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https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/apr/04/bank-of-england-sounds-new-alarm-over-consumer-credit-binge

Money

2017-04-04T12:17:17.000Z

Katie Allen

Bank of England sounds new alarm over consumer credit binge

The Bank of England has flagged up new concerns about the rapid growth in consumer borrowing as Britons rack up debt on credit cards, car purchase schemes and personal loans. Reinforcing recent warnings from the Bank about signs of a borrowing binge, minutes from a policy meeting published on Tuesday suggested it was worried about looser lending conditions such as higher maximum loan limits. The financial policy committee (FPC) announced last week it was launching a review into the credit quality of new lending – underwriting standards and the risk models used by banks – and said it would scrutinise these findings over the coming months. Tuesday’s record of the FPC meeting revealed policymakers were worried about the risk to banks and other lenders from rising consumer borrowing, although they played down the risks to the wider economy. UK's borrowing binge is worrying the Bank of England Larry Elliott Read more “If recent strong growth had been driven by weaker underwriting standards, this could reduce the resilience of lenders to shocks. The FPC judged that underwriting standards should be monitored closely,” said the minutes of the FPC’s 22 March meeting. “Overall, the committee judged that, relative to mortgage debt, consumer credit was less likely to pose a risk to broader macroeconomic stability through its effect on household spending. Instead, the recent rapid growth in consumer credit could principally represent a risk to lenders if accompanied by weaker underwriting standards.” The FPC, chaired by the Bank’s governor, Mark Carney, described household indebtedness as “high by historical standards” and noted it had begun to rise relative to incomes. “Consumer credit had been growing particularly rapidly. It had reached an annual growth rate of 10.9% in November 2016 – the fastest rate of expansion since 2005 – before easing back somewhat in subsequent months,” the meeting minutes noted. “Growth had been broad-based across different segments of the market. Dealership car finance had seen the fastest expansion in recent years, but credit cards and personal loans had contributed materially to the acceleration in consumer credit in 2016.” Sub-prime cars: are car loans driving us towards the next financial crash? Read more The Bank’s latest remarks on household debts follow signs that rising prices and sluggish wage growth are squeezing incomes and prompting some households to run down savings or turn to loans to cover their living costs. On Monday, the financial watchdog set out proposals to help millions of people languishing under long-term credit card debt. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said charges could be eased or withdrawn if customers could not afford to curb their liabilities through a repayment plan. The FCA found that 3.3 million people had fallen into a persistent credit card debt spiral, where all their money is spent on repaying interest, while the total debt is never lowered.

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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/08/minnesota-big-oil-climate-trial-us-supreme-court

US news

2024-01-08T16:51:01.000Z

Dharna Noor

US supreme court rejects big oil’s bid to move Minnesota climate trial

The US supreme court denied a plea from big oil to move the venue of a 2020 climate lawsuit filed by the state of Minnesota. The decision, issued on Monday morning, puts the state one important step closer to putting the fossil fuel industry on trial for allegedly covering up the dangers of burning coal, oil and gas. Minnesota in 2020 sued the US’s top oil lobbying firm the American Petroleum Institute, major oil and gas producer ExxonMobil and Koch Industries, which is tied to the fossil fuel billionaire Charles Koch. The case alleges that the companies engaged in a decades-long campaign to deceive the public about climate change and attempts to force the companies to pay for the effects of the climate crisis on Minnesotans. The defendants have long argued that the case should be heard in federal court rather than the state court where it was originally filed. But on Monday, the high court denied their appeal. The order marks the third time since spring 2023 that the supreme court has turned down petitions from the fossil fuel industry to review jurisdiction in lawsuits focused on climate deception. In April, the high court turned down five appeal requests by oil majors, and the following month, it issued a similar decision on appeal requests in lawsuits filed by Hoboken, New Jersey and Delaware. “Big oil companies will continue fighting to escape justice, but for the third time in a year, the US supreme court has denied their desperate pleas to overturn the unanimous rulings of every single court to consider this issue,” said Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity, a non-profit organization that tracks and supports climate litigation. TThe fossil fuel industry argues that state court is an inappropriate venue to hear the lawsuit because climate change is an issue that should be left to federal lawmakers. However, there is no federal common regulation for greenhouse gas pollution. But supporters of the suit note that the Minnesota case was brought under state consumer protection law, and argue that such jurisdictional battles mark an attempt to kill the cases before they can be heard in court. “After three strikes, it’s time for these polluters to give up their failed arguments to escape state courts and prepare to face the evidence of their climate deception at trial,” said Wiles. Minnesota’s climate deception lawsuit is one of more than two dozen filed by states, municipalities and the District of Columbia since 2017. In December, Native tribes in Washington state filed a similar suit against ExxonMobil, Shell and other oil interests, becoming the first Indigenous plaintiffs in the US to do so. That same month, San Juan, Puerto Rico, filed a similar suit against major fossil fuel companies alleging they violated racketeering protections. In September, California joined the climate deception legal battle, filing a lawsuit against some of the world’s largest oil and gas companies. Multnomah county, Oregon, also filed a similar suit in June, claiming the fossil fuel industry should be held responsible for fueling a deadly heat dome that struck the region two years earlier.

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https://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/sep/08/fiction.fayweldon

Books

2007-09-08T22:46:28.000Z

Carrie O'Grady

Review: The Spa Decameron by Fay Weldon

The Spa Decameron by Fay Weldon 330pp, Quercus, £14.99 She had me at the title. A dozen ladies, gently poaching in the jacuzzi while outside the world succumbs to a 21st-century pandemic (and, worse yet, the collapse of the internet), each taking her turn to entertain and enlighten the others with a story from her own experience. What could be nicer? Boccaccio has enjoyed 650-odd years of renown with his original Decameron, and Weldon, with her gossipy, mischievous style, is well placed to take up his baton. Unfortunately, that's not all she has taken up. Boccaccio ripped off most of his stories; some, in an admirable early example of recycling, he even ripped off from writers who had already ripped them off themselves. Weldon, for her part, borrows only her own work - but at times she does it practically word for word. Since she is now 75, with 26 novels, six collections of stories and 40 years' worth of miscellaneous writing under her belt, that might be understandable. But the extent of her borrowing here really takes your breath away. Two of these stories are reprinted almost verbatim from her last collection, Nothing to Wear and Nowhere to Hide; there are fresh expansions and digressions, but the plots and many whole passages are identical. (Those same tales had been seen once already: she originally wrote them for magazines or newspapers.) She takes an idea from a third story, from 2000 - a poltergeist who likes to shatter the family china - and transplants it to a new set-up. And there are several turns of phrase with a strangely familiar ring. In a story from Nothing to Wear, the narrator muses: "Women end up with as many or as few children as they can afford: emotionally, physically, and practically. Often these days it was only one, sometimes it's none." In The Spa Decameron, it's brighter and breezier: "Women have the number of children they can afford, and sometimes, and more and more these days, that means none." And this is what Weldon's publisher has had the nerve - the immortal rind, as PG Wodehouse calls it - to call a "sparkling new novel", and flog for £14.99. It's a shame, because The Spa Decameron is quite good fun. The wraparound device of the spa story is flimsy, with a rather sketchily drawn plague - "Sumatra flu" - failing to strike much fear into one's heart. But the isolated spa, most of whose employees have bolted, is a great setting and Weldon makes the most of it. Her "ladies" have a ball, emptying the huge fridges of caviar and champagne, applying mud packs to their faces and taking chocolate into the bubble pool. They are grown-up kids in a candy store, and their feminine wish-fulfilment somehow counteracts the implausibility of their stories and makes them easier to digest. The narrator, Phoebe, is a woman of a certain age, caustic, witty, insecure yet slightly smug when she feels she has a right to be. She bolts to the spa when her husband is called away and her house is flooded three days before Christmas. The women she meets there are a real pick 'n' mix: the blonde twin who became a brain surgeon but couldn't catch a man, the public speaker whose heart stops beating when she's stressed, the foul-mouthed manicurist who was pursued by a Saudi sheikh. All, naturally, have trouble with men. The judge's trouble is particularly unfortunate, since she was born, much to her dismay, with male genitalia and "a superfluity of testosterone" - a baffling defect which she put right as soon as she felt ready. She is the embodiment of Weldon's philosophy about the battle of the sexes: even when they share blood vessels, male and female are at war. The weather girl, with her slight estuary twang, also has a spell in hospital during her tale - but for a very different reason. Hers is one of the more interesting stories in that she is unequivocally in the wrong, and she attracts a certain amount of condemnation from her bikini-clad listeners, who for the most part are an unjudgmental lot. (Although they can be, if you'll excuse the phrase, a pack of bitches - often with funny results. One sculpted executive, dangling a toe in the bubbles, is pressed to admit how old she is. The answer: 77. A gasp echoes round the pool, and a little cry of horror. "How could anyone be so old and still function?") There's also a moral undercurrent in Phoebe's musings; she talks of her hairdresser as her confessor, telling her everything and feeling "absolved". This may have something to do with the new direction Weldon took in her 2006 book, What Makes Women Happy, in which she laid down some bizarre ethical guidelines - such as, it's OK to sleep with someone other than your husband if it makes you happy, but it's not OK to do it more than once. Clearly, Weldon is as good as her word. Any delight you might take in these frothy tales is tainted by the thought of the two reworked stories. You start to wonder whether the rest are secondhand goods, smuggled in from some Weldon novel of the 1980s or 90s, forgotten perhaps even by the author herself. This "new collection" breaks the unwritten contract between author and reader - and no, it's not OK to do it more than once.

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https://www.theguardian.com/film/2012/nov/25/how-dogme-built-denmark

Film

2012-11-25T19:00:00.000Z

Patrick Kingsley

How the Dogme manifesto reinvented Denmark

Il est merde!" yelled Mark Kermode, from the back of the cinema. "It is shit!" The year was 1998 and Kermode – then Radio 1's film critic – had not taken kindly to that year's Cannes film festival. Specifically, he was narked by a new work by Lars von Trier called The Idiots, a film shot with shaky cameras that centred on an orgy-loving group of rebels who, in public, acted like people with mental disabilities. The Idiots was one of the first films to emerge from the Dogme 95 movement. Three years earlier, its ringleader Von Trier had stood up at a Paris conference and showered its audience with pamphlets. These were the bigwigs of European film; the pamphlets were the manifesto for a new doctrine of chastity that rejected much of what they stood for. At the heart of Dogme were 10 rules signed by four Danish directors, of whom Von Trier remains the most prominent. Part-gimmick and part-sincere, Dogme raged against the unrealistic plotlines and overwrought visuals of mainstream cinema. "I swear as a director to refrain from personal taste," read its manifesto. "My supreme goal is to force the truth out of my characters and settings." Genre films were outlawed, as were filters and fancy lighting. Directors went uncredited. Thomas Vinterberg's Festen, about a family reunion that goes spectacularly wrong, was the first Dogme film, appearing in 1998, just ahead of The Idiots. And although it angered some, Dogme was for many the most exciting thing to hit cinema since the French new wave. "I was sitting in Cannes, watching those films, and thinking, 'This is fantastic,'" remembers film critic Christian Monggaard, then at the start of his career. "This is what it must have been like to sit in Paris in the early 60s and watch the first films by Godard and Truffaut. Finally, films are talking to me about the kind of experiences that happen in my life." Von Trier and Vinterberg later abandoned their project (they worried it had itself become too generic), but for several years it remained the talk of European arthouse cinema. Dogme wasn't just a watershed for film, though. It was a watershed for all of Denmark, and one that would come to embody its cultural renaissance. This spring I travelled around the country, from the Copenhagen set of The Killing to the windmills of Jutland, interviewing great Danes for a book about the nation recently named the happiest on Earth. Dogme, I discovered, had even sparked a renaissance in Danish cooking. In the mid-1990s, says Bi Skaarup, president of the Danish Gastronomic Association, "food culture was really down the pan. If mother had an evening off, you had pizza, Coca-Cola and chips." Yet its restaurants are now world-beaters, with 12 Michelin-starred venues – 12 more than in the early 1980s. Copenhagen's Noma has been named best restaurant in the world for three years running (sample dishes: vegetables served in a trough of earth; eggs you fry yourself). How did this come about? Largely thanks to the New Nordic Kitchen (NNK), a movement founded in 2004 with values partly inspired by Dogme 95. Von Trier and co advocated using basic equipment and props found on location. The NNK wanted something similar: local techniques and local, seasonal produce. They even had a manifesto promoting "the purity, freshness, simplicity and ethics we wish to associate with our region". Claus Meyer, co-founder of Noma, says: "I was very inspired by the Dogme brothers. I thought if they could do it, we could do it." Copenhagen's supermarkets are now full of once-obscure roots and herbs; a new generation of Danish chefs likes to shock and confound. At the I'm a Kombo pop-up restaurant in Copenhagen, I had to carve through the table with a Stanley knife to reach part of my meal: a herb chalice beneath the surface. It was fun, bizarre, slightly shocking and (by the time I'd hacked through) quite tiring. Very Dogme, in other words. The table is replaced afterwards. Even this paled beside the city's Nordic Food Lab, which experiments in the name of the NNK. There, I was fed fried mould garnished with grasshopper. (It tasted quite good, actually, a cross between steak and an oily cereal bar.) And Noma, meanwhile, serves live shrimp. "You don't really know what to say when you see three little shrimps still alive," says food critic Bent Christensen. "It gives a little bit of fear." The place is jumpin' … fried mould with grasshopper, as served by the Nordic Food Lab, Copenhagen. Dogme's tentacles have reached into Danish architecture, reminding practitioners of the need to focus on the human. By the mid-1990s, many mainstream Danish architects had become obsessed with detailing, and less concerned with how their buildings fostered human interaction. "The big offices were doing what I call 'hi-tech baroque,'" says Nille Juul-Sørensen of the Danish Design Centre. "It was advanced for the sake of being advanced." The annex Henning Larsen Architects built for the Berlingske Tidende newspaper was a case in point. Boasting a fiddly, double-fronted facade that becomes more transparent as the day goes on, the annex is, argues Juul-Sørensen, too focused on detail for detail's sake – like a Hollywood film prioritising special effects over narrative. Since 2000, Juul-Sørensen argues, a new generation of architects (firms such as the Bjarke Ingels Group, Effekt and Cobe) have focused on making engaging external spaces, rich in architectural narrative rather than awash with detail. "The detailing is crap," says Juul-Sørensen. "But to walk around in these buildings and plazas is pure joy. You could say that each plaza is doing its own little Dogme movie." The indirect impact of Dogme, he adds, is wider than is commonly realised: "It took everyone outside their normal bubble and got them to say, 'Is this the direction we want to go in?' These young designers were the Dogme of architecture. They got the human being back." Dogme's biggest effect may have been psychological rather than ideological. For years, Denmark had seen itself as an inconsequential backwater, and ambition had dwindled accordingly. Danes who thought big were often cut down by their peers, thanks largely to a Nordic cultural concept called the Jante law, which discourages attention-seeking. The success of Dogme showed that Denmark – small as it is, with a population of just over five million – could be a cultural force. "It's the same thing as a guy with a small penis who wants a huge motorbike," Vinterberg once told Variety. "When you're a small country, you have to yell to get heard." Danes took note – not least the team behind two TV shows Britain has come to love. Dogme, says Piv Bernth, producer of Borgen and The Killing, "opened up people's eyes to Denmark. And we opened up to the world. We started to look at ourselves as less local and more international. We became more curious and ambitious." Aesthetically, The Killing owes little to Dogme. You could compare its unadorned realism to the pared-back plots of Festen and The Idiots. But really, its excellence is inspired less by Dogme and more by the ambition it fostered. Traditionally, Danish TV hadn't been very progressive: dramas tended to be one-off adaptations of stage plays. After Dogme, says Bernth, she and her colleagues started visiting the sets of big American series, including NYPD Blue and The West Wing. They didn't want to replicate what they had seen; they wanted to better it. "It was my ambition to do the world's best show," says Søren Sveistrup, creator of The Killing. "People laughed at me. They said, 'Oh, we can't do that – we're only Danish.'" Of course, not everyone agrees this renaissance was triggered by Dogme. Denmark's triumph at Euro 1992 was undeniably a boost; the country's star fashion designer Henrik Vibskov, for one, believes Denmark was already on the rise. "The Dogme movies," he says, "were just mirroring whatever else was going on." For politicians, the explanation may be even more prosaic. "Dogme is one of the reasons why a lot of creative stuff is happening," says Uffe Elbaek, the culture minister. "But it's sure not the only one." The boom in food, TV and architecture, he says, is the result of three decades of financial support. This has assisted the Danish Film School and the New Nordic Kitchen movement, and delivered grassroots funding for young creatives. Free university tuition hasn't hurt, either. "Now we see the fruit of that kind of public investment," says Elbaek. But film critic Monggaard has no doubt there is a link between Von Trier's 1995 pamphlet-hurling and the ambition shown by today's young go-getters. "It was a very brash statement from Von Trier," he says. "You could say the same about [chef Rene] Redzepi when he makes his food in Noma. It's very, 'Here I am, this is what I do, I'm a very good cook.' It's a kind of bravado – a very forward, almost aggressive way of marketing yourself." What about Von Trier's alma mater, the Danish Film School? Is Dogme's influence still strong? "We're worlds apart," laughs 26-year-old student Jesper Fink in the cafeteria. "The majority of directors here have other idols: Coppola, Scorsese." But Von Trier's drive, if not his doctrine, is already the stuff of legend. "I think students are mostly inspired by the stories of his time in the school," says Fink. "That he was completely impossible to work with, always wanted to have his way. Not everyone does that – but they're thinking about it. Everybody knows about Lars von Trier."

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https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/sep/23/how-many-small-businesses-us-census-bureau-wrong

Business

2018-09-23T10:00:21.000Z

Gene Marks

The US Census Bureau says there are 30m small businesses. They're wrong | Gene Marks

For years, whenever someone asked me how many small businesses there are in the US I always have the same response. “About 30m,” I say. Why? Because that’s what the US Census Bureau says. Actually, the number is even more. It’s 32,570,855. But wait … is this really accurate? Are these really small business owners like me? Businesses are confident in Trump's economy – but challenges still loom Gene Marks Read more No, not really. And here’s why: of all these businesses, it turns out that only a third of them actually have employees. Not only that, but according to a report from the Census Bureau’s Adam Grundy, the 76.2% of businesses that had no employees accounted for just 4% of sales of all small businesses. So who are these non-employers? They’re “self-employed individuals operating a very small unincorporated business which may or may not be the owner’s principal source of income,” Grundy writes in a blog for the bureau. In other words, these are not business owners. Many of them are “side hustlers”. It’s the neighbor who sells $1,000 worth of crafts on Etsy or the friend who sometimes drives an Uber. It’s a college kid who babysits or a school teacher who occasionally rents out a room on Airbnb. They probably have a full-time job with health insurance. They are not entrepreneurs. They’re just earning a few extra bucks and reporting the income on a schedule C – the supplemental income tax form. There are others skewing the number. I call them the “shells”. For example, the real estate mogul who owns 10 rental properties each filing a separate tax return. Sure, that person could be a legit business owner, but of one business, not 10. I have a client where the four partners file tax returns for both a limited and general partnership for liability and tax purposes, but only own one business. All of these tax returns are skewing the Census Bureau’s calculations. There are, however, true “independents”. These are the people that run companies with no employees. This is their full-time job and they rely on that income for their livelihood. They’re generally service providers – a stockbroker, a cleaner, a delivery person. My barber, who is an independent contractor at someone else’s barber shop, is a business owner. An accountant, consultant or lawyer who may work from home but has clients is another example. Full-time real estate agents, dieticians, life coaches and yoga instructors also fit the bill. They don’t employ anyone, but I’ll give them a pass anyway and include them in my definition of small business owners. How many of the 25m non-employers are hobbyists and shells versus actual independents? No one seems to know. What I do know is that none of them, in my opinion, are true business owners. To me, a true business owner usually satisfies two requirements: the business is a stand-alone entity that files its own tax return. More importantly, the business has employees. True business owners sign paychecks. They have vacation policies. They struggle to find good people. They do performance reviews. They know what it’s like when a trusted employee doesn’t show up for work one day or just quits for no reason, leaving them high and dry. They find themselves spending more time on staff scheduling then selling. They have a break room. Businesses claim it's hard to hire 'good people'. The solution is pretty simple Gene Marks Read more Which is why certain industries, such as wholesales trade, accommodation and food services, have more employees than others. These are the true small business people. These are the ones who know that, like any newly married couple, you don’t truly know what it’s like to be a parent until you’ve had kids. And you don’t know what it’s like to run a business until you’ve got a payroll. So, if you’re targeting the “small business” community to sell your products or get elected to public office, just know that there aren’t 32m small businesses in the US. There are just 32m who report extra income on their tax returns. The real number of small business owners in this country is somewhere around 7.8m. They know who they are.

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https://www.theguardian.com/football/2017/jan/04/premier-league-winners-losers-2017-africa-cup-of-nations

Football

2017-01-04T12:00:19.000Z

Paul Doyle

The Premier League’s likely winners and losers from 2017 Africa Cup of Nations | Paul Doyle

Now is the time for top clubs to prove that to be forewarned really is to be forearmed. Everyone knew that the Africa Cup of Nations was on the agenda for early 2017 and now, with 23 Premier League players among those heading off to Gabon to compete for their countries in what their employers view as the world’s worst-timed international tournament, rich clubs must show they are resourceful enough to cope. Otherwise they will pay a heavy price. Liverpool’s matchwinner Sadio Mané will head to Gabon with a heavy heart Read more For Liverpool and Manchester United that could mean slipping further off Chelsea’s pace in the title race. For clubs such as Sunderland, Leicester City and Hull City, it may result in falling deeper into relegation trouble. Of the 99 signings that Sir Alex Ferguson made as manager of Manchester United only four were African – and one of the reasons for that was the Scot’s wariness about losing a key player in the middle of a campaign. When forking out around £30m for Ivory Coast’s Eric Bailly last summer, José Mourinho obviously figured that some players are so good that the risk is worth running, a feeling that Ferguson once had about Eric Djemba-Djemba. Mourinho’s judgment looks sounder on that score, with Bailly emerging as United’s best centre-back of the season so far. United kept a clean sheet without him at West Ham United in their last match but, depending on Ivory Coast’s progress in Gabon, they may have to contest another seven matches while he is away with his country. That schedule includes the high-stakes duel with Liverpool on 15 January. On the plus side for United, Liverpool will be deprived of Sadio Mané for that match, as the forward will be on duty with Senegal. As two of their rivals are depleted, Chelsea, who used to fret about the departures of players such as Didier Drogba, Michael Essien and Salomon Kalou, can smile at being unhindered by the Africa Cup of Nations. Nigeria’s slightly surprising failure to qualify for the tournament means that Victor Moses remains available to Antonio Conte (so does Mikel John Obi, although Conte may not consider that a relevant observation). Chelsea, then, can be confident that this year’s Afcon could be as beneficial to them as the last one was in 2015, when Manchester City missed Yaya Touré terribly. Two years ago the title race was a lot closer at this stage, as Chelsea were neck and neck with Manchester City before the latter lost Yaya Touré and Wilfried Bony to the Afcon. City missed Touré terribly and were seven points behind Chelsea by the time their Ivorians returned. Earlier in this season it seemed as if Pep Guardiola might not have cared if Touré went travelling for a month, now the fact that the midfielder has retired from international football means one headache fewer for a manager who has much to ponder at the moment. City will have no players at the Afcon. Nor will Tottenham Hotspur, while Arsenal look to have enough cover to withstand the loss of the Egypt midfielder Mohamed Elneny. Sunderland and Leicester would like to be able to say something similar but both are set to lose three important players and cannot be certain of coping. Sunderland are to be shorn of their Ivory Coast centre-back Lamine Koné, their Gabon midfielder Didier Ndong and their Tunisia midfielder Wahbi Khazri. All three of those players featured in the club’s last Premier League win, the 1-0 victory against Watford on 17 December. The loss of Koné looks to be especially unwelcome to David Moyes, who has been keenly aware of the downside to losing a centre-back to the Afcon since 2004, when his Everton team tumbled into relegation peril by losing four matches while their Nigeria defender Joseph Yobo was away at the tournament. Koné’s absence is likely to mean regular deployment by Moyes of a central defence featuring John O’Shea and Papy Djilobodji. The latter was not deemed worthy of a call-up by Senegal and Moyes will be hoping the player’s performances over the next few weeks do not vindicate that decision. Wilfried Bony, who plays for Ivory Coast, is one of three Stoke City players who will be absent for the club while at the 2017 Africa Cup of Nations. Photograph: Eddie Keogh/Reuters If the Afcon goes the way that bookmakers expect, then Algeria will be in the tournament right to the end, in which case Leicester will be without Riyad Mahrez and Islam Slimani for at least four league matches on top of the FA Cup tie against Everton. Mahrez has not been as consistently good this season as he was last term, when he was voted the Premier League’s player of the year, but Claudio Ranieri would surely liked to have had him available for upcoming jousts with Chelsea, Southampton and Manchester United, not to mention the meeting with Burnley, who were tipped to struggle at the start of the campaign but are currently two points above the ailing champions. Leicester will also be adversely affected by the loss of their Ghana midfielder Daniel Amartey, who has been improving in recent weeks. On the positive side, Mahrez’s absence represents a big opportunity for Demarai Gray, the young winger who has regularly impressed coming off the bench and performed splendidly when given a rare start against West Ham last weekend. It could also turn out to be a chance for Ahmed Musa, the Nigerian who has so far failed to make much of an impact at Leicester since his arrival in the summer. Slimani’s absence, meanwhile, could lead to regular redeployment of the Jamie Vardy-Shinji Okazaki partnership that worked so well last season. Hull City’s attempt to haul themselves out of the relegation zone will be complicated by two significant absences from a thin squad. The Egyptian defender Ahmed Elmohamady has played in all but one of the club’s league matches so far this season, while the Congolese striker Dieumerci Mbokani has served as the fulcrum of the team’s attack in recent games, even though he has yet to score for the club. Sam Allardyce may be wishing he used his one England match to cap Wilfried Zaha, who has since pledged his allegiance to Ivory Coast and will therefore leave Crystal Palace for the best part of a month. Palace will also be without one possible replacement for Zaha, with Bakary Sako hooking up with Mali. Watford will also lose a key winger because Nordin Amrabat will be competing for Morocco. Wilfried Bony has been less influential than was hoped for by Stoke City this season after arriving on loan from Manchester City but the manager, Mark Hughes, would still rather the striker had not been picked by Ivory Coast. Bony is one of three departures from Stoke, with the tricky young winger Ramadan Sobhi joining up with Egypt while Mame Biram Diouf, the forward who has been successfully converted into a right wing-back by Hughes this season, will be part of Senegal’s attack. Wilfried Zaha accepts Ivory Coast call-up for Africa Cup of Nations Read more Senegal have enough talent to go far in the tournament and that would be a bad development for West Ham, for whom Cheikhou Kouyaté is important. The London club will also be without André Ayew and whatever relief they felt after Algeria’s decision not to select Sofiane Feghouli can now be fully appreciated after his ban following Mike Dean’s decision to send him off against Manchester United was overturned on Wednesday. Progress by Senegal would be especially problematic on Merseyside and not only because of Liverpool’s need for Mané. Idrissa Gueye has been the linchpin of Everton’s midfield since joining from Aston Villa in the summer. Villa, meanwhile, are proof that the Afcon affects English clubs beyond the Premier League, as Steve Bruce’s attempt to steer the club into the Championship play-off places is made more difficult by the loss of three players, including his Ivorian top scorer Jonathan Kodjia. Premier League players selected for Gabon 2017 Arsenal Elneny (Egypt) Bournemouth Gradel (Ivory Coast) Crystal Palace Zaha (Ivory Coast), Sako (Mali) Everton Gueye (Senegal) Hull City Mbokani (DR Congo), Elmohamady (Egypt) Leicester City Amartey (Ghana), Mahrez and Slimani (Algeria) Liverpool Mané (Senegal) Manchester United Bailly (Ivory Coast) Southampton Boufal (Morocco) Stoke City Bony (Ivory Coast), Sobhi (Egypt), Diouf (Senegal) Sunderland Koné (Ivory Coast), Ndong (Gabon), Khazri (Tunisia) Watford Amrabat (Morocco), Guedioura (Algeria) West Ham United Kouyaté (Senegal), Ayew (Ghana)

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2017/dec/12/i-challenge-them-to-leave-but-force-them-to-stay-playwrights-on-their-audiences

Stage

2017-12-12T07:00:27.000Z

Guardian Stage

I challenge them to leave but force them to stay': playwrights on their audiences

Lucy Prebble There are three acts of writing: before rehearsal, during rehearsal and during previews. Though each shortens drastically in length, each is as vital and thorough as the one before. The third act (previews) is defined entirely by the presence of an audience. There is a strange circularity to it. As you sit in an auditorium with an audience for the first time you are closest to the state in which you sat down to write the first draft. You are keenly aware of the lack of knowledge about what is about to happen, newly appreciative of how information is given, how realisations are made. You become the audience again. Neil LaBute The audience definitely influences my writing but in ways different than you might imagine. I don’t think about them in terms of “Will they like this play?” or “Will they enjoy this character?” as much as I care about connecting with them in a visceral way with the material I present (both story and character). I want to get close to them and make them feel the events in a real way – to break the fourth wall, to look them squarely in the eye, and challenge them to leave, but force them to stay (by making the work compelling, not by having guards at the doors). I care more about being true to my characters than I do to the audience, but I want to do such good work that the audience finds that they have no choice but to continue watching. Gbolahan Obisesan and Ronke Adekoluejo in The Mountaintop by Katori Hall at the Young Vic in 2016. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian Katori Hall Oddly, I do not think too much about audience when I start writing and I don’t know if that is a good thing or a bad thing. I think the first audience member I seek to please is myself. Selfish, yes, but writing for an audience of one I think helps you write for an audience of many. Quiara Alegría Hudes I believe what Edward Albee said – a playwright is not a servant. You must not alter your core vision based on an audience’s reaction. Additionally, audiences differ – from city to city, production to production, sometimes night to night. So if you write solely to suit the audience, you’ll be chasing your tail. That being said, I study them very closely – where they laugh, where they lean in, where they “go fishing” in their minds. To me, the most telling kind of audience reaction is the electric silence – when you can feel them stop breathing for a moment. If I find myself in agreement with an audience’s reaction, then I will rewrite. Temi Wilkey in Chris Goode’s version of Jubilee at the Royal Exchange, Manchester. Photograph: Johan Persson Chris Goode Audiences are specific groupings of people under particular conditions, in anticipation of and response to certain events. We struggle to meet them, especially as writers. Actors glimpse them, at best. The audience that attends a specific occasion is unique to it, and the next audience is its own separate entity. It makes no sense to talk of “the audience” in a generalised way. What we are talking about when we talk about “the audience” at the point when we are writing is, necessarily, our fear of the audience, our projection into the void where the audience will eventually convene. There are, of course, moments of practical judgment that have to inform writing. Do I have to explain this reference? Do I need to signal this dynamic shift more clearly? (The one I try to expunge from my thinking: will an audience get this?) My rule of thumb is that there’s no reason to suppose an audience is, generally, any less intelligent or informed than I am or my colleagues are. But I guess I will, sometimes, spell something out a bit more, just to be sure, if the fluency of communication in a passage feels crucial and I don’t want anyone to get hung up on something they think they may have misunderstood. Or, alternatively – and perhaps more successfully – I’ll make it fuzzier and more hospitable, so that an audience that completely understands what I’m getting at isn’t necessarily at an advantage over one that doesn’t. Alexander Zeldin I write poetry and other forms of writing for myself, but I think theatre is a way of helping me and the people I’m with have a better understanding about ourselves and our place in the world. One of the great qualities of theatre is that you can concentrate time, you can look at life in a way that is increasingly difficult to do. I read lots about the origins of the theatre and in those days I think theatre was there to do good to people; to help crops grow, or rain fall, and to have a space in which every type of person can be brought together. One need only look at the architecture of certain theatres, be they Greek or Elizabethan, to notice that one of the particularities of the theatre is that a whole different range of people can come together. Theatre is for me a very effective tool for thinking and, crucially, feeling a little bit of what it’s like to be in the world now. So the audience is absolutely crucial to the point of theatre in the first instance but theatre is an invitation to think of oneself as part of a group of more than one. Luke Clark and Janet Etuk in Love, directed and written by Alexander Zeldin at the National Theatre. Photograph: Sarah Lee/The Guardian George Brant On a micro level, the rewriting process is all about the audience. One specific example: the life of a drone pilot is for the most part a boring one, so I knew that boredom had to be part of Grounded – calibrating how much intentional boredom an audience can handle was certainly a new and fascinating challenge. Anne Washburn An imagined perfect audience (curious, alert, loving, demanding, and fierce) influences the writing of the first draft. After that … I do have a weather eye out, during rehearsal and previews, for clarity and engagement but, the more you listen to what audiences are taking away from plays – yours, others’ – the more it becomes clear that attention is a very mysterious process. Chatting with people after shows, fielding talk-backs, just listening to conversations afterwards; I went to a revival, on Broadway, of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and afterwards heard a group of what seemed to be perfectly intelligent and sophisticated people discussing whether or not the child was real. So I think you can only go so far when thinking about how people are making sense of your play. And as far as interest and enjoyment and affection go … Mr Burns was a real flashpoint in this way but all of my plays, some people seem to really respond and others it’s absolutely not their cup of tea. I just throw up my hands, really, and write the play I myself would like to see, and know that some number of other people will come along and I can’t anticipate who it will be or why. Extracted from Fifty Playwrights on Their Craft, published by Methuen Drama

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https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2014/apr/29/frank-skinner-edinburgh-festival-russell-kane-richard-herring-shows

Stage

2014-04-29T07:58:14.000Z

Guardian Stage

Frank Skinner returns to Edinburgh festival for first time in seven years

Frank Skinner will take his new standup show, Man in a Suit, to the Edinburgh festival this summer, it has been confirmed. Skinner is currently on tour with the show, which sold out for five weeks at the Leicester Square theatre earlier this year, and in which the standup has reinvented himself – to a degree. ("Man in a Suit certainly sees Skinner tone down the trademark blokeishness," wrote Brian Logan, "but only so far.") It has been seven years since Skinner performed a full-length standup show at the festival. He won the Perrier comedy award there in 1991. Skinner told the Guardian: "A three-week Edinburgh run, no nights off: in the old days it would have wrecked me but that's when I'd be in the Gilded Balloon bar till 4am. This year I'm taking my family and will spend much of my spare time seeking out puppet-based entertainment." Skinner is one of several comedians promoted by Avalon who have announced details of their Edinburgh shows. Skinner's fellow Perrier winner Al Murray will present a work-in-progress version of his 52-date touring show One Man, One Guvnor, celebrating "20 years at the lager top". The ale-loving philosopher will also be hosting The Pub Landlord's Summer Saloon, an Edinburgh variety show with special guests. Richard Herring and Russell Kane will both present dramatic works at the festival. Herring's play I Killed Rasputin charts an encounter between the journalist EM Halliday and Felix Yusupov, the prince supposedly involved in the assassination of Rasputin. "I am very excited to be bringing a play to the fringe for the first time in 15 years," says Herring, who has been to St Petersburg on a research trip and wrote the opening of the play in the shadow of Yusupov Palace. "I have long been obsessed with Rasputin and the incredible life of his supposed assassin Felix Yusupov. His account of the murder is so melodramatic and unlikely that it is surely covering a more interesting and unpleasant truth … For a story of murder, revolution and obscene privilege it is surprisingly funny though. It's a daunting task to get all this together into an 80-minute play but I am relishing the challenge and after several years of writing TV scripts that get bogged down in the commissioning process it is very gratifying to be writing something that will definitely be produced. Even if the economics of Edinburgh mean it will cost me tens of thousands of pounds." In Kane's "bleak and viscerally twisted" monologue The Closure of Craig Solly, the audience "become the friends and family of this psychotic gangster's victims". Kane's standup set will explore the British fascination with smallness while Herring's will examine how his "whole career is a failed attempt to top a piece of visual slapstick comedy he came up with at 16". Other Avalon acts confirming Edinburgh appearances include Alex Horne, Carl Donnelly, Chris Ramsey, Hayley Ellis, Lucy Beaumont, Matt Forde and Phil Wang. Tickets go on sale on 13 May.

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https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/bike-blog/2016/apr/28/cycling-how-to-ride-in-the-rain

Life and style

2016-04-28T08:55:13.000Z

Nick Van Mead

Cycling: how to ride in the rain

We’d all rather ride in warm and dry weather but sometimes that isn’t an option. Don’t let bad weather put you off, though – with the right kit, attitude and skills and you can stay safe and still enjoy your ride. There’s no such thing as bad weather … ‘There’s no such thing as bad weather just the wrong kit’ may be a well-worn cliche – but with a good waterproof jacket, neoprene overshoes and gloves your wet-weather ride will be a lot less uncomfortable. Breathability is key, otherwise your sweat will just mean you get wet from the inside rather than the outside. If it rains hard for a long time you are going to get wet anyway, but having the right kit will at least stop you from getting too cold. To be waterproof, jackets need to have taped seams. While a fully taped, fully waterproof jacket is a good option in really bad weather, a lightweight jacket which stuffs in a back pocket will stop you getting caught short in a shower – and you can easily stow it away if the sun comes out. What lurks beneath? Don’t ride through puddles or standing water. You won’t be able to see how deep the water is until it’s too late – it might just be a shallow puddle, or it could be a wheel-breaking pothole. Steer clear. Slippery when wet Avoid manhole covers, painted lines and the tell-tale rainbow of oily residue on the road. If you can’t avoid them, try to steer straight and don’t turn or brake until you’re through. On guard Mudguards will not only help protect you from the elements – stopping water spraying over your feet and up your back – a rear guard will also protect the person riding behind you. Some club rides insist participants fit guards in wet weather. If you’re unsure, ask the mechanic in your local cycle shop which mudguards will fit your bike. Video: Let this Polish cyclist’s puddle experience be a warning Think thicker, flatter tyres Tyres are your only point of contact with the road. Wider tyres should offer more grip, so if you ride a road bike, for example, consider swapping your 23c tyres for wider 25c or 28c rubber. Think of reducing your tyre pressure too: anything from 10 to 20psi lower than usual should offer greater contact with the road and so traction – although you might also be more at risk of a puncture, and fixing a flat in the pouring rain is no fun at all. Easy does it Conventional rim bike brakes are much less effective in the wet (although disc brakes are not as badly affected) so you need to give yourself much more time to slow down or stop. Test your brakes at the start of the ride. Obviously, take extra care on tight corners which you might zip around on a warm, dry day. And be aware that it’s not just water that reduces grip – grit washed into the road, especially quiet country lanes, can catch you out too. Light up Rain, overcast skies and steamy windows all reduce motorists’ vision, so it’s a good idea to ride with lights in wet weather. A flashing rear light on your seatpost is inexpensive and effective. Think reflective and bright clothing too – you can never be too visible. Post-ride Clean the grit off your chain after a wet ride and reapply oil to help your chain last longer. After that it’s time for a hot shower, a change into dry clothes and a your treat of choice – you deserve it … Have we missed anything? Share your tips for wet weather riding in the comments below.

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https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2015/oct/27/spectre-james-bond-villains-women-ending-sam-mendes

Film

2015-10-27T11:46:14.000Z

Benjamin Lee

Spectre: the villains, the women, the ending – discuss the film (with spoilers!)

After the dreary and misjudged Quantum of Solace, the release of another James Bond film was hardly worth flagging in the diary. But Sam Mendes was wisely brought into the fold and he delivered Skyfall which became something of a phenomenon, matching wildly enthusiastic reviews with record-breaking box-office returns. Daniel Craig: a reluctant Bond who has made the role his own Read more The same team have reunited for Spectre, a film that’s accompanied with extraordinarily high expectations and now that it’s been released in the UK, here’s a forum for you to discuss what you think about Bond’s latest thriller. There are spoilers ahead, so if you haven’t seen the film yet and want to remain blissfully ignorant, look away. The tone Light touch … Léa Seydoux and Daniel Craig. Photograph: Allstar/United Artists While there was silliness in Skyfall (Javier Bardem’s Joker-lite villain’s plan becomes more nonsensical on second viewing), it succeeded largely because of a grounded tone that separated it from many previous instalments. At Monday’s premiere, Sam Mendes referred to Spectre as more “flamboyant” yet still retaining the emotional core of the last film. It’s definitely a lighter film, both in atmosphere and plotting, and at times, feels like a less sexist Roger Moore outing. After Skyfall, given the continuation of some of the events, it does jar somewhat. The film’s lurch towards something resembling real-world emotion centres around Bond’s surprisingly sentimental relationship with Léa Seydoux’s psychologist (more on that later) which feels poorly developed. But, despite the camper tone, it somehow felt less fun than Skyfall. The villain Christoph Waltz and Léa Seydoux. Photograph: Allstar/United Artists Rabid discussion over the true identity of Christoph Waltz’s shadowy bad guy started almost immediately after the character was announced with most convinced he was playing legendary Bond villain Blofeld. Mirroring the story of Benedict Cumberbatch not playing Khan (but totally playing Khan) in Star Trek Into Darkness, the big reveal in Spectre was that yes, despite reports to the contrary, Waltz was playing Blofeld. But we didn’t get to see a lot of him in the film which, given how his character was left during the finale, seemed like a very deliberate tactic. It was essentially an origins tale for the character, but was it enough to make audiences want more? The Snowden angle Post-Snowden baddie … Andrew Scott. Photograph: Jonathan Olley While the tone of Spectre might have been somewhat lighter than any other Daniel Craig outing, the theme of surveillance gave it some vague roots in reality. Andrew Scott’s sinister suit busied himself by spouting about a future where privacy would be a thing of the past, along with the dated use of agents such as Bond. It was clearly a post-Snowden Bond film but other than some rather obvious speeches, did the film really do much with it? It was no great surprise that Scott’s character ended up being a bad guy but the connection to Spectre and Blofeld was thinly drawn. Could there have been more depth? The women A missed opportunity? … Monica Bellucci and Daniel Craig. Photograph: PR With the announcement of both Monica Bellucci and Léa Seydoux as Bond’s latest female companions, speculation was rife over who would be the lead and who might be a villain. Poor Bellucci, initially heralded by many as a refreshing choice given her age, was sorely underused. Bond kills her husband and then sleeps with her after his funeral while she begs him to stay for more. Seydoux initially appears to have more strength but ultimately becomes yet another woman who wants nothing more than to have sex with 007. Which makes the oddly romantic final act seem a bit surprising, with Bond softening more than ever and the two disappearing into the sunset ... The ending I’ll be back? … Christoph Waltz. Photograph: YouTube ... which makes the reappearance of Seydoux’s character in the next Bond film a not entirely impossible proposition. Bond isn’t known to continue his love affair with a woman from one film to the next but after the continuing references to his murdered Casino Royale squeeze, it could very well happen. The finale, which sees Bond decide against killing Blofeld, also suggests that we will be seeing far more of Waltz in future outings. But what did you think and what would you like to see in the next Bond film? Let us know in the comments below.

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https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/aug/26/right-to-buy-margaret-thatcher-david-cameron-housing-crisis

Society

2015-08-26T16:47:50.000Z

Andy Beckett

The right to buy: the housing crisis that Thatcher built

In August 1980 Margaret Thatcher’s first government, barely a year old but already deeply unpopular and bogged down by problems, produced a Housing Act. Even more than most legislation it was prolix and repetitive, but its bold intention stood out: “to give ... the right to buy their homes ... to tenants of local authorities”. It envisaged a revolution in how a large minority of Britons lived. That revolution – which David Cameron’s government controversially hopes to revive by extending the right to buy to housing association tenants – had been an awfully long time coming. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, cleverly sown by the Conservatives in 1980 and doggedly cultivated by rightwing Britain ever since, selling off council homes was not a sudden stroke of genius by the Thatcher government. The idea was as old as council housing itself. “Nineteenth-century housing legislation required that council-built dwellings in redevelopment areas should be sold within 10 years of completion,” point out the historians Colin Jones and Alan Murie in their little-known but revelatory 2006 book The Right to Buy. During the 1920s council homes were sold “on a small scale”. During the 50s sales accelerated: 5,825 in May 1956 alone. By 1972 even a distinctly leftish Tory environment secretary, Peter Walker, could declare to his party conference that the ability of council tenants to buy their homes was a “very basic right”, and that they should be offered a 20% discount on the market price. Later in the 1970s, now a backbencher, Walker went further, suggesting that municipal properties should simply be given to their tenants. Michael Heseltine, the Conservative shadow environment secretary from 1976, who was close to Walker and like him had a populist side, agreed. Tory right-to-buy plan threatens mass selloff of council homes Read more Labour councils, responding to the squalor and overcrowding of Victorian and Edwardian cities, and the graphic failure of private landlords and developers to deal with it – indeed the glee with which some of them exploited it – had constructed much of Britain’s early municipal housing in the 1900s. Labour councils and governments carried on building it in large quantities for the next seven decades. By the early 70s some Labour local authorities were even buying up whole streets of decaying inner-city properties from private landlords, and turning them into council homes – a tangible and potent demonstration of state power making up for market failure. By 1980 the proportion of all British housing in state hands was “large ... by international standards”, write Jones and Murie, “almost one in three households”. Most Labour politicians believed there were few reasons, electoral or moral, to risk unravelling the housing safety net that made a congested country habitable for tens of millions. Yet from the mid-70s some influential Labour figures, such as Harold Wilson’s press secretary Joe Haines and Jim Callaghan’s economic adviser Gavyn Davies, began to wonder whether renting from the council, often for life, was a satisfying way for such Britons to be living, and also whether governments could afford to keep building the necessary properties. By the late 70s, the Wilson and then Callaghan administrations were increasingly short of money; and their more forward-thinking members were increasingly interested in the growth of consumerism and private property, and how Labour might adjust to it, before the other parties could take full advantage. Both Labour governments built progressively fewer council homes. In 1977 a high-profile housing study by the Callaghan administration accepted that “for most people, owning one’s house is a basic and natural desire”. The language used by Labour and the Conservatives to talk about the issue was beginning to converge. Margaret Thatcher after handing over the deeds of the house to the Pattersons of Harold Hill, Essex in 1980. Photograph: PA Archives At the 1979 general election, council-home sales featured prominently in the Conservative manifesto. In this slim pamphlet, the right to buy was given as much space as enormous issues such as education and health, and explained right down to the precise discounts to be offered to tenants. These were to start at 33% off their home’s market value, and were to rise, according to how long they had rented it, to a maximum of 50% for tenants of 20 years’ standing or longer. “We shall also ensure,” promised the manifesto, “that 100% mortgages are available.” For any purchaser, and particularly for people in late middle age or older, the British age group most likely to vote Conservative, these were extremely generous terms; or as Davies put it to me, half-impressed and half-horrified, “You were insane if you didn’t buy.” Whether these terms represented a good deal for the state, which had after all built these homes and would lose the rental income from them, was not something the manifesto explored. Nor were related, even more fundamental questions. Would the country be left with enough cheap homes after the sell-off? And would the policy backfire if the population, and therefore the demand for housing, rose? Given that the UK was part of the EU, and also linked by other busy immigration routes to its vast former empire, and to the US, a stable or falling population, as had existed throughout the 1970s – a period of perceived British decline that Thatcher had noisily promised to reverse – could hardly be assumed. But effectively it was. The right to buy, say Jones and Murie, “was introduced at a time of some complacency in British housing policy ... For the first time in over a century there was not a shortage.” Right to buy: how will it work? Read more On winning power, Thatcher made the forceful Heseltine environment secretary. She and the Treasury quickly squashed his notion about giving away council homes. The cash-strapped Treasury needed the money from sales. The prime minister, with her acute sensitivity and loyalty to Tory-inclined social groups, believed, probably with good reason, that a giveaway would enrage homeowners who had painstakingly saved for deposits and paid off mortgages. Instead, within a fortnight of taking up his post, Heseltine issued an official circular recommending council-home sales. To his frustration the legislation took almost 18 months to draft and push through, with obstinate resistance coming from Labour councils and the House of Lords. But by August 1980 the act was passed. Thatcher herself introduced the policy in a special television broadcast. “If you have been a council tenant for at least three years,” she began, enunciating her words even more slowly and carefully than usual, as if addressing a slightly dim child, “you will have the right, by law, to buy your house.” She gave a couple of firm, no‑going-back nods: “And that’s that.” “The right to buy”: it was a clever slogan, clear, quick to say, easy to remember, and combining two of modern Britain’s favourite preoccupations, personal freedom and purchasing, while also encapsulating the more seductive side of what the Thatcher government was offering the country. Her use of the word “house” in the broadcast, when millions of council tenants actually lived in flats, was also significant. It gave the policy an aspirational flavour: reassuringly suburban rather than proletarian and urban. Thatcher used the word ‘house’ in her broadcast when millions of tenants actually lived in flats, giving the policy an aspirational flavour. Photograph: David Bagnall/Rex Shutterstock The right to buy TV ad that soon followed gave further, less subtle, hints that the government’s intended housing transformation would reinforce rather than upset the existing social hierarchy. In a generous, tidy semi without a tower block in sight, like the setting for a middle-class sitcom, an envelope containing a right to buy leaflet dropped on to the doormat. A small tousled boy, wearing dungarees, white-skinned, picked it up. He ran eagerly to the breakfast table. There, his mother, in her mid-30s, dressed in a spotless white blouse, and with a Lady Diana-like haircut, was reading a newspaper and sipping from a genteel white teacup. The old-fashioned implication seemed to be that father was out at work. The camera moved closer to the table, revealing that mother was poring over a print ad headlined “How to go about buying your council house”. Then a voiceover began in a chirpy cockney accent – the ad’s one concession to the existence of a working class – informing viewers that “There are nearly 5 million council tenants in England and Wales, many with families like yours ... You can decide whether to turn your home into your house.” Sales started slowly. During the remaining four months of 1980, 55 council homes were bought in England under the new legislation. Some Labour local authorities were deliberately sluggish in dealing with would‑be buyers. In the London borough of Greenwich, council staff refused to give out application forms, and sometimes denied that a right to buy existed at all. But Heseltine, empowered almost without limit by the 1980 Housing Act, beat his municipal opponents in court. Then came the sales surge: in 1981, 66,321 English right to buy purchases; in 1982, 174,697 – a sales peak that would be repeatedly approached during the rest of the 1980s but never exceeded. In Wales, too, sales peaked early, in 1982. In Scotland, people were more cautious, the highest annual figure not reached until 1989. There were also regional variations: in England, sales were fastest in London, the south-east and the south-west, and slowest in the industrial, or increasingly ex‑industrial, north. But certain patterns were universal. Semis sold better than terraces. Houses sold better than flats – at first by almost 50 to one. Low-rise flats sold better than high-rise ones. Properties with gardens or garages were strongly in demand. Rural and suburban properties sold better than urban ones. Homes on small estates sold better than homes on large ones. Homes with non-council neighbours were the most sought after of all. Similar subtle and not so subtle social gradations defined the buyers. A thorough, politically neutral national survey conducted by the Department of the Environment in 1985–6 and published in 1988, looking back at the first five years of the right to buy, found that: “[Purchasers] were a highly diverse group but ... clearly not representative of [council] tenants as a whole. Buyers were disproportionately drawn from the middle-aged and the better-off, many with adult children sharing the home and the expenses. Most were in full-time work, usually manual skilled or white-collar occupations, and with more than one wage-earner in the household. Buyer incomes were on average about double tenant incomes.” Michael Heseltine was frustrated by opposition to the Housing Act 1980. Photograph: Richard Francis/Rex Shutterstock Buyers were 10 times less likely to be unemployed than non-buyers. And they were twice as likely to know existing homeowners. In fact, “Two thirds of buyers reported that all or most of their family or friends were owner-occupiers.” In all these regards, the survey quietly concluded, council-home buyers in the first half of the 1980s showed a strong “continuance” with those who had bought council properties during the decades before the right to buy became law. Thatcherism, in some ways, was a highly skilful exercise in feigned egalitarianism – as indeed is capitalism itself. Right to buy, for all its appealingly inclusive rhetoric, was not a right available to all. Those who could not afford to exercise it tended to be lone parents, younger tenants, people living on their own, or Thatcherism’s economic losers: the unemployed or low-skilled. There were also psychological barriers. Non-buyers tended to be afraid of mortgage debt, or of taking responsibility for repairs. Or they didn’t think property ownership was for the likes of them. Or they simply didn’t like their home enough to buy it: during the 70s, more vulnerable tenants had become increasingly concentrated in the worst council properties. Often, non-buyers were simply too overwhelmed by the rest of their lives. Even after five years of the right to buy, the 1988 report found, almost a tenth of council tenants were completely unaware of the scheme at all. Among the remaining nine-tenths, the vast majority of whom qualified for it, “knowledge of the right to buy was found to be sparse and often inaccurate”. The government and its press allies presented the right to buy as a triumph regardless. Either way, the scheme did succeed in altering how many Britons thought. The 1988 survey asked 1,230 buyers why they had bought, and received hard-headed, individualistic, essentially Thatcherite responses: “good financial investment ... the ‘bargain’ which discounts on sales provided ... the sense of security ... of pride ... the freedom to repair or improve ... the desire to have something to leave the family ... to move up the housing ladder ... to increase mobility”. Two-thirds of those questioned said they had not expected to become homeowners until the right to buy legislation. As in all successful capitalism, a new demand had been created and then satisfied. The discounts were pivotal to the process. The official prices of the state assets being sold off were respectably high: in southern England in 1981 the average valuation of a right to buy property was £19,557, a tenth more than the average price paid for a private-sector home by an English first-time buyer. Yet most right to buy purchasers actually paid much closer to £10,000: “The average discount obtained” nationally, reported the 1988 survey, “was 44%.” Buyers typically borrowed almost the entire cost of their property. Meanwhile the government received a financial windfall, not as juicy as North Sea oil, but substantial: £692m from council-home sales in 1980–1, £1.394bn in 1981–2, £1.981bn in 1982–3. Thatcherism liked to present itself as a rejection of the postwar, state-driven, more profligate way of doing things. But in housing, her administration was actually the postwar state’s beneficiary, selling off the assets it had built up. A similar dependency lay, almost never acknowledged, behind her social and economic reforms generally. Her freedom to make Britain more risk-taking and individualistic in some ways only existed because the country she had inherited, for all its flaws and tensions, was a relatively stable, unified place underneath: more equal in the late 70s than it had ever been, still permeated by shared class assumptions and largely at peace – there had been few riots in Callaghan’s Britain. Her administration, supposedly dynamic and new, in fact partly lived off this social capital that stodgy old social democracy had produced. What would happen when that social capital began to run out, like what would happen when Britain ran out of cheap housing, was, in the early 1980s, a question for another day. Unusually among Thatcher’s ministers, Heseltine had some sensitivity to the wider consequences for housing of right to buy. He successfully argued that councils should be allowed to keep three-quarters of the income from sales, in order to replace the homes sold. Contrary to right to buy’s small but growing number of critics since the 80s, the policy did not kill council home-building overnight: more than 250,000 state-owned dwellings were completed between 1980 and 1985. But the rate of construction did slow, year by year. The share of the income from sales that went to councils was gradually eroded, against Heseltine’s wishes. In 1983 Thatcher moved him to the Ministry of Defence, in large part to use his bulldozing charisma against CND and the women of Greenham Common. Meanwhile rents for remaining council tenants rose with a new alacrity. By 1991 they were 55% higher, relative to average earnings, than they had been 10 years earlier. “If it were not for the right to buy,” conclude Jones and Murie, “the council housing sector as a whole would have generated huge surpluses [from rental income] and the rise in real rents ... would not have been necessary.” Or to put it more directly: home ownership was made possible for wealthier council tenants through discounts paid for by their poorer neighbours. Yet in the early 1980s, the full cost of the right to buy was less apparent than the new front doors, new kitchens and bathrooms, new paint jobs and fireplaces, new pebbledash and stonecladding, new garden balustrades and double glazing, new porches, conservatories and mock-Tudor panels that began to appear across the previously muted and communal landscape of British municipal housing. The prime minister posed regularly with new owners, in their lovingly arranged kitchens, on their swept-clean doorsteps, in their trimmed front gardens; the owners usually a little younger than the average buyer, and dressed up for the occasion, with photogenic children at hand. Thatcher herself looked genuinely fascinated and delighted, sometimes even sitting on a garden wall – winning one of her battles to reshape the country, for once. Until the spring of 1982, and the improbable rescue of her reputation and popularity by the Falklands war, it did not seem likely that she would win many more. This is an extract from Promised You A Miracle: UK80-82 by Andy Beckett, to be published by Penguin on 3 September. To order a copy for £16 (RRP £20) go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/libertycentral/2010/aug/08/cameroon-journalist-charles-atangana

Opinion

2010-08-08T12:00:13.000Z

Jeremy Dear

A journalist in danger | Jeremy Dear

Every day journalists in the UK expose fraud and corruption – in local organisations, corporations and high political office. Occasionally they earn a stinging rebuke from politicians whose noses have been put out of joint. When Charles Atangana, a leading Cameroonian journalist, did so, he was set upon by President Biya's security forces, arrested, stripped naked, beaten up and detained for 40 days. He was locked in a flooded cell and tortured to try to force him to reveal his sources. He refused. Suffering from malnutrition, chronic diarrhoea and food poisoning Charles managed to persuade his captors to take him to hospital. Hidden in his underwear was the remains of his money. Through bribery he managed to escape. On his release he faced numerous death threats. Vilified in the state-run media, censored by his own newspaper, facing threats to kill him he fled to the UK – somewhere he believed was a sanctuary for freedom of speech. Instead of freedom, Charles is locked up. He is still facing death threats. Now our government plans to deport him back to Cameroon and – we believe – torture or death. Charles has asked me to bring him a plastic bag to the Dover Immigration Removal Centre where he is held. It's for his belongings. He could be told at a moment's notice he is to be deported. It may not come to that. He could be released, remain imprisoned or even bailed. His fate is down to the home secretary. Theresa May literally Charles's life in her hands. Brendan Barber, TUC general secretary, has urged the home secretary to release Charles. He said: "Charles Atangana is a brave journalist and trade unionist who should not be sent back to face continuing persecution in Cameroon." The consequences of relative freedom in most of our daily lives could make it impossible to imagine what other people and the state are able to do to you. And then there is the reality. The Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture has published a shocking report which says: "You can expect to be beaten and ill-treated and kept in foul conditions. Stripped naked, you will be housed in a dark, airless, overcrowded cell with no toilet. The guards may jokingly call your daily excursions from your cell for a beating or torture session un petit café." The Federation of African Journalists after visiting the country described Cameroon in May 2010 as "one of the worst jailers of journalists in Africa". In April 2010 Bibi Ngota, a journalist and the editor of the Cameroun Express, died in custody. Other journalists are currently held in prisons in Cameroon. They have been detained following investigations into allegations of corruption at an oil company. Amnesty International's 2010 annual report section on Cameroon states: "The government continued to muzzle critics of its policies, including journalists and human rights defenders." So the National Union of Journalists and others believe that Charles's life is at risk if he returns. Charles has not been allowed to work so he has been volunteering at the Citizens Advice Bureau. He is active in his community and has many colleagues and friends. We want the home secretary to use her discretionary powers to release him and let him stay indefinitely in safety in Scotland.

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https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/nov/05/sunak-kings-speech-new-system-oil-gas-licences

UK news

2023-11-05T22:30:20.000Z

Pippa Crerar

Sunak to use king’s speech to announce new system to award oil and gas licences

Rishi Sunak will this week announce legislation for a new annual system for awarding oil and gas licences as part of a highly political king’s speech which the Conservatives hope will open up clear dividing lines with Labour. The government said the plans would protect thousands of jobs and bolster energy security, reducing the UK’s reliance on imports from hostile foreign regimes such as Russia, even though the UK has committed to move away from fossil fuels. The prime minister said the move would help Britain reach its climate commitment of net zero carbon emissions by 2050 in a “proportionate and realistic” way, with the new licenses contingent on specific tests he said would support the transition to net zero. Sunak has already watered down the government’s climate targets, pushing back the deadline for selling new petrol and diesel cars and the phasing out of gas boilers, prompting furious condemnation from the automobile and energy industries. The proposed new legislation could set a political trap for Labour, which has said it would block new domestic exploration licences if it wins power, proposing instead to invest heavily in renewable sources such as wind and also in nuclear power. Ed Miliband, the shadow climate secretary, said the plan to mandate annual oil and gas licensing was unnecessary, suggesting the government was more focused on creating dividing lines over the green agenda ahead of the next election. Rishi Sunak to ‘double down’ on anti-green policies in king’s speech Read more “This proposed bill is a stunt which does nothing to lower bills or deliver energy security. We already have regular North Sea oil and gas licensing in Britain, and it is precisely our dependence on fossil fuels that has led to the worst cost of living crisis in generations. “All this stunt of a bill tells you is that this is a government that is bankrupt of any ideas, and Rishi Sunak is continuing with his retreat from net zero as part of a desperate political strategy. “No wonder we see consternation from so many leading businesses, and even figures in his own party, who know he is undermining our energy security, damaging our economy and risking jobs.” Under the plans, the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA) will invite applications for new production license on an annual basis, which the government said would provide certainty and confidence to investors and industry. Each yearly licensing round would only take place if key tests are met that support the transition to net zero. The first test is that the UK must be projected to import more oil and gas from other countries than it produces at home. The second is that the carbon emissions associated with the production of UK gas are lower than the equivalent emissions from imported liquefied natural gas. If both these tests are met, the NSTA will be required to invite applications for new licences. “Domestic energy will play a crucial role in the transition to net zero, supporting jobs and economic growth, while also protecting us from the volatility of international markets and diversifying our energy sources,” Sunak said. “The clarity and certainty that our new legislation will provide will help get the country on the right path for the future.” Sign up to First Edition Free daily newsletter Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it matters Enter your email address Sign up Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Government sources suggested there were unlikely to be any major surprises in the king’s speech with many of the measures already in the public domain such as a phased smoking ban and a new regulator for English football, while several other bills would be carried over. It is also expected to include criminal justice measures such as restricting the use of tents by homeless people on the streets of Britain – with growing numbers of rough sleepers and what the government considers a rise in antisocial behaviour. Among the previously announced measures are plans to give judges in England and Wales more powers to force criminals to attend their sentencing hearings, an expansion of the circumstances in which judges have to hand down a whole-life order for murder, and mandatory jail terms for certain other offences, including shoplifting. Tory insiders said that No 10 wanted to concentrate on winning back voters who had turned against the party since the last election, with party strategists believing the king’s speech, the autumn statement and a cabinet reshuffle create an opportunity for a reset. “They want to try to do stuff that is going to appeal to voters that backed the party in 2019 but are now in the ‘don’t know’ category,” one said. “They think they’ve got a chance to get some of those people back if they concentrate on ‘red meat’ policies.” The policy agenda set out on Tuesday would be aimed at “people who want to see a common-sense approach”, one government source said, in a nod to wedge issues such as climate change, migration and gender identity which the Tories plan to weaponise ahead of the election. Labour will try to set the narrative following the king’s speech when the opposition can pick some issues for debate, with housing, the NHS, schools and crime all expected to feature. “They’re deliberately doing a divisive king’s speech that’s all about the politics and not about legislation at all,” one senior Labour figure said. MPs will also get the chance on Thursday to debate Labour’s plans for an energy independence act which would set up a publicly owned energy generation company and establish a national wealth fund to invest in the renewables industry in the UK.

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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/22/chinua-achebe-grandfather-african-literature-dies-aged-82

World news

2013-03-22T20:40:27.000Z

Monica Mark

Nigeria in mourning for Chinua Achebe

From Nobel laureates to roadside booksellers, Nigerians expressed their grief and shock at the death at 82 of Chinua Achebe, the literary giant whose works made him a household name and national hero. Many who had worked alongside him wept as they paid tribute, and bookstores in downtown Lagos said his books sold out as news of his death trickled in. Despite his age and distance from his homeland– he died in Boston, where he had lived for years – Achebe's frequent and often barbed pronouncements against an oil-fed Nigerian elite kept him very much in the national psyche. He further endeared himself to a younger generation of Nigerians weary of corruption, when he twice turned down a national honour in 2004 and 2011. African literature burst onto the world stage with Achebe's 1958 novel Things Fall Apart, which portrays an Igbo yam farmer's fatal struggle to come to terms with British colonialism in the late 19th century. It remains the best-selling novel ever written by an African author, having sold more than 10-million copies in 50 different languages. Nelson Mandela, who read his books during his 27-year incarceration, once said of him: "He was the writer in whose company the prison walls came down." Wole Soyinka, a fellow giant of African literature, who was informed by the Achebe family in a dawn phone call, said, "We have lost a brother, a colleague, a trailblazer and a doughty fighter." Writing for the Guardian's Comment is free section, Soyinka said: "No matter the reality, after the initial shock, and a sense of abandonment, we confidently assert that Chinua lives. His works provide their enduring testimony to the domination of the human spirit over the forces of repression, bigotry, and retrogression." Speaking from the town of Ogidi where Achebe was born in 1930, village head, Amechi Ekume, said: "There is deep mourning all over the village, both young and old are mourning." "As we say in Igboland, when an extraordinary person dies, the iroko [African teak] has fallen," said a weeping Dora Akunyili, a former minister who worked with Achebe during his tenure at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Achebe's earlier works focused on the social upheavals wrought by British colonialism. "He was the first of our African writers to tell the story from our own perspective. But even beyond Africa, people who were colonised or oppressed could relate to his stories," said Denja Abdullahi, the vice president of the Association of Nigerian Authors, which was founded by Achebe and other writers in 1981. Wheelchair-bound since a car accident in 1990, the octogenarian had made time to speak with hundreds of fans during a gruelling national tour to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Things Fall Apart. Abdullahi said, "He was always so welcoming to everybody we met, anytime. He was very humane, very reflective. Even when he wasn't speaking, he just had so much presence." Speaking of Achebe's impact, Abdullahi said: "He's the father of African literature and children always try to imitate the good qualities of their fathers." The celebrated Nigerian novelist, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, last year said she wept when she received a note from Achebe praising her best-selling novel, Half of a Yellow Sun. She was too awed to pluck up the nerve to call him back. Meeting him for the second time, she was again too shy to approach as writers including Toni Morrison and Ha Jin crowded around him backstage during an awards luncheon. "Before I went on stage, he told me, 'Jisie ike [more grease to your elbow]'. I wondered if he fully grasped, if indeed it was possible to, how much his work meant to so many." Novelists from a younger generation described the freedom to write in their own voices, which Achebe's own writing opened up, and the daunting task of trying to live up to his works. "In the last five decades, just about every post-colonial African author, one way or another, has been engaged in a creative call-and-response with Chinua Achebe," said author Lola Shoneyin. "You are never weaned off his fiction because it renews itself. It gives you something new every time. He was just that kind of storyteller." Another novelist, Chika Unigwe, recalled reading Things Fall Apart as a young child: "I like to imagine it was on a Sunday afternoon, right after lunch, lying on my bed. I [clearly] recall … the wonder of reading the world he creates in the book so beautifully. Its power did not hit me until years later when I re-read it as a much older reader. I am immensely grateful to him." His children's books on African folklore remain popular with Nigerian parents. "I just literally handed The Flute and also The Drum to my daughter two weeks ago. She was glued to them, reading and re-reading them. I was too," said Ifeamaka Umeike of her 7-year-old. "I feel like my granddad died." Released last year, Achebe's final book, There Was A Country, was a deeply personal account of his experience during the 1967-1970 Biafran civil war. "Even a lot of [white] people buy it," said Success, hawking books amid the choking Lagos traffic yesterday. "We don't have anymore to sell but people are still asking. That means he is a man of the people."

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https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/nov/21/paul-murray-and-fern-brady-shortlisted-for-inaugural-nero-awards

Books

2023-11-21T00:01:10.000Z

Ella Creamer

Paul Murray and Fern Brady shortlisted for inaugural Nero awards

Paul Murray, Eleanor Catton and Fern Brady are among the authors shortlisted for the inaugural Nero book awards. Caffè Nero announced the new awards in May this year, less than a year after Costa abruptly scrapped their book prizes of 50 years’ standing. The new prizes see 16 writers shortlisted across four categories: fiction, debut fiction, children’s fiction and non-fiction. Quick Guide Nero book awards shortlist 2023 Show The winner of each category will be announced in January, and will receive £5,000. The overall winner of the Nero Gold prize, announced in February, will be awarded an additional £30,000. Murray, an Irish novelist, was shortlisted in the fiction category for his novel The Bee Sting – a comic family saga that is also shortlisted for this year’s Booker prize, the winner of which is announced on Sunday. Another Irish novelist, Megan Nolan, made the shortlist for her second novel, Ordinary Human Failings, about a family implicated in a crime. Completing the fiction shortlist are Booker-winning author Eleanor Catton’s Birnam Wood and Karen Powell’s Fifteen Wild Decembers, a reimagining of the lives of the Brontë family. Two Irish writers also feature on the debut fiction shortlist. One is Michael Magee’s Close to Home, which was also shortlisted for the Waterstones debut fiction prize. “What sets this apart is the voice, which perfectly evokes a character and a community straining so hard against the systemic clamps of poverty, disillusionment, and ennui that the effort crackles off the page,” judges said. Chloe Michelle Howarth also makes the list for Sunburn, a coming-of-age novel set in 1990s Ireland. London Review of Books contributing editor Tom Crewe joins the debut fiction shortlist for The New Life, his novel set against the backdrop of the Oscar Wilde trial, which also won the Orwell prize for political fiction. Alongside Crewe on the shortlist is Stephen Buoro with The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa, which judges described as “extraordinary, driven by a gloriously eccentric central character”. The novel is “utterly compelling, not shy about posing difficult questions for the reader; just don’t expect it to provide any neat answers”, they added. Sign up to Bookmarks Free weekly newsletter Discover new books and learn more about your favourite authors with our expert reviews, interviews and news stories. Literary delights delivered direct to you Enter your email address Sign up Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. No rhyme or reason: why is poetry missing from the new Caffè Nero book awards? Rishi Dastidar Read more The non-fiction shortlist is made up of four books by women, including comedian Fern Brady’s memoir Strong Female Character and The Tidal Year by Freya Bromley, a memoir about grief and the healing power of swimming. The children’s fiction shortlist includes social media personality Lex Croucher with their first YA book, Gwen and Art Are Not in Love. The judges were asked to choose which reads they would most want to recommend to others. This year’s panel includes the writers Sara Collins, Sarfraz Manzoor, Anthony Quinn and Dave Rudden. The prizes were open to books published between December 2022 and November 2023 by authors who have been resident in the UK or Ireland for the last three years. Browse all of the books shortlisted for the Nero book awards 2023 at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/apr/12/australian-tax-office-force-banks-hand-over-landlord-data-investment-property-crackdown

Australia news

2023-04-11T15:00:50.000Z

Paul Karp

Australian Taxation Office to force banks to hand over landlord data in investment property crackdown

Banks will be compelled to hand over the data of 1.7 million landlords, including transaction details, as part of a tax office crackdown in search of $1.3bn in revenue lost from residential investment properties. The data-matching program will target people failing to declare rental income or pay capital gains tax, and those incorrectly claiming deductions – including rental property loan interest – to reduce income and negatively gear properties. According to a sample audit conducted by the Australian Taxation Office in 2020-21, the federal government missed out on an estimated $9bn in tax revenue from individuals due to tax avoidance or errors. Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup The ATO said that “a significant driver of the gap is the incorrect reporting of rental property income and expenses”, telling Guardian Australia that “the rental component of the individuals’ tax gap is estimated to be $1.3bn”. It said the most common errors on rental tax deductions are: no or incorrect apportionment of the loan interest costs after refinancing for private purposes; claiming costs as a repair rather than a capital works deduction; and not apportioning expenses for private use of the property. Australian tenants spending $2,700 extra on rent on average over past year amid record low supply Read more Last week, the ATO announced a data-matching program for the 2021-22 to 2025-26 financial years aimed at capturing information about residential investment property loans in a bid to catch those “who may be failing to meet their reporting or lodgement obligations”. The ATO will collect: client identification details including names, addresses, phone numbers and dates of birth; account details including account numbers and balances; transaction details; and rental property details. “We expect to collect data on approximately 1.7 million individuals each financial year for this program,” the ATO website said. The ATO listed 17 financial institutions in Australia, including the big four banks – Commonwealth, Westpac, NAB and ANZ – and mortgage provider RAMS, who will be “obligated (sic) to provide the information request” by the use of “formal information gathering powers” which are “coercive” in nature. The ATO said the program would help “promote voluntary compliance” by taxpayers, including helping self-preparers through myTax and prefilling details in systems used by tax agents. But it will also “identify relevant cases for administrative action including compliance activities”. Sign up to Afternoon Update Free daily newsletter Our Australian afternoon update breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it matters Enter your email address Sign up Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. “We will use the data for tax and superannuation compliance purposes.” Landlords will be given 28 days to respond before any administrative action is taken using data gleaned from their financial institutions, giving them a chance to dispute the information collected by the ATO. “Our data-matching programs help us fulfil our responsibility to protect public revenue and maintain community confidence in the integrity of the tax and superannuation systems,” the ATO said. Under an earlier data-matching program, the ATO acquired information about 1.6 million landlords from property management software providers for the period 2018–19 to 2022–23. In February, the tax expenditure and insights statement revealed that 2.4 million people claimed $51.3bn in rental deductions in 2019-20, reducing their tax bills by about $18.6bn. About 1.3 million people had a rental loss – known as negative gearing – which added up to total rental losses of $10.2bn, helping to reduce their tax bills by about $3.6bn.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/apr/24/bruce-lehrmann-defamation-trial-legal-costs-channel-10-brittany-higgins-rape-allegation-ntwnfb

Australia news

2024-04-24T03:47:41.000Z

Amanda Meade

Bruce Lehrmann defamation trial: why legal costs could run to $10m

Between $8m and $10m in legal costs for the Bruce Lehrmann defamation trial is an eye-watering figure for the public to grapple with. How does a 24-day civil trial end up costing so much, and who gets the money? On Tuesday the federal court released the parties’ submissions on costs ahead of a hearing on costs scheduled for 1 May. No figures were mentioned but legal experts have estimated the total cost to be as high as $10m. Bruce Lehrmann should pay Ten’s entire legal bill after ‘deliberately wicked’ decision to sue, network says Read more But this headline-grabbing case is exceptional. Legal experts say the millions spent is no surprise but is exceedingly rare. How much does a defamation case cost? For starters an applicant, Lehrmann in this case, would have a raft of fees for a single day in the federal court, including a hearing fee of at least $5,000; a transcript fee of $3,000, a senior counsel for $10,000; a junior counsel for $3,000 and two solicitors for a total of $8,000. Defamation matters don’t always rack up this quantum of costs, and often don’t, according to Dr Michael Douglas, a defamation consultant at Perth law firm Bennett. In so-called back yard defamation cases, involving non-famous people, there might be one less-expensive lawyer “because the client can’t afford Sue Chrysanthou”, Douglas told Guardian Australia. Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup Chrysanthou, who acted for the former Project host Lisa Wilkinson, commands $8,000 a day. For every day in court, with her solicitor, the bill is $12,000. And that’s before any preparation days. But this defamation case is not run-of-the-mill. It is notable because it involved a big media company, Ten, and multiple high-profile names. Each party invested significant resources in winning because the stakes were high. Why did Lehrmann’s case cost so much? The key to the cost of the Lehrmann v Network Ten and Lisa Wilkinson case is on the federal court website in the long list of exhibits. There were more than 1,000 separate exhibits, including hours of CCTV footage as well as audio and video recordings and photographs, and dozens of affidavits. “If you think every single exhibit is a piece of evidence that requires a solicitor to find the thing, to check whether it’s relevant, to check whether it can be used as evidence or if it’s privileged, and then to talk to their superior about it, you’ll see how much is involved in terms of human time,” Douglas said. In Network Ten’s submission on costs, filed on Tuesday, there are three names at the end of the 14-page document, listed in order of seniority, starting with Dr Matt Collins. Each one has to be paid for each hour they put into the case. Legal experts say every day in court Ten would have paid for a transcript at $3,000, Collins at $12,000, junior counsel at $3,000 and on some days up to five solicitors at $15,000. Sign up to Morning Mail Free daily newsletter Our Australian morning briefing breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it matters Enter your email address Sign up Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Silks who specialise in defamation can cost in the order of $1,000 an hour, although their counterparts who work in commercial law can command as much as $20,000 a day. “Lawyers typically charge per hour for their time, like lots of service industries, and it’s just that there’s been a tremendous amount of human effort going into this and the public sees the end product – what’s argued in court,” Douglas said. “But for every five minutes senior counsel was on their feet arguing in court there’s a lot of time in addition spent behind the scenes by a team of people making that happen.” Those people include solicitors, researchers, administrative staff and experts. Tasks include photocopying, handling exhibits, swearing affidavits and preparing witnesses. Expert witnesses, such as the UK-based lip-reader Tim Reedy who interpreted the CCTV footage of Brittany Higgins and Lehrmann at The Dock, get paid for their time and travel costs. Leading up to the trial there is a lot of work to do. In this case it was estimated to be 20 days for Ten, which had to prepare over 20 affidavits, while Collins had to prepare his cross-examination of Lehrmann. Lehrmann’s legal team, led by Steven Whybrow, was already familiar with the case having acted for his client in the criminal trial. His preparation is estimated to be between 10 and 15 days. Whybrow commands about $8,000 a day. On some days in court Lehrmann had four barristers, increasing the costs significantly. So, who pays? As the applicant has lost the case, he has to pay the costs of the two respondents. However, the court heard Lehrmann has not worked since 2021 and lacks the means to pay, so it is possible that the network could still be saddled with the bill.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2014/sep/13/doctor-who-recap-series-34-episode-four-listen

Television & radio

2014-09-13T19:20:05.000Z

Dan Martin

Doctor Who recap: series 34, episode four – Listen

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 four – Listen• Read Dan Martin’s episode three episode blog here ‘Fear is a superpower, and fear can make you faster and stronger and cleverer … fear can make you kind.’ You have to admire Steven Moffat’s honesty. Speaking in the current issue of Doctor Who magazine, he said: “It was really down to an entirely selfish desire. I remember the first thing I said about this year’s run is: ‘I’m going to do a chamber piece, with no money, in the middle, because I haven’t done one in ages and I’d like to prove that I can actually write.’” There speaks a man who sounds as if he actually reads what some people say about him on the internet, never mind takes it to heart. But let’s be clear, Listen is destined to sit close to Blink as one of his best ever. It is phenomenally good. But, but … it’s slightly unfair to judge things according to that yardstick, because the episodes everybody remembers tend to be the off-kilter ones that you can’t do every week. Of course, limitation is the root of creativity – making the best of a bad budget is one of Doctor Who’s great hallmarks, and by deliberately choosing to do the cheap one, Moffat is allowed to take his favourite subject, fear – the thing in the corner of your eye and the monster under the bed – and push it to the ultimate conclusion. A story where the monster is fear itself. But Listen is in a different space altogether, which is signalled from the start of the pre-credits as the Doctor sits cross-legged on the top of the Tardis, in space, like an angry cosmic buddha, with musings on evolution and survival, surrealist tableaus and the chalkboard working overtime. Travelling on his own, the Doctor is sort of losing it, fixating over a dream in the absence of anything else to do. And for all the Dark Doctor stuff, it’s still shocking when he loses it with Clara – we know he’s absolutely terrified. And then to throw all those story bombs in there as well! The one and only downside of doing this job is that before we get access to the episode we have to agree not to reveal certain key plot points, so I had an email agreeing not to reveal that we visit Gallifrey or we meet the young Doctor in the barn before having actually watched it. Spoilers, sweetie. But I was knocked sideways by that mythology fangasm, and the callback to The Day of the Doctor, not knowing it was coming. “Audacious” barely covers it. Do we lose something of the mystery by seeing a young, scared Doctor having nightmares on screen – or does it enrich the mythology? Possibly a bit of both. As established around the 50th anniversary, we know for sure that not all Gallifreyans were Time Lords – some were sent to join the army. We also know that the Doctor’s parents spoke like estuary BBC bit-players. ‘You said you had a date. I thought I’d better hide in the bedroom in case you brought him home’ Apart from scares, of course, the other thing that Moffat does better than most is awkward romantic comedy. And here he gets to flex those Coupling muscles once again. Clara and Danny’s date is as much a masterclass in awkward as the rest is a masterclass in spooky. I’m invested in these two already, because we’ve all been on those dates where you say the absolute worst thing you possibly could. And after just a few scenes, I feel as if I know Danny – his defensiveness over the 23 wells he dug in the army, his prickliness over his past, his easily dented male pride and general decency. Of course, it helps that we know his entire life story, that the next few generations of his family have been defined by one slight and quick Tardis mishap – and when Clara realises that, her main reaction is an “oh-god-this-again-really?” shrug. Danny, whose male pride is easily dented. Photograph: Adrian Rogers/BBC/Adrian Rogers Already, Clara has the most complete home life since Rose Tyler, and it feels as if this is going to be an actual proper storyline. For her part, after three weeks of the writers hammering home her bossy characteristics, we see her warmth seeping through. That nannying experience comes in useful, and she’s absolutely brilliant with young Rupert and child-Doctor. And in that final sequence, she continues to fulfil her “Impossible Girl” mission, even by accident. Last week Circumstances meant that Robot of Sherwood got a bit of a raw deal last week, and in the end it seemed to divide opinion almost completely down the middle. Predictably, those who want Doctor Who to be like Babylon 5 After Hours every week were incandescent. But on reflection this kind of gaudy romp was exactly how Doctor Who should do a Robin Hood story. It was lovely and refreshing to just see a bit of colour, and we hadn’t a good old charismatic villain this year until Ben Miller’s Sheriff of Nottingham. The Doctor’s examination of the Merry Men was laugh-out-loud funny, and his exasperation with them actually made him more relatable, especially Alan-a-Dale, whom I wanted to slap from the get-go. Did you spot the Miniscope reference to 1973’s Carnival Of Monsters? Fear factor Parenting tip: a straightforward way of assuaging your child’s fears of the monster under the bed might be to get them a divan. Meanwhile, I’m not sure that I ever had that nightmare about a hand grabbing my ankle in the night, but it would have been a long time ago. How many of you have had it? Dreams-being-real is a rich seam for Doctor Who to plough – and it would be fun to see more of it. But as above, here was a masterclass in fright, a litany of psychological setpieces – the most effective to my mind being the thing under young Rupert’s bedspread, never completely explained – building up to the pay-off of Clara and Danny’s kiss. A tacit acknowledgement that opening your feelings up and being exposed in that way is probably the most frightening thing of all. Mysteries and questions It led to a bit of unpleasantness afterwards, but last week @HarryBorcus made a compelling reading of an atheist subtext this year, which could of course be co-incidental. Aside from the biggie that we’re heading for a “heaven” that will have a sci-fi explanation behind it, there was last week’s struggle over whether a bearded hero had been real or not, a lot of crucifix imagery in the dungeon and on the robots’ faces, and the six-pointed Star of David-alike when the shields crossed the beams. And molten gold, which also featured in the Bible (Exodus 32:4). Time-space debris Clara links psychically with the Tardis. But as we know, the Tardis doesn’t like her very much. Is that why she hurts her fingers pulling them out of the gloop? The Doctor also spends his downtime reading Where’s Wally? books. We should assume the chatty Coal Hill pupil we saw in episodes one and two is the Whitney they talk about in the restaurant. “The deep and lovely dark. We’d never see the stars without it.” Another costume amendment. That’s a very nice new jumper, Doctor. And simply because we may never again get a Doctor Who episode that shares its title with a Beyoncé classic – here’s Beyoncé. Who? It’s Beyoncé, that’s who. Next week! It’s Doctor Who does Hustle, as Keeley Hawes plays an unscrupulous banker in Time Heist. Quick Guide Doctor Who: all our episode-by-episode recaps Show

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/feb/02/its-time-for-us-to-live-our-lives-to-the-full-line-of-dutys-tommy-jessop-on-changing-the-world-for-people-with-downs-syndrome

Society

2022-02-02T08:00:18.000Z

Emine Saner

‘It’s time for us to live our lives to the full’: Line of Duty’s Tommy Jessop on changing the world for people with Down’s syndrome

Most of Tommy Jessop’s acting plans are, he says with a smile, “top secret”. His biggest ambition is to play James Bond, and there’s an opening now. Jessop laughs, and says he has been told he looks like Bond. “It’s when you’re wearing black tie,” says Jessop’s mother, Jane, who is sitting next to him. Jessop has had cause to wear black tie a fair amount – last year, Line of Duty, in which he starred as murder suspect Terry Boyle, picked up a National Television Award. Jessop’s first big role saw him star alongside Nicholas Hoult in the 2007 BBC drama Coming Down the Mountain, which was nominated for a Bafta. Last year was a particularly successful one for Jessop. As well as appearing in 2021’s biggest TV show, he has been filming a Steven Spielberg-produced second world war drama, Masters of the Air, for Apple TV+ (those are the rumours, at least, after he was photographed on set). He was awarded an honorary doctorate at the University of Winchester and, most significant of all, added his voice to the campaign for the Down Syndrome bill, which passed its second reading in the Commons in November. “We can be proud and honoured that it has been passed,” says Jessop. “It can also be history-making, changing the world for the better. We really have waited long enough to be treated equally and it really is time now for people living with Down’s syndrome to have the same chances in life that anyone else has, to live their lives to the full, and not get hidden away.” Likely to become law this year, if passed at further stages, it was introduced as a private member’s bill by the Conservative MP Liam Fox, and will place an obligation on local authorities to assess and meet the needs of people with Down’s syndrome across aspects of life including healthcare, education and housing. People with Down’s syndrome are born with an extra chromosome, which causes a degree of learning disability, and are more likely to have a range of physical conditions. There are about 47,000 people with the syndrome in the UK. Previously, people with Down’s syndrome were not expected to live rich lives and had short life expectancies but this is improving all the time; now many live into their 50s and 60s, with some into their 70s. Fox said it would be “a stain on our country and a scandal” not to make provision to ensure they live full, independent and happy lives. People think we are all the same but that is wrong Although there is existing legislation, says Peter Brackett, chair of the National Down Syndrome Policy Group (NDSPG), “it will clarify what the position is, what support people with Down’s syndrome should be getting”. It will help, he says, professionals providing services, as well as people with the condition, and their parents and carers, to navigate the system. Brackett’s 15-year-old son has Down’s syndrome and he says “at every stage in his life, whether healthcare or education, we’ve had to go through the process of explaining what his requirements are, and almost educate the professionals. Unfortunately, we hear that from everybody else. There has to be a more efficient way of doing this, and it has to be something that is not dependent on where you live, the postcode lottery. It’s all about clarification of existing duties, and ensuring people understand what they should be doing.” By treating people with Down’s syndrome as a specific group – though this, too, has been criticised as divisive, leaving out those with other learning disabilities or chromosomal disorders – it will identify and meet their appropriate needs, as the 2009 Autism Act was designed to do for people with autism spectrum disorder. How will life change for people with Down’s syndrome if the bill passes? “Hopefully for the better,” says Jessop. “To get proper care from people who believe in them – teachers, doctors, nurses and employers too, just like other people, so we can all be healthy, happy and living our lives to the full.” For himself, he says, he has always “lived my life to the full. I have also been campaigning for better chances in life for people with Down’s syndrome all my acting life.” Jessop as Terry Boyle in Line of Duty. Photograph: Steffan Hill/BBC/World Productions Jessop is one of a number of people with Down’s syndrome who have worked with the NDSPG, and other organisations, giving talks to universities and conferences, and being interviewed on podcasts and in the media. “It involves speaking up, and recording video messages to MPs, speeches, press interviews,” he says. “What [people with Down’s syndrome] need is to have a voice, so they can say what they really want in life.” Why does he think it has taken this long for people with Down’s syndrome to be given a voice? “I think [other people, including politicians] tend to label us, saying that we cannot do things. Except we can do things. People think we are all the same but that is wrong. We all are different with different skills and personalities.” When we speak over Zoom, Jessop is at home near Winchester and it’s clear he has a keen sense of humour – he joins the call, ensuring his novelty T-shirt with a picture of a pizza on it, is on full show. Jane sits nearby, helping him when he needs it, which he rarely does. Instead, he teases her. At the start, Jessop’s parents didn’t take his professional acting ambitions seriously. Did they realise they’d got it wrong when he was cast in Coming Down the Mountain? “Er, no,” he says, deadpan. “We did!” protests Jane, smiling. “Walking on set, the very first day, there were 100 people, and huge contraptions for cameras and lights and things. I thought: ‘Wow, I hope Tommy can pull this off.’ And then they got Bafta-nominated so …” Jessop laughs. He is one of the UK’s most high-profile people with Down’s syndrome, although the field is not exactly crowded. How does it feel to be a role model? He smiles broadly. “I am really proud and honoured to be noticed that way. Hopefully I can inspire other people as well.” Would it have helped to have seen someone like him on primetime TV when he was growing up? “Yeah,” he says. He would love to see more people with Down’s syndrome being cast in high-profile shows “because it will make a difference. You can see what we truly are capable of.” Jessop is the middle of three children; Jane was a publishing and marketing executive, and his father is a retired doctor. As a child, says Jessop, he liked performing. “I do like making people laugh and cry, in real life and in character.” He attended a mix of mainstream school and schools for those with special educational needs. He remembers in his first school play, he played a snowman. “That was quite intriguing,” he says with a smile. After leaving college, he auditioned for a play, Adam, which would go on to be performed in schools around Hampshire, and at Chichester Festival theatre. It was political, about giving people with learning disabilities the right to make choices about their lives, and the start of Jessop acting as a voice for people with Down’s syndrome. He played the title character, who wants to be a chef, although nobody takes him seriously. It was the same for Jessop with acting, says Jane. “We’d asked him what he’d like to do with his life and he said he wanted to be an actor. We thought: ‘No, we’ll get him a job in the library,’” she remembers. The producer of the play suggested Jessop apply for an initiative run by the BBC and Channel 4 to discover and nurture talented disabled people. From about 2,000 applicants, just over 20 were chosen; Jessop was one of only two with a learning disability. That led to the role on Coming Down the Mountain, written by Mark Haddon. That experience, says Jessop, was “wicked”. “My favourite scene was talking about what sex was like, with Nicholas [Hoult].” They kept getting the giggles during filming. Working on film sets, he says, “makes me feel quite alive and free”. Filming Line of Duty, with its budget, secrecy and slick professionalism “was like being on a James Bond set”. People have recognised him in the street. “I do not mind being the centre of attention,” he says. He would love to see more people with Down’s syndrome being cast in high-profile shows “because it will make a difference. You can see what we truly are capable of.” Jessop had searched for an inclusive theatre company to join but found most were based in London. In 2005, his mother set up an arts organisation, Blue Apple theatre, in Winchester, to give people with learning disabilities opportunities to perform in dance and drama. They put on ambitious productions, including a lot of Shakespeare. “My favourite play has to be Hamlet,” says Jessop, in which he has played “the main man himself”. He breaks into the “to be or not to be” soliloquy, lines still remembered. With his Special Recognition award for Line of Duty at the National Television Awards in September 2021. Photograph: Ian West/PA Jessop also played Prospero in The Tempest, but there have been contemporary dramas too, such as Living Without Fear, in which he played a victim of disability hate crime. He also appeared in a short film, Freddie’s Story, which was inspired by a Mencap report, Death by Indifference, that exposed healthcare inequalities for those with learning disabilities, and detailed the NHS failings that it believes led to the deaths of six people (a further report blamed institutional discrimination for the deaths of 74 people with learning disabilities within a decade, though Mencap believes this is “a tiny proportion” of the real figure). Jessop says he doesn’t spend too much time thinking “about living with Down’s syndrome. If I do think about it, it’s a label, which is really quite depressing.” Most people, he says, “are nice to me” and when I ask if he experienced any bullying growing up he replies: “Not really.” Did he feel different from other people? “Possibly,” he says, but not because he has Down’s syndrome. “I’m the exact opposite of other people, really. Other people tend to be serious and I see the fun side of life and have a laugh.” Since the summer, non-invasive prenatal testing has been available to pregnant women in England on the NHS (Wales brought it in in 2018, and Scotland introduced it in 2020). The blood test can detect Down’s syndrome fairly early in the pregnancy and previous research has found that about 90% of women choose to terminate a pregnancy when Down’s syndrome is diagnosed. Campaigns led by those with Down’s syndrome, such as Don’t Screen Us Out, want to end the remaining stigma and improve life for those with the condition, rather than eliminate it. Jessop finds it too painful to talk about. The idea of antenatal testing “really does scar me for life”, he says. Jane picks it up instead, explaining that people with Down’s syndrome “were still segregated a lot, right up until this century. So they never had a chance to explore their skills or find out about life, or do anything interesting, so they had nothing to talk about.” Many people with Down’s syndrome weren’t encouraged to eat healthily or exercise, which led to health problems, she says, “because we hid them away”. Jessop, on the other hand, says he has always been a confident and positive person. Aside from acting, he follows football news avidly, loves music, likes travel and cooking. The pandemic has given him a quieter life, as it has for many of us, but he says, “I’d like to get back to the theatre.” He would also love to have a girlfriend, “hopefully, at some point”. He will continue to speak out, especially as his profile grows. Last month, it was announced that he had become an ambassador for Mencap. By living fully, he wants to show what people with Down’s syndrome can do. This includes working, he says, and “falling in love and living really healthy good lives”. It’s also the reason why he believes it’s “about time” the bill becomes law.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/jan/08/t2-trainspotting-robert-carlyle-begbie-interview

Film

2017-01-08T16:00:22.000Z

Danny Leigh

Robert Carlyle: 'I took out two teeth and suddenly Begbie came back to life'

In May 2016, a group of actors arrived in Edinburgh to begin shooting T2, the long-anticipated sequel to the fabled Trainspotting. Picking up the threads of his own film, director Danny Boyle had already been in the city some time. The novelist Irvine Welsh, writer of the original book, occasionally dropped by. And then came the stars – Ewan McGregor, Jonny Lee Miller, Ewen Bremner and Robert Carlyle, back to play moustachioed psychopath Francis Begbie. Each was now well into middle age. Their mood was united. “Oh, the fear was palpable,” Carlyle says. He still sounds nervous now. “You just don’t want to fuck it up.” Carlyle says he fancied a sequel as soon as the original came out in 1996. It made perfect sense. The film had been a hit of giant scale, a cultural Godzilla whose filthy, rowdy portrait of life, death, sex and heroin in 80s Leith became a phenomenon. The cast had been made famous. All of them were up for another go around. It was Boyle who said no. “Danny kept telling us, ‘You’re not old enough.’ And it wasn’t until we actually started this that I understood. Because you can have grey dye in your hair, but if you don’t have real life experience, it’s not going to be there in your eyes.” T2: Trainspotting - full trailer for the sequel to the 1996 hit Guardian And so, in the end, the reprise took until now, loosely using Welsh’s own 2002 follow-up Porno as its source. It suits the air of homecomings that Carlyle is calling from Glasgow, where he’s spending New Year with his family (the conversation is briefly interrupted by his mother-in-law trying to use the upstairs phone). These days his time is mostly spent in Vancouver. Like all good British actors you haven’t seen in a while, he has a steady job on a US TV show, in this case Once Upon a Time, a modern riff on fairytale characters in which he turns up, still long haired and lean featured, as Rumplestiltskin. But his signature role remains Begbie. You suspect it always will. As the years passed, there was another obstacle to any reunion: the rancour between Boyle and McGregor, after the director cast the actor aside in favour of Leonardo Di Caprio for The Beach, his 2000 adaption of Alex Garland’s Thai-set novel of blood and backpacking (Carlyle would play a supporting role). The pair were estranged for years; Boyle later publicly admitted a sense of guilt. Had Carlyle and the others kept in touch in the meantime? The answer comes with a sigh. “We didn’t. And it was a pity, because we’d all been very close. But we drifted apart. Me and Ewan in particular, we lost touch completely. The four of us went for a meal before filming and sat there in shock. We said, ‘How does this happen? How does this much time go by without setting eyes on each other?’ And there was a real sadness, and a desire not to let it happen again.” The centre of everything … Ewen Bremner, Ewan McGregor and Robert Carlyle in the original Trainspotting, 1996. Photograph: Sportsphoto Ltd/Allstar Having had to return to Canada after shooting, Carlyle is yet to see the finished film. Still, he says he knows that amid the debauchery, the heart of the story is “the fate of these friendships we make when we’re basically children. So there’s life imitating art in there.” There was always an irony to the career of Carlyle, gently spoken and a natural socialist, being so bound up with Begbie – an iron fist clutching a broken pint glass. But having grown up in Glasgow’s Maryhill, leaving school at 16 to work as a decorator, he knew that, in Scotland at least, the novel had connected with a cross-section of people “far, far wider than most novels do. So when we were making the first film, I thought, All right, it’s got a chance of doing something here. But then, when it came out – my God.” The movie caused a splash internationally, but only after seducing the whole of Britain and its pallid, pimpled youth. “We pushed a button, didn’t we?” Carlyle says. Set in a non-specific 80s of smack misadventures and rave epiphanies, the film’s cackling energy and party soundtrack somehow became the perfect emblem of 1996, the long night of Tory government about to end at last, lairy optimism conquering all. If it seems like a lifetime ago, Carlyle knows how you feel. “It’s a horrible word now, but in that Britpop moment, the film was right in the centre of everything. We all felt that when it came out. Politically, you felt it too. Change was coming.” The mood of the nation that will greet the sequel is different. For years, Carlyle was a vocal political animal. Now, you need to raise the subject to get him started. “Down the years I’ve talked less about politics because it feels like this endless list of disappointments, but I was stunned about Brexit. And gutted. We need some leadership, and we haven’t had it for years. I look around and I can’t see one political figure I would trust to provide an alternative. Where is the Labour party?” Brexit was made all the weirder for him by seeing it unfold from the west coast of Canada; 20 years will take most of us to places we hadn’t expected to end up in. For Carlyle – whose career has encompassed male stripping in The Full Monty and Russian-accented Bond villainy in The World Is Not Enough – nine months of every year since 2011 has been spent on the set of Once Upon a Time. On a show of such longevity, he says the directors are essentially there “to keep the ship steady”. He sounds more polite than enthused. (In 2015, he directed his own first film, The Legend of Barney Thomson, and wants to make more). And Vancouver, while diligently praised, isn’t Glasgow. “It’s a lovely city. But culturally it is different, and I miss the craic. I’m at the stage where even though Britain is in a mess politically, I think it’s time to pack up and come home.” T2 on track … from left, Spud (Ewen Bremner), Renton (Ewan McGregor), Sick Boy (Jonny Lee Miller) and Begbie (Robert Carlyle). Photograph: Tristar Productions Inc For Begbie, the years have been bumpy – much of his time between the two stories was spent in prison. Carlyle sounds exuberant describing the physical changes he made for the film, hair shorn back to a silvery number six crop, a dental implant removed from his lower teeth. “Then the tooth next to it comes loose, so I think ‘Fuck it, take that out too.’ Suddenly I see him come to life!” And yet the backstory presented a dilemma for an actor who has always prized the authentic – in 1993 he slept rough while preparing to play a homeless man in the drama Safe – but who also knew the tone of Trainspotting was oddly fragile. “I spoke to people who had served a lot of time, but in the end I didn’t use their experience. Real jail is a serious thing. Trainspotting was never about that kind of reality. It has its own. It’s Trainspotting World, isn’t it? And pushing that world to the limit is the secret of the franchise.” The line fleetingly goes quiet. “Trainspotting, the franchise,” he repeats. “Sounds funny, eh?” T2: Trainspotting is released in the UK on 27 January This article was amended on 13 January 2017. An earlier version used the word “psychotic” where “psychopath” was meant.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/sep/12/harry-potter-jk-rowling-fantastic-beasts-film

Film

2013-09-13T09:43:00.000Z

Andrew Pulver

Fantastic Beasts carry Harry Potter back to the silver screen

The Harry Potter films will live again. Warner Bros, the studio behind the Potter films, has announced it is working on a new feature series in conjunction with author JK Rowling, based on Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, the first-year textbook that Potter uses at Hogwarts school in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. In 2001 Rowling published Fantastic Beasts as a separate book in aid of the Comic Relief charity, with the book purporting to be Potter's actual copy of the textbook, complete with his and his friends' doodles and scribblings. It is a guide to "magizoology", or the study of magical creatures, and was supposedly published in 1918, written by Newt Scamander, who will become the central character of the new film. Rowling will work on the screenplay of the new film – her first – and the hope is that it will expand into a franchise along the same lines as Potter. The author said in a statement: "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is neither a prequel nor a sequel to the Harry Potter series, but an extension of the wizarding world ... Newt's story will start in New York, seventy years before Harry's gets underway." Rowling said that the studio came to her first with the suggestion, but she said she made her own bid to be involved. "The idea of seeing Newt Scamander, the supposed author of Fantastic Beasts, realised by another writer was difficult. Having lived for so long in my fictional universe, I feel very protective of it ... As I considered Warners' proposal, an idea took shape that I couldn't dislodge. That is how I ended up pitching my own idea for a film to Warner Bros." Kevin Tsujihara, Warner Bros CEO said: "We are incredibly honoured that Jo has chosen to partner with Warner Bros. on this exciting new exploration of the world of wizardry which has been tremendously successful across all of our businesses... We know that audiences will be as excited as we are to see what her brilliant and boundless imagination conjures up for us." The eight Harry Potter films, which were released between 2001 and 2011, took over $7.7bn (£4.87bn) worldwide, and is still the most successful film series of all time. Warner has also developed a string of theme parks, video games and digital attractions, for which it clearly anticipates similar exploitation with Fantastic Beasts.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/may/03/donald-trump-backed-candidate-jd-vance-wins-ohio-senate-republican-primary

US news

2022-05-04T02:19:39.000Z

Joan E Greve

Trump-backed candidate JD Vance wins Ohio Senate Republican primary

Author JD Vance won the Senate Republican primary in Ohio on Tuesday, securing a victory after receiving Donald Trump’s endorsement in the hotly contested race. Vance was leading the crowded pack of primary candidates with 32% of the vote when the Associated Press called the race, about two hours after polls closed. Former state treasurer Josh Mandel looked likely to finish second, and state Senator Matt Dolan, who saw a last-minute surge in support, rounded out the top three. ‘JP, right?’ Donald Trump appears to forget name of candidate he endorsed Read more Addressing supporters in Cincinnati, Vance thanked Trump for his endorsement and attacked the media for highlighting his past criticism of the former president. “They wanted to write a story that this campaign would be the death of Donald Trump’s America First agenda,” Vance said. “It ain’t the death of the America First agenda.” Vance, the bestselling author of the memoir Hillbilly Elegy, will now face Democratic congressman Tim Ryan in November to determine who will fill the seat of retiring Republican Senator Rob Portman. Ryan, who ran for president in 2020, easily fended off a primary challenge from progressive candidate Morgan Harper. Delivering a message of unity to his supporters on Tuesday, Ryan promised to “build a home for Ohioans” regardless of their political party. “The work is just beginning. The fight is just beginning. We’re going to heal the country – heal Ohio and in turn heal the United States of America,” Ryan said in Columbus. The Ohio race could prove crucial in determining control of the Senate, as Republicans look to retake the upper chamber this November. The Senate is currently evenly split 50-50, but Democrats have the majority thanks to the tie-breaking vote of Kamala Harris. If Republicans can pick up just one seat in the midterm elections, they will regain control of the Senate, and holding Portman’s seat will be key to those efforts. Vance starts his general-election campaigning with a clear advantage in the race, as Trump defeated Joe Biden in Ohio by 8 points in 2020. Democrats across the country are also at a disadvantage, as the president’s party usually loses seats in the midterm elections and Biden’s approval rating has been mired in the low 40s for months. Despite the obvious challenges ahead, Ohio Democrats voiced optimism about Ryan’s chances in November, saying he would sell voters on his vision for the state’s economic future. “As Ohio’s next US Senator, Tim will keep working alongside Sherrod Brown to level the playing field and invest in our state so that we can out-compete China and create more opportunities for working families in every corner of our state – a far cry from any of the unaccountable and out of touch millionaires vying for the GOP nomination in this race,” said Elizabeth Walters, chair of the Ohio Democratic party. Democrat Tim Ryan will now face JD Vance for a crucial senate seat. Photograph: Paul Vernon/AP Trump announced his endorsement of Vance last month, arguing that he would have the best chance of victory against Ryan. Trump’s endorsement was viewed as somewhat of a gamble in the race, as Vance had previously been trailing in polling behind Mandel and businessman Mike Gibbons. Vance’s victory now provides another data point in how influential Trump’s endorsement remains among Republican primary voters, underscoring the former president’s firm grip on the party. Several of the primary candidates in Ohio had openly campaigned for Trump’s endorsement, but Vance won him over, partly thanks to his performance in recent debates. Vance ran his primary campaign as a Trump acolyte, calling for completing the wall along the US-Mexican border and demanding an end to abortion in the US. But just six years ago, Vance was one of the most prominent conservative critics of Trump, denouncing him as “America’s Hitler” and a “moral disaster”. “He’s the guy that said some bad shit about me,” Trump said of Vance during a rally in Ohio late last month. “If I went by that standard, I don’t think I would have ever endorsed anybody in the country.” But Vance completely abandoned his past criticism of Trump as he launched his Senate bid last year. Appearing alongside Trump at last month’s rally, Vance praised Trump for having “revealed the corruption in this country like nobody else”. “I wasn’t always nice, but the simple fact is, he’s the best president of my lifetime,” Vance said. The Republican primary was defined by ugliness and mudslinging, as attack ads flooded Ohio’s airwaves in the run-up to the election, but the last days of the race were also characterized by silliness. Speaking at a rally in Nebraska on Sunday, Trump misidentified Vance as “JD Mandel,” apparently confusing him with one of his opponents. The comment instantly attracted mockery from Democrats and Vance’s competitors. Despite the jokes made at his expense, Vance laughed off Trump’s slip of the tongue and insisted (correctly as it turned out) that his campaign was on the path to victory. “I think President Trump gives probably thousands of words of speeches every single week,” he said. “He’s going to misspeak every now and then. But the president’s very much on board.”

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/careers/2017/may/03/how-to-tailor-your-cv-for-interview-success

Guardian Careers

2017-05-03T06:00:22.000Z

Andrew Fennell

How to tailor your CV for interview success

Ensuring that your CV matches the role you’re applying for is the key to success while job hunting. However, no two jobs are identical, so it’s unlikely that your CV will tick all the boxes for every job. If you want to guarantee a high response rate from your applications, then it pays to tailor your CV every time you apply for a job. Making a few alterations before every application may take a bit more time, but it will greatly strengthen your chances of landing an interview. Ultimately, it’s better to make one carefully planned application, than make 10 untargeted ones. Top 10 CV buzzwords – and how to avoid them Read more Start with a flexible structure To make CV tailoring quick and easy, you need to start with an adaptable base CV to work from. This will serve as a CV that is good enough to apply for most jobs in your field, but can be adjusted in a few minutes when needed. Always start off by researching your general target roles and creating a CV that highlights the essential skills and knowledge across your niche. Using a structure that breaks text up into short paragraphs and bullet points will make edits much easier for you when it comes to tailoring. A powerful feature for tailoring (and CV best practice in general) is a “core skills” section. This is an area of short bullet points listing your most valuable skills, which sit underneath your CV profile. Not only do they provide a great instant snapshot of your talents to readers, they are also easily changeable, allowing you to make effective edits in seconds. Study every advert’s requirements A mistake that many job seekers make is to read the job title of an advert, presume that they will be a good fit, and fire off their CV without even reading the specification in full. Although it’s fair to assume that you will be somewhat qualified for most jobs in your niche, the CV you have written may still not reflect all the needs for every single vacancy you apply to. Read every job advert before you apply and check for the following things: Requirements that you possess, but haven’t included in your CV Requirements that you possess but that perhaps you aren’t making visible in your CV Unusual or out-of-the-ordinary requirements that aren’t often required in your niche Essential requirements that the employer seems to value over all else Once you understand what your CV is lacking for each role, you can begin to tailor it accordingly. Show relevant skills If you boast an attractive skill for a certain employer, don’t hide it at the bottom of your CV. For example, many people gain degrees and end up working in a completely different field from their studied subject. They then progress through the career ladder, and understandably do not shout about their degree on their CV because it no longer holds much relevance. No interviews? Stop applying for jobs and speak to the hiring manager Read more However, some employers really value education and make a big point of preferring to hire staff with degrees (no matter how long ago they were achieved). If a candidate finds themselves in a position where they are applying to an employer like this, then their old seemingly-irrelevant degree will suddenly become much more valuable on this occasion. If you are concealing any skills that an employer deems valuable, tailor the CV by repeating them at the top of your CV (in your profile or core skills) to make sure they get noticed. Add the important, cut the irrelevant If a recruiter doesn’t see the qualities they need on your CV, they probably won’t call you. If a job advert is asking for skills that you possess but haven’t included in the CV, then you need to add them. Similarly, if a requirement seems crucial to a role and you have only touched upon it, you should expand upon it to show off your expertise. To make spaces for these additions you will need to cut back on some of the less relevant information for that role. Don’t cut too much Be careful not to go overboard with the information that you cut from the CV, or you risk doing more harm than good. Try not remove: Entire roles Especially if they cover long periods of time as you will create unnecessary gaps in your CV. You may get away with removing a totally irrelevant role if it only lasted a month or two, but any longer and you should just shorten it. Core industry skills When trying to create space for unusual requirements, don’t sacrifice the essential skills for your roles. Even if you feel those skills are implied due to your work history, a recruiter may not necessarily feel the same way. Another point worth noting is that you should always start editing from your base CV rather than starting from a previously tailored version, or you will end up with a jumbled CV after making a few applications. Andrew Fennell is founder of CV writing service StandOut CV and author of How to write a CV – The ultimate guide. Looking for a job? Browse Guardian Jobs or sign up to Guardian Careers for the latest job vacancies and career advice

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/jan/31/passing-review-rebecca-halls-elegant-but-inert-directorial-debut

Film

2021-01-31T02:00:15.000Z

Benjamin Lee

Passing review – Rebecca Hall's elegant but inert directorial debut

There’s a great deal of early promise to actor Rebecca Hall’s directorial debut, an ambitious adaptation of Nella Larsen’s much-loved and much-studied 1929 novel Passing, the kind of passion project that would most traditionally be a film-maker’s sophomore effort (after something smaller and personal to prove one’s ability). In crisp, handsome black and white and with a 4:3 aspect ratio (often used as a gimmick but here feeling both fitting and practical given a smaller budget), we meet Irene or Reenie (Tessa Thompson) somewhat uneasily making her way through a mostly white Manhattan neighbourhood in the 1920s. Finding herself parched or at least in need of some comforting luxury, she heads to the Drayton Hotel, where she bumps into vibrant old friend Clare (Ruth Negga). Mass review – excruciating drama deals with school shooting aftermath Read more The pair, both light-skinned mixed-race women, haven’t seen each other for years, and while Clare is thrilled at the surprise reunion, Irene is more cautious, an initial instinct soon validated when they have a chance to talk in private in Clare’s suite. Clare reveals that she’s been “passing” as a white woman, a decision that’s helped her climb a social ladder and secure a rich husband (an odious Alexander Skarsgård). There’s a delicate push and pull to their initial conversation, both polite and both trying to avoid judgment but when Clare’s husband enters and shows himself to be a vile racist, Irene is horrified and returns back to the safety of her townhouse in Harlem with her loving doctor husband Brian (a reliably charismatic André Holland) and two kids. Clare soon finds a way back, desperate for friendship but also led by a curiosity about the life she turned her back on, a sense of energy she feels is now sorely missing from her drier new world, stuck with a husband who doesn’t just not like black people but “hates” them instead. The dynamic between the pair is dramatically limitless, an awkward, complex friendship between two women of colour both trying to survive at a time when their country is against them (Brian’s constant horrifying anecdotes of racial violence from the news are brushed away by Irene who needs no reminder of the danger her family faces) in vastly different ways. There’s a seductive comfortability to Clare that Irene envies, the ease with which she’s able to acclimatise, none of the visible second-guessing that Irene experiences, the life and soul of whatever party she’s at, exuding a natural charm but also something rather dangerous too. Yet as compelling and as complicated as this fraught friendship might be, Hall’s script can’t quite find a way to take it – and the other pieces of Larsen’s novel – and turn them into something deservedly substantial. Hall’s connection to the material is a personal one (her mother is biracial and many generations have “passed” for white) yet there’s a passion missing here, a fire that starts off blazing but fizzles as the story progresses. The slow pace and spareness of the deft first act is delicate and allows moments and characters to breathe but it soon turns into tedium as the script settles into a slightly repetitious nature, a plod that means the moments that do work (usually involving a new slight development in Clare and Irene’s obsession with each other’s identity, always a fraction away from Hitchcockian thriller territory) are lost in the mass that don’t (earlier subtlety giving way to clunky on-the-nose dialogue). There’s an initial quietness to the film that’s full of so much – the things that are thought but can’t be said – but it soon evaporates into emptiness instead. Thompson, who was so luminous at last year’s Sundance in Eugene Ashe’s wonderful 60s romance Sylvie’s Love, gives a valiant effort here but she’s malnourished by Hall’s limited script which lumps her with too many scenes of looking concerned in a small handful of locations and not enough else. Negga, on the other hand, is allowed to steal scenes as the more gregarious of the pair and she’s deviously good at it, a true star turn from an actor who has deserved to be in so many more things since her Oscar-nominated turn in Loving. It remains visually elegant throughout, with Hall’s decision to shoot in black and white allowing for some gloriously well-lit one-off shots courtesy of A Single Man cinematographer Eduard Grau. But the choice to repeat the same piece of music throughout starts to tire, and as we reach the final act, Hall skips over some important emotional beats (He did? She what? How come? etc) which leaves the tragic finale not feeling quite tragic enough. There are so many weighty and often unasked questions in Passing about race and identity – questions that can never be easily answered, if at all, and Hall deserves credit for daring to cover such ground. But the fascinating nature of these issues should have left us with something more to hold on to, more to feel and more to think, a film as worthy of discussion as the knotty ideas it brings up. Passing is screening at the Sundance film festival with a release date yet to be announced

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2014/feb/06/mistress-contract-royal-court-review

Stage

2014-02-06T02:09:29.000Z

Michael Billington

The Mistress Contract – review

Abi Morgan, who has had great success on TV with The Hour and on film with The Iron Lady, has now adapted this best-selling memoir about a couple's unusual sexual arrangement. But, although the female partner constantly describes the situation as "an experiment", I was struck by how conventional the play is: it kept reminding me of a popular 1970s Broadway comedy, Same Time Next Year by Bernard Slade, in which a married couple's annual clandestine meetings yield something like love. In this case, the set-up is a bit more hard-headed. The anonymous couple, who've known each since grad school and are characterised simply as She and He, decide in 1981 to formalise their relationship. She, a twice-married feminist, agrees to provide "mistress services" while He, a wealthy businessman, will offer her a house, necessary expenses and periodic companionship. Over a period of 30 years, and 90 theatrical minutes, we not only see how a business arrangement acquires the patina of habit: we also realise that, by taping their conversations, the couple turn them into a marketable commodity. I've not read the book but Morgan certainly allows the pair to cover a variety of topics: gender wars, the changing face of feminism, masculine predictability versus the female hunger for the unexpected. At times the conversations are bruisingly candid as when She mocks his need to be regularly fellated and He attacks her incuriosity and urge to treat males as abstractions. But, although She and He talk endlessly about sex, they never talk much about anything else. Given the vast changes that have overtaken America from the Reagan to the Obama years, I rather wished they might at least have touched on Iraq and Afghanistan, threats to homeland security and shifts in racial attitudes. In Merle Hensel's design, they occupy a glass house on the fringe of the Californian desert but I kept thinking there is a world elsewhere. Because the conversations are assiduously taped, they also acquire a fatal self-consciousness. At one point He tries to get her to admit to her mastectomy. She brushes him aside, rather oddly, by saying the subject "makes our talks Pollock rather than Munch or Van Gogh." She goes on to say that "we want the woman in this book in this book to have a quality of everywoman" rather than seeming exceptional. But that sets alarm-bells ringing since it makes one wonder to what extent we are eavesdropping on spontaneous conversations or something dictated by commercial imperatives. Even if the play emerges as romcom for the intellectual classes, it is given a bit of zip by the two actors. Saskia Reeves feelingly captures the dilemma of a woman who has experienced two rocky marriages, found guidance in the feminism of Friedan and Dworkin and is trying to discover whether she can love a man again. Danny Webb is equally impressive as the He who is slightly blunter in his attitudes but who also hides his sensitivity under a mask of sexual braggadocio. Under Vicky Featherstone's shrewd directorial guidance, the two actors also age with subtlety and finesse. But, although I admire the play for its sexual candour, it still strikes me as a hermetic, inbred work in which private lives are never really subjected to the pressure of external events. Abi Morgan interview: 'Mistresses can have great power Buy top price tickets for The Mistress Contract for just £27. For more, go to theguardian.com/extra

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jun/26/not-my-fathers-son-alan-cumming-review-actor-difficult-childhood

Books

2015-06-26T15:59:00.000Z

Victoria Segal

Not My Father’s Son by Alan Cumming review – the actor on his tough childhood

In the acknowledgements of this memoir, Alan Cumming thanks his agent for “not exhorting me to do a ‘my fabulous celebrity life’ type of book”, and despite occasional references to hosting charity galas and wearing Alexander McQueen, Not My Father’s Son tells two stories that unfold in places far removed from that glamour. One starts in the Scottish forest where Cumming grew up terrorised by his violent, philandering father; the other ends in Malaya where his maternal grandfather, Tommy Darling, died in a mysterious shooting accident in 1951. His appearance on Who Do You Think You Are? allowed Cumming to uncover Darling’s life and death, and the show’s framework has a slight distancing effect, but the actor’s writing about his relationship with his father is raw-edged, stinging and inescapably painful. Just when he thinks he has conquered his past, an end-of-life revelation from his father drags him back in, but Cumming’s unsurprising gift for drama never overwhelms the cold realities of the damage done, nor his joyous determination to crush bad memories by living a good life. To order Not My Father’s Son for £7.19 (RRP £8.99) go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/jan/24/im-an-apocalypse-writer-bradford-cox-the-asexual-rock-star-for-end-times

Music

2019-01-24T14:00:08.000Z

Ben Beaumont-Thomas

I'm an apocalypse writer': Bradford Cox of Deerhunter, the asexual rock star for end times

The door to Bradford Cox’s wood-framed house is unlocked, so I wander in. Set in a leafy bit of Atlanta, it is the kind of place that would make Marie Kondo freak out, with the entire contents of Cox’s brain seemingly emptied on to its handsome wooden furniture: a topography of shells, tools, vials and records. His voice calls out a greeting, digitally garbled through a loudspeaker, and a dog treat fires across the room. Faulkner, Cox’s stocky mutt, skids on to the kitchen floor. “I love you boy!” Cox is on his way back in his Volvo, but is using an app to monitor, talk to and remotely feed Faulkner. “I love dogs more than humans,” he tells me later. “I don’t like hateful things. I like sweet dogs with velvet ears.” As the frontman and creative engine of Deerhunter, Cox’s ambient rock music – forged at the crossroads of shoegaze, doo-wop and 60s psych – has made the five-piece one of the great US bands of the century. Their new album Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared? is terrifically bleak without being maudlin, beautifully sketching out worlds that are teetering or actually ending. But Cox, once ensconced in his home, is a picture of contentment. “The only great fear I have is losing my parents, or anyone in my family, and my dog,” he says. “I wish those things could last for ever, and then I would have heaven. I have everything I want.” He has double-booked me, and apologises: would I mind going to his friend Michael Stipe’s birthday party? As inconveniences go, it ranks low, and so we head off to Athens, the next sizeable town to the east. This is where Cox grew up, poor, and had a tough childhood: complications resulting from Marfan syndrome left him his rake-thin profile, and required surgery and months in hospital. Succour eventually came from going to see bands such as Stereolab. “When I was just a boy at 12 or 13, [Stereolab co-founder] Tim Gane said to me his favourite word was ‘juxtaposition’. I remember that sticking out to me. And I said: ‘Well, that’ll be my favourite word, and my life will be devoted to juxtaposing.’” At Stipe’s house, Cox does not seem particularly thrilled by the party element of the birthday party, and mostly wants to give Stipe his present, a painting by fellow Atlanta visionary Lonnie Holley. His lanky frame stiffens when we enter Stipe’s noisy kitchen, and we make fitful small talk next to Helena Christensen, Cox holding an untouched portion of cake as if out of duty. There is a great spread, but he would rather head off and eat elsewhere. We get back in the Volvo and head to a diner, where Deerhunter bassist Josh McKay happens to be sitting at another table. A journeyman Georgia indie rocker who once played in a band with River Phoenix, McKay replaced Josh Fauver, who later died young at 39, a subject Cox will not talk about. McKay and keyboardist Javier Morales had themselves dodged death the previous week, after a car smashed into theirs. Cox is not massively sympathetic, slightly scolding McKay for not buying his previous Volvo; McKay breathes his irritation in through his nose and swallows it. There’s something uniquely toxic about this current situation, a new chemical scent that I’ve never smelled before Bradford Cox It is the only glimpse all weekend of the frictions that have sometimes flared up in the band, that first formed in 2001. All the members seem to agree that they are in a better place now than when they were making previous records. Guitarist Lockett Pundt describes 2013’s Monomania as having “a kind of snarl, a lot of anger and resentment … the creation was kind of nightmarish”, but has recently noticed a “maturation in the band … we enjoy each other’s company more [now] than in the past”. McKay says they are like “misunderstood cousins” with Cox as “mum and dad in one”. Cox meanwhile, who writes the bulk of the band’s music as demos before the band refine it together, describes their creative process as: “This oil just erupted through the floor of the desert, but now we’re going to build a scaffolding around it.” The waitress brings over the bill with a Deerhunter lyric quoted on top in Biro. The next day, Faulkner leads us around their cloudless Atlanta neighbourhood as we talk about town planning. In the local cafe, they know how Cox likes his tea: on ice, steeped for seven minutes. Where on earth has Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared?, “empirically a bummer record” according to Cox, come from amid this indie version of Eden? “I’m basically trying to take a zeitgeist and run with it,” Cox says, back sitting in his living room. “There’s something uniquely toxic about this current situation, a new chemical scent that I’ve never smelled before. It’s like burning plastic.” Is Trump to blame for this social discord? “How can you blame one person? There’s a general narcissism, a general sense of meaninglessness, really. And the rush to synthesise some sort of meaning out of the versions of ourselves that we create and promote.” Not that it’s a bad thing for art he says: he was up late watching The Third Man, and quotes the Orson Welles line about the Italians having bloodshed and Michelangelo, and the Swiss having peace and the cuckoo clock. “It is an interesting way of framing human history: the worse it gets, art restates its value and necessity. In a peaceful and contented culture, art becomes subdued – all of its art is going to be based on designs for living. [Apple designer] Jonathan Ive is probably one of the most important modern artists,” he says, witheringly. Bradford Cox on stage at Field Day, London, in 2016. Photograph: Richard Isaac/Rex/Shutterstock One song, the Kinks-referencing No One’s Sleeping, was written straight after Cox heard about the killing of British MP Jo Cox by a man opposed to her stance on the EU and immigration: “Great unrest / In the country / There’s much duress / Violence has taken hold.” “I was laying in bed with my dog, reading the news, and I was moved to stand up and groan by the frustration,” Cox says. “It’s just violence, it’s sickening.” Like many, he regards the rise of populism wearily. “Having grown up in the American south, I understand about poverty. And how poverty can leave one to feel a strange, brassy sense of dignity, and a need for one to possess one’s culture and identity. There’s an aspiration to be the ruling class, the ones who can trace their ancestry to primitive beaches. We feel entitled to a national identity, and tribalism, which is sad.” He compares us unfavourably to Faulkner and his canine friends. “When I take my dog up to the dog park, he doesn’t play with dogs of his own size or colouring or breed, he plays with all the dogs. They become a mad pack, tongues wagging, happy to be together.” Punk’s much easier when you don’t have to wake up in the morning, and that’s who dominates punk Bradford Cox Another song, Element, is even more stricken, seemingly taking place in a painterly nuclear apocalypse. “Humanity is like a 12-year-old who has just realised what suicide is: ‘Wait, we could actually just end it all?’ Well, everyone wants to leave if things get not fun; no one wants to stay at a party that turns foul.” He segues into free association, also his songwriting method. “Are black holes punk? Are they nihilist? Do they have safety pins through their cheeks? Is antimatter suicidal, does it possess an urge to destroy, to uncreate?” When he first moved to Atlanta, Cox lived with an underground punk crowd and his no-fucks-given performances (including one where he covered My Sharona for an hour) have a punk attitude, but he is jaded by the snotty aesthetic that “punk” conjures. To begin with, “punk is essentially just as misogynistic as being in a frat; a lot of it really was white men creating more conniving ways to impose their self-perceived superiority on people”. Moreover, it was a culture of privilege, he says. “Punk’s much easier when you don’t have to wake up in the morning, and that’s who dominates punk. The working class wake up and they work. The punks would be very happy with all this conservative psychosis: ‘Yeah, let’s watch it burn!’ Whereas there’s no little object in this house that I haven’t worked for, and I don’t want the world to fall apart because I want my dog and I to stay here.” So have you become more socially conscious? “Quite the opposite. I do not feel myself becoming more engaged with culture or society.” And yet you are communing with what’s happening in that culture. “We’re living in supernatural times, and the supernatural has always appealed to me. Well, supernatural is now just referred to as genetically modified. Witchcraft is real, now. It’s patented.” He grimaces. “I just sound like a fucking Radiohead interview in 1996.” He warms to the theme, though. “They’re like the big brothers in college when I was a kid, and now I’m in college, and I’m like: ‘The world is fucked up!’ And they’re like, ‘We already knew that. We’re married with kids now, we’re happy, we’ve realised you can just settle into it.’ But I’m an apocalypse writer.” Deerhunter, with Bradford Cox, left. Photograph: PR The final track, Nocturne, is described as “a final dispatch before ascending to heaven”, and Cox is saved from total desperation by his belief in God, “in a way that virtually no one would understand. I’m appalled by what people have done in the name of Christianity. But God’s all I’ve got because if I didn’t have that faith … Are you listening to my lyrics, this stuff that’s coming out of my mouth? I’ve not got a lot else to live for. The flowers in my garden die and are reborn in the spring; I like to hope there’s some design to this cycle.” He calls the new album “very hopeless”, so has he ever felt truly hopeless himself? “I’ve never been suicidal, if that’s the implication. I don’t find it romantic, I just find it selfish and distasteful. Hopelessness is no different from hunger or having to defecate; it’s just part of the process until the next sense of renewal. I take antidepressants, I’ve battled depression like so many others, but I wasn’t feeling hopeless when I wrote this album; I was writing this album about hopelessness. Horror is not eternal. I personally hug my dog.” And he writes music, including superb solo albums as Atlas Sound; he rushes upstairs to show me how he works, building up a track from drums, guitar and a tone-generation machine used to test children’s hearing. A proud asexual, he says his lack of libido means “my entire world is based on aesthetic contemplation, with no distractions”. In 2016, Cox told the podcast Start Making Sense that “at 34 years old, I’m actually a virgin”. Might he ever be interested in sex? “That’s like asking a homosexual: do you think you’ll ever be interested in a woman? It’s a bit rude. The problem with society is they patted themselves on the back – which is a very white male behaviour – for accepting the homosexual, the bisexual, the transgender person, as much as they do, which leaves a lot to be desired. But no one acknowledges asexuality as an actual thing. People so often say to me: ‘Well, you just haven’t met the right person.’ As if asexuality is like having braces, they’ll come off eventually.” Instead, he can settle into being an aesthete, and a father to his band and Faulkner. He tells me what he finds beautiful: “Designs in plastics like Bakelite, English watercolours, the bass clarinet, always the drums, really fine French paper. It’s kind of pretentious, but there is nothing more beautiful than a blank piece of paper. It’s a bit like seeing a puppy and thinking: ‘What an amazing time I’m going to have raising you.’” We head off to the park, where Faulkner runs around happily with all the other dogs. Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared? is out now on 4AD

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/feb/08/liberal-senator-andrew-bragg-publicly-lobby-peter-dutton-to-embrace-indigenous-voice

Australia news

2023-02-07T14:00:50.000Z

Paul Karp

Liberal senator Andrew Bragg will publicly lobby Peter Dutton to embrace Indigenous voice

Liberal MP Andrew Bragg will publicly lobby opposition leader Peter Dutton to embrace the Indigenous voice to parliament, labelling it a “liberal solution” to reconciliation. On Wednesday, Bragg will release a position paper giving “five reasons the voice is right”, rejecting some of the central concerns of voice opponents that it discriminates on race or will fail like the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (Atsic). Bragg has declared the Indigenous voice “isn’t a Labor project, it’s an Australian project”, labelling it the country’s best shot at reconciliation. Nationals fracture over federal opposition to Indigenous voice Read more “This is not a ‘woke’ agenda. It’s not identity politics and it isn’t a separatist agenda which denigrates Australia,” Bragg said. “Of all the major ideas put forward to advance reconciliation, from a national treaty through to misguided attempts to change history through moving Australia Day, the voice is the best idea with the highest chance of broad-based support.” Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup Bragg’s support for the voice comes despite the Liberals’ Indigenous affairs spokesperson, Julian Leeser, warning that the government is “in danger of losing [him]”, and Dutton concluding there is not enough detail yet on the proposal. But Bragg’s position could still cause headaches for the Albanese government, with calls to explain the creation of the local and regional voices in addition to the national voice, and to establish an inquiry before introducing a bill to set up the referendum. Bragg said that four of the five conditions he had set on support for a voice in his first speech had been met, but “further analysis” is needed on the supremacy of parliament, including more detail on the potential for high court “interference”. Dutton, by contrast, sent Anthony Albanese 15 questions for Labor about the voice. The bid to entrench the voice in the constitution was boosted this week by the Greens resolving to support it, although the voice faces a renewed threat from the radical left after senator Lidia Thorpe quit the party to pursue “black sovereignty” instead. On Tuesday, Dutton told the Coalition party room there was no need to settle the opposition’s position on the voice while it awaits more detail. The Nationals senator, Jacinta Price, and other opponents to the voice, including the Institute of Public Affairs, argue the voice divides Australians based on race by giving Indigenous Australians special input into government decisions. Bragg rejected the argument, noting it “assumes there are no race-based policies … in Australia”. He cited native title legislation, income management, assistance for Indigenous education and the stolen generations redress scheme as examples. “At present, these laws are made and amended without any obligation on the commonwealth to consult Indigenous people. This is our illiberal past and present but it doesn’t have to be our future.” On 29 January, the Nationals leader, David Littleproud, told Sky News that Australia had already experienced an Indigenous advisory body. “It was called Atsic and it didn’t shift the dial in closing the gap.” Dutton has also referred to Atsic in three interviews about the voice in January, warning that “we don’t want to end up with an Atsic” that cannot be repealed because it is entrenched in the constitution. Bragg said the voice “would not be the rebirth” of Atsic because it would not deliver government programs, mediate between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations, conduct evaluations or be a clearing house for research. Bragg argued that Liberals as “supporters of limited government, and individual and community liberty and responsibility” should be in favour of the voice, which he said would improve “agency and control” of Indigenous communities and “kill paternalism”. Bragg praised John Howard for launching the constitutional recognition debate but noted “the concept of simple acknowledgment-style recognition morphed into a recognition which was to be substantive and consultative: the voice”. Bragg aligned himself with Ken Wyatt, the first Indigenous person with portfolio responsibility for Indigenous Australians, and the report by Marcia Langton and Tom Calma that he commissioned, which advocated local and regional voices in addition to the national voice. On Tuesday, the Coalition resolved to push for amendments to the referendum machinery bill to restore pamphlets explaining the yes and no cases, and public funding for both campaigns. It will oppose the bill if these are not agreed to. Liberal Senate leader, Simon Birmingham, a leading moderate, told reporters in Canberra he has “long supported the recognition of First Australians in our constitution”. “I don’t want to see a referendum put and fail, but I can see a scenario where the government’s failure to provide comprehensive answers, detailed to the Australian people, that is creating a real challenge in relation to whether Australians will give the support for this referendum,” he said, calling for a “fully informed” vote.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/sep/02/manchester-city-yaya-toure-left-out-champions-league-squad-pep-guardiola

Football

2016-09-02T14:26:20.000Z

Jamie Jackson

Yaya Touré left out of Manchester City’s Champions League squad

Yaya Touré has been left out of Manchester City’s Champions League squad by Pep Guardiola. Touré has featured once this season, in City’s 1-0 win over Steaua Bucharest in the Champions League knockout round second leg. That game was virtually meaningless because City led 5-0 from the first leg. Manchester City’s Sergio Agüero to contest violent conduct charge Read more Leroy Sané and Ilkay Gündogan, two midfielders bought this summer but who have yet to play because of injury, are included in the Champions League squad. Touré’s exclusion is a further signal his City career may nearing its close, just as Joe Hart’s loan move to Torino after being dropped by Guardiola seems to have ended the goalkeeper’s time at the club. City are in Group C, alongside Barcelona, Celtic and Borussia Mönchengladbach. Guardiola’s side host Borussia in the group opener on 13 September.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/nov/12/grenfell-memorial-not-ready-decade-after-fire

UK news

2023-11-12T09:00:16.000Z

Jon Ungoed-Thomas

Grenfell Tower memorial will not be ready until a decade after fire

A memorial to commemorate the 72 lives lost in the Grenfell Tower fire will not be completed until at least 2027, a decade after the fire, according to a new report. A report, Remembering Grenfell, by the Grenfell Tower Memorial Commission says the “earliest point” building on a memorial could start would be late 2026. The government has not yet made any decision on the future of the tower in west London, which is now covered in a protective wrapping. The report, which is yet to be published but has been seen by the Observer, says: “There are parts of the structure of the tower which could be preserved or repurposed in a way that is safe and which recognisably retains their original form, texture or construction. “This includes items such as the 14 pillars which support Grenfell Tower and the concrete crown on the roof of Grenfell Tower.” Bereaved family members and former residents of the tower differed over whether elements of the tower should be incorporated in any future memorial, the report says. Some members of the Grenfell community made it very clear they would not want the memorial to become a tourist destination. The report said that, based on its consultations with the community, it recommended the memorial should incorporate a garden, contain a dedicated space for the expression of grief and mourning, and should include a monument and/or an artwork. It said arrangements should be put in place to ensure the memorial would be properly looked after for generations. Terms of reference for the Grenfell Tower Memorial Commission were published in September 2018. They said the purpose of the community-led commission was to establish what happens to the Grenfell Tower site in the future and to decide how the site will be owned and sustainably managed for the long term. It is co-chaired by Lord Boateng, the former Labour minister, and Thelma Stober, head of legal services at the Local Government Association. It also has 10 community representatives. It was reported in September 2021 that ministers were set to announce the demolition of Grenfell Tower, with senior Whitehall sources describing it as a “fait accompli”. Michael Gove, the housing secretary, later apologised for the anonymous briefing, which occurred before he took office. He said any future decision would be taken respectfully and in consultation with those affected. There is frustration among some of the bereaved families at the pace of the work of the Grenfell Tower Memorial Commission. They consider a decision needs to be made on the future of the tower, with the necessary inspection work to establish its structural integrity. Kimia Zabihyan, who represents the Grenfell Next of Kin group, an organisation which supports families of those who died in the fire, said: “There still has not been a decision on the key issues of whether or not the tower remains or not. The issue is not whether you want a fountain or a playground, but what happens to the tower and what parts are safe. We can’t afford any more delays. Grenfell commission proposes permanent memorial to replace tower Read more “The decision about the tower needs to be made with the government listening to the immediate family members who are first and foremost the reason for the memorial in the first place.” Hisam Choucair, 46, who lost six members of his family in the fire in June 2017, including his mother and sister, said he would like the tower to remain as a sign of the “failings and the atrocity”. He said: “The fact that there’s no decision is so damaging as it’s holding us up. We are not able to move forward.” The Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities and the Grenfell Tower Memorial Commission are not commenting until the official publication of the report.

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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/22/male-female-brains-different-centuries

Opinion

2024-02-22T11:00:50.000Z

Gina Rippon

Take it from a neuroscientist: searching for a ‘male’ and ‘female’ brain is a waste of time | Gina Rippon

There seems to be an insatiable public appetite for information about sex differences in the human brain, eagerly harnessed by the media in many forms. A paper out this week from a research group at Stanford University made headlines for its innovative contribution to this form: using an AI neural network model to look at brain scans to see if it could “reliably” and “robustly” tell female and male brains apart. In other – more neutral – words, could the algorithm tell whether the brain patterns being looked at were from women or men? The answer was “yes”, though rather more guarded in the paper itself than in the reports about it. What was interesting about the study was that it seemed to have moved beyond the stereotypical “size matters” agenda – asking whether male or female brains are bigger or smaller in different areas – instead measuring differences in the working brain using a method that looked at differences in blood flow to various brain regions. Frustratingly, though, when they did find differences, the explanations were just in terms of sex (in the traditional binary, biological sense of the word). We really should stop talking about “male” and “female” brains – and rigidly using that particular lens to evaluate and report on data that is interesting in so many other ways. Arguments about sex differences in the brain have been raging for centuries. Early combatants were pretty outspoken about what they were trying to prove, in particular the inferiority of the female brain. It would be so good to move along from this. This paper is obviously not wanting to draw any inferences about the value, or even the meaning, of the differences they found, but the impression we are left with – magnified by the media interest it sparked – is clearly reflecting an ongoing “hunt the sex differences” agenda. There seems to be an implacable need, even in today’s world, to find a nice set of biologically programmed, sex-specific differences in the brain, and agree that these must be the basis of any female-male differences in behaviour, or temperament, or ability and achievement. As for the science itself, there were two key truths that this paper and its coverage overlooked. The first concerns the difference between sex and gender – what, in the olden days, might have been cast as the nature v nurture argument. We now know our brains are malleable and changeable throughout our lives. When you can tell by looking at the scan of an expert musician if they are a keyboard player (spot the symmetrical representation of finger control centres in the brain) or if they play a stringed instrument (cue asymmetrical control centres), this gives a pretty good indication that our brains reflect the lives they have lived or the skills they have acquired. This means that when most studies look at adult scans, they are seeing a brain that has been shaped by lifelong experiences, not just by any potential “hard coded” differences. The second thing to note about brains is that they have evolved to make us social beings. What nobody, including the authors of the paper, seem to have picked up on is that the areas of the brain that were found to distinguish females and males most reliably are key parts of the social brain network, which has evolved to be uniquely attuned to social interactions, and to pay attention to the outside world and to other people. The default mode network is the part of the brain in which we store key elements of social knowledge acquired by interaction, from the moment of birth (if not before) with the outside world – about yourself and about other people, about social rules and social norms, and even social stereotypes. Is AI more creative than the human brain? I doubt it – and I definitely want humans to stay in charge Stefan Stern Read more The 1,500 young adults in this study were aged between 20 and 35 – just imagine what a treasure trove of experiences will be reflected in their brains. This is not to say that what determines how our brains work is “all culture and no biology”. It is perfectly plausible that there may be sex-related differences in how brains are shaped by social experiences. But it does mean that, when studying diverse groups of human beings, just knowing that the brains come from young female adults as opposed to young male adults will never give us the full picture of where any differences came from. Researchers should acknowledge that, despite the thousands of research papers with the term “sex differences” in their title, there is little or no consistent and conclusive evidence that any brain differences found can be solely attributed to biological sex. Essentialist assumptions like these have negative consequences. Only last month, David C Geary, a well-known evolutionary psychologist, said that we should question the wisdom of policy interventions to reduce gender gaps if there was any evidence that they arose from “substantive biological contributions”. Comments on the so-called gender equality paradox cite unspecified “endogenous factors” as an explanation for the fact that that the most gender-equal countries have the greatest underrepresentation of women in science, failing to note that these very countries also have the most entrenched gendered stereotypes about women’s scientific abilities. If we continue to buy in to the argument that differences between men and women are hardwired, permanent and intractable, then any attempts to address inequalities will all too easily be dismissed, with “what science says” taking the blame. Prof Gina Rippon is emeritus professor of cognitive neuroimaging at the Aston Brain Centre, Aston University, and the author of The Gendered Brain Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

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https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/feb/17/progress-shark-sydney-worldpride-2023-icon

Culture

2023-02-17T05:19:53.000Z

Samantha Lock

Sydney’s ‘absurd and wonderful’ Progress Shark becomes WorldPride icon

When an event thrusts a city into the global spotlight, designing a mascot is a highly deliberated undertaking. But in Sydney, where the month-long WorldPride celebrations have just commenced, it has happened entirely by accident. And the result is a giant great white shark wrapped in rainbow Lycra. In Australia’s biggest city, the month-long WorldPride festival has begun and a 10-metre long statue called Progress Shark, has become its unofficial totem. The Australian Museum exhibit – originally designed simply to welcome its hundreds of thousands of visitors – has become a viral sensation and accidental icon of WorldPride. “As a queer person I have never connected to something so deeply as I have to Progress Shark,” said Laura Connell, 29, a Sydney-based artist. “It’s absurd and wonderful. It’s everything we never knew we needed.” Kylie, Ultra Violet, Kim Petras: WorldPride festival has ‘something for everyone’, CEO says Read more The prop, suspended five metres in the air, has gained international fame online, sparked dozens of memes and even prompted an Instagram fan account. Hundreds have lined up to take a photo next to the larger-than-life sea creature. “Progress Shark needs to be made a national landmark,” one fan said. “I would die for Progress Shark,” said another. The museum tweeted earlier that it was “blown away” by all the support. “Progress Shark has captured the hearts of so many already,” it said. “He’s a male, he’s bigger than a great white shark normally gets but he’s scientifically and anatomically correct.” Allow Instagram content? This article includes content provided by Instagram. We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as they may be using cookies and other technologies. To view this content, click 'Allow and continue'. Allow and continue Artist George Buchanan brought the creation to life by sewing together the shark-sized Lycra leotard in her garage in south Sydney. “I had to measure the shark first,” she says. “It’s not symmetrical so it was difficult to get it right.” The final result was a metres-long rainbow suit sewn together with 25lb fishing line. “It’s very Aussie humour. It’s so silly. It’s just absurd,” she said. “What is seen as a menacing creature is now bringing so much joy and love.” From Broadslay to BWYASSS: the best, worst and cringiest brand tie-ins at Sydney Pride Michael Sun Read more Kate Wickett, the festival’s CEO, said Progress Shark was just one of the 45 “rainbow moments” spread across Sydney as part of Rainbow City, one to celebrate each year of Mardi Gras. “It’s the unofficial mascot Sydney WorldPride never knew it needed,” she said. Sydney’s lord mayor, Clover Moore, is also in support of the shark. “It’s your time to shine Progress Shark”, she said while tagging the fan account set up in dedication to the shark. Art Simone, Australian drag performer and former contestant in RuPaul’s Drag Race, joined the online frenzy, writing: “Progress Shark is where it’s at!” WorldPride started in Sydney on Friday and will run to 5 March. It will also coincide with the city’s 45th Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras where more than 500,000 people are expected to attend.

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https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/aug/17/former-itv-chief-adam-crozier-to-take-over-as-bt-chairman

Business

2021-08-17T08:51:11.000Z

Mark Sweney

Former ITV chief Adam Crozier to take over as BT chairman

BT has appointed Adam Crozier, the former chief executive of Royal Mail and ITV, as its new chairman. Crozier, who is standing down as chairman of online retailer Asos, will join as BT’s chairman designate on 1 March and take over from the incumbent, Jan du Plessis, on 1 December. BT began the hunt for a new chairman in March after Du Plessis announced his resignation after reports of clashes with the chief executive, Philip Jansen, who reportedly threatened to resign unless a replacement was found. “After a thorough and comprehensive process to ensure we identified the very best candidate to lead BT, Adam is the unanimous choice of the board,” said Iain Conn, BT’s senior independent director. “He has significant experience in leading public company boards, developing teams and managing stakeholders, and brings a strong transformational and operational track record in large-scale executive roles.” Crozier, 57, who has also held the role of chief executive at advertising group Saatchi & Saatchi and the Football Association, will also step down as a non-executive director at Sony Corporation. However, he will retain his role as chairman of Whitbread, the owner of Premier Inn, and Kantar, the data and research company spun out of advertising group WPP. “BT is a hugely important company with a critical role to play in building the digital networks and services to support the UK’s future,” Crozier said. “I look forward to working with the board, Philip and his executive team to create value for all our stakeholders.” Sign up to the daily Business Today email or follow Guardian Business on Twitter at @BusinessDesk At BT, Crozier will receive an annual salary of £700,000, the same as his predecessor. The appointment of Crozier comes as Jansen aims to deliver a £15bn rollout of full-fibre broadband to 25m premises by 2026 and restructure BT, which employs about 100,000 staff, including reducing the sprawling telecoms company’s physical footprint from 300 to 30 sites across the UK. BT’s share price hit an 11-year low last year and, despite recovering about 80% since then, speculation remains that it could be a takeover target. In June, Altice, the telecoms group controlled by the billionaire Patrick Drahi, became BT’s biggest shareholder after spending £2.2bn to take a 12.1% stake. “I would like to thank Jan for his leadership over the last four years,” Jansen said. “I am delighted to welcome Adam to BT, and I really look forward to working with him as we target returning BT to consistent growth.”

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https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/feb/09/christian-bale-terrence-malick-knight-of-cups

Film

2015-02-09T16:12:37.000Z

Ben Child

Christian Bale baffled by Terrence Malick on Knight of Cups shoot

Christian Bale has admitted he was left a little clueless as to what was going on during the making of Terrence Malick’s latest film Knight of Cups. Speaking over the weekend at the Berlin film festival, where the romantic fantasy is debuting in competition for the main Golden Bear and Silver Bear prizes, Bale said he shot his part without a script and did not receive any instruction from the maverick film-maker to help him paint a picture of the movie’s theme. Knight of Cups review: Malick's back! With the least interesting spiritual crisis in history Read more “He didn’t tell us what it was about,” Bale said. “He really just gave me the character description. We worked on the character a great deal, worked on his backstory.” He added: “I never had any lines to learn, but I’d see other people, and they’d have pages. I’d always look over their shoulders to see what it was that I was going to be told. I never knew what I was going to be doing each day.” The double Oscar-winning actor also revealed Malick’s penchant for “torpedoing” his cast with “different actors and non-actors to get a very real response.” Knight of Cups stars Bale as an LA screenwriter trying to make sense of a series of bizarre experiences. Other members of the cast include Natalie Portman, Cate Blanchett, Brian Dennehy and Antonio Banderas. Bale is not the first Malick castmember to reveal confusion at the director’s unorthodox methods. In 2011, The Tree of Life star Sean Penn told Le Figaro he failed to comprehend the Palme D’Or-winning film’s offbeat structure and admitted he was unsure why he had been asked to join the cast. “The screenplay is the most magnificent one that I’ve ever read but I couldn’t find that same emotion on screen,” said Penn. “A clearer and more conventional narrative would have helped the film without, in my opinion, lessening its beauty and its impact. Frankly, I’m still trying to figure out what I’m doing there and what I was supposed to add in that context! What’s more, Terry himself never managed to explain it to me clearly.”

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https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/nov/24/are-the-secret-service-gonna-come-get-me-colman-domingo-on-rustin-zendaya-and-touching-obama

Film

2023-11-24T08:00:15.000Z

Steve Rose

‘Are the Secret Service gonna come get me?’: Colman Domingo on Rustin, Zendaya and touching Obama

‘T he stars aligned,” says Colman Domingo, “that’s why I’m wearing stars on my boots.” He is laughing as he shows me his spotless white Chelsea boots, each with three blue stars up the back. Domingo has an explosive, contagious, almost filthy laugh that often bursts out of his otherwise mellow, succulent baritone. In voice, in dress and in person he is immensely charming. Quite a few stars have aligned into a Domingo-shaped constellation lately. He has breakout roles in two movies and the actors’ strike has ended just in time for him to talk about them. One is The Color Purple – a lavish adaptation of the musical of Alice Walker’s seminal novel (the white boots are for a photoshoot; he doesn’t wear them all the time). The other is Rustin, a biopic of Bayard Rustin, the unsung organiser of the legendary March on Washington of 1963. Ironically, while he was a champion for Black rights, Rustin’s homosexuality and communist affiliations saw him airbrushed out of the history books. He has been called “the godfather of intersectionality”. “He was openly gay at a time when it truly would have cost him his livelihood and harm to his body,” says Domingo. “I mean, talk about cancel culture.” ‘I think very similarly to him’ … Domingo as Bayard Rustin in Rustin. Photograph: David Lee/Netflix © 2023 Rustin is Domingo’s first proper starring role and it fits him like a glove. “Once I started to do more research about Bayard Rustin, I realised we had some similar aspects,” he says. They’re about the same physical size, Domingo explains. And like Rustin, he is from Pennsylvania, left-handed and gay (he has been married since 2014). “He was very much focused on civil rights, and he happened to be gay,” says Domingo. “That’s the way he thought of himself. I think very similarly; just a man in the world with ideas, thoughts, dreams, wants and needs like everybody else. I happen to be gay … that’s just an addendum to who I am.” Like his subject, 53-year-old Domingo is finally emerging from the margins, and deservedly so. His energetic, empathic performance is likely to be noticed come awards season, and after 30-odd years as a jobbing character actor, people are starting to notice him cropping up all over the place. ‘They know: “Oh, Colman will help add to our sets, not just as an artist, but as a human being”’ … Regina King and Domingo in If Beale Street Could Talk. Photograph: Lifestyle pictures/Alamy The last time he was here in London was “a bookend”, he says. In 2014, he was just stepping off the stage (in the West End musical The Scottsboro Boys) and on to the screen, having landed a recurring role in zombie spin-off Fear the Walking Dead (the series has just ended, eight seasons later). Since then, screen roles have kept coming: Ava DuVernay’s Selma (as Martin Luther King’s fellow preacher Ralph Abernathy this time), Barry Jenkins’ If Beale Street Could Talk, Janicza Bravo’s Zola , the rebooted Candyman. Rustin director George C Wolfe first cast him in his 2020’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, alongside Viola Davis and the late Chadwick Boseman. Clearly, Wolfe saw his leading-man potential. Like Rustin, Domingo is something of a leader, it seems. Film-makers and actors he has worked with speak of him as an authoritative, charismatic presence who not only delivers on screen (he is notorious for his deep research – he learned to play the trombone for Ma Rainey, the lute for Rustin and the banjo for The Color Purple) but has a steadying, almost guru-like influence off it. This partly explains why Domingo has been so busy lately. “I think people like me. And I like people,” he says, simply. “They know me, and they know: ‘Oh, Colman will help add to our sets, not just as an artist, but as a human being’ … I’m always trying to show them a practice of a way of being; that this is how we make the work. And that kindness is everlasting, and it’s necessary.” Domingo, David Oyelowo, Andre Holland and Stephan James in Ava DuVernay’s Selma. Photograph: Allstar/Pathe Another repeat customer is Sam Levinson, creator of HBO teen phenomenon Euphoria. Having cast Domingo in his 2018 satire Assassination Nation, Levinson wrote the role of Ali – mentor and sponsor to Zendaya’s recovering addict Rue – specifically for him. One of the show’s standout episodes is effectively an hour-long two-hander between the two actors, in which Ali delivers a deep life sermon to Rue over pancakes in a diner. “We trust each other as if we’ve known each other for millennia,” he says of Zendaya. “She is one of my favourite scene partners, because I never know what she’s going to do. She’s so honest, and we really dance together, which is beautiful.” ‘We trust each other as if we’ve known each other for millennia’ … Domingo and Zendaya in 2022. Photograph: Jeff Kravitz/Getty Images for HBO They haven’t quite known each other for millennia, but not far off, it turned out. Among his many jobs as a struggling actor over the years, Domingo once worked for the California Shakespeare Company around San Francisco. Chatting to Zendaya on set one day, she mentioned that her mother used to work there, and she would go and watch the plays, aged five or six. She especially remembered one production (All’s Well That Ends Well) where a guy dressed in white rode in on a motorcycle. Of course, it was Domingo: “I remembered, I would pull up on a motorcycle and get off and do this speech to the audience, and there was a little curly haired girl upfront and I was like: ‘Who’s this kid out here at nine o’clock at night watching Shakespeare?’ And it was Zendaya!” As it prepares for a third season, Euphoria has been beset by claims that some cast members felt uncomfortable about the levels of nudity and sexual content. “Honestly, in my experience, there was none of that,” says Domingo. “I think there’s a lot of talk around it. And I think things get blown out of proportion.” He describes Levinson as “one of the kindest, open-hearted director-writer-producers that you could ever ask for. There’s just noise because it’s popular and it’s in the zeitgeist. You can’t have a successful show without people wanting to tear some things down.” Despite his kindly presence, Domingo often brings a compelling hint of menace or darkness to his characters. It’s on the surface with roles such as the often ruthless Victor Strand in Fear the Walking Dead, or his African-accented pimp in Zola. In The Color Purple he plays the abusive antagonist Mister, who cruelly beats and rapes his teenage wife. Rustin also has his demons, and Euphoria’s Ali has a history of domestic violence – when it seems as if it will rise to the surface at one point, the threat is palpable. ‘I think people like me. And I like people.’ Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian “And I’m such a nice guy!” says Domingo, bursting into his huge laugh. “The characters that have menace, a lot of them are the most interesting to me,” he says more seriously. “I generally think people who make choices of generosity and kindness and love in that spirit every day, understand darkness probably even more. They know what they’re fighting against.” ‘He never hid himself’: the incredible life of gay civil rights leader Bayard Rustin Read more Domingo had a typical working-class background, he says. Raised in Philadelphia, the third of four children, his mother was primarily a homemaker and his stepfather sanded floors for a living. His biological father was from Belize, hence the surname, and left the family when Domingo was nine. He came out to his family at 21 “and they just loved and embraced me exactly the way I was”. At Temple University he took an acting class as an elective, “and someone said: ‘I think you’re gifted in this.’ And I took that seriously.” He left college, moved to San Francisco and came up the hard way, he says: “You’re looking at 32 years in this industry: ups and downs, highs and lows, bartending, teaching, not working for long periods of time, finding my way, building theatre companies, becoming a playwright, becoming a director, becoming a producer … I didn’t have the luxury to just be an actor.” A lavish adaptation … Domingo in The Color Purple. Photograph: Ser Baffo/AP Now, he is hanging out with the likes of Oprah Winfrey (who produced The Color Purple) and the Obamas (whose production company produced Rustin – while in the White House, Barack Obama posthumously awarded Bayard Rustin the presidential medal of freedom in 2013). When Domingo first met the Obamas he was kind of starstruck, he admits. “I was giddy; they are two of the most charismatic human beings walking the planet.” Now, though, “we’re in a different relationship, we’re telling a story together”. He hung out with them just last week, in fact, introducing the movie at a festival. “I found myself just touching Barack Obama, patting him on the shoulder like an old buddy. And I thought, am I actually [allowed]? Are Secret Service gonna come get me or something?” Rustin review – Colman Domingo shines in by-the-numbers civil rights biopic Read more The stars may have aligned for Domingo at last, but he is not quite clicking his star-spangled heels. One dark cloud on the horizon is the current state of his country, particularly when it comes to recent attempts to ban library books and suppress education dealing with LGBTQ+ identity and the US’s history of racism against Black people. It’s hard to feel triumphant about Rustin’s achievements when those battles still need to be fought today. “There are forces in this world trying to send us right back to 1963,” he says. “And at this time it’s important for a film like Rustin to rally not only young people but thought – to combat hopelessness, to let people know that they have the power to galvanise and make this country what we want it to be. That’s why I think that the film is divine timing. We need someone to say: ‘This ordinary man gave his life in service to us all. What are you going to do?’” Rustin is out now and available on Netflix.

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https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/jul/15/i-grew-up-on-an-estate-from-hell-megan-nolan-on-class

Society

2023-07-15T10:00:27.000Z

Megan Nolan

‘I grew up on an “estate from hell” but I have no idea what class I am’: novelist Megan Nolan on the conundrum of identity

Last year I was chatting with another writer and talk turned to council estates. The writer asked if I had ever lived on an estate myself. On and off, I told her, during my earliest life and then back again for the final eight or so years of my childhood. I had intuited that she and I were aligned in some vague sense, or rather that I didn’t have to be conscious of my performance as a polished, well-to-do author as I spoke to her. “It’s funny actually,” I said, “my estate was once on this tabloid list that called them The Estates From Hell.” “Me, too,” she said, both of us delighted, “I’m from Ballymun.” And we smiled at each other. I was born in a largely working-class area of Waterford called Ballybeg which is made up of four council estates and one private one. Priory Lawn was ours. When I say I was born there, I mean it literally – my mother gave birth to me in the bedroom. Some ventilating equipment was accidentally kicked under the bed in the fuss of my emergence and I did not breathe until after the midwife and my father had managed to find it. I had inhaled meconium, the baby’s first faecal movement, and occasionally in moments when I am struggling to feel gratitude for this life, I think to myself: well, at least you didn’t die choking on your own shit. I remember little of my first years in Ballybeg, which we would leave before I turned four. What I recall are the purely sensory experiences of earliest childhood: the quality of light in the kitchen when my father was leaving for work and I was scooting frantically toward the door on my potty, wanting to accompany him; the clean, sweet smell of my mother’s sweat as we sat on the porch. It’s always summer in my memory of Priory Lawn; perhaps it felt like real life could take place only in the central square, not our private home. I remember ice-cream vans and disgustingly coloured gobstoppers, and the neighbour five or so years older who carted me around amiably as though I was her own baby. I wasn’t old enough to be aware of the reputation Ballybeg had as a “bad neighbourhood” nor to engage with any of the goings-on that made people believe it to be one. Priory Lawn estate in Ballybeg, where Nolan spent much of her childhood. Photograph: Patrick Browne/The Guardian In my adulthood, after I had left Ballybeg again, I became aware of certain circumstances surrounding our departure I was too young to be privy to at the time. A sexual crime had taken place involving two neighbours – neighbours I had until this discovery recalled as jovial, positive presences (both perpetrator and victim). I was deeply disturbed to find out what had happened, not just in the way one is always hurt and degraded to learn about pointless acts of violence, but in a more personal and selfish sense. It felt as though the knowledge had reached into my past and made the warm memories warped and ugly. I had been – unwittingly – physically very proximate to the crime and it dislodged my sense of my young self as a lucky child who was always safe. I knew it was insane to centre myself in this story I had no material part of, but nevertheless I felt angry. It made me feel dark about the area, about my origins. I wrote in passing about this at an early point in my career and my mother gently took me to task for suggesting Ballybeg was a malign place characterised by violence. She reminded me of what I had once known but had forgotten in the ensuing disturbance of learning about this crime, which was that the real characteristic feeling of Ballybeg was its powerful, defiant community. She was right, but it was – is – difficult to keep straight in my mind how I feel about being from where I am from. Part of this is that I do not feel particularly from anywhere, and perhaps I resent the place I was born for not giving me the strong sense of identity I have seen it give others. I n Dublin there’s a colloquial rousing cheer: “Up the flats!” which celebrates pride and community in the inner city: the actor Barry Keoghan, from Summerhill, employed it while responding to his Bafta win for The Banshees of Inisherin. A talented young musician called Gemma Dunleavy released a song called Up De Flats in 2020 which includes lyrics such as “The soundtrack of the summer gettin’ played by the sirens/We found laughs in the middle of the violence/We coulda had nothing but we had it all/Shouting up the flats from the rooftops”. By contrast, there have been countless media depictions of areas like these as lawless shantytowns rotting outside polite society. In 2013, TV3 produced a three-part documentary about Ballybeg called The Estate, which follows, among others, a teenage mother arguing with her own mother (who also gave birth as a teenager) about her financial irresponsibility, and a 25-year-old called Denis who had spent eight of those in jail. Denis says, “I think there’s a curse on Ballybeg” but one gets the sense he would rather propagate the supernatural theory than focus on his own culpability. I, naturally, find such depictions embarrassing. But then I must ask myself why I am so eager to disclose Ballybeg’s depictions to others. Why am I seemingly so keen to let others know I hail from Ireland’s Hell Estates? I do feel pride about coming from Ballybeg, but why? Is it valid, the sort of pride many people feel about their particular street or neighbourhood? Or is it instead a dishonest claim to a disadvantage I did not experience? I suffered no poverty, no exposure to addiction, no violence, none of the hardships that would mean I valiantly overcame my circumstances. My life was about as good as it gets. I had parents who not only loved and cared for me but were interesting, funny, talented individuals in their own right, siblings I more or less got along with, and dedicated encouragement to read, draw, sing, to become engaged with the world. No matter what street you are born on or how wealthy you are, these are advantages that not everyone receives. I was wary of the local kids, not because they were frightening but because they seemed so of their place, and I was not No doubt I have at times strategically emphasised my minor differences in a creative industry that is pretty overwhelmingly homogeneous. When I dropped out of university, I felt both poisonous regret for my failure to get a higher education and a defensive bolshie pride about the fact that I didn’t. Part of me loathed the feeling of inadequacy and part of me enjoyed how it made people in certain sectors widen their eyes with surprise I wasn’t sure was admiring or scathing. But if my trajectory is a little different from many successful writers’, it certainly has never felt that I’ve been disadvantaged by my background. If anything I feel I have not lived up to the endless possibilities open to me from within it, because of my parents and my excellent if somewhat overly Catholic secondary education. In fact the sole disadvantage I feel burdened by, the thing that makes me jealous of those peers who don’t have to negotiate it, is my experience of mental illness. Seasons of despair so acute I can’t get out of bed, when I wake and hear a voice that is both me and not-me telling myself not to bother waking up, that the world is malevolent and that I am too weak to withstand it. I have no moralistic adulation of a work ethic in an abstract sense, but when I reflect on how I have spent my life, it’s these fallow periods in which work is all but impossible that make me feel either bitter, or proud for having emerged from them. It doesn’t have anything to do with where I grew up, or that my parents didn’t have generational wealth. ‘When I moved to England, where all things class are more clearly stratified, I kept getting the definitions wrong.’ Photograph: Mark Chilvers/The Guardian This is another part of my ambivalence – money. Or should I say class? The lack of clarity on the exact relationship between those two things adds to my confusion here. Ballybeg is a working-class district, but I have no idea what class I am, nor what I was back then. Class wasn’t something I was especially aware of as a child, or at any time in my life in Ireland. Even when friends of mine lived in enormous houses and had doctor parents and multiple cars, I did not experience them as being meaningfully different from me. Once a girl in school called my coat “cheap” – which it was, probably – and this is the totality of discrimination I faced for being from Ballybeg. I knew Ballybeg had more fires and horses and drug dealers than some other places, but that just seemed an organic fact of nature; here were the places horses and fires and drug dealers happened to exist, alongside all the other parts of life. I didn’t think about money or class. With hindsight I can see that it must have been very difficult for my mother to get by – single in her early 30s and with three children – but no level of financial difficulty was ever apparent to me. My father was and is a playwright and director, and this cultural status confuses matters further. His background is working class, and he grew up on another estate called John’s Park, but I do not have the economic sophistication to interpret at what point he stopped being working class, or whether he still is. I don’t know the amount of money you need to make, or the amount of time spent on creative work that needs to take place, for your class status to change. Sign up to Inside Saturday Free weekly newsletter The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. Enter your email address Sign up Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. W hen I moved to England, where all things class are more clearly stratified, these definitions came up and I kept getting them wrong. I grew up in Ballybeg, neither of my working-class parents came from money or went to university, so I was part of a working-class family, I assumed. No, said angry commenters responding to a column I had written: my father was an artist and therefore neither he nor I were working class. This was mildly galling because at other times my experience of being perceived in England was that Irishness achieved a flattening of demographic differences; your specificity, including your economic or social markers, were eroded and your general yokel-ness was conflated with being working class. At the time I was still into having pointless, spite-fuelled arguments with strangers about this kind of thing. Now, I don’t particularly care about being able to accurately describe my class, except that I wonder if its obscurity helps inform the frustrated longing I sometimes feel toward Ballybeg, the annoying sense that I’m not a part of the place I grew up in. Ballybeg as seen in the documentary series The Estate. Photograph: TV 3 Maybe it was simply that I moved house regularly during my formative years, before ending up back in Ballybeg for the final seven or eight years of my childhood. Maybe it was having parents who were separated, the inevitable discordance of identity that follows splitting one’s time at that age, learning how to please one or other parent, the existential anxiety that can accompany it all. When I got back to Ballybeg aged about nine, I was wary of the kids who lived around us, not because they were bad or frightening, but because they seemed so of their place. They were comfortable, or so I thought, and I was not. I have never been that. Whatever it is, I find myself drawn back again and again to the idea of The Estate, which exists not only as a frightening tabloid fabrication, but also in reality as a place of unusually sturdy community. I began work on my second book, Ordinary Human Failings, in 2021 but had thought about it for several years beforehand. The inspiration was less a character or plot and more a sensory feeling that bothered me enough that I felt compelled to pay it attention. In this case, it was the feeling of looking down on a central courtyard in a housing estate and the gradual build of dread and excitement that takes hold when something terrible is happening. The relevant details filled themselves in as I began to write, emerging from a long existing area of interest – the tabloid press and its rabid demonisation of working-class people and those defined as the bad, feckless sort, instead of the hardworking, decent kind. I had also been struck years ago by a detail in the Gordon Burn book Somebody’s Husband, Somebody’s Son about Peter Sutcliffe, in which a tabloid had approached Sutcliffe’s family – some of whom were alcoholics, all of whom were working class – and offered to put them up in a hotel, essentially sequestering them to keep them as a source on tap, in exchange for money and booze. Sixty years on, the housing estate I helped build is still being celebrated Roy Hattersley Read more I read many accounts of the trial of Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, killers of James Bulger, aghast at the details of the murder itself, naturally, and also disbelieving at the chaotic circus that was allowed to unfold around the court case. It was striking how little the boys’ youth seemed to mitigate the conviction that they were monsters; if anything, their youth achieved the opposite job, enforcing the idea that certain kinds of people are born bad. I was interested in the furious determination to simplify, the need many people had not to consider the boys as human beings. It’s an understandable impulse, because of how easy it is to conflate the attempt to understand with the attempt to excuse. Still, I couldn’t help but think of the infinite quirks of family history, economics, living situations that accumulate through the decades and years to amount to a day of violent madness like this one, which not only robbed a family of their child but ruined many other lives and incited the passion of a tabloid culture obsessed with the feral poor. I came, in my novel, to tell the story of a small child found dead on her estate, the daughter of well-liked, community-minded people, and another, older girl who is suspected of her murder. A tabloid journalist gets wind of the suspicions and sequesters her family. They are Irish immigrants who arrived in the area 10 years before and never assimilated, are considered by neighbours to be at least strange and possibly dangerous people, and now their historical miseries, kept private even from one another, begin to unfurl. I conceived this shortly after a stint renting a room in a former council estate that has now, like so much else, been partially privatised. I read years ago about the attempt to erase the word “estate” from contemporary vocabulary in London when the Olympic developments were taking place. One professor said, “The word ‘estate’ has become synonymous with the term ‘ghetto,’” while a letting agent said, “You would jeopardise the deal if you said ‘estate’. You always said ‘ex-local’.” I lived there only nine months, in an unstable hinterland of my life, and it was an appropriate halfway house for that sort of living. I paid very low rent because the owner of the flat worked from home in the main living area, so I really just returned to sleep, creeping in and out, feeling a little like an intruder. I liked the place, though. I liked standing out on the balcony and looking down at the convivial shared life I could hear thrumming there, a life I was next to but not a part of, just as it felt back home in Ballybeg. Ordinary Human Failings by Megan Nolan is published by Vintage at £16.99. To support the Guardian and the Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2005/sep/08/g2.congo

Environment

2005-09-07T23:02:39.000Z

Stanley Johnson

Stanley Johnson: Conference in Kinshasa

The view from my room on the 17th floor of the Grand Hotel, Kinshasa, is superb. As I write, I can see Brazzaville across the wide grey sweep of the Congo river. There are some advantages in this proximity. In the past, for example, diplomats could keep a speedboat ready so that when things got too hot in Kinshasa, they could make a quick dash to the other side. The Grand Hotel was known then as the Inter-Continental. Former president Mobutu backed its construction in the 1970s and his men didn't hesitate to avail themselves of the worldly facilities it offered. Sometimes, things got nasty. The story goes that the manager of the hotel showed exemplary heroism in blocking the elevators to the guest floors one night when a party of Mobutu's henchmen arrived at the hotel, set on murder and mayhem. The fact that hotel guests nowadays are not quaking in fear of a sudden banging on the door shows how much things have changed since May 1997, when Mobutu was overthrown. That doesn't mean that everything in this equatorial garden is lovely. Fifteen months ago, when I last visited the Democratic Republic of the Congo, we crossed the border from Rwanda. When we drove up a stretch of eastern Congo from Bukavu to Goma, we took armed guards with us and had to endure constant roadblocks. A few days after I left for Kinshasa in the west of the country, a shooting war broke out between rival factions in the east. These factions none the less still manage today to be part of the overarching coalition put in place following an agreement struck in Sun City in 2003 between the Kabila government and its main adversaries. In Kinshasa, I was invited to meet the president of the National Assembly, Olivier Kamitatu. He took a sanguine view of the troubles. "The movement towards democracy is irreversible," he told me. "The elections will take place as planned." That was in May 2005. Technically, the Sun City process is still on track because 12 months' grace has been allowed if "special circumstances" require more time to set up a constitution and elections. All of that extra time will surely be needed. Just registering the electorate in this vast land of 60 million inhabitants without an efficient transport system is a gigantic task. We are talking, moreover, about not just one, but a whole series of popular votes, beginning with a referendum on a new draft constitution and ending with the direct election of the president. Forty or more years ago, the eyes of the world were on the Congo. Some of the most tense dramas of the cold war were played out here. After decades of pariah status, the wheel has come full circle and the DRC has again moved centre-stage. The international meeting on saving the great apes, for example, which I am attending this week, is a small but significant step in the process of normalisation. Twenty-one African and two Asian countries are represented. Donor nations, including Britain, represented by biodiversity minister Jim Knight, are also present and seem ready to sign up to a practical, funded programme of action. If hosting this first intergovernmental conference on the conservation of the great apes - gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans - is one way the DRC can show its willingness, and readiness, to rejoin the comity of nations, why should we complain? Tomorrow, the president, Joseph Kabila, will attend the meeting. What is an honour for us may also be useful for him, given the wide publicity this conference has attracted across the nation. Kabila was 26 when he succeeded his assassinated father, Laurent, five years ago. To prevent him standing in the upcoming election, his political opponents tried to write a provision into the draft constitution restricting presidential candidates to people over 40. The attempt was unsuccessful, but the question of age clearly has a resonance here. The other night, in the hotel bar, a Congolese friend asked me: "What about Cameroon?" "What's special about Cameroon?" I asked. Cameroon has a delegate at the meeting who had, I considered, been making a useful contribution to proceedings. "Isn't he too young to stand for leader of your Conservative party?" I finally realised what he was driving at. "Oh, you mean David Cameron - you're very well informed! No, of course he's not too young to stand. He's much older than President Kabila!"

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/sep/15/remembering-the-mangrove-notting-hill-caribbean-haven

UK news

2018-09-15T14:00:02.000Z

Diane Taylor

It was like a family': remembering the Mangrove, Notting Hill's Caribbean haven

Atwo-bedroom flat on Notting Hill’s All Saints Road can fetch up to £2m these days. But half a century ago, when property prices were a small fraction of what they are now, the road was on the frontline of battles between the police and the black community. Notting Hill and Brixton were the two main areas where Windrush migrants settled. The majority who arrived in Notting Hill came from Trinidad, and at the very heart of this community was the Mangrove restaurant, at 8 All Saints Road. The Mangrove was established in 1968 by Frank Crichlow, an entrepreneur from Trinidad who became a community activist and symbol of black urban resistance in the face of police persecution. He died in 2010, aged 78, but his legacy endures: this Sunday community activists, generations of Windrush residents, lawyers and musicians will gather to mark the 50th anniversary of the restaurant’s opening. Crichlow previously ran the Rio Cafe in nearby Westbourne Park Road, a venue frequented by John Profumo and Christine Keeler. His new venture attracted artists, musicians and activists from around the world. Bob Marley, Marvin Gaye, Jimi Hendrix, Nina Simone, Diana Ross and the Supremes, and Vanessa Redgrave all flocked to the Mangrove to enjoy traditional Caribbean food, share ideas and discuss politics. Although Crichlow was known for his strong anti-drugs stance, police continually raided the Mangrove looking for illegal substances – in one year alone the Mangrove was raided six times, although police found no drugs on the premises. Matters came to a head when Crichlow and seven others, including the late writer and broadcaster Darcus Howe, were arrested and charged with a variety of offences including affray while protesting against police harassment. The trial exposed racism in the Metropolitan police 30 years before the Macpherson inquiry. All nine were acquitted of the key charges against them. At the time Crichlow said: “It was a turning point for black people. It put on trial the attitudes of the police, the Home Office, of everyone towards the black community. We took a stand and I am proud of what we achieved – we forced them to sit down and rethink harassment. It was decided there must be more law centres and more places to help people with their problems.” Crichlow set up the Mangrove Community Association to provide practical help for the community, from accommodation for older people to support for women coming out of prison. 31 October 1970: A demonstration takes place in Notting Hill organised by the Black Defence Committee. Photograph: Ian Showell/Getty Images Police harassment of Crichlow continued, however. In 1979 he was charged with drugs offences but was again cleared. In 1988 Mangrove was raided again by police and Crichlow’s bail conditions prevented him from going near the restaurant for a year. It never recovered from his prolonged absence, and ultimately closed. In 1992 he successfully sued the Met for false imprisonment, battery and malicious prosecution and received record damages of £50,000. As well as providing an opportunity for celebration, the anniversary has resurfaced some darker memories. Clive Mashup Phillip, who will be one of those attending Sunday’s events, was a regular at Mangrove in its heyday and endured many struggles with the police himself. “When I came to this country from Trinidad in 1961 I knew nothing about racism and I didn’t expect to find this kind of situation,” said Phillip, now 77. “Back home we showed people so much respect, especially white people. We came here to the mother country and found ourselves not wanted, abused and laughed at.” He said that until 20 years ago he was regularly harassed by police. “We stood up and fought racism as a group. I felt safe being around Mangrove, it was like family. I was often charged with obstructing police officers. When I saw someone being abused by police in the street I would help to defend him and they did the same for me when I was in that situation.” Phillip said he met many celebrities at Mangrove, including Bob Marley and Marvin Gaye. “I used to talk a lot with Marvin Gaye,” he said. Jeb Johnson, 66, who describes himself as a Windrush baby, remembers Marley frequenting the restaurant. “He was a vegetarian and he used to eat rice with butter,” he said. Johnson said a community hub like Mangrove was needed more than ever today. “We need something like this for our young people to give them an alternative to the life some of them have at present.” Yvette Williams, a member of Justice4Grenfell, first got involved with Mangrove in the late 1980s, and helped to sort out people’s housing and immigration problems. She says some things have not changed, pointing to the circumstances of the Grenfell Tower fire as evidence. “These issues do not go away,” she said. The community activist Lee Jasper, another Mangrove veteran, said: “The history of Mangrove embodied the spirit of British black civil rights resistance against racism and injustice. Our 50th-anniversary reunion on All Saints Road is a celebration of one of Britain’s foremost radical black political organisations. One day we will buy the entire street and turn All Saints Road into a world heritage site celebrating its unique black British history.”

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/mar/23/harry-kane-urges-world-cup-captains-to-unite-for-powerful-qatar-message

Football

2022-03-23T18:10:09.000Z

David Hytner

Harry Kane urges World Cup captains to unite for powerful Qatar message

Harry Kane is determined to shine a light on human rights abuses in Qatar with the help of captains from other national teams after expressing misgivings at the Gulf state hosting the World Cup this year. The England captain mentioned his Tottenham teammates Hugo Lloris and Son Heung-min – who captain France and South Korea respectively – and former clubmates such as Gareth Bale – the captain of Wales, who are hoping to qualify – as he looked to rally strength in numbers to drive lasting social change. Russia warned by Uefa it could face more sanctions if it bids to host Euros Read more Kane and his England teammates were briefed at St George’s Park on Tuesday about the issues surrounding Qatar’s hosting of the finals tournament – chiefly the rights of women, the LGBTQ+ community and migrant workers. Gareth Southgate, the England manager, led the conversation, with input from other Football Association members of staff, including Mark Bullingham, the chief executive, and Edleen John, the director of international relations, corporate affairs and co-partner for equality, diversity and inclusion. Southgate and Bullingham will travel to Qatar for the World Cup draw on Friday week and the FA is considering whether to give migrant workers a voice as part of any England media activity there. Kane said: “There’s a couple of other national captains at Tottenham or maybe it’s talking to other national team captains to see if we can be unified, what we try and do. We haven’t spoken about it yet but, over the next weeks and months, it’s definitely a conversation we should have because when you are together as nations and you have that unity in terms of captains, you can send a message. Harry Kane wears a captain's armband bearing the rainbow colours at Euro 2020. Photograph: Frank Augstein/AFP/Getty Images “It is something I will try to do. I think that will send out a bigger and more powerful message. It is part of the responsibility of a captain. It is important to talk about these things and not just hide away from them. And I know for sure the other lads will be happy to be talking about it, too. Hopefully we can make a real impact.” Kane was asked whether it was right that the World Cup finals tournament had gone to Qatar. “It’s a hard question to answer, if I am totally honest,” he said. “It wasn’t our decision, it was the decision of Fifa. “The World Cup is one of the greatest tournaments I have ever played in. There is definitely that excitement of being there and experiencing that again – 2018 was incredible for me and the other players involved. But there are some issues that you can’t hide away from. There are, of course, some conflicting emotions around it. “For me and our team it’s about controlling what we can control and that’s to make sure we do what we can and use our platforms to help in any way we can. But also still be excited about a major tournament. We will have to learn to cope with it and balance the two.” Germany display a message before their 2022 World Cup qualifier against Iceland last March. Photograph: Getty Images Kane admitted that in terms of gestures the England squad were unclear, as yet, about what they may do. Some national teams in Europe have worn T-shirts and displayed banners that have drawn attention to the human rights issues in Qatar. What Kane did say he wanted to see was action that led to change which went far beyond the four weeks of the tournament. “Any issues that we are trying to resolve are trying to be resolved forever,” Kane said. “It is not just a quick fix. The fact there is a light shining on Qatar will help the situation and help us talk about it. Having these conversations now is definitely useful. But it is important those conversations carry on. Quick Guide How do I sign up for sport breaking news alerts? Show “It is similar to taking the knee [in the fight against racism]. It is not just something we did for a small amount of time. By carrying on, we keep showing our support and that has been really important. I think the same thing will happen in Qatar and, after the tournament, it will be important to keep talking about the issues and make sure anything we do help or improve is for the rest of time, not just a few months.” England are preparing for Wembley friendlies against Switzerland and Ivory Coast on Saturday and next Tuesday. Bukayo Saka did not train on Wednesday because of illness, although he is not believed to be Covid‑positive. The goalkeeper Sam Johnstone has withdrawn and is likely to be replaced by Fraser Forster.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2007/sep/14/money2

Business

2007-09-14T14:37:17.000Z

Mark Oliver

Customers rush to withdraw money

Rival banks were handing out fliers to anxious Northern Rock customers today as they queued on the street outside some branches to withdraw money. Northern Rock, which has confirmed it has received emergency funding from the Bank of England, has stressed that investors' money is safe and Downing Street said the Financial Services Authority had judged the bank was solvent. But some customers were concerned at the bank's future and were withdrawing funds online and at branches, particularly in the north, where the majority of Northern Rock's customers are based. The queue at the bank's Northumberland Street branch in Newcastle's city centre grew through the morning. One customer who was patiently queuing told the Press Association: "I'm not sure about this, even though they say it is going to be all right. If they are short of funds, what happens to our funds?" Another customer, a pensioner who did not wish to be named, said she was withdrawing all her savings. She said: "I have shares, and I have a Tessa and I'll keep those here but I'm taking out my savings as I'm worried." Another woman, who was with her husband, said she was worried and added: "I want to spend my money before someone else does." People in the queue burst out laughing when one member of staff asked: "Does anyone want to pay money in?" Staff from rival high street branches in Newcastle - whose football team is sponsored by Northern Rock - worked the queue handing out promotional material. Some branches in the south also had queues of customers. At the branch in Harrow, north west London, customers began queuing outside long before the 9am opening. One woman, who did not wish to be named, told PA: "I have withdrawn all my money. I got here at about 8.40am and was about 12th in the queue. It took me well over an hour to be served and by the time I got outside there must have been at least 50 people queuing out into the street. "I know everyone has been urged not to panic but I just felt safer moving the money somewhere else rather than worrying about Northern Rock's financial position over the next few days." There were also reports that the Northern Rock website was jammed this morning as anxious customers tried to access their accounts. A spokeswoman for the bank said that as far as she knew, the online withdrawal facility was still working, although the website was running slowly. "We're looking into it," she said. Earlier today, workers arriving at Northern Rock's HQ in Gosforth, Newcastle, declined to comment on their employers' financial crisis. Some said they did not wish to comment because they were unaware of the facts. Clearly Northern Rock is keen to minimise any "run on the bank" and chief executive Adam Applegarth said: "My advice to customers is, with the Bank of England providing this liquidity, they should be greatly reassured. If I was a depositor I would be reassured if the Bank of England was behind me." He added, however, that homeowners would face more expensive mortgages in future as the impact of the current crisis filters through to borrowers. The firm, a big employer in the region, employs 6,300 people nationwide. Mr Applegarth played down the prospect of compulsory redundancies but said any reductions were likely to be achieved through a recruitment freeze and natural staff turnover.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/nov/22/vivien-leigh-life-on-screen

Film

2013-11-22T09:30:00.000Z

Michael Newton

Vivien Leigh – a life on screen

Every great Hollywood star is both an actor and the embodiment of a myth. Film transforms them, turning their selves, their presence, their talents, into an individual archetypal narrative, one seen both in their movies but also in the public knowledge of their private lives: wounded Monroe; malleable Audrey Hepburn; James Stewart, the irascible, increasingly neurotic all-American guy. Vivien Leigh is one of Britain's few genuine women "movie stars"; her myth is memorable and dark, her life a rise and fall story, centred on the consequences of what was then called her "manic depression" – around her vulnerability, her promiscuity, her ageing. Her films themselves similarly want to tell us stories about suffering and resilience, about surviving and about being punished for doing so. Leigh was born a hundred years ago, in November 1913, in Darjeeling. A pukka colonial childhood was followed by boarding school exile in England, and her catching the theatre bug. At 19 her ambition was hardly deflected by an early marriage and motherhood – in her diary, she laconically noted "Had a baby – a girl". She was learning acting on her feet, changing herself into something remarkable. But still her early films are all forgettably average; only a devotee could detect traces of a future Blanche DuBois in them. In the benign if dull Elizabethan swashbuckler Fire Over England (1937) she plays opposite Laurence Olivier for the first time. The two had just fallen in love, but any expectation that the film might contain Bogart-and-Bacall-style fireworks soon fizzles out. Leigh has little to do but run about or pine, a petulant source of frustrated energy. But only a year later, there are signs of greatness. St Martin's Lane (1938) enacts a parable of fame, fixed on the greasepaint ambitions of London's theatreland. Leigh plays Libby, short for Liberty ("like the Statue", she helpfully informs us). In analysing Liberty's path from street busker to potential movie star, the film shows the men around her wanting to market a freshness felt in her, one that they immediately treat as suspect as soon as it is successfully being sold. A double bind traps Libby: she is deemed authentic, but duplicitous; frail, but mercenary. The film wonders whether she wouldn't have been better off never making it, choosing to loiter instead with her platonic mate and fellow busker, Charles Laughton, rather than flirting with Rex Harrison and aristocratic stage-door Johnnies. Leigh and Laughton here are beauty and the beast, Esmeralda and the hunchback. They are like playful children: Laughton seems an overgrown boy, brimming with sweaty self-belief; while, in her beret, shirt and tie, there's something schoolgirlish about Leigh. Leigh's corblimey Cockney accent proves considerably less convincing than would Scarlett O'Hara's Georgia drawl; it's an enacted Englishness. With its no-nonsense nostalgia for the gutter, St Martin's Lane clings to a light-hearted pessimism: "Everything's luck and good temper … and if you can take a joke," booms Laughton with bullish stoicism, before tacking on the glum coda "the whole of life's a joke." This grimly chipper mood was the nearest Britain got to the can-do optimistic gleam offered by Hollywood and Gone With the Wind. After some 200 other women had been rejected, the quest to find an actress to play Scarlett O'Hara, the resourceful leading lady, ended with Leigh. The story goes that David O Selznick, the film's producer, was introduced to her while around them Atlanta (or the derelict buildings that stood in for it) burned. Selznick knew at once he had found his heroine. This flame-surrounded story sounds contrived, and in a sense it was – the meeting was likely engineered by Leigh's agent, who was also Selznick's brother. But as a legend it is entirely apt for Gone With the Wind, itself a mingling of over-the-top spectacle, spontaneous passion and conscious artfulness. Gone With the Wind has been rereleased in a digital restoration as the centrepiece of the BFI Vivien Leigh season. Its magnolia blossoms and blazing sunsets will look even more gloriously, perniciously seductive. There is some truth in the idea that it is Leigh's film and that its beguiling unreality best answers to her screen persona. Like Liberty, Scarlett O'Hara is a schemer, another survivor. Leigh is one actress playing another – pulling faces, looking sulky, producing at will those incorrigible dimples. There is much wrong with Gone With the Wind – its racial politics, its slippery view of American civil war history, its mingled adoration and frustrated hostility towards its heroine. Yet, for all this, it remains one of the most vital, entertaining and enchantingly beautiful of all classic Hollywood films – and, more than anything else, its life stems from the mercurial verve of Leigh's performance. Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh in A Streetcar Named Desire. Photograph: Allstar/Cinetext/Warner Bros With Olivier and Leigh having divorced their respective spouses, for a long time she was absorbed into the smiling public image of "the Oliviers", in love and famous for it, a sanctified, theatrical showcase of a marriage. Unsurprisingly Olivier often wanted to play opposite her; Leigh might have made a fantastic Cathy in William Wyler's Wuthering Heights (1939), but, if she and Olivier had got their way, would have been terribly miscast as the gauche second Mrs De Winter in Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940). Instead she took the role of ballet-dancer Myra Lester in Mervyn LeRoy's Waterloo Bridge (1940). This was a three-hankie first world war weepy that proceeds like a Hardyesque "Satire of Circumstance", a sick joke about providence, luck and doom. It presents a somewhat muffed debate about the value of living life on any terms – Robert Taylor's inexplicably Americanised Scot affirming an enraptured optimism against Leigh's downbeat English assumption that what can go wrong will go wrong. In plot terms, Leigh's pessimism would appear to win out. Through one terrible mistake (the misinformation that Taylor has been killed at the front) and one masochistically obtuse scene of cross-purposes between Myra and her fiance's mother, the heroine's life plunges into poverty and prostitution. When Taylor unexpectedly returns, Leigh hopes that she can pick up where she left off. Only of course she cannot; she is a fallen woman and, as such, there is only one thing to be done with her. Myra's sin is one that cannot speak its name; no one ever explicitly mentions how Myra has been paying the rent. "You don't have to tell me," moans Taylor, when the penny finally drops. It is all desperately sad, and yet somehow the film wants Taylor's bright sense of life's possibilities to survive even losing Myra. At the start of another world war, he is left behind to walk Waterloo Bridge again, to shed a nostalgic tear and summon up a resolute half-smile of remembrance. For ultimately, the film is happy to consign fallen Myra to suicide. It enjoys her defeat by letting us wallow in it; her extinction is sentimental, accompanied by the sweetness of a tear. This was Leigh's favourite role, and is certainly one of the most significant. There are few of her films that so clearly express the contradictions of her essential myth. Here the strong investment in her intrinsic innocence mingles most obviously with the horror that she is in fact "corrupt". The film plays on the undeniable appeal of her freshness, but shows it becoming jaded. Ballet is the perfect medium for young Myra, and for Leigh; it is a physical art dependent on hard graft, control and strength that must give the appearance of an effortlessly ethereal delicacy. Like a film star, Myra moves from a performance of gracious prettiness, adored and remote from earthly concerns, to an assumption that she is available for any man, and as such is worthless, unless redeemed by self-destruction. Leigh's genius was to embody a startling vivacity, a quality of naturalness; yet it was also always apparent that this "naturalness" was also a performance, an artful exposure of the real self. Like all stars, she was a published person. Waterloo Bridge is an actress's film that exposes the contradictions in the public consumption of Hollywood's great women stars. The ironies of her position were next best expressed in the British-produced adaptation of Anna Karenina (1948). By rights, this really ought to have been a fantastic film. It was shot by the gifted Henri Alekan, who had only recently photographed Jean Cocteau's La Belle et La Bête; one of the period's great French film-makers, Julien Duvivier, directed; Constant Lambert wrote the music; Jean Anouilh collaborated on the script. And at the centre of it all is Leigh at her very best. Yet the film fails to be great. It's not its heaviness that mars it – for central to its meaning is a woman cushioned and trapped by brocade, antimacassars and frills, the ceilinged sets deepening the sense of confinement. Ultimately it is wrecked by the miscasting of stolid, uncharismatic Kieron Moore as Leigh's lover. Without his hussar's moustache, he'd look a little like George Cole. Though too old, Olivier would have been infinitely better. By this point, Peter Finch, Leigh's new lover, could have brought much more to the part, and Olivier might more suitably have been cast as the cuckolded Karenin (a role that fell instead to his great friend Ralph Richardson). Art was imitating life; the Leigh myth was melding together the screen and the gossip columns. Three years later, she would up her game once more by playing Blanche DuBois in Elia Kazan's version of A Streetcar Named Desire. It is simply one of the greatest pieces of acting in any American film; no Oscar was ever more deserved. Leigh had lived to unite in one career the acting styles of two distinct worlds – moving from dinner-jacketed Rex Harrison suavely proffering his cigarette-case all the way to Marlon Brando bellowing in a ripped T-shirt. She had passed from urbane theatricality to passion and "the authentic". (Olivier would have to wait years before following her by playing Archie Rice in John Osborne's The Entertainer.) There can hardly have been two such different southern belles as Leigh's two Oscar-winning performances as Scarlett O'Hara and Blanche DuBois; not least in the fact that, as Leigh herself pointed out, where one survives, the other goes under. With Blanche, Leigh finds a space for insecurity, for her elusive sense of failure. She seemed to be putting her disintegration on screen; Leigh is felt to suffer as Blanche suffers. To play with her persona, with her talent, was a high‑risk activity but also a sign of things to come. As happened to Montgomery Clift, her (too few) last movies became preoccupied with the wreck of her once astonishing beauty. Yet the long tailing-off of her career should not conceal that she continued to be a great actor to the end of her life, or that, for a while, she had brilliantly held together in art the contradictions both of her own personality and of every beloved and envied, desired and condemned Hollywood star.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/feb/06/caughtontherock

Opinion

2008-02-06T19:30:00.000Z

John Redwood

Caught on the Rock

When it comes to Northern Rock, the government seems mesmerised by shareholder power. I don't know why. The truth of the position is simple. The failed bank needs access to large sums of public money to keep its business going. There is no other source for this money in the short term. The government can therefore set its own terms. It is wise to seek the shareholders' agreement, but foolish to underestimate the power in the government's position. The taxpayer wants the Treasury and the Bank of England to do a good deal that finances the Rock's successor and ensures the taxpayer will get early repayment of the large sums with interest. The taxpayer should also be rewarded with stock warrants or options to give us some share in the future success of Northern Rock, if the rescue works well and the shares recover. The rumoured decision to demand the end of the guarantee in three years rather than the originally floated five years changes the nature of the task any new owner of Northern Rock faces. It means they need to generate more cash more quickly, or to be sure they can raise private finance more quickly. If the government changed the terms on offer like this, it should ensure all potential bidders know, and each bidder has to be given a chance to change their bid in the light of the new circumstances. Presumably the Treasury realises that if it presses for a shorter repayment period it will increase the pressure on management to cut costs, and may result in a smaller business. This does not mean it is wrong - as the taxpayer does want to know the money will be repaid sooner rather than later. In order to decide between the competing bids, the shareholder representatives have to satisfy themselves they are recommending the best possible bid to improve shareholder value and give the business the best chance of future prosperity. It is not for the government to decide which bidder wins, but it is for the government to make its terms as bank manager clear to all the bidders. Given the scale of lending to the company, the government has an effective veto on any bidder if they fail to convince the Treasury they are likely to be able to repay the loans in good time. From the beginning, the government has failed to tell us how much it has lent, what interest rate it will charge, when it will be repaid and how much security it has taken for the loans. These are all elementary parts of good banking. Let us hope these necessary arrangements were made to protect the taxpayers' interests. Now there is the chance of shareholders putting more money in, or of a new plan by management to develop and finance the bank, the company needs to make a decision. To do so, it needs to be sure how much money it can borrow for how long on what terms from the government. That will help determine how quickly the business will have to be reduced in size to repay borrowings, and how much scope there is to try and trade their way out of cash shortage.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/24/on-lampedusa-a-familiar-disillusion-10-years-after-its-first-refugee-tragedy

World news

2023-09-24T04:00:12.000Z

Angela Giuffrida

On Lampedusa, a familiar disillusion 10 years after its first refugee tragedy

Almost 10 years have passed since José Manuel Barroso uttered the words: “Never again”. They came as the then president of the European Commission stood before rows of hundreds of coffins, many of them containing the bodies of children and teenagers, lined up in the airport hangar in Lampedusa, the southern Italian island off whose shore they had died in a shipwreck a few days earlier on 3 October 2013. Eight days later, 268 people, including 100 children, perished in the stretch of sea between Lampedusa and Malta. “We remember Barroso’s famous words well,” said Vito Fiorino, a businessman who rescued 47 people in the 3 October tragedy. “He said ‘this should never happen again’ on a European coastline. But nothing has changed in 10 years – the tragedies kept happening, the people kept coming.” A familiar feeling of disillusion swept over people living in Lampedusa, an island with a population of about 6,000, again last week when they heard the words of Ursula von der Leyen, the current European Commission president, during her fleeting visit with Italy’s far-right premier Giorgia Meloni. Lampedusa – for years the first port of call for people making the perilous journey by sea from north Africa – was thrust back into the spotlight after more than 11,000 people seeking refuge in Europe arrived on the island within the space of six days. The spike sent EU member states into disarray, with some tightening controls at their borders with Italy and others refusing to help. Can we only accept people with blond hair and blue eyes, and not those fleeing horrendous situations in Africa? Vito Fiorino In a declaration reminiscent of something Meloni might say, Von der Leyen spoke about cracking down on people smugglers and swiftly implementing a controversial £105m deal made with Tunisia to stem the flow of irregular migration. Referring to a “10-point plan”, she pledged to quickly deport those whose asylum requests are rejected, and didn’t flinch at Meloni’s plan to create more pre-deportation detention centres – known for their deplorable conditions – and to keep people in them for as long as 18 months. “We will decide who comes to Europe and under what circumstances, not the smugglers,” said Von der Leyen. Fiorino found the words chilling. “What right do we have to choose who can stay and who has to leave? I’m sorry if what I am about to say is controversial: but can we only accept people with blond hair and blue eyes, and not those who for years have been fleeing horrendous situations in Africa?” With more than 130,000 people landing on Italian shores so far this year, Meloni, a key protagonist of the Tunisia deal who vowed not to allow Italy to become “Europe’s refugee camp”, called on member states to work together to find “serious, concrete” solutions. But if the passage of time has not changed the situation in Lampedusa, neither has it produced workable policies. Ursula von der Leyen, left, and Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni during their visit to Lampedusa. Photograph: Roberto Salomone/The Guardian “I think it is high time to realise that the last 20 years of immigration policies, in Brussels and in the member states, have not met the expectation of any kind of government whatsoever,” said Andrea Menapace, who leads the Italian Coalition for Civil Liberties and Rights and Open Migration. “Previous administrations promised agreements with north African countries would diminish immigration – it didn’t happen. We were promised a crackdown on people smugglers – it didn’t happen.” Meloni and Von der Leyen have been accused of exploiting Lampedusa for political campaigning before the European parliamentary elections next year. “I find that reprehensible,” Dutch MEP Sophie in ’t Veld said last week. Juan Fernando López Aguilar, chair of the European parliament’s civil liberties committee, said Von der Leyen appeared to have been “Melonised”, adding that while it was correct for senior commission figures to travel to the island, he was “puzzled and shocked” by the statements made during the trip. “To me this is a playbook for the European elections,” added Menapace. “Von der Leyen is looking to expand her candidacy … while the higher arrival numbers are advantageous for Meloni, who plays the role of victim well.” Von der Leyen’s 10-point plan included providing Italy with support in processing new arrivals while “exploring options to expand existing naval missions in the Mediterranean”. The final point referred to widening the channels for legal entry into the EU. “I appreciated very much that she pulled this one out of the bag,” said Christopher Hein, a professor of immigration law and policy at Luiss University in Rome. “Only again, there were no numbers or concrete indications from where, to where, in which timeframe, on what legal basis, nothing like this … we’ve heard this for years now, but nothing has happened – the same with the other points.” An Italian coast guard vessel laden with migrants rescued at sea threads between tourist boats on its way to Lampedusa. Photograph: Yara Nardi/Reuters With no money having so far changed hands, the Tunisia deal is yet to produce any fruit – instead, departures have increased by 70% since it was signed in July. Other than concerns over human rights, questions have also been raised about the deal’s legality. “This was an ‘initiative solitaire’ from the commission without a mandate from the council,” said Hein. Italy and the EU have a similar deal with Libya, where people have reported severe human rights abuses in detention camps, including being beaten, tortured and raped. Others have reported murder in the camps and, as one young man from Sudan said in Lampedusa, people are dying of disease and hunger. EU states expressed ‘incomprehension’ at Tunisia migration pact, says Borrell Read more As the EU grapples with immigration, the devastating floods in Libya and earthquake in Morocco are expected to prompt a fresh wave of people attempting to reach Europe. More than 2,000 are estimated to have died during the journey so far this year. While there is no “magic wand” solution, Hein warned that the EU needs to be careful in striking deals with north African countries. “I have worked in north African countries and know the mood very well,” he said. “They have experienced European colonialism and are very sensitive to all that smells of colonial interventions: ‘We pay you money and you have to do this and that.’ I get the impression that sometimes among politicians, whether national or European, there is not much sensibility towards this and they need to be very careful not to give the impression that the rich EU is paying the ‘poor brothers over there’ to do its dirty work.”

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/dec/15/seven-world-cup-breakout-stars-qatar

Football

2022-12-15T16:03:22.000Z

Will Unwin

On the rise: seven of the World Cup’s biggest breakout stars

Saud Abdulhamid Saudi Arabia and Al Hilal There was plenty to analyse when Saudi Arabia shocked Argentina in their opening game. A lot of focus was put on the lacklustre efforts of the Argentinians, who were beaten by the better team on the day. One of the key giantkillers was the right-back Abdulhamid, who has 26 caps – not bad for a 23-year-old. His hero is Brazil’s Dani Alves, which explains the marauding nature of his play up and down the flank. He brings speed, pinpoint tackling and is comfortable in possession, as well as being a set-piece specialist and having the adaptability to operate in midfield. Clubs in Europe have taken note after his impressive efforts, with Sevilla, Milan and Juventus scouts monitoring his progress. He has captained his country, a sign of his importance for Saudi Arabia, and is tipped to lead them in the years to come. WU Yassine ‘Bono’ Bounou Morocco and Sevilla Sevilla’s status as a foremost club in polishing talent continued in Qatar through the brilliance of Morocco’s goalkeeper, though perhaps his status as a Europa League winner who played a crucial part in their 2020 final win over Inter ought not to have made him such a breakout star. Those two penalty saves against Spain, the country where he has played for the past decade, and his command of Morocco’s excellent, tightly drilled defence mark him out as one of the World Cup’s major talents. Canada-born and multilingual, the 31-year-old will be on any list for scouts looking for an experienced, organising goalkeeper who has shown himself to be adaptable. And Sevilla always have a price for their talent. JB Yassine ‘Bono’ Bounou at the centre of Morocco’s celebrations after the defeat of Spain on penalties. Photograph: Tom Jenkins/The Guardian Ritsu Doan Japan and Freiburg Japan’s defeats of Germany and Spain will live long in national memory and followed a similar pattern. Once Doan came on the field, everything changed. Four minutes after his arrival in the first game, Doan equalised against the country where he has played his football, first for Arminia Bielefeld and, since the summer, Freiburg. Then, against Spain, Doan came on at half-time and scored within three minutes. That his team lost both games Doan started does, though, throw questions up against a player occasionally referred to as “Japan’s Messi”. He previously struggled to make an impact at PSV Eindhoven but after five years in European football anyone who can harness a winger of withering speed and a latent goal threat running beyond the strikers will have a serious asset to call upon. In this era of five substitutes, impact players have increased in premium. JB Aïssa Laïdouni Tunisia and Ferencvaros Among the litany of goalless draws at the start of the tournament came a classic of the genre in Denmark v Tunisia. Laïdouni excelled in a game played in high heat and dominated a talented, experienced Denmark midfield with his energy and devilment, making one lung-bursting run after another. In that game, and against Australia, he was substituted when he could give no more, but his capacity for putting himself about was hugely striking. When Tunisia completed a historic win over France in their final group game, Laïdouni was again in the vanguard. The Ferencvaros player, lately linked with Celtic, would seem ideal for a high-pressing team. Born in France, and after starting his career with Angers, he has played in Romania and now Hungary, this season competing in the Europa League for that country’s champions. JB Aïssa Laïdouni makes his presence felt on Kingsley Coman during Tunisia’s win against France. Photograph: Lionel Hahn/Getty Images Dominik Livakovic Croatia and Dinamo Zagreb The goalkeeper made himself a shootout hero in Croatia’s wins over Japan and Brazil but his consistency as well as his penalty saves have made him the tournament’s standout goalkeeper, despite giving away a spot-kick in the semi-final defeat by Argentina. Livakovic has spent his entire career in Zagreb, first at NK before moving to Dinamo, where he has won five domestic titles. He was part of the Croatia squad that finished runners-up four years ago, but watched from the bench as understudy to one of his heroes, Danijel Subasic. Since then, the 27-year-old has become his country’s No 1 thanks to his reflexes and imposing nature in the box. He has been linked with Bayern Munich in recent weeks and could attract plenty more interest in the winter transfer window. WU Azzedine Ounahi Morocco and Angers After Morocco had seen off Spain in a shootout, Luis Enrique could have been forgiven for feeling disappointed, but he took time to praise his opponents, singling out Ounahi. The midfielder made his international debut in January at the Africa Cup of Nations and was playing in the French third tier 18 months ago. He is now with Ligue 1’s bottom club, Angers, but has the confidence of a man playing at a higher level. Ounahi has spent the tournament breaking the lines in midfield, providing constant energy, while also being key in a Morocco setup that was hard to break down. He has a contract until 2025 at Angers, who would be smart to sell the 22-year-old in January with his price rightly high thanks to helping his country to the semi‑finals. WU Quick Guide Qatar: beyond the football Show Harry Souttar Australia and Stoke Australia’s success derived much from an alliance of A-League graduates and players of Scottish origin. Souttar, whose older brother, John, plays for Rangers and Scotland, is an Aberdonian with a Western Australian mother. His dreadnought defending laid foundations for famous wins over Tunisia and Denmark as the Socceroos reached the last 16. Three seasons ago, he was on loan at Fleetwood. Stoke, who signed him from Dundee United in 2016, had been denied his services for the past year by a cruciate injury. He had played one club game this season, against Luton on 8 November, before flying out to become an Australian national hero. At 6ft 6in, he dominated the air traffic and Graham Arnold, his national manager, has been only too happy to recommend him to Premier League suitors: “I’d be banging on his door real quick. He’s that good.” He was quickly back in action with Stoke at home to Cardiff last Saturday and is in line to feature at Bristol City on Saturday. JB

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/21/pensioners-minefield-financial-options-pensions

Opinion

2014-03-21T14:08:52.000Z

Joanna Moorhead

Maybe pensioners don't want a minefield of financial options | Joanna Moorhead

"C hoice" is the buzz word around the changes the chancellor has made to pensions provision this week, but is choice really what those nearing retirement actually want? The changes affect those over 55 who have savings in defined contribution (DC) pension schemes, so someone like me, in my early 50s with a personal pension, is now hurtling towards a moment when all sorts of complicated financial decisions will have to be understood, and taken. And while that suits some 50-somethings, it definitely doesn't suit all of us: the pictures used in the press over the past couple of days of "retirees" have depicted 80-somethings on a park bench, but it would be more apt if it showed a picture of a slightly harassed, overworked parent with two or three kids at university and, frankly, enough on our plates without having to take a huge financial decision. Of course, there are people who enjoy the personal finance sections of newspapers, and who love nothing more than poring over the small print of different finance options on offer, but I'm not one of them. I'm the woman looking for the switch for "financial autopilot", and right now, with the changes to annuities, that looks suspiciously as though it might have disappeared from my dashboard. Like many others of my generation I have also had my confidence badly dented when it comes to making big financial decisions by the whole endowment mortgage debacle. Whether or not to take it out was a choice; it seemed like a good one. Two decades on I am tens of thousands of pounds out of pocket as a result. When you get down to the individual, there's only one question at the heart of pension planning, and it's this: how long am I going to be around? Giving us the chance to micromanage our own pensions, as George Osborne is now doing, means we – you and me – will have to make that call for ourselves. But how do we work it out given that life expectancy figures are constantly being revised upwards? Also, according to David Robbins, senior consultant at Tower Watson, there is evidence that we tend to underestimate how long we are going to survive. We've all had, in minister Steve Webb's Lamborghini comment, a colourful image of profligate overspending by the recently retired; but the opposite problem is just as serious, ie the pensioner who ekes out his or her pot much more frugally than turns out to be necessary. I don't want to be either of these people, I just want to be sensible: and annuities, from where I sit, look like a very good bet indeed. And yes, of course they will still be available – but they might be a lot pricier, and if they're not what everyone is doing any more I am almost inevitably going to have to start looking around, doing homework I don't want to do, and perhaps making (another) big financial mistake. One that, unlike the endowment policies I took out in the 1980s, will be completely impossible to put right.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/jan/31/queensland-and-victoria-rebuff-albanese-governments-offer-of-more-public-school-funding

Australia news

2024-01-31T05:25:22.000Z

Paul Karp

Other states rebuff Albanese government’s deal with WA to boost public school funding

A “landmark” deal between the Albanese government and Western Australia to co-fund public school improvements has been rejected by all other states. The federal education minister, Jason Clare, on Wednesday announced the five-year deal in which the commonwealth and WA will jointly pay to lift the state’s public schools to the schooling resource standard (SRS) by 2026 in return for the state implementing teacher quality and student wellbeing reforms. Government schools in WA will receive an extra $777m under the deal. ChatGPT is coming to Australian schools. Here’s what you need to know Read more Despite the Albanese government’s intention to roll the same co-funding plan out nationwide, the Australian Education Union and other states have called for the commonwealth to unilaterally lift its funding share to close the public school funding gap. The Turnbull government’s Gonski 2.0 education reforms required states to fund public schools at 75% of the SRS on top of the federal contribution of 20%, leaving a funding gap of at least 5%. Currently no public school in Australia, except for schools in the Australian Capital Territory, is funded at the SRS level – a benchmark for required funding based on student needs. Federal Labor was criticised by the AEU for its vague commitment ahead of the 2022 election to put schools on a “pathway” to full funding and again in December 2022 for extending the existing schools funding agreement to the end of 2024. On Wednesday Clare and the WA premier, Peter Cook, announced a deal for each government to provide an extra 2.5% of the SRS, lifting the commonwealth share to 22.5% in two steps in 2025 and 2026. The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said the “landmark agreement” was the first of its kind but the federal government “will be working this through with every state and territory government”. The scale of the WA deal, if replicated nationwide, suggests an extra $1.5bn to be spent on public schools by the commonwealth, matched by each of the states. But NSW’s deputy premier and education minister, Prue Car, said the state maintained its position that the commonwealth should fund the remaining 5% to help schools reach their SRS level. “State governments are facing unprecedented pressure to continue to provide world class services to a growing population, and as the largest state in the Commonwealth NSW is no different,” she said in a statement. “Our government has committed to reach 75% of the Schooling Resource Standard by 2025 - that’s two years earlier than the previous government’s target.” State governments in Queensland, Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia have also maintained their commitment to seeking 25% funding from the commonwealth. Queensland education minister Di Farmer. Photograph: Dan Peled/AAP The AEU federal president, Correna Haythorpe, applauded the WA deal but said it “will only see WA public schools reach 96%” of the standard. Sign up to Morning Mail Free daily newsletter Our Australian morning briefing breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it matters Enter your email address Sign up Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. That is because WA’s share is “artificially inflated by 4% through the inclusion of costs not directly related to the education of students in schools, such as capital depreciation, transport and regulatory costs”, she said. The AEU wants the Albanese government to lift its share of public school funding from 20% to 25% of the standard, and up to 40% in the Northern Territory. Trevor Cobbold, an economist and national convenor of advocacy group Save our Schools, condemned states that did not accept the deal, saying they were failing to commit to better funding of public schools. “That is disastrous,” he told Guardian Australia. Cobbold backed the union’s argument that WA’s government schools would still be funded to less than 100% of their SRS. Sarah Henderson, the opposition spokesperson for education, said the Coalition would consider the proposed funding package. Henderson said the commonwealth was already meeting its 20% funding requirement under the Gonski model and said the “big gap” was the states and territories. Does a public school education in Australia really cost $93k? Read more In return for the increased funding, WA will implement reforms to be negotiated this year, drawing on recommendations of the independent expert education panel which reported in December. The panel recommended ongoing screening on student progress in literacy and numeracy from grade one, with catch up supports for under-performing children, greater professional development among teachers and a strengthened link between schools and community health services, including a national wellbeing measure.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/mar/16/thought-wig-tried-comb-over-now-im-bald-and-proud

Life and style

2020-03-16T07:00:19.000Z

Jonathan Sale

I thought about a wig and tried a comb-over. But now I’m bald and proud

‘T o the Bald One,” begins the card from my son. Some years, by way of variety, it is “Dear Baldman”, which makes me sound like a Marvel superhero with a cranium that dazzles all villains within 50 paces. Either way, it is nice of him to remember my birthday, and I’m glad to see that the top of my head still amuses. There was a time when losing my hair was no laughing matter. The loss of locks started when I was about 21 and in my first job – with an unreasonable boss. Friends would casually joke about my receding hairline. Then I noticed the heavy fall of hair on my pillow in the mornings caused by – and causing even more – stress. I admitted to having a “widow’s peak”, that V-shaped point in the hairline. Then I brushed my hair forward, not to hide the bare skin, of course, but to copy the Beatles, who were then at their peak. OK, and to hide the bare skin. A local barber, of the traditional sort, who would ask: “Anything for the weekend, sir?” gave me a short back and sides, which revealed that my hairline was on the run. This prompted my now-late wife – who made rather too much of the fact that she was a whole year and 13 days younger than me – to laugh that I looked “like a little old man”. That was so incorrect. I am not little. Nor was I old enough to be bald. The comb-over was a work of artifice, but it didn’t stay combed or over when the wind blew She made up for it by suggesting that, if I was all that bothered, a wig may be the way forward. Now was the hour; if you left the artificial-thatch solution until you had a gleaming billiard ball of a pate, and then suddenly went forth into the world with long, thick tresses, people would notice. I sent off for a brochure from a wigmaker, but instead a furtive-looking man knocked on the door one Sunday morning. He was wearing an unnaturally luxuriant red wig, and his spiel consisted of slating rival hairpiece suppliers. This put me off, as did the thought that I would be lumbered for the rest of my life with a wig. Wigs plural, presumably, as my hair would need to age with me, which meant decades of jiggery-wiggery-pokery costing more than the occasional haircut. Back at the barber – a different one – I experienced the greatest cover-up since Watergate. He was a man of few words, most of them Greek, but my cranium did the talking, and he obeyed. Carefully picking the ends of tendrils from one side of the skull, he lured them over the barren summit to start a new life with their relatives on the far side. As the years went by, my parting had to descend ever further in search of hair to part. The comb-over was a work of artifice, but it didn’t stay combed or over when the wind blew, I got on my bicycle, opened the window, turned on a fan or nodded too vigorously. I felt like an impostor; an enemy agent whose cover could be literally blown at any moment. But I was well aware that I was fooling no one. At 35, I threw in the towel. I didn’t know the Greek for “make with the scissors”, but I indicated that I was looking for a scorched-earth look or, as the barber put it: “Ah, no parting!” He set to with his comb and razor until I had shed more follicles than he had snipped off in the previous couple of years. I left his premises with a wonderful feeling of freedom. People would no longer peer knowingly through the sparse covering and detect the pink skin beneath. Yes, I was bald. “Get over it,” I thought. “I have.” I could hold my head high – and not, as before, just to stop anyone noticing the open space at the top of it. It reminded me of how liberated I had felt when I had gone, with an unclad wife and bare toddler, to a nudist beach in Cornwall. Back at the office, I no longer had to sneak into the gents’ to repair my hairstyle. Colleagues at first pretended not to recognise me. Some inquired if I was a Bruce Willis tribute act. My wife was a bit taken aback, but I informed her that I was getting my ageing over early. My niece gave me a badge declaring “Bald is beautiful.” That was more than half my life ago. My civil partner knows me only in my hair-free reincarnation. Now, my small grandson is more intrigued by the baldness of his uncle, who has inherited the condition. This came to my son later in his life than it did to me, but, like other men of his generation, he takes no prisoners: avoiding camouflage absolutely, he gives himself a close-shorn “number one” with the electric razor all over his bonce. He still looks young to me, so maybe I don’t look too ancient to him. Although my hair is less severely trimmed than his, I know he will always refer to me as “the Bald One”. And we will always find it funny.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/sep/29/oath-keepers-members-january-6-capitol-attack-venmo

US news

2023-09-29T10:00:41.000Z

Jason Wilson

Revealed: far-right Oath Keepers kept up dues payments after Capitol attack

Oath Keepers members paid dues to the rightwing militia’s then vice-president for up to almost a year after the January 6 attack on the US Capitol and months after the organization and its founder, Stewart Rhodes, were named in court filings as participants in the assault, according to publicly accessible transaction records on the payment platform Venmo. Those who made payments to an Oath Keepers leader on Venmo include an engineer whose employer provides satellite technology to US government agencies including the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Department of Homeland Security, a former Department of Homeland Security employee whose tenure at the agency overlapped with his membership in the group, and a 2022 candidate for the Wyoming state senate. Others connected on Venmo to Rhodes or other organizational leaders include a US navy recruiting officer. The Guardian corroborated the identity of some of the individuals making payments using earlier hacks and leaks of Oath Keepers membership rolls, payment records and internal communications. Venmo transactions were public by default throughout most of the service’s history. Megan Squire is deputy director for Data Analytics and OSINT at the Southern Poverty Law Centre, and from 2017 she was one of the first to use Venmo transactions to understand the internal structure of groups like the Proud Boys. Squire said: “Venmo has had security issues since its inception. They have tried to fix them but only after high-profile privacy breaches involving people like Joe Biden.” The Oath Keepers transactions were recorded on the profile of Jason Ottersberg, a Cheyenne, Wyoming, man who has been publicly identified as a senior leader in the Oath Keepers. Ottersberg’s name, email address and a username – “seebeewyo” – were all revealed in a leak of information from the Oath Keepers website in 2021. Ottersberg is also named as the recipient on an Oath Keepers fundraising page on the extremist-friendly fundraising site Givesendgo. Ottersberg’s current username on Venmo is based on his name, but a scrape of his account with the open-source intelligence tool Venemy shows that his original user name was nationalokvp, indicating that he was presenting himself as the Oath Keepers national vice-president. The account’s transaction history shows payments to and from Ottersberg along with explanations of the payments. On 1 September 2021, an account carrying the name Michael Ray Williams made a payment to Jason Ottersberg on Venmo with the message “OK dues”. The account’s avatar is a promotional image for Williams’s political campaign bearing the slogans “Michael Ray Williams Wyoming Senate District 11” and “Giving the power back to the people”. In 2022, Michael Ray Williams ran for the Constitution party for the Wyoming state senate, but lost handily to the Republican Larry S Hicks. On the Constitution party’s website and Ballotpedia’s candidate survey he expressed anti-abortion, pro-gun and anti-LGBTQ+ sentiments. Williams told Buzzfeed News in October 2021 that he was an Oath Keeper, but his payment of dues the month before confirms his ongoing links to the group at the time of his election campaign. The Guardian contacted Williams for comment via email. Others identified by the Guardian hold sensitive positions in business, the military and government. One of those identified is a senior figure at Space Systems Engineering at Echostar Corporation, headquartered in Englewood, Colorado. Echostar is also a major government contractor in potentially sensitive areas. Last year, the company announced that its subsidiary Hughes won a contract to create a private 5G network at a US navy base on Whidbey Island in Washington state, and the previous year trumpeted its success in bidding for satellite services to the Department of Defense’s (DoD’s) Advanced Battle Management System project. Historically, the DoD has been Hughes’s biggest client, according to US government spending records. Current Hughes contracts include supplying satellite services to the Department of Homeland Security. The person identified by the Guardian was involved in developing satellite-related technologies, including a project to gain limited access to Nasa satellites. Another separate payment on 4 October 2021 came from an account of someone who was a DHS employee until June 2021, according to their LinkedIn profile. They had also recently applied for a job in a state department of corrections. A third person connected to Stewart Rhodes on Venmo and identified by the Guardian works in US navy recruitment in Texas. Venmo records show that other accounts are connected to Stewart Rhodes and Ottersberg. A Venmo “friend” connection does not necessarily indicate that the parties have exchanged money, but it does indicate that the parties have recorded one another as telephone contacts. Throughout 2021, at least nine people paid Ottersberg or were charged by him on Venmo with comments indicating that the payment was for dues, membership or a new membership. In turn, Ottersberg appeared to funnel money onwards to Rhodes. On 24, 25 and 26 October, payments from him all mention “Stewart”, including one to an account in the name of Chad Rogers. In January 2022, Rhodes was arrested in Plano, Texas, at the home of Chad Rogers, a licensed security officer. Later, during Rhodes’s trial, prosecutors detailed a 10 January 2021 meeting between Rhodes and Jason Alpers, a man who Rhodes believed could pass on his plea to Trump to retain the presidency by force if necessary. Alpers testified that Rogers was present at the meeting. Squire, the SPLC deputy director, said of the new Oath Keepers revelations that “it’s amazing to me that they’re still using open, non-privacy focused payment solutions”. She added: “They don’t seem to have institutional knowledge about previous things that have happened to other groups, so they repeat their mistakes.” Despite Ottersberg’s apparently senior role in the Oath Keepers, and his access to key players including Rhodes, he has faced no known legal consequences for his membership in the group. The last publicly visible payment from his Venmo account, however, is to his wife, and is simply captioned “Lawyer”.

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https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/sep/18/the-pet-ill-never-forget-miles-was-the-cat-no-one-wanted-i-took-him-in-and-he-never-left-my-side

Life and style

2023-09-18T10:00:25.000Z

Hannah Jane Parkinson

The pet I’ll never forget: Miles was the cat no one wanted. I took him in – and he never left my side

My journey with Miles started, practically, in an Uber returning from the Cats Protection centre in north London, his huge, golden eyes peering out from his bulky carrier. But the road to Miles and I ending up together began much earlier. He was a successor to two abandoned kittens I had found at the bottom of my garden and taken in. I raised them for three weeks, syringe feeding them with specially formulated milk. A friend then adopted them (they are thriving). But I missed the kittens and thought it time for a permanent feline friend. I had grown up with two cats: Pepsi and Tess. I loved them dearly, and they died, adored, at 18 years old, their long lives filled with … well, mostly sleeping and eating. Miles had been the longest-standing resident at the rescue centre, his intense shyness preventing visitors from forming a bond with him. Once home, his timidity continued. He ran under the cooker and didn’t come out for days; then he ran under the desk and didn’t come out for weeks. He crept from his hiding place in the night to eat and drink. “I am living with a ghost cat,” I told a friend. But gradually I earned his trust (mostly through treat-based tactics), and then he never left my side. Whenever singledom made it possible, he slept under the crook of my arm in bed, or with his head on the adjacent pillow, his warm breath on my cheek. ‘He was so handsome, with his aristocratic ruff’ … Photograph: Supplied image He was so handsome. I expanded his name to Fitzwilliam Miles Wentworth, because of his aristocratic ruff. He was part Maine coon, but instead of the breed’s typical long ears, Miles’s were tiny triangles, which I rubbed like a swatch of velvet between my fingertips. Miles’s best friend was Merlin, a neighbourhood cat. Merlin would often come and chill, the two of them on the sofa. While Miles resembled a cylindrical feather duster, Merlin was as wiry as a pipe cleaner. One evening, I stayed at a friend’s, putting food and water out, and leaving Miles to roam overnight with Merlin, as he often would. When I returned, he didn’t come bolting through the cat flap as was customary and, as darkness fell, I began to worry. I found Miles outside, unable to use his hind legs. He was soaking wet, but he wasn’t bleeding. My neighbour drove me to a 24-hour vet. The verdict was horrific. He had somehow become injured and as a result, in rapid time, fallen victim to something called flystrike, which left him infested with maggots. The internal damage he had suffered was brutal, and he could not be saved. I still blame myself. I feel if I hadn’t been away that night he would have been inside with me. I was his protector, and I had failed to protect him. He was two and a half when I took him in, and just five when he died. I moved to a new place, and often think of Merlin, who almost certainly misses Miles as much as I do. I barely ever addressed him as Miles – usually buddy, sometimes pal. He’s still with me, but now it’s in photographs on the fridge. I’m so sorry, buddy. I miss you, pal.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/apr/10/animal-tranquilliser-xylazine-found-in-cannabis-vapes-and-illicit-sedatives-in-uk-warn-researchers

Society

2024-04-10T04:00:37.000Z

Rachel Hall

Animal tranquilliser found in cannabis vapes and illicit sedatives in UK

People buying cannabis vapes and illicit sedatives to treat pain, anxiety and insomnia risk unknowingly consuming a powerful animal tranquilliser that can cause skin ulcers and overdoses. Xylazine has been prevalent in the US for several years, where it is commonly found mixed with strong opioids, such as heroin or fentanyl, and has caused thousands of deaths. Research from King’s College London has found that its presence has been steadily growing in the UK, causing multiple deaths since 2022, when the first fatality was identified. Unlike in the US, in the UK xylazine has been found in counterfeit prescription drugs such as codeine, alprazolam (Xanax) and diazepam (Valium) tablets and vapes containing THC, the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis. Dr Caroline Copeland, senior author of the study, said: “This is cause for alarm as a much wider population of people who use drugs beyond heroin users will be exposed to its harms. “We also know that most people who buy heroin will not intend to buy xylazine and this combination increases the risk of overdose. Xylazine was designated an ‘emerging threat’ to the United States and this public health threat is a growing concern for the UK.” The findings, published in the Addiction journal, drew on evidence from all toxicology laboratories in the UK. The drug was found in 16 people, 11 of whom died. In nine of the 11 confirmed deaths xylazine was found in combination with a strong opioid. The lack of this combination in the other two cases suggests xylazine was potentially consumed in an illicit sedative or vape. Copeland said the total number of deaths is likely higher, since xylazine does not stay in the body for long. Since August 2023, the last death covered by the research, “we’ve had several more deaths so it is only continuing and increasing”, she said. Xylazine is a non-opioid sedative, painkiller and muscle relaxant used in veterinary medicine, which can dangerously lower breathing and heart rate. It is known as tranq when cut with heroin and fentanyl. If injected directly into the user’s bloodstream it can form large open skin ulcers, which if infected may result in limb amputation. Copeland recommended measures to avoid an epidemic of xylazine use, which resulted in a 20 fold increase in deaths within three years in the US, including requiring pathologists and coroners to request toxicology testing for xylazine to understand the true prevalence of the drug. Xylazine’s emergence follows the spread of nitazenes, which are synthetic and extremely powerful drugs implicated in a spate of recent deaths of heroin users. Co-author Dr Adam Holland, a co-chair of the drugs special interest group at the University of Bristol, said the increase in drug adulteration and deaths shows that punitive drug laws are failing. He added: “We need to expand the range of harm reduction interventions available for people who use drugs, including drug checking and overdose prevention centres, to give them the opportunities they need to stay safe.” A government spokesperson said: “We are aware of the threat from xylazine and are determined to protect people from the threat posed by this drug and other illicit synthetic drugs. “We will not hesitate to act to keep the public safe. Following advice from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, we intend to make xylazine a class C drug meaning anyone supplying this substance will face up to 14 years in prison, a fine or both.”

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https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/dec/03/the-arcs-review-dan-auerbachs-soul-side-charms-windy-city

Music

2015-12-03T16:11:23.000Z

Mark Guarino

The Arcs review – Dan Auerbach's soul side charms windy city

When Dan Auerbach turns around in the Arcs he sees two drummers, none of whom are named Patrick Carney. The Arcs: Yours, Dreamily review – Black Keys frontman bares his soul Read more That is the most obvious difference separating this new band from the Black Keys, the flagship duo that Auerbach founded with drummer Carney almost 15 years ago in Akron, Ohio. That band organically groomed a stadium-sized following based on a love of the mesmerizing trance-blues of outsiders Hound Dog Taylor and Junior Kimbrough and the pop side of the British Invasion. The blues seeps through the Arcs but not necessarily through Auerbach’s guitar. He is the vocalist in the Black Keys but a committed soul singer in the Arcs. In true Motown/Stax fashion, he pleads, whispers, talk-sings, and at the Vic Theatre on Wednesday, unwraps the microphone chord from its stand, slides to the edge of the stage and drops to his knees. “The one I wanted was far away / Maybe it was just all in my mind,” he sings before wrapping his head in his hands in panicked paranoia. The Arcs has a bigger, more swirling sound than Auerbach’s primary band, mostly because there are more people onstage. Dual drummers Richard Swift and Homer Steinweiss weren’t a necessity, although Swift doubled on vocals and keyboards. Next to bassist Nick Movshon and guitarist Leon Michels, the standout flavor provided to this band was from three members of Mariachi Flor de Toloache, a Grammy-winning quartet of women from New York City playing original ranchera music. That group opened the show, and later, three of the four members merged with the Arcs as backup singers and multi-instrumentalists. Through a classical guitar, fiddle, flugelhorn and triple-packed vocal power, the trio inflected color into the music, which often paused mid-song before gaining a stronger headwind. The arrangements of songs like Stay in My Corner allowed for pockets to open up that revealed the band’s dexterity and individual contribution to the groove. This was a late-night soul band first and foremost that directed everything to the dancefloor, whether through slinky instrumental breaks or, due to the break-beats of both drummers and Movshon’s extra-chunky basslines, the buzz of electro-funk. The stage was strewn with tropical plants and colored in dark yellows and browns that gave the stage a kind of Miami nightclub from decades past feel. Auerbach left the vocal effects out of his sound mix but played it bare in keeping with the band’s straightforward approach. Guitar solos were had, but they were kept to a minimum and with few notes. As a bandleader he kept things loose, rarely interacting directly with other musicians but directing through thrusting himself into the music and sliding his dance shoes in every direction of the floor. Unlike Broken Bells (The Shins) and the Dead Weather (Jack White), the Arcs feel less like a hobby-turned-side project than a full-formed band that can stand on its own merits without the backstory of the mothership. The only direct reference to the blues was near the end of the show’s 90 minutes when Auerbach revealed Ike and Tina Turner’s It’s Gonna Work Out Fine, which near the end included lines from Back Door Man, written by Chicago Chess Records great Willie Dixon. As Michels riffed on his guitar, Auerbach danced notes on top with his own. The song led to Out of My Mind, the band’s lead single that bounced like a rubberband.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/jun/23/china-melamine-olympics

Opinion

2010-06-23T09:00:20.000Z

Phelim Kine

China's public health whitewash | Phelim Kine

Pretend it didn't happen. That's apparently the strategy of the Chinese government, the World Health Organisation, and the International Olympic Committee toward China's melamine milk contamination scandal during the Beijing Olympics. An official ban on reporting of "all food safety issues" during the games stifled domestic media coverage of revelations that at least 20 dairy firms were spiking milk products with the chemical melamine. That cover-up contributed to the deaths of six children and illness among 300,000 others. But there's not a whisper of melamine – or of the reporting ban – in a May 2010 book jointly issued by the Chinese government, the WHO and IOC, The Health Legacy of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games: Successes and Recommendations. That publication instead declares that "no major outbreak of food-borne disease occurred during the Beijing Olympics". The book describes, without irony, the Chinese government's attention to food safety during the Beijing Olympics as "an instructive example of how mass events can be organised to promote health in a value-added way". The book's introduction features tributes from the IOC president, Jacques Rogge, who praises the Beijing Olympics for providing a "lasting legacy to the benefit of the population in and around Beijing". The WHO director-general, Margaret Chan, commends the Beijing Games for spurring "innovative measures to protect the health of visitors and the local population". The WHO's and IOC's parroting of the Chinese government's rosy assessment of the Beijing Olympics' health legacy doesn't just defy the historical record. It adds insult to the injury of China's child melamine victims by whitewashing the role of official censorship in their misery. China's state-controlled media was not allowed to publish the melamine contamination story until September 2008. This fact goes unmentioned in the book. Nor is there a discussion of ongoing persecution of some public health advocates. On 30 March 2010, Zhao Lianhai was hauled before a Beijing court in a one-day closed trial on charges of "provoking disorder" for blowing the whistle on the government's failure to assist the thousands who became ill. Zhao helped to establish a grassroots advocacy group, Home for Kidney Stones Babies, which rallied parents of sick children to demand official compensation and an official day of remembrance. For his efforts, Zhao faces a possible prison term of up to five years. The Chinese government has a long history of denying or covering up issues it broadly defines as "sensitive" – even public health emergencies. The government stifled public disclosure of its severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) outbreak to ensure a crisis-free meeting of the National People's Congress in early 2003. That decision helped fuel an epidemic, which spread to 25 other countries and killed 774 people before it was contained in July 2003. Two years later, the government blocked all domestic media reports of the massive spill of the toxic chemical benzene in the Songhua river in Heilongjiang province until wild rumours about the disaster prompted disclosure of what had actually happened. If the WHO is genuinely committed to "the attainment by all people of the highest possible level of health" – its stated objective – it should examine the good, the bad, and the ugly in China, not put its imprimatur on half-truths and cover-ups as to the real health legacy of the Beijing Olympics. The WHO reflected some discomfort when Human Rights Watch inquired about its co-authorship. An email from the WHO's regional office of the western Pacific defends the book as a "scientific study", but adds that its contents "do not necessarily reflect WHO's views, nor does WHO necessarily endorse them". The IOC's complicity is no less shameful, but less surprising given its well-documented tolerance of the Chinese government's unrelenting campaign to squelch legal peaceful protests, limit media freedom and restrict the internet access of journalists ahead of and during the Beijing Olympics. The WHO and the IOC owe China's citizens and the international community the truth and not some selective and rosy portrayal dressed up as "science". The WHO should undertake independent reporting on the Beijing Olympics' public health legacy in its monthly medical bulletin. The IOC should integrate ethical principles based on the values enshrined in the Olympic charter to establish human rights-compatible standards to guide the Olympic movement and the selection of future Olympic host cities. And both should demand that the Chinese government immediately release Zhao, stop harassing those seeking redress and allocate necessary funds for their compensation and medical treatment. That would be an Olympic legacy worth writing about.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/mar/01/dm-stith-new-york-music

Music

2009-03-01T00:01:00.000Z

Ally Carnwath

Ally Carnwath meets rising New York singer-songwriter DM Stith

I am expecting a particularly exotic bird to descend on the north London strip of cafes and newsagents where I've arranged to meet David M Stith. In a set of photos on his record label's website, the first glimpse most of us have had of the 28-year-old singer, he is dressed like some princely Elizabethan throwback, pallid and faintly androgynous, with a woollen ruff billowing around his neck. Enter Stith in jeans and a slate-grey hoodie. "Yeah, when people see those photos they think I'm some kind of diva or something," he says, smiling a little ruefully. "It was actually the photographer's kids who dressed me up like that. I wear this all the time." You'd have to say the kids had got it right; Stith's current get-up could hardly be more at odds with his music. His debut album, Heavy Ghost, recorded on Sufjan Stevens' influential Asthmatic Kitty label, is an otherworldly blend of sounds and textures that pits his spooked falsetto against grand orchestral flourishes and multitracked choirs of his own voice. Stith is being increasingly talked about in US indie circles and has earned comparisons with Jeff Buckley - semi-obligatory for any extravagantly talented singer. But Antony Hegarty is a closer match; like Hegarty, Stith's voice moves in an instant from quavering melancholy to whoops and exaltations and his lyrics seem to document a painful process of self-discovery. "Every kind of creative endeavour is a search to find empathy for myself," he says. "I'm trying to learn to like the world and it shows up in my songs." As a child, growing up in the city of Buffalo, upstate New York, Stith would spend much of his time trying to avoid attention. His family were a local musical institution - his grandfather is a university music professor, his father a band leader and his mother a pianist - and he and his three sisters were expected to stand up in church to perform devotional songs, to the delight of elderly parishioners and the mortification of the self-conscious Stith. After one particularly excruciating performance - a school rendition of songs from The Phantom of the Opera before 1,500 fellow students, with his mother accompanying on piano and a microphone shared with a girl with bad breath - Stith vowed never again. "I think my mum said, 'If you do this, you won't have to do anything else.' And I held her to that." By his early twenties, though, the spectre of schlocky Lloyd Webber performances had faded sufficiently for him to start re-engaging with music. Soon after moving to New York, he met musician Shara Worden, now the lead singer with My Brightest Diamond. Worden would work on her songs in Stith's one-bed apartment while he provided coffee and fell back in love with the idea of making music. But it took a more prosaic spur before Stith began recording himself. He had been struggling to find work since arriving in New York and money was beginning to prey on his mind. Then one day he walked into the largest 24-hour Starbucks in New York and asked for a job - he was told he could start in two weeks. "I went home and I was so happy. I was going to get paid, it was such a relief. I started recording and it felt like I was hearing things for the first time. It was wonderful." The two-week stint produced 20 songs, most of which Stith now says "aren't that good", but when after several years working and paying off student loans he began to write Heavy Ghost, it was this pre-barista surge of creativity that he would try to recapture. Looking back on the fraught recording of his debut album, Stith seems amazed that he managed to complete the record at all. Asked to reflect on his creative process, he considers the froth on top of his cappuccino and gives answers that twist this way and that. "I was having a really hard time focusing on any one thing and trusting an idea. At some moments, I felt I had to do this and all this other stuff was trash and at other moments that was the clear way to go. I had about 150 things recorded, but I wasn't happy with any of them. "Somebody said I don't write songs, I relinquish them," he adds. "Music is the thing I feel in my gut, more than visual art and more than reading and writing. So there's more at stake for me." It didn't help that the material he was trying to channel into the songs was intensely personal. Stith was still nursing a broken heart after two relationships had run aground - "Friendships that got too close," he calls them - and he admits the record is suffused with a sense of romantic loss. "There's a lot of longing in it, a lot of aching for somebody." And buried deeper, though exposed in the biblical imagery and often hymnal feel of the songs, were his conflicted feelings towards his religious upbringing. "I have a lot of angst for the church I grew up in. But I feel like I can't lop it [religion] off, I can't get rid of it." The record bore the weight of so much emotional baggage that S th would sit in his studio, walls covered with pieces of paper scrawled with ideas, struggling to find a way through the material before it overwhelmed him. In the end, it took a moment of psychological insight to help him find a way. "I met someone who talked about this idea that everyone has a big collection of persons inside their brain, a multiplicity of selves. The crux of it was that in order to deal with this issue of not being in control you had to have empathy for these parts that make you up. It played into the idea of being at peace with the way I was recording and ended up being what made the whole thing possible." Since he put the final touches to Heavy Ghost, Stith's star has been firmly in the ascendant. At the end of last year, his debut EP, "Curtain Speech", was praised by critics; he went on to record a session for the Daytrotter website, which has previously broadcast performances by Vampire Weekend and Bon Iver. He also appears alongside Arcade Fire, David Byrne and Cat Power on Dark Was the Night, the recent charity compilation which doubles as a roll call of everyone who's anyone in US indie. There's an element of poetic justice to Stith's contribution, adding wordless backing vocals to a remix track featuring Sufjan Stevens, the crown prince of narrative-based alt-pop. Long before he began work on Heavy Ghost, he was repeatedly introduced to Stevens who could never remember who he was. "It was horrifying. We probably met 15 times and every time he would say, 'Tell me your name again. You write songs, right?'" he says, laughing. "Every time I met him, it was a heavier handshake because I'd listened to his music more and I wanted even more for him to know who I was." Now Stevens waxes lyrical about his label's new signing. "David's music is light on its feet so as to defy gravity. And yet it carries in its flight the gloomy weight of the human heart," he says. "This is music for dangerous flight patterns across vast oceans." But though Stith is pleased with the response to his music, he's not losing any sleep over how Heavy Ghost is received by the critics. "Even if I get no stars in all the magazines, I'll still be proud of it," he says. "I've tried my whole life to give up my creativity - to cut that off so that I can be married and have kids, so I can have a house and be seen as a responsible person. But I've definitely become more comfortable with sharing this side of me. The record marks a really purifying time for me." That might not mean he's ready to re-employ his kindergarten stylists but somewhere underneath that hoodie, Stith is beginning to spread his wings. A Brooklyn sound: musical neighbours Brooklyn was crucial to the genesis of Stith's debut, which was largely written and recorded there. The New York borough's ties with art rock and electronica are well known, but it has also been home to a range of current artists inspired by classical music and emotional heartache. Sufjan Stevens Co-founder of the influential Asthmatic Kitty label, Stevens is best known for his project to release a record inspired by every American state, delivering symphonic alt-pop records about Michigan (2003) and Illinois (2005). My Brightest Diamond Stith's mentor Shara Worden, a former opera student and creative linchpin of MBD, writes richly orchestrated songs informed by pastoral and dream imagery. Timothy Dick Dick, Worden's former neighbour, has a voice recalling Tom Waits at his most desolate. His debut On a Grassblade was released when he lived in the borough and features artwork by Stith. Grizzly Bear The eerie classical pop of their 2006 album Yellow House won the band a support slot with Radiohead. Heavy Ghost is released on the Asthmatic Kitty label on 9 March; dmstith.com

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/dec/27/rowan-moore-best-architecture-of-2020

Art and design

2020-12-27T12:00:43.000Z

Rowan Moore

Architecture: Rowan Moore’s five best of 2020

1. Town House, Kingston University By Grafton Architects; opened in January A grown-up climbing frame for students. A three-dimensional town square for the social life that will one day return. Generous and dignified. 2. Z33, Hasselt, Belgium Francesca Torzo; opened in May The expansion of an art and architecture museum in a historic building that goes far beyond your usual thoughtful minimalism. The experience is of a series of atmospheres, created by subtle modulations of its surfaces and shadows, as much as of solid masonry. A work of pleasure and beauty. Z33 in Hasselt, Belgium. Photograph: Gion Von Albertini 3. Tainan Spring, Taiwan MVRDV; opened in March The ruins of a shopping mall made into a water garden that changes with the seasons – more water when it’s rainy, vapour mists when it’s hot. Perhaps Philip Green’s legacy could be transformed like this. 4. Mountain View, Sydenham CAN Architects; completed in September This small-scale house extension may not literally be one of the world’s best five buildings this year, but its bright colours, playful bits of ruined brickwork, and faux-mountain-shaped gable offer hope. Because it feels that someone had a good time while designing it, which is not an impression of which you get enough in architecture. Tainan Spring, Taiwan. Photograph: © Daria Scagliola 5. Zoe Zenghelis: Do you remember how perfect everything was? Betts Project, London EC1; December-30 January 2021 (temporarily closed) Exhibition of paintings by the artist and designer who was one of the founding members of the Office of Metropolitan Architecture, one of the most influential practices in the world, in the 1970s. Zenghelis and her collaborators treated architecture as a thing of imagination and dream, not just function and styling. Another small but hopeful event.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/apr/05/calls-nhs-111-soar-400-since-start-coronavirus-crisis-uk

Business

2020-04-05T09:58:39.000Z

Mark Sweney

Calls to NHS 111 soar 400% since start of coronavirus crisis in UK

The volume of calls to the NHS 111 helpline has surged by 400% since the spread of the coronavirus became a national health crisis. The free service, which offers urgent but non-emergency care advice, has been inundated with calls from Britons since the start of March when the virus took hold. Vodafone, which provides the lines and handles the call traffic for the NHS 111 call centre, said it had doubled capacity to handle 2,400 calls simultaneously. The call centre has experienced huge surges in the number of calls, hitting a peak of 1,100 simultaneously at one point – five times more than the peaks before the health emergency. Daily peaks vary widely, but for example last Saturday it was 500. The mobile company, which has also installed the phone network at the new Nightingale hospital in London, will from Monday provide registered NHS staff with free unlimited mobile data access for 30 days. “It is our job to keep the UK connected, especially the NHS,” said Nick Jeffery, the chief executive of Vodafone UK. “Our dedicated network engineers are working all hours to make sure that we do.” Vodafone said call volumes across its network had increased 45% week-on-week since the beginning of March, as people stuck at home dial into conference calls and ring businesses such as banks. The company said it was still using only 75% of its network capacity, however. Internet usage is also booming with the video conferencing service Zoom, whose market value has more than doubled to $36bn (£29bn) since the crisis began, recording a 3,000% increase in demand. Sign up to the daily Business Today email or follow Guardian Business on Twitter at @BusinessDesk Families and friends wanting to stay in touch have also fuelled a huge rise in the usage of FaceTime (up 121%), WhatsApp video (162%) and Skype (640%). Last week, BT said a “new normal” had emerged in terms of the weight of broadband usage under the coronavirus lockdown. Weekday traffic has doubled and is up by a fifth in the evenings. “The good news is that the network is holding up well to these changes,” said a BT spokesman. “It is comfortably within the network’s maximum capacity.”

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/03/barnaby-joyce-declares-he-wont-be-bullied-on-climate-science

Environment

2021-09-03T07:26:43.000Z

Daniel Hurst

Barnaby Joyce declares he won’t be ‘bullied’ on climate science

Australia’s deputy prime minister has refused to say he accepts key findings of the latest global summary of climate science, declaring he won’t be “berated” or participate in a “kangaroo court”. Barnaby Joyce, leader of the junior Coalition party whose agreement will be needed if Australia is to take a more ambitious climate policy to the Glasgow conference in November, said he would not yield to “straight-out bullying”. “I can say and think what I like,” he said on Friday. Having spent a decade framing emissions reduction in apocalyptic terms, the Coalition now has to present different facts Katharine Murphy Read more Joyce, who was reinstated as leader of the Nationals in June, likened basic questions about climate science to a baptism where parents were required to “denounce Satan and all his works and deeds”. Joyce did not rule out the Nationals doing a deal with Scott Morrison’s Liberal party to firmly commit to net zero emissions by 2050, but said: “In any deal, I don’t start by saying what I think it’s worth, I start by saying how much do you want it?” Deputy PM Barnaby Joyce at a press club address held for the first time due to covid restrictions in the blue room of Parliament House, Canberra this afternoon. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian He said the prime minister – who has said it is his “preference” to achieve net zero by midcentury, and is facing increasing diplomatic heat from the UK and the US – was “giving his best endeavours to this process” but any long-term emissions strategy would require the “concurrence” of National party MPs and senators. During a National Press Club event held at parliament house on Friday, Guardian Australia asked Joyce whether he accepted the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s latest reports. He was presented with three statements from the IPCC’s 40-page summary for policymakers, including: “It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land.” The other quotes from the report (pdf) were that human influence “has warmed the climate at a rate that is unprecedented in at least the last 2000 years” and that global heating “of 1.5C and 2C will be exceeded during the 21st century unless deep reductions in CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions occur in the coming decades”. He was also asked whether he accepted that the intensity, frequency and duration of fire weather events were projected to increase throughout Australia – a form of words drawn from the IPCC’s two-page regional fact sheet on Australasia (pdf). Coalition’s misleading tactics will no longer cut it – the IPCC report shows our future depends on urgent climate action Adam Morton Read more Asked whether he accepted that was our best understanding of the science, Joyce said: “I really don’t like when questions are presented like that, because it sounds like you’re at a baptism, on behalf of your child, denouncing Satan and all of his works and deeds, and on and on and on it goes.” Joyce added: “If the question you ask me is I do I believe that humans have an influence on climate, yes I do.” He did not specify how much of an influence he accepted humans had on the climate. “And if you then walk into the frame of saying, ‘I’m now going to grab you by the ear and make you comply with everything I say’, I won’t do that because it’s a free nation. I can say and think what I like.” Asked whether he had read the IPCC report, published early last month, Joyce said he had “been through whole sections of that report” but “this turns into this sort of parochial partisan process”. He said he was “not going to stand here and sort of be berated into complying” with such statements. “I’m not going to participate in some sort of kangaroo court of now you will agree to every statement I say because the IPCC said it,” Joyce said. In response to a subsequent question from another journalist about a long-term emission reduction strategy, which the government has promised to unveil before the Glasgow summit, Joyce suggested regional Australia was “bruised and beaten by the Kyoto process”. He said the Nationals would work to ensure that urban Australia, not regional Australia, paid the price “if there’s a price to be paid”. Coalition MPs want more school chaplains to help children suffering mentally due to ‘alarmist’ climate activism Read more “This is why in regards to the previous question [about climate science], why we get so annoyed, because people say you must comply with my assertion, and that therefore justifies everything that I want to do next, because otherwise I just go back to the initial statement and say but didn’t you say this, therefore you must comply with that,” Joyce said. “And that’s bullying.” The Australian government is yet to firmly commit to net zero emissions by 2050 or to deepen its Abbott-era emission reduction pledge for 2030, although some members of the Liberals are pressing for Morrison to increase Australia’s ambition. Joyce defended coal and gas exports, saying it was a big export earner for Australia. He said it would be a “childish decision” to stop such exports while expecting to maintain the same standard of living. Sign up to receive an email with the top stories from Guardian Australia every morning Sign up to receive the top stories from Guardian Australia every morning In questioning Australians’ increasing reliance on solar power, Joyce also raised concerns over a key source material produced in China’s Xinjiang region. His comments follow the Biden administration moving in June to ban US imports of a key solar panel material from a Chinese-based company over forced labour allegations. Joyce questioned whether Australians thought about the polysilicon that was produced “by reason of the slave labour by the Uyghur people”. He said: “When you go and turn on the lights, do you think slave labour?” Joyce’s comments are starkly different from those of Morrison, who said last month that the government was “very aware of the risks that are set out in the IPCC report”. “The cost of inaction globally is very clear in what the IPCC report sets out today,” Morrison said at the time, and promised that the government would “set out a clear plan”.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/26/eu-referendum-brexit-vote-leave-iain-duncan-smith-nhs

Politics

2016-06-26T18:36:44.000Z

Frances Perraudin

Iain Duncan Smith backtracks on leave side's £350m NHS claim

Leading Brexit campaigner Iain Duncan Smith has distanced himself from a pledge by the official leave campaign to spend £350m “sent to the EU every week” on the NHS, saying he had never made the claim. During the referendum campaign, Vote Leave issued posters reading: “Let’s give our NHS the £350m the EU takes every week.” The campaign’s battlebus, outside which the former work and pensions secretary was frequently photographed, featured the slogan: “We send the EU £350 million a week – let’s fund our NHS instead.” Why Vote Leave's £350m weekly EU cost claim is wrong Read more But asked about the statement on Sunday morning, Duncan Smith said he had never made the claim during the campaign. Speaking to the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show, he said: “I never said that during the course of the election. The £350m was an extrapolation of the £19.1bn – that’s the total amount of money we gave across to the European Union. What we actually said was a significant amount of it would go to the NHS. It’s essentially down to the government, but I believe that is what was pledged and that’s what should happen. There was talk about it going to the NHS, but there are other bits and pieces like agriculture, which is part of the process. That is the divide up. It was never the total.” He denied that his comments constituted a broken promise, saying: “The lion’s share of that money, the government is now able to spend. So people can say that there is more money available now for the NHS – categorically more, which is what’s required and that’s the key point.” The repeated claim by the leave campaign that the UK could save £350m a week by leaving the EU was criticised in the run-up to the referendum, with the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies describing the figure as “clearly absurd” and estimating that Britain’s net contributions were closer to £175m a week. Sir Andrew Dilnot, the chair of the UK Statistics Authority, twice reprimanded the campaign for using the figure, while Conservative MP Dr Sarah Wollaston said the claim that all of the money saved would go towards the health service meant she no longer felt comfortable being part of the Vote Leave campaign. Speaking hours after the result of Thursday’s referendum was announced, the Ukip leader, Nigel Farage, said he could not promise money spent on the EU would instead go to the NHS. “I would never have made that claim, and it was one of the mistakes that the leave campaign made,” he said. “You must understand, I was ostracised by the official leave campaign and I did – as I always do – my own thing.” A week before the referendum, pollsters working for Britain Stronger in Europe admitted that they were getting extremely worried about Vote Leave’s suggestion that £350m sent to the EU could be diverted to British priorities such as the NHS. Guardian focus groups in Brighton and Knowsley suggested many voters saw the message and believed it. One woman in Merseyside told the group: “Just think, we could get £20bn back a year and make the country great again.”

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2015/apr/12/game-of-thrones-recap-season-five-episode-one-the-wars-to-come

Television & radio

2015-04-13T12:14:05.000Z

Sarah Hughes

Game of Thrones recap: season five, episode one – The Wars to Come

Spoiler alert: this blog is published after Game of Thrones airs on HBO in the US on Sundays. Do not read on unless you have watched season five, episode one (which airs in Australia on Foxtel on Monday at 11am AEST, and in the UK on Sky Atlantic on Monday at 9pm). Also, please keep books spoilers to a minimum in the comments. Game of Thrones: your essential primer for season five Read more ‘A drunken dwarf will never be the saviour of the seven kingdoms’ Welcome back everyone. The first episode of the fifth season of Game of Thrones thrust us straight back into the heart of Westeros with a well-paced hour that gave us new alliances aplenty and neatly set up several juicy plotlines. The best of those alliances was, of course, the enforced partnership between a bearded, depressed and wine-sodden Tyrion and an exasperated but endlessly patient Varys. The pair traded one-liners about bodily functions before the erstwhile Master of Whispers finally spelled out his grand plan to save Westeros. Forget the rest of the claimants to the Iron Throne, our Spider is a Targaryen man through and through, and even has a neat election slogan – “Power, prosperity and a land where the powerful no longer prey on the powerless” – to prove it. He believes that Tyrion is the man to help put a dragon queen on the throne, but is he right? The events of the past four seasons have shown that there’s a man in Tyrion who could become the astute and empathetic adviser Varys describes. The question is how much of him remains following the murders of Tywin and Shae? I’m not sure, but we have what promises to be an entertaining journey to Meereen to find out. ‘I am not a politician, I’m a queen’ It’s not just Tyrion, however, who could put a spike in Varys’s master plan. He and his fellow Targaryen loyalists are betting on Dany being the “stronger than Tommen but gentler than Stannis” answer to all their prayers. But this is Westeros where dreams have a habit of being prematurely dashed to death, and I’m not so sure that the Mother of Dragons is quite the paragon Varys believes. There’s a high-handedness to Dany – a tendency to answer every threat with the statement “I’m the queen” that, in addition to recalling Blackadder’s Queenie, also raises questions about her leadership style. In a traditional fantasy Dany would prove to be the traditional saviour of Westeros – in Game of Thrones she’s just as likely to be the devil in disguise. Lena Headey as Cersei Lannister and Ian Beattie as Meryn Trant. Photograph: Helen Sloan/HBO It’s also worth noting that being on the side of the angels doesn’t necessarily mean everything works out for the best. It’s all very well Dany stating that she “didn’t take up residence in this pyramid to watch the city below descend into chaos”, but armies of Unsullied on the streets mean that Meereen is effectively under military rule. As any student of political history can tell you that rarely works out well. It wasn’t all bad news in Essos, however, as a minor miracle saw me enjoy a Daario Naharis scene for the first time. His tale of a character forged in the fighting pits was fascinating and, whisper it quietly, he was also right about the dragons. Dany without her children is not much more than the scared girl of season one. To succeed, she has to overcome her fear of them even if that means embracing their darker side. ‘The freedom to make my own mistakes was all I ever wanted’ Up at the Wall, further parallels were being drawn between recent history and Westeros as Mance Rayder (Ciaran Hinds making me wish we’d seen more of him in this show) stayed true to his principles, choosing to be burned alive rather than leading his people into “a foreigners’ war”. He was saved from that horrific “scorched and screaming” death by a merciful arrow from Jon Snow (an act of which Ned Stark would have been proud) yet, as so often on this show, his death raised more questions than it answered. Did Mance die nobly? Absolutely. Did he die bravely? Undoubtedly (and I loved the brief acknowledgment of that courage on Stannis’ face). But he still died and in doing so he has left his Wilding people without a leader and at the mercy of Stannis. His own memory might be untainted by a bending of the knee but, as Jon himself pointed out, what is the point of songs celebrating your death when there will be no one left to sing them after the White Walkers sweep the land. In Westeros, pragmatism trumps honour, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Tormund took a rather different approach. Kristofer Hivju as Tormund Giantsbane. Photograph: Helen Sloan/HBO Additional thoughts I enjoyed the opening flashback, in particular Jodhi May’s spooky performance as Maggy. Is her prophecy likely to come true? Your guess is as good as mine, although it’s worth noting that in Game of Thrones these things are rarely straightforward. What exactly is Margaery planning? Whatever it is she clearly doesn’t intend to share with Loras. To be honest nor would I. Loras might be an enthusiastic lover with a birthmark of Dorne on an intriguing part of his body but on the evidence of the past four seasons he’s not the fastest thinker on this show. I did, however, enjoy his spectacularly awkward conversation with Cersei at Tywin’s funeral. Even in Westeros it’s impossible to avoid well-meaning people saying just the wrong thing. Not, however, as wrong as Lancel who plucked up the courage to share his newly discovered religious beliefs with his cousin and former lover only to be withered by Cersei’s most eye-brow arching glare. I was amused by the fact that both Tyrion and Cersei have the same solution to their sorrows, clearly believing such things are best drowned in a vat of red wine. I actually screamed at the screen when the carriage containing DarkSansa and Our Lord of the Wandering Accent trundled past Brienne while she was expressing her disillusionment with all things quest-related. Poor Brienne, will she ever manage to locate and hold on to a Stark girl? I’m not holding my breath. Congratulations to all the posters who correctly called Ser Alliser Thorne’s survival. Turns out you can’t keep a good curmudgeon down. Finally, is it just me or are David Benioff and DB Weiss overly obsessed with the sex lives of the Unsullied? Sophie Turner as Sansa Stark and Aidan Gillen, as Petyr “Littlefinger” Baelish. Photograph: Helen Sloan/AP Violence count One Unsullied soldier with his throat slit, two very angry dragons and the noble if arguably wasteful death of Mance Rayder, saved from burning alive by a merciful arrow to the chest. Nudity count In what I’m prematurely hailing as a new all-inclusive post-Poldark approach to ogling, this week’s episode gave us intimate scenes between Loras and Olyvar and Dany and Daario in which Mr Naharis in particular demonstrated just what his appeal might be to a lonely young queen. Random Brit of the week A welcome return for Lord Yohn Royce AKA Rupert Vansittart, who has popped up in everything from Heartbeat to Braveheart and was most recently glimpsed as Jack Whitehall’s arch-enemy, Mr Humpage, in Bad Education. So what did you think? Are Varys and Tyrion the best buddy pairing yet? Will Cersei put down her wine glass long enough to remember to rule? And, most importantly of all, just where is DarkSansa heading to with our Lord of the Wandering accents? As ever all speculation, with no spoilers, welcome below… Quick Guide Game of Thrones: all our episode-by-episode recaps Show

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/business/grogonomics/2023/jan/26/inflation-has-hit-78-over-the-last-year-so-why-arent-australians-running-for-the-hills

Business

2023-01-25T19:00:37.000Z

Greg Jericho

Inflation has hit 7.8% over the past year – so why aren’t Australians running for the hills? | Greg Jericho

It says a bit about how the economy (both here and around the world) is in a very different place to a year ago when figures showing inflation is growing at 7.8% – the fastest since just before the 1990s recession – is met with some optimism that the worst is behind us, rather than having everyone run screaming for the hills. If the graph does not display click here The highest inflation growth for 32 years was driven by a big uptick in prices in the month of December. The monthly inflation figures, which the Bureau of Statistics also released yesterday, showed that prices in the month of December alone rose 1.6%. So given such sharp increases, why should we be more sanguine than panicked? The main reason: once you unpick the numbers, you see that for the first time since 2020, the price of discretionary items rose faster than the price of non-discretionary ones (ie those you can’t avoid paying): If the graph does not display click here In the December quarter, the average price on discretionary items (excluding tobacco) rose 2.7%, compared with 1.3% for non-discretionary items. Similarly, the price of services rose faster than that of goods for the first time in two years. The quarterly growth of goods prices has now fallen 2.9% in the December 2021 quarter to 1.6% in the last three months of 2022. The Reserve Bank of Australia should hold off on raising rates again next month. Here’s why Greg Jericho Read more That suggests a lot of the international and domestic supply issues are beginning to clear up, and we’re not seeing the abnormal things that were happening in 2021 when you would have to wait months to get items bought from overseas. We can also take some comfort from what individual items are mostly driving inflation. In the December quarter, 15 items accounted for 77% of all the growth in inflation, and the largest – by some way – was the price of domestic holidays. The cost of holidays, both here in Australia and overseas, accounted for a quarter of the total increase in inflation in the December quarter. If the graph does not display click here That is not because everyone is so flush with cash that we’re going mad and jetting off to all parts of the globe and country. Rather, it is a reflection that we have gone from essentially no holidaying to much more domestic holidaying than in the past. When we look at international short-term arrivals and departures, it’s clear the tourism market is massively different from what it was before the pandemic: If the graph does not display click here This is not something the RBA can really affect. Yes, higher interest rates will reduce the ability to go on holidays, but things are so abnormal right now that prices are doing weird things – things that will be unlikely to continue. The same can be said for games – which saw a 5.5% increase in prices in the past year. Given that the prices of games usually fall around 1.3% each year, it’s clear a degree of wackiness is occurring right now. Despite Australians on average only spending 0.6% of their weekly expenditure on games and hobbies, the increase in their prices accounted for 3.1% of all the inflation in the December quarter. That made for some more-expensive-than-expected Christmas presents: If the graph does not display click here This does not mean that there was no pain in these prices. Discretionary only means that you can avoid paying, not that you did. Holidaying and buying games and toys are less discretionary activities in December than usual, so it would not be a surprise if credit cards around the nation got a big workout. The increase in the price of rents is also continuing to flow through in the inflation numbers. Because the rent prices in the CPI accounts for all rents, not just the new ones, they can be a bit slow to move. But they are moving now. In all capital cities rental prices are growing strongly, and – in Brisbane and Adelaide – they are growing at the fastest rate in 13 years. If the graph does not display click here The good news is the price of new dwelling purchases by owner-occupiers looks to have peaked. As with rents, this can take a while to flow through into the CPI figures, but given house prices have fallen in the last six months of 2022 we should expect the price of this category to also fall. Most food and drink prices in the past year also rose faster than overall inflation. Milk alone rose 18%, while bread prices were up 13%. Only the price of lamb went up by less in 2022 than it had been rising on average before the pandemic: If the graph does not display click here And of course the pain is felt for everyone, given wages are not rising anywhere near close to 7.8%. The Reserve Bank predicted that wages would grow by 3.1% in the 12 months to December. They actually rose by that amount in the year to September, so even if we assume a better-than-predicted wage growth in 2022 of 3.25%, that would still mean real wages are now back where they were in June 2009: If the graph does not display click here After the GFC, real wages took about two years to get going and then from 2012 to 2020 they slowly grew. All that growth is now undone. Despite the large increase in inflation over 2022, the latest figures do suggest a peak has likely been reached. Prices are jumping off the back of abnormal circumstances and a return of normal behaviours such as dining out. But as international supply pressure ease and we stop seeing big changes in how we spend our money, prices should begin to start calming down. Greg Jericho is a Guardian columnist and policy director at the Centre for Future Work

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/21/forget-walking-10000-steps-a-day-i-have-another-solution-fitness-trackers

Opinion

2017-02-21T13:32:22.000Z

Stuart Heritage

Forget walking 10,000 steps a day – I have another solution | Stuart Heritage

Wearing a fitness tracker, are you? Eager to get your 10,000 steps today, are you? You idiot. Those things are useless. Last year, the University of Pittsburgh published a study claiming that people who wear fitness trackers tend to lose less weight than people who don’t. Then yesterday, a professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University went further, saying that a daily 10,000-step target could be harmful for some users. Honestly, all said, you would probably lose more weight if you took off your fitness tracker right now and spent an hour violently tutting at it. The latest findings were presented by Dr Greg Hager at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He said that the target of 10,000 steps was all but arbitrary, having roots in a single study of Japanese men 57 years ago, and that it fails to take into account any environmental or societal variables that may occur from person to person. Three million wearable fitness trackers were bought in the UK in 2015 alone and yet, according to Hager, many owners might be striding towards a target that simply isn’t suitable for them. You have all been wasting your money. You idiots. Health apps could be doing more harm than good, warn scientists Read more Honestly, I couldn’t have been happier to hear this news, because I have spent the past two years sitting on my arse mainlining cakes all day. Seriously, I am not in good shape. As a work-from-home freelance writer, I probably only manage a couple of thousand steps each day, and most of those are to and from the kitchen, because that’s where all the bacon sandwiches are. I am not exaggerating. See that picture of me in the byline? I currently look like I killed and ate that person, then hid from the police by sleeping in a bin for a month. The last time I performed any sort of physical exertion was in a soft-play centre with my son, and I ended up tearing a footlong hole in the crotch of my trousers as a result, because, realistically, I hadn’t been slim enough to wear them for months. So I’m thrilled that someone has finally punctured these fitness myths. After all, you might have been trying to lose weight and failing, but I haven’t even been trying. Surely that makes me the winner here. Except it doesn’t, obviously, because the thrust of Hager’s presentation seems nitpicky. Yes, a flat 10,000-step goal doesn’t take things such as age or length of stride into consideration. And, yes, simply walking for a few miles each day won’t be as good for you as a focused, closely monitored exercise and nutrition plan that has been created for your specific lifestyle. But it still means you’re walking a few miles a day, and that has to count for something. You’re still being compelled to move around where otherwise you were not. And, so long as you’re not banking on it to turn you into an Olympic-level athlete, any movement is better than none at all. Meanwhile, at last count, inert sanctimony doesn’t burn very many calories at all, which means that I’m screwed. However, if this is the end of the fitness tracker – if such wearable devices really are going to be consigned to the same bin as all the abandoned Nutribullets and 5:2 books – then it’s going to leave the industry with a gap in the market. And, if you would be so generous as to listen to my pitch, I think I have just the replacement: shame. No, really. Any time in the past that I’ve managed to effectively lose weight, it’s because I’ve been thoroughly, corrosively ashamed of how I look. For a while, this has best taken the form of a personal trainer; a man I paid to make me feel sluggish and inadequate at every turn, until I got my act together and stopped piling doughnuts into my face every evening. And I think this has been the key factor missing from fitness trackers so far. Any fool can give you a sterile set of data at the end of the day, but no product has been able to combine this with an hour-long tirade about how much you have been letting yourself go lately, ideally in your mother’s voice. Get one of those on the market before anyone else and you would be a trillionaire by Easter. Fortunately, until then, I’ve accidentally struck upon a handy workaround. From time to time, I’m asked to take part in various Channel 5 talking-heads shows called such things as World’s Funniest Marmosets or 50 Shocking Celebrity Blow-Offs. And, since shame is such a powerful catalyst for weight loss, I am here to tell you that nothing is quite as shameful as seeing your own ballooning face wobble in harrowing high-definition closeup, like some sort of dreadful Steve Bannon statue made by a moron from legally condemned margarine. If I lose weight this year – and I think I probably will have to – it will be purely because Channel 5 made me feel like a worthless gutbucket. So that’s my advice to you, readers: throw the fitness tracker in the bin and get booked on a mediocre filler clip show instead. Honestly, it works wonders.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/food/2020/jan/17/silo-london-e5-restaurant-review-grace-dent

Food

2020-01-17T09:30:08.000Z

Grace Dent

Silo, London E5: ‘Loud, righteous and holy’ – restaurant review | Grace Dent

“So what do you know about Silo?” asks our server, crouching down by the table. She pauses like a school teacher waiting for me to fill in the gap. I say nothing, being not in the mood for a test. She changes tack: “Do you know about our concept?” “Yes,” I reply. “And how did you find out?” she asks. “From a magazine,” I say with my lips tight around my teeth. The real answer is that Silo has been so loud, righteous and holy in the run-up to its London opening that anyone with even a smattering of curiosity in the food scene is aware that it’s here. Chef Douglas McMaster and his disciples are, they say, “providing quality through purity” in Hackney Wick with a zero-waste restaurant that serves a six-course tasting menu. The details of dinner are beamed across an entire wall via projector, so saving on paper menus: blood radish cannelloni, charred red artichokes in blue cheese sauce, braised Friesian cow, squash, potato and pumpkin ice-cream … “We don’t do à la carte, so we can control what we need,” our server explains, and then proceeds to explain many other things on top, despite me having not asked any questions. Silo’s charred artichokes: ‘The insides are fudgy, but the skin is bitter and tastes, unsurprisingly, of fire.’ Silo sits in a large, gorgeously lit loft with a large sit-up bar and about 10 tables, and is upstairs from Crate Brewery, where, for reference, you can get a decent pizza and a beer, and no one tells you anything at all. Up at Silo, meanwhile, loud hip-hop, jazz and spoken-word poetry plays over doubtlessly ethically sourced speakers. Almost everything else about the place, however, feels like a 1985 Tomorrow’s World segment on “How we’ll eat out in the future”, in which Judith Hann shows us Silo’s magnetic table made out of recycled plastic packaging with the cutlery hidden within, and its aerobic digester, which is capable of turning 60kg of organic waste into compost, overnight. Mind you, I don’t have a clue what she’d make of the very burnt artichokes and the non-intervention wines that do not taste remotely of wine, yet can still get you so drunk, they’d numb the grief after all your loved ones had been squashed by a killer asteroid. It’s commonplace in the restaurant world right now to be very, very ashamed of food waste, carbon footprints and, for that matter, the ethics of experiencing luxury at all. Silo suggests that, in the future, going out for dinner will be so little fun that eating corned beef in your bunker will be a lot more entertaining anyhow. Then again, Silo is the perfect place to hold a client lunch or to take people you don’t want to talk to, so you can all coo over distracting ideas such as Empirical Spirits’ drinks at £7 a glass, which are sort-of-cocktails but served as wine and made with a liquid that’s not based on any known spirit. I think the technical term for this kind of thing used to be “moonshine”. With every course, a server arrives, calls you “folks”, kneels down, proffers a tiny sliver of radish with a small fart of hemp cheese goo inside, before talking you through the lifespan of the radish and the seasonings and the puddle of glop in which it sits and all the minuscule stages of its cooking process, plus the flavour notes of which you need to be aware. If you’re in the mood for this kind of thing, you’ll love the place. Silo’s pumpkin ice-cream: ‘A delicious, if tiny suggestion of ice-cream.’ Two charred artichokes – and by charred, I mean they resembled something you’d find in the remains of your house after a fire – sit in a Stichelton cheese sauce with a vividly red ruby kraut. They’ve been caramelised over fire before being plunged into coals to get that blackened exterior. The small amount of flesh inside is sweet and fudgy, but the skin is bitter and tastes, unsurprisingly, of fire. The small piece of braised Friesian bull is delivered with a soliloquy on its various life stages, its noble death, and the machine Doug owns that turns an unappetising cut into something edible. It’s a piece of meat extracted from between the ribs, and comes from a wing of the dairy industry that’s not usually consumed – enjoy the course. A tiny suggestion of pumpkin ice-cream is, however, delicious. There are chefs all over Britain, in rural pubs and tiny cafes, who are making a stiff effort to grow their own vegetables, source kindly, re-use and recycle, and who love the planet, but they’re doing so with a fraction of the fuss and po-facedness of Silo. I’ve seen the future of sustainable fine dining: I think many of us may well decide to stay at home. Silo Unit 7, Queens Yard, London E9, 020-7993 8155. Open dinner, Tues-Sat, 6-10pm; brunch, Sat & Sun, 11am-3pm. Dinner £50 a head six-course tasting menu only; brunch from £7.50 a plate, both plus drinks and service. Food 3/10 Atmosphere 3/10 Service 3/10 This article was edited on 17 January 2020. An earlier version listed the wrong London postcode in the headline.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/feb/22/five15-review-glasgow-opera

Music

2009-02-23T00:15:49.000Z

Andrew Clements

Opera review: Five: 15, Oran Mor, Glasgow,

Though some of us who saw the first instalment of Five: 15 a year ago might disagree, Scottish Opera pronounced it an "overwhelming success" and promptly programmed another home-grown batch of mini-operas as drab and unfocused as the first. The purpose of the Five: 15 project is entirely laudable. Within a 15-minute piece, so the theory goes, it should be possible to identify composers and librettists who have the potential of writing good, full-length works. Yet two of the composers had already produced full-length operas - Nigel Osborne last year, Stuart MacRae this. And neither exactly covered themselves in glory within this format. MacRae's Remembrance Day, with a text by Louise Walsh, was a risible snatch of Grand Guignol, veering towards League-of-Gentleman black humour and without his usual pungency. It followed Death of a Scientist, by John Harris and Zinnie Harris, which dramatised the last moments of the life of David Kelly in a trite, unforgivably cavalier way. At least two of the first three works had integrity and dramatic shape. Martin Dixon's The Lightning-Rod Man, to Amy Parker's adaptation of a Melville story, tried to pack too much in, but had the right ingredients; Gareth Williams's White, with a text by Margaret McCartney, kept things simple - a hospital death scene, to an minimalist score. But David Fennessy's Happy Story, adapting a Peter Carey story, seemed inconsequential and bitty. At the Hub, Edinburgh, on Saturday and Sunday. Box office: 0131 473 2000

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/25/shipping-arctic-fog-sea-ice-melts-climate-change

World news

2023-05-25T05:00:14.000Z

Jeremy Plester

Shipping in the Arctic faces a foggy future as sea ice melts

The Arctic is turning increasingly foggy, driven by climate change. A recent study looked at Arctic weather records from 1979 to 2018 and found the seas have been growing foggier, especially near newly open areas of water. The disappearance of ice changes the moisture content in the very lowest part of the atmosphere and this leaves a narrow layer of moist air at the sea surface: with so much extra water vapour at the surface, this leaves vast tracts of iceless ocean that become extremely prone to fog. The fog is a particular problem for new shipping routes opening up in the Arctic over the summer between Europe and Asia. As ice cover shrinks by about 14% each decade, sea traffic has increased over the past 20 years with more commercial fishing trawlers, bulk carriers, tourist cruise ships and other vessels. And in foggy conditions, ships have to slow down to avoid hidden chunks of submerged ice, which remain a major hazard. Shipping itself also risks serious pollution, threatening the delicate polar environment. Heavy oil fuel spills can persist for weeks or longer in cold seas, and ships release high concentrations of hazardous air pollution such as black carbon soot, and marine wildlife is threatened, especially marine mammals that are vulnerable to underwater noise and collisions with vessels.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/apr/10/how-we-met-jill-dave-marry-date

Life and style

2023-04-10T10:00:16.000Z

Lizzie Cernik

How we met: ‘One of my friends said: “Dave fancies you!” I said: “Oh God”’

In 1973, when Jill discovered that Dave had a crush on her, she was less than impressed. They had met at art college in Leicester the year before, but she had never considered a romantic relationship with him. “The first time we spoke was when he barged into a conversation I was having to ask if I knew of any rooms going,” she says. Although they had mutual friends, it was a while before they got to know each other. The next year, she bumped into him at the college library. “He was very insistent that I come to his 21st birthday party,” she says. “While I was there, one of my friends came over and said: ‘Dave fancies you.’ My response was: ‘Oh God.’ I just didn’t fancy him at all.” Not wishing to be rude, she agreed to meet him for a coffee. “I definitely fancied her,” Dave says. “I liked the way she looked and dressed and I found her funny. We liked similar art and music as well.” The next Monday, she went to the coffee shop to meet him but got cold feet. “I’d only agreed to go out with him so I didn’t hurt his feelings, but I was a bit panicked because I didn’t want to pursue this relationship,” she says. “I ended up hiding around the back of the building.” But, when Dave arrived, he took a different route and assumed she was standing there waiting for him. “I had no idea she was trying to hide from me – she wasn’t doing a very good job,” he laughs. ‘What has kept us going is that we have the same moral values’ … Dave and Jill on their wedding day. They had a drink together, and Jill soon warmed to Dave. “He really made me laugh and I realised I actually did like him.” From then on, they enjoyed regular dates, going to the cinema and gigs whenever they got the chance. By the end of 1973, they had moved in together in a shared house in Leicester. “I kept asking her to marry me but she kept saying no,” says Dave. Eventually, she said yes, and they got married in London in 1975. “Two weeks before the wedding, the priest told us not to do it,” says Jill. “I’m an atheist and Dave is a practising Catholic and he told us it would never work.” Despite the warnings, it was something they overcame. “At the beginning we used to argue about it but we got to a stage of accepting each other as we were. Religion hasn’t affected our relationship,” she says. The year after, they moved to Leeds so that Dave could complete his teacher training, before settling in Blackpool. Jill worked in graphic design, then later as a teacher and photographer. They have three children together, born in 1978, 1980 and 1982. As well as their differing views on religion, the couple are opposites in many other ways. “He loves a drink and I’m teetotal; I’m an introvert and he’s an extrovert; I’m a worrier, and he’s not at all,” says Jill. “What has kept us going is that we have the same moral values. We were always in agreement about how to bring up our children and we have the same political views and sense of humour.” In 1982, after their third child was born, Jill experienced severe postnatal depression. “It took me a long time to recover and Dave was really supportive.” As well as spending time together as a couple, they enjoy their own hobbies independently. “It’s a really nice balance. We give each other space but come together when we want to, which works perfectly for us.” They also enjoy seeing their grandchildren and love to travel. Jill loves her partner’s trustworthiness. “We bicker a lot, but then he always makes me laugh and I can’t be mad any more,” she says. Dave admires his wife’s work ethic. “She has always worked really hard for our family, and she’s bubbly and funny. She drives me round the bend but I’d never be without her.” Share your experience Take part in this series Whether your tale is unusual and outrageous, or touching and everyday, we’d love to hear it – and maybe interview you and your friend or partner(s) for our weekly column. Please share your story if you are 18 or over, anonymously if you wish. For more information please see our and . Show more

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2016/apr/17/neil-macgregor-britain-germany-humboldt-forum-berlin

Culture

2016-04-17T09:00:20.000Z

Tim Adams

Neil MacGregor: ‘Britain forgets its past. Germany confronts it’

If you were searching for Britain’s greatest living European, it would be hard to ignore the claims of Neil MacGregor. His life’s work – he was born in 1946 with the continent in rubble and ruin – has been devoted to the judicious excavation of history and memory; to the understanding of our post-colonial world through the drama of objects, from the priceless to the humble, that the past has bequeathed to us. Sharply erudite in his insights, in person MacGregor is never far from a boyish chuckle at what he likes to see as the enormous good fortune of finding himself in the roles he has filled – director of the National Gallery for 15 years, and then of the British Museum for a transformative tenure in which he made it arguably the most vivid museum in the world. There seems a certain fateful inevitability about where he has now ended up. For the past year MacGregor has been chairing the advisory board in Berlin that is creating a new German equivalent to the British Museum, the £600m Humboldt Forum that will house its collections from around the world. Ironies are not lost on him. “I am about to be 70 and obviously the defining memory of my childhood was the second world war,” he says. “It was over, we were told. But you quickly realise that what we are still sorting out in Berlin is really the business of 1945 finally reaching closure. The whole of my lifetime the second world war has been being ended in Europe.” In the centre of Berlin you keep coming across monuments to national shame. I think that is unique in the world The new museum will be a defining symbol of that closure, he hopes. It will contain “what the new Germany can articulate physically of its relationship with the rest of the world”. The history of the site, in the centre of the German capital, is heavy with symbolism. The exterior of the new building will be a mostly faithful reconstruction of the palace of the Prussian monarchy that stood on this site for centuries. The original, in the old East Berlin, was deemed a symbol of imperialism and demolished by the occupying Soviets after the war. In the 70s the parliament building of the DDR was built on the site, with enormous distinctive bronze-tinted windows. After reunification, that building in turn was demolished, partly because it was full of asbestos, partly because of its uglier associations. The new museum represents a curatorial challenge but also a political, cultural and psychological one, MacGregor suggests. “Germany always has to do things in light of its own history.” We are talking about these issues on the occasion of the publication of the paperback of MacGregor’s book Germany: Memories of a Nation. The book originally accompanied the landmark British Museum show that marked MacGregor’s farewell to the institution, at the beginning of last year. Was his new appointment prompted by that exhibition? A 2 metre section of the Berlin Wall is installed in the British Museum ahead of the Germany: Memories of a Nation, exhibition, 13 October 2014. Photograph: Geoff Pugh/Rex/Shutterstock He suggests the conversations had begun a long time before, when he was at the National Gallery and helped Berlin stage its first big exhibition after the Wall came down, devoted to Rembrandt. Then about 10 years ago he was invited to join conversations about what the new Humboldt might contain. He was excited in particular by the idea of “this emblem of European military power housing these objects from cultures that the Nazis despised. You were reversing the history in the place of the history.” In reality, MacGregor had developed a curiosity about these questions from much further back. He is the son of two Glaswegian doctors. His parents’ lives had been so disrupted and diminished by the war that they were determined that the future in Europe should be different for their four children. MacGregor’s father had seen action in the Royal Navy and his mother was an emergency doctor in Plymouth during the air raids. They weren’t really politically engaged, he says, except to the extent that they chose to work in the very poorest area of Glasgow. Their defining quality was, however, “a very international, European view”. To this end they sought to give their kids a proper grounding in the continent. Each summer from the age of 10 MacGregor was sent away alone to live with a friendly family in France, as part of an informal exchange – homesickness was never part of the bargain. “Of course you loved it!” he says, flushing at the memory. “The idea of being alone and not with your embarrassing brothers and sisters and more embarrassing parents is always pretty liberating! And then after that I had some months of school in Hamburg in 1962.” Those months at a German high school were really MacGregor’s first experience of the act of forgetting. The Warren Cup, AD 5-15, featured in Neil MacGregor’s A History of the World in 100 Objects. Photograph: Trustees of the British Museum “I was astonished to find that adults in Germany didn’t talk about what had happened in the war at all. It was only Germans of my generation that made those demands. And it was only really after the Eichmann trial and then, later, with films like Shoah, where the mechanics of it began to be thought about. The idea of discovering exactly what your parents and grandparents had done was a very disturbing experience. The idea that you can go on doing it, now also with the post-Stasi world is, I think, unprecedented.” He sees these acts of memory as a defining difference within Europe. In Germany, he says, “the thing I continue to find striking is that in the centre of Berlin you keep coming across monuments to national shame. I think that is unique in the world.” Did they really have an option but to confront what had happened though? “Well,” he says. “Austria hasn’t done it. Post-Soviet Russia hasn’t done it. Japan hasn’t done it.” And, he would suggest, Britain and France have never really done it. “If you compare the way we remember, the perfect example was the opening ceremony of the Olympics, that selective national memory: all true but not looking at any of the difficult bits.” Two things, he says, in the past couple of months have highlighted that complacency. The Cecil Rhodes statue debate “shows that we still cannot look at the past dispassionately, even a hundred years on”. Likewise, the centenary of the Easter Rising. “There is still no appetite to look hard at British behaviour in Ireland. What I find so painfully admirable about the German experience is that they are determined to find the historical truth and acknowledge it however painful it is. You can’t be an informed adult – or an artist – in Germany without doing that.” The great thing a museum can do is allow us to look at the world as if through other eyes That reflexive act of memory also colours the great political schisms of our times. Much has changed in Europe in the 18 months since the British Museum’s Germany show and the first publication of his book. It contains many chapters of forensic storytelling, but the one that stands out reading it now is MacGregor’s analysis of a simple refugee cart. That cart was representative of one of the most forgotten events of the last century: the forced “repatriation” of German speakers from eastern Europe after the war. About 30 million people were “ethnically cleansed” and 12-14 million returned to a devastated homeland they didn’t know, and became absorbed into a society that was rebuilt and reordered within a decade. “If you try to explain why Germany has taken its unique stance on Syrian refugees in Europe you can’t ignore this,” MacGregor says. “Some argue the policy is another way of atoning for the Nazi era. But another absolutely central motivation, rarely mentioned, is that almost everybody now in Germany in their 20s or 30s has a grandparent or great-grandparent who has been a refugee. Pretty well every German has direct family experience of knowing what it means to be welcomed.” The other debate that has become more charged since the book first appeared is the notion of sovereignty. MacGregor believes that the British and Germans mean completely different things when they use that word. Partly because of its own traumatic experience of nationalism and partly because of the history of shifting borders and alliances during the Holy Roman Empire, in Germany, he says, sovereignty always means an appetite for coalition and compromise. “Any German knows that as well as the Bundestag there are 16 other parliaments making laws within its borders. In Britain we don’t have the language for that.” The European debate in Britain looks so strange if you are a German for precisely this reason, he suggests. “German people see the whole purpose of a political leader is to make successful alliances. The proper use of sovereignty is all about pooling it to achieve your aims. The British idea that you should entirely do these things on your own and try to assume total control over your environment is unthinkable.” Neil MacGregor with Hartwig Fischer, director of the Dresden state art collections and Käthe Kollwitz’s Pieta at the Residenzschloss Dresden. Photograph: Sean Gallup/Getty Images MacGregor’s own benign reign at the British Museum was something of a microcosm for the possibilities of collaboration and partnership. He helped to transform the museum from a colonial relic into a sort of enlightened arm of the Foreign Office, keeping channels open with Iran, for example, and extending partnerships for cultural exchange across the world. That work is never a smooth progression. Having been instrumental in providing support and interventions to help preserve Iraqi architectural and cultural treasures after the 2003 invasion, he has viewed the latest desecration of memory in Palmyra, Syria, with despair. “At one level the IS destruction has been about just shocking the world and terror. But part of it has been about the deliberate reordering of history that is common to all wars.” Exhibitions review: Shah Abbas: The Remaking of Iran, British Museum, London Read more You could say MacGregor has placed himself consistently on the frontline of such brutal engagement with the past, trying to exhume traces of human cultural memory from the militarised march of history. A few years ago I watched him tiptoe through this no man’s land over the course of a week in Iran in which he irrepressibly cajoled and persuaded cultural representatives of the Ayatollah’s regime to collaborate in the great British Museum exhibition Shah Abbas: The Remaking of Iran in 2009. I was struck, in some of the more repressive corners of the Islamic republic, by his faith in the historical triumph of civilisation over barbarism. How does he maintain that faith? “Well it’s more I think we have got to keep believing it,” he says, “what else is there? If you look at western European civilisation they are all societies where very high levels of culture have been accompanied by astounding levels of brutality. The French culture is unthinkable without the Terror; Britain: Shakespeare and the slave trade. All of our cultures had this absolutely murderous shadow side. And in Germany it became apparent to a degree that was perhaps unparalleled…” I remember a few debates in Iran, I say, and his determination to always argue, in all cases, for empathy over judgment. Does that approach ever waver – shouldn’t we sometimes just condemn? Sign up to our Bookmarks newsletter Read more “The great thing a museum can do is allow us to look at the world as if through other eyes,” he says. “What does the world look like if you have an Iranian memory? Well you know that your country was the great civilising force of the region for 4,000 years. And you also know that your country’s attempt to become a liberal democratic nation in 1900 and in the 1920s were twice destroyed by the British and then violently destroyed by the British and Americans in the 1950s. You know that Iran was occupied and partitioned by the British in the second world war; in Britain we have completely forgotten that fact, if we ever knew it. But they certainly haven’t forgotten it…” This principle, quietly but stubbornly held, is the one that he lives by and seeks to extend into the world, a one-man empathy crusade. “At one level,” he says, “it is that very simple idea: ‘you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free’. I do believe that the more truths you can glimpse and lay hold of, even if they are shifting and contradictory, the better chance of freedom you probably have.” Though he is generally too modest to say it in such grand terms – and even now accompanies it with a giggle (“That sounds very deep…”) – there is no more symbolic place, he believes, to express that idea than in 21st-century Berlin. Germany: Memories of a Nation is out in paperback now (Penguin £9.99). Click here to order a copy for £7.99

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/mar/05/matthew-e-white-fresh-blood-review

Music

2015-03-05T22:30:01.000Z

Michael Hann

Matthew E White: Fresh Blood review – a delicious second helping

When Matthew E White’s debut album, Big Inner, emerged unheralded in 2012, there was a sense of wonder that someone had emerged, seemingly fully musically formed, without anyone realising. But there was also a pleasing oddness about Big Inner: for all the obvious soul influences, the likes of Big Love and Brazos had a trancelike mood that was less Curtis Mayfield than Spiritualized. Its follow-up is a more straightforward affair, and – though still a delicious record – slightly less eye-opening. Memphis and Philly are the soul moods that dominate, and this time round White has added some singalong-ready choruses, notably on Feeling Good Is Good Enough: once someone starts rolling out the la-la-la-la-la codas, you suspect they’re picturing twilight festival crowds swaying in unison. There are depths, though: the emotional heart of the album, Tranquility, is a beautifully orchestrated meditation on the death of Philip Seymour Hoffman, with a feedback guitar solo that resolves into a loping groove, as if death is the peace that follows turmoil.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2012/aug/30/liverpool-hearts-europa-league-match-report

Football

2012-08-30T23:20:00.000Z

Andy Hunter

Liverpool line up Chelsea's Daniel Sturridge to replace Andy Carroll

Liverpool will attempt to cover Andy Carroll's departure to West Ham United with an offer to sign Daniel Sturridge on loan from Chelsea on transfer deadline day. Carroll left Anfield after Liverpool dropped demands for a guaranteed £17m transfer to Upton Park in order to remove the England international from their wage bill. Brendan Rodgers, whose side qualified for the Europa League group stage with a 2-1 aggregate win over Hearts on Thursday, conceded there was risk in releasing Carroll without a replacement secured but is hopeful of "one or two" before Friday's 11pm deadline. A move for Clint Dempsey is highly unlikely after Liverpool were unable to raise the funds to meet Fulham's £7m asking price and a proposed swap with Jordan Henderson was rejected by the Anfield midfielder. The Liverpool manager will attempt to land Sturridge on loan instead. Rodgers dismissed the prospect of signing the 22-year-old on Wednesday when Chelsea were holding out for a permanent £15m deal. Their willingness to consider loan offers for Sturridge, however, has revived Rodgers' interest and softened his stance on resisting a temporary exit for Carroll. "I've been given as much confidence as I can possibly get that we will have someone to come in," the Liverpool manager said. "I've said all along that I have Luis Suárez and Fabio Borini as front-line strikers and the young lads like Adam Morgan are getting experience but between now and January I need more than that. Hopefully tomorrow we can do some work and get something complete because we certainly need it. I am hoping for one or two. We need one, that's for sure." Liverpool may raise further funds should Charlie Adam accept a £4m move to Stoke City while Jay Spearing is expected to join Bolton Wanderers on a season-long loan. Rodgers has also told Joe Cole his first-team prospects will be severely limited this season but, despite a few inquiries,, one believed to have come from Spartak Moscow, the former Chelsea player is unlikely to depart. Carroll's exit, merely 19 months after his £35m transfer from Newcastle United, saves Liverpool over £4m with West Ham picking up his £80,000 weekly wage. The 23-year-old was initially against joining West Ham, Fulham or Aston Villa, while Newcastle failed to offer a permanent transfer and Rodgers refused to consider a loan deal with Carroll's former club. But the prospect of being frozen out by Rodgers, and Liverpool's desperation to remove him from the wage bill by accepting a revised deal with West Ham, prompted a late change of heart. West Ham had initially offered a £2m loan fee with a guaranteed £17m next summer should they avoid relegation. The final deal is a £1m loan fee with an option to buy at the end of the season, not a guarantee. Rodgers said: "It is very simple: the club made a monumental investment in big Andy and at this moment in time he's not playing. He made it very clear from when we first met in the summer that he wants to play games and obviously this is the last chance for him to go and do that. Then obviously we can assess it over the course of the next six months or a season. So that's it." On the pitch Liverpool overcame a self-inflicted scare against Hearts to book their place in Friday's draw for the Europa League group stage. The Anfield club again laboured against their Scottish opponents but wasted several chances, mostly through Suárez, before calamitous goalkeeping from José Reina in the 84th minute allowed David Templeton's 22-yard shot to squirm over the line. With the tie level on aggregate and extra-time looming, Suárez evaded two Hearts challenges to beat Jamie MacDonald inside his near post and take Liverpool through.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/apr/11/sex-education-primary-school

Opinion

2009-04-10T23:01:00.000Z

Rebecca Front

Rebecca Front on sex education in schools

Ten years old? That has been the universally incredulous response I've had when telling people that my son's class at a state primary school is currently studying sex education. It was my first response too when the letter arrived inviting us to view some of the materials they would be using. My second thought was that the opportunity to sit with other parents and my son's form teacher in the school hall watching dirty movies was too weird and too full of comic potential to ignore. So there I was, sitting at the back with my mates, while the normally reticent Mr S introduced the DVDs and tried to pretend that he had not drawn the short straw in having to host what was, undoubtedly, the parents' evening of his nightmares. He did a good job, making a few jokes to put us at our ease and assuring us that he had taught this subject to primary-age kids for many years, and that what we were about to view was about as good as a film can be that has to carry the conflicting messages that making love is a wonderful thing and on no account should they be tempted to try it. I have heard a great deal of ill-informed criticism suggesting sexual information is being taught in schools without the context of loving relationships being reinforced. Judging by the material I saw, this is far from the case. In fact, so much of the ensuing DVD concentrated on friendship and love, and how touching was a natural part of everyday life, and how holding hands was just the best thing ever, that I began to wonder how on earth - in the remaining 10 minutes - the gulf could be bridged between stroking someone's grazed knee and going at it hammer and tongs. Then, with a suddenness that made me reel in my uncomfortable, undersized chair, there was a jump cut to a couple of animated characters - strange, featureless Morph-like creatures - humping and thrusting like there was no tomorrow. It was all a bit joyless, like when you see deer rutting in a nature programme, and had I been a 10-year-old it would doubtless have made me think I'd want to steer well clear of that stuff for the foreseeable future, which is, of course, a jolly good thing. Then it was back to lovely, safe, real-life humans holding hands and smiling asexually, apart from one curious moment when a couple of actors told the camera why they enjoyed touching each other's bodies, which seemed overly frank of them given that no one had actually asked them. I gave permission for my son to watch the DVD at school the next day. It seemed to me that it was, though patently a bit odd, completely moral and blandly informative, and on balance I felt I would rather he learned any sexual facts he hadn't already gleaned from the eminently sensible Mr S than his less informed playground mates. A few days later, the school held an open afternoon, in which parents were encouraged to see the sort of things their children were learning in all areas of the curriculum. My husband and I went, amusing ourselves that the one subject that wouldn't be being taught that day was the one that all the parents were sniggering about. To our surprise, when we entered our son's class, we found 28 immaculately behaved, calm, sensible, not-sniggering children colouring in diagrams of penises and placing fabric fallopian tubes in their correct anatomical position on a chart. At the centre of it all was Mr S, an avuncular exemplar of cheery matter-of-factness, answering questions, correcting mistakes, making it all seem normal. There is a moral in all of this, I think. Sex education is a big deal because we make it so; many parents seem to feel that because they weren't taught it at the age of 10, there must be something wrong with our children learning about it then. But every 10-year-old I know has some sketchy understanding, or, worse still, ill-informed curiosity about where they came from. Surely answering their questions at the age when they are first being asked, and in a relaxed, responsible and yes, relationship-based way, is the best chance we have of raising loving, respectful adults, and not the sort of prurient, childish people who sit at the back of the hall sniggering with their mates at the word penis ... like I did. Rebecca Front is an actor and writer comment@theguardian.com

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/21/coronavirus-uk-grant-shapps-quarantining-arrivals-parts-countries

World news

2020-08-21T08:36:22.000Z

Helen Pidd

Coronavirus UK: Shapps rejects idea of quarantining arrivals from parts of countries

The transport secretary, Grant Shapps, has rejected the idea of imposing quarantine rules on people arriving from regions of other countries, as opposed to entire countries. It would be “too difficult”, he said, despite other countries, such as Germany, adopting a more targeted approach. “A week ago Croatia was seeing cases that were at about UK levels. One week later their levels have gone up from just 10.5 cases per 100,000 to 27.5 cases per 100,000,” Shapps told BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme. There were about 11 cases of coronavirus per 100,000 of the population in the UK, Shapps said. Coronavirus UK map: the latest deaths and confirmed Covid cases Read more The UK could not follow Germany’s lead, he insisted, saying experts at the joint biosecurity centre had told him it was impossible to understand infection patterns overseas “at a completely granular level”, unlike at home. “Lots of other countries don’t have the same level of detail or indeed the 330,000 test capacity that we have, the largest in Europe, to be able to get into detail. So it just isn’t practical to say: ‘You can come from this city but not from this city’. We have to protect the lower levels that we have achieved here,” he said. On Thursday Croatia, Austria and Trinidad and Tobago were removed from the government’s list of travel corridors, meaning travellers will have to quarantine for two weeks if they arrive back after 4am on Saturday. Shapps said it was unlikely that Spain and France would be re-added to the government’s travel corridor list any time soon. He told LBC radio: “At the moment I’m afraid France and Spain have both been going the wrong way. “So just to put numbers on this, we respond when there are about 20 cases per 100,000 of the population measured over a seven-day rolling average. So 20 is the figure to bear in mind.” He added: “I think that the last that I saw of Spain it was up in the 40s and 50s, so a long way off that, and France, who … quarantined from last weekend, I’m afraid to say we were right to do that because we’ve seen the cases continue to carry on up in France as well.” Croatia’s ambassador to the UK said it was “a regret” that the UK government did not impose quarantine rules on regions within countries, rather than entire countries. Igor Pokaz told Today the Croatian government had been lobbying for “a more nuanced approach”. He said cases might be high in Zagreb, the capital, but there were “very, very few cases” in Dubrovnik, a favourite destination for UK tourists. “And I deliberately mention Dubrovnik and the islands as that is where most of the British tourists go. And Dubrovnik has its own international airport and is naturally secluded from the rest of the country,” he said, noting that Germany only required quarantine for visitors to two of Croatia’s 20 counties. Discussing changes to the exemption list, Shapps told Sky News: “This is a very unpredictable virus which unfortunately just doesn’t play ball as far as the way that it can just sometimes take off in a country and I think anyone travelling this year will know that there are risks involved. “Indeed, we’ve added Portugal back on to the list, but you need to go with your eyes open there or anywhere that you travel this year because coronavirus is just a fact of life, we’re having to live with it.” He added: “So to answer your question, it is still rather too difficult to do the kind of regionalisation that you’re talking about because we just don’t have the same control elsewhere.” Asked about possible testing at Heathrow, Shapps said: “I want to see systems in place to do that kind of thing. But you’ve also got to be sure that you’re testing the right person on that second time round because are you going to just send the kit to the house or are you going to require the person to perhaps drive to a test centre? “So the point I’m making is this, it’s a bit more complicated than is sometimes suggested. People say why don’t you just test at the airport? Well, because it wouldn’t provide the results and you’ve then got to make sure the second test goes to the right person.” On Friday, Shapps launched an “acceleration unit” to speed up transport infrastructure projects around the UK. He said he was expecting railway passenger levels to return to normal eventually: “I think we need to think about our railways, our entire infrastructure, over the very long term.” Next year’s rail fare increase would be “probably the lowest that we’ve seen for many years”, he told LBC.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/20/gucci-heist-new-york-city

US news

2024-02-20T17:05:02.000Z

Edward Helmore

Robbers make off with $50,000 of Gucci merchandise at gunpoint in New York

New York police are searching for a black Honda SUV with New Jersey license plates after three robbers – two men and a woman – allegedly stole $50,000 of merchandise from a Gucci store in the city’s Meatpacking district at gunpoint. The suspects took the merchandise after telling shoppers and store sales assistants to lie down, police said. Video footage showed the robbery crew removing bags of product and rolling out suitcases in broad daylight, loading the Honda and speeding off. They were last seen driving into the Lincoln Tunnel toward New Jersey. Tourists in the area told a local radio station they were surprised by the daytime raid. “It’s very daring and middle of the day for somebody to rob a very high-end store at gunpoint and put all the poor people there at risk, terrible,” said Rosemary Welburn, a tourist from Australia. Joe Salama, from Brooklyn, told the outlet he and his family had not travelled by subway to the area to avoid crime. “So we came in to spend the day, you know? The kids are off from school today, it’s a nice family day and that’s, like, the last thing I would expect,” he said. “We decided to drive and not take the subway because we felt like it wasn’t maybe so safe. So I feel like things have deteriorated a little bit.” The armed heist comes two years after Gucci’s store in Soho was repeatedly knocked off during pandemic lockdowns. On one night, the ground floor was cleaned out of goods, and the basement the following evening. In August, a smash-and-grab crew hit two other luxury retailers near Los Angeles and made off with $300,000 in Yves Saint Laurent merchandise in multiple getaway cars. A similar sized crew of 30 to 40 people hit a nearby Nordstrom store the following day, making off with $100,000 in merchandise. New York’s mayor, Eric Adams, has been waging war on luxury goods counterfeiters, including clearing traders off the sidewalks on Canal Street and over the span of the Brooklyn Bridge, but robberies of legitimate luxury goods from legitimate outlets pose a different problem for authorities. Last month, the New York governor, Kathy Hochul, announced the formation of a new $25m “smash-and-grab enforcement unit” to crack down on retail theft, support small businesses and retail workers “and bring peace of mind to New Yorkers”. The national retail federation estimated that organized retail crime – defined as “the large-scale theft of retail merchandise with the intent to resell the items for financial gain” – accounted for “nearly half” of what retailers euphemistically call shrinkage, estimated at $112bn in 2022. However, the retail lobbying body was forced to correct that estimate when it was shown that the “nearly half” claim came from congressional testimony from Ben Dugan, an advocacy risk consultant. Gucci this week will attempt to restore its luxury luster at its fashion show in Milan under a new creative director. The brand had soared under the direction of designer Alessandro Michele, but he was fired in 2022 when sales stalled, taking with it half of owner Kering’s share value. New designer Sabato de Sarno hit the reset button in September, saying he wants the world to fall for Gucci again and tell “a story of music and nights out, of sweat, dancing and singing … a story of family, of kissing, lots and lots of kisses” – a message that has yet to reach New York’s luxury smash-and-grab crews.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/02/angela-merkel-britain-remain-eu-european-union

Politics

2016-06-02T22:28:14.000Z

Heather Stewart

Angela Merkel says she hopes Britain will remain in the EU

Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, has intervened for the first time in the EU referendum debate, saying Britain could be left with a raw deal if it leaves. On a day when a number of high-profile European politicians spoke out on the potential consequences of the referendum, Merkel said the decision was one for Britain’s voters, before adding: “I personally hope and wish that Britain will stay part and parcel of the European Union.” Leave campaigners have stressed that Britain could strike a new trade deal with the EU after a Brexit, which would retain open access to European markets, while allowing a future government to impose restrictions on the free movement of people. But Merkel suggested a post-Brexit British government would not receive the same “quality of compromise” with member states without sharing the costs of the single market as well as the benefits. Merkel is the latest world leader to intervene in the debate about Britain’s future in the EU, with Barack Obama using a visit earlier this year to warn that the US would not rush to do a trade deal with Britain alone. Merkel stressed that Britain was able to have its voice heard in debates about EU rules and regulations by remaining at the negotiating table. “We work well together with the United Kingdom, particularly perhaps when we talk about new rules for the European Union,” she said. “We have to develop those together with the United Kingdom and, whenever we negotiate that, you can much better have an influence on the debate when you sit at the bargaining table and you can give input into those negotiations. The result will invariably be better when you have that, rather than being outside of the room.” Our European allies dread Brexit, and they have good reason to fear it Andrew Rawnsley Read more How Britain would fare in negotiating its way out of the EU has been a key point of contention in the referendum debate. Michael Gove and his Vote Leave colleagues have suggested the government could drive a hard bargain with the rest of the EU, which is a major market for British exports. The fact that the German chancellor has decided to make a considered intervention, after having previously indicated she would not comment on the matter, is seen as a sign of growing concern inside her government about the destabilising effect a British exit from the EU could have on the eurozone economy. “Having led many negotiations with countries outside the EU in the past, we would never enter the same compromises and reach the same good outcomes with states that don’t shoulder the responsibilities and costs of the common market,” Merkel said at a press conference following a meeting with the Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg. The comments came shortly after her European policy adviser, Uwe Corsepius, attended a summit near Brussels at which the foreign ministers of the EU’s six founding states debated how member states should react if the UK leaves the union. Brexit would pose 'serious risk' to global growth, say G7 leaders Read more Other European leaders have also begun to spell out the consequences of Britain’s departure from the union, with Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the Dutch finance minister and president of the Eurogroup, calling on the UK to play a stronger role to make the European Union a success, if it votes to stay on 23 June. “The UK shouldn’t just be leaning back and making sure the interests of the City are heard; they should be leaning forward and making sure we really need to get it right. Just staying in the EU, but sitting back and playing defensive just isn’t good enough.” The Netherlands, a free trade-loving country that takes a pragmatic approach to EU integration, has long been a close ally of the UK in Brussels. The Dutch are concerned that the impetus to extend the EU single market will be lost if Britain votes to leave. In an interview with the Guardian and six other European newspapers, Dijsselbloem said he would welcome the UK “taking the lead in Europe” and showing initiative on projects to deepen the single market and promote trade, including the controversial transatlantic trade pact TTIP, which is on the verge of stalling, amid deadlocked talks between the EU and US. UK should stop 'sitting back' in EU, says Jeroen Dijsselbloem Read more He was speaking on the same day that the head of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, warned that Brexit posed “a downside risk” to the global economy. Dijsselbloem insisted there was “no big plan” to put on the table the day after a possible Brexit, although a lot of ideas were under discussion. He said: “Every door you open [in Brussels], people are talking about what if, and what should happen.” Brexit would have “negative effects” on the UK and the rest of Europe, although he insisted the eurozone would not be blown off course. “I don’t think there will be chaos and panic,” he said. “The most important message that has to come from us both today and on the 24th is that we have to make [the eurozone] work, that we are determined to keep strengthening the monetary union – which by the way is not necessarily a full political union – but strengthening what we have.” In a separate intervention, the Spanish prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, also warned on Thursday that British expats could forfeit their rights to live in Spain if they vote to leave the EU. “I have no doubt whatsoever, as I have repeatedly stated, that it would be very negative if the United Kingdom left the European Union. Negative for everybody, for the United Kingdom, for Spain, and for the European Union,” Rajoy told the Spanish news agency EFE. “But, above all, it would be very negative for British citizens: the European Union is based, ever since its foundation, on the principles of freedom of movement of people, goods, services and capitals.” More than 400,000 British citizens live and work in Spain, while 100,000 Spanish citizens live in the UK, Rajoy said. UK citizens, he said, would forfeit crucial rights to live and work across the continent. “Leaving the European Union would mean that British citizens would lose their right to move freely, work and do business within the largest economic area, the largest market in the world,” he said. “If the United Kingdom left the European Union, it would be very negative for everyone and from every perspective.”

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/apr/08/one-nation-video-mocking-ndis-condemned-as-vile-by-disability-advocates

Australia news

2023-04-08T00:50:37.000Z

Donna Lu

One Nation video mocking NDIS condemned as ‘vile’ by disability advocates

A One Nation video mocking the National Disability Insurance Scheme, which includes offensive depictions of people with a disability, has been condemned, with advocates calling for party leader Pauline Hanson to remove the video and apologise. The clip, which was posted on Friday, is from the YouTube series Pauline Hanson’s Please Explain, and describes the NDIS as a “scam” and a “rort”. The People with Disability Australia president, Nicole Lee, said the video showed “insensitive cruelty” and it contained “offensive, inappropriate and inaccurate depictions of disability supports under the NDIS”. “People with disability experience high levels of abuse as it is and now we’re being used as cheap shots for political point scoring,” she said. Pauline Hanson calls on Mark Latham to apologise for ‘disgusting’ homophobic tweet Read more Lee said the scheme provided benefit not only to people with a disability but to the wider Australian community. “Through the NDIS, people with disability are one of the biggest contributors to the Australian economy, delivering $2.25 for every dollar spent in the scheme or more than $2bn a year,” she said. The NDIS was legislated in 2013 and entitles people under 65 who have a full and permanent disability to funding for relevant support services. The scheme supports more than 550,000 Australians. The second largest social program after the pension, the NDIS cost $35.8bn in 2022-23. The scheme is forecast to cost more than $50bn a year by 2025-26. Blaming Coalition neglect, Labor has announced an independent review into the scheme, which is expected to be handed to disability reform ministers by October 2023. The One Nation video was also described as reprehensible by the disability discrimination commissioner, Ben Gauntlett. “Politically motivated and callous use of humour at the expense of people with disability does not improve social policy. Rather, it creates fear, division and resentment,” he wrote on Twitter. The Advocacy for Inclusion head of policy, Craig Wallace, said Hanson’s video had blatantly misrepresented the NDIS’s ability to support people on a short-term basis and called on political leaders and regular Australians to condemn the video. “The video inspires hatred against disabled people and is a particularly nasty and vile depiction of the lives of highly vulnerable people with disability released on Good Friday, which is a day of love and reflection for many people,” he said. Wallace condemned the video’s suggestion people with a disability were “scamming” the NDIS. Sign up to Morning Mail Free daily newsletter Our Australian morning briefing breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it matters Enter your email address Sign up Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. “We know we are actually more likely to be the victims of scams, poor services and rip offs by services and businesses seeking to profit from disabled people.” People with Disability Australia and Advocacy for Inclusion have called for Hanson to withdraw the video and apologise. The federal opposition leader, Peter Dutton, last month suggested that the Coalition would offer bipartisan support for cuts to the NDIS to pay for the Aukus nuclear submarines. “It’s an incredibly important program but it needs to be sustainable,” he told ABC’s 7.30. “And if the cost trajectory of that is going to result it in falling over, I think the government itself has pointed out that’s not sustainable. “So, if there are different ways in which we can provide support to the government, we’re happy to do that.” Hanson’s office has been approached for comment.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/aug/16/heartbleed-linux-foundation-openssl-corporate-responsibility-google-facebook-microsoft

Technology

2014-08-16T20:04:00.000Z

John Naughton

So the internet's winners are finally chipping in? About time…

"I t is difficult to get a man to understand something," wrote Upton Sinclair, the great American muckraking journalist, "when his salary depends on his not understanding it." That was in 1935, so let us update it for our times: "It is impossible to get an executive of an internet company to understand anything if the value of his (or her) stock options depends on not understanding it." There are two things in particular that the various infant prodigies, charlatans, megalomaniacs, sociopaths and venture capitalists who run our great internet companies have a vested interest in not understanding. The first is that the state is not the almighty pain in the ass that they constantly maintain it is. To listen to some of them you'd think that the only thing standing between us and nirvana is the nation-state, with its clueless legislators, obsolete laws, red tape and regulatory reflexes. When the European court of justice dared to decide that people had what is (incorrectly IMHO) a "right to be forgotten", the heavens were rent with corporate whingeing about how Europeans were opposed not only to free speech but also to innovation itself. The clear imputation was that anything tech companies do is innovation, whereas all public agencies (of which courts are one) do is impose a brake on that sacred activity. What this crazed neoliberalism overlooks is that without the state and its baleful agencies these corporations couldn't exist, never mind thrive. It's the state, for example, that provides the courts and the legal system that protects their intellectual property, the roads and infrastructure on which their self-driving cars travel and so on. Or, as Senator Elizabeth Warren put it in a great campaign riff: "There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory… Now look, you built the factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea? God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along." The second thing that the geniuses of Silicon Valley have a vested interest in not understanding is that all of their wealth stems ultimately from something built by the hated nation-state, and some of it depends on things built by people who gave it away for free. For without the internet none of the great digital corporations would exist. And the internet was built not by private enterprise but by the US government which funded the Arpanet and then the "internetworking" project that built the network on which we – and Google, Amazon, Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft et al – all now depend. Even more interesting is the fact that the core infrastructure of the network runs on software that is all in the public domain. Almost every broadband modem, for example, runs on the Linux operating system, which is free software created by programmers for the love of it. The corporations who make the modems profit from them; but they never paid a cent for Linux. I have no problem with that. What I do have a problem with, however, is that these neoliberal free riders on public resources seem to feel no obligation to give anything back. For not only do they go to fantastic lengths to avoid paying tax, but they also feel little obligation to contribute to the upkeep of the public-domain code that enables them to function. We have finally begun to see the consequences of this myopic corporate selfishness. A few months ago, the Heartbleed bug was discovered in the OpenSSL cryptography library, which plays an absolutely critical role in securing confidential online transactions. We then discovered that for years this critical piece of infrastructural software has been maintained by a handful of overworked volunteers. The industry was rightly shocked by Heartbleed, and some companies – notably Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Intel, IBM, Cisco and Amazon – agreed to donate $300,000 each over the next three years to support the OpenSSL project. You can interpret this as "corporate social responsibility". I call it common sense. And we need much more of it.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/07/britain-first-leaders-convicted-of-anti-muslim-hate-crimes

UK news

2018-03-07T18:42:44.000Z

Kevin Rawlinson

Britain First leaders jailed over anti-Muslim hate crimes

The leaders of the far-right group Britain First have been jailed for a series of hate crimes against Muslims. The group’s leader, Paul Golding, was sentenced to 18 weeks in prison, while deputy, Jayda Fransen, was sentenced to 36 weeks on Wednesday. They had each been found guilty of religiously aggravated harassment at Folkestone magistrate’s court earlier the same day. “These defendants were not merely exercising their right to free speech but were instead aiming religiously aggravated abuse at innocent members of the public,” the prosecutor told the court. They were both arrested in May last year as part of an investigation into the distribution of leaflets and online videos posted during a trial at Canterbury crown court in the same month. Three Muslim men and a teenager were convicted of rape and jailed as a result of those proceedings. On Wednesday, the judge Justin Barron said Golding and Fransen’s words and actions “demonstrated hostility” towards Muslims and the Muslim faith. “I have no doubt it was their joint intention to use the facts of the [Canterbury] case for their own political ends. It was a campaign to draw attention to the race, religion and immigrant background of the defendants.” Both were convicted over an incident at a takeaway in Ramsgate, in Kent, during which Fransen banged on the windows and doors and screamed “paedophile” and “foreigner”. Two children were playing in the middle of the shop and Jamshed Khesrow, a friend of the owners, was inside. The judge dismissed a second charge against the pair over an incident alleged to have taken place outside Canterbury crown court later that day. Fransen was convicted on another count related to a visit to a house she wrongly believed to be the address of a defendant in the Canterbury trial, Sershah Muslimyar. Golding was cleared of uploading a video of that incident. Fransen was convicted on a third count over an incident at the home of Tamin Rahmani, during which she shouted racist abuse through the front door while his pregnant partner was inside. Jaswant Narwal, the chief crown prosecutor in the south-east, said: “The victims suffered the distress of the abuse followed by additional stress when the footage was uploaded to the internet.” Britain First has been noted for its extreme white supremacist and anti-Muslim stances in the past, and Fransen gained particular notoriety when racially charged videos she published on Twitter were retweeted by Donald Trump. At least one was later found to be fake and the incident caused a rift between Trump and Theresa May.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2008/sep/27/family.fitness

Life and style

2008-09-26T23:01:00.000Z

Rachel Platt

The Family Challenge - a three-man adventure challenge

The family My dad first entered me into a race when I was about eight - a three-mile "fun" run on the North Downs. I never knew if he was more disappointed with my pitiful performance (I came second-to-last) or the pride I took in beating a girl with a hole in her heart. You see, the thing about my dad is he's very fit. And the thing about me is I'm very lazy. So why he persists in entering me into competitive activities I don't know. "Let's make sure we start at the back, so we don't get in anyone's way." Encouraging words from Dad. We have entered an "adventure challenge". It's a team-of-three event involving 25km of cycling, 10km of running and 1km of kayaking - plus a series of surprise "challenges" at the end. "If you've ever fancied a filthy threesome then look no further!" is the organisers' malapropos tease. Our team consists of me, 30, and recently a mum (all right, it's a year now but it still feels recent), my dad, 53, and training for a 100-mile ultra marathon, and my boyfriend, Bevis, who effortlessly maintains his fitness without actually doing anything. The training I should have known, really. The last team event my dad entered me for saw me losing four toenails (during a 100km non-stop walk), while he barely broke a sweat. Still, I needed a reason to kickstart my fitness post-baby. And the toenail incident was long enough ago for me to have forgotten the pain. So when he suggested the Trail Plus Adventure Challenge on Staffordshire's Cannock Chase, it sounded like a good idea. "It's suitable for all levels of fitness, anyway," Dad reassures me. So here I am. I have trained. I've cycled to work - and back again. It's at least three miles. I've endured a chronically embarrassing step class. I've even worked double-hard at my post-natal yoga class. Am I ready? My dad's statement probably says it all. Going solo We start somewhere in the middle. First is a short run, which passes problem-free. I'm feeling pretty good, in fact. There are even people more out of breath than me. Switching to bikes, I feel like a proper athlete. Bevis disabuses me of the notion by pointing out I have my helmet on back to front. So off we ride. We agree to stop and wait for each other since this is, you know, a team event. About 15 minutes in, I stop and wait. Cyclists whizz by. I wait a bit longer. The cyclists thin out. Where are my dad and Bevis? Soon there are no more cyclists. Reluctantly, depressingly, I head back the way we came. They must have a puncture. I return to where I saw them last. No sign of them - or anyone. I head on again. "What are you doing?" My dad is coming back towards me. Apparently it's not a good idea to wait for someone who is ahead of you. Less than half an hour in and we have already proven our inability to function as a team and have fallen about 20 minutes behind everyone else. We pelt off, pretending we're not irritated with each other. The cycling is more technical than any I've done before. Narrow, bumpy paths, made muddy by the 600 or so bikes that have just sped over them. I fall off a few times, the scariest being when I get back on after a fall and try to brake on a steep downhill, only to discover my handlebars are facing the wrong way. Two hours of this and it's time for some more running. I did some running in training, and I did some cycling. But I didn't do one after the other. The run is hard, the terrain hilly. When we pass a marshal shouting hortatively, "Just one-and-a-half miles to the kayaks," it doesn't provide the desired encouragement. There are now people running back past us as the route loops back on itself. I realise that every step we take towards the kayaks is a step we will have to run back again. And these people look tired, very tired. "You're doing really well, sweetie," Bevis says. This is not helpful. This event is becoming like childbirth: there is nothing he can say to make me feel better and it just annoys me he isn't suffering as I am. Surprisingly, my dad manages motivation quite well. One of my earliest memories is having to run alongside him to keep up, but today he stays by my side, instructing me to go as slow as I can, just keep going. It works and I manage some pretty tough hills without walking. The kayaking comes as a relief. We are all in the same boat (though not necessarily paddling in the same direction), so I have a rest. And the run back isn't as bad as on the way there. It's not over yet, though. The final three-mile cycle feels more like five: it's mainly uphill. And we've still got to face the challenges - the elements of the event supposed to make it fun, rather than just gruelling. A three-legged sack race where I am squashed into the noisome underarms of my team-mates feels as if the organisers are having a laugh, at my expense. Then we are all strapped at the feet to two planks and have to walk a short course. It is here that we finally find our team spirit and get into a great rhythm. Next we scale an 8ft wall and crawl under a net, commando-style. And then we are done. And we're not last! We've overtaken at least a dozen teams. And, as far as I know, not one of their members had a hole in their heart ... Your turn Trail Plus organise several Adventure Challenge events each year at locations across the country. Team entry costs £135. Further details at trailplus.com/helly_hansen.cfm

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/26/west-midlands-emerges-as-a-hotspot-for-coronavirus-deaths

World news

2020-03-26T20:37:44.000Z

Rowena Mason

West Midlands emerges as a hotspot for coronavirus deaths

The West Midlands has seen another sharp rise in the number of coronavirus-related deaths after emerging as a hotspot for transmissions of the virus earlier this week. Of the 115 new deaths reported across the UK in the latest update, 40 were recorded in the West Midlands. That took the total number of deaths across the Midlands to 112. Eighteen people who died were being treated by the Royal Wolverhampton NHS trust, which has recorded the highest death toll from the virus for any trust in the UK for the second time. There have been 17 deaths in Sandwell and West Birmingham hospitals NHS trust, 16 in University Hospitals Birmingham NHS foundation trust and 11 in the Dudley Group NHS foundation trust so far. Earlier this week the government said it was investigating the reasons behind a hotspot emerging in the region. Anecdotal evidence suggested people’s religious convictions and fears of social isolation could be leading to a sharp rise in the number of coronavirus transmissions in the area. In an interview with the Guardian, the Birmingham MP Khalid Mahmood said older Muslim and Sikh people in the area were struggling to adhere to government guidelines about physical distancing because of their religious convictions. Despite most religious services being cancelled, some older people were allegedly continuing to attend mosques and gurdwaras to pray, Mahmood said. Another theory suggested panic buying in supermarkets, with people queueing next to each other for hours to pay for their goods, could be contributing to the large cluster. Who is dying from coronavirus and in which NHS trusts? Read more While NHS England reported 107 new deaths across 30 trusts on Thursday, some of those deaths had reportedly occurred as early as 16 March. The youngest of the new patients was 32 and had an underlying health condition. The figures emerged amid continuing confusion over the number of virus-related deaths after NHS England changed how the data was reported and it emerged that people dying at home of suspected cases were not included. NHS England said it was shifting the time period for the daily reporting of deaths because hospitals under pressure were struggling to gather the data in time. It revealed that 107 people died from coronavirus in England, taking the UK-wide figure to 115 over a 24-hour period – the highest daily toll so far. NHS England also belatedly revealed that the unexpectedly low figure of 28 deaths on Tuesday covered only a short period, from 9am to 5pm, dashing hopes that the UK’s curve was flattening. In future, there will be a time lag of almost a day in reporting deaths, which will be published at 2pm and reflect mortality figures for the 24-hour period before 5pm the previous day. The figures include age brackets showing the range of people who have died. However, some prominent cases do not appear to be reflected in the figures, such as that of Kayla Williams, a 36-year-old mother from Peckham, who died just before paramedics arrived and was recorded by them as a possible Covid-19 case. Chloe Middleton, the 21-year-old from Buckinghamshire whose family said on Wednesday she died after contracting coronavirus, also does not appear to be recorded in the figures. An NHS England source said the likely cause of people missing from the statistics is that the daily figures only include those who tested positive in hospital. The UK is only testing people for coronavirus in hospital, so people dying at home or in care homes with symptoms of the disease will be missing from the overall figures. The number of omissions are likely to be low at the moment but could increase as the pandemic worsens in the coming weeks. A Public Health England spokesman said the overall figures published daily represented all those who had tested positive for coronavirus, and there was no systemic testing of those who had died with symptoms but no confirmed diagnosis. Additional reporting by Pamela Duncan and Niamh McIntyre

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/20/families-of-shooters-dallas-police-chief-david-brown

Opinion

2016-07-20T11:00:33.000Z

Candace Thompson

It's hard to hear, but the families of shooters grieve too | Candace Thompson

The families of police shooters Micah Johnson and Gavin Long are in an emotionally fragile place. In the aftermath – Johnson killed five officers in Dallas; Long killed three in Baton Rouge – their lives are now under a microscope. The world is looking to place blame for their actions – on family, a breakdown in mental health, military indoctrination, open carry laws, black empowerment groups and a host of other reasons. Johnson’s parents have said that they are at a loss to explain why their son snapped. “I don’t know what to say to anybody to make anything better,” said his father, James Johnson. “I didn’t see it coming. I love my son with all my heart. I hate what he did.” Another deadly day in Baton Rouge. Will we heed the warning? Barrett Holmes Pitner Read more What do you say? That question has been eating at me for some years, especially since I lost my brother, David Brown Jr – we called him DJ – to the death grip of bipolar disorder self-medicated with PCP-laced marijuana. Yes, he’s that David Brown Jr, son of Dallas police chief David Brown Sr, my stepfather, and the only father I’ve ever known. DJ’s inability to successfully self-manage without prescribed medication ultimately caused the deaths of two innocent men, Jeremy McMillan and Officer Craig Shaw, by his hands, and his own death at the hands of the Lancaster, Texas, police department in 2010. We didn’t see it coming any more than James Johnson did. Sure, DJ shared with me that he did not feel like himself, or much of anything, when taking his meds. And I knew he struggled personally and questioned his self-worth because he could not get a job in the field he studied. He had a criminal record, and companies used it to discriminate rather than to offer a second chance and to see what a great asset he would be. I tried to encourage him nonetheless. I was his biggest cheerleader. Never could any of us have imagined that DJ would cause harm to others or to himself. So many questions remain unanswered, and our family is left with survivor’s guilt and the memories of a young man with a full heart, a loving embrace and a deep loyalty to family. Media, in its quest to get the facts, can simultaneously be insensitive and demeaning, stripping away the dignity, humanity and worth of a person, often in the quest to craft the perfect villain. But everyone has a backstory. Committing a crime does not mean a person is no longer a human being or deserves to die, as both Long and Johnson did. Who among us can say our lives have been lived without blemish? For the most part, people have families and those who love them dearly. And what you don’t hear about is that we continue to struggle to live each day, attempting to find joy and happiness while coping with the heavy load of loss. No matter the title, position, the side, many of us are the walking wounded trying to cope. Dallas is a tragedy for all of us – and shouldn't shut down calls for justice Ijeoma Oluo Read more We are all standing on the edge of breakthrough or breakdown, and I do not have the words to make anybody feel any better. Often, I have felt inept at being able to comfort my mother and my father. The void will always exist. I do not have a secret formula to heal a broken heart due to the tragic loss of your son, brother, nephew or cousin. But what I can say is this: to the Johnson and Long families, I stand with you and understand the pain you feel. I can tell you, it is important to cherish the memories and to love yourself, and keep or form stronger relationships with your other children. They will need you and try to soothe you through a variety of means. I will forever carry the memories of my brother in my heart.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2015/dec/14/bernard-natan-pathe-cinema-holocaust-victim-france-film-industry

Film

2015-12-14T17:04:57.000Z

Pamela Hutchinson

In need of rehabilitation: Bernard Natan, the Holocaust victim who saved France's film industry

La Fémis, the French national film school, occupies a space at number 6, rue Francoeur in Montmartre, Paris. The building is a former film studio, naturally enough. It was built in 1929 for a company called Rapid Film, owned by a man called Bernard Natan. When Natan bought a much more famous outfit, Pathé, he merged the two organisations, and Pathé-Natan, the country’s leading studio throughout the 1930s was born. Today, there is a plaque at La Fémis commemorating Natan, the founder of the building, a man vitally important to French film history. The plaque, which was unveiled at the end of 2014, states that he died in 1942 at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Between the second world war and the establishment of this small memorial, few people talked about Natan, his sad death, or his contribution to cinema. Many people that did mention his name called him a criminal, or a deviant. With Natan’s legitimate achievements erased from the history of the business he devoted his life to, rumours swirled in to fill the void. Instead of being known as the saviour of the French film industry, Natan was called a pornographer and a crook. Watch the trailer for Natan. Not everyone fell for the gossip. A fascinating documentary film called Natan, directed by David Cairns and Paul Duane and newly available on DVD, attempts to separate the facts from the slander. It’s a grim, but enthralling watch – despite its sensational subject matter, it’s a cool-headed investigation into an unpalatable slice of film history. Unfortunately, despite his late recognition on the Rue Francoeur, Natan’s story remains a very sad one indeed. Natan Tannenzaft was born in Romania in 1886. He first arrived in Paris in the early 1900s and, because he loved the cinema, he immediately began working in the moving picture business. He held various jobs, including working as a projectionist, and developing films in a lab. In 1909, he married a French woman and they went on to have two children, little girls. In the first world war, he volunteered to fight for France, and returned to Paris wounded, but decorated for bravery. In 1921 he successfully applied for French citizenship, changing his name to Bernard Natan. Twenty years later he would be imprisoned, stripped of that citizenship, labelled “the most dangerous Jew in France” and sent to certain death at Auschwitz. Nicknamed ‘the Pathé swindler’ … Bernard Natan Photograph: Pathé-Natan Natan’s crime appears to have been to be successful, and Jewish, in an era of antisemitism and fear. In the 1920s, Natan was the owner of Rapid, which had exclusive rights to film the 1924 Paris Olympics, and ran studios where silent-era luminaries such as Marcel l’Herbier made groundbreaking films. At the end of that decade, he took over the exhibition and production sectors of Pathé and turned that company around. Without him, the French cinema industry was at risk of foundering, having failed to recover from the dry period of the first world war, and unready to embrace the disruption of the 1930s. Without Natan, Pathé would most likely not have embraced sound film-making, revived its famous newsreels nor moved into diverse areas from radio and television to home projection and anamorphic photography. In his time at Pathé, he also produced some of the masterpieces of French 1930s cinema, including Raymond Bernard’s Wooden Crosses (1932), a powerful war film made all the stronger by the fact that it was created by and starred so many veterans of the 1914-18 conflict, including Natan himself. But this is where the story begins to get very murky – and veers in two different directions. According to contemporary rumours, which have been recently revived by people from American academic Joseph Slade to lead singer of the Pixies Black Francis (in his illustrated novel The Good Inn), all the time that Natan was the chief executive of the Pathé studio, he led a double-life as a pornographer. Natan is not suggested to have been a porn film producer, but actually an actor, in boundary-pushing silent stag movies involving practices previously, or indeed still, taboo – homosexual acts, sadomasochism, and bestiality. It’s a charge as ludicrous as it is lurid, and it boggles the mind to think that one of the country’s leading businessmen would take on such work. There is absolutely no evidence to confirm the story. For anyone who still harbours doubts, in Cairns and Duane’s documentary, headshots of Natan are shown next to discreet excerpts from the films. The truth is somewhat less sensational, but outrageous in its own way. Pathé was hit by the financial crises of the 1930s, and Natan was struck by the surge of antisemitism in France. When the studio went bankrupt, Natan was accused of fraud and nicknamed “the Pathé swindler”; newspaper reports revealed his “hidden” Jewishness and his name was dragged through the mud. Filmed in the dock during his trial, Natan is shown hiding his face behind a newspaper and saying: “This is not a comedy, this a tragedy.” The recording was manipulated so that his words are spoken in a ridiculous, Mickey-Mouse squeak. This is when the stories about the stag films began to circulate, from industry rumours to a grim illustrated report in Paris-Match. Natan was convicted and sent to prison in 1939. In 1941, his portrait featured prominently in a racist Paris exhibition called Le Juif et la France, and Natan was stripped of his French nationality. He was released a year later, but as he was no longer a citizen, he was sent with a transport of Romanian Jews from the Drancy camp in Paris to Auschwitz (with a note to Adolf Eichmann, pointing out who he was). He never came home again. Dead, and defamed, Natan’s name was consistently missed out of the standard histories of French cinema, but still the rumours persisted. When the pornography stories surfaced again in a journal article by Slade in 1993, Natan went from a forgotten man to a dirty joke – the saucy, crooked Jew who thought he could make a legitimate career in a booming business. For his family, these lies are upsetting, but the damage spreads further than that. We owe it to our understanding of the cinema, and of immigration, to remember the name Natan. Natan is now available on DVD from Lobster Films, with French and English subtitles. Wooden Crosses is available on DVD/Blu-ray from Masters of Cinema.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/2022/jan/31/the-times-editorial-cycling-licences

Environment

2022-01-31T10:52:30.000Z

Peter Walker

Has the Times declared war on cyclists?

Even in the context of the UK media’s famously curious coverage of everyday cycling, this was a surprise. Away from the more familiar tabloid cries of a “battle” over changes to the Highway Code, tucked away in the sober enclave of the Times’s editorial pages something odd was happening. It was near the bottom of a leader column on cycling that a paper which, less than a decade ago, launched the most concerted and effective media campaign for safe cycling seen in this country for years, decided in effect to declare war on those who opt for two-wheeled transport. It was, the column noted, beyond doubt that drivers should have licences, insurance and number plates for their vehicles. Then came the follow-up: “Requiring the same of cyclists is fair.” This was a triple-whammy, the full bingo card, the complete Littlejohn, the title that still styles itself the country’s newspaper of record formally declaring that it no longer wants to see cyclists on the roads. Of course, it wasn’t phrased so directly, but if you argue for such measures, that is in effect what you want. Any of those regulatory handcuffs being applied to bikes, let alone all three, would be so unwieldy, so counter-productive, so utterly, utterly pointless that pretty much no country or territory has ever attempted it, and the few that did generally gave up quite quickly. If the UK enforced these measures fully and with gusto, my guess is that somewhere between 50% and 75% of cycle traffic would vanish. And yes, this is a guess. There is no real data to base it on – because no one has been so stupid as to try it. The arguments against such regulatory tangles for cycling have been made many times before and don’t need repeating in full, but let’s just think about a couple of the potential hiccups. Consider children. Would they need to take a test and have insurance? If so, from what age? Some kids ride on the roads, with their parents, when they’ve five. Good luck giving them a multiple choice test on the Highway Code. And if under-18s are exempt, how do you enforce rules for teenagers? Would a 16-year-old have to carry ID when out on a bike to prove their age? Secondly: number plates for bikes. Anything light and small enough would be too small to read beyond a distance of a few metres. And what of people [holds up an apologetic hand] with multiple bikes? Would we have to register each one, or transfer plates between them? This is the point at which someone usually suggests riders wear a numbered, hi-vis tabard. One both light enough to wear on a 100-mile ride in mid-summer, but also big enough to go over the winter coat of someone cycling to work in the snow? And that’s assuming the commuter doesn’t have a bag on his or her back. You could go on, almost endlessly, which is why, when asked about such ideas, UK ministers and officials, in common with just about everybody else who has given the idea more than 90 seconds of thought, dismiss them. Cycling for transport is an undisputed social good – even the Times editorial concedes that. So why argue for all this? The Times, almost insultingly, doesn’t even try to square the circle, merely saying, without any attempt at elaboration: “The objection that it would deter legitimate cycling is not persuasive.” Instead we get this very odd sentence: “The road network is a service available to everyone, and it is reasonable to expect those who benefit from it to abide by its regulation and contribute to its upkeep.” Ignoring the intellectual howler of “contribute to its upkeep” – it is embarrassing for the Times to have got that one so wrong – we at last come to the crux of the argument, such as it is: “fairness”. It is the cry more usually seen in the murky depths of reader comments or the fringes of Twitter arguments: drivers face all sorts of regulations to use the roads, what’s so different about cyclists? One response would be: if you use a table saw and a screwdriver for the same wood-based DIY project, and you don goggles, ear protection and a mask for the saw, why don’t you for the screwdriver? That’s right – one is notably more dangerous than the other. Again, the statistics are well known. Of the 1,700 or so deaths and 25,000-plus serious injuries on the UK’s roads every year, only a handful are caused by a cyclist hitting someone else. To stress yet another well-worn point: it’s not about morals, it’s just physics. If I hit a pedestrian while doing 20mph in a Range Rover I would impart 25 times more kinetic energy than at the same speed on my bike. If you make the speeds more realistic – bike at 12mph, car doing 30mph – then the difference is 150 times. What should we make of the Times’s sudden outbreak of idiocy? It’s hard to know. It would be nice to think this is the response of a dinosaur class who realise history is against them. But even in the context of the UK’s cursed media narrative on everyday active transport, it is deeply depressing.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/may/01/far-right-pastors-embracing-trump-white-christian-nationalism

US news

2023-05-01T08:00:28.000Z

Peter Stone

Pro-Trump pastors rebuked for ‘overt embrace of white Christian nationalism’

A far-right religious group with ties to Donald Trump loyalists Roger Stone and retired Army Lt Gen Michael Flynn is planning events with pastors in swing-state churches in Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and elsewhere to spur more evangelical backing for the former US president’s 2024 campaign. But the group, Pastors for Trump, is drawing sharp rebukes from mainstream Christian leaders for being extremist, distorting Christian teachings and endangering American democracy by fueling the spread of Christian nationalism. The Oklahoma-based evangelical pastor and businessman Jackson Lahmeyer leads the fledgling Pastors for Trump organization. Lahmeyer told the Guardian it boasts over 7,000 pastors as members and that he will unveil details about its plans on 11 May at the Trump National Doral in Miami, an event Trump will be invited to attend. Donald Trump says ‘great to be home’ after landing in Scotland for golf visit Read more Stone, a self-styled “dirty trickster” whom Trump pardoned after he was convicted of lying to Congress, is slated to join Lahmeyer in speaking on 11 May, according to the pastor. Lahmeyer added he will talk more about his pro Trump group at a ReAwaken America evangelical gathering on 12 and 13 May at the Doral. Lahmeyer said the pastors group intends to sponsor a “freedom tour” with evening church meetings in key swing states this summer, an effort that could help Trump win more backing from this key Republican voting bloc, which could prove crucial to his winning the GOP nomination again. Lahmeyer described the genesis of Pastors for Trump in dark and apocalyptic rhetoric that has echoes of Trump’s own bombast. “We’re going down a very evil path in this country,” he said. “Our economy is being destroyed. It’s China, the deep state and globalists. “China interfered in our 2020 elections,” he added. “This is biblical, what’s happening. This is a spiritual battle.’ But those ominous beliefs have drawn sharp criticism. “This kind of overt embrace of white Christian nationalism continues to pose a growing threat to the witness of the church and the health of our democracy,” said Adam Russell Taylor, the president of the Christian social justice group Sojourners. “This pastor and this effort are trying to impose a Christian theocracy. It’s imperative that Christian leaders of all backgrounds, including conservative ones, speak out about this effort as a threat to our democracy and to the church.” Other religious leaders warn of the dangers that Pastors for Trump poses by marrying Christian nationalism with political vitriol and election lies. “For years, Trump has tried to co-opt religious leaders to serve his campaign, even attempting to change long-standing tax law to allow dark money to flow through houses of worship,” said Amanda Tyler, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty. “Tragically, far too many pastors have confused political power with religious authority, and have thrown their lot in with Trump, no matter the cost to their ministry. Pastors for Trump is the next step in this unholy alliance, mixing Christian nationalism, election lies and vitriolic language in a gross distortion of Christianity.” There is ample evidence Lahmeyer has embraced religious and political views replete with extremist positions. Lahmeyer has previously attacked former House speaker Nancy Pelosi as a “demon”, and former Covid adviser Anthony Fauci “a mass-murdering Luciferian”. To Lahmeyer, the attack on the Capitol on January 6 by a mob of pro-Trump supporters was an “FBI inside job”. Besides his apocalyptic rhetoric, Lahmeyer’s effort has echoes of the two-year-old ReAwaken America tour, which has combined election denialism with Christian nationalism and regularly featured Flynn at its two-day revival-style meetings. In 2021, Flynn provided strong and early backing for Lahmeyer in an abortive primary campaign by the pastor to gain the Republican nomination for a Senate seat from Oklahoma. Flynn, who worked to overturn Trump’s loss to Joe Biden by pushing bogus claims of election fraud, and who Trump pardoned after he pleaded guilty twice to lying to the FBI about contacts he had with Russians before briefly serving as Trump’s national security adviser, is a real hero in Lahmeyer’s eyes. “Flynn is a leader and general,” Lahmeyer told the Guardian. “I trust him, and I have come to love him. He’s been like a father to me.” Those bonds were reinforced in early 2021 when Lahmeyer introduced Flynn to Clay Clark, an Oklahoma entrepreneur and a member of his church, who teamed up with Flynn to host20 ReAwaken revival-like gatherings over the last two years nationwide, all of which Lahmeyer said he’s attended. Late last year, Lahmeyer unveiled Pastors for Trump on Stone’s eponymous Stone Zone podcast, a relationship that was forged in 2021 when Stone served as a key paid consultant to Lahmeyer’s primary campaign. Pastors for Trump is “interwoven” with the Trump campaign, “but we’re a separate grassroots group”, Lahmeyer said, indicating it is a 501(c)(4) non-profit social welfare, which is awaiting IRS tax status approval. Sign up to First Thing Free daily newsletter Our US morning briefing breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it matters Enter your email address Sign up Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. To date, the pastors group has created a two person board that includes South Carolina pastor Mark Burns, a key Trump campaign religious adviser who backed Trump’s 2016 run and who told the Guardian he is a “spiritual adviser” to Trump. Lahmeyer said his group hopes to arrange an event in Las Vegas in August to coincide with a ReAwaken America gathering that is scheduled there, and that he expects to start fundraising to increase his group’s membership and activism. Asked if Stone and Flynn may participate in the various swing state church gatherings, Lahmeyer said: “I’d be dumb not to ask them. Stone and General Flynn are huge supporters.” To push the group’s pro-Trump messages, Lahmeyer has arranged prayer calls in recent months that have included Stone, Flynn and ex-Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, all of whom promoted bogus claims of election fraud in 2020 and tried to help Trump overturn his loss to Joe Biden. One call that included a segment with Trump in late March, which Lahmeyer hosted and that Stone and Flynn participated in, went badly awry when the sound quality was interrupted for several minutes with Trump on the line. Lahmeyer told the Stone Zone the next day that trolls had infiltrated the “back stage” of the platform they were using, while Trump fingered the “radical left” for hacking his phone when he tried to join the call. The launch of Pastors for Trump came not long after a rise in public criticism of Trump from some evangelical leaders that suggested waning support among evangelicals. Dr Everett Piper, the ex-president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, a Christian university, in November wrote an op-ed entitled “It’s time for the GOP to say it: Donald Trump is hurting us, not helping us.” Piper wrote that in the 2022 midterms Trump “hindered rather than helped the much-anticipated ‘red wave’”. Likewise, Bob Vander Plaats, the Iowa-based president and chief executive of the Family Leader, a conservative social group, has tweeted about Trump: “It’s time to turn the page. America must move on. Walk off the stage with class.” Little wonder that in January Trump condemned evangelical leaders who publicly criticized his new campaign for their “disloyalty”. Some scholars and recent polls, however, suggest Trump still has significant support in the evangelical circles, and that he should garner hefty support again from evangelical voters in the primaries if he is to be the nominee. “Trump’s enduring appeal to evangelicals is the greatest single triumph of identity politics in modern American history,” David Hollinger, an emeritus history professor at Berkeley and the author of Christianity’s American Fate, told the Guardian. “The evangelicals who flocked to Trump have good reason to stay with him.” Still, Tyler of the Baptist Joint Committee is alarmed at the Pastors for Trump campaign. “Most clergy avoid endorsing political candidates, even in their personal capacity, because they know the polarizing impact it would have on their congregations and the distractions it would cause from their calling and the mission of the church.” Similarly, Taylor of Sojourners says Pastors for Trump is particularly worrisome. “This is further evidence that the threat of muscular white Christian nationalism is real and needs to be counteracted.”

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/oct/15/nearly-7m-people-uk-identify-naturists-nudists-survey-naturism

Life and style

2022-10-15T06:01:00.000Z

Amelia Hill

Nearly 7m people in UK identify as naturists or nudists, survey suggests

Temperatures may be falling – and there is now a nip in the air – but enthusiasm for getting naked is rising at an unprecedented rate in the UK. The biggest survey ever into naturism has found 14% of people now describe themselves as naturists or nudists: an estimated 6.75 million – or one in seven people. The findings by the polling firm Ipsos are a huge increase on previous figures: the last survey done by the members organisation British Naturism, in 2011, found almost one in 17 people (6%) in the UK considered themselves to be naturists or nudists. That itself was a substantial increase from 2001, when the percentage was 2%. “It turns out that there’s a huge, hidden enthusiasm for nude recreation,” said Dr Mark Bass, the president of British Naturism. “Attitudes to nudity are changing with taboos and stigma being eroded.” He added: “Modern society is weighed down by a body confidence crisis and more and more people are discovering the benefits that nudity brings to mental, emotional and physical health by allowing us to reclaim ownership of our identities.” The latest survey fielded responses from almost 2,500 people aged 16 to 75, and was likely to give the most accurate picture ever of naturism in the UK because it was conducted online, said Bass. “The other surveys have been face to face. I can imagine that a fair few people might not be entirely honest with someone asking the question on their own doorsteps while answering an anonymous, online survey in the privacy of one’s own homes might elicit a far more honest response.” The survey also found that while naturism was “often perceived to be something that old retirees do”, it was in fact the younger generation who were far more likely to identify as naturists or nudists, with almost half of respondents aged 16 to 24 doing so, compared with just 6% of those aged 45 to 75. “There’s a huge imbalance in engagement,” Bass said. “In 2011, when the survey was last done, the proportion of people who said they were naturists were equally split across the age bands.” “Younger people really are diving into it far more than their elders have done,” he added. “That gives us a lot of confidence in the future. This is a newer, modern way of living that younger people are engaging with rather than just maintaining the status quo.” The survey gave respondents a definition of naturists as people who engage in activities such as sunbathing and swimming without clothes in the company of people other than their partner or family – or in a healthcare setting. Respondents were asked to select any activities they had ever done before (but not as a young child) from a list of four (swum without a costume; sunbathed without a costume to get an all-over tan; been on a naturist beach overseas; or visited a British clothes-optional beach resort or club). Katy, 17, realised she enjoyed naturism this summer. “I think it was because we were all closed up for so long over lockdown,” she said. “A group of us went swimming in the lakes over the summer and decided on the spur of the moment, to take off our costumes. Then we just hung out afterwards, not bothering to get dressed. I realised it was so freeing. I’m definitely thinking of doing more structured naturist activities next summer. There’s something really liberating about it.” Almost 40% of those surveyed by Ipsos said they had engaged in one or more of the four listed activities. Skinny-dipping was particularly popular, with 21% of respondents saying they have swum without a costume. More than 20% said they had been naked in the company of people – in real life or online – other than their partner, immediate family or in a healthcare setting on at least one occasion in the past 12 months. Bass said he was not surprised by the increase: the 9,000-strong membership of British Naturism grew by about 2.5% over lockdown, with more than 15,000 people attending organised naturist events across the country. “We were worried that the lockdown increase would turn out to be just a Covid-bounce and would disappear but the enthusiasm hasn’t receded at all,” he said. “When we used to put on events, we worried about whether we were going to break even. Now we’re trying to figure out ways to increase capacity because activities sell out. “When we spend time naked with others we realise that we all have scars and flaws, and that we don’t need to compare ourselves with an airbrushed model,” Bass added. “Naturism gives us the freedom to be ourselves and have a lot of fun.”

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2009/apr/10/francois-truffaut-400-blows-film-review

Film

2009-04-09T23:01:00.000Z

Peter Bradshaw

Film review: 400 Blows

Now revived, François Truffaut's semi-autobiographical 1959 debut is one of the French new wave's most accessible and best-loved films. Jean-Pierre Léaud is Antoine, a tearaway kid perpetually in trouble both in school and at home: his troubled family circumstances are only revealed at the very end - a cool narrative coup. The film looks superb and Antoine's heartbreakingly open face is like Truffaut's monochrome Paris: beautiful, tough, innocent and yet worldly. There are too many great moments to list in full: the "Wheel of Death" scene at the fair, like the contraption itself, abolishes gravity and becomes weightlessly joyous. The faces of the children are unforgettable. The overhead shot of the kids in single-file behind the gung-ho PE teacher jogging through the Paris streets, gradually sneaking away to bunk off, is inspired, and so is Antoine's plagiarism of Balzac - a demonstration of literary good taste lost on his dullard schoolmaster. The end sequence, culminating in his arrival at a vast lonely shore, is mysterious. Antoine runs away from his correctional facility, and his escape seems to morph into something else; without an immediate pursuer, it becomes an intuition, or premonition, of the lonely long-distance run he has endured and will continue to endure.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2014/oct/27/real-madrid-el-clasico-win-carlo-ancelotti

Football

2014-10-27T15:58:34.000Z

Sid Lowe

Real Madrid’s clásico win down to Carlo Ancelotti’s calm rebuilding | Sid Lowe

All around him people were losing their heads but Carlo Ancelotti barely raised an eyebrow. Which is going some for him. His president was getting twitchy, his captain was getting whistled and his team was getting beaten. On TV sets, they were getting wound up, just for a change like. In England, Ángel Di María was getting even, or trying to. And in Catalonia, they were getting giddy with excitement. Real Madrid were on the front covers in Barcelona and that can only mean one thing. “Crisis!” cheered the headline in El Mundo Deportivo; “the worst Madrid,” gloated Sport. As for Ancelotti, he was just getting on with it. Madrid had pursued the décima for a decade and seemingly forgotten it in six games. Di María had gone, Xabi Alonso had gone, and the Spanish Super Cup had gone, to Atlético de Madrid. Three weeks into the season they had won just once in the league – and a flat 2-0 win over Córdoba was nothing to boast about. They were beaten by Atlético and beaten by Real Sociedad and slipped down to 13th, six points behind Barcelona. No one in Spain had conceded more goals. “I feel like a manager who has to fix things,” Ancelotti admitted. So he did. Calmly, quietly, effectively, no crisis and no crying. Just as he always knew he would. “I feel like a manager who has to fix things,” he had said and then he had added: “… in the same way that I felt like a manager who had to fix things last season.” After Madrid had been beaten 4-2 by Real Sociedad, the Italian admitted that he “did not like” what he saw. But he didn’t panic. We’re not fully fit yet, he said. Soon we will be, he said. Soon we will be winning again. What mattered was May, not now. Madrid won the next seven games, scoring 32 and conceding just five. They climbed back up the table and climbed to the top of their Champions League group. Still there was caution; some were unimpressed. Beating Basel and Ludogorets was no big deal. In Bulgaria, they had trailed 1-0, equalised with a penalty and not got the second until the 77th minute. In the league they had beaten Deportivo, Elche, Villarreal, Athletic and Levante to go with the win against Córdoba. In other words, their victories had come against the teams who on Monday morning stand 15th, 16th, 18th, 19th and 20th. Only Villarreal are in the top half (8th), and their own poor finishing had sunk the Yellow Submarine: they took 19 shots against Madrid and scored none. But then came Anfield and a 3-0 hammering. And even if Anfield is not all that these days, then came the biggest game there is: the clásico v FC Barcelona. And on Saturday night, Real Madrid beat Barcelona 3-1 at the Santiago Bernabéu. It wasn’t just that they beat Barcelona, either; it was the way that they beat them. “More than a victory,” AS’s front page called it. This was the first time that Madrid had beaten Barcelona in the league by more than a solitary goal since 2008, the day of the famous pasillo, when Barça’s world was crumbling around their ears and every player, even ones who later turned out to be very, very good, looked very, very bad. It finished 3-1 and it could have been more.“That’s the way Madrid win!” one cover celebrated. It could have been different, sure. Barcelona took the lead after three minutes and in the first half at least were nowhere near as bad as the post-mortems suggested. They didn’t so much shoot themselves in the foot as aim a bloody great bazooka at their big toe: Lionel Messi missed a great chance from six yards to put them 2-0 up, Iker Casillas blocking the shot after Luis Suárez’s assist; Madrid’s first goal was a ridiculous penalty; on the second, Pepe headed in all alone while Dani Alves went for a lie-down on the floor below him; and the third was even more ridiculous than the first. It started with a corner – a Barcelona corner – continued with Andrés Iniesta and Javier Mascherano running into each other and ended with the ball in the net. Then there’s the fact that Casillas made a superb save from Jérémy Mathieu that would have made it 2-2. But afterwards Luis Enrique admitted that Madrid had deserved to win. “We played some quality football, especially on the counter, where we looked deadly,” said Madrid’s assistant coach Paul Clement. And at 3-1, the chances kept coming. AS counted eight of them, if a little generously. Barcelona were picked off as they tried, without much conviction, to advance. Every robbery started a run and every run was accompanied by three or four players sprinting forward like a Madridista stampede. Nor though was it just about the counter-attack, which absurdly gets treated like some kind of dirty word in Spain, even though the precision and pace can be exhilarating. And it certainly wasn’t a case of pulling everyone back and waiting for the chance to hit a random long ball and chase it. Madrid’s possession was up to 43%, 10% more than the average against Barcelona over the last few years. If the best player on the pitch might just have been Madrid’s right-back Dani Carvajal, that was because of his attacking as well as his defending. On the other side, Marcelo ran at Barcelona. Toni Kroos and Luka Modric eventually took control, and Karim Benzema, like James Rodríguez and Isco, was superb. This time, it wasn’t about Ronaldo. El País called it total football; there is more variety to Madrid now. And a hell of a lot of goals too. They have scored 28 in six league games, including the only three goals that Barcelona have conceded all season, and let in just four. “Real Madrid have to win playing spectacular football,” Ancelotti had announced when he arrived. Right now, they are. So they should, you might say. After all, this is the most expensive team in history and the quality of the players makes excellence an obligation. If you have Ronaldo and Benzema and James and Kroos and Isco and Modric, you should play well. That is an idea that has, perhaps unsurprisingly, been conveyed at presidential level too: Ancelotti has not always enjoyed the protection or projection some might expect. Far from it. Even at times of success, he has not always been celebrated, both from the inside and the outside. “I have read that we won the Champions League in spite of me; that I don’t have the talent to run this team,” Ancelotti said recently. “I laugh a lot …” Who knows what might have happened had Sergio Ramos not headed a 92nd minute equaliser in Lisbon? There is something in the idea of the primacy of players, of course. During an interview last week, it was put to Álvaro Arbeloa that he might be a coach one day, not least because he described himself as a player who does what the manager wants of him rather than what he feels like doing, because he studies the game carefully, and because he has played under some of the best. So who would his model be? The answer became a discussion of the roots of success in football, one that raised contradictions and questions, in which the answer remains unclear. If there even is an answer. “The thing is I have worked with so many coaches, so many managers who are so different that in the end you think: ‘who do I look to?’,” he said. “They are all superb coaches. And sometimes I think to myself ‘how is it possible that I have worked with Del Bosque, Pellegrini, Mourinho, Benítez, Caparrós, Aragonés, Ancelotti, and they have all won but all with very different methods? And you sometimes think qué coño?, ‘what the hell?’ There is no one way of doing things, there is no secret.” “You can’t say: ‘this is what works’ because something else works too. I look at all those great coaches and sometimes I thought ‘I wouldn’t do it like that’ and then things have worked out brilliantly and you think: ‘cago en la puta, que cabrón, sabe más que yo.’ [Bloody hell, the bastard, he knows more than me.] In the end the conclusion that you sort of come to is that football is about the players. It’s the players. The players need to be good. It is clear that Mourinho is fantastic, that Guardiola is fantastic, but what would happen in a team that was not as outstanding as the ones they had?” Arbeloa talked about teams coming to the Bernabéu and playing well, but then finding it hard to find a way through and into the area. “For us,” he added, “with the beasts that we have up front … well, they’re machines and so we don’t have that problem.” And yet Arbeloa too talked about being well-worked tactically, about unity and about players fulfilling their duty: “If one doesn’t, fine. If two or three don’t, it collapses like a house of cards.” He talked about intensity and motivation, about effort, about being well drilled tactically, about unity, emotional balance and the mechanisms that make a team work; about the need to follow a manager, not go it alone. About the coach getting all that right. Not all managers have. This weekend, Ancelotti highlighted the players after their victory, describing them as showing a professionalism that is “unique in my experience”, but although he underplays it, his own role has been vital too and the players recognise that. Ancelotti was in the press conference after Madrid won the European Cup in Lisbon when a group of players invaded the room, jumped on him and began singing “how could I not love you?” A few months later, Ángel Di María departed and then so did Xabi Alonso, two players that the coach considered vital. Suddenly, all the talk was negative; suddenly it felt like a crisis. Ancelotti appeared undermined and his team weakened. He did not complain; instead, he rebuilt. And he did so as if it was all so normal, taking it in his stride. It looks easy because he makes it look easy but the pressure is intense. Rather than contributing to it, he calms it. Last season he even managed to make the abnormal seem normal, gently swatting away the constant questioning about the rotation in goal. Ancelotti knows that much of the manoeuvring is political; he knows that some reports are far from coincidental. He knows too that managing expectations and egos is delicate, and not just in the dressing room. There’s a patience and a simplicity about him, a surprising lack of ego. “People say I am a club man,” he says. “Well, of course: I work for the club, not the players.” He also sees the game with unusual clarity and a light touch, a flexibility that means that convictions stay the same but systems change. So do players’ roles. He has had to reinvent the team. Sometimes it goes against Ancelotti’s own preferences but he is not just crowbarring players in any old place to get as many stars in the side as he can. Instead, he sees qualities in his players that even his players don’t see. Last season he had to reposition Di María and, after a slow start, it worked brilliantly; this season he has repositioned James and that now looks like it is working too. James could have been just another creative player to float up front but has become a left-sided midfielder instead; but not just a replica of what came before. “James is not Di María” Ancelotti said, and so readjustments were made; to the role and the style. This weekend, without Gareth Bale, the formation changed again. From 4-3-3 to 4-4-2; James now went right. At first, he did not convince – mostly because he seemed unconvinced himself – but it worked. Just like Isco works, and Modric and Kroos. He has made brickies of architects in the words of Roberto Palomar in Marca. In the wake of the departures of Di María and Alonso, Ronaldo said that he was sure that Madrid’s style would have to change and said that if he had been in charge he might have done things differently. He was saying what most were thinking, pessimism clinging to his words. Yet there was a glimmer of optimism too; this problem was in the right man’s hands. What tends to get forgotten is that he also said that he was sure that the new players, “very good players”, would adapt quickly, perform well and maybe even improve the team. Not least because Ancelotti was there to help them do just that. “The míster knows what he is doing. We have to let him work calmly,” Ronaldo said, as if Ancelotti ever does anything else. Talking points Barcelona 22, Sevilla 22, Real Madrid 21, Valencia 20, Atlético 20 … Spain’s top five are now separated by just two points. “It won’t last beyond February. For now they’re just points,” said Diego Simeone. Killjoy. Two goals in the last five minutes left the Sevilla striker Carlos Bacca on his knees, pointing to the skies and praying. They left his team joint top of the table with Barcelona. Denis Suárez had got the equaliser in the 88th minute against Villarreal, then Bacca got the winner in the 93rd. “It’s cruel,” said Marcelino. “We’re building optimism,” Unai Emery said. This is the best ever start for Sevilla. They are the first division’s best side since February. Atlético won again. Another corner, another goal, another victory. They’re just two points off the top and they have played more games against the other five than anyone else, beating Madrid and Sevilla and losing at Valencia. They almost lost out in the other Madrid derby at Getafe when the home side showed a side to them that has rarely been seen before: a dirty side. Alexis was sent off for punching Mario Mandzukic and Juan Rodríguez was lucky not to be sent off too for a stamp. “Yes, I trod on him,” the Getafe player admitted, “but it wasn’t the kind that can break his leg. He pushed me in the move too and he pushed Alexis as well. There are clashes in football. We’re not playing Ludo.” At the full time whistle, Diego Simeone ran down the tunnel clenching his fists. The Getafe manager Cosmin Contra headed down after him and then a security guard turned to follow. Asked if anything happened, Contra said, deadpan: “yes, I grabbed him and we started punching each other …” He paused and added: “No, nothing happened. We didn’t even look at each other.” And now it’s official at last: Peter Lim is the new owner of Valencia. On Sunday he was at the game. Manchester United v Chelsea, that is. He had been at Mestalla the day before and was given a hero’s welcome before his team beat Elche. Two down, one to go. Monday nights are murder. Last Monday, Levante and Córdoba sacked their managers. Real Sociedad still haven’t sacked theirs but some are expecting it tonight. It does look like Jagoba Arrasate is safe for now, though: it looks like they won’t sack him until next week. The fans are getting impatient. Muñquera negra. Results: Celta 3–0 Levante, Almería 1–0 Athletic, Real Madrid 3–1 Barcelona, Valencia 3–1 Elche, Córdoba 1–1 Real Sociedad, Eibar 1–1 Granada, Málaga 4–0 Rayo, Espanyol 0–0 Deportivo, Sevilla 2–1 Villarreal, Getafe 0–1 Atlético

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2008/aug/17/olympics2008.olympicstennis

Sport

2008-08-17T09:30:33.000Z

Peter Nichols

Olympics: Elena Dementieva beats compatriot Dinara Safina in women's singles final

Elena Dementieva may not get the warmest of welcomes when she arrives at the US Open next week, for the new Olympic champion just couldn't help reminding everyone that the Olympic Games was the real deal. "I can't even compare a grand slam to the Olympic Games, it's just so much bigger. This is what I was waiting for. This is what I was working for. This is the biggest moment in my career, my life," she said. It is as you would expect the 26-year-old to react after her three-set victory - 3-6, 7-5, 6-3 - over her compatriot Dinara Safina, but some might say that she would be a better judge when she actually wins a grand slam tournament, or even reaches a final. Dementieva came close at Wimbledon this year, losing in the semi-finals, and was going quite well into the French Open until her progress was blocked by Safina in the quarter-finals. Safina, who seems to have been around for an awful long time for a 22-year-old, met her compatriot three times this summer and won the lot and in the first set at the Olympic Green Tennis Centre looked for all the world that she would win this one too. But in a match where the front of the court played little part, Dementieva, who had won the silver medal at Sydney in 2004, was commendably dogged. She took 66 minutes to win an error-ridden second set, and was helped in the decider by the fact that Safina held her serve only once. Perhaps, the real difference between the two players was that one wanted it more than the other, and if you believe it's the greatest tournament in the history of the world, that helps. The bronze medal went to Vera Zvonareva, who beat China's Li Na 6-0, 7-5. It gave the Russian team a sweep of the medals. Meanwhile, Venus and Serena Williams put their singles disappointment behind them to win the women's doubles with a straight-sets victory over the Spanish duo of Anabel Medina Garrigues and Virginia Ruano Pascual. The defending Olympic champions cruised to victory, winning 6-2, 6-0 in just over an hour. China's Yan Zi and Zheng Jie beat Alona and Kateryna Bondarenko of Ukraine 6-2, 6-2 to win the bronze medal.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/feb/21/coronavirus-air-travel-demand-to-fall-for-first-time-in-11-years

Business

2020-02-21T08:34:40.000Z

Mark Sweney

Coronavirus: air travel demand 'will fall for first time in 11 years'

The spread of the coronavirus will result in the first fall in global air travel in more than a decade, the international airline industry body has predicted. The International Air Transport Association (Iata) warned that falling passenger demand as a result of the outbreak of the Covid-19 virus would cost the airline industry $29.3bn (£23.7bn) in lost revenues this year. UK factory output hits 10-month high – as it happened Read more In its initial assessment of the impact, the organisation said it expected global demand for air travel to fall by 4.7% in 2020, the first overall decline since the global financial crisis in 2008-09. “Airlines are making difficult decisions to cut capacity and in some cases routes. Lower fuel costs will help offset some of the lost revenue,” said Alexandre de Juniac, director general and chief executive of Iata. “This will be a very tough year for airlines.” The vast majority of the financial impact will hit airlines in the Asia Pacific region, where revenues will fall by $27.8bn, with the bulk borne by carriers registered in China. Iata estimates that losses in China’s domestic market will hit $12.8bn. Carriers outside Asia Pacific are forecast to lose about $1.5bn this year, “assuming the loss of demand is limited to markets linked to China”. Sign up to the daily Business Today email or follow Guardian Business on Twitter at @BusinessDesk Iata said: “The sharp downturn in demand as a result of Covid-19 will have a financial impact on airlines – severe for those particularly exposed to the China market. These estimates are based on a scenario where Covid-19 has a similar V-shaped impact on demand as was experienced during Sars. That was characterised by a six-month period with a sharp decline followed by an equally quick recovery.” De Juniac warned that Iata’s assessment was based on the coronavirus public health emergency not spreading beyond China. “If it spreads more widely to Asia Pacific markets then impacts on airlines from other regions would be larger,” he said. Iata said it was “premature” to estimate what the revenue loss would mean for the global profitability of the airline industry. Airlines including Qantas and Air France-KLM have cancelled flights to and from China and have warned of weaker demand for travel in Asia. The Franco-Dutch group Air France-KLM expects the Covid-19 outbreak to wipe between €150 and €200m (£130 and £170m) off its earnings.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/feb/23/daylight-robbery-two-in-five-uk-teachers-work-26-hours-for-free-each-week

Education

2024-02-23T00:01:31.000Z

Richard Adams

‘Daylight robbery’: two in five UK teachers work 26 hours for free each week

Teaching unions have accused ministers of “daylight robbery” after a new survey by the Trades Union Congress revealed that teachers perform the most unpaid overtime of any profession. The TUC survey – published to mark its Work Your Proper Hours Day on Friday – found that two out of five teaching staff in the UK worked 26 hours for free each week, for a combined 5.5m hours a year. Patrick Roach, the general secretary of the NASUWT teaching union, said it was “shameful evidence” that the government was relying on free labour rather than investing in schools and colleges. “The fact that teachers are losing out on average by £15,000 a year in unpaid overtime is nothing less than daylight robbery,” Roach said. Ofsted fuelling ‘football manager culture’ of firing school heads, says report Read more “Teachers are seeing their workloads piled higher and higher, and with cuts to support staff and cuts to other children’s services, teachers are now working around the clock. “Our latest research found that more than half of teachers polled worked over 50 hours a week, with some working more than 70 hours. This is unsustainable and unacceptable. “World-class education cannot be built off the backs of overworked and underpaid teachers and headteachers.” The figures come as the Department for Education in England will miss its deadline for making its submission to the annual pay round, leading to protests by school leaders over the potential delays in reaching a settlement. The TUC survey placed teachers ahead of chief executives, managers and directors for the number of hours they worked. Paul Nowak, the TUC general secretary, said: “Most workers don’t mind putting in extra hours from time to time. But unpaid overtime is out of control for teachers. And nobody should be expected to work without pay for all the hours they do.” Overall, 3.8 million workers in the UK worked unpaid overtime last year, according to the survey, doing more than seven unpaid hours each week. The TUC estimated that was equivalent to £7,200 a year of wages going unpaid. Despite the concerns of the Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, public sector staff were more likely to put in unpaid overtime than their peers in the private sector. The survey found that one in six public sector workers did unpaid overtime in 2023, amounting to £11bn, compared with one in nine in the private sector. The TUC’s campaign aims to encourage workers to take all the breaks they are entitled to, and finish their shifts on time.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/jul/12/story-ivf-five-million-babies

Society

2013-07-12T16:34:20.000Z

Kate Brian

The amazing story of IVF: 35 years and five million babies later

There's an old bell jar that sits on top of a cupboard at a Cambridgeshire fertility clinic where history was made; it was in a dish inside this jar that the world's first IVF baby spent the hours after her conception. With the success of in vitro fertilisation (IVF), scientist Robert Edwards and his gynaecologist colleague Patrick Steptoe had changed the future for infertile couples around the world. Louise Brown, that first IVF baby, is 35 this month and what was then a revolutionary scientific advance has become a routine medical treatment. More than five million IVF babies have been born, and it's easy to forget quite how controversial the idea of fertilising human eggs in a laboratory was at the time of Louise's birth. "It was viewed with absolute suspicion," says Professor Peter Braude, head of the Department of Women's Heath at King's College London. "If you talk to people today about human reproductive cloning, the feeling you get that it is playing God is just how it was in 1978 with IVF." Steptoe and Edwards started to work together in the 1960s. Scientists had been experimenting with fertilising animal eggs outside the body, but few believed it would ever be possible to create human embryos this way. Steptoe and Edwards thought that they could help couples with fertility problems if they could take eggs directly from the ovaries and return them to the womb once they had been fertilised. Many, even within the scientific community, felt that their research using human eggs and sperm was unethical and immoral. They were refused a grant by the Medical Research Council, but set up base in Oldham, where they had no shortage of infertile women volunteering for the experimental treatment. Grace MacDonald, whose son Alastair was the world's second IVF baby, had read an article in the Lancet about the research Steptoe and Edwards were doing, and her overwhelming desire for a child led her to volunteer. "It was all very new so when we started in Oldham we were sworn to secrecy – I think for our own protection," she explains. "There had been so much controversy. I never looked on going there as being anything to do with courage though, it was just determination." MacDonald discovered she was pregnant after her second attempt at IVF, and gave birth to Alastair, the first IVF boy to be born, in January 1979. Across the world, other scientists were attempting to replicate the British achievement, and Australia's first success came in 1980. A year later, the first IVF baby in the US was born, but the total number of children across the world conceived using the process still only stood at 15. Steptoe and Edwards had originally hoped to carry on their work within the NHS, but it was clear that there was no appetite for this so they eventually set up their own private clinic at Bourn, just outside Cambridge. Treatment was expensive with each cycle of IVF costing £3,000, at a time when the average annual income was around £6,000. Fertility treatment was restricted to those who could pay, and were willing to undergo this radical new technique. The media fascination with IVF was intense, and the literature given to patients included advice about publicity; women were warned not to talk to the media, to "beware of telephone enquiries" and to avoid mentioning the names of any other women they'd met at the clinic. Many people, even within the medical profession, knew little about the treatment, as Ro Facer, who went on to have three children using IVF, discovered. She had been trying to conceive for some years when she heard Steptoe interviewed on the radio. "I'd never heard of IVF, I'd never heard of Louise Brown, and when I went to my doctor, she had never heard of IVF either so I had to do the research myself," she explains. "Eventually I got a referral. We saw Patrick Steptoe and I felt in very safe and caring hands. It didn't ever feel as if you were being taken advantage of or experimented on." With success rates in the early years averaging 12%, most women who went to Steptoe and Edwards did not end up with a baby, but that didn't deter couples from around the world joining the waiting list. Lucy Daniel Raby had eight cycles of treatment in the 1980s before she finally got pregnant with her daughter Izzy. "It was all new and a bit sci-fi," she says. "We were the early pioneers, and part of this exciting experimental process. I didn't have a second thought about it once I knew it was the only way I could get pregnant. We were lucky that it was available." Gynaecologist Dr Thomas Mathews moved down from Scotland to learn about IVF from Steptoe and Edwards and he says patients were often very secretive about the fact that they were trying IVF, not telling their friends or families what they were doing. "The term test-tube baby had a stigma attached to it and it wasn't seen as natural," he explains. "I was passionate about it, but many people didn't understand." The embryos created during IVF are stored in small dishes rather than test tubes, but the term "test-tube baby" has stuck and, as Mathews suggests, does have negative connotations. There were wild rumours about what went on inside the clinic and the hostility and suspicion took a while to die down, as Vivien Collins discovered when she went to work for Steptoe and Edwards as a receptionist in the 1980s. "It was all very new and there were people who were critical. I had somebody who was disgusted that I worked at what she called a test centre where they made babies." IVF was far more demanding for patients than it is today. Women were required to spend two to three weeks as inpatients, staying in Portakabins in the grounds of their clinic. They had to collect all their urine during treatment as this was the only way doctors could monitor their hormone levels. If they weren't at the clinic, this meant carrying large plastic containers around with them at all times, and inpatients had to give samples every three hours, even during the night, as Daniel Raby recalls. "We were in beds in ranks, six of us in each of the Portakabins. They'd come round and wake us up in the middle of the night and we'd all troop off and we had to wee in a bottle so they could monitor our hormones. It did help us all to bond with one another." When these checks showed the hormone surge that indicated ovulation, the eggs had to be collected exactly 26 hours later. This meant that the medical team would often have to get up in the middle of the night to carry out operations to harvest women's eggs. It was felt that gravity might increase the chances of embryos implanting, so women were required to crouch forward with their bottoms in the air for an hour or two after embryos had been transferred. Despite all this, former patient Ro Facer says that it was a very supportive environment, which made the emotional strain of infertility and treatment more bearable. "The collaborative, team atmosphere helped with the stress and pressure," she explains. "We felt that we were all in it together, the staff and the patients." Today, IVF is a far more streamlined process. Women are treated as day patients, and there are no three-hourly urine collections, no hours of crouching after egg collection. Although moral and ethical questions still surround new advances, for the most part it has become an everyday treatment. Freezing allows spare embryos to be stored for future use and the advent of intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), where sperm are injected directly into the egg, has meant that male fertility problems can be treated too. Donor eggs, sperm and embryos can all be used to help couples with more complex fertility problems, and the multiple birth rate, which has been the biggest health risk from IVF, is coming down. The advances continue. This week it was reported that the first IVF baby to be screened using a procedure that can read every letter of the human genome had been born in the US. The birth of Connor Levy in Philadephia in May suggests next-generation sequencing (NGS), which was developed to read whole genomes quickly and cheaply, is poised to transform the selection of embryos in IVF clinics. In another significant development, it was reported this week that the cost of IVF could be cut dramatically from thousands of pounds to around £170 in what could mark the start of a "new era" in IVF. Fertility doctors from Belgium told a London conference that 12 children had already been born through the technique, which replaces expensive medical equipment with "kitchen cupboard" ingredients, like bicarbonate of soda and citric acid, with a success rate similar to conventional IVF. In the 35 years since Louise Brown's birth, IVF has become a global money-making business producing very healthy profits, and there are hundreds of centres offering treatment around the world. Labour peer Lord Winston, who was head of the IVF unit at Hammersmith, has been highly critical of the charges patients face in many clinics. "The biggest change has been the increasingly commercial market which has driven IVF," he says. "I think that the inequalities in treatment are scandalous, and I do feel very angry that the NHS has used IVF as a moneyspinner." Susan Seenan is deputy chief executive of Infertility Network UK, a charity that supports patients and campaigns for changes to the postcode lottery for NHS treatment. "Infertility is a devastating medical condition, and the emotional impact is exacerbated when people cannot access treatment," she says. "Thirty-five years after IVF started in the UK, we have a situation where your chances of having NHS-funded fertility treatment depend entirely on where you live, leaving many people unable to get the help that they need." Despite that, the most recent figures show an annual IVF birth rate of more than 17,000 babies in the UK, and average success rates have risen to around 25%. Professor Braude worries that women may put too much faith in fertility treatment, believing that it can override the biological clock. "There is a huge expectation, and people think that if they stave off motherhood for whatever reason then IVF will be their salvation, but that's not true. If one is realistic, it isn't that successful." So where will we be in another 35 years? Yacoub Khalaf, director of the IVF unit at Guy's and St Thomas's, suggests that ongoing stem cell research is the area to watch. "IVF has evolved significantly, but I think it is almost near the limits of biology now unless we find a way of creating eggs," he explains. "We do see patients who are struggling at 40 to 45, and the only thing which would change the face of treatment would be if we could make gametes from stem cells; if we could make sperm from men's skin cells, or eggs from women's hair cells." If that all sounds rather "brave new world", it is worth remembering that's just what many people thought about IVF itself 35 years ago. Whatever the future holds, it is clear that Steptoe and Edwards, who are now both dead, have left an extraordinary legacy. Mike Macnamee worked with them in the early days and is now chief executive at Bourn Hall. "They inspired incredible loyalty, but what came through most from both of them was that they understood the pain of infertility," he explains. "We forget that until Louise was born there was no hope for many couples." Louise Brown may have grown up in the media spotlight, but is keen to stress that today she leads an ordinary life. She is married and has a son, Cameron, who was conceived naturally. She says she tries not to think too much about being the first IVF baby, which is to her "just a normal thing because I have never known anything else". However, she is clearly proud of what Steptoe and Edwards achieved. "They helped thousands of people, people they hadn't even ever met, to have babies," she says. "Without them, these children wouldn't have been born." Louise's own birth was the landmark that changed the face of reproductive medicine, but it was the tenacity of Steptoe and Edwards, and the courage of their early patients, that so many parents today have to thank for their families.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/aug/13/chelsea-liverpool-premier-league-match-report

Football

2023-08-13T17:53:39.000Z

Jacob Steinberg

New-look Chelsea and Liverpool share spoils after Disasi equaliser for Blues

After a nervous start to Mauricio Pochettino’s introduction to life at Stamford Bridge, Chelsea ended it looking fitter and more coherent than an inconsistent Liverpool. The positives outweighed the negatives for Pochettino, even if he still has to address familiar failings in attack, and once the dust settled it was hard not to feel that the bigger concerns belonged to Jürgen Klopp. Chelsea agree £115m British record deal to sign Moisés Caicedo from Brighton Read more Beyond Mohamed Salah’s angry reaction to being taken off after an ineffective second-half display, what really hit home was how quickly Liverpool fizzled out after dominating the first 25 minutes. The system unravelled and, while Trent Alexander-Arnold and Alexis Mac Allister caught the eye with their passing from deep, it was easy to see why Klopp wants Moisés Caicedo so badly. Liverpool still lack stability in midfield, threatening their hopes of a title challenge, and there is no doubt that Caicedo would make them a far more rounded outfit. Unfortunately for Klopp, of course, the expectation is that the Brighton midfielder will join Chelsea for £115m. They are set to break the British transfer record for the second time in six months, which perhaps explains why Pochettino keeps talking about needing to win now, and Caicedo will probably be an excellent partner for Enzo Fernández in midfield. Fernández impressed as this game wore on, offering the kind of classy touches that ought to come naturally to £106.8m midfielders, though he was helped by a wholehearted display from Conor Gallagher. Chelsea, who could also beat Liverpool to Southampton’s Roméo Lavia, lacked that commitment last season. This is a fresh start, although their failure to open their campaign with a win was broadly down to their lack of ruthlessness in the final third. Christopher Nkunku was missed after having knee surgery and while Chelsea responded well to Luis Díaz’s opener, levelling through Axel Disasi’s debut goal, the fact remains that Pochettino could do with adding more firepower to his squad. Nicolas Jackson and Mykhailo Mudryk spurning chances built the case for another striker to come in before the transfer window shuts. Luis Díaz slides in to give Liverpool the early lead at Chelsea. Photograph: Javier García/Shutterstock By the same token it must be pointed out that Jackson appears to have the tools to succeed in the Premier League. The former Villarreal striker was a handful throughout, his touch and mobility repeatedly troubling Virgil van Dijk and Ibrahima Konaté, while Pochettino will also take encouragement from how many problems Raheem Sterling gave Andy Robertson. Sterling’s combinations with Chelsea’s new captain, Reece James, were a constant feature and Ben Chilwell also impressed at left wing. Equally, though, it was not as if Liverpool were constantly outplayed. They were quick to impose themselves, Cody Gakpo breaking through the lines and Salah curling against the bar in the 12th minute, and the high press functioned well at first. Dominik Szoboszlai worked hard to retrieve possession on his debut and Klopp’s decision to continue with Alexander-Arnold as an auxiliary midfielder was highly effective when the visitors had the ball. Quick Guide How do I sign up for sport breaking news alerts? Show Having spent pre-season experimenting with his new squad, there was a new ploy from Pochettino. What looked like a back three on paper turned out to be a back four, with James at right-back, Disasi and Thiago Silva in the centre and Levi Colwill making his debut at left-back, and Chelsea needed a while to settle. They had four debutants on the pitch after a summer that has so far seen 12 players leave and it was worth remembering that he is doing so at a club who remain without a shirt sponsor. But Liverpool are also rebuilding. With Jordan Henderson, Naby Keïta, James Milner, Fabinho and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain gone, Gakpo and Szoboszlai pushed high and the use of Mac Allister at the base of midfield had mixed results. Sign up to Football Daily Free daily newsletter Kick off your evenings with the Guardian's take on the world of football Enter your email address Sign up Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Mac Allister was a No 6 wearing the No 10 shirt. The former Brighton midfielder demanded the ball on his debut, pleasing Klopp, and was involved when Liverpool went ahead in the 18th minute. The move began with Alisson playing out from the back and the danger increased when Mac Allister sprayed a piercing ball to Salah. Free to run at Colwill, Salah pushed the youngster back and carved Chelsea apart with a curving ball for Díaz to run off Disasi and beat Robert Sánchez. Chelsea probably would have collapsed last season. Wesley Fofana is out for the season and Sánchez, a £25m summer signing from Brighton, was not expected to be in goal before Real Madrid decided to sign Kepa Arrizabalaga on loan. Chelsea and Liverpool highlight increasing need for Caicedo in chaotic clash Jonathan Wilson Read more Pochettino demands steel, though. Chelsea benefited from some fortune, not least when Liverpool were prevented from going 2-0 up when Salah was judged offside after being released by Alexander-Arnold and firing home. Yet Disasi was strong and Jackson was tenacious. Chelsea stirred, Sterling wriggling through on the right and winning a corner. Liverpool could not clear their lines and they cracked under sustained aerial pressure, Chilwell guiding a header back into the area and Disasi punishing sleepy defending from Alexander-Arnold by poking the loose ball beyond Alisson. Liverpool’s frailties grew. Alexander-Arnold’s defensive deficiencies were exposed when Fernández released Chilwell, who was denied a goal by a tight offside call. Short of protection, Mac Allister began to struggle. Liverpool became frayed and, as their creative threat dimmed, there was the spectacle of Salah chucking his wristbands to the turf after being withdrawn. Darwin Núñez threatened after coming off the bench, but Chelsea finished well. Chilwell, Jackson and Mudryk all went close, pleasing Pochettino. He will be even more optimistic once Caicedo arrives.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2014/mar/06/italy-uruguay-costa-rica-england-rivals-world-cup

Football

2014-03-06T15:10:51.000Z

Sid Lowe

Italy, Uruguay and Costa Rica: what England have to fear at the World Cup

ItalyOverall performance Overrun. Although Spain created few chances in the first half, once David Silva came on the dominance of possession brought chances. Italy had no way of stopping the movement of Pedro, Andrés Iniesta and Silva. Especially vulnerable down the left with space created in the centre when defenders pulled out to cover. Tactics With Andrea Pirlo left on the bench and Daniele De Rossi left out of the squad, Italy played 4-3-3 but with quite a straight, defensive midfield three and the wide forwards rarely that close to Dani Osvaldo. "If we only play on the break they will beat us for sure," the manager Cesare Prandelli said, but the few chances they had were, indeed, on the break. Best player Gabriel Paletta had a reasonably promising debut at centre-back even though he was occasionally left exposed and often pulled across. It's tempting to point at Pirlo, if only for one pass to Osvaldo. Could not control the midfield but at least sought to produce something. Room for improvement Control, creativity, support for the striker, the ability to prevent skilful opposition cutting right to the heart of their defence … Italy have much to improve. But then, they often do, and they still have a habit of going a long way. England need to be wary of … Why always him? Perhaps because there's no one else, unless Giuseppe Rossi makes it. Who to be wary of? The men who weren't there on Wednesday. It is hard to imagine that Italy will go into the World Cup without De Rossi and Mario Balotelli playing key roles. Besides, Prandelli says Balotelli has been an angel with the Azzurri. Sid Lowe Uruguay Overall performance To borrow a phrase from the manager, Oscar Tabárez, Uruguay were "rubbish" in the first half. They were sloppy in possession while they afforded Austria too much space. They conceded a bad goal to Marc Janko, after an error from the right-back Maxi Pereira and, were it not for the goalkeeper Fernando Muslera, the damage could have been worse. Uruguay did flicker in front of goal – the substitute José Giménez should have scored from close range in the 31st minute – but they were a team transformed after the interval. They came to dominate the game, with Luis Suárez, inevitably, to the fore. They had far greater offensive cohesion and deserved the equaliser, which followed wonderful work from the right-sided attacker Christian Stuani and was tapped home on the line by the substitute, Álvaro Pereira. Stuani might have had a late penalty for a trip by Markus Suttner. "The second half was the team that I wanted to see," Tabárez said. Tactics Tabárez did not risk Edinson Cavani in Klagenfurt as the Paris Saint-Germain striker had only just recovered from a thigh problem and so he started, instead, with Diego Forlán up alongside Suárez in a 4‑4‑2 formation. Diego Pérez and Egidio Arévalo Ríos sat in front of the defence, with the former looking to man-mark David Alaba, Austria's best player. Ríos was rarely more than 10 or 15 yards in front of his centre-halves. Tabárez switched to a 4‑1‑4‑1 formation in the second-half, swapping Pérez for Walter Gargano and Forlán for Southampton's Gastón Ramírez. Gargano and Ramírez worked in front of Ríos, with Ramírez the more forward-thinking of the pair. Tabárez's other changes were broadly like-for-like. He lost the captain and centre-back Diego Lugano to a knee injury on 30 minutes and replaced him with Giménez. Best player This will hardly come as an earth-shattering revelation but the bloke in the No9 shirt looked useful. Suárez, on the occasion of his 77th cap, did everything but add to his national-team record goals tally of 39. He rattled the crossbar with a vicious 30-yard free-kick on 22 minutes that had Robert Almer beaten while he was denied one-on-one by the goalkeeper in the second half and narrowly failed to bend another free-kick back inside the near post. Frustrated by repeated fouls in the first half, he worried Austria with his direct running after the break. Room for improvement When the tide was against them in the first half and Austria threw men forward, Uruguay's central defenders looked vulnerable to pace. Lugano and Diego Godín rely on their reading of the game and their defensive midfielders compressing the space between the lines but Uruguay's World Cup opponents will surely attempt to expose the veteran pair, who have 168 caps between them. Uruguay were not immune to wobbles at the back in the second half, even when they were on top. England need to be wary of … Uruguay's spirit is indefatigable. They never know when they are beaten and they will fight until the very last. This squad has been together for years and the camaraderie was clear as they bear-hugged and said their goodbyes at Vienna airport, having connected from Klagenfurt on Thursday morning, before going their separate ways. Uruguay have lost only once this season, to Ecuador, and they rallied after the substandard first half and a dressing-room inquest led by Tabárez. On the balance of the play, a winning goal would not have flattered them. David Hytner in Klagenfurt Costa Rica Overall performance Costa Rica did the necessary – but not much more – to beat Paraguay 2-1 in San José, with the players who had missed January's friendly back in the squad. The usual suspects Joel Campbell and Álvaro Saborío scored the goals Tactics Jorge Luis Pinto once again used his favourite formation – 5‑4‑1 – but when the team goes on the attack the basic formation shifts to a 3‑4‑3, because the defensive wingers join the midfield and the central striker gets support of two additional midfielders. Best player Arsenal's Joel Campbell – on loan at Olympiakos – had a very good game in San José and not just for the great goal he scored. The striker was dominating proceedings and shielded the ball impressively as his good technique made it almost impossible for the defender to take the ball off his feet. Room for improvement Costa Rica qualified for the World Cup mainly because of their parsimonious defence. On Wednesday it again looked solid but there was a problem with set pieces and the goal they conceded came from a corner. The central midfield can also lack a bit of imagination. England need to be wary of … Costa Rica's attack will cause problems, whoever is playing in defence for Roy Hodgson. In Bryan Ruiz, Campbell, and Saborío they have players who can provide a spark to trouble the best teams in the world. Leonardo Pandolfo in San José

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/oct/24/la-traviata-review-london-coliseum-eno

Music

2023-10-24T11:45:55.000Z

Tim Ashley

La Traviata review – radical revival powered by outstanding performers

First seen in Graz in 2011 and taken into English National Opera’s repertory two years later, Peter Konwitschny’s production of Verdi’s La Traviata returns to the Coliseum for its second revival after what seems like an overlong absence. The company attempted to replace it in 2018 with a much disliked effort by its then artistic director Daniel Kramer, which was never seen again after its initial run. As with Jonathan Miller’s production of Rigoletto, similarly restored after a misguided decision to scrap it, ENO has wisely reverted to its earlier, finer achievement. Konwitschny, who first came to prominence at the Berliner Ensemble in the 1970s, has long been one of European music theatre’s great iconoclasts, and his Traviata, painstakingly revived by Ruth Knight, is a radical piece of work, intelligent and hard-hitting in equal measure. Konwitschny pares the opera down to its absolute essence, cutting repeats and cabalettas, and trimming out the lengthy divertissement at Flora’s party. There’s no interval (which means the gathering tensions reach almost excruciating levels at times), and the drama plays itself out in 1950s dress against a simple set of multiple red curtains that successively open on new emotional worlds until death becomes an inevitability and the final curtain is black. Excruciating tension … La Traviata at London Coliseum. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian Nicole Chevalier’s Violetta is the victim, tellingly, not only of the bourgeois codes of respectability embodied in Roland Wood’s bullying Germont, but also of the voyeuristic cruelty of her demimonde cronies, who ridicule her relationship with Jose Simerilla Romero’s bookish Alfredo from the outset: we really end up sharing Konwitschny’s utter contempt for this abominable crew by the end. There are lapses: the suggestion that Violetta contemplates suicide at one point during her duet with Germont has no foundation in text or score; and Konwitschny’s fondness, here as elsewhere, for despatching his cast into the auditorium on occasion, causes inevitable problems with balance. But this remains, nevertheless, a staging of considerable power. There are some wonderful performances, too. A fine vocal actor, who compensates for a habit of sometimes approaching high notes from below with singing of considerable dramatic immediacy, Chevalier pushes herself to her limits to convey Violetta’s fluctuations between love and despair: the brief but cruel elation occasioned by Alfredo’s return in the final scene is heartbreakingly done. Simerilla Romero sounds handsome and ardent, his dynamic shading particularly beautiful, while Wood is suitably imperious, admirably capturing the physical and emotional violence that lurks, in Konwitschny’s view, behind Germont’s moral rigidity. The opera is greatly conducted by Richard Farnes, who digs deep into its emotional world and whose understanding of its dramatic pace is matched by few. Playing and choral singing are both simply outstanding: it is genuinely tragic that ENO’s excellent orchestra and chorus face cuts and job losses in the near future. At London Coliseum until 12 November

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2018/apr/24/sydneys-break-room-is-smashing-stuff-all-its-cracked-up-to-be

Culture

2018-04-23T18:00:10.000Z

Stephanie Convery

Sydney's break room: is smashing stuff all it's cracked up to be?

Is there an office worker alive who hasn’t ever wanted to let fly at the jamming, endlessly whirring printer with a blunt object? Or thought taking a baseball bat to their computer monitor would soothe the turmoil in their soul? Hoping to fulfil these everyday daydreams of violence as catharsis is Smash Brothers, Sydney’s first break room: not the tea and biscuits type of establishment but a place where you can pay money to smash stuff. They advertise it as a stress reliever; a safe space to blow off some steam without anyone getting hurt. That china plate? Fling it against the wall. The beer bottle? A steel baseball bat will go straight through it. I visit the Kogarah premises on Friday night, at the end of a long and hectic week, to see if breaking stuff is really all it’s cracked up to be. The audacity of anger Chelsea Watego Read more The business had its genesis in a conversation over chicken schnitzel between a pair of entrepreneurial workmates, Johnny Li and Russell Dunne. Li had worked in Hong Kong, when break rooms were becoming a phenomenon across Asia. While a handful have since popped up in Australia there were none in Sydney, and the pair felt like it was the kind of thing this city should have. “I think in Sydney, especially, with the price rises and the interest rates, people losing their jobs – there’s just a lot happening in the world that’s affected [people’s] emotions,” says Li. For breakables, they collect bits and pieces from friends and family, and have a steady supply of beer and wine bottles from a local restaurant. Searches on Gumtree and eBay yield bigger items such as office printers and fridges. They kit me out in a pair of overalls, gloves and a safety mask and set me up in the “printer room” with a baseball bat and a crate of breakables. I choose some appropriate smash music (an old favourite, March of the Pigs by Nine Inch Nails) and think about all the things that have got up my nose recently. I think first about the usual frustrating miscommunications with friends and colleagues, how the neighbours watch loud TV with their windows wide open, and how annoying it is that my computer always takes 10 minutes to boot up. But that quickly gives way to deeper anger. Charlotte Wood: We’re told female anger is finding its moment. But I can’t trust it Read more I think about #MeToo and how so many women are made to feel unsafe in their own workplaces. I think about my friend and neighbour whose sister was the victim of a horrible random violent street attack. I think about the time I was groped by a stranger on the tram, and the two men who stood way, way too close to me on the train that very evening when there were plenty of seats available. I think about how many people take advantage of public space to invade the personal in ways that range from subtle to brutal. I think about other kinds of injustices too: how we’re systematically choking the planet with plastic, not to mention cooking the oceans, and all anyone can cite by way of a solution is to point to failing recycling schemes or inadequate government Band-Aid schemes. I’ve always believed that anger is more productive than, say, grief. It is, if nothing else, a propulsive force that can power all kinds of activities. But what do you do if you can’t find something to harness it to? Once, when I was going through a bad breakup, my housemate suggested I take a piece of kitchen crockery into the street and smash it. We chose a particularly ugly mug and I flung it as hard as I could against the bitumen. It was an experience somewhat befitting the relationship: what I had expected to be satisfyingly explosive was in fact a muted disappointment. The mug bounced, the handle broke, but otherwise it remained stubbornly intact. Catharsis, I learned then, is somewhat dependent on consequence. In the smash room, though, everything shatters – fragments of porcelain and glass explode across the room. Beer bottles are the most satisfying, bursting apart instantly. I throw some mugs and plates into the air and swing at them with the steel baseball bat. If I miss, they smash when they hit the wall or the concrete floor. The office printer in the corner – which already bears a number of dents and is trailing damaged pieces of plastic and metal – is less immediately satisfying, requiring much more by way of brute force to see any noticeable impact. But by the end of 10 minutes, I am sweaty and elated, and surprised by how enjoyable the experience is. Most people come in stressed about work, says Li. “Surprisingly, the guys don’t hit as hard as the women.” “We have more things to be angry about,” I say. Thinking about it afterwards, it’s pretty clear to me that breaking stuff won’t solve anyone’s problems. It won’t remove life’s burdens from anyone’s shoulders, and we shouldn’t expect it to. But taking the edge off anger in a safe and controlled environment can’t possibly be a bad thing – and it might just help you take on the world with a slightly clearer head.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2012/jul/25/my-favourite-hitchcock-rear-window

Film

2012-07-25T08:40:01.000Z

Killian Fox

My favourite Hitchcock: Rear Window

The first time I watched Rear Window, I was 14 or 15 and living in a remote part of Ireland. There was a mile and several hills between us and our nearest neighbours, so the concept of looking out the window and being able to closely survey the lives of an entire community was alien to me, and totally fascinating. I was nurturing an ambition to visit New York at the time and Rear Window, more than any other film I'd seen, gave me a powerful sense of that city's atmosphere: noisy, breathless, intoxicating – even though the whole thing was filmed inside a Hollywood studio. It's a sweltering New York summer and James Stewart, playing a restless magazine photographer, is cooped up in his West Village apartment with his leg in a cast. The humid air is filled with languorous music: versions of hits by Dean Martin and Nat King Cole, fragments of Bernstein. Everyday domestic dramas unfold in the box-like living spaces across the courtyard and Stewart is their captive audience. Two details I vividly remember from that first viewing: the middle-aged couple sleeping outside on their balcony and frantically trying to save their mattress when it starts pouring rain; and the tip of Lars Thorwald's cigar glowing red in the darkness of his living room after the neighbours' dog is found strangled in the garden. When I watched Rear Window again at university, I was able to appreciate what the film was saying about the cinema-going experience – of sitting in a dark room and gazing into other people's private lives. "We've become a nation of peeping toms," complains Thelma Ritter, Stewart's nurse and the film's ostensible voice of sanity, when she sees her patient glued to the window in the opening scenes. But before long she's just as transfixed as he is. If the film was critical of voyeuristic behaviour, Stewart and his co-conspirators would be proved wrong in their suspicions of Lars Thorwald at the climax, after they'd blundered into his life and destroyed his reputation. But this is Hitchcock, connoisseur of the perverse, and the film ended up saying the opposite of what I thought it should. Voyeurism has its rewards; keep a close eye on your neighbours and you might just root out a murderer. Watching Rear Window recently, I realised Stewart's voyeurism yielded another reward. What stood out for me this time was the film's panoramic view of romantic attachment and its pitfalls. What Stewart is really observing, in his multi-channel display of neighbourhood life, is marriage in its various stages and possibilities: the excited newlyweds pulling down the blinds in their new apartment; the bickering older couple who can no longer conceal their loathing for one another. Stewart, of course, is in the rather unlikely position of being hotly pursued by Grace Kelly and is – even more implausibly, though the screenplay does a good job of making us believe it – dubious about the merits of shacking up with her. He is the rugged, nomadic type who views marriage as an extension of the cast on his leg; she is a Park Avenue socialite who seems ill-adapted to the one-suitcase life of adventure. It's only by confronting the worst-case scenario of married life – uxoricide, followed by the distribution of spousal body parts up and down the East River – that Stewart can reconcile himself to the idea of settling down. Marrying Grace Kelly might be a drag but it couldn't possibly be as bad as that. What's extraordinary, for a film that works on these different levels, is that it also manages to be a riveting thriller. The murder scene, which you can only appreciate as such on a second viewing, is a masterpiece of suggestion and ellipsis. In contrast to the in-your-face killings in Hitchcock's Psycho, six years later, this murder happens out of sight, behind lowered blinds. The scream almost goes unnoticed in the New York night and in the bloody aftermath not a drop of blood is seen. The rain falls, Thorwald shuttles in and out of his apartment carrying his silver-coloured salesman's suitcase and we are left to imagine what, exactly, it contains. Then there is the scene of perfect suspense when Kelly's character steals into Thorwald's apartment while he's momentarily out. Powerless to intercede, Stewart can only look on with mounting anxiety and implore her in a strangled whisper to "Get out of there", like a jumpy audience member in a horror film, when he knows that the murderer will be returning any second. Hitchcock made a career out of indulging our voyeuristic tendencies and he understood, better than any other film-maker, how to excite them. I don't think he ever did it more skilfully, or with more gleeful self-awareness, than in Rear Window. I've been keeping a close eye on my neighbours ever since.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/15/narendra-modi-bjp-given-570m-under-scheme-allowing-anonymous-donations

World news

2024-03-15T13:16:54.000Z

Hannah Ellis-Petersen

Narendra Modi’s BJP given £570m under scheme allowing anonymous donations

India’s election commission has published details of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of political donations, exposing how much prime minister Narendra Modi’s party benefited from a controversial financing scheme. According to the data that was released, Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) received more than 60bn rupees (£570m) in donations through a scheme known as electoral bonds, which the Modi government introduced in 2017. Last month, the supreme court struck down electoral bonds as unconstitutional, stating that they could lead to a “quid pro quo” arrangement between donors and political parties. The judges ruled that the State Bank of India (SBI) must make public the details of the donors who had bought the bonds. BJP win in India’s 2024 general election ‘almost an inevitability’ Read more Electoral bonds faced fierce criticism over their lack of transparency as they allowed corporations and individuals to make anonymous donations to political parties by buying certificates from the SBI. The data, going back to 2019, confirmed the immense scale of the BJP’s financial advantage over other parties just as the country heads into an election, likely to be held next month, in which Modi and his BJP government are widely expected to win a third term in power. The amount donated to the BJP was far higher than that given to any other political party, accounting for more than 54% of all bonds. The main national opposition party, Indian National Congress, received just 14bn rupees through the same scheme. The supreme court verdict was seen as a blow to the BJP, which was widely known to have reaped huge benefits from electoral bonds. The details of the bonds released on Thursday revealed that several of the biggest bond donors are under investigation by India’s tax authorities. The lottery company Future Gaming and Hotel Services, which has been under investigation for money laundering since 2019, emerged as one of the biggest buyers of bonds. The second largest electoral bonds donor, Megha Engineering, is also under investigation by the authorities, as is the Vedanta Group, which emerged as the fifth largest buyer. However, the data release still does not map electoral bond buyers to recipients, leaving it unclear which individual and corporate donors were funding which parties.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/mar/10/featuresreviews.guardianreview11

Books

2007-03-10T23:59:21.000Z

Jonathan Bate

Review: Collected Poems by Sara Coleridge

Collected Poems by Sara Coleridge, edited by Peter Swaab 144pp, Carcanet, £14.95 Martin Amis has recently opined that it is far more common for the sons of bus drivers to follow their fathers into the trade than it is for the sons of writers. For Kingsley Amis to have become the most admired novelist of his generation and Martin of his is, I think, without precedent in the English language. The only genuine parallel of which I am aware is Alexandre Dumas père and fils in 19th-century France. The more common occurrence is for the son either to become the pious custodian of the father's literary legacy (Hallam Tennyson) or to fail miserably in his literary aspirations and become an alcohol- or opium-soaked wreck (Hartley Coleridge). Daughters have fared rather better: think of Mary Shelley. Sara Coleridge has hitherto been regarded as a custodian of the legacy. Coleridge's youngest child and only daughter, she inherited his passion for languages and literature, philosophy and theology. After her father's death, she laboured to put his chaotic papers in order. Most notably, in 1847 she published a new edition of his critical manifesto Biographia Literaria, with an extended introduction and copious annotation. As collaborator in her task, she had first her husband (who was also her cousin), Henry Nelson Coleridge, and then, after his death, her brother Derwent. Her work on her late father's unfinished literary business was all the more impressive given that her own health was always fragile. She suffered repeatedly from miscarriages and the death of children, and she increasingly came to rely on opium. She died before turning 50. That she wrote original poetry of her own has scarcely been noticed. There has been an enormous revival of academic interest in Victorian women's poetry in the past 20 or 30 years, but most of the new anthologies have passed Sara by, or included only two or three poems. Yet a considerable body of her work survives in manuscript form, mostly in the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center in Texas. Peter Swaab is the first scholar to work in detail on these manuscripts and he has performed a great service in bringing a wide range of her poems into print for the first time. The inevitable question is: are they of more than academic interest? How many of these poems can be read for pleasure by the lover of Samuel Taylor Coleridge or Christina Rossetti rather than merely for study by the student enrolled on a course in Victorian women of letters? Swaab takes a high-risk strategy, beginning his introduction with three stanzas beneath the unpromising title "Doggrel Charm: to a little lump of malignity, on being medically assured that it was not a fresh growth, but an old growth splitting." He compares it to Harold Pinter's poetic address to his cancer cells, published in this paper a few years ago. There is, I suppose, ingenuity and no little bravery in the act of making poetry out of malignant dermatology, but Swaab does not fully persuade me that it rises above doggerel: "Split away, split away, split away, split! / Plague of my life, delay pretermit! / Rapidly, rapidly, rapidly go! / Haste ye to mitigate trouble and woe!" Many of the poems are intimately linked to Sara's frail health. They are characterised by a mixture of resigned piety that is typical of the age (God's will be done) and grim humour that is more engaging to the modern reader. During her lifetime, Sara published Pretty Lessons in Verse for Good Children, which went through five editions - better sales than any of her father's works - and a fairy story with interspersed lyric sequences called Phantasmion. A high proportion of her poems are aimed at "juvenile readers". I can report that my six-year-old daughter liked the sounds that some of them make - the rhymes especially - but was not wild about the sense. However, as Swaab shrewdly remarks in his introduction, "songs of innocence may well not be songs by innocence, and they may not be meant exhaustively for innocents." The Poppies blooming all around My Herbert loves to see; Some pearly white, some dark as night, Some red as cramasie: He loves their colours fresh and fine, As fair as fair may be; But little does my darling know How good they are to me. Coming from the pen of an opium addict, this raises a wry smile. The least successful poems are those that attempt to imitate Wordsworth and Coleridge. So, for instance, there is a catchily entitled "Epistle from Sara to her sister Mary whom she has never yet seen, her 'Yarrow Unvisited'" (Mary was Derwent Coleridge's fiancée, "Yarrow Unvisited" a famous poem by Wordsworth). This is a reflection on memory and childhood, stuffed with phrases nicked from the poetic coffers of Sara's dad and his best mate William - a celandine, a lime-tree bower, "Greta's frozen stream" and so on. The critic Harold Bloom famously read the Romantic poets in terms of "the anxiety of influence", arguing that their creativity stemmed from an Oedipal reaction against their canonical predecessors. "Strong" poets are those who throw off the burden of the father and find a voice that is fully their own. Sara had courage and technical ability, but not the strength to take poetic language to places undiscovered by her father and his circle. · Jonathan Bate's biography of John Clare is published by Picador

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/aug/13/pleasure-island-review-subpar-seaside-drama

Film

2015-08-13T20:00:09.000Z

Leslie Felperin

Pleasure Island review – subpar seaside crime drama

Remember how in the early days of the EEC we used to talk about agricultural overproduction in terms of “butter mountains” and “wine lakes”? Sometimes it feels as if there must be a secret “common cinematic policy” that subsidises British film-makers to make grim dramas in decrepit seaside towns where a native son returns, usually from military service, to help save loved ones being exploited or abused by shady crime bosses. Pleasure Island is another. This time the setting is Grimsby, and the prodigal redeemer is played by Ian Sharp. He’s back to save Gina Bramhill, playing the stripper widow of a dead buddy, and Nicholas Day as his irascible, pigeon-racing father mixed up with drug dealers running one of cinema’s more ludicrous smuggling operations. Given the lazy script, mostly shabby acting (Samuel Anderson is an honourable exception) and flat digital lensing, this is a subpar contribution to the genre quota, which will no doubt soon sink into on-demand distribution.

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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/27/culture-war-2012-olympic-opening-ceremony

Opinion

2022-07-27T07:00:11.000Z

Charlotte Higgins

Imagine the culture war the 2012 Olympic opening ceremony would spark now | Charlotte Higgins

It still makes me cry. Especially, perhaps, the very first moments, before it really began, when skeins of filmy blue fabric rippled across the excited crowd to the sound of Nimrod from the Enigma Variations – Elgar at his truest, most melancholic self. Looking back on it now, it really was the music of the opening ceremony of the London Olympics, 10 years ago today, that was at the heart of Danny Boyle’s brilliant and bonkers production. It wound all the way round from Handel to Hey Jude, via David Bowie and Dizzee Rascal. There was a boy soprano singing Jerusalem. There were the Sex Pistols. It was vaunting, ecstatic, angry, cheeky and reflective by turn, setting the tone for everything. Incredibly slickly produced, the ceremony felt, at the same time, deliciously anarchic. I wrote at the time that the ceremony forged a new mythology for Britain. It did: it was a national story that managed to weave together the NHS and the Industrial Revolution, maypoles and Windrush, suffragettes and cricket, Fawlty Towers and Blake, The Tempest and punk. It was (to me) thankfully low on military glory, but it did not fail to include the Red Arrows and Winston Churchill: his statue in Parliament Square was seen to wave his cane at Daniel Craig’s James Bond and the Queen as they apparently helicoptered from Buckingham Palace before parachuting into the stadium. It was a mythology that capitalised on benign national stereotypes: it did not take itself too seriously, in those days before Boris Johnson ruined not taking yourself too seriously. It zoned in on what Britons can be proud of (pop music, inventing the web, universal healthcare and children’s literature). It felt inclusive, even if stitching together the United Kingdom-ishness of it all by means of Danny Boy and Flower of Scotland and Cwm Rhondda was a little artificial. Yeah, well. Remember how everyone laughed at a Conservative MP called Aidan Burley for tweeting that it was “lefty multicultural crap” (a man who’d been sacked as a ministerial aide for attending a Nazi-themed stag night)? It felt as if he had utterly misread the public mood. From the perspective of 2022, though, he feels like a time traveller from the future. I have no doubt that if the ceremony were to be staged now, agitators would be all over it in a similar vein, never mind the cricket and the Dambusters theme and the Chelsea pensioners, the obviously careful attempts to be encyclopaedic. It is often said (and I suppose I used to say it myself) that what Britain needs now is a post-imperial narrative as confident as that of the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony. But it’s too easy to look back on that time as somehow antediluvian: as a gilded moment before the traumas of the Scottish and Brexit referendums; before JK Rowling (who read that night from Peter Pan) became divisive; before the lurch to the right of the Conservatives. But Britain was already well into the process of fracturing. In an interview earlier that summer of 2012, Theresa May, who was then home secretary, had announced her desire to create “a really hostile environment for illegal migration” – the very same “hostile environment” that would target the Windrush families honoured at the opening ceremony; the same hostile environment that has flowered grotesquely into the Rwanda deportation scheme. Above all, the financial crisis had set in motion far-reaching changes to British society. Inequality, not least generational inequality, was deepening. The scene was set for the rise of the politics of identity, which sharpen when there’s less economically to go around. London 2012, 10 years on: wrestling with a sporting legacy built on false assumptions Read more The Olympics opening ceremony was seductive. It picked a delicate path through a thicket to present a narrative that was comforting and funny and true, sort of, but at the same time gilded and polished and intensely selective. To create a myth is to tell a story that may have some deep truth about it – but it’s also, often, about suppressing elements that threaten the smooth running of the story. An ancient Greek myth told in Aeschylus’s Oresteia illustrates this process in a beautiful, literal, dramatic way. It’s a story about how a series of seemingly endless revenge family killings is, eventually, resolved by a reasoned judicial process, offering a stirring origin story for Athenian democracy. The Furies, the terrifying female deities who pursue those who kill family members, have argued that Orestes, who is in the dock, should be punished for murdering his mother, Clytemnestra. But the goddess Athena, who holds the casting vote in the trial, accepts the outrageous patriarchal argument that Orestes did not really kill a family member, since mothers are mere vessels, not parents, for their babies: Orestes is acquitted and the pattern of tit-for-tat killing comes to an end. To deal with the Furies’ rage, Athena transforms them into “Kindly Ones” and they are contained safely beneath Athens’s Areopagus hill. Symbolically, then, the matriarchal order is crushed. But they are still there in the story, like the city’s brooding unconscious. The myth, in the end, can’t quite eradicate them; and perhaps it doesn’t want to. So it is with the 2012 opening ceremony, if you choose to read it against itself. “The isle is full of noises,” as Kenneth Branagh told us that night: but just as in The Tempest, a play that foreshadows the anxieties of empire, not all of those sounds are benign, and many of them are frightening. Charlotte Higgins is the Guardian’s chief culture writer Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 300 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at guardian.letters@theguardian.com

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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/10/england-worst-covid-figures-austerity-inequality

Opinion

2020-08-10T09:00:02.000Z

Michael Marmot

Why did England have Europe's worst Covid figures? The answer starts with austerity | Michael Marmot

“T he pestilence is at once blight and revelation,” wrote Albert Camus in The Plague, “it brings the hidden truth of a corrupt world to the surface.” If that is true of Covid-19, as it was of the plague of Camus’ novel, then the UK’s dismal record is telling us something important about our society. We are doing badly: dramatic social inequalities in Covid-19 deaths; high rates in black, Asian and minority ethnic groups; and, now, the highest excess mortality in Europe. The statistician David Spiegelhalter, in his wise and clear way, has been counselling us against drawing too much on international comparisons because of differences in the way Covid-19 deaths are assigned. Excess mortality is much more reliable. It is a measure of how many more deaths, from all causes, there were in each week of 2020 compared with how many would have been expected based on the average of the last five years. The Office for National Statistics reported on 30 July that for the period 21 February to 12 June, the excess mortality was higher in England than in any other European country, including the other countries of the UK. Commenting on this report in the Guardian, Spiegelhalter says it will be years before we can properly assess the measures taken against the epidemic. I am sure that’s right but, if we stand back, we can see where to look. My starting place is the report my colleagues and I published on 25 February, Health Equity in England: The Marmot Review 10 Years On. More than a decade after I was asked by the then secretary of state for health to chair an independent review of health inequalities, we looked again at the lie of the land. England was doing badly in two key respects (remember that this was before the pandemic reached our shores). The first was overall health. In the decade from 2010, the rate of increase in life expectancy had slowed, dramatically so. For more than 100 years, life expectancy had been improving at a rate of about one year every four years. The increase in life expectancy that had begun to slow in 2010 had, by 2018, more or less ground to a halt. Compared with other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (which is to say, rich) countries, the improvement in life expectancy in the UK from 2010 on was the slowest of all, except for the US and Iceland. Second, health inequalities continued to increase. The clear picture is that of a social gradient: the more deprived the place you live, the higher the mortality rate and the shorter the life expectancy. During the 2000s the gap in life expectancy between the poorest 20% of areas and the rest narrowed. During the decade from 2010 on, it increased. And if health stopped improving and health inequalities got bigger, it implies that society stopped improving and inequality in general got worse. My speculation is that the same set of influences that led to England and the UK looking unhealthy in the decade after 2010 led to us having the worst excess mortality figures in Europe because of Covid-19. Such speculation can be given substance if we look at the coronavirus inequalities. Here we find that there is once again a social gradient in mortality rates from Covid-19 – the more deprived the area, the higher the number of deaths. This social gradient is almost exactly paralleled by the social gradient for all causes of death. It suggests that the causes of unequal Covid-19 outcomes are rather similar to the causes of inequalities in health more generally. The political mood of the decade from 2010 was one of the rolling back of the state, and a continuation of an apparent consensus that things were best left to the market. At times, this aversion to government action was made worse by a suspicion of expertise. This rolling back of the state was seen clearly in a reduction in public spending from 42% of GDP in 2009-10 to 35% in 2018-19. The fiscal retrenchment was done in a regressive way. If we look at spending per person by local authority, we find that the poorer the area concerned, the bigger the reduction. In the least deprived 20% of areas, local government spending went down by 16%; in the most deprived it went down by 32%. This is remarkable – the greater the need was, the more spending was reduced. Changes made to the tax and benefit system introduced in 2015 went on in a similar vein: the lower the family income, the bigger the loss as a result of the chancellor’s policies. I sat with a former minister in the Conservative government, showed him these figures and said: “Your government’s policy was ‘make the poor poorer’.” He looked uncomfortable and said that perhaps it was not their explicit policy. But there are smart people in the Treasury and they must have known that this would be the effect. We limped into the pandemic, then, in a parlous state – an unhealthy population marked by growing inequalities and a worsening of the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age; in short, in the social determinants of health. Six months into Covid, England's quarantine programme is still a mess Anthony Costello Read more In addition to the general mistrust of the state by the government, we had the legacy of specific cuts. NHS spending, supposedly ringfenced in an age of austerity, had not kept up with historic trends: an average 3.8% annual increase since 1978-79 had slowed to about a 1% increase in 2010, at a time when the population was growing, and growing older. The budget of Public Health England had been cut by 40% in real terms from its founding in 2012 up to 2019-20. Public health was moved out of the NHS into local government – not necessarily a bad thing – but its budget allocation was reduced by £700m in real terms between 2014-15 and 2019-20. Spending on adult social care was reduced, too: by 3% in the least deprived 20% of local areas, and by 16% in the most deprived. Much of what I have laid out above could be applied to the US, too: a mistrust of the state and miserable levels of spending on social infrastructure and social safety nets. In the US, this is compounded by marked inequalities in access to healthcare. Everyone in the US, except it would seem the president and his core supporters, is aware that the government’s failure to handle the coronavirus pandemic has been catastrophic. Yet, if we trust the figures, US mortality rates from Covid-19 are lower than the UK’s. How badly must we be doing, indeed. It is time to heed Camus’ words, and examine the truth about what has brought us to this point. Having been honest about the causes, perhaps we can begin to address them. Michael Marmot is professor of epidemiology at University College London, director of the UCL Institute of Health Equity, and past president of the World Medical Association

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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/16/post-office-victims-windrush-families-trust-politicians

Opinion

2024-01-16T08:00:17.000Z

Amelia Gentleman

Do you really think ministers will get justice for Post Office victims? Ask the Windrush families and think again | Amelia Gentleman

Janet McKay-Williams watched ITV’s Post Office drama earlier this month with a rising sense of fury, instantly aware of the parallels between her family’s experience and the difficulties suffered by the post office operators. McKay-Williams has been fighting for justice for people affected by the Windrush scandal ever since her husband, Anthony Bryan, who had been living entirely legally in the UK since arriving here aged eight in 1965, was sacked from his job, arrested, wrongly held in an immigration detention centre for five weeks and booked on a plane back to Jamaica, a country he hadn’t visited in more than 50 years. The parallels between the Post Office scandal and Windrush are stark. Both are systemic injustices that were ignored for years, despite victims’ persistent attempts to get politicians to pay attention. In both cases there were people who lost their jobs, their homes, were wrongly imprisoned, and some who were driven to suicide. Paula Vennells received a CBE for her work at the Post Office; one of the Home Office civil servants who helped design the “hostile environment” policies that saw thousands of people misclassified as illegal immigrants was made a knight commander of the order of Bath by Theresa May. Both scandals exploded into public consciousness unexpectedly, triggering sudden and startlingly effusive declarations of contrition from politicians and officials who, just days earlier, had exhibited zero interest in either matter. McKay-Williams, a respite carer for children with disabilities, is still wrestling with the Home Office over compensation and was taken aback to hear Rishi Sunak promise upfront payments of £75,000 to 555 Post Office staff who took legal action against the Post Office. On the face of it, their problems seemed to be getting resolved with enviable speed. But she has two pieces of wise, battle-hardened advice for the post office operators who are now caught in the floodlights of political attention: one, make sure you achieve something before this issue goes out of the headlines; two, never give up, or people risk ending up with up nothing. Her advice will also resonate with Hillsborough campaigners, already familiar with Westminster’s stop-start approach to delivering justice, and politicians’ tendency to jolt into action only when campaigners’ fury becomes too shaming to disregard. London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, said he hoped ITV would now commission a Windrush drama to expose the full scale of the Home Office’s actions to new audiences. Those people who were wrongly categorised as immigration offenders and who are still waiting for compensation would welcome the same outpouring of public sympathy that might come from a thoughtful drama that engages 9 million viewers over four hours. A good drama would, in passing, educate people in Britain’s recent but forgotten colonial history, the collapse of its empire and the introduction of increasingly racist immigration legislation throughout the second half of the 20th century. It would also showcase how civil servants simply forgot there were tens of thousands of people living here legally but without documentation, and how May’s hostile environment policies meant officials started demanding they produce impossible-to-provide proof of their right to be here. A still from the ITV drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office, 4 Jan 2024. Photograph: ITV/Rex/Shutterstock There is no shortage of material. While reporting on the Home Office’s mistakes, I’ve met pensioners wrongly imprisoned or deported to islands on the other side of the world they hadn’t travelled to since they were children, much-loved teachers and teaching assistants summarily sacked, ambulance drivers made homeless, cancer patients denied treatment, families torn apart. 'Lambs to the slaughter': 50 lives ruined by the Windrush scandal Read more It would be a mistake to imagine that the historical aspects of this story are well understood. When Wendy Williams, the official commissioned to investigate the Home Office’s mistakes, published her findings, she noted: “The Windrush scandal was in part able to happen because of the public’s and officials’ poor understanding of Britain’s colonial history.” There have already been several inspired but shorter dramas aimed at bringing the experiences of those caught out by the Home Office’s Windrush mess to new audiences. The BBC’s Sitting in Limbo won a Bafta for its powerful dramatisation of Janet and Anthony’s difficulties with the Home Office. Lenny Henry’s hilarious and heartbreaking play August in England showcased a life spiralling into chaos as deportation letters rained down on the stage. A musical was written about the hostile environment (featuring dancing civil servants and a singing David Cameron happily belting out a showstopper on the need to cut net migration), and would have been staged if it hadn’t been for Covid; bits of On Hostile Ground by Charlotte Westenra and Juliet Gilkes Romero can be seen online, and the whole production should really have a West End transfer. Barbara Walker’s moving portraits of people whose lives were ruined by the scandal were shortlisted for the Turner prize and are now on show at the Towner Gallery in Eastbourne. The sobering lesson from Windrush is that art and drama can spark flashes of public outrage, but it tends to be quite fleeting, and politicians’ enthusiasm for action swiftly wanes once attention moves elsewhere. It’s up to reporters to continue highlighting the gap between the promises made and what’s actually been delivered. In the case of Windrush, that gap remains strikingly wide. About 15,000 undocumented people have been given paperwork by the Home Office since the scandal, proving that they have (and always had) the right to live here. Officials initially expected that a similar number might claim for compensation, and anticipated paying out somewhere upwards of £200mn. Some progress has been made. So far, the scheme has paid out £75m for 2,000 claims (it is emblematic of the opaque scheme that officials have never been able to say how many individuals have received compensation – talking instead, confusingly, about claims). Message to Suella Braverman: you are betraying the Windrush scandal survivors, but we will defend them Wanda Wyporska Read more But the scheme remains slow and bafflingly complex, demanding sophisticated actuarial skills to complete application forms successfully; no legal aid is available for advice. There is anger that the scheme was handed to the Home Office to administer – the same department that created the problem, then ignored it, repeatedly denied the problem existed, and then told reporters there was nothing much to worry about, is now responsible for deciding who to compensate and by how much. In the wake of the scandal, successive home secretaries have promised comprehensive cultural reform of the Home Office. Priti Patel said she wanted to create a “fair, humane, compassionate and outward-looking” department; no one could accuse her of succeeding. Last year, Suella Braverman disbanded the Windrush “transformation team”, which was working to implement the promised (and not wholly delivered) post-Windrush reforms. James Cleverly has not felt the need to mention the legacy of the scandal since taking on the role of home secretary last November. It’s an issue the government would like everyone to believe has been resolved. Many affected by the Home Office’s mistakes are, like Janet McKay-Williams, exhausted by the continuing battle to secure justice. At least 44 people are known to have died after submitting compensation claims, still waiting for payments. At this stage, more useful than further public outrage would be the efficient delivery of promises already made. Amelia Gentleman is a reporter and author of The Windrush Betrayal, Exposing the Hostile Environment Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/08/foreign-office-britain-global-power

Opinion

2024-04-08T13:25:36.000Z

Simon Jenkins

Even its old boys are turning on the stuffy Foreign Office. They’re right to do so | Simon Jenkins

Poor old Foreign Office. The imperial roar has become a squeak. All the wrong pictures adorn its walls, and the wrong attitudes its mindset. And now even its own are turning against it. A new report, aimed at a forthcoming Labour government, demands a complete rebuild. Written by three senior ex-diplomats, including the former cabinet secretary Lord Sedwill, it dismisses their old department as “somewhat elitist and rooted in the past”, and “like a giant private office for the foreign secretary of the day, responding to the minister’s immediate concerns and ever-changing in-tray”. The report demands a new office to handle all the country’s overseas affairs, including trade, aid, cultural relations and the climate crisis. It should also modernise its Whitehall palace, one that used to rule an empire and makes Downing Street look like an annexe. When, in 1859, Lord Palmerston rejected Gilbert Scott’s design for a gothic Foreign Office, he demanded instead one that would evoke the spirit of imperial Rome, not “the barbarism of the dark ages”. That is what he got – a building whose very murals were meant to make the world quake. The Foreign Office has never quite kicked the habit. It has always been pontification central. Its favourite comment on whatever ails the world is that it is “unacceptable to Britain”, as if that made a jot of difference. James Cleverly visited Beijing as foreign secretary last summer, declaring that “it would be a mistake to isolate China”. It echoed the famous forecast, “Fog in Channel, continent cut off.” Boris Johnson’s bombastic bid to make Britain great on the world stage by sending aircraft carriers to the South China Sea was exactly the posturing that Sedwill describes as causing “the bewilderment of our allies and the glee of our adversaries”. It was merely a leader auditioning for a bit part as world statesman. The Tory party has lost the plot – and could be bad news for Labour John Harris Read more The report calls for foreign affairs to be recast as economic as much as political. Britain now confronts an insulted and rejected Europe and a possibly isolationist America. It cannot still pose as a poor man’s world policeman, brandishing military interventions and economic sanctions. Old alliances and prejudices must be succeeded by new multilateral relations. Britain’s stance abroad must be primarily as a guardian of its interests. Some of the report’s suggestions jar with its hard-nosed pragmatism. Its plea for more foreign aid – the most chaotic and ill-audited of budgets – sits oddly with its demand for better “prioritisation and resource allocation”. It largely leaves defence out of account. But it does emphasise soft power – British universities, the arts, sport and the English language – the importance of which cannot be overstated. I recall on a visit to India being told that, in India’s eyes, the British Council outranked the Foreign Office. Culture should sit alongside trade as a leading function of an overseas department, ahead of the Foreign Office’s running commentary on world affairs and the self-important “instilling of British values”. As the report states, Britain is not a world power but an “offshore, mid-sized” country. It should equip itself to behave like one. Over to Starmer. Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist

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https://www.theguardian.com/money/2022/jan/02/if-youve-resolved-to-improve-your-finances-for-the-new-year-

Money

2022-01-02T09:00:14.000Z

Shane Hickey

If you’ve resolved to improve your finances for the new year …

It’s a new year and many of us are looking for a fresh start after a very difficult 2021. We’ve asked a group of experts for their advice on how to tackle some of the most common personal finance dilemmas. I want to spend less money this year, what should I do? Damien Fahy, founder of personal finance site Money to the Masses The key to spending less is having a budget – if you can quantify it, you can control it. Luckily, there are lots of resources to help work out a monthly budget, including budgeting and banking apps. I’d recommend Money Dashboard and Emma. Try using the “three-day rule” to curb frivolous spending – if you want something, wait three days before buying it to see if you genuinely want or need it, rather than it being a momentary impulse. You can also introduce zero-spend days into your week, aiming to have 24 hours without additional spending, over and above essentials, such as food and bills. How can I clear my overdraft? Sara Williams, founder of the Debt Camel advice blog Overdrafts are a hard type of debt to clear, as your balance keeps changing through the month. But they are also very expensive, so are a priority to tackle. You can be very disciplined, and aim to cut your overdraft usage each month. Many people find it is more practical to change to a new current account with no overdraft and move all of their banking over. That way you can pay off the old overdraft by setting up a standing order from your new account. If you have been continuously in your overdraft for a long while, never getting back into the black, you should also look at making a claim for unaffordable lending. This would be based on whether the bank “completed reasonable and proportionate checks” that you could repay in a sustainable way. Details at the Financial Ombudsman Service website. I need a decent pension. How do I begin? Steve Webb, partner at LCP and former pensions minister If you earn more than £10,000, your employer should put you in a workplace pension and make a contribution, so simply not opting out is a great start. Next, review your pension contribution each time you get a pay increase, as it’s less painful to commit a bit more before you’ve got used to the extra income. Also, find out if your employer will do more, if you do more. Many bigger firms will match the money you put in (up to a limit). Make the most of this “free money”. Finally, it’s never too late to start. You get good tax breaks for saving in a pension, plus money from your employer, so even building up a small pot is worthwhile. How can I drive an electric car without breaking the bank? Melanie Shufflebotham, co-founder of Zap-Map, which gives information on charging and electric vehicles One of the best routes to getting a good value electric vehicle (EV) is via a salary sacrifice scheme. Another flexible option is to subscribe to a short-term, all-inclusive service such as Onto, which includes insurance, charging and tax, among other expenses. There are also more secondhand EVs available to buy – try out one of the specialist companies, such as Weareev or Drive Green. Once you have secured your electric vehicle, your next step is to get a charge point installed at your home and sign up to an EV energy tariff with discounts for off-peak charging when available, given current energy tariff issues. With this, costs can be as low as 2-3p/mile – even less if you can link it to solar panels. Alternatively, you can check out community charging via Co-Charger, or take a look at the close to 30,000 public charge points on Zap-Map, about 5,000 of which are still free to use. Energy bills are killing me, how do I save money? Laura McGadie, group head of energy, Energy Saving Trust There are a series of simple and straightforward things you can do that will save you money without compromising your health or lifestyle. Firstly, turn off devices that are on standby and turn off lights when you leave the room. Be sure to draught-proof around windows, doors, floorboards and skirting boards and insulate hot water cylinders with an 80mm British Standard jacket. In the kitchen, fit an aerator to the tap – it reduces the amount of water flowing – and only boil water you need in the kettle. Reduce the number of washing machine loads you run by one a week, and ensure they are always full. Wash clothes at 30 degrees. Avoid using a tumble dryer – dry clothes outside where possible, or inside with ventilation. Limit shower times to four minutes and swap a weekly bath for a shower. Take all of these steps and you could save up to £248 a year. How can I prepare for my child starting university this year? Laura Brown, editor, Save the Student It’s worth familiarising yourself with the student finance system and, if possible, saving up some money to help them get by. Research has found that, on average, students receive £120.56 a month from parents. But one in eight feels their parents don’t give enough financial support. As maintenance loans are generally calculated on household income, you might find the government actually expects you to contribute, offering a smaller loan as a result. We have a parental contributions calculator that helps you work out how much this could be. Saving to financially support your child, as well as sharing your best money-management tips, could make a huge difference. I want to eat more sustainably – what should I do? Sian Conway-Wood, author of Buy Better, Consume Less The first thing is to not do something – and that is waste food. Households account for 70% of food waste in the UK, and the majority of food thrown away would have been edible. The cost of that adds up to £284 a person each year. Plan ahead, buy what you need and take steps to avoid waste. All of these steps are the first moves towards sustainable eating and can save you money as a result. Potatoes, bread and fresh fruit and vegetables are some of the most wasted foods. We’re often encouraged to buy in bulk, but they can be purchased in smaller quantities. Pay attention to how much you actually use and reduce the amount you buy. I am scared of being scammed. What steps should I take to protect myself? Jason Costain, head of fraud prevention at NatWest When buying goods, only use sellers or shops that accept card payments. Be suspicious when answering calls, texts and emails. There will always be the latest ingenious scam, so any time you give someone your address, email, or date of birth, stop and think. Do I trust them and what do they need it for? A lot of victims are the target of sophisticated scammers days after they’ve innocently given away basic information. I want a pay rise, how do I go about it? Charles Cotton, senior policy adviser at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development Do your homework by checking what the going rate is for similar jobs, such as through a salary comparison website like Glassdoor. If you’re already being paid the average salary, or higher, it could prove harder to justify an increase, so you may want to go for a promotion, instead. If you’re not, make sure you make this point when putting forward your case. Strengthen it further by giving examples of why you deserve a pay rise – perhaps you met all your annual objectives, or you’ve excelled on a particular project. While it makes sense to talk to your manager first, they will most likely not be able to authorise a pay rise. Make their job easier by writing down your reasons, which they can share with their colleagues.

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