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https://www.theguardian.com/social-care-network/2015/jun/02/childrens-homes-care-leavers-neil-morrissey-lemn-sissay | Social Care Network | 2015-06-02T12:37:59.000Z | Linda Jackson | The last place was like a prison': care leavers' stories of children's homes | It was meant to be a day celebrating his brother’s 12th birthday. Instead, actor Neil Morrissey, then aged 10, and his sibling, Steve, were in a Stafford court accused of stealing a box of liquorice allsorts, a pencil and a packet of sweets.
Expecting a rap over the knuckles, they stood in the dock waiting to play on the swings. Minutes later they were placed into care, marched away from their sobbing parents and sent to separate children’s homes, where they would spend the next few years away from each other and their mum and dad.
“Being taken away from my parents was the biggest single trauma I went through,” says Morrissey. “I thought I was being placed into care because I was naughty. It was only five years ago, when I made a documentary, that I realised I was placed into care because my mum and dad were bad parents. They weren’t bad people, but they couldn’t cope.”
I came out of the home in shock – I was like a war veteran. When you leave you’re not built to last, but I had my poetry
Lemn Sissay
For someone who experienced such a traumatic family break-up, Morrissey, 52, is remarkably sanguine. Placed in Penkhull children’s home in Stoke-on-Trent with 17 other children, he regards himself as one of the fortunate ones, as he was brought up under the care of house mother Auntie Margaret “who instilled a sense of routine and reward”.
Six years later, ambitious and naturally optimistic, Morrissey appealed for foster parents and was fostered for a couple of years before going to drama school. The result? “I grew up streetwise and hardened to what was normal. I was used to meeting new people all the time; hanging out with strangers and being aware of sudden changes in people’s moods.”
Morrissey finds it difficult to believe that siblings could be separated, and wants to see more support for parents to look after their children in their own homes – and more support for care leavers. It is a feeling shared by Ethiopian poet, playwright and author Lemn Sissay, who feels passionately about the plight of teenagers leaving residential care.
After being fostered between the ages of three months and 12 years, Sissay spent time in four different children’s homes, ranging from a family group home with just 12 residents, to a 60-place assessment centre, where residents were routinely strip-searched after receiving visitors.
“Looking back, I realise I was seen as a problem, but no one told me the problem wasn’t me,” he says. “The last place was like a prison: I hadn’t done anything wrong, but they were preparing me for a life in and out of institutions, as a disproportionate number of people in care end up in prison or in prostitution.
“I came out in shock – I was like a war veteran. When you leave a children’s home you’re not built to last. I ended up in an unfurnished flat and started a gutter-cleaning business a few months later. All the while I had my poetry and I went on to get a job as a literacy worker.”
Children's care homes are seen as a last resort, but they can be a safe haven
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Sissay, who says he will never stop being a care leaver, says support shouldn’t stop at age 16 or 18. For the past three years he has attempted to make Christmas special for teenagers in Manchester and Bradford – organising a “scrumptious Christmas dinner” for 50 care leavers. He also campaigns for children’s rights, and the University of Huddersfield has set up a PhD scholarship for care leavers in his name, in recognition of his work.
Thirty years have passed since Morrissey and Sissay were in residential care, and much has changed. Gone are the big institutions, to be replaced by smaller therapeutic homes. The passing of the Children Act in 1989 meant children were given a voice, and rights.
But being in care can still carry a stigma. Tia Spencer (18), had 10 foster placements before going into residential care at the age of 11. She then spent seven years in homes before moving into her own flat last October. Today Spencer is an apprentice support worker at a school helping young people with disabilities.
She recalls: “I would get bullied for being in care and would beat the girls up. One day it got too much and I took a knife into school.”
She says that staff at the homes helped her manage her anger and supported her through a crisis when her father died three years ago.
This support continued even after she moved into her own flat. “The staff have been fantastic,” she says. “They even took me on holiday. If I could change anything, it would be to have studied harder at school.”
Such a range of experiences is not surprising, according to Dr Jim Goddard, chair of the Care Leavers’ Association. A former care resident himself, Goddard says: “People in the same home can have wildly different experiences. There are a lot of abuse stories, but, equally, there are a lot of good homes.”
This article was amended on Wednesday 3 June. A quote from Lemn Sissay was attributed to Neil Morrissey; this has now been corrected. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/jan/26/black-students-struggle-uk-university-places-ucas | Education | 2017-01-26T00:01:02.000Z | Richard Adams | Black students still struggle to win places at UK universities | Black students continue to struggle to win undergraduate places at UK universities, despite applying in record numbers and equipped with stronger qualifications than previous years.
The figures released by the Ucas university admissions clearing house show that last year black school-leavers failed to be offered places at the rates their qualifications and subject choices would suggest.
Despite record numbers of applications and better predicted A-level grades and equivalent qualifications, only 70% of black applicants received offers of places, compared with 78% of white applicants and 73% of students from Asian backgrounds.
According to Ucas’s predictions, 73% of black applications should have been successful.
Black and Asian students under-represented in university offers
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Prof Les Ebdon, director of the office of fair access to higher education, said while the admissions data “cannot provide conclusive proof that offer-making is biased, it should certainly prompt universities to investigate their admissions policies and practices if the data suggests that certain groups of students receive unusually low offers”.
The success rate of black students applying to more selective universities – such as the Russell Group of research-intensive universities, including Manchester and Edinburgh – also deteriorated despite a sharp rise in applications from qualified students.
While 61% of black applications were awarded places, a slight improvement over 2015 entry, according to Ucas’s calculations, 64% could have done so.
The mixed picture suggests that while universities are becoming more successful in outreach and in terms of encouraging black students to apply, the greater numbers of applications are not translating into offers compared with rising numbers of those from Asian, mixed and white ethnic backgrounds.
Ebdon said the data would “enable individual universities to identify cold spots in their student population” and help target their efforts towards the most underrepresented groups.
Prof Les Ebdon. Photograph: Sarah Lee/The Guardian
“I strongly encourage universities to make use of this data when planning their strategies to improve access. An evidence-based approach is crucial if we are to make further, faster progress in opening higher education to everyone with the talent to benefit from it,” Ebdon said.
Wendy Piatt, director of the Russell Group, said: “The root causes of underrepresentation are complex and a wide range of factors need to be taken into account to fully understand them.
“However, we must remember that this data does not take into account some important aspects of the application such as subject choice and relevance to degree course, the exact profile of the predicted grades, or other factors such as the personal statement, teacher references or interviews.”
Piatt said next year Russell Group universities planned to spend £250m on scholarships, bursaries and outreach activities.
Among the leading universities, the London School of Economics stood out with above-average offer rates to applicants from neighbourhoods with historically low rates of university education, and with increasing rates of offers to black students despite high levels of competition for places.
LSE offered places to 95 out of 255 applications from black students last year, out of 1,500 undergraduate offers. In contrast, the University of Oxford offered places to just 45 black students – five fewer than 2015 – out of 270 applications, as part of a university-wide total of 2,500 undergraduate offers.
Oxford University accused of failing to deal with admissions racism
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Oxford’s offer rate for black students slipped to its lowest level since 2013, with just one in six winning places.
However, Oxford experienced an increase in the number of students from Asian backgrounds winning places, from 145 in 2015 to 200 in 2016.
The number of white students was largely unchanged at 2,090, representing more than one in four applicants. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/05/health-officials-hopeful-australia-is-flattening-coronavirus-curve-but-warn-against-complacency | World news | 2020-04-05T05:20:33.000Z | Calla Wahlquist | Health officials 'hopeful' Australia is flattening coronavirus curve but warn against complacency | Health authorities in Australia have expressed cautious optimism that Australia may be able to limit the domestic coronavirus outbreak, as the death toll reaches 34 including three more deaths linked to the Ruby Princess cruise ship.
However, senior officials have warned against complacency or relaxing social distancing rules too early.
Australia’s chief medical officer Professor Brendan Murphy said the number of cases in Australia rose by 139 on Sunday, to a total of 5,687 cases. About 2,000 of those cases are of people who have completely recovered.
“That is probably the lowest rise we’ve had for a few days and it does tend to continue the trend we’ve seen of flattening of the curve,” Murphy said.
He added: “We’re increasingly confident that if people continue to adhere to what we’ve been asking them to do we can prevent a situation like we’ve seen in many other country of the world.”
However Murphy said he remained concerned about community transmission, which accounted for 10% of cases in Australia.
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The deputy chief medical officer, Nick Coatsworth, meanwhile said Australia appeared to be on the right path.
“If we do stop these measures too early, then we have seen graphs in the media showing there could be a resurgence in cases so we have to be careful on those grounds,” Coatsworth told Sky News on Sunday.
'Like preparing for war': Australia's hospitals brace for coronavirus peak
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Dr Jeremy McAnulty, NSW Health’s director of health protection, said the rate of daily infections in that state was “stabilising” but it was too early to say if this trend would continue.
“It is pleasing to see early signs of stabilisation, which is down to a number of important factors,” McAnulty said.
He attributed that stabilisation to an early detection of cases, allowing for early contact tracing and isolation of all known contacts, as well as adherence to social distancing measures.
“We want to be hopeful, but not to over-egg the figures,” he said. “The last few days we have seen numbers bounce around without escalating at the same level as we have seen before, so we are hopeful that we are starting to flatten the curve. But there is more work to be done and it is important that we all heed those messages.”
New South Wales reported 87 new cases on Sunday, bringing the total number of cases in that state to 2,580. Some 39 people with Covid-19 are in intensive care in that state, 23 of whom require ventilators.
NSW has the highest rates of untraced community transmission in the country, with 380 cases recorded as having been acquired locally with no known source of infection and 58 more under investigation. About 118,863 people have tested negative to the virus .
The federal government has said it will release modelling on the coronavirus outlook in Australia on Tuesday, after it is approved by the national cabinet.
Modelling by the University of Sydney showed that the number of active cases in Australia, assuming continued adherence to the current social distancing laws, could peak mid-April and the spread could be controlled by July. That modelling suggested the total number of people who would contract Covid-19 in Australia over the course of the pandemic was between 8,000 and 10,000. The current number is 5,635.
Victoria’s chief health officer, Prof Brett Sutton, said he for the first time had “a little bit of optimism that we can actually beat this”.
“That we can take a different course than most of Europe and North America has taken,” Sutton said. “That we can avoid literally the millions of cases that will occur in North America and Europe and the tens of thousands of deaths that, unfortunately, will occur in those continents … It means staying the course in Australia, and the things that we’ve asked people to do can make a difference, and this is the very early sign of it.”
Victoria recorded 20 new cases of Covid-19 overnight, bringing the total to 1,135 of which 75 were acquired through untraced community transmission.
Sutton said the new cases recorded on Sunday were “likely to be a mix” of returned travellers and known contacts, and community acquired cases.
NSW health minister defends experts who handled Ruby Princess coronavirus outbreak
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“We’ll see a greater proportion of community transmission as our international travel proportion goes down, because those individuals are smaller and smaller in number as every day goes by,” he said. “And their secondary contacts are fewer and fewer because we’ve got people in hotel quarantine, therefore protecting others around them.”
Queensland recorded just nine new cases overnight – its smallest one day rise in weeks.
“We’ve got a long way to go, but these signs are very encouraging to have only nine positive cases overnight,” Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said.
Palaszczuk said that more than 92% of the 907 cases confirmed to date in Queensland were either acquired overseas, or were caught from a person who had acquired the disease overseas.
The Northern Territory has no confirmed cases of community transmission. It recorded 27 new cases overnight, including a child who was a close contact of a person who had travelled overseas. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/aug/23/gender-pay-gap-average-18-per-cent-less-uk-women | Money | 2016-08-23T09:32:06.000Z | Katie Allen | UK women still far adrift on salary and promotion as gender pay gap remains a gulf | Women earn 18% less than men on average, according to new research that highlights the challenge facing Theresa May in closing Britain’s stubbornly wide gender pay gap.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) also found that the gap balloons after women have children, raising the prospect that mothers are missing out on pay rises and promotions. That is echoed by a separate report on Tuesday suggesting that male managers are 40% more likely than female managers to be promoted.
May highlighted the gulf between men’s and women’s earnings in her first statement as prime minister when she vowed to create a “Britain that works for everyone”.
But underscoring the struggle her government will face in closing the gender pay gap, the IFS study hints at an entrenched penalty for those women who have children. The pay gap widens consistently for 12 years after a first child is born, by which point women receive 33% less pay an hour than men, according to the research funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
More than four decades after the Equal Pay Act, there is some encouraging news in the report. The current 18% gap in hourly wages is down from 23% in 2003 and 28% in 1993, the IFS notes.
But at the same time, its research reveals there has been little improvement for graduates and women with A-levels. For the mid-level and highly educated, the gender wage gap is essentially the same as it was 20 years ago.
“The gap between the hourly pay of higher-educated men and women has not closed at all in the last 20 years,” said Robert Joyce, associate director at IFS and one of the report’s authors.
“The reduction in the overall gender wage gap has been the result of more women becoming highly educated, and a decline in the wage gap among the lowest-educated.”
The thinktank says the widening of the hourly wage gap after childbirth is associated with working fewer hours. However women do not see an immediate cut in hourly pay when they reduce their hours. Rather, women who work 20 hours or less per week lose out on subsequent pay rises, meaning that the hourly wages of colleagues in full-time work pull further and further ahead.
Sam Smethers, chief executive at the Fawcett campaign group, said the findings underlined the urgent need for more quality part-time jobs. “We are wasting women’s skills and experience because of the way we choose to structure our labour market,” she said. “Part-time workers can be the most productive, yet reduced hours working becomes a career cul-de-sac for women from which they can’t recover.”
But Mark Littlewood, director general at the free market thinktank the Institute of Economic Affairs, said the study showed employer discrimination was not to blame for the gender pay gap. “If anything, the IFS has provided us with more evidence that the wage gap has nothing to do with gender discrimination. As the study itself notes, women who take time off work and return doing fewer hours are not getting paid less per hour.”
Former prime minister David Cameron had vowed to “end the gender pay gap in a generation” and new government rules are coming in next April that will force bigger employers to publish their pay gap. The UK has also introduced more free childcare and shared parental leave but equality campaigners are concerned too few families can afford for fathers to take it.
Responding to the IFS study a government spokeswoman said: “We want to make our country a place where there is no limit on anyone’s ambition or what they can achieve – that means making sure everyone, regardless of their gender, can succeed at work.
“The gender pay gap is the lowest on record but we know we need to make more progress and faster. That’s why we are pushing ahead with plans to force businesses to publish their gender pay and gender bonus gap.”
A separate report from the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) attempts to shed some light on women’s lack of pay progression by analysing the salary data of more than 60,000 UK managers and professionals. In the past year 14% of men in management roles were promoted into higher positions compared with 10% of women.
The research, carried out with pay analysts XpertHR, cited the difference in promotion rates as one of the main causes of the gender pay gap. The CMI’s measure of the pay gap for managers was 23.1% for this year, compared with 22.8% in 2015.
CMI’s chief executive, Ann Francke, said the rules on reporting pay gaps should force employers to analyse any discrepancies in the salaries of male and female employees. “Promoting men ahead of women is keeping us all back,” she said. “Diversity delivers better financial results, better culture and better decision making.
“Transparency and targets are what we need to deal with stubborn problems like the gender pay gap.”
The researchers also found there were fewer women in executive positions than men. Women comprise 73% of the workforce in entry and junior level roles but female representation drops to 42% at senior management level and 32% at director level.
Mark Crail, content director at XpertHR, commented: “The gender pay gap is not primarily about men and women being paid differently for doing the same job. It’s much more about men being present in greater numbers than women the higher up the organisation you go.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/gamesblog/2014/mar/20/event-kieron-gillen-and-the-new-games-journalism | Games | 2014-03-20T11:34:03.000Z | Keith Stuart | Event: Kieron Gillen and the new games journalism | Ten years ago this week, well-known PC Gamer writer Kieron Gillen got home from the pub and decided he wanted to change games journalism forever. At 2.04am in the morning on March 23, he posted on to his website, The New Games Journalism manifesto, a heartfelt call for games writing to change, to become more subjective, and to convey the experience of actually being in a game world.
The manifesto was much discussed and encouraged a new way of thinking about and even playing games. And Gillen is now a writer at Marvel, penning excellent runs of X-Men and Thor, before moving on to his superhero teen-angst masterwork, Young Avengers.
So what happened to young Gillen on that fateful night at the Delfter Krug bar in Bath 10 years ago? Who was with him? And how did it shape his approach to writing over the next decade?
To find out, we’ll be reuniting Kieron with the two journalists he was talking to that night at the pub, ex-PC Gamer colleague Tim Edwards and Jon Hicks, now editor of the Official Xbox Magazine. In conversation with the Guardian games editor, Keith Stuart (who was probably in the bar as well), the trio will attempt to recall the mood of that modest night down the boozer, as well as assessing the legacy of NGJ and the way writing about games has changed in the following decade.
Afterwards, we’ll speak to the newly announced Kotaku UK editor, Keza MacDonald, and well-known games video maker Matt Lees about the current generation of games writers, journalists and YouTube stars.
The event will take place at The Yorkshire Grey pub in London, on 26 March. Tickets are available for £5 (plus booking fee), which includes one free drink. The event is for over-18s only.
Book your ticket here! | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2007/jan/18/gonetohaven | Music | 2007-01-18T17:30:41.000Z | John Aizlewood | Back from Bedlam, gone to haven | There's no accounting for tastes ... James Blunt on his way to the top tax bracket
They all dream, but in every pop star's life there comes the moment they know they've made it. It's not the first number one, the first gold disc or the first time an urchin spots them on the street. Oh no. Even the most bovine of them - and a big hello to Emma Bunton at this point - understand it's when their accountant visits and says those golden words: "You need to take a year out of the country for tax purposes."
They've all done it (except, for obvious reasons, New Model Army and Babylon Zoo). Some, such as Def Leppard's Joe Elliott, live in Ireland (from his house you can see Chris De Burgh's); others, such as George Michael, disguise it by going on a world tour.
Not James Blunt, though. Start the wailing and gnashing of the teeth now, because he has gone for good and moved to Switzerland, home of David Bowie, Phil Collins (before his most recent wife fled) and the secret bank account of every dictator worth his secret police. The obvious question is: has the greedy fool ever been to Switzerland, in particular the chocolate box village of Verbier where he is to live? The surprising answer is yes. Often. Since childhood.
The natural response is a cheery v-sign and a national chorus of "good riddance". But behaving like a tax advisor rather than a pop star is wrong. We must try to stop him from leaving us. Not because I want to hear You're Beautiful again or that song about the three wise men (or was that James Morrison? It's hard to tell), or because I wish to see another of his interminably dreary concerts. No, I want him to stay with us because it's not fair that he goes.
He has made us suffer with his records, his tales of single-handedly bringing down the Yugoslav military machine and his half-smirk which means he knows he was lucky to arrive at the very moment the British public demanded a winsome pubic schoolboy.
Now, by rights, it should be his turn to suffer at the hands of the Inland Revenue. I don't just want new hospitals and that pothole outside my house to be fixed: I want James Blunt to pay for them. That's what progressive taxation is all about, Jimbob. We make you rich; you refurbish a state-run hospice.
In fact, I'd like to see all popstars barred from leaving the country, or pilloried for personal hypocrisy, unless James Blunt has written a song called Can't Help Falling For A Tax Loophole. Sadly, they're almost all as two-faced as each other and it's not just about where they live. The blessed Joe Strummer sent his kids to public school, The Beatles loved Liverpool so much they left it the moment fame beckoned, and Bono's bid for sainthood (lead by example pixie boy; give your money away) hasn't stop him allowing U2's operations to be moved to the more tax-efficient Netherlands. And, as we stand at the quayside, tearfully waving off James Blunt, imagine what we don't know about... | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/sep/01/talking-horses-moore-in-isolation-after-trip-for-champions-weekend | Sport | 2020-09-01T10:23:36.000Z | Chris Cook | Talking Horses: Oxted ruled out of Sprint Cup after poor gallop | Oxted is to miss Haydock’s Sprint Cup on Saturday, for which he had been 4-1 joint-favourite. One of the most popular winners of the Flat season when he landed the July Cup for his low-profile trainer, Roger Teal, Oxted was disappointing in a gallop on Tuesday morning and will be saved until Champions Day next month.
Talking Horses: Delia Bushell accuses Jockey Club of 'stitch-up' over review
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“He was just a bit below par,” said Harry Teal, assistant to his father at their Lambourn stable. “With it being softer ground than we’d ideally like at Haydock, we feel it wouldn’t be fair on him to go there not at his peak. It’s going to be a competitive enough field, like any Group One, and there’s no point going there on that ground and pulling the guts out of him.”
Oxted’s blood is to be tested in case his performance on Tuesday should be an indication of ill health. But the Teals are hopeful he can revive in time for the Champions Sprint at Ascot in seven weeks.
“It’ll be straight to Champions Day. It can often be soft then, so Saturday was going to be our trial for that, if you like. But we’d rather save him for that than run on Saturday and perhaps not have a horse for next month. We’ll give him a little freshen-up for a week or two and go from there.”
But Teal Jr had better news of one of the yard’s other stars, Kenzai Warrior, unbeaten as a juvenile but disappointing this year in the Guineas and at Royal Ascot. “Kenzai Warrior is bouncing back to form. He goes to Sandown on 16 September and hopefully he runs a revival race.
“He’s had his problems this year, he had a splint before the Guineas and we thought it was right but when he got to racing speed, he was obviously just feeling it a bit in his two runs. We think it flared back up a little bit at Ascot, hence why he ran below par. He’s in great form, he looks amazing, he’s working well.” Chris Cook
Moore in quarantine for Irish Champions Weekend
Most jockeys would do anything to avoid a two-week holiday at the start of the busy autumn schedule, but Ryan Moore is not most jockeys and Aidan O’Brien’s No 1 could be out until Saturday week after deciding to travel to Ireland (and have a fortnight of isolation) before Champions Weekend at Leopardstown and the Curragh on 12 and 13 September, writes Greg Wood.
Moore, whose latest rides in Britain were at Goodwood on Saturday, is not certain to be required to serve the full 14 days in isolation currently required by Ireland’s Covid-19 regulations, as Horse Racing Ireland hopes to see jockeys added to the government’s list of “elite” sports competitors who are exempt from the rules. In uncertain times, however, Moore and O’Brien are taking no chances.
Moore will miss out on a decent chance of Group One success this weekend, as he was expected to ride Dream Of Dreams for Sir Michael Stoute in the Betfair Sprint Cup at Haydock Park.
Tuesday’s best bets, by Greg Wood
Course-and-distance winner Top Breeze (4.15) is worth an interest returning to the all-weather at Kempton Park.
Richard Hughes’s gelding won off 90 at Lingfield in February but has been on turf for his three starts since, including a decent run after attracting support at Windsor four weeks ago when blinkered for the first time. He runs without the blinds this afternoon but Top Breeze, a 10-1 shot, has been dropped a couple of pounds since that effort and has a clear chance from a mark of 88 today.
Quick Guide
Greg Wood's Tuesday racing tips
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Voi (1.45) is another with a decent chance on the same card, while Challet (2.30) stepped up considerably when fitted with a hood last time and will go close at around 4-1 at Ripon if the headgear works again.
Pythagoras is an obvious favourite for the nursery at the same track but Red Right Sand (3.30) is much closer to the market leader on ratings than the betting suggests after finishing fifth in the Convivial Maiden Stakes, always one of the strongest maidens all year, at the Ebor meeting last time. His price of around 15-2 look big.
At Hamilton, it’s a case of once more unto the breach with Quanah (5.45), who has not had much luck when tipped up here on his last two starts, while Granite City Doc (6.15), twice a winner over track and trip, should also go well at the same track. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/nov/15/oatly-shares-fall-20-after-quality-issue-warning-and-delivery-delays | Business | 2021-11-15T17:34:57.000Z | Sarah Butler | Oatly shares fall 20% after ‘quality issue’ warning and delivery delays | Milk alternative maker Oatly has warned that production and distribution problems hit sales by $7m over the summer despite a surge in demand for its products.
Shares in the Swedish oat milk producer plunged by nearly 20% on Monday after it said it expected further lost sales in Europe in the months ahead as it was “investigating a quality issue” which might force it to bin some products.
Alt-milk maker Oatly loses trademark case against family-run UK firm
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Oatly said UK sales were $1m lower than hoped in its third quarter to the end of September because of driver shortages which delayed deliveries, while mechanical and technical issues at its US production plant in Utah had a $3m impact on sales, on top of $3m from Covid-related closures of hospitality businesses in Asia.
It is the latest business to reveal problems from widespread supply chain issues as manufacturers try to keep pace with rising demand after the ending of coronavirus restrictions that have caused cost increases amid shortages of staff and raw materials while delivery infrastructure, from ports to delivery vans, have become congested.
Oatly added that the pace of sales growth at new and existing retailers in Europe and the Middle East was “slower than we anticipated” because of the effects of the pandemic.
Profit margins for the group, which attracted investment from Blackstone, Oprah Winfrey and Jay-Z last year ahead of flotation on the US stock market, were also affected by higher transport costs and expenses related to expanding its manufacturing site in the US.
Oatly’s share price has dived almost 60% since its US stock market debut in May, amid concerns about its potential for growth amid heavy competition from big name brands such as Alpro and Danone. Oat milk is also just one of an array of milk alternatives which can win or lose favour depending on consumer interest.
Oatly’s share price. Photograph: Refinitiv
Toni Petersson, the chief executive of Oatly, said: “We’re pleased with our ability to continue to be a leader in driving growth and sales velocity for the plant-based milk category within our key markets.
“This positive momentum was partially offset by temporary headwinds as we scale our global production capacity, particularly in Ogden, Utah, and as we manage through Covid-19 Delta-variant related restrictions and temporary foodservice closures in Asia. Despite this near-term variability, we remain very confident in our ability to meet the rapidly growing global demand for our products.”
Despite the production issues, Oatly’s sales rose by almost 50% to $171m in the latest quarter but pretax losses widened to almost $41m from $9.8m in the same period a year before.
Oatly said that amid growing demand for its drinks, it had produced 131m litres of oat milk, 77% more than the 74m litres produced in the same period a year before. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/apr/10/paolo-nutini-caustic-love-review | Music | 2014-04-10T21:00:00.000Z | Harriet Gibsone | Paolo Nutini: Caustic Love review – impressive set of Motown-influenced potential hits | Perhaps it's his lounge singer name, his dishevelled good looks or his penchant for creating vastly profitable Radio 2-friendly hits, but Paolo Nutini has never been granted the discerning acclaim such a voice deserves. His third album, the follow up to 2009's 1.8m-selling Sunny Side Up, however, aims to put an end to that: the 27-year-old and his whisky-soaked words writhe their way around a multitude of Motown-inflected could-be singles, paying homage to Prince, Marvin Gaye, Echo and the Bunnymen, the Beach Boys and D'Angelo along the way. Like many men in his 20s, Nutini seems split between concern for the welfare of the planet and a preoccupation with getting his end away: the tremendous Iron Sky and Looking for Something point towards existential earnestness with soaring emotion; but for the most part he's on a libido-driven warpath, such as on Scream (Funk My Life Up) and the Janelle Monae-featuring Fashion. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2015/aug/18/patrick-stewart-blunt-talk | Television & radio | 2015-08-18T13:46:17.000Z | Stuart Heritage | Patrick Stewart: totally over the top – but impossible not to love | Patrick Stewart’s new comedy Blunt Talk is not a good television programme. The crimes it commits are numerous – it doesn’t know what it wants to be, it lurches from crass almost-joke to crass almost-joke and, perhaps worst of all, it’s a show called Blunt Talk that’s about a man called Walter Blunt who talks for a living. Did we learn nothing from Nelson’s Column?
However, it’s still worth watching, if only to see how utterly astonishing Patrick Stewart is in full flight. Watching the first episode (which is currently streaming on Stewart’s Facebook page), you’re struck by the sensation that he clocked the mediocrity of his material and decided to overcompensate by just relentlessly hamming the whole thing out of the park. By the end of the episode, not a single piece of scenery is left ungummed. It’s such a self-consciously enormous performance that it makes Sir Ian McKellen’s turn in Vicious look like a low-budget piece of mumblecore.
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And since the first episode includes scenes where Blunt – a troubled cable news presenter – variously drink-drives, snorts cocaine, raps, gets whipped semi-naked and roars theatrically on the roof of a car after being caught trying to suckle on a transgender sex worker’s breasts, I can’t really underline the word “enormous” enough. It’s berserk, but it’s virtuosic. It also speaks to how utterly indefatigable Stewart is. His brilliance is in his total commitment. Even when he’s in something as ropey as Blunt Talk, you come away from it slightly in love with him.
Patrick Stewart: 'I can store emotions. No experience is ever wasted'
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This, admittedly, took a while for me to realise. Growing up forced to watch him on Star Trek – the one programme my dad ever insisted on watching – I just saw a stilted old man who never did anything of interest. It wasn’t until the video of him singing Perry Como’s “A” You’re Adorable on the bridge of the Enterprise that I realised the twinkly charm hidden under the surface.
Those charms are only increasing with age. A decade ago, Stewart stole the entire series of Extras with a single scene, but since then, this side of him has expanded to the point that he’s now basically a walking meme; he’s a Shatner it’s OK to like because he’s definitely in on the joke.
Who doesn't love winter citrus season? pic.twitter.com/QgZ9LhFJ
— Patrick Stewart (@SirPatStew) February 11, 2013
Witness the bizarre ticket-touting video he made during the Olympics , or the home-shot footage of him teaching viewers the difference between a double and a quadruple take (“That last one was a little coarse in its execution”), or the many, many times he’s used social media: to tit about with McKellen or gawp at cardboard Taylor Swift standees or Facehuggering himself with fruit. At this point, Stewart has become so universally beloved that he could kill a lion with a bow and arrow and people would still think he was a broadly OK guy.
In fact, thanks to all this extra-curricular larking around, Stewart has now become bigger than television, bigger than any role he could possibly play. Really, this development shouldn’t do Blunt Talk any favours. And yet I’ll probably still end up dipping in and out of the series, purely because hanging out with him looks like so much fun. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/may/16/amazon-warehouse-traffic-noise-brooklyn-red-hook | US news | 2023-05-16T09:00:06.000Z | Aliya Uteuova | Noise, pollution, danger: how Amazon warehouses upended a sleepy New York neighborhood | On a drizzly Friday night, Rosana Zapata was mapping out a changing neighborhood.
Using Sharpie and pencil, the 18-year-old sketched her world on printer paper: a street intersection, a small parking lot, a lit-up sign for fried chicken. “I have a lot of memories there,” Zapata told a small group of young artists seated at school desks, who had each drawn their own favorite neighborhood spots.
These treasured locations stand against an increasingly difficult-to-ignore backdrop: truck traffic, driven partly by an e-commerce boom.
In the last decade, Red Hook – a Brooklyn neighborhood whose waterfront faces the upper New York harbor – has undergone cataclysmic flooding from Hurricane Sandy as well as years of construction in the neighborhood’s large public housing complex, the Red Hook Houses. Now, residents face a sudden buildup of last-mile warehouse facilities.
Since late 2021, Amazon has opened two facilities in the neighborhood, and it’s set to open a third later this year. Together, the three structures will comprise more than 800,000 sq feet of warehousing space and parking, with one facility’s 90ft walls casting shadows across a community garden.
Each new operation sends more vehicles down Red Hook’s narrow streets. Zapata worries about the increase of trucks and vans, especially when they roll by the school her younger brother attends. “That’s very dangerous,” she said. “Kids play around; kids are gonna be kids. We don’t want anyone to get hurt.” And she has noticed an uptick in traffic at the intersection she drew – where Wolcott and Dwight streets meet, right by the public library.
Rosana Zapata at Coffey Park in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Photograph: Amir Hamja/The Guardian
“Red Hook can be like a second family – even a first family,” she said. “But this community is changing a lot. It’s very, very hectic – it’s just too much sometimes.”
Residents worry that the warehouses threaten the safety of pedestrians and cyclists, and the health of their neighbors – but a lack of data has made it harder to advocate for more local control over warehouse openings. (Federal, state and local governments don’t regularly collect information on air quality or traffic when e-commerce facilities open, the way they often monitor other industrial sites like power plants or factories.)
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Red Hook residents have now taken matters into their own hands. In a first-ever collaboration, members of the community installed traffic, air-quality and sound sensors purchased by Consumer Reports, and are now gathering data throughout the neighborhood. Consumer Reports teamed up with the Guardian to analyze the first several months of data.
Our measurements do not show precisely how much the new facilities have affected Red Hook, since the sensors were installed after they opened. However, seven months of initial data shows a neighborhood under stress:
A traffic sensor on Red Hook’s main street counts nearly 1,000 trucks and vans on an average weekday. The street is lined with shops and restaurants, and regularly gets backed up with semis and double-parked vans.
An air-quality sensor next to the Red Hook Houses, the neighborhood’s large public housing complex, measured 16 days in the last seven months with levels of particulate pollution the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says can be harmful for sensitive groups such as people with asthma. Red Hook has disproportionately high asthma rates.
A sound meter charts noises that are twice as loud as background levels every three minutes during daytime hours, and four times as loud every 30 minutes, on average.
More warehouses are on their way to Red Hook. Several planned facilities, including one that is larger than a million square feet, could bring more than 1,300 additional trucks to the neighborhood every weekday.
This problem could get much worse.
As the new facilities begin operating, the sensors should help residents document the increasing environmental impacts. But neighborhood groups are already preparing to deploy the data to advocate for new rules on how e-commerce facilities are developed throughout the city and state.
Thousands of trucks and vans
On Van Brunt Street, a narrow two-lane street lined with parked cars, shops and restaurants, trucks and vans make their presence known daily.
“It seems to operate like clockwork,” said Scott Pfaffman, an artist who owns the building that houses the Record Shop, a vinyl store on Van Brunt that is a part of the sensor network.
On the store’s roof sits a vehicle counter, while a sound meter roosts in a tree out front. A pair of laser sensors suspended over the shop’s door chart air pollution from trucks and other sources that can damage respiratory health, especially among children and elderly people.
On an average weekday, the traffic sensor at the store counts 61 trucks and vans an hour in the period between 10am and noon, or about one each minute. The vehicle counter can tell the difference between a car and a van, a cyclist and a pedestrian – but it can’t visually identify which vans are branded with Amazon, FedEx or other delivery logos. Still, stand outside the store, and it’s clear that many of the vans in the morning rush are Amazon vehicles; they rumble up Van Brunt Street in packs of a dozen or more. Sometimes, residents stop on the sidewalk to record videos of the long lines of Amazon vans.
A second sensor – placed atop an upholstery store a half mile away – found even higher rates of truck and van traffic. This sensor typically sees about 105 trucks and vans an hour pass by between 10am and noon. On particularly busy days, it can be more than 140 trucks an hour.
[Read more about our methodology below.]
On several occasions, this sensor counted more than 1,200 trucks and vans over the course of a day – and that’s probably an undercount, because the sensors can miss vehicles when it’s dark outside.
That’s a high volume of delivery traffic for Van Brunt Street, said Brian Ketcham, who worked as a transportation engineer for New York City before consulting for neighborhood and environmental groups. “For a narrow two-way street with parking, yeah, that’s a lot of trucks and vans,” Ketcham said.
Data analyzed by the Guardian and Consumer Reports is in line with general trends across New York City. Delivery traffic in the city is booming, with the number of daily deliveries climbing from 1.8m in 2019 to 2.25m in 2023, according to an estimate from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Locals say a crush of trucks and vans now clog the neighborhood’s streets, jostling for space with buses, cars, pedestrians, bikes and scooters.
The trucks and vans that deliver these packages also contribute to disruptive street noise. Every three minutes during the day since Consumer Reports and the Guardian began gathering sound data in January, there’s a sound that’s twice as loud as background noise levels.
Amazon trucks leave the Beard Street facility in Red Hook, Brooklyn, on 12 November 2022. Photograph: Amir Hamja/The Guardian
Mary Dudine, the owner of a wine and spirits shop on Van Brunt Street, said she’s bothered by the beeping of trucks reversing over and over as they try to make tight right-angle turns.
“That noise is there specifically to warn and alarm us,” Dudine said. “If every place I turn, all I hear is something saying ‘Watch out! Watch out! Watch out!’, what am I supposed to do? It’s just everywhere.”
Dudine said she can hear large semis hitting potholes two blocks away from her shop. Passing trucks regularly rattle the bottles on her shelves.
When warehouses open in a residential neighborhood, the increase in the number of vehicles on the streets sends ripple effects throughout the community. “It’s a real problem putting warehouses into residential communities,” said Ketcham. “It breaks up the roads faster. Noise is higher. It slows down traffic for passenger cars.”
More distribution centers are on the way, threatening to bring over a thousand more delivery trucks to Red Hook every weekday.
Amazon’s third Red Hook warehouse will add an estimated 344 truck trips and 1,224 car trips every weekday, according to a 2020 traffic study commissioned by the company that built the warehouse.
This warehouse is scheduled to open in September, according to officials at a neighboring school who spoke to Amazon. Amazon spokesperson Simone Griffin would not confirm a timeline to Consumer Reports and the Guardian but said the facility “remains in our plans”.
In a statement, Griffin said: “We always work hard to be a good neighbor, and take into account what it might mean for a community if we locate a building there,” but added that the company is aware of traffic issues and works with the community and local policymakers on such issues “when it makes sense to do so”.
Just a few blocks away, another proposed waterfront logistics complex includes an 80ft-tall warehouse, already under construction, and another 200ft-tall warehouse. It’s not yet clear who will operate them; developers will lease out the facilities once construction is completed. This compound and the Amazon warehouse due to open later this year together could generate more than 1,350 additional truck trips every weekday, according to the same formula used in the traffic study cited above.
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Worse air quality, greater health risk
Air pollution in Red Hook regularly rises to levels the EPA categorizes as concerning for people who are particularly sensitive to particulate pollution, according to air-quality monitors set up by community members working with Consumer Reports and the Guardian.
Between September 2022 and April 2023, an air-quality monitor on residential Lorraine Street right across from the Red Hook Houses measured 16 days with particulate pollution levels above the level the EPA considers potentially harmful for sensitive groups. At the upholstery store and the Record Shop – which is located across the street from a public school playground – sensors each counted 14 days with potentially harmful pollution levels.
Although the sensors can’t draw a direct connection between delivery traffic and elevated pollution, these particulate levels will only worsen if truck and van traffic increases.
A sensor near the Red Hook Houses measures particulate pollution. Photograph: Amir Hamja/The Guardian
Amazon and other last-mile warehouses in Red Hook are opening shop against a backdrop of environmental hazards and concerning health outcomes. “This neighborhood already has toxic parts that have impacted health over the past few decades,” said Tevina Willis, community organizing manager at Red Hook Initiative, a longtime neighborhood non-profit. For example, the city closed a large park complex next to the Red Hook Houses in 2015 because the EPA found dangerous contaminants such as lead in the soil. Half of the 16 fields in the complex are still closed today.
In the two census tracts that contain 80% of Red Hook’s residents, asthma-related emergency room visits were higher than the average rate for Brooklyn and New York City, according to a 2018 report from Red Hook Initiative. And the 11231 zip code containing Red Hook has higher levels of asthma-related emergency room visits than any of the surrounding zip codes, according to data from the New York state department of health gathered between 2018 and 2020. (This is the most recent data available.)
“To put more things in here that are going to impact that – that’s what has residents concerned,” Willis said.
Increasing delivery traffic will only add to the pollution burden in Red Hook. Microscopic particles from heavy vehicle emissions can settle deep in a person’s lungs, elevating their risk of asthma, heart disease, cancer, late-onset depression and dementia. Elderly people, children and people with existing respiratory conditions are particularly vulnerable.
And the burden of that pollution isn’t evenly distributed, according to a study from True Initiative, a British emissions-focused research group. On average, people of color in New York are exposed to 15% more particulate emissions than white residents. Despite these large exposure gaps, there’s a worrying lack of hyperlocal air quality data across the US, experts say. Citizen science efforts – in which residents monitor air, water and other conditions themselves – can help close the gap. “Some of our most polluted communities in the US are severely under-monitored by traditional air-quality monitoring efforts,” said Dan Westervelt, a scientist at Columbia University studying air pollution. “Neighborhood-scale data leveraging consumer-grade air sensors is critical for addressing latent air-quality challenges.”
Red Hook, for example, is a blind spot in New York City: none of the roughly 100 sensors in the city-run community air survey program are in the neighborhood.
“What the city is collecting is inadequate,” Alexa Avilés, the New York city councilmember whose district includes Red Hook, told Consumer Reports and the Guardian. “And so community members and civic groups have decided to take that into their own hands.” She said the city needed to pick up the slack – but e-commerce companies like Amazon should be partly responsible for monitoring air quality near their facilities, too.
An Amazon last-mile facility seen from the rooftop of the Basis school in Red Hook. Photograph: Amir Hamja/The Guardian
To cut down on emissions, Amazon says it plans to deploy 100,000 electric delivery vans nationwide by 2030. As of now, more than 3,000 of them are on the road, Amazon tells Consumer Reports, but none of them are in Red Hook.
Amazon isn’t the only delivery giant moving toward electric vehicles. FedEx, which is building a large last-mile facility right next door to Red Hook in Sunset Park, says its entire delivery fleet will be electric by 2040. UPS – which in 2018 bought and later razed a huge waterfront parcel in Red Hook that has remained empty ever since – has not publicly set a target date for converting its entire delivery fleet to zero-emissions vehicles, but it has committed to buying 10,000 electric vehicles.
Electrifying delivery vans will cut down on a large part of particulate emissions, but it won’t eliminate them. Electric vehicles still generate non-exhaust particulate pollution such as brake, tire and road dust – especially heavier delivery vans. For this reason and other safety concerns, city advocates and officials are pushing for alternatives that would decrease the number of trucks and vans on the road altogether, such as cargo bikes. In a small pilot program, Amazon is now making some Red Hook-area deliveries by cargo bike. Elsewhere in the city, UPS, FedEx, DHL and two other logistics companies also make deliveries by bike.
Air quality near a new breed of warehouse
Zapata is one of the tens of thousands of Brooklynites living with asthma. “I know many people with asthma also,” she said. “I don’t want to be breathing in air that could possibly give me diseases or affect my body. And I don’t want the kids to have any issues or have asthma because of the trucks.”
Zapata is part of the Red Hook Art Project, in which she and a small cohort of young adults are leading workshops designed to get neighbors thinking about what’s changing in Red Hook, and how they might respond. They’re now using sensor data to prepare for conversations with city and state representatives.
Several organizations are gathering similar data in Red Hook, including the Brooklyn Greenway Initiative, which has installed several traffic-counting sensors. A partnership between the City University of New York and the local non-profits Red Hook Initiative and Pioneer Works has installed several air-quality monitors.
In Red Hook, two-thirds of the land is zoned for manufacturing, allowing last-mile facilities to pop up unchecked. In these areas, warehouse developers don’t have to ask New York City for permission or solicit input from neighbors before building – they don’t generally need to do traffic studies, or get special applications.
Rosana Zapata walks through Red Hook on a recent morning. Zapata is one of the tens of thousands of Brooklynites living with asthma. Photograph: Amir Hamja/The Guardian
These zoning rules date back to 1961, a time when a warehouse typically meant a moderate-sized building where goods would be stored for extended periods, generating little traffic.
City officials and local advocates are pushing to change this rule, because it lumps together warehouses used for long-term storage with vast complexes that create round-the-clock delivery traffic. They argue that this new breed of facility should be treated much differently from the old, and should require buy-in from neighbors before moving in.
In February, Councilmember Avilés and other city officials promoted a package of eight city proposals and a state bill aimed at curbing harms from last-mile facilities. The proposals would, among other things, require warehouse operators in the city to get a special permit before opening up shop, and submit estimates of how the facilities will affect traffic and air quality. The proposals would also redraw the city’s network of truck routes.
Some New York state officials have announced support for reforms to zoning laws. In January, the New York state attorney general, Letitia James, wrote a letter warning the city that its policy to allow warehouses to be built without review or permit could potentially violate federal civil rights law, because it’s allowing last-mile facilities to cluster in neighborhoods of color. The letter cited coverage from Consumer Reports and the Guardian on Red Hook’s warehouse crunch, and urged the city to require warehouse operators to apply for special permits.
View of Amazon-acquired land for warehouses from the Louis Valentino Jr pier in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Photograph: Amir Hamja/The Guardian
The uneven distribution of delivery facilities is a nationwide problem, as our previous reporting reveals. In 2021, Consumer Reports and the Guardian found that more than two-thirds of Amazon warehouses were in neighborhoods with a disproportionately high number of people of color and that 57% were in disproportionately low-income neighborhoods.
Under the Biden administration, the EPA has increased its focus on the disproportionate impact of freight and transportation pollution on communities of color and low-income neighborhoods. It has issued more stringent emissions standards for heavy-duty trucks, and consults with state and local governments on air-quality monitoring. But while some advocacy groups have called on the EPA to hold warehouse operators accountable for pollution resulting from their deliveries, the agency says that’s up to state governments and local agencies.
A bill currently in front of the New York state legislature called the Clean Deliveries Act could make New York the first state to do so, if it passes.
Quick Guide
Methodology
Show | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/mar/02/southampton-west-ham-fa-cup-fifth-round-match-report | Football | 2022-03-02T21:50:45.000Z | Ben Fisher | Southampton’s Armando Broja ensures FA Cup fifth-round win over West Ham | West Ham will have to make do with competing on just the two fronts for the remainder of this season after Southampton advanced to the FA Cup quarter-finals at their expense. A trip to Seville in the Europa League next week and their tilt for a top-four berth in the Premier League will no doubt soften the disappointment of defeat here but there will be a lingering frustration for David Moyes given how his side allowed a game in their grasp to get away.
Romain Perraud rocked West Ham with a phenomenal, rasping strike from outside the box – it was some way to open his account for the club – before the former Southampton loanee Michail Antonio levelled in the second half. But James Ward-Prowse restored the hosts’ advantage with a no-nonsense penalty before the substitute Armando Broja secured passage into the next round, wriggling clear of three defenders before slotting home into the far corner.
Moyes could not mask his mood afterwards. “We are lacking quality at the moment in the final third,” the West Ham manager said. “We’re pleased for Mich [Antonio] that he got a goal but we’ve got other players that need to find some quality and start making the right decisions in the final third. I don’t know how many times tonight we made the wrong choices in and around the box, and it cost us. Our finishing and final pass was so poor, so poor. It was disappointing.”
James Ward-Prowse slots his penalty home for Saints’ second. Photograph: Charlotte Wilson/Offside/Getty Images
It was a minor miracle that Southampton were not trailing when Perraud rifled his shot into the top corner beyond the West Ham goalkeeper Alphonse Areola, one of two changes. Kyle Walker-Peters shifted the ball across the field to the Frenchman, who took one touch before blasting a left-footed shot that flew in from 25 yards, whistling diagonally across the West Ham goal.
Ralph Hasenhüttl, whose decision to make nine changes would be vindicated, jumped on to the pitch in celebration, while a clutch of Southampton substitutes stood to applaud. Stuart Armstrong, who arrived from the bench at the interval alongside Broja, hit a swerving strike from a similar distance against Coventry in the previous round. Hasenhüttl said both his voice and players needed to recover before visiting Aston Villa on Saturday. “What a goal,” he said. “The ball is a little bit lighter in the Cup so it is fantastic to shoot from outside [the box].”
For West Ham, a trip to Anfield is next in the calendar. Southampton could have doubled their advantage before the break but Adam Armstrong played a hospital pass to Will Smallbone, who tentatively joined the attack to the striker’s right.
In his technical area Moyes, arms folded, could be forgiven for wondering how his team had not taken the lead. Pablo Fornals, again operating from left wing-back, telegraphed a fine pass over the top of the Southampton back line to give Jarrod Bowen a sight of goal within the opening 67 seconds but Jack Stephens nicked the ball away to prevent the forward a shot at goal.
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West Ham’s best first-half opening came when Antonio, who won the Football League Trophy with Southampton in 2010, stood up a cross from the left, after Tomas Soucek and Fornals combined down the left. Bowen rose in the six-yard box but could not direct his header on target.
Soucek was forced off early in the second half after requiring stitches for a stray elbow to the head but West Ham replied when Willy Caballero made a mess of a Bowen corner. The ball flew towards Kurt Zouma at the near post and Caballero failed to claim it, allowing Issa Diop to hook the ball towards Antonio, who fired in from close range to spark delirium among the almost 5,000-strong West Ham support in the Northam Stand.
But the joy was short-lived. Five minutes later Stephens’ quick free-kick exposed a gaping hole in the heart of the West Ham defence and Craig Dawson, in trouble when Broja beat him for pace, upended the striker.
The referee, Andre Marriner, was advised to visit the VAR monitor and eventually awarded a penalty, which Ward-Prowse emphatically slammed down the middle.
Dawson almost made amends but Caballero earned redemption, repelling the defender’s header with a minute of normal time to play, before Broja sealed victory in the fifth minute of stoppage time. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/may/08/tory-donor-ayman-asfari-to-leave-petrofac | Business | 2022-05-08T12:05:49.000Z | Alex Lawson | Tory donor Ayman Asfari to leave bribery scandal-hit Petrofac | The Conservative party donor at the centre of a bribery scandal that drew in two former prime ministers is to leave the oil group he ran for 20 years.
Ayman Asfari, the Syrian-born executive who built London-listed Petrofac into a global oil engineering company, will leave the company next year.
It will mark an end to a colourful career at the firm, during which Asfari was arrested and interviewed in 2017 when the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) began its investigation. Petrofac agreed to pay £77m last October after failing to prevent former senior employees from offering or paying bribes to secure contracts in the Middle East between 2012 and 2015. The SFO last month formally confirmed Asfari was no longer a suspect.
Asfari spent more than three decades building his empire, amassing the trappings of a billionaire lifestyle with a private jet and a superyacht to cruise on the French riviera. The success of his early career, carved out in the 1980s oil boom, has been overshadowed by the long-running fraud office investigation.
He stepped down as chief executive of the oil services company in late 2020 but has remained on the board since. The company has now disclosed in its annual report that he will depart at next summer’s annual shareholder meeting.
Petrofac was founded in Texas in 1981, before expanding internationally, and Asfari led a management buyout and a float on the London stock market in 2005. The listing netted him £55m but he has lamented that selling his 10% stake was a mistake, as the value of the company subsequently ballooned.
Asfari, 63, was born in Syria but spent his childhood on the move. His father’s diplomatic postings took him to Turkey, the US and the former Czechoslovakia. He studied at Wharton business school, whose alumni include Donald Trump and Sundar Pinchai, chief executive of Google’s owner, Alphabet.
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He began his career as a consulting engineer testing soil in Dubai. In the early 1980s, he moved to Muscat in Oman, starting a construction business building roads to drilling locations and camps amid the oil boom. His business entered into a joint-venture with America’s Petrofac and Asfari eventually rebooted the business, pursuing growth outside the US from a London office.
Asfari has said his upbringing gave him a western view of the world, but he can “understand the emotions and the romantic approach of the east”.
He went on to build a firm with 8,500 employees and more than 30 offices worldwide, designing and maintaining rigs and pipelines for the world’s biggest oil and gas companies.
Petrofac and its peers were briefly stock market darlings a decade ago before a declining oil price hit shares. The stock has fallen 80% since the SFO opened its investigation.
The affair threw a spotlight on two former prime ministers’ links to the company. In 2017, David Cameron promoted the company during a two-day stay in Bahrain, flying back from the country on a plane owned by Asfari.
Theresa May wrote to her Bahraini counterpart to support Petrofac’s bid for a contract in the country during her tenure in Downing Street. Petrofac did not ultimately land the contract.
Asfari has, with his wife, given about £800,000 to the Conservative party.
He remains a 17% shareholder and an influential figure at Petrofac. Last year, investors gave the company a bloody nose over his continued involvement – more than 30% of shareholders voted against his re-appointment. The company responded, saying he had provided “additional support and stability in a year of significant challenge”. Shareholder adviser Glass Lewis says, given his impending retirement, it is happy to recommend investors approve his re-election to the board this month.
Petrofac said in the annual report that the SFO investigation had “cast a shadow” and been a “painful learning experience”, and that former employees had left its teams feeling “let down”. Four former employees have had their outstanding share awards cancelled. The company’s chairman, René Médori, was due to step down this month but will now stay on for an extra year.
Under the new chief executive, Sami Iskander, it hopes to make a break from the past.
For Asfari, a new chapter beckons. Last year, he formed Venterra, a venture aimed at creating a services business for the offshore wind industry. He’s also switching sea lanes: Asfari has reportedly put his almost-new 61-metre (201-ft) superyacht up for sale. The Cloud 9, built as an opulent pleasure boat with its own swimming pool and private terrace, is up for sale for a rumoured €59m (£51m). | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2020/apr/02/loan-credit-card-payments-frozen-uk-financial-regulator-coronavirus | Money | 2020-04-02T10:07:46.000Z | Kalyeena Makortoff | Loan and credit card payments to be frozen for three months in UK | The financial regulator has announced plans to freeze loan and credit card payments for up to three months as part of emergency measures for consumers impacted by the coronavirus outbreak.
The measures, which would usually require a lengthy consultation, could come into force as soon as 9 April. The Financial Conduct Authority said the process was being fast-tracked “given the national emergency and the significant impact on consumers’ finances right now”.
It is aimed at consumers and renters who are not benefiting from existing relief measures that have targeted homeowners – with mortgage payment holidays – or business owners.
The proposals include a temporary freeze on loan and credit card payments for consumers who are facing financial difficulties as a result of the outbreak.
The FCA said consumers who were at risk of having their credit cards suspended because of the regulator’s new affordability rules would not lose access to their accounts.
Lenders would also have to waive interest charges on arranged overdrafts up to £500 over the same period, which would extend relief already announced by some banks including Barclays, HSBC and Lloyds.
Consumers who dip into unauthorised overdrafts would also benefit. Most banks have started charging a single interest rate of 39.9% for both arranged and unauthorised overdrafts as part of new rules meant to standardise charges this month.
But the FCA’s emergency measures force firms to make sure all customers are “no worse off” due to the changes, meaning some customers may revert to lower interest rates.
Banks and credit card providers will have to ensure that consumer credit ratings are unaffected by any of the measures, the FCA said.
The FCA’s interim chief executive, Christopher Woolard, said: “Coronavirus has caused an unprecedented financial shock with far-reaching consequences for consumers in every corner of the UK.
“If confirmed, this package of measures we are proposing today will help provide affected consumers with the temporary financial support they need to help them weather the storm during this challenging time.”
The news has been welcomed by consumer advocates including Martin Lewis, who said it would help level the playing field for customers who may not have time to shop around for better rates during the crisis.
Lewis, the founder of MoneySavingExpert.com, said: “We have already seen many unsecured lenders put some forbearance criteria in place … However the provision is patchy and has become a banking lottery and that’s unfair – no one could have taken into account when they signed up for products how considerate each lender would be in these extraordinary times.”
14:01
Life in lockdown: how our jobs turned upside down – video | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2021/may/13/derby-owner-set-to-scrap-takeover-deal-with-spanish-businessman-eric-alonso | Football | 2021-05-13T20:11:34.000Z | Ben Fisher | Derby owner set to scrap takeover deal with Spanish businessman Erik Alonso | The Derby County owner, Mel Morris, is poised to scrap a deal with the Spanish businessman Erik Alonso to buy the Championship club – less than a week after the manager, Wayne Rooney, warned they could afford no more mess-ups following a season of off-field uncertainty.
A protracted £60m takeover by Bin Zayed International, a Dubai-based consortium, was called off in March and now the Derby chairman is expected to abandon talks with Alonso, a former adviser to the Sheffield Wednesday owner, Dejphon Chansiri, amid doubts over whether a deal can be finalised. Alonso said his long-term goal was to lead Derby into the Champions League.
Derby announced last month that they had agreed a takeover with Alonso via his company, No Limits Sport Ltd, subject to ratification from the English Football League which had been investigating the source of funds.
Last Saturday, after avoiding relegation to League One by a single point, Rooney suggested a deal was close but called for clarity either way. “We cannot have any more mess-ups,” he said. “It [the takeover] has to happen quickly.”
Derby are facing a possible points deduction after the English Football League confirmed they won an appeal over a charge for breaching financial rules. The charge relates to the amortisation of intangible assets – how the purchase price of a player is spread across a contract – but it is unclear whether any sanctions would be applied this season.
Meanwhile the former Derby captain Richard Keogh has secured a payout of about £2.3m from Derby after winning his long-running compensation claim against the club. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/charlottehigginsblog/2013/jul/15/britten-auden-roman-wall-blues | Culture | 2013-07-15T17:08:00.000Z | Charlotte Higgins | Free download of rediscovered Britten and Auden song | My forthcoming book, Under Another Sky, is about the encounter with Roman Britain: the way people have interpreted, fantasised about and projected ideas on to the 400-year period, from the time when its physical remains began to be rediscovered until the present. Roman Britain is, I found, an intensely generative space, which has inspired poems by Housman and Owen, plays by Fletcher and Shakespeare, music by Elgar and Vaughan-Williams – not to mention centuries' worth of extraordinary scholarship.
Two artists inspired by Roman Britain were WH Auden and Benjamin Britten. In 1937, Auden's radio play Hadrian's Wall was broadcast from Newcastle, with incidental music by the composer.
In common with most live broadcasts at the time, only the transcript survives: it is a delightful, unashamedly pedagogic play about the history of the wall using a family daytrip to the fort of Housesteads as a framing device. Auden used what we would now call found texts in the work, drawing on, for example, a wonderful travelogue by a writer called William Hutton, who walked to the wall in 1801 from Birmingham, traversed its length twice, then walked back to the Midlands. (He was 78 – and walked an average of 17 miles a day on his 35-day trip.)
One of the elements of the play was a poem, Roman Wall Blues; a lyrical exploration of the loneliness of the Roman border soldier posted to the edge of the world. "Over the heather the wet wind blows/I've lice in my tunic and a cold in my nose", it begins. Britten set it to music.
But that music – though apparently Peter Pears could hum phrases of it until the end of his life – was thought lost until filmmaker John Mapplebeck made the chance discovery that a friend of his, a then 99-year-old former employee of the Bank of England, had a handwritten copy of the vocal line, saved from the recording session.
The song briefly featured in Mapplebeck's 2007 South Bank Show about Auden and the manuscript ended up in the Britten-Pears archive. When I was researching my book, curious to see the manuscript, I contacted composer Colin Matthews, who was Britten's assistant in the 1970s and is director of music at the Britten-Pears foundation. Not only did he offer to hunt down the music for me, he also, with extraordinary generosity, volunteered to complete the work with a piano part. Having done so he even, along with Auden's estate, graciously allowed me to publish the whole score in my book (the point being that you can, if the mood takes you, play and sing the song yourself).
Matthews also arranged for the song to be recorded through the contemporary music label NMC, performed by the crack team of singer Mary Carewe and pianist Huw Watkins (I love that the Roman squaddie is sung by Mary, with her sexy, feminine voice). The best news of all is that the song is available as a free download from the NMC website. That all this has come to pass is one of the most pleasing – and unexpected – outcomes of working on the book, and I'm very happy it will have an audience beyond those who switched on the wireless on 25 November, 1937. It's a lovely song – bluesy, cabaret-style with a dash of Gershwin. I hope you enjoy it. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/aug/23/the-one-that-got-away-jeanette-winterson | Life and style | 2014-08-23T07:00:00.000Z | Jeanette Winterson | The one that got away: Jeanette Winterson | Nostalgia for lost love is cowardice disguised as poetry. It is easy to imagine that if life had moved a degree in a different direction, then the one that got away would be by our side, and we would both be living happily ever after. Memories of holiday romances or stray nights with strangers are part of the pleasure of the past. And I believe that anyone we have loved is someone we should be able to think about, talk about and recognise as a real piece of our emotional history. To me, one of the best aspects of gay culture is that we work hard to stay friends with our exes – perhaps a survival mechanism from the bad old days of the ghetto, but a civilised arrangement, nonetheless. (It will be interesting to see if the normalising effect of marriage changes this.) But recognising the past as our past, and being able to groan, giggle, blush, sigh and play with those memories, is not the same as a corrosive secret infatuation with the idea of that special someone we managed to mislay. Sighing over a fantasy drains energy from reality. What happens in our heads isn't private; it is unspoken, that's all. We all know what it's like to live in the stifling atmosphere of what is unsaid.
Love is hard work. We don't hear enough about that. Falling in love is the easy part – it's why affairs are so exciting and attractive – none of the toil, all of the fun. I used to have a lot of affairs until I realised it was like growing cress on a flannel – instant results, no roots. Adam Phillips has written eloquently, in Missing Out, on the strange discontent that prompts us to believe that the life we are not living would be better for us than the life that is ours. If only we had that job/house/girlfriend/husband/sex life, etc. In truth, the life that is ours is the one we make, and that includes our partners. If we really have been criminally careless with the love of our life, and driven him away, or let her go – well, then – we deserve to be unhappy, at least until that unhappiness prompts such a change in us that the miracle of a second chance (with someone else) is not thrown away.
I realised a few years ago that the script I was running through all my relationships was a narrative of loss. Either I chose, or let myself be chosen by, people who weren't free (those were the exciting ones), or I had bouts of duty where I tried to settle down in a way guaranteed to find me secret-sighing over someone else. Changing that story changed my relationship with myself – which is, after all, the relationship all other relationships must negotiate.
I have regrets about a couple of past partners, but no fleeting feelings of nostalgia for what might have been with "someone". "Someone" is a fantasy. The person I love is real.
Do you have one that got away? Send your story of lost love to [email protected] and we'll publish the best. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/may/15/100-best-nonfiction-books-67-household-education-harriet-martineau | Books | 2017-05-15T04:45:35.000Z | Robert McCrum | The 100 best nonfiction books: No 67 – Household Education by Harriet Martineau (1848) | Harriet Martineau’s story offers the parable of a certain kind of literary endeavour that’s never far from the experience of quite a few writers in this list, ie contemporary success, and short-term celebrity, followed by a more prolonged oblivion, punctuated by moments of renewal and rediscovery.
Martineau came to prominence aged 21 with her first published work, Devotional Exercises (1823), partly inspired by her Unitarian upbringing. Thereafter, she would be an indefatigable writer for the rest of her life, making a career in which she supported herself through her pen, a considerable achievement for a woman in Victorian England. Martineau wrote numerous books and essays from a sociological, religious, reforming and even a feminist perspective. For some commentators, she is a pioneer sociologist both in her own right as the author of books such as Society in America (1837) and also as the translator of Auguste Comte. In the former, she articulated a passionate critique of women’s prospects in the new world: “The intellect of women is confined by an unjustifiable restriction of education... As women have none of the objects in life for which an enlarged education is considered requisite, the education is not given... The choice is to either be ill-educated, passive and subservient or well-educated, vigorous and free only upon sufferance.”
Martineau got taken up by Malthus, Carlyle, Dickens and JS Mill, among many. The young Princess Victoria was a fan. In her work, Martineau had a clearly stated method that was relatively new for its time: “When one studies a society, one must focus on all its aspects, including key political, religious and social institutions.” She believed that only through a complete analysis of society could she truly understand women’s status among men.
As part of the rising generation of “Victorians”, she became friends with Charles Darwin, whose brother, Erasmus, suffered unrequited love for her, and it’s the author of On the Origin of Species (No 60 in this series) who provides the best portrait of Martineau in her prime. After one meeting, he wrote: “She was very agreeable and managed to talk on a most wonderful number of subjects, considering the limited time. She is overwhelmed with her own projects, her own thoughts and own abilities.”
Later, he described her as “a wonderful woman”, although he was plainly intimidated by her formidable exterior.
Every woman ought to have... as much intellectual power and as many resources as education can furnish her with
Household Education, one of her most popular books, appeared in 1848, as a protest against the abysmal state of women’s education. In a ringing declaration, she writes: “Household education is a subject so important in its bearings on everyone’s happiness, and so inexhaustible in itself, that I do not see how any person whatever can undertake to lecture upon it authoritatively, as if it was a matter completely known and settled. It seems to me that all we can do is to reflect, and say what we think, and learn of one another.”
Her opinions, quite radical at the time, now seem antiquated. Martineau held that women had a natural inclination to motherhood and believed that domestic work went hand in hand with learning for a proper, well-rounded education.
She divided the child’s education into the influence of Nature, the influence of the parents and the influence of conscience, “the greatest and noblest” moral power of man. From here, she moved to the training of “the intellect”. Throughout her writing, there’s a quasi-ecstatic tone, striking a note of moral earnestness that characterises much Victorian prose. For example: “Intellectual and moral beauty are so blended, it would be impossible for the one to exist without the other. It is just so in the human character – the intellect of a human being cannot be of a high order if the moral nature is low; and the moral state cannot be a lofty one where the intellect is torpid.”
It is for such passages that Martineau’s work has dated so badly and fallen out of favour. And yet, in her time, she was doing what countless parenting and educational bestsellers have done since.
“I go further than most persons...” she wrote, “in desiring thorough practice in domestic occupations, from an early age, for young girls.” But she also proposed that freedom and rationality, rather than command and obedience, are the most effectual instruments of education. In some moods, Martineau can be almost fiery: “Every woman ought to have that justice done to her faculties that she may possess herself in all the strength and clearness of an exercised and enlightened mind and may have at command, for her subsistence, as much intellectual power and as many resources as education can furnish her with. Let us hear nothing of her being shut out, because she is a woman, from any study that she is capable of pursuing; and if one kind of cultivation is more carefully attended to than another, let it be the discipline and exercise of the reasoning faculties.”
Suffering persistent ill health, Martineau withdrew from the fray. When On the Origin of Species was published in 1859, Erasmus Darwin sent a copy to his old flame. In late middle age, she was still reviewing books from her home in the Lake District. Martineau returned her thanks, praising “the quality and conduct of your brother’s mind. It is,” she went on, recognising in Darwin something of her own methodology, “an unspeakable satisfaction to see here the full manifestation of its earnestness and simplicity, its sagacity, its industry, and the patient power by which it has collected such a mass of facts, to transmute them by such sagacious treatment into such portentous knowledge. I should much like to know how large a proportion of our scientific men believe he has found a sound road.”
True to her free-thinking credo, Martineau supported Darwin precisely because his theory was not based in theology. For Martineau, the abolition of church and religion was her goal: “In the present state of the religious world, Secularism ought to flourish. What an amount of sin and woe might and would then be extinguished.”
Martineau, a creature of her time, was in no doubt of her contribution to Victorian culture and society. Her own, posthumously published, appraisal of herself was made in a frank autobiographical sketch, published by the Daily News:
“Her original power was nothing more than was due to earnestness and intellectual clearness within a certain range. With small imaginative and suggestive powers, and therefore nothing approaching to genius, she could see clearly what she did see, and give a clear expression to what she had to say. In short, she could popularise while she could neither discover nor invent.”
A signature sentence:
If thus, the loftiest and the lowliest, the purest and the most criminal, the wisest and the most ignorant, are comprehended under the process of household education, what a wide and serious subject it is that we have to consider.
Three to compare
Isabella Beeton: Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management (1861)
JS Mill: The Subjection of Women (1869)
Dr Benjamin Spock: The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care (1946) | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/nov/06/when-good-tv-goes-bad-how-sons-of-anarchy-took-us-all-for-a-ride | Television & radio | 2017-11-06T13:00:01.000Z | Pete Cashmore | When good TV goes bad: how Sons of Anarchy took us all for a ride | There has always been something faintly hilarious about Hells Angels. Perhaps it’s the unholy combination of dodgy leatherwear, comedy helmets and unrestrained beards, but they always look a little bit “midlife crisis spinning wildly out of control”, a little bit “minor members of the Def Leppard road crew”. It’s for this reason that Hells Angels are almost always deployed filmically for comic effect nowadays; indeed, up until recently the last major Hells Angels on-screen moment was 2007’s execrable midlife-crisis comedy Wild Hogs.
I say “until recently” because, of course, one year after Wild Hogs tried its hardest to ruin the biker gang’s mystique for generations to come, along came Sons of Anarchy to show us all the true face of the American Hells Angel, a serious, scowling, organised-criminal face, albeit still with a dodgy beard. These Hells Angels were not about to be pushed around by John Travolta and Tim Allen in “humorous” bandanas and unflattering trousers.
I have no idea if Sons of Anarchy is a realistic depiction of the biker subculture, but even if it is a grotesque exaggeration of everyday petty malfeasance, its early skirmishes were given a touch of class by faultless casting. It is pretty difficult, really, to balls up anything that has Ron Perlman in it. Damn near impossible.
Sons of Anarchy managed it, though.
If there’s one thing American TV should never try to do, it’s Ireland
For the first two-and-a-bit seasons, when it existed in its own self-contained Stateside world of dive bars, strip clubs and motorcycle clubhouses, Sons of Anarchy was just fine. But in the middle of the third series, it made the bold – by which I mean horrifyingly misguided – move of having the entire biker gang up sticks and head to Belfast, Northern Ireland, to hang out with the gang’s Celtic chapter. And if there’s one thing American TV should never try to do, it’s Ireland.
Cue sweeping aerial shots of the gang roaring along idyllic country lanes to sub-Enya bollocks. Cue some of the worst Oirish ah-be-jeebers accents committed to film; we’re talking Henry Thomas in Gangs of New York levels here. Depressingly, the worst offender is a fine character actor, Deadwood’s Titus Welliver, here playing a Real IRA hard man who couldn’t be more comedy-Irish if he were wearing a foam-rubber Guinness-branded St Paddy’s Day hat. But pretty much nobody escapes unblemished. There’s an early encounter with the Northern Irish police, for example, where one officer manages to be Irish, Scottish, scouse, Brooklyn Noo Yoik and Slovenian inside one sentence.
No Blarney stone is left unturned to remind us where we are. There are bagpipes, there are orphanages, barflies in flat caps, balaclava-clad gunmen, bare-knuckle boxers, a stern patrician priest – there are even gun-toting nuns, which is a lot less interesting than it sounds. All it needs for a full house is Roy Keane chasing Father Dougal across a mountain stream waving a shillelagh.
The sum total means that every second of Sons of Anarchy’s Ireland tour is toe-curling, and apparently scripted by someone whose sole exposure to that island’s culture has come via Michael Flatley. It makes everyone involved look ridiculous. And remember, we’re talking about middle-aged men who wear leather trousers here. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/may/04/avengers-age-of-ultron-scores-second-biggest-opening-ever-at-us-box-office | Film | 2015-05-04T09:14:18.000Z | Ben Child | Avengers: Age of Ultron scores second biggest opening ever at US box office | Superhero sequel Avengers: Age of Ultron scored the second highest opening of all time at the US box office over the weekend, with takings of $187.7m (£124m).
Joss Whedon’s return to the Marvel cinematic universe also passed the $500m mark worldwide, taking another $168m outside the US for a total of $627m worldwide.
Starring Robert Downey Jr as Iron Man, Chris Hemsworth as Thor, Mark Ruffalo as the Hulk, Chris Evans as Captain America and Scarlett Johansson as the Black Widow, Age of Ultron sets the titular superhero ensemble against titular intelligent robot villain Ultron, voiced by James Spader. The $250m sequel’s US bow did not quite match the $207.4m taken by The Avengers three years ago, but the film was likely hampered by interest in Saturday’s much-hyped Floyd Mayweather/Manny Pacquiao boxing match.
It looks well on the way to cracking the crucial $1bn barrier and could yet overtake its predecessor, which hauled in more than $1.5bn in 2012 and stands as the third highest-grossing film of all time.
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Rival studios made the wise decision to avoid putting new movies up against Disney-Marvel’s superhero epic, resulting in a complete absence of competing debutants in North America. Last week’s No 3, Blake Lively romantic fantasy The Age of Adaline moves up to second place with another $6.2m for a two-week total of $23.4m.
Street racing sequel Fast & Furious 7 finally slipped from the top spot after five weeks, landing in third place with another $6.1m for a total of $330.5m in North America. James Wan’s film now has a staggering $1.428bn worldwide and will also be gunning for The Avengers’ $1.528bn total over the coming weeks.
The top five was rounded out by comedy sequel Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2, with another $5.5m in its third week for a total of $51.1m, and animated adventure Home with another $3.3m for a sixth week total of $158.1m.
Elsewhere on the chart, Alex Garland’s celebrated science fiction effort Ex Machina continues to perform well. The film took another $2.2m in seventh place for a four-week total of $10.8m.
US box office chart 1-3 May
Avengers: Age of Ultron: $187.7m - New
The Age of Adaline: $6.2m, $23.4m
Fast & Furious 7: $6.1m, $330.5m
Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2: $5.5m, $51.1m
Home: $3.3m, $158.1m
Cinderella: $2.3m, $193.6m
Ex Machina: $2.2m, $10.8m
Unfriended: $1.9m, $28.5m
The Longest Ride: $1.7m, $33.2m
Woman in Gold: $1.6m, $24.5m | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2020/nov/05/death-of-england-delroy-review-olivier-national-theatre-london-roy-williams-clint-dyer | Stage | 2020-11-05T10:52:05.000Z | Arifa Akbar | Death of England: Delroy review – brash and brilliant theatre | ‘T
here have been other moments in history when the opening night is also the closing night,” the National Theatre’s artistic director, Rufus Norris, told the audience on the press night for the sequel to Clint Dyer and Roy Williams’ Death of England. But it is a second national lockdown that has forced this fine and furious monologue to shut just after it has opened.
The first monologue, starring Rafe Spall and staged earlier this year, focused on white, working-class Michael as he faced up to the death of his racist father. This one dramatises the life of Michael’s friend, Delroy, who was raised by his Jamaican-born mother and remained silent in that play, though his Britishness was questioned and his pro-Brexit politics mocked.
Identity and belonging become the focus of Delroy’s story, and he sends out his rejoinder to Michael’s derision, though what initially stands out is his brash wit. Like Michael, Delroy is given unstoppable and racing powers of speech, but his outpourings are as funny as they are enraged; so, while there are knife-edge moments, they are leavened by Delroy’s cheeky charisma.
Death of England: Rafe Spall stars in a microplay by the Guardian and the Royal Court Guardian
He pauses only to take a slug from his beer can before resuming his flow about how he got a police tag, when he met his girlfriend, Carly (who is also Michael’s sister), and what has led him from his upwardly mobile, unapologetically capitalist life as a bailiff, spiralling into unemployment and drink-soaked days by himself.
Michael Balogun, as Delroy, is every bit as energetic as Spall, but his performance is more compact and controlled. The play is performed in the round in a socially distanced Olivier theatre, which leaves Balogun entirely exposed; but he commands the space, moving across the stage, jumping off it or sprawling by its side, and he sets an assured pace to the monologue that stops him from becoming too antic or breathless.
Commanding the space … Michael Balogun. Photograph: Normski Photography
While the first Death of England derived from a microplay (commissioned by the Royal Court theatre and the Guardian), this sequel has some origins in the short film Dim Sum (commissioned by Headlong and the Guardian), which tracked a day in the life of a black British bailiff. Delroy here defends his right to put money above ideology (“I didn’t give a fuck who we evicted – black, white …”) and sneers at the Black Lives Matter movement: “Thinking they are going to make changes. Jokers.”
But something snaps when he is arrested and thrown into a police cell just as Carly is going into labour with their first child. Delroy has been subjected to such racial profiling since the age of 15, he tells us, but this particularly hostile encounter leads to the realisation that he can’t be black British and remain apolitical. The impact of the arrest is reminiscent of Changez’s inward transformation in Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist after his ignominious airport detention, though Delroy is not radicalised but politicised here.
There are some excellent reflections on the power dynamics within a mixed-race relationship as Delroy’s brush with the police makes him see Carly’s “white privilege” differently, too. Although the play’s politics touch on the events of the summer, from the killing of George Floyd to the Covid crisis and quarantine, they are integrated into the drama on the whole.
The writing glitters in certain moments, while revelations and climaxes are better positioned than in the previous play. Sadeysa Greenaway-Bailey and Ultz’s stage design was a highlight of that show and it is again: simple yet sensational with a few mischievous surprises. Designed, like the last, in the shape of a cross, it appears bare until props are pulled out from hidden pockets. Pink helium balloons float out of the darkness as Delroy recounts one happy memory and a glitter ball emerges from nowhere to sprinkle disco light across the auditorium to mark Delroy’s teenage romance with Carly.
Rufus Norris on the National Theatre's new films, saving panto and the UK arts crisis
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Pete Malkin and Benjamin Grant’s sound design and Jackie Shemesh’s lighting crank up the melodrama. Both cut through the room like a knife as we go from light to dark with blunt suddenness and slicing sounds whip around the stage. These feel simultaneously over-the-top and effective in keeping our attentions on edge.
Norris, in his opening speech, pointed to cameras around the auditorium to announce that the drama would be filmed so that it could be shown to a bigger audience. It is quick and inspired thinking from the National: this play deserves a far longer life on stage and on screen. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2011/jul/13/romeo-juliet-coliseum-review | Stage | 2011-07-13T17:50:00.000Z | Judith Mackrell | Romeo and Juliet – review | Sir Frederick Ashton's Romeo and Juliet may be danced to the same Prokofiev score as Sir Kenneth MacMillan's, but beyond that the two versions are completely different. While MacMillan's 1965 production swaggers and bustles with vividly plotted action, Ashton's 1955 version distils the story down to a poetic, almost fairytale narrative – reminiscent at times of the Prokofiev Cinderella he choreographed seven years earlier.
This Romeo and Juliet is rarely seen, but thanks to Peter Schauffuss it is back on the UK stage. And after an absence of nearly two decades, the choreography's virtues are fascinating to see: the fast, fluid pacing of the action, the pure dance invention and the eloquent breathing space given to key dramatic moments – Romeo's horrified comprehension of the forces stacked against him, after Tybalt's death, has never resonated more starkly.
As far as this revival goes, it's a criminal shame that aspects look so cheap: the lighting is bad, the projected scenery blurs over the dancers' faces and Wayne Eagling as the Prince of Verona appears to be wearing a Canadian Mountie's hat. But these are mere details in the face of the ballet's luxury casting, led by Natalia Osipova and Ivan Vasiliev in the title roles.
It was always going to be an issue, having two Bolshoi dancers accommodating themselves to the idiosyncrasies of Ashton's style. Both Osipova and Vasiliev get into difficulties with the slow-melting sensuousness of certain moves, the rhythmic snap of others. Osipova, in her rush to fit in every detail, occasionally raps out the steps too hard and fast.
But the couple's determination to master Ashton has its own heroic quality – and where they succeed, they are transcendent. Osipova flits though Juliet's opening scene with a vulnerable recklessness; in the balcony pas de deux the passion of their dancing scales every romantic climax in Prokofiev's score; and both allow everything to play out in their faces and eyes.
Nor does the deluxe casting end with the lovers. Alban Lendorf – emerging star at the Royal Danish Ballet – is an insouciant, scintillating Mercutio, Robin Bernadet an elegant Benvolio. And while the parade of veteran British dancers filling the character roles at Tuesday's gala was occasionally distracting (Wayne Sleep just couldn't rein in his showman's instincts), Marguerite Porter was a superb Lady Capulet – tense, thwarted, flinching from every touch of her overbearing husband. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/feb/07/these-actors-are-doing-huge-things-in-hollywood-so-why-isnt-australia-celebrating-them | Film | 2019-02-06T17:00:45.000Z | Debbie Zhou | These actors are doing huge things in Hollywood. So why isn't Australia celebrating them? | If you had a career that began in Melbourne and went on to span a multimillion-dollar Hollywood blockbuster and a billion-dollar genre franchise, you’d expect the Australian media to be lining up at your doorstep.
Not so for James Wan, the hotshot Malaysian-Australian director behind the cult horror brand Saw – a franchise which grew to global domination over the course of a decade and seven sequels.
His first step into the superhero genre, 2018’s Aquaman, became DC’s highest-grossing film ever. But back at home, Australian media don’t seem to be considering him within the league of famous, “true blue” Aussie directors that make headlines, such as Baz Luhrmann, Peter Weir and George Miller.
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This mainstream media erasure of Australian people of colour isn’t a new phenomenon, but it recently inspired a well-shared Facebook post from a Sydney-based actor who asked, “Why isn’t Aussie mainstream media profiling and celebrating Aussies of colour doing great things in showbiz around the world?”
In the wake of the post and the discussion it generated, Junkee profiled James Wan, digging into Wan’s Australian identity and how it has shaped his films. (“In the US, discussions around representation [have] been going on for a while, so it makes sense that the US is quicker at embracing diversity,” he said.) The New York Times, meanwhile, published a piece about the Asian-Australians looking to Hollywood to escape the comparatively white sphere of Australia’s entertainment industry.
Each article had a similar through-line: Australia’s screen industries aren’t giving people of colour the opportunities they need to flourish at home.
But the recent coverage was a Band-Aid over another structural issue: even if these people become successful abroad, Australia doesn’t seem to claim them.
‘Our’ Pang and ‘our’ Viswanathan
A 2018 study by UCLA found a growing and direct correlation between top-grossing films and diverse casts, with the most racially and ethnically homogenous casts in the study performing poorest on average at the box office. And with the commercial success of Jon M Chu’s Crazy Rich Asians – a film featuring the first all-Asian cast from a major studio in 25 years, including Australians Chris Pang, Remi Hii and Ronny Chieng – the conversation around diversity seems to be changing.
But gaps in Australian media coverage of its talent suggests otherwise. These omissions include newcomers like Pang, Hii and Chieng as well as Keiynan Lonsdale (Love Simon, CW’s The Flash), Natasha Liu Bordizzo (The Greatest Showman, Hotel Mumbai) and Jordan Rodrigues (Lady Bird, The Fosters). They also include established Hollywood players like Wan.
‘With the commercial success of Crazy Rich Asians, the conversation around diversity seems to be changing.’ Photograph: Sanja Bucko/PR Company Handout
So why doesn’t the media want to celebrate these actors’ Australianness? The media regularly, proudly crowns “our” Cate, “our” Baz and “our” Nicole (who, for the record, was born in Hawaii). Is it another symptom of our under-resourced outlets? Is it because their audiences tend not to identify non-white immigrant Australians as our “own”? Or is it the fault of primarily white media institutions that overlook them, consciously or otherwise?
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The reality is Australia is diverse. The 2016 census found that for the first time more Australians born overseas come from Asia than Europe. By neglecting Asian-Australian stories, the Australian media may not just be failing any ethical obligations for diversity; they may – like Hollywood – be missing out on a huge potential audience, too.
Of course Cate, Baz and Nicole get all the attention: by now, they’re world-class celebrities. But how do you make a celebrity? It involves an investment by Australia and its media in talent when it becomes successful abroad.
Margot Robbie’s small but breakout role in Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street is a prime example of not just how a star can be made, but of the Australian media’s priorities. Publications followed Robbie closely, selling her as the traditional “blonde bombshell” starlet by drawing on the sex and nudity in the film. But the narrative fed into the idea that you need to be conventionally attractive, and white, if you want to be crowned Australia’s next “golden girl”.
Geraldine Viswanathan, a cast member in Hala, poses at the premiere of the film at the 2019 Sundance film festival. Photograph: Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP
It seems difficult to see that same phrase applied to Indian-Swiss, Australian-born Geraldine Viswanathan – deemed a “breakout star” in the John Cena comedy Blockers, but who was mostly profiled only by regional Australian news outlets.
The radio silence stretches on, despite the fact that at age 23, Viswanathan has already added to her CV the TV show Miracle Workers (with Daniel Radcliffe and Steve Buscemi), the upcoming feature Bad Education (co-starring with Hugh Jackman) and the Sundance hit Hala.
If we are starting to shift the way we talk about diversity, and if the film industry is starting to recognise it profits from better on-screen representation, it’s essential our mainstream media gives space to Australian people of colour creatives to let them break that ground.
Exposure is important not just for audiences who have a whitewashed understanding of Australia, but for those who, like me, don’t fit that mould. Watching #AsianAugust take the US by storm last year with the triple-threat release of Searching, All The Boys I Loved Before and Crazy Rich Asians, made me feel seen by the film industry for the first time. Second-generation immigrants were finally being represented in a way that showed our lives to be as multifaceted, complicated and riveting as the white culture that often dominates us.
So let’s start talking about the Viswanathans, the Wans, the Bodizzos, the Pangs. Give them the platform to become the new Blanchetts, Luhrmanns, Kidmans.
They deserve it, as do we: the Smiths, Williamses, Patels, Nguyens and Zhous. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/10/notre-dame-firefighters-should-be-tested-for-lead-say-campaigners | World news | 2019-05-10T15:58:29.000Z | Kim Willsher | Notre Dame firefighters should be tested for lead, say campaigners | Firefighters who battled the Notre Dame cathedral inferno as well as neighbouring residents and those who watched the fire from the streets should be tested for exposure to toxic materials, campaign groups have said.
Experts consulted by the environmental group Robin des Bois have warned that the flames that destroyed the roof and spire of the medieval edifice sent at least 300 tonnes of lead into the air above Paris.
As well as the danger of lead particles, the organisation warned on Friday that other toxic substances, including those used to treat wooden beams destroyed in the fire, could have contaminated the cathedral site and surrounding area including the River Seine.
“We need a rigorous programme of analyses with a detailed map and regular follow-ups,” Jacky Bonnemains, the head of Robin des Bois, told journalists. He said the Paris authorities should enlarge the area to be tested to include the Tuileries gardens, private homes in west Paris and even the Elysée palace.
Notre Dame fire: police say air not toxic despite high lead levels on ground
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Bonnemains said the authorities were not fulfilling their responsibilities. “Until the debris [from the fire] has been cleared and taken somewhere secure to be stored, the site will remain a source of pollution.”
1:11
Notre Dame Cathedral: before and after the devastating fire – video
The group has said the site of the fire “might be temporarily considered an industrial wasteland” and urged authorities to decontaminate it before moving ahead with a competition to design a new spire.
It recommended that “all the firefighters involved in fighting the blaze and those who urgently saved antique objects should be subject to tests for lead in the coming weeks”, adding that the country’s health authorities should engage in the long-term testing of local parks and gardens.
The warning came after Paris authorities warned that lead levels on the ground immediately around Notre Dame cathedral were 65 times above the safe limit.
Police issued a statement saying there was no risk of toxic inhalation from the air and that the area of high lead levels immediately around the cathedral was closed to the public.
Flames and smoke rise from the fire at Notre Dame cathedral on 15 April 2019. Photograph: Thierry Mallet/AP
Robin des Bois has written to several government ministers as well as city and regional authorities pointing out its concerns and calling for the clean-up of the Notre Dame site to avoid the spread of toxic substances.
It also released a statement from Michael Anderson, professor of physical chemistry at the University of Manchester, expressing his concern about “the levels of lead pollution” following the Notre Dame fire.
“The pollution spread by fire is very extensive. Contrary to what I hear being reported that the lead was contained at the cathedral, actually almost all the lead has been dispersed across Paris,” he said.
“It is really important that the streets of Paris under the lead plume are analysed for lead as quickly as possible and before it starts to rain. This is unlikely a problem of air pollution, but of solid particles on the ground.
“When it rains, any lead particles will be carried into the water courses. People should be advised to be careful what they touch for a while in Paris until the situation is properly assessed.”
Paris has been subject to violent rainstorms since Anderson’s letter of 29 April.
Temporary tarpaulins cover the roof of the cathedral to protect it from rain damage. Photograph: Chesnot/Getty Images
Annie Thébaud-Mony, of the Henri Pézerat health, work and environment association, said she was particularly worried about workers, while Dr Mady Denantes, a GP, said: “All lead is bad and this pollution needs all our vigilance.”
On Friday, French MPs were presented with a hastily drawn-up law overseeing work to restore the cathedral which would allow plans to be speeded through the normally slow planning regulations.
Bonnemains said approving the law would make MPs “complicit in the putting in danger of people’s lives”. He said his association was looking at ways to block the law. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/aug/31/donald-trump-mexico-president-nieto | US news | 2016-08-31T06:15:31.000Z | Nicky Woolf | Trump announces trip to Mexico for talks with President Peña Nieto | Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has confirmed that he will travel to Mexico on Wednesday to meet President Enrique Peña Nieto in Mexico City.
Moments before taking the stage for a rally in Everett, Washington, just north of Seattle, Trump tweeted that he had “accepted the invitation of President Enrique Peña Nieto, of Mexico, and look[ed] very much forward to meeting him tomorrow”.
I have accepted the invitation of President Enrique Pena Nieto, of Mexico, and look very much forward to meeting him tomorrow.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 31, 2016
The meeting will happen hours before Trump is scheduled to deliver a major address on immigration in Phoenix, Arizona, in which he will aim to clarify his increasingly murky stance on the issue.
It was confirmed by the official Twitter account for the Mexican presidency, which said:
El Señor @realDonaldTrump ha aceptado esta invitación y se reunirá mañana en privado con el Presidente @EPN.
— Presidencia México (@PresidenciaMX) August 31, 2016
Translated, the tweet says that Trump “has accepted the invitation and will meet privately tomorrow with the president”.
Peña Nieto – who has previously compared Trump to Hitler and Mussolini – said via Twitter that he had invited both presidential candidates to Mexico “to discuss bilateral relations”, adding: “I believe in dialogue to promote the interests of Mexico in the world and to protect Mexicans wherever they are.”
Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto said he had invited Trump, despite having previously compared him to Hitler. Photograph: Susan Walsh/AP
The Trump campaign did not respond to repeated requests for comment. However, Josh Green, a reporter for Bloomberg News, said Trump would be accompanied on the trip by former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and Alabama senator Jeff Sessions.
Trump surrogates: Republican's position on immigration has not changed
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Trump, who launched his campaign in 2015 with the announcement that Mexico was “bringing their worst people”, including “rapists”, to the US, had been scheduled to appear at fundraisers in California on Wednesday morning, before delivering his immigration address in Phoenix at 6pm local time (9pm ET).
The trip to Mexico City to meet Peña Nieto – who has previously invited Trump to debate him in Mexico – will likely occur sometime in the middle of the day.
The proposal was first broached with the US embassy in Mexico City earlier this week, a fast-tracking of an international visit by an American presidential candidate that is typically planned over the course of weeks.
In recent days, Trump has been increasingly vague on his position about the legal status of the 11 million illegal immigrants currently in the US. During the Republican primary, Trump appealed to the conservative base by calling for a “deportation force” to remove all undocumented immigrants from the country.
However, on a recent trip to Iowa, Trump said the policy issue was driven by the media. “In recent days, the media – as it usually does – has missed the whole point on immigration. All the media wants to talk about is the 11 million or more people here illegally,” he said at a fundraiser for Republican senator Joni Ernst.
In front of a crowd in Everett on Tuesday evening, Trump made no mention of his upcoming diplomatic mission, focusing instead on campaign speech favorites, including a rambling story in rhyming couplets about an ungrateful and poisonous snake, intended as an allegory about Muslim refugees to the US.
Also notably absent from the speech was perhaps Trump’s most essential motif: the wall he proposes to build along the US-Mexico border.
Trump’s approval ratings among Latino voters are historically bad, and his relationship with Peña Nieto’s government is even worse. Trump has long pledged to force Mexico to pay for the proposed 2,000-mile (3,220km) border wall, a suggestion the Mexican president responded to coldly.
“No way,” Peña Nieto told CNN earlier this year.
‘They are not our friend, believe me’ – Donald Trump’s attack on Mexico. Guardian
Peña Nieto has fallen on hard political times in recent months. The latest polls put his approval rating at just 23%, according to Mexico News Daily, as the president has been hit by personal scandals, as well as allegations of human rights abuses by police officers. Protests by teachers opposed to his educational reforms have led to widespread unrest and several deaths.
It is hard to see how inviting Trump to meet him would help Peña Nieto domestically, as Trump is, unsurprisingly, considerably less popular in Mexico than the president. In March, city legislators passed a non-legally binding bill to ban Trump from Mexico’s capital.
Peña Nieto’s predecessor, former president Vicente Fox, has been considerably more vocal in speaking out against the Republican nominee, calling Trump’s ideas “racist” and saying “I declare: I’m not going to pay for that fucking wall.”
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A spokesperson for Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, said the focus should remain on Trump’s immigration speech in Arizona. Jennifer Palmieri, communications director for Hillary for America, said: “From the first days of his campaign, Donald Trump has painted Mexicans as ‘rapists’ and criminals and has promised to deport 16 million people, including children and US citizens. He has said we should force Mexico to pay for his giant border wall. He has said we should ban remittances to families in Mexico if Mexico doesn’t pay up.
“What ultimately matters is what Donald Trump says to voters in Arizona, not Mexico, and whether he remains committed to the splitting up of families and deportation of millions.”
Launching his presidential bid last year, Trump claimed “the US has become a dumping ground for everyone else’s problems”, pointing the finger at Mexico.
“They’re sending us not the right people,” he said. “They’re sending people that have lots of problems and they’re bringing their problems.
“They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists, and some, I assume, are good people, but I speak to border guards and they tell us what we are getting.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2010/jun/23/conversion-document-church-england | Opinion | 2010-06-23T09:30:00.000Z | Jenny Taylor | Not a question of conversion | Jenny Taylor | The Church of England was urged not to be embarrassed or "awkward" about converting others to the Christian faith in a new document published today.
At least that's what many of the reports said.
Except it's not true. The Church of England did no such thing, and the media reaction indicates the gulf between the church and the secular world in which it operates.
No one can convert another, only God. Martin Beckford's report contains a common howler: "The study was commissioned after General Synod, the governing body of the church, called upon senior clergy to spell out 'their understanding of the uniqueness of Christ in multifaith Britain' amid fears that they dared not broach the sensitive subject of whether Christians have a duty to convert Muslims."
Conversions at the point of a sword or a gun may have been common in times past; for example when indigenous people in Cuba jumped off a cliff rather than face the Catholic conquistadors with their bibles and blunderbusses. And in Nigeria, according to a December 2009 visit report by Christian Solidarity Worldwide, some Muslim traders in Bauchi state have demanded children for conversion to Islam if a poor farmer defaults on fertiliser loans. But as John Locke saw, a soul that is compelled is a soul that has lost its religious worth. "It appears not that God has ever given any such authority to one man over another as to compel anyone to his religion."
The reason for that is clear. "True and saving religion consists in the inward persuasion of the mind ... such is the nature of the understanding, that it cannot be compelled to the belief of anything by outward force."
It's on this very basis that the authority implicit with democracy itself rests. We have the right to seek to change a person's vote, or choice of washing powder precisely because we know that forcing that choice is not an option, resulting only in tyranny.
Thank goodness then for the C of E's report Sharing the Gospel of Salvation (pdf). It's about time that these differences were clarified.
As Britain's demography changes, and more and more people settle here to escape from precisely the kinds of tyranny where coercion stunts the soul and stifles initiative, these lessons need to be rooted in all our consciences.
Britain is free because people died for others to have the right to believe what they want. The Devonshire Square Baptists would rather go to the gallows than renounce freedom from the state to coerce their faith.
But that needs communicating. As St Paul says: "Unless I preach, how will they know?"
As a convert myself, I know how obnoxious I found the church – but that was before I met any Christians.
I was a rebel against all authority. I behaved as I saw fit, and suffered the consequences. It wasn't the conversion squads who changed me; but the love and prayers and doggedly patient friendship that did the trick. And their example. I wanted that quality of inner assurance, that light and peace that they manifested which I could not put any name to.
Had these people not exercised their loving concern for me, and told me something of what it was that their peace rested on, I may not be alive today because I was in a mess.
Christ is caught before he is taught. The Holy Spirit is visible to the seeking heart and cannot be disguised. But you have to get close enough to know it, and then words of comfort from one who has found Him are essential.
It was the Church of England that helped to reinforce the foundations of separatism and parallel communities in England (some call them ghettoes) that mean such contact is harder to come by than it might be.
For in its Faith in the City report in 1986, it said: "There are places where Christian service to the community may take the form of helping others to maintain their religious and cultural heritage in freedom and dignity."
This was an act of compromise with those aspects of incoming cultures for which freedom was alien and even in UK today, there are people in hiding from relatives seeking to end their lives because they "converted".
But that only serves to make the point clearer. If I still want to change my faith, even though it may get me killed, how powerful a thing the conscience is. And how little any human being can do to "convert" it, beyond offering the truth in love. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/03/the-guardian-view-on-germanys-election-struggling-to-move-on-from-merkel | Opinion | 2021-09-03T16:39:31.000Z | Editorial | The Guardian view on Germany’s election: struggling to move on from Merkel | Editorial | In September 1998, when a relatively youthful Gerhard Schröder defeated Helmut Kohl and ended his 16-year reign as German chancellor, the victorious leader of the Social Democrats (SPD) told supporters that the country had opted for “a change of generation”. Mr Schröder’s triumph turned a page on the cold war era, aligning Germany with a fresh-faced centre-left resurgence in western democracies led by Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. It was, in the political vernacular, a quintessential “change” election.
Almost a quarter of a century later, Angela Merkel will stand down of her own accord later this month – the first chancellor to do so – after equalling Mr Kohl’s longevity in office. But this time, ahead of a 26 September election, German voters seem to be somewhat reluctant to move on. None of Ms Merkel’s prospective replacements come close to matching her popularity. Fewer than one in five see the chancellor’s own preferred successor, the CDU/CSU candidate, Armin Laschet, as the best option to replace her. Caught on camera laughing during a visit to a town devastated by floods, Mr Laschet has fought a lacklustre campaign and has become a liability for his party. A poll last week found that from highs of around 35% at the start of the year, the CDU/CSU’s ratings have plunged on Mr Laschet’s watch to the low twenties and fallen just behind the SPD for the first time since 2006. The Greens electrified the contest by topping polls in the spring. Their extraordinary surge seemed to embody a widespread desire for a more environmentally driven politics to meet net zero pledges. But they too have lost their mojo as the party’s candidate for chancellor, the inexperienced Annalena Baerbock, struggles to recover from allegations of plagiarism and financial mismanagement.
The travails of the two former frontrunners have thus cleared the stage for the battered and bruised SPD, for years a symbol of the apparently terminal decline of European centre-left parties. Remarkably, the SPD now narrowly leads the race to take charge of the new era. Yet even this Lazarus-style resurrection can be seen as a tribute to the enduring appeal of Merkelism. The 63-year-old SPD candidate, Olaf Scholz, has served as a fiscally cautious finance minister in the outgoing government. He is basing his pitch on being a safe pair of hands, much in the former chancellor’s mould. A recent SPD campaign ad even joked of Mr Scholz as “Er kann Kanzlerin” (“he can do chancellor”), using the feminine form of the German word to underline a message of continuity with his predecessor.
If Ms Merkel were standing, she would almost certainly win. After 16 years in office, that is some compliment to her political skills and consensual style of government. But as Germany faces up to major challenges, such as meeting some of the most ambitious climate targets in the world and dealing with a rapidly ageing population, a new generation of leaders will need to make their mark in new times. The makeup of any future coalition is almost impossible to predict, such is the uncertainty of a race in which the lead has changed hands three times. The economically liberal FDP, for example, could become a kingmaker after 26 September, cancelling out centre-left commitments to higher taxes, more state spending and green investment. With three weeks to go until polling day, Germans find themselves looking through a glass darkly at the country’s post-Merkel future.
This article was amended on 5 September 2021. An earlier version said the SPD campaign advertisement about Olaf Scholz used the phrase “er kann Kanzerlin” and translated this as “the can-do chancellor”; the German phrase is “Er kann Kanzlerin”, which translates more correctly as “he can do chancellor”. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/nov/17/the-1978-star-wars-holiday-special-was-genuinely-dire-how-on-earth-did-it-happen | Film | 2023-11-17T11:43:26.000Z | Ben Child | The 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special was genuinely dire – how on earth did it happen? | If there is an event more synonymous with the folly of man than the Star Wars Holiday Special then no one has yet discovered it. The two-hour, 1978 TV show, which sent Mark Hamill’s Luke Skywalker, Harrison Ford’s Han Solo and Carrie Fisher’s Princess Leia to Kashyyyk (the home planet of the Wookiees) for something called “Life Day” is notoriously one of the most execrable pieces of entertainment ever committed to film. It has never been re-broadcast, and George Lucas once said he would have personally destroyed each and every bootleg copy if given the chance.
The costumes are cheap, the makeup even cheaper (Hamill has so much caked on he might as well have just stepped off the stage after playing a pantomime dame), nobody is in charge of the script, and in fact there is no script at all for the first 15 minutes or so as Chewbacca’s family mug around their Wookiee home, speaking entirely in impenetrable grunts with no subtitles. Everyone who actually has something to do with 1977’s Star Wars looks as if they would rather be sucked into a Sarlacc’s belly than spend another moment on set. It is a mercy for James Earl Jones that he only had to provide his voice as Darth Vader , but the only participants to really embrace the grating banality of it all are now long-forgotten variety show stars of the 70s such as Harvey Korman and Art Carney.
It’s rumoured Carrie Fisher was high on cocaine when she sang the final song about the glory of Life Day to the main Star Wars theme – for her sake, you really have to hope this is true. There is an excruciating segment in which Chewie’s gurning dad Itchy watches VR porn featuring the singer Diahann Carroll telling him how much she fancies him. The special did mark the first ever screen appearance of iconic bounty hunter Boba Fett in an animated section, but even this isn’t enough to make up for the dismal quality of the remaining 110 minutes.
It simply makes no sense that George Lucas would have allowed a blockbuster and cultural event such as Star Wars to be followed by something so preposterously bad. And so a new documentary, A Disturbance in the Force, has done its best to unpack what happened in the late 70s to allow this monstrosity to actually screen in the US. It’s a fascinating watch, even if it fails to explain why nobody intervened to stop the special almost ruining the long-running space opera before it could hit the jump to light speed.
One of the biggest takeaways from Jeremy Coon and Steve Kozak’s film seems to be that in 1978, despite having seen Star Wars almost singlehandedly usher in the blockbuster era (with apologies to Steven Spielberg’s Jaws), Lucas clearly had no idea what he had done, or at the very least, wasn’t aware that allowing a bunch of TV hacks into the galaxy he had so painstakingly created could end up going so badly wrong. Comedians such as Bruce Vilanch were hired to write corny jokes despite having no idea what Star Wars was actually about, while the final cut of the special was edited together by producers Ken and Mitzie Welch, who had never carried out that particular task before and were variety show stalwarts who also knew nothing about sci-fi. Lucas, meanwhile, was apparently so worried that the cinemagoing public might forget about Star Wars before they got a chance to see 1980’s spectacular The Empire Strikes Back that he was prepared to take the view that any publicity was good publicity and leave all the creative stuff to some other mug.
In the 70s, still popular but fading variety shows were just another part of the promotional machine for new movies. Star Wars stormtroopers had already danced cheerfully on the Donny & Marie show and Mark Hamill had turned up on Bob Hope’s show in full costume by the time they arrived on the special. Richard Pryor got to hang out in the Star Wars cantina, while C-3PO and R2-D2 did ads for Burger Chef. Nothing, apparently, was off-limits. So why not have give audiences a cheesy variety special just before Christmas to sell a few extra toys?
Somebody somewhere should have stepped in before it was too late, but nobody did, and the Star Wars Holiday Special was the result. If you’ve ever seen it, you are to be pitied. For this is a cultural atrocity that goes beyond “so bad, it’s good” into a terrifying netherworld of half-arsed hokum, a two-hour advert for the kind of major studio quality control that at least means these days the worst we are likely to be subjected to in terms of small screen Star Wars is a TV repeat of The Phantom Menace.
So the next time you find yourselves flinching at the prequels’ dodgy cosmic racial stereotypes or the bit where Anakin tries to feed Padme a floating pear, just remember that in the 70s, it was a lot, lot worse. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/jul/27/simone-biles-olympic-withdrawal-all-round-gymnastics-team-tokyo-2020 | Sport | 2021-07-27T18:22:30.000Z | Andrew Lawrence | We expect our heroes to be perfect. Simone Biles is unafraid to show she is not | She hadn’t lost in all-round competition since Frozen pipped Iron Man 3 at the box office, has four moves (four!) named after her, attempts routines that literally break the scoring system – routines some male colleagues won’t even try. She so reliably makes gymnastics a trending topic that no less than Twitter was compelled to create a goat emoji to reflect her status as the Greatest of All Time; never mind that she is just 24 years old. Those four golds she won in her Rio Games debut? Pfft. Light work, they promised. Wait till Tokyo, and you’ll see how easily she reels in Larisa Latynina’s all-time record of nine career golds. For the five years that Simone Biles has reigned supreme over her sport, all we’ve heard is how she’s the next surest thing after death and taxes. Until, of course, she wasn’t.
On Tuesday, as her American team was in the early stages of the women’s gymnastics team final, Biles huddled with a trainer after a flubbed attempt on her opening vault. When she then exited the competition floor with a USA Gymnastics doctor, the world held its collective breath. The excitement of seeing her reemerge several minutes later was quickly tempered when she slipped off her bar grips and hugged teammates Grace McCallum, Sunisa Lee and Jordan Chiles before slipping into sweatpants and a jacket and urging on her teammates.
Just like that Biles was out of the team competition, but exactly why wasn’t certain in the immediate aftermath of this epic plot twist. In a statement USA Gymnastics called it “a medical issue,” but before that her coach had told NBC it was a “mental health concern”. Finally, in a subsequent news conference, Biles said it was a bit of both – that the long, idle period leading up to the Olympics had frayed her nerves and compromised her focus, and that she didn’t want to risk hurting herself and her team’s chances in subsequent events by forging ahead anyway. “I’ll usually persevere and push through things,” she said. “But I just needed to let the girls do it and focus on myself.”
Simone Biles to take ‘a day at a time’ before further Tokyo participation
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In the end, alas, it goes down as Team USA’s first loss in a major all-around event since 2011, with Biles registering the worst vault score of her glittering career. “We hope America still loves us,” she said from the mixed zone, a silver medal dangling from her neck. And yet: what’s even more stunning than this reality check is the fact that we never saw it coming in the first place.
Heavy is the head and whatnot, and the particular burden for Biles – the star of the Tokyo Olympics alongside Naomi Osaka – is Sisyphean. She’s supposed to stay great and top herself, too. It’s one thing to embrace that challenge when you are setting the bar for yourself and then clearing it in a leotard emblazoned with a rhinestone goat on your back. But it’s quite another for NBC’s Hoda Kotb to ask in an interview, “Are you beatable?” and then twist her face into a beseeching smile before answering the question herself. “If I had a vote,” said Kotb, “I would say. No girl, you are not beatable.”
There are the endorsement deals with Visa and Athleta, all those little girls looking up in admiration, some of them already taller than the 4ft 8in Biles, some of them – like Biles – diagnosed with ADHD. There are all those black supporters around the world taking prideful ownership in her every outsized accomplishment. There are all those survivors of sexual assault who draw strength from the courage Biles has shown while speaking for them in the wake of Larry Nassar’s staggering crimes. That’s a lot to ask from anyone, and it shows every time a blip in form is laughed off as a trifle and not a symptom of excessive stress.
Really, Too Much Pressure could well stand as the unifying theme for a Games that has already seen losses for Osaka, taekwondo star Jade Jones and the once invincible US men’s basketball team. What’s more, we just saw Osaka take a break from tennis for her mental wellness, and we were introduced to the phrase “overtraining syndrome” last month as Simone Manuel clawed to make the Olympic cut for the US swimming team.
We expect our heroes to be perfect. So it’s to Biles’s immense credit that when she wasn’t feeling up to her GOAT status, she took a step back – despite the world clamouring for her gravity-defying moves. She chose to focus on herself again even if that meant – gasp – defeat in what are almost certainly her last Olympics. Biles showed us she is only human. And we would do well to remember that even as her aura of infallibility suggests otherwise. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/31/alzheimers-society-advert-truth-about-dementia | Opinion | 2024-03-31T09:30:34.000Z | Sonia Sodha | Will this brutally honest look at dementia finally get us talking or will we turn away? | Sonia Sodha | We see a man giving a speech at his mother’s wake. It starts off as you might expect. But he goes on to tell us how his mother died multiple times in the eyes of those who loved her. When she became convinced her friends were stealing from her. When she asked him, her son, what his name was. When she looked straight through his dad. Then he says she died a final time surrounded by the people who loved her.
This is the latest ad from the Alzheimer’s Society. Anna had dementia. At the end, a voiceover from Colin Firth tells us: “With dementia, you don’t just die once, you die again, and again, and again. Which is why at Alzheimer’s Society, we’ll be with you again, and again, and again.”
I found it immensely uncomfortable to watch. Using death as a metaphor to describe the progression of a disease experienced by someone living struck me as horribly dehumanising. Throughout the ad we see Anna in her last years juxtaposed against clips of a vivacious younger woman; the message of the video seems to be, that was Anna then; this confused, silent character is who she is now. I’m not alone in this reaction; on social media many said they found it upsetting and offensive, alongside some positive responses from those who feel it spoke to their experience.
The ad – which the society says was made with significant input from people living with dementia – has been very divisive within dementia advocacy: some groups who were consulted have publicly distanced themselves from it, and Alzheimer Scotland put out a dissenting statement about “stereotypical and frightening images” that does not reference the advert but is clearly about it.
Since my initial viewing, I’ve changed my mind about it many times, after speaking to the chief executive of the Alzheimer’s Society about what they were trying to achieve; after reading through the reactions of people with early-stage dementia, and after talking to a psychiatrist who specialises in mental health in older age. Where I’ve come down is that I think the advert went too far, but that one of the many issues with the public discourse about dementia is that it can be overly sanitised.
It’s important to acknowledge what a difficult communications job dementia charities have. Many have compared the stigma around dementia to the stigma around cancer in the 1980s. I think it’s worse in many ways, because dementia leads to the degeneration of your mind rather than your body; it erodes your memories, your identity and your sense of self. There’s no getting away from what a truly frightening prospect that is. And as human beings, we are terrible at confronting the things we fear – ageing and death in general, but the progressive loss of self that dementia imposes adds a new dimension to already taboo subjects. We don’t talk anywhere near enough about the huge social and medical challenges dementia poses for society.
That’s reflected in public attitudes: Alzheimer’s Society research reveals that only one in 10 people know that dementia is the leading cause of death in the UK; 78% of us don’t know that one in three people born today will get dementia and only a third think urgent action is required on dementia. But also in our politics: just 31p is spent on dementia research for every pound spent on cancer research and politicians have failed to confront the implications for social care and mental health services. People are left to struggle alone, and there is under-investment in the scientific developments that could slow its progress.
There is a lot to communicate. Dementia charities need to tackle the stigma of having dementia, but also support and care for a loved one who has it. They need to raise public awareness of the impacts of dementia despite the fact that those untouched are disinclined to contemplate it; doing so is vital to getting politicians engaged.
The idea of 'living well' might feel at odds to someone whose partner has late-stage dementia and has become abusive
It’s fanciful to pretend these objectives don’t sometimes conflict. There has been a strong emphasis on “living well” with dementia; that’s vital in terms of emphasising the dignity of people with dementia and their capacity for love and fulfilment that doesn’t switch off with a diagnosis. But the idea of “living well” might feel at odds – alienating, even – to someone whose partner has late-stage dementia requiring round-the-clock care, or who has become abusive. The Alzheimer’s Society’s media guidelines, published in 2018, are rightly very strong on tackling negative stereotypes of people with dementia, but left me wondering whether they also crowd out the space to talk about the difficult realities of dementia as it progresses – and in doing so risk letting politicians off the hook.
At the heart of this is a dilemma many charities face: how to accurately illustrate the challenges faced by people they support without being accused of doom-mongering? Lived experience is rightly prized, but how to account for the fact that it is people with less disabling aspects of a condition who are the most able and attractive advocates, whose interests are no less legitimate but may be very different from those who lack voice altogether? Dementia most obviously affects people who have it, but also profoundly affects those who love them, many of whom themselves experience a lack of support from friends and services; how do you enable them to have a conversation about how difficult it is, given the stigmas that exists around guilt, and the grief they experience as a result of losing aspects of a relationship and connection while their partner or parent is still living? Do we have to accept it might be all but impossible to do this without the risk of feeding some of the harmful stereotypes about dementia?
For me, the ad is too blunt and too bleak to achieve its objective of increasing public awareness: people need to be told the truth but also to be offered a little hope to avoid increasing a sense of fatalism which research suggests switches people off. But what I do admire is its willingness not to pretend that “living well”, while the right aspiration, is always a realistic one. And the fact that this advert barely made a splash in the media – imagine how much coverage a controversial cancer ad would have generated – itself reveals that we are not having the right conversation about dementia. In fact, we are barely talking about it all.
Sonia Sodha is an Observer columnist | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/feb/21/storm-frankin-hundreds-evacuated-and-travel-halted-uk | UK news | 2022-02-21T18:37:33.000Z | Mark Brown | Storm Franklin: ‘danger to life’ flood warnings in Shropshire and Worcestershire | Two severe “danger to life” flood warnings have been issued in Shropshire and Worcestershire after Storm Franklin brought a day of flooding, power cut misery and travel chaos on Monday.
Parts of the historic village of Ironbridge were being evacuated as the river Severn threatened to overwhelm flood defences, and in Bewdley in Worcestershire, residents were told to expect flooding from Tuesday morning. The Environment Agency urged people to implement emergency flood defence plans and follow evacuation advice.
A further 129 flood warnings were in place as river levels rose across England and Wales.
Matlock town centre in Derbyshire was described as a “river” by local resident Phil Gregory after the Derwent burst its banks. “It’s probably only a foot or two deep in truth, but enough to wreck businesses,” he said. “It’s just really terrible and the rain is continuing.”
The town council described the flooding as devastating and urged people not to visit Matlock. Babington hospital in nearby Belper was under water and forced to close and cancel appointments.
In Tadcaster, North Yorkshire, the main bridge was closed and shops flooded after the River Wharfe overflowed its banks. An Environment Agency spokeswoman said: “We are aware of a small number of flooded properties in Tadcaster and are working closely with the emergency services and other agencies to keep the community safe.”
Train operators urged people on Monday to avoid travel if possible as services in some parts of the country experienced severe disruption and were expected to be halted by gale-force winds and heavy rain.
Southwestern said more than 50 trees had fallen on to the tracks in the last three days. Southeastern said response teams had been “stretched to the limit” and that several lines were unable to operate in and out of London.
Storm Franklin hits the Southend seafront in Essex. Photograph: Penelope Barritt/Rex/Shutterstock
Major road bridges were again closed because of high winds, including the Severn Bridge between England and Wales and the Dartford Bridge crossing. Two stretches of motorway in north-west England were closed in the morning after incidents involving lorries, including one that overturned on the M60 in Greater Manchester.
Airlines had cancelled 122 flights to and from the UK in the morning, according to data from analysts Cirium. British Airways apologised to customers who had faced additional long waits for luggage at Heathrow as well as flight disruption in the last few days. It said it was unable to operate the machinery needed to unload cases because of the high winds.
It comes only days after Storm Eunice killed at least four people and left 1.4m homes without power.
The energy minister, Greg Hands, on a visit to Kent, said 32,000 households across the UK remained without power.
UK Power Networks, which covers the south-east, London and east of England, said about 12,000 of its customers had yet to have power restored. Basil Scarsella, the CEO, said it had decided to make extra goodwill payments to those worst affected by power cuts.
“This means that if you were impacted by Storm Eunice, you will be eligible to receive £50 after 24 hours without electricity, an additional £70 when you reach 48 hours, and an additional £70 thereafter for every 12 hours without power.”
0:37
River almost engulfs bridge as Storm Franklin floods parts of North Yorkshire – video
On Monday, Northern Rail issued a “do not travel” alert to passengers, while TransPennine Express strongly urged customers to avoid travel if possible, particularly those planning to travel north of Preston in Lancashire before 10am. Great Western Railway urged customers to travel only if absolutely necessary as services were expected to be “significantly disrupted across the network”.
Southwestern Railway also urged customers not to travel, warning that the weather conditions were “likely to hamper efforts to help stranded customers”. National Rail warned anyone making essential journeys once services resumed to expect major disruption to routes across most of the country, including cancellations, delays and slower train speeds.
Met Office meteorologist Becky Mitchell said last week marked the first time that three major storms – Dudley, Eunice and Franklin – had been recorded within seven days since the naming system began in 2015.
An overturned lorry on the M60, near Trafford Park, Greater Manchester, on Monday. Photograph: Danny Lawson/PA
The Met Office said Monday’s highest wind speed, 79mph, was recorded at Capel Curig in Wales, followed by 78mph at Orlock Head in Northern Ireland. The worst of the storms are over for now with no weather warnings in place for the coming days. It will, though, be “a blustery week”.
The storms have had calamitous consequences for thousands of trees, including a clone of Isaac Newton’s apple tree that was planted at Cambridge University’s Botanic Garden in 1954.
It fell on Friday during Eunice. A spokesperson for the gardens said: “We have a clone that will be planted elsewhere in the garden soon, so Newton’s Apple will remain in the garden, but sadly not in its accustomed place.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/food/2024/mar/27/australian-supermarket-veggie-chip-taste-test-best-grain-waves-turtle-chips-dja-vege-chips | Food | 2024-03-26T21:00:32.000Z | Jess Ho | Australian supermarket veggie chip taste test: my notes on the aroma are ‘rancid oil’ and ‘farts’ | When is a chip a chip and when is it not? This is a question I kept asking myself when I was tasked with taste-testing the most readily available non-potato-based chips in supermarkets.
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Ultimately, a potato chip is a thin slice of potato – sometimes a slice of reconstituted potato (I’m looking at you, Pringles) – that has been fried or baked until crisp, then seasoned. That means anything that isn’t a potato, but has received the same treatment, would qualify as a non-potato chip.
Additionally any grain – and grains are technically fruits – that has been dried, pulverised, reconstituted, pressed, fried, baked or popped would also fall under that category. However, if the item takes any obvious non-chip form (such as Shapes), they are a cracker or a “crisp snack” – and not a chip.
You may notice a glaring omission of corn chips. They are an entirely separate category and deserve their own taste test.
The blot test was used to assess the chips’ greasiness. Photograph: Ellen Smith/The Guardian
‘Once these rules were set, I began manically reading the ingredients lists of foil packages in the snack aisle.’ Photograph: Ellen Smith/The Guardian
Once these rules were set, I began manically reading the ingredients lists of foil packages in the snack aisle. To streamline the tasting process, where possible, I purchased either the sea salt or original flavour of the product so I could experience its least-adulterated form. Each chip was judged on its crunch, flavour, texture and aftertaste that totalled up to 10 points. I also considered the aroma of each chip because, boy, are non-potato chips pungent.
‘I wanted to love you’: Kettle Sweet Potato Chips. Photograph: Ellen Smith/The Guardian
Another, unscored element that I factored into the eating experience was greasiness. I judged this by weighing out five grams of each chip and placing it on a plain sheet of paper to see how much oil was left behind – much like at tempura restaurants, where if an item has been fried optimally, it leaves little or no grease on a piece of paper, indicating the chef’s skills.
The blot test is also very much like the Window to Weight Gain test, as espoused by Dr Nick to Homer Simpson.
Best overall and best value
Sunbites Grain Waves Sea Salt 170g, $4.80 ($2.82 per 100g) from Coles
Score: 8.5/10
I must admit, I did not expect the plain flavour of Grain Waves to come out on top in both flavour and value. The idea of chewing on a glorified salted wafer made of 65% wholegrains didn’t initially appeal to me, but the thick, cracker-like consistency came with an unapologetic punch of salt, which was welcome after so many surprisingly sweet-tasting chips. The wholegrains are coarsely ground and the chip’s chunky, undulating texture seems scientifically engineered to encourage an addictive, mindless shovelling. There is a naturally sweet, toasted cereal aftertaste to round off the initial salty hit. Simply put, Grain Waves scored so highly because they delivered exactly what is written on the bag. They are waves, and they are made of grains.
Notable mention
Orion Turtle Chips Sweet Corn/Corn Soup 80g, $3.30 ($4.13 per 100g) from Coles and Woolworths
Score: 8.25/10
“Wow! Four layers!” The defining feature of a Turtle Chip, as I am repeatedly reminded on the packet, is the four-layer structure that, if viewed from the correct angle, is meant to resemble the shell of a turtle. Slightly barbaric or cute, depending on how you look at it. The chip itself is light and completely dissolves as soon as it meets saliva thanks to its corn flour base. And the flavour, against all logic, tastes exactly like sweet corn soup without being cloying, thanks to the subtle tang of citric acid on the back of the palate and the lingering, lactic, buttery aftertaste.
The rest of the test
DJ&A Crispy Broccoli Florets 45g, $6 ($13.33 per 100g) from Coles, Harris Farm and Woolworths
Score: 8/10
My notes on the aroma of these broccoli chips are “rancid oil” and “farts”. They smell like a room at the end of a morning hot yoga session where everyone in attendance ate chickpeas for dinner. Thankfully, they taste nothing like they smell. There is a shattering crunch that the packet attributes to the low cooking temperature, accompanied by a pleasant vegetal sweetness. Surprisingly, there is no detectable bitterness usually associated with broccoli, which would make this a good way to trick yourself into eating more greens (although at a substantially higher cost, by weight, than fresh broccoli). Just open the bag a few minutes before you eat it so the trapped sulphur blows off.
Ajitas Vege Chips Natural 100g $4.90 ($4.90 per 100g) from Coles and Woolworths
Score: 6.5/10
For me, the packet has always had “sucker” written all over it. It claims to be vegan, nut-free, gluten-free, dairy-free and egg-free, but aren’t all chips? These light-as-air crisps are 60% cassava which accounts for the mild, subtle sweetness. If you’re after crunch, you’ll satisfy your cravings here. But if you’re searching for flavour, you’d do well with one of their seasoned varieties or to pair these with a dip. A perfectly serviceable chip, but these will always be a supporting act, never the main event.
Nongshim Onion Flavoured Rings 50g, $2.20 ($4.40 per 100g) from Coles, Woolworths and Asian groceries
Score: 6.5/10
Onion: you either love it or you hate it. And if the reflective green foil and cartoon of an onion DJ-ing on the packet says anything, it’s that you freaking love onions – which is fortunate, because the second ingredient of these chips is onion. The chip itself is made of a mix of starches including wheat, corn and tapioca, which produces an aerated, brittle hoop shaped to resemble an onion ring (just in case you forgot what you were eating). The onion flavour is more on the sweet and mellow side, but the raw, sulphuric allium sensation lingers on your tongue long after you’ve finished the bag. You have been warned.
Kettle Sweet Potato Sea Salt 135g, $6.50 ($4.81 per 100g) from Coles and Woolworths
Score: 6/10
Oh, sweet potato crisp, I wanted to love you because you’re only made with three ingredients: sweet potato, oil and salt. Unfortunately because sweet potatoes are sweeter, higher in water content and more fibrous than regular potatoes, they produce second-rate chips. The high sugar content means the sweetness carries a burnt aftertaste. The higher water content means the texture – kettle-cooked or not – will never produce the same, satisfying crunch. And the fibre, well, you can feel the strands of it clinging to the back of your mouth after a few chews. For hardcore sweet potato lovers only.
Hippeas Chickpea Puff Snacks Sweet & Smokin’ 78g, $6 ($7.69 per 100g) from Coles
Score: 5.5/10
As soon as I opened the bag I was hit in the face with the smell of artificial smoke; the kind that made me involuntarily pull my head back and wonder what I had agreed to when I signed up for this tasting. There is uneven flavour distribution in my bag – the puffs were either pale and anaemic or assaulted with seasoning. With the chips that are adequately seasoned, the flavouring tastes pleasantly sweet, salty and smoky which smothers the legumes’ pasty aftertaste – sadly, these chips are few and far between. The texture is like a heftier Cheeto but the flavour is exponentially more bean-y. This is the kind of health chip that tastes exactly like a health chip. Zero grease detected.
Karma Bites Popped Lotus Seeds Peri Peri 25g, $3.20 ($12.80 per 100g) from Coles and Woolworths
Score: 4.5/10
The problem I have with most chips that claim to be spicy is that they’re never spicy. These popped lotus seeds, however, are unexpectedly hot. Aggressively so, which makes sense considering chilli is the first seasoning listed in the ingredients. Karma Bites make various health claims, such as the whole bag contains only 100 calories (around 418kJ), which probably explains why the texture of these chips is closer to popcorn than a crisp. The spice may be spicing, but alas, the chip is not chipping.
Keep It Cleaner Lentil Chips Sea Salt 90g, $5.50 ($6.11 per 100g) from Coles and Woolworths
Score: 3/10
Before learning the origins of Keep It Cleaner, my tasting notes read: “Tastes like fitness and cardboard.” This is another chip marketed as “healthy snacking” – it’s gluten-free, vegan and the brand is fronted by a pair of wellness influencers. For a legume-based crisp, the flavour is better than the Hippeas, but that’s where the positives end. The blot test also revealed these lentil chips left behind the most grease on the day. The bag has a four-star health rating; by comparison Red Rock Deli Sea Salt potato chips is rated three-and-a-half stars. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2024/apr/25/mother-play-review-jessica-lange-broadway-drama | Stage | 2024-04-26T01:50:25.000Z | Benjamin Lee | Mother Play review – Jessica Lange anchors often aimless Broadway drama | At a performance of Pulitzer prize winner Paula Vogel’s late stage Tonys contender Mother Play, opening a day before eligibility ends, one can pick from three bright and syrupy themed cocktails before purchasing a tie-in cap graced with the word MOTHER screamed in pink. The play itself only has three characters, two of whom are queer, with the third played by a martini-swigging Jessica Lange, a package that feels almost algorithmically designed to appeal to a gay audience.
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Even at a time of overwhelming competition on Broadway, there may well be enough check boxes ticked for some – Lange dancing to I Will Survive in a gay club definitely straddles a few – but Mother Play isn’t quite specific or emotionally searing enough to live beyond its admittedly alluring reference points. It works in moments, most of them the result of Lange’s ineffable presence, but as a whole, it’s not as commanding as her or its title demand, perhaps more estranged aunt than mother.
Vogel uses her own life as inspiration, as she did in her acclaimed 1992 play The Baltimore Waltz, both centering on siblings, both featuring a gay brother called Carl, a stand-in for her real brother of the same name who died of Aids in 1988. The story is presented as “a play in five evictions” as a mother called Phyllis (Lange) – Vogel’s mother was also called Phyllis – uproots her children from scuzzy apartment to scuzzy apartment in the wake of a messy divorce. Money is tight and tensions are high and her children, played by Jim Parsons and Celia Keenan-Bolger, are forced into positions of responsibility as they manage a mother who self-medicates with booze.
It’s a solid structural concept that allows for some slick and deftly justified maneuvering of furniture as the characters adjust to new apartments, the same pieces just slightly shifted by themselves. There’s also a smart use of overhead light as different fittings descend from a collection above, each time a slight upgrade in quality. The lived-in detail of the staging is mostly a win but the director Tina Landau makes a few baffling missteps, the most jarring of which is a rather embarrassing sequence that sees giant cockroaches put on a synchronised dance routine, an intimate family drama suddenly turning into a deleted scene from Joe’s Apartment.
It’s an odd moment of confusion for those both on and off the stage, more of which emerge as the play progresses, the separation of evictions feeling more notable at the outset before they become almost forgotten and dramatically unimportant by the end. Time is loose and fuzzy, as it often is when we remember those early years, the play changing multiple decades without ever changing actor, a lofty task for its trio, some of whom are more able to convincingly age than others.
We meet the siblings when they’re young teens, a stretch for even the most skilled adult actor to pull off and one that Vogel herself has employed before in her Pulitzer winner How I Learned to Drive. In that play, Mary Louise-Parker was required to play 17 and here the ask is even younger, something that a confident Keenan-Bulger manages with ease, having perfected the art from playing Scout in Aaron Sorkin’s sterling 2018 adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird. She manages to evoke awkwardness and impetuousness without falling into actors workshop parody, something that Parsons is notably less effective at throughout. The ex-Big Bang Theory star might have an accomplished career on stage but his 12 years on the CBS sitcom often leave him with an acting style that can still feel cartoonishly over-exaggerated, something that also plagued his leap to big screen leading man in 2022’s flat gay romance Spoiler Alert.
Like the show, he’s never able to rise to the bar set by Lange who might be playing a slightly remixed version of her greatest hits but well enough for it to feel like a show in itself. Even if an extended sequence of her making and eating a microwave dinner alone doesn’t have the pay-off it needs, or we deserve, spending so much uninterrupted time living with an actor of her calibre and dazzle is a rich reward. If we’d perhaps like to see Lange be pushed into something a bit further out of her wheelhouse then that’s a larger issue that one play is unable to fully address.
The inevitable descent into tragedy is sadly unmoving, the play working better when focusing on the smaller bittersweet notes of the day-to-day, the all-in-this-together intimacy of a family unit forced to strive and struggle under relatable constraints. There’s just not enough devastating detail in the crush of bad things happening to force us into feeling quite as curdled as we should, a polite clap at a point in the season when an ebullient cheer is needed. Mother Play sees a major writer teaming up with a major actor to give us a minor work. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/jun/25/chris-froome-2015-tour-de-france-cycling-vincenzo-nibali-nairo-quintana-alberto-contador | Sport | 2015-06-25T13:31:41.000Z | Barry Glendenning | Chris Froome: ‘It’s building up to be an epic Tour de France battle’ | Chris Froome has likened the first nine stages of this year’s Tour de France to a series of one-day Classic races and suggested the scramble to the podium will not begin in earnest until it enters the mountains in the south of France. The 2013 winner is currently fine-tuning last-minute preparations for next Saturday’s Grand Départ from the Dutch city of Utrecht, for a Tour many are expecting to be the most closely fought for years.
Along with his fellow Grand Tour winners Vincenzo Nibali, Nairo Quintana and Alberto Contador, the Sky leader is among the favourites who will need to negotiate and survive a series of largely flat but extremely tricky stages through the Netherlands, Belgium and the north of France if they are to remain in contention for victory in La Grande Boucle before the peloton hits the Pyrenees.
“That first week really is going to be crucial: the first nine days, until we get up into the mountains,” said Froome, referring to stages in which none of the main General Classification contenders will win the Tour but any number of them could lose it in coastal crosswinds, on treacherous pavé or through the kind of wretched luck that forced the Sky team leader to abandon last year.
“In my mind, it’s almost like each one of those nine days is like a Classics race in its own right, so it’s almost like we’ve got to do nine one-day Classics before then starting the [General Classification] race up in the mountains,” said Froome.
“It’s going to be hugely crucial, but I think we’ve got a potentially very strong Classics orientation in our Tour de France squad.”
Having been forced out of last year’s Tour through injury, after two crashes on stage five, Froome is excited by the prospect of wrestling the yellow jersey back from the Astana rider Nibali.
The Italian’s celebrations in Paris last year were rendered somewhat hollow by the withdrawal through injury of Froome, who on Wednesday admitted to missing a drugs test while on holiday this year, and Contador, not to mention Quintana’s decision to sit out the Tour after winning his first Giro. “It feels great to be here now,” said Froome, fresh from winning this year’s Tour warm-up, the Critérium du Dauphiné.
It's probably the biggest battle we’ve seen for years in the Tour de France
Chris Froome
“The Tour is just over a week away, things are looking good personally, my condition feels good and I think the whole team is buzzing after winning the Dauphiné. I think that’s lifted everyone’s morale. I think for myself personally, I feel as if I’ve come into the race with a lot less pressure on my shoulders.
“I feel a lot more relaxed this time around, not coming in as the defending champion. I’ve got a really strong team around me. The way the Tour is structured this year, I think it’s really building up to be such an epic battle between the big rivals, the big GC contenders; probably the biggest battle we’ve seen for years in the Tour de France. It’s exciting; really exciting and we can’t wait to get the show on the road.”
A sizeable obstacle was removed from his path on Thursday when the Col du Galibier climb was taken off the schedule for the 20th stage due to landslides. However another was swiftly put in its place when the route from Modane to Alpe d’Huez was diverted over the Col de la Croix de Fer. One show Sky will not be getting on the road is the motor home Froome had been hoping to sleep in each night, after the UCI put a stop to their wheeze of having their team leader avoid hotels designated by the race organisers.
“I think it’s unfortunate they’ve taken that decision,” said Froome.“I think it was purely just from a performance point of view. I could only see it as being a good thing to be able to control those factors, where you get into some of those race hotels and one night you’re on a hard bed, one night you’re on a soft bed and you wake up with a sore back. Some of the rooms without air conditioning in mid-July in France … you’re just going to be sweating for 10 hours.”Froome will need all the good sleep he can get, as his uninterrupted nights of rest are numbered – the cyclist looked chuffed to announce that he and his wife Michelle are expecting their first child at the end of this year. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/06/h-bombs-chicken-bones-scientists-race-to-define-start-of-the-anthropocene | Environment | 2023-01-06T11:54:14.000Z | Damian Carrington | H-bombs or chicken bones: the race to define the start of the Anthropocene | Exactly where and when did the Anthropocene begin? Scientists are attempting to answer this epochal question in the coming months by choosing a place and time to represent the moment when humanity became a “geological superpower”, overwhelming the natural processes that have governed Earth for billions of years.
They could decide the start is marked with a bang, thanks to the plutonium isotopes rapidly blasted around the planet by the hydrogen bomb tests that began in late 1952, or with a shower of soot particles from the surge in fossil-fuel power plants after the second world war.
Or they may choose the postwar explosion in artificial fertiliser use and its profound impact on the Earth’s natural nitrogen cycle. Microplastics, chicken bones and pesticide residues may also be among the eclectic signs used to bolster the definition of the Anthropocene. Possible other signs include lake beds in the US and China, Australian corals, a Polish peat bog, the black sediments beneath the Baltic Sea and even the human debris accumulated under Vienna.
An international team of almost 40 scientists, who have been commissioned by the official guardians of the geological timescale, must select a place where layered deposits show the clear transition from the previous age to the new one. The team has come up with a shortlist of 12 sites that have now begun a series of votes – but there can be only one winner. Humanity has unquestionably changed the Earth far beyond the stability of the Holocene, the 11,700-year period during which all civilisation arose, and which will end with the declaration of the Anthropocene. The atmosphere, lakes and oceans, and the living world have all been transformed by greenhouse gas emissions, pollution and the destruction of wildlife and ecosystems. Humans also now have a greater effect on shaping the surface of the Earth than natural processes, shifting about 24 times more material than is moved by rivers.
Defining the Anthropocene is vital, researchers say, because it brings together all the impacts of humans on the world, thereby giving a platform for holistic understanding and, hopefully, action to repair the damage. From a scientific perspective, a precise definition is essential for a clear basis for debate.
Tractor spraying crops in a field. Photograph: Creatas/Alamy/Alamy
The first stage of voting is already underway. The site will need to show “specific physical properties in sediment layers, or strata, that capture the effects of recent increases in human population; unprecedented industrialisation and globalisation; and changes imposed on the landscape, climate, and biosphere”, according to a recent paper in the journal Science by Leicester University’s Prof Colin Waters and University College London’s Dr Simon Turner, the chair and secretary respectively of the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG).
But creating a new unit of time is a big decision in geological circles and, in parallel, the AWG has also to achieve a bigger task – persuading geologists that a new epoch is justified at all.
Both tasks come down to identifying clear markers of change and hundreds of scientists are doing just that. The broad markers of anthropogenic transformation include rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, recorded in trapped air bubbles in ice cores, and the huge change in the populations and locations of species, with human and livestock numbers soaring and spreading as those of wild animals plunge and vanish.
But other markers offer the “golden spike” needed for a precise definition and enabling strata to record a sharp, clear rise. Principal among these is the distinctive fingerprint of radioactive isotopes, particularly plutonium, produced by cold war H-bomb tests, the first of which was carried out by the US on 1 November 1952 on the Eniwetok atoll in the Pacific Marshall Islands.
Scores of above-ground tests soon followed, with some even rocketed into the stratosphere. The fallout from the tests was fast and global, circling the planet within about 18 months, until atmospheric testing was banned in 1962.
“For a short period of time, they tested their new arsenal a lot,” said Turner. “That’s why you have this very unique, time-specific, global marker which is so useful for our work.”
Another useful marker are tiny spheroidal carbonaceous particles (SCPs), a type of tough fly ash only produced by the high-temperature burning of coal or heavy oil. “They take off with the sudden increase in numbers of thermoelectric plants after WW2,” said Turner. “They’re good at travelling on a continental scale and you find them globally because lots of continents produced them.” Work done for the AWG has revealed SCPs in Antarctic ice cores for the first time.
Polyester, acrylic, nylon and polypropylene fibres were found in samples collected on the top of Mount Everest. Photograph: Baker Perry/National Geographic/PA
Plastic pollution is also a marker of the Anthropocene, the scientists said. “The 1950s is when you start to see the majority of the polymers that were familiar with being invented and starting to appear in products,” said Waters, with nylon essentially replacing silk around second world war for example.
Plastic waste can now be found from the top of Mount Everest to the deepest ocean trench, giving a global signal. Other scientists found in 2019 that plastic was being deposited into strata and suggested the stone age and iron age was being followed by the plastic age. However, the sharpest rise in plastic pollution comes a couple of decades after the plutonium isotopes from the H-bomb tests, though both have the advantage of never having appeared in the geological record before.
Some scientists have suggested broiler chicken bones as a marker of the Anthropocene, with their production soaring from the second world war onwards. Furthermore, agricultural breeding means their skeletons and genetics are clearly different to those of their wild ancestors.
“Chickens are now far and away the biggest population of birds on the planet,” said Waters. “But also two-thirds of the mass of large mammals on the planet are domesticated species - cows, sheep, pigs etc. That is clearly a big change to the populations of species, particularly given the diminishment of natural species.” WWF estimates an average 70% reduction in the population size of wild animals. These biological changes are large, but more gradual than other markers, Waters said.
Broiler chickens at a farm in the UK. Photograph: A Room With Views/Alamy
Invasive species introduced by humans to new regions can also be markers, the scientists said. The inadvertent import of alien species in the ballast water of ships arriving in San Francisco from Asia transformed the bay. “There was a point where 98% of the mass of all of the animal species in the bay were actually invasive,” Waters said. Pollen from introduced plant species, such as the trees used in commercial forestry, can also record change.
Chemical and metal pollution show up in sediments too, said Turner: “The Green Revolution was based on artificial fertilisers and pesticides, and so you see that in sediment cores. The whole cocktail of industrial chemicals just exploded postwar.” Whether the chemicals persist in the environment long enough to be markers of the Anthropocene remains to be determined.
The 12 potential locations for the site that will define the new epoch all display some of the markers, but are very varied. “Because the Anthropocene has not been formally accepted, we’re still trying to prove to people that this is not something localised, it is something you find and correlate in a whole host of different environments,” said Waters.
“They all illustrate this dramatic Anthropocene transformation very well. But the sites which really stand out are the ones where you can actually see an annual resolution of layers,” said Turner, including some of the lake, coral and polar ice sites. “It’s quite astonishing that these sites detail planetary changes at annual resolutions.”
Algae blooms in the Baltic Sea. Photograph: European Space Agency
All have pros and cons. The 32-metre-long Palmer ice core from the Antarctic Peninsula is the longest record of the Anthropocene, but its remote location means the trace of some of the markers is often faint. The Baltic Sea sediments switch from pale to black as the Anthropocene starts. This is caused by pollution-fuelled algal blooms sucking all the oxygen out of the water. But the sediments do not have annual laminations. The archeological site in central Vienna gives a 200-year record, dated by artefacts, but has gaps in the record because of redevelopments.
The choice of site, and therefore the official time and place for the dawn of the Anthropocene, is in the hands of the 23 voting members of the AWG, but it will then have to be passed by the Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy, then the International Commission on Stratigraphy and finally be ratified by the International Union of Geological Sciences. There is a deadline too: theinternational geological congress in South Korea in 2024, when the mandate of the AWG expires. “It’s been pretty much stated that we’ve got until then to get this done,” said Waters.
Prof Naomi Oreskes, at Harvard University and a non-voting AWG member, said: “As geologists, we were trained to think that humans were insignificant. That was once true, but it no longer is. The evidence compiled by the AWG demonstrates beyond any doubt that the human footprint is now in evidence in rocks and sediments. The Anthropocene is primarily a scientific concept, but it also highlights the cultural, political, and economic implications of our actions.”
UCL’s Prof Mark Maslin, who co-authored The Human Planet with Prof Simon Lewis, said: “I think the Anthropocene is a critical philosophical term, because it allows you to think about what impact we are having, and what impact we want to have in the future.”
Maslin and Lewis previously proposed 1610 as the start of the Anthropocene, representing the huge and deadly impact European colonists had on the Americas and consequently the world. But Maslin said agreeing a definition was more important than precisely where it is placed.
“Up until now, we have talked about things like climate change, the biodiversity crisis, the pollution crisis, as separate things,” he said. “The key concept of the Anthropocene is to put that all together and say humans have a huge impact on the earth, we are the new geological superpower. That holistic approach then allows you to say: ‘What do we do about it?’” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/oct/24/taylor-swift-1989-review | Music | 2014-10-23T23:01:17.000Z | Alexis Petridis | Taylor Swift: 1989 review – leagues ahead of the teen-pop competition | At 24 years old, Taylor Swift inhabits something of a unique position within the teen pop firmament. It’s not merely the fact of her immense popularity, although the sheer devotion of her fans can sometimes knock you back a bit: earlier this week, when Swift released a track consisting of eight seconds of static to iTunes – alas, the result of a technical malfunction, rather than a radical new power-electronics direction influenced by Right to Kill-era Whitehouse and Genocide Organ – her fans in Canada bought it in such quantities that it went to No 1. It’s more that Swift’s music attracts the kind of serious critical attention afforded almost none of her peers. You don’t get many learned articles in the New Yorker about the songcraft of Swift’s mortal enemy Katy Perry. No acclaimed noveliest has felt impelled to take to the pages of Salon to defend the fact that he doesn’t like Jessie J, which Rick Moody did after expressing a dislike of Swift.
On one level, that is irrelevant. What do the vast majority of Taylor Swift fans – the tweenage Instagrammers to whom Swift, according to her ghastly record company biography, represents a “loyal friend, fierce protector of hearts and one of the world’s greatest ambassadors for the power of just being yourself” – care whether their tastes have been anointed by the New Yorker? But on another, it’s intriguing: what is it about Swift’s music that causes it to be singled out in this way?
At first glance, her fifth album doesn’t offer any obvious answers. 1989 has been widely boosted as being Swift’s first pure pop album, the record on which she finally divests herself of the last remaining musical vestiges of her roots as a teenage Nashville star. But that isn’t saying much, given that you’d have needed an electron microscope to detect any last remaining vestiges of those roots in its predecessor, Red. Much has been made of Swift as a self-contained singer-songwriter, but this time around the credits look pretty much the same as the credits for every big pop album: representatives from Scandanavian hit factories (Max Martin, Shellback); a moonlighting member of a mainstream indie-rock band (Fun’s Jack Antonoff); an EDM producer chancing their arm in the world of pop (Ali Payami); the omnipresent Greg Kurstin, of Lily Allen, Lana del Rey, Ellie Goulding and Kylie Minogue fame.
Given the cast list, you would expect 1989 to be an extremely polished product, which it undoubtedly is. Even its least interesting tracks sound like hits, which is what one pays Max Martin for: at its best, 1989 deals in undeniable melodies and huge, perfectly turned choruses and nagging hooks. Its sound is a lovingly done reboot of the kind of late 80s MTV pop-rock exemplified by Jane Wiedlin’s Rush Hour. It’s bold enough in its homage to take on one vintage sound thus far avoided by 80s revivalists – the booming, stadium-filling snare sound that all artists were legally obliged to use for the latter half of the decade makes a reappearance on I Wish You Would – but not so slavish as to preclude everything else: I Know Places is powered by drum’n’bass-influenced breakbeats; single Shake It Off pitches a My Sharona-ish beat against blaring hip-hop synths; the alternately pulsing and drifting electronics of Style and Clean mark 1989 out as an album made in the wake of Random Access Memories and Cliff Martinez’s 2011 soundtrack to Drive.
But the really striking thing about 1989 is how completely Taylor Swift dominates the album: Martin, Kurstin et al make umpteen highly polished pop records every year, but they’re seldom as clever or as sharp or as perfectly attuned as this, which suggests those qualities were brought to the project by the woman whose name is on the cover. As a songwriter, Swift has a keen grasp both of her audience and of pop history. She avoids the usual hollow platitudes about self-empowerment and meaningless aspirational guff about the VIP area in the club in favour of Springsteenesque narratives of escape and the kind of doomed romantic fatalism in which 60s girl groups dealt: the protagonists of I Know Places don’t end the song being pulled lifeless from a mangled car wreck, as they would have done had the Shangri-Las been in charge of proceedings, but they sound like they might, quite soon.
She also has a neat line in twisting cliches until they sound original. Shake It Off takes as its subject that great latterday pop bugbear, the haters, but avoids the usual line – the rather brittle insistence that their presence has somehow contributed to the artist’s inner strength – in favour of suggesting you just ignore them. If you were the kind of person wont to describe pop songs as “meta”, you could apply the term to How You Get the Girl, a knowing checklist of the kind of love-song platitudes that Swift’s peers might easily punt out with a straight face. If Wildest Dreams bears a hint of Lana del Ray, there’s something hugely cheering about the way Swift turns the persona of the pathetic female appendage snivelling over her bad-boy boyfriend on its head. Ramping up the melodrama by way of Be My Babyish drums, Wildest Dreams paints the man as the victim, doomed to spend the rest of his life haunted by what he’s carelessly lost.
“The drought was the very worst,” she sings at the outset of Clean. It’s not just that this is a pretty striking line with which to open a pop song, it’s that you can’t imagine any of Taylor Swift’s competitors coming up with anything remotely like it. Whether that’s because they couldn’t be bothered – you’d have to be hard of hearing to miss the distinct, depressing air of will-this-do? that currently runs through pop music – or because they just couldn’t is debatable. Either way, on 1989 the reasons she’s afforded the kind of respect denied to her peers are abundantly obvious.
Taylor Swift: ‘Sexy? Not on my radar’ | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/aug/17/brothers-review-akshay-kumar-is-lead-weeble-in-feeble-warrior-remake | Film | 2015-08-17T11:15:28.000Z | Mike McCahill | Brothers review – Akshay Kumar is lead Weeble in feeble Warrior remake | Bollywood has long eyed up Hollywood for inspiration: since the millennium, it’s remade everything from The Godfather (2008’s Sarkar Raj) tothe David Duchovny heart transplant saga Return to Me (2004’s Dil Ne Jise Apne Kahaa). Fox’s high-profile Brothers forms an interesting case study, reworking material that flopped the first time around: Gavin O’Connor’s Warrior, that 2011 mix of mythology and mixed martial arts that sought to provide rock ’em-sock ’em entertainment to crowds whose credit had been crunched. (Sadly, they couldn’t afford the ticket.) That film was very specifically tied to an America reeling from rounds of foreclosures and lay-offs; removed of that context, the story can’t pack the same punch.
The husband-and-wife team of Karan Malhotra (who directs) and Ekta Pathak Malhotra (who adapts) doubtless sensed the underlying melodrama would translate easily into Hindi. Again, the focus is on damaged men – a father and his estranged sons – who can only truly express themselves through violence, although the Malhotras have reconfigured the relationships. Their retelling opens with the father (Jackie Shroff), sometime boxer-turned-greying drunk, emerging from jail, before introducing “bad son” Monty (Sidharth Malhotra, no relation), a pushover in this version, and “good son” David (Akshay Kumar), a fighter-turned-teacher returning to the ring to fund an operation for his sick daughter.
In this version, there is a fourth major character: the absent wife and mother, relegated to mere backstory in Warrior, embodied by Shefali Shah. She makes fleeting appearances throughout the first half – as a photo in a shrine, then as a ghost haunting her husband – before taking centre stage in an extended pre-intermission flashback. Trilling the haunting lullaby Gaaye Jaa, she’s a nurturing presence gradually ground down by the relentless rough-housing of the men around her, and eventually falling victim to domestic violence in the kind of blood-and-thunder scene no western filmmaker would dare attempt lest their fragile handiwork be laughed off the screen.
Considerable energy has gone into counteracting the whiff of jockstrap that may have alienated some western viewers: the inevitable mid-film training montage is intercut with a nightclub number where Malhotra shoots guest star Kareena Kapoor Khan as though she were Rita Hayworth’s Gilda. In both locales, you could conceivably sit back and admire the choreography, not to mention the physiques. Yet the Kapoor Khan number – isolated razzle-dazzle, connected to nothing in particular – indicates just how prone the film is to distraction, grabbing for instant spectacle over longer-lasting effects: it’s the movie equivalent of a fighter sitting out on the tiles when he should be hitting the bag.
Akshay Kumar and Jacqueline Fernandez. Photograph: Hindustan Times
Almost all the second-half drama feels sketchily conceived; that canvas of narrative and thematic groundwork O’Connor set down before his brothers in arms went head-to-head simply hasn’t travelled. Monty’s inherited alcoholism comes down to a single locker-room glimpse of shaky hands, and some of the detail is wrong: we’re told one fighter won a bronze in the 2009 Olympics. (If you can’t win gold in a year when there isn’t an Olympics, hang up your gloves.) Malhotra’s rushing towards the fight scenes, which are functional enough, but stripping them of their emotional scar tissue risks leaving them no more meaningful than the ABCD movies’ comparably energetic dance-offs.
Kumar, a goonish figure in his recent action-comedies, demonstrates a newfound maturity that becomes him, but these characters never feel like the flesh-and-blood human beings they were in the original; they’re really just Weebles, to be knocked down and reset as the narrative template demands. The Malhotra version connects occasionally – I admired the sucker-punching shamelessness of the final bout, where David envisages Monty as his younger, helpless self – and it may usefully redirect viewers to the overlooked original, but in and of itself Brothers feels puny and underdeveloped: at best light-middleweight, dancing round in the shadows of a super-heavyweight. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jun/09/labour-urges-tories-to-hand-back-5m-donation-from-mohamed-mansour | Politics | 2023-06-09T11:28:24.000Z | Rowena Mason | Labour urges Tories to hand back £5m donation from Mohamed Mansour | Labour has urged the Conservatives to hand back a £5m donation from the party’s senior treasurer, Mohamed Mansour, as it questioned why it had taken so long for one of his companies to wind down its business in Russia.
In a letter to the Tories, Labour’s chair, Anneliese Dodds, called on the party to justify donations of almost £7.5m that she said had come from people and firms who had had links to business in Russia.
Labour renewed its attack on the Conservatives over donations after the Tories criticised its acceptance of £1.5m from Dale Vince, the founder of the energy company Ecotricity who also funds the campaign group Just Stop Oil.
Labour drew particular attention to Mansour’s co-ownership of Mantrac, which earlier this week still appeared to have a Russian-language website advertising its services as an authorised dealer of Caterpillar hardware and equipment, with 14 offices in the country.
Mantrac said in May that it was winding down its business in Russia, more than a year after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine drew international condemnation and calls from Rishi Sunak and Boris Johnson for businesses to withdraw.
The website was taken down on Wednesday, and it is understood Mantrac’s operations in the country were fully suspended in May.
Dodds said it had been brought to her attention that “the Conservative party senior treasurer Mohamed Mansour’s firm is operating a Russian-language website” and questioned his previous financial ties to Russia “at a time when the UK is rightly imposing sanctions on the Putin regime and the prime minister has repeatedly called on British companies to pull out of Russia in order to ‘inflict maximum economic pain’ on Putin’s regime”.
Mansour revealed last month that he was giving £5m to the Conservatives, the largest donation to the party since Sir Paul Getty in 2001. Mantrac said it was winding down its business in Russia at about the same time.
In her letter, Dodds said the Conservative chair, Greg Hands, should “get a grip” on the flow of donations from people with links to Russia.
She said public confidence in politics and politicians depended on parties “doing the right thing” and she urged him to explain what due diligence had been done on Mansour’s donation.
She wrote: “Rishi Sunak promised a government of professionalism, integrity and accountability. It’s time to put his money where his mouth is. At a time when public confidence in politicians has been damaged by Conservative scandal after Conservative scandal, it is vitally important that the party comes clean on these donations and returns them in full.”
Labour has also renewed calls for the Conservatives to give more than £2m in donations they have received since 2007 to charity because they came from the wife of a former deputy finance minister in Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
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Lubov Chernukhin has also been a member of the Tories’ leaders group of top donors who give at least £50,000 a year to the party, and a member of the party’s advisory board of super-rich donors.
A spokesperson for the Chernukhins said: “Neither Lubov nor her husband, Vladimir Chernukhin, support, or have ever supported, the policies of Putin. Mr Chernukhin was appointed as deputy minister of finance by prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov and formed part of his government for two years.
“Mr Kasyanov was dismissed by President Putin in 2004 due to significant disagreements on policy. He has since become one of the leading critics of President Putin and an opposition leader. Shortly after Mr Kasyanov’s firing, Mr Chernukhin was dismissed and subsequently had to leave the country. In the 19 years since, he has never returned to Russia.
Pressure on Tories to reveal ‘true source’ of party donations
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“As a British citizen, Mrs Chernukhin is entitled to make donations to political parties based on her personal wealth as she sees fit; any suggestion to the contrary is patently xenophobic. Her donations to the Conservative party have been declared in accordance with the rules of the Electoral Commission.”
A Conservative party source said: “This is rich coming from Dodds who sat next to Corbyn as he slagged off British intelligence when a chemical weapons attack took place on British soil.
“Labour are clearly rattled by the exposing of their shadowy relationships with eco-zealots. They are so deep into the pockets of Just Stop Oil that they have the criminal group writing their energy policy for them.”
The Conservatives have been approached for comment. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/may/07/lib-dems-and-greens-make-gains-in-english-local-elections | Politics | 2021-05-07T16:06:37.000Z | Helen Pidd | Lib Dems and Greens make gains in English local elections | Signs of a Liberal Democrat resurgence emerged in England’s local elections, including in at least one Brexit stronghold, while the Green party also took seats from both Labour and the Conservatives.
In Stockport the Lib Dems became the largest party with a one-seat advantage over Labour. They will probably now form a minority administration, potentially relying on support from the Tories, independents and the first ever Green party councillor in the borough.
In Cambridgeshire, the Conservatives lost control of the council after Lib Dems gained five seats, taking them to 20 to the Tories’ 28. The county hall is now in no overall control.
Perhaps most surprisingly, the anti-Brexit Lib Dems made four gains in leave-voting Sunderland. They now have 12 seats, putting them in third place, after galvanising frustrations with the Labour-run council with the slogan: “They’ve done nowt, kick ‘em out.” The party also ran local campaigns to rid Sunderland of rats and oppose the downgrading of the local eye hospital. Labour kept control of Sunderland, but with 42 seats, down nine on 2019.
The Liberal Democrats used to enjoy strong support in both Stockport and Cambridgeshire. Until 2015, two of Stockport’s four MPs were Lib Dem and the party controlled the council until 2016, but their fortunes dived after the national party went into coalition with the Conservatives, reneging on a key election pledge not to raise tuition fees.
Lisa Smart, the deputy group leader for the Lib Dems in Stockport, admitted her new minority administration would not have an easy ride. “There is a shared animosity towards us and everything we stand for, from both Labour and the Conservatives, but in other walks of life people manage to work together with people they don’t necessarily agree with,” she said.
The Green party was celebrating early positive results on Friday, electing councillors to four new councils for the first time in Northumberland, Stockport, Hastings and Derbyshire.
In Sheffield, the Greens made five gains and managed to oust the leader of the council, Labour’s Bob Johnson, from his Hillsborough ward. The Lib Dems also made three gains from Labour in the Steel City. Sheffield is now in no overall control after Labour also lost its first seat to the Conservatives in at least 20 years.
In South Tyneside, the Greens made two gains from Labour and now have three seats on what was once an impregnably Labour council. David Francis, chair of the local Greens, himself elected in 2019, said the party was gaining a reputation for “having a presence locally, all year round, and getting things done”.
In Suffolk, the Greens made six gains – four from the Tories and one each from Labour and the Lib Dems. Cheering the results, Jonathan Bartley, the Green party’s co-leader, said: “It’s clear that there are no no-go areas for Greens any more.
“We are winning seats in areas that have traditionally been thought of as Labour and Conservative. Green politics is on the rise and it is only the Green party that is offering a clear vision of a better future, with thousands of green jobs, warmer homes, safer streets, thriving local economies and stronger communities.”
Going into the latest elections, the Greens had control of just one council, in Brighton & Hove, but was in coalition in York, Lewes and Lancaster. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2008/feb/18/match.southampton | Football | 2008-02-18T00:08:53.000Z | Stuart James | FA Cup: Lambert the name on everyone's lips as Rovers scupper Saints | The Bristol Rovers players will be watching with understandable interest when the FA Cup quarter-final draw is made this afternoon, but no one will be listening more attentively than Rickie Lambert. Much to the amusement of Lambert's team-mates, the FA's director of football development, Trevor Brooking, referred to the striker as Rickie Herbert when he paired Southampton with Bristol Rovers in the fifth round. There should be no excuse for the same mistake this time.
Lambert might not have been well-known outside of the lower leagues before Saturday, but his winning goal against Southampton in front of live television cameras should ensure he gets a touch more respect from those emptying the balls from the velvet bag today. "He got a bit of stick about Rickie Herbert and he wasn't happy," said Stuart Campbell, the Rovers captain, with a smile.
"I didn't hear it myself and didn't know anything about it until some fans came up and were shouting Herbert, and I wondered what they were going on about," said Lambert, whose 84th-minute free-kick would have been saved by the Southampton goalkeeper Kelvin Davis had Jermaine Wright not stuck out a right boot.
Lambert, who celebrates his 26th birthday today, may not be enamoured with his new moniker but he has little else to be disappointed about. His goal was his 15th of the season and, more significant, took Rovers into the last eight of the FA Cup for the first time since 1958. There might have been more than a hint of good fortune about the breakthrough, but Rovers, inspired by the indefatigable Campbell, thoroughly deserved their victory.
"It was a great day for the whole club," said Lambert, who was unfortunate to have a header disallowed for a slight push 14 minutes before he struck. "The secret is work rate and teamwork. I think as the season goes on we gradually get fitter and better as a team and you could see that against Southampton. You have to give credit to Lennie Lawrence [the director of football] and Trolls [Paul Trollope, the first-team coach] because it's down to them we are like that."
Indeed, Trollope insisted the players jump straight into an ice bath after the game rather than celebrate. John Gorman and Jason Dodd, the Southampton caretaker managers, might have wished they had inflicted the same treatment on their players before the match. The visitors managed only one notable attempt on goal, by Jason Euell, and played with an alarming lack of passion.
Against that backdrop, it was no surprise that the handful of Southampton players who sought to applaud the travelling supporters at the final whistle were shunned, and fans by the players' entrance shouted: "You're not fit to wear the shirt."
Gorman admitted: "We expected 100 times more from our players. I hold my hands up to the fans. I'm gutted for them because we didn't give them anything."
Rovers, in contrast, have exceeded all expectations, with Trollope explaining that the League One club had not budgeted to go beyond the second round. Five victories later and the Rovers coach is daring to dream about "going all the way" if the draw is favourable. Lambert will merely be hoping that his name is said correctly.
Man of the match Stuart Campbell (Bristol Rovers) | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/nov/19/missy-elliott-when-pharrell-called-i-was-vacuuming-my-floor | Music | 2015-11-19T13:26:04.000Z | Peter Robinson | Missy Elliott on hoverboards, Pharrell Williams and WTF | Hello Missy! It feels as if you’ve almost come back a few times over the past 10 years (1). Why is now the right time?
Wow! Well, the times before, we were just testing the water. I tell people, when God aligns the stars, then I go. I’d most definitely say that Pharrell was the captain of the ship – he asked me to perform with him last year at the BET Awards, and then Katy Perry asked me to do the Super Bowl with her. After the Super Bowl, I think I was in shock. I was getting mad calls: “Do you see what’s goin’ on?” “Do you see what people are sayin’?” By that point I was back at my house washing dishes and vacuuming my floor! I’ve got my scarf on my head! And then Pharrell called. He said: “If you would have it, I would like to get in the studio with you.” And I was like: “This is Pharrell, am I gonna be non-busy? I’m vacuuming my floor!” So I said OK.
What sort of vacuum cleaner is it?
It’s one that you push. It’s a regular vacuum cleaner! I do regular things! When WTF (2) dropped, my phone was blowing up – people were texting me and emailing me. People be like: “You’re not gonna have no GET-TOGETHER? No dinner?” I’m like: “I’m here WASHING MY DOGS!” They’re like: “WASHING YOUR DOGS? Don’t you see what’s happening on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook?” I’m like: “I’m washing my dogs.”
Missy Elliott: she's back (maybe) and still like no one else
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We nearly met in 1999 – you were asleep in the corner when I visited Timbaland in his studio. Do you still have the occasional snooze when people are working on your music?
[Laughs] If I was asleep it’s probably because we put in a lot of hours already. Normally, I’m wide AWAKE. Cos I like to HEAR! I hear a drum kick I don’t like? I’m like: “I don’t like THAT!”
It’s interesting that Timbaland’s been talking up your new music for the best part of a decade (3), but you went with Pharrell for WTF.
You know, it’s funny – me, Pharrell and Tim, we from Virginia. And we’re family. Tim and Pharrell used to be in a group together called Surrounded By Idiots. I always say, if I would work with anybody outside Tim for my projects, it would be Pharrell, because that’s still family. Actually, Tim and Pharrell were on the phone the other day – we’re all supposed to get in the studio, get some work done, finish it up. I didn’t know I was gonna go with a Pharrell record first, but when he played the beat it was like: “Oh my GOODNESS”. I wanted to have a record that makes people MOVE and DANCE again.
What was your reaction to Pharrell’s first line in his part of the song: “I come into this bitch like a liquid”?
[Uproarious laughter followed by brief spluttering] Hey! It’s Pharrell! Actually, when he played me the beat, he already had his verse written. He knew it when he got in the studio – he said: “Hey, I gotta get some bars on this thing.” When he started rapping, the flow was so crazy that he could have said ANYTHING! I felt like it was Neptunes Pharrell – spaceship, futuristic, boombastic type stuff (4). Yeah! Hey! Pharrell can say anything and make it hot!
How often these days do you get your hair did?
Oh, I get my hair did every other day.
What?!
HELL YEAH. Every. Other. Day. Oh trust me. My hairdresser’s house is probably looking bigger than mine at this point!
It’s a decade since your last album. How has your outlook on life changed in that time?
I guess my friends probably think I’m one of the lamest when it comes to doing stuff. I’ll stay in my house and watch Lockup, the prison show (5). But also I don’t take things as serious any more. I used to worry a lot. The reason I stay home more is because I realise that my blood pressure started going up. And I never had a vacation until 2005! I’ve only ever had two vacations in my whole career and I’ve been in the industry over twenty-something years! I felt like I had to take a second for myself before I look up and realise I haven’t enjoyed life. That’s the outlook now.
You’re on a hoverboard in your new video, but they’re basically illegal in the UK (6). Do you think David Cameron should take action and legalise them?
REALLY? WHY? Are they thinking somebody gonna hurt themselves? I mean I dunno, I don’t see no problem with them but I ain’t even gonna lie, I probably was about to bust my tail a coupla times when I first learned. They probably savin’ a lot of people from broken arms! You most definitely don’t wanna get on there and just go outside and start rollin’ in traffic! But once you learn, it’s all good.
Who’s the best MC in the world today?
I guess that means alive? That’s a hard one! I got a few people I like so I don’t wanna just say one. There used to be a time when I could just say one – I always thought Biggie was untouchable. But even then I loved Tupac, too. Lyrically, I feel it’s hard to hold a candle to Biggie.
Well, who’s good now?
Oh goodness. I’ve gotta go with André 3000. He’s something else.
There’s a lot of them out there – I don’t want to LIMIT! Drake makes great records. And Kendrick! And J Cole. They’re doing things that’s innovative, and I’m all for that. I’m at the back, cheerleading for that!
On an old episode of MTV Cribs, you stated very clearly that it’s important not to have carpet when you walk into a house. Do you still believe that?
I actually have a new house that I just bought and – guess what – my upstairs has carpet. I guess that’s another of the things that’s changed over the years. Because I’ve never liked carpet, but my new house has carpet in it.
Well, we’re all getting older, aren’t we?
We just gettin’ wiser!
Footnotes
1 In 2008, an album called Block Party was shelved; Missy subsequently put online two new songs – 9th Inning and Triple Threat – in 2012. During this time, she’s also recorded with artists such as Little Mix.
2 WTF (Where They From) was a surprise release last week. In the song Missy claims, among other things, that her body is “thick like a biscuit”.
3 Timbaland told Rolling Stone last year: “It’s something you ain’t never heard Missy do. It sounds today, but the future.”
4 If anyone would like to make a song from the audio of Missy saying “spaceship futuristic boombastic”, please contact the Guardian.
5 The prison documentary series has been running in the US for 23 seasons. There’s a lot of shouting.
6 Last month the Crown Prosecution Service confirmed that self-balancing scooter things are only legal to ride on private property, and only with the landowner’s permission.
7 “You can’t have carpet when you walk in a house.” That’s what she said. (She did however have a huge glass tile with her own signature in it.) | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/aug/14/anne-born-obituary | Books | 2011-08-14T17:18:42.000Z | Amanda Hopkinson | Anne Born obituary | Anne Born, who has died aged 87, was the author of a dozen local histories of her adoptive home county of Devon; a score of poetry collections and contributions to contemporary anthologies; and some 50 translations of modern Scandinavian novels and poetry collections. She was also a tireless campaigner on behalf of literary translators, working with the Society of Authors (through its translators' association) and serving on the translation advisory panel of Arts Council, England (until its abolition in 2006).
She was an only child, born Anne Cookes in the southern suburbs of London, and was educated at home by a nanny and a governess. Her father, Dudley, ran a shipping insurance company in the City; her mother, Lily, had been his secretary. Anne was much inclined to reading. Her great-great-great-grandfather Sir Thomas Cookes had been the founder of Worcester College, Oxford, and later, in the 1970s, Anne took a BLitt there as a mature student.
The second world war brought a change in her expectations. She joined the Fany, and worked teaching morse code at the SOE station at Grendon Underwood in Buckinghamshire. There she met Povl Born, a young pilot in the Danish air force, but they lost contact as the war progressed. They met again by chance on a London bus and were married in 1946 and moved to Copenhagen.
This was where Anne first attended university, using her rapidly acquired linguistic fluency to study for a postgraduate degree in English literature through Danish. It was also there that the Borns' eldest son, Conrad, was born. Three more children were born when they moved back to Britain, settling in Oxfordshire: Christopher, Caroline and Crispin. According to Caroline: "Anne was absolutely not an earth mother. We always had au pairs, and she taught ESL [English as a Second Language] at St Clare's Hall on Banbury Road. At the same time, she had immense energy, both for us and in keeping the house meticulously clean." She was also quietly acquiring a fluency in reading Norwegian and then Swedish.
Anne began writing for publication in the 1960s. Already a private poet, she also began writing and translating short pieces commercially before finding her feet as one of Britain's foremost translators of Danish, something with which she obtained considerable practical assistance from her husband. This was well ahead of the current boom in "Eurocrime", at a time when literary translation was almost entirely confined to the classics, or at least to "high" literature. Born contributed to both genres, for example in translating Hans Christian Andersen's The Comet (in 1982); in providing the first English rendition of The Snow Queen and Other Poems (in 1977); and in translating the entire oeuvre of Karen Blixen (aka Isak Dinesen), including Letters from Africa, 1914-1931 (1981).
Such authors could, however different to one another, be regarded as literary staples. Jens Christian Grøndahl (Silence in October, 2000; Virginia, 2003; An Altered Light, 2004) and Per Petterson (To Siberia, 1998; In the Wake, 2002; Out Stealing Horses, 2005) are two novelists whose successful introduction to an anglophone readership was due to the persistent dedication of their translator. She and Petterson were rewarded for the latter with the Independent foreign fiction prize in 2006 and the Impac Dublin literary prize in 2007.
Born also took literary chances, on authors with no prizes to their names, even in their homelands, not excluding poets. Most did not make it into print in the UK more than once: a mix of a younger generation of names – such as Michael Larsen, Janne Teller, Stig Holmas and Carsten Jensen – alongside those more established in their countries of origin, including Sissel Lie, Henrik Stangerup and Knud Hjortø.
Born continued writing her own poetry alongside her other literary undertakings. In the 1980s, the Borns moved to a house in Salcombe, Devon, that had been owned by Anne's family since 1938, and there she began writing local history and folklore. In addition to a number of books on south Devon and her Salcombe Shipyards: Poems From the South Hams (1978), she also compiled an anthology of poetry entitled Leaves (1991).
I first met Born through the Translators' Association steering committee in the 1990s. We most recently collaborated when I invited her to speak at a conference on Scandinavian translation at the University of East Anglia. Throughout she was a quiet, but erudite presence, always ready to advise from a position of specialist knowledge.
Povl died in 1999. In 2007 Anne suffered her first stroke and, four months ago, a major one that paralysed her left side. Nonetheless, she was reading her work aloud to the local poetry group In the Company of Poets two days before this stroke, and afterwards insisted on teaching herself to sign greetings cards right-handed.
She is survived by her children, five grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
Anne Rosemary Born, local historian, writer, poet and translator, born 9 July 1924; died 27 July 2011 | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2009/jul/17/charlotte-gainsbourg-antichrist-lars-von-trier | Film | 2009-07-16T23:01:00.000Z | Catherine Shoard | Charlotte Gainsbourg tells Catherine Shoard about making Antichrist with Lars von Trier | It was hard to watch Charlotte Gainsbourg at Cannes this year. Not just when she was hacking off her own genitals. No, Antichrist - the hot-potato horror from Lars von Trier, in which she plays a grieving mother who does grisly things to herself and husband Willem Dafoe in the woods - was the easy bit.
It was in the flesh that Gainsbourg was most unsettling. The day after the first screening (cheers, jeers, four people fainted), the Guardian's film website went to shoot an online video interview with her. She was friendly and frank and bright - and just so incredibly measured and intense it was a struggle to look her in the eye (a problem, if you're holding a camera). On screen, it's her top asset, this tension between extreme poise (that perfect RP voice, those finishing-school manners), and a capacity for wild, orgiastic abandon. Face-to-face, it's amplified. It's like talking to a dormant, gorgeous volcano. You can't help but wonder: why such composure, unless it's a cover-up?
Two months on and it's easier. We're in a clinically swanky hotel in London. She's brought along her own green tea; chain-drinks the contents of the pot. She smiles and laughs and leans forwards a lot, elbows on knees, drill-bit thin in skinny jeans and a purple sweatshirt and cowboy boots (it's 82 degrees outside). She has long, flat hair, a face like a beautiful old man: tiny and slightly simian.
So, maybe that freakish stillness back in Cannes had quite banal roots? Was she simply self-conscious, chatting all day to people who had, so recently, been watching her onscreen masturbating against a tree? Was the mannered diction mostly down to English being her second language? Or was it that she'd just been pitched into the thick of it: the best actress award she went on to win wasn't for another week, and, just as huffing journalists demanded Von Trier defend what many felt was an abhorrent treatise against women, so Gainsbourg, too, was met by a chorus of tuts. How could she be so used and abused? Why was she willing to be co-opted into such a gender betrayal?
Today, she's more confident in Antichrist: her place in it, its place in her. "It was like doing my first film again," she smiles, lightly. "It was like a first experience. I don't know why: perhaps the way it was shot, and because I revealed myself so much. I really wanted to go into a cinema and see how people reacted to it, but I didn't dare."
Why not? "Oh, my sister and people very close to me told me what they had felt, and I was worried. My last image of it was good, so I want to stay with that."
In fact, even that last image took some coaxing; during rough-cut screenings she was more tentative. "I would watch it and Lars would ask me what I thought. And I was like: 'Hmm, well, it's a weird film!' Then in Cannes, when I saw it I could finally see how big it was. I mean, the film was really very important." She's wistful, suddenly. "And he wasn't there at the end of the screening, he had left, so I couldn't say it to him. And the applause was so uplifting."
Von Trier has turbocharged her profile - outside France, at least, where her parentage (Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin) means she's been famous all of her 37 years. She's been good on screen before: the best thing I'm Not There, possibly because she wasn't playing some artsy incarnation of Bob Dylan. She came out of Michel Gondry's gruellingly cute rom-com The Science of Sleep with dignity intact. She showed good instincts hitching herself to Alejandro González Iñárritu for 21 Grams (pity they weren't quite realised). She was highly sympathetic in Lemming - another film about women losing their marbles.
But she was never so striking as she is in Antichrist. And Von Trier didn't just cast her in her key film to date, he lent her his personality, too - both claim her character (called "She"; Dafoe is "He") is based on the director. It seems plausible - Von Trier was suffering from debilitating depression; the film is preoccupied with the panicky, physical manifestations of grief. (Dafoe's paternalistic psychotherapist is only mildly affected by the death of their son; Gainsbourg's PhD student is so moved she goes mad.)
"Lars really showed me what he felt," she says. "And so I felt very close to him. I felt he wasn't just coordinating everything, a spectator, but as if he was with me, feeling [those emotions] too."
When she starts speaking of Von Trier, she's hard to stop. Out pours the affection: protective, indebted, defensive, all hammered home with repeated adverbs. "He touched me very, very deeply. I could feel that he was very, very fragile. But as well as that vulnerability, he showed a lot of strength, never giving up and even having tempers, which, of course, was very reassuring, because he wasn't a weak man, not at all."
And, of course, to equate the director and "She" allows for an easy rebuttal to those misogyny claims. "There's a fear of women, of course, but I find it more interesting than that. He doesn't hate women. Also, he's having fun with all that. He was quite happy with all the noise."
Gainsbourg is comfortable in the company of people like Von Trier: mischievous provocateurs, older men who take her as a muse, winning in return what appears to be tireless adoration. Almost all her early films fitted that mould: Claude Miller's coming-of-age tale L'Effrontée, shot when she was 13; Charlotte for Ever, a frankly infatuated (and occasionally nude) study Serge made of his then 15-year-old daughter. A few years later came her hypnotic turn in The Cement Garden as a teen who sleeps with her brother - directed, complicatedly, by her uncle, Andrew Birkin.
Before all of them, though, came her musical debut: a breathy father/daughter duet called Lemon Incest, which acted as a sort of foreplay to Charlotte for Ever. The accompanying video - trouserless Charlotte, 11, and shirtless old Serge on a black satin bed - is, for my money, more startling than anything in Antichrist.
It wasn't till the early 90s - around the time she got together with her partner, the actor Yvan Attal, with whom she has two children - that she took a punt into the mainstream. No wonder, then, that Antichrist feels like another first film: it's a blood-splattered, censor-baiting return to that early period, to a time when she had to entrust someone else with her reputation - a willingness to do this, to "go the whole way, to have no limits or barriers", is, for her, an actor's sole responsibility.
Yet there was one moment she will concede feeling queasy about: a scene in which her face is in the same shot as an erect penis, with which she grapples until it ejaculates blood (Von Trier drafted in porn actors for the especially hardcore stuff). "I just felt I was in a different film. And so when in the next shot he asked to show me actually bashing the guy's testicles with a piece of wood, I said no."
It's a source of guilt for Gainsbourg. "I felt bad about not being able to say beforehand, 'This I can do, and this I can't do.' But I never think things are bad or very dramatic until it's the very, very last minute. It's a big fault." How peculiar. Why does she think that's the case?
She smiles, aimably. "I think I'm in some way naive or I just don't want to see reality before I'm in it. I regret that because I think anticipation would be a very good thing."
It's a disarming admission. She's not distancing herself from Antichrist, not at all, but she's qualifying her involvement. "I saw what my limits were that day. We agree to and take pleasure in the shooting of a film like that at a certain time. It doesn't mean that I wouldn't want to do it again, not at all. But it also took a lot of naivete."
Such fickleness is a funny luxury, she acknowledges, but one she's in no hurry to quit. "I quite like the idea of never being too stable. I think for a long time I was always troubled, because I doubted my capabilities. But I think that's the way I work. I like to hate myself and then love myself. I tend to be very unsure because I like going in different directions so much. I love agreeing with what someone will say and then going in a different direction. It's easy." She laughs, self-mocking. "I need to be in the present in order to have my own point of view and to be able to take decisions. And then it's always a bit too late."
Doesn't that make her very vulnerable to exploitation?
"Oh yes, I am! Very, very. But I have people who love me, who help me. They're really like guardians. But sometimes it makes them mad because I've become very lazy about taking decisions."
It's odd, this heightened empathy, this masochistic selflessness. It makes you doubt the truth of her answers - maybe she's just being amenable in the moment? But it also must be what makes her such a fine actor. Witness her excusing of some of her character's actions in Antichrist - not so much more than a natural reaction to circumstance, she thinks. She abstains to say exactly what she thinks the film says about women (to be fair, it's a struggle for anyone) - perhaps something about the "duality of the woman mother and the woman lover".
But when it comes to Von Trier's antipathetic take on nature, she seems to feel on firmer ground taking her own stance. "I'm scared of nature. I don't really understand it and I'm not attracted to it. I feel very good in a very, very civilised atmosphere."
It's all down to childhood, she thinks. "Isn't everything? I grew up in the city, and we did spend a lot of holidays in Normandy - but it's simple nature, with cows." Not so on an a recent family holiday in Africa, where she saw wildlife in its most literal sense. "Stepping into that landscape is very scary, very attractive, and yet you could see there was no place for you." She watched a lion hunting down its prey: "It was horrible, but you keep watching. And you think of how it seems through your son's eyes, how cruel and horrid everything is." Antichrist seems to argue that nature is evil, and that women are, somehow, allied to that evil. "I think as a mother you do have an animal feel," she says, pauses perhaps a touch longer than usual. "Something which I can't really explain. You try and disguise it, to put thoughts on to it. I know I have to battle against my first feelings, to try and be reasonable. And that often goes against that animal feel."
It's curious to hear her admit this attempt at pretence. And it illuminates something of her particular skill and charisma: this fine-tuned awareness of knowing when to suppress and when to release deep, even unpalatable emotions. Antichrist remains sceptical of anyone's ability to assert themselves against their kneejerk impulses. Yet Gainsbourg's career, her whole acting style, is proof of extreme self-control.
Her performance has been both applauded and condemned for lending the film its astonishing power. Paradoxically, it's also what might just prove Von Trier's thesis wrong.
Antichrist is released next Friday | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/nov/25/goncharov-why-has-the-internet-invented-a-fake-martin-scorsese-film | Film | 2022-11-25T04:49:10.000Z | Sian Cain | Goncharov: why has the internet invented a fake Martin Scorsese film? | Sian, I’m seeing a lot of talk about a Martin Scorsese film called Goncharov. But I’ve never heard of a Martin Scorsese film called Goncharov. What’s going on?
Ah yes, there’s been a lot of talk on Tumblr about the greatest mafia movie ever made.
Released in 1973, the little-seen Scorsese flick starred Robert De Niro as Goncharov, “a former discotheque owner who comes to Naples after the fall of the Soviet Union” with the goal of becoming a mob boss. Harvey Keitel plays the eye-patched Andrey (or Andrei) “The Banker” Daddano; Gene Hackman plays Valery Michailov; Al Pacino appears as Mario Ambrosini and Cybill Shepherd plays Goncharov’s wife, Katya. Apparently, it was really good and was added to the Criterion Collection.
And you’ve never heard of it because it doesn’t actually exist.
What.
So a few years ago, a Tumblr user posted a photo of some “knockoff boots” they had ordered online that had a very strange tag on the tongue: “The greatest mafia movie ever made. Martin Scorsese presents GONCHAROV. Domenico Proccacci production. A film by Matteo JWHJ0715. About the Naples Mafia.”
This mostly went ignored until 2020, when another Tumblr user reblogged a comment made on the original post, reading: “this idiot hasn’t seen goncharov.” Like the good lord himself and the Guardian’s coffee machine, the internet works in mysterious ways; earlier this month, Tumblr user beelzeebub made a fake poster for the film, tens of thousands of people were suddenly sharing it and lo: a new Scorsese film was born.
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So Tumblr just made it up?
Yep! And like all of the best jokes, people have really committed to the bit. There’s the film’s poster, which has the tagline “greatest mafia movie (n)ever made”. A music teacher in Indiana composed a theme song for Goncharov, inspired by The Godfather. There is also a cash-in video game, with an accompanying soundtrack, and a fake VHS. “Academics” wrote essays analysing the film, which were published in (fake) film journals. A representative for the movie reviewing platform Letterboxd even told the New York Times that they had had to remove multiple reviews for the film that had been submitted by users.
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People have created mood boards, used scenes from other films to create Goncharov gifs and drawn fanart of the best scenes (apparently there is one involving a boat) and their favourite “ships”, or romantic pairings. This being Tumblr, a lot of the fanart is very queer; apparently Goncharov and Keitel’s character Andrei have a lot of sexual tension. And somehow, in the space of a couple weeks, there are already more than 500 Goncharov fanfics posted on the fanfiction website Archive of Our Own.
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Has Scorsese got anything to say about this?
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Not yet – it is hard to imagine Scorsese knows what Tumblr or shipping is, but I feel he could enjoy the enthusiasm around it all.
But Wonder Woman and all-time hottie Lynda Carter did post two black-and-white photos of herself and Henry Winkler captioned, “Me and ‘The Fonz’ at premiere of Goncharov (1973) at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.” The image is actually from the 1977 Golden Globe awards.
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Even Tumblr itself has joined in, tweeting: “Goncharov was inexplicably ahead of it [sic] time and it’s contribution to cinema is remarkable. Rarely does a film tell as many diverse-yet-interconnected stories. Hard to imagine so few ppl have seen it.”
This week, Goncharov has been the No 1 trending topic on the platform. Scorsese was second.
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I guess the last question to answer is … why?
Like Ratatouille: The Musical (a fake musical based on the movie that eventually was actually made, after people began building on a single song posted on TikTok) and Demi Lovato’s twin sister, Poot Lovato (just a bad photo of the singer), people just seem to really enjoy coming together to pretend fake things are real. While that impulse can lead to, er, sinister things that seem to be in the news every day now, it also leads to sheer silliness – which, to my mind, should be enough of a reason to do anything.
But somehow along the way, Goncharov has become quite meaningful: complete strangers, from all around the world, forming a community to tell a story and flex their creative muscles – simply for the joy of the joke. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/mar/02/gwenno-le-kov-review-cornish-identity | Music | 2018-03-02T09:30:44.000Z | Michael Hann | Gwenno: Le Kov review – Cornish identity in full-colour psychedelia | The fourth track on Gwenno Saunders’ second album raises a question about whether lyrics really matter. Saunders narrates the verses of the brilliant Eus Keus? in a monotone, before the sung bursts into colour at the chorus, a euphoric series of chords with Saunders suddenly urgent over the top. She’s singing in Cornish – after the Welsh language of her debut album, she’s switched to her second mother tongue (English is her third language) – and one wonders quite what she’s singing about: something vital and urgent, surely? Then one checks the lyric translation. The verses are a roll call of Cornish towns and that thrilling chorus actually runs: “Is there cheese? / Is there or isn’t there? / If there’s cheese, bring cheese / And if there isn’t cheese – bring what’s easy!” Is the song diminished by being a lyrical throwaway, the way the Smiths’ Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others was? No, because you can imprint your own meaning on it. That’s not to say there isn’t seriousness of purpose behind Le Kov (which translates as “The Place of Memory”). It’s an exploration of Cornish identity, from feelings of post-Brexit-vote isolation, to calls to arms, to the status of minority languages. But casual listeners are unlikely to pick up on those themes (and the lyrics are sufficiently allusive that you need Gwenno’s explanations to get the point). It’s the melodies that will keep people coming back: purposeful and direct, but deliciously blurry, reminiscent of Broadcast in their creation of a psychedelia that looks backwards and forwards simultaneously. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/blog/2012/may/09/private-providers-in-higher-education | Education | 2012-05-09T16:52:00.000Z | Eliza Anyangwe | Private providers in higher education: is it time to bury the hatchet? | The dust seems to be settling on many of the reforms announced in last year's HE white paper but one topic still seems to get backs up: the perceived privatisation of HE and the growing number of private institutions.
Writing about proposals to allow more private organisations the powers to award degrees, Kim Catcheside said: "Images of American bullfrogs invading Sussex ponds, the triffid-like advance of Japanese knotweed and rats murdering endangered birds on distant islands, come to mind. A delicate eco-system is at risk and I fear we can have little confidence that policy makers have much idea how their plans will play out in the real world."
And she's not the only one who's worried. "At the very time when the UK HE white paper is putting in place a framework for deregulation and subsidies for for-profit providers, the US government is now, following deregulation by the previous Bush administration, looking for ways to reduce such funding and create tougher rules for no-frills colleges," said professor Patrick McGhee, vice chancellor at the University of East London.
But there are also benefits to welcoming private providers into a fast-growing sector, namely their ability to cater to niche groups. Roger Brown, a professor of higher education at Liverpool Hope, puts it this way: "There is little doubt that many commercial courses meet needs that conventional ones do not. In particular, there is unfulfilled demand for post-experience courses for working adults in many applied professional areas. The typical private college student is a nursing manager in suburban Milwaukee, who is combining her career with bringing up a family, and who wants to improve her qualifications in a way that suits her living pattern. She prizes flexibility and cost over residence and institutional status. It is also claimed that, as well as flexibility and a relentless focus on customer needs, commercial providers are innovators, which is beneficial to the system."
So has the time come to stop seeing private providers as pariahs and accept them as a valuable part of a diverse HE sector, catering to a diverse group of students? And, as Patrick suggested in his blog, can we learn from the US in order to avoid making the same mistakes?
Join us at noon on Friday 11 May, to discuss the contribution of private HEIs to the sector. The live chat happens in the comment threads below. You can also have your say on Twitter using the hashtag #HElivechat
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Panel
Carl Lygo, principal, BPP University College
Carl is a qualified barrister, having practised in London and Yorkshire. He holds a first class undergraduate degree in law as well as a higher research degree and further qualifications in business subjects. @carllygo
Mychelle Pride, development officer for educational oversight, Quality Assurance Agency
Born in New Zealand and having lived in and attended school and university in Germany, Russia, Sweden and USA, Mychelle completed her BA from a private college and her MA from a state funded university in the USA. She has taught in both the private and public education sector in the USA, before moving to England where she worked at in FE for 10 years. Currently, Mychelle supports QAA's peer reviews of private sector HE providers who recruit international students. @QAAtweets
Matthew Batstone, director, New College of the Humanities
Matthew has had a long career in business, both in large organisations and as an entrepreneur, including The Economist Group, Carlton Communications and iAnnounce. As a co-founder of New College of the Humanities he created the college's Professional Skills programme that sits alongside students' academic studies with the intention of making NCH's graduates highly attractive to employers.
Jonathan White, deputy head of campaigns, University and College Union
Jonathan White leads UCU's work on privatisation. He has led the union's campaign against government plans to allow for-profit higher education providers greater access to taxpayers' money in the form of student loans. @ucu
Keanan Barbour-March, program manager for accreditation, University of Pennsylvania
Keanan has a diverse work history spread across education, consulting, and entrepreneurship. His experiences include developing and directing leadership trainings & orientations for students; consulting and researching for educational, nonprofit, and government organisations. As well as working for the University of Pennsylvania, Keanan is also a contract program manager on multiple projects at the Lumina Foundation, a private foundation committed to increasing access to quality higher education." @kbbmarch
Matthew Robb, head of education practice, The Parthenon Group consulting firm
Matt has worked in the public and private sectors in education. He worked for seven years at McKinsey and Company, and then worked for the (then) Department of Children Schools and Families on the Five Year Strategy. He now leads Parthenon's education practice, working on strategy projects in the public and private sector. A particular focus is the emerging Higher Education landscape. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/aug/24/alice-in-chains-track-of-week | Music | 2018-08-24T10:00:14.000Z | Gavin Haynes | Tracks of the week reviewed: Janet Jackson, Calvin Harris, and Alice in Chains | Alice in Chains
Never Fade
Ever since Layne Staley checked out in 2002, Alice in Chains have quietly been doing an AC/DC: actively getting better with a new singer. That’s the beauty of someone who actually turns up to rehearsals and doesn’t piss themselves too often. Never Fade does that minor-to-major key thing that metallers keep in tight reserve for when the pyro goes off, all while mimicking prime mid-90s Chains so efficiently I keep waiting for puberty to kick in.
Janet Jackson x Daddy Yankee
Made for Now
Proof of Janet Jackson’s divinity has been mounting lately. A miracle baby at 50. The capacity to lose 70lbs overnight. Whatever it was that happened to her forehead. Now, the rarest of holy relics: a comeback single as good as her prime. As the most bankable name in 2018, Daddy Yankee earns his globe-pop keep, but this is no oldie throwing herself at a passing bandwagon. Janet reaches through; the voice of an old friend, somehow unscarred by time, beaming, beatific.
Calvin Harris ft Sam Smith
Promises
“Are you drunk enough not to judge what I’m doing?” is Sam Smith’s opening gambit. Pished out of my cobra, Sammy – after all it’s midday. But I’m still going to give you the Supreme Court of Pop treatment. Evidence Bit One: this clearly should have been called Tonight but they didn’t want to mix it up with all the other songs called Tonight. Evidence Thingy Two: it’s boring. Sentence: hanging. But only light hanging, like with a dishrag or something, just so his sad doe-eyes bulge a bit.
Cat Power ft Lana Del Rey
Woman
Cat Power might easily have bagged Best Track if she didn’t spend every word of her chorus chanting “woman” in a strange mystical tone as if she’s angling to get this into the next Dove Body Soap campaign. Lana Del Rey turns up, but only to add little hype-man moments of emphasis, more of a generational baton-pass than a “ft”.
Connan Mockasin
Con Conn Was Impatient
Connan is widely known as a genius in artsy circles, mainly because he is wacky. Con Conn Was Impatient is culled from an album, soundtracking a film, Bostyn ’N Dobsyn, about a band made up of teachers, which stars Connan, in a wig, looking like a remake of Les Liasons Dangereuses shot by an LA porn company in 1989. Happily, Connan’s wacky stick has burned out on that concepting, leaving the song: slight, languid, winsome, and very nice. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jan/27/michael-chabon-interview-books | Books | 2017-01-27T13:00:26.000Z | Alex Clark | Michael Chabon: ‘Trump is like a random impulse generator’ | Michael Chabon is perusing the breakfast options from the comfort of a softly upholstered banquette in a retro London hotel: we are surrounded by high-end chintz, greenery, mismatched vintage crockery. But the menu hasn’t received the memo, and is a mash-up of international favourites – buttermilk pancakes, lobster omelettes, kimchi. “Where’s my black pudding and my roasted tomatoes?” he wails, mock-plaintively, before conceding defeat and ordering what he has back home in Berkeley, California: granola and yoghurt.
The complicated reconstruction of the past in the face of intrusions from the present is a recurring preoccupation in Chabon’s work, from his Pulitzer prize-winning and much-loved riff on the history of comics, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, to the alternate reality of The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, which re-situates the state of Israel to Alaska.
But perhaps nowhere is this interest more strongly interrogated than in his new book Moonglow (4th Estate), nominated for a National Book Critics Circle award in the US. Unsurprisingly, Chabon being primarily a novelist, it features in the fiction category; and, as described on its cover, Moonglow is indeed a novel. But it’s not that simple: an author’s note declares it a memoir, with the added qualification that facts have been stuck to “except when facts refused to conform with memory, narrative purpose, or the truth as I prefer to understand it. Wherever liberties have been taken with names, dates, places, events, and conversations, or with the identities, motivations, and interrelationships of family members and historical personages, the reader is assured that they have been taken with due abandon.”
Which is it, then, memoir or novel? As it turns out, of course, it’s both, and neither. It’s a made-up memoir, the story of a man – a writer called Michael Chabon – who sits at his grandfather’s bedside and listens to a welter of memories, their tumbling, freeform nature aided by tongue-loosening painkillers. The real Chabon did indeed sit by his real grandfather’s real bedside – his deathbed – and listen; but the stories in Moonglow come almost entirely from his imagination.
And what stories they are: tales of wartime espionage, space exploration, post-Holocaust mental disintegration, snake hunts and fateful Monte Carlo nights at Baltimore synagogues. Alger Hiss, an alleged Soviet spy, gets the ball rolling – the narrator’s grandfather attempts to strangle his boss with a telephone cord after a newly released Hiss nabs his job – and much in the book hinges on Wernher von Braun, the SS officer who masterminded the V-2 rocket programme and later played a pivotal role in Nasa and the Apollo space programme. In order to mimic the experience of a wandering memory, there is little adherence to any linear progression, and that also applied to the writing process: Chabon tells me it is the first time he’s been able to write out of chronological sequence.
But this blurring of fact and fiction goes way beyond a device; there is something unusually, provocatively committed about it, not least that Chabon constructs the narrative “to allow for the interpretation that the story I’m telling in Moonglow is the source of at least two or three of my other books”. Moonglow’s “Uncle Sammy” works for a cheap novelty company, which is exactly how his namesake in Kavalier & Clay got his start, “so the reader might wonder … ”
There are a lot of elements of my experience as a reader and as a writer that inclined me to try to push this fake memoir thing out there and see what it felt like to write knowing it was entirely invented
But why? “There are a lot of elements of my experience as a reader and as a writer that inclined me to try to push this fake memoir thing out there and see what it felt like to write a memoir knowing it was entirely invented,” Chabon says. “And one of those things is the prolonged, mounting feeling I’ve had as a novelist contemplating the rise of the memoir, of the literary memoir; and the kind of apotheosis of it, the apparent claim that literary memoir makes – that we seem to be willing, culturally, to grant it – to some greater truth, to some greater value, because of its supposed truthfulness.”
He has a specific example in mind: James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces, the controversial memoir-that-wasn’t of addiction and recovery. “So he writes this novel, he can’t sell it, so he changes the word novel to memoir, sells it for a ton of money, it becomes an Oprah book, a huge bestseller. And it turns out that he made it all up, and there’s this big scandal and he has to apologise, on television. We’re so upset with him because he lied to us, right? I mean, it betrays a great naivety about memoirs and how true they are, which is to say, they are not true. They are works of fiction. They may be scrupulous attempts by the memoirist to be as truthful as possible, with no intent to deceive or defraud or get anything wrong at all; nonetheless, they’re works of fiction. Because that’s how memory works; memory is a tool of fictionalisation.”
Far more than by Frey’s actions, Chabon is offended that a piece of work pretending to be true was prized more highly than one proudly proclaiming its untruthfulness. “What annoyed me was that earlier part of the story where he went to 37 publishers with this thing and they all passed on it, and simply by changing the word novel, not changing a word of the text, just changing the word novel to memoir, suddenly it acquires value. Monetary value, cultural value. And that’s something they want. Same book! This one they want to publish. This one they don’t want to publish. Why? Because it’s true? We all know it’s not true. We ought to know it’s not true.”
Chabon is fascinated by the correlation between our expectations of the novel and the rise of the internet. While he was writing the book, someone he knew revealed that they had a first edition of Kavalier & Clay and was curious to know how much it might be worth. Chabon didn’t know, and so did an eBay name search whereupon, among the hits, emerged a dealer in old magazine advertisements who had one for Chabon Scientific Company (it is reproduced in the book, with its enticing headline NOW! THE MISSILE YOU CAN FLY!). “And I’d never heard of this thing,” laughs Chabon. “So I did what anyone would do under the circumstances, I Googled it.” He drew a blank. “That’s all there was. That was the last piece I needed for the fictional construct of this book, the miracle of an unGoogleable thing.”
That, he contests, is the way it used to be, and the way it’s supposed to be. Readers used to get in touch with him to ask if they could buy Joe Kavalier artwork, “But now, that’s over.” He recalls loving Oscar Hijuelo’s 1989 novel The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, in which the musicians appear on an episode of I Love Lucy. Chabon was so into the book that he convinced himself he remembered the episode. But did he? Beyond tracking down the original tape, there was no way to check. And the simple fact that “there’s no way to gainsay it was something a writer of fiction could take for granted, for decades, for centuries”.
Chabon’s wife, Ayelet Waldman, also has a book out, chronicling her microdosing with LSD. Photograph: George Pimentel/WireImage
Accordingly, Moonglow also represents a sort of “reaching back”, he says, to a time when it was routine for novelists to pretend their works were a form of document: Robinson Crusoe, Wuthering Heights, travellers’ tales; “it’s someone’s diary, it’s someone’s journal, it’s being written by firelight in the aftermath of the escape”. Fictional truth, he says, “is under siege by spurious fact in so many ways”, pointing out that what the novelist always has up his or her sleeve is the reader’s consent and, in fact, encouragement: “You turn to the storyteller, to the novelist, filmmaker, whatever it is, to say, ‘Please lie to me. I want to be lied to. Make it a good one.’”
This is not idle chatter; Chabon describes his feelings about “spurious fact” as “what I imagine a performing stage magician might feel towards a con man who preys on the elderly”. The parallels with the public and political arena are glaring, especially since we meet a few days before Donald Trump’s inauguration; the whole concept of fake news is, Chabon says, “more of the same”. What are his feelings about Trump? “I really have no idea what to expect. He’s so unpredictable. He’s so mercurial. You know, I would be no more surprised if he stood up there and declared amnesty for all illegal immigrants to the United States than if he said he was going to take them all out to be shot. He’s like a random impulse generator.”
Moonglow has been a revelation to Chabon; he wrote it more quickly and more surely than his previous novels, though it sits happily in his fictional universe, in which characters can crop up more than once, and “ghosts and echoes” are always around. He is attracted to recurrence and companionship in his own reading life, from Batman showing up in a Flash comic to Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County right back to Virgil’s appearance in The Divine Comedy. He has also had fun working on other projects, not least Mark Ronson’s album Uptown Special, for which he wrote the lyrics (Ronson approached him after Kavalier & Clay reduced him to tears).
Chabon is currently experiencing the novelty of his wife, Ayelet Waldman, having a book out at the same time as him; despite their fairly regular publications, it hasn’t happened before. A Really Good Day, which chronicles her attempts to combat mood and anxiety issues through microdosing with LSD, has had a huge amount of coverage; it is, he tells me, a great book. (There is a wonderful moment when Waldman, anxious about taking mild-altering drugs, reveals her shock when she discovered Chabon has, in the past, dropped acid nine times. How is he not psychotic? “He’s pretty much the least psychotic person I’ve ever met. In fact, he’s almost disturbingly sane.”) Over-sharer though Waldman might be, the scenes depicting their loyalty to one another and their couples therapy are very moving; she also confides that she and Chabon, who have four children, take ecstasy every couple of years to recharge “the batteries of our relationship”.
All memoirs, overtly fictionalised or not, reveal something about their writers. In Chabon’s case, I wonder if it is a yearning for solitude; not separation from his family, or from his work, but from the clamour of the outside world. He writes at night, and allows himself a long time to figure out each project; although he is extremely genial and open in person, there remains something self-contained about him. He talks about his fictional grandfather’s fantasy of building a tiny colony of intimates on the moon; and talks too of the final words of the Jewish prayer of mourning, the Kaddish. “I realised that it’s fully possible to translate that passage as, ‘Could I please be left in peace. Like, give me a break.’ Even though we have this idea of this prayer as a very moving affirmation of the continuity of life and its blessings and so on, it is possible to look at that last section as just saying, ‘Could you just please leave me the fuck alone, just for a little while?’” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/mar/25/the-20-greatest-smackdown-movies-ranked | Film | 2021-03-25T12:00:02.000Z | Stuart Heritage | The 20 greatest smackdown movies – ranked! | 20. Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever (2002)
Aside from its instantly offputting title, Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever enjoys the rare distinction of having a 0% score on Rotten Tomatoes. That makes it worse than Mac and Me. As bad as Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2. What is Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever about? I watched it, and I’m still not entirely sure. One thing’s for sure, Ecks and Sever really don’t seem to get along
19. Dracula vs Frankenstein (1971)
There are bad films, and then there’s Dracula vs Frankenstein. Where to start? The fact that Dracula was played by the producer’s stockbroker? The excruciating LSD wig-out sequence? The fact that the whole film (known as Blood of Frankenstein in the UK) is so badly lit that you can never really see what’s happening? The way that a main character (played by Lon Chaney Jr, no less) is named Groton? Yes. The answer to all these questions is yes.
18. Sharktopus vs Whalewolf (2015)
The world is full of shark-based smackdown movies. But perhaps Sharktopus vs Whalewolf represents the pinnacle. We are all aware of the concept of a sharktopus, a giant shark with eight tentacles. But what makes this film so incredible is the inclusion of a whalewolf. “What is a whalewolf?” you ask. “A cross between a wolf and a whale?” Almost. It’s a man who turns into a cross between a wolf and a whale, and then fights a sharktopus with its fists in a baseball stadium. Glad you asked.
17. Cockneys vs Zombies (2012)
Richard Briers on Cockneys Vs Zombies: 'I've popped up to play these terrible killers. It's great'
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The worst thing about Cockneys vs Zombies – apart from the script and the execution – is that it required an elderly cast. And so this has to go down as the final film of both Richard Briers and Honor Blackman. They both deserved better than this, a clod-footed Shaun of the Dead rip-off where everyone involved seems to be operating at quarter speed.
16. Monsters vs Aliens (2009)
A film called Monsters vs Aliens should at least have a sense of fun. But sadly this isn’t the case for this brutally generic DreamWorks animation, which takes some very promising character design and then does nothing with it. It isn’t scary enough, or funny enough, or self-aware enough. A mess.
15. Alien vs Predator (2004)
The best thing about both Predator and Alien was that they understood the terror of the unexplained. To watch either film is to experience a sustained jolt of “Holy shit, where did that come from?”. Alien vs Predator, on the other hand, knew where they both came from and was determined to explain it to you at such punishing length that you stopped caring after about 10 minutes. Side note: can everyone stop wasting Ewen Bremner in things, please?
14. Strippers vs Werewolves (2012)
No universe exists in which a film called Strippers vs Werewolves is any good. And yet this is somehow worse than you even imagined. The horror isn’t scary. The comedy isn’t funny. The sexiness is aggressively unsexy. The only reason you should watch this is because it stars a pre-Line of Duty Martin Compston, and it’s interesting to wonder how much shame he feels about it.
13. Gamera vs Guiron (1969)
Gamera is Gozilla’s cheaper, less famous, worse-made cousin; a giant jet-powered fire-breathing turtle whose nickname, embarrassingly, is “the friend of all children”. Nevertheless, I have an enormous soft spot for Gamera, not least because he has the best theme tune in all of cinema history. All Gamera films are great, but I have gone with 1969’s Gamera vs Guiron here because it’s the only one with cannibal aliens in it.
12. The People vs Larry Flynt (1996)
Fine, this is a loophole because it has “vs” in the title, but have you seen The People vs Larry Flynt lately? It’s great. Woody Harrelson’s best role, Courtney Love’s best role, one of Miloš Forman’s best films. I have ranked it lower than Freddy vs Jason here, purely because there aren’t as many underwater decapitation scenes. But, whatever, you should watch it again anyway.
11. Freddy vs Jason (2003)
If you have forgotten that Freddy vs Jason existed, well done. It is a crossover horror that pitted Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees against one another, after Krueger revived Voorhees in hell. A terrible film that did lasting damage to both franchises, Freddy vs Jason also has the indignity of being Robert Englund’s final outing as Freddy. It is worth pointing out that this film was made because fans asked for it. The moral of this story is that you should never listen to fans.
10. Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla (1974)
You can take your pick of films where Godzilla beats up other massive monsters but, for me, 1974’s Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla deserves mention purely for how nuts it is. A robot Godzilla controlled by shonky-looking space chimps attacks Japan and almost takes out actual Godzilla. The only way that Godzilla can stop it is by teaming up with King Caesar, a sort of massive bejewelled kung-fu dog. There are rumours that Mechagodzilla will reappear in this year’s Godzilla vs Kong. But not King Caesar. We don’t deserve King Caesar.
9. Eagle vs Shark (2007)
Sadly, not a film about an eagle fighting a shark. Instead, this is Taika Waititi’s first film, and by far his least successful. A romcom where Jemaine Clement edges closer to Loren Horsley, it almost drowns in its own uncontrollable thirst for whimsy. I would suggest watching Boy instead, but that doesn’t have a “vs” in its title.
8. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)
Is it worth watching Batman v Superman again, now that Zack Snyder’s Justice League is out? No. The film hasn’t got any better since the last time you saw it. It still blows an incredibly good premise – Bruce Wayne being a first-hand witness of Superman’s unwitting destruction of Metropolis – on a barrage of overblown, self-serious scenes of abject brooding. It still mashes all the fight scenes into an incomprehensible CGI soup. The word “Martha” still does a preposterous amount of heavy lifting. It is still a very stupid film.
7. Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus (2009)
Many of the films on this list are influential, but only one can really say that it directly influenced Sharknado. There isn’t a lot you need to know here. There’s a mega shark, and a giant octopus, and they fight each other. In fairness, the majority of the film is made up of Debbie Gibson standing in a succession of submarines and laboratories talking about either mega sharks or giant octopuses. But this is all worth enduring for the fight scenes. Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus may well be the only film in history where a megalodon jumps a mile in the air to bite an aeroplane in half.
6. Billy the Kid Versus Dracula (1966)
John Carradine as the count in Billy the Kid Versus Dracula. Photograph: TCD/Prod.DB/Alamy
William Beaudine made a hell of a lot of films in his 51-year directing career, his record being the 11 he released in 1942 alone. Some of his work, such as Jean Harlow’s first headliner, Three Wise Girls (1932), are pretty good. And then there’s Billy the Kid Versus Dracula. Made alongside Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter – both were shot in a total of eight days – Billy the Kid Versus Dracula needs to be seen to be believed. Dracula visits the wild west and tries to drink the blood of Billy the Kid’s fiancee, but (spoiler alert) Billy the Kid throws a gun at Dracula’s head and kills him. Fun fact: this is the only one of John Carradine’s films that he regretted, and he once made a film called The Astro-Zombies.
5. Kramer vs Kramer (1979)
A lot of smackdown movie brutality comes from men in rubber suits hurling each other around model villages. But there is another kind of smackdown movie, one so emotionally gruelling that watching it makes you feel as if you have been beaten up. This is Kramer vs Kramer, a film in which Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep tear chunks out of each other for custody of their son. It hasn’t aged terrifically well, not least thanks to stories about Hoffman’s misbehaviour on set, but it still packs a punch. Honestly, if Marriage Story had “vs” in the title somewhere, I would have put that in here as well.
4. Joe Versus the Volcano (1990)
Again, a film about a man with a chronic illness travelling to the South Pacific in order to fling himself into an active volcano does not necessarily sound like the stuff of smackdown. But hear me out. First, there is the “versus” in the title, always a sign of a good time. Second, John Patrick Shanley’s romantic comedy is so stubbornly weird, so content to explore its own battered logic, that it repelled mainstream audiences. Not only is this the best and most ambitious of the Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan romcom trilogy, but it is also a genuine cult film. A smackdown movie in spirit.
3. King Kong vs Godzilla (1962)
As this is being written, nobody knows whether 2021’s Godzilla vs Kong is any good (although, come on, how can it not be?). Still, even if it flops hard, we always have the original to fall back on. I will admit that I first watched King Kong vs Godzilla with a sense of obnoxious irony, but that dissipated on subsequent viewing. Not only is it genuinely thrilling in places, but it also functions as a deeply prescient clickbait satire. After all, the two monsters only fight because the head of a pharmaceutical company wants better ratings for a TV show.
2. Scott Pilgrim vs the World (2010)
I might have pushed the definition of “smackdown movie” a little too far here and there. But Scott Pilgrim vs the World absolutely belongs on this list. A young man has to battle the seven evil exes of his girlfriend in order to win her heart. If you kept this film completely intact, but dressed Chris Evans and Brandon Routh in rubber lizard suits, this would be the greatest Godzilla movie of all time. Better yet, Scott Pilgrim flopped so dramatically on release that there is still a giddy sense of discovery whenever anyone watches it for the first time, same as whenever anyone stumbles across an old kaiju movie. It belongs here.
1. Mothra vs Godzilla (1964)
Epic battle … Mothra vs Godzilla (released as Godzilla vs the Thingi n the US). Photograph: TCD/Prod.DB/Alamy
As is hopefully becoming evident, this whole list could have contained nothing but Godzilla movies. But the best of this genre is the sequel to King Kong vs Godzilla. The story is simplistic enough – Godzilla fights a giant moth – but the appeal comes from the era in which it was made. Previously, Godzilla was solely an antagonist; an analogue for the still-fresh horrors of nuclear warfare. Afterwards, he softened and the films simply became fodder for teenagers chasing a quick thrill. This film was made right in the sweet spot. Godzilla is the baddie, but he also kills the baddies. There’s a ton of action sequences, and a weighty morality. And, unlike modern CGI sludgefests, it is beautiful to look at. The undisputed champion.
Godzilla vs Kong is released on 1 April in the UK. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/aug/08/scottishpower-build-150m-green-hydrogen-plant-port-felixstowe | Environment | 2022-08-08T13:10:08.000Z | Alex Lawson | ScottishPower to build £150m green hydrogen plant at Port of Felixstowe | ScottishPower is planning to build a £150m green hydrogen plant at the Port of Felixstowe to power trains, trucks and ships, the Guardian can reveal.
The energy company has drawn up proposals for a 100megawatt plant at the Suffolk port which will provide enough fuel to power 1300 hydrogen trucks from 2026.
The company, owned by €63bn Spanish utilities giant Iberdrola, said demand for the green fuel had stepped up since petrol and diesel prices began to soar last year, emboldening the firm to invest.
It has submitted an application to the government’s Net Zero Hydrogen Fund, which provides state backing to develop low-carbon hydrogen projects for the next three years. ScottishPower estimated the whole project could cost between £100m and £150m.
ScottishPower plans to build the facility, which will be around the size of a football pitch, on brownfield land within the port, which is one of the busiest in the UK and a trade hub.
Green hydrogen is produced by using renewable electricity to drive an electrolyser that splits water into hydrogen and oxygen. The gas is burned to produce power, emitting water vapour, warm air, and no carbon greenhouse gases. But, depending on the method of burning, it can also cause health-harming air pollution and, as a climate-heating gas itself, any leakage of hydrogen could offset some of the advantages of its use.
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ScottishPower plans to supply hydrogen to the vehicles and machinery used by the Port of Felixstowe, which is owned by Hutchison Ports, part of Hong Kong based multinational CK Hutchison.
About 6,000 heavy goods vehicles a year use the port and logistics providers are increasingly studying hydrogen as an option to cut fuel bills and carbon emissions. The hydrogen will also be used to power trains used for rail freight into the port and shipping vessels.
ScottishPower, headquartered in Glasgow, already has significant interests in East Anglia, where it has offshore windfarms. Iberdrola owns Europe’s largest production site for green hydrogen for industrial use, at Puertollano in Spain.
Barry Carruthers, the hydrogen director at ScottishPower, told the Guardian: “The strength of demand from the port itself, logistics and distribution companies and rail freight companies has given use the confidence to press ahead with this facility. This is a big, industrial scale project that we’re doing at pace.
“The cost of hydrogen is now comparable with diesel so this can be cheaper and cleaner for customers. The market has given us a really good glide path.”
ScottishPower is already in the process of developing a smaller hydrogen facility at Whitelee, the UK’s largest onshore windfarm near Glasgow, in partnership with Sheffield’s ITM Power. The 20MW electrolyser, which is due to produce hydrogen by next year, is expected to make up to 8 tonnes of green hydrogen a day, roughly equivalent to fuelling 550 buses to travel from Glasgow to Edinburgh and back again each day.
Carruthers said the Felixstowe site would also offer the opportunity to produce “green ammonia” from green hydrogen, which can then be used in agricultural fertiliser.
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Further up the Suffolk coast, environmental campaigners have protested against proposals for the £20bn Sizewell C nuclear power station.
But Carruthers said the proposed hydrogen plant “will not dominate the skyline” and is likely to be built within the grounds of the port. “For locals it should mean less diesel pollution and cleaner power for the trains and lorries in the area,” he said.
Last week it was announced that dockers at Felixstowe belonging to the Unite union are planning eight days of strike action over pay that are expected to cause serious disruption to the UK’s largest container port.
This article was amended on 18 August 2022. An earlier version said that no greenhouse gases are emitted when green hydrogen is burned; that meant to refer to carbon greenhouse gases. It was further amended on 14 November 2022 to provide more details about the possible effects of using green hydrogen. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/26/why-young-people-growing-mullets-inspired-by-much-better-hairstyle | Opinion | 2023-10-26T10:00:32.000Z | Adrian Chiles | Why are young people all growing mullets? I’ve been inspired by a much better hairstyle | Adrian Chiles | Icould see there was something significant going on with this lad’s hair. Max, 13, had plainly gone to some trouble with it. His mum and dad, old friends of mine, clocked my quizzical look. “He wants a mullet and this is the closest we’ve let him get to it,” his mum said. Max explained that even getting this far on the road to full mullet had demanded some subterfuge on his part – a conspiracy, in fact, between him and the barber.
What happened was this: knowing his mum was watching him like a hawk, he asked the barber for a “low taper”. I don’t know what that is, but the barber did. This was a wink to the wise. “I know what you really want is a mullet,” she whispered to him. And minutes later, to his mother’s dismay, this new semi-mullet was getting its first outing on the streets of Chislehurst. Nice work, son.
But why a mullet? Max had no answer for me, other than to claim that everybody wants one. The last time everybody wanted one was 40 years ago when his dad and I were at school together. But I was in a bar on Saturday watching rugby with a bunch of youths, many of them mulleted up to the gills. Great masses of curly hair at the front, on top and down the back, but nothing on the sides. All very mysterious. Everything must change so everything can stay the same.
The last time I sported a mullet, not long ago, it was a wig I bought from a joke shop. The occasion was a friend’s 40th birthday, which we were asked to attend in hairpieces of our choosing. Norman Lamont happened to be there, sporting a big, curly, 18th-century dandy-style number. There the two of us stood, like Beau Nash and Chris Waddle, bickering about Brexit. He looked very fine indeed. Never mind the mullet; it’s about time the Beau Nash barnet made a comeback. I’ll have a word with Max about it and see if I can get him to change tack.
Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster, writer and Guardian columnist | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/apr/04/the-red-wall-test-labour-fights-to-regain-trust-in-its-heartland | Politics | 2021-04-04T07:45:02.000Z | Julian Coman | The Red Wall test: Labour fights to regain trust in its heartland | The Calderdale council ward of Illingworth and Mixenden is perched high on the hilly outskirts of Halifax, from where residents can look down on the town and west across some magnificent Pennines scenery. “You could say it is a classic Red Wall ward,” says councillor Adam Wilkinson, who is co-ordinating the Labour party’s local election campaigning in the area. “It’s predominantly white working class, and in the 2019 general election, there was a significant swing to the Tories. You only reconnect by being visible and out there, so we are getting to as many doors here as we can.”
Along with Stuart Cairney, the local Labour candidate, Wilkinson is doing a morning’s canvassing on a cold, windy Good Friday. A list of addresses has identified potential Labour sympathisers, and Wilkinson’s first door-knock yields two certain votes for Cairney. “A good start,” he says. A little further on though, they run into some turbulence. “You’ll not be getting my vote while that Holly Lynch is our MP,” says Andrew Platt bluntly. Lynch has been the Halifax MP since 2015. A majority of the town voted Leave but she supported Remain and then backed a second referendum in the parliamentary deadlock that followed. In 2019, Platt, traditionally a Labour supporter, voted for Boris Johnson. “I voted Tory last time and will do this time,” he says. “Holly Lynch was entitled to her opinion but what about her constituents? They voted to leave and she ignored them. There’s a lot of people around here who feel the same. As for Starmer, I don’t trust him.”
It is a doorstep exchange that goes to the heart of the Labour party’s anxieties and neuroses in the north, as a crucial electoral test on 6 May looms. Any round of local elections is a significant moment in the political cycle. But this spring sees a bumper set of polls, brimming with implications for Britain’s future.
There will be elections to Holyrood in Scotland, the Welsh Senedd and 13 mayoral races, including London, Manchester and for the first time, West Yorkshire. A vital byelection will take place in Hartlepool. The votes will also offer a broad snapshot of opinion on Boris Johnson’s handling of the pandemic and Sir Keir Starmer’s first year as Labour leader. The stakes are huge, and for Labour they are biggest of all in the heartland communities which defected to the Conservatives in 2019, handing the party its worst defeat since 1935. Labour held on to Halifax, although Lynch’s majority was halved to 2,569.
Halifax landmark Wainhouse tower as seen from the village of Norland. Photograph: mirrormere/Getty Images
But according to a poll for Channel 4 published last week, in the 45 Red Wall seats taken by the Tories from Labour two years ago, the Conservatives have regained the lead they lost in the late autumn at the height of Covid’s second wave. Nationally, as Johnson now enjoys a vaccine bounce, Labour trails the Conservatives by up to 10 points. If the party cannot significantly restore its fortunes in Yorkshire, Lancashire and the north-east, the next general election will begin to look like a hopeless cause. The trouble for Wilkinson, and the Labour party as whole, is that no one really knows the extent to which the disastrous “Brexit election” of 2019 was a one-off, or how many Leave-voting former Labour supporters like Platt can be persuaded to come back to the fold.
“The two big factors in places like this were the unpopularity of Jeremy Corbyn and Brexit,” says Wilkinson. “But the truth is there have also been more long-term issues with Labour’s white working-class base, going back 20 years or so maybe. A lot seem to be coming back. But it just can’t be taken for granted. For some it’s not enough to say there’s new leadership. One person I was speaking with was asking what does Keir Starmer stand for? Why’s he abstaining on everything all the time?”
The party’s old coalitions, he says, need to be built all over again. “This is the challenge for Labour. Here in Illingworth, for example, Corbyn was very unpopular. But in Hebden Bridge [a more middle-class community in the Upper Calder Valley] they loved him. And it was the same in Park Ward, which has a large Asian population.”
In this landscape of political uncertainty, one new reality is clearly here to stay: whereas people in Illingworth and Mixenden would once have been reluctant to admit that they voted Conservative, or were thinking of doing so, the sense of embarrassment has gone. “It’s like, you’ve done it once,” says Cairney, “so it’s not such a scary thought any more. That’s a bit worrying.”
Amid the alarming polls and a growing sense of disquiet over his leadership, Starmer has made it a priority to head north. On Wednesday he visited Sheffield before joining the Batley and Spen Labour MP, Tracy Brabin, in Leeds. Brabin, the former Coronation Street star, is Labour’s candidate to be the first mayor of the West Yorkshire region. Labour’s subject of the day was law and order, as Starmer vowed to make criminal justice central to its campaign. Speaking in Sheffield, he laid out his law enforcement credentials, calling for more police resources and recalling his role as director of public prosecutions: “I was responsible,” he said, “with the police and prosecutors, for enforcing criminal justice. I know what a difference it makes to our communities, so we, the Labour party, are saying we’ve got to take this much more seriously.” The reward was a front-page headline in the Yorkshire Post reading: “‘Ridiculous’ to call Tories party of law and order, says Starmer”. The tough-on-crime approach may touch some of the right buttons among the more socially conservative voters Labour has lost touch with. Labour’s other main campaign themes – NHS pay and a pro-business message – are also designed to reassure. But experienced local observers have no doubts about the scale of the wider task facing him and the party.
Aspiring mayoral candidate Hugh Goulbourne – ‘everyone in Labour knows that no assumptions can be made any more’. Photograph: Gary Calton/The Observer
Hugh Goulbourne, a lawyer who has lived in Huddersfield for 10 years, lost out to Brabin in the race to be Labour’s mayoral candidate. He says: “I studied some maps before running, and in 1997, 2001 and 2005, West Yorkshire was simply Labour. Now it’s not that far from being 50% Conservative. That’s a pretty big change. I think everyone in Labour around here, after the experience of 2019, knows that no assumptions can be made about anything any more.”
Goulbourne believes that the year of Covid has meant Starmer remains a relatively unknown quantity. “I’m not sure everyone is even aware we have a new leadership of the party,” he says. “Keir is only 12 months in, and all of those months have been in the shadow of the pandemic. It’s like starting a marathon, but the beginning of the race is conducted in complete darkness.”
In any case, he adds, the Red Wall will not be rebuilt by one man based in London. “It’s not all about the ‘great leader’. He’s a long way away. We have to get across our own message up here in regions like West Yorkshire.”
The key, Goulbourne says, lies in mapping a new economic identity for the patchwork of former mill towns that criss-cross the Pennines. The smaller towns have not seen the kind of vibrant regeneration that has taken place in cities such as Leeds and Manchester. “One of the challenges for the new mayor of West Yorkshire will be, how do you continue to increase the growth and prosperity in Leeds, but also ensure other areas get their own opportunities?”
If Brabin wins the mayoralty, she will almost certainly join Andy Burnham, up for re-election in Manchester, and Dan Jarvis, in Sheffield, as part of a Labour triumvirate in England’s north. “That triangle could be significant in giving a platform,” says Goulbourne. “We will then need to start showing, through our metro mayors, that we can deliver and that we are willing to be a bit more radical in what we are doing for places. The Conservatives’ ‘levelling-up’ agenda is too centralised, too focused on infrastructure and will come with cuts to local services. We can offer more. The green growth agenda offers huge opportunities. In West Yorkshire, successful institutions, like Huddersfield University, can develop further as R&D [research and development] hubs for green innovation, and we need to find a way to reach the towns without universities, places like Batley and Keighley.
Tracy Brabin, Labour’s candidate for West Yorkshire metro mayor. Photograph: Ian Forsyth/PA
“There are opportunities for a mayor to say are we going to double down and really invest and put ourselves at the forefront of a new future for places with proud, illustrious pasts. It’s in the blood of people over generations, this memory of the past. They will not be happy with their towns just becoming dormitory towns in years to come, however good new transport links into the cities might be.”
Whatever the outcome in May, it seems likely that the days when Labour could count on tribal loyalty in the Midlands and the north have gone. According to the pollster Deborah Mattinson, author of Beyond the Red Wall, a newly calculating approach is emerging after the recent seismic disruption.
“These places and regions were taken for granted and excluded from political discourse for such a long time,” says Mattinson. “Voters within them are a bit more transactional about their votes now.” For West Yorkshire’s new Tory MPs, in seats such as Wakefield, Keighley and Dewsbury, that will mean pressure to deliver tangible results quickly. “There are high expectations of the ‘levelling up’ agenda.” says Mattinson. “‘Levelling up’ is not how ordinary people speak about it but they are expectant. They feel that promises have been made to them, they are expecting their place to get better and it’s going to be a big ask. Can Boris Johnson deliver? Who knows, but notwithstanding the vaccine bounce, he will be judged on the future not on the past and that’s a real opportunity for Starmer.”
Tracy Brabin running to become the 'Andy Burnham of West Yorkshire’
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Back in Illingworth and Mixenden, Gordon Northing, a retired art teacher, appears cautiously willing to give Labour another chance. Like Platt, Northing voted Leave and felt let down by Labour after the referendum. “I still have my suspicions that they might make overtures back to Europe,” he says. “I wish Starmer would be much more clear cut and make it clear that we are out. He’s doing all right. He’s better than Corbyn, but Labour need to get back to their issues, like basic fairness and the privatisation of healthcare, which is definitely happening.”
Having assured a doubtful Northing that the matter of Brexit is settled, Labour’s canvassers move further along Low Moor Road, which offers a majestic view of Halifax’s old mills. For the moment Labour controls Calderdale council, to which Cairney hopes to be elected. But the politics are on a knife edge. A swing to the Tories would leave it under no overall control. Restrictions caused by the pandemic mean that a low turnout is likely, traditionally a disadvantage for Labour. Wilkinson admits that unknown political territory is being mapped out in the coming poll. “It’s been baffling to us how many members of the white working class find Boris Johnson appealing,” he says. “Lots of people seem willing to overlook the government’s pandemic mistakes. There’s almost no point in raising the death toll or the fact there’s been the worst recession in the G7. Labour seems to have gained no political capital at all from that.”
One month away from the first big test of the Starmer era, all bets are off, after an extraordinary period of politics and the worst public-health crisis for a century. But it seems certain that Labour’s traumatic reckoning in the Red Wall seats of England is far from over.
This article was amended on 6 April 2021 to reflect the fact that Goulbourne finished third among those shortlisted to be Labour’s mayoral candidate for West Yorkshire. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/oct/13/trial-of-chicago-7-netflix-rennie-davis-interview | Film | 2020-10-13T07:05:02.000Z | David Smith | I was hit and knocked to the ground': the true story of The Trial of the Chicago 7 | Rennie Davis had come to protest peacefully. The police had come to riot. Wielding batons, they stormed forward yelling, “Kill Davis!” he recalls. He was cracked on the head, knocked to the ground and felt lucky to escape with his life.
It could be a scene from this year’s summer of civil unrest in America. In fact it was a demonstration outside the 1968 Democratic national convention in Chicago that descended into a violent clash with police and the national guard.
Chicago 1968: glimpses of when the Democrats met amid a summer of unrest
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The story of Davis and other organisers of the protest is told in The Trial Of The Chicago 7, a film written and directed by Aaron Sorkin that premieres on Netflix on 16 October. Its star-studded cast includes Sacha Baron Cohen, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Michael Keaton, Frank Langella, Eddie Redmayne and Mark Rylance.
In an interview with the Guardian, Davis, 80, says he was not consulted during production of the film and expresses serious reservations about how he and fellow activists are portrayed. But he also welcomes the timeliness of its release.
“Coming out at this time is just really perfection,” he says by phone from his home near Boulder, Colorado. “There are some things that I wouldn’t agree with how Sorkin has characterised certain figures in the trial, myself included. But the impact of the movie is there and I certainly endorse and support it.”
The tumult of 2020 – a global pandemic, economic crisis, an uprising over racial injustice – has frequently been compared to 1968, when the Vietnam war was raging, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were assassinated and major cities were engulfed by violence.
From a farm community in Michigan, Davis’s political awakening came in the early 60s. He helped created Students for a Democratic Society, effectively the voice for students in the north. Davis was an activist and community organiser and joined the antiwar movement in around 1965.
By the summer of 1968, Americans were dying at a rate of more than 1,000 per month in the worst year of the Vietnam war. Davis became the national coordinator of a coalition of 150 organisations dedicated to nonviolence that went to Chicago.
“Our initial plan was to bring 500,000 people to Chicago and it was simply because the mayor refused to grant permits that the numbers reduced, but the result was a police riot. That’s how a presidential commission defined what happened. But it was watched on television by more people than watched the moment the first man landed on the moon. It was incredible.”
Eventually the city did grant a permit for a demonstration in Chicago’s Grant Park that was so benign it included parents with babies. Davis remembers that a young person lowered a flag to half-staff, later explaining it as a symbol of international distress.
“The police saw the flag coming down and basically came in and beat people as they arrested this person. We had a very highly organised team of close to 4,000 marshals so I was able to put up a human chain where arms were linked.
“We faced out towards the police to just bring the whole situation under complete control in a matter of minutes. Then I announced to the police that we have a permit and you can see we are able to secure this properly, so if you could withdraw, that would be in everybody’s best interest, or words to that effect.
Rennie Davis, Jerry Rubin, Tom Hayden and John Froines get lunch during the trial in 1970. Photograph: Anonymous/AP
“That just set off the police and they came crashing in. As they approached me, I literally could hear police yelling, ‘Kill Davis!’ I was hit on the head and knocked to the ground. I was on the ground crawling with my two arms trying to get away and just being clubbed and clubbed and clubbed. I think what saved me that day, honestly, was a little chain fence in the park. I was able to get under the chain fence and it gave me three seconds to get away, stand up and get on the other side. I did pass out for a while.”
Davis went to hospital and was given 13 stitches and managed to avoid arrest. “The police realised I was seen as the organiser of this event so they came into the hospital and did a room-by-room search trying to find me to arrest me. One of the most amazing things of the impact we were having on the city is that there were nurses who literally risked their entire career.
“This was a county hospital, they were employees of the county, and they put me on a trolley and covered me with a sheet and literally moved me from room to room to evade the police search until I could get to an exit and get out. I did, and didn’t get arrested. It really is amazing. Even today I think: wow, that was some courage there.”
But the incoming Richard Nixon administration successfully pushed for the purported ringleaders of the protest – including Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Tom Hayden and Davis – to be charged with conspiracy to incite a riot. They were originally the “Chicago Eight”, but the case against the Black Panther leader Bobby Seale – who was silenced in court by being bound and gagged – was eventually dropped.
A chaotic and raucous trial began in 1969 and forms the backbone of the Netflix movie. Davis continues: “The trial went forward with eight people and, on the opening day, the New York Times said on the front page: ‘This is the most significant political trial in American history’ – and it certainly lived up to its billing.
“Certainly none of us want to go to prison for many years, so it’s not to say we weren’t mindful of the likely outcome, but quite honestly this was a group of people, myself included, who really saw the opportunity to basically speak to the country about the Vietnam war. We had different styles and we came from different organisations but, while the movie characterises us as squabbling and fighting a fair amount, it really wasn’t the case.”
When the trial ended each day at 4.30pm, the accused, out on bail, would travel far to deliver speeches to crowds of thousands of people. “This was every night with every defendant and people were stamping their feet and screaming. It was really that support of, especially, students that made such a difference.
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Ben Shenkman, Mark Rylance, Eddie Redmayne and Alex Sharp in The Trial of the Chicago 7. Photograph: Nico Tavernise/Netflix © 2020
“We also had press conferences at the lunch break that were larger than the press conference at the White House: the entire world press was present in a massive room that could barely hold everybody. All three networks carried our story pretty much as the lead story every single day for six months.”
The trial lasted five and a half months. At one point all the defendants read the names of people who lost their lives in Vietnam. Five, including Davis, were found guilty of inciting a riot and all seven, plus their lawyer, were sentenced to prison terms for contempt of court. The convictions were reversed on appeal.
Davis became friendly with John Lennon and proposed that the onetime Beatle undertake a 42-city tour to revive the waning antiwar movement and raise funds for local causes. The first was held in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1971, but was so successful that Nixon tried to to have Lennon deported and the tour was abandoned.
Davis still recalls the day when Lennon took him to a recording studio in Manhattan: “Basically the entire audience is just me and Yoko and we sit there and I still don’t know what’s going to happen. John starts and he’s basically recording the final overdub of Imagine. It was really spectacular.”
He moved to Colorado and set up a business, consulting to chief executives of Fortune 500 companies. But his counterculture streak also saw him living alone at the bottom of the Grand Canyon for four years. “Today I teach earth whispering, how to basically deepen yourself and become more self aware and things like that. It was largely triggered by that Grand Canyon experience.”
Davis is played by Alex Sharp in the movie. Sorkin, known for the White House TV drama The West Wing and the Facebook origin story The Social Network, started writing the screenplay in 2007, but filming did not begin until late 2019. It is his second go in the director’s chair, following Molly’s Game in 2017.
The Chicago Seven and their lawyers, from left: lawyer Leonard Weinglass, Rennie Davis, Abbie Hoffman, Lee Weiner, David Dellinger, John Froines, Jerry Rubin, Tom Hayden, and lawyer William Kunstler outside the courthouse in Chicago in 1969. Photograph: David Fenton/Getty Images
Davis has mixed feelings about the finished product. “I was the coordinator of the coalition that went to Chicago and I brought back American prisoners of war from Vietnam at a time when places where I was living were being bombed by US military. In the movie, I’m made out to be a complete nerd who’s afraid of his own shadow.”
He adds: “Sorkin was seven years old when the trial was occurring and clearly had no understanding of the defendants or, maybe more importantly, the tens of millions of people that were just passionately supporting us.”
Half a century later, Donald Trump is again swimming against the tide of public opinion, according to every poll, by playing down police brutality and using the Nixon “law and order” playbook to seek re-election. Hoffman, Rubin and Hayden are no longer alive but for Davis, the echoes are inescapable. “Of course, there are very decent police officers in every state but the systemic racism in the police department just can’t be denied.
“It’s very similar to the anti-war movement. There was a period where the protests represented a segment of society but gradually the anti-war movement came to represent the majority of society and that’s exactly what I see happening now. It is Black Lives Matter but it’s also the women’s movement and the youth movement and the environmental movement and the Extinction Rebellion movement and how they see themselves as basically being, in a way, one voice.
“They don’t have the kind of coalition that we had in the 60s but I suspect that’s going to be coming. As we move towards this kind of authoritarian tendency in the government – and the government just has really lost his way – the greatest hope right now is that movement, just as it was in the 60s.”
The Trial of the Chicago 7 is now showing at select cinemas and will be available on Netflix on 16 October | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/dec/28/the-tunnel-stephen-dillane-clemence-poesy-sky-atlantic-tv | Television & radio | 2017-12-28T16:32:13.000Z | Michael Hann | The bleak, grimy brilliance of the Kent coast: why The Tunnel was TV gold | Rare is the remodelling of an acclaimed and popular TV series that surpasses the original. The US version of Broadchurch – retitled Gracepoint – lasted just one season, despite importing David Tennant to reprise his role as the detective, albeit with a new accent.
Once in a while, though, something special comes along. I’ll admit that I first watched Sky Atlantic’s The Tunnel more out of indolence than anything else. I’d already seen The Bridge, the Swedish-Danish co-production it reconfigured; I was tired, and watching something in which I already knew what happened was about as much effort as I could be bothered to make. But The Tunnel surpassed low expectations by far. In fact, I’d say it’s significantly better than The Bridge, and, given the risible third season of The Bridge, with the detective not just metaphorically but literally haunted by his past, the third season of The Tunnel, (subtitled Vengeance), doesn’t have a high bar to clear.
The first season of The Tunnel was pretty much a straight remake of The Bridge, with the Channel tunnel replacing the Øresund bridge that links Copenhagen and Gothenburg. Season two didn’t bother with the original at all: while the Scandi version concerned eco-terrorists spreading pneumonic plague, The Tunnel: Sabotage featured the rather more current concerns of people trafficking, airline terrorism and religious murder, as well as a Nazi-inspired chemicals expert, thrown in for a bit of levity. The third season, unlike the the third run of The Bridge, keeps the central pairing together and develops their relationship further, while adding in a plot that – the ridiculous ritual killings that drive it on aside – is gratifyingly, and heart-tuggingly human. The central villains are not just evil or mad: they are people profoundly damaged by loss, inflicting their own emptiness on others.
But it was not daring plotting that elevated The Tunnel.
The Tunnel: Vengeance review – intriguing sleepover kid-swap
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Part of what makes it special is its unremitting visual bleakness. It might be the case that if you are Scandinavian, Copenhagen and Malmö are the most godforsaken, windswept places on Earth, yet to Anglocentric eyes they look like city break destinations. But the Kent coast, a Ukip heartland until this spring’s council elections, has an authentically grimy, seedy air and a wintry emptiness that suits the storylines. (Even when it’s summer in The Tunnel, it still feels like winter.) Across the Channel, Calais, too, is a far less picturesque backdrop than the Baltic coastlines – a town where, we know, tension is rife and the landscape drifts on in a plain of unleavened drabness.
The other thing it has going for it is the performances of the leads. While Kim Bodnia and, especially, Sofia Helin were justly praised for their work in The Bridge, The Tunnel’s casting moves beyond that. Sometimes it’s easy to be dazzled by star power and perhaps one reason The Bridge seemed natural to UK viewers, given how implausible the plot lines were, was the unfamiliarity of its leads: we weren’t swayed by associating them with anything else. The Tunnel, however, has Stephen Dillane and Clémence Poesy, actors with a higher recognition factor – he from his work as Stannis Baratheon in Game of Thrones, she because she was in the Harry Potter series of films, among other things.
Not the good guy he first appears to be … Dillane gets tough. Photograph: Des Willie/Sky
Neither, though, are showy actors. They don’t flood The Tunnel with technique or emoting. Dillane might be the most compelling British actor at work right now. I first remember seeing him at the Donmar Warehouse in London in 1999, in Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing and being transfixed by him. It seems a little incredible that someone with his gifts – the ability to make difficult characters likable, likable characters complex, and complex characters understandable. He and Poesy replicate much of the dynamic between Bodnia and Helin in The Bridge, but somehow it seems to go deeper.
The character Dillane and Bodnia play is not the simple good guy he first appears to be – they never are in noirish dramas. He’s a philanderer, with a carelessness that falls into recklessness. And Dillane can do wonders with this part, even though it is, at heart, just a primetime drama detective. He has an ability to switch through the gears effortlessly without ever making a big deal of it. He’s never “acting” and can turn a muttered aside into some miniature jewel of dialogue.
In the last two episodes of season three, Dillane and Poesy’s acting is pretty much perfect, and their characters’ recognition of their dependence on each other is breathtaking. Poesy brings a little more humanity to her role than Helin did: her vulnerability, when she shows it, seems unforced, In The Tunnel, it often seemed Helin’s character was defined by her Asperger’s, but Poesy has made less and less of it as The Tunnel has gone on. It informs the character; it does not define her.
Come the final episode, the relationship between them – the very heart of the series – is brought front and centre. No spoilers, but while there is some trite sentimentality in the second half hour, Dillane and Poesy are almost unwatchably powerful – Dillane especially, when he comes to deal with one of the captured villains, and his anger and grief about the death of his own son at the end of season one comes spilling out.
Sky Atlantic’s collaborative thrillers tend to land a bit wide of the mark. Tin Star, the Canadian-set Tim Roth vehicle, was a mess; the disease-and-ritual-in-the-frozen-north thriller Fortitude was fun, but often baffling and always ridiculous. The Tunnel was more than the sum of its parts; a show that could easily have gone badly wrong but ended up wonderfully right. I’ll miss it.
The Tunnel: Vengeance is available on Sky Atlantic as a box set. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/oct/05/liz-truss-safety-first-conference-speech-at-least-has-not-made-things-worse | Politics | 2022-10-05T11:46:55.000Z | Andrew Sparrow | Liz Truss manages not to make things worse with safety-first speech | That was a safety-first speech. It was much shorter than a usual party conference speech, it did not contain any policy announcements, and in fact it did not really contain much news at all. Given the hostile reaction to much of what the government has been saying in the last four weeks – on the financial markets, in the polls (the opinion markets), and among MPs – the fact that Truss managed to get through this without antagonising her party any further is probably a bonus. She hasn’t made things worse.
Quite a lot of the speech sounded like the stump speech she was making during the Tory leadership, or what she was saying during the hustings. These arguments were successful with her audience – Conservative party members – and so it probably made sense to provide them with an encore today. But hardcore free market libertarianism is a niche enthusiasm, even in the Conservative party, and there was nothing in the speech that will make her economic agenda sound more appealing to the public at large than it is already (which is not very). The speech was not even particularly well written.
It is not as if the government has no plans. Within the next few weeks the government intends to introduce supply-side reforms (deregulation, mostly) in eight areas, but Truss did not want to talk about these in detail at all. Perhaps she realises the plans will not be universally welcomed, even by her party. You can imagine the conversation in the speech-drafting session. “Shall we include the bit about ripping up the working time directive, or issuing more visas for seasonal workers, or Jacob Rees-Mogg’s plan to allow people on high salaries to be sacked for no reason? Probably best we don’t.”
Welfare was another black hole in the speech. Truss did address the controversy over the 45% top rate of income tax (using the same words Kwasi Kwarteng used), but she did not talk about uprating benefits. Given the mood in the party, she may have already given up hope of getting away with not uprating them in line with inflation.
The most memorable passage of the speech was the attack on the “anti-growth coalition”. This sounded like a routine Daily Mail whinge about anyone with vaguely progressive views. It did not amount to a serious critique, and some of it may have angered her own MPs (for example, the line criticising people who “taxi from north London townhouses to the BBC studio to dismiss anyone challenging the status quo” – a category that includes a large number of prominent Tories).
It was also hypocritical. If Truss really wants to go to war with the anti-growth coalition, she would pick a fight with Brexiters opposed to rejoining the single market, MPs who block development on the green belt and politicians who want to restrict immigration. But she can’t, because that’s her party. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/8 | Books | 2008-10-03T23:01:00.000Z | Alistair Cooke | Alistair Cooke: the two sides of Bill Clinton's character | Letter from America No 2585, August 28 1998
Last Wednesday evening, just when those of us whose job is to keep one eye peeled for the news feel free to close it and listen in relief to what EB White called "the most beautiful sound in America: the tinkle of ice at twilight," a bulletin came in. President Clinton would make a public speech on Thursday August 27, in Worcester, Massachusetts. Let me put you in the mood - the very wary, watchful, the almost morbidly suspenseful mood in which we heard about that coming speech.
Only eight days before, a very chastened president had made what everybody hoped would be a full, liberating confession about the squalid Lewinsky affair [concerning his liaison with a young White House intern]. Yet, it was, to all but a handful of politicians and the media and other public figures, deeply disappointing - tricky, legalistic, evasive.
So - came Thursday noon - and heaven alone knows how many people skipped the lunch hour, how many oldsters delayed the golf game, how many journalists in how many states sat with pen and paper or tape recorder to hear a confession.
The speech, the occasion - a Massachusetts town, the joyous, stunning reception by a small audience of parents - was the shock. Mr Clinton did not deign to mention Whitewater, the FBI, Ms Monica Lewinsky, or any other inappropriate houri. A young news editor, coming on the tape of this speech 20 years from now, could have dated it 1993; or, since it gave a breath-takingly impressive recital of all the splendid things the Clinton administration had done, maybe it was a triumphant speech at the end of his first term. And that same editor, would have said, "No wonder they re-elected him. What bounce, what confidence, what intelligence, what a range of knowledge."
Then he'd see the date: Thursday August 27 1998. Impossible. This a marooned, a besieged president. Where? How?
In a totally non-clinical way, Mr Clinton gives the impression of having two characters, the tricky, sly, deceptive, engaging con man, and the public, conscientious, truly concerned, engaging, eloquent, sympathetic statesman.
So, the unreal spectacle on Thursday, which for an hour or more made me think we were living on two planets at once: there was this ruddy-faced, engaging, cheerful, funny, eloquent president - reeling off impressive stuff about a balanced budget, lowest unemployment ever, more home ownership, smaller government bureaucracy, determination to make every school in the country safe for children, to free every parent from the haunting menace of guns, robbers, drugs. The small audience gave the cue to all of us and rose with a collective shout of praise and wonder.
Meanwhile, Russia was stumbling into bankruptcy, Islam was starting protest marches against the outrage of American [cruise missile] attacks on their soil [in the Sudan and Afghanistan], Saddam Hussein was chucklingly telling the United Nations inspectors to get lost - and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was almost saying, "Yes, sir." The stock market, as Mr Clinton spoke so rapturously, so cheerfully, was plunging down 300 points, as deep a drop as any since the Black Monday of 1987. Surely, in the hour we need him, he
will survive. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/jul/04/kazimir-malevich-liberated-painting-tate | Art and design | 2014-07-04T11:01:00.000Z | Frances Spalding | Kazimir Malevich: the man who liberated painting | So fragile is Kazimir Malevich's 1915 Black Square that the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow refuses to lend it. Not even to a venue within Russia. To reach it in the Tretyakov, you have to trek through rooms of traditional Russian painting and past a great many more modern canvases filled with images subjected to semi-cubist fragmentation. Then suddenly there it is, hanging high up – this relatively small painting filled with its large black square hovering over a tired white ground. Amid the visual clamour elsewhere in the museum, it acts like a sudden silence. And the first thing one notices is that the surface of the black square is crazed with craquelure. Its forlorn state acts like a protest and reminds the viewer that in 1934, when socialist realism was declared the official artistic doctrine of the Soviet Union, this painting and many other works by Malevich were abruptly removed and hidden from sight. It was more than 40 years before Black Square returned to public view.
In 1915 it had been the key picture in Malevich's unveiling of "suprematism". This strange word derives from supremus, meaning "superior" or "perfected", and refers to Malevich's intent to liberate painting from the shackles of mimesis and representation, to raise it to a higher state and into greater spatial freedom. For some two years he worked in secret on this new approach to the making of art, keeping the results hidden from sight until he showed a large group of suprematist pictures in the legendary Last Futurist Exhibition of Painting 0.10, held in the Dobchina Art Bureau in the recently named Petrograd. They did not form a neat line, but were dotted unevenly over the walls, from floor to ceiling, creating their own environment.
Black Square hung in a corner just beneath the ceiling. This cross-wall position echoed that of Vladimir Tatlin's corner reliefs, which appeared nearby in the exhibition. But the use of a high-up corner space also evoked the sacred, for it was precisely where an icon usually hung in the traditional Russian home. Malevich's black square replaced the more usual gold background associated with divinity. Instead it faced into the room, offering a fiercely unequivoval formalist blessing.
Black Square 1929 by Kazimir Malevich. Photograph: State Tretyakov, Moscow, Russia
Malevich dated this work 1913, but this is incorrect: the craquelure has exposed small glimpses of red and these led to the x-ray discovery that the square is painted over an earlier suprematist composition. But it suited Malevich to suggest that the genesis of suprematism lay in this stark opposition of black and white. In 1913 he had collaborated with the writers Aleksei Kruchenykh and Velimir Khlebnikov, as well as the composer Mikhail Matyushin, on the futurist opera Victory Over the Sun. It was full of nonsense language, but was also intended as a protest against religious doctrines and tsarist absolutism. No black square is mentioned in the libretto, but it has been pointed out that, in the scene depicting the funeral of the sun, a black square on the backcloth suggests the sun's coffin, while the pall bearers sport black squares on their coats and hats. One of Malevich's shorthand sketches for a stage curtain also shows a square, divided in two by a diagonal line. "That drawing," he announced in 1915, "will have great significance for painting. That which was done unconsciously now bears extraordinary fruit."
Just how extraordinary can be seen at Tate Modern, where the first Malevich exhibition for almost 25 years will open on 16 July. Malevich (1879-1935) was born in Ukraine, of Polish descent. He grew up amid the vast expanse of Ukraine's sugar fields; his father was a manager of sugar refineries. Around 1890 the family moved to a town near Kiev. Until then he had shown scant interest in drawing, but his boyhood love of watching storks and hawks soaring into the sky suggests a fascination with the freedom associated with flight into space. Later, in some of his suprematist compositions, the abstract shapes were so arranged as to evoke light aeroplanes, seen from above, twisting and turning in white space.
In his teens he taught himself to paint, adopting the methods used in local peasant or folk art. Later, after he began studying art and in 1907 moved permanently to Moscow, he segued through realism, impressionism and symbolism, gaining en route a very good understanding of the history of art. Of major importance to his development were the two collections of art from the west, amassed by the wealthy textile merchants, Sergei Shchukin and Ivan Morozov. In their palatial residences Malevich encountered the work of Monet, Gauguin, Cezanne, Matisse and Picasso. This added still greater verve to his pursuit of an avant garde style, and his dizzying stylistic shifts now took in cubism and futurism. But after this exposure – within a very compressed period of time – to such an array of styles, he needed a period of isolation. This was provided by the first world war: only then, when cut off from external stimulation, could he make the great leap that suprematism represents.
His own writings indicate a complex theoretical underpinning to his use of such a bold abstract language. He is often referred to as a mystic, owing to his wide reading in philosophical and speculative literature. He was also fascinated by ideas surrounding the fourth dimension, but his thinking about art was crucially influenced by his association with the Russian formalist Roman Jakobson and by the poetic innovations of Kruchenykh and Khlebnikov. He shared with these poets a desire to explode conventional logic in order to arrive at a new empirical understanding of reality.
Detail of Self Portrait by Kazimir Malevich. Photograph: State Tretyakov, Moscow, Russia
He was also indebted to his fellow artists Natalia Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov, who reignited his passion for folk art and his interest in the power of icons. The directness of expression in folk or peasant art lies behind the blunt simplicity in some of his suprematist pictures. As an artist, teacher and revolutionary, he was determined to bust up what he saw as the bourgeois hold on art, which turned painting into "a necktie on the starched shirt of a gentleman and a pink corset holding in the stomach of a fat lady". It was a bitter irony that later in his career, when socialist realism was the order of the day, his art and he himself would be criticised as "bourgeois" by the Soviet authorities.
No one, however, was more determined than Malevich to overturn centuries of painting rooted in Renaissance ideals. This art, he declared, was merely "aesthetic", and, unlike suprematism, never original or an end in itself. It is argued that Malevich went further than Picasso or Matisse. Whereas they kept hold of some form of representation, however much they pushed it to its limits, Malevich abandoned the depiction of reality altogether.
And so his 1915 Black Square, even in its battered state, remains an icon for an uncompromisingly modern age. The Tate catalogue refers to it as a "tabula rasa", and this is correct, for it was an emptying out, of all the habits, tricks, skills, clutter and values associated with painting. Malevich was not averse to making further versions of this landmark work. Two of these are included in this exhibition, but not the 1915 canvas. Even so, this absent picture, owing to the long shadow it has cast in its persistent questioning of the nature and purpose of art, is perhaps the most dominant presence in the entire show.
Malevich: Revolutionary of Russian Art is at Tate Modern, London SE1, from 16 July to 26 October. tate.org.uk. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/feb/07/judge-rules-kesha-defamed-dr-luke-by-claiming-he-raped-katy-perry | Music | 2020-02-07T13:57:55.000Z | Laura Snapes | Judge rules Kesha defamed Dr Luke by claiming he raped Katy Perry | A New York supreme court judge has ruled that Kesha defamed her former producer and label head Dr Luke – whose real name is Lukasz Gottwald – when she claimed, in a text to Lady Gaga, that he had raped Katy Perry.
Judge Jennifer G Schechter was ruling on issues of defamation and breach-of-contract action, and said: “Perry unequivocally testified that Gottwald did not [rape her]. In response, Kesha has not raised a triable issue. There is no evidence whatsoever that Gottwald raped Katy Perry, or that Katy Perry, whose sworn testimony is unrefuted, must not be believed.”
Kesha (born Kesha Rose Sebert), was also ordered to pay Gottwald’s company $374,000 (£289,000) related to late royalty fees.
The judge’s 32-page decision is published online here.
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In 2014, Kesha sued Gottwald claiming sexual assault and emotional abuse. Gottwald denied the claims and filed an ongoing countersuit alleging defamation and breach of contract. Kesha’s case was dismissed in 2016.
Schechter said the latest ruling did not provide a definitive answer as to whether Gottwald had sexually assaulted Kesha, which will be determined by a jury in a separate trial.
In a statement, Gottwald’s lawyer Christine Lepera said: “Today’s important decision by the court in Dr Luke’s lawsuit brings him closer to the justice that he seeks … Dr Luke looks forward to the trial of his case where he will prove that Kesha’s other false statements about him were equally false and defamatory.”
Variety has reported that Kesha’s legal team will appeal this latest decision. The Guardian has contacted representatives for Kesha for comment. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/commentisfree/2024/mar/03/writing-off-george-galloway-ignores-his-dangerous-appeal-to-both-far-left-and-right | Politics | 2024-03-03T10:00:08.000Z | Michael Chessum | Writing off George Galloway ignores his dangerous appeal to both far left and right | Michael Chessum | George Galloway’s victory in the Rochdale byelection has been greeted with a shrug of complacency by most commentators. After all, Galloway has a habit of pulling off shock byelection wins only to disappear quickly afterwards, and his success this time owed much to happenstance. Perhaps if Labour had not been forced to suspend its candidate after he was recorded at a public meeting claiming that Israel had planned the 7 October attacks, Galloway would not have won. Perhaps the whole episode tells us little about the outcome of the forthcoming general election, let alone the future of British politics. Then again, perhaps not.
Things would be more straightforward if we could take Galloway, and the Workers’ Party of Britain (WPB) that he leads, at face value. They claim to be a leftwing outfit that won Rochdale on a surge of pro-Palestinian sentiment in the wake of Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza. But the truth is murkier. During this campaign, Galloway’s team sent out more than one set of correspondence. One, addressed to Muslims in the constituency, urged voters to “use your vote to send Keir Starmer and the Labour party a message – stop supporting genocide, stop supporting Israeli aggression, and stand with Palestine”.
His other election address, targeting a different demographic, tells another story. It trumpets Galloway’s record of backing Brexit, opposing Scottish independence and supporting family values. A whole paragraph is dedicated to outlining his opposition to transgender rights and his conviction that “God creates everything in pairs”. “I believe in law and order,” the letter reads. “There will be no grooming gangs in Rochdale. Even if I have to arrest them myself.” It ends with a deliberate nod to Donald Trump, promising to “make Rochdale great again”. Alienated white voters were a key part of Galloway’s winning coalition.
The WPB is as much about social conservatism as it is about leftwing economic policies. It promises decent housing, better-funded public services and workers’ rights. But it also promises to combat the “ridiculous intersectional ideology of radical liberals”, and to put a stop to net zero. Perhaps this is why Nick Griffin, Britain’s most famous far-right leader, called for a vote for Galloway in Rochdale, saying Galloway “understands the position of working-class white Britons on immigration”. Chris Williamson, a former Labour MP and now the WPB’s deputy leader, was asked on the BBC’s Today programme if he would like to distance the party from Griffin’s endorsement. He declined to do so.
Galloway’s political shift can be measured in organisational terms. When he was expelled from the Labour party in 2003, he joined Respect, a broad leftwing party that emerged from the movement against the Iraq war. Galloway last stood for Respect in 2015, when he lost Bradford West to Labour. By 2020, he had shifted gear entirely, founding All for Unity, an unsuccessful attempt to bring together Scottish unionists, including Tory and Ukip figures, before the 2021 Scottish parliament elections. Now, Galloway leads the WPB, which campaigns, in its words, “for the workers not the wokers”. Whereas Respect often relied on the activist work ethic of the Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP), the WPB was until recently backed by the Communist party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist), an explicitly Stalinist organisation. The authoritarian, socially conservative group made excellent bag-carriers for Galloway’s long march away from the left.
‘They don’t represent us’: Rochdale voters on why they deserted major parties
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Across Europe, figures are toying with the same strategy. Sahra Wagenknecht was until recently a prominent spokesperson for Germany’s Left party. She split last year to found her own project and is now polling at about 7% before May’s European elections. Like Galloway, she espouses an explicitly conservative agenda on culture war issues and opposes environmentalism. She has long called for a rolling back of Germany’s acceptance of refugees, once warning that “there should be no neighbourhoods where natives are in a minority”. Like Galloway, she was critical of Covid lockdowns, playing to an audience otherwise courted by the far right. And, like Galloway, Wagenknecht has spoken about Putin’s right to push back against “Nato aggression”.
There are plenty of caveats to Galloway’s success in Rochdale. The demographic coalition he is trying to unite – Muslim voters angry about Gaza and socially conservative white working-class voters – are not obvious bedfellows. It is more than possible that Labour will regain the seat at the general election. But politics is about more than election results, and after a decade of upsets it is unwise for anyone to write off what Galloway represents. Received wisdom has him down as a fringe left figure whose moment in the sun will pass. The opposite is the case: Galloway is no longer bound by the left, and freed from it he is dangerous.
Michael Chessum is a freelance writer and socialist activist
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at [email protected] | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/sep/29/ringleader-bling-ring-documentary-review-hbo | Television & radio | 2023-09-29T08:46:38.000Z | Lauren Mechling | ‘These kids were all struggling’: the real story behind The Bling Ring | An attractive young woman in billowing white linen enters the room and takes a seat on the floor cushion, arranging her body in lotus position. Her eyes flutter closed and she takes a deep breath, then fixes her gaze ahead. “Hello, everybody,” she says at last, her voice simultaneously beseeching and solemn. She is not here to lead a yoga class. The woman before us is Rachel Lee, the heretofore unheard from mastermind of the Bling Ring, the infamous band of boys and girls who made headlines and inspired a Sofia Coppola film when they broke into the homes of Hollywood stars and took off with millions of dollars worth of spoils.
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Lee, who was sentenced to four years in prison and set free after 16 months, has maintained an enigmatic and anonymous persona since her release from prison 10 years ago. She is coming forth in The Ringleader: The Case of the Bling Ring, Erin Lee Carr’s taut and textured documentary. The portrait pierces through the glamorous amorality tale without letting one of its chief perpetrators off the hook. “It took about a year to get her onboard,” the director said. “And it took a very, very, very long time for her to actually tell me things that were the truth.”
Carr, a prolific documentary director, has been a fan of the Bling Ring story since her undergraduate days at the University of Wisconsin. More recently, she was thinking about focusing on the story for a documentary when Alexis Neirs, one of the best known and most photographed members tipped her off to the fact that she had gone to a hair salon where she ran into Lee, who now worked as a hairdresser. “Just by coincidence, Rachel had to wash Alexis’s hair and they exchanged numbers,” Carr said. “Rachel was incredibly hard to pin down,” Carr said. Even when she consented to work with the director, “There may have been times where she wanted to back out of doing a project. It was about explaining that this is not a hit piece. This is not going to be exploitive. This is going to be a rendering of what actually happened.”
Her film presents less of a counter-narrative than a deeper, muddier psychological inquiry of the heists. Family structure (Lee’s parents split up when she was a toddler), race (Lee is Korean and grew up in a predominantly white enclave of California) and drugs (she was using Xanax) enter the picture – but no single explanation gets saddled with the blame, no matter how tempting such a clean line might be. Lee, who is now seen tending to a collection of massive crystals and no longer uses drugs, occasionally dips into therapy-speak that feels pat and points up Carr’s key challenge. “I guess I just suffer Fomo … really badly,” Lee says at one point in her raspy voice, as if a desire to have and do it all constitutes a medical diagnosis. “There were racial components to it, and then there was mental illness,” Carr said. “These kids were all struggling with their mental health as a result of questioning their sexuality or doing too many drugs. Teenagers are going to be wild but these kids were especially wild.”
Lee met Nick Prugo, her partner in crime, at a continuation school for children who had trouble staying in traditional high school. They bonded over a shared feeling of being outsiders – Nick is gay, Lee wished she could look like a Kardashian – and after-school hangs spent painting their nails gave way to more thrilling pursuits. They started searching for cars that had been left unlocked, the way some fish for quarters in a vending machine. They moved on to visiting the addresses of celebrities, and determining who was away from home based on whether their mailbox was empty or packed. And then they started breaking and entering. Their targets were the heroes of the Ugg boots era: Paris Hilton, Rachel Bilson, Lindsay Lohan, Orlando Bloom. When the gang members were arrested, their insouciant mugshots resembled those of their favorite stars.
Celebrity worship at its most base is the true villain in Carr’s work, which makes a point to implicate everybody in the Hollywood ecosystem. The district attorneys and journalists who appear in the film also own up to their own desires to be closer to fame. “We all get caught up in the ego and wanting to feel a little bit famous,” Carr said on a video call, leaning in close to the camera to show her eyelash extensions. “I mean, I look very different than how I used to look. I’ve got my eyelashes done.”
Carr repeatedly pushed her subject to reconsider her version of events and scrapped days of interviews where Lee relied on the word “anxiety” to explain her past actions. “She had a story that she kept telling: I didn’t really want to rob, I was really anxious the whole time,” Carr said, sounding fired up. “And I just was like, that’s not true. It’s not true. You know, you did it time and time and time again. So we need to get to the actual root of that, and you need to be honest with me.”
Rachel Lee and Nick Prugo in The Ringleader: The Case of the Bling Ring. Photograph: HBO
Carr, who said she regularly discusses her subjects’ transformations with her therapist, eventually reached a breakthrough with Lee. Her subject was finally able to tease out and articulate the intoxicating emotional cycle that accompanied every one of her crimes. Anxiety only played a part. “She was anxious before [the break-ins],” Carr said. “In the middle, it was adrenaline. And then after, it was clarity, it was just that white noise and the sense of: I got away with it. I got away with it.”
Unpacking Lee’s family history was a pivotal piece of the process. Lee had long identified as coming from “a broken family”, but Carr, whose own father is the late New York Times journalist David Carr, exposes Lee’s strong if fraught relationship with her dad David, a professional gambler with a laconic swagger and a penchant for suspenders. Rumors about David, who used to live in Las Vegas, burying evidence from his daughter’s crimes in the Nevada desert have long been in circulation. “David felt like a very important person to interview,” Carr said. While she wasn’t able to get to the bottom of the burial story, including David and the rest of Lee’s family brings a dimension of heartbreak into the Bling Ring narrative. We learn that Lee’s mother had to downsize to a small apartment as a result of her daughter’s exorbitant legal fees. Lee chokes up when she tells Carr that she was in prison and her father was in Korea when her grandmother died in an assisted living facility. “My dad came and visited me and said my mom died alone because of you.”
So why did Lee, who does not appear to be looking to launch a beauty brand or hook a streaming network on a reality show, come forth? Perhaps she simply wanted to sweep away the debris as she struggles to move on. “There’s this horrible, horrible thing on Wikipedia where somebody talks about Lee having lower than average intelligence, and saying that she was not capable of being a ringleader,” Carr said. Her film just might inspire an edit.
The Ringleader: The Case of the Bling Ring is available on HBO and Max on 1 October with a UK date to be announced | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/jun/28/1995-dance-music-britpop-orbital-leftfield-underworld | Music | 2015-06-28T09:00:03.000Z | Andrew Harrison | It was 20 years ago today: the year British dance music went wild | The 90s: how were they for you? Judging by Channel 4’s TFI Friday revival and attendant retro special, we’ve remade the entire decade as an all-lads-all-the-time pub lock-in of car chat and bloke rock — the genetic cradle of Bantersaurus Rex. Watch any 90s documentary and you get the same garbled precis: Kurt Cobain shot himself, then Blur and Oasis had a punch-up at No 10 while Tony Blair drank Hooch and read Loaded.
August 1995’s “Battle of Britpop” – when Blur and Oasis chose the same day to release Country House and Roll With It, Blur “winning” this overhyped run-off between two mediocre singles — is the money shot in this retelling. History rewritten by the TV researchers. But there was so much more to the decade. There was another 90s – a bigger, broader, more exciting time – and its zenith was the miraculous summer of 1995. Britpop had revitalised rock, and an unprecedented explosion in dance music – sparked off by a second consecutive sunny and idyllic Glastonbury – transformed how Britain thought, listened, partied and came down afterwards.
This was the year of Leftfield’s Leftism, Tricky’s Maxinquaye, Goldie’s Inner City Life and Coldcut’s Journeys By DJ: 70 Minutes of Madness, of Hideaway by De’Lacy, Born Slippy’and Da Funk. After Tribal Gathering and Orbital at Glastonbury, dance became the main event at any festival. The DJ mixtape was supplanting the compilation CD. The independent Mixmag crept up on the indie mags and would soon outsell them. The demarcation between serious music fans and hedonist clubbers melted away. The best new rock stars (Pulp, Blur, PJ Harvey, Elastica, Supergrass) acted like pop stars, phobic of boredom and of being boring. Fashionable aloofness became unfashionable. The reason why 1995 sits with 1967, 1977 and 1988 among pop culture’s true glory years is that it was democratic. Everyone was into everything. And, for a very short moment, everything was amazing.
Orbital at Glastonbury in 1995.
Paul Hartnoll, Orbital
Torch-wearing brothers Paul and Phil Hartnoll converted an entire new audience to dance music with Orbital’s 1994 Glastonbury appearance, and by 1995 their electrifying show was a must for festival-goers. Paul now records solo under the name 8:58, and his album of the same name is out now on ACP.
I loved 1995. I was living the life of Riley. I’d bought a warehouse in Shoreditch near Orbital’s studio, the Strongroom – for £155,000, can you imagine? – and it was a real little artists’ community. We hung out with Spring Heel Jack, Spiritualized, Future Sound of London, Jamiroquai, Republica… We had Robbie Williams falling down in his own vomit outside the pub where we played pinball. It was great fun. The Spice Girls were just starting their records in the Strongroom too. I used to watch Neighbours with the two Mels.
East London was pretty Dickensian back then. One Sunday morning I was woken up by a parade of ravers in mad hats crunching across my roof in search of some warehouse party. Here’s me, bollock-naked in a full-length window, screaming “Get off my fucking roof, it’s going to fall in.” That’s how I became friends with Tim “Love” Lee of Tummy Touch Records.
Playing Glastonbury’s Pyramid stage is a big step from the Other stage. We’d had our breakthrough in 1994 and suddenly we’re second on the bill to the actual headliners, Pulp. Terrifying. Though the Pyramid is better for big communal singalong bands, there’s a sharper sound at the Other stage that suits dance music better. We really noticed that. But they were two brilliant, hot, sunny Glastonburys and they kind of summed up the moment.
It annoys me that people still talk about 1995 as if it was only Blur and Oasis. Britpop was just a parallel to the massive outpouring of brilliant dance music at the time. It was a real youth culture revolution, the last big one really. Britpop? What was that? Just a load of blokes getting back into the 60s with a Union Jack guitar. I thought it was deathly boring, and I still do. The best thing to come out of Oasis was the Mike Flowers Pops version of Wonderwall. We got a whole easy listening revival in the 90s. There’s only so many times you can play the Orb or Chill Out by the KLF at 6am. AH
Leftfield’s 1995 debut, Leftism.
Neil Barnes, Leftfield
As half of London duo Leftfield, Neil Barnes helped forge a bass-heavy, dubbed-up sound that Mixmag christened “progressive house”. With ex-collaborator Paul Daley now working solo, Barnes has just released the first Leftfield album in 16 years, Alternative Light Source, on Infectious Records.
We put a lifetime of dance ideas into our debut album, Leftism [January 1995] but the massive success was totally unexpected. We’d have been happy selling 20,000 copies but it just exploded. And it just kept growing. It felt like this was music that had found its time. We’d been testing these tracks in clubs for years. Then suddenly it’s on the radio and we’re on Top of the Pops. It was mental.
You could never get away with an album launch like ours now. We hired the GLC chambers and told them it was a film event. Instead we threw a massive free party with DJs, people dancing in the council chamber, and a huge sound system. We spent the whole evening trying to avoid security. In the end they pulled the power at 4am. They found someone still in there on the Monday morning, lost in the corridors. I didn’t mind losing the Mercury prize that year to Portishead. Dummy was an amazing record, and we had a great night with Tricky and Oasis.
You can’t have that feeling of breakthrough again. All you can do is push the bar up. With the new album I wanted to make sure we’re part of what’s happening now. All you can ever do is reach forward. AH
Underworld’s Born Slippy as featured in Trainspotting.
Karl Hyde, Underworld
Karl Hyde formed Underworld in 1988 with Rick Smith. Darren Emerson joined in 1991, and in 1995, they released Born Slippy, the B-side of which, Born Slippy.nuxx, became ubiquitous thanks to featuring on the Trainspotting soundtrack.
It’s curious how history is being completely rewritten. I watched a BBC show about the 90s recently, and it was all guitar music, with a fleeting reference to the Prodigy. It wasn’t like that at all. It was an extraordinary, exciting time. There was a whole fusion of things going on between genres, with nobody looking down their noses at each other. We all grew up listening to John Peel, and always heard everything, side by side: Brian Eno, reggae, Be Bop Deluxe, Elvis Costello. We just took that attitude on.
Indie bands were going to raves and dance events all the time. Jarvis [Cocker] was always around, we became good friends with the Manics. The Heavenly Social [Central London bar and venue] was great for mixing. Noel Gallagher collaborating with the Chems says it all.
We worked above a record shop in Soho, and had also formed [design collective] Tomato. We were setting up clubs, spoken word nights, art events, publishing books. DJs would come in all the time, but also people like Bob Mortimer and The Fast Show cast. You felt like you could do anything. We’d go to the Drum Club at Soundshaft at Heaven every week, and meet up with people like Björk and Orbital, just to talk about what we were doing in the studio. Everyone would give freely of their secrets.
Born Slippy was huge for us. We’d released four albums in the 80s [as synthpop band Freur, and Underworld Mk 1] and sold nothing; now we had a 12in selling, on a label we loved [Junior Boy’s Own]. I spent the rest of the year trawling the streets for lyrics for our next record [1996’s Second Toughest in the Infants]. Revisiting that time recently on tour, we’ve been reunited with the attitude from back then, which has been amazing. JR
Kemistry & Storm with Goldie in 1996.
DJ Storm
The DJ duo Kemistry & Storm (Kemi Olusanya and Jayne Conneely) played a key role in the rise of drum’n’bass in the mid 90s, co-founding the influential Metalheadz label with Goldie in 1994 and launching the legendary Metalheadz Sunday Sessions club night in east London a year later. Olusanya died in a road accident in 1999. Conneely continues to DJ as Storm.
We were working too hard in 1995 to pay much attention to what was going on in the mainstream. Myself and Kemistry had just taken over the running of Metalheadz. People thought we had this big office but in fact we were running the label out of a one-bedroom flat with my mattress propped up in the corridor during the day. It was pretty underground.
Goldie’s dream was to have a label and a club. He said: “I’ll make the music, you’ll play it.” People were saying, “Who is this crazy guy with gold teeth from Wolverhampton trying to get me to play his dubplate?” We were a bit naive – we weren’t from London [the pair met at college in Northampton] so we didn’t know the score – but if you told Goldie he couldn’t do something, he was like, why not?
The music coming out of Metalheadz wasn’t seen as jungle. That seemed silly to me. We were like, hang on, we are making jungle but it’s 21st-century jungle. It’s moved on, it has much more drama and format.
In July 1995 we started running our club night at Blue Note in Hoxton, which back then was a rundown part of town. It took a few weeks but then it just exploded. By the end of 95 you could hardly get in. We had all these famous people coming down on a Sunday evening: Björk, Billy Zane, Robbie Williams. It was a heady place to be. We were all about pushing the music forward but the media were portraying us in a very bad light. Some guy was found smoking crack at Rage [a seminal drum’n’bass night at Heaven] and that was the end of Rage. I was never aware of any of that. It was a very minor part of the scene.
Kemi and I had started DJing together four years earlier, and by 1994 I was earning enough to give up my day job as a radiographer. As women, sometimes we were seen as a novelty on the drum’n’bass scene, but it soon became insignificant. If you came with a passion for what you were doing, you were accepted. We shared one set of records: I always knew a Kemi tune, she always knew a Storm tune. When she passed away I was lost for a while but the one thing I knew I could do was DJ. It was a complete solace for me. I always felt like she was right behind me waiting to go on.
The drum’n’bass scene still has a lot of energy 20 years on. It’s become a massive global community, and it gives me a lot of contentment to think we played a part in that. Goldie asked me recently if I ever imagined in the early days that it would get this big. I said yes, I never had a doubt. I always believed it would be a huge thing. KF
Mogwai’s debut single, Tuner.
Stuart Braithwaite, Mogwai
Stuart Braithwaite is the guitarist with Mogwai, the Glasgow post-rock band he co-founded with Dominic Aitchison and Martin Bulloch in 1995. They have put out eight albums over 20 years: their first, Mogwai Young Team, was released in 1997; their most recent, Rave Tapes, in 2014. Mogwai are curating a series of shows at the Roundhouse until 5 July in association with ATP.
I remember 1995 vividly because it was the year Mogwai got together. By the end of the year we were planning our first seven-inch. It was all pretty hectic – an exciting time. 1995 was a horrendous year for British mainstream music. It seemed as if culture had taken a complete nosedive into real turgid, worthless, TGI Friday, fake-barrow-boy territory. It was very retro and anti-American. There was a falseness to it. Who were the worst offenders? I would say Blur [Mogwai printed “Blur: Are Shite” T-shirts in 1999] but there were a lot of other bands around that you probably can’t remember the name of but were selling half a million records a week because they’d taken coke with the guy from Loaded or something. It was the worst period in British culture I can remember.
But there was good stuff going on in the underground. Bands like Movietone and Flying Saucer Attack in Bristol, Hood in Leeds, Arab Strap and the Delgados in Scotland… The Glasgow music scene was the antithesis of what was going on in London. John Peel was the only person on the radio or down south who really got behind us.
The power has shifted away from the media over the past 20 years. Back in 1995, people really did look to the weekly music press and Radio 1 to find out what to like. Pretty bad bands could at least have the appearance of being popular. I don’t think that can happen so much any more.
Bands get known much quicker now thanks to the internet, but you need to play around for a year or two before you get any good. It took us a while to get good. If someone had said after a few months, go and record an album, it would have been really terrible and we might not have made a second one. We had time to find our feet. KF
Elastica live at Glastonbury in 1995.
Justine Frischmann, Elastica
Justine Frischmann co-founded Suede with Brett Anderson in 1989 but left two years later to form her own band, Elastica. They released their self-titled, Mercury-nominated debut in 1995. After the band split in 2001, Frischmann collaborated with MIA on the album Arular. She then moved to San Fransisco, where she now works as an artist.
When I first heard the term Britpop it filled me with dread: it felt too trite and like an over-simplification. The bands didn’t all go together. But there was a core gang of people who had known each other for a long time: we’d dated, been flatmates, played gigs together. All of us had our roots in British music and culture, and an interest in what it meant to be British. And everybody was sick of hearing about Seattle bands: Nirvana were great but it seemed like they were from a different planet.
Elastica’s musical influences were English, and we loved a lot of the English punk stuff, but we were also influenced by the early 80s new wave stuff from New York. It was irritating to be lumped in with Oasis. None of us liked their music. I remember being confused when I first heard them – it sounded like classic-rock power ballads.
On the tour bus we’d listen to Wire, Happy Mondays, Brian Eno, some krautrock. Clubbing was never really my thing. I couldn’t cope with house music, the beat always made me feel like I was going to have an epileptic fit. But I did have a kind of numinous experience watching New Order live at Reading in 1993 with Donna [Matthews]. There was something about the warmth of those keyboards and the Germanic insistence of the drum machine sounds. After that we were always interested in adding keyboards and sequencing, and talked about that night a lot over the next years.
Peaches supported us on our last tour and she was the person who convinced me to try out writing on a 505 [groovebox], but ultimately that stuff ended up being used for MIA rather than Elastica.
1995 was a challenging year. Even though Blur v Oasis getting on News at Ten felt triumphant in a way, it was also sad. Both the records were crap. The Great Escape [Blur’s 1995 album] felt like a sell-out, a parody. There were tabloid journalists following us around and kids camping outside our door. Graham (Coxon) was suicidal. He hid behind his amp at the Blur Ally Pally gig because he was so embarrassed to be part of it. Annie (our bass player) had walked out in the middle of the Lollapalooza, which was basically a US stadium tour. She couldn’t take it. We were all playing massive gigs and had so many crew we didn’t know all of them. The people in my band were all partying so hard that I was scared someone was going to die. Damon [of Blur, her partner at the time] had a stalker who poured petrol through our letterbox and set it alight while I was upstairs. I came downstairs to find the front hall on fire. We were both on tour for most of the year; I think we saw each other for a total of a few weeks.
It felt like it had all happened so quickly. It had gone from really exciting to tabloids and sell-out in just a couple of years. Some of it was really fun: 93-94 were two of the best years of my life, surrounded by smart, talented, optimistic people. By the end of 95 it was obvious to us all that it was over. It felt too quick. It was sad. But looking back on it, it was a rare opportunity to have witnessed something like that from the inside, and I’m grateful for it. KB
Liverpool’s Cream club makes the Granada TV news in 1995.
James Barton, Cream co-founder
James Barton co-founded Cream in 1992. A weekly club night at Nation in Liverpool, it expanded to Ibiza in 1994 and has since become a global dance music brand. Cream was acquired by Live Nation in 2012 and Barton is now the US events company’s president of electronic music. Last year Rolling Stone named him the most important person in electronic dance music (EDM).
1995 was a big year for electronic music. Dance was dominating the charts, Cream and Ministry of Sound were being described as superclubs. It was the era of the DJ. It was a crazy, hedonistic time. There was nowhere more hedonistic than Ibiza in 95. Cream has launched a night the year before. Manumission was huge. The island was full of DJs, promoters and TV crews. The club scene there had gone overground in a big way. If you were British and into dance music, you were going to Ibiza at some point between June and September, no question about it.
There was lots of money to be made from club culture. Not that we were great businessmen at the time. We were extremely ambitious in how we marketed Cream but unfortunately we weren’t very good at managing the finances, in some cases blowing tens of thousands of pounds on expensive photographers, designers and private jets for DJs. That period was very large, as we say.
There was a really intense rivalry between Ministry of Sound, the big superclub in London owned by James Palumbo, and Cream, owned by a few young guys from Liverpool. And we had a fan base. Kids were getting Cream tattoos. It was like a religion.
We started Cream in a dingy nightclub in Liverpool. Now I live in LA and work for a major events company. I’m still doing today what I did back then, but on a global scale. Electronic music is a huge industry now worth billions and billions of dollars. Electronic music has exploded in the States in the past five years.
I pulled all my inspiration from Tony Wilson at the Hacienda and the way Factory Records used to sell their brand. No one really remembers nightclubs from way back, apart from Studio 54, but everyone can remember the big names from the 90s.
Dance music travels better than rock and pop. We were taking our business to South America, the Middle East and across the US when a lot of rock bands were struggling to find audiences outside Britain. If you’re a teenager getting into dance music, I think you’re better served now than 20 years ago. Yes, there was an element of excitement with raves, but they were badly organised, kids got ripped off, the police would be turning up with dogs. Now events are more professional, the sound is much better, there are more options, more shows. It’s just better all round. KF
Skunk Anansie join Björk on Top of the Pops in 1995.
Skin, Skunk Anansie
The frontwoman of rock band Skunk Anansie, Skin (real name Deborah Dyer), started out singing jazz before signing with the band, aged 26, in 1994. She went solo in 2003 and is now an electro DJ.
In 1995 Skunk Anansie were part of this scene of bands that were playing the Splash club in King’s Cross. We were all friends – Oasis, Echobelly, Skunk Anansie. King’s Cross at that time was really sleazy, so if you wanted to be in a cool place you’d go to Camden. The clubs then were sweaty, really hot, and everyone smoked. Everyone drank beer and cider – this was pre-white wine…
House music was really taking off so I’d hang out with all of these rock dudes and then go to Trade in Farringdon, a really crazy gay club, and DTPM or Heaven. I liked the dance music scene – I was raving non-stop – but I never wanted to make it [the music].
People forget there was this massive underground club scene because it didn’t produce No1 singles. I suppose because I was black and from Brixton I felt like I could dip my toes in all different things – I could go to gay clubs, funky soul clubs, reggae clubs, but I was in a rock band.
We played Glastonbury for the first time that year but ended up only playing four songs. We didn’t know where we were going – we ran on to the stage, played our songs and ran off again. We thought nobody knew about Skunk Anansie but there were about 2,000 people in front of us on a tiny stage. We named our first album after Glastonbury – Paranoid and Sunburnt – because that’s what we were all weekend. We always wanted to be on tour: in the UK, Europe, north America… The crowds were mad as hell; it was all moshpits and stage-diving. I was one of the first girls who stage-dived non-stop. I remember one gig when I could see more stage-divers than actual audience. CJ
Spiral Tribe epitomised the free party scene in 1995.
Tom Hunter, artist
Tom Hunter was born in Dorset in 1965. He has won numerous awards, including the 1998 John Kobal photographic portrait award for “Woman Reading a Possession Order”, and was the first photographer to have a solo show at the National Gallery. He lives in east London.
I was living in a squat in Hackney in 1995: we were putting on raves or going to squat parties every weekend. Some nights you couldn’t even get down Mare Street, there were so many people. In the basement we’d have a big sound system pumping out dance music, upstairs there’d be a dub reggae sound system for all the stoners, and in the garden there’d be a live traditional punk or folk band – fiddles, guitars, bongos.
It’s quite hard now convincing my students I wasn’t a drug-crazed lunatic anarchist. I moved to Hackney as a tree surgeon and ended up in a squat because it was convenient. There were thousands of empty properties. It was such a different atmosphere – neighbours would say, “Thank god you’ve moved in and it’s not being used as a crack den.”
We never had any trouble with the police. They knew there were drugs involved: most of them would go off duty and come to the party. It wasn’t an alien world to them. But they had better things to deal with than this – muggings and robberies rather than a bunch of kids having a nice time.
The Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 [which targeted gatherings with “repetitive beats”] didn’t eradicate raves, but it did mean they were on a smaller scale compared to huge events like Castlemorton. My friends from Dorset would take two speakers, a couple of decks, and go into the woods with 40, 50 people. Then people realised that there were huge amounts of money to be made in this, but to make money you have to go legitimate.
The techno did get quite tribal: everyone in groups like Spiral Tribe had short haircuts, wore minimal black clothes. It was very downbeat. I loved both rock and techno: on a Saturday night we might go to a rave in a warehouse in Hackney Wick but on a Friday I might go up to an old Irish pub and listen to some traditional folk-punk band, like the Tofu Love Frogs, and the whole audience was completely engaged. KB
Paul Oakenfold at Ku Club Ibiza in 1995
Paul Oakenfold, DJ
Paul Oakenfold is a producer, DJ and the founder of the trance record label Perfecto. In 1995 he became to first dance music DJ to play on the main stage at Glastonbury. Oakenfold was twice voted no 1 DJ in the world by DJ magazine. He now lives in Los Angeles.
Electronic music was becoming mainstream in 1995. I was being asked to support U2 on tour and DJ on the main stage in Glastonbury, and my record company Perfecto had started having big pop records. Doors were opening and we were stepping through them. It was a real whirlwind moment. Britain was a force to be reckoned with back then. For such a tiny country, we were putting out some of the best music. We still are.
When I go abroad, I realise how lucky we are in Britain to have Radio 1, because they play all kinds of music. When I first went to America, if you wanted to hear rock you had to tune into a rock station. On Radio 1, back then, you’d hear Public Enemy next to U2 next to an acid house record. It was great. By 1995, raves had developed into electronic festivals, which then started to bleed into the traditional rock festivals. That format, with all different kinds of music coming together under one roof – it came out of Britain. DJing has become a lot easier in the past 20 years. I used to carry two boxes of records and I had records stolen on a flight. It was stressful. Now I use a USB stick. It’s great but the sound is different. I loved the sound of vinyl.
Am I nostalgic about it all? No, I’m not. To stay in the game, you have to be in the moment. You have to move forwards, embrace technology, embrace change. You don’t have to like it but you have to be aware of it.
I never thought I’d see the world through a box of records. I’ve played in China, Vietnam, Alaska and Ushuaia, the world’s southernmost city. It’s a long way from where I started off, playing with three friends at a club in Streatham. KF
Hear the sounds of 1995 Spotify
Interviews by Kathryn Bromwich, Killian Fox, Andrew Harrison, Corinne Jones, Jude Rogers | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2017/jul/12/johanna-konta-wimbledon-womens-semi-finals | Sport | 2017-07-12T16:37:32.000Z | Barney Ronay | Johanna Konta’s inspiring story is about far more than accents and flags | Barney Ronay | The relationship between player and crowd at Wimbledon tends to be pegged out around great matches, an accumulated muscle memory of successive oddly intimate moments of extreme competition down the years. Johanna Konta’s gripping quarter-final defeat of Simona Halep looks like being the latest example of this process in action.
Both women played to the outer reaches of their capacity over three high-grade sets. Centre Court quivered and moaned in the way no other sporting crowd ever really quivers and moans. In victory Konta threw another grappling hook across the divide from late-blooming high-class hopeful to slams contender. Plus she added another layer to her own note of fond, purring rapport with a home crowd that for all its squealing gaucheness does tend to remember.
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It will have been a satisfying win for Konta for other reasons, too. So often dismissed as a little flaky, prone to blow-ups and breakdowns, victory gave further proof of her maturity as a competitor, of the added resilience that has coincided with a shake-up of her coaching influences in the past three years. Win or lose from here a semi-final against Venus Williams on Thursday afternoon is already a quietly inspiring tale of a fine mid-twenties talent beginning to hit the groove.
Albeit, on the other hand, we could of course just talk about how British she is. Given the flag-waving pageantry of Wimbledon it was inevitable Konta would be hailed, first and foremost as the first British woman to reach the semi-final here in 39 years. Inevitably there have also been the usual mutterings over a childhood spent in Australia, passports of convenience and all the rest.
It is to be hoped this kind of talk will continue to fade. For one thing Konta’s story has far more interesting notes than accents and flags. The past two years have seen a surge through the rankings from 146th to world No7. Konta has achieved something unusual, making the jump from just another talented satellite player to major force, an arc that may still have some distance left to run. In April she won the Miami Open, with prize money just shy of a £1m, four months after the sudden death of her mentor Juan Coto, credited with the stiffening of the mental sinews since their first session in 2014.
All of which stands without the usual awkward formal dance over exactly how much and to what degree Konta can be said to be One Of Us. There are plenty of logical, entirely non-jingoistic reasons for analysing national performance and for keeping the boundaries discrete. At its best international sport provides the most fascinating contrasts, a test of system versus system, an empirical gauge of which methods produce and nurture the most successful players.
There is a problem here with the LTA, an unimpressive governing body, drowning in cash but apparently unable to dredge anything of substance out of those desiccated grassroots, to produce a home-reared, home-coached player of real standing.
For all that this is a debate that should be left to circulate outside Konta’s late-flowering success, a Wimbledon semi-finalist who is at least as British as Eric Dier, or Keaton Jennings, or the much-beloved Gladstone Small, who moved to England at the same age. In reality sporting nationality has little to do with passports and parentage and everything to do with formative sporting years, tied to wherever an athlete’s greatest period of development arrived. It is an argument that makes Konta almost entirely British, Kevin Pietersen an English batsman and South African off-spinner and Cesc Fàbregas a Premier League Londoner.
Hopefully attention will focus elsewhere in the last knockings of this Wimbledon. As Konta prepares for her semi-final against Williams it is a shared unorthodoxy in both women’s path to this point that stands out rather than questions of nationality. Nothing in sport quite compares to the success of the Williams sisters, champion outsiders whose path to the top has been forged by nothing more than their own talent and tenacity. At 37 Williams is more than a decade older then Konta and an all-time hall of famer.
If there is a similarity it is in the freelance, self-propelling nature of both players’ backgrounds, further evidence perhaps that national identity in individual sports is a complex, diffuse, increasingly fugged and complex notion. For now Konta will fancy her chances. She has an encouraging 3-2 win record against Williams.
She was brilliantly assertive in that quarter-final win against Halep, hitting with power off both wings, serving with precision, and playing with sustained aggression. Victory would set the scene for an unusually fevered weekend and another note in what already looks like becoming another beautiful SW19 friendship. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/jan/21/mash-movie-robert-altman-misogyny | Film | 2020-01-22T07:15:18.000Z | Noah Gittell | M*A*S*H at 50: the Robert Altman comedy that revels in cruel misogyny | M*A*S*H is a rare example of a movie that has been eclipsed by its television adaptation. The 1983 finale of the long-running sitcom about a medical unit near the frontlines of the Korean war was the highest-rated single television episode in history, with 125 million viewers tuning in. It’s understandable that Robert Altman’s 1970 film, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this month, lives in its shadow. The subversive anti-war comedy avoided sentimentality and teachable moments in favor of cruel pranks and a more hardened cynicism. Coming at the start of cinema’s most famous decade, it is a seminal film of New Hollywood, and it bears all the hallmarks of its era: a strong anti-establishment sentiment, the foregrounding of morally ambiguous protagonists, and, unfortunately, a deep and unexamined misogyny.
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The film follows the comic hijinks of three army surgeons – played by Elliott Gould, Donald Sutherland, and Tom Skerritt – stationed on a medical base during the Korean war. In between bursts of bloody activity, they become experts at killing time through football, golf, gambling and their pursuit of the female nurses. It starts immediately, when Hawkeye (Sutherland) and Forrest (Skerritt) arrive on base and aggressively proposition an attractive lieutenant, minding her own business in the mess hall. Hawkeye invades her personal space, sitting uncomfortably close to her despite the availability of other seats, and calls her “Lieutenant Dish”. Several scenes later, he’ll have her in his bed, a plot twist to reward him and the male viewers who want to see their hero complete his conquest.
The boys save their most awkward cruelty for bigger game, the hated nurse Houlihan (Sally Kellerman). A comic foil who has the gall to confront the surgeons about their unprofessional attitude, she is introduced to viewers as she gets off a helicopter, with her skirt rising so we can see her garter belt below. Perhaps unable to tolerate the combination of her good looks and lack of submissiveness, the boys make her the target of their misplaced anger. When she succumbs to her loneliness one evening and has a casual rendezvous with Maj Burns (Robert Duvall), a stuffed-shirt religious type who is the boys’ object of ridicule, Hawkeye and his friends transmit their sexual dalliance over the base broadcasting system. After she begs Burns to kiss her “hot lips”, her new moniker – “Hot Lips” Houlihan – is born.
‘Given that M*A*S*H remains so highly esteemed – it ranked #43 in a 2017 BBC poll of the greatest comedies of all-time – it deserves this closer scrutiny.’ Photograph: Allstar/Cinetext/CBS TV
It would be easy to see this as an equal opportunity lampooning – after all, Maj Burns was also a target of the prank – but the film continues to pile on to nurse Houlihan. The most egregious act of violence against her comes later on when the boys decide to settle a bet as to whether she is a natural blonde by exposing her in the shower tent for the entire base – and us – to see. It’s a cruel moment that the film revels in. She subsequently runs to the commander’s tent to tearfully complain about her treatment, and he, who has another nurse in his bed at the time, dispassionately suggests she simply resign her post.
The trauma that Houlihan experiences, brought to life with emotional force by Kellerman, cannot be laughed off in the way that it might have been in 1970. It was intended as a prank, but today, after the revelations of the #MeToo movement, it reads more like harassment or assault. Of course, depiction need not equal endorsement, and while one could argue that this misogyny is in some ways the subject of the movie – that the men are reverting to their primal selves amid the throes of war – the film itself tips its hand in the closing credits, which show brief shots of each actor from earlier in the film as their name is printed on screen. The clip of Kellerman is of her in the shower, encouraging the audience to see her – the actor, not only the character – as an object. This is not just depiction. It’s endorsement.
Of course, even the film version of M*A*S*H was an adaptation, so it’s not quite fair to lay these critiques entirely at the film-makers’ feet. The sexism is present in the 1968 novel by Richard Hooker that the film is based on, but it’s greatly magnified in the screenplay by Ring Lardner Jr and the extensive improvisation that reportedly occurred on set. The shower scene, the broadcasting of the lovemaking between Houlihan and Burns, and a subplot involving a character who wants to kill himself because he is afraid he is gay; none of them are present in the book.
Without the ability to assign a single author to the film’s misogyny, it’s reasonable to read it as a product of the culture from which the film sprang. The great films of the 1970s may have contained excellent, complex roles for women; Ellen Burstyn as a struggling but hopeful single mother in Scorsese’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore; Faye Dunaway as the hardened TV executive in Network; and Diane Keaton as the heroine of Annie Hall, who undergoes a bigger transformation than her male counterpart created by Woody Allen. But there is no denying that the culture of New Hollywood, in which young, male mavericks like Scorsese, Spielberg, Coppola, Lucas and Ashby were given carte blanche, was fertile for sexism. Perhaps emboldened by their freedom, they inadvertently revealed a blind spot for women’s equality. Even the best roles for women were somehow beholden to their male creators, and few were the type of roles women would create. They were projections of male insecurity, like Annie Hall, or women whose personalities were bent towards maleness by a patriarchal system, like Dunaway in Network.
‘Without the ability to assign a single author to the film’s misogyny, it’s reasonable to read it as a product of the culture from which the film sprang.’ Photograph: AF archive/Alamy Stock Photo
M*A*S*H can’t compare to these complex depictions of femininity in a world of men. It may be remembered for its youthful subversions, but its protagonists treat women with the same disrespect that their fathers did, and it portended a troubling future. Squint at M*A*S*H, and you can see National Lampoon’s Animal House, which would come eight years later. Look a little further into the future, and there’s Porky’s or Revenge of the Nerds, other films in which frat bros play sexual pranks on unsuspecting girls. In its defense, M*A*S*H has more to say than those films, and there doesn’t appear to be the same intention of cruelty. Rather, it spreads its subversive sentiment in all directions, women just get caught in the crossfire and ended up getting the brunt of the injury. After all, Kellerman’s nude scene was in itself a watershed moment. The Production Code was repealed in 1968 and replaced with the MPAA system. For the first time, nudity was permitted on screen, and it’s easy to see how Altman could have viewed the shower scene as a flex of his first amendment rights.
Still, given that M*A*S*H remains so highly esteemed – it ranked #43 in a 2017 BBC poll of the greatest comedies of all-time – it deserves this closer scrutiny. Many of today’s best film-makers grew up idolizing the directors of the 1970s and modeling their careers after them. Perhaps then it’s no surprise that Hollywood still has such a woman problem. The absence of female directors in this year’s Oscar nominations to the eye-opening reporting of the #MeToo movement makes M*A*S*H more timeless than it should be. Women in Hollywood are still struggling to be seen as anything more than casualties of war. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2014/feb/14/joy-of-six-crosses-david-beckham | Football | 2014-02-14T11:33:49.000Z | Rob Smyth | The Joy of Six: football crosses | Rob Smyth | 1) Marius Lacatus, Romania 1-1 Argentina, Italia 90
Crossing is a funny old part of the game. It is a percentage tactic, yet those percentages aren't particularly good; only around one in five crosses are accurate. Most crosses, particularly from near the touchline, are not played with a specific team-mate in mind. That's only logical. All you see are a few moving dots in the distance; it is essentially a 40-yard pass, often with defenders in the way, and not everybody can be Paul Scholes or Diego Maradona. So most crossers, like fast bowlers, aim to hit a general area and do a bit with the ball, be it dip, swerve, pace or whatever. That in itself takes considerable skill, and thus it is not right to dismiss crossing as a primitive tactic.
If it is ostensibly odd to place so much faith in something so imprecise, it may simply be that, in terms of success, crosses compare favourably to other tactics in the final fifth of the pitch: the long shot, the killer pass and the dribble. It's certainly the case that nothing has the capacity to disorientate a defence quite like an effective cross. Take Marius Lacatus's against Argentina at Italia 90, which created the goal that put a good Romania side into the second round of a World Cup for the first time. From near the touchline, Lacatus delivered a growling far-post cross which sparked such havoc that Gavril Balint was able to equalise with a deceptively good header before you could say "What's the Romanian for 'put it in the fakkin mixer?'"
There is something uniquely compelling about the deep cross, perhaps because of the ball's extra hang time. Oldham's Rick Holden was the galumphing king of the back-post boomer: he threw his entire being into crosses, following through to such an extent that it's a surprise he didn't pull 14 different muscles every time.
2) Aron Winter, Holland 3-1 Germany, Euro 92
For all that, a small proportion of crosses are undoubtedly passes. Andy Cole produced a gorgeous half-volleyed example in Manchester United's epic European Cup semi-final victory over Juventus 15 years ago, a game in which Tuttosport gave Cole rather than Roy Keane the Man of the Match award. There are head-up cutbacks, such as Robert Pires's to win Euro 2000, and quick square passes as with this simple Danish move.
Then there's this delightfully clean Holland goal at Euro 92, with Aron Winter combining two sub-genres: the cross as pass and the chipped cross. In a couple of seconds, having almost been knocked off his feet, Winter calculates that the only feasible option is a pass to Dennis Bergkamp, that the pass must be lofted because of the position of the covering Thomas Helmer, that it's Bergkamp arriving so he can trust him to take on a difficult first-time header from 12 yards, and that it's the bloody Germans so it would quite nice to score here. It's an unobtrusively supreme demonstration of quick wit and technique. Winter flips it over Helmer's head, and Bergkamp arrives dramatically from out of shot to plant a superb header into the net.
3) David Beckham, Real Madrid 4-0 Real Zaragoza, Copa del Rey 2005-06
There is a paradox surrounding the career of David Beckham. Many people go out of their way, sometimes aggressively, to assert he was not a great footballer, yet nobody disputes he was a great crosser and perhaps the greatest of all time. (Ordinarily we resent the assumption that the best of modern times is the best of all time, but given the developments in technique and football boots it's hard to believe anyone has made the ball talk quite as Beckham did.) Given the fundamental nature of crossing, it's hard to reconcile those observations. It might be that crossing is seen as a blue-collar skill – an observation Beckham apparently shared, given his desire to join the perceived artists in centre-midfield – though that could only be a partial explanation.
"His crossing [was] unparalleled regardless of variables: hooked, lobbed, whipped, chipped, driven, lifted or curled, bouncing or dead, looped or flat, and from any conceivable body position," wrote Daniel Harris in his book on Manchester United's treble. That was the thing with Beckham: he had one trick, but he had so many different ways of demonstrating that trick that it was extremely difficult to stop, especially as he didn't need to beat his man to get a cross in. He was a dead-ball specialist and also a dying-ball specialist: although Beckham was equally happy with a languid, lean-back sidefoot on the run or a dainty chip, his signature crosses in open play involved a ball that was barely moving, which allowed him to use the same technique as with corners and free-kicks.
That technique was as unique as Michael Johnson's running style or Muttiah Muralitharan's bowling action. Beckham's body shape was like a badly drawn stick man. Left arm sticking out like a lollipop lady's; right arm down by his side; standing foot planted at 45 degrees very close to the ball – very important this, we suspect, though we haven't a clue why – and right foot stretched back as far as possible in preparation to come through the ball like a lumberjack's axe. (Tom Cleverley once copied that technique to great effect, though we've no idea what the moral of that particular story might be.)
We could easily have made this the Joy of Six: David Beckham crosses. Let's settle for three. This is the definition of undefendable; this gathers pace and takes on a life of its own in mid-flight; and this homing missile to Ronaldo is simply the most ridiculous cross/pass we will see even if we live to 271. Real had lost the first leg of their semi-final to Real Zaragoza 6-1. This put them 3-0 up inside 10 minutes of the return; they eventually won 4-0 and went out 6-5 on aggregate. The match almost went into Real folklore. The cross that created the third goal will always be a YouTube staple; it currently has over 16 million views.
4) Jason McAteer, Liverpool 4-3 Newcastle, Premier League 1995-96
There were many sub-genres of cross we wanted to prattle on about. The stand-up. The cross that becomes famous for what follows. The first-time cross . The accidental goal. The deliberate goal. The cross from an apparently impossible position that inadvertently catalyses the most miserable month of your career. The driven cross. The scoop, as eerily homaged by Aaron Ramsey this season. The headed cross. The rabona. The Bébé.
This isn't the Joy of Eighteen, however, and we're already done enough to irritate the poor person who has to put in all these hyperlinks, so let's move straight to another sub-genre: the cross into the corridor of uncertainty. Luís Figo gave an immaculate demonstration in his final World Cup game, as did Steve Hodge 20 years earlier. There's also this Barry Davies-approved peach from Don Goodman, and a stunning no-look flick from the days when Wayne Rooney was good.
But we've selected one from Jason McAteer as part of our six. The greatest Premier League game of all was a good one for crosses. In the second minute Stan Collymore gave another reminder of the formidable two-footedness that made him the most naturally talented of England's brilliant crop of mid-90s centre-forwards. (Yes, we do include Alan Shearer in that. Shearer was an all-time great and Collymore, sadly, an also-ran, but it shouldn't need explaining that natural talent and achievement are two different things entirely.) Then, with Liverpool 3-2 down, Collymore benefited from an even better cross by McAteer, curved into an area where defenders and goalkeepers don't know whether to stick, twist, phone a friend or start crying. McAteer isn't always the smartest bloke, as one particular pizza company could confirm, but this particular cross had an IQ of about 175.
5) Luka Modric, Spain 1-0 Croatia, Euro 2012
The outside of the foot is the exclusive domain of the classy footballer. Did you ever see poor old Ade Akinbiyi use the outside of his foot? Exactly. If Andy Gray says it's the hardest cross in the game, that's good enough for us. When the Joy of Six was growing up, the outside of the foot came just behind our RE teacher and those strange hairs on the list of otherworldly fascinations. Entirely fictitious research shows that, in English football between 1985 and 1990, only four out of 987,129 passes were played with the outside of the foot, all of which went out for a throw-in. English football, left to its own devices by the rest of Europe, regressed to a level of thoroughly endearing crapness. An outside-of-the-foot pass was so unusual and continental that anyone who tried it risked being booked for ungentlemanly conduct.
All of which is why we wanted to use Mark Hughes's criminally under-appreciated Fergie-saving pass as one of our six, until we watched it again and realised we couldn't quite justify it as a cross. So instead here's Luka Modric against the Spanish Art Project at Euro 2012, part of a masterful individual performance against the world's best team. It's the kind of cross journalists are contractually obliged to describe as "insouciant", and gave the flying Ivan Rakitic a great chance to put Spain on the brink of a humiliating early exit from Euro 2012. As with all outside-of-the-foot crosses, the implicit assertion of technical superiority – the good kind of arrogance - was central to its appeal. Not any old Tom, Dick or Ade can pull this off.
6) Peter Reid, Everton 4-1 Sunderland, Division One, 1985
The School of Science has been the home of some educated feet down the years, especially on the wings. Dave Thomas deserved a significant cut of the £10,000 that Bob Latchford received from the Daily Express for scoring 30 league goals in 1977-78, while Andy Hinchcliffe's crossing could drive grown men to strip in public. But neither of them produced anything quite as memorable as this, the defining moment of Everton's greatest side.
It's occasionally forgotten just how good that Everton team was. After losing their first two league games, they went on a run of 27 wins in 36 games – a murderous, almost unprecedented run of form in the days when the top flight was a competition in nature as well as name. The title was all but sealed in the first week of April. After a Neville Southall-inspired 2-1 win away to their closest rivals Spurs on the Wednesday, they slaughtered Sunderland 4-1 three days later. The phrase "power team" is often seen as faint praise yet it is anything but. It is the most appropriate description for West Germany in 1990, the greatest World Cup winners of the last 40 years, and for an Everton side who were surely the best in Europe in 1985.
After Sunderland made the innocent mistake of scoring a goal, Everton savaged them like rabid dogs. Soon they were level with a goal that was decisive and devastating. Peter Reid, the PFA Player of the Year that season, slipped his man and sidefooted a fierce cross to the near post, where Andy Gray – a man who never used his feet when the noggin was an option – applied a majestic diving Glasgow kiss. The goal, and the performance, became even more memorable because the game was shown on Match of the Day, a rare and powerful thing in those days. "Reid's cross – GRAY!" became a staple of the playground commentator.
It's a type of goal we hardly see at the top level any more: primal, caked in mud and reeking of testosterone. Just as Tony Soprano lamented the death of the Gary Cooper type, so the Joy of Six regularly asks its therapist: whatever happened to Mick Harford? Wingers are inverted (this isn't new – the visionary Sepp Piontek did it with Denmark in the 1980s, and Bobby Robson did it in the Italia 90 semi-final – just more common), nines are false (this isn't new either – the visionary Alex Ferguson did it in the late 1970s at Morton – just more common), boots are unchalked, strikers' noses unbroken, and kids no longer want to be Brian Talbot. The hipsters don't like crossing; nor, increasingly, do the managers. Whether it is dying or out of fashion, we don't really know. If it's the former, it will be missed. Can we not knock it in the mixer?
With thanks to Cris Freddi, Daniel Harris, Mike Gibbons and Gary Naylor
Rob Smyth is the co-author of Danish Dynamite and And Gazza Misses the Final | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/30/more-than-150-sign-letter-denouncing-sexual-harassment-in-art-world | World news | 2017-10-30T00:02:41.000Z | Nicola Slawson | More than 150 write letter denouncing sexual harassment in art world | More than 150 artists, curators and museum directors, have written a letter denouncing sexual harassment and abuses of power in the art world.
The letter comes in the wake of separate allegations against Knight Landesman, co-publisher of leading arts journal Artforum, who resigned on Wednesday hours after a lawsuit was filed in New York accusing him of sexual harassment.
It reads: “We are gallerists, artists, writers, editors, curators, directors, arts administrators, assistants, and interns — workers of the art world — and we have been groped, undermined, harassed, infantilised, scorned, threatened, and intimidated by those in positions of power who control access to resources and opportunities.”
We’ll stay silent no more over sexual harassment in the art world | Letters
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The signatories of the letter, published in the Guardian on Monday, include American photographer Cindy Sherman, Turner prize winner Helen Marten, British art dealer and gallery owner Sadie Coles and Cuban-American artist Coco Fusco.
The letter, which 2,000 more people have put their names to and which will be shared on social media platforms using the hashtag #notsurprised, says that “abuse of power comes as no surprise” and that the request of sexual favours in exchange for career advancement was commonplace.
The letter continues: “The resignation of one publisher from one high-profile magazine does not solve the larger, more insidious problem: an art world that upholds inherited power structures at the cost of ethical behaviour. Similar abuses occur frequently and internationally on a large scale within this industry.
“We have been silenced, ostracised, apathologized, dismissed as ‘overreacting’, and threatened when we have tried to expose sexually and emotionally abusive behaviour. We will be silenced no longer.”
Sarah McCrory, director of the Centre for Contemporary Art at Goldsmiths, University of London, said the letter came about after women in the sector began to have conversations about sexual harassment via the Whatsapp messenger app.
She says: “It’s been a very intense three days but it’s been also a heartening exercise. It began from discussions on social media between colleagues initially about how to react to the Artforum situation. We were concerned about how it was being dealt with and about accountability.”
Women, trans and gender non-conforming people began to share experiences with each other but McCrory said the focus has been on taking action. “We were quite quick to make sure that we focused on the letter and focused on harnessing the outpouring of the ‘me too’ hashtag,” she said.
Art writer Valerie Werder, who is one of the women named in the lawsuit against Landesman, got involved in the letter’s creation after being disappointed by Artforum’s handling of the Landesman allegations.
New theatre industry guidelines to be drawn up after harassment claims
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She said: “After the news of that broke, Artforum’s response was something that I couldn’t support. It wasn’t enough and I was very disappointed as it seemed to absolve the responsibility I thought Artforum should take.
“What started as an original group of people to discuss this specific case became a really strong collective of voices around the world that wanted to make active change, stand up for victims and show acts of solidarity.”
She added that choosing to speak out was hard but the group of women have helped. “Suddenly we were over 100 strong and I felt this incredible amount of support from an international and very diverse community of women and gender non-confirming people,” she said.
Emma Astner, co-founder of the Koppe Astner gallery in Glasgow, said they hoped the letter would get people talking.
“The issue is incredibly complex and has many layers but the only way to start to address it is to start a conversation and that’s what I believe the letter will do,” she said.
She added: “There isn’t one solution because it’s a problem that’s embedded in society in many different ways so we have to fix it from many different angles. The only way to do that is to talk about it.”
This article was amended on 30 October 2017 to clarify that the the letter was written by 150 people, but signed by around 2,000 by the time the letter was made public. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/mar/13/whats-on-the-last-of-us-queerness | Television & radio | 2023-03-13T15:00:20.000Z | Micha Frazer-Carroll | How The Last of Us bucks the trend for on-screen queerness | If you want to read the complete version of this newsletter, please subscribe to receive What’s On in your inbox every Monday.
The world has ended. Cordyceps, a mushroom-blooming fungal infection, has ravaged humanity. The streets outside are silent, peppered with pockets of violence and desperation.
Considering that bleak, post-apocalyptic setting, viewers may not have expected that the third instalment of HBO’s The Last of Us would take the form of a deeply heart-rending queer romantic bottle episode. And the theme of queerness has only continued to crop up throughout the show in the run up to today’s finale.
The first two episodes of the series had laid the groundwork for what we needed to understand the Cordyceps pandemic, and fleshed out the backstories of protagonists Joel and Ellie. They also provided the audience a level of comfort with its familiar genre setting. Creators Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann know that three years into a real-world pandemic and a concurrent uptick in pandemic storytelling, people know what to expect from a show like this. This meant that almost everyone was blindsided by the creative choice that came next, which represented a clear break from the genre-conformity of the rest of the series, with its representation of queer love in a post-apocalyptic setting a key aspect of that surprise.
Queerness is too often seen as a form of luxury, a privileged indulgence of the modern world. It’s a perspective that seeps through onto the small screen. RuPaul’s Drag Race has popularised the aesthetic excess associated with queer performance, glued together by sequins, luxe fabrics and false lashes. In The L Word, when tennis star Dana comes out, her mother says that she sees lesbian life as a modern and superfluous choice (“we all have feelings for our girl friends Dana – it doesn’t mean you have to act on them”). Mainstream sci-fi has also explored the idea that technological advances may produce more queerness; like in Black Mirror’s Striking Vipers, in which best friends Danny and Theo embark on an illicit affair in a virtual reality video game. In these representations, queerness is almost futuristic, but exclusively exists in those futures that are high tech, late capitalist, hyper-consumerist and hedonistic – underpinned by indulgence rather than necessity.
Bella Ramsay as Ellie in the season finale of The Last of Us. Photograph: HBO/Warner Media/2023 Home Box Office, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
The queerness in The Last of Us bucks that trend. Here, queerness is not dependent on “advanced” material conditions; on the contrary, it belongs to dystopias as well as utopias. It would always exist. In fact, in an alternate timeline where the world had burned, perhaps new forms of queerness would be certain to rise from the ashes. Frank and Bill, the two gay characters whose romance we follow in the unexpected bottle episode, find one another in a barren and lonely landscape, but this also means that they have a blank canvas on which to create their own kind of love. Alone, in their house, they carve out their own queer world.
It’s also suggested that queerness isn’t something that the characters could fully explore in the “beforetimes”. So, in their story, the “progression” of society didn’t give rise to queerness, the destruction of society did. The same may be true for Ellie – who has grown up in this apocalyptic hellscape, and is beginning to explore her own sexuality by episode seven. While her life is not concretely better in this world, she will undoubtedly have a different experience of her queerness as she enters adulthood in an unrecognisable society.
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Our current politics is a constant reminder that progression of time does not equal progression of values – that “modern” or industrial societies do not inherently give rise to a better world. TV often suggests that this is the case, a notion that is also subtly reiterated all around us in the form of “rainbow capitalism” and liberal “homonationalism”. But queerness isn’t the property of a technological future or even a stripped back past. It disrupts norms; it can teleport itself to any alternate timeline, and doesn’t only bloom in spaces of life and productivity, but also persists alongside death and destruction. This is an idea worth holding on to, in a world that seems to be building up and burning all at the same time. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/jun/10/the-sea-of-trees-review-gus-van-sant-matthew-mcconaughey | Film | 2015-05-15T19:00:03.000Z | Peter Bradshaw | The Sea of Trees review: a fantastically annoying and dishonest tear-jerker | Gus Van Sant returns to the Cannes competition, and returns — horribly — to a middleweight syrupy-commercial mode of film-making into which he is capable of switching so easily. He may have permanently deserted the more challenging and rigorous style of movies like the Palme D’Or-winning Elephant, Last Days or indeed his poetically mysterious Gerry, about two guys lost in the wilderness. This fantastically annoying and dishonest tear-jerker is almost like a parodic version of that movie. (It is incidentally possible that Van Sant and screenwriter Chris Sparling were inspired by Naomi Kawase’s contemplative film The Mourning Forest, in the Cannes competition in 2007.)
For all its apparent sombreness and thoughtfulness, The Sea Of Trees is an exasperatingly shallow film on an important and agonisingly painful subject - depression and suicide. This it slathers in palliative sentimentality. The gooey musical score with strings and woodwind, kicking in from the first airport scene, unmistakably signals brimming-eyed self-pity and self-forgiveness.
Matthew McConaughey, whose performance strains every sinew, plays Arthur, an academic mathematician (he wears glasses). He is travelling to Aokigahara, or The Sea Of Trees, a vast woodland wilderness at the foot of Mount Fuji in Japan which has become notorious as a place where people come to take their own lives. Once there, Arthur has clearly reached a terrible decision. But then he sees another pilgrim of despair: Takumi (Ken Watanabe), a Japanese businessman in a rumpled suit, staggering into the clearing, covered with blood from wounds on his wrists, having evidently botched a suicide and perhaps now changed his mind. Arthur comes to help, and the two men begin a kind of friendship as they try to find a way out of the forest. Conveniently, Takumi speaks excellent English, which is neither remarked upon nor explained.
As the relationship develops, the film discloses its annoying and insidious anti-scientific and anti-rational theme - as well as its fantastic condescension to the Japanese character. Like some wise old forest sprite, Takumi pours scorn on Arthur’s attempt to understand his situation from his standpoint as a professional scientist. Naturally Arthur comes to accept the spiritual immaturity of this view.
Like Arthur’s wife Joan (Naomi Watts) - their troubled marriage is revealed in flashback - Takumi is entirely subordinate to Arthur’s dull emotional journey. But he doesn’t get any flashbacks of his own. There are some cursory lines about some disgrace and demotion in the office and casual remarks on how Arthur “doesn’t understand” suicide in Japanese culture. (Really? I’d have liked to see this glib stereotype scrutinised a little further.) But that’s it: Takumi’s pain and his story is second-class.
Naomi Watts does her best with the role of Arthur’s wife: and the film almost looks something from actual life when the two have petty marital arguments. But then a dark shadow falls on them - redemptive and love-renewing in the way these situations are supposed to be - but the finale to this situation made me want to scream at how evasive and fatuous it is.
It is Van Sant’s depiction of the forest itself which is at the centre of the problem. It is a hostile place from a straightforward view of survival: Arthur is always falling heavily down rocky slopes and getting deluged by floods, and yet McConaughey’s supposed physical pain never seems to be any sort of plausibly interesting dramatic problem. We see the dead bodies of suicides there, revealed so casually that it is at first unclear if these are hallucinations - but the film can’t decide if they should make us scared or sad. So we are neither: they are represented blankly, like the forest itself, and like the film, they are inert. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2016/nov/03/how-a-syrian-refugee-found-success-by-helping-other-refugees | Guardian Sustainable Business | 2016-11-02T22:20:19.000Z | Fiona Smith | Breaking down barriers: how a Syrian refugee turned his good luck into jobs for others | Just 14 months ago Nirary Dacho was a penniless refugee, landing at Sydney airport with a dream of being able to continue his career as an IT analyst in a country where he would be safe from Isis.
Today the 29-year old Assyrian sits in a comfortable office as the cofounder of Refugee Talent, a fast-growing digital platform that exists to get refugees into work.
This has been a rapid turnaround in fortune – especially considering 48% of those on humanitarian visas remain unemployed 18 months after arriving.
Dacho has been able to break free from the traps that frustrate other refugees, thanks to a combination of lucky breaks and his ability to make good connections.
When Dacho arrived from Syria, via Lebanon, on a humanitarian visa with his parents, brother and sister, he could speak English, had a master’s degree in web science and more than eight years of working in IT and teaching programming at university in Syria.
Even so, he found it impossible to break into the employment market, despite updating his skills to Australian qualifications.
“My qualification was from overseas and I had no work experience in Australia and these are two of the main barriers for employment for refugees,” he says.
Gender diversity at work: using education to tackle the backlash
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Dacho applied for more than 100 jobs in his first eight months before getting his first lucky break – which involved starring in a television news segment.
When the ABC’s Lateline program was preparing a story on unemployed refugees, the assistance organisation, Settlement Services International, nominated Dacho as a client to be profiled.
After it was screened, 10 employers lined up to offer him work and help. With a three-month contract as a software engineer with the technology company Dolby Australia, he was getting local experience that seems a prerequisite for most employers.
It was an exciting development, however Dacho was nowhere near elated. “It was such a bad feeling,” he says, explaining that he was thinking of the thousands of other refugees still waiting for their lucky break.
“They are also qualified and have long years of experience and they are sitting there, doing nothing. I was happy because I finally got a job but, the other side of it, [I] felt so bad.”
Dacho’s second stroke of good fortune came 12 months ago when he attended a networking event for refugees with IT skills – Techfugees Hackathon Australia – and met Anna Robson, who became his cofounder and the chief executive of Refugee Talent.
Robson had spent 10 months working at the Nauru detention centre as an adult recreation officer and the two of them bonded over their desire to help refugees get work experience. Robson decided to join forces with Dacho to build an online platform to connect refugees to employers. The site launched in February.
The third time fortune smiled upon them was in March this year when Robson, moonlighting as an Uber driver, started chatting about her venture with an investor she was taking to the airport.
That passenger was Jason Yat-Sen Li, the chairman of Vantage Asia Holdings, a diversified investment group with offices in Beijing and Sydney and interests in real estate, mining, financial services and technology. Li is also a former Labor candidate for the seat of Bennelong.
“I asked her what she did when she wasn’t driving an Uber,” says Li, who was moved by what she had to say about her work with Save the Children on Nauru.
“The thing that caught me the most, apart from the awful things she saw there, was her observation that the vast majority of the people who were locked up there were highly skilled. They were doctors and engineers and software developers.”
The Syrian who's aiming to get refugees jobs in Berlin's booming tech scene
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Li became an investor in Refugee Talent, offering Dacho and Robson free space in his Sydney Surry Hills office, business start-up advice and introduction to his business connections.
“The story and the serendipity of it appealed,” Li says. “It is a really nice thing in the innovation space where one can do something that reflects one’s values and hopefully do well out of it as well. We do think it has the potential to be a viable business.
“They sit with us in our office so, whenever they have questions or problems, they come to us. I chair their board and have helped them to put together a small board of directors. I have helped them raise a little money to get them started and they use some of our in-house resources, like an in-house designer.”
Refugee Talent now has 50 employers on board, has 160 clients and has placed 15 in jobs in its first eight months. The company has expanded to Melbourne and is looking at other states.
Dacho says the duo never expected things to happen so fast, thinking it would take two to three years to get to the point where they are now at 11 months, with both being employed full-time by the business.
“I am so lucky because I have these three moments in Australia,” he says, referring to his lucky breaks.
His advice to other refugees would be to take the initiative, rather than depending on case workers and assistance organisations. They should also get Australian qualifications as soon as possible and try to get any job (to get local experience), using refugee-assistance channels or applying direct to employers.
And drawing upon his experience, they should also make the effort to meet as many people as they can to build up a network. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/dec/29/behind-her-eyes-to-nine-perfect-strangers-the-tv-hatewatches-of-2021 | Television & radio | 2021-12-29T06:00:13.000Z | Hollie Richardson | Behind Her Eyes to Nine Perfect Strangers: the TV hatewatches of 2021 | Nine Perfect Strangers (Amazon Prime)
When a glowing Nicole Kidman first glided into shot, speaking in a Russian accent an offensive uncle might pull after a few shandies, it was clear that Nine Perfect Strangers was, actually, not so perfect. But I persevered, because this was another glossy adaptation from Lianne Moriarty – the novelist behind Big Little Lies – and it boasted a cast including Regina Hall, Michael Shannon and Melissa McCarthy. Why might enigmatic Masha (Kidman) have invited this motley crew to her Tranquillum wellness resort? Was there a supernatural twist ahead? Was she evil? Two episodes in, it attempted a big reveal – that she had been slipping guests a daily LSD cocktail – and nobody batted an eyelid because, hey, YOLO. A mindblowing finale was surely due.
But it didn’t come; it was ultimately about a woman chasing hallucinogenic trips to “see” her dead son – and bringing another bereaved family along for the ride. That’s fine, but why was it pretending to be something more sinister or exciting the whole time? Without even knowing it, it was a wellness culture satire, and proof that we’re too easily sucked into wanting to know what happens to silly, wealthy people with non problems. Shame on us. Hollie Richardson
The Morning Show (Apple TV+)
Like a horrible piece of The Newsroom cosplay ... The Morning Show. Photograph: Erin Simkin/Apple TV+
The first season of The Morning Show had a giddy allure. A bunch of Very Famous People, some of them doing their best work in years, were let loose on #MeToo and the results were borderline operatic. But then they had to make a second season. The list of everything wrong with The Morning Show this year could fill up the entire internet, so I’ll try to keep to the worst offences. Making Billy Crudup the authority figure, automatically robbing him of all his charm. Setting it at the start of Covid, like a horrible piece of The Newsroom cosplay. The entire Italian episode, which was by far the most baroquely misjudged hour of television made all year. The lack of direction. And the ending. My God, the cack-handed, logic-defying, brain-destroying shocker of an ending. Congratulations, The Morning Show. You were the only series this year that made me physically shout at the TV. Stuart Heritage
You (Netflix)
A heady cocktail of stalking, killing and bibliophilia ... You. Photograph: John P Fleenor/Netflix
You is one of the most improbably bizarre dramas ever made, a heady cocktail of stalking, killing and bibliophilia which makes your average daytime soap look plausible by comparison. And yet, for all of those reasons it is also undeniably compelling, with literary snob and murder enthusiast Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley) hooking viewers in with each sub-American Psycho monologue. If its first two seasons seemed problematic – guy kills girl, repeatedly – season three was a less controversial bingewatch. Both Joe and his wife, Love (Victoria Pedretti), prodded at the fourth wall as they decamped to the California suburbs to do battle with mommy bloggers and tech barons … as well as offing the odd neighbour with an axe. I nearly forgot – they’ve got a baby, too (Joe and Love seemed to forget as well: he wasn’t in it much). From questionable stalker drama to questionable family stalker drama – have you ever heard anything more heartwarming? Hannah J Davies
The L Word Generation Q (Sky Atlantic)
I came of age with the original L Word, when seeing queer women on screen felt so revolutionary – so of course I was going to watch the reboot, Generation Q. The first season was perfectly decent, soapy and trashy in just the right measure, but by series two the shine had worn off. It managed to make the magnificent Bette Porter into a curmudgeonly caricature, much of it involved a court case about marketing opiates that was ill-at-ease with the tone elsewhere, which was a bizarre patchwork of moods in the first place. The rest of the characters seemed stuck on a treadmill of circular stories that had no tension, because they would have been so easily resolved by a single rational action. I understand there’s no drama in that, but a whole season of people doing stupid things for no good reason, in an increasingly confusing mess of plots, isn’t very gripping. So obviously I watched every episode. Rebecca Nicholson
The Crew (Netflix)
Struggled to get out of first gear ... The Crew. Photograph: Netflix
What made me go the distance with a multi camera sitcom set in the deeply macho male environs of a Nascar garage? In the dark days of February, maybe all you really want is something low-stakes and easily digestible. The Crew’s plot of a veteran garage chief (Kevin James) butting heads with a fresh-faced new owner (Jillian Mueller) seemed to promise generational and gender-clash shenanigans. But despite an episode where James unexpectedly rocked an eyepatch, this half-hearted Netflix project struggled to get out of first gear. The first 10 instalments were characterised by the mechanical delivery of would-be zingers, unappreciated side characters being put upsettingly through the wringer and two suspiciously out-of-the-blue romantic cliffhangers to wrap the season up. Of course I raced through the whole thing and five months later – when it was quietly cancelled – I hated myself even more. Graeme Virtue
Buffering (ITV2)
Less empathic than a lump of felt ... Buffering. Photograph: Mark Johnson/ITV
As intensely maddening viewing went in 2021, the sitcom writing debut of Love Island narrator and comic Iain Stirling was almost unbeatable. Apparently playing himself, Stirling’s turn as a kids’ TV presenter was so screechy and irksome that his scenes alongside a puppet co-star saw him prove less empathic than a lump of felt with ping-pong balls for eyes. And yet, in a shout-at-the-TV, pray-for-disaster sort of way, it was captivating. It’s not unusual to be hooked on a show by rooting for its lead. But in this case, you were rooting for him to fail. Alexi Duggins
Behind Her Eyes (Netflix)
For the most part, Behind Her Eyes was a naughtily good psychological thriller – the perfect blend of raunch, wealth, secrets and lies, based on a book by Sarah Pinborough which you can imagine tearing through at the airport. It follows Louise (Simona Brown), a receptionist who starts having an affair with her psychiatrist boss David (Tom Bateman) then befriends his wife Adele (Eve Hewson). Soon, the true story of this outwardly perfect but damaged couple begins to unravel, with Hewson giving a shuddering performance as a woman who is dead behind her eyes. But just when we thought we were going to get a well-considered conclusion, the series decided to switch genres and become a supernatural story about astral projection. Sure, it was a shocking finale which nobody saw coming and we couldn’t stop tweeting about – but that is exactly why it was so damn infuriating. Where was the logic? Why cop out of a decent ending with a nonsensical twist? That said, the closing scene where Adele’s son realised another soul was living in his mum’s body made me want a second season. HR
Married at First Sight (Channel 4)
Tacky drama factory ... Married at First Sight. Photograph: Simon Webb/Channel 4
When the UK version of Married at First Sight launched in 2015, I instantly fell head over heels. Despite the gimmicky premise, the show had all the sociological delights of the best reality TV and none of the infuriating cynicism: contestants really seemed in it for the promise of everlasting love, not a career on the influencer circuit. That, unfortunately, was not the case with this year’s edition, revamped to mimic the hugely popular Australian format. Featuring a whopping eight couples, forced to interact regularly during mass dinner parties and communal “commitment ceremonies”, what had once been a genuine social experiment became just another tacky drama factory: performative arguing, fake friendships, game-playing, cross-couple cheating, dinner table showdowns. Still, like previous series, I watched until the end, desperate to know if the participants went the distance – not because I was rooting for them, but because I was concerned for their welfare. Most of these relationships were disturbingly dysfunctional: were they being prolonged solely for the airtime? Going by the eventual slew of separations (and continued tabloid coverage) the answer – mercifully – was yes. Rachel Aroesti
Kim’s Convenience (Netflix)
The first four seasons of Kim’s Convenience were perfect lockdown viewing: a warm, occasionally biting comedy about a Korean Canadian family and their convenience store. A rare western show to feature a majority Asian cast, it took on immigrant storylines without ever becoming preachy. Until, in the final season, things took a turn, with all emotional investment lost to a string of dead-end storylines. Would the parents close up shop? Would longsuffering daughter Janet (Andrea Bang) land a job? Would eldest son Jung (Simu Liu) get a … better job? (There was some irony here: over the summer Liu starred in Marvel blockbuster Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.) But despite everyone seeming to have given up, I had to know what happened to my lockdown companions. We were eventually rewarded with a series finale, memorable mostly for introducing a break-up within the final five minutes. After it ended, Liu called out a lack of diversity in the writer’s room, turning this hatewatch of a final season into something sadder: a missed opportunity. Henry Wong | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/13/volodymyr-zelenskiy-lands-in-italy-to-meet-the-pope-as-ukraine-wins-ground | World news | 2023-05-13T17:19:36.000Z | Lorenzo Tondo | Zelenskiy and pope discuss peace in Ukraine as Russia retreats in Bakhmut | Volodymyr Zelenskiy asked Pope Francis on Saturday to back Kyiv’s peace plan, and the pope indicated the Vatican would help in the repatriation of Ukrainian children taken by Russians.
The Ukrainian president was in Rome for a one-day whistle-stop visit, also meeting Italy’s president, Sergio Mattarella, and the prime minister, Giorgia Meloni.
“It is a great honour,” Zelenskiy told Francis, putting his hand to his heart and bowing his head as he greeted the 86-year-old pope, who stood with a cane.
Images were also published of the pontiff meeting Zelenskiy over a desk in a wood-panelled office within the Vatican.
Pope Francis and Volodymyr Zelenskiy at the Vatican. Photograph: Vatican Media/Reuters
Zelenskiy, who was visiting Rome for the first time since the war began, spoke with the pope for 40 minutes and presented him with a bulletproof vest that had been used by a Ukrainian soldier and later painted with an image of the Madonna.
A Vatican statement said that in their private talks, Zelenskiy and the pope discussed “humanitarian gestures”, which a Vatican source said was a reference to the Vatican’s willingness to help with the repatriation of Ukrainian children.
Kyiv estimates nearly 19,500 children have been taken to Russia or Russian-occupied Crimea since February 2022, in what it condemns as illegal deportations.
“We must make every effort to return them home,” Zelenskiy said in a tweet afterwards, saying he had discussed it with the pope.
Zelenskiy also said he asked the pope to “join” Kyiv’s 10-point peace plan.
“I asked (the pope) to condemn Russian crimes in Ukraine. Because there can be no equality between the victim and the aggressor,” Zelenskiy said in his tweet.
Both Mattarella and Meloni reiterated Italy’s full support for Ukraine in terms of military, financial, humanitarian and reconstruction aid in the short and long term.
At a news conference after her meeting with Zelenskiy, Meloni condemned Russia’s “brutal and unjust aggression”, pledged Italy’s support for Ukraine for “as long as is necessary”, and urged Russia to immediately withdraw.
“You can’t achieve peace through a surrender,” she said, echoing a previous comment by Mattarella. “It would be a very grave precedent for all nations of the world.”
She emphasised Italy’s support for Ukraine’s membership of the EU and the “intensification” of a partnership with Nato.
The historic meeting came as Ukraine regained at least a kilometre (more than half a mile) of territory near the eastern city of Bakhmut amid an alleged Russian withdrawal from the area.
The UK’s Ministry of Defence said that over the past four days Russian troops from the 72nd separate motor rifle brigade (72 SMRB) had possibly withdrawn “in bad order” from their positions on the southern flank of the Bakhmut operation. The move, according to the British intelligence, reflected Moscow’s lack of effective combat units.
In its latest intelligence briefing posted on Twitter, the MoD wrote: “72 SMRB is an element of Russia’s 3rd Army Corps, a formation created in autumn 2023 [sic] and dogged with allegations of poor morale and limited combat effectiveness.
“Its deployment to such a demanding and operationally important sector highlights Russia’s severe shortage of credible combat units.”
The statement came a day after Russia’s first admission that Ukraine was successfully recapturing ground around Bakhmut, with Moscow’s defence ministry saying on Friday that some of its troops had fallen back “to more advantageous defensive positions” near a reservoir north-west of the city, which the Kremlin has been trying to take for more than 10 months.
There has been intense speculation that Ukraine is about to launch its much-anticipated counteroffensive, with several Russian military bloggers claiming on Thursday that the counterattack had already started and that Kyiv had already broken through parts of the frontline.
Military analysts have suggested Ukraine’s localised offensive in Bakhmut may indicate it is trying to pin down Russian forces in the city. But Ukrainian officials on Friday played down these reports.
The Centre for Defence Strategies thinktank in Kyiv said recent gains in Bakhmut were not an attempt to encircle Wagner group mercenaries, who occupy most of its central buildings. Instead, Ukraine’s defence forces were seeking to reduce pressure on two key supply roads into the city, which have come under intense Russian artillery fire.
Russia appeared to suffer a further setback on Saturday after images emerged of one of its SU-34 fighter aircraft crashing in Klintsy, in the western Bryansk region, about 30 miles (50km) from the Ukrainian border. Telegram channels showed burning wreckage on the ground inside Russian territory.
Russian Telegram channels post a video from Klintsy, Bryansk region, saying it is a Su aircraft that is burning.
No official confirmation has been made by Russian authorities. pic.twitter.com/KANCnbzgRk
— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) May 13, 2023
There was separate video footage of a Russian Mi8 helicopter circling the same area, catching fire and then crashing. There was speculation that Russian air defenders had accidentally shot down their own aviation objects, possibly mistaking them for long-range missiles supplied by the UK to Kyiv. Russian officials have blamed the mishap on an engine fire.
And then later there were unconfirmed reports that another plane and helicopter had crashed, in what appeared to be a disastrous day for Russian aviation.
Moscow Telegram channels reported that an SU-35 warplane had been shot down too, as well as a second Mi8 helicopter. Another military helicopter crashed on Friday in Crimea. It was unclear whether the two aircraft and two helicopters were downed on Saturday because of friendly fire, or if the Ukrainians targeted them with missiles.
In the early hours of Saturday, Moscow carried out its own bombardment. Ukraine said it had shot down 17 out of 21 enemy drones, in the latest night-time barrage. Five people were wounded in the Khmelnytskyi region, and another three were hurt in the southern city of Mykolaiv where a bomb had landed on a residential building, its mayor, Oleksandr Sienkevych, said.
Zelenskiy will not meet the other two leaders of Italy’s government, Silvio Berlusconi and Matteo Salvini, who are both longtime admirers of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.
Berlusconi, who has previously claimed that Zelenskiy “provoked” Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, is still in Milan’s San Raffaele hospital where he has been treated for a lung infection linked to chronic leukaemia.
Russian troops fall back to ‘defensive positions’ near Bakhmut
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Salvini, the leader of Italy’s rightwing League party, said he would not meet Zelenskiy because “I’m neither prime minister nor foreign minister”.
However, according to media reports, Salvini’s presence was not welcomed. In March 2022, a few weeks after the war began, Salvini had been called out for his previous support of Putin during a visit to Przemyśl, the Polish city on the frontline of the Ukrainian refugee crisis.
In a separate development, the German government announced it would provide further military equipment worth €2.7bn (£2.4bn) to Ukraine in what would be the largest sum Berlin has provided since Russia’s invasion.
This article was amended on 15 May 2023. Salvini’s visit to Przemyśl was in March 2022, not March 2023.
Reuters, AFP, AP and Ansa contributed to this report | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/jan/04/stephen-lawrence-key-suspects-warned | UK news | 2012-01-04T21:19:46.000Z | Sandra Laville | Stephen Lawrence suspects warned they should not 'rest easy' | The three remaining key suspects for the Lawrence murder were left in no doubt: keep looking over your shoulders.
Speaking publicly for the first time about the case on Wednesday, the commissioner of the Metropolitan police, Bernard Hogan-Howe, promised that his officers would continue to search for evidence against others, even though Gary Dobson and David Norris have been convicted.
"The other people in the murder of Stephen Lawrence should not rest easy in their beds," said Hogan-Howe. "We are still investigating this case. If anybody out there has any information, even after all this time, please tell us. We will do the rest." The judge, Mr Justice Treacy, told the police after sentencing to keep the murder file open. "On the evidence before the court there are still three or four other killers of Stephen Lawrence at large," he said.
The other three men who were named as "prime suspects" in the Macpherson report are Neil and Jamie Acourt and Luke Knight, who, along with Dobson and Norris formed the racist gang who marauded around Eltham in the early 90s. There has been mention in the past of a fourth suspect but he has never been identified by police.
But while Hogan-Howe appeared bullish about the ongoing inquiry, sources closer to the investigation have acknowledged they have exhausted all live lines of inquiry. The latest cold-case scientific review costing £3.8m submitted all exhibits from the Acourts and Knight to a thorough review. But nothing was found to enable police to charge any of them. Scientists on the inquiry said they had exhausted all avenues and cutting-edge science had failed to uncover any evidence to put the three men in the dock.
The only hope police have is changing allegiances from associates of the gang or ex-girlfriends who may have witnessed and perhaps recorded on a mobile phone someone's confession or offhand remark. But for 18 years despite, no one has broken the vow of silence among members of the gang and their close associates.
Neil Acourt was always regarded by police as the leader of the gang. Obsessed with knives, he exposed a vicious racism in the surveillance tapes made by the police in 1994. He is seen in the footage thrusting a knife at an imaginary person, and later skilfully putting the same large knife down his trousers before he goes out into the night. He is filmed talking about "chopping up" black people, and referring to them as niggers.
Acourt has not moved far from the scene of the crime, or the rundown terraced house he lived in at the time. It was inside his family home at 102 Bournbrook Road on the Brook estate in Eltham that police found a stash of weapons, including a knife behind the TV, another Gurkha-type knife in one of the padlocked bedrooms, a sword under the cushions of a sofa as well as knives in another bedroom and an airgun-type revolver.
Today he lives a couple of miles away in a newly refurbished bungalow on the outskirts of Sidcup in Kent. Well built from his hobby of body building, he lives with his girlfriend. When the Guardian tried to contact Acourt, his Mercedes 4x4 was parked right outside his front door, apparently so that he can avoid being photographed as he leaves his home.
He has maintained contact with the other suspects and was jailed in 2002 for the racially aggravated harassment of an off-duty black police officer – a crime committed with David Norris. A year earlier he was convicted of possessing an offensive weapon – a baton he claimed he kept for his own protection.
Acourt uses his mother's maiden name, Stuart, to avoid unwanted attention. But some believe he thrives on the notoriety he has gained over the last 18 years. He told Martin Bashir in an interview the five suspects gave in 1999 that he would not stand for trouble from anyone. "We're seen as murderers, big-time gangsters, just killers. We're looked upon as scum.
"If someone put trouble in my way I would not stand for it, simple as that."
A mile or so away his younger brother, Jamie Acourt, lives in a three-bedroomed terraced house in a tree-lined street. He has two children, whose scooters lean on the outside wall of the property. His girlfriend has recently set up a business selling designer baby clothes, according to friends in the street. He does not appear to work. "I'm not sure what he does for a job," said one neighbour. "He loves playing football, and he is always off doing that."
Since the Lawrence killing he has been convicted of one offence – stealing 32 soda siphons from a drinks warehouse in 1999 with David Norris.
Luke Knight has always been considered as the fifth suspect and was mentioned as a suspect in the court case. However, the Guardian understands the police may no longer believe he was there.
His family say his life has been ruined by the notoriety associated with his name. Now 35, he lives in Eltham and is said to be paranoid and depressed.His sister Lisa is reported saying: "It's never going to end. They have all been guilty until proven innocent. We have all been affected by this – it's horrendous."
Several years ago Knight applied to Greenwich council to be rehoused because he said he was the subject of racial abuse. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/feb/21/outside-coastal-bubbles-to-say-america-is-already-great-rings-hollow | Society | 2017-02-21T12:00:04.000Z | Chris Arnade | Outside coastal cities an ‘other America’ has different values and challenges | Anthony Rice’s house in Youngstown, Ohio is a mile away from a river valley once filled with factories offering jobs. Many of those left in the 1980s, and with them, many residents.
His home is one of the few occupied on the street. Empty lots or boarded-up homes make up most of the block. He points to those remaining, listing his neighbors and their age. They are all over 70. “This neighborhood is okie-dokie, although not much goes down here”, he says. “Stores used to be all around here, but they mostly gone. The people left are either too old to move or waiting for someone to buy them out.”
The road itself is a patchwork of potholes. “This street hasn’t been paved in like forever. They just don’t care about us. But we used to that.”
Youngstown is the largest city in Mahoning County, Ohio, where Donald Trump narrowly lost a county Barack Obama won twice easily. That was partly because turnout in Youngstown – which is lower income, younger, and close to half African American – dropped by roughly 15%.
It was a blueprint replicated across the US – getting just enough working class, older and wealthier suburban whites to flip and turn out for Trump, while a small enough sliver of minorities and younger white voters did not turn out. It was achieved in just the right places: Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Turnout in Youngstown Ohio was down by roughly 15%. Photograph: Chris Arnade
I ask Anthony about the election. “Most people in this neighborhood sat idle. We didn’t have a dog in this fight. It is like we had our president, and it is time for them to have their president. I voted for Hillary. But I don’t mind Trump, although I do think he is crazy. He is jamming a stick in the beehive, and some think it will break their way.”
Did Trump’s win surprise him? “No. Obama promised a lot and only a little came of it. Maybe New York City got delivered promises. This street here is still filled with homes falling down.”
A lot of the US is like that. I have seen it all over, when I put 100,000 miles on my car before the election. I have heard and seen the frustrations of countless people – of all races and faiths – in wildly different places, from Nebraska to Louisiana.
To get out beyond successful neighborhoods in DC, New York City and the elite college campuses – beyond where prevailing socio-political opinions are made – is to see another America.
What I learned after 100,000 miles on the road talking to Trump supporters
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It isn’t a more “real” America – a glib and offensive cliche – it is simply a different one. It is an America that values and experiences different things, emphasizing local community and faith, rather than career or educational status. It is an America that has been on a downward trajectory for decades, hurt by the loss of jobs and with downtowns emptied of energy and filled with drugs. It has made staying in these communities harder.
In this America hope is fading, not growing. People’s lives are a constant tangle of changing and uncertain jobs. The path that offers a way out – education – requires threading a narrow needle of opportunities from an early age. If that small chance is missed it means a lifetime of feeling looked down on by the “other America.”
In these towns, “America already is great” rings hollow and offensive. Trump exposed and exploited that, coming into these communities with a simple and angry message – one that effectively said: “This ain’t working for you. So let’s knock it all over!”
He also came with a message of division and fear, inflaming a long ugly thread of racial politics in American history. It made supporting him almost impossible for frustrated minorities such as Anthony, who was blunt: “Trump isn’t a racist, but sure does surround himself with racists.” Some registered their frustration by simply not voting, a process exploited by a cynical GOP that has made it harder to vote.
Hattie Wilkins, 66, witnessed that. She is a former steel worker and union president who is now a community activist.
Former steel worker Hattie Wilkins. Photograph: Chris Arnade
She hates Trump but also doesn’t like Hillary Clinton. She actively supported Bernie Sanders in the primaries. Frustrated and angered by Clinton, she eventually voted for her, but as a vote against Trump. “I had to,” she says. “It hurt but I did.”
She had trouble convincing many of her neighbors to get out and vote: “I ran into a lot of people who didn’t like either of them, so they weren’t voting.” Despite that, she worked hard to get as many people registered as she could, even trying to coax the drug dealers in her neighborhood to do so.
Despite the intensity of political passions, Youngstown is a small, close and extra friendly community, and Hattie has spent her life here. She has colleagues, friends and acquaintances who voted for Trump and who she has long relationships with. When I ask her how they could vote for someone she thinks is a racist, she says: “The people who voted for him, they can’t see that. It is their ignorance, and I try to educate them.”
I ask her whether she thinks they’re still good people, despite their vote. She replies: “Yes, yes. I feel that they are.”
Enthusiasm for Trump wasn’t hard to find among the white voters in Youngstown. George Beshara, the owner of the The Gold Exchange pawn shop – a store that sits between two boarded-up shops, was also born and raised here. He has seen the changes the town went through.
George Beshara, who was born in Youngstown. Photograph: Chris Arnade
“When the steel shut down in the 1980s it kicked the shit out of Youngstown,” he says. But he is optimistic, and Trump’s message fits his optimism. “We could use some manufacturing jobs, good paying ones, not these minimum wages ones. When we put tariffs on steel and start manufacturing again, we got a shot.”
When I asked him if he voted for Trump, he shoots back: “Oh yeah.” When asked why, he says: “I just think everyone wanted a change.
“I don’t think it is specifically Trump. We were in purgatory for eight years. Nothing happened, no growth, no GDP. I mean nothing! And nobody wanted to work because you were getting enough money from welfare, why go get a job? I think Obama made people lazy, he made it too easy not to work, and that is not the American dream.”
He also notes how surprising it was Trump came within a nudge of winning the county: “This is a monstrous Democratic community. If you even talk Republican here 25 years ago, they might have shot you!”
Things have changed, however, and plenty of lifetime Democrats voted for Trump. Bill Golec, 60, is one of them. A city police officer, he also runs a lawnmower repair store on weekends. After high school, he earned both a law enforcement administration degree and a small engine repair certificate from local schools.
Bill Golec, who has lived in Youngstown since birth. Photograph: Chris Arnade
He is a life-long Democrat, and when I ask him if he voted for Trump, he quietly responds: “Hate to say yes. Couldn’t vote for Hillary. I wasn’t going to vote for anyone at all.”
He adds that Trump was the first Republican he has ever voted for. “It has been going on for too long, for too many years,” he says. “Something has to change.” He pauses: “These people on welfare, they’re living better than what I am. I am working two jobs. I like what Trump is doing with the auto factories. We need jobs here, in the United States.”
When I ask why, despite all the problems with Youngstown, he hasn’t moved, he looks confused. For him the question is silly, because the answer is obvious. “I like it here – my family is still here,” adding that he initially stayed to take care of his mom after his father died.
That is the thing about places like Youngstown: people often stay where they are born. For many it is simply what you do, and the community’s health is dependent on it. You stay not to just build a life, but also to support older family members.
Places like Youngstown are also more diverse than usually acknowledged. Including having growing Muslim populations.
I went to the Islamic Society of Greater Youngstown for Friday prayer. I came early and the first man I spoke to greeted me with a big handshake. He was rushing out the door but stopped to welcome me.
Friday prayer at the Islamic Society of Greater Youngstown . Photograph: Chris Arnade
I started explaining I had come to talk about politics, cautiously dancing around the issue of Trump and the recent executive order, when he quickly interrupted.
“OK. You want to talk about Trump? I voted for Trump!” I asked him if he was pulling my leg. He laughed. “No way. I may be a Muslim, but I am a businessman first and I am not stupid. Many Muslims here did. Under the table.” He added with a big smile: “We are Americans. We have diverse views also.”
Inside, 34-year-old Bruce Jones was sitting quietly against the back of wall. He grew up in Youngstown, and while some of his friends went off to college, he bounced around a bit, before getting dragged deep into heroin. He was recently released from a three-year prison term for burglary, where he converted to Islam.
“Islam saved my life,” he says. “When I was released this mosque welcomed me even though they know my past.” When I asked him about Trump, he doesn’t miss a beat. “Of course I like him. He is going to restore America again.” When I ask him about the recent changes on immigration he squints: “We are all citizens here. So I am not concerned.”
Bruce Jones, 34: ‘Islam saved my life’. Photograph: Chris Arnade
That last sentiment was made clear by almost everyone I spoke to at the mosque, including Aiman Salem, 54. He came to the states over 15 years ago from Syria to study. He didn’t vote for Trump, and is careful to explain why: “The community here in Youngstown is great. It is one of mutual respect, regardless of background. I definitely have concerns about Trump, like any American. I believe he has incorrectly targeted our faith.
“I would like to see more of an explanation and communication of what he plans. But I am not impacted. I am a citizen with a good job. Very few here at this mosque are impacted. We should accept refugees, of course, but Obama’s mistakes in Syria are one of the contributing factors for why we have the problems in Syria we have now.”
I ask him if he was surprised Trump performed so well in the region. “The American public grew impatient with what happened here in the US over the last 16 years, eight under Bush, eight under Obama ... I work with Trump voters, and have friends who voted for him. I understand many of them and their anger. I don’t like how it is being expressed, but I see their anger as being about economic issues.”
In Youngstown the past decades have been a slow decline, yet the town has maintained a warmth, friendliness, and a strong sense of community. Being here means being pulled between wanting to stay in a place that values you, but worried the future might only offer more decline.
One morning, I meet Daisy as she stood in the sunshine waiting for a ride from a relative. She watches me taking pictures and shyly smiles. I go over to talk with her and she tells me her story. She is 18 and was raised by her grandmother after being taken away from parents who were drug addicts. “I went through hell because of all the drugs around me”, she says.
Daisy, a Youngstown resident. Photograph: Chris Arnade
She left briefly to try and make a new life for herself but returned to stay with her grandmother. When I asked her about the election, she says: “I voted for nobody. Both are liars. I can only pray that Trump is the right president for us.”
I ask her about the future, and she mentions modeling and the military. Then, a pause.
“I want to do better in my life,” she says. “I want a healthy life. I want a wonderful life. And I want to see the ocean.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/oct/03/cristiano-ronaldo-deny-rape-allegations | Football | 2018-10-04T10:24:05.000Z | Paul MacInnes | Cristiano Ronaldo hits out at rape allegations: ‘It goes against everything I am’ | Cristiano Ronaldo has strongly denied an accusation of rape made against him by Kathryn Mayorga, claiming such a crime was “against everything that I am and believe in”.
Mayorga says she was assaulted by the footballer after they met at a Las Vegas nightclub in 2009. In an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel last weekend she gave extensive details of her claims. Ronaldo responded on Wednesday on Twitter, saying he awaits the results of a reopened police investigation “with tranquillity”.
Cristiano Ronaldo rape allegation: police reopen investigation into 2009 claim
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“I firmly deny the accusations being issued against me,” Ronaldo said. “Rape is an abominable crime that goes against everything that I am and believe in. Keen as I may be to clear my name, I refuse to feed the media spectacle created by people seeking to promote themselves at my expense.
“My clear conscious [sic] will thereby allow me to await with tranquillity the results of any and all investigations.”
Lawyers for Mayorga, who sued Ronaldo in a district court in Clark County, Nevada, said the Portugal forward has 20 days from the filing of the lawsuit to respond. Mayorga alleges that Ronaldo raped her in 2009 in a Las Vegas hotel penthouse suite.
Mayorga had been emboldened to speak out because of the #MeToo movement, her lawyers said at a news conference on Wednesday. “The #MeToo movement and the women who have stood up and disclosed sexual assaults has given Kathryn a lot of courage,” attorney Leslie Stovall said.
Her lawyers added that Mayorga has left Las Vegas to escape the attention on her case, adding the alleged assault has caused her severe mental and emotional damage. She was not at the news conference.
“She has decided not to make herself available to the media and stay out of the public because of her emotional state,” Stovall said. “It is not pleasant for her.”
Her lawyers added they are considering whether to release documents they say relate to the case including police reports, medical records, and an out-of-court settlement that apparently included a non-disclosure agreement about the incident. They claimed that a psychiatrist has determined she suffers post-traumatic stress and depression because of the alleged 2009 attack in Las Vegas.
Ronaldo has previously described Ms Mayorga’s allegations as “fake news”. His latest remarks follow the decision by the Las Vegas police authorities this week to conduct further investigations into the claims.
I firmly deny the accusations being issued against me. Rape is an abominable crime that goes against everything that I am and believe in. Keen as I may be to clear my name, I refuse to feed the media spectacle created by people seeking to promote themselves at my expense.
— Cristiano Ronaldo (@Cristiano) October 3, 2018
At the time Ms Mayorga reported the alleged assault in 2009 she refused to name her assailant. She later initiated a legal process that resulted in a financial settlement being agreed between both parties. The terms of that settlement included Mayorga not going public with her claims but the 34-year-old teacher, under new legal advice, now believes the settlement to be void and has spoken out.
“At the time the report was taken, the victim did not provide detectives with the location of the incident or suspect description,” said a statement from the Las Vegas police on Monday. “As of September 2018, the case has been reopened and our detectives are following up on information being provided.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/aug/14/bds-boycott-divestment-sanctions-movement-transformed-israeli-palestinian-debate | News | 2018-08-14T05:00:51.000Z | Nathan Thrall | BDS: how a controversial non-violent movement has transformed the Israeli-Palestinian debate | null | Partial |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/05/in-praise-of-galley-beggar-publishing-eimear-mcbride | Opinion | 2014-06-05T22:05:04.000Z | Editorial | In praise of ... Galley Beggar | Editorial | If you hadn't previously heard of Galley Beggar of Norwich, that is hardly surprising. It's a small-scale operation set up by a local bookseller. But Galley Beggar has something which big publishers too often lack: the courage to take a chance with an unknown author writing in an unconventional way. So Galley Beggar decided to publish a novel that Eimear McBride had written 10 years before and which a string of major houses had rejected. Now the company, and she, have been rewarded with the choice of her novel A Girl is a Half-formed Thing for the Baileys women's prize for fiction. The book was one of a clutch from publishers few people would ever have heard of that were chosen as best book of the year in the Guardian last Christmas – in this case, by the Booker prizewinner Eleanor Catton. All are publishers, like Galley Beggar, with scant resources but a cartload of guts. Let it no longer be said that Beggars cannot be choosers. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2013/mar/12/oz-great-powerful-works-magic | Film | 2013-03-12T13:05:13.000Z | Charles Gant | Oz the Great and Powerful aims over the rainbow, Side Effects also appealing | The winner
After four weeks where the market has been dominated by Wreck-It Ralph, Disney scored again with its latest family title, Oz the Great and Powerful. Oz's £3.71m is a decent opening figure, and Disney will be hoping to sustain the title throughout March and then coast through the two weeks of Easter school holiday.
In the US, Oz opened with a muscular $79m, indicating a UK debut of about £8m could have been expected. The big UK shortfall on the rule-of-thumb projection may be explained by the huge popularity of L Frank Baum and all things Oz in North America, which is not matched in the UK. The respective opening figures for Alice in Wonderland, from Oz producer Joe Roth, were much better aligned, with $116m in the US and £10.56m in the UK.
The biggest UK debut for a film featuring James Franco in a lead role remains Rise of the Planet of the Apes, with £5.84m including £1.10m in previews. For director Sam Raimi, the best opening remains Spider-Man 3, with £11.83m – a tally that did not include previews.
The runner-up
Benefiting from some stonking reviews, including a five-star rave from the Guardian's own Peter Bradshaw, Side Effects kicked off with a solid £905,000. However, the number for Steven Soderbergh's feature-film swansong compares unfavourably with Magic Mike, which began last July with £2.65m including just over £1m in previews. An uncertain genre positioning – medical drama, Hitchcockian thriller, self-consciously trashy B-movie – may have hampered audiences getting a fix on the film, and many critics were at a loss how best to communicate its pleasures without giving away the twisty fun.
It's the first time a film has landed as high as second place in the chart with less than £1m since September (when Killing Me Softly opened in that position with £956,000) and the lowest gross for a chart runner up since July (when Ice Age: Continental Drift occupied the spot with £720,000 earnings from Scotland, Ireland and Northern Ireland).
The also-ran
In a studio's portfolio of risk, a Jason Statham action film represents a relatively predictable outcome: unlikely to deliver a breakout surprise, but reliably flop-proof. However, the numbers seem to be drifting downwards. Despite glossy Miami production values, Taylor Hackford direction and the addition of Jennifer Lopez, Statham's latest – Parker – debuted with a lacklustre £569,000 from 301 sites and a £1,890 average. This compares with £680,000 from 330 cinemas for the opening salvo of Safe last May. The Mechanic kicked off its run with £922,000 from 301 venues in January 2011. Hollywood financiers will be paying more attention to DVD numbers, as it is on ancillary platforms that the Statham brand comes into its own.
The Mother's Day experiment
Unlike Valentine's Day, Mother's Day is not traditionally considered a big cinema-going occasion, but this didn't prevent Paramount targeting the day with its intergenerational comedy The Guilt Trip, boasting unlikely combo Seth Rogen and Barbra Streisand. The US tagline – "Get ready for one mother of a road trip" – was tweaked to become the more straightforwardly descriptive "The first-ever mother-son road trip movie". An additional marketing message urged: "Flowers? Not again … Chocolates? Really?! Treat her with a trip to the cinema this Mother's Day!"
The resulting box-office, £398,000 from 318 sites, enough for seventh place in the chart, hardly suggests a crowning achievement. On the other hand, The Guilt Trip had already underwhelmed in the US, with a $37m total, and Streisand is a more marketable commodity there. It's hard to know what else could have been done to re-energise this title, which has a 50/100 Metacritic score and a 5.6/10 IMDb user rating. Cinemas saw earnings spike on the comedy from Saturday to Sunday, whereas all the other titles in the top 10 experienced significant dips, especially A Good Day to Die Hard and, ironically, Mama.
The flop
Landing with a thud in 33rd place, Fire with Fire, released more or less straight to DVD in the US last summer, debuted here with a dire £19,200 from 105 cinemas, yielding a £183 average. Despite featuring in the Transformers movies, Josh Duhamel never looked an easy sell as the main star of an action film, and audiences may have surmised that Bruce Willis's role is modest. The supporting cast includes Rosario Dawson, Vincent D'Onofrio, 50 Cent and Vinnie Jones. The film's director, David Barrett, is a veteran stunt man and stunt co-ordinator.
The alternatives
With Soderbergh's Side Effects appealing to arthouse fans as well as multiplex goers, and Oscar movies, such as Les Misérables, Argo, Django Unchained, Life of Pi and Lincoln all still in the top 20, conditions are far from ideal for smaller releases aimed at specialised audiences. Robot & Frank was the highest-grossing film released on fewer than 100 prints, but £99,000 from 73 sites, plus £8,000 in previews, will hardly get cinema bookers salivating. Broken, from British theatre director Rufus Norris, achieved a similar result, with £53,000 from 35 sites, plus £13,000 previews. Highest-grossing foreign language title is Lore in 30th place.
The future
Although overall weekend takings were only 40th out of 52 in the league table for the past year, box-office was almost identical (up a quarter of a per cent) to the equivalent frame from 2012, when Disney's John Carter opened disappointingly at the top spot. The picture is unlikely to show imminent improvement, as the coming weekend lacks an obvious blockbuster release. Instead, several mid-level titles will battle for audiences: James McAvoy returns in cop thriller Welcome to the Punch; Zac Efron, Matthew McConaughey and Nicole Kidman star in steamy crime thriller The Paperboy; Steve Carell and Jim Carrey are warring magicians in comedy The Incredible Burt Wonderstone; the long-delayed Red Dawn remake sees teens fight back against an invasion of the US; and Elijah Wood puts Frodo behind him in gory slasher picture Maniac.
Top 10 films
1. Oz the Great and Powerful, £3,712,948 from 530 sites (New)
2. Side Effects, £904,746 from 351 sites (New)
3. Wreck-It Ralph, £744,683 from 503 sites. Total: £21,459,657
4. Parker, £568,777 from 301 sites (New)
5. Mama, £525,672 from 373 sites. Total: £4,530,295
6. Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, £507,759 from 403 sites. Total: £2,651,393
7. The Guilt Trip, £432,068 from 316 sites (New)
8. Safe Haven, £407,293 from 388 sites. Total: £1,689,566
9. A Good Day to Die Hard, £342,415 from 321 sites. Total: £10,401,957
10. Les Misérables, £293,893 from 278 sites. Total: £39,552,600
Other openers
Robot & Frank, 73 sites, £98,656 (+ £7,690 previews)
Broken, 35 sites, £53,127 (+ £12,690 previews)
Fire with Fire, 105 sites, £19,201
The Princess Bride, 76 sites, £11,273
Być Jak Kazimierz Deyna, 5 sites, £5,578
Babeldom, 4 sites, £1,558
Gangs of Wasseypur: Part 2, 4 sites, £340 | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/03/cop28-officials-fail-to-clarify-whether-protesters-will-be-safe-in-dubai | Environment | 2023-12-03T14:00:17.000Z | Ruth Michaelson | Cop28 officials fail to clarify if protesters are safe to protest in Dubai | Cop28 organisers and the UN body that oversees the annual climate conference have failed to clarify whether activists in Dubai are safe to demonstrate outside the conference area, putting civil society at risk in a country where protest is normally prohibited.
At least 80,000 people are registered to attend the conference, including thousands of activists and members of civil society, who normally hold protests around the conference area.
Some protests have already taken place, including to call for a ceasefire in Gaza, but the demonstrations have mostly been small and not disruptive. It has been reported that the UAE organisers have declined permission for some protests, including one singling out the airline Emirates as a polluter.
The conference is taking place in Dubai’s Expo City, a sprawling conference centre built to host the World Exhibition two years ago, which houses a series of pavilions but little to no public space.
Despite mounting pressure on the UAE authorities and the UN framework convention on climate change (UNFCCC), the body which administers the conference, both have declined to clarify how they are handling dissent, particularly protests that occur outside the venue, gatherings organised without express permission from the authorities, or political protests, particularly those addressing the war in Gaza.
The US state department’s annual country report on the Emirates stated: “The law provides limited freedom of assembly, although in practice the government imposed significant restrictions, including criminal penalties. Protests and demonstrations are prohibited.”
Emirati law bans gatherings without prior authorisation by the government, while the US state department said authorities “generally permitted political gatherings that supported government policies”, while imposing penalties including a potential life sentence for those leading gatherings that “[disturb] public security”. Fines for breaking laws on public assembly have a minimum penalty equivalent to £107,280 and a maximum of £215,000.
The poor record of workers’ rights in the UAE has put many would-be attenders of Cop28 in an uncomfortable position. Photograph: Ali Haider/EPA
The Emirates’ restrictions on free expression, coupled with the risk of detention or fines, has led some activists and members of civil society to stay away from the conference, citing potential risks to their safety.
“You should not be in a situation where, at an international conference on the climate crisis, you need assurances around safety. It shows that it shouldn’t be held in that environment in the first place,” said Mustafa Qadri, the founder and chief executive of the workers’ rights organisation Equidem, which has released several reports detailing labour violations among migrant workers in the Emirates, including those staffing the Expo2020 conference centre.
Qadri, along with members of his organisation based outside Dubai, said he did not feel it was safe for them to attend Cop28.
Despite the Emirates’ existing laws around protest, in early August the Emirati authorities released a joint statement with the UNFCCC focusing on what they termed an “inclusive” conference. “There will be space available for climate activists to assemble peacefully and make their voices heard,” they said.
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‘Enough of endless delays’: will Cop28 force a course change for the world?
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A Cop28 spokesperson told the Guardian that demonstrations would be permitted in the UN-administered blue zone at the conference and within the “Voice for Action hub” in the green zone, which is administered by the Emirati authorities.
The hub requires anyone hoping to host an event there, including speeches, debates, workshops or demonstrations, to obtain permission from the conference organisers to protest by filling out an online form and providing detailed information about their plans. This includes selecting the theme of the potential demonstration from a list that reads: “technology and innovation, inclusion, frontline communities, finance, other”.
‘Don’t be naive like I was’: UK academic advises Cop28 attenders to stay safe
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“Cop28 has developed specialised security protocols in line with international processes and our security teams have received advanced training to enable them to respond to issues effectively, efficiently and with wider cultural contexts in mind,” said the spokesperson. “The UAE protects the right to protest in line with relevant international agreements.”
Qadri said the vast majority of the security officials enforcing the ban on protest are likely to be migrant workers, meaning they could face repercussions including losing their visas for failing to enforce a harsh crackdown on dissent.
This also makes workers additionally vulnerable amid confusion about what kinds of dissent are authorised. Qadri said: “Workers might be too scared to raise complaints, but what [the authorities] are relying on are standards and policies that we support in principle, but how security guards are treated is a totally different situation.
“This is a society where trade unions and peaceful assembly are criminalised, so you can have the most sophisticated complaints systems but in a repressive environment that comes to very little. People are right to be worried about going there as delegates,” he said.
The Cop28 administration requires participants to sign a code of conduct on arrival, which includes a demand to “refrain from using UNFCCC venues for unauthorised demonstrations”.
Representatives for the conference declined to respond to other questions about protests, particularly whether demonstrating outside the designated areas in the blue and green zones is permitted, details of who administered the security training, what the training covered or what would happen to those who protest without prior permission.
The UNFCCC did not respond to multiple requests for comment on the issue of protests, including questions about whether it had assessed the risk to participants’ safety if they chose to protest in Dubai.
Joey Shea, an Emirates expert at Human Rights Watch, said: “We are deeply alarmed for the safety and security of Cop28 participants … due to the lack of clarity around what kinds of expression and protest will be allowed and where they will be permitted.
“We are expecting that in the green zone, UAE national law will apply, but we are not sure what mitigating steps will be taken to protect participants expressing themselves in a way that’s normal for a conference about climate change. We are deeply concerned about the lack of clarity.”
Shea added that the Emirati authorities permitting protests about less sensitive issues should not be taken as an indication that the UAE is softening its line on protests overall.
Shea said: “I think there is a risk that Cop28 will be very effective in whitewashing the Emirates’ reputation if some protests on less sensitive issues are allowed to go ahead, while they take a harder line against protests on issues like political prisoners, harms linked to the UAE’s own fossil fuel production or rights for migrant workersJust because there’s an opening on some issues during Cop doesn’t mean there is rights-respecting tolerance in the UAE.”
Cop28: Can fossil fuel companies transition to clean energy?
On Tuesday 5 December, 8pm-9.15pm GMT, join Damian Carrington, Christiana Figueres, Tessa Khan and Mike Coffin for a livestreamed discussion on whether fossil fuel companies can transition to clean energy. Book tickets here or at theguardian.live | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/24/britain-one-party-state-tory-defeat-covid-19 | Opinion | 2020-06-24T10:00:21.000Z | Frances Ryan | Britain feels like a one-party state, but therein lie the seeds of Tory defeat | Frances Ryan | Britain’s political landscape is unenviable. Boris Johnson has emerged from the pandemic as exactly the prime minister his track record warned he would be: one that finds time to reference Churchill but gets bored with going to Cobra meetings. His cabinet, meanwhile, are ready to sink to any depths, be it lying at will or playing up to racists. They have little to be smug about. The UK can now boast the highest excess death rate of any country, and the worst forecast recession. All of this playing out against the backdrop of a social fabric so decayed that it takes a footballer to force ministers to ensure more than a million hungry children are actually fed.
Our government has never been more unfit for office, just as the official opposition couldn’t be further from power
Our government has never been more unfit for office, just as the official opposition couldn’t be further from a chance at power. Last week Labour released its investigation into its crushing 2019 election defeat. This document was not simply an autopsy of the past but an insight into the future: in order to form a majority government in 2024, Labour will have to increase the number of MPs it has by 60%. Watching events unfold, it feels as if we are in a uniquely powerless and dangerous state of affairs, in which the government can fail without redress, at a time when we could not be in greater need of good leadership.
Johnson is said to be set on a major cabinet reshuffle in September due to worries over sinking poll ratings, but the truth is that public opinion has been set against the Tories before and it has done them no harm. Anyone who thinks the horror of unnecessary Covid-19 deaths will be enough to dislodge the Conservatives from Downing Street should talk to the families of Windrush or Grenfell victims.
The Tories are Teflon, overseeing ministerial scandals, vast wastes of public funds, and crumbling public services, before being repeatedly voted back in – with an increased majority to boot. Neither lack of morality nor of competence can dissuade voters, no matter how much progressives wish it did. If it were enough to point the electorate towards dead benefits claimants, the Labour party would have been elected on a landslide. We are living in the democratic equivalent of a one-party state, and it just so happens that party is destroying the country.
Key points from review of 2019 Labour election defeat
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How we go about challenging this is the most pressing matter in modern UK politics. Labour’s report gives solid advice on its long-term strategy: fixing organisational failings, a digital campaign that swaps preaching to the converted for targeting swing voters, and, above all, pitching a transformative economic agenda. But long-term strategies bring little comfort when there is such urgency for change. If a week is a long time in politics, four years is a lifetime, not least in an era where a pandemic is changing life – and politics – as we know it. Downing Street is currently stoking divisive culture wars to shore up support in its “red wall” seats, from curbing foreign aid to dumping trans self-ID plans. That a Tory MP felt the need to check parents couldn’t spend free school meal vouchers on booze and fags last week is an insight into how the party really feels about its new working-class base.
Coronavirus, politically speaking, is the unknown quantity in all this. As the months unfold, voters will face falling living standards and rising unemployment under a party that neither has the answers to help them nor any real desire to. A government overseeing an ever more pressured NHS and threadbare social care system, on top of an, at best, “hands off” approach to children’s education can only wriggle off the hook for so long. Anyone who lived through the 1980s and 90s knows seemingly unending Tory rule can be dramatically uprooted with sufficient public will.
The elements that could pull the country towards a deeper reckoning with its leaders, and with Conservatism, are falling into place. The opposition – for all its wounds – has an urgent task to give the public a bright alternative to Johnson’s decay. Britain’s one-party state cannot last, for all our sakes.
Frances Ryan is a Guardian columnist.
This article was amended on 26 June 2020. An earlier version said that no party has ever increased the number of MPs it has by 60% to form a majority Government, but in fact this has been achieved at a number of elections, including in 1945. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/aug/24/return-to-ithaca-review-laurent-cantet | Film | 2017-08-24T11:00:18.000Z | Peter Bradshaw | Return to Ithaca review – Palme d'Or winner's Cuban comrades clean out their closets | Laurent Cantet set the seal on his pre-eminence by winning the Cannes Palme d’Or in 2008 with the tough school drama Entre les Murs, or The Class; and then his English-language debut Foxfire (2012), adapted from Joyce Carol Oates, was respectfully received. But this is a very low-key chamber piece from 2014, about a reunion of middle-aged friends, which of course turns out to be an autumnal, bittersweet affair involving the exhumation of painful secrets. It is set mostly in one spot: a roof-terrace overlooking Havana’s Malecón, and has evidently grown out of Cantet’s contribution to the portmanteau movie 7 Days in Havana (2012).
Five old Cuban comrades meet up for drinks: troubled Tanía (Isabel Santos), boisterous neocapitalist Eddy (Jorge Perugorría), teacher and failed artist Rafa (Fernando Hechavarria), factory worker Aldo (Pedro Julia Díaz Ferran) and writer Amadeo (Néstor Jiménez). They first met as teenagers at a communist work camp – an old photo of them looking heartbreakingly young is passed around – and they are still conflicted about the abandoned or congealed leftist idealism of their youth. Should they mourn it? Or feel ashamed that they submitted for so long to a repressive regime on the point of vanishing into history’s dustbin? They are particularly disturbed that Amadeo, who has been living in exile in Spain, now plans to return to Cuba to live out his days: the Cuba they now daydream about leaving, or having never inhabited in the first place. Inevitably, secrets are disinterred and the film saves a major confrontation for the big finish. It is a bit stagey, but heartfelt and well acted. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2018/aug/28/standups-edinburgh-show-sean-hughes-comedy-award-festival-fringe | Stage | 2018-08-28T05:00:04.000Z | Paul Fleckney | Joke's over: why standups should refresh the tired 'Edinburgh show' | The late Sean Hughes had a reasonable claim to inventing what we now know as the “Edinburgh show”. Before 1990, wannabe comics went to the Edinburgh fringe and performed their best standup material. Hughes came along with something different: a funny monologue, set in his bedsit and containing a narrative to go with the gags. Comedy with a hint of theatre, in other words.
It worked: A One Night Stand not only won the Edinburgh comedy award (then called the Perrier), it got Hughes a Channel 4 series. And 28 years later, Hughes’s template for a 60-minute show still dominates the fringe.
The first fringe since Hughes’s death has just come to an end, and I feel a little shakeup may be in order. Not because of any shortage of ingenuity or good shows – it’s been a strong year. Rather, because this notion of the “Edinburgh show” is, I think, stifling creativity and individuality. Comics have perfected the art, so it’s possible that what comes next is diminishing returns. And core to this is the rigid expectation that standup shows must be about 60 minutes.
The one-hour format is obviously convenient for festival organisers and punters, but how about loosening the reins? Surely one of the worst things an industry can do to its creative health is be prescriptive, and what could be more prescriptive than setting a time limit? Imagine all albums having to be 45 minutes, all films 120 – it would fundamentally change the relationship the artist has to what they are creating. And yet comics have this time limit, fixing minds early and funnelling them into the same creative pathways.
So common is the 'sad bit' now that not only is it a cliche in comedy circles, it’s also become a cliche for standups to knowingly point it out
What it produces is a certain number of shows each year that feel like a similar overall experience (allowing for the natural repetition you would get from 1,000 comedy shows). They appear to spring from a conscious attempt to write an “Edinburgh show”, to fill the allotted time, and it’s often strong comedians selling themselves short.
There is good reason why the 60-minute set leads comics into the same territory. A standup can power through 30 minutes on material only (40 at a push), with no structural underpinning. Make that 60, and suddenly the show needs more of a reason to exist, so comics make it more of a three-dimensional experience with a broader narrative and/or an emotional core. Not all comics do this, of course – the likes of Sarah Millican, Josh Widdicombe and Nish Kumar have all broken through from Edinburgh in recent times leaning more on material than “narrative” shows. But broadly speaking, there’s a formula to fit the format – just as there’s a formula to the three-minute pop song.
Another similarity between many of these 60-minute offerings is the “sad bit”. So common is the sad bit now that not only is it a cliche in comedy circles, it’s also become a cliche for standups to knowingly point it out with, “OK, here’s the sad bit of the show now.”
A different approach … Sarah Millican on the eve of her show Chatterbox in August 2010. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian
Again, this is popular because it works. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when it started, but there was a glut of shows around 2008-10 that were flippantly called “dead dad shows” (Russell Kane’s was the most well-known). Since then, of course, wider awareness of mental-health issues has been a significant social change, and standup comedy has been both beneficiary and catalyst, with comedians publicly discussing their experiences of grief, anxiety and depression, and helping to bust open the stigma.
Deployment of the sad bit ranges from the authentic to the cynical, the immersive to the subtle. And I don’t think it’s going anywhere, either, because it so perfectly fits the formula that fits the format: it provides that bit of grit and narrative, it makes the show personal and, sure, it’s a bit of free therapy, too.
Edinburgh award champ Rose Matafeo's Horndog is a comedy smash
Brian Logan
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Last year, the personal, themed comedy show pioneered by Hughes was brought full circle by Hannah Gadsby. In her remarkable piece Nanette – joint winner of the Edinburgh comedy award – Gadsby pushed the form to its limit, analysing why comedy with an emotional undercurrent is in fact bad for the comedian.
So maybe now is the time not to reinvent the wheel, but to allow for a few more types of wheel. More 30-minute and 40-minute slots – or perhaps even 80 minutes, with an interval. We might get a wider range of shows being developed or toured, and standups retaining more individuality – particularly the younger ones still finding their feet.
Comics could play their part, too, and think beyond the “Edinburgh show”. For starters, why not view 60 minutes as two half-hour “shows”: standup set in the first half, something completely different in the second?
There is some time flexibility in the free (and more carefree) parts of the festival – perhaps the bigger venues should follow suit. For the sake of the most naked, exhilarating artform going, I think it’s worth a try. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/17/an-apocalyptic-cult-900-dead-remembering-the-jonestown-massacre-40-years-on | World news | 2018-11-17T09:00:28.000Z | J Oliver Conroy | An apocalyptic cult, 900 dead: remembering the Jonestown massacre, 40 years on | Four decades ago this Sunday, the Rev Jim Jones, the charismatic leader of an American cult in the Guyanese jungle, ordered his followers to murder a US congressman and several journalists, then commit mass suicide by drinking cyanide-laced fruit punch.
The Jonestown massacre was, before 9/11, the largest single incident of intentional civilian death in American history. More than 900 people died, many children. It was also a devastating cultural trauma: the end of the last strains of a certain kind of 1960s idealism and 1970s radicalism. Jonestown’s legacy lives on in the ironic phrase “drink the Kool-Aid”. (In actuality it was Fla-Vor-Aid.)
Although he would later become a symbol of the darker side of the west coast counterculture, Jim Jones was born to a poor family in Indiana. Described as an intelligent and strange child, Jones was instinctively attracted to religion, especially charismatic Christian traditions like Pentecostalism. He cut his teeth as a street preacher, and was, unusually for the time and place, a passionate advocate for racial equality.
Jim Jones and his wife Marceline Jones, seated in front of their adopted children and next to his sister-in-law, right, with her three children, California, 1976. Photograph: Don Hogan Charles/Getty Images
Jones’s idiosyncratic blend of evangelical Christianity, New Age spirituality and radical social justice attracted an enthusiastic following. He called his burgeoning church the Peoples Temple.
Although Jones’s followers would later be stereotyped as sinister, brainwashed idiots, the journalist Tim Reiterman argues in his seminal book on the subject that many were “decent, hardworking, socially conscious people, some highly educated”, who “wanted to help their fellow man and serve God, not embrace a self-proclaimed deity on earth”. The Peoples Temple advocated socialism and communitarian living and was racially integrated to an exceptional standard rarely matched since.
In 1965, when Jones was in his mid-30s, he ordered the Peoples Temple moved to California. He drifted away from traditional Christian teachings, describing himself in messianic terms and claiming he was the reincarnation of figures like Christ and Buddha. He also claimed that his goal all along was communism, and, in a twist on the famous dictum that religion is the “opiate of the masses”, that religion was merely his way of making Marxism more palatable.
By the 1970s, the Peoples Temple, now based in San Francisco, had gained significant political influence. Jones’s fierce advocacy for the downtrodden earned him the admiration of leftwing icons like Angela Davis and Harvey Milk and the support of groups like the Black Panthers – a tragically misguided political affinity, given that more than two-thirds of Jonestown’s eventual victims were African American.
The Rev Jim Jones and his wife, Marceline, taken from a photo album found in Jonestown, Guyana. Photograph: Bettmann Archive
The Peoples Temple was, as David Talbot notes in Salon, successful in part because it was politically useful: “Jones could be counted on to deliver busloads of obedient, well-dressed disciples to demonstrations, campaign rallies, and political precincts.”
There were already signs, however, of a sinister undercurrent to the Peoples Temple. Followers were expected to devote themselves completely to the church’s utopian project: they turned over their personal wealth, worked long hours of unpaid labor for the church and often broke contact with their families. They were expected to raise their children within the commune. As a show of commitment, Peoples Temple members were asked to sign false testimonials that they had molested their children, which the church kept for potential blackmail.
Jim Jones' lover: inside the mind of the cult leader's right-hand woman
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In his 1980 study of Jonestown, the writer Shiva Naipaul, younger brother of VS Naipaul, argued that the Peoples Temple was at heart a fundamentalist religious project – “obsessed with sin and images of apocalyptic destruction, authoritarian in its innermost impulses, instinctively thinking in terms of the saved and the damned”.
The result, Naipaul wrote, “was neither racial justice nor socialism but a messianic parody of both”.
Jones, who had long believed the US was in danger of imminent nuclear holocaust, had been searching for a place where his church would be “safe” during an apocalyptic event. A magazine article alleging abuse in the Peoples Temple spurred Jones’s desire to relocate. He chose Guyana, a former British colony in South America whose socialist regime was politically sympathetic.
In 1977 the Peoples Temple moved its headquarters to a remote area of Guyanese wilderness. Here, Jones declared, they could build a utopian society without government or media meddling. Battling an oppressive tropical climate and limited resources, they began to convert the dense jungle into a working agricultural commune, soon known as “Jonestown”.
The Peoples Temple office in Georgetown, the capital of Guyana. Photograph: Ken Hawkins/Alamy
The church delivered Jones’s rambling monologues to Jonestown’s inhabitants by megaphone as they worked. In the evenings they attended mandatory propaganda classes. Jones’s writ was enforced by armed guards called the “Red Brigade”.
Jonestown had little reason to expect interference from Guyana – a “cooperative republic” whose government happily ignored signs of the cult’s authoritarian and paranoid bent. Back in the US, however, parents of Jonestown inhabitants – concerned by the strange letters, or lack of letters, they received from their children – had been lobbying the government to investigate.
After a family in the US won a custody order for a child in Jonestown, paranoia escalated. The commune became an armed camp, ringed by volunteers with guns and machetes, threatening to fight outsiders to the death.
During the (imaginary) siege, Black Panthers Huey Newton and Angela Davis spoke to Jonestown inhabitants by radio patch to voice solidarity. Davis told Jonestown inhabitants that they were at the vanguard of revolution, and right to resist what she called “a profound conspiracy” against them.
Sometime during this period Jonestown began drills called “white nights”, in which inhabitants would practice committing mass suicide.
Jackie Speier, an aide to Congressman Leo Ryan, survived five gunshots. She is now a congresswoman representing California’s 14th district. Photograph: Bettmann Archive
The NBC News soundman Steven Sung, survivor of the ambush at the airstrip, is evacuated. Photograph: Larry Downing/AFP/Getty Images
At the behest of concerned family members in the US, the California congressman Leo Ryan organized a delegation of journalists and others to make a fact-finding mission to Jonestown.
The delegation arrived at Jonestown on 17 November 1978 and received a civil audience from Jones, but the visit was hastily called short on 18 November after a member of the commune tried to stab Ryan. The delegation headed back to the airstrip, accompanied by a dozen Jonestown inhabitants who had asked to leave the commune, and escorted by Jones’s watchful deputies.
The delegates never made it off the ground. As they boarded the planes, their escorts drew guns and opened fire. They shot Ryan dead, combing his body with bullets to make certain, and killed four others – including two photographers who captured footage of the attack before dying. Wounded survivors ran or dragged themselves, bleeding, into the forest. (One of Ryan’s aides, Jackie Speier, survived five gunshots and is now a congresswoman representing California’s 14th district.)
Back at Jonestown, Jones announced that it was time to undertake the final “white night”. To quell disagreement, he told inhabitants that Congressman Ryan had already been murdered, sealing the commune’s fate and making “revolutionary suicide” the only possible outcome.
The people of Jonestown, some acceptant and serene, others probably coerced, queued to receive cups of cyanide punch and syringes. The children – more than 300 – were poisoned first, and can be heard crying and wailing on the commune’s own audio tapes, later recovered by the FBI.
When Guyanese troops reached Jonestown the next morning, they discovered an eerie, silent vista, frozen in time and littered with bodies. A tiny number of survivors, mainly people who had hidden during the poisoning, emerged. One elderly woman, who slept through the entire ordeal, awoke to discover everyone dead. Jones was found dead of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot.
The hypodermic syringes and vials filled with cyanide and animal tranquilizer used in the mass murder-suicide.
Photograph: Ken Hawkins/Alamy
US military personnel remove American bodies from Jonestown, Guyana, for repatriation. Photograph: Ken Hawkins/Alamy
One of the journalists attacked on the airstrip, Tim Reiterman of the San Francisco Examiner, survived two bullet wounds and went on to write Raven: The Untold Story of the Rev. Jim Jones and His People, still considered the definitive history of the Jones cult.
Reiterman has argued that it is impossible to separate Jonestown from its political and social context. The “Peoples Temple was – as many communes, cults, churches and social movements are – an alternative to the established social order, a nation unto itself”, he wrote in Raven. “The Temple I knew was not populated by masochists and half-wits, so it followed that the members who gave years of labor, life savings, homes, children and, in some cases, their own lives had been getting something in return.”
He “recoiled”, Reiterman added, “when outsiders took the attitude that they or their children would never be crazy or vulnerable enough to join such an organization. Such complacency is self-delusion.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/nov/12/brexit-article-50-parliament-eu-farron-may | Politics | 2016-11-12T21:09:11.000Z | Jamie Doward | Two-thirds of voters oppose a ‘blind-date Brexit’ | Only a third of UK voters support Brexit unconditionally, according to a poll that suggests a widespread wish for the government to share the terms of the UK’s departure from Europe before it embarks on the process.
The findings of the ICM poll will please the growing number of MPs and peers calling for the government to clarify the terms of the exit – a demand that puts them on a collision course with Theresa May, who has made it clear that she is determined to begin the departure process in March.
Last week, Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrat leader, said his eight MPs and more than 100 peers would oppose Brexit unless the terms of the final deal were put to a second referendum. A small number of Labour MPs have said they share Farron’s concerns.
“Article 50 would proceed, but only if there is a referendum on the terms of the deal. And if the British people are not respected then, yes, that is a red line and we would vote against the government,” Farron said.
The prime minister must make her plan fully transparent to parliament and the public
Alex Wilks, Avaaz
The new poll – for online campaign group Avaaz – finds that 33% of voters support Brexit unconditionally. Almost a quarter (23%) oppose it unconditionally, 32% say it depends on the terms of the deal and 12% are undecided.
“Theresa May is wrong if she thinks she has public support for a blind-date Brexit,” said Alex Wilks, Avaaz’s campaign director. “Two-thirds of people in the country don’t back Brexit at any cost, and the prime minister must therefore make her plan fully transparent to parliament and the public.” The High Court ruled last month that the government could not begin the formal process to leave the EU – triggering Article 50 – before it had allowed parliament a vote on the issue.
The court said that once article 50 was triggered it was irreversible. As a result, UK citizens would lose rights granted to them under the 1972 European Communities Act. The High Court said that only parliament – not the government – had the right to repeal a law it had passed.
Article 50 could be reversed, government may argue in Brexit case
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The government plans to contest the ruling in the supreme court. The Guardian reported yesterday that the government may argue that the article 50 proceedings can be reversed at any time before the two-year Brexit process is completed. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2016/oct/21/the-unconformity-devastation-and-beauty-collide-in-isolated-tasmanian-mining-town | Culture | 2016-10-20T22:57:09.000Z | Josephine Rowe | The Unconformity: beauty and devastation collide in isolated Tasmanian mining town | Josephine Rowe | The descent into Queenstown, Tasmania, is one of disparate and formidable beauty. As the Lyell highway wends its way through hairpin bends, the surrounding mountainsides shed world heritage forest, shed trees of any kind, becoming the region’s famed lunar dreamscape. The magenta, ochre and smoky-green hues of the denuded hillsides are remarkable to look at, cast in a slightly different glow at every turn, recalling the mesas of New Mexico, or the Painted Desert (Arizona or South Australia, whichever you fancy).
But this beauty is complicated by its genesis – more than a century of extensive mining has decimated the area: minerals are hauled out of the earth, and decades of sulphurous smelter fumes allow little in the way of regeneration.
Beauty and devastation is but the first of many incongruous pairings to be encountered over the course of Queenstown’s three-day arts festival, the Unconformity.
A remote and depleted mining town may seem an unlikely location for an arts festival. Previously called the Queenstown Heritage and Arts festival, the biennial event’s latest iteration was held in the wake of the 2014 Lyell copper mine closures that brought an eerie quiet to the streets, and spurred the departure of many residents. The 2016 name change references one of the geological phenomena of the area. Geologically speaking, an unconformity is an abrupt shift in strata, an eroded age – in the case of the Queenstown unconformity, about 35m years.
The name doubles as a mission statement, encouraging an embrace of the paradoxes that make this festival distinct.
Flux, a project by Liquid Architecture and the Unconscious Collective, which took over an old limestone quarry. Photograph: Andrew Ross
The sky is starkly, coldly clear for the opening-night event, The Rumble: a large-scale sound installation by the Hobart-based composer Dylan Sheridan, who incorporates salvaged mining machinery. The procession of mining trucks was once an annual Christmastime happening. Tonight, the distant thunder of the trucks and the initial hammer chimes of the composition resonate ominously through Queenstown’s streets before headlights appear through the first dark and The Rumble grinds towards the heart of the town.
“The rock crusher emits a very distinctive major third – F and A – which I based all of the harmony around,” Sheridan explains. “The idea was to start with a menacing, harsh sort of sound world of hammers and drills and horns and machinery, and turn it into a sort of cacophonous celebration of what the town was and is. Ultimately I wanted it to be hopeful.”
One of the festival’s greater successes is much of the program’s calibre and tenacity. The Unconformity does not suffer from the underestimation of audience that so often undermines regional arts festivals.
The festival director, Travis Tiddy, has stressed the vitality of an artistic program that responds to the region. The percussionist Matthias Schack-Arnott’s immersive, elemental Fault Traces is visually and sonically exquisite. Using subsonic frequencies and a plethora of organic materials, it evokes tectonic murmurings and the frenetic desiccation of shell, wood, stone and metal, giving way to the late, mechanised pound of heavy industry – the audible memory of a mountain.
This focus on deep time is revisited and refracted throughout a number of the works. Rock is “full of slower, longer thoughts than mind can have”, Mish Grigor and Zoe Scoglio tell us in We Are Mountain, giving a shout-out to Ursula K Le Guin.
Edible Mount Lyell by Fiona Ebert, Carol Murphy, Mish Grigor and Zoe Scoglio. Photograph: Andrew Ross
Their participatory performance begins with the audience being bussed up to Iron Blow, the open-cut mine where Mount Lyell’s mining industry began. The en-route scripting makes for a idiomatic audio guide. The earliest thing we know about this area … It’s an imagined sequence of oral histories, staggering back through the strata of inhabitants and their relationship to the mountain, past mineral industry and the prospectors who came in search of it, past the West Coast Range’s first people, to the Cretaceous organisms that form the fossiliferous rock.
For We Are Mountain’s conclusion, Scoglio and Grigor have enlisted the help of locals Fiona Ebert – the baker of much-coveted banana cakes at the Queenstown markets – and the sculptor Carol Murphy, to create an edible Mount Lyell that the audience is invited to descend upon with dessert spoons.
“This goes against all my health and safety training,” a local nurse says, grinning and digging her spoon into the iridescent icing.
The multi-disciplinary performance Geologies makes reverent use of the fading Masonic Hall in which it is staged. Somehow the old pews and blistered paint seem in accord, so too the eight hanging overhead lamps shaded by milky glass, the lone fluorescent bulb illuminating the violinist’s solo. The dancer Wendy Morrow’s final movements are performed by torchlight, the beam directed by the composer, Leigh Hobba.
The ethos of working with available materials extends to the performance itself; Morrow’s gestures presented as in immediate response to Hobba’s delivered litanies of words, technical instructions – how to tie a sheet bend, for instance – and crashing impromptu piano.
During this performance it occurs that a face is never more compelling – or beautiful – than when listening, intent. This is true of both audience and dancer; and the still, reflective intensity of Morrow’s inward gaze is as arresting as gesture.
Dancer Wendy Morrow’s final movements are performed by torchlight in Geologies. Photograph: Jack Robert-Tissot
Each night the festival club resembles the late hours of an unlikely wedding, with boundaries between locals and incomers dissolving on the dance floor where Bruce Springsteen, as ever, proves the great unifier. (Try not dancing to Dancing in the Dark in an underground club with pink-carpeted walls. Just try.)
The festival culminates on Queenstown’s infamous gravel football pitch for the Unconformity Cup: the West v the Rest. Ours and Theirs are intermingled in the grandstand. Up close, the gravel is mercifully finer than imagined. It rains steadily throughout all four quarters, underscoring why a turf pitch might prove impractical here. There was an early-morning attempt to paint in ground markings but the rain has soaked the paint into the pitch, where it has leached out into wide magenta stains, mirroring those of the mountains.
The Hobart writer Michael Blake, ostensibly of the Rest, was a late recruit to the West, playing half-back flank. “I was a bit trepidatious, going in,” he says afterwards. “But there was much less savagery than expected. A lot of blood, though – they were pretty laissez-faire about the blood rule.”
The final score: 46-30, the West. The way it was always going to go, but perhaps at a slightly more respectable margin.
‘They were pretty laissez-faire about the blood rule’: the West v the Rest play on Queenstown’s infamous gravel football pitch. Photograph: Jack Robert-Tissot
“Mining is full of the unexpected, of sudden wealth and rapid decay,” the historian Geoffrey Blainey wrote, six decades ago, in The Peaks of Lyell. “All mining fields must eventually die and most old men of the west know this bitterly.”
Following the Lyell Highway back east, amid the mountains and their long, slow thoughts – their secrets – the sense of deep time lingers. No small thing for a town to imagine itself differently, towards a future in which industry and place are not exclusively synonymous, and the view from the Unconformity feels anything but bitter. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2015/dec/15/the-50-best-films-of-2015-in-the-us-no-4-anomalisa | Film | 2015-12-15T11:55:31.000Z | Catherine Shoard | The 50 best films of 2015 in the US: No 4 – Anomalisa | Anomalisa review: sex and depression in Charlie Kaufman's superb stop-motion breakdown
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Anomalisa is a perfect film I was lucky enough to first watch it in perfect conditions: alone, abroad, exhausted, before returning to work in a hotel room as pleasantly, depressingly bland as that in which most of the movie unfolds.
Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson’s stop-motion masterpiece is set largely in a bedroom at the Fregoli, a moderately upscale Cincinnati hotel, home for the night to Michael Stone (voiced by David Thewlis), a customer service guru due to give a keynote speech the next day. Everyone but Michael not only looks the same – the puppets (uncanny enough as it is) have identical heads, save for hair and make-up. They also sound the same (all are voiced, without modulation for age or gender, by Tom Noonan).
Watch the trailer
Michael suffers, you gradually decipher, from a delusion called Fregoli, in which the sufferer thinks believe everyone is the same person. Anomalisa is about the horror and isolation of that – but also about a larger loneliness borne of living in increasingly identik world. A world in which connection and communication are muffled by hegemony. In which people blur and smooth into one another, in which everyone has the same purchase on everything: all their experiences, including those that once seemed rare and special.
But it is also about what it is like – in the words of its hero – “to be human, to ache”. It gives us the most graphic representation yet of how it feels to fall in love with someone, to sense a connection you can’t explain – and then to witness it crumble in front of your face. For Michael is not the only person he recognises as different from every other member of the human race. Also staying at the hotel is Lisa, who has a different – even disfigured – face, and a voice courtesy not of Noonan but Jennifer Jason Leigh.
Watch a video review of Anomalisa from Telluride Guardian
Their courtship is the heart of the film, and it takes you into enchantingly unknown territory. The real-time, full-frontal sex scene is both unlike anything you’ve ever seen before and miles more touching, human – and even realistic – than cinema has yet managed.
I saw the film for a second time recently, in more singular settings: in London, at home, not returning to a room full of throw pillows in a manicured mountain village of condo upon condo. Rather than lessening the impact, it reconfirmed for me the movie’s genius. It is a fleeting film (just 90 minutes) filled with richness and humour and endless interest, with breathtakingly-realised conceits and moments I think might haunt me forever. I can’t wait to watch it again. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jan/20/rishi-sunak-fined-for-not-wearing-seatbelt-lancashire-visit-instagram-video-back-moving-car | Politics | 2023-01-20T18:22:46.000Z | Kiran Stacey | Rishi Sunak fined for not wearing seatbelt during Lancashire visit | Rishi Sunak has become the second sitting prime minister in history – and in the last 12 months – to be fined by the police after he received a fixed-penalty notice for not wearing his seatbelt.
Lancashire constabulary announced on Friday it was fining the prime minister, who filmed a social media video earlier this week while travelling in the back of a car without his belt on.
It is the second time Sunak has been fined in the past 12 months after he was punished by the Metropolitan police for attending Downing Street parties during lockdown.
Boris Johnson also received a fine at that time, which made him the first sitting prime minister to be penalised for breaking the law.
Lancashire constabulary said on Friday: “You will be aware that a video has been circulating on social media showing an individual failing to wear a seatbelt while a passenger in a moving car in Lancashire.
“After looking into this matter, we have today issued a 42-year-old man from London with a conditional offer of fixed penalty.”
A No 10 spokesperson said: “The prime minister fully accepts this was a mistake and has apologised. He will of course comply with the fixed penalty.”
The police did not say how much they had fined the prime minister, but according to the government’s safety campaign, any driver or passenger not wearing a seatbelt is breaking the law and is liable to be fined up to £500.
In the video, which was uploaded to Instagram but has since disappeared, Sunak turns to the camera without his belt on to talk about the government’s levelling up agenda. The car was being accompanied by police outriders as the prime minister travelled from one event to another.
Labour said the incident made Sunak a “laughing stock”. A party spokesperson said: “Hapless Rishi Sunak’s levelling-up photo op has blown up in his face and turned him into a laughing stock.
“He started the week hoping people would be grateful for a partial refund on the money that has been stripped from them over 13 years of the Tories. But instead he got a warring party and yet another fine from the police.
“Just when you thought this Tory government couldn’t get any more ridiculous, they manage it.”
The fine caps a tough week for Sunak, who travelled to northern England this week to publicise millions of pounds’ worth of grants that the government announced from its levelling up fund.
The visit was meant to showcase Sunak’s ability to connect with ordinary voters and to reset the government agenda after a bruising six months.
It was overshadowed, however, not only by the controversy over his seatbelt but by the revelation that he had travelled to Blackpool in a 14-seat RAF jet.
Meanwhile, the announcement of the latest round of levelling up funds was marred by accusations by Andy Street, the Conservative mayor for the West Midlands, that the government was fostering a “begging bowl culture” among local authorities. A Guardian analysis also revealed that Tory seats had received considerably more money from the fund than other seats with similar deprivation levels. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/may/22/grow-richard-herring-jeremy-hardy | Books | 2010-05-21T23:03:12.000Z | Phil Daoust | How Not to Grow Up! by Richard Herring and My Family and Other Strangers by Jeremy Hardy | Book review | People have been telling Richard Herring to grow up since he was three. "Wee wee, poo poo, bottom" was, he says "my first and in some ways purest catchphrase". Now it is "my adult stand-up act pretty much distilled down into its essential components".
That resolutely juvenile sense of humour has stood him in good stead. In the 1990s it made him a TV star alongside the more cerebral Stewart Lee, and although their double act is now just a memory Herring can still pack out any medium-sized provincial theatre you care to name. His stand-up show is a regular highlight of the Edinburgh festival. The ladies seem to like him, too. Assuming you can believe anything he says (and you probably can't, as he's a comedian) he has spent most of the past decade "up to my plums" in a succession of much younger women. So what's he got to be miserable about?
He's hitting middle age, of course, and can no longer deny it. How Not to Grow Up! is the story of a man turning 40 who takes a look at himself and doesn't much like what he sees. It's not just what the mirror reveals – though his stomach is spreading and his hair is getting grey – but the comparisons he makes with those around him. When his dad was 40, he had a wife, three children, a proper job as a teacher and some useful skills like gardening and wine-making. Herring Jr can use a Nintendo DS. "If the Apocalypse came and I survived it," he writes, "I would have nothing of use to contribute to the new society. People don't want to hear cock jokes after Armageddon."
As for his friends, even the most immature have settled down and are having children. And all poor Richard has to fill his days is a string of affairs, and the hope – which eventually turns into reality – of luring two women into his bed at the same time . . .
Is he complaining or boasting? It's not always clear, even to Herring himself. Many men, he knows, would kill for a life like his. But something seems to be missing, and it's probably woman-shaped. As the fateful birthday passes, he becomes desperate to find the One, falling fast and hard for assorted "hilarious", "gorgeous", "effervescent" beauties, most of whom run away as fast as their high heels will let them. Will he realise that what he really needs is to cultivate a sense of self-worth? What do you think?
Jeremy Hardy is just six years older than Herring, but My Family and Other Strangers suggests he has more in common with Herring's father. He has a partner, a kid, and probably at least two pairs of slippers. He doesn't worry much where his life might be heading, or where it's been in the past; he's quite happy pottering along, performing his stand-up show here, recording a radio programme there, visiting this Sussex castle and that London food market. If Herring's life is one big blurry, boozy tour, Hardy's is a succession of days out, recorded with occasionally soporific attention to detail. If you want to know how much it costs to park in Croydon's Centrale car park or what's on the menu at Rosie Lee's Tea Room in Loddon, you'll find it right here on pages 142 and 165.
Like Herring, Hardy is on a quest, but his appears more contrived. Born and bred in south-east England, he is "the whitest, most Anglo-Saxon Protestant" he knows, and would like to find out if his ancestors were all as dull. What would he gain from the experience? That's the problem with the whole project. "I'm not sure what I think I'll really *learn* by finding out more about my forebears," he admits early on. Almost 300 pages later, he notes: "Without the fact of having a book to write, I doubt I would have done a fraction of this researching or exploring."
Was it all worthwhile? For Hardy, perhaps, as he discovers at least once skeleton in the family closet, and realises how much he should treasure his living relatives. For his readers, less so. There is plenty that is interesting and touching and funny in this book, but every time we get close to Hardy's family, or one of the many friends he has lost, like Linda Smith or Alan Coren, he remembers what he has been paid to tell us about, forces us into his car and drives us off to another public records office. Sometimes, it seems, you can be too grown up. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/25/khalid-masood-profile-from-popular-teenager-to-isis-inspired-terrorist | UK news | 2017-03-25T07:00:03.000Z | Sandra Laville | Khalid Masood: from Kent schoolboy to Westminster attacker | In an old school photograph, the smiling face of Adrian Ajao is a picture of a healthy, happy, middle class boy from Tunbridge Wells. Beaming with satisfaction after a football marathon, he stood on the cusp of a fruitful life.
What led that bright, sporty, popular teenager to become the Islamic State-inspired killer responsible for the attack on parliament this week confounds those who knew him then and is now the focus of a urgent and sprawling investigation by the security services.
“He was a smashing guy, really nice chap,” said Stuart Knight, an old classmate at Huntleys school. “The picture of us in the football team was after we did a 24-hour sponsored football match to raise money for the sports hall. We would have been about 14 years old. Everyone got on with Adrian, he was a lovely bloke.”
Khalid Masood: questions over how much MI5 knew about attacker
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But there are themes running through the life of Adrian Ajao, who was born as Adrian Elms and who died as Khalid Masood that help explain what went so terribly wrong and turned that “lovely bloke” into the most murderous terrorist in Britain since 2005.
They include a shifting identity and a conviction, perhaps paranoid, that he was an outsider as the black child born out of marriage in the 1960s to a teenage white mother in Kent. He seemed to simmer with resentment and anger, which exploded repeatedly throughout his life in violent episodes involving knives. It was a toxic combination that found its most deadly outlet when he embraced Islamic extremism in its most violent form.
Born in Hainault maternity hospital in Erith, his mother Janet Elms was 17 when she gave birth and brought him up alone, until she met and married Philip Ajao two years later and moved to Tunbridge Wells. His two younger brothers were born in the genteel town, and the family lived in St James Park among big Victorian villas. His mother attended the local church.
“They seemed quite pleasant, just a normal family,” recalled a neighbour.
“He had a big personality and everyone liked him,” said former classmate Kenton Till. “He was very bright and very good at chemistry. I think he wanted to do something like that after he left school.”
Ajao with fellow pupils, and a teacher, at Huntleys school. Photograph: Huntleys school
According to Till he was known among his peers as Black Ade, a nickname that barely masked underlying racism. When he left school at 16, he lost touch with classmates and began to be drawn into the life of petty crime.
“I remember he came to a new year’s party at my house but he was with a group of lads who were drunk and on something and my parents asked them to leave,” said Tills. “After that we sort of lost touch.”
By 18, Ajao was into dealing drugs and had a notched up a conviction for criminal damage. He later skipped town with a string of debts in his wake, former friends recalled. One said he was at one point a “heavy cocaine” user who managed to hold down a job at Woolworths.
At 28, Ajao met Jane Harvey and tried to get his life back on track. The couple had a daughter in 1992 and moved to rural Sussex in search of the tranquillity. They lived in a four-bedroom detached house with a large garden in Northiam, a village near Rye, east Sussex.
He found a job in a nearby chemical company, which supplied cleaning fluids to hotels and restaurants, and began studying for a university degree. He set up his own business – but his feelings of alienation and resentment appeared to grow.
“He was very intelligent but always slightly sinister,” said Alice Williams, who knew him while landlady of the Rose and Crown pub near Rye. “He would do the Telegraph crossword and, to be fair, would make intelligent conversation but he was a bit racist. He always had a chip on his shoulder.”
In 2000 his parents, the stability in his life, moved to west Wales, where they bought a farm and his mother started making handmade cushions and bags from her farmhouse kitchen. While they settled into a rural life, their son’s attempt at country living came to a violent end.
One night in the Crown and Thistle pub in Northiam, Ajao flew into a row with a local, Piers Mott.
Leaving the pub, he used a knife that he had been using to decorate his daughter’s bedroom and slashed the seat covers on Mott’s car, shouting and gesticulating as he did so. When Mott came out Ajao cut him across the face, leaving a three inch gash on his cheek.
He was charged with unlawful wounding and possession of an unlawful weapon. He was ostracised. Ajao’s lawyer told the court: “It is a very small community and his wife and family have been extremely affected by this. He will effectively have to move his family from the village and start to live his life all over again.”
That new life was prison. Ajao pleaded guilty and was jailed for two years serving his sentence, it is understood, in Wayland prison in Norfolk.
Judge Charles Kemp told him: “The reality is that you lost your temper and went beyond the bounds of what is reasonable.”
In September 2003, by now living in Eastbourne, he was jailed again, this time for six months for attacking a man with a knife, again in the face, outside a nursing home in the town.
This time the prison culture was different. In the wake of the 11 September attacks many British extremists were in jail under new terror laws and the prison system played host to the radicalisation of new recruits. Targets for conversion were often young men with violent backgrounds struggling with their identities – men like Ajao.
Within months of emerging from prison, he had met and married a young Muslim woman working as a marketing assistant, Farzana Malik.
It seems to have been a turning point. Marriage records show he used his birth name Adrian Russell Elms but his identity was about to shift once more and Adrian Ajao, aka Elms, became Khalid Masood.
A CV he reportedly circulated until last year recorded that in the same year he was married he earned a qualification to teach English as a foreign language under the Tesol programme. It would be his passport to Saudi Arabia.
Turning 40, his first stop was reportedly Yanbu, a Red Sea town about 40 miles from Medina – the burial place of the prophet Muhammad. He took a post teaching English to workers at the General Authority of Civil Aviation in Jeddah. He also taught in Jubail on the east coast.
Going to Saudi Arabia to teach English is a common path for converts, according to security sources. It remains unknown if he was radicalised here.
By 2009 he was back in the UK and in Luton, Bedfordshire, where according to his CV he joined a language college as a senior English teacher, supervising seven other staff.
He lived at two addresses in 2010 and 2011 in the Bury Park area in the north west of town. Racial and religious tensions were running high as the now banned radical Islamic group Al Mahajaroun clashed with the far right English Defence League, which was formed in Luton. He lived with Rohey Hydara a 29-year-old Gambian women believed to be his wife, and according to one neighbour, two young children. It is not known when, or if, he divorced Malik.
Neighbours’ memories of him vary. Teacher Katie Garricques, 48, said he was “always polite” and “frequently gardening or mowing his lawn”. But another neighbour, who declined to be named, described him as “like a shadow” moving around at night in black Islamic dress and a black beanie hat.
Killer ‘was laughing and joking’ night before Westminster attack Guardian
At some point after his radicalisation he came to the attention of MI5 but he was barely even the “peripheral figure” that Theresa May described earlier this week.
He also called himself Khalid Choudary. Leaders at Luton Central mosque said they weren’t familiar with him and condemned the attacks, saying in a statement: “We remain united with our friends and neighbours in our sincere endeavour to oppose all those who seek to harm us.”
Around 2013, they moved to a two-storey terrace house in the Forest Gate area of east London, and stayed for three years, according to one neighbour, attending the local mosque.
The mosque and madrasah is run by the Al-Tawid Trust and has more than 1,000 attendees a week. It said on Friday that “it is conceivable that he may have prayed here on the odd occasion, however he is not a known regular attendee”.
The couple were also registered at a nearby recently built flat on the site of the Olympic Park, which was raided by police on Thursday. Vera Amade, a 21-year-old mother of two, told reporters on Friday that he “was very pleasant … always dressed in a suit” and “used to come back from work at about five or six”.
His last regular home – at least his 14th – was in Winson Green, Birmingham. Neighbours who knew him since he arrived last year described a “split personality”. Anna Goras, 32, told reporters he gave her children lifts to school but “his face would change in a moment and his eyes would go hard and look evil”.
She told the Sun: “He often went off about how British people didn’t bring up their kids right and sent them to poor standard schools.
“I am a Catholic and he had a go at me saying the school I sent my children to was rubbish and not as good as Muslim schools.”
Another said his black clothes and habit of going out at night made him seem “a bit like a vampire”.
Picture of Khalid Masood distributed by the Metropolitan police’s counter terrorism command. Photograph: AP
Before the attack he was drawn back to the south coast and booked into the £60-a-night Preston Park hotel in Brighton. Businessman Michael Petersen recalled encountering him at reception “very white teeth, smiling, articulate, polite”. He was “laughing and joking, telling us stories about where he lived” recalled manager Sabeur Toumi. In fact he was hours from committing the worst terrorist atrocity in Britain since 2005, which left four other people dead and more than 50 injured.
Hundreds of miles away in west Wales, his mother remained behind the closed doors of her farmhouse being guarded by police. Like his school friends, she too was surely wrestling the horror that her child had killed four people. Officers said she did not want to comment. Her husband was in hospital and not very well. One neighbour said: “Janet’s done nothing wrong and this must be hell for her.”
This article was corrected on 25 March 2017. Medina is the burial place, not the birthplace, of the prophet Muhammad. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/jul/09/they-were-slave-traders-how-an-indigenous-historian-found-peace-by-unearthing-her-familys-past | Books | 2023-07-08T20:00:24.000Z | Susan Chenery | ‘They were slave traders’: how an Indigenous historian found peace by unearthing her family’s past | It was late at night in 2008 when Shauna Bostock’s phone rang. It was Uncle Gerry, from Sydney, sounding “strangely incredulous”. He couldn’t quite believe the news he had just heard. “Guess who our white ancestors were?” He paused for dramatic effect. “They were slave traders. Imagine that!” Snorting with laughter, he added: “Those white ancestors of ours must be rolling in their graves knowing we turned out to be a mob of blackfellas.”
Until then, the Bundjalung woman had only known of Augustus John Bostock, “the whitefella who gave us our family name”. Uncle Gerry’s news ignited in her “a burning desire to know more”. But it also left her feeling numb. Bostock realised she “simply didn’t have the words to describe how I felt”. Now, in her book piecing together her family history, Reaching Through Time, she has found those words.
But finding out about her slave trader ancestors from the mid-1700s turned out to be easier than accessing the records for her ancestors who had lived under the Aborigines Protection Board in the early part of last century.
Her white ancestor, she would soon find out, was not only a slave trader but a convict – one of two slave traders sent to Australia for the crime. His life had already been documented by an avid amateur genealogist and a professional historian. In the mid-1700s, Capt Robert Bostock transported African captives in terrible conditions and sold them in ports across the world. His son Robert had followed his footsteps at a time when slavery was being abolished and criminalised. Robert Bostock Jr would be found guilty under the Slave Trade Felony Act and transported to Australia in 1815 for a term of 14 years. In the colony he would be pardoned and become wealthy and respectable.
His grandson Augustus John Bostock would travel north from Sydney and at the age of 27 marry One My, AKA Clara Wolumbin, of the Wollumbin people – Bostock’s great-great-grandmother. Finding One My was a big moment for Bostock; she actually had a name for one of her Aboriginal ancestors. “Now I had a starting point.”
‘I felt it was my calling’
As she turns off the M1 and sees the great heft of Wollumbin Mt Warning, Bostock breathes in, exhales and feels a sense of peace. Rising spectrally above the towns and villages of the New South Wales northern rivers, the sacred mountain and its powerful presence dominate the landscape. For Bostock, this is her ancestral home.
When she was finishing her book, Bostock found herself in ‘a very peaceful place’. Photograph: Dan Peled/Guardian Australia
She felt her ancestors close by as she researched her book. “As soon as I started doing my family history, the heavens opened up.”
Erased from history, dispossessed, forgotten – her ancestors came alive in the archives as if they had been waiting for someone to find them there, to tell their stories. They came rushing down the generations. “When you go to the archives, sometimes they are bound together and tied up with cotton tape. And by releasing them from their binding, reaching in and pulling my ancestors out, it is like reaching through time to bring them in front of you.”
Bostock thinks back to being a mature-age student studying to be a primary school teacher in 2003. After a tough lecture on Aboriginal segregation and the indenture of teenagers, she was struck by the realisation that few Australians know the true history of Aboriginal people in this country. “What do you know about missions and reserves?” she asks. “Nothing. What you do know about the history of Aboriginal people are cherrypicked: Mabo and stolen generation. I am not discrediting these milestones, but they’re isolated little milestones on the timeline of history.”
She began with the goal of tracing her four Aboriginal grandparents’ family lines as far back as she could in Australia’s written historical record. “I felt it was my calling,” she says. It was a way of addressing unfinished business, and building a “bridge between my ancestors who witnessed colonisation – and my life today as an urban Aboriginal woman”.
The records locked away
The multigenerational story of her family is the story of the modern history of this country.
“I have always joked,” she writes, “that my family members are the ‘Forrest Gumps’ of blackfellas.” They were there at the frontline of all of it.
But the individual stories of her people are not known publicly because all the records of their lives under the Aborigines Protection Board are locked up in the Aboriginal affairs department, off limits to the general public. “And none of them see the light of day.” Bostock was only able to access them because she could prove that she is a direct descendant of the people whose files she was requesting. Other historians cannot get access; their truth remains hidden.
Her own family’s truth was illuminating. In the files were “copious records”. The Aborigines Protection Board, which operated for more than six decades before ending in 1969, controlled every aspect of the lives of Aboriginal people in northern NSW. It forced them to live on ever-shrinking reserves, sometimes starving them out to force them to move from one reserve to another. “People were just shuffled and shuffled and shuffled,” Bostock says. It removed children from their families – the girls sent to Cootamundra Domestic Training Home to be trained as unpaid domestics; the boys to Kinchela Boys Home to be trained as farm labourers. “They didn’t see them as human beings,” Bostock says.
The cotton thread: how we uncovered the Guardian founders’ links to slavery
Read more
And there were many stories of resistance. Her great-grandmother Nellie Solomon, apprenticed to Mrs JC Edwards of Kyogle, had stood her ground and refused to go when white authorities, possibly with a police officer, had come to take her to Sydney. She was 14 years old. Bostock had found her in the archives in the last minutes before she was due to leave to catch a flight from Sydney to her home in Brisbane. “Yes Nellie!” she shouted in the silence of the reading room, slamming her hand on the table top.
But while the search for information about Nellie elicited exhilaration, “there have been countless times when I have found the records so saddening, so shocking, and at times so infuriating, that they have caused streams of tears to pour down my cheeks”, she writes.
Bostock set out to “restore the humanity” of her ancestors. And she has.
“There is this burden that builds and builds and it is sort of like you’re holding all this sadness, but the wonderful thing that helps you put down this burden are shining moments of humanity and kindness,” she says now. The process of truth telling creates healing. The ancestors are remembered, acknowledged, no longer erased and unknown; the spiritual connection is restored.
‘It was like a washing away of grief’
Towards the end of writing the book, Bostock contacted the grandson of JP Howard, who had managed the lives of her ancestors at the Kyogle Aborigines Reserve. Alan and Carolyn Howard “welcomed me with open arms”, even though she warned them in advance “that he wasn’t very well liked by the Aboriginal people”.
While in Bostock’s family Howard was a notorious figure, in Howard’s family he was known as someone who had tried to help the Aboriginal people under his care. Bostock came to two conclusions: the first is that history depends on who is doing the telling, and the second is that “they are no more responsible [for] what their ancestor did than I am [for] what mine did”.
“Mine were slave traders, so I felt a great feeling of peace. It was like a sort of washing away of grief because the family didn’t even know that he was involved in this. And they felt very terrible about it.”
But to have that peace, the truth needs to come out.
She believes the Aboriginal affairs department should not be “ferreting shit away”, limiting access to Aboriginal stories. “I’m fighting for the kids to know these stories, to know where they come from.” Borrowing from the words of Thomas DeWolf, a descendent of American slave traders, she says: “The history of Aboriginal people in this country is a living wound under a patchwork of scars. The only hope of healing is to be willing to break through the scars to finally clean the wound properly and begin the healing.”
When she was finishing her book, Bostock found herself in “a very peaceful place”. She has wondered “if family history research was the key to emancipation, because researching my ancestors’ lives has spiritually unshackled them”.
“I too am unshackled. I know their names. I know who they were.”
Reaching Through Time: Finding My Family’s Stories by Shauna Bostock is out now through Allen & Unwin | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2016/sep/22/rip-dj-spank-spank-phuture-earl-smith-jr-acid-house | Music | 2016-09-22T14:26:18.000Z | Joe Muggs | RIP DJ Spank-Spank – your music changed the way people dance | Once you hear certain sounds – really hear them as they’re intended to be heard – they seem to rewire your mind and body. Jimi Hendrix’s guitar, Aretha Franklin’s voice, James Brown’s locked grooves: their effects aren’t just aesthetic or hedonistic, they physically alter listeners who surrender to them, change their stance, attitudes and actions for good. Never was this more true than for the churning modulations of the Roland TB-303 bass line synthesiser, when locked into the relentless four-to-the-floor patterns of acid house. In thousands of dark, strobe-lit basements, millions of people have given themselves up entirely to the sound, and been irrevocably altered by it. And when people change, the world changes, for better or worse. All of which is to say that the music made by Earl Smith Jr, AKA Spanky or DJ Spank-Spank – whose death was announced by Phuture on Wednesday – is among the most important ever made.
As he tells it, his breakthrough came, perhaps appropriately, in the small hours. Speaking on a panel at the Amsterdam Dance Event conference in 2010, Smith described how in 1986 he and DJ Pierre had been playing around with the TB-303 he had bought on Pierre’s recommendation. They found themselves frustrated and unable to get to grips with it, and eventually Pierre went home to bed while Smith kept tinkering. It had reached 4am that night, he explained, when “it just came out of nowhere. One minute I was just fooling around, trying to understand this damn machine, the next this unbelievable noise came out of it.” He rang Pierre, who apparently was spectacularly grumpy about being woken up, but did eventually come over, and the rest is music history. From this “unbelievable noise”, together with Herbert “Herb J” Jackson, they created the tune Acid Tracks, had it mixed by Marshall Jefferson, gave it to Ron Hardy to play at his Music Box club, became Phuture, and changed the world through acid house.
DJ Spank-Spank with DJ Pierre and DJ Herbert ‘Herb J’ Jackson in Phuture. Photograph: Phuture
It’s vitally important to note, though, that for all his modest talk of “fooling around” and “coming out of nowhere”, this wasn’t the simple happenstance that music legend would have it. As Pierre is very keen on emphasising, acid house wasn’t an accident: Phuture weren’t dumb kids, they were skilled musicians who loved the house music of their home city and spotted that the 303 could add something to it. It was Pierre’s judgement in spotting the machine’s possibilities and Smith’s tenacity in working out how to misuse it that realised the potential and birthed an entire genre. Smith was also the rhythmic virtuoso of the trio: “Spanky on the drum machine was an absolute master,” Pierre told Ransom Note recently. “[He] did all the drum programming on our tracks.”
You only have to listen to the track Spank Spank, essentially a Smith solo piece, from the 1988 12-inch We Are Phuture, to understand his sophistication and restraint. There’s no “acid line” or synthesiser of any sort, no buildups or breakdowns, just a drum machine and a couple of tiny vocal snippets repeated relentlessly, yet just shifting enough to warp minds and bodies and cause complete dancefloor meltdowns. It’s the sound of Chicago house at its rawest, simplest and cleverest, and remains a jaw-droppingly beautiful piece of sonic design to this day.
Smith’s death is a tragedy. While so many of the black and Latino pioneers of house music have been forgotten as white Europeans make sizable fortunes from stealing their work, Phuture at least continued working. As well as making dozens of great records by himself as Spank Spank, Smith was the one constant in a shifting lineup that included Pierre again shortly before his death. He toured globally as a DJ and with Phuture’s live shows. He was much beloved in the dance music community, and well known for his generosity and good humour, as well as his enduring love for the music that he did more than almost anyone else to invent. We often say people can live on through their creations, but there can’t be as many people whose work is hardwired into the bodies and lives of as many people as his. The legacy of Earl Smith Jr and Phuture, 30 years on from his 4am discovery, is as vital and fertile now as it has ever been. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2016/sep/25/bbc-could-launch-bake-off-rival-before-channel-4-show-source-says | Television & radio | 2016-09-25T13:59:34.000Z | Alexandra Topping | BBC could launch Bake Off rival before Channel 4 show, source says | A BBC show to rival the Great British Bake Off, featuring Mary Berry, Sue Perkins and Mel Giedroyc, could be launched before Channel 4 is able to get its version on screens, according to a source at the corporation close to the show.
Channel 4 bought the Bake Off format from Love Productions earlier this month, but rumours about a BBC rival have been rife since Perkins and Giedroyc said they would not be “going with the dough” and jumping ship. They were followed in pledging their loyalty to the BBC by Berry.
Paul Hollywood, Berry’s fellow judge, will continue in his role when the show moves channels.
It is now only a matter of time before the BBC announces its Bake Off battle plan, with “lots of ideas” being discussed, a source told the Guardian.
Reaction to Mary Berry leaving The Great British Bake Off Guardian
“We have not ruled anything out and we could well reunite Mel, Sue and Mary,” the source said. “And yes, we could probably get a show out before Channel 4, if we chose to do so. We are looking lots of ideas, although we are not yet ready to make an announcement.”
It is understood that Channel 4 may not be able to get its first Bake Off show on air until summer 2018, if the BBC enforces a clause allowing the corporation to block filming until a year after next month’s finale. The BBC looks set to air a festive edition of the show, filmed in June, on Christmas Day.
The BBC, which has the right to license the Bake Off format overseas until 2028, is thought to be confident that a new baking show, with a different name and format, would not infringe copyright.
Fiona Lindsay, Berry’s agent, rejected a Sunday Mirror report claiming that she may work for another year before retiring. “That’s simply wrong; she has lots of exciting projects coming up, including on TV with the BBC, and has absolutely no plans to retire,” Lindsay said.
A BBC source said: “It’s a given that Mary is a priority for the BBC, as long as the sun shines. We feel no need to reiterate how much we love her and how important she is to the BBC. We are delighted that she has chosen to stay and the public are as well.”
Hollywood has faced criticism from some fans of the show for remaining with Bake Off as it moves to Channel 4. A friend told the Sunday Mirror that the baker said his loyalty was to the show, not the broadcaster. “His heart belongs in that tent, and the show lets him work with ordinary people who share his love of baking,” they said.
Meanwhile, Channel 4 is likely to face questions by a committee of MPs, who will ask if the broadcaster has upheld its duty to champion innovative programming. Damian Collins, the acting chair of the culture, media and sport select committee, said “we will have the BBC and Channel 4 in front of the committee and Bake Off is something that we will ask about,” the Sunday Telegraph reported.
The former culture secretary John Whittingdale has expressed his “surprise” at the channel’s decision to bid for Bake Off. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/mar/26/labour-opposes-henry-viii-powers-rewrite-eu-laws-great-repeal-bill | Politics | 2017-03-26T13:51:20.000Z | Andrew Sparrow | Labour to oppose 'Henry VIII powers' being used to rewrite EU laws | Labour will oppose plans in the “great repeal bill” to give ministers sweeping powers to rewrite laws with minimal interference from parliament, Jeremy Corbyn has said.
The Labour leader was responding on Sunday to reports that the government will publish a white paper setting out its plans for the bill on Thursday, a day after Theresa May starts the formal process of taking Britain out of the EU by triggering article 50.
The white paper will set out how the government intends to repeal the 1972 European Communities Act and transplant laws that have force because of the UK’s membership of the EU into domestic law. It is expected that this will involve extensive use of “Henry VIII powers” – laws allowing ministers to change primary legislation (government bills) using secondary legislation (orders that go through parliament with little or no scrutiny).
Speaking on ITV’s Peston on Sunday, Corbyn said Labour would oppose handing ministers such extensive powers when the House of Commons votes on the great repeal bill.
“We’re not going to sit there and hand over powers to this government to override parliament, override democracy and just set down a series of diktats on what’s going to happen in the future,” he said. “We’d be failing in our duty as democratically elected parliamentarians if we did that.”
Corbyn said the fact that the constitution allowed these sorts of powers to survive was “a wondrous thing”, but“they’ve got to stop”.
“I don’t think the record of Henry VIII on promoting democracy, inclusion and participation was a very good one,” he said. “He was all about essentially dictatorial powers to bypass what was then a very limited parliamentary power.
“We need total accountability, at every stage of this whole Brexit negotiation.”
Ministers argue that they need the powers because leaving the EU will require a vast body of law to be rewritten and many of the changes that will be made to primary legislation using Henry VIII powers will be technical.
Speaking on the BBC’s Sunday Politics, David Lidington, the leader of the Commons, cited as an example the need to change a bill to take out a reference to an EU body serving as a regulator and replace it with a reference to a UK regulator.
He said the Henry VIII powers granted in the great repeal bill would be “limited and defined”, and parliament itself would vote on what powers ministers should receive.
“The scope, the definition of those powers and when they can be used, in what circumstances, is something that parliament will have to approve in voting through the bill itself,” Lidington said.
The row erupted as the Sunday Times claimed that the Department for Exiting the European Union had drawn up a plan for EU nationals who are living in the UK to continue to receive the benefits they currently get after Brexit, including in cases where child benefit is paid for children living abroad.
The newspaper said DExEU was arguing for the proposal, which has yet to be agreed by the cabinet, on the grounds that cutting EU nationals’ rights to benefits would undermine the government’s attempt to protect the benefits of Britons living in other EU countries.
But it would break a Conservative manifesto promise to stop EU migrants receiving tax credits and child benefit unless they had been in the country for four years, and to stop all child benefit payments for children living abroad, regardless of how long a claimant had worked in the UK.
Asked about the Sunday Times story, a government spokesman said: “This is speculation and we do not comment on leaks from cabinet. We have said we want to secure the rights of EU nationals already in the UK, and UK nationals in the EU. But no decisions of the kind speculated about here have been taken.”
On Monday, Sir Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, will give a speech setting out the conditions Labour would impose before deciding whether or not to support the government’s final Brexit deal. One condition is that any new trade deal must deliver the “exact same benefits” the UK enjoys from being inside the single market and customs union.
The Liberal Democrat leader, Tim Farron, said this demand was “beyond parody”, given that Labour peers recently voted against an amendment to the article 50 bill in the House of Lords that would have required the government to keep the UK in the single market.
“Just weeks ago, Labour MPs voted against membership of the single market and to give Theresa May a blank cheque for a hard Brexit,” he said.
“It’s not just that the horse has bolted, Labour opened the stable door.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/1980-1989 | World news | 2014-07-30T23:30:10.000Z | Harry Slater | Guardian Century: how the Guardian saw the 20th century | 1899-1909
1899 - American Imperialism
Fighting at Manila
“The Filipinos attacked the American position around this city at half-past eight last night. It began with sharp firing on the outposts from several quarters at once, and grew to a furious conflict as the night advanced. The insurgents fought savagely, but the defending lines, which have been ready for this for weeks, held their own steadily. At this hour there is still hot firing. The Americans are still successfully repelling the assault.”
1900 - The Boer War
The relief of Ladysmith
“To describe with any degree of adequacy the excitement in London, and indeed throughout the country, consequent upon the announcement yesterday of the relief of Ladysmith would be an almost impossible task. The news was made known a few minutes before ten o’clock at the War Office, and soon after the hour the welcome intelligence was proclaimed by the Lord Mayor from a window of the Mansion House.”
1901 - Queen Victoria dies
Death of the Queen
“The Lord Mayor of London last night received the following:- Osborne, Tuesday, 6.45pm. The Prince of Wales to the Lord Mayor. My beloved mother the Queen has just passed away, surrounded by her children and grandchildren. (signed) Albert Edward.”
1902 - End of the Boer War
Conclusion of peace
“The announcement of peace was made at the evening service at St. Paul’s Cathedral to a fairly large congregation. Apparently the message came as a surprise, as evensong had commenced before the gratifying tidings were generally known even in the central parts of the City. There was an audible murmur of satisfaction when the telegram from Pretoria was read by the Bishop of Stepney.”
1903 - Race hate in the US
Anti-negro riots in the United States
“The town of Evansville, in Indiana, has been the scene for several days of anti-negro riots, which have been attended by the loss of ten lives. A negro was imprisoned in the gaol on a charge of murdering a policeman who was endeavouring to arrest him, and on Sunday a mob set out to break into the gaol and lynch the negro.”
1904 - The Russo-Japanese War
The war in the Far East
“According to a St. Petersburg telegram, the Russians are far from intending to allow the Japanese to advance unmolested from the Yalu to Feng-huang-cheng - General Kuropatkin’s first line of defence. On the contrary, it is declared they mean to offer serious resistance either at Antung or Shakhedz.”
1905 - Pogroms in the Ukraine
Days of terror
“The events in the Odessa suburbs of Moldavanka, Slobodka, and Bugaieoka last night were of a most terrible nature. Immense bands of ruffians, accompanied by policemen, invaded all the Jewish houses and mercilessly slaughtered the occupants.”
1906 - The Big ‘Quake
Earthquake in San Francisco
“San Francisco has been devastated by an earthquake. The shock occurred shortly after five o’clock yesterday morning, and lasted three minutes.”
1907 - Millions starve in China
The famine in China
“It is estimated that four millions are starving and tens of thousands reduced to utter destitution wandering over the country, in the North of Anhui, the East of Honan, and the whole of the North of Kiang-Su provinces of China.”
1908 - The Persian civil war
Fighting in Teheran
“Fighting between Royalist and Parliamentary forces began at Teheran yesterday morning. The Shah and his ministers have been preparing for a coup d’etat for the last week or two.”
1909 - Bleriot’s cross-channel flight
Airship feat
“The feat of flying across the English Channel in a heavier-than-air machine, a thing which had never before been done, was accomplished yesterday morning by M. Louis Bleriot, in a monoplane of his own construction.”
1910-19
Franz Ferdinand, archduke of Austria, and his wife Sophie riding in an open carriage at Sarajevo shortly before their assassination in 1914. Photograph: Henry Guttmann/Getty Images Photograph: Henry Guttmann/Getty Images
1910 - The murderous Dr Crippen
Crippen & Miss le Neve
“A great crowd assembled early yesterday morning outside the famous police court in Bow street, London, where Dr. Crippen and Miss Le Neve were to be brought before the magistrate later in the day in connection with the mystery surrounding the discovery of human remains in the cellar of 39 Hilldrop Crescent, Camden Road.”
1911 - Churchill, have-a-go Home Secretary
Murderers’ siege in London
“A raid made by London police early yesterday morning on a house in Stepney - 100, Sidney-street - in which two of the gang that murdered the three police offficers in Houndsditch last month were believed to be hiding, developed into a pitched battle or siege.”
1912 - Sinking of the Titanic
The Titanic sunk
“The maiden voyage of the White Star liner Titanic, the largest ship ever launched, has ended in disaster. An unofficial message from Cape Race, Newfoundland, stated that only 675 have been saved out of 2,200 to 2,400 persons on board.”
1913 - Scott of the Antarctic
Captain Scott’s last journey
“Captain R. F. Scott, the famous Antarctic explorer, and four other members of the British South Polar Expedition have died amidst the Southern ice. The five men were the whole Southern party. They had reached the Pole on January 18, 1912, just over a month after Captain Amundsen, the Norwegian, and had struggled far back towards safety when they were overcome.”
1914 - The Great War
Assassination of the Austrian royal heir and wife
“The Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria, nephew of the aged Emperor and heir to the throne, was assassinated in the streets of Sarayevo, the Bosnian capital, yesterday afternoon. His wife, the Duchess of Hohenberg, was killed by the same assassin. Some reports say the Duchess was deliberately shielding her husband from the second shot when she was killed.”
1915 - Sinking of the Lusitania
The Lusitania disaster
“The death roll in the Lusitania disaster is still not certainly known. About 750 persons were rescued, but of these some 50 have died since they were landed. Over 2,150 men, women and children were on the liner when she left New York, and since the living do not number more than 710, the dead cannot be fewer than 1,450.”
1916 - The Easter Rising
Sinn Fein outbreak in Dublin
“A very serious outbreak organised by Sinn Feiners occurred in Dublin on Monday. A large body of men, mostly armed, seized St. Stephen’s Green and the Post Office, and also houses in St Stephen’s Green, Sackville Street (where the Post Office is situated), the adjacent Abbey Street, and on the quays along the Liffey. The telegraph and telephone lines were cut.”
1917 - The Russian Revolution
How the Bolsheviks took the Winter Palace
“The Palace was pillaged and devastated from top to bottom by the Bolshevik armed mob, as though by a horde of barbarians. All the State papers were destroyed. Priceless pictures were ripped from their frames by bayonets.”
1918 - The Armistice
The end of the war
“The war is over, and in a million households fathers and mothers, wives and sisters, will breathe freely, relieved at length of all dread of that curt message which has shattered the hope and joy of so many.”
1919 - First transatlantic flight
Manchester men first to fly Atlantic direct
“The first direct Transatlantic flight from America to Europe has been achieved by Captain Alcock, D.S.C., a Manchester pilot flying the Vickers Vimy-Rolls aeroplane with Lieutenant A. W. Brown as navigator.”
1920-29
After Lenin’s death in 1924, a power struggle ensued, with Stalin emerging as his successor. Photograph: AP Photo/Sovfoto Photograph: AP Photo/Sovfoto
1920 - The Prohibition
America ‘dry’ tonight
“One minute after midnight tonight America will become an entirely arid desert as far as alcoholics are concerned, any drinkable containing more than half of 1 per cent alcohol being forbidden.”
1921 - Speech hits the movies
The talking kinema
“The invention of the talking kinema - reported the other day from Sweden - promises to endow the art of the actor with some sort of immortality.”
1922 - The rise of Fascism
Italy in Fascist control
“At the moment when Mussolini, the leader of the Italian Fascisti, was seizing control of the country by force, the governing authority has been placed in his hands by the King, who yesterday asked him to form a Cabinet.”
1923 - The Beerkeller putsch
Bavarian monarchist rising broken
“The German reactionaries have struck and failed. News of their overthrow comes close upon the heels of the announcement of the coup, which appeared in our later editions yesterday. The coup’s leaders, Ludendorff and Hitler, were captured.”
1924 - Stalin succeeds Lenin
Death of Lenin
“Lenin, who was at Gorki, a village twenty miles from Moscow, had a sudden relapse yesterday, became unconscious, and died an hour later, just before seven in the evening.”
1925 - Advances in atomic science
Remarkable claims for new ray
“The remarkable discovery of Dr. Millikan, a Nobel prize-winner for physic, of new penetrating rays far shorter and more powerful than any hitherto known, has aroused the keenest interest of authorities in this country.”
1926 - The General Strike
Ugly disturbances
“The first day of the strike passed off, in a sense, uneventfully. The absence of trains and trams is not a new thing; it was borne good humouredly, and in no part of the country did any kind of serious disturbance occur. Already, by the second day, there have been ominous signs that this peaceful state of affairs is gradually giving way to a more dangerous temper.”
1927 - Lindbergh flies the Ocean, solo
Alone across the Atlantic
“Captain Lindbergh, the young United States airman, reached Paris at 10.22 on Saturday night on his non-stop flight from New York. He is the first pilot to have crossed the Atlantic by himself, the first to fly from America to France, and the first to make an uninterrupted flight of 3,600 miles. The journey took 33 hours.”
1928 - Hirohito takes the throne
Japan’s emperor
“The enthronement of Emperor Hirohito was the culminating ceremony here to-day. It was cold but bright with a passing shower. Over a thousand people assembled at the Shishinden, or Throne Hall, your correspondent being one of a privileged group viewing the ceremony through the Kemei Gate.”
1929 - The great Crash
£1,000,000,000 crash on New York stock exchange
“The heavy break on the New York Stock Exchange, which began on Saturday and has been increased on each succeeding day except Tuesday, when there was a slight recovery, reached catastrophic proportions yesterday with a crash described as the worst in the history of the Exchange. It is estimated that £1,000,000,000 in paper values had been swept away by the close of the market.”
1930-39
Neville Chamberlain, prime minister of Great Britain 1937-1940. Photograph: Getty/Hulton Archive Photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty
1930 - Gandhi and civil disobedience
Gandhi’s march to the sea
“At 6.30 yesterday morning “Mahatma” Gandhi left Ahmedabad on foot at the head of a band of civil resistance volunteers on a 100-mile march to the sea at Jalalpur, on the Gulf of Cambay.”
1931 - The depression
Huge increase in unemployment
“The unemployed total on Monday, December 29 - 2,643,127 - was the highest recorded since the unemployment insurance statistics began in 1921.”
1932 - The Five-year Plan
Soviet output to be trebled
“Instructions by the Soviet Premier, Mr. Molotoff, and head of the State Planning Commission, Mr. Kuibisheff, for the second Five-year Plan were published to-day.”
1933 - Persecution of Jews begins in earnest
Anti-semitism in Berlin
“Demonstrations against the big stores in Berlin to-day developed later in the evening into an active outbreak of anti-Semitism.”
1934 - A foretaste of Nazism
Dachau concentration camp
“The concentration camp at Dachau is often represented as a model of its kind. The truth is that this camp is in no sense a model, although it is no worse than many of the Hitlerite concentration camps. The total number of prisoners who have been killed or who have died of their injuries at Dachau cannot be far short of fifty.”
1935 - Fascist expansionism begins
Fascist troops march into Ethiopia
“Mussolini’s Fascist troops marched into Ethiopia today - and as the war-drums called Emperor Haile Selassie’s people to fight, the League of Nations in Geneva was facing its greatest test since it was formed in 1919.”
1936 - Franco’s rebellion in Spain
Civil war in Spain
“On July 12 Calvo Sotelo was taken from his house by night and shot. There is some mystery in this assassination.”
1937 - The Middle Eastern question
Partition of Palestine
“Partition of Palestine between Arabs and Jews and the termination of the mandate are recommended by the Royal Commission, whose unanimous report is published to-day.”
1938 - “Peace for our time”?
Return from Munich
“Mr. Chamberlain went to a first-floor window and leaned forward happily smiling on the people. ‘My good friends,’ he said - it took some time to still the clamour so that he might be heard - ‘this is the second time in our history that there has come back from Germany ‘peace with honour.’ I believe it is peace for our time.’”
1939 - The declaration of war
Britain at war with Germany
“Britain and France are now at war with Germany. The British ultimatum expired at 11 a.m. yesterday, and France entered the war six hours later - at 5 p.m.”
1940-49
A mushroom cloud rises more than 60,000 feet into the air over Nagasaki, Japan after an atomic bomb was dropped by the US bomber Enola Gay, 9 August 1945. Photograph: Everett Collection/Rex Feature Photograph: Everett Collection / Rex Feature
1940 - The Battle of Britain
Never in the field of human conflict ...
“The gratitude of every home in our island, in our Empire, and indeed throughout the world goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by odds, unweakened by their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of world war by their prowess and their devotion. Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”
1941 - The attack on Pearl Harbor
Japan declares war on United States and Britain
“The Japanese, without any warning, yesterday afternoon began war on the United States with air attacks on the naval base at Pearl Harbour, Hawaii, and the adjacent city of Honolulu.”
1942 - The Holocaust
The German massacres of Jews in Poland
“The Note on Jewish persecution in Poland which the Polish Government in London has addressed to the respective Governments of the United Nations contains a comprehensive account of the horrors being perpetrated by the Germans on Polish soil.”
1943 - Italy defeated
Italy surrenders unconditionally
“Italy has surrendered unconditionally to the Allies, and hostilities between the United Nations and Italy ended early yesterday evening. There were unconfirmed reports this morning of new Allied landings at several points north and south of Rome.”
1944 - D-day
Weather held up invasion for 24 hours
“There is a feeling of confidence at this headquarters to-night. No one imagines that the supreme battle which began on the beaches of of Normandy early this morning will be won by the Allies without bitter fighting against a determined and desperate enemy, but there is a general sense that the ‘first hurdles’ of invasion of the European Continent have been successfully surmounted.”
1945 - The atomic bomb
Destruction at Hiroshima
“One hundred thousand Japanese may have been killed or wounded by the single atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. This was the unofficial estimate at Guam to-night after reports of the tremendous devastation wrought had come in.”
1946 - The Iron Curtain descends
The Cold War
“In Czechoslovakia life is normal. This does not seem so surprising if you go from London to Prague by air, travelling more easily and more quickly, than from London to Edinburgh. It is incredible and bewildering if you come to Prague overland through the chaos and starvation of any of the surrounding countries.”
1947 - Independence for India and Pakistan
India and Pakistan celebrate
“British rule in India ended at midnight last night after 163 years. To-day the new Dominions of India and Pakistan are in being. At midnight in Delhi, capital of India, Lord Mountbatten ceased to be the Viceroy and became Governor General of India.”
1948 - The State of Israel proclaimed
The Jewish state born
“The Jews yesterday proclaimed in Tel Aviv the new State of Israel. It was formally recognised last night by the United States. In Jerusalem firing began as soon as the Army and the police left and increased steadily as the Jews began to take buildings in the central zone and to hoist the Zionist flag on them.”
1949 - The Berlin airlift
Blockade of Berlin over
“The blockade of Berlin ended at one minute past midnight this morning when a British convoy started its journey through the Soviet zone. Less than two hours later the first cars had reached Berlin without incident.”
1950-59
Black students are escorted into Little Rock High School, Arkansas in 1957 having previously been prevented from entering by the state governor. Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis
1950 - TV viewing habits
Television tastes
“Owners of television sets seldom switch off even programmes which they admit to disliking, so that the extent to which television is watched seems to depend only to a limited extent upon the nature of the programme transmitted, said Mr Robert Silvey, head of Audience Research, B.B.C., when he addressed the Manchester Statistical Society last night on methods of viewer research employed by the corporation.”
1951 - Theft and return of the Stone of Destiny
Return of the Stone
“Three and a half months after its removal from the Coronation Chair in Westminster Abbey early on Christmas morning, the Stone of Scone was to-day deposited in Arbroath Abbey in Scotland. Three men drove up to the abbey and carried the stone, which was draped in a St. Andrew’s flag along the main aisle before laying it at the high altar.”
1952 - The death of Evita
Eva Peron’s lying-in-state
“Senora Peron’s body was brought to the Ministry to-day from the Presidential Palace. It will lie in state, in a coffin draped with the Argentine flag and white orchids and other flowers, until Tuesday.”
1953 - The death of Stalin
How Moscow broke the news
“The news of Stalin’s death had just been released to the outside world by Moscow’s foreign services. Now, surely, was the moment for the Russians to be told. But they were not told anything - except perhaps by implication.”
1954 - The four-minute mile
The mile in 3min. 59.4sec.
“Roger Bannister, aged 25, to-day became the first man to run a mile in less than four minutes. His time at the Iffley Road track, Oxford, in the annual match between the Amateur Athletic Association and Oxford University, was 3min. 59.4sec.”
1955 - ITV launched
ITV makes its bow
“One thing must be said immediately. In 365 days’ time, Independent Television will have been with us for a year. So far, it has been with us for a bare hand-count of hours, and although the conclusions are crying to be jumped to, the temptation to jump must be resisted.”
1956 - The Hungarian rising
Soviet tanks crush resistance
“At 8 p.m. yesterday the Soviet High Command in Hungary ordered Mr Nagy’s Government to surrender by noon “or Budapest will be bombed.” Soviet armoured forces then went into action.”
1957 - Little Rock
Heavier guard for negroes
“About 75 white pupils walked out of the Central High School in Little Rock after eight Negroes went in to-day, and one boy hung a straw effigy of a Negro from a tree.”
1958 - Music in stereo
Stereophonic sound
“Within a few months, so we are promised by the big record companies, stereophonic discs will be available in this country. The question all record-collectors will want to ask is whether we are going to be faced with yet another gramophone upheaval on the scale of the L.P. revolution.”
1959 - The Cuban revolution
Castro in control of Cuba
“All of Cuba to-day was under the precarious control of Fidel Castro, the 31-year-old rebel whom the Batista Government pictured to its graceless end as a ragamuffin hiding in the scrub hills of Oriente Province.”
1960-69
Neil Armstrong walks on the moon, 1969. Photograph: Neil Armstrong/AP/Press Association Images Photograph: Neil Armstrong/AP/Press Association Images
1960 - UK seeks entry to Europe
Britain will ask to join EEC
“Mr Macmillan, a weary-looking father figure, at last held out his hand yesterday and offered to try to lead the Commons and the country into Europe, if he can find the way. There was a good deal of kicking and screaming and this was to be expected.”
1961 - Russia puts a man in orbit
What it feels like in space
“Major Yuri Gagarin described today how it felt to be the first man in space - how he was able to write and work and how he burst out singing for joy as his ship plunged back towards the earth. ‘Everything was easier to perform? legs and arms weighed nothing,’ he told an interviewer.”
1962 - The Cuban missile crisis
The Cuban crisis
“People who thought the Cuban crisis was easing - and who sent Stock Exchange prices rising - had better think again. The situation is still full of danger.”
1963 - The shooting of JFK
President Kennedy assassinated
“President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, was shot during a motorcade drive through downtown Dallas this afternoon. He died in the emergency room of the Parkland Memorial Hospital 32 minutes after the attack. He was 46 years old.”
1964 - Beatlemania
Beatle hysteria hits US
“Physically, the Beatle invasion was launched just after 1 p.m. when their air liner touched down to pandemonium at Kennedy Airport. But in fact New York has been in the tightening grip of Beatlemania for some weeks.”
1965 - The Vietnam war
US paratroops go into attack against Vietcong
“An Australian battalion joined United States paratroops and South Vietnamese forces today in an attack on a Vietcong stronghold about 30 miles north of Saigon. This was the first time US troops were employed in an offensive role.”
1966 - England wins the World Cup
Let Us Now Praise Famous Footballers
“To the accompaniment of expressions of praise, thanksgiving, and, in some cases, undisguised disbelief, England became football champions of the world by defeating West Germany 4-2 on Saturday at Wembley.”
1967 - The six-day war
Israeli forces hit back - and cut off Gaza town
“Fighting broke out today on all Israel’s borders with its Arab neighbours. Official Israeli statements said that attacks had been launched in the area of the Negev, in Jerusalem, and along the Syrian border near Dagania.”
1968 - The soixante-huitards
Paris gripped by insurrection
“An insurrection, there is no other word for it, swept a stupefied Paris last night in the hours that followed General de Gaulle’s television address.”
1969 - Neil Armstrong takes one small step
The Moonwalkers
“Men are on the moon. At 3:39 am this morning - nearly four hours ahead of schedule - Armstrong, the lunar module commander, opened the hatch and clambered slowly down to the surface of the moon.”
1970-1979
Margaret Thatcher, with husband Denis Thatcher, waves to well-wishers outside 10 Downing Street following her election victory, on 4 May 1979. Photograph: Tim Graham/Getty Images Photograph: Tim Graham/Getty Images
1970 - Beginning a decade of industrial action
Hospitals work by candle
“Nationwide power cuts averaged 31 per cent yesterday, with 40 per cent in some areas, and hospitals faced their most critical 24 hours of the strike so far with staff struggling to keep going by candle and battery power.”
1971 - The Vietnam war drags on
What Vietnam does to a man
“The men of D company were discussing the question of why in hell they had had no beer, or at least soda, for a whole month when I arrived on their hill. They wanted to tell me about those in the rear who were stealing the beer and soda from them, but I wanted to talk about ‘the action.’”
1972 - Bloody Sunday
13 killed as paratroops break riot
“The tragic and inevitable doomsday situation which has been universally forecast for Northern Ireland arrived in Londonderry yesterday afternoon when soldiers firing into a large crowd of civil rights demonstrators, shot and killed 13 civilians.”
1973 - Britain joins the EEC
We’re in - but without the fireworks
“Britain passed peacefully into Europe at midnight last night without any special celebration. It was difficult to tell that anything of importance had occurred, and a date which will be entered in the history books as long as histories of Britain are written, was taken by most people as a matter of course.”
1974 - The end of Tricky Dicky
Nixon resigns
“The last that we saw of him as President was his limp right hand flapping occasionally like a dying fish, trying to wave a laconic farewell through the bulletproof glass of the shiny green helicopter.”
1975 - Indonesia invades East Timor
Indonesians capture capital in air-sea invasion of Timor
“An Indonesian-supported force launched a full-scale attack by air and sea on the former Portuguese colony of Timor at dawn today. More than 1,000 army commandos parachuted into the capital of Dili in the first wave of the attack.”
1976 - The death of Chairman Mao
Power vacuum after Mao’s death
“The Chinese people, sad but hardly surprised, began to consider their future last night without their country’s great helmsman.”
1977 - Punk hits Britain
Punk record is a load of legal trouble
“The manager of a record shop in Nottingham who displayed in his window the new best-selling LP record by the Sex Pistols, which displays on its sleeve the title ‘Never mind the Bollocks, here’s the Sex Pistols’ has been charged with offences under the 1889 Indecent Advertisement Act.”
1978 - The Met’s attitude to race relations
Race causes an initial confusion
“The man who answered ‘human race’ when asked to what race he belonged would get short shrift at West End Central police station, London. For there human classifications have achieved an elaborate formality, as a bemused magistrate heard yesterday.”
1979 - Thatcher in power
Thatcher takes over No.10
“Mrs Margaret Thatcher looks certain this morning to be the next tenant of 10 Downing Street and the first woman prime minister in the western world.”
1980-89
A man stopping a column of tanks in Tiananmen Square, 5 June 1989. Photograph: Stuart Franklin/Magnum Photos Photograph: Stuart Franklin/Magnum Photos
1980 - The Iran - Iraq war
Open war as Iraq is bombed
“The border conflict between Iraq and Iran turned into a full-scale war yesterday after both sides bombed each other’s airbases and clashed repeatedly on the ground and at sea along the 720-mile frontier.”
1981 - The Brixton riots
How smouldering tension erupted to set Brixton aflame
“On Friday afternoon, a police patrol in Brixton stopped to help a black youth who had been stabbed in the back. The incident marked the beginning of a build-up of police strength and a confrontation began which erupted into violence on Saturday afternoon when a black youth was arrested outside a minicab office.”
1982 - The Falklands war
Patriotism has worked its old magic
“A thousand dead, terrible wounds; the Union Jack flying again over the Falklands (pop. 1,800); rejoicing and mutual congratulation in the House of Commons; champagne and Rule Britannia in Downing Street - each must draw his or her own balance sheet and historians must decide where to place the Falklands War in the annals of Britain’s post-1945 adjustment to her reduced circumstances as a declining power.”
1983 - The AIDS epidemic
The lurking killer without a cure
“Aids surfaced in Haiti. West Coast homosexuals brought it back to San Francisco. Cheap transatlantic travel flew it into England. And next year the handful of known cases will become hundreds as the four-year incubation period comes to an end for gays, and maybe even for their heterosexual partners.”
1984 - The apogee of Thatcherism
Commentary
“One of Thatcherism’s most startling gifts to British society is to have thoroughly politicised it. Little now occurs, in large reaches of public and sometimes private life which does not have political importance and is not subjected to a test of its relevance to the prevailing ideology.”
1985 - The miners’ strike
Pit strike ends in defiance and tears
“One of the most significant chapters in Britain’s trade union history was closed last night when the miners reluctantly agreed to call off their strike in a mood of bitterness and tears, almost a year after it had begun.”
1986 - The Chernobyl meltdown
Russia admits blast as death fears rise
“After three days of virtual news blackout, the Soviet authorities finally admitted last night what Scandinavia had already deduced from radioactive fallout - that the Chernobyl nuclear accident is a “disaster”, that some people have been killed and thousands evacuated.”
1987 - The Stock Market crash
Black Monday
“A record #50.6 billion rout on the London Stock Exchange yesterday was followed by a fall on Wall Street which far exceeded the 1929 crash.”
1988 - Reagan’s second term ends
Goodbye, Ronald Reagan
“As Ronald Reagan journeyed triumphally from Texas to California in the closing hours of campaign ‘88, tipping his stetson to the crowds lining the streets for a glimpse of the Gipper on his last hurrah, it was plain that, whatever his failings, the American people are both forgiving and adoring.”
1989 - The Tiananmen Square massacre
The horror of a people attacked by its own army
“Students had been bayoneted to death, others had set fire to two armoured personnel carriers and trucks, tanks had crushed to death 11 students who had left the square and were lagging behind the others, more students had been crushed to death in their tents. ‘How could the Communist Party do this? How could they shoot children?’ asked a worker in blue overalls.”
1990-99
Nelson Mandela and his then wife Winnie Madikizela-Mandela raising fists upon his release from 27 years of imprisonment, 11 February 1990. Photograph: Alexander Joe/AFP/Getty Images Photograph: Alexander Joe/AFP/Getty Images
1990 - South Africa releases Mandela
Mandela free after 27 years
“Mr Nelson Mandela walked out of prison a free man yesterday, and within hours told an ecstatic crowd of supporters in Cape Town that the armed struggle against apartheid would continue.”
1991 - Allies attack Iraq
Kuwait’s liberation begun, says US
“Bombs rained down on Baghdad and other targets in Iraq and Kuwait early today as the long months of waiting in the Gulf crisis finally ended. Allied planes launched wave after wave of air attacks on the city and on Iraq’s Scud missile bases.”
1992 - War in Bosnia
Escape from Sarajevo
“Jordi had his doubts on Sunday morning. He wanted to leave. At 12.10 on Sunday afternoon a mortar bomb dropped out of the sky like a shot putt and killed him.”
1993 - The middle-east peace process
Symbolic gesture seals hopes to end blood and tears
“With faith, hope and a careworn charity, Yitzhak Rabin of Israel and Yasser Arafat of the Palestine Liberation Organisation shook hands on a joint accord at the White House yesterday and rolled the dice of history in what President Bill Clinton called ‘a brave gamble for peace’.”
1994 - Genocide in Rwanda
Rwandan PM killed as troops wreak carnage
“The Rwandan capital of Kigali descended into chaos yesterday as troops, presidential guards and gendarmes swept through the suburbs killing the prime minister, United Nations peacekeepers and scores of civilians.”
1995 - Unstoppable rise of Microsoft
Bill Gates: The world’s richest private individual
“Bill Gates, founder of the Microsoft Corporation, is the world’s richest private individual, with $12.9 billion ($8.3 billion).”
1996 - The Dunblane massacre
Schoolchildren shot dead
“The small Scottish town of Dunblane was racked with grief and horror last night as details emerged of the killer who had lived in their midst until yesterday, when he shot dead 16 small children and a teacher in three minutes of carnage in a primary school gym.”
1997 - Hong Kong transferred to China
A last hurrah and an empire closes down
“With a clenched-jaw nod from the Prince of Wales, a last rendition of God Save the Queen, and a wind machine to keep the Union flag flying for a final 16 minutes of indoor pomp, Britain last night at midnight shut down the empire that once encompassed a quarter of the globe.”
1998 - Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky
Zippergate is a scandal for him, for her and for us
“Insomniacs and obsessives couldn’t wait till the morning. They stayed up until 3am to watch Bill Clinton give his TV address live - and they weren’t disappointed. It made gripping viewing.”
1999 - Allies attack Serbia over Kosovo
Defeating Milosevic: Troops may be needed
“As the bombers go in, for the first time in the long evolution of the Balkan crisis, the outside powers are directly confronting the author of that crisis. Always before, the Serbian leader has distanced himself from the tragic situations which he has played such a large part in creating.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/dec/30/streaming-the-best-party-movies-when-harry-met-sally | Film | 2023-12-30T08:00:27.000Z | Guy Lodge | Streaming: the best party movies | It’s New Year’s Eve, the one night a year when otherwise commonplace parties take on a slightly desperate significance, a need to succeed. You have to set the tone for the year ahead, and warm prosecco on an emptying dancefloor doesn’t bode well for anyone. This degree of pressure sets up almost any celebration to fail – though a bad party can launch as many formative memories as a good one. Look at the movies where parties pave the way for swooning romantic connection, social catastrophe or the end of the world: with the help of a few drinks, any drama speeds up.
It’s a New Year’s Eve party, specifically, that finally brings closure to the will-they-won’t-they relationship dance that keeps Rob Reiner and Nora Ephron’s When Harry Met Sally so sparklingly afloat. That single scene has made the film go-to 31 December viewing for anyone spending the night in. In George Cukor’s delicious 1938 romcom Holiday, a lavish, overpopulated New Year’s Eve party is what brings Katharine Hepburn’s headstrong heiress and Cary Grant’s starry-eyed striver together – in an old children’s playroom, away from the crowd.
Everyone is trying to escape everyone else, meanwhile, in Happy New Year, Colin Burstead (BBC iPlayer), Ben Wheatley’s caustically funny study of a dysfunctional family reuniting and disintegrating over the course of one elaborately planned but terminally gloomy NYE bash. Perhaps Wheatley’s best film, and certainly his most underappreciated, it’s a lesson in the spiralling tragedy that can emerge from organised gaiety.
Kristin Scott Thomas in The Party (2017). Allstar
There’s a similar level of venom spiking the drinks in Sally Potter’s simply titled The Party, but here tensions aren’t familial but professional. A messy dinner party held to celebrate the appointment of a new government minister (a fine, tart Kristin Scott Thomas) sees her Westminster dreams go up in flames. Consider Potter’s The Party the upper-crust counterpart to Mike Leigh’s immortal 1977 teleplay Abigail’s Party (Amazon Prime Video), in which a world of British class politics is laid bare by the wince-inducing social tensions and humiliations of a suburban drinks do. Even so, you’d probably rather accept that invitation than one to Festen (Viaplay). In Thomas Vinterberg’s brilliant acid-burn comedy, set around an embittered patriarch’s vicious 60th birthday bash, the ascetic, late-90s Dogme stylings have dated a little, but the writing remains fresh and lacerating.
If you prefer your party films more straightforwardly fun, look to the teen movie genre. An escapade about two black high-schoolers defying parental rule to host the mother of all bashes, Reginald Hudlin’s House Party was a huge American indie hit in the 90s on the strength of its goofy ebullience and fizzing hip-hop soundtrack. It still has more charm and bounce than this year’s already forgotten remake.
‘Goofy ebullience’: House Party (1990). Alamy
The 2007 smash Superbad owes something to its antic energy, and its tale of two pasty dorks setting out to party hard and lose their V-cards in turn preceded the likes of The Inbetweeners. Yet the berserk, wildly inflated Project X (2012) took the humble teen house party to an unprecedentedly grand scale. Its found-footage debauchery was akin to the blinked-out, champagne-fuelled set pieces of Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby, albeit not quite as well dressed. Beside it, the gawky coming-of-age socials of the winning 80s French crowdpleaser La Boum (starring a baby Sophie Marceau) look not just of another era, but another species.
Babette’s Feast (1987). Alamy
For a quieter, more luxurious celebration – with a New Year’s Eve angle to boot – you can hardly do better than Babette’s Feast, Gabriel Axel’s candlelit touchstone of gastro cinema, in which each ravishing course at the titular banquet counts as a mini party in itself. But the buried gem of party-oriented films is Celts, a marvellous Serbian drama from 2021 in which a child’s birthday celebrations enable all manner of adult misbehaviour and spiky political ire, without killing the vibe.
Also new on streaming and DVD
The Miracle Club
(Lionsgate)
Reminiscent of the fuzzy, American-targeted Irish crowdpleasers of the 90s, Thaddeus O’Sullivan’s perky period comedy about four working-class Dublin women on a pilgrimage to Lourdes is precision-tooled not to offend – unless you count some hobby Oirish accent work from a cast including Kathy Bates and Laura Linney – but there’s nothing much to remember either.
Maggie Smith, Agnes O’Casey and Kathy Bates in The Miracle Club. Lionsgate
In Bed With Victoria
(Mubi)
If this year’s Palme d’Or winner Anatomy of a Fall introduced you to the gifts of writer-director Justine Triet, treat yourself to her delightful 2016 blend of romantic farce and courtroom drama, now given a spotlight on Mubi. Starring Virginie Efira as a Parisian criminal lawyer whose tricky casework and disastrous love life eventually collide, it gives a smart, spiky slant to old romcom tropes.
Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai
(StudioCanal)
Rereleased on Blu-ray in a spiffy 4K restoration, Jim Jarmusch’s fleet-footed 1998 genre blend – fusing yakuza gangster cinema, deadpan comedy and zen character study – remains one of his most accessibly playful and rewarding films, thanks in large part to Forest Whitaker’s affecting, eccentric lead performance. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/social-care-network/2015/oct/22/leadership-social-care-graduate-schemes | Society | 2015-10-22T09:00:04.000Z | Ruth Hardy | Career paths and graduate schemes: how to improve leadership in social care | How do we ensure that people who use services get into leadership positions?
Martyn Sibley, co-founder, Disability Horizons: “Everything should be done for disabled people to attend mainstream school. Of course sometimes this isn’t feasible and we need to include everyone regardless of education background. However inclusion gives more than the ‘typical’ education. It gives social skills and emotional intelligence. Everyone is a victim if they choose to be. Everyone is a winner if they believe they can be. By giving people an equal start in life, leaders will spring up from every area of life.”
Gary Bourlet, co-development lead, People First England: “If people haven’t been given the skills early on, that doesn’t mean they can never be leaders. They can be given training and support to become a self-advocate. It takes a few years to become a good self-advocate. You need to build up people’s confidence and self-esteem and help them turn their anger and frustration into assertiveness.”
How can the social care sector find good leaders and managers? Livechat
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Sharon Allen, chief executive, Skills for Care: “This is the most important part of practice leadership and partnership – what we do matching what we say. This is about culture, that people who need care and support and people who provide care and support and organisations like mine that support them to do this, are all equal partners. There are good examples of where we work together well, including paying people properly, but we still have work to do.”
Tina Coldham, chair of the Social Care Institute for Excellence’s co-production network: “If you want to value people, then it has to be on equal terms. A key to co-production is reciprocity; I give something, I get something back. That can be courses, opportunities, conferences as well as monetary gain. Some of us do this work for a living, it’s serious for us and it pays the bills on a pragmatic note, but to change the system for the betterment of users is what drives us.”
How should employers help staff progress from frontline work into management positions?
Ian Watson, personal assistant: “Some people are born natural leaders and, from my experience, a good few work in social care as personal assistants without ever realising or fulfilling their full potential. Senior staff should recognise this potential and encourage it, slowly giving them added responsibilities and challenges.”
Sharon Allen: “My experience leading a large social care organisation was that it was critical we recruited people with the right values – commitment to person-centred support, focus on dignity, willing to speak up. It was then our responsibility to give them the skills and knowledge to do their job to the best of their ability.”
Leaders need to get out in the community – they shouldn’t be stuck behind a desk
Gary Bourlet
“Supporting staff to pursue a higher apprenticeship, to achieve their level 5 diploma, actively promoting induction for managers as well as providing mentoring opportunities and effective supervision all contribute to developing leaders. Encouraging staff to think creatively about how they could change the way things work and supporting them to put good ideas into practice.”
David Roberts, head of colleague engagement, Anchor: “By showing a clear career path into entry-level management roles, recognising the importance of good management. Plus coaching and mentoring opportunities.
Encouraging colleagues to grow their career and take that next step into a management or supervisor role is key to making sure that we retain talent and gives an opportunity to develop those management and leadership skills.”
What can be done to encourage younger people to consider a career in social care?
Rob Greig, chief executive, National Development Team for Inclusion: “I know there has been comparison with the NHS where there is a long-standing graduate scheme. The National Skills Academy has a social care equivalent which (in part) aims to be a social care version of this.
“I think the underpinning challenge is that healthcare has a public image as being more exciting and dynamic than social care – because of government and media approaches to the two sectors. A route that attracts high-calibre graduates into social care is important, but without addressing the overall public perception of social care and social work, it will be an uphill struggle.
Martyn Sibley: “It would be nice if the government pushed to improve the image of social care in society. The cuts now will hurt us more when there’s nobody trained to look after the growing number of disabled and older people.
“Politics aside, we need improve the image ourselves. Social care organisations should attend graduate recruitment fairs, offer graduate schemes and sell themselves as a fulfilling career. Service users should sing the praises of the professionals they work with, and work with them to improve the terrible bigger picture situation.”
Gary Bourlet: “If we want to get young disabled people working in social care they need good personal assistants to work alongside them, accessible materials, jargon-free language, suitable equipment and a friendly work environment. They should also be able to take breaks when they need them. They also need to be treated fairly by non-disabled staff.”
Social care needs strong leaders – but where will they come from?
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Does the sector need to create more senior positions that aren’t just about management?
Rob Greig: “Management is not for everyone, but to lose or not make use of their leadership potential because they don’t want to manage people and budgets in a traditional way would be foolish. Also, management roles are often highly pressurised, and deny people the capacity to take time out to think and take a fresh look at what services are doing. Having people in the organisation who have the capacity to do this is just good organisational design (though obviously challenging for small organisations).”
Sharon Allen: “The principal social worker role is about just this and we absolutely need more of this at every level across the sector. All senior managers should ensure that their role still involves practice and engagement with people. And workers at every level should be given the opportunity to support development; perhaps by providing learning for student nurses, social workers, occupational therapists, by being or having a mentor, providing group supervision, leading on different aspects of development in the organisation . There are loads of different ways this can be achieved. Harnessing all the talents.”
Gary Bourlet: “Leaders need to get out in the community – they shouldn’t be stuck behind a desk. If they’re stuck behind a desk it’s a waste of their talents. If leaders are separated from the people their services support then there’ll be no improvement. They need to be talking to service users because that’s the only way to understand the problems they face. And they have to make service users comfortable and confident that they’ll be listened to. Good leaders take people’s words and stories and turn them into action.” | Full |
http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2006/feb/07/theatre.rsc | Stage | 2006-02-07T11:28:08.000Z | Michael Billington | Interview: John Barton | One of Peter Hall's first actions on founding the RSC in 1960 was to invite a junior don from King's College, Cambridge, John Barton, to join him as an associate. Forty-six years later Barton, despite a falling-out with Hall, is still there as an "advisory director" and, at 77, is busier than ever. As we met, he was preparing a one-night production of his anthology, The War That Still Goes On, revising the proofs of a new edition of Tantalus, and getting ready for the RSC's forthcoming Shakespeare marathon. He was even keeping an eye on Celebrity Big Brother.
Barton is a man around whom legends accumulate. As a young director, he reportedly chewed razor blades during rehearsals to concentrate. Once, he was so absorbed in giving notes to actors that he fell backwards off the stage into the orchestra-pit, whereupon he dusted himself down and instantly resumed. Yet nothing could be further from the truth than the idea of Barton as an academic eccentric at large in the rough world of theatre. He has directed some of the greatest Shakespeare productions of our time. His TV series, Playing Shakespeare, became an instant classic. And he is surprisingly conversant with TV soaps, and is angling to get George Galloway to join the debate that will follow The War That Still Goes On on February 12.
The show itself is an anthology drawn from Thucydides and Plato, and has a long RSC history. "It was first done in 1967," says Barton, "as part of a fortnight exploring Greek myth. It was then televised and later revived during the Gulf war and it seemed opportune to bring it back now. It's absolutely not about Bush and Blair. It's a timeless text that always seems relevant to the moment. About three-fifths of it comes from Thucydides's History of the Peloponnesian War, the rest from Plato's Socratic Dialogues. But a large part consists of debates about war which Thucydides reports from memory. The result is not a political diatribe. It's really an examination of a particular war that suggests that what has happened in the past will happen again and may be of some use in the future."
Even if Barton disclaims any propagandist intention, he believes that the crux of the evening will be the ensuing debate. "When we first did it," he recalls, "Enoch Powell and Tony Benn took part. Benn was very enthusiastic and said the text should be in every school curriculum. Powell was very laidback, runic and quizzical. I was in awe of him because he was a professor of Greek whereas I'd done my dissertation on Beowulf. Hearing this, the actor playing Socrates said incredulously, 'You did a dissertation on werewolves?' But I remember at the end someone asked Powell if he thought democracy would last. He paused a long time before replying, 'It's much too early to say.'"
This time Barton is going for broke. Jon Snow will chair the discussion with Paul Cartlidge, a Cambridge Greek scholar, and Germaine Greer among the participants. "I've known Germaine," says Barton, "since my wife supervised her at Cambridge. But I've probably put my foot in it by asking George Galloway. I've watched him on Celebrity Big Brother and I'm impressed by the way he goes along with all the games and listens to people. He strikes me as very intelligent, lucid and laidback and gave a brilliant Shakespearean performance in front of the Senate committee. But I also want to have a hawkish American neo-con like Paul Wolfowitz so we can get a serious debate going."
That, if nothing else, should dispose of the notion of Barton as an unworldly academic. But, for all his immersion in classical legend, Barton points out he has never directed a solo Greek play. In 1980, he staged a magnificent 10-play cycle for the RSC, The Greeks, that told the unfolding story of the Trojan War. And in 2000 his epic, Tantalus, memorably completed the myth. But Barton explains that this is simply an extension of his long-term interest in narrative sagas.
"As an English scholar," he says, "I studied Anglo-Saxon and became fascinated by the Norse Sagas and the idea of telling a story through character and speech. When I was at Cambridge, I did a 12-part series for BBC radio on the medieval Mysteries; but any hope of doing them on stage was destroyed by Bill Bryden's version which was one of the greatest things I've ever seen. Later on, I had a scheme to do the Napoleonic Wars at the Barbican, complete with the battle of Waterloo, but that never happened. But The Wars of the Roses, which I edited and co-directed with Peter Hall, stemmed from my love of narrative. And, when I want to escape the horrors of the world, I watch The Bill on television. It's not a soap but it's very well acted, cunningly plotted and follows continuing characters. I'm not so much into Coronation Street and EastEnders: I get them muddled up. But much of my working life has been governed by a quest for epic narrative."
Tragically, however, Barton's last big project, Tantalus, has left unhealed scars: dealing with the origins, climax and aftermath of the Trojan war, it led to a Homeric row when Peter Hall removed one of the original plays and tightened the narrative structure in advance of the Denver premiere.
"It's a totally unresolved matter," says Barton, "and a source of great sadness. Peter won't meet and talk to me about it, and it upsets me deeply after a friendship of 50 years. I wrote the bloody thing. I said to Peter, 'I don't know if it's any good but, until you run it through, I won't know what to cut and adapt.' I think the truth is that, once Peter started doing it, he lost confidence in it and felt it wouldn't work; at which point I should have told him to drop it. But he put it into masks when he'd agreed it wasn't a mask-play and changed it to a one-day event when I always felt the story needed two days to unfold. When I saw it in Denver, I was very diplomatic because I didn't want to attack it while the actors were still doing it. But, although I've tried to extend an olive branch to Peter, I've only got a tart reply. It disturbs and upsets me because I've known him since he was so high. At our age we ought to be able to chuck the odd brick at each other and get over it."
Even if the breach with Hall remains unhealed, Barton has enjoyed a fruitful relationship with successive RSC directors: Trevor Nunn, Terry Hands, Adrian Noble and now Michael Boyd. Having worked his way through much of the Shakespeare canon, Barton now spends his time advising everyone else: holding regular verse-speaking surgeries with young actors and offering counsel to directors on specific productions. But doesn't that become difficult when, like Barton, you yourself have done near-perfect productions of Twelfth Night, Love's Labour's Lost and Richard II?
" I do get protective," admits Barton, "over certain plays, so I will only intervene when asked. I talked to Trevor a lot about Richard II before his Old Vic production but, from what I read about it, I felt it probably wasn't for me. I think Trevor's one of the best directors alive but I felt what I had to say afterwards wouldn't be valuable and might even be offensive. But, while I don't want to be a spectre haunting the RSC, I try to be of help. I'm very close to Greg Doran and told him, after I'd seen his Midsummer Night's Dream, that I found it over-inventive and a bit inhuman in places. We had a very open, civilised discussion about it and I think Greg went back and changed certain details. So, although I'm an advisory director, I only try and offer advice when it can be of use."
What is hard to gauge is the influence Barton has had over the RSC. But my guess is that its survival over the last 46 years owes a vast amount to his practical wisdom and sage counsel. He has been the resident guru to a variety of directors, though he modestly disclaims being the secret of the company's longevity.
"If the RSC has survived," he says "it's partly due to the luck of the gods. I think if you'd asked Peter or Trevor whether it would have lasted into its fifth decade, they would have said it was very dicey. It was never wanted by the establishment. But that may be one reason for its astonishing tenacity. Whatever the achievements of individual directors, I also think the success or failure of the RSC depends on the quality of the actors. If I've learned anything in my time, it is that if you get the right combination of actors, a production will generally work. Which is why I'm cheered that the new season will contain a lot of experienced names - like Patrick Stewart, Harriet Walter, Judi Dench and Ian McKellen - as well as brand-new faces. But one should always remember that no theatre company is immortal and Zeus could still chuck a thunderbolt at any moment."
So saying, this kindly, cardiganed Richelieu goes off to attend to the business of war, the hunt for an American hawk and the eternal pressures of a new Stratford season.
· The War That Still Goes On is at the Novello Theatre, London WC2, on February 12. Box office: 0870 950 0948. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/may/07/if-we-get-to-qatar-ive-lived-my-life-for-a-reason-inside-ukraines-training-camp | Football | 2022-05-07T18:00:06.000Z | Nick Ames | ‘If we get to Qatar, I’ve lived my life for a reason’: inside Ukraine’s training camp | Brdo smells of spring. The air drifting down from the Slovenian Alps feels fresh and clean, the stillness interrupted only by birdsong and distant church bells. Dmytro Riznyk looks across at three immaculate pitches; directly behind him a small stand has been ingeniously embedded in a bright, grassy mound. Football environments rarely get more idyllic but, for those working here this week, the beauty is drowned out by a constant, silent scream.
“I’ll only find peace again when I return to my country and there is no war there,” says Riznyk, one of four goalkeepers in the initial phase of Ukraine’s first training camp since it was invaded. “We are here and my heart is there. We believe in the people who are defending it and believe we will win. When that happens, the fear will go away.”
Still, Riznyk was ready when the time came to travel. He spent the first four days of the war at a maternity ward in Poltava, where he plays for Vorskla, with his wife and newborn son. It was the heaviest of wrenches to leave them, but on 30 April he joined the national team’s staff on a 20-hour bus journey from Kyiv to their bucolic new base.
‘I cry every day’: in the stands with Ukrainians as Dynamo Kyiv play again
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Most of his 22 colleagues are from Dynamo Kyiv and Shakhtar Donetsk; they have been playing charity matches abroad and could fly to Slovenia but Riznyk is a rarity. Other clubs more or less suspended operations so he has spent almost two months training alone, between trips to the bomb shelter and the haunting wail of sirens, in preparation for a crack at the World Cup. “We hope to honour our country, and also that we can bring joy to our people,” he says.
If Ukraine beat Scotland in next month’s playoff semi-final they will face Wales; win both and a place in Qatar will be secured. In a tournament contested under a shadow, their presence would represent a beam of light. “I’m not putting pressure on them, it’s very difficult,” says the head coach, Oleksandr Petrakov. “I never expected to work under such conditions.”
Petrakov is 64 and thought he had seen everything. In contrast to Riznyk he says a feeling of calm enveloped him as the bus crossed Ukraine’s border with Hungary: there were no snaking, futile queues at petrol stations for dwindling supplies of fuel and he sensed “the kind of life I’d maybe forgotten”.
Imbuing his players with some measure of serenity while conditioning them physically for two intense qualifiers from what is essentially a standing start will, he admits, be the toughest challenge of his career. “I try to joke, to tell them some interesting stories from football and life, to raise their spirits,” he says.
Petrakov speaks with dry humour but an hour spent watching Ukraine train – in a gentle session shortly after their Dynamo contingent has arrived – confirms a tactility, a lightness, in his interactions. “It’s important to distract them from bad thoughts but on the other hand we all know people are dying for Ukraine. They have to keep it in their minds and hearts, as the whole country is waiting for some happiness. We have to put it together for them.”
The goalkeeper Dmytro Riznyk, shown in training, says he and his teammates want to “honour our country” and “bring joy to our people”. Photograph: Jurij Kodrun/Getty Images
Petrakov worries his players have not been able to go “full gas”, as he puts it, in their friendlies and knows time to attain a competitive tempo is short. Their foreign-based players, including Oleksandr Zinchenko and Andriy Yarmolenko, should be closer to speed and will arrive later in May; Ukraine play a friendly against Borussia Mönchengladbach on Wednesday but require a couple of more exacting tests before walking out at Hampden Park. The timing is difficult but they hope to face at least one African national team before the month ends.
Any benefits of football might appear nebulous at best while the horror on the ground remains so real. So it is striking to hear the veteran midfielder Taras Stepanenko, talking in a pastel-white room overlooking the training complex, explaining the squad receive messages from soldiers on the frontline every day. “They make only one demand: ‘Please do everything you can to go to the World Cup,’” he says. “For the country, for them, it’s a moment of hope and it will be like a celebration. That’s why we have to play not only like a football game; we have to play with our souls, our hearts.”
Perhaps this, in fact, is sport at its purest: Russia has hardly concealed its intention to erase Ukrainian culture and a football team is one obvious representation of a country’s heart, its craft, its creativity. Playing football on the highest stage is a show of defiance on one level but, on another, an act of preservation and perpetuation.
That thought rears up again during a conversation with Serhiy Sydorchuk, the Dynamo midfielder who, at 31 and with 47 caps, is another senior figure in a youthful group. He sits on a terrace outside the team’s hotel, yards from a reconstruction of a traditional local house on wooden stilts.
Sydorchuk played in his club’s charity games and there is a different image he cannot get out of his head. Before Dynamo played Legia Warsaw in the Polish capital last month, they visited a factory that had been repurposed to accommodate Ukrainian refugees. The players gave toys and sweets to children who had fled with their mothers or grandparents: one was a seven-year-old boy who had been drawing and, pulling up the photo gallery on his phone, Sydorchuk shows the image that was presented.
The scene is heartbreaking: the boy’s drawing, chillingly bright and vivid, depicted a burning set of houses with a Russian flag flying above them. “It’s tough to see, very tough,” Sydorchuk says. “I hope in future he will live his life normally and have everything he wants. But I think a broken or scarred heart will remain.” Qualifying for the World Cup might at least inspire happier means of self-expression.
Given the freedom to travel, Ukraine’s footballers are in a favourable situation – “When you see people who lost everything, and you have something, it’s a very shocking moment,” Sydorchuk says – but the Dynamo and Shakhtar players have still known the practical consequences of Russia’s violence.
In the invasion’s early days he and his family, including his then pregnant wife, spent two days and nights under blankets in the car park beneath their home. His international teammates Serhiy Kryvtsov, Andriy Pyatov and Mykola Matvienko joined them. The nearby airport at Zhuliany had been bombed and the reverberations made their apartment’s window handles fall off. Others have suffered more severely but, as he scrolls through his archive again to show his children sleeping in an open car boot, the point is reinforced that everyone here carries their own trauma with them. “This isn’t only a training camp,” he says. “Everything is different now. It’s very heavy feeling.”
There is raw anger, too, beneath the professionalism and the methodical way Ukraine’s travelling party describe their experiences. Petrakov expresses it strongest of all: perhaps he feels the most able to. He wants to see Russia punished more severely in a sporting sense, beyond their expulsion from the World Cup and the season-long ban from Europe for their club sides.
“They should be banned five years, minimum,” he says. “They have to pay for their support of Putin. They’re killing our women, our children, destroying our cities, so they have no right to compete in sport. If we don’t stop their aggression, they will come for other parts of Europe. It’s not a peaceful nation so, in sport, they should pay for it.”
The Ukraine manager, Oleksandr Petrakov, wants Russia to be banned from sport for five years. Photograph: Borut Živulovič/Reuters
Riznyk speaks about the help his Vorskla teammates, who are now back in group training, have been giving to hospitals and refugees as volunteers; Sydorchuk describes how his parents and in-laws in Zaporizhzhia, the first relatively safe destination for those who have managed to escape Mariupol, have been giving new arrivals food. The energy and love expended to keep all facets of a country alive defy comprehension.
“We’re all united in this,” Sydorchuk says. “If you’re a journalist, do your journalism work. If you’re a football player, play football for your country. If you’re a normal worker, you can work. Because we have a professional army, we have military volunteers who can fight. But everybody is together, and that’s a very important thing.”
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The message is, in the worst of circumstances, simply to be the best you can. For the Ukrainians in Slovenia, whose training is conducted in front of hoardings advertising Lvivske beer and other products from home, that means carrying the torch all the way to Doha. “We need to win our games, but I’m thinking about it,” admits Ryznik, even if he faces a battle to make the final cut.
As night falls and the midges outside offer a reminder that the time of year brings its minor inconveniences, Petrakov wonders whether the mission he never sought has become his destiny. “I’m at such an age where I don’t want anything: no house, no car,” he says. “But if I take the team to Qatar, I have lived my life for a reason.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/may/22/theresa-may-u-turn-on-dementia-tax-cap-social-care-conservative-manifesto | Society | 2017-05-22T12:47:23.000Z | Anushka Asthana | Theresa May ditches manifesto plan with 'dementia tax' U-turn | Theresa May has announced a U-turn on her party’s social care policy by promising an “absolute limit” on the amount people will have to pay for their care but is not planning to say what level the cap will be set at before the election.
The prime minister’s decision came after Conservative party proposals to make people pay more of the costs of social care were branded a “dementia tax” – but she insisted it was simply a clarification.
General election 2017: Theresa May struggles to defend 'dementia tax' U-turn in BBC interview – as it happened
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“Since my manifesto was published, the proposals have been subject to fake claims made by Jeremy Corbyn. The only things he has left to offer in this campaign are fake claims, fear and scaremongering,” she said, during a speech in Wrexham to launch the Welsh Tory manifesto.
“So I want to make a further point clear. This manifesto says that we will come forward with a consultation paper, a government green paper. And that consultation will include an absolute limit on the amount people have to pay for their care costs.”
The prime minister said key elements of her party’s social care policy – to limit winter fuel allowance to the poorest and take people’s properties into account in the means test for social care at home – would remain in place.
It is understood that the party will not pre-empt the consultation with a figure, not least because the level will depend on where the means test is set for winter fuel allowance.
But the Conservative manifesto and a briefing for journalists on the policy had made no mention of a cap, with the policy only announced after days of backlash and amid a slight tightening in the opinion polls.
May immediately faced a string of difficult questions from reporters, with one saying the announcement amounted to a “manifesto of chaos”.
A testy prime minister responded by insisting that there was always going to be a consultation and the “basic principles” of the policy were unchanged.
“Nothing has changed, nothing has changed,” she added tersely, raising her voice when asked towards the end of the session if anything else in the Tory manifesto was likely to be altered.
The prime minister accused a Guardian journalist of borrowing a term from the Labour party after it was suggested that the “dementia tax” would still mean a wide disparity between the children of Alzheimer’s and cancer sufferers.
“This is a system that will ensure that people who are faced by the prospect of either requiring care in their own home or go into a home are able to see that support provided for them and don’t have to worry on that month by month basis about where that funding is coming from. They won’t have to sell their family home when they are alive, and they will be able to pass savings on to their children,” she said.
The announcement triggered claims of “chaos, confusion and indecision” from Labour, while the Lib Dems said it represented a “manifesto meltdown”.
Under the Tory proposals, people needing social care at home would have to pay for it until the value of their assets – including their home – reached a floor of £100,000. The party also promised that a family home would never need to be sold in a person’s lifetime, with costs instead recouped after death.
However, the policy caused anger because payments after death could eat into the inheritance of offspring whose parents were unlucky enough to suffer from a condition – like dementia – in which reliance on social care is inevitable.
Conservatives buy 'dementia tax' Google ad as criticism of policy grows
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The phrase “dementia tax” was used by Labour but also by newspapers supportive of May to highlight the idea that someone suffering from Alzheimer’s, which means heavy reliance on social care, would be less able to pass on their home to their children than someone with an NHS-treated condition such as cancer.
Despite May’s claim that the “basic principles” of the policy were the same, the Tories had previously briefed that their policy was “fairer and more equitable than the current system and the cap recommended by the Dilnot report”.
The health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, was asked on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme if the policy was a rejection of both Dilnot’s cap and the £72,000 limit that was going to be put in place by the Conservatives under David Cameron.
“Yes, and not only are we dropping it but we are dropping it ahead of a general election and we’re being completely explicit in our manifesto that we’re dropping it,” said Hunt.
A Tory source insisted that the party still believed Dilnot’s recommendations were unfair because they were being funded by “ordinary working families” via general taxation. They said the cap would be funded by the two new means tests, arguing that this amounted to an additional element rather than a U-turn.
Theresa May is confronted by a voter over social care Guardian
Labour’s Barbara Keeley, the shadow social care minister, told the Guardian: “What people need is certainty, so they can know how their future care needs will be met. What the Tories are delivering is chaos, confusion and indecision over the funding of care. The Tories were going to introduce a cap on care costs in April 2016, then in April 2020 and now they are talking of a green paper, which is another delaying tactic.”
The Lib Dem leader, Tim Farron, said: “As Theresa May has made clear herself, nothing has changed and her heartless dementia tax remains in place. This is a cold and calculated attempt to pull the wool over people’s eyes.”
Wes Streeting, the Labour candidate in Ilford North, called it a shambles and said it was not a U-turn but a “fudge” because there was no information on what level the cap would be set at.
In Wrexham, May argued that the policy was necessary to create a “sustainable future for social care”, saying there would be 2 million more people over 75 coming into the system over the next decade. “Our social care system will collapse unless we make some important decisions now about how we fund it,” she said.
She also tried to shift the focus by upping her attack on Corbyn, after a weekend where polls showed the gulf between the two parties narrowing to nine points.
She said Labour had “taken people in Wales for granted for decades – just as it has in other communities across Britain”.
Several local Conservative activists who attended the launch at the memorial hall in the village of Gresford discreetly told reporters after the launch that they were pleased to see the robust questioning of the prime minister on social care.
One activist, who did not want to be named, said he thought the policy was imbalanced. “I’ve had family die of dementia and of cancer. I’ve also worked all my life to pass on what I’ve worked for to my children, I’d be devastated if it all had to go on care after I die, but this way it’s a lottery. It does seem like the balance isn’t quite right.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2017/mar/13/my-vulva-cupcakes-were-confiscated-but-i-gained-a-sense-of-home | Working in development | 2017-03-13T11:05:21.000Z | Leyla Hussein | My vulva cupcakes were confiscated': a day in the life of an anti-FGM campaigner | Leyla Hussein | Smuggling vulva-decorated cupcakes into the Somali region of Ethiopia was one of those moments where I thought: “My work as an anti-FGM campaigner gets me into interesting situations sometimes.”
Three years earlier I’d made vulva cupcakes as part of a documentary about FGM that I’d done for Channel 4. “We need you to bring them with you,” said Sagal Abdi, vice executive director of Maandeeq, when she invited me to an event in Jijiga, the capital of the region, part of 16 days of activism against gender-based violence.
Honestly, I was taken aback. I grew up in the UK as part of the Somali diaspora, and I’d assumed the people of Jijiga would not be ready for vulva cupcakes. But Abdi, also part of the diaspora, reassured me that the Ethiopian women had requested them. “Leyla, they watched the documentary and loved the concept of using art for campaigning,” she said.
On reflection, the fact that he recognised the icing decoration as vulvas was good
Abdi filled me in on the current status of the women from Jijiga. It was the usual story of inequality, gender-based violence, lack of employment and access to healthcare. But Abdi gave me hope as she described these negative situations. By the end of that phone call I couldn’t wait to meet her. The only snag was, how would I carry vulva cupcakes from London to Jijiga?
I am always up for a challenge. I managed to carry the cupcakes, made in London, in my hand luggage all the way to Addis Ababa. I really began to think I was going to pull this off. But just as I was about to embark on my final flight to Jijiga, one of the officers told me to step aside and opened the box. When he saw the cakes staring back at him he made a sound halfway between a gasp and a giggle. “Why would you bring these here?” he asked. “Oh, you know what they are then?” I thought. He said I needed permission to carry them and he needed to investigate. My flight was taking off in 10 minutes, so I sadly had to leave the cakes behind.
On reflection, the fact that he recognised the icing decoration as vulvas was good – many men and women don’t know what women’s genitals look like. I hope he enjoyed eating those red velvet pussies.
What working as an FGM counsellor taught me about female sexuality
Leyla Hussein
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Something extraordinary came out of that trip. On the flight to Jijiga I suddenly realised that everyone around me was speaking Somali. My family isn’t from that region but the last time I was in Somalia was 25 years ago, when I was 10 years old. The heat hit me and felt so familiar. Tears streamed down my face. I tried to hold them back but it was overwhelming.
Abdi and her colleague, Hodan, were very sweet and comforted me when they picked me up. They were disappointed about the cakes, but as Somali women we weren’t going to let that setback stop us from getting our message getting across.
On my way to my hotel I felt a sense of belonging to a city I’ve never been to before, but also the fear that I would be targeted with threats, as I am known as an outspoken advocate for women’s and girls’ rights.
The next day I presented my work on gender equality and female genital mutilation (FGM), exploring how to create safe spaces for survivors of violence free from shame. I got a positive reaction from the local women and young people, even from the politicians in attendance. They asked me to come back as often as I could. I was deeply touched to be appreciated by my own people.
Leyla Hussein teaching young people and senior politicians about FGM. Photograph: Leyla Hussein
I was truly impressed with Hafsa Mohamed, the founder and director of Maandeeq. She, a diaspora born and raised in North America, has galvanised grassroot support and policy influence for many years to get to this point. As she shared a joke with the president of the Ethiopian Somali region, I could see she has built a respectful relationship with local politicians. It didn’t happen overnight, she told me. She had to work hard and prove herself to the local people. She knows that in order to make a change and build a safer world for women/girls we have to work with politicians to influence policies and ensure funding and resources are directed to this area.
She told me that she and her colleagues had got into physical fights with men to ensure they provided what the local women/girls needed. “At times we need get physical to get what we need for our women,” she said. I realised I needn’t be afraid when I was with such brave women.
The number of FGM cases are decreasing. Gender equality is becoming more and more a reality
Abdi M Omar, president of the Ethiopian Somali regional state
To have the most senior politician of this region attend and open this conference spoke volumes of Somali women’s leadership skills. Abdi M Omar, president of the Ethiopian Somali regional state, even made a statement: “We must prioritise the welfare and empowerment of women,” he said. “In the Somali region of Ethiopia, almost half of the regional parliament are women. The number of businesswomen are growing. The number of girls and women partaking in education are tremendously increasing. The number of FGM cases are decreasing. Gender equality is becoming more and more a reality.”
I had a strong sense of Somali sisterhood with Mohamed (from Jijiga), Abdi (originally from Somaliland) and Hoden (from Djibouti). We had a group hug to recognise this important moment in our lives. We women all face similar challenges and we are stronger by coming together.
There’s an assumption that diaspora who move back home are living the life of luxury. But these three women were living in a one-bedroom apartment. When I asked why they choose to live this way, their response was simple. They said they all left their privileged lives in the west, and have the option to go back, but they can’t leave the sisters who need them here.
Letter to my daughter: my hopes for 2017
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The next steps for these amazing women is to keep building the grassroots movement for gender equality in Ethiopia. I urge you all to support these east African warriors by donating, volunteering or becoming their allies in this battle.
For me, the trip brought up feelings about how I can make the most of my skills and privilege to improve life for women and girls all over the world, particularly in the land where I was born.
On my flight out of Jijiga I got tearful again. I started thinking about how my mum and many families must have felt when they left their home without knowing when or if they are going to see it again. But I know for sure that I’m going to go back to that region. And next time, hopefully, I’ll get all the way with the vulva cupcakes.
Join our community of development professionals and humanitarians. Follow @GuardianGDP on Twitter. Join the conversation with the hashtag #SheMatters. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/jun/19/breadline-britain-demand-school-breakfasts | Society | 2012-06-19T14:29:00.000Z | Amelia Gentleman | Breadline Britain: Demand grows for school breakfasts | School's breakfast club 'something to look forward to every day' guardian.co.uk
A few minutes spent leafing through the forms sent to charities by schools hoping to get funding to provide pupils with free breakfasts builds up a vivid picture of how teachers all over the country are struggling to help ill-fed children who come into school hungry.
"Around 40% of first aid referrals from last year were deemed to be caused by lack of breakfast," a teacher writes from a school on the Hartcliffe estate in Bristol, adding: "Many of our children do not eat before school and this leads to many problems throughout the school day." Staff at a school in Blackburn say they have observed pupils who are "underweight and pale", and have "poor concentration, are tired and lethargic, often complain of feeling hunger pangs". A teacher from Merseyside writes: "We have undertaken a survey today and over a quarter of our children have not had breakfast in key stage two [seven to 11-year-olds] this morning."
Charities that fund breakfast clubs in schools report a dramatic increase in applications from teachers across the UK, for financial support to help them set up or expand existing provision of subsidised breakfast. They believe the rise is at least in part the result of the financial crisis and of the government's austerity drive, which has seen benefits payments frozen or cut.
Children are often understandably reluctant to discuss why it is that they haven't had breakfast at home. During a series of visits to pre-school clubs in London and Manchester, pupils talked readily about how much they like the food available at the subsidised sessions, but were less forthcoming about why that food was not available at home.
A six-year-old boy in Manchester, whose mother is not working, says he comes "because we don't have cereal at home".
A 10-year-old girl, eating two toasted bagel halves and drinking a glass of orange juice, before school at a London primary explains, unwillingly, why she comes. "Sometimes we don't have food. They run out …"
And then what happens? "We get hungry," she says, and turns back to the the school library book she is reading as she eats breakfast.
Carmel McConnell is founder and director of the charity Magic Breakfast, which already funds pre-school clubs in 210 schools, selected because all have more than 50% of pupils receiving free school meals. It helps feed 6,000 pupils. She said there had been a sharp rise in demand since the recession; at the beginning of 2009, the charity was working in just 149 schools and had a waiting list of 20-30 schools who wanted help. Over the past year the waiting list has grown to over 100.
McConnell thinks the charity will be helping at least 250 schools by the end of the year. "The volumes are rising. We are delivering more food to our existing schools and some have started running two sittings instead of just one. Schools are seeing more need among the children, and also funding from other sources has been cut," she said. "The problem is that if you are in low-paid work or on benefits, it doesn't cover the rising cost of food."
Her experience is echoed by other charities working in this area. Ken McMeikan, chief executive of Greggs, the bakers, which also helps provide breakfasts for pupils in deprived areas, says: "It is very much a response to children from the most deprived backgrounds who are starving when they come into school. When I joined in 2008, we did 120 breakfast clubs. There has been a 60% increase in the number of clubs since 2008 – I think it is because we went into recession. We are running to stand still."
He said the company was already sponsoring 191 clubs, helping to feed 9,000 children and had a waiting list of another 100 clubs. "I can remember when that was probably nearer to 30 or 40. My impression is that the numbers are rising. There are more children and families going into poverty. Times are increasingly much tougher financially for these families. Inevitably one of the things that gets cut back in family budgets when times are tough is food." Kellogg's, which runs similar services through the charity Continyou, said they had also seen an increase in the numbers of schools asking for support.
The link between hungry pupils and the economic downturn, unemployment, soaring food and energy costs, and shrinking incomes is complicated. The rise in schools turning to charities for funding is sometimes the result of state funding for existing breakfast schemes being withdrawn. Teachers acknowledge that the reason why children come into school without breakfast are complex, and involve poor parenting as well as stretched finances. But long-standing members of staff at a number of schools are adamant that they are seeing a rise in the number of children coming to school unfed.
At Hill Mead primary school in Brixton, London, the assistant head, Cheryl Stonebridge, who has worked at the school for 35 years, said: "The breakfast club's numbers have probably doubled over the last year, with the recession and people losing their jobs. Benefits haven't gone up in line with rising costs, particularly food, gas and electricity costs. When you're on a very limited income that increase is making a huge difference."
Some children are sent to the 8-9am breakfast club because this gives their parents a chance to start work earlier, but a growing proportion are there to receive the subsidised breakfast which Magic Breakfast helps to provide; the school charges those who can afford it £1 a day, but staff accept that a growing number of children are unable to pay.
One 10-year-old girl says if she doesn't eat breakfast she feels "grumpy, tired, stressed", and concedes that attending school breakfast makes life easier for her mother, an unemployed single parent, because "not all the time she has money".
"Sometimes at the start of the day we find pupils haven't had anything since the previous day's school lunch. We have children telling their teachers they're hungry mid-morning," Stonebridge says. She believes the levels of need are higher than she has known them to be over the course of her teaching career.
"We see poverty in the fact that more children seem to be saying 'I'm hungry'. More families seem to be struggling with the cost of school uniform. We're getting more families who are reluctant to pay contributions to school trips then ever before. If a child is constantly saying 'I'm hungry', I will meet the parents. More often than not it's not a child protection issue; it's just that they have no money for a period of time."
She concedes that there may be an element of poor budgeting, but stresses: "Hunger definitely does exist in London. I think it's very difficult if you're comfortable on your salary to understand the difficulties of having a fixed, low-level income. There are families in London with a high level of rent, who just do not have enough money left. Breakfast to a lot of people is a small thing. There is hunger where families don't have enough money to put together an evening meal. It's difficult to say why these children are hungry, but the money just runs out."
Her experiences are echoed in at a small primary school in Manchester's southern suburbs, where about 40 children arrive at 8am to queue up for breakfast, served in the school hall. The headteacher, who has been with the school for 15 years, but who asks that her school should not be identified to avoid upsetting the parents, said the number of pupils arriving for breakfast, which costs 15p per item, has doubled in the past 18 months, and is usually attended by about 70 children. The rising numbers of pupils wanting breakfast is only one of a number of indicators that families are under more pressure financially.
"We can see a definite rise in hardship. There are fewer children with gym kits. We're not talking about something that's dear, but there are a few children who don't have the T-shirts, shorts, swimming costumes. That has definitely changed, particularly recently. One indicator of poverty is how grubby they are by Friday. It could be to do with electricity or soap powder. They only have one set of uniform, not three," she says.
As well as the heavily-subsidised breakfast, the school makes and sells about 80 pieces of toast every day at break time and serves pieces of fruit and cheese.
"If children had had a good breakfast, then they wouldn't need to have toast at 10 o'clock," the head says. She wonders if part of this failure to feed children properly in the morning is also to do with a weakening of parenting skills. "I have taught in schools in this area for nearly 30 years. We have lost a generation of parents who are able to parent. Part of that is managing their money well," she says. "I do also think parents choose to spend on things that we didn't have, big televisions. There is this ease about getting hold and borrowing money and that comes back to bite you."
In the hall the children, even older ones, are playing with pink dough, cutting out shapes with biscuit cutters or sellotaping egg-boxes together, cutting bits out of them with child-sized scissors.
"If you don't come to breakfast, you get hungry. Sometimes you don't eat at home," an eight-year-old boy says.
Why? He pauses and thinks. "Because you get up late." The children do not willingly admit to there being a shortage of food at home.
A ginger-haired boy in year four says: "I come to get healthy. You get fruit and bagels; that's healthy." If he doesn't eat a proper breakfast he begins to feel sad, he says.
One of the supervisers says that many of the families have very high levels of debt. "I know that some children haven't had tea the night before; they tell me. It has got worse since the recession. I talk to parents about how expensive food is now, about how hard it is to feed children on a budget."
In the school office, an unemployed single mother of two at the school describes why she likes the system. She is 30, but the lines on her forehead make her look much older.
"It's definitely cheaper than having the stuff at home," she says. The amount she has every week to spend on food is reduced by the repayments on a £100 Shopacheck voucher she took out earlier this year to buy food at Iceland, on one of the weeks she was struggling. It helped her at the time, because she didn't have any money, but she now has to pay back £160.
After heating, phone and electricity bills, "that probably leaves about £60, which doesn't go far. Everything is expensive at the moment. They want lollies, treats I can't get them because it would be taking from things I have to have. I don't buy breakfast for myself," she says. She has looked for work, but has so far been unable to find anything.
"A lot of parents are in the same position. You don't like to admit you are struggling," she says. "They do love to have chicken, mash and gravy," she adds, but yesterday there wasn't much food in the fridge. "They had toast for supper last night." She pauses, and adds, more cheerfully: "With butter. I didn't have anything."
Another single mother of a nine-year old boy says that Monday is the worst day of the week. "I had 50p in my pocket by the end of the day. Sending a child to breakfast club is a form of saving one meal. You think, that's one meal covered," she says. "The basics have become so expensive. I budget ahead, I plan the meals we're going to have every single day of the week. You shop around for the cheapest places, if you are fortunate enough to have the time to shop around. You have to sit down and have the brain of an accountant."
McConnell, founder and director of the charity Magic Breakfast, says teachers often talk to her of "midweek hunger" which strikes around Wednesday, when pay packets are running out.
Teachers at a big secondary school on the outskirts of Manchesterhave similar, anecdotal accounts of new poverty among students.
"We have found that children are coming into school with canvas shoes on because they can't afford proper shoes," the headteacher said. She too requested apologetically that we did not name her or the school, in case prospective parents read about it and said: "I'm not sending my children there because there are poor people there."
The school receptionist said she went out twice last week, with two pupils, to buy them shoes because their parents couldn't afford to. "We go out and buy school shoes – that way they're not getting into trouble. The sole had come off one boy's shoe, and he couldn't afford to buy new ones; the other one lost a shoe in PE and couldn't afford new ones. It has got worse. I say, nobody needs to know, this is between you and your family," she says.
Fifty miles away at High Greave infant school, in a part of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, that has very high unemployment among parents, Paul Sheard, who supervises the breakfast club, says numbers have remained constant but "it is certainly noticeable that the number of children who come because their families were working has reduced.
"There are definitely families who can't afford to buy breakfast. The other day a child came in late for breakfast club and we'd cleared away already. He was inconsolable and sobbed. He hadn't had any tea the night before – only a pack of crisps. Instances like this show the level of need." | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2005/jul/13/corporatefraud.worldcom | Business | 2005-07-13T16:53:24.000Z | Mark Tran | WorldCom creator jailed for fraud | Bernard Ebbers, the creator of the telecommunications giant WorldCom, today received a 25-year jail sentence for his role in the fraud that led to the company's collapse.
The heavy sentence was handed down by Judge Barbara Jones in Manhattan, three years after WorldCom unravelled in an $11bn (£6.2bn) fraud, resulting in the biggest bankruptcy in US history.
"I find that a sentence of anything less would not reflect the seriousness of this crime," Judge Jones said.
Mr Ebbers did not address the judge and showed no discernible reaction. His wife, Kristie, cried quietly.
Mr Ebbers' lawyer, Reid Weingarten, had asked for leniency, citing Mr Ebbers' heart condition and his charitable works. These were mentioned repeatedly in 169 letters sent to the judge. He described Mr Ebbers as "a modest man" and "an angel" to many charitable causes.
The judge said she did not believe the heart condition was serious enough to warrant a lesser sentence. She called the charity question a close call, but said she would not formally reduce sentence because of it.
Judge Jones also rejected the defence's contention that Mr Ebbers was not a mastermind of the accounting fraud. Mr Ebbers "was clearly a leader of criminal activity in this case," the judge said.
In a victim impact statement, Henry Bruin, 37, a former WorldCom salesman, said the company's collapse had caused him "untold human carnage" and put him through "sheer hell." He lost all of his savings and couldn't get another sales job.
When the company bankrupt some 20,000 workers lost their jobs and shareholders lost about $180bn.
Mr Ebbers is the first of six former WorldCom executives and accountants to face sentencing this summer. The other five all pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with the case against their former boss. WorldCom emerged from bankruptcy as MCI. | Full |
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