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https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2020/feb/20/new-visa-rules-encourage-backpackers-to-help-in-australias-bushfire-recovery | Travel | 2020-02-20T13:38:47.000Z | Antonia Wilson | New visa rules encourage backpackers to help in Australia's bushfire recovery | Britons who plan on taking a working holiday in Australia can now volunteer to help with bushfire relief as part of their application for a longer working-holiday visa. The aim is to direct larger numbers of workers to areas where help is most needed, especially on a long-term basis. The changes come a month on from devastating bushfires which killed 33 people and around a billion animals, destroying more than 3,000 homes and 19.4 million hectares since July 2019.
Prior to the change, travellers had to put in 88 days of paid – usually agricultural – work to be able to apply for a second- or third-year working holiday visa. Also known as 417 visas, these are open to travellers aged 18 to 30, or up to 35 for Canadian, French and Irish citizens. Now, unpaid volunteer work in bushfire-affected areas can count towards the total number of days.
The new rules also allow people to stay up to a year in a single job, instead of just six months as was the case before. And construction jobs have been added to the designated work activities travellers can participate in, to encourage young people with relevant skills and training to find work in affected areas.
“Many young people were desperate to help in the recovery efforts, and this extension gives them the chance to do so”
Sam Willan, StudentUniverse
In a statement on 17 February, Alan Tudge, acting minister for immigration, citizenship, migrant services and multicultural affairs, said the new rules for working-holiday visas have been welcomed by farmers and regional businesses.
“Hardworking Australians have been hit by the recent bushfires, but from today they can employ backpackers for six months longer, helping them at a critical time in the recovery effort,” said Tudge. “It means working holidaymakers can help rebuild homes, fences and farms … and help with demolition, land clearing and repairing dams, roads and railways.”
Regions declared most affected by the fires include areas of eastern Victoria, south-eastern New South Wales and Kangaroo Island in South Australia. It is hoped that the new measures will also boost local economies, as travellers spend money in the fire-affected towns where they work.
“Every extra working holidaymaker we can get into these communities is one extra visitor to help protect local jobs and keep local businesses alive,” said Simon Birmingham, minister for trade, tourism and investment. “The more tourism dollars these working holidaymakers can inject into these economies, the quicker these businesses can get back on their feet.”
The UK is Australia’s largest market for working holidaymakers, according to Tourism Australia. Around a third of all backpackers and young travellers visiting the country currently take advantage of the second- and third-year visa.
Sam Willan, manager for travel booking site StudentUniverse, welcomed the move: “Australia has always been one of StudentUniverse’s most-searched-for (and booked) destinations,” he said. “Many young people were desperate to help in the recovery efforts and this extension gives them the chance to do so, on the ground, in the places that need it the most.”
Visit the Australian Government for more information | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/books/1998/oct/17/fiction.natashawalter | Books | 1998-10-17T15:48:28.000Z | Natasha Walter | Review: Another World by Pat Barker | Pat Barker's new novel is about the power of old wounds to leak into the present. How do we know? Because she tells us so, quite clearly, not far into the book, and the same phrase also appears on the cover blurb in case we missed it. The interlinked plots of her novel press the point home: our central narrator is Nick, a well-meaning Newcastle teacher. But much of the novel centres on his grandfather, Geordie, who is deeply disturbed by his memories of the trenches, where he thinks he killed his own brother. Then there is the Victorian ghost that flits through Nick's house, which turns out to be the apparition of a young girl who was once suspected of killing her brother. And there is Nick's stepson, Gareth, who, in a reprise of all these past traumas, becomes inexplicably aggressive towards his baby brother.
All these plots are neat, inventive devices. But the parallels between them are peculiarly forced, and Barker seems to have trouble just getting them on to the page - she relies on Nick reading a book with the story of the Victorian ghost in it, and then she relies heavily on quotations from another book in which Geordie tells his story, in order to explain events clearly. So the wheels of the plot turn clunkily, and you feel her carefully slotting the pieces into place rather than diving into the stuff of her characters' lives.
That is surprising, because in the past Barker has shown an easy, unforced confidence in handling the most disparate material. In her Regeneration trilogy, which explored the experiences of soldiers in the first world war, and in her early novels exploring working class women's lives in northern England, Pat Barker showed that she was a novelist with her own, surprisingly powerful voice. It found a vigorous poetry both in working-class and in middle-class British speech.
But that linguistic energy seems to have failed Pat Barker here. In order to force a real contrast between the present and the past, she writes most of this novel in the present tense, dropping into the past tense only for people's memories. That leads her into a sloppy, flat rendering of her characters' thoughts. They think in tones of constant exasperation: 'She goes into the living room, to remind herself of how awful it is. God, the wallpaper's terrible . . . Nick opens the living room door, sees buckets, cloths, scrapers and a stepladder. My God, she means it.' Barker paints a picture of modern family life that is, perhaps, true, in its close, warm chaos, but it is also claustrophobic in its unrelieved rendering of petty irritations: the husband longing for a drink, the wife for sleep, the son for his computer games. And when she tries to express bigger emotions, Barker often moves into mere generalisation. So after Geordie dies, Nick looks around the family graves, 'deriving some consolation from his family's long attachment to this place.' If Barker had really wanted to show us what the attachment to this place meant, she would have needed to flesh that sentiment out with some individual sentiment, some grip on the sensory environment.
Barker has previously shown an understated brilliance in using a patchwork structure, but here she flicks away from each individual too quickly before we have a chance to hear their voice or feel their presence. Each one pulls in a separate emotional direction - Nick, who is tending to his dying grandfather his daughter Miranda, wrapped up in fears about her mad mother his current wife Fran, who is grappling with her crazy son, and Gareth himself, with his terror of school bullies. As each one comes forward and lays a claim on your sympathy a sense of frustration grows in the reader. Barker seems to have laid out her plot without ever finding its emotional centre, and somehow that feels exploitative. How many family traumas are we expected to witness? How many tears are we expected to shed for each character? It is only, really, in the tale of Nick's grandfather Geordie that Barker seems to plunge into the individual richness of a man's life. Year after year, we are told, Geordie would wake crying in the night, and his wife would sit and sing to him, 'She used to sit on the bed beside me and get hold of me hands and sing . . . Keep yor feet still, Geordie lad! And dinnet drive me bonny dreams away.' Geordie's legacy of guilt arose partly from his confused relationship with his brother and partly from his unbearable experiences in the trenches, and Barker knits the two together into a disturbing whole. His death is an ungentle, painful one, shot with emotional and physical agony. 'I am in hell,' he whispers as he dies. In moments like this, we glimpse the fiery talent we have seen in Barker's previous books, and her ability to render something of the complicated passions of ordinary life. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2024/apr/03/christian-horner-accuser-upset-scared-and-lonely-after-red-bull-suspension-formula-one-motor-sport | Sport | 2024-04-03T10:37:46.000Z | Guardian sport | Christian Horner accuser ‘upset, scared and lonely’ after Red Bull suspension | The woman who has accused the Red Bull team principal, Christian Horner, of inappropriate behaviour is “very upset, angry, scared, intimidated and lonely”, according to a friend of hers who has spoken to BBC Sport.
“It’s impossible for people to understand what it’s like for her,” said the friend. “She can’t talk and she won’t talk.
“But I can tell you what it is doing to her. Every time I have asked her something, she breaks down in tears and says she’s got no one to talk to because she’s not allowed to talk.
Red Bull employee will go to tribunal should her appeal over Horner case fail
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“She is very upset, very angry, very scared, very intimidated, very lonely. And I think it’s impossible for people to understand without being in her shoes what it’s like for her.”
The ongoing crisis for the leading F1 team is sure to be the talk of the pit lanes at Suzuka for the Japan Grand Prix at the weekend with Horner set to face the media ahead of the fourth race of the season on Sunday.
Red Bull Racing’s parent company Red Bull GmbH announced in late February that Horner had been cleared of the allegations after a private, independent investigation and the employee, who has not been named, subsequently launched an appeal against the decision.
The friend of the woman told the BBC she “struggles to understand” how Red Bull dismissed the complaint following an investigation.
Horner has always emphatically denied any wrongdoing and has called for a line to be drawn under the matter. The Guardian understands from industry insiders, however, that the complainant will take the grievance to an employment tribunal in the event her appeal fails.
A Red Bull spokesperson told the BBC that Horner was bound by the same issues of confidentiality as his accuser.
The spokesperson said: “Both [parties] signed a confidentiality agreement on it so they both can’t discuss it.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/aug/22/airports-call-for-urgent-post-brexit-deal-on-uk-eu-flights | Politics | 2017-08-22T17:07:10.000Z | Gwyn Topham | Airports call for urgent post-Brexit deal on UK-EU flights | Airports have joined forces to press the government to urgently strike a post-Brexit deal on flights between the UK and the EU, warning that the current uncertainty alone would be enough to see bookings drop by up to 41%.
A report submitted to ministers by the owners of Manchester, Stansted, Heathrow, Gatwick and London City airports concludes that even if flights are not interrupted in March 2019 when Britain leaves the EU passenger numbers are likely to be hit hard without early assurances.
The report, written by WPI Economics on behalf of the airports, found that almost half of passengers booking in the year ahead were likely to change their travel plans if there was any doubt over the status of flights.
British airlines can operate freely within Europe, but international air travel otherwise depends on a host of bilateral treaties, and there is no default fallback for the UK outside the EU.
Ryanair in particular has been warning of the prospect of flights between Britain and the EU being unable to operate without a deal, although other airlines have dismissed the possibility.
But the report warns: “Although an 11th-hour deal may prevent planes from being grounded, damage to the aviation industry and the wider economy would have already been done.”
It added: “The closer we get to the article 50 deadline for the completion of withdrawal negotiations (end of March 2019), without the security of guaranteed future access to the single aviation market, the greater the negative economic consequences will be.”
While the worst-case scenario from the economists’ modelling would see 8 million fewer passengers in 2019, their central forecast is 2.3 million, or 11.5%, fewer air passenger bookings expected before March 2019 for travel on UK-EU routes after the article 50 deadline. Air freight will also be affected.
The report urges the government to strike a deal as soon as possible, ideally before spring 2018. “Not doing so could mean that, hundreds of thousands of passengers and aircraft movements are affected. This will be bad for the aviation industry and bad for the economy ... The UK’s overseas trading relationships and domestic economic activity supported by air travel will suffer.”
A spokesperson for MAG, which owns Manchester and Stansted airports, said: “Other sectors are able to plan on the basis of WTO fallback arrangements, but the aviation industry is at a distinct disadvantage because in the event that the UK leaves the EU without a deal, it doesn’t have the same sort of ‘safety net’.
“Tickets will soon go on sale for flights in a post-Brexit world and both airlines and passengers need assurance from the EU and UK government to enable them to plan for the future.”
Heathrow, one of the co-sponsors of the report, said it was confident that the government understood the role aviation played in the economy. It has argued that its expansion plans for a third runway are even more necessary in the event of Brexit.
The airports’ report follows other forthright advice from the aviation industry, notably from airlines, that clarity on the legal framework was needed soon or flight schedules – planned and sold up to a year in advance – would be jeopardised.
A Department for Transport spokesperson said: “Our aviation industry is the largest in Europe, and both we and the EU benefit from the connectivity it provides. That’s why we are pursuing liberal access to European aviation markets – including all the benefits that brings for consumers.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/feb/01/migrants-more-profitable-than-drugs-how-mafia-infiltrated-italy-asylum-system | News | 2018-02-01T06:00:30.000Z | Barbie Latza Nadeau | ‘Migrants are more profitable than drugs’: how the mafia infiltrated Italy’s asylum system | Joy, a young Nigerian woman, was standing in the street outside the sprawling, overcrowded Cara di Mineo reception centre for asylum seekers in central Sicily, waiting for someone to pick her up when I met her. It was late summer 2016, and the weather was still hot. She said she was 18, but looked much younger. She was wearing a faded denim jacket over a crisp white T-shirt and tight jeans, and six or seven strings of colourful beads were wrapped around her neck. A gold chain hung from her left wrist, a gift from her mother.
As we spoke, a dark car came into view and she took a couple of steps away from me to make sure whoever was driving saw her, and saw that she was alone. There were a handful of other migrants loitering along the road. The approaching car didn’t slow down, so Joy came back over to me and carried on our conversation.
The oldest of six children, Joy (not her real name) told me she had left her family in a small village in Edo state in Nigeria at the age of 15, and gone to work for a wealthy woman who owned a beauty salon in Benin City. She had since come to suspect that her parents had sold her to raise money for their younger children. “They probably had no choice,” she said as she looked down the road toward the thick citrus groves that hid the coming traffic.
There were six other girls who worked for the woman, whom Joy said they called their maman, meaning “mother”. When Joy turned 16, she went through a ceremony that bound her to the maman by a curse: if she disobeyed the maman, her family would die. A few weeks later, she was told she was moving to Italy, where she would work for her maman’s sister. She believed she would be working in a hair salon. She was given €45 (£40) and a phone number to call once she got to Italy – but no name, no address, and no documents.
Joy’s new life would turn out to be nothing like what she had expected. Instead of working for a hairdresser, she fell into the trap set by traffickers who lure women into slavery and prostitution. More than 80% of women brought to Europe from Nigeria are unknowingly “sponsored” by sex traffickers who have paid for their journey, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM). The rest will have paid the smugglers to get them to Europe, but once they get there, will be unlikely to escape the sex-trafficking rings.
After an appalling journey, via Tripoli, which took nearly three weeks, Joy arrived at the port of Augusta on Sicily’s east coast. She had no papers or passport. All she had was an Italian phone number, which her maman had stitched into the sleeve of her jacket. When the migrants got off the boat, an armed military policeman in a bulletproof vest stood guard as another patted them down and took knives from some of the men. Those with documents were taken to a large tent lined with army cots. One woman handed out shoes and flip-flops, and another gave them bruised yellow apples from a large metal tub. An officer used a black marker pen to write a number on the migrants’ left hands. Joy was number 323.
Freeing girls trafficked to Italy for sex: ‘You will not be a slave for ever’ Guardian
The new arrivals were divided into groups and put on buses. Joy’s bus headed to the Cara di Mineo migrant camp, one of the biggest in Europe. In this context, Cara stands for centro di accoglienza per richiedenti asilo, or asylum seekers reception centre; cara also means “dear” in Italian, but Mineo is not a place that makes people who have risked everything for a new chance at life feel cherished. About 70km from the coast in central Sicily, it is a hellish place where the vast majority of African migrants who arrive by sea start their lengthy journey to asylum. But often, before they can obtain legal status, they are claimed by the criminal underworld.
The site was built as luxury housing for US military personnel, but it is ill-equipped to deal with the number of migrants washing up on the shores of Sicily. (At last count, it housed 4,000 people.) Accommodation blocks are often so overcrowded that people have to sleep on the floor or in tents. The buildings are overrun by cockroaches and rats that feed off festering piles of garbage, while mangy, flea-infested dogs duck in and out of holes in the razor-wire fence. Mount Etna, and its steady stream of smoke, is clearly visible in the distance.
The centre has become a lawless place where people are easy prey for criminal gangs. The state funds these centres by giving them a sum of money for each asylum seeker, but many of them cut corners on food and other amenities, and pocket the profits. Low-level members of Italy’s various mafia organisations and Nigerian gangs come to the centre to recruit drug mules and petty criminals among the bored, idle men who have given up on the life they dreamed of when they crossed the sea.
Cara di Mineo, like the Sant’Anna asylum centre in Isola di Capo Rizzuto in Calabria, and others on the mainland, has also become a hunting ground for traffickers. Posing as asylum seekers, traffickers lure women out of the centre on the pretext of shopping trips or other excursions, and deliver them to the Nigerian women who control forced prostitution rings. They are then forced into sex work under the threat of violence, most of them – like Joy – terrorised by a curse that binds them into slavery. Several centres have become the subject of criminal investigations, revealing corruption at local and state level, and infiltration by powerful crime syndicates. Always quick to exploit new opportunities, the mafia is making vast profits off the backs of migrants.
O
nce Joy was taken off the bus in the reception centre with the other passengers, she was given a bed in a villa with 10 Nigerian women around her age. Most of them had come to Italy to work in hair salons, and all had contact numbers to call. A Catholic charity had given Italian phone cards to all those who had been rescued, which they could use to call home. Joy still had her jacket with the phone number sewn inside. The woman who answered the phone told her to apply for political asylum using a fake name and birthdate, and never to give the phone number she had just called to anyone.
She applied for asylum the morning after she arrived, using her own birth date and the name of her younger sister. Once migrants apply for asylum, they can come and go from the centre at designated times, while they wait for word about their application, which can take months. After three days, a man Joy didn’t recognise came to find her in the camp and told her she was to wait at a roundabout down the road from the entrance every morning, and eventually someone would come for her. Joy asked how she would know who was picking her up.
“You will know,” the man told her. “Just get into the car when it stops.”
It was at that roundabout that I met Joy. When I asked her what she thought would happen when she was picked up, she said she was sure she would be taken to a beauty salon owned by her maman’s sister, where she would be given a job as a hair braider, as she had been in Benin City. She said she might have to start by cleaning floors, but that she would work her way up. I asked her if she knew that a lot of girls like her ended up as sex workers. She said she had heard about Nigerian women who ended up as prostitutes after coming to Italy, and that she would “never do that”, no matter how desperate she got.
Nigerian women working as prostitutes in Turin, Italy. Photograph: Elena Perlino/Rex/Shutterstock
Eventually, she had to go back inside the compound, or risk missing her evening meal. Once again, her ride had not come. I wished her good luck and gave her my phone number, which she saved in her phone before walking through the sliding metal gate back inside the centre. Later I would regret not trying to warn her in a more concrete way. At the time, she was just one of so many young women I saw sliding into the abyss.
Many of the Nigerian women and girls rescued from the smugglers’ boats by charities or coastguard vessels are from small villages around Benin City. Most are single and travelling alone. Many of those trafficked for sex slavery are assured by their “sponsors” that they will take care of getting the necessary documents for them once they leave the centres. Others are provided with false personal details that they are told to use for their applications. Most of the trafficked women end up with fake documents provided by Italian organised-crime groups. The documents are another link in the chain that keeps the women trapped in sexual slavery, because the madams threaten to take them away if they try to escape.
In 2012, an investigation was opened into forced prostitution at Cara di Mineo, after doctors at the centre received a series of requests for abortions. In three months, the centre’s doctors performed 32 abortions on migrants – an increase of more than 200% on the year before. The authorities concluded that this was due to an increase in prostitution, along with a lack of birth control options. Because of the church’s influence over migrant care, contraception was not being distributed, and few migrants have the means to source their own. Some aid groups have since tried handing out condoms.
In December 2016, four Nigerian asylum seekers were arrested in Cara di Mineo, accused of drugging and raping a female resident. The woman had been told, like Joy, to wait on the street for someone to pick her up. Realising she was being put to work as a prostitute, she had refused to leave the camp. The men raped her as a warning – a typical punishment in sex trafficking. The theory is that if a woman realises that the penalty for refusing to prostitute herself is gang rape, she will likely agree that roadside sex is a better alternative. It is rare to meet a trafficked woman who has not been faced with this choice.
After the incident, Francesco Verzera, a prosecutor with jurisdiction over Cara di Mineo, appealed to the authorities to close down the camp, stating that overcrowding and lack of supervision is creating a dangerous criminal environment. “This sort of violence will become the norm if you continue to operate a community-based asylum centre with nearly 4,000 people,” he warned. “The crimes continue to get more violent, and the growing disregard for life is a clear sign of a deteriorating situation.”
T
he complex that houses Cara di Mineo was built in 2005 by the Pizzarotti Company of Parma, which is still the primary contractor for US defence logistics in Italy. It was built for officers stationed at the Sigonella naval air base about 40km away. The boulevards and tree-lined streets of the compound were meant to replicate a US suburb, complete with a recreation centre, supermarket, American-style steakhouse and a coffee and pastry shop. There was a baseball diamond and American football field, along with a non-denominational house of worship that doubled as a cinema. More than 400 villas were built to accommodate the standard family of five.
In 2011, the US navy gave up its $8.5m (£6m) annual lease and returned the property to Pizzarotti. The same year, during the height of the Arab spring, Silvio Berlusconi’s government decided to lease the complex as an asylum “hot spot”, for processing the growing number of asylum seekers coming to Italy. At that time, the complex was completely locked down, and the mostly Tunisian and Moroccan migrants were held until they were repatriated. Now the people inside are called “guests” and are free to come and go once they have applied for asylum.
Ghosts of the centre’s former life remain. The playground equipment scattered throughout the compound is rusty and in disrepair, now mostly used by men in their 20s who sit on the swings and lie on the slides, whiling away the long hours. The bar is now the medical centre, and the restaurant a canteen where migrants pick up rations of rice and bananas. The recreation room is now a makeshift school, and offices have become dormitories.
Inhabitants dry their laundry next to signs protesting against the Italian government, condemning the bad food and the time it takes to process asylum requests. The compound is guarded by military police who check the asylum seekers in and out, and keep out anyone who isn’t registered. The incentive to return each night runs beyond food and shelter. They come back for the promise of documents that will allow free movement through Europe’s passport-free Schengen zone, and the right to work. Still, dozens of people disappear each month, quickly replaced by new arrivals from Sicily’s ports.
Trafficked women working as prostitutes near Turin. Photograph: Elena Perlino/Rex/Shutterstock
The conditions are deplorable. Most of the villas house 15 to 20 people, sleeping in bunk beds or on mattresses on floors. The villas are falling apart, and the migrants are left to do what they can to take care of maintenance with scant tools. The stench of sewage permeates the grounds, attracting rodents and insects. There is no cleaning service other than in the administrative and kitchen areas. Some of the villas are burnt out, and others are missing windows or doors. After the Americans left, Pizzarotti removed many of the amentities – from washing machines and air-conditioning units to ceiling fans and bathtubs – leaving exposed wires and holes in the walls.
Most of the residents are divided by ethnic or religious background, which has done nothing to reduce tensions and fighting. Every year at Cara di Mineo, on average, 10 migrants die while waiting for their asylum requests to be heard, killed in fights or dying from untreated medical conditions, according to Amnesty International and other aid groups that operate in the centre.
The camp’s director, Sebastiano Maccarrone, admitted in a series of media interviews in early 2016 that it was virtually impossible to protect the inhabitants. “It’s like a small city,” he said. “The big crimes get reported, but the smaller ones are usually handled among the residents.”
Verzera’s investigation into criminal activity at the centre turned up inconsistencies in the record-keeping of who was living there. Many of the migrants on the official roster had long since disappeared, even though the centre, under the direction of Maccarrone, was still reimbursed €35 (£31) a day for them. By law, each migrant awaiting asylum is given an electronic card to check in and out of the centre when making outings. If they don’t check back in after three days, they are supposed to be taken off the roster, and that information sent to Rome so the reimbursement will be stopped. But Verzera says he found that migrants who had been gone for months were kept on the list for financial support. The centre was, on paper, far over capacity, and received extra funds to help with the overload when, in reality, they were taking care of far fewer people than the documents stated.
In 2016, Maccarrone, who previously ran the migrant reception centre on the island of Lampedusa, came under criminal investigation for corruption at Cara di Mineo. He was accused of collusion with the mafia, and of using funds intended for the care of migrants and refugees for personal gain. The charges against him have since been reduced to aggravated fraud and corruption. He maintains he is innocent, and is working as a volunteer at one of the smaller migrant centres in Catania while he awaits trial.
L
ast year, Catania’s chief prosecutor, Carmelo Zuccaro, tried to make it illegal for NGO charity ships to rescue migrants at sea and bring them to Italian shores. In March 2017, in an interview with the rightwing newspaper Il Giornale, he revealed that the state had started investigations into prisons and refugee camps where extremists were recruiting migrants awaiting word on their asylum requests. “We have received very specific reports of recruitment activities and radicalisation,” he told the paper. “There are radicalised individuals who attract foreigners in order to incite them to fundamentalism.”
The alarm about radicalisation overshadowed the fact that criminal groups are recruiting migrants from the camps for forced or low-paid labour. At harvest times, men leave Cara di Mineo in the early morning and gather along a triangle of dirt off the state highway. Local farmers come in pick-up trucks, looking for i neri (“the blacks”), choosing the biggest and strongest for casual labour, harvesting tomatoes and citrus fruits. The farmers call them ragazzo or “boy”, demanding they turn around or show them how straight their backs are. It is a degrading display, made worse by the fact that they are paid a mere fraction of what Italians would be paid for the same work. Their wages are part of the illicit economy that makes up around 20% of Italy’s overall GDP.
When asylum requests are rejected, applicants have one chance to appeal. If they fail, they are given a slip of paper that says they have five days to leave the country, but no means to do so. Torn-up shreds of those papers are a common sight in the ditches beside the road near the centre. Those turned down are easy bait for criminal gangs working inside the camps, who get paid for providing mafia groups with illegal cheap labour, running drugs and arms or working in the many industries those groups have infiltrated.
In 2014, an investigation known as “Mafia Capitale” found that a criminal group had been running Rome’s municipal government for years. The group, which prosecutors defined as a mafia-style association, had siphoned off millions of euros intended to fund public services. The group had also infiltrated asylum centres across the country, buying and selling names and details of migrants who had long disappeared, in order to keep the per-person state funding coming.
During the investigation, one of the alleged bosses of the group, Salvatore Buzzi, was caught on a wiretap bragging about how much money he made off the backs of asylum seekers. “Do you have any idea how much I earn on immigrants?” he was heard telling an associate. “They’re more profitable than drugs.” Buzzi and his associates were sentenced to decades in prison after a trial that ended in 2017, although their sentences were reduced on appeal. Another appeal is under way.
In 2017, anti-mafia police arrested 68 people, including the local parish priest, in the Calabrian town of Isola di Capo Rizzuto, where one of the country’s largest migrant and refugee reception centres has been in operation for more than a decade. Investigators say the criminals stole tens of millions of euros in public funds intended for asylum seekers to live on while their applications were heard. Gen Giuseppe Governale, chief of the anti-mafia forces, said the centre was a lucrative source of funds for the Calabrian mafia, the ‘Ndrangheta. Prosecutor Nicola Gratteri said detectives had filmed appalling conditions inside the centre. “There was never enough food, and we managed to film the food that was on offer,” he said. “It was the kind of food we usually give to pigs.” The local mafia had set up shell companies that were being paid to provide services including feeding the migrants. (The investigation is ongoing, and no trial date has been set. The priest has denied the charges and claims he has always fought against the mafia.)
A shelter for trafficked women who have entered a protection programme run by the Italian state. Photograph: Elena Perlino/Rex/Shutterstock
Administrators in some centres are accused of taking kickbacks for selling personal details of asylum seekers who have escaped to smaller centres (some of whom don’t exist). Those in charge of the smaller centres then use the names to claim daily allowances. This is one of the reasons trafficked women have been allowed to leave so easily: their names tend to stay on the lists, and the centres continue to receive funding. As they leave, they are quickly replaced. Some centres take on more migrants than they can manage, in order to earn extra revenue, so refugees end up living in dangerously overcrowded conditions. Trafficked women who disappear to work as sex slaves have little chance of being rescued, because their absence causes no concern.
N
igerian girls who are trafficked directly to madams in Naples and elsewhere are forced to do sex work to pay off large debts. Before they’ve even started work, they will owe around €60,000 (£53,000). A cut goes to the recruiter in Nigeria, a cut to the traffickers and smugglers who expedited the women’s journey, and a large portion goes to the Nigerian gang members, who must pay the Naples mafia, the Camorra, or other crime syndicates in whose territories the women will be forced to work. There are other incidentals, including room, board, clothing and rent for the space on the pavement from which they solicit sex. If we assume half of the estimated 11,000 Nigerian girls who came to Italy in 2016 generated €60,000 each through debt bondage for the madams’ gangs, the profits off those girls alone would top €300m (£264m), even after their travel costs are deducted.
Escaping the sex trade: the stories of Nigerian women lured to Italy - in pictures
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It can take five years or more of sexual slavery to pay the debts. Then, women are free to go, but some end up becoming madams themselves, either convinced there are lucrative profits to be made, or as an act of revenge: to visit on others what they had to endure. This cycle has continued for more than a decade, but in 2016, the number of Nigerian women who arrived by smugglers’ boats was 60% higher than the previous year.
Many of the trafficked Nigerian women end up in Castel Volturno, outside Naples, known as the most lawless part of Italy. Murder rates are the highest in the country, and locals call it Beirut, or the Bronx. Sergio Nazzaro, a local journalist, says it is the Camorra’s graveyard. “You can’t imagine how many bodies are buried in fields and tied to rocks at the bottom of the river.”
Most migrants live in another former military residential development, now dilapidated and controlled by the Camorra, who charge rent to squatters and trafficked women. African migrants first started coming to the area in large numbers in the 1980s, to work in the tomato fields for low wages. The Africans were not welcome to integrate with the Italians and instead set up a peripheral society where they lived outside the law, often squatting in illegally built or unfinished buildings. Italian authorities did not pay much attention to them at the time, but they were not ignored by the Camorra.
By the 1990s, women started arriving in greater numbers. They were rarely hired for farm work, so many had no choice but to prostitute themselves. Many of those first prostitutes eventually became madams, controlled by Nigerian drug-smuggling gangs, who had to pay protection money to the Camorra to operate on their territory. When the gangs discovered there was a demand, madams recruited more women from Nigeria to the area. They started using traffickers to trick them into coming, eventually expanding the trade further north to Italy’s larger cities and into Europe.
In 2016, anti-mafia police conducted an operation named “Skin Trade”, which uncovered one of the networks set up to get women out of the Cara di Mineo camp and on to the streets. Among those arrested were Nigerian women who worked with what were termed “connection men” inside the camp. The women arrested in Castel Volturno included Irene Ebhoadaghe, 44, who called herself Mummy Shade. The investigators say that in 2016 she was waiting for three young women to make their way to Naples from Cara di Mineo. One of those young women was Joy. The car she was waiting for was never going to take her to a hairdressing job. It was going to take her straight to Mummy Shade.
During the investigation, an undercover police officer was tipped off by one of the aid agencies working in Cara di Mineo, and picked Joy up on the road leading through the citrus groves. He convinced her to help them catch the people who had trafficked her, and her evidence became key to the operation’s success. Because Joy was named in the sealed arrest warrant as a victim of trafficking, after cooperating with the police, she was given asylum and moved to northern Europe to join a relative.
I caught up with Joy by email thanks to a local anti-trafficking advocate in Sicily who took an interest in her case and acted as a liaison with the court. She remembered our conversation outside Cara di Mineo.
“I was so stupid,” she wrote. “How could I have been so trusting? How could I have been so dumb?”
I wrote back to console her, telling her not to worry, that many women fell into the same trap.
She wrote again. “You knew about this. Why didn’t you tell me what was going to happen?”
I had tried, I thought, but obviously not hard enough. I admitted that I hadn’t known exactly what to do. I had no idea how to help her. I was also selfishly scared that if I intervened, I might get caught up in some sort of retaliation act, that someone might harm me or my children for taking one of the madam’s precious “assets” off the streets. She wrote back a third and final time.
“You could have saved me.”
Roadmap to Hell: Sex Drugs and Guns on the Mafia Coast by Barbie Latza Nadeau is published by Oneworld.
Follow the Long Read on Twitter at @gdnlongread, or sign up to the long read weekly email here. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/22/europe-syrian-asylum-seekers-refugees-illegal-trafficking | Opinion | 2014-07-22T10:00:06.000Z | António Guterres | Europe must give Syrian refugees a home | António Guterres | While the world’s eyes are now firmly fixed on Gaza, the Syrian maelstrom of death, destruction and displacement rages on, and shows no signs of abating.
When histories are written about the humanitarian cost of Syria’s civil war, Europe’s response to the crisis of a generation might be summed up in a single phrase: never was so little done by so many for so few.
More than three years after the conflict began, almost three million refugees have fled their shattered homeland in fear of their lives. A dispassionate observer might imagine that, by virtue of wealth and geography, many would seek safe harbour just a few kilometres to the west, in the peaceful and prosperous countries of the EU.
The reality is dramatically different. In response to the largest forced displacement crisis in the world, taking place only a short boat ride away, Europeans have provided refuge to a grand total of 124,000 Syrians – less than 4% of all Syrian asylum seekers.
Lebanon, by contrast, a country with a population of around 4.4 million, is host to 1.1 million Syrians in exile. These are just those who have registered as refugees. That is 10 times as many, in a country with less than 1% of Europe’s population. In other words, person for person, the wealthy EU is offering refuge to 1,000 times fewer Syrians than cash-strapped Lebanon, a country already struggling with severe internal difficulties and reaching the limits of its ability to absorb the problems of another.
Of course, it is not as simple as that. Many Syrian refugees still hope to return one day and don’t want to travel too far. Their neighbours share a religion, in most cases a language, and are easier to reach.
But from some of the rhetoric in Europe, the concerns raised about a tide of refugees battering at the gates, one would never realise that it is carrying so little of this burden, even as a regional humanitarian catastrophe rages at its doorstep.
But these stark facts do not tell the full story. More than half of all new Syrian asylum applications in Europe are absorbed by only two countries: Sweden and Germany. Both stand out by granting protection to Syrians seeking asylum, with Sweden additionally offering permanent residency. They have exemplary humanitarian admission and resettlement programmes; Germany also leads the way in private sponsorship of refugees.
The next five countries account for about a quarter. That means many other EU states are doing less than their fair share to absorb Syria’s fleeing millions; they should be doing far more to help. Cecilia Malmström, the EU commissioner for home affairs who has done so much to keep this issue alive, appealed earlier this month for all EU states to follow the example of Germany and Sweden.
The consequences of Europe’s underwhelming response to the suffering of millions nearby was put into sharp relief this week in a new report by the UN high commissioner for refugees. Syrian Refugees in Europe shows that while the proportion of Syrian refugees seeking asylum in Europe remains relatively low, the total number is growing and there are worrying signs that the EU’s response is growing less benign.
While most asylum applications in Europe are granted, the report cites the growing accounts of “pushbacks” on the Bulgaria-Turkey border in which asylum appeals are ignored and families separated, as well as “disturbing accounts of forced returns”. Many asylum seekers have reported being mistreated, beaten and abused.
The report also charts pushbacks and ill-treatment in Greece, as well as closed borders, including the Spanish border at Melilla, which was found closed when a group of 200 Syrians tried to enter in February. There are accounts of detentions, inadequate housing and substandard reception centres throughout, falling short of international standards.
Italy has provided exemplary service with its Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) rescue operation for Syrians stranded at sea, saving 64,000 people this year alone. But it too has seen its reception centres become increasingly overcrowded and some asylum seeker have been left in critical conditions for prolonged periods.
The consequences of these failures are severe. Threatened with the denial of entry by legal means, many people are turning to illegal trafficking networks. This includes tens of thousands of children threatened with separation from family members, child labour, exploitation and sexual abuse.
In other words, Europe is increasingly faced not with a choice over whether Syrian refugees will enter its borders, but under what circumstances: illegally, under the radar and at serious risk, or in a regulated, humane manner.
That is why I am urgently calling on EU states to heed Malmström’s advice by offering more and better legal ways of coming to Europe – whether through student or work visas, more resettlement places, family reunification schemes or private sponsorship.
Reception centres should be brought up to standard and detention – with all its devastating consequences on the well-being of refugees – kept to a bare minimum, with strict limits and safeguards.
Most of all, more politicians need to step up and recognise this crisis for what it is: a massive, multi-regional disaster that is not going away, which is causing the protracted suffering of millions next door and which Europe can do far more to alleviate.
Relief support to Syria’s neighbours is important, but it is no longer enough. It is time for European charity on this crisis to begin at home. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/jun/20/beetaloo-basin-traditional-owners-land-council-gas-fracking-northern-territory | Australia news | 2023-06-19T15:00:17.000Z | Lisa Cox | ‘We need help’: traditional owners accuse land council of ‘facilitating fracking’ | “T
here’s a tremendous injustice happening in the Beetaloo basin,” says native title lawyer Dominic Beckett. “The genuine voices of concern, fear and opposition are not being effectively represented or heard by the people whose job it is to do that.”
Last month, the Northern Territory government gave the green light for gas production to begin in the basin, a region between Katherine and Tennant Creek that contains vast reserves of shale gas.
Scientists have warned the planned massive expansion of hydraulic fracturing – or fracking – for gas in the Beetaloo basin will have an unacceptable impact on the climate.
But on the ground there is another battle playing out.
Beckett has spent more than two decades working in native title, including a period at the Northern Land Council (NLC). But he now believes the land council is not effectively doing its job as a representative for traditional owners in negotiations with gas companies.
“So many of the people up there are opposed, are fearful, about contemporary fracking practices on their land and the scale of operations. That’s very clear from the time I’ve spent up there,” he says.
The NLC’s role is to help Aboriginal people in the northern half of the Northern Territory acquire and manage their traditional lands and seas. It’s a commonwealth-funded statutory authority that traces its roots back to the land rights movement of the 1970s and has been instrumental in traditional owners across the Top End winning back land.
But dozens of traditional owners in the Beetaloo basin now say the NLC is no longer acting in their interests.
A number of them have told Guardian Australia they felt under pressure by the land council to sign agreements with gas companies to frack on their country rather than risk the matter going to the native title tribunal. They say the NLC appears to them to be “in the business of facilitating fracking”. Johnny Wilson, a Gudanji-Wandaya man who is a jungai, or cultural lawman, for his family’s country, said: “The NLC is supposed to be representing us. But we see them doing not anywhere near that.”
The Beetaloo basin is the name governments and industry have given to an area of about 28,000 sq km between Katherine and Tennant Creek. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian
But a spokesperson for the NLC strongly rejected the claims, saying the land council had “a proud history of fighting for land rights, against governments, miners and other vested interest groups [and] setting groundbreaking legal precedents”.
They say criticism should instead be directed at native title law, which doesn’t give a right of veto over gas exploration or production, and noted there was a diversity of opinions among Territorians, including Aboriginal people, about fracking.
It hurts me really badly … Sometimes I pray at night for something to go right
Johnny Wilson
Hundreds of fracking wells
The Beetaloo basin is the name governments and industry have given to an area of about 28,000 sq km between Katherine and Tennant Creek.
The name is drawn from a single pastoral station 40km off the Stuart Highway but the entire basin takes in communities including Daly Waters, Newcastle Waters, Larrimah and Elliott and, on its borders, places such as Mataranka, which is home to natural springs that feed into the Roper River.
Flooded termite mounds beside the Stuart Highway north of Mataranka. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian
The basin was the focal point of the former Morrison government’s proposed “gas-fired recovery” from the Covid-19 pandemic and is central to the Northern Territory government’s plans for a $40bn territory economy by 2030.
Despite the International Energy Agency’s warnings that no new coal or gas projects can proceed if the world is to limit global heating to 1.5C, the expansion of the Beetaloo has the backing of both major parties.
The main companies with active exploration in the basin are Tamboran Resources – which in 2022 bought Origin Energy’s projects in the Beetaloo – and Empire Energy. One of Tamboran’s exploration permits is a joint venture with Santos.
‘Another Juukan Gorge’: Darwin’s Middle Arm hub threatens Indigenous rock art, traditional owners say
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If the basin reaches full production, hundreds or potentially thousands of wells could be drilled using fracking across the landscape.
The 2018 Pepper inquiry into fracking in the territory found Aboriginal people from regional communities who made submissions to the panel “almost universally expressed deep concern about, and strong opposition to, the development of any onshore shale gas industry on their country”.
A bid to take back control
Wilson lives on an outstation on the Carpentaria Highway and says he can smell the gas well 20km from his home when there’s a change in the weather. He is worried about how fracking might affect songlines, which connect one place with another, and the groundwater that people and ecosystems rely on. Ninety per cent of the territory’s water supply comes from groundwater.
“It’s a tossing and turning situation at the moment,” he says. “You’ve got this energy in your head, all these questions: why is it happening like this?
“It hurts me really badly … Sometimes I pray at night for something to go right.”
The chair of the Nurrdalinji Aboriginal Corporation, Gudanji-Wambaya man and jungai Johnny Wilson. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian
Wilson is the chair of the Nurrdalinji Aboriginal Corporation, an organisation that is made up of more than 60 native title holders from 11 determination areas in the Beetaloo. There are hundreds of native title holders in the basin and at least 11 determination areas, depending on how you define its boundaries.
In December 2020, he and a group of six other traditional owners, represented by Beckett, applied to the federal court to have Nurrdalinji recognised as the body that would represent the rights and interests of native title holders in nine of the determination areas, including in their dealings with governments and developers about gas exploration.
In short, it proposed that Nurrdalinji take on a role performed by the NLC.
Beckett says the land council’s response was swift and aggressive.
In a letter to the lawyer, seen by Guardian Australia, the NLC recommended his clients discontinue their proceedings because the application “has no reasonable prospects of success”.
If they did not, it warned the land council would pursue an indemnity costs order for its full legal costs to be paid by the individual applicants and an Indigenous organisation by the name of Original Power, which was supporting the traditional owners.
“I think it was an attempt to scare off both the traditional owners and their supporters once and for all,” Beckett says. “While it hasn’t scared people off or daunted their opposition, it was enough to kill off those proceedings.”
Dominic Beckett. Photograph: Blake Sharp-Wiggins/The Guardian
The application collapsed after one pivotal traditional owner withdrew.
A spokesperson for the NLC said the land council was unable to support Nurrdalinji’s bid “because of significant deficiencies in the application” and said its response was “entirely reasonable”.
‘We want more transparency’
For years, traditional owners in the Beetaloo basin have queried the processes used to inform people and obtain agreements for gas exploration, some of which were signed in the early 2000s when little was understood about fracking.
Those attempts are documented in letters and emails – seen by Guardian Australia – that were sent to the NLC and companies such as Origin Energy between 2018 and 2020.
Traditional owners were supported in writing some of this correspondence by Original Power, an Indigenous organisation that “supports the right of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to self-determine what happens on their country and waters”, according to its executive director, Yorta Yorta woman Karrina Nolan.
“We are writing because we feel the NLC are not listening to the people from the communities,” says one letter from 2018, which was signed by 10 traditional owners from Beetaloo and neighbouring areas. “We want more transparency as to how the NLC operates especially with mining companies and whose interests are represented.”
A reply was not sent until six months later, in January 2019. In it, the NLC’s interim chief executive, Rick Fletcher, said the NLC provided “informed explanations about mining and fracking and its impact on country … at all consultations”. He offered to meet with traditional owners to discuss their concerns, but attempts to take up this offer were not successful amid a change of personnel at the land council.
Original Power sent more letters and emails on behalf of native title holders in 2019, requesting a meeting to discuss concerns about the consultation process and the potential effects of fracking. Nolan says they received no response to these requests and no meeting was organised.
The Stuart Highway south of Mataranka, Northern Territory. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian
By August 2020, senior NLC representatives were being invited to meet in Daly Waters with native title holders for 11 of the determination areas in the Beetaloo basin.
This invitation was extended in multiple letters that stressed the group believed “coordination and cooperation with NLC will ensure the best and most durable outcomes for the native title holders”.
On 25 September 2020, Janet Gregory, a Jingili woman whose lands are affected by fracking, wrote to senior NLC representatives and said traditional owners were “disappointed and sorry, but not surprised, that we received no response and that no representative of NLC attended the meeting”.
“We need to take greater control over decisions being made on our country,” she wrote, before requesting the NLC support the court application to formalise Nurrdalinji as the new representative body for native title holders.
In a reply, the NLC representatives wrote they were concerned that “after stating that the reason for the change was so that ‘we can take control of our native title and our country’, you go on in the letter to use language which reflects your opposition to fracking”.
“You are absolutely entitled to have negative views about fracking. We respect those views and some of us may share them,” it said. “But … our job is to properly represent wishes in particular of the senior decision makers from the estate groups whose country will be affected.”
In 2022, Nurrdalinji wrote that it had formed the view the “NLC is primarily in the business of facilitating fracking, rather than enabling members to make their own decisions about fracking, in a free and informed way,” in an unpublished submission to a current audit of the land council by the National Audit Office.
No right to veto
“It’s been a rollercoaster for people to understand,” says Janet’s sister Elaine Sandy, one of the directors of Nurrdalinji and a Jingili woman.
Sandy and her siblings have felt the presence of the gas industry in the Beetaloo since some of the earliest exploration agreements were negotiated with companies in the early 2000s.
‘My concern is water … the environment and our land’: Jingili elder and director of the Nurrdalinji Aboriginal Corporation Elaine Sandy. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian
Sandy says in those very early days there was little explanation about what fracking was or what its effects or potential scale could be.
“We never knew what it was all about,” she says. “There had been a promise of jobs and money.
“My concern is water … the environment and our land. Once it’s been contaminated that’s going to be [a] great disaster for us,” she says. “Not just for us, our people, our country, our environment – but also our neighbours, the pastoralists.”
Most of the areas targeted by the gas industry in the Beetaloo are non-exclusive native title lands, meaning they are lands held under pastoral leases where traditional owners have coexisting rights.
Native title holders don’t have a right of veto over resources exploration, but have a right to negotiate an agreement with gas companies and the NT government for jobs, protection for the environment, and payments for exploration to ensure benefits flow to what are often desperately poor communities.
These negotiations are time-limited and companies must negotiate in good faith. If after six months they have not secured an agreement, the legislation permits a company to go to the national native title tribunal and seek a determination to be granted tenure for its activities anyway.
Roads and stock routes in the Northern Territory cover great distances with no available fuel. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian
Consultation and division
Elliott is a sliver of a town on the Stuart Highway where homes run on diesel paid for with power cards.
Residents live in two town camps, one on either side of the petrol station, and in houses scattered between. There’s a primary school, a sports and recreation park with a brightly painted basketball court, and an arts centre where people meet to chat under the din of industrial fans.
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Guardian Australia visited the town, which is one of the focal points of the NT’s gas industry expansion, in mid March.
The Beetaloo basin 500km south-east of Darwin. Composite: Guardian graphic/Department of Industry, Science and Resources
People who live in Elliott talk about their connection to the region’s ecosystems and waterways and the aquifer that runs under the Beetaloo, flowing north feeding the Mataranka hot springs that then discharge into the Roper River. Their deep ties to country are not only to what sits above the ground but what is below it.
One of the biggest concerns traditional owners worried about fracking have raised is that its effects could be cumulative and felt region-wide but consultation has focused on the boundaries of single permits, which “suits the gas companies … so their enormous combined impacts and the risks they present are not fully understood,” as Nurrdalinji wrote in its submission to the audit.
The town of Elliott on the Stuart Highway sits roughly halfway between Alice Springs and Katherine. It has become one of the focal points of the NT’s gas industry expansion. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian
While in Elliott, Guardian Australia witnessed the way consultation about gas development can divide communities. A new company, Territory Gas, has applied for an exploration permit on the edge of the Beetaloo basin and a meeting was held with native title holders in March. If the application is approved, it would be the first new gas company to enter the territory for a number of years.
Notices were delivered to homes in Elliott, inviting native title holders to a meeting where they would be provided with information about “what is involved in petroleum exploration”, would have the opportunity to ask the company questions and “give the NLC instructions about whether you want to make an agreement with Territory Gas”.
Near the top of the meeting notice, the NLC noted Territory Gas had made an application to the native title tribunal to decide if the permit could be granted.
Guardian Australia did not witness the meeting. But after it, people raised concerns and some said they felt pressured to sign an agreement they did not support.
That a tribunal application hung over the proceedings indicates how fraught these processes can be.
“The NLC mob want us to say yes to the company,” Jingili man Mark Raymond told Guardian Australia. “The mining company want to push ahead in the tribunal.
Traditional owner Mark Raymond. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian
“They said if we don’t sign an agreement [Territory Gas] will push through the back door.”
A spokesperson for the NLC said its staff members were courteous professionals.
“NLC staff members are monitored throughout their interactions with constituents and notes are kept,” they said.
Policy that doesn’t put that power back into their hands is paternalistic
Dominic Beckett
A spokesperson for Territory Gas said its involvement at meetings was limited to company presentations and corresponding questions and answers, and they had not been party to any of the discussions between the NLC and native title holders.
“The company has complied with all the requests of the NLC including the provision of information and facilitation of multiple on country meetings with the native title holders,” they said.
In a statement to the ASX last week, the company said it had reached an agreement with native title holders.
‘Treating land owners like children’
There is another factor that is unique to the Northern Territory that is critical to understanding why a group of traditional owners tried to take back control from their own land council in court.
In every other jurisdiction in Australia, when a determination of native title is made a corporation is set up that holds the native title in trust, usually with local traditional owners on its board.
These corporations are generally referred to as prescribed body corporates (PBCs) and are meant to act as a forum for regional governance that manages interactions with governments and industry.
NT government accused of lying about meeting climate condition before it greenlit ‘carbon bomb’ Beetaloo fracking
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In the Top End of the Northern Territory, this has not occurred. Instead, the Northern Land Council established a shell corporation called the Top End Default Prescribed Body Corporate (TED PBC) that is the PBC for more than 70 native title determinations in the territory’s northern half over an area twice the size of Tasmania.
The TED PBC’s members and directors are also the executive of the NLC.
“The NLC is neither separate from, nor independent from the TED PBC, and vice versa. Indeed, they are indistinguishable,” Nurrdalinji wrote in its submission to the audit.
The road to Bitter Springs, one of two natural thermal pools in Elsey national park, is cut by flooding. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian
The NLC has told parliamentary inquiries this was only meant to be an interim arrangement before native title holders transitioned to their own PBCs. But it has also said it was a useful model for the remote communities of the Top End because they were not the target of large-scale development and thus rarely had to engage with industry.
The Beetaloo basin, as one of the largest proposed new fossil fuel developments in Australia, does not fit that description.
Beckett thinks the TED PBC model is abhorrent and paternalistic.
“It doesn’t put power back into the hands of the people who have been determined to be the native title holders,” he says. “I think this is treating land owners like they’re children.”
The spokesperson for the NLC said the TED PBC “delivers efficient and effective support for native title holders and avoids the dysfunction plaguing many parts of the PBC sector”.
James Fitzgerald, who has worked as a native title lawyer for 25 years and negotiated some of the largest and most lucrative mining deals with Aboriginal groups in Australia, believes the NLC’s approach to native title holders in the Beetaloo with concerns about fracking “seems to be fundamentally antagonistic”.
“The Beetaloo basin is one of the hottest industrial properties in Australia, yet when Beetaloo native title holders have attempted to opt out of the TED PBC arrangement they have met strong resistance from the NLC,” he says.
“Taken together, the NLC’s actions in the Beetaloo indicate an organisation that seems more interested in establishing and maintaining monopolistic control over native title representation than in serving the wishes of native title holders.” Fitzgerald has also who worked as a strategist for Original Power.
The spokesperson for the NLC said the land council sought to ensure development did not occur without the free, prior and informed consent of traditional owners.
They said lands covered by the Native Title Act notoriously did not allow for a right of veto over either gas exploration or production and the NLC, along with other land councils around Australia, had advocated for law reform that would give First Nations people genuine rights to decide whether and how their country will be mined or drilled.
“In the Beetaloo basin, much of the criticism that is currently levelled at the NLC would be more appropriately directed at the native title legislation under which the NLC is required to operate,” the spokesperson said.
Fitzgerald, however, said “regardless of the shortcomings of the Native Title Act” it was “within the power of the NLC to use its substantial heft to advocate in favour of native title holders’ wishes, including where a group or groups wants to resist fracking or other mining development on their land”.
“There are more tools available than just the Native Title Act,” he said. “National and territory environmental laws, cultural heritage laws, the negotiations themselves and political and direct action can be used to genuinely minimise the risk of environmental or cultural heritage impacts including, where necessary, agreements not to frack.”
The spokesperson said the NLC’s chief executive, Joe Martin-Jard, had told the Senate inquiry into the Beetaloo basin that “if any determined group of native title holders in the Top End makes a decision to replace the [TED PBC] with a different corporation, the NLC will respect and support that decision”.
Cattle grazing under a rainbow south of Darwin. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian
They said “at most about 36 adult constituents” were in attendance at the Daly Waters meeting in September 2020 who sought to represent the native title holders of the entire Beetaloo Basin. The council said at the time it was not “satisfied that this appointment or this creation of Nurrdalinji and the purported appointment of it as a PBC were decisions that were authorised with the consent of all native title holders. On the contrary, it was quite clear to us that many groups and many senior native title holders either didn’t know anything about this or were opposed to this particular action”.
“When understood in context of the established facts, NLC’s response to Nurrdalinji and Original Power’s application in the federal court is entirely reasonable,” the spokesperson said.
But Beckett said the NLC’s remarks were “an attempt to downplay the significance of the meeting”.
It’s like a storybook and someone has ripped the page out and burned it.
Samuel Sandy
He said Original Power had made considerable effort to inform and consult with a steering committee to make sure the meeting was well notified and a sufficiently representative group was invited to attend. He said this was done without the assistance of the anthropology and other resources available to the land council.
He said he was not aware of any other region-wide meeting that had been organised to discuss gas development in the Beetaloo and this was why people had requested one.
“In my view the NLC should have supported this meeting and attended it. This was a meeting requested by and for the benefit of people who it claimed to be acting on behalf of,” he said. “Instead, it chose to keep its distance and then criticised and marginalised it after the event.”
‘I want the world to know’
“At the moment we have a big fight, a big battle on our hands with companies that are entering the Northern Territory,” says Samuel Sandy, a Jingili man and deputy chair of Nurrdalinji.
Jingili elder Samuel Sandy with his great-grandson. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian
Guardian Australia met with him in March, on the porch of his home in Katherine, while his great-grandson Henry played next to him in a Spider-Man suit.
“If they continue doing this fracking, if they’re going to drill all these wells and going to full production, there’s going to be a lot of dangers to the land.”
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In 2022, Nurrdalinji directors visited a fracking well on Tanumbirini station. Sandy says when he saw the site “my heart sank”.
“It’s unforgivable on our beautiful country. The way it’s going, they’re going to destroy it,” he says.
“It’s like a storybook and someone has ripped the page out and burned it.
“I just want the whole world to know we desperately need help. The people in the Beetaloo basin need help.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/04/100-best-nonfiction-books-10-selfish-gene-richard-dawkins | Books | 2016-04-04T04:45:20.000Z | Robert McCrum | The 100 best nonfiction books: No 10 – The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins | What is man, and what are we for? Remarkably, it was not until Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859 that anyone, in our history, had thought methodically to address the reason for our existence. Darwin’s answer to this simple question was to show that every earthly species – chimps or humans, lizards or fungus – had evolved over about 3bn years by the process known as natural selection.
But then, after the furious controversy surrounding that publication, Darwin’s celebrated theory fell into neglect and misuse. A hundred years later, in the heady, innovative atmosphere of the 1960s, a new generation of young and ambitious evolutionary biologists found themselves confronted with a rare opportunity: the rediscovery and renewal of evolutionary theory. Enter Richard Dawkins, a young Oxford zoologist who had been born, and partly raised, in Africa. Following some notable pioneers such as WD Hamilton and GC Williams, Dawkins pulled together many disparate strands of thought about the nature of natural selection, and organised them into a conceptual framework with far-reaching implications for our understanding of Darwin’s ideas. He called it The Selfish Gene, a title he later considered to contain an unconscious echo of Oscar Wilde’s The Selfish Giant. Dawkins was convinced that an amplified and developed version of neo-Darwinism “could make everything about life fall into place, in the heart as well as in the brain”. His book would extol, he wrote, a “gene’s-eye view of evolution”.
It was Dawkins’s simple, but profound, proposition that “the fundamental unit of selection, and therefore of self-interest, is not the species, nor the group, nor even, strictly, the individual. It is the gene, the unit of heredity.” He acknowledged that this might sound “at first like an extreme view” but proceeded to explore all the major themes of social theory in the light of this idea, conducting his survey in a highly readable and entertaining way. With chapters such as “Genesmanship”, “Battle of the Sexes”, and “Nice Guys Finish First”, he tackled concepts of altruism and selfishness, the evolution of aggressive behaviour, kinship theory, sex ratio theory, reciprocal altruism, deceit, and the natural selection of sex differences. In hindsight, it seems appropriate that The Selfish Gene should have been published soon after The Joy of Sex and The Female Eunuch.
You can call me a big bad wolf but not a bore, says Richard Dawkins
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From his first page, Dawkins unfolds an exhilarating and combative narrative of the gene’s-eye view of life with infectious brio. The Selfish Gene, he declares, should be read “almost as though it were science fiction. It is designed to appeal to the imagination.” Part of the book’s compulsion derives from Dawkins’s appealing certainty that he is exploring a scientific world in which “we are survival machines – robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes”. This insight, he reports, is “a truth which still fills me with astonishment”.
Much of this book’s appeal lies in its author’s barely suppressed excitement, prose that bubbles over with the intoxication of a brilliant new approach. He buttonholes his readers; he dazzles with paradox and provocation. In an introduction to a later edition of The Selfish Gene, Dawkins describes its gestation: it was a book written in extremis (the power cuts and industrial strife of the early 1970s) and, as he says, “in a fever of excitement”. For the young author, it was, in hindsight, “one of those mysterious periods in which new ideas are hovering in the air”.
So zeitgeisty was it that, from first publication, the reception of The Selfish Gene was highly favourable. Initially, it was not seen as a controversial book, Dawkins wrote later. “Its reputation for contentiousness took years to grow.” Eventually it would become regarded as a work of extreme radicalism. But, he goes on, “over the very same years as the book’s reputation for extremism has escalated, its actual content has seemed less and less extreme”.
Richard Dawkins: 'I don't think I am strident or aggressive'
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This is undeniable: while The Selfish Gene grew out of orthodox neo-Darwinian ideas, it actually expressed Darwinism in a way that Darwin himself might have welcomed. Rather than focus on the individual organism, it looked at nature from the perspective of the gene. It was, claimed Dawkins, “a different way of seeing, not a different theory”.
It also addressed itself to “three imaginary readers”: the generalist, the expert and the student. This was a high-low cohort that swiftly propelled it on to bestseller lists worldwide. Moreover, in keeping with the temper of the times, The Selfish Gene announced itself, from the first, as “a book about animal behaviour”, arguing that “we, like all other animals, are (survival) machines created by our genes”. For Dawkins, “we” did not mean just people. He wanted his description to embrace all animals, plants, bacteria and viruses. “The total number of survival machines on Earth,” he wrote, “is very difficult to count.” Even the total number of species is unknown, he conceded. “Taking just insects alone, the number of individual insects may be a million million million.”
Dawkins – in a style that would recur in later polemical books such as The God Delusion – was never less than comprehensive in his ambitions. Here, he used “survival machine” rather than “animal” because he wanted to encompass all plants and humans, too. His argument should apply, he said, to any and all “evolved beings”.
Orthodox neo-Darwinian he might be, but in chapter 11, he coined an idea about cultural transmission that quickly went viral within the global intellectual community: the meme, or replicator, a unit of imitation. Examples of memes include tunes, idea, catchphrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches: “Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation.” Shortly after this analysis, Dawkins characterised “God” as a meme. Thus, pages 192-193 of The Selfish Gene might be said to encapsulate most of Richard Dawkins’s brilliant career, in which the theory of evolution came to offer such a satisfying and complete explanation for the complexity of life on Earth that there could no longer be a place for the possibility of God’s design.
A signature sentence
“A monkey is a machine that preserves genes up trees, a fish is a machine that preserves genes in the water; there is even a small worm that preserves genes in German beer mats. DNA works in mysterious ways.”
Three to compare
GC Williams: Adaptation and Natural Selection (1961)
EO Wilson: On Human Nature (1978)
WD Hamilton: Narrow Roads of Gene Land, Vol I (1996)
The Selfish Gene is published by Oxford University Press (£8.99). Click here to order a copy for £7.19 | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/global/2018/apr/22/amy-schumer-interview-film-i-feel-pretty-marriage-love-stand-up | Global | 2018-04-22T06:00:14.000Z | Sophie Heawood | Amy Schumer: ‘I’m not invincible. I need to slow down’ | When I meet Amy Schumer, she has been married for exactly one month and is working on a joke about her husband’s penis. Something along the lines of, my husband is uncircumcised – for now. She had jotted it down on the Notes app on her iPhone, where she keeps a lot of ideas, but it duplicated the note five times “so now it looks like I really have plans to mutilate him,” she says.
She then admits that she actually first used that line about another man she used to date, “but you have to update it so it’s about the person you’re with now. And really, my husband is good, he can keep everything he has. At this point in my life, I’m cool with foreskin or not – God bless everyone and their penii,” she says, breezily, as if she might have exhausted herself by creating a persona who is supposed to care so much.
I think we should see more – I’m not letting them retouch me in the film
Amy Schumer is a conundrum. A native New Yorker, she made her incredibly successful name doing stand-up comedy about raw, rude sex and all of its discontents, about dating and dirtiness and blacking out drunk and doing the walk of shame home. Her TV sketch show, Inside Amy Schumer, ran for four series on Comedy Central and often mercilessly skewered the gender hypocrisy of what our culture allows men and women to do, in particular the beauty myths that silently surround women, in sketches such as “Girl You Don’t Need Makeup” and “Her Last Fuckable Day”.
At the Glamour awards in London in 2015, after various female celebrities had tottered up to the stage to receive awards in heels they could barely walk in and dresses they could barely breathe in, Schumer strode on. “I’m probably 160lb right now,” she said, looking out over the audience with disdain, “and I can catch a dick whenever I want. That’s the truth.” I was there; she changed the mood of the room from faux modesty to explosive, spluttering laughter, and all the disdained women ran up to her afterwards, desperate to be her friend. It felt like a tipping point in that industry; famous women have been letting their guard down ever since.
Stealing the show: Amy Schumer after bringing the house down at the Glamour awards. Photograph: David M Benett/Getty Images
Yet a couple of months later, her debut movie Trainwreck came out, which she wrote and starred in. It began promisingly and originally, but ended with her character giving up her competitive career and literally becoming a cheerleader – an actual cheerleader – for her clever, high-achieving man. The next year Schumer published her autobiography, The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo, in which, alongside stories of a childhood going from riches to rags on Long Island with her dad’s dodgy business skills and then illness, and both her parents’ philandering, she wrote that, actually, she had only ever had a one-night stand once, and it was lovely and respectful, thank you very much.
Now she has made I Feel Pretty, a film about a woman who gets a bash on the head and wrongly believes herself to have become as beautiful as a supermodel, and so creates a whole new life for her sexy self. The film asks if beauty is a state of mind – while also involving Schumeresque motifs such as a vaginal injury on an exercise bike.
Meanwhile, Schumer has surprised the gossip papers by suddenly getting married, to a chef called Chris Fischer, in a lacy white wedding dress on a clifftop in Malibu. For celebrities, this is as traditional as your father walking you down the aisle in your village church. Coverage of the wedding made it all sound rather giddy and impulsive, but when I ask her about it, she is anything but.
“I feel exactly the same as before I was married – but I’m psyched. I love him,” she says, her face deadly serious, like she’s been through a thing or two in this life. “Like, I’m fucking – it feels like having a partner. It feels like not being alone.” We are sitting in a rather fancy hotel suite overlooking Central Park, where Schumer is promoting her new movie. Her bodyguard is in the next room, along with two assistants who have taken Schumer’s tiny black poodle Tatiana, who was barking too much for the interview. “He’s 38, I’m 36, so, you know, we are not completing each other. We already are who we are and just want to support and encourage each other. And so I’m psyched that I don’t have to be zipping up my knee boots, leaving someone’s apartment at 3am. I’m done.” She says this wasn’t like other relationships, “where you’re like, come on, pleeease meet my parents. I can’t believe I dealt with any of that bullshit before! This was like, oh my God I fucking love this person, and I admire him, and we’re a team and he was ready.”
‘I don’t think of this movie as a love story. It’s about her and her friends’: with Rory Scovel in I Feel Pretty. Photograph: Mark Schfer/STX Films
I ask her if it is hard, having created such a bold sexual persona, ever to find the space to feel shy, but she looks baffled by that question and says that she isn’t ever shy. In fact, she looks baffled by quite a few of my questions: interviews are clearly not her favourite thing. I want to discuss her work being about the concept of fuckability, but she says that that’s not accurate, and turns her nose up a bit.
She says this film is about her character Renee simply wanting to be seen, and though there’s a boyfriend angle, “I don’t think of this movie as a love story. It’s about her and her friends.” She says the dressing-up is for other women, because she has learned, with age, that we don’t really dress for men. “In my experience, men are not that psyched and the guys that I’m attracted to aren’t the guys who are like, ‘Oh, is that the new Givenchy line?’ I think, her thing is about confidence and about feeling attractive.”
What the kids are just realising is that the adults are not actually in control
Well, yes and no. I mean if it’s all about women, then her character entering a bikini competition and shaking her stuff all over the stage in a dive bar full of men does seem an interesting move. Yet the thing about the bikini scene is – it becomes lovely. You start watching it behind your hands, cringing – and by the end you’re charmed by the sight of someone just thoroughly, unabashedly enjoying herself.
Schumer is glad I liked that scene, and says she fought for it. She was supposed to just stand there, “but I said no, I’m going to go nuts on stage, I’m going to dump water on myself, do the whole thing. And I seriously fought everybody and I’m so glad I did.” She also has a sex scene, and fought to be allowed to reveal more flesh but still have the film rated 13. “I think we should see more, you know, and I’m not letting them retouch any of me in the movie.”
There is an idiosyncratic, pioneering power to Schumer’s comedy work that I keep looking for in her films. They veer towards slapstick whereas her solo material has brains and guts. I do not make myself popular by suggesting this, and Schumer bristles when I ask what sort of movies she would make if there was no financial compulsion for feelgood endings.
“You know, I said no to a movie where I would have made five times this amount of money,” she says. Really? Someone else’s project? “Mmm,” she replies, mysteriously. “For me, it’s not so much about the money. Like, I wouldn’t want to spend three years of my life working on The Revenant. I filmed a drama two years ago and it was a bummer. I don’t want to show people what I can do – I just want to do stuff that will make people feel better.”
Hot women, once the butt of her jokes, now get cast in her films. I Feel Pretty co-stars Emily Ratajkowski, who rose to fame dancing topless in the Blurred Lines music video, and also features a cameo from Naomi Campbell. “I did a lot of press yesterday sitting next to Emily and I think that probably would have been kind of hard for me 10 years ago,” she admits. They were wearing similar clothes, “and I would have made a joke about it before – but now it’s just – I just feel like that’s over. I kind of feel done with the self-ranking thing.”
Black humour: Schumer’s The Leather Special. Photograph: Marcus Price/Netflix
She says this comes from growing up and realising that she feels most beautiful when she’s away with her girls, or on a night out where she’s just “so happy, so comfortable, you know who you are. And then it’s like, well, why can’t we just feel like that all the time?” One of those girls is her best buddy Jennifer Lawrence. “I texted her yesterday and I was like, ‘I did an interview today and I told them you were really hideous up close.’ And she wrote, ‘Actual LOL’, and then she added in parenthesis ‘(Because I’m so pretty, you know?)’ And I was like, ‘Exactly.’” I ask about their shared sense of humour. “Well, Jen’s quick. She picks up on things that I just mutter to make myself laugh. I’ll just say something under my breath, and she’ll be like, ‘I heard that.’”
Speaking of comic actors, Michelle Williams is an absolute revelation in I Feel Pretty. It’s perhaps the biggest shock of the film. “Me too,” says Schumer. “I didn’t know she was really funny. Like she’s really funny. Why didn’t we know? It’s because they always put her in some awful thing where she’s got to be on the floor, crying.”
As for the #MeToo movement, Schumer wholly supports it but isn’t jumping up and down whooping about it “because, while it’s exciting, it’s also really triggering and upsetting. It makes everybody feel super vulnerable. But to think that this generation is going to say, ‘This isn’t acceptable,’ and not just bury the things that our mothers buried – that feels really good. It feels like, across the board, we’re getting closer to equality. Which is – it’s such a gut-wrenching thing to even have to say that.”
She must have seen a few of her own male colleagues in comedy go down. “Right, there are people you love that can have really shitty behaviour that needs to be called out. And then there are so many men who are just scared, they’re just waiting for the phone to ring, they’re waiting to open their computer and see their faces and it’s a frightening time for them. But then we’re going, ‘We’ve been frightened our whole lives.’”
Show of strength: on the Women’s March in 2017 with Madonna. Photograph: Kevin Mazur/WireImage
As for the future, Schumer continues to campaign for gun control, aided by her distant cousin the US senator Chuck Schumer, and to call out certain other senators and their links to the NRA. It’s a subject even closer to her heart after two young women were shot in an American cinema while watching her movie Trainwreck. The day we meet, schoolkids are pouring out of their classrooms across the USA to demonstrate, “and I think once I start looking at that news footage I’ll just be crying all day,” she says. We discuss the Florida survivors, such as Emma Gonzalez. “These kids are really making an impact and I feel more hopeful right now than I thought possible,” she says. “This has been more movement than I thought that I would see in my lifetime. I think what they’re just realising is that the adults are not actually in control.”
It’s also time for a change in Schumer’s own life. I ask about a typical day for her and she says that for the past 10 years, from the moment she woke up till she went to sleep, “I was driven and working and writing. Doing stand-up, you know, promoting something or filming something. I would say that, for 15 years, I was getting up at seven, going boxing, showering, going to the writer’s room all day, and having an interview during lunch. Afterward, maybe getting some sort of acupuncture before going and doing stand-up, and then having, like, 90 minutes when I could write when I got home. You know? That’s been it. I’ve been hustling for so long, I want to take care of myself now. I got really sick and it just made me realise I wasn’t invincible. I need to slow down.”
One last thing though – can we just clear up the one-night-stand thing? Do you really mean you only had sex within relationships? “No! See to me, a one-night stand is where you meet someone that same day, you have sex with them, and then you never see them again. Sleeping with a friend or having sex with someone you know just once, no, I don’t consider that a one-night stand. I should make an addendum to that book. Something else I realised: I wrote that I don’t like watercress in the book. But I meant water chestnuts. So I need to publish two corrections, I guess.”
I Feel Pretty is in cinemas in the UK and Ireland on 4 May | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/nov/10/nick-caves-son-died-from-fall-after-taking-lsd-inquest-hears | Music | 2015-11-10T17:12:08.000Z | Damien Gayle | Nick Cave's son took LSD before cliff fall death, inquest hears | The son of singer Nick Cave had taken the hallucinogen LSD when he fell to his death from a cliff, an inquest has heard.
Arthur Cave, 15, suffered a fatal brain injury after plunging onto the underpass of Ovingdean Gap in Brighton on 14 July. The student was taken to the Royal Sussex County hospital but died that evening.
The inquest heard testimony from a friend of Arthur’s who described how the pair had taken the drug together near Rottingdean windmill on the day he died.
Witnesses described later seeing the 15-year-old staggering on a grassy area around the top of the cliff between Ovingdean and Rottingdean. Minutes later, Arthur fell.
Dr Simi George, who carried out the postmortem at Guys and St Thomas’ hospital trust, said Arthur died of multiple head injuries. “In my opinion, even if there was a trauma team at the bottom of that cliff it would have been very unlikely that he would have survived,” she said. Other medical witnesses assured Arthur’s parents that it was unlikely that he suffered.
The court heard that on the day of Arthur’s death, he and his friend, who cannot be named for legal reasons, had decided to try LSD together for the first time. DC Vicky Loft, who read out the friend’s statement, said that the boy had researched LSD use online the night before the incident, but while he read advice about how long the effects could last and that it was unwise to take too many doses, there was little information about the potential negative effects.
Describing the moment the boys took the drug, she went on: “Arthur was also slightly hesitant but said to [his friend] that if they were thinking or worrying [about] bad things before taking the tablets that would have an effect on their trip. They debated for a few minutes about whether to take the tablets then both took them together.”
The boy said he and Arthur shared three tablets and that they were initially in “good spirits and happy”. The friend said he then started having “vivid hallucinations”, including seeing patches of oil on the grass and shapes and colours in the sky.
Loft said: “[The boy] became paranoid and felt like people were staring at him in cars. He couldn’t tell what was real and what was not real.” The boy said he was not sure if he and Arthur walked off together but he recalled that they went their separate ways.
A driver who spotted Arthur staggering close to the cliff edge became worried about him after seeing him slump on to the grass. Veronica Langford, who was with her 11-year-old daughter, parked and tried to check on the boy. She asked a passing jogger for help and the pair began peering over the side. It was the runner who saw Arthur lying at the bottom of the cliff.
Dr Paul Ransom, who treated Arthur at the Royal Sussex County hospital, said it soon became clear there was little that could be done for the boy, who had suffered critical head injuries.
“In Arthur’s case, sadly, and I think mercifully, it was clear that he was not aware of what was going on,” Ransom said. “The point of impact was the point of death.” Ransom declared Arthur dead at 7.08pm.
Summing up, the coroner, Veronica Hamilton-Deeley, accepted that the boys had taken LSD, although no trace of the drug was found in Arthur’s body. She said: “It was taken by lads who were inquiring and experimenting and it’s what kids do all the time, and most of the time … they get away with it, except on sad occasions like this.”
Hamilton-Deeley recorded a verdict of accidental death, adding: “In his own family’s words ... ‘he was a bright, shiny, funny, complex boy and we loved him deeply’.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2024/jan/26/please-make-it-stop-tom-hollander-and-the-bizarre-world-of-mistaken-celebrity-identity | Television & radio | 2024-01-26T15:08:13.000Z | Stuart Heritage | ‘Please make it stop’: Tom Hollander and the bizarre world of mistaken celebrity identity | This week, during a taping of Late Night with Seth Meyers, the actor Tom Hollander casually unveiled what might be the greatest talkshow anecdote ever told. After a few minutes of halting, self-conscious promotion for his new Truman Capote show, during which he barely made eye contact with anyone, he opened up.
Asked if he was sick of people confusing him for Tom Holland, he started unloading a story about a time he felt particularly flush, visiting a friend in a theatre and deliberately not trying to lord his television earnings over him, when he mistakenly received an email from his agent. Labelled “box office bonus for The Avengers”, the email’s intended target was Tom Holland. Hollander opened it. “It was an astonishing amount of money,” he told Meyers. “It was not his salary. It was his first box office bonus. Not the whole box office bonus. The first one. And it was more money than I’d ever seen. It was a seven-figure sum.”
It’s a wonderful story. It’s gossipy and insidery. It puts Hollander squarely in the realm of the plucky underdog. And it’s a nice little insight into the world where there are too many famous Toms with similar surnames.
Hollander isn’t the only Tom to have found himself sucked into the gravitational pull of Spider-Man. There is another Tom Holland, the author and historian. Like Hollander, he had a perfectly decent career pre-Avengers. Say “Tom Holland” to someone a decade ago and they might have replied: “Ah yes, I enjoyed his BBC Four documentary about the impact that fossils had on global mythology.” But those days are long gone. Say “Tom Holland” now and people just whoop and make thwippy noises with their mouths.
If this was a struggle for the OG Holland, he managed to keep it largely to himself. And then, last year, the Spider-Man Tom Holland went to India, posed for a picture, and the entire population of the subcontinent reacted by mistakenly tagging historian Holland in a tweet. “Please make it stop,” he whimpered as his mentions were deluged.
Please make it stop https://t.co/K8j0EBbjyY
— Tom Holland (@holland_tom) April 2, 2023
Of course, this also happens to other people. There are two Brian Coxes, for instance: one a physicist, the other an actor. During a particularly brain-melting episode of BBC Breakfast in 2022, both Coxes appeared on screen at the same time, simultaneously promoting a documentary about wealth inequality and a book about black holes. During the appearance, the pair of Brians revealed that they often turn up at events where the other Brian was expected. Once, science Brian said, they both stayed in the same hotel, and the receptionist told him to pick a new name because their system couldn’t handle two bookings for Brian Cox at once.
Succession does seem to have a stranglehold on this sort of mix-up. My son’s favourite children’s author, to my eternal chagrin, is Jeremy Strong, who has written a very good series of books about bums. He is not to be confused with the wildly method Succession actor Jeremy Strong, but that hasn’t stopped the world from telling book Jeremy how good he is on their favourite HBO prestige drama. Intermittently, book Jeremy is forced to respond to well-wishers with an extraordinary level of patience. “Sorry, but I’m not the US actor,” he will write on social media several times a year. “I’m a British author of children’s books.” It must be galling.
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However, there is now a precedent for when this sort of mix-up happens. For years, a mild-mannered X user named John Lewis would find his Novembers and Decembers ruined by an onslaught of public confusion whenever the department store of the same name released a new Christmas advert. Knowing a good PR move when they saw it, shop John Lewis reached out to John Lewis the guy and started sending him gifts to make up for the inconvenience of sharing a name with a much more famous entity. It seems clear that this is what must happen now. Whenever Tom Holland makes a new Marvel movie, he should split his salary into three and share it with the other two Toms who live in his shadow. It seems only fair, after all. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/apr/30/six-london-garages-sell-for-700000-auction | Money | 2014-04-30T11:49:47.000Z | Hilary Osborne | Six ageing London garages fetch £700,000 at auction | Fierce bidding drove up the cost of six garages in west London at a recent property auction - with the lock-ups fetching £700,000, some 10 times the guide price.
Three of the garages, are currently let, bringing in an income of £2,760 a year, but the buyer is expected to knock them down and replace carparking with carpeting. Property prices in Hammersmith & Fulham, where the garages sit just off the Fulham Road, rose by almost 16% in the year to March, according to the Land Registry.
Clearly the buyer thinks there is still value to be had. Although the seller is understood to have carried out a feasibility study on a development of two two-bedroom townhouses, the site does not have planning permission.
The man who brought down the hammer on the garages, Andrew Binstock of the Auction House London, said the price "was a surprise for everyone involved".
Binstock said the lack of planning permission made the garages a widely attractive proposition, with bidders seeing its value as anywhere between £100,000 and the eventual sale price.
"If it had planning permission there would be much more precision as to what the value would be – people would have an idea of how much they could sell the development for and the only variable would be the perceived cost of building it," he said.
"Not having planning permission has a downside because you are taking some risk, but in this case it was a massive upside – without planning there are unlimited opportunities."
Binstock said this was just one of several lots that sold for "crazy prices". On the same street as the garages, a house divided into two one-bedroom flats and one four-bedroom home went for almost £1m over its £975,000 guide price.
"The auction market is exceptional at the moment and no one can work out why," said Binstock. "There is a shortage of stock and people are looking for exciting opportunities in good areas."
And for someone, six ageing garages seem to present just that. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/07/hillary-clinton-declared-democratic-presidential-nominee | US news | 2016-06-07T16:53:53.000Z | Paul Lewis | Clinton clinches Democratic nomination as Sanders stays in race | Hillary Clinton faces the last major contest of the primary campaign on Tuesday having already been declared the Democratic presidential nominee, making her the first woman in history to lead a major party bid for the White House.
The declaration that Clinton had won the support of the 2,383 delegates needed to clinch the nomination came from the Associated Press late on Monday, before voting was due to commence in primaries in California and five other states.
The legitimacy of AP’s declaration, which was announced 24 hours earlier than her campaign expected, was immediately called into question by Clinton’s rival, Bernie Sanders.
The Vermont senator’s campaign issued a defiant statement that condemned the media’s “rush to judgment” and signalled that the Vermont senator was willing, if possible, to contest the nomination at the Democratic National Convention in July.
Clinton: ‘We are on the brink of a historic, historic, unprecedented moment’ Guardian
However, as voters headed to the polls in California, New Jersey, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and New Mexico, it was clear that the mathematics were squarely on the side of the former secretary of state.
The unexpected and somewhat anti-climactic twist in the race appeared to surprise the Clinton campaign, which has not altered its plan and is waiting until voting concludes on Tuesday before declaring her the Democratic nominee-in-waiting at a victory party in New York.
Clinton made reference to the AP declaration during a campaign event in Long Beach, California, on Monday night. “I got to tell you, according to the news, we are on the brink of a historic, historic, unprecedented moment, but we still have work to do, don’t we?” she said.
On Tuesday Clinton secured the endorsement of House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California and, according to US media reports, aides to Barack Obama are in discussion with her campaign with a view to the president formally backing her soon. He is understood to have called Sanders on Sunday to inform him.
Obama remained on the fence on Tuesday. Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, said: “There is at least one superdelegate – the one who works in the Oval Office – who is not prepared to make a public declaration about his endorsement at this point, but stay tuned and we’ll keep you updated.”
Clinton’s candidacy, years in the making, will cap a long and bruising campaign against Sanders, a self-described socialist who has electrified the progressive wing of the Democratic party and pulled its frontrunner to the left.
Her graduation to presumptive nominee will also mark the start of a momentous general election campaign against the Republican nominee, Donald Trump.
Clinton gave a foretaste of the type of campaign she plans to wage against the real estate mogul last week when she used a speech in San Diego to brand her adversary too dangerous and unstable to be entrusted with nuclear codes and warning of economic crisis if he were to reach the White House.
“Donald Trump’s ideas aren’t just different, they’re dangerously incoherent. They’re not even really ideas, just a series of bizarre rants, personal feuds and outright lies,” she said in that speech, widely agreed to be one of her best of the campaign. “He is not just unprepared. He is temperamentally unfit to hold an office that requires knowledge, stability and immense responsibility.”
At a fundraising concert in Los Angeles on Monday where celebrity supporters included Stevie Wonder, Ricky Martin, Cher, Magic Johnson and Christina Aguilera, Clinton told the crowd: “We’re going to come out of the primary even stronger to take on Donald Trump. Enough with the fear, enough with the anger, enough with the bigotry, enough with the bullying!”
Her supporters argue she has unparalleled qualifications for the job after a lifetime in public service in which she has served as first lady, New York senator and secretary of state under Barack Obama.
Does Hillary Clinton have your vote?
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The US president, who defeated Clinton’s first bid for the Democratic nomination in 2008, is widely expected to endorse Clinton in the coming days.
The sense that the nomination was within Clinton’s grasp had been growing in recent days and the candidate has been looking increasingly relaxed and confident on the campaign trail.
Stevie Wonder, Christina Aguilera and Ricky Martin at Hillary Clinton fundraising concert Guardian
Earlier on Monday, in an exchange with reporters in Compton, Clinton made clear she believed Sanders should withdraw from the race after Tuesday’s vote, pointing out it would be “eight years to the day” since she withdrew and endorsed then-senator Obama.
Unusually for Clinton, who has carefully avoided appearing to take the nomination for granted, she also conceded she was “very touched” by the belief among her supporters that she was on the verge of making history.
“My supporters are passionate. They are committed. They have voted for me in great numbers across our country for many reasons,” she said.
“But among those reasons is their belief that having a woman president will make a great statement, a historic statement about what kind of country we are, what we stand for. It’s really emotional.”
However, Clinton’s readiness for the looming general election battle still rests, in part, on the outcome of Tuesday’s primary in California, a large and diverse state that she had been expected to win easily until just a few weeks ago.
Clinton and her husband, former president Bill Clinton, have campaigned tirelessly in the state in recent days after polls showed her formidable lead in the polls shrink in the face of a stiff challenge from Sanders.
The senator had hoped to use an upset in California to shift momentum in the race and convince superdelegates to switch sides.
Conversely, a defeat for Sanders in California, which could potentially mean his rival amounting sufficient pledged delegates to seal the nomination without the help of superdelegates, would fundamentally undermine his case for remaining in the race until July.
Appearing before thousands of supporters in front of a fog-shrouded Golden Gate Bridge late on Monday, Sanders implored supporters to turn out for a contest he described as “the most important primary that we’ve had in the entire Democratic nomination process”.
He repeated his argument that he is consistently performing better against Trump in the polls than Clinton and stands a better chance of keeping him out of the White House. The senator made no mention of the reports declaring Clinton the nominee, but the news had by then percolated through the crowd.
Some supporters began trickling out of the rally before it had concluded while others sniped at reporters over what they complained was biased media coverage and a premature and undemocratic declaration of Clinton as the victor.
AP said its announcement was based on “a burst of last-minute support from superdelegates” – the party officials who get a vote at the national convention that is not bound by the results of elections.
Bernie Sanders vows to fight on at California rally Guardian
Clinton appeared to be on the very cusp of amassing the number of delegates to win the nomination after convincing wins in the US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico by the end of the weekend.
By then Clinton had 1,812 pledged delegates, compared with Sanders’ 1,521. When those were added to her overwhelming support from superdelegates the frontrunner appeared to be just shy of the target.
But the declaration, by AP’s count, that Clinton had actually met the target appeared to catch both campaigns off guard, upending carefully choreographed plans to react to a denouement not expected until Tuesday.
Sanders’ spokesman, Michael Briggs, immediately released a statement accusing the media of “ignoring the Democratic National Committee’s clear statement that it is wrong to count the votes of superdelegates before they actually vote at the convention this summer”.
“Secretary Clinton does not have and will not have the requisite number of pledged delegates to secure the nomination,” he said. “She will be dependent on superdelegates who do not vote until 25 July and who can change their minds between now and then.”
Even Clinton’s campaign appeared to believe the declaration was premature. “We can’t say the primary is over,” Bill Clinton told reporters at a rally in San Francisco. “Let people vote. Let them have their say.” Other Clinton campaign officials indicated that, while the news reports were welcome, they did not plan to declare victory in the overall race until Tuesday.
Clinton spoke only briefly at the concert-rally in Hollywood. “It is not an overstatement for me to say that we have a really important election ahead of us now,” she said, smiling broadly. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/feb/21/winning-fabelmans-judd-hirsch-taxi-spielberg-oscars-history-hopkins | Film | 2023-02-21T15:10:07.000Z | Tom Shone | ‘I’d appreciate winning’ – Fabelmans star Judd Hirsch on Taxi, Spielberg and aiming for Oscars history | ‘I
must tell you that I feel very inadvertently lucky,” says Judd Hirsch of his Oscar nomination for Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans. “The great respect for Steven, and the fact that it’s written very well and acted beautifully, I believe turns people’s minds to say, of me, ‘He had something to do with this. He was an important element in this movie.’ This is what I hope they thought. Instead of saying, ‘Well, he is old enough now, let’s give him an Academy Award nomination. It’s been 42 years since the last one’.”
Last nominated in 1981, in fact, for Robert Redford’s Ordinary People, Hirsch will be 88 by the time the Oscars roll around next month. If he wins, he will be the oldest actor to win, beating Anthony Hopkins, 83, who won for The Father two years ago. The Academy likes its oracle figures, and as Uncle Boris, the cracked lion-tamer who wanders in from the Arizona desert to impart words of advice to the teenage Sammy in Spielberg’s autobiographical coming-of-age tale, Hirsch commands every second of his 10 minutes on screen.
I said: ‘We can’t do this, right?’ Steven said: ‘What?’ And I said: ‘Be funny.’ And he said: ‘Oh yes we can'
“It started out with ‘SS wants to talk to JH,’” says Hirsch, by Zoom from his home in the Catskill mountains. “I said, ‘Who is SS? I know who JH is!’ OK. What’s the big whisper here? What, are we doing a crime story? Am I gonna be arrested? So I asked, ‘Who would I play?’ Steven said, ‘A great-uncle of mine.’ I said, ‘What does he do in the movie?’ He said, ‘He made me become a director.’ I said, ‘So where did he come from?’ and he said, ‘I think maybe Ukraine.’ ‘OK. Well, then what did he sound like?’ and he said: ‘We hardly ever understood a word he said.’ And that, my friend, was the only description I got before I had to come and do it.”
‘Looking for an egg to be broken’ … Hirsch on set, getting a minimal amount of direction from Spielberg. Photograph: Merie Weismiller Wallace/NBC Universal
Spielberg gave the rest of the cast photographs and objects to help them play versions of his mother, father and sisters, but he had nothing for Hirsch. During the shoot the director would come in, change something about the camera and give Gabriel LaBelle, the actor playing the young Spielberg, a few notes. But to Hirsch he would say nothing, just smile and go back to his monitor. “He gives me no direction at all. Doesn’t tell me what the man is like. Doesn’t tell me what his effect should be, no matter what. So I think it looks like they’re looking for this egg to be broken open in my brain.”
The result is as far from a gauzy, follow-your-dream advert for the artistic life as it is possible to imagine. “Family, art, life – it will tear you in two,” Boris tells Sam in his thick Ukrainian accent. “It will tear your heart out and leave you lonely.” The look on Sammy’s face is one of sheer terror, as if to say: this is my oracle? After one take, Spielberg started laughing. “I said, ‘But we can’t do this, right?’” says Hirsch. “He said, ‘What?’ and I said, ‘Be funny.’ I mean, this is an outright joke. And he said, ‘Oh yes we can.’” It was to be Hirsch’s only piece of feedback until his final day of shooting, when cast and crew, Spielberg included, applauded his final take.
Only afterwards did the meaning of the part reveal itself to Hirsch. “When I was a kid, when I was five, six years old, I lived in Coney Island and we used to go to the beach. And my memory of that was that the waves were enormous. People said, ‘Be careful.’ My mother said, ‘Don’t go in too deep.’ Well, you want to know something? There were no big waves in Coney Island. There were hardly anything like it. I was short. I was a small kid. In other words, we’re playing a younger memory, not the one he has now – a young person’s memory, not Steven Spielberg at 74 years old. Shocking. The man shocked the shit out of him.”
‘Uh-oh, I’m in trouble’ … with the cast of Taxi, Danny DeVito, Marilu Henner, Tony Danza, Andy Kaufman and Christopher Lloyd. Photograph: Paramount Television/Allstar
The story tells you a lot about Hirsch, and the gravelly, existential shtick that has informed the long career of this two-time Emmy and two-time Tony winner. His acting teacher William Hickey, at the HB Studio in New York, once told him: “The most believable thing about you is when you’re innocent of what’s happening.” He didn’t start acting until his late 20s, after getting a degree in physics, experiencing a spell in the Army Reserve and getting a job as an engineer. A decade after making his stage debut as the telephone man in Neil Simon’s hit comedy Barefoot in the Park in the mid-1960s, he was ready to quit acting when he got a call from his agent about a TV comedy show called Taxi.
“I had a kid at the time, a young boy, and I said, ‘No, I want to go to Europe and take the kid with me.’ Then I read the thing, the pilot, and I go, hmm. I called my agent and said, ‘This looks like at least three years, and I’m already 40.’ Make them an offer they can’t accept. So he did. Then the next phone call was my agent saying: ‘They accepted everything.’ I said: ‘Holy crap.’”
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‘It meant something’ … Hirsch with the cast of The Fabelmans, Seth Rogan, Gabriel LaBelle and Michelle Williams. Photograph: Erik Pendzich/Rex/Shutterstock
Hirsch was at the producer’s house, watching it on opening night with the rest of the cast – Danny DeVito, Andy Kaufman, Marilu Henner – when he saw the credit sequence with his name before even the title of the show. “I didn’t ask for that. I swear to God, I never asked for that. I thought, ‘Whoa. Uh-oh, I’m in trouble’. Now they’re going to say, ‘Who the hell are you?’”
His part as the fast-talking cab-driver Alex in Taxi led to two Emmys and the part in Ordinary People, playing a psychiatrist who, said Redford, “seems like he’s a little nuts” himself. Oscar-nominated in the same supporting category as the film’s breakout star, Timothy Hutton, Hirsch told a journalist that winning would be the worst thing that could happen to him. “Because I would have to explain to the lead actor, who’s in the same category, why I won instead of him. And so I was sitting there with my hands in prayer mode saying, ‘Don’t win, don’t win, don’t win. It’s enough to be nominated, thank you very much. And screw those other people who stuck them in that category. But anyway. Don’t win. Don’t win.’ And I didn’t.”
This time around, he’s happier to accept the good fortune of his nomination, which caps a decade of work in the films of younger auteurs such as the Safdie brothers (Uncut Gems), Noah Baumbach (The Meyerowitz Stories) and Kelly Reichardt (Showing Up). “I call it the ‘motor mind of the business’, meaning you ain’t just showing up and doing lines. It puts you into the conversation. And this is late in life for this, but yes, OK, I accept. That’s why I would appreciate perhaps even winning this Academy Award. Because I believe everybody loved the movie and I had enough to do with it that it meant something. Not because it’s a charity – ‘Oh, well, he’s 87, might as well give him one.’ I’m not interested in that.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/jul/18/harry-potter-box-office-records | Film | 2011-07-18T18:46:22.000Z | Peter Walker | Harry Potter's eighth and final film vanquishes world box office records | Should JK Rowling awake this week to find a gaggle of middle-aged, particularly well-groomed fans encamped outside her Edinburgh home there could be a simple explanation: a posse of Warner Bros film executives have arrived from LA to beg, one final time, for another Harry Potter novel.
In an industry where there is traditionally no such thing as a surefire hit, the films of Rowling's books have, for a decade, proved the exception.
The eighth and final movie, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II, looks set to outdo even its predecessors, taking not far short of $500m (£310m) worldwide in its first few days, and beating the US and UK records for an opening weekend.
The last chapter in the now-adolescent wizard's struggle against the forces of evil took £23m in the UK from Friday to Sunday, easily eclipsing the previous record of £18.3m, set by Deathly Hallows Part I, the initial instalment of the two-film final Potter novel. In North America it gathered almost $169m – $10m more than the previous record, 2008's Batman film The Dark Knight.
It looks set to beat the £66m UK gross taken by the first title, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, said box office analyst Charles Gant: "Some viewers started off with the series and then dropped away, while younger children caught up with the early films on DVD. Those two audiences are now coming together for this final chapter. That's why it was always likely that this film would be even bigger than the others."
In addition, this is the first Potter film available in 3D, for which cinemagoers usually pay a premium. Almost half the global audience so far have gone for this option, helping to bring in $475m in total, amid an expectation that this will be the first Potter film to break $1bn.
The franchise has charted the characters' – and the actors' – passage from prepubescence to adulthood.
But it is still likely to be hard statistics that cement its place in cinema posterity. According to one estimate, the films have earned Warner Bros close to $21bn overall, including merchandise.
In the UK alone they have brought in almost £400m in cinema receipts since 2001, according to Sean Perkins, head of research and statistics at the British Film Institute. The BFI's list of the 20 top-grossing UK films includes six of the seven previous titles, with only the third outing, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban – paradoxically often named by critics as the best – just missing out. But even this made £46m.
Warner now faces a gaping hole in its summer release schedule. Gant said: "For the last decade this has been the absolute anchor for them. The grosses of the Harry Potter films have just been so consistent.
"There's the famous dictum in Hollywood: 'No one knows anything.' You never know what's going to work and what isn't going to work. But the closest thing there's ever been to a sure thing has been Harry Potter, certainly after the success of the first film. In the world of film-making, things you can count on are very, very rare."
If all this wasn't sufficiently cheering news for Rowling, Monday saw the final demise of a long-running – if seemingly speculative – lawsuit claiming she lifted the plot of one book from another author.
The appeal court in London struck out a claim made by the trustees of the estate of Adrian Jacobs, who died in 1997, after they failed to pay the first instalment of £1.5m needed as security for costs.
Rowling was accused of taking the plot of the fourth book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, from Jacobs's Willy the Wizard, and faced a demand for more than £600m in damages.
A parallel US claim was previously rejected out of hand by a judge, who noted that Rowling's book stretched to 734 pages while Willy the Wizard was just 16. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/nov/24/you-are-wolf-hare-hunter-moth-ghost-review | Music | 2023-11-24T09:00:16.000Z | Jude Rogers | You Are Wolf: Hare // Hunter // Moth // Ghost review | Jude Rogers's folk album of the month | So many folk songs are about moments of metamorphosis between worlds or identities, full of peculiar magic and possibility. Composer and novelist Kerry Andrew’s third album as You Are Wolf is a joyful celebration of those transformative experiences, inspired by their recent experiences of debilitating chronic illness and coming into their non-binary identity.
You Are Wolf: Hare // Hunter // Moth // Ghost
This potential is conveyed in accessible, blissfully pretty arrangements, despite Andrew’s commitment to experimentation crackling around the edges. On the opening Reynardine, the popular ballad about a woman charmed by a werefox, Andrew’s glossy voice, set against simple, plucked strings, sounds charmingly radio-friendly, before the phrases slow (the fox’s “teeth did brightly shine”) and distortion grows. A trick has been played on the listener, the track cosying up before revealing something more surprising.
It sets the album’s outlook. Within the kalimba-propelled sweetness of Hare Song 1 are the lyrics: “you will find me at the edge of breath / You will find me at the heart of fire, shaking off death.” Whirling around a playful prepared piano loop and pivoting between images of coercion and consent, the traditional Twa Magicians is no longer about a woman having to shapeshift to escape a male stalker, but one about two women switching states – one a griddle, the other a cake, then one a moorland, the other the heather growing on it.
Great samples abound, too, including the Irish Traditional Music Archive’s 1969 recording of six girls singing an eerie playground rhyme, and birdsong on The Trees in the Wood, a duet with Ben See about life developing within nature. With Sam Lee also contributing vocals and Robert Macfarlane providing lyrics (on Blue Men, alongside a drone from Andrew’s radiator, no less), an album emerges bursting with crossover potential as well as mercurial spirit.
Also out this month
A 1978 private press recording reissued with the artist’s writings, drawings and dedications from friends, Dorothy Carter’s Waillee Waillee (Palto Flats) is one of the most astonishing reissues of the year, mixing originals and traditionals brought alive by shuddering zithers and psalteries. Another gorgeous exercise in instrumental beauty is Ragnhild Knudsen and Pauliina Syrjälä’s Norwegian/Finnish collaboration Talende Strenger/Kertovat Kielet (Taragot Sounds), which translates as Talking Strings. Syrjälä’s kantele (a kind of Baltic box zither) meshes gorgeously with Knudsen’s bowed Hardanger fiddle, creating a sound that feels peculiarly festive. Other seasonal delights can be found in Bryony Griffith and Alice Jones’s Wesselbobs, a collection of West Yorkshire winter songs named after a decorated evergreen carried by local wassailers. Broadside ballads, local poems and dances are delivered by the pair as warmly as jugs of mulled wine. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/23/ben-affleck-kill-batman-superheroes | Opinion | 2013-08-23T15:32:36.000Z | Marina Hyde | Has Ben Affleck been sent in to kill off Batman? | Marina Hyde | Idea for a superhero movie: America needs rescuing from its superheroes. In a world where the public is menaced by will-this-do superhero movies, one man must save them by torpedoing the entire genre. Ben Affleck stars.
And so to news that the Gigli actor/Oscar-winning Argo director has been cast as Batman for director Zack Snyder's upcoming Superman-Batman mash-up, which has been met with a mostly outraged reaction. Within a few hours, a petition against Warner Bros was doing the rounds of the internet – and if that doesn't confirm how lame the fight between good and evil has become, then nothing does. "Sock!" "Pow!" "Electronic signature!"
Look, don't get me wrong about Affleck: he seems like a nice guy, and I was made up for him over that business with the Iranian hostage movie and the beardy Oscar and whatnot, even if best picture is an award also recently bestowed upon the likes of Crash and The Hurt Locker (huzzah for movies which dispense with yesteryear concepts like "stories" and "characters anyone could give a toss about"). But before Argo, Affleck had pretty much had to retire from being a frontline movie star because he almost without exception ensured any movie's eternal epithet would be "the Ben Affleck shocker — ". As far as summoning horrible reviews and hysterical giggles, well, Affleck was like the bat-signal.
Bizarrely, though, the smelling salts were still being called for when news of his emBatment broke on Thursday night, as though the hire is some sort of aberration in the evolution of the American superhero movie, when in fact it is entirely of a piece with the direction of a genre which could really use a transformational event. Maybe it could be unbitten by a spider, or something.
One major problem, unfortunately, is that the US government has stolen all the superheroes' clothes. Not their literal clothes – the dress code of the White House situation room is still not believed to stipulate capes and pants worn on top of tights. But it has stolen their ideological garments. The American government now openly acts like a superhero. Historically, the thing about superheroes is that they're secretive and extrajudicial – they are vigilantes, who know you can't trust government, and they dispense swift justice outside the parameters of ordinary law enforcement. (They're always rightwing, obviously.) But these days, even the government appears not to trust the mechanics of the state, given its reliance on extrajudicial solutions – so you have to think superheroes have ceded their natural territory to the very establishment whose failings were supposed to have made them a necessity. "Special powers" are no longer things like the ability to fly or shoot projectile webs from your finger – they have become a questionably legal euphemism for the most sinister abuses of the president. Quick, to the Dronemobile! Actually, don't worry: this baby drives itself.
As for where the superhero community goes from here, it's a tough one. Maybe they'll go for the straight role reversal with government, and the plot of Superman/Batman will see the pair put their corrosive partisan bickering behind them, and work together within the apparatus of the state to secure a better America, by small and sensible legislative increments. Say what you like, but I bet even that wouldn't be as unwatchable as Iron Man 2.
And that's the thing: have all those people so surprised and bewildered by the Affleck casting even been to the cinema lately? This is a movie culture that can't even tell the Spider-Man story in less than 136 minutes any more. Its superpower is exhausting audiences into submission. As for Batman's last outing in The Dark Knight Rises, I couldn't have been more excited to see that one on the day it opened last summer, and I couldn't have been more relieved to walk out of it after an hour and 45 minutes, still without the faintest clue what the villain wanted. I understand there was a full hour of the opus left to run, and that – spoiler coming right on up – it eventually falls to Catwoman to dispatch the baddie Bane. You know, I don't mean to be a stickler, but I don't go to the movies to watch Batman's girlfriend have to kill his enemies. In fact, I struggle to think of something more emasculating for Batman than that – and that's before you consider that Catwoman apparently does it for him with a big, phallic rocket.
Honestly, who watches these watchmen? Gazillions, is the somewhat sobering answer – not that a strong box office should insulate the genre against people being allowed to wonder what it's doing with its life.
Maybe instead of being assembled in different formations – such as the Marvel Avengers, or Superman and Batman – American superheroes could benefit from a sort of cultural exchange programme. For my money, Batman should be teamed up with the Burka Avenger. Are you all over the Burka Avenger? She's the fictional superhero who has swooped to popularity in Pakistan. By day, she's a schoolteacher; by night, she's a hijab-masked warrior fighting oppression and extremists who bar girls from seeking education.
Surely Batman's best hope currently is to act as a sort of jaded, post-imperial mentor for this genuinely exciting and subversive figure? Otherwise I can't help feeling that it's only a matter of time before she or her immediate cultural descendants kick his proverbial ass. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/jan/22/unbreakable-kimmy-schmidt | Television & radio | 2019-01-22T08:58:59.000Z | Sam Wolfson | PTSD and pervy Muppets: Kimmy Schmidt’s finale pushes the reset button on satire | Ihave spent the week watching a show in which a victim of childhood abuse tries to cope with her PTSD, while her gay flatmate wrestles over whether to sacrifice his career in order to out a high-profile sexual abuser. That sounds grim; you’re probably imagining some greyscale Channel 4 drama with Sarah Lancashire set in an apprehensive quarry. Actually, it’s the final six episodes of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (available from Fri, Netflix), the silliest, most colourful, best-written show on TV.
Since the show’s first episode, when the titular Kimmy was rescued from a bunker where she has been held captive for 15 years, creators Tina Fey and Robert Carlock have tried to take TV comedy to places it has never gone before. And by comedy, I don’t mean a show that gets called a comedy because it happens to be 22 minutes long, but when you start watching it’s just Hannah Gadsby delivering incurable illness diagnoses at a children’s hospital – there’s barely a line spoken in Schmidt that doesn’t have at least three jokes in it. I watch with subtitles on so I don’t miss a throwaway moment, such as when the vain Jacqueline responds to the discovery that “these millennials like us old broads” by adding “and us young narrows”.
In these final episodes of the season, it feels as though they are daring themselves to see how far they can push it. Struggling actor Titus gets dragged into the Time’s Up movement when Ronan Farrow (played by the actual Ronan Farrow) asks him to go on the record about his Sesame Street audition, where he had a casting-couch experience with a pervert Muppet called Mr Frumpus. It gives you a sense of how the show finds humour in serious moments that his decision is based around whether he’ll lose his job as “the first ever black, male Dairy Queen” or get to join other victims who are all wearing shorts to the Tonys in solidarity (there are “divas in denim cutoffs, Bernadette in Bermudas and so many victims!”)
Elsewhere, Kimmy uses her own covered-up workplace harassment case as blackmail to help launch a children’s book series that teaches little boys not to be perverts. Also, Rob Huebel guest stars as a home makeover host looking for a fake gay showbiz relationship so no one finds out he has a wife, and there’s an hour-long Sliding Doors parody in which the Sliding Doors moment is whether or not Kimmy went to the cinema to watch Sliding Doors. It’s not that the show makes light of serious issues – if anything it’s better than more po-faced attempts at joining up the dots between daily harassment, embedded misogyny and grave abuse – it just manages to do so while being constantly hilarious.
Some will tell you that critically acclaimed writer-creators tend to overthink the follow-ups to their hit shows (hello Treme, The Romanoffs and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip). But Kimmy Schmidt managed to avoid that curse by taking the gags and structure of 30 Rock and just infinitely upping the stakes, replacing dumb celebrities with troubled real people. By making a success of Schmidt, Fey and Carlock have shown how TV comedy can still be funny in serious times. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jul/28/myth-monsters-and-the-maze-how-writers-fell-in-love-with-the-labyrinth | Books | 2018-07-28T08:00:24.000Z | Charlotte Higgins | Myths, monsters and the maze: how writers fell in love with the labyrinth | Icannot navigate. My internal disorientation is mirrored by the world’s; perhaps it is even caused by it. We are surrounded by confusion. I am afraid of what will happen. Round every corner, down every false trail, there are monstrous dangers that threaten to consume us. Will we ever find a clear path to lead us through?
I have never been able to find my way. If I once possessed a sense of direction, I have long surrendered it to the reassuring blue thread of the map on my smartphone. But I never had one, really. Turn me loose in a city without a map and panic rises, as if I were a child who had lost the grip of a parent’s hand in a crowd.
Conversely, I cannot even lose myself effectively. One night in Rome, I set myself the task of trying to do it. I was living, for the month of February 2016, in a building in the Borghese gardens, and one evening, leaving behind my partner and his son, who were engaged in some task in which I played no role, I set forth with the express purpose of aimlessness. I would simply walk, I thought, taking random turnings when it felt right to do so. But all I did was wind round and around, covering no real ground, re-emerging frustratingly again and again on the straight and dreary spine of the Corso. Nothing was discovered. There were no revelations, only weariness. Having no destination in mind – no church, no gallery, no park or vista or bar, as we usually had on our wintry, twilit walks that month – I felt flat and dismal.
Eventually I turned a corner and came into a square in which stood a church, San Lorenzo in Lucina. Stepping inside, I came across the pale, restrained tomb of the painter Nicolas Poussin. On it was carved a likeness of his own painting, which hangs in the Louvre, of shepherds in some pastoral idyll stumbling on a sarcophagus on which is inscribed “Et in Arcadia ego”, meaning “I, too, was in Arcadia”. The phrase is ambiguous. Who is this “I”? The dead man, who once enjoyed all the pleasures of Arcadia? Or death itself, which haunts even the most beautiful landscapes? It felt, at least, that I had found an end to the walk.
On the path of my life, in the middle of my life, I know little about where I have been, and where I might go. The path that lies ahead of me is a riddle. But the path that lies behind is indistinct, too: its myriad and confusing turns already half forgotten, the significance of the landmarks encountered along the way misunderstood, misinterpreted.
Once upon a time, when I was a child, my parents took me to Crete. We went to Knossos, whose remains, discovered a little over a century ago, are not classical, but of the bronze age, traces of a civilisation a thousand years older than the busily literate Athens. The little writing the inhabitants left behind them, a script we know as Linear B, was deciphered in the early 1950s. It was found to consist mostly of lists of goods: the dull unromantic stuff of bureaucracy. It did not unlock the hearts and imaginations of the people who had lived surrounded by an exuberant luxury of faience and glass and crystal, dashingly elegant frescoes and a swirling vigour of painted pottery.
Cornerstones … the dolphin fresco in the palace of Knossos, Crete, where the labyrinth myth may have begun. Photograph: Photography by Jeremy Villasis/Philippines./Getty Images
I can recall moments of this trip with sharp clarity. I remember my father observing that the buildings had been heavily reconstructed, so that, he implied, our experience was a little compromised, less authentic than it might have been. I remember a huddle of giant pithoi, terracotta storage jars so tall that they loomed over me. I remember walking down a stairway into the heart of the building. Here was a bath to be filled with pure water where a queen might bathe, or so we were told. There was a stone throne with a narrow curving back that looked like something out of Narnia, standing in a room painted with gryphons and waving, coiling flower stems. Another room was painted with dolphins flipping through turquoise waters.
I can remember the guide saying that the myth of the labyrinth started here: the story that Minos, king of Crete, ordered the inventor Daedalus to build a labyrinth to house the half-bull, half-man Minotaur. That the Athenians were forced to pay the Cretans a regular tribute of seven boys and seven girls, who would be left in the labyrinth to be consumed by the monster. That one year, Theseus, the son of the king of Athens, came to Crete as part of this tribute. That with the help of King Minos’s daughter Ariadne, he killed the creature and found his way out of the perplexing building. That Theseus and Ariadne escaped over the sea, but instead of marrying her as he had promised, the Athenian prince left her behind as she slept on the island of Naxos. That when Theseus sailed within sight of Athens, he forgot to lower the ochre sail and hoist the white fabric that would signal to his father that he was alive, so the old king, in his grief, threw himself off the rocks and died. And that the god Bacchus came to Ariadne on Naxos, and fell in love with her.
The guide said that out there on the broad terrace, Minos, or some Cretan king a shade more real, may have sat and watched acrobats twist and leap in the air, cascading over the horned heads of bulls, just like in the fresco of bull leapers here on the palace wall. (Though it turned out the fresco was a reproduction; the original was in the museum in the city.) Perhaps the bull acrobatics – if the frescoes showed us what really happened at Knossos – were the reason that stories began about the biformed Minotaur.
To be inside a maze is to be bewildered or afraid, but it's also to be inside a structure – lost, but only up to a point
The guide admitted that there was nothing you could exactly call a labyrinth at Knossos, but that the intricacy and complexity of the building, with its winding corridors and bewildering floor plan, may have been the basis of the legend, as memory dimmed into myth in the centuries after the palace was wiped out by earthquake, fire and war. I remember how much I wanted these narrow rooms and passages to be labyrinthine, to trap and contain me, to be magical, to be a code, to be something that could be unlocked. I wanted to lose myself in them. This was where it began, my longing for the labyrinth. Even here it seemed just out of reach: a rumour, a trace, a clue.
We also went to the museum at Heraklion, the city on whose outskirts Knossos lies. I remember the guide who showed us around. She must have been about the age I am now, neatly dressed in a formal brown suit, while we sweated in short sleeves and sandals. At the end of the tour she turned to me and gave me a little envelope containing three postcards – my reward for being an attentive and interested child. One was of the bull leapers fresco. The second was of another fresco, this time of three beautiful women in blue dresses, gesturing to each other with infinite delicacy. The last was of an intricately worked golden pendant, of two bees curving around a drop of honey.
I never quite forgot about the guide and her gift to me. The postcards were, together, a talisman, a key to a certain place that became harder to visit, in my imagination, as I became older. One day, some years after I left university, I found the postcards again, quite by accident, hidden away in my bureau, in an old cedarwood box: the acrobats, the beautiful women, the bee pendant. In an envelope, too, a piece of paper bearing the name and address, in old, faded ink, of Sofia Grammatiki, who had guided us around the museum two decades before.
On a whim, I decided to send her a letter. I didn’t really expect a reply. Some months later, though, I got one. It turned out that her son was living in her old flat in the city. She had moved away into the island, to the Amari valley. It pleased her that her tour, and her small gift, had meant something and that I had gone on to study classics. She herself, she wrote, had studied classical philology in Athens many years ago, before returning to Crete and becoming a high school teacher of Latin and ancient Greek, often earning a little extra in the holidays touring visitors around.
Over the course of the long correspondence that followed, at first by letter and then by email, it turned out that we shared an obsession with labyrinths. Of course she knew all about the Knossian labyrinth of myth, but she was also knowledgeable about the labyrinths and mazes of later literature and landscapes, for she had walked the maze at Hampton Court and the great 13th-century labyrinth picked out in the stone floor of Chartres Cathedral. She used to speculate on why they appealed to her so. “The great Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges has compared the labyrinth to the boundless ocean, the desert wastes and the disorienting wilds of the forest,” she wrote. “These are, yes, confounding and frightening places. And yet the labyrinth is never so terrifying. A maze or a labyrinth has always been designed by a person. This means that another person has always the possibility of breaking its code. To be inside a maze or a labyrinth is to be bewildered, confused or afraid. But it is, nonetheless, also to be inside a structure. It is to be lost, but only up to a point. It is also to be held within a design and a pattern.”
Finding patterns … Jorge Luis Borges. Photograph: Ulf Andersen/Getty Images
In one email I asked Mrs Grammatiki whether she had ever had the kind of recurring dreams that I’d had – in which a door would spontaneously appear in an apparently familiar building, usually my flat in London, or my childhood home. In these dreams, which I still have, I push open the door and wander through room after room of ancient stacked-up furniture and cobwebbed bric-a-brac, exploring spaces that cannot possibly exist within the flat’s footprint, and resemble the warehouse of some careless and untidy seller (or collector) of antiquities. Sometimes I dream of whole wings and enfilades of rooms, each leading to the next; or of a single twining, corkscrewing passage that winds round into a centre. In these dreams, I feel a mixture of pleasant surprise (so much space I hadn’t known about!) and dread. I was, therefore, less confident than her about the essentially benign nature of labyrinths. I think they have the capacity to terrify. The Minotaur lives there, after all.
For Sigmund Freud, the unconscious resembled the dark corridors and hidden places of a labyrinth
After this, she wrote back: “You are right to make this connection between the labyrinth and the world of dreams. For me it is very strong. Borges wrote that a library is a labyrinth. This is also true – the rows of bookshelves running on for miles, with paths and passageways between them, the classification of the texts working as a kind of cipher that the reader must decode in order to find what she wants. That is only the superficial idea, however. Borges meant that literature is itself a labyrinth, and that every library contains the possibility of infinite places and infinite existences. Open a book in a library and you can disappear into a world, its cities, and its landscapes. All books, in turn, are labyrinths that express the winding shapes of their writers’ imaginations. Each writer builds the labyrinth, and then leads the readers through the myriad possibilities of their tale with a thread like that of Ariadne, guiding them down the paths of their story, wherever it might take them.”
¶
For Sigmund Freud, the unconscious resembled the dark corridors and hidden places of a labyrinth. Navigating the chaos of that maze – achieving mastery over it, mapping it, finding one’s way out of it – was the work of psychoanalysis, he told an interviewer in 1927. “Psychoanalysis simplifies life. We achieve a new synthesis after analysis. Psychoanalysis reassorts the maze of stray impulses, and tries to wind them around the spool to which they belong. Or, to change the metaphor, it supplies the thread that leads a man out of the labyrinth of his own unconscious.”
The Minotaur’s lair in Chaucer’s The Legend of Good Women is “crinkled to and fro”, and “shapen as the mase is wroght”. To find his way through it, Theseus must use the “clewe of twyne” that Ariadne gives him. The word “clewe” derives from Old English cliwen or cleowen, meaning a rounded mass, or a ball of thread. Eventually it became our word “clue”. It lost its material significance, and retained only its metaphorical meaning. But still, there it is, hidden but present: the clewe is in the clue (and the clue is in the clewe). Every step towards solving a mystery, or a crime, or a puzzle, or the riddle of the self, is a length of yarn tossed us by the helping hand of Ariadne.
In Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film The Shining, Jack Torrance, his wife, Wendy, and their son, Danny, move to an isolated hotel, the Overlook, so that Jack can take up a job as its caretaker when it closes for the winter. There is an enormous hedge maze in the hotel’s grounds, and a model showing its complex design on display inside. In one spine-tingling sequence, Kubrick transports the viewer from watching Wendy and Danny rushing joyfully towards the maze, to an image of Jack, inside the hotel, glowering balefully over the tabletop model, in which his wife and child can be seen as curious miniaturised figures. Watching these few seconds of the film, one has the destabilising sensation of being simultaneously above and within the structure. There is a third labyrinth: the hotel itself. It is “such an enormous maze”, says Wendy anxiously, when the couple first arrive, “I feel like I’ll have to leave a trail of breadcrumbs every time I come in”. Breadcrumbs, as we learn from the story of Hansel and Gretel, are not the most effective signs to leave in the confusing expanses of a maze or forest.
In The Shining, young Danny is a true labyrinth-walker – he discerns the hotel’s hiding places and hauntings. Photograph: Allstar/Warner Bros.
Young Danny, however, is a true labyrinth-walker. There are famous tracking shots of him riding his trike in loops through the various floors of the hotel, the wheels smooth on the rich rugs of the palatial halls and then bumping and rasping on the parquet. He explores the building’s every inch and discerns its hiding places – as well as, it turns out, its bitter memories and hauntings. Ariadne-like, Danny is alert to the dangers of the place, and at a crucial moment gives his mother a knife, in the same way that the Cretan princess gives Theseus a sword. Danny and his mother will need it, because Jack has become a monster. The boy will finally outwit his murderous father in the snow-filled hedge maze by faking his own footprints, walking backwards into them, allowing them apparently simply to stop, then darting into a side alley and covering his tracks. His deranged father, by now a wild Minotaur, is deceived by these false clues. In his last moments, trapped and defeated in the maze, he simply bellows.
The film itself is a labyrinth, for it attracts interpreters who wish to decipher its apparently arcane and secret meanings. There are those who believe that it is an allegory of the Holocaust, others who contend it is really about the genocide of the Native Americans, others who believe it is an occluded confession by Kubrick that he faked footage of the moon landings, others still who say that it contains references to the precise date of the Mayan apocalypse. It is not hard to see why. Kubrick loads his scenes with details, with “clues”: there are significant-seeming objects and numbers and curious visual anomalies (disappearing pieces of furniture, changing props). I find it striking how similar the Overlook appears in its decor, its stately halls and long corridors, to Knossos as reimagined by its 20th-century excavator, Arthur Evans: all those geometric friezes and lofty pillars; all those deep‑red chambers.
¶
The Stuttgart library, in Germany. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo
The narrator of Henry James’s story “The Figure in the Carpet”, a critic for a literary journal called The Middle, is convinced that a novelist, Hugh Vereker, has buried an “exquisite scheme”, a “little trick”, in all his works. If only he tries hard enough, he believes, it can surely be decoded. In an encounter between the novelist and the critic at a country-house party, Vereker teasingly tells the young man: “To me it’s exactly as palpable as the marble of this chimney.” The critic asks: “Is it a kind of esoteric message?” Vereker replies: “Ah my dear fellow, it can’t be described in cheap journalese!”
His expression reminds me of an exchange at the start of James’s novella The Turn of the Screw, which begins, like Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, with a prologue that claims the story has been transcribed from an old manuscript. In this case, the narrator remembers an occasion, many years earlier, when friends of his at a country house party were in the mood for telling chilling stories. One of their number, Douglas, recalls that at his home in London is a manuscript, written by a governess he used to know, detailing certain disturbing events that occurred while she was caring for two children on behalf of their absent guardian. It is this story, written “in old, faded ink”, that will form the main narrative of the novella. One of the friends asks whether the governess had been in love with the guardian. “The story will tell,” the narrator says. But he is sharply contradicted. “The story won’t tell,” says Douglas, “not in any literal, vulgar way.”
The scheme can’t be described in cheap journalese. The story won’t tell – not in any literal, vulgar way. The warning, in both cases, is against a reading of a story that attempts to smooth out mystery or ambiguity. You can appreciate the design of James’s subtle spirals, his lovely labyrinths, but don’t expect them to translate into some glib meaning, to be delivering “an esoteric message”. As Borges remarked of the ambiguities of meaning in The Turn of the Screw, “People shouldn’t know [the explanation], and perhaps he didn’t know himself.”
There are terrors in the labyrinth but there is also love. The centre may not be where you think it is
In “The Figure in the Carpet”, the narrator and his friends become consumed by the project of discovering the “secret” of Vereker’s books. One of them claims to have cracked the code, and is about to write an article that will “trace the figure in the carpet through every convolution”, but he dies before he is able to do so. The narrator finds himself trapped in Vereker’s puzzle, “shut up in my obsession for ever – my gaolers had gone off with the key”. Vereker’s last novel is called The Right of Way: the artist forges ahead, leaving the interpreters flailing around in the labyrinth.
Borges once said, of James and Kafka, “I think that they both thought of the world as being at the same time complex and meaningless.” For them, no pattern. The story will not tell.
You are, on the whole, with James and Kafka. But still, is it not possible to live in the complex and meaningless world? The labyrinth is something that you cannot help entering. Once inside it, you have no idea where you are, you feel lost, you are robbed of a sense of direction, but perhaps that does not matter. You will never see the whole design, but you can live with that. There are terrors within the labyrinth but there is also love. The centre may not be where you think it is or where you want it to be. But humans desire pattern and shape and design. They spin thread, they tell stories, they build structures. There is meaning to be made, meaning to be excavated.
In her last email to me, Mrs Grammatiki wrote this: “I sometimes imagine that Daedalus, when he designed his labyrinth, must have re-created the ridges and convoluted folds of his own brain in the form of a building, as if it were a self-portrait. Do you not find that an image of the human brain resembles a labyrinth? And if Daedalus’s labyrinth is a diagram of the brain, it is therefore also a symbol of the imagination. It represents the manner in which humans make associations, one thought following another in a long procession, from the edge to the centre to the end. Stories have this comfort to them: they have a beginning and an end. They find a way out of the labyrinth.”
Charlotte Higgins’s Red Thread: On Mazes and Labyrinths is published by Cape. To order a copy for £20.49, 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/lifeandstyle/2016/oct/04/young-girls-ashamed-survey-body-confidence | Life and style | 2016-10-04T12:39:14.000Z | Laura Bates | Stop judging women on how they look – it is damaging our children | Laura Bates | The largest annual survey into the views of the UK’s girls and young women has revealed that 36% of seven- to 10-year-old girls say people make them feel like the most important thing about them is the way they look. The Girlguiding Girls’ Attitudes Survey, which saw over 1,500 young people surveyed, also revealed that almost 40% of the same group feel they are not pretty enough, and 25% feel they need to be “perfect”. One in six feel ashamed or embarrassed of how they look.
The findings suggest that the problem may be getting worse, with the survey reflecting a five-year decline in girls’ body confidence. Almost 40% of girls aged seven to 21 do not feel happy with how they look in 2016, compared with 27% in 2011.
At one school, girls aged 12 to 14 wanted to be thinner.
The results are hardly surprising, in a world where airbrushing is ubiquitous. When I visit schools around the country as part of my work with the Everyday Sexism Project, I am constantly struck by the emphasis on girls’ body image in conversations with young women. Even at the age of just 12 or 13, girls already know that we live in a world where women are judged, first and foremost, not on their abilities or achievements, but how closely they match up to an unrealistic, media-mandated beauty standard. They feel, deeply, that they must strive to emulate the tall, thin, white, large-breasted, long-legged, glossy-haired, perfect-skinned models they see everywhere in adverts and magazines. They specifically reference the women they have seen online, from the unrealistic body shapes of pornography to “perfect Instagram girls”. Dieting and slimming tablets frequently crop up in conversation.
At one school, I handed out worksheets to a group of 12- to 14-year-old boys and girls, asking them to draw two pictures: “me now” and “me if I could change anything”. The worksheets that came back from the boys were varied, with some showing that boys, too, are clearly affected by pressures around idealised male body image. But the responses demonstrated that boys also had a wide variety of other ideas for improving their lives – from money to magical powers. The responses from the girls, however, were heartbreaking. The same picture came back again and again – a sausage-like drawing of a girl in the first box, and a stick figure in the second. They just wanted to be thinner.
‘Body image dissatisfaction certainly has an impact on mental health … It impacts girls’ careers and long-term view of themselves.’
It is striking that the Girlguiding report comes just days after the release of another inquiry, which found that over 12% of young women aged 16-24 screen positive for post-traumatic stress disorder, 20% for self-harm, and that almost 30% have some kind of mental health condition. While it would be over-simplistic to draw a direct line between the two studies, social media, with all its attendant body-image pressure and appearance-based abuse, was again cited by the mental health inquiry as a potentially major contributing factor.
Evelyn Greeves, a 17-year-old Girlguiding advocate, told me: “[Body image] certainly has an impact on mental health … It impacts girls’ careers and long-term view of themselves, because we’re saying to girls the most important thing about them is that they’re pretty – not that they’re clever or creative or good at sports, but that they’re pretty. I think it does hold a lot of girls back.”
She, too, believes that social media has a major impact, because: “It’s all about putting up pictures of yourself and people can like and comment on those pictures. It encourages people to think about themselves solely in terms of looks and how many Likes – it’s a way of rating themselves almost.” And, says Greeves, the online world magnifies the wider objectification of women “into something that’s constantly present. The internet isn’t something you can just turn off and not look at – especially for young people.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/feb/25/oscar-winner-rami-malek-bohemian-rhapsody-freddie-mercury-the-first-best-actor-of-arab-heritage | Film | 2019-02-25T09:31:52.000Z | Andrew Pulver | Oscar winner Rami Malek: the first best actor of Arab heritage | Rami Malek has made history by becoming the first actor of Arab heritage to win the best actor Oscar, after taking the Academy Award for his performance as Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody. Remarkably, it’s a role he almost never played: Ali G and Borat star Sacha Baron Cohen was originally earmarked, before disagreements with Queen band members who were producing the project; another actor, Ben Whishaw, was named by Queen guitarist Brian May as his preferred choice, before Malek was asked.
Malek told the Guardian that taking the role was a “kind of the gun-to-the-head moment”. “What do you do? … The scariest endeavours that I’ve chosen to take in my life have been the most fulfilling and rewarding. And this has proven to defend that equation.”
Rami Malek as Elliot Alderson in Mr Robot. Photograph: USA Network/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images
His rise to Oscar glory has been meteoric. Before Bohemian Rhapsody, Malek was best known for the lead role of the hit TV series Mr Robot. As “vigilante hacker” Elliot Alderson who is dealing with a social anxiety disorder, Malek starred alongside Christian Slater and won an Emmy for best actor in a drama series in 2016. Until Mr Robot gave him industry traction, his film roles were unremarkable, with small parts in Oldboy, Ain’t Them Bodies Saints and Battleship.
Born in Los Angeles in 1981 to a family of Egyptian immigrants from Cairo, Malek spoke Arabic in his childhood and was raised in the Coptic Orthodox faith. He says he grew up in a diverse, multicultural community in the San Fernando Valley, among Latinos, Filipinos and Asians but found it “difficult … forming a sense of identity”. He also attended Notre Dame, a Catholic high school in Sherman Oaks, at the same time as Kirsten Dunst and The Last Kiss star Rachel Bilson.
Rami Malek: ‘Being offered the part of Freddie Mercury was a gun-to-the-head moment’
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Malek found his Middle Eastern background a help as well as a hindrance when it came to starting out as an actor: early roles included the pharaoh in all three Night at the Museum films, an Egyptian vampire in The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2, and as a terrorist in 24. It was this last role, which aired in 2010 that prompted him to refuse any negative portrayals of Arabs. He told GQ: “In the past it was like, ‘Oh well, he’s an acceptable terrorist! He’s an accessible terrorist! … But after I did [24] I said to myself, ‘You know what? Bullshit. No more. This is not how I want it.’ …. Any calls that come about playing Arabs or Middle Easterners in a negative light? I don’t need to respond to any of them any more. No more of this.”
A self-confessed non-singer, non-musician and non-dancer, Malek says he worked intensively with movement and voice coaches once he had been cast as Mercury. However, most of the singing performances in Bohemian Rhapsody use Mercury’s own vocals, about which Malek is sanguine. “I don’t think anybody really wanted to hear my voice as much as they would love to hear Mr Mercury’s,” he said, after completing the work. “I quickly realised no one can sing like Freddie Mercury, and nor can I. It’s very difficult to get my voice up to those high notes, and at some point, my voice breaks, and it breaks pretty quickly when I’m trying to ascend what Freddie Mercury can do.”
Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody. Photograph: Photo Credit: Nick Delaney/Allstar/New Regency Pictures
While Malek was clear favourite to win the best actor Oscar, doubts persisted due to the controversy around credited director Bryan Singer. Singer was fired from the production before the shoot finished, and subsequently accused of sexual misconduct and underage sex, which Singer has denied as a “homophobic smear”. Malek has said he was unaware of any allegations against Singer prior to the film, but after its release said: “My situation with Bryan, it was not pleasant, not at all.”
Malek can now expect to have his pick of roles in the future, though the huge success of Bohemian Rhapsody appears to taken the industry somewhat by surprise: his only forthcoming film role is as the voice of Chee-Chee the gorilla in the upcoming Voyage of Doctor Dolittle. Mr Robot will end when its current fourth series finishes later this year; Malek will then have the time to sit down and work out how he will conquer Hollywood. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/mar/26/queensland-lnp-youth-crime-detention-justice-act | Australia news | 2024-03-26T04:17:18.000Z | Eden Gillespie | Queensland LNP vows to ditch ‘detention as last resort’ approach to youth crime | The Queensland Liberal National party opposition has vowed to remove the principle of detention as a last resort from the Youth Justice Act before year’s end if it wins the state election.
Speaking in Townsville on Tuesday, the LNP leader, David Crisafulli, revealed more detail about the party’s “Making Queensland safer laws” and accused Labor of having a “conga line of crises”.
Crisafulli said the LNP was “determined” to remove detention as a last resort, allow victims and their families to attend court and ensure victims were automatically “opted-in” to updates about the justice process.
“An LNP government would make sure the rights of victims come first before the rights of offenders,” the opposition leader said.
“We will be making sure victims are front and centre … It’s rewriting the act to put victims first, it’s giving victims visibility … and opening courts to let the sunshine in.”
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The shadow minister for youth justice, Laura Gerber, said the LNP would ensure judges were required to give more consideration to the impact of offending on a victim’s physical, mental and emotional wellbeing.
Asked if the party would consider mandatory minimum sentencing, Crisafulli said the party would “listen to Queenslanders” and flagged more policy announcements to come.
The measure of detention as a last resort for children is enshrined in international law, including in the United Nations’ convention on the rights of the child, which Australia has ratified.
The premier, Steven Miles, has previously labelled the LNP policy “incredibly dangerous” and said it would harden children and make them more likely to re-offend.
The Labor party introduced the legal provision of detention as a last resort to the act in 2016. But on Monday, Miles softened his stance, saying the government would consider adopting the LNP policy if a youth justice committee recommended it.
“That’s certainly not our intention, but we have a select committee at the moment so we will see what they recommend,” he said.
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“We will consider whatever they recommend.”
The bipartisan youth justice select committee, chaired by independent MP Sandy Bolton, is expected to deliver its interim report next month.
Miles on Monday promised new laws before the middle of the year which will include improving media access to youth justice court proceedings.
The premier also criticised the LNP for “politicising community safety for their own benefit” after the party rolled out television ads about youth crime this week.
The weakening of Labor’s stance comes after the party backflipped and overrode the state’s Human Rights Act to make breach of bail an offence for children.
Labor’s adoption of the LNP policy more than a year ago did not quieten talk from the tabloid media or the opposition about the state’s “youth crime crisis”. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/apr/27/manchester-citys-perfection-is-laced-with-coldness-and-unease | Football | 2023-04-27T19:04:01.000Z | Barney Ronay | Manchester City’s perfection is laced with coldness and unease | Barney Ronay | Shortly after the 4-1 evisceration at the Etihad Stadium on Wednesday night – a title decider that felt at times like an entirely self-contained event, Manchester City’s players simply having a conversation with themselves – Arsenal’s Twitter feed posted 30 seconds of approved Aaron Ramsdale apology content.
Ramsdale thanked the fans. He spoke nicely about the need to keep on keeping on. In a moment of arch, algorithm-driven satire this post was accompanied by a sponsored advert for something called “the New Melts”, a horrific-looking pizza-style food product, pictured in grisly closeup sagging out of its cardboard skin.
Manchester City took Arsenal to a horrible place and didn’t let them leave
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True to form there was plenty of this in the replies, the conviction that Arsenal’s performance had indeed been a melt, a collapse, a choke, the sporting equivalent of a kilo of grease-drenched artery-clog drooping on to the arm of your sofa.
Did Arsenal choke at the Etihad? Was this something as recognisable, as familiar, as the bottle job and the no-show? Arsène Wenger said a good thing in the buildup. In the past few weeks Arsenal have begun to think about how to win. Before that the players thought only about the process, the system, not the outcome.
Whereas City are by now all process, a champion team that know how this should feel, that will celebrate a successful team press, will concentrate simply on lines and angles and drilled moves. Winning is a skill. You learn how to do it. Arsenal will be back. Ideally with more centre-halves.
Does this sound enough? By the end that 4-1 defeat certainly felt like something more basic. To choke is to have agency, to have a decisive say in what happens to you. Mikel Arteta’s team went to the Etihad as league leaders and spent 90 minutes being marched around like a team of straw-stuffed tailor’s dummies. Even the stumbles of the past few weeks have felt like something induced by the pressure at their back, a human-scale football entity being pursued by a team so good they appear to be operating to a different set of laws, for whom victory is simply a matter of pressing go and following the playbook.
This has now reached a significant point. City are on the verge of winning a fifth league title in six years, with a team that look as close to unbeatable as anyone has come since Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona of 2010-11; which was, presumably, the idea when that Barcelona system was purchased wholesale and bolted on to Abu Dhabi’s sporting outreach project.
Pep Guardiola with Erling Haaland. The manager’s Manchester City team now seem as unbeatable as his Barcelona 2011 vintage. Photograph: Tom Jenkins/The Guardian
Here it is then. This is what football looks like at the end of seven years of hyper-competent state-funded development: a place without edges or snags or the familiar mess of ambition, meltdown and lust for glory; just that shark-like sense of state-level competence, refined through the Premier League’s weekly finishing class. The end result is undeniably magnificent. But is it still la guerre? Does this thing still feel like sport?
No doubt City’s supporters will sigh wearily at the idea there is suddenly something wrong with winning. Why us? Why not object to Manchester United’s dominance of the 90s (also tedious at times) or Chelsea’s opaque and financially incontinent ownership over the past two decades (also a scandal)?
Why not simply enjoy the wonderfully cinematic season’s endgame when even City’s key opponents in their pursuit of the treble – Arsenal, United, Real Madrid – are perfect for the story City like to tell about themselves as underdog outsiders ranged against the cartel. The cufflinks, the steady hand, the pistol inside the furled-up newspaper. This feels like a football version of the sequence in The Godfather where Michael takes out his sclerotic mafiosi rivals one by one; putting the world in order, in a way the world is, frankly, not bouncing back from.
Yet there is still something jarring about this spectacle. For all the obvious brilliance of the football, Manchester City are also a cold project. The players are wonderful. The pieces revolve with perfect synchronicity. So why does it feel like processed fillet steak, like AI Beethoven, like a literary masterpiece written by a super computer?
This is not simply about hurling money at the wall. There is a misconception that City spend more than other clubs. The club books suggest their financial management has in fact been commendably prudent. Plus of course basic transfer spend is a misleading metric. Has it helped Chelsea to capsize their own squad with hallucinogenic over-recruitment? Or Barcelona to panic-splurge themselves into a state of penury?
What we have instead here is planned, targeted, brilliantly enacted success. Pep Guardiola is the best manager in the world. Therefore we will buy not just Pep Guardiola, but the conditions that make Pep Guardiola work, an entire Pep Guardiola habitat. We will buy the strongest squad. There will be no variables here, just billionaire-backed certainties, aided by the stunning good fortune that this vision is shared by such far-sighted companies as Etisalat, Etihad Airways, Abu Dhabi Bank and others.
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Some champion teams have a strut. City’s vibe is something closer to un unceasing V-sign from the VIP lounge seats
At the end of this watching City feels for the neutral like consuming high-end homogenised product, nodding approvingly at the finish, the slick automatic gear changes, the whisper of unparsed expense. Is this enough? Is it interesting? Does it leave us any space to feel anything?
It is at least deeply modern. In his uncomfortably prophetic book The Atrocity Exhibition JG Ballard coined the phrase “the death of affect” to describe not so much the death of feeling – feeling will still exist as commodified rage and triumph: cheer for us, feel anger for us – but the dying away of an emotional connection to public acts. Ballard has a chapter where he describes the assassination of JF Kennedy in the same phrases as a mass-spectated sporting event.
Watching this sporting project perform under those cold white lights, it is hard to avoid the feeling that City are the team Ballard would have imagined. Here is something engineered for the benefit of a dictatorial regime, an entity that is luminous, beautiful, chilly, politically controlled and shrouded also in a trapped sense of rage.
Manchester City fans celebrate their owners’ wealth. Photograph: Tom Jenkins/The Guardian
The key point behind all this is that City remain a sports-washing soft power vehicle for the state of Abu Dhabi. What we are witnessing here is the final expression of this brilliantly focused pursuit of the sun. Abu Dhabi is entitled to do this, to pour expertise and start-up funds into a sports club reimagined as a public relations arm.
But it is also important to remember why this is happening. It is time to restate these things as the project reaches its final stage. This is not a soft regime. Abu Dhabi is an ambitious carbon power run by an inherited royal family. Abu Dhabi has a record of alleged (and of course denied) human rights abuses and structural prejudice. Abu Dhabi believes homosexuality should be illegal, that wealth and power should be unchallenged by things such as democracy and social mobility. Abu Dhabi also believes that it can exist comfortably alongside states who don’t believe these things by, among many other things, transforming English football’s top tier into a high-visibility PR vehicle.
And perhaps Abu Dhabi is right, because it certainly seems, as the good times roll, to be accepted without question by the English media and the club’s support. Although perhaps that sense of basic dislocation is still a part of this spectacle. One of the more interesting aspects of City’s success has been its chief accompanying emotions, which are triumphalism and laconic gallows humour, but also quite a lot of anger.
In part this is simply tribalism. Here are a club on their way to winning a league that has in effect charged them with cheating; and also entering the final stages of the previous competition to accuse them of cheating. Some champion teams have a strut. City’s basic vibe is something closer to an unceasing V-sign from the VIP lounge seats.
Perhaps there is also something unexpressed here, a sublimated unease. For all the performative regime-love, the bizarre embrace of the vice-president of Abu Dhabi as a fond and kindly Father Christmas figure, no one, deep down, wants to be treated as a political glove puppet. We will take your passion, your love, your loyalty and wear it like a campaign hat. Is this really a happy situation?
That pending dominance is at least entirely of the moment. In a season in which Qatar has reduced the World Cup to a painted political stage, how fitting that another nation-state vehicle should transform the club game into its own billboard. Welcome to the new world. The football is beautiful, steamrollering, tactically coherent. If it feels a little cold, a little planned, a little lacking in affect; well, maybe that’s because it is. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2020/jul/09/helen-mccrory-interview-national-theatre-stream-deep-blue-sea-rattigan | Stage | 2020-07-09T05:00:53.000Z | Chris Wiegand | Helen McCrory: 'This is a woman's private space, invaded by others' | Director Carrie Cracknell described one day in rehearsals with you as an “almost spiritual experience”. How would you define your collaborative relationship?
We first worked together on Medea in 2014. We took Ben Power’s new adaptation and delivered an all-singing, all-dancing production of a Greek tragedy set in the 20th century on to the massive Olivier stage in six weeks. So ours was a collaboration formed in the furnace. We worked together at breakneck speed. So when we came to work on The Deep Blue Sea, the task seemed much simpler.
I hope I speak for Carrie, too, when I say we now have an implicit trust and respect for each other. Carrie possesses a rare quality that all the best directors have: no ego. The best solution in the rehearsal room is used, she has no concern who it belongs to, just that the play is served. She encourages everyone to trust their instincts and never attempts to dominate but quietly edits, taking ideas and losing others. The Deep Blue Sea was one of the most profoundly happy experiences I have ever had in a rehearsal room. She has a gentleness and non-judgmental quality that make you feel you could do anything. I hope we have the opportunity to do it again.
Helen McCrory as Medea at the National Theatre in 2014. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/the Guardian
How does this production upend expectations about how Rattigan is done?
Carrie definitely threw the dust sheets off how Rattigan should be produced. First, she worked with Tom Scutt, designing the inside of a postwar London boarding house as an open set, a skeleton of a building where each sound was amplified, where the tenants all heard each others’ footsteps, arguments and secrets. All washed through with the colours of a deep blue sea. I then played most of the performance in my slip and dressing gown. I wanted to feel that this world was a woman’s private space, constantly invaded by others and a woman whose sexuality had driven her to a very dark place. Lighting and sound design were then used to create the outside world that broke into the interiors in a sharp, discordant way. The result was almost expressionistic.
Rattigan’s writing can be incredibly subtle and full of subtext. Is there a specific line or moment that you think encapsulates your character Hester’s position?
“When you’re caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, the deep blue sea can seem terribly inviting.” It could have been written by Tennessee Williams and some nights I played Hester with that heady sensuality that Williams’s characters can possess. In the NT Live recording we started 15 minutes late so I remember having a brusque, brittle quality that lying under a blanket backstage in the dark and cold can give you! But it’s valid, she has many qualities and different ones dominated on different nights. That’s the fun of live performance – it really can change radically from night to night.
Fragility … Tom Burke and Helen McCrory in The Deep Blue Sea. Photograph: Richard Hubert Smith
Hester is desperate. How important have the arts been in raising awareness of mental health issues, both in the 50s and now?
Hester is suicidal, something that Rattigan understood implicitly as the play is based on his own experience of losing his lover of 10 years to suicide by gas poisoning. The entire play can be seen as a love letter to him, asking him at the end of the play not to succumb to the deep blue sea but to live. It has a poignancy and heartache throughout, on one hand understanding the fragility, anger and shame that can drive someone to the brink of suicide but on the other asking that sometimes you have to put one foot in front of another and keep walking on even when you feel no sense of hope or purpose because you mustn’t give up. It has a beautiful wisdom and simplicity. I don’t think I’ve ever heard the term “mental health issues” in a rehearsal room. Actors tend to see all reactions as part of the human experience. We don’t say this is normal, this is not normal, as a social worker or a psychiatrist might because the actor must always empathise with the character in order to portray them and everything is encompassed within that. Perhaps that attitude destigmatises human behaviour and helps an audience to question why someone might be behaving in a certain way, rather than are they “right” or “wrong” to do so. Because change can only be brought about through understanding.
You can almost smell the damp and the cigarette smoke in the production, partly thanks to Tom Scutt’s green-tinged set. Did that mood, and Hester’s troubled character, affect your life off stage?
Once the curtain’s down and I’m out of the shower, that’s Hester gone. If you’re ever looking for a fun crowd after a show, find a company that’s just done an emotional performance. All we want to do is laugh, dance and be merry. It’s that comedy lot you want to avoid ...
Very early in your career you had a lead role at the National in Trelawny of the ‘Wells’. What are your memories of that time?
They are very, very happy and very, very vague. I remember I played footie in my obligatory Doc Martens (well it was the early 90s) with the stage crew before the show as my warm-up. I had the most incredible ball gowns that we got me into in 47 seconds (my quick change between act one and act two used to get its own round of applause, I was thrilled). I remember working with the great Michael Bryant, whose ashes now lie under the stage at the National. (I’m not sure if that’s true or just an urban myth, but I always say hello to him every night before I warm up.) And I vividly remember enthusiastically congratulating a young director in the bar one night after the show, on his great achievement of directing at the National. It turned out the young director was Richard Eyre, head of the National and my boss. He was completely charming and didn’t say anything so as not to embarrass me. Happy days.
Emotional … Tom Burke and Helen McCrory. Photograph: Richard Hubert Smith
You set up a scheme to feed the NHS at the start of the pandemic – what are your current plans for the scheme and how has it gone?
FeedNHS joined up with MealForce and BaxterStorey and was, at its peak, feeding 45,000 meals a day to over 100 hospitals across the nation. We have wound down now, but I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who donated and also to say despite having to design websites (like having teeth pulled), spending days on calls which all began by screaming “Can you hear me?!” before losing connection as wifi dropped out again, learning that the NHS is a series of trusts all of whom must be contacted independently, Damian (Lewis, McCrory’s husband), John Vincent (head of Leon) and I met the most inspirational philanthropists, hard-working NHS staff, altruistic chefs, kind and selfless delivery people and a wealth of good-hearted people. It was a wonderful experience.
The Deep Blue Sea streams on YouTube from 7pm on 9 July as part of National Theatre at Home. It will be available until 16 July. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/oct/13/roger-stone-trump-ally-january-6-capitol-attack | US news | 2022-10-13T06:00:03.000Z | Martin Pengelly | Who is Roger Stone, the Trump ally in the January 6 panel’s crosshairs? | At its hearing on Capitol Hill on Thursday, the House January 6 committee is expected to show footage of Roger Stone, shot by Danish film-makers.
‘It’s a sham’: fears over Trump loyalists’ ‘election integrity’ drive
Read more
According to the Washington Post, the clips will show that Stone “predicted violent clashes with leftwing activists and forecast months before the 2020 vote that [Donald Trump] would use armed guards and loyal judges to stay in power”.
CNN said footage also showed Stone the day before election day saying: “Fuck the voting, let’s get right to the violence.”
So who is Roger Stone?
A Republican strategist, consultant and author, he is most often described as a self-confessed political dirty trickster and longtime Trump adviser, given to flamboyance in tailoring and swinging as well as campaign stunts.
Now 70, Stone started out as a student volunteer on Richard Nixon’s re-election campaign in 1972, “pulling … penny-ante tricks” against Democrats or, in the Nixonian vernacular, “ratfucking” the president’s opponents.
Before Nixon’s downfall in 1974, amid the Watergate scandal, Stone worked for the Committee to Re-elect the President, or Creep.
After Nixon, Stone – who has a tattoo of the 37th president on his back – worked with Paul Manafort and Charles Black to build a Washington lobbying firm that flourished in the 1980s, often representing clients other firms might have found unsavoury.
Mobutu Sese Seko, the president of Zaire, was one. Donald Trump was another.
Stone advised Trump during his flirtation with a presidential run in 2000. In the presidential election the same year, Stone played a prominent role in stopping a recount in Florida, thereby securing the White House for George W Bush. In the mid-2000s, Stone was involved in the downfall of Eliot Spitzer, a Democratic New York governor who used prostitutes.
Stone was back at Trump’s side in 2015, when he finally ran for president. Stone was fired or resigned but remained in Trump’s orbit, an erratic asteroid endangering anyone in his path, during the billionaire’s campaign and time in power.
In 2019, Stone was indicted by Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating Russian election interference and links between Trump and Moscow.
Stone was convicted on seven counts of lying to Congress, obstruction of justice and witness tampering, in relation to his links to Trump’s campaign and to WikiLeaks, which released Democratic emails obtained by Russian hackers.
In February 2020, prosecutors recommended Stone be sentenced to between seven and nine years in prison. After Trump complained by tweet, the Department of Justice intervened, saying the recommendation was too harsh. Four prosecutors resigned in protest.
Stone was sentenced to 40 months in prison but never went to jail. In December 2020, in the midst of Trump’s attempt to overturn his election defeat by Joe Biden, Trump granted Stone clemency.
In Trump’s attempt to overturn the election, Stone denies working with far-right groups including the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys around the Capitol attack. But last week, such links came up at the start of the trial of the Oath Keepers leader, Stewart Rhodes, on seditious conspiracy charges.
Trump ally Roger Stone: Americans can now choose 'alternative' truths
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Randall Eliason, a former federal prosecutor who teaches law at George Washington University, told the Washington Post: “It seems like the prosecution is treating Stone as an un-indicted co-conspirator.”
Stone’s decision to allow documentary film-makers to follow him in his efforts to “Stop the Steal” was characteristic – and landed him in characteristic trouble, in the sights of the January 6 committee and the justice department. Summoned to appear before January 6 investigators, Stone repeatedly invoked his fifth-amendment right against self-incrimination.
Stone has recently teamed up with Michael Flynn, a retired general, ex-national security adviser and leading pro-Trump plotter.
In July, Sean Morales-Doyle, a Brennan Center expert on voting rights and elections, told the Guardian Stone and Flynn’s attempts to train Republican canvassers and poll watchers were “a sham, aimed … at undermining public faith in our elections and setting the stage for future attempts to subvert the will of the people”. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2018/nov/25/homeowners-trapped-solar-panels | Money | 2018-11-25T08:00:03.000Z | Anna Tims | Homeowners trapped by 25-year solar panel contracts | Julie Griffiths* wanted to reduce her carbon footprint by installing solar panels. The cost would have been a prohibitive £12,000, so she signed a deal to lease part of her roof to a solar power company, which would fit the panels for free. It would pocket the newly introduced feed-in tariffs (FITs) – subsidies paid by the government for the electricity generated. She, meanwhile, would have lower energy bills. At the end of the 25 years, the panels and the tariffs would be hers.
It seemed a win-win situation until recently, when she needed to sell the house. Her buyer’s mortgage application was refused because of the lease agreement, which had effectively signed over a large part of the roof to the solar company.
“A clause in the lease allowed us to buy out the panels for a fee to compensate the company for the loss of their FITs,” she says. “We were prepared to do it to be able to sell our house and move on with our lives, but the company had passed the management of the panels on to an agent, who seemed reluctant to let us proceed.”
Eventually, after the Observer intervened, Griffiths was allowed to buy the panels for £20,500, an uncosted sum that she was told was non-negotiable. Not only was this nearly double the price she’d have paid to install the system herself, but she had also missed out on nearly eight years of FITs worth, around £7,300. All in all, the “free” system has left her around £16,000 out of pocket.
I am retired with MS and need to sell my house, but the buyer is refusing to go ahead unless I have the panels removed
The government introduced the generous incentives in 2010. The FITs, funded by a levy on all energy bills, have encouraged 800,000 households to go solar, but they have also spawned a multitude of startups that have exploited homeowners.
Homeowners who wanted to do their bit for the environment but could not afford the outlay were promised up to 50% off their bills if they signed over the airspace above their roof for 25 years. For the startups it was a bonanza. Payouts would earn them an average of £23,000, more than triple their investment. But unscrupulous contracts obliged owners to seek permission if they wanted to extend or sell their home, or compensate them if the panels were temporarily removed for roof repairs.
Since 2012, as installation costs have plummeted, the feed-in rates have been slashed for new installations by 90%, and they will be abolished for those who install solar panels after 31 March next year. The profiteering startups have all but disappeared, but their legacy will blight the lives of homeowners and unwitting buyers for two more decades.
Many are discovering the high price of their “free” deal as they try to sell. The 25-year leases apply to the property regardless of who owns it, and they have to find a buyer willing to take on the remaining years. And even if a buyer is happy, mortgage lenders may not be. The deal is treated as a leasehold, and contracts skewed in favour of the company are deemed risky by banks and building societies.
Claire Hunt discovered that her elderly father had signed up to a leased solar installation when his roof began leaking. He had been talked into the 25-year contract in 2011, when FITs were at their peak, and the company has since ceased trading.
“We were directed to another company which has apparently taken over the contract, but we’ve been unable to engage with them by phone or in writing,” says Hunt. “It is only because of the leak that I have finally had sight of the contract and I am devastated to find there isn’t even a buyout clause to end it. We are therefore arranging to remove the solar panels ourselves and will put them back when completed. A very expensive fix.”
Fiona Baker is similarly trapped after agreeing to leased solar panels in 2010. “I am retired with MS and myotonic dystrophy, and need to sell my house, but the buyer won’t go ahead unless I have the panels removed,” she says. “This is apparently not possible until the lease expires at the end of the 25 years.”
Meanwhile, Simon Norris is unable to remortgage because the firm that installed his leased panels appears to have breached building regulations. “The lender wanted a structural survey, which concluded that the roof should have been reinforced before the panels were fitted,” he says.
Most lenders will agree a loan on a property with leased solar panels provided the contract meets certain conditions, one of them being that the installing company be accredited, the installation be approved and insured, and panels removable without penalties for missed FIT payments. Crucially, a lender’s permission needs to be obtained if an existing borrower decides to install leased panels.
In the race to profit from FITs, many companies ignored these conditions. They also did not inform customers of the full value of subsidies they would be entitled to if they bought the panels outright or the implications for current or future mortgages as required by the Renewable Energy Consumer Code (RECC).
Since most of the original companies have ceased trading, it can be difficult for sellers and buyers to find out who owns their panels. Jim Cowan recently bought his house without receiving the contract for the leased panels. He can’t find out who owns them since the installing company no longer exists and may find himself unable to remortgage or sell. Householders in this predicament have to submit a subject access request to energy regulator Ofgem’s FIT register team and provide proof that they are the property owners.
Now that FITs have all but dried up, profiteering has taken a new form. This time companies are targeting those who bought panels outright between 2010 and 2015 and continue to receive the old higher-rate subsidies. They offer a tempting-looking lump sum in return for the FIT for the remainder of the 25 years. However, the offered price is invariably less, sometimes by 75%, than the sum customers would receive from their FIT and the conditions are often similar to the lease stitch-up.
Government subsidies on solar panels will cease at the end of next March. Miss the deadline and it would take a working household up to 70 years instead of the current 20 to recoup the average £6,500 cost. Those hoping to install panels should get quotes only from companies listed on the RECC website and request a written estimate of the output from the system and the financial benefits. Anyone buying a house with leased solar panels should ensure the contract complies with the minimum requirements laid down by the Council of Mortgage Lenders.
* All names have been changed | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/oct/08/apple-watch-se-review-an-almost-great-cheaper-option | Technology | 2020-10-08T06:00:29.000Z | Samuel Gibbs | Apple Watch SE review: an almost great cheaper option | The Apple Watch SE is a cheaper version of Apple’s smartwatch that offers most of what makes it good while cutting out some key features.
The Watch SE comes in two sizes, 40mm or 44mm, and is made of aluminium. Prices start at £269 – £100 less than the top Apple Watch Series 6 – and tested here in the 44mm space grey version with 4G and costing £349. It requires an iPhone and cannot be used with Android.
Similar to Apple’s iPhone SE, the idea behind the Watch SE is to combine the best bits of the company’s recent devices into a more affordable model. As such the watch is essentially a Series 6 with the S5 processor from last year’s Series 5, no always-on screen and no electrocardiogram (ECG) or blood oxygen sensor (SpO2).
The back of the Watch SE is different to other recent Apple Watch models and features a redesigned optical heart rate sensor configuration. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian
The screen is the same quality as the Series 6, which makes it bright, colourful and crisp when on. But Apple has removed the ability for it to show the watch face all of the time. When you’re not actively using it the Watch SE’s screen is off. Only when you tap it, turn the digital crown or twist the watch face towards you does it light up to show the time or an app.
It takes about half a second to do so when you rotate your wrist. But it requires a fairly deliberate action, meaning you can’t check the time at an off-angle glance when you’re carrying something or just typing at a keyboard on a desk.
Otherwise the Watch SE fits the same as other Apple Watches with the same range of straps, and is available in silver, space grey or gold.
Specifications
Case size: 40mm or 44mm
Case thickness: 10.4mm
Weight: 30.5 to 36.4g depending on version
Processor: S5
RAM: 1GB
Storage: 32GB
Operating system: WatchOS 7
Water resistance: 50 metres (5ATM)
Sensors: gyro, HR sensor, light, microphone, speaker, NFC, GPS/GNSS, compass, altimeter
Connectivity: Bluetooth 5, wifi n, NFC, optional 4G requiring eSIM and compatible plan
Solid performance and two-day battery
The USB charging puck magnetically attaches to the back of the watch and plugs into any standard USB power adapter (there isn’t one in the box). Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian
The Watch SE has the S5 chip that was used to great effect in the Series 5. On paper it is 20% slower than the S6 in the Series 6, but it is not a noticeable difference. It is considerably faster than the chip used in the older Series 3 that remains on sale.
Battery life is very good, lasting a total of 49 hours on between charges. That includes sleep tracking overnight, which consumed 12% of the battery in eight hours, and a 25-minute run that consumed 5%.
The watch fully charges in 1 hour 52 minutes from flat using the magnetic charging cable and a standard 2A USB power adapter, which is just under 30 minutes longer than the Series 6 and about the same as the Series 5.
Sustainability
The case of the watch is made from recycled aluminium. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian
Apple does not provide an expected lifespan for the battery in the Watch SE. Similar batteries typically last at least 500 full charge cycles while maintaining at least 80% capacity. The battery can be replaced for £82.44 while the watch can be repaired for between £206.44 and £236.44 depending on the model.
The Watch SE uses 100% recycled aluminium in its case. It does not ship with a power adapter in the box, but the wireless charging puck has USB-A connector for plugging into standard USB power adapters.
Apple is also using renewable energy for final assembly of the watch and breaks down the Watch SE’s environmental impact in its report.
It offers trade-in and free recycling schemes, including for non-Apple products.
WatchOS 7
Google Maps has returned to the Apple Watch after a hiatus. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian
The Watch SE runs the latest watchOS 7 out of the box and has all the same notification, fitness and health-tracking features as the Series 6, minus the ECG and SpO2 that require dedicated hardware sensors.
Voice dictation is now fully locally processed, meaning Siri is super fast for setting timers and other bits. The Watch SE has the same tight integration with an iPhone as other Apple Watches, for notifications, Apple Pay and a relatively healthy selection of third-party apps, including Strava, Google Maps and a basic version of Spotify.
The one app that’s missing is WhatsApp. You can reply to messages via the notification system but cannot start new ones from your wrist.
The watch connects to an iPhone and the internet via Bluetooth and wifi, plus 4G for those models that support it and if you have a compatible phone plan. Most of the watch’s functions also work offline, such as health and fitness tracking but not notifications or maps. Apple Music can store tracks offline, for playing back via Bluetooth headphones for running or similar, but Spotify cannot.
Health monitoring
The heart rate monitoring on the Watch SE is the same as the Series 6, but it lacks ECG and blood oxygen tracking. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian
The Watch SE has all of the health-monitoring features of other Apple Watch models apart from those reliant on the ECG or SpO2 sensors, which aren’t included here. The Watch SE, therefore, has heart rate monitoring, fall detection, noise monitoring, steps and general activity tracking, plus workouts ranging from running, cycling and swimming to core training, yoga and a huge list of others.
The screen doesn’t stay on when you’re exercising, which means you can’t see the timer or similar while working out unless you tap the watch or rotate your wrist as you might to see the time. That’s not a problem for running, but was for seeing how long was left during a plank.
Sleep tracking records the time you were sleep and can set a standard alarm, but cannot measure your sleep cycle and has none of the smart alarm functions that competitors have, which wake you up in a light sleep phase so you feel refreshed.
The hand washing tracking is genuinely smart and useful, employing on-device AI to detect when you are washing your hands using your motions and the sounds of water and soap, and automatically timing you 20 seconds and logging it in the Health app.
The sleep tracking on the Apple Watch is basic compared to competitors. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian
Price
The Apple Watch SE comes in two sizes, three colours, various strap options and with or without optional 4G, which requires an eSIM and compatible phone plan add-on to use.
The 40mm version costs £269, or £319 with 4G. The 44mm version costs £299, or £349 with 4G.
For comparison, the Apple Watch Series 6 costs £379, the Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 2 costs £269, the Fossil Gen 5 costs £279 and the Fitbit Versa 3 costs £199.99.
Verdict
The Apple Watch SE is almost a resounding success, but is let down by one cut corner too many.
It has all the major features that make an Apple Watch good. Excellent notifications, pin-sharp haptics, snappy performance and good battery life. Sleep tracking is a bit rubbish, but the rest of the good health-monitoring features are excellent and it has solid exercise tracking too.
The lack of ECG and blood oxygen saturation sensors is only really a negative if you’re looking for comprehensive monitoring done manually – they’re only things you stop in your day to use if you’re worried about a particular thing such as your heart.
But the lack of an always-on screen is a deal-killer for me. From glancing at the time and date to timing exercises, not having the screen on all the time is really irritating. It’s also a feature practically every other smartwatch at this price or less has.
If you can get over that one big drawback the Apple Watch SE is great. Just note that while the £269 Watch SE is lower cost for an Apple Watch, it’s not cheap for a smartwatch with most rivals costing similar or less.
Pros: excellent haptics, good health tracking, solid activity tracking, 50-metre water resistance, good battery, comfortable, quick-swap straps, Apple Pay.
Cons: screen not on all the time, only works with an iPhone, sleep tracking not great, no ECG.
The fit and finish of the Watch SE is just as good as other Apple Watch versions. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian
Other reviews
Apple Watch Series 6 review: faster, cheaper, still the best
Apple Watch Series 5 review: the king of smartwatches in 2019
Samsung Galaxy Watch 3 review: the new king of Android smartwatches
Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 2 review: the best cheaper smartwatch for Android
Fossil Gen 5 review: Google’s Wear OS smartwatch at its best
Garmin Forerunner 245 Music review: a runner’s best friend
Garmin Fenix 6 Pro Solar review: the solar-powered super watch
Withings ScanWatch review: health-tracking watch with 30-day battery | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/nov/15/australia-says-yes-to-same-sex-marriage-in-historic-postal-survey | Australia news | 2017-11-14T23:04:41.000Z | Paul Karp | Australia says yes to same-sex marriage in historic postal survey | Australia has taken a decisive step towards legislating marriage equality by Christmas after 61.6% of voters in an unprecedented national postal survey approved a change to the law to allow couples of the same sex to marry.
1:00
That's a yes! Australia celebrates result of same-sex marriage survey – video
The result, announced by the Australian Bureau of Statistics on Wednesday, will lead to consideration of a same-sex marriage bill in parliament with the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, promising marriage equality should be law by Christmas.
Australia's same-sex marriage postal survey: 61.6% yes, 38.4% no – as it happened
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With a turnout of 79.5% the result in the voluntary survey is considered a highly credible reflection of Australian opinion and gives marriage equality advocates enormous momentum to achieve the historic social reform. Australia’s chief statistician, David Kalisch, announced the results at a press conference in Canberra at 10am on Wednesday, revealing 7,817,247 people voted in favour and 4,873,987 voted against.
At a press conference in Canberra, Turnbull said that Australians had “spoken in their millions and they have voted overwhelmingly yes for marriage equality”.
Turnbull said the result was “unequivocal and overwhelming”, implicitly warning conservatives including in his own government that the public are “our masters” and the parliament must now deliver on the result.
“They voted yes for fairness, yes for commitment, yes for love. And now it is up to us here in the parliament of Australia to get on with it, to get on with the job the Australian people asked us to do and get this done,” he said, stressing the law should change before Christmas.
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Turnbull pledges same-sex marriage will be law by Christmas – video
At a rally in Melbourne, the Labor leader, Bill Shorten, said: “What a fabulous day to be an Australian – because in this survey the Australian people have declared overwhelmingly Australia is ready for marriage equality.
“And I just want to make one promise: today we celebrate, tomorrow we legislate,” he said.
Bill Shorten celebrates the results of the same-sex marriage postal survey in Melbourne. Photograph: Scott Barbour/Getty Images
Turnbull, same-sex marriage supporters in Australia’s ruling Liberal-National party Coalition, the Labor opposition, Greens and other cross-bench parties have reached a consensus around a cross-party bill that makes minimalist changes to protect religious freedom without legalising discrimination by commercial service providers, such as cake makers, as some conservatives in the Coalition government have demanded.
Appearing alongside Turnbull, the finance minister, Mathias Cormann, said the cross-party bill was a “good starting point” but he believed “there is a need for some additional religious protections”, signalling amendments could still be contentious within the government.
Full results of Australia's vote for same-sex marriage, electorate by electorate – interactive
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The bill will be introduced in to the Senate on Wednesday for debate on Thursday and Shorten has offered the opposition’s support to help “stare down the conservatives seeking to delay marriage equality”.
A bill is expected to pass, with many opponents of marriage equality in parliament promising to respect the result, although parliament may consider amendments. Coalition parliamentarians, who were previously required to vote against marriage equality will now be given a free vote, Labor MPs are almost universally in favour and a majority of crossbenchers will also support the bill.
On Tuesday Turnbull said the government “would not countenance” legalising discrimination against same-sex weddings by commercial service providers and warned a rival conservative bill to do so would have “virtually no prospect” of passing parliament.
In a speech after the result Equality Campaign spokesman, Alex Greenwich, said: “Today love has had a landslide victory.”
“Together we have achieved something truly remarkable, a win for fairness and equality, not only for the LGBTI community and our families, but for all Australians,” he said.
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Australia says yes to same-sex marriage – video
Greenwich said the campaign had made more than 1m phone calls and knocked 100,000 doors, an “unprecedented” level of support that had exceeded “any campaign in our history”.
“In doing so it has delivered an unequivocal mandate to federal parliament to vote this through by the end of the year.”
With the positive result, Turnbull, a supporter of same-sex marriage leading a party that straddles both liberal and conservative traditions, looks to have finally achieved a win against reactionaries in his party that oppose the social reform.
Some conservatives have suggested they will put forward their marriage bill in the Coalition party room in two weeks, but senior ministers including Cormann have protected the prime minister’s position by insisting the parliament will choose which bill and amendments to allow.
Same-sex marriage has been banned in Australia since 2004 when the Howard government changed the Marriage Act to define marriage as between a man and a woman. As many comparable countries such as the US and Britain allowed or legislated for same-sex marriage, Australia looked increasingly out of step. After the successful marriage equality referendum in Ireland in May 2015, pressure grew on the Australian government to legislate but the Coalition party room agreed on a national plebiscite instead, although there was no legal requirement to do so.
A crowd celebrates the results of the postal survey in front of the State Library of Victoria Wednesday. Photograph: Scott Barbour/Getty Images
When Turnbull took the prime ministership from conservative predecessor Tony Abbott in September 2015, he retained the Coalition’s commitment to hold a national plebiscite on same-sex marriage before changing the law.
Labor, the Greens and other opposition parties blocked the proposed plebiscite in the Senate in November 2016 and August 2017, leading the Turnbull government to launch a $122m voluntary national postal survey to fulfil its election commitment to give Australians a say.
In a bruising three-month campaign, opponents of marriage equality including the Australian Christian Lobby, and the Catholic and Anglican churches in Sydney, claimed same-sex marriage would have far-reaching negative consequences for gender education. Former prime ministers Tony Abbott and John Howard warned that religious freedom and freedom of speech were at risk.
The yes camp’s Equality Campaign combined with moderate Liberals, Labor, the Greens, unions and progressive campaign organisation Get Up to argue that same-sex marriage was a matter of equality and fairness.
The campaign featured everyday Australians, their friends and families, emphasising that the only question was whether LGBTI Australians should be able to marry the one they love.
Despite assertions from Turnbull that the survey would be overwhelmingly respectful, the campaign has been marred by homophobic incidents and campaign material which continued largely unabated despite a special law passed to apply electoral law safeguards to the survey, such as authorisation requirements for campaign materials.
I've fallen in love with my country all over again
David Marr
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The campaign also featured two unsuccessful high court challenges against the expenditure of $122m for the survey, as marriage equality advocates fought to prevent the poll seen as an affront because it determined LGBTI people’s equality before the law by a majoritarian vote.
Public polling throughout the campaign showed consistent support for marriage equality and weekly estimates showed the survey was on-track for a record turnout.
The no campaign took increasingly bizarre turns, with Abbott using an assault that even his attacker said had nothing to do with marriage to rally Australians to his cause, and conservatives attempting to use US rapper Macklemore’s performance of his hit Same Love at the rugby league grand final to claim the national campaign they called for had inappropriately politicised Australian institutions.
The cross-party bill will be debated in the Senate on Thursday and the parliamentary sitting week beginning 27 November, with supporters of marriage equality aiming to pass a bill through both houses of parliament before they rise on 7 December. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2022/sep/25/handbagged-kiln-moira-buffini-indhu-rubasingham-review-the-cherry-orchard-yard-james-macdonald-vinay-patel-clutch-bush-will-jackson | Stage | 2022-09-25T09:30:29.000Z | Kate Kellaway | The week in theatre: Handbagged; The Cherry Orchard; Clutch – review | It seemed likely that the revival of Handbagged, Moira Buffini’s 2010 satirical hit about the reputedly dicey relationship between the Queen and Margaret Thatcher, would be cancelled – and, on the day of the funeral, it was. The following day, I pitched up to the Kiln feeling hesitantly heretical: what would it be like to see the Queen impersonated after all those sober hours of contemplating her coffin on television?
As Marion Bailey stepped on stage, I could swear I spotted tears in her eyes. An exceptionally sympathetic actor, she made it possible, within seconds, to relax. Buffini’s play is, not unexpectedly, far more merciful to the Queen than to Mrs Thatcher, and in Bailey’s hands, satire came close to tribute. She brings sweetness, kindness and intelligence to the role. The Queen’s niceness becomes almost a moral quality. As she totters around in frumpy, apricot-coloured twinset, she looks about to purr, although also, at times, privately eye-rolling and tempted to growl at her prime minister’s intransigence. The Queen’s younger self, impressively played in parallel by Abigail Cruttenden, is politely concentrated yet frequently nonplussed by Thatcher. There are gentle jokes at the monarch’s expense – digs about her love of horses – but only one serious potshot. When the Queen is holding forth about poverty, Thatcher retorts in an exasperated aside that the Queen does not pay taxes.
This is an entertaining, pacy and damning scamper through Thatcher’s 11 years in power. She is also played by two actors to represent her older and younger selves. Naomi Frederick plays the younger with vim, but it is Kate Fahy, the elder, who steals the show. She has mastered Maggie to comic perfection, catching precisely the faux-hushed, breathy quality of the later voice – at its most mannish when in pursuit of femininity. It’s an excruciating pleasure to hear her. Fahy has also mastered the strange up-and-down movements of the head when speaking, like a nodding dog mascot but more swayingly unpredictable.
The two men in the cast, Romayne Andrews and Richard Cant, each play several roles and do the piece proud. As the Queen’s butler and a saucy Nancy Reagan, Andrews is a hoot. Cant has an unfailing grip on the absurd, too, as a ganglingly offputting Denis Thatcher and a mindless cowboy of a Ronald Reagan. There are several satisfying meta-theatrical moments when the actors appear to shake off their script: Andrews flatly refuses to play Enoch Powell; Cant is determined to enlighten younger members of the audience about what the Thatcher years were really like. Indhu Rubasingham, who directed the original, pulls off this revival with confidence. And seeing Bailey, at the opening of the second half, walking through the stalls, waving a white-gloved hand, has a revenant poignancy.
The samovar has given way to the spaceship in Vinay Patel’s admirable and eccentric reworking of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, with a cast of mainly South Asian heritage. James Macdonald’s production is an experimental feat. Within the Yard’s small space, a revolving stage has been installed (great work from designer Rosie Elnile) with hi-tech, talkative, all-lights-flashing artificial intelligence as its centrepiece (name of Divya, she is pert and tactless, her voice amusingly conveyed by Chandrika Chevli).
One misses the romance of the Russian estate, but this brave new play relates to a moment in which we are on the verge of losing so much. Here are future citizens of a translated universe, mourning a pastoral scene. But do we have lift-off, theatrically speaking? Only intermittently. This is a claustrophobic piece for the crew aboard the spaceship, and too often a particularly stultifying form of Chekhovian ennui sets in and spreads into the audience.
‘An experimental feat’: The Cherry Orchard at the Yard. Photograph: Johan Persson
Anjali Jay plays Captain Prema Ramesh (the Madame Ranevskaya equivalent) fluently; Neil D’Souza plays her brother, Lohit, an amusingly tiresome compulsive talker. There are good supporting performances from Tripti Tripuraneni as an embattled Varsha; Maanuv Thiara as Abinash, chief engineer; Gavi Singh Chera as Pawan, stellar cartographer; and Aaron Gill as Sailesh, a gauche and lovestruck quartermaster who serenades the computer in a particularly diverting scene. But the most enjoyable theatrical ingredient is Hari Mackinnon’s old retainer, Feroze (Firs in the original), in Russian butler garb of shabby black, whose unfocused vision, strange high-stepping gait and jerky arm movements reveal him to be a robot. Feroze is saturated by images of the past, and the implication is that the past is no longer bearable for anything other than a machine to store. He is comic and tragic – a perfectly Chekhovian combination.
Charlie Kafflyn (Tyler) and Geoffrey Aymer (Max) in the ‘heartwarming’ Clutch. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Observer
It takes less time than your average driving lesson (under an hour) to watch Clutch, Will Jackson’s funny, involving and heartwarming new play, empathically directed by Philip J Morris. On stage are two black leather car seats, side by side. The driving instructor and the learner driver, his pupil, have been brilliantly cast for contrast. Max (Geoffrey Aymer) is larger-than-life and black, and instructs Tyler (Charlie Kafflyn), who is small, white and transgender, and the play is about the sympathy that develops between them as they discover by accident (and because of an accident) the vulnerabilities in each other’s lives. There is no stalling in this playlet, although Tyler gets off to a bumpy start in the car. Fasten your seatbelt – and go.
Star ratings (out of five)
Handbagged ★★★★
The Cherry Orchard ★★★
Clutch ★★★★
Handbagged is at the Kiln, London, until 29 October
Clutch is at the Bush theatre, London, until 8 October | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/05/our-school-systems-are-broken-lets-grab-this-chance-to-remake-them | Opinion | 2020-07-05T07:15:36.000Z | Peter Hyman | Our school systems are broken. Let's grab this chance to remake them | Peter Hyman | I don’t want schools to “get back to normal”.
It’s tempting to crave a return to life before this horrible pandemic struck. There’s no doubt that those of us who love the buzz of a school community, the thrill of teaching, the boundless energy of children, have missed those compelling and life-affirming interactions.
But inside we know a simple truth: “normal” was not right. Normal for schools had become unbalanced, at times unhinged. Tunnel vision. A pressure that was unhealthy, often toxic; Ofsted inspections, high-stakes exams, the crowding out of creativity. Normal was vindictive: 30% labelled as failures each year, after 12 years of education, to satisfy the normal distribution of the GCSE exam bell curve. Normal meant too many committed and creative teachers battling against the odds: 40% leaving the profession within five years. Normal could be dispiriting, with growing mental health problems in young people. Normal was scarred by deep inequalities, now further exposed by Covid-19. And in the compelling words of Andreas Schleicher of the OECD, normal meant educating people to become “second-class robots”, rather than developing the human skills that are increasingly what will matter most.
So, yes, I want school to reopen safely to every child in the country. But getting back to “normal” is not what we need.
We need every child’s voice to be heard and valued in the classroom and each child’s learning properly supported
Many school leaders and teachers are of a similar mind. There has been a change of mood, born out of a cocktail of anger, frustration, commitment to social justice and resolve. Headteachers and teachers have worked under immense stress to provide simultaneously an on-site provision for key workers and the most vulnerable and online distance learning (some having to rapidly learn how to do this from scratch). It has entailed confronting real hardship, delivering food parcels, children’s toys, laptops and regularly checking in and providing much-needed social and emotional support for families.
The breaking of trust between government and the frontline at this crucial time (the result of too many insensitive, late or contradictory announcements) has perhaps strangely resulted in a growing sense of empowerment in the profession, a desire to take control of our own destiny.
At Big Education (a growing social enterprise and group of schools committed to providing a more expansive education), we have been bringing together ideas and insights for renewal from a powerful range of passionate, thoughtful and dynamic people in the sector. Our new website has a mission to use this period wisely to improve how schools are run. Key strands for future reform are emerging.
First: rebalancing our schools. Covid-19 has made us reflect on what makes us centred as human beings. It has become clearer to us, as parents and teachers, that academic ability is not enough. To flourish, we need a balance between what we call “head, heart and hand” – knowledge, wellbeing, problem-solving and creativity. That is why an obsession with academic “catch up” in the coming months at the expense of student wellbeing would be the wrong approach. We need every child’s voice – the full range of diversity – to be heard and valued in the classroom and each child’s learning properly supported. The Observer’s manifesto rightly stressed this point and there is an obvious need for extra government funding for mental health services and enrichment activities and not just one-to-one tutors.
Second: we need smarter assessment and intelligent accountability. Ofsted inspections have rightly been suspended, as have league tables (neither of which produces the breadth of information parents need), and it would be wrong to have them return next year as schools are picking up the pieces after the pandemic. Schools need time to breathe. And the consensus is now overwhelming that Ofsted needs an overhaul, with the possibility of it being repurposed, from the crude labelling of schools, to sharing good practice across the system.
Many are also taking this opportunity rightly to rethink exams. Lord Baker, one of the architects of GCSEs, has joined a growing call for them to be replaced, with a number of groups, including a state/independent coalition, thinking hard about crafting a better system that measures the full range of student achievements.
Third: skilful use of technology. Until this extraordinary forced experiment, where the world’s teachers had to learn to teach online overnight, technology has often been underused or badly used in schools. Now, all but the deliberately contrary can see its many benefits: collaborative tools to aid student learning; flipped learning, where students consume the knowledge first and then discuss it with teachers.
Parents now have more options to support their children, though the choice can become bewildering at times. Video conferencing can be used when people cannot turn up to parents’ evenings. Professionals from dispersed multi-agency teams can support learners with special educational needs more easily on video calls. Teacher resources have been made available online to students, for them to work on in a more self-directed way. Digital portfolios can showcase student work and emerging skills, and make young people more accountable for their learning.
The Observer view on a manifesto for change as a generation of Britain's children faces crisis
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Fourth: a different type of school leadership, a different kind of teacher. Many teachers have been liberated by being off the exam treadmill, some describing having far more in-depth curriculum discussions and the ability to spend proper time collaborating. This is a glimpse of a more sustainable and enriching teaching profession. Many school leaders have found a new voice and new priorities, including giving attention to staff wellbeing and rethinking the micro-management that characterises so many schools. Our new Big Leadership Adventure programme is designed to nurture leaders who want to build a more balanced, agile and expansive education system.
In the future, one more quality, finally, is needed in abundance – not just from schools but government, too: imagination. As we come out of the crisis, we must urgently ask whether what we are doing is fit for purpose, particularly given the bleak post-pandemic economic world. We need to imagine afresh what a great education, a big education, looks like, so we can come back stronger. It would be sad if, next June, we were back in a “normal” that no one really liked.
In the words of Emily Dickinson: “The possible’s slow fuse is lit by the imagination.”
Peter Hyman is co-director of Big Education and co-founder of School 21. Share ideas on rethinking post-Covid-19 education at learningfromlockdown.com | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2012/oct/26/hartnell-amies-couture-london-exhibition | Fashion | 2012-10-26T17:51:31.000Z | Maev Kennedy | Norman Hartnell to Hardy Amies – gowns to lift gloom of postwar Britain | In the greyness of postwar Britain, with rationing still in force for food and clothes and the cities spattered with bomb sites, the dazzling creations of Sir Norman Hartnell, Sir Hardy Amies and milliner Frederick Fox were visions from a fairytale, unattainable to all but a handful of the wealthiest.
Some of the fabulous survivors, worn to royal weddings and society parties and then folded away in tissue paper, together with supremely elegant contemporary photographs by Norman Parkinson, will be seen in Hartnell to Amies: Couture By Royal Appointment, an exhibition opening in November at the Fashion and Textile Museum in London.
Hartnell's elegant line and beautiful fabrics, combined with sumptuous embellishment by his famous team of hand embroiderers, created some of the striking evening gowns in the exhibition, including a dress and coat designed in 1953 and believed to have been worn to Queen Elizabeth II's coronation ball.
Although it appears green in Norman Parkinson's contemporary photographs – which have changed colour over the decades – the coat is sky-blue. It is coming to the show on loan from guest curator Michael Pick, biographer of Hartnell, who is about to launch a biography of the designer's great rival for royal and society patronage, Hardy Amies.
Other gowns, almost all loans from the people who bought and wore them, include the dress worn by Lady Anne Glenconner when she married Colin Tennant in 1956, one of the society weddings of the year if not the decade. It was where Princess Margaret met the wedding photographer, Antony Armstrong-Jones, whom she would later marry. Tennant himself had been tipped by the tabloids as a suitor for the princess: "I don't expect she would have had me," he said later. Tennant, who died in 2010, went on to buy the island of Mustique in the Grenadines, which became a holiday paradise for high society – and society gossip columnists.
Celia Joicey, director of the museum in Bermondsey, which was founded by the designer Zandra Rhodes and is now owned by Newham College and used for training students as well as exhibitions, said the detailed work in the clothes is dazzling. "To see the sheer quality of some of the gowns, you need to turn them inside out to appreciate the hand work in the boning, linings and every detail invisible when the garment is worn – one wedding gown has a tiny blue bow stitched into the lining, as the something blue for the bride."
The exhibition celebrates the opening of Norman Hartnell's first salon in 1923 as a landmark in British fashion, re-establishing traditions of hand tailoring and a distinctive English cut. Hartnell went on to create both the Queen's wedding dress in 1947, and coronation gown in 1953, both setting much-copied fashions for anyone who could afford the fabrics or get hold of the coupons.
As princess and for decades as monarch, Elizabeth also patronised Sir Hardy Amies, who began as a designer at Lachasse, which was famous for elegantly tailored suits, and went on to become one of the most successful menswear designers, launching the first recorded men's catwalk show in 1959.
The exhibition also features millinery by Australian-born Frederick Fox, whose hats made the small figures of both the Queen and her mother stand out in the crowd in innumerable photographs.
Hartnell to Amies: Couture by Royal Appointment, Fashion and Textile Museum London, November 16 - February 2013 | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jan/13/boris-johnson-deflects-questions-of-funding-on-stormont-visit | UK news | 2020-01-13T19:09:39.000Z | Rory Carroll | Boris Johnson deflects questions of funding on Stormont visit | Boris Johnson has pledged the government’s support for Northern Ireland’s revived power-sharing executive, but sidestepped questions about funding to shore up the historic deal.
The prime minister said he felt “the hand of the future beckoning us all forward” during a visit to Stormont on Monday to support the restoration of devolution in the region after a three-year breakdown.
However, Johnson deflected questions about a promised financial package for public services and infrastructure, saying devolution was about leadership, not money.
“What’s so great about today is, as I say, that Northern Ireland politicians have put aside differences, stepped up to the plate and shown leadership,” he told a press conference after meeting party leaders.
The prime minister repeated his claim that under the Brexit deal there would be no checks on goods going from Northern Ireland to Great Britain and only minimal checks on goods going the other way. This claim has been undermined by Northern Ireland’s obligation to implement EU customs codes at its ports.
Flanked by the Irish PM, Leo Varadkar, Johnson said cooperation between Dublin, Belfast and London would deepen. “The friendship that always existed, the opportunity now is to develop even more east-west cooperation and links and that is what we are going to do,” he said.
Varadkar agreed: “The Good Friday agreement is working again. North-south cooperation is going to resume. We are going to beef up and deepen cooperation.”
However the giddy mood at Stormont, which was revived on Saturday after three years of mothballing, gave way to frustration at the lack of detail about funding.
“We are listening very carefully and we will give the support we can,” said Johnson, perhaps mindful that funding for Northern Ireland could have knock-on implications for Scotland and Wales.
Johnson sits alongside Leo Varadkar to meet the Northern Irish leaders. Photograph: Kelvin Boyes/Pool/AFP/Getty Images
Northern Ireland’s political parties signed up to power-sharing last week partly on the basis of significant Treasury transfers, with Sinn Féin mooting £1.5bn and the Democratic Unionist party floating £2bn.
Some public services, notably healthcare, are in crisis. The Northern Ireland secretary, Julian Smith, used the promise of financial support to coax Sinn Féin and the DUP towards a deal. Devolution collapsed in January 2017 amid acrimony between the two parties.
In a joint statement, Arlene Foster, the DUP leader and first minister, and Michelle O’Neill, Sinn Féin’s leader and deputy first minister, said they had had constructive meetings with Johnson and Varadkar, but stressed that funding “must follow quickly”.
“We need significant and sustained investment, not just this year but over a number of years,” said Foster. “This is crucial in ensuring transformation in areas such as health and also our road and water infrastructures.”
O’Neill said she had pressed Johnson and Varadkar over funding. “We have done our bit. I look forward to the fulfilment of the commitments made by the two governments to let us get to work.”
Foster and O’Neill were due to push the issue in a meeting with Smith on Monday night.
A botched green energy scheme nicknamed “cash for ash” that wasted hundreds of millions of pounds under Foster’s watch in the previous administration may have dented her ability to squeeze money from Whitehall.
Asked about the scandal, Johnson replied: “It is vital that public spending in Northern Ireland is properly invigilated and there is no repetition of that kind of thing.”
Johnson struck a cautious tone on the investigation of alleged crimes by military veterans during the Troubles, a contentious issue in Northern Ireland and the Conservative party.
The new power-sharing deal struck the right balance between supporting military veterans and giving victims of violence the truth, he said.
Stalled mechanisms backed by Northern Ireland’s parties in a 2014 agreement are due to be implemented as part of last week’s accord. This could set up a potential conflict with the Tory party’s recent election pledge that there would be no unfair prosecutions of armed forces personnel where there was no new evidence.
“I think that the parties here who have revived Stormont have done a very good job of finding a balance between giving people who are in search of the truth the confidence that they need but also giving people who served our country in the armed services the confidence and certainty that they need,” said Johnson. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2014/may/29/self-publishing-revolutionary-reactionary-authorpreneurialism | Books | 2014-05-29T10:23:10.000Z | Alan Skinner | Self-publishing is not revolutionary - it's reactionary | Self-publishing has always been possible and, indeed, for centuries was part and parcel of literary culture. Then it became expensive and, frankly, less prestigious, until digital books came along and made it affordable. Now price and success, too often the determinants of value, have made it respectable.
The idea of writers being able to bring their creations directly to readers is widely touted as a radical advance in authorial control and a revolution in the creative process. Its popularity has soared and its champions, such as the writer and founder of the Alliance of Independent Authors, Orna Ross, proclaim it as something "radical, really revolutionary within my world".. Self-publishing is the revolution du jour, the change that will liberate writers and democratise publishing.
Unfortunately, self-publishing is neither radical nor liberating. And, as revolutions go, it is rather short on revolutionaries. It is actually reactionary, a contracted version of the traditional publishing model in which companies, who produce for a wide range of tastes and preferences, are replaced by individual producers each catering to very narrow range.
Self-publishing is supposed to democratise publishing. For Nicholas Lovell, writing in the Bookseller, "publishers no longer have an ability to determine which books get published and which books don't." In other words, democratisation is nothing more than the expansion of the publishing process from the few to the many. But this both overestimates the barriers to traditional publication – the vetting and selection process may be deeply flawed, but every writer can submit a manuscript – and underestimates the constraints of the marketplace. It also fails to consider whether the democratisation of publishing produces a similar democratisation for the reader by making literary culture more open.
By definition, self-publishing is an individualistic pursuit in which each writer is both publisher and market adventurer, with every other writer a potential competitor and the reader reduced to the status of consumer. Publishing then becomes timid, fearing to be adventurous and revolutionary lest it betray the expectations of its market. This is a natural tendency in traditional publishing but it is one restrained by the voices of its authors who are free to put their work first and entrepreneurship a distant second. With authorship and entrepreneurship now equal partners, the new authorpreneurs have thrown off the dictatorship of the editor to replace it with the tyranny of the market.
You can see this thinking best in the proclamations of the industry that has risen to support these new businesspeople. Dana Lynn Smith defines readers as "people who buy the book to read … the most obvious category and it includes your primary audience (the 'ideal customer' that the book was specifically written for)". Or you can see it in the anger which greeted Will Self's confession that he doesn't "really write for readers".
When writers fear readers, who remains bold enough to push the boundaries?
The risks that are an inescapable part of an industry where every book is a gamble make traditional publishers very conservative. But they are far more liberal, far more radical than self-publishing in its current form. Cross-subsidies from commercial titles support poets, academics and writers of new and daring literary fiction who will never appear on bestseller lists. Such concerted action is impossible in a fragmented world where each writer pursues individual success.
Can a literary culture where writers are producers and readers are consumers be truly open? Only if your definition of an open society is one ruled by the market.
The individualism of the self-publishing authorpreneurs, is disturbingly close to Ayn Rand's Objectivism, in which the greatest goal is individual fulfilment. No wider context needs to be considered because these wider goals will take care of themselves if every individual pursues a personal objective without regard to anyone else. It is the philosophy of pure laissez-faire capitalism that rejects community and mutual responsibility.
If self-publishing is to be a radical and revolutionary force it will be forged by creative collectives, groups of committed writers and artists who inter-publish, contributing to the publication not just of their own work but of the work of the others in the group across diverse genres and literary forms. Collectives, such as Year Zero Writers and Pankhearst offer the best hope that self-published authors can produce innovative, challenging writing and ensure that all literary forms and genres are represented, for all readers. That would be a true democratisation of publishing. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/sep/17/battle-of-sexes-borg-vs-mcenroe-two-tennis-films-geoff-dyer | Film | 2017-09-17T08:00:35.000Z | Geoff Dyer | Game, set and spats… a grand slam of tennis movies | Tennis addicts can rest easy – in the sense of staying up all night to watch tennis. Somewhere in the world an important tournament is under way and on subscription TV. The less seriously committed are faced with the long inter-slam drought between the US and Australian Opens. Fortunately palliatives are at hand in the form of two movies, Battle of the Sexes and Borg vs McEnroe.
The first film is about the 1973 match between Billie Jean King and the self-proclaimed male chauvinist pig and former world No 1 Bobby Riggs; the second focuses on the 1980 Wimbledon final. They are linked by the way that in 2000 Donald Trump offered John McEnroe a million dollars to play either of the Williams sisters at one of his hotels. As McEnroe recounted in his 2002 autobiography Serious, the sisters’ claim that “they could beat ranked male players” prompted him to respond that “any respectable male player, be it a top college competitor, a senior player, or a professional, could beat them”. Trump stumped up the money but the Williamses “came to their senses and put out a statement that they didn’t want to play against ‘an old man’”.
John McEnroe: 'A knack for creating controversy where there is none'
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That was the end of that until this summer when McEnroe published a sequel, But Seriously – a book even well-disposed critics had trouble taking seriously – and, possibly as a controversy-provoking way to nudge it up the rankings, ventured the opinion that Serena would be ranked around 700 on the men’s tour. She volleyed back that he should respect her privacy – at about the time that she had appeared naked and pregnant on the cover of Vanity Fair. History has a way of repeating itself, first as farce and then as farce.
The difference is that the first time around, when 29-year-old King played the 55-year-old Riggs, it was precisely the farcical nature of the encounter that made it so serious. Riggs, as King understood, was a clown and a hustler, and the more ridiculous his antics the more demeaning it would be if she lost. Especially since he had already beaten Margaret Court who, exactly as predicted, wilted under the pressure of the occasion. So while Riggs did everything he could to publicise the forthcoming bout, King trained for it.
Since all of this – build-up, match and aftermath – was filmed, recut and retold in an excellent recent documentary, the question is whether there was any need to re-enact the story in a biopic. Perhaps the fact that there was no need freed the film-makers Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris to come up with a striking piece of cinema in a way that the similarly superfluous Selma never managed.
Emma Stone as Billie Jean King and Steve Carell as Bobby Riggs in Battle of the Sexes. Photograph: Fox/Kobal/Rex/Shutterstock
Emma Stone is wonderful as Billie Jean (so wonderful as to make one wonder: was she quite so charming in real life?) and Steve Carell’s Riggs is a far more nuanced – and tormented – character than the cartoon sexist he gleefully set himself up to be. As BJK realises, Riggs is both a colourful manifestation of and an energetic distraction from the blazered patriarchy at work behind the scenes. More subtly, camerawork and design do not just capture the colours and textures of the early 1970s – how can one not adore the sun-swept, traffic-less freeways of California? – but also a broader sense of historic convergence.
An altogether less dramatic moment in the vexed history of the sexes occurs in Rebecca West’s immense book about Yugoslavia, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon. The author is in a restaurant in Pristina in the 1930s, when a man and a woman enter, the woman carrying “the better part of a plough on her back”. The sight of “unrestricted masculinism” of this kind is “disgusting” to West, less because of the effect on women “who are always taught something by the work they do, but because of the nullification of the men”. In a hectic schedule of publicising matches, flogging tickets, looking pretty and playing tennis with each other – plus, in BJK’s case, having her first lesbian love affair – the rebellious women on the tour are seen having a high old time. With the exception of Billie Jean’s devoted dude of a husband – the most poignant scenes in the film show him taping ice to her aching knees – and the gay costumiers on the women’s nascent tour, the men remain imprisoned by what they unthinkingly thought they were preserving.
If anything the fact that the result was so clear-cut – Riggs got his ass royally kicked in straight sets – makes the waters seem less turbulent than they were. Contrast the well-orchestrated hoopla of the match in Houston with a debate on feminism in New York two years earlier, as preserved in the documentary Town Bloody Hall. Holding the fort in the name of… well, himself really, Norman Mailer struggles manfully to fend off a gang of marauding brainy women including Susan Sontag, Germaine Greer and Diana Trilling. It’s all just talk but the anarchic swirl and passion of the event make the Houston contest seem as decorous as a mixed-doubles match at Wimbledon. In Battle of the Sexes, Stone/King recalls how, as a little girl, she was excluded from a team photograph because she was wearing shorts. At that moment she decided to take up her racket-cudgel on behalf of womankind. This stand casts her as an infant Jeanne d’Arc, predestined for saintly and bespectacled greatness. That, I suppose, is part of the attraction of politically symbolic sporting events such as Jack Johnson v James J Jeffries or Jesse Owens v the Nazis in Berlin in 1936. They make everything simple, while life proves stubbornly resistant to resolution by knockout or tie-break.
Watch a trailer for Battle of the Sexes.
Still, better King v Riggs than Borg v McEnroe which seems entirely – and for a tennis film fatally – pointless. The outcome of the match is known in advance and nothing except that result is at stake – unless you buy into the idea that somehow McEnroe, “the kid from Queens”, as the lawyer’s son never tires of describing himself, was somehow trying to bring down the English ruling elite as symbolised by the lawns of SW19 and the umpires who were their myopic custodians. The film retains vestiges of interest, only if one attends to everything except its titular match-up.
Waiting to come on court for the final, Björn and John sit on a bench beneath the famous lines from Kipling: “If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster / And treat those two impostors just the same…” It’s as if the audience’s doubts have been projected on screen! The film is really a Best Impostor contest, but it’s impossible to treat the contestants in the same way. Sverrir Gudnason looks so like Borg it makes one conscious of how unlike McEnroe Shia LaBeouf looks. Method-wise, LaBeouf would seem to have had the advantage in that he has acted like a jerk in real life, and McEnroe’s inner life has been demonstrably and repeatedly expressed on court and off. With McEnroe forever acting up – contractually obliged, it seems, to reprise the role of his tantrum-prone younger self even on the senior circuit – LaBeouf is left with little to do except brood on how his hair looks more like Bob Dylan’s than Johnny Mac’s. Borg, meanwhile, remains a mystery.
LaBeouf is playing superbrat in a tennis flick, while Gudnason wanders around as if marooned in an Ingmar Bergman film
McEnroe/LaBeouf suspects that the reason his opponent sleeps in a hotel room with the AC turned up to arctic frigidity is not that he’s an ice-borg; he’s really a volcano about to erupt. We know this is true because of the scenes from Borg’s adolescence where he seems to be getting in character for the racket-smashing role of forever-young McEnroe/Dylan. His trainer persuades him to harness those tears of rage and express them solely through forehands and backhands.
Where, to rephrase Eric Liddell’s moving speech in Chariots of Fire, does the rage come from? Partly because he’s been told tennis is not for certain classes of person. More generally – and the film is necessarily vague on this score – from some non-specific Scandinavian malaise: an all-court rumble of Hamlet, Kierkegaard, Ibsen and Strindberg, barely held in check by a sweaty headband. (Or could it be caused by the headband?) So while LaBeouf is playing superbrat in a tennis flick, Gudnason wanders around as if marooned in an Ingmar Bergman film directed neither by Bergman nor his acolyte Woody Allen but by Janus Metz. “What’s going on in that head of yours?” people keep asking. No one knows and nothing in the script rivals the way the question was framed by the poet William Scammell when he wondered whether it was “chess against a breaking wave / or just some corny Abba tune”.
Which leaves us, as always, with the tennis. In this regard the critical heart of the matter was articulated years ago by my dad. I was watching a Woody Allen film on TV, a sequence in which Allen’s character plays squash. My dad had no idea who Allen was but after watching for a few minutes said, “The li’l un’s not up to much is he!” It’s as simple as that. Can the tennis players in these films play tennis? Yes they can. I assume that this is a product of technology whereby the heads of the actors can be grafted on to the bodies of their doubles. But the issue is not only whether they can play tennis well enough. They have also to be able to play oldly enough. Compared with today, tennis of the 1970s looks a leisurely, almost sub-aqua affair, but any difference in overall quality is also a technologically induced illusion. Only pole-vaulting has been as thoroughly reconfigured by advances in equipment as tennis.
Watch a trailer for Borg vs McEnroe.
Stone’s last big hit, La La Land, negotiated a similar problem. Can she and Ryan Gosling dance like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers? No they can’t. The solution is to let the camera do the dancing. In the battle to replicate the actual tennis, Battle of the Sexes is more effective than Borg vs McEnroe for exactly the opposite reason. Whereas in the latter the camera is down there on court, moving in close and scampering after the ball, the former opts for viewing the match as though on TV: a reminder that although as a tennis match it was pretty silly, it was the spectacle – seeing Riggs make a spectacle of himself in front of a television audience of 90 million – that mattered. Aesthetically it also takes us back to the 1970s when cameras were not able to immerse us in every-angle HD closeups of the shifting narrative increments of a match.
Ironies abound. The celebration of women’s tennis being taken seriously comes at a time when women’s tennis is in danger of becoming seriously boring, as endless players from eastern Europe and beyond – “all these new -ovas”, as Venus Williams wittily put it – thump the ball into the middle of the second week. There have been quite a few one-sided semis and finals in recent years but the close-fought conclusion to this year’s tournament at Indian Wells between Svetlana Kuznetsova and Elena Vesnina was a prolonged exercise in endurance – for anyone watching. The problem is not a lack of personalities; it is the surfeit of women whose games are all but indistinguishable from each other. Qualities traditionally identified as feminine – grace, delicacy and beauty – have become the exclusive preserve of the men’s game. (The dudes even cry more than the chicks!)
I say “preserve” because those qualities have long been endangered in the men’s game too. Watching John Isner, Kevin Anderson and Sam Querrey remains one of the less edifying sporting experiences available. We have become used to dads like Mike Agassi and Richard Williams pushing their kids to become players from infancy. The next move might well be to breed monstrously tall, big-servers in a laboratory. In spite of this, the men’s game is presently more pleasing to the eye than the women’s. This was not always the case. Mischa Zverev is lauded as a throwback to the serve-and-volley heyday of Wimbledon – but hey, that day often comprised serve minus volley. To go from Ivan Lendl plying his joyless trade to watching Steffi Graf play was like seeing the covers coming off after a rain delay had somehow assumed human form. And then – to cut a long story short – along came Roger Federer, who was blessed with power, subtlety and grace. David Foster Wallace famously described Federer as “Mozart and Metallica at the same time”.
Four decades after the Battle of the Sexes, the fight for equality goes on
Read more
Women’s matches these days often resemble a mashup between Metallica and a Metallica tribute act. Lacking equivalents of the unpredictable Gaël Monfils or the dreadlocked Dustin Brown, the women’s game remains deadlocked in the power phase. Let’s put it as simply as possible. Since the retirement of the glorious Justine Henin-Hardenne none of the top women play with a single-handed backhand. Without single-handed backhands the potential for beauty in tennis is severely cramped.
The final irony is that one emerges from Borg vs McEnroe fascinated not by the rivalry, but by the legendary tie-break after which, as Tim Adams memorably put it in his book On Being John McEnroe, Borg came out for the fifth set “as if nothing had happened”. That, as Adams writes, was one of the great moments in sport. But a great film could potentially be made about the nothing that did happen, after Borg retired at the precocious age of 26, after he turned his back on everything that gave his life meaning, or kept the lack of meaning at bay: a film, that is, about what happens to volcanoes after they opt for extinction. It could be so boring. It could be Bergmanesque.
Borg vs McEnroe is released on Friday; Battle of the Sexes is out on 24 Nov.
Geoff Dyer’s latest book, White Sands, is published by Canongate (£16.99). To order a copy for £15.19 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/us-news/2021/feb/12/josh-hawley-st-pauls-british-school | US news | 2021-02-12T07:00:36.000Z | Henry Dyer | Josh Hawley's schooldays: ‘He made popcorn to watch the Iraq invasion’ | Before Josh Hawley became known as a leader of the attempt to overturn the 2020 election in the US Congress, he was remembered by former students and staff at St Paul’s, the elite British school for boys where he spent a year teaching, as an aloof, rightwing political obsessive who had made himself popcorn to watch the US invasion of Iraq.
The Republican senator from Missouri has been the target of ire of millions of Americans after he became the first senator to say he would object to election results. Ultimately, 146 congressional Republicans joined the rightwing lawmaker in seeking to block votes from Pennsylvania and Arizona from being counted, an extraordinary move that was seen as stoking the flames of a pro-Trump mob who attacked the US Capitol.
Before the assault, Hawley was photographed walking past the crowd and raising his fist in salute to them.
While Hawley has painted himself as a man of the “American heartland”, and has expressed contempt for what he says is the US’s liberal “elite”, the graduate of Stanford and Yale Law School, who once clerked for the supreme court chief justice, John Roberts, spent a year in suburban London in 2002, at the top all-boys private school St Paul’s that dates back to 1509.
An examination of Hawley’s time there by the London-based magazine the Fence, found Hawley was not the first choice to serve as a “Colet fellow” at the prestigious private school, a role reserved for Ivy League graduates.
But Hawley persuaded the interview board with what some called his intellectual rigor and drive.
Hawley taught A-Level politics jointly with Rob Jones, a leftwing former policeman who was described fondly when he left in the school magazine as “able to create a fearsome reputation, but is also worshipped by his students. There cannot be many who have their own Facebook appreciation society.”
The teaching style of the pair, former pupils said, was combative, with it apparent that Jones was on the left and Hawley on the right. “Rob had him take some lessons, he would sit with the boys and throw grenades every so often,” said one.
Jack, a former student who is himself now a teacher, explained further: “Jones and Hawley would sit on opposite sides of the classroom. We’d get these photocopies of, you know, excerpts from Nietzsche or Marx or John Locke, for ideologies, given them in advance and told to highlight them. Then it was a debate, a discussion, about what conservatives think about society, is nationalism inherently aggressive, and so on and so on.
“Fairly quickly it was known … you know, Hawley, he’s the conservative one, he’s the rightwing guy. But then, as I say, he didn’t hide it in discussions. He was forthright about defending his views even at that stage.”
The ex-pupil added that Hawley was clearly highly intelligent. “I’m sad to see some of the things he’s saying now, the people he’s aligning with, and the simplistic, glib phrases he’s coming out with, but he’s a serious thinker and he was seriously impressive even back then. And everyone could see it. I think that’s why Jones was happy for him to take such a big load of the teaching, as it was very apparent that this was a very impressive young person,” he said.
Hawley, who left comments on pupil’s essays in green ink, “could be quite tough at some points”, according to Jack.
“It was a great incentive to work hard and try and do better and see, gosh, would I be capable of writing an essay that wouldn’t be scrawled all over or, you know, would at least get some positive feedback. So, yeah, that was really the first time at St Paul’s where I really loved the education. And I did very well in A-Level politics because I was so, what’s the word – these lessons were exhilarating. And that inspired me to keep going with politics, and he had a lot to do with that,” Jack said.
But not all of Hawley’s former pupils were as kind. “He ran my Oxbridge preparation classes. He’s useless, I didn’t get in,” remarked one graduate of Durham University.
The reading material set by the young American teacher spoke to his Christian faith, with the devout Hawley setting Paul’s letter to the Romans as Oxbridge reading. In politics, Hawley also went beyond the syllabus to teach John Rawls, Michael Sandel, John Locke, Thomas Paine and other classic works of studying American democracy.
More than anything, the prevailing impression left by Hawley on one pupil seems to be that of a politics wonk. “He was really, really into American political logistics. It was around the time of the 2004 election, or run-up to it, and he had his postal voting pack with him and was so proud and protective of it,” he said.
Such was his tidiness – or “creepily American” appearance – that the best nickname his pupils could devise was “The All-American Hero”.
“He looked like somebody who’s going to be president. If you imagined what a 22-year-old would look like before they became president, he was the figure. Can’t typecast better than that,” added one former charge.
But what did his colleagues make of him? In a now-deleted tweet, Mike Sacks, a former Colet fellow who arrived two years after Hawley, said that a teacher asked him: “You’re not a fascist like that Joshua Hawley, are you?”
Another described him as “too rightwing and Christian for my sensibilities”, but it seems Hawley did little to help himself in becoming friendly with the staff.
“He made a point to keep himself aloof. My take on that is that he had an attitude that he was better, and that the sort of mingling and socializing was just below him, and not something he’d engage in. There were lots of opportunities to spend time together, either in the staff room or at drinks down at the pub – and he doesn’t drink, or he didn’t drink, let me put it that way. He’d never once go to the pub. Not once,” the ex-colleague said.
Another former teacher, who says Hawley took an instant dislike to him, recalls an unfriendly Sunday morning encounter with Hawley at a bus stop, where he stayed wordless for 20 minutes as Hawley clutched a huge Bible full of colored ribbons to mark bits of scripture, off to an evangelical gathering.
With few social appearances, staff actually remember little of Hawley, though one remembered incident seems striking.
“The only anecdote I remember about him in the staff room is he made himself popcorn to watch the news coverage of the Iraq invasion. You know, shock and awe. […] Holding forth about how this is a good military move, and it’s a show of American strength. He was very hawkish,” a teacher recalled.
“The common room is, I think, a bit more liberal – he really felt they weren’t quite as aligned with some of his morals. This kind of came across as him making his mark – maybe he was hamming it up a bit to make his point. But it’s not like popcorn was usual in the staff room. We are, after all, in London – we have tea and coffee, not exactly popcorn. He was quite excited about that kind of military endeavor. That was a funny, bizarre kind of moment,” the teacher added.
Hawley’s connections to St Paul’s persisted after he left, attending a dinner celebrating the school’s 500th anniversary on 4 April 2009 at the Library of Congress in Washington DC and posing for a photograph with other former Colet fellows and the then High master, Dr Martin Stephen.
But the events of attack on the Capitol on 6 January have changed St Paul’s attitude to their former employee.
A spokesperson for the school said: “Like people the world over St Paul’s has been shocked by the scenes taking place in America and those resisting the delivery of the legitimate election process. Our records show Josh Hawley came over from the United States for 10 months as a postgraduate intern 18 years ago. We are relieved that democratic process is now prevailing in the US Capitol.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/askjack/2020/feb/20/how-do-i-get-my-name-to-the-top-of-googles-search-results | Technology | 2020-02-20T08:00:19.000Z | Jack Schofield | How do I get my name to the top of Google’s search results? Jack Schofield | I’m a researcher at a major university. Unfortunately, I happen to share my name and middle initial with an unrelated drug dealer who has been in and out of prison. My name is sufficiently rare that I’m worried that confusion might arise, because a cursory Google search tends to give prominence to negative news stories that feature him.
The standard advice online seems to be to open as many social media accounts as possible. I also have my own domain, but none of these has displaced the negative news stories in the search rankings. What should I do? Name withheld
How to get the top spot in Google’s search engine results has been a hot topic for years. It’s still vitally important to all types of business, to consultants and other professionals, bands and musicians, authors and journalists, politicians and many others. For those who can justify the fees, personal branding and “reputation management” companies do it for a living.
At this point, all the information you need is online somewhere. The problem is that it takes a significant amount of work, which may or may not be worth it.
In your case, I imagine that anybody likely to search for the name of a bright, young academic is not going to confuse you with a drug dealer almost twice your age. They already know that two or, usually, many more people have the same name. The people who could have real problems are the ones who share names and professions. Two journalists spring to mind: Duncan Campbell, a novelist and former Guardian crime reporter, and Duncan Campbell, an investigative reporter and television producer formerly on the staff of the New Statesman. Neither is likely to be confused with Duncan Campbell, the artist who won the Turner prize in 2014, or the Duncan Campbell from the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow, or numerous others.
However, the general advice is correct. You need to displace your namesake by producing content that Google’s search algorithms find more compelling than old newspaper crime reports. You could do this by becoming famous, which would generate vast numbers of links to your name. Failing that, you will have to generate as many links as you can through social media, and by writing popular articles, or blogging.
Personal branding
Sting, Cher, Madonna and others have successfully managed to cement themselves as mononymous household names. Photograph: BabiradPicture/REX/Shutterstock
It helps to have a distinctive name, so you are off to a good start. People with common names can use various techniques to distinguish themselves. These include varying their first name (Edward, Ed, Eddy, Eddie, Ted, Teddy, Ned, Neddy etc), adding or dropping a middle initial, or expanding and hyphenating their surnames. Some people have become known by their initials, including the American poet EE Cummings and the English author JRR Tolkien. Entertainers can invent stage names, which can be mononymous. Examples include Cher and Sting.
Under English law, you can change your surname to whatever you like, and for convenience, affirm it in a deed poll. This can make sense if your surname is problematic or you are anglicising a name. It would be extreme for your purposes.
However, the key point is to decide on a fixed nomenclature, adopt it, and stick to it. This could include using the Dr to which your PhD entitles you, and abbreviating your first name. You already get the top hit on Google for this search, so tell people to use it.
You should also write yourself an identifying statement. The younger Duncan Campbell, for example, uses “investigative journalist & computer forensics expert”, and this appears in his Twitter bio. Google search can use statements like this to disambiguate people who have the same name.
At the moment, your naming and labelling is inconsistent.
Once you have decided on a name and a catchy (if possible) description, you should update your website and Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media accounts so that they all send Google the same unique and distinctive message. The more you can incorporate your chosen nomenclature into your academic life, the better.
After that, it is mainly a question of repetition, repetition, repetition.
Own your domain name
Getting your own domain and site can provide a central place for broadcasting your name across the internet. Photograph: Lifestyle pictures / Alamy/Alamy
Google’s results are influenced by domain names so buying appropriate names is a good branding investment. Obviously, .com is the most powerful TLD (top-level domain), but most common names were snapped up ages ago. Alternatives include .co.uk, .org, .net, and .info.
Some country domains are popular, and .ac (Ascension Island) could appeal to academics. Radio and TV stations can buy .am (Armenia), .fm (Federated States of Micronesia), and .tv (Tuvalu) addresses. Technology companies have used .ai (Anguilla), .io (British Indian Ocean Territory), .ly (Libya), and .ws (Western Samoa). The .co (Colombia) and .me (Montenegro) domains have broad appeal. Some countries require a local presence, trademark or registered business address, but many people should be able to find a usable domain name somewhere.
Once you have a domain, you need to use it, and you have. But one page of static content is not going to hold Google’s interest for long. Ideally, you should have several pages. You could have a landing page that says what you do and why you care about it. You should have an “about yourname” page that links to your university page and social media accounts, and ideally, these should link back to your website. You could have a publications page that links to your academic papers, with précis, and so on.
Google’s founding idea was that you could decide a web page’s importance from the number of links to it, and from the quality of the websites doing the linking. A link from the Guardian or the BBC has a lot more “google juice” than a link from, say, Flickr or YouTube, but they all count.
Google Search tries to detect and punish techniques such as “keyword stuffing” and “link farming”, so you have to avoid anything that looks deceptive while also trying to reinforce your name and declaration. Links should be natural.
Ideally, you should update your website regularly, at least once a month. Google has a strong bias towards “freshness”. The more often you update your website, the more often Google’s spiders will index it, and the better you will score.
Reach out for validation
Medium is a popular light blogging platform. Photograph: Medium
Prof Brian Cox did not become a household name by publishing academic papers. You do not have to aim for that level of name recognition, but there are lots of things you can do to make your name more widely known. You are, after all, a recognised expert, and your field is more important to more people than particle physics.
Blogging became a simple and socially acceptable way to build a reputation online after Blogger was launched in 1999, and it became even more important after Google bought the company in 2003. If you cannot blog on your own website, you can blog at yourname.blogspot.com, while linking to your main site and social media accounts.
You can also post short stories about your research topics at Medium and LinkedIn, and possibly on a Facebook “fan page”, and promote them on Twitter. Aim at an audience that will never read your academic papers. If you are successful, your thoughts will be picked up by other publications. If you are not, it’s still worth doing. Your real target audience is Google.
It will take a few months, but you should be able to build up a coherent online presence that establishes your identity, your authority and your continuing activity. Those are the three things that will increase your reputation with Google’s search algorithms, and improve your visibility. You can’t make your namesake disappear, but you may yet be able to outrank him.
Have you got a question? Email it to [email protected] | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/oct/21/deborah-orr-obituary | Media | 2019-10-21T12:30:50.000Z | Maggie Brown | Deborah Orr obituary | The journalist Deborah Orr, who has died aged 57 after suffering from cancer, was a strikingly original character, and made an impression in whatever she did. From 1993 to 1998 she proved to be a gifted editor of the Guardian’s Weekend magazine, setting a serious tone and a high bar by eschewing trivia in favour of carefully chosen big reads, often on challenging subjects.
However, she made her most public mark as a columnist, one of the small tribe of trenchant writers with the panache to walk the high wire of tackling social, political and personal issues in an engaging manner, week after week, in her case for the next two decades.
The original suggestion came from Simon Kelner, the editor of the Independent. It followed a turbulent period when Orr had served as an unhappy literary editor of the Guardian and left the paper in the wake of the departure of her then husband, the journalist, author and media personality Will Self from its sister paper, the Observer. He was sacked after admitting taking heroin in the toilet of John Major’s plane during the 1997 general election campaign, her plea that he be allowed to resign notwithstanding.
Orr had a loyal following as a columnist at the Independent (1999-2009), then back at the Guardian until its reshaping as a tabloid in 2018, and finally at the i newspaper. Fans appreciated her muscular style and voice. As she led them through an argument to her conclusions, the workings of her mind were visible, and she was not polemical.
She praised the benefits of inner-city life over the suburbs, despite her neighbour being stabbed to death. She was early on to the fact that minor crime was not being checked by policing, resulting in a permissive atmosphere and the increase in knife crime. Brexit was “like deciding you are going to cure cancer by giving up membership of your golf club”, she opined.
She had an intensity that less assured people and even editors found intimidating: some were fearful of taking her calls. With long hair, a taste for thigh-high brown boots, leather miniskirts, Goth-style apparel or long swishy skirts, she had a Dorothy Parker manner, sardonically witty and somewhat haughty. But she certainly had a soft side, and never sought the media profile bestowed on her husband by television and radio.
They married in 1997: Orr became stepmother to Self’s children, Alexis and Madeleine, and they went on to have two sons. For a time the couple were glamorous fringe bohemians of the Groucho Club set and put on lavish parties. Orr held an annual Christmas “no men allowed” party for female friends at their house in Stockwell, south London. This building became a news story in itself after a large chunk of masonry fell from its facade to the ground.
She created a beautiful garden, and developed a sympathetic ear to the troubles of others. When her divorce was finalised last year she bought a house in Brighton.
In 2017, in a Guardian column, she revealed her diagnosis of complex post-traumatic stress disorder, rooted in a working-class childhood in her birthplace of Motherwell, near Glasgow, as the daughter of Win (Winifred, nee Avis) and her husband, John Orr, a factory worker. The condition left her uncertain of dates, barely able to remember events of the past decade. Her bravado was a camouflage for insecurity.
This self-discovery led to a memoir, Motherwell: A Girlhood, to be published in January: writing it took over from column writing. It charted the influence of her mother, who railed against Deborah going to university. Win’s life had been determined by men. She wanted the same for her clever daughter, who duly went her own way after attending a local comprehensive school, Garrion academy, Wishaw, and collecting an MA (1983) from St Andrews University, where she had studied English.
Her route into journalism came through City Limits, a co-operatively run listings magazine in London, where she became deputy editor (1988-90), and as film critic for the New Statesman. From there she was invited to join the Guardian as an arts subeditor by Alan Rusbridger, who was then its features editor. She moved to Weekend magazine and in 1993 succeeded Roger Alton as editor. There she made her name wooing writers including Gordon Burn and Andrew O’Hagan. Alexander Chancellor and Julie Burchill were signed up as columnists.
Orr’s Weekend was ambitious, providing essential grit in the Guardian oyster. In 1995 she oversaw a redesign that brought a National Colour Supplement of the Year award, and in 1996 scored a newspaper first by giving away an individually numbered print of an original work by Damien Hirst to every reader.
She was disappointed when her tenure as editor of Weekend came to an end. “I was absolutely heartbroken in a spectacularly unprofessional weeping wailing way,” she said. She then became, for a short period, the Guardian’s literary editor.
Orr the columnist adapted readily to social media, communicating frankly about bitter disputes as her marriage to Self crumbled.
Following a diagnosis of late stage four cancer this summer, a decade after she was treated for breast cancer, she tweeted about her condition, from severe pain to insomnia in the small hours to her advice about what not to say to cancer patients, especially: “Is there anything I can do?”
Her smartness, vivid personality, serious edge, willingness to tell it as it is and bravery shone out to the end.
She is survived by her sons, Ivan and Luther.
Deborah Jane Orr, journalist, born 23 September 1962; died 19 October 2019 | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/mar/29/your-talent-will-open-doors-club-qatar-african-players-dream-mazrouah-fc | Football | 2023-03-29T20:26:34.000Z | Nick Ames | ‘Your talent will open doors’: the club in Qatar giving African players reason to dream | “M
aintain your dignity, maintain your confidence, maintain your belief.” Robert Otiato has been training his Mazrouah FC players for the last two hours and, before everyone heads into the night, it is time for some final words. They have run themselves into the hard, pebbly ground but Otiato has a habit of making them feel 10 feet tall and every face in a tight-knit circle is fixed in his direction. “Your talent will open doors for you,” he tells them. “There is a vision. There is a future.”
It has not always been easy to see one here, in a bleak and dusty expanse north-west of Doha. Life can be harsh for the workers whose accommodation sits 100 yards behind the pitch, and to which most of Otiato’s team return after the session. It feels a long way from their homes in different parts of Africa; they are in Qatar to earn some money but, in their limited downtime, there are few ways to occupy body and mind.
In January last year Otiato, a 28-year-old Kenyan with eloquent persuasive power, decided to do something about it. He arrived in Qatar almost two years ago, thinking he would be a waiter but instead being employed to load and unload trucks. In his homeland he was a successful goalkeeper for lower-league teams and coached an amateur side, but moving abroad made more economic sense than staying. He noticed the community had no organised outlet for those who wanted to play football. He also realised that he was surrounded by talented, hungry young players who still held hopes of progressing in the sport but had been offered little direction.
Mazrouah, named after the area, was born. Today a squad of up to 30 trains six evenings a week; sometimes work intrudes but several players have been successful in persuading employers to accommodate their football when devising rotas. At the start Otiato had to clear rocks from the area to create a relatively safe playing space; there were also disputes with south Asian neighbours who used it for cricket. Now both parties have made room to play side by side and Mazrouah feel they have established a springboard for rapid progress.
Mazrouah players take part in a training session. Photograph: Mohamed Farag/The Guardian
“We’re thinking about how we’re going to grow beyond this place,” Otiato says. “This is just the start of it.” Last year the club began playing friendlies against other migrant teams in Doha, gradually increasing the quality of opposition and holding their own. They entered two tournaments and in the second, the well-organised Barwa Champions League, reached the quarter-finals.
Training is serious and impressively structured: Otiato, who says he studies the likes of Jürgen Klopp and Mikel Arteta, sets out cones and oversees a variety of drills. Then the team play an in-house game and the standard, considering the inhospitable location, is high. The keepers can dive fearlessly because carpet has been sourced to cover their goalmouths.
Players contribute 50 riyals (£11) a month towards Mazrouah’s operation. The sum funds training materials, travel to away games and incentives such as trophies for individual excellence; it has also brought them their own kit, designed and printed via the friend of a player in Kenya. But the club is young and the fee to join Qatar’s best amateur setup, the Supreme Committee-run Community League, doubled this season to 4,000 riyals (£880). That was prohibitive so they are looking for a sponsor to help them participate and, in addition, find better facilities.
Each of Otiato’s crew has a story. Wycliffe, one of his assistant coaches, was a leading referee in Kenya and in 2021 was named among the top three officials in its Super League. Now he works as a security guard at a resort in Doha. “I’ve got a family and couldn’t earn enough in Kenya,” he says. “But I love refereeing, it’s what I do best. If you can do it in Africa, you can do it anywhere. It’s my dream to referee at a World Cup and I’m always optimistic, I pray the chance will come.”
Mazrouah FC captain Omar (left), player Hamy (centre) and assistant coach Wycliffe. Photograph: Mohamed Farag/The Guardian
Mazrouah’s captain is Omar, a rangy midfielder with commanding presence on the ball. He arrived in Qatar after accepting a job offer cleaning at a golf club but his real motivation was to develop a football career that started in Kenya’s second tier. It was a setback to learn that, being clubless, he could only attempt to sign for a senior Qatari side once he had lived in the country for four years.
Somebody purporting to be an agent offered to represent him but it did not feel right; he bobbed between other amateur teams for more than a year until being enticed to Mazrouah soon after their creation and winning a vote to lead the side. “I like bringing people together and think leadership is my thing,” he says. “I have a plan and I know one day I’ll be a professional player.”
Hamy, a 20-year-old schemer who played for two clubs in Uganda, decided to seek work in Qatar because he felt inspired by the World Cup. He is a site officer at one of the gleaming skyscrapers being erected in Lusail, where the final was held, but prays to get his big footballing break. Daniel, a Ghanaian who works in security at a hotel, was an attacking right-back in his home country’s second division and hopes his ability will catch somebody’s attention.
Mazrouah players train with carpets in the goalmouths to protect diving goalkeepers. Photograph: Mohamed Farag/The Guardian
The same goes for the Zambians, Gambians and other nationalities who make up Mazrouah’s squad. But few eyes wander to an outpost like this and it is a gargantuan challenge, for young men who have arrived without professional guidance or experience in a leading academy, to make their fortunes this way. Otiato believes he is sitting on a well of untapped talent and is intent on giving it a platform. “We have players here who are capable of bigger things,” he says. “My aim is to lead this team from Africa, to Qatar, to beyond.”
There are two other strands to his mission. He knows the importance of football when daily existence is so difficult. “Some of these guys come from very difficult backgrounds in Africa,” he says. “And in Qatar there is a lot of pressure: the living conditions are not great in some cases. But we don’t complain. I tell them this is a family and we are here to come together, fight and support each other.” He recounts the story of a player who required surgery for an industrial injury and was ready to leave Qatar, but opted to stay because of the connection he feels to Mazrouah.
Otiato also wants Mazrouah to reach a financial position whereby they can regularly support people in their home countries. He wants to assist local teams and also fund education for those who need it, so that they can earn the qualifications that might help them work abroad. They have started by donating to two individuals in Kenya and Uganda but want to scale their assistance up: the point is to gaze forwards while taking care of their roots.
Individually and collectively, there are ambitions here that give life fresh dimensions in an otherwise sterile situation. Otiato and his friends have created something from nothing in a place where none of them could ever have expected to pitch up. “These boys really love each other, I can tell you that,” he says. “When they come here, they know how much they are appreciated.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/food/2022/nov/12/roast-dinner-leftovers-recipes-vegetable-fritters-chicken-soup-dumplings-roast-vegetable-sausage-egg-bake-ottolenghi | Food | 2022-11-12T10:00:38.000Z | Yotam Ottolenghi | Yotam Ottolenghi’s recipes for roast dinner leftovers | There’s only one thing better than a roast chicken lunch, and that’s what you can make with the leftovers. The pressure is off, the flavours often improve with time and whatever you create feels like alchemy, having made something out of what could well have been nothing. It’s not just the leftover meat and veg, either: there is also the cheese rind you don’t throw away, that bunch of tired-looking herbs and the spices that need using up …
Kreplach dumplings in mum’s chicken soup
Kreplach is the Yiddish word for dumpling, and they’re often stuffed with meat or cheese; sometimes, as here, they’re served in chicken broth. Everyone has their own favourite chicken soup, and this one is inspired by Roma Felstein, my colleague Jake’s mother. It’s soup for the soul.
Prep 15 min
Cook 1 hr 35 min
Serves 4 as a main
For the broth
500g cooked chicken carcass (ie, from a medium-large bird)
1 leek (200g), trimmed and roughly chopped
2 celery sticks (180g), trimmed and roughly chopped
2 bay leaves
¼ tsp peppercorns
¼ tsp whole allspice
3 carrots (260g), trimmed and roughly chopped
25g piece parmesan rind
1 garlic bulb, cut in half horizontally
Fine sea salt and black pepper
1 tbsp picked dill leaves, to finish
For the kreplach
1 onion (180g), peeled and thinly sliced
1 tbsp olive oil
200g cooked chicken meat, finely shredded
25g parmesan, finely grated
1 tsp white-wine vinegar
1 tbsp dill, roughly chopped
200g kimchi, excess liquid squeezed out and discarded, then shredded (120g)
1 egg, beaten
30 8½cm x 8½cm fresh wonton pastry sheets
Put all the ingredients for the broth except the seasoning and dill into a large pot, cover with 1.8 litres of cold water, then bring up to a simmer on a medium-high heat. Turn down the heat to low and simmer gently, stirring occasionally, for an hour and a half; don’t let the broth boil or it may turn cloudy. Take off the heat, rest for 10 minutes, then pass through a sieve into a medium saucepan (you should have about a litre of broth) and stir in a quarter-teaspoon of salt.
Meanwhile, start on the kreplach stuffing. Put the onion in a small saucepan with the oil and a quarter-teaspoon of salt, set it over a medium heat and cook, stirring frequently, for 15 minutes, until brown and jammy. Take off the heat and tip into a large bowl with the chicken, parmesan, vinegar, dill, kimchi, egg, a quarter-teaspoon of salt and a good grind of pepper, then mix well to combine.
Now for the kreplach. Take one wonton wrapper and put a teaspoon and a half of the stuffing mix in the centre. Wipe around the edges of the pastry with water, then fold the wrapper in half to make a triangle. Pinch all around the edges, to seal. With the longest side of the pastry triangle facing you, brush the left and right-hand corners with water, then bring them together to meet in the middle, pinching to seal – you should be left with something that resembles a tortellini. Repeat with the remaining wonton wrappers and stuffing.
Put the broth pot on a medium heat and bring back to steaming. At the same time, bring a large pan of lightly salted water to a boil. In two batches, blanch the kreplach in the water for three minutes, drain them well, then divide between four large bowls. Pour the hot broth over the top, sprinkle over the dill and serve.
Roast vegetable and egg bake with paprika sausages
Cracking stuff: Yotam Ottolenghi’s roasted vegetable and egg bake with paprika sausages.
What’s better than roast dinner for (a late!) breakfast? Depends on the hangover, I suppose, though this bubble and squeak-inspired dish will definitely hit the spot. I’ve included instructions on making mashed potato, but if you have some in your leftovers, use that instead.
Prep 20 min
Cook 1 hr
Serves 4
500g maris piper potatoes
Fine sea salt
50ml double cream
75g unsalted butter
500g leftover roast vegetables – I used potatoes, carrots, parsnips and cabbage
210g pork sausages (ie, about 3), casings removed
½ tsp sweet smoked paprika
8 small-medium eggs (large eggs will be too big and make the dish spill over)
20g coriander leaves and stalks, finely chopped
1-2 spring onions, trimmed and finely chopped (25g)
1 small garlic clove, peeled and crushed
1 lemon – zest finely grated, to get 1 tsp, then juiced, to get 2 tsp
1 tsp cumin seeds, toasted, then coarsely crushed in a mortar
10g parmesan, finely grated, to finish
First, make the mash (if you’re using leftovers, you’ll need about 500g ). Put the potatoes in a small saucepan, add enough water to cover them by about 3cm, then season with two teaspoons of salt. Gently bring to a boil, then simmer for about 20 minutes, until cooked through.
Drain the potatoes into a colander, put the pan back on the heat and add the double cream and 40g butter. Pass the potatoes through a potato ricer directly into the pan, and use a spatula to mix in the butter and cream, making sure not to overwork the mash. Take off the heat and set aside. Once the mash has cooled a little, chop all the leftover roast vegetables into roughly 5cm pieces, then stir these into the mashed potato pan.
Put the sausagemeat and smoked paprika into a 26cm, shallow, cast-iron saucepan for which you have a lid, then cook on a medium heat, stirring to break up the meat, until it’s browned all over. Transfer to a small bowl and set aside.
Wipe clean the sausage pan, put it on a high heat, add 25g butter and, when that’s melted, spoon in the mash and roast vegetable mixture and spread it evenly over the base of the pan. Leave to cook for five minutes, until the edges are starting to turn golden brown.
Put a plate that is larger in diameter than the pan upside down on top and, with a heatproof cloth in each hand, put one hand under the pan and the other on the bottom of the plate. In one swift movement, turn the pan upside down to invert the potato mixture on to the plate. Carefully slide the potato mixture browned side up back into the pan and return it to a medium heat.
Make eight large wells in the potato mixture. Divide the remaining 10g butter between the eight wells and, once it’s melted and bubbling, crack an egg into each and leave to cook for five minutes. Cover the pan and cook for another six minutes, by which point the eggs should be cooked. Take off the heat and leave to cool slightly. Meanwhile, in a small bowl, combine the coriander, spring onion, garlic, lemon juice and zest, cumin and an eighth of a teaspoon of salt.
Spoon the coriander dressing and the sausagemeat mixture over the egg and potato combo, scatter over the finely grated parmesan and serve straight from the pan.
Vegetable fritters with tamarind yoghurt
A better batter: Yotam Ottolenghi’s vegetable fritters with tamarind yoghurt.
These fritters are very versatile, so add any cooked vegetables and herbs that you have to hand to the batter base.
Prep 20 min
Cook 35 min
Makes 10
For the batter
120g plain flour
4 eggs
Flaked sea salt and black pepper
300g leftover roast vegetables, roughly chopped
4 spring onions (80g), trimmed and cut into fine rounds
30g coriander, finely chopped, plus 1 tbsp leaves extra, to serve
6 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
30g piece fresh ginger, peeled and roughly grated
2 red chillies (20g), finely chopped (remove and discard the pith and seeds if you like less heat)
2 tsp caraway seeds, toasted and roughly crushed in a mortar
2½ tsp coriander seeds, toasted and roughly crushed in a mortar
150ml sunflower oil, for frying
For the tamarind yoghurt
220g Greek yoghurt
60ml tamarind paste
30ml maple syrup
Flaked sea salt and black pepper
First, make the batter. Put the flour and eggs in a large bowl with a teaspoon and a half of flaked salt and a good grind of pepper, then mix to a smooth batter. Stir in all the remaining batter ingredients bar the oil, until they’re all completely covered in sticky batter.
Pour the oil into a medium frying pan on a medium heat and, once it’s hot, drop in 70g spoonfuls of the batter mix and cook in batches for three or four minutes on each side, until golden all over; use a spatula to flatten the fritter a little when you turn it over. Transfer to a plate lined with kitchen paper and keep warm while you repeat until all the batter has been used up.
Meanwhile, mix the yoghurt in a small bowl with a quarter-teaspoon of salt. In a second small bowl, mix the tamarind paste and maple syrup, then swirl this into the yoghurt.
Arrange the fritters on a platter, scatter the coriander leaves and a quarter-teaspoon of salt on top and serve warm with the yoghurt for dipping alongside. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/sep/03/brew-period-craft-beer-labels-works-of-art | Food | 2017-09-03T14:00:07.000Z | Tony Naylor | Brew period: the craft beer labels that are works of art | With its barrel-aged stouts and gooseberry saisons, craft beer has transformed British beer. But that revolution has not solely been about flavour. It has been aesthetic, too. Beer cans are now a canvas for dazzling, cutting-edge design, and this golden age for beer art is celebrated in blogs-cum-books such as ohbeautifulbeer.com, and even at exhibitions.
This makeover of pump clips, bottle labels and packaging has been pivotal to craft’s appeal, says the beer writer and consultant Matthew Curtis: “Craft brewers needed an updated image to match the modern flavours in their beers. Breaking with traditional brewing imagery was essential.”
For Becky Palfery, the co-owner of the Leeds bookshop Colours May Vary – which in May held a beer art exhibition, Pumped – that marketing necessity has facilitated the rise of branding that can be considered art. “We wanted to see if, removed from the bottle and put in a frame, the artwork would stand alone,” she says. The beautiful, often logo-free bottles created by the revered Karl Grandin for the Swedish brewery Omnipollo, she insists, have the “aura” of artworks.
That is certainly how Textbook Studio would like its work with the Manchester brewery Cloudwater to be regarded – as art that, although shown on cans, would work in a gallery. The Salford design agency commissions and curates original art (about 130 pieces annually), which it then works into labelling for Cloudwater’s seasonal beers. It is a serious endeavour, as the notes for the current campaign explain: “Mariel Osborn worked with tactile fabrics and materials with a feminine aesthetic to create site-specific responses to the Cloudwater brewery.”
A Cloudwater design by John Powell-Jones
Last year, Anglia Ruskin University’s pubLAB research centre found that snazzy label designs were more important than shelf-space in catching consumers’ eyes. That may explain why craft has embraced such bold packaging. In a crowded marketplace, craft breweries want to stand out – particularly online. “A beautiful can goes a long way,” says Textbook’s Chris Shearston. “A lot of US bloggers get the cans, photograph them and it becomes part of the experience. People do collect them.”
The radical, tangential and aesthetically purist way in which many craft breweries approach branding has confounded big breweries. Larger businesses design product packaging to strict “brand guidelines” for specific demographics, whereas, initially, UK craft beer had no defined audience or marketing budget. It just made it up on the hoof, often differentiating itself not with the obvious signifiers of authenticity (retro printing styles, images of hops), but with wild, abstract designs that utilise everything from voguish hand-drawn illustration to landscape photography. When established breweries attempt to tap into this market (see the generic hipster branding for Beardo from the north-west brewery Robinsons), they often look, says Curtis, “Like your weird uncle trying to dance to Taylor Swift at a wedding.”
“The big guys are fascinated by it to the point of confusion,” says Nick Dwyer, the creative director at Beavertown in north London, where he executes all aspects of the brewery’s trashy, B-movie aesthetic. Dwyer talks of his illustrations building trust and intimacy with an audience of a similar age (he is 27) through a shared visual language of graphic novels, old Star Wars comics and cult movies: “This generation is not ashamed of nostalgia.”
A Partizan Brewing design by Alec Doherty
Over at Partizan Brewing in south London, label artist Alec Doherty wasn’t “thinking about being distinctive. But do your own thing and you will be.” His work (a fusion of Soviet, modern European design and 1960s US counterculture influences) might reference a beer’s ingredients or its style, but obliquely (eg a wise old man to represent the herb sage). Doherty sees himself as cultivating a likeminded audience who might decode his artwork in the way rock fans once scrutinised album sleeves. Beer, he says, encourages such “nerdiness”. “We wanted to add to the experience in a visual sense. You might taste something unusual, look at the label and it would have these reference points.”
“If a product makes you feel sophisticated, you’ll keep buying it,” says Palfery. “In a way, it’s a clever strategy.” But, says Design Week editor Tom Banks, there must be an essential truth to such marketing: “Craft breweries see themselves as anti-establishment agitators, and people are buying into that. I don’t think that branding is disingenuous, and if the drinks weren’t nice they wouldn’t be selling.”
Naturally, a hardcore of drinkers regard any sharp design as suspect – a gimmick to shift substandard beer. But craft is a flavour-focused scene. A cool label may get a beer noticed, but if it is a lacklustre liquid, interest will wane. Conversely, says Curtis, an “awful” label (“It even uses the dreaded Comic Sans”) has not stopped Russian River’s Pliny the Elder from becoming one of the world’s most sought-after IPAs.
Nor is every new brewery compelled to spend big on design. The Kernel’s vintage labelling (black type on brown wrapping paper) is simple, instantly recognisable and conceptually fitting for a brewery obsessed with historic beer recipes. In Yorkshire, Bad Seed brewery’s inexpensive branding – a DIY effort based on the swing tags homebrewers use to identify bottles – works for a brewery pushing a handcrafted ethos. “It’s unique and comes from our story,” says co-owner Chris Waplington. “You need something eye-catching but it doesn’t need to be perfect. An honest reflection of you is more important.”
“There are a lot of old farts out there who don’t like change and complain about anything,” says Doherty. “Essentially, the label is inconsequential.” Except that this new wave of design is not entirely frivolous. Rewind to 2007 and real ale packaging was, as Palfery recalls, “ludicrous”. Its lingua franca of craggy moors, steam trains, adolescent fantasy imagery and lazy sexism (blonde pinups on blonde ales etc) defined good beer as a middle-aged, male pursuit. In contrast, craft beer’s aesthetic is asexual, inclusive, urban. “With skeletons and aliens you don’t have to think about gender, race, age,” says Dwyer. “It is what it is.”
Craft beer may look cool, but that stylistic shift is cultural, too. Beer is now in a far more progressive place.
The masters of modern beer art
A Mikkeller design by Keith Store
Mikkeller – Keith Shore
As chosen by label artist Alec Doherty: “The master. It’s personal, unique and he appears not to care about people’s opinions or what a label should “do” – as an artist I really respect him.”
Omnipollo – Karl Grandin
Becky Palfery, Colours May Vary: “Standalone work. You’d wear it on a T-shirt, buy it as a print.”
Magic Rock – Rich Norgate
Nick Dwyer, Beavertown: “Distinctive and detailed. Close up, there is so much to see in his circus-based ’scapes of abstract shapes and forms.”
Other Half – Small Stuff
Chris Shearston, Textbook Studios: “They have a lovely bold logo that is hidden when the artwork needs to shine. Bold colours and graphic shapes framed against silver really zing.”
To Øl – Kasper Ledet
Chris Shearston: “Pure art; each bottle feels like a canvas with a strong concept behind it. Ledet uses multiple mediums and processes that are always a puzzle.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/oct/15/bristol-algorithm-assess-citizens-risk-harm-guide-frontline-staff | UK news | 2019-10-15T11:30:09.000Z | Robert Booth | How Bristol assesses citizens' risk of harm – using an algorithm | Day and night, an IBM computer algorithm whirrs through reams of data about the lives of 170,000 citizens of Bristol. The city council’s servers teem with information from the police, NHS, Department for Work and Pensions and the local authority about these individuals’ work, alcohol, drug and mental health problems, crime, antisocial behaviour, school absences, teenage pregnancies and domestic abuse.
Almost a quarter of the population of the West Country’s biggest city is processed by the algorithm, which gives these people scores out of 100 to show the likelihood of them behaving antisocially, abusing children or going missing, among other things. The system has even predicted which of the city’s 11- to 12-year-olds seem destined for a life as a Neet – not in employment, education or training – by analysing the characteristics people currently in that position showed at that age.
Citizens do not automatically have access to the results from the integrated analytics hub but can request them under data protection laws. The council, however, is using them to guide the actions of frontline staff.
One in three councils using algorithms to make welfare decisions
Read more
Often, the algorithm tells these workers what they already know, but its insights have already helped inform decisions to deploy £800,000 to fund more social workers and family support workers in parts of the poorer, socially deprived south of the city, where risk factors such as school exclusions, domestic violence and crime indicated emerging demand.
The project is part of a trend among cash-strapped local authorities to embrace algorithmic technology to analyse their citizens. It holds out the hope of reducing fraud or preventing costly social problems, but the systems are often opaque. Private companies are pouring into the market, but there have been problems. North Tyneside council recently ended a contract after an algorithm identified the wrong people as high-risk claimants, leading to their benefits being wrongly delayed.
Bristol has decided to be open about its system, which has largely been developed in-house. Citizen scoring is underpinned by analysis of the circumstances of people who have gone through problems before. For example, the algorithm determines the likelihood of a child being sexually exploited through analysis of 80 different risk factors from the records of people who were previously abused. Going missing more than once is the most reliable predictor, but data about domestic violence, gang membership, school discipline and truancy are also fed into the algorithm.
In seconds, the system can paint a picture of risk for an individual that would take social workers years of local knowledge to build up. New data arrives around the clock and when it creates a concerning pattern, the system can automatically email an individual’s social workers or family support workers and urge them to review their plans. Feedback from frontline officers on which risk factors are most germane is used to then “tune” the algorithm to improve its accuracy.
Gary Davies, the head of early intervention and targeted services for children and families, said: “It is not replacing professional judgment, it is not making any decisions on its own. What it does is give us information that has been sunk in organisations’ memories.”
A recent effectiveness check examined the sexual exploitation of five young people. It found that prior to them being victimised last year, the algorithm had placed three of them in the top 100 of young people in Bristol who were likely to become victims; a fourth was between 100th and 200th. This was out of more than 7,000 people. The fifth would have been high up as well if a piece of data about them had not become disconnected.
This raises serious questions. If an algorithm predicts harm, does that place the council under a legal and moral obligation to prevent it? Should the council allow the algorithm to tune itself to account for when its predictions were right or wrong – in other words, to use machine learning to potentially improve its accuracy? This does not currently happen, but might give the machine greater influence over the question of who needs the council’s help most. If the algorithm is effective, should it automatically mandate that workers take action, rather than simply tipping them off about possible concerns?
For now, Davies, a former chief superintendent with Avon and Somerset police, is keen to retain the primacy of social workers, health visitors and school welfare officers, who spend time in schools and on citizens’ doorsteps. He believes people might resist the algorithm being allowed to develop machine learning.
“It is hard to know if it goes in that direction,” he said. “Public opinion could go against it.”
But the neatness with which the system categorises families and citizens with scores and rankings is likely to prove alluring to a resource-strapped public sector. At a click, officials in Bristol can download an individual’s digital “vulnerability profile” including percentage scores denoting the likelihood of a range of other harms. The risk of bad outcomes for whole families can be displayed as a single line graph showing change in risk over time.
It is a simplistic snapshot of the complexity of human life. Bristol has acknowledged misinterpretation of scores is a risk, particularly when it comes to child exploitation, and it has identified hacking of information or even misuse by those with authorised access as dangers.
“There is definitely a need to be mature in your thinking about what this tells you,” Davies said. “There is a benefit to be gained in allowing people with the right intentions to use modern technology to assess risk and vulnerability, and allocate resources to those that need it most. We have to stimulate a conversation with the public to get their consent.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/10/candidates-polling-third-urged-to-step-aside-in-key-marginals | Politics | 2019-12-10T19:00:16.000Z | Peter Walker | Candidates polling third urged to step aside in key marginals | A tactical voting campaign has made a last-ditch appeal for Labour and Lib Dem candidates polling third in a series of marginal seats to step aside so as to improve the chances of the other party defeating the Conservatives.
Vote for a Final Say, which is seeking to ensure a second Brexit referendum by preventing a Conservative majority, has compiled a list of 20 marginal seats in England and Wales where, it says, votes for the third-placed party could result in the Tory candidate winning.
Based on constituency-by-constituency projections taken from a major YouGov poll, as well as other surveys, the group recommends five Labour and 15 Liberal Democrats formally recommend their supporters vote for the other party.
While the Lib Dems, Plaid Cymru and Greens have completely stepped aside for each other in more than 60 seats under the remain alliance banner, Labour has declined to take part in any formal pacts.
In place of this, a number of organisations have attempted to gauge which of Labour and the Lib Dems have a better chance of defeating the Conservatives in marginal seats, for example with an app developed by Vote for a Final Say.
The group has highlighted the situation in the Stockton South seat, taken by Labour’s Paul Williams from the Conservatives in 2017 by just 888 votes. Polling shows Williams, on 43% support, is three percentage points behind the Conservatives, but that the Lib Dems are on 5%.
Q&A
What is ‘tactical voting’?
Show
“If I were re-elected I would fight for a fairer voting system that makes every vote count, so that this type of compromise would never have to happen again,” he said in a statement released via Vote for a Final Say.
With many constituencies set to be very tight in Thursday’s election, tactical voting could play a crucial role in determining the final number of Conservative seats, amid signs a number of voters could lend their support to other parties.
A survey released last week by the Electoral Reform Society, which campaigns for a proportional voting system, said 30% of voters believed they could vote tactically, significantly up on the figures earlier in the campaign.
Q&A
What is a ‘marginal’ seat?
Show
Some candidates have stood down without the backing of their party. Tim Walker, the Lib Dem candidate in Canterbury, where Labour’s Rosie Duffield is defending a tiny majority, dropped out last month – but was replaced by his party.
Walker said: “I beg other Lib Dem and Labour candidates in identical situations to my own to now look to their consciences and abandon their disreputable campaigns. I know of dozens who know deep down what they’re doing is wrong.”
Seats where the party is urging Labour to stand down include Cheadle, Winchester, South Cambridgeshire and St Albans. It wants the Lib Dems to step aside in places including Chingford and Woodford Green- the seat held by former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith – Sedgefield, Eltham and Croydon Central. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/20/swiss-guard-veteran-gay-network-vatican-pope-elmar-mader-homosexual | World news | 2014-01-20T17:55:07.000Z | Lizzy Davies | Swiss Guard veteran claims existence of 'gay network' at the Vatican | A former commander of the Swiss Guard, the small force of men whose job it is to protect the pope, has said there is "a network of homosexuals" within the Vatican, the latest in a series of claims about gay priests working at the heart of the Roman Catholic church.
Elmar Mäder, who was commandant of the Guard from 2002 until 2008, said his time at the heart of the Vatican had given him an insight into certain aspects of life there. "I cannot refute the claim that there is a network of homosexuals. My experiences would indicate the existence of such a thing," he told the Swiss newspaper Schweiz am Sonntag.
Famed for their striking uniforms of blue, red and orange, recruits to the Guard swear to protect the pope and his successors with their lives.
Mäder, 50, from the canton of St Gallen, refused to comment on speculation that he had warned guardsmen about the behaviour of certain priests.
Earlier this month, the same newspaper reported the claims of a former, unnamed member of the Guard that he had been the target of more than 20 "unambiguous sexual requests" from clergy while serving in the force.
Recounting a dinner in a Rome restaurant, the man was quoted as saying: "As the spinach and steak were served, the priest said to me: 'And you are the dessert'."
At the time, spokesman Urs Breitenmoser said the rumoured gay network did not pose a problem to the Swiss Guard, whose members he said were motivated by entirely different interests.
Asked about the claims, Mäder reportedly said stories of this kind "obviously lacking in factual basis" were sometimes told. But the facts remained clear, he added. "
A working environment in which the great majority of men are unmarried is per se a draw for homosexuals, whether they consciously seek it out or unconsciously follow an urge," he said.
"The Roman Curia [the Vatican's bureaucracy] is exactly this kind of environment."
Though it does not condemn gay people, whom it says should be "accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity," the catechism of the Catholic church teaches that homosexual acts are "objectively disordered" and calls gay people to abstinence.Mäder, while he said he did not have a problem with homosexuality, said he feared that a network or secret society of gay people within the Vatican could pose security problems. He added that he would not have promoted a gay man in the Guard – not because of his sexuality but because "the risk of disloyalty would have been too high".
Mäder said: "I also learned that many homosexuals are inclined to be more loyal to each other than to other people or institutions," he said.
"If this loyalty were to go as far as to become a network or even a kind of secret society, I would not tolerate it in my sphere of decision making. Key people in the Vatican now seem to think similarly."
The comments appeared to be referring to a remark made by Pope Francis on the flight home from Brazil last summer. "They say there are some gay people here. I think that when we encounter a gay person, we must make the distinction between the fact of a person being gay and the fact of a lobby, because lobbies are not good," the pontiff told journalists, while at the same time joking that, while there was a lot of talk about a gay lobby, he had never seen it stamped on a Vatican identity card.
While Francis signalled a clear conciliatory tone on the issue, he added: "If they accept the Lord and have goodwill, who am I to judge them?" Mäder's comments about the supposed threat posed by gay guards and priests drew criticism among rights advocates in Italy.
"Along with all gay people in the armed forces, I would advise Mäder to become better informed," said Aurelio Mancuso, chairman of Equality.
Franco Grillini, chairman of Gaynet, added: "Statistically, gays are the least violent group in human society so if the pope were really surrounded by homosexuals, he could sleep easy." | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/media/commentisfree/2024/mar/15/the-nightly-gives-gerry-harvey-space-to-take-a-swipe-at-arch-rival | Media | 2024-03-15T02:50:33.000Z | Amanda Meade | The Nightly gives Gerry Harvey space to take a swipe at arch rival | Weekly Beast | The retail giant Gerry Harvey is Australia’s biggest advertiser, eclipsing Woolworths and McDonald’s, so it’s no surprise newspapers hungry for advertising dollars love him.
Now Kerry Stokes’s new digital publication, The Nightly, has cosied up to its benefactor and interviewed Harvey at length about his dim view of Harvey Norman’s arch online retail rival Temu.
Harvey is just one of the billionaires who have supported The Nightly with their advertising might, along with the Mineral Resources founder, Chris Ellison, and Gina Rinehart.
“Harvey Norman chair Gerry Harvey says Temu is unlikely to survive, as quality over quantity will win out with consumers preferring to buy from trusted brands,” the Nightly reported this week.
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Harvey’s interview was followed by several articles about Temu which highlighted allegations of child labour, poor quality and stolen data.
There was even an editorial backing Harvey’s fears. “If you’re paying $11 for a no-name garment steamer, you should probably be grateful if it doesn’t burn down your house, let alone if it manages to see out the month,” the editor in chief, Anthony De Ceglie, warned in his editorial.
Deegan learns the hard way
Many journalists cross to the “dark side” – public relations – when they leave daily news, often earning a much bigger pay packet than they did working as a mere hack.
But with the financial windfall comes some risk. If things don’t go well for your new masters, you may well be blamed.
Take Liz Deegan, a former editor of the Sunday Mail and deputy editor of the Sunday Telegraph, who was appointed executive director of public affairs for NSW police 11 months ago. The position reportedly pays between $320,000 and $360,000.
Deegan was blindsided this week when the NSW police commissioner, Karen Webb, dismissed her after a bad run in the press.
Webb faced criticism for referring to a Taylor Swift lyric in a media interview as she defended her response to the alleged murders of Sydney couple Jesse Baird and Luke Davies.
Deegan, who handled communications for News Corp and the NRL before joining the police, declined to comment.
Tredrea claim ruled out of bounds
Speaking of healthy pay packets, Channel Nine was paying the South Australian sport presenter Warren Tredrea $192,500 to present sport on Adelaide’s afternoon news, 6pm news and Nine News on radio station 5AA.
That was until Covid hit and the TV station limited access to its premises, allowing entry only to persons who were fully vaccinated.
According to court documents Tredrea refused to be vaccinated and was terminated by the media company a month later.
The former Port Adelaide captain and premiership player sued Nine for almost $6m in lost wages – and lost.
“Mr Tredrea was a controversial figure who was discussed in other media outlets in a manner that was unwelcome to Channel 9,” Justice Geoffrey Kennett said in his dismissal of Tredrea’s claim this week.
“Rather than having the studied neutrality of a newsreader, he was associated in public discourse with an unpopular viewpoint on an issue apt to excite strong emotions.”
Tredrea has been ordered to pay Nine’s legal costs but will be allowed to present a claim as to why he should not have to pay them.
Kennett said it was “at least awkward for one of its news presenters to have disappeared from his post in circumstances that appeared to have a direct connection with controversial comments that he had made and with responses to one of the most pressing issues facing the Australian community at the time”.
Peter Greste story gets film treatment
Production wrapped this week on The Correspondent, starring Richard Roxburgh, a feature film about the foreign correspondent Peter Greste, who was arrested in Cairo in 2013 while working for Al Jazeera.
Greste and two of his colleagues, Canadian-Egyptian Mohammed Fahmy and Egyptian Baher Mohammed, were charged with spreading false news and joining a terrorist organisation: the newly outlawed Muslim Brotherhood.
Richard Roxburgh portrays the foreign correspondent Peter Greste, who spent more than a year in an Egyptian jail, in the feature film The Correspondent. Photograph: John Platt
Greste, now a professor of journalism at Macquarie University, spent 13 months in an Egyptian jail.
The Correspondent is produced by a former foreign correspondent, Carmel Travers, based on Greste’s memoir The First Casualty, and written by Peter Duncan.
Stan goes missing on Hubbl
The Sydney Morning Herald, which is owned by Nine Entertainment, had a glowing review of Foxtel’s Hubbl this week.
“Too many streaming options? This new device could solve the problem.
“As you’d expect, Hubbl lets you watch all of Australia’s major streaming services including Netflix, Disney+, Amazon’s Prime Video, Apple TV+, Paramount+, Optus Sport, YouTube and Stan (owned by Nine, publisher of this masthead),” the review by Adam Turner said.
But Stan is not available on the platform yet, Foxtel confirmed to Weekly Beast.
We wonder if they would have published such a positive take if they knew Stan was not available on Hubbl as of this week?
Daily Telegraph leaves out the fine print
The “Teals have their own licence to print money” was the headline in the Daily Telegraph this week above photographs of independent MPs Kylea Tink ($87,000), Allegra Spender ($54,115) and Sophie Scamps ($54,000) and the amount they spent from their parliamentary printing allowance.
“Parliament’s most environmentally conscious MPs from affluent city suburbs are forking out thousands of dollars in printing, contributing to a shocking six-month $12m parliamentary printer’s bill,” the story said.
But a closer look at the data revealed the Liberal Jason Wood and Labor’s Peter Khalil were among the highest spenders, along with independent MP Dai Le, who spent $147,000. Wood and Khalil spent about four times more than the teals who were singled out.
At least Wood and Khalil appeared in the story, albeit at the bottom.
The Daily Telegraph took some teal MPS to task for their spending on mailouts, newsletters and other printed materials. Photograph: Daily Telegraph
But the former Coalition communications minister Paul Fletcher, who spent $104,863 over the same period, did not warrant a mention.
The average spend on mailouts, newsletters and other commonly printed materials across the 227 parliamentarians was $54,625, so Scamps and Spender were right on average.
So why were the teals targeted by the tabloid? Because they were “climate conscious” and their electorates had “high levels of digital literacy”.
“But climate-conscious Teal Independents were also not shy of forking out thousands of dollars on printing despite living in electorates with high levels of digital literacy and running on a platform of saving the environment,” the news story said.
By that measure, Fletcher’s electorate of Bradfield on Sydney’s upper north shore, would certainly also qualify. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/dec/14/warp-records-artificial-intelligence-aphex-twin-autechre | Music | 2022-12-14T17:13:22.000Z | Joe Muggs | ‘It was a gateway for people to get into electronic music’: 30 years of Warp Records’ Artificial Intelligence | In the white hot rave heat of 1992, Warp Records, then based in Sheffield, released a compilation for the wind-down: Artificial Intelligence. The name would, sadly, prompt talk of “intelligent techno” and then “intelligent dance music” (IDM), implying an air of nerdy elitism. However Warp insisted the title was only ever a tongue-in-cheek alignment with sci-fi, and the balmy music was unmistakably hedonistic. Taking cues from Detroit techno, and featuring future superstars in Autechre and Aphex Twin (as the Dice Man), it perfectly captured the still-ecstatic backroom and after-party vibe of the era.
As a new reissue celebrates the compilation’s 30th anniversary – and three decades of its pleasure principle reverberating across subsequent scenes and generations – we asked famous fans from 1992 to the present about why Artificial Intelligence endures.
Róisín Murphy
Róisín Murphy. Photograph: Pedro Gomes/Redferns
I was used to the idea of electronic music for listening at home as I’d hammered the KLF’s Chill Out long before I’d arrived in Sheffield – but this was different. There was nothing remotely hippy or retro about it. The image on the cover, by the brilliant Phil Wolstenholme, says it all: it just was future. Alone, but together with, and connected to, technology. I would often visit Phil at his home and he was always on that bloody computer of his, he had to be the most patient man in Sheffield – he doesn’t get enough credit for his vision.
Kuedo
I only discovered these compilations a couple of years ago. I’d never identified with IDM at all, it’s too culture-less of a notion. But this zone of electronica built for home listening, which pulls from real club cultures like hip-hop and house, while making space for abstract exploration – that, I care about a great deal. It can be a beautiful area, even though it’s a diffuse non-genre, so hasn’t much of a cultural core. It sounds and feels like suburbia in that sense.
The Dice Man: Polygon Window – video
Lila Tirando a Violeta
When I was a teenager a friend said Fill 3 by Speedy J on this compilation reminded them of the sort of music I was trying to make. They were right! On first listen I was inspired: it felt timeless, really carefully crafted and still impactful. I was astonished to learn that the album came out just before I was born – I’d have believed it was a new release. It’s been a huge influence on producers’ not being locked in club or ambient genres – its biggest strength was in revealing there were cracks in between.
The Blessed Madonna
The Blessed Madonna. Photograph: Eva Pentel/PR
Some records arrive by way of serendipity, at the cosmic moment when all the tumblers in your brain click and some music from another galaxy beams into you and upgrades your operating system. In 1992, I was looking for a world that I believed existed but had not yet set foot upon: that’s when this album arrived for me. Every part of it was affecting, but none so much as Dr Alex Paterson AKA the Orb’s contribution of Loving You performed live. All these years later, I am no less moved or filled with hope when I hear that cut. Nothing sounds more like an acid-drenched sunrise from a time before the world was ending. Its persistence is a comfort to me.
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JD Twitch
Autechre: Crystel – video
I was a big fan, but it was also a gateway for a lot of people who perhaps didn’t get the “rave” thing to get into electronic music and clubbing. I have friends who got into the scene via this album. Of course, a lot of the music on Artificial Intelligence was straight up club music rather than any kind of armchair listening: Up!’s Spiritual High is a total banger while the Speedy J track was a low-tempo club anthem. It can’t be ignored that it is a very white take on Detroit techno inspiration, though. I and many friends loathed the idea of one form of techno could being more “intelligent”, too. “Stupid Techno” then became a badge of honour for us – I think we even used that term on a flyer or two.
Aphex Twin's best songs – ranked!
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Mor Elian
My early musical education was my older sister’s CD collection, which I stole from many times – I found this there years after its release. Similar to Aphex Twin’s first album, I find it deeply moving, still forward-thinking and relevant. Unfortunately, it is mostly impossible to play in most club environments these days – it’s more suitable for deep listening, lying on your back with a huge spliff in your hand … or maybe when you are dancing at dawn at the after-hours. It’s music that makes me feel painfully nostalgic, like a deep longing – but also incredibly motivated to get in the studio and make music.
Paul Woolford
I was at Leeds College of Art in 92 and really just started being properly music obsessed. I’d already followed music from hip-hop through Detroit techno and all points in between, but all of that had to be hunted down on import; Warp managed to draw a narrative out of the UK’s answer to all of that. The fact that it had a manifesto, that bold artwork, the incredible albums that followed by Kenny Larkin, Fuse, Black Dog – it was irresistible. It made me throw everything into getting cheap equipment and making music 24/7 and I haven’t looked back.
This article was amended on 14 December 2022. In a previous version, the main image showed Mike Paradinas but was incorrectly captioned as showing Autechre. Also, Aphex Twin’s alias on the compilation is the Dice Man, not Polygon Window, which is the track title. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2014/oct/31/four-nations-australia-new-zealand-referees-cummings | Sport | 2014-10-31T13:05:59.000Z | Steve Mascord | Four Nations board attacked over failure to select neutral referees | Stuart Cummings, a director of World Cup match officials and former Test referee, has criticised the organisers of the Four Nations for failing to appoint neutral officials for this weekend’s round of fixtures.
Social media have been flooded with complaints from England fans over the appointment of an Australian, Gerard Sutton, to Sunday’s Australia-England match at AAMI Park here, during which the home side will attempt to keep alive their run of making every available tournament final since 1954. Meanwhile on Saturday, a New Zealander – Henry Perenara – will take charge of the Kiwis’ match against Samoa at Toll Stadium in Whangarei.
Cummings, who sat on the three-man board that appointed referees at last year’s World Cup, said: “What the hell has happened to international referee appointments? The World Cup had neutral referees in every game. We have gone backwards.
“And what is the criteria that decided that Gerry Sutton performed better than Phil Bentham [the English referee who took charge of Australia’s opening defeat to New Zealand]? Because I and many others over here can’t see it.”
This year’s selection committee comprises Australia’s Tony Archer, New Zealand’s Luke Watts and England’s Jon Sharp, and Cummings – a former RFL director of referees – has questioned the involvement of Watts given that Perenara is actually a product of the Australian system. “Why is a Kiwi head of referees even in an international selection?” Cummings, now a Sky pundit, continued. “Who has he even produced for international duty? Jon Sharp may as well come home as he will be out-voted each week.”
Australian officials argue that it is more important to have the best referee for the most important game than give the impression of neutrality, and that rugby league’s limited international reach means there is a dearth of suitable candidates from outside Australia and England.
But Cummings argued: “A proposal was put to the RLIF in 2008 and 2010, supported by the then heads of referees in the NRL and RFL, looking to have one person in charge of international development and appointments. If that had gone ahead, we would not be in this position now.”
Australia and England both expect to have their respective injured players available for the match, which is likely to attract a crowd of around 20,000. The Australia stand-off Daly Cherry-Evans returned from the birth of his second child in Sydney to get through a full training session on Thursday, despite a hip injury. Meanwhile the England captain, Sean O’Loughlin, who has a quad strain, did not attend Friday’s captains and coaches media conference at Federation Square but is expected to be added to the team named by Steve McNamara.
During the same media conference, McNamara played a straight bat in regards to the refereeing controversy. “It’s the same when you’re trying to choose an international referee as when you’re trying to choose a team,” the England coach said. “They’ve deemed that Gerard Sutton was the best referee last weekend and he’s got the game which is probably of the biggest importance this weekend, which is our game. I’ve got no issue with it. That’s the path the international game has gone down in this tournament and we’re happy to roll with it.”
The Australia captain, Cameron Smith, added: “I don’t think any referee is partial to any side, or the country where he lives or grew up. He’s out there to officiate the match and I think he’ll do that fairly. He’s approachable, he talks to all the players on the field.”
England’s James Graham has said his side are not focused on making history by giving Australia their first consecutive defeats anywhere since 1978, and at home since 1970. “It’s not entered our thoughts, knocking Australia out,” the Canterbury Bulldogs prop said.
Smith also denied the weight of history is bearing down on his men. “We just want to perform well,” he said. “You’ll see a better side out there on Sunday.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/feb/15/wiko-plans-to-cut-jobs-as-part-of-restructuring-after-fall-in-sales | Business | 2023-02-15T18:35:02.000Z | Sarah Butler | Wilko plans to cut 400 jobs as part of restructuring after fall in sales | Wilko plans to cut more than 400 jobs, including assistant store managers, retail supervisors, head office managers and call centre workers, in the troubled retailer’s latest effort to control costs.
The value household and garden products retailer has told staff it plans to reduce hours for team supervisors in 150 of its 401 stores, leading to the equivalent of about 150 full-time equivalent job losses, after a fall in sales.
The cuts also include about 150 assistant store managers, around 95 workers from its contact centre in Worksop, Nottinghamshire, whose work is being outsourced to a South African company later this month, as well as dozens of head office management roles across commercial, retail operations, merchandising, marketing and finance.
One member of staff said the changes in stores and the head office, on which a consultation began this week, came as “sales remain poor and rumours are rife about the future of the business”, which has been struggling to pay suppliers.
Mark Jackson, the chief executive of Wilko, said: “We’ve identified significant changes to the Wilko operating model to enable us to stabilise the business and then thrive again. This includes some proposed changes to our management structure at both our stores and head office.
“We’re fully supporting affected individuals. We know change will be unsettling to our team members and the wider business, and we’re acting swiftly to put in place the new organisational structure to stabilise and grow.”
The GMB union said it was consulting with Wilko, which employs 16,000 staff in total, in an effort to reduce job losses.
“Wilko is going through significant changes at the moment and ultimately the business is in a fight for survival,” said Nadine Houghton, GMB national officer.
“We are seeing continued and increasing job losses throughout the retail sector and this is something that warrants an urgent, strategic response from the government.”
The cut-price retailer borrowed £40m from restructuring specialist Hilco and rejigged its leadership team as it faced a cash squeeze after falling to a loss.
At least one credit insurer has withdrawn cover for the retailer, prompting some suppliers to pause deliveries. Wilko told suppliers in a meeting before Christmas that it was “debt free” but did not have sufficient funds to pay them upfront.
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Former Bensons for Beds chair Chris Howell has taken over from Lisa Wilkinson, a member of the founding family, as chair, after another former Bensons executive, Mark Jackson, stepped in as chief executive before Christmas, the group’s third in three years.
Wilko’s struggles come as the number of shoppers out and about remains more than 10% below pre-pandemic levels.
While consumer spending has been better than expected in recent months, retailers say shoppers are being cautious about what they buy amid rising energy bills, food costs and mortgage rates. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/dec/18/copenhagen-deal | Environment | 2009-12-19T00:47:00.000Z | John Vidal | Low targets, goals dropped: Copenhagen ends in failure | The UN climate summit reached a weak outline of a global agreement in Copenhagen tonight, falling far short of what Britain and many poor countries were seeking and leaving months of tough negotiations to come.
After eight draft texts and all-day talks between 115 world leaders, it was left to Barack Obama and Wen Jiabao, the Chinese premier, to broker a political agreement. The so-called Copenhagen accord "recognises" the scientific case for keeping temperature rises to no more than 2C but does not contain commitments to emissions reductions to achieve that goal.
American officials spun the deal as a "meaningful agreement", but even Obama said: "This progress is not enough."
"We have come a long way, but we have much further to go," he added.
Gordon Brown hailed the night as a success on five out of six measures.
In a press conference held after the talks broke up, Brown said the agreement was a "vital first step" and accepted there was a lot more work to do to get assurances it would become a legally binding agreement. He declined to call it a "historic" conference: "This is the first step we are taking towards a green and low carbon future for the world, steps we are taking together. But like all first steps, the steps are difficult and they are hard."
"I know what we really need is a legally binding treaty as quickly as possible."
The deal was brokered between China, South Africa, India, Brazil and the US, but late last night it was unclear whether it would be adopted by all 192 countries in the full plenary session. The deal aims to provide $30bn a year for poor countries to adapt to climate change from next year to 2012, and $100bn a year by 2020.
But it disappointed African and other vulnerable countries which had been holding out for deeper emission cuts to hold the global temperature rise to 1.5C this century. As widely expected, all references to 1.5C in past drafts were removed at the last minute, but more surprisingly, the earlier 2050 goal of reducing global CO2 emissions by 80% was also dropped.
The agreement also set up a forestry deal which is hoped would significantly reduce deforestation in return for cash. It lacked the kind of independent verification of emission reductions by developing countries that the US and others demanded.
Obama hinted that China was to blame for the lack of a substantial deal. In a press conference he condemned the insistence of some countries to look backwards to previous environmental agreements. He said developing countries should be "getting out of that mindset, and moving towards the position where everybody recognises that we all need to move together".
This was a not-so-veiled reference to the row over whether to ditch the Kyoto protocol and its legal distinction between developed and developing countries. Developing nations saw this as an attempt by the rich world to wriggle out of its responsibility for climate change. Many observers blamed the US for coming to the talks with an offer of just 4% emissions cuts on 1990 levels. The final text made no obligations on developing countries to make cuts.
Negotiators will now work on individual agreements such as forests, technology, and finance – but, without strong leadership, the chances are that it will take years to complete.
Obama cast his trip as a sign of renewed US global leadership: "The time has come for us to get off the sidelines and shape the future that we seek; that is why I came to Copenhagen."
But the US president also said he would not be staying for the final vote "because of weather constraints in Washington".
Lumumba Di-Aping, chief negotiator for the G77 group of 130 developing countries, said the deal had "the lowest level of ambition you can imagine. It's nothing short of climate change scepticism in action. It locks countries into a cycle of poverty for ever. Obama has eliminated any difference between him and Bush."
John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace UK, said: "The city of Copenhagen is a crime scene tonight, with the guilty men and women fleeing to the airport. Ed Miliband [UK climate change secretary] is among the very few that come out of this summit with any credit." It is now evident that beating global warming will require a radically different model of politics than the one on display here in Copenhagen."
Lydia Baker of Save the Children said world leaders had "effectively signed a death warrant for many of the world's poorest children. Up to 250,000 children from poor communities could die before the next major meeting in Mexico at the end of next year." | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/oct/01/the-martian-review-matt-damon-ridley-scott | Film | 2015-10-01T13:51:11.000Z | Peter Bradshaw | The Martian review – Matt Damon thanks his lucky stars in sci-fi test of survival | It should of course be called The Earthling. Ridley Scott’s genial, likable and borderline flippant sci-fi adventure is not interested in life on or from other planets. The point is that the home team is in danger.
Matt Damon: 'You're a better actor the less people know about you'
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Matt Damon, in all his squat retroussé-nosed handsomeness, plays Mark Watney, a Nasa astronaut who in some future time of viable human spaceflight exploration is part of a team undertaking dull scientific research into the red dust and red rocks on Mars, earnestly decanting them into little plastic pots and exchanging good-natured walkie-talkie badinage with his team. Then there is a mission-threatening and apparently unanticipated red-dust storm leading to catastrophe. Watney’s spacesuit is ripped – later revealing that Watney is as well. His commander Melissa Lewis (Jessica Chastain) takes the tough decision to abandon the red planet and blast off with her crew, leaving Mark behind, believing in good faith that he is dead. But he isn’t. Now Mark, all alone in this gigantic red landscape, must find a way to stay alive – and call for help.
Another title for this could be Apollo 13 2.0. Like all Hollywood science fiction, it is indebted to visual rhetoric effectively invented by Kubrick: the giant planetary curvature looming into the upper or lower half of the screen, perhaps occluding some more distant planetrise; the spacecraft’s vertiginous gleaming white tunnels through which spacepeople float; the video messages from home that fascinatingly flicker and fizz. There is a bit of Douglas Trumbull’s Silent Running in the concept of growing vegetables in artificial habitats – and precisely nothing of Ridley Scott’s disturbing and pessimistic Alien.
Watch the Guardian Film Show’s video review of The Martian Guardian
The auteur spirit presiding over this movie is Ron Howard. It’s all about cheerful and unreflective persistence, finding ingenious ways of surviving, improvising with what’s available and making the best of things, having a laugh and never giving up. We see boffins racing against time as they try things out with bits of cardboard. Houston, we have a solution! This unassuming approach is refreshing after Christopher Nolan’s overblown Interstellar, whose visionary scientific accuracy we were invited to take very seriously indeed. The tone is different in Drew Goddard’s cheeky screenplay here. In his messages and video-diary log entries, Watney’s adverb of choice is “luckily”. “Luckily, the camera can spin!” he says, describing his ways of transmitting still images from the alphabet to communicate with his base. “Luckily, I have the greatest minds on the planet helping me,” he later says. And when it comes to the challenge of growing his own food on the red planet, he says with a grin: “Luckily, I’m a botanist!” It’s the closest this film comes to just flat-out taking the mickey. The “I” there may well be a twist on the third-person way Ridley Scott described the film’s plot in some early pitch meeting.
Jessica Chastain on The Martian: ‘If I do the movie, can I go to space camp?’ – video Guardian
On the home front, there are a lot of good actors with little to do. Jeff Daniels plays the hard-faced Nasa chief, preoccupied with the bottom line; Chiwetel Ejiofor plays frowningly preoccupied director of Mars missions Vincent Kapoor, Sean Bean is flight director Mitch Sanderson, and Benedict Wong is the stressed tech supremo Bruce Ng. Kristen Wiig is landed with the entirely gagless role of Nasa’s media flack Annie Montrose. Donald Glover plays a youthful Sorkinian savant genius called Rich, who more or less saves the day, dissing the bejeepers out of pompous Jeff Daniels without realising he is doing so. As for Matt Damon, he is basically the anti-Kurtz. No matter what happens, no matter how punishing the solitude, he never changes. The nearest he comes to losing it is growing a great big long beard. Which he quickly shaves off. There is no unwholesome or unhealthy brooding. Watney gets on with it.
Weirdly, the question of wife and kids is passed over: Watney is more exercised about sending a message home to his poor old mum and dad. Perhaps, like a reality TV show contestant, he has to downplay these domestic or romantic commitments so that the audience can identify more fully: we, the onlookers, are his family, just as we are his Man Friday. We are repeatedly told about the years it takes to travel between Mars and home, and just occasionally it feels as if Scott might be filming it in real time. It’s a bit long, but it’s the only grandiose thing about it. I actually found myself remembering the entertaining 1964 film Robinson Crusoe on Mars with Adam (then-soon-to-be-Batman) West. The charm of The Martian turns out to be how down-to-earth it is.
More on this story: Space experts challenge accuracy of The Martian.
Mars attracts: the cosy relationship between Nasa and Hollywood. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/apr/26/fiction.williamgibson | Books | 2003-04-26T22:35:48.000Z | Toby Litt | Review: Pattern Recognition by William Gibson | Pattern Recognition
by William Gibson
368pp, Viking, £16.99
In the end, William Gibson's novels are all about sadness - a very distinctive and particular sadness: the melancholy of technology. On the opening page of Pattern Recognition we are introduced to one of its central ideas, a "theory of jet lag". Gibson's heroine, Cayce (pronounced Casey) Pollard, has just flown from New York to London, and feels that "her mortal soul is leagues behind her, being reeled in on some ghostly umbilical down the vanished wake of the plane that brought her here... Souls can't move that quickly, and are left behind, and must be awaited, upon arrival, like lost luggage." Whatever he has written, Gibson has never abandoned the idea of a "mortal soul", a human essence, which the speed of our world, or of his imagined futures, causes us to lose - if only temporarily.
In this, he is basically a conservative author; he doesn't really want to engage with the possibilities of the post-human. His chosen form, the novel, doesn't allow him to do this. Many science fiction authors have written about human-absent worlds, about robots battling robots, but in order to make these novels seem worthwhile to humans (and robots aren't a particularly large market at the moment), they always have to invest at least one of the robots with human qualities. The soul is necessary in novels, for without the soul there would be no melancholy, and without the melancholy the novels wouldn't be worth reading.
Pattern Recognition very much wants to be a novel of ideas. And the ideas it is concerned with are those of what Gibson sees as our po-mo Logo/ No Logo world. The familiar idea of simulacra is put forward by marketing mastermind Hubertus Bigend (some SF habits, like the overnaming of characters, die hard). "Everything, today, is to some extent the reflection of something else." At one point Cayce Pollard sees "a pub of such quintessential pubness that she assumes it is only a few weeks old".
Bigend also says, "Far more creativity, today, goes in to the marketing of products than into the products themselves." What is interesting, today, is that Gibson doesn't seem to have the intellectual energy to think the novel beyond this.
Cayce Pollard is "a legend in the world of advertising" - she has the incredibly valuable quality (both to corporations and to the novelist-of-ideas) of being allergic to branding. This first revealed itself when she was six, in her horrified reaction to Bibendum, aka the Michelin Man. At the beginning of the novel, she has been flown over from New York to say Yes or No to a sneaker-manufacturer's new logo, into which it has poured massive investment. Only to say Yes or No, nothing else. And if Cayce says No, the logo is scrapped.
The central idea of the novel is plainly stated. "Homo sapiens is about pattern recognition... Both a gift and a trap." Cayce makes her living from pattern recognition, from "finding whatever the next thing might be": she is a cool-hunter. She is also one of a large number of people hunting for brief clips from a nameless film that have been posted, on incredibly obscure sites, around the internet.
This film may or may not have a plot, it may or may not be complete; what all who see it agree is that is has an awesome, melancholy power. The clip-hunters, or footageheads, congregate in newsgroups to speculate as to who is creating the footage, and why.
Of course, when Bigend hears of this, the greatest piece of viral marketing since The Blair Witch Project, he wants in. Cayce is encouraged to turn her hobby into her job, and off around the world, in pursuit of "the maker", she goes. This is a good opportunity for Gibson to do what he does best, the spaced-out travelogue. Cayce's quest takes her first to Tokyo, capitalist epitome, and then Moscow, capitalist wannabe. Gibson's eye for detail and his way with a phrase remain exquisite: "In the sunlit street, all is still; nothing moves save the cinnamon blur of a cat, just there, and gone."
Devoted readers of Gibson will, by this point, be experiencing some pattern recognition of their own. In Pattern Recognition , Gibson's resourceful heroine, Cayce Pollard, is given huge resources by an untrustworthy corporate spiv, Hubertus Bigend, to find the maker of mysterious and melancholy footage. In his earlier novel Count Zero, Gibson's resourceful heroine, Marly Krushkhova, is given huge resources by an untrustworthy megacorporate spiv, Herr Virek, to find the maker of mysterious and melancholy boxes. Both novels are a quest after the artist, the person capable of investing mere light, mere matter, with soul. Without giving the end away, the revelation of Count Zero is the more radical.
Pattern recognition, as a human phenomenon, becomes something else when it goes too far; it becomes "apophenia... the spontaneous perception of connections and meaningfulness in unrelated things". One of the disappointments of the novel is that it doesn't push this far enough as a potential plot device. If there were an insane number of interconnections by the end, as is sometimes the case in thrillers, then the reader would feel more fulfilled. Judged just as a thriller, Pattern Recognition takes too long to kickstart, gives its big secrets away before it should and never puts the heroine in believable peril.
The pivotal moment comes when Cayce is granted access to the huge resources of Bigend's company. Pamela Mainwaring, one of Bigend's glamorous employees, presents Cayce with a credit card. "'Sign this, please'... Case takes it. CASE POLLARD EXP. Platinum Visa customised with the hieratic Blue Ant... Pamela Mainwaring hands her an expensive German rollerpoint. Cayce puts the card face down on the trestle table and signs its virgin back. Something seems to clunk heavily, at the rear of her ethical universe."
For the rest of the novel, Cayce is on expenses. Gibson loves high-end luxury: "We have an iBook for you, loaded, cellular modem. And a phone. It's good here, anywhere in Europe, Japan, and the States... The Tokyo office is at your complete disposal. The best translators, drivers, anything you feel you need. Literally anything." (I started to wonder if Gibson's publicity handlers are coached to talk to him in this James-Bond-visits-M tone.)
Expenses, of course, can only be topped by one thing: cash. At the end of the novel, for services rendered, Cayce is presented with a "Louis Vuitton slim-line attaché, its gold-plated clasps gleaming", which contains "in tightly packed rows, white-banded sheaves of crisp new bills".
One could hardly find a more 1980s image, and Gibson's entire aesthetic is still definitely stuck in that decade. He loves shiny things, matt black things, things that open with a whirr and a click, things that sense human presence and react. The conclusion of Pattern Recognition reenacts the ultimate fantasy ending of 1980s movies - the heroine has lucked out without selling out, has kept her integrity but still ended up filthy rich. As a gesture towards the changed mood of the new millennium, Gibson has Cayce guiltily give the money away. Her gesture doesn't convince; Gibson's soul, sadly, isn't in it.
· Toby Litt's new novel, Finding Myself , will be published in June. To order Pattern Recognition for £14.99 plus p&p call Guardian book service on 0870 066 7979. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/sep/06/tokyo-2020-paralympics-briefing-35-monday-6-september | Sport | 2021-09-06T14:18:09.000Z | Martin Belam | Tokyo 2020 Paralympics briefing: glory, despair and everything else | And suddenly that was that, and Tokyo 2020 was in the rear-view mirror. The Paralympics delivered us 12 incredible days of action – but on the whole the legacy of these Games will remain uncertain for some time to come. With just a couple of days left of the event, Japan’s prime minister Yoshihide Suga announced he was to step down from his party’s leadership amid mounting discontent at his government’s handling of the Covid pandemic. Japan’s attention has maybe not fully been on the Paralympics.
But our attention was. I always think with the Paralympics there is an element where participation is a reward in itself. Who can forget Ellie Robinson’s emotional speech declaring that beating her debilitating hip condition and finishing fifth in the the final of the women’s S6 50m butterfly was “a story of triumph, not a story of defeat”?
1:36
'This is a story of triumph': Ellie Robinson on the pain of her Paralympic journey – video
But that isn’t the whole story of a Paralympics, because over the last 12 days we saw all of the glory and despair that you’d expect from a multi-sport international contest. I keep thinking about Australia’s Lauren Parker, losing the triathlon gold medal that had been in her grasp for the whole race until the very last couple of metres as the USA’s Kendall Gretsch chased her down.
Lauren Parker and Kendall Gretsch race to the finish line. Photograph: Joel Marklund for OIS/PA
Or the despair of Brazil’s Jerusa Geber Dos Santos’s whose tether anchoring her to her guide broke in the first few strides of the women’s T11 100m, leading to her disqualification. Five years of hard work literally undone. Sports at its rawest and most cruel.
Jerusa Geber Dos Santos of Brazil reacts after being disqualified. Photograph: Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters
And then there are those incredible multi-medallist Paralympians who simply refuse to let age and disability dim their competitive spirit, and keep coming back to medal and medal and medal again. Jessica Long, Sophie Pascoe, Ihar Boki, Lee Pearson, Sarah Storey, Hannah Cockroft and more. And competitors such as Jetze Plat and Marcel Hug who are just totally dominant in their field.
Sarah Storey (right) on her way to winning yet another gold. Photograph: Alex Whitehead/SWpix.com/Rex/Shutterstock
Jen Colla was in touch with me from Australia, and she said: “It’s a bit sad today knowing the Paralympics are over as they’ve brought so much joy to a world that doesn’t have a lot in it at the moment. Watching these amazing, talented humans achieving the results they did, regardless if it was on the podium, was wonderful.” She also wanted to recommend gold-medal winner Dylan Alcott’s podcast ListenAble.
It’s been fascinating looking at how different countries prepare their athletes and where they focus their resources. The Netherlands with a seemingly never-ending stream of wheelchair tennis talent, Ukraine’s traditional spot near the top of the medal table, Azerbaijan’s investment in para-judo, the fact there’s no type of football tournament in the world that Brazil aren’t good at.
Raimundo Mendes of Brazil shoots at goal during the football five-a-side gold medal match against Argentina. Photograph: Koki Nagahama/Getty Images
I hope you’ve enjoyed it. I am a fan of endurance events and loved the cycling, triathlons and marathons, but I think my favourite event at Tokyo 2020 was the wheelchair rugby. I love the tactical side of it – that much of the skill in the game is working out how to occasionally prevent the opposition from scoring while relentlessly turning your own possession into tries. And I relished the physical aggression of it – belying the idea that people are just happy to be able to turn up and play at a Paralympics. “Chess with violence” they sometimes call it.
Mark Ingemann Peters of Denmark falls during a pool phase group match of wheelchair rugby. Photograph: Shuji Kajiyama/AP
The annotated emoji table
Here’s how the medal table in Tokyo ended up – with a few notes.
1 🇨🇳 China 🥇 96 🥈 60 🥉 51 total: 207
China once again dominated the Paralympics, albeit with slightly fewer medals than they earned in London and Rio, but it just goes to show what you can achieve if you have a large talent pool and are prepared to invest in the infrastructure for para-sports.
Wen Xiaoyan won three golds as part of a dominant China team. Photograph: Xinhua/REX/Shutterstock
2 🇬🇧 Great Britain 🥇 41 🥈 38 🥉 45 total: 124
ParalympicsGB tried to slightly downplay expectations going into the Games, because with little competition happening in advance it was difficult for athletes to gauge how each other would perform. It is the sixth time in the last seven Games that Britain has finished second in the table. The team are particularly proud that they won medals in 18 different sports.
Lee Pearson with his horse Breezer in the dressage. Photograph: John Walton/PA
3 🇺🇸 USA 🥇 37 🥈 36 🥉 31 total: 104
Team victories on the final Sunday allowed the USA to haul themselves just above Not Russia on golds won, even if more athletes from the Russian Paralympic Committee earned podium places overall.
The USA celebrate by removing the net after winning the wheelchair basketball men’s gold-medal match against Japan. Photograph: OIS/Bob Martin/REX/Shutterstock
4 ◻️ Not Russia 🥇 36 🥈 33 🥉 49 total: 118
Athletes from Russia competed in Tokyo under the banner of the Russian Paralympic Committee as part of a punishment for the cover-up of a massive state-sponsored doping programme. The original four-year suspension was halved to two, but will continue to apply to the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.
5 🇳🇱 Netherlands 🥇 25 🥈 17 🥉 17 total: 59
Aided by their relentless production of wheelchair tennis champions, 2020 was the Netherlands’ best gold medal haul since winning 31 in Seoul in 1988.
Diede de Groot and Aniek van Koot in the wheelchair tennis. Photograph: OIS/Bob Martin/REX/Shutterstock
6 🇺🇦 Ukraine 🥇 24 🥈 47 🥉 27 total: 98
Ukraine have been a powerhouse since the 2004 Games, rarely far from the top of the medal table. This year’s total is actually down on the 41 golds they won in Rio.
7 🇧🇷 Brazil 🥇 22 🥈 20 🥉 30 total: 72
This was Brazil’s highest ever number of gold medals, bettering the 21 golds they won at London 2012.
8 🇦🇺 Australia 🥇 21 🥈 29 🥉 30 total: 80
Australia’s chef de mission, Kate McLoughlin, said: “A lot gets spoken about the resilience and determination of para-athletes. But I don’t think those qualities have ever been more clearly displayed than by this incredible team over not just these two weeks here in Tokyo, but right throughout this five-year Games cycle.”
Curtis McGrath of Australia celebrates one of his gold medals. Photograph: Dean Mouhtaropoulos/Getty Images
9 🇮🇹 Italy 🥇 14 🥈 29 🥉 26 total: 69
An exceptional Games. It is the most golds they have claimed since Seoul in 1988, and their highest overall medal tally since hosting the very first Paralympics in Rome in 1960.
10 🇦🇿 Azerbaijan 🥇 14 🥈 1 🥉 4 total: 19
Judo was the backbone of Azerbaijan’s performance, with six golds in the Nippon Budokan adding to four in the pool and four in the track and field events.
Khanim Huseynova of Team Azerbaijan celebrates her gold medal on the podium. Photograph: Alex Pantling/Getty Images
11 🇯🇵 Japan 🥇 13 🥈 15 🥉 23 total: 51
Japan missed their stated target of 20 gold medals, and became the first Paralympic hosts since Greece in 2004 not to be in the top 10 at the end of their Games.
12 🇩🇪 Germany 🥇 13 🥈 12 🥉 18 total: 43
Long gone are the days when Germany used to finish in the top three in the Paralympics medal table – and their Tokyo performance delivered 14 fewer medals than Rio did.
13 🇮🇷 Iran 🥇 12 🥈 11 🥉 1 total: 24
An impressive performance in the Japan National Stadium with 11 athletics medals, as well as retaining the sitting volleyball title.
Morteza Mahrzadselakjani poses with teammates during the Iranian victory ceremony after the final match of sitting volleyball. Photograph: Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP/Getty Images
14 🇫🇷 France 🥇 11 🥈 15 🥉 28 total: 54
Since winning at least 30 gold medals in each of the 1992, 1996 and 2000 editions, France’s medal haul has dwindled somewhat. Hosting the Games in 2024 will hopefully inject a boost of interest – and cash – back into French para-sport.
15 🇪🇸 Spain 🥇 9 🥈 15 🥉 12 total: 36
Spain equalled their number of golds in Rio, and slightly boosted their overall medal count from 32 to 36.
Selected others …
21 🇳🇿 New Zealand 🥇 6 🥈 3 🥉 3 total: 12
Fully a third of New Zealand’s medals were down to the incredible Sophie Pascoe alone.
Sophie Pascoe in the women’s 100m butterfly. Photograph: Lintao Zhang/Getty Images
23 🇨🇦 Canada 🥇 5 🥈 10 🥉 6 total: 21
A mixed result for Canada. They got almost twice as many medals as they did in Rio, but three fewer golds.
24 🇮🇳 India 🥇 5 🥈 8 🥉 6 total: 19
India won more gold medals at Tokyo 2020 than they had won in every other Games put together, with their total of 19 topping their previous best of four by some margin.
32 🇮🇪 Ireland 🥇 4 🥈 2 🥉 1 total: 7
Ellen Keane, Jason Smyth and Katie-George Dunlevy’s double ensured that Ireland matched their gold medal haul at Rio.
Katie-George Dunlevy and her pilot Eve McCrystal carry the Irish flag during the Paralympics closing ceremony. Photograph: Sam Barnes/Sportsfile/Getty Images
There were 78 different countries that earned a medal, and 14 out of the 162 Paralympic Committees competing secured a single one. Bhutan, Grenada, Guyana, Maldives, Paraguay, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines were all making debuts at the Paralympics, but none of their athletes won medals. Athletes from Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Montenegro and Oman won their nations’ first ever Paralympic medals.
Filip Radovic of Montenegro in action on his way to bronze and his nation’s first ever Paralympic medal. Photograph: Iván Alvarado/Reuters
You might also enjoy reading …
My colleague Paul MacInnes has an exclusive interview today with Tony Estanguet, the president of the Paris 2024 organising committee, and there are some fascinating details in it, like the current ideas that the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2024 Games will be held in the streets rather than in the stadium, and that the public will be able to participate in the marathons and cycling road races on the same courses as the athletes. It is a fascinating read: Paris 2024 takes opening ceremonies to the streets in Games for the people.
The last word
I’ll have the last word myself today. Thank you so much for reading our daily briefing through all of the Olympics and the Paralympics, you basically read a small novel over the last six weeks. I hope you have enjoyed our coverage. With Tokyo 2020 over, I’m going back to my day job on the news desk, but we shall no doubt see each other around on the Guardian website. Take care, stay safe, and thank you. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/jul/25/cricket-scotland-faces-special-measures-status-after-racism-report | Sport | 2022-07-25T15:34:16.000Z | Simon Burnton | ‘Devastating’: Cricket Scotland faces special measures after racism report | A report into racism in Scottish cricket has been described as “the most devastating verdict to be delivered on any sporting institution in the United Kingdom” and as “a wake-up call for all of Scottish sport” after its authors detailed 448 examples of institutional racism at Cricket Scotland and concluded that of 31 indicators of good practice the organisation failed to meet 29 and fully satisfied none.
The entire Cricket Scotland board resigned on Sunday in advance of the report’s publication and released a joint statement apologising “to everyone who has experienced racism, or any other form of discrimination, in cricket in Scotland”. But Aamer Anwar, the lawyer who represents Majid Haq and Qasim Sheikh – the two former internationals whose descriptions of the discrimination they experienced during their playing careers prompted the report – said the apology was “too little and too late” and that the board’s resignation was “the cowardly option, meaning that today there is nobody to answer for their failure of leadership”.
‘Truly sorry’: Cricket Scotland board resigns before report into racism
Read more
Stewart Harris, chief executive of Sportscotland, which has been urged to place Cricket Scotland in special measures while it undergoes a complete reorganisation, described the report’s conclusions as “deeply concerning and in some cases shocking” while Gordon Arthur, who took over as Cricket Scotland’s interim chief executive this month, pledged on Monday to “address the past, repair the sport and ensure history does not repeat itself”.
Following the review, 31 allegations of racism against 15 people, two clubs and one regional association have been referred for continued investigation. Some allegations have been shared with Police Scotland as potential hate crimes, and others may be referred to the police in future. In addition, many participants who had “clearly witnessed or experienced racism” have chosen not to proceed with the process.
In 325 responses to an anonymous survey, a further 122 examples of people seeing, hearing or being made aware of racism were detailed and another 49 of prejudice on the grounds of religion. Of those 325 participants, 34% had personally experienced racial discrimination and 62% were aware of specific incidents of racism, inequality or discrimination.
In addition to prejudice on the grounds of race, gender, religion and nationality, the report’s authors also found grounds for “concern over the perceived bias towards the recruitment of players from public schools over state schools”. Opaque selection processes for national teams at all levels was a constant issue, while the board of Cricket Scotland is described as being “only concerned about the men’s national squad and [having] no interest or oversight on any other part of cricket”.
Louise Tideswell, managing director of Plan4Sport, and Stewart Harris, chief executive of Sportscotland. Photograph: Andrew Milligan/PA
The report, compiled by the charity Plan4Sport, found that not only was Cricket Scotland not trusted to manage allegations of racism effectively, several allegations “had not been investigated at all”. Meanwhile some of those who raised concerns had been victimised or forced out of the organisation completely. One volunteer within the Western District Cricket Union – whose area covers half the population of Scotland, and who the report also recommends should be placed in special measures – said “it was very difficult to work in West Scotland and not witness racism”.
Louise Tideswell, the managing director of Plan4Sport, declared it was clear that the “governance and leadership practices of Cricket Scotland have been institutionally racist”. She said: “Over the review period we have seen the bravery of so many people coming forward to share their stories which had clearly impacted on their lives … The reality is that the leadership of the organisation failed to see the problems and, in failing to do so, enabled a culture of racially aggravated microaggressions to develop.”
In a statement delivered on behalf of Haq and Sheikh, Anwar said: “Today’s report is the most devastating verdict of racism to be delivered on any sporting institution in the United Kingdom. Scottish cricket owes a debt of gratitude to Majid and Qasim for never giving up. It is they who have been a catalyst for change, it is too late for their careers, but they did this for future generations.”
Haq is Scotland’s all-time leading wicket-taker and made 209 appearances, but after he made an allegation of discrimination during the 2015 World Cup he was sent home and never picked again. Sheikh was also not picked again, aged 27, after in 2012 publicly questioning why he was not being selected for the national team.
“It should never be normal for a young person to be made to feel worthless, to be dehumanised in a sport they love, to be brainwashed into thinking it’s their fault,” Anwar said, “but that sadly is the brutal story of hundreds of young people of colour who played cricket in Scotland.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/may/28/leeds-relegated-from-premier-league-after-losing-to-tottenham | Football | 2023-05-28T17:42:25.000Z | David Hytner | Leeds go down with a whimper as Tottenham miss Europe despite win | It was the moment when it really turned ugly, the fury and frustration that the Leeds support felt rushing to the surface and spilling everywhere. Pedro Porro had scored at the start of the second half to put Tottenham 2-0 up and, from all corners of Elland Road, came the cry: “You’re not fit to wear the shirt.”
Leeds had needed a miracle to retain their Premier League status. A first win in nine games and the results involving Everton and Leicester to go for them, too. They needed to find some cohesion. And they needed to defend properly, which they have not done for an awfully long time.
It was always likely to prove beyond them. But now there was mutiny. Leeds were going down with one of the game’s most grievous insults ringing in their ears and there would be further choruses of it after the substitute Lucas Moura – on his farewell Spurs appearance – made it 4-1 in stoppage-time.
At 2-0, the Leeds fans urged the owner, Andrea Radrizzani, to sell up and return to Italy – or words to that effect. There were repeated calls of “sack the board”, there was abuse for Weston McKennie when he was substituted and it would be quicker to say which Leeds players were spared after the full-time whistle when they did an extremely nervous small circle of appreciation: Adam Forshaw, Liam Cooper, Jack Harrison and Wilfried Gnonto.
It was a desperate day for everyone connected to the club, heavy on recrimination, with only the occasional splashes of gallows humour. When a pitch invader was wrestled away in the 77th minute by a posse of security guards, there was a demand for the hierarchy to sign him up. “He’s got more fight than you,” was the follow‑up chant to the team.
Sam Allardyce reacts while watching his side lose at home to Tottenham and be relegated from the Premier League. Photograph: Scott Heppell/Reuters
Harry Kane scored the other goals for Spurs to reach 30 for the league season – the focus will now turn to his future – although he was quick to say that eighth place was not good enough. Spurs have failed to qualify for Europe for the first time since 2008‑09.
The focus was on Leeds and it picked out so much more than the pipe-dream of Sam Allardyce’s attempted rescue mission. When the story of their last three seasons is told – their first stint in the top flight since 2004 – it will major on the communion under Marcelo Bielsa, whose name the fans bellowed; how the club appeared ready to kick on after the ninth-placed finish of 2020-21.
How they have regressed from a position of strength is scarcely believable on one level and yet entirely so on many others. This is Leeds, the trap-door never far away. They have paid for making so many poor decisions, especially on the recruitment front.
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Leeds had survived on the final day of last season when they won at Brentford and saw their relegation rivals, Burnley, lose at home against Newcastle. The hope was that history could somehow repeat itself, however outlandish it seemed at kick-off time, and it quickly came to feel even more that way when Kane scored after 93 seconds.
Allardyce had made a tactical change, setting up with five at the back, Pascal Struijk asked to make a left wing-back role work for the team, which felt like a big ask. He started badly, allowing Porro to run inside him on to an Emerson Royal chip; Struijk was on his heels. Porro worked the ball to Son Heung-min, it was an easy pass from him to Kane and the finish was a formality.
Leeds’s chaotic defending was a feature. Of course it was. It has been a motif of the season. There was a moment midway through the first half when Rasmus Kristensen stopped rather than move to clear a punt out of the Spurs defence, allowing Dejan Kulusevski to break from halfway and feed Son. Kristensen got back to tackle but even then Leeds almost gave the ball straight back to Spurs inside their area.
By then, Struijk and Max Wöber had each been forced to commit yellow‑card fouls to stop Spurs breaks. Leeds were on the edge. The crowd were on edge, too, howling.
Lucas Moura scores Tottenham’s fourth goal at Elland Road. Photograph: Lee Smith/Action Images/Reuters
Robin Koch spurned a glorious chance to equalise in the seventh minute, heading wide when all alone inside the area following Rodrigo’s ball in from the right. But it was mostly rudimentary stuff from Leeds; frantic, too, little composure in the areas that mattered. The first half was summed up for them when Harrison missed his pass to Rodrigo on an attempted short corner. There were boos at the interval.
It was all over with less than 90 seconds of the second half gone even if – the hard truth be told – Leeds never looked alive, capable of manufacturing something to give them hope. Allardyce would lament individual errors and Struijk was guilty of another one when he miscued a Kane pass to let Porro in. The finish was drilled low into the far corner.
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Harrison, who had tears in his eyes when he was substituted late on, pulled a goal back but it was merely the prompt for another soft concession, Leeds wide open as Kane scored on the counter.
Lucas Moura’s goal was a gem. He sliced past four would-be tacklers and it was a fitting finale for a player who will always be remembered for his last-gasp Champions League semi-final winner at Ajax. It was a neat counterpoint to the Leeds misery. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/feb/18/mps-fca-woodford-inquiry-investigation-collapse-investment-firm | Business | 2021-02-18T18:03:16.000Z | Rupert Jones | MPs urge FCA to hand over Woodford inquiry to independent judge or QC | Pressure is mounting on the City watchdog over its stalled investigation into the collapse of Neil Woodford’s investment business, after MPs called for the government to step in and order a judicial review unless the Financial Conduct Authority hands over its inquiry to an independent judge or QC.
Mel Stride MP, the chair of the Commons Treasury select committee, said on Thursday that the FCA needed to set out when the investigation would conclude.
The regulator began its inquiry in June 2019, the same month Woodford’s flagship fund was suspended. But it has yet to publish any findings, with the FCA blaming the pandemic for its difficulties in accessing documents and witnesses.
Woodford revealed last weekend he planned to return to investment management, prompting outrage from investors and concern from regulators. Campaigners say the one-time star investment manager’s previous venture left more than 300,000 small investors nursing losses initially estimated at about £1bn.
“As the FCA’s investigation still continues over 18 months after the fund was suspended, the reports of the new fund may understandably be of concern to investors who previously lost out,” Stride said. “The FCA should set out when we can expect its investigation to conclude.”
The FCA has responded by saying Woodford still faced the outcome of a regulatory investigation and would need authorisation before returning to investment management.
There is growing unhappiness in some quarters about how long the FCA’s investigation is taking and whether its remit may be too limited.
On Thursday, the fund manager and activist Gina Miller called for the regulator to cede control and appoint an external investigator.
“The only choice for the new head of the FCA is to hand wherever they have got to in their investigation to an independent judge or QC, and widen the scope to include the FCA,” Miller told the Guardian.
She claimed the “rushed-out statement” from the FCA “appears to indicate they are turning a blind eye to their own regulatory actions, or lack thereof, in Woodford. Even if this were to be included, which I doubt, they shouldn’t be allowed to investigate themselves.
Miller – who is best-known for mounting a legal challenge over Brexit, but has also campaigned on consumer protection standards through her True and Fair campaign – indicated that the investigation should take a similar form to the inquiry carried out by the former high court judge Dame Elizabeth Gloster into the regulation of the scandal-hit investment firm London Capital & Finance.
If the FCA did not hand over the investigation and widen its remit, Miller said the Treasury should step in and request a judicial review, adding that those who had lost money in the Woodford debacle should not have to club together to take legal action.
She also said it was important that any independent judge or QC looked at “all links in the chain” – including distributor firms and investment platforms such as Hargreaves Lansdown and St James’s Place.
Earlier this week Miller and her husband and business partner, Alan Miller, wrote to the Commons Treasury committee about the issue, saying: “We believe it ought to be a very serious source of public policy concern that high-profile individuals such as Mr Woodford can be allowed to recommence trading, with the slate ostensibly wiped clean, when over 300,000 people … are scrabbling to make ends meet after seeing their life savings decimated.”
The fund manager Terry Smith – in charge of the £22.6bn Fundsmith Equity fund – also weighed in, telling the trade publication Interactive Investor: “I’m a believer in human redemption ... But to attain redemption, one of the very first things you have to do is be afflicted with painful personal knowledge of what went wrong, and very publicly tell people that you have reached that conclusion and that you are sorry, and what you would change about it.”
In its statement issued just before 9pm on Tuesday, the FCA said “any comment about the scope of this ongoing investigation is purely speculation; we have not confirmed who or what we are investigating”. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2018/jan/12/what-i-wore-this-week-corduroy-fashion-jess-cartner-morley | Fashion | 2018-01-12T13:00:30.000Z | Jess Cartner-Morley | What I wore this week: corduroy | Jess Cartner-Morley | In case you’re wondering, the look I am going for here is east-coast-liberal-arts-lecturer-hosts-brunch. That is how I like my corduroy: a bit campus dreamboat, a bit arthouse cinema. Accessorised with a strong scarf game, and maybe an elbow patch; some reading material (either news or fiction but printed on actual paper) and deep conversation peppered with hand-gesture quotation marks.
In other words, nothing to do with Jeremy Corbyn. No offence, Jezza, but I’m thinking more along the lines of Ali MacGraw in Love Story crossed with Diane Keaton in Annie Hall crossed with Tina Fey. There is a whole late-70s-staffroom piece that happens around corduroy in Britain that I choose to ignore, because I prefer what’s on my moodboard.
Corduroy is the postgraduate degree of the fabric world. It adds letters after your name. It makes you look smart, in the brainy sense. Even when it is in fashion, like it is now, it looks more high-minded than fashion-victim. At least, that’s how it works in my head. The trouble with what you wear, of course, is that other people see it, too. And judge it according to what’s in their heads, which can sometimes be quite different. (I know! So meta today. It’s the corduroy talking.)
What I wore this week: a floral dress in winter
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You may have noticed that I am wearing not just corduroy, but pink corduroy. An unexpected colour is one way to nudge people into realising that you are wearing corduroy in a soulful-and-cultured sense, not in the grumpy-and-outdated sense. Black looks great, cream is fabulous. If you must do brown, make sure it’s a rich butterscotch caramel; if you go for burgundy, make it crimson and regal rather than dingy uniform-shop blazer. Go up a size: when tight, corduroy has a tendency to lumpiness. It looks best when it is generous.
Also, go luxe. Wear with a silk blouse rather than a cotton shirt. Or choose a lush knit, instead of a scratchy cardigan. Cable knits, smooth textured merino or groovy ribs all work well. This is not the moment for Guccified maximalism: sleek and uncluttered works better. Robert Redford in his treacle-toned cord suit in All The President’s Men is never not a good look. George Clooney as the nattily attired Fantastic Mr Fox is the best of all. Corduroy may not be foxy. But it looks fantastic to me.
Jess wears cords, £45, and polo neck, £24, both topshop.com. Heels, £175, lkbennett.com. (Chair, £395, grahamandgreen.co.uk.)
Styling: Melanie Wilkinson. Hair and makeup: Samantha Cooper at Carol Hayes Management. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/jul/07/rafael-nadal-karen-khachanov-wimbledon | Sport | 2017-07-07T18:27:11.000Z | Kevin Mitchell | Rafael Nadal shows Wimbledon title credentials against Karen Khachanov | There is a shining verve and familiar glint of pugnacity about Rafael Nadal that should frighten every player left in the men’s singles at this 131st Wimbledon. The 31-year-old Spaniard, after all, was not supposed to be a contender, according to those who subscribe to the view his recent visits have ended so miserably a third title is beyond him.
Some of the doubters put aside his triumphs in 2008 and 2010 arguing they were so long ago their relevance has become diminished. However, on the evidence of his 6-1, 6-4, 7-6 (3) win in the third round on Friday over the powerful young Russian Karen Khachanov, these are dangerous assumptions.
Johanna Konta’s career-best Wimbledon run continues with Sakkari win
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Now he plays a contender even older than himself, the 34-year-old Gilles Müller, who sent Britain’s Aljaz Bedene on his way 7-6 (4), 7-5, 6-4 on No2 Court in just under two and a half hours. While Nadal later talked up the danger of that fixture, he knows it is a match he should win comfortably enough, even allowing for the Luxembourg veteran’s splendid form on grass this year.
“He’s one of the toughest opponents possible on this surface especially,” Nadal said. “It is his best surface, without a doubt. He has a great serve, a great volley. He plays well from the baseline here.”
And he got a decent enough workout against Khachanov, who also put in a spirited performance against Andy Murray in the French Open last month. At one point it looked like it might be over with embarrassing speed. On a warm, but hardly steaming, afternoon, and on a surface no more threatening than a bowling green, Nadal was 3-0 up after 10 minutes, 4-0 after 13 – then broken to love on the quarter-hour.
But Nadal repaired the damage immediately and wrapped up the first set with less ceremony than one of his shopping trips in Wimbledon village. The Russian did not hit a single winner in the 22 minutes of the first frame.
There was more grass-slippage to excite those who regard these courts as some sort of green Bermuda Triangle, when Nadal wrong-footed Khachanov with a lovely change of direction on his way to breaking for 2-1 in the second. Sometimes players just fall over, often because of a late shift of weight – and anyone unaware of the vagaries of grass might be advised to do an elementary course in gardening.
Khachanov remained dangerous, even as the points piled up against him, and struck a hat-trick of aces to stay in touch at 2-3. The exchanges then lost a little rhythm and Khachanov failed to cash in on a fleeting and minor dip in level by Nadal who had to regather his composure for a two-set cushion. Nevertheless, Khachanov, who rose to No34 in the world after giving Andy Murray a few sturdy blows of his racket to think about in the fourth round at Roland Garros, grew in confidence in the third, staying in front in the serving cycle with an uncomplicated attack built on the most solid of foundations: a big serve.
However, when Nadal was under serious pressure for the first time, he saved break point for the third time in the set, after an hour and 45 minutes, with a 103mph top-spun second serve in the seventh game that bamboozled his young opponent, but had to do so twice more for parity.
The end was in contrast to the beginning and that was in large part as a result of the fighting spirit of the Russian. When he held for a fifth game, he became only the second player to do so in 28 sets, after Donald Young had pressed Nadal that far in the second round, a minor victory in itself with the former two-times champion in such phenomenal form this summer, on clay and now grass.
There would be no more dips. He gave up just 34 games to win his 10th French Open but Khachanov went one further on Friday. He took Nadal to his first tie-break since the Madrid final on 14 May against Dominic Thiem – who was also the last player to beat the Spaniard, in the quarter-finals in Rome the following week.
Wimbledon 2017 day five: Murray, Konta, Nadal through, Watson out - as it happened
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Khachanov was not going to match that, his final, framed forehand flying and out of bounds, to the acclaim of an adoring Centre Court. Nadal’s many fans are starting to believe the second week here will lead to a third Wimbledon coronation.
When he changed his shirt, the crowd went predictably crazy, David Beckham prominent among those cheering from the royal box, and Nadal went blushingly down the tunnel to compute a few figures before the fourth round on Monday.
Having completed his third Decima of the year in Paris, Nadal has carried his rediscovered brio from his beloved clay to the grass of south-west London without any apparent tweaks to his game.
If he were to go on to win here for a third time, he would equal the back-to-back achievement of Bjorn Borg, who won the French and Wimbledon three years in a row. Nadal would be spacing his out a little but the fact he is even in contention to challenge for the title after missing last year’s championships with a wrist injury that forced his temporary absence from the Tour – and coming off a string of four Wimbledon defeats against opponents from outside the top 100 – is a victory in itself. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2017/oct/24/how-can-all-university-students-get-a-share-of-the-spoils | Education | 2017-10-24T06:30:39.000Z | Harriet Swain | Next steps for widening access: ensuring all students get a share of the spoils | When she first looked at students’ experience of King’s College London, Anne
Marie Canning found it was like a jewellery box.
“You’ve got internships, study abroad and loads of vivid, fantastic opportunities,” said Canning, the university’s director of social mobility and student success. “And some students – not just middle-class students, not even wealthy students but a highly wealthy set of students – were reaching in and taking everything out, and other students were having what I would call the SlimFast version of higher education.”
Les Ebdon: ‘We need a step change on widening access to university'
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How to counter this tendency across the higher education sector and ensure that students succeed no matter their background was the subject of a roundtable debate sponsored by HSBC and held at the Guardian earlier this month. Taking part in the roundtable along with Canning were other representatives of organisations working to widen participation in higher education, as well as senior university managers and academics.
A data-informed approach
Crucial for universities in supporting students from diverse backgrounds, the speakers agreed, was data. David Reubain, chief executive of the Equality Challenge Unit, which now has ten years worth of data on the different characteristics of students and staff in UK higher education, said these showed key disparities in student success, retention and attainment by race and ethnicity.
Several speakers gave examples of ways data had proved useful in identifying students’ needs. Ian Dunn, deputy vice-chancellor at Coventry University, said data helped both in assessing individual students’ journeys to and through higher education, and in formulating general policy.
How universities are using data to stop students dropping out
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Nona McDuff, director of student achievement at Kingston University, said data at her university showing an attainment gap related to race had proved pivotal in persuading academics that action was needed.
Some of the participants thought too little data existed on how a spread of factors could affect students, which could make it difficult to intercede in the right way. Kalwant Bhopal, professor of education and social justice and deputy director of the centre for research in race and education at the University of Birmingham, said it was important to look at different identities, such as ethnicity, race, class and gender together.
BAME students tended to have less access to capital, which meant fewer went on to academic careers
Reubain was worried about concentrating too much on overall BAME (black and minority ethnic) data since the experience of different groups within that could differ so markedly; men of British Bangladeshi ethnicity tended to perform poorly, while British Chinese heritage women did very well, for example. He also pointed out that race could sometimes be a proxy for class.
Graeme Atherton, head of AccessHE, director of the National Education Opportunities Network and a member of the European Access Network, said the amount of data collected at different levels could make the overall picture hard to grasp, although he said data in the UK was generally much more comprehensive than in the rest of Europe.
But all agreed that it was how the data was used that mattered – particularly how it helped institutions improve the value added, which is the difference between how groups of students performed when they entered university and how they did at graduation. “This shifts attention from the student to the institution,” argued McDuff.
Tim Blackman, vice-chancellor of Middlesex University, agreed the key issue was “direction of travel” but he warned that value-added data was difficult to gather.
The teaching excellence framework can enhance academic careers
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He also suggested that while data was useful, it could carry risks. He was particularly concerned about the Teaching Excellence Framework, designed to measure teaching, which could eventually introduce differing fees based on metrics such as the grades and employment outcomes institutions achieve for students. He gave the example of a black woman from a single parent family who does a foundation degree, graduates as a nursing assistant and eventually does a top up degree and secures a nursing job earning £25,000 a year. Her success trajectory is less straightforward than that of a privileged white male who graduates as a doctor and earns £85,000 within five years.
Responsibilities outside study
Speakers agreed inequalities in what students had to deal with could be extreme. Bhopal argued students who had to work part-time had less time for studying, which meant they were less likely to get a 2.1 or first-class degree.
Deborah Hayes, provost and chief academic officer at Greenwich School of Management (GSM), said many students at her institution suffered “extreme disadvantage”, including caring responsibilities, limited financial capital, and sometimes homelessness.
One way GSM is now trying to support its students is through strengths profiling, identifying what they are good at, what this means for how they learn, and helping them to find ways of building on their strengths. It has also developed a teaching fellows programme, recruiting its best graduates and postgraduates and giving them experience as an academic, including gaining a postgraduate certificate in higher education practice. This not only boosts aspiration, but improves staff diversity, Hayes said.
Diversity that benefits everyone
Bhopal said a study she had carried out at her university showed access to economic capital was the most important factor in whether final year students decided to go on to do a PhD. BAME students tended to have less access to such capital, which meant fewer went on to academic careers.
Oxford accused of 'social apartheid' as colleges admit no black students
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Generally those who do become academics are more likely to be on fixed-term contracts and less likely to be professors, which has a domino effect, she said. “BAME students are less likely to want to be academics if they don’t have any BAME role models.”
Yet universities should see diversity as an asset, both among staff and students, Blackman argued. “Those different perspectives, insights and ways of seeing issues, ways of thinking about things, are very powerful,” he said, and students recognise this themselves. While they often gather in segregated groups, in surveys they say they want more support to integrate.
Canning said what drives student mobility is getting students to know students not like them, and if she could give students one gift when they got to university, it would be social belonging. “It’s the richest gift we can give to students and it basically opens up a whole world of student success, both academically and in terms of happiness.”
I knew they were the most talented young people I’d ever seen in my life and I could see them shrinking
Anne Marie Canning
Two years ago, she became worried that while her university was becoming increasingly successful at bringing in students from broader backgrounds they needed more support after they arrived. “I knew they were the most talented young people I’d ever seen in my life and I could see them shrinking,” Canning said.
As a result she decided to be more proactive about intervening to create a strong cohort and ensure that students from all backgrounds took up the opportunities on offer. This has included a project giving students on bursaries a branded item in their first week to help them bond to their institution, and putting on social activities. One student suggested they were trying to create a Bullingdon Club for bursary kids, and Canning agreed. “It’s really about trying to generate that social capital.”
King’s has also worked with the government’s behavioural insights team to get students to connect with the right experience at the right time, and understand that achieving their degree is just the first step. Students are often overwhelmed by all that is on offer in their first year, and a study at King’s into students’ experiences during that year found those from more disadvantaged backgrounds were 10% less likely than others to feel they could approach their peers for help. “It’s not about the services we run, it’s about the campus community we create,” she said.
Role models
Many speakers stressed that this needs to start early. King’s works with pupils in primary school. Ted Edmondson, head of technology for higher education at KPMG, which sponsors a secondary school in Hackney, and works with other schools, said at first they found many students did not have the aspiration or expectation that they could ever work in a firm like his. “As we have worked with some of these schools we have seen these students realise they can do that. They can achieve and it is something that should be on their radar.”
Social capital: the new frontier in widening participation at universities
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Michael Sanders, head scientist and head of research and evaluation at the behavioural insights team, said his research had found that role models – and even just letters written by role models – could significantly raise pupils’ aspiration to go to university. But he said they also needed academic support once they got there. He suggested that work he had done with further education colleges, in which students nominate an academic supporter (usually a parent) to receive regular letters designed to prompt conversations about what the student is studying, could be useful in higher education too.
Dunn said it was important to ensure the way the curriculum was structured was not exclusive. And many speakers stressed that support for diversity needed to come from the top – vice-chancellors and chairs of governors.
But for Blackman the “elephant in the room” was academic selection, which he called social class selection by another name. How, he asked, could more white, privileged kids from independent schools be persuaded to go into post-1992 universities? “At the moment I think our universities drive inequality more than they drive equality.”
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Looking for a higher education job? Or perhaps you need to recruit university staff? Take a look at Guardian Jobs, the higher education specialist | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/27/urope-is-sailing-into-stormy-waters-but-its-leaders-are-dozing-at-the-tiller | Opinion | 2024-01-27T07:00:31.000Z | Simon Tisdall | Europe is heading for perilous waters, and its leaders are dozing at the tiller | Simon Tisdall | Democrats fear Joe Biden is sleepwalking to disaster in a November rematch with Donald Trump. Tories level similar criticism at dozy Rishi Sunak as Labour dreams of an autumn landslide. But for a truly world-beating slumber party, EU leaders take the bedtime biscuit.
The way it’s going, 2024 could turn into a nightmare for the 27-country bloc – an all-time annus horribilis. A daunting slew of international and internal challenges is coming to a head. Is the EU ready to meet them? Definitely not.
Take the crisis in the Red Sea. Iran-backed Houthi militants have been attacking shipping there since the Israel-Hamas war began. Citing threats to global trade and free navigation, the US and the UK struck back this month in Operation Prosperity Guardian – on their own.
The EU has an important stake in this fight. About 40% of its Asia and Middle East trade moves via Suez. But only the Netherlands provided hands-on assistance. Germany offered support – in a written statement. France, Italy and Spain ducked out. The excuse in Brussels is that the EU plans to launch its own Red Sea mission. Yet despite an obvious need for urgency as Houthi attacks continue, foreign ministers have put off a decision until 19 February. The good news is that Belgium may send a frigate.
This sorry saga exposes some familiar EU singularities: ambivalence about following America’s lead, fear of getting into a war, divided counsels and, in this case, worry about siding with Israel. Snoozing at the tiller, Europe is again failing to pair its self-interest and aspirations as a global actor with timely, concrete, joined-up action.
Second time around, Trump may fulfil his threat to pull the plug on Nato. What then for collective European security?
The Gaza war has exploded another illusion ahead of this week’s pivotal EU summit. Governments believe the conflict, and regional escalation, threaten their vital interests. As Israel’s largest trading partner, they think the EU has leverage. All support a two-state solution. But when Josep Borrell, EU foreign policy chief, outlined a 10-point peace plan for Palestine last week, his VIP guest, Israel Katz, Israel’s foreign minister, ignored it. “Which are the other solutions they [the Israelis] have in mind?” Borrell fumed. “To make all the Palestinians leave? To kill them?” He was left muttering darkly about unspecified “consequences”.
Europe’s bottomless capacity for punching below its weight is damaging Ukraine, where two years on from its invasion, Russia appears to be slowly gaining the upper hand. As the summit approaches, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, Moscow’s Trojan donkey, continues to block a €50bn financial package for Kyiv.
The failure of some EU countries, notably France, to supply more and better arms, as US deliveries dry up, is also harming Ukraine’s chances – and consequentially, Europe’s hopes of defending its borders from future Russian aggression. That’s especially pertinent given Trump’s prospective return to the White House a year from now. Like a deer frozen in the headlights, Europe seems paralysed by the fast-approaching orange bulldozer. This time around, Trump may fulfil his threat to pull the plug on Nato. What then for collective European security?
Trump’s resurrection “would endanger European interests but Europe is not investing in mitigating the risks,” warned Ian Bond, of the Centre for European Reform. Defence, transatlantic economic relations and Trump’s disdain for the rules-based international order were looming problem areas.
“Most European leaders are still not being honest with their populations about the strategic situation in which Europe finds itself. Russia is increasingly putting its economy on a war footing,” Bond wrote. This helps explain calls in the UK to mobilise a “citizen army” and prepare for war.
There has been much talk in Europe in recent years about developing common defences. But French president Emmanuel Macron’s blueprints for EU “strategic autonomy” and “military sovereignty” have largely gathered dust. US-led Nato remains Europe’s first and last hope.
Like a deer frozen in the headlights, Europe seems paralysed by the fast-approaching orange bulldozer
Fearful of Trump’s second coming, Manfred Weber, leader of the European People’s party in the European parliament, proposes an EU-wide nuclear umbrella based around France’s force de frappe. “Regardless of who is elected in America, Europe must be able to stand on its own in terms of foreign policy and be able to defend itself independently,” he said.
For Judy Dempsey, of Carnegie Europe, the geopolitical dangers facing the EU in 2024 are global – and exacerbated by the dithering of its wealthiest member. Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, “is giving no political or strategic leadership to a Europe that is ill-prepared for a possible rupture of the transatlantic relationship,” Dempsey wrote.
“Similarly, neither Germany nor Europe is prepared to withstand the growing influence of regimes that challenge the traditional prominence of the west” – a reference to China, a big trade partner and bigger potential threat. “Europe’s way of life, anchored in democracy, human rights, and security, is on borrowed time.”
Germany is also a flashpoint in the main internal political challenge confronting the EU – the rise of the far right, which Scholz and tens of thousands of German street demonstrators decry as an existential threat to liberal democracy. In France, anti-EU sentiment is being cynically exploited by the right to fuel current farm protests.
New polling by the European Council on Foreign Relations suggests populist “anti-European” parties, principally of the right, will make large gains in EU and national elections this year. Migration, broken budgets, energy and climate are other explosive common denominator issues.
Can the EU survive a dangerous, defining year? It will probably muddle through. But the sort of strategic leadership and vision offered by Jacques Delors, the legendary Eurocrat who died last month, is evidently lacking – and urgently required.
Europe is the meat in the sandwich being cut by hostile authoritarians around the world. If it doesn’t wake up and shape up, it’s lunch.
Simon Tisdall is the Observer’s foreign affairs commentator | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/18/its-starting-to-get-dark-after-navalnys-death-many-fear-what-putin-will-do-next | World news | 2024-02-18T17:31:54.000Z | Pjotr Sauer | What next for Putin? After Navalny’s death, many fear what leader will move on to | Vladimir Putin smiled and looked unusually festive on Friday as he praised factory workers and joked with state reporters at an industrial plant in the Ural city of Chelyabinsk.
Putin’s confidence was unmistakable – a sign of his full belief that he would get away with the death that day of his biggest critic in jail while outlasting Ukraine on the battlefield.
The world might never know what specifically happened on the day of Alexei Navalny’s death at a remote prison above the Arctic Circle. As of Sunday, his family has not yet even been allowed to see his body.
Navalny spent years enduring some of the worst excesses of the Russian prison system. The country’s penal colonies are notorious for their grim conditions and the opposition leader was singled out for particularly cruel treatment.
Whatever the circumstances of his death, years of mistreatment support the widespread view held by his supporters that the Kremlin was responsible.
“Putin killed Alexei Navalny,” said Georgy Alburov, a Navalny ally and a researcher for his Anti-Corruption Foundation. “How exactly he did it will certainly be exposed.”
Leaders across the west similarly echoed Alburov’s view, laying the blame for Navalny’s death directly at the feet of Putin. “Make no mistake: Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death. Putin is responsible,” said the US president, Joe Biden.
But these statements are likely to leave the Kremlin shrugging its shoulders at best.
Already a wanted man after the international criminal court ruling charging him with overseeing the abduction of Ukrainians, Putin has long stopped seeking the approval of the west. As the Kremlin sees it, Putin is in the driving seat.
With the death of Navalny, he has inflicted a devastating blow to the country’s already suppressed opposition.
His control over domestic politics now appears total. After next month’s elections, he will be crowned for another six-year term as president, and his tenure could surpass even that of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. Putin has been in charge for 24 years so far, while Stalin died in 1953 after ruling for 29 years.
As the second anniversary of Putin’s invasion nears, Ukraine is deprived of vital aid, and cracks in morale are showing.
On Saturday, Ukraine’s army was forced to retreat from Avdiivka, a key frontline Ukrainian city, a decision that dealt Kyiv a military blow and handed the initiative of the war firmly to Putin.
In the long term, Donald Trump, who has yet to comment on Navalny’s death, has a real chance of becoming the next US president, which could give Putin a carte blanche in Ukraine and beyond.
The western plan to isolate Putin and his country, to make him a pariah and to inflict global sanctions that would cripple the Russian economy have not had their desired result.
Putin has cultivated new allies and courted the global south, receiving a grand welcome in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, once staunch western allies.
Biden on Friday was quick to admit that after Navalny’s death it would be hard to inflict the “devastating” consequences on Russia he promised in 2021. “We’re contemplating what else could be done,” Biden said.
This hesitancy is only likely to bolster Putin’s confidence. “The more impunity Putin has, the more aggressive he inevitably becomes,” said Boris Bondarev, a former senior Russian career diplomat who defected from the Kremlin after the start of the war in 2022.
“Having destroyed opposition at home, he will focus then on those who dare speak abroad,” Bondarev warned.
This mood appears to be infectious among Putin’s allies. “Russia owes nothing to anyone – let’s start there,” Margarita Simonyan, the head of state-controlled broadcaster RT, wrote, commenting on Nato’s statement that Putin has “serious questions to answer” over Navalny’s death.
Simonyan, seemingly unfazed by the optics, continued by saying that five people who had fallen “victim” to Navalny’s anti-corruption investigations had already called her to celebrate his death.
After his killing, many fear for what is to come. “With no checks on his capacity to make fatal mistakes, an ageing Russian ruler surrounded by sycophants may embark on more reckless moves in coming years than anything we’ve seen so far,” wrote Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.
The prominent Russian sociologist Greg Yudin put it more grimly: “In Russia, they like to say that it is darkest before dawn. I think it’s true – it’s just that we hardly know the real darkness yet. Looks like it’s only starting to get dark. The sun is gone.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/jun/23/carsten-holler-arcelormittal-orbit-slide-first-ride | Art and design | 2016-06-23T15:47:55.000Z | Oliver Wainwright | Into Orbit: my dizzying drop down the world's biggest slide | Never has an attraction promised so much yet delivered so little. It was the roller coaster without a ride, the helter skelter without a slide, a £20m mountain of steel leering above London’s lean Olympic stadium as a mocking monument to the vanity of the city’s former mayor, Boris Johnson, and its funder, the steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal.
Designed by artist Anish Kapoor and engineer Cecil Balmond, the ArcelorMittal Orbit was conceived as a money-making machine, intended to reap £1.2m a year for the upkeep of the Olympic park. Instead it has cost the taxpayer £10,000 a week to maintain. Of all of Johnson’s follies, from the empty Thames cable car to the overheating bus, it has been the most useless totem pole of mayoral hubris.
In a delirious red blur … you catch bleary glimpses of Olympic-scape before plunging into darkness around hairpin bends
But when you’re hurtling down through the structure’s contorted loops on the new corkscrew slide that opens this weekend, all this can be momentarily forgiven.
All that steel, which the engineers of the neighbouring stadium worked so hard to avoid using, shoots by in a delirious red blur. The awkward marriage of Kapoor’s tangled structure, that clunky staircase, the lift and boxy corporate entertaining suite dissolve in a dizzying 40-second thrill ride. As Guy de Maupassant said of the Eiffel Tower, being inside the Orbit is the best place to be – because it’s the only place you don’t have to look at it.
Downward spiral … Oliver Wainwright going down the slide. Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian
Through transparent sections of the slide’s roof, you catch bleary glimpses of the surrounding Olympic-scape, before plunging into darkness and jolting around 12 hairpin bends at speeds of up to 15mph (which feels much faster, believe me).
You see the bulging roof of Zaha Hadid’s swimming pool, the thicket of Stratford’s tacky apartment towers, the gilded souks of Westfield, the skeletal stadium, all whisked up in a woozy cocktail, before you’re spat out at the bottom. It brings back the thrill of the Games – that one moment when the nation suspended cynicism over this £12bn regeneration project – in a brief white-knuckle gulp.
Carsten Höller: ‘It is impossible to travel down a slide without smiling’
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Billed as the longest and tallest tunnel slide in the world, it is the most extreme work yet of Belgian artist Carsten Höller, a research scientist turned purveyor of slides to major global art institutions since 1998. For Höller, who first brought his steel spirals to London at Tate Modern in 2006, and attached a pair of corkscrews to the front of the Hayward Gallery last year, the slides are an experiment in letting go.
They are, he says, a way of propelling visitors into a state of “simultaneous delight, madness and voluptuous panic”. This last bit is a quote from the French writer Roger Caillois, who in the 1950s described sliding as “surrendering to a kind of spasm, seizure, or shock which destroys reality with sovereign brusqueness”.
When you’re 76 metres up in the air above Stratford, kitted out with the obligatory elbow protectors and padded hat, then ceremonially stuffed into a sack and left peering into the gaping steel tube, the brusqueness certainly bites. And the ride doesn’t disappoint.At £17 a go, this is no cheap thrill, especially in the context of three of London’s poorest boroughs.
‘Spasm, seizure, shock’ … Anish Kapoor’s ArcelorMittal Orbit, adorned by Carsten Höller’s slide.
The ticket price is part of an effort to make this white elephant’s hopeless business plan stack up. Projected to receive 350,000 visitors annually, less than half that number came last year. Abseiling was introduced in 2014, at £85 a pop, but that did little to help balance the books, nor did corporate events help. The view from the top of the tower, even with Kapoor’s funfair hall of mirrors, simply wasn’t enough of a draw. You see pretty much the same from the John Lewis luggage department nearby. And that has a cafe.
When the plan for the slide was first mooted, Kapoor was blunt. “The mayor foisted this on the project, and kind of insisted,” he said. “It felt to me as if it was turning the whole thing in the wrong direction.” Now he claims to be “delighted with the collaboration”. Never has an artist been commissioned to add a sticking plaster to another artist’s failed work in such a public manner, even if Johnson jovially compared the situation to being “like Bernini adorning the work of Michelangelo”.
The truth, according to a source close to the project, is that Boris had been keen on a slide from the very beginning, when he first dreamt up the plan for an Olympic tower, fearing the flat-pack stadium might lack the wow-factor he desired. Alongside Kapoor, he invited two other artists to submit ideas, including Antony Gormley, who proposed a gigantic model of himself through which visitors could clamber, and the architects Caruso St John, who came up with a vertical seaside pier.
Designed with artist Eva Rothschild and curated by Jeremy Deller, it would have been a kiss-me-quick ascent of palm-reading and fish and chips, telescopes and fairy lights, easy to dismantle and recycle after the Olympics. But however much the mayor pleaded for a slide, no one played ball. The entrants preferred to occupy the higher pedestal of art than funfair attraction.
Constructing Anish Kapoor’s Orbit: time-lapse film Guardian
Five years on, Höller’s £3m slide has finally given this knotted steel monster a use. It will pay itself back in five years, in the optimistic dreams of the London Legacy Development Corporation. But what if it doesn’t? Might it become the fantastical testing ground for a succession of ever more lurid spectacles of public art? They could commission Jeff Koons to cover it in flowers, or Christo to wrap it up so we no longer have to see it.
Why every British landmark would be improved by a slide
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In tougher times, hated public art was simply pulled down. When John Nash erected a 20-metre pillar in Kings Cross, topped with a statue of George IV, it was damned as a “Doric monstrosity”. As the Home Counties magazine put it: “The whole was such an execrable performance that ridicule killed it”.
Perhaps that might eventually be kinder fate than letting this reviled zombie-pylon stagger on. It contains enough steel to make 265 double-decker buses, trumpets the promotional blurb. It’s hard not to think that might have been a better use for it.
The Slide at the ArcelorMittal Orbit, Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, London, is open from 24 June | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/10/helmut-schmidt | World news | 2015-11-10T16:08:26.000Z | Dan van der Vat | Helmut Schmidt obituary | Helmut Schmidt, who has died aged 96, was West Germany’s fifth head of government and, by a comfortable margin, its most competent and gifted chancellor, serving from 1974 to 1982. The bitterness of his later years after his fall was only intensified by the extraordinary luck of his successor, Helmut Kohl, who united Germany after the collapse of communism. Kohl changed the course of German and European history; Schmidt was denied the opportunity, of which he would surely have made the most.
An incisive mind and a decisive character marked out this high-flying pragmatist for supreme power in his early 30s, despite eight youthful years lost to the Wehrmacht. Not only was Schmidt outstandingly good at politics and statesmanship; he knew it, and made sure everyone else did, too. Clearsightedness, one of his main strengths, may help explain his perceived main weakness as a leader – his lack of a political concept. He disavowed any desire for power or wealth but hungered for public recognition.
Born in Hamburg the son of Gustav, a teacher, and his wife, Ludovica (nee Koch), he was protestant by family tradition rather than conviction. He qualified for university in 1937, but instead of studying architecture was conscripted, first into the Nazi Labour Front and then the artillery, with which he fought in both the east and the west. In his teens, after Hitler came to power in 1933, he had learned a dreaded secret from his father: his paternal grandfather was a Jew, a fact that would have ruined the prospects of both of them, so they acquired false documents. Schmidt ended the war with an Iron Cross as a first lieutenant in charge of a battery and was briefly held by the British in Belgium in 1945.
Helmut Schmidt, left, joking with Willy Brandt in 1975. Photograph: Heinrich Sanden/Picture Alliance/Photoshot
Returning to a shattered Hamburg, he started to study politics and economics and joined the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in 1946, driven not by idealism but by the plight of the poor in the city. He passed the state examination for teachers in 1949 but went straight into the service of the reborn Land (federal state) of Hamburg, where he soon showed his administrative brilliance.
The SPD put him on its list of Hamburg candidates for the Bundestag election in 1953. Only three years later, his mastery of rhetoric and the detail of policy got him elected to the party’s parliamentary executive. He specialised in defence and made his name as a superb debater, taking on Franz Josef Strauss, the rightwing defence minister and political boss of Bavaria, who was his only intellectual and oratorical equal in German politics. But the mercurial Strauss was prone to scandals, enabling the always focused Schmidt to gain the upper hand in many of their crackling parliamentary exchanges. He acquired the nickname “Schmidt-Schnauze” (Schmidt the Lip), and in 1980 wiped the floor with Strauss when the latter ran against him for the chancellorship. Kohl had received the same treatment in 1976.
When the SPD failed to topple the ageing Konrad Adenauer, the first postwar chancellor, at the 1961 election, Schmidt left the Bundestag and went home to serve as senator (local minister) of transport and later of the interior in the Hamburg city-state government.
The Elbe floods in 1962, in which more than 300 people died, gave him the chance to prove he was as much a man of action in power as a master of invective in opposition. His expertly organised rescue and clearing-up operations won him nationwide notice and a place in the SPD “team for government” – but the party lost again in the 1965 federal election. Schmidt returned to the Bundestag as deputy parliamentary leader.
Two years later he was elected parliamentary chairman and in 1968 deputy chairman of the party overall. But he never stood for party chairman, even when chancellor. The SPD got its first postwar taste of power in 1966 when it became junior partner in a “grand coalition” with the Christian Democrats (CDU), led by Kurt Georg Kiesinger, who succeeded Ludwig Erhard as chancellor. Schmidt stayed on as parliamentary leader, working closely with the people he had been savaging in opposition only weeks before.
When the SPD at last formed an administration in 1969, in coalition with the much smaller Free Democrats (FDP), chancellor Willy Brandt appointed Schmidt to the sensitive post of minister of defence. He set about reforming the Bundeswehr (defence force). Some 22 generals and admirals and a swathe of grumbling colonels and naval captains resigned en masse. At the same time, the world was amazed and amused by the “German Hair Force” (Schmidt’s own English-language pun) as residual Prussian discipline made way for “hippies in uniform”. Efficiency was not allowed to suffer, but the Bundeswehr became a more humane environment for the nation’s conscripted youth.
Schmidt worked 18 hours a day and undertook arduous foreign tours, but came under constant attack from the SPD left for his centrist stance and his unshakeable commitment to Nato, and its nuclear weapons on West German soil. Early in 1972 he all but collapsed from overwork and was in and out of hospital. Some of his stupendous energy derived from an overactive thyroid, as suggested by his piercing and prominent eyes.
Helmut Schmidt with Margaret Thatcher in 1982. Photograph: AP
His large, handsome head, boyish profusion of hair and angular features belied an unexpectedly stocky figure, usually masked by a waistcoat. His addiction to tobacco in all its forms (including snuff, his way of getting round the Bundestag ban on smoking in the chamber) did nothing for his health, and although he seldom touched alcohol, he drank litres of cola. In 1981, however, his health improved dramatically when he gave up smoking and was fitted with a pacemaker. It was not until 1990, when he was 71, that he had a heart attack. He resumed his love affair with tobacco some years before the end of an unusually long life.
The job that opened the way to the top came in July 1972, when Brandt appointed Schmidt to the double ministry of finance and economics (normally separate). Fortunately, the heavy load was his for only four months as Brandt’s majority ebbed away in the great controversy over Ostpolitik, or detente with the Soviet block, including East Germany. But the constitutional upheaval that Brandt had to engineer in order to be able to call Bonn’s first premature election was the prelude to a smashing SPD victory in November, the greatest in its history. Europe east and west rejoiced to see the West Germans voting for peace and stability.
Brandt sent Schmidt back to finance (without economics, which went to the FDP coalition partners), enabling him to distinguish himself on the world stage in the oil crisis a year later, proving once more that he was at his best in a crisis.
Thus when Brandt suddenly resigned over the discovery of the East German “spy in the chancellery” in May 1974, there was only one plausible successor. A genuinely shocked and reluctant Schmidt was sworn in, but had the wit to leave Brandt in the party chair to shield him from the left. Schmidt took to the arduous job as if born to it. In the early days, he would blow a whistle as he took the short walk from his official bungalow in the chancellery grounds to his office, alerting the staff to his approach. He worked them all hard, but drove himself even harder. Yet his critics soon claimed he had no strategy, dismissing him as “a wire-puller with no ideas”.
He certainly seemed to be a man of reaction rather than action, responding, however brilliantly, to events rather than initiating them. But he formed a close friendship with Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, the right-of-centre French president, who also spoke almost perfect English. Politically, too, they spoke the same language, while the “Bonn-Paris axis” on which the European Union turned grew even stronger. Their chief joint achievement was the European currency unit (Ecu) in 1978, the prelude for the Euro.
Helmut Schmidt with is wife, Loki, on holiday in 2003 in Switzerland. Photograph: Arno Balzarini/AP
There was one inherited sore that Schmidt handled no better than Brandt: the nihilist terrorism of the Baader-Meinhof gang, also known as the Red Army Faction, which began in the late 1960s, the years of protest against the Vietnam war and of the “extra-parliamentary opposition” to the grand coalition, which was all but unchallenged inside parliament.
A handful of middle-class devotees of a perverted idealism, who enjoyed a surprisingly large supportive network, carried out bombings, kidnaps and other crimes against the large American military presence in West Germany and the bourgeois, capitalist state, including 34 murders of “symbolic” personalities. The results included alarming police hyperactivity, legislative over-reaction and a reduction in personal freedoms.
Although most of the pressure within government for restrictions came from the FDP, which controlled the interior ministry, and from the CDU opposition, which ran several state governments, Schmidt and the SPD were also carried away on the tidal wave of panic. His old enemy Strauss even took to sporting a pistol as well as a bodyguard. It was a most oppressive and uneasy time to be living in Bonn, but then the terrorist leaders were German and knew instinctively where to apply pressure through the “propaganda of the deed”, including their own trials and eventual prison suicides.
One of the few regrets he mentioned in later life was his decision in 1975 to allow an exchange of Red Army Faction prisoners for Peter Lorenz, the CDU party leader in West Berlin, who had been taken hostage. He resolved the very next day never to repeat the mistake. But the successful assault by a new West German police unit on a Lufthansa airliner, hijacked by Red Army and Palestinian terrorists, at Mogadishu in Somalia, showed his resolve and consolidated Schmidt’s can-do reputation in October 1977.
The recession caused by the Middle Eastern oil embargo was his millstone for the rest of his time as chancellor and indirectly brought him down in October 1982. The West Germans’ love affair with the car was dramatically interrupted by Sunday closure of the road network. It was a crisis not only of the economy but of confidence, drawing a line under the postwar “economic miracle”. Schmidt personally exuded confidence but his best efforts to talk the country out of the crisis did not succeed, even though West Germany coped better than most, thanks to his adroit damage-limitation.
In the end, the SPD-FDP coalition broke up because the partners fell out over economic policy in 1982, but also because the FDP, the tail that had so often wagged the dog in Bonn, decided to switch loyalties and join the resurgent CDU. The SPD old guard, including Brandt, fearing a split in the party, left Schmidt in the lurch. He was as ready as ever to adopt a confrontational course, forcing the FDP ministers to resign and thus take the blame for his fall in October 1982, even though it amounted to political suicide.
The SPD had been in government for 16 years and was tired, bankrupt of ideas and at odds with itself as a huge row loomed over the stationing of new US medium-range nuclear missiles on West German soil. The party was thus already out of office when it turned against this result of Schmidt’s “twin-track” strategy, of negotiating arms reductions with Brezhnev’s Soviet Union while preparing to increase the nuclear arsenal in West Germany if they failed. The Greens had become a national political force after the 1980 election, and the SPD leadership and grass roots felt the need to recover ground lost on the left. The party ditched Schmidt, along with his conservative defence policy, and he withdrew from politics. The party did not recover for 16 years, during which Kohl had no serious rival outside or inside the CDU.
There is no knowing what Schmidt might have achieved had he been in power during a period of expansion rather than retrenchment, or at the end of the 1980s when Mikhail Gorbachev was winding down the Soviet Union. He was the most skilled, experienced and respected western statesman of his time. Unburdened by modesty, he was fully aware of the fact. He once told me, wagging his famous admonitory finger, that he was “tired of educating American presidents”, being then on his fourth. Intolerant of fools, he had the common German didactic and omniscient tendencies in full measure, along with frankness. Because the Germans like their politicians to be solemn as well as serious, his sense of humour and dazzling smile were seldom seen or heard (but not when speaking in Britain, of which he was very fond). What he always showed was wit.
It was an unforgettable privilege for foreign correspondents to go electioneering on the chancellor’s private train (Hermann Göring’s legacy to democratic Germany). We were treated to a nightly tour de force as Schmidt sat at a table in the saloon in the early hours after a hectic day on the hustings, solving world problems, knocking back the coffee, the Coke or the odd cognac, gesturing with pipe or menthol cigarette and puffing smoke in all directions, switching from German to the English of which he was so proud, and back again.
Out of office, out of favour and out of luck, he took his wagging finger on the international lecture circuit while Kohl got off to a decidedly modest start. As the Guardian put it at the time, a great man had made way for a large one. Schmidt, however, lacked the vision associated with the highest plane of great statesmanship. Perhaps there is no need to see this as a weakness: his predecessor had vision, but made a poor fist of government.
Helmut Schmidt discussing the European Union with Jean-Claude Trichet in 2012
In his heyday, only 30 years after Hitler, the rich, western three-quarters of a divided Germany, with its historical burden, was a powerbase too limited for even such a talented man to take the lead internationally in the kind of problem-solving at which he excelled. The ideas and advice were freely available; the clout to get them adopted abroad, and in the end at home, was not. It was sad to watch the SPD conference rejecting him almost unanimously, along with his passionate plea for the new missiles, in 1983.
The rise of Gorbachev and a couple of backward-looking critical books unfairly congealed his reputation as a passé cold warrior, or less unkindly, the right man in the right place at the wrong time; the chancellor who missed the bus of German unification in advance.
What a pair of pragmatists such as Gorbachev and Schmidt might have done together, given the chance, is a challenge to the imagination. But it was the ever-underestimated Kohl who was to seize the moment and pluck unification from the ruins of communism with unexpected skill and speed. Schmidt was undoubtedly jealous and was heard to say, “I told you so” when Kohl made a mess of the economic side of unification.
It was Schmidt who had the brains of a second Bismarck, but it fell to Kohl, who seemingly had only the bulk, to achieve more than any other 20th-century chancellor, not only in uniting Germany but also in leading Europe to economic and monetary union. How ironic it was that a player with Schmidt’s egregious talent and record should have spent much of his long retirement musing on what might have been. To have run the Federal Republic so well with so little room for manoeuvre was not enough for this “crisis-manager without a programme”. A German cartoonist in 1982 adapted Tenniel’s 1890 Punch cartoon, substituting Schmidt for Bismarck stepping down from the ship of state over the caption, “dropping the pilot”.
After politics, Schmidt worked as publisher of Die Zeit of Hamburg, Europe’s leading intellectual weekly, writing increasingly pessimistic books and articles and lecturing on world affairs. He disliked his successor intensely but supported Kohl’s commitment to Europe, and for the same reasons: it was in the best interests of democracy and peace in Germany and Europe that the one should be indissolubly locked into union with the other.
The private Schmidt was very private indeed, almost a blank space for the media. His self-effacing but strong wife Hannelore (“Loki”), a teacher whom he married in 1942, made few public appearances and gave fewer interviews, while their daughter, Susanne, managed to pursue her life without intrusion, although she exiled herself to London to avoid the attentions of the Red Army Faction. A son had died in infancy. Helmut liked to play the organ and the piano, and to sail his yacht in the waters north of his beloved Hamburg, where he lived in a waterside villa. His “Prince Heinrich” sailor’s peaked cap became a trademark and enjoyed a huge fashion revival.
In autumn 2008, shortly before his 90th birthday, he gave an extraordinary, 70-minute television interview, publicising his new book, Ausser Dienst (Out of Service), a reflection on a long life. The programme revealed as never before a man who not only had no religious convictions but blamed clerics – Catholic, Protestant, Islamic – for the mutual intolerance he identified between Christianity and Islam. He admitted that he was not “a seeker after truth” but he took an interest in all manner of philosophies and was a particular admirer of Confucius. He developed a friendship with Hans Küng, the progressive Catholic theologian whose views antagonised the Vatican.
In a masterly analysis of the world financial and economic crisis, he regretted that none of those responsible for the credit crunch would be brought to book. As an experienced economist, he dismissed the generality of contemporary politicians, including George W Bush, as economic “dilettantes”. He revealed that his political hero was Anwar Sadat, the assassinated Egyptian president, who had been a close colleague and friend.
One of his watchwords (and another of his English puns) was: “The biggest room in the world is the room for improvement.” This could have served as Schmidt’s political epitaph when his eight-year chancellorship ran down to its frustrating end. He was not a “conviction” politician and his heart never got the better of his head, but a democratic leader needs a party, and in both Hamburg politics and his own family tradition, the SPD was the only place to be. In exchange for a power-base, Schmidt gave the party eight more years of power in Bonn and two federal election victories before the inevitable falling-out between the ideological left and the centrist master of realpolitik. But in the constrained art of government in difficult times, there was never a safer pair of hands.
Loki died in 2010, and he is survived by Susanne.
Helmut Heinrich Waldemar Schmidt, politician and publisher, born 23 December 1918; died 10 November 2015 | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2023/jul/17/top-economists-call-for-action-global-inequality-rich-poor-poverty-climate-breakdown-un-world-bank | Inequality | 2023-07-17T17:00:31.000Z | Larry Elliott | Top economists call for action on runaway global inequality | Failure to tackle the widening gulf between the world’s rich and poor will entrench poverty and increase the risk of climate breakdown, a group of more than 200 leading economists have said.
In a letter to the UN secretary general, António Guterres, and the World Bank president, Ajay Banga, the signatories from 67 countries call on the two bodies to do more to reverse the sharpest increase in global inequality since the second world war.
Those backing the call for action include the former UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon, New Zealand’s former prime minister Helen Clark and the economists Jayati Ghosh, Joseph Stiglitz and Thomas Piketty.
Reducing inequality by 2030 was one of the 17 UN sustainable development goals (SDGs) agreed by the international community in 2015. The letter says urgent action is needed in light of the differing impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on rich and poor.
Arguing that rising inequality has been “largely ignored”, the letter says the current means for assessing progress in tackling the problem – faster income growth for the poorest 40% than for the population as a whole – fails to take account of the concentration of income and wealth among the super-rich.
For the first time in a quarter of a century, global poverty and extreme wealth have been rising simultaneously, the letter says.
It continues: “Goals matter. Leadership matters. The [World] Bank and UN SDGs are uniquely placed to offer the rallying call for a reduction in inequality that our divided world needs so urgently today.”
The letter demands better measurement of inequality and more ambitious targets for narrowing income and wealth gaps. “We are living through a time of extraordinarily high economic inequality. Extreme poverty and extreme wealth have risen sharply and simultaneously for the first time in 25 years. Between 2019 and 2020, global inequality grew more rapidly than at any time since WW2,” it says.
“The richest 10% of the global population currently takes 52% of global income, whereas the poorest half of the population earns 8.5% of it. Billions of people face the terrible hardship of high and rising food prices and hunger, whilst the number of billionaires has doubled in the last decade.”
When Guterres reviewed the 2030 goals in April, he found inequality at a record high, with only 10% of countries on track to meet the target.
Last October, the World Bank said progress in reducing poverty had come to a halt. It forecast that without a dramatic acceleration of efforts, there would be no chance of meeting the goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030.
Banga is conducting a review of the Bank’s mission and is under pressure from some member countries, such as Germany, to take the fight against inequality more seriously.
The letter says: “We know that high inequality undermines all our social and environmental goals. It corrodes our politics, destroys trust, hamstrings our collective economic prosperity and weakens multilateralism. We also know that without a sharp reduction in inequality, the twin goals of ending poverty and preventing climate breakdown will be in clear conflict.”
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It says tackling inequality is not a standalone goal and that all economic, financial, and social policies should be assessed in terms of their probable impact on it. “This would clearly signal our collective ambition to forge a more equal world,” it adds.
Max Lawson, the head of inequality policy at Oxfam International, said: “Never has the fight to close the gap between the rich and the rest of us been more urgent. A dramatic increase in equality is the key to a better world, and to beating climate breakdown before it is too late.”
Matthew Martin, the director of the campaign group Development Finance International, said: “If we don’t start measuring inequality properly now, we will never reduce it seriously by 2030.”
A World Bank spokesperson said: “Inequality is unacceptably high around the world today as the poorest people continue to bear the steepest costs of the Covid-19 pandemic and its aftermath. The World Bank is committed to tackling inequality in all its forms – the path to ensure no one gets left behind.
“We agree that we need to do more to address inequality, and to do better in measuring progress. The ideas proposed in the open letter are a welcome contribution to this discussion.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jul/20/right-climate-backlash-natural-england-conservation | Opinion | 2023-07-20T07:00:22.000Z | George Monbiot | To understand the right’s climate backlash, look no further than its monstering of Natural England | George Monbiot | Several grisly bloodsports, legal or otherwise, are enjoyed in the English countryside. But none is as popular as shooting the messenger. Rather than attend to our environmental crisis, politicians, lobbyists and the media prefer to hunt the people seeking to address the problem. No quarry is pursued as keenly as the government’s conservation agency Natural England.
This weekend, a full-spectrum attack was launched in the billionaire press. The Sunday Telegraph raged against the agency’s call for “nutrient neutrality”. This means that new housing or business developments should not increase the amount of shit in our rivers. The paper also attacked Natural England’s advice that when new homes are built there should be no net increase in air pollution. It quoted a mysterious “insider” accusing the agency of “green activism”. What’s the betting that this “insider” is a property developer? A similar attack was launched in the Times on Monday.
A column in the Sunday Times by Robert Colvile, director of the Centre for Policy Studies, a dark-money junktank that won’t reveal who funds it, also excoriated Natural England for advising councils that housing developments should be accompanied by new green spaces, to take pressure off existing nature reserves.
In all these cases, Natural England is simply discharging its statutory duties. Under the habitat regulations, it must ensure that new developments don’t adversely affect important wildlife sites, through water pollution, air pollution, visitor pressure and other impacts. It is following the evidence, not the politics. This is its cardinal sin.
But the campaign against it seems to be working. Rishi Sunak is reported to be rewriting the rules. Instead of ensuring that wastewater treatment plants must be upgraded before major new developments are completed, the government, the Telegraph says, intends to “forward count” promised improvements. In other words, just as sewage pollution becomes a major political issue, our rivers can be loaded with even more excrement, on the grounds that one day the problem will be addressed. Relying on promises of future action by water companies and housebuilders – what could possibly go wrong?
The Tories will claim they are simply eager to ease the housing shortage – and that this reported reversal is entirely unrelated to the fact that property developers are among the principal donors to the Conservative party, and seem to give most when their demands are met. The Telegraph correctly points out that the largest share of water pollution comes not from homes but “from farms”. But the government has got that covered too. Following representations from another powerful lobby – the National Farmers’ Union – it introduced loopholes into the farming rules for water, permitting livestock farmers to load rivers with dung without fear of prosecution.
‘Dartmoor, allegedly a national park, is an ecological disaster zone, among the most mistreated ecosystems in Europe.’ Photograph: FreespiritEnvironment/Alamy
There’s been a similar hue and cry about Natural England’s attempts to defend protected places (sites of special scientific interest or SSSIs) on Dartmoor. In 2012 and 2013, it struck 10-year agreements with farmers on the moor to adjust their “grazing calendars” (how many animals they release, where, when and for how long) to reverse the disastrous decline of protected species. The farmers proposed a new grazing regime that, they agreed, would be adjusted if it wasn’t working. In return, they were given millions of pounds of public money, in the form of “higher level stewardship” payments.
As the conservationist Tony Whitehead documents, it became clear several years ago that these agreements weren’t working, either because the wrong calendars had been proposed or because the farmers weren’t sticking to them. The protected sites are still in catastrophic decline. The farmers were repeatedly asked to make adjustments by Natural England.
This year, the agreements were due to expire. But the farmers receiving this money could, if they wanted, seek a five-year extension. Natural England published a blogpost explaining the issues and sent emails to farmers taking the payments, asking for further changes if they wanted another tranche of money. The result was an eruption in parliament and the press. The Country Land and Business Association led the charge, calling for a “full-scale review of Natural England’s remit and track record”, and claiming that the agency “does not receive sufficient scrutiny”. But it was simply doing its duty: it has a legal responsibility to protect and restore SSSIs.
In a parliamentary debate on the issue, only one MP (Labour’s Daniel Zeichner) offered a halfhearted defence of Natural England. Everyone else – Conservative, Labour, LibDem and DUP – lacerated the agency. MPs wrongly claimed that no one was consulted and no warnings were given, that Natural England “is attempting to force farmers out of business” and that its efforts to improve the condition of protected sites are “an insult”, “heavy handed” and a “grave wrong”.
Somehow they all managed to forget that the special subsidies – higher level stewardship grants – are payments for services rendered. If you don’t render the service, you shouldn’t get paid. Farmers could continue to trash the land, but they would no longer be paid public money for it. Somehow, they all also managed to forget that Dartmoor, allegedly a national park, is an ecological disaster zone, among the most mistreated ecosystems in Europe.
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At the end of the festival of ignorance that passed for parliamentary debate, the farming minister Mark Spencer gave our elected vandals everything they demanded. The issue would be taken out of the hands of Natural England and handed to an “independent” review. In the meantime, the livestock farmers would continue to receive the special payments, regardless of the damage they inflicted. Who would chair this review? David Fursdon, the former president of the Country Land and Business Association.
Attacks like this are launched whenever Natural England tries to do its job. It was furiously denounced at the end of last month when it designated, for solid environmental reasons, a new protected site in Cornwall.
Wildlife protection is in freefall in this country. The government’s own figures show that the proportion of SSSIs in favourable condition has fallen from 44% in 2003 to 38% last year. The figures are even worse in our national parks. Natural England has an average of just one staff member to assess the condition of every 73 protected sites: an impossible workload. It doesn’t have the capacity even to see what is happening, let alone act on it.
None of the official targets are being met. The government is preparing to smash its promise of no decline in environmental protection after we left the EU. There are two options in such circumstances: address the problem or find a scapegoat. Who could have guessed they would take option two?
George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2000/mar/24/culture.reviews1 | Film | 2000-03-24T01:26:07.000Z | Peter Bradshaw | Girl, Interrupted | Winona Ryder is the star and co-executive producer of Girl, Interrupted, directed by James Mangold (Heavy, Cop Land), a film tremulous with self-importance. Throughout, Ryder is elfin-like, as if she is going to hop onto your palm any second and start emoting. She is Susanna, a troubled teen forced to check into a psychiatric hospital in 1967 after a suicide attempt. There she meets the statutory sub-Cuckoo's Nest line-up of weirdos and wackos, presided over by the ineffably smug and understanding female ward nurse Whoopi Goldberg.
The iron law of Prettiness-Apartheid applies. They are all uglies, plain-Janes, one of them actually having horrific burn-scars (just to emphasise the point), except for Winona and her co-star Angelina Jolie, the swaggering bad girl who has just been brought back after, of all the way-cool things, an escape attempt . Naturally, Winona and Angelina bond. But Winona never does any unsightly, unsexy things associated with genuine emotional or psychological disorder. It's the fatsos and the losers who do the arm-slashing and laxative-hoarding, while winsome Winona just scribbles sensitively in her notebook, sometimes writing in BIG CAPITAL LETTERS to emphasise that she does have a disorder of some sort. Otherwise, the bug-eyed, strangely sexless Winona might as well be a sensitive co-ed hunched on her bed after some sort of sorority hazing ritual. One for Channel 5. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/26/dozens-of-bodies-believed-to-be-refugees-found-on-beach-in-southern-italy | World news | 2023-02-26T18:53:16.000Z | Angela Giuffrida | Children among 59 people killed in boat wreck off Italy’s coast | Fifty-nine people, including a newborn baby and other children, have died after a wooden boat believed to be carrying refugees wrecked against rocks off the coast of Italy’s Calabria region.
Many of the bodies were reported to have washed up on a tourist beach near Steccato di Cutro, while others were found at sea.
According to survivors, there were about 140 to 150 people onboard the boat before it crashed into the rocks. Eighty-one people survived, with 20 of them taken to hospital, Manuela Curra, a provincial government official, told Reuters.
A Turkish national has been detained on suspicion of human trafficking, according to the Ansa news agency. The vessel is believed to have left Turkey four days ago with people from Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan onboard.
The bodies of the victims were being transported to a sports hall in nearby Crotone on Sunday afternoon. Ansa reported that 20 children, including twins and a newborn baby, were among those who died.
Antonio Ceraso, the mayor of Cutro, told reporters: “It is something one would never want to see. The sea continues to return bodies. Among the victims are women and children.”
The wreck of the boat was reportedly seen by fishers early on Sunday. “You can see the remains of the boat along 200-300 metres of coast,” Ceraso added. “In the past there have been landings but never such a tragedy.”
Rai News reported that the boat “snapped in two”, citing sources as saying that those onboard “didn’t have time to ask for help”.
The Italian coastguard, firefighters, police and Red Cross rescue workers attended the scene.
As rescuers continued their search, Filippo Grandi, the UN high commissioner for refugees, called for European governments to “stop arguing” and “agree on just, effective, shared measures to avoid more tragedies”.
“Another terrible shipwreck in the Mediterranean off the Italian coast,” he tweeted. “Dozens of people have died, many children. We mourn them and stand in solidarity with the survivors.”
The Italian president, Sergio Mattarella, said the “umpteenth tragedy in the Mediterranean shouldn’t leave anyone indifferent”, while urging the EU to “finally take concrete responsibility for governing the phenomenon of migration in order to rescue it from human traffickers”.
The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said that “we must redouble our efforts” on the migration pact and “plan of action” on the central Mediterranean.
“Member states must step forward and find a solution. Now,” she wrote on Twitter. “The EU needs common and up-to-date rules that will allow us to face the challenges of migration.”
Italy is one of the main landing points for people trying to enter Europe by sea. The so-called central Mediterranean route is known as one of the world’s most dangerous.
More than 100,000 refugees arrived in Italy by boat in 2022. The rightwing government of the prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, which came to power in October, imposed tough measures against sea rescue charities, including fining them up to €50,000 (£44,000) if they flout a requirement to request a port and sail to it immediately after undertaking one rescue instead of remaining at sea to rescue people from other boats in difficulty.
Rescues in recent months have resulted in ships being granted ports in central and northern Italy, forcing them to make longer journeys and therefore reducing their time at sea saving lives. Charities had warned that the measure would lead to thousands of deaths.
In a statement, Meloni expressed her “deep sorrow” for the lives cut short by “human traffickers” while repeating her government’s commitment to “preventing departures and along with them the tragedies that unfold”.
“It is criminal to launch a boat of just 20 metres long with as many as 200 people onboard in adverse weather forecasts,” she added.
“It is inhumane to exchange the lives of men, women and children for the price of a ‘ticket’ paid by them on the false perspective of a safe journey.”
Meloni said her government would demand “maximum collaboration” with the countries of departure and origin.
Matteo Piantedosi, Italy’s interior minister, said the shipwreck in Calabria was a “huge tragedy” that “grieves me deeply”, while adding that it was “essential to continue with every possible initiative to prevent departures [of migrants]”.
Piantedosi told Il Giornale on Thursday that the government measures, including agreements with Libya and Tunisia, had “averted the arrival” of almost 21,000 people.
According to the International Organization for Migration’s Missing Migrants project, 20,333 people have died or gone missing in the central Mediterranean since 2014. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/nov/22/paris-climate-talks-six-years-on-destroying-cattle-killing-fish | Environment | 2015-11-22T00:04:08.000Z | Robin McKie | Paris climate talks: ‘Six years on, climate change is killing fish, flooding our fields’ | They are humanity’s hope for tomorrow, but each faces a future that looks increasing bleak and uncertain. Born in four different parts of the globe, these children came into the world in the weeks leading up to the Copenhagen climate conference in December 2009.
At the time, the Observer described the lives of these young people as their families struggled to cope with the impact of climate change.
Now, before the Paris climate summit at the end of the month, we have returned to meet those children and show how they have lived with the consequences of the 2009 Copenhagen summit’s failure to reach a deal to limit nations’ outputs of greenhouse gases. Global warming has continued and droughts have spread. At the same time, sea levels are still rising and ice caps are shrinking while food is becoming increasingly scarce for many people.
The world is again at a crossroads. In Paris, our leaders will be asked to agree to another deal that could limit carbon emissions from factories and vehicles that burn fossil fuels. Each nation will be asked to put forward proposals to cut their output of carbon dioxide so that it will be possible to have an even chance of limiting global warming to a 2C increase over temperatures that were experienced in pre-industrial times.
If they succeed, then the hopes for the next generation – those whose lives are described in these reports, gathered by the Catholic charity Cafod – will receive a welcome boost.
If our leaders fail again, however, then the bleak lives outlined on these pages are destined to become even grimmer.
Denislania da Silva, Brazil
The baby girl born to Elisa da Silva just before the Copenhagen climate summit in 2009 had not yet been named when our first report was published. Today, six-year-old Denislania da Silva attends school, plays with her five brothers and sisters and hopes one day to become a teacher.
However, life among the indigenous Macuxi people is still hard – though there has been one recent cause for hope that the Macuxi will be able to survive in their threatened homelands around Barro, in north Roraima, close to the border with Venezuela.
In 2009, Brazil’s supreme court ruled in favour of the Macuxi in their battle against farmers who wanted to turn the region’s marshlands – where local men hunt and fish – into rice plantations. The indigenous land there should remain as a single, continuous territory, it was decreed, while unlawful land occupiers were also ordered to leave the region.
“The white people used to occupy our land and wouldn’t let us fish or walk in the fields because everywhere was fenced off,” Elisa recalls. “Today it is open to us.”
The development is encouraging, though the Macuxi still face an uncertain future as the area is now being ravaged by the effects of climate change. “I have six children at home and worry a lot about not having enough food for them, especially when I wake up in the morning with nothing,” she says. “I say, ‘Oh dear God, I have nothing to give the children’, but then someone invites me to work and then I can go and buy food and give it to them.”
While Elisa works, her husband Denanson hunts and fishes with the other men of the community. Compared to the past, there have been many improvements, she adds.
Copenhagen summit: How climate change will shape these lives
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“There was no transport in my day. Today we have buses. Nor did we have taps to fill our water bottles to put in the fridge. My hand used to be scratched from grating cassava. Today there is an electric mill and I no longer get tired from using a tipiti [a kind of grater]. I was always reminding the children of this.”
But other developments are not nearly so welcome. Roraima borders the Amazon region of Brazil, one of the world’s most environmentally sensitive regions. Almost 40% of the world’s remaining tropical forests grow here – though the threat of deforestation, caused by rising temperatures and the spread of farming, remains a serious worry.
“The weather has changed a lot,” says Elisa. “It is getting drier and there no longer seems to be a distinct winter or summer: the weather has become constantly dry. It isn’t like before, when there was a rainy season and then a summer. The seasons have clearly changed. Today our water system is drying up and we have to struggle to maintain it.
“Our river used to be abundant but it’s suddenly dried up. The fish that we used to catch have disappeared. Even when there is only rotten old fish, people will buy it. Our wildlife is also leaving – all because of the drought. I sometimes wonder if God is making us die from drought.”
Olomaina Mutonka, Kenya
Noomirisho Mutonka with Olomaina. Photograph: David Mutua/Cafod
In 2009, the Mutonka family had just celebrated the birth of their son Olomaina. Then, they were fearful of the future: droughts were increasing in severity and their cattle were dying. Those fears have since been justified. Of the 284 cattle that they have owned over the past six years, they have lost 271. The area has had no rain in the last year and the family regularly goes to bed without eating. Olomaina’s mother, Noomirisho Mutonka, now fears the worst.
“If the drought continues all our animals will die and we will be left with nothing. We will have no money to pay our children’s school fees. This will lead to our children dropping out. Yet they are the future of this family. They are the ones we will rely on. If they get education, they will get employment and will become breadwinners. And they love school. They are very bright.”
Noomirisho belongs to the Masai people and lives near the town of Kajiado, south of Nairobi. Droughts in this part of Kenya used to occur every three years but in the past few decades their frequency and duration have increased. More than 80% of the Masai in the Magadi area of south Kenya have lost cattle as a result of these increasing droughts.
By 2020 it is expected that more than 75 million people will suffer from water stress in east Africa as global warming takes its inexorable grip. The amount of land that can support the growing of crops will also be halved as a result, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
“In the past, it rained from April to June and then again in December so our dams were never dry,” says Noomirisho. “Nowadays, we can go two years without rain. During that time our animals become emaciated and die.”
Noomirisho wakes around 5am to prepare breakfast for her children before she takes her cattle and goats to graze. She makes the six-hour round trip for water every second day, travelling with a donkey that carries 30 litres in two jerry cans. “On the day, I go to fetch water, I cannot go to graze the cattle because I travel for six hours to the water point and back. When I do take the animals to graze I often have to travel far because of the dry conditions.”
The main source is an abandoned quarry that contains very salty water. “It is all we have now. The Olkejuado river dried up a long time ago and so we have nowhere else to fetch water from. That is what we have to drink.”
Fretelina de Oliveira, Timor-Leste
Six years ago, Joana and Armando de Oliveira, who live in the village of Au-Hun on the north coast of Timor-Leste, were celebrating the birth of their daughter Fretelina. She was the couple’s third child. Life was hard at the time but has only worsened as the climate has deteriorated, leaving the couple fearful for their offspring.
Joana, Armando and Fretelina de Oliveira Photograph: Januario Soares/Caritas Australia
“My preoccupation is that now I am getting old, if I die, who will look after my children and sustain them?” says Armando.
In 2009, the island was afflicted by periodic droughts and wells sometimes ran dry. Maize production was badly hit on several occasions. Unfortunately conditions have hardened since then.
“The community here talks about climate change,” says Armando, who work as a security guard at the nearby Technique School. “Six years ago the climate was better, normal and not as hot as it is now. It’s so very hot and this heat is having an impact on our lives, particularly with my children who cannot get a good sleep.”
The family depend on Joana’s parents for shelter. “I started building my own house but I do not have enough money to continue,” Armando says. “In reality, sometimes my family and I do not have breakfast or lunch, we just eat dinner.”
In the dry season, life is bearable. However, things change in the rainy season, which lasts from November to May. “We are discontented because the roof leaks and water sinks in. The wall is made from woven fibre and if it rains we find it very difficult to find food.”
The community around Au-Hun relies on subsistence with local people growing all their own food, managing livestock and securing water. This is not easy. Both water and electricity supplies are erratic, for a start. “And now the government is charging us for clean water and electricity and we are not able to pay,” says Armando.
Poor yields affects a family’s resistance to disease, cuts livelihoods and, in the end, reduces access to basic service such as education and healthcare. Of Armando’s three children, only Fretelina now goes to school. “I hope my children will have a better future and go to school,” he says.
According to climate scientists, temperatures are expected to rise between 0.88C and 3.68C by 2070. At the same time, rain patterns will be disrupted and droughts will be far more frequent. It is a grim forecast, though Armando remains hopeful that his community will ultimately prevail. “Life in my community involves helping others. Sometimes there is a conflict in family life but as in community problems between youngsters, we can resolve issues.”
Maria Mallik, Bangladesh
Maria Mallik with her mother Majeda. Photograph: Anik Rahman/CAFOD/Cafod
Tayab Mallik has been a rickshaw puller in Bangladesh for 30 years and the strain of this life is beginning to tell.
“I’m getting old and I am losing my strength,” he says. “I have breathing problems. It troubles me in the summer mostly due to the rising temperatures. But being rickshaw puller you have to be very strong. If you are not strong enough, then you will fail to earn money.”
Married with five daughters and a son, including Maria, who was born in 2009, Mallik’s main fears are for his family. “I want them to be literate. I want to see them going to universities and doing well-paid jobs. I don’t want them to pull rickshaws. But if something happens to me, who is going to feed them or pay their tuition fees? I know no one. Life is brutal.”
Mallik earns £2 to £3 a day. “It’s really hard to feed a family of seven with this income,” he says. “I cannot remember when I bought meat for my family and I feel bad when I cannot buy fruit for my children. I know that they need it.”
Tayab and his wife, Majeda Begum, live with the children in Mostortona in Bangladesh’s Barguna district, which is suffering desperately from rising sea levels caused by global warming. High levels of salinity affect soil productivity, agriculture and vegetation. Drinking water is polluted. At the same time, the area has been devastated by increasingly vicious cyclones that bring tidal surges and destroy homes. More and more people are migrating to cities as land is lost to erosion.
In 2009, the situation was serious and it has only worsened over the years. “Everyone in our community now knows that climate change is now a big threat. Everyone is tired of speaking about it. We are poor so there is no way out.
“The river Pyra is about two miles from my home and due to climate change the water level is rising every year. You never know when you have to swim at night rather than sleep in your bed,” Mallik says. “Increasing temperatures are another threat that cannot be denied. All in all, my life is full of threats. I don’t know what is going to be next.”
This stress is shared by his children, he believes. “I think it is hampering the natural flow of their lives and their education. At their age, I used to play all day long in the field. But my children are spending their time thinking about how to cope with a changing climate. This is not a proper childhood.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/jan/12/met-police-chief-its-crazy-i-cant-sack-toxic-officers-who-broke-the-law-mark-rowley | UK news | 2023-01-12T09:02:58.000Z | Matthew Weaver | Met police chief: it’s crazy I can’t sack ‘toxic’ officers who broke the law | The head of the UK’s biggest police force has said it is “crazy” that he cannot sack “toxic” officers who have broken the law.
Responding to a disclosure in the Guardian that 150 officers are under investigation over allegations of sexual misconduct or racism, the Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, admitted that the force’s vetting procedures were inadequate.
Challenged about the figures, Rowley said: “We have some very worrying cases with officers who’ve committed criminality whilst police officers and yet I’m not allowed to sack them. It’s sort of, it’s crazy.”
Speaking to Radio 4’s Today programme about the 150 cases he added: “The investigation needs to take place – not all of those cases will have have a case to answer, but many of them will.”
He added: “We’ve got some officers who we sacked, but other legal bodies, who have a power to reinstate them, did. So I’ve got officers who we determined shouldn’t be police officers and yet I have to keep them. It sounds bizarre – I’m the commissioner, yet I can’t decide who my own workforce is.”
Metropolitan police commissioner, Mark Rowley: ‘I’m the commissioner, yet I can’t decide who my own workforce is.’ Photograph: Kirsty O’Connor/PA
Rowley said he had the backing of the government to rapidly change the police recruitment system. “The home secretary and the prime minister have been very helpful in ordering a review that I hope will change the rules to make it easy to move the toxic people.”
Campaigners have questioned how rogue officers were recruited. Rowley said: “There were cases where there were warning signs and our vetting wasn’t good enough. That’s why we’re beefing that up.”
Rowley also expressed alarm about falling levels of police pay that were forcing some officers to rely on food banks.
He said: “I’m concerned about the cumulative effect of challenging pay over many, many years. Frontline officers have lost about 14% in real terms over over a decade.”
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He added: “They have no desire to strike; it’s not allowed but they are frustrated. I’ve seen data about police officers using using food banks, which is really concerning.”
Rowley also said he wanted more flexibility on the type of people who were recruited to policing.
He said: “There will be people out there who have got really specialist skills who would make a great detective in the fraud or cyber world, that probably wouldn’t be great at confronting a drunk on a Friday night. At the moment, all of our officers have to have the same core set of skills and I will need some flexibility about that.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/mar/18/could-ukraine-war-help-end-wests-reliance-on-hydrocarbons | Environment | 2022-03-18T10:53:42.000Z | Fiona Harvey | Could Ukraine war help end west’s reliance on hydrocarbons? | Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will have a profound impact on the world’s race to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions, climate experts have warned – but it may not all be negative.
Vladimir Putin’s attempts to wield his dominance over European energy supplies as a weapon to limit interference in his war appear in danger of backfiring. Europe is embarking on a clean energy push that could reduce Russian gas imports by more than two-thirds, while the UK will set out an energy security strategy within days that will emphasise renewable power. In the US – as well as pumping more fossil fuels – president Joe Biden is renewing efforts to pass his mauled green investment package.
David Blood, the prominent financier who with Al Gore founded Generation Investment Management, believes the Ukraine war should boost green energy. “The irony is, this war is funded by the west’s dependence on Russian hydrocarbons. There is now significant evidence to show that hydrocarbons are not just environmentally unsustainable, but that they weaken the social, political and economic fabric of our world too,” he said. “This war provides even more evidence of why there is no time to waste in transitioning away from fossil fuels and towards a cleaner future.”
This fresh impetus to decarbonisation probably caught Putin by surprise, as he had been “happy to use climate to exacerbate tensions within the west”, said Rachel Kyte, dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University in the US, and a former high-ranking World Bank climate expert.
She said EU countries’ commitment last year to reach net zero emissions by 2050 may have fed into the Russian president’s calculation that he should no longer delay his long-standing ambitions over Ukraine. Every step towards clean energy in Europe diminishes his economic hold over EU states: Europe gets 40% of its gas from Russia, rising to 60% for Germany, but that demand must all but disappear by 2050 if the net zero aspirations are to be met.
“Putin’s understanding of what decarbonisation, especially in Europe, would mean for Russian energy exports in the medium and long term may have been one factor in the timing of his invasion of Ukraine now,” said Kyte. “The more time passed, so the appetite for fossil fuels would diminish. However, the nature of the west’s pivot away from Russian fuel in response was likely not part of the calculus.”
In the long-running UN annual negotiations on the climate, Russia has played a low-key but not outwardly obstructive role for decades. Todd Stern, former US climate envoy under president Barack Obama, and who helped negotiate the 2015 Paris climate agreement, said Russia “didn’t try to throw sand in the gears” but did little to help.
“Nothing I’ve ever seen suggests [Putin] has had any desire to be an active, high-ambition player,” he added. “I doubt climate has entered into his calculations except when he thinks he can get something for it.”
Something Putin could get for it has been to foment populist culture wars, particularly in the US where he acted, according to Kyte, as the “climate whisperer” to president Donald Trump, “encouraging scepticism of scientific consensus”. Russian social media bots and troll farms honed their disinformation techniques for years on lies about climate science.
Yet Putin himself is believed not to be a climate denier, and listens to Russian experts who have made clear the climate chaos that will come from rising carbon emissions. The deeper question is whether the Russian president regards those ravages as a problem. Heatwaves, droughts, wildfires, floods and rising sea levels will scour the planet, but those impacts will be diffused across the vast landmass of Russia – the biggest country on the planet, but sparsely populated compared with rivals such as China, India and the US.
According to the comprehensive report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, published at the end of February, Russia will fare far better in terms of the impact on agriculture than regions such as sub-Saharan Africa, south Asia and the US. Its productivity for some key crops such as wheat could increase. The biggest risk the IPCC found to Russia was permafrost thaw.
Putin is even hoping to exploit some aspects of the climate crisis, such as the melting of the Arctic ice cap, which could open up new shipping passages and make oil and gas drilling easier. Russia is notably pushing its Arctic territorial claims, even while invading Ukraine.
Paul Bledsoe, a former Clinton White House climate change adviser, says the Russian president has no scruples over inflicting climate catastrophe on the rest of the world, while seeking advantages for himself.
“Putin has acted with utter contempt for the climate, just as he has violated all norms on human rights and international sovereignty,” said Bledsoe, who is now at the Progressive Policy Institute in Washington DC. “He is planning massive new oil and gas developments in the Arctic, which would devastate that fragile region, including by hastening the disappearance of Arctic sea ice, which is crucial to global climate stability. And he has done nothing to prevent Siberian tundra melt, which will unleash gigantic new methane releases. Putin has made Russia a climate outlaw state.”
In an optimistic analysis, if the Ukraine war accelerates the shift to renewable energy in the EU, the UK and the US, it could mark a turning point for the world’s efforts to decarbonise. Campaigners warn the opposite could also be true, and an expanded role for fossil fuels could push the goal of staying within 1.5C of global heating out of reach. But Stern believes that fear could be overdone.
“What China does or does not do to meet the call of the Glasgow climate pact to ramp up its [emissions-cutting target] will almost surely have much greater impact on account both of China’s carbon footprint, and the power of its example for other high-emitting developing countries,” he said. “Whether the US Congress delivers climate legislation will also make a big difference.”
Even in the best case, however, the human cost and suffering inflicted recklessly and willingly by Putin in Ukraine will cast a deep shadow over the world’s efforts to prevent climate breakdown. Governments scrambling to deal with the military threat, the refugee crisis and the economic impacts of this Russian-made crisis will be in a poorer position to concentrate on the looming threat of the climate emergency.
“By definition, [the war] demands intensive focus and so diminishes the amount that relevant leaders focus on climate,” said Stern. “When you’re trying to get big things done, that diminishing of focus can matter.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/mar/08/theresa-may-to-step-down-as-mp-at-next-general-election | Politics | 2024-03-08T09:51:57.000Z | Jamie Grierson | Theresa May to step down as MP at general election | The former prime minister Theresa May will step down as an MP at the next general election after 27 years in parliament, becoming one of the most high-profile Conservatives to join a wave of departures from the House of Commons.
In a statement to the Maidenhead Advertiser, the Maidenhead MP said she wanted to focus on causes close to her heart, including her work on the Global Commission on Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking.
She also criticised the current political climate, saying in an article for the Times that she had “seen a coarsening of our debates and less respect for others’ views”.
“Democracy depends on us being able to debate key issues that affect people’s everyday lives seriously and respectfully. It needs politicians who put those they represent first and themselves second. It needs MPs who are there to serve,” she said.
The former prime minister also said it was important to remember that “compromise isn’t a dirty word”, highlighting her own unsuccessful efforts to chart a way through the arguments over Brexit from 2017 to 2019.
May, who was first elected in 1997, told her local newspaper: “Since stepping down as prime minister I have enjoyed being a backbencher again and having more time to work for my constituents and champion causes close to my heart including most recently launching a Global Commission on Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking.
“These causes have been taking an increasing amount of my time. Because of this, after much careful thought and consideration, I have realised that, looking ahead, I would no longer be able to do my job as an MP in the way I believe is right and my constituents deserve.”
As polls continue to show Labour with a significant lead over the Conservatives, May joins 64 Conservatives and former Conservatives who will not fight their seats at the next election – the highest number of Tories to retire from parliament since May entered the Commons in 1997. Labour has argued this shows there is “no confidence” in the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, and the Tory party’s electoral prospects.
May, 67, has been a consistent campaigner on modern slavery and human trafficking, and launched her global commission in October, backed by the UK and Bahrain governments.
She served as home secretary under David Cameron between 2010 and 2016 before succeeding him as prime minister.
Her term in Downing Street lasted a turbulent three years and was dominated by wrangling over Brexit. In a snap election in 2017, she lost her majority but remained in No 10 thanks to a deal with the DUP in the resulting hung parliament.
Conservative MPs, opposing her proposed Brexit deal, held a vote of confidence in her leadership. Although she survived, her authority was diminished and she announced her resignation five months later.
Front-page headlines on 25 May 2019 the day after Theresa May resigned as prime minister. Photograph: Daniel Sorabji/AFP/Getty Images
During her six years as home secretary in Cameron’s cabinet she coined the term “hostile environment”, which became a catch-all expression for controversial policies on illegal migration.
In her statement, May said it had been “an honour and a privilege” to serve as Maidenhead’s MP and vowed to continue working for her constituents until the general election, which is expected in the second half of this year.
She added: “As I pass the baton on I will be working with my successor to secure a Conservative victory in Maidenhead. I remain committed to supporting Rishi Sunak and the government and believe that the Conservatives can win the election.
“I would like to thank all those who chose me to represent them as their member of parliament.”
Responding to her announcement, the Labour MP Jess Phillips said on X: “Something very classy about this being in the Maidenhead Advertiser first. Love her or loathe Theresa May politics, she was famed for being a responsive and involved local MP.”
The Conservative MP Julian Smith, who served as chief whip under May, said on X: “I am very sorry to see that Theresa May is standing down as an MP. Our second female prime minister is an exceptional public servant with the highest integrity, relentless work ethic & total commitment to all parts of the United Kingdom in addition to her passionate campaigning for vital causes around the world.”
Caroline Nokes, the immigration minister under May, said: “On [International Women’s Day] I want to celebrate a colleague who showed us all the importance of hard work, commitment to your constituency and integrity. Parliament will be poorer (and I’m a bit sad – too many women standing down).”
Andrew Bowie, May’s former parliamentary private secretary, said: “I’m so sorry to see the woman I was proud to call boss and remain proud to call a friend standing down from parliament. It will leave the House of Commons a lesser place.
“Her dedication to her constituency, her country and her party is unmatched. Thank you Theresa.”
The Labour party chair, Anneliese Dodds, said the number of Tories standing down showed there was “no confidence” in Sunak and the Conservative party’s prospects.
The Treasury minister Gareth Davies denied this was the case, telling Sky News he was “personally sad” to see May stand down, but that it was “completely reasonable” for people to decide to leave parliament before an election.
He said: “Each one has made their own decision for personal reasons and I respect every single person’s decision to do so.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/nov/29/nsw-drug-law-overhaul-would-allow-six-marijuana-plants-for-personal-use | Australia news | 2023-11-28T14:00:13.000Z | Tamsin Rose | NSW drug law overhaul would allow six marijuana plants for personal use | People would be allowed to grow six marijuana plants for personal use and give their friends pot as a gift under a proposed law being introduced to the New South Wales parliament on Wednesday, as the government comes under more pressure to enact drug reform.
The legislation would also allow people to carry up to 50g of cannabis, in a change that Legalise Cannabis MP Jeremy Buckingham hopes would reduce the number of Aboriginal people caught under laws he believes are racist.
Government data obtained by Guardian Australia reveals Aboriginal people were 10 times more likely to have a marijuana-related interaction with police than non-Indigenous people.
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“It is clear that cannabis prohibition is a racist law,” Buckingham said. “It is clear it being used to target young Aboriginal Australians.”
The data revealed through questions on notice to the parliament shows that, between 2020 and 2022, there were 54,174 people caught by police with cannabis.
Of those, 19,232 were Aboriginal people. While First Nations people accounted for more than 35% of all interactions over the three years, just 3.5% of the NSW population is Aboriginal.
Buckingham said the statistics showed the “laws are being used against First Nations people”.
“In a lot of instances, this is a ‘crime’ that is the first interaction First Nations people have with police,” he said.
Under the proposed changes, adults would be allowed to grow up to six plants at home, either indoors or outdoors, and could give other adults their harvest as long as it was not sold.
Buckingham will introduce the bill during the final sitting week of the year, with the intention for it to be referred to a committee for further consideration before the government’s promised drug summit.
The government went to the election promising to hold a drug summit at which reforms would be discussed but the premier, Chris Minns, has repeatedly refused to outline a timeframe other than saying it will happen in 2024.
Earlier in the year the government announced people who were caught with small quantities of illicit drugs for personal use could be issued with fines that they could work off by seeking help as part of a drug law overhaul.
Advocates have welcomed the introduction of the diversion scheme but said the changes do not go far enough, with a group of people who took part in NSW’s last drug summit in 1999 to gather at parliament on Wednesday to call for urgent reform.
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The long-serving former Labor premier Bob Carr and the Sydney lord mayor, Clover Moore, were among those scheduled to attend, 25 years after they took part in the event which resulted in the creation of the state’s safe injecting room.
“At the beginning of the drug summit the catchcry was courage,” Carr said. “I still believe that courage is vital in this difficult area of drug policy.”
The Uniting church, which runs the safe injecting room in Kings Cross, is calling on Minns’ government to announce a date for its own drug summit after the event at parliament on Wednesday.
Uniting’s head of advocacy, Emma Maiden, said the decriminalisation of drugs in NSW would have a “profound impact” on reducing First Nations incarceration rates and remove the stigma for drug users around seeking help.
The ACT recently passed laws reducing the penalties for people possessing small amounts of drugs including cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine for personal use.
Maiden called on the government to emulate the 1999 summit by shutting down parliament for five days and inviting all MPs to attend.
“We’re just hope that nothing’s ruled out,” she said. “We don’t want possible solutions taken off the table.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2002/aug/23/popandrock.artsfeatures6 | Music | 2002-08-23T01:20:09.000Z | John Aizlewood | Pop CD releases: Frank Black and the Catholics: Black Letter Days | Releasing two albums of all-new material invariably smacks of highfalutin conceit. Even Bruce Springsteen and Guns 'N' Roses wobbled when they embraced such hubris, so a minor traveller such as erstwhile Pixies leader Frank Black is obviously destined to struggle. Bragging that both albums were recorded live merely emphasises Black's slapdash unwillingness to edit. The cliche that two flabby albums would make one trim one is certainly the case here. But for all its embarrassingly lazy bar stomps, Devil's Workshop also includes the gorgeous His Kingly Cave. Black Letter Day is more enticing, with two sterling versions of Tom Waits's The Black Rider. Elsewhere, it recasts Black as an energetic alt.country roustabout with a travelogue. I Will Run After You is a creepy break-up song and the clattering 21 Reasons gives the impression that Black has actually spent some time refining it. Time to think about taking the Pixies for another spin around the block. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/28/the-cold-war-is-back-labor-is-right-to-support-a-nuclear-ban-treaty | Opinion | 2018-12-28T01:23:01.000Z | Tilman Ruff | The cold war is back. Labor is right to support a nuclear ban treaty | Tilman Ruff | The gulf between the shenanigans of way too many politicians, and the growing urgency of grave and looming threats has rarely seemed wider. Action on crucial issues languishes while parliamentarians make naked grabs for power, acting in the interests only of themselves. Poor personal behaviour seems endemic. On the two unprecedented dangers looming over all humanity – nuclear war and climate disruption – Australia has been not just missing in action, but actively on the wrong side of history, part of the problem rather than the solution.
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The government’s own figures demonstrate that our country, awash with renewable sun and wind, is way off track to meet even a third of its greenhouse gas emissions reduction target by 2030 – itself nowhere near enough.
Not only is nuclear disarmament stalled, but one by one, the agreements that reduced and constrained nuclear weapons, hard-won fruit of the end of the first cold war, are being trashed. All the nuclear-armed states are investing massively not simply in keeping their weapons indefinitely, but developing new ones that are more accurate, more deadly and more “usable”. The cold war is back, and irresponsible and explicit threats to use nuclear weapons have proliferated. Any positive effect that Australia might have on reducing nuclear weapons dangers from the supposed influence afforded us by our uncritical obsequiousness to the US is nowhere in sight. Our government has been incapable of asserting any independence even from the current most extreme, dysfunctional and unfit US administration. The US has recently renounced its previous commitments under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT); we have said nothing.
An Australian government joining the treaty would enjoy wide popular support in doing so
The one bright light in this gathering gloom is the 2017 UN treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons. For its role in helping to bring this historic treaty into being, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (Ican) was awarded the Nobel peace prize for 2017 – the first to an entity born in Australia. This treaty provides the first comprehensive and categorical prohibition of nuclear weapons. It sets zero nuclear weapons as the clear and consistent standard for all countries and will help drive elimination of these worst weapons of mass destruction, just as the treaties banning biological and chemical weapons, landmines and cluster munitions have played a decisive role in progressing the elimination of those other indiscriminate and inhumane weapons. The treaty lays out a clear pathway for all states, with and without nuclear weapons, to fulfil their binding legal obligation to accomplish nuclear disarmament. It is currently the only such pathway.
Regrettably, the Australian government was the most active “weasel” in opposing the treaty’s development at every step and was one of the first to say it would not sign, even though we have signed every other treaty banning an unacceptable weapon.
Hence the Labor party’s commitment at its recent national conference in Adelaide that “Labor in government will sign and ratify the Ban Treaty” is an important and welcome step. It is a clear commitment, allowing no room for weaselling.
Shadow infrastructure minister Anthony Albanese during the Labor party national conference, 18 December 2018. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP
The considerations articulated alongside this commitment are fairly straightforward and consistent with the commitment. First, recognition of the need for “an effective verification and enforcement architecture” for nuclear disarmament. The treaty itself embodies this. Governments joining the treaty must designate a competent international authority “to negotiate and verify the irreversible elimination of nuclear weapons” and nuclear weapons programmes, “including the elimination or irreversible conversion of all nuclear-weapons-related facilities”. Australia should also push for the same standard for any nuclear disarmament that happens outside the treaty.
Second, the Labor resolution prioritises “the interaction of the Ban Treaty with the longstanding Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty”. The treaty has been carefully crafted to be entirely compatible with the NPT and explicitly reaffirms that the NPT “serves as a cornerstone of the nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation regime”, and that its full and effective implementation “has a vital role to play in promoting international peace and security”. All the governments supporting the treaty support the NPT, and the NPT itself enshrines a commitment for all its members to “pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament”. The UN secretary general, Antonio Guterres, and the International Committee of the Red Cross are among those who have affirmed that the treaty and the NPT are entirely consistent, complementary and mutually reinforcing. Even opponents of the treaty recognise that prohibition is an essential part of achieving and sustaining a world free of nuclear weapons.
Third, the Labor resolution refers to “Work to achieve universal support for the Ban Treaty.” This too is mirrored in one of the commitments governments take on in joining the treaty, to encourage other states to join, “with the goal of universal adherence of all States to the Treaty.”
An Australian government joining the treaty would enjoy wide popular support in doing so – an Ipsos poll last month found that 79% of Australians (and 83% of Labor voters) support, and less than 8% oppose, Australia joining the treaty.
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Australia would also stop sticking out like a sore thumb among our southeast Asian and Pacific Island neighbours and be able to work more effectively with them. Brunei, Cook Islands, Fiji, Indonesia, Kiribati, Laos, New Zealand, Malaysia, Myanmar, Palau, Philippines, Samoa, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Tuvalu, Vanuatu and Vietnam have already signed the treaty.
Most importantly, joining the treaty and renouncing nuclear weapons would mean that Australia would become part of the solution rather than the problem of the acute existential peril that hangs over all of us while nuclear weapons exist, ready to be launched within minutes. Time is not on our side. Of course this crucial humanitarian issue should be above party politics. The commitment from the alternative party of government to join the treaty and get on the right side of history when Labor next forms government is to be warmly welcomed. It is to be hoped that the 78% of federal parliamentary Labor members who have put on record their support for Australia joining the treaty by signing Ican’s parliamentary pledge will help ensure Labor keeps this landmark promise.
Dr Tilman Ruff is co-founder of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (Ican) and Nobel peace prize winner (2017) | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/may/18/xo-kitty-review-to-all-the-boys-netflix-spinoff | Television & radio | 2023-05-18T07:01:52.000Z | Janelle Zara | XO, Kitty review – convoluted but charming Netflix teen series | The first episode of the new Netflix romcom XO, Kitty runs through its exposition like a sprint.
It starts with our 16-year-old biracial Korean American protagonist Kitty Song Covey (Anna Cathcart) hopping a plane from her home in Portland to the Korean Independent School of Seoul, or Kiss, her late mother’s alma mater. It’s also the current school of her long-distance boyfriend, Dae (Minyeong Choi), and she’s just enrolled without telling him – an unannounced romantic gesture that, to no adult viewer’s surprise, ends in utter disaster. Kitty soon finds out that Yuri, the teen hotel heiress who gives her a ride on their first day of school, is actually Dae’s girlfriend. And throughout his relationship with Kitty, Dae’s also been lying about his family’s economic status: he’s struggling to afford tuition, and his father is Yuri’s family driver. Yuri’s mother, Jin (Yunjin Kim), meanwhile, is the principal of Kiss, and for reasons unknown chooses to lie about having been friends with Kitty’s mother, despite a 20-year-old photograph featuring the two of them together. Yuri’s got her own secret, too: she’s been paying Dae to be her boyfriend, using their fake relationship to cover up her real love for a girl named Juliana.
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Got all that? We’re only 24 minutes in, and the plot only gets more convoluted from here.
Lighthearted and entertaining, XO, Kitty is the 10-episode spin-off of Netflix’s To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before trilogy, the film adaptation of Jenny Han’s bestselling novels of the same name. Cathcart first played Kitty in 2018 as the spunky, bespectacled 11-year-old little sister to main character Lara Jane (Lana Condor). As a spin-off, XO, Kitty is true little sister material, where in lieu of the Jane Austen-caliber romance and longing sexual tension of To All the Boys, Kitty delivers the wholesome hijinks and misadventures of the Disney Channel as she awaits her first kiss. At a maximum 30 minutes each, each action-packed episode flies by. With such little time, the series’ Scooby-Doo mysteries are never allowed to simmer; characters are prone to stating solutions outright the moment they encounter the slightest clue. None of this, however, is really a dealbreaker. As far as children’s programming goes, XO, Kitty’s cutesy love triangles and cliff-hanging endings might be enough to sustain a full-grown adult, at least through folding a pile of laundry.
After a horrifying first day of school, Kitty spots the apparent lack of chemistry between Yuri and Dae almost immediately, being the same preternaturally gifted matchmaker that she was in To All the Boys. But due to a series of improbably timed interruptions, Dae never gets the chance to explain what’s really happening, leaving their romance temporarily stalled. The Dae drama periodically takes a backseat to the dramas of the greater Kiss population, an international group of wealthy, overachieving teenagers whose hormones are running high.
Min Ho (Sang Heon Lee), a child of celebrities and Dae’s playboy best friend, starts out as Kitty’s antagonist but may have an unwillingly change of heart. Half-Iranian, half-Filipino Q (Anthony Keyvan) has a crush on the new French boy at school, and leaves it up to Kitty to work her matchmaking magic. Almost everyone except Kitty effortlessly switches between speaking Korean and English, a pleasant surprise from Netflix; this is the same streaming service that had the French characters of Emily in Paris speaking English to each other just so we’d never have to read subtitles.
Despite Kitty’s very public romantic disaster that earns her the nickname Portland Stalker, she stays at Kiss out of a desire to feel closer to her mother, a love that trumps any dashed feelings for Dae. Part of unearthing her mother’s past is getting to the bottom of whatever Jin’s hiding – potentially a love triangle that also may involve handsome Prof Alex (Peter Thurnwald) or curmudgeonly Prof Lee (Michael K Lee). Throughout the plot’s highly unlikely twists and turns, the show is an introductory ode to Korean culture through Kitty’s eyes. Part of getting closer to her mother is also learning the joys of Chuseok, a holiday of family gathering akin to Thanksgiving, while her failing grades serve as a recurring joke about the inferiority of an American education. Prestige television XO, Kitty is not, but its charming cast is worth revisiting next semester.
XO, Kitty is now available on Netflix | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/jun/22/windrush-compensation-claims-scheme-payouts-criticism | UK news | 2023-06-22T16:40:25.000Z | Amelia Gentleman | Windrush payouts remain elusive after four years of scheme | Lawyers and charity workers helping people trying toclaim Windrush compensation have expressed dismay that claimants are still struggling to secure settlements that reflect the damaging consequences of being misclassified as illegal immigrants.
Statistics released this week show that only one in four of the 6,348 applications submitted have received payments. A total of £62.7m has been paid out on 1,681 claims so far, four years after the scheme was launched.
But Home Office case workers based in the Sheffield headquarters of the compensation team say that although the scheme has previously been slow to pay out, staffing levels have recently been increased and officials are now determined to make generous settlements.
Urging potential applicants not to be put off by negative coverage of the scheme, Nigel Hills, the head of the Windrush compensation and documentation schemes, said: “We want people to get in touch with us. We all feel very passionate about doing this work. Our ethos is to pay more people the maximum amount possible.”
During a visit to the headquarters, several staff members described how disturbed they had been at reading accounts of how applicants’ lives were upended by their department’s misclassification of legal UK residents as immigration offenders.
“I have read claims that upset me to the point that I have had to leave the room to get some air,” one official said.
“It isn’t always the big, dramatic cases that have the biggest impact – not the deportations or the people who were stranded abroad. But it’s when you read about the cascade effect, how someone’s established life crumbles and falls apart – how someone loses their job, then loses their resilience, their mental health suffers, their relationships suffer, and the knock-on effect sends them and their close family into a spiral,” another official said.
“It is upsetting. That’s the motivator for a lot of us who work here. It’s what drives us to try to get the maximum payout.”
Some of the stark disconnect between the Home Office staff’s stated determination to help and the ongoing difficulties experienced by claimants lies with structural decisions made four and a half years ago when the scheme was launched, and officials chose to give responsibility for the scheme to the Home Office (rather than to an independent organisation). Some people remain anxious about making an application to the same department responsible for their initial difficulties.
A decision, also made at the time the scheme was designed, not to allocate funding for legal support has meant applicants often struggle to provide the required documentary evidence, and many claimants have found the 44-page application form too complex to navigate.
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Pro bono legal advisers who have worked on large numbers of compensation claims remain critical of the scheme, noting that unreasonably high quantities of documentary evidence are required from applicants, that the burden of proof bar is set too high and that a culture of disbelief remains within the department.
Home Office staff say their attempts to speed up their work has recently been hampered by the need to process and reject large numbers of ineligible applications, after misinformation was spread on TikTok suggesting that everyone who arrived in the UK from the Commonwealth in the 1950s and 60s was automatically eligible for payments (regardless of whether they have had problems with housing, healthcare or employment stemming from the Home Office’s failure to give them documentation showing their right to remain here). After the TikTok video, the number of people applying doubled.
Two key people who have worked on the scheme this week expressed concern about the slow delivery of payments to those affected.
The former No 10 adviser Samuel Kasumu in his book, The Power of the Outsider, published this week, reveals that he realised in 2019 that the scheme was “plagued with challenges”. By February 2020 he concluded that it was “not fit for purpose and major changes would be necessary”.
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In December that year he learned that some victims were being offered as little as £250 in compensation. He recommended that the minimum payments to those affected by the scandal should be increased to £10,000, a proposal which was accepted by then home secretary, Priti Patel. “Sadly I was not able to see through the work around the cultural reforms to the Home Office and getting the compensation scheme to deliver for the victims of the scandal,” he writes.
Staff at the Sheffield headquarters said the £10,000 initial payment had improved confidence in the scheme. “The preliminary payment changed the whole tone of engagement; previously people may have felt we didn’t believe them,” Hills said.
He recognised that there had been challenges in rolling the scheme out, but stressed it was constantly under review. “We’re here to fix and respond to problems.”
Martin Forde, the lawyer who designed the scheme, said he believed it was “fit for purpose as designed but the implementation is woeful”. He was particularly concerned by a number of cases where claimants had initially been told they were not eligible for payments, only to be granted large sums on appeal.
“I am aware of a case where an applicant for compensation was refused at the initial stage and on review a nil award was the outcome. After consulting solicitors and a further appeal to the independent adjudicator the claimant was awarded £289,000. Every case handled by the two Home Office caseworkers who made an error of nearly £300,000 needs to be re-opened,” Forde said.
Sally Daghlian, the chief executive of the charity Praxis, which has helped people made homeless by the Windrush scandal, said: “Perhaps unsurprisingly the department that shredded thousands of lives is now failing at compensating its victims for the hardship they had to endure.”
A Home Office spokesperson said: “The government remains absolutely committed to righting the wrongs of the Windrush scandal. We continue to make improvements so people receive the maximum award as quickly as possible, but we know there is more to do, and will work tirelessly to make sure such an injustice is never repeated.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2020/jul/19/nigel-pearson-sacked-watford | Football | 2020-07-19T14:07:06.000Z | Ben Fisher | Nigel Pearson sacked by Watford with two games of season remaining | Watford have sacked Nigel Pearson with two games remaining of their season. The manager was dismissed on Sunday afternoon, after the club deemed Friday’s 3-1 defeat to West Ham unacceptable, a result which leaves them three points above the relegation zone. The under-23s’ coach Hayden Mullins will take over until the end of the season.
Pearson had overseen a remarkable upturn after taking charge in December, when the club had only eight points from their opening 15 matches.
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Since he replaced Quique Sánchez Flores, Watford have won more points than Leicester and seven other top-flight rivals. It is understood the club’s technical director, Filippo Giraldi, informed Pearson and his assistant, Craig Shakespeare, of their fate The decision is understood to have come as a surprise to Pearson, who was under contract until the end of the season. No agreement was in place with regards to next season.
Pearson had steered Watford to fourth-bottom and the brink of safety after an extraordinary turnaround, including memorable wins over Manchester United and Liverpool, the latter ending Jürgen Klopp’s hopes of an unbeaten season. They had won two of their past three matches to leave their destiny in their own hands before facing Manchester City on Tuesday in the penultimate game of the season.They travel to Arsenal on Sunday.
They are three points clear of Bournemouth, whose goal difference is inferior and have only one game remaining after losing to Southampton on Sunday, and Aston Villa, who have two. Mullins takes charge as caretaker, as he did when Sánchez Flores was dismissed.
In a statement the club said: “Watford FC confirms that Nigel Pearson has left the club with immediate effect. Hayden Mullins, with Graham Stack as his assistant, will take up the position of Interim Head Coach for the Hornets’ final two Premier League fixtures of the 2019/20 season.”
Pearson is the third manager to depart Vicarage Road this season, with Javi Gracia sacked in September, four months on from leading Watford to an FA Cup final, and Sánchez Flores, who was sacked after failing to overturn a desperate start to the season. Whoever replaces Pearson will be the club’s 13th appointment since Sean Dyche took charge nine years ago. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2018/mar/08/summer-and-smoke-review-tennessee-williams-patsy-ferran-almeida | Stage | 2018-03-08T10:51:33.000Z | Michael Billington | Summer and Smoke review – gripping return for rare Tennessee Williams | As it is so rarely seen, this early play by Tennessee Williams feels like a major discovery. Williams began it in 1945 and endlessly revised it. Now a young director, Rebecca Frecknall, has given it a complete makeover. Eschewing realism, she adopts the expressionist tactics favoured by the Belgian director Ivo van Hove and palpably builds the production around Patsy Ferran, who confirms her status as one of the most exciting actors on the British stage.
Frecknall, designer Tom Scutt and Angus MacRae, credited with composition, join forces to give the action an unusual setting: a circular pit of sandy earth ringed by nine pianos that the ensemble periodically play to create atmosphere. The text tells us we are in Glorious Hill, Mississippi, between the turn of the 20th century and 1916. But here the focus is on the primal nature of a conflict between spirit and flesh.
Alma, who constantly tells us her name means “soul” in Spanish, is a parson’s daughter and singing teacher whose undeclared love for a neighbouring doctor, John Buchanan, has driven her into a state of neurosis. If Alma represents the soul, then John, both professionally and socially, stands for the body. But after a melodramatic shooting, Williams shows their roles ironically reversed.
Nancy Crane as Alma’s mother in Summer and Smoke, designed by Tom Scutt.
The stock argument against the play is that it is overly schematic: Kenneth Tynan argued“the characters are too slight to sustain the consuming emotions which are bestowed on them”. Williams also loads the play with visual symbolism, with an anatomical chart and an angelic statue underlining the tension between body and soul.
Frecknall, however, jettisons poetic realism to give us a dramatic ritual and a study in unfulfilled longing: one in which Alma’s mental turbulence is expressed through overturned chairs and jangled, nerve-racking chords on the pianos. Even if the production tends to favour Alma over the earthily sensual John, it deftly captures Williams’s underrated comic gift: in particular, his hilarious portrait of the snobbery of a small-town literary circle where an aspiring poet yearns to read a verse-drama that looks as if it weighs a ton.
Patsy Ferran with Forbes Masson, who doubles as Alma and John’s fathers.
It is Ferran who is the absolute centre of this production. She is first seen at a microphone stand expressing her youthful preoccupation with the wayward John. What makes her so magnetic is that she balances Alma’s spirituality, with her talk of gothic cathedrals reaching up to the skies, with a visible hunger for love. There’s an unforgettable, Chekhovian moment when John, in the process of medically examining Alma, takes her pulse, which she mistakes for a gesture of affection. It’s all in Ferran’s expressive eyes, which convey Alma’s contradictory mix of hope and despair and what she calls “the affliction of love”.
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Matthew Needham plays John intelligently, as a man alive to Alma’s spiritual vibrancy but who craves more immediate gratification. The test of Needham’s performance, however, is that you believe in his character’s ultimate redemption. Anjana Vasan, representing four varieties of female sensuality, Nancy Crane as both Alma’s deranged mother and a local busybody, and Forbes Masson, doubling as Alma' and John’s fathers, provide exemplary support. Frecknall’s production, which at the start looked fashionably tricksy, by the end had me totally in its grip. It restores Williams’s wrongly neglected play to a central place in the canon.
At Almeida theatre, London, until 7 April. Box office: 020-7359 4404. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/may/05/ash-cloud-flight-cancellations-summer-disruption | World news | 2010-05-05T21:57:32.000Z | Dan Milmo | Volcanic ash cloud grounds more flights and could bring summer of disruption | The volcanic eruption in Iceland disrupted services for thousands more air passengers in Ireland, Northern Ireland and Scotland yesterday as the Civil Aviation Authority admitted more problems were possible in summer.
Flights to and from Glasgow, Edinburgh, Belfast, Derry and Dublin were grounded, as increased activity from Eyjafjallajokull produced an ash cloud dense enough to cancel hundreds of services, despite revised guidelines that now permit flying through contaminated airspace.
The cloud also drifted into north-west England and Wales yesterday, but airports remained open across the rest of the UK. The UK air traffic controller Nats said it hoped "fewer restrictions" would be imposed today as the cloud moved in a southwesterly direction, which allowed Edinburgh airport to reopen yesterday evening, although Glasgow and Northern Ireland remained under no-fly zones.
"There is no doubt that if the volcano continues to erupt and the ash is of a density that is unsafe, we will see more no-fly zones," said a CAA spokesman.
However, the CAA believes the new safety limits, which permit flying through ash-contaminated clouds when none was allowed previously, will lessen disruption. "The new limit means that hopefully we will not see the levels of closures that we had last month."
Vulcanologists predict that some ash will be produced for months ahead. Colin Macpherson, at Durham University, said the only point of reference to estimate the duration was the history of Eyjafjallajokull. "The only thing we know for certain is that the last time, this volcano erupted, it erupted for two years [from 1821 to 1823]," he said. The volcano appeared to be producing mostly magma-based ash, he said.
The key to flight disruption, and a summer of discontent, is not ash, but the wind, however. Without the unusual northerlies last month, the ash would have stayed away from Europe's crowded airspace.
The prevailing winds over the UK are southwesterlies, which bring damp air from the Atlantic and would keep any ash in the Arctic. Northerly winds on average occur 15% of the time during the summer, a Met Office spokesman said.
"Wind direction is actually one of the easier things to forecast in what is a very complicated picture, but we wouldn't look more than about six days ahead with any confidence."
Airlines remain concerned about the cost of the eruption, after European Union transport ministers this week played down the prospect of immediate state aid for carriers. The six-day shutdown of European airspace cost airlines more than £1bn, and the trade association for UK airlines yesterday urged EU transport ministers to accelerate the reform of compensation rules making airlines responsible for their stranded passengers, with multi-million pound accommodation and food costs.
Ryanair has led the attack on the EU261 regulation. It claims the rule was designed to help passengers caught out by cancellation of individual flights, rather than the prolonged closure of swaths of airspace.
"It is concerning that the timescale for reform points toward the end of the year," said Roger Wiltshire, secretary general of the British Air Transport Association. "We want it reviewed urgently because it is not a credible regulation."
Travel insurers said they were unlikely to offer payouts to customers who had bought policies since last month's wave of disruption. Many insurers have refused to pay out on claims from last month, citing clauses excluding disruption caused by any kind of natural event. HSBC and the British Insurance Brokers' Association (Biba) Biba were among those who honoured claims, but yesterday they warned they were unlikely to do so in future.
Among the thousands caught in the disruption yesterday were Britons concerned that they will not get back in time to vote in the general election.
Greg O'Ceallaigh, 28, a former Labour voter, was stranded in Dublin and desperate to get back to Poplar in east London, where he is planning to vote for the Liberal Democrats. "It's very annoying. I was looking forward to voting. I've never not voted before, but I've just got this text from Aer Lingus telling me the flight has been cancelled. I'm thinking of getting a boat if it still looks like I can't get a flight tomorrow."
Casper, stuck in Northern Ireland, said: "I contacted electoral services who said that the only emergency proxy vote allowed is for a medical emergency. To clarify, I asked if this meant I would lose my vote entirely if flights were cancelled. The answer was a definitive yes. I'm really surprised there has been no provision made."
James Thorpe, a spokesman for HSBC, which also offers policies through its First Direct and M&S Money brands, said: "Although the bank was considering claims from customers who bought policies before the first problems arose, it may not do so in future.
"If you took out a policy and a similar thing happened, we would look at it again ... but it isn't the case that the policy was actually covering you. It was just in that instance we decided we would pay out."
Biba, which in April said it was confident that all claims made under its Protect travel insurance policies would be met, has taken a similar stance, saying that while customers who bought cover before the initial disruption will be able to seek compensation if there are any more problems, customers who had bought a policy since would not be covered. RBS, which offered payouts on policies sold under its brands, including Direct Line and NatWest, said it was trying to decide what to do about future claims.
Customers buying holidays independently do get some cover from their airline if they are travelling within the EU or on an EU airline, but this does not extend to pre-booked hotels, car hire or any other arrangements at their destination. Under EU rules, airlines must cover the cost of putting travellers on a new flight if theirs is cancelled and pay out for any accommodation and food costs while passengers are waiting for departure. They are not liable for any money lost as a result of cancelling.
Usually, travel insurance would step into the breach, but a spokeswoman for Holiday Which? said the consumer group had been unable to find any insurer willing to categorically state it would offer cover against cancellations resulting from the ongoing eruption, with the exception of a specialist policy from the airline Flybe. She added: "The only way to fully protect yourself is to buy a package holiday." Under the package holiday regulations, if a flight is cancelled the travel operator must offer a rebooking or refund of the whole holiday.
The Association of British Travel Agents said its members have reported an increase in bookings since last month's disruption, and that the extra protection afforded by booking through an agent was likely to have been a factor. Sean Tipton, a spokesman for Abta, said although there was no legal requirement for travel operators to pay the bills of customers who were stranded abroad, they had done so last time and customers could be confident that they would do so again in the event of further problems. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/apr/05/the-cars-that-ate-paris-rewatched-freaky-foot-to-the-pedal-action | Film | 2015-04-05T03:23:04.000Z | Luke Buckmaster | The Cars That Ate Paris rewatched – freaky foot-to-the-pedal action | Last week another Mad Max: Fury Road trailer blew apart the internet, offering a peek at a range of new automobile-related perversities for which the franchise has become known. These include rusted-out cars that look like death cages on wheels, and a truck with a gargantuan black and gold sound system, while perched in front someone playing a fire-spurting, guitar-esque instrument.
The cranky desert warrior and his foes are far from the only Australian film creations synonymous with wild feats of vehicular weirdness. Our cinema has a well-oiled history in freaky foot-to-the-pedal films and contraptions, from the getaway vehicle that splits in half in Malcolm, to cars converted into prison cells in Dead End Drive-In and, most recently, a methane-powered zombie truck in Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead.
But the mantle for the most batshit crazy Australian automobile movie belongs to 1974 curio The Cars That Ate Paris (released in the US as The Cars That Eat People). The first feature from veteran director Peter Weir belongs to a pantheon of productions focused on poor sods stuck in crummy backwater outback towns (including Wake in Fright, Welcome to Woop Woop and Summerfield) where dark things happen, particularly at night.
In an Australian country town called Paris, the economy is reliant on a steady supply of wrecked vehicles. The local pastor refers to the road into town as “a real bone-shaker” and says he would “certainly hate to travel on it at night”. It’s not just the road itself that poses a danger. The locals use the curly mountainous route to target tourists and visitors, creating accidents by blinding them with lights and driving them off it. Car parts are sold and the survivors subjected to strange medical experiments – an amateur psychological test here, a drill to the head there.
Arthur (Terry Camilleri, who later played Napoleon in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure) is a rare victim who emerges physically unscathed, though psychologically rather worse for wear. His brother was killed in the crash and Arthur is adjusting to a new start as Paris’s resident parking officer, having been befriended by the local mayor (John Meillon) who decrees that nobody is ever allowed to leave.
The community is self-sufficient but divided. Hints of what at first appears to be a Wickerman-esque community, bound tight by a shared secret, takes on something more like a macabre spin on Footloose: a story of youthful rebellion and adult consternation – with dangerous driving instead of dancing – and no joy in the challenging of status quo. Weir (who also wrote the screenplay) heats up intergenerational tension between older members of Paris and its population of young hotheads, which eventually boils over into violence and destruction.
The drivers are mostly unseen, like psychotic spiritual brethren to the faceless maniac behind the wheel in Steven Spielberg’s Duel (1971). They operate monstrously modified vehicles including the film’s centrepiece invention: a gaudy silver beast that looks like a gigantic mechanical hedgehog, its chassis covered with enormous spikes that impale anything in its the way. The full reveal of the vehicle is left until late in the running time, Weir teasing out its presence in the manner of a monster from a creature feature you don’t get to properly see until the end.
There is a restrained sense of madness throughout The Cars That Ate Paris; a feeling the drama might tip over into mayhem at any moment. Weir’s gravitation towards human behaviour over spectacle (the story is largely told from perspective of Arthur trying to make sense of it all) keeps the film distinct from the bloodline of Ozploitation movies, which came into being around the time of its release and delved much more willingly into vulgarity and gross-out.
The essence of Paris is more akin to a cryptic Transport Accident Commission (TAC) video. While Australian cinema has no shortage of films involving devilish road games, they are almost always ensconced in stories sceptical about a national obsession with burning bitumen and screeching tyres. Mad Max director George Miller once described driving in Australia as a socially acceptable form of violence. “The Americans have a gun culture,” he said. “We have a car culture.”
The Cars That Ate Paris is both part of that and a carnivalesque reflection of it. It’s a complicated satire and a violent and eccentric classic. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/dec/26/arsenal-west-bromwich-albion-premier-league-match-report | Football | 2016-12-26T17:16:42.000Z | Ed Aarons | Arsenal’s Olivier Giroud snatches late win against West Brom | It was left to the matchwinner, Olivier Giroud, to say what everyone was thinking. “At home you have to win and even more so after two disappointing results,” said the France forward. “It is a big relief.”
Of all those of an Arsenal persuasion, however, there was no one more relieved than the manager. As the clock ticked towards full-time and the first supporters began to drift away, one dreaded to think how Arsène Wenger would recover from a third game without a victory after the disappointment of successive defeats at Everton and Manchester City.
As he acknowledged, West Brom are not the opponents anyone would pick in such circumstances, given their reputation for dogged resilience, and it looked as though an inspired performance from their goalkeeper, Ben Foster, would be how this game was remembered until Giroud’s late header following an inch-perfect cross from Mesut Özil.
“With 10 minutes to go I thought we could play a draw or maybe, if we were not intelligent, even lose the game,” Wenger said.
“We kept going and in the end, whenwe couldn’t make a difference on the ground, we made it in the air, with maybe the only player in our team who can do that.”
Given the season he has endured, there was a certain irony that it was Giroud who found the breakthrough. Alexis Sánchez has enjoyed such success playing through the middle that this was the Frenchman’s first Premier League start of the season, in the absence of the injured Theo Walcott, and for the majority of the afternoon it was easy to see why as he struggled to make an impact.
He had skied his only opportunity in the first half, then picked up a yellow card and another foul on Claudio Yacob less than three seconds after the restart may have hinted that this was not going to be Giroud’s day.
Yet his perseverance was rewarded in fine style as he won the physical battle with Gareth McAuley to meet Özil’s cross with a looping header that left Foster with no chance.
“He put his hand across him early and outmuscled him,” said the West Brom manager, Tony Pulis, almost in admiration. “I think if Gareth takes a step forward, then he stops Giroud pinninghim. Once he pinned him he is so strong and overpowers him. I’ve got no complaints.”
West Brom have faltered recently, suffering defeats at Chelsea and Manchester United, but they remain a difficult team to break down.
Had Yacob shown more composure when the ball fell to him after Petr Cech’s fumble following a corner midway through the second half, then they could easily have snatched three points against an Arsenal side who looked there for the taking at times. But that escape seemed to spark the hosts into action, with Özil finally waking from his slumber to provide the one moment of real quality that ultimately proved decisive.
As ever, it was not for the want of trying from Sánchez, who could consider himself unlucky to be denied twice by Foster and between times by a post in a matter of minutes after the break.
As it was, Giroud’s goal threatened to open the floodgates and the substitute Aaron Ramsey could easily have added some gloss to the scoreline late on. But any more than a 1-0 victory would have flattered the home team.
“The confidence is swinging and depending highly on the result,” said Wenger. “We have lost two on the trot so of course the confidence has been hit. But it’s a good test for the team. There is no season without disappointment, so it was interesting to see how they responded to disappointment.”
With matches between now and the end of January against Crystal Palace, Bournemouth, Swansea City, Burnley and Watford, there should be optimism that Arsenal’s title challenge may not be over just yet and this was exactly the kind of result that could spark another run of victories.
But Wenger will know his hopes of overhauling a Chelsea side who have won all 12 of their matches since the 3-0 defeat here at the end of September are now out of their hands.
“Maybe, yes,” he replied when asked whether this team is more resilient than it has been in recent years. “It’s normal to say yes but we have to show that for the whole season to maintain that resilience.
“ We are quite a big distance behind Chelsea and we will need a special resilience to come back.
“But I hope that the other teams will have their moments of weakness as well. We can only take advantage if we continue like that.”
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Alexis Sánchez cut a frustrated figure as Arsenal struggled to break down the West Brom defence. Photograph: Ian Kington/AFP/Getty Images
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https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jun/19/brexit-talks-david-davis-michel-barnier-brussels-uk-eu | Politics | 2017-06-19T10:30:18.000Z | Dan Roberts | Brexit: David Davis and Michel Barnier begin discussions in Brussels | Brexit talks have begun in Brussels. The lead negotiators, David Davis and Michel Barnier, representing the UK and the European commission respectively, posed for the cameras before several hours of initial discussions.
Amid concerns that political uncertainty in Britain could delay meaningful negotiations, the two leaders stressed their opening day on Monday would mainly deal with the timing and structure of the divorce talks, which the EU insists cannot yet deal with issues of trade.
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“We must first tackle the uncertainties caused by Brexit: first for citizens but also for beneficiaries of EU policies and the impact on borders – in particular Ireland,” said Barnier. “I hope today we can identify priorities and the timetable that would allow me to report to the European council later this week that we had a constructive start.”
Davis, the UK’s Brexit secretary, struck a more upbeat tone, grinning for the cameras before insisting that recent terrorist attacks and fires in Europe showed how the continent could still come together in moments of crisis.
“It is at testing times like these that we are reminded of the values and resolve that we share with our closest allies in Europe,” said Davis. “There is more that unites us than divides us.”
“We are starting with a positive and constructive tone, determined to build a strong and special relationship,” he added.
Barnier and Davis, who last met briefly in November, appeared relaxed and were on first-name terms, but the two sides begin discussions poles apart on a host of contentious issues, particularly the size of any Brexit settlement and the compatibility of Britain’s trade ambitions with EU law on immigration.
The most important opportunity to develop some personal chemistry between Barnier and Davis is likely to come during a 15-minute one-on-one meeting around noon, before they are joined by a couple of officials each for a private lunch. Otherwise the plenary session will take place with up to a dozen advisers on each side.
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Davis, who flew in from London on Monday morning, is expected to leave Brussels shortly after the talks for another meeting in Europe, leaving little opportunity for engagement outside the formal context of the negotiations. But officials stress that the opening day is mainly to demonstrate that Brexit remains on track. “The most important thing is the fact that we are here,” said one Whitehall official.
Privately, the British team concedes it will largely have to acquiesce to EU demands for trade to be left off the agenda for now, although it stresses that no final deal can be reached before all aspects of the future relationship are also considered.
An opening session of talks, during which Davis and Barnier sat down together for the first time to formally negotiate terms of the UK’s withdrawal, started shortly after 11am local time (10am BST).
Barnier and Davis will scope out a timetable for the negotiations during a 90-minute session, before taking an early working lunch.
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In the afternoon, officials from both sides will spend about two-and-a-half hours in working groups responding to any agreement from the two principal negotiators, and working up a detailed plan.
The most senior officials coordinating the negotiations, Sabine Weyand, who is the European commission’s deputy chief negotiator, and Olly Robbins, the permanent secretary at the Department for Exiting the EU, will also meet in the afternoon.
A closing session between Barnier and Davis will start at 5.30pm, before they again emerge to brief the world’s media at a press conference in the European commission’s Berlaymont building.
Earlier, the British foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, said a Brexit deal could be sealed with “profit and honour” on both sides.
“Obviously this is the first day of the talks on Brexit and I think the most important thing is we should all start – of course there’ll be lots of discussions about the nature of the deal we are going to do – but I think we should also enter on the discussion about money and so forth,” he said.
“But I think the most important think about us now is for us to look to the horizon. Raise our eyes to the horizon. Think about the future. Think about the new partnership. The deep and special partnership that we want to build with our friends and I think in the long run this will be good for the UK and good for the rest of Europe. That’s we are hoping for.”
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Johnson, who has previously described the estimated bills emerging from Brussels as “absurd”, said: “I think the whole thing, the whole process, will lead to a happy resolution that I think can be done with profit and with honour for both side and that’s what we’re aiming for.”
Guy Verhofstadt, the European parliament’s coordinator on Brexit, welcomed the British decision not to contest the EU’s negotiating timetable, after Davis retreated from his earlier declaration that it would be “the row of the summer”.
“I am glad that we are sticking to the negotiating timetable, which is already quite tight,” Verhofstadt said. “Let’s now, first of all, make progress in the field of citizens’ rights and create legal certainty for both our people and our companies.”
Didier Reynders, Belgium’s foreign minister, welcomed the start of Brexit talks, but made clear EU leaders remained uncertain about the UK’s goals. “We are waiting for a clear British position,” he said. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/01/precipitous-fall-in-antarctic-sea-ice-revealed | World news | 2019-07-02T01:21:36.000Z | Damian Carrington | Precipitous' fall in Antarctic sea ice since 2014 revealed | The vast expanse of sea ice around Antarctica has suffered a “precipitous” fall since 2014, satellite data shows, and fell at a faster rate than seen in the Arctic.
The plunge in the average annual extent means Antarctica lost as much sea ice in four years as the Arctic lost in 34 years. The cause of the sharp Antarctic losses is as yet unknown and only time will tell whether the ice recovers or continues to decline.
But researchers said it showed ice could disappear much more rapidly than previously thought. Unlike the melting of ice sheets on land, sea ice melting does not raise sea level. But losing bright white sea ice means the sun’s heat is instead absorbed by dark ocean waters, leading to a vicious circle of heating.
Sea ice spreads over enormous areas and has major impacts on the global climate system, with losses in the Arctic strongly linked to extreme weather at lower latitudes, such as heatwaves in Europe.
The loss of sea ice in the Arctic clearly tracks the rise in global air temperatures resulting from human-caused global heating, but the two poles are very different. The Arctic is an ocean surrounded by continents and is exposed to warming air, while Antarctica is a freezing continent surrounded by oceans and is protected from warming air by a circle of strong winds.
Antarctic sea ice had been slowly increasing during the 40 years of measurements and reached a record maximum in 2014. But since then sea ice extent has nosedived, reaching a record low in 2017.
“There has been a huge decrease,” said Claire Parkinson, at Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Center in the US. In her study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, she called the decline precipitous and a dramatic reversal.
“We don’t know if that decrease is going to continue,” she said. “But it raises the question of why [has it happened], and are we going to see some huge acceleration in the rate of decrease in the Arctic? Only the continued record will let us know.”
“The Arctic has become a poster child for global warming,” Parkinson said, but the recent sea ice falls in Antarctica have been far worse. She has tracked Antarctic sea ice for more than 40 years. “All of us scientists were thinking eventually global warming is going to catch up in the Antarctic,” she said.
Kaitlin Naughten, a sea ice expert at the British Antarctic Survey, said: “Westerly winds which surround the continent mean that Antarctic sea ice doesn’t respond directly to global warming averaged over the whole planet.”
“Climate change is affecting the winds, but so is the ozone hole and short-term cycles like El Niño. The sea ice is also affected by meltwater running off from the Antarctic ice sheet,” she said. “Until 2014, the total effect of all these factors was for Antarctic sea ice to expand. But in 2014, something flipped, and the sea ice has since declined dramatically. Now scientists are trying to figure out exactly why this happened.”
Prof Andrew Shepherd at Leeds University in the UK said: “The rapid decline has caught us by surprise and changes the picture completely. Now sea ice is retreating in both hemispheres and that presents a challenge because it could mean further warming.” He said it would also be important to find if the ice’s thickness has changed, as well as its extent.
‘Extraordinary thinning’ of ice sheets revealed deep inside Antarctica
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The new research collated microwave satellite data from 1979 to 2018, providing excellent measurements of sea ice as the different signals from ice and ocean are very distinct and microwaves can be detected day or night and usually through clouds.
Sea ice expands in winter and retreats in summer every year, so Parkinson used annual averages to assess the long term trends. The biggest single year fall was in 2016, when an El Niño boosted human-caused warming to result in record global temperatures.
She said rates of decline after 2014 were three times faster than the most rapid melting ever recorded in the Arctic. Sea ice extent had a small uptick in 2018, but in 2019 so far there had been a further reduction, she said.
Parkinson said the dramatic plunge was a strong piece of evidence that scientists could use to narrow down the causes of the change. “As a Nasa scientist, my key responsibility is to get the satellite data out and I hope others will take this 40-year record and try to figure out how these dramatically rapid decreases since 2014 can be explained,” she said. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/jun/24/chris-froome-missed-drug-test-tour-de-france | Sport | 2015-06-24T22:58:01.000Z | Barry Glendenning | Chris Froome admits missed drug test and blames zealous hotel staff | Chris Froome has admitted missing a drugs test while on holiday earlier this year, in what the 2013 Tour de France winner described as “a hugely frustrating situation”.
Speaking in Monaco before this year’s Tour in which he will lead Team Sky as one of the favourites to win the race, Froome blamed overzealous hotel staff, rather than an inaudible doorbell similar to that owned by the distance runner Mo Farah, for his missed drug test.
“I had a couple of recovery days and I took my wife down to quite an exclusive hotel in Italy,” said Froome, who was forced to abandon last year’s Tour through injury after two crashes on stage five. “On the first morning the authorities pitched up at seven and the hotel staff actually wouldn’t give them access to our room and also refused to let them call up.
“So when we came down for breakfast at 8.30, they basically just said to us: ‘OK, the anti-doping guys were here to test you this morning but it’s our hotel policy not to let them disturb our clients or let anyone disturb our clients’. So that was a hugely frustrating situation for me.”
Under the whereabouts system, designed to support out-of-competition testing, cyclists are obliged to inform officials where they will be for a specific hour between 5am and 11pm when they are obliged to be available for testing.
Chris Froome on the Tour de France: I’m not looking for a stage win Guardian
Most nominate a time early in the morning, as it is when they are most certain of their likely whereabouts: at home in bed. While Froome had logged his temporary holiday address on the whereabouts website, he neglected to let hotel staff know he may have callers who should be granted immediate access to his room.
“I did appeal to try and explain the circumstances to the authorities but at the end of the day I take full responsibility for that case,” said Froome, who has previously claimed to have been tested more than 30 times in one three-week period.
“I should have been more proactive in letting the hotel know this was a possibility that I could be tested. I’ve certainly learned my lesson there. I’ve stayed in hotels all over the world and I’ve been tested all over the world without any issues at all. Unfortunately I just didn’t see this one coming but it’s opened my eyes and I’m definitely going to be more pro-active in the future. It’s always the athlete’s responsibility to make sure he or she is available for testing.”
The World Anti-Doping Agency operates a three-strike policy that means anyone who misses three tests in a 12-month period is deemed to have committed an anti-doping rule violation and incurs an automatic ban of up to two years.
Despite the recent blot on his copybook, Froome is pleased with what he sees as a more rigorous approach to drug testing in cycling.
Last year he observed that neither he, nor his high-profile Tour de France rivals Vincenzo Nibali and Alberto Contador, had been asked to undergo drug controls during lengthy spells of altitude training in Tenerife.
“As far as I can see that has been rectified,” he said. “This year, up in Tenerife alone, I think we were tested at least three or four times during the period when we were up there. So yes, I think the authorities have acted on that.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/dec/25/back-with-a-bong-why-we-need-stoner-movies-more-than-ever | Film | 2014-12-25T19:00:06.000Z | Phil Hoad | Back with a bong: why we need stoner movies more than ever | The shot of the year comes early for UK audiences in 2015 – a tableau in Inherent Vice. Owen Wilson – lost boy astray in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Californian dream – settles for dinner at the centre of a 20-strong congress of dropouts, longhairs, freak-flag-flyers, patchouli princes and acid casualties. His eyes, freighted with infinite weariness, catch the camera as he bends and reaches for a slice of … pizza?!? The joke’s expertly bad. In the bosom of the Topanga renaissance, behold: the stoners’ Last Supper. Low culture has stumbled, dooby in hand, into high. It’s the cinematic equivalent of a Pope Smokes Dope T-shirt.
That’s how Inherent Vice rolls. The zaniness quotient is strong. Doc Sportello, the pothead PI played by Joaquin Phoenix, scrawls: “Paranoia alert” instead of sensible notes; turtles up on the pavement to avoid his regular LAPD beating; body-swerves like Ace Ventura away from annoyingly secretive sanatorium attendants. There’s weightier stuff underneath, the post-second-world-war search for meaning of Anderson’s last film The Master washing up here in the flotsam of California’s alternative communities (the director adapted Pynchon’s 2009 novel during a hiatus in development on the earlier work). But, just as you’re scribbling “sunset of the American dream” in your notepad, you look back up at the screen, and there’s Josh Brolin fellating a chocolate banana. It’s been a while since we had such a heavy-duty concentration of stoner humour in a film by a serious artist.
Jeff Bridges in The Big Lebowski. Photograph: Gram/Sportsphoto/Allstar/Cinetext
The stoner movie’s not just the heavy-lidded kid of Cheech’n’Chong any more; it’s trying to go legit. Cinephiles reacted pretty much the same bug-eyed way as Doc Sportello re: the chocolate banana when serious artist David Gordon Green – once purveyor of sensitive rural dramas – released Pineapple Express and Your Highness. Wasn’t it unbecoming of the man dubbed the new Terrence Malick to direct scenes with genial tokers discussing pioneering methods of joint construction, or hookah-puffing sex-pest wizards? You’d be hard-pushed to claim there was anything profound going on in either work, but Green found a way of infusing his tryst with Mary-Jane with the auteurship of old in 2013’s more sombre Prince Avalanche: its tale of two road-marking painters retained the loopy conversation and spacey rhythms. There could be a little resinous wisdom in the air at the end of the stoner flick – hardly an unfamiliar idea to connoisseurs of The Big Lebowski, the Coen brothers’ own rub of the green and the spiritual touchstone for the high-class smokers’ movie.
CEO over the new reputable empire of the stoner is Seth Rogen, who, before he sparked a major international incident, recently invited fans to come and smoke weed with him to celebrate the release of The Interview. He’s not only been candid about his intake down the years – claiming to be able to smoke 20 joints during a three-hour camera setup – but also deems it central to his creativity. “I don’t know if it helps me write,” he told MTV recently, “It makes me not mind that I’m writing. And I don’t know if it makes me work better, but it makes me not care that I’m working. Who wants to work? But if you’re stoned, it doesn’t seem like work.” Which solves the mystery of how someone masquerading as a Fozzie Bear-voiced man-child perpetually on the brink of the next whitey has written six successful feature-length films. Kevin Smith credits the Rogen “method” with revitalising his career.
Cheech and Chong in Up in Smoke
The idea that the genre could have greater aspirations is only a surprise because we’ve become used to stoner characters as affable, harmless, bong-toting jesters awesomely out of kilter with the adult world: Cheech and Chong, Floyd from True Romance, Jay and Silent Bob, Harold and Kumar. But stoners weren’t comic characters originally: in films like Easy Rider, marijuana use is just part of the chivalric code for counter-culture knights-errant like Peter Fonda’s Wyatt. The body of work – also including films like The Trip, Skidoo and Head – that was the Hollywood contribution to the hippie era was a strange mix of moralistic censure and vicarious indulgence of the “lifestyle”. It mostly conceded, though, that there was a sincere social experiment at the heart of it, a pressing need to secede from the straight world. Jack Nicholson’s dope-dabbling lawyer, George Hanson, in Easy Rider might seem like a satire, a proto-stoner figure, but he meets a tragic end at the hands of people unable to handle non-conformism or a social revolution.
The stoner as we know him – depoliticised clown figure – really emerged in the 1970s. The brilliant film of Fritz the Cat – drawn from the Robert Crumb strips published in underground magazines Help! and Cavalier – picked at the scabs of the free-love movement, oozing cynicism about its narcissism and sense of privilege. The idealism of the 1960s had run aground, leaving the counter-culture without a purpose. The non-sequitur, surreal, anti-authoritarian stoner sense of humour is in full flow in mid-70s satirical anthologies like The Groove Tube, Tunnel Vision and Kentucky Fried Movie – but with relatively few political targets. Instead, we get skits about great literature in digestible capsule form, phoney industrial research, ridiculous kung-fu movies. If this is what 70s stoners were laughing at, it feels like they’ve already become acquiescent, passive parts of media-relayed consumer society; precursors of the cathode-ray-frazzled pop-culture exegetists of Tarantino and Kevin Smith in the 90s. In 1978, Richard “Cheech” Marin and Tommy Chong released the highly successful Up in Smoke, the first true stoner comedy, built on routines honed as veterans of the post-hippie standup circuit. It was probably all over for the idea of being stoned as a portal to a higher consciousness after the release of a film in which the two perma-baked protagonists drive a car with the numberplate MUF DVR.
The puritanical climate of Reagan’s America deferred the absorption of the screen stoner into the mainstream until the 1990s. But my way and the high way were the same thing for Generation X slackers, with their keynote film of Richard Linklater’s Dazed & Confused. Appropriately for the Clinton era, by that time you could be a stoner without inhaling. The digressive dialogue, the time-lapse delivery, the off-hours craving for random junk food: they were all familiar enough by the mid-90s to be the default scaffolding for comedies that hardly featured a single joint, such as Bill & Ted, Wayne’s World and, later, Dude, Where’s My Car? Not dissimilar to the hippie era, the studios have a conflicted stance towards promoting drug use – the script for Dude apparently featured plenty of overt smoking, but it was removed to secure a PG-13. Tamra Davis, director of Half-Baked – which, featuring Dave Chappelle as “Sir Smoke-A-Lot”, was more candid – admitted she couldn’t “believe they let you make a movie like this”. Once hip hop, whose leading lights have been known to like a smoke, entered the fray, contributing dubious classics like Friday and Half-Baked to the stoner oeuvre, the stage was set for the official coronation of the caner.
In 1998, The Big Lebowski raised the game for the genre. Its key maxim, of course, is that the Dude abides. That is what we love about cinema’s stoners; they are salt-of-the-earth naïfs preserved from the passage of time and real-world cares in a spicy fug, out of which floats the odd bit of mumbled genius. Perhaps Paul Thomas Anderson and David Gordon Green, even the Coens, just wanted to hang out there for a while; a break from triple-handled auteur names and the responsibilities of profundity. I can believe it of Green’s sabbatical, especially. Anderson has long been an admirer of Robert Altman, another herbalist of renown, and Inherent Vice’s reeling tomfoolery is a bit reminiscent of MASH (from where The Last Supper pastiche is also pinched, if you can pinch a pastiche).
Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider. Photograph: Everett Collection/Rex
But Inherent Vice has a manic glint in its eye. It’s less relaxed than The Big Lebowski, which it superficially resembles on account of their midnight-toking gumshoes. Anderson told Screen International that it charts a watershed moment, narcotics-wise: “It’s that idea that when you’re smoking weed everything is OK, but as soon as heroin comes in everything is changed and everything is fucked, and that’s sad.” It’s more troubled and elegiac than Pynchon’s novel even, with less daffy musical interludes, more insistent harking-back to a lost Californian utopia – expressed through Doc’s search for his vanished “old lady” Shasta Fay Hepworth. The director appears to be anointing the freakshow individualism that once flourished in America’s most maverick state, searching for (and not always locating) a more natural, almost improvisational register for the comedy emanating from it than the Day-Glo melodramatics of Boogie Nights.
At the centre of Inherent Vice is a shadowy cabal called the Golden Fang, which may or not involve dope-smuggling, property development, private sanitoria and dentistry. Anderson said recently that the whys and wherefores of the Golden Fang aren’t important; it’s a metaphor for the Man, the system, the evil empire, whatever anti-fun military-industrial complex rules the day. Perhaps what Inherent Vice really represents for the stoner film is a moment of lucidity, a rush of blood of the old non-conformism, political engagement, oblique strategies, shrewd cheer and human values with which 60s counterculture believed it could fight the good fight. And perhaps, in a time when the inequalities have widened, the jobs are getting worse, and the conspiracists hide in even plainer sight, peering at us 24/7 through our own screens, Anderson is saying we need our Doc Sportellos even more than then. The bums nailed Nixon, after all.
Inherent Vice is out in the UK on 30 January. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/sep/05/gambling-industry-feasts-on-poor-vulnerable-helen-pidd | Opinion | 2017-09-05T14:23:37.000Z | Helen Pidd | Gambling is an industry that feasts on the poor and vulnerable | Helen Pidd | It is not often that I feel sorry for a vandal, let alone a violent one armed with a hammer, but when Eric Baptista went on a rampage in Liverpool recently he had my sympathies. A problem gambler, he says he had begged to be barred from all of his local bookies, but that they refused to stop serving him. He was too good a customer, regularly losing £400 in a matter of minutes on the fixed-odds machines.
In May, Baptista took drastic action. If the wretched betting shops wouldn’t stop taking his business, he would put them out of business, he reasoned. He had lost yet another £100 in the William Hill on Aigburth Road when a circuit in his brain tripped. He went next door to buy two tins of black paint and set about smearing it over everything he could see. He didn’t stop there, visiting six other branches over a three-week period, causing £36,000 of damage by smashing up betting terminals, TV screens and gambling machines.
Last month, he pleaded guilty to criminal damage and was given a 12-month suspended sentence and ordered to do 150 hours of unpaid community work. Liverpool crown court heard that during one of his rampages he shouted: “This is a protest. I am sorry; there is no safety net for customers.”
Horrible as it must have been for the staff he terrorised, they should have been allowed to stop serving him. As Baptista later argued, when he was a barman, he wouldn’t pour pints for people who had had too many; why, when the bookies knew he was an addict, did they allow him to keep feeding the machines?
Gambling firm 888 penalised record £7.8m for failing vulnerable customers
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They allowed him because gambling is an industry that feasts on the poor and vulnerable to survive. Last week, 888, one of Britain’s biggest online gambling firms, was fined £7.8m after allowing more than 7,000 people who had chosen to exclude themselves from its casino/poker/sport platform to access their accounts and continue gambling. Also last week, a Guardian investigation found that betting firms were using third-party companies to harvest personal data, helping bookmakers and online casinos target people on low incomes and those who have stopped gambling.
For many addicts, data harvesting is less of a problem than the fact they can’t go to buy a pint of milk without walking past a betting shop – or its enabling cousin, the pawn shop. It is depressing how many of our once-great towns can no longer sustain even an M&S and are instead plagued by bookies, pawn shops and stores selling washing machines for “just” £5.50 a week (twice the high-street price at the end of the typical 156-week payment plan). Just as you can tell an area is gentrifying when the plantation blinds and bi-fold doors appear, you know it is going in the other direction when a street gets more than one bookie and a Cash Generator or a BrightHouse.
When I was young, gambling looked exciting, largely because I wasn’t allowed to do it (Christian parents). Even playing the 2p cascade machines in Johnny’s Fun Factory after school in Morecambe felt illicit. It was 2005 before I started to see gambling differently. I was the most junior person on G2, the Guardian’s daily features magazine. The paper was downsizing to Berliner format and I had been tasked with trying out some ideas the features editor had for the revamped pages. One of them had the working title “Are you happy?” and was envisaged as a regular column where we would go out and ask people that question.
Revealed: how gambling industry targets poor people and ex-gamblers
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It soon became clear that people were not prepared to admit to a nosy parker with a notebook that they weren’t skipping through town, high on their fulfilling lives. After several soul-destroying hours, all I could report with great certainty was that I, at least, wasn’t happy.
I looked up and down Exmouth Market, which was midway through becoming the London foodie haven it is today, and noticed a bookmaker’s, squeezed in between an artisanal bakery and a jewellery store. That was the day I learned that if you need sad, honest quotes during the daytime, head to a bookie’s. A man came out, leaned against the window, lit a fag and told me that no, he wasn’t happy, actually. He and his wife were barely speaking after trying and failing to conceive for several years and he had just lost the money he ought to be putting towards the private IVF. Again.
Research has proved that people living in areas with a higher number of bookies are more likely to be problem gamblers. We know that problem gambling costs the UK up to £1.2bn a year, with London seeing a 68% rise in violent crime associated with betting shops since 2010, according to the Metropolitan police. But councils don’t have the powers to reject applications for new betting shops where there are already clusters and the government is dithering over whether to regulate the fixed-odds betting terminals – of which there are more than 34,000 – that prompted Baptista’s smashing spree. If a gambling addict with a hammer doesn’t wake up the authorities, it is hard to see who or what will. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/housing-network/2016/dec/07/rent-gap-local-housing-allowance | Housing Network | 2016-12-07T07:37:14.000Z | Dawn Foster | The rent gap: what is the local housing allowance? | Housing charity Shelter has calculated [pdf] that at least 1.4 million private renters in England, Scotland and Wales now have to claim housing benefit to help with the cost of their rent.
Research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation on the 7 million Britons living in poverty found that housing costs have played a huge part in increasing poverty. The number of private renters living in poverty has doubled over the past decade, and there are now as many private renters in poverty as social renters.
Study finds 7m Britons in poverty despite being from working families
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For those who rent privately, the local housing allowance (LHA), a calculation method used in assessing housing benefit claims, determines how much help they are entitled to with housing rental costs. People are entitled to housing benefit if they are working or if they claim benefits.
What is LHA?
LHA was introduced in 2008 by the last Labour government to bring the amount being spent on housing benefit for those renting privately in line with the benefit for those renting social housing. Labour capped the LHA at half local market rents. If tenants’ rent was more than that, they would not be reimbursed for the rent over that 50%.
In the coalition’s 2010 emergency budget, the terms were tightened:
LHA was calculated using the lowest third of local market rents rather than the lowest half, or median rent, so less housing benefit was paid for the same accommodation.
LHA calculations were capped at four bedrooms, rather than five, particularly affecting larger families.
The age under which claimants are only entitled to the shared accommodation rate (for a room in a shared house rather than a one bed flat) was raised from 25 to 35 years.
From 2011, tenants under 35 living alone were either only entitled to housing benefit for the cheaper shared room rate or had to move into shared accommodation, with their own bedroom, but shared kitchens and bathrooms. Larger families that previously qualified for the five bedroom rate were now entitled to less housing benefit, both in terms of the lower calculation, and the demise of the five bedroom rate.
Who gets housing benefit and what does it cost?
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A new LHA cap and stricter terms were announced by the then-chancellor George Osborne in his autumn statement in November 2015. Initially brought in for a nine-month transition period that applied only to new tenancies, the new LHA cap and stricter terms now apply to all private tenancies signed after 7 April 2008.
How does LHA work?
There are limits on the amount of LHA tenants can get and any shortfall in rent must be met by the claimant. The maximum weekly LHA rate limits are:
£260.64 for a room in shared accommodation.
£260.64 for one bedroom accommodation.
£302.33 for two bedroom accommodation.
£354.46 for three bedroom accommodation.
£417.02 for four bedroom accommodation.
This differs by area – for example in Lambeth, the maximum LHA payment for a room in shared accommodation is £94.38 a week, in Aberdeenshire the maximum rate is £75.63 a week, and in the Rhondda it is £46.03 a week. In Southwark, where the LHA rate is set to a maximum of £204.08 a week for a one bedroom property, the maximum housing benefit awarded is £884 a month. A search on property listing site Rightmove shows only two one-bedroom flats available slightly under this rate, one of which specifies that potential occupants must earn a minimum of £23,850 a year.
Social housing benefit cap will put thousands on streets, say charities
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What is the effect?
Kate Webb, Shelter’s head of policy, says: “With housing costs so high and genuinely affordable homes in such short supply, many families have to rely on housing benefit to keep a roof over their heads, often scraping by from one month to the next. With the loss of a rented home the single biggest cause of homelessness, we’re worried that the lower benefit cap could mean even more families struggling to pay the rent and ultimately losing their homes.”
Shelter’s research found that with rents rising as much as 8% a year in some areas, the gap between local housing allowance rates and actual rents is considerable. The rates of local housing allowance have also been frozen for four years, from April 2016 to April 2020: real term rents are unlikely to fall, meaning there is no link between LHA and real term rents.
For tenants hit by rent shortfalls, the only way to avoid falling into arrears is to move to cheaper areas, apply for discretionary housing payments (a payment from the local authority for people who need extra help with housing costs) or to pay the extra rent from other earnings or benefits.
For many, this is difficult: some areas are unaffordable under LHA, but discretionary housing payments are meant to be short term and councils’ funds are finite. At the moment, people hit by the bedroom tax, benefit cap and LHA gap relay on the DHP payments; in expensive areas demand for the payments outstrips available funds.
By 2020, Shelter predicts that there will be a gap between the cost of renting some of the cheapest properties and the maximum LHA support in 80% of the country:
In 169 areas (52%) there will be a gap of more than £50 a month between LHA and private rents at the bottom quarter of the market.
In 98 areas (30%) there will be a gap of more than a £100 a month.
In 49 areas (15%) there will be a gap of more than a £200 a month.
In 11 areas (3%) there will be a gap of more than £500 a month between LHA and private rents at the bottom quarter of the market.
Some areas are particularly hard hit, such as Cambridge, where the projected gap between LHA and rent is projected to rise to £529 a month by 2020, and Manchester, where the gap is projected to be £239. For households in these areas, the LHA gap is deepening their arrears, and opportunities to move are slim.
Sign up for your free Guardian Housing network newsletter with news and analysis sent direct to you on the last Friday of the month. Follow us:@GuardianHousing | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/may/10/police-reopen-2010-sexual-assault-inquiry-after-ruling-in-libel-case | UK news | 2023-05-10T18:50:43.000Z | Alexandra Topping | UK police reopen 2010 sexual assault inquiry after ruling in libel case | Northumbria police are reopening a sexual assault investigation after a woman who was sued for writing about her experience defeated the libel action against her.
Last month, the high court found that Nina Cresswell had “proved on the balance of probabilities that she was violently sexually assaulted” by Billy Hay, a tattoo artist, in Sunderland in 2010 when she was 20.
Cresswell said the investigation was a “positive move” and she hoped lessons could be learned, but it had come too late.
“I’m happy to cooperate, but I just can’t help but feel that the motives aren’t to protect me and to protect other women,” she said. “The police have only jumped to action since the media have been involved and a high court judge has called them out, so it feels like it’s 13 years too late to me.”
Hay took legal action against Cresswell in 2020 over a blog and social media posts she wrote at the height of the #MeToo movement. Naming Hay, she wrote that he attacked her when she was walking home from a nightclub where they had met earlier the same evening. He denies the claims.
Mrs Justice Heather Williams ruled that on the balance of probabilities Cresswell had been attacked, and she called the police’s initial investigation “deficient … and superficial”.
Cresswell, a copywriter, told police hours after the incident in 2010 that she had been sexually assaulted by Hay. Officers spoke to her at 6.33am, before she had slept and while she was still under the influence of alcohol. A few hours later, the incident had been recorded as “no crime”.
After being threatened with legal action by Hay a decade later, Cresswell re-reported the attack to police. In a letter, his lawyers stated that the pair had only “danced and chatted in groups”, but when questioned by police Hay said he had left the nightclub with Cresswell and tried to kiss her, but stopped when she moved away. Police reopened the investigation but decided there was no realistic prospect of prosecution.
After the ruling, Cresswell said she was looking forward to healing and moving on with her life.
But she said she was left feeling unsettled once again when two police officers turned up at her house without warning last Friday. “I went into full-on panic,” she said. “And I thought: oh god, what is it now?”
She said the two male officers said a more senior officer wanted to speak to her but they would not tell her why. Then, after her mother called them to ask them not to turn up unannounced again, they visited a second time, she said.
Cresswell said she complained about her entire experience with the police via email to Kim McGuinness, the Northumbria police and crime commissioner. She received an email on Monday saying police were reopening the investigation, she said.
“I went into full fight-or-flight mode,” she said. “It wasn’t that I was unwilling to cooperate. I was just having a trauma response.”
She said she would fully cooperate with the investigation, but she also hoped that police would learn from mistakes made during her case, including around interactions with trauma victims. “It would be good for the police to look into what went wrong, give some answers and learn lessons,” she said.
A spokesperson for Northumbria police said: “We can confirm we are reopening the investigation into the report of a sexual assault from 2010. It would therefore be inappropriate to comment any further at this stage.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2024/may/01/hockey-canada-third-party-investigation | Sport | 2024-05-01T09:00:53.000Z | Matthew Hall | Exclusive: Youth coach facing assault charge was cleared by third-party firm investigating Hockey Canada abuse claims | Ayouth hockey coach is set to appear in a Canadian court charged with assaulting a child after being cleared of abuse for the same incident by Hockey Canada’s “independent third party” that investigates abuse within the sport.
The charge laid by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police – the country’s national police service – demonstrates a disparity in standards between police investigations into abuse and internal civil investigations managed by sports organizations.
Also of note is that Sport Complaints – the independent third party that investigated the case on behalf of Hockey Canada – did not report the alleged abuse to law enforcement. The incident occurred in the province of Alberta where the Child, Youth, and Family Enhancemnet Act requires concerns of child sexual exploitation or abuse or neglect to be reported to authorities. According to Hockey Canada’s Maltreatment, Bullying, and Harrasment Treatment and Protection and Prevention Policy, “any Participant engaged in a Hockey Canada activity, who has reasonable grounds to suspect that a Minor Participant is or may be suffering or may have suffered from any form of child abuse, has a legal obligation to immediately report the suspicion.”
The criminal charge of assault, scheduled to go to trial in an Alberta court on Wednesday, relates to two incidents in 2023 involving an adult coach and a seven-year-old child. The Guardian is declining to name the parties involved as the charge involves a minor.
Sport Complaints cleared the coach of any allegations of abuse in its official report of the incidents, instead describing the two incidents now subject to the criminal charge as “inappropriate” and taking place in a “playful environment”.
The Sport Complaints decision to clear the coach of any allegations came after an investigator interviewed the child via Microsoft Teams, a method contrary to how investigators trained to interact with children would conduct an interview.
“If the parent doesn’t make a report to police then certainly the [investigating] organization should make a report to law enforcement immediately,” said Teresa Huizar, CEO of Washington DC-based National Children’s Alliance (NCA), an organization that assists law enforcement in best-practice investigations of child abuse.
“The actual criminal investigation should take precedence over what is happening within the sport. That ensures kids are getting justice and not getting retraumatized and not having to tell their story over and over again. But it also ensures that [the sport] isn’t giving improper privilege over community safety and is holding offenders accountable.”
Hockey Canada’s “duty to report” policy states any personnel or partner “who has reasonable grounds to suspect that a participant is or may be suffering or may have suffered from emotional, [or] physical abuse … shall immediately report to the local child protection agency and/or the local police detachment”.
Hockey Canada said in a statement to the Guardian that it “cannot comment on how the ITP handled a particular complaint” but “we can comment on the Maltreatment Complaint Management Policy that determines the work of the ITP, and the ITP’s responsibility to report matters to police.
“More specifically, Schedule A of the Maltreatment Complaint Management Policy describes the Investigation Procedure. Within Schedule A, Article 9 states “Should the investigator find that there are possible instances of offence under the Criminal Code or behaviour which might constitute child abuse under the relevant provincial/territorial legislation, the investigator shall advise the Complainant and the ITP that it must refer the matter to the police.” This means that ITP-appointed investigators are required to determine if the criteria for referring the matter to the police/law enforcement are met and they then inform the Complainant and the ITP accordingly.”
According to a witness statement seen by the Guardian made to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in September 2023, the coach allegedly placed the then seven-year-old upside down in a locker room garbage can. The incident occurred after the child allegedly threw a puck in the direction of the coach.
The same statement to police alleges a second incident when the coach “aggressively grabbed” the child by his helmet cage, pulled his head forcefully forward and shook the child’s head from side to side and up and down. “His helmet half came off and his face mask/cage was up by his nose,” according to the statement. That incident allegedly occurred after the child shot a puck in the direction of the coach.
The Sport Complaints investigation into the incidents stated that the coach “denied any physical abuse, such as head jerking, or that the helmet ended halfway up [the child’s] head”. The coach said he “just put his fingers in [the child’s] mask cage and that the entire incident took place between 10-15 seconds.”
According to the report, the child told the investigator during the video interview that he did not recall the incident and that the coach did not hurt him.
“There is 40 years of science behind how children need to be interviewed,” said the NCA’s Huizar. “There is specialized forensics training that is available not only in the US but elsewhere and those models have the same underlying principles. They align with the scientific evidence about how children’s memory works, the language that needs to be used, how to ask questions in a non-leading way and that training is absolutely essential.
“When kids, especially very young children, are being questioned improperly they can think that they must have not answered a question right because the person keeps asking them questions again. Kids will guess what the adult is looking for. On serious criminal matters the interviews really must be done by trained forensic interviewers.”
The Sport Complaints investigation found that the ice hockey coach did not engage in verbal or physical abuse or contravene any policy of Hockey Canada, Hockey Alberta, or the Spruce Grove Minor Hockey Association, where the incidents are alleged to have taken place.
Police took a different view of events with officers obtaining a statement from the alleged victim at a child advocacy center – a specialist facility staffed with officers from local and national police forces, prosecutors, and staff from provincial health and children’s services, specializing in managing abuse cases that involve minors.
“Children require a developmentally appropriate, legally sound, way of approaching these conversations,” said Huizar whose organization supported agencies who worked with the FBI investigating the disgraced US gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar following flaws in initial investigations.
Nassar was given an effective life sentence after pleading guilty to multiple charges after being initially charged with sexually assaulting at least 265 women and girls. The NCA and local child advocacy centers were not involved in the FBI’s initial investigations and interviews with survivors. As the Nassar investigation developed the FBI engaged specialist investigators and interviewers with specifically-trained CAC interviewers also brought into the investigation.
Later, the NCA agreed a series of memorandums of understanding with the FBI that provided a platform for the agency to work with local child advocacy centers and follow the CAC investigatory process in similar cases.
“Even some of the young adult victims of Nassar were interviewed by children’s advocacy centers,” says Huizar. “In the Nassar case there were hundreds of victims that needed to be interviewed which far outpaced the number of trained forensic interviewers that the FBI had.
“There are often good intentions with these third-party entities but there are deep flaws. Some of these flaws are very difficult to overcome the way things are currently structured even when you have people making some good faith efforts to do so. At least that is the case in the US.”
In a statement to the Guardian, which can be read in its entirety at the bottom of this story, Sport Complaints said: “The complaint process is confidential. As an Independent Third Party (ITP) to Hockey Canada, Sport Complaints is not permitted to provide any information regarding a specific complaint.”
It added: “We welcome further questions about the process, and will respond to the extent possible without compromising the integrity of the process and our obligations of confidentiality.”
Canadian member of parliament Kirsty Duncan, a former minister of sport under Justin Trudeau, said the government was lagging behind in a commitment to safe sport and needed to hold sports organizations to a higher level of accountability by threatening funding cuts.
“I made it clear to Sport Canada during my time as minister of sport that the system would only change if federal funding was tied to proven efforts on equity and ending abuse, discrimination, and harassment,” Duncan told the Guardian. “What’s needed as an immediate next step is a comprehensive, thorough, investigation of a national sport system that failed to protect athletes and young people for 50 years and continues to fall short.”
Speaking broadly as she is not permitted to comment on specific cases as a sitting member of parliament, Duncan said more transparency is needed of so-called “independent third parties” that manage investigations of abuse on behalf of sports organizations and called for a national enquiry into abuse in Canada’s sports system.
“How independent are third parties?” Duncan said. “Who are they accountable to and who is funding them? The national sports organizations and their collective power also need to be thoroughly investigated: Together, they are a formidable force that can shut down athletes, politics, and the media. An inquiry would absolutely have to look at independent third parties and putting new guardrails in place.”
Sport Complaints issued the following statement in response to queries during the reporting of this story:
The complaint process is confidential. As an Independent Third Party (ITP) to Hockey Canada, Sport Complaints is not permitted to provide any information regarding a specific complaint.
The complaint process is governed by Hockey Canada’s Maltreatment Complaint Management Policy. Under the Policy, the ITP appoints investigators, adjudicators and/or mediators to perform their obligations under the Policy. The investigators, adjudicators and mediators are independent from and external to Sport Complaints and are selected for each complaint based on their experience, educational background and abilities - taking into consideration the nature of the complaint and the age of the participants. Investigators have background and experience that renders them qualified to address the complaint to which they are assigned.
Schedule A of the Policy stipulates the Investigation Procedure. The investigators comply with this Procedure and use their experience to determine the appropriate process within the requirements of the Policy, including who to interview and in what format.
Schedule A, article 9 of the Policy states that “Should the investigator find that there are possible instances of offence under the Criminal Code or behaviour which might constitute child abuse under the relevant provincial/territorial legislation, the investigator shall advise the Complainant and the ITP that it must refer the matter to the police.” Investigators are responsible for determining if the criteria for referring the matter to the police are met and advising the Complainant and ITP accordingly.
Once an investigator has completed their investigation, Schedule A, article 8 specifies that the investigator is to provide the investigation report to the ITP, who will disclose it to the adjudicative panel and may also disclose it, or a redacted version, to the Parties. Schedule A, article 10 of the Policy states that the adjudicator will take the facts as characterized by the investigation report as determinative, unless rebutted by the Parties. Meaning, the presumption will be that the investigation report is determinative of the facts; however, a party may rebut the presumption if they do not agree with the factual findings set out in the investigation report and if they can demonstrate that there was a significant flaw in the process followed by the investigator, or can establish that the report contains conclusions that are not consistent with the facts as found by the investigator. If the presumption is rebutted, the Adjudicator will determine to what extent the investigation report will be accepted as evidence and to what extent a witness or Party may be required to give fresh evidence at the hearing.
It appears to us as though there is an individual who is dissatisfied with the outcome of the complaint process, and is attempting to cast aspirations on Sports Complaints [sic], investigators and others as a result, and has found that they are able to use your news media organizations as a receptive avenue to do so. As noted at the outset, Sports Complaints’ [sic] ability to respond to any dissatisfaction with the complaint process is limited by the need to maintain confidentiality. In essence, this deprives our organization of any meaningful ability to respond to counter false, unfounded or misleading allegations about the conduct of any specific investigation. It is our view that, particularly where minors are involved, it should be abundantly clear that it is highly improper for any adult participant in the process to speak publicly about the process and involved minors, and equally irresponsible for the media to publish unverified allegations in this context.
We welcome further questions about the process, and will respond to the extent possible without compromising the integrity of the process and our obligations of confidentiality. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2014/sep/03/lbc-boris | Media | 2014-09-03T08:40:01.000Z | Roy Greenslade | Nick Ferrari on Boris and Kelvin - in conversation with Phil Harding | Nick Ferrari, the LBC presenter and Sunday Express columnist, is the latest media figure to undergo a Media Society interrogation.
He will be questioned in front of an audience in two weeks' time by Phil Harding about his life and times as a broadcaster and his days as a newspaperman.
There is much to tell because Nick has a life-long journalistic history. He grew up learning about journalism at the kitchen table because his father, Dan (who later became news editor of the Daily Mirror), ran the Ferrari press agency.
Nick's first job was as a reporter on the Sunday Mirror. He later joined the Sun and worked in several roles. He has much to tell about the editor, Kelvin MacKenzie, both there and later when they worked together at Mirror group's short-lived but memorable L!VE TV.
Harding may well ask him also about his time with Rupert Murdoch at Fox TV in New York. But I guess the majority of the conversation will concern his LBC breakfast show.
He has managed to set the news agenda on several occasions, not least by hosting regular appearances by deputy prime minister Nick Clegg and the London mayor Boris Johnson. And the show has won him awards, including one as the London Press Club's broadcaster of the year.
The event, jointly hosted by the London Press Club, takes place on Wednesday 17 September at Reed Smith in the City of London's Broadgate Tower. It begins at 6.30pm.
London Press Club members can reserve their space by emailing [email protected]. Non-members and guests can book online. To buy tickets, go to Eventbrite. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/nov/08/my-karaoke-go-to-always-on-my-mind-by-willie-nelson-craig-charless-honest-playlist | Music | 2021-11-08T07:00:24.000Z | Rich Pelley | ‘My karaoke go-to? Always on My Mind by Willie Nelson’: Craig Charles’s honest playlist | The first song I remember hearing
One of my most vivid first memories is my mum and dad dancing around the kitchen to I’ve Got a Woman by Ray Charles, which cemented my love of golden-era Black American music.
The first single I bought
Bye Bye Baby by the Bay City Rollers. I was about eight, so my mum would have bought it for me from the Liverpool Woolworths. They had big racks full of 7in singles, so that’s where you bought your records from, along with your pick’n’mix.
The song that is my karaoke go-to
Always on My Mind by Willie Nelson is less overblown and more stripped back than the Elvis version, so it’s easier to sing. And Nelson sings it from the heart. I’ve felt that emotion a few times; he just captures it spectacularly well.
The song I know all the lyrics to
There’s too many. I’ve got a peculiarly good memory for words. If someone forgets a line on Red Dwarf, everyone looks at me because I know all their lines, too. I can remember my O-level history notes: “Bismarck’s main aim after 1871 was to preserve the status quo whilst he concentrated on the internal affairs of the German state.” How useful is that to me?
The best song to play at a party
My DJ sets are full of party starters such as I Like It Like That by Tito Nieves and I Wish by Stevie Wonder.
The song I stream the most
At the moment, it’s Break My Heart Again by Finneas. I know it’s sad, but I’m peculiarly drawn to that song. It gives me earworms. It’s a song you can’t get out of your head.
The song that I secretly like, but tell everyone I hate
I’ve taken a great stance against Abba throughout my life. The same goes for George Michael and Take That. But A Million Love Songs by Take That? That’s a tune, man.
The song I can no longer listen to
My brother Dean died a while back and his favourite song was Mind Blowing Decisions by Heatwave. I used to play it when we were getting ready to go out. So I always feel a bit of a twinge when I hear it now.
The song I want played at my funeral
When my dad was cremated, we played Hot Hot Hot by Arrow, which was quite funny. I think my wife and kids will probably choose what to play. But there will be so many tears, you won’t be able to hear the music. There will be too much eulogising.
Craig Charles’s show is broadcast weekdays, 1pm, BBC Radio 6 Music and BBC Sounds. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/dec/24/why-christmas-is-for-everyone-religion-christianity-atheism | Life and style | 2017-12-24T06:00:43.000Z | Julian Baggini | Why Christmas is for everyone | Julian Baggini | Although I’m a card-carrying atheist, I have some sympathy with those who argue that a Christmas without Christ or a mass is as meaningless as celebrating a birthday without a birth, or a jubilee without a coronation.
However, traditions have a habit of breaking free from their roots. Nobody is calling for Saturday or Wednesday to be renamed because we no longer worship Saturn or Wōden, the Roman and Norse gods who gave the days their names. The fact that hundreds of years ago our pagan midwinter festival was refashioned and renamed after Jesus does not give Christianity ownership of it in perpetuity.
Disgruntled Christians would do better to seek common cause with anyone else, including thoughtful atheists, who wants Christmas to stand for more than just shopping and gorging. If they did so, they would see that a good atheist Christmas looks a lot like a good Christian one.
The nativity myth centres on the birth of a child, but you don’t need to believe in the tale of the manger and the Magi to use Christmas as a time to celebrate the family, in spite or perhaps even because of its strains. The distasteful consumerism of Christmas today is simply an excess of a laudable desire to put extra resources into a once-a-year coming together.
The fact that our midwinter festival was renamed after Jesus does not mean Christians own it
This should foster gratitude, which in turn draws our attention to those who lack family support or the material resources to push the boat out. So Christmas is also a time of hospitality and generosity. Many will be inviting people outside their families to share their Christmas lunches, while seasonal charity appeals (including that run by this newspaper) show that splashing out on ourselves is not incompatible with caring for others.
Most obviously, Christmas is in effect a celebration of the winter solstice, four days late. Christians might think this is impious paganism, but all human cultures mark the passage of the seasons, whether they worship gods, nature or nothing at all. We can all be cheered by the lengthening of the days and the prospect of spring.
Much of the value of Christmas is the same for anyone, irrespective of religious faith, or lack of it. But just as Christians bring their own distinctive faith to the holiday, so atheists appreciate an aspect of it that remains inaccessible to believers.
Atheists are not just people who don’t believe in God. Put positively, our belief is that the natural world is all that there is. Only by fully accepting this fact can we live good lives that are true to our nature. The marking of midwinter brings these truths home. It reminds us that the cycle of life and death turned for aeons before we were born and will continue its rotations for aeons after. It exemplifies the legitimate hope that darkness can be followed by light but not the false hope that we can ultimately escape the fate of all living things. In our feasting, we are asserting the value of appreciating the good things while we have them, while remembering that nothing is meant to last, for good and for bad.
These beliefs are not for the most part shared with Christians. But the solemnity with which we meditate on them and the joy with which we act on them very much echoes their blend of moral seriousness and festivity at Christmas. By remembering we’re all just trying to work out how to live good lives in the harshness of a sometimes cruel and perplexing world, we can share the Yuletide hope for peace on earth and goodwill to all.
A Short History of Truth: Consolations for a Post-Truth World by Julian Baggini is published by Quercus at £9.99. To order a copy for £8.33 go to bookshop.theguardian.com | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/may/14/george-rr-martin-scorns-absurd-claims-hes-finished-writing-game-of-thrones | Books | 2019-05-14T12:48:27.000Z | Alison Flood | George RR Martin scorns 'absurd' claims he's finished writing Game of Thrones | George RR Martin has rebuffed the rumour that he has secretly finished the final two books in his Song of Ice and Fire series, after a Game of Thrones actor made the claim last month.
Speculation began spreading online after actor Ian McElhinney, who played Ser Barristan Selmy in the HBO adaptation, made the claim on 29 April at a fan convention in Russia. “George has already written books six and seven … but he struck an agreement with David and Dan, the showrunners, that he would not publish the final two books until the series has completed,” he told the audience at EPIC Con 2019.
George RR Martin: ‘When I began A Game of Thrones I thought it might be a short story’
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The fifth novel in Martin’s bestselling series, A Dance with Dragons, was published in 2011.
But writing on his website on Monday, Martin said McElhinney’s claim was not true. “No, The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring are not finished. Dream is not even begun; I am not going to start writing volume seven until I finish volume six,” wrote the author.
“It seems absurd to me that I need to state this … Why would I sit for years on completed novels? Why would my publishers – not just here in the US, but all around the world – ever consent to this? They make millions and millions of dollars every time a new Ice & Fire book comes out, as do I. Delaying makes no sense.”
HBO did not ask him to delay the books, the author added, nor did the show’s co-creators, David Benioff and DB Weiss. “There is no ‘deal’ to hold back on the books. I assure you, HBO and David & Dan would both have been thrilled and delighted if The Winds of Winter had been delivered and published four or five years ago,” he wrote. “And NO ONE would have been more delighted than me.”
Martin also took the opportunity to double down on his claim that Gandalf would “kick Dumbledore’s ass”, after making the assertion at the premiere of the new JRR Tolkien biopic last week.
“Gandalf COULD kick Dumbledore’s ass. I mean, duh. He’s a Maia, folks. Next best thing to a demigod,” wrote Martin, diving deep into Silmarillion levels of Tolkien knowledge with his “maia” reference. According to the Tolkien Gateway: “The Maiar (singular Maia) were those spirits which descended to Arda to help the Valar shape the World.”
Martin wrote: “Gandalf dies and come back. Dumbledore dies and stays dead. But if it will calm down all the Potterites out there, let me say that Gandalf could kick Melisandre’s ass, too.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/feb/15/what-starmer-election-bar-on-corbyn-means-for-labour-left | Politics | 2023-02-15T13:02:50.000Z | Jessica Elgot | What Starmer’s election bar on Corbyn means for Labour’s left | Islington North is a constituency of contrasts, multimillion-pound Georgian townhouses next to council blocks, with one of the UK’s highest child poverty rates.
Jeremy Corbyn’s particular brand of politics navigated that for 40 years, appealing to his diverse working-class constituents as well as wealthier socialists. It is one of Labour’s safest seats – but now looks like it will be a bitterly divided battleground.
Should Corbyn decide to run at the next election as an independent it would pose an existential dilemma for Momentum, the grassroots leftwing group that emerged out of his leadership campaign and which has become a pressure group for the Labour left and the loudest critic of Starmer’s leadership.
Jeremy Corbyn will not be Labour candidate at next election, says Starmer
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Senior Labour sources have made it clear that should Momentum campaign for Corbyn, Labour would proscribe it as an organisation – similar to the way Militant or other leftwing groups that challenged the party’s MPs have been treated.
That same dilemma faces some of Corbyn’s closest allies who are still Labour MPs – John McDonnell, Diane Abbott, Richard Burgon. It is a tortuous decision – to back a Labour candidate or, instead, one of their oldest friends – and there is no doubt it is one they will be publicly asked to make.
There is no certainty Corbyn will stand as an independent. He has a huge support base locally, including among some local councillors, and a significant number of grassroots activists who have quit Labour want to campaign for him. He has a ready-made vehicle – his Peace and Justice Project – and the public urging of his family members to run rather than retire.
But that run will have significant repercussions far beyond Holloway Road. The decision will almost inevitably seal the fate of many of the leftwing movements, politicians and activists still in Labour. And for the sake of the future of the left in the party, some former close advisers to the ex-Labour leader hope he will not stand.
Locally, party activists will need to decide if they are prepared to lose their Labour membership to support Corbyn, and councillors will need to choose whether to defect to Peace and Justice, if that is how the race pans out.
Anyone running for Labour selection will be under the spotlight for previous support for Corbyn. Matt Kerr, a senior figure in Scottish Labour, who ran for deputy leader, was recently blocked from the shortlist for Glasgow South West, where he had previously stood. Issues raised by the NEC panel were his support for Corbyn after his suspension – he had tweeted: “He’s been suspended for telling the truth.”
None of these dilemmas are particularly new for those they affect. For many months it has been clear that Starmer had no intention of readmitting Corbyn to the party, even if some of the former leader’s backers thought there may still be a path, given Corbyn is technically a party member.
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Starmer takes no persuading to be hardline on the issue, and many of those who advise him dedicated the past few years to removing any trace of the previous leadership from the party’s structures. They are unapologetic about a desire to remove any association with a period of Labour’s history that led to a historic election defeat and unprecedented censure from the equalities watchdog for unlawful discrimination against Jewish people.
Equally, Corbyn has been dedicating his time to defending his legacy, in particular on austerity and on international politics – where he has also clashed with Starmer on Russia and Ukraine.
Many on the Labour left still want to keep the party as a broad church where they can fight on issues like nationalisation, student fees, trade union rights and fair pay. The question now is whether supporting the leader that first inspired many of them will cost them their ability to influence Labour in government. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/feb/25/luciana-berger-rejoins-labour-after-keir-starmers-antisemitism-apology | Politics | 2023-02-25T20:59:11.000Z | Danya Hajjaji | Luciana Berger rejoins Labour after Keir Starmer’s antisemitism apology | Luciana Berger has returned to the Labour party after an invitation and apology from Keir Starmer, four years after leaving the party over its handling of antisemitism cases.
“The Labour party has turned a significant corner under Keir’s leadership,” Berger said in a tweet on Saturday. “I’m pleased to be returning to my political home.”
Lord Sainsbury returns to the Labour fold with £2m donation
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Berger, 41, served as MP for Liverpool Wavertree until her departure from Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour in 2019 amid the party’s antisemitism row. She was the highest-profile Jewish MP to quit.
Starmer shared a letter in which he apologised for Berger’s “intolerable and unacceptable” experience in Labour’s ranks.
The Labour Party has turned a significant corner under Keir’s leadership. I’m pleased to be returning to my political home. @UKLabour https://t.co/U3mSHol2PX
— Luciana Berger 🇺🇦 (@lucianaberger) February 25, 2023
“You left because you were forced out by intimidation, thuggery and racism,” he wrote. “Yours was a principled and brave move. But it was one you should never have been forced to take. That day will forever be a stain on Labour’s history.”
He added: “The abuse you suffered was disgusting. You were left isolated and exposed. Shamefully, those who should have defended you stood by.”
In her response accepting Starmer’s invitation, Berger said her previous Labour tenure was a “grim journey […] during which the party fell into the depths of the abyss under Jeremy Corbyn’s reign”.
“I never expected to bear witness to the volume and toxicity of anti-Jewish racism espoused by people who had been allowed to join Labour, and to experience a leadership that treated antisemitism within the party’s ranks differently to every other kind of racism – and that by refusing to condemn it, encouraged it,” she wrote. “But that is exactly what happened.”
The human rights watchdog found that the party broke equality law over its handling of antisemitism complaints.
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Keir Starmer’s five ‘national missions’ mark a turning point for his Labour party
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A report by the Equality and Human Rights Commission in 2020 found that the party was responsible for unlawful acts of harassment and discrimination.
Corbyn rejected some of the report’s findings and claimed the issue had been “dramatically overstated for political reasons” by his critics. His comments led to Labour’s headquarters suspending him from the party.
Berger said she is “looking forward to rejoining the party” and working with Starmer. “It is time to replace this reckless and divisive government and ultimately make a difference our country so desperately deserves,” she said.
News of Berger’s return was welcomed by a number of Labour MPs. Labour North West tweeted: “We are sorry that we left you. You never left us. You were forced out of the Labour party, but under Keir Starmer’s leadership you will feel at home once again.”
As a Labour MP, Berger spoke of suffering a torrent of antisemitic abuse online and in person, and relied on police protection at Labour’s annual conference. One man who sent antisemitic threats to Berger was jailed for two years in 2017.
While eight months pregnant, Berger faced a no-confidence motion within her Liverpool Wavertree constituency over her criticism of Corbyn. The motion was withdrawn after it emerged that a key opponent in the local party called her a “disruptive Zionist”.
After her exit from Labour, Berger moved to the Independent Group of MPs, later joining the Liberal Democrats. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/apr/25/working-9-5-jacob-rees-mogg-office-work-letters-to-civil-servants | Opinion | 2022-04-25T14:32:58.000Z | Simon Jenkins | Working 9-5 doesn’t mean being chained to a desk. Someone tell Jacob Rees-Mogg | Simon Jenkins | The joke must have seemed merry at the time. The “minister for Brexit opportunities” leaves a calling card on his absent officials’ desks saying: “Sorry you were out when I visited. I look forward to seeing you in the office very soon.” He also suggests in a Mail on Sunday article that they might like to stick to what he called “the shires” and forgo their London weighting allowance.
The mind reels at the replies Jacob Rees-Mogg may receive. They could include: “Have been up all night trying to think of opportunities for the 98 British scientists told to relocate to the EU if they want any research money.” Or perhaps: “Have been at home trying to think of opportunities for British farmers we have refused to protect from EU imports for a fourth time.” Or perhaps even: “I just can’t face another opportunities meeting in Whitehall.”
Rees-Mogg’s Brexit has been largely responsible for 91,000 extra officials being appointed since 2015-16, of whom about 25,000 are attributable to Brexit. Lockdown and Brexit may have sent civil service productivity plummeting, but that is the fault of ministers, not officials. For two years, Rees-Mogg and his boss have been ordering workers to stay at home, causing many upheavals in their working lives as they have juggled work with other responsibilities, such as home schooling. Not all officials are like butlers, at the disposal of Rees-Mogg’s click of the fingers.
‘Condescending’: Jacob Rees-Mogg leaves notes for WFH civil servants
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It is clear that the idea of office work as the “white-collar” equivalent of clock-watching factory work is dead. The pandemic and the digital revolution have shattered the relationship between labour and location. After a post-lockdown surge, data is now showing the “return to work” has plateaued. Tube travel into central London midweek has steadied at between 60% and 67% of pre-Covid levels, with a significant rise only on Thursdays, much favoured by the “three-day hybrids”. Law and finance firms are reporting offices at between 30 and 60% of capacity. Retail footfall has stabilised at 80% of pre-Covid numbers. The property consultants Remit estimated in February that clerical occupancy was as low as just 25%, far below pre-pandemic levels. This may change over time, but something drastic has happened and is unlikely to be reversed.
Nowadays the digital pressure of most types of work has little to do with the clock. Offices are inflexible and distracting places, prone to time-wasting chat and unnecessary meetings. This is in addition to the time and cost involved in commuting. We know that socialising is important to an organisation and to individual members of its staff. We know that the balance between on-screen and in-person contact is a delicate one, as is the balance between in-house and outsourcing. But we do not know how that balance is to be quantified and disciplined.
It’s not just clerical labour, but workers in the retail, hospitality and transport sectors are all experiencing radical changes in their workplaces. Giantism in office blocks, department stores and shopping malls may truly be a thing of the past. As the culture secretary, Nadine Dorries, bluntly retorted to Rees-Mogg, his view of work was Dickensian, bringing to mind “images of burning tallow, rheumy eyes and Marley’s ghost”. Those days are over. But perhaps Rees-Mogg’s officials, who find themselves working in a department that deals in “Brexit opportunities”, have simply despaired of coming to work 9-to-5 for a contradiction in terms.
Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2017/sep/14/who-will-judges-choose-to-win-booker-prize | Books | 2017-09-14T14:32:35.000Z | Stuart Kelly | Surprised by the Booker shortlist? Don't judge the books, study the judges | This week the email from the Man Booker’s publicity team arrived, with its announcement of the shortlist: three Americans; two debuts; two formerly shortlisted authors; one winner of a major prize set up in opposition to the Man Booker; and one grand old man. Curious indeed, I thought, and then, as my more reptilian brain kicked in, I started playing the odds. Horse-trading? Who pushed for what? Why were names such as Zadie Smith, Sebastian Barry and Arundhati Roy whittled off the longlist?
As a literary editor for many years, and a former judge, I have sometimes joked with friends that the year that I correctly predicted the Man Booker result was the year I judged it. It is, delightfully, unpredictable. The longlist did seem like a mix-tape of greatest hits (thankfully nobody put on the Rushdie) – and yet the only two surprise tracks are on the shortlist.
Man Booker prize 2017 longlist – in pictures
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With a different set of judges each year, it is a fool’s errand to try to guess the eventual winner. So I have always had a simple formula: never judge the books – study the judges.
In the infamous year of having a former spook looking at literature, the prize nearly collapsed under the banalities, until a tried-and-tested victor was put in place (Julian Barnes, with The Sense of an Ending). This year’s judges are a curious mixture. Having been in this game for so long, I can say without hesitation that I respect the opinions of Sarah Hall and Lila Azam Zanganeh, both of whom I have chaired at literary festivals, and have long admired Colin Thubron and Tom Philips, whose work I used to push on creative writing students. I have not had the pleasure of meeting the chair, Baronness Lola Young. But these are people I take seriously, and their decisions should be taken seriously.
But seriously: Paul Auster? The new book strikes me as bloated Borges. What he managed in “The Garden of Forking Paths” it takes Auster a book longer than Ulysses to play around in. It’s a very macho book, not in content, but in form. After years of slender novels and slim pickings we get the huge work, and it is huge work to finish it.
Another Booker koan: the front-runner never wins. I quite liked George Saunders’s Lincoln in the Bardo, but it had a musty air of nostalgic experimentation. Ali Smith (Autumn) appears to be always the bridesmaid, and seems content with that – as she observed, Angela Carter never won the Booker. The debuts, History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund and Elmet by Fiona Mozley, which I read yesterday, are good; at points very good indeed. Mohsin Hamid (Exit West), like Auster, attempts alternative realities but has the upper hand in politics.
If you want to win at the Man Booker – as a punter – then here’s the strategy: find five friends and each of you place a bet on one of the books. One of you will win and you can divide the dividends sixfold. That’s the only way to win. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/03/ariel-sharon-final-mission-peace-israel | Opinion | 2014-01-03T20:00:00.000Z | Jonathan Freedland | Ariel Sharon's final mission might well have been peace | Jonathan Freedland | In truth, Ariel Sharon's journey ended long ago. Eight years have passed, almost to the day, since he was silenced by a stroke that left him lodged in the limbo between life and death. That state of ambiguity was strangely fitting for a figure who, after decades painted as either black or white – reviled by his enemies as the "butcher of Beirut", loved by his admirers as "Arik, King of Israel" – ended his life an unexpected shade of grey.
After a long career as his country's most fearless, some would say brutal, warrior – his father's gift to him on his fifth birthday was a dagger – and as patron to the settler movement, Sharon's final act was to dismantle some of the very settlements he had sponsored. In 2005 he ordered Israel's disengagement from Gaza, seized in the 1967 war in which Sharon had been a crucial, if maverick, commander.
When the stroke struck, he was poised to win an election that would, it was widely assumed, be followed by further withdrawals from the West Bank. The former general had unique credibility to do that – to fix borders that had remained provisional since the state was born – because he was drawn from Israel's founding generation. Sharon had fought in the 1948 conflict Israelis call their war of independence: despite having his arm in a plaster cast, he led a platoon. Even his name was given to him by Israel's founding father, David Ben-Gurion – turning the young Scheinerman into Sharon as if he were King Arthur anointing a knight.
Israel's current president, the apparently immortal nonagenarian Shimon Peres, was also a Ben-Gurion protege and key player in 1948, but he was never a soldier. The demise of Sharon means the 1948 combat generation has gone. And that matters more than you might think.
The explanation can be found in a new, immensely powerful book. My Promised Land by the Haaretz columnist Ari Shavit is a personal history of Israel, one that begins in 1897 with a boatload of dreamers yearning for Zion, sailing to Jaffa: their leader is a British Jew, the Rt Hon Herbert Bentwich – the author's great-grandfather. From there, Shavit offers us places and moments that between them tell the story of the last remarkable century, whether absorbing successive waves of Jewish refugees from the rubble of post-war Europe or building the secret nuclear reactor at Dimona, from the triumphs of the settlers to the failures of the peace movement. The book is not without flaws. Critics have faulted the scarcity of women, Mizrachim (Jews of Middle Eastern origin) and Palestinians in Shavit's narrative. There is no denying that his vantage point is that of Tel Aviv's male, liberal elite. He is an Israeli aristocrat, his link to Bentwich putting him on a par with those Americans who trace their origins to the Mayflower. By his own admission he is a Wasp, a White Ashkenazi Supporter of Peace.
But that does not negate the book's three great strengths. The first is context. Every time an interviewee is introduced – whether a great novelist or the unnamed engineer behind Israel's nukes – we are given their back story, the life that led to their views. You can still disagree with the most hawkish speakers, but it's useful to know the harrowing past of loss and violent bereavement – often but not only in the Holocaust – that shaped so many of them, the fear that transformed itself into a desperate longing to survive.
Similarly, Shavit resists the binary simplicities that afflict so much discussion of Israel-Palestine. His book will provide ammunition both to those who despise Israel and those who revere it, telling of its darkest deeds as well as its shining triumphs. Propagandists for both sides, who resemble each other so closely, could cherry-pick favourite facts to buttress their view – but both will end up disappointed. Shavit is a hawk on the Iranian nuclear threat, for example, but fierce in his denunciation of the post-1967 occupation. He slams Israel's hawkish supporters for failing to address the occupation and slams Israel's opponents for failing to address Israelis' deep fear of their own annihilation. To truly understand the country and the conflict, he says, you have to understand both: that "occupation and intimidation" are the twin pillars of the Israeli condition.
But Shavit goes further. He castigates his former comrades in the peace movement for focusing so narrowly on the territories conquered in 1967, as if returning them to the Palestinians will solve the entire conflict and bring blissful resolution. For, he insists, the heart of the matter is not 1967 but the birth of Israel in 1948.
In one chapter, he meticulously reconstructs events in the mainly Arab town of Lydda in July 1948, when soldiers of the embryonic Israeli army emptied the place of its Palestinian inhabitants and, according to Shavit, killed more than 300 civilians. In an unflinching account based on the testimony of those who did the killing, Shavit states baldly: "Zionism carrie[d] out a massacre."
Now, Shavit is not the first Israeli to stare the reality of 1948 in the face. He quotes a famously candid speech from 1956 in which Moshe Dayan did much the same. More than 30 years later, Israel's "new historians" excavated the archives, looking for the factual truth. Some of those described themselves as anti-Zionists, others as post-Zionists. But Shavit might be the first such voice from deep inside the Zionist mainstream to speak so directly of the events the Palestinians regard as the nakba, the catastrophe.
That represents a profound challenge to Israel and its supporters. Shavit is telling them, as an Israeli patriot profoundly committed to his country, that it can avoid this painful history no longer: it has to own up to it. His message to the Israeli left – and perhaps to John Kerry, now on yet another peacemaking trip to Jerusalem – is that it can delude itself no more that dealing with the relatively easy matter of the post-1967 occupation will be enough to bring peace. Ending the occupation is a worthy goal in its own right, Shavit says, but the real Palestinian grievance originates in 1948.
That thought fills the author with pessimism. He sees "no solution" to the clash of Palestinians who believe their land was stolen and Israelis who believe their collective lives depended on taking it. I think Shavit is right about the necessity for honesty, but wrong to believe this means a true peace is forever doomed. Much of what Palestinians demand is precisely the acknowledgement that in 1948 they did indeed suffer a nakba. If Israel could one day make such an admission, who knows what accommodation might follow?
The tragedy for both sides is that the right people to speak that truth were the founding generation. Those who fought the war of 1948 were best placed to close its wounds. An intriguing habit of Sharon's was to refer to places in Israel by their original, Arabic names – thereby acknowledging the truth that usually lies buried beneath the soil. Leading his nation to do the same could have been Ariel Sharon's final mission. They will have to do it without him.
Twitter: @Freedland
Comments are set to remain open for 24 hours, but may be closed overnight | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/09/european-union-sustained-reform-overhaul-relationship-cooperation | Opinion | 2014-05-09T09:00:00.000Z | José Manuel Barroso | European Union needs sustained reform, not an overhaul | José Manuel Barroso | The last decade of European integration was marked by historic achievements, starting with the enlargement to 12 new countries, but it was also marked by unprecedented crises, from the financial meltdown to recent developments in Ukraine – probably the biggest challenge to security and peace in Europe since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Much of the fallout from the economic crisis was negative. Tensions have re-emerged between the centre and the periphery, between richer and poorer member states, between creditors and debtors, between the north and the south. There is a feeling of a loss of fairness and equity. There was a dramatic rise of unemployment and a huge challenge to our social model.
But the crisis has also increased resolve that reforms are needed if we want to maintain European competitiveness, productivity, employment and ultimately our European growth model. And it has increased awareness of our interdependence.
In order to safeguard peace and prosperity in Europe, we need an EU that is much more willing to act together, project its power internationally and strengthen its role and influence. A new world order is being forged. Either we contribute to reshaping it or we miss out on the future. Either Europe will advance in its coherence or it will face irrelevance.
This means that the EU must develop further. I believe that we need to perfect our political union. Such a development must be an organic, not an abrupt one. Reform, not revolution – that is the lesson I draw from my European experiences, mainly from my 10 years as president of the European Commission.
Events over the past decade are testimony to the extraordinary adaptability and flexibility of the EU's institutions. One could call it their plasticity: they adjust shape and form while keeping the substance. And that is exactly what we are doing now to meet the challenges of our time.
It will require us to develop a new level of political maturity that matches the degree of decisions we take collectively. For a stronger EU to develop, we must address the lack of ownership for these joint decisions. Populism thrives because when Europe is given responsibilities, key stakeholders often shy away from assuming their part of the accountability. The populists should not be given that free ride.
For the next phase of European integration we need to build broad-based political and societal support. The drive for earlier phases of European integration has always come from the bottom up as well as from the top down. European integration was based on a clear sense of purpose, a clear idea of the need for Europe. The treaties and institutions have always followed the political will. We cannot – and should not – force public opinion's hand. But we must try to forge the consensus we need. We need a new debate to take Europe further. We need to build a real sense of European and national ownership of the European project.
The main challenges ahead of us today must be examined from the point of view of first, the politics needed; then, the policies needed, and third, the polity needed to achieve the first two. In that order.
So before we discuss the technical details of yet another treaty, we must answer the question: what is the agreed purpose of our Union? To what extent do we join our destinies? How far and how deep do we want integration to go; who wants to participate in what; and why? Whether we discuss further economic integration towards a genuine economic and monetary union, a more unified external policy, or further steps towards a political union, these questions must be debated first.
Europe's political actors have to live up to their commitment to our common European project.
Throughout the crisis the political will to act has eventually emerged. From new rules for economic and budgetary oversight to stronger regulation and supervision of the financial sector: whenever the 17 or 18 embarked on a more ambitious project, almost all of the others joined and contributed. The centripetal forces have proved to be stronger than the centrifugal forces time and again. The pattern was for more integration, not less, and for the European institutions such as the European Commission and the European Central Bank to become more competent, not less.
But European political dialectics are often characterised by a system where everybody can afford to be a little bit in government and a little bit in opposition; where successes are nationalised and difficulties Europeanised. The time has come to create a new relationship of cooperation, a Kooperationsverhältnis between the union, its institutions and the member states, a loyalty between the institutions and the member states that goes beyond what's written in the treaties.
The French president, François Hollande, and Germany's chancellor, Angela Merkel. Photograph: Olivier Hoslet/EPA
Sustained reform requires national leaders to see their role not only as national but at the same time as European, and to close the existing implementation gap. When decisions are taken by head of state and government they must be followed at national level.
Sustained reform also requires the European parliament to embrace its role as a decision-maker rather than serve as an echo chamber for demands without regard for their feasibility. Throughout the past decade parliament has shown that it can play the game – from the adoption of the EU's budget to the conclusion of the banking union.
Sustained reform means that the commission remains the indispensable and reinforced focal point of European politics. While the final outcome has not always reflected our initial ambition, the commission has put the decisive proposals on the table throughout the crisis. The new financial stability toolbox (EFSM, the EFSF and later the ESM), the reform of economic governance, banking union, tackling tax evasion, and initiatives to combat youth unemployment are just some of the examples. No other place in the union brings together the horizontal view – the political awareness of the variety of member state situations – with the vertical insight and the expertise on European policies.
In Europe, leading means building consensus and avoiding fragmentation. This is why I have made sure the commissions under my presidency took collective responsibility for their decisions. A political executive is not a miniature parliament. While it is important to recognise the political character of the commission, it is equally important to avoid giving the commission a partisan nature.
There will not be a European Philadelphia moment, a constitutional rebirth of the whole EU framework. The EU will continue to be a case of permanent reform rather than permanent revolution. For this permanent reform to succeed, we need to get the politics of Europe right first. No treaty change, no institutional engineering can replace the political will Europe needs to move forward.
European integration will always be a step-by-step process. Such a pragmatic approach has never been in contradiction with working towards a vision. Quite the contrary.
It remains the most visionary project in recent history. Its energy and attraction is striking. Its adaptability is unprecedented. But only if certain conditions are met: when national politicians exercise ownership of the European project and don't treat Europe as foreign interference, when cooperation reaches new levels of maturity, and when the politics of Europe are on the offensive.
That is what's at stake in the coming European elections. They are a decisive moment to stand up for what has been achieved and to build a consensus around what needs to be done, to speak up for Europe as it really is, and advocate a vision of what Europe could be. These elections matter a great deal.
In my 10 years at the head of the European Commission, I have had the privilege to be there to contribute to the response to some of the most threatening events in the EU's history, and I am proud of the reforms we have achieved since then. But the true reward will come, not from starting but from finishing our efforts. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/gamesblog/2011/sep/01/driver-san-francisco-game-review | Games | 2011-09-01T10:58:11.000Z | Steve Boxer | Driver San Francisco – review | Poor old John Tanner, the cop with the unparalleled wheelman skills, has been through an awful lot over the years. After an attention-grabbing PlayStation debut in 1999's Driver, he saw subsequent iterations of the franchise in which fronts decline in quality, mirroring the disintegration of then-publisher Infogrames/Atari.
By the time Driver: Parallel Lines arrived in 2006, Tanner had been dropped from his own starring vehicle. And now, his big comeback and first appearance on next-gen consoles, Driver San Francisco, begins with his old nemesis Charles Jericho hijacking his own prison transport van and driving it into the side of Tanner's classic Dodge Challenger R/T, leaving Tanner comatose in hospital.
Except, despite the evidence (police radio chatter, Tanner driving his own body to hospital in an ambulance), Tanner wakes up in his miraculously undamaged car, trusty sidekick Tobias Jones in the passenger seat. And he has developed the ability to drive any car in the city, essentially by possessing the drivers (who look the same but utter Tanner's wisecracks).
If you think that sounds like the sort of preposterous premise that would set up some movie almost entirely constructed from car chases, you're on the right track. Driver San Francisco is an homage to movie car chases. And it's an object-lesson in how to resurrect a franchise.
Ubisoft picked it up after Driver: Parallel Lines, along with Newcastle developer Reflections Interactive, and gave the latter creative free rein. The result is that tortuously explained car-hopping mechanic, which brings a fresh new aspect to the well-worn driving game blueprint.
Early missions include raising a driving instructor's heart-rate beyond 180bpm and terrifying a supercilious car salesman by racing the Ford GT he hopes to sell down San Francisco's famously twisty Lombard Street. Later on, you find missions like ensuring two drivers come first and second in a cross-city race, by flipping between the two cars.
Driver San Francisco
The ability to car-hop has spawned countless unusual multiplayer modes, such as vying with others to slipstream an AI-controlled car. Its control-system works beautifully, pulling you out to a birds-eye view with two levels of zoom to allow swift sweeps across the city.
A (mostly) realistic San Francisco has been meticulously recreated in the game, providing the ideal surroundings – it's surely the iconic city for any car chase aficionado. Its steep, jump-enabling roads have been augmented with toys such as car transporters that form mobile ramps.
Driver San Francisco's cars also seem designed to bring out your most hooliganistic tendencies – American muscle cars, original and modern remakes, predominate, along with supercars – although the game's overall level of realism does extend to a variety of awful modern American family cars and endearing oddities such as the Alfa Mito and Fiat 500 Abarth.
Handling, as ever, is of the rear-wheel-drive, tail-out variety, although there's enough steering precision to weave through oncoming traffic (a key skill in the game). Mastery of the handbrake is required, but the cars are much more forgiving than in real life.
Complex structure Single-player campaigns have shortened noticeably in recent years, but Driver San Francisco provides an unfashionably meaty experience, although the actual storyline is quite short and delivered in a rather bitty manner. But there are vast numbers of various missions – including Dares, Pursuits, Races and Stunts – dotted around the city, and every story chapter opens a new part of San Francisco.
Driver San Francisco
Plus, you can buy garages, where you can buy cars and upgrades to Tanner's abilities (his supernatural powers extend to a nitrous-style boost, whose duration and recharge speed can be upgraded, and a ram for battering enemies off the road). You can collect movie tokens (many in places only accessible by boost-jumping) and cash them in for special missions that re-enact San Francisco movie car-chase sequences. And your garages will earn money for you to spend (the currency is technically Willpower, or WP, representing Tanner's attempts to wake from his coma), so you can play at being a garage mogul if that floats your boat.
Ubisoft Reflections, as the developer is now called, has especially gone to town with the car-hopping mechanic online, coming up with a bewildering variety of multiplayer modes that use it to varying degrees of success. There are classic checkpoint races, though – we played one that put us on a dirt-track near the Presidio at the wheel of a fearsomely twitchy Group B Audi Quattro – tag modes and cops and robbers, where one person tries to escape a bunch of pursuers.
You'll have to try them to work out which suit, but more casual users should be able to find some sort of enjoyable multiplayer mode which isn't dominated by the hardcore online racing fraternity. While the likes of those Group B cars and McLaren's MP4-12c should keep the petrol-heads interested.
When the oil runs out and the joy of motoring fades from memory, things like Driver San Francisco will become revered artefacts. If you liked Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit or Burnout Paradise, you should be pretty happy with Driver San Francisco – it's at least as classily constructed, and the car-swapping mechanic plus glorious San Francisco setting (which is sufficiently populated to feel pretty lifelike) add a couple of interesting new directions for the genre.
It's not perfect – the storyline is a bit perfunctory, its free-form style can be illusory when it forces you to perform certain missions and it gets a bit repetitious in the latter stages. But it's a joyous sandbox in which you can drive like a lunatic, in exotic machinery that you might never even clap your eyes on in real life, without hurting anyone. Only video games can provide that experience, unless you're a movie stuntman.
Driver San Francisco was reviewed on PlayStation 3 | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/sep/07/take-a-junior-job-and-dodge-the-dwp-mps-post-ministerial-incomes-ranked | Politics | 2022-09-07T05:00:41.000Z | Henry Dyer | How MPs’ earning potential varies after leaving office | Pity the ambitious young Tory MP. The top jobs in Liz Truss’s government have been briefed and decided. Short of any huge upsets, the great offices of state have been filled, cutting off the possibility of significant advancement for some backbench Truss supporters.
As they are left in the cold, standing outside the cabinet revolving door, the chance of becoming a household name and a significantly higher earner is vanishing. So too is the hope of the post-ministerial earnings that sometimes follow such high-profile gigs.
But there are still positions for the prime minister to fill, lower rungs of the ministerial ladder that historically have opened doors to some interesting future jobs. And some are more lucrative than you might think.
The Guardian has analysed more than 170 post-ministerial roles taken up by Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs since 2010 and calculated the financial potential of different ministerial ranks across Whitehall. The earnings were assessed using declarations by former ministers who remained MPs and published their outside income in the register of members’ interests, looking at jobs picked up in the two-year period after they left their role.
MPs should not turn their nose up at the prospect of becoming a parliamentary undersecretary, the most junior of the ministerial roles in a department: after finishing their role these are paid a median of about £80,000, more than ministers of state (£50,250) and even secretaries of state (£77,000).
If they are hoping their next role in government will be their last, they should not take a job in the Home Office, which has the lowest post-ministerial earnings of £5,000. The Department for Work and Pensions, likewise, is best avoided.
MPs would be well served telling Downing Street how they have long been passionate about culture, foreign affairs and transport, as jobs after minister of state roles here net a median of at least £150,000.
Defence is a red herring: networking skills are better served at the Department for International Trade or the Ministry of Justice.
If given a choice between education secretary and Northern Ireland secretary, they should head for Belfast: the post-ministerial median of £43,575 is seven times higher.
Most importantly, they should remember that their successes (or not) in the department won’t matter too much. After all, the former transport secretary Chris Grayling received £200,000 in two years for advising a ports company, after awarding a ferry contract to a company with no ships.
Former prime ministers make the most. The full scale of David Cameron’s earnings were not published, but Theresa May has collected more than £2.5m since leaving office.
Next comes the chancellor. George Osborne’s several jobs dragged up the median to just over £2m. The third highest median is in the attorney general’s office. Geoffrey Cox’s sterling efforts representing the British Virgin Islands, in person and remotely, helped him make more than £1.7m, triple the income declared by Edward Garnier, the solicitor general until 2012.
Boris Johnson’s time after being foreign secretary and before being prime minister has skewed the former role into appearing hugely profitable, thanks to a £275,000 contract with the Telegraph (for which he did not properly seek permission from the revolving door watchdog Acoba) and more than £450,000 in speeches.
As Johnson heads off into the sunset and an anticipated surfeit of post-prime ministerial roles, he is proof that the job of foreign secretary is a great stepping stone. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/21/thailand-friends-crisis-protesters | Opinion | 2014-03-21T13:45:38.000Z | Jonathan Prentice | Thailand needs friends to help it through its crisis | Jonathan Prentice | "U
sually, in the past, we would have had a coup by now," said one retired senior Thai official this week about his country's travails. He didn't mean the absence of a coup marked progress; he was reflecting a widespread resignation that without action by some external force – such as the military – the crisis being played out in Bangkok risked running the country into the ground.
Thailand faces truly existential challenges. It is riven by social, economic, ideological and regional divisions. Resignation seems to give way only to heightened extremism; vituperative intolerance has damaged any prospect of talks. Outside powers should not misinterpret a lull in the streets as progress. Without a concerted attempt to alter course, Thailand remains at risk of tipping into violent confrontation.
How did things come to this? The government called elections for 2 February after protests led by former members of the Democrat party persuaded the prime minister, Yingluck Shinawatra, to withdraw an inflammatory amnesty bill that would have annulled the 2008 abuse-of-power conviction of her brother, former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Instead of channelling the dispute into the political arena, protesters occupied Bangkok's streets, calling for Yingluck's resignation and an appointed government.
Boycotted by the Democrat party, boycotted and disrupted by anti-government protesters, the February poll had no cathartic effect. Yingluck's administration continues to face pressure from protests, the courts and nominally non-partisan watchdog agencies. Indeed, the constitutional court today voided the elections, throwing yet more uncertainty on an already confused situation. But an appointed government – an ever more likely proposition – would almost certainly provoke a backlash by "red shirt" Shinawatra supporters, who have seen every government they elected since 2005 undemocratically removed.
Just off-stage, and far more significant to Thailand's immediate future than either Yingluck or her street-based opponents, are three sets of characters.
First, there is Thaksin: to some, a politician who finally gave voice to the aspirations of the rural north and northeast; to others, a Voldemort-like figure who, even in exile, is omnipresent, able and willing to sacrifice the nation to his limitless ambition. Few express a middle line but many miss the fundamental dilemma. Whatever his virtues or sins, Thaksin, politically active, will remain a source of extreme division; but the converse – that his removal will bring union – does not hold up. Thaksin is both cause and symptom of Thailand's irreversible political reality: it is the north and northeast, rather than Bangkok, the Thai establishment and the south, that have the electoral clout to determine who is in government.
Second, the military. They're not shy about politics – in 2006 they ousted Thaksin – or in stamping down protests, as they did with extreme prejudice against red shirts in 2010. Currently, their intentions remain unclear. Burned by experience of recent interventions, they may want to stay on the sidelines but are unlikely to if they believe their core interests, or the integrity of the state, are in jeopardy.
And, finally, the monarchy, discussion of which is circumscribed by vigorously enforced lèse majesté laws. The elderly king's health renders unlikely his intervention in the current crisis. Most royalists loathe Thaksin and are anxious about succession. Partisan appeals for royal intervention have helped to undermine perceptions of the monarchy as above politics. Long a byword for national stability, the monarchy finds itself constrained from playing a mollifying role, on the cusp of a new era amid much uncertainty.
So what's the answer to Thailand's dilemma? The opposition demands reform before elections; the government the reverse. Squaring this circle demands compromise. Protesters need to accept that the views of a majority as expressed at the ballot box cannot systematically be overturned by the minority. The government, its supporters and Thaksin need to accept that long-term stability requires that their opponents' concerns be addressed.
An agreement might work as follows. The democratic process should be upheld and Yingluck permitted to form a government, ideally drawn from a base broader than just her party. Recognising the country's divide, she could commit to staying in power for one year while a national dialogue takes place. Such a dialogue, which would need to be both balanced and truly reflective of all interests, could air the country's ills, whether over the rule of law, corruption, growing regionalism or even the separation of powers. Yingluck's administration should culminate in a referendum on a new constitution paving the way for fresh elections. The crown and the military could endorse such choreography.
What Thailand needs are friends, domestic and international, to help it confront, not gloss over, the country's deep fissures. Seeking absolute victory, wrapped in a cloak of righteous principle, is not working. It is pushing Thailand ever closer to a precipice. Time, now, to try compromise and dialogue. | Full |
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