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https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/apr/05/michael-jordan-changed-the-world-the-true-story-behind-nike-movie-air | Film | 2023-04-05T05:40:25.000Z | David Smith | ‘Michael Jordan changed the world’: the true story behind Nike movie Air | “I didn’t give a damn about Michael Jordan,” recalls Sonny Vaccaro. “He did not play in my all-star game that I had for 20 years. I didn’t pick him; I picked somebody else who was damn good too.”
But lodged somewhere in the brain of Vaccaro, an executive at Nike hunting basketball’s next big thing, was the memory of 1982 and a moment for the sporting gods. Jordan, a 19-year-old freshman displaying preternatural calm, had made a 16ft jump shot with 15 seconds left to win the national college championship for North Carolina.
The importance of this moment is vivid in Air, a new movie in which Matt Damon plays Vaccaro as middle-aged, out of shape and short of breath – literally gasping for air – as he tries to save what in 1984 was Nike’s fledgling and flailing basketball division. Director Ben Affleck plays the Nike co-founder Phil Knight while Viola Davis brings steely dignity to Jordan’s mother, Deloris.
Jordan himself is not shown in the film apart from some archive clips including that life-changing shot in 1982, which Damon’s Vaccaro is seen studying on VHS video tape again and again. “That is such a great scene because you can watch it happen now,” Vaccaro, now 83, says by phone from Palm Springs, California. “It was 40 years ago and there are kids who weren’t born yet.”
In the movie version, Vaccaro becomes convinced that Jordan is special and that Nike should bet everything on him to achieve success in the NBA. But he faces scepticism from Knight and fierce competition from more established shoe rivals Adidas and Converse.
The real Vaccaro, who was an adviser on the film, recalls that he had only met Jordan once. “He basically said he loved Adidas right up front. He was probably going to Adidas if they gave as much money as other people. I said, ‘Michael, who are you the closest to?’ I thought he’d say [North Carolina coach] Dean Smith or one of his fellow team-mates. He said, ‘My family’. It just stuck in my mind.”
The dogged Vaccaro found out the Jordan’s family home phone number and began calling the player’s mother Deloris. “We made a relationship over the phone right there,” he says. “She was an alpha human being.”
Vaccaro says Nike colleagues came up with the novel idea of building an “Air Jordan” shoe around the young star and ended up signing him in a $2.5m five-year deal. But Jordan’s mother added a crucial clause, insisting that the player get a share of the profit from every pair sold – perhaps the shrewdest bit of business since Alec Guinness secured a percentage of Star Wars’ earnings.
It also heralded a global revolution in the way sport was marketed and players were rewarded. Vaccaro comments: “Michael changed the world. People think he’s the greatest basketball player that ever lived and he may well be. I don’t go in for icons or Goats and all that on team sports but what I can say – and I never thought of it till I saw the movie – is Michael opened up the door for Black athletes in earning a lot of money off their endorsements.
“It was like a set fee in the 80s; the most that anybody got was maybe $100,000. But now you were free to make deals. He opened up a business world that was not available to anybody else and he created an item that will live on. Where else in the world can you see somebody’s old shoe now worth $1m at auction?”
The gamble paid off in spectacular fashion. Jordan won six NBA championships with the Chicago Bulls, became a billionaire and now owns the Charlotte Hornets. Last year the Jordan brand made Nike $5.1bn. The “Jumpman” logo – a silhouette of Jordan jumping with a ball in his hand – is a staple in the fashion and sports industries. Nike, whose revenue topped £37bn in 2022, is the world’s number one shoe and sports brand.
Matt Damon as Sonny Vaccaro in Air. Photograph: Ana Carballosa/Prime Video
But Air does not tell the whole story. Vaccaro was fired by Nike in 1991. He recalls: “One day I just walked in and Phil made an agreement that I would no longer be there. That was the business and I always understood that. Things carry on and I’ve gone forward in my life and he certainly has. There was nothing like competing against them too.”
Vaccaro went to work for the old foe, Adidas, and signed Kobe Bryant to a major shoe contract straight out of high school. Bryant went on to a stellar 20-year career at the Los Angeles Lakers. It was poetic justice for Vaccaro but he denies feeling any lingering bitterness towards Nike.
“Differences in stories take place. A lot of people do a lot of things but I have no animus towards anybody. Phil is the last person I would even remember from the old days. He opened the door for me. He believed in Michael so I can’t ever be mad at them. I just go on with my life.”
There was obvious acrimony, however, in a 2015 article in the USA Today newspaper about who was responsible for the Nike deal. Knight was quoted as saying: “Sonny helped, but he wasn’t the MVP in that process.” Jordan told the paper: “Sonny likes to take the credit. But it really wasn’t Sonny.” And Vaccaro himself said: “Phil Knight’s lying, Michael’s lying more than Phil.”
Roland Lazenby, a sportswriter and biographer of Jordan, Bryant and Earvin “Magic” Johnson, has interviewed Vaccaro at length. He says: “Sonny was the mind and, by his own admission, the somewhat devious mind of Nike basketball in a lot of ways. The thing that’s so painful for him is that Nike has gone to great lengths to create this revisionist history that writes Sonny’s role out of everything. The bad blood between Sonny and Nike has just gotten worse.”
Michael Jordan. Photograph: Focus On Sport/Getty Images
Affleck’s film offers a corrective, however (Nike did not respond to a request for comment). Speaking from Salem, Virginia, Lazenby, 70, adds: “I’ve been told Sonny is not getting a dime for this movie but he is very appreciative of it. It’s very important to him because Sonny is an old gentleman now and Nike is still big and strong and powerful. It controls the messaging, sets the agenda itself pretty well, and so this is the chance for Sonny’s side of the story to be told.”
Critics have blamed Vaccaro for the commercialisation of college basketball. But in recent years he became an advocate for players included in a class-action antitrust lawsuit against the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) over athletes’ rights to profit from their name, image and likeness. A supreme court ruling went against the NCAA in 2021.
Lazenby comments: “Sonny’s not quite a hidden figure. I first did a story on him in 1984 for the Sporting News and he was a notorious figure in some regards. In many ways Sonny is a sweetheart and a champion of players and coaches; he’s also a very tough guy and has a fierceness. He is one the great mysterious figures of American sport and he has been right in very big ways.”
Jordan, now 60, was introduced to a new generation in 2020 in The Last Dance, a documentary looking at his last championship season with the Chicago Bulls. The 10-part series, which included never-before-seen footage, was released sooner than expected to fill the sporting vacuum caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
Sonny Vaccaro in 2023. Photograph: MediaPunch Inc/Alamy
Lazenby reflects: “One of the themes of Michael Jordan’s life is this unbelievably perfect timing. I was sitting up top alone with Michael Jordan at the pre-draft camp in Orlando in 2008. Kobe was on his way to winning the league MVP and the league had set Jordan up to be owner in Charlotte. He looked at me when I asked him to look back on his life and he said, ‘Timing is everything’.
“The real relevant point here about Sonny Vaccaro is that he played a key role in that timing. He was part of the great ignition that set everything in motion. When I look back on it, Sonny Vaccaro was the accelerant for the business of basketball and shoe marketing.”
He adds: “All over the world very quickly Jordan became the primary figure of global sports merchandising. I wouldn’t say it’s the last great American phenomenon globally but at a time where American influence is being challenged – some would say it is waning – Jordan is a figure that is immune to the future.”
Air is now out in US cinemas and will be in UK cinemas on 7 April with an Amazon Prime release later this year | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/sep/28/who-won-the-republican-debate-our-panel-responds | Opinion | 2023-09-28T04:20:16.000Z | Bhaskar Sunkara | Who won the Republican debate? Our panel responds | Panelists | Bhaskar Sunkara: ‘We’re far away from a pro-worker Republican party’
A new Republican party was supposed to be in the making. Donald Trump as president catered to corporate interests and the super-rich, but as candidate he wrote a playbook to winning over workers in greater numbers.
At tonight’s debate, it’s clear his would-be successors haven’t read it. While Trump has been traveling around Michigan signaling his support for working people (though tellingly at non-union factories), in California the rest of the field struck a far different note when discussing workers that will be key in battleground states like Michigan and Pennsylvania.
Senator Tim Scott openly attacked the United Auto Workers’ demands and said that instead of showing up on their picket lines, President Biden should be protecting our southern border. Insurgent candidate Vivek Ramaswamy had a similar response: “If I was giving advice to those workers, I would say go picket in front of the White House in Washington DC,” advocating energy deregulation as an alternative solution to America’s woes.
In between his anti-Trump posturing, Chris Christie joined in. “This public school system is no longer run by the public. It is run by the teachers’ unions in this country,” the former New Jersey governor said. “And when you have the president of the United States sleeping with a member of the teachers’ union, there is no chance that you could take the stranglehold away from the teachers’ unions.”
The reference to Jill Biden has all the crassness of a Trump line, but none of the political acumen. It’s no wonder no one on the stage is likely to square up against President Biden in November.
Bhaskar Sunkara is the president of the Nation, the founding editor of Jacobin, and the author of The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in An Era of Extreme Inequalities
Lloyd Green: ‘Cringe-worthy comes to mind’
Donald Trump won Wednesday night’s debate. From 2,295 miles away, he dominated the seven Republicans who appeared at the Reagan library. His legal woes escaped real attention, albeit his latest posturing over abortion less so. He narrowly leads Joe Biden and leaves the Republican pack in the dust. The race’s dynamics remain unchanged.
On stage, Ron DeSantis got the airtime he craved but polls third in New Hampshire. Nikki Haley auditioned to be Trump’s running mate but earned his campaign’s ire as she was onstage. Mike Pence is officially irrelevant and a bad joke-teller.
“Thank you for speaking while I’m interrupting.” Vivek Ramaswamy’s quote of the night was an instant classic. Tim Scott let us know that African Americans had a tougher time enduring the Great Society than slavery. Cringe-worthy comes to mind.
At the same time, the evening definitely highlighted Biden’s vulnerabilities. For starters, bedlam reigns at the Mexican border.
Upcoming legislative contests in Virginia offer a reality check. Republican victory would scream “danger” for the president and his party. A Trump-backed shutdown, however, might provide them with a lifeline. The Old Dominion is filled with government contractors and small businesses.
Early in his term, Biden mistakenly took a premature victory lap. “I am confident that Barack is not happy with the coverage of this administration as more transformative than his,” he said. He also compared himself to FDR. Uh, that guy won four terms, assisted by convincing congressional majorities. Also, Hunter Biden isn’t Obama’s child.
Lloyd Green is an attorney in New York and served in the US Department of Justice
Osita Nwanevu: ‘Nothing but an act of God can dislodge Trump’s lead’
Do debates matter? This is itself the subject of some debate among those who follow presidential elections closely. Commonsensically, big breakout moments for candidates that are replayed in the days after the big event can boost the profiles of candidates who manage to pull them off. And there did seem to be some movement in favor of at least Nikki Haley after the first debate of this cycle. But the race before the candidates in the Republican field hasn’t fundamentally changed: Donald Trump, the last president of the United States and a now-heroic figure in the Republican party, retains and will continue to retain a commanding lead over his rivals that seemingly nothing short of an act of God, and maybe not even that, can dislodge.
Trump gained the most of any candidate in the field after the first debate. The huffing and puffing from the other contenders felt a bit different this time around, though. Tim Scott took center stage for much of the night – delivering not only his stock lines about how his own experiences disprove the existence of structural racism in American society, but hits against the records of his rivals, including Nikki Haley, who engaged him in an extended exchange about whether the state department paid for her curtains. Riveting stuff, but the substance really mattered less than the demonstration, to anyone watching, that he’s still in the fight.
Trump’s absence, by comparison, was a theme many candidates hit upon, though frankly there were moments during the night when some of the candidates on the stage themselves seemed like nonentities. It took a strikingly long time for Fox’s moderators to send questions Ron DeSantis’s way – he acquitted himself well when they arrived, but not well enough that he’s likely to see the bump in his standing he needed coming out of tonight.
The night’s real surprise, really, was Fox’s editorial line – there were questions early on about income inequality and the party’s standing with Latino voters, for instance. It felt throughout like a debate aimed at pulling the primary towards the center from two different directions – the business conservatism that Trump upended with his victory in 2016 and the populist conservatism that hopes to succeed him. There are substantive ideological tensions aplenty to be wrestled with on the right at the moment and the powers that be in the heart of the conservative press are evidently interested in teasing them out. They did their best and so did the candidates.
But it’s still Trump’s party and still Trump’s race to lose.
Osita Nwanevu is a Guardian US columnist
Jill Filipovic: ‘These egomaniacs don’t care about women’
If there’s one takeaway from the second Republican debate on Wednesday night, it’s that this party of blustering egomaniacs simply does not care about women.
There was only a single woman on stage – perhaps not a surprise from a party that struggles to put women in office and to capture women’s votes. Startlingly few questions were about the issues that animate the lives of so many American families, and women’s lives especially: childcare, healthcare, abortion.
While Republican lawmakers criminalize abortion in conservative states, and while even voters in conservative states vote for abortion rights when given the chance, the Republican hopefuls were wishy-washy on the issue – not wanting to be accountable for their party’s own extremism, but also refusing to align themselves with America’s pro-choice majority. Chris Christie turned a question about abortion rights into talking about defunding Planned Parenthood and wanting to fund drug treatment. Ron DeSantis simply refused to accept that pro-choice voters cost Republicans some midterm wins. There was only a single question about childcare, and it went largely unanswered. Chris Christie, though, did find time to refer to the first lady, Jill Biden, as someone whom the president is “sleeping with”.
The candidates had more to say about invading Mexico than invading women’s uteruses – although most of them seemed to favor both.
Even Donald Trump, he of “grab ’em by the” – you know – seems to understand the bind Republicans have put themselves in with their legislative misogyny. Trump isn’t an abortion moderate – he’s the reason Roe v Wade was overturned, and he has voiced support for jailing women who have abortions – but the truth is that he doesn’t really care; he’s willing to do whatever he thinks will put him in power and keep him there. He is a keen observer of his own party, and his flip-flopping on abortion seems to signal that he sees the Republican’s anti-abortion extremism as a liability.
But he wasn’t on stage tonight. Those who were seem committed to doubling down on their attacks on women’s rights – or ignoring women altogether.
Jill Filipovic is the author of the The H-Spot: The Feminist Pursuit of Happiness
LaTosha Brown: ‘They are not willing to face real issues’
The debate was another display of Republican presidential candidates coddling Trump’s legacy. Even in his absence, these candidates have chosen denialism and partisan rhetoric as a strategy for positioning themselves as the next best thing to Trump. It is clear they are not willing to face real issues, protect democracy, or hold themselves, and others like them, accountable for their actions. Each candidate on that stage lacked the fortitude to separate themselves from Trump – and, in a race for leadership, that is very telling.
The debate was so chaotic and disjointed, due to the candidates bantering back and forth and talking over each other, that debate moderators had to remind them: “If you’re all speaking at the same time, no one can understand you.” It was like watching children fight for attention at the local schoolyard.
There appears to be an ongoing unwillingness to offer real solutions for real life for everyday people. One example is the candidates’ refusal and unwillingness to seriously address the labor issues that have led to the current UAW auto workers’ strike. Instead of suggesting any remedy that would provide millions of American households with job and economic security, several candidates suggested punishing workers or union-busting while ironically claiming to support the need to bring jobs back to America from places like China.
The candidates also refused to adequately address the impending government shutdown. They chose to lay the blame at Biden’s feet without acknowledging Congressional Republicans’ refusal to work out a solution and apparent hellbent determination to force an unnecessary shutdown.
It’s all smoke and mirrors. The Republican party’s identity crisis was primetime viewing. The debate was not only a reflection of how broken and childish the Republicans are, but of their willingness to cannibalize each other for power and take the country down with them.
LaTosha Brown is the co-founder of Black Voters Matter | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/oct/16/demon-copperhead-by-barbara-kingsolver-review-appalachian-saga-in-the-spirit-of-dickens | Books | 2022-10-16T12:00:34.000Z | Hephzibah Anderson | Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver review – Appalachian saga in the spirit of Dickens | Last year in the US, opioids were involved in more than 80,000 overdose deaths, representing yet another hike in an epidemic that began in the mid-1990s and shows no signs of abating. Fury at the now well-documented role big pharma played in its creation ripples through Barbara Kingsolver’s charged new novel, a hillbilly coming-of-age saga that seizes from its opening line.
“First, I got myself born,” announces its protagonist, Damon Fields – no mean feat given that his addict mother, little more than a child herself, is lying passed out among her pill bottles in a trailer home in Lee County, Virginia.
He grows into a wild boy with red hair inherited from the dead father he never knew, and before long the nickname “Demon Copperhead” has stuck. “You can’t deny, it’s got a power to it,” he observes, and so does his voice, summoning in its singularity the likes of Huck Finn and Holden Caulfield while hailing from a very different demographic.
For this is a novel that testifies to the experience of some of the earliest casualties of the opioid crisis, in particular the hollowed-out communities of Appalachian America, who tend to feature in the wider culture solely as the butt of jokes – they’re moonshiners, hicks, rednecks. It’s an intensely personal mission for Kingsolver, who grew up in Kentucky versed in a language that, as she puts it in her acknowledgments, “my years outside of Appalachia tried to shame from my tongue”.
With its bold reversals of fate and flamboyant cast, this is storytelling on a grand scale
Her boy hero spends his earliest days inseparable from his best friend, “Maggot”, playing in the woods and messing around in creeks lined with mud “that made you feel rich – leaf smelling, thick, of a colour that you wanted to eat”.
They’re ragged, hungry kids for whom Bible stories are as fanciful as superhero comics, so nature provides just about the only salvation going, despite rumours of venomous copperhead snakes locally. Demon will need every lungful of green air that he can get because a thug of a stepfather is about to overturn his world, and a stolen OxyContin prescription will knock his mother off the wagon soon after.
Dire experiences in the “foster factory” follow, compelling Demon to track down a long-lost grandmother who persuades the local high-school football coach to take him in. He becomes a star player, but his tale’s linguistic dynamism is up against the dogged fatalism of its plot, and when he’s injured in a game and the pain pills are doled out, a sorry outcome surely looms.
With its bold reversals of fate and flamboyant cast, this is storytelling on a grand scale – Dickensian, you might say, and Kingsolver does indeed describe Demon Copperhead as a contemporary adaptation of David Copperfield. That novel provides her epigraph: “It’s in vain to recall the past, unless it works some influence upon the present.”
The words signal Kingsolver’s avowedly political intent as an author – one that smothered the creativity of her last novel, 2018’s Unsheltered, but is for the most part more subtly integrated here despite the book’s long list of righteous campaigns. They crystallise, too, Demon’s quest: still barely into adulthood by the novel’s close, he has been trying to pinpoint where things started to fall apart for him.
Should he even be held accountable for bad choices after the start he had? Maggot’s Aunt June, a homecoming queen turned crusading nurse, insists not, but as Demon discovers, owning his story – every part of it – and finding a way to tell it is how he’ll wrest some control over his life. And what a story it is: acute, impassioned, heartbreakingly evocative, told by a narrator who’s a product of multiple failed systems, yes, but also of a deep rural landscape with its own sustaining traditions.
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver is published by Faber (£20). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2014/dec/11/sci-fi-films-2001-space-odyssey-science-fiction | Science | 2014-12-11T07:00:15.000Z | Carole Jahme | Alien intelligence and the lost prologue to 2001: A Space Odyssey | Carole Jahme | We know that fact can be stranger than fiction, but should science fiction be a stranger to scientific facts, or has sci-fi become our most loved film genre because of its blue-sky thinking and impossible plot twists?
The British Film Institute’s Days of Fear and Wonder science fiction season has brought these questions into focus. One of the highlights has been a digitally remastered 2001: A Space Odyssey, now showing in selected cinemas – including the Curzon Soho in London on Thursday.
The creator of the Jodrell Bank Observatory, Bernard Lovell, influenced the director Stanley Kubrick’s conception of the film. Kubrick wanted the movie grounded in fact and originally planned for it to have a prologue in which Lovell and 20 other scientists would discuss their thoughts about aliens, evolution and space travel. But 2001: A Space Odyssey turned out to be an unusually long film, even without the prologue, and so the 1966 footage was never used and is now lost. Fortunately, the transcript has survived and makes fascinating reading.
Trailer for the digital re-release of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Jodrell Bank Observatory, home of Britain’s most powerful telescopes, has enjoyed an intimate relationship with sci-fi for the past 50 years. And as the international headquarters of the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) – which will be the world’s most powerful radio telescope – this observatory is set to have its finger on the extraterrestrial pulse for decades to come.
I asked Jodrell’s associate director, astrophysicist Tim O’Brien, about the prologue to the movie. “I was amazed when I heard about this interview,” he said. “Lovell’s speculation about contacting [alien] civilisations in advance of us by tens of thousands or even a million years, was interesting.”
Bernard Lovell at Jodrell Bank Observatory, Manchester in January 1979. Photograph: Sefton Samuels/Rex Features
Lovell discusses “benign or aggressive contact” with aliens in the lost prologue to 2001, but he doesn’t comment on which type we should expect. O’Brien considers his predecessor’s reticence wise, but he went on to tell me, “Any species capable of travelling across interstellar space would likely be technologically far in advance of ours. Meetings between mismatched human civilisations have rarely ended well, so maybe one could be pessimistic. But first things first. Let’s see if we can make remote contact, or Seti [the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence].”
In the prologue, Lovell argues against Seti, claiming that it would divert attention from radio astronomy. O’Brien disagrees: “SKA will do amazing science but will also focus on Seti”. When the SKA telescope array, based in South Africa and Australia, begins working in 2025 it will be 50 times more sensitive than any other radio instrument. It will have multiple beams for the core work of astrophysics and black hole observation, said O’Brien, but “a few beams will be set aside for Seti”.
The prehistoric monolith from Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Photograph: MGM/Everett/Rex
In 1945, when Jodrell Bank was being built, sci-fi was obscure and cult. It was the Cold War, rather than the hunt for aliens, that hobbled Lovell’s astronomy research, Jodrell being used to spy on the USSR and track its Sputnik satellite. In 2009, Lovell would claim that Soviet agents had tried to assassinate him in 1963, using a telescope to bombard him with potentially lethal radiation during a visit to the Deep Space Communication Centre in Crimea. He suffered from what appeared to be radiation sickness for a month after his visit, but recovered.
After his death in 2012, Lovell’s family released his account of how Soviet agents had also tried to “erase” the memory of what he had seen at the communication centre. In the transcript of the prologue for 2001: A Space Odyssey, recorded three years after his ill-fated trip to the USSR, Lovell talks anxiously of future technology that could change the human brain and transfer memory.
The world’s first artificial satellite Sputnik I, launched in 1957 by the Soviet Union from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Photograph: OFF/AFP/Getty Images
Cutting edge radio astronomy, such as observing pulsars (the remnants of exploded stars) to test Einstein’s general theory of relativity, requires international co-operation. SKA is an international consortium of 11 countries, including China and India, but it will take another decade of development before its telescope array is operational.
But once SKA is up and running it will provide the highest resolution images in all astronomy and survey the sky more than ten thousand times faster than any other radio telescope. It will be capable of detecting any alien radio transmissions within 50 light years of Earth (if they’re out there).
Dusk falls over radio telescope dishes of the KAT-7 Array at the South African site for the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescope in the country’s remote Northern Cape province. Photograph: Mike Hutchings/Reuters
Filmmakers will surely beam over to SKA for inspiration from galaxies far, far away. But that sort of inspiration cuts both ways. When I asked O’Brien to nominate his favourite sci-fi device that now exists, he named the guide from Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. “The guide foreshadows our information age, combining the iPad, the world wide web, the phenomenal miniaturisation of physical memory and Wikipedia,” he said.
Indeed, sci-fi is close to O’Brien’s heart. “I actually remember the first time Star Trek, the original TV series, was broadcast, a few weeks before the 1969 moon landings. A bit of science, space travel and incredible, imagined future worlds were a very powerful inspiration for me aged five.
Leonard Nimoy as Mr Spock, William Shatner as Captain James T Kirk and DeForest Kelley as Dr McCoy in the Star Trek episode “Plato’s Stepchildren” which originally aired on 22 November 1968. Photograph: CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images
“When films include actual science it encourages the viewer to find out more. The huge debate about Interstellar and which bits of physics were right and where they went wrong, was all stimulated by the filmmakers being open. There’s a place for imagination to take a leap beyond what we currently know.”
In the transcript for the 2001 prologue, Lovell takes a leap of faith when he proposes that there may be a large number of habitable planets in the universe, but in 1966 he had no proof of this. Twenty years would pass before the first exoplanets were detected, let alone the first habitable planets. But we can now estimate with some certainty that there are billions of habitable planets in the Milky Way alone.
Sci-fi films such as Interstellar can spur scientific debate. Photograph: Paramount/Everett Collection/Rex
O’Brien is confident that soon we will detect a planet just like Earth: “We will be able to analyse its atmosphere and perhaps provide evidence for it supporting life. The problem then will be the same as in 2001: how do we travel there and how to we communicate?”
I predict that sci-fi filmmakers will think of a way …
Days of Fear and Wonder has boldly gone from Penzance to the Orkneys and concludes in early January 2015. Before then you can catch a wide array of films including, Another Earth, 2001: A Space Odyssey and the long awaited Blade Runner: The Final Cut | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/sep/23/the-fall-jamie-dornan-bbc2-series | Media | 2014-09-23T22:35:35.000Z | John Plunkett | The Fall actor Jamie Dornan: playing a serial killer left me scarred | The actor Jamie Dornan has said he has been left scarred by playing a serial killer in BBC2’s The Fall, the channel’s most popular – and most violent – new drama for 20 years.
The Belfast-set series about a family man who is also a psychopath was acclaimed by critics, but came under fire for its scenes of violence against women. It was described in one newspaper as “the most repulsive drama ever broadcast on British TV”.
Dornan, the former underwear model who will star in the film adaptation of Fifty Shades of Grey, said: “You can’t fail to be left slightly scarred by inhabiting someone like that for two seasons. I do carry elements of him with me in a worrying way. I find him relatable … I have a deep understanding of him and why he is why he is.”
Speaking at the launch of the second series on Tuesday alongside his co-star, Gillian Anderson, Dornan said he would scare himself by absorbing some of the reactions of his character, the sexually motivated killer Paul Spector.
“He had such distaste for everything,” Dornan said. “You do carry some of that anger and that hatred in you a little bit, especially towards the end of a few months playing him.”
Nearly four million viewers watched the final episode of the first series last June. The show’s writer, Allan Cubitt, who directed the second series, defended its graphic violence, saying he hoped it would be seen as a feminist piece. “Obviously there were a lot of people who thought the diametric opposite of that,” he said. “But there were plenty of people who understood what I was trying to achieve. In a sense it’s a dissection of a certain kind of male view, an exploration of misogyny.
“Anything that sets out to explore a complex and difficult subject like that always runs the risk of being held up as being an example of it, rather than a critique of it. Obviously if you think The Fall is misogynistic then I would have failed completely, abjectly.”
Cubitt, who previously wrote Prime Suspect 2, said he “did not self-censor” the second series as a result of the criticism. He said the French supernatural drama The Returned, shown on Channel 4 last year, was more violent and “overtly sensational” than The Fall.
Anderson, the former X-Files star who came to the end of her acclaimed run in the Young Vic’s A Streetcar Named Desire this month, said she would be keen for her character, the enigmatic DS Stella Gibson, to return in another series.
“Who she is and everything she stands for and how she operates – I find that very compelling and I don’t feel like I have really seen that before,” she said.
“She makes it very clear how she feels about violence against women, how these women are represented and how they are perceived. She is a supporter of women and women being treated respectfully and she doesn’t mince words. It’s in her bones. I like that about her.”
Asked if he was a feminist, Dornan said he would “never totally describe myself as a feminist. I have feminist values. I am well aware what my character is doing is wrong.”
He said the role had “totally transformed” his life and career, and hinted that his character could yet return after the end of the six-part second series, which will begin on BBC2 later this year. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/jul/31/james-murdoch-resigns-board-news-corporation | Media | 2020-07-31T23:51:10.000Z | Dominic Rushe | James Murdoch resigns from board of News Corp | James Murdoch has resigned from the board of News Corp, the media company said on Friday, citing “disagreements” over editorial content.
The Rise of the Murdoch Dynasty review – Succession with phone hacking and foam pies
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The resignation severs Murdoch’s final formal link to the media empire his father, Rupert Murdoch, created. James’s older brother Lachlan heads Fox Corporation.
In a letter of resignation filed on Friday afternoon, Murdoch wrote: “My resignation is due to disagreements over certain editorial content published by the company’s news outlets and certain other strategic decisions.”
News Corp’s News UK division owns the Times, the Sunday Times and the Sun newspapers. Its other assets include Dow Jones, the owner of the Wall Street Journal, broadsheet newspaper the Australian, and the Australian tabloids the Daily Telegraph, the Herald Sun and the Courier-Mail.
The Murdochs’ other media company, Fox Corp, is the parent company of Fox News and the Fox broadcast network, created after 21st Century Fox sold its entertainment assets to the Walt Disney Company last year.
James Murdoch, 47, is the fourth child of the 88-year-old Rupert Murdoch, the billionaire founder of News Corp. Lachlan Murdoch, 48, is seen as the heir apparent.
It was not immediately apparent what editorial content might have fueled James Murdoch’s decision to step down. However, he and Lachlan have recently indicated discomfort with the conservative slant of much of News Corp and Fox Corp.
Rupert Murdoch’s Australian newspapers have repeatedly been accused of propagating climate “misinformation” and giving a platform to climate science deniers, including during Australia’s recent bushfires crisis.
Andrew Bolt, a prominent political commentator and blogger for News Corp Australia, is known for his derision of climate change science and attacks on climate “alarmists”.
News Corp Australia’s executive chairman, Michael Miller, has previously said the company does not “deny climate change or the gravity of its threat”.
Earlier this year, James Murdoch and his wife Kathryn criticized coverage of the climate crisis in the family’s outlets.
“Kathryn and James’s views on climate are well-established, and their frustration with some of the News Corp and Fox coverage of the topic is also well-known,” a spokesperson for the couple said. “They are particularly disappointed with the ongoing denial among the news outlets in Australia given obvious evidence to the contrary.”
Kathryn Murdoch is a vocal environmentalist. She has said she was inspired to act after seeing former US vice-president Al Gore speak at a Fox News retreat.
“I decided to switch everything I was doing,” she told the New York Times. “I wanted to be able to look my children in the eye and say ‘I did everything I could.’”
James Murdoch has also publicly criticized Fox News.
“There are views I really disagree with on Fox,” he told the New Yorker last year.
On Friday, a filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission said: “On 31 July 2020, News Corporation received a letter from James R Murdoch tendering his resignation from the company’s board of directors, effective immediately.
“Mr Murdoch informed the company that his resignation was due to disagreements over certain editorial content published by the company’s news outlets and certain other strategic decisions.”
In a statement Rupert Murdoch and Lachlan Murdoch said: “We’re grateful to James for his many years of service to the company. We wish him the very best in his future endeavors.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2009/dec/07/small-island-bbc-ratings | Media | 2009-12-07T14:40:00.000Z | John Plunkett | TV ratings - 6 December: Small Island debuts with 5m viewers | BBC1's adaptation of Andrea Levy's award-winning novel Small Island began with 5 million viewers, beating ITV1's terrestrial movie premiere Batman Begins last night, Sunday 6 December.
Small Island, starring Naomie Harris, David Oyelowo and Ruth Wilson, had a 21% share of the audience for the first of a two-part adaptation between 9pm and 10.30pm, according to unofficial overnight figures.
Batman Begins had 4.6 million viewers, a 20% share, between 8.30pm and 11.10pm on ITV1.
The Christian Bale movie lost more than half the audience it inherited from The X Factor semi-final, which averaged 12.7 million viewers, 46% of the audience, between 7.30pm and 8.30pm.
The X Factor, which saw the exit of Danyl Johnson ahead of next weekend's final, predictably had the better of BBC1's Countryfile, which averaged 5.6 million viewers, a 22% share, between 7pm and 8pm; and the first half of Antiques Roadshow, which had 6.2 million, 22% of the audience, between 8pm and 9pm.
Batman Begins was also beaten by BBC2's Top Gear, which had 5.4 million viewers, 20% of the audience, between 8.30pm and 9.30pm.
Channel 4's Mike Leigh terrestrial movie premiere Happy Go Lucky had 700,000 viewers, a 4% of the audience, between 9pm and 11.20pm. Happy Go Lucky had another 113,000 on Channel 4 +1.
Channel Five's Clint Eastwood film repeat, Blood Work, was watched by 1.6 million viewers, a 7% share, between 9pm and 11.10pm.
Both movies lost out to another showing for BBC2 sitcom Miranda, which had 2.1 million viewers, a 9% share between 9.30pm and 10pm, and Match of the Day 2, which had 2 million viewers, 10% of the audience, between 10pm and 10.50pm.
Channel 4 and Five went head to head with another pair of films earlier in the evening. Channel 4's terrestrial premiere Son of the Mask had 1.2 million viewers, a 5% share, between 6.10pm and 8pm, narrowly beating another showing for Kelly's Heroes on Five, which had 1.1 million viewers, also 5% of the audience, between 6.10pm and 9pm. Another 123,000 saw Son of the Mask on Channel 4 +1.
Mark Lawson Talks To Alan Bennett, part of BBC4's Alan Bennett season, enjoyed the highest audience of a night of Bennett-related programmes, with 253,000 viewers between 9pm and 10pm, a 1.1% multichannel share.
Later, ITV1's South Bank Show about poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy had 400,000 viewers, 5% of the audience, between 11.20pm and 12.20am.
BBC1's Ewan McGregor film repeat Down With Love, had 1 million viewers, 12% of the audience, between 10.55pm and 12.35am.
This article was amended on 7 December 2009. The original used the spelling Mike Lee. This has been corrected.
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". | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/jan/11/anita-loos-gentlemen-prefer-blondes-screenwriter-silent-era-films | Film | 2016-01-11T13:24:42.000Z | Pamela Hutchinson | Anita Loos – sharp, shameless humour of the 'world's most brilliant woman' | Anita Loos, the screenwriter and author, claimed – in typically waggish style – to be furious at the women’s lib movement. “They keep getting up on soapboxes and proclaiming that women are brighter than men,” she said. “That’s true, but it should be kept very quiet or it ruins the whole racket.” Loos was a veteran of silent-era Hollywood, when women worked at all levels of the film industry – directing, editing, producing and designing. Scriptwriting, Loos’s forte, was the most feminine department: a “manless Eden” of female screenplay writers, scenario authors, story editors, intertitle artists and “script girls”. Loos may not have been the most successful screenwriter during Hollywood’s silent years (that honour falls to Frances Marion), but she was one of its greatest wits, most popular characters and one of its key storytellers.
Loos is best known today for her wickedly funny novel Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, written during her Hollywood years, which follows the escapades of gold-digging, flaxen-haired showgirl Lorelei Lee and her man-mad brunette chum Dorothy. For many, this breathless novel epitomises the highs and the lows of the jazz age, though it’s now most famous in its 1953 musical film incarnation starring Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell.
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)
The book is typical of Loos’s sharp and shameless humour: for all that Lorelei appears to be a mercenary and a “dumb blonde”, the real butts of the joke are the men who fall for her charms. Loos was inspired to write it when she saw her friend, the literary critic and satirist HL Mencken, lose his cool when faced with a blond beauty.
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
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Gentlemen Prefer Blondes had been filmed before the musical, in 1928, when its roaring 20s satire would have been even more pointed. Loos, by then a fixture at Paramount, wrote the screenplay (with her husband, John Emerson) and the intertitles (with Herman Mankiewicz, who would go on to write Citizen Kane).
The 1928 Gentlemen Prefer Blondes had impeccable comic credentials, being directed by Keystone alumnus Mal St Clair, and starring two more former employees of Mack Sennett: Ruth Taylor and Ford Sterling. Alice White picked up the part of sidekick Dorothy after Loos nixed the studio’s original, and intriguing, choice of Louise Brooks. Brooks is said to have given a joyless performance in her screen test (“I stunk”), and Loos dismissed her, with an offensive turn of phrase that was, sadly, characteristic, saying: “If I ever write a part for a cigar-store Indian, you will get it.” The film was something of a flop, and we may never get to judge it for ourselves as it has long been considered lost.
Anita Loos and John Emerson reviewing an intertitle in 1919, the year they married. Photograph: Rex/Shutterstock
But Loos’s Hollywood story began more than a decade before Lorelei first shimmied on to the pages of Harper’s magazine, where her novel was originally serialised. As a young woman in California, Loos was an avid moviegoer, long before a trip to the nickelodeon was considered a cultural event. She had strong opinions about which films were better than others and fancied that she could make a fair fist of writing movies herself.
Aged 24, she posted a short film scenario she had written to DW Griffith’s Biograph studio in New York. Not only did Griffith like The New York Hat, and pay her $25 for it, but the film he made from her story is one of his finest short features. Twenty-year-old Mary Pickford gives a typically nuanced performance in the lead role of a motherless child swept up in small-town scandal, and Lionel Barrymore makes his first screen performance as the local minister whose kindness causes the disgrace. By most people’s standards, The New York Hat would be precocious, but the vain Loos so often embroidered the truth that, in the telling of this story, she often claimed to have attained her movie debut as a teenager, even as young as 12 years old. Loos told some of the finest and funniest stories about Hollywood, but many should be taken with a sprinkling of salt.
The New York Hat (1912)
Loos wrote many more scenarios for Griffith, posting them from her home in San Diego, where she lived with her mother. Some of them he used, but many he considered unfilmable as silent pictures. “The laughs were all in the lines,” he complained, “there was no way to get them on to the screen.” For that very reason, he gave Loos the prestigious job of writing the intertitles for his epic Intolerance (1916), a vast portmanteau film taking in a contemporary crime drama, the fall of the Babylonian empire, a Bible story and the St Bartholomew’s Day massacre of 1572.
Loos’s amusing, compact intertitles leaven the film’s heavy material with crisp dramatic statements and comical jibes such as: “When women cease to attract men they often turn to Reform as a second choice.” Loos had found an excellent way to exploit her natural skill with a one-liner. A year later, Photoplay reported that Griffith had called her “The most brilliant woman in the world”, and praised her skilful writing, saying: “The most important service that Anita Loos has so far rendered the screen is the elevation of the subcaption [sic], first to sanity then to dignity and brilliance combined.”
His Picture in the Papers (1916)
Loos became renowned for her cleverness at writing piquant intertitles, first for a series of Douglas Fairbanks’s early films: her verbal wit a match for his physical gags. Four feet 11in tall, with a chic, gamine hairdo and a terribly expensive wardrobe, Loos was a distinctive presence and soon became as famous as many a movie star: the “soubrette of satire”. She had a collaborator by this time, the director John Emerson, to whom she was devoted and would later marry, although he was a notorious philanderer and far from her intellectual equal. Loos and Emerson worked as a writer-director team for many years. Emerson often insisted on taking a screenwriting credit when the words were Loos’s alone, and there have even been some controversial suggestions that when Emerson was indisposed, Loos took his place behind the camera. When they worked in New York, they stayed at the Algonquin hotel, where Loos was friendly with, though not an insider in, Dorothy Parker’s famous Round Table.
Jean Harlow and Anita Loos in a publicity photo for Red Headed Woman. Photograph: Everett/Rex/Shutterstock
Loos spent years as a successful Hollywood screenwriter, at Paramount, United Artists and MGM. She developed a knack for talent spotting, and moved happily into sound films, not least because the witticisms that were confined to titlecards in her silent movies found a home in fast-talking screenplays of the 30s. Fashion-obsessed, gossipy and loyal, she forged last Hollywood friendships with a number of stars, included those she “spotted”, from the Talmadge sisters (she wrote a very affectionate biography of them), to Jean Harlow and Paulette Goddard. When Emerson’s health failed in 1937, she discovered that he had frittered away much of their income and requested a divorce, realising that after all she would have to make a success of her career alone. And she did.
The Women (1939)
Loos died in her 90s, in 1981. Her legacy comprises a vast body of silent work, as well as sound-era successes including the sizzling pre-code flick Red-Headed Woman (1932), starring Jean Harlow, and the breakneck cattiness of The Women (1939). She also adapted her Gentlemen Prefer Blondes for a triumphant Broadway musical production starring Carol Channing in 1949, and two years later made a New York sensation of Colette’s Gigi, which ran for more than a year, with a young Audrey Hepburn in the lead role.
Much of Loos’s writing success came from the fact that she was a born raconteur, the life and soul of many a Hollywood party, with a hawkish eye on the glamorous, or scandalous, events that surrounded her. Hence the pinpoint satire of Lorelei Lee. In one of her biographical volumes, A Girl Like I, Loos wrote that: “I’ve enjoyed my happiest moments when trailing a Mainbocher evening gown across the sawdust-covered floor of a saloon.” Those Hollywood memoirs, while not always to be trusted, are among the most entertaining ever written, because Loos remains great company, and because her story proves how far a young woman in a young industry could get on brains and high spirits alone.
Comedian Lucy Porter will talk on Anita Loos: Hollywood Pioneer at the Slapstick festival in Bristol on 22 January, which includes screenings of The New York Hat and The Mystery of the Leaping Fish. This event will be followed by a screening of the Douglas Fairbanks western Wild and Woolly, which Anita Loos co-wrote. Click here for tickets. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/oct/24/real-freddie-mercury-bohemian-rhapsody | Music | 2018-10-24T16:40:08.000Z | Alexis Petridis | Guaranteed to blow your mind: the real Freddie Mercury | Bohemian Rhapsody is a film that suffered from a difficult gestation. It was announced in 2010 but, in the intervening eight years, everyone from the lead actor to the screenwriter to the director either bailed or was replaced, in some cases several times. Freddie Mercury was first to be played by Sacha Baron Cohen, then Ben Whishaw, although it’s hard to see how either could have done a better job than the actor the role eventually went to, Rami Malek, whose incredible performance is the film’s one unequivocal triumph.
Bohemian Rhapsody review – Freddie Mercury biopic bites the dust
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You can see why they pressed on with its making. For one thing, few artists have been so hawkish in posthumously extending their brand as Queen: since Mercury’s death in 1991, there have been jukebox musicals, umpteen archive releases and documentaries, as well as attempts to reboot the band without him. For another, Mercury’s story is clearly one worth telling. If anything, he seems a more remarkable figure in hindsight than at the height of his career.
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Watch the trailer for Freddie Mercury biopic, Bohemian Rhapsody – video
The child of Parsi parents, who formed his first band at school in Mumbai, Mercury was an Asian frontman at a time when Asian visibility in rock was virtually nil and racism was overt (intriguingly, the guitarist in Mercury’s Bombay school band was Derrick Branche, the actor who went on to appear as Gupte in the ITV comedy Only When I Laugh). Island Records boasted an Anglo-Indian prog band called Quintessence, but there was certainly no other Asian rock star on Mercury’s scale. He was a gay man who, while never coming out publicly, put his sexuality front and centre in his performances and songwriting, apparently without his audience realising what he was doing.
‘They dig Monsieur Freddie and they call me queer’ Photograph: Anwar Hussein/Getty
In his autobiography Head On, Julian Cope recounts the experience of supporting Queen at Milton Keynes Bowl in 1982, as part of the Teardrop Explodes, and being showered with homophobic abuse by their fans. “[They] shouted, ‘Fuck off, you queer!’ at me,” recalled an incredulous Cope. “Wow, they dig Monsieur Freddie and they call me queer. So much for the workings of the average mind.”
Bohemian Rhapsody isn’t bad on the issue of Mercury’s race, a subject usually ignored or dismissed as beside the point in the story of Queen. We see Mercury facing down racist abuse while working as a baggage handler at Heathrow and from an audience member at an early gig. But its depiction of his sexuality is more troubling. It’s a film that seems to view the fact that Mercury was gay as little short of a tragedy. His homosexuality leaves him lonely, unable to share his bandmates’ domestic happiness as they settle down into marriage and parenthood. It drives a musical wedge between the band and their frontman, whose ideas for songs and styles are increasingly founded on his experiences in gay clubs and viewed as antithetical to the spirit of the band.
You watch the film and think: 'God – imagine being in a band with this bunch of prigs'
It also seems to give him a taste for hedonism that makes him unreliable and unprofessional: according to the film, the rest of Queen seem to have spent the late 70s and 80s tutting and rolling their eyes at Mercury’s behaviour before demurely excusing themselves from whatever deranged bacchanal their singer was leading the charge at and going to bed early. Anyone with a passing interest in the band knows this is nonsense. A reporter from the US magazine Circus who attended the legendarily debauched launch party for their 1978 album Jazz noted with surprise: “Brian May seems to be the true organiser of the night’s carnival.” Yet watching the film, you think: “God, imagine being in a band at the height of the most sybaritic decade in rock with this bunch of prigs.”
The film’s villain, meanwhile, is unequivocally Mercury’s personal manager, Paul Prenter, a hugely controversial figure in the Queen story, not least because he sold stories about Mercury’s sex life to the Sun while the singer was dying of Aids (Prenter himself died of the disease a few months before Mercury did). Here, Prenter is a devious gay man who, among his compound wrongs and manipulations, lures Mercury into a twilight world of drugs, orgies and S&M clubs, and thus ultimately to his death.
It goes without saying that in virtually every other account of his life, Mercury does not come across as a man who needed a great deal of luring where sex and drugs were concerned. But then Bohemian Rhapsody is a film that plays so fast and loose with the truth, it ends up seeming faintly ridiculous: you start out nitpicking about minor chronological errors (one Queen obsessive took to social media to protest that the kind of reel-to-reel tape seen in the recording of Bohemian Rhapsody wasn’t in production in 1975) and end up with your jaw on the floor during a deranged final sequence that posits that Mercury found true love, came out to – and reconciled with – his parents, then played Live Aid on the same day.
Full leather … on the News of the World tour in 1978 . Photograph: Steve Jennings/WireImage
Perhaps a certain ridiculousness is perfectly fitting – few bands have so revelled in and owned their own piquant OTTness – but the depiction of Mercury’s sexuality seems unnecessarily reductive. There’s no mention of the debt Queen effectively owed to Mercury’s queerness, which gave them everything from their name to their image. With the greatest of respect to the band’s other members, when you think of Queen, you think of Mercury got up in full leather, dressed like a ballet dancer, naked except for a pair of tiny shorts, or swishing his way through Killer Queen on Top of the Pops. There’s no mention of the impact it had on his performances, despite the compelling argument that it took an outrageous gay man to convincingly sell confections as lavish and preposterous as those Queen kept coming up with.
And there’s no mention of the impact of his queerness on his songwriting, beyond the admittedly intriguing implication that the lyrics of Love of My Life and Bohemian Rhapsody might have been fuelled by anguish over his sexuality. You don’t have to delve deep into semantics to find other examples, although you can if you want. Simon Reynolds’ 2016 book Shock and Awe: Glam Rock and Its Legacy makes a convincing case that 1974’s The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke has less to do with the painting of the same name by Richard Dadd than it has to do with “a sex life kept hidden from the public”. Reynolds also draws links between the sound of Bohemian Rhapsody and Wayne Koestenbaum’s study of opera’s allure to gay men, The Queen’s Throat.
But Mercury didn’t usually deal in covert metaphor. He wrote songs that had his sexuality proudly emblazoned across them, from Get Down Make Love to Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy. Amid the huffing and eye-rolling about Mercury’s behaviour, there’s no room in Bohemian Rhapsody for the fact that what may be Queen’s greatest song of all – the astonishing Don’t Stop Me Now – was a direct product of his hedonism and promiscuity: an unrepentant, joyous, utterly irresistible paean to gay pleasure-seeking. You find yourself wondering if its title might not have been aimed at his censorious bandmates.
‘Deranged final sequence’ … Rami Malek in Bohemian Rhapsody. Photograph: Alex Bailey/20th Century Fox
Nor does the film address the obvious delight Mercury took at hiding in plain sight, which remains the most mind-boggling aspect of his career, as audacious in its own way as Queen’s multilayered, more-is-more productions. No rock star in history had as much fun exploiting the public’s apparent inability to cotton on to what was in front of their eyes, something that had to do with the tenor of the times (this was an era in which Elton John could release All the Nasties, a song literally about coming out, without any comment whatsoever).
But it may also have been linked to the kind of audience Queen attracted. In Bohemian Rhapsody, the band give a prospective manager a grand speech about their appeal to freaks and outsiders – but that really wasn’t the crowd they drew. Look at the legendary televised Christmas Eve concert from 1975. This is not a band performing before an audience of makeup-sporting aesthetes in Biba’s Rainbow Room at the height of glam. It’s a band playing Hammersmith Odeon to a hard-rock crowd, the kind of people who might have gone to see Uriah Heep or Deep Purple, and who clearly couldn’t conceive of their idols being anything other than straight.
For an encore, Mercury comes on stage in a kimono, which he gradually strips off while singing Hey Big Spender. No one seems to raise an eyebrow. There was the occasional snippy remark in the music press. A notorious 1977 NME profile was headlined “IS THIS MAN A PRAT?” – but these days, it reads less like the wounding character assassination it purported to be than the work of a self-important journalist being made mincemeat of by Mercury’s acid wit. The writer refers to him as a “bitch” but that is it.
Presumably emboldened, Mercury pushed it further and further. By 1980, he was dressing exactly like a denizen of the kind of gay clubs he frequented: muscled, moustachioed, and in tight-fitting jeans and T-shirt. In America at least, this caused ructions. The standard line is that Queen scuppered their own career in the US by dressing in drag for the video of 1984’s I Want to Break Free, but four years earlier on the tour that followed the release of The Game, fans threw razors on stage in an apparent attempt to get Mercury to shave off the moustache, to look less gay. In Rolling Stone magazine, bassist John Deacon as good as admitted that Mercury’s appearance was alienating a US audience that was traditionally prickly about homosexuality. “Some of us hate it,” he said in 1981. “But that’s him and you can’t stop him.”
It’s a him that the film studiously ignores in favour of presenting Mercury’s story as a morality tale. That may be how the surviving members of Queen see it: the charitable interpretation is that their take is coloured by lasting grief at his loss. But it sells Mercury – and Queen – short. You only have to listen to their albums or watch live footage to know the truth was far more complicated and interesting.
But perhaps Mercury wouldn’t have cared. “I’m not going to be an Eva Perón,” he once said. “I don’t want to go down in history worried about, ‘My god, I hope they realise that, after I’m dead, I’ve created something or I was something.’ I’ve been having fun.”
Bohemian Rhapsody is out now.
This article was amended on 25 October 2018 to reflect the fact that Derrick Branche played Gupte in Only When I Laugh, not Mr Gupta in Mind Your Language. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2017/mar/05/hamlet-almeida-review-andrew-scott-robert-icke | Stage | 2017-03-05T08:00:39.000Z | Susannah Clapp | Hamlet review – Andrew Scott is a truly sweet prince | Robert Icke is one of the most important forces in today’s theatre. He blew the dust from Oresteia and made 1984 newly penetrating. Now he and Andrew Scott give us a terrific modern-dress Hamlet. Full of ideas but not manacled to a concept. The originality is a question of pitch and pace and breath. It is as if the lungs of the play are different. Every moment of the text rings with significance.
Scott is convulsed with emotion on a small stage. From the beginning he is emphatic, tipping easily from fury into tears, a windmill of small gestures, pointing to his eyes when he talks of weeping. He is on the brink of being too much. But then Hamlet is too much – for himself. Scott, spilling over with emotion, continually moves in unexpected directions. Away from lucidity, towards illusion, and suddenly dipping into laconic humour. In an inspired moment, on the eve of his death he sends up the idea of his fitness as a fencer.
This is one of the least declamatory of Hamlet stagings. It has extraordinary conversational ease. These characters are members of a family as well as a dynasty. They are also – again unusually – in the grip of love. Gertrude and Claudius are intoxicated with each other. Entwined on a sofa, they have to be woken to receive an ambassadorial visitor. Ophelia flings herself into her loving father’s arms. Hamlet sobs on Ophelia’s shoulder.
Dylan songs thread though the action like the voice of a goblin damned
Angus Wright is an exquisitely subtle Claudius, using his great height slowly to uncoil himself. Juliet Stevenson’s Gertrude is fervent and finely calibrated. As Ophelia, Jessica Brown Findlay actually makes the mad scene work. She is in a wheelchair, rigid-limbed and staring. There is no Scarborough Fair sweetness about her herb handouts. She hits herself; she hates her life.
Could this – given the unforgiving nature of the Almeida seats – be a little shorter than four hours. Possibly. Yet it is hard to see where, apart perhaps from the extended dumbshow, it would profit from a tuck. Could it be more three-dimensional and searching? Scarcely.
‘A windmill of small gestures’: Andrew Scott as Hamlet at the Almeida. Photograph: Manuel Harlan
Dylan songs thread through the action like the voice of a goblin damned. The great designer Hildegard Bechtler divides the stage with sliding doors, their opalescent green giving a hint of aquarium. At the beginning these separate the brooding Hamlet from a fairy-light waltzing court. At the end – in a brilliant touch – they become a different frontier. Patrolled by the Ghost.
This may be a small space but it has a long reach. There’s a touch of Scandi-noir and a touch of The Bridge in the bulletins from Fortinbras’s Norway, relayed on giant video screens. But modern tech-y touches go well beyond the modish. The Ghost is seen through surveillance cameras, making his way through a puddled vaulted space: when he disappears, the screens fizz as if a big brain is malfunctioning. During “The Mousetrap”, Claudius’s face is captured in closeup. The machine goes wrong and the tormented image gets stuck there, flickering anguish above the stage. Claudius abruptly walks away from the play within a play. The action pauses. It looks for a moment as if something has gone wrong with the production. The audience is left in as much doubt as Hamlet himself.
Hamlet is at the Almeida, London until 15 April | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/housing-network/2015/jun/30/tories-wasteful-housing-policy-is-an-opportunity-for-labour | Housing Network | 2015-06-30T06:00:07.000Z | John Healey | Tories' wasteful housing policy is an opportunity for Labour | Some people see Tory plans to put rocket boosters under a new right to buy for housing association tenants, funded by the forced sale of council homes in areas of high housing demand, as a big problem for Labour.
In fact, it’s an opportunity to redefine the debate and seize the political centre ground on housing.
David Cameron’s plan deserves scepticism from middle-ground Tories, and strong opposition from Labour. It fails the test of sound social policy because it will result in fewer genuinely affordable homes when the need has never been greater, and it will accelerate a social cleansing of those on low incomes – both in and out of work – from our great cities.
But importantly, it also fails the tests of good economics and sound fiscal management because it squanders a long-term asset by selling it on the cheap, and will lead to greater costs for the public purse from a higher housing benefit bill.
Public investment in housing is just that: an investment. It yields a two-fold return to the taxpayer in rental income and in lower housing benefit costs.
Right to buy for housing associations is the idea that won't die – it should
Hannah Fearn
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When chancellor George Osborne talks about fiscal discipline, he ignores the fact that every £1m invested in a genuinely affordable home generates £1.18m in long-run housing benefit savings for the taxpayer. And that by recycling those savings, we could build more and save more – helping to ease the housing crisis and deal with our long-term fiscal pressures at the same time.
When it comes to this right to buy, taxpayers will bear the cost three times over: first, for the investment to build the homes; second, for the discount to sell them; and third, for the higher housing benefit bill when they’re let to tenants paying market rather than social rents, which is what’s happened to over a third of right-to-buy homes sold.
Past, present and future taxpayers are all failed by this policy. So I’ve written to the National Audit Office, the guardians of government value for money, to ask them to investigate the proposals.
David Cameron had a choice on housing between two Conservative traditions. The extreme of Margaret Thatcher, under whom the number of new homes being built fell to the lowest level then on record and the housing benefit bill trebled to £10bn a year. Or the mainstream of Harold Macmillan, who built a quarter of a million homes a year in England, almost half of which were council or housing association homes for people on low and middle incomes.
Labour has the chance to argue economic discipline and social justice together
He has shunned Macmillan and rebooted Thatcher, with the same dire results. Fewer homes being built, house prices and rents soaring, home ownership the lowest for a generation and housing benefit costs at £25bn a year and rising relentlessly.
Labour has the chance to argue economic discipline and social justice together, and recreate the Macmillan centre ground.
As I’ve set out previously, this can and must include a costed plan to match Macmillan’s success in building 100,000 new social homes a year, which can be done with no greater up-front capital costs than the housing investment when I was Labour’s housing minister in our last year of government.
But it must also mean showing that, as in the postwar years, home ownership can be an option for all, not just those with deep pockets. So Labour should scrap over-generous tax relief for buy-to-let landlords and use it to offer cut-price new homes to first-time buyers. We should promote “help to build” guarantees for smaller developers to build thousands more homes for sale. And we should end the idea that councils only have responsibility for the poorest and give them a remit to build homes for private sale at the same time.
By showing that sound economics and good social policy go hand-in-hand, Labour can not only sidestep the Tories’ political trap on housing, we can speak for the centre ground that Cameron’s right to buy proves he has rejected.
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Looking for a job in housing? See all the latest vacancies on our Guardian Jobs site | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/apr/03/bug-review-found111-kate-fleetwood-james-norton | Stage | 2016-04-03T06:59:26.000Z | Susannah Clapp | Bug review – horror and despair at close quarters | Every now and then a particular theatre turns into a breeding ground. It becomes indispensable. Which is the case with Emily Dobbs’s Found111. It is not only that this unlikely theatrical space, at the top of several punitive flights of stairs next to Foyles bookshop on Charing Cross Road, has been terrifically well programmed with ferocious plays: Barrie Keeffe’s Barbarians and Richard Greenberg’s The Dazzle. It is also that its productions have been detailed and unsparing. The physical conditions – the low ceiling, the cramped room where the audience almost spill on to the stage – mean that the space itself becomes a magnifying glass for actors. The best of them shine.
Found111: the pop-up West End theatre with an art school's ghosts
Read more
As do Kate Fleetwood and James Norton in Simon Evans’s production of Bug. Seeing Tracy Letts’s 1996 paranoia play here is like watching a disaster unfold in a shaving mirror. Agnes (Fleetwood), in mourning for a child that has vanished, high on coke and liquor, in fear of her battering ex-con husband, takes a Gulf war veteran, Peter (Norton), into her motel room. For a moment hope twinkles. But the bug starts here.
There is, it seems, an aphid in the bed – or a surveillance system implanted in Peter’s skin. Misery turns to horror, enclosed in the unnerving crackle of Ed Lewis’s soundscape. Huge red sores like infected tattoos; a bloodied nose; pliers meeting teeth. Norton – he of War and Peace and Happy Valley – slinks like a lashed dog. He looks utterly flayed, but is himself an infection.
Fleetwood is one of the few actors who can suggest impoverishment, of means and mettle, without flashing it like a cloak. She draws on the quality she showed in the film of London Road: magnetic despair.
At Found111, London, until 7 May | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/sep/15/12-years-a-slave-toronto-film-festival-people-s-choice-winner | Film | 2013-09-16T07:51:00.000Z | Catherine Shoard | Toronto film festival: 12 Years a Slave's top prize makes it Oscars favourite | It's bleak, barbaric and brutally unsparing about the part played by almost every white person in perpetuating injustice in 1840s America. Yet 12 Years a Slave, the drama by British director Steve McQueen, has proved the popular choice at the Toronto film festival, winning its People's Choice award.
The festival, which ended today, is unlike rivals such as Cannes and Venice in that it hands out only a small set of awards voted for by the public, rather than elected juries. Yet its top honour has proved increasingly unrivaled as an indicator of how Oscar members will vote. Slumdog Millionaire and The King's Speech both won Toronto then the best picture Oscar; last year Silver Linings Playbook (eight Oscar nominations, one win) took top honours in Toronto, while Argo (three Oscars) was named runner-up.
This means McQueen's drama looks almost unbeatable, despite nearly six months to go until the Oscars ceremony. Odds have dropped dramatically since its ecstatically-received premiere last Friday evening; it recently overtook David O Russell's American Hustle in poll position amongst Oscar tipsters.
As well as best picture, McQueen's two-and-a-half-hour tearjerker, based on the memoir of Solomon Northup - a free man kidnapped then sold into slavery in Louisiana in 1841 - looks likely to generate awards buzz for Chiwetel Ejiofor, who plays Northup, as well as for Michael Fassbender as the sadistic planation owner who buys him off the more compassionate Benedict Cumberbatch. There has been much acclaim, too, for Lupita Nyong'o, playing a slave who's the object of Fassbender's lustful eye, and whose horrific beating in one scene proved too much for some audience members.
The third collaboration of McQueen and Fassbender after Hunger and Shame, 12 Years a Slave could also see wins for cinematographer Sean Bobbit and scriptwriter John Ridley (who also directed the Jimi Hendrix biopic which premiered at the festival).
If it does continue unimpeded along the road to awards glory, McQueen, born in London but now living in Holland, could be first black director to win the directing Oscar (to date, only John Singleton and Lee Daniels have ever been nominated) and the first black director to pick up the best picture award (there have only ever been four black nominees).
The runners up prize in Toronto was won by another Brit, veteran director Stephen Frears, and another real-life drama Philomena - the film proving a hit at Tiff after first premiering in Venice. The movie was co-scripted by Steve Coogan after reading in the Guardian about the attempts of journalist Martin Sixsmith (who Coogan plays) to trace the long-lost son of Irishwoman Philomena Lee (Judi Dench), who was forced by the Catholic church to give him up for adoption. Frears gave Ejiofor his first lead, in 2002's Dirty Pretty Things; this is the third big film this year for Coogan, following The Look of Love and Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa.
The second runners up award went to Hugh Jackman/Jake Gyllenhaal thriller Prisoners, while the best documentary award to The Square, a chronicle of events in Egypt's Tahir Square over the last two years. Meanwhile, the Midnight Madness award went to the rhetorically-titled Why Don't You Play in Hell?
Speaking to the Guardian before the festival began, artistic director Cameron Bailey singled out McQueen's drama as his own most eagerly-anticipated title. "There's a kind of intensity of expression happening among UK film-makers," he said. "They're upping the game collectively. There is a willingness and an ability to confront the harsh realities of life in a way that strips away artifice and niceties and shows you what the film-maker believes to be the truth of the situation."
His sentiment was echoed at the premiere by Brad Pitt, who has a significant cameo in Slave as well as producing through his Plan B outfit. "Steve was the first to ask the big question: why have there not been more films on American history of slavery?" said Pitt. "It took a Brit to ask it …. And I just have to say: if I never get to participate in a film again, this is it for me."
Toronto's winners
People's Choice award
Winner: Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave
First runner-up: Stephen Frears' Philomena
Second runner-up: Denis Villeneuve's Prisoners
Documentary
Winner: Jehane Noujaim's The Square
First runner-up: Alanis Obomsawin's Hi-Ho Mistahey!
Second runner-up: Leanne Pooley's Beyond the Edge
Midnight Madness
Winner: Sion Sono's Why Don't You Play in Hell?
First runner-up: Mike Flanagan's Oculus
Second runner-up: Alex de la Iglesia's Witching & Bitching
International critics' prize (Fipresci prize)
Pawel Pawlikowski's Ida in the special presentations category
Claudia Sainte-Luce's The Amazing Catfish in the Discovery Program, which spotlights feature films by new and emerging directors
More on 12 Years a Slave
First look review: 12 Years a Slave
News: Steve McQueen on Slave - 'It's not about sugar-coating history'
News: 12 Years a Slave wins standing ovation
Feature: 12 Years a Slave set to triumph in Toronto | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/28/my-heart-catches-when-i-see-my-children-care-for-odie-the-puppy-i-resisted-for-so-long | Opinion | 2021-12-28T16:30:02.000Z | Ranjana Srivastava | My heart catches when I see my children care for Odie – the puppy I resisted for so long | Ranjana Srivastava | The gratification of an Indian mother at the words “I love your food” is matched by the dread of hearing “I am leaving home”, so when my 10-year-old wistfully announced that he couldn’t wait to move out, my maternal guilt peaked as I tried to figure out why.
In the world he inhabited, “every parent” imposed fewer screen restrictions and “no parent” ever expected a child to excel at school. These two assertions made it easy enough for his parents to point out that a combination of excessive screen time and no work seldom gave rise to the ability to move out of home.
But this time, his words sounded less wishful thinking and more genuine desire, moving me to ask why.
“So I can get a dog.”
Wellness for dogs: why your pet needs vaccines but not reiki and raw meat
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After raising three children to the point of relative independence, all I saw was a fourth who would remain needy and dependant. And not for a moment was I fooled by, “You just have to get the dog, we will do everything.”
But given the profound fondness Australians have for pets, we simply couldn’t shake off the topic. Friends and the unlikeliest of relatives acquired dogs, sent cute photos and cuter videos, and casually remarked, “Get a dog, they’re so much fun!” But amid the occasional froth these comments ignited, I stayed resolute – we didn’t need a dog to complete our life – and the kids gave up.
Until the day their sibling voiced the fact that he couldn’t wait to move out of the house and they murmured their appreciation. Suddenly, the equation shifted: gain a dog or lose a child?
Then came the pandemic and, with it, a wonderful reprieve. Rescue homes were emptied of dogs and the cost of buying a puppy from a breeder soared. Every family driven mad by isolation wanted a dog and a hypoallergenic one – the kind we needed – cost a ridiculous $10,000! And then too, there was a waiting list nearly as long as the one for elective surgery.
One day Odie stole a grape. The vet said he could be fine, need dialysis or die without another window for intervention
Suddenly my statement of intent, “We can look into it,” was matched by a harrumphing disclaimer, “But I refuse to pay $10,000 for a dog!” Yes, love had a price.
I shared my dilemma with my friend who owned dogs, cats, ponies and birds (who probably found me weak for not owning even one pet) and she connected me to her breeder friend whose first ominous words were, “No child should grow up without a dog.” But then lamenting the extortionist pandemic pricing, he maintained that the right price for a puppy should not be outright unaffordable but one that made buyers pause for thought because there was nothing worse than a momentary indulgence quickly abandoned. I found his view so sensible and his love for dogs so endearing that I decided to visit him.
When the litter was born, we took a surprise trip to the countryside. I will confess that watching a gel-like mass of blind things clinging to their weary mother (while their father happily chased birds) resurfaced all my previous misgivings but it was too late. Amid squeals of delight, we anointed one of the unclaimed puppies as ours – the breeder put a tag on him and bid us return after eight weeks.
The child who wanted to move out of the house was allowed to name the dog. A fan of the cartoon character Garfield, he named the puppy Odie after Garfield’s friend. The choice was passed by unanimous resolution in an Irish-Indian household, where nothing happens unanimously.
Odie at three months
At eight weeks and not a day later, Odie came home. I warmed to the breeder’s dim view of expensive training programs and his advice that dog owners must take responsibility for instilling the rules at a young age, which sounded just like parenting. So we kept an eagle eye on his propensity to pee on the good carpet and chew shoes in preference to his toys – and he soon learned.
One day Odie stole a grape. The vet said he could be fine, need dialysis or die without another window for intervention. I rued that it was the kind of useless “choice” I gave my cancer patients. After the $800 grape heist, we stopped buying grapes.
I am glad to say that my worst fears about dog care were not realised. The sink, dishwasher and laundry, loaded but inanimate, might groan for my children’s attention, but Odie is dutifully walked, washed and fed, and endlessly loved because he both demands and merits attention. There is a running joke in our house that I am jealous and resentful of a little dog who has become a big hit, but in truth my heart catches when, in the quiet of the night, I hear one of the kids telling Odie their day was better because of him.
Separation anxiety: how to manage your pet’s mental health as post-lockdown routines resume
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We strive to parent our children in wholesome ways – I underestimated the added dimension of love and responsibility that a dog would teach mine. On a hot day, my daughter cut short her outing to check if Odie had enough water. When Odie was sick, her teenage brother made fresh broth and patiently fed it to him. Such acts of reciprocity are hard to manufacture and, if a dog quietly teaches my children how to give and receive love, I am all for it.
Odie turned one this week. You should have seen the toys and treats, although I drew the line at the high-top dog sneakers with matching socks.
My in-laws ended up with Odie’s cousin, Rory, who brings them unparalleled joy in retirement. My children no longer talk about leaving home because there is the vexed issue of who will take the dog. The obvious compromise is living together for a long time or being close enough to each other to freely visit. I am realistic enough to know that this might not hold true in the modern world but, if having a dog means knitting my children even closer together, it will be a mother’s prayer answered.
Happy birthday, Odie! | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2014/feb/26/nfl-draft-who-will-be-no1-pick-manziel-bridgewater-bortles | Sport | 2014-02-27T14:01:07.000Z | Nicky Bandini | NFL draft: who will be the No 1 pick? Manziel? Bridgewater? Bortles? | It ought to be the easiest decision in the world: holding the first overall pick in May’s NFL draft. The Houston Texans need not worry about which players will be available, nor try to second-guess what other teams are thinking. Instead they can simply identify the most gifted individual in this year’s class and take him.
In reality, things are a little less straightforward. Like most teams in their position, the Texans find themselves juggling a number of different considerations. Should they simply take the best player at any position? Given the struggles of Matt Schaub and Case Keenum last season, would they not be better off using this opportunity to draft a quarterback, even if they have another athlete graded higher? And if they were to opt for a signal caller, which one should it be?
Alternatively, might they be better off trading down and stockpiling more picks? The Texans have expressed a willingness to listen to offer but the likelihood is that they will stay where they are. Trades for the first overall pick are relatively rare, mostly because the premium on moving up is so high.
It might be even harder to trade down in a year when there has been no consensus among analysts over the No1 pick, since other teams will be happier to take their chances on players that might fall to them further down the order. The Texans have plenty of options but very little certainty. So it was that general manager Rick Smith informed journalists at the scouting combine on Friday that his staff was “still in the process of ranking and evaluating”.
Head coach Bill O’Brien went further, saying that the team had not even got so far as narrowing their list down to a top five. That may have been a bluff, but either way Houston would have the opportunity to examine their options more closely over the weekend.
Although many sections of the combine are televised – the running, leaping, lifting and positional drills – the truth is that some of the most important processes take place behind closed doors. Teams that have already studied players endlessly on tape might be less interested to know how fast a given prospect can change direction than to see how they perform in a one-on-one interview, or how their body holds up to the barrage of medical tests they are subjected to on the morning after their arrival.
For that reason it is always important to take all impressions of a player’s combine performance with a pinch of salt, since we are seeing only one part of the overall picture. It is also true that teams will have further opportunities to evaluate the most sought-after individuals at private pro days on college campuses over the coming weeks.
But it is still fair to say that we know more about this draft class now that the combine is over than we did before it began. And while O’Brien might not have whittled his list down this far just yet, the following four individuals look more and more like the most obvious candidates for the Texans’ first overall pick:
Johnny Manziel, quarterback, Texas A&M
At least one man has no doubts about who the Texans should take. Manziel told the Houston Chronicle earlier this month that the team would be making “the worst decision they’ve ever made” if they fail to select him with the No1 pick, noting that he could easily fall to their division rivals Jacksonville two spots later. “I’d be in the same division playing against them twice a year,” he continued. “Sorry, but you just turned that chip on my shoulder from a Frito into a Dorito.”
Of course, there will be those who perceive the former Johnny Football – he is trying to distance himself from that nickname these days – as arrogant, citing the reputation he made for partying his way through college as evidence of a lack of maturity. It has been the player’s challenge over the last few days to convince teams he has grown up since then, no doubt saying to them, as he did to MMQB.com’s Peter King, that “my mom always told me: ‘There’s a time and a place for everything.’”
Manziel, who threw for 63 touchdowns and rushed for 30 more in his two years as a starter at Texas A&M, chose not to partake in passing drills at the combine, waiting instead for his pro day, but turned heads with his performance in speed and agility tests, ranking fourth among quarterbacks in the 40-yard dash with a time of 4.68 seconds.
A Texas native, he would certainly be a popular choice with Houston fans, but many scouts consider him to be the high-risk choice among this year’s top quarterback prospects. Despite Russell Wilson’s success with Seattle this year, concerns remain over Manziel’s size – he measured in at 5ft 11 3/4ins – and durability as well as off-field questions.
Teddy Bridgewater, quarterback, Louisville
Of course, Manziel is not the only player with faith in his own abilities. “No doubt. I feel that I’m the best quarterback in this draft,” said Bridgewater during his media session at the combine. “I’m not just going to sit up here and just say it. Obviously, actions have to back up these words and I’m just confident in myself, my capability to be able to play this position and I’m just going to go out there and prove that I’m the best guy.”
Bridgewater did not run or throw in Indianapolis, but made a statement nevertheless when he stepped onto the scales – weighing in at 214lbs, nine heavier than his playing weight had been at Louisville. Analysts had previously raised questions about whether the quarterback’s skinny frame could hold up against the sort of punishment he was likely to take in the pros.
The player himself noted that he had played at a significantly higher weight before arriving at Louisville, but said that jaw surgery in his sophomore year was to blame for him dropping a significant chunk of his muscle mass. “I couldn’t eat for two months, and that was a period when I lost most of my weight,” he explained. “So I just want to get back to that range, 220, 225 range, and just feel good.”
After choosing not to participate in drills at the combine, Bridgewater will need to perform well at his pro day to reassure scouts that this additional weight has not had any adverse effects. But for now many consider him to be the safest choice at quarterback for Houston – a consistently accurate passer who completed 71% of his throws on the way to 31 touchdowns and just four interceptions last season.
Blake Bortles, quarterback, Central Florida
With Manziel and Bridgewater opting not to throw, it was Bortles who emerged as the stand-out performer during Sunday’s quarterbacking drills at Lucas Oil Stadium. A prototypical pocket passer who measured in at 6ft 5ins and 232lbs, the UCF player had been dismissed in some quarters as too raw to merit the first overall pick, but won admirers with the consistency of his mechanics while throwing to unfamiliar receivers.
The simple fact of his willingness to take part might also have impressed some teams. “I believe that I can compete with any guy here, and that’s why I’m doing everything I’m doing,” said Bortles beforehand. “That’s why I’m throwing, that’s why I’m running, doing all this stuff. Why wait until your pro day when you have an opportunity to make your first impression here in Indianapolis?”
It has been suggested that Bortles’ height and powerful arm would make him a good fit in O’Brien’s offense, although the coach himself played down such talk in Indianapolis. “There’s no way that you just label yourself [and say] ‘you like this type of quarterback over this type of quarterback’,” O’Brien said. “In my career, I’ve been around quarterbacks that were 6ft 5ins and quarterbacks that were 5ft 10ins. We’re just looking for the best fit at any position.”
Jadaveon Clowney, defensive end, South Carolina
Defensive end is hardly Houston’s biggest area of need, but there is a school of thought that says that Clowney is the single most valuable player in this draft. He certainly thinks so himself, telling reporters on Saturday that he would “of course” tell the Texans to take him. “That’s one of my goals here, to go No1,” said Clowney. “I came out of high school as the No 1 player [in the country], so I want to come into the league as the No 1 guy.”
Clowney certainly did his chances no harm at the combine, posting a 4.53sec time in the 40-yard dash and perhaps even more impressively covering the first 10 yards of that sprint in just 1.56sec. For a player who stands 6ft 6ins and weighs 266lbs, those numbers are extraordinary. As ESPN.com noted: “The five-year combine averages among wide receivers are 4.54 in the 40, with a 1.58 10-yard split. And their average size was 6-foot, 202 pounds.”
Perhaps more poignantly, the defensive end had been faster than not only Manziel but also the likes of Colin Kaepernick and Cam Newton before him. It will be a rare quarterback indeed who is capable of eluding Clowney on the field through speed alone.
But as impressive as Clowney’s times were, could they really be enough to justify Houston spending a No1 pick on him? Defensive end is hardly a pressing need, and although the prospect of him lining up at opposite ends of the line from JJ Watt is an enticing one, it is also true that the aspiring rookie had a deeply disappointing final season in college, recording just three sacks – 10 down on his sophomore year. Analysts have questioned his work ethic and passion for the game, charges that might not be reflected in the combine weekend’s numbers, but will most certainly form a part of Houston’s deliberations. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/jul/14/test-ride-carbon-road-bikes-by-trek-colnago-pinarello-canyon-and-cube | Life and style | 2015-07-14T06:45:08.000Z | Ian Tucker | Carbon road bikes: are they worth the money? | You have to go back to 1998 to find the last non-carbon bike used to win the Tour de France, yet it’s still a material regarded with suspicion by many cyclists.
The sceptics claim it isn’t as durable as steel, alloy or titanium and is liable to be unrepairable after a crash. Everyone has a horror story of carbon failure “that happened to a mate”, yet it was noticeable that after the 20 bike pile-up in Stage 3 of this year’s Tour how many riders hopped back on the same bikes or suffered from fractured bones rather than snapped frames.
80-90% of the force holding you back on a bike is wind resistance rather than weight
The haters also claim that the advantages it offers are wasted on recreational cyclists, because you need to be creating a lot of watts to get speed gains from the aerodynamic and lightweight frames carbon makes possible.
Bike design always used to be about lightness, but in 2000 the UCI introduced a minimum weight of 6.8kg and manufacturers turned their attention to aerodynamics. Inspired by the success Chris Boardman and others had had on the track during the 1990s employing bikes and riding positions honed during wind tunnel testing, bike companies went on quest to reduce drag, resulting in the aero features of modern road bikes.
Aero bikes are characterised by having teardrop profile tubes, flattened forks and stays, and wheels with deep carbon rims. These modifications add mass: for example, Canyon’s produce the Aeroad (pictured above) and they also produce a less-aero carbon model called the Ultimate which is up to 0.5kg lighter.
This feeds into another debate: should you go for a bike that is more aero or weighs less? It might surprise you that 80-90% of the force holding you back on a bike is wind resistance rather than weight. And around 80% of this drag is caused by the rider, the remainder the bike. So these aero designs are only slicing away at the 20% caused by the bike. You would get bigger aero gains by riding using the drop handbars all the time, although your neck might reject that idea.
However, a small experiment conducted recently by Cycling Weekly demonstrated that a cyclist generating 200w of pedalling power on an aero carbon bike was 1.7kph faster than on a lightweight carbon bike – extrapolated over four hours riding they claimed this would translate into an extra 6.6km distance travelled. But this assumes the unlikely scenario of never-ending flat roads. And generating 200w for that length of time would be beyond the abilities of most weekend riders.
Weight becomes more important than aerodynamics when going uphill – at 5% inclines for average riders and at steeper slopes for the more powerful. Critics often say that although carbon frames are lighter if riders really want to climb more speedily they’d be better off losing some pounds rather than spending some. Judging by the number of rotund gentlemen one sees on expensive carbon bicycles they may have a point.
If riders really want to climb more speedily they’d be better off losing some pounds rather than spending some
Carbon is expensive. Although prices are edging downwards, you can buy an alloy frame with a similar groupset and wheels as a carbon model for considerably less. Carbon prices begin around £1,000. We did try borrowing others at that price point, but some manufacturers couldn’t provide us with one.
These aren’t bikes for commuting. They are designed to be ridden long distances. They are for participating in sportives or grinding up mountains where the savings in weight and aerodynamics might keep your legs feeling fresher for longer and ensure you don’t get dropped from the pack. Is that worth several thousand pounds? If you’ve got it to spare, probably.
13 Intuition Alpha Carbon Road
£999; 8.46kg (56cm frame) halfords.com
The 13 Intuition Alpha shows its best side. Photograph: Ian Tucker/The Observer
This is the cheapest carbon model in Halfords’ new aesthetically pleasing 13 bike range. The frame is designed to be more aero – with teardrop tube profiles, concealed cabling and brakes tucked away behind the forks and under the bottom bracket.
The Intuition’s rear brake.
While it may give you small gains in wind resistance the frame is less good at buffering the rider from uneven roads – this cyclist had sore shoulder blades the next day after doing 50km on the bike.
The easy-on-the-eye-and-air rear brake is a dainty centre-pull arrangement which requires a long throw of the brake levers to engage and is binary in feel.
I only rode the Intuition Alpha on dry roads, but the brake’s location could be a mud and gunk trap which may further interfere with braking performance.
Verdict Looks fantastic, but maybe best saved for sunny days and smooth roads.
Trek Domane 4.0 Disc
£1,500; 9.55kg (56cm frame) trekbikes.com
The Trek Domane 4.0 Disc relaxing by a wall. Photograph: Ian Tucker/The Observer
This bike embodies some current trends in road bike evolution. First the frame has “endurance” geometry: the top tube is slightly shorter and the handlebars are higher and shallower. This creates a more upright riding position which should be easier on your back and offer comfort over long distances.
The disc brakes and thru-axle.
Secondly it has disc brakes to ensure consistent braking even in the wet. Instead of quick-release skewers it has thru-axles, an import from the rough and tumble world of mountain biking, which it is claimed are stiffer and safer. Finally, it has a suspension device called an “IsoSpeed Decoupler” – a sealed bearing at the tube junction beneath the seat which is designed to absorb some road shudder.
The suspension device.
These extra features mean this is the heaviest bike we looked at and to balance its budget it comes with the more basic Shimano Sora 18-gear system. However, if comfort rather than speed is your priority you probably don’t give a jolt about that, hell, you can even fit full mudguards on it.
Verdict If you’re looking for a bike for slowly-but-surely stress-free riding this is a sensible choice.
Colnago AC-R Disc
£3,200; 8.87kg (52cm frame) sigmasport.co.uk
The Colnago AC-R Disc enjoying some rays on Hastings seafront. Photograph: Ian Tucker/The Observer
This is the bells and whistles version of the illustrious Italian company’s “entry level” carbon bike.
As is the legal requirement it does come with a bell but the whistles are reserved for its grey/fluoro paint job and its disc brakes. Up until recently the latter were normally found on mountain, commuter and cycle-cross bikes, but were banned for professional road racing. This was due to concerns about their safety in crashes, plus teams’ reservations about the extra grams and the extra seconds it would take to change wheels. However, in August 2015 the ban is being lifted and teams can pilot their use, with a view to discs becoming legal in the 2017 Tour. Cynics (and the cycling community has a smattering) have suggested the gains in performance are negligible and road discs are just a ploy to create brake anxiety and get riders to upgrade their bikes to models with a more expensive set-up.
No one is suggesting you’ll stop quicker with discs, but the performance is consistent regardless of the weather and the confidence this gives you will enable you to, in particular, descend faster down hills. This rider found that to be the case – although one person’s speed is another’s recklessness – and braking was predictable in the wet, too.
The Colnago’s mostly Shimano Ultegra drivetrain was wonderfully smooth and quiet. On an even road the only noise was of rubber on tarmac, punctuated by the wonderful sound of cascading hub bearings when freewheeling. The frame felt rigid, but absorbed more road judder than most. Morever, it felt very stable – whether you were out of the saddle climbing 15% gradients or slaloming potholes down the other side.
On paper it’s not light and it doesn’t represent good value – you can find similarly equipped bikes for less – but I was sad to return it.
Verdict Pricey, but great all-year-round bike, the most steel-like in feel.
Canyon Aeroad CF SLX 9.0SL
£4,899; 6.85kg (medium frame) canyon.com
The Canyon Aeroad pauses for a photo. Photograph: Ian Tucker/The Observer
German manufacturer Canyon has excelled in recent years at delivering value bikes via a direct sales model, and of late they’ve rivalling legacy companies in the innovation stakes, too. This year both the Katusha and Movistar teams will be riding Canyon bikes in the Tour de France.
As its name suggests every aspect of this bike has been engineered to reduce drag. How many of these gains translate into increased speed for an average rider is a moot point, but for those generating a lot of watts they can make a significant difference.
Charging the Di2 electronic gears.
This bike certainly felt zippy. Although the conclusions from riding the same 147km Surrey route on this bike and the Dogma (below) were inconclusive. My average speed was 0.3kph higher on the Aeroad and it got me up Leith Hill more quickly, but the Dogma was quicker on Box Hill. All measurements that would have been very possible if I’d ridden the same bike twice.
Nevertheless the Aeroad felt fast and its shaved design certainly looks fast. Or in the words of a white man with dreads who spent some time on the Brighton seafront admiring it through bloodshot eyes: “That’s some fucked-up shit, man.”
Moreover, despite the low riding position it was comfy, even when using the drops of the handlebars. The frame and wheels created the smoothest ride of the bikes I tested. It was also the quietest, aside from the satisfying powering-down sound that the brakes make when stopping.
This Aeroad is equipped with Shimano’s top-of-the-range Dura Ace Di2 gears. These are electronic rather than mechanical, featuring a motor in each derailleur – as a result changing gears requires the lightest of touches on the paddles and chain rub is eliminated as the front mechanism automatically adjusts. In 475km of riding I didn’t experience one missed change or other hiccup, despite sometimes rapidly throwing the gears this way and that in an attempt to cause a malfunction. Ultimately, once you’ve tried Di2 you’re spoilt – changing gears mechanically feels a bit backwards and an inconvenience.
All the other bikes on this test have compact chainsets, but the Aeroad comes with a semi-compact or “faux pro” chainset – which has chainrings of 52 and 36 teeth compared to a compact’s 50/34 – effectively, this shifts the gearing up a little, losing some gearing for the hills and gaining some for the flat.
The only niggle with this bike might be the wheels. Aero wheels have deep rims to shorten the spokes thereby reducing the turbulence – meaning that less power is required to attain the same speed.
The main drawback of aero wheels is that the deep rims can get buffeted by crosswinds causing them to twitch. The Mavic wheels on this bike have rims with a v-shape profile whereas newer designs have a u-shape which copes better with sideways gusts. I went riding on days with 15mph winds and didn’t experience any problems. However, if you’re likely to ride a lot in gusty situations you may end up buying another set of wheels or at least a low profile one for the front. Or you may just have forearms of steel (or aero carbon ones) like the pros and be able to cope with blowy conditions.
Verdict If speed is your passion, this is your bike. Start saving.
Pinarello Dogma F8 2015 Super Record EPS
£9,599; 6.62kg (53cm frame) thebikerooms.com
The Pinarello Dogma stops for refreshment. Photograph: Ian Tucker/The Observer
Your points of contact are important to a bike’s ride quality and comfort. The pedals and saddle are easy to replace, but changing the brake hoods (where you hands will spend most of their time rather than on the handlebars) is a palaver because they are integral to the gearing and brake system. The hoods of Campagnolo Super Record EPS groupset fitted to this bike were the most comfortable – particularly compared to the boxier Shimano Ultegra hoods – for my small-to-medium hands.
The Super Record EPS front derailleur.
The brakes they controlled were the best performing rim brakes I’ve experienced – lots of stopping power and modulation, but compared to the Dura Ace Di2 (and Ultegra Di2 I’ve used on other bikes) the Italian company’s top line electronic shifting system wasn’t as smooth and dependable as the Japanese Shimano. Maybe it’s telling that of the 22 teams in the Tour only four are using Campagnolo components, whereas 17 have opted for Shimano, including Team Sky who ride this Pinarello frame.
The combined brains of Pinarello, Jaguar and Team Sky have been pooled to create a frame that they say is lighter, stiffer and more aero than the previous Dogma. In the right gear this superlight bike felt muscular when climbing, and it handled corners the surest of the bikes on test – which was probably due in part to being shod in 25mm tyres rather than the 23s found on the Canyon and Colnago bikes.
We asked Pinarello “for the most Italian bike you’ve got”, but I’m certain that had we asked for a Shimano Di2 version this would have been a more positive review.
Verdict If you want to spend ten grand on a bike test ride the groupset options first.
Planet X Pro Carbon SRAM Rival 22 Women’s
£899; 7.87kg (small) planetx.co.uk
The Planet-X Pro Carbon just hanging out. Photograph: Ian Tucker/The Observer
Planet X claims to make “the best-value carbon road bike on the planet” – and it is hard to dispute that assertion. Bikes are ordered online, then hand-assembled and dispatched from Sheffield. Purists may sniff at buying without a test ride, but I had no problems with mine – even my local bike-shop owner had to grudgingly admit it was riding well. (There are showrooms in Sheffield, Barnsley and now Portland, Oregon, if you must try before you buy.)
The bike-to-work-scheme-friendly price is a big draw, but that doesn’t mean scrimping on quality. The spec includes a lightweight AL30 wheel set, SRAM gears and a compact geometry frame. The women’s version has a shorter stem, narrower bar and a different saddle, supposedly for comfort – in reality, it is the only part I would change. This light, fast and responsive bike makes for a fantastically fun ride; it gobbles up hills and flies on the flat.
Verdict If you’re looking for your first carbon bike, look no further. This is an absolute steal.
Cube Axial WLS GTC SL
£1,699.99; 7.91kg (50cm frame) cube.eu
The Cube Axial prefers the shade. Photograph: Ian Tucker/The Observer
This bike is embarrassingly good-looking – riding it is a bit like going out with a supermodel; I felt unworthy. Complete strangers stopped me to comment on how “thoroughly beautiful” it was. Luckily, my blushes were usually spared by staying ahead of the pack – it is an absurdly fast ride, leaping forward like a racehorse; I shaved minutes off my short commute.
The Cube’s cables are routed internally.
The German manufacturer, which is best known for its mountain bikes, credits this to the Shimano Ultegra groupset and Fulcrum Racing wheels. So it is a bike built for speed, but for endurance riding it benefits from a comfortable position and a thin yet female-friendly saddle. Gear changes are seamless, though it is a little sensitive to bumps in the road. Giving it back felt like the end of a beautiful relationship.
Verdict If you want speed without sacrificing style, this bike delivers in spades.
Thanks to Ben at Micycle for mechanical adjustments to some of these bikes | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/the-swimming-blog/2013/aug/23/top-10-swimming-songs-rem | Life and style | 2013-08-23T10:40:00.000Z | Sally Goble | My top 10 swimming songs | Swimming as a pastime can be full of joy and laughter; it can be sensual. It can also be physically demanding as a sport. It can be about beautiful solitude and contemplation or isolating and lonely, according to your mood. And of course it can be fraught with challenges and danger if you can't swim.
You'd be forgiven, then, for thinking that there are hundreds of wonderfully evocative songs about swimming. But once you discard the dubious ones involving pool parties and breaststroke (really) the pool starts to dwindle. Some are about drowning rather than swimming: "Ruby lips above the water, blowing bubbles soft and fine, but – alas – she was no swimmer, Oh my darling Clementine." Some swimming songs are pick-me-ups – light and frothy. Some take you back to swims you've had in the past – good or bad. By turns literal, metaphorical, nostalgic, gloomy and anthemic: here are my top 10 swimming songs.
My absolute out-and-out favourite has to be the tender and breathy duet Swimming by Breathe Owl Breathe. It's a song that makes my heart ache and makes me long to go paddling, by capturing the sheer joy of a really good swim. This isn't a pumping song to charge up and down the lanes to at your local pool or one that conveys the loneliness of swimming in the sea. This song simply and perfectly captures the excitement and joy of packing a bag for a day on the beach or in a pond and splashing about with friends. "Swimming … I wish I was swimming / Bring the mask and snorkel / Bring the flippers also / Bring the frisbee baby, bring something to drink / Bring your purple bathing suit …" It's a call to have whimsical carefree fun, and I love it.
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But of course not every swim is like that for some of us. And so to the opposite extreme. As one who's been there, it's hard for me to imagine that the person who wrote Channel Swimmer hadn't experienced the isolation of swimming a very long distance. How could they possibly have written this song if they hadn't? Vancouver folk band Corbin Murdoch and the Nautical Miles are mysteriously laconic and laid back in their description of a Channel swim: "I know the ocean well / I know the taste of it, the rhythm of its swell / The icy song that whispers across my skin …". Listening to this song sends shivers down my spine, especially when our channel swimmer sings: "Currents do not pull me, tides don't turn me away". The sparse instrumentation and gentle and insistent lilt convey brilliantly the loneliness of swimming a long way. I'm instantly transported into the middle of a sea. Urgh.
Not all the songs in my top 10 are literal. Some great swimming songs are about metaphorical barriers and breaking them down. In Frank Turner's tender and sweet folksy ballad Front Crawl, he has to cross eight borders and three seas to see his love. Sadly he can only doggy-paddle. It's OK, though – he says he'll set out when his front crawl is up to scratch.
Never one to over-sentimentalise things, Loudon Wainwright III weighs in with an uplifting ditty, The Swimming Song, which recounts a summer of freedom. He tells us he swims in the ocean, the swimming pool and a reservoir. He does swan dives and jackknives and backstrokes and butterflys and even the "australian crawl" (another name for the front crawl). He swims in a swimming suit and goes "informal". He does it all. This man clearly loves his swimming.
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And it does seem to bring out the nostalgic in others too. REM's classic Nightswimming evokes times gone by and the recklessness of swimming under cover of dark. Is swimming all really about nostalgia for youth? Is it true that "these things go away, replaced by every day"? For some, perhaps, that's true – I dearly hope not. I feel sorry for Michael Stipe. Swimming keeps me young.
A weird and haunting one this, and I love it for that. Laura Marling sings, "Oh you crawled out of the sea / Straight into my arms, straight into my arms." It could be Darwinian; it could be about slimy sea monsters. Maybe it's not quite Ursula Andress with a dagger. In my mind it's all about the romance. Maybe a mermaid and her sailor. Or maybe it's a about a slightly bedraggled Channel swimmer, staggering up an obscure beach into the arms of her waiting love. Preferably he's there with a big fluffy towel. And a hot drink. Yeah, that would be good.
Maybe I'm doing them a disservice, but could you ever pick a less likely looking bunch of guys to be singing about braving the ocean than 10CC? Seriously? Channel Swimmer from 1975 was the B-side to Life Is a Minestrone. Classic lyrics, with a kind of funky organ accompaniment: "I've greased my body / And I'm heading over the ocean / These two arms are the only locomotion I need." Enough said. I had to include it in my list, I'm sorry. How many songs are specifically about Channel swimming?
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Any song that has the lyrics "Swim until you can't see land / Are you a man or are you a bag of sand" had to be included in this top 10. I know I'm a long-distance swimmer so I have a certain bias. Scottish Indie rock band Frightened Rabbit's track might be about swimming or might be about walking out into the sea with no intention of ever coming back. I have no idea which. I choose the former interpretation – it's just about bravado. Yeah – what are you? A bag of sand if you don't even dare to set out. I love it.
Life's not always easy, of course. Eels' Swimming Lesson is a hard lesson to learn – more sink than swim. More, to be frank, about being thrown in a (metaphorical) lake than going for a relaxing dip.
But let's not end on a gloomy note. Jack's Mannequin's anthemic Swim is all rock guitars and wailing – in the nicest possible way. He's not having any of Eels' negative thinking. He's not giving up. He's exhorts us to swim despite the tidal waves tearing at the shore. He's swimming to brighter days. He entreats us: "You gotta swim in the dark, there's an ocean to drift in." Sounds just the ticket. Wait for me – I'll just go and find my goggles and cossie.
My top 10 swimming songs
1. Swimming – Breathe Owl Breathe
2. Channel Swimmer – Corbin Murdoch and the Nautical Miles
3. Front Crawl – Frank Turner
4. The Swimming Song – Loudon Wainwright III
5. Nightswimming – REM
6. Crawled out of the sea – Laura Marling
7. Channel Swimmer – 10CC
8. Swim Until You Can't See Land – Frightened Rabbits
9. Swimming Lesson – Eels
10. Swim – Jack's Mannequin
What are your favourite swimming-related songs? Make your suggestions on the thread below. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2017/dec/01/what-wore-week-low-heeled-party-shoes-jess-cartne-morley | Fashion | 2017-12-01T13:00:43.000Z | Jess Cartner-Morley | What I wore this week: low-heeled party shoes | Jess Cartner-Morley | You know those features where writers reveal the advice they wish they could give their younger selves? And they are always really erudite and wistful, poignant and touching? Well, this is sort of one of those. Sort of. OK, without the erudite, wistful, poignant or touching parts. But still important.
I am talking about high heels. Specifically, how much I wish I could give my younger self a talking to about not spending insane amounts on shoes I couldn’t walk in. As heart-swelling, motivational speeches go, this is not, admittedly, up there with Robin Williams imploring us to carpe diem in Dead Poets Society. But I really wish I had known then what seems obvious now. Which is that good-time shoes that you can’t have a good time in because your feet hurt are a total waste of money.
What I wore this week: white boots
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As my 20-years-ago self would have said: like, duh. But I’m not the only one with a blind spot for heels. Walk into a shoe department at this time of year and you’ll find an average heel height of around 10cm. But walk into a party and you’ll see women in proper heels outnumbered by sensible ones in smart, low-heeled and flat shoes, and less sensible ones barefoot with their shoes discarded in a corner. There’s a disconnect between the shoes we buy for nights out and the shoes we actually wear on nights out, which suggests I’m not the only one whose shoe-buying cortex required rewiring. I have finally graduated from being the barefoot woman who has kicked off her expensive new heels to the one in the sensible jewelled flats.
The trouble with high heels is that they are such gorgeous objects to look at. The slender curves of a dagger heel, the thrill of a precipitous angle, are irresistible. But we are not buying sculpture, we are buying footwear. And while it is seductive to identify with the high-maintenance attitude of a high heel, unless your credit card stretches to a chauffeur service, it is a waste of money.
The need to winch yourself up on a stiletto to look glamorous is fading with the advent of the low-heel party shoe. The renaissance of the kitten heel has been followed by a new generation of block heel shoes that give you a tangible boost that doesn’t spiral into agony. It is time to break free of heel dependency. Carpe diem, two and a half inches at a time. We can do this.
Jess wears silk top, £39, and trousers, £35, both topshop.com. Heels, £68, office.co.uk (Chair, £995, grahamandgreen.co.uk)
Styling: Melanie Wilkinson. Hair and makeup: Samantha Cooper at Carol Hayes Management.
This article contains affiliate links to products. Our journalism is independent and is never written to promote these products although we may earn a small commission if a reader makes a purchase. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2024/jan/02/west-ham-brighton-premier-league-match-report | Football | 2024-01-02T21:42:18.000Z | Jacob Steinberg | Alphonse Areola defiant as West Ham frustrate Brighton in stalemate | This was a game that made it hard not to wonder if there is such a thing as too much football. West Ham and Brighton were two tired, injury-hit teams trying their best and giving their all without ever really suggesting they had the wit or energy to score a goal.
At the end the biggest takeaway was it will be tough for both to remain above richer rivals as the season wears on. While West Ham ended 2023 with fine wins over Arsenal and Manchester United, the limitations of their squad were exposed by the absence of Lucas Paquetá and Mohammed Kudus. They remain sixth, three points above Brighton after a dogged defensive display, but it was not a surprise to hear David Moyes admit he would love to bring in reinforcements if money is available this month.
West Ham should not gamble: it’s time to extend David Moyes’s contract
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“We want to keep building,” said Moyes, who went on to complain about the timing of this fixture depriving him of his African players. Kudus, who might not have played anyway because of a hamstring injury, has joined Ghana’s training camp for the Africa Cup of Nations, while Nayef Aguerd is with Morocco. Egypt’s Mohammed Salah, Moyes noted, was available to play in Liverpool’s win over Newcastle on New Year’s Day.
The riposte is that West Ham could help themselves by having better deputies for Kudus. Pablo Fornals struggled on the right and Saïd Benrahma, who played as though determined to ward off potential suitors this month, was awful in Paquetá’s place on the left. Even then Danny Ings and Maxwel Cornet, two expensive forward signings, both remained on the bench.
All of which is something for Tim Steidten, West Ham’s technical director, to consider as he hunts for incomings. While Moyes spoke of resilience, West Ham’s refusal to give up a point could not disguise the fact Brighton dealt better with their injuries and created the better chances on a night when Roberto De Zerbi’s forwards were repeatedly thwarted by Alphonse Areola.
De Zerbi had a similar view after watching his side claim their first clean sheet of the season. “We played an amazing game,” Brighton’s manager said. “One of the best in my time. We created a lot of chances.”
The question facing both of these clubs is whether they have enough depth to sustain their challenges for European football. Both are in the Europa League and weariness is an issue. Whereas bigger clubs are more accustomed to handling the load, there inevitably comes a point when teams of the size of West Ham and Brighton struggle to defy financial reality.
It certainly felt that way here. West Ham, who were dealing with a sickness bug again, were never going to be as dangerous without Kudus and Paquetá in attack. “They’re fantastic players” Moyes said. “The other players need them.” Still, while Moyes had seven out, Brighton had nine absentees. The visitors arranged themselves in a fluid 3-4-3 system but they lacked a spark with Kaoru Mitoma, Simon Adingra and Ansu Fati unavailable on the flanks.
Opportunities were rare. West Ham sat back and were insipid in the final third. Their best chance came when Benrahma’s deflected cross fell for James Ward-Prowse to volley at Jason Steele. Brighton, who kept Jarrod Bowen quiet, responded with chances for Jack Hinshelwood and Pascal Gross. Areola denied them.
Adam Lallana launches an unsuccessful effort at goal for Brighton. Photograph: Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images
West Ham went close from a set piece, Edson Álvarez and Konstantinos Mavropanos almost converting Emerson Palmieri’s cross, but Brighton were slicker. They pushed at the start of the second half, Billy Gilmour running midfield, and Danny Welbeck tested Areola. Then João Pedro dribbled in from the left, a stunning solo goal on the cards until he shot straight at West Ham’s goalkeeper.
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West Ham, who filled their bench with youngsters, needed to respond. Benrahma finally took some responsibility on the left. The Algerian’s cross deflected to Tomas Soucek, but Pervis Estupiñán did enough to force the midfielder to shoot wide from close range.
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De Zerbi decided it was time to present West Ham’s centre-backs, Mavropanos and Angelo Ogbonna, with a different challenge by replacing Welbeck with Evan Ferguson. The young striker almost made an instant impact, brilliantly turning Álvarez, but his shot fizzed wide.
It became a real test of West Ham’s defensive steel. Brighton, who saw Adam Webster limp off on his first start since November, went close when Jakub Moder, on as a substitute, missed a glorious chance. Another substitute, Adam Lallana, almost beat Areola. Ben Johnson, West Ham’s right-back, went down with cramp. The final whistle was welcome. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2008/oct/17/smashing-pumkins-anniversary | Music | 2008-10-17T10:37:03.000Z | Sean Michaels | Billy Corgan: We're no better than Bon Jovi | Dissolving Smashing Pumpkins in 2000 was "a total mistake", Billy Corgan has admitted. And as much as he is fired up about the "reformed" Smashing Pumpkins' forthcoming tour with (mostly) new material ... the fans just want to hear the old hits. And they're wondering where founding members James Iha and D'arcy Wretzky have gone.
"You're standing onstage and hearing people going, 'I don't know how I feel about this,'" Corgan said to Rolling Stone this week. "We found that America had turned every older band into the 'reunion band'. [They would say] 'I just want to hear those eight songs and drink my beer.' You think, 'I'm 41 years old, and I've earned some level of trust'. And you find out you're just like everybody else. You're no better than Bon Jovi."
Corgan disbanded the Pumpkins in 2000, released a solo album, and then reunited with Pumpkins drummer Jimmy Chamberlain in 2006. Though Iha and Wretzky weren't involved, Corgan found weirdly similar-looking musicians to take their places – guitarist Jeff Schroeder, bassist Ginger Reyes and keyboardist Lisa Harriton. And the resuscitated Smashing Pumpkins released an album called Zeitgeist, which didn't exactly, er, capture the zeitgeist. "A gold record in this economy is quite an accomplishment," Corgan snapped.
Still, Corgan's happier as a Pumpkin than as a free agent. "There's something about being in the band that brings things out in me motivationally," he said. "I don't know if it brings the best out of me musically, but it brings the best out in me energetically."
Though the group is planning to record a "long-ranging concept album" next year, they are first embarking on fall tour to celebrate the Pumpkins' 20th anniversary. They are re-learning (or in some musicians' cases, learning,) 40-45 old songs, an experience Corgan described as a "really interesting journey ... like putting on a spacesuit again".
But Corgan refuses to just become a tribute act. "If we're not into [certain old songs], we don't play them," Corgan said. It's not unlike the Guitar Hero video game, where one of the Pumpkins' new songs is featured. Corgan is dismissive. "You don't play Guitar Hero if you are a guitar hero." | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/13/australia-is-spending-billions-on-the-great-barrier-reef-will-it-do-any-good | Environment | 2022-02-12T19:00:02.000Z | Graham Readfearn | Australia is spending billions on the Great Barrier Reef. Will it do any good? | The Great Barrier Reef – the world’s largest coral reef system, covering an area about the size of Germany – always comes with big numbers.
Last month the Australian government pledged another seemingly large figure, $1bn, for conservation and science to be spent over the next nine years and spread along the 2,300km reef.
That comes on top of state and federal government commitments in the region of $3bn since 2014.
So where is all the money going, and will it be enough to keep one of the world’s most complex natural wonders from collapsing under the mounting pressure of global heating?
Scientists dispute Morrison government claim to UN its Great Barrier Reef approach ‘second to none’
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Without rapid global cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, many experts fear the $1bn will do little except delay the inevitable. More urgent for the Morrison government is whether the funding – contingent on the Coalition winning the next election – will convince the 21-country world heritage committee not to dump the reef onto its list of sites in danger when it meets in July.
The $1bn pledge came just days before a 1 February deadline to deliver a report to the world heritage centre in Paris outlining the health of the reef and what was being done to build its resilience.
An economic analysis of the value of the reef – released in 2017 but still referred to by the government – said the reef added $6.4bn to the nation’s economy in just one year, mostly through tourism, commercial fishing, recreation and scientific research.
The Great Barrier Reef – one of the world’s most complex natural wonders. Photograph: Jumbo Aerial Photography/AP
Water quality
Some $579.9m of the $1bn pledge would go to water quality projects, with the next largest slice – $252.9m – for reef management and conservation.
Another $92.7m is for research and adaptation and $74.4m would go to community- and traditional-owner led projects, such as habitat restoration and species protection.
The reef’s major threat is from climate change – specifically, rising ocean temperatures that have caused corals to bleach en masse five times since the first recognised outbreak in 1998.
Unesco’s science advisers want management plans to account for the effects of climate change, to have greenhouse gas emissions targets consistent with 1.5C of global warming (analysts say Australia’s approach is aligned with heating closer to 3C) and to do more to cut pollution running into the reef from the land.
Sediments, nutrients and pesticides running into the marine park can harm inshore corals, as well as marine habitats such as seagrass meadows and mangroves.
One key source for these pollutants is agriculture, both directly when on-farm pollutants get washed into waterways and indirectly when exposed soils and eroded riverbanks are washed away by rain.
According to the Queensland government, in the five years from 2017 to 2022, commitments focused on improving water quality stood at $270m from the state government and $396m from the commonwealth.
A spokesman for the environment minister, Sussan Ley, said under the $1bn plan, funding for water quality would rise from $60m a year now to $85m a year from 2026-27 through to the end of the decade.
The state and federal governments have set targets for water quality up to 2025, and release an annual report card. The most recent results with data up to 2019 show slow progress from previous years, even though three of the four key measures indicate the target is at least halfway to being met.
“Overall inshore marine condition remained poor in 2018-2019, with coral and seagrass in poor condition and water quality rated moderate,” the report said.
A spokesman for Ley said: “We are confident that the additional programs generated through this funding will significantly accelerate these outcomes.”
Queensland’s minister for the Great Barrier Reef, Meaghan Scanlon, says the $270m in recent years does not include a $2bn renewable energy fund, or $500m for land restoration.
“Since 2015, we’ve banned the dumping of dredge spoil, passed tree clearing laws, committed to bring in reef regulations, brought in net free zones and invested billions of dollars to help protect the Great Barrier Reef,” Scanlon says.
Prime minister Scott Morrison on a glass bottom boat during a visit to the Great Barrier Reef. Photograph: Brian Cassey/AAP
Direct intervention
Funding for direct interventions to improve water quality is spread across multiple projects. Between 2018 and 2023 some $200m of federal cash is routed through the Great Barrier Reef Foundation (GBRF) – a small not-for-profit that was given a $443m grant by the Turnbull government in 2018, to be spent over six years.
Theresa Fyffe, executive director of projects and partnerships at the foundation, said the bulk of the money had gone to 10 regional programs.
Fyffe said the foundation is working with more than 1,000 farmers across 15,000 sq km.
There are two approaches, she said. One is to improve the way farmers use fertilisers and pesticides so that less washes away during rain. Field officers work with farmers to map out their land and soil types and document how they use fertilisers and chemicals before drawing up management and monitoring plans.
The other identifies projects such as earthworks that will directly tackle problems such as erosion of creek-banks or damage to wetlands.
“You’re trying to drive enduring change,” she said. “Working with a grower for five years gives you a change that is there forever. That’s when farmers can become advocates.”
The grant to the foundation remains controversial. Labor said last month it would terminate the agreement and reallocate any unspent funds if it won the next election.
But there is unlikely to be much uncommitted cash left.
Australian government’s plan to protect Great Barrier Reef falls short, environment groups say
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The foundation’s managing director, Anna Marsden, said by the end of this financial year, only $80m will be uncommitted and “every dollar is allocated for a program” with much of the uncommitted funds earmarked for traditional owner-led projects.
“We’re halfway through a job. And it’s a big job,” Marsden said.
“The reef is an extreme sport because there’s opposing views all over the place and everyone is passionate.
“But we can’t give up on the reef. The reef won’t give up and the public aren’t giving up and neither are the scientists. But this is the critical decade. It’s crunch time.”
The crown-of-thorns ‘plague’
In a landmark 2012 scientific paper, scientists at the Australian Institute of Marine Science found coral cover over the reef had dropped by half between 1985 and 2012. About 42% of that loss was down to the voracious coral-eating crown-of-thorns starfish (Cots).
“They are just so exquisitely evolved to take advantage of the conditions and they can get to plague proportions,” said Dr Roger Beeden, responsible for co-ordinating the Cots control program and director of reef interventions at the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority.
Beedon said Cots are part of the reef’s ecosystem, but they have become a pest that are able to eat their own bodyweight in coral in a matter of days.
“They can cause very rapid decline in coral cover. There can be carpets of them.”
The bulk of the funding for the Cots program goes to running five dedicated boats with teams of up to eight divers that select locations based on new methods of modelling outbreaks.
Crown-of-thorns starfish monitoring in the Capricorn and Bunker groups on the Great Barrier reef. Photograph: Daniel Schultz/Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority
Beeden says since the 2018 funding expanded the program, 268 reefs have been actively managed and 320,000 starfish have been killed in 43,000 diver-hours.
Divers use spear-like injection guns to pump the starfish – which can grow to the size of a dinner plate – with either ox bile or household vinegar. A new “one shot” method has replaced an older approach that used acid salt that needed to be injected into every arm of the starfish (miss one arm, and the starfish could survive).
Beeden said many tourism operators like to carry out their own culling operations as they visit reefs “so we provide them the materials to do that”.
The aim for the dive teams, Beeden said, is not to eradicate the starfish, but to get them down to sustainable levels. Divers have become highly skilled, he said, and can spot juvenile starfish the size of a thumbnail.
The reef is in the middle of the fourth major outbreak of the starfish since the first in the 1960s. Through the grant to the GBRF, $57m went to controlling Cots, and Beeden said about $41m was spent on the direct control program.
Under the latest federal government funding pledge, Beeden said $162m is identified for Cots control.
“Every adult coral we keep alive matters,” he said.
‘Shuffling the deck chairs’
Some $100m of the GBRF’s grant has gone to research and development projects, adding to funding of reef-related research at other institutions including CSIRO and the Australian Institute of Marine Science.
These R&D projects include the development of more heat-tolerant corals, methods to help the dispersal of coral larvae and more controversial approaches such as brightening clouds to shade corals undergoing heat stress.
Great Barrier Reef: cooler weather reduces threat of mass bleaching outbreak this summer
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A study released last year suggested if these mostly unproven methods could be deployed at scale, they could slow down the loss of corals by as much as two decades.
But scientists agree that any benefits the reef could gain from improving water quality or making corals more resilient will be swamped by rising ocean heat – an inevitable consequence of increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Two academic experts on reef management and science said the $1bn funding was “nonsensical” because it failed to address the direct cause of the majority of the reef’s problems.
“Unless we deal with climate change, everything else is just shuffling the deck chairs,” says Prof Terry Hughes, a prominent coral and reef scientist at James Cook University.
“Even if we had pristine water quality and we could find a magical bullet to control crown of thorns, we still have the overwhelming problem of global warming.
“These other Band-Aids will only make a difference if we deal with climate change. They’re all contingent on water temperatures being tolerable for corals.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/may/22/labor-victory-means-murugappan-family-set-to-return-home-to-biloela | Australia news | 2022-05-22T08:33:29.000Z | Ben Smee | Labor victory means Murugappan family set to return home to Biloela | About 11pm on election night in the central Queensland town of Biloela, Angela Fredericks phoned her absent friend.
“Priya, you are coming home,” she said.
Few people had more at stake in the federal election than Tamil asylum seekers Nades and Priya Murugappan, and their daughters Kopika and Tharnicaa.
Independent who beat Kristina Keneally in western Sydney seat says Labor was ‘arrogant’
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It is four years since the family were taken from their home in Biloela and placed in immigration detention; and the people of the small country town have been campaigning for their return since.
The Coalition had been steadfast that it would not allow them permanent residency because they arrived in Australia by boat. Their deportation was delayed by a last-minute injunction in 2019. They are now in community detention in Perth, but are not allowed to leave the state.
Labor had promised to grant the family a visa and allow them to return to Biloela. For the Murugappan family, the election would produce an all-or-nothing result.
Fredericks, a social worker in Biloela who has helped run the campaign to get the family home, and other community members spent the day handing out how-to-vote cards in the town, in the Queensland seat of Flynn.
“People were voting Labor for the very first time, it filled us with tremendous hope,” Fredericks said.
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“It was a very tense wait, a very tense evening. There was a huge group of us all together. It was just so nice to be anxious together. We knew how much was riding on that election yesterday and in the end, we could go to bed last night knowing that they were safe.”
Fredericks rang Priya in Perth when the result was confirmed. Nades, who had been working, arrived home during Scott Morrison’s concession speech.
The very special moment Nades arrives home from work to community detention in Perth & greets his wife Priya.
(Sound on). pic.twitter.com/dps2eZ3k0W
— Rebekah Holt (@rebekahhlt) May 21, 2022
“To get to that last night was so incredibly special,” Fredericks said. “We’ve never seen their smiles so big, we’ve never seen their faces look so relaxed – the toll of 20-plus years of trauma falling away as they actually finally processing that they are safe.”
Biloela Tamil family wins challenge to decision barring them from reapplying for bridging visas
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The family has legal action afoot but their situation can be resolved simply at the discretion of the new immigration minister. Fredericks said they were confident and had been given assurances by Labor that allowing them home would be “one of the first” priorities for the incoming government.
The situation is complicated by the election defeat of Labor’s immigration spokesperson, Kristina Keneally. It is unclear who will take the portfolio and a cabinet is unlikely to be announced until the incoming prime minister, Anthony Albanese, returns from the Quad meeting in Japan.
Fredericks said she hoped the family could return in time for the Biloela Flourish multicultural festival next month.
“We’re honestly just getting through today first,” she said.
“I guess our first step is just getting those plane tickets. We just want their feet back here in Bilo.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/07/northern-ireland-sikhs-reopening-gurdwara-derry | UK news | 2024-02-07T12:57:43.000Z | Neha Gohil | ‘No other place to go’: NI Sikhs eagerly await reopening of place of worship | For Manpreet Kaur Sandhu, a member of Northern Ireland’s small Sikh community, the gurdwara is a lifeline.
The 56-year-old has worshipped for almost 30 years at the Northern Ireland Sikh Association in Derry, one of two Sikh places of worship – known as gurdwaras – in Northern Ireland. But a fire in 2021 led to its closure.
Now, following renovations, the gurdwara is set to reopen in March with a “big celebration”.
“We are all excited to open it,” Sandhu, a trustee, said. “Everybody has been waiting eagerly for it because we are missing [it] so much … there is no other place we [can] go.”
Sandhu described how the gurdwara was “so important for the wellbeing of the community” and one of the few meeting points for the Sikh community in Northern Ireland.
She said: “We do everything as a community. It is for the communities and it’s done by the community.”
Sandhu, along with other members, was at the gurdwara when the fire broke out in November 2021. The cause of the incident was later deemed an accident.
She said the memory of the fire still provoked shivers.
“It happened so quickly and the smoke was just coming down within seconds … Thankfully, we got everybody out, with the grace of God, and the Guru Granth Sahib Ji [the Sikh holy scripture and eternal Guru] – we managed to get that safe and sound,” she said.
The gurdwara’s closure had a profound impact on Sandhu and the local community.
“How difficult it is for us not to have anywhere to do our prayers, to do the work together, to do the seva [selfless service] together. You know how important it is for us, as [the founder of Sikhism] Guru Nanak Dev Ji said, ‘Nam Japna [remembering the name of Waheguru], Wand Chakna [generosity and self-sacrifice], Kirat Karna [earning an honest living].’ These are the three mottos and we follow those.”
Before the gurdwara opened in 1995, Sandhu said members of the Sikh and south Asian community in Derry would meet monthly at the homes of friends and family to pray and provide langar (communal kitchen).
The trustee said it was important for the community, due to the absence of a place of worship, to come together to ensure younger members understood the Sikh religion.
She said: “Because we had no gurdwara there was no way to communicate with one another … I came in 1990 and at that time we were doing prayers once a month on a Sunday in different houses. We had about 18 families, so we used to take turns.”
The number of people visiting the gurdwara grew over the years, with individuals from different religious backgrounds finding comfort and peace in the place of worship.
She said: “We had people who started to come from the south of Ireland – from Letterkenny. There were so many people from India so they started to come to the gurdwara as well.
“Irrespective of your background or your culture, you’re very welcome in the gurdwara.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/feb/21/ad-break-james-corden-cadburys-sochi-paralympics-vw | Media | 2014-02-21T12:51:00.000Z | Jason Stone | Ad break: James Corden for Cadbury's, Sochi Paralympics, VW | The Royal Dutch Guide Dog Foundation: 'Buddy' (starts at 00:06) - Netherlands
This film promoting the work of a Dutch guide dog charity opens with a nightmarish scene from a war zone. When it turns out to be exactly that – a nightmare – it's a specially-trained dog who eases the military veteran from his unconscious recollections. If you didn't know about this aspect of guide dog work, it's truly eye-opening and will have dog lovers welling up in appreciation.
Agency: Selmore (Amsterdam)
Director: Rogier Hesp
Team Canada: 'What's There?" (Starts at 00:45) - Canada
While this doesn't quite hit the heights of Channel 4's Meet the Superhumans film promoting the broadcaster's coverage of the 2012 London Paralympics, it is nonetheless built on a similarly empowering idea. And it's clever to use a changing letterbox ratio to support the idea that our focus should be directed at what these remarkable athletes can do rather than concentrating on the limitations their disability places upon them.
Agency: BBDO Toronto
Director: David Quinn
Booking.com: 'Booking.yeah' (starts at 01:48) - UK
In this commercial for an online hotel booking service, a succession of bombastic vignettes shows people glorying in the magnificence of the hotels they've booked. Establishing a presence in a crowded marketplace is never straightforward but you sense that booking.com have adopted the right approach by ensuring their UK launch advert makes a splash.
Agency: W+K Amsterdam
Director: Traktor
VW Tiguan: 'Rope' (starts at 02:52) - UK
Vokswagen have turned a well-established theme of their advertising on its head in their latest commercial. Previously, the German manufacturer has promised that the price of one of their models will amaze us because it's so much less than we might think. Here they go in the opposite direction by using the tale of a frugal rock climber to remind us that cutting corners isn't always a good idea.
Agency: adam&eveDDB
Director: James Rouse
Green Flag: 'Wrong Fuel' (starts at 02:57) - UK
Operating in a sector dominated by two better-known rivals, Green Flag has decided to position itself as the fun alternative to the AA and the RAC. In this commercial, a man confronts the light-heartedly dreadful consequences of not making it to a dinner date after he puts the wrong fuel in his car - offering the opportunity for us to learn that Green Flag alone protects its members against this particular calamity.
Agency: CHI & Partners
Director: Leo Woodhead
Cadbury: 'James Corden' (starts at 04:00) - UK
James Corden starts his day on the wrong foot as people get in his way on the way to work. The news being piped through his earbuds is gloomy... but then Estelle's Free starts playing, and the world becomes a brighter place. This viral for Cadbury's has the cuddly star lip-syncing and dancing all the way through the track, spreading cheer as he goes. Fun, uplifting and timed to coincide with Corden's fifth stint as host of the Brit awards.
Agency: Gravity Road
Director: Ben Winston
Jason Stone is the editor of David Reviews | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/askjack/2020/feb/06/how-can-i-copy-1400-dvds-to-a-new-hard-drive | Technology | 2020-02-06T08:00:33.000Z | Jack Schofield | How can I copy 1,400 DVDs to a new hard drive? | Over the years, I have been backing up files to writeable DVDs. I probably have around 1,400 of them. Now I want to transfer their contents onto a single 10TB USB hard drive. Can you and your erudite readers recommend the quickest solution?
Is there a DVD recorder that can load 10 to 20 DVDs at a time and automatically copy them onto said 10TB hard drive? Also, are there any issues with the formats needed to ensure access to my data for another 10 years or more? Harry
I expect many of us still have lots of optical discs stashed away, because CDs and DVDs were the most economical way to store data for 20 to 30 years. Just cutting one disc a week could get you over the 1,000 mark, though I assume most of them would have been recopied and recycled before now.
The CD-R recordable format, storing 702MB, was launched in 1982, when my IBM PC/XT’s hard drive stored 10MB. We didn’t get DVD+RW discs storing 4.7GB each until about 1998, when 4GB was a reasonable size for a hard drive. A decade later, an Amazon receipt tells me I bought a 500GB Western Digital My Book for £62.20, so I was probably switching from optical to digital disks some time around 2008, if not before.
In theory, we might have switched from DVD to the new Blu-ray discs instead, because a Blu-ray can store either 25GB (single-layer) or 50GB (dual-layer) on archival discs. However, by the time Blu-ray writers became affordable, we already knew that external hard drives were going to win the storage wars. They were getting bigger and cheaper at a rapid pace. Today’s 8TB and larger drives confirm that we were right.
Money or time?
Robots do exist for automating copying optical discs to drives, but they’re not exactly cheap.
Schofield’s First Law of Computing says: Never put data into a program unless you can see exactly how to get it out. I didn’t think to mention storage, or the effort it might take to retrieve it. Technically, your data is accessible, but the sheer volume of DVDs means it’s not very practical. Moving it to a hard drive makes sense, but there’s no obvious way to do it. Buying specialised hardware would be expensive while doing it manually could take a long time.
Over the years, many commercial systems have sported multiple DVD drives, sometimes with hoppers or robot arms to feed in the discs. But most were aimed at large corporations or service providers, and very rarely at home users.
Multi-DVD systems usually targeted either the disc duplication or data sharing markets. Products aimed at the first enabled companies to create lots of identical DVDs at once. Products aimed at the second were file servers, somewhat like giant jukeboxes. They enabled companies to share data from large numbers of DVDs or BDs, or create “cold storage” backups that could last for 50 years. Facebook, for example, developed a server to store 10,000 Blu-ray discs, and demonstrated the system in a three-minute YouTube video.
MF Digital’s Ripstation 7000 Series CD/DVD/BD ripper should do what you want, but it costs $4,595, including the built-in PC. It uses a robot arm to pick up discs and drop them into a DVD tray. Products like this are aimed at radio and TV stations, publishing empires and educational institutions that needed – perhaps still need – to convert a lot of old discs into digital format. They are not expensive compared with the cost of humans doing it manually.
I’m not sure if MF Digital’s cheaper Music CD Ripping Station would do the job because you don’t need to rip your discs, just copy them to a hard drive. However, I suspect £1,699.56 is more than you want to pay for a one-off job.
That leaves you with one fast option: find a company that owns a Ripstation 7000 or similar device and offers file transfer as a service. I didn’t manage to find one – the search terms are tricky – and the price might still be prohibitive. I’d guess it would cost from 25p to £1 per disk, and 50p doesn’t sound too unreasonable. Even with a bulk deal, moving your data might cost £500. You’d also face the problem of shipping a very big box of discs at least one way.
If anyone knows of an affordable DVD-to-HDD copying service, please let us know in the comments, or email me at the address below.
Manual copying
Inserting DVD discs manually into a PC would take a massive amount of time. Photograph: YAY Media AS/Alamy
If there’s no quick fix that you can justify on price, you will have to copy every DVD by hand. You could tackle it as a holiday project, but it’s a tedious way to spend your free time. Alternatively, set yourself a target, such as copying five to 10 discs per day, every day. Even with some breaks, you should get it done in a year. If you don’t set a target, you might never finish the job.
Perhaps you could speed up the process by using two DVD drives, but it depends on the hardware you have available. A PC tower could take two internal DVD drives, but you would probably have to buy and install them.
Alternatively, you could buy one or two external DVD drives and plug them into USB ports, or into a powered USB hub. (Not every USB port provides enough power to run a DVD that doesn’t have its own power supply.) With two drives, you can load a DVD in one drive while the other drive is copying files.
After that, it would be a boon to have some software to detect discs and copy the files automatically. This avoids waiting for the file directory to appear, highlighting the files you want, and dragging them to your hard drive.
Perfect Automation has a utility that does the job well. You check the box for “Copy a lot of CD/DVDs automatically” and start feeding it discs. It copies each one to a new folder that it creates on your hard drive (CDDVD1, CDDVD2 etc), then pops out the DVD tray for the next disc. It’s a small (219K), free program and doesn’t need to be installed, so it’s worth a try.
I also tried Averk’s free AutoCopy 2, which is even smaller at 184KB. Averk had much the same problem as you – he wanted to move more than 100 CDs to a hard drive – and wrote a little utility to do it. Unlike Perfect Automation’s program, AutoCopy 2 includes a countdown timer. While its copying took longer than Perfect Automation on my system, I found that both were faster and more reliable than doing it manually.
Format issues
Even DVD-quality movies typically aren’t worth the effort in our streaming world, unless the’re family home videos. Photograph: BritBox/PA
The first task is to copy all the DVDs to a hard drive and, obviously, to a backup hard drive: you don’t want to do this job twice. You can worry about file formats later.
Over the long term, the best choices are usually the most common formats, especially if they are ratified international standards. Given the cost of storage nowadays, it’s not worth converting files to more efficient, space-saving formats, because this takes time and may involve some loss of quality. I’m leaving my jpg and png images, mp3 music, avi videos and other files in their original formats.
I’m converting some videos that were in less popular formats – such as wmv, mov, flv and rm – to mp4 with the H.264 codec, which is supported by processors (Intel Quick Sync Video) and most graphics cards. Programs such as Wonderfox’s HD Video Converter Factory make this very easy to do. You can also reprocess old videos to remove colour casts, make them look sharper, correct faulty aspect ratios and “upscale” their resolution, though the results from my old VHS-C video camera will never look good by today’s standards.
Even DVD-quality movies are rarely worth the effort, unless they are of holidays, weddings, or your kids’ birthday parties. DVDs have a resolution of 720 x 480 pixels (American NTSC) or 720 x 540 (UK PAL). Today, we live in a 1080p world (1920 x 1080 pixels) on the way to 4K (3840 x 2160). You can probably watch the same videos in much higher quality on Netflix, Amazon Prime, BritBox, YouTube or some other streaming service.
Have you got a question? Email it to [email protected] | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/21/navalny-russian-agent-novichok-death-plot | World news | 2020-12-21T13:59:10.000Z | Luke Harding | Navalny says Russian officer admits putting poison in underwear | One of the operatives allegedly involved in the attempt to kill Alexei Navalny has confessed to his role in the plot, and has revealed that the Russian opposition leader was apparently poisoned via his underwear.
Navalny phoned two members of the team from Russia’s FSB spy agency, which allegedly tried to murder him. One recognised him immediately and hung up. The second operative, Konstantin Kudryavtsev, was seemingly duped into thinking he was talking to an aide working for a top FSB general.
The call was made hours before the investigative website Bellingcat published details last week of the eight FSB officers who allegedly poisoned Navalny.
Navalny survived the attempt to kill him in August and is recuperating in Germany.
Posing as “Maxim Ustinov”, a fictional aide, Navalny asked Kudryavtsev for details of the operation and demanded to know what had gone wrong.
Unaware that he was being spoofed, Kudryavtsev apparently confirmed the FSB was behind the poisoning. He said his colleagues had applied novichok to the “inner seams” of the opposition leader’s boxer shorts, when Navalny was staying in the Siberian city of Tomsk.
A recording of the call between Navalny and Kudryavtsev.
A reconnaissance team had previously visited the Xander hotel and switched off the CCTV cameras, Kudryavtsev said. Once the all-clear had been given, operatives deployed the poison. It had been previously thought Navalny may have been exposed to the nerve agent through a cup of tea or a cocktail.
It now appears likely the novichok was administered in the form of a spray or an ointment, either via the hotel’s laundry service or by FSB officers sneaking into Navalny’s hotel room. Navalny said he could not recall if the boxer shorts were among a delivery he got back from the laundry on 18 August.
Two days later, early on 20 August, Navalny wore the poisoned pants. He then travelled to Tomsk airport and boarded a flight to Moscow. Soon after takeoff he fell violently ill and collapsed. The plane made an emergency landing in Omsk and Navalny was taken to hospital and put on a ventilator.
Asked why he survived, Navalny was told it was probably because his plane had made an emergency landing. If he had continued to Moscow – a journey of another three hours or so – he would probably have died, Kudryavtsev said. There were “lots of unknowns and nuances”, he added.
“My understanding is they calculated everything with a margin,” he said, suggesting his superiors had got the poison dose right.
Kudryavtsev said he was sent five days later to Omsk to retrieve and sanitise Navalny’s clothes, including his underwear, and to remove all traces of novichok. On the call he told Navalny that the cleanup operation had been done effectively.
Navalny has demanded the return of his clothes from Russia. In September he complained that the FSB had destroyed possible evidence of its crime. He was airlifted from Russia to Berlin “completely naked”, he said.
“Considering novichok was found on my body, and that infection through contact is very likely, my clothes are a very important piece of evidence,” he said. “I demand that my clothes be carefully packed in a plastic bag and returned to me.”
After his collapse, colleagues from Navalny’s anti-corruption foundation bagged up items from his hotel room. Video taken at the Xander hotel shows them collecting empty water bottles, gingerly handling them using plastic gloves. These were sent to Germany for analysis.
Kudryavtsev told Navalny there were no traces of novichok on the bottles. According to Bellingcat, Kudryavtsev travelled to Omsk twice in the aftermath of the poisoning: once on 25 August and a second time on 2 October 2020. Phone records show he was in regular contact with Col Stanislav Makshakov, the FSB officer who allegedly commanded the operation.
European laboratories confirmed Navalny was poisoned with novichok, the nerve agent used in Salisbury against Sergei and Yulia Skripal. The apparent use of clothing as a delivery mechanism may explain why it took several hours for the poison to take effect – and why Navalny ultimately survived.
Last week Bellingcat identified three FSB operatives from a clandestine unit who travelled alongside Navalny to the Siberian city of Novosibirsk. They included two medical doctors – Alexey Alexandrov and Ivan Osipov – and Vladimir Panyaev, whose role appears to have been reconnaissance. The trio followed Navalny to Tomsk.
According to Bellingcat, citing flight and telecoms data, at least five other FSB operatives were involved. Its latest report mentions two further names, including a local chief in the FSB’s department who was photographed in the Omsk hospital where Navalny was treated.
The officer, Mikhail Evdokimov, works for a unit within the FSB’s Second Service, in charge of counter-terrorism and keeping constitutional order, Bellingcat reported. Western security officials have linked the Second Service to the Navalny plot. Last month the UK and EU sanctioned the FSB’s director Alexander Bortnikov.
On Friday, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, acknowledged the FSB had tailed Navalny on multiple trips but said this was necessary since he was working for US intelligence – a claim Navalny denies. Putin ran the FSB before he became president.
Moscow has said it is yet to see evidence of a crime and declined to open an investigation. It suggests Navalny was poisoned in Germany, or while onboard the medical evacuation plane that took him in a coma to Berlin.
Officially, Russia has destroyed its chemical weapons. Last week, however, Bellingcat identified three state-run institutes that appear to be behind a covert nerve agent programme. All communicated closely with GRU operatives linked to the Salisbury plot.
One appears to have developed novel “nano-encapsulation techniques”. This “relatively new technology could permit a lethal toxin to be ‘packaged’ within a veneer of another substance, allowing both obfuscation and delayed onset of the poison,” Bellingcat reported. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/25/wellcome-trust-fossil-fuel-divestment-not-way-reduce-carbon-emissions | Opinion | 2015-03-25T11:28:55.000Z | Jeremy Farrar | Fossil-fuel divestment is not the way to reduce carbon emissions | Jeremy Farrar | For two decades I lived in Vietnam, leading research into the health challenges affecting low and middle-income countries. It is clear from my personal and professional experience that environmental change, including climate change, is among the most significant of these: rising temperatures, altered weather patterns, urbanisation and habitat loss have serious implications for nutrition, disasters and diseases such as dengue, malaria and ebola.
Wellcome Trust rejects Guardian's calls to divest from fossil fuels
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When I became director of the Wellcome Trust 18 months ago, I had no need to convince colleagues that this issue deserved our attention. In 2010 the trust made understanding the connections between environment, nutrition and health one of its five key challenges and has since spent more than £32m on research that explicitly addresses these questions and still more in areas including infectious disease and population health that are influenced by a warmer world. We are developing this emerging discipline – where we must often stimulate excellent research before we can fund it – and we are increasing our support.
The trust thus has considerable common ground with the Guardian’s fossil fuels campaign. We agree that substantially reducing carbon emissions is necessary if we are to restrict global warming to 2C. We agree that fossil fuel producers have responsibilities to society that could often be better fulfilled. This is especially important to us because of our long-term approach to making investments. We agree that investors should consider environmental issues and journalists have every right to challenge us.
We do not agree, however, that the strongest contribution the trust can make to a decarbonised economy is a commitment to avoid investing in a list of 200 fossil-fuel companies, compiled according to the size of their reserves rather than the position they take on climate issues. Our view is that it is more constructive and effective to take a case-by-case approach to investments in the energy sector. We consider individual companies on their merits, including the extent to which they meet their environmental responsibilities, when we decide whether or not to invest or stay invested. All companies engaged in fossil-fuel extraction are not equal.
We combine this approach with active engagement with the companies in which we invest. We use our access to boards to encourage them to adopt more transparent and sustainable policies that support transition towards a low-carbon economy. And we adopt the same position with companies that consume fossil fuels as we do with the companies that supply them. Carbon emissions are driven by both supply and demand: it makes no sense to devote attention purely to one side of this equation.
What is fossil fuel divestment?
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This maximises our influence as investors. We understand the attraction of the grand gesture for which the Guardian is calling, but such a gesture can be made only once. By maintaining our positions, we meet boards again and again, supporting their best environmental initiatives and challenging their worst. We would not be able to have the frank discussions we require if we published details, but we are confident that our engagement has impact. Were we to sell our holdings, it is unlikely that the buyers would exert the same influence. But when we are not satisfied that a company is engaging with our concerns, we are perfectly prepared to sell.
This strategy recognises the unavoidable fact that fossil fuels are essential to the economy, life and health, and will remain so for decades under any conceivable scenario. This is especially true in low and middle income countries, where growth is the best guarantor of better health. What is critical is to move away from the most carbon-intense fossil fuels towards those with lighter carbon footprints, and towards renewables and nuclear energy. Some fossil fuel companies – though by no means all of them – are playing important roles in this transition, for example by investing heavily in natural gas and carbon capture and storage. Some also champion carbon pricing, and already use carbon prices internally in assessing investment projects.
We back this policy with transparency. The Guardian has been able to name the Wellcome Trust’s most significant holdings because, unusually, we declare these in our annual report. Divestment campaigners should also be aware that our approach has had the same effect as some of the divestment initiatives they have most praised.
Stanford University pledged not to make direct investments in companies whose principal business is coal for energy (rather than steel). We have had no such investments for many years. The Rockefeller Brothers Fund pledged to reduce its investments in coal and tar sands to less than 1% of its portfolio. Again, our investments meet this benchmark. We also invest in alternative energy technologies, from novel and sustainable biofuels to nuclear fusion. This is a risky sector for any investor, but we continue to make these investments.
Last week, the Guardian’s editor was asked in a webchat whether divestment and shareholder engagement are complementary. He replied that “both look good for us” but that engaging to support decarbonisation is more complicated to explain, and thus hard to build a campaign around. Such complexity may indeed be tough as a campaign, but we embrace it as an investor. Our responsibility is not to heed the catchiest slogan, but to make the most difference. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/mar/04/david-crosby-sells-music-catalogue-citing-covid-restrictions-on-touring | Music | 2021-03-04T10:41:17.000Z | Laura Snapes | David Crosby sells music catalogue, citing Covid restrictions on touring | David Crosby has sold the recorded music and publishing rights to his entire music catalogue – including the works of the Byrds, Crosby & Nash, Crosby Stills and Nash, and Crosby Stills Nash and Young – citing the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Given our current inability to work live, this deal is a blessing for me and my family and I do believe these are the best people to do it with,” he said in a press release.
In December, Crosby said in response to a wave of sales of catalogues belonging to high-profile artists – among them Bob Dylan and Lindsey Buckingham – that he planned to sell his recording and publishing rights.
“I can’t work … and streaming stole my money,” he tweeted on 7 December, when news emerged of the Dylan deal. In response to a fan saying they didn’t want to hear canonical artists’ works on advertisements once they no longer controlled the rights, Crosby said: “If we could get paid for records and play live we would not be doing it. None of us.”
Crosby sold his music to music executive Irving Azoff’s Iconic Artists Group (IAG) for an undisclosed sum. “I’ve known David as a friend and have admired him as a great artist since our earliest days at Geffen Roberts Management shortly after I moved to Los Angeles,” said Azoff.
“This is an incredible time to be involved with David and his tremendous catalogue of music. He’s truly one of music’s most prolific songwriters and artists and I’m honoured he has made Iconic the steward of his timeless musical legacy.”
‘Record companies have me on a dartboard’: the man making millions buying classic hits
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These sales come amid a gold rush of investors buying up artists’ musical rights. Dylan’s sale of his complete song catalogue to Universal Music in December was reportedly worth more than $300m (£225m). Universal called it “the most significant music publishing agreement this century and one of the most important of all time”.
Crosby’s former bandmate Neil Young sold 50% of his entire song catalogue to Merck Mercuriadis’s Hipgnosis fund in January. Last month, IAG bought a controlling stake in the music catalogue of the Beach Boys, including their sound recordings, brand, select compositions and memorabilia, also for an undisclosed sum. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2024/apr/01/leicester-fined-for-breaching-salary-cap-rules-in-covid-season | Sport | 2024-04-01T17:52:57.000Z | Gerard Meagher | Leicester Tigers fined for breaching salary cap in 2019-20 season | Leicester Tigers have been fined almost £50,000 for contravening salary cap regulations four seasons ago – their second sanction in just over two years – with the chief executive, Andrea Pinchen, again blaming the previous management.
Premiership Rugby identified additional payments of £47,136.91 for the 2019-20 Covid-interrupted season, which were not included in Leicester’s salary cap certification that year.
“In accordance with the regulations, for this level of additional overrun, the club is required to pay £1 for every £1 overspend, being £47,136.91,” Premiership Rugby said in a statement.
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In March 2022, Leicester were fined £309,000 but escaped a points deduction after they were deemed to have failed to comply with salary cap regulations for five consecutive seasons. It was by some distance the second largest salary cap fine – behind Saracens, who were hit with a fine of more than £5m in 2020.
At the time PRL’s investigation found that Leicester entered into an arrangement with a third party who made payments to the image rights companies of Leicester players. Those payments, made over the four seasons from 2016-17 to 2019-20, should have been disclosed within the salary cap but were not.
Confirming that Leicester have already paid the new fine, Pinchen said on Monday in a statement: “While disappointed to again have historic salary cap spending relating to 2019-20 season result in this overrun tax, as was the case in March 2022, we accept the findings of Premiership Rugby.
“As was the case in March 2022, this in no way relates to any of the most recent four seasons and we are grateful to Premiership Rugby for the cooperative approach in bringing this matter to a close.
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“We have accepted and paid the overrun tax and, as stated in March 2022, the current club management – who inherited this issue – have a great respect for the Salary Cap regulations and remain committed to ensuring Leicester Tigers is compliant every season.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/09/isis-document-leak-reportedly-reveals-identities-syria-22000-fighters | World news | 2016-03-09T23:50:20.000Z | Ewen MacAskill | Isis document leak reportedly reveals identities of 22,000 recruits | More than a dozen Britons and a handful of Americans are among Islamic State fighters reportedly named in a cache of 22,000 documents obtained by German intelligence.
Britons identified in the documents so far had previously been revealed to the public and are dead, killed in US-led strikes, or their whereabouts unknown. Sixteen Britons are thought to be on the list, among them Junaid Hussain and Reyaad Khan.
The documents, thought to be from a border crossing into Syria, are questionnaires of each would-be recruit. There are 23 questions, including names, date and place of birth, hometown, telephone number, education and blood type.
Head of Isis chemical weapons program captured by US in Iraq last month
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Germany’s interior minister, Thomas de Maizière, confirmed the documents were real and they would facilitate “speedier, clearer investigations and stricter prison sentences” for those returning from Syria and Iraq. De Maizière said the materials help clarify “the underlying structures of this terrorist organisation”.
A spokesperson for the BKA, the German federal police, confirmed that the agency was in possession of the cache of documents, adding that experts determined their authenticity. German officials did not specify how the agency had got the documents, nor how many names had been found within them.
German media reported that the questionnaire asked would-be Isis recruits about any previous experience they had in jihad and whether they were prepared to be suicide bombers.
The existence of the documents was revealed by the Munich-based Süddeutsche Zeitung paper and German broadcasters WDR and NDR on Monday evening. Zaman al-Wasl, a pro-opposition Syrian news website, published examples of the questionnaires on Tuesday.
Sky News claimed on Tuesday that it too has obtained copies of what appeared to be the same documents, containing about 22,000 names. It said the they were passed on a memory stick stolen from Isis internal security police by a former Free Syrian Army convert who later became disillusioned with Isis.
Sky News claimed it has obtained copies of the same ISIS documents Photograph: Sky News
Isis ‘war minister’ targeted in Syria had been in Georgian army
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The documents held by the German authorities seem to have been collected at the end of 2013. Even the lowest estimate of the numbers that crossed the border in that period indicates the sheer scale of volunteers to Isis. The documents will be useful to intelligence agencies in confirming names and details of people suspected of joining Isis. However, it was reported that there are names not previously known to the intelligence services.
Zaman al-Wasl reported that personal details of 1,736 fighters from 40 countries had been revealed – a quarter were Saudis and the rest predominantly Tunisian, Moroccan and Egyptian.
The documents, written in Arabic and stamped with logos used by Isis, allegedly contain details of 16 British fighters, four from the US and six from Canada, as well as recruits from France and Germany.
Intelligence agencies have estimated that about 700 Britons have joined Isis.
Isis, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, is a militant group so hardline that it was disavowed by al-Qaida. Years of civil war in Syria – and a manifesto that disavows notions of statehood and national boundaries – have helped it to claim hundreds of square miles of territory, and now it is gaining a foothold in Iraq, explains the Guardian’s assistant foreign editor, Phoebe Greenwood Guardian | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/jan/26/the-stranger-across-from-me-was-my-sister-how-one-adoptee-uncovered-a-tragic-past | Global development | 2024-01-26T06:00:23.000Z | Rosie Swash | The stranger across from me was my sister: how one adoptee uncovered a tragic past | It was not long into a research trip to Bangladesh, on behalf of an organisation seeking to reunite children adopted abroad with their birth relatives, when Kana Verheul found herself huddled in a cafe toilet, comparing birthmarks with a stranger.
That trip seven years ago was one of many that Verheul, 47, had taken to the country of her birth since she was 16 years old, travelling back to Bangladesh for the first time as part of a “roots trip” organised by the Dutch government for children such as her, an orphan adopted to the Netherlands as a baby.
But this trip was different. After decades of trying in vain to find her siblings, Verheul joined forces with other people in her situation to set up an organisation called the Shapla Community, creating a network of hundreds of Bangladeshi adoptees raised in the Netherlands. If she could not find her own family, she could at least help others find theirs.
From left: Kana Verheul, Asad van Gelderen and Suma de Heij. All three were adopted from Bangladesh and are now involved with the Shapla Community. Photograph: Noor Alam/The Guardian
Verheul was among those from Shapla who spent hours interviewing Bangladeshis with extraordinary stories about their children, many of whom claim they were taken for adoption abroad without their consent. It was one of these interviews that led her to the cafe meeting with a woman from the area where she was born.
Verheul tried to see if there was any family resemblance with the woman, but could not see any. “Some details matched but some did not,” she says. “Her sister was called Nasima. I truly believed that Kana was my real Bangladeshi name because it was in my birth papers. I couldn’t comprehend that I may be Nasima. Then I asked them the name of the village I have in my Bangladeshi passport, and she said, ‘Yes, that’s where we lived before.’”
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Verheul was still not convinced, so she asked if there were any birthmarks. “The woman said her mother would often tell bedtime stories about the sister who was lost, that they both had the same birthmark on their leg. This was a shock because I have one on my knee.”
In disbelief, the women headed to the toilets and revealed their almost identical birthmarks. They hugged and cried, and soon afterwards, Verheul says, “I finally saw the resemblances between us – in her hands, her mannerisms. I have really funny feet, and she has the same funny feet,” she laughs. “It felt undeniable, but I couldn’t accept it fully until the result of the DNA test came in.”
Verheul was adopted from Bangladesh and grew up in the Netherlands. Photograph: Noor Alam/The Guardian
Verheul returned to the Netherlands and anxiously awaited the results. Two weeks after they met, a DNA test confirmed they were sisters. “I remember like it was yesterday. I was driving on the highway when the doctor called. I could finally accept that this was my sister. Immediately I got a huge headache. I had to stop next to the road. I started crying. From all over, from my ears, from my toes, from deep inside me. I cried for an hour.”
Amid the joy of finding the woman she had spent decades trying to find, her sister, Taslima, was able to explain to Verheul how she came to be adopted abroad as a baby. The story she shared horrified Verheul, but it also confirmed suspicions that she had had for years.
I
n February 2021, the Dutch government temporarily suspended the adoption of children from abroad to the Netherlands after a lengthy investigation found children from Bangladesh, Colombia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Brazil had been stolen or bought from their birth parents. In the case of Bangladesh, it was the culmination of many years of claims that children had wrongly been adopted between 1973 and 1981. Police in Bangladesh launched an investigation into the adoptions after the Guardian reported on the allegations last year.
Through the 2010s, as social networking grew, Bangladeshi adoptees from the Netherlands began seeking each other out online. A forum was established and the adoptees began exchanging information. “It can feel incredibly lonely, as an adoptee. But now we had each other. There is strength in numbers and our numbers were growing,” says Verheul.
Nasima Begum holds a picture of her sister, who was adopted abroad as a child without her mother’s consent. The family were later reunited with the help of Shapla. Photograph: Noor Alam/The Guardian
Once those on the forum connected, Verheul says a number of adoptees realised that they had siblings within the group. “It proved that sibling separation was possible, despite adoption agencies saying it was not allowed, and many adoptees began wondering whether they too had a brother or sister in the Netherlands.”
The group realised the problem was bigger than they imagined and in 2017, Shapla was officially founded, to help adoptees find their relatives in Bangladesh. The organisation began recruiting fieldworkers in both countries – volunteers who would interview relatives, collect data and identify leads that could eventually result in a reunion.
They set up a DNA database and started to collate everyone’s adoption documents. “That’s when we saw certain patterns – the adoption storylines were all the same. The mother had died of poor health, father died in an accident, and grandmother or aunt brought the baby to a home.” Some information was identical, says Verheul, like “a copy-and-paste job”.
Within months, Shapla was able to reunite mothers with their children, and siblings found each other in Bangladesh and within the Netherlands. They were quickly able to confirm what many suspected – that many birth documents and adoption papers had probably been fabricated. One adoptee discovered she had an identical twin who arrived in the Netherlands at the same time as her, but the pair were split up and adopted into two different families.
V
erheul, a mother of two, clearly adores her “wish parents”, the term she uses to describe couples who adopt. But there are small clues dotted around the home she shares with her family, about half an hour from Amsterdam, that the happy upbringing she had was not the end of her story. A large blackboard hangs in the kitchen, with details written in chalk of an upcoming search mission. Next to a fruit bowl lies a folder marked “Bangladesh files”.
Documents say my father was killed in a road accident and that my mother died of illness. This was completely untrue
“You can see here that it says my father was killed in a road accident and that my mother died of illness soon after,” says Verheul. “This was completely untrue.”
Taslima told Verheul their mother had never intended to give her away. She explained that her father had three wives, and one of them had convinced him to take Nasima to a daycare home nearby when her mother was away because she had become ill and needed medical care. When Verheul’s mother came back and discovered what had happened, it was too late. Nasima had already gone from the children’s home. She had been adopted by a couple in the Netherlands who believed she was an orphan. “My mother divorced my father because of this,” says Verheul.
The mystery of Bangladesh’s missing children – part one
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For decades, Verheul had searched for relatives in Bangladesh. The joy of finding her sister is tempered by the fury and deep sadness she feels about her past. “My father passed away in 2012, my mother in 2014,” she says. “But they were still alive when I was searching for my family in Tongi. At one point, I had even stood on the doorstep of my father’s home. That still hurts.”
‘I lost my family and my real identity’: Kana Verheul (left) with her family in Bangladesh Photograph: Courtesy of Kana Verheul
“As an adoptee you often hear, ‘You’re lucky, now you have a good life.’ But you cannot really compare the two,” says Kana. “In one sense I feel lucky that I have the best of both worlds. But nothing makes up for the loss you had to endure. Because I lost my family and my real identity.”
Shapla and a network of other adoptee groups in the Netherlands have joined forces and are campaigning to put an end to intercountry adoption altogether. Shapla now comprises 40 volunteers and they have reunited 40 adoptees with their relatives. The group believes that instead of international adoption, the focus should be on supporting vulnerable families, strengthening youth care systems, and improving quality of care in countries of origin so children can be cared for in familiar surroundings. Their argument is in line with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which recognises the right of children to grow up in their own culture, befitting their own identity.
Verheul has since met her other siblings – all half-brothers and sisters – and recently bought a plot of land in the village named in her passport. “I want to build a house there, for my sister to live in if she wishes. I would like to spend time there too.”
This article was amended on 29 January 2024 to give the correct age for Kana Verheul (she is 47, not 49) and to include details of how many people work for and cases were solved by the Shapla Community. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/apr/02/the-five-sorrowful-mysteries-of-andy-africa-by-stephen-buoro-review-astute-story-of-self-discovery | Books | 2023-04-02T14:00:22.000Z | Lucy Popescu | The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa by Stephen Buoro review – astute story of self-discovery | There has been a spate of excellent novels about Nigeria, its past and present predicaments. Set in the predominantly Muslim town of Kontagora, Stephen Buoro’s debut is overstuffed with themes, from corruption and religious intolerance to identity and teenage desire, but there’s much to admire in this imaginative coming-of-age tale.
Fifteen-year-old Andrew Aziza, nicknamed Andy Africa, is an altar boy in the neighbourhood church. He lives with his single-parent photographer mother, who refuses to reveal the identity of his father. Skilled in maths and poetry, Andy ponders various theorems and “HXVX” – his mathematical shorthand for “the curse of Africa”. His teacher dismisses it as a construct for “everything negative that has befallen Africa: slavery, colonialism, dictatorship, kleptocracy, xenocentrism” and claims that by “conniving with HXVX, we’ve made Africa the heart of darkness… for not believing in her”.
When an anti-Christian protest spirals into bloodshed, Andy’s life is irretrievably altered
Seduced by Hollywood, Andy prefers blonds. He yearns for a white girlfriend and the lifestyle of an American or European. At the start of the novel he looks unlikely to achieve his ambitions until he meets Eileen, the niece of Father McMahon, at a welcome party. When an anti-Christian protest spirals into bloodshed, Andy’s life is irretrievably altered.
Religion – the title refers to the meditations on the five stages of Christ’s suffering – maths and poetry shape Andy’s identity. I’d have liked more about his friends: Slim is queer and lives in fear of being outed. Morocca is a rapper and father of a two-year-old daughter. Inevitably, the western culture they are fed reels them in. They know the dangers of being caught in lawless Libya – when a traumatised local, Oga Oliver, returns from there, he repeats only one word: “Water!” But their classmate Okey makes it across the Sahara and into Spain. His joyful messages and Nigeria’s volatile political climate persuade them to follow him.
Buoro’s plot occasionally meanders, but his descriptions of protests and communal violence are astute, and he sensitively conveys what pushes his fellow countrymen to risk everything to reach Europe.
The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa by Stephen Buoro is published by Bloomsbury (£16.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/sep/03/he-took-every-penny-the-women-left-with-a-debt-mountain-by-coercive-partners | Society | 2023-09-03T07:00:06.000Z | Yvonne Roberts | ‘He took every penny’: the women left with a debt mountain by coercive partners | “I
’ve got nothing. I’ve worked for 26 years and the only asset I have is my pension. I have no savings, no home and my credit rating is destroyed because of the credit cards and loans he took out in my name. Everything I thought we owned, we didn’t.”
Two years ago, Ruth Dodsworth, a television journalist and weather presenter, gave a number of interviews disclosing that she had been a victim of domestic abuse. For almost a decade, her now ex-husband Jonathan Wignall phoned her up to 150 times a day, tracked her movements and was physically abusive.
In 2021, Wignall was sentenced to three years in prison for stalking and coercive or controlling behaviour. He served 18 months. Dodsworth claims he continues to pursue her for half her pension.
It’s only now, however, that she is speaking out about the economic abuse that she also experienced, to help others. She says she failed to understand the implications of what was happening to her at the time.
She told the Observer: “I’ve a degree, yet I didn’t have my own bank account. You think, ‘How can that have happened?’
“He took every penny of my salary. If I asked for money for lunch at work, he would give me exactly £3 for a Tesco meal deal. Work colleagues asked me for lunch and I’d have to make excuses, so the isolation increased. I never saw mail or bills.
“I didn’t realise economic abuse was part of coercive control. I certainly didn’t realise it would have ramifications for the rest of my life. ”
Dodsworth is one of a number of women whose experiences feature in an important report, Seen Yet Sidelined, published on Monday by the charity Surviving Economic Abuse (SEA). The report analyses 810 successful prosecutions of the offence of coercive or controlling behaviour that have been reported in the media over the eight years since it became a criminal offence in 2015 in England and Wales.
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Even in 2015, financial abuse – defined by SEA as control of money and finances – and economic abuse – described as control of the resources that money can buy, such as food, clothes and mobile phones, as well as the sabotaging of career prospects – was not explicitly recognised in law as part of coercive or controlling behaviour. Largely as a result of SEA’s campaigning, that was rectified in the Domestic Abuse Act 2021.
In Seen but Sidelined, two-thirds of the 810 cases reference economic abuse and half also feature physical abuse. While the report focuses only on cases published in the press, it gives an indication of how police, agencies and the courts are responding – or not – to the offence. Strikingly, in only 2% of the cases did survivors receive any compensation for their losses. Yet in seven of the cases the total debts amounted to £174,000.
“Economic abuse used to go undocumented and unpunished,” said Nicola Sharp-Jeffs, the founder and chief executive of SEA.
“It is better recognised now, but awareness by victim-survivors themselves is poor while police appear to rank economic abuse at the bottom when assessing risk. Yet in two of the cases in the report, the perpetrator was found guilty of manslaughter – a context of such control that the victim felt she had no choice but to take her own life.”
In the cases in the report, three-quarters of those convicted received a custodial sentence. Although the offence carries a sentence up to five years, the mean length of time spent in prison was only 23 months. If additional offences were also proved (for example, stalking or criminal damage), the average length of sentence was 47 months. Three life sentences were given.
The conclusion that the report draws is that coercive or controlling behaviour in England and Wales is viewed less seriously than other domestic abuse offences and may be downgraded further by plea bargaining. The wording of the law also means that coercive or controlling behaviour is seen as a standalone crime, instead of being part of an overarching offence in which sexual, physical, economic and psychological abuse play constituent parts, as it is in the Scottish system.
Natalie Curtis: ‘My husband had made me financially destitute. I couldn’t even afford the diesel to get to work.’ Photograph: Sophia Evans/The Observer
In Scotland, because it is seen as a gendered crime, it does not include family members as the England and Wales legislation does, and carries a prison sentence of up to 14 years.
“Survivors tell us that coercive or controlling behaviour is the most dangerous aspect of their abuse,” said Dr Cassandra Wiener, author of Coercive Control and the Criminal Law. “Yet the five-year [prison sentence] cap reinforces the message that there is a hierarchy of harm, with physical abuse at the top and coercive or controlling behaviour at the bottom.”
In one case in the SEA report, the perpetrator caused the victim to build up £50,000 in debts; in another, the perpetrator gave his partner a weekly allowance of £15 in 2p pieces. “He financially rinsed me,” one victim said.
How can that happen? “Coercive behaviour is a course of conduct, not a single event such as a physical assault,” Wiener said. “A victim is subject to the arbitrary control of the perpetrator, deprived of all rights and stripped of her autonomy. The victim is terrorised by a fear of what might happen to herself and her children if she fails to comply to rules that often change constantly. It’s as if she’s in a permanent state of siege.”
Irya (not her real name) had risen to a senior position during nearly two decades in global banking when she married her husband in 2016. A month before, he had attacked her. “It was a big wedding,” she said. “I couldn’t call it off.”
Over the next two years, she was hospitalised several times, suffering brain damage. In 2019, her husband was convicted of coercive or controlling behaviour. He was sentenced to two and a half years and was released after six months.
“That’s what £750,000 worth of lawyers buys you,” Irya said. “When I was with him I had to pay for everything in the house. He wouldn’t allow me hot showers. Physical abuse was always the response if I objected. It only stopped in 2018 when I thought he was going to kill me. The implications of my economic abuse, that have unfolded since, I couldn’t have foreseen.”
Five years on, Irya is homeless, unemployed and, because of markers on her credit rating, cannot get a job in banking, a mortgage, a mobile phone contract or a car lease – all impediments to her new business. “I was trapped. He wouldn’t agree to selling the house, the building society wouldn’t let me rent without his permission. He stopped paying his half of the mortgage. I had to pay £20,000 each time a barrister went to court to push for an order of sale on the house. I had to sell my jewellery and my personal possessions. I was sleeping in my car. I explained to my building society but it constantly harassed me.
Campaigner Nicola Sharp-Jeffs says the police do not treat economic aspects of abuse with sufficient seriousness. Photograph: Andrew F Spicer
“Protocols exist. It should have treated me as a ‘vulnerable customer’ but to this day it has failed to recognise my situation. Its harassment has turned me into a nervous wreck. It’s almost as bad as the original abuse.”
Protocols do exist, as does legislation that would permit victims to be compensated, and the SEA website lists the steps a woman experiencing the aftermath of economic abuse can take. Allied Irish Bank, for example, provides personal loans to those who have a poor credit score as a result of to domestic abuse.
Natalie Curtis, a health and safety manager, spent six years with her now ex-husband. He insisted that all loans, bills and credit cards be in her name because he was self-employed. These included a £20,000 loan which he immediately transferred to his own account and a £60,000 BMW car bought on credit. He was physically abusive, destroyed her property and called her dozens of times a day. In 2018, he was sentenced to three years for coercive or controlling behaviour, one of the first convictions under the new offence.
“He had made me financially destitute. I couldn’t even afford the diesel to get to work. I had kept a diary and recorded his behaviour,” Curtis said. “I did it for my own sanity because he kept telling me I was mentally ill and ‘over the top’, but it helped in his prosecution.”
Curtis claims that the perpetrator left her with £80,000 worth of debt. Supported by SEA, she utilised the 2021 Financial Abuse Code of Practice, a banking industry initiative, and worked with the specialist domestic abuse team at Lloyds Bank so that the majority of loans that her ex-husband had taken out in her name were eventually returned to her account. “It took a long time but it was life-changing for me. Five years on, I’m debt-free, but I was hoping to buy a house and I discovered there was a county court judgment against me for a parking fine. He racked up thousands of pounds’ worth of fines.”
Curtis is now a domestic abuse campaigner.
The Observer view on domestic abuse: thousands of women in England and Wales are being refused refuge
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Among the many recommendations the SEA report makes is to follow the Canadian example and establish restitution orders. “They can address a victim-survivor’s credit history or rating,” Sharp-Jeffs said. “It is vital to find a solution so that a woman’s own creditworthiness is reflected and not the abuse she experienced.”
SEA is also lobbying for the victims and prisoners bill currently going through parliament to place a duty on public bodies to provide economic advocacy services as part of victim support. SEA also wants to see mandatory training on economic abuse for police and criminal justice agencies.
“I found bags and bags of unopened letters and bills,” Dodsworth said. “But as far as the police were concerned, the economic abuse was a sideline, a minor interest.”
Other SEA recommendations include a government fund to recompense survivors for debts until the perpetrator can foot the bill; an audit of an offender’s assets (rarely implemented in the 810 cases in the report); and better government collaboration with financial institutions so evidence can be more easily gathered. SEA believes that awareness of economic abuse should be taught in schools and research conducted into how factors such as religion, disability and honour-based violence relate to economic abuse cases.
Dodsworth, who has since remarried, said: “If I hadn’t left when I did, he would have killed me on that night or the next. I’m in a far happier place now, but I have nothing to leave my children. For someone who has worked all her life, that’s a bitter pill to swallow.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/dec/01/jill-uncredited-worlds-most-prolific-extra | Film | 2023-12-01T14:00:18.000Z | Ellen E Jones | ‘I was told not to make eye contact with Tom Cruise’: meet the world’s most prolific film extra | Jill Goldston has only recently moved into this airy flat, on the site of the old Teddington television studios in south-west London, but there are already two framed items on prominent display. One is her newly awarded Guinness World Records certificate for “The most appearances by an extra/background actress”. The other is the poster for Jill, Uncredited, the strangely moving documentary short that has brought her into focus at last. “I’ve had an amazing career,” Jill says, as she sits down at the dining room table, to tell her film industry fable over a cup of tea. “Self-indulgent, really – I was getting paid to have fun and I always found the people fascinating.”
Now a vivacious 80-year-old, Goldston was born nearby in 1943, within people-watching distance of Twickenham Studios, the birthplace of British classics such as The Italian Job. She discovered her love of dance aged three, and at 15 ran away from home to join the Butlin’s revue company. “Not because I didn’t like my parents, who I liked very much indeed, but because it was an adventure. So I left them a note and went.” It was at Butlin’s that Jill met her husband, Geoff, with whom she’s recently celebrated a 60th wedding anniversary, although when I congratulate her, Jill says airily, “I think it shows a lack of imagination, actually.” If so, she’s more than compensated for that lack in other areas.
Credit where it’s due … Jill Goldston today. Photograph: Hannah Burton
It was from the security of this happily uneventful relationship, for instance, that Jill was able to navigate the excitement of 1960s Soho. “I was [a dancer] at Murray’s with Mandy Rice-Davies when the Profumo affair was going on.” This was the glamorous, star-studded nightspot where a society osteopath met a showgirl, setting in motion events that would eventually help spell the end for Harold Macmillan’s government. “Some of the girls … they had parties at Cliveden [country house] every weekend, but they said, ‘It’s not really for you, Jill.’”
Sixty-year-old scandals aside, these formative experiences taught Goldston two invaluable lessons for a background artist: first, how to keep one’s cool in the presence of movie stars; and second, that it is much more pleasant to spend time in the refracted glow of the limelight than to be directly in its glare. “I had no wish to become famous. I saw people wanting to become famous … It’s not great.” At the suggestion of one of her colleagues from Murray’s, Goldston tried extra work and it suited her. “They warned me: ‘You might get eaten alive, it’s very competitive’. But I found it to be a breeze.”
While filming the 1969 war comedy The Virgin Soldiers she struck up such a good rapport with a fellow extra that he remembered her when they met again, over a decade later, on the set of 1982 TV movie Baal. By this time that extra, David Bowie, had attained top billing. “He came over and said, ‘Weren’t you in Virgin Soldiers?’ We had supper together in the canteen and talked about mundane things.”
Other stars who met with Jill’s approval included ex-Bond Timothy Dalton: “He didn’t get on with his co-star Joanne Whalley, so I had to do the love scenes with him. I used to pray, ‘Please, God, don’t let my hands sweat when he holds them!’” And Michael Caine: “He put his jacket over my head to stop me getting wet in the rain. A true gentleman.” She liked Warren Beatty too, though she says he somehow found the time to proposition her for a three-way with him and Jack Nicholson while producing, directing and also starring in the 1981 film Reds. “It might have ended more than friends. But not with Jack Nicholson as well! I said: ‘Sorry, no. I’m happily married!’”
Films would be boring without extras. You’d get on a tube train and no one else would be on it!
As Jill grew busier, her husband Geoff, an accountant by training, noted down her gigs in date order, up to that record-breaking 1,951st appearance. This is the list she refers to now to jog her memory on specifics, such as how many Carry On films she worked on (“Oh, about 80%”), the on-set mood during the very first episode of EastEnders (“It was a party scene in the Old Vic and the producer wanted her dog Roly to be in it”). Or the title of her very first gig, a 1963 film called Just for Fun, which might serve as the motto for her entire career.
It was also this husband-compiled list that first attracted the attention of 32-year-old film-maker Anthony Ing. While researching archive footage on another job, Ing found himself idly wondering about the people who appear in the background, at train stations and political rallies, often out of focus, or in a few fleeting frames. Who were they? What were their lives like? Eventually, via a sub-thread titled “Oh, There You Are!” on the online forum Britmovie, he caught wind of Jill’s impressive CV. The two met in person, after which Ing began the painstaking, but also somewhat romantic, process of searching through decades of screen history, hoping for a glimpse of his obsession.
“I went through A Clockwork Orange again and again – like maybe there’s a frame somewhere?” says Ing of his clip-compiling process. “Even though these are such small moments, you do get a sense you know the person. There’s an emotional pull, thinking about her really being there. And then you would see patterns, and be drawn in by those patterns.” It’s this wistful feeling of searching for the narrative of a life in a series of fragmented images – like flicking through photographs of a long-dead grandparent – that Jill, Uncredited captures so well. The resulting film works both as an offbeat biopic and a symbolic tribute to the countless craftspeople who rarely get proper credit for their work.
This aspect is meaningful to Jill, too. “Extras are the lowest and you don’t ever speak to a star unless they speak to you. We’ve been told: ‘Tom Cruise is about to come on set. Please do not make eye contact.’” She has always found the strictly enforced on-set hierarchy more amusing than demeaning. “I had self-worth, because I was part of the film. Films would be very boring without extras. You’d get on the tube train, and there’d be no one else in it!”
Miss en scène … Jill in The Monster Club, Black Windmill, The Elephant Man and The Sweeney 2. Composite: Loop
Ultimately, being a fake waitress for the day was more fun than being a real waitress every day – and better money, too. She could afford to work only 10 days a month, which must have fitted in well with raising a family? “Oh, I was terrible mother. Absolutely a terrible mother,” she says. “The casting agents used to phone me up and say: ‘How old is your son now?’ I’d say, ‘Well, how old do you want him to be?’”
Her son can’t have felt too resentful about being dragged along to film sets, because he grew up to work in television himself. James Goldston is the Washington DC-based former president of ABC News, and often invites his mother to accompany him to swanky events, such as dinner with the Obamas. “I’m sure I’m one of the only extras that’s ever been to the Oscars,” says Jill with evident maternal pride.
Last year the tables were turned, when she asked James to attend the premiere of Jill, Uncredited, as moral support. “I was terrified. I thought the cinema would be half-empty.” That feeling soon dissipated. “By the time I got to the Berlin film festival, I loved every minute of it!” Nor was the experience of watching 50 years of her life flash by in 18 minutes of screen time quite as uncanny as one might imagine. “But then, I wasn’t watching me. I was watching the people in the background of me. It was like: ‘Oh, there’s so-and-so!’ And it was so lovely to see them all again.”
Jill, Uncredited is available on Mubi. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/aug/16/ian-rankin-dr-jekyll-mr-hyde | Books | 2010-08-16T14:31:48.000Z | Ian Rankin | Ian Rankin on The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde | Think you know this book?
Think again.
The notion of a "Jekyll-and-Hyde" character has become a lazy way of describing someone when they do something contrary to their normal nature. But that's not quite what Dr Henry Jekyll does. Rather, he consciously searches for a chemical that will allow him to separate out the two sides to his nature. He is fascinated by the duality of man and wants to explore his darker side. Resolute and determined, eventually he succeeds. But his evil self becomes stronger over time, until it threatens to extinguish Jekyll altogether. The doctor has played with fire and he's burning from the inside.
Sadly, we'll never know the thrill experienced by this explosive book's original audience. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is a work of suspense, but we all know the twist these days, don't we? So why do we still read the story? Well, it's written with great economy, tension and wit. I know few books so concise that pack such an emotional punch. It's also a complex narrative: Jekyll himself figures only as a friend of the other characters and narrators – right up until the revelation provided by his "confession". We start the book in the company of two gentlemen called Utterson and Enfield. They are out walking, but Enfield has a story to tell. It concerns a grotesque incident and its aftermath. The story links the thuggish and mysterious Edward Hyde to the wealthy and urbane Henry Jekyll. Utterson and Enfield are in no doubt: their friend is being blackmailed. But Hyde has a stronger hold on Jekyll than this, as Utterson will eventually discover.
The tale originally came to its author in a dream. Robert Louis Stevenson had always trusted to "brownies" – meaning his daydreams and nightmares. He felt that stories and characters were being channelled to him from elsewhere. As a young man his fantasy life had been kept in check. He had grown up in a family of engineers and was himself destined for a career in the law. He lived with his family in a large house in Edinburgh's "New Town" (constructed to a rational, geometric design in the late 18th century). But the population of the New Town had decamped from the squalid, overcrowded and downright dangerous "Old Town" (the stretch of Edinburgh between Castle Rock and the Palace of Holyrood). Stevenson was captivated by the Old Town, and would tiptoe out of the house when everyone else was asleep, climbing the steep slope towards drink and debauchery. He knew fine well that there were two sides to Edinburgh's character – he'd known it since childhood. In his bedroom there stood a wardrobe constructed by William Brodie, and young Stevenson's nanny would tell him the story of Brodie, who had been a respected citizen by day but housebreaker by night. Here was the duality of Man – not only in the figure of Brodie but also apparently built into the construction of the city itself – light and dark, the rational and the savage.
Jekyll and Hyde.
Stevenson suffered ill-health all his life, and was being dosed with an experimental drug at the time when his "brownies" assailed him with the story of the good doctor and his evil other self. It must have struck Stevenson that it might be a yarn about his own attraction to the less savoury side of life. Maybe self-preservation led him to set the novel in London rather than Edinburgh. On the other hand, London was perfect. It had been the home of a Scots-born doctor called John Hunter. Hunter was known in all the right circles. He was married to a patron of the arts who would give grand parties at their home in Leicester Square. But if you continued through the house you came to Hunter's surgery. You might also be shown his vast (and growing) collection of weird and wonderful specimens. And eventually, you'd find yourself in the cramped accommodation used by his students, beyond which a door led out into a narrow alley off what is now Charing Cross Road. This was where, at dead of night, the grave-robbers arrived with fresh deliveries of cadavers.
John Hunter did like his little experiments …
When you read Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde you will be struck by the similarities. (Jekyll himself purchased such a property from the heirs of a great medical man.) For a tale steeped in fantasy and the macabre, this is a novel with its roots firmly planted in a recognisable world – so much so, in fact, that when Jack the Ripper began his work, the public began to suspect that Hyde himself might be real. And remember ... Jack, too, was reputed to be a medical man.
As a writer, Stevenson wanted to explore the various facets of human nature. Was civilisation just a very thin veneer? Did you dare to scratch its surface and reveal the truth beneath? We are all capable of committing evil acts – look at the atrocities meted out in wartime. Killers talk about the "red mist" that descends, then lifts, leaving them wondering how they could have done such terrible deeds. Religious believers talk of "possession". Psychopaths can appear to be just like you and me for the most part of their lives, but then suddenly flip, before flipping back again.
This is an important book because it discusses a very basic problem which is still (and forever) with us – how can we do such terrible things to each other? Jekyll feels hidebound in his own skin, made to comply with the rigid conventions of his class and society. Hyde frees him from this, but the sensation of liberation becomes addictive. It is no accident that Hyde is described as being much younger than Jekyll. Jekyll himself is a man of 50, regretting times past and opportunities missed. The folly of youth – that sense of possibility and invincibility – is regained when he becomes Edward Hyde.
This book, then, is a morality tale as well as a stark warning. It's also every bit as claustrophobic, creepy and chilling as when it first saw the light of day over a century ago.
Ian Rankin's introduction to Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde appears in a new pocket hardback edition of the book by White's Books, priced £6.99, out now. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2015/sep/28/ride-shoegaze-years-lush-slowdive-oxford | Music | 2015-09-28T13:42:15.000Z | Joe Muggs | Ride of passage: my shoegaze years | In 1989 I had it all. A fringe past my nose. A matelot top. A gothy girlfriend who wore hooped tights and Dr Martens. A taste for snakebite-and-black and baggy joints made mostly of Old Holborn. An almost unfeasible degree of social awkwardness. I was 15 and I lived in a south Oxfordshire country town on the fringes of the Thames Valley: I was born to shoegaze.
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It had started with Ride’s first demo tape, circulated among my friends after someone’s older brother got a copy at Manic Hedgehog Records in Oxford. We were primed for it – having gone through the standard dweebs’ trajectory of metal and then goth, we were getting a taste for the melancholy and widescreen thanks to Siouxsie and the Cure both getting a second wind in the late 80s and making glorious albums. Acid house was happening somewhere out there, and snippets of siblings’ tapes and John Peel started to prime us for hypnotic discombobulation as a form of recreation. And on this tape, in the sheets of guitar sound, the repetition and the pained harmonies, there was something that hit those spots, but more importantly felt like it was ours.
This was music that sounded like chucking a whitey by the bins round the back of a country pub, like the weird rush of copping a feel during a hour-long snogging session, like the chest-compressing awkwardness of trying to talk to that girl in the sixth form who had different-coloured hair each week, like tumbling through the abyss after smoking flatpress hot knives, like lying in meadows staring up at circling insects. There was plenty else out there that was exciting, too – we were getting into the aggro weirdness of Butthole Surfers, the boho urbanity of Sonic Youth, the alpha-stoner heaviosity of Dinosaur Jr – but the other groups were from another world. As we hoovered up everything we could find by Ride, Slowdive, Chapterhouse, My Bloody Valentine, Bark Psychosis, Telescopes, Pale Saints, Loop and Lush, on the other hand, it was like someone had purposely designed a kind of psychedelia for our slightly isolated, slightly sad, hormonally saturated lives.
The bands looked like the boys and girls we had crushes on or wanted to be. Generally as awkward as us, but – hiding behind those fringes or tresses, staring down at their effects pedals, staring into the distance as they pulled out sheets of white noise or cascades of melodic twinkle – transforming into something that felt impressively aloof, or even a bit noble. As the huge noise and fragile songs turned our mundane emotions and worries into something transcendent, here was a kind of performer whom we could imagine ourselves being: not really speaking much and diddling a Rickenbacker as a Brixton Academy moshpit surged. (OK, admittedly my own attempts at making a noise at the time started and stopped with being the worst bass player a Hendrix covers band ever had, but the thought was there.)
The bands weren’t all awkward or ethereal. The girls of Lush were anything but indie-schmindie manic pixie dream girls or floaty-skirted Timotei princesses: they were rock stars. Never mind riot grrrl – seeing Miki Berenyi at the Reading After Dark club respond to a fat oaf chanting “Get yer tits out” with “Why, aren’t yours big enough, you cunt?” was enough to turn anyone righteously feminist. And it was far from homogeneous: Loop’s brain-damaged noise led us to the Stooges, the Telescopes’ wig-outs to Sun Ra, Lush’s sidereal pop to the Cocteau Twins. Lush, Chapterhouse and Slowdive all more than flirted with electronica: indeed some of the remixes from that time stand up as splayed-out-on-a-beanbag classics for the ages and fetch silly money from DJ/collectors.
We all grew up and into other things – in my case, tipping over into techno Stalinism before my teens were out – but shoegaze never left me. It wasn’t just that it showed me what it meant to have a local scene that you could be proud of, and that great things could come out of places as cripplingly uncool as Oxford, Reading and Slough. It wasn’t just that it soundtracked me cutting my musical teeth, going to my first gigs, having those first cackhanded sexual and pharmaceutical experiences. It wasn’t even that it was perfect music to be 15 to. It was that this little, awkward scene really did generate killer music.
Obviously the influence has echoed on through “nu gaze” and “chillwave” and M83 and Air and Fennesz and so on and on – and as time passed I would start meeting people from Tokyo or San Francisco who would go wobbly with envy that I’d seen Lush at the After Dark or Slowdive at Oxford’s Jericho Tavern. Each time this happened, the cognitive dissonance was extreme: the idea of an event associated in my mind with snakebite-and-black vomit and the smell of tarry hash in a car park resonating across the world and decades was hard to countenance. But then for all our dweebishness, we did find transcendent moments, so why shouldn’t the world get excited about that? | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/sep/24/year-12-exams-2023-australia-when-hsc-vce-qce | Australia news | 2023-09-23T20:00:03.000Z | Caitlin Cassidy | Testing time: what to know about Australia’s year 12 exams in 2023 | Year 12 exams are just around the corner, bringing the usual dose of anxiety and expectation among students, teachers and parents.
Remote learning is behind us, but this year is bringing its own set of changes and challenges. Here’s what you need to know.
When are the exams?
The exam period depends on each state and territory’s jurisdiction, but generally runs from October until mid-November.
In New South Wales, HSC written exams kick off with English on Wednesday 12 October and finish with food technology on Friday 3 November.
Victoria’s VCE exams run for a longer period, beginning with performance examinations on Monday 2 October and concluding on Wednesday 15 November.
In Queensland, QCE exams start later, running from Monday 23 October until Tuesday 14 November.
Atar results are then released in mid-December, followed by first round university offers. Undergraduate offers continue until March.
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What subjects are students flocking to?
English – the only compulsory subject – and mathematics continue to top the list, the latest Acara data shows. They are followed by society and environment, and science courses.
Technology ranks fourth, largely due to high uptake among male students (35% of the cohort compared with 21% of females). Yet it has dropped off in recent years, from a peak of 42% of males and 25% of females in 2012.
Arts ranks sixth after a significant decline in the past decade, with 28% of female students and 17% of male students enrolled in arts subjects in 2021, down from 37% and 23% a decade earlier.
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The falling enrolments across traditional subject areas can be in large part attributed to a rise in Vocational Education and Training (Vet) courses. The first year cross-disciplinary areas were included in Acara data in 2021, holding about 18% of student enrolments.
From this year, Victoria has replaced its certificate of applied learning (Vcal) with a new vocational major, meaning it will recognise different students equally under one integrated Victorian certificate of education (VCE). The changes, aimed to slow the surge in un-scored VCEs, will probably see a further uptick in vocational courses such as health, education and trades.
What else is different this year?
This is the first year the education department is grappling with the widespread uptake of new artificial intelligence technologies, including ChatGPT.
Schools remain on high alert for the use of banned devices in written exams, including phones and smartwatches
The International Baccalaureate (IB) program was on the front foot in February, allowing students to use the chatbot in essays with appropriate attribution.
But schools remain on high alert for the use of banned devices in written exams, including phones and smartwatches, to cheat on tests.
Figures released by the NSW Education Standards Authority earlier this year found about 680 students were found to have cheated in HSC assessment and tasks last year, with greater challenges expected this year thanks to the rapid proliferation of AI.
Dr Claire Golledge, a lecturer in education at the University of Sydney and former teacher, says Covid was a “missed opportunity” to shake up final exams.
She was working in schools during lockdowns when many teachers thought end-of-year exams wouldn’t happen and she is among a growing coalition of educators who have lobbied for internal assessments including research projects, presentations and oral exams to replace the traditional Atar.
“It was an opportunity to moderate based on school-based assessment,” she says. “But instead, we doubled down.
“Lots of students don’t perform well in exams. And they’re not necessarily a good predictor of university achievement.”
How important is an Atar?
Final exams can be seen as a defining moment in a teenager’s life. But experts say students don’t need to pin their career trajectory on a single number. Instead, they should view their Atar as a single pathway, rather than the only one.
Golledge says higher education is increasingly leaving Atars behind, replaced by early offers, mature age enrolments and bridging pathways – including from Tafe to the tertiary sector.
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A Centre for Independent Studies paper released this year found the share of school leavers being admitted to universities on a non-Atar basis had grown from 15% in 2016 to at least 25% today.
The caveat was non-Atar based admissions were almost twice as likely to drop out of university in the first year.
The Universities Admissions Centre (UAC) received 22,737 applications via this year’s early offer scheme, now closed.
It was a 6.8% decrease on last year, which UAC says is likely due to the proliferation of other schemes that make offers earlier than the completion of HSC exams in mid-November.
“With the resources and energy it requires, two years of schooling … the number of courses just requiring an Atar are becoming quite small,” Golledge says.
“The question I’m asking is why all of this energy, anxiety and stress for teachers when it’s not what it used to be.
“The biggest challenge isn’t the outcome of students, but their mental health.”
What happens if you don’t get the Atar you want?
Firstly, it’s important to understand what the Atar measures.
The Atar calculates a number between zero and 99.95 that ranks you in relation to your year group. So an Atar of 80% doesn’t mean your score, but that you’re in the top 20% of your cohort.
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Universities use Atars to set the lowest rank to receive an offer for each course, as a nationally recognised measure for student comparison.
But if you don’t get the Atar you hoped for, most institutions offer pathway options via adjustment factors, which increase your selection rank for particular courses.
Adjustment factors are available for a range of measures, including the location of school, educational access schemes (EAS), performance in certain subjects and for elite athletes and performers.
So while you may not have reached the Atar you hoped for, the more important score is your selection rank, which includes adjustments made by a university.
How can stress be managed?
Peita Mages, an award-winning teacher and director of the Clever Cookie Academy, says her No 1 piece of advice for students is to “keep it in perspective”.
“Gone are the days of Atar being the one determinate of success in your life,” she says.
“There’s multiple pathways, try your best but if you’re persistent and want to follow a career you’ll get there.
“Stay resilient – if you don’t get the result you’re looking for, there are pathways and bridging courses.”
To parents, she says maintaining routine is key.
“Make sure [students] have a place to study and a study regime, keep them eating, sleeping, exercising and living,” she says. “And don’t let the pressure get too much – it’s one measure of your child on one day.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/09/tuesday-briefing-what-to-expect-from-the-next-phase-of-the-post-office-inquiry | World news | 2024-04-09T05:45:43.000Z | Rupert Neate | Tuesday briefing: What to expect from the next phase of the Post Office inquiry | Good morning.
It is, in the words of the prime minister, “one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in our nation’s history”. The Post Office Horizon scandal led to 236 innocent subpostmasters being sent to prison, and more than 4,000 others suffering – whether it be losing jobs, bankruptcy, family breakdowns or homelessness. At least four of those accused have since killed themselves.
Starting today – 25 years after the first post office operators were convicted for theft, fraud and false accounting that we now know was caused not by them but by the Post Office’s faulty IT system – the former subpostmasters’ stories will be heard at the public inquiry into the scandal.
At 10am today Alan Bates – the real life hero of the ITV drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office, in which he is played by Toby Jones – will take the stand at Aldwych House, in central London, and tell the inquiry his story. Then, in the coming weeks and month’s the Post Office’s bosses, including former chief executive Paula Vennells, will be called to give evidence under oath about what they really knew about the faulty Horizon IT system – and, crucially, when.
For today’s newsletter, my colleague Jane Croft, who has been covering the scandal since 2018, provides a primer of what to expect. That’s after the headlines, but spoiler alert: expect the sudden onset of “amnesia” to continue, with many ex-bosses saying: “I do not recall.”
Five big stories
Israel-Gaza | David Cameron will set out the UK’s reasoning for continuing to export arms to Israel on Tuesday as ministers face ongoing pressure to disclose the official legal advice on the trade. On Monday evening, the foreign secretary
held talks with Donald Trump in Florida amid a push to shore up support for Ukraine.
Carers | Ministers are facing calls to abandon the “cruel and nonsensical” fines levied on tens of thousands of unpaid carers for unwittingly breaching earnings rules by just a few pounds a week. The Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), a centre-right thinktank, said the government should accept that it was to blame for allowing overpayments to run up to huge sums.
Fossil fuels | The world’s biggest economies have continued to finance the expansion of fossil fuels in poor countries to the tune of billions of dollars, despite their commitments on the climate. Canada, Japan and South Korea were the biggest sources of such finance in the three years studied, according to campaigning groups Oil Change International (OCI) and Friends of the Earth US.
Home Office | Families in Gaza have won a legal case against the Home Office after a judge found it had reached “irrational and unreasonable” conclusions to justify its refusal to consider the families’ reunion applications. Two challenges were brought against the government department after it refused to decide on reunion applications from families in Gaza without biometric data.
Politics | Downing Street has urged MPs to be cautious when responding to unsolicited messages, after the “spear-phishing” attack that targeted more than a dozen MPs, staff and journalists working in Westminster. On Tuesday evening it was reported that William Wragg, the Conservative MP who divulged colleagues’ personal phone numbers as part of the scandal, had stepped down from two Commons roles.
In depth: ‘Their lives have been ruined. You can’t compensate for lost time’
Former subpostmasters Alan Bates will speak at the Post Office Horizon public inquiry this morning. Photograph: Annabel Lee-Ellis/AFP/Getty Images
It’s a scandal that has been ruining lives across the country for decades, but it only really hit the wider public consciousness when the ITV drama came out over the Christmas holidays. “Suddenly, the Post Office scandal was leading the news bulletins,” Jane says. “And politicians were falling over themselves to talk about how awful it was.”
Less than a week after the final episode of the drama, Rishi Sunak announced legislation for a new law to “swiftly exonerate and compensate” all the victims. “People who worked hard to serve their communities had their lives and their reputations destroyed through absolutely no fault of their own. The victims must get justice and compensation,” he said on 10 January.
The inquiry, chaired by retired high court judge Sir Wyn Williams, has been trying to get to the truth since it launched on 29 September 2020. It is phases five and six, covering “redress”, “oversight” and “whistleblowing”, that begin today.
What has the inquiry heard so far?
“The impact this scandal has had on thousands of people’s lives has been truly devastating,” Jane says. “These are ordinary people, without money and connections that have been caught up in this real David and Goliath battle.”
In personal impact statements to the inquiry, the victims have spoken about losing everything. “It’s not just their money,” Jane says. “It’s their liberty, their partners, their families, their homes. Some spoke about their children being bullied at school, being shunned by their local community, and being referred to as ‘the postmaster who stole old people’s pensions’.”
Jo Hamilton, who ran a post office in a village shop in South Warnborough, Hampshire and was played by Monica Dolan in the TV series, pleaded guilty to false accounting. She had to pay back a supposedly missing £36,000, though the grandmother-of-three did avoid jail. But the trauma continued. One day, while making Easter bonnets at her granddaughter’s school, the headteacher told her she would have to leave the premises as she could not be alone with the children because of her conviction.
“Jo, and the other subpostmasters, have had or will get compensation,” Jane says. “But their lives have been absolutely ruined. You can’t compensate for lost time, you can’t buy back time.”
What do the post office operators want the inquiry to find out now?
“They want justice and for the truth to come out,” Jane says. “It feels like the Post Office knew the Horizon IT system wasn’t working properly, but they continued to prosecute these innocent people anyway.”
The subpostmasters want to know what Post Office bosses, executives from Fujitsu (the Japanese company that developed the IT software), and government ministers knew about the faulty Horizon system. The judge in a high court case in 2019 concluded that “bugs, errors and defects” meant there was a “material risk” Horizon was to blame for the money missing from post office operators’ accounts.
Paula Vennells – who was chief executive of the Post Office between 2012 and 2019, for which she earned about £5m – is likely to be asked why she decided to spend millions prosecuting the post office operators when the company was aware of the Horizon problems.
Paula Vennells, former chief executive of the Post Office, photographed in 2018. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images
Who knew what about Horizon – and when?
Whether the Horizon system could be used to remotely access post office operators’ accounts is key to the scandal, and alleged cover-up.
In 2015 the Post Office told a House of Commons inquiry: “There is no functionality in Horizon for either a branch, Post Office or Fujitsu to edit, manipulate or remove transaction data once it has been recorded in a branch’s accounts.” This was untrue, a high court judge ruled in a landmark court case four years later.
In fact, staff at Fujitsu were capable of remotely accessing branch accounts, and had “unrestricted and unaudited” access to those systems, the inquiry heard.
A recording from 2013, unearthed by Channel 4 News, shows Susan Crichton, the Post Office’s head lawyer, confirm that Vennells had been briefed about a “covert operations team” that could remotely access the Horizon system and adjust branches’ accounts. The recordings suggest Vennells was aware of claims that remote access to branch accounts was possible two years before prosecutions were halted against post office operators.
In 2015 Vennells told the Commons business select committee that “we have no evidence” of miscarriages of justice.
Vennells, an ordained Anglican priest, refused to comment when Channel 4 News tracked her down at her parish church over the weekend. In a statement released by her lawyers, she said: “I am truly sorry for the devastation caused to the sub-postmasters and their families, whose lives were torn apart by being wrongly accused and wrongly prosecuted as a result of the Horizon system.
“I now intend to continue to focus on assisting the inquiry and will not make any further public comment until it has concluded.”
Vennells, who has handed back a CBE awarded to her for “services to the Post Office and to charity”, will give evidence, live-streamed here, for three days from Wednesday 22 May.
Is the public inquiry enough, or should the police be called in?
Nadhim Zahawi, the former chancellor who was one of the MPs questioning Vennells in 2015, has called for a “thorough police investigation”.
“I don’t think it’s good enough that we keep falling back on ‘let the inquiry do its work’ – this is much more serious,” he said. “There needs to be an investigation into corporate manslaughter and individuals at the Post Office.”
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Kevin Hollinrake, the Post Office minister, on Monday told a group of 50 post office operators who reconvened at the village hall in Fenny Compton (where they founded the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance campaign group in 2009) that those responsible “should go to jail”.
“People should be prosecuted,” he said. “That’s my view. And I think you and other people I’ve spoken to certainly feel that people within the Post Office and possibly further afield should go to jail.”
What else we’ve been reading
Certain compounds in coffee have strong anti-inflammatory properties. Photograph: Daria Ahafonova/Getty Images/iStockphoto
How much coffee is too much? According to the latest Well Actually column, anything more than four shots might be pushing it – although it’s surprisingly good for your liver. Toby Moses, head of newsletters
This fact stopped me in my tracks: more than 200 Indian elephants have been killed in collisions with trains in the past 10 years. Amrit Dhillon reports on schemes to install AI-enabled surveillance systems to alert train drivers of elephants near the lines, and to build banana tree-lined flyovers to help the animals cross more safely. Rupert
Many a parent was excited by the promise of some free childcare for two-year-olds – but as Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett found, the rollout is going about as smoothly as you’d expect from the current government. Toby
Drinking and festivals had always gone hand in hand for the Guardian’s Laura Snapes (and, quite frankly, most people). So how hard would it be to attempt to go to one sober? “I can’t say that the delight in having succeeded is necessarily as good as going on Glastonbury’s ferris wheel razzed at 5am, but it is pretty great. And you’ll remember it.” Rupert
Rachel Dixon offers up 30 ways to get more vorfreude into your life. I shan’t spoil what that means – and instead will allow you the anticipatory joy of waiting for the webpage to load. Toby
Sport
Everton manager Sean Dyche has seen his side deducted a further two points. Photograph: Mike Egerton/PA
Football | Everton have been dragged closer to a first relegation in 73 years after being deducted two points for breaching Premier League profitability and sustainability rules (PSR) up to 2023. An independent commission imposed the sanction with immediate effect after the financially troubled club admitted breaching PSR by £16.6m for the three-year period ending June 2023.
Cricket | Harry Brook lit up a rain-soaked round of Championship matches with an audacious unbeaten 100 in 69 balls for Yorkshire against Leicestershire. Essex top the Division One table after beating Nottinghamshire by 254 runs, while Sussex nearly forced victory at Hove, reducing Northamptonshire to 170 for nine.
Football | Euro 2022-winning captain Leah Williamson, who missed the World Cup with an ACL injury, is set to make her first England start in almost a year. Williamson will start against the Republic of Ireland on Tuesday night in England’s second Euro 2025 qualifier. The Arsenal defender last played for England in a 2-0 friendly loss to Australia last April.
The front pages
Guardian Photograph: Guardian
The Guardian leads with “Starmer told to resurrect Sure Start to help poorest”. The Times reports “Labour set to close non-dom loopholes”, while the Financial Times says “Labour tightens screw on non-doms in plan to fund key election pledges”. The Mirror puts it simply as “We’ll punish tax dodgers”.
Elsewhere, the Mail reports “Record surge in £150,000 council fat-cats”. The Telegraph quotes an NHS report as saying “‘Children must not be rushed to transition’”. Finally, the Sun carries a picture of boxer Ricky Hatton and Coronation Street star Claire Sweeney, with the headline “Ricky and Claire hit it off”.
Today in Focus
Sosa Henkoma was taken in to care at 9 years old, but became involved with a gang – drug dealing and carrying a gun by the time he was 11. Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian
The devil walking on Earth
Annie Kelly reports on the story of Sosa Henkoma, who was exploited by drug gangs as a child and now mentors young people at risk of gang violence.
Cartoon of the day | Ben Jennings
Illustration: Ben Jennings/The Guardian
The Upside
A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad
In Alameda Central park women from feminist collectives set out stalls selling merchandise including toiletries, crafts and clothes. Photograph: Mahe Elipe/The Guardian
What began life as a Facebook group in 2016 where women sold food and products, has grown into a series of burgeoning Mexico City markets – and become a crucial voice in a country still beset with issues of gender inequality and femicide.
The Mercaditas Feministas – or feminist markets – can be found at locations across the Mexican capital, run by an estimated 600 women and offering not only goods such as jewellery, crafts and clothes but “knowledge and services tailored to individual needs, from menstrual healthcare to psychological assistance or legal services”, says human rights advocate Mar Cruz.
For the likes of Laura López, who trades in soft toys and handmade jewellery, the mercaditas are more than simply an income, but an essential community in a country where women spend two-thirds of time on domestic chores or childcare duties, and more than 3,000 women are murdered each year. “The political act of putting ourselves on the streets makes me feel I am not alone,” López says. “On the streets, we are all one.”
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Bored at work?
And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow.
Quick crossword
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Wordiply | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jun/27/colorado-wildfires-32000-evacuated-flames | World news | 2012-06-27T16:27:00.000Z | Adam Gabbatt | Colorado 'like worst movie set you can imagine' as wildfires force 32,000 to flee | Colorado's governor has described the fire season as 'among the worst ever' guardian.co.uk
About 32,000 Colorado Springs residents were being evacuated on Wednesday as wildfires continued to wreak havoc in Colorado.
The Waldo Canyon fire, west of Colorado Springs, was fanned by strong winds on Tuesday, engulfing houses in flames. Just 5% of the 6,000-acre fire has been contained, and an unknown number of homes have already been destroyed.
Colorado's governor has described the fire season as "among the worst ever", with eight separate fires recorded by the state's emergency management team, and with the fire service expecting "further trouble" on Wednesday.
"It was like looking at the worst movie set you could imagine," Governor John Hickenlooper said after flying over the Waldo Canyon blaze late on Tuesday.
"It's almost surreal. You look at that, and it's like nothing I've seen before."
The US air force academy is among the sites evacuated close to Colorado Springs, with 2,100 residents among those fleeing the blaze. Shelters have been set up at nearby high schools for residents who have had to leave houses and possessions behind.
"It's devastating," Colleen O'Brien told the Guardian on Wednesday. O'Brien, a recent college graduate, had only moved back to her parents' home in Mountain Shadows this summer. The family were evacuated on Saturday, allowed to return to the house on Monday, but then evacuated again on Tuesday, when O'Brien said they could "see flames coming over the ridge".
"I've lived there since I was five, so it's pretty surreal to see your community, my neighbourhood, go up in flames. The fear of the unknown is just really frightening."
O'Brien, who works at a women's clothing store on the other side of town from the blaze, said even at that distance "the sky is just really hazy with ash".
"The ash and the smoke burns your eyes when you go outside, it's really intense."
Brittney Scott, a fellow Mountain Shadows resident who was also evacuated on Saturday, said the onset of the blaze on Tuesday had taken people by surprise.
"At first I wasn't that concerned about it," Scott said. However in the space of an hour on Tuesday afternoon "the winds had changed direction, and were bringing the fire towards the town".
"There were a lot of fire trucks and a lot of police, really thick smoke, and some black smoke for the first time. That's when I knew it had changed."
Scott, who is now staying with friends, said she was able to see the fire creep towards her neighbourhood on Tuesday evening, watching as it engulfed houses just two blocks from her own.
"Watching the houses actually starting to burn, it's just a whole different feeling when you know families' lives are being affected."
Colorado Springs fire chief Richard Brown told the Denver Post that "many, many homes" were saved by firefighters, but described the Waldo Canyon blaze as "a firestorm of epic proportions" that was "not even remotely close to being contained." It is not known how the fire began.
At a briefing on Wednesday incident commander Rich Harvey said crews "expect further trouble from the weather today".
"We do expect all of our lines to be challenged today," MSNBC quoted Harvey as saying. Local newspaper the Courier-View said 600 firefighters were involved in tackling the blaze, while Harvey had requested "more firefighters, more engines, more helicopters".
Hickenlooper attributed the wildfires to an "unprecedented weather pattern of hot days and dry conditions".
"If there was an executive order for rain, we'd sign it immediately, but what we can do now is provide support and resources to communities that are most at risk," he said in a post on Facebook.
Colorado's emergency management website shows the scale of the problem, with wildfires in the south-west, central, north-west and north-east parts of the state.
In Boulder County, north of the state capital Denver, officials evacuated 26 households when a wildfire erupted on Tuesday afternoon following a lightning storm. No structures were immediately threatened, but the National Center for Atmospheric Research, perched on a hilltop in front of Boulder's famous Flatirons foothills, closed as a precaution.
Further north, High Park fire has destroyed 257 homes, authorities said. The blaze is 55% contained but was spanning 87,000 acres on Tuesday. That fire was also triggered by lightning, on 9 June.
Derek Arndt, head of climate monitoring at the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, NC, said the nation is experiencing "a super-heated spike on top of a decades-long warming trend".
O'Brien and Scott are unlikely to be able to return to their homes soon. O'Brien said she had been told it would be a minimum of 3-5 days before the family could return home, while Scott has been warned it could be mid-July before it is safe to return.
"We're just hoping that the winds don't pick up like crazy [so that] it could go in any direction, and hopefully if it does go in a direction it's back out west into the mountain and not further east destroying our homes. Everyone's just playing the waiting game right now." | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/10/ireland-no-vote-referendum | Opinion | 2024-03-10T15:26:24.000Z | Niamh Ní Hoireabhaird | Ireland’s ‘no-no’ vote is a victory for human rights – not a rejection of progress | Niamh Ní Hoireabhaird | As results from Ireland’s referendums began to trickle in, I cringed as I imagined the international headlines that would follow: “Ireland votes to keep women in the home” and “Referendums to modernise Irish constitution fail” were likely interpretations of the “no-no” vote.
This was the latest in a series of referendums that have seen Ireland progress into the 21st century. I’m sure the government felt that winning it would be easy, considering the success of the same-sex marriage and abortion referendums, which helped to earn Ireland a status as a beacon of liberal progressivism. But now I fear that, after Ireland’s recent flirtation with the far right, we’ll be seen as a backward country.
On Friday, International Women’s Day, Irish citizens took to the polls to vote in two referendums intended to modernise the country’s constitution, which has been in place since 1937. From the get-go, Ireland’s rightwing and conservative groups campaigned for no votes in both the family referendum and the care referendum.
For me and many others, a yes to the family referendum was a no-brainer: it proposed broadening the definition of a family beyond marriage to include those in “durable relationships”. But the care referendum was much more complex. The referendum proposed removing article 41.2, dubbed the “woman in the home” provision, and replacing it with wording that could see families saddled with the responsibility to provide care, while the state would “strive” to support them.
In its analysis of the amendments, the Free Legal Advice Centres (FLAC) worried that the wording of the proposed amendment was “ineffective” and was “unlikely to provide carers, people with disabilities or older people with any new enforceable rights or to require the state to provide improved childcare, personal assistance services, supports for independent-living, respite care or supports for children with disabilities”.
I resented the government for trading social inequalities, and replacing sexist language with ableist language. My identities as a woman and as a disabled person were in conflict.
My relationship with feminism has been a tumultuous one. As a disabled woman, my experience of inequality differs from that of my non-disabled peers. My younger brother and both I have the progressive neuromuscular condition Friedreich’s ataxia, so the concept of care plays a big role in our lives. His condition is much more advanced than mine, and he is 100% reliant on my parents and his nine hours of weekly government-funded care.
For able-bodied women, this referendum is about relieving an obligation to care – an obligation that women have been unfairly saddled with for centuries. But as a disabled woman, I need society to be more caring, not less. The failure of the yes campaign to even acknowledge this tension has been a great source of vexation for me over recent weeks. I felt that the rights of disabled people were being sacrificed by mainstream activists and NGOs who campaigned for a yes vote, ignoring the pleas of disabled people and carers.
Leo Varadkar after the referendum results were announced. Photograph: Charles McQuillan/Getty Images
I worry constantly about my ageing parents, who are already struggling to cope with the physically laborious task of caring. What will happen to my brother as my parents get older? Who will take care of them in their old age? And what about me? I despair when I think about a future in which my husband is forced to give up his job, rely on carer’s allowance and dedicate his life to my care. I want to live an independent life, which only state-provided care can offer me.
I felt the tide turning towards a no vote when an interview clip of Ireland’s taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, on Virgin Media One amassed huge popularity on social media. In the clip, Varadkar spoke about caring for his family members and said: “I don’t actually think that’s the state’s responsibility to be honest. I think it’s very much a family responsibility.” The outrage was immediately palpable online. Varadkar was eager to clarify his statement and claim that he had been misinterpreted, but the damage was done. The wording of the care referendum was perceived as yet another government failure over disability rights, the most recent of which was a “degrading and humiliating” proposal to reform welfare payments.
Ireland’s referendums: what went wrong, and what happens now?
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Voters had their different reasons for choosing “no-no” on Friday. For many, their vote was against the confusing wording of the text or the haphazard conduct of the yes campaign, or simply against a government that has failed to deliver on health, housing and education. Some feminists rejected the proposals because they didn’t go far enough – and yes, some people will have voted them down because they want to keep women in the home. But the decisive defeat of the care referendum wasn’t a win for Ireland’s far right. Anyone who suggests that is glossing over the admirable work of disabled people, carers and their allies who want to hold the state accountable.
The government would be making a grave mistake if it underestimates the political appetite for change and chalks the result up to conservative groups. Instead it must recognise the public desire for true equality and progress rather than tokenistic referendums that divide activists and NGOs. I would be very happy to revisit a care referendum with a different text in the future, under a different government that respects the autonomy of disabled people. That would guarantee a yes from me.
The failure of the referendum is a victory for Ireland’s disability community, and I am relieved that Ireland did not vote to abdicate the state’s responsibility to care for its citizens. But the archaic language that defines women’s role as in the home will continue to sit in our country’s constitution until a government is willing to deliver equality for all. We take no comfort in that.
Niamh Ní Hoireabhaird is a disability activist and journalist | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2014/jan/06/2014-us-box-office-record-transformers-spiderman | Film | 2014-01-06T17:00:28.000Z | Jeremy Kay | 2014: age of the US box-office record | Found footage – what a yawn
Is anybody else fed up with the found footage genre? Come on Hollywood, you've had a good run with the thing and we all know the $5m (£3m) price tag means this will end up being profitable for Paramount, but for the sake of originality can you mine a new genre? Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones arrived on $18.2m (£11.1m) in second place and in the process became the first of the last four entries in the horror franchise not to open at number one. The box-office number is quite a way down from the $29m (£17.7m) October 2012 debut of Paranormal 4. Tweaking the story to centre on Latino characters was a smart idea – Paramount marketed the movie aggressively to the demographic – but even this wasn't enough to deliver a memorable opening gross. And Paranormal Activity 5 is already dated for September this year. The Marked Ones will end up in the black and a healthy home entertainment run beckons, but audiences aren't dumb and are hungry for something new. Give it them, Hollywood.
Hobbit 2 doing fine but trails predecessor
By the end of the fourth weekend The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug sits third on $229m (£140m). It looks increasingly unlikely that it will overtake the $303m (£185m) final North American box office of 2012's An Unexpected Journey. Nor is it likely to surpass that movie's final $714m (£436m) international box-office tally. But Warner Bros, New Line and MGM won't be too bothered by this. There's nothing wrong with a $756m (£462m)-and-counting worldwide running total and if Peter Jackson's got it right, audiences should lap up The Hobbit: There and Back Again when it opens on 17 December. These trilogy finales usually muster the best crowd of the lot. Dare we say a $1bn (£0.6bn) global box office for There and Back Again is Jackson's to lose?
Lone Survivor is locked and loaded
Ben Foster in Lone Survivor Photograph: Gregory R. Peters/AP
Still only on two screens after two weekends, Peter Berg's latest slice of gung-ho military cacophony is posed to expand into around 2,700 theatres this week. It stars Mark Wahlberg and tells the true story of a Navy SEAL stranded in Afghanistan after a shepherd compromises a reconnaissance mission. For what it is, the movie is actually very good and could make a big splash. It's a product of the independent space, even through Universal Pictures acquired US distribution rights. The most fascinating backstory to all this centres on the picture's financier Envision Entertainment, an LA-based outfit founded by US citizen Remington Chase and his Armenian business partner Stefan Martirosian. An investigative piece by LA Weekly details the gentlemen's larger-than-life litany of arrests, drug busts and shady associates and provides food for thought for a classic Hollywood caper.
American Hustle on its way to $100m (£61m)
In last year's awards season, David O Russell's Oscar contender Silver Linings Playbook defied expectations when it went on to earn $132m (£80.6m) in North America through The Weinstein Company and a further $104m (£63.5m) internationally. A year later and Russell's latest awards contender, American Hustle, is well on its way to crossing $100m (£61m) in North America through Sony. The international box office remains something of a mystery but those figures will creep in eventually. Suffice to say, Russell has the magic touch these days. Now, will American Hustle do for leads Amy Adams and Christian Bale what Silver Linings did for Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper and earn them Oscar nominations on 16 January? Adams absolutely deserves to push Cate Blanchett of Blue Jasmine all the way but has fallen by the wayside in this awards race, while Bale delivers one of his best performances and should be in the running.
2014 will be a box-office record
There, said it. This whole box-office pantheon business is a load of smoke and mirrors, of course, but we all still write about it. 2013 set a new record of $10.9bn (£6.6bn) and this year's box office for North American releases will cross $11bn (£6.7bn), you watch. Here are some of the movies that will drive the action: Transformers: Age of Extinction, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Godzilla, Interstellar, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1, Rio 2, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Guardians of the Galaxy, Noah, A Million Ways to Die in the West, Muppets Most Wanted, Divergent and The Hobbit: There and Back Again. There are at least another 15 that should be on this list, but how much time do you have?
North American top 10, 3-5 Jan 2014
1. Frozen, $20.7m. Total: $297.8m
2. Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones, $18.2m
3. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, $16.3m. Total: $229.6m
4. The Wolf of Wall Street, $13.4m. Total: $63.3m
5. American Hustle, $13.2m. Total: $88.7m
6. Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues, $11.1m. Total: $109.2m
7. Saving Mr Banks, $9.1m. Total: $59.3m
8. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, $8.2m. Total: $45.7m
9. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, $7.4m. Total: $407.5m
10. Grudge Match, $5.4m. Total: $24.9m
More on films for 2014 and The Hobbit
2014 in film preview: blockbusters
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug – review | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/sep/09/what-poverty-means-to-children | Society | 2012-09-09T19:30:00.000Z | Jon Henley | What poverty means to children | Their names are Claire, Billy, Amira, Sydnee, Trey. Regular east London kids, some of the many who came along to the Poplar Boys and Girls Youth Club in Tower Hamlets during two days in August to have their pictures taken, and to say what they thought child poverty in the UK was and how they felt about it.
Their portraits, by the award-winning photographer Spencer Murphy – whose shot of a soulful Mark Rylance was last week nominated for the National Portrait Gallery's Taylor Wessing prize – are frank, guileless and affecting. Their words, presented in diptych, are equally forceful.
Poverty, reckons Adam, means "not having the basic things to live, like food, clothes, education". For Sydnee, you realise someone "may not have as much money as others by the toys that they have, or they might not even have toys. Also by the clothes that they wear, or if their clothes and shoes etc may not fit them."
According to Save the Children, which commissioned the series to mark the publication of its first ever domestic appeal and survey of child poverty in the UK, Britain's poorest children are bearing the brunt of the recession and spending cuts, while families on modest incomes are increasingly struggling.
The report, based on interviews with 1,500 children and 5,000 parents, half of them in areas of high deprivation, found that one in eight of Britain's poorest children are going without at least one hot meal a day, and 43% had seen their parents cutting back on food and clothes.
Some 15% have to go without new shoes, 14% are denied a warm winter coat and 23% are missing out on school trips because parents cannot afford them. Nearly 30% of parents say they cannot afford to have their children's friend round for tea, and 10% of children cannot celebrate their birthdays.
The charity aims to raise £500,000 to help its work in the UK, and is calling on government to encourage more employers to pay the living wage, strengthen the new Universal Credit welfare system and help parents afford to work by providing extra child care support. Poverty, says Justin Forsyth, Save the Children's chief executive, "is tearing families apart".
More of Spencer Murphy's pictures will be published on the Save the Children website later this week. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2024/feb/04/new-jerseys-metlife-stadium-to-host-2026-world-cup-final-as-azteca-gets-opener | Football | 2024-02-04T20:56:33.000Z | Tom Lutz | New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium to host 2026 World Cup final as Azteca gets opener | New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium will host the final of the 2026 World Cup, which will take place across North America in the United States, Mexico and Canada.
The 82,500 capacity MetLife Stadium is in New Jersey but is five miles from New York City and is the home of the NFL’s New York Jets and Giants. It hosted the Super Bowl in February 2014 and the final of the Copa America Centenario in 2016.
The tournament will be the first edition of the World Cup in its expanded 48-team format. The final will take place on 19 July after a 39-day tournament taking in 104 matches, the most in World Cup history. The first match will be on 11 June in Mexico City’s Estadio Azteca, which has hosted the tournament opener on two previous occasions, in 1970 and 1986.
World Cups bring scrutiny on hosts’ human rights – and that includes the US
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The first ever men’s World Cup match in Canada will be on 12 June in Toronto’s BMO Field, which will host the Canadian team’s opener. Vancouver’s 54,500 capacity BC Place will be the venue for Canada’s second and third group matches. “It’s important to be coast-to-coast,” said Mauro Biello, Canada’s interim manager.
The US will play their opener on 12 June at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, which will host the opening ceremony for the LA Olympics in 2028 and was the venue for the Super Bowl two years ago. The US will play their final group game at the SoFi and their other opening round fixture at Seattle’s Lumen Field, keeping the co-hosts on the west coast for their first three matches.
“You think of LA an iconic soccer city, already hosting two World Cup finals with the men’s in 1994 and the women’s in 1999 and 2003 … there’s a lot going on in LA and SoFi stadium is an amazing venue,” said US manager Gregg Berhalter. “Then thinking about Seattle with its rich fan culture, loud atmosphere in the stadium … it’s going to be an incredible atmosphere in all those stadiums.”
Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium will host the third-place playoff. The semi-finals will take place in Dallas and Atlanta, with the quarter-finals in Kansas City, Los Angeles, Miami and Boston. The round of 16 will be hosted in Vancouver, Seattle, Mexico City, Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, Philadelphia and New York/New Jersey. Each of the host cities will get a round of 32 match, with the exception of Guadalajara and Philadelphia.
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Dallas, which some had tipped to host the final, will stage nine matches at the tournament, more than any other city. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2016/may/02/punk-london-summer-preview-sex-pistols | Culture | 2016-05-02T15:47:52.000Z | Alexis Petridis | Pistols reloaded: the pick of the summer of punk | It seems fitting that the extensive celebrations planned for the 40th anniversary of punk have caused controversy, even if it’s not the kind of controversy that punk caused 40 years ago.
Chief among the critical voices has been that of Joe Corré, son of Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood, who has claimed the events have been “given the Queen’s blessing”, and represent “alternative and punk culture being appropriated by the mainstream”. This once radical movement, he said, is becoming “like a fucking museum piece or tribute act”. In response, Corré has announced that he’s going to burn £5m worth of punk memorabilia – an action that, rather winningly, has been added to Punk London’s online list of upcoming commemorative events: “26 Nov: Joe Corré burns his punk stuff.”
Happy Birthday Punk: the British Library celebrates 40 years of anarchy and innovation
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Clearly this is just the kind of cocktail of recklessness, provocation and look-at-me self-publicising that his late father would have loved. Nevertheless, you could argue all night about whether Corré has a point, or whether the co-opting of punk by the mainstream happened so long ago as to render his argument irrelevant.
It’s nearly 20 years since the Sex Pistols’ 1976 appearance on the Today Show, once a source of national outrage, took its place next to Benny Hill and Morecambe and Wise on a collection of classic Thames TV moments. You might also wonder where exactly Corré got his intel that Her Majesty is on board with, say, the Design Museum’s fanzine-making workshop.
But even if you don’t share Corré’s aversion to nostalgia, it’s easy to feel that the story of punk has become over-told in recent years. That the movement has been reduced to a series of tired and occasionally inaccurate bullet points by endless BBC4 documentaries that are apparently obliged by law to cut from footage of an angry man standing by a brazier and rubbish piling up in Leicester Square in early 1979 to the Sex Pistols performing Anarchy in the UK on ITV’s So It Goes nearly three years earlier.
Don Letts Presents Punk on Film is at the BFI Southbank in August. Photograph: Erica Echenberg/Redferns
Perhaps a slightly more complex, nuanced account of what happened in 1976 will emerge from all the events scheduled in London over the coming months. The centrepiece is probably Punk 1976-78, an exhibition that opens at the British Library on 13 May, featuring rare material from the collection of Jon Savage, punk archivist and author of the definitive punk history, England’s Dreaming.
Joe Corré on burning his Sex Pistols collection: ‘It’s the ideas that are important, not the memorabilia’
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Elsewhere, there are a multitude of photography exhibitions – certainly no one is going to be able to complain that they didn’t see enough black and white shots of Johnny Rotten – of which the pick might be Anita Corbin’s Visible Girls, a collection of photos of youth subcultures that includes new romantics, mods and rockabillies as well as punks.
There’s also a film festival at the BFI curated by the musician and film-maker Don Letts; a weekend of music and spoken word at the Roundhouse to commemorate the Ramones’ legendary 4 July 1976 concert at the same venue; and a special “punk strand” at the Stoke Newington literary festival – presumably something to do with key player in the festival and “coolest librarian in the world”, former Buzzcocks manager Richard Boon.
There’s also a major exhibition at a venue yet to be confirmed, which purports to show “the lasting impact of punk on British fashion from Westwood to McQueen and Vogue to Vice” – a description that raises the question of where the curators of Punk London think the movement’s legacy resides 40 years on, if anywhere.
Punk London: 40 Years of Subversion, various London venues until 26 November. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/07/koch-family-stand-together-music | US news | 2023-12-07T20:10:17.000Z | Geoff Dembicki | Revealed: how top pop stars are used to ‘launder the reputation’ of Koch family | Last September, the rapper Killer Mike was DJing hip-hop classics like Snoop Dogg’s Ain’t No Fun at a music festival afterparty in Louisville, Kentucky. “The inspiration for the night’s set is freedom of speech, so say what the fuck you want!” he told a crowd of hundreds. Killer Mike, half of the duo Run the Jewels, is known for speaking out against police brutality and racial injustice, as well as campaigning for Bernie Sanders.
But this night’s set was co-sponsored by Stand Together Music, an organization backed by the libertarian billionaire Charles Koch, who made his fortune in fossil fuels. Other sponsors of the party included the free-speech group Fire (which has received millions of dollars in contributions from the Charles G Koch charitable foundation), as well as the music outlet Spin, an official partner of Stand Together Music.
Why would Killer Mike associate himself with an 88-year-old political powerbroker whose network has given hundreds of millions of dollars to conservative causes? Researchers who track the network say it’s possible that the rapper, who is not listed as a partner of the group, didn’t know his set was linked to Koch.
“It shows how sneaky and successful Stand Together Music has been at generating collaboration with artists who I don’t think share the value sets of Charles Koch,” said Connor Gibson, a former Greenpeace researcher who now runs the site Grassrootbeer Investigations.
This organization is expanding its influence as Koch, whose brother David died in 2019, is thinking about how he wants the public to remember him. Stand Together Music is part of a wider conservative advocacy network that is promoting “Charles Koch’s principles-based legacy”. Stand Together Music itself was founded by Koch’s son Chase, who says as a child he had to listen to “books on tape by Milton Friedman”. Turned on to music in his teenage years by Pink Floyd, he’s now a 46-year-old guitarist who plays in multiple bands and will reportedly inherit 42% control of Koch Industries when his father dies.
But Stand Together Music is more than just a wealthy, middle-aged heir’s pet project. Gibson and other critics claim it allows Koch and his allies to co-opt pop musicians, young music fans and other hard-to-reach constituencies into a conservative political movement whose ultimate aims include dismantling the government’s ability to regulate polluting corporations like Koch Industries.
Stand Together Music, which appears to have launched in 2022, lists as its official partners the likes of the pop-punk rapper Machine Gun Kelly, the electronic duo the Chainsmokers and the Miami rapper Pitbull. “The result is that these musicians are being used to launder the reputation of Koch Industries, whether they know it or not,” said Gibson.
On a section of its website devoted to “free speech and peace”, the organization features an interview filmed earlier this year with Tom Morello, the former guitarist for Rage Against the Machine. “Watch him discuss how RATM has made a career of speaking out about the issues they care about,” the site explains.
It’s a bizarrely generic way to describe Rage Against the Machine’s politics. Morello has aligned himself with leftist causes like Occupy Wall Street and freeing the Indigenous activist Leonard Peltier from prison, as well as assailing capitalism’s role in “the impending environmental crisis”. So it might seem odd that he’s being championed by a music organization linked to a conglomerate that owns oil refineries, pipelines and petrochemical facilities and is a top greenhouse gas polluter in the US.
Representatives for Machine Gun Kelly, the Chainsmokers, Pitbull and Tom Morello did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story.
In a statement sent after this story was first published, Stand Together Music said it was “honored to partner with incredible musicians who share our passion for solving problems holding people back” and that music brought people together in “today’s polarized world”.
It added: “The artists we work with have the ability to elevate meaningful solutions to problems like addiction, criminal justice, mental health by getting involved with incredible nonprofits around the country.”
Charles Koch, with a net worth of about $60bn, is among the top 25 richest people in the world. For decades, he and his late brother David used their immense wealth to fight environmental regulations and pull US politics to the right. From 1997 to 2018, they gave more than $145m to conservative groups, such as the Manhattan Institute, that have a record of attacking climate solutions and denying that a climate emergency exists, according to Greenpeace calculations. The Kochs founded the political advocacy group Americans for Prosperity, which in the late 2000s played a lead role in catalyzing the Tea Party, a populist movement that elected dozens of hard-right Republicans to Congress and arguably helped create the conditions for Donald Trump to be elected president in 2016.
This sprawling political operation was previously coordinated under an umbrella group called the Seminar Network (referred to by some critics as the “Kochtopus”). Its organizers cited as a major accomplishment pushing the Trump administration to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, according to private documents obtained by the Intercept and Documented.
But Koch publicly feuded with Trump on issues such as the Muslim ban. And during Trump’s presidency, he renamed his network of rich donors, political influence groups and conservative advocacy operations Stand Together. This organization then began making charitable contributions to groups working on issues with modest bipartisan support, like criminal justice reform, poverty and addiction, with Koch signaling in 2019 at a gathering of supporters in Palm Springs that he wanted to move away from partisan politics.
How much Koch actually meant that is debatable. One of Stand Together’s members continues to be Americans for Prosperity, which during the 2020 election spent nearly $48m to help Republican candidates, according to the watchdog group Open Secrets; it spent an additional $69m during the 2022 election cycle. Supporting bipartisan social causes while helping elect Republicans is all part of the same political strategy, said Lisa Graves, executive director of the watchdog organization True North Research.
She cited as an example Koch’s support for a sentencing reform bill known as the First Step Act, which was signed into law by Trump in 2019. That year, Americans for Prosperity went on tour with a Black man named Marshall Charles who was released from prison due to the law. Charles spoke at a Black church in Wisconsin, a state where Americans for Prosperity subsequently mailed nearly 2m flyers supporting the 2022 re-election campaign of the Republican senator Ron Johnson. “What they got out of [the criminal justice reform bill] was some access into the African American community, which advances their political game,” Graves said.
To her this illustrates a key organizing principle of the Koch network – that it’s designed to appeal to, and enlist support from, as many distinct identity groups as possible. Another member of Stand Together is the Libre Initiative, which has given out free Thanksgiving turkeys in Latino communities and then asked people to fill out questionnaires with their political beliefs and contact information. There are Stand Together groups that reach out to veterans, concerned parents, K-12 educators, professors and early-stage entrepreneurs. And now, with the launch of Stand Together Music, the Koch network is targeting music fans.
Before founding the organization, Chase apparently struggled to find a place in his father’s business and political empire. After giving up his dream of being a professional tennis player at 15, Chase took his first job with Koch Industries. He told Forbes that his dad “shipped me away to our cattle feed yard in Syracuse, Kansas, to shovel cow shit and dig post-holes. That was quite an adjustment from the country club.”
Chase was in 2014 asked to run Koch Industries’ entire fertilizer business, but the pressure of overseeing thousands of employees in 30 countries was apparently not a good fit and he fired himself after nine months. Several years later, he founded a venture capital group within the company and in his free time began playing in a band called Memento Mori with John Hardin, a Stand Together board member who had previously worked in golf course design and construction. Chase formed a second band, 2ŁØT, with the former drummer for Chance the Rapper. “I had just been through a divorce, so I was going through a lot myself,” Chase told Forbes. “So we said, ‘Hey, let’s just play music together.’”
Chase then apparently parlayed his musical connections into a new organization serving the goals of his billionaire father. One of Stand Together Music’s first major ventures involved sponsoring in 2022 an ongoing music series at a new 10,000-seat sports and concert arena in Palm Springs. Brian Hooks, chairman and chief executive of Stand Together and longtime ally of Koch, posted about the news on LinkedIn: “Together, we’ll bring in artists and songs that can fuel movements to help transform how the country tackles our biggest challenges.”
Stand Together Music has since then partnered with the Chainsmokers and the sobriety organizations 1 Million Strong and the Phoenix for a “sober-supportive concert” in Berkeley, co-sponsored an “alcohol-free space” at the Lana Del Rey-headlined Newport Folk Festival and presented a panel discussion about trauma and healing in Black communities called “Stand Together Music Presents: Heal America” at a music festival in Park City.
Critics say the banality of these causes is the point: who doesn’t support helping people with addiction and healing America? But Graves said such events give the Koch network entrée into music festivals and hip-hop afterparties that aren’t exactly strongholds for Koch’s brand of free-market ideology, while creating opportunities to sign up younger voters.
The broader Stand Together network is meanwhile pursuing its more nakedly self-interested goals. At a 2022 panel discussion, video of which was previously shared with and reported on by the Guardian, strategists said they were quietly supporting cases before the US supreme court intended to overturn a legal doctrine known as the Chevron deference, which would weaken the power of federal agencies to craft regulations. That could make it harder for the US government to fight the climate crisis. “You won’t see them actually directly litigating on that case,” one panelist said of an advocacy organization funded by Stand Together. “But they’ve done a lot of work behind the scenes.”
Critics say all the tentacles of Stand Together ultimately serve the same master. The network is trying to hollow out the regulatory state while getting Killer Mike to play fun free-speech parties that make Koch look like he’s beyond politics. The musicians working with Stand Together Music, whether conscious of it or not, are “aiding a billionaire who has been devastating to American democracy and to efforts to deal with climate change”, Graves said. “It’s disappointing that these artists would fall pretty to the Koch spin machine and give it any credibility.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/feb/06/oscars-2015-who-will-win-best-actress | Film | 2015-02-06T12:42:00.000Z | Guy Lodge | Oscars 2015: who will win best actress? | Almost every year, Oscar pundits insist on telling us how “weak” the best actress race is, pointing out the dearth of female contenders from the year’s most fancied films. They’re not wrong on the latter point – certainly not this year, at least – but equating it to a limited range of worthy female leads is a false connection, and an idle one.
Last year featured a wealth of award-level performances from women in films that don’t fit the conventional Academy model, from Scarlett Johansson in Under the Skin to Jenny Slate in Obvious Child. Dismissed out of hand by predictors before they have a chance to pique curiosity, such possibilities can nonetheless enter the fold when baitier-on-paper prospects fall through. The race for this year’s final slot turned out to be unexpectedly competitive: Jennifer Aniston and Amy Adams made surprise surges for films disregarded by critics, but it was an arthouse darling widely perceived as too refined for Academy tastes who beat them to the punch.
Still, we’ll start with the performance that, in a year’s time, everyone is likeliest to have forgotten was nominated in the first place. Not that Felicity Jones isn’t a perfectly deft and disarming screen partner for a virtuoso Eddie Redmayne in The Theory of Everything – but for all the marketers’ insistence that it’s the extraordinary story of Stephen and Jane Hawking, it never feels much like her film. (We learn that Mrs Hawking studied Spanish poetry, was into choir-singing and ... well, that’s about it.) Though Jones has enough presence and screen time to justify the categorisation, few eyebrows would have been raised had she been fudged into the supporting field instead – where she might have stood a chance of winning at least one award on the precursor trail. As it is, this is the year’s only best picture nominee to score a best actress nod – a tellingly back-handed achievement in a year when Academy voters haven’t seemed greatly interested in female-driven stories.
For months, many insisted that David Fincher’s Gone Girl would be the second, conveniently ignoring the Academy’s usual lack of regard for chilly airport-thriller entertainment. Those who argued for the film as a daring post-feminist satire of American marital mores didn’t seem very clued in to Oscar voters’ favourite genres. Despite formidable box office – it’s grossed $167m (£109m) Stateside, more than the other four nominees combined – most voters weren’t as jazzed, with even Gillian Flynn’s seemingly assured screenplay nomination falling by the wayside. Its lone nomination turned out to be for Rosamund Pike’s gleeful, dry-ice turn as malevolent antiheroine (or straightup villain, depending on your take) Amy Dunne: this is now the one area where the film’s fans can block-vote, but how many of those are there? If Glenn Close couldn’t win in 1987 for terrifying the men of America into submission, the British first-time nominee surely can’t – particularly with her recent pregnancy having kept her away from the publicity circuit. The sizeable career boost stateside is her reward; she’ll probably be back soon.
Then again, that’s what we said about Reese Witherspoon when she collected best actress for a charismatic elevation of a borderline supporting role in Walk the Line. Few would have guessed it’d take nine years for America’s sweetheart to be invited to the dance, but few would have guessed her career would slump quite so drastically following her triumph. Credit to Witherspoon for engineering her own recovery, however: edged out of Rosamund Pike’s role in Gone Girl, she went ahead and produced the film anyway, developing an adaptation of Cheryl Strayed’s gritty salvation-by-hiking memoir Wild into the bargain. Her self-casting instincts are strong: the role of Strayed is a canny one for her, tapping into the steel-magnolia persona that has underpinned her best parts to date, while revealing a sense of wear, tear and tiredness less familiar from her. It’s a welcome return to form, and if the industry had embraced Jean-Marc Vallée’s film half as warmly as it did his Dallas Buyers Club last year, she’d be in a better position to win.
Like Witherspoon, Marion Cotillard has scored a second nomination this year several years after a well-earned win, but hers is no comeback narrative. Rather, the not-entirely-expected nod for her subtly wrenching turn as a laid-off Belgian factory worker in the critics’ pet Two Days, One Night feels like the Academy catching wise to a rich, under-rewarded run of recent form. If anything, she’s even more deserving of the nomination this year for James Gray’s stunning The Immigrant, sadly still awaiting a UK distributor; the New York Critics’ Circle and the National Society of Film Critics cited her for both films. With this nomination, Cotillard has beaten the odds in a number of pleasing respects: recognition for foreign-lingo performances is rare enough as it is, while the Dardennes’ film suffered a setback when it wasn’t even shortlisted for best foreign-language film. Finally, Cotillard has barely been present on the campaign trail – a pointed contrast to the season she won for La Vie en Rose, when the then little-known ingenue was dragged to every ribbon-cutting ceremony in town. Just sometimes, the work speaks for itself, albeit with a strong accent.
Subtly wrenching … Marion Cotillard in Two Days, One Night
Nevertheless, Julianne Moore essentially won this race five months ago, when Still Alice premiered with quiet confidence at the Toronto film festival in September. She’s eminently deserving of recognition for her restrained, emotionally complex portrayal of an English professor slipping into early-onset Alzheimer’s, but she’d be the frontrunner even if she wasn’t. Moore has had a banner year, winning best actress at Cannes for her contrastingly unhinged performance in Maps to the Stars, and appearing prominently in the latest instalment of The Hunger Games franchise – 2014’s highest-grossing release in the US. Add to that the widespread perception that an Oscar is long overdue for Moore: an actor’s actor, she has four previous nominations, should certainly have several more, but has yet to win. This perfect storm of factors in her favour has already netted her the Golden Globe and Screen Actors’ Guild award, among others. This year, put it all on red.
Will win: Julianne Moore.
Should win: Marion Cotillard.
Hey, where’s ... Essie Davis? The Australian star of indie horror sensation The Babadook put herself through the psychological wringer more rigorously than anyone in this year’s race. Given the Academy’s antipathy toward the genre, she’d never have made it, but owing to outdated rules regarding VOD releases, the film was never eligible in the first place. Time for a rethink. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jan/02/mario-cuomo | US news | 2015-01-02T20:06:39.000Z | Godfrey Hodgson | Mario Cuomo obituary | Mario Cuomo, who has died aged 82 of heart failure, was a populist Democrat of the old school. He was born in the New York borough of Queens, above the grocery shop owned by his family, illiterate immigrants from south of Naples. He grew up to be a professional baseball player; a lawyer good enough to turn down an offer of a place on the supreme court; a Catholic intellectual who dared to take on his church over abortion; a tireless campaigner against the death penalty; an orator who thrilled his party with one famous speech; and a politician who deeply disappointed it by twice backing away from running for president.
In 1984, as the keynote speaker at the Democratic national convention that nominated Walter Mondale to run for president, Cuomo had the nerve to mock Ronald Reagan’s favourite image of America as “a shining city on a hill”. It was more a tale of two cities, he told a wildly cheering auditorium in San Francisco. There was another city, he said, where people “stared from a distance at the shining towers” of Reagan’s rhetoric. In the places Reagan did not visit, Cuomo said, people could not afford a mortgage; they slept in the gutter. The Reagan Republicans, he said, had divided America “between the lucky and the left-out, the royalty and the rabble”.
And yet, for all his talents and his sincere radicalism, Cuomo was an enigma. People could not understand why he twice turned down glowing opportunities to run for president as well as a clear offer of a place on the supreme court. No wonder journalists called him “Hamlet on the Hudson”.
Mario Cuomo during Columbus Day celebrations in New York in the 1980s. Photograph: Zuma/Rex
Part of the explanation was his commitment to New York and a deep Catholic faith. Once when an engine in a plane he was flying in caught fire, he was imperturbable. “What’s the matter?” he asked a journalist flying with him. “Are you not in a state of grace?” Yet he infuriated the church with a speech at the great Catholic university in Indiana, Notre Dame, in which he equivocated like any 17th-century Jesuit confessor to royalty about the politics of abortion: "God should not," he dared to say to that audience, “be made into a celestial party chairman." There was even talk of excommunication.
There were less saintly sides to that personality. He may have been, as New York’s liberal mayor Bill de Blasio said after Cuomo died, “a man of unwavering principle”. But no one ever said he did not know how to look after himself. The bachelor politician Ed Koch never forgave the posters in a New York mayoral primary campaign in 1977, proclaiming “Vote for Cuomo, Not the Homo”, though Cuomo always denied responsibility. President Clinton was embarrassed to be recorded comparing the New York governor to a mafioso and calling him, for good measure, “a mean son of a bitch”. He himself called politics “an ugly business”.
Mario’s parents, Andrea and Immaculata, had come from the province of Salerno in the Italian Mezzogiorno to the Queens neighbourhood of South Jamaica.
It was, as their son said later, “Italian-black-German-Irish-Polish”, a working-class part of New York, and Cuomo was a “lunch-bucket Democrat”, who never forgot the bread-and-butter issues that mattered to New York’s working class.
He also never forgot the opportunities New York and America had given him.
He went to St John's preparatory school, a high school run by the nearby St John’s University. There he was so good at baseball that he was put under contract by the Pittsburgh Pirates, who sent him to one of their farm clubs in Brunswick, Georgia. He was doing well there when he was hit on the head by a fast ball. He was blind for a week, and had to give up baseball: it was the best thing that could have happened.
He went to St John’s, where he was first in his class, and then to its law school, where he was supported by his wife, Matilda (nee Raffa), a teacher, after their marriage in 1952. Four years later he was called to the New York bar and worked as a clerk to the head of the New York state court of appeal.
Mario Cuomo at the 1984 Democratic convention in Washington DC. Photograph: Rex
In 1958 he went to work for a Brooklyn law firm and had no involvement in politics until he was over 30, when he was successful in helping a group of local homeowners who were threatened with losing their land to the ambitions of the New York “master builder”, Robert Moses, for the New York World's Fair of 1964-65. Again in 1972, Cuomo successfully mediated a dispute about a housing project on behalf of New York mayor John Lindsay, and in 1974 he undertook his first campaign, for lieutenant governor. He was elected to that post on his second attempt, in 1978, helped by another St John’s alumnus and Catholic politician, the Democratic governor, Hugh Carey.
It was not until 1982 that Cuomo ran successfully for governor of the state, and won again in 1986 and 1990. At first he was brilliantly successful, so much so that he was re-elected to his second term with 65% of the vote. In 1983 he settled a prison riot at Sing Sing, known at the time as the Ossining correctional facility – in contrast to the bloodbath at Attica prison, in which 29 prisoners and 10 hostages had died, under his predecessor Nelson Rockefeller in 1971 – and raised money for education through huge bond issues.
Later, life became more difficult because, as he candidly admitted at the start of his third term in 1991: “We don’t have any money." The paradox was that, though his presidential career prospects suffered because of his loyalty to New York state, he always did enough to keep his national prospects alive because it helped his poll standing in New York.
In October 1991 he said he was thinking of running for president, but two months later, with a plane waiting at the airport in Albany to take him to New Hampshire to file for the key presidential primary election there, he decided not to go. Two years later he turned down President Clinton’s offer of the place on the supreme court that went to another New York liberal, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and in 1994, to his and everyone’s else’s surprise, he was defeated for re-election by the relatively unknown Republican, George Pataki.
In the end, when asked by the New York Times what he would like to have said in his obituary he replied: “I tried." They used to say that you couldn’t be president of the United States if your surname ended in a vowel. But it was Barack Obama, not Mario Cuomo, who first proved that wrong. In truth he did not try hard enough to be president.
He is survived by Matilda, his daughters, Margaret, Maria and Madeline, and his sons, Christopher and Andrew. His death came on the day that Andrew was inaugurated for a second term as governor of New York.
Mario Matthew Cuomo, politician, born 15 June 1932; died 1 January 2015 | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/dec/24/charles-darwin-beagle-artist-conrad-martens-cambridge-university | Science | 2014-12-24T12:10:54.000Z | Maev Kennedy | Charles Darwin’s voyage on Beagle unfolds online in works by ship’s artist | On Christmas Day 1833, Charles Darwin and the crew of HMS Beagle were larking about at Port Desire in Patagonia, under the keen gaze of the ship’s artist, Conrad Martens.
The crew were mostly young men – Darwin himself, a recent graduate from Cambridge University, was only 22 – and had been given shore leave. Martens recorded them playing a naval game called Slinging the Monkey, which looks much more fun for the observers than the main participant. It involved a man being tied by his feet from a frame, swung about and jeered by his shipmates, until he manages to hit one of them with a stick, whereupon they change places.
The drawing, part of a short film made by Cambridge University, which holds the originals in a mass of Darwin material, shows the Beagle, the ship that helped change the history of science through Darwin’s observations on the voyage, and its companion ship the Adventure, at anchor in the background. Others, including a double-page spread, were made from the deck of the Beagle.
Alison Pearn, of the Darwin Correspondence Project – which is seeking to assemble every surviving letter from and to the naturalist into a digital archive – said the drawings vividly brought to life one of the most famous voyages in the world. “It’s wonderful that everyone has the chance now to flick through these sketch books, in their virtual representation at the Cambridge digital library, and to follow the journey as Martens and Darwin actually saw it unfold.”
Darwin in his diary recorded the events of the day: “After dining in the Gun-room, the officers & almost every man in the ship went on shore. – The Captain distributed prizes to the best runners, leapers, wrestlers. – These Olympic games were very amusing; it was quite delightful to see with what school-boy eagerness the seamen enjoyed them: old men with long beards & young men without any were playing like so many children. – certainly a much better way of passing Christmas day than the usual one, of every seaman getting as drunk as he possibly can.”
Christmas two years earlier at Devonport, when the start of the voyage was delayed by bad weather and the crew could get at pubs and not just manly sports on shore, had been a very different scene. Darwin furiously recorded: “Monday 26th A beautiful day, & an excellent one for sailing, – the opportunity has been lost owing to the drunkeness & absence of nearly the whole crew. – The ship has been all day in state of anarchy. One days holiday has caused all this mischief; such a scene proves how absolutely necessary strict discipline is amongst such thoughtless beings as Sailors are.– Several have paid the penalty for insolence, by sitting for eight or nine hours in heavy chains. – Whilst in this state, their conduct was like children, abusing every body & thing but themselves, & the next moment nearly crying. – It is an unfortunate beginning, being obliged so early to punish so many of our best men there was however no choice left as to the necessity of doing it.”
It would be a further 26 years before Darwin published his theory of evolution, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, based partly on wildlife observations he made on board the Beagle. The voyage, and many of the people he met and the places he saw can be traced in scores of tiny lightning sketches made in pencil and watercolour by Martens – although unfortunately he joined the ship too late to record the weeping and hungover sailors in their chains – which have been placed online by Cambridge University library.
Martens left the voyage the following year; there wasn’t enough room when the Adventure was laid up because it had become too expensive to continue the project with two ships, and the two crews combined in the Beagle. He settled in Australia, where he became a successful landscape artist, and sent Darwin the gift of a watercolour to congratulate him on the much-delayed publication of his great work.
Pearn described his drawings as a visual counterpart to Darwin’s letters home. “Both bring to life a really remarkable adventure, different landscapes, the lives of the local people and of the crew of these two tiny ships in a vast and remote part of the world.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/apr/27/barclays-profit-slump-confirms-interest-africa-arm-jes-staley | Business | 2016-04-27T11:12:29.000Z | Jill Treanor | Barclays confirms interest in Africa arm as profits slump by 25% | Barclays has revealed it has received approaches for its African operations – which its former chief executive Bob Diamond wants to buy – as it reported a 25% slump in first-quarter profits and losses on oil-related loans.
The bank, currently undergoing a restructuring under its new chief executive, Jes Staley, reported first-quarter profits of £793m and a 15% rise in bad debts, largely a result of problems facing clients in the oil and gas sector.
Staley, an American banker who took the helm in December after a hiatus in the boardroom, also warned Barclays’ investment bankers that their bonuses would be cut because of a slowdown in the industry.
Staley said there had been expressions of interest in the African business, which was put on the market last month.
Jes Staley.
“On Africa, we continue to explore opportunities to reduce our shareholding to a level that achieves regulatory deconsolidation, including capital market and strategic options, and we are pleased with the level of indicative interest in what is a high quality business,” said Staley.
He did not name the potential buyers for Barclays Africa, a complex business that is listed on the Johannesburg stock market and in which Barclays has a 62.5% stake. However, Diamond, who was chief executive of Barclays before being forced after the Libor rigging scandal, said on Tuesday that he had the funding to table a potential offer.
Staley does not necessarily want to sell the entire stake in Barclays Africa, but lower it to below 20% as part of a plan to preserve capital, which has already led him to cut the dividend for this year and next.
He has said it could take up to two years to dispose of the African stake but the possibility of a faster than expected disposal sparked questions from analysts about whether the dividend cut could be rethought.
A year ago the bank’s profits were knocked by £1bn of charges in anticipation of fines for rigging foreign exchange markets and more payouts for payment protection insurance. This quarter the charge for such misconduct was £78m.
Staley has created two major divisions at Barclays, a UK arm and a corporate and international division, in anticipation of the ringfencing rules that come into force in 2019 and require separation of risky investment banking operations from UK high street customers.
Bob Diamond's interest in Barclays Africa confirmed
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The bank had already warned that trading in its investment banking arm – once the powerhouse of the business – was slowing and profits in this division were down 31%, although this was not as bad as feared by the market.
Staley said that though the investment banking arm had performed well compared with its US peers he was keeping a close watch on costs. “We will adjust bonuses for 2016 appropriately, given that our year over year revenues were down, and mindful of the fact that the industry more widely has made dramatic cuts to performance accruals in the first quarter,” he added.
Profits in the UK arm fell 2% amid fierce competition in the mortgage market.
There is also a non-core division that includes parts of the investment bank as well as its Egypt and Zimbabwe banks and its continental retail bank. On Wednesday, it announced talks to sell its 74-branch network in France to AcaCap Financial Partners.
The bank’s chairman, John McFarlane, has previously expressed a preference for the UK to remain part of the EU and, as it published its first-quarter figures, the bank warned that it was “cautious as we approach the 23 June EU referendum”.
McFarlane will chair the bank’s annual general meeting on Thursday, where he will face questions about the cut to the dividend despite his pledge to bolster payouts to shareholders.
“The dividend cut is painful,” said Staley, who said major institutional investors were supportive of the decision while the non-core divisions was being sold off. Everyone wants the restructuring of Barclay to come to an end in a reasonable period of time,” said Staley.
“The performance of the core [part of the bank] today shows the potential power of the group once it is freed from the drag of non-core.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2020/may/21/u2s-40-greatest-songs-ranked | Culture | 2020-05-21T11:05:56.000Z | Alexis Petridis | U2's 40 greatest songs – ranked! | 40. North and South of the River (1997)
Bafflingly left off Pop – it was released on the B-side of Staring at the Sun – North and South of the River is audibly better than swathes of that album: a low-key excursion into something resembling trip-hop, replete with breakbeat and lo-fi orchestral samples and particularly yearning Bono vocal.
39. Vertigo (2004)
If All That You Can’t Leave Behind returned U2 to something like their pre-Achtung Baby selves, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb’s roaring lead single took them back even further: inspired once more by the Sex Pistols and Buzzcocks, it stripped their sound to its elemental punk roots: one guitar, bass, drums.
38. In a Little While (2001)
Once they had shaken off their youthful obsession with Siouxsie and the Banshees and Joy Division, U2 seldom sounded like anyone other than U2. In a Little While, however, has a 70s Rolling Stones feel to it. Subsequently covered by both Hanson and William Shatner, it’s a lovely, loose ode to enduring romance.
37. Out of Control (1980)
U2’s debut single is very much a product of its era, further bedevilled by the difficult recording session at which the band’s own technical limitations were revealed. Re-recorded for 1980’s Boy, however, Out of Control shone, its blazing youthful power fully revealed itself.
36. Sleep Like a Baby Tonight (2014)
The contents of Songs of Innocence were overshadowed by the controversy over its means of distribution – oddly enough, not everyone wanted a U2 album to automatically appear in their iTunes library – but they were better than the reviews suggested: produced by Danger Mouse, Sleep Like a Baby Tonight’s lambent tune and electronic pulse deserve reassessment.
35. The Playboy Mansion (1997)
Another song worth salvaging from the wreckage of Pop, the drum machine-driven The Playboy Mansion is raggedly charming, its lyrics casting an ambiguous eye over media bombardment, celebrity and advertising, its guitar snaking around Bono’s low-key vocal.
34. Hold Me Thrill Me Kiss Me Kill Me (1995)
U2’s contribution to the soundtrack of Batman Forever might well be their own charming homage to Marc Bolan, albeit put through a distinct Zooropa-era filter: the string arrangement is pure Children of the Revolution, the guitars crunch very T Rex-ily, there’s a distinct hint of a “glam descend” chord sequence about the chorus.
33. Cedars of Lebanon (2009)
Cursed with the kind of title guaranteed to get U2 naysayers rolling their eyes, Cedars of Lebanon is nevertheless one of No Line on the Horizon’s scattered highlights: sonically muted and misty, the vocals oddly conversational, its tone weary and sombre, it feels focused and potent where the rest of the album feels confused.
32. Invisible (2014)
Kraftwerk apparently lurked among the regular musical diet of the nascent U2, but it took until 2014 for their influence to really make itself heard. Invisible’s blend of classic U2-isms with motorik drums and Autobahn synths is the most successful of their recent attempts to reboot their sound.
31. Mothers of the Disappeared (1987)
There’s a sense that U2’s vast commercial success means their willingness to experiment gets overlooked, but The Joshua Tree’s second side is thick with impressive diversions into the musical left field, as evidenced by its closing track’s ominous, chilling ambient noise.
30. Stay (Faraway, So Close!) (1993)
As befits a song originally intended for Frank Sinatra, Stay pared back the sonic overload of much of Zooropa, leaving U2 more or less au naturel. Its live sound bolsters the song’s beautifully elegant, elegiac, small-hours tone, its lyric inspired by the plot of the Wim Wenders film they wrote it for.
29. October (1981)
At the other extreme to Gloria’s breast-beating lurked October’s title track, an austere, suitably autumnal-sounding piano ballad in which Bono’s vocals arrive only in the final 50 seconds. “Joy Division had gone to our heads,” shrugged the singer years later, but there’s a hushed, stark beauty to the track.
28. Get Out of Your Own Way (2017)
U2’s most recent albums have been marred by the audible sense of a band trying too hard, but Songs of Experience’s highlight felt effortless. Its shifts from soft and sad to rousing are the sound of a band not worrying about their place in the modern pop landscape and being themselves.
27. Until the End of the World (1991)
A fantastic example of Achtung Baby’s ability to adapt current musical trends so they fit into U2’s universe, rather than vice-versa, the shuffling, vaguely “baggy” dance rhythm here supports a retelling of the story of Judas Iscariot, a song that alternately broods and soars and a particularly sky-scraping Edge solo.
26. Pride (In the Name of Love) (1984)
The song that in effect sent U2 supernova plays fast and loose with the facts of Martin Luther King’s murder – he was shot in the afternoon, not the morning – but it hardly matters. As straightforward a lunge for anthem status as they had yet recorded, Pride worked.
25. City of Blinding Lights (2004)
Either a paean to Bono’s goggle-eyed first trip to London, or a description of Manhattan, City of Blinding Lights isn’t about taking risks so much as U2 doing what U2 were put on Earth to do – make music that’s atmospheric but anthemic, uplifting but soul-searching – and doing it absolutely perfectly.
24. Ultraviolet (Light My Way) (1991)
Julian Schnabel’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly features a scene soundtracked by Ultraviolet: the film’s paralysed protagonist remembering a car journey with his lover, her hair flowing in the wind. It is an extraordinary piece of film-making that perfectly captures Ultraviolet’s power, the most musically uplifting of U2’s examinations of faith.
25. Mofo (1997)
Pop is generally regarded as U2’s latter-day nadir: its recording was rushed, its attempt at grafting samples and loops on to U2’s sound ungainly, and even its title managed to upset US rock fans. But occasionally, it worked, as on Mofo, an improbably titled song about the death of Bono’s mother, complete with thrilling, Giorgio Moroder-ish synth line.
24. The Electric Co (1980)
U2 have been resident in the world’s stadiums for so long, it is easy to forget they were once a post-punk band. (They would doubtless argue they still are.) It is very clear here, a song about alienation and electro-convulsive therapy, vocals hidden amid trebly, reverb-heavy guitars, drums heavy on tom-tom thunder.
23. Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of (2000)
At the other emotional extreme to Beautiful Day lies All That You Can’t Leave Behind’s anguished response to the death of Michael Hutchence. More complex and affecting than a standard issue tear-jerker, its lyric keeps shifting from sadness and empathy to anger at its subject: “You’re such a fool.”
22. Zooropa (1993)
Zooropa was Achtung Baby’s scrappier sibling: if you wanted evidence of the distance U2 had travelled in recent years, the title track’s experimental, episodic collision of ambience, distorted vocals and densely affected guitar was a good place to start. Moreover, they somehow did it without surrendering their, well, U2-ness.
21. Bullet the Blue Sky (1987)
Inspired by a trip to El Salvador, Bullet the Blue Sky’s tribal drums, dub bass and arcs of guitar noise sound like a bold attempt to turn the experiments of post-punk into something stadium-sized. Extra fun can be had imagining Mark E Smith’s reaction when he learned the chorus was based on a Fall track.
20. Gloria (1981)
U2’s second album could have been their last – a confused exploration of spirituality, it nearly pre-empted a split – but when it worked, as on towering opener Gloria, it underlined what a different proposition U2 were. Who else among their peers would write an open-hearted, earnest celebration of Christian faith?
19. The Troubles (2017)
Not all of U2’s recent lunges for contemporaneity have worked (who in their right minds wants to hear Bono singing through Auto-Tune?) but Songs of Innocence’s concluding duet with Lykke Li did. A slow drift that never deals directly with the conflict in the title, but focuses on the impact that growing up near conflict has on one’s personality.
18. The Fly (1991)
From its opening blast of chaotic guitar, The Fly boldly announces things are not as they were in the world of U2. Out goes earnestness that could border on painful, in come more murky, ambiguous songs sung in character. “Conscience can be a pest,” offers Bono, as if starkly critiquing his former self, “ambition bites the nails of success.”
17. Desire (1988)
Rattle and Hum marked the point at which U2 allowed their passion and self-belief – and indeed their reaction to superstardom – to slip into bombast, but sometimes its experiments with US roots music work. Fizzing with their enthusiasm for music forbidden under post-punk’s rules, Desire’s irresistible Bo Diddley beat is evidence.
16. Bad (1984)
Inspired by the rise in heroin use in 80s Dublin, Bad looms large in U2 legend. The original is hypnotic and slow-burning, delicately shaded with Brian Eno’s electronics, the perfect launchpad for onstage development. Most famously, they played it for 12 minutes at Live Aid, a performance they thought was a disaster, but which turned out to be a highlight.
15. I Will Follow (1980)
U2’s first truly great song was a product of its era – Public Image-esque guitars, the vocal influence of Siouxsie particularly evident on the chorus, a hint of DIY experimentation in its percussive use of cutlery and a bicycle wheel – but it hoisted its influences into the service of music expressly built for crowds to sing along and punch the air to.
14. New Year’s Day (1983)
The unexpected result of Adam Clayton attempting, and failing, to play the bass line to Visage’s Fade to Grey, U2’s breakthrough hit had what Bono admitted was a sketchy lyric about Poland’s political upheavals. It didn’t matter: its anthem status rests on the emotional shift between the jagged iciness of its verses and the warmth and yearning of the chorus.
13. Sometimes You Can’t Make It on Your Own (2004)
How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb’s greatest track remains Bono’s rumination on his complex relationship with his dying father. It’s the perfect counter-argument to those who feel U2’s music exists solely on a grand scale, painted in emotional brushstrokes too broad for its own good. Incisive and personal, it is heartbreakingly frank.
12. Lemon (1993)
Achtung Baby’s singles employed a lot of hip dance remixers: the shimmering synths and falsetto vocals of Zooropa’s Lemon seemed to seamlessly integrate the sound of a hip dance remix into U2’s own. It is helped by the fact the song itself is great; you could strip it of its production and it would still work.
11. Even Better Than the Real Thing (1991)
Returning to Achtung Baby’s many remixes, Paul Oakenfold’s version of Even Better Than the Real Thing was the most famous, but then his source material was fantastic: a rattlingly exciting song about the desire for immediate gratification – “Slide down the surface of things” – that now seems remarkably prescient.
10. No Line on the Horizon (2009)
A commercial disappointment – selling a mere 5m copies – the album No Line on the Horizon was muddled and, in Larry Mullen’s words, “fucking miserable”. Finding its highlights requires a degree of sifting, but its title track is fantastic: a wracked vocal over a pulsing wall of guitar effects, the intensity of which ebbs and flows throughout the song.
9. Beautiful Day (2000)
Trailed as a return to basics after the failed experiment of Pop, All That You Can’t Leave Behind wasn’t quite as straightforward as that, but U2 songs come no more direct and powerful than its lead single. Everything about Beautiful Day clicks perfectly, the apparent effortlessness of its widescreen euphoria at odds with its tricky gestation.
8. The Unforgettable Fire (1984)
By now, U2 could knock out potent stadium rock to order, as evidenced by Pride, but The Unforgettable Fire’s best moments are more opaque, less direct. The title track is atmospheric, synth-heavy and dense with serpentine melodies, its euphoric power gradually building over the course of five minutes.
7. I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For (1987)
The gospel inflections and earnest tone of I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For are precisely the kind of thing that winds up U2’s detractors. But blessed with a melody that sounds it has somehow always existed, its strength lies in the fact that it doesn’t deal in pious sermonising; its expressions of spiritual doubt are disarmingly heartfelt.
6. All I Want Is You (1988)
Of all Rattle And Hum’s attempts to tap into American music history, employing former Beach Boys collaborator Van Dyke Parks for All I Want Is You was the most inspired. His complex but beautiful string arrangement turns a straightforward love song into something richer, adding an undercurrent of uncertainty to Bono’s vocal proclamations.
5. Sunday Bloody Sunday (1983)
A lot has been written about Sunday Bloody Sunday’s lyrics – a non-sectarian, pacifist view of the Troubles – but its power lies in the way its sound keeps lurching back and forth from a clattering racket strafed with feedback and scraping violin to something more straightforward and palatable: a killer riff coupled with the singalong-inducing refrain: “How long must we sing this song?”
4. With Or Without You (1987)
Daringly at odds with then-prevalent trends for pumped-up and musclebound stadium rock, With Or Without You’s examination of faith and/or love is simple to the point of sounding stark: subtle, even subdued, never reaching the big climax you expect. None of which stopped it going to No 1 in the US, a very counterintuitive way of becoming the biggest band in the world.
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3. Mysterious Ways (1991)
“Heavy-bottomed but light-headed” in the words of the producer Brian Eno, Mysterious Ways is one of a number of Achtung Baby tracks to bear the influence of contemporary indie-dance, an inspiration U2 were able to assimilate remarkably well, hence this gleefully lubricious blast of wah-wah guitar, congas and funky bass.
2. One (1991)
Achtung Baby is rightly heralded as one of the great 180-degree artistic turns a major band has ever performed, but at its heart lies a traditionally U2-esque song: a love ballad that reaches for bigger topics – “We’re one, but we’re not the same, we get to carry each other” – so emotionally powerful it apparently reduced Axl Rose, of all people, to floods of tears.
1. Where the Streets Have No Name (1987)
Where the Streets Have No Name had inauspicious beginnings: in effect written to order – The Joshua Tree was “short [of] a certain kind of song”, the Edge later recalled – the band struggled to record it, and Eno was so unimpressed he attempted to wipe the tape. He would have erased a song that perfectly sums up U2’s appeal. Powered by a particularly gripping example of Edge’s patent echo-drenched arpeggios, it is breathlessly exciting without ever resorting to rock anthem cliche (the time signature changes twice). The lyrics seem to be as much about the ability of music to inspire joyful transcendence as the divisions in Belfast that inspired them and the chorus soars irresistibly. “The ultimate U2 live song,” Edge suggested. He was right.
This article was amended on 21 May to state that The Troubles came from Songs of Innocence rather than Songs of Experience | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2007/jan/12/tennis.australianopen20073 | Sport | 2007-01-12T00:29:37.000Z | Eleanor Preston | Tennis: Murray to beef up | There was a time when the thought of Andy Murray striding on to Centre Court in a sleeveless shirt, à la Rafael Nadal, might have been cause for a smirk or two but, if his coach, Brad Gilbert, is to be believed, this summer audiences may be marvelling at the Scot's ripped biceps. It would have been tempting to assume Gilbert was joking when he suggested it until he began detailing just how much work Murray has been putting in to buff up his physique.
"We were hoping that he could bust sleeveless at Wimbledon '08 but now, if he works hard enough, it could be Wimbledon '07," said Gilbert yesterday, using his own peculiar interpretation of the English language. "That's the litmus test, busting sleeveless. Then you've got some guns."
For those who have not done the evening course in Gilbert-speak, he meant that Murray has added some conspicuous firepower, speed and stamina to the thoughtful, clever tennis that comes naturally to him. Murray is set to get stronger still as he continues the programme Gilbert's fitness trainer, Mark Grabow, worked out for him during the intense 10-day training block they had in California in December.
Murray's time there was spent lifting weights in the gym, running up hills and even sprint training with the former Olympic 400 metres champion Michael Johnson. Much of the hard graft was done before Murray arrived in Melbourne this week but, even as he practises before Monday's start to the Australian Open, he will be following the instruction book Grabow has given him on how to maintain his vigorous training regime. Grabow and Gilbert have advised him to lay off the heavy work during the tournament, to save himself in conditions which can test the stamina of even the fittest players.
"He's got a schedule of things to be doing but obviously at a major you taper down; it's all about maintenance," explained Gilbert. "If you're trying to do your work here, you haven't done it. It's about trying to stay the course and get through one of these events. But it's a process. It doesn' t come overnight. I think that in 12 months, or 18 months, there will be significant change and it will be change for the good. The stronger you get, you start getting a little more stick on your shots. We're trying to improve his serve. Andy is a very clever player. He's getting a little stronger, both physically and mentally, and he'll become even more clever."
All sounds like sweetness and light between coach and player but there were signs in Doha last week that their relationship can sometimes be a fractious one. Gilbert has not yet eradicated the occasional on-court emotional meltdowns that Murray succumbs to and the teenager threw several choice words in Gilbert's direction during the more frustrating moments of his final defeat there by Ivan Ljubicic.
"I know he doesn't mean it," said the American. "When Andy is yelling and shouting, he's not so much pissed off at me as pissed off at himself because he's driven to do better. The anger looks like he's getting mad at me but he's mad at himself that he's not playing better. It's not a personal thing at me. That just releases him a little bit. We are working on that. He's never going to be a choirboy but we're trying to temper him down. The calmer he can be, the better his game is going to be. Everybody gets frustrated. Some people just do a better job of holding it in."
There will probably be moments during the forthcoming Australian Open when Murray's ability to keep a grip on his emotions and his new-found strength and fitness will both be sorely tested but Gilbert believes he has evolved to the point where he is ready to be more than just a promising newcomer.
"Last year at this time he had played maybe 20 pro matches at most. He's now had a full year. He's no longer a rookie, he's become a pro," said Gilbert. "Even though he's 19, he's not a young 19 and he knows what he's doing and he's much more professional. I think that a year ago he was hoping. Now it's not about hope, it's about doing." If Gilbert's faith is justified, then acquiring bigger biceps - at least big enough to allow him to carry off a sleeveless shirt - should be the very least of Murray's ambitions.
Gilbert-speak
Gilbert
Pull the rip cord.
Translation
Elevate one's performance in order to disarm one's opponent.
Gilbert
Do the worm.
Translation
Perform celebratory dance.
Gilbert
Give big props to.
Translation
Praise fulsomely.
Gilbert
Ride the pine.
Translation
Sit idly on the sidelines.
Gilbert
Take to the wood shed.
Translation
Defeat comprehensively.
Gilbert
I'm bummed for him.
Translation
I share his disappointment at another first-round, straight-sets defeat.
Gilbert
He puts his hard hat on week after week out there.
Translation
He strives relentlessly for perfection.
Gilbert
This guy's dishes are off the hook.
Translation
The head chef's dover sole really is a must. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/apr/22/piled-on-pavements-sunk-in-canals-the-ugly-side-of-the-cycle-hire-revolution | UK news | 2023-04-22T14:52:19.000Z | Miranda Bryant | Cycle hire: how poor parking put a spoke in the wheel of city schemes | On the narrow streets of Soho, the bright, bulky silhouettes of London’s many hire-scheme bikes are visible on every turn – parked freestanding on roadsides, in docking stations, whizzing past slow-moving traffic and (a particular bugbear for many Londoners) lying horizontal across pavements, sometimes in piles.
The proliferating schemes – the biggest of which include Transport for London’s (TfL) Santander Cycles, founded in 2010, and relative newcomers Lime, HumanForest, Dott and Tier – are undoubtedly popular. Usage of hire bikes appear to be at record levels, with the summer months expected to further increase popularity, and easy access to electric bikes have transformed the lives of many.
But as the rival companies battle it out for dominance on the streets of the capital, and in cities around the country, they are also wreaking havoc for local authorities. While TfL’s scheme has designated docking stations where bikes have to be left to end a journey, app-operated e-bikes can be left freestanding wherever the rider’s journey ends – and for some people that means leaving it in the middle of a pavement.
Westminster council, which receives daily complaints about abandoned bikes on pavements, has started seizing cycles that pose an “imminent risk to public safety”.
Last week the councillor Paul Dimoldenberg, a cabinet member for city management, met e-bike operators to look at potential parking bays. “While the majority of users park their bikes responsibly, unfortunately many dockless bikes are simply dumped in the middle of the pavement all over Westminster. This is a safety hazard, particularly for people with disabilities or those who are partially sighted,” he said.
Will Norman, London’s walking and cycling commissioner, said: “Dockless rental e-bikes are extremely popular but it is concerning to hear of instances where dockless bikes are left carelessly and recklessly on roads and pavements causing real difficulties for visually impaired and blind Londoners. We urge users to park them considerately.”
Issues with hire bikes are not just a London phenomenon. Voi pulled its e-bikes out of Peterborough in January due to persistent vandalism of its cycles, while in Manchester, mayor Andy Burnham resorted to pleading with residents to stop throwing the city’s hire bikes into canals.
Cities do not have the power to regulate rental bike providers, Norman said, and he called for the government to introduce legislation that would enable them to “ensure providers behave responsibly, and all road users feel safe”.
The Department for Transport, the Observer understands, is planning to introduce new legislation that would allow local authorities to manage rental schemes and enforce on issues such as parking.
Ilyas Omar, a student, is a regular user of e-bikes. Photograph: Sophia Evans/The Observer
In Soho’s Berwick Street on Friday, student Ilyas Omar, 20, a regular user, said bikes piled up on the pavement are “taking away from the aesthetic of the street”. But, he added: “Unless you get a docking station for them there’s nothing you can do.”
Walking down the street with their baby in a stroller,
Vinay, an entrepreneur, and his wife, Gopika, who works in consulting, both 31, said the bikes were a “menace” for buggies. The people who use them, Gopika said, “don’t tend to drive very responsibly … parking in the middle of the road, middle of the pavement, not stopping”.
But many love the rental cycles, especially e-bikes – particularly younger people. A teenager hopping on a bike at Tottenham Court Road station said he uses them every single time he comes to central London.
London TravelWatch said while hire bikes offer a convenient and relatively cheap way to get round London, it is vital they are used responsibly:
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Tfl to add 500 e-bikes to Santander cycle-hire scheme as costs rise
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“When awarding licences to hire companies, the authorities should look to include provision for secure docking as a condition,” a spokesperson said. “Disabled people, especially wheelchair users, guide dog owners and cane users, must be able to use all walkways unobstructed.”
Tier said it “works hard to encourage the right behaviour and fix issues quickly”. Dott said users can only leave bikes in suitable parking spaces. A spokesperson added: “If any bad parking is reported, we have street teams available and working to go and rectify these.”
Lime, which operates in London, Salford, Milton Keynes, Nottingham and Derby, said its users “receive ongoing education in-app on how to park their bike safely and considerately at the end of their journey. They are also required to take an ‘end-trip photo’ of how they park. These photos are reviewed, with users warned and fined for mis-parking.”
It added that it works in partnership with councils across London “to deliver a safe, affordable and tidy e-bike rental scheme”.
HumanForest said it works with local authorities to establish parking spaces “in suitable places to encourage appropriate parking”. The firm “constantly monitors” poorly parked bikes, relocating them when reported, and punishes repeat offences.
A Department for Transport spokesperson said: “Local authorities already have powers to remove e-cycles from pavements where they are causing an obstruction and are responsible for working with rental operators to keep pavements clear where possible.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/feb/04/refuse-firm-lord-of-the-bins-ordered-to-change-its-name-by-tolkien-franchise | UK news | 2023-02-04T16:12:25.000Z | Tom Ambrose | Refuse firm Lord of the Bins ordered to change its name by Tolkien franchise | A refuse firm in Brighton called Lord of the Bins has been ordered by lawyers to change its name after being accused of breaching trademark laws.
The two-man waste collection business was contacted by Middle-earth Enterprises, which owns the worldwide rights to The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Nick Lockwood and Dan Walker run the company, which collects household, building and office waste across East Sussex and West Sussex.
The pair said they have been issued with a cease and desist notice after it was claimed they were in breach of the well-known franchise’s trademarks.
As well as changing the firm’s name and website, they have been forced to ditch their company slogan – “One ring to remove it all”.
Lockwood, 36, told the Sun: “If we don’t turn up on time, no one’s going to chuck their Lord of the Rings DVD in the bin. And if they bring out a box office smash, I don’t think more people are going to ring up for waste collection. It’s just bullyboy tactics.”
He added: “We now have the prospect of spending thousands of pounds and [a lot of] effort on rebranding, to appease a multibillion-pound company. We will survive this storm and continue providing a great service for our city, whatever our name.”
The legal letter reads: “You have made use of names and slogan highly similar to the Lord of the Rings. Your activity amounts to an infringement of our client’s trademark rights.”
Lawyers for the franchise also told the businessmen that it reserved the right to “seek damages” over the “unlawful activity”.
Walker, also 36, said: “We can’t afford to fight them. We’re just trying to make people smile and make a living.”
It is not the first example of global firms flexing their legal muscle to force smaller businesses into name changes.
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In 2017, a shopkeeper dealt with the threat of legal action from Sainsbury’s over his similarly named store by changing its name from Singhsbury’s to Morrisinghs.
Jel Singh Nagra changed the name of his convenience store in West Allotment, North Tyneside, after Sainsbury’s said its original name, Singhsbury’s, was too similar to its own branding.
Last year, the Star Inn at Vogue, named after the hamlet in which it is situated, received a message from the similarly named fashion magazine’s owner asking for a name change because a link “is likely to be inferred”.
Middle-earth Enterprises has been approached for a comment. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/jan/21/digital-afterlife-how-to-deal-with-social-media-accounts-when-someone-dies | Society | 2024-01-20T19:00:07.000Z | Josh Taylor | Digital afterlife – how to deal with social media accounts when someone dies | Gavin Blomeley was lucky his mother was incredibly organised before she died. She left a note that included the passcode to her phone and access to all her online passwords.
“I can’t even begin to imagine how difficult this could have gotten not having these passwords or knowing this note with all of her passwords existed,” Blomeley says.
“In the note, my mum had an alphabetised, formula-based logic to all her passwords including banking, pensions, social media – everything.”
Untangling the web of someone’s online life after they die creates additional stress on top of grief and funeral planning, and it is getting increasingly complicated as more and more daily tasks are carried out online. There are bank accounts, email accounts, online bills and streaming subscriptions, as well as various social media accounts to consider.
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There is no one-stop-shop or single method to memorialise or delete accounts. Some companies, including Google, are now deleting accounts after two years of inactivity but there is no consistency across platforms.
“Facebook, in some ways, is probably actually pretty progressive and a leader in this space,” says Bjorn Nansen, a digital media researcher in the “death tech” team at the University of Melbourne.
“Over time, they’ve developed their policies; you can nominate a legacy contact, so that when you pass away that person … can follow your wishes, and either close your account or memorialise it.”
Nansen says other platforms don’t have the same policy.
“You just have to follow the same old workarounds, which is, you leave your passwords to somebody and your wishes as to what you want to be done with the accounts and content. Often, you’re breaching the terms of service.”
People can make choices about what happens to their data and assets
Adam Stingemore, Standards Australia
He says it is getting more complicated with the advent of two-factor authentication using biometrics to ensure that only the account holder can access the account.
Nansen says online companies should make the process easier but increasingly people are including directives in their will and this is likely to increase over time as baby boomers die.
“We’re entering a period that’s been referred to as ‘peak death’. The baby boomer bubble means there’s going to be a high volume of deaths and it’s always going to be the next generation that’s going to have to deal with it … it will make awareness of the issue wider and may help bring around change.”
Standards Australia says about 60% of Australian adults have made a will but not all of those have accounted for their digital legacy.
The nongovernment standards body is part of a group of organisations from 35 countries proposing core principles and guidelines for how organisations should manage the process when a relative or executor requests access to an account of someone who has died.
‘Tech platforms haven’t been designed to think about death’: meet the expert on what happens online when we die
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Adam Stingemore, general manager of engagement and communications at Standards Australia, says that means developing a common set of definitions that companies can then build into terms of service.
“The worst time to be dealing with a challenge like this is if you know someone in your family has died, and there’s a feud between parties,” he says. “What we want to do is get ahead of that on these different types of platforms. There’s common sets of questions and people can make choices about what happens to their data and assets.”
Nansen says another factor is the privacy of the person who has died, and whether they want personal messages and content to be seen by family members or deleted.
“There’s complexity and nuance,” he says. “You might have emails, you might have messages, you might have photos, you might have videos that for a whole range of reasons you might want deleted or not want certain people to see.
“If you really want to be thorough, it’s not just providing access and instructions to a digital executor; it might be quite detailed instructions about different platforms and different content.”
Blomeley says his best advice is to ensure power of attorney is arranged beforehand, and access to accounts included as part of a regulated will.
He says the process of shutting down his mother’s accounts was time-consuming, despite having all the passwords. It took several weeks to sort out, through the grief of losing his mother.
“Thankfully, we were all in a position where we were able to take time off work … but I can imagine this being much more complicated for certain individuals, based on varying circumstances.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/sep/14/ticket-to-paradise-review-george-clooney-julia-roberts | Film | 2022-09-14T19:00:09.000Z | Peter Bradshaw | Ticket to Paradise review – George Clooney and Julia Roberts go heavy on the goof | George Clooney goes into his goofy comedy routine in this feelmoderate romcom from director and co-writer Ol Parker: an intergenerational tale of Crazy Rich Americans going to a wedding. Clooney brings some serious goof: he does his goofy face and the goof is onstream more or less from the outset. This may be to the unease of those who like him in a more sophisticated low-key style, such as in Ocean’s Eleven or Up in the Air, or those who look to the Coens to rein in and shape his broader comedy tendencies, as in O Brother, Where Art Thou? or Intolerable Cruelty.
Clooney plays David, a prosperous man in middle age who is divorced from high-flying art dealer Georgia; this is Julia Roberts. They were college sweethearts who got married way too early and split unhappily after the birth of their only child. But now, despite their sizzling mutual irritation, they must come together to attend the college graduation of their daughter Lily (Kaitlyn Dever), who has learned to suffer her parents’ undignified outbursts and immature tantrums with each other. Lily then heads off for a much-deserved holiday in Bali with her friend Wren (Billie Lourd), and there meets and falls in love with local seaweed farmer Gede (Maxime Bouttier). David and Georgia are horrified to receive the wedding invitation and agree on a cessation of hostilities to head out there, on a secret mission to sabotage this hasty marriage and save Lily from the same mistake they made.
There are one or two likably silly and daft moments in this film. Lucas Bravo (from Emily in Paris) has an amusing small part as Paul, the smoothie French airline pilot that Georgia is now dating and who – to David’s intense chagrin – is flying them to Bali. And it’s sweet when Georgia and David get drunk with the young couple and insist on playing beer pong in the street and doing embarrassing mum- and dad-dancing to some tunes from yesteryear. But I couldn’t help thinking that Nancy Meyers (the master of this kind of thing) would have created more dialogue, more situational intrigue, more comedy, and might have reined in Clooney. But Roberts’ part is within her skillset and Dever is fine also – although the latter’s performance in Olivia Wilde’s comedy Booksmart showed what she can do with a properly funny script. And it’s a shame that there wasn’t more for Lourd’s character to do.
Ticket to Paradise may well do great business to those looking for some escapist fun, and that’s entirely understandable. But I found the wacky double-act of George and Julia slightly hard work.
Ticket to Paradise is released on 15 September in Australia, 20 September in the UK and 21 September in the US. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2011/dec/20/best-and-worst-christmases | Life and style | 2011-12-20T20:16:00.000Z | Guardian readers | Your best and worst Christmases | I had hidden an engagement ring in the smallest Russian doll of a set
This picture was taken by my sister-in-law, Leah. It was Christmas Eve 2009 and my then girlfriend, Amy, had invited me to spend the festive season with her family in Devon. They have a tradition where, after singing carols in the village square in Chulmleigh, everybody comes back to the house for a meal. We are all allowed to open one present around the table after eating. As you can see from the picture, I had hidden an engagement ring in the smallest Russian doll of a set. It was a wonderful moment captured beautifully in this photograph. Thankfully she said yes. Michael Heron
Mum said: 'I'm out to get some stuffing.' And was never seen again
Christmas for me will always be associated with Mum saying: "I'm out to get some stuffing." And never to be seen again. Last we heard she was living it up in Magaluf. Dad won't have stuffing in the house. I miss stuffing at Christmas. Mercurey
My grandmother collapsed in the guest bedroom. She'd had a severe stroke
Christmas Eve, 1986. I'm sitting by my grandma's hospital bed, where she has been lying comatose for the past two days. Her usual stay with us for the Christmas period was shattered when my mother found her one morning collapsed in the guest bedroom. She's had a severe stroke, just a few weeks shy of her 91st birthday. Since then, we have been taking turns to maintain a round the clock vigil, waiting and hoping against hope for any response.
Our local church choir, whom we know well from my two brothers' long-standing association with them, does the rounds of the hospital for carol singing every Christmas Eve. As they enter the ward, I squeeze my grandma's hand and tell her they are here. "How lovely," she slurs, and – an accomplished singer herself in her day – starts to sing along to Silent Night. "Sleep in heavenly peace." Pepperthecat
One snowy Christmas Eve the cattle on our smallholding escaped
It was the mid 70s when I was five. I grew up in west Wales, where we had a smallholding and my paternal grandparents had a farm just under Llanllwni Mountain. They called us one snowy Christmas Eve to tell us the cattle we had on their land had escaped. We all bundled into the car and set off to the farm. The day was spent tracking down the animals. My brother and I were sent to find them in the fir wood, a magical world of knee-deep snow and silence. Finally my sister spotted them and we got them back into the field and set about fixing the fence.
As we headed back up the hill I was sleepy and trailing behind, my parents arm-in-arm in front and, along with my brother and sister, they were silhouetted against a pillar-box-red sunset. I remember thinking, amazed by the colour of the sun and the pink tinged snow: "I will remember this all my life." It was only as an adult I found that my memory of that moment was wrong; it was not a red sunset but a bright red moonrise. Catherine Victor
The policeman looked in the car, saw me in uniform and asked me to come with him
Many years ago when I was a student nurse, I was finishing my run of nights on accident and emergency on Christmas morning and was looking forward to having Christmas Day and Boxing Day off. My mum and dad had agreed to pick me up from work and drive me back to the family home. As it was early the roads were practically empty, but not far from home we came across a policeman in the street indicating for us to stop.
As we slowed down, the policeman looked in the car, saw me in uniform and asked if I could come with him. There was another car in front, in the middle of road. All the doors were open and there was no one inside. I particularly remember that it was a hatchback and that the rear shelf was filled with presents. Standing at the side of the road were two men and two women. One of the women was sobbing and one of the men was holding her gently, trying to comfort her. Then I saw her, a little bundle in the middle of the road. The blanket covered most of her but I could see her pink slippers and a long nylon pink dressing gown, and scattered about her were presents – it was a surreal scene. It was very obvious that this little girl was dead. It turned out that she had run out of her house with an armful of presents and ran across the road without looking, straight into the only car. Every Christmas I think about this. I think about the little girl's family, the people in the car and particularly the police officer, whose face I will never forget. And for the last 21 years every Christmas I give my daughter an extra big hug and kiss. Eudemonist
Quite unexpectedly, my wife died just two days before Christmas Day
Late in 2009 my wife made, with a little help from me, four decent-sized Christmas puddings. That was one thing we always supplied when the family got together for Christmas dinner. Then, quite unexpectedly, my wife died just two days before Christmas Day. Particularly for the sake of the grandchildren, it was decided to carry on as normally as possible. We managed to get through the turkey and then got out the pudding in its plastic container. Somebody innocently asked: "Well how long does this need in the microwave to warm it up properly?" We all looked at each other and realised that the one person who knew was no longer with us. Luckily somebody gave a quiet laugh rather than bawling their eyes out and we managed to microwave the pudding for a time that made it nice and warm.
The second of the four puddings was used at Christmas 2010 and another has been recovered from the back of the larder. It's in perfect condition and ready for this year's meal. These thoughts will come back to us every year and remind us all, whether husband, child or grandchild, how much the maker of wonderful Christmas puddings meant to us all. Ron Brewer
Mum relied on my dad winning the bottle of port at his shooting club
My memories of our family Christmas in the 50s are the rows my mother and father always had on Christmas Eve, usually because the tree lights never worked or because dad was late home. He worked at WH Smith's head office in London and was a member of the shooting club there. They always had a Christmas shoot and Mum relied on him winning the bottle of Sandeman's port. This was the only alcohol we had at Christmas or could afford. They were usually speaking to each other by Christmas morning, except for the year he dropped the bottle on Waterloo station as he got on to the train. Lynda Kiss
Two men at the street door invited us to go upstairs. It was a lunch for the homeless
Our son died in August 2006 and having no close family we had booked into a well-known chain hotel in Leicester for the Christmas holiday. It wasn't until Christmas Day, when we were turned away from the dining room, full of non-residents, that we realised that we were going to go without lunch. We drove around a deserted Leicester city centre very hungry and seriously thinking of going home when the sight of a large building with people eating at an upstairs window cheered us up. Two gentleman at the street door invited us to go upstairs. The big room was nearly full but we were welcomed and taken to a table. We sat down and tomato soup was put in front of us followed by a delicious turkey dinner. None of this had been ordered by us. It was hushed for such a large room mainly full of men with smartly dressed "waiters" talking quietly and gently to each table. We had been invited to lunch for the homeless. A group of kind friends had provided food, sleeping bags and rucksacks for anyone who needed them. The restaurant owner had cooked the wonderful lunch and supplied the room. We chatted afterwards to some of the helpers, one of whom had also recently lost a loved one. We all wept a little and, while it was obvious we weren't destitute, the compassion and love we received from those good samaritans helped us more than anything else, before or since. A very different Christmas we shall never forget. Vicky Scott
On Boxing Day my dad said he was going to fit a draft excluder to the loft hatch
About 10 years ago we were having a very sedate Christmas, as we'd lost people through the year, so we'd decided to stay at home, just the three of us. On Boxing Day my dad announced that he was going to fit a draft excluder to the loft hatch door as it was causing heat wastage. Off he went into the loft and we shut the door for him. He said he would bang when he wanted to be let out. My mum and I went downstairs to watch a movie and have sandwiches. As it was warm and we were full, we both fell fast asleep. At the end of the movie – Harry Potter I think – a red-faced furious man came downstairs. He'd been banging to be let out for three hours. Olivia Walker
Two large Tupperware boxes had melted and dripped over turkey
1972 and the last Christmas lunch we had as a family at my grandparents' house (my dad and grandfather died the following year). My gran was a fantastic traditional cook, but by this time was suffering terribly from arthritis, so two of my aunties offered to help out. We sat down, as always, to scotch broth, after which Gran and the aunties departed to serve up the main course. Screams from the kitchen had us all tearing through to discover that one of the aunties had decided to pop vegetables into the top shelf of the oven to keep warm – unfortunately in two large Tupperware boxes, which had now melted and dripped over turkey, roast potatoes, bacon rolls, etc. The entire meal was inedible, so we ended up having cheese and ham sandwiches, while we kids delighted in the sniping going on across at the adults' table about who was to blame. clashmach
My fiancee's joke backfired and she has never recovered from the embarrassment
Delighted to be newly engaged, my fiancee and I were invited to spend Christmas at my father's house a few years ago. She was very anxious to make a good impression with my father, who is a rather reserved sort of person and whom she was meeting for the very first time. Her manners were immaculate and I was surprised to see what a charming person she could be in polite company. My father was delighted and impressed by her, and I was pleased and a little unnerved that things seemed to be going quite so well.
A morning just before Christmas, I woke early with the intention of serving my future wife a cup of tea in bed. Hearing me get up, she followed me downstairs. Passing the bathroom, she thought she heard me issuing forth noisily from the quiet solitude within and decided to comment on the proceedings. She pursed her lips to the door and blew a prolonged raspberry followed by a deep and reprimanding "You smelly bastard!" Grinning to herself, she descended the stairs to the kitchen to find me there making tea.
I have laughed ever since about this though I don't think she has ever recovered from the embarrassment. My father has never since mentioned that particular early-morning greeting. Andy Robinson
He said: 'Oh, is it at lunchtime? I thought dinner was in the evening.'
1949 was a Christmas to remember and we still laugh at it. I met Colin in August that year and invited him and his mother for Christmas dinner, which was just a small party. Come the day it was 1pm, 2pm ... no Colin! We phoned and he said: "Oh, is it at lunchtime? I thought dinner was in the evening." So they rushed and joined us for the meal by 3pm.
We had both been trying to settle back into civvy life. He had spent six years in the army, mostly as a commando. I had spent four years in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force as a photographer. Neither of us had had much of a Christmas during those years. But that year we had a great time, and as a result we are now celebrating our 60th wedding anniversary, after marrying at Christmas 1951. Alice Anson
This article was amended on 22 December 2011. The original item on a lunch for the homeless gave the author's name as Vicky Cooper rather than Vicky Scott. This has been corrected. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/jun/28/age-105-then-youve-a-better-chance-of-living-even-longer | Science | 2018-06-28T18:00:14.000Z | Hannah Devlin | Age 105? Then you've a better chance of living even longer | It’s considered an inescapable fact of life: the older you get, the more likely death becomes. But new research suggests that the chances of dying may level off – at least for those who make it to 105 years old.
The study found that death rates, which rise exponentially in adulthood, begin to decelerate after 80 years old and appear to eventually plateau, or even decline slightly, after the age of 105. By that point, the chances of passing away in a given year are approximately 50-50.
“It’s the equivalent of tossing a coin each year,” said Prof Jim Vaupel, a specialist in ageing at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Germany and one of the authors.
The findings add fuel to an unusually hostile debate between two camps of scientists, who are locked in an escalating dispute about whether humans are approaching their upper limit in terms of lifespan.
The latest paper, from Vaupel’s team who argue there is no evidence of a looming longevity limit, is based on data tracking the survival trajectories of almost 4,000 Italians older than 105 between 2009 and 2015. And they believe it bolsters their position.
“If [mortality] stays constant, as more and more people survive to very old ages, the record will be broken,” said Vaupel.
The latest study is not the first to tackle the question of what trajectory the human mortality curve takes for those who survive into extreme old age. However, previous efforts were hindered by small sample sizes and a failure to meticulously check birth records. “Age exaggeration is common among the oldest old”, according to the analysis in the journal Science.
Demographic data suggests that the chance of dying at 68 is around 2%, rising to 4% at 76 and 30% by 97. This doubling in the chance of death every eight years, known as the Gompertz law, implies an intrinsic ceiling to the human lifespan as the chance of death would hit 100% at around 111. But the data showed that instead of continuing to double, the risk of dying levelled off.
One explanation for the result is purely statistical: those who die in a certain age group in a given year tend to be the frailest. The following year, the survivors are one year older, but they are also relatively stronger and healthier. “Eventually the two factors, the ageing and the weeding out, counterbalance each other,” said Vaupel.
The oldest people who have ever lived – in data
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Biological factors may also play a role. Cancer, for instance, becomes less common in the oldest people alive, which some have put down to a slow-down in cell division in this age range. “Cancer is quite a common cause of death for people in their 70s, 80s or 90s,” said Vaupel. “But very few people die from cancer over 100.”
Similar mortality plateaus are observed in a range of other species, including fruit flies and nematode worms, which the scientists said could hint at a common evolutionary explanation. Other animals, including certain fish and tree species, follow the reverse pattern, with the chances of death lessening for each year alive as they continue to grow in size.
The oldest human to have lived, according to official records, was Jeanne Calment, a French woman who died at the age of 122 years in 1997. Some claim the fact that this record has not been broken, despite an expanding pool of centenarians, is evidence that humans cannot live much beyond this age. And the latest findings appear to have escalated the ongoing debate.
“It seems rather far-fetched that after increasing exponentially, the chance of dying should suddenly stop in its tracks,” said Jan Vijg, a geneticist at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. Vijg previously published a paper in Science’s competitor journal, Nature, suggesting that the human species has hit its maximum shelf-life that prompted five separate teams to submit critiques of the work. “I do not consider the evidence for a plateau presented in this paper to be especially strong,” Vijg added. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/oct/16/oil-review-almeida-theatre-london-anne-marie-duff-ella-hickson-empire-energy-parenthood | Stage | 2016-10-16T11:57:31.000Z | Michael Billington | Oil review – scorchingly ambitious with plenty of renewable energy | The old idea that women dramatists tend to shun the epic form has emphatically been given the lie in recent years. After Lucy Prebble’s Enron, Lucy Kirkwood’s Chimerica and Beth Steel’s Labyrinth, we now have Ella Hickson’s new play, which takes on a vast range of subjects, including empire, energy and the environment, as well as mother-daughter relationships. The result may be uneven but the piece is bold, playful and scorchingly ambitious.
Spanning more than 150 years, Hickson’s play focuses on a woman called May who travels effortlessly through time. We first see her as a 19th-century Cornish farmer’s wife for whom the newly invented kerosene lamp becomes a source of personal illumination. Later, we see May working as a servant in 1908 Tehran, at a time when the British are desperate to exploit Persia’s natural resources. By 1970, she has risen to become CEO of an international oil company threatened by Libya’s proposal to nationalise its assets. But, as May rises in the world, difficulties with her daughter, Amy, intensify and become deeply problematic as they head into a nightmarish future.
‘One of the best theatrical mother-daughter relationships of recent years’ … Yolanda Kettle as Amy and Anne-Marie Duff as her mother, May, in Oil at the Almeida. Photograph: Richard H Smith
Hickson suspends the normal rules of realism to pursue big ideas. One is that there is a parallel between the imperialist instinct of countries and corporations and that of parents. This is most vivid in the scene where May, on one crisis-ridden evening, simultaneously seeks to retain control of her company’s Libyan oil wells and of her teenage daughter’s love life. But Hickson is equally fascinated by the price that has to be paid for living through a century and a half of accelerating progress: in particular, she shows the career-driven, uncompromising May becoming habituated to loneliness and to a sense of estrangement from the activist Amy who, as her three-letter name implies, represents her other self.
Anne-Marie Duff: ‘I was just so bloody-minded...’
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Hickson strives too hard for cyclical neatness. The level of the writing also varies from one scene to another. But she has created a remarkable play that, aside from an opening scene that is as impenetrably dark as a Georges de la Tour painting, is very well directed by Carrie Cracknell and contains one of the best theatrical mother-daughter relationships of recent years. Anne-Marie Duff excellently catches all May’s contradictions: her sensuousness and solitude, her curiosity and curmudgeonliness and the oppressive nature of her maternal love. Above all, Duff, with her taut, expressive features, is very good at suggesting hardship overcome. When May says: “There is still blood on my hands from hauling myself up, from clinging on,” Duff makes you believe every word.
Yolanda Kettle is equally good as daughter Amy: defiant, angry, passionate about the environment, yet imbued with a faint touch of self-righteous certainty. The men are less multi-dimensional, but there is good work from Tom Mothersdale as May’s abandoned husband, Patrick Kennedy as her regimental pursuer and Nabil Elouahabi as a Libyan emissary. And even if Hickson’s play is about the ultimate exhaustion of our oil reserves, it has a renewable energy of its own.
At Almeida, London, until 26 November. Box office: 020-7359 4404.
A scene from Oil by Ella Hickson, directed by Carrie Cracknell. Photograph: Richard H Smith | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2023/nov/04/digital-nomads-work-remotely-tech-visas | Money | 2023-11-04T09:00:34.000Z | Suzanne Bearne | Digital nomads: rising number of people choose to work remotely | Where in the world would you work from if you could? A hilltop village in Croatia? The hip surfing town of Tarifa in southern Spain? Or the lively city of Bogotá in Colombia? All three have recently emerged as locations that are now tempting people to pack their bags and work remotely thanks to their respective digital nomad visas.
With 50-plus countries (the number is growing all the time – the Czech Republic is one of the latest) enticing digital nomads with a visa typically lasting a year or longer, the ability to work from anywhere has become a more appetising proposition – especially with the cost of living crisis hitting pockets hard in the UK. It has really taken off afterthe coronavirus pandemic.
As the UK heads into winter, a fair few people will be mulling over the idea of setting up shop in another part of the world for a spell.
One recent report said digital nomads “have moved from eccentrics to mainstream in less than a decade”, with one in nine (11%) US workers now describing themselves as one. Another said it expects the global number of digital nomads to top 40 million this year, and rise to about 60 million by 2030.
However, the visa schemes vary, with some more restrictive than others in terms of how they operate and who is eligible.
Previously largely a “tech” crowd, nowadays the nomadic demographic is interspersed with more traditional professions such as lawyers and accountants.
Hands up – I’m a semi digital nomad. Since 2012 I’ve taken my backpack or suitcase and worked from locations as varied as Hsipaw in Myanmar and New York.
As an on-off digital nomad for more than a decade, what have I learned?
First, if you are travelling solo, you need to be comfortable spending a lot of time on your own. Although I’ve made lifelong friends and had lots of rich experiences – from dinner with a family at their home in Buenos Aires after meeting them kayaking, to long conversations with strangers on buses – there will be times it’s just me, myself and I. That can be challenging at times, especially when faced with not one but two rabies scares after a monkey and dog attack in Bolivia and Myanmar, respectively.
Suzanne Bearne has worked from various locations since 2012. Photograph: Suzanne Bearne
However, before a trip, I ask friends and contacts on social media if they have any local pals they can put me in touch with. One request led to me staying with Vicky in San Francisco for a few nights – saving me hundreds of dollars. Many have become good friends.
Over the years I have learned that I enjoy it and feel more productive if I put down some roots and stay in one place for months at a time. That way, you can find your feet, shop at the local food market, make stronger connections and understand the culture more. Although a privilege, constant travelling and lugging suitcases around every few days can feel exhausting at times, and it can be hard to focus on work when you are always on the road.
It is worth avoiding non-owner-occupied Airbnbs, given the impact they have on communities. Instead, ask friends and contacts on social media if they know anyone renting out their place while they are away. Also, booking spare rooms via Airbnb is not only considerably cheaper than a whole apartment, it means you can interact more with a local person.
I love volunteering in the UK, and when I’m overseas I’m always keen to engage with local communities. For example, I’ve volunteered at a soup kitchen in New York, an animal sanctuary in Bolivia and a refugee camp in Berlin. I also use my time overseas to scout out local stories – for example, interviewing former political prisoners in Myanmar.
Chris Cerra, 30, the founder of RemoteBase, an accommodation-focused newsletter aimed at remote workers, has been a digital nomad for six years. Currently in Bulgaria with his partner, Cerra says he usually visits a place for a month or two before moving on – and, in many cases, returning at a later date. He sticks to a schedule when it comes to work, and generally keeps exploring to evenings and weekends. “You need to find a sustainable balance for you.”
He avoids travelling in high season: “Visiting before or at the end of peak seasons means you can still have good weather and a nicer experience without all the tourists.”
As well as checking for strong wifi, he advises travellers to opt for places that are time zone compatible, “unless you’re a night owl”.
The RemoteBase founder, Chris Cerra, in Croatia with his partner. Photograph: supplied
When it comes to accommodation, Cerra recommends checking out local platforms such as Flatio and Idealista in Portugal and Spain, and Blueground in the US.
Other options that could help preserve money include housesitting through sites such as TrustedHousesitters, home swaps through websites such as HomeExchange, and chipping in with some work through Workaway in return for free accommodation.
Another option – and a way to combat loneliness – is to stay in a co-living residence.
“One of our main values is connecting people in a physical environment,” says Emmanuel Guisset, the founder of Outsite, a co-living company with 50 locations ranging from Mexico City to Biarritz. “They become co-workers, business partners, and some find love.”
Outsite’s prices vary – at the time of writing, for example, you could pay just over $1,100 (£902) a month in Tulum in Mexico, or more than $3,300 a month to stay at a Chelsea brownstone in New York.
Recently, the nomad community has attracted a backlash for contributing to gentrification and pushing out local people. Guisset attributes this to people from other countries renting and buying houses rather than digital nomads.
But he is aware of the chasm and is introducing ways for nomads to easily integrate and contribute more to the local community. “We have people with strong skills and quite a bit of spare time, so this year we will be connecting nomads up with mentoring programmes with local entrepreneurs and running more regular volunteering initiatives.”
“We try to integrate into the local culture – for example, our children are now fluent in Spanish and currently attend local clubs in Guatemala,” says Lauren Hill, 41, a business strategy consultant who has been travelling with her daughters, 11 and nine, and partner, Tom, since autumn 2020, when they took off on their sailing boat. “We deliberately look for more local experiences.”
An Outsite location in Cascais, Portugal. Photograph: Joao Sousa
How does Hill manage home schooling? “We have a routine where the kids will work alongside us and self-study using online programmes. We manage it using Trello boards [to plan lessons], so we can see what they have to do. We also link what they are learning to travelling, so they are not sitting in front of a screen all day. For example, when they were studying the Romans, we visited amphitheatres, and we’ve taken them to a slave museum in St Lucia.”
To ensure work goes without a hitch, they pack extra necessities. “Video calls can be difficult if there’s too many people using a network. We use Starlink [a satellite internet system], which costs us $100 a month, and travel with mini generators so we can deal with short-term power outages.”
Before digital nomads head off, Morag Ofili, a managing associate at the law firm Harbottle & Lewis, says they should check the terms of any double tax treaty between the UK and the other jurisdiction.
“This is often a useful starting point to understand what income will be taxed, when and by which country,” she says. “You should tell HM Revenue and Customs that you are leaving the UK if you intend to work abroad for at least one tax year, or if you are permanently emigrating. This ensures that your tax records are accurate and gives you a way to reclaim any UK tax that you are owed. Also, ensure that you have a right to work in the country – you may not be able to work on a tourist visa.”
Have you considered working in another country? Photograph: Westend61 GmbH/Alamy
In practice, most digital nomads prefer to just be taxed in the UK unless they move to a country for a long period.
As for employers, they should ensure that payroll and social security are managed properly, and that they are complying with local labour laws, Ofili says. “Facilitating a shorter move is easier than most employers think but long-term moves require more careful consideration, as it would trigger a change of residency status, may create a permanent establishment for the company, and could require consideration of broader business operational factors.”
I probably take fewer flights than people who take holidays three or four times a year
RemoteBase’s Chris Cerra
Is being a digital nomad tricky when we are living in a climate emergency?
“I probably take fewer flights than people who take holidays three or four times a year,” Cerra says. “And we spend longer in a place. But I think there’s bigger fish to fry with people flying in private jets.”
Those mindful of their carbon footprint can find more sustainable options. Having ditched flying and stuck to overland travel for the past four years, I can vouch for a huge network of brilliant and cheap trains across Europe to take advantage of.
Or, if you are feeling more adventurous, there’s also a spot on a cargo ship if you have the time and patience.
But speak to any digital nomad and the benefits they reel off make it worth any delayed bus (or rabies scare).
“We get to work hard at work time but on our doorstep have new cultures, languages, amazing food, natural beauty that is available to explore and is constantly changing with every new destination,” Hill says.
“Most importantly, we get quality time with our kids as they grow up and raise them to be true global citizens.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/09/eu-rejects-iran-two-month-ultimatum-on-nuclear-deal | World news | 2019-05-09T19:27:21.000Z | Julian Borger | Donald Trump tells Iran ‘call me’ over lifting sanctions | Donald Trump has offered Iran direct talks, saying its leaders should “call me” and suggested the US would help revive the country’s economy as long as Iran did not acquire nuclear weapons.
The impromptu offer by the US president, if serious, represents a dramatic lowering of the bar set by his administration for lifting extensive sanctions, including an oil embargo. Iran is already party to a 2015 agreement that strictly limits its nuclear programme and places it under close scrutiny. Trump withdrew the US from the Obama-era treaty a year ago.
“What I’d like to see with Iran, I’d like to see them call me,” Trump said. He pointed out the Iranian economy was in a shambles as a result of the pressure from the US.
“What they should be doing is calling me up, sitting down and we can make a deal, a fair deal,” Trump said. “We just don’t want them to have nuclear weapons. It’s not too much to ask. And we would help put them back into great shape.”
The Trump administration has previously insisted Iran would have to fulfil a list of 12 wide-ranging conditions, including non-intervention in Syria, Yemen and Iraq, in order for sanctions to be lifted. Trump’s remarks suggested that a new deal on the nuclear programme would be enough.
The new Iranian ambassador to the UN, Majid Takht Ravanchi, immediately responded by saying Iran had no interest in developing nuclear weapons.
“The first question that he has to answer is why he left the negotiating table because we were talking to all participants of the nuclear deal, including the US,” Ravanchi told NBC News. “So all of a sudden he decided to leave the negotiating table … What is the guarantee that he will not renege again on the future talks between Iran and the US?”
In his remarks, Trump accused former secretary of state John Kerry of telling Iran not to negotiate with his administration, which he claimed was a violation of the Logan Act, which bans private individuals from negotiating with foreign states.
The allegation was denied by a spokesman for Kerry’s office, who told CNN: “Everything President Trump said today is simply wrong, end of story. He’s wrong about the facts, wrong about the law, and sadly he’s been wrong about how to use diplomacy to keep America safe.”
Asked why the US had sent an aircraft carrier to the Middle East in response to allegedly menacing behaviour by Iran, Trump said: “They were threatening and we have information that you don’t want to know about. They were very threatening and we just want to have … great security for this country and for a lot of other places.”
And on the question of whether there could be a military confrontation, he replied: “I guess you could say that always, right? I don’t want to say no, but hopefully that won’t happen. We have one of the most powerful ships in the world that is loaded up and we don’t want to do anything.”
Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, has been pushing an aggressive stance towards Iran and made the announcement of the military deployments, but the Washington Post reported on Wednesday that Bolton has irritated Trump over his involvement in a failed effort to oust the Venezuelan leader, Nicolás Maduro.
“John .. has strong views on things, but that’s OK. I actually temper John, which is pretty amazing, isn’t it?” Trump joked to reporters on Thursday.
The Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani (right), inspects the country’s nuclear technology. Photograph: Iranian Presidency Office Handout/EPA
The president made his remarks at a time of rising tensions over the 2015 nuclear deal. Iran announced its intention to violate elements of the agreement on Wednesday, in response to what it said was the failure of the US and other state parties to meet their side of the bargain by relaxing sanctions.
The EU and the foreign ministers of Germany, France and Britain have said they would not accept ultimatums from Iran over the nuclear deal, but admitted to sharp differences with the US over how to change Tehran’s behaviour.
The European leaders, increasingly hampered by the US’s determination to weaken Iran, also said they were still committed to the deal and did not at this stage see threats from Tehran to loosen its obligations as being in breach of the agreement.
On Wednesday the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, reduced Iran’s obligations under the deal and said his country would take further steps in 60 days on uranium enrichment if the EU did not do more to help the Iranian oil and banking sector. In its initial step, Tehran said it would no longer limit its stocks of heavy water or low-enriched uranium.
The EU said in response: “We reject any ultimatums and we will assess Iran’s compliance on the basis of Iran’s performance regarding its nuclear-related commitments under the joint comprehensive plan of action (JCPOA) and the treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.”
Iran challenges Europe and China to stand up to US over nuclear deal
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In a tweeted response on Thursday, the Iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, derided the EU statement.
“The US has bullied Europe – and rest of world – for a year and EU can only express ‘regret’,” Zarif said. “Instead of demanding that Iran unilaterally abide by a multilateral accord, EU should uphold obligations – [including] normalization of economic ties.”
The JCPOA is the technical term for the deal signed in 2015 by Iran, Russia, China, the US and three EU states, France, Britain and Germany.
The EU said it regretted the reimposition of sanctions by the US after it withdrew from the nuclear deal last year and that the EU remained committed to preserving and fully implementing the deal, including helping the Iranian people enjoy the benefits of sanctions relief.
The US laid on further sanctions on Wednesday, mainly focused on the Iranian iron, steel, aluminium and copper industry and apparently designed to push Iranian manufacturing deeper into recession, potentially provoking a rift between blue-collar workers and the government.
Iran wanted to bring its nuclear deal with world powers “back on track” after the US’s unilateral withdrawal, Behrouz Kamalvandi, a spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, said.
Since pulling out of the deal, Trump has been trying to isolate Iran economically and force Europe to back away from any trading contact, save some humanitarian supplies.
Chances of war with Iran are rising. And Donald Trump is to blame
Michael H Fuchs
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The US “maximum pressure campaign” is formally designed to press Iran to renegotiate perceived weaknesses in the deal, but Washington’s critics claim the true aim is to bring the Iranian economy to its knees and provoke a revolution.
Tehran is frustrated that Europe says it opposes US actions but seems at best slow in devising a financial mechanism or legal entities that would protect those European companies that wish to trade with Iran.
With EU leaders gathering for an informal summit in the Romanian town of Sibiu, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, appealed for calm on all sides, saying Europe must work to convince Iran to stick with the deal. “We must not get jumpy or fall into escalation,” Macron said. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/may/01/afternoon-update-police-move-on-us-campus-protesters-1b-for-domestic-violence-initiatives-and-a-brisbane-icon-closes-ntwnfb | Australia news | 2024-05-01T06:53:10.000Z | Mike Hohnen | Afternoon Update: police move on US campus protesters; $1bn for domestic violence initiatives; and a beloved Brisbane venue closes | Welcome, readers, to Afternoon Update.
Some astonishing scenes coming from New York today, as police moved to dismantle pro-Palestinian protest encampments established in universities and colleges.
Earlier, New York City police entered Columbia University in an apparent effort to disperse protesters who had seized and occupied a building after a two-week-long encampment on the campus. A police spokesperson confirmed that flashbang grenades were used to disperse the crowd, with no immediate reports of injuries.
Authorities have since confirmed that all protesters have been removed, with police now focusing on the nearby City College of New York (CUNY) where a protest sit-in remained active. Arrests have begun following a large police presence on campus.
Read our latest coverage of the US campus protests here. Below, we look at the movement’s presence in Australia.
Top news
Anthony Albanese speaks to media during a press conference at the commonwealth parliamentary offices in Sydney. Photograph: Dean Lewins/AAP
Government pledges almost $1bn to help women leave violent relationships | The commonwealth said it would deliver a range of new measures to tackle factors that exacerbate violence against women. The measures include a “leaving violence payment” of $5,000 to help meet the costs of leaving a relationship along with services, risk assessments and safety planning.
Two charged after woman’s body located in North Bondi yesterday | Two men will face court on drug-related charges after the body of a woman was located in North Bondi yesterday. Emergency services were called to a unit in North Bondi around 9.20am yesterday after reports a woman was found unresponsive, and the body of a 19-year-old woman was located. No charges have been laid over her death.
Qantas passengers’ personal details exposed | Potentially thousands of Qantas customers have had their personal details made public via the airline’s app, with some frequent flyers able to view strangers’ account details and possibly make changes to other users’ bookings.
Republican presidential candidate and former president Donald Trump speaks during a campaign event. Photograph: Matt Rourke/AP
Trump threatens to prosecute Bidens if re-elected unless he gets immunity | In a sweeping interview with Time magazine, Donald Trump painted a startling picture of his second term, warning that Joe Biden and his family could face multiple criminal prosecutions and hinting he may let states monitor pregnant women to enforce abortion laws.
Australia expelled two Indian intelligence operatives in 2020 | Australia’s domestic intelligence agency, Asio, has previously alleged that a “nest of spies” from an unnamed country had sought to cultivate politicians, monitor diaspora communities and obtain classified trade information. The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that two officers from the Research and Analysis Wing, India’s foreign intelligence service, had been expelled from Australia in 2020.
Saudi Arabia activist sentenced to 11 years in prison for ‘support’ of women’s rights | Manahel al-Otaibi, a young women’s rights activist in Saudi Arabia, was secretly sentenced to 11 years in prison by an anti-terrorism court after being arrested for “her choice of clothing and support for women’s rights”.
Nick Cave reciting poetry in 1996 at the Zoo in Brisbane, which is set to close in July. Photograph: Joc Curran
Live music venue the Zoo to close after 32 years | The Brisbane institution will call last drinks in July, with the owner listing a “perfect storm” of forces that have led to its closure, including cost-of-living pressures and declining alcohol consumption among young people. The 500-capacity room is one of Australia’s oldest music venues.
Smith left out of T20 World Cup as Australia shift towards new era | Chair of selectors, George Bailey, said this was an “experienced” squad that “covers the scenarios the panel believes will factor in the West Indies” but Smith had not done enough to win a place at the top of order.
Healthy hospital staff posed as ‘fake’ patients for Victorian minister’s visit | Staff members at a regional hospital posed as “fake patients” to make their urgent care clinic appear busier, an investigation has found. The health minister, Mary-Anne Thomas said the deception included a staff member arriving to the clinic by ambulance.
In pictures
University students around the world have been setting up similar camps on campus to show solidarity with Palestinians. Photograph: Jessica Hromas/The Guardian
Australian university students are camping out in support of Gaza
Protests in support of Gaza have spread to about 50 US universities and are now in four Australian universities, with students committed to permanently occupying university land until their demands for divestment are met. Here is everything you need to know.
What they said …
Nicotine is known to increase blood pressure, heart rate and the ‘stickiness’ of the blood, as well as narrow and stiffen the arteries, according to Prof Garry Jennings. Photograph: Tolga Akmen/EPA
“If we were to purposefully design something to increase heart risk, we probably couldn’t do much better.” – Prof Garry Jennings, the chief medical officer of the National Heart Foundation of Australia speaking at a Senate inquiry into vaping laws.
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On Wednesday, a Senate committee heard from peak health bodies, academics and the pharmaceutical industry ahead of the next round of vaping reforms being put to a vote before parliament.
In numbers
Illustration: Guardian Design
House prices have set a record high for a sixth consecutive month, after rising an average of 0.6% nationwide in April. The Western Australian market was especially hot, with Perth facing a 2% increase in April, taking price rises to over 20% over the last year. Regional WA values jumped 1.3% for the month.
Before bed read
A boy room is a bedroom with no form and little function, inhabited by an adult male who doesn’t think much about either concept. Photograph: Matthew Cantor/The Guardian
I live in an uninhabitable ‘boy room’ – can a comedian save me from myself?
Rachel Coster’s TikTok show, which documents the extremely messy dwelling spaces of New York’s young men, has clearly struck a nerve with the Guardian’s Matthew Cantor.
Daily word game
Photograph: The Guardian
Today’s starter word is: NOR. You have five goes to get the longest word including the starter word. Play Wordiply.
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If you would like to receive this Afternoon Update to your email inbox every weekday, sign up here. And start your day with a curated breakdown of the key stories you need to know. Sign up for our Morning Mail newsletter here. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/nov/03/close-up-james-bond | Film | 2011-11-03T17:40:00.000Z | Henry Barnes | Close up: James Bond has a licence to kill. Still | The big story
Every Bond begins with a kill. He walks in silhouette, turns and shoots us. The camera wobbles, fills with red and down we go. 007's first kill happens before anything else: before he's survived the Lake Como car chase, or flown a home-made plane through a hanger, or bungee-jumped from the Contra dam. Before the credits roll and the naked ladies start wrapping their legs around giant handguns.
Violence is as integral to the Bond franchise as product placement. Imagine the uproar then, when it was suggested that the appointment of Sam Mendes as the director of Bond 23 might do away with fist-fights and gunplay altogether. Mendes was a class act, out for Oscars. Fanboys looking for the crunch of Rolex on foreigner would have to look elsewhere.
Thankfully, Pacifist Bond was just one of the rumours officially scorched at an official press conference in London today where Mendes and his cast officially assembled to officially confirm the ins and outs of the officially-titled new Bond film, Skyfall. Daniel Craig will punch and kick with the best of them (Sean Connery IMO). Javier Bardem will be his super-villain punching bag. Naomie Harris will be there, perhaps throwing in a few high kicks of her own. Even tiny, lovely Ben Whishaw might get in on the action.
Our own Peter Bradshaw's happy to see all of them. And he thinks this one will work, but it'll still need to be "a real drama with real characters, real, believable tension between Bond and his enemy – as well as gadgets and explosions".
There you go then. Bond. James Bond. Licence to kill. Still.
In other news
Photograph: Timothy A Clary/AFP/Getty Images
The morning after: Hilary Swank sacks manager and staff following Ramzan Kadyrov PR disaster
Raising Justin: Coen brothers cast Timberlake in new film
Grasshopper bounces back: Bill Paxton to direct Kung Fu feature
Hugh's the daddy: Grant becomes a father
More Morman: South Park writers on a mission to make The Book of Mormon musical into a movie
You wait years for a new Malick ... Tree of Life director set to shoot two new films featuring all-star casts
Licensed to spill: Roger Moore says what he thinks of Craig and Connery
Blow-by-blow account? Amanda Seyfried slated to star in Linda Lovelace biopic
Taylor's a Milk fan(g): Twilight star Lautner set to collaborate with Gus van Sant
On the blog
Dustin Hoffman in Straw Dogs (1971) Photograph: Les Acacias
Straw Dogs, A Clockwork Orange and Dirty Harry made 1971 an annus horribilis, but the year's biggest shocks lay in the dark corners of 10 Rillington Place, says Peter Bradshaw.
Puss in Boots causes paws for thought at the US box office, while during the half term holiday in the UK, Tintin takes parents' wallets on a mighty adventure.
Ghostbuster's bespeckled Janine Melnitz is a classic film secretary, but the job has been demoted in Hollywood, says Lauren Cochrane.
After Hollywood's Phil Hoad imagines what will happen to Hollywood if Spielberg's lost his magic.
Xtreme reviewing addict Stuart Heritage suspends himself inches above the trailer for Mission Impossible 4: Ghost Protocol.
Ben Child wonders whether the man who imagined "The Bear Jew" splattering Nazi brains across most of second World War Germany can handle slavery in pre-Civil War America with any tact.
Clip joint goes square-eyed at film's best watching TV scenes.
Other site highlights
Antonio Banderas and Tahar Rahim in Black Gold
Paul MacInnes returns from the Doha Tribeca film festival asking if the Arab spring has liberated film-makers.
Xan Brooks sidles casually up to our latest gallery, checks both ways, then nips in to stare at Cinema's Sex Sirens.
Two more tasty galleries: John Landis talks us through his top monsters and Lewis Klahr's pieces together his crime collage The Pettifogger.
2012, Independence Day and Godzilla were more realistic than Roland Emmerich's new fantasy - that Shakespeare didn't write his plays, says Reel History's Alex von Tunzelmann.
Eddie Marsan shakes with fear, not rage, as he meets Cath Clarke (and has his photo taken).
Bleak house? Ryan Gilbey takes coffee with Andrea Arnold and James Howson, star of her new Wuthering Heights.
Multimedia
David Gest on Michael Jackson
Bone jumping, Jacko and a lawyer called Sue Yu as Simon Hattenstone meets the makers of new Michael Jackson documentary Life as an Icon.
Actor Diana Quick talks about hopping behind the camera to curate the Aldeburgh Documentary Festival.
Machine Gun Preacher's Gerard Butler gets himself into a spin telling Stuart Heritage how he played a real life biker-turned-preacher-turned-mercenary in Sudan.
Jason Solomons brushes the glitter from his elbows as he returns from the star-crammed nomination ceremony for this year's British Independent Film Awards. Nominees Benedict Cumberbatch and Sally Hawkins are on hand to grace the microphone, while back in the studio director Andrew Haigh discusses his lo-fi SXSW hit relationship drama Weekend.
Our favourites
Allstar/Cinetext/UNITED ARTISTS
Watched with dad, got drunk to with mates, used it to recover from break up with girlfriend(s). So far we've used our My favourite film series to reveal a lot about our writers' personal lives. Oh - and there's been some talk about movies too. This week Becki Barnicoat plumped for Some Like It Hot, Patrick Kingsley considered The Consequences of Love, Rosie Swash explained why The Big Lebowski abides and Michael Hann ogled beautiful girls (and wrote about the film too ...). You can chip in with your comments at the bottom of each article, or write your own review on our film pages.
On the site tomorrow
A clue to that favourite …
Reel review sees Xan Brooks reviewing the ups and downs, ins and outs of Andrew Haigh's 48-hour relationship drama Weekend, Esther Walker and daughter Kitty brave a parents-and-babies-screening of We Need To Talk About Kevin, an exclusive trailer for Las Acacias, and Phil Hoad reveals his favourite film. Plus much more …
Coming up in the paper
Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian
David Lynch glowers from the front cover of tomorrow's Film & Music like a man who's just spent a hard week ducking the conventions of guest editing a newspaper supplement. Inside "David Lynch's Film & Music" this week: the director refuses to give Xan Brooks any definite answers about anything ever. But he's "ready to boogie" and his fish is "telling him how it wants to be cooked" - which is good enough for us. Further in Cath Clarke reveals "the flaming nipple" (Lynchian for Blue Velvet's recently rediscovered missing footage), David Thomson peers at the cinematic creations at the bottom of the coffee cup and Lynch's favourite musicians have a dance about architecture / write about film's influence on their music. Meanwhile our straight-laced reviews section peers over the picket fence - frightened, aroused and a little sour that all it has to offer are judgements on Miranda July's The Future, Philip Seymour Hoffman's Jack Goes Boating and Rod Lurie's Straw Dogs re-make.
Relative normality is restored with the arrival of Saturday and his bolshy little companion, The Guide. On the cover this week is Cillian Murphy, who talks to Steve Rose about starring in In Time, Gattaca director Andrew Niccol's new sci-fi thriller. Meanwhile, John Patterson explains why, however much you love him, it's hard to deny that The Rum Diaries star Johnny Depp is kooking himself into a corner, while the Infomania column goes into the numbers behind Nic Cage.
Finally, Sunday's Observer New Review carries an extract from veteran US film critic Roger Ebert's forthcoming memoirs, and Rachel Cooke meets the man himself.
Sign up for our film masterclasses
Join us to explore the wonder of cinematography at our second Guardian film masterclass. Film 2011's Danny Leigh (joined by the Guardian's Xan Brooks and Variety's Leslie Felperin) will be on hand to take you through a two-day course on the hidden art of mise en scene, the importance of a good script and the craft of editing. Also available: the Producer's foundation certificate from independent film body Raindance. Learn how to take your project from business plan to funded film in five weeks.
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https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jul/29/endometriosis-action-plan-follows-decades-of-lobbying-and-suffering | Society | 2018-07-29T02:10:47.000Z | Helen Davidson | Endometriosis action plan follows decades of lobbying – and suffering | On Thursday the wheels of government proved they can turn quickly on occasion, as Greg Hunt released a national action plan on endometriosis.
That the long-ignored and debilitating condition – which costs the Australian economy $6bn a year – is now the target of a multifaceted plan is due in no small part to the women who have suffered from it.
At least one in 10 women of reproductive age are estimated to have “endo”, which occurs when tissue similar to the uterus lining grows outside the uterus, causing inflammation, pain, fatigue and, in some cases, infertility. Until recently many sufferers had no idea, or had been sold myths by undereducated GPs about how to treat it.
Nationwide campaigns and media coverage drew a genuine apology from the health minister last year, who said it was “long overdue” that the condition be brought out of the dark.
“On behalf of all of those in parliament and all of those who have been responsible for our medical system, I apologise,” Hunt said. “This condition should have been acknowledged at an earlier time in a more powerful way and will never be forgotten again.”
The endometriosis plan is good news. If funding follows
Gabrielle Jackson
Read more
On Thursday he revealed the plan in Sydney, which “outlines a new approach to improving awareness and understanding of endometriosis, speeding up diagnosis, and developing better diagnostic and treatment options”.
Of the $4.5m in funding, $1m will resource a steering group to oversee the plan’s implementation.
On that steering group is Sylvia Freedman, who with her mother in 2015 successfully lobbied Bayer through a change.org petition to get a drug to treat endometriosis made available in Australia. The campaign went viral and brought hope to thousands of women who until then thought they were suffering alone.
To harness all the attention they’d attacted, Freedman and her mother founded EndoActive Australia & NZ, and held conferences, organised events, and joined a coalition of support and advocacy groups, which caught the attention of federal MPs.
Gai Brodtmann, the Labor MP for Canberra, attended a Canberra march held by endo groups and posted her speech to Facebook. She then began reading out the stories of women who had contacted her to parliament, “about misdiagnosis myths, operations, hysterectomies in their 20s, endless operations, lost opportunities, impact on mental health, the cost, the pain, and the daily struggle to take control of their lives”.
The stories, enshrined in Hansard, led to the Liberal MPs Nicolle Flint and Nola Marino joining her to create the bipartisan Parliamentary Friends of Endometriosis Awareness.
Multiple surgeries aren’t the best care for endometriosis. Ask Lena Dunham
Jason Abbott
Read more
“It was set up in August last year with a very clear aim,” Brodtmann says.
“Both Nicolle and myself in former lives had been involved in community [work] … and we were very clear it wasn’t just a group that was set up to talk about the issue. We wanted to make change.”
They met with endometriosis groups and approached Hunt.
A roundtable discussion to develop a national action plan brought together dozens of delegates, who formed the Australian Coalition for Endometriosis – EndoActive, QENDO, Pelvic Pain Foundation of Australia, Canberra Endometriosis Network and Endometriosis Australia – to present a single advocacy voice to government.
“We had so many thoughts and plans that when the roundtable was planned, everyone already had a good idea about what the national action plan should look like,” says a steering group member, Prof Jason Abbott, who is a gynaecologist and the medical director for Endometriosis Australia.
“It happened very quickly but this is on the background of a lot of in-depth work from a variety of groups and professionals who have been working on it, sometimes for decades. We’ve been pushing for these things for a very long time.”
The plan is essentially a three-pronged approach to increase awareness and education, improve clinical management and care, and support further research.
While it may be difficult to quantify, the plan states its five-year goal is: “To see a marked improvement against the objectives of the National Action Plan, with indication of progress against the overarching goal of an improvement in quality of life for women, girls and other individuals living with endometriosis and chronic pelvic pain.”
One of the major problems with endometriosis is that the lack of awareness is not limited to the general public. There is a clear and identified need to improve the knowledge of endo among medical practitioners and healthcare professionals.
“The most common stories are that women are told the pain is all in their head, or that it’s just period pain and it’s normal,” Freedman says.” Endo is much, much more than that.
The biggest lesson from the vaginal mesh saga? Doctors must listen to women
Melissa Davey
Read more
“Or to go and have a baby to cure your pain, which is mythical advice.
“One GP said to a [Canberra] woman with endo, to go and have a baby and when she said, ‘I don’t even have a boyfriend or husband so that’s a bit logistically inconvenient,’ he said, ‘Go to Civic, go to the pub and have a one-night stand, before you miss the boat.’
“That’s a GP obviously uninformed about endo, encouraging unsafe, unprotected sex with a stranger to cure pain and address a woman’s fertility problems.
“I’m sure most people’s experiences with the GPs aren’t that inappropriate, but lack of GP and healthcare professional education is a major, major issue.”
Brodtmann agrees. “We are well overdue for acknowledgement of this insidious disease; the physical cost, psychological cost, the professional cost, to these women and their families and loved ones,” she says.
The funding is small but supporters are careful to say it’s a good start.
“It’s still a relatively small pot of money compared to many other chronic diseases we’ve identified that get much better resourcing and understanding than ‘real’ diseases,” Abbott says.
“It’s important to note endo is just as ‘real’ as all those other illnesses … Further funding is absolutely going to be needed, and the government understands this is something that’s going to need to be resourced at state and federal level.”
Constable who endured agony of endometriosis claims she then had to battle 'bullying' bosses
Read more
The road to get here has taken its toll. Freedman and many others have tirelessly campaigned while also managing their own endometriosis.
“I was really sick but the effect it was having and the power I started to feel through sharing my story, I felt like I was sort of reclaiming endo as my own and it wasn’t owning me anymore,” she says. “That was really pivotal to me feeling physically better.”
Part of Freedman’s taking control included a masters in health communication, during which she wrote every paper about endo just so she could access all the literature for free.
“The more self-educated I became the more I understood about how I could manage it, but these things weren’t made available to any patients,” she says.
“That’s what kept spurring us on to have the events we held. I felt best-placed to pick what type of info patients need because I was a patient. I could see where the gaps are.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/feb/28/nearly-10000-oppose-plan-to-pump-treated-sewage-into-thames-london | UK news | 2023-02-28T11:51:11.000Z | Sandra Laville | Nearly 10,000 oppose plan to pump treated sewage into Thames | Almost 10,000 people have signed a petition against proposals by Thames Water to tackle drought by drawing off up to 100m litres of water a day from the Thames and replacing it with treated effluent from one of Europe’s biggest sewage treatment works.
The company, which leaks 630m litres a day from its pipes, is attempting to get a new scheme approved involving tens of millions of litres of treated effluent being pumped into the Thames from Mogden sewage works in west London to tackle future water shortages.
Concerns over the impact of chemical pollution from the treated sewage, including harm from “forever chemicals”, has angered river users.
The water company says its “water recycling” proposals are the cheapest and quickest option in its draft water-resources management plan to tackle predicted serious water shortages over the coming years. The building of a new reservoir is not likely to happen until at least 2040 and Thames Water’s plans to reduce leaks by 50% will not be achieved until at least 2050.
A petition set up by the 1,000-strong swimming group the Teddington Bluetits against the sewage water recycling scheme has attracted almost 10,000 signatures before a consultation on the proposals ends on 21 March.
Magnus Grimond, from the swimming group, said the proposals were a significant threat to the fragile ecosystems of the river. “There is scientific evidence that treated sewage can have ill-effects on water-based creatures, both through changes in the chemical makeup of the water and its temperature,” he said.
“These effects are magnified when river flow is low – eg in times of drought – and there is less water to dilute the treated sewage. It is just at these times that Thames Water will need to increase the flow from the Mogden sewage works.”
Grimond said no specific tests had been carried out as part of the plans for several persistent organic pollutants or newer pollutants, such as hormones and antibiotics that have been shown to cause irreparable changes in fish, or for “forever chemicals”, polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAs).
Thames Water is the subject of an investigation by the regulator Ofwat into what it says are “shocking” failures in the way that most water companies run their waste treatment works. It was given the a two-star rating by the Environment Agency for its environmental performance last year and a red rating for serious pollution incidents.
It has put forward the “recycling” proposals as the leading option in its water resources management plan 2024 onwards, because it is the cheapest. “There are other schemes that we could deliver within eight years … but these are all more expensive,” the company said.
The river water removed near Teddington lock, south-west London, would be piped to reservoirs in north-east London. Photograph: Jill Mead/The Guardian
The scheme involves abstracting up to 100m litres of water a day from the Thames above Teddington lock in south-west London and transferring it by pipeline to reservoirs in the Lee Valley in east London. The abstracted river water would be replaced by treated effluent from Mogden, one of the biggest sewage plants in the UK. Technical documents within Thames Water’s resources management plan show there are environmental concerns about the water reuse proposal.
Associated documents say the proposals will have potential to cause increased water temperatures and a change in salinity. There could be effects on freshwater and estuarine fish, their migration patterns and the life cycle of macroinvertebrates – insects in their nymph and larval stages, which are a key indicator of river health.
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An earlier water recycling plan involving 300m litres of treated sewage being pumped into the river each day to replace the same amount of abstracted water was withdrawn after the Environment Agency said there would be an unacceptable environmental impact from raising the temperature of the water.
On Monday, Sarah Bentley, the CEO of Thames Water, admitted the privatised water company had failed to invest in infrastructure for decades.
Munira Wilson, the Liberal Democrat MP for Twickenham, said: “These plans are necessary because Thames Water has failed to fix leaks losing them a quarter of their precious daily supply, all whilst handing out millions in bonuses to their chief executives. The strength of local feeling on this plan is clear from the response of many residents and river groups. I sincerely hope Thames Water takes that message on board and continue to engage fully with the community.”
Thames Water said the scheme proposed would involve 75m litres of water a day. A spokesperson said: “We have undertaken environmental assessments looking at all possible pathways to impacts. The assessments complete to date show that a scheme up to 100m litres a day would meet Environment Agency guidance.
“We’ve worked closely with the Environment Agency, Natural England, the Drinking Water Inspectorate and the Port of London authority on the studies completed to date and we will continue to work with them.”
A consultation on the proposal runs until 21 March. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2017/apr/07/ipl-back-bedlam-squeals-thunder-pure-cricketing-energy | Sport | 2017-04-07T16:14:00.000Z | Barney Ronay | The IPL is back: cue bedlam, squeals, thunder and pure cricketing energy | Ben Stokes held his nerve pretty well for the first half of the opening over of his Indian Premier League career in Pune on Thursday afternoon. Gliding up to the wicket in aubergine pyjamas, pumped and sweating, endorsing at least seven high-end products and services simultaneously, the most expensive overseas import in the history of domestic cricket fizzed down a couple of tight, straight dot balls and a single to the Mumbai Indians openers Jos Buttler and Parthiv Patel.
His fourth ball was pitched up. Buttler stood still and clubbed it hard and flat over long-off for six. The next was short, and Buttler produced something ludicrous, pirouetting outside his off stump and persuading the ball away for a six looped straight back over his left shoulder. Cue bedlam, squeals, flashes, thunder, Kevin Pietersen on comms cooing about “wonderful, wonderful cricket shots” and what looked close to a small riot in the stands.
County Championship cricket: day one of the new season - as it happened
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Yes, it’s back. The IPL is upon us once again, here for another very special season just a little bit more special than the last very special season. This week marks the start of the 10th edition, billed as an anniversary affair in its opening exchanges. Hence the extra layer of jollity to the festivities, with fireworks, dancers, speeches and a beaming, waving David Warner being driven around in a spangled golf buggy, like a very jolly cartoon tiger running for president.
The IPL does feel a little different this year. Mainly it feels a little closer to home, and not just because of the presence of Stokes, Buttler, Tymal Mills, Eoin Morgan, Sam Billings, Chris Woakes, Jason Roy and Chris Jordan. The IPL has always been a shadow presence in England at this time of year, kicking off at the same time as the County Championship, and providing its own point of contrast, and indeed some genuine anxiety too.
Not that English cricket needs much encouragement in this, a summer game where the default setting has often tended to be angst, gloomy lament, a conviction that all that is good has long since passed. The September sun is setting. Cut grass lies frail. The weeds grow thick around the clapboard pavilion. Blot the scorebook. Sweep the crumbling steps. Last teas in the clubhouse, boys.
Against this, Twenty20 franchise cricket – which is brash, new and unforgivably successful – was always likely to be cast by some as a malign alien influence. This has been given an extra rev on the throttle by the spectre of the England and Wales Cricket Board’s own plans for a competition to piggy-back the IPL/Big Bash format from 2020, an evisceration of the domestic status quo that is already casting its shadow.
Change is coming. And once again the most striking thing about all of this is the sense of febrile, urgent cricketing life. No matter how much you might recoil from the style and the rhythms of the format, the fact is T20 franchise cricket positively writhes with energy.
Even Sky Sports’ coverage of this IPL has been ramped up. Day one saw not just the excellent Matt Floyd and Rob Key in matching deep blue shirts around the studio dais, but special guest stars Moeen Ali and – hang on! – the great Shane Warne himself, looking tremendously excited and full of vim, and resembling more than ever a charismatic US celebrity preacher who also films gurningly upbeat TV commercials for his discount waterbed warehouse just off highway 59.
True, the IPL TV commentary is, if not the worst TV commentary ever conceived by any industrialised society, then certainly up there, the worst yet. Danny Morrison in particular seems to be astonished by pretty much everything from dot balls to thrashed sixes. Listening to his T20 commentary is like listening to a child’s toy that has mysteriously come to life – a friendly rocking horse, a bouncy space hopper – and which just wants to share its potato-eyed joy in every single object that swims into its line of sight.
The fielding is still terrible. At one point in Hyderabad Shane Watson seemed to spend a whole half-hour looming into shot looking baffled and muscle-bound as the ball plonked on to the turf a few yards in front of him. Later Watson bowled a few overs of medium pace, waddling in like a man in a bomb disposal blast suit very carefully and deliberately flinging a custard pie.
There was plenty of craft and beauty in the opening games too. First from Yuvraj Singh, elegantly brutal as ever; and then from Steve Smith, the best batsman in the world seeing home Rising Pune Supergiant with consecutive clubbed and flicked sixes. Mainly there was confirmation that for all the perils of dissolving the county identities, of haring off in pursuit of that hypothetical cricket-curious eight year old, this form of cricket really is the most viable lure, the most powerful source of energy, out there.
Resistance among the counties is of course entirely legitimate. Many who have supported and protected these delicate institutions fear the new franchised world will allow them to wither, that existing support is being neglected in search of as-yet nonexistent new consumers. It is a gamble. But then so is doing nothing, ignoring those signs of heat and light.
In practice the best way of reassuring yourself all-star franchise cricket really can snag and catch fire is to talk to some children about it. My own random, anecdotal, but relatively wide experience of this target audience suggests even the pre-converted, the ten year old Test Match obsessive, not only gets franchise-style T20 but feels quite proud of it. Here is a form of their favourite sport that can be shared with their football-mad mates, that isn’t a posh voice droning on the radio, or an opaque, academic that can look like a closed shop to those not bred into the game by family or school.
T20 has to attract the next generation first and the blazers will follow the kids
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The day before Stokes and Buttler, Mills, a genuinely likeable, sui generis English cricketer bowled the first ball of this IPL. Later Mills touched 93mph, bowled his party-piece fast-arm slowie, and looked handsomely cinematic in the TV lens, with that bounding run and bulging, gladiatorial physique. Mills was bought for £1.5m. In all he’s going to bowl around sixty overs in India, which works out at about £4000 per ball. Not bad going for a state school kid who hadn’t played a game before he was 14 years old and who was hooked by stumbling across the 2005 Ashes on Channel 4.
Right now Mills stands as a model for other ways of entering this shuttered world. Not to mention an inconvenient truth for those who still scoff at the idea putting cricket on non-specialist, less lucrative television might actually be key to its spread and reach.
Ten years down the IPL track it is time for English cricket to take a proper bite out of this new world. And to do so without a backward glance, or any kind of illusion that the real enemies of cricket are not arguments about team names or overly-managed excitement; but indifference, stasis, drift and above all fear of the gaudy, chancy, intoxicating future. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/28/tunisia-attack-how-a-man-with-a-parasol-could-38-people-on-the-beach | World news | 2017-02-28T11:42:44.000Z | Jamie Grierson | Tunisia attack: how a man with a parasol could murder 38 people on the beach | On a late June day in 2015, a man dressed in black came strolling along the beach outside the five-star Imperial Marhaba hotel in Sousse. It was almost noon, the temperature approaching 30C.
The man’s name was Seifeddine Rezgui. He was 23 years old. He held a large parasol. The dozens of sunbathers paid him no attention. At 11.45am, he pulled out a Kalashnikov assault rifle that was hidden in the parasol, and opened fire.
Rezgui’s rampage is said to have lasted about 30 minutes. He laughed as he went, indiscriminately shooting as he made his way through the crowds, up the beach to the hotel’s pool area, through the building and back again.
Sousse terror attack: the 30 British victims
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By the time he was killed by Tunisian security forces he had murdered 38 people, and left another 39 wounded. Of those killed, 30 were British. All had booked their holidays through Tui, the owner of Thomson Holidays and First Choice.
It remains the biggest loss of British life to terrorism since the bombings in London in July 2005.
How high was the terrorist threat?
A number of attacks had taken place in the area in the two years before the atrocity in Sousse.
Among them was a failed suicide bombing in Sousse in 2013, when an assailant wearing an explosive vest attempted to enter the Riadh Palms hotel, six miles south along the coast from the Imperial Marhaba.
Another failed suicide bombing occurred the same year in Monastir, a resort town 16 miles from Sousse.
Three months before the Sousse attack, the threat from Islamic extremism in Tunisia drew overseas attention. On 18 March 2015, three militants entered the Bardo National Museum in the capital city of Tunis and killed 22 people, mostly European tourists, including a Briton, Sally Adey.
Was the Foreign Office aware of the risks?
Against this backdrop, the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) was informing travellers there was a “high threat from terrorism” in Tunisia within its official travel advice.
The current travel advice system relies on a traffic-light code to convey the guidance: red advises against all travel, amber against all but essential travel, and green means “see travel advice before travelling”.
Crucially, green does not necessarily mean “safe to travel”, although it is widely interpreted that way. After the Bardo attack, a significant chunk of Tunisia remained in the green area, including Sousse and the coastal resorts – but the FCO altered the wording of its advice to include details of the atrocity in the museum.
If read in full, the advice gave potential travellers to Tunisia details of the failed suicide bombing in 2013 and also warned attacks could be “indiscriminate, including in places visited by foreigners”.
The security climate in Tunisia after the Bardo attack prompted Lee Doddridge, director at security consultant Covenant, to reach out to his contact at Tui and raise his concerns.
Doddridge had previously provided a far-reaching security audit for Tui in the Egyptian resorts of Sharm El Sheikh and Luxor in 2013 and 2014 respectively, amid concerns about the terror threat in the country.
He and his team had come across a video purportedly posted by Islamic State on YouTube a few months before the Bardo attack, pledging to attack Tunisia and build a network in the North African country.
In the film, the group threatened to “expand” in Tunisia. Doddridge, in the email dated 18 March 2015 – the day of the Bardo attack – explains that he believes the incident was “the start of an active campaign in Tunisia”.
Jacque Reynolds, a UK-based director of risk and compliance for Tui, was sent the Doddridge email and did not follow it up as it was one of many similar emails she frequently received from security firms.
Reynolds did not consider terrorism or security to be within her remit. Based on evidence presented to the inquest, it remains unclear if anyone at Tui did. The company had no security advisers on its board or in the risk management department. The inquest heard from several Tui employees, none of whom had responsibility for security issues.
Tui’s view was and still is that if the FCO’s advice is green, they will sell holidays to that destination. That the green indicator still comes with conditions attached is not considered.
On the ground in Tunisia, it sent representatives to security briefings alongside British embassy officials and Tunisian ministers. But these employees were not tasked with responsibility for security.
Did Tui hide the travel advice?
Meanwhile, in the UK, after the Bardo attack, Tui prices for Tunisian holidays were plunging, in some cases by up to 30%.
It was at the time of booking that customers might have come across the FCO travel advice.
Tui has been accused by families of victims in the Sousse attacks of “practically hiding and keeping [the advice] out of the limelight”.
When booking a holiday through the Tui website, there are seven pages that must be visited. It is not until the last of these, after the lengthy process of selecting destination, accommodation and flights is completed and personal and payment details are entered, that a small-print link to the FCO website appears.
If a customer books a holiday in a travel agent branch, they will receive a printed booking form, which comes with a small-print reference to the FCO advice.
Some survivors and relatives of victims of the Sousse attack said that after raising concerns about Bardo and the security climate they were reassured Tunisia was “100% safe” and were not directed to the FCO travel advice. A Tui representative denied advising customers in these terms.
The insurance packaged offered by Tui through insurers Axa did not cover for losses caused by terrorism.
Its handling of the FCO travel advice, lack of insurance cover for terrorism and high cancellation penalties were dubbed the “unholy trinity” by its critics.
The FCO currently advises against all travel to four areas of Tunisia and advises against all but essential travel to the rest of the country. Tui does not currently offer holidays to the country.
How secure was the hotel?
Rezgui is said to have chosen the Imperial Marhaba because it was an easy target.
After Bardo, the Tunisian minister of tourism sent a letter to all hotels in the country demanding an upgrade in security.
The Imperial Marhaba had six CCTV cameras, although two were not working and there was no control room to monitor the live footage. There were four guards on duty on the day of the attack. The beach gates were unlocked and unguarded. No training was given to staff for dealing with terrorist incidents.
So it was that Rezgui, an electrical engineering student who had only been exposed to a radical interpretations of Islam in the last 18 months of his life, was able to launch his attack.
Tunisia inquest: gunman shown on beach before and after Sousse attack Guardian
What were Rezgui’s influences?
Rezgui who was from Gaafour, in north-west Tunisia, had embraced foreign and western influences, from hip-hop music to Real Madrid football club, and was a keen breakdancer, as seen in a video that surfaced on Facebook. He came from a town known as a centre for ultra-conservative Salafists, but had not been considered particularly devout himself.
Friends told reporters he had travelled to Libya for military training. Tunisia’s interior secretary, Rafik Chelli, said he had visited the neighbouring country in January, travelling with fellow jihadis who afterwards carried out the Bardo Museum attack, leaving 22 dead. He also visited Libya again in March, during the academic spring vacation.
He returned to his Master’s degree course after finishing his final combat training across the border, and sat his end-of-term exams. He passed and picked up his certificate on 29 May as the college was closing for the summer.
Family and neighbours in his hometown of Gaafour, just a few hours north-west of Sousse, said they had not spotted any change in the young man.
Radhia Manai, 49, Rezgui’s mother, told reporters her son must have been radicalised. She said he was a victim as much as those he shot dead in Sousse.
The ringleader behind the Sousse and Bardo attack, and Rezgui’s recruiter, was identified by a BBC Panorama investigation as Chamseddine al-Sandi. Panorama said al-Sandi is believed to be on the run in Libya. The Guardian has not been able to verify his role.
Were the tourist police cowardly?
As Rezgui unleashed his bloodthirsty campaign on the hotel, a catastrophic and hapless response by the Tunisian security authorities was unfolding.
In the aftermath of the attack, it emerged that the armed tourist security police, best equipped and positioned to bring an end to Rezgui’s attack, had deliberately delayed arriving at the hotel in fear for their own lives.
The Tunisian interior minister said the “deliberate and unjustifiable” delays amounted to a criminal offence. Emergency call centre operatives said the tourist police acted out of “simple cowardice”. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/jun/06/barcelona-luis-suarez-lionel-messi-juventus-champions-league-final | Football | 2015-06-06T21:18:46.000Z | Sid Lowe | Barcelona’s Luis Suárez, Leo Messi and Neymar too good for Juventus | Just when the rolling tide was black and white, when it was Juventus’s players imploring their fans to raise the volume, as if they even needed asking, when the nerves were Barcelona’s and the tension was rising, just moments after Leo Messi appeared to be struggling, the stride slow and the brow heavy, he was up and running again. Others ran with him. There was space now, for almost the first time, and off Messi went, heading at the defence. He shifted inside and took aim. Gigi Buffon dived to his left and pushed the shot away. And there was Luis Suárez.
Sprinting in behind Patrice Evra, the Uruguayan got to the ball first and sent it back into the net. He kept running, leaping over the advertising board before sprinting across the vast space behind the goal separating the goal he had scored in and the fans celebrating it, and over the gigantic Barcelona shield on the floor, arms wide. He kissed his fingers, that familiar celebration, and reached the running track by the delirious fans. There, his team-mates soon joined him.
Luis Suárez’s strike rewards Barcelona’s dominance to break Juventus
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Messi had made it, Suárez had scored it: the 121st goal scored by Messi, Neymar or Suárez this season, the most effective attacking trio in Spanish football history, and the goal that would give Barcelona their fifth European Cup. The league and Copa del Rey winners now added the European Cup to complete a treble; “perfection”, as Gerard Piqué had put it. As the clock ticked down, they made sure. Neymar made it 122 goals for the “MSN” with the very last kick of the game. The trophy was Barcelona’s. Another one.
For Suárez, the significance was gigantic. For any player it would be, of course, but for him perhaps more so. A season that started with him unable to play, banned for biting Giorgio Chiellini at the World Cup, a pariah who was booted out of that tournament and unable to join Uruguay in the Copa América too, ended with him scoring in the European Cup final.
It has not always been an easy season; Suárez had scored three goals before Christmas, but he has scored 22 since then and there is reverence now. Scorer of the winner in the clásico, the goal that perhaps more than any other took them to the league title, he has marked this competition as well. This was his seventh goal in 10 games. He got two in Manchester, two in Paris, and gave two assists in Munich. Now, he scored in Berlin too.
Juventus 1-3 Barcelona: Champions League final player ratings
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When he departed in the dying minutes, the fans chanted his name. Suárez needed this. For all his talent, it is remarkable how long it has taken for him to get it. Suárez is 28. Holland’s player of the year, England’s player of the year, a Copa América winner with Uruguay and player of the tournament too, but his club career has actually been startlingly modest when it comes to silverware. Just three titles in Europe until this season: a Uruguayan title, the English league cup, a Dutch cup and a Dutch league, clinched six months after he departed, the medal sent to him by post.
In nine months at Barcelona he has won as much as in nine years in Europe. A man who admits that it is not so much that he wants to win as that he needs to win, he joined the right club. This was Barcelona’s second treble in six years. No team in Europe has ever won two trebles before and no team has dominated the decade like them. That is four European Cups in 10 years now; no one else has more than one.
Jubilant Barcelona fans gather at Las Ramblas boulevard to celebrate their team beating Juventus 3-1 in the Champions League final Guardian
This is a new Barcelona, though, and his role in their success is hugely significant. Piqué had insisted on the eve of this game that he hated comparisons and begged people not to constantly play one Barcelona team off against another but that is inevitable and the way this final was won will only add to that.
Messi is Messi, and Barcelona will always be Messi’s Barcelona, his role in both goals colossal here. Andrés Iniesta was decisive in the opening goal and voted the man of the match. And there was a late appearance for Xavi Hernández, making his 900th professional appearance and his last in Europe, the finest playmaker in Spanish football history lifting that trophy again. But it was two new men who scored the key goals; two men who symbolise the shift in style.
Ivan Rakitic had given Barcelona the lead: the first player other than Messi, Neymar or Suárez to score for Barcelona since the quarter-finals. Twenty-seven of their 31 European Cup goals have been scored by the MSN. The first here, after three minutes and 24 seconds, was not.
Gianluigi Buffon and Juventus veterans find destiny favours Barcelona
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Nine of the 10 outfield players touched the ball in the move – the one that did not was Suárez. Messi’s diagonal ball opened up the space, Jordi Alba sidefooted a volley into the path of Neymar and, although his first touch was a little heavy, he found Iniesta. Iniesta, who had dashed past Arturo Vidal, could have taken on the shot himself. Instead, he waited, that pause that sets him apart, like a man whose second hand moves at a different rate to everyone else’s. Imperceptible but impeccable.
He nudged the ball back and Rakitic swept it past Buffon. This was the third final in which Iniesta had provided an assist: in Rome in 2009 it was for Samuel Eto’o; in London in 2011 it was for Messi; here, it was for Rakitic. A Europa League winner last year, Rakitic had the European Cup this year.
When he returned to Sevilla this season, supporters held up a banner saying “thank you”. Although Barcelona still needed another, Álvaro Morata’s goal increasing the nerves, and although the Croat’s goal would not prove the winner, the sentiment will be similar in Catalonia now too. Johan Cruyff says that the thing that most struck him when Barcelona won their first European Cup in 1992 was that people stopped him, not to say “well done” but to say “thank you”.
Ronald Koeman scored the goal at Wembley; Rakitic had scored it here. The first time is always special, but these will be gratefully remembered too. Koeman, Eto’o, Belletti, Pedro, Messi and Villa; Rakitic, Suárez and Neymar. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/nov/02/ego-left-at-door-life-of-understudy-reserve-goalie | Life and style | 2019-11-02T10:00:19.000Z | Nige Tassell | Your ego has to be left at the door': the secret life of the understudy | ‘I studied engineering at Cambridge: it’s fascinating to test the technical innovations first-hand’
Oliver Turvey, 32, Formula One test driver, Penrith
I started racing karts when I was eight at my local track in Cumbria. I won my first national championship when I was 12, and my second, in a different class, when I was 15. The following year I progressed to racing single-seater cars. It was a struggle. Motor sport is really expensive and my family didn’t have the money, but we managed to find some sponsorship.
I had some successful years in the Formula BMW UK Championship and got nominated for the McLaren Autosport BRDC Young Driver of the Year award at the age of 19, which I went on to win. That was quite a turning point. The prize included a test drive in a McLaren F1 car. That first test went really well and I signed for the team as a test driver at the end of the year.
In the early 2000s, test drivers did a lot of track testing. Nowadays, that’s quite limited. Access to the cars is difficult and the race drivers themselves want to track-test as much as possible. But, most years, I’ve been fortunate enough to drive the car for a couple of days at least. Most of my time at McLaren is spent driving the simulator in the team’s factory in Woking. In the short term, it’s about working on the car’s set-up for the next race. In the medium term, it’s working on developing the car through the season. And then there’s the long term, adapting the design of next year’s car within any new regulations that are coming in.
I studied engineering at Cambridge, and have always been interested in the technical side. You get to see the developments and innovations first-hand – they all come through the simulator before the car is manufactured. Other test drivers are maybe less interested in this aspect. Perhaps my fascination for it is why I’ve been a test driver for 10 years; I’m one of the longest-standing in Formula One.
It’s important for a race driver to have someone they believe in. Every time a new driver comes in, they want to understand your role and to trust that you’re improving the car for them. And you need to understand what they want from the car. At each post-race debrief, we listen back to the drivers on their radios to hear their feedback.
As a kid, racing in Formula One was obviously the dream. Being a test driver can be a route to one of the racing spots in a team – you always hope you have the chance to step up one day. But there are few opportunities. There are only 20 seats in a season – it’s a very tough environment. It won’t happen for me now.
At the same time as testing for McLaren, though, I have been able to develop my career as a race driver. I’ve raced across many formulas, including Formula Three and GP2. I’ve also won the Le Mans 24-Hour race in the LMP2 class. I currently race in Formula E, the class that solely uses electric-powered cars, so I still carry a dream of becoming a world champion. McLaren have been very flexible in working around my racing schedule: they think it’s good for me to be race-sharp.
I feel very proud to have made a career out of motor sport. Many of the guys I used to race didn’t even progress from karting. Even if I didn’t quite reach the pinnacle of Formula One, being a test driver for one of the top teams has been the next best thing.
‘People study for degrees in their dressing room. I did my master’s’
Rosemary Annabella Nkrumah, 39, actor, London
Rosemary Annabella Nkrumah at the Theatre Royal in Margate: ‘Your adrenaline levels are always high.’ Photograph: Fabio De Paola/The Guardian
I didn’t start out understudying – I did a lot of ensemble stuff and had some lead roles. But the bigger the productions that I’ve worked on since, the more understudying work I’ve done. I was the understudy for the role of Hermione Granger, played by Noma Dumezweni, in Harry Potter And The Cursed Child for three and a half years. Over that time, I was Hermione on just eight occasions.
I’ve just finished a run in a production of The Color Purple. I had a featured role as Darlene, but was also an understudy for the part of Shug Avery. I had an understudy for my featured role and so, if I needed to become Shug Avery, my understudy would step up. Having both a featured role and being an understudy in the same production is really common; most understudies have responsibility elsewhere.
Nobody becomes an actor to be an understudy. We’re all ambitious, but you have to be patient. A standard West End production will have eight shows a week, spread over either five or six days. We are required to be at the theatre for every performance – even if we’re just sitting in our dressing rooms. There are always ways to keep yourself busy and engaged off stage. During my time at Harry Potter, when not on stage in my ensemble role, I would regularly work on the script and the character of the role. I’d also watch the show from the wings to stay as connected as possible. If you need to go on, you need to be there.
You might not have the same level of contact with your director as the principal actor, so you’ve got to be really on the ball. You always have to be at the point of emotional and physical preparedness, in order to go on at the drop of a hat. Your adrenaline levels are always high. You’ve got to keep sharp and stimulated, too – boredom can have a huge impact on you psychologically. I know people who study for degrees in their dressing room. In fact, I did my master’s in music while understudying.
Do understudies get on with lead actors? Everyone is different; sometimes personalities knit nicely together, other times they don’t. But generally speaking, a company of actors will endeavour to work well together for the good of the production. I’ve always been fortunate enough to work in that way.
I’ll look back fondly on my understudy days, without a shadow of a doubt. Being an actor is not just about the role itself – it’s about the company, the project, the content. Understudying has taught me about self‑belief. You need to have a heck of a lot of it – and those lessons filter into the rest of your life.
‘You’re not part of the evening, you’re a footnote’
Mark Olver, 44, TV warm-up act, Bristol
Mark Olver: ‘The job is a combination of standup, cabin crew and holiday camp redcoat.’ Photograph: Fabio De Paola/The Guardian
I started doing standup in the late 90s, in exactly the same way that every other comedian does – clubs, open spots, gigging all over the place.
But I worked out early on that compering was something I could do, too. In 2004, there was a Channel 4 show, Kings Of Comedy, where standup comedians lived together in a Big Brother-style house. Every week they’d do a gig and the least good person would be evicted. Beforehand, the production team wanted to see how a comedy club worked and, because it was being made in Bristol, they came to see one of the nights I compered. When they started doing the live eviction show, hosted by Russell Brand, they asked me to do the warm-up.
I did a few more warm-ups the following year, and then Deal Or No Deal started, which I did for more than 10 years. I now do a lot of shows. I’m the warm-up on Have I Got News For You, Vic & Bob’s Big Night Out, The Last Leg, and loads more.
The core task of warm-up is the same as standup: it’s communicating with people – making them comfortable, making them laugh. The job is a combination of standup, cabin crew and holiday camp redcoat. A lot of it is housekeeping, so I try to find the funniest way to do it. I have jokes about every element of the studio experience: health and safety, fire exits, mobile phones. I joke about getting a young person to turn off your mobile phone for you, about drug dealers and doctors having a night off, about teenagers struggling to go two hours without Instagram. There’s lots of admin. There’s getting the right shots for the director, and there’s making sure the audience aren’t worn out before the show begins. I sometimes need to slow them down, because I want them to still have energy in four-and-a-half hours’ time.
With standup, the crowd has come to see you, or at least a night you are part of. With warm-up, you’re not an expected part of the evening – you’re an appendix or footnote. It’s not the place to experiment with quirky material – the warm-up has to fit with the tone of the show.
If there’s a break in the recording, you have to plug the gap; one skill I have is that I can just talk for ever. I’m happy discussing the perfect burger or the best biscuit or my favourite service station ad nauseam – I think I’m a naturally funny person. Once, on Never Mind The Buzzcocks, I was told I only needed to do five minutes, because everyone was ready, but the floor manager came up to me and said, “There’s a problem. Someone’s refusing to sign a contract.” And I was on for an hour.
Lots of other people who do warm-up aren’t comics; they may have come from cruise ships or holiday camps. There are a few standups on the circuit who do warm-up, but not many enjoy it, as the ego has to be left at the door.
If I met someone at a party, I’d still describe myself as a standup. I’ve got a gig in Halifax later this week, sandwiched between doing Pointless today, The Great British Bake Off: An Extra Slice on Sunday and 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown on Monday. It’s a varied life and I’ve done warm-ups around the world: in Bangkok, Buenos Aires, Rio. It’s lovely to be a full-time comedian and I’m really well-paid.
I’ve got standup friends who are now superstars – I used to live with both Russell Howard and Jon Richardson. But I’m very happy where I am. Whatever level you’re at in comedy, there’s always someone above you, so you have to find a place where you’re at ease. And I am considered one of the best at what I do, even though it’s quite niche. When Richard Osman introduces me to people, he says, “This is Mark Olver. He’s the best warm-up in the world.” I would never say that myself, but I’m glad that he does.
‘I nearly lost both legs a couple of years ago. Just sitting on the bench is an achievement’
Eartha Cumings, 20, second-choice goalkeeper, Bristol City
Eartha Cumings at the Bristol City Ladies FC ground: ‘It can be quite isolating.’ Photograph: Fabio De Paola/The Guardian
I’ve been a goalkeeper since I started playing football at the age of five with the local boys’ team in Edinburgh. I joined Bristol City in the summer of 2018, but only turned professional this summer. Last season I was combining football with studying ancient history at university. But that went a bit sideways as I was spreading myself too thin, so I decided to leave uni and focus on football.
I made two appearances for the first team last season: one in the Continental Tyres League Cup and one in the FA Cup. The Conti Cup game against Aston Villa was played in torrential rain. We were winning 4-0, but I slipped in the mud and they scored. Not a dream debut. But we won the FA Cup game 3-0, so it was relatively easy.
During the week, I do the same training and gym sessions as the first-choice goalkeeper, Sophie Baggaley. The only difference is that, at the weekend, I’m on the bench and Sophie is on the pitch. I’m sitting down and she’s standing up.
There’s a danger that, knowing the chances of actually playing on Sunday are low, you just go through the motions. You’ve got to motivate yourself. There could be an injury at any moment and you’d be in at the deep end. It’s hard to feel ready, and keep feeling ready, for something that’s probably not going to happen. It can be quite isolating. Outfield players can at least come on for five or 10 minutes at the end of the game, but with goalkeepers it’s all or nothing. It’s tough: it can make you feel as if you’re not part of the team.
You can’t wish ill on the first-choice keeper though. I respect that Sophie’s better than me and we are great friends, despite us vying for the same spot. Maybe if you didn’t get on with the first-choice keeper, you’d go to the coach and shout about it: “Why am I not playing?”
Because they don’t get game time, understudy goalkeepers have to show the best of themselves in training. That’s their audition. I don’t have to dislodge Sophie this year. At the end of my 12-month contract, it won’t be “Eartha’s not number one, so she’s out”; it’s more that I have to be pushing myself and pushing Sophie – blurring the line between the number one and number two. The club want the best goalkeeper, regardless of who that is. It can be hard to maintain concentration and motivation to prove myself every day when, more than likely, at the end of the week I won’t be the one who’s playing. But if I decide to stop trying, I will be damaging Sophie’s chances of improving, too.
This year will hopefully be the year I can really kick on. I have international ambitions, too. I’ve played for Scotland under-19s, and I want to play in the World Cup for the full side.
A couple of years ago, I nearly lost both my legs. I got compartment syndrome. During a fairly routine operation for a health condition, there was a problem with oxygen flow getting to the muscles and they began to swell up and up. If not operated on in time, compartment syndrome results in the breakdown and death of your muscles. I had to sign a form giving the surgeons permission to amputate if the operation went wrong. I was a footballer and my life was in my legs. I had to have numerous surgeries to repair the injury and spent a good bit of time on crutches. Nearly losing the opportunity to play football changed my outlook. Even if I’m just sitting on the bench, I still think that’s a huge achievement.
‘If I took Richard Hawley’s place, people would ask for their money back’
Gordon White, 56, guitar roadie, Leeds
Gordon White at Blueberry Hill Studios in Leeds: ‘If you’ve ever been in a band, you always regret packing it in.’ Photograph: Fabio De Paola/The Guardian
I went to art college. Everyone there pretends to be a painter or a sculptor, but it’s just a way of getting into bands. We described our band as punk-skiffle, a description we made up, because it fitted what we did: you played whatever instrument you were given or had found in a skip. We made a godawful racket. We were technically appalling, but we had the enthusiasm of youth.
We were doing gigs around Leeds, but I had some friends who were in a band called Cud and they were doing a fair bit better; they were gigging beyond Leeds and getting John Peel sessions. One day they had a gig in Preston and they were looking for someone to drive them. “Can you drive?” “Yes.” “Can you hire a van and drive us to Preston?” “Yes.” “We’ll give you £10 for it.” “Yes!”
So a driving licence was the most important qualification I ever got. Then it became, “Can you set the amps up? Can you tune the guitars?” Cud started playing bigger gigs in bigger venues and you’d bump into other bands on the road. They’d say, “Oh, we need someone, too.” Before I knew it, it was a job.
I’ve been working with Richard Hawley for about 12 years. Anywhere he has to plug in a guitar – including in-store shows or TV and radio appearances – I’ll be there. I can do a couple of weeks touring with him and then come back and get on with things in my workshop. We’re all of a certain age and we’ve all got kids and families. None of us are remotely interested in the one‑and-a-half-years-away-from-home thing.
On tour, a big chunk of the day will be spent setting everything up on stage: amps, pedals and the like. Richard uses four amps and about 30 pedals. They surround him in a semi-circle – an arc of guitar noise. He also uses about 12 guitars per gig; it’s virtually a guitar change with every song. Once the PA is set up, I tend to do a soundcheck by having a go on a couple of the guitars, making a bit of a racket and making sure all the pedals do what they should be doing. I need to make it sound the same as it did the night before – what I heard when I stood in the middle of that arc of noise 24 hours earlier.
Through working with Richard, I ended up working with Duane Eddy, as his guitar tech when he comes to the UK. I’ve also worked with the Cure, Joe Strummer, Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds, Tindersticks and Embrace.
If you’ve been in a band, you always regret packing it in. Life gets in the way and you have a mortgage to pay. But I couldn’t contemplate being able to do what Richard does: his skill as a songwriter, singer and guitarist is at such a level.
Richard needs me, and I need him, but I don’t think he could do my job, and I certainly couldn’t do his. If something terrible happened and Richard couldn’t do a gig one night, but they decided to go ahead with me in his place, I think there’d be a lot of people asking for their money back.
If you would like a comment on this piece to be considered for inclusion on Weekend magazine’s letters page in print, please email [email protected], including your name and address (not for publication). | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/dec/21/losing-the-wilderness-a-tenth-has-gone-since-1992-and-gone-for-good | Environment | 2017-12-21T00:14:29.000Z | Susan Chenery | Losing the wilderness: a 10th has gone since 1992 – and gone for good | The world’s last great wildernesses are shrinking at an alarming rate. In the past two decades, 10% of the earth’s wilderness has been lost due to human pressure, a mapping study by the University of Queensland has found.
Over the course of human history, there has been a major degradation of 52% of the earth’s ecosystems, while the remaining 48% is being increasingly eroded. Since 1992, when the United Nations signed up to the Rio convention on biological diversity, three million square kilometres of wilderness have been lost.
Our selective blindness is lethal to the living world
George Monbiot
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According to the UQ professor and director of science at the Wildlife Conservation Society James Watson, senior author on the study, “If this rate continues, we will have lost all wilderness within the next 50 years.”
This wilderness degradation is endangering biodiversity, as well as the water cycle, the nitrogen cycle and pollination. And, says Watson, once they have been damaged or cleared, the wildernesses are gone for good; there is no scientific evidence that degraded eco-systems could ever return to their original condition.
These pristine wild places exist in inhospitable locations: the deserts of Central Australia; the Amazon rainforest in South America; Africa; the Tibetan plateau in central Asia; and the boreal forests of Canada and Russia.
Wilderness degradation endangers biodiversity, as well as the water cycle, the nitrogen cycle and pollination. Photograph: UQ School of Earth and Environmental Sciences
They are being encroached on by logging, oil and gas exploration, mining, roads and agriculture. “It is death by a thousand cuts” says PhD student James Allan, who also worked on the study. “The moment you put a road in, you get people moving in to farm, hunt, and [that] undermines the wilderness. The risk is that a lot of these systems could collapse. The Amazon is the best example of where you need the whole forest, or a huge portion of the forest, protected for the hydrological cycle to function.” One third of the Amazon wilderness region has been lost since 1992.
Watson agrees: “What we are showing is that the degradation of intact ecosystems affects the ability around cloud formation, so it means that literally the ability to create rain is affected. [And]we are seeing the dramatic impacts on water, in terms of the water flow in rivers.”
Loss of wilderness will affect the migratory species who depend on large intact wilderness areas, and the large carnivores – charismatic megafauna such as lions, who can’t live in a human landscape when their habitat disappears.
It is death by a thousand cuts
PhD student James Allan
According to the study, Australia has not suffered the worst of global wilderness loss. “Central and Northern Australia has very little large scale infrastructure at the present,” says Watson. “We are very lucky, we have a very low population density and the vast majority of our population is on the coast. This doesn’t mean these areas are not threatened – they still have very serious issues with invasive species and non-natural fire regimes.”
However, James Trezise, policy analyst at the Australia Conservation Foundation, points to the irrigation and mining projects in Western Australia and South Australia scattered within the wilderness regions.
Trezise says Australia urgently needs to address the major drivers of habitat loss, invasive species and fire regimes. “We have some of the biggest intact tropical savannas, we have got amazing desert country [but] we have this immense challenge in how we adapt and protect nature going into the future. Otherwise, we will see a significant ramp-up in extinction. We will also see a huge loss in ecosystem function which could ultimately cascade onto us.”
The UQ study found that conservation efforts are being rapidly outpaced by the acceleration of the decline, thanks to massive global population growth and the associated economic growth that demands ever-increasing natural resources.
Australia has escaped the worst so far but needs to address habitat loss, invasive species and fire regimes. Photograph: University of Queensland School of Earth and Environmental Sciences
The problem is profound. “Intact functioning ecosystems” says Watson, “are critical not only for biodiversity but for the huge amounts of carbon they store and sequester. They provide a direct defence against climate-related hazards like storms, floods, fires and cyclones. They are the most resilient and effective defence against ongoing climate change.”
And yet only 20% of the earth’s surface now survives as wilderness. “Within a century it could all be gone,” says Watson, “and with it, uninfluenced evolution and natural carbon storage. When we started seeing the numbers, we had to double-check them because they were so large in terms of the loss.”
Queensland farmer fined and ordered to restore cleared native vegetation
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Loss of wilderness also affects Indigenous communities . “You have got people living in the Amazon, Congo and New Guinea who have been there for thousands of years subsisting through hunting – just sustainable use of the resources,” says Allan. “So loss of wilderness will have huge ramifications for local people and their livelihoods.”
While Trezise says the UQ research is “sound”, it is part of a bigger picture. “It doesn’t account for impacts such as climate change. In Canada you have climate change impacts to those boreal forests. You need to take this analysis and look at other bits of work and bring it all together to tell a holistic story. ”
The UQ research shifts conservation thinking which has historically targeted funding towards really threatened areas where there is a lot of human activity harming species.
“What we realised was that we were not really thinking about the other end of the spectrum, which is those amazing intact systems that are still functioning like they are meant to be function by evolutionary and ecological processes,” says Watson. “If you looked around, there were no maps, no discussion of how these places were changing. Or what was being lost. We realised that we should start looking at humanity’s influence on that end of the spectrum, the last great wildernesses on the planet.”
A third of the Amazon region has been lost since 1992. Photograph: University of Queensland School of Earth and Environmental Sciences
In 2016, Watson and his team released maps of the global human footprint, using eight data layersof roads, agriculture, grazing land, human population density, urbanisation and navigable waterways.
We have to save the last brilliant irreplaceable places
Conservationist James Watson
“The environment footprint of humanity is truly massive,” Watson wrote of his findings in Time. “No other species has ever come close to us in terms of consuming so much of the world’s energy, resources and land area. In this Anthropocene era, where the human footprint is now altering many of the Earth systems processes, wilderness areas serve as natural observatories where we can study the ecological and evolutionary impacts of global change.” The loss of wilderness maps build on that research.
It is hoped the maps and research will influence global policy. Watson says he has had “multiple” requests from policymakers around the world, including the UN.He describes it as a call to action. “We have got to turn the corner, we have got to bend the curve, we have got to change this and save the last brilliant irreplaceable places.”
What we need, says Trezise, is “strong environmental law. We need big investments from government and the private sector, otherwise we will continue on a very sad trajectory.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/feb/20/kermode-dvd-another-year-illusionist | Film | 2011-02-20T00:04:03.000Z | Mark Kermode | Mark Kermode's DVD round-up | At last year's Cannes film festival, I (wrongly) tipped Mike Leigh's Another Year (2010, Momentum, 12) as being a shoo-in for the Palme d'Or, fully expecting it to repeat the awards-courting success of Secrets and Lies which went on to take five Oscar nods and three Bafta wins. Sadly, this was not to be; last week, Leigh's somewhat under-rewarded latest emerged empty-handed from the Baftas and the odds are stacked against it beating The King's Speech to the Academy award for original screenplay next Sunday. In terms of gongs, this is far from Leigh's most feted film. No matter; despite the comparative paucity of awards, audiences comprising Leigh devotees and neophytes alike will find much to love, cherish and chew on in this bittersweet tale of good-hearted people battling for the best in an often cold and hostile world.
Played out over four distinctly paletted seasons (particular plaudits are due to cinematographer Dick Pope for the subtly evoked changes), Another Year centres on Tom and Gerri, an almost comically well-matched and supportive couple played with beautifully gruff tenderness by Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen. Into their nurturing home come friends and relations in various states of emotional unrest, most notably Leslie Manville's fidgety and anxious Mary, a middle-aged malcontent whose broiling unhappiness and increasingly desperate loneliness are barely hidden behind a nervous laugh and a half-filled glass of wine. As the spectres of weddings and funerals flicker in her orbit, she seems unable to escape the self-absorbed cycle of isolation into which she has fallen, despite the efforts of those around her, all of whom have troubles of their own.
The deliberately ambivalent title of Another Year can be read in two very different ways; as the declaration of a positive new broom – out with the old, in with the new – or as the depressing acceptance of an unalterable status quo. Yet despite the many perfectly observed bleak moments, the overall tone of this oddly forgiving film is perhaps closest in the Leigh canon to High Hopes (in which Sheen presented a similarly radiant presence), with the female strength of Vera Drake underwriting the drama.
I detect a softening in Leigh's heart of late; a willingness to look more kindly upon his characters' foibles, and a fondness for optimism which reached unbearably upbeat levels in Happy-Go-Lucky. For all his flinty social observation, Leigh has always been a comedian at heart, even when that comedy was as acutely painful as Abigail's Party. Perhaps the most encouraging thing about Another Year is the suggestion that in his mid-60s, Leigh's best work still lies ahead.
Some years ago, I started receiving multiple copies of a letter apparently written by the descendants of Jacques Tati complaining bitterly about a forthcoming animated adaptation of one the maestro's unproduced screenplays from 1956. The complaint was complex (as family matters so often are) but The Illusionist (2010, Fox, PG) is deceptively simple: a melancholic tale of a washed-up conjurer, playing second fiddle to brash pop stars who strikes up a strange relationship with a young fan. Having worked such wonders with Belleville Rendezvous, Sylvain Chomet invests Tati's unwordy but strangely weighty manuscript (a response, apparently, to his guilty abandonment of an illegitimate daughter) with a sense of innocent melancholia which is at once eccentric, moving and strangely magical. At the Oscars, this has been shortlisted to compete against that unstoppable cross-generational heartbreaker Toy Story 3 which, for all its whizzo technical innovations, shares a similarly old-fashioned heart.
Not so Despicable Me (2010, Universal, U), a passable production-line digimation which rehashes well-worn riffs from The Incredibles, Igor, Austin Powers and (peculiarly) Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events to no more than moderately diverting effect. Steve Carell voices Gru, a wannabe Dr Evil whose reputation as the world's premier fiendish mastermind is threatened by the arrival of a new kid on the block blah blah blah (stop me if you've heard this one). Far from timeless, this middle-of-the-road, machine-like entertainment earned itself a place in the history of the "stereoscopic revolution" as the first big-budget, kid-friendly romp (the most dependable section of the market) which more viewers chose to watch in 2D than 3D. On this evidence, the future is flat.
But not as flat as Alpha and Omega (2010, LionsGate), a lame Romeo and Juliet-lite anthropomorphic romance between socially mismatched wolves on the run which holds the honour of being Dennis Hopper's very last movie. Quite how the director of Easy Rider and star of Blue Velvet would feel about receiving an "in memoriam" dedication on this limp affair cannot be known; presumably he wasn't in it for the art.
Cyrus (2010, Fox, 15) is a strange affair; a hybrid comedy which can't quite decide whether it wants to be a noodly indie-spirited drama about estranged adults and trapped single parents looking for love; or a brash, boyzie farce packed with lowest-common-denominator knob gags, and marketed with a picture of Jonah Hill making the universal wanking gesture and the tag-line: "Seriously, don't f**k his mom." Premiering at the 2010 Sundance festival, this latest from The Puffy Chair creators Mark and Jay Duplass follows lonely bozo John C Reilly as he woos the unfeasibly glamorous Marisa Tomei, only to discover that her dumpy son has a Norman Bates-style psychotic obsession with keeping her to himself. Sometimes it's funny, occasionally it's creepy, but more often than not it's just frustrating, not unlike Cyrus himself, in fact. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/jan/27/oscars-campaign-procedures-andrea-riseborough-backlash | Film | 2023-01-27T22:04:20.000Z | Benjamin Lee | Oscars to review ‘campaign procedures’ after Andrea Riseborough backlash | The film academy has announced a review of “campaign procedures” in the wake of a backlash to this year’s Oscar nominations.
The British actor Andrea Riseborough gained a surprise best actress nod for her role in indie To Leslie after a grassroots campaign backed by A-listers including Kate Winslet, Jane Fonda, Charlize Theron, Gwyneth Paltrow and Amy Adams.
‘Masterpiece of a film’: why is every A-lister trying to get To Leslie an Oscar?
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While the academy doesn’t mention Riseborough or the actors involved in the last-minute campaign, the statement alludes to questions that have arisen since this week’s announcement.
“It is the Academy’s goal to ensure that the awards competition is conducted in a fair and ethical manner, and we are committed to ensuring an inclusive awards process,” the statement reads. “We are conducting a review of the campaign procedures around this year’s nominees, to ensure that no guidelines were violated, and to inform us whether changes to the guidelines may be needed in a new era of social media and digital communication. We have confidence in the integrity of our nomination and voting procedures, and support genuine grassroots campaigns for outstanding performances.”
Riseborough’s inclusion in the category led to surprise from many prognosticators given the film’s low profile during the awards season. Her film To Leslie made only $27,000 on its release last October and while she was nominated for an Independent Spirit award, she was not picked by either the Golden Globes or Screen Actors Guild.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the film’s director, Michael Morris, and his wife, actor Mary McCormack “contacted nearly every one” of their famous friends asking them to watch the film and spread the word about it on social media. Support soon followed with Theron hosting a screening back in November, Winslet leading a Q&A and online posts appearing from others, including Edward Norton and Susan Sarandon. Many posts also included similar wording, referring to the film as “a small film with a giant heart”.
Riseborough told Deadline that she was “astounded” by the nomination. “It was so hard to believe it might ever happen because we really hadn’t been in the running for anything else,” she said. “Even though we had a lot of support, the idea it might actually happen seemed so far away.” Winslet also said it was “hard-won” and “deeply deserved”.
Sources claim to Variety that the academy has been “inundated” with calls and emails about the nomination but no formal complaint has been filed. The academy is set to meet on Tuesday and reportedly this will be on the agenda.
Riseborough is included in the category alongside Cate Blanchett, Ana de Armas, Michelle Williams and Michelle Yeoh. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/apr/03/royal-college-of-nursing-asks-police-to-investigate-some-of-its-members | Society | 2023-04-03T05:00:41.000Z | Kiran Stacey | Royal College of Nursing asks police to investigate some of its members | England’s biggest nursing union has called in the police to investigate some of its own members, as the internal fight over whether to accept the government’s pay deal turns bitter.
The Royal College of Nursing has asked the police to investigate a petition to hold a vote of no-confidence in its leadership, while reporting the behaviour of other members to social media platforms and the nursing regulator. Meanwhile Vote Reject campaigners claim they are being bullied and intimidated by union management in an attempt to win what is likely to be a knife-edge vote.
The accusations from both sides reflect the stakes involved in this month’s vote. With weeks to go until the ballot closes, the RCN is warning its members that if they reject the deal they will have to go on strike again to get a better one, raising the prospect of more industrial action by nurses over the coming months.
The NHS is already bracing itself for record disruption next week, with four days of walkouts by junior doctors after the bank holiday weekend. Hundreds of thousands of appointments and operations are likely to be cancelled, on top of the 320,000 already lost to previous strikes.
A spokesperson for the union said: “This debate must be conducted in a manner that befits the nursing profession. Only a very small number are acting in a way that looks like bullying or harassment, and that will never be tolerated.”
One member who is involved in the Vote Reject campaign however said: “There has been totally unacceptable monitoring and intimidation. This is supposed to be a democratic union, but leadership is acting in a way that is anything but democratic.”
Ballot papers were sent to members of 14 health unions last week asking them to vote on whether or not to accept the pay deal thrashed out over weeks between ministers and union negotiators. Under the terms of the deal, staff will receive a one-off 2% salary uplift and 4% Covid recovery bonus for the current year, and then a permanent 5% pay rise from April. The deal will apply to all NHS staff except for doctors and dentists, who negotiate separate deals.
Leaders at every big health union except for Unite have recommended that members accept the offer, warning them they are unlikely to receive a better one. The leadership of several big unions, including the RCN and Unison, have told members that they will have to go back on strike if they want more money, and are more likely to lose their one-off bonus than they are to get a better offer.
Last year Scottish members of the RCN and the GMB voted to reject a pay offer agreed between those unions and the Scottish government, although Scottish ministers have since paid the agreed sum anyway. Union leaders say they expect the Conservative government in the UK to be more aggressive in their tactics should the English deal be rejected.
The Guardian revealed last month that some union members have begun a highly organised campaign to reject the deal since it falls far short of the UK’s current inflation rate of about 10%.
Nurses in England, Wales and Northern Ireland: share your views on the RCN strike
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Soon after the deal was accepted, two RCN members put together a petition to hold a vote of no confidence in the union’s leaders, including Pat Cullen, the chief executive. When that petition crossed 1,000 votes – enough to trigger an extraordinary general meeting – the union leadership launched an investigation into whether all the signatures on it were valid.
The union now says it believes 600 of the those signatures were false, and belonged to members who later said they had not signed the petition. They added that one name on the petition belonged to a deceased member. The petition has since been taken offline and the union has contacted the police.
An RCN spokesperson said: “This is now a significantly discredited and underhand petition and has been invalidated. As a result, we will not be taking this further.
“We will be taking legal advice, involving the police, the regulator and carrying out a forensic examination.”
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One of the petition’s organisers did not respond to a request to comment; the other could not be reached.
The RCN has also deleted WhatsApp messages and Facebook posts made by members of the Vote Reject campaign, arguing they amount to intimidation of other members. The language was so vitriolic, an RCN official said, that the union contacted social media platforms and the nursing regulator to complain about them.
Members of Vote Reject however say the union’s tactics themselves amount to bullying and voter suppression. Claire Turner, a nurse in the east of England, claimed on Twitter she had been forced out of her role on the union’s local board, saying: “Apparently I was too passionate about #VoteReject despite the fact I was elected by members to represent them and their interests. Accepting another pay cut is not in their interests. Is @theRCN really member led?”
The RCN’s eastern regional board did not respond to a request to comment.
Both the RCN and Unison, the two biggest nursing unions, have told local branches and individual representatives that they should be campaigning for a Yes vote, although both say representatives are free to campaign for No if they choose.
A Unison spokesperson said: “The union’s health committee decided to recommend acceptance of the offer. It’s now down to health branches to ensure Unison members have their say and are fully informed about the offer and the union’s position.”
Union leaders say the campaign has been particularly hard-fought within the RCN because that was the first health union to go on strike, and many of its members have been particularly energised as the industrial dispute has dragged on.
One said: “The RCN is going to find it particularly difficult to pass this deal. But that causes a headache for all of us. We cannot be sure that the government will stick to the deal if the biggest nursing union does not vote for it.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/dec/19/the-50-best-tv-shows-of-2023-no-2-succession | Television & radio | 2023-12-19T10:00:22.000Z | Jack Seale | The 50 best TV shows of 2023: No 2 – Succession | Well, it was the unexpected TV death of the year, for starters. Just as Logan Roy – the media mogul who for three seasons had refused to let go of his billion-dollar company Waystar Royco – dominated his jostling adult children, Succession had always revolved around the vulpine snarl of the man who played Logan, Brian Cox. The big man had to be killed off so Succession could actually feature a succession, but without him, wouldn’t it be Lear without the king? Surely Cox would be kept on screen as long as possible?
Not so. The ruthless drama binned Cox after just three episodes of the fourth and final season. Hours of Coxless fare beckoned. Of course, showrunner Jesse Armstrong knew exactly what he was doing. He knew that while the cruel, profane, profoundly intimidating Logan had been a powerful avatar for an examination of how the richest 0.1% of corporate America act and think, his finest creations were those grownup kids: Kendall (Jeremy Strong), Roman (Kieran Culkin) and Shiv (Sarah Snook). Taking them out of Logan’s shadow meant Armstrong and his writers could slowly take them apart.
“You are not serious people,” Logan said to his brood at their final face-off, an instantly memeable put-down. As the grieving trio tried to gain control of Waystar by either securing or sabotaging a deal with unpredictable Scandinavian billionaire Lukas Matsson, they all ended up as losers. Matsson, a cross between Daniel Ek and a not-thick Elon Musk, roaringly well played by Alexander Skarsgård, represented a new class of plutocrat that was coming to eat the Roys alive.
Out of Logan’s shadow … Roman (Kieran Culkin), Shiv (Sarah Snook) and Kendall (Jeremy Strong) in Succession. Photograph: HBO
The series has shown us, with what always felt like cool accuracy, the penthouses, the country retreats and the lives lived in complete isolation from the real world – deliciously, the conclusion coincided with reports that the Murdoch family had allegedly fought to stop each other contacting the show’s writers with suggested storylines. But aside from all that, Succession has taught us that top-level capitalism is a game, played by high achievers whose only goal is to make other high achievers squirm. Everything is a power play; sensing weakness and smelling bluffs are the keys to winning.
In Succession’s last season, it was more evident than ever that this is the ideal environment for the very finest filigree drama. Scene after brutal scene found ways to show that Kendall, Roman and Shiv were unable to overcome their essential flaws. As the show intensified its knack for turning every episode into the sort of devastating showdown that other dramas spend whole seasons working towards, the Roy siblings’ downfall had almost too many bravura character beats to count.
In one outstanding set piece at Logan’s funeral, Roman’s little-brother cockiness collapsed when he had to do a hard grownup thing and deliver a eulogy: Culkin’s embodiment of a pampered manchild with no emotional core, suddenly dissolving into toddler tears, was stunning. But Strong was superb too as Kendall, who replaced Roman at the funeral and improvised a brilliant speech defending his indefensible dad. Kendall is a talented operator, but his entitled view of himself as Logan’s natural successor doomed him to for ever be seen as a soft-bellied nepo baby. Succession found a definitive line for him to exclaim in the finale, when his lack of personal authority found him out and his insistence on his own importance finally, totally failed: “I am the eldest boy!”
In the season’s other classic episode, a presidential election night saw the siblings battle to decide Waystar’s influential news line. Shiv – the coolest, classiest Roy, whose effort to read Matsson’s emotions so nearly gave her victory, until it turned out she’d been played – looked on in horror when her liberalism proved no match for Roman’s amoral, Trumpish propaganda blitz. As Waystar ended up anointing a frightening proto-fascist and Shiv’s self-image as a kinder, gentler capitalist evaporated, Succession acquired a new political edge. As for Shiv herself, her wet snake of an ex, Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen), became CEO of Matsson’s new Waystar purely by dint of being reliably pliable. That the Roys all finished the race some way behind a bog-standard office schemer was the perfect crowning ignominy.
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Roman, always the best at spotting a fake or a dud, delivered the final blow when he looked at himself, his brother and sister and said simply: “We’re bullshit.” For the Roys, it was a rare moment of self-aware clarity. As it left the stage, Succession proved that it knew its characters inside out. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2024/mar/15/8-ways-to-restyle-your-wardrobe-without-buying-anything | Fashion | 2024-03-15T11:00:32.000Z | Jess Cartner-Morley | Try a power sock and dig out your leopard print: 8 ways to restyle your wardrobe (without buying anything) | Idon’t know about you but I am so bored of all my clothes right now. My favourite jumpers have tipped from comforting familiarity into the kind of familiarity that breeds contempt. My winter coat hulks awkwardly on its peg in my hallway – like a party guest who doesn’t know when to leave, getting on my nerves every time I walk past it.
This happens every year at the tail end of winter. Every year, at the point when spring is in the air but in a flighty, unreliable way (it’s still cold in the mornings, still dark in the evenings) I run clean out of enthusiasm for everything I’ve been wearing.
Which is rubbish, because feeling good about my outfit is the best trick I know for feeling good about a new day. But much as I would like to shove the coat in the attic and start wearing gingham sundresses and espadrilles, it’s not a practical solution: I would probably give myself pneumonia and ruin said espadrilles in a muddy puddle.
Styling lets you play with your wardrobe, have fun with it, and that helps put the spark back into getting dressed
So this year I’ve got a plan. Eight new styling tricks to spice up what’s already in our wardrobes. No shopping, just styling. Wearing the same clothes, but in different ways. This is a terrible time of year to go shopping. There is no point buying more winter clothes, because you won’t get enough wear out of them before summer happens, and when autumn rolls around they will feel like old clothes, so that’s a waste of time and money. And it’s too early to go in on proper summer clothes, which aren’t going to be of much use in the weeks of unreliable weather we’ve still got to get through.
Styling tricks can transform your wardrobe. Nothing makes you look more instantly up-to-date than wearing your clothes the way the in-crowd do. One season it was shoulder-robing our coats, another it was French-tucking our shirts. Styling lets you play with your wardrobe, have fun with it, and that helps put the spark back into getting dressed.
Styling tweaks can bring old favourites back into your look (hello, leopard, my old friend) and shuffle the deck so that the spotlight falls somewhere different. (See: the Power Sock, below.) I have spent much of the past few weeks watching fashion shows – which offer brilliant people watching in general, but are specifically excellent for getting a jump on the latest tips and tricks about how to wear clothes – and have distilled some key lessons into these ways to breathe new life into your between-seasons wardrobe. Are you ready, team? Let’s go.
Make a shirt sandwich
Mink blazer and trousers, Reiss. Striped satin shirt, Mango. Merino poloneck, Arket. Gold stacking rings, Monica Vinader
Let me introduce you to the recipe you need in your life right now: the shirt sandwich. Which is exactly as it sounds. That is, the shirt is the filler in between two layers. Start with a fine, close fitting, high-necked layer – a plain polo neck is perfect. Then add a shirt, so that only the neckline of the bottom layer is visible. Then add a third layer: this can be a jacket, like I’m wearing here, for when you want to look smart.
This is a useful work formula, because it’s cosier than just a shirt and a blazer and has a vaguely leftfield vibe that makes it interesting while remaining meeting-appropriate. The shirt sandwich also works well with a plain crew-neck sweater as the top layer. One combination I’ve been wearing a lot is a sleeveless top with a lace trim collar by Me+Em, which I’ve been wearing under a denim shirt under a loose-fit navy sweater – and while I know I said no shopping, I’m making an exception to share this with you as it is unbelievably useful.
Three contrasting colours or patterns makes a strong and vibrant look; two of the layers in a matching colour is more understated. Fashion writer Leandra Medine Cohen, who coined the “shirt sandwich” phrase for a look she first spotted in a Victoria Beckham lookbook, suggests wearing a hoodie as the top layer for a more casual look, or swapping the polo neck for a silk scarf tucked into the neck of your shirt when the weather warms up. Practical, tasty and satisfying. A recipe for a great sandwich.
The two-texture trick
Wool jumper, Cos. Satin skirt, River Island. Kitten-heel slingbacks, Asos. Northern star necklace, Ottoman Hands. Rings, Monica Vinader
Don’t know whether to dress for winter or summer? Hedge your bets with a half-and-half outfit. A cosy, fluffy knit makes a silky skirt wearable on a chilly day, so long as the hemline is long enough to cover most of your legs. Or, flip it around, and team the kind of blouse you might wear on holiday – in cheesecloth, maybe, or broderie anglaise – with chunky cord trousers and a boot.
It’s a perfect balance of practicality and optimism, you see. Keep the colours tonal to tie the two contrasting pieces together, and add a little something shiny to highlight the textures.
Leopard bites back
Leopard-print blouse, Albaray. Cropped jacket and tailored trousers, both Me+Em. Rings, Monica Vinader
Not that we needed an excuse to bring leopard print back, but the mob wife trend has given us one anyway. To recap, mob wife means lots of jewellery, attitude and flash. Noisy luxury rather than the quiet type. The vibe is: headed out for dinner with the girls, with money in your pocket, a boxfresh French manicure, and possibly a dead body in the boot of the car.
Look, it’s complicated, we’ll come back to it, but for now all you need to know is that a hit of leopard where you wouldn’t expect it can inject sass into any situation. Think leopard blouse under a smart jacket, or a glam leopard coat with relaxed, wide-leg jeans.
Welcome to your Power Sock era
Fishnet socks, Raey from Matches Fashion. Loafers, Grenson. Raw-hem jeans, Paige
Socks now have main character energy in fashion. This is quite a turn-up for the books because socks had been invisible for as long as I can remember. A bare ankle was the chic choice, and if a sock was essential, one chose a colour to blend with one’s trousers and shoes, to make the socks as discreet as possible.
But this season, my view across the catwalk to the legs swinging from chairs on the other side was dotted with cheerful socks. In bright colours and rich textures, power socks instantly lift your outfit from blah to snazzy, in the same way a great piece of jewellery can do.
The power sock started out in athleisure. Look around any gym and you will notice that anyone under 30 wears chunky sport socks, out and proud over their leggings, rather than the low-cut liner socks I’ve always worn with leggings and trainers. Well, now it has been promoted from the changing room to smart daywear. It’s a bit preppy, so while it works with any shoe, it is particularly good with a loafer.
Point of order: when I say power sock I do not, repeat not, mean novelty socks. The fluffy cartoon character pair you got as a Secret Santa gift is not the look we are after here. You want a good-quality sock in a strong colour. Can’t go wrong with a pop of red.
Drapescaping is the new tablescaping
Alpaca-mix scarf, Holzweiler. Ribbed dress, Whistles. Suede boots (just seen), Dear Frances. Earrings and rings, Monica Vinader
Just as tablescaping is a fancy word for setting the table, drapescaping is a fancy one for wearing a scarf. In the depths of winter, a scarf is to be wrapped as tightly around your neck and chin as possible, to ward off cold winds and lurgies. But now that we’re not at risk of freezing, it is time to get creative. The Doctor Who fling has been happening at fashion week: throw one half over your shoulder, let the other hang free. Add a brooch at the shoulder for extra jazziness, and consider yourself drapescaped.
Shoulder-robe your sweater
Wool coat, Vivere. Jumper, Mango. Earrings, Monica Vinader
I never got on with shoulder-robing my coat – it kept falling off, for a start, but it also wasn’t keeping me warm, and I couldn’t figure out what to do with my bag strap – but I am very excited about shoulder-robing 2.0, which you do with a sweater.
It works like this. Get dressed, then pick out a jumper or cardigan that will work on top if you get cold later, but instead of putting it on, put your coat on first and then tie the knit around your shoulders, like a scarf. This is a good styling hack for days when you are going to be outside a lot and your coat will be the headline act of your outfit – because most coats are pretty dull-looking and a contrast knit adds personality. Footnote: remember that around your shoulders, not around your waist, is the only place to tie one’s spare jumper these days.
Try a redfit (or a bluefit)
Coat, Ted Baker. Vintage Jaeger trousers, Rokit. High-neck T-shirt, New Look. Earrings, Monica Vinader. Shoes, Dear Frances
Layers are helpful in the shoulder season, when you need a combination that can cope with weather that shifts from one season to another and back again in the space of a day. When an outfit has lots of moving parts I tend to retreat into neutrals to keep the look from getting frantic, but here’s an alternative: pick one colour, and wear it top to toe.
Red is fun, grey looks chic, and electric blue is gathering steam as the next colour-of-the-moment. This has the added advantage of pretty much picking your outfit for you – if you make yourself stick to one colour, your wardrobe edits itself.
Add a belt
Gold buckle black belt, Black & Brown. Grey tailored trousers, Mint Velvet. Grey polo bodysuit, Weili Zheng (yoox.com)
That’s it. It’s that simple. Think of a belt as jewellery for your trousers, adding emphasis and a bit of shine. A belt makes you look sharper, because it shows that you get that a good pair of trousers are the mainstay of a 2024 wardrobe.
Side note: a belt like this is also good cinching a blazer, with jeans and a simple white T-shirt. Give it a try, I think you might like it.
Photographer’s assistant: Isaac Dann. Styling assistant: Sam Deaman. Hair and makeup: Carol Morley at Carol Hayes Management | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/16/after-coronavirus-boris-johnsons-tories-will-be-a-very-different-party | Opinion | 2020-04-16T05:00:34.000Z | Martin Kettle | After coronavirus, Boris Johnson's Tories will be a very different party | Martin Kettle | It is only four months since Boris Johnson led the Conservative party to a historic victory. His 80-seat majority seemed to recast the electoral landscape for a generation. It also marked another milestone in Brexit’s transformation of the Conservative party from the party of business to the party of the flag. Today, that seems like another world.
Everything has been upended by Covid-19. The business of government is wholly taken up with protecting public health, keeping the economy on life support and, in Johnson’s own case, his personal survival. Today the national lockdown is expected to be extended into May.
It seems likely that the Britain which eventually emerges from the coronavirus crisis will be a country of a significantly different temper from the Britain that went into it. Nobody can be certain about the degree of change. The possibility that the economy may shrink by a third, with millions of job losses, is a reality check about a more enduringly difficult new normal. The post-pandemic Conservative party must adapt too. But in what ways?
Future British politics will not shake down into a binary choice between the economy and public health. The need to restore both will be far messier than that. Political horizons will simultaneously be very wide – global issues of health, supply chains, travel, information and Chinese power will surge up the agenda – and very narrow: local issues about safe ways to work, earn, live and survive a future pandemic will matter more too. Politics will be more fragile, fearful and dynamic.
While the pandemic and the lockdown hold sway, the official Conservative position is to ensure the least bad of all possibilities. The policy can be summed up by Rishi Sunak’s comments this week. “The single most important thing we can do for the health of our economy is to protect the health of our people,” said the chancellor on Tuesday. “It’s not a case of choosing between the economy and public health.”
However, once discussion moves on to the so-called exit strategy and to the post-Covid future, as it is now beginning to do, this begins to change. The choices do not suddenly become absolute. Instead they become competing calculations of the balance of risk in the interaction between the economy and public health, as and when the pandemic wanes. That has to be one of the reasons why Keir Starmer is pressing the government to publish its strategy. He knows this will reveal faultlines and compromises that an opposition can exploit without appearing partisan or unpatriotic.
There are some signs of those tensions already appearing within Conservative ranks. Sajid Javid, Sunak’s more fiscally cautious predecessor, warned this week against mortgaging the future, and said low taxes remained key to kickstarting the economic recovery. Theresa May and several of her ex-ministers, including Philip Hammond, believe something similar. But Johnson will want to go on spending, not reinventing austerity. So will the health secretary, Matt Hancock, who will press for a large programme of resilience measures in health and social care to guard against a future pandemic. The new Tory MPs from the former industrial areas will agree with them. So, at least for now, will Sunak.
Where this process of change will eventually lead the Tory party is difficult to predict. Sunak’s autumn budget – in which the social care agenda that was abandoned in 2017 will surely have to be a central focus – looms increasingly as a vital moment. But all this will surely generate a rather different party, and with rather different priorities, from the one that Johnson led to victory last December.
Whether the Tory party successfully embraces the choices that will now face it depends overwhelmingly on Johnson himself. After 2019, the party is unusually dependent on the man at the top. The reshuffled cabinet consists mainly of minister of state-level players whom Johnson dominates from No 10. Its lack of depth has been cruelly exposed in the crisis. The party remains very much Johnson’s own brand, held together by his inimitable personality and popularity.
For as long as Johnson remains out of action, the important choices about the party’s direction are likely to be deferred. The party which, only a few weeks ago, Johnson and Dominic Cummings were building on the basis of Brexit and the anger of the left-behind is becoming less relevant by the day in the shadow of coronavirus.
State servant or free agent? The BBC's balancing act is now even harder
Tom Mills
Read more
The dissonance between the new realities and the recent past is now huge. Instead of the old contempt towards experts, competence and seriousness, there is now a craving for all three to help steer a safe course through the Covid-19 crisis. The idea that the government’s post-pandemic priorities might include lighting fires under the BBC, the civil service and the universities therefore seems even more destructive now than before. The idea that Britain should be a Brexit buccaneer, turning its back resolutely against Europe and throwing itself into the arms of Donald Trump seems even more irresponsible.
As one former minister put it to me this week: “The party that was being created in the wake of the election was a new one. It was based on a cultural backlash against liberalism and established elites at home and abroad. But that doesn’t feel to me like what the country wants now. It doesn’t want divisive politics. It doesn’t want a culture war. This feels like a moment to step away from a lot of that.” Whether to take that step away will be very much Johnson’s own decision. But it is a decision with momentous implications for the Tory party and for the whole of British party politics.
Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2023/oct/06/lou-sanders-whats-that-lady-doing-memoir-interview | Stage | 2023-10-06T13:00:43.000Z | Rachel Aroesti | Comedian Lou Sanders: ‘It blows my mind that people still don’t want to believe women’ | “C
an you say I wafted in looking stunning?” asks Lou Sanders, dissolving into laughter before she’s even finished her sentence. She is joking, of course – the comedian isn’t actually desperate for a hyperbolically awed 2000s glossy magazine-style depiction of herself in print. It’s just that airing the silliest, cringiest, most wildly conceited response to any given situation – always coupled with a self-effacing acknowledgment of the ridiculousness of what she’s saying – is Sanders’ stock in trade.
What really happens is that Sanders strides into the Groucho Club (admittedly, quite a 2000s glossy mag setting) dressed, I will say, in a very fetching lilac jumpsuit. She is late but doesn’t waste time with small talk. Before she’s even properly sat down, she launches into her list of worries: she is anxious she’ll be misquoted, or that something she tells me off the record will be accidentally printed. She then asks, out of nowhere, whether I’ve been crying. I haven’t, I say, suddenly paranoid that my mascara is halfway down my cheeks. “Oh,” she chuckles nervously. “Maybe I’m projecting.”
If that sounds a touch chaotic, well, welcome to Sanders’ world. Over the past decade, the Kent native has established herself as one of the more unpredictable figures in British comedy. Her mock-egocentric, relentlessly giddy (yes, she does laugh at her own jokes; it’s part of her charm) and bracingly frank persona has lit up the standup circuit, as well as pretty much every comic parlour gameshow going. In 2019 she appeared on Taskmaster – a milestone for any rising comic – and won. More recently, she has been co-presenting Mel Giedroyc: Unforgivable, which sees a celebrity panel relate shameful stories from their pasts in an attempt to convince the hosts that they are the most morally dubious guest.
The first draft was full of burning resentment, then one of my healers showed me how to do a much kinder one
Recently, Sanders has been sharing some eye-watering tales of her own. In August, her moving, hilarious and generally astonishing memoir, What’s That Lady Doing? False Starts and Happy Endings, was released to surprisingly little fanfare (“We’ve been light on the promo. Thank God you’re here!” she guffaws). In it, she chronicles her traumatic early experiences with clarity, compassion and a non-stop stream of outrageous, distinctively Sanders-esque jokes, transferring her daffy standup persona to the page.
The book moves chronologically through Sanders’ life, from feeling unwanted as a child to an adolescence defined by heavy drinking and scarred by sexual assault. The booze-abetted escapades – some enjoyably wild, some horrifying – continue into her 20s and 30s, until her binge-drinking starts to sabotage her attempts to make it as a comedian (a career she came to relatively late, having worked in TV for more than a decade beforehand). Finally, she gets sober, gets help and becomes a successful standup.
Someone like Lou … Sanders on stage at at Leicester Square theatre, London. Photograph: Paul Gilbey
That happy ending isn’t completely straightforward, however. Sanders begins the book by worrying how her family will respond to her description of her childhood, and you can see why: contact with her father is described as minimal, while her treatment at the hands of her late stepdad – who insulted her and lied to others about her behaviour – meant she ended up moving out of the family home at 15. (“This is obviously just my side of the story,” she writes, “but good luck getting his, because he’s dead … I didn’t do it!”). Her mother, while supportive at times, engages in her fair share of disappointing parenting, too.
A month on from publication and “the dust has settled”, Sanders says tentatively. “No one really wants to be written about, which is a shame, even if you think you’ve done it quite nicely. But we can’t live in a world where everything’s whitewashed.” That said, What’s That Lady Doing? is far from the score-settling exercise it could have been. What rings out from every page is astounding levels of generosity and forgiveness directed towards those that have mistreated her. (“Tell that to … !” she cries when I mention this, before naming a peripheral family member who has clearly been offended by the book.)
Her memoir was not initially so magnanimous. “The first draft was full of burning resentment and then one of my healers … I know, excuse that sentence, one of my healers as well, bloody hell,” she eyerolls. “She said: ‘You have to look at them with the compassion that you would want when you’ve made mistakes,’ and so then I was able to do a much kinder draft.”
I just basically outed Russell Brand, but in an amusing way and not at the cost of the victims
As that anecdote suggests, the second half of the book sees Sanders turn to alternative therapies, complementary medicine and support groups in an attempt to come to terms with the trauma she has experienced, and let go of the resentment she (unsurprisingly) feels. In adulthood, she comes to love and celebrate her stepfather’s quirks and shortcomings, attends AA meetings and undergoes eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy to deal with the incredibly disturbing abuse she has been subjected to – including rape and sexual assault – by multiple men. Reckoning with the latter has been a slow process: “There’s so much shame attached to it; you’re not even revealing it to yourself. You’re getting on with your life trying to forget about it; you know it’s there, but you’re like: I’ll deal with that when I can.”
Early on in our conversation, Sanders expresses concern that anything she says about the news of Russell Brand being accused of sexual assault by four women – which broke days before we meet – might overshadow discussion of her own career. But mention of her personal experiences naturally brings her on to the topic. “The one thing I will say on the Russell Brand thing is that it blows my mind that people still don’t want to believe women – and that’s why I put that stuff [about assault] in the book – to let people know that it’s more ubiquitous than [it seems].” Brand denies the allegations.
She recently deleted her X (formerly Twitter) account “because there were so many people supporting him”. Brand has been “clever”, she alleges. “For years, he’s known this is going to come out so he’s been going in a different direction,” – essentially, sowing mistrust in the mainstream media. She says people have told her about their experiences with Brand.
Sanders did not keep this information to herself. At a gig this spring, she spoke about it on stage. “I just basically outed Russell Brand [as a predator] but in an amusing way and not at the cost of the victims,” is how she recalls it. In the industry, says Sanders, “everyone knew”. That said, she is keen to stress that this issue is not unique to the television or comedy industries. I ask about a passage in her book where she mentions a TV producer who “has date-raped so many women”, including one of Sanders’ friends, but is still posting “Instagram stories about being at Soho House”. Her response is not what I was expecting.
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“I’m not going to discuss any of that, I don’t want to,” she says. “I don’t want it to be a witch hunt. I want to talk about my book, I don’t want it to be overshadowed.” This is in the book, though. “Then people can then find it in the book. I think there are rapists in every industry. I think it’s very hard to monitor it. What do you do? If you’re a producer and you know someone’s a rapist, don’t hire them. Beyond that, I don’t know.”
We can, however, talk about the other ways in which Sanders is working to make comedy less hostile to the reality of women’s lives. She is determined to bust taboos by discussing her “XL” labia in her live work and her writing. (“It’s not that big, I’ve never got it trapped in a lift, OK?” she writes during a very funny passage in the memoir.) She is struggling, however, to broadcast this fact on television. “I did Live at at the Apollo three years ago and talked about my labia and they cut it,” she says, before revealing that she has recently filmed another episode – this time as the host – where she mentioned it again. “I’ll see if they leave it in this time.”
Despite being refreshingly upfront, there is one thing Sanders won’t divulge: her age. In the book she says she didn’t tell anyone how old she really was for “a long time” because she “wasn’t comfortable with it” – without actually revealing what it is. I ask if she will tell me now but she demurs, citing ageism in the entertainment business. The 1985 birthdate on Wikipedia is wrong, she says – she has asked her agent to have it taken it down twice – but aside from that will only say that “people can piece it together” if they listen to the entire archive of her irreverent chat podcast Cuddle Club.
It may be missing key biographical details, but Sanders’ tale of rebuilding herself is full of far more valuable stuff: radical forgiveness and compassion, hard-won wisdom, the ability to make light of life’s darkness and impressive insight on the human condition. I particularly liked her thoughts on shame, an emotion that “doesn’t motivate change, quite the opposite”, she writes. “You think that is who you are, so you double down, a lost cause.” Sanders snorts when I pay her the compliment. “Are we putting it on the syllabus of schools now?!” she laughs. They could do a lot worse.
This article was amended on 20 October 2023 to clarify that a reference to Lou Sanders’ contact with her father being “minimal” was based on the account in her book. After publication, her representative asked us to further clarify that the childhood relationship with her father consisted of regular phone calls in between family visits.
What’s That Lady Doing? False Starts and Happy Endings is out now. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2017/jun/18/norfolk-creeks-salt-marsh-holiday-in-1950s-whelk-boat | Travel | 2017-06-18T06:00:04.000Z | Patrick Barkham | Navigating Norfolk’s hidden creeks and salt marshes – in a 1950s whelk boat | We’re sailing across a sandy-coloured sea. Seals pop up around our little crab boat and then vanish, like a game of Whac-A-Mole. Further ahead, a group lie motionless on the water, as if levitating. It takes me a moment to realise that the sea is so shallow they are resting on a submerged sand bank.
The boat’s depth gauge reads 4ft. One false move and we’ll shudder on to the sand. We draw closer to a flat expanse of salt marsh coloured dun and olive. The captain edges us closer and then, as if by magic, marsh opens up. Before us is a secret creek, a portal into another world – limpid water, glistening mud banks, and no sound but the lonely piping of oystercatchers.
There is only one real wilderness left in 21st-century Britain: salt marsh. A maze of treacherous tidal creeks intimidates modern humans. This liminal landscape of scratchy sea-blite, scoured by wind in winter and scorched by sun in summer, cannot be easily navigated on foot or by boat. We cannot grow crops here, or build on it either. Channels abruptly change with the tide; storms transform the marshes.
The wider world has awoken to the space and peace of the north Norfolk coast in recent decades. This great sky arena, from the generous sands of Holkham to the birdwatching nirvana of Titchwell, is very much on the map. But this is a vast, mysterious coast, and there are still huge areas of terra nullius for most visitors – and locals too.
I grew up in these parts and still visit regularly. When I hear that Henry Chamberlain, a Norfolk boy who has returned to his roots, has restored two fishing boats and is offering sailing adventures exploring hidden creeks and channels, I jump at the chance to join his maiden voyage.
My Girls, ‘unlikely to topple over if we do run aground’. Photograph: Leigh Goodsell
We meet Henry on the east quay at Wells-Next-the-Sea. Even this is a discreet spot, away from the bustle of the harbour. We’re sailing in two wooden boats, which Henry has painstakingly restored. Salford is the last traditional whelk boat ever built in nearby King’s Lynn, dating from the 1950s, with terracotta sails that glow in the sunshine. She’s towing My Girls, a 20ft crab boat from 1965. We need this smaller boat to navigate some of the creeks. The fact that both are locally made is important too: they have been built to cope with these deceptively dangerous waters – both can stay afloat in shallow water and are unlikely to topple over if we do run aground.
All we can hear is the sloosh of water and the flap of sail and rope on polished wood
Henry is an ex-Marine who spent recent years delivering UN food aid to crisis-hit countries. He’s completely un-macho but just the sort of hugely competent person you’d want if you were stuck up a creek without a paddle. And the hazards here are very real. Like a cabbie learning the Knowledge, Henry must memorise every detail of these constantly changing waterways. “Every year these channels are so different,” he says. “You have to walk and kayak them at low tide.”
We must sail to Cley Next the Sea by high water, which means leaving Wells with our motor struggling against the incoming tide. A cormorant tries to subdue a large eel writhing in its beak and we dodge the incoming fishing boats, which shoot past us on the tide.
Sailing Salford is a bit like driving a classic car. People walking past the pretty wooden beach huts of Wells stop and stare, and take photos of the boat. We soon leave them behind, however, and once we’re free of tidal currents, Henry cuts the engine and wind power takes charge. All we can hear is the sloosh of water and the flap of sail and rope on polished wood.
I know this coast well but the sea provides a completely fresh perspective. It’s a busy summer’s day but here there’s no boat traffic and the land looks green and peaceful. We sail around the sand-spit of Blakeney Point, famed for its seals and the thousands of screaming terns that nest here. Little terns dive by our boat, expertly extracting tiny silver fish from the water.
Skipper Henry loading supplies. Photograph: Zoe Dunford
We slip into the shallow bay known as Blakeney Pit and begin our creek adventures. The channel up to Cley’s moorings by its famous windmill has only recently been opened up again. I’ve only experienced these marshes as a walker, following paths along the high sea banks. On a boat, we’re intimately absorbed into the marshes. A bearded tit, a spectacular little bird, clings to the reeds beside us.
We retreat down the creek and moor for the night in the marshes by a tiny sandy beach. We’re tucked below the creek banks, sheltered from any wind and out of sight of any birdwatching mainlanders. The only trace of us is a whisper of smoke from the portable woodburner that Henry spirits from one magic box (a portable composting toilet comes from another).
Charlie Hodson, a Norfolk chef and champion of local produce, prepares our supper (delicious tandoori mackerel caught off Cromer that morning, with smoked salmon, crab and asparagus) and, as the sun sets, I jump into the creek for a swim in the surprisingly warm water. After eating cakes provided by Henry’s sister, Jo Getley, we join crew-mate Marie Isaac for some yoga on the marsh. Bare feet on a carpet of sea purslane in this grand arena, larks singing overhead, makes for a gloriously meditative experience.
As the sky darkens, we feel the wind from the wingbeats of seabirds flying up the creek. At 9.30pm, under a blood-red sky, Henry turns on two Tilley lamps whose citronella should keep any flies away. He offers to pull a tarpaulin over the boom to make a tent but it’s such a fine evening we choose to sleep on the open boat, under the stars.
Yoga time near Cley. Photograph: Zoe Dunford
Dawn comes before 5am. Henry spots a barn owl hunting by the boat as he sorts out the boat. This adventure is gloriously tranquil for us but Henry is always on deadline: the tide is a god who must be obeyed.
We sweep round a bend and the historic warehouses of Wells harbour draw nearer. We’ve not passed a boat all morning
We take the smaller My Girls for our trip back to Wells, not on the open sea but through the salt marsh via a maze of obscure channels. Few sailors dare follow this route. After crossing the shallow waters of Blakeney Point, we twist and turn into the salt marsh, passing the decaying ribs of an ancient boat stranded on the marsh. “There’s the last boat that didn’t make it,” says Henry with a glimmer of a smile.
At its narrowest, the creek is barely 10ft wide and studded with submerged posts from derelict footbridges, which could easily stick a hole in a boat. Just before 7am, we reach an old metal footbridge that hasn’t been washed away. We can’t get under it. “It’s either kayak or Swallows and Amazons – we’ll have to lower the mast,” says Henry.
First, we moor up and breakfast on guinea fowl eggs and local bacon. Then we lower the mast and creep under the bridge. Slowly, the creek starts to widen again and water flows in the opposite direction. We sweep round a bend and the historic warehouses of Wells harbour draw nearer. We’ve not passed a single boat all morning.
When we clamber off My Girls, an experienced-looking sailor approaches our captain about taking the back channels to Blakeney. “I’ve been sailing here for 20 years but I’ve never dared do it myself,” he says. “Will you take me?”
The Coastal Exploration Company offers bespoke sailing adventures on the north Norfolk coast. Day-trips on My Girls from £80pp for up to six adults with one meal; overnight adventures on Salford from £120pp for up to eight adults | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jun/27/dutch-companies-bread-bins-biogas-fertiliser-amsterdam-hague-rotterdam | Guardian Sustainable Business | 2017-06-27T06:00:23.000Z | Senay Boztas | Dutch companies set up giant bread bins to help cities tackle rat scourge | Once upon a time, you would throw your old bread to the birds. But in the Netherlands, where an excess of crumbs is feeding a growing scourge of rats, people are starting to turn to massive bread bins instead.
Rather than ending up in the street or the dump, collected bread waste is taken to anaerobic digesters and turned into biogas or made into fertiliser.
Reports of rat nuisance in Dutch cities are on the rise, according to KAD, an independent research body that gives advice on pest control throughout the Netherlands. In response, some councils have funded bread-collection schemes to cut off a major source of rodent food.
The lights can go on at home because of the leftover French fries or bread from the night before
Lara van Druten
But what began as a community movement has attracted a number of companies in Amsterdam, The Hague and Rotterdam, which see potential for socially responsible profit in old loaves.
BroodNodig is one of them. Founded in 2014 with a grant from Rotterdam municipality, the company has installed bread collection bins at 40 different locations around the city and aims to expand to 60 pick-up points by August.
Its revenue comes from charging the council for its services, and the bread is currently made into fertiliser by the council. But in future the company hopes to produce biogas and use it to generate, and sell, electricity too.
Bread accounts for around a quarter of domestic food waste in the Netherlands, according to a government-commissioned report, with the average citizen throwing out 9.2kg worth per year.
One of 13 bread bins in The Hague. The city works with various partners to collect the bread and turn it into biogas. Photograph: Henriëtte Guest
A chunk of this evades the formal waste management system, in part due to habits and beliefs around old bread, explains BroodNodig’s head of research, Aletta Martens. “Rotterdam has 180 cultures, and each has its own ideas about bread: some don’t want to put bread in the bin but to give it back to nature,” she says. “This often leads to overfeeding of wild animals, and vermin.”
BroodNodig, which in Dutch means both “highly necessary” and “bread needed”, aims to showcase its biogas plans with a small-scale digester at a Rotterdam petting zoo this summer. Some of the bread it collects will be ground, mixed with water and exposed to bacteria which turn the mix into methane – one loaf, says the company, can produce enough fuel to power a domestic gas burner for an hour.
As part of its expansion plans, BroodNodig is partnering with two other companies, GroenCollect and Stadsgas, which have applied for planning permission for two biogas plants in Rotterdam.
Philip Troost, director of both of these firms, plans to sell electricity directly to businesses and consumers: the plants, which Troost hopes could be up and running by November, will cost €800,000 to build, with backing from an unnamed commercial investor, he says.
The technology to turn bread and other kitchen scraps into energy will come from The Waste Transformers, a company based in Hoofddorp, North Holland, which has already sold its biogas technology to businesses in South Africa, Sierra Leone, Hong Kong and Portugal.
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The Waste Transformers’ first installation in the Westergasfabriek, a former coal gasworks in Amsterdam, sees organic waste from 12 restaurants, two theatres and a microbrewery converted into electricity on site, explains managing director Lara van Druten. Consumers can buy this electricity by opting for an energy tariff that allows them to specify preferred suppliers.
“The lights can go on at home because of the leftover French fries or bread from the night before,” says Druten. “The key is to reach the scale to have a transformer in every hotel, hospital, airport and street corner, and use that to power a greener future.”
Druten says the business has funding from Rabobank, Dutch governmental bodies and private investors and has just broken even after four years in business.
Some experts see turning bread into biogas as the wrong approach. “Making biogas from old bread is a waste of valuable resources and ethically wrong,” says Toine Timmermans, programme manager of sustainable food chain research at Wageningen University and Research.
Baking the bread in the first place takes more energy than you could ever recover in biogas, he says. “Instead, we should work with consumers to reduce food waste with better planning, preparation, storage in freezers and using leftovers, but because food is so cheap, people don’t make the effort.”
But for people like Labour councillor Jeroen van Berkel, a long time supporter of bread collection programmes, the schemes are an astute way to keep out “ever more brutal” vermin (which he says are even getting into third floor flats), respect religious requirements and promote a stronger sense of community.
Cindy Slaghuis of sustainability charity Aarde-Werk, which is working on a similar project in The Hague alongside the local government and a public-private waste collector, also hopes they can help to drive behavioural change. “The deeper hope is to make a transformation in how much we buy and how we live,” she says. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/02/wise-words-the-advice-that-i-cant-forget | Opinion | 2020-07-02T06:00:44.000Z | Adrian Chiles | Wise words? The advice that I can't forget | It’s funny, the things that stick in your mind for ever. When I was little, my brother and I would usually go to our grandparents’ house after school. We would be given our tea in front of the telly, which we would sit and watch while Grandad read the Express and Star and Nan read a magazine. I noticed that every time she turned a page, she licked her finger first. Deducing this was the kind of adult modus operandi I should be aiming for, I started doing the same thing. I went so far as to pick up magazines I couldn’t even read properly, just to practice and perfect my finger-licking page-turning technique. Before long, my Nan saw me proudly in action.
“Oh, don’t do that, Ade,” she said.
“Huh? Why not?”
“That’s only for grownups to do,” she explained.
Duly chastised, I took this on board and didn’t do it again until I was a grownup. To this day, whenever I turn a stubborn page with a wetted finger, I feel a bit guilty about it.
Why did this thing stick? Was there something significant going on with my brain chemistry at that particular moment, which stuck it in there as fast as an uneaten cornflake to a cereal bowl?
Another example: when I was growing up, there was always a sponge of some kind supplied for my use in the shower at home. When I went off to university, I took my first shower and, sponge-less for the first time, beheld my shower gel wondering how best to apply it. I managed, but it was unsatisfactory. I had just made a new friend, John from Bristol, who I felt I knew well enough to consult on this matter. He advised me to use part of my, erm, body hair to lather up the gel. For this reason, I’ve thought of John from Bristol during every shower I’ve taken in 34 years. He’s a primary school teacher in Plymouth now, where I trust he continues to dispense invaluable wisdom to this very day. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2024/mar/22/richest-chess-tour-announced-for-2025-as-freestyle-wins-global-appeal | Sport | 2024-03-22T08:00:32.000Z | Leonard Barden | Richest chess tour announced for 2025 as freestyle wins global appeal | Freestyle Chess, which made an impressive debut last month, has firmed up its plans to expand into five continents next year, as well as enlisting the top 25 elite grandmasters into a new club for its competing players. The variant, also known as Fischer Random and Chess 960, has the back rank pieces on both sides on random squares, with Black’s pieces placed equal-and-opposite to their White counterparts.
German promoter Jan Buettner, who heads Freestyle along with the world No 1, Magnus Carlsen, and who made his fortune from AOL Europe, has launched the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour, where the prize fund for each of the five events is projected to rise gradually to $1m.
For comparison, the existing over-the-board Grand Chess Tour, organised from St Louis and culminating in the Sinquefield Cup, offers a total of $1.5m, while the Champions Tour, where four online tournaments are followed by an over-the-board final, has $1.7m.
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Top grandmasters are enthusiastic, and no wonder. Freestyle offers a generously rewarded escape from the many hours of drudgery spent before a classical game in preparing openings in detail with the aid of a Stockfish computer, with the real possibility that the mutual research will fizzle out into a drawn ending. It is very different at the level of the average player or even the average master, where you can surprise the opponent with a well prepared opening bomb and where even this is no guarantee of ultimate success.
If Freestyle is to gain traction, Buettner will have to justify his declared ambition of “making it as commercially successful as iconic sports events like the ATP for tennis, PGA for golf, and Formula 1 for motorsport”. The next Slam in India in November, with a $500k prize fund, looks sure to be a success, as Indian chess fans will want to watch their teenage heroes take on Carlsen. February 2025, back in north Germany with $750k, should also go well, but the later events, where the Tour goes into new territory in South America and South Africa with the full $1m, may face logistical problems.
At best, if all goes according to plan, the global chess economy will receive a significant boost, while the benchmark for an elite grandmaster, currently 2700, will move up to 2725 to match the new pot of gold.
Matthew Wadsworth scored his best international performance yet on Thursday when the Cambridge economics graduate, 23, tied for second with 7/9 in the giant 400-player Reykjavik Open, taking sixth prize on tiebreak. The top seeded Romanian, Bogdan-Daniel Deac, won first prize with 7.5/9.
Wadsworth, who lost only once, played a fine attacking game in the ninth and final round to checkmate the No 4 seed, GM Jules Moussard of France, whose white king was caught in mid-board in a 41-move Italian Game.
Wadsworth’s rating performance narrowly missed achieving his second GM norm, but he will have another chance for that on Saturday, in one of two important tournaments that begin this weekend with opportunities for England’s young talents to win international titles. Both events have support from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport’s £500k grant for elite chess announced last year.
The 4NCL Spring GM Round Robin is a 10-player event where IMs Marcus Harvey, 28, Wadsworth, 23, and Shreyas Royal, 15, all have chances for the GM norm of 6.5/9. Play starts at 3pm on Saturday, with nine rounds in five days.
The eighth Menchik Memorial commemorates the first woman world champion, who was killed by a V1 rocket in 1944. The 10-player event starts on Friday (round one 10am, round two 3pm), and continues until Tuesday, with women’s title norms at stake.
Bodhana Sivanandan, nine, will take part and comes direct from another impressive result at Reykjavik, where she scored 5.5/9 with a TPR of 2069, losing only to a GM and an IM (see the puzzle below). Games from both next week’s events will be shown live on lichess
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3912B: Bodhana Sivanandan v IM Thibaut Fantanel, Reykjavik 2024. White played 1 Qa4+? and lost. Can you do better? Sivanandan misses a chance to break a world record with a single move, as Judit Polgar was aged 10 years five months when she beat IM Dolfi Drimer at Adelaide 1987, the youngest ever female win from an IM in a classical game. Sivanandan still has nearly 18 months left to do it.
In the £400k American Cup, with Open and Women’s sections, Levon Aronian beat Wesley So in the open final, while Alice Lee, 14, defeated the holder, Irina Krush, in the women’s final. The favourite, the world No 2, Fabiano Caruana, lost to Aronian and So, sparking concerns about his form before next month’s Candidates in Toronto.
3912: 1...Re5! 2 Qxc3 Qxh2+! 3 Kxh2 Rh5+ 4 Kg1 Rh1 mate. If 2 g4 Qxg4+! 3 Nxg4 Re1 mate or 3 Kf1 Qh3+ and mates.
3912A: 1 Rc1! g4 2 Rc2! dxc2 3 Bc1! a3 4 Rf4! Kxf4 5 d4 mate.
3912B: 1 Nd5+! Qxd5/Kb5 2 Qa4 mate. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/apr/05/we-are-elite-complainers-pup-the-punk-band-satirising-a-shameless-music-industry | Music | 2022-04-05T10:46:16.000Z | Luke Ottenhof | ‘We are elite complainers’: Pup, the punk band satirising a shameless music industry | The Covid-19 pandemic has thrown workers of all kinds into long-term illness, poverty, homelessness and death, and musicians are among them. Unionisation efforts have hit back, including the Union of Musicians and Allied Workers; anti-capitalist and pro-worker commentary from musicians on social media – spurred at least in part by the hilarious, acidic Twitter rants of Eve 6 frontman Max Collins – has brought new language to exploited artists who are struggling to maintain integrity while record labels and streaming companies leech the profits of their labour.
Pondering these tensions while stuck at home, unable to tour, were the noisy, beloved Toronto punk band Pup (an abbreviation of pathetic use of potential). “For two years, we’ve been a glorified webstore and that’s it,” says lead singer Stefan Babcock. “I was writing about us navigating this weird spot we’re at in our careers, where art and commerce are at direct loggerheads with each other.” The band had grown further than any of its members anticipated. Another group in their position may glad-hand their way to bigger gigs and cheques, but Pup decided to make a record that chomps down on the hand that feeds.
Messing around on a keyboard, Babcock started mumble-singing lyrics about how he and his bandmates – guitarist Steve Sladkowski, bassist Nestor Chumak and drummer Zack Mykula – comprise a “board of directors” at a quarterly meeting, and Babcock has blown the label money on a piano. It became a suite of interludes full of mocking, tongue-in-cheek business lingo (“The board of directors is growing impatient / The budget is shrinking, but we can’t agree, so we vote on the issues / Like, are we tuning the vocals?”) that set the tone for the punk-rock acid trip of Pup’s fourth album, The Unravelling of PupTheBand.
Formed in 2010, Pup have established themselves as the punk world’s nice Canadian boys: they create loud, carefully arranged melodic yell-alongs about dead pets, doomed camping trips and killing each other on tour. Their third LP, 2019’s Morbid Stuff, confronted Babcock’s anxiety and depression in blunt, bleak terms, which made for a difficult press cycle. “I didn’t clue in to how exhausting it was going to be to have to talk for an hour every day to strangers about my mental health problems,” says Babcock. But rather than clamming up, the new album hurtles like a chop-shop clown car toward a cliff while inside the four bandmates – bug-eyed, overworked, sleep-deprived, extremely caffeinated and a bit drunk and stoned – bash and yell their way through the part-comedy, part-horrorshow, part-best job ever that is being a working band in 2022. “Writing about how the business of your band works is one of the most unsexy things you can do,” says Babcock, “and therefore it’s very in Pup’s wheelhouse. It felt like a way to let people into our world a little bit.”
To make the album, they lived and recorded at a mansion in Connecticut, using the same piano played on the National’s Boxer (“I should go to jail for playing those songs on it”, shudders Babcock). A familiar spectre appeared in Babcock’s lyrics: the tension between being an artist and a business. On the closing track, PupTheBand Inc Is Filing for Bankruptcy, Babcock snarls about being stoked to receive good reviews and free shoes, before announcing semi-sarcastically: “I sold those Nikes, I bought a new guitar case / It’s called protecting your investment!” The visuals, merch, and marketing look like the stuff of 90s infomercials. It’s all a parody, but also, it’s not.
‘I didn’t clue in to how exhausting it was going to be to have to talk to strangers about my mental health problems’ … Stefan Babcock fronting Pup in August 2019. Photograph: NurPhoto/Getty Images
“The four of us are PupTheBand as a business, whether we want to admit it or not,” says Sladkowski. “Any time people are willing to talk about things such as streaming royalties, work permits or any of the ways in which the music industry mirrors the business world and the movement of capital, I think that’s good. I don’t think it’s something musicians should feel they have to do necessarily, but I do think a level of transparency and honesty is important, and people are starting to realise that. You have to do some of this because we all have to pay our bills.”
Pup’s approach to the subject matter is as goofy as it is grim. Babcock says he was “having a tantrum about something, being a little pissy pants baby” while writing a first set of lyrics for the closing track. He ended up scrapping them and wrote something funnier. “It was so shitty and serious,” says Babcock. “That cannot be what Pup is, just angry songs with angry music.”
“We are elite complainers but I do think something that we’ve always been conscious of is that juxtaposition,” adds Sladkowski – namely anger colliding with fun. Because even if they’re being exploited, they still get to make music with people that they love. “That doesn’t change the fact that there are bad people running this shit,” says Babcock, “but it does make it a bit easier to accept your lot. I wouldn’t switch this job for anything.”
The Unravelling of PupTheBand is out now on Rise Records/BMG. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/feb/12/eu-finance-ministers-call-for-restrictions-on-500-euro-note-crime | Business | 2016-02-12T17:05:02.000Z | Jennifer Rankin | EU finance ministers call for restrictions on €500 note over crime fears | EU finance ministers have called for an investigation into the €500 note, amid growing concern it is making life easier for terrorists, money launderers and drug barons.
The French finance minister, Michel Sapin, said it was right to ask questions about the use of the euro’s largest-denomination note. “The €500 note is more used to conceal then to purchase, more used for easing dishonest transactions than to allow you and I to buy something to feed ourselves,” he said.
At a meeting in Brussels on Friday, the 28 finance ministers of the EU called on the European commission “to explore the need for appropriate restrictions on cash payments exceeding certain thresholds”. They also asked the EU’s executive arm, to engage with the European Central Bank to “consider appropriate measures on high denomination notes, in particular the €500 note”.
France has stepped up restrictions on the use of cash, following the “low-cost” terrorist attacks that struck Paris last year. The January 2015 attacks on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket that killed 17 people were funded with cash, earned partly from the sale of counterfeit goods.
In response, the French government tightened restrictions on cash payments and stepped up monitoring of high-value withdrawals. Since September, French citizens can only make cash payments of €1,000, down from €3,000, while cash withdrawals or deposits exceeding €10,000 in a month are automatically checked by money-laundering authorities.
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Since the 13 November attacks in Paris, France has been pushing for a common EU approach against terrorist financing. An EU action plan published earlier this month stated that €500 notes “are in high demand among criminal elements ... due to their high value and low volume”.
The €500 note, worth around £389 at current rates, is one of the highest-value banknotes in the world, along with the Swiss 1,000 franc note (£707). But in an age of electronic payments and concern about the anonymity cash provides, many experts would like to see the notes scrapped. This week Peter Sands, the former chief executive of Standard Chartered, called for the abolition of the €500, $100, SFr1,000 and £50 notes, which “play little role in the functioning of the legitimate economy [and] a crucial role in the underground economy”.
According to Europol, the European police agency, the €500 note accounts for a third of all the euro notes in circulation, despite their low public profile. About a fifth of all euro banknotes, in denominations from €50 to €500, are not held in Europe, raising suspicions that some of the notes are used by foreign criminals.
Valdis Dombrovskis, the European commissioner in charge of the euro, who will lead the European commission inquiry following the call by the 28 EU finance ministers, pointed out that the ECB was ultimately in charge of issuing notes and coins. “We must respect the independence of the ECB,” he added.
In the past, law enforcement officials have found the Frankfurt-based bank unwilling to scrap the note, a stance described as “shameless” by former Bank of England policymaker Charles Goodhart. But the ECB president, Mario Draghi, told the European parliament this month that the bank is reviewing its policy on the notes. “We are determined not to make seigniorage [profits earned from printing the notes] a comfort for criminals,” he said.
Benoît Cœuré, a French economist who sits on the ECB’s executive board, told Le Parisien on Thursday he found the arguments for retaining the note “less and less convincing”.
The EU investigation into cash limits and high-value notes is part of a wider strategy targeted at terrorist financing and money launderers. In June the commission will publish a blacklist of countries that have weak controls on money laundering and terrorist financing.
Also on the table are proposals to harmonise the EU’s money-laundering laws. Differences in legal definitions and sentencing “create obstacles in cross border and police co-operation to tackle this crime”, said Dombrovskis, who has promised to publish proposals later in 2016. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/jul/05/glastonbury-festival-huge-improvement-in-clean-up-operation | Music | 2019-07-05T09:44:24.000Z | Lanre Bakare | Glastonbury festival: 'huge improvement' in clean-up operation | The annual clean-up of the Glastonbury festival site is 90% completed with only 500 of the 55,000 tents brought on site by attendees being left behind, according to the organiser, Emily Eavis, who has called 2019 “a massive improvement” on previous years.
The entire clean-up is expected to take four weeks this year, with the warm weather, in which temperatures reached 30C during the festival, making it more straightforward than in 2017, when it took teams six weeks to complete.
On Tuesday, Eavis posted on Instagram that “99.3% of all tents were taken home” based on analysing aerial photographs of the site during and after the event.
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She said there was still work to be done in terms of improving the clean-up and ensuring more items were removed from the site after the festival. “Some of the worst offending campsites did still have several dozen tents left behind,” she said. “Plus we still get camping chairs and air mattresses left behind, alongside standard rubbish – so things are by no means perfect yet.”
There is no estimated price for the clean-up in 2019. However, Eavis said it could cost £500,000 more to return the site to its original state in a wet year. “Sunshine is the biggest impact on the clean-up,” she added. “When the weather is good, people also move around and place things in bins, and the whole waste collection operation runs far more smoothly and efficiently.”
The Daily Mail called the site “a squalid mess” that “makes a mockery of [the festival’s] eco-posturing”, claiming there was a “sea of bottles, plastic bags, cans, tissues, wet wipes and paper cups … mile after mile of it”.
“We tend to get some people looking for that negative angle on the Monday,” said Eavis in response, adding that any photographer looking for shots of rubbish would find something. “Those photos are often taken first thing on Monday morning when a lot of people haven’t even started packing up and heading home, so they’re not really a fair reflection of how the site is left after everyone’s left.”
At this year’s festival, there was a plastic-free system in place, meaning no single-use plastic could be bought on site. The final bill for the removal of rubbish from the site was estimated at £780,000 in 2016 and the move to ban plastic was motivated by the desire to be more eco-friendly and save on clean-up costs.
David Attenborough made an appearance on the final day of the festival on the Pyramid stage and praised the event for its no-plastics policy. “Now this great festival has gone plastic-free,” he said, “that is more than a million bottles of water have not been drunk by you in plastic. Thank you! Thank you!”
During the festival, 2,500 people are involved with waste and recycling – with approximately 1,800 working as volunteers picking litter. After Glastonbury closed its gates on Monday, 600 people – who are paid – began the clean-up operation. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2012/nov/12/pampered-humanity-less-intelligent | Science | 2012-11-12T18:54:52.000Z | Ian Sample | Is pampered humanity getting steadily less intelligent? | Ian Sample | Since modern humans emerged from the evolutionary brambles of our ancient ancestry, our bodies and minds have been transforming under the pressures of natural and sexual selection. But what of human intelligence? Has our cognitive ability risen steadily since our forebears knapped the first stone tools? Or are our smartest days behind us?
Gerald Crabtree, a geneticist at Stanford University in California, bets on the latter. He believes that if an average Greek from 1,000 BC were transported to modern times, he or she would be one of the brightest among us. Our intellectual prowess has probably been sliding south since the invention of farming and the rise of high-density living that it allowed, he claims.
In two articles published in the journal Trends in Genetics, the scientist lays out what might be called a speculative theory of human intelligence. It is, he admits, an idea that needs testing, and one that he would happily see proved wrong.
At the heart of Crabtree's thinking is a simple idea. In the past, when our ancestors (and those who failed to become our ancestors) faced the harsh realities of a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, the punishment for stupidity was more often than not death. And so, Crabtree argues, enormous evolutionary pressure bore down on early humans, selecting out the dimwits, and raising the intellect of the survivors' descendants. But not so today.
As Crabtree explains in the journal: "A hunter-gatherer who did not correctly conceive a solution to providing food or shelter probably died, along with his or her progeny, whereas a modern Wall Street executive that made a similar conceptual mistake would receive a substantial bonus and be a more attractive mate. Clearly extreme selection is a thing of the past."
The scientist draws on recent studies to estimate a figure for the number of genes that play a role in human intellectual ability, and the number of new mutations that harm those genes each generation. He settles on a suite of 2,000 to 5,000 genes as the basis for human intelligence, and calculates that among those, each of us carries two or more mutations that arose in the past 3,000 years, or 120 generations.
All of which leads to the conclusion that humans reached our intellectual height in the dim and distant past. "We, as a species, are surprisingly intellectually fragile and perhaps reached a peak 2,000 to 6,000 years ago," Crabtree writes. "If selection is only slightly relaxed, one would still conclude that nearly all of us are compromised compared to our ancient ancestors of 3,000 to 6,000 years ago," he adds.
The idea may not survive in the face of experiments, or even close scrutiny from other geneticists. The kind of enormous evolutionary pressure Crabtree talks of perhaps isn't necessary to maintain human intelligence.
Whichever it turns out to be, Crabtree ends on a positive note: the human race is not hurtling towards cognitive oblivion, doomed, as he puts it, to watch reruns on televisions we can no longer build. "Remarkably it seems that although our genomes are fragile, our society is robust almost entirely by virtue of education, which allow strengths to be rapidly distributed to all members." | Full |
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/mar/02/patti-smith-interview-im-not-trying-to-change-the-world-with-photography | Art and design | 2016-03-02T16:50:10.000Z | Nadja Sayej | Patti Smith: 'I’m not trying to change the world with photography' | Last year, when New York punk icon and poet Patti Smith descended upon Berlin, she did so with her vintage Polaroid camera. As a group of press photographers snapped her with Joan Baez for the Amnesty International’s Ambassador of Conscience Award, Smith snapped back.
“I take my camera everywhere I go, especially when I’m touring with the band,” said Smith on the phone from her home in Rockaway, Queens. “It’s hard for me to find the solitude I need for writing when I’m travelling, but with my camera, I’ve been able to take a little walk – visit a graveyard, look at statues or architecture – and if I get a picture I like, I feel like I’ve accomplished something.”
Now, 100 of Smith’s photographs from the past 35 years are on show at Robert Miller Gallery in New York opening on Thursday. Never before seen photos are shown alongside those from her latest memoir, M Train, named after the New York City subway line which leads to her home. The book is riddled with musings on her travels and lively personal details, and the exhibition, titled 18 Stations, is an extension of the book.
Cafe ’Ino. Photograph: Patti Smith courtesy of Robert Miller Gallery
“In the book, there are 18 ‘stations’ instead of 18 chapters,” said Smith. “I wanted my book to have visual evidence of the places I’ve been. If you’ve read it, it’ll have a deeper meaning, and if you haven’t, the photos stand on their own.”
Most know Smith for her debut album Horses in 1975 and the 10 studio albums that followed – she still tours (just last year, she brought the Dalai Lama onstage at Glastonbury for his birthday). In 2010, she made waves with her National Book Award-winning memoir Just Kids, a tribute to her relationship with artist Robert Mapplethorpe, but Smith has also been making art since the 1960s, including drawings and installations alongside her poetic photographs.
“Since I travel so much, I’m in a lot of different places that many people wouldn’t have the opportunity to go to,” she said. “I like to show pictures of different things: architecture, an empty beach or an abandoned street.”
Smith takes an unpretentious approach to photography, which seems to feel like a vacation from her hectic life. “I don’t consider myself a photographer,” she said. “I take lots of photographs; it’s a part of my life. But I think of myself as an amateur. There’s nothing wrong with being an amateur. I take them with all the photography knowledge I have and with a certain aesthetic, but I wouldn’t compare myself to people who devote their whole life principally to photography.”
Some of her shots have an archival nature: she has photographed writer Sylvia Plath’s grave, a suit belonging to German artist Joseph Beuys and Margot Fonteyn’s ballerina slippers. “It’s a visual diary,” she said “Taking photos was a nice respite from public life.”
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Smith first picked up a Polaroid after the death of her husband, MC5 guitarist Fred “Sonic” Smith, in 1995, and almost all of the photos in the show were shot on her vintage Polaroid, a Land 250. Rather than showing original, old-school Polaroids, she shows gelatin silver or digital inkjet prints that are made from the original photo negatives.
“Sometimes [people] will say my photos are blurry, they’re out of focus or they’re too soft focus,” said Smith. “My pictures look exactly like I want them to look. I’m not trying to change the world with photography; I’m just taking photographs I think have a certain amount of beauty.”
Some pieces in the show include photos of sculptures, such as a photo of a guardian angel in the Dorotheenstadt Cemetery in Berlin, which is where the poet Bertolt Brecht is buried. “I love statues and I often take photographs of them,” said Smith, who said she believes in guardian angels.
“I don’t like bothering people and it’s just nice to have a human form to photograph. Sometimes you get a statue and with a certain light, they feel as if they have an empathetic, human quality.” Smith is also showing a piece, shot in her neighbourhood, called Aftermath Rockaway Beach, which shows the cement pylons that once held up the Rockaway Boardwalk, destroyed after Hurricane Sandy in 2012.
“It was a very eerie sight,” she said. “Now they’re gone, but I loved the boardwalk so much, it drew me to live there – and now it’s gone.”
In 2013, the artist photographed the table and chair she wrote most of her book in, which was at Cafe ’Ino, a Greenwich Village cafe that closed in 2013. “That photo was taken the day the cafe closed,” said Smith. “I took the photo and that evening, Jason [Denton, the owner] brought me that table and chair as a gift when he closed ’Ino. Now, they’re at my little house in Rockaway.”
Guardian Angel. Photograph: Patti Smith courtesy of Robert Miller Gallery
As part of the show, the table and chair are coming to the gallery where Smith will be giving public readings from M Train. She will also be in conversation with Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago curator Omar Kholeif on Saturday.
“A lot of the book was conceived at that table and chair, so it’s a literary show,” she said.
Smith would have never pursued photography if it hadn’t been for John Smith, the former assistant director of the Andy Warhol Museum, who visited Smith several times in her studio before (and after) mounting a retrospective of her work in 2002.
“It was really his enthusiasm that drew me out to occasionally show the photographs,” she said. Smith grew up reading 1950s Vogue magazines, and photos by Irving Penn struck her. “Penn’s photos had a special quality that gave me the sense that, even as a child, the Sears catalogue was not the only way to photograph women in dresses,” she said.
“I came from a lower middle class family; I never saw anything like that except for in magazines I found in the trash. I noticed that some photographs were more beautiful than others.”
It comes from the nature of the era in which the 69-year-old artist grew up. “I was raised in a black-and-white world. TV was black-and-white; so were pictures in magazines and movies,” she said.
Eyewitness: Irving Penn
Read more
It’s no surprise she counts 20th century master photographers like Jean-Luc Godard and August Sander as influences, as well as anonymous amateur photographers, whose work she says is “very atmospheric. Sometimes they look almost like reveries. I’m into the same kind of thing.”
Looking at Smith’s photos, too, is like stepping back in time. “My photos probably seem more archaic; that’s alright. It’s fine for me to dwell in another century,” she said.
They also have a quiet quality to them, but that was never the intention. “Someone asked me what the goal was for my photos and I don’t think it’s anything besides taking a photo that I think is worthy,” said Smith. “If someone liked one and put it over their desk where they write or think, that to me is the ultimate place to have one of my photographs.”
For Smith, it’s a shame old cameras don’t last forever. After the bellows crushed in her Polaroid camera, she asked her friend, the world-renowned photographer Wim Wenders, to borrow one of his Polaroid cameras.
“He lent me one, which is in perfect condition,” she said. “Now, I not only have a camera but a new camera that belongs to a great artist. I’m interested to see what I can capture with Wim Wenders’ camera.”
Eighteen Stations opens 3 March at Robert Miller Gallery | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/may/01/ex-camelot-boss-nigel-railton-named-as-new-post-office-chair | Business | 2024-05-01T10:34:30.000Z | Jack Simpson | Ex-Camelot boss Nigel Railton named as new Post Office chair | The ex-chief executive of the former national lottery operator Camelot has been named as the new chair of the Post Office.
The business secretary, Kemi Badenoch, appointed Nigel Railton to the role on Wednesday, replacing Henry Staunton, who was sacked in January.
The government said he had been chosen for the role, which he will hold on an interim basis for an initial period of 12 months, because of his experience in “transforming organisations”.
Railton will oversee the company as it expects to provide millions of pounds in compensation to victims of the Horizon IT scandal while also managing the daily revelations from the public inquiry into the scandal.
Between 1999 and 2015, more than 900 post office operators were wrongly prosecuted because of faults with the Horizon computer system, which was developed by the Japanese technology company Fujitsu.
Railton’s appointment was first reported by Sky News. The government has said he will take up the role as soon as possible, subject to the completion of pre-appointment checks.
The new chair spent seven years as Camelot boss before stepping down in 2023, the year after the Gambling Commission decided to award the licence to run the UK national lottery to the rival Allwyn UK.
Railton started his career working in the signal box at Crewe railway station before notching up 12 years with British Rail. He went on to work in the automotive industry and at the toolmaker Black & Decker.
He also chairs Argentex, a currency management service provider, and is a director at the Social Mobility Foundation.
Railton once said his business idol was Adam Crozier, who was the chief executive of Royal Mail between 2003 and 2010, before the Post Office became independent of the organisation. Crozier gave evidence to the Horizon inquiry last month.
After being sacked, Staunton was involved in a war of words with Badenoch after an interview with the Sunday Times in which he claimed he had been asked by the government to stall compensation payments to victims of the Horizon scandal. Badenoch rebutted the allegation, describing the comments as a “disgraceful representation” of the conversation they had.
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Badenoch said: “Nigel has the necessary experience to lead an organisation as large and complex as the Post Office and I’m confident he will work well with the leadership team to implement the change that is required in the organisation.”
Railton said: “The Post Office plays a vital role in communities across the country. It is a national institution and its success in the years ahead matters to everyone.
“This is an incredibly challenging time for the Post Office as it works to address historic failures while also striving to transform its business.”
Separately on Wednesday, Emma Gilthorpe began her new job as the chief executive of Royal Mail, which demerged from the Post Office in 2012. Gilthorpe, who has been the chief operating officer at Heathrow since 2020, takes over at the struggling postal firm as its parent company faces takeover interest from its largest shareholder, the Czech tycoon Daniel Křetínský. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/nov/21/rishi-sunak-to-unveil-national-infrastructure-strategy-for-uk | Politics | 2020-11-21T13:23:39.000Z | Molly Blackall | Rishi Sunak to unveil national infrastructure strategy for UK | Rishi Sunak is set to unveil the government’s national infrastructure strategy next week, including long-term investments in the climate and transport sectors and plans to narrow the north-south divide.
The strategy, which the chancellor had been due to be published in March, provides £100bn to improve connectivity in transport systems and work toward the government’s goal of net-zero emissions by 2050. It includes a down payment on flagship programmes including fibre broadband, flood defences and transport schemes, according to the Treasury.
Sunak will announce the plans on Wednesday along with his spending review, which will provide tens of billions of pounds for infrastructure investment, including £1.6bn to tackle potholes.
The strategy is also designed to push back against accusations of a discrepancy in funding for the north and south of England. The Treasury confirmed Sunak would be changing the department’s green book, a set of regulations that determines the value of government schemes and which is said to favour London and the south-east of England.
Sunak will also introduce a new national infrastructure bank, which will have its headquarters somewhere in the north of England. The bank will be launched next year to replace the work of the European Investment Bank after the UK leaves the EU.
The Treasury also said it would announce the location of its new northern headquarters in the coming weeks, part of a wider drive to get more civil servants to work outside London.
“We are absolutely committed to levelling-up opportunities so those living in all corners of the UK get their fair share of our future prosperity,” Sunak said.
“All nations and regions of the UK have benefited from our unprecedented £200bn Covid support package. And after a difficult year for this country, this spending review will help us build back better by investing over £600bn across the UK during the next five years.”
Jake Berry, who leads a group of Tory MPs representing the north of England, welcomed the chancellor’s announcement. He said it demonstrated that Sunak had “‘levelling-up’ at the heart of this government’s agenda”.
Unions and the Labour Party have criticised the chancellor over reports that he would announce a pay limit as part of the spending review, although NHS doctors and nurses are expected to be exempt.
The shadow chancellor, Anneliese Dodds, described the measures as “more empty rhetoric”.
“The Conservatives have been in power for 10 long years, but their track record is a litany of failure and broken promises,” she said.
The former shadow chancellor John McDonnell suggested the Treasury had got the ideas for policies including the national investment bank, the overhaul of the Treasury green book and the move north from Labour’s 2019 manifesto.
“We’ll see whether it is on the scale needed to address the decade of Tory underinvestment, match the catastrophic climate crisis we face and whether it will tackle the grotesque levels of inequality they have created or line the pockets of their friends in big business,” he tweeted. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2014/sep/27/doctor-who-recap-series-34-episode-six-the-caretaker | Television & radio | 2014-09-27T20:15:00.000Z | Dan Martin | Doctor Who recap: series 34, episode six – The Caretaker | 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 six – The Caretaker• Read Dan Martin’s episode five blog here“I don’t know anything – because you haven’t told me anything. Which means I wouldn’t approve. Which means you’re endangering this school”
The one where the Doctor has to pass himself off as a normal person and makes a dreadful fist of it is fast becoming a sub-genre of its own. These episodes have become writer Gareth Roberts’ “thing” – he penned the James Corden specials for Matt Smith (The Lodger and Closing Time). So The Caretaker might run the risk of repeating itself, except for the fact that both of those episodes amounted to slight curios, sidesteps from the main narrative when they were giving Karen Gillan a week off. This, on the other hand, is so steeped in continuity and “arc-ness” that it’s practically a soap. In a good way.
Ofsted would be plunged into crisis if the true nature of Shoreditch’s Coal Hill school ever became apparent. We’ve yet to discover whether Clara’s employment there is for some big plot reason, but it’s no surprise that trouble has found its way there. It’s also telling that the Doctor has yet to inform Clara of his own long history with the place – this was where his granddaughter Susan tried to pass herself off as a normal Earth girl and he inadvertently picked up Ian and Barbara (the last big office romance among the teaching staff) as travelling companions way back in 1963. Times have changed; the place now has a life-sized chessboard and the humanities teachers all dress like hipsters, but the artron emissions emanating from the school’s troubled timeline have made it easy bait.
In truth, the alien incursion part of this story is its weakest element, but basing itself in story and character as it does, you barely notice the joins. Jenna Coleman gets her best ever comedy here, doing incredible work with a simple widening of her eyes, while Capaldi continues to imbue his supposedly “Dark Doctor” with levity and empathy. When he mistakes Adrian for Clara’s boyfriend on account of the bow tie, who wasn’t cheering on the fool? And as annoying children in Doctor Who go, Ellis George’s Courtney Woods is what we call “one to watch”.
And yet, fancy this – we’re halfway through the series and there is yet to be a duff episode. And, even more remarkably, most people seem to actually agree on that. Extraordinary scenes.
“Never mind that some of us are trying to save the planet, there’s only room in my head for cross-country and the offside rule!”
Danny: alpha male. Photograph: Adrian Rogers/BBC
As awkward moments to first use the L-word go, having just been outed to your boyfriend as a secret time-traveller is going to take some beating. But as Clara’s carefully constructed house of cards collapses around her, the deftness of this series begins to play out. As crazy as I went over the timey-wimey River Song arc back in Matt’s era, this more grounded, emotional story is paying off hugely. Here, nobody is completely right and everyone is a little bit wrong.
For all his bravery and humility, Danny is still showing signs of being the alpha male whose insecurity leads him to make things all about him. Clara is living in a fool’s paradise, thinking she can get away with living both these lives at once. And this Doctor, once again, is proving himself to be needy and tempestuous behind the bravado. It’s a brave version of Doctor Who, where everybody is written so honestly and as brutally flawed, and we’re only halfway through. The Doctor and Danny’s rivalry is an absolute dead heat as to who is right and who is wrong, and if either of these male egos were to make her choose (something which I doubt she would stand for anyway) I couldn’t call which way she would go.
Courtney Woods might wish to check herself if she decides she really does want to follow her English teacher off out into space.
Fear factor
The not-so terrifying Skovox Blitzer. Photograph: Adrian Rogers/BBC
For all that the Doctor talks it up, the Skovox Blitzer isn’t exactly the most menacing killing machine the universe has ever known. It made me laugh more than anything, trundling along looking like a robot Silurian on a mobility scooter – which may or may not have been the point. Did it matter that the world never felt under much of a threat? Maybe, but also maybe best to chalk this up to being another of the “funny ones”. That said, the policeman’s severed hand almost made me vomit a little.
Mysteries and questions
As is becoming more and more obvious, the big storyline this year looks to be the complicated Doctor-Clara-Danny triangle, and it may not end particularly well. But we also got a welcome dose of the other arc, as that policeman finds himself joining Half Face Man and Gretchen in the Promised Land named for the first time as “the Nethersphere”. And its pen-pusher is Chris Addison as Seb. They clearly have good people skills up in heaven, even when the management are having an off-day. Michelle Gomez’s Missy does not look happy. What can have gone wrong?
Time-space debris
The Doctor: levity and empathy. Photograph: Adrian Rogers/BBC
Clara’s jealousy issues now extend not only to all her predecessors but to Jane Austen too. “Oh what, I suppose she was your bezzie mate was she, and you went on holidays together and then you got kidnapped by boggans from space and then you all formed a band and met Buddy Holly!”
Nice to see River has not been forgotten completely.
We all know there are few things in the world more malevolent than the PE teacher. I’ll share my horror stories if you’ll share yours …
Danny’s inability understand the “different” way that Clara might love the Doctor has become my only real problem with him. So much that I almost get the Doctor’s antipathy toward him. What sort of person really believes there’s only one, sexual, kind of love?
“It’s funny, you only really know what someone thinks of you when you know what lies they’ve told you.”
Next week!
Courtney Woods gets her big moment as the first woman on the moon. But there are bigger challenges ahead, and by the end of Kill the Moon, the Doctor and Clara’s relationship might never be the same again …
Quick Guide
Doctor Who: all our episode-by-episode recaps
Show | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/feb/05/chick-lit-author-suicide | UK news | 2010-02-05T00:31:29.000Z | Ben Quinn | Chick-lit author killed herself, coroner rules | A best-selling author who was regarded as a pioneer of the chick-lit genre killed herself by taking an overdose of painkillers, a coroner has ruled.
Susan Morgan, 52, who wrote under the pseudonyms Zoe Barnes and Sue Dyson, had been suffering from the emotional pain of a marital break-up and the physical pain of ill-health, said the Gloucestershire coroner, Alan Crickmore, who recorded a verdict of suicide.
Police discovered her body after breaking into an Isle of Man hotel room on 31 October last year.
The inquest heard that she had taken a lethal cocktail of painkillers.
Her husband Simon said she suffered with chronic pain caused by two rare conditions – Tolosa Hunt Syndrome and Marinesco-Sjogren Syndrome – that required a range of medication.
The author of 45 novels – including Weddings Belles, Just Married and her last book, Return to Sender – she had also translated books into French and worked on an English translation of Van Gogh's letters, which has recently been published.
Most of her novels were written in Cheltenham where she lived and mention areas such as Charlton Kings, Tivoli and Montpellier.
She had previously worked as a hearing aid technician and a secretary.
A spokesman for her publishers Piatkus said: "She was one of the pioneers of chick-lit back in the nineties and has been entertaining her female fans ever since.
"All her stories were honest and believable with flawed but honourable heroines any woman would want to call a friend.
"She will be sorely missed by everyone who has had the pleasure of working with her through her career as a novelist." | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2012/jun/22/joy-of-six-european-championship-controversies | Sport | 2012-06-22T09:59:26.000Z | Scott Murray | The Joy of Six: European Championship controversies | Scott Murray and Rob Smyth | NB: This list is not definitive
1) Franco refuses to let Spain play the USSR, Euro 60
So at the time of writing, Spain are two in the hole, three games away from bagging an unprecedented third international tournament on the bounce. Unquestionably, by any definition, they're the greatest Spanish side of all time. By any definition other than star quality, that is. A pool of talent including Xavi, Iniesta, Villa and Torres is none too shabby, but during the late Fifties and early Sixties, the Red Fury teamsheets, at one time or another, included names such as Francisco Gento, Luis Suarez, Laszlo Kubala, Alfredo di Stefano and Ferenc Puskas. Another level.
Trouble is, while those names looked good on paper, the teams they were in weren't much cop on the pitch. Spain failed to qualify for the 1958 World Cup, as a side built around Barcelona and Real Madrid's best managed to get themselves knocked out by a Scotland team containing players from second-division outfits like Clyde and Liverpool. Then they made it to the 1962 finals, though they didn't really bother turning up, failing to get through the groups.
So whether they'd have done anything in the 1960 European Nations Cup is a moot point. Suarez, Gento and di Stefano were all on the scoresheet as Spain thrashed Poland over two legs in the tournament's opening round – a 7-2 aggregate spanking – but Franco had been fretting, concerned over potential humiliation at the hands of a country behind the Iron Curtain. So when Spain drew more Communist opposition in the quarter-finals – 1958 World Cup quarter-finalists and reigning Olympic champions USSR – the pinch-faced despot touched cloth. Spain were refused permission to travel to Moscow for the first leg and withdrawn from the tournament. The Soviets were granted a walkover, en route to winning the tournament.
The decision meant di Stefano never played in the finals of a major international tournament for Spain (though he did win a medal at the 1947 South American Championship with Argentina). By the time the 1964 finals came round – held in Spain, with Franco this time deciding he couldn't shy away from cold-war opponents in Hungary and the USSR – it was too late for him. Spain – under the managerial yoke of Jose Villalonga, the first coach to win the European Cup back in 1956 – did it anyway, Marcelino planting a header past Lev Yashin in the final, to the purse-faced dictator's unfettered glee. SM
2) Euro 68: take your pick
A tournament brimming with controversies. In the first semi-final, Yugoslavia and England kicked seven bells out of each other. In the third minute of the game, Dobrivoje Trivic tackled Alan Ball so hard a severe bruise ran from his big toe to his heel. "I said to Alf at half time, by George this is sore!" squeaked Bally after the game. "He wanted me to take the boot off so they could have a look at it, but I said no, it would swell up and I wouldn't get the boot back on. If I tried to sidefoot the ball it was murder." As the legendary Hugh McIlvanney said in the following Sunday's Observer, "the significance of this testimony was that it came from a man whose courage is out of all proportion to the slightness of his body".
The tone was set. On five minutes, Norman Hunter crunched Yugoslavian playmaker Ivica Osim. Sir Alf Ramsey, disdainfully referring to Osim as "a clown", opined that he was "sure Alan Ball was at least as badly hurt as Osim. The difference is, Alan Ball has more courage than Osim." Osim didn't play football again for several months.
England went on to lose 1-0, finishing the game with 10 men, Alan Mullery prodding the tip of his boot on to the business end of Trivic's tig. "They say we're hard, and we are at times," blasted Bobby Moore afterwards, "but at least it's a fairly open sort of hardness, man to man … After Mullery was sent off, the next thing I saw was Martin Peters running past me like a crazy man. I could only see the whites of his eyes. I thought someone had kicked him, but he was just mad at what the Yugoslav was up to. And Martin is a composed fellow!" Although quite what England were expecting from a midfield pairing of Hunter and Mullery is anyone's guess.
In the other semi-final between hosts Italy and the USSR, the game was decided by the toss of a coin, penalty shootouts yet to become the norm. Italy's win – captain Giacinto Facchetti called tails – is commonly cited as an affront to sport. Which of course a win by the flick of a coin obviously is. But it had to fall one way or the other, and it's often forgotten that Italy had played most of the game with 10 men after Gianni Rivera was injured, and had hit the post through Angelo Domenghini during extra-time.
The final brouhaha came in the final, with Domenghini's late equaliser – a rasping free-kick from the edge of the area – being described in many contemporary reports as coming while Swiss referee Gottfried Dienst was ordering the Yugoslav wall back. But watch the video: the wall is static as Domenghini scores. It's a myth that's since been erroneously repeated in various textbooks.
Dienst was also accused of favouring the home side throughout the match. (The referee of the 1966 World Cup final, a shameless homer? Surely not.) But even if mud sticks there, Yugoslavia can't feel too hard done by: they missed two open goals while leading and enjoying the ascendency, while Domenghini had earlier shaved the post. And Italy, having got out of jail in the first game, sauntered their way through the replay, winning 2-0. Still, controversies have a life of their own, whether confections or not. SM
3) Holland take on Clive Thomas, Euro 76
The romantic story of Holland's failure to win the World Cup in 1974 and 1978 is one of the first things they teach on the Football History curriculum in these parts. Yet nobody really talks about why they failed to win the tournament in between, Euro 76. Unlike in 1978, their team included Johan Cruyff and Wim van Hanegem, yet they were beaten 3-1 by the eventual winners Czechoslovakia in a nasty semi-final in Zagreb, a match played in fierce wind and rain on a pitch that the Times described as "a paddyfield". If the match is barely remembered over here, then it will never be forgotten in Holland. In 2008, it was the subject of a half-hour documentary.
The focus of the documentary was one incident in extra-time. Both sides were down to 10 men by that stage, with Johan Neeskens sent off for a savage hack at Zdenek Nehoda. (Some people associate the purity of the Dutch football with pacifism, but they were a team who had velvet boots with a steel toecap. Exhibit A: this tackle, and the yelp, against Italy at the 1978 World Cup.)
With the score at 1-1, there were six minutes of extra-time remaining when Johan Cruyff was fouled badly by Antonin Panenka. The Welsh referee Clive Thomas gave nothing and the Czechoslovakians broke to take the lead a few seconds later. For a Dutch team who had been moaning at Thomas all game, this was the final straw. They were already in a foul mood before the game because of the usual infighting, and Cruyff had earlier been booked for again trying to become football's first player-referee. "Cruyff sadly is now inclined to put himself above the game," said Geoffrey Green in The Times. "My friend Johan," said Clive Thomas as he watched the video 32 years later, "trying to tell me what the laws of the game are."
Van Hanegem was booked for dissent on the way back to the halfway line after the goal and sent off before the game had kicked off again. He already distrusted Thomas because of an incident in a match between Feyenoord and Benfica four years earlier, when he says he called Thomas a "thief". Thomas said he didn't hear this, and that had he done so he'd have "tried to get him a 10-game ban, in fact maybe for life. No one says that to me."
Precisely what Van Hanegem said and did when he met Thomas again at Euro 76 is not entirely clear, because his and Thomas's versions of the story are different. This is not just a controversy; it's an unsolved mystery. Thomas says, both in his autobiography By The Book and David Winner's Brilliant Orange, that he told Van Hanegem he would send him off for dissent if he stepped over the halfway line before the kick-off was taken. When Van Hanegem did that, he was off.
Van Hanegem's version is that Thomas ordered him to take the kick-off. "I said 'Why? I'm a midfield player. Ruud Geels is the striker – he should take it,'" says Van Hanegem in Brilliant Orange. "Thomas said: 'Come over here.' Normally the referee comes to the player, so I stayed where I was. He said again: 'Come here.' I stayed where I was. Then he sent me off."
The video (after 18 minutes of this link) apparently supports Van Hanegem's version. There are two other players waiting to take the kick-off, and Thomas seems to point for van Hanegem to come towards him. When he doesn't, Thomas pulls out the red card. And Thomas's accounts aren't entirely consistent. In Brilliant Orange (released in 2000), he says, "I've looked at that tape and I know I was right." In the Dutch TV documentary, eight years later, he says it is the first time he has seen the incident since it happened.
This is not to say Thomas was wrong to produce a red card, because Van Hanegem was behaving like a Total Slapped Arse. Thomas was insistent that players should come to him – "I am not prepared to run around the field to seek out a recalcitrant footballer" – whereas Holland thought the referee should come to them. There had been a similar incident earlier in the game, when, after a long stand-off, Cruyff eventually relented and walked towards Thomas to receive his yellow card. What Van Hanegem failed to realise is that Holland were up against the only referee in the world who was even more stubborn and self-righteous than they were. Thomas was never, ever, going to back down. "At the time," says Van Hanegem, "I wanted to kill him."
At first Van Hanegem refused to leave the field, and Thomas was in the process of walking off and abandoning the game when Van Hanegem finally shuffled off. With Holland down to nine men, Czechoslovakia scored a third to go through to the final.
In that Dutch TV documentary, Thomas accepts it was a foul on Cruyff. "I apologise," he says. "It was the wrong decision." This does not vindicate Holland's behaviour; these mistakes happen all the time, and Holland would not have played at the 1974 World Cup without a serious refereeing error (see here). Nobody covered themselves in much glory, but Thomas surely had more right on his side.
The Dutch players are content to forgive now, with one exception. "He needn't take 32 years to do that [acknowledge his mistake]," says van Hanegem. "That strikes me as a little long. [Narrator: it was the first time in 32 years he'd seen the images.] I can't imagine that, don't try to convince me of that. He's just incredibly vain, when you see that little man walk, so pedantic, an annoying little fella, always saying, 'Come here'. You don't think he has [those images]? You don't think he has that. That he sends Neeskens off? That he calls Cruyff over to give him a yellow card? He had it enlarged. He was the first to have one of those [holds hands far apart] plasma screens, believe me, to watch that. That's the sort of little man he is." RS
4) Graham Taylor substitutes Gary Lineker, Euro 92
Poor Graham Taylor. A gentleman, but never a popular one. Never popular enough to win a beauty contest with Gary Lineker, at any rate. Lineker had stored up plenty of moral credit in the public bank with his exploits at the 1986 and 1990 World Cups. All Taylor had managed, by the time England faced hosts Sweden at Euro 92, was to lead his country to the brink of early elimination from a tournament at which they'd been expected to reach at least the semis.
Lineker went into the must-win game having failed to score in his previous five matches for England, a run which included a risible effort to Panenka a penalty past Brazilian keeper Carlos in a friendly at Wembley, the chance to equal Bobby Charlton's English record of 49 international goals spurned. "Not scoring doesn't worry me," insisted Lineker before the game. "I don't get uptight about it."
Sure you don't, Gary. After 61 minutes of huffing and puffing to no effect whatsoever – and missing a half-decent chance to convert a Tony Daley cross and give England a surely unassailable 2-0 lead – Lineker saw his number go up. He stomped off the field in a gargantuan funk, refusing to acknowledge Taylor, his international career over should England fail to go through.
But there had been method in Taylor's apparent madness. England had by this point been pegged back to 1-1, and were being over-run in midfield. Lineker had been totally isolated and his replacement, Alan Smith, was better at holding the ball up. Taylor had refused to let sentiment, especially the fact Lineker was stranded on 48 international goals, cloud his judgement. That the substitution didn't pay off – Smith also spent his time in not-so-splendid isolation, albeit with plenty of time to admire the midfield dynamism of Jonas Thern and Stefan Schwarz – should have mattered not one jot.
These days, with tactics pored over in post-match analysis to the nth degree, there would probably be some recognition of Taylor's thought processes, and at least a little reasoned debate. Back in the day, the climate was not quite the same. The Sun superimposed Taylor's face on to a root vegetable – Swedes 2, Turnips 1 – and a decent man spent the next few years getting abuse flung at him in the street. Well done, journalism! SM
5) Piers Morgan mentions the war, Euro 96
Piers Stefan Pughe-Morgan loves Twitter – 2.3m followers and counting – but he must be glad it wasn't around in 1996. If it had been, he'd have been hounded out of his job as Daily Mirror editor faster than you could type #fauxoutrage.
When England got through to meet Germany in the Euro 96 semi-final, Morgan – or "Guten" Morgan, as he became known – mistook himself for Basil Fawlty. Two days before the match, the front page had a picture of Stuart Pearce and Paul Gascoigne wearing tin hats and the headline 'ACHTUNG!' SURRENDER' followed by the subhead 'For you Fritz, ze Euro 96 Championship is over'. To the right was an editor's column from Morgan, a parody of Neville Chamberlain's declaration of war in 1939, this time declaring "football war" on Germany.
It was stunningly unfunny, although most concentrated on its more obviously offensive aspects. Morgan was forced to apologise as the Mirror's share price dropped and Vauxhall became one of a number of advertisers to pull its ads from the paper. Jo Brand even dropped her Mirror column, reportedly in protest. It could have been worse: the New York Times reported that Morgan had shelved plans to drop leaflets from a Spitfire all over Berlin, and drive a tank to the German Embassy. "Rarely," said Roy Greenslade in this paper, "has an editor so drastically misjudged the public mood."
Morgan had been warming up throughout the tournament. Before the Spain game, the Mirror published a list of "Ten Nasties Spain's Given Europe", including syphilis, paella and carpet bombing. A few days later, the Times diary reported that Morgan was "still trying to live down an editorial conference he chaired on Monday after England beat Spain on Saturday. Guten demanded that descendants of famous Spaniards from history be traced and asked how they felt about being trounced by the England. 'Who did you have in mind?' a newsman asked. 'Well,' he replied. 'Mussolini for a start.'"
One publicity seeker – whose name we have to withhold for fear of justifying his existence – reported Morgan and the Mirror to West Midlands police for inciting racial hatred with his declaration of football war on Germany, while Lord Healey announced that "The grubby little men who write this sort of trash should remember that our monarchy are krauts and that our defence minister is a dago".
The Mirror weren't alone in mentioning the war. "Herr we go, bring on the Krauts" was the Star's headline - alongside, of course, a picture of Claudia Schiffer searching for her clothes. The Sun settled for "Let's Blitz Fritz", tucked away on Page 4. Deliciously, this relative restraint allowed them to claim the moral high ground. On Channel 4 news, their editor Stuart Higgins proudly announced that "The Sun has maintained a jingoistic approach, rather than a xenophobic one." RS
6) Sweden 2-2 Denmark, Euro 2004
You might have heard about this one in the week: the 2-2 draw between Sweden and Denmark that conveniently eliminated Italy in 2004 and was seen in some quarters as a bit of a Scando scandal.
The shame is that it has totally overshadowed a memorably absurd Italian campaign. There were two particular highlights: Christian Panucci justfiying the 0-0 draw against Denmark by saying "The thread that [our] socks are made with is too rough", and Christian Vieri asserting his masculinity in front of the Italian press after the 1-1 draw with Sweden. "I'm not talking to you people ever again," he bantered. "None of you may judge me as a man because I am more of a man than all of you put together. You have no idea how much of a man I am." RS
With thanks to Leander Schaerlaeckens | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2010/oct/11/broadcasters-independent-producers-pact | Media | 2010-10-11T06:00:10.000Z | Maggie Brown | Broadcasters try to wrest back more control from independent producers | Not much connects ITV's lush Downton Abbey with Channel 4's teenage laughfest The Inbetweeners but two of this autumn's hit programmes share a provenance. They are both made by independent production companies, and the broadcasters buy a licence to screen them.
Now this system is under stress and may even be in danger of breaking down. Talks between Pact, the indies' trade body, and leading broadcasters are taking place in a bid to reach agreement by next year.
The interests of broadcasters and independent producers rarely dovetail, but the gap appears to be worsening just at a point when a fresh modus vivendi is needed - by next year, when internet-enabled television is expected to bring about a fragmented online world. Broadcasters and independent producers want to control more of the programme content and secondary rights, especially in a market in which DVD sales are waning.
Broadcasters are dealing with the negotiations in different ways but all of them want change. At Channel 5 last week, payments were temporarily frozen to some programme suppliers by Richard Desmond's new team. He also abruptly concluded talks with an equally hard-nosed independent, Endemol, about buying Big Brother.
Fresh look
The BBC, the UK's biggest spender on independent production, is in negotiation with Pact and Jana Bennett, the director of vision, is "careful not to hold negotiations in public". Yet sources say the BBC is hawkish. In his MacTaggart lecture in August, Mark Thompson, the BBC's director general, rattled the bars when he said it was "time to take a fresh look at whether the current [terms of trade] are fit for purpose … we may need more flexibility from the producers".
Over at ITV, where the former chairman, Michael Grade, led a fierce but ineffective assault on the independents in 2009, the new chief executive, Adam Crozier, is diplomatic but keen to address the unfairness of the system. "In the UK we're massively over-regulated and it is distorting the market in a number of different ways. Some of the programme suppliers we deal with are every bit as big and powerful as ITV."
Downton Abbey's producer, Carnival, for example, is owned by America's NBC Universal studios and is subject to different regulations.
The terms of trade relate to the agreement in 2003 between Pact and broadcasters which gave the independents copyright of their programmes, rather than the broadcasters, who paid them. This big piece of government intervention, enshrined in the Communications Act 2003 and monitored by Ofcom, transformed the British production business. Many more indies became attractive businesses after a bitter 20-year struggle by producers. (All sides subsequently updated terms in 2006, to allow for the iPlayer, and video on demand).
The current negotiations are seen as an attempt by broadcasters to wrest back a bit of that control. Ofcom's Communications Market review for 2010 shows that independents have 50% of the market, and are beating in-house producers with new programming.
The indy sector's total revenue was £2.2bn last year of which programme commissions were the biggest portion, £1.395bn. Growing international activities totalled £439m.
What is less discussed is that the 2003 deal also seems to have made the UK unique, a kind of Switzerland of television. A well-known television executive says: "I really think we should simply be able to buy programmes outright, from suppliers, like they do everywhere else."
Wayne Garvie, the former managing director, content and production, BBC Worldwide, says: "The UK is completely different to any other market in the world. The rights position is really healthy for UK plc.
"When a producer takes a format to the US, they retain all the rights, format sales, secondary rights. The US broadcaster will accept you wholly own the rights. This has helped UK independents enormously. If we change we will weaken our international position."
Gerhard Zeiler, the chief executive of RTL Group, whose Talkback Thames/Fremantle subsidiary makes American Idol, The X Factor, and Britain's Got Talent, recently told an RTS conference: "There is no other country where you have these terms of trade, at least that I know of. In the UK, where we own Fremantle, it's brilliant!"
However, over the past two years US networks have become more savvy about what rights they want to keep, and they have become tougher with UK producers.
Digital channels
ITV's grievance is compounded because the terms of trade only apply to the public service channels - BBC, Channel 4, ITV1 and Channel 5 - and not ITV, C4 and Channel 5's digital channels. They also exclude BSkyB, increasingly making deals for glossy drama, and other digital channels.
Meanwhile, broadcasters are talking up the power of their mass audiences as a bargaining chip. Peter Fincham, ITV director of television, says: "Our airtime has a value. We can make a format famous. So as a commercial broadcaster, we want to participate. An airing on ITV1 is as good a driver of international sales as [an airing] anywhere in the world."
Fincham reaches for an example that still rankles, even though the deal was struck years before the 2003 agreement. Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, which launched on ITV in 1998, was sold after eight years of income (which dwarfed the sale price), for £106m, then resold on to its current owner, Sony, for £137.5m. ITV had allowed its creator, Celador, complete copyright and exploitation rights.
That is why it is trying to re-establish its ITV Studios division, encouraging commissioners to look at all aspects of a programme decision, including the financial consequences, and to seek to co-produce more new shows with suppliers, regaining rights. Crozier recently revealed that only 16-17% of ITV1's programmes were made inhouse, excluding Emmerdale and Coronation Street. "We want to be free to do a deal on its own merit, with only the lightest touch intervention," he says. "The terms of trade stem from a different era. There is only a limited role for terms of trade."
C4's position is the most nuanced and careful of all the broadcasters , since it is set up to wholly source programmes from outside. It naturally doesn't want a huge conflict with Pact, but it wants a more sophisticated business model.
Martin Baker, the head of commercial affairs, says: "Rather than shout at independents, we want to work productively with them."
John McVay, the chief executive of Pact, says he does not expect root and branch change at this point; he wants sensible, rational discussions, especially with ITV, with evolution the aim.
The real sticking point remains the principle of copyright. "We will never give it up," says Jane Turton, the deputy chief operating officer of All3media, the UK's biggest independent.
But there are pressure points, as broadcasters increasingly refuse, or say they are simply unable, to meet the full costs of producing programmes, especially drama. Fincham insists: "It is absolutely in the interests of the production industry and viewers that the commercial model is sound, with well-funded broadcasters commissioning programmes, and stable suppliers. We are complementary."
It remains to be seen whether independent production companies, which have benefited from the current regime, are prepared to agree. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/dec/07/indefinite-immigration-detention-detainee-charged-parole-ntwnfb | Australia news | 2023-12-07T03:48:26.000Z | Paul Karp | Fifth immigration detainee arrested after release due to high court ruling | The Coalition has targeted immigration minister, Andrew Giles, over a report a fifth person released from detention has been arrested in connection with an outstanding warrant.
On Thursday the Courier Mail reported that a man was arrested in Queensland after it was realised there was a warrant to return to jail for allegedly breaching his parole conditions before being placed in immigration detention in 2012.
Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup
In question time the shadow immigration minister, Dan Tehan, asked about the reported fifth arrest “in connection with an outstanding return to prison warrant”.
Labor’s preventative detention minefield – Full Story podcast
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Tehan suggested the man had been released from immigration detention “without any checks being carried out” and queried whether he should have been released.
Giles said he “cannot comment on individual cases” and cited earlier comments from opposition leader, Peter Dutton, that it was inappropriate to do so where he had been the decision-maker.
Giles said the government had set up operation Aegis, a joint taskforce between the federal police, border force and state police forces to “share information and enforce visa conditions, steps that have been enhanced by the legislation that passed the parliament late last night. This work of course continues.”
The man is the fifth person released from immigration detention as a result of the high court’s NZYQ ruling to be arrested since release.
At least 148 people have been released as a result of the ruling that indefinite detention is unlawful where it is not possible to deport the non-citizen.
On Wednesday evening the parliament passed laws that will allow the immigration minister to apply to state supreme courts for orders seeking the “worst offenders” in the cohort to be re-detained.
Under the preventive detention regime, courts will be able to order non-citizens convicted of serious violent or sexual offences who cannot be deported to successive terms of three years in detention if satisfied to a “high degree of probability” that there is an “unacceptable risk” the person will reoffend.
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Fourth former immigration detainee charged after release due to high court ruling
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The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, began question time by asking the prime minister to apologise for “failing to prepare for the high court decision it knew was coming for at least six months”, citing four people allegedly reoffending since release.
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, replied that “community safety is our priority and I am very pleased that the parliament has passed stronger laws to keep people safe”.
Albanese said the government had created “four layers of protection” including preventive detention, community safety orders, electronic monitoring devices and curfews and “stringent visa conditions”.
“Certainly, I am sorry anytime anyone is a victim of a crime, committed at any time against any victim.”
Albanese revealed that the attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, has apologised for a fiery exchange with a journalist on Wednesday, describing this as an “appropriate” course of action “when our standards aren’t met”. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/29/damned-bastards-im-still-alive-gomorrah-author-hails-court-victory-over-mafia-threats | World news | 2021-05-29T15:00:28.000Z | Ed Vulliamy | ‘I’m still alive’: Gomorrah author hails court victory over mafia threats | The internationally renowned anti-mafia writer Roberto Saviano has declared that “journalism has been vindicated; words are vindicated – and so am I”, after a landmark judgment in Rome over threats to his life.
Judges ruled on Monday that a courtroom manoeuvre 13 years ago by a Camorra mafia boss and his lawyer constituted a threat to Saviano’s life, and that of a colleague – Rosaria Capacchione, then of the Naples daily Il Mattino – condemning the journalists to live ever since in the shadows, under bodyguard.
“My life does not greatly change,” Saviano told the Observer after the verdict. “I will still need to keep my bodyguard. And of course, the ruling does not give me back those 13 years, forced to live a hidden half-life, constantly vigilant, under guard, for all that time.
“But the ruling does show that the mafia is not invincible, that it cannot threaten journalists without sanction, and that the clans are afraid of the word, of journalism.”
After an oft-delayed 13-year trial, Rome’s criminal court found Francesco Bidognetti, chief enforcer of the Casalesi clan of the Naples region mafia, and his lawyer, Michele Santonastaso, guilty of threatening the journalists’ lives by filing a document into the “Spartacus” maxi-trial. It ended after 12 years in 2010, with 16 Camorra bosses, including Bidognetti, jailed for life.
Francesco Bidognetti, chief enforcer of the Casalesi clan of the Naples region mafia.
Bidognetti was a senior, crucial figure in a regime of murder, extortion and terror around the Casalesi base of Casal di Principe, north of Naples, and mastermind of its corrupt control over multimillion-euro businesses of waste management – much of it toxic – across the Campania region.
The document at stake was apparently a matter of legal procedure, entered into the maxi-trial shortly before the appeal hearing ended in March 2008. It requested a suspension of the entire trial, and that it be referred from Naples to another jurisdiction, because of the influence that Saviano and Capacchione were said to “wield over the judges with their writing”.
“The mafia does not make its threats directly,” explains Saviano. “They don’t issue a fatwa like Iran or Isis. Mafia semantics are complex and coded, and their menaces are made at a diagonal.”
He cites a famous foreboding made by Cosa Nostra boss Michele – Il Papa (the Pope) – Greco during the Sicilian maxi-trial of the 1980s: “Greco said to the court: ‘We wish your justice to be serene, and that this serenity will accompany you throughout your life.’ It sounds like a blessing, but it wasn’t, it was a threat [to jurors and prosecutors],” says Saviano.
“And with this manoeuvre in 2008,” he explains, “Bidognetti was saying that if he and his fellow mafiosi were convicted in that court, Rosaria and I would be complicit. And that if the mafiosi were acquitted, they would regard us – Rosaria reporting at local level, me nationally – as part of the attempt to prosecute them.
“This threat was, and still is, unique in criminal history. It labelled us as enemies of the defendants, whose work as journalists had urged the state into action against them. According to them, it was I who was a menace to the course of justice in Naples, not them, the killers awaiting judgment.”
The threat was made in an atmosphere of extreme menace: while the maxi-trial called more than 500 witnesses, and handed down more than 700 years of jail terms, five people involved in the case were murdered.
A scene from the hit TV series Gomorrah, based on Roberto Saviano’s book. Photograph: BetaFilm/Sky Atlantic
The maxi-trial had coincided with publication in 2006 of Saviano’s bestselling book Gomorrah, which revealed the Camorra’s operations and had infuriated the mafia. Saviano was put under guard, and this was augmented after the 2008 legal manoeuvre; both the clans and the journalists knew exactly what it meant. “It was coded, but clear,” says Saviano.
Capacchione, who served as a deputy for Italy’s Democratic party from 2013 to 2018, told the Ansa news agency last week: “They were real death threats against us.”
Last week’s judgment in Rome seals Saviano’s and Capacchione’s argument as legal fact, ruling the content of the referral request to be a threat and crime.
Bidognetti, who is serving several life sentences, was given 18 months for threatening the journalists, and Santonastaso, who has a previous conviction for aiding and abetting the mafia, 14 months. The judges have 90 days to publish their reasoning.
“They are token sentences,” says Saviano, “but so important in establishing what has caused me to live the life I have lived, and lost: constantly surveilled, hunted, watched, under protection, and wondering what life I would be living had these threats not been issued.”
He adds: “This has taken 13 years for us to prove this. Thirteen years of living like this. It’s hard for an Anglo-Saxon public to understand how long these trials can take.” Delays in the process are due to adjournments and debates over jurisdiction.
The threat and judgment, says Saviano, “also demonstrate how the mafia, with this court manoeuvre, regards the perimeters of journalism, and the implied instruction that a journalist ‘do a good job’ so far as they are concerned. They know this is a democracy, that there will be an article about a murder or an arrest, but that’s the limit. Then they come into court and say what they always say: everything happens, but we didn’t do it. Cosa Nostra exists, but we do not exist. And they expect us to report that.
Rosaria Capacchione in 2008 in her office at Il Mattino newspaper. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
“But what does it mean to go beyond the limit? What if a journalist investigates the facts in relation to one another, and draws up a map of the mafia’s economic interests and institutional and political relations? Then, one crosses the line, exceeds the limit.”
Writing in Corriere della Sera last week, Saviano paid tribute to Capacchione – “who has dedicated a large part of her life to reporting on the Casalesi clan with courage and determination” – his lawyers and media colleagues who had brought and followed the proceedings throughout.
Why the mafia are taking care of everyone's business
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Saviano calculates: “Why would Bidognetti, already serving several life sentences, spend 13 years defending himself against this charge of making a threat against me? It’s because so long as I live, his threat has failed. Therefore he has to pretend he didn’t issue it. So long as I live, he loses kudos; he loses credibility in the eyes of his mates and rivals.
“Bidognetti threatened Saviano, and Saviano still lives,” reflects the writer. “In the eyes of my enemies, my most egregious fault is that I am still alive. This week is a victory for the power of the word, not mine or even Rosaria’s. But when I walked out of that courtroom on Monday, I did think – as I wrote in the final line of Gomorrah – damned bastards, I’m still alive.” | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/voluntary-sector-network/2012/sep/11/innovation-good-charities-management | Voluntary Sector Network | 2012-09-11T05:30:01.000Z | Anita Pati | Can innovation improve your organisation? | It can be argued that the culture of innovation within the voluntary sector has morphed from the common-or-garden business development mandate. But because the word conjures up ideas of freedom, risk and creativity, its popularity is going from strength to strength.
However, its meaning can be fuzzy. For some organisations, innovation can mean product or business development while others focus on embedding a wider culture of encouraging inventive and efficient approaches. Fundraising innovation consultant, Lucy Gower, says that despite more than five years of the concept's development there's no clear blueprint. "Each charity differs in its profile and strategy," she says. "It was being talked about more than five years ago and people still haven't worked out how to do it."
But now, says Gower, many organisations are being forced to think differently because of less available funding. "It's not just coming up with new ideas but getting them to market – it's about how you choose which ideas will make the most difference," she explains. "We should ideally, as part of every fundraising job, be innovative," But a cautious sector means people sometimes need a push.
Charities could take a leaf from the corporate sector to be more open and collaborative, Gower adds. For instance, smoothie brand Innocent actively encourages its teams to spread themselves out across desks in order to learn how other departments work and understand each other. "Lots of fundraising teams are quite siloed," says Gower.
Oxfam GB has around six innovation managers in different departments. Matt Lumsden, innovation manager, within marketing and fundraising at Oxfam, says that for a number of years they had two innovation workers whose sole job it was to generate ideas, but that this became "very resource intensive".
So Oxfam decided to change the system from one where just two people were responsible for idea generation to one where every individual was encouraged to be creative. Two months ago they launched a new innovation programme which they hope will embed the culture of idea generation within the marketing and fundraising departments.
Lumsden says the fact that new ideas are copied across the sector so easily makes innovation vital rather than some faddy notion. "Fundraising at the moment is in an extremely competitive space," he says, mentioning Oxfam Unwrapped's successful Give a Goat as a Gift campaign
"The great thing was it made Oxfam's work really tangible," he explains. "But within a year, other charities had copied it and we no longer had that market advantage. We need to keep coming up with these ideas regularly – our supporters' expectations change, consumer behaviour changes so we need to do this to keep generating income."
To build internal capacity for innovation, his team is introducing a four-stage toolkit to be available on the intranet which will provide an IT platform ideal for cross-departmental and cross-organisational collaboration.
The four stages of the innovation process will include how to come up with an idea; select the best idea; develop an idea; and launch the idea, with each step offering tools, templates and techniques. There will also be case studies and research methods for use in the ideas generation stage. "It's been quite a job to define what we mean by innovation; it's quite an ambiguous term," Lumsden says. "Like any change management programme, it's all about communication and we've been speaking to every team to find out what support they need when they're doing innovation".
But for his department, it means essentially devising "new ways of communicating with existing or prospective supporters". There will also be extra training in, for example, how to run an effective brainstorming session. "Or systems will be agreed for pitching the best ideas. We want our staff to be able to research an idea really well so they can develop a compelling business case."
Staff members will be able to vote on ideas posted on the intranet by other teams. "We'll also have regular 'inspiration events', where we will present interesting examples of innovation in other industries – so there's a horizon scanning function," says Lumsden.
Richard Turner, director of marketing and fundraising at SolarAid, has worked in charity fundraising for more than 20 years and believes that admitting failure is the first stage to unlocking innovation. "We've started to realise that problems are a real opportunity to engage partners so rather than hide problems, our skill is defining them and sharing them – both internally and with the world."
The charity recently had a problem where a cyclist fundraiser needed to auction a famous photographer's prints but needed a storage area first, "so we put the problem out on Facebook and within 24 hours we had someone who not only could store them, but could sort out an exhibition and auction the prints," Turner says.
Although SolarAid is a small charity with about 10 London staff and a turnover of about £2.5m, it has more than 15,000 followers on Facebook and this response is prompting the charity to develop a problem page on its website, covering issues from smaller specifics to large, logistical issues.
Trusting staff to express themselves freely can also spark innovation, says Turner: "We're trying to encourage our staff to communicate freely so any member of staff can set up and run a blog or Twitter linking from our homepage – we don't dictate what they have to say. So instead of having a bottleneck of content [to be vetted by internal communications staff], staff are self-editing."
However, buy-in from the top is crucial, he says, "because if management don't buy in to that [problem] then they won't necessarily accept the failure that goes with it". To secure buy-in, Turner refers to big hairy audacious goals – or BHAGS – a concept better known in the commercial sector. SolarAid's mission or BHAG is to eradicate the kerosene lamp from Africa by the end of the decade and to keep on course, staff will constantly be reminded of that.
At the end of 2011, Save the Children set up Born to Grow, an innovation programme taken from its wider campaign name, No Child Born to Die. Its purpose, says strategic innovation manager, Joe Morrison, "is to help the fundraising teams be more innovative in what they do". Part of the programme involves running an internal website, designed to facilitate both online and offline debate, where any member of staff can post a challenge. For instance, a recent conundrum was how the charity could engage with staff of a corporate partner without access to a computer.
"You're widening the net of people who might have a solution to your problem," Morrison says. People can also rate ideas on a five-star system similar to Amazon, "which helps you not only identify more ideas but filter them so the best ones are right at the top". Morrison says the culture of innovation needs to be embedded gradually by getting people to do easy things such as rating ideas first before contributing ideas.
"[The website is] also good at identifying people who have lots of ideas but wouldn't otherwise have a way of voicing them," he says. Conversations can then go offline and be brainstormed. So far, 90% of Save the Children's fundraising division has taken an action on the site, from rating an idea to contributing.
But Morrison says pushing innovation can prove a challenge at the moment because charities, facing government cuts, are naturally being cautious. "With innovation, you're talking about doing something new which involves taking a measured risk and that's quite difficult." Like Turner, he says, "you need management that is open to innovation and willing to embrace it".
Save the Children also encourages its volunteer shop staff across roughly 120 stores to use their own skills to run each shop individually rather than being dictated to by head office. "Most charities have a paid shop manager but we are led by volunteers who put their own passionate stamp on it," he says. This can range from designing the store layout to how it fundraises.
It seems funding cuts are not necessarily stymieing the creative urge. While "charities are feeling a little vulnerable to the idea of doing things that involve risk," Turner says, "if you're not prepared to innovate and take on failure – it's a difficult place to be.
"The irony is that every non-profit was created out of being inspirational."
This content is brought to you by Guardian Professional. To join the voluntary sector network, click here. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/culture-professionals-network/2016/apr/22/burning-man-ceo-marian-goodell-interview | Culture professionals network | 2016-04-22T11:30:03.000Z | Matthew Caines | Burning Man chief: 'it helps people connect more authentically' | What can you tell us about Burning Man?
Burning Man is an eight-day annual gathering of 75,000 people in the Black Rock desert in Nevada. What’s really unique about it is that it’s not like any other festival. We don’t sell anything other than coffee or ice, so you bring everything you need. We also have no trash cans, so while you think it would be messier, we have taught everyone to take away what they bring with them. We call that radical self-reliance, which is key to Burning Man.
We also have a key principle of communal effort, so we’re asking everyone to look out for each other. Part of that would be picking up your own mess, but if you don’t, it’s not uncommon to see someone leaning over to pick up a cigarette butt that someone else dropped. Everyone is dedicated to the “Leave No Trace” principle.
That’s one of the things people say they take home with them from Burning Man – it changes the way you look at litter, yourself and what you’re bringing into the world.
People tell me Burning Man gives them hope in humanity
Burning Man is also radically creative. It doesn’t have any stages. It’s an experiment in temporary community. We’re asking the participants to bring themselves to it.
How do you balance giving responsibility to participants and being responsible stewards?
That’s part of the conversation we have about civic participation – that we’re setting up the infrastructure for a city. But when people ask me: well how are you [the organisation] going to make sure newbies take on the Burning Man ethos,
I say: we’re going to put the tools out there, but if you’re a camper, you’re responsible for helping to acculturate the others become citizens. We all become citizens together. So it is a balance.
It’s sort of ironic in a day and age when people are touchy about too much government, because often participants will say: well, the organisation should do this or that.
We say: we’re setting up values, principles, intentions and guidelines. We’d rather not behave like a government. We would rather be involved in helping frame things, so people can adopt what they see as useful tools to move along in life.
Burning Man helps people connect with each other more authentically.
What can you tell us about extending and facilitating the Burning Man ethos globally?
In 1997, when we were first in debt (and the internet was coming to life) we found people wanting to help us. Up until that point, the event never had people in other cities or communities reaching out to us to create the Burning Man culture or affiliate with it.
Since 2004, there’s been an up-swelling of people wanting to do events and meet other Burners. So we formalised a process for that.
Through the work of local groups and leadership, we support a 10,000 person annual event in South Africa and a 7,800-person event in Israel. It’s also happening in South Korea and Japan. In Europe, there’s a number of events that range in size from about 250 to 1,500 – and there’s a group in the Netherlands that in July will have the first official Burning Man event using the name.
There’s a responsibility of festival producers to bring people together to live side-by-side and treat each other well
All of this isn’t franchised, like McDonald’s; it has to happen locally and come from the people there. We also don’t give them any money – we just give them the tools. Many of them know more about small event production that we do, so we’re learning from each other. And other staff members travel to all these different groups and share our lessons about leadership and managing
volunteers, among many other things.
We’re nurturing the interest and giving people the tools to produce the culture – not just at events, but in their wider communities.
There’s different work being done all over the world in these Burning Man communities – and they’re actually doing real community work: working in soup kitchens; craft; disaster relief. They do it around the Burning Man concept, because they know there’s wider trust in our structural and organic approach.
If you’ve been to Burning Man, you’re nice to your neighbour. It’s about taking it into communities and helping other people.
People tell me Burning Man gives them hope in humanity.
Marco Cochrane’s R-Evolution at Burning Man 2015. Photograph: Dan Adams
It comes back to the idea that people take the spirit of the event home – back into their communities. Is that the way festival culture should be heading?
I’ve been to the bigger ones – Glastonbury, Bonnaroo and Fusion, but also the smaller ones. I go to every festival I’m invited to.
Festival producers – not all of them, because some are just music and drinking, which don’t play the same way – have real social values. There’s a responsibility of festival leaders and producers to bring people together to live in close proximity, side-by-side and treat each other well.
If things went sideways on the planet – if no one trusted authority and religion wasn’t the place for people – I have a real belief that some of the festival community would look to each other to solve things, through the rules that we’ve learned by living together at events such as Burning Man and Glastonbury.
I really believe in the culture of bringing people together in these mass gatherings.
What can you tell us about Burning Man’s nonprofit status?
We didn’t build Burning Man as a nonprofit. We built it as a for-profit, then decided to turn it into a nonprofit. It was the right thing to do, because it has the right framework for the future. We didn’t want ownership originally, but we chose that route because it was nimble and quick. We had to work hard internally to understand – the whole staff – what it means to be a nonprofit.
It doesn’t mean that we’re poor or that we want low salaries for our staff. We’ve worked hard to be as ambitious as we were before and to learn more about what it means to engage in fundraising. We’re still learning.
We don’t want Burning Man to get bought out by those who make large, charitable donations. We don’t want favouritism. We’ve had to learn: how do we keep the culture and get the right kind of support as well?
What are the challenges facing Burning Man?
The [9% state] entertainment tax passed last summer is horrible. It was implemented in October 2015. It’s very unfortunate. We only started selling tickets in January. We did send an appeal, which we got back in February. It said that we still qualified as a form of entertainment. It’s nearly 10% per ticket per person, so it’s just a horrible tax. We will be fighting that.
There’s also the federal government. It’s a constant battle with them over the amount of money they spend to help manage Burning Man. They keep wanting to take more control, but it’s ours to run. It’s a battle between the federal law enforcement, the administrators and our people to be self-governing.
It’s our event, so we’re constantly having to push back, to manage our own rules. We’re good at that. When we create a rule or we make a commitment to our operation, we follow through. But we constantly have to explain who we are and why we have a right to survive.
How much has the Burning Man community changed over the years?
Someone asked me recently how I felt about all the techies that are coming to Burning Man. It’s funny, because Wired magazine in 1996 – 20 years ago – opened the door to the tech community. This didn’t just happen yesterday.
There is definitely a wealthier element coming to Burning Man, but if you look at the event as a possible cultural force of change in the world, then you want to have everyone from all walks of life.
I don’t have any problem with the diversity of the demographic.
Remember, we work really hard to help other communities make Burning Man happen out in the world, in 45 different countries. We’re engaging with every colour, race and background. It’s getting richer and broader over time, not whiter.
Marian Goodell is founding board member and CEO of Burning Man
Join our community of arts, culture and creative professionals by signing up free to the Guardian Culture Pros Network. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/25/tory-peer-lobbied-for-ppe-firm-months-after-lawyers-said-she-had-stopped-leaked-emails-suggest | World news | 2022-03-25T10:00:24.000Z | David Conn | Tory peer lobbied for PPE firm months after lawyers said she had stopped, leaked emails suggest | Leaked emails suggest that the Conservative peer Michelle Mone lobbied a health minister on behalf of a company seeking Covid contracts – five months after the point at which her lawyers said she had stopped doing anything for the firm.
The documents add to questions surrounding Lady Mone’s account of her involvement in PPE Medpro, which was awarded government contracts worth more than £200m to supply personal protective equipment early in the pandemic.
Several months later, according to the leaked emails, Mone was trying to help PPE Medpro secure a lucrative contract to supply the government with Covid-19 antigen tests.
Mone has repeatedly sought to distance herself from PPE Medpro, whose business she first recommended to the government in early May 2020.
When Mone’s referral of May 2020 became public, she said her involvement in the company went no further than a single recommendation to the then Cabinet Office minister Theodore Agnew. Her lawyer said: “Having taken the very simple, solitary and brief step of referring PPE Medpro as a potential supplier to the office of Lord Agnew, our client did not do anything further in respect of PPE Medpro.”
Tory peer Michelle Mone secretly involved in PPE firm she referred to government
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However, emails seen by the Guardian from October 2020 suggest that Mone was by that point still promoting the company, which was selling Covid tests.
Anthony Page, one of PPE Medpro’s directors, emailed the Tory peer James Bethell, then a minister at the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), on 6 October mentioning Mone’s involvement.
“I write to you in my capacity as UK managing director of PPE Medpro,” Page said. “I understand that Baroness Mone has kindly made you aware of the company and our recently developed coronavirus antigen rapid test.”
The email continued: “By way of introduction, PPE Medpro is a PPE and medical product supplier that, in recent months, has successfully completed orders of 235m units to DHSC.”
In addition to his role as the sole public face of PPE Medpro, Page is a longtime senior employee in the Knox Group, the Isle of Man-based financial services firm run by Mone’s husband, Douglas Barrowman.
Lawyers for Mone, who sold her stake in the Ultimo lingerie company before David Cameron made her a member of the House of Lords in 2015, have said she “was not connected to PPE Medpro in any capacity” and “has no involvement in the business”.
Barrowman’s lawyers have similarly distanced him from the company, but they have not denied that he benefited financially from PPE Medpro’s business.
Last month the Guardian revealed that leaked files appear to suggest that both Mone and Barrowman were secretly involved in PPE Medpro’s mask and surgical gowns business.
The newly leaked emails between Bethell and Page suggest that Mone was subsequently also involved in supporting PPE Medpro’s attempt to secure a slice of the testing market.
In his 6 October 2020 email, Page told the Tory minister that the “consortium behind PPE Medpro” had partnerships with two factories that could produce 1.9m Covid tests a day. “We are able to start production immediately following agreement of terms and on receipt of signed contract and PO [purchase order] from DHSC. I would welcome a dialogue with you and/or your team to get things moving.”
According to a government source, Bethell then referred PPE Medpro to a specialist team of officials and consultants who gave him prompt, attentive service. PPE Medpro, the source added, was among a number of companies referred as potential Covid-testing suppliers that were given a similar priority service.
The source, a government official who spoke on the condition of anonymity, described the process of prioritising well-connected firms offering coronavirus testing kits as akin to the government’s “VIP lane” for well-connected PPE firms.
Despite the special attention, Page appears to have become impatient with his treatment by the department, complaining in an email to officials and copying in Bethell and Bethell’s private secretary.
PPE Medpro ultimately failed in its testing bid. However, the government source believes officials gave PPE Medpro undue priority because of its political backing.
“Given their lack of experience, PPE Medpro should have been turned down at the start for testing contracts, which were such a vital part of our response to the pandemic,” the official claimed. “But instead we tutored that company through the process because we knew that senior people were involved: we were very aware that Baroness Mone had held that initial discussion with Lord Bethell.
“The concerns were already starting about the VIP lane that operated for PPE, yet here we were giving a special service to companies just because of their political connections.”
Mone appears to have been still contacting officials on behalf of PPE Medpro four months after her contact with Bethell, and nine months after she first recommended the firm to Lord Agnew.
Jacqui Rock, the chief commercial officer for NHS test and trace, told colleagues in February 2021 that Mone was “incandescent with rage” at the treatment of PPE Medpro over testing contracts, saying they had been “fobbed off”, and was planning to speak to Michael Gove and Matt Hancock about her concerns.
Mone’s lawyer did not respond directly to questions from the Guardian about her referral of PPE Medpro to the government for Covid-19 tests, saying: “She has no involvement in the business.”
Bethell did not respond to a request for comment.
A DHSC spokesperson said there had been “a rigorous scientific validation process with officials to ensure no products were progressed that did not meet the required specification”.
Page denied that the company was given preferential treatment because of Mone’s recommendation, saying that PPE Medpro had already been working with the DHSC, so already had the necessary contacts. He blamed the company’s failure to secure testing contracts on “adverse press” and “the process being frustrated by the various testing phases,” although he said they “passed at each phase”. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/may/02/housing-in-australia-is-a-cruel-disaster-and-getting-worse | Opinion | 2022-05-02T07:18:09.000Z | First Dog on the Moon | Housing in Australia is a cruel disaster and getting worse! | First Dog on the Moon | null | Partial |
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jul/05/theresa-may-wins-first-round-of-voting-in-tory-leadership-race | Politics | 2016-07-05T19:08:25.000Z | Anushka Asthana | Theresa May wins first round of voting in Tory leadership race | Theresa May has swept to victory in the first round of voting in the Conservative leadership race, winning the support of 165 of her party’s MPs, placing her far ahead of her closest rival, Andrea Leadsom.
Brexit: Crabb and Fox out of Tory race after May wins first round of voting - As it happened
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The result means the home secretary is almost certain to be among the final two candidates selected by Tory politicians to be put forward for a vote by the grassroots of the party.
Leadsom secured the backing of 66 MPs, including many Eurosceptic figures who want to see someone who campaigned to leave the EU in charge of negotiating Britain’s exit.
She was followed by Michael Gove, with 48 votes, and Stephen Crabb, with 34. The fifth-placed candidate, who has been knocked out of the race, was the former defence secretary Liam Fox, on 16 votes. Crabb withdrew from the race about 90 minutes after the results were announced, saying he would support May and that she was “the only person who can unite our party and form a strong government at this serious moment”.
May said she was pleased by the result and very grateful to her colleagues, adding: “There is a big job before us: to unite our party and the country, to negotiate the best possible deal as we leave the EU, and to make Britain work for everyone.”
The result is a major blow for Gove, the justice secretary, who wrecked Boris Johnson’s campaign for leadership by abandoning him at the last moment in order to run himself.
The former London mayor endorsed Leadsom on Monday night in a move that is likely to have attracted a number of other leave campaigners to her campaign.
David Burrowes, who is supporting Leadsom, said: “We look like we are heading for an all-women shortlist. That is exciting, uplifting and energising for members.”
The energy secretary, Amber Rudd, who is backing May, said her candidate had secured half of all MPs. “It shows she’s the one who can unite the party. The other candidates got particular sectors but she’s got remain and leave, north and south. I think someone with such a broad reach of support will be right for the country.”
Some Johnson supporters were furious with Gove, with the MP Ben Wallace attacking him as having an “emotional need to gossip”, particularly after a drink, while Jake Berry tweeted that there was “a very deep pit reserved in hell” for people like him.
The five candidates in the first round of voting (L to R): Fox, May, Crabb, Leadsom and Gove. Photograph: PA
Asked on Sky News why he was not backing Gove, Johnson smiled and said: “Because Andrea Leadsom, I think, has all the qualities that you need at the moment. She’s got a lot of zap, a lot of drive, and all the experience.
“Plus I think she can articulate what’s needed at the moment, which is a bit of an antidote to some of the gloom and negativity and misunderstanding about what the Brexit vote means. Because some people think that it’s the end of the world. It’s not. On the contrary, it’s a massive opportunity for this country.”
Johnson voted along with hundreds of Tory MPs in a special room set up on parliament’s committee corridor, outside which supporters of each candidate stood with leaflets, stickers and badges. Sources said that 80% of the party had already cast their vote by halfway through the day.
Many joked about Ken Clarke, the former Conservative chancellor, being caught on camera as he criticised each of the leadership candidates, describing May as a “bloody difficult woman”.
Asked if David Cameron shared that view, the prime minister’s spokeswoman replied that he did not. “He has found she has done a very good job as home secretary and they have worked very closely together on a whole range of issues,” she said.
Asked if this amounted to an endorsement, the spokeswoman added: “I think it reflects the working relationship between prime minister and home secretary. It’s not that different to how he works with other cabinet ministers.”
The vote followed two sets of hustings in parliament on Monday night after which many Conservative MPs discussed the candidates in House of Commons bars.
All five candidates faced a packed room at 5.30pm organised by the backbench 1922 Committee, in which they took turns to speak and field questions for 20 minutes each. They then took part in half-hour sessions with the party’s 2020 group, which has members from the more progressive end of the party.
All of the candidates focused on the issue of life chances, with some MPs saying that Leadsom lost the room when she started talking about attachment theory and the brains of newborns, as she laid out her “three Bs - Brussels, banks and babies”. Others said that Fox and Gove had given the strongest performance, with May and Crabb both solid. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2013/feb/28/manchester-international-festival-shelley-macbeth | Culture | 2013-02-28T18:47:26.000Z | Maev Kennedy | Manchester International Festival: Shelley, Macbeth and Massive Attack | Reading this on mobile? Click here to view the video
A string of world premieres will be among the highlights of this summer's Manchester international festival. Events will include: a ballet featuring 11 tonnes of bone dust instead of dancers; a concert inspired by the poems of Michelangelo; and a performance of Percy Bysshe Shelley's savagely political 1819 poem The Masque of Anarchy – within a stone's throw of the site of the Peterloo massacre which inspired it.
Several of the events have already sold out. Tickets for Kenneth Branagh's return to Shakespeare and to Manchester after more than 10 years, playing Macbeth in a deconsecrated church, went in four minutes and almost crashed the festival's website.
The festival's last night, 20 July, will be relayed live on a big screen to 5,000 people in a nearby car park – but those tickets are also expected to sell out instantly. All the concerts by the group the xx have also sold out – unsurprisingly since they are performing not in an arena, but in a specially built 60-seat room.
Slightly to his surprise, festival director Alex Poots has found that this fourth biennial festival – of which the Guardian is a media partner – will be a darker affair, with many of the artists concerned with a world that looks bleaker to them in terms of politics, power, freedom and money – or the lack of it.
The stage and screen actor Maxine Peake, star of Silk, and Shameless, will perform Shelley's great 91 verse epic – without a book, she confirmed nervously – a shout of rage against the authorities who in 1819 sent a cavalry charge into a crowd of 60,000 unarmed men, women and children demonstrating for electoral law reform, killing 15 and injuring hundreds more, and incident she called "a bedrock of Manchester's history of radical politics". The event also led to the foundation of the Manchester Guardian, which in turn became the Guardian.
The performance on 6 July will be preceded by a debate hosted by the economist and BBC presenter Evan Davis, entitled Are we Powerless?.
Peake, who recently returned to live in Salford, challenged her peers to do more to support the regional arts. "They won't like me for saying this, but if instead of sitting in London and signing petitions against arts cuts, they actually got back out into the provinces and made performances, made exhibitions, we could bring about a real change."
The festival has a track record of seeking out unconventional new spaces, which Poots admitted has led to him stalking the streets shaking doorknobs and peering through hoardings – which is how he found a huge half-derelict former train station, the Mayfield Depot, abandoned since 1986, which will come back to life as a vast festival venue.
The depot will house a spectacular performance, Massive Attack v Adam Curtis, which will incorporate a concert – the band's first since 2010, and their only UK show this year – in an event being created by Robert del Naja of the band, the film-maker Adam Curtis, designer Es Devlin, and Felix Barrett of theatre company Punchdrunk.
The depot will also house one of the more startling events, a centenary performance of Igor Stravinsky's chilling score for The Rite of Spring, with a 100-piece orchestra flown in from Russia. The original ballet, choreographed by Nijinsky, sparked riots. This reimagining by the theatre director Romeo Castellucci will replace the dancers with 11 tonnes of bone dust eddying and billowing in a giant glass box.
Another legendary director, Robert Wilson, will be working with the actor Willem Dafoe, and the dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov, who is better known to some as a silver-haired character of Aleksandr Petrovsky in Sex and The City. They will be working on The Old Woman, based on a 1930s absurdist novella by a Russian writer, Danill Kharms, who would die a few years later in a prison camp, aged just 36.
It will be more of a home coming for Josie Rourke, who will be bringing her new Donmar Warehouse company in a play based on the epic match between the chess master Garry Kasparov and the computer Deep Blue. Although she comes from Salford, the last time she worked in Manchester was as an office temp trying to pay off her student loan. Rourke told me her grandmother died last year, and she was sad she would not see her first play directed in the north.
Manchester International Festival, 4-21 July 2013. This article was amended on 6 March 2013 to clarify a remark by Josie Rourke, and make clear that tickets are still available for many shows. | Full |
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/may/09/ndia-admits-missing-red-flags-in-case-of-malnourished-brothers-found-in-house-with-dead-father | Australia news | 2023-05-09T07:04:57.000Z | Luke Henriques-Gomes | NDIA admits missing red flags in case of malnourished brothers found in house with dead father | The national disability insurance agency (NDIA) has accepted it missed red flags in a case where two brothers with disabilities were found severely malnourished, naked and locked in a room, the disability royal commission heard on Tuesday.
The inquiry, which is holding its final public hearings in Brisbane this week, heard on Monday about the shocking case of two young men, aged 17 and 19, who authorities found living in squalid conditions in May 2020.
Their father was found deceased in the home after a concerned neighbour contacted authorities, while the two brothers were later diagnosed with severe malnourishment.
The inquiry has already heard that between June 2000 and May 2020, there were 30 occasions when concerns about neglect were raised with Queensland authorities, while 19 child protection notifications were received by the state’s Department of Child Safety.
Disabled Australian women face forced sterilisation, abortion and contraception, health groups say
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Of the two brothers, given the pseudonyms Kaleb and Jonathon by the inquiry, only the older brother, Kaleb, was an NDIS participant. The inquiry heard their father had essentially blocked Jonathon from the scheme, in part due to concerns it would affect his carer pension.
The inquiry heard that in meetings with the agency, the father had been hostile towards NDIA staff, insisting Kaleb did not need the level of funding offered by the NDIS.
The senior counsel assisting the commission, Kate Eastman, told the commission that while Kaleb’s first 12-month plan was worth $102,000, only $361 was spent.
After the father subsequently told NDIA officials Kaleb did not need that much funding, a second plan was valued at only $8,000. A third plan was lifted to $41,000 during a period when the father was hospitalised.
By the time of the father’s death in May 2020, the inquiry heard only $1,200 had been utilised for Kaleb’s necessary and reasonable supports in about two years.
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A neighbour who sometimes cared for the brothers told the inquiry on Monday that they lived in dire conditions, often denied food and water. She said she had encouraged the father to seek help.
Eastman said: “If such a very small amount of the overall funds available was used in that first year, should that have been a red flag to anyone in the NDIA?”
Desmond Lee, the NDIA’s acting general manager of national delivery, told the commission: “Yes. It should have been.”
Lee also accepted that the agency had “completely missed and overlooked” the needs of Jonathon, who was not granted NDIS supports until after the father’s death.
The inquiry heard that some NDIA officials had raised concerns about the father’s reluctance to receive support, but managers had suggested the agency could not “force” the scheme on to the family.
Eastman said this failed to recognise the “absolute conflict” between the interests of the father and his children, who were entitled to support under the scheme.
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If Labor bulldozes ahead with NDIS cuts that hurt disabled people, we will fight against it
George Taleporos
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Lee acknowledged that conflict “in hindsight”.
The commissioner, John Ryan, said the case involved a “whole heap of sliding door moments where people might have recognised two young men who are in serious trouble and no one noticed”.
“I don’t know whether that’s the case or not, but are people advised to look for signals of abuse and if they feel there’s abuse going on? Are there procedures within the NDIA to report that somewhere?” Ryan asked.
Lee said under updated guidelines and training procedures NDIA officials would be more proactive in considering a referral to agencies with coercive powers such as the public guardian, child protection or the police.
“I’m fairly confident that that kind of situation would be far less likely given the training and support that we provide to our staff today,” Lee said.
The royal commission also heard on Tuesday that under state law the Queensland Family and Child Commission could not investigate individual cases unless it received a referral from the child death register or child death review board.
4:21
'Nothing I will ever do that is more important': Bill Shorten pledges to reform the NDIS – video
The principal commissioner at the Queensland Family and Child Commission (QFCC), Luke Twyford, told the inquiry said this meant the watchdog stepped “above being drawn into individual cases and look at the compilation of issues across Queensland”.
But under questioning from counsel assisting Gillian Mahony, Twyford accepted that not investigating individual cases might also mean missing systemic issues.
In the case of Kaleb and Jonathon, the QFCC prepared a report after receiving a referral from the Queensland attorney general. It came after high-profile media reporting of the case.
Twyford said to his knowledge the report, which was provided to the minister but could only be released by the government, had not been made public.
The royal commission heard that instead, a summary report that made no specific reference to the circumstances of Kaleb and Jonathon’s case was provided to the government for public release.
The inquiry continues. | Full |
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