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https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/apr/16/sydney-church-stabbing-bishop-mar-mari-emmanuel-wakeley-assyrian-christ-the-good-shepherd-terrorist-attack-what-we-know-so-far-ntwnfb | Australia news | 2024-04-16T08:43:09.000Z | Elias Visontay | Sydney church stabbing – what we know so far | A 16-year-old-boy was arrested on Monday night after allegedly stabbing a bishop and several others at an Assyrian church service in Wakeley in Sydney’s west. The incident triggered a riot among worshippers and violence towards police and paramedics.
As leaders call on various religious communities in Sydney’s west to remain calm, here is what we know so far about what has been declared by authorities as a terrorist incident.
A live stream of the service at Assyrian Christ the Good Shepherd church in Wakeley showed a person approaching the altar who then appeared to stab toward the head of Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel just after 7pm.
Sydney church stabbing: Chris Minns considering tighter knife laws after Wakeley and Bondi stabbings
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A priest was also allegedly stabbed in the attack.
In a video reportedly filmed in the wake of the alleged attack, the teenager can be heard saying in Arabic: “If he [the bishop] didn’t get himself involved in my religion, if he hadn’t spoken about my Prophet, I wouldn’t have come here … if he just spoke about his own religion, I wouldn’t have come.”
Emmanuel, who has a popular online presence, has previously criticised Islam and the prophet Muhammad in public sermons.
The congregation then swarmed forward, with a scuffle ensuing between the worshippers and the attacker. Others travelled to the church, with 2,000 reportedly gathering on the suburban street.
Police were called and arrested the 16-year-old, who had one of his fingers severed in the alleged incident. Authorities believe he severed his own finger.
The attacker, bishop and priest all underwent surgery.
0:42
Sydney church stabbing: hundreds of people clash with police after Orthodox bishop stabbed – video
The NSW premier, Chris Minns, said on Monday the 16-year-old had been found in possession of a flick knife at a train station in November last year, and a magistrate had placed him on a good behaviour bond over the incident earlier this year. Minns also said the boy had been found with a knife at school in 2020.
The alleged offender had not previously been on any terror watch list.
Police and paramedics came under attack during the riot. Six paramedics became stuck in the church for three and a half hours, while 30 people were injured – about 20 of whom were affected by capsicum spray.
The alleged attack was declared a terror incident in the early hours of Tuesday morning, which gives counter-terrorism police extraordinary powers under NSW laws to investigate, as well as conduct searches to prevent any further suspected attacks.
Minns gathered leaders of the local Muslim, Assyrian and Melkite communities for an emergency meeting at 10.30pm on Monday, organising for them to put their names to a statement condemning the violence and calling for calm.
Leaders of Lakemba mosque in Sydney’s west revealed they had received threats to firebomb the mosque on Monday night.
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has pleaded for unity after the alleged attack.
1:13
'It felt like something surreal': Wakeley community on Sydney church stabbing – video
The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (Asio) chief, Mike Burgess, said there was evidence the alleged attack was religiously motivated.
Authorities have so far declined to state the religion of the alleged offender.
The NSW police commissioner, Karen Webb, said the police would allege a degree of premeditation, as the church was not near the alleged offender’s home, and he allegedly travelled there with a knife.
The alleged offender had not previously been on any terror watch list.
The NSW government will now consider strengthening knife laws, following the incident as well as the attack in Bondi Junction on Saturday in which six people were stabbed to death. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2010/apr/13/religion-catholicism | Opinion | 2010-04-13T15:20:21.000Z | Paul Behrens | Why the pope can't be tried | Paul Behrens | Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins have called for the prosecution of Benedict XVI, and the human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson, in an exercise of creativity, suggested that the abuse cases could be considered crimes against humanity and tried by the international criminal court (ICC). The Hague-based court has that far started investigations only into a few selected situations: most prominently the bloody conflict in northern Uganda, the atrocities in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the massacres in Sudan. It is an intriguing thought that the Vatican might be next on the list, and that the pope's next Easter mass will be broadcast from a prison cell. Only: It won't happen. Robertson probably knows that.
True enough, the ICC can prosecute sexual slavery as a crime against humanity – as well as rape and other sexual offences. But not every sexual offence falls automatically in that category. Something else needs to be in place: sexual offences only become crimes against humanity if they are done in the "context of a widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population". That in itself is difficult to prove (who is the "civilian population" in the abuse cases?). And there is more: the attack must be based on a "State or organizational policy". With all the horrors that abusive priests have inflicted on children in their care, it would still be a stretch of the reality to speak of a papal plan to carry out the abuse.
Outside the ICC, it is even more difficult to drag the pope into a courtroom. In national courts, Benedict XVI enjoys the highest form of immunity that international law gives to individuals: the immunity of a Head of State. Papal critics see that differently: they are not convinced that the Vatican really qualifies as a State.
In international law, reference is usually made to four elements which "make" a State: a defined territory, an effective government, a permanent population and the capacity to enter into international relations. The Vatican has all four, but in rather eccentric forms. Its territory is well defined, but tiny (it is the smallest State on the planet). It has a government – well structured and effective, but not exactly democratic (it is an absolute monarchy). Vatican City is permanently populated, and there is such a thing as Vatican citizenship: but it is a small population, and quaintly composed (mainly clergy and the Swiss Guard). It certainly has the capacity to enter into relations with other States. In fact, it has done so frequently, and that is a crucial point: the Holy See (representing the Vatican) has relations with more than 170 States. Wherever papal diplomats are received, they enjoy immunity from criminal law – just like diplomats from any other State. The Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, to which almost all States are party, expressly refers to papal representatives (nuncios and internuncios). It would be absurd if the representatives of the pope had immunity, but not the pope himself.
In international law, a sense of the realities not an altogether bad idea. That the church has let its members down, is beyond question. That those who actually carried out the crimes, must face justice, is likewise clear. But utopian dreams about the pope in an iron cage help no one – least of all the victims of abuse. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/business/grogonomics/2022/dec/14/the-pandemic-showed-us-that-poverty-is-a-policy-choice-we-must-do-better | Business | 2022-12-14T14:00:56.000Z | Greg Jericho | The pandemic showed us that poverty is a policy choice – we must do better | Greg Jericho | The great economic lesson of the pandemic was that poverty is a policy choice, and inequality is effectively set at the level the government is content with. When the pandemic hit and businesses shut, unemployment was set to soar and the Morrison government realised that more than a million people were about to discover just how impossible it is to survive on $40 a day.
Not only was this politically untenable, but it was also economically disastrous, because the pitiful jobseeker rate would not be enough to sustain the economy during the downturn.
In response, the government temporarily doubled the rate and instituted the jobkeeper program as a quasi-wage guarantee.
Guess what? It worked. Not only did it keep the economy going despite a massive drop in production, but it also lowered poverty.
The RBA keeps slamming on the brakes, but the economy has already very much slowed down
Greg Jericho
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We have always known that government benefits reduce poverty and inequality, but this was a great practical example.
The most recent Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (Hilda) survey demonstrated just how good taxation and government benefits are at lowering inequality when it compared the Gini coefficient (which measures inequality) before and after taxes and benefits.
If the graph does not display click here
Taxes and government benefits effectively reduce the level of inequality by about a third.
But this is only part of the story. The latest distribution of the household income, consumption and wealth survey released this week by the Bureau of Statistic gives us the rest.
The survey provides breakdowns on how much money each household income quintile (ie households broken down into groups of 20%, from the poorest to richest) has, how they get it, what they spend it on, how much tax they pay and how much they – if any – have left over to save.
For example, the richest 20% of households account for 48% of primary income (wages, investments, business profits), spend 33% of all the money consumed on goods and services and save 64% of all household savings:
If the graph does not display click here
The poorest 20%, however, have just 4% of total primary income, spend only 12% of all household consumption and actually contribute -4% of all household savings (ie they are in debt).
The data also reveals how important social assistance (which makes up a majority of what is referred to as “secondary income”) is to low-income households:
If the graph does not display click here
In 2021-22, this secondary income accounted for 47% of the pre-tax income of the poorest 20% of households.
As you would expect, the richer the household, the smaller the part social assistance plays in the total income. But while the above graph suggests a lovely equality, when we look at the average dollar amount of each income quintile, the reality of who has the money is revealed:
If the graph does not display click here
The wages of the richest 20% of households is on average 15 times that of the poorest 20%, but when we add in social assistance it falls to 6.4 times.
When we include the impact of taxes, the average after-tax household income of the richest 20% is down to 5.3 times that of the poorest 20% of households:
If the graph does not display click here
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But we can’t stop there, because taxes do not just fund benefits – crucially, they fund government services.
This is an often-overlooked aspect of reducing inequality. While it’s vital to provide people enough money to survive while looking for work or while living with illness or a disability, the provision of government services is what truly prevents society from becoming an inequitable horror show.
The dollar value of services like public education and health are referred to as “social transfers in kind”. When we take these into account, the ratio of the richest 20% to the poorest 20% falls from 5:3 to 3:1.
If the graph does not display click here
Another way to think of it is that social benefits lift the share of national household income going to the poorest 20% of households from 4.1% to 4.7%. Benefits lift it to 8.1%, but once we include public services, it is raised to 12%:
If the graph does not display click here
Public services do as much to reduce inequality as do social benefits.
Inflation may now have peaked. The RBA must tread carefully
Greg Jericho
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Taxation, while valuable, does not reduce inequality anywhere near as much. What it does do however is provide the revenue to fund government benefits and services. Reduce that revenue and you inevitably reduce the ability of a government to pay for services – unless they are willing to increase the budget deficit, which we know they are extremely hesitant to do.
This becomes very pertinent when you consider how much revenue is being removed due to the stage-three tax cuts.
The Parliamentary Budget Office estimated the tax cuts in 2024-25 will cost $17.7bn – roughly the same as the cost of the PBS, and $6.2bn more than the federal government will spend that year on public schools.
Yes, high-income earners pay a larger share of tax than others, and more than their share of total income. But the stage-three tax cuts are even more weighted in their favour.
While the richest 20% of households account for 48% of private income and pay 59% of income tax, they will receive 80% of the benefits of the stage-three cuts:
If the graph does not display click here
Income tax is crucial to reducing inequality, but mostly through how much it allows governments to redistribute income though benefits and services. If you massively reduce the level of revenue, as the stage-three tax cuts will do, inevitably government benefits and services will need to be cut.
And when you cut government services, you raise inequality.
Greg Jericho is a Guardian columnist and policy director at the Centre for Future Work | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/culture-professionals-network/culture-professionals-blog/2013/jul/23/suba-das-curve-theatre-leicester | Culture professionals network | 2013-07-23T10:07:00.000Z | Matthew Caines | Arts head: Suba Das, associate director, Curve Theatre | Hi Suba, can you tell us a little bit about Leicester's Curve Theatre and your role there as associate director?
It's pretty varied, it must be said. In the main it's about using my directorial skills to help one of the country's major theatres achieve its aim of helping as many creative people as possible engage with the arts, mainly as creators in their own right.
As well as quite straightforwardly directing the work of new local writers, and supporting local theatremakers, this has also included things you might not expect: curating a regular programme of free performances by local artists and creatives; managing the theatre's new art gallery space; welcoming the city's best participatory groups into the building with initiatives like our in-house breakdancing academy; regular MC-ing in our recording studio; Bollywood dance classes; and our weekly gospel choir.
What are you doing specifically to engage new and diverse audiences? Leicester is a hugely diverse city but I imagine that doesn't automatically make your job any easier…
Of course it's complicated, as there are so many different possible targets and deciding which to pursue is a challenge in and of itself. My starting point is my belief that if we want to reach wider audiences, the key thing is to try to find and support the people within those communities who want to use their creativity, and make these people the bridges between the establishment and the wider region.
Our commitment is to excellence first and foremost, and across these programmes we have engaged with creative people in the city who have independently secured the support from institutions as varied as the Royal Opera House, the National Theatre and the Home Office, but who are quite young, diverse and experimental
You're also a freelance theatre director and producer; how do you manage to juggle all the different aspects of your career?
I don't sleep very much! Being really clear with yourself about how many hours your spending on what project and dividing your day clearly helps – I'd be lost without colour-coded calendars. But it's pretty standard for me to work until midnight every day and through the weekend. It sounds terrible, but so much of my job is exhilarating and not at all like 'work' so I can tough it out for a few more years.
I'd say it's very important to be clear with the people you meet professionally what hat you're wearing when you meet them. And try to find people entirely outside of the industry to be those you let off steam with. If you're keeping a lot of plates spinning, it's inevitable that one of them will cause you some tension at some point, but it's not a great idea to let that negativity seep into other projects.
You were the youngest ever director-in-residence at the National Theatre Studio – what were the big lessons that you learned during your time there?
That every actor welcomes a good, clear note. It was a fairly terrifying experience being 22 and working regularly with actors who'd been working much longer than I'd been alive, but I went away with a real confidence in how to hold my own in a rehearsal room and command (not demand) respect.
Earning that respect stemmed from being able to share clearly with actors and other creatives that the work we were doing mattered to me, and that we were all working together to get to the heart of the project. Of course, that in turn requires knowing really clearly yourself why you are exploring a play or an idea and being able to share that straightforwardly and precisely, and using your own focus and clarity to help open up more thought and ideas in the room.
To namedrop shamelessly, I had the honour of meeting Peter Brook a few years ago and he said to me: "before something can be about everything, it has to be about one thing totally." My time at the studio helped me fully understand that.
Do you think young theatre practitioners are given enough support by the sector at the moment?
I'm a non-white, young director, brought up by my widowed first-generation immigrant mother on benefits in the north-east who finds himself being asked to talk today about his directing career by the Guardian: if it were true that there isn't enough support, then I'm not sure how it is that I've got to where I am now.
I know there's a huge amount of support out there, and in my career I've been lucky to draw on extraordinary companies like the Young Vic, IdeasTap, Old Vic New Voices, Tamasha – all of whom are committed to helping young talent flourish, and all of whom make a point of searching far and wide to support diverse talent with often free or low cost opportunities.
However, there is a danger here that isn't widely discussed, which is that any target-driven pursuit of ever-higher figures for participation and artist development risks creating over-supply – an over-supply also perpetuated by what seems to be a very financially driven proliferation in training courses across the board.
I don't think it's widely enough accepted that this over-supply is part of what enables the demonic words of the fringe world "profit-share" and "unpaid internship" to be uttered so frequently. There's a willing, facilitated workforce desperate to showcase their talents in the hope it will move them up the ladder. And those words are often what price emerging artists from low-income and diverse (and yes, statistically in this country the two things do go hand in hand) backgrounds out of some of the most practical contexts of skill development. – the link is quite simple supply/demand economics.
At a time where we are apparently locked into making the 'business case' for the arts, this whopping great economic incoherence seems off-kilter, and suggests some form of overhaul is needed. The challenge ahead will be how the sector manages sustainability alongside access. At the root of that has to be empowering artists to be entrepreneurs, facilitators and producers in their own right. I think they're the only ones who will survive in the next few years.
What projects or shows have you got coming up that you're most excited about?
I've the great fortune to be directing the first production at the Omnibus, the new arts centre in Clapham. The show is my first ever production of a full-length new play, Hope Light And Nowhere – the post-apocalyptic second play by Manchester playwright Andrew Sheridan. I'm definitely embarking on a new challenge, but thrilled to be doing so with a team that includes young designer Jean Chan, who won the Linbury Prize, and lighting designer Richard Howell, who won this year's Off West End Award.
We open on 25 July, and, rumour is, the venue's patrons such as Vivienne Westwood will be in attendance. So it's all fairly nerve-wracking, but another step in my journey of trying to make surprising work with astonishing, diverse, young artists. And on that note of new talent, there's definitely some exciting times ahead at Curve too.
Suba Das is associate director at Curve Theatre, Leicester – follow the theatre on Twitter @CurveLeicester and Suba @SubaDasDirects
This content is brought to you by Guardian Professional. To get more articles like this direct to your inbox, sign up free to become a member of the Culture Professionals Network. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/askjack/2019/mar/07/is-there-a-way-to-use-facebook-without-giving-up-my-privacy | Technology | 2019-03-07T08:00:11.000Z | Jack Schofield | Is there a way to use Facebook without giving up my privacy? | Is it possible to be a passive user of Facebook? I want to read announcements relating to friends and colleagues, and maybe post comments, without building a profile with photos, a timeline and so on. I have managed perfectly well without joining, but occasionally miss useful information that is not available elsewhere. Eira
What’s known as “lurking” – being a member without actively participating – is very common. To quote Jakob Nielsen, “In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action.” This is known as the 1% rule, and it’s obviously a gross generalisation.
Facebook’s participation levels appear to be much higher than that. We don’t know the number of lapsed or (literally) dead accounts, but in September 2018, Facebook reported 2.27 billion monthly active users (up 9.6% over the previous year) and almost 1.5 billion daily active users (up 9.3%), despite losing about 1 million users in Europe.
While there’s no obligation to participate, there are much trickier questions about privacy and tracking.
What distinguishes Facebook from Twitter, Reddit, Metafilter and so on is that it is based on real identities, which are fundamentally public. While you can choose how much information you post on Facebook, and how widely you share it, your friends may already have given Facebook your email address as part of the “find friends” procedure. Some of them may also have posted images of you, mentioned you in comments, or linked to things you posted on other services. As a result, when you sign up, Facebook may already know who most of your friends are.
This information may be about you, but it isn’t yours: it belongs to the people who shared it.
Either way, any organisation that knows your real name can probably find out a lot about you. This was already obvious in 1999 when Sun’s Scott McNealy said: “You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it.”
Minimal Facebooking
Facebook’s many communication services make it a useful tool, but you don’t have to give it every bit of information it asks for to use it. Photograph: Eric Gaillard/Reuters
To sign up for a Facebook account, you need a name and a working email address or mobile phone number. You can use any name you are known by. However, if you run into a problem, you may have to provide an acceptable form of ID to verify it later.
You will also be asked for your date of birth – because you have to be at least 13 years old to join – and your choice of gender. Both may be used for advertising purposes. After that, everything is optional.
Facebook will want you to complete your new profile by uploading a mug shot and a cover photo, entering the names of schools or colleges you attended, where you live and so on. You are not obliged to do any of this. Your profile photo could be a cartoon character. However, there could be from dozens to thousands of people who have the same name as you. The more details you enter, the easier it will be for friends to find you.
Next, to make the system work for you, you have to “friend” people you know. Facebook encourages you to upload your contacts book (see above). It’s much better to track people down one by one, though it is more work.
And that’s it. When your friends post things on Facebook, they will appear in the news feed. You will also have a timeline under your name, which used to be your wall. You can’t get out of having these, but again, you don’t have to post anything to them.
Privacy settings
Joining Facebook is easy, working out your privacy settings is more difficult. Photograph: Chris Jackson/Getty Images
When you do post something, you can control who sees it by using each post’s settings menu (three dots), but it’s better to choose settings for your whole account. To do this, click the down-arrow on the far right of the blue heading bar, select Settings from the menu, and then Privacy. The main entry is “Who can see your future posts?” You probably won’t want to use Public, which means anyone on or off Facebook. Instead, limit visibility to friends, perhaps, or customise it. You can exclude by name anyone you don’t want to see something.
You can also limit the range of people who can look you up using the email address and/or phone number you gave Facebook, though that can make it harder for friends to find you.
Where it asks “Do you want search engines outside of Facebook to link to your profile?”, answer no.
You should also visit the ad preferences page and click on “Ad settings”. This lets you turn off adverts based on “data from partners” (external websites, not Facebook), and adverts on external websites based on your activities on Facebook. This removes the advantages of tracking you. Otherwise, Facebook could use the information that you visit, for example, car websites to show you car ads.
You can also change “Ads that include your social actions” to “No one”. This stops Facebook from using your actions (signing up for events, using apps, making recommendations and so on) to promote them to your friends.
Finally, Facebook publicises birthdays. The setting is on your About page under “Contact and basic info”. Note that you can set different privacy levels for your date of birth and your year of birth. You could set both to “Only me” or just keep the year – and therefore your age – private.
This description barely scratches the surface of the many ways you can manage your data. Facebook provides detailed control over your privacy, and how it can target you with the adverts that pay for its free service. The problem is that it would take many hours to find, understand and customise all the settings available. Understandably, most people just don’t care enough to make the effort when the only visible benefit may be seeing less appropriate advertisements.
Facebook disconnect
Facebook Connect or “Log in with Facebook” is an identity system that, conveniently, lets you log into other websites, play games and so on with your Facebook ID. While this saves creating a lot of different login names and passwords, it also lets Facebook know what you are doing away from Facebook.
This isn’t a new idea, and Facebook’s tracking network is much smaller than Google’s, but it’s what drives the use of things like Ghostery, Privacy Badger, Disconnect.Me and Redmorph.
You can opt out of using the whole platform. This stops Facebook Connect from working, and disables all the apps and games that have been used by third parties to harvest user data.
To do this, go to the Settings page and select “Apps and websites”. Scroll down to the Apps, Websites and Games section, click Edit and then select “Turn off”. I got some dire warnings when I did this a few years ago, but as you’re a new user, it shouldn’t affect anything.
You can also limit Facebook tracking by running Facebook in a container in the Firefox browser.
It’s not just Facebook
Facebook explained in a blog post what sort of data it collects and how it does it. Obviously, it mentioned that other internet companies are doing exactly the same things.
In fact, the main difference between Facebook and LinkedIn and some rivals is that most (but not all) of the personal information on Facebook and LinkedIn has been willingly contributed by users for their own purposes, rather than gathered by spying. Facebook has become the universal kicking boy partly because of its carelessness, and because its massive scale means its blunders can affect far more people, or even whole nations.
Ultimately, however, the problem is not Facebook but “surveillance capitalism”: the business model whereby users trade personal information for services instead of paying for them.
As security expert Bruce Schneier wrote last year in a blog post on Facebook and Cambridge Analytica: “for every article about Facebook’s creepy stalker behaviour, thousands of other companies are breathing a collective sigh of relief that it’s Facebook and not them in the spotlight. Because while Facebook is one of the biggest players in this space, there are thousands of other companies that spy on and manipulate us for profit”.
For those of us with distant friends and family, Facebook is just too valuable to give up, and its replacement(s) might well be worse. It’s the whole system that needs fixing.
Have you got a question? Email it to [email protected] | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2012/may/10/portugese-police-manchester-united-bebe-transfer | Football | 2012-05-10T14:00:03.000Z | David Conn | Portuguese police to question Manchester United over Bébé transfer | Police in Portugal are planning to question Manchester United about the club's €9m (£7.2m) signing of the striker Bébé from the Portuguese club Vitória Guimarães, as part of their criminal investigation into the deal.
The judicial police national unit for combating corruption, part of the Justice Ministry based in Lisbon, is investigating the 11 August 2010 transfer, by which United paid that fee for a player whose only competitive experience was a single season in the Portuguese third division.
Bébé's agent, appointed days before he moved to United, was Jorge Mendes, also agent to Cristiano Ronaldo, Nani and Anderson, who moved from Portuguese clubs to Old Trafford in previous seasons. Of the €9m United paid to Vitória for Bébé, Mendes was paid 40%, €3.6m (£2.89m). It was reported in Vitória's subsequent general meeting that Mendes's €3.6m comprised a 10% agent's commission, €900,000, and the further €2.7m because Mendes had also just acquired 30% of Bébé's "economic rights", part-ownership of the player.
Sir Alex Ferguson said at the time that Bébé was the only player he had signed in his long managerial career without having watched him at all first, even on video. United said Bébé had been recommended by Carlos Queiroz, coach of the Portugal national team, formerly Ferguson's assistant at Old Trafford.
On 10 April, the police anti-corruption unit in Lisbon wrote to Bébé's former agent, Gonçalo Reis, asking him to attend at their headquarters and as a witness to provide his account of what happened in the deal. The letter informed Reis that a processo-crime – literally, criminal proceedings – "relate to the transfer of the professional football player Tiago Manuel Dias Correia (known as 'Bébé') from Vit. Guimarães to Manchester United (England)."
The police unit declined to officially confirm to the Guardian the scope of their inquiries or what precise aspects of the transfer they are investigating. Reis has complained formally to the Portuguese Football Federation that Mendes improperly poached Bébé from him before very quickly sealing the United move, in breach of Fifa's regulations governing the conduct of agents.
Reis told the Guardian that on 23 April he was interviewed for around three hours by a police inspector, José Cunha Ribeiro, at the anti-corruption unit's offices. Reis said the police asked him in detail about every aspect of the transfer, and told him they plan to ask United for their version of the deal. Subsequently Reis emailed several documents to the inspector, including his contract to represent Bébé.
A spokesman for United said: "Clearly if the police ask us for information, we will co-operate with them. Nobody is suggesting that we have done anything wrong."
Mendes and his agency Gestifute did not respond to the Guardian's questions about the police investigation. They have previously denied poaching Bébé from Reis. In his complaint to the PFF, Reis claims he had an exclusive contract to represent Bébé as the player's agent for two years from 25 August 2009. Bébé, who had a poor, deprived childhood, his parents having abandoned him, was still living in a care home when he played for Estrela da Amadora, in Portugal's semi-professional third division, in 2009-10.
He played one full season as a striker for Estrela, then after they failed to pay him because the club was in financial difficulties, Reis negotiated the termination of the player's contract and Bébé became a free agent. He moved to Vitória, a first division club, in June 2010, with Reis brokering the terms of the contract. For a time Bébé lived in Reis's house as he came to terms with making his way into professional football. He played in just six pre-season friendlies for Vitória when a story appeared in Marca, the Spanish football newspaper, that Real Madrid, managed by José Mourinho, a client of Mendes, were suddenly interested in signing him. United have always said they then moved rapidly to sign him, on the recommendation of Queiroz, who is also represented by Mendes.
According to Reis's official complaint, on 9 August, 2010 he received a letter from Bébé, dated 5 August, in which Bébé sacked Reis as his agent. Two days later, on 11 August, Bébé was transferred to United, who paid €9m to Guimarães for him, and gave the player a three-year full professional contract on wages Reis believes are €63,000 a month, net of tax. It emerged subsequently that Mendes had become the agent and owner of 30% of Bébé's economic rights, too, and made €3.6m from the United deal.
At United in 2010-11, Bébé was selected to start two matches in the Carling Cup and one in the FA Cup – the fifth round 1-0 victory over Crawley Town – and made four further appearances as a substitute. He scored when he came off the bench against Bursaspor in a Champions League game in Turkey in November 2010. After a year, United sent him on loan to the Turkish club Besiktas, which has several Portuguese players on the books. He has been injured for much of the time and although still contracted to United, spent much of his rehabilitation back in Portugal. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/aug/01/work-life-balance-taking-august-staff-productivity | Opinion | 2023-08-01T06:00:02.000Z | Jo Hunter | I’m taking all of August off – and so are all of my staff. It’s the best decision we ever made | Jo Hunter | Ayear ago, we ran an experiment at work. Emerging from the height of the pandemic, we were exhausted and running on empty. And, as an organisation that works with teachers, care workers, youth and community workers, local authority staff, academics and thousands of others, we found ourselves having the same conversation with everyone. They were burned out too.
So we decided to give our whole team August off. We were inspired originally by a similar initiative at the organisation of well-known researcher Brené Brown – and her explanation of the rationale behind it. We had no idea how it would go, but knew we had to do something radically different from the “keep on keeping on” cycle that we, and everyone else around us, was caught in. It was a rush to get everything finished and wrapped up with clients before we took the break, but it was worth the effort.
And it paid off. We had much-needed reflection, recreation and family time; people came back feeling motivated and ready to work. Ideas that came into focus over that time have led to us growing our team, and our income this year, by almost 50%. As a result, we’re doing it again. We’ve embedded it in our employee contracts as a permanent feature, alongside working a fully paid four-day week, having an additional 20 or more days holiday annually, and creating a policy for fully paid sabbaticals after long service.
When we tell people about this, they often think it’s hugely radical and impressive, or they think we’re lazy snowflakes who couldn’t possibly be productive. But to me, it’s just common sense. And not really new. Plenty of European countries slow down or stop in August, and the recent four-day working week trial at 61 UK firms was a major success.
When we look at the work systems around us, there are many that are clearly struggling. Poor mental health is costing UK employers £56bn a year due to absenteeism, presenteeism and staff turnover. Half of employees are showing at least one characteristic of burnout due to greater job demands and expectations, lack of social interaction and lack of boundaries between work and home life. Public sector strikes are just another sign that work isn’t working for many of us.
‘We were inspired by well-known researcher Brené Brown – and her explanation of the rationale behind it.’ Photograph: Suzanne Cordeiro/AFP/Getty Images
So often, work becomes a system we need to fix, and we forget that our workforce is made up of individual people, living lives, with needs in and outside their jobs. “Listening” to staff often means a half-hearted survey where poor results can be written off by companies as people just being grumpy or disgruntled. However, ignoring the needs of staff is detrimental not only to their wellbeing, but to the productivity of the company too. If you prioritise your bottom line over your staff, the choices you’re making are costing you in the long run.
We’ve seen that putting staff and their needs at the centre of a company can be transformative. Happy, well-rested people are not only less likely to be off sick, but they will communicate better with each other, have more of a sense of purpose and feel more committed to a company that looks after them. For my company, August gives us a moment to reflect and pause (even if for many of us that might include picking fish fingers up off the floor, giving endless lifts and stopping a toddler from falling in a paddling pool). It lets you get off the treadmill and then actively decide to get back on.
The ‘work hard and you’ll get a good job’ mantra is no longer true – so what do I tell my kids?
Gillian Harvey
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I know you’re probably thinking, “but they’re a small company who can afford to take risks”, or “it’s easy for them to talk, but they don’t have 1,000 employees and pressure from shareholders”, and you’re right. We are an organisation of 10 people. But looking at the state of the country at the moment, who can afford not to take risks? Creativity – the ability to transcend traditional rules, ideas and patterns, and make new ones – is fundamentally vital to the society we live in now. We need fresh ideas. We all have it in us to be creative, but we can’t do it when we’re pushed up against the edge of our limits, when we’re exhausted and trying to juggle everything all at once.
Society seems to have got completely caught up in a never-ending cycle of busyness – and when we don’t stop to pause and question it, we continue to make the same mistakes. Yes, I’ll hold my hands up to being a Guardian-reading woman with anti-capitalist tendencies who (shock, horror) thinks putting people’s wellbeing first is just fundamentally the right thing to do. But it does also make business sense. Without allowing people adequate time to recharge and reset, they suffer. And so will the systems relying on them.
And so, as I write this, I am in my last hour of work for the next four and a half weeks. I’ll delete my email account from my phone and I’ll have extra time to share with family, sort out my life admin, enjoy being outside and maybe, if I’m lucky, actually have a rest.
I know how privileged I am to have made this decision for my company, and that not everyone can stop. But if you’re in the position to make that decision for yourself, or others, maybe have a think about what stopping might mean for you. A day off? A new way of working? Actually taking your lunch break? Radical, maybe; snowflake-y, maybe; absolutely essential to continue functioning as a human being, definitely.
Jo Hunter is the co-founder and CEO of 64 Million Artists | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/dec/31/new-year-honours-list-data | UK news | 2011-12-31T09:00:00.000Z | Simon Rogers | New year's honours, 2012: download the full list as open data | The Queen's birthday honours list is out, with 1,290 people awarded as part of a well-worn ritual of the British royal (and government) power.
While the exact value that a peerage or a medal carries now is less certain than it used to, the list still says something about the state of the nation - honours this year include iPod designer Jonathan Ive, golfer Rory McIlroy and actor Helena Bonham-Carter.
The list, as it comes out, is pretty inaccessible, so we thought it would be interesting to turn it into a spreadsheet and break it down - thanks to John Houston for making this happen. So, what kinds of honours do people receive?
And what do they actually mean? The key ones are:
Order of the British Empire (broken down into CBE, MBE, OBE and so on), which is the most awarded category, and covers general achievements in military and civilian life
Order of the Bath, which is awarded to senior civil servants and high-ranking military
The Royal Victorian Order, which is for 'services to the crown'
This shows how they break down, and the dominance of the Order of the British Empire:
People think of OBE as meaning the Order of the British Empire, but it's actually one of the divisions - meaning an Officer of the Order of the British Empire. This is how that giant category breaks down:
So, what do people get the awards for? For a substantial number, no reason is given. For senior civil servants or military officers, receiving an honour is an inevitable stage of their career. For the 942 where we could identify the reason for the honour, the biggest single reason given was service to the community or a charity.
The full data is below. What can you do with it?
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https://www.theguardian.com/business/nils-pratley-on-finance/2021/dec/14/a-patrick-drahi-takeover-of-bt-would-be-an-unhelpful-distraction | Business | 2021-12-14T19:15:34.000Z | Nils Pratley | Government should use its new powers to block a BT takeover bid | The government says it is “monitoring the situation carefully” and “will not hesitate to act if required to protect our critical national telecoms infrastructure”. Does this mean Patrick Drahi of Altice, now with 18% of BT in his back pocket, can forget any idea of buying the company outright?
Let’s hope so. For the first time in years, BT, if it runs its business well, looks set up to satisfy the demands of all its main constituencies. Customers and the government get £15bn of fibre investment over the next five years. The shareholders, after a (too) long standoff with regulator Ofcom, have the “fair bet” terms, covering future broadband pricing, that successive BT managements have argued are critical to getting the fibre in ducts.
Better still from a public policy perspective, regulatory generosity to BT has not been so lavish that it has deterred others from having a run. Mike Fries, the chief executive of Liberty Global, which owns Virgin Media, said last month that wholesale broadband in the UK was “ripe for the picking”. Add the smaller “alt-net” providers and you have what Ofcom and the government have sought for years: something resembling a race in fibre.
It is hard to see what a takeover of BT by Drahi would add. Altice has helped to build broadband networks in the US, France and Portugal but control from overseas by a heavily borrowed private company is not what BT needs. The UK company is not on its knees like Telecom Italia, which may be about to succumb to a private equity takeover. BT should have started its fibre rollout earlier but, at this point, a target of reaching 25m premises by 2026 counts as reasonably slick. Distractions would be unhelpful.
For the time being, Drahi is smiling sweetly and expressing admiration for BT’s management, and Tuesday’s statement means he’s offside as a bidder anyway for six months unless somebody else has a pop. But Drahi is not usually the type to sit passively in the wings for ever; the “creeping control” theory is the one to focus on.
The government should not be afraid to use its powers of intervention under the new National Security and Investment Act. The legislation could almost have been written with BT in mind.
How the banks were let off the hook
Almost a decade after the event, the story can be told: the Treasury did the big banks an enormous favour by putting pressure on the financial regulator to water down a compensation scheme for small businesses that had been mis-sold interest rate swaps.
The 493-page report by John Swift QC is an instructive read on how “independent” financial regulation works in practice. Treasury officials wondered aloud how a potential huge compensation bill might be reduced. Then, miraculously, the Financial Services Authority, as it then was, concluded that “sophisticated” purchasers of the swaps, which became hideously expensive when interest rates fell in the financial crash, shouldn’t be compensated. Result: a potential £10bn bill for the banks became £2.2bn.
Naturally, the regulator could offer a justification of sorts: by drawing a line, it secured a settlement and got money quickly to affected businesses. Come on, though, the admission on Tuesday by today’s Financial Conduct Authority of “clear shortfalls in processes, governance and record keeping” and “a lack of transparency” is damning. The banks were let off the hook.
Rentokil executes a big deal
See, the UK does have world-leading companies that bestride the globe and are capable of buying American rivals in multibillion-dollar deals. Catching rats and destroying termites may not represent the pinnacle of 21st-century advancement but, hey, they all count.
Rentokil Initial’s $6.7bn (£5.07bn) purchase of Memphis-based Terminix is also a startling comeback for a company that was a stock market star in the 1990s before getting lost in complexity, taking a misguided detour into parcel deliveries, and dicing with extermination itself.
When he took over as chief executive in 2013, Andy Ransom inherited a still-unresolved mess and a Rentokil share price that was 98p. The price now, even after Tuesday’s 12% drop, is 548p. The recovery hasn’t required rat-like cunning; just quiet operational improvement.
Therein lies the slight worry about the Terminix purchase. Having made 220 small acquisitions since 2016, Rentokil is now spending a large sum on a big one at a 47% premium to the target’s last share price. It’s a change to a winning formula.
Given Ransom’s record, though, Rentokil’s investors should probably swallow any doubts. This is hardly a trip into the unknown. North America is the world’s biggest pest control market and Rentokil already operates there. Shareholders should back a show of ambition. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/nov/16/experts-warned-government-of-tower-block-collapse-risk-last-year-leak-reveals | Society | 2023-11-16T05:00:07.000Z | Robert Booth | Experts warned government of tower block collapse risk last year, leak reveals | Government safety experts last year warned that many tower blocks built from concrete panels that may pose a collapse risk have not been fixed, leaked documents reveal.
Minutes of the government’s structural stability working group revealed that experts warned Whitehall officials in 2022 that “buildings which were supposed to have undergone remedial work in previous decades have not been remediated”, and there were “consequential safety implications for such buildings”.
They also warned in December 2021: “Many structural defects are hidden from view,” and the “market is not responding in the way we would wish, prioritising profit over safety”.
The warnings emerged as hundreds of families were evacuated from Barton House, a 15-storey tower block in Bristol, over fears an explosion could pose “risk to the structure”, which is made from a large panel system (LPS).
Tenants and campaigners estimate there are about 575 LPS tower blocks still standing after construction mostly in the 1950s and 60s. Concern for their safety has simmered for decades after a gas explosion caused the partial collapse of Ronan Point in east London in 1968, killing four people.
When the panels are poorly assembled, gas blasts, fire or even strong winds can threaten their integrity.
Large panel systems were used widely in the postwar housing boom and there have been problems on many different council estates, leading to residents being moved out and buildings demolished.
In 2017 engineers were called to the Ledbury estate in Peckham, south-east London, to investigate 3cm-wide cracks between the panels that were opening and closing depending on the weather. Last year demolition and rebuilding was approved by Southwark council.
Residents in LPS blocks have been moved out in Portsmouth, where buildings were demolished in 2022, and in Rugby, where residents were moved out and blocks were demolished in 2021. Barton House in Bristol joined the list on Tuesday.
Fears for other Bristol tower blocks after council evacuates unsafe Barton House
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The minutes of the working group’s meetings reflect concern that the problem has not been grasped systematically. It warned that “many LPS buildings were not strengthened-post Ronan Point” and that “we were past the point of leaving this responsibility solely to the building owners”.
In particular, the committee heard in December 2021 that “the number, locations, conditions and presence of a gas supply [in LPS blocks] are not known, which is a cause for concern”.
In 2022 it called on the government to survey housing associations and councils to estimate the current numbers of buildings with LPS and also those built with reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) and to assign an estimated risk to each building.
A spokesperson for the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) said: “Following the Grenfell Tower tragedy [in 2017], the government has introduced some of the toughest building safety regulations in the world through its landmark Building Safety Act.
“The Act also introduced a new building safety regulator to assess the safety and standards of all buildings, to monitor and investigate any potential risks or changes that may affect residents’ safety and to oversee a culture of higher standards throughout our built environment.”
After the Grenfell fire, concerns have been growing inside Whitehall about LPS housing. Last December a senior civil servant made a formal submission to Lee Rowley, then the building safety minister, urging him to approve a nationwide programme to investigate the safety of ageing social housing blocks built with LPS concrete.
Frustrated that potential safety risks were not being properly addressed, the civil servant resigned citing the structural stability working group concerns that many LPS towers have not been strengthened.
In 2017, the government did tell social landlords “it is important with all large panel system buildings that their structural history is known, and that their condition and continued structural integrity are understood and monitored”.
Bristol city council said there was no record of any structural surveys of Barton House after remedial works were carried out around 1970. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2018/aug/30/john-ruskin-artists-victorian-social-critic | Culture | 2018-08-30T08:15:31.000Z | Larry Ryan | Ruskin the radical: why the Victorian critic is back with a vengeance | It is a familiar tableau of urban Britain. Labourers dig a tunnel, a porter delivers goods, a man swigs beer, there are young children and dogs, police and aristocrats look on; there is dirt and beauty and life all thrown together. Ford Madox Brown’s pre-Raphaelite painting Work (c 1852-63) has been reworked many times. In the latest effort, the comic artist Hunt Emerson gives it a knockabout cartoon feel, but with a distinctly current edge: the cast is multicultural, the tools more hi-tech and there are allusions to social dysfunction, the gig economy and the housing crisis.
Emerson’s update also alludes to the social critiques of Brown’s contemporary and friend, John Ruskin: a writer, artist, social critic, polymath and aesthete. Emerson’s illustration is the central image of A World of ... Work, an exhibition at Brantwood, Ruskin’s former home in Cumbria. It also figures in How to Work, a comic made in collaboration with writer Kevin Jackson, and one of three in their recent collection , Bloke’s Progress, a playful re-examining of Ruskin’s ideas through the eyes of a modern everyman, Darren Bloke.
Ruskin was born in London in 1819 to a wealthy Scottish wine-merchant father and a strict Evangelical mother. Having graduated from Oxford University in 1842, he came to public prominence with his defence of JMW Turner, published in the first volume of his acclaimed treatise on art, Modern Painters. He gained fame as a public intellectual – writing, teaching and delivering lectures on art, architecture and other subjects, all in his eccentric style. Ruskin’s art criticism and advocacy was a particular inspiration to the pre-Raphaelites.
In the 1860s, he turned his attention to politics and society against the backdrop of the inequality and rampant poverty many suffered in the industrial capitalist age. He railed against the exploitation of the poor and the self-interest of the wealthy. Ruskin proposed reform, and carried out practical projects – such as getting his students to work on widening roads in Oxford – which provided a hands-on social parable for his beliefs.
While much of his thinking was considered radical, and could be considered a precursor to socialism, he adhered to an older conservative tradition that believed in hierarchy and the established authority; it also suggested that those who naturally held power had a duty to serve and protect the poor. By the mid-20th century, some of his ideas had filtered into the perceived wisdom of the British welfare state.
“In some ways, Ruskin seems like the most Victorian of the Victorians, so not applicable to our lives now,” says David Russell, associate professor of English at Corpus Christi College Oxford. “People get hung up on how eccentric some of his ideas were, but the core of his claims remains relevant and important. That is to say: our aesthetic experience, our experience of beauty in ordinary life, must be central to thinking about any good life and society. It’s not just decoration or luxury for the few. If you are taught how to see the world properly through an understanding of aesthetics, then you’ll see society properly.”
Ruskin, who died in Brantwood in 1900, has been cited as an influence on William Morris and Gandhi, the arts and craft movement, ecological thinking and the foundations of the welfare state.
His most searing social critique is contained in his 1860-62 essays, Unto This Last, in which he takes a scythe to Victorian capitalist values: “the art of establishing maximum inequality in our own favour … the rash and absurd assumption that such inequalities are necessarily advantageous, lies at the root of most of the popular fallacies on the subject of political economy”.
In his conclusion, Ruskin states baldly: “Luxury is indeed possible in the future – innocent and exquisite; luxury for all, and by the help of all; but luxury at present can only be enjoyed by the ignorant; the cruellest man living could not sit at his feast, unless he sat blindfolded.”
Restorers work on Giotto’s fresco of Saint Rufus, in Assisi, Italy. John Ruskin’s analysis of the artist’s work helped redefine art criticism in the Victorian era. Photograph: Alessia Pierdomenico/Reuters
A central line of thinking for Ruskin, cutting across his art criticism and political writing, is that a society founded on structures that are embroiled in heartlessness – in brutal treatment of people and the environment around them – is indifferent to beauty. As we see the growth of vast inequalities today, such billionaire tech firms employing precarious workers with diminished rights and pervasive environmental ruin, it is not hard to see parallels in our current moment.
This year, David Zwirner Books published the long out-of-print Giotto and His Works in Padua, Ruskin’s consideration of the Italian painter’s 12th-century fresco cycle at the Arena Chapel in northern Italy. Even here, when contemplating the beauty of early Renaissance art, Ruskin writes: “As long as it can bear to see misery and squalor in its streets, it can neither invent nor accept human beauty in its pictures.” As Robert Hewison adds in an introduction to the new edition: “Is this 1860, or 2018?”
Whether Ruskin remains an influence on the left, however, is another matter. “There is an important echo in contemporary radicalism,” says Jeremy Gilbert, a member of the founding national committee of Momentum and a professor of cultural and political theory at the University of East London. “Ruskin is not really much of a presence in contemporary left culture, but there are definitely resonances, especially in the popularisation of post-work politics.”
Ruskin’s criticism of the alienating nature of work and the aesthetic impoverishment of industrial capitalism chimes with current arguments about inequality and the despoiling of the environment. But, for Gilbert, “it’s never clear with Ruskin what the strategy was meant to be politically to resolve the problem.”
Where Ruskin’s continuing political influence is concerned, Gilbert says he remains central to an ethical-socialist radical tradition, a belief-system embraced by Tony Benn and even Jeremy Corbyn, whose “own vision of the world is a moral one: it’s not really about class struggles, so much as it is about wanting a moral and ethical society”. While Ruskin is not widely cited by the left today, this concept is something he espoused.
Gilbert suggests that the strongest link between Ruskin and contemporary discourse lies in the possibility that automation might be a liberation – allowing people to lead more creative and and aesthetically fulfilled lives because they don’t have to do boring work anymore.
In Unto This Last, Ruskin offers, in his elaborate style, exhortations: “The equality of wages, then, being the first object towards which we have to discover the directest available road, the second is … that of maintaining constant numbers of workmen in employment.”
There are also provocations: “Whereas it has long been known and declared that the poor have no right to the property of the rich, I wish it also to be known and declared that the rich have no right to property of the poor.”
And there are dramatic paeans to what might be possible. “There is no wealth but life. Life including all its powers of love, of joy, and of admiration,” he writes. “That country is richest which nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy human beings.”
Emma Thompson and Dakota Fanning in Effie Gray, 2011. The film examines the relationship between John Ruskin and his teenage bride. Photograph: Joel Ryan/AP/Press Association Images
When Ruskin did publish his social criticism, there was a backlash from his audience: the wealthy, educated elite. The essays that became Unto This Last were originally published in Cornhill magazine; but he had to end the series because his editor, William Thackeray, along with much of the readership, were horrified, Russell explains. The economic establishment were contemptuous and said he had no practical business insight to draw on.
“They thought Ruskin would be providing a guide to art and he provided them with a condemnation of society. But on the same sort of aesthetic principles, [he was] trying to change people’s values, which was what his art criticism was already doing but they didn’t see the continuity so much as were annoyed by his assumptions and how confusing they found it.”
The World of Work exhibition in Brantwood, which runs until this weekend, considers how artists have responded to human labour, and is underpinned by Ruskin’s writing on the laissez-faire capitalism of the Victorian industrial age. Alongside Emerson’s update of Work, there is a very broad interpretation: George Mason’s rural idyll The Harvest Moon, John Cassidy’s sculpture The Ship Canal Digger and AS Finlayson’s paintings of an aero-engine production line offer optimistic and noble visions of work. Set against these are stark visions in paintings like Peasant Woman with a Pitchfork by James Pelham and Graham Sutherland’s Press for Making Shells.
The exhibition runs into the present day, with images including Jonathan Ive’s design for the iPhone.
The David Zwirner Books edition of Ruskin’s writing about Giotto is part of the gallery and publisher’s Ekphrasis series – reissuing largely out-of-print writing on visual arts by the likes of Vernon Lee, Marcel Proust, Alice Michel and Paul Gauguin. “When I was in university, I don’t think I was ever taught Ruskin,” says Lucas Zwirner, the managing editor of the imprint. “In his lifetime he was a celebrity. And then he was totally out of fashion. There’s such richness there that I think there are cycles of engagement – maybe we’re entering a place where people want a different kind of writing about visual art.”
John Ruskin’s former home, Brantwood, in Coniston, Lake Disctrict. Photograph: Philip Hoare
Zwirner says he was introduced to the Victorian due to his somewhat unlikely influence on the punk and counter-culture infused drawings of Raymond Pettibon – former Tate director Nicholas Serota also encouraged him to publish the Ruskin work. Ruskin is referenced directly in the title of The Ethics of Dust, a series by the artist, architect and preservationist Jorge Otero-Pailos. Here installations are created out of minute dirt, dust and matter that has accumulated over years at old buildings, including Westminster and Doge’s Palace in Venice.
“It’s a really important part of the radical tradition to be able to say that one of the things wrong with capitalism in general is that it produces a certain kind of aesthetic degradation,” says Gilbert. “And that does speak to something that really intuitively, people recognise – not just aesthetes, not just intellectuals. Most people have a sense of the way in which corporate culture cannot produce beauty. It can appropriate it and sell access to it, but it can’t produce it.”
There is a banner in the Brantwood exhibition that simply reads: “To Do Good Work”. It is by the Sheffield-based art partnership Poly-Technic, which uses words as polemic in its art, riffing on trade union banners and other types of sloganeering, as well as creating collective community projects that take messages out in public.
“That was something Ruskin was doing,” says Howard Hull, the director of the Ruskin Foundation and Brantwood Trust. “He was making actions and finding words or concepts which could be taken out and used.“Famously, the first bit of writing that Ruskin ever did was three lines long: a little sermon that his mother got him to preach in the home on a Sunday, in which he stood up and proclaimed: ‘People be good’.”
A World of ... Work is at Brantwood in Cumbria until Sunday 2 September. Giotto and his Works in Padua by John Ruskin is published by David Zwirner Books. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/oct/02/labour-waving-not-drowning | Politics | 2009-10-01T23:05:10.000Z | Michael White | Labour: waving, not drowning | Not much is left to chance at modern made-for-TV party conferences. So shortly before the ritual finale in Brighton Labour officials handed out flags – contrasting "Labour: fighting for the many, not the few" with "Tories: a change you can't afford" – for delegates to wave.
Waving, not drowning after all? Activists fired up by a week's collective optimism, angered by the bullying withdrawal of the Sun's block vote, face daunting election odds.
Yet the kernel of defiant claims this week that all is not quite lost for Gordon Brown's battered 12-year government is not complete fantasy. It hangs on two points visible in the closing speeches made yesterday by David Miliband and Harriet Harman.
Miliband spoke with more fluent authority than usual. It helps that one issue this conference has resolved is the leadership controversy: Gordon Brown will still be prime minister on election day, most probably 6 May.
The foreign secretary voiced scorn for the "bunch of schoolboys" aspiring to take over. But he also name-checked Labour's record since 1997 – and what it hopes to do in a fourth term. Miliband's observation that "the word that matters most in modern politics is 'future'" is critical. Strategy-minded ministers and officials see the Tory policy cupboard as bare.
Surely the centre left can carve out fresh opportunities for a party which believes in the active, interventionist state which the times now require?
In her speech Harman insisted that Dan Hannan, the mouthy MEP who rubbished the NHS, is "not the eccentric fringe, he is the beating heart of the Tory party".
Put another way, Labour is now actively courting its defectors, the stay-at-homes and those tempted to go Green, Ukip or BNP, with an offer that builds or protects public services rather than hacks them back. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/10/egypt-police-strike | World news | 2013-03-10T19:41:16.000Z | Patrick Kingsley | Egyptian police go on strike | Police officers in more than a third of Egyptian provinces have gone on strike, including in parts of Cairo and in Port Said, the troubled northern city where more than 50 people have died in the past month in clashes between police and protesters.
Police have also refused to protect President Mohamed Morsi's home in the Nile delta province of Sharqiya. Among several seemingly contradictory grievances, police demand better weapons. But conversely, they also claim the Morsi regime is using them as unwilling pawns in the suppression of protesters who demand the regime's downfall.
"They're trying to Ikhwanise the police and we are against that," claimed Ahab Kamel, a spokesman for an informal union of junior police officers, who was on strike in Port Said. Ikhwan is the Arabic word for Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood.
"We are at the same distance from all the political parties," added Kamel, sitting in the city's el-Sharq police station in civilian clothes, afraid to be seen in uniform by a local population furious with recent alleged police brutality.
The strike is the latest crack to emerge in the Egyptian state, which has been dogged by civil unrest in several cities over the past six weeks. It also adds a new dimension to the ongoing national debate about police abuses, which was a major cause of both the 2011 uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak, and the current unrest that continued across several pockets of Egypt this weekend.
Campaigners claim that the police have resumed the use of torture, and in some cases, murder. A recent report by the United Group, a group of human rights lawyers, allege there have been at least 127 victims of police malpractice (pdf) since December
In one case, lawyers say a 28-year-old activist, Mohamed el-Guindy, was killed by police after officers took him to a police camp in January. He was allegedly strangled with a cord and electrocuted via his tongue. Authorities first claimed the activists died in a car crash – a claim later contradicted by an official medical report.
Campaigners and residents in Port Said have also documented multiple accounts of police firing indiscriminately at protesters.
But policemen on strike in Port Said deny the allegations. "I'm sure that this isn't the police," claimed Mohamed el-Adawy, deputy commander at el-Sharq police station, as he piled seven rifle rounds on his desk – for use as self-defence, he said. "It was thugs on the street."
Other officer argued that police were acting under extreme psychological pressure. "When people say that we are using force against the protesters, you have to go on the other side and see the situation when thousands are attacking you," said Kamel, who also claimed that the police had reformed their ways since the 2011 uprising.
But rights activists say that abuse continues. "There's definitely more activists subject to torture because there's more activism going on," said Aida Seif el-Dawla, the co-founder of the Egyptian Association Against Torture.
Tellingly, she reported that many of the recent survivors had been mocked by police in custody for their participation in overthrow of Mubarak. "The police want to belittle the revolution," she said.
Some striking policemen claim their treatment of protesters is a result of interference from Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood. But the Brotherhood argues that it has little control over an intransigent institution, loyal to Mubarak holdovers, that will take years to reform.
"The corruption of the past 60 years is not going to be solved in just one or two or even five years," Walid al-Haddad, a spokesman for its political wing, the Freedom and Justice party, has told the Guardian. A small number of Islamist policemen also claim they have been discriminated against for wearing beards.
For their part, human rights activists feel that while Morsi may not have as much control over the police as officers claim, reforming the service is not one of his, or his colleagues', priorities. "They have a choice: to remain in power supported by the people. Or remain in power supported by institutions like the police," said Seif el-Dawla.
But this weekend, as police strikes spread across the country, even the second option seemed unlikely.
"I think we [can] safely say a police mutiny is underway in #Egypt," tweeted Issandr el-Amrani, an analyst and commentator on Egyptian politics. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/dec/11/the-guardian-view-on-declining-authors-pay-an-unequal-burden | Opinion | 2022-12-11T18:25:38.000Z | Editorial | The Guardian view on declining authors’ pay: an unequal burden | Editorial | News that the average earnings of self-employed writers have slumped to £7,000 in the UK might seem par for the course in the context of a pandemic followed by a cost of living crisis. However, the 38% drop in median earnings since 2018 continues a 16-year downward trend, with the number of authors who earn all their income from writing more than halving since 2006, from 40% to 19%. This phenomenon is not unique to the UK, with similar trends reported in Australia, Canada, the EU and the US, according to the authors of a new report.
The survey, commissioned by the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS), is not going to set alarm bells ringing like the low pay of nurses or ambulance drivers. These are people in a network of industries, across publishing and the media, that have always rewarded the successful few at the expense of the aspiring many. The full significance of the drop becomes clear when you burrow down into where the authors live and how they manage to survive on such low earnings. Nearly half are based in London and the south of England, and many rely on financial support from partners or family (where they do so, their household earnings average £50,000). One in five primarily support themselves through academic work.
Where does this leave a young writer toiling away in a bedsit somewhere in the Tees Valley? Among the writers surveyed, only 3% live in the north-east of England, falling to 1% cent of those whose writing occupies more than half of their working time. The Booker-winning novelist Pat Barker was one such author back in 1982 when her first novel, Union Street, was finally published, after being rejected many times for offering too bleak a portrait of working-class women who, like her, hailed from the industrial north-east.
Even now that Ms Barker has moved her fictional gaze on to the classical world, her novels thrum with the “toughness, irreverence, humour and bitterness” that she hears in women’s voices around her. Fiction would be very much poorer without such playful applications of lived insights from underrepresented communities. So it is worrying to hear that writers from minority ethnic backgrounds are particularly losing out, with the fall in publishers’ advances – the money that heats the writer’s garret – a key concern.
Two years ago, writers around the world attempted to reveal the disadvantage suffered by black authors by sharing their earnings on Twitter. The former children’s laureate Malorie Blackman was among those who were shocked by the disparities that emerged. Reports on #publishingpaidme bore out one revelation of the ALCS survey: 47% of earnings go to 10% of writers, so for the vast majority, a career in writing relies on “intrinsic motivation”. In other words, it is a vocation, admittedly with big potential rewards, but also with a big risk of penury and exploitation. “If we give up, nothing changes. Our stories are worth telling and need telling,” wrote Ms Blackman, in a tweet that neatly summed up the conundrum: to evolve, literature most needs those who are rewarded least. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/food/2023/dec/08/cocktails-at-home-for-christmas-go-for-a-premix-fiona-beckett | Food | 2023-12-08T14:00:54.000Z | Fiona Beckett | Cocktails at home for Christmas? Go for a premix | Just a few years ago, the idea of buying a premixed bottled cocktail would have been a bit weird, but thanks – or, rather, no thanks – to lockdown, when bars and restaurants used them to create an extra revenue stream, they’ve become quite a thing. If you’re making cocktails for a crowd, the cost doesn’t really stack up, obviously, but if there are just the two or four of you, a premix can save you both time and money, not least in buying several different products.
The trend has also been fuelled by the rise and rise of the espresso martini. According to Asda, whose Extra Special Espresso Martini chocolate-flavour cream liqueur (17%) is one of the cheapest, at £8, customer searches for espresso martini on its website increased by 888% in a single week at the start of November (as a bit of a closet Bailey’s fan, I like that just as it is, but I’ve recommended the Waitrose version in today’s pick, because it has a stronger coffee flavour). Espresso martinis are going to depend on your taste in coffee, and the alcohol content. Actually, that’s a general tip: if you’re a bit of a cocktail geek, you’ll probably find lower-ABV cocktails a bit wimpy, but if you’re not drinking, there are a few alcohol-free ones, such as the Pentire Coastal Spritz below, that really deliver on flavour. You can, of course, also tweak premixes to your own taste. I found that M&S’s the Marksologist Sloegroni, for example, was actually nicer at room temperature than chilled, as recommended and which somehow muted its flavour; it was better still with an extra dash of gin.
At the other end of the scale, there are some very fancy bottles indeed, especially in top-end department stores such as Fortnum & Mason and Harvey Nichols. I really like the Fortnums range, which includes a cracking vesper at a punchy 34.2% and a velvety espresso daiquiri (20.2%) that’s based on rum rather than vodka (both cost £28.50 for 35cl, which is basically cocktail bar prices. Pour into small martini glasses to make them go further).
So what justifies those kinds of prices? According to M&S product developer Jenny Rea, the brains behind the store’s cocktail range, it’s all about the quality of the spirits you use and the knowhow involved in creating a product that will survive sitting on the shelf. “We always carry out trials and shelf-life testing to make sure the products are as stable and consistent as possible before we launch,” she says (as you’d expect from M&S). Once opened, they generally need to be consumed within the week, which frankly shouldn’t be too onerous.
Six ready-to-drink cocktails to keep in your fridge
The Marksologist Sloegroni £18 (50cl) Marks & Spencer, 21%. Fabulous invention: like a supercharged mulled wine.
Tails Raspberry Cosmopolitan £15 Tesco (£12.50 for Clubcard members), £16 Ocado, Waitrose Cellar, 14.9%. A really natural-tasting, fresh, fruity raspberry riff on a cosmo. Super-summery.
Waitrose No 1 Espresso Martini £15 (on offer down from £20; 50cl) 22%. Made with the store’s own-brand No 1 Colombian reserve organic ground coffee. Really good dark coffee taste with a hint of chocolate.
Pentire Coastal Spritz £22.80 (50cl), 0%. Sophisticated, alcohol-free orange aperitif that would appeal to Campari drinkers. Dilute with light tonic or soda. (The bottle is better than the cans.)
Harvey Nichols Fig and Cacao Old-Fashioned £35 (75cl), 25.5%. Rich, spicy, vanilla-y: a proper grownup drink of the kind you’d find in a posh cocktail bar.
Fortnum’s Vesper Martini £28.50 (35cl), 34.2%. If you love a Vesper (the twist on a martini favoured by James Bond), this full-strength blend of gin, vodka and Lillet blanc absolutely hits the spot. Cocktail bar price, but really, really good.
For more by Fiona Beckett, go to fionabeckett.substack.com
This article was edited on 12 December 2023, to clarify that it’s the Asda espresso martini that shares similarities with Baileys, not the Waitrose one. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/mar/09/amber-fury-natalie-haynes-review | Books | 2014-03-09T14:00:00.000Z | Jessica Holland | The Amber Fury review – Greek tragedy with added suspense | Comedian, broadcaster and long-time Classics nut Natalie Haynes tells the story of Alex Morris, a meek former theatre director in her mid-20s who moves from London to Edinburgh after the violent death of her fiance and begins teaching drama to a class of five kids who've been excluded from mainstream school.
Soon enough she's got them discussing Oedipus and Clytemnestra and opening up about their feelings, but one pupil, the partially deaf Melody, becomes obsessed with both her and the Greek tragedies they're discussing, and life starts to imitate art. What reads for 100 pages like a Dead Poets-style classroom drama becomes something bloodier and more elemental.
Haynes's last book was a breezy guide to the ancient world; this is her first novel. It hops artfully between detective noir, tragedy and coming of age and cranks up the suspense once the plot's properly under way. Haynes's passion for the ancient stories is infectious, and a too-neat ending didn't stop me wanting to read the Oresteia next. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/20/us-uk-doctors-biden-idf-atrocities-gaza-ceasefire | US news | 2024-03-20T09:00:48.000Z | Chris McGreal | US and UK doctors in Washington to warn of IDF’s ‘appalling atrocities’ in Gaza | A delegation of American and British doctors is in Washington DC to tell the Biden administration the Israeli military is systematically destroying Gaza’s health infrastructure in order to drive Palestinians out of their homes.
The doctors, who have recently returned from volunteering at Gaza’s besieged hospitals, are expected to meet White House officials and senior members of Congress this week to warn that pledges of increased aid to Palestinians under bombardment are largely meaningless without an immediate ceasefire to allow safe distribution of food and the revival of healthcare services.
Professor Nick Maynard, the former director for cancer services at Oxford University who worked at the al-Aqsa hospital in central Gaza at the beginning of the year, accused the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) of “appalling atrocities”.
“The IDF are systematically targeting healthcare facilities, healthcare personnel and really dismantling the whole healthcare system,” he said.
“It’s not just about targeting the buildings, it’s about systematically destroying the infrastructure of the hospitals. Destroying the oxygen tanks at the al-Shifa hospital, deliberately destroying the CT scanners and making it much more difficult to rebuild that infrastructure. If it was just targeting Hamas militants, why are they deliberately destroying the infrastructure of these institutions?”
UN says Israeli restrictions on Gaza food aid may constitute a war crime
Read more
The UN says none of Gaza’s 36 hospitals is fully functional. A dozen are partially working and the others are destroyed. On Monday, the Israeli military again raided the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City. Medical staff said the IDF killed and arrested Palestinians inside the hospital.
The crisis in the hospitals has been compounded by the killing or arrest of hundreds of healthcare workers by the Israeli military. Last week the BBC reported that medical staff said they werestripped, beaten and tortured by Israeli troops during a raid on the Nasser hospital in the south of the Gaza Strip, where half the population is now displaced.
Maynard said he believed the closure and damage to the hospitals was part of a strategy to force Palestinians out of their homes.
“It persuades the local population to leave. If a hospital has been dismantled, if the locals see there is no medical care available and see the disrupted infrastructure, it’s yet another factor that drives them south,” he said.
The IDF said in a statement that “a central feature of Hamas’ strategy is the exploitation of civilian structures for terror purposes”.
“It has been well documented that Hamas uses hospitals and medical centres for its terror activities by building military networks within and beneath hospitals, launching attacks and storing weapons within the confines of hospitals, and using hospital infrastructure and staff for terror activities … If not stopped, under certain conditions, this illegal military use can make the hospital lose its protection from attack,” it said.
The doctors are expected to meet US national security council officials and senior members of Congress in the coming days, including Senator Chris Van Hollen who recently called on Biden to “use all levers” to pressure Israel to relieve the humanitarian crisis. They spoke to delegates to the UN from France, Ireland, South Africa and the UK in New York earlier this week.
Top senator calls on Biden to ‘use all levers’ to pressure Israel over Gaza
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Thaer Ahmad, a Chicago doctor who volunteered in Nasser hospital’s emergency room in January, said the damage to the healthcare system makes the need for a ceasefire all the more urgent.
“We all feel a sense of urgency,” said Ahmad. “So we’re trying to communicate that same sense of urgency to people who can make some impactful decisions.”
The Gaza health ministry estimates Israel has killed about 32,000 people, the majority women and children, in response to the 7 October Hamas attack in which about 1,200 Israelis and others were killed. But the doctors said that with most hospitals closed or overwhelmed, there are tens of thousands more Palestinians with severe wounds that are not being adequately treated beyond immediate emergency care and many of those will die or be left with disabilities.
In addition, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are now at risk of starvation, because Israel has blocked adequate food supplies to Gaza. The UN has warned that Israeli restrictions may amount to the war crime of deliberate starvation, and the EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, has accused Israel of “provoking famine” and using starvation “as a weapon of war”.
Maynard said the delegation will warn the White House that large-scale food deliveries will have a limited impact without a ceasefire.
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“We’re here to say that however much aid gets to the borders of Gaza it cannot be distributed whilst there’s ongoing military action,” he said.
Dr Zaher Sahloul, president of the medical charity MedGlobal who volunteered in Gaza earlier this year, said that some Democratic politicians appear more open to discussion about Israel’s actions in part because of the voter backlash against Biden’s support for the military assault. Sahloul was a guest of Senator Dick Durbin at the president’s State of the Union address earlier this month.
“I think, especially now with the administration shifting its position on Gaza and trying to be more sensitive to the public pressure, they are more open to it. People want to hear about Gaza nowadays at the highest level,” said Sahloul.
Maynard said he met the British foreign secretary and former prime minister, David Cameron, before coming to the US.
“Although David Cameron was receptive, we walked away from the meeting thinking this was a tick box exercise that has had no impact whatsoever on our government,” he said.
Maynard, who has volunteered in Gaza repeatedly over the past decade as chief clinician for Medical Aid for Palestinians, said he travelled to the US because he does not believe Americans are hearing the full story.
“I felt a real desperation to counter some of the false narratives coming out of Israel, but also out of a lot of the western media and governments. The particular thing, which so many people believe because it keeps being repeated, is that the Israelis are protecting civilians. What we witnessed refutes that completely,” he said.
“We’ve witnessed appalling atrocities in Gaza and we’re desperately keen that people know about it. I witnessed indiscriminate killing of vast numbers of innocent civilians. I spent two weeks operating all the time. I operated on far more women than I did men. This notion that they’re targeting Hamas militants – I saw the most appalling injuries in children. Awful burns, traumatic amputations in children.”
The doctors fear worse to come after the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, this week again rejected an appeal from Biden to call off a ground assault on Rafah in southern Gaza, which is crammed with more than one million displaced Palestinians.
Ahmad said that an assault on the area “will be catastrophic”.
“It’ll be a bloodbath. You have a place that already didn’t have the infrastructure for the one million who are there. Now they’re talking about a ground invasion with people not being able to go anywhere else. Everywhere is devastated,” he said. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/mar/29/biography-of-x-by-catherine-lacey-review-who-is-this-mysterious-artist | Books | 2023-03-29T06:30:27.000Z | Marcel Theroux | Biography of X by Catherine Lacey review – who is this mysterious artist? | Celebrated for her novels, her art installations and her musical collaborations with David Bowie, Tom Waits and Tony Visconti, the artist known as X was, until her death in 1996, one of the more enigmatic cultural figures of the 20th century. She always refused to confirm her place or date of birth, and after she took the pseudonym “X” in 1982, it was never clear which if any of her previous identities – Dorothy Eagle, Clyde Hill, Caroline Walker, Bee Converse – corresponded to her actual name. This is a biography drawing on X’s archives and a range of interviews with the people closest to her, joining the dots about her background and exploring her difficult relationship with contemporary America. And it is, like X herself, entirely a work of fiction.
Catherine Lacey, the author of this haunting, genre-bending novel, has form investigating characters with mysterious identities. Her previous book, Pew, was a gothic fable set in America’s Bible belt, narrated by an unnamed protagonist whose race, gender and age are never established. Pew, so nicknamed because they are discovered sleeping in a church, mirrors the anxieties and fractures of the world they turn up in – a world that becomes progressively weirder as we read the novel.
Though it is structured in a similar way and drawn to the same themes, Biography of X is a stranger, more ambitious and more accomplished book. The conceit is that the book’s actual author is CM Lucca, X’s widow. Annoyed by the publication of an inaccurate biography of her late wife, Lucca has resolved to set the record straight. Complete with extensive bibliography, photographs, footnotes, images of X’s books and art, and even front matter that attributes the copyright to CM Lucca, 2005, Biography of X is presented to the reader as a simulacrum of a nonfiction work. This is an enchantingly strange proposition and, like Pew, it only gets stranger.
First of all, as the prickly and somewhat self-involved CM Lucca attempts to explain her motives for writing the book, you are troubled by little oddities in the narrative. Pretty soon it becomes clear that the events of the book take place on an alternative timeline of US history in a world very different from our own. The election of a female socialist president in the 1940s has led to the secession of some of the southern states. These so-called Southern Territories have become a dictatorial theocracy complete with their own morality police. Meanwhile the north has pursued a range of radically progressive policies – a kind of wish list of enlightened thinking that ought to have created a utopia yet somehow hasn’t.
There’s something wondrous about the way the book backs into its high concept. While CM Lucca is fretting over the meaning of her relationship with X and settling scores with the other biography, a huge vista opens up behind her. It’s like looking at a family photograph in which something truly extraordinary – an avalanche or alien invasion – is taking place in the background.
It turns out that X’s origins lie across the border, in the recently reunified (or conquered?) Southern Territories. Visiting them, like a traveller to North Korea, the narrator is assigned a Travel Mentor and begins tracking down X’s family members and childhood friends. This parallel reality is evoked with brilliant specificity. One tiny example: when the narrator visits a house there, a man briefly enters the room to ask his sister for a glass of milk. “A grown man unable to pour himself a glass of milk, I thought. This is the sort of person an authoritarian theocracy produces.”
The different versions of America – one where same-sex marriage has been legal for decades, another where it’s regarded as an abomination – are clearly extrapolations from our present. Yet the conflict between their mutually uncomprehending worlds is not fuel for a polemic but presented with thoughtfulness and nuance. “Their ability to love a concept as large and appealing as God was used against them again and again,” we read of the oppressed population in the theocratic South. It’s a great line that suggests links between the speculative world of the book and the victims of other utopian schemes.
As the book uncovers details of X’s past in the Southern Territories, it forces us to re-evaluate her art, which acquires more urgent and political overtones. X’s exploration of artistic freedom and refusal to be confined by any single identity seem very different in the light of her upbringing in a virtually totalitarian world. But the move to the north is not a happy ending. X remains a contrarian to the end, ruffling feathers, bracingly defending her right to inhabit multiple personas. “There was no con, there was no crime. There was only fiction,” she says. And as the book builds to its unexpected and yet somehow inevitable conclusion, the line between life and art becomes menacingly blurry.
At times I couldn’t tell the difference between the real and imagined characters. Among X’s acquaintances are a half-Russian New York socialite, Oleg Hall, who owes his fortune to his parents’ murder-suicide, and a folk musician called Connie Converse, who vanishes in mysterious circumstances, leaving a trove of unreleased recordings. Both seemed equally bizarre; only one of them is invented.
There is so much that’s impressive about this book. It makes you think afresh about America and American history. It roves over the muddy trenches of identity politics while saying things that are original and not parti pris. At its centre, X is a charismatic, tantalising figure who takes aim at all orthodoxies. My one quibble with the novel is that there’s a tendency to apostrophise too much about the puzzles of love, art and identity at the heart of the book. The courageous world-building and bold storytelling carry these themes without any need for additional rhetorical flourishes.
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It’s hard to locate influences, but one mention of the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges made me think of his story Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius. In this strange tale, objects from a fictional world penetrate our world and transform it. A lovingly made facsimile of a nonfiction book, Biography of X resembles a Tlönian artefact from a parallel reality. Though it may not change the world, it will leave the reader altered.
Biography of X by Catherine Lacey is published by Granta (£18.99). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/aug/17/jaguar-xf-sportbrake-car-review-tour-de-france | Technology | 2014-08-17T04:59:07.000Z | William Fotheringham | Jaguar XF Sportbrake: car review | William Fotheringham | Price from £31,945
MPG up to 57.7
Top speed 150mph
A few weeks before the Tour de France, Jaguar invited journalists to a ceremonial unveiling of this year’s Team Sky Tour bike, a joint venture between the British car maker which supplies Sky with its support vehicles and Pinarello, its bike builder.
The Dogma F8 may be one of the most aerodynamic Tour bikes ever made, but it had a nightmarish Tour. Chris Froome’s crash and his team’s futile fight to salvage something from the race only served as a reminder that the bikes are irrelevant if the human beings aboard aren’t up to scratch.
The Jaguar XF Sportbrake which conveyed the Observer from Yorkshire to Paris via much of France shared the same sleek, smooth lines of the Dogma F8, but it had a far happier Tour. One judge of the Tour car is how the roadside gallery responds. A Citroën C5 I drove a few years ago incited old men to wind down their windows and wax patriotically lyrical. This Jaguar inspired gasps among both the French and British fans. We followed the race to the sound of “Regardez, le Jaguar” and “Ee up, lad, look at t’ Jag.”
Chris Froome and his Team Sky Procycling colleagues ride Buttertubs Pass on Stage 1 of the 2014 Tour De France route, followed by their Jaguar support car. Photograph: Simon Wilkinson/REX Photograph: Simon Wilkinson/REX
Amusingly for any cycle-racing fan, the interior trim of the car is all carbon fibre, the material of choice for frames and wheels. More broadly, it’s all very James Bond – turn on the ignition and a joystick rises silently out of the vast console while the air vents ease gently open. The electronic boot closure is very slow – almost sinisterly so.
That’s not to say Jaguar has achieved perfection here. There’s a price to pay for the swept-back lines, and it is levied mainly in the headroom. It’s disconcerting to have your eyeline above the top of the windscreen. The split-screen satnav was overcomplex and hard to interpret – not what you want in an item that should give the information you need at a glance.
In terms of cargo space, it doesn’t match some of the larger estates, but makes up for it with a decent amount of backseat room and a rather neat hatch in the middle of the rear bench through which you can poke your skis or, as I did, the handlebars of the bike which came with me on Tour.
Inside story: the perfect spot to watch the Tour de France from Photograph: PR
Part of the joy of driving the Tour is its variety: many miles on the autoroute, lots of gentle grooving along well-maintained rural roads – how, in a country this large, is there barely a pothole in la France profonde? – and plenty of twists and turns in the mountains.
With the cruise control on, the sheer silence lent autoroute driving an extracorporeal feel, while in the mountains it was far more stimulating. There aren’t many cars as long as this that you can throw about with such gay abandon on the hairpins of the Alps. It may have been down to the self-levelling air suspension or the dynamic stability control, but, whatever it was, it worked. Fortunately we didn’t need to test the Jaguar as intensely as some French colleagues did when they managed to get caught in front of the race leader Vincenzo Nibali on a key Pyrenean descent. This sort of thing is frowned upon, and they were banned from the race.
There was a further test, however. One evening the Tour’s logistics team sent the caravan down a mountain on a steep and rocky road. This wasn’t what the Sportbrake was designed for and we took such care that an impatient colleague suggested on Twitter that we deserved to be lynched for holding up the convoy. And so the Jaguar achieved a first for a Tour press car – a complaint for being driven too carefully.
Visit theguardian.com/profile/williamfotheringham for all William’s articles in one place. Follow William on Twitter @willfoth
Red Bull flies over Ascot
The Red Bull Air Race World Championship season is now underway, as the world’s fastest motorsport series returns to the skies after a three-year break. And this weekend the planes will be performing in the skies over Ascot. You’ll have to be quick, though, as the event is this weekend – 17 and 18 August. Sorry not to give you more notice. But you are still in time for a tremendous day. The Red Bull Air Race World Championship features the world’s best race pilots, including Britain’s reigning two-time world champion Paul Bonhomme. Using the fastest, most agile and lightweight racing planes, pilots navigate a low-level aerial track made up of air-filled pylons 80ft high at speeds of up to 230mph. The competition this year is even more intense as all 12 pilots are using a standardised engine and propeller, intensifying the focus on pilot skill and precision flying. Often the course is held over water, but unusually at Ascot it is over the ground. Tickets are now available at redbullairrace.com. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/mar/25/martin-luther-king-50-years-on | US news | 2018-03-25T08:30:47.000Z | Jackie Kay | From Lennie James to Akala, black Britons celebrate Martin Luther King | Jackie Kay
Novelist and Scottish poet laureate
Growing up in my house in Glasgow, there were certain people who meant the world to me. They brought the whole wide world to my house in whatever kind of weather, on dreich days, or when the snow was falling, in the spring when the cherry blossom my parents planted when they adopted my brother was blooming. Household names – Angela Davis, Nelson Mandela, Madame Allende, Martin Luther King. Our house held their names, like names of members of an extended family. We posted letters to the prisoners in South Africa. We marched against apartheid. We went to hear Madame Allende speak after the assassination of President Allende in 1973.
I joined Rock Against Racism in my teens. Even when I was attacked by fascists, or had posters put up in my university with my name on them, calling me a wog, I believed that racism was a battle that could be fought and won. It was hard not to take racism personally, and yet I knew, too, there was nothing personal about it. Martin Luther King’s name was said in my house not just with respect and reverence, but with a lovely familiar ring to it. His whole name, always, a small poem. Martin Luther King. Maybe that is what a household name really is: a name held by a house. We took him in, Martin Luther King. We made him at home. Kindred.
By the time I knew properly about Martin Luther King, he was already dead, and yet houses all over the world held on to his name; people on the street spoke his name. If somebody said something racist to me, my mum would half quote Martin Luther King. Don’t you let anyone tell you… one day we’ll all be equal.
The civil rights movement, the stories of Rosa Parks, the stories of American resistance and resilience were our story too. I identified with African Americans (didn’t have many Afro Scots to identify with then!). I had a Free Angela Davis poster on my bedroom wall. (This weekend, in one of life’s beautiful circles, I can’t quite believe that I am going to be meeting Angela Davis in Dublin, at the Mountains to Sea festival.)
It is now 50 years since Martin Luther King received his honorary doctorate of civil law, honoris Causa from Newcastle University. It was the last speech he ever gave in the UK, and five months later he was assassinated. The film of that spontaneous and remarkable speech can be found on the university archive. Everything that Martin Luther King had to say on 13 November 1967 sounds eerily contemporary. His speech circles around poverty, war and racism, and it was this speech that was the impetus for The Mighty Stream (an anthology I’ve edited with Carolyn Forché to bring poets together across the Atlantic.)
There’s so much poetry in the voice of Martin Luther King; so much music. It’s hard to think of the Martin Luther King that the world knows and loves without that especially unique voice, those rises and falls; a voice that is simultaneously authentic and theatrical. It still demands to be heard; it still is, all these years after his death, very much alive.
In his speech in Newcastle that day, he said: “The world will never rise to its full moral or political or even social maturity until racism is totally eradicated ... it may be true that morality cannot be legislated, but behaviour can be regulated. It may be true that the law cannot change the heart, but it can restrain the heartless. It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can restrain him from lynching me; and I think that is pretty important also. And so, while the law may not change the hearts of men, it does change the habits of men if it is vigorously enforced, and through changes in habits, pretty soon attitudinal changes will take place and even the heart may be changed.”
He talks, too, about the complicity of silence, how silence itself is a form of betrayal.
It is hard to think that here we are in 2018, in the era of the Black Lives Matter movement. It’s hard to imagine King being able to see in the death of Trayvon Martin, the murder of Emmett Till. And hard to think of Martin returning from the dead to find Trump in the White House after Obama. We don’t just look back at the civil rights movement; we look forward with it.
It was not just his courage, not just his generosity of spirit, not just his oratory genius that made him a household name… it was the fact that he offered us hope. He believed in that future. Fifty years since his death, it feels incumbent upon us to do the same. He still walks with us. He is still crossing over the bridge.
Martin Luther King speaks against the Vietnam war at the University of California, in Berkeley, on 17 May 1967. Photograph: AP
Lennie James
Actor and screenwriter, currently in Save Me on Sky Atlantic
I don’t remember when I didn’t know about Martin Luther King. I was two when he died, but until I was 11 we went to Pentecostal church every Tuesday and Thursday evening and twice on Sundays. - we’d get the 249 bus the whole way from Tooting Bec Common to this hall above some shops in Shepherd’s Bush Green. It was a social place and a spiritual place to gather, where black people got together to feel some sense of community and safety in the company of people who understood what was going on with you, without you having to say it. Every preacher there was always quoting Dr King, so his words were always with me, growing up.
I became politicised in my mid‑teens, at the time of ska and 2 Tone and the Anti-Nazi League, when I’d get dressed up for a night out in my white socks and loafers, and the last thing I’d hear is: “Have a good night, be careful of the police.”
We looked to America for guidance, as we knew this situation was a version of what was going on over there. The movement had two dads – Martin Luther King and Malcolm X – and most people started with Martin. I did sociology A-level and read Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? It had a sense of ideology and his hopes for America beyond the struggle. Even though, being young and restless, Malcolm X turned my head more, I was firmly in Martin’s corner too.
The immediacy of his message and his life became obvious with Barack Obama. I moved to America with my wife and kids in 2007, so I saw that effect first-hand. And almost anything my kids decide to do with their lives now, there is someone who looks like them who has done it before them, which is absolute progress.
But I still have issues with the way that Martin’s legacy has been usurped to make his message more comfortable. He was frightening to white America, and to white Europe too – the idea that Malcolm X was the hothead and King was the calm, safe, appeasing voice is not true at all. His writing was about what could happen when we get past the shit we’re still dealing with – and that was frightening to people.
Pauline Black
Musician
My parents were white [Black was adopted in 1958], and there was always a vaguely embarrassed silence when Martin Luther King came on TV, or when there were images of black people being hosed down. No white kids I knew took an interest in the ideas he articulated in his “I have a dream” speech, either – I was the only black kid in my class, of course, so I was the only kid in class wondering what civil rights meant, and, well, did I need them? The idea that black people were expressing their opinions, and that they would gather together, made an impact on me.
By 15, I made it my mission to know everything about civil rights – a belligerent black teenager always down the library, not the cute girl with strange curls any more. This was a really exciting time culturally, too: James Brown, Motown and Stevie Wonder were coming through… the Black Is Beautiful movement, the success of the musical Hair. It became quite groovy to be black, unless you stayed south of the Mason-Dixon line, of course. And here I was living this contradiction down in Essex, where the National Front were still selling their newspapers very openly.
Although I became more interested in Malcolm X at that age, I still understood Martin Luther King’s power as a leader. His religion distanced him from me a bit, though. He was always appealing to the morals or conscience of the nation, which seemed pointless to me as a teenager. But in hindsight, my opinions have mellowed. The message of nonviolence and peaceful protest is absolutely good and fine. But sadly, that often doesn’t get you the legislative changes you need, and sadly, King didn’t live long enough for those changes to happen.
Years later [in 1984], I interviewed Jesse Jackson [then standing as the first black presidential nominee for the Democrats] and Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King’s wife, for the Channel 4 programme Black on Black. I couldn’t get much closer to King than that. I also visited the 16th Street Baptist church in Birmingham, Alabama, where those four little girls had died only a few weeks after the “I have a dream” speech. One of them had been the same age as me, which still brings things home.
When I think about Martin Luther King, I also think about when 2 Tone was a big movement in the late 70s and early 80s among people of all backgrounds. When we were playing with the Selecter at gigs and on TV… here were white kids and black kids everywhere, dancing hand in hand. This was exactly what King had said he wanted to see in his “I have a dream” speech. That still means so much to me.
Violence erupts in Memphis after a demonstration in March 1968. Photograph: Jack Thornell/AP
Irenosen Okojie
Novelist
Martin Luther King famously said: “Somebody told a lie one day. They couched it in language. They made everything black, ugly and evil. Well, I wanna get the language right tonight so that everyone here will cry out: ‘Yes, I’m black and beautiful!’”
As a young girl, I was stunned by that quote. Dr King gave me an early revelation: that if you tell a lie well enough, if you repeat it enough, people will believe it. Language has been used to hoodwink black people, shackle us, slyly destroy a sense of our selves, and Dr King proved I could turn that on its head.
I wanted to show what Dr King displayed, which is the inventiveness, vibrancy and dynamism black artistry possesses. I wanted to use language as a tool of liberation. As my love for literature grew, I’d listen to his speeches to remind me that language could change lives. Dr King showed me words could build men and women. He inspired me by displaying the power of words to rally individuals to be better versions of ourselves, to lift the soul of a nation, to keep fighting for spaces for those who feel marginalised.
His exquisite delivery of language taught me how to hold an audience; the impact of an inflection, the freedom of a breath taken, the weight of a pause in the right place. Now, I use language to reframe the perceptions of black. I bend it, I reshape it, I reinvent it. I break boundaries with it, cross borders with it, build bridges with it. Martin Luther King gave me permission to redefine what black is.
Black is a kernel, black is a multiple narrative, black is innovation; it is an uprising and a bough breaking. It is a quiet breeze snaking through a valley, the shape of gold in the mist. It is a light that cannot be measured. It is a spirit that cannot be broken. It is a dawn that reconfigures your idea of what the morning is. It is irrepressibly beautiful, unquestionably audacious. Dr King epitomises all this and more.
Benjamin Zephaniah
Poet
I was eight when I had my very first racist attack. I was walking down the street when a guy came from behind me on a bicycle and slapped the back of my head with a brick. He cut my head open and as he was riding off he said: “Go home you black bastard.” I just couldn’t understand it. I went home and said to my mum: “Why did he tell me to go home? I was going home anyway.” She explained to me that there were people who didn’t like us and wanted us to get out of the country because of the colour of our skin. Little eight-year-old me said: “Oh, so we shouldn’t like them because of the colour of their skin?” And she said, “No – we have to show them love.”
It made no sense to me, but she went on to explain the nature of racism and the teachings of Martin Luther King. She told me he was one of the few people trying to do something about racism, and my first reaction was: “But, Mum, he’s in America.” He felt very far away. I used to listen to his speeches and think: “Why haven’t we got somebody like that here?”
The nonviolent protest King preached was a beautiful ideal, but growing up I felt closer to the school of Malcolm X. I think if you try nonviolence and you see real, positive change then, fair enough, it shows that the people who should be listening to you are listening to you. But they weren’t listening to Martin Luther King.
He was a great man, a great orator and the way he took passages from the Bible and put them into a contemporary context and made them relevant was breathtaking. His moral compass came from his religion and he took the religion of his oppressors and turned it back to them like a mirror, telling them they must live up to their ideals, which was very powerful. Now in America you have streets and squares named after Martin Luther King in places where he couldn’t walk.
But I think without people who were more militant we wouldn’t have the progress we have now. Look at the suffragettes: some of them had to die for what they believed. It was only when they started putting their lives on the line that real change was achieved.
King Jr with his wife, Coretta Scott King and three of their four children at home in Atlanta, 17 March, 1963. Photograph: AP
Guy Gunaratne
Author
Martin Luther King awakened my understanding of the power of words. He knew exactly how to communicate feelings such as hope, love, pain and strength. Everything he wrote had intention. What’s impressive is how distilled it is: how much power is in every line and every word.
King showed me how to participate – emotionally and intellectually – in society. He demonstrated that freedom is the framework you must use to measure progress in any country – I think that’s really what his message was.
For me, he was the bridge to the kind of writing I ended up liking and enjoying: James Baldwin, Chinua Achebe, Mahmoud Darwish, Doris Lessing, George Orwell, even: writers who wove politics into beautiful prose and storytelling, because that’s what King did.
You can see echoes of him in young people today. You can see King in Malala Yousafzai, in Patrisse Khan-Cullors of #Black Lives Matter, in the kids campaigning for gun reform. You can see how they carry themselves, who they’ve watched and studied. You can see King in anyone who stands for moral causes. He offers a template of leadership and humility.
Bola Agbaje
Playwright and screenwriter
I performed part of Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech for assembly in year nine. I remember the emotional connection I had, learning about the civil rights movement, about somebody who stood up and said “enough is enough”. It was around the time of the OJ Simpson case, and there was some racial tension at our school. I felt I was living in a time where, as a young black person, I wasn’t being treated as an equal. That speech taught us that you can stand up for what you believe in, you can find a cause and fight for it, but I remember thinking it’s so tragic that he was killed and his dream is still not realised. We have so much further to go.
Sometimes I feel sad about the younger generation now: who’s their Martin Luther King? Who’s going to risk their life for justice? Who’s that brave? I don’t think this generation has an equivalent figure. We’re living in a time where it feels like the clocks are going backwards, things are not moving in the right direction, and now more than ever it’s important for us to be reminded of people who fought for justice and equality.
What’s important to me as a writer is that we get to show characters like him. I write predominantly about black people, black lives, and the opportunities are not really there – particularly in TV and film – to create characters like Martin Luther King. In meetings, I’ve pitched black characters who are strong, determined, confident, and I’ll get notes saying “these characters need to be more flawed”. We’re not used to seeing strong representations of black people.
King is arrested in Montgomery, in 1956, after directing a city-wide boycott of segregated buses. Photograph: Don Cravens/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Image
Reni Eddo-Lodge
Writer and activist
When I first learned about Martin Luther King, during Black History Month at school, he was presented to us as a benign hero of the civil rights movement who we were to celebrate. But we didn’t hear a whole lot about what he was struggling against, or the movement he came from. He was deradicalised. Later, when I became an activist, I came across the full extent and context of his work. I read his “Letter From a Birmingham Jail”, where he talks about white moderates who are more interested in order than justice, and that totally resonated with me. When we’re talking about racism, we’re talking about an order of things that needs to remain intact for many people’s comfort. As an anti-racist, what I’m concerned with is disrupting the order of things. So that line brought home to me the humanity of his work. He shared the same frustrations that I had been dealing with – being told, “But this is just how it is.”
This was a man fighting for racial justice who was assassinated by white people. I think the world needs to be careful about how they memorialise him, and not make what he was saying more palatable to a white audience who don’t wish to feel challenged on race.
Paapa Essiedu
Actor, currently playing Hamlet with the RSC
I was doing a project for Black History Month in primary school when my mum suggested I read up on Martin Luther King. He was an inspiration for me from then on. I think it was the nobility with which he spoke, and his pursuit of freedom that I found – and still find – really compelling. There was power and a prophet-like charisma to him. It’s beyond sad that his vision hasn’t moved from a dream to a reality, because 50 years on we’re still looking at black people getting gunned down in the street.
Learning about Martin Luther King led me to find out about Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, the Black Panthers, pan-Africanism and Kwame Nkrumah; also musicians like Nina Simone and Marvin Gaye. They helped me to understand the importance of the civil rights movement and how it still directly affects the way we live our lives in Britain today.
What resonates most strongly for me from King’s legacy is the simple expectation of equality, and his belief that it’s not to be affected by the colour of your skin, your gender, your physical ability, your sexuality: it’s about all people being equal.
Roy Williams
Playwright
In my teens, I struggled to understand Martin Luther King’s idea of peaceful demonstration, because there was so much going on here in the UK – like the Brixton riots – which affected my generation. So I had difficulty marrying that with King’s idea of peaceful resistance. I thought we should bloody well fight back.
But in later years I found so much wisdom in his words and his speeches. The idea of peaceful resistance was such a powerful political statement. He embodied that old saying: always be kind to your enemies because it’ll piss them off. You can’t deny that what he did got results.
Recently I was approached to do an open-air project in Newcastle, called Freedom on the Tyne, and I listened to a recording of the speech he made there in 1967. It is powerful, inspiring, emotive – such a great antidote to Trump’s America.
I can see his influence in Obama, and in the Black Lives Matter movement, or the NFL players kneeling during the US national anthem. That’s definitely come from King’s teaching: peaceful demonstration is as strong – if not stronger – than hitting your oppressor back.
Akala
Rapper, poet and social entrepreneur
If you go to any Caribbean barbershop or fruit shop in Brixton or Tottenham in London, there are three or four people whose pictures you always see: Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey, and maybe Muhammad Ali. It reflects the Caribbean and American influence on black British culture, and also sadly that, until recently, black British people haven’t had the same respect for black history made in Britain. One of the ways Britain has avoided discussing its own racial contradictions is by an emphasis on black America. We didn’t have a domestic form of apartheid, we don’t have police who shoot 12-year-old kids – it’s as if we think, if you’re not as sick as America, then you’re a well country.
It is right that Martin Luther King should be remembered as a global icon and hero, but it’s important to remember him honestly rather than just repeating “I have a dream”. Yes, he had a dream, but over the years he became a lot more radical and started questioning whether that dream was realistic.
A lot of black liberals and people who are desirous of acceptance want to remember him as the safe, “can’t we all get along?” Martin of 1963. But towards the end of his life especially, he wasn’t that. He started becoming more and more critical of capitalism. He started talking about poor people’s marches, and class unity, and taking positions we’d associate more with the Black Panthers or Malcolm X. And that made him very, very dangerous, and that’s the point at which, really, he had to go.
Dr King made me take a more nuanced view of religion. I’d grown up with an almost anti-religious, pan-Africanist politics, which meant I thought that Christianity was just the slave masters’ religion – but then you realise there was also the tradition of liberation theology. The leader of the greatest slave rebellion in Jamaica, Sam Sharpe, was a Christian preacher; the leaders of many of the slave rebellions in America were Christian preachers; and this is a tradition of radical Christianity that isn’t often looked at. Martin Luther King gave me an understanding of the possibilities of religion – and enabled me to see it not just as a hierarchical, top-down, spiritual slavery, but potentially a revolutionary force for good. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/quiz/2014/may/08/quiz-world-city-logos-brands-tourism | Global | 2014-05-08T09:31:00.000Z | Nick Van Mead | Quiz: can you identify these world cities from their logos? | 1.Which city uses this logo?<b> </b>
Hong Kong
Hanoi
Manila
Reveal
2.Which city uses this logo?
Kirs
Krakov
Kiev
Reveal
3.Which city uses this logo?
Cape Town
Accra
Nairobi
Reveal
4.Which city uses this logo?
Vienna
Dresden
City of London
Reveal
5.Which city uses this logo?
Zug
Amsterdam
Castlemaine
Reveal
6.Which city uses this logo?
Melbourne
Montreal
Madrid
Reveal
7.Which city uses this logo?
Chicago
Toronto
Houston
Reveal
8.Which city uses this logo?
Porto
Phoenix
Peterborough
Reveal
9.Which city uses this logo?
Toledo
Prague
Rome
Reveal
10.Which city uses this logo?
Venice
Pisa
Genoa
Reveal | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jun/02/uk-ministers-back-down-and-offer-civil-servants-1500-to-end-pay-row | Politics | 2023-06-02T14:04:01.000Z | Kiran Stacey | UK ministers back down and offer civil servants £1,500 to end pay row | Ministers have made a breakthrough in their talks with civil servants over pay after backing down to offer officials in less senior roles a one-off payment of £1,500 to help with the cost of living.
The Prospect union welcomed the offer on Friday, which followed talks between the Cabinet Office minister, Jeremy Quin, and union officials earlier in the day.
Civil service unions had previously condemned the government for not offering their members the same lump sum offered to teachers and health workers. Civil servants had already suspended the strikes they planned for this week and will now consult with their members about whether to accept the government’s revised offer.
Mike Clancy: 'there is no point standing on the sidelines heckling'
Read more
Quin said in a statement: “I am pleased with the constructive engagement we have had with civil service trade unions, and to be announcing that departments will be allowed to make a £1,500 payment to every member of staff at Grade 6 and below.
“This is both fair to the taxpayer and a recognition of the financial pressures civil servants have faced over the last year.”
Mike Clancy, Prospect’s general secretary, said: “The industrial action taken by union members has been critical in getting to this point. We will now consult our public service representatives on the substance of the offer and formally respond to the government in due course.”
After a winter beset by public sector strikes, the government has made headway in the negotiations in recent months, in part by offering one-off sums to workers to compensate for high levels of inflation. They include teachers, health workers and railway staff, but until today, not civil servants.
Prospect, whose members include technical, managerial and scientific staff in agencies such as the Met Office, the Health and Safety Executive and Natural England, criticised Downing Street last month for not making them a similar offer.
Sources close to the talks said that while a lump sum was never explicitly offered, government officials had given the impression it would be. But when Quin formally presented the offer last month, it did not include any one-off payment, prompting anger and further strikes.
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The union temporarily suspended the strikes last week when the government offered to enter a fresh round of talks. Those strikes will remain suspended while the union consults its members.
Union officials said they welcomed the new offer, which they said dealt in principle with their concerns. They have not made a formal recommendation to members, however, over whether to accept it or not. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/mar/03/tv-tonight-jared-harris-stars-as-capt-crozier-in-the-terror | Television & radio | 2021-03-03T06:20:09.000Z | Ammar Kalia | TV tonight: Jared Harris stars as Capt Crozier in The Terror | The Terror
9pm, BBC Two
This American horror anthology series from 2018 makes its debut on UK terrestrial TV. Based on Dan Simmons’ 2007 novel of the same name, which tells a fictionalised account of Capt Sir John Franklin’s lost expedition to the Arctic in 1845, it opens with Jared Harris as Capt Crozier, second in command of the expedition, who becomes concerned their group will be trapped in the Arctic ice as winter approaches. As Franklin (Ciarán Hinds) ignores his concerns, the group pushes forward, where disaster awaits. Ammar Kalia
Kirstie and Phil’s Love It Or List It: Brilliant Builds
8pm, Channel 4
Another retrospective compilation from reality home refurbishers Kirstie Allsopp and Phil Spencer, looking at the best ways to tackle a life-changing build. This week’s focus is on extensions, with a replay of Karl and Paul’s renovated layout in their three-bedroom house in 2009. AK
Brush with greatness ... Joan Bakewell and Stephen Mangan. Photograph: Ali Painter/Sky
Landscape Artist of the Year
8pm, Sky Arts
The final of this sedately charming competition takes the contestants to the sort of place where the winner might end up spending time: Trinity Buoy Wharf, a formerly derelict patch of the London Docklands that is now a creative hub. Stephen Mangan and Joan Bakewell observe the climactic brush strokes. Jack Seale
Fergie’s Killer Dresser: The Jane Andrews Story
9pm, ITV
A minor royal scandal is revisited in this documentary. It tells the story of Jane Andrews, the one-time dresser of Sarah Ferguson who murdered her boyfriend, Thomas Cressman, after he refused to commit to marrying her. The case is reappraised. Phil Harrison
Extraordinary Escapes With Sandi Toksvig
9pm, Channel 4
Toksvig’s jaunt around the UK’s finest holidaying spots ends with a visit to the Cotswolds with Bake Off judge Prue Leith. In the Wye Valley, the pair go foraging before stopping off at a luxury treehouse and indulging in some forest bathing. They also discuss Leith’s cooking career. AK
The Pandemic at No 47
10pm, Channel 4
There’s something Paddington-like about Paddy Wivell’s warm-hearted and oddly transporting portrait of a London street in lockdown. While his wife heads up the home schooling, the award-winning film-maker can’t resist picking up a camera to document chats with his neighbours. Ellen E Jones
Film choice
Careful now ... Young Catherine in Wuthering Heights. Photograph: Allstar/Artificial Eye
Wuthering Heights (Andrea Arnold, 2011), 12.50am, Film4
Andrea Arnold brings real conviction to Emily Brontë’s smouldering classic. This is the first version to make overt the latent suggestion that Heathcliff is African-Caribbean, emphasising the transgressive nature of his love for Catherine. It is a heavy, passionate, at times brutal rendering of the wild romance. Paul Howlett
Live sport
Ski jumping: The World Championships 4.05pm, Eurosport 2. From Germany, featuring the women’s HS137 event.
Scottish Premiership football: Livingston v Rangers 6pm, Sky Sports Main Event. From the Tony Macaroni Arena.
Test cricket: India v England 3.50am, Channel 4. The final game of the series from Ahmedabad begins. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/feb/18/students-paying-for-postgraduates-fees | Education | 2014-02-18T07:29:00.000Z | Jonathan Wolff | How students will be paying for other people's degrees | Keen observers of higher education will know that almost all universities now receive £9,000 a year for each home or EU undergraduate, who, in turn, typically builds up a debt of £27,000. But how are the universities meant to spend that money?
Some is recycled into bursaries for students from lower-income families. There are running costs: staff salaries; library books; rooms for teaching and so on. And now we are all worrying about the "student experience", not only "what happens in the classroom", but also what it is like for the students between classes. Where can they study? Where can they eat? What are the sports facilities like?
Many universities have accepted that, in return for the higher fee, they need to up their game. Dusty storerooms are being converted into trendy cafes and shiny computer clusters, paint is being ordered by the tanker load, and chewing gum is being scraped off the underside of library desks.
One question that doesn't yet seem to have surfaced is whether students should also contribute to the training costs of those who will teach. The system is evolving so this will, in fact, have to happen, which can only mean less money for other purposes. But it is happening by stealth, rather than plan, unless, indeed, it is a very cunning one.
In my general subject area, arts and humanities, an important change is in process, starting next year. It follows some decisions made by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) that will have a very significant effect on university funding.
Here's how the system works now: someone getting their first permanent lecturing job is likely to have started their undergraduate work about 10 or more years ago. Doing very well in their first degree and considering an academic career they would have found an MA course, and if they were in the very top cohort, would have received a grant from the AHRC, and thus ultimately the taxpayer. All being well, next they would have enrolled for a PhD. And again if in the top cohort their studies would have been funded by the AHRC.
After being awarded a PhD they would have had the stress of temporary jobs while publishing the academic papers needed to be a serious candidate for a permanent post. Many decide against at this point, and go on to other careers.
Of course there is not enough scholarship money for everyone, and some will get an academic job even without AHRC funding. Many who were funded by the AHRC will not end up as academics. But the system has had one huge advantage. Those with talent but no money have been able to compete on a level playing field with the financially comfortable.
That is the story up to now. From this October the AHRC has withdrawn funding for master's students. Its reasoning is that the great majority of master's students they funded did not go on to do PhDs and so it is better to target its limited funds to doctoral studies. Consequently there are virtually no government scholarships for master's students now, and the universities will have to fill the gap. Otherwise there is simply no way that students from low-income families, however brilliant, will be able to undertake full-time master's study. And where will the universities get this extra money? We'll come back to that.
At least the AHRC is still funding doctorates. But it is now asking the universities to put up "matched funding". This dodge is on the increase. Having announced that "partnerships" are the future, research councils are using this strategy as a reason to pay only a portion of the costs of scholarships. And where does the matched funding come from? The same place as the MA scholarships.
Ultimately, unless outside benefaction comes in, there is only one possible source: other students' fees. Hence undergraduate students, from October, will be contributing to the cost for other students to take MAs and PhDs. Justified or not? A fascinating debating point. But it would have been nice to have had the debate in advance.
Jonathan Wolff is professor of philosophy at University College London and dean of arts and humanities | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/nov/08/the-grinch-review-benedict-cumberbatch-dr-seuss | Film | 2018-11-08T06:00:11.000Z | Cath Clarke | The Grinch review – an unwanted Christmas gift | Dr Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas! has been adapted for the screen before: Boris Karloff voiced the furry green festive grump in 1966; Jim Carrey at his charmless worst starred in the horror-show 2000 live-action movie. Now comes another animation, which takes the book’s message that you can’t buy Christmas and tops it up with noisy, wacky capering, squishing and flattening Seuss’s universe into yet another bland frenetic kids’ movie.
Benedict Cumberbatch, with an American accent, does a decent job voicing the Grinch, who lives on a mountain high above the gingerbread-pretty town of Whovillle, where festive goodwill is spreading like an epidemic. Like that other noted Christmas-hater, Scrooge, there’s an explanation for his shrivelled heart that’s rooted in the Grinch’s backstory: he grew up unloved in an orphanage where Christmas came not even once a year.
To destroy the fun for everyone else, this year the Grinch is impersonating Santa to steal the town’s presents. At the same time, cute-as-a-button poppet Cindy Lou (Cameron Seely) cracks a plan to trap Santa as he comes down the chimney to be doubly sure her Christmas wishes come true.
As the narrator, Pharrell Williams delivers Seuss’s sing-song rhymes beautifully, and the animation is tip-top. There are also a couple of corking scenes that put Cumberbatch to work. In the best of them, the Grinch ventures into town to do his groceries, stamping on the townsfolks’ Christmas cheer and merriment with malicious glee.
More bah-humbuggery – which is a rational response to the wall-to-wall Christmas jumpers – and less zany antics here would have done the job better. As it is, the movie may leave you feeling as if you’ve been standing on the escalator in Hamleys for 90 minutes during the Christmas rush. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/aug/02/10-graphic-novels-everyone-should-read | Books | 2018-08-02T09:33:15.000Z | Paul Gravett | From Maus to Tamara Drewe: the 10 graphic novels everyone should read | The recent hoo-ha about the Man Booker prize’s longlisting of a graphic novel for the first time, the chilling, understated Sabrina by Nick Drnaso, may have piqued your interest in exploring this ever-expanding medium further, or perhaps for the first time. Not everyone has grown up reading comics and the demands of their various verbal and visual literacies can take some adjusting to, particularly if you’re used to the orderly typesetting of prose novels. It’s never too late, though, to try stretching your brain – both sides of it when it comes to graphic novels, where looking is as important as reading.
This experience comes through in the wordless migration parable The Arrival by Shaun Tan (2006), which follows a man who has gone on ahead of his wife and children to seek work abroad and struggles to navigate his alien surroundings and their indecipherable language. Unable to make himself understood, he resorts to making simple drawings to communicate his need for a room. The reader shares his bafflement and gradually grasps with him how his strange new homeland works. Tan’s genius in children’s picture books blossoms in this extended tale for all ages, illustrated in almost photographic sepia images.
From The Arrival by Shaun Tan. Illustration: Hodder & Stoughton
One lifetime’s dawning awareness and evolving cognition are graphically and poetically conveyed in Chris Ware’s Acme Novelty Library #20 (2010): Lint is an approachable introduction to Ware’s oeuvre (a key influence on Drnaso). From newborn child to anguished adolescent, to career, marriage, fatherhood and decline, each year of Lint’s life is distilled into an intricate, humane diagram of a few telling moments of consciousness per page. In comparison, it takes 15 revelatory dreams to unfold the troubled biography of British first world war artist Paul Nash in Dave McKean’s Black Dog (2016). Inspired by Nash’s artworks and writings, McKean harnesses an array of media, palettes and styles to explore his subject’s fluid psychological states.
Time becomes space in comics, enabling us to freeze and ponder the most fleeting micro-expression or falling leaf. In The Walking Man (1992), Jiro Taniguchi invites us to accompany a middle-aged Japanese man of few words, as he sidesteps Tokyo’s bustle and seeks solace in the natural world, finding a hidden glade or a remembered cherry tree from his childhood. Taniguchi’s serene pace and tenderly rendered settings underscore the zen-like calm. A similarly subtle, sublime mood is evoked in printmaker Jon McNaught’s Pebble Island (2012). A wordless comic, its shifting sunlight, bleak, dramatic seashores and boyish sense of wonder are derived from McNaught’s fond memories of living in the Falkland Islands.
From The Walking Man by Jiro Taniguchi. Photograph: Jiro Taniguchi / Fanfare Press
The broader sweeps of history have been recorded in graphic memoirs. There is an unparalleled immersive immediacy to the hand-drawn, handwritten, black-and-white, personal stories of the Holocaust and Iran’s Islamic regime in Art Spiegelman’s Maus (1980-91) and Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis (2000). These accessible and acclaimed autobiographical works – Maus won a Pulitzer prize; Persepolis was taught to soldiers at the US’s West Point Academy – are essential foundation stones of the modern medium and continue to inspire other works of graphic non-fiction.
A page from Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis. Photograph: Vintage
Nothing less than the entire birth and evolution of our world and species are explained in the massive Alpha by Jens Harder (2009). His scintillating, mosaic-like spreads are crafted out of a multiplicity of images, from ancient to modern, interspersed with supplementary notes. Harder’s follow-up, Beta, not yet in English, and the forthcoming Gamma will complete his madly ambitious project.
Rich writing is just as important as the visuals, and in Tamara Drewe (2005-2007) – serialised in the Guardian – Posy Simmonds cleverly updates and subverts Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd to observe the stark contrast between a country retreat for comfortable, middle-class writers lusting after the alluring Tamara, and the local working-class teenagers bored stiff in their “event-proofed” village. Don’t be fooled by Stephen Frears’s breezy film version; Simmonds is no lightweight satirist. She applies real depth and edge to her observations of British society, while her extensive narratives have redefined what the graphic novel is.
Another of Britain’s great world-builders is Chris Reynolds. In The New World (2018), his writing and drawings stretch and twist tenses and times to conjure up a nostalgic near-future, one that is part Edward Hopper, part Andrei Tarkovsky, transposed to post-industrial Wales. Step inside – you’ll find comics have rarely been so hypnotic and tantalising.
Paul Gravett is the author of Mangasia: The Definitive Guide to Asian Comics (Thames & Hudson) and curator of an accompanying touring exhibition organised by the Barbican Centre. He will be speaking at Edinburgh international book festival on 12 August. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/07/20-meat-and-dairy-firms-emit-more-greenhouse-gas-than-germany-britain-or-france | Environment | 2021-09-07T08:00:25.000Z | Sophie Kevany | 20 meat and dairy firms emit more greenhouse gas than Germany, Britain or France | Twenty livestock companies are responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than either Germany, Britain or France – and are receiving billions of dollars in financial backing to do so, according to a new report by environmental campaigners.
Raising livestock contributes significantly to carbon emissions, with animal agriculture accounting for 14.5% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. Scientific reports have found that rich countries need huge reductions in meat and dairy consumption to tackle the climate emergency.
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Between 2015 and 2020, global meat and dairy companies received more than US$478bn in backing from 2,500 investment firms, banks, and pension funds, most of them based in North America or Europe, according to the Meat Atlas, which was compiled by Friends of the Earth and the European political foundation, Heinrich Böll Stiftung.
With that level of financial support, the report estimates that meat production could increase by a further 40m tonnes by 2029, to hit 366m tonnes of meat a year.
Although the vast majority of growth was likely to take place in the global south, the biggest producers will continue to be China, Brazil, the USA and the members of the European Union. By 2029 these countries may still produce 60% of worldwide meat output.
Across the world, the report says, three-quarters of all agricultural land is used to raise animals or the crops to feed them. “In Brazil alone, 175m hectares is dedicated to raising cattle,” an area of land that is about equal to the “entire agricultural area of the European Union”.
Across the world, three-quarters of all agricultural land is used to raise animals or the crops to feed them, the report says. Photograph: Meat Atlas 2021/OECD, FAO
The report also points to ongoing consolidation in the meat and dairy sector, with the biggest companies buying smaller ones and reducing competition. The effect risks squeezing out more sustainable food production models.
“To keep up with this [level of animal protein production] industrial animal farming is on the rise and keeps pushing sustainable models out of the market,” the report says.
The recent interest shown by animal protein companies in meat alternatives and substitutes was not yet a solution, campaigners said.
“This is all for profit and is not really addressing the fundamental issues we see in the current animal protein-centred food system that is having a devastating impact on climate, biodiversity and is actually harming people around the globe,” said Stanka Becheva, a food and agriculture campaigner working with Friends of the Earth.
The bottom line, said Becheva, is that “we need to begin reducing the number of food animals on the planet and incentivise different consumption models.”
More meat industry regulation is needed too, she said, “to make sure companies are paying for the harms they have created throughout the supply chain and to minimise further damage”.
On the investment side, Becheva said private banks and investors, as well as development banks such as the World Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development needed to stop financing large-scale, intensive animal protein production projects.
Responding to the report, Paolo Patruno, deputy secretary general of the European Association for the Meat Processing Industry (CLITRAVI), said: “We don’t believe that any food sector is more or less sustainable than another. But there are more or less sustainable ways to produce plant or animal foods and we are committed to making animal protein production more sustainable.
“We also know that average GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions in the EU from livestock is half that of the global average. The global average is about 14% and the EU average is 7%,” he added.
In England and Wales, the National Farmers’ Union has set a target of reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions in agriculture by 2040.
Sign up for the Animals farmed monthly update to get a roundup of the best farming and food stories across the world and keep up with our investigations. You can send us your stories and thoughts at [email protected] | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/food/2020/mar/23/20-best-noodle-recipes-nigella-lawson-drunken-noodles | Food | 2020-03-23T08:00:32.000Z | Nigella Lawson | Nigella Lawson’s drunken noodles | The general explanation given for why Thai drunken noodles are so called is that they have enough chilli in them to shake you out of even the worst hangover. The only difficulty here – prepared though I am to believe it – is that making a traditional pad kee mao is not an undertaking I’d recommend while worse for wear. So this is my simplified version. I’ve cut to the chase – no meat, fish or veg, just highly seasoned, searingly hot noodles. Not that you need to be hungover to eat them. Why give yourself all that pain, in order to get to the pleasure?
Anyway, I make them so often when in serenely sober bowl-food mood. Most of the ingredients come from the store cupboard, and the finished dish is in front of you in 10 minutes. I find these hot noodles hard to beat, and they do really blow your head off: if you want less of a fiery fright, then halve the chilli flakes. To start with, at least …
Serves 2 (or a very drink-soaked or greedy 1)
dried flat rice noodles 150g (the pad thai sort)
oyster sauce 1 tbsp
toasted sesame oil 1 tsp
sunflower oil 2 tsp
fresh ginger 3cm piece (15g), peeled and finely grated
garlic 1 clove, peeled and minced
lime 1, preferably unwaxed
dried chilli flakes ½ tsp
soy sauce 4 tbsp
fresh coriander handful, chopped
Soak the noodles in hot water for 8 minutes, or according to packet instructions, then drain and refresh under a cold running tap.
Put 2 tbsp of cold water into a cup and stir in the oyster sauce, then set aside for a mo.
Put the oils in a wok, turn on the heat and add the ginger, garlic and grate in the zest of the lime – I use a coarse microplane grater here, only because it’s faster than a fine one. Sprinkle in the chilli flakes. Stir well, then tip in the soaked, drained noodles and stir them quickly in the seasoned oil (easier with an implement in each hand).
Add the watered-down oyster sauce, the juice of half the lime and the soy sauce, then transfer to waiting bowls (or bowl) and toss with the chopped coriander.
Keep the bottle of soy sauce and the remaining half-lime close at hand, should you need either of them as you eat. I am such a pyrophile, I like to keep some extra chilli flakes to hand, too.
From Simply Nigella by Nigella Lawson (Vintage, £26) | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/14/erase-outdated-tv-shows-account-channel-4 | Opinion | 2020-07-14T05:00:42.000Z | Dorothy Byrne | We can't erase outdated TV shows, but we can hold their views to account | Dorothy Byrne | Every public service organisation in this country is examining itself in the light of Black Lives Matter. Principled campaigners are challenging us to deal with our pasts. At Channel 4, our past doesn’t include money from slavery or statues glorifying slavers, but it does go back 38 years, and a lot has changed in that time. Think back for a moment to your favourite programmes 20 or 30 years ago; some of the characters you loved probably said things that would make you shudder today. A number of the jokes would now seem tasteless, even vile. So what should we do with them?
The comedian and director Leigh Francis recently apologised for playing characters in blackface in Channel 4’s Bo’ Selecta!. Francis, who produced the series for five years, said he doesn’t want it to be kept on our on-demand service All4. Channel 4 has since removed it, but a number of broadcasters and streaming services that rushed to remove material have later reinstated it, albeit with warnings or explanations. HBO initially removed Gone With the Wind but has now returned the film with a short introductory video stating that it “denies the horrors of slavery”.
Channel 4, unlike other broadcasters, makes a huge amount of material available on its on-demand channel All4. There are 14,000 hours of programming in total, dating back to the first episode of Brookside. No other UK broadcaster has publicly archived so much material on a streaming service, going back so far. Reviewing all that would be close to impossible. But even if we could do it and spot every bit of potentially offensive content, is it right to go back and change our past? Those thousands of hours of material are not only our own history as a broadcaster, they are part of the social history of our country.
If much-loved characters in the past made homophobic comments or dressed up as people from other ethnic groups or pretended to be people who used wheelchairs, should we destroy that evidence of the social attitudes of the times? Cleaning up our past erases evidence of how views that we would now consider reprehensible were once normalised. Channel 4 is an anti-racist organisation with a particular remit to reach and reflect the lives of people from diverse backgrounds. But we are also committed to freedom of expression and being deliberately daring and controversial. There are bound to be moments when those principles come into conflict. There may be elements in our programmes which are so offensive that a public service broadcaster should not leave them on any platform.
As editor-at-large at Channel 4, I was given the job of devising answers to some of these problems. Our director of programmes, Ian Katz, believed it was important that we should establish clear principles for dealing with our archive rather than make a series of individual decisions based on knee-jerk reactions. He also thought our approach should be consistent across the broadcaster. I led a small group, including the renowned comedy producer Ash Atalla, our head of drama Caroline Hollick, and our controller of legal and compliance Amali de Silva.
We have concluded, that where old programmes contain potentially offensive material, they are generally best handled by adding warnings rather than removing them entirely. I was struck by powerful arguments put forward by some members of our employee group 4Pride which represents staff from LGBTQ+ communities. They said they didn’t want the homophobia of the past hidden. It was by fighting the attitudes shown by some characters in older programmes that minorities have achieved the rights and freedoms they have today.
In most programmes, the context is clear and viewers can judge for themselves what they think of the characters and events. This becomes much trickier where a segment containing potentially offensive material is brief or where, for example, a racist comment is made in passing and left unchallenged. A white comedian may appear in a blackface sketch lasting only two or three minutes, where the main “joke” is merely that he is pretending to belong to another ethnic group. It’s without point or purpose, and is extremely offensive to many – so it’s hard to see a justification for keeping it.
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We think we should remove content only on rare occasions. Though we would take the view of the creator into account, in the end it would be our decision as to whether we kept a segment of a programme, a whole programme, or placed a warning on it.
Now we’ll start putting these principles into effect. We can’t review all 38 years of material, but where viewers complain about a programme and there are grounds for considering it offensive, we will examine it. We know it is a matter of judgment, but we will begin from the premise that we should not destroy the past, however embarrassing that past may be, except in exceptional circumstances.
We will take into account whether there is any context to the potential offence shown on screen, and whether the character making the remark or engaged in the behaviour receives approbation or opprobrium within the plot. Where a racist character suffers criticism and consequences, that would be seen differently by viewers to a passing racist swipe. We might also think that we would retain a programme in our archive as a matter of record, but not rebroadcast it.
Research by our regulator Ofcom published in April indicated that viewers were concerned about material which could be deemed as offensive about minority groups, or be encouraging discrimination against them. As a public service broadcaster owned by the people of the UK, we need to be sensitive to the views of our audience, while showing the truth about our past.
Dorothy Byrne is editor-at-large at Channel 4 | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/oct/11/quentin-tarantino-batman-boring-lone-ranger-excellent | Film | 2013-10-11T07:38:16.000Z | Ben Child | Quentin Tarantino: Batman is 'boring' but Lone Ranger 'excellent' | Quentin Tarantino has dismissed Batman as a boring movie character, while explaining why he placed critical turkey The Lone Ranger on his recent top 10 of films from 2013.
Interviewed by French magazine Les Inrockuptibles, in comments subsequently translated by The Playlist, the Oscar-winning film-maker poured scorn on the current furore over Ben Affleck's casting as the caped crusader. Why debate the subject, he offered, when there were more interesting topics to be discussed.
"I have to admit that I don't really have an opinion," said Tarantino. "Why? Because Batman is not a very interesting character. For any actor. There is simply not much to play. I think Michael Keaton did it the best, and I wish good luck to Ben Affleck. But, you know who would have made a great Batman? Alec Baldwin in the '80s."
Tarantino is known for his leftfield opinions, but few commentators saw his passion for Disney's The Lone Ranger, a critical dud and the year's biggest box office flop, in the tea leaves. "The first 45 minutes are excellent," enthused the director of Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs. "The next 45 minutes are a little soporific. It was a bad idea to split the bad guys in two groups; it takes hours to explain and nobody cares," he admitted. "[But] then comes the train scene—incredible! When I saw it, I kept thinking, 'What, that's the film that everybody says is crap? Seriously?'"
Tarantino's top 10 of 2013
1. Afternoon Delight (Jill Soloway)
2. Before Midnight (Richard Linklater)
3. Blue Jasmine (Woody Allen)
4. The Conjuring (James Wan)
5. Drinking Buddies (Joe Swanberg)
6. Frances Ha (Noah Baumbach)
7. Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón)
8. Kick Ass 2 (Jeff Wadlow)
9. The Lone Ranger (Gore Verbinski)
10. This Is The End (Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg) | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/dec/18/hermes-delivery-drivers-diary-shows-flipside-to-christmas-shopping | Business | 2017-12-18T17:19:32.000Z | Sarah Butler | Hermes delivery driver's diary shows flipside to Christmas shopping | Online retailers are expecting record UK sales this Christmas, with deliveries running right up to 24 December. An army of drivers is being deployed to deliver these purchases to shoppers’ homes.
Most drivers are self-employed contractors paid by the hour or per parcel delivered with no guarantee of earning the national minimum wage, holiday pay or sick pay.
The Guardian asked one self-employed driver for delivery firm Hermes to record the work he has been doing and the pay he has been receiving. He is a member of the GMB trade union, which is backing a legal claim from workers who believe they are wrongly classed as self-employed independent contractors.
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The courier, who has asked to remain anonymous, is paid for each delivery: 65p for a parcel; 45p per packet (which are smaller items). He delivers an average of 100 items a day, but throughout the year that workload can vary between 30 and 170, with little warning. He also gets 45p for picking up unwanted items from homes. He must pay petrol costs, of £20 to £30 a day, plus other costs such as insuring and maintaining his van.
Each morning drivers get a manifest – a list of parcels – and over the Christmas period they get a £4 bonus if they can deliver a certain percentage of the parcels listed on that day. There is another £4 bonus for delivering the list of parcels within the estimated delivery time set at the beginning of the day.
This driver’s day begins with a delivery van dropping off the parcels at his home. A manifest is downloaded to his hand-held terminal. He must then scan all the parcels delivered to him and calculate an estimated delivery time. There can be parcels missing or unexpected additional items.
The Hermes parcel delivery company’s distribution base off the M62 at Burtonwood, Cheshire. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian
This is the courier’s work diary…
Friday 8 December Long day today as van late. Cleared all parcels from late van. One customer gave me a cuppa to keep me going. Earned about £129 for 11-hour day nonstop to clear backlog – £11.70 an hour before petrol and other costs. Couple of customers gave me a Christmas tip: a bottle of whisky and £10. Very gratefully received.
Saturday 9 December Almost a standard day today, seven hours, but the packet scam (in which companies mislabel large parcels as packets so that that won’t have to pay so much for delivery) is getting annoying. We either weigh and measure parcels or get underpaid for what we deliver. I now submit upgrades daily to ensure I’m paid right. About £88 for seven hours – £12.50 an hour before petrol and other costs.
Sunday 10 December Off today. Glad of the rest.
Monday 11 December Frozen solid here but not much snow. Just makes it harder. Loads of damaged parcels today. Told compliance manager that I refuse to deliver trashed parcels that may well be Christmas presents. She threatened me with an improvement notice. Earned about £143 for 10.5 hours – £13.60 an hour before costs. Good day for me.
Tuesday 12 December Roads very slippery today and slowed down deliveries. More customers wanting fourth and fifth delivery attempts. I’m not paid any extra for the first three attempts. Quieter day today. About £77 for 7.5 hours – £10.26 an hour before costs. But very slow on some roads that haven’t been gritted so used lots of fuel today on slippery roads and crawling along in slow traffic.
Wednesday 13 December Van late again today. There’s parcels not listed on the manifest, all big boxes too. I asked if I was going to be paid extra for them as they are bigger than my contract. Answer is no, it’s just part of the job. Had to return home to reload the van six times as so many parcels. About £124 for 11 hours today – £11.30 an hour before costs. .
Thursday 14 December Good day today. Van on time and a shorter day. Six hours and home. Still some damaged parcels, but sending then all back now so the customer doesn’t have to sort things out. Only earned about £42 today (£6.95 an hour) but great to have a shorter day and see my wife.
Friday 15 December Christmas peak is not over. Lots of large boxes today so had to reload the van four times. It has rained all day. Just makes things harder. £145 for 9.5 hours today – £15.20 an hour before costs.
Hermes said it was committed to paying its couriers fairly. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian
Hermes response
In response to the driver’s diary, Hermes said it was committed to paying its couriers fairly. It said they were paid per parcel, typically capped at between 50 and 80 items a day depending on the area.
It said the average courier rate over a year is £10.60 an hour after all expenses have been deducted, which is 41% above the national living wage, which is £7.50 per hour for over 25s. “This has been verified using real-time data gathered from a significant sample of rounds over the past 12 months, supported by extensive route modelling,” it said.
Hermes said that less than 1% of parcels over the year were sent to couriers without being listed on their manifest and as long as they were scanned and delivered this did not affect pay. The company said its records showed that on average 2-3% of its vans were more than 15 minutes late to deliver parcels to couriers and “virtually no van” is more than 30 minutes late. In these cases, Hermes said couriers were given “ad hoc payments” to cover waiting time. The driver said he had never heard about such payments.
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The company added it had “numerous processes” in place to identify damaged parcels within its depots: “If a courier believes that they have received a damaged parcel they are encouraged to send it back to the depot marked as damaged.”
It said couriers could choose to deliver larger parcels for extra payment and it did not ask drivers to deliver more than three times without extra payment. Drivers can opt to deliver more during peak season and get “ad hoc payments” if they have to return to the Hermes depot to pick up.
“If a courier feels they cannot deal with the volume of parcels on their round then they can consult the one of 350 field managers to ensure the round is designed to meet their request,” the company said.
Follow Guardian Business on Twitter at @BusinessDesk, or sign up to the daily Business Today email here. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2013/jan/22/mba-postgrad-success | Education | 2013-01-22T10:00:00.000Z | Liz Lightfoot | Is studying an MBA a good investment? | It's hard work, expensive and it can deal a hammer blow to the toughest of management egos, but the master of business administration (MBA) continues to be one of the UK's most popular postgraduate programmes.
More than 8,000 new students enrolled at business schools in 2011 for courses accredited by the Association of MBAs. But if you are thinking of joining them in 2013, where should you start? Over the next few days, this series will guide you through the basics of MBAs, looking at the different courses on offer, how to apply, the cost and job prospects once you have graduated.
Fees at the top end are £57,500 for a two-year full-time MBA at the London Business School, or £33,000 for a two-year part-time executive MBA at the Cranfield School of Management in Bedford.
So the question has to be asked: is there a return on investment? Quantifying an MBA's value is an inexact science but the Alumni Perspectives Survey of 4,000 MBA graduates, conducted by the Graduate Management Admissions Council in 2012, claimed that, on average, respondents had recouped one third of the cost of their studies within a year of graduation and the degree had paid for itself in four years.
Some schools, such as the London Business School, publish information on post-MBA salaries. Its 2012 MBA employment report shows the median base salary for its graduates going into consulting was £74,000; for corporate sector jobs it was slightly lower at £70,000; and for jobs in the financial sector it was £65,000.
A few colleges and rankings attempt to demonstrate the value of an MBA in terms of salaries commanded three or five years after graduation. The downside is that it is hard to know what the ambitious individuals would have been earning without the degree.
A lot depends on the attitude of employers. Phil Dunne, a partner at AT Kearney, the global firm of management consultants, says an MBA is not just about the topics you learn, but the people you meet and the networks you create. "We find graduates are equipped with very relevant, broad-based, team-oriented, problem-solving skills," he says.
Sarah Hernon, a principal consultant for Right Management, part of the ManpowerGroup, says encouraging "high-value staff" to do master's qualifications can be a creative way for employers to retain them when restructuring has reduced promotion prospects."An MBA makes people more marketable," she says.
But she adds a warning: "Working evenings and weekends is a huge commitment. But if you can get through it, the return on investment is vast."
Find out more: Association of MBAs; Graduate Management Admission Test | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/25/farmers-crops-uk-floods | Environment | 2023-10-25T11:55:33.000Z | Helena Horton | UK farmers warn of rotting crops after Storm Babet flooding | Potato and cereal crops are likely to have been heavily damaged by the recent devastating floods across the UK, farmers have warned.
Entire fields have been submerged in water after Storm Babet swept across the country, with crops ruined. Extreme weather events are becoming more likely and frequent due to climate breakdown, and have caused food shortages and price increases.
The storms have left at least seven people dead and hundreds more homeless after flash floods followed heavy rain. An estimated 1,250 properties in England have been flooded while about 30,000 properties have needed flood protection, according to the Environment Agency.
Farmers say the floods will damage this year’s harvest. The Soil Association’s farming adviser, Jerry Alford, said: “The flooding will have a devastating impact on winter cereals and make spring cropping more likely with the inevitable lower yields. Those farmers affected who have already invested in planting this year will be facing a catastrophic impact and considerable financial losses at a time of real crisis.
“Parts of the UK are hugely vulnerable to flooding and recent years have shown that the impact of climate change is going to wreak havoc with harvests unless we act now to build on farm resilience, review land use and build a plan for horticulture which addresses these risks.”
The National Farmers’ Union (NFU) said their members’ crops were rotting under water, and called for the government to put in place a water strategy to prevent such losses.
The NFU deputy president, Tom Bradshaw, said: “The farming community too has been impacted with hundreds of acres of productive farmland under water and land that’s now inaccessible. We’re hearing desperate stories from many of our members who are struggling to get crops out of the ground from this season, or are still to plant autumn crops for next year. Those crops that are in the ground are likely to rot, meaning the output and profitability of next year’s harvest is already seriously compromised, building on an unprecedented year in terms of weather and cost.
“Despite what we’ve heard from government in recent times about the importance of UK food security, this just isn’t being reflected in policies on how the nation’s food production is valued, and how water infrastructure is managed.
“Farming is on the frontline of climate change and the sector is experiencing volatility and severe weather events more often. It’s why we absolutely need a long-term plan to improve how we manage water in times of flood and drought, as we regularly experience both on an annual basis, and both severely impact our ability to produce food.”
The effects of flooding are expected to continue, with yellow rain warnings in place until Wednesday afternoon in some parts of the country.
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The Met Office said 13 areas had broken their daily rainfall records for October last week, including sites in Suffolk, South Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Wiltshire, Kincardineshire, North Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, Northumberland, Derbyshire and Humberside.
Last year, farmers faced turmoil because of the extended drought and extreme heat, which caused crop losses, water shortages and effects on planting and harvesting.
A Defra spokesperson said: “We are monitoring the impacts of the flooding caused by Storm Babet on the agricultural sector and working closely with the Environment Agency. Farmers and land managers have an increasingly important role to play in reducing the risk of flooding and coastal erosion as we adapt to climate change, through measures such as natural flood management. As set out in the latest flood strategy roadmap, risk management authorities will be working with farmers and landowners to help them adapt their businesses and practices to be resilient to flooding and coastal change.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/oct/20/olympic-parks-orbit-tower-costing-taxpayer-10000-a-week | Sport | 2015-10-20T18:17:02.000Z | Aisha Gani | Olympic Park's Orbit tower costing taxpayer £10,000 a week | The Olympic Park’s Orbit tower is losing money and costing Londoners £10,000 a week, a senior Labour member of the London assembly has said.
Len Duvall, member for Greenwich and Lewisham, claimed that the ArcelorMittal Orbit tower had lost £520,000 – or £10,000 a week – based on its 2014/15 report, despite having forecast a profit of almost £1.2m in its business plan.
The attraction, however, has lost around half a million pounds after only 124,000 people visited between April 2014 and March 2015, Duvall found in his analysis of costings.
Olympic Park’s ArcelorMittal Orbit tower during construction. Photograph: Alamy
Orbit, the UK’s tallest sculpture at 114.5 metres, and which has two observation platforms, was expected to generate a profit of almost £1.2m during its first 12 months.
Annual forecasts for the sculpture, designed by Sir Anish Kapoor, have been cut from 350,000 to 150,000 visitors.
The sculpture, which resembles a helter skelter, was commissioned by mayor Boris Johnson in 2008 with £3.1m of taxpayers’ money invested in its construction.
The designers had compared their creation with the Tower of Babel, as painted by Pieter Bruegel the Elder – which depicted a tower spiralling towards heaven from a bulging base on Earth, built by humans who were united and monolingual.
Duvall, however, described it as a “Boris Johnson vanity project of towering proportions”. “Instead of paying back some of the three million [pounds] of taxpayer investment, the Orbit is actually losing £10,000 a week, an awful record even by Boris’s standards.
“The Olympics was meant to be a grand celebration of sport, not an excuse to build pointless monuments at vast taxpayer expense,” Duvall said.
He added: “When you look at the Mayor’s record on projects like this, it makes you wonder whether other projects like the garden bridge are really as good a deal as he would have us believe.”
The London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC), which oversees regeneration of the 2012 Games site, claims another 76,000 visitors have been to the installation since March this year.
“The ArcelorMittal Orbit was one of the standout successes of the 2012 Games and has seen almost 200,000 visitors since reopening in 2014, which is a tremendous achievement,” a spokesman said.
Visitors have abseiled from the top of the red sculpture, the spokesman said, while plans for the world’s longest and tallest tunnel slide were approved this summer, with construction expected to finish in 2016.
The LLDC had revised its estimate of visitor numbers down from its original forecast of 350,000 a year to 150,000, but said it was “constantly looking at ways to enhance the experience to attract more people”. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/dec/10/comic-relief-bbc-parnorama-investigation-frankie-boyle | Media | 2013-12-10T21:15:00.000Z | John Plunkett | Comic Relief under fire ahead of BBC Panorama investigation | Comic Relief's chief executive has promised a full review of its investment policy following a public backlash triggered by a Panorama investigation into the charity's multimillion-pound holdings in tobacco, arms and alcohol companies.
Kevin Cahill admitted for the first time on Tuesday that the Red Nose Day and Sport Relief charity still had money in managed funds that held shares in tobacco, arms and alcohol firms but said they were "a small percentage, no more than 5% of our funds in any of those particular areas".
He was speaking after details emerged of Tuesday night's Panorama documentary on BBC1, which reported that between 2007 and 2009, Comic Relief money was put in shares in schemes that critics say contradict the core aims of the charity.
The Panorama investigation had prompted several months of wrangling between the programme-makers and Comic Relief, straining the close working relationship the charity has with the BBC, which has broadcast its Red Nose Day and Sport Relief fundraising telethons for nearly 30 years.
Comic Relief's law firm, Harbottle & Lewis, attempted to get the programme stopped, warning that its accusations would "damage vulnerable people in the UK and abroad".
However, after sustained criticism of Comic Relief on Tuesday, including caustic tweets from some of the charity's own high-profile supporters, including comics Frankie Boyle and Al Murray, Cahill signalled a sudden change of tack.
"We will do a full review of our policy after this particular programme and these discussions we are having now," Cahill told Martha Kearney on Radio 4's World at One.
"It's really important that the public stick with us, that they trust us to do the right thing and they understand that we are listening to the messages that are out there on the social networks."
Cahill said it was a "no-brainer" that the charity would rather invest in ethical concerns if they could match or better the returns offered by other investments.
But he added that Comic Relief and other charities should seek more clarification over the rules around ethical investments from the Charities Commission.
"Our trustees were acting in good faith in doing what they were doing. It's very good to hear the potential exists within ethical funds to match the return [of funds with non-ethical investments], because Comic Relief would clearly choose to be in those if the return was equal or better to where we currently are. It's a no-brainer for us."
Cahill said the charity's trustees had made their investment decisions believing "they delivered the greatest benefits to our benefactors".
"When a moment like this occurs for a charity like ours, that's never had a blemish on its reputation in its entire 25-year history, which has never been cited for any kind of transgression of Charity Commission regulations or guidelines, the past is important but the future is even more important."
Prior to Cahill's announcement, the charity had come under attack from Boyle, whose controversial routine was axed from a BBC3 broadcast of a Comic Relief fund-raising night this year.
Boyle tweeted: "Will happily perform at this year's Comic Relief if paid in guns" and "Those fairy cakes your kids baked for Comic Relief bought [Ugandan warlord] Joseph Kony a rocket launcher", which had been retweeted 2,000 times at the time of publication.
Murray, better known as the Pub Landlord, who appeared in Comic Relief Does Fame Academy on BBC1 in 2005, was also critical on Twitter. Referring to Comic Relief's 1991 single, The Stonk, he pointed out that one definition of a stonk is "a concentrated artillery barrage".
Other key figures connected to Comic Relief defended the charity.
Journalist and broadcaster Emma Freud, wife of Comic Relief co-founder Richard Curtis, replied to a comment on Twitter that said Panorama producers would "have blood on their hands if their ill-judged programme leads to just one person not donating to future Comic Reliefs". Freud responded: "Thank you for that ... I know."
Controversy has surrounded the Panorama documentary, All in a Good Cause, since it was postponed in October, amid claims that a string of executives had ruled themselves out of taking decisions on the programme, as a result of the BBC's longstanding ties with Comic Relief.
The BBC director general, Tony Hall, and its director of news and current affairs, James Harding, became involved, with the latter understood to have asked the producers to go back and firm up the investigation.
Hall told an industry conference last month: "It's James's [Harding's] programme. He wants to get it right. It's quite right the director of news has views about programmes – it'll broadcast."
In a string of letters to the BBC and the programme's production team, Comic Relief's lawyers Harbottle & Lewis said: "We should not have to remind you of the enormous damage your unsubstantiated allegations will cause to our client and its charity aims.
"This is especially so given such claims will damage the vulnerable people in the UK and abroad who our client seeks to help."
To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email [email protected] or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication".
To get the latest media news to your desktop or mobile, follow MediaGuardian on Twitter and Facebook. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/sep/08/olivia-rodrigo-guts-review | Music | 2023-09-08T06:00:48.000Z | Alexis Petridis | Olivia Rodrigo: Guts review | Alexis Petridis’s album of the week | Between shimmering guitars and a doleful piano line, a song from Olivia Rodrigo’s second album called Making the Bed offers a grim picture of fame. “I wanted it so I got it,” she admits, before making clear it wasn’t what she bargained for: being treated “like a tourist attraction”, haunted by dreams of being in a car without brakes that “can’t swerve off the road”. It feels realistic, partly because it’s studded with self-loathing at her apparent ingratitude and worries that she’s “playing the victim” and partly because Rodrigo clearly knows what she’s talking about.
You would be hard-pushed to call her 2021 debut album, Sour, anything other than a phenomenon. It broke sales records, won Grammys and made her the solitary new artist in the last two years admitted to pop’s rarefied upper echelons, the multi-platinum realm of Ed Sheeran, Harry Styles and Taylor Swift, where albums don’t just sell on release, they keep on doing so for years: Guts is being launched into a Top 20 that Sour has yet to vacate.
The artwork for Guts
Perhaps its success wasn’t surprising. If the rise of Billie Eilish obviated the need for teenage listeners to distil universal, #relatable lessons from Swift’s sagas of romance and enmity among young habitués of the entertainment world – Eilish was a teenager, talking about teenage stuff, with nary a film star boyfriend nor supermodel frenemy in sight – then Rodrigo’s songs rendered things more straightforward still. They stripped away both the left-field electronic aspects of Eilish’s sound and the gothic horror aspects of her lyrics in favour of big ballads and polished pop-punk – inhabiting a musical universe where Avril Lavigne’s Let Go and Pink’s Missundaztood occupy the same position of influence that the Stooges’ and the New York Dolls’ eponymous debuts occupied during punk itself – and song titles that read like double-underlined phrases in an adolescent diary: Guts features Get Him Back!, Pretty Isn’t Pretty, Bad Idea Right? and Love Is Embarrassing. Any intimations that their subjects are fellow celebrities are smartly batted away in interviews, among them the persistent rumour that Guts’s lead single Vampire – which stirs both polarities of Rodrigo’s style together with a hint of Broadway showstopper – is aimed at Swift, who was given 50% of the songwriting credits to Rodrigo’s Deja Vu after similarities with the former’s Cruel Summer were pointed out; better to present something that feels familiar to her audience’s daily lives than an acerbic transmission from a distant star-studded universe.
The sound of Guts is noticeably tougher than its predecessor, as if taking Sour’s Elvis Costello-indebted opener Brutal as its starting point: more distorted guitars, a live sound underlined by the presence of count-ins and discussions among the musicians about which song they’re playing next, a hint of grunge-era alt-rock in the quiet-loud dynamics of Ballad of a Homeschooled Girl and a sprinkling of sprechgesang vocals that probably have something to do with Wet Leg, but which, allied to the lumbering syncopated rhythm and massed-vocal chorus of Get Him Back!, more clearly conjure up the spectre of early 00s rap-rock.
Olivia Rodrigo: Bad Idea Right? – video
But the most striking thing is how little global stardom has caused Rodrigo to loosen her grasp on topics close to her fanbase’s heart. Making the Bed’s wracked account of fame is an outlier here: elsewhere, Guts offers a round of adolescent concerns, among them social awkwardness (Ballad of a Homeschooled Girl), romantic rejection (The Grudge), seemingly perfect love rivals (the Jolene-esque figure of Lacy) and a succession of bad boyfriends that vary from unfortunately irresistible (Bad Idea Right?) to patronising older man: “I was too young, I was too soft, can’t take a joke, can’t get you off,” she snaps on Logical.
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‘I had all these feelings of rage I couldn’t express’: Olivia Rodrigo on overnight pop superstardom, plagiarism and growing up in public
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The other striking thing is how sharp her lyrics are, behind their unassuming conversational veneer: only Pretty Isn’t Pretty’s assault on beauty standards feels a little boilerplate. Elsewhere, she’s witty, as on Bad Idea Right? – “I told my friends I was asleep, but I never said where or in whose sheets” – and stingingly acerbic. Brutal’s borrowing from Costello was both unexpected and somehow telling, and at her angriest, Rodrigo’s lyrics can feel as if they’re recasting accusatory bitterness – Costello’s initial default setting – for a younger, female audience. “Hate to give the satisfaction, asking how you’re doing now / How’s the castle built off people you pretend to care about?” opens Vampire, lines that could have walked straight off This Year’s Model or My Aim Is True.
It’s sharp enough to appeal beyond its obvious constituency, reaching people for whom the phrase witheringly deployed in closer Teenage Dream – “great for my age” – has slightly different resonances than it does for Rodrigo. But that is a secondary concern here, as is the question of whether Rodrigo can grow with her audience and continue serving their interests when they no longer have to, as Making the Bed puts it, pretend to be older than they are. That’s the future: in the present moment, it’s hard to imagine they won’t lap Guts up.
This week Alexis listened to
Tapir! – Gymnopédie
A song that on paper shouldn’t work – borrowing from Erik Satie is a well-worn idea – but, in reality works beautifully, unfolding into a lovely warm sound that recalls a lo-fi Lambchop. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/24/woodpigeons-and-crows-can-no-longer-be-freely-killed-in-england | Environment | 2019-04-24T11:05:14.000Z | Patrick Barkham | Woodpigeons and crows can no longer be freely killed in England | “Pest” bird species such as crows, woodpigeons and jays can no longer be freely killed in England after the government’s conservation watchdog revoked the licence permitting it.
The move by Natural England came after a challenge to the legality of the “general licence” by a new environmental group, Wild Justice, created by conservationists Mark Avery, Ruth Tingay and Chris Packham.
Natural England now plans to introduce a legal system of licences to allow 16 species of birds, including rooks, magpies, Canada geese and non-native parakeets, to be controlled. In the meantime, anyone wanting to control these species must apply for an individual licence, as they are required to if seeking to kill other more protected bird species.
Wildlife campaigners have greeted the decision, which came on Tony Juniper’s first day as the new chair, with delight, but many farmers – and some conservationists – were dismayed.
“It’s not every day that three part-time conservationists overturn decades of unlawful bird-killing,” said Avery. “England’s statutory nature conservation organisation has been shown to be allowing people to break wildlife law for decades.”
Natural England’s interim chief executive, Marian Spain, said: “We recognise this change will cause disruption for some people, but we are working hard to ensure it is kept to a minimum.
“We will bring forward interim measures as quickly as possible as the first stage of our planned review of the licences. We want to make sure our licensing system is robust and proportionate, taking into account the needs of wildlife and people.”
Farmers and land managers said the timing of the revoking of the licence came at the worst time for protecting livestock such as lambs, crops – and some wildlife.
Guy Smith, deputy president of the National Farmers’ Union (NFU), said it had “significant concerns” about the abrupt withdrawal of these general licences.
“They are absolutely necessary at this time of year when crops are particularly vulnerable to pests. For example, a flock of pigeons could decimate a farmer’s field of crops,” he said. “It is incredibly disappointing that farmers and growers find themselves in this position, particularly at this time of year.”
The conservationist Mary Colwell said the revoking of the licences came just when crows preyed on the eggs of endangered ground-nesting birds such as lapwing and curlew.
She said: “The general licence needs reforming and tightening but Natural England’s timing is appalling. Curlews lay their eggs on average on 21 April. If they lose their eggs – and camera traps reveal the biggest predators are foxes followed by crows – they won’t lay again this year. There’s no doubt that if you stop people controlling crows at this time of year the crows will take more eggs.”
Avery said Wild Justice’s challenge had only sought to halt the general licence from next year, and said Natural England could have better timed its announcement so farmers and conservationists had more time to apply for individual licences.
He said he hoped Natural England would consult all parties to design a better licensing system. “If you were designing a new system of licensing you’d get everybody around the table to talk about what is needed and how it should be administered,” he added.
According to the NFU, Natural England will issue interim measures to allow for the temporary control of these 16 bird species from 29 April before its wider review. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/nov/06/meth-road-conor-woodman-book-feature-australia | Society | 2023-11-05T14:00:12.000Z | Lucy Clark | ‘The country, the whole region, is being flooded’: tracking meth to Australia | When you analyse Australia’s wastewater, the story of methamphetamine use is shocking. According to the Australia Criminal Intelligence Commission, in 2021 we ranked the highest of 20 countries in per capita use.
The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare reports there has been a rapid increase in the number of deaths involving meth and other stimulants, with the death rate in 2021 almost four times higher than that in 2000 (1.8 deaths compared with 0.5 deaths per 100,000 population, respectively). It is abundant and easy to obtain.
The UK author and journalist Conor Woodman has tracked the supply of meth to Australia, examined addiction and use and the policing and treatment of that use. Here he answers 10 questions about Meth Road: A life-and-death investigation following the world’s most destructive narcotic to Australia.
Your book charts an extraordinary journey from hidden jungle laboratories in south-east Asia to the streets of Brisbane, mapping the movement of methamphetamine to this country, which has the highest addiction rates of this drug in the world. What made you start this story?
This story really found me. A friend of mine was working for one of the TV streamers on a film about meth labs in Myanmar but when a contributor got shot, the production team pulled out. I immediately felt that there was an opportunity to pick up the threads and so I flew to Myanmar soon after to begin my research.
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Once I realised how closely the drug trade was linked to the ongoing civil conflict in Myanmar, I was determined to find out more so I stayed until I got right to the root of the source.
The book is broken down into three parts – supply, demand and solutions – why did you decide to start with laying out the processes and geography of supply?
For me, the first big shock of all this was discovering that there was a huge drug trading nexus located in a war-torn south-east Asian country that hardly ever gets talked about. We tend to think that all the world’s biggest drug supply chains start in Latin America or Afghanistan but Myanmar is right up there with them as a major player.
Conor Woodman, author of Meth Road, in south-east Asia. Photograph: Conor Woodman
I had a lot more compassion for individual users of methamphetamine in places like Australia once I started to understand the size of the industrial complex that underpins the country’s meth supply. The country, indeed the whole region, is being flooded with high grade/low cost methamphetamine and I wanted readers to get that from the start.
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What separates meth from other drugs?
Meth is so worryingly insidious in its modus operandi. The dopamine response that it engenders in users makes it especially addictive and corrosive. You might go out and take MDMA or cocaine on a night out, but there’s going to come a point where your body says “enough” and you have to sleep. But not so with meth. I was shocked to see users go at it for five or six days straight without sleep.
Does anything compare?
Heroin is maybe the obvious comparison to make when thinking about methamphetamine but alcohol is perhaps an even better one. Alcohol and meth do a very good job of taking you out of yourself without rendering you incapable of functioning. That’s maybe what makes them both so dangerous. Meth and alcohol addicts can function in society for a long time before their use eventually catches up with them and gets out of control.
The stories of addiction you have in your book are utterly sobering and also often frightening. What unites the users of meth?
Too often I met people using meth who had a story of historic abuse to tell. Sometimes physical, mental or even sexual. Often going back to childhood trauma. There’s something very dissociative about methamphetamine that I think helps users to pack those painful feelings and memories away.
The other common thread I observed was users self-medicating for what they believed to be undiagnosed ADHD. There’s certainly a similarity between the way meth and a licensed drug such as Adderall work, so some users thought the meth was helping them function better in the world.
How do you de-stigmatise drug use in society and is it really possible?
I think drug use is already widely de-stigmatised, albeit in communities of people who use drugs. Middle class cocaine users who share a gram at a dinner party have normalised that behaviour for each other but they might still consider anyone using heroin to be a “junkie”. Likewise, a group of people down the pub who get drunk together on a Saturday night are normalising their behaviour while at the same time holding a meth user in contempt.
The question is “can we de-stigmatise the use of drugs that we don’t personally do?” I think that requires a bit of realism from society. The majority of people in western societies partake in some form of drug use to help them to wind down, so it’s a question of having some respect for people making a different choice to your own and having some empathy if ever that choice becomes problematic. People make bad choices. They don’t need you to punish them for it.
What did you discover about Australia and its approach to drugs?
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I was surprised how socially conservative Australia can be. The international impression of Australians is that they’re pretty laid back and easy going but the country’s drug policy is far from that. The use of drug dogs at music festivals, for example, is positively barbaric. Having said that, I met a lot of very smart and compassionate people working in this area in Australia so I’m optimistic that reform and progress are possible.
Police officers and drug detection dogs walk among festivalgoers at Splendour in the Grass 2016 in Byron Bay. Photograph: Mark Metcalfe/Getty Images
The research being done now in Australia suggests that there could be a growing appetite for change among the public and a consensus around the need for more investment in harm minimisation and rehabilitation. I’d like to see that opportunity capitalised on.
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Was being an outsider an advantage here?
I’m fully prepared to cop the flak from those who say that I should stick to my own patch. Why not write a book about the UK’s many drug problems? It’s a fair point. But still, a fresh pair of eyes is sometimes an advantage. I came to Australia with a very open mind and tried to always ask myself “what do people want?” I think when you’re already entrenched in your views or embroiled in a longstanding argument (as many people seem to be over there) it’s easy to lose sight of that important question.
What preconceptions did you start out with but have changed your mind about?
I wondered when I started this book if I would try methamphetamine myself so as to be able to write about the experience first-hand. But once I saw the drug up close and the way it affected people, I changed my mind. I have a very different view about meth now. I see it as a very pernicious drug and a bad choice for recreational use.
What would meaningful progress in Australia look like to you?
First up, the education around meth has to change. No more TV advertisements of crazed meth-heads tearing apart ER rooms. I would prefer to see people who have lived experiences of meth take a lead in educating others about its potential dangers.
Meth Road by Conor Woodman. Photograph: A&U
Secondly, state policing needs to take a step back. Once meth has hit the street, I would argue that control of supply has already been lost. It’s far more economical and effective for the AFP and Australian Border Force to focus on supply reduction at a national and international level while reallocating that part of the state police budget to harm minimisation strategies. When money is tight, it’s important to spend it wisely.
To help make that move practical, the next step would be to decriminalise possession for personal use. That was the conclusion of the NSW’s own report into methamphetamine in the state so I’m not saying anything that far smarter people than me haven’t already said.
The current strategy clearly isn’t working so it must be time to try something new.
Meth Road by Conor Woodman (Allen & Unwin) is out now | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2021/mar/09/milestone-women-a-monument-to-w-leagues-enduring-persistence | Football | 2021-03-08T16:30:32.000Z | Samantha Lewis | Milestone women a monument to W-League’s enduring persistence | Samantha Lewis | Clare Polkinghorne has been here before. The afternoon sun in Canberra is warm and bright, the crowd is vocal and unforgiving, and Michelle Heyman is tearing away from her towards goal.
Polkinghorne flashes a desperate look towards the sideline official, whose flag has stayed down. The offside trap that she and her Brisbane Roar teammates had set to keep Heyman contained has been breached. The Roar captain watches forlornly as the Canberra United striker shoulders off her challenger, takes a touch and slots the ball low and hard across the goalkeeper.
Another goal and an assist followed that day for Heyman, as she helped Canberra win the 2011-12 W-League grand final against Brisbane. The game would book-end the most impressive season to date for the iconic forward and the club she became the face of: Heyman would win the Golden Boot while Canberra would become the first club to go through a W-League season undefeated.
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Polkinghorne knew the feeling, though. She was there when Queensland Roar won the double in the league’s inaugural season, defeating Canberra in the championship final. She was there when the Matildas became the first Australian team to win the Asian Cup in 2010. And she was there to become the first defender to win the Julie Dolan medal twice – once in 2013 and again in 2018.
Not much has changed in the almost 10 years since Polkinghorne threw up a hopeless, pale arm as Heyman strode away from her that afternoon in 2012. This past Sunday, the Roar captain watched on as her decade-long W-League rival and Matildas teammate did it again, muscling her opponent off the ball and sliding it past the goalkeeper. That moment – the run, the touch, the finish – was a kind of historical echo, containing within it all the resistance and persistence of not just the two iconic women of Heyman and Polkinghorne themselves, but also the league and the teams they have become synonymous with.
Now in their early 30s, both players celebrated characteristic milestones in the same game at the weekend: Heyman equalled the W-League’s all-time goal scoring record (70, along with Sam Kerr), while Polkinghorne became the first player in league history to tally 150 appearances for the same club (Heyman, for her part, currently sits at 98 appearances for Canberra).
These numbers are all the more impressive when you consider the footballing context within which both have worked for the past decade. Up until the W-League’s collective bargaining agreement in 2017, players in Australia’s top women’s league (including Matildas) did not have guaranteed salaries, nor did they have minimum medical or travel standards. Some players earned $600 a season, some earned nothing at all.
Clare Polkinghorne made her 150th appearance for Brisbane Roar at the weekend. Photograph: Robert Cianflone/Getty Images
Heyman and Polkinghorne entered the W-League when it was still an amateur competition, working and studying alongside training and playing at the highest domestic level. Their involvement with the national team allowed them to participate in the 2015 strike that put the off-field treatment and support for Australia’s top women footballers in the spotlight; a moment of collective empowerment that snowballed in the following years, resulting in higher standards across the women’s game and arguably contributing to the 2023 Women’s World Cup co-hosting rights.
Heyman’s return to Canberra this season after almost retiring from the game in 2019 is particularly illustrative of the irrepressible determination of a generation of women footballers upon whose shoulders the W-League and the national team now stands.
And yet, despite what has been achieved in recent years, the fact that the league’s veterans – Heyman, Polkinghorne, Teresa Polias, Gema Simon, Tameka Yallop, Leena Khamis, Ellie Brush, Tara Andrews, Caitlin Cooper – must still hold down full-time jobs is a stark reminder of how much work remains to be done to ensure their sacrifices are not in vain.
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These are women, like many women throughout history, who have had to work twice as hard for half as much recognition and reward as their male counterparts, simply because they are women. These are women who have been derided and dismissed for pursuing their dreams, who have had to carry the extra weight of not just existing in a male-dominated industry, but thriving there, too.
Monday marked the start of Female Football Week, in line with International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month, and the passion and perseverance of women athletes like Heyman and Polkinghorne ought to be celebrated in ways that extend beyond symbolic breakfasts and social media hashtags.
Their very careers – the fact that they are still here at all – act as their own kind of cenotaph to the individual and collective tenacity that has got the women’s game to where it is today. It is imperative now that their efforts are cemented in and remembered by genuine structural changes that will provide the next generation of Heymans and Polkinghornes with the opportunities that their foremothers had to struggle and scrap for. That, perhaps more than the record number of goals scored or games played, ought to be their lasting legacy; a monument that can last as long, if not longer, than they have. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/sep/21/70-of-brands-in-malaysia-and-singapore-dont-disclose-palm-oil-use | Guardian Sustainable Business | 2017-09-20T23:01:18.000Z | Laura Paddison | 70% of brands in Malaysia and Singapore don't disclose palm oil use | A new scorecard rating companies headquartered in Singapore and Malaysia on their palm oil sustainability commitments has found that the majority do not disclose any information on their sourcing practices.
The WWF Palm Oil Buyers’ Scorecard surveyed 47 companies, all household brands in Malaysia and Singapore, asking how far along the path they were to sourcing 100% certified sustainable palm oil. Only 16 disclosed any information.
“We were disappointed at the number of non responses,” said Denise Westerhout, the lead for WWF Malaysia’s sustainable markets programme, “because it doesn’t enable us to gauge how well the market is moving along and how much help it needs in raising awareness and understanding what we need to do”.
Two companies emerged as regional leaders in the scorecard, providing, according to WWF, “a clear indication that sourcing sustainable palm oil is possible”. Out of a total of 12 points, Denis Asia Pacific and Wildlife Reserves Singapore Group (WRS) scored 10 and nine respectively. Both have committed to sourcing 100% certified sustainable palm oil by 2018 and 2022 respectively.
'It’s up to us': why business needs to take a stand on palm oil
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The aim behind WRS’ decision to focus on palm oil sourcing was “guaranteeing the protection of habitat for wildlife threatened by unsustainable palm oil production”, said Sonja Luz, director of conservation, research and veterinary at WRS.
For Denis Asia Pacific, it was about “employee satisfaction, brand value and business opportunities in Europe, US and Australia where sustainable palm oil has become a market entry criteria,” according to Roy Teo, managing director of Ayam Brand at Denis Asia Pacific.
Market drivers are a key pressure point when it comes to engaging companies with sustainable palm oil sourcing, said Westerhout, “for example consumer pressure or regulatory demands from export markets.”
However, the majority of companies surveyed – 70% – either refused or ignored WWF’s request for information and do not publicly disclose their palm oil policies. And of the 15 which responded, half admitted to taking no action to source sustainable palm oil.
Benjamin Loh, WWF Malaysia’s sustainable palm oil manager, said some companies they talked to lacked internal capacity and expertise on sustainable palm oil. “So they don’t even have the infrastructure, or the facility, or the resources to comment on the scorecard,” he said.
Palm oil is an ingredient in a huge number of consumer goods, from biscuits to infant formula, which accounts for the much cited statistic that the oil is in 50% of all supermarket food products. It’s also a huge driver of deforestation, and can have negative consequences on the people and animals that live in areas of palm production.
While WWF has been ranking international companies on their palm oil commitments since 2009, this marks the first time the non-profit has focused solely on Malaysia and Singapore. The decision was made to take a regional view, said Westerhout, because local companies have a very low level of awareness about sustainable palm oil: “It would be unfair for us to compare them against the larger [international] companies that were far further down the road of sustainability.”
Palm oil accounts for 5-6% of the GDP of Malaysia, which is the world’s second largest producer of palm oil after Indonesia. Singapore is a base for the regional operations of major palm oil growers and traders and is also a financial hub for investment into these companies.
Both countries were affected by the choking haze pollution blown their way from neighbouring Indonesia, which experiences widespread forest fires every year thanks to illegal forest clearance, linked to the palm oil industry among others.
Indonesia's forest fires: everything you need to know
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The fires were particularly devastating in 2015 when the noxious smoke settled across swaths of south-east Asia, leading to regional shut downs in Malaysia and Singapore and forcing tens of thousands of residents to seek help for respiratory problems.
In response, WWF last year launched a new alliance in south east Asia aimed at boosting demand for sustainable palm oil and tackling haze pollution. Members include Unilever, Ayam Brand, Danone, Ikea and WRS. “The alliance sends a clear signal to consumers about which companies are committed to sustainability and which are not”, said Elaine Tan, CEO of WWF-Singapore.
However, there is still much work to be done on raising consumer awareness. In Malaysia, “there is very low to zero awareness on palm oil”, said Westerhout. “We need to help consumers better understand that their choices make a difference” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/mar/18/six-nations-2019-verdict-guardian-writers-highs-and-lows | Sport | 2019-03-18T14:50:35.000Z | Guardian sport | Six Nations 2019 verdict: Guardian writers on their highs and lows | Player of the tournament
Very few of the captains involved enjoyed a serene Six Nations but Wales’s indomitable Lion Alun Wyn Jones was at the heart of his country’s deserved success. Wales’s set-piece did not top many statistical lists but intangibles such as passion and soul are equally crucial. Three grand slams as a player has cemented his hall of fame inclusion and lending his tracksuit top to a shivering mascot on Saturday was a further touch of class. Robert Kitson
Six Nations’ team of the tournament: Wales and England dominate best XV
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Alun Wyn Jones. Wales’s Six Nations was defined by the steady nerves, strength of character and savvy game-management they showed in winning from behind against France and England, fighting off Scotland and bossing Ireland when the grand slam was on the line. Jones epitomises, and inspires, all three qualities. They could not have done it without him. Andy Bull
Alun Wyn Jones. Tempting to say Jonathan Davies, in part due to tipping him at the beginning, but the debate starts and ends with Wales’s colossal captain. Leadership, presence, inspiration – Jones has the lot. He has 134 caps now and it is staggering to think you could count the number of bad performances on one hand. Gerard Meagher
Liam Williams. Wales are twice the team when he plays at full-back. He rules the air and defends like no other. Only Stuart Hogg compares in attack. Why pick anyone else? Alun Wyn Jones, Josh Navidi and Hadleigh Parkes influential too. Tom Curry was England’s best player. Michael Aylwin
Alun Wyn Jones. On behalf of his Wales team, the supreme leader. Paul Rees
Match of the tournament
Impossible to beat Cardiff for atmosphere or Twickenham for thrills on a dramatic final weekend but England’s opening weekend demolition of Ireland in Dublin should not be entirely forgotten. If they ever want to remind themselves they can perform under pressure, this is the game to re-watch. RK
England’s win in Dublin was the best performance they’ve turned in since Eddie Jones took over, and if they could reach that peak every week they’d be the best team in the world. But the most enjoyable match I saw was Wales against Scotland. I’m still not really sure how the Welsh won it. AB
England 38 Scotland 38. Bonkers. Having to file copy on the final whistle put years on most journalists in attendance but it was worth it to witness one of the most remarkable Test matches in recent memory. England’s victory over Ireland wins in terms of best performance, Wales’s triumph over England for atmosphere, but the finale was something else entirely. GM
Ireland v England. England v Scotland was fairly remarkable, but it didn’t quite feel real. Dublin in round one did. Finest England performance under Eddie Jones. It has not been a great Six Nations. Wales superb in defence, England in attack, Scotland shot through with injury. Everyone else all over the place. MA
Maro Itoje celebrates during England’s win over Ireland in Dublin on the opening weekend. Photograph: Matthew Impey/Rex/Shutterstock
The opening night in Paris when Wales clambered off the ropes in the second half, the only one of the top three teams comfortable playing catch-up. PR
Favourite moment
Two moments: Henry Slade’s back-of-the-hand flick to set Jonny May away for his try against Scotland was world class but so, too was Finn Russell’s clever no-look pass that enabled Sam Johnson to slice through a shell-shocked English defensive line. Russell and Slade in the same backline really would be fun. RK
Alun Wyn Jones giving his tracksuit top to Wales’s shivering mascot as the teams lined up for the anthems in the wind and rain in Cardiff last Saturday. In terms of action, Henry Slade’s pass out of the back of his hand to Jonny May against Scotland. PR
Darcy Graham’s try against Wales at Murrayfield, for the way Finn Russell made it with an inside pass that only he seemed to see. You could just as well pick out dozens of touches Russell made in the games he played, good and bad. He’s the most inventive, unpredictable, fly-half to play in the Six Nations since his boss retired. AB
Deleting half of a 900-word match report at around 6.25pm on Saturday evening. Twenty-five minutes to write a new one. In Paris in round one the report needed to be filed five minutes before the end, but at least they had the decency to stop scoring with nine to go. MA
It is hard not be taken by how much Manu Tuilagi loves playing for England and his beaming smile after Henry Slade’s try in Dublin was the enduring image of a breathless opening weekend. Finn Russell’s no-look pass is a close second. GM
Biggest surprise
Having tipped Ireland before the tournament it was bizarre to watch so many good players playing with the zing, energy and imagination of a sack of spuds. Was it purely an All Blacks hangover thing or was there another underlying reason? Maybe they were playing a clever long game: the weight of public expectation heading into the World Cup will be much lighter now. RK
The difference between the Irish team that beat New Zealand in the autumn and the one that got trounced by Wales in the spring. Joe Schmidt has been making comparisons with the ups and downs England have been through, but given that it took Eddie Jones a year to get his team out of that slump, Schmidt’s argument is not all that reassuring. AB
That it is even up for debate whether the Six Nations stays on free-to-air TV considering 8.9million people are tuning in to watch Wales v England. Noteworthy mentions include neither Ireland nor France seeing fit to play a full‑back at full-back against England, how poor Ireland were in Cardiff and that France named the same 23 for consecutive matches. GM
Owen Farrell’s wobble. Wouldn’t expect it to last too long, but Farrell seems to be struggling with something at the moment. Maybe he doesn’t like being captain, maybe he’s not altogether sold on playing fly-half. England will need their most influential player to rediscover himself soon. MA
That Wales were ranked as outsiders to win the title. Despite his impressive record, Warren Gatland has too often been underestimated. PR
2020 will be …
The survival of the fittest. Any team bouncing straight into a tough Six Nations campaign after the World Cup without breaking stride will be doing incredibly well. By then, hopefully, there will be a better structured global season in place that does not merely pay lip service to player welfare. RK
Alun Wyn Jones the pain-defying warrior needed for more Wales battles
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The same again in many ways, as intense, entertaining, and unpredictable as this tournament always is and yet very different in others, with new coaches in charge of Wales and Ireland, as well, you guess, as a couple of others, and, I’d wager, a world champion team among the contenders. AB
Completely different without Warren Gatland (we think), Joe Schmidt, maybe Eddie Jones and someone new – possibly with a clue as to what they are doing – at the helm of France. It feels like this year’s competition was the end of an era, roll on the next one. After the small matter of the World Cup, that is. GM
Wales’s first as world champions, Warren Gatland’s first as England coach, Eddie Jones’s first in charge of France. Ryan Wilson and Billy Vunipola to kick the CVC Calcutta Cup down Prince’s Street and World Rugby the can of growing the global game. MA
A leap year into the unknown. There will be no Warren Gatland, who says he will resist any overture from England, or Joe Schmidt. And, perhaps, no Eddie Jones, Jacques Brunel and Conor O’Shea. PR | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/mar/08/head-of-uk-science-body-calls-for-creative-disagreement-after-libel-row | Science | 2024-03-08T12:16:00.000Z | Fiona Harvey | Head of UK science body calls for ‘creative disagreement’ after Michelle Donelan libel row | The head of the UK government science body at the centre of a libel scandal has called for “creative disagreement” and a higher standard of public discourse, with less polarisation and blame between scientists and politicians.
Ottoline Leyser, the chief executive of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), said that with so much at stake for the planet and given the need for science to propel a transition to a low-carbon economy, it was imperative for policymakers, scientists and the public to be able to communicate.
“We’ve got to work harder to build higher-quality spaces for public debate and disagreement, [for] engaged debate where people listen to each other,” she said in an interview. “[We need to] create environments, situations, where people feel comfortable being challenged, where disagreement is considered a good thing. That is a high-quality research environment. Creative disagreement is absolutely the essence of what we need.”
Leyser came under fire last year from Michelle Donelan, the science secretary, who on the social media platform X accused two academics – Prof Kate Sang, of Heriot-Watt University, and Kamna Patel, of University College London – of “sharing extremist views”. Donelan expressed “disgust and outrage” that they had been appointed to an expert advisory group to Research England, which falls under UKRI.
The minister published a heated letter to Leyser, who undertook an inquiry into the accusations. The investigation found no wrongdoing and Sang took libel action against Donelan. On Wednesday, as the Guardian interviewed Leyser, news of the libel settlement was made public, with Donelan forced to apologise and withdraw her remarks. It also emerged that the taxpayer had paid the £15,000 costs of Donelan’s legal defence.
The distress this episode has caused Leyser is apparent but she remains stoical under fire and tries not to take it personally. “When you’re doing a job like this, you’re wearing a hat called CEO, and that’s the thing that people are debating,” she said.
What would she do to tackle the polarisation? “I’m tempted to say ban Twitter,” she joked. “But that is definitely not the answer. It is important that it is easy for a wide ranges of voices to be heard.”
She added: “There is a serious element of that, which is the quality of public discourse, which has become very captured by social media as a means of interaction.”
That could cause problems, she said. “Social media is great, it’s a very empowering thing, but it makes it easy for people’s anger to amplify.”
People in the public eye should be able to debate better, she added, without singling out individuals. “If you’re academics, if you’re in business, if you’re in government, we’re actually all of us in really quite privileged positions. In the context of research and innovation, we ought to have the tools to engage in these very constructive quality points of discussion, of disagreement.”
Leyser acknowledged that the relationship between scientific research and the governments that pay for it would always be fraught, but wants all involved to seek more constructive ways of approaching problems.
“An organisation like mine, which has inherently a role of sitting at the interface between government and the research and innovation system, our job is to support a fantastic research and innovation system in the UK. That system has to be one to which everyone can contribute and from which everyone benefits,” she said.
“Sitting in that nexus, you can’t help but be caught up in a whole variety of blame narratives of one sort or another, and polarised views. Parts of [the communities involved] are very, very angry. I understand why, and anger is a natural human emotion, but actually orchestrating change from a position of anger is not very easy. It drives people away.”
Leyser, a prominent biologist before she took on this role, will leave UKRI in June 2025 and the government is already seeking a successor. There have been strong hints that ministers are looking for a businessperson rather than a scientist this time. Some scientists have voiced concern that the government is attempting to fill the position with one of its supporters before the general election, in an echo of recent rows over other public appointments, including that of the chair of the Climate Change Committee.
Leyser would not be drawn on the choice. “It’s less about whether you’re from an academic research background or a business background, and more about how you think about the collective endeavour [of innovation]. Businesses have a collective endeavour,” she said. “On the other hand, there’s a complete flipside to that: research in an academic system is more open-ended precisely because it’s not directed to any particular goal, and is free-flowing. So you have an opportunity to be more disruptive.”
She was adamant on one point: whoever took over would have to focus closely on the UK’s target to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. About £800m of UKRI’s annual spend of about £8bn is devoted to green ends, though the figure is hard to judge exactly as so many aspects of research are interconnected. Leyser sees massive opportunity in areas such as the role of AI in the transition to a low-carbon world.
She said it was wrong to think the UK may have missed the boat to be a leader in low-carbon innovation. “The huge opportunities, and the huge imperative for innovation in everything that we do [to reach net zero], means that there will be no boats to be missed, because so many boats will have to sail to make this work.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/nov/02/the-guardian-thursday-quiz-general-knowledge-topical-news-trivia-132 | Life and style | 2023-11-02T11:00:38.000Z | Martin Belam | Lost swans, unbroken records and a seatless underground – take the Thursday quiz | One silver lining in the cloud that is Thursday is that it is time for a quiz. Fifteen vaguely topical questions on news, current affairs and quirky things, laced with a few jokes and the occasional pointed observation about Nick Clegg. It is just for fun so there are no prizes, but we love to hear how you got on in the comments. Not you, though, Clegg. Not you.
The Thursday quiz, No 132
1.Police officers were called in to usher a swan back to the River Avon after it ended up among shoppers in Bath city centre, echoing a famous scene in which of Edgar Wright’s movies?
Shaun of the Dead
Hot Fuzz
The Sparks Brothers
Baby Driver
Reveal
2.What is going to be shot from the air at the Kosciuszko national park in New South Wales because they are doing so much damage to the park’s threatened wildlife and ecosystems?
Kangaroos
Quolls
Horses
Some very naughty miniature dachshunds
Reveal
3.A silver ticket from 1766 promising free shows for life is up for auction. Which theatre has said it will honour the 257-year-old promise?
Bristol Old Vic
Westcliff-on-Sea Palace Theatre
Bath Theatre Royal
Camden Dingwalls
Reveal
4.That otter (not pictured) that kept stealing surfboards in Santa Cruz has had a baby. Awwwwww. But what is the otter's rather unusual name?
01
811
8055
841
Reveal
5.The Pan American Games (mascot pictured) got excited when the world record was smashed in an event, only for organisers to discover they had measured the distance wrong. Which event?
Women’s 20km walk
Women's marathon
Women's discus throw
Women's long jump
Reveal
6.In the UK, BBC Radio 2's mid-morning show has lost 1.3 million listeners since Ken Bruce left. Careless. Who took over from Bruce?
Rylan
Graham Norton
Scott Mills
Vernon Kay
Reveal
7.Which EU member state has banned under-18s from the World Press Photo exhibition in case – SHOCK! HORROR! – they see one set of images with an LGBTQ+ theme?
Poland
Greece
Italy
Hungary
Reveal
8.It is the anniversary of Expedition 1 docking and the first humans arriving on the International Space Station, which has had people on it continuously ever since. What year did Expedition 1 dock?
1991
1994
1997
2000
Reveal
9.An artist has collected 6,000 copies of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code and recycled them into a new edition of George Orwell’s surveillance dystopia novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Who?
Tracy Emin
David Shrigley
Banksy
Ron from Sparks
Reveal
10.In the UK, which Labour politician (not pictured) has admitted they 'should’ve done better' after their most recent book was accused of containing plagiarism?
Angela Rayner
Bridget Phillipson
Rachel Reeves
Yvette Cooper
Reveal
11.It is Stefanie Powers' birthday today. Happy birthday, Stef, if you'll forgive the Thursday quiz's familiarity, and also the fact we didn't find a picture of you in time. What was the name of her character in Hart to Hart (almost pictured)?
Judith Hart
Jolene Hart
Jennifer Hart
Romanadvoratrelundar Hart
Reveal
12.There have been calls in Spain this week for retailers to stop selling which type of Halloween costumes?
Sexy nurse
Sexy nun
Sexy Christoper Columbus
Sexy feral hog
Reveal
13.Also in Spain, the heir to the throne has pledged allegiance to the constitution in a coming of age ceremony that sounds like something from the 16th century but nevertheless happened in 2023. What is their name?
Doña Victoria de Marichalar y Borbón
Leonor, Princess of Asturias
Infanta Elena, Duchess of Lugo
Jabe of the Forest of Cheem
Reveal
14.The former UK deputy prime minister and latter-day Facebook ethics fig-leaf Nick Clegg has likened concerns over AI to what?
The 1970s moral panic about recreational drug use
The 1980s moral panic about video games
The 1990s moral panic about dangerous dogs
Signing up to five years of austerity politics and ensuring your party faced a massive wipe-out at the next election
Reveal
15.Finally, here is Willow, the official dog of the Guardian Thursday quiz, enjoying an open-topped sightseeing bus tour of Bristol. But which city is going to be introducing seatless carriages on its metro to increase capacity?
Beijing
Mumbai
Seoul
Tokyo
Reveal
If you really do think there has been an egregious error in one of the questions or answers – and can show your working – feel free to email [email protected], but remember the quiz master’s word is final and he’s busy watching Nadine Shah’s Topless Mother. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/sep/19/labour-mp-appalled-that-rosie-duffield-feels-unable-to-attend-conference | Politics | 2021-09-19T14:37:46.000Z | Andrew Sparrow | Labour MP ‘appalled’ that Rosie Duffield feels unable to attend conference | A senior Labour MP has said he was “appalled” to discover that his colleague Rosie Duffield felt unable to attend the party’s annual conference after she was made to feel unwelcome because of her views on trans women.
Duffield, who received threats and was branded transphobic after liking a tweet saying women were people with a cervix, has confirmed she will not be attending the conference because of the controversy generated by her remarks.
Pat McFadden, a shadow Treasury minister, told Sky News on Sunday he was appalled that Duffield did not feel able to attend the conference and said the party had to find a way of allowing people to debate difficult issues without resorting to abuse.
Duffield, the MP for Canterbury, has a record of expressing gender-critical views. She used an interview with the Sunday Times to say the row about her stance – in which she has been fiercely criticised by trans activists and abused online – had left her exhausted and at times frightened.
Starmer ‘must win over soft Tory voters for election success’
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But she said she “mainly took the decision [not to attend conference] not because I really thought I was going to be attacked, but because I did not want to be the centre of attention”.
Sadiq Khan, the Labour mayor of London, said he thought somebody who professed the same stance as Duffield would be welcome at the Labour conference.
In an interview with the BBC’s Andrew Marr, he said: “It’s unacceptable that anybody feels unsafe going to Labour party conference, whether it’s Rosie Duffield, whether it’s journalists or anybody else. We must be able to have this conversation in a civilised way.”
Khan, who like McFadden did not endorse Duffield’s views on trans women, went on: “One out of four trans teenagers tries to kill themselves. These are one of the most vulnerable members of our society and it’s really important we have this debate in a cool, calm, respectful way.”
In a separate interview, Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, defended the party’s decision to ban a member from standing as a parliamentary candidate for saying women had to be female.
While refusing to comment on the particular case, Davey said: “The issue that we have been really clear [on] is that a trans woman is a woman and a trans man is a man. That is the issue that we’re fighting on. We believe that trans rights are human rights.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/05/chicago-gun-violence-bloody-weekend | US news | 2019-08-05T21:45:37.000Z | Eric Lutz | Chicago suffers bloody weekend as gun violence leaves seven dead | As deadly mass shootings devastated communities in Texas and Ohio and reignited calls for lawmakers to act on gun reform, Chicago experienced yet another bloody weekend – suffering the kind of violence that has come to be treated by the nation as almost routine in this city.
Seven people were killed and 46 wounded here, including in two multiple shootings on the west side. The first of the shootings, in the Douglas Park neighborhood early on Sunday, left seven wounded; the second, in Lawndale hours later, wounded another seven and killed one.
“As a city, we have to stand up and do a hell of a lot more than we’ve done in a very long time,” Mayor Lori Lightfoot said in an address on the violence over the weekend.
Can Chicago's new mayor stop the bloodshed from gun violence?
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“There are no adequate words at this point,” she said of the violence.
Often lost in national conversations about guns are shootings occurring every day in places like Chicago, which has continued to see high levels of violence, mostly affecting its predominantly black and brown south and west sides.
“In Chicago, it’s just another weekend,” Father Michael Pfleger, a south side pastor and anti-violence activist, said of the national response to the city’s deadly violence. “It gets forgotten and pushed to the side.”
Where mass shootings tend to command widespread media coverage, Pfleger said, violence in Chicago tends not to make national headlines. In part, he believes it’s become an “old story” after years of the city suffering from a devastatingly high murder rate. But it also has to do with the fact that those being affected by the city’s scourge of violence are mostly black and brown Chicagoans, he said.
“Black and brown life being taken by gun violence is not something America has been concerned about for a long time,” the St Sabina pastor said.
“It needs to get the same attention,” Pfleger continued. “We have 47 people shot and seven killed. If that happened over in Iraq, that’s all anyone would be talking about.”
To erase everyday violence from the national conversation about gun control is to lose sight of the scope of the problem, according to Kris Brown, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.
“We do that at our own peril,” Brown told the Guardian. “It’s not routine for the people who live in these communities, and it doesn’t have to be accepted as normal.”
As studies have shown, mass shootings like those in Texas and Ohio represent just a fraction of gun deaths in America. Suicides and other homicides account for the majority of firearm-related deaths.
“We need to look at gun violence as the public health epidemic it is,” Brown said. “We have to change the cultural narrative around guns.”
Doing so can be challenging, though, given the unwillingness by Republicans to act on commonsense gun reforms.
“The shootings that occurred this past weekend in Chicago are certainly not taken for granted by the neighborhoods and families that experience them all too often,” Rob Nash, chair of the board of directors for the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence, said in an email interview. “The only people who have accepted gun violence as being routine are public policymakers who refuse to take action to stop it.”
Brown said the Brady campaign was continuing to work on changing the national narrative about guns, and Pfleger is organizing a national demonstration in Washington DC, in September in an effort to pressure lawmakers into action. “They’re not gonna just do it,” Pfleger said of gun reform. “They have to be pushed.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/theatreblog/2015/may/06/effects-of-live-satellite-broadcasts-national-theatre-rsc | Stage | 2015-05-06T07:01:07.000Z | Lyn Gardner | To beam or not to beam? How live broadcasts are changing theatre | The audience for a single live broadcast of a Shakespeare production by the RSC is about the same as the audience for an entire year at the Royal Shakespeare theatre in Stratford. That’s according to the RSC’s deputy artistic director Erica Whyman, who was speaking at the recent British Theatre in Hard Times conference. “The upside is so massive and the exponential reach so great that we can change who the audience is,” said Whyman. But she also sounded a note of caution, and added that it is crucial for both the RSC and the National Theatre to navigate some of the questions raised by such broadcasts. One (small) idea in the pipeline is for a trailer to be shown before the broadcasts, to remind audiences that there is live theatre in the vicinity.
Why digital theatre poses no threat to live performance
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Broadcasts have significant benefits for many audiences, but are no substitute for going to a live show. And neither do they let the big, well-funded companies off the hook when it comes to their commitments to tour the UK. As actor and director Samuel West remarked at the conference: “The bottom line is that streaming is a very nice ‘and’, but it should never be an ‘or’.”
But the rise of theatrical broadcasts raises complex questions about how theatre is distributed and its repertoire. Last year, in response to a piece that I had written about digital broadcasts, Elizabeth Freestone of Pentabus wrote about the detrimental effect of NT Live broadcasts on the touring network, and the dates now available to small companies. That effect has only increased with the growing number of “Encore” screenings – or “NT Dead”, as I’ve heard them described. In these straitened times, it’s not surprising that venues will book a screening over a live performance if they know that one will make more money than the other.
In a speech to the Westminster Media Forum last summer, Freestone expanded on the difficulties faced by touring companies, and pointed out that, yet again, British theatre is failing to operate on a level playing field. “When my productions are beamed from a village hall in Herefordshire into the Cottesloe, and when the National Theatre takes to the stage in Clee St Margaret village hall, that’s when we’ll know we’re all in the same game.”
While research published in 2014 suggests that NT Live has a neutral effect on theatregoing regionally, and may even have promoted it in London, the samples it is based on are small. We desperately need more research to understand the effects of broadcasts on both the national and local theatre ecologies.
What live theatre screenings mean for small companies
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Also, we need to understand their effect on the theatrical repertoire. I’ve certainly heard of venues cancelling productions that they had pencilled in, after productions of the same play were beamed from London into their own theatres or to cinemas nearby. If audiences have seen Helen McCrory as Medea streamed from the National Theatre, will they want to see their local theatre’s production, perhaps less than a year later? Joe Sumsion of the Dukes theatre in Lancaster points to the fact that if a London revival of A View from the Bridge has just been broadcast, then it must have an effect on a touring production of the same play, however good that touring production might be: “The challenge for visiting or touring theatre is how to make it of equal value for audiences as the NT Live stuff.”
It is. Nobody is questioning the benefits that theatre broadcasts can bring, but we urgently need more wide-ranging research on its effects on audience and venue behaviour beyond London.
The Royal and Derngate in Northampton ran an initiative for first-time ballet-goers, whereby they could watch a screening of the Bolshoi in action and then go to a live dance performance in the Derngate. That kind of thinking helps broaden audiences, but it doesn’t come cheap, and perhaps some percentage of the growing profits from NT Live and Live from Stratford-upon-Avon could help fund such initiatives at theatres around the country? Theatre broadcasts are clearly a financial golden egg, but we need to ensure that we don’t kill the goose – the live theatre, including touring theatre – that laid them in the first place. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/nov/20/priti-patel-boris-johnson-bullying-report-findings | Politics | 2020-11-20T19:12:07.000Z | Heather Stewart | Boris Johnson adviser quits after being overruled on Priti Patel bullying report | Boris Johnson drove his own ethics adviser to quit on Friday as he ripped up the rulebook by refusing to sack Priti Patel despite a formal investigation finding evidence that she bullied civil servants.
After a Cabinet Office inquiry, Sir Alex Allan said the home secretary’s conduct “amounted to behaviour that can be described as bullying” – noting instances of shouting and swearing, and finding that she had breached the ministerial code, even if unintentionally.
Johnson seized on that caveat, seemingly dismissing the report, by insisting he judged the code had not been breached – and he had full confidence in Patel.
He then urged Tory colleagues in a WhatsApp message to “form a square around the Prittster”.
In a statement issued at the same time as the prime minister’s decision, Allan, who also served Johnson’s two predecessors, said: “I feel that it is right that I should now resign from my position as the prime minister’s independent adviser on the code.”
Late on Friday night, Downing Street failed to deny reports that the prime minister had tried to persuade Allan to tone down his conclusions to find there was no clear evidence of bullying. A No 10 spokesman said: “As you would expect, the prime minister spoke to Sir Alex Allan to further his understanding of the report. Sir Alex’s conclusions are entirely his own.”
The shadow home office minister, Holly Lynch, said the “initial, unedited report” must be published in full and called for an independent investigation. “These are serious allegations that suggest Boris Johnson tried to interfere with an investigation into bullying accusations against one of his closest political allies,” the Labour MP said.
Dave Penman, the general secretary of the FDA union for senior civil servants, said Johnson’s decision to ignore the report’s findings meant “no civil servant will now have confidence that any complaint raised about ministerial behaviour will be dealt with fairly or impartially”.
Jonathan Evans, the chair of the committee on standards in public life, called Allan’s resignation “deeply concerning” and added: “This episode raises serious questions about the effectiveness of the current arrangements for investigating and responding to breaches of the ministerial code.”
Patel later apologised, saying in a broadcast interview on Friday evening: “I’m sorry that my behaviour has upset people and I have never intentionally set out to upset anyone. I work with thousands of brilliant civil servants every single day and we work together, day in day out, to deliver on the agenda of this government and I’m absolutely sorry for anyone that I have upset.”
0:30
Priti Patel: I'm sorry that my behaviour has upset people – video
However, Sir Philip Rutnam, who resigned as the Home Office’s permanent secretary after accusing Patel of a “vicious and orchestrated briefing campaign” against him, added to the pressure on Patel by challenging a claim in the bullying report that she had been given no feedback about her behaviour by civil servants, and was therefore unaware of the impact.
“This is not correct,” Rutnam said. “As early as August 2019, the month after her appointment, she was advised that she must not shout and swear at staff. I advised her on a number of further occasions between September 2019 and February 2020 about the need to treat staff with respect, and to make changes to protect health, safety and wellbeing.”
In another remarkable admission, he said he was “at no stage asked to contribute evidence to the Cabinet Office investigation”.
Johnson’s decision to stand by Patel provoked fury among opposition MPs.
The Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer, said: “If I were prime minister, the home secretary would have been removed from her job.
“It is hard to imagine another workplace in the UK where this behaviour would be condoned by those at the top.”
No 10’s determination to brazen out the row has echoes of the prime minister’s handling of Dominic Cummings’ lockdown trip to Barnard Castle. A statement from Downing Street insisted: “The prime minister has full confidence in the home secretary and considers this matter now closed.”
Conservative MPs largely rallied behind Patel, the MP for Witham, who was a leading figure in the Vote Leave campaign alongside Johnson and the Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove.
Johnson’s new press secretary, Allegra Stratton, said of the prime minister: “He loathes bullying. He takes it very seriously and recognises that it is very difficult for people to come forward and raise concerns. It’s a brave thing to do, he knows that, and he believes that this process has been thorough. But it is also his responsibility to look at … the conclusions in the round.”
Asked about the “Prittster” message, she said it reflected an acknowledgment that “this is a testing day for her”.
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The decision came on day five of Johnson’s “reset”, after a tumultuous period in No 10 last week that ended with the resignations of his two key aides, Cummings and Lee Cain.
But the outcome of the Patel inquiry, which has been sitting on Johnson’s desk for weeks, is unlikely to reassure civil servants, who may have hoped for a letup in the “hard rain” Cummings had promised would fall on Whitehall.
Johnson did not appear in public himself on Friday, with the health and social care secretary, Matt Hancock, fronting a Downing Street press conference.
Asked what the point was of having an independent adviser on ministerial standards if the prime minister ignored the advice when it was “one of his mates in the firing line”, Hancock said: “The prime minister has been clear that he doesn’t think that the home secretary has broken the ministerial code.”
Rutnam has lodged an employment tribunal claim against Patel under whistleblowing laws, claiming he faced constructive dismissal after informing the Cabinet Office of the home secretary’s behaviour.
Downing Street only published a one-and-a-half page summary of Allan’s report, which included criticism of the culture in the Home Office, a notoriously dysfunctional department. Patel’s predecessor, Amber Rudd, resigned over the Windrush scandal.
“The civil service itself needs to reflect on its role during this period,” Allan’s report said. “The Home Office was not as flexible as it could have been in responding to the home secretary’s requests and direction. She has – legitimately – not always felt supported by the department.”
In its statement, Downing Street said: “The prime minister notes Sir Alex’s advice that many of the concerns now raised were not raised at the time and that the home secretary was unaware of the impact that she had. He is reassured that the home secretary is sorry for inadvertently upsetting those with whom she was working.”
It added: “As the arbiter of the code, having considered Sir Alex’s advice and weighing up all the factors, the prime minister’s judgment is that the ministerial code was not breached.”
The chair of the home affairs select committee, Yvette Cooper, who repeatedly pressed Rudd over Windrush, called on the government to publish Allan’s report in full.
“The issues raised by Sir Alex Allan’s inquiry are extremely serious, and his resignation in the light of the prime minister’s response makes them doubly so. I am therefore asking the cabinet secretary to provide the home affairs select committee with a copy of the full report as a first step so that we can consider the issues it raises on misconduct, bullying and the operations of the Home Office,” she said.
“Public servants working in government departments must never be bullied by ministers or treated with disrespect, and they need to know there are standards and safeguards in place to prevent that happening.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/jul/21/fiction.features1 | Books | 2002-07-21T02:02:54.000Z | Adam Mars-Jones | Observer review: As It Happened by David Storey | As It Happened
by David Storey
Jonathan Cape £17.99, pp420
Writing the first chapter of a novel is like putting your flat on the market and preparing it for viewing. Lucid grammar, helpful punctuation, clear presentation of person and event - these are the equivalents in prose of fresh flowers, bread and coffee smells, the string quartet on the landing.
Starting to read As It Happened, on the other hand, is like venturing into a dark hallway crammed with bicycle frames, feral cats and mysterious boxes of treasure that the previous occupant could never bear to throw away. Among the things David Storey has hoarded are commas, brackets and present participles. About main verbs he is less sentimental. This, for instance, is the last sentence of his first chapter: 'Sobriety, verging on unease, the object of Maddox's morning, so much having preceded him until this moment - a moment (glancing at Rachel's drawing above his head) when it felt as if he were about to reinvent himself.'
Grammar is loose to the point of non-existence. Sentences routinely run out of structure about halfway and continue with tacked-on phrases like 'he long of the opinion...' Phrases in apposition to the whole sentence, or modelled after the Latin ablative absolute (as in Deo volente), are hard going in English because their relationship to the whole is so indeterminate. Latin writers used the ablative absolute often - but then Latin had an ablative. Latin words bear the marks of their case, as English words do not. The meaning of an English sentence is socially constructed, as it were - its internal links are looser, the hierarchy subtler.
The whole experience of reading a sentence like the following is of waiting for sense (or a verb) to emerge: 'Placed by their father in the seats of his cars, lined in an intoxicatingly scented row behind his showroom windows, the light reflecting off their bonnets - mudguards, roofs - the "massage", as he called the paintwork, the odour of metal, oil, leather, polish sensationally, entrancingly, erotically combined, the garage and showroom fronting the old Roman road leading in from the south, "straight as an arrow" his father's claim on his own behalf printed in lower-case gold letters across his principal showroom window: an allusion to probity, speed, openness (honesty, reliability, common sense), proven Maddoxian traits.'
Something has been placed in the seats of some cars - but what is it? The only possible candidates seem to be light, 'massage', odour, garage and showroom. They also seem impossible candidates. Place your bets, ladies and gentlemen. The field is wide open. But shouldn't grammar eliminate at least some of the guesswork?
Punctuation can either help or hinder. Though these humble marks can work as lubricants of a sentence, they turn into adhesives when used to excess. In a sentence of 36 words starting on page 41, Storey uses 13 commas, two dashes and two colons. That's a punctuation mark roughly every two words. Skilful punctuation articulates sentence structure, inept punctuation masks it.
It isn't a great labour to restore flow to a sentence like the one that begins: ' She, at the first meeting, he had, initially, hardly noticed...' This gives, easily enough, 'He had hardly noticed she at first meeting...' What could possibly be wrong with that?
The book begins with a description of the life-drawing class attended by Matthew Maddox, an art historian half-way between breakdown and redemption by new love. The reader, on top of any other difficulties, must struggle to distinguish roughly a dozen characters. There's Rachel, Ailsa, Arthur, Mary, Hannah, Ruth, Maria, Susannah, Duncan, Neil, Jeanette, Sheba and 'Harold'. One is plain and high-breasted, another describes himself as 'asexual', one was wounded at Arnhem, and so on.
The only excuse for starting a novel with this kind of confusing group scene, rather than something more intimate, must be that they are important characters who play a large enough part in what follows to outweigh the disorientation they cause by all being introduced at once.
Not so. After page 11 Sheba, Jeanette, Neil, Duncan and the rest disappear for 340 pages. By the time some of them come back, which they do for only half a dozen pages anyway, as if for a curtain-call after hours of hanging around in the green room, only the most masochistic and memorious reader will remember whose feet were arthritic, who was a jeweller's widow, who had the animalistic expression.
In fact, the opening group scene is uncharacteristic, although chapter two describes a different meeting and introduces another seven tertiary characters. Most of the novel is in the form of dialogues or ruminations on the big questions - life, death, murder, madness, guilt, art.
Sometimes the questions are rhetorical, posed by Maddox or his intimates: 'Is inertia sufficient to hold one back [from suicide]? Should we exercise our option to pre-empt? Are we little, if nothing more than a neurological function, triggered and controlled by chemicals which, fortuitously or otherwise, may or may not be there? Are we merely a mutation which, by repetition, has acquired a "spetial" [sic] authenticity?' The grammatical fog has cleared a little by this point and the underlying pretentiousness shines strongly through.
No book as unreadable as As It Happened would be published without surgery if it came from an unknown writer - unless all the reading is now done by machines, like so much of the proofreading. Spellcheck programs on computers eliminate only (some) impossible words, not incorrect ones. So, for instance, Maddox's uncle starts off being 'macaronic' - whose dictionary meaning is, of verse, 'written in more than one language'. Twenty-five pages later he's a 'macaroni', a dandy (this is presumably the meaning intended throughout) and finally on page 260 he's 'the St Albans macaroon', a kind of almond biscuit.
A stringent editing process at Jonathan Cape could only be less damaging than the revelation that a previous Booker Prize-winner doesn't currently write correct or communicative prose. As it is, no one in-house can be surprised if there isn't much interest in a property so badly in need of doing up. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/25/turkey-switches-from-arabic-script-to-latin-alphabet-1928 | World news | 2023-10-25T11:53:07.000Z | Richard Nelsson | Turkey switches from Arabic script to the Latin alphabet – archive, 1928 | A new alphabet for Turkish: Latin characters in writing
11 July 1928
A new alphabet for Turkish has been unanimously selected by the Latin Characters Commission sitting at Angora. The invention of new letters has been avoided. Some letters can bear accents to denote the extra sounds needed. All Turkish words can be written with the new alphabet.
The Commission is beginning to draw up a dictionary giving an official Latin orthography to which all must conform. Grammatical rules are made uniform by eliminating the special formations of Persian and Arabic words that still encumber Turkish, and making them follow the rules of Turkish proper.
Atatürk elected first president of Turkey - archive, 1923
Read more
Editorial: the Turkish language
23 July 1928
The machiavellian policy, initiated at the Tower of Babel, has always been distressingly successful in keeping the nations of the world apart. The problem of intercourse in different languages has been further complicated by a variety of scripts. Thus the decision of the more or less philosophic despotism reigning in Turkey to substitute Latin characters for Arabic ones is a step, even if a small one, towards the unity of nations. According to reports it is hoped that all education will be Latinised in its script in the course of seven years, while newspapers will be compelled to begin the transformation in some of their columns as soon as the law is finally passed. The Turkish government has a short way with conservative opinion, and one presumes that not many years hence it will be as dangerous to put up a notice in the traditional and highly decorative Arabic characters as it now is to wear a fez.
Continue reading.
The new Turkish language: aim of the reform
From our correspondent
5 September 1928
Constantinople
The whole of Turkey is mobilising to learn to read and write in the new alphabet in the shortest time possible. An immense change has come over the official view of the matter since the Linguistic Commission set to work, and from 15 years, which the reform was expected to take, the time allowed has fallen to two years. Provincial administrations, government departments, banks, and commercial institutions are all organising courses for their employees, and in many cases are offering bonuses for a rapid mastery of the new script.
The script itself has been made as simple as possible, and the rules which govern spelling and grammar are far easier than those of the Arabic script. The alphabet consists of twenty consonants, eight vowels, and three principal signs – the apostrophe to mark a pause in the middle of a word, the hyphen, which will be very frequent and will establish the separations of the roots of verbs from their terminations and other separations, and the circumflex accent. One peculiarity is that there are two i’s, one of which is spelt without a dot. Otherwise the letters are all familiar Latin European letters. As for spelling, it is to be purely phonetic, and is to follow the Constantinople pronunciation.
The Turkish language reform illustrated with a newspaper, 1928. Photograph: Sueddeutsche Zeitung Photo/Alamy
The reform is regarded under a number of important aspects. Not only is it to produce a general literacy throughout the country instead of the 10% of literacy which exists at present, and which Kemal Pasha has indicted as a disgrace to any modern nation, but it is to introduce the nation to a new culture. It is urged that the Turkish literary and artistic genius has always been held back from a proper self-expression by being cast in the Arabic and Persian moulds, which were really foreign to it. The national literature, it is said, has consisted of thin imitations of those Oriental models belonging to another civilisation and that a civilisation which, owing to its inherent faults of fanaticism and tyranny, soon became decadent and obsolete. So the Turkish Conservatives and Orientalists are confronted with the argument that the artistic sterility of Turkey is directly due to its unfortunate linguistic inheritance. Modern civilisation, it is pointed out, needs a new terminology, and it is useless to try to adapt the Arabic script to it. The Turkish nation must have a malleable means of expressing modern scientific needs and philosophic theories, and cannot continue to torture into new shapes the fixed and inadequate Arabic letters which were devised for quite another epochs
The change of alphabet, then, is regarded as the final step away from the old Oriental culture and as the means of assimilating all the elements of the one civilisation which by its practical results has justified itself and leads the world – namely, European civilisation.
Continue reading.
Turkey: the new alphabet
From our correspondent
3 November 1928
Constantinople
The voting of the new alphabet at the first Assembly sitting yesterday is regarded as marking the elimination of the last Oriental aspect from Turkish life. One deputy says: “The old script hung round twentieth-century Turkey like a medieval soutane; it was the only remaining element of the so-called picturesqueness which westerners found so amusing. We do not want people to amuse themselves at our expense. Arabic writing has gone where the dervish’s bonnet has gone – namely, to the museum. It is not right to consider the matter merely as linguistic. Arabic writing made us a kind of Perso-Arabic colony. Our brain, our thoughts were not our own: our tongue was paralysed. National culture will now develop in an atmosphere of linguistic freedom.”
Nicholas Birch: Turkey’s proverbial problem
Read more | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2007/mar/02/womenfilmdirectorsascandal | Film | 2007-03-02T16:16:41.000Z | Kate Kellaway | Women film directors: a scandalous rarity | Gurinder Chadha's Bend It Like Beckham was a commercial hit.
About 10 days ago, I went to chair a discussion of women film directors at the ICA, with Gurinder Chadha, Antonia Bird, Vicky Jewson, Carine Adler and Gabby Dellal, for the Observer Review. These women are in a tiny minority. In Britain, only seven percent of film directors are female, and in 2005, only seven per cent of the 250 top-grossing films in America were made by women. These are scandalous statistics, and I can't help thinking that if this imbalance were the case in most other professions, there would probably be some attempt to legislate against it. Why is it that film-making continues to be the most unbalanced career in the arts?
When I got to the ICA, the women, squeezed on to a balcony together, were having their picture taken - a crowded balcony scene - and they looked great, smiling to the camera. It was as if they had known each other for years, which actually, for most of them, wasn't the case at all. But, as the conversation would reveal, there were lots of reasons not to be smiling from ear to ear.
Two things really surprised me about the discussion. The first was the way in which being a woman was a subject that, at first, they all resisted talking about but which kept creeping its way back in and dominating everything else. The women did and didn't want to talk about it. I wondered what that inescapability says about being a woman director - or just about being a woman. They kept coming back to questions of gender, and the difficulties of working in a male-dominated industry. I would love to have heard more about the ways in which being a woman might be an advantage. But perhaps, in this context, is just isn't?
I was also really surprised to hear that Hollywood may be less sexist than we think. According to Bird and Chadha, when they were working in Hollywood they felt far more supported than they ever have done in Britain. There was no sense of being discriminated against as a woman. I wonder whether this is because, if you are working in Hollywood, it is a sign that you have already successfully climbed the career ladder? If, like Chadha, you have a whopping commercial hit - Bend it Like Beckham - to your name, then your career is, surely, almost certain to get easier no matter where you work?
But the truth is that it is really hard to make films (no matter what sex you are) in Britain, and that creative people have to spend far too much time fundraising. The second theme that came out of the discussion was the sense that power is so absolutely with the marketing men - you have to work the system, play the game. There is so much courage involved in being a film director - and it is such a gamble, too - but must the first question always be: is this commercial? And if this becomes the only question that matters, then, after a while, that is surely going to mean risk-taking, original films are much harder to make?
Rachel Millward, director of the Bird's Eye View Film Festival (showing women's films from all over the world at the ICA from Thursday), told me it is never straightforward judging what will be commercial. Risk-taking work is not, by definition, uncommercial. But it may be difficult to sell. She thinks "patronising" decisions are often taken about what audiences may want to watch. Chadha mentioned that there was an appetite throughout the world for "quirky comedies" from Britain. Don't we excel at unquirky tragedies too? Notes on a Scandal, say - not quite a tragedy, but still... And isn't variety essential? Is it naive to wonder if there is any way of making marketing men less powerful so that women film directors are able to go ahead with the films they actually want to make? And, above all, what needs to happen for more women to feel that directing a film is a possible - and potentially fantastic - future career? | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/06/ps4-or-xbox-one-parents-guide | Games | 2013-11-06T11:43:00.000Z | Keith Stuart | PS4 or Xbox One? A parent's guide | If you've never touched a video game controller in your life, but do have avid players in your household, you may be in for a bewildering month. That's because we're on the verge of what the gaming industry excitedly calls 'a new console generation'. In short, the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, once the most powerful games machines on the planet are being replaced – the former by the Xbox One, the latter by the PlayStation 4. No, I don't know why they called it the Xbox One either, but as a lot of people still refer to the original Xbox (launched waaaay back in 2001) as Xbox one, it's going to lead to some hilarious Christmas list misunderstandings.
Anyway, both of the new consoles are arriving in November, and members of your family may already be nagging you for one. So what are these things and what makes them different from each other, and from the consoles that you can still buy in the shops for a third of the price?
Here's a quick guide designed especially for uninterested parents and partners, hopefully avoiding all the usual jargon and assumed knowledge. Good luck out there …
The technology
Okay, all you really need to know here is that both the PS4 and the Xbox One represent a significant leap over their predecessors. Some people in the industry are suggesting that the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 are around eight times more powerful than the current Xbox 360 and PS3 machines. Does this mean that games will look eight times better? Probably not – tech specs don't work like that. But game visuals will look noticeably more detailed, and you'll see lots of lovely lighting effects and intricate character animations, which add to the "realism" of game worlds. I've put realism in quote marks there because we're still a long way from "photo-realism". However, I think the big blockbuster Xbox One and PS4 games will have moments where you'll think you're watching TV, or at least a pretty good animated movie.
What about the technical differences between the consoles? Well, they're pretty negligible to the naked eye. Both are using very similar multi-core central processors and high-end graphics technologies, both have Blu-ray players and 500GB hard drives, and both have 8GB of system memory.
There are small differences in the way memory works and how graphics are handled which, on paper, suggest the PS4 is more powerful and will be capable of better visuals. However, developers are very clever and usually work out how to get comparable results from all the available hardware. Even if right now PS4 games look better, that might not be the case a few months down the line when game studios work out how to squeeze extra performance from the Xbox One.
Finally, both offer advanced online functionality. The use of cloud computing, which connects your console to remote servers on the internet, may mean we see a new era of games which have huge online worlds that players can explore together, and that seamlessly grow and evolve over time. We may see game processing tasks like physics and artificial intelligence being 'outsourced' to the cloud, meaning we see much more advanced simulations and life-like computer-controlled enemies. It's a truly exciting time.
In a nutshell: Right now, it looks like PS4 is the most powerful console, but developers may well learn to exploit the Xbox One in new ways. It's unlikely you'll be making your buying decision on hardware specifications alone.
The PlayStation 4 controller
Motion controls
Microsoft is making a big deal about its updated Kinect motion controller, which uses a camera to watch player movements allowing you to control the onscreen action with arm waves, head nods and other gestures. Kinect was available for the Xbox 360, but it wasn't very accurate and required a lot of light and space to work. The new Kinect is more sensitive and more powerful – it'll be able to watch several players at once in quite a small room, it can recognise individual players, and it can even monitor your heart rate. Which isn't at all creepy. It also has a microphone, so you can actually shout instructions at your console and it'll obey. Again, Xbox 360 did this, but not very well. Oh, and Microsoft has assured everyone that the Kinect won't be watching you 24 hours a day and then beaming live footage to the NSA. Its privacy statement assures users that all footage is kept locally on the machine.
So this is all very exciting, but then, the PS4 also has a new version of its own PlayStation Eye peripheral which does a lot of the same stuff. According to Sony, it can recognise your face and voice, and it can track body movements, although it uses a different technology and there are doubts that it'll do this as accurately as Kinect.
Perhaps the key difference, however, is that while the Xbox One ships with Kinect, PS4 owners will have to buy a PlayStation Eye camera separately. This will probably mean that developers are more likely to support the Kinect as they know everyone will have one. So if controlling games by wafting your arms around and/or talking is attractive, that's a tick in the Xbox One column.
In a nutshell: both machines have interesting motion controllers that can reportedly recognise your face, your voice and your friends, though Microsoft seems to be taking Kinect more seriously than Sony is taking PlayStation Eye, and its motion technology is more advanced.
Entertainment beyond games
Xbox One and PS4 are promising lots of entertainment options that will let you watch movies and listen to music on your console, as well as playing games. We'll see deals with video-on-demand providers like LoveFilm and Netflix, and there will be "free" TV services like YouTube, iPlayer and 4oD.
Right now, Microsoft seems more ambitious in this area. It has been showing off how you'll be able to connect your cable or satellite set-top box to Xbox One, letting you control your live TV viewing pleasure through your console and also adding new social and interactive features to the experience. However, right now, a lot of those options are only available in the US – and if you don't really fancy, say, playing fantasy football while watching a real football match, it won't excite you that much anyway.
Other than that, Microsoft is also making a big deal about how Xbox One can instantaneously switch between TV, movies and gaming without a lot of fiddling about. It can also play your CDs and MP3 files and will soon be able to stream media content from your PC – PS4 can't do any of those (although a later firmware update could well add MP3 playback and streaming capabilities).
In a nutshell: both consoles will offer tons of on-demand movie and TV options, but Xbox One seems to have a wider array of options, including the potential compatibility with your Sky or Virgin Media box. You need to think of these machines, not just as games consoles, but as all-round entertainment devices. You need to especially remember that when you're handing over your £400.
Second screens
There's a theory that the future of interactive entertainment is going to be about playing things on the your big living-room TV, while simultaneously interacting with a smaller screen on your lap. Basically, the games industry has been studying how everyone watches television these days, and, apparently, that involves sort of semi-viewing stuff like X Factor and Made in Chelsea while tweeting friends or, I don't know, looking up Phoebe-Lettice Thompson on the web. This is the second-screen theory.
The PS4 and the Xbox One are going to support this to some degree. If you buy an Xbox One, for example, you'll be able to download a new version of the SmartGlass app to your phone or tablet and then use your portable device to control certain elements of the console game.
For example, in the zombie adventure Dead Rising 3, if you have SmartGlass on your phone, you can actually use it to receive in-game mission objectives. Yes, the game will "ring you up" and a character will tell you what to do. It's also likely a lot of games will support a second screen to show players personal stuff, like what items their character is carrying or where they are in the game world. All very useful.
Microsoft has also shown how you'll be able to use your tablet or smartphone as a remote control and programme guide, as well as comparing your gaming stats with friends, and organising multiplayer sessions.
PS4 has a smartphone app that does similar things to SmartGlass, such as acting as a limited remote control and showing game information. But Sony's console also offers extra compatibility with the lovely PlayStation Vita handheld console. For example, you'll be able to remote play PS4 games on your Vita, as long as both are wirelessly connected to your home network.
Why would you want to do that? Well, say you're having a lovely time playing a PS4 game on the big TV in your living room, but then someone else wants to watch Downton Abbey – well, now you can pick up your Vita, select Remote Play and the PS4 game will appear on its little screen. You can now continue playing, while your housemate revels in a sedentary and unconvincing portrait of early 20th-century aristocratic life. Not all games will be compatible with Remote Play, but it's still pretty neat. Oh, and Vita will also be used as a second screen for lots of new titles.
In a nutshell: Xbox One has a more powerful smartphone and tablet application in the form of SmartGlass and developers are already using it in very interesting ways. But PS4 has strong connectivity potential with the PlayStation Vita console.
Backwards compatibility
In the past, new games consoles would often let you play the old games released for proceeding machines. That's not the case with the PS4 or Xbox One – you'll have to keep hold of your rickety old PS3s and Xbox 360s to play those classic titles. However, from next year, the PS4 will be able stream a limited selection of PS3 games from "the cloud" (i.e. a remote server network) to your PS4, so you'll have access to "retro" titles. It's likely Xbox One will eventually offer this sort of thing as well.
As for peripherals, you won't be able to use your old Xbox 360 or PS3 controllers with your new machines – both consoles have shiny new joypads with lots of new features. For example, the PS4's Dualshock 4 controller has a touchpad, which provides a new form of tactile input, while the Xbox One controller has cool rumble packs in the triggers to … well … make the triggers vibrate. Don't ask.
In a nutshell: Neither PS4 nor Xbox One are compatible with old games or controllers.
The games
At last, the real meat of the debate. Well, both machines will have extensive lineups from launch, so a lot of it's going to be down to personal choice – what do you, your kids or your partner want to play? What do they like? You can find complete lists of the launch lists (as they stand right now) here and here. Have a quick look.
Both consoles boast a selection of exclusive titles and these are the key bargaining chips at this stage. Xbox One has super sexy driving simulator Forza Motorsport 5, gruesome zombie game Dead Rising 3 and historical hack-and-slash romp Ryse: Son of Rome.
PS4, meanwhile, is the only place you'll be able to play family-friendly adventure Knack, sci-fi blaster Killzone: Shadow Fall and hectic shoot-em-up, Resogun. PS4's ambitious open-world racing game, Drive Club, has been delayed until next year.
The Xbox One and PS4 will also offer all the major multi-platform blockbusters released this autumn, such as Battlefield 4, Call of Duty: Ghosts, Assassin's Creed 4, Lego Marvel Superheroes and Fifa 2014. Which machine has the best versions? Well, that's going to vary quite a lot – and we don't yet know the answers for several big titles. However, there's been some controversy over the fact that Call of Duty: Ghosts runs in full native 1080p high-definition on PS4 but only 720p on Xbox One.
Don't know what that means? It's OK, a lot of people won't notice the difference – indeed a lot of cheaper LCD television sets don't actually support full 1080p HD. Furthermore, other developers are promising to get full HD performance out of Xbox One. Let's just say this: if graphics are the main reason you're buying a new machine, this is an issue to be aware of – especially if you've been presented with a Christmas list that says: "Dear Santa, please bring me a games console that absolutely definitely outputs in full 1080p HD at 60 frames-per-second or I'll scream until I vomit".
Fifa 14
As for the future of games, well, both consoles have their individual strengths. Sony has an amazing collection of development studios that will work exclusively on PS4 and Vita titles. Naughty Dog, creator of the much-loved Uncharted series, and Media Molecule, the clever Guildford team behind the loveable LittleBigPlanet titles, are both working on major projects that will certainly show what next-gen consoles are capable of. We can also look forward to steampunk action adventure, The Order: 1886 by Californian studio Ready At Dawn, whose staff did lots of work on the hugely successful God of War series.
But Microsoft also has its own cabal of talented studios. Warwickshire-based veteran Rare is producing the hugely amusing Kinect Sports Rivals, and 343 Industries is now hard at work on epic space sequel Halo 5. Xbox One also has some extremely promising console exclusives on the way including Titanfall, the new sci-fi shooter from the people who brought us Call of Duty, and Quantum Break, an apocalyptic thriller set to tie-in with a live-action TV series.
Oh, as a sub-plot, it seems Sony has launched a major charm offensive on smaller indie developers. Consequently, there are quite a few idiosyncratic little treasures that will be exclusive to PS4 – at least in the short term. Microsoft is also trying to court these teeny studios too – everyone wants to find the next big crossover hit, like Minecraft. Right now, though, PS4 is definitely the console to come to for offbeat titles like Supergiant's sci-fi adventure Transistor and hilarious action puzzler Octodad: Dadliest Catch.
In a nutshell: Xbox One possibly has the stronger launch lineup in terms of big triple-A hits, although graphically it may be lagging behind its rival. PS4, meanwhile, is very strong on offbeat indie games.
Social interaction
It's all about social gaming these days, so both machines will offer video chat for up to eight people, and both will provide loads of social integration features, making it easier to find and play against friends. On the PS4, for example, as soon as you switch the console on, you'll get a news screen showing what all your friends are playing – you'll even be able to leap straight into their games.
One big new feature of the next-gen consoles will be seamless content sharing. On both, you can record yourself playing games and then post that footage to the web. This may sound daft to you, but there's already a huge online community of gamers who share videos of themselves playing games, and many of them have hundreds of thousands of YouTube subscribers. This is what kids do nowadays instead of watching television.
All of this will be jammed with parental locks so you shouldn't have to worry about how much personal information your children are broadcasting across the gaming universe.
In a nutshell: the Xbox One and PS4 are both loaded with social features such as video chatting and video sharing, allowing users to communicate and share content with friends and the wider web. Xbox has traditionally been the best platform for online multiplayer gaming, but PlayStation is really pushing it this time round.
Launch details and prices
The PS4 is launching in North America on 15 November and in Europe and Australia on 29 November. The machine will cost $399 in the US, €399 in Europe, £349 in the UK and $549 in Australia – that price will get you the machine, a controller, a mono headset and an HDMI cable.
The Xbox One is launching in major global territories on 22 November. It will cost $499 in the US, €499 in Europe, £429 in the UK and $599 in Australia. The basic package has a controller, all the essential leads, plus the Kinect motion device.
There are various other bundles available which will add extra controllers or games – it's best to check with retailers like Amazon, Game or Argos, or any of the supermarkets, to see who has the best deals. If you're buying the console as a present, check what games the lucky recipient wants – you may find a bundle deal that includes that very title, and it'll be cheaper than purchasing the game separately.
Games will cost between £45-60 each – you'll be able to buy second-hand copies, but it's likely that many will require you to pay again in order to unlock online multiplayer modes and other extras (originally, the Xbox One was designed to prevent or at least control the sale of used games, but a public outcry led to a change in policy).
Both consoles will also be offering a range of free' titles, that will cost nothing to download, but will doubtless include 'microtransactions' so that players can purchase in-game items. The Xbox One has beat-em-'up Killer Instinct and game creation package Project Spark, while PS4 has third-person shooter Warframe and flight combat sim, War Thunder. Free-to-play is already a common model in smartphone games, and is likely to be a big deal on these new consoles too.
'Hidden' costs
If you buy an Xbox One, you'll need to pay an annual Gold subscription to be able to play games against other users online, as well as to use Skype and most TV services. This will cost £39.99 a year. On PS4 you'll need an annual subscription to PlayStation Plus to play online games (currently it's £5.49 a month, or £39.99 for a year) – however, video chat and TV streaming options like iPlayer and 4oD will be free, and you also get a range of other subscription services like access to pre-release games and free online titles. On both machines, video-on-demand services like Netflix and Lovefilm will almost certainly require separate subscriptions.
Purchasing a next-gen console
For a while at least, this probably isn't going to be as straightforward as you'd expect. Initial supplies will be limited, so it's unlikely you'll just be able to wander into your local HMV on the launch day and grab one off the shelves. Even if you go out tomorrow and pre-order a machine, most retailers are saying that you won't get it for launch – the likes of Game and Amazon are, however, promising you'll get it before Christmas – but you ought to be quick.
"Finding a console at all for launch is going to be a stretch now," agrees Lewie Procter of video game retail news site, SavvyGamer. "GameStop are taking PS4 orders at £329.97, which is about £20 cheaper than pretty much everywhere else. They won't get it to you for launch, but I think it's most likely you'll get it before Christmas.
"Everywhere is charging full price for an Xbox One, and I'd say Amazon or Game (depending on whether you want the bundled copy of FIFA) would be your best bet to get one soon after launch. Also, most high-street retailers will have a small amount of stock on the shelves available on launch day. If you are eager to get it on launch day, and don't mind taking a chance, it's worth turning up first thing in the morning. Although it's a bit of a long shot."
Alternatively …
If you're not sure, don't rush in. Give things a few weeks to settle down, see if you can get hands-on time at your local game store or chat to any early adopters you know. And of course, we'll be reviewing both of the machines closer to their launch dates, so you can always come back here.
And there are alternatives. The PS3 and Xbox 360 are great machines with vast libraries of excellent games – if you're buying your first family console, you could do a lot worse than purchasing one of these and then jumping into the next-gen era in a year or so. There's also the Nintendo Wii U, the follow-up to the hugely successful Wii. It hasn't caught on as well as its predecessor, but with its innovative GamePad controller (which comes with its own display, like a tablet computer), it offers some really fun gaming experiences, such as Nintendoland, Pikmin 3 and New Super Mario Bros U – and there arre new versions of Mario Kart and Wii Fit on the way.
If you love smartphone games, there are also a couple of smaller consoles based on the Android operating system. The Ouya and the GameStick are priced at less than £100 and are extremely portable – their games are more like those you'd find on your mobile, but for a lot of people that's fine. Meanwhile, we're seeing an increasing number of 'living rooms PCs' – computers designed for entertainment rather than work. Next year, the brilliant game developer Valve is releasing a series of Steam Machine PCs that will handle gaming brilliantly, as well as offering all the other advantages of a computer.
In a nutshell: Don't feel you have to jump into the next generation just yet. Make sure you research the alternatives.
Gamescom: a gamer tries out Kinect on the Xbox One Photograph: Oliver Berg/DPA/Corbis
PlayStation 4 conclusion
Pros
Powerful, cleverly designed hardware with high-end graphics technology
Excellent 'in-house' developers
Really interesting new controller, with touchpad interface
Plenty of 'on-demand' entertainment options, many of which won't require a subscription, and PlayStation Plus subscription includes free access to digital games
Strong roster of offbeat 'indie' games
Clever 'live' user-interface that displays what your friends are playing and lets you join them instantly
Cons
PlayStation Eye motion controller is sold separately, which means it won't be as well supported by developers
Launch lineup relies heavily on 'third-party' multi-platform games
Xbox One conclusion
Pros
Advanced all-round entertainment options, allowing users to plug in their satellite or cable box (content deals permitting) and control the TV experience
Seamless transition between movies, TV and games
The new Kinect is extremely powerful and may well lead to some truly innovative gaming experiences
The launch lineup is very strong with key brands like Forza and Killer Instinct
Xbox Live is a very strong online multiplayer service which has been fully overhauled for the new generation
Cons
Question marks over the console's ability to display full 1080p visuals when games are running at the optimal rate of 60 frames-per-second (but this may be temporary)
The inclusion of Kinect means it's more expensive
Finally (phew!)
If you're choosing one for your family, have a good think about what you'll use it for. It may also be worth checking what consoles all your childrens' peers are getting. If your family is likely to be gaming online, you'll want the same machine as your friends so you can battle it out together.
If not, it's really difficult to separate the two, but right now, if you want an all-round entertainment beast that will handle all your TV and movie needs as well as playing a very decent selection of games, go for Xbox One. If it's all about graphical performance and sheer variety of gaming experiences, PlayStation 4 may be the one for you.
They're both super advanced machines with tons to offer, so in the end, it's down to personal choice. The good news is, although this is billed as a console war, neither is likely to 'lose'. Buy a next-gen console and, unless there's some sort of financial catastrophe, you're investing in at least eight years of entertainment. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/sep/07/mobile-phone-eeyore | Opinion | 2012-09-07T09:00:00.000Z | Ian Sansom | How I finally stopped being a mobile-less Eeyore | Ian Sansom | "T
he old grey donkey, Eeyore, stood by himself in a thistly corner of the forest, his front feet well apart, his head on one side, and thought about things. Sometimes he thought sadly to himself, 'Why?' and sometimes he thought, 'Wherefore?' and sometimes he thought, 'Inasmuch as which?' – and sometimes he didn't quite know what he was thinking about." (Winnie-the-Pooh, 1926). I'm Eeyore. Or at least I was, until I got a phone. Now I'm more like Tigger – bouncy, trouncy, flouncy, pouncy, fun, fun, fun, fun, FUN! I'm everywhere!
Obviously, you already have a mobile phone. I know, I know. I'm so 20th century. When there were telephone boxes: shared public resources. Imagine! Now everyone has their own mobile phone. My wife has a drawerful of mobile phones. She could open her own privat mobile-phone museum with its own gift shop, featuring heritage telephone items including Gilbert Scott red kiosk key-rings, and old GPO black Bakelite-style fridge magnets, and telephone pads and telephone seats. Remember them? Little mini-banquettes designed especially for hallways and under the stairs, and by the telly, and with a shelf for your grey/green/red/blue standard table-top phone? Where you'd sit and whisper to your girlfriend, so as not to disturb your family watching Crossroads?
Now, my children have BlackBerrys, like they're CEOs – essential for running their complex multimillion pound social lives. And my elderly parents have big button mobile phones. Even my grandparents, before they died, had mobile phones – and they may have them still, who knows. CS Lewis found it hard to believe in a heaven without animals. Why should we believe in a heaven without phones? What do you care more about, your dog or your iPhone 4S?
I am 46 years old, male, and until recently did not have a mobile phone. I was Eeyore. I was alone. But not now. No. Now I'm connected, plugged in, wired up, au courant, up for it and above all I'm contactable, which is what's important. Machiavelli claimed that the Swiss were the most armed and the most free, and I see now that in my naive mobile phone-less state I was unarmed and unfree. I was vulnerable. I was un-Swiss. What if I needed someone urgently? What if I was needed by someone urgently? I was Bruce Wayne. Now I'm Batman. I'm indispensable.
Of course, I've used mobile phones before – I'm not a complete luddite. My mother gave me one of her old cast-offs a couple of years ago, but it broke, which is why I've had to buy my own. My first phone. Now I can connect to the internet and download apps and play games and do all the things that normal people have been doing for years. I haven't flicked my thumb and my fingers so much since I used to play Subbuteo.
And the texting! Really, I had no idea. That's what everyone's doing! I wondered what it was. I thought it was Parkinson's. Up until about a month ago I'd sent maybe a couple of dozen texts in my life. But this morning alone I texted my milkman and I texted my sister in Australia and I texted my wife and my son and my other son and my daughter and two work colleagues and a friend. It's amazing: it's almost like talking to people.
And I'm talking to people. All the time – chitter-chatter, chitter-chatter, blah, blah, blah. Lines open now. Continuously available. I'm like a machine, a node in a network, a receiving terminal for endless information from others. Boundaryless. Merging with the infinite. Philip Roth has a little riff on mobile phones in his novel Exit Ghost, wondering what "had collapsed in people to make incessant talking into a telephone preferable to walking about under no one's surveillance, momentarily solitary, assimilating the streets through one's animal senses and thinking the myriad thoughts that the activities of a city inspire ... What will the consequence be? You know you can reach the other person anytime, and if you can't, you get impatient – impatient and angry like a little stupid god." I've completely collapsed. I'm like everyone else. A little stupid god. | Full |
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2002/dec/29/philipfrench | Film | 2002-12-29T23:41:51.000Z | Philip French | Chicago | In the 1830s Chicago was a minor fort and trading post in swampland at the edge of Lake Michigan. Within 70 years it was to become the nation's second city, the first great urban creation of advanced capitalism where transcontinental time was standardised to make sure trains ran on time, products were turned into commodities in the grain elevators that 'banked' wheat, a recalcitrant river had its direction reversed, and the first skyscrapers went up to exploit valuable real estate and celebrate the aspirations of its builders.
This vital place became a centre of academic excellence, avant-garde literature and culture, as well as of municipal corruption and organised crime. One of the greatest novels of the twentieth century, Saul Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March, begins with the unforgettable declaration: 'I am an American, Chicago-born', and the century ended with the ascendancy of David Mamet as America's second greatest living playwright.
To call a play simply Chicago is therefore something of a challenge, but that is what Maurine Watkins did back in 1926 when she quit her job at the Chicago Tribune (America's highest paying newspaper) to enrol in a drama class at Yale. For her major assignment she wrote a hard-boiled, wise-cracking comedy, Chicago, about a housewife, Roxie Hart, with showbusiness ambitions, who kills her unfaithful lover, tries to get her dim husband to take the rap, and is charged with murder. She's exploited by the sensation-seeking press, saved from the gallows by the flamboyant advocate, Billy Flynn, then fades into obscurity when another, more glamorous murderess seizes the headlines.
Chicago was taken up by Broadway, where it ran for 172 performances, and turned into a now-forgotten silent movie. It proved to be Watkins's only success. But another graduate of Chicago's school of gleefully irresponsible journalism, Ben Hecht, had taken note, and he co-wrote with Charles MacArthur (the pair were to become Hollywood's highest-paid writers) a very similar play that would achieve classic status, The Front Page.
A dozen years later, as the Depression ended and the United States faced up to the Second World War, there was a wave of nostalgia for the lively decade that abruptly ended with the Wall Street Crash. The most famous film of this nostalgic cycle is The Roaring Twenties, but quite as good, and tougher, is William Wellman's Roxie Hart (1942), a witty, stylised version of Watkins's Chicago. Scripted by Nunnally Johnson, one of the great journalists-turned-filmmakers, it presented the story in flashback from the Forties, and starred Ginger Rogers as Roxie. That epitome of suave and one of the most accomplished comic actors in movie history, Adolph Menjou, gave a knockout performance as the histrionic lawyer, Billy Flynn. Menjou had earlier played the cynical city editor in the 1931 film of The Front Page. Roxie Hart isn't a musical, but along the way there are better Thirties songs, better danced, than in all but a handful of Hollywood musicals. There are also numerous performances from familiar character actors from Hollywood's golden age.
Reverting to its original title, Watkins's Chicago became a Broadway musical in 1975, with music and lyrics by John Kander and Fred Ebb, who had collaborated on Cabaret eight years before. In capturing the 'divine decadence' of the Weimar Republic, Cabaret reflected the Sixties ethos. Directed by Bob Fosse (who had made the 1972 film of Cabaret), Chicago opened on Broadway as Americans were reeling from the corruption of the Watergate scandal.
The Nineties stage revival of the musical, which is still running in the West End, employs a minimalist style that directs the play away from its historic setting and towards President Bill Clinton's sleazy White House and the shenanigans surrounding the O.J. Simpson trial.
The feature debut of the stage director and choreographer, Ron Marshall, the movie, Chicago, is simultaneously frenetic and half-hearted, going for Twenties decor while keeping the main women in Janet Reger-style déshabillé for the musical numbers. It aims at the dark significance of Cabaret, emphasising the connection by the use of a black jazz musician as mediating master of ceremonies, though he doesn't begin to have the presence of Joel Gray's sinister MC. Richard Gere, the world's second most famous Buddhist, acquits himself well as Billy Flynn, though he gets few laughs and isn't in the same league as the incomparable Menjou.
Catherine Zeta-Jones is splendid, singing and dancing well as the husband-killer Velma Kelly, a dominant figure in the musical, a minor one in the original play. Ginger Rogers was hilariously strident as Roxie. Renée Zellweger's Roxie has a doughy sadness that doesn't quite unite the film's insistent device of constantly cutting between fantasy and supposed reality.
Likewise John C. Reilly, as her pathetic husband, is encouraged to grow from the figure of fun he is in Roxie Hart to become a poignant loser with the show-stopping sentimental song, 'Mister Cellophane'. Anachronistically, a black actress (the formidable rap artist, Queen Latifah) has been cast as the lesbian prison warder.
The difference between Roxie Hart and the screen musical is not merely that one is very funny and the other isn't. It's that Roxie Hart has the warm, shrug-of-the-shoulders cynicism of old big city journalism, a humane, Falstaffian acceptance of life as it is.
Chicago, the musical, has a bitter, puritanical feel beneath its glossy surface. A shallow work without a true moral framework, it sees the world as a posturing showbusiness arena, a stage for celebrities to briefly strut their stuff and go on their way. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/15/jacinda-ardern-saves-best-for-last-in-new-zealand-election-tv-debate | World news | 2020-10-15T12:05:29.000Z | Steve Braunias | Jacinda Ardern saves best for last in New Zealand election TV debate | Steve Braunias | Long time no see. Jacinda Ardern left it late, but turned up at last night’s fourth and final debate of the election campaign as the prime minister. Ghostly versions of herself made weird, kind of shifty appearances in the previous three debates. God she was terrible, an anxious mess, uptight, easily thrown, unable to say anything memorable or with much conviction. She got better or at least less terrible as the debates dragged on and last night, back at the TVNZ studios where the series began, she was in the ascendant. She looked like she knew what she was doing. She looked like herself.
Who was the person sitting beside her in the mauve lights of the studio, though? Someone who only had a faint resemblance to the National leader, Judith Collins, someone who looked like she had the fight taken out of her and had nothing left to give. God, it was sad to witness. It’s a lie that it’s lonely at the top. It’s a lot lonelier at the bottom, and that’s where Collins seems right now at the end of a campaign that has turned into a nightmare, with the prospect of a sound thrashing on Saturday.
Collins should be the last person in New Zealand politics anyone ought to feel sorry for; she’s too flippant and confident to have any use for sympathy. Anyway, with only one day left before election day, it’s a bit late to send her a Get Well Soon card. All throughout the debates she’s been the one to watch, the most compelling of the two leaders. There was something compelling about her last night, too, in the sense that it was hard to take your eyes off a political leader turned all wan and winsome.
When the first debate finished, Collins strode with fast steps and great purpose towards the media for her standup, and was quick to announce that she won the debate. Last night, she made a slow approach towards the jackals of the fourth estate; when asked if she had won, she said: “Other people can judge that.”
“We need a leader who can make decisive, uh, decisions,” she raved in her closing address. It wasn’t the worst thing she said all night. The worst thing she said all night was: “There’s a lot worse things than to be sitting on the opposition benches.” There really isn’t, as Ardern acknowledged, when she said that if Labour lost the election she’d not only step down as leader, she’d leave politics.
The National party leader, Judith Collins. Photograph: Phil Walter/Getty Images
Ardern kept the message simple. “I am not done yet,” she said. She talked about providing more homes, increasing the minimum wage, and “the need to fulfil our refugee obligations”. She talked as much as she pleased and without interruption or challenge from Collins, who clasped her hands together, and looked out at the audience with a thousand-yard stare.
The pair really only clashed once. Ardern was emphatic that Labour would not adopt the Green proposal for a wealth tax. Collins insisted that Labour would cave in: “I absolutely believe they are going to do it.” Ardern absolutely disbelieved Collins really thought that, and said: “Judith, I have to call you out on this. I am putting an end to it. It’s just wrong. I would never stand here and blatantly call someone a liar. And that is what Judith is doing. It’s a desperate tactic, and frankly,” she said, searching for the right word and finding it, “it’s sad.”
Collins stared straight ahead. For much of the past month, she’s fought hard, and clearly enjoyed the experience of the campaign trail, meeting Kiwis and being herself, a mocking straight-shooter who knows the score. She smashed the first debate. She probably won the second. She probably lost the third but went down swinging, hollering, saying random things. At last night’s encounter, held on a cold evening in spring, she gave up the ghost.
“Every morning,” she said, “I wake up and have a smile on my face.” God knows how she’s going to manage that on Sunday. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/may/05/join-the-baking-revolution | Life and style | 2015-05-05T10:00:01.000Z | Matt Chittock | Join the baking revolution | Most people take their daily bread for granted, but not 37-year-old Simon Cobb. Learning to bake hasn’t just given him a new skill – it also helped him cope with depression. “Five years ago I was a primary schoolteacher, but eventually the job got to me,” he says. “I was working all the time and still nothing ever seemed to get finished. I was signed off with stress and eventually made the decision not to go back to work.”
When casting around for something to help him get back on his feet, Simon came across a local bread-making course taught by Lewes community chef Robin van Creveld. By that point, even leaving the house had become a big thing for him, he says, but “the baking course helped with that. Just speaking to people I hadn’t met before felt like an achievement.”
The simple process of baking is increasingly linked with wellbeing. As Mary Berry once said: “If you’re feeling a little bit down, a little bit of kneading helps.” Novelist Marian Keyes also found that baking helped her cope with depression. “Baking hasn’t cured me. But it gets me through,” she wrote in her book, Saved by Cake.
Simon agrees. “Baking is therapeutic. There are necessary times of stillness and calm where there’s nothing you can do but wait for your bread to get to the next stage.” He was convinced his experience could help others and started the Stoneham Bakehouse in Hove, a not-for-profit enterprise that provides “bread by the community for the good of the community”.
It’s part of the UK’s growing community-led baking movement: a grassroots attempt to resurrect baking traditions, bring people together over food and encourage them to reconnect with the taste of real bread. The idea behind Stoneham Bakehouse is simple. Every week a revolving pool of volunteer bakers meet up to learn breadmaking skills. The loaves they make are then sold to local people at fair prices, on site or through a cafe down the road. Any profit gets ploughed back into the project so that more people can get involved.
“People enjoy the mindful aspect of baking, they enjoy the social aspect of it and learning a new skill,” explains Simon. “But it’s more than that. You’re basically giving your time for free to do something for the community.”
The bakers meet most Saturday mornings at 7.30am, and today I join five fellow volunteers in a pizza joint’s kitchen - Cobb is using borrowed ovens until he opens a bakery of his own. I’ve never made bread before, but after seeing one too many £3.99 artisan loaves around town I’m determined to see if I can do it myself.
We’re making different kinds of loaves: from humble malthouse loaf to the posher-sounding pain de campagne. To start with, I’m on rye bread alongside regular volunteer Francesca Swatton, a graphic designer.
Fran is a dab hand at making the rye dough. I step back as she portions the cement-like mixture into brick-sized slabs and soon I’m putting it in tins and sprinkling a seed mixture on top.
Simon comes over and judges the tins ready for the oven. He flours them up and expertly flips them around in the waiting flames. The timer goes on and aprons come off: time for tea.
After a quick chat and some chocolate biscuits, the morning takes on a natural rhythm. There’s a busy period as everyone gets to work on the next batch, then a period of contemplation when the bread goes in the oven and we watch it turn from lumpy dough to proper loaves.
Around 11am customers start turning up at the door for their bread. What is so rewarding is being able to see something through from scratch – kneading, shaping and baking, then selling the final product, all within one session. I leave with the other volunteers at midday, with a baby rye loaf that I made under my arm. “In the past everywhere used to have a local bakery, but now baking is a bit of a dark art,” says Simon. “It’s time to bring those skills back.”
See stonehambakehouse.org.uk | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2017/nov/09/hedd-wyn-the-shepherd-poet-whose-story-shows-the-stupidity-of-war | Opinion | 2017-11-09T14:45:07.000Z | Giles Fraser | Hedd Wyn: the shepherd poet whose story shows the stupidity of war | Giles Fraser: Loose canon | When the first world war broke out, the poet Ellis Humphrey Evans was working as a shepherd on the family hill farm in north Wales. Generally better known by his bardic name, Hedd Wyn, which means blessed peace in Welsh, Evans initially refused to sign up. While the Anglican establishment was calling on young men to do their duty for God and country, there were others, particularly in the Welsh nonconformist tradition, who refused this dangerous combination. “Why must I live in this grim age,” writes Evans in his poem War, “When, to a far horizon, God / Has ebbed away, and man, with rage / Now wields the sceptre and the rod.”
But when the army came for his younger brother, Evans took his place, despite his Christian pacifism – or perhaps even because of it. He joined the Royal Welsh Fusiliers. In France, trudging towards Passchendaele – a three-month battle that was concluded 100 years ago on Friday – Private Evans composed his final poem on the theme of the hero and posted it back home as an entry in the national Eisteddfod competition.
Twice in the last few months people have spoken to me movingly about Hedd Wyn. First was Paul Flynn, the veteran Labour MP for Newport West. Flynn’s father was a machine-gunner at Passchendaele. Believing all the nationalistic propaganda, he enlisted and fought through the worst of the mud and death. He survived, but was never the same again. Which is why, even at 82, Flynn still burns with righteous anger at the stupidity and pointlessness of war; and why he was so exercised when Tory MP Bill Cash foolishly described Passchendaele as “a wonderful battle” in a Commons debate earlier this year. As he was explaining to me what his father went through, Flynn reached for a copy of Hedd Wyn’s poems and started reading them out in Welsh – a language I do not understand. But the way he read was so intense, so focused, there was no mistaking the moral seriousness of what he was doing.
A few weeks later, I mentioned how moving I had found this to Rowan Williams, whom I had gone to visit in Cambridge. At the name of Hedd Wyn his eyes lit up. He took me into his study, where, on the bookshelf, he showed me an image of the great Welsh poet painted in the form of an orthodox icon. I knew very little about this poet beforehand, but it was clear this young shepherd from Trawsfynydd had profoundly touched the lives of many.
The black chair, given posthumously to Hedd Wyn at the national Eisteddfod. Now at Wyn’s old farm, Yr Ysgwrn, near Trawsfynydd. Photograph: Christopher Thomond for The Guardian
Hedd Wyn was killed on the first day of Passchendaele. “It was a nosecap shell in his stomach,” wrote a soldier, with him on Pilckem Ridge in the notorious Ypres salient. During the 100 days of the battle of Passchedaele, the allies gained just five miles of ground. For this they lost 310,000 men; the Germans 260,000.
A few weeks after Hedd Wyn’s death, the poem that he’d sent back from France – as tradition has it, submitted anonymously under a pseudonym – won the coveted bard’s chair at the National Eisteddfod. The prime minister, David Lloyd George, was in attendance. As the trumpets sounded, they called on the winning poet to reveal himself. After three such attempts, the archdruid stepped forward and gave the grim news that Evans had been killed in action six weeks before. The empty chair was draped in a black sheet. To this day it is remembered as the Eisteddfod of the black chair.
I will stand in silence with my poppy during the act of remembrance. But I am always conscious that remembrance is a little too easily purloined by those who want to celebrate precisely the sort of militarism and nationalistic chauvinism that led so many young men to pointless deaths. So during the silence, I will be thinking of a peace-loving man walking the hills with his sheep and hundreds of thousands like him whose lives were needlessly taken by the failure of politicians to figure out a better way for human beings to live with their differences. And I will think of that empty black chair, a haunting symbol of the total futility of war.
Giles Fraser will present Military Memory, and the Sacred Space on BBC Radio 4 on Friday 10 November at 11am | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/dec/23/buried-ponds-to-be-excavated-in-norfolk-to-revive-wildlife | Environment | 2021-12-23T11:23:09.000Z | Patrick Barkham | Buried ponds to be excavated in Norfolk to revive wildlife | Ghost pingos, unique ponds forged by the ice age and buried during the era of industrial agriculture, are to be excavated to revive wildlife on two former farms.
Rare species including the scarce emerald damselfly and the northern pool frog are set to return to the pingos, which are being restored on farmland next to Thompson Common near Thetford in Norfolk, a little-known nature reserve whose 400 ancient ponds make it the pingo capital of Britain.
The first of 26 ghost pingos on Watering Farm is being excavated by Norfolk Wildlife Trust, a painstaking process which requires soil to be removed an inch at a time under expert supervision.
The restorers hope to precisely locate the former bottom of the pond to open up the still-viable seed bank that remains from when the ponds were filled in by a desire to “improve” farmland over the last 150 years.
“This is restoration from within,” said Jonathan Preston of Norfolk Wildlife Trust. “You can dig a pond anywhere but the unique thing with these is getting down to that original sediment which will unlock an ancient seed bank.”
“Pingo” is an Inuit word for hill, and the ponds were the result of springs forming subterranean ice pinnacles during the last ice age. When these melted, hundreds of small round ponds were created.
The pingos’ excavation will be overseen by experts led by Prof Carl Sayer of University College London, who has spearheaded the Norfolk Ponds Project, which has restored 250 lost ponds across the region.
Sayer said: “We know from our research that often quite rare plants can be preserved. Can we bring back things that are lost even from Thompson Common? We’re disturbing sediment from a time when there were no sprays, no fertilisers and much wilder places, so plants can come back and say hello.”
Once the original shape of the pond is excavated, the depressions will fill up naturally with an upwelling of water from the aquifer, releasing naturally filtered and nutrient-poor water in which sensitive aquatic plants and invertebrates such as diving beetles can flourish.
Initial tests by Sayer’s team have identified the dark layers of ancient pond sediment and seeds within it on the 60 acres of Watering Farm.
Norfolk Wildlife Trust is also planning to resurrect up to 40 ghost pingos it has identified on 130-acre Mere Farm, which it acquired after a fundraising appeal to expand the unique landscape of Thomson Common. The ghost ponds are first detected using old maps and aerial “lidar” laser scanning which reveals the ponds in hi-tech 3D maps.
This joining up and restoration of wetland habitats is crucial for the prospects of rare species such as the northern pool frog, which was reintroduced in Thompson Common in 2005. The native frog, which became extinct in Britain in the 1990s, is doing well, but requires a network of warm pools with surrounding vegetation in which to thrive.
Crucial to the success of resurrecting the ghost pingos is to remove subterranean drains that were installed in the 1970s when the land was intensively farmed. Traditional Breckland grassland will be revived around the pingos as a species-rich mosaic of glades, scrub and larger trees is allowed to develop.
One of Sayer’s previous restorations brought to the rediscovery of grass-poly, a delicate pink wildflower that is one of Britain’s rarest plants and had been lost to Norfolk for a century. He said that some seeds in ancient sediments could possibly remain viable for hundreds of years.
Sayer predicted that the ghost pingos would be brimming with life by this time next year. “When you restore ponds and go back there, sometimes it’s just gobsmacking. It’s almost the most successful form of restoration we know of in Britain – you create systems that are flourishing, alive and very quickly working again.”
Wild Green Wonders by Patrick Barkham (Guardian Faber, £14.99). To support The Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/29/pope-francis-openness-gay-priests | World news | 2013-07-29T18:45:46.000Z | Lizzy Davies | Pope Francis signals openness towards gay priests | As they settled into their seats on the Alitalia jet, the assembled members of the Vatican press corps might not have expected a great deal from the journey home.
They had just followed the Catholic church's first Latin American pope on a meet and greet around Brazil. They had seen his Fiat Idea mobbed by weeping fans. They had watched him celebrate mass with three million pilgrims on the packed-out shores of Copacabana beach. What, they may have wondered, could top that?
Sometime after take-off, however, Pope Francis strolled to the back of the aircraft and gave them their answer. The in-flight entertainment, it turned out, would be him: a no-holds-barred press conference that lasted for an hour and 20 minutes and was the first of its kind to take place on a papal plane since the early days of a vigorous John Paul II.
"The atmosphere was one of near incredulity," said John L Allen, a veteran Vatican observer for the National Catholic Reporter, who was on board the flight. "We haven't seen something like this for 20 years."
In the course of his first real press conference, a free-wheeling session in which the pope answered all the questions thrown at him and even thanked a journalist who asked him about a recent sex scandal, Francis signalled a readiness to address the serious issues of the church – albeit in a light-hearted manner.
Asked about reports of a "gay lobby" inside the Roman curia, he replied: "I have still not seen anyone in the Vatican with an identity card saying they are gay."
He struck a markedly more conciliatory tone towards homosexuality than his predecessor, saying: "If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has goodwill, who am I to judge? The catechism of the Catholic Church explains this very well. It says they should not be marginalised because of this [orientation] but that they must be integrated into society."
That catechism however, also teaches that, "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered". Francis said nothing that would appear to counter that, although some observers said his remarks set him apart from Benedict, who said that men with deep-seated tendencies should not enter the priesthood.
Francis seemed to disagree: "The problem is not having this [homosexual] orientation. We must be brothers. The problem is lobbying by this orientation, or lobbies of greedy people, political lobbies, Masonic lobbies, so many lobbies. This is the worse problem."
Francis also used the word "gay" rather than "homosexual", which his predecessors preferred.
Speaking for the first time as pope on the issue of women's ordination, Francis said that although that particular door was "closed", the church should find ways to boost women's "role and charism [divinely bestowed gifts]".
He joked about Monsignor Nunzio Scarano, a prelate alleged to have tried to fly €20m in cash into Italy illegally, saying he "didn't go to jail because he resembled a saint".
Francis also dismissed sinister whisperings about his relationship with his predecessor, describing living with Benedict in the Vatican as "like having … a wise grandfather living at home". Asked what was in the famous black briefcase he clutched while boarding the plane last week, Francis was happy to clarify: "The keys to the atomic bomb weren't in it." His razor, prayer book, agenda and a book on Saint Thérèse of Lisieux were.
The pope's comments on the gay lobby came after an Italian magazine published a report claiming that the prelate whom Francis chose to be his "eyes and ears" in the Vatican bank had lived all-but-publicly with his gay lover in Uruguay.
The pope said he had ordered an investigation into the claims and had found nothing to back them up. Moreover, he chided journalists for covering such stories, saying there was a world of difference between allegations of that kind – which he said concerned "sin" that could be forgiven and forgotten by God – and crimes, such as the sexual abuse of children.
On the long-troubled Vatican bank, Francis spoke of several possibilities for its reform, and did not rule out its eventual closure, saying that it needed to become "honest and transparent".
Asked whether he had met with resistance from within the Roman curia – the Vatican's sprawling central bureaucracy – to that and other reforms, he said: "There are many people [in the Vatican] who are saints but there are those who are not very saintly … and it pains me when this happens."
Pressed on whether, by that, he meant he had come up against open opposition to his ideas, he replied: "If there is resistance I have not seen it yet."
When the 80 minutes were up, and all subjects from the papal sciatic nerve to the vindication of his free-wheeling low-security preferences had been exhausted, the pope went back to his seat for the remaining hours of the transatlantic flight.
For the reporters on board, Allen said, the spectacle could not have been more different from the "very carefully stage-managed affairs" under Benedict XVI, in which a handful of questions were usually screened and the sessions restricted to brief encounters.
On this occasion, reporters had been told that there would be "ample space" for questions with the pope. But, as Allen remarked, "in Vatican speak, if someone says the pope is going to give you an 'ample' period of time you normally think that means 15 minutes". What they got, instead, was a wide-ranging discussion that touched on some of the most controversial issues in the church today.
"I don't know that we've learned anything new at the level of content," said Allen, after the plane landed in Rome. "I think what we learned first of all is that this pope is capable of dealing with the press and doing so remarkable effectively … and the other thing is that he is determined to set the most positive tone possible, to try to put a positive face on church teachings, including those teachings that some people find harsh."
What Francis said …
On gay people: "If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?"
On women: "We must go further in the explicitness of the role and charism of women living in the church."
On the need for bodyguards: "I'd like to walk in the streets. But I know it's impossible."
On the black bag he took on the plane: "The keys to the atomic bomb weren't in it." (Apparently it held his razor and books)
On his advisers: "I like it when someone tells me: 'I don't agree.' This is a true collaborator. When they say 'Oh, how great, how great, how great,' that's not useful."
On his predecessor: "The last time there were two or three popes, they didn't talk among themselves and they fought over who was the true pope!" Having Benedict living in the Vatican "is like having a grandfather – a wise grandfather living at home". | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2018/aug/06/better-call-saul-breaking-bad-vince-gilligan | Television & radio | 2018-08-06T15:03:48.000Z | Charles Bramesco | Better Call Saul: the audacious prequel series keeps getting better | They say fire possesses a cleansing purity, offering destruction and rebirth in flame. The universe of Vince Gilligan – a droll, violent New Mexico in which Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul are set – often traffics in portentous symbolism such as this, and latter program’s recent third-season finale drew on that particular time-honored imagery. Just when it seemed like Chuck McGill (Michael McKean) might have had his electromagnetic hypersensitivity under control, a full breakdown sent him into a paranoid spiral. Though the series had called the veracity of the illness into question, it was enough to have him ripping the wiring out of the walls and toppling a precariously placed lantern that set his house ablaze, with him in it.
Vince Gilligan on Better Call Saul: 'We dread the future as much as the fans do'
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With that demolished home, the popular drama razed its premise and freed itself up to build anew. While Better Call Saul was smartly pitched as an origin story, the dynamic between the man born Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk) and his brother Chuck quickly revealed itself as the true backbone. They’d spent decades locked in a rivalry of biblical proportions, playing a game of chicken with trust, each daring the other to betray him. After three years of overtures to reconciliation followed inevitably by further backstabbing, the show rightly decided that it was time to break out of the vicious cycle. Gilligan’s skill as a storyteller has always been to wriggle out of corners he’s painted himself into, and with McKean’s departure from the cast, he turned what could ve been a fatal blow into an opportunity for reflection and growth. Jimmy had to leave Chuck behind to move forward.
With Chuck out of the picture, each hour (the first three of which were shared with critics) has ample space to focus on Jimmy’s compromised moral odyssey towards decency while balancing its tangential prongs of plot. The new episodes bring Jimmy closer to a slippery concept he’s spent most of his life chasing: an ethical con. Jimmy hatches a plan to make a little money by stealing something that nobody will notice is gone and selling it to someone who wants it very badly. It’s a meaningful step forward for him, as he finds a tarnished but morally acceptable place for himself in a seemingly random world. As familiar faces Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks) and Gustavo Fring (Giancarlo Esposito) continue to move inexorably towards their starting positions for Breaking Bad and other pre-introduced characters enter the fray, Jimmy’s story can continue to flourish and expand outward.
The cloud of whether Chuck’s death was intentional or accidental hangs heavy over the first few episodes of season four, but Jimmy won’t let his parade be rained on. He leans hard into denial, refusing to let Chuck’s final act on Earth hurt him even more than he already has. His constant love interest and on-again, off-again legal partner Kim (Rhea Seehorn) shoulders much of Jimmy’s grief for him, racked with sadness even as she’s concerned by Jimmy’s complete lack of reaction. But emotions stuffed down always catch up with a person, and there’s no way the show will let Jimmy avoid the personal ramifications of what’s happened for long.
Rhea Seehorn and Bob Odenkirk in Better Call Saul. Photograph: Nicole Wilder/AMC/Sony Pictures Television
The third episode, titled Something Beautiful, offers the single most dangerous thing a show’s writing staff can give its characters: closure. Chuck leaves a posthumous message for Jimmy that should unravel their decades of bickering and self-imposed inadequacy. Without getting into any specifics, Chuck takes responsibility for himself, gives Jimmy a frank appraisal as a brother and human being, and leaves him with a few pearls of substantive, lasting wisdom. He says things that have been percolating their whole lives, things that viewers have now spent four years waiting for one brother to admit to the other, things that could have ground the show to a screeching halt if uttered while both men were still alive. Jimmy’s reaction suggests that he’s only damming up an eventual deluge of feelings, which the episodes to come will undoubtedly bear out.
Couple that intimate process of grief with a victimless scheme Jimmy can feel good about, and Gilligan’s game starts to come into focus. Chuck’s death advances Jimmy to the next major juncture of a path he’s been on for years of our lives and decades of his. Without Chuck undermining him at every turn, an unencumbered Jimmy can find his own way to be crooked, on terms that let him get to sleep at night. Until his lingering guilt and resentment for Chuck rears its ugly head, that is. But nothing stays buried for long in Gilligan’s New Mexico, and if Jimmy wants this move forward to stick, he’ll have to do some serious excavation himself. It’s all there, right beneath his surface.
Better Call Saul starts again in the US on AMC on 6 August and in the UK on Netflix on 7 August | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/feb/28/the-famished-road-ben-okri-review | Books | 2010-02-28T00:05:52.000Z | James Purdon | The Famished Road by Ben Okri | Book review | "T
hey named me Lazaro," explains the narrator of The Famished Road, Ben Okri's 1991 Booker winner. "But as I became a subject of much jest, and as many were uneasy with the connection between Lazaro and Lazarus, Mum shortened my name to Azaro." You might think of Azaro as a short Lazarus: the spirit-child, or abiku, of Yoruba myth, who flits between the paradisiacal "world of pure dreams" and the poverty and suffering of a modern west African slum, where children are born and die every day.
Into this bewildering life, Azaro brings a spirit-eye: around the corrupt policemen and market traders flit imps, ghosts and homunculi, demons and sad souls whom only he can see. These spirit brothers tempt him to return to the world of the unborn, away from his hard-working parents and the mundane squabbles of political strife, caricatured here as a competition between "The Party of the Rich" and "The Party of the Poor".
Okri's novel – the first part of a trilogy – brought forward his distinctive brand of magical realism, but it also raised questions about some of the conventions of Anglo-African postcolonial writing. Is the abiku a youthful spirit – a Pan who sees the world in its full strangeness and plenitude – or one of Nigeria's displaced children, cut off from a culture far richer than the material world of his birth? What does it mean for us to stay, like Azaro, in the "world of the living" while reading this lush prose, full to bursting with fruits and seeds, palm wine and precious stones? "Our hunger can change the world," Azaro's father tells him, "make it better, sweeter." Okri's novel hungers for variety, for compassion and hope – and for an art that might make a feast out of famine. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/apr/15/how-ageing-pills-and-paper-thin-plotlines-gave-oz-a-death-sentence | Television & radio | 2019-04-15T11:59:21.000Z | Daniel Dylan Wray | How ageing pills and paper-thin plotlines gave Oz a death sentence | The so-called golden age of TV is usually credited as beginning with shows such as The Sopranos and The Wire. However, another HBO show played a crucial role in laying the foundations. The unrelentingly vicious prison drama Oz shared cast members with those aforementioned critical darlings but began in 1997, two years before The Sopranos. It set a new TV tone: bold, violent and cinematic.
Your next box set: Oz
Kathy Sweeney
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The show focused on an experimental prison wing where inmates underwent holistic methods of rehabilitation. With a paralysed inmate who spouted philosophical opening monologues, it was evident early on that Oz was a prison drama unlike any other. It didn’t shy away from hard realities: gangs, drugs, rape, extortion, assault, murder and racism. It captured the brutality of prison life and hit as hard as the frequently thrown punches.
The show juggled a huge and ever-changing cast with an agility that allowed multiple plotlines to unfurl and interlink. Alongside managing vast numbers of characters, Oz succeeded in tackling subjects with great emotional and sociopolitical depth; episodes used flashbacks to tell individual inmate stories (a technique later mirrored in Orange Is the New Black). It used space and time thoughtfully, reflecting the repetitive nature of prison as often as it employed explosive techniques to echo impulsiveness and self-destruction. Relationships – both consensual and coercive – played out over long periods, allowing viewers to sink into the dynamics of prison life. But the show’s gritty veracity spared us nothing.
What's on Netflix and Amazon this month – April 2021
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Oz used the extremes of prison life to stretch plotlines well beyond what would be readily accepted in the outside world. It was like a soap opera on angel dust – leading eventually to some wild shark jumping. In season four, an ageing pill was given to inmates with long sentences so they could be released as old men as a measure to ease overcrowding. It was baffling beyond comprehension, as was the story of the prison nurse who fell in love with the inmate who had her husband killed. Not to mention the fate of the Reverend Jeremiah Cloutier, who was somehow buried alive in the prison walls without detection.
At the heart of the show was Tobias Beecher, a successful lawyer who killed a child with his car and was thrust into a horrifying unknown world. For six seasons and more than 50 episodes we followed his agonising journey, from being sexually assaulted to having his family members murdered by a rival. Parole was teased throughout but when it was finally granted, he was back in Oz by the next episode via a plotline so rushed and paper-thin it felt as if we had been cheated. By the end of season six, the show became a race to the finish as bodies piled up like prison laundry. The final plots left you praying for the entire prison to be shut down permanently. Which of course would have happened a long time ago to any prison with even 1% of the ridiculous goings-on inside Oz. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/oct/18/bbc-centenary-fewer-big-salaries-richer-rivals | Opinion | 2022-10-18T13:03:07.000Z | Mark Lawson | At 100, the BBC must face the harsh reality: the licence fee is unsustainable | Mark Lawson | Perhaps it was bashfulness that led the BBC to leave until the final item of the Radio 4 news bulletins this morning a mention of celebrating its own centenary today. Or maybe the reticence reflected mild embarrassment.
The British Broadcasting Corporation as we know it (state-owned, licence-fee funded) doesn’t strictly come to dance at its centenary ball until 1 January 2027. What launched on 18 October 1922 was the British Broadcasting Company, a private consortium of radio manufacturers, with programmes that were initially no more than an inducement to buy a wireless, as they were known. But because the logo conveniently remained BBC, and John Reith managed both institutions, it’s reasonable to cut a cake today.
And there is much to celebrate. The two most generally cherished Britons of the last century – Queen Elizabeth II and Sir David Attenborough – were both BBC creations. The naturalist’s revelatory reports over seven decades on global flora and fauna most exactly capture Reith’s declared mission to “inform, educate and entertain”. The late queen, from her first annual Christmas broadcast on radio in 1952 (also on television from 1957), to her platinum jubilee tea party sketch with Paddington Bear in 2022, moulded her own and the monarchy’s image through astute use of broadcasting, with the BBC always the main media partner.
But, with the Queen dead, the King a more awkward TV performer and Attenborough now also making shows for other networks (Sky, Netflix), what has been cannot be a model for what will be seen next.
At any stage in the BBC’s history, a useful interview question for new recruits would be the relative significance of the words in the organisation’s title.
British, which applicants until recently would have been wise to put first, seems an escalating fantasy, with Scotland, Belfast and Cardiff politically pulling away from London, thereby making viewers in the nations ever more dubious about the “impartiality” of BBC News.
Broadcasting, something done only by the BBC until 1955 (ITV’s arrival), and long after that only on devices called TVs and radios, now comes from everywhere by anyone on everything.
Corporation meant a staff, often staying for life, pensioned and union-protected. But almost all of the BBC’s biggest hits are now made by external independent companies.
BBC at 100: the next decade that could determine fate of broadcaster
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So a more accurate name for the organisation now would be EDC – English Digital Consortium.
The past is great but gone, and the future is contested. On holiday this summer in France and Italy, I did something mildly illegal. Clicking on Test Match Special on BBC Sounds prompted a message warning this programme was not available in that territory. So I paid money to one of the services that trick your devices into thinking you’re still in Blighty.
But, even while apologising to the ghost of Reith for my sin, my frustration is that I would happily pay a fee, as I think millions would, for being able to receive all BBC programmes outside the UK.
The word from inside Broadcasting House is that the corporation doesn’t want to provide such a service as it would show how easily Sounds and iPlayer could be adapted to subscription, hastening an alternative to the licence fee at home. Such defensive sentimental attitudes must end if the BBC is to flourish in its second century.
Whatever the comforts of the licence fee, accelerating evasion (no longer plausibly challenged by criminal sanction) and digital transmission make it impossible to sustain. Subscription – perhaps topping up a free “basic” service of news and royal funerals – will eventually come.
The BBC that results from this will be smaller, less able to pay footballers’ wages to football presenters and bankers’ salaries to newsreaders. But that is an inevitable consequence of no longer having the absolute monopoly over content and transmission that the BBC claimed in 1922.
Celebrations often lead to hangovers and for the BBC the throbbing headache once the centenary fun is done is how to maintain its significance in a world Reith never faced – of rival, richer, ravenous media all around.
Mark Lawson is a Guardian writer and broadcaster | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2013/jul/20/america-big-country-colorado-nevada-utah | Travel | 2013-07-19T23:10:00.000Z | Nevada Barr | Welcome to America's real big country: Colorado, Nevada and Utah | Colorado, Nevada and Utah are among the largest states in the union, covering nearly 300,000 square miles – about the size of Austria, Germany and Italy combined. They have dozens of mountain ranges, myriad deserts, lakes and rivers. I've written five books set in these states, and have not explored one half of one per cent of their mystery.
Though the states cover a lot of territory, population in most areas is sparse. This is rugged country: harsh, broken deserts, arid mountain ranges, towering peaks cloaked in pine and aspen, and, in winter, deep snows. This is country that feels new-made, as if it were recently heaved up out of the molten core of the earth and has just had time to cool and crack and settle.
When driving across it, or even flying over at 30,000ft, the immensity of this chunk of the continent is staggering – mile on mile without towns or a city. Roads are scarce and cut across tens of thousands of acres of desert, pale scratches on a sea of dun. Here you find reassurance that there remains space to breathe in this world, space where nothing of man corrupts the view between eye and horizon.
Southern Utah, home to the Navajo, Apache and Hopi, was carved by the hands of the gods. The desert has been sculpted into red spires in Canyonlands national park . In Zion the earth is twisted into red and gold canyons, then cut through with the sudden green of a river. Staggering necks of red stone stand sentinel in Monument Valley. Arches national park and the hidden canyons of Lake Powell are scoured into graceful arches and delicate bridges of sandstone. Vegetation is low, widely spaced and hardy, most of it armed with spines. Animals are small and fast: tarantulas, lizards, Gila monsters, jack rabbits and roadrunners.
Monument Valley, Utah Photograph: Rivernorthphotography/Getty Images
Travelling here, you may feel an eerie tickle of memory, as if, in a former life, you'd ridden these canyons. If, like me, you grew up on American westerns, you did ride here … with John Wayne and Gary Cooper. Director John Ford liked shooting films in the wild lands of Utah. That sense of danger and adventure has yet to be civilised out of the state. Even with mobile phones, GPS and cars, to tour southern Utah is to have a sense of a time when humans did not own the world.
Nevada, where I was born, and after which I was named, was not sculpted; it was slammed into the world with a stony fist. The western border climbs into the Sierra Nevada, all pine forests and jewel lakes, where the air is clean and dry and smells of sunlight. This land is home to Lake Tahoe and Reno, ski resorts and casinos catering to tourists along a narrow corridor. The rest is left to mule deer, cougars, marmots, badgers – and me.
The central and eastern parts of the state are ribbed with dry mountain ranges and wide, high deserts, broiling in summer and freezing in winter. Nevada is a land that does not care a whit for humans. Highway 50 crosses the state, and is advertised as "the loneliest highway in America". Scrawny coyotes, living on blue-bellied lizards and rodents, glare with yellow suspicious eyes at passing cars, and black vultures with scaly red heads and resentful glares scatter up from feasts of roadkill. Scratchy, fierce little towns are populated with scratchy, independent people whose ancestors dared cross the desert in wagons.
One particular national park captures the essence of Nevada. Great Basin national park brings home the stony magnificence of desert and mountain, what it is like to be alone under a sky so deep and star-filled one can hope humanity will prove too insignificant to destroy the work of nature. It embodies the isolation and rugged determination of life forms that will not be eradicated.
Colorado begins in the southern deserts around Mesa Verde national park ancestral home to the cliff-dwelling Anasazi, and climbs quickly into the soaring Rockies. Colorado embraces the many myths and histories of the American west: cowboys, Indians, miners fighting for unions, wars over water rights, forts with log palisades, prairies where pioneers lived in sod-roofed huts. The turmoil of a country being born was acted out in the mountains, plains and deserts of Colorado.
A coyote keeps a close eye on its territory … and you. Photograph: David C Stephens/Getty Images/Flickr RF
Colorado still embodies the embattled forces of the American west. Denver and Boulder are cutting-edge modern cities. Estes Park and Rocky Mountain national park bring in millions of visitors from all over the world. The population has exploded in recent decades, and once again water is fought for – now with words in the mouths of politicians instead of guns in the hands of ranchers. Outdoor sports are big business: mountain biking, skiing, hiking, fishing, rock climbing camping and hunting.
Despite this inundation, the state is too big and too grand to be diminished. The mountains have not been conquered. Wild fires fight back, droughts cripple cities, and snows and avalanches block passes. Blinding blizzards stop traffic on highways across the wide eastern plains. Tiny, perfect antelope run across endless expanses dotted with prairie-dog towns; bears and mountainlions dwell in the forests. It remains a place where humans can eat and be eaten.
In Colorado, one can feel the tension between using the land and saving it for future generations. As it was 200 years ago, it remains on the frontlines or – gods forbid – last stands of the American wilderness.
One of the lessons repeatedly brought home to me as I worked and researched in these great western parks was how dependent we have become on technology. A heart attack in the cities calls for an ambulance and a quick trip to the hospital, but when I worked in Mesa Verde a large woman suffered an attack after climbing a 60ft wooden ladder to a cliff dwelling. Suddenly, we were back in the age of ropes and pulleys and brute strength to deliver her into the hands of the mechanised world.
At Dangling Rope, a marina on Lake Powell in Glen Canyon national recreation area, where I researched [2012 novel] The Rope, on the last day of a holiday weekend a power failure resulted in water, communication and fuel delivery systems shutting down. Over 400 people and 100 boats were stranded in temperatures of about 40C, with little shade. Hordes of civilisation had descended on the middle of nowhere and found the lights out. The wild west continues to remind us that we must nurture self-reliance and ingenuity.
I have tried to capture the size and magnificence of a part of the world that remains wild; that reminds us how to be alive and filled with wonder, how to be afraid, and also how to know humility.
These lands once taught Americans what it meant to be independent, stubborn and canny. The teachers of those lessons linger in the sagebrush and granite, in the kivas of the ancient Native Americans, and behind walls of snow and ice for those who look for them.
Nevada, Utah and Colorado are not to be seen in a day or a week or a month, but savoured over a lifetime – each visit a new place, each new place a world of discovery.
Nevada Barr is a former park ranger and author of the Anna Pigeon mystery novels, set in US national parks. Her latest book is The Rope (Macmillan, £6.40)
© 2013 Nevada Barr. All rights reserved
For more information on holidays in the US, visit DiscoverAmerica.com | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/may/01/anna-maxwell-martin-from-sinister-line-of-duty-cop-to-harried-mum-who-makes-us-laugh | Television & radio | 2021-05-01T13:00:03.000Z | Nosheen Iqbal | Anna Maxwell Martin: from sinister Line of Duty cop to harried mum who makes us laugh | In her last appearance on primetime television, Anna Maxwell Martin drew a spontaneous combustion of hate on social media. Viewers couldn’t stand her – or at least, they loathed Patricia Carmichael, the monstrous detective chief superintendent making her police colleagues’ life hell in BBC One’s Line of Duty. When the show, which concludes its sixth series on Sunday night, began trending on Twitter, enthusiasts outdid one another compiling memes on why Carmichael was so objectionable.
She was, to paraphrase the show’s devotees, the Monday morning alarm in human form. The physical embodiment of the teeth-grinding, passive aggression of the sentence “as per my last email”. Thousands agreed with one fan who noted that “the way we all hate Patricia Carmichael so much really is a testament to how insanely talented Anna Maxwell Martin is”.
Maxwell Martin, 43, had enjoyed more than 15 years of critical acclaim as a stage and television actress prior to joining the BBC’s twisty police procedural. Creator Jed Mercurio said he was “delighted and flattered that an actor of Anna Maxwell Martin’s status agreed to play this pivotal role”. Before it, every now and again she might have been stopped in the supermarket. As she told the Observer: “I don’t get offended if someone comes up to me in Waitrose – for some reason, it’s Waitrose in particular – and says: ‘Oh, I saw you in Cabaret. I hated it. You weren’t very good.’”
It was a level of fame Maxwell Martin was comfortable with, able to pootle around the north London neighbourhood where she then lived with little fuss. Now, with more than 10 million Brits tuning in to Line of Duty, she faces being snapped by paparazzi if she’s out in London and has been subject to a level of media scrutiny she finds baffling. Last week the Sun pored over every inch of Maxwell Martin’s Instagram account, , which she created less than a year ago, for an article analysing the interior decor of her home in Hertfordshire.
Anna can make you laugh, but also panic inside. And she's a little bit nuts, which always helps
Sharon Horgan
“She loves how much people love the show,” one colleague said. “She just hates the press circus that seems to come with it.”
Maxwell Martin grew up in Beverley, East Yorkshire. Her parents were scientists, her father, Ivan, the director of a pharmaceutical company and her mother, Rosalind, a researcher. “My parents had no idea where I came from, but they let me get on with it,” she told the Mail on Sunday last year. “I’d dress up in little outfits and I’d get to sing solos. I remember dressing as a pearly queen for one performance, but Whitney [Houston] was my idol.”
She described herself as a drama queen from a young age, explaining in one interview that as a child she was “a bit strung out. I used to get completely hyperactive and then completely depressed. I’m much more level now”.
By the time she was 11, Maxwell Martin had joined an after-school drama club and decided that was it for her: she was going to become an actress.
Emotionally “not ready” for drama school at 18, she read history at Liverpool University before going to Lamda [London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art]. On graduating in 2001 she made her professional stage debut at London’s Donmar Warehouse in a production of Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes. It was the only performance her father saw her in before he died that year.
By 2004 Maxwell Martin was earning rave reviews playing 12-year-old Lyra in the National Theatre’s production of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials. She “carries much of the show on her slim shoulders,” noted the Guardian’s Michael Billington, while the Telegraph crisply observed: “She’s not a beauty to rival Keira Knightley, but her face is always interesting to watch.”
Thankfully, Maxwell Martin didn’t pay too much attention to industry cattiness and declared herself “strangely un-neurotic for an actress”.
“I wasn’t confident about my looks because I wasn’t classically pretty like a lot of actresses when I was growing up,” she said last year. “But I never doubted I could act. I wasn’t arrogant, just totally sure I was doing the right thing.”
His Dark Materials saw Maxwell Martin nominated for her first Olivier and catapulted her into a TV and theatre career that has included winning two best actress Baftas (for the BBC’s Bleak House and Channel 4’s Poppy Shakespeare) and a steady sweep of praise for her work on stage. It was around the same time that she and Roger Michell became a couple, after he cast her in another play at the National.
“When I met him he felt like my person,” Maxwell Martin said. “I groomed him to fall in love with me,” she joked. The director of Venus, Le Week-End and Notting Hill (a film Martin once described as “arse-achingly middle class”) was 21 years her senior and had two children with his first wife. The couple married and had two daughters together, Maggie, 11, and eight-year-old Nancy, before announcing their separation last spring. “I haven’t really spoken about it because it isn’t fair on all the people involved,” she said at the time. “There are four children to think about. It’s taken an enormous amount of time, but we are all getting through it in a healthy way … you get on with life. We talk all the time.”
Diane Morgan and Anna Maxwell Martin in Motherland. Photograph: Colin Hutton/BBC/Merman
Career-wise, Maxwell Martin has been on an incremental ascent. A brief foray to Los Angeles didn’t work out – she reportedly lost out to Carey Mulligan for a role in the Coen brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis – although she is considering trying again next year “for a bit”, despite being wary of the schmooze Hollywood requires.
“I really have a lot of confidence in myself as an actor, but I don’t necessarily have that same confidence in a room full of people, networking at a party,” she told the Observer in 2018. “If someone said, ‘Hey, do you want to come to this really cool party?’ I would probably have said, ‘No, I have cystitis, sorry’.”
Not that it seemed to affect her work at home. The Guardian once noted that the very appearance of Maxwell Martin in a production “tends to be a signal of quality British television”. And in 2016, after a serious run of period dramas and literary adaptations, Maxwell Martin signed up to her first comedic role in Motherland.
The BBC sitcom by Sharon Horgan and Holly Walsh takes a savage swipe at school gate life and has built cult status, being caustic and funny enough for viewers with or without kids. Maxwell Martin was nominated for another Bafta – for comedy this time – playing the role of harried and scowling working mum Julia. Series three returns on 10 May.
Horgan said she had hoped for an actor “who made you laugh but also made you panic inside. And Anna does that. She’s one of those actors who’s so naturally gifted she can just switch it on and off. She’s also a little bit nuts, which always helps”.
One interviewer recalled that “far from [being] the serious actor type, she reminds me of a slightly dotty relative, barrelling along happily, amused by most of what’s going on around her”.
It’s a recurring theme. Maxwell Martin cackled her way through ITV’s This Morning with Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby last Monday and caused Zoe Ball to honk with laughter when she appeared on Radio 2’s Breakfast show.
Often giggling on set and in her interviews, Maxwell Martin insists she’s nothing at all like the terrifying and tight-lipped characters she often plays. “I’m absolutely not like Julia”, she told the Mail on Sunday. “She’s a horrible, self-centred human being.” Maxwell Martin, on the other hand, has kept the same tight circle of friends since school and her days at university in Liverpool. She once described her marriage as an oddball coupling. “He’s a real intellectual and I’m a silly performing seal,” she told an interviewer.
One friend, the actress Lucy Cohu, told the Independent that Maxwell Martin’s success was partly the result of the fact that she retained a sense of normality, and an ability not to take herself too seriously.
“Anna is very rare in this industry” said Cohu. “She is without artifice as a person, and that is reflected in her acting.”
This article was amended on 2 May 2021 because an earlier version misrendered the name of the film Inside Llewyn Davis as “Inside Llewllyn Davis”. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2012/sep/26/rotisserie-chicken-vat-laws | Money | 2012-09-26T12:08:29.000Z | Jill Insley | Rotisserie chicken falls foul of VAT laws | Rotisserie chickens could become an endangered species, the British Poultry Council (BPC) has warned, following a trial to see how customers will respond to the addition of VAT to the cost of hot, cooked birds.
From 1 October VAT rules will see the cost of whole rotisserie chickens rise by 20% – about 88p a bird or totaling £34m a year, according to the council.
During a trial price rise at one Morrisons store, designed to emulate the addition of VAT, sales fell by 9%. The BPC said if this fall was replicated throughout the UK, consumers would buy 73,000 fewer birds from high street supermarkets every week.
The move to add VAT to the cost of hot cooked chickens is a leftover of the controversial pasty tax, which caused more outrage when it was announced in the 2012 budget than just about any other measure.
The ensuing uproar persuaded the government to cancel plans to class hot pasties and sausage rolls as takeaway food, which incurs VAT. But the new rules still apply to rotisserie chickens, even though research indicates they are generally eaten later than the point of purchase and as part of a main meal.
A poll by parenting website NetMums found that 86% of those who responded eat ready cooked supermarket chickens, with 99% saying they use the chickens to feed a minimum of two people and nearly half saying they use each chicken to make two or more meals.
Three in every four mums responding to the poll buy rotisserie chicken when they want a nutritious family meal but are short on time.
NetMums founder Siobhan Freegard said: "Family finances are in the worst state for over a generation, and struggling parents simply cannot afford to pay out anymore. This proposed tax on roast chickens isn't targeting junk food or unhealthy snacks, but will make it harder for families to put a wholesome hot meal on the table."
The tax will also hit poultry farmers who already face steep increases in feed costs this autumn following drought in the US.
Peter Bradnock of the BPC said: The value of lost sales could be as much as £17m, or around 4 million birds a year.
"This is a very high cost to consumers and chicken farmers alike for only a relatively tiny tax gain in the government coffers," he said. "It is disproportionate and the fact it singles out only rotisserie chicken in the supermarket makes it doubly unjust."
Morrisons and the BPC have joined forces to organise a nationwide petition telling the government "Don't Tax Our Roast". People can join the petition online or text CHICKEN FIRSTNAME SURNAME to 88802 (texts will be charged at standard network rates). | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jul/26/hunter-biden-plea-deal-taxes-gun-possesion | US news | 2023-07-26T18:10:13.000Z | Martin Pengelly | Hunter Biden pleads not guilty as judge says she needs more time to review deal | Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, pleaded not guilty to tax charges on Wednesday, after a federal judge in Delaware said she needed more time to review a proposed deal with federal prosecutors to avoid a felony gun charge.
Biden’s plea came after what was expected to be a routine hearing turned into a three-hour affair featuring hushed negotiations between lawyers and pointed questions from the US district court judge, Maryellen Noreika.
“I cannot accept the plea agreement today,” the Trump appointee said, asking the parties to brief her on why she should accept it.
Biden’s lawyers and prosecutors may yet persuade Noreika to approve the deal as it was first negotiated, or to alter it to a form she can accept.
But the news also means the saga will drag on even as Joe Biden campaigns for re-election in 2024, in a possible rematch with Donald Trump, who faces his own extensive legal woes.
Hunter Biden was accused of failing to pay taxes on more than $1.5m in income in 2017 and 2018 despite owing more than $100,000. He is charged in a separate case with unlawfully owning a firearm while addicted to and using a controlled substance.
Biden has worked as a lobbyist, lawyer, banker, consultant and artist. He has long admitted struggling with addiction, particularly since the death in 2015 of his brother Beau Biden, a former attorney general of Delaware, the state Joe Biden represented as a senator for 35 years.
Hunter Biden published a confessional memoir, Beautiful Things, in 2021. It was followed by a similar volume, If We Break, written by his ex-wife, Katherine Buhle Biden.
On Wednesday, as reported by the New York Times, Hunter Biden told Judge Noreika he first sought treatment for alcohol addiction in 2003 and eventually sought treatment for drug addiction too. He had not been in treatment since late 2018, he said.
Such struggles have been painful for the Biden family. At the White House on Wednesday, the press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said the president supported his son, adding: “Hunter Biden is a private citizen and this was a personal matter for him.”
Nonetheless, Hunter Biden’s personal struggles have added political fuel to Republican claims that he has leveraged his father’s political power for gain in dealings in Ukraine and China.
Investigations led by David Weiss, the US attorney for Delaware, a Trump appointee, have not turned up any evidence to support such claims. Nonetheless, in June, news of Hunter Biden’s plea deal sparked accusations of favorable treatment.
Republicans are seeking revenge for two impeachments of Trump; weapons to fire in response to what they claim to be political prosecutions of the former president; and material with which to paint Joe Biden as inherently corrupt as an election looms.
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Trump’s first impeachment concerned attempts to gain from Ukraine political dirt on rivals including the Bidens. Hunter Biden’s relationship with a Ukrainian company, Burisma, and any links between that relationship and his father, remains at the heart of Republican speculation, allegations and invective.
Earlier this week, Kevin McCarthy, the House speaker, told Fox News investigations centered on Hunter Biden were “rising to the level of impeachment inquiry” against his father.
Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, McCarthy said: “All I’m saying is … where’s the truth? You’ve got to get to the bottom of the truth. And the only way Congress can do that is go to impeachment inquiry that gives Republicans and Democrats the ability to get all the information.”
Last month, Christopher Clark, a lawyer for Hunter Biden, said: “I know Hunter believes it is important to take responsibility for these mistakes he made during a period of turmoil and addiction in his life. He looks forward to continuing his recovery and moving forward.”
Reuters and Associated Press contributed to this report | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2021/mar/14/five-best-british-canal-and-waterway-holidays-wow-factor | Travel | 2021-03-14T12:00:30.000Z | Karin Andreasson | Five British canal and waterway trips with a wow factor | Imoved on to my boat five years ago and am lucky to have a permanent mooring, but there’s nothing like casting off and setting yourself free. I love waking up to the splash of ducks pecking at algae on the hull, and spending all day outdoors, a mug of tea on the roof, moving from one spot to the next or mooring up for a couple of nights and exploring an area. It’s also incredibly sociable. Canal folk stop and chat, you work locks together and whiling away time with strangers like this can feel really enriching, especially after a long period of self-isolation.
Monmouthshire and Brecon canal
35 miles, six locks and two tunnels, from Brecon to the Pontymoile basin
Narrowboats moored on the Monmouthshire and Brecon Canal Photograph: Matthew Taylor/Alamy
This is a dream trip if you want to immerse yourself in nature. The canal is almost entirely in the Brecon Beacons national park with views of the mountains. This is also a designated dark sky reserve. As the canal drops into the Usk valley, there are wild swimming spots to enjoy. To make this trip even more peaceful it’s possible to hire an electric boat.
Thames ring
245 miles, 176 locks and two tunnels, anti-clockwise
Photograph: Benjamin John/Alamy
Done in one go, this is an epic journey but each section makes a holiday in its own right. The Grand Union canal has urban areas, rolling Chiltern hills, two long tunnels and the bustling village of Braunston. The Oxford canal winds its way around picturesque villages. If you’re a folk music fan, aim to go for the Cropredy festival in August. This tiny canal joins the Thames at Oxford – you’re propelled faster than the 3mph canal limit. You get the best view of Hampton Court and Windsor from the water.
Middle Level Navigation
More than 90 miles of navigable waterways link the River Nene to the Great Ouse in the Fens
Photograph: Graham Uney/Alamy
This is a remote, otherworldly place to go boating. The channels were created for drainage in the 17th century and you can visit a working steam-powered pumping station in Stretham. The waterways crisscross fields, pass giant wind farms and just a handful of villages. It’s a place for peace, quiet and to immerse yourself in nature. The Fens are home to a huge variety of wildlife and conservation efforts mean that otters, water voles and barn owls are just some of the creatures you might spot.
Kennet and Avon canal
87 miles, 104 locks, one tunnel and two aqueducts, from Reading to Bristol
Photograph: Nik Taylor/Alamy
This canal reopened in 1990 after an epic feat of restoration driven by volunteers. This canal-cum-river boasts a winning combination of scenic countryside, canalside pubs, feats of engineering and elegant architecture. Moor at The Barge Inn in Honeystreet and cycle to Avebury stone circle. Bath is an obvious highlight, but don’t miss Bradford-on-Avon, a gem of a town home to Tithe barn, one of the oldest medieval barns in Britain, and the tiny Saxon church of St Laurence.
Lancaster canal
41 miles, no locks, from Preston to Tewitfield
Photograph: Keith Douglas/Alamy
This is a lock-free cruise with views of the Silverdale coast, the Forest of Bowland and overlooked by the foothills of the Pennines. At Hest Bank it’s a few hundred yards to the beach where you’ll be looking across to Morecambe Bay. Take a tour of the nearly 1,000-year-old castle in Lancaster where, in 1612, 10 people were convicted of witchcraft; in the 19th century it held England’s largest debtors prison. Just north, you’ll travel over the canal’s most impressive feature – the Lune aqueduct. If you fancy working some locks, there’s a short run branching off to Glasson where the canal meets the Lune estuary. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2009/may/18/overseas-students-denied-entry | Education | 2009-05-18T08:29:54.000Z | Anthea Lipsett | Genuine overseas students 'denied entry to UK' | The enforcement of complicated new visa laws is deterring overseas students who bring billions of pounds to the UK economy, business school leaders have warned.
The government introduced a new points-based immigration system for non-European students on 31 March to prevent terrorists from entering the country, and to crack down on bogus colleges.
Almost three quarters of the 340,000 overseas students studying at UK universities in 2007-08 were non-EU nationals. As the pound is weak thousands more are expected to apply to study here.
The British Council estimates international students are worth more than £8.5bn to the UK economy.
But as universities recruit for next year there is growing alarm that UK Border Agency officials are incorrectly interpreting the rules and rejecting genuine students, threatening a huge source of revenue when the UK is already in financial crisis.
Officials from the umbrella group Universities UK are meeting with the Home Office this week to raise the issue of lengthy delays and inconsistencies in visa decisions for students and staff.
Rather than focusing on fraudulent applications, officials are making decisions based on photo backgrounds and addresses written in the wrong order.
Problems will become increasingly serious for institutions as their recruitment cycle peaks in July and August and students are left unable to start courses in September.
Jonathan Slack, chief executive of the Association of Business Schools, said students being deterred was "already a reality not just a perception".
"It's also adding extra layers of difficulty and bureaucracy in trying to recruit high quality international faculty," he said.
Prof Andrew Clare, associate dean of Cass Business School, said the rules were already having an effect.
"If [UKBA officials] can't get it right how are overseas students going to fare?
"This is a one shot game – students don't get a second try if there's a mistake on their application form," he said.
"They will go to other European business schools that teach in English and that export revenue will be lost forever."
Prof Julian Birkinshaw, the London Business Schools' deputy dean for programmes, said the rules were delaying recruitment of overseas academics.
In one case an application was rejected because a copy of a degree certificate from 20 years ago had been submitted, rather than the original.
He said that 90% of LBS academics were not British and the vast majority were not EU members but they were the most highly educated and sought-after staff.
"We're very worried. We're hearing different stories from the Home Office and agencies around the world about how they interpret the rules.
"If 10% of our non-EU students who have been accepted onto our programmes are denied entry that puts us in a really dangerous place because we rely on those people to cover our costs."
Prof David Weir of Liverpool Hope University's business school said: "It's enormously difficult to get visas even for bona fide courses.
"Students are apparently treated with great suspicion by most British authorities, when 99.9% are absolutely legitimate."
Duncan Lane, director of advice and training at the UK Council for International Student Affairs, said the problems were more widespread than in business schools.
The new system should be simpler and more transparent but UKBA officials often use training documents to judge applications rather than sticking to a literal reading of the official policy guidance, and students were being erroneously rejected as a result, he said.
"There are bound to be teething problems but high rates of refusals will cause students distress and threaten the UK higher education export market because word gets round quickly, which will undermine the good reputation that's been built up over the last few decades." | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/mar/01/what-is-the-best-oscar-winning-film-of-all-time-casablanca-the-godfather-moonlight | Film | 2018-03-01T13:10:22.000Z | Peter Bradshaw | What is the best Oscar-winning film of all time? | The best film! Of all the awards, this is the one most drenched in glory – and hubris. It comes at the end of a long night, and it’s the one most keenly anticipated by the producers themselves who now have their moment of glory as the people for whom this award represents years of agonising work and instances of what Jerry Maguire called the “up-at-dawn pride-swallowing siege that I will never fully tell you about”. For the winner, it is a moment of euphoria and exhaustion, which last year Warren Beatty did his best to make as chaotic as possible, with Faye Dunaway, by accidentally awarding best picture to La La Land, when it should have gone to Moonlight. It is a measure of the suppressed hysteria that Oscar night engenders that this egregious cockup is the subject of its very own “truther” conspiracy – a theory that it was deliberately contrived to boost ratings. Looking down the list, it is disconcerting to see how many favourites and classics were not in fact rewarded with the best picture statuette. But there are quite a few that are, and here are some mouthwatering examples.
Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine in Rebecca. Photograph: Allstar/United Artists
Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca was the great man’s Hollywood debut; he was brought to the US by the shrewd David O Selznick, who effectively placed a crown on his head. The movie is stylishly adapted from the Daphne du Maurier novel by Robert E Sherwood and Joan Harrison. It is a gripping romantic mystery with superb performances from Joan Fontaine and Laurence Olivier — and an influence, incidentally, on Paul Thomas Anderson’s new film Phantom Thread. Olivier is the saturnine widower Max de Winter who marries Fontaine’s shy and mousy lady’s companion and brings her back to his magnificent Cornish home, which is all but haunted by his first wife: Rebecca. There is a terrible secret in this house, connected to the creepy housekeeper, Mrs Danvers, unforgettably played by Judith Anderson.
Claude Rains, Paul Henreid, Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca. Photograph: Allstar/Warner Bros
Virile, passionate, patriotic: these adjectives apply to the male lead of Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca, as well as to the movie itself. It is that rare beast: a second world war picture that came out in the middle of the war, when the outcome of the war in Europe was far from clear. Humphrey Bogart is Rick, the tough American bar-owner in Vichy-controlled Morocco, secretly nursing a broken heart. Of all the gin joints, she has to walk into his – Ilse, played by Ingrid Bergman, the resistance leader’s wife he fell in love with in Paris, when the Nazis were moving in. The movie’s fierce anti-Nazi ethic is glorious, the dialogue crackles along and the romance is gorgeous. Find yourself watching the opening moments on TV and you have to stay to the end, no matter how often you’ve seen it before.
Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront. Photograph: Allstar/Columbia Pictures
With its sheer artistry, muscular idealism, and the passionate intensity of the acting — along with Leonard Bernstein’s bright, clamorous orchestral score — Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront is a true classic. Marlon Brando’s wonderfully uninhibited performance set a gold standard for the new method style of acting. He and the movie in general are an obvious inspiration for Scorsese’s Raging Bull. Brando is Terry Malloy, a washed-up boxer now casually employed at the docks – a crooked closed shop controlled by mobster union boss Johnny Friendly (Lee J Cobb). Terry has a cushy deal taking pay for no work, because he’s the kid brother of Friendly’s top consigliere, Charley Malloy (Rod Steiger). But people who talk to the cops get whacked and Terry is secretly sickened by the murders that he has connived at – and at the way his brother betrayed him at the beginning of his boxing career. Hollywood history has given this film a patina of tragedy and irony: Terry wonders if he has the moral courage to name names for the authorities and later, Kazan would be pilloried for doing that during the McCarthyite era. At any rate, On the Waterfront is an operatic masterpiece.
Shirley MacLaine and Jack Lemmon in The Apartment. Photograph: Allstar/United Artists
Romantic comedy is a genre now synthesised and commodified into something very predictable. But Billy Wilder’s The Apartment is a masterly mix of material that is both funny and romantic – with a uniquely charming and accessible male lead in Jack Lemmon. He is the put-upon salaryman in New York who has been bullied by his boss into lending out his apartment for this sleazebag’s extramarital liaisons. Meanwhile, he is falling in love with a heartbreakingly pretty elevator operator, played by Shirley MacLaine. It’s a smart and sophisticated big-city satire with a heart of authentic gold.
Marlon Brando in The Godfather. Photograph: Allstar/PARAMOUNT
Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather was the high point of the American new wave and revived the reputation of Hollywood itself. Like Spielberg’s Jaws, it brilliantly took a pulpy format and supercharged it with meaning and intensity. Brando is the ailing Vito Corleone, presiding over a postwar mafia clan; his sons are coming to terms with what their own destinies are to be when he goes. Al Pacino is Michael Corleone, the decorated war veteran who appears to want nothing to do with his toxic family inheritance. The secrecy, the dysfunction, the fear and self-hate which is transformed into fanatical dedication – it is all here. The mafiosi behave like soldiers in a war movie, only it is peacetime and the battle is on home soil. A magnificent achievement, aspiring to an almost Shakespearean grandeur.
Delos V Smith Jr, Jack Nicholson, Will Sampson, Danny DeVito, Brad Dourif and William Redfield in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Photograph: Allstar/United Artists
Kirk Douglas played the role on Broadway, but when it came to the movie version, his producer son Michael took the decision to cast the young hotshot Jack Nicholson and the rest is film history. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was directed by Milos Forman and adapted by Lawrence Hauben and Bo Goldman from the Ken Kesey novel. Nicholson plays Mac McMurphy, a small-time crook sent down for statutory rape who by playing up his natural craziness gets what he thinks is a cushy transfer to a psychiatric facility, where he leads a revolt of the patients against the system. A fascinating film, soaked in the anti-establishment zeitgeist. Louise Fletcher gives a great performance in the chilling, but complex role of Nurse Ratched.
Diane Keaton in Annie Hall. Photograph: Rex/Moviestore Collection
This is a difficult time to be remembering the brilliance of Woody Allen’s Annie Hall. Objection to his personal life has reached a critical mass, largely due to the recent TV interview that Dylan Farrow gave, effectively introducing a new generation to her original abuse allegations from 1992. However, no legal proof has been established, and Moses Farrow has crucially offered his own complicating testimony. It could be argued that, whatever we think, the reputation of Allen has now been so clouded that, like it or not, Annie Hall has ceased to be funny. I personally think it would be absurd now to airbrush this film out of history and behave as if we never had time for it. It is his fictionalised account of his lost romance with Diane Keaton, and it is a film that pretty well invented the relationship comedy, as well as giving birth to Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm and Girls. And it’s an ancestor of the work of Charlie Kaufman. Annie Hall has lost its innocence, but not its brilliance.
Schindler’s List. Photograph: Cine Text/Sportsphoto Ltd./Allstar
Schindler’s List was a powerful and deeply honourable film for Steven Spielberg, an adaptation of the Thomas Keneally book, and an intensely felt attempt to find the possibility of hope in the very heart of darkness itself: the Nazi concentration camp. It is the true story of the German businessman Oskar Schindler, played with dignity and presence by Liam Neeson, a mercenary cynic who entered a mysterious state of grace and saved over a thousand Jews from death. The young Ralph Fiennes plays the unspeakable camp commander Amon Goeth and Ben Kingsley is Schindler’s bookkeeper Stern. The emotionally exhausting three-hour-plus movie is throughout (mostly) in black-and-white, often using handheld shots with Spielberg in personal charge of the camera.
Josh Brolin in No Country for Old Men. Photograph: Richard Foreman/AP
Cormac McCarthy’s apocalyptic western thriller No Country for Old Men was filmed with passion and style by the Coen brothers: a dark and disquieting Texan movie to compare with their debut, Blood Simple. Tommy Lee Jones is the impassive sheriff, who sets off on the trail of the good ol’ boy (Josh Brolin) who has chanced upon and fled with a bag of $2m of criminals’ money. On his trail also is the deeply creepy killer tasked with recovering this loot for the bad guys: the bizarre Anton Chigurh, played by Javier Bardem. It’s bleakly funny and exciting, but also terrifying in its presentiments of pure evil.
Mahershala Ali and Alex Hibbert in Moonlight. Photograph: David Bornfriend/AP
Bizarre announcement cockups from Beatty and Dunaway to one side, Barry Jenkins’s Moonlight is a remarkable Oscar achievement: a film of real artistry and form, combined with emotional power. It’s a triptych portrait of a young gay black man, played by three different actors as a kid, a teen and then a young man: an almost Tolstoyan sense of childhood, boyhood and youth. Moonlight is about the nature of masculinity, conditioned by the determinant factors of race, class – and sexuality. Its rendering of time and the vicissitudes of identity are complex and enigmatic, but deeply moving at the same time.
Its sheer, intoxicating sleekness and the panache and scope of its storytelling gets The Godfather the big prize, along with the colossal, iconic performance that Coppola gets out of Brando as Don Corleone. In On the Waterfront, Brando was facing up to the mob; now he is their king. Perhaps that sketches out a trajectory towards cynicism or bad-guy glamourisation in popular culture, but the villain has always been a potent force, and they don’t get more compelling than Corleone, a career-criminal who founded a dynasty and believed, in his own way, in the American Dream.
The people’s choice
Peter has had his say on the greatest Oscar-winning film of all time. Now it’s time to find out who you, the people, have crowned your champion. We gave readers the chance to select their favourite from Peter’s five nominees, and here’s who they have chosen as the winner: | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/sep/15/novelist-ditches-publisher-book-launch | Books | 2011-09-15T12:45:18.000Z | Alison Flood | Novelist ditches publisher at book launch for 'condescending' treatment | Novelist Polly Courtney has dropped her publisher HarperCollins for giving her books "condescending and fluffy" covers aimed at the chick lit market.
Courtney self-published Golden Handcuffs, a fictional exposé of life in the City, in 2006 after quitting her job as an investment banker, following it up in 2008 with Poles Apart, about an ambitious Polish graduate who moves to London. Their success helped land her a three-book deal with HarperCollins imprint Avon, but at the launch of the third book, It's A Man's World, she announced that she would not be working with the publisher again.
Instead, she is planning to return to the world of self-publishing.
"My writing has been shoehorned into a place that's not right for it," she said this morning. "It is commercial fiction, it is not literary, but the real issue I have is that it has been completely defined as women's fiction … Yes it is page turning, no it's not War and Peace. But it shouldn't be portrayed as chick lit."
It's a Man's World (given the tagline by Avon, "but it takes a woman to run it") is set in the world of lads' mags, following the story of Alexa Harris, asked to head up a magazine, Banter, with an all-male editorial team. Subjected to "light-hearted" misogyny in the office, Alexa also finds herself the victim of a hate campaign by women's rights activists.
"I'm not averse to the term chick lit," said Courtney, "but I don't think that's what my book is. The implication with chick lit is that it's about a girl wanting to meet the man of her dreams. [My books] are about social issues – this time about a woman in a lads' mag environment and the impact of media on society, and feminism."
The jacket, which displays the chick-lit staple of a pair of slender legs, misrepresents the novel, Courtney believes. "The titles and covers have been a problem with all three of my HarperCollins books, right from the start," she said. "If I had my time again I certainly wouldn't have signed with them. There's a feeling that any author should be grateful for any attention they can get from any publisher – that they should take what they can get. But I don't think they should have looked to sign me on the basis of what I'd written so far."
Her decision to publicly ditch her publisher was the result of "three years of pent–up frustration", she said. "People are looking at my books and saying 'you've turned chick lit'," she said. "The irony is that what's inside the books hasn't changed. To give Avon their due, in terms of the editorial process they didn't try to change what's inside into something different. It's the packaging. From the reader's perspective, they'll see it on the shelf and think this is chick lit, and it's not."
The problem is not confined to Avon: when her novels were being pitched to publishers before she signed with the HarperCollins imprint, Courtney said that she was asked by editors to scrap office scenes and replace them with "handbags". The author believes that publishers are making a mistake in not listening to authors or readers. "They don't want to be patronised, and told all they want is girl meets guy. I genuinely think readers want something more meaty, something to get their teeth into. And if I'm writing that, which I am, then I want them to know that, and for there to be no pink, fluffy packaging," she said.
Speaking at the launch party, Courtney also pointed to WH Smith's recently reported decision to drop the "women's fiction" label from its point of sale after two women complained about the "condescending" practice. They were told by head of fiction Jackie Wing that "this might not be the most suitable reference for our customers" and that it would be removed from future shelf labelling.
Fellow novelist Michele Gorman, who was at the launch, said she did not have a problem with her own novel, Single in the City, being marketed as chick lit by its publisher Penguin. "In my case the jacket very accurately reflects the story," she said. "But at the end of the day, we do judge books by their covers, and if it doesn't do what it says on the tin it will have disappointed readers. Publishing houses do tend to take a single broad brush approach to books by women, for women, and we as writers don't have creative control over our covers or our titles."
A spokesperson for HarperCollins declined to respond directly to Courtney's criticisms of the publisher, saying only: "Avon is right behind Polly Courtney's timely and important book. Our experience tells us it has a great look and feel and we think Polly will be delighted when she sees it flying off the shelves." | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/community/2016/feb/19/cosmic-crossings-share-your-space-inspired-holiday-posters | Community | 2016-02-19T11:32:56.000Z | Tom Stevens | Cosmic crossings: share your space-inspired holiday posters | See Jupiter – by balloon! Nasa's retro space holiday posters – in pictures
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How do you see travel in the future? As Nasa imagines far-off planets as resorts in Visions of the Future, a free-to-download series of vintage-style posters, we’d now like to see your own space-inspired posters.
Whether it’s a tour of the asteroid belt, studying the ‘electric footprints’ of Jupiter’s moons, or visiting a lesser known exoplanet, share your intergalactic holiday illustrations with us. We’ll feature a selection of them on the site.
You can share your space artwork by clicking on the blue ‘Contribute’ button on this article. You can also use the Guardian app and search for ‘GuardianWitness assignments’ – and if you add it to the homepage – you can keep up with all our assignments.
GuardianWitness is the home of readers’ content on the Guardian. Contribute your video, pictures and stories, and browse news, reviews and creations submitted by others. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/may/21/older-people-must-wait-to-find-out-cost-of-tory-cuts-says-damian-green | Society | 2017-05-21T10:22:54.000Z | Rowena Mason | Older people must wait to find out cost of Tory cuts, says Damian Green | Older voters will have to wait until after the election to find out how much money they could lose as a result of Conservative manifesto pledges, a senior Tory cabinet minister has said.
Damian Green, the work and pensions secretary, said he could not say which older people would lose their winter fuel allowances as a result of new means testing and struggled to explain how much some could have to pay because of the proposed social care shakeup, which has been dubbed a “dementia tax” by Labour.
“If they are in genuine need of the winter fuel payment they will still get it ... That’s what we’re going to consult on after the election. That’s the sensible way to do it. That is the way a grown-up government will operate,” he told BBC’s Andrew Marr Show.
Green was confronted with calculations suggesting a widow living in an average-priced house in his own constituency of Ashford in Kent could have to pay an extra £70,000 towards the cost of care for dementia in her own home.
“I suspect that figure requires heroic assumptions,” Green said. “She should vote Conservative and her children should vote Conservative because whatever level of care she needs that removes that terrible decision of how long should you try and keep someone at home or maybe put them into residential care.”
The work and pensions secretary said the policy would not be reversed but it would be subject to a consultation over the summer, like the winter fuel allowance proposal.
He was also pressed about the uncosted nature of the Conservative manifesto in contrast to Labour’s, which presented calculations about how current spending would be balanced by raising taxes on the wealthiest individuals and businesses.
“The difference between the Conservative party and the Labour party is that we produce realistic policies to deal with the real problems of this country.”
The Conservatives appear to have fallen back in the polls amid a growing backlash over the impact of May’s manifesto on older people, who are a key demographic in the party’s support.
The gap between the Tories and Labour has narrowed over the last week, according to four polls released this weekend, with YouGov for the Sunday Times showing only a nine-percentage-point lead for May’s party.
Under the social care plans, older people will have to pay for care in their own home out of the value of their house for the first time until they have £100,000 of assets remaining. The party is promising no one will have to sell their home, as products will be available to allow them to recoup the cost from the value of their assets after death or when the property is eventually sold.
But John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, said the new system was a lottery that hit those who are unlucky enough to suffer from dementia. He said Labour would prefer a cap on the cost that people have to contribute towards their care, similar to the system proposed in a review by Sir Andrew Dilnot.
“You should pool the risk and that way people are not left on their own,” he said.
As newspapers dubbed it a “weekend wobble” for the Conservatives, senior ministers were dispatched on to the airwaves to defend the social care package and withdrawal of winter fuel allowance.
Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, said the social care package was an example of “responsible, grown-up Conservative policy”.
May and other MPs are also using the narrowing of the polls to attempt to motivate Conservative voters to turn out, arguing a failure to do so will make Corbyn prime minister. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/dec/18/and-the-braddie-goes-to-peter-bradshaws-favourite-films-of-the-year | Film | 2015-12-18T11:52:20.000Z | Peter Bradshaw | And the Braddie goes to … Peter Bradshaw's favourite films of the year | Film of the year
45 Years (Dir. Andrew Haigh)
Bridge of Spies (Dir. Steven Spielberg)
Carol (Dir. Todd Haynes)
Inherent Vice (Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson)
Star Wars: The Force Awakens (Dir. JJ Abrams)
Spectre (Dir. Sam Mendes)
A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (Dir. Roy Andersson)
Inside Out (Dirs. Pete Docter, Ronnie Del Carmen)
The Falling (Dir. Carol Morley)
Hard to Be a God (Dir. Alexei German)
Best director
Todd Haynes for Carol
Steven Spielberg for Bridge of Spies
Jafar Panahi for Taxi Tehran
Ava Duvernay for Selma
Terence Davies for Sunset Song
Rufus Norris for London Road
Miroslav Slaboshpitsky for The Tribe
Mia Hansen-Løve for Eden
David Robert Mitchell for It Follows
Noah Baumbach for While We’re Young and Mistress America
Best actor
Michael Fassbender for Macbeth (Dir. Justin Kurzel), Steve Jobs (Dir. Danny Boyle) and Slow West (Dir. John Maclean)
Tom Courtenay for 45 Years (Dir. Andrew Haigh)
Willem Dafoe for Pasolini (Dir. Abel Ferrara)
Joaquin Phoenix for Inherent Vice (Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson)
Antoine Olivier-Pilon for Mommy (Dir. Xavier Dolan)
Channing Tatum for Foxcatcher (Dir. Bennett Miller)
Johannes Kuhnke for Force Majeure (Dir. Ruben Östlund)
David Oyelowo for Selma (Dir. Ava Duvernay)
Harrison Ford for Star Wars: The Force Awakens (Dir. JJ Abrams)
Tom Hiddleston for Crimson Peak (Dir. Guillermo Del Toro)
Best actress
Saoirse Ronan for Brooklyn (Dir. John Crowley)
Rooney Mara for Carol (Dir. Todd Haynes)
Cate Blanchett for Carol (Dir. Todd Haynes)
Charlotte Rampling for 45 Years (Dir. Andrew Haigh)
Marion Cotillard for Macbeth (Dir. Justin Kurzel)
Carey Mulligan for Far From the Madding Crowd (Dir. Thomas Vinterberg) and Suffragette (Dir. Sarah Gavron)
Anna Kendrick for The Last Five Years (Dir. Richard Lagravenese)
Maggie Smith for The Lady in the Van (Dir. Nicholas Hytner)
Alicia Vikander for Ex Machina (Dir. Alex Garland)
Karidja Touré for Girlhood (Dir. Céline Sciamma)
Best supporting actor
John Turturro for Mia Madre (Dir. Nanni Moretti)
Mark Rylance for Bridge of Spies (Dir. Steven Spielberg)
Ben Whishaw for The Lobster (Dir. Yorgos Lanthimos)
Richard Johnson for Radiator (Dir. Tom Browne)
Kevin Guthrie for Sunset Song (Dir. Terence Davies)
Idris Elba for Second Coming (Dir. Debbie Tucker Green) and Beasts of No Nation (Dir. Cary Fukunaga)
Michael Sheen for Far From the Madding Crowd (Dir. Thomas Vinterberg)
JK Simmons for Whiplash (Dir. Damien Chazelle)
Michael Shannon for 99 Homes (Dir. Ramin Bahrani)
Ricardo Darín for Wild Tales (Dir. Damián Szifrón)
Best supporting actress
Julie Walters for Brooklyn (Dir. John Crowley)
Olivia Colman for London Road (Dir. Rufus Norris) and The Lobster (Dir. Yorgos Lanthimos)
Regina Casé for The Second Mother (Dir. Anna Muylaert)
Florence Pugh for The Falling (Dir. Carol Morley)
Anne Dorval for Mommy (Dir. Xavier Dolan)
Sienna Guillory for The Goob (Dir. Guy Myhill)
Sidse Babett Knudsen for The Duke of Burgundy (Dir. Peter Strickland)
Toulou Kiki for Timbuktu (Dir. Abderrahmane Sissako)
Kitana Kiki Rodriguez for Tangerine (Dir. Sean Baker)
Yana Novikova for The Tribe (Dir. Miroslav Slaboshpitsky)
Best documentary
Amy (Dir. Asif Kapadia)
The Look of Silence (Dir. Joshua Oppenheimer)
He Named Me Malala (Dir. Davis Guggenheim)
A Syrian Love Story (Dir. Sean Mcallister)
Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief (Dir. Alex Gibney)
We Are Many (Dir. Amir Amirani)
The Last of the Unjust (Dir. Claude Lanzmann)
Beyond Clueless (Dir. Charlie Lyne)
Best of Enemies (Dirs. Morgan Grenville, Robert Gordon)
My Nazi Legacy (Dir. David Evans)
Best screenwriter
The best films of 2015: Guardian readers' choice
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Pete Docter, Ronnie Del Carmen, Meg Lefauve, Josh Cooley and Simon Rich for Inside Out (Dirs. Pete Docter, Ronnie Del Carmen)
Phyllis Nagy for Carol (Dir. Todd Haynes)
Aaron Sorkin for Steve Jobs (Dir. Danny Boyle)
Damián Szifrón for Wild Tales (Dir. Damián Szifrón)
Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach for Mistress America (Dir. Noah Baumbach)
Desiree Akhavan for Appropriate Behavior (Dir. Desiree Akhavan)
Nick Hornby for Brooklyn (Dir. John Crowley)
Debbie Tucker Green for Second Coming (Dir. Debbie Tucker Green)
Ana Lily Amirpour for A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (Dir. Ana Lily Amirpour)
Laurence Rickard and Ben Willbond for Bill (Dir. Richard Bracewell)
Best films of the year in the UK, US and Australia | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2018/mar/14/the-killing-joke-at-30-what-is-the-legacy-of-alan-moore-shocking-batman-comic | Books | 2018-03-14T14:00:16.000Z | David Barnett | The Killing Joke at 30: what is the legacy of Alan Moore's shocking Batman comic? | When The Killing Joke was published, 30 years ago today, it was instantly hailed by critics as the greatest Batman story ever told. Written by Alan Moore, the comic won an Eisner award in 1989, hit the New York Times bestseller list a decade after it first came out, and was adapted into a R-rated film. The ripples have been felt across superhero comics ever since.
It is an important comic book for many reasons, not all of them worth celebrating. The 46-page psychological slug-fest posits the ultimate standoff between Batman and his oldest foe, the Joker; the green-tressed villain wants to prove that all it takes to make a sane, ordered person slip into madness is “one bad day”. His bad day being when his wife and unborn child died in a tragic accident, the Joker suspects that Batman has had his own formative, shocker of a day at some point – which readers know is right, since he saw his parents gunned down in front of him as a child.
But it is not the Batman who the Joker wishes to drive mad – they’re both already there, in their own, very different ways. The subject of the experiment is Commissioner Jim Gordon, who the Joker kidnaps, strips naked and exposes to a nightmarish, de-humanising experience in an abandoned funfair.
When Moore asked if his treatment of Barbara was okay, editor Len Wein reportedly said “Yeah, okay, cripple the bitch.”
It is here that the tipping point occurs; if not for Gordon, certainly for the reader. When kidnapping Gordon, the Joker and his thugs shoot his daughter Barbara, injuring her spine and paralysing her. The young woman, who is also Batgirl, is then stripped naked and subjected to a humiliating photoshoot, with the photos later blown up to monstrous proportions in an attempt to nudge her father over the edge.
The story goes that Moore asked DC if they were OK with how he treated Barbara Gordon; editor Len Wein reportedly responded, “Yeah, OK, cripple the bitch.” As Moore doesn’t speak about The Killing Joke (or any of his DC work) any more, and Wein died last year, it’s perhaps a piece of comics apocrypha we can analyse however we want.
What we do know is that Moore disowned the comic, and not just because of contractual sparring with his former publisher. A couple of years ago, answering a question about The Killing Joke in a Goodreads Q&A session, he said, “I thought it was far too violent and sexualised a treatment for a simplistic comic book character like Batman and a regrettable misstep on my part.”
Since the 1980s, comic studios have frequently released stories that sit outside their main storylines, self-contained works existing in their own bubble. But Barbara Gordon and her wheelchair persisted beyond The Killing Joke; she took on a new persona, Oracle, and fought crime from behind a computer. Barbara was an original member of the Birds of Prey superteam, eventually written by Gail Simone, who was also one of the founders of Women in Refrigerators. Named after an infamous act of violence in Green Lantern (involving a woman and a fridge), the campaign drew attention to the trope of female characters being injured, killed or abused merely to give men motivation for revenge – and Barbara Gordon’s ordeal at the hands of the Joker was one of the most famous.
In a way, a lot of good came out of The Killing Joke. In 2011, Simone began writing new Batgirl comics for DC, starring a physically rehabilitated Barbara who still endures post-traumatic stress disorder – an issue that might not have been aired otherwise. Barbara Gordon showed that it was possible to survive, and to fight back. And, with 30 years of hindsight, male writers should think twice about how they portray women in their books – and expect to be called out on it when they get it wrong.
Quick Guide
The five Alan Moore comics you must read
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Leaving aside Barbara Gordon, The Killing Joke remains technically superb in terms of its writing and art. Alongside Moore and Gibbons’ Watchmen, Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, Sandman and Hellblazer, The Killing Joke was part of a 1980s movement that changed the attitude of comics being something just for kids. They became darker, richer, more sophisticated.
Three decades on, The Killing Joke’s legacy could be regarded as balancing between two polarised positions – not dissimilar to the Joker’s own “one bad day” hypothesis. Could a comic that Moore himself felt was too violent, too sexualised and “a regrettable misstep” push the medium over the edge into something reprehensible, where anything is permissible in the name of entertainment? Or would comics, just like Barbara Gordon, ultimately prove too resilient? I hope it is the latter. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/dec/01/copa-libertadores-final-river-plate-refuse-to-play-boca-juniors-in-madrid | Football | 2018-12-01T16:23:43.000Z | Guardian sport | Copa Libertadores final: River Plate refuse to play Boca Juniors in Madrid | River Plate rejected the decision to play the rearranged second leg of their Copa Libertadores final against Boca Juniors in Madrid.
The much anticipated Superclásico between the fierce Buenos Aires rivals was postponed twice last weekend after Boca’s team bus was attacked by River fans on the way to the stadium.
Postponed Copa Libertadores final to be played at Bernabéu in Madrid
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On Thursday Conmebol announced the second leg of the final will be played at the Bernabéu stadium, more than 6,000 miles away from the original venue, on 9 December.
But River Plate said in a statement on Saturday that it is “incomprehensible” to play it in Spain.
“River Plate reject the change of venue,” the club said. “The club understands that the decision (to play in Madrid) … adversely affects those who bought tickets and also upsets the idea of equal conditions by taking away home advantage.
“Argentine football as a whole and the Argentine Football Association cannot and should not allow a handful of violent [fans] to impede the Superclásico taking place in our country.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2013/jul/04/carla-bruni-free-flights-union | Culture | 2013-07-04T12:07:39.000Z | Angelique Chrisafis | Carla Bruni's free flights anger Air France union | During the last French presidential election campaign, Carla Bruni claimed she was so down to earth she wore a wig to travel on the Paris metro in disguise.
But it seems that the millionaire folk-singer and wife of former president Nicolas Sarkozy still has a taste for luxury travel and state freebies.
A trade union at the national airline Air France has voiced outrage after Bruni enjoyed a free return flight from Paris to New York while promoting her new album in the US last month. Air France also paid the €500 (£428) airport taxes for her.
The SUD union complained that free tickets for VIPs were scandalous at a time when the airline is telling staff its financial situation is "catastrophic". Air France has been undergoing major restructuring and is trying to cut its debt by €2bn by 2015 with significant job losses.
Former French presidents and their families are traditionally allowed free flights on Air France, which is partly state-owned, as well as free rail travel.
The SUD criticised an opaque system of VIP freebies, not just among former presidential families but also among the executive class and their hangers-on. "We're no longer in a monarchy," a representative told Agence France Presse.
Last year there was a scandal when a former Air France chief executive, his wife and two friends were due to fly to Mauritius on preferential tickets that cost almost nothing. They eventually cancelled their trip.
Meanwhile on Thursday, France's constitutional council rejected Sarkozy's 2012 election expenses, saying he had omitted to mention more than €1.5m of spending in his accounts, which totalled around €22m.
The ruling means that Sarkozy's right-wing UMP will be deprived of the €11m that it would have been reimbursed. The party, whose finances are already tight, will lose out on what amounts to one third of its annual budget. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jul/23/makes-me-shiver-with-glee-a-stephen-king-superfan-on-castle-rock | Television & radio | 2018-07-23T09:00:29.000Z | James Smythe | Makes me shiver with glee' – a Stephen King superfan on Castle Rock | God, I love a mystery box. TV shows built around the idea that there’s something going on, but the explanation is teased out over episodes – over seasons – before the resolution is offered. And everything in that show feeds into that central mystery, before being spat out, hopefully satisfying the viewers who’ve stuck with it.
Remember Lost? JJ Abrams does. It was partly his brainchild, after all; and it changed the landscape of television in what amounts to very JJ Abrams-shaped ways. Suddenly, for so many TV shows, the mystery box was everything. What’s in the box? Who knows! The mystery box has been a major part of some of the most intriguing TV shows of recent years, to varying degrees of success: from Fringe to Westworld to The Leftovers, the hand of Lost – of Abrams – has touched them all.
'It was wonderfully scary': Tim Curry, Rob Reiner and Kathy Bates on the joy of adapting Stephen King
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You know what else I love? Easter eggs. You know, when there’s a hint that the creator understands that you’re interacting with a text in some way, and they give you a nod at that; or a wink, that says, you’ve spotted a connection here! Clever old you. They’re fun little meta layers that fans of the properties love.
Stephen King does as well. His – frankly unimpeachable – career is full of Easter eggs. So many of his novels have shared universes and characters. If you’re one of his devoted fanbase – Constant Readers, we’re known as, a pet name that we lean into as hard as we can – then you’ll live for these moments. We’re reading 11/22/63, and suddenly, wham: some characters from It appear, just living their lives; old friends that we’re catching up with. Not to detract from the rest of the book, but that’s the most exhilarating moment in it. And while it’s not quite throwaway, it’s certainly not the book’s core.
And perhaps the biggest Easter egg in King’s back catalogue is Castle Rock. It’s a town in Maine, and bad stuff happens there. It’s the focal point of many of my favourite of his novels – The Dark Half and Needful Things, to name just two – and it’s like some weird hellmouth, an Eerie Indiana for real horror fans: a place where Very Bad Things (caps intended) happen, and Righteous People have to sort them out.
So, what happens when the Master of the Mystery Box meets the King of the Easter egg? Castle Rock, that’s what. A new show that’s defiantly set in King’s world, but not actually using his novels or stories. Instead, it’s channelling the tone, and – based on the few episodes available for review – seems to be set in a shared world where a lot of the stories from his books are in the narrative’s past.
The plot of the show is a very King-ish tale indeed. A few decades ago, this kid, Henry Matthew Deaver, mysteriously went missing on the day that his father mysteriously died. He mysteriously reappeared 11 days later in the middle of a frozen lake. Now, he’s a death row lawyer, and he’s called back to Castle Rock when a young man is mysteriously found in a secret cage in a prison after the prison warden mysteriously kills himself. The young man only says three words, and he says them pretty damn mysteriously – Henry Matthew Deaver.
Oh, and the warden killed himself because he says that God told him that the young man is the devil. Pretty standard stuff.
Now, that’s a hooky idea that I’d try whatever, regardless of the Stephen King and JJ Abrams associations. But you throw them in … and, well. The mystery box is stuffed full from minute one. Why did Henry Deaver go missing? How did his father die? How did he reappear, sans frostbite? Why did the warden kill himself? Who’s this boy in the hole? Did God speak to the warden? And if not God, who? Is the psychic woman actually psychic? So many questions. Some of them are answered, and some of them – in the first few episodes, at least – are not.
Then there are the Easter eggs. And let me tell you, for the King aficionado, this is a feast. The man who finds young Henry Deaver on the ice is a sheriff, and when I realised that he was Alan Pangborn – the sheriff who oversaw Castle Rock in the 1980s, who appeared in so many novels – I actually shouted his name out loud, as if this was some sort of game of Stephen King bingo.
Bill Skarsgard in Castle Rock. Photograph: Patrick Harbron/Hulu
The references don’t stop coming. They range from the subtle (the Mellow Tiger bar, which appeared in a scene in the aforementioned Needful Things) to the massively overt (checking that a deceased pet dog, now buried, has actually stayed dead – and as for the fact that it’s buried in a suitcase, in case … well, you should probably go and read Pet Sematary).
And I haven’t even mentioned the casting yet, which is a whole other layer of meta. Sissy Spacek, famously Carrie, is here; and so’s Bill Skarsgard, who played Pennywise in the recent incarnation of It. And Terry Quinn, the warden who spoke to the devil? Well, he’s the man who played Locke in Lost – a character who communed with the evil that was a part of the island that show was set on.
There’s a lot here for the Constant Reader; but, crucially, these references never get in the show’s way. Because, of course, this show needs to work for non-King fans. While the opening credits suggest this is a deep dive into his work, being little more than a series of manuscript pages from a variety of his novels, the truth is that the show itself has to be more.
And so far? It is. It’s thoroughly entertaining, and the mystery box is just the right side of the annoyance line – there are answers, and the drip-feed of them is just right. What the partnership between Abrams and King has cooked up here is quite remarkable: an eminently bingeable premium TV show that just happens to make me shiver with glee at the thought of my favourite characters popping up as the show goes on. Because I just know they’re all waiting for me.
Castle Rock starts in the US on Hulu on 25 July with UK and Australian dates yet to be announced | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/jan/24/paniconthestreetsoflondon | Opinion | 2008-01-24T17:00:00.000Z | Josh Freedman Berthoud | Panic on the streets of London | I heard about Monday's murder in Edmonton sooner than most people, as my friend had witnessed the aftermath.
The local schools had just been dismissed; the streets were packed with frenetic crowds, understandably upset by what had occurred. Aside from the injuries, one of the most disturbing sights my friend reported was several young teenagers wearing stab-proof vests over their clothing, fighting with police to get closer to their dying friend.
The attack took place at the bottom of my old school's road. It wasn't an inviting neighbourhood then, either. And, ours being the geeky school of the area, we often feared being attacked on the walk down to Silver Street. Many of us saw knives; some were beaten up; sometimes there were fights between local kids.
That is to say, the area was roughly the same then as it is now - this was only 10 years ago. But the language was different. Then there were groups of kids fighting; now there are "gangs at war". Then there were muggings and beatings; now there are "gangland revenge attacks" and "streets of fear".
It is hard to say whether "things have got worse", as we are constantly being reminded by a media and public overcome by fear. According to statistics, things are improving, as far as London's violent crime rates - and, specifically, knife attacks - are concerned, though statistics should be taken with a pinch of salt.
Either way, London murders certainly occurred 10 years ago, and they occur today - though there has been a rise in violent youth crime. However, what has risen most noticeably is the attention paid to the crimes, giving the impression of a pandemic of teen killings in the capital.
Of course these killings are as disturbing as they are unacceptable, and the crimes must not go unreported. Yet there is coverage, and there is sensationalism. Compare, for instance, these two reports of the same attack. One is from the BBC; the other is from the Evening Standard. Notice how the former keeps to dry facts while the latter uses quotation to hype up the news with emotionally charged conjecture.
It is, indeed, an emotional issue, but how much does this kind of reporting really help to improve the situation? One might argue that it is not a newspaper's job to improve the situation. OK. But to what extent does this kind of analysis actually make things worse?
Not once did I see teenagers wearing stab-proof vests in the street 10 years ago. Now they not only wear them under their clothing, but in some cases ostentatiously over their sweaters, blatantly embracing and perpetuating the image of life on the frontline. Likewise, this range of slash-proof streetwear did not exist until last year. And now there are recommendations to introduce metal detectors at troubled schools.
On the one hand, these measures are designed to decrease the prevalence and impact of knife-carrying children. On the other hand, though, they are symptomatic of a growing sense of moral panic, entrenching the view that London is a murder-ridden ghetto among those who most need to be convinced otherwise - namely London's impressionable youth.
Take the example of this young black boy from Bow, whom my friend teaches photography in a scheme for underprivileged children. When my friend suggested that the boy attend a college in Latimer Road, he replied: "West London? I'd have to take my shank, then."
The idea that a boy from east London thought he could not travel to west London without a knife would be laughable if it were not a telling indicator of the impact that the sensationalising of violent crime is having on young people, males in particular.
Boys need to feel free to travel from one part of London to another without fear of attack. And in reality the chances, both statistical and anecdotal, prove they can indeed travel without incident. Yet young men are growing up with newspapers, TV, teachers and even the current home secretary - all of whom should be responsibly leading society - hysterically reporting that London runs red with violent crime.
The youths' response: to come prepared; to carry more knives, wear vests over their clothes and tell everyone just how ghetto their manor has become.
So if today's children, who grow up seeing galleries of killed kids in the daily paper, decide to wear vests and carry more shanks, then, in 10 years' time, what will the children who grew up around stab-proof vests and metal detectors do?
Teenage violence needs to be urgently tackled. However, image is everything to impressionable young people, and as long as adults tell them that they live in a war zone, then they will increasingly act as though they really do.
It is imperative that those in positions of responsibility keep their heads, to keep inner-city youths from losing theirs. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/feb/10/baftas-2019-dress-to-express-replaces-statement-frocks | Film | 2019-02-10T21:46:00.000Z | Morwenna Ferrier | Dress to express replaces statement frocks at the Baftas | Ayear on from 2018’s Baftas blackout, this year’s red carpet was remarkable for not being remarkable, with black, white – and occasionally black and white – the dominant trends on an otherwise trendless evening.
It was perhaps intentional. Since the #MeToo movement, we have looked to the red carpet for a visual response to the allegations of abuse that have surfaced. This had its genesis in Hollywood, after all. But the idea of Time’s Up was that it would transcend the red carpet. “[It] was never intended to live on the red carpet or serve as a red carpet campaign,” a spokesperson for the movement told the Guardian.
Baftas 2019: red carpet fashion – in pictures
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Still, there were gowns – at least more gowns than trousers – and even a royal appearance by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. So what were the trends? Black and floor-length, primarily. Two of the five nominees for best leading actress – Glenn Close and Melissa McCarthy – went head to toe, while Olivia Colman and Viola Davis wore black and white monochrome (Emilia Wickstead and Armani Privé, respectively). The other nominee, Lady Gaga, was absent but one likes to think she too would have got the memo. Cate Blanchett went one step further, matching her newly dyed dark hair to her Christopher Kane dress. Also in black.
White was also a theme. Rising star winner, Letitia Wright, talked about “breaking barriers” in a white tuxedo by Stella McCartney. Mary J Blige wore white trousers, designed by Ralph & Russo, while the duchess arrived late, but well put together, in an asymmetric bespoke white gown. Most prominent of all was host Joanna Lumley who also wore a white suit, echoing the uniform of “suffragette white” adopted by Democratic women in the US.
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2019 Bafta film awards - full list of winners
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Flourishes came via addendums, such as giant bows (Amy Adams’s were used to keep her burgundy Prada dress hoiked up) and a smattering of cream tulle for Rachel Weisz, and black for Margot Robbie in Chanel Couture. Some of the best dresses were strapless – see Claire Foy, Roma’s Yalitza Aparicio and Thandie Newton – proof that the most effective gowns can be the simplest ones, well executed.
Baftas 2019: The Favourite reigns – almost – supreme as Roma takes best picture
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As for the men, they largely balanced polite traditionalism with silliness. Timothée Chalamet, an early adopter of the luxury harness, wore a silk damask jacket by Haider Ackermann, while Luke Evans went for a velvet tuxedo in green.
Polite traditionalism with silliness … Timothée Chalamet. Photograph: Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP
There were moments of personal expression. Spike Lee clashed reliably with the status quo and red carpet in a purple tux and beret, while Octavia Spencer matched it in a red sequinned gown. Zawe Ashton and Regina King both wore cerise, and Ashton wore flats. Although when one of the most famous lingerie models – in this instance, Irina Shayk – wears a plain black suit, you know change is afoot.
Any political discourse moved back to the films, though. In timely fashion, The Wife, a favourite to win Close the best actress award, is focused on gender imbalance. Speaking on the red carpet before the event, Close said it added to that dialogue.
US director Spike Lee’s shoes. Photograph: Tolga Akmen/AFP/Getty Images
It’s worth remembering the red carpet is not an easy place for ongoing activism. The dress code from last year might have been the movement’s most striking example, but even by the time the Oscars had rolled around, a few weeks later, activism was absent. It’s no surprise that a year later, the sole act of dissent were the words “speak on it” written on Spike Lee’s trainers. After Liam Neeson’s comments this week, Lee said he wouldn’t cast him in a film.
And then there was the weather. Compared to its west coast cousins, the Baftas are the chilliest of the season. Salma Hayek, resplendent though she was in black slender column and mesh headband, spoke for everyone when she told the assembled fans who wanted a photo: “It’s too cold!” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/jul/09/marriage-equality-liberal-senator-drafts-private-members-bill-in-defiance-of-party | Australia news | 2017-07-09T07:41:38.000Z | Naaman Zhou | Turnbull discourages Liberal private member's bill for marriage equality | Malcolm Turnbull has poured cold water on a Liberal backbencher’s move to present a private member’s bill to allow a conscience vote on same-sex marriage.
“The government’s policy is very clear: we support a plebiscite where all Australians would be given a vote on the matter and that remains our policy,” the prime minister told reporters in Paris.
The West Australian senator Dean Smith told Perth’s Sunday Times he had been drafting the private member’s bill in secret and was now ready to take it to the Liberal party room, with the aim of a conscience vote in parliament.
Nationals senator reminds Liberals same-sex marriage plebiscite part of their deal
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Smith’s bill contradicts the official party position, which requires a non-binding plebiscite be conducted on the issue before legislation can be introduced.
However, Smith said a swift parliamentary vote was the “sensible way forward”, and that “the time is now”.
“My sense is that people are embarrassed that Australia has not resolved this issue … Many do support the matter being put before the parliament and finally resolved.”
Smith’s bill threatens to rekindle a factional battle within the party that Turnbull has spend the past few weeks putting out, after the defence industry minister, Christopher Pyne, was caught on tape saying marriage equality would come “sooner than everyone thinks”.
Last month Turnbull explicitly ruled out the introduction of a bill after a backlash from conservatives. He said the official party policy was that no bill or vote could be taken “until there has been a vote of the Australian people”, a position he reiterated in Paris on Sunday. However he did not directly criticise Smith.
“Dean crossed the floor against the plebiscite bill in the Senate, you know, so he has a longstanding view on it,” Turnbull said.
On Tuesday, Nationals senator John Williams reminded the Liberal party that a guaranteed plebiscite was a part of the Coalition agreement between the two parties.
Smith, who is the government’s deputy whip in the upper house, said the bill would include religious exemptions for celebrants who had an objection to marrying members of the same sex.
“I believe – and I am confident many other Australians share my view – that people’s religious views about marriage deserve to be protected at the same time as we provide for same-sex marriage,” he said.
He said the exemptions followed the recommendations of a cross-party Senate committee in February, which he sat on along with Labor’s Louise Pratt and the Greens’ Janet Rice.
A poll from February found that a free vote on marriage equality would boost the government’s popularity.
Seventy-one per cent of those polled said they would support a move to replace the plebiscite with a parliamentary conscience vote, including 64% of Liberal supporters.
Smith said he wanted the issue resolved “once and for all” before the next election.
Christopher Pyne apologises for 'unwise' remarks that triggered Liberal brawl
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“This is not an academic or theoretical issue,” he said. “This goes to the heart of how some Australians could be free to live their lives according to their own choices.”
Alex Greenwich, an independent New South Wales state MP and the co-chair of Australian Marriage Equality, welcomed the bill.
“Senator Dean Smith’s progress towards legislation shows the political will to deliver marriage equality in this parliament continues to grow,” he said.
Tiernan Brady, the campaign’s executive director, added that the legislation was “a straightforward reform”.
“Our message is clear to all federal MP’s – it’s time to do your job and introduce marriage equality in line with the clear wishes and values of the Australian people and we won’t give up until they do.”
With Australian Associated Press | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2016/sep/26/orphanage-locked-up-disabled-children-lumos-dri-human-rights | Working in development | 2016-09-26T08:00:25.000Z | Naomi Larsson Piñeda | Out of sight: the orphanages where disabled children are abandoned | A dozen children with cerebral palsy lie on thin mattresses on the floor of a spacious room. A smell of cleaning products unsuccessfully masks the scent of urine.
Nearby, five children are tied to a rough metal frame. They are bandaged from the waist to the ankles, their hands bandaged too, looking half mummified in an attempt to teach them how to stand.
Eight million children live in orphanages across the world, despite more than 90% having at least one living parent
There are 19 patients in total at Asociación Hogar Infantil San Luis Gonzaga, an institution located in Mexico City. They are aged between nine and 40, but the eldest look like teenagers – their bodies haven’t fully grown and they seem absent from their surroundings. Most still wear diapers. All were brought here by their families, but just half of them have sporadic contact with their relatives. As long as the monthly fees are paid (from £29 to £185, depending on the family’s financial situation) the child is allowed to remain there.
Here, time seems to have halted: teaching materials, orthopaedic contraptions, and physiotherapy techniques go back 30 years. Even the patient care model, which focuses solely on physical therapy, denies the residents any basic entertainment or volition, and essential personal support.
A still from the DRI film in Mexico, showing Leonardo tied to his bed. Photograph: Disability Rights International
Video footage taken inside the institution in May this year by NGO Disability Rights International (DRI) shows 10-year-old Leonardo, who is autistic, fastened in a wheelchair. His wheelchair is tied to the neighbouring crib so that he is unable to move – even though he is capable of walking. This set up is not to punish him, says a staff member, but to keep him safe and stop him from throwing himself off the chair. His family live six hours from Mexico City, and are not financially able to take care of him.
Another video shows a boy who appears to be in his early teens with cerebral palsy lying in his bunk, banging his teeth on the wooden sides. The side boards are heavily marked by the force of his head and teeth against the wood. When the child opens his mouth, there are teeth missing.
A worldwide human rights issue
Up to eight million children (pdf) live in orphanages across the world, despite more than 90% having at least one living parent. Disabled children are overwhelmingly represented, and can remain in institutionalised care for life. Harrowingly, young adults raised in institutions are 500 times more likely kill themselves.
For the last 13 years DRI has been working on a worldwide campaign to shut down orphanages and institutions that, in far too many cases, neglect or even abuse the rights of the children. In particular, they focus on people with disabilities. Over their years of research, DRI has documented abuse within state-run, and donor-funded facilities – including orphanages and psychiatric wards – from the Ukraine to Guatemala. In the process they have exposed institutionalisation as a worldwide human rights issue.
Last year, when investigating Mexican institutions for children with disabilities, DRI found “atrocious abuses that fall inside the definition of torture”. Investigators recorded prolonged use of restraints in centres – like those in San Luis Gonzaga – that caused high levels of suffering, physical deformities and dislocations. Any restraint of people with mental disabilities “even for a short period of time, may constitute torture and ill-treatment”, according to the UN’s rapporteur on torture.
Even in the best of institutions children don’t get their full needs met
Helen Dent
In Paraguay, researchers found autistic children locked in cages at a state-run hospital. The children were only allowed to spend a few hours every other day in an outdoor “pen littered with excrement, garbage and broken glass”, as DRI described it. There have been reports of forced sterilisation of patients in Mexico – some pressured by health professionals – to cover up sexual abuse within an institution. In Ukraine, the teams discovered that children were given classifications depending upon the “severity” of their disability. Children classed as level three or four were considered to be “uneducable”, and were expected to remain in an institution for life.
Though the organisation has come across well-equipped, clean facilities and many families believe they’re doing the right thing for their children, DRI’s president Laurie Ahern maintains “there is no such thing as a good orphanage. Nothing replaces a family. Children still have psychological and developmental delays – you need someone to look into your eyes, a primary caregiver, and that doesn’t happen in an orphanage.”
“Even in the best of institutions children don’t get their full needs met,” says Helen Dent, professor of clinical and forensic psychology at Staffordshire University. Dent watched DRI’s videos from the institution in Mexico, and her impression is of a “clean and modern” facility where “the staff are trying to care for the children with apparently few resources”.
She adds: “The young man banging his teeth against the cot side was clearly in need of adult attention both to stop him from self-harming and to provide positive stimulation to remove the need for self-harm. Most people kept in such circumstances would suffer serious consequences and show unusual behaviours.”
The alternative, argues DRI, should be that development funding is moved to community- and family-based care. Their campaign is a monumental task that requires changing mindsets on a global scale.
“They were literally hosed off to be cleaned”
It was after visiting the Samuel Ramirez psychiatric hospital in Mexico City more than 20 years ago that Eric Rosenthal decided to found DRI.
With a slight tremble in his voice he recalls an area surrounded by barbed wire where both children and adults were held naked. “They were literally hosed off to be cleaned. They were fed on trays ... they all lunged for common food and had to fight over it,” he says. “They were tied down. It was the most horrendous dehumanisation. These people look like animals when they’re left this way, and that’s how they were treated.”
Eric Rosenthal, founder of Disability Rights International. Photograph: Jocelyn Augustino/The Guardian
Rosenthal, 52, studied both mental health and international human rights before turning to law. A lifelong activist, he strongly felt the rights of people with disabilities had been overlooked by the international development and human rights communities. DRI was established with a $20,000 fellowship in an empty office above a dance studio in Washington DC. The organisation bases its model on Amnesty International, researching and exposing injustices to push for change. Over the past two decades, Rosenthal has visited hundreds of institutions in more than 30 countries, accompanied by a team of volunteers who are often medical experts.
The team is small, but they’ve made some genuine advances over the years. DRI now has offices in Mexico, Guatemala, Ukraine and Serbia, and have produced 18 major investigative reports. An expose of abuse in one particular facility that DRI collaborated on with the New York Times Magazine, contributed to the historic 2006 UN treaty on people with disabilities, which called for disabled people to have the same human rights as the able bodied.
We’re exporting a model that we know is harmful to children
Laurie Ahern
The organisation’s work has also led to the European Union introducing a policy where European money cannot be used for maintaining any kind of institution. And in Serbia, DRI’s efforts have led to a law that children under the age of three can’t be institutionalised. Serbia now has one of the lowest percentages of children in institutions – though the number of institutionalised children with disabilities remains high.
After the landmark UN treaty – the DRI focused its efforts on stopping new entrants to existing facilities. “It’s a lot easier to establish international law than enforce that law,” Rosenthal says. “If we could get countries to agree on a moratorium of no new admissions to institutions, then they would whittle [the numbers] away – it would save families, save kids at the most vulnerable point in their lives. And that was Laurie’s idea.”
Laurie Ahern, president of Disability Rights International. Photograph: Jocelyn Augustino/The Guardian
Laurie Ahern, 62, is the brainchild of DRI’s global campaign to end institutionalisation. Rosenthal sings her praises, and when speaking to her on the phone from her office in DC, it’s not hard to see why. Her passion for the cause is admirable. She cares deeply for her colleagues and seems to dedicate every waking hour to this campaign.
“We’re exporting a model that we know is harmful to children,” Ahern says. “When I began visiting orphanages and institutions for children some 13 years ago, and witnessed unimaginable human rights abuses and torture perpetrated against children – left to die lonely painful deaths, immobile children left in cribs for years, no touch, no love – I knew we had to do something big.”
“It’s something that we can change,” she adds. “This is really not a complicated problem; this is about donors putting money to families and not supporting orphanages.” Other organisations such as Lumos, the charity founded by JK Rowling, also campaign for deinstitutionalisation, and Lumos has just launched a global campaign to raise awareness of the issue. DRI, Lumos and other organisations including the Replace Campaign all support the idea that we should change this culture of institutionalisation and work on keeping families together, supporting communities, and improving social networks. Lumos believes that the institutionalisation of children can be eradicated globally by 2050 (backing this statement with figures including the 70% reduction of the number of children in institutions in Moldova over the last decade, despite the country’s high poverty rates).
There is also an economic argument, Ahern adds: “It’s so much less expensive for government to support families to [help] children with disabilities go to school, than it is to pay to keep them in an orphanage for a long time.” For example, in Tanzania’s Kagera region, the yearly cost for one child in institutional care is reportedly $1,000 (£770) – six times the cost of supporting a child in foster care. And in Romania, residential care for children costs up to $280 (£216), while family reintegration and local adoption costs about $19 (£15) per child.
Volunteer travel: experts raise concerns over unregulated industry
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But in many senses they’re fighting an uphill battle. Institutionalisation is still a development model – and in some countries it even constitutes a method of tourism, or voluntourism – supported by donors and governments.
Money is a big problem. There is little or no funding for the services that can prevent family separation or for social care networks. Any funding that does come through is often used to renovate or reopen institutions, especially facilities for people with disabilities, rather than support the structures that can help replace them.
Although 32 state-run institutions in Georgia were shut and replaced with family and community-based services in the last decade, a 2013 DRI investigation found that US government money had funded two institutions specifically for disabled people, in the years since. Between 2008-2012, €5.6m (£4.8m) of EU funding (pdf) was spent on renovating children’s institutions and those for people with disabilities in just one county in the Czech Republic. Despite this investment, the quality of care did not improve and the Czech ombudsman still reported concerns over serious neglect and abuse in these facilities. ‘When no one is watching out, bad things happen to children’
But for Ahern and her colleagues there is no question of giving up. I speak to her just before she is about to go on holiday for three weeks – her only time off throughout the year. Can she ever switch off? “Yes I can. It’s for my own survival and because I want to be able to stay and continue to do this work.” She is going to spend time with her granddaughter, who is a poignant reminder of why she works with DRI. “I can’t imagine her going through what I’ve seen other children go through unnecessarily. In recent years the investigations have become even more nefarious than I thought they ever could be – the trafficking of children for sex, pornography, organs. There’s no way I ...” she falters. “I can’t put that into the back of my mind and just let it go.”
When I ask Ahern about her motivation for the work, she says: “I was abused as a child. I wish someone had come and rescued me; I wish somebody had spoken to me when I couldn’t speak.” Ahern believes that children left in institutions, especially those with disabilities, are forgotten. “When no one’s watching out for children – whether that’s conflict or an orphanage – bad things happen to children. There’s a sphere for abuse and neglect.”
We need to stop treating people with disabilities as less than human
Shantha Rau Barriga
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One of the most extreme cases of neglect she has seen was in the Tbilisi Infants Home in Georgia, where children with hydrocephalus – a buildup of fluid in the brain – were left untreated, which is extremely painful and life-threatening. “Babies, six months old with huge heads were just laying there moaning. I was overwhelmed with grief because we know the problem can be taken care of and the child can have a perfectly normal life,” she says. The NGO found more than 50% of the children with this treatable condition died in the institution.
“You can’t see this and not be moved,” Ahern says. She tells me about the time when, a few years ago, she walked into a Serbian institution to find teenagers with cerebral palsy who looked like children because they had not been allowed to leave their beds in 10 years. Worse, this was not the first time she had come across this situation.
“But you can take action, get a little angry, and then you see change. You see people’s minds change, and we see money change [from funding orphanages] because of that. That’s the only way for me to deal with [this].”
For more information about the work of Disability Rights International visit their website here. For information about Lumos click here.
Join our community of development professionals and humanitarians. Follow @GuardianGDP on Twitter. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/sep/23/wim-wenders-berlin-changed-cathedrals-of-culture-wings-of-desire | Cities | 2014-09-23T10:33:01.000Z | Chris Michael | Wim Wenders on his Berlin: 'Oh man, has it ever changed!' | Do you feel the Berlin of now is the same Berlin you portrayed in Wings of Desire, or is it now a different city altogether?
WW: Oh, man, has it ever changed! There is a building in my neighbourhood, on Brunnenstrasse, on which it is written, in huge letters: “This house once stood in another country!” That pretty much nails it. Berlin was two cities in two countries, a quarter of a century ago, and it still represents a phenomenal change. I don’t think that any other city in the world (well, I should probably not include Chinese cities) has undergone such dramatic reinvention.
Mitte, along with Prenzlauerberg, Kreuzberg etc, has seen dramatic leaps towards gentrification over 10-20 years - do you mind it? Is it all bad, or are there positives too?
Considering the gentrification I have seen and witnessed myself in New York, Paris or London, what is happening in Berlin is not that dramatic. But obviously, with Berlin’s raising popularity, and the continuing arrival of (mostly young) people from all over the world to the city, proportions have shifted, certain quarters have become more expensive, and others are inundated with tourists, like Mitte. The other day I saw the first horse-drawn coach trot along Linienstrasse, and I find myself avoiding horse-shit with my bicycle in our quarter, so I figure we are clearly becoming a new Central Park.
A still from Wenders’ film Wings of Desire, in which two angels wander the divided German capital. Photograph: Everett Collection/Rex Features
Mitte now is (we think) the only district that contains parts of the old East Berlin and the old West Berlin. When you walk through the city, are you still aware when you cross the old divide? Do the different parts of Mitte feel different?
Mitte is now among the most expensive areas of Berlin, that’s true. I lived in New York in the early 80s, and I remember the shift that happened in Soho. I’m reminded of that now in Mitte. For a while, the “Old West” like Charlottenburg seemed to become quite sleepy and old-fashioned, but now the Kurfürstendamm is picking up again, and that part of the city, especially around Savignyplatz, is catching up again. These things continue to move. As I have lived in Berlin since the mid-70s, and long enough in the “Old West”, I’m still very conscious of the thresholds and divides between the former East and West. But I find visitors increasingly unsure about what was what, so obviously the two parts of the city are slowly assimilating their old borders. Sometimes it has become quite impossible to establish where the wall was actually running through …
If Wings of Desire was partly a plea for reunification, has the city lived up to it?
After the initial euphoria, the city lived reunification quite badly, I felt. There was a mutual discontent, and bad feelings. That is now slowly disappearing and Berlin starts feeling more “normal” altogether. But one still learns things. The other day I took a cab to a cinema out in the former East, and the driver said: “Oh, you want to go straight into the Bermuda triangle.” And that’s how I heard for the first time how common parlance called this area where I was going to, where Prenzlauer Berg, Mitte and Friedrichshain are meeting up.
Wenders’ section of the film focuses on the Berlin Philharmonic building
In the new film Cathedrals of Culture, your section focuses on the Berlin Philharmonic building. Tell us about what it means to you.
It was a monument to modernity when it was built. When I first entered it in the early 70s – for a Miles Davis concert – I was totally overwhelmed and thought: “Wow! Now I have seen the future!” And the amazing thing is that the building, 50 years later, still has this aura. It was the first concert hall of its kind, with the orchestra and the conductor in the centre of the room, and since then many other places have been built and conceived after this model of the Berlin Philharmonic.
Architecture is usually present in films merely as backdrop: what is Cathedrals of Culture trying to do differently?
We’re giving architecture centre stage. Our films each deal with a particular building, and we even let those buildings “speak for themselves”, by giving them their own voice.
How did you choose Robert Redford and the other directors?
They needed to have an affinity to architecture and the particular building that we chose together with them. And they needed to be curious about doing this in 3D. Except for myself, none of them had previously worked in 3D, and for us at Neue Road Movies it was important to “spread the virus” and continue to prove that 3D is a highly artistic new medium that has much more potential that the current applications in blockbuster action movies show.
Filmmaker Michael Glawogger turned his camera on the National Library of Russia in St Petersburg for Wenders’ Cathedrals of Culture film
We gather you live on Torstrasse. What are you favourite local haunts? And what other secrets do you love about your neighbourhood?
I love “Klärchen’s Ballhaus” on Auguststrasse. Even if it’s insanely popular now it still has preserved its originality and flair. You can still go dancing every day of the week, different styles every night, you just need to know whether you want to swing, or tango, or rock. My favorite bar is across the street, still appropriately called “Meine Bar”. It used to be called “Ici”…
How would you like to see Mitte and Berlin in general develop henceforth?
I’d love to see a few of the leftover no-man’s-lands actually stay empty. It’s insane how each and every last gap is being filled as if there was no tomorrow.
Cathedrals of Culture opens the City Visions film season at the Barbican on 25 September and is released to selected cinemas across the country on 17 October.
Cities in cinema: from the Third Man to the home of Hollywood | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2005/feb/18/london.pressandpublishing | Politics | 2005-02-18T10:22:29.000Z | Hugh Muir | The Guardian profile: Ken Livingstone | The mayor sat amid a scene of high drama at City Hall and sank back into his chair, as if someone had knocked the wind out of him. Behind Ken Livingstone were Holocaust survivors, a golden-haired woman, her tearful eyes blazing, and a stocky man, mouth tightly pursed, cheeks reddened by fury. Criss-crossing from either side were assembly members, marching grim faced from the chamber in protest at the statement he had just made.
It is telling that Mr Livingstone's closest political allies were as dumbfounded as everyone else when he first informed the London assembly that, for all its criticism, he would not apologise for likening an Evening Standard reporter to a Nazi concentration camp guard. "I could apologise," he had said, "but why should I say words I do not believe in my heart?"
Mr Livingstone took an unusually personal decision on Monday to head straight into the storm, imperilling his own future and maybe Britain's Olympic bid. One aide, an important member of what has been called the Kenocracy, said Mr Livingstone came close to apologising, but because he felt cornered he came out fighting. The mayor is a man who has to reach his destination himself.
Those whose knowledge of Mr Livingstone is drawn from news bulletins and cheery appearances on Question Time may struggle to understand why he would lose his temper so disastrously on being approached by a reporter outside City Hall; why, enraged by perceived injustices, his mind so regularly evokes the Nazis and concentration camps; why, with the stakes so high this week and despite appeals from Tony Blair and ministers, he could not bring himself to proffer even a half-hearted apology, thereby putting the matter to rest.
Tony Travers, the director of the Greater London Group at the London School of Economics, who has observed him for 30 years, says: "He has not apologised because it is not in his nature.
"He feels in an innate fundamental way that he has done nothing wrong. In fact, given his very strong views on race and discrimination, he probably feels that he could not make a discriminatory remark. He sees himself as being at the forefront of the fight against discrimination of any kind, so the remarks he made could not logically have been anti- semitic, and therefore he cannot apologise for them."
Bob Neill, the Conservative leader at City Hall, says the mayor increasingly displays a siege mentality.
"There has always been a charming side to him, but also a ruthless side and a very stubborn side that seems much more pronounced now. He has won two terms now and things are going his way, but he is much more prone to lash out. He seems to have demons that few of us can understand."
While there is no way of knowing what made the encounter between the mayor and the reporter so explosive, some elements would undoubtedly have been in the mixture.
According to one friend of more than 20 years: "He is very sceptical of the media, without exception. Some politicians have close mates in the media, but not Ken." The Mail, the Standard and the Sun were his chief tormentors during his period at the GLC. By drawing a link between Associated Newspapers with the far right of the 1930s and 40s, he was treading familiar ground. He made similar comments on BBC Radio Five Live more than three years ago.
His day, which began with a press conference at 10am, would also have been a factor. It was undoubtedly a long one and critics have claimed, without any subsequent rebuttal, that by the time the exchange took place he was at least a little "tired and emotional".
Since the turn of the year he has been trying to shake off a persistent cold and Mr Livingstone may have had a sip of "single malt Lucozade" which he says helps his sore throat.
Though he was clearly not drunk 10 hours later as he left City Hall and the party he had thrown to celebrate Chris Smith coming out as Britain's first openly gay MP, his voice on the tape recording suggests that he had, like his guests, enjoyed the party.
More clues to what transpired lie in the mayor's background; his immediate reference point was Nazi Germany.
The mayor sees this as baggage carried from childhood. "Being born in 1945, I grew up in a world in which all the horror of what the Nazis did unfolded over years," he said on Tuesday.
"It was quite some time before we knew how many had died in the death camps, the fact 22 million Russians had died pushing back the Nazis; and so right the way through my growing up was this constant expansion of our knowledge of the scale of the horror that had happened. For all my generation, we define evil by that: that this is the absolute worst in human history."
His father Bob was part of the Murmansk convoy, ferrying supplies to the Russians during the war. In 2003 Mr Livingstone attended a commemorative ceremony in Red Square and laid a wreath, his face soaked with tears.
"The incident of the Holocaust just infuses all my politics," he has said - "and I do look for parallels."
Many, however, question whether they are the right parallels. They also ask whether the mayor, as part of an irreverent approach to politics and public discourse, degrades the process with an overheated vocabulary.
In 1984 he said the Board of Deputies of British Jews, which this week reported him to the local government watchdog, was "dominated by reactionaries and neo-fascists". Three years later, he compared Camden council's housing policy with Hitler's persecution of homosexuals. In 2000, complaining about a story in the Times about his finances, he said: "This is the sort of coverage you get when you have convicted a Nazi war criminal who has been hiding in Britain for years." That same year, he also observed that "capitalism has killed more people than Hitler".
In 2003 as George Bush prepared to visit London, he called the US president "the most dangerous man on the planet"; and last year, he looked forward to seeing the Saudi royal family "swinging from lamp-posts".
Nicky Gavron, the daughter of Holocaust survivors and Mr Livingstone's deputy, says: "He is a very colourful character who uses juxtaposition to shock.
"I don't think it is always done consciously, but it is incredibly powerful and effective."
She denies that it puts her in a difficult position: "He uses the war and Hitler as a moral reference point. But I wouldn't work for him for a minute if he was anti-Jewish."
Another explanation for the events of the past week could be that having won the mayoralty twice and introduced congestion charging when most said he would fail, and bolstered by a poll rating higher than it has ever been, he has just grown cocky.
"It is possible to see how that could induce hubris. One could begin to believe in your own immortality," says Mr Travers.
Some see signs of this in the way he has dealt with recent controversies: a relatively steep rise in the amount the mayor takes from the boroughs for common services; his insouciant response to the Jewish and gay activists who objected to his welcome for the Muslim scholar Yusuf al-Qaradawi.
Darren Johnson, a Green assembly member, formerly the mayor's environment spokesman and now a foe, says: "I don't know if he is getting more stubborn or belligerent, but things do seem to be starting to unravel."
It is likely that the mayor will do something to calm the storm in the next few days, but he would rather streak through Trafalgar Square than bend the knee to his critics. He also knows his popularity is based on the use of language that occasionally gets him into trouble.
He says that this week he has been guided by the spirit of Stanley Baldwin, the Tory prime minister who stood firm before Beaverbrook and Rothermere. But in truth, in keeping with the ethos of the mayoralty, the only voice he has listened to has been his own.
Life in short
Born June 17 1945, Streatham, south London
Education Tulse Hill comprehensive; Phillipa Fawcett College of Education (teacher's certificate)
Family Married to Christine Pamela Chapman,1973, dissolved 1982;
20-year relationship with Kate Allen; a son, Thomas, born in 2002, and a daughter, Mia, in 2004, with Emma Beal
Career Technician, Chester Beatty Cancer Research Institute ,1962-70
Politics Joined Labour party, 1969; London borough of Lambeth: councillor, 1971-78; vice-chair of housing, 1971-73; Camden council: councillor,1978-82; housing committee chair, 1978-80; elected Labour member of GLC, 1973; vice-chair, housing management, 1974-75; leader 1981-86; MP for Brent East, 1987-2000; mayor of London, 2000 to present; rejoined Labour, January 2004
Publications If Voting Changed Anything, They'd Abolish It, 1987; Livingstone's Labour: A Programme for the 90s, 1989 | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/15/catalan-secession-incubated-media-cocoon | World news | 2017-10-15T06:00:23.000Z | Peter Preston | Catalonia’s dreams of secession were incubated in a media cocoon | We know what happens first when coup leaders strike. They take control of the state TV and radio station. We know what the SNP would have done if they’d won their referendum. Set up a Scottish Broadcasting Corporation on the grave of the BBC. So here’s one additional factor to note after Spain’s tumultuous week.
Catalonia has had its own television and radio services since 1983, delivering Catalan-only language programmes and – guess what? – paid for by the same government that declared quasi independence a few days ago.
Catalan president accuses Mariano Rajoy of ignoring call for talks
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Bias comes naturally, perhaps inevitably, in the reporting of poor anti-separatist demonstrations, in the constant flashbacks to civil guard police wielding batons and throughout the hours of political discussion. Two regular participants in those discussions – voices against independence, hired in the supposed name of fairness and balance – wrote an article for El País the other day, explaining why they wouldn’t be appearing any longer.
“The official thesis in Catalonia is that this is a natural, essentially good nation that for at least three centuries has been living in a situation of unsustainable colonial oppression within an artificial, perfidious Spain, from which we must escape,” Joan López Alegre and Nacho Martín Blanco declared.
“But when reality is reduced to a single theme, secession… then the presence of a single voice opposed to the thesis of the talk – facing three or four participants plus to the moderator … only serves to project the idea that it is a minority position, even a marginal one in Catalan society. Goodbye. We’ve been ‘useful fools’ too long.”
Their argument can be pursued in two ways. One, filled with the emotion that surrounds the independence vote; the other more reflectively. Let’s take the high road.
Language is a wild card when you try to define nationhood. The areas of inland Catalonia most committed to independence are also the likeliest to use Catalan as their first, and sometimes only language. They depend on TV3 and its four sister channels for their news, soaps and drama series, and rely on Catalan radio round the clock. The algorithms of their social media follow the same route. And the picture they’ve drawn for all of this is often at odds with the complexities you find in Barcelona.
They have lived in a media cocoon of settled opinion, convinced that the EU will welcome their new nation into its midst, that the economic outlook is untroubled, that “taking control” will solve all problems. Passion becomes ingrained. No need to draw parallel conclusions closer to home, but this mingling of fact and conviction crosses many borders. If you can make the rest of the world go away, then doubt becomes a stranger.
No one watching Spanish TV through this crisis should pretend that it’s not had its own biases. Nor should anyone believe that the BBC, charting its lugubrious, legally mandated way through the thickets of bias, can ever achieve consensual calm.
The more open the windows, the easier it is to breathe. Scotland’s own cocoon of devolution has weakened because SNP and now Tory success – as represented in parliament – make the national picture more relevant again. Brexit, too, is gradually opening eyes and horizons. But the language factor comes with an added twist. How did Catalonia wander so close to the edge of a cliff? Because – on screen, on the airwaves, in cosseted print – there was no real debate. Because (think Fox News) the semblance of real debate was quite enough, thank you. Think of the little boxes of diversity; then think adversity. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/nov/20/north-macedonia-england-euro-2024-qualifier-match-report | Football | 2023-11-20T22:02:56.000Z | David Hytner | Atanasov own goal spares England’s blushes as North Macedonia earn draw | This is what happens when Harry Kane – in the form of his life – is left to kick his heels on the substitutes’ bench. When he was unchained, the result was instant, the England captain forcing the equaliser 40 seconds after his introduction.
It would go down as an own goal by the North Macedonia midfielder, Jani Atanasov, but it was the presence of Kane, his darting run on to a Phil Foden corner just before the hour, that panicked his marker.
And so England got something from the final game of an excellent Euro 2024 qualification campaign, their progress never in doubt from the moment that they beat Italy in Naples in the opening tie. Mercifully, the goal also took some of the focus away from the referee, Filip Glova, who had one of those evenings when he was impossible to ignore, mainly for the wrong reasons.
Maguire’s struggles are stretching loyalty and could cost England again
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Glova had rocked England and the debutant, Rico Lewis, who had come in to fill the problem position of left-back, when he gave North Macedonia a penalty towards the end of the first half. Enis Bardhi scored from the rebound after seeing his spot-kick saved. Following a nudge from the VAR, Glova ruled that Lewis had put his hand in the face of Bojan Miovski as he won a clearing header. It was not Glova’s only overly fussy intervention.
The match fizzled out after that, England far from perfect but nevertheless better than they were in the 2-0 Wembley win over Malta last Friday. They finish the calendar year with a record of eight wins and two draws from 10 games. As everybody knows, it will be about how they finish the season at the European Championship in Germany.
North Macedonia were determined at the outset to let England know they would be in a physical battle and the constant nibbles at Bukayo Saka and Jack Grealish, in particular, were both tiresome and a test of the wingers’ respective temperaments. Gareth Southgate threw his arms up in frustration.
Glova was far too central a figure for anybody’s liking and he had two decisions to make at the other end in the first half, North Macedonia screaming for a penalty on each occasion. He ignored the first one and gave the second, which felt wrong on each occasion but did that add up to a right? Let’s start with the first one, which was the turning point of the half because, up to that point, England had dominated, Ollie Watkins – who started ahead of Kane – having a couple of sniffs and Declan Rice banging a low shot through a crowd and against the far post.
Enis Bardhi gives North Macedonia the lead on the rebound from a penalty awarded against Rico Lewis. Photograph: Nikola Krstic/Shutterstock
There was no danger when Harry Maguire got on the ball in the 23rd minute and then, in the blink of an eye, there was when he passed straight to Miovski, who moved it to Eljif Elmas. Cue the one-on-one between Maguire and Elmas, with the former’s challenge clumsy, to say the least. He appeared to lose his balance and barge into Elmas; shades of Boris Johnson at Soccer Aid. Glova gave Maguire the benefit of the considerable doubt.
On to the next one and it was Lewis who rose to head away a cross from the North Macedonia left, clearly winning the ball. But why was Miovski, the Aberdeen striker, laid out on the ground? It turned out that with his leveraging, jumping arm, Lewis had put his hand in Miovski’s face. Upon the advice of the VAR, Glova checked the pitchside monitor and, after a long think, he pointed to the spot. It was a ludicrously harsh decision. The North Macedonia captain, Bardhi, saw Jordan Pickford save his kick but he would gobble up the rebound. Miovski was the toast of all of Scotland. England had it all to do.
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‘There was no crime’: Southgate praises Lewis after ‘excellent’ England debut
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England’s 7-0 victory over North Macedonia at Old Trafford in June had provided a significant part of the backstory. It was the heaviest defeat in North Macedonia’s history and there was little doubt that they were motivated to show they were more than that. They did so.
Southgate’s starting XI had been progressive, Trent Alexander-Arnold retained in midfield; no Kalvin Phillips, so no double bolt with Rice. It was particularly noticeable at the outset how Lewis played up and inside when England had possession; high up at times. Lewis could almost see the headlines in the early running when a corner was only half-cleared to him. The first-time shot was wild. He did not deserve his moment of VAR misfortune.
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The all-seeing technology would deny England at the start of the second half. The first period had ended with Alexander-Arnold extending Stole Dimitrievski from distance and now England thought they had the equaliser after lovely work from Saka on the right. He wriggled away from two challenges and unloaded his cross before a third could get him. Grealish had a tap-in at the far post but he would be pulled back for offside.
England stayed calm and, with Kane on the field, their fortunes improved immediately. It had been a massive opportunity for Watkins and, in the final analysis, one that he did not take. He was peripheral, only touching the ball 11 times. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2024/feb/05/how-to-watch-movies-for-free-bbc-iplayer-amazon-prime-cinema-film-previews | Money | 2024-02-05T08:00:11.000Z | Rupert Jones | How to watch movies for free: seven top tips | 1. Keep checking the iPlayer, ITVX, etc
For smart TV and laptop watchers, arguably the first port of call should be the main on-demand services such as BBC iPlayer, ITVX, Channel 4 (formerly known as All 4), My5 and STV Player. Films sometimes come and go quite quickly, so it’s worth getting into the habit of checking regularly. At the time of writing, the iPlayer was offering Oscar winners The Theory of Everything, the Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga version of A Star Is Born, and Sound of Metal.
From 1 March, ITVX is showcasing a selection of Oscar-winning and nominated films, including No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood, Drive and Dogtooth (the latter an early film by the Poor Things director, Yorgos Lanthimos), plus all-time classics such as The Apartment, Vertigo and Rear Window.
These services typically require you to register and sign in to use them. And, of course, with all the above bar the iPlayer, there are adverts during the films, unless you opt to pay and see fewer ads or go ad-free.
Check out the films on the BBC’s iPlayer. Photograph: Nick Ansell/PA
2. Find new channels
Scroll through your TV’s main menu and you will probably find channels you have never watched or even heard of. For example, Amazon Freevee is a free, ad-supported streaming service boasting thousands of shows and movies, including A Dangerous Method, starring Keira Knightley, and Darren Aronofsky’s acclaimed drama Requiem for a Dream.
Plex is a free-with-ads service with an excellent range of old and new movies. It boasts a particularly good selection of foreign, arthouse and midnight movie gems, including Japanese classics by Akira Kurosawa, Yasujirō Ozu and Kenji Mizoguchi, several movies by the Italian horror maestro Dario Argento, and a stack of Bollywood films.
Other channels include the vintage movie specialist Talking Pictures TV, Great! Movies, LEGEND, Rakuten TV, Pluto TV and wedotv.
How and where to watch these services will vary, depending on your kit and your preference – it might be via Freeview, Sky or Virgin Media, or via an app on your TV or device, or via another platform. In most cases there is a website that spells this out.
Keira Knightley and Michael Fassbender in A Dangerous Method. Photograph: Allstar
3. Use free trials
Many of the streaming services offer free trials, so you could sign up, watch a lot of films and then cancel before you are rolled over into a paid-for subscription (read the terms and conditions very carefully to make sure you are not caught out).
Apple TV+ is running a free seven-day trial, giving you the chance to watch Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, which has been nominated for 10 Oscars. Its other movies include the 2021 film Coda, winner of three Oscars including Best Picture.
Amazon Prime has a 30-day free trial, allowing you to check out new movies such as Saltburn and Foe, a sci-fi drama starring Paul Mescal and Saoirse Ronan. Students can get six months’ free membership when signing up to Prime Student.
Other services offering seven-day free trials include Paramount+ (its movies include the Tom Cruise blockbuster Top Gun: Maverick and Babylon, starring Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie), Lionsgate+, StudioCanal Presents, MGM, and four that are particularly good for arthouse fare and classics: BFI Player, Curzon, Mubi and the eastern Europe specialist Klassiki.
Netflix does not currently offer free trials.
Barry Keoghan (left) and Archie Madekwe in a scene from Saltburn. Photograph: AP
4. Beware of illegal sites
“Be careful when you search online – many websites will send you to dubious destinations that not only stream illegal content but also slam you with spammy warnings and pop-up windows,” says Or Goren at the website Cord Busters. He says that in general, if it looks too good to be true – for example, the most recent Hollywood hits being offered “for free” – then “there’s something fishy”.
Last autumn Guardian Money highlighted how people in the UK who illegally stream movies, sport and TV shows online were being warned they risked having their bank accounts emptied or their identities stolen. The BeStreamWise campaign also points out that people who watch pirated content can potentially be prosecuted.
5. Scan listings
If you want to watch films for free on the big screen, event listings websites can help. For example, Eventbrite lists free screenings around the country, which often take place at libraries and community spaces.
In north London, Wood Green library is showing Citizen Kane on 15 February, The Book Thief on 22 February and Vertigo on 29 February, while Laxton Victory Hall in Laxton, East Yorkshire, has a “romcom movie night” (film TBC) on 23 FebruaryThe Plaza cinema in the Liverpool suburb of Waterloo also runs community screenings, with the next ones scheduled for 6 February and 5 March.
Orson Welles in Citizen Kane. Photograph: Rko/Sportsphoto/Allstar
Museums and galleries sometimes host free film screenings. BFI Southbank in London has the Mediatheque, where you can explore the riches of the British Film Institute’s national archive for free, including classics such as Brief Encounter and Withnail and I.
Some cinemas organise free screenings for certain groups. For example, BFI Southbank has screenings that are free for the over-60s. The next ones are the Oscar-nominated 2016 romantic drama Loving on 5 February and the 1992 drama Blue Black Permanent on 1 March.
6. Join a club
A number of services discreetly offer free and cheap tickets to movies and other events, often at short notice – it’s typically about filling empty seats and building a buzz. One of the best for movies is ShowFilmFirst, which occasionally offers free tickets to previews, director Q&As and so on (you have to apply to be a member, and it will let you know if you’ve been successful).
Also check out Free Movies UK (FMUK), a non-profit, free-membership organisation and web forum dedicated to getting its members “as many free cinema tickets [typically provided by film distributors] as possible”.
7. More freebies on the way
A new BFI-supported multi-year project called Escapes will offer free film screenings in cinemas to almost 1 million people across the UK. Beginning in early 2024, Escapes will offer regular free screenings at up to 400 cinemas and aim “to grow cinema engagement across the UK and break down primary barriers to cinema-going among audiences, particularly those excluded by price”. More details should emerge soon – keep an eye on the website, escapetothecinema.co.uk. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2014/jul/16/top-10-national-parks-state-parks-oregon-usa | Travel | 2014-07-16T05:00:11.000Z | Mary Caperton Morton | Top 10 national and state parks in Oregon | Crater Lake national park
Today, Crater Lake national park in western Oregon is known for having one of the deepest, clearest lakes in the world, but 7,700 years ago, the landscape stunned witnesses for a different reason: the eruption of the Mount Mazama volcano, which created Crater Lake, is thought to be one of the greatest geologic catastrophes ever witnessed by humans. After it erupted, Mount Mazama collapsed, leaving behind a crater more than 1,200 metres deep – and 8km north to south and 10km east to west – that eventually filled with rain and snowmelt.
Along the crest of a line of volcanoes known as the Oregon Cascades, Crater Lake is a winter sports playground. Summer visitors should plan to circumnavigate the lake on the 53km loop road, which skirts the edge of the crater – or hike down to the water on the 3.5km Cleetwood Cove trail. Accommodation is available at the Crater Lake Lodge or at two campsites (reservations recommended). Backcountry camping is also allowed along the Pacific Crest trail, which runs through the park on its way from Mexico to Canada.
Top tip: To see how clear Crater Lake’s water really is, take a boat tour to Wizard Island. With a maximum depth of 596 metres, Crater Lake the deepest lake in the US and the ninth deepest in the world.
More information: nps.gov/crla, craterlakelodges.com, volcanoes.usgs.gov/volcanoes/crater_lake
Valley of the Rogue River state park
Photograph: Bob Stefko/Getty Images Photograph: Bob Stefko/Getty Images
Oregon’s Rogue river, in the south-west corner of the state, is well-named: this rushing river is famous for its rugged scenery, wild rapids and epic salmon runs. Visitors can explore the Rogue by raft – the 35-mile stretch downstream from Grants Pass is one of the top whitewater runs in the country – or on foot along the Rogue River national recreation trail, which runs parallel to the river for more than 80 miles. Fishing for chinook and coho salmon, steelhead and rainbow trout is legendary on the Rogue and a number of dams have been dynamited in recent years to restore fish migration pathways.
People have lived along the Rogue river for at least 8,500 years but its most famous denizen is probably the author Zane Grey, who wrote more than 90 books about the western frontier. In 1926, Grey bought a miner’s cabin at Winkle Bar, where he wrote his novel Rogue River Feud and a collection of stories, Tales of Fresh Water Fishing. His cabin still stands today and is open to the public (adults $5, under-12s free).
Top tip: Get the full Rogue experience in one swoop with a rafting-supported-backpacking trip, offered by several area outfitters: rafts transport camping gear downstream and offer tired hikers a chance to float down the river. If you’re not into roughing it, a number of lodges offer accommodation along the way, including the Black Bar Lodge, Marial Lodge (+1 541 474 2057, no website) and Paradise Lodge.
More information: wildrogue.com, oregonstateparks.org
Marys Peak scenic botanical area
Photograph: Forest Service Northern Region/flickr Photograph: Forest Service Northern Region/flickr
Oregon was once home to millions of huge trees but decades of logging have felled many of its most spectacular giants. A few pockets of old-growth woods remain, however, including this gem, near Corvallis. Named for a Native American legend, Marys Peak is home to one of the last pockets of pure, old-growth noble fir, along with some magnificent Douglas firs.
At 4,097ft, the summit of Marys Peak is the highest point in the Oregon Coast Range. From the summit, accessed via the Summit trail or a paved forest service road, visitors can marvel at the line of Cascade volcanoes to the east, the lush, green Willamette valley below and the Pacific Ocean to the west, making this one of the best places for views in the state. Not even the somewhat unsightly weather station on the summit can detract from this. Camping is available below the crest at the Marys Peak campground.
Top tip: For maximum scenery, take the East Ridge trail to the Meadow Edge trail and then the Summit trail, which winds through a forest of huge, old-growth trees, and open fields carpeted with tall grass, wildflowers and clover. More than 200 species of flowers have been identified at Marys Peak.
More information: oregon.sierraclub.org, npsoregon.org (PDF)
Ecola state park
Trail running in Ecola state park. Photograph: Alamy Photograph: Alamy
All 363 miles of Oregon’s coast is open to the public, with beach access from the Washington state line all the way south to California. Ambitious beach walkers can hike the entire way on the Oregon Coast trail, which runs up and over headlands and around inlets for 425 miles. Dozens of state parks and recreation areas line the coast, featuring tide pools, seal rookeries, sea stacks and lighthouses.
One of the highlights of the coastal park system is Ecola state park, just north of the town of Cannon Beach. The nine-mile section of coast wraps around Tillamook Head, a forested promontory that offers incredible views up and down the coast. A number of rocky sea stacks decorate the beaches here, including Haystack Rock, which has long served as a landmark for travellers and sailors. Offshore, Ecola’s waves are popular with surfers. No camping is available here but sites can be found nearby at Oswald west state park to the south and inland at Saddle Mountain state natural area.
Top tip: The six-mile Tillamook Head trail runs from Cannon Beach to Seaside, following in the footsteps of Captain Meriwether Lewis and his close friend William Clark, who reached the Pacific Ocean near here after a gruelling 18-month expedition from St Louis, Missouri.
More information: cannon-beach.net, nps.gov/lewi/planyourvisit/ecola.htm
Oregon Dunes national recreation area
Photograph: Clint Farlinger/Alamy Photograph: Clint Farlinger / Alamy/Alamy
Most of Oregon’s coast is beautifully rugged and rocky, but this 40-mile section of beach between the Coos and Siuslaw rivers is home to the largest expanse of coastal sand dunes in North America. Here, windswept dunes tower up to 150 metres above sea level, making for excellent hiking, whale watching, horse riding and off-road driving. Camping is available in a number of established campsites, as well as in primitive sites along the Siltcoos river. More sites can be found in Jessie M Honeyman state park to the north and Umpqua Lighthouse state park to the south; reservations recommended.
Oregon Dunes does a great job of keeping the quieter foot-traffic-only areas separate from the motorised off-highway vehicle areas. If you’re into the off-highway vibe, the largest off-road area stretches between Spinreel campground and Horsfall Road. Dune buggy rentals are available from several outfitters in North Bend.
Top tip: The Umpqua dunes are the highest dunes in the park and the area is closed to motorised traffic, making this section ideal for whale watching. Each year, more than 18,000 grey whales migrate past the Oregon coast on their journey between Baja California and Alaska, moving south in December and January and north, with their calves, between March and June.
More information: fs.usda.gov, oregonsadventurecoast.com
Smith Rock state park
Smith Rock with Crooked River. Photograph: Alamy Photograph: Alamy
Oregon is famous for being green, but the red, yellow and orange hues of Smith Rock state park, near Terrebonne, serve as a colourful gateway to the state’s arid and beautiful eastern desert. Smith Rock is famous among rock climbers as the birthplace of modern sport climbing, where climbers follow bolted routes up challenging rock faces. Smith Rock has some of the hardest sport routes in the world, including the first 5.14 grade climb ever completed in the US. Even if you’re not a world-class rock climber, Smith Rock has hundreds of routes, many suitable for beginners; several reputable guiding companies are based in the area. Visitors who prefer to stay close to the ground can explore miles of hiking and mountain biking trails and the scenic Crooked river has excellent fishing. Primitive walk-in camping is available in the park, first-come, first-served, as well as at the national forest Skull Hollow campground, just five miles down the road.
Top tip: Don’t let the name scare you away, the Misery Ridge 3.8-mile loop hike is a treat, with views of Smith Rock, the Crooked river canyon and the entire Cascade peaks to the west, including Mount Hood, Mount Jefferson and the Three Sisters.
Climbing guides: smithrock.com, smithrockclimbingguides.com
John Day Fossil Beds national monument
Photograph: Marc Adamus/Aurora Photos/Corbis Photograph: Marc Adamus/ Marc Adamus/Aurora Photos/Corbis
The brightly hued hills of John Day are spectacular, but it is what lies beneath the surface that makes this desert region of eastern Oregon famous. Hidden beneath the rolling red landscape is one of the world’s richest fossil deposits from the Cenozoic era, also know as the Age of Mammals. Around 30m years ago, rhinos, camels, giant ground sloths and saber-toothed cats roamed a lush grassland before being buried by a series of volcanic eruptions, which preserved their bones in colourful layers of tuff. The monument is divided into three separate parks: the Sheep Rock, Painted Hills and Clarno units. Visitors are advised to start at the Sheep Rock unit, which lies north-west of Dayville. Here you can visit the park’s main facilities and tour the fossil museum at the Thomas Condon Paleontology Center. No camping is available within the park, but there are plenty of sites in the nearby Ochoco national forest.
Top tip: To experience the best of John Day’s scenery and geology, hike the Blue Basin Overlook trail, combined with the shorter, adjoining Island in Time trail. Both paths begin four miles west of the museum on Highway 19. The three-mile loop overlooks the blue-tinged fossil-rich outcrop where many of John Day’s fossils have been found.
More information: nps.gov/joda
Steens Mountain co-operative management and protection area
Photograph: Bureau of Land Management/flickr Photograph: Bureau of Land Management/flickr
If you’re looking to get away from it all, head to the Steens in south-east Oregon. Here, wild horses roam a rugged landscape carved by retreating glaciers at the end of the last ice age. The closest town of any size is Burns, population 2,806, where you should stock up on petrol, food and water before heading south into the wilderness on the 66-mile Steens Mountain Backcountry Byway. Open between late May and September, the first half of this loop road is gravel, accessible to most cars. Past the Big Indian Gorge overlook, however, the road becomes rougher and a high-clearance, four-wheel-drive vehicle may be needed, even during dry summer months. The road provides access to three campsites and scenic views of the region’s glacially carved U-shaped Kiger, Big Indian, Wildhorse and Little Blitzen gorges. The oddly named Donner und Blitzen river is home to trophy red band trout.
Top tip: The Steens are famous among wild horse enthusiasts, who travel to the region to catch a glimpse of a rare Kiger mustang, hardy horses directly descended from Spanish stock brought to North America in the 17th century. For your best shot at seeing a Kiger, visit the Kiger Wild Horse Viewing Area, three miles east of the town of Diamond.
More information: onda.org/where-we-work/steens, blm.gov/or/districts/burns, blm.gov/or/districts/burns/wildhorse
Hells Canyon national recreation area
White-water rafting, Hell's Canyon. Photograph: Phil Schofield/Getty Images Photograph: Phil Schofield/Getty Images
With a name like Hells Canyon, carved by the Snake River, this area in far north-eastern Oregon sounds like a place to avoid, but recreation opportunities abound: white-water rafting, boating, fishing, swimming and more than 900 miles of hiking trails make Hells Canyon downright heavenly. Hells Canyon is the deepest river canyon in the US, deeper even than Arizona’s Grand Canyon, measuring more than a mile and half from river bed to mountain top in some places. The 90m-high Hells Canyon dam, built in 1967, is the largest privately owned hydroelectric power complex in the country. Primitive camping is available throughout the recreation area and cabins are available for rent in the adjoining Wallowa-Whitman national forest.
Top tip: Hells Canyon’s white water goes up to class IV and V, so river guides are recommended for rafting trips. Savvy outfitters will also point out the canyon’s petroglyphs, abandoned mines, shipwrecks and homesteads, signs of the area’s long history of human occupation. One of the most comprehensive archaeological sites is at Buffalo Eddy, decorated with more than 200 petroglyphs left behind by the Nez Perce people.
More information: fs.usda.gov, visitlcvalley.com
Columbia River Gorge national scenic area
Multnomah Falls in the Columbia River Gorge Scenic Area. Photograph: Alamy Photograph: Alamy
Washington and Oregon are often lumped together as the Pacific Northwest but the two sister states are separated by this imposing gorge. Carved out over millions of years by the Columbia river on its way to the Pacific Ocean, the gorge was scoured down to its current 1,200m depth by a catastrophic flood at the end of the last ice age.
The 80-mile-long Columbia River Gorge is a waterfall lover’s paradise, with 77 falls on the Oregon side, including 186-metre-high Multnomah Falls, the second-highest waterfall in North America, just 30 miles east of Portland. Camping opportunities are plentiful along the gorge and in Mount Hood national forest to the south. Hundreds of miles of hiking and mountain biking trails line the gorge – with adventurous paths plunging over the edge, into the depths. If you can get down to the mighty Columbia river, you’ll find a kayaking, rafting, fishing, windsurfing, kiteboarding wonderland.
Top tip: The 13-mile Eagle Creek trail isn’t for the faint of heart as it sometimes skirts the edge of sheer cliffs, but the rewards are well worth the scares: at Punchbowl Falls, water spills 30 metres down into a blue-green grotto, and at Tunnel Falls the trail passes through a tunnel behind a spectacular sheet of falling water.
More information: fs.usda.gov/crgnsa, oregon.com/attractions/multnomah_falls, fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/stelprdb5397049.pdf
Mary Caperton Morton is a freelance writer and photographer who makes her home on the back roads of North America, living and working out of a tiny solar-powered Teardrop camper | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/aug/21/small-retailers-and-fans-step-in-as-nike-refuses-to-make-replica-mary-earps-shirt | Football | 2023-08-21T17:17:02.000Z | Alexandra Topping | Small retailers and fans step in as Nike refuses to make replica Mary Earps shirt | Dozens of small-scale T-shirt manufacturers and football fans are stepping into a Nike own goal-shaped hole after the company again refused to produce a replica England goalkeeper shirt after England’s best finish at a Women’s World Cup.
Nike refused to change tack following England’s 1-0 defeat to Spain on Sunday, even as Mary Earps saved a penalty and was crowned goalkeeper of the tournament. The company would not commit to producing the shirt, saying only that they were “working towards solutions for future tournaments”.
Clamour grows for Nike to sell replica Mary Earps shirt after World Cup final
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It comes after ratings figures revealed the final was one of the most watched British broadcasts of the year, with the UK television audience peaking at 14.8 million viewers. The true figure is likely to be significantly higher as the figure does not include people watching streams on their laptops or mobile phones or in communal spaces.
Calls for the Lionesses to be recognised with honours, led by the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, intensified on Monday. A spokesperson at Downing Street said that while the decision rested with the honours committee, “no one is in any doubt about what an inspiration they have been and that they’ve represented this country incredibly well”.
Controversy has raged around Nike’s decision not to produce a replica England goalkeeper shirt, with the England No 1 describing the omission as “hugely hurtful”, while the former England men’s goalkeeper David Seaman was among the names calling for the decision to be reversed.
But after a performance that saw Earps’s passionate reaction on saving the penalty launch a thousand memes, some fans addressed the lack of replica shirts using DIY methods. The BBC Radio 6 Music DJ Mary Anne Hobbs posted a picture of herself on social media on Monday wearing a customised T-shirt featuring Earps’s name. “MARY EARPS @maryearps027 such a powerful inspiration to us all.. love you so much i made my own shirt..”, she wrote.
MARY EARPS@maryearps027
such a powerful inspiration to us all..
love you so much i made my own shirt..@Lionesses #EarpsShirt pic.twitter.com/46qgkwPSSQ
— maryanne hobbs (@maryannehobbs) August 21, 2023
Explaining that she was a devotee of the woman fans have taken to calling Mary, Queen of Stops, Hobbs said: “Mary’s passion, fury, absolute devotion to her game is such a powerful inspiration. I customised my favourite T-shirt because Mary Earps is a queen in my world.”
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England’s World Cup odyssey points to bright future of sustained success
Suzanne Wrack
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Other smaller retailers have moved into the space vacated by Nike. Foudys – which calls itself “the first retailer dedicated to the fans and players of women’s football” – is selling a T-shirt for £20 with the slogan “This is my keeper shirt” against the pattern of the Earps player shirt.
A football illustrator, Holly Collins, who produces illustrations and T-shirts for her company HollaaaaFC, decided to make a T-shirt after the Colombia game. “I had been thinking about it since the start of the tournament. There was obviously a lot of noise online about there being a lack of a Mary Earps shirt available to buy,” she said. “So I thought, I’m going to design one that I would want to wear, mixing streetwear style with football fashion.” The shirt, which states “Number one, second to none” above “Mearps” with the words “Safe hands – safe heart. Mary, Queen of Shots” below it has seen a rise in sales, even after the defeat.
#MaryEarps t-shirt now available in white! #England #Lionesses #FIFAWomensWorldCup
https://t.co/it5tupoT3S pic.twitter.com/3GzssUUTIB
— holly (@hollaaaafc) August 17, 2023
In the last 24 hours more than 10,000 people have signed a petition launched by a 16-year-old football fan on Change.org, calling on the sportswear giant to change its mind and produce the shirt, taking the total signatories to more than 73,000.
Emmy Somauroo said she was “shocked and upset” when she couldn’t buy an Earps replica shirt, adding that the company should have changed its decision. “Mary is such an inspiration to me,” said the teenager. “I think on Sunday she showed the world, and Nike, who she is and she’s made the whole country so unbelievably proud of her.”
Mary Earps (left) with Emmy Somauroo, who launched an online petition calling on Nike to produce a replica shirt.
But Earps may take some solace that her own T-shirts, launched through her clothing range, MAE27, as a result of the scandal, had completely sold out even before the starting whistle of the final.
The keeper started selling two of her own T-shirts – one of them stating “Be unapologetically yourself” – in response to failing to get the response she hoped for from Nike after “fighting behind closed doors”, she revealed in an interview with the Guardian. The phrase comes from the acclaimed speech Earps made when accepting Fifa’s award for best women’s goalkeeper in the world in February.
“Sometimes success looks like this, collecting trophies,” she said at the ceremony. “Sometimes it’s just waking up and putting one foot in front of another. There’s only one of you in the world, and that’s more than good enough. Be unapologetically yourself.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/feb/17/national-museum-of-scotland-to-open-10-new-galleries-in-major-expansion | Art and design | 2016-02-17T06:00:14.000Z | Maev Kennedy | National Museum of Scotland to open 10 new galleries in major expansion | The National Museum of Scotland will open 10 new galleries this summer devoted to science, art and design, increasing its exhibition space by almost half and putting many treasures from its collections on display for the first time.
The £14.1m project will give the museum its first fashion gallery, creating a permanent display for what is an growing collection. Among its 50,000 objects are pieces by Mary Quant, Vivienne Westwood, Yves Saint Laurent, Alexander McQueen – and a jacket designed by Schiaparelli and donated by Frances Lovell Oldham, otherwise known as “Frances the Fabulous”. The US-born fashion editor of Vogue, later editor of Harper’s Bazaar, married the laird of the Invercauld estate, moved into the family castle – painting part of it sugar pink – and swapped her polar-bear coat for equally flamboyant Highland dress.
A cabinet of curiosities … Isabel Wagner, assistant conservator, cleans the Borghese travelling service. Photograph: Neil Hanna
One of the most spectacular objects going into the new galleries is a more than 100-piece silver gilt travelling set made for Napoleon’s sister Pauline, on her marriage in 1803. It includes combs and brushes, crystal bowls, bottles and glasses, toothbrushes and a tongue-scraper – along with tea and coffee pots, and a jug and wash basin.
It was bequeathed by Pauline to a handsome admirer, Alexander Duke of Hamilton, a voracious art collector, who employed Napoleon’s favourite architect to build Hamilton Palace, one of the most celebrated Scottish treasure houses until it was demolished in the 1920s. National Museums Scotland managed to raise funds to buy it in 1986, but preparing it for redisplay, including delicately cleaning all the tarnished intricate silver pieces, has taken more than 250 hours of conservation work.
Other rarities going on display include hand-painted 18th-century French wallpaper, the first Dunlop pneumatic tyre, and a 1910 engine from a plane built by the Wright brothers seven years after they made history with the first powered flight, 20 feet above ground level, covering 852 feet and lasting just 59 seconds.
The new galleries will open on 8 July, and will add more than 40% extra exhibiting space to the museum. Three-quarters of the 3,000 objects haven’t been displayed in a lifetime and many others are newly acquired or coming out of the stores for the first time.
The museum is still fundraising for the project, an appeal supported by patron and author Alexander McCall Smith, who called it “a place which connects Scotland to the world and the world to Scotland”.
This article was amended on 17 February 2016. An earlier version referred to a 250-piece, rather than more than 100-piece, travelling set. In addition, a reference to the National Museum of Scotland raising funds should have been to the organisation that runs it, National Museums Scotland. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/23/sardinian-town-novel-way-cut-unemployment-pay-people-to-leave | World news | 2014-09-23T16:32:06.000Z | Lizzy Davies | Sardinian town finds novel way to cut unemployment: pay people to leave | Governments across Europe dream of finding a magic solution to rising unemployment. But in the hardest-hit parts of the EU, joblessness rates continue to creep up and the rhetoric does little to shorten the dole queue.
Now, in a struggling corner of Italy, one mayor thinks he has found an answer to his town’s chronic lack of work – although, rather than a solution, it appears to some to be more of an admission of defeat. Valter Piscedda, the centre-left mayor of Elmas, a small town near Sardinia’s capital, Cagliari, wants to pay residents to leave. The council will pay for 10 unemployed locals to take intensive English lessons, board a cheap flight and look for jobs elsewhere in Europe.
“This is above all an idea born of common sense and experience,” he told the Guardian. “Over the past year and a half – especially in the past few months – I have been receiving young people almost every day who are despairing about their search for work. Some are looking here, and ask for a hand in finding it here. Others have tried everything and are so discouraged that they no longer want to stay and wait. And they want to go and gain [work] experience abroad, life experience too.
“So, my reasoning was this: put everything in place that the council administration can put in place so that those who want to gain experience abroad are able to,” he said.
As the national economy continues to falter, Sardinia, along with much of southern and central Italy, is grappling with high unemployment, with the overall joblessness rate at 17.7% in the second quarter of this year, according to the national statistics institute, Istat. More than 54% of people under 25 are out of work.
For the Adesso Parto (Now I’m leaving) programme, Elmas’s council has allocated €12,000 (£9,500) on a first-come, first-served basis to applicants aged between 18 and 50. As long as they are out of work and have lived in the town for three years, they are eligible. They do not have to be university educated, and their annual income must be no more than €15,000.
The idea of encouraging people to up sticks is sensitive at a time when floods of Italians – many of them bright young graduates – are leaving their country every year. But Piscedda, who belongs to the Democratic party of the prime minister, Matteo Renzi, denies he is facilitating a brain drain and believes that the people he is sending away may well return “and give me back 100 times what they were given”. More importantly, he wants the scheme to give a leg up to those most in need.
“It’s a programme for those with no other resource; it’s the last-chance saloon. It’s about allowing them the dignity of not having to ask a friend for money or place burdens on families that cannot do it,” he said.
Several months ago, he added, the council launched a scheme whereby businesses were given financial incentives to hire young workers from Elmas. “We advertised 20 of these positions,” he said. “We got 120 applications.”
In Elmas, the scheme has provoked mixed reactions. “The reality is that there is little work here,” said Alessandro Macis. “The opportunity to go abroad to learn about the workplace and experience other cultures can be very worthwhile. The son of a friend of mine who didn’t study much has ended up in London and he’s really finding his way. He started as a waiter, now he’s a cook and he’s learning English.”
Others were perplexed. “I heard about it but I thought it was strange. If you have that money to pay for people to go away, why don’t you use that money to keep them here?” said Consuelo Melis, working behind the bar in a local cafe. On Twitter, one of many reactions was disbelief. “The state’s admission of defeat,” commented Marco Patavino. “Institutions are raising the white flag,” remarked Carlo Mazzaggio.
Piscedda, however, is undeterred, remarking of his online critics: “Probably they are people that aren’t in need ... Every day I deal with people’s problems and I have to do something to try to solve them. These people, if they had an alternative, they wouldn’t be asking [for help].
“The work I can create [as mayor] is temporary. I can have a piazza cleaned. I can have it cleaned again. I can have the streets cleaned. But these are all temporary things that give nothing beyond that little bit of money for a few months. I want to go beyond that.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/feb/18/former-asio-boss-accuses-liberal-senator-of-grubby-attack-over-huawei-comments | Australia news | 2022-02-17T16:30:42.000Z | Katharine Murphy | Former Asio boss accuses Liberal senator of ‘grubby’ attack over Huawei comments | One of Australia’s most respected former public servants, Dennis Richardson, has accused Liberal senator James Paterson of engaging in a “grubby” and “despicable” attempt to blacken his name over comments Paterson made in an interview on Sky News.
Paterson, the chair of federal parliament’s powerful committee on intelligence and security, argued in the interview on Thursday that Richardson, the former head of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, had publicly advocated in 2018 that the Chinese telco Huawei should be involved in the Australian 5G rollout.
Paterson described Richardson as a “distinguished” former public servant.
But the Liberal senator told Sky News the government’s decision to exclude Huawei from the 5G rollout was “one of the best decisions our government has made – and I stand by it even if Dennis Richardson disagrees”.
Morrison and Dutton are puffing themselves up like mini-me McCarthyists – and it’s beyond reckless
Katharine Murphy
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Paterson’s critique followed Richardson contending in a series of interviews on Thursday morning that the Morrison government was serving China’s interests, not Australia’s, by politicising national security ahead of the election, and “seeking to create the perception of a difference [between the major parties] when none in practice exists”.
The unusual intervention carried weight. During his long career in the public sector, Richardson was secretary of the departments of foreign affairs and defence, as well as the Asio boss, and Australia’s ambassador to Washington.
The latter two appointments occurred during the Howard government.
Richardson told Guardian Australia back when he was the secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the government considered whether or not Huawei would be involved in the 4G network.
“I was on the secretaries committee on national security which recommended against Huawei’s involvement in 4G,” the retired bureaucrat said. “I was not in government in 2018. And I challenge James Paterson to come up with any evidence that I advocated for Huawei’s unmitigated involvement in 5G.
“Given that I was on the secretaries committee on national security that recommended against Huawei being involved in 4G, on what basis I would have advocated for Huawei being in 5G is beyond me.”
Richardson said he had made a comment in the media that the United Kingdom “had negotiated a deal with Huawei that enabled them to be in part involved in non-sensitive areas”.
“However the Brits subsequently overturned that. So James Paterson is being loose with the truth by a long margin. He ought to check his facts and get them right before he makes public comments about individuals.”
It was reported at the time that Richardson suggested that Australia should follow the UK’s lead and establish a cyber-security unit to manage risks and safeguard Australia’s national interest, rather than banning the Chinese company outright.
“If Huawei has 5G technology [and] if they’re the only telecommunications company with it, I think it would be a shame if we did not seek to take advantage of that, but in a way that safeguarded our own national interest by perhaps looking more closely at what the UK has done,” Richardson said in 2018, according to a report in the Financial Review.
On Sky News on Thursday, Paterson also noted that it had been publicly reported that in 2011, when Richardson was secretary of Dfat, he went on leave “to negotiate on behalf of the Canberra Raiders a lucrative sponsorship agreement from Huawei for the Canberra Raiders”.
Richardson rejected that. He said he was involved in one presentation at board level, and took half a day’s leave without pay to attend that event, but: “I never negotiated with Huawei their sponsorship of the Canberra raiders.
“That is a claim that was put in a letter to the editor in the Canberra Times a couple of years ago which I refuted. Indeed, it was stated in the Canberra Times that I’d taken six weeks leave to negotiate this deal with Huawei, and as I pointed out in my response, I have never taken six weeks leave in my life, let alone taking six weeks leave to negotiate a deal with Huawei.”
Richardson said the history recounted by Paterson was selective. “At the time we got that sponsorship from Huawei, no-one other than [former Liberal foreign affairs minister] Alexander Downer was on the board of Huawei – right?”
“Alexander Downer was on the board of Huawei, and might I also add that in 2011, when I went to Senate estimates and was questioned by none other than the good senator [Eric] Abetz, who asked me about whether I had done this and that about Huawei, I told him what I’d done, and I said if you think I’ve done anything wrong, go to the public service board, go to the police, go to whomever you like.
“He never pursued it. I subsequently deliberately accepted an invitation from Huawei to go to a match of the state of origin in Sydney.” Richardson said other guests of Huawei at that match included a federal liberal staffer and a senior Liberal from the NSW party.
“If they want to cast aspersions, then bring it on. It is grubby and it is an attempt to blacken people’s names.
“It is despicable for them to want to engage in this sort of innuendo. The first thing they should do is get their facts right – that would help. To say that I advocated for Huawei’s involvement in 5G in 2018 is not even half true. It is extraordinarily misleading and it flies in the face of what happened in 2011.”
The escalating brawl between Liberal politicians and members of the national security establishment follows days of intensifying partisan contention over national security. Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton have spent much of the parliamentary week declaring that China wants the Labor party to win the looming federal election.
3:03
'Trash talk': Albanese hits back at Morrison's attempt to stoke division over China – video
The hyper-partisanship culminated in Morrison on Wednesday branding Labor’s deputy leader, Richard Marles, a “Manchurian candidate” – an observation he later withdrew. The phrase “Manchurian candidate” refers to a politician being used as a puppet by an enemy power.
On Wednesday night, the current Asio chief Mike Burgess also declared the weaponisation of national security was “not helpful to us”. Paterson said on Thursday Burgess’s comments had been “over-interpreted”.
The Labor leader Anthony Albanese returned fire on Thursday seizing on comments made by Richardson to the ABC.
“What is unusual in this case is that the government is seeking to create the perception of a difference between it and the opposition on a critical national security issue, that is China – seeking to create the perception of a difference when none in practise exists,” Richardson had told the ABC.
“That’s not in the national interest. That only serves the interests of one country, and that is China.”
Albanese used Richardson’s criticism of the politicisation to turn Morrison’s insult back on him. Gesturing in Morrison’s direction in the chamber, Albanese declared after question time: “If you are looking for a Manchurian candidate, he sits over there.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2012/jul/02/euro-2012-spain-italy-final-history | Football | 2012-07-02T00:20:06.000Z | Sid Lowe | Euro 2012: Spain seal their place in history with Italy's destruction | Sid Lowe | For Spain there was symmetry and symbolism in success – and style too. The cycle was completed against Italy, the same team against whom it had all begun. Once the team that never won, they have become the team that never lose – European, world and European champions, two consecutive qualifying campaigns with perfect records, 10 wins out of 10, and 10 successive knockout games across two Euros and a World Cup without conceding a goal, stretching back six long years. And now they put four goals past Italy: Silva, Alba, Torres, Mata. No side have ever achieved what Spain have achieved. Surely no one has ever won an international final with such authority. No other team have scored four in a European final.
This will forever be recalled as Spain's era, unrivalled by any team. Forty-four years it took them to win a major tournament. In four years they have won two more. No other team have retained this trophy and yet at times it felt as if winning this tournament was an obligation; winning it well was an obligation, too. Spain fulfilled both brilliantly. Fernando Torres scored in this final just as he scored against Germany in 2008. It was Spain's third and it gave him the tournament's Golden Boot. Juan Mata came on for his first minutes of the tournament. He scored with his first touch – 12 goals scored, one conceded.
Spain's era began with a penalty shoot- out against Italy in 2008. It was only the quarter-final but the Spanish had finally broken a barrier that had stood before them for 24 years, one that had seemed insuperable. Spain feared Italy, the team that many liked to portray as everything Spain were not: dirty, cynical, boring … successful. Even Torres later said of the quarter-final: "That was the night that we won the European Championship."
This was the night that they won it again. Torres scored again. Now it is Spain who are insuperable. No one has ever won three major tournaments in a row. As Iker Casillas had admitted, there would never again be anything like 2008 and 2010.
"It is different," he said on the eve of this game – 2008 had been the explosion, success at last 44 years later but 2010 was "nervous" – first Europe, then the world. "Success debilitates you but we have been lucky that we have good players who have not lost their competitive spirit," Vicente del Bosque said.
That side of Spain's game is often forgotten. "It is not enough," Del Bosque says, "to have talent." Yet Spain have talent, so much of it that just competing, achieving something unique, has been treated as if it is not enough.
Here it was not just the fact that they won but the way they won. There was a sensation that Spain needed a final like this. Different demands are made of great teams, debates sparked. "Tournaments," said Del Bosque, "always concentrate debate and tension. It's impossible to win over everyone all of the time." Those debates have been destroyed. Did anyone remain unconvinced on Sunday night? Spain were not just better; they were brilliant.
They had the lead inside 14 minutes and never looked like relinquishing it. Andrés Iniesta's pass was slotted diagonally into the area for a run from Cesc Fábregas. He got to the byline and pulled it back for David Silva, racing in from deep to head home. It was Silva's second goal of the competition; he also has three assists. Like Spain's goal against Italy in their opening game, it was also an expression of what Del Bosque seeks with a striker-less formation. There is no fixed point; instead there is combination, control, mobility, unpredictability, players arriving not waiting.
Asked whether he would play an attacker before the match, Del Bosque had replied: "I'll play three of them." "Yes," came the retort, "but will any of them be No9s?" "People who can create and score goals," the Spain coach said. When Silva headed in, Spain had taken five shots already. They had begun with speed, moving the ball with intensity and intent. Now they were 1-0 up.
Italy had already played their part before the goal and they sought the equaliser after it. They had not come simply to stop Spain. Casillas was forced to intervene on a couple of occasions. "Of course the games are not as good when [only] one team try to attack and the other team defend," Iniesta had said. Here Italy attacked. And so did Spain. If control was harder to find, spaces appeared; the game was longer, less compressed. There was space in front of the Italian defence; space behind it too. Spain had not finished with less than half the possession since the final four years ago. Italy had 53% of the ball in the first half. Spain had two goals.
For a man whose position has been questioned constantly, Fábregas's impact on this tournament has been huge. Xavi's, on the other hand, had not been. "I would have liked to have been more transcendental than I have been," he admitted on the eve of the final. The remark is all the more striking because he is the man who perhaps embodies best of all the style that has made Spain different. In Kiev it was a different story. With Iniesta he took central stage again, always involved, his passing crisp and clever. He had space ahead of him, runners too. That had largely been denied him during this championship.
Shortly before the interval that runner was Jordi Alba. Spain may play without strikers but Alvaro Arbeloa has had more touches in the opposition penalty area than any other defender here and now it was Alba, one of the stand out performers of Spain's championship, who bombed forward. Once a member of the front three, he had been converted by the Valencia coach Unai Emery into a full-back. But Alba, who this week confirmed that he is returning to Barcelona, where he started out as a teenager, has not forgotten his roots. The interception happened deep inside his own half. A first-time touch inside and off he went on a run. Five yards, 10, 20, 30, 40, faster and faster. As he screeched past the last defender, the ball appeared ahead of him, perfectly weighted by Xavi. A touch to control was followed by a tidy finish.
"If we can crush them, we crush them," Luis Aragonés told his players at Euro 2008. That Spain do not has been one of the accusations most often levelled at them here. "Those people who think we are playing boring... in my opinion they don't understand the game," Fábregas said. "This feels really amazing, one of the best days of my life. I don't think we're ready to see what we have done yet. Three major trophies in a row has never been done before in the history of football."
They crushed Italy, not any team but Italy. This was the defining game and Spain can now be defined only with ever-increasing superlatives. Iniesta said: "We gave our best performance in the last game. This is unrepeatable." Torres slotted past Gianluigi Buffon, then Mata finished too. And the night ended with the centre-back, Sergio Ramos, attempting to score with a back-heel from three yards out. Four goals were enough – four. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2013/may/10/flood-insurance-fears-rise-calls-advice | Money | 2013-05-10T11:41:10.000Z | Lisa Bachelor | Flood insurance fears drive rise in calls for advice | Householders whose homes have previously been flooded are seeking advice in record numbers over fears they will not be able to buy insurance from July onwards.
The National Flood Forum (NFF) charity said the number of calls to its helpline trebled in the past year, with some callers reporting huge rises in the cost of their cover, and others saying they were unable to sell their properties.
The calls are increasing as the end of an agreement between the government and insurers approaches. This agreement, known as the "statement of principles", obliges insurers to offer flood insurance as part of standard household policies at reasonable rates, providing the government invests in flood defences. So far ministers and the industry have been unable to reach an agreement about what happens next.
The NFF said it has seen growing numbers of households getting in touch because they are struggling to sell their properties while it remains uncertain whether or not a new buyer would be able to get buildings insurance.
"I am sure everyone agrees that it is not government's business to support house prices, but you cannot ignore the likelihood of a significant markdown in value for perhaps 200,000 properties across the country," NFF chief executive Paul Cobbing said.
"Others are contacting us because their insurance premiums have been jacked up by ridiculous amounts, while a third group is telling us that insurers are now asking them for lots of extra information before they will renew their cover. This is despite the fact that under the 'statement of principles' an insurer has to continue to offer cover on renewal."
Cobbing said he had seen some householder's premiums double to £2,000 a year, and in one case a small business saw its premium rise from £4,000 to £25,000 a year. He was speaking to the Guardian ahead of the UK's first conference dedicated to flooding, taking place in York on 10 May 2013.
"I am really worried that the government and the insurers have not reached an agreement," Cobbing said. "My understanding is that the decision is being held up by one or two key individuals – but the consequences for households is huge."
The insurance industry, supported by the NFF and a number of cross-party MPs, wants to introduce a levy on insurance for all policy holders of about £8 in order to create a £150m-a-year fund to cover those at high risk of flooding. But the government is understood to be reluctant to provide any additional funding that could be required on top of this in the case of extreme flooding.
One alternative – resorting to a free market – would essentially mean insurers could charge what they like, and many householders would find themselves in effect unable to obtain insurance.
Anything else would require legislation – something that is increasingly unlikely to go through before parliament's summer recess.
Also speaking at the conference, Matt Cullen, the Association of British Insurers' policy adviser on flooding, said: "If a single large insurer decides to stop offering renewals to is high flood risk properties, it could leave thousands of properties struggling to find a new insurer."
He unveiled figures that showed the likely impact on household premiums of moving to risk-reflective prices, as would happen within a free market. At present, 75,000 homes pay £500 or more a year for their insurance. Under a free market this would increase to 650,000 homes. At the very top, the number who currently pay more than £2,500 for their insurance would rise from 1,200 homes to 4,000.
Shadow environment secretary Mary Creagh said: ""Incompetent government ministers are playing russian roulette with people's homes, businesses and futures." | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2011/aug/27/doctor-who-television | Television & radio | 2011-08-27T19:00:00.000Z | Dan Martin | Doctor Who: Let's Kill Hitler - series 32, episode 8 | SPOILER ALERT: This weekly blog is for those who have been watching the new series of Doctor Who. Don’t read ahead if you haven’t seen episode eight – Let’s Kill Hitler
Dan Martin’s episode seven blog
Mid-season questions and recap
“Get in the cupboard, Hitler!”
And we’re back. What-we-did-on-our-holidays can wait. As, actually, can what the episode was actually about. First we must deal with what it wasn’t about. Hitler. It was a characteristically mischievous move from The Moff: tease us with the title; spend the entire summer courting a minor controversy over casting the Fuhrer in a family show; release a preview clip implying that the Tardis crew save his life – and then have him barely feature at all. It’s marvellous.
“Unequivocally, we’re against Hitler,” was Moffat’s response to fears that this episode might have been set up as some wrong-headed attempt to reappraise him. “I think he was a bad thing and I’m, glad he’s gone. The worse thing you could do to that awful man is to take the mickey out of him on Doctor Who. We’re not really going to save Hitler. He’s dead already.” And take the mickey out of him they did - having him frog-marched into a cupboard by Rory of all people.
For all that, to me Let’s Kill Hitler was far more successful as a season opener than A Good Man Goes To War was as a finale. Here was an energetic, timey-wimey tour de force with with gags and flourishes like the car and the crop circles that still maintained a strong sense of what it was about. Most fabulously of all, it was all about Doctor Song.
“Oh that’s magnificent! I’m going to wear lots of jumpers!”
Alex Kingston getting to do a post-regenerative flummox? You can’t really hope for more. And in playing River at the beginning, all murderous and unstable, she got to steal her every scene even more completely than usual (“So I was on my way to this gay Gypsy bar-mitzvah for the disabled, then I thought, the Third Reich’s a bit rubbish…”), masterfully swerving the episode into a properly emotional final act.
If you could keep up, we were given a lot more answers than we might have dared to expect. Yes she did have regenerative powers, but in saving the Doctor she also sealed her fate to that ultimate ‘death’ in the Library. We learn where she got the Tardis diary. But we still have to deal with the mystery of who she is to the Doctor. Perhaps most brilliantly of all, we solve the continuity niggle of Alex Kingston’s reverse ageing: “I might take the age down a little, just gradually, just to freak people out.”
“At least I’m not a time-travelling, shape-shifting robot operated by tiny angry people, which I’ve got to admit, I didn’t see coming.”
Shape-shifting robots and miniaturisation rays in Doctor Who are to be encouraged. But is there an argument, somewhere, that having River/Melody perceived by the people in the Tessalator as a worse war criminal than Hitler maybe, possibly, a little bit dodgy?
Fear Factor
Where the first half of this series went all out for the scares, part two, on the basis of Let’s Kill Hitler perhaps goes in the opposite direction. But with Earth not on the brink of destruction every single week and the big flushes being about the big plot, will we finding the single episodes to be as edge-of-your-seat?
Mysteries and Questions
As answers begin to emerge, more questions of course crop up. The Silence are not a species, but a religious order. So what were those creeps in Utah? And what is the Academy Of The Question?
Time-Space Debris
River is left with the Sisters Of The Infinite Schism. Do they have something to do with the Sisters Of Plenitude?
Matt Smith gets a new coat. Yet he has still been denied his wish for a new hat.
Did anybody call out Mels being Melody? And is anyone else a little bit sad that we won’t be seeing her again.
More fangasm continuity nods, as Rose Tyler, Martha Jones, Donna Noble and of course, Amelia Pond, all get cameos.
Amy spent their whole lives thinking Rory was gay. Isn’t that just exactly how it would have happened?
Next Week!
Most things Mark Gatiss has done have been unerringly brilliant, but he has yet to write a truly great episode of Doctor Who. So now he gets another shot at it, with Night Terrors, set in the most terrifying place in the universe… a child’s bedroom.
Quick Guide
Doctor Who: all our episode-by-episode recaps
Show | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/nov/02/buses-back-under-public-control-ruling-tyne-and-wear | UK news | 2015-11-02T19:11:52.000Z | Gwyn Topham | Plans to bring local buses under public control face ruling blow | Plans to bring local buses back under public control are to be dealt a blow by a ruling that is expected to judge Tyne and Wear’s pioneering attempt to regulate its services as unworkable.
In the culmination of a bitter, drawn-out battle between the regional authority in Newcastle upon Tyne and private bus firms, an independent board could in effect dismiss a scheme to re-regulate buses, warning that the plans would potentially leave the authority liable for millions of pounds in compensation for operators such as Stagecoach.
After a series of hearings this year, the Quality Contract Scheme board chaired by the traffic commissioner for the north-east is expected to set out its conclusions as to whether Tyne and Wear’s proposals to franchise services and control routes, timetables and fares pass a range of public interest and economic tests.
The operators have argued that attempts to take control of routes would be in breach of their economic rights and be appropriation of goodwill. The panel is likely to decide that Nexus, the region’s transport executive, could face large liabilities to compensate Stagecoach, Go-Ahead and Arriva for loss of business.
The decision, which is expected on Tuesday, could have huge implications for city devolution plans at the heart of the chancellor’s vision of a “northern powerhouse”. Manchester and other cities have agreed to changes including elected mayors in return for control over local financing and transport, with buses a focal issue.
Deregulation of bus services outside London was brought in by the Thatcher government in the 1980s. Stagecoach and other transport firms have made the bulk of their UK profits from such bus services rather than the trains or regulated buses they also operate.
Nexus argued it was paying large subsidies to fund unprofitable routes for community benefit, while not being allowed to run public services on profitable routes under the legislation. Local authorities are also forced by law to provide concessionary bus travel to pensioners.
The transport executive claimed re-regulation would save money and result in better services. But operators led by Stagecoach, which runs about 40% of bus services in Tyne and Wear, claimed the move would mean higher fares, worse services and higher taxes.
Richard Collins, a transport specialist at the law firm Bond Dickinson, said: “Whatever the ruling, this drawn-out process has demonstrated that the current regulatory structure may not be fit for purpose.
“There is more regulation coming down the pipeline, the buses bill, due next year. It may be that, whatever the outcome of this process, new forms of partnership between operators and local authorities are likely.
“It’s going to create an interesting dynamic: part of the northern powerhouse is about devolving decision making to local authorities and it throws up challenges for bus operators.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/dec/26/rugby-union-wayne-barnes-red-cards-breakdown | Sport | 2023-12-26T09:59:31.000Z | Michael Aylwin | Red mist: Rugby’s leaders would do well to heed wise words of Wayne Barnes | The Breakdown | Opinion will always be divided, but a general consensus seems to have it that Wayne Barnes has been the best referee of our times. Now that he has retired, it seems he is feeling freer to speak his mind. The game would do well to pay attention.
He appeared on TNT’s highlights programme for round one of the Champions Cup this month and offered his thoughts on the cards that he and his colleagues have been obliged to bandy about for so many years now.
Champions Cup emerges from rugby’s recent darkness to offer shafts of light
Read more
When asked how often he had shown red cards to players who had clearly not meant to offend in the way they had – to whom he was showing the card because he had to – he stopped short of replying “every time”, but his diplomatic response was clear. “I don’t think any player goes out intentionally to hurt another player,” he said. “I think players get things wrong.”
Another way of putting that is that the game is simply too fast and physical for any player to guarantee they will always get things right. So all we do under the protocols is guarantee we will be sending players off. “The game needs to have that discussion,” Barnes said. “There were 112 cards in the Champions Cup last season. We do need to ask ourselves the question – and this is a nice time to ask it, just after a World Cup – do we constantly want to see teams reduced to 14 or 13 men?”
Poignant words from the man who presided, only a couple of months ago, over the first men’s Rugby World Cup final to feature a red card, in front of a global audience of millions, the year after the first in the women’s equivalent. Sam Cane was the unfortunate scapegoat in the men’s event. But just as poignant is to consider who he is.
By the lottery of split‑second timings and outcomes, his offence was adjudged by the bunker review officer to be upgraded from a yellow card to red, while Siya Kolisi’s in the same match stayed at yellow. It is telling that Cane is the captain of the All Blacks and an openside flanker. Kolisi is the captain of the Springboks and an openside flanker. This means that they are two of the best tacklers the game has seen.
We are all familiar now with the rantings of armchair critics who insist that players will “just have to learn to tackle lower”. If two of the best tacklers the game has seen cannot guarantee they will never catch a player in the head, no one can.
There are apologists who want you to believe this era of the red card began as recently as the 2019 World Cup with the introduction of the “high‑tackle sanction framework”. This was no more than a guideline to help referees to achieve consistency (and help spectators to work out what was going on). Anyway, in 2021 the framework was replaced by the “head‑contact process”. Perhaps we are to believe red cards for high tackles were invented then.
In the real world, the protocol was made official, with far more draconian wording and less room for mitigation than applies now, on 3 January 2017, nearly seven years ago, and the first red card, for Richard Barrington of Saracens, followed that weekend. Unofficially the policy pre‑dated even that. In December 2016 there were nine red cards across two weekends of Europe, when it later transpired referees had been quietly instructed to referee as if the imminent protocols already applied. Meanwhile, the first time the Breakdown discussed the problem of red cards for accidents, instead of for intentional crimes, was April 2015.
So the best players in the world have had at least seven years to learn how to tackle lower. Still the red cards keep coming. And they will never stop, until this persecution is dropped, because none of the offences are intentional, nor are they avoidable.
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England’s Lydia Thompson was sent off during the 2021 Rugby World Cup final defeat by New Zealand. Photograph: Fiona Goodall/World Rugby/Getty Images
There is plenty of evidence to suggest players are tackling lower. Gone is the cult of the “big hit”, that chest‑high smash so celebrated by the entire rugby community only 15 or so years ago. It is just not cool any more – and that is without doubt a positive development. It has not made one iota of difference to concussion incidence, nor will it, but the celebration of the big hit was an ugly look for a game supposedly prioritising player welfare.
We did not need to send a single player off to achieve that shift. Education and coaching are the biggest inputs, and an actual law change to back it up would also help, lowering the legal height of a tackle from shoulder height, where it has always remained, to something like the armpit or sternum. The avalanche of penalties that would unleash is preferable to even one more red card for an accident.
Cane sat with his own head in his hands when the news of his red card came through that fateful night, just as Tom Curry (England openside, one of the best tacklers the game has seen, etc, etc) had on the opening weekend of the tournament. What should have been the greatest night of Cane’s life lay in ruins, as did the sport’s credibility in its showpiece event. Lydia Thompson has spoken movingly of how the red card she was shown in the women’s final nearly derailed her.
These are the humans the sport is betraying. Rugby is dangerous at the elite level and never will it not be. Applying retrospective justice after ugly accidents can never work. Referees are not in armchairs. They are at the heart of the action in this dizzyingly fast sport. They can see these players mean no harm, and they do not like having to send them off. May Barnes’s words resonate where it matters.
This is an extract taken from our weekly rugby union email, the Breakdown. To sign up, just visit this page and follow the instructions | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/jan/08/guns-n-roses-lcd-soundsystem-radiohead-laurie-anderson-week-in-music | Film | 2016-01-08T15:30:22.000Z | Tshepo Mokoena | The week in music: Coachella reunions, Laurie Anderson's dog concert and more | Guns N’ Roses are headlining Coachella – with Slash
Dust off your top hat and leather trousers: Guns N’ Roses are back, in their original form. Well, maybe. So far, the band have been announced as Coachella festival headliners, with Slash, Axl Rose and Duff McKagan apparently signed up to play. Mostly we’re assuming that because, at the time of writing, all three former bandmates have posted a band logo on social media (sigh), with a Coachella tag written in one corner. Twitter photos now count as confirmation in the digital age, I guess.
LCD Soundsystem reformed
In other Coachella reunion news, James Murphy’s band are back together. Not long after their place on the festival lineup was announced, the electro-rock group confirmed a new album and tour on the way. If this leaves you feeling conflicted, since their flawless and emotional amicable split in 2011, have a read of two writers’ arguments for and against LCD 2.0.
Laurie Anderson put on a late-night gig for dogs …
Dogs in New York City get all the fun. Portraiture Instagram account-turned-book The Dogist grants them internet fame, and on Monday they were treated to a Times Square concert by artist Laurie Anderson. Predictably, none of the dog owners could pick up on the low frequency of the music played, but were able to listen to a human-level strings arrangement through headphones. Lovely stuff.
Laurie Anderson’s concert for dogs was a low-frequency treat Guardian
… and was confirmed as guest director of Brighton festival 2016
Anderson’s week only got better. On Thursday, she was announced as guest director of annual culture event Brighton festival. The position has been previously held by Brian Eno, Myanmar pro-democracy party leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, and author Ali Smith, so she’s keeping some rather good company. This year marks the festival’s 50th anniversary, and Anderson will be curating events to the theme of “home and place”. Get it, Laurie.
Keith Flint of Prodigy denied going foxhunting
Flint may have sung about being a firestarter, but he spent a fair amount of the new year putting out fires on social media. Gutted. A Daily Mail report on 1 January alleged that Flint had taken up foxhunting, and kicked up enough of a fuss to inspire a Facebook response from the Prodigy frontman two days later. He wrote that he went horseriding “with the local trail hunt” but that no animals were hurt or killed. Judging by the replies to his post, not everyone is convinced.
Jack Garratt won the BBC Sound of 2016 poll
When Garratt picked up the Brits critics’ choice award in November 2015, I deemed him “the musician you won’t be able to avoid – from billboards and posters to radio – for the next year”. With this BBC win, that prediction may come true. Garratt’s minimal pop-R&B with electronic elements came out on top of the music industry poll, followed by R&B-pop singer-songwriter Alessia Cara, synth-funk producer and songwriter NAO, indie band Blossoms and – tied in fifth place on the shortlist – R&B-rap trio WSTRN and electronic music producer Mura Masa.
Watch the video for Jack Garratt’s Weathered
Radiohead set up a company – and that’s news
No, you read that right. This week we learned that the members of Radiohead had set up a new company, and we’re so desperate for a new album from the band that this move seems to signal progress. Thom Yorke and the lads last registered new companies before putting out albums The King of Limbs and In Rainbows, so fans can only hope that the creation of Dawn Chorus LLP signals new material on the way. Come on guys. That Spectre track just wasn’t enough.
Lemmy’s funeral is due to be livestreamed online
Mötorhead’s frontman Ian “Lemmy” Kilmister died on 28 December 2015. Fans the world over mourned his death, and will be given the chance to raise a glass to one of the titans of heavy metal when his funeral is livestreamed on YouTube on Saturday, from 3pm-4.30pm PST (11pm-12.30am GMT). Lemmy was also posthumously featured in a Finnish milk ad, recorded about a month before he died and released as a tribute with the support of his management.
Janet Jackson had to tell everyone she doesn’t have cancer
Being a celebrity must be baffling. People who don’t know you think they do, and are entitled to your time. You can’t pop down to the corner shop on your own. And gossip magazines and sites are allowed to publish information about your life that may or may not be true. Janet Jackson decided to take matters into her own hands this week, releasing a statement dismissing reports that she may have a tumour growing on her throat. “The rumours are untrue,” the message read. “I do not have cancer.”
We lost several talented musicians
Finally, this week’s roundup ends on a solemn note. Several musical talents died in the past week, including classical music heavyweight Pierre Boulez, Grammy award-winning singer Natalie Cole, Canadian jazz virtuoso Paul Bley, founding Whispers member Nicholas Caldwell and country singer Craig Strickland. Robert Stigwood, heavily involved in the careers of the Bee Gees, Cream and Eric Clapton, died on 4 January. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/jun/13/victoria-terrorism-sentencing-coalition-ministers-chastised-for-inappropriate-comments | Australia news | 2017-06-13T04:35:39.000Z | Calla Wahlquist | Coalition ministers' comments about Victoria terrorism sentencing 'inappropriate' | Victoria’s peak legal body has chastised senior Turnbull government ministers for making “worrying” and “inappropriate” comments about the Victorian judiciary over the sentencing of terrorism offences.
The federal health minister, Greg Hunt, and the human services minister, Alan Tudge, said senior supreme court judges – including chief justice Marilyn Warren – made what they called “deeply concerning” comments during an appeal hearing on Friday.
Hunt accused the court of becoming a forum for “ideological experiments” and said the Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, should “immediately reject” the judge’s statements.
The appeal concerned the sentencing of three Victorian men who had pleaded guilty to three separate terror-related offences, including Sevdet Ramadan Besim, who received 10 years’ jail for a plan to behead a police officer at the Anzac Day service in Melbourne in 2015.
'Handing victory to terrorists': lawyers warn over denial of bail and parole
Read more
The commonwealth director of public prosecutions (DPP) appealed against all three sentences on the grounds they were manifestly inadequate. In New South Wales, the DPP alleged, Besim’s sentence would have been closer to 20 years.
Warren reportedly said the difference in sentence lengths between the states was due to NSW placing less weight on the personal circumstances of the offender than Victoria, and generally taking a more tough-on-crime approach.
Hunt told the Australian: “Comments by senior members of the Victorian court endorsing and embracing shorter sentences for terrorism offences are deeply concerning – deeply concerning.
“The state courts should not be places for ideological experiments in the face of global and local threats from Islamic extremism that has led to such tragic losses.”
The Law Institute of Victoria president, Belinda Wilson, said it was inappropriate for politicians to comment on the judicial process, and said political commentary of court cases was emerging as a concerning pattern of behaviour.
“It is worrying that some federal MPs are prepared to make deliberate comments about the Victorian judiciary and state issues,” Wilson said in a statement on Tuesday.
“The [Law Institute of Victoria] believes that independent, highly qualified, professional and experienced judicial officers are best placed to impose the most appropriate sentence, taking into account all the circumstances of the case and hearing all the evidence in court.”
The Victorian Bar echoed the criticism, saying the comments by federal ministers were of “inconsistent with respect for the rule of law.”
“It is of great concern that comments made by judges during the hearing of an appeal, which is yet to be determined, are being taken out of context in the political debate,” president Jennifer Batrouney QC said.
“Robust commentary and discussion are a hallmark of a strong democracy, but so too is respect for the law, due process, and the independence of the judiciary. These statements give the perception that they are calculated to influence the court’s decision before judgement is given. That intrusion is inconsistent with respect for the rule of law.”
President of the judicial conference of Australia, NSW supreme court judge Robert Beech-Jones, said the comments amounted to “a slur on the character of the Victorian judiciary,” and threatened to undermine public confidence in the courts.
“The statements attributed to the ministers are deeply troubling. They represent a threat to the rule of law. They should never have been made,” Jones said.
Besim, 20, will be eligible for parole in seven-and-a-half years. One of the other men, Hassan El Sasabi, spent 44 days in jail for sending $16,000 to a contact who planned to fight in Syria. The third person, a teenager referred to on the court list as MHK, was sentenced to seven years’ jail for building a bomb he planned to detonate on Mother’s Day in 2015 and will receive parole in five years.
The decision on all three appeals has been reserved. A spokeswoman from the supreme court said it would be “improper for the courts to engage in public debate” while the case was ongoing.
Andrews told federal MPs to be “more careful” about how they talk about ongoing court cases.
“We are all entitled to our views, of course, but how they are expressed, when you are in position, you have got to be just a little bit more careful than what those three ministers and assistants in whatever positions they might have been, today,” he said.
“Sentences always need to keep pace with community views, but as for running loose commentary on individual cases, I think you have got to be very careful with that because you can put at direct risk the outcome that you say you’re interested in: justice.”
Tuesday’s comments follow a round of criticisms of the Victorian justice and corrections system following the fatal Brighton siege on 5 June by Yacqub Khayre, who was released from prison on parole in 2016 after serving three years in jail for a violent home invasion.
Focusing on Yacqub Khayre’s parole may look ‘tough on crime’ but it misses the point
Read more
The prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, questioned why Khayre, who had connections to violent extremism and was acquitted of terrorism charges in 2010, was granted parole, and said Asio and the Australian federal police should be directly involved in parole decisions involving anyone on the watchlist.
The parole board was never told Khayre was on any terrorism watchlist.
Premiers and chief ministers gave in-principle agreement to introducing a presumption against bail for people associated with terrorism, at the Council of Australian Governments meeting in Hobart on Friday.
At the Coag press conference, Andrews said Australia needed to introduce tougher powers to fight terrorism, which “may mean taking the rights and freedoms of a small number of people.”
One of those powers was announced on Tuesday: a proposal to allow police and law enforcement agencies to detain children as young as 14 for up to two weeks without charge if they are suspected of involvement in or believed to be planning a terrorist activity. NSW already has those powers. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/aug/05/biloelas-nadesalingam-family-feel-peace-after-being-granted-permanent-residency-in-australia | Australia news | 2022-08-05T07:21:39.000Z | Eden Gillespie | Nadesalingam family feel ‘peace’ after being granted permanent residency in Australia | The Nadesalingam family have said they finally feel “peace” after the federal immigration minister, Andrew Giles, intervened to grant them permanent residency.
Priya and Nades Nadesalingam, along with their daughters Kopika, 7, and Tharnicaa, 5, were visited by government officials in their family home in Biloela on Friday afternoon and told the news.
Priya said it was a “very happy day” for the Tamil asylum seeker family and for all of their friends and supporters in Biloela.
“At last we feel peace,” Priya said in a statement. “I am so grateful to minister Giles for granting us this permanency.
“Now I know my daughters will get to grow up safely in Australia. Now my husband and I can live without fear.”
In March 2018, the family were given 10 minutes to pack before being removed from their home by border force agents in a 5am raid.
They were then moved to immigration detention in Melbourne before the government attempted to deport the family to Sri Lanka in 2019.
The deportation attempt was halted by a last-minute court injunction – their plane was stopped in Darwin and they were moved to the detention centre on Christmas Island where they spent two years.
This year, the Biloela family were given hope after the Labor government won the federal election and moved swiftly to grant the family with bridging visas in June.
This act of ministerial intervention allowed the Nadesalingams to exit community detention in Perth and return to their beloved home in Biloela, a small country town in central Queensland.
Simone Cameron, a friend of the family, said the Nadesalingams were “beaming” after hearing the news.
“The plight of this family has opened Australians’ eyes to the cruelty of this country’s refugee policy,” Cameron said.
“This family have endured multiple traumatic deportation attempts and have withstood the debilitating physical and mental health impacts of prolonged detention.
“We can never give that lost four and a half years back to them. But we can, and we must, ensure that we never treat people like this again.”
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Angela Fredericks from the Home to Bilo campaign said the community was grateful the government had acted swiftly to return the family to Biloela.
“People power brought this family home, plain and simple,” she said.
“This campaign has shown what we can do when we refuse to be divided by fear and instead stand together as one.”
Giles, said he intervened under section 195A of the Migration Act to grant the family permanent visas following “careful consideration of the Nadesalingam family’s complex and specific circumstances.”
“My intervention provides the family with visas allowing them to remain permanently in Australia,” Giles said in a statement.
“I extend my best wishes to the Nadesalingam family.”
The federal opposition has criticised the decision.
“Actions have consequences and this sets a high profile precedent,” the opposition’s home affairs spokesperson, Karen Andrews, said in a statement.
“It undermines the policy that if you come here illegally you will never settle in Australia.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/aug/31/ban-us-cotton-imports-from-xinjiang-say-human-rights-campaigners | Global development | 2020-08-31T11:15:05.000Z | Oliver Balch | Ban US cotton imports from Xinjiang, say human rights campaigners | Human rights campaigners are calling on US authorities to ban all imports of cotton from the Chinese province of Xinjiang after allegations of widespread forced labour.
Two identical petitions, delivered today to US Custom and Border Protection, cite “substantial evidence” that the Uighur community and other minority groups are being press-ganged into working in the region’s cotton fields.
The petitions note the “integral role of forced labour” in China’s penal and economic system, which campaigners state has given rise to a “cotton gulag” in Xinjiang.
'Virtually entire' fashion industry complicit in Uighur forced labour, say rights groups
Read more
China is the largest cotton producer in the world, with 84% of its cotton coming from Xinjiang, located in the north-west of the country. According to Chinese government data cited in the petitions, apparel exports from this disputed region were valued at $4.2bn (£3.1bn) in 2018. Footwear and textiles represent an additional $3.06bn.
Rahima Mahmut, a spokeswoman for the World Uighur Congress, one of the campaign groups spearheading the petitions, is hopeful that the economic impacts of a ban could cause Beijing to rethink its prison labour policy.
“This is a very small measure compared to the terrible abuse that is happening to the Uighur people in East Turkistan [now known as Xinjiang] … but hopefully it will hurt China economically and encourage them to stop,” she says.
Since 2017, more than a million Uighur Muslims have been moved to high-security “de-extremification” camps, where they are forced to produce industrial and agricultural goods for export, campaign groups maintain.
“So many international brands rely on cotton from this region that it would be a massive problem for China were the US to enforce a ban,” says Dearbhla Minogue, legal officer for the Global Legal Action Network (Glan), co-sponsor of one of the petitions.
In April, Glan submitted a 57-page petition to HM Revenue & Customs in the UK requesting a similar ban. The request, submitted under a 1897 law banning the import of goods made in foreign prisons, remains “under consideration”, according to Minogue.
In a separate attempt to put pressure on the UK government, the World Uighur Congress is preparing to launch a nationwide campaign later this month. Stop Uighur Genocide has support from MPs across all parties as well as leading faith groups, says Mahmut.
The campaign will call for a public boycott of any products produced by Uighur forced labour or by companies facilitating Uighur suppression. It will also call on companies importing cotton and other goods from Xinjiang to investigate their supply chains.
In July, a coalition of more than 180 campaign groups issued a similar “call to action” to leading high-street brands, demanding that they guarantee their supply chains are not directly or indirectly linked to abuses of Uighurs or other persecuted minorities in China.
“With virtually the entire fashion industry affected, no brand can defend being complacent on this grave human rights crisis,” says Chloe Cranston, business and human rights manager at human rights group and coalition member, Anti-Slavery International.
The Better Cotton Initiative, which runs a sustainable certification system for cotton producers, reported earlier in the year that it was concerned about reports of forced labour in China and has commissioned a third-party investigation into the claims.
In a statement at the time, the cross-sector initiative said withdrawing from Xinjiang could “cause more harm than good” as a critical mass of farmers were dependent on cotton production.
In late March, however, the organisation suspended its certification activities in the region after concluding that “credible assurance” of labour practices was not possible.
“We are in the process of evaluating our presence [and] will announce our approach in the region moving forward in a way that prioritises the safety and wellbeing of farming communities,” a spokesperson for the initiative said. | Full |
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