-01-29T00:05:43.000Z | Mark Kermode | Mark Kermode's DVD round-up | Asound somewhere between a muffled cheer and a collective sigh of relief could be heard echoing around the hushed corridors of the "British film industry" last Tuesday when the brilliant Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011, Optimum, 15) received at least some of the recognition that it so richly deserved at the Oscar nominations.
Having been first snubbed by the unaccountable bozos of the increasingly embarrassing Golden Globes and then feted by the far more discerning voters of Bafta, Tomas Alfredson's low-key masterpiece walked away from round one of the Academy Awards with three significant nominations to its name: best actor for Gary Oldman (amazingly, his first sniff of Oscar glory); best music for Alberto Iglesias; and a posthumous adapted screenplay nod for Bridget O'Connor, whose partner in crime, Peter Straughan, deserves to carry off the statuettes on both their behalfs come awards night.
That the Swedish Alfredson should not have been specifically recognised too is clearly a disappointment, but in a year when We Need to Talk About Kevin has been overlooked entirely by the most high-profile American awards ceremonies, Tinker Tailor's Oscar nominations are something of a reason to be cheerful.
The genius of Alfredson's film is that despite the fabulously evocative period detail (you can smell the stale cigarette smoke lingering in the yellowing wallpaper) and the pervasive cold war dread, this adaptation of John le Carré's well-loved bestseller is not about spies at all. Just as Let the Right One In presented a surreptitious study of repressed childhood anger disguised in the garb of a neo-gothic vampire tale, so Tinker Tailor buries its central theme of male distrust, duplicity and anxious misidentification within the labyrinthine twists of an international counter-intelligence yarn.
While the seven-part 70s TV series had the time to unravel and unpick every intertwining plot strand, O'Connor and Straughan's slimmed-down screenplay remains altogether more allusive on the spy-v-spy mechanics. Instead, we watch a parade of variously uncomfortable misfit men dupe, lie and habitually deceive one another, often with no clear purpose or end in sight.
At the heart of it all is Oldman's immeasurable Smiley, cast out into the wilderness by the politics of fate, now struggling to reassemble the fractured pieces of a life he never really understood. Unlike so many who capture the attention of awards voters, Oldman offers a performance of rare control and understatement, reducing momentous revelations to the merest flicker of an eyelid, a faint ripple of a neck muscle, a barely noticeable tightening of the jaw.
All this tiny ballet is beautifully captured by Hoyte van Hoytema's surveillance cinematography and pickled within the aspic perfection of Maria Djurkovic's effectively oppressive production design. DVD extras include commentary from Oldman and Alfredson and an interview with le Carré, with Blu-ray discs adding contributions from Straughan and co-stars Colin Firth and Tom Hardy. Breathtaking.
While there was triple cause for celebration in the Tinker Tailorcamp, the makers of the Bafta best film contender Drive (2011, Icon, 18) had to make do with a single Oscar nomination for sound editing. It's perhaps unsurprising that Cannes festival prize-winner Nic Winding Refn should find his excellent upmarket exploitation picture thusly shunned by the American Academy – this is exactly the kind of unashamedly "unworthy" effort that is traditionally sidestepped by Oscar voters in favour of more socially conscious fare such as The Help. Never mind – this heady cocktail of tension, intrigue and explosive pedal-to-the-metal violence is in little need of respectable garlands.
Drawing equal inspiration from the throwback narrative templates of The Driver and Le Samouraï and the modern grind-house aesthetic of Gaspar Noé's Irreversible, Refn's shiny gem is a slick, stylish, quasi-existential thriller, which purrs like a V-8 and roars like a Straight-6. Ryan Gosling resembles a latterday James Dean as the match-chewing, titular gun for hire whose untouchability is threatened by Carey Mulligan's vulnerable allure. Adapted with high-performance efficiency by screenwriter Hossein Amini from James Sallis's pulp-fiction source, Drive is a real guilty pleasure, with its glistening surfaces, threatening noises and intoxicating musical soundtrack.
The only downside to its arrival on the DVD shelves (replete with Refn Q&A) is the fact that, as in cinemas, it ships up day and date with another altogether less likable Ryan Gosling vehicle, Crazy Stupid Love (2011, Warner, 12). An increasingly irksome Steve Carell "relationship comedy" (stop me if you've heard this one), this disappointingly dreary dirge casts Gosling as a slimy ladies' man who makes it his mission to get a middle-aged lunk laid. Heavy-handed sex-farce japes aside, what is most dispiriting about this somewhat smug and ultimately ill-advisedly moralising mess is the lousy hand it serves to talented performers such as Marisa Tomei, Emma Stone and Julianne Moore.
At least Anna Faris gets a fair crack of the whip in What's Your Number? (2011, Fox, 15), in which she plays a disenchanted singleton who learns from a magazine article that her chances of marriage would be impaired by any further liaisons and therefore resolves to revisit all her former boyfriends in search of Mr Right. It's a clunking plot contrivance that runs out of steam long before the movie has run its course and the script has nothing of the ballsy charm of Bridesmaids (which caught a couple of bouquets at the Oscar nominations – hooray!). But Faris gets to keep changeable cheesecake Chris Evans out of the centre-stage spotlight and remind us that there's nothing essentially male about bawdy scattershot humour. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/nov/28/daisy-ridley-star-wars-the-force-awakens | Film | 2015-11-28T07:00:06.000Z | Emine Saner | How Daisy Ridley went from bit parts to lead in Star Wars: The Force Awakens | Daisy Ridley made her first feature film three years ago, a project by the film-maker Peter Hearn and his students at Andover College, where he is a lecturer. Ridley, like the handful of other professionals working with the students, was paid expenses for her role as a comic book drawing come to life, but that was about it.
Daisy Ridley’s second feature film is Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the seventh in the multibillion-dollar series. And if internet rumours are anything to go by (they’re not normally, of course, but Star Wars fans tend to be an obsessively analytical and keen-eyed bunch), Ridley’s character Rey, a staff-wielding scavenger picking through the wreckage of battles, is the film’s lead. “She’s not a superhero,” the British actor has said. “She’s a normal girl thrust into extraordinary circumstances, so it’s very relatable.”
Ridley’s leap from bit parts in British TV dramas to the biggest film franchise in the world is a legitimate overnight success. “It’s a great place to come from,” she said in an interview with Vogue in September. “Nobody has any expectations of me until they see the film.”
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Ridley had heard that the film-makers were seeing not just famous actors and she lobbied her agent to get her an audition. She auditioned five times for the film’s director, JJ Abrams.
Casting an unknown was entirely deliberate, Abrams said recently. “That’s something I remember loving about the original trilogy: not having seen these people before,” he told Elle magazine. “It was exciting but also terrifying because we knew that there was going to be a certain level of scrutiny and expectation on who these people were going to be. So they needed to be actors whom the audience could discover as these characters, not as actors they’d seen elsewhere. Ideally, it needed to be people like Daisy – somewhat experienced, but mostly new to the game.”
Ridley, 23, grew up in west London with four older sisters. Her mother works in communications for a bank and her father is a photographer. A great uncle was the actor Arnold Ridley, who appeared as Private Godfrey in the classic TV comedy Dad’s Army.
She attended the fee-paying Tring Park School for the Performing Arts in Hertfordshire, where she specialised in musical theatre, graduating in 2010. In one of the few interviews Ridley has given, she says she did not have a burning desire to act. At her school, she credits her drama teacher as being “the first person that made me think I could do it as a profession. My sister asked me, ‘Why do people want to be actors?’ I had no answer. I’m not totally sure of my capabilities. I felt like a total novice compared to everyone I worked with. I went to the dentist last week and I said I was an actress, and everyone’s like, ‘Ooohhh.’ It still feels weird to me.”
There are hints that Ridley may not act forever. She has signed up for the next two Star Wars films, but she has also enrolled on a social sciences degree and has spoken about her interest in psychology and counselling. One of her first jobs was in Lifesaver, an interactive short film made for the Resuscitation Council.
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Georgina Higgins, who cast Ridley in a short film, Blue Season, after seeing her on a casting website, says: “She worked incredibly well in the time we had, creating her character.” In the film – created as part of the Sci-Fi London 48-hour film challenge, in which film-makers had to write and shoot a short film in that time – Ridley played a woman who had been kidnapped. “She was focused and giving, and open, asking if there was anything she should change or do. We didn’t have much time for rehearsals and she worked really well with that. For the first part of the film, she was mostly hanging upside down.”
Other small parts started to come in – Ridley appeared briefly in the E4 comedy Youngers, in an episode of BBC1 hospital drama Casualty and in the ITV series Mr Selfridge. She appeared in one of the two-part Silent Witness dramas as the best friend of a murder victim who meets an untimely demise herself. Dusan Lazarevic, the director, remembers being taken with her immediately at the casting.
“I had this gut feeling that she was right,” he says. “She showed a combination of vulnerability and strength which gave her a complexity, and there was an intelligence in her eyes that was an indicator she could play quite a complicated part. Her eyes and face can one moment radiate joy and a lust for life, and then suddenly there was strength in it, and another moment she could be brave, then defiant, then racked with guilt and despair. There was a whole range where she could go with authenticity and conviction.”
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Ridley was nervous, he says, “but I wouldn’t say she was insecure. Although she was inexperienced, there was a kind of intuitive integrity to what she was doing. She wasn’t simply following advice or direction. She would listen, but then she would incorporate it into her own feeling of how it should be done.”
The only thing Hearn had seen Ridley in before he cast her in his film was an advert for a supermarket – a friend had also appeared in it, and she told him about Ridley. “She said Daisy seemed to have bundles of energy and that if we needed any more young actors [for his film], to look at her.” He met her and told her that if she would like to be in the film, he would write her a part. “There was something about her. She just had that spark about her.”
Did he get a sense of her ambition or where she wanted her career to go? “I think she just wanted to work. I’m pretty sure she was working in a bar at the time we cast her. She was overwhelmed with the fact people were offering her work. Daisy just wanted to work and whenever she got cast in anything we all applauded.” His student film-makers were really excited seeing her pop up on Casualty, he says; imagine how they will feel when they see her lead the new Star Wars film. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2021/nov/25/how-to-fix-manchester-united-it-depends-which-direction-they-want-to-go-in- | Football | 2021-11-25T18:06:28.000Z | Karen Carney | How to fix Manchester United? It depends which direction they want to go in | Karen Carney | Manchester United have all the components required to challenge for trophies – they just need to step things up on and off the pitch.
It cannot be forgotten that they finished second in the Premier League last season, but in the search to go one better they have moved away from what made them successful. I think there has been a lack of identity and structure throughout the club which has seeped into the squad. This season under Ole Gunnar Solskjær the players did not know whether they were a pressing team or a defensive side that counterattack.
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I like Solskjær and he was great for the culture of the club and getting an association with the fans, which had been missing since Sir Alex Ferguson stepped down, but the top managers are tacticians and there the Norwegian fell short. It ended in a sorry affair at Watford, culminating in the negative comments from the players. I think sacking him was right because it was not working out and in the end there could only be one outcome.
The summer recruitment hindered the team. It remains to be seen whether they have recruited the right type of players, and it seems a real mismatch. Cristiano Ronaldo has obviously changed the dynamic of the squad but it is not all on him; he arrived late and at short notice and it would have taken a strong personality at United to turn down the return of a club legend still performing at such a high level.
Paul Pogba started the season superbly but his form dropped off when his position changed. Photograph: Eurasia Sport Images/Getty Images
Ronaldo has not let the team down – he keeps scoring and proving he is still one of the best around. The problem is that his signing changed the tactical plans after the season had started and tweaks were not made to accommodate his shortcomings. If the staff had known he was coming, they could have brought in a midfielder or really pinned down the identity of the player philosophy, in particular the defender of the team from the front.
Solskjær also suffered bad luck with Raphaël Varane’s injuries, because he could be a key player in the heart of the United defence. The sooner they get him back the better, to help take the pressure off Harry Maguire. The backline needs freshening up so that Luke Shaw and Aaron Wan-Bissaka, who are out of form, do not need to play every week. In the modern game full-backs are winning matches for teams, as Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester City are proving. Equally, the backline could be helped by the forwards, who are not doing their work when it comes to pressing and tracking back – because defending starts at the front.
Many United fans will want the team to be more positive. Under Solskjær, more often than not, they would operate with two holding midfielders. He will have had his reasons, but the formation could be adjusted to utilise just one and allow Donny van de Beek to come in and bring a more dynamic threat in the middle of the pitch.
Paul Pogba was flying at the start of the season – I watched him and thought he was brilliant. He played off the left and came into central midfield where he was causing a lot of problems. Then all of the sudden he was moved from that position. I feel for him, because he works hard and tracks back, and that can go unnoticed. Can he play in central midfield without the protection? No, but we’ve known that for a long time. It’s not all on Pogba, who has missed the past three games and won’t be back for weeks because of injury; there are others at United doing a lot less.
Ralf Rangnick during RB Leipzig’s match at Nürnberg in March 2019. Photograph: Dpa Picture Alliance/Alamy
When it comes to the forwards having to work harder, that’s not an opinion, it’s a fact. Their running stats going back are nowhere near those going forward. Those players can do it but they need to take responsibility and be accountable. Liverpool and Manchester City work so much harder out of possession to win back the ball, keep opponents in their own half and protect their backline. United have all the talent but they need direction and authority to make sure that happens. They require a new manager with a strong personality who will tell them that, if they don’t put the effort in, they are off.
The right permanent manager has to come in as soon as possible. They can have an interim but if that person starts putting ideas in place that are not for the long term they will have to start again in the summer, putting the team further behind the opposition. The best solution would have been to get going immediately, allowing a new manager the January window, a full summer and a pre-season with their own ideas to revitalise the club.
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But United have seemingly concluded that coach is not available, which is why they are in advanced talks with Ralf Rangnick over taking the job temporarily. Now they must look at who will be available in the summer and what direction they want to go in, which has been the issue all along. Sadly for United, the best tactical managers are in jobs at rival clubs, making it quite hard to appoint someone who can compete with Pep Guardiola, Thomas Tuchel and Jürgen Klopp. At the very least, starting now, the players need to provide a considerable shift in intensity and desire. They have top-quality players, but those players have plenty more to give. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/dec/04/the-killers-best-christmas-singles | Music | 2015-12-04T16:36:05.000Z | Marc Burrows | A very Killers Christmas: the best of the band's festive singles | The days of the big Christmas hit are long behind us. Every year someone has a pop, and every year the most successful new addition to the Christmas canon is Michael Bublé smugly desecrating a treasured classic. Most bands only ever give it a go once – most bands, that is, apart from Las Vegas indie rock stalwarts the Killers.
The group have been releasing a charity Christmas single every year for a decade now; they’ve been a mixed bag, veering from the ridiculous to the genuinely tender, the bombastic to the low key, the excellent to the bloody awful (2011’s The Cowboy’s Christmas Ball is an actual abomination). But then that’s the Killers all over, isn’t it? Treading the line between brilliant and banal. Quality aside, it’s a likable tradition, upheld by the band regardless of whether they’re even a functioning unit that year, and the cause, the Product Red campaign, is a very good one.
This week marks the release of the band’s 10th Christmas song, Dirt Sledding. If I’m honest it’s not one of the stronger entries – but that’s OK. They’ve got enough for a whole album now. What better time to highlight the best of the best from 10 years of a very Killers Christmas?
A Great Big Sled featuring Toni Halliday (2006)
The Killers’ A Great Big Sled
The track that started it all. Catching the band at the height of their Americana rock phase around second album Sam’s Town, it’s a big-hearted pop monster heavy on the good-time Springsteenisms, chugging along like the Polar Express with a monster none-more-Killers chorus. Sleigh bells jangle, tubular bells chime and boxes are satisfactorily ticked.
Don’t Shoot Me Santa featuring Ryan Pardey (2007)
The Killers’ Don’t Shoot Me Santa
The first of several Killers Christmas songs featuring Vegas scenester Ryan Pardey as old St Nick. Like much of the band’s best stuff Brandon Flowers manages to instil a weird desperation into the silliest of phrases, and there’s something quite unsettling and genuinely funny going on with the concept. It’s Pardey’s best Santa-turn too.
Joseph, Better You Than Me feat. Elton John and Neil Tennant (2008)
The Killers’ Joseph, Better You Than Me
Completing a trio of brilliant weirdo Christmas songs, the band (at this point at their commercial peak) bring in the heavyweights with Neil “Christmas Number 1, 1987” Tennant and Elton “Step Into Christmas” John. Let’s face it, if you’re going to straight-face such a knowingly ridiculous ballad, those are the voices you want. Sympathising with the Nativity’s most underappreciated character there’s genuine pathos here (“You’re a maker, a creator, not just somebody’s dad.”) Probably the best of the bunch.
Joel The Lump of Coal, feat. Jimmy Kimmel (2014)
The Killers’ Joel, The Lump of Coal
A late-period highlight, with the band drafting in US comedian and chat show host Jimmy Kimmel to tell the story of of the titular Joel, an anthropomorphic piece of coal excited to be picked by Santa as someone’s present, only to realise he’s the booby prize to teach a naughty boy a lesson. It’s oddly charming.
I Feel It In My Bones featuring Ryan Pardey (2012)
The Killers’ I Feel It In My Bones
Pardey returns to the Santa beard in this dark piece of 80s powerpop. Continuing the now established theme of “Christmas losers”, this time it’s Flowers himself begging for inclusion on the “Nice” list against a weirdly menacing Pardey-Claus. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/apr/25/coca-cola-new-coke-formula-1985 | Business | 2019-04-25T04:30:41.000Z | Michael White | From the archive: Coca-Cola changes its formula – 25 April 1985 | The hard-nosed men of the New York Stock Exchange yesterday made a snap judgment on the most sensational news in the mighty American soft drinks industry for 99 years. Without even trying the new, sweeter formula Coca-Cola, they backed the initial shock reaction of the amateurs: it tastes more like Pepsi.
By lunchtime yesterday Coca-Cola shares had taken another 1.50 cent pounding on top of the 1.60 they sustained in late trading after the new formula was officially unveiled on Monday, despite the assurances of Coke’s chairman, Mr Roberto Goizueta, that the new taste is smoother, rounder and bolder, not to mention more harmonious. Reporters disagreed.
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This was exactly what buoyant Pepsi-Cola executives had hoped for when they ran a street party just a few blocks from Coca-Cola’s Manhattan press conference beneath a banner proclaiming ‘taste the Real real thing,’ and announced a staff holiday tomorrow. Its shares rose comfortably, although at the time of writing, Coke’s dominant share of the £23bn US soft drinks market remains 21.8% to Pepsi’s 17%.
What is at stake is no laughing matter - not at least for Coca-Cola and Pepsi whose products compete in 155 countries, in a market worth $50bn, as symbols of US Multinational capitalism. Coca-Cola has not lightly decided to alter the formula which the Atlanta dentist, John S Pemberton, concocted in 1886.
As all the world knows, the formula ‘Merchandise 7X’ is a secret mixture of water, sugar, caramel, phosphoric acid, vanilla, caffeine, extract of coco leaves, cola nuts and the mystery 7X, but the success of its own Diet-Coke, not to mention caffeine free Coke, plus the steady rise of rivals, notably Pepsi, had persuaded Coca-Cola’s executives to tamper with it. New Coke, which will be world-wide by Christmas, will be slightly sweeter, have two fewer calories per 12 ounce can and a nice new silver and gold touch on the famous red and white logo.
Pepsi says it represents a loss of nerve after an 87-year-old poker game between the two companies, but Coca Cola has tested the new product on 190,000 people in the US and Canada and they like it better than old Coke by 55 to 45% in a blind test, even more when they’re told which is the new one - and by an encouraging, but undisclosed, margin over Pepsi, says Coca-Cola.
Production of old-fashioned Coke ended yesterday and the customers can start passing judgment on May 8.
Not all consumers liked the new formula and within three months Coca-Cola reintroduced the old drink as Coca-Cola Classic. New Coke became Coke II, which lingered in parts of the US until 2002, when it was stopped entirely. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2013/nov/25/why-pommie-bashing-is-so-much-fun | Australia news | 2013-11-25T05:35:40.000Z | Richard Cooke | Why pommie bashing is so much fun | Finally. Once again the Death Star of Australian cricket is fully operational. England has not just been beaten, but bitten by a pack of junkyard mongrels we feared might have been neutered.
The first Test at the Gabba wasn’t just a win, but an old-school Australian bad winner’s win, a sledging, bouncing, snarling KO by a flat-track bully. Australia is back in the game, and the real game is baiting the English.
We should be honest here – no Australian wants an even contest against the Old Enemy. My own dream result is an Ashes series so one-sided cricket gets banned by the Queen: every field salted, every bat thrown into a bonfire, even the word “cricket” expunged from the language, like a damnatio memoriae in the old times. Then the Poms go off and get beaten at rounders by the Dutch.
That’s how it is, no quarter given, no quarter given. Or how it was, the new version being no quarter given, and the lack of quarter being complained about by the English papers.
When they were on top, I don’t remember those pious organs piping up over rotating casts of substitute fieldsmen, or time-wasting, or any of the other tweaks that put a bite of fire in the spirit of the game.
I remember Giles Coren sledging our nation, asking what we had when we didn’t have any cricket any more. “You look at the wider Australian cultural scene and you are forced to ask: ‘What have you got when Rolf goes?’” That’s Rolf Harris for Australian readers – he’s part of Britain’s cultural firmament, and look how that’s turned out.
Now that English cricket is back down in the doldrums (AKA its natural habitat), and Australia is on top again, it might be time to send some of that crowing back return-to-sender. Coren is an English restaurant critic (poor bastard), a position a bit like coaching Eddie the Eagle to a “Most Improved” award. So his job is to be irascible.
But his criticisms of Australia seemed a little stale, like they were trapped in 1979. So much has changed since then – in those days, Britain was still facing a bitter winter of social unrest, failing infrastructure, and a Conservative government cutting services to the quick.
The line of attack Brit jingoes chose was a strange one. Australia was vulgar! Yes, but vulgarity is what inoculates us against sclerosis. Australia is stuck in the past! We’ll get to that.
Coren even questioned our country's record with Indigenous populations and film production, thereby constructing the biggest glass house since the Crystal Palace. Who says Britain can't build things! Anyone who has ever been there and tried to use a train or a toilet, it turns out.
Sydney has notoriously bad public transport, but it's Switzerland compared with Britain, which seems to have a system imported from the former Soviet Bloc, only with less friendly customer service. On my last trip from Stansted, the seat was decorated with the standard melange of wet tissue, trickling tea cup and apple core that some call "Stansted Express still life".
The point of innovation was filthy water dripping from the roof, the ominous calling card of a sprinkle of snowflakes. Second-world infrastructure was about to become third-world chaos. Sure enough, before long they were prying open the doors with a crowbar and shifting us to another train.
There's no phrase that sums up the experience of modern Britain better than “run out of grit”, except maybe “the train is delayed due to leaves on the track”. Spirit of the Blitz!
Of all the haymakers swung at Australia by English sneerers, “stuck in the past” feels the most off-target. Have these people ever been, say, into the cocktail bar at the Savoy Hotel? It’s like something out of an Evelyn Waugh novel, only not funny. I felt like one of those fisherman who catches a grotesque amphibian formerly believed extinct for millions of years.
I was the only man in the room not wearing a dinner suit, a holding pen of pallid scions with doodled jaw lines and clammy comb-overs, the oldest young people in the world. That room isn’t Britain’s vestigial spleen, it’s the brains of the operation. The overbite goes all the way to the top.
No matter how embarrassing and backward Australia is, we’re still a rung up the evolutionary ladder from prostrating ourselves to suck the toes of an idiot future monarch. At least we’re trying to prise ourselves out of this ancient boondoggle, instead of buying a picture of it on a plate.
The only aspect of British life that feels both modern and truly functional is the surveillance culture. It’s the world's first police state with the reach of a dictatorship, but the mind of a suburbanite curtain-twitcher, obsessed with littering, TV aerials, noisy teenagers and the foreigners next door – Eurasia run by Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells.
So it’s natural and right that the summer sport is won by the place where the sun shines, rather than the place where it doesn’t. For now the English must go back to their traditional method of basking, where employed, corpulent men in their underpants lie in public parks, milking whatever fleeting rays they can get.
Fortunes will turn again. But until then, in the immortal words of Ricky Ponting … actually it probably wouldn’t get past your firewall. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/jun/25/adil-rashid-england-sri-lanka-odi-cricket | Sport | 2016-06-25T19:21:00.000Z | Vic Marks | Adil Rashid ignores the armchair ‘experts’ to give England confidence | Vic Marks | Bleary-eyed, the circus heads to Bristol, scarcely believing what has just happened. The old certainties have been uprooted. As we sleepwalk over the Clifton Suspension Bridge, always a dangerous journey, we have to pinch ourselves. Is this a dream or a nightmare? No, it is true: England did manage to defeat Sri Lanka by 10 wickets at Edgbaston with a record opening partnership in a victory triggered by some superb bowling by an English-born leg-spinner. And the Super Series has been secured. Hang out the bunting.
But there is a problem. The series now lacks context with the Super Series decided. This concerns the administrators and exercises the minds of broadcasters and correspondents, who want to stress how important Sunday’s ODI remains. In fact for the dogged old punters, who actually sit in the stands, this will not matter so much. They want a bit of sunshine (not guaranteed unfortunately) and an entertaining day out at the cricket.
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England are entertaining and unpredictable. They can be 82 for six and almost reach their target of 287 at Nottingham. Two days later they finish the game with more than 15 overs to spare at 256 for nought. There is something to be optimistic about.
In particular this applies to the performances of Adil Rashid. In the first two games Rashid has, by a substantial margin, been the most economical bowler on either side. In his 20 overs he has yielded just 70 runs, picking up two important wickets at Edgbaston. He is becoming one of Eoin Morgan’s most reliable bowlers, which represents significant progress.
This is not entirely down to Shane Warne. But it is intriguing how Warne is drawn to Rashid and excited by his progress. The shy Yorkshireman is hardly likely to chase the world’s greatest wrist spinner around the outfield in pursuit of some nuggets. The leg-spinners’ union is one of the smallest in cricket but it is tight-knit. As Rashid explained after the match at Edgbaston, he had a chat with Warne before the first game at Nottingham.
“We had a general talk about leg-spin,” said Rashid. “He gave me tips and stuff. It was more bumping into him. It was good to see him and good of him to give me a few tips. Helpful.”
Rashid then expanded a little. “It was about the basics. Keeping it simple. Bowling the same ball, ball after ball and letting natural variation take over – from the hand and the pitch.”
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Coming from someone of Warne’s stature, this is excellent stuff. Warne was a wonderful propagandist about his own bowling, talking up all his own variations and inventing a few along the way (remember the “zooter”?). This was all part of the spell. In fact he could be quite a conservative bowler; he certainly recognised the virtue of being parsimonious, of frustrating his opponents by denying them any easy runs.
Too often there is an excess of armchair talk about spin bowling, demanding more variations in pace, flight and modes of delivery. Think of all the guff about Monty Panesar needing to slow down and give the ball more air or how Moeen Ali should mesmerise with his doosra. The great spin bowlers have a very good stock ball, which they keep repeating time and time again and they bowl no rubbish. And, of course, they have a few variations, but not as many as they like to pretend to opponents.
Increasingly it seems Rashid understands this and to have Warne’s confirmation is indeed “helpful”.
There are other England players enjoying this series. Neither Liam Plunkett nor Jason Roy have been pulling up many trees while playing at county level this summer. Yet when reunited with an England shirt they have prospered. Both have excelled in two disciplines, Plunkett with bat and ball, Roy with bat and in the field.
It is hard to imagine anything other than England marching on to victory in this ODI series with three more games to play, especially since Sri Lanka’s two most dangerous batsmen, Angelo Mathews and Dinesh Chandimal, were limping ominously at various stages at Edgbaston. So expect England to prevail with one proviso: it seems that the so-called experts – or even the bookies – are not always right in their predictions. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/food/2020/jan/23/the-poor-deserve-more-than-ration-book-food-staples | Food | 2020-01-23T08:00:48.000Z | Zoe Williams | Food-bank users deserve luxuries as well as lentils – just like everyone else | It was 2011 when I first went to a food bank to see what was going on, but the Trussell Trust had launched its first one more than a decade earlier. So, in a way, it was naive to think that this was a watershed political moment, but not unreasonable to think they were political in essence. We used to think of food aid as an American peculiarity, one of those degrading stopgaps they prefer to a social safety net. Was Britain, too, on its way to rejecting universal dignity as a principle, and replacing it with something materially meagre and philosophically ungenerous? Or was it just a cod Americanism that politics was trying out, the way singers try to sound like Shania Twain before they find their own voice? We got our answer to that soon enough: the story in 2011 was that food bank use had surged by 50%, with 61,000 people going to the Trussell Trust in a year. Last year that was 1.6 million.
One thing I never thought this was was a story about food. I didn’t even look inside the parcels; it would have felt incredibly intrusive, a little like poking through someone else’s shopping trolley. The first backlash moment I remember was when someone – a reader, I couldn’t possibly guess of which newspaper – spotted some Maldon sea salt on a food bank shelf. Thus was the truth unmasked: that these people were not hungry at all, they were just in it for the incredibly expensive salt. Jack Monroe, the Bootstrap Cook, who has done the extraordinary work of building a recipe encyclopaedia from the foods you might get at a food bank, pointed out that they were just working with whatever people had donated. Users may, occasionally, get some peaches in armagnac; that would not be proof positive that they weren’t destitute.
Despite making perfect sense, the point did not land: the new normal was that food had to be extremely basic, otherwise food bank users were somehow in breach of their “contract”. There is necessity and there is pleasure, and if they ever coexist, the need is a lie. Monroe has worked tirelessly against this, insisting on pleasure in whatever bag of lentils she chances upon, but she seems to be doing this almost singlehandedly. By 2017, some supermarkets were handing out suggested shopping lists if you wanted to donate: tinned meat, fish, fruit, veg, soup and pulses; UHT milk; tea, coffee, rice and pasta. Of course, they have to be tinned, since they can’t be perishable (although arguably, usage is so high now that shifting a few bananas wouldn’t be very hard).
Absent a can of condensed milk, this is exactly the food my mum used to keep in the cellar (she said in case we got snowed in, but really for the untoward event of a nuclear war). To give “austerity” its fullest meaning, this – minus the pasta – is a postwar shopping list, the food you would eat without complaint in the immediate aftermath of a national disaster. The Trussell Trust typically tries to include some biscuits, but its offering is still strikingly pared down. This is about more than what people happen to donate: there are conventions, now, around what you’re supposed to donate. So in Cardiff, two Christmases ago, there was a glut of baked beans and tea bags, but an urgent shortage of sponge puddings. That made perfect sense: if a food parcel is political, which it is, then its contents will be scrutinised, and somebody, somewhere, will call a pudding empty calories. Why would a person in genuine need eat an empty calorie? Beans? Now there’s an honest food. Basic enough that nobody is getting something for nothing.
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It is actually the food itself, more than the widespread experience of hunger, that distils the difference between charity and social security. With charity comes the end of privacy, since your basket is everybody’s business. But it also builds a very functional view of the body, insofar as the least it requires to survive is also the most that it needs, as though you are talking about horses, or rabbits (dogs are exempt from this narrative; God knows how they got away with it, but it would be considered very inhumane never to give a dog a treat). And the fact that you can imagine all these foods on the basics list of a ration card, instead of ringing any alarm bells (hang on a second: we didn’t have a war; we don’t have a national food shortage), only serves to reinforce the notion that it is somehow character-building, because, you know, wars are. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/03/i-feel-like-a-1950s-housewife-how-lockdown-has-exposed-the-gender-divide | World news | 2020-05-03T08:10:46.000Z | Donna Ferguson | ‘I feel like a 1950s housewife’: how lockdown has exposed the gender divide | During the lockdown, Anna Bosworth, a freelance marketing consultant, has given up on her career so that her husband can concentrate on his. “There isn’t a second I can work, from 5am until my kids go to sleep at 8.30pm,” she says. “I can’t do anything productive.”
Like many working mothers, Bosworth is self-employed and went part-time after she had her first child. Meanwhile, her husband has a full-time job at an advertising agency. He is continuing to work normally, except for one day a week which he is taking as holiday. “He’s doing everything to help with the children, but I feel lucky he still has a job,” says Bosworth. “The priority for us is to keep our house and pay our bills, and his job is the most straightforward route to that.”
They have an eight-month-old baby and a five-year-old girl, and normally get help from grandparents and a childminder so that they can both work. “I’m a feminist and believe in choice,” she says. “But because of the pandemic, my choices have been taken away. I feel like a 1950s housewife.”
She is not alone. During the lockdown, mothers in the UK are typically providing at least 50% more childcare as well as spending around 10% to 30% more time than fathers home schooling their children, figures analysed by the Observer show.
It doesn’t matter whether a woman is working from home, working outside the home or not working at all: the research reveals she is typically spending at least an extra hour-and-a-half on childcare and home schooling every day, compared to the average man in the same circumstances.
The research, carried out by economists from the universities of Cambridge, Oxford and Zurich between 9 and 14 April, indicates that a woman who is at home – whether or not she is formally working – is affected by this gender divide. Both employed and unemployed mothers are typically spending around six hours providing childcare and home schooling every working day. By contrast, the average father at home is only spending a little over four hours on childcare and homeschooling each working day, regardless of his employment status.
“Whatever situation you have, on average it’s the woman doing more, and it’s not because she’s working less” says Dr Christopher Rauh, an economist at Cambridge University.
Men seem to be able to lock themselves away in a study, while women are working at the kitchen table – and also trying to home educate
Mary-Ann Stephenson, Women's Budget Group
The gender divide is even larger in high-income households. A mother who earns over £80,000 and is working from home is typically doing 3.3 hours of home schooling and 3.8 hours of childcare each day – over seven hours in total. A typical father who earns over £80,000 only spends 2.1 hours home schooling his children and 2.3 hours on childcare each working day – less than 4.5 hours in total.
“The higher the household income, the more time women are spending home schooling compared to men,” says Rauh. “People come up with explanations – like women are better at taking care of their children due to evolution – but if that were true, it shouldn’t apply to home schooling. Yet we also see those differences here.”
The amount of home schooling children are receiving in lockdown appears to be particularly affected by the income of their mothers, with the lowest-paid women spending 2.1 hours a day educating their children each day (over an hour less than the highest-paid women). Fathers earning £0 to £20,000 are doing even less homeschooling (1.9 hours), but that’s still roughly the same as the higher-paid men.
The starkest gender divide among low-paid parents, however, is around childcare. Like the highest-paid women, those women earning £0 to £20,000 are doing 3.9 hours of childcare each day. By contrast, the lowest-paid men are carrying out just 2.4 hours of childcare each day.
In other words, a woman earning over £80,000 and working from home is typically spending 60% more time (an extra 1.4 hours) on childcare each working day than the average man earning £0 to £20,000.
Mary-Ann Stephenson, director of the Women’s Budget Group, thinks this may be because women are more used to having to juggle looking after children and work than men. “It may be that in an emergency the woman takes on more of the childcare work,” she says.
Children may also be more inclined to go to their mothers than their fathers, she says. Similarly, if their father is paid more, it might be seen as more important that he doesn’t lose his job.
The home-learning platform Atom Learning says that since the lockdown began, more than three-quarters of parents who have registered their children for free online lessons and set them schoolwork were female.
At the same time, there is evidence that women’s contributions outside the home are decreasing. There has been a drop in the number of solo-authored academic papers submitted by women, while submissions by male academics have increased. Similarly, at the Philosophy Foundation, the majority of the organisation’s work is now being carried out by men. “This is because most of our female philosophers are having to focus on childcare and home education” says co-CEO Emma Worley.
Working Families, which runs a legal advice service for parents and carers, has seen a sixfold increase in inquiries since the lockdown began, 80% of which have come from women. “We have seen evidence from mothers that they’re being penalised and not being supported to work from home because they have children. We’ve also seen mothers having to take unpaid leave or being dismissed.”
There are concerns about the impact of all this on women’s mental health. Research from King’s College London shows that, since the lockdown began, 57% of women say they are feeling more anxious and depressed, compared to only 40% of men. More women than men also report that they are getting less sleep, and eating less healthily, than usual.
“In a large number of cases, women are doing the vast majority of the caring for small children and the home educating work,” says Stephenson. “The men seem to be able to lock themselves away in a study, while the women are working at the kitchen table – and also trying to home-educate”
Sam Smethers, chief executive of the Fawcett Society, says the wider implications of the lockdown gender divide are clear. “This shows that the default assumptions about who does the caring for children fundamentally haven’t shifted. It defaults to women. There’s still an expectation that women will make their jobs fit around the caring, whereas a man’s job will come first.”
‘You don’t feel like you’re performing 100%’
Lizzie Harrop and her son, Barnaby, aged 5.
In lockdown, Lizzie Harrop had been experiencing the same anxiety levels she felt when she was suffering from postnatal depression five years ago. “In the beginning, my child was making me feel like a prisoner again. I was trapped in my own home, with responsibility for a five-year-old and a huge pressure to teach him, but I had a job to do as well.”
She works full-time in a senior role at a well-known company – and for the first week was having to conduct almost every single meeting with her son, Barnaby, on her knee. “I called him my shadow. He was very excited about having me around all the time. But it was relentless, seven days a week.”
Her stress levels rose. “Even though the business was being brilliant around not expecting parents with children at home to do all their usual hours, as a hardworking person you don’t feel like you’re performing 100%. As a consequence, you feel like you’re failing. And failing is just a shit place to be.”
She and her husband both work full-time and earn equal salaries. “But if I am at home, my child will always migrate to me –and that’s a bloody nightmare.”
She began to argue with her husband about whose job was more important, resulting in some major rows. “There were moments when we were like: we’re probably not going to make it through this lockdown together. We had a couple of really difficult conversations.”
But now, she says, they are in “a really good place”. The key change was deciding to “own” her situation in lockdown. “You’ve got to boss it. You can’t let it boss you.”
That’s where the framework came in: a shared calendar that shows who is the primary carer for their son every minute of the day from 6am until bedtime, with each parent expected to do equal amounts of childcare and home schooling during that period, ideally in scheduled three-hour chunks. The timing of work meetings – and exercise – must be diarised and agreed between them, days in advance.
“What I’ve now observed is that my husband is brilliant with Barnaby, who has turned into a different, more confident boy with both of us being there for him at home. And as a couple, we’ve gotten much closer together. I think we had to have a rocky bit to come out the other side.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2017/oct/04/gerard-pique-catalan-referendum-footballer-express-himself | Football | 2017-10-04T17:06:37.000Z | Sid Lowe | Gerard Piqué: ‘Why can a journalist or a mechanic express themselves but not a footballer?’ | Gerard Piqué has admitted he considered leaving the Spain team after he was whistled and verbally abused by supporters at a training session on Monday but insisted he would not give those fans satisfaction by walking away. The Barcelona defender appealed for respect and dialogue in the wake of Sunday’s Catalan referendum as the political situation grows increasingly tense. He also refused to reveal whether he had voted yes, describing that as the “$1m question”, but did dismiss the popular assumption that he is in favour of independence.
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Barcelona played behind closed doors on Sunday in protest at the conduct of Spanish police in trying to prevent Catalonia holding a referendum that the central government and constitutional courts declared illegal. As images of violence emerged, Barcelona asked for the game against Las Palmas to be postponed, opting to play in an empty stadium when the request was denied. Afterwards Piqué, visibly affected and close to tears, criticised the Spanish government and reaffirmed his long-standing public support for the Catalans’ right to vote. He said he felt Catalan and offered to step down from international duty if the coach, Julen Lopetegui, wanted him to.
The following evening, with political positions increasingly entrenched, supporters gathered for the evening session at the Spanish Football Federation’s Las Rozas headquarters. Piqué has been whistled playing for Spain before but he admitted he had not expected the intensity of what awaited him on Monday. Some carried banners demanding he leave the national team. There were reports that his relationship with the captain, Sergio Ramos, had broken down and worse is expected when Spain play Albania in Alicante on Friday. The situation appeared to have become unsustainable.
Piqué, who said he had decided to speak because he wanted to find a solution and because it was not fair on his team-mates who have grown “tired” of the issue to have to face endless questions about him, said that it “hurt” that people questioned his commitment to the national team. He said he had thought about departing in the wake of the referendum, but also that he had thought about continuing after 2018 – the date he had previously set for his international departure. “I don’t want to leave out the back door,” he said.
1:24
Emotional Piqué offers to end Spain career after Catalonia violence – video
“From the age of 15 I have considered this a family: that’s one of the reasons I’m here,” Piqué said. “My commitment to the national team is maximum. I feel very proud to be here. I have thought about [leaving] and I think the best thing is to stay. Going would mean that those people have won, those who think the best solution is to whistle and insult. I’m not going to give them that satisfaction.
“There are lots of people who want me to stay. If you talk, you can reach an understanding. I am sure that if I sat down with them all, it would be different. There are people in Spain whose positions are very diverse and if you talk, you can find a solution. I’d like people to listen and think: ‘What he says is reasonable.’ And the Sergio Ramos thing is a myth. I’ve said it 15,000 times: we get on fantastically well. In fact we’re going to go into business together.
“Politics is a drag, but why shouldn’t I express myself? I understand those players who don’t want to say anything. We’re footballers but we’re people too. Why can a journalist or a mechanic express themselves but not a footballer?”
Piqué insisted his politics were not incompatible with the national team. He reiterated that he has “never” declared for independence. Indeed, the way he returned to the theme and framed his argument implied he does not support separatism. He agreed when it was put to him that Spain and Catalonia would be weaker in the case of independence; argued that the “world is so connected that countries are the least important thing”; and described his family as “Colombian, Lebanese, Catalan and Spanish”.
Asked if his Catalan sentiment meant that he should not play for the national team, he replied: “No. And I would take it even further than that – and this is not the case with me – I would say that even a supporter of independence could play for Spain. There is no other national team and they’re not against Spain. Spain is a country that’s the hostia [the business] and the people are de puta madre [bloody brilliant], so why not play for Spain? I repeat: it’s not the case with me. But why not? We reduce it to sentiment, but we’re here to help Spain win.”
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“I am in favour of people voting. They can vote yes, no, or abstain,” he said. “I’m not on the front line. I don’t think I have ever positioned myself on one side of another. And my opinion is not so important. I have never fought tooth and nail to defend a particular side. Some say there should be independence, some say there should be a vote, some say there should be nothing. All three points of view are licit. There are lots of people in Spain that support Catalans voting. There were demonstrations in Madrid and Seville.”
When it came to direct questions, Piqué avoided a direct answer. How had he voted, he was asked. “That’s the $1m question,” he said. “I can’t give an answer on that. I can’t back one side or the other: I would lose half of my supporters.”
And who would he choose to play for if Catalonia did get independence, he was asked.? “I imagine it would be a process of three or four years, like Brexit,” he said. “I’ll be 33, so I haven’t really thought about it.”
Piqué said he had not seen King Felipe’s speech the previous night accusing the Catalan authorities of attempting to break the unity of Spain the previous night before because he was playing cards but said people in Catalonia would have liked a more conciliatory message and he appealed for dialogue. “Spain has a history that goes back I-don’t-know-how-many years, and there is a part that wants to go. That’s way more important than what I think.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2012/apr/13/southampton-reading-championship | Football | 2012-04-13T23:02:00.000Z | Paul Doyle | Southampton 1-3 Reading | Championship match report | The rise of Reading is almost complete. Brian McDermott's team were on the brink of the relegation zone after the first month of this season but have since racked up an extraordinary run of victories that was extended here as they inflicted a rare home defeat on Southampton. They thus leapfrogged Nigel Adkins's side at the top of the table and now stand three points clear of Saints and nine ahead of third-placed West Ham. If Sam Allardyce's side fail to beat Brighton on Saturdaytoday, a home win over Nottingham Forest on Tuesday will confirm Reading's return to the Premier League after a four-year absence.
"When we were 21st our ambition was to get to 20th," McDermott said. "And when we were second our ambition was to be No1. That's how we do things at this club. Now that we're No1, it's important to stay there."
They got there by displaying the qualities that have allowed them to win 14 and draw one of their last 16 matches: they were composed, compact and clinical. And they had to be.
Southampton started with the swagger of a team that has the best home record in a division from which they have been in a position to graduate since the first weekend of the season. Rickie Lambert forced an awkward save from Adam Federici in the third minute. Reading's goalkeeper excelled on his last visit to the south coast to help his team win at Brighton on Tuesday and he produced a splendid stop in the 17th minute to thwart Lambert again.
His team-mates' capitalised on that stop by racing down the other end and taking the lead, Jimmy Kébé delivering a delightful cross from the right that Jason Roberts headed into the net from six yards.
There is a cliché in football that claims clubs cannot get value in the January transfer market: well, this was the 34-year-old's sixth goal in 15 appearances since joining from Blackburn Rovers for £3m three months ago. Bargain recruits like that have been another of Reading's qualities.
Lambert continued to threaten and a delicious lob from him drew another fine save from Federici. But Reading had lost only one of the 21 previous matches this season in which they had taken the lead and they defended defiantly here to reach the break in front, albeit thanks to an uncharacteristic miss from Lambert in first-half stoppage time, the striker heading wide from five yards.
Lambert soon atoned for that. Within three minutes of the restart he received a smart chested pass from Billy Sharp and walloped the ball into the net from 15 yards with the aid of a deflection off Kaspars Gorkss.
Southampton sensed blood and went for the win. Moments later Federici had to beat a long-range Richard Chaplow shot behind. McDermott reacted by introducing the striker Adam Le Fondre for the midfielder Jay Tabb in the 64th minute. Le Fondre, in his last appearance on Good Friday, came off the bench to score twice to sink Leeds United and he soon made his presence felt here too. Moments after Sharp had headed narrowly wide for the home side Reading broke and Kébé served another fine cross from the right into a cluster of bodies in the box. Le Fondre arrived at speed to crash the ball into the net from 14 yards.
Reading secured their win in stoppage time, Le Fondre pouncing on a short back pass by José Fonte before rounding Kelvin Davis and tapping into the net. That was the 11th goal of the campaign for a player who was bought for £300,000 from Rotherham United in August – another bargain. "I told him when I signed him that he would be a hero at Reading and he's proving me right," said McDermott.
Despite the defeat Adkins is confident his side will not endure the heartbreak of missing out on automatic promotion. "It's in our own hands and we have demonstrated over the whole season that we have the consistency to get over disappointments quickly." | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/jun/06/from-australias-most-hated-woman-to-a-state-pardon-how-kathleen-folbigg-walked-free | Australia news | 2023-12-14T02:17:39.000Z | Jordyn Beazley | From Australia’s ‘most hated woman’ to a state pardon: how Kathleen Folbigg walked free | It was four short questions during a nine-hour police interview in 1999 that made Kathleen Folbigg fully comprehend what was happening.
“Kathy, did you kill Caleb?” asks the officer sitting next to her in a small room at a police station near the banks of Australia’s Hunter River.
“No,” she sobs, with a tissue in hand.
Folbigg gives the same response for the next three questions: did she kill her children Patrick, Sarah and Laura?
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In 2003, Folbigg would be convicted of murdering three of her children and the manslaughter of one child. She was labelled a baby killer, a serial killer and Australia’s “most hated woman”.
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But Folbigg, now 56, has always maintained her innocence. In June, 20 years after she was incarcerated, she was pardoned and released. On Thursday, the court of criminal appeal quashed her convictions.
An inquiry had previously found there was reasonable doubt as to Folbigg’s guilt for each of the deaths after new scientific evidence found three of the children could have died of natural causes.
Her advocates say she has suffered one of the gravest miscarriages of justice in Australia’s history.
“It is impossible to comprehend the injury that has been inflicted upon Kathleen Folbigg,” her lawyer, Rhanee Rego, has said.
“The pain of losing her children, close to two decades locked away in maximum security prisons for crimes which science has proved never occurred.”
‘My baby’s not breathing’
By 1999, Folbigg had already lost three of her children in their infancy. That year she found her fourth child, 18-month-old Laura, unresponsive.
“My baby’s not breathing,” Folbigg told an ambulance operator from her home in the New South Wales town of Singleton in a recording played to court.
“I’ve had three Sids [sudden infant death syndrome] deaths already … I’ve had three go already.”
Paramedics were unable to resuscitate her daughter and Laura was declared dead.
Kathleen Folbigg leaves the supreme court of NSW during the 2003 trial. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP
She was Folbigg’s fourth child to die. Caleb, a placid baby with intense eyes, died aged 19 days in 1989. Patrick, who suffered from epilepsy and vision impairment, died aged eight months in 1991. And Sarah, remembered as the cheeky child, died at 10 months in 1993.
Folbigg had already had a traumatic start to life. She was raised by adoptive parents after her father stabbed her mother to death before her second birthday, an inquiry would later note.
When Folbigg’s trial began in 2003, there was no physical evidence she had harmed the children. Instead, the prosecution relied heavily on diary entries Folbigg had written.
One of Folbigg’s diaries, which the prosecution maintained were an admission of guilt. Photograph: Dean Lewins/AAP
“Very depressed with myself, angry & upset – I’ve done it. I lost it with her,” one January 1998 entry about Laura read.
“I yelled at her so angrily that it scared her, she hasn’t stopped crying. Got so bad I nearly purposely dropped her on the floor & left her.
“I restrained enough to put her on the floor & walk away. Went to my room & left her to cry. Was gone probably only 5 mins but it seemed like a lifetime. I feel like the worst mother on this earth. Scared that she’ll leave me now. Like Sarah did. I knew I was short tempered & cruel sometimes to her & she left. With a bit of help.”
The prosecution contended Folbigg’s diary entries were an admission of guilt, proving she had struggled as a mother and had a tendency to lose her temper with each of the children and then smother them.
The 2003 trial was also strongly influenced by the since-discredited Meadow’s Law, a precept espoused by a controversial paediatrician, Roy Meadow, suggesting that three or more sudden infant deaths in one family was murder until proven otherwise.
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Throughout the trial, Folbigg was criticised for not grieving in the way the broader public expected of a women not guilty of murdering her children.
When the guilty verdict was handed down and she was sentenced to 40 years in prison, she buckled and cried.
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Later, that sentence would be reduced to a 25-year non-parole period.
A push for release
In the years after Folbigg’s conviction, more and more people began pushing for her release.
They included Folbigg’s school friend, Tracy Chapman, who called Folbigg in prison almost every day, and Folbigg’s lawyer Rego, who has worked on the case pro bono for the past six years.
A 2019 judicial inquiry into Folbigg’s conviction found the evidence confirmed Folbigg’s guilt.
But another inquiry was triggered last year after new scientific findings that Folbigg and her two daughters – Laura and Sarah – carried a rare genetic variation, known as CALM2-G114R, casting doubt on her convictions.
The counsel assisting the inquiry, Sophie Callan SC, said there was “persuasive expert evidence” that one of Folbigg’s sons, Patrick, may have died from an underlying neurogenetic disorder. The cause of her son Caleb’s death remains undetermined.
Folbigg and her two daughters – Laura (pictured) and Sarah – carried a rare genetic variation, known as CALM2-G114R. Photograph: Dean Lewins/AAP
“On the whole of the body of evidence before this inquiry there is a reasonable doubt as to Ms Folbigg’s guilt,” Callan said in April.
“I sat in court a month ago and I heard the words ‘reasonable doubt’ and have hung on to those words, waiting, waiting,” Chapman told reporters.
The psychological and psychiatric experts at the more recent inquiry also determined the diary entries shouldn’t be interpreted as admissions to the killing or harming of her children. Instead, they should be read as a grieving and possibly depressed mother, blaming herself for the death of each child.
Kathleen Folbigg: science sheds new light on case of mother convicted of murdering her children
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The NSW attorney general, Michale Daley, in June announced Folbigg had been pardoned based on summary findings from the inquiry.
“We’ve got four little bubbas who are dead. We have a husband and wife who lost each other, a woman who spent 20 years in jail and a family that never had a chance,” he said.
“You’d not be human if you didn’t feel something about that.”
What happens next?
Felicity Graham, a human rights and criminal law barrister said in June that Folbigg’s case was an indictment on the country’s justice system.
“Across Australia, we need to reform our systems for dealing with potential miscarriages of justice,” she said. “The current safeguards are not sufficiently robust, nor sufficiently responsive to the urgency and the horror of someone being wrongly convicted.”
Rego has said it is time Australia implemented a body that reviews such matters, following the lead of the UK, Scotland, Norway, New Zealand and Canada.
“This case should reignite the discussion to strengthen the interactions between law and science, to make important reforms so that the legal system makes decisions based on the best scientific evidence available, not speculation,” she said in June.
“It is Ms Folbigg’s hope that the legal system will thoroughly investigate sudden infant deaths before seeking to blame parents without good reason to do so.
“Ms Folbigg’s freedom is a breakthrough moment on a long and painful journey. We have all been inspired by her persistence for the truth to be known.”
Rego said on Thursday that now her convictions had been overturned there should be compensation from the state. She would not put a figure on it but suggested it would be “bigger than any substantial payment that has been made before”. | Full |
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