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https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/08/key-points-of-budget-2017-at-a-glance-analysis

UK news

2017-03-08T16:51:32.000Z

Jill Treanor

Key points of the budget 2017 – at a glance

GrowthForecast of 2% growth for 2017, up from 1.4%. In 2018, growth forecast to be 1.6%, then 1.7% in 2019, 1.9% in 2020, and 2% in 2021. Previous forecasts were 1.4% for 2017, 1.7% for 2018, 2.1% in 2019, 2.1% in 2020 and 2% for 2021. Rowena Mason, deputy political editor: Philip Hammond looks satisfied to be announcing higher growth than previously forecast – a rare experience for chancellors in recent years. It defies the predictions of gloom by remain supporters before the Brexit vote, although the effects of leaving the EU are yet to be felt. Borrowing £51.7bn in 2016-17, £58.3bn in 2017-18, £40.8bn in 2018-19, £21.4bn in 2019-20 and then £20.6bn in 2020-21, and £16.8bn in 2021-22. In November, borrowing was forecast at £59bn in 2017-18, £46.5bn in 2018-19, £22bn in 2019-20, £21bn in 2020-21 and £17.2bn in 2021-22. Hopes of a surplus by the end of the decade already abandoned. RM: Again, Hammond is able to deliver better news than previously forecast on borrowing. He stresses that this will not be used as a reason to spend more, signalling there will be no easing off on austerity. The chancellor moves on to a few digs at the opposition for ‘recklessly’ wanting to borrow more, carrying on George Osborne’s strategy of trying to paint Labour as fiscally irresponsible. Small business tax For businesses below VAT registration threshold, delay by a year the introduction of quarterly reporting at a cost of £280m. RM: Hammond says this is a sign he is listening to the voice of business, unlike Labour, and shoehorns in a joke about the ‘last Labour government’ of Blair and Brown being called that for a reason. Budget 2017: What it means for you Guardian Business rates Three measures for England: a cap so rates rise by no more than £50 a month for small businesses losing their rate relief, pubs to get a £1,000 discount on business rates of less than £100,000 rateable value (90% of pubs) and a £300m fund for discretionary relief for local authorities. This amounts to a £435m cut. RM: Inevitably, Hammond has had to take action to calm down the backlash against changes to business rates, given the outcry among Conservative MPs, small companies and the rightwing press. Cheers from the Tory benches suggest they will be satisfied by the concessions. Tax avoidance £820m of tax avoidance measures. VAT on roaming telecoms outside the EU. New financial penalty for professionals who create schemes defeated by HMRC. Stop businesses converting capital losses into trading losses. RM: Crackdowns on tax avoidance have become a budget staple to boost the exchequer’s coffers. This is another attempt to stop unfairness in the tax system, with added penalties on accountants who help people to try to dodge their liabilities. Self-employment Less tax paid by self-employed people will cost the taxpayer £5bn this year. An investigation into tax treatment is being conducted by Matthew Taylor of RSA. Treasury to raise £145m from increasing national insurance contributions of some self-employed people. RM: Hammond has had to go into a very lengthy explanation justifying this on the grounds of improving fairness in tax levels between the employed and self-employed. This has the potential to be controversial with some traditional Conservative supporters, who are likely to see it as an assault on entrepreneurialism and an unwanted rise in a personal tax. Tax-free dividend allowance Cut from £5,000 to £2,000 from April 2018. RM: This is another change that may annoy traditional Conservatives, but will please those who have long thought it unfair that shareholders can gain tax advantages by taking earnings through dividends rather than a salary. Duties Sugar tax set at 18p and 24p per litre for the main and higher bands (more than 5g of sugar per 100ml and more than 8g per 100ml respectively). Freezing vehicle excise duty for hauliers and HGVs. New minimum excise duty on cigarettes. No changes to duties on alcohol and tobacco. RM: The traditional ‘sin taxes’ on booze and cigarettes are not rising, but a new one is being introduced in the form of the sugar tax. It is one of the few flagship policies of David Cameron continued by May. ‘National living wage’ Rises to £7.50 an hour in April. RM: This is merely confirmation of what Hammond said in last November’s autumn statement. It is a rise, but not enough to meet the target of £9 an hour by 2020 on its current trajectory. Personal tax allowances As expected, £11,500 for basic rate taxpayers. RM: This is a continuation of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government’s trend of raising the personal allowance to reduce income tax paid for all but the very highest earners. Originally it was taking the very lowest paid out of tax altogether, but critics argue that a better way to do that now would be to raise the national insurance threshold instead, bringing it in line with the income tax threshold. Savers The promised NS&I three-year bond paying 2.2% will be available from April on savings up to £3,000. RM: This is simply confirmation of an autumn statement measure, which appears to be a bit of filler in the speech rather than a new announcement. Women £20m fund to combat violence against girls. £5m for ‘returnships’ – helping people back into work after a career break. £5m for projects to celebrate the 1918 Representation of the People Act. RM: Hammond’s announcement prompted a lighthearted dig at May for already announcing two out of the three measures on Mumsnet on Tuesday night. She managed a bit of banter in return, retorting: “It is International Women’s Day.” Consumers Green paper on protecting consumers to be published. RM: This is as expected, with few details in the speech, with the government once again channelling Ed Miliband, who hit out at ‘rip-off Britain’ in the previous parliament. Training £300m for 1,000 new PhD placements. £270m for disruptive technologies such as robotics and driverless vehicles (the ‘industrial strategy challenge fund’). A £16m 5G tech hub. RM: A big theme of the Treasury under Hammond has been improving training opportunities in science and technology. The sums involved are not huge, but Hammond has repeatedly signalled there will be few big giveaways in this budget. Education White paper to be published. Funding of £320m for 110 new free schools to take the total to 500. Free school transport extended to children receiving free school meals at selective schools. £216m invested in school maintenance. RM: This measure was widely trailed in Tuesday’s papers, with a focus on May’s decision to allow the new free schools to be selective grammar schools. It will be fiercely opposed by Labour and the other opposition parties. Careers Introduction of T-levels – technical qualifications, an alternative to A-levels – for 16- to 19-year-olds. £40m for pilots on lifelong learning projects. RM: This was also widely trailed by the Treasury as part of its focus on increasing the status of technical education. Local government Midlands engine strategy to be published. £690m competition for local authorities to tackle urban congestion. RM: This is a development of George Osborne’s ‘northern powerhouse’ strategy attempting to spread prosperity beyond the south-east. May has slightly shifted the focus to make sure all regions are targeted with an active industrial policy and the Midlands engine appears to be the latest plank of this plan. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland £350m for the Scottish government. £200m for the Welsh government. £120m for the Northern Ireland executive. RM: May has placed a huge emphasis on keeping the union together. The sums involved are sizeable, but hardly a gamechanger to quell the clamour for a second independence referendum among SNP supporters. Social care £2bn over the next three years for England. Green paper on social care funding to be published later this year. RM: This is a fairly dramatic climbdown for Hammond, who was severely criticised after the autumn statement for barely mentioning the NHS or social care crisis. In the ensuing debate, he repeatedly insisted there was no need for a bailout of the social care system. But the pressure from Tory councils, NHS chiefs and backbenchers has obviously proved too great. NHS £325m of capital for the first of the new sustainability and transformation plans (STPs), intended to improve healthcare. £100m for 100 onsite GP treatment centres in A&Es in England. Hammond promises announcement of multi-year capital programme later in the year. RM: The £100m injection into the NHS is a small amount compared with what medical chiefs say is needed. However, allocating money for a specific reform fits with No 10’s strategy of asking the health service to work more efficiently.

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https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2016/feb/08/reuters-carries-sponsorship-of-its-us-presidential-coverage

Media

2016-02-08T08:11:35.000Z

Roy Greenslade

Reuters carries sponsorship of its US presidential coverage

Reuters, the world’s largest English-language news agency, is running sponsored coverage of the US presidential election. Its campaign reports and photographs are carrying a statement that says: “SAP is the sponsor of this content. It was independently created by Reuters’ editorial staff and funded in part by SAP, which otherwise has no role in this coverage.” SAP is a German multinational software corporation. Its sponsorship was noticed by a former Reuters editor and revealed by The Baron, the website dedicated to reporting material “of interest to Reuters people past and present.” The editor told the website: “I’ve never seen such a thing on Reuters. Of course there is sponsored content - I believe ‘native content’ is the term - out there in a lot of publications. But to farm out an entire slice of one’s news file?” So The Baron sent a list of questions about the sponsorship to Reuters editor-in-chief Stephen Adler: “What’s the deal? Does SAP pay for the entire cost of Reuters coverage, eg travel, hotels, staffer/stringer sustenance? Or is it a contribution towards part of those or other costs? How is the story independent of Reuters’ news coverage of the campaign? Does the journalist writing sponsored content also produce unsponsored copy on the same or related subjects? Does SAP or any other sponsor pay for coverage of other news stories aside from political ones, eg business, economic or financial news?” Adler evidently discussed The Baron’s inquiry with David Crundwell, Thomson Reuters corporate affairs vice president, who sent The Baron a statement. It began by asserting that the agency’s “principles of independence, integrity and freedom from bias are at the heart of everything that Reuters News does.” He continued: “A company associated with a news report that is labeled as ‘sponsored’ is no different from any advertiser wanting to be associated with a great news site or news publication. An advertiser, or ‘sponsor’, has no involvement in the content of any Reuters news article; advertising and sponsorship is a commercial proposition which can bring in funds that allow Reuters to cover a wider range of topics, or deliver that content to a wider audience, that may not have been economically viable otherwise. All aspects of our editorial decision making however remain consistent with the Trust Principles whose safeguarding is our top priority.” The Baron is an independent website founded and edited by Barry May, a former Reuters correspondent, editor and manager. Source: The Baron

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https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/sep/03/naked-celebrity-pictures-james-foley-jennifer-lawrence-how-many-viewed

Technology

2014-09-03T06:00:07.000Z

Charles Arthur

Naked celebrity pics and the James Foley video: how many have clicked?

How many people have looked at the full, gruesome video of James Foley’s murder, or the pictures of Jennifer Lawrence and scores of other celebrities that were put online earlier this week? The simple answer is: nobody knows. But you can make some estimates. And they run into millions. The murder of Foley was first posted to Google’s YouTube, and pictures from it to Twitter. Both organisations moved quickly to delete the full video (Google has allowed the video without its ending to remain online if it has “news context”) while Twitter suspended accounts that tweeted pictures as quickly as it could. Neither organisation would say how many views were made, or accounts suspended. However, given that Google handles about 6bn searches per day, one can guess at how many people are trying to look at something at any time based on data from Google Trends. This doesn’t give absolute numbers for searches – only a relative value between 0 and 100. But we can use Facebook as a point of reference. Surprising though it may sound, lots of people type “Facebook” into Google in order to go to the page. According to data collected by Hitwise in August, around 3.7% of traffic from Google goes to Facebook. Out of 6bn searches per day, that’s around 222 million people going to Facebook. But many people will have searched for something else and ended up on Facebook. Let’s assume only 1 in 10 people actually Googled “Facebook” and followed the link there. That means, on most days, 22 million people type “Facebook” and go to Facebook. But in Google Trends, that search unhelpfully dwarfs almost all others. Luckily, “Google” is also a popular search, getting about 40% as many as “Facebook”; so 8.9m per day. Now we can make some estimates. On 20 August, the day after IS released its gruesome video, for every 95 searches for “google” there were 11 for “james foley”, and two for “james foley video”. Assume all of those sought out the video and you get 1.2m views. Assume only those searching with “james foley video” viewed it and the figure is 190,000. How about Jennier Lawrence? Searches for her rocketed by a factor of 50 on Monday, when the Google: “Jennifer Lawrence” search ratio was 92:7 – which suggests, on the basis of 8.9m “Google” searches, that 700,000 people suddenly sought out Jennifer Lawrence. (There aren’t any appreciable searches for “Jennifer Lawrence pics”, “J-Law pics”, “Jlaw pics” or similar.) Remember, though, we made the assumption that only 1 in 10 Facebook visits came from a search for “Facebook”. Take that away, and it would mean between 1.9m and 12m views of the James Foley killing, and 7m views of Jennifer Lawrence pictures. The latter doesn’t include those who might have looked at them on file-sharing sites or 4chan – but the number of users there is comparatively small compared to the 2.7 billion on the whole internet.

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https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/may/06/on-my-radar-aaron-dessner-the-national-cultural-highlights-first-two-pages-frankenstein

Music

2023-05-06T14:00:10.000Z

Kathryn Bromwich

On my radar: Aaron Dessner’s cultural highlights

Musician and producer Aaron Dessner was born in 1976 in Cincinnati, Ohio. He plays guitar, piano and keyboard for the National, is one half of Big Red Machine alongside Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon, and has written and produced for artists including Ed Sheeran and Sharon Van Etten. In 2018 the National won a Grammy for best alternative music album with Sleep Well Beast, and in 2021 Taylor Swift’s Folklore, on which Dessner co-wrote and produced many of the songs, won album of the year. The National’s latest album, First Two Pages of Frankenstein, is out now on 4AD. They tour the UK in September. 1. Music Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou ‘I could never approach her brilliance’: Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou. Photograph: Gali Tibbon One of my favourite musicians, who died on 26 March aged 99: she was a very influential Ethiopian pianist who became a nun. She had an interesting style that was a blend of classical piano and this improvised, impressionistic, incredibly melodic, wandering style. I’ve listened to her for years and it’s crept into how I play the piano, although I could never approach her brilliance. I know many people love her, but she’s still strangely overlooked because her music isn’t widely available. Her most famous record is Ethiopiques 21: Piano Solo. 2. Book On Time and Water by Andri Snær Magnason The head of my kids’ school gave me this book, which is an Icelandic perspective on why the climate crisis is not widely perceived as a cataclysmic, urgent event, like some other disasters or catastrophes in history. It focuses on the issue of time, and how because climate change is perceived to be slow, a disaster in slow motion – even though it’s actually moving much faster than we realise – it creates some inertia around action. I love nonfiction that has a narrative bent to it. 3. Place Kinderhook Knitting Mill Flower Drama, 2005 by Judith Linhares, on display at Kinderhook Knitting Mill as part of its Freaky Flowers exhibit. Photograph: Judith Linhares / September Gallery There’s a really interesting project near where I live in upstate New York: it’s a 19th-century textile mill that’s been turned into a multi-occupancy food and art emporium. There’s an incredible gallery called September that currently has a beautiful multi-artist exhibit called Freaky Flowers, an eccentric pantry called OK Pantry, and an amazing coffee shop called Morning Bird. I spend a lot of time there. Kinderhook is an old Dutch pre-revolutionary war town that has had a lot of new energy come into it, and it has a strong art community. 4. Poet Mustafa the Poet ‘A compelling person’: Mustafa the Poet. Photograph: Yasin Osman I wanted to draw attention to a poet and musician named Mustafa Ahmed, known as Mustafa the Poet. He’s a Sudanese-Canadian singer-songwriter and poet from Toronto, and he had a beautiful debut album called When Smoke Rises – there’s a song called Stay Alive on there that I find really moving. He’s an interesting lyricist and poet and just a compelling person. He read poetry before the National played the Ottawa folk festival when he was maybe 15 years old, almost 10 years ago. I think he’s someone special who has a unique voice. 5. Shop Old Style Guitar Shop, Los Angeles Guitars at Old Style Guitar Shop, Los Angeles. Photograph: Old Style Guitar Shop / Instagram My friend Reuben Cox buys old, undervalued guitars primarily from the 50s and 60s, that were built as cheap starter guitars at the time, and he renovates them using his own interesting techniques. He then creates these very playable, unique pieces, such as the rubber bridge guitar I use on a lot of recordings, including Taylor Swift’s Folklore and Evermore. The shop has all kinds of eccentric instruments and special items – I buy them as gifts for people and I buy them for myself all the time. 6. Restaurant Casa Susanna, Catskills Casa Susanna: ‘It’s all about the abundance of food and beautiful ingredients in the Hudson Valley.’ Instagram/ @casasusannacamptown Camptown is a renovated vacation bungalow colony from the 30s, near where I live. It has 26 log cabins and an amazing restaurant called Casa Susanna. The chef is Efrén Hernández, who does a seasonal version of modern Mexican cuisine that is really special and constantly changing. All of the tortillas are made in-house, and they use ingredients from local farms. It’s all about the abundance of food and beautiful ingredients in the Hudson Valley. And they have the best margaritas I’ve ever had.

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https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2004/mar/11/theatre

Stage

2004-03-11T13:46:59.000Z

Michael Billington

Endgame, Albery, London

Atatty, threadbare curtain rises to the accompaniment of a circus drum-roll. Clearly Matthew Warchus sees Beckett's play as an apocalyptic vaudeville and, given the presence of a virtuosic duo like Michael Gambon and Lee Evans, this makes sense. It also overcomes the faint Endgame-fatigue resulting from the play's third London revival in eight years. Cyril Connolly pointed out that while Waiting For Godot is a fresh assault on a universal problem, Endgame "is the statement of a private one". By that he meant that it not only reflects Beckett's vision of life as a meaningless farce, the fractious dependence of the blind master, Hamm, on his oppressed servant, Clov, may also be a re-enactment of the Joyce-Beckett relationship currently depicted in Calico. But, while Endgame meant a lot to Beckett, I increasingly wonder how much it means to the rest of us, especially if we don't share his view of the unalterable absurdity of existence. My doubts were largely quelled by the heightened theatricality of Warchus's production. Centre-stage sits Gambon's magnificent Hamm, which evokes multiple images: a screaming Bacon Pope, a dying Prospero, a decaying Irish landlord. With a voice oscillating between organ-like thunder and strangled quietness, Gambon brings out Hamm's terminal desperation. When he cries "If I could drag myself down to the sea!", it is like one vainly clutching at salvation. But the dominant impression is of Hamm as a frustrated creator tortured by art's inability to counter life's pointlessness. Gambon's moulting majesty is perfectly offset by the comic cluelessness of Evans's Clov. Scuttling about in his crumpled longjohns, he looks like a scrawny Dickensian potboy as drawn by Cruikshank. Evans also highlights Clov's gift for mislaying ladders and telescopes, as if he is at the endless mercy of material objects. He is the permanent Fool to Gambon's raddled Lear, yet in his refusal to kiss his master reminds us that even the dispossessed have their dignity. With Geoffrey Hutchings's Nagg and Liz Smith's Nell popping up from their dustbins like incarcerated clowns, everything reminds us of Beckett's theatricality. Yet, while we are royally diverted, I found myself for once questioning the universality of Beckett's despairing vision. · Until May 1. Box office: 020-7369 1730.

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https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/dec/19/mills-boon-launch-spicy-afterglow-series-to-woo-tiktok-book-lovers

Books

2023-12-19T13:34:18.000Z

Lucy Knight

Mills & Boon launch ‘spicy’ Afterglow series to woo TikTok book lovers

In an attempt to attract younger romance fans, Mills & Boon will launch a new list of titles specifically aimed at TikTok users and readers aged 35 and under. While the longstanding publisher of romantic fiction sells a book every 10 seconds in the UK, according to its website, there is not yet much appetite for Mills & Boon titles among TikTok users. Romance “is by far the biggest book genre” on the app, says Edel Flood, the head of lifestyle and education at TikTok UK. Search the TikTok hashtag #BookTok, and you are likely to be given recommendations for “spicy” (read: sexy) books by romance authors Colleen Hoover and Emily Henry, or blends of fantasy and romance from the likes of Rebecca Yarros or Sarah J Maas. It has led to the publisher launching Mills & Boon Afterglow, which will publish two titles a month from January 2024, joining the six existing imprints that range from steamy, passionate sagas (Mills & Boon Desire) to the love stories of high-flying doctors (Mills & Boon Medical). Afterglow is “a trend-led, trope-filled list of books with authentic and relatable characters”, with “a generous dose of spice in every story”, says Katie Barnes-Wallis, marketing director at Mills & Boon. Tropes – for example: enemies to lovers; small-town settings; grumpy versus sunshine – are key to the way younger romance fans choose books and talk about them on TikTok. “People know what they want from their books and if someone can promise that before they even open the pages then it’s job done,” says Abby Parker, known online as abbysbooks. Pleasure and pliés: the ballet bonkbusters handling dance’s hot button issues Read more With the promise that Afterglow books will contain “all the tropes you could possibly want,” Barnes-Wallis and her colleagues are keen to tap into existing BookTok trends. The new imprint’s launch titles also demonstrate a focus on LGBT+ representation: The (Fake) Dating Game by Timothy Janovsky is described by the publisher as a “delightful and steamy male-male romance that takes the trope of ‘faux dating’ to a whole new level”, while The Boyfriend Subscription by Steven Salvatore is being advertised as “the queer Pretty Woman”. Queer titles such as Song of Achilles, Red, White and Royal Blue and the Heartstopper series are popular with BookTokers, “so whilst traditional romance will always have a place, there is scope for smaller sub-genres or emerging authors to find an audience too”, says Flood. Research by the Publishers Association has found that 59% of 16-25-year-olds say BookTok has helped them to discover a passion for reading, and Mills & Boon is upfront about the fact it is trying to get its slice of the TikTok pie. “With an eyewatering 4.5bn views of the hashtag #SpicyTok, there is a huge audience of voracious readers searching for their next romance read,” Barnes-Wallis says. And, as romance author Jenny Colgan says, it makes sense for the nation’s best-known romance publisher to cater for all kinds of romance fans. “Mills & Boon are a huge part of British cultural life, particularly for women,” Colgan says. Since it publishes “so much”, it is in “the perfect position to cater for a more diverse audience”. 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. Though the success of #BookTok is “completely fuelled by the community and their passion for literature”, Flood and her colleagues at TikTok see its growth as an opportunity to engage with the books industry – the app has formed a partnership with the Hay festival and this year launched its first ever TikTok book awards. “From a publisher’s perspective, TikTok is a great window to see what books, genres or authors are popular right now, so they can lean into those conversations in real-time,” says Flood. Yet some TikTokers are sceptical of how the books industry has latched on to TikTok as a way to sell books. “I think publishers need to be a bit more careful about how loosely they can brand books as ‘the next biggest BookTok sensation’ as I really think this is beginning to put people off,” says Parker. “Above everything, BookTok is a community of people who love books and want to talk about them … its power lies within in the honest opinions of reviewers and this should not be overlooked.” Afterglow may have its buzzwords “spice” and “tropes” – but whether Mills & Boon can find its happily-ever-after with the BookTok community remains to be seen.

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https://www.theguardian.com/film/2012/dec/16/tinkerbell-secret-wings-disney-review

Film

2012-12-16T00:02:01.000Z

Philip French

TinkerBell and the Secret of the Wings: 3D – review

Heard but not seen on stage, J M Barrie's Tink is her usual Disney sorority Barbie-doll figure in this mercifully brief animated movie wherein she encounters her long-lost sister when breaking the rules and crossing from warm Pixie Hollow into the Winter Woods. Things go desperately wrong after she brings Sis in from the cold, accidentally upsetting the global ecology and threatening to create a new ice age. A worthy message, quietly delivered.

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https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2017/mar/21/fourth-plinth-trafalgar-square-heather-phillipson-michael-rakowitz

Art and design

2017-03-21T15:49:42.000Z

Jonathan Jones

Trafalgar Square's fourth plinth is fine for horses, but not avant garde art

I’ve never been convinced that Trafalgar Square’s fourth plinth public sculpture project, in London, is a marvellous thing for art – it is a completely outdated way of displaying sculpture that modern art specifically and, I thought, finally rejected a long time ago. Winged bull and giant dollop of cream to adorn Trafalgar Square's fourth plinth Read more When the Italian shit-canning artist Piero Manzoni created his 1961 work Base Magica, consisting of just an empty plinth with two footprints on it, he was making a joke that was already old. The idea that statues need a “magic base” to set them apart from real life is a pre-modern convention that 20th-century artists gleefully subverted. Marcel Duchamp’s 1913 piece Bicycle Wheel mounts a bike wheel on a kitchen stool: it clearly demands to be displayed on the floor, part of real life and not separated from it. Setting the whole ensemble on a plinth would be silly. Putting Carl Andre’s horizontal array of bricks Equivalent VIII or anything by Richard Serra on a plinth would be equally ludicrous, not to mention physically impossible. It’s no coincidence that Rachel Whiteread, the best and most serious modern artist who has ever made a work for the fourth plinth, created one of its least effective sculptures. Whiteread’s transparent cast of the plinth itself was an awkward compromise between the new and the old that quickly lost its ghostly quality when pigeons perched on it. If it brings out bad work from good artists – while giving the maximum acclaim to the artistically old-fashioned statue that was Marc Quinn’s portrait of Alison Lapper – is the fourth plinth really such an effective way popularise avant-garde art? The fourth plinth does not challenge artists to create new ideas of what art is, but instead asks them to adapt to a traditional style of display. Why? No wonder so many commissions, such as Katharina Fritsch’s big blue cock, have been banal and pointless (once you’ve said “cock” the joke is made). Heather Phillipson with her sculpture The End, which will be installed on the fourth plinth in 2020. Photograph: Will Oliver/EPA The relentlessness of this series of commissions, its boundless appetite for fitting the square cube that is modern art into Trafalgar Square’s round hole, is changing art. It is making sculpture’s history go backwards. Young artists appear to be getting more plinthy in the way they think; their imaginations are increasingly well suited to a setting that was created for an equestrian statue in 1841. I like the two latest commissions, a homage to destroyed art by Michael Rakowitz and an apocalyptic dessert by Heather Phillipson. The first is an ancient Assyrian mythical beast built from date syrup cans. It represents an ancient masterpiece in the Mosul museum that was smashed by Islamic State, while the cans symbolise a local industry wrecked by the Iraq war. This sculpture deals with the current crisis in the region and its causes. Admirably, it mourns destroyed art but doesn’t pretend we can replace it with an exact simulacrum. Phillipson’s The End is a tottering still life representing the doom of civilisation; a giant swirl of cream is topped by a cherry, an insect and a drone. As in the still-life paintings in the National Gallery next door, we see corruption about to rot loveliness, except the drone is more sinister than the fly and the creamy dessert is sickly and decadent. These works have valid points to make and do so pithily. That’s a good, sensible use of the plinth. Yet they don’t exactly push the avant garde forward. There are no piles of bricks here. A hundred years after Marcel Duchamp exhibited a urinal as art, where is sculpture going? Well, backwards. The Victorians, once they got used to the idea of food cans as an artistic material and someone explained what a drone is, would have had no real difficulty with these sculptures. They are representational art whose content is more important than their form. Very moral, very 19th-century. Forty years of this, and art will be back in the stone age. The ultimate plinth art will be an equestrian statue of a monarch, and we will be so beaten down by then that we will hail it as a modernist masterpiece.

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https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/mar/25/jeremy-clarkson-top-gear-contract-bbc

Media

2015-03-25T14:10:30.000Z

John Plunkett

Jeremy Clarkson dropped by BBC after damning report into attack on producer

The BBC announced on Wednesday that it has dropped Jeremy Clarkson after the Top Gear presenter was responsible for an “unprovoked physical and verbal attack” that left a colleague bleeding and seeking hospital treatment. BBC director general Tony Hall said he took the decision to end Clarkson’s BBC career “with great regret”, 16 days after he was suspended following a “fracas” with a member of the Top Gear production team, but said the presenter had “crossed a line”. A BBC investigation led by BBC Scotland boss Ken MacQuarrie found that Clarkson had subjected Oisin Tymon to a 30-second physical attack after a sustained verbal tirade. Tymon took himself to an A&E department after the assault. It emerged on Wednesday that Clarkson could face a police investigation into his attack on Tymon after North Yorkshire police asked the BBC for a copy of MacQuarrie’s report. The report, published on Wednesday, revealed the full extent of the attack at the Simonstone Hall hotel in North Yorkshire, where the programme team had travelled for a location shoot on 4 March. MacQuarrie concluded that Tymon was “subject to an unprovoked physical and verbal attack” by Clarkson, during which he was “struck, resulting in swelling and bleeding to his lip”. The attack “lasted around 30 seconds and was halted by the intervention of a witness”, and Tymon “offered no retaliation”. It said Tymon was “shocked and distressed by the incident” and “drove to a nearby A&E department for examination”. The report added that Clarkson verbally abused Tymon “on more than one occasion – both during the attack and subsequently inside the hotel – and contained the strongest expletives and threats to sack him. “The abuse was at such volume as to be heard in the dining room, and the shouting was audible in a hotel bedroom.” In a statement, North Yorkshire police said it “is liaising with the BBC regarding the alleged incident in North Yorkshire involving Jeremy Clarkson. “We have asked the BBC for the report which details the findings of their internal investigation into the matter. The information will be assessed appropriately and action will be taken by North Yorkshire police where necessary. “It would not be appropriate for North Yorkshire police to comment further at this time.” BBC director general Tony Hall explains his decision to dismiss Top Gear host Jeremy Clarkson Guardian ‘Sustained and prolonged verbal abuse of an extreme nature’ Hall said Clarkson had “crossed a line” by subjecting an “innocent party [to] a physical altercation accompanied by sustained and prolonged verbal abuse of an extreme nature”. He said the BBC was a “broad church” which required “distinctive and different voices but they cannot come at any price. Common to all at the BBC have to be standards of decency and respect. “I cannot condone what has happened on this occasion. A member of staff – who is a completely innocent party – took himself to accident and emergency after a physical altercation accompanied by sustained and prolonged verbal abuse of an extreme nature. “For me, a line has been crossed. There cannot be one rule for one and one rule for another dictated by either rank, or public relations and commercial considerations.” Hall said: “It is with great regret that I have told Jeremy Clarkson today that the BBC will not be renewing his contract. “It is not a decision I have taken lightly. I have done so only after a very careful consideration of the facts and after personally meeting both Jeremy and Oisin Tymon. “Given the obvious and very genuine public interest in this, I am publishing the findings of his report. I take no pleasure in doing so. I know how popular the programme is and I also know that this decision will divide opinion. The main facts are not disputed by those involved.” Hall is a Top Gear fan and has previously stood by the presenter following a string of controversies, including an incident last year when he appeared to mumble the N-word in a Top Gear out-take. Top Gear’s future The BBC will attempt to continue with Top Gear, which is BBC2’s most popular show with more than 5 million viewers a week and generates around £50m a year for its commercial arm, BBC Worldwide. Hall said: “The BBC must now look to renew Top Gear for 2016. This will be a big challenge and there is no point in pretending otherwise. “I have asked [BBC2 controller] Kim Shillinglaw to look at how best we might take this forward over the coming months. I have also asked her to look at how we put out the last programmes in the current series.” Clarkson’s contract with the BBC was due to expire at the end of March. James May on Jeremy Clarkson’s sacking: ‘The three of us are a package’ Guardian The question now for the BBC is what happens to the other Top Gear presenters Richard Hammond and James May, both of whom have presenting commitments on the BBC outside of Top Gear. The Top Gear trio’s contracts run out next week. Negotiations for new deals with May and Hammond have been put on hold during the investigation. Hall also paid tribute to both Tymon and Clarkson. He said it had “obviously been difficult for everyone involved but in particular for Oisin. I want to make clear that no blame attaches to him for this incident. “He has behaved with huge integrity throughout. As a senior producer at the BBC, he will continue to have an important role within the organisation in the future.” On Clarkson, Hall added: “Obviously none of us wanted to find ourselves in this position. This decision should in no way detract from the extraordinary contribution that Jeremy Clarkson has made to the BBC. Top Gear: Jeremy Clarkson's biggest controversies - in quotes Read more “I have always personally been a great fan of his work and Top Gear. Jeremy is a huge talent. He may be leaving the BBC but I am sure he will continue to entertain, challenge and amuse audiences for many years to come.” Following the findings of the MacQuarrie inquiry, and the fact that Clarkson was put on a final warning after the N-word controversy last year, Hall had little alternative but to let Clarkson go. MacQuarrie’s report concluded Tymon was the “victim of an unprovoked physical and verbal attack” for which Clarkson had “made a number of attempts to apologise … by way of text, email and in person”. A “well-valued and respected” member of the Top Gear team, it said Tymon had “suffered significant personal distress as a result of this incident, through no fault of his own”. Reports that the BBC has lined up Chris Evans to take over from Clarkson are believed to be incorrect. The Radio 2 breakfast DJ, who has a huge car collection, told listeners on Wednesday: “This is not true. Not only is it’s not true – it’s absolute nonsense.” Top Gear has been successfully relaunched before – by Clarkson and his executive producer Andy Wilman at the helm – after its previous presenting and production team jumped ship to Channel 5. Meanwhile, Clarkson’s stint presenting BBC1 quiz Have I Got News for You is still due to go ahead on 23 April. However, sources say the final decision as to whether or not Clarkson will takes part will be down to him and it may be that he wishes to sever his links with the corporation entirely.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2007/nov/22/abriefsurveyoftheshortst3

Books

2007-11-22T11:01:48.000Z

Chris Power

A brief survey of the short story: part four

I first came to Ryunosuke Akutagawa by way of Akira Kurosawa's 1950 film Rashomon, which conflates a 1915 story of the same name with In a Bamboo Grove (1921). The latter work is a remarkable example of Akutagawa's distinctive early style, which added psychological complexity to medieval Heian period folktales. Redolent of Browning's The Ring and the Book, In a Bamboo Grove consists of seven testimonies concerning the death of a samurai who had been travelling with his wife. These accounts, including the dead man's own version via a spirit medium, all contradict one another to varying degrees. In highlighting the subjectivity of truth - no single account solves every paradox - Akutagawa displays an insightful and keenly creative intelligence in prose so lucid its sophistication is hardly visible. The period in which Akutagawa wrote, from the first world war until his death in 1927, was marked by affluence and liberalism in urban Japanese society. At the same time, outside the major cities a more or less feudal culture still held sway. Bridging this gap, Akutagawa became enormously popular by applying modernist techniques to his adaptations of traditional stories. In the mid-1920s, however, a radical shift split Japanese literary culture between the autobiographical, inward-looking I-novel (or, more accurately given the genre's short story element, "I-fiction"), and the chiefly Marxist works of the proletarian school, both of which were Japanese strains of European naturalism. Suddenly there was no audience for Akutagawa's modernist-medieval tales, of which he had in any case grown tired. There followed a period of desultory though not undistinguished experimentation. Having made his name with a unique fusion of styles, Akutagawa was understandably unwilling to join either the confessional or proletarian schools (although he wrote incisively and sympathetically about the latter in his 1927 essay, What is Proletarian Literature?). The Writer's Craft (1924) is a personal favourite from this period, in which the eulogy a teacher writes for a barely-known colleague - a sequence of clichés banged out in a lunch break - provokes tears at the funeral, while on the same day a story over which he has painstakingly laboured is savaged by a critic. It is the best sort of satire, with humour and a commitment to truth working in concert. It was with his mental health in steep decline that Akutagawa set to work on a final series of devastating, pared-down works of introspection that culminated in his barbiturates overdose in the summer of 1927. And while these share traits in common with I-fiction, Akutagawa's was a typically individual take on the style. His fear of following his mother into madness pervades these diarylike pieces, which also unflinchingly document his paranoid delusions. The Life of a Stupid Man, completed just a month before his death, sees its narrator clinging to his diminishing will to live as a man "leaning as it were upon a chipped and narrow sword". In another particularly revealing passage the narrator, reading Candide, says that "Voltaire supplied him with man-made wings." Akutagawa perceived literature and the intellectual life as an escape from life's drudgery, but he cannot help going on to merge his metaphor with the fable of Icarus, thus making the agent of his salvation that, also, of his doom. The posthumously published Spinning Gears amplifies this atmosphere of despair. It is a vision of hell on earth in which the author, who has come to see portents everywhere, from maggots in his meal (an hallucination that Akutagawa suffered regularly) to strangers' words heard in passing and brands of cigarette, surrenders the last shreds of his will to live. Looking back to his youth in The Life of a Stupid Man, Akutagawa writes, "He wanted to live life so intensely that he could die at any moment without regrets." But even as he made this recollection, as Spinning Gears makes clear, his delusional state had made life so intense as to drive him out of it, writing as he went. As a final note, Jay Rubin's translations in the recent Penguin edition of Akutagawa's stories represent a significant improvement on several past efforts. The choice of Haruki Murakami to write the introduction is a puzzle, however, given that he only musters faint praise for his subject. But that's an irony Akutagawa, who once ended a story by claiming that if her boyfriend didn't brutally deflower his heroine then the critics most surely would, might well have enjoyed. Next week: Raymond Carver Read the rest of the survey here.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/nov/30/david-haye-tony-bellew-boxing

Sport

2016-11-30T23:07:26.000Z

Sean Ingle

David Haye and Tony Bellew plumb new depths with boxing at low ebb | Sean Ingle

The bar was set low but at the Dorchester hotel on Wednesday David Haye and Tony Bellew still managed to crassly limbo under it. A press conference to announce their fight in March fast descended into a 20-minute slanging match, during which Haye promised to put his opponent in hospital and – for good measure – warned him his life was on the line. Then, as the pair butted noses during the face-off, a push from Bellew was met with a left hook from Haye. As bouncers waded into the chaos, there were numerous shouts and threats, with Bellew angrily suggesting the pair settle matters with a street fight. Nicholas Walters stuns boxing by committing the sport’s ultimate sin Read more After a desperate few weeks for the sport – with the tragic death of the Scottish welterweight Mike Towell in October followed by two other fighters, Nick Blackwell and Eduard Gutknecht, undergoing brain operations in the past fortnight – this was another swingeing blow to boxing’s image. It was not as if they needed to sell the fight: Bellew’s promoter, Eddie Hearn, admitted that the demand for pre-sale tickets was overwhelming, even with ringside seats costing £2,500. Afterwards Bellew, the WBC cruiserweight champion, put the blame on Haye for the melee and accused him of dragging the sport into disrepute. “Listen, there are fighters in comas right now,” he said. “You don’t brag about putting someone in hospital. It’s absolutely horrible. It’s the most dangerous sport in the world and we don’t need clowns like him saying what he said. It’s disgusting. “That wasn’t a way of selling the show. I’m a professional sportsman, I’m a businessman and I’m not coming here to put the game I love into disrepute like that. I threw no punches, I had no intention of throwing any punches. I just wanted to get him off my face. That’s all I wanted to do.” Earlier both fighters had traded insults, with Haye promising to knock out Bellew in a round and calling him a “fat, pumped up light-heavyweight”. “You’ll have some standard of living after this fight,” he added, “but you won’t have any teeth to enjoy those lovely meals. You and your whole team are getting destroyed.” Then, pointing to Hearn and Bellew’s trainer, Dave Coldwell, Haye added: “Both of you two are putting him in such a dangerous situation. His life is on the line.” Bellew retaliated by calling Haye a “nightclub whore” who had wasted the millions he had made from boxing. “He’s blown the lot,” he said. “This is the only reason he’s fighting me, he thinks he’ll walk through me in a round. He could have fought for the heavyweight world title but he chose the money because he’s skint.” Haye was also accused of being “the biggest diva boxing has ever seen”, with Bellew pointing to a long list of demands from his opponent in the contract. “I don’t know where it’s come from, but I can’t believe how egotistical he is,” he said. “I had to be sat in the room when he entered the press conference, that was one of the stipulations.” The former cruiserweight and heavyweight champion of the world increasingly has the scent of a heavyweight mega-fight with the IBF champion, Anthony Joshua, in his nostrils. “When Sky see the numbers and excitement I bring, they will realise they have to make the fight,” said Haye. “It would break all records.” “People laugh about my last two fights being on Dave, and it being a comedy channel, but they got 3.5 million viewers so they had the last laugh,” he added. “Ticket sales went in a matter of seconds for this fight. People want to see this and they want to see me knock someone out.” What happened on Wednesday will have only boosted pay-per-view sales. The sad fact is that these fighters are among the more intelligent and eloquent members of their profession. But this was far from their finest hour.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jun/07/diane-abbott-to-step-aside-for-the-period-of-her-ill-health-corbyn-says

Politics

2017-06-07T11:58:45.000Z

Peter Walker

Diane Abbott to step down 'for the period of her ill health', Corbyn says

Diane Abbott, the shadow home secretary, is to step down temporarily due to ill health, Jeremy Corbyn has said. The shadow policing minister, Lyn Brown, will stand in for her. It is understood that Abbott has recently been diagnosed with a long-term health condition, which her doctors have been attempting to manage. However, it is non-life threatening, and not deemed serious enough to impair her ability to take on the job of home secretary if Labour wins the election. Abbott herself tweeted: Touched by all the messages of support. Still standing! Will rejoin the fray soon. Vote Labour! — Diane Abbott (@HackneyAbbott) June 7, 2017 Speaking on a campaign visit to Glasgow, Corbyn said Abbott was still not well after she pulled out of two election events on Tuesday. Labour said in a statement: “Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the Labour party, has asked Lyn Brown to stand in for Diane Abbott as shadow home secretary for the period of her ill health.” Another Labour MP, Barry Gardiner, said Abbott had been diagnosed with a long-term medical condition, but that he had no further details. Gardiner, the Brent North MP, told Talk Radio: “I don’t have her medical condition. I’m given to understand she’s been diagnosed … It’s a long-term condition, and she’s been coming to terms with that.” Gardiner said he did not know any more, and that he had been told this by a Labour official. Abbott’s friends were furious with Gardiner, saying he had “overstepped the mark” and it was “outrageous” to discuss her health in public. Another shadow minister played down the seriousness of the condition, saying: “Everyone, in every job, gets ill from time to time. That’s just the way it is.” Friends of Abbott denied reports that she had not been consulted before her break from the role was announced, pointing out that Brown is her deputy and the move could not have taken place without Abbott’s say so. Speaking to reporters during her final round of campaign events, Theresa May wished Abbott a speedy recovery . Theresa May flies to Norfolk for final campaign push. She refuses to be drawn on what victory looks like. Wishes Diane A a "speedy recovery" pic.twitter.com/qTt9uWd2KB — Rowena Mason (@rowenamason) June 7, 2017 Abbott, 63, had been due to take part in a debate on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour and a hustings organised by the London Evening Standard on Tuesday, but was replaced by the shadow foreign secretary, Emily Thornberry, with Labour saying Abbott was ill. The MP for Hackney North, who has been shadow home secretary since October, has faced increasingly vehement criticism from the Conservatives and others following a series of difficult interviews. At the start of May, in an interview on LBC, Abbott repeatedly stumbled over the cost of Labour’s pledge to hire 10,000 extra police officers, initially suggesting the bill would be just £300,000, before correcting herself several times. She was featured on the front page of Wednesday’s Daily Mail, with Corbyn and the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, under the headline: “Apologists for terror.” Corbyn told BBC Breakfast that Abbott had not been well for a couple of days and was taking a break from the campaign. He said: “Diane is somebody that works extremely hard and represents her community very well and I have to say has received totally unfair levels of attack and abuse, not just recently – over many years.” Asked how long she would be away from her role, Corbyn replied: “I’ll be talking to her later on today – she’s not well at the moment.” Britain’s transformed election: what on earth is going on? Guardian Abbott has represented Hackney North and Stoke Newington in north-east London since 1987. She remained on the backbenches until Ed Miliband made her a junior shadow health minister in 2010. Under the leadership of Corbyn, a long-time political ally, she took the shadow roles for international development and health before becoming shadow home secretary. Brown, 57, has represented West Ham since 2005. She was appointed to Labour’s shadow home affairs team when Corbyn named his first frontbench team in 2015. She was among a series of MPs who resigned the following year after the Brexit referendum and subsequent vote of no confidence in Corbyn’s leadership. She said then that Labour should seek a new leader “for the good of the party and the country”. She rejoined the frontbench three months later as minister for policing. Brown held her safe east London seat in 2015 with a majority of almost 28,000. She was a Labour whip under Gordon Brown and Miliband, before being appointed shadow minister for communities and local government in 2013 and then shadow Home Office minister two years later.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/apr/15/game-of-thrones-series-eight-review-a-nostalgiafest-for-long-suffering-fans

Television & radio

2019-04-15T10:04:57.000Z

Lucy Mangan

Game of Thrones series eight review – a nostalgia-fest for long-suffering fans

Warning: this review contains spoilers. At one point in the long-awaited, much-hyped premiere of the eighth and final season of Game of Thrones, Tyrion, Varys and Davos look down from a Winterfell gangway on the recently-arrived Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen, and let their imaginations run riot. What if, Davos wonders, the Seven Kingdoms could be ruled by a just woman and an honourable man, “for once in their shit history.” A harsh assessment of the preceding 67 hours of dynastic convolutions, power plays, undead risings and narrative horses galloping across multiple continents and delivering members of the largest ensemble cast in televisual history to their correct destinations on time – but fair. It’s been a bit grim, for the most part. Heads have been melted and crushed. Eyes have been extracted with thumbs. An unusual number of penises have been severed. Twincest has been a thing. Offspring have been baked into pies and served to unwitting but, alas, hungry fathers. Game of Thrones recap: season eight, episode one – the end is now Read more The eighth season premiere – there are, slightly incredibly, just five more episodes after this – was, by Westerosian standards, a sedate affair, concentrating largely on retrenchment, and narrowing the scope of the narrative and emotional landscape. This was doubtless disappointing to the many who expected nothing but mighty spectacle all the way down the home straight, but pleasing to those of us who found that the sprawl of later series was dissipating our ability to care about the characters and rendering the (many) deaths, twists, unions and partings increasingly insignificant. The premiere pulled everyone and everything together; it was, for the most part, an almost nostalgic hour. Moments of it – like Arya’s reunion with Jon, or Yara’s forgiveness of Theon – might even have warmed the cockles of your heart, if winter hadn’t come with such a vengeance to Winterfell that the chill seemed to reach through the screen. Plenty of callbacks for those who have stayed the distance ... Arya Stark wearing her hair like her late, lamented father. Photograph: HBO There were plenty of callbacks for all the loyal viewers who have stayed the distance; from the little boy running through the crowded Winterfell streets and climbing a tree to see the arriving army led by Jon and the Mother of Dragons, recalling our first sight of Bran eager to see Robert and Cersei arriving all those series ago, to tiny touches like Arya wearing her hair like her late, much lamented father Ned Stark did before (and I suppose, technically, after) his shock decapitation at the end of season one. And the greatest circle back of all, in the final scene, when Jaime Lannister lays eyes on Bran for the first time since he lightly flung him out of the tower window and paralysed him, 66 hours of juggernauting television ago. Plus we got our best look yet at the dragons, albeit in a scene that seemed to come from a different series entirely, as secret new couple Daenerys and Jon flew together over the snowy wastelands grinning at each other like something out of a medieval romcom (When Dany Met Dymwytte). There were no great plot advances. The Wall is still very much down, the White Walkers are still coming, Cersei is still Cersei (giving Bronn orders to kill both her brothers and handing him the crossbow with which Tyrion killed their father to do it. “That fucking family,” he sighs, and he is so right), and Euron is still a mad charmer with a strangely brightening effect on my mood (and brightens considerably himself when Cersei allows him an advance on their promised post-war wedding night). But Sam does reveal to Jon that he is not in fact Ned Stark’s bastard but Aegon Targaryen, Sixth of his Name, therefore not just currently shagging his aunt but the true heir to the Iron Throne and her direct rival. And because the makers have chosen to go deep with their creation rather than wide, it is a revelation that suddenly matters once more to us. Though possibly not as much as it will to the Northerners when they find out that Jon effectively gave away their autonomy to a close relative. Bad optics. Or as Ygritte used to put it – you knurr nothing, Jon Snurr. It is the competing loyalties, the loves and enmities that enmesh the Lannisters, Starks, Targaryens and the rest, after all, and the questions Game of Thrones poses about conscience and corruption and the manifestations of power, that will propel us through to the end. The Battle for Winterfell looks set to take place midway through the season; after that comes the reckoning. Who will win, who will die? Deservedly or undeservedly? Cleanly or peeled like a switch, Ramsay-style? Can there be punishment enough for Cersei, or was the wig she sported till season five’s walk of shame enough? All will be revealed soon enough. Then we will know everything, Jon Snurr.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/jan/21/the-big-short-review-steve-carell-ryan-gosling-2008-financial-crisis

Film

2016-01-21T15:00:02.000Z

Peter Bradshaw

The Big Short review – Ryan Gosling and Christian Bale can't save this overvalued stock

Awards season is a time for some movies to be Enronised. Reputations get inflated. And Adam McKay’s The Big Short is overvalued stock. Michael Lewis: the scourge of Wall Street Read more As if assembled at some gigantic dinner party, saucer-eyed pundits have been excitably talking this up, and the prospectus did look inviting. With co-screenwriter Charles Randolph, McKay has adapted the non-fiction bestseller by Michael Lewis about those various financial mavericks, Rain Men and chancers who “shorted” the market before the great crash of 2008 – that is, they bet that subprime mortgage bonds would collapse and take the economy with them. Lewis also wrote Moneyball, filmed by Bennett Miller, about stat wizardry and baseball, another book about nerd visionaries seeing things hidden from the rest of us at a deep molecular level. Watch a video review Guardian I came to The Big Short in a state of anticipation, only to be baffled at how smug, laborious and self-important it is, trying to combine Gordon Gekko sexiness with anti-banker correctness, like Oliver Stone’s Wall Street rewritten by Malcolm Gladwell and Justin Welby. It’s a film that doesn’t let you have your cake, or eat it. And how agonisingly it keeps stopping to explain technical stuff by bringing on celeb guest stars such as superchef Anthony Bourdain or singer Selena Gomez to recite the patronising and gimmicky mini-explanations written for them. (To explain how high-risk subprime mortgage products were invisibly and dangerously “bundled in” with relatively decent loans, Bourdain says it was like some chefs’ cheeky habit of chucking old fish cuts in with nicer fish to make a stew. But wait. Does that mean the stew is going to poison us?) Brad Pitt as a broker in The Big Short. Photograph: Moviestore/Rex Shutterstock The Big Short is fatally unsure about whether it is a righteous condemnation of fraud, or a black comic romp with cool amoral dudes and rebellious outsiders. There is neither the gleeful energy of Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street nor the plain informative clarity of Charles Ferguson’s documentary Inside Job. At one stage, investment brokers cheerfully explain their subprime scam and someone asks how it is they can confess so easily. “They’re not confessing – they’re bragging!” comes the reply. There’s a similar tonal problem here. Christian Bale gives a good performance as Michael Burry, a shy and difficult man employed as a fund manager. He sees that subprimes are about to blow and persuades his boss to gamble the firm’s entire capital on financial instruments that will pay off when the market collapses. Ryan Gosling is Jared Vennett, a tough-talking blowhard who gets wind of the deal, grasps the thinking behind it and persuades an investment team to get in on this opportunity – led by Mark Baum, played by Steve Carell, an angry, overheated guy, traumatised by a family tragedy he won’t discuss, and driven by a need to punish the financial world’s iniquities. Meanwhile Brad Pitt plays Ben Rickert, a broker who has retired from the financial world in disgust, but now helps two newbies to join in this same retributive adventure. Steve Carell on The Big Short: ‘It’s true and horrifying’ – video interview Guardian It sounds like a fascinating story: taken together, these disparate people could almost be akin to Ocean’s Eleven or The Dirty Dozen or Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds. In a more cheerfully cynical or ironic mood – the sort of mood that helped create Adam McKay’s successful comedies – The Big Short might have been a sort of heist film. But disapproval and piety preclude this approach: and Pitt gives the two younger colleagues a pompous and redundant lecture on how they mustn’t gloat, because the crash they’re exploiting will ruin lives. Oscars 2016: full list of Academy Award nominations Read more Carell himself gives a dull, one-note performance: permanently pissed off, permanently outraged by the rottenness of everything he discovers about the subprime racket, but in a strange, impotent, not-funny way. He can’t stop what’s happening; he can’t take pleasure in cashing in on its downfall, and even the cashing in part turns out to be frustratingly difficult. His character is, incidentally, involved in one of the most outrageous examples of “sexposition” I have ever seen: the practice of getting characters to explain things in a lapdancing club in order to spice up the dialogue. Mark Baum gets a stripper to explain how her dodgy mortgage works, while she’s at work. Most exasperatingly, the film appears finally to shrug at the outcome of all this, in a kind of whaddaya-gonna-do grimace, and all those homeless subprime victims are far less important dramatically than sensitive vindicated genius Christian Bale, with the adorable wife he met on match.com. Some people made money; more people lost money (but no one we care about). The end result is a kind of exhausted acquiescence. I wanted a real attack. This comes up short.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/07/uae-oil-firm-cop28-climate-summit-emails-sultan-al-jaber-adnoc

Environment

2023-06-07T12:00:36.000Z

Damian Carrington

‘Absolute scandal’: UAE state oil firm able to read Cop28 climate summit emails

The United Arab Emirates’ state oil company has been able to read emails to and from the Cop28 climate summit office and was consulted on how to respond to a media inquiry, the Guardian can reveal. The UAE is hosting the UN climate summit in November and the president of Cop28 is Sultan Al Jaber, who is also chief executive of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc). The revelations have been called “explosive” and a “scandal” by lawmakers. The Cop28 office had claimed its email system was “standalone” and “separate” from that of Adnoc. But expert technical analysis showed the office shared email servers with Adnoc. After the Guardian’s inquiries, the Cop28 office switched to a different server on Monday. Al Jaber’s dual role has attracted strong criticism, including from the former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres, who called his approach “dangerous”. Replies to a Guardian email to the Cop28 office requesting reaction to these comments, which did not mention Adnoc, contained the text “Adnoc classification: internal”. The French MEP Manon Aubry, said: “This is an absolute scandal. An oil and gas company has found its way to the core of the organisation in charge of coordinating the phasing out of oil and gas. It is like having a tobacco multinational overseeing the internal work of the World Health Organization.” Aubry, who co-led a recent letter to the UN from 133 US and EU politicians calling for the removal of Al Jaber, said: “The Cop28 office has lost all credibility. If we care more about preventing a climate disaster than protecting the profits and influence of fossil fuel companies, we need to react now.” Pascoe Sabido, at Corporate Europe Observatory and co-coordinator of the Kick Big Polluters Out coalition of more than 450 organisations, said the revelations were outrageous and that Al Jaber’s appointment had been “a huge blow to the credibility” of the UN’s climate body, the UNFCCC. “It’s completely inappropriate that an oil corporation was consulted and it exposes just how influential it has been in shaping what gets presented to the outside world,” Sabido said. “Until world governments accept that fossil fuels need to be left in the ground and their lobbyists are no longer allowed to write the rules of climate action, this will keep happening.” A senior international climate policy expert, who requested anonymity, said: “The UAE have been advised by many actors since it became clear they would host Cop28 that they should separate out the presidency from Adnoc. They also were advised that Sultan Al Jaber should step down from his roles at Adnoc, even if temporarily. Despite a six-month listening tour, they do not seem to have picked up on this advice.” The Guardian revealed in April that the UAE had the third biggest net zero-busting plans for oil and gas expansion in the world. The International Energy Agency, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and a large consensus of scientists are clear that new oil and gasfields are incompatible with the 1.5C target of the Paris agreement. In addition to being the head of Adnoc, Al Jaber chairs Masdar, a renewable energy company, and was the UAE climate envoy from 2010 to 2016 – he was reappointed to the post in 2020. He received support from senior figures shortly after his appointment as Cop28 president in January, including from the US climate envoy John Kerry and EU climate chief Frans Timmermans. The Guardian discovered the links between the UAE’s Cop28 office and Adnoc after requesting a response to Figueres’s criticisms in mid-May. When asked why the email replies contained the text “Adnoc classification: internal”, the Cop28 office said it had “sought input from several subject matter experts regarding emissions, including Adnoc” and that the internal classification mark had become part of the email chain as a result. The Guardian also asked if the Cop28 office shared an IT system with Adnoc. Politico reported in January that the UNFCCC had sent a “series of questions inquiring whether the presidency will be independent of the oil company … including whether there is a firewall between the two institutions; whether Adnoc has access to Cop28 meetings and strategic documents; if [Cop28] staff are relying on the oil giant’s IT systems”. The Cop28 office replied to the Guardian on 23 May, with a spokesperson stating: “Cop28 can confirm that Cop28 content (including emails) are held in separate servers, housed in the Cop28 offices, on a standalone, firewall-protected network, supported by a separate Cop28 IT team.” However, expert technical analysis for the Guardian of the headers of emails from the Cop28 office and from an earlier email chain between the Guardian and the oil company revealed that Adnoc servers were involved in both sending and receiving emails from the Cop28 office. Sign up to Down to Earth Free weekly newsletter The planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essential 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. “The [Cop28] server handed everything off to the oil company’s server to send the email out,” said Dr Richard Clayton, at the Computer Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, UK, and an expert in traceability. “The oil company was able to look at all of the email which they were sending out.” Prof Alan Woodward, a computer security expert at the University of Surrey, UK, added: “Both the [Cop28] and Adnoc emails use the same primary email external service. Their MX record – where their email is sent to – was the same Proofpoint server.” In response to the finding that Adnoc servers were involved in Cop28 office communications, the Cop28 spokesperson said on 2 June: “For the past few months, Cop28 has been using a dedicated Microsoft 365 tenant and email service. We have been migrating our data from the previous host to our own setup and we expect that this process will be complete by 5 June.” The MEP Bas Eickhout, the vice-chair of the EU parliament’s environment committee, said the Guardian’s findings were “explosive”. He added: “The [UAE presidency of Cop28] is a merger of the economic interests of a fossil country with a fundamental transition agenda that should be away from this fossil industry – that will not go well, and [these revelations] already show that it’s not going well.” Al Jaber should be replaced as Cop28 president, Eickhout said. But with time running short before the November summit, he said the UNFCCC secretariat “should now take more control of the entire process” and better reflect the statements made by the UN secretary general António Guterres, who has warned that the climate crisis has put the world on a “highway to hell”. The UNFCCC did not respond to a request for comment. Al Jaber has previously defended his appointment, and told the Guardian in April that his business ties would prove an asset in ensuring the private sector took the necessary action on the climate crisis. The US senator Sheldon Whitehouse, who also co-led the letter calling for the removal of Al Jaber, said: “The [Guardian] reports seem to confirm what many of us have been saying. Sultan Al Jaber will be hard-pressed to separate his role as CEO of Adnoc from his role as the head of the world’s largest diplomatic gathering on climate change. Our window to avert climate disaster is narrowing, and there’s too much at stake for the planet to get this wrong.”

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/may/11/women-dominate-2021-brit-awards-as-dua-lipa-tops-winners

Music

2021-05-11T21:31:47.000Z

Ben Beaumont-Thomas

Women dominate 2021 Brit awards as Dua Lipa tops winners

Dua Lipa has topped the winners at the 2021 Brit awards, calling for Boris Johnson to approve “a fair pay rise” for frontline NHS staff as she picked up gongs including the top prize of British album for her chart-dominating disco spectacular Future Nostalgia. She also won female solo artist, bringing her total Brit award tally to five and cementing her position as one of the UK’s most successful and critically acclaimed pop stars. Receiving the latter award and addressing the 2,500 key workers given tickets to the show, she said: “It’s very good to clap for [frontline NHS staff], but we need to pay them,” as she dedicated her award to nurse and healthcare pioneer Dame Elizabeth Anionwu. She later dedicated her album award to Folajimi Olubunmi-Adewole, the 20-year-old man who died after attempting to save a woman who had fallen in the river Thames in April. She called for a bravery award to be made to him and Joaquin Garcia, who also attempted a rescue and survived along with the woman. 1:48 Dua Lipa calls for pay rise for frontline NHS staff as she wins two Brit awards – video The 2020 Brit awards were widely criticised for their heavy bias towards male artists, with only one British woman – pop singer Mabel – nominated across 25 slots in the mixed-gender categories. There has been an emphatic reversal in 2021, with Lipa among a diverse range of female winners. Little Mix became the first all-female band to win the British group award, with Five Star in 1987, Stereo MCs in 1994 and Gorillaz in 2018 the only previous category winners to feature women. Little Mix’s win crowns a career that began on TV show The X Factor 10 years ago, with six UK Top 5 albums since, plus 16 Top 10 singles, five of those reaching No 1. The group are expected to now go on hiatus, with members Perrie Edwards and Leigh-Anne Pinnock each announcing pregnancies this month, and founder member Jesy Nelson leaving the group in December. Taylor Swift accepts the global icon award. She is the first female winner. Photograph: Ian West/PA Pinnock said on receiving the award: “It’s not easy being a female in the UK pop industry. We’ve seen the white male dominance, misogyny, sexism and lack of diversity. We’re proud of how we’ve stuck together, stood our ground, surrounded ourselves with strong women and are now using our voices more than ever.” Los Angeles trio Haim won international group, the first all-female group to do so in nearly two decades following Destiny’s Child’s win in 2002. Billie Eilish won international female, pop singer Griff won the rising star award, and Taylor Swift became the first woman to receive the global icon award, previously won by David Bowie, Elton John and Robbie Williams. “There is no career path that comes free of negativity,” she said on receiving the award in person. “If you’re met with resistance that probably means that you’re doing something new.” Twenty-year-old Arlo Parks won breakthrough artist, having released one of the most admired albums of the year so far with her debut Collapsed in Sunbeams, blending trip-hop and soul in songs full of emotive storytelling. Arlo Parks, who won breakthrough artist, performs on stage. Photograph: John Marshall/AFP/Getty Images She had been nominated for three awards and also performed at the ceremony, telling the Guardian beforehand: “It feels pretty crazy, and I think it hasn’t fully sunk in. I’ve been doing a lot of preparation and rehearsals, and it feels beautiful putting the time into constructing something that is like a step towards bringing gigs and concerts back. When they do come back properly they will be even more special because these songs will have grown roots in people’s lives and will have soundtracked such a difficult time.” Each year this century, at least half of the winners in the mixed-gender categories have been men, but in 2021, six out of seven are women. The celebration of female talent follows similar recognition at this year’s Grammy awards, where Eilish, Swift, Megan Thee Stallion and HER won the top four awards, and where Lipa won one of her six nominations, for best pop vocal album. Lipa couldn’t sweep the board at the Brits though, and was beaten to British single by Harry Styles with his song Watermelon Sugar, an enduring hit since its release in November 2019 that has spent 62 weeks in the UK chart in total. Headie One got in a jab against Boris Johnson’s government. Photograph: JMEnternational for the Brit awards/Getty Images He also addressed the key workers in the audience, saying: “Thank you for everything you did for this country”, while Headie One and AJ Tracey added new lyrics to their hit track Ain’t It Different, rapping: “Team work keeps the dream working, it’s only right we show love to the key workers.” The pair also got in a jab against Boris Johnson’s government, “saying eat out to help out but won’t help out [Marcus] Rashford when he’s feeding the youths”, while performing on a stage set designed by Louis Vuitton artistic director Virgil Abloh. British male was won by J Hus, the east Londoner whose sophisticated blend of rap with African pop production cohered on his No 1 album Big Conspiracy. International male was won by the Weeknd, who was snubbed at this year’s Grammys, earning zero nominations despite having one of the year’s biggest global hits with Blinding Lights. He also performed at the Brit awards via video, and his award was presented to him with a video message by Michelle Obama. Further performances came from Lipa, Parks, Griff, Coldplay and Olivia Rodrigo, the latter making her UK live debut after her single Drivers License topped the chart for nine weeks earlier this year. Elton John and Years & Years performed a surprise collaboration, of Pet Shop Boys’ It’s a Sin. Rag’n’Bone Man closed the show alongside Pink and the Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust Choir. Prior to the event, the British blues-soul singer told the Guardian he was honoured to share the stage with key workers, and added: “It’s been difficult not having the kind of output that I usually have, being able to stand on stage and let everything out. I really feel for people where [live performance] is their livelihood, especially if you’re at a certain point in your career where you have to do a lot for so little – I know what that feels like. I think they’re the people that are most affected.” Pink and Rag’n’Bone Man perform with the Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust Choir. Photograph: JMEnternational for the Brit awards/Getty Images The 2021 Brits was the first large-scale indoor event to be held as part of a government-led research programme into how crowds can return safely to events. Scientists monitored the event and tracked any potential areas of contamination. “The learnings that the government will get out of this will be very important and hopefully will allow them to inform their approach and policy going forward,” said a Brit awards spokesperson. Hannah, a 26-year-old nurse who was attending the awards, said that it felt like a long overdue party after what has been a difficult year. “I can’t believe I’m actually here,” she said. “It’s so nice to have an evening out to dress up and dance, although it does feel strange as we’re not completely out of the thick of it. But it does feel like the difficulties over the past year are ending.” 2021 Brit award winners British female: Dua Lipa British male: J Hus British group: Little Mix Breakthrough artist: Arlo Parks British single: Harry Styles – Watermelon Sugar British album: Dua Lipa – Future Nostalgia International female: Billie Eilish International male: The Weeknd International group: Haim Global icon: Taylor Swift Rising star: Griff

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/sep/26/families-can-fall-apart-over-this-stuff-the-children-refusing-to-go-to-school

Australia news

2022-09-25T17:30:39.000Z

Sophie Black

‘Families can fall apart over this stuff’: the children refusing to go to school

Every morning Sylvie* wakes up and wonders if her nine-year-old son Jack* will make it to school that day. “We count down to the holidays,” says Sylvie. “We count down to the end of each school day with the promise of a surf.” The Victorian mother of two jokes that she’s not sure if that counts as bribery or “perspective”, but she does know that ever since Jack started resisting going to school, the “jury is out on everything”. “When I tell people – even friends – that he has school refusal they will say things like ‘so you just let him stay home?’,” she says. “But this is nothing like a kid just wanting a day off.” Right now the general consensus is that Jack is suffering from extreme separation anxiety, and it’s agonising to witness. ‘When I tell people he has school refusal they will say things like “so you just let him stay home?”’ Photograph: Geo Piatt/Getty Images/500px Prime “In the early days, we were in the emergency department multiple times as we tried to understand what was going on. At first there were the medical tests, as Jack would say his tummy was sore or he had a really bad headache. But then it would manifest in aggression because we were trying to push him into the things he desperately didn’t want to do ... he was a kid in crisis and we had no idea what was going on.” Sylvie finds it difficult to talk about. “It’s hard to match it up with our sweet boy ... this was a kid who’d never had a tantrum in his life and was a happy and cuddly guy and he just changed.” He became aggressive and at times, says Sylvie, kept the house up all night – yelling and banging things, occasionally throwing things, refusing to go to bed or sleep. “Nothing could calm him.” Sylvie herself feels completely exhausted after fighting to find help – not just for Jack, but the whole family. The “teachers at school are good people and they love [Jack] ... but they have no resources or specialist knowledge, no allied health, no psych or counselling services available. They say there’s at least one [school refuser] in each class, but no support for families – it was only through a really exceptional GP that we got through the maze.” Teaching with turtles: the NSW program turning school students into conservationists Read more Prior to the pandemic, Jack was happy enough at school. “We had ups and downs … but I think Covid heightened all of our anxiety on a deep level – and remote schooling showed him it was possible to not go.” The widely used term “school refusal” isn’t about wilful truancy but rather refers to the emotional distress that students (of any age) can associate with attending school. Some miss all or part of the school day, some might not go to school at all for extended periods. They usually spend the day at home with their parents’ knowledge, even though their parents, at least initially, try very hard to get them to go. In fact, many children desperately want to be able to go to school, but simply … can’t. “Our initial approach, which all the leaders at school espoused, of ‘the only cure for school refusal is school’ is rubbish for a kid like Jack. And we did some real damage to trust in going all out to ‘force’ him to go in those early times,” says Sylvie. Like many parents or carers in a similar situation, Sylvie has now had to give up work. The disruption to the household has resulted in anxiety for Sylvie, her partner and Jack’s sister. They’re just one of a growing number of families who are dealing with the acute stress of trying to steer through the issues that are raised when their kids start feeling distressed either at school or by the mere thought of it. Crucially, these students’ inability to attend potentially reflects what needs to change in our education system, for the benefit of not just Jack, but all children. When there’s nowhere else to turn Tiffany Westphal and Louise Rogers are two of the administrators of the Facebook group School Can’t, which began as a small peer support group known as School Refusal Australia back in 2012. “We’ve recently changed the name,” says Rogers. “The term ‘school refusal’ implies that there’s a wilfulness there, and that kids are just being obstinate. But it goes a lot deeper than that. Children are experiencing distress and they don’t know what to do with it.” Rogers has two children, aged 11 and 13. A qualified teacher, she gave up her registration as she’s been unable to work while homeschooling her youngest. “The level of suffering and the level of distress that people are experiencing by the time they find our group is often quite severe,” says Westphal, a social worker and mother to a 21, 18 and 14-year-old. Sign up to receive an email with the top stories from Guardian Australia every morning All the members of the School Can’t Facebook group are parents or carers who have children with school attendance difficulties. Many members have qualifications themselves – psychologists, paediatricians, GPs, teachers and even school principals – but they don’t offer professional advice. Instead, they come together only to realise their story is far from unique. In June 2019 School Can’t had roughly 900 members. Now it has 6,595 members, with almost 300 pending membership requests. Members say they often feel like they have nowhere else to turn. Trying to access qualified mental health support for their children and their family is hard enough with current waiting lists, let alone finding a network of people who actually understand what they’re going through and, crucially, don’t judge. ‘He was a kid in crisis and we had no idea what was going on.’ Photograph: Getty Images The rising numbers reflect a general trend of school attendance problems across the country. Datasets around school attendance issues are typically hard to get a handle on, and lockdowns and missed school due to sickness or Covid over the last few years have muddied the numbers. There’s also a difference between disengaged and completely detached students. In November 2019 the report Those Who Disappear: The Australian education problem nobody wants to talk about wrote that the term “disengaged” is used to identify students struggling at school for a range of issues, from bullying to disability to behavioural problems. “These students need to have their educational challenges addressed before school disengagement turns into school detachment,” the report said. Detached children are no longer enrolled in any kind of school at all – the report conservatively estimated that “at least 50,000 children and young people of school age have detached from any educational program or institution”. That was pre-pandemic. Megan O’Connell, a co-author of the report and honorary senior fellow at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, says current data “points to nearly 100,000 children not in education and many more only tangentially attached and not attending regularly”. It’s a sliding scale from disengagement to complete detachment, but the causes and the urgent need for early intervention are the same. “We see school attendance difficulties as a signal that there are barriers and stressors impacting a child’s relationship with school,” says Rogers from School Can’t. “They may include a combination of difficulties with peers … or relationships with teachers, academic pressures, unmet learning needs, lack of disability supports, environmental stressors, unsupported sensory needs (like uniform, noise) or school discipline.” For parents and carers, the experience can be isolating, says Rogers. “There is also a level of shame because oftentimes people think this is a problem with parenting, they make judgments. Often parents themselves feel like they’ve failed.” “Families can fall apart over this stuff,” says Westphal. “Relationships can disintegrate when you have a couple disagreeing over the approach to use or a grandparent who disagrees about how to address the problem.” Malcolm’s* son Patrick* is 16 years old, and has spent very little time in high school. He first started wanting to stay home from school in grade 1, and switched to a smaller school in regional Victoria at which he initially “flourished”, until “grade 5 when he had a falling out with his teacher”. Towards the end of grade 6 Patrick received a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Autistic students and students with ADHD are twice as likely to experience school refusal. Patrick’s delayed diagnosis meant “it was too late to have a meaningful impact in primary school”. The local high school “tried their best to accommodate him … but the shift from a tiny primary school to a massive high school was too much”. ‘It’s hard to match it up with our sweet boy ... this was a kid who’d never had a tantrum in his life and was a happy and cuddly guy and he just changed.’ Photograph: Louise Beaumont/Getty Images Patrick’s parents enrolled him in the online learning offering Virtual School Victoria, but it didn’t work out. He enrolled in the private Victorian school Berengarra that specifically caters for students with social and emotional challenges. “That started brilliantly,” says Malcolm, “but the 45-minute commute was too much for him and attendance tanked quickly.” Homeschooling proved too stressful for everyone, not least Patrick. 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. “Respective psychologists advised us to back off schooling to reduce the amount of frustration and resulting outbursts of anger from my son. He calmed down significantly when schooling was effectively eliminated. “My daughter, who is about to finish VCE, found the whole experience very stressful, so the experience has impacted the whole family.” Schools to fit students The act of opting out of school, says Dale Murray, the co-chair of the Australian Association for Flexible and Inclusive Education, reflects on the nature of mainstream schooling. “Their very action of not being there is their way of telling us something – that what you’re offering us and the way you treat us doesn’t work for us.” Murray and his co-chair, Prof Kitty te Riele, have watched on as the pandemic has kicked off a conversation about our mainstream education system not serving the needs of children, an issue they’ve been pushing for years in a bid to rethink what schools need to do fundamentally differently. One of the many things that lockdowns highlighted was that “wellbeing is essential for learning” and reminded everyone of “the key role of positive relationships”, says te Riele. “It’s essential that schools operate in ways that fit kids rather than expecting kids to fit in with them,” says te Riele. Specialist schools can provide a possible solution, but cost and location are prohibitive for most families. Kristie de Brenni is the principal of Queensland Pathways State College (QPSC), a senior transition program for 15 to 17-year-olds. QPSC is also, unlike most specialist schools, state-run and funded. The school, made up of six campuses, was created in 2018 when a group of state school secondary principals came together after “identifying quite a unique cohort within their seniors – students who wanted to learn, but were leaving the system because it wasn’t the right place for them to be themselves and feel comfortable to learn”, says de Brenni. QPSC’s environment, curriculum and approach has been built to cater for young people who have specifically refused school, most commonly for mental health reasons. Some 70% of the students have a diagnosed anxiety or depression illness. The school is notable for its tiny cohort – approximately 30 students a day attend each campus – and for its emphasis on wellbeing and student agency. In addition to focusing on literacy, numeracy and workplace skills, the school spends 50% of the student’s time “trying to address the reasons for disengagement through our wellbeing program. And we do that in a safe and supportive environment.” The program is guided by the student and what they want to work on. Experts agree that since the pandemic, there’s been a far greater emphasis on wellbeing in schools, but how quickly and well most mainstream schools can adapt to cater for the increasing demand is an open question. A stressed system Westphal and Rogers have witnessed hundreds of stories of stressed children and families, but for them this is also a story about a stressed education system. “We need schools where teachers have their needs met, where they’re not stressed,” says Westphal. “We need schools which can collaborate with parents to identify underlying stressors and find ways to resolve these. We need to understand that chronic stress leads to mental health problems. We need inclusive schools.” The School Can’t administrators have temporarily put a hold on memberships. As volunteers with their “own kids in perpetual crisis”, they can’t keep up with demand. The Victorian government recently announced a $200m commitment to ensure that every primary school will have a mental health and wellbeing leader within the next four years. In the meantime, however, Sylvie has considered remortgaging the house to send Jack to an expensive private school that does have welfare officers and psychologists. “The state system is failing kids like Jack, who never cause any trouble and don’t have a clear enough diagnosis for funding.” ‘Our initial approach of “the only cure for school refusal is school” is rubbish.’ Photograph: pixdeluxe/Getty Images Meanwhile, Malcolm’s son Patrick is now trying to find part-time employment. Malcolm and his wife are going through the convoluted process of researching Centrelink options and reviewing Patrick’s NDIS plan. “My son wavers between enthusiasm and fear about getting a job … but the engagement with Centrelink and the DES agency [Disability Employment Services] left him feeling a bit confused and he’s lost some enthusiasm. We’ve done all this with very little support from anyone,” he says. The toll has been substantial. “The situation with my son led to the breakdown of the relationship between my wife and her mum – too old-school to accept that ASD and school refusal is a real thing, she’d say ‘all he needs is a firm hand’. “Now both my wife and I are on antidepressants to help manage our own anxiety.” ‘I can’t stay. It’s not enough’: why are teachers leaving Australian schools? Read more Malcolm has also been forced to interrogate society’s expectations of his child and his own ideas of what success means. For his child, success now is simply establishing some level of independence. It is leaving the house. Sylvie knows her current approach with Jack – of trying to stick it out, of making sure they’re never away from school for more than a full week – is just a band-aid measure. Jack definitely worries about being away from school – and Sylvie knows it’s “true that the more time they are away, the more out of the loop they are in the classroom and the playground”. But she also knows that Jack would be happier staying home every day. “He has a better understanding of anxiety through his psychology sessions, he’s a little more developed age-wise and we know the early signs. But it’s not over. School holidays are a dream but I’m already dreading start of term.” As it is, every day at school is exhausting for Jack. “Some days he just can’t do it … I can’t not work for much longer but for now I’m trying to listen and tune into him more.” A paediatrician just last week recommended anti-anxiety medication for Jack. “I’m very much on the fence,” says Sylvie. “On the one hand I want to relieve the poor fella of suffering and exhaustion. But I also feel like the world could change a bit more before he should have to.” * Names have been changed for privacy

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2010/jun/20/nus-president-battle-fees-aaron-porter

Education

2010-06-19T23:05:40.000Z

Anushka Asthana

Smart suit, shiny shoes … meet the new NUS president leading the battle against fees

Aaron Porter, 25, has just moved back in with his parents in Norbury, south London, after graduating in English literature from the University of Leicester. Not quite the profile you might expect of a man who, as the new president of the National Union of Students, is about to lead one of the fiercest political battles in a generation. Porter has only months in this new age of austerity to convince Lord Browne, who is carrying out a major review into university financing, that the government should not raise the cap on student fees. If he fails, hundreds of thousands of young people he represents now – and millions in the future – will face an increasingly US-style market in higher education. That could mean starting their working lives with debts of £50,000 or more. "I've got a hell of a lot on my plate," he admits. The campaigning begins in earnest tomorrow, when thousands of students and lecturers team up for 70 events across the country, hoping that higher education will be spared the worst of the cuts to be unveiled in Tuesday's emergency budget. Porter might be living with his parents – a policeman who grew up in London and a teacher from Trinidad – but by day his job is as high-powered as they come. Dressed in a smart dark suit, striped shirt, red tie and shiny black shoes, he is due to go from this interview with the Observer to a one-on-one meeting with Lord Browne. From there it is on to an advisory forum with top figures in the field including Professor Steve Smith, president of Universities UK, which represents all vice-chancellors. Porter officially becomes NUS president on 1 July, but he has already met Vince Cable, secretary of state for business, innovation and skills, and tomorrow he will sit down with David Willetts, the universities minister. In between the occasional dinner cooked by his mother, he is working 10 to 20 hours a day, seven days a week. "The stakes are so high – it is imperative I get my point across," he says. Success, says Porter, is "ensuring that a market in fees does not emerge". And failure? "The disaster would be a real market in fees coupled with cuts from the government... it will devastate some people's lives." He is fighting hard to stop universities getting their way and lifting the £3,225-a-year cap on fees (due to rise to £3,290 this year). Porter is already worried about predictions that this summer 150,000 pupils who have the ability to go to university will never make it. Tackling that issue is what he sees as his key role: "It is vital – I have to stand up to defend what could be a lost generation of young people. And also ensure that education can continue to be based on ability, and not ability to pay. That is the real battle we are up against." It is a battle for which the NUS has created a new strategy. One of the youngest unions in the country has given up shouting from the sidelines and decided instead to step into the fray. "We've moved from irrelevance to the centre of the debate," he says. "By ensuring we have evidence-based policy and engaging in the debate that is happening, not in some imaginary one." Porter remembers 2004, when he was 19 and the decision was being taken to increase fees from their original level of £1,000 a year. At that time the NUS stuck to a position opposing all tuition fees, calling instead for the reinstatement of grants. But, he argues, the argument had already been lost and the time had come to move on. "There came a point when the debate was no longer 'should there be fees or not?', but 'how do we fund higher education?' Rather than sitting at the table, we were standing outside shouting. We weren't taken seriously: we were left out in the cold." It was his predecessor, Wes Streeting, who fought to change the NUS from the inside, dropping its opposition to contributions from students. Instead, the organisation came up with an alternative – a graduate tax, which would see students face a slightly increased rate of income tax over their careers. It was a fight to get the union to accept it and now Porter is determined to maintain the policy. "There are some that think we should stick to the principled position of free education. But if vice-chancellors expect us to stand on the outside waving placards they are sorely mistaken." Porter is a member of the Labour party but decided to run for the role of president as an independent, believing that would be the best way to serve students. Student support for Labour has ebbed away in recent years. A poll carried out before the general election suggested 50% of students were planning to vote for the Liberal Democrats. Porter believes Nick Clegg's party has placed itself in a difficult position. After all, it promised in its manifesto to phase out fees – a hugely popular move. Yet in the coalition agreement the party agreed to await the outcome of Browne's review. Should it be unpalatable to the party, Clegg and his negotiating team agreed that Lib Dem MPs would abstain, allowing the review's conclusions to be implemented if supported by the Conservatives and Labour. Porter knows that the party – and especially Cable – is under from pressure from vice-chancellors who insist fees must go up if they are to compete successfully with foreign competitors. The universities believes fees should be seen as an additional income on top of government funding – not an alternative. "There are tens of thousands of students who voted for the Liberal Democrats on a pledge that they would not raise fees," says Porter. "It they do not stick to that position they will not only lose the trust of students but the general public. I think it would be political suicide for the Lib Dems to go into coalition with the Conservatives on this issue." He goes further: "I don't believe the Lib Dems can look the electorate in the eye if they go back on their word. We would be happy to work with them on an alternative way of funding higher education." As for the Conservatives, he talks of a "constructive" relationship with Willetts in opposition. "He surprised us, a Tory minister, and I hope we surprised him as a national union." Indeed, the politician has been full of praise for the NUS. When in opposition Willetts said the transformation of the union and its new way of fighting was "the most powerful single way of making sure that politicians listen". That was in October 2009, at an NUS conference. It was there that Willetts claimed the case for raising the cap had not been won by universities. "How would I vote today? I think I would say today, if the vote arose, that the case has not been made," he said. "This is not an argument that I believe the universities have won. They haven't yet properly accounted for the first £3,000 they had, so I would say not unless, and until, you have shown what is in it for students and their parents." Porter hopes to convince Willetts that vice-chancellors have still not won the argument. "I don't think universities have made the case sufficiently about how they could improve what students receive," he says, saying the call for higher fees lacks "legitimacy". Porter believes that failure by the NUS to win this argument will hurt those from the poorest backgrounds in the long run, who are deterred from applying to university. Those that do choose to study at a higher level may have to stay at home missing out on the extracurricular activities such as volunteering and clubs – not to mention learning to live independently, "to cook and wash for themselves". Then there is the post-university impact. Heavy fees could mean different decisions about marriage, he argues, and could create a society in which graduates habitually rent instead of buying homes. "I recognise the pressures on university and college funding but they have had a decade of almost exponential investment and very few of them had the foresight to realise there might be a few years of difficulties." His argument is that it is not fair to burden students with the cost of that failure. Porter perhaps owes his own political drive to his mother, who timed dinner with the six o'clock news when he was growing up. "I remember taking an unhealthy interest in the 1992 election," he says. "I was seven." Should he fail and fees go up, he says: "I don't think vice-chancellors are so bloodthirsty that they would not make some grants available. But if you graduate with £50,000 of debt, or £80,000 or £90,000 if you are a medic... I would think twice." As for the struggle, it will be a bit of the old and a bit of the new, he says: meetings behind closed doors with the likes of Willetts, Cable and Browne – but an old-fashioned national demonstration to remind the country that students still know how to shout.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/dec/10/care-for-elderly-crisis-how-to-improve-quality-of-life

Society

2016-12-10T22:21:42.000Z

Sonia Sodha

Underfunded and overstretched – the crisis in care for the elderly

‘I t’s like being at home,” was the verdict that one resident at West Hall, a care home in West Byfleet, relayed to inspectors. When you walk through the doors, you can see why. The first thing that strikes a visitor is its immaculate grounds and impressive architecture, which blends a beautifully converted old manor house with three eco-build residential lodges. But the impressive surroundings fade into the background when you start talking to the people who live and work in West Hall. The warmth and affection that characterise the relationships between staff and residents light up its smart interior, creating a comfortable, homely atmosphere. Arriving on a Thursday lunchtime, I’m introduced to several relatives visiting their parents: Nigel Allen, the home’s manager, stresses they are welcomed with open arms. There’s a huge range of activities to take part in: the day I was there, they included a sing-along, a lunch outing to the local pub and a Scrabble group. West Hall, run by the not-for-profit Anchor Trust, is not a typical care service. It is one of the few homes to have received an outstanding rating from the regulator. Data provided to the Observer by the Care Quality Commission shows that there are just 91 outstanding care homes in England for the over-65s – less than 1% of those the CQC has inspected under its new regime. Almost one in three have been rated as requiring improvement or as inadequate. The quality of care provided to older people in their own homes is similarly variable. Another thing that sets West Hall apart is that it doesn’t seem particularly short of resources. Set in a leafy corner of Surrey, where very few older people qualify for state support with the costs of their care, all of its residents are privately funded. Its fees put it at the high end of the market. Walking through its excellent facilities, there’s a sense that money is no object, and there’s one carer for every four residents. The Observer view on social care Read more Care homes and homecare agencies that rely at least in part on public funds face a far more straitened set of circumstances. Council funding for adult social care has fallen by 11% on average since 2010, and in some areas by as much as 30%. Cuts to local government funding, together with increasing demand as the population ages, and rising costs as a result of higher regulatory standards and the introduction of the “national living wage”, have created a perfect storm for councils. The government points to the introduction of the social care precept, a new measure allowing councils to charge an extra 2% on top of their council tax rates to pay for care services from this year. But new analysis by the King’s Fund exclusively for the Observer shows the precept will raise just 3% of what councils are already spending on social care this year. The 10 most affluent areas will raise more than twice as much as the 10 most deprived areas, further widening inequalities in older people’s access to care. Another source of extra funding, the Better Care Fund, will not kick in substantially for another few years. “Services supporting our loved ones are close to breaking point”, says Izzi Seccombe, chair of the Local Government Association’s community wellbeing board. “The system with which we provide state-funded care to the elderly really is on the brink of financial failure.” Shock figures show Tory plans are ‘making social care worse’ Read more As a result of funding cuts, councils have reduced the rates they pay care-home providers and homecare services for residents who get financial support. Some local authorities are now paying just £330 a week for a care-home place, which works out at less than £2 an hour. It’s becoming increasingly common for providers to cross-subsidise the fees of those who are council-funded using the fees of private funders: industry research suggests privately funded residents are paying up to 40% more for a like-for-like service. Councils have serious concerns about the sustainability of the care market. According to the Local Government Association, 48 councils have seen at least one home care provider cease trading in the past six months, and a further 77 councils have lost at least one residential or nursing care provider. The number of people getting state support to help with the cost of their care has also fallen by more than 25% in the past five years. Age UK estimates that there are now more than a million older people who struggle without the help they need to carry out everyday tasks, such as getting out of bed, going to the toilet and getting dressed. “Growing numbers of older people are going without enough care or, in some deeply worrying cases, no care at all,” says Caroline Abrahams, charity director of Age UK. “Ultimately this means many older people are living sadder and lonelier later lives, a tragedy for them and for our society.” Gary FitzGerald, chief executive of the charity Action on Elder Abuse, says a lack of support is having a knock-on impact on safeguarding referrals for neglect, which have increased by 24% in the past four years. “Someone is having to support them. Often it’s family and friends trying to do their best without the skills, knowledge and equipment to care for them securely and safely.” He remembers a case that emerged a couple of years ago of an elderly woman who tied her husband, a dementia sufferer, to a chair in order to go out shopping. “All the weight of criticism came down on her. But she couldn’t get any help with her husband’s care, so she couldn’t get out to shop. She was damned if she did, damned if she didn’t. That’s the sort of choice we’re forcing people to make.” Beyond the tragic human cost, the care funding crisis is having a severe impact on the NHS. A lack of state-funded care means thousands of older people are left languishing on hospital wards when they are well enough to be discharged, costing the NHS £800m a year. It also drives more older people to hospital: it is vastly more expensive to treat a broken hip than to prevent it by helping with washing and dressing. The funding crisis has been a long time in the making. “The need for action was recognised as long ago as 1997, when Tony Blair established a royal commission on the funding of long-term care,” says Richard Humphries, assistant director of policy at the King’s Fund. “There have been three significant reviews and commissions since then. The problem is not a lack of evidence or solutions.” Rather, the issue seems to be the lack of political willpower. “When the NHS is in trouble, we see the visual evidence,” Humphries adds. “Images of overflowing hospitals and queuing ambulances. The consequences of stretched care services are far less visible. Care does not resonate as a significant issue in MPs’ postbags and surgeries in the same way.” Many believe the solutions required are so long-term that they will only be delivered through a degree of cross-party consensus. Cross-party talks were started a few years ago, but broke down acrimoniously just before the general election in 2010. Andrea Sutcliffe, the chief inspector of adult social care, has warned that the funding predicament risks jeopardising quality of care. “The reduction in resources and the level of unmet need means adult social care is reaching a tipping point,” she told the Observer. “There is a fragility and a lack of resilience in the sector which I am very concerned about ... It’s leading us into situations where we don’t have enough trained staff to deliver good care.” Many councils struggle to find good-quality care for their residents. “I’m worried about the quality of care homes available locally,” says Rebecca Lury, a Southwark councillor who chairs the authority’s health scrutiny committee. “Earlier this year the council was in a position where one care home announced its closure following an inadequate rating from the regulator. It had to move residents to another care home; it had also put in special measures.” Some councils are still commissioning 15-minute care visits, despite strong government guidance that such cursory visits are seen as wholly inadequate. John Kennedy, former director of care services at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, believes funding isn’t the only problem. He published a personal inquiry into the quality of care homes in 2014, and since then has spent time visiting outstanding care homes to find out what makes them different. Too many carers face poor pay and working conditions. But John Kennedy also believes the care system fails to support care-home managers adequately – a job often invisible to society at large. “This is a job with an immense level of responsibility,” he says. “In a home with over 50 residents, you might have a staff team of the same number, with turnover around the £2m mark. All care homes are 24/7 operations. The show must relentlessly go on.” Yet average pay for a care-home manager is just £27,700 a year. “I doubt you could find any other job in any other sector that requires this level of responsibility for that level of pay.” He believes government has placed too much emphasis on red tape and regulation as a way to improve care services. “We’ve created a system that makes it too difficult for any but the most skilled managers to deliver consistently good care,” he says. “Instead of valuing relationships, people and life, we concentrate on value, systems and processes. The system puts avoiding blame above ensuring people are having a good life. This attitude permeates and damages the culture of care.” Kennedy is worried that, given the relentless nature of their role, care-home managers are at risk of burning out: on average, one in four care managers leave every year. He argues that this makes quality in care homes fundamentally fragile, citing the example of one care home he visited that was rated outstanding by the regulator, but whose standards plummeted to inadequate after it lost its manager. If it’s great management that makes a great care home, it’s poor management that paves the way for the kind of abuse that has been periodically uncovered by the media, according to FitzGerald. “Where you see abuse situations in a care home, you’ll see bad leadership with 40 or 50 ordinary people working in an environment that’s abusive and neglectful, and not seeing anything wrong with it,” he says. The relentless nature of the job means care home managers burn out. Photograph: F1 Online / Rex Features FitzGerald doesn’t believe incidents of abuse are isolated or rare incidents that can be dismissed. He points to the fact that there has been no reduction in the use of antipsychotic drugs in care homes, despite a 2009 government review that concluded they were overused to the detriment of patients. His charity has raised concerns with the CQC that relatives who have complained about the quality of care have been banned from homes, or told they will have to move out their elderly relatives within 28 days. He doesn’t mince his words. “We’ve created an institutionally abusive environment in social care. It’s ageism in action.” Sara McKee, the founder of Evermore, agrees we have a problem with ageism. “Why is it considered acceptable to institutionalise older people when other forms of institutionalisation have been eradicated?” she asks. “Our fundamental model of care has not changed for over 40 years. Modern nursing homes look like they did decades ago, just with newer carpets.” McKee is setting up a new model of supported housing designed to be somewhere people can live their life out, regardless of how high their level of need escalates. “Many health and care providers see ageing as a condition that needs to be managed. We want to provide positive choices where growing older means doing what you love and feeling good, rather than managing declining health.” The Evermore concept is based on the Green House ageing project in the US, developed by geriatrician Bill Thomas, with whom she now works. She describes the Green House as an “anti-institutional” environment. “He has stripped away all the hospital-like paraphernalia you would find in many traditional care homes, such as nursing stations, uniforms and rigid schedules. In its place is a building designed like a family home, with self-contained residences for six to 12 people.” Unlike in traditional supported housing, the emphasis is on communal living, with meals prepared in an open kitchen and shared at a communal dining table. McKee says the staff are absolutely key to making it all work: she describes them as multiskilled and self-managed, with much more freedom to run the household according to the wishes of the residents, rather than top-down diktat from head office. It has taken McKee a while to find an investor for her project, but she’s now working with a developer to build the UK’s first Evermore community in Wigan. But won’t it only be wealthier baby-boomers who can afford this type of living? McKee doesn’t think so. “Most local authorities want to stop paying for grim and expensive nursing home beds,” she says. She believes joining up NHS and council budgets could enable money to be spent on more innovative ways of delivering care like Evermore, not necessarily at higher cost. Alex Fox is another person rethinking traditional models of care. He runs Shared Lives Plus, a network of local schemes in which paid carers share their home and family life with an adult who needs care or support. The goal is to share an ordinary family life, in which everyone contributes and benefits. This is a much more explicitly two-way relationship than in traditional professional care. It’s a model that was developed primarily for adults with disabilities, but there are now almost 2,000 older people with care needs using Shared Lives in England. “The Shared Lives carer makes a positive choice to share their home and family life with the older person, so it’s a real relationship which can last a lifetime, not just a service,” says Fox. “People who use Shared Lives tell us they feel ‘one of the family’, and their relatives often say they feel like there are two families working together now, whereas before they often felt on their own and struggling.” It might not be for everyone. But Fox believes that the rest of the care system can learn from it. “Shared Lives schemes spend time recruiting the right people, then giving them the space and freedom to be more human and flexible in their work. This isn’t just more cost-effective, it creates better care,” he says, pointing to the fact that, out of the 25 Shared Lives schemes rated by the CQC, 24 are good or outstanding. Is there any work that is more fundamentally human than caring for others? Little wonder then that, whether it’s West Hall, the Green House or Shared Lives, the golden thread that runs through successful care organisations is the quality of their staff. Perhaps this offers society a golden opportunity. From assembly-line manufacturing to book-keeping to driving a minicab, jobs that once required human endeavour are being replaced by technology. Jobs requiring uniquely human skills like empathy and care may take up a growing share of the labour market in the future. Older care falls into this category, especially given the needs of an ageing population. Yet care is not exactly a career destination of choice for many young people. Charlotte Whittaker, 22, is halfway through a five-month work placement at care homes in Surrey. It’s a career she’d recommend, but she doesn’t think young people tend to see it as fulfilling or enriching. “Partly it’s a misconception about what care involves. There’s not much understanding of the relational aspects, and the potential to make a difference to a lot of lives over a career.” But she says it is also partly the misperception of care as a low-skill job. “I’ve been incredibly impressed by the skills and diplomacy of the carers I’ve been working with.” Perhaps by investing more time, money and love in our care system, we can simultaneously improve the lot of both the older and younger generations. That’s an attractive proposition at a time when so much political debate seems to set the young against the old. But it’s not a job that can solely be left to the politicians. Nothing will change unless we face up to the reality that the way we as a society care for older people is just a mirror that reflects back our cultural attitudes towards ageing. THE MANAGER Karen Cooper at Greensleeves Care Home in Tunbridge Wells in Kent. Photograph: Richard Saker/The Observer Karen Cooper runs Mount Ephraim House, a Greensleeves care home in Tunbridge Wells. “My job is demanding, incredibly demanding, but I adore what I do,” she says. “You get so much back from it. You wouldn’t do this job for the money, but because you care about making a difference at the end of the day.” It takes a high level of skill to care properly for someone with dementia, she says. “They might constantly ask you the same question day in day out, looking for a family member long passed on. You have to be careful how you respond, otherwise a person can go through the grieving process eight times a day.” It’s not a nine-to-five job. “You can’t really switch off. You’re on call 24 hours a day unless you’re on holiday.” She used to work for a standalone home, which she found more difficult than working for a care home group. “You’re on your own – you don’t have any backup.” While she loves her work, Cooper feels it’s sad the care sector has to fight its own corner because of the negative publicity generated by stories of abuse. “Sadly, the general public think all care homes are the same, when there are an incredible number of excellent care homes.” THE CARE WORKER Charlotte Whittaker, who is doing a five-month placement as a carer. Photograph: Jill Mead/The Guardian Charlotte Whittaker, 22, is halfway through a five-month work placement as part of an activities team in two care homes in Surrey. She’s doing the work as part of Year Here, a postgraduate qualification in social innovation. Having seen both her grandmothers need care, she has a close personal interest in the subject. “Elder care is a big societal issue that isn’t necessarily very glamorous but needs a lot of thought and innovation”, she says. “The best thing about my work is the residents: getting to know them as individuals, finding out about their lives and what they like doing now. There are a lot of laughter moments, singing or doing arts and crafts.” But there are harder moments too. “Sometimes you have residents who are very upset, and it’s difficult to comfort them, because the person they’re missing isn’t around any more, or they want to go home but no longer have a house.” She has been overwhelmed by the emotional investment made by her colleagues in the people they care for: “They do it because they love doing it.” THE DAUGHTER Michele Simmons’ mother suffered neglect in her care home. Michele Simmons thought the small privately owned care home in London she carefully chose for her 77-year-old mother, Gilda, (pictured below) who has dementia, was a warm and welcoming place. However, neglect soon became evident in a number of ways. “My mother was someone who took great pride in her appearance and I took time labelling all her clothes,” says Michele. “But she was increasingly put in other people’s clothes, things that didn’t fit.” She recalls finding her mother in plastic shoes two sizes too small, her toes bent over. “Mum couldn’t speak, but her face conveyed the pain,” says Michele. One freezing winter morning, Gilda was sent to hospital in an ambulance. “She was in a thin nightie with no slippers, no blanket, no notes and no one went with her,” says Michele. “The manager said it was because there was a changeover of staff and no one was available. I eventually found her hours later, terrified, on a trolley in a hospital corridor.” Michele, who paid £3,500 a month for her mother’s care, talked to the manager many times but her complaints were brushed aside. “I became worried about making too much fuss in case they [the care home] took it out on mum. All I wanted was the best for my mum and for her to be treated with dignity and kindness – it was just a shame the home didn’t feel the same.” THE WHISTLEBLOWER “Witnessing the abuse and not being able to do anything about it was the worst thing I had to endure,” says Alex Matthews, a former care home worker who was shocked by what he saw during a year at an “expensive and luxury” home. “Rough handling by carers was evident on a daily basis,” he says. “Feeding was done in a hurry and people were often left dribbling porridge and other food over their clothes. Personal hygiene was terrible. ” But most of those he worked with were good people, he adds. “The neglect was to do with the heavy workloads and having too many people to deal with in a short space of time.” As bad as the physical neglect, he says, was the lack of care over patients’ emotional wellbeing. “We were always asked to move from one to the next as quickly as possible. This leaves you with a lot of guilt.” Alex Matthews (his pen name) has written a book about his care home experience; She’ll be Alright, Pavilion Publishing, £19.95.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/apr/21/snowy-mountains-tumut-broom-factory-handmade

Australia news

2024-04-20T20:00:36.000Z

Eliza Spencer

The last straw: the Snowy Mountains broom-makers keeping a tradition alive

In a warehouse just off the Snowy Mountains highway, in the foothills of Mount Kosciuszko, the sweet smell of millet fills the air. There is the soft hiss from a pneumatic sewing machine and the interested chattering of tourists. They have come to watch brooms being made. The Tumut Broom Factory has been handcrafting millet brooms since 1946, supplying long-lasting brooms to wholesalers and visitors who travel down the winding roads. One couple, from Brisbane, says the factory was on their “must visit” list on a trip around the country. Others have made the relatively short if circuitous trip from Canberra, and another family has travelled up from regional Victoria. Sign up to receive Guardian Australia’s fortnightly Rural Network email newsletter “People love watching people make things,” says third generation broom maker Andrew Wortes. “They’re amazed that they can walk into a factory and watch people make something, like brooms, or blacksmiths and visit lost trade fairs across Australia.” A broom is stitched together at the Tumut Broom Factory. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian Wortes, 28, studied music in Melbourne, but moved home to the town of 6,000 in 2019, just before the pandemic put a dampener on the live music scene. “I grew up around it and used to come in and help Dad cut the strings off and finish the brooms,” he says. “But there’s only so much you can learn until you actually have to make a broom.” He now owns the factory, having bought out his father, Geoff Wortes, and business partner, Rob Richards, in 2022. “Dad wanted me to do other things,” he says. “I was in bands and went off and studied at university, but when I decided to come back, Dad said, ‘you’ll know what you’ll be doing if you move back to Tumut’, and I said, ‘yeah, Dad, I want to learn’.” Andrew Wortes moved back to Tumet in 2020 and bought the factory from his father and his business partner. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian It takes six months to learn how to make a decent broom, Wortes says. Now, with four years’ experience, he can make about 20 on his own each day. Broom-making is juggled between welcoming visitors, handling wholesale orders and managing the business. “There were a lot of learning curves, it’s not just broom-making,” Wortes says. “There’s the sewing, working on the machines … They’re all a unique kind of machinery that takes its own set of knowledge and skills. You can’t just call up someone to come and fix it.” Wortes says it takes six months to learn how to make a broom – now he makes over a dozen each day. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian ‘People appreciate that it’s made in Australia’ The majority of millet used in the factory is imported from the US, after being grown in Mexico. Sorghum vulgare, known as broom corn or broom millet, grows best in soils consistently at or above 20C and must be harvested by hand to be used in broom making, preserving the ‘tassels’ at the head of the plant. “You get good years and bad years with local millet. It’s a lot more consistent out of America,” Wortes says. ‘People love watching people make things.’ Tourists watch Andrew Wortes make a broom. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian The imports are pre-graded and packed, removing the need to utilise the ancient grading machine in the back of the warehouse. That machine is reserved for local crops. (It was recently put to use to sort out the best millet for a broom with the black and gold colours of the Gundagai Tigers rugby league club, for a mate.) The Tumut broom millet industry is a shadow of what it used to be, but Wortes says he would like to see momentum build again. He has begun speaking to growers in Tumut about growing millet. Sign up to The Rural Network Free newsletter Subscribe to Calla Wahlquist's fortnightly update on Australian rural and regional affairs 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. “If we’re ever going to build the industry up back, the main issue is going to be the labour component,” he says. “You need a team of people who can cut the millet by hand. It’s mainly the harvesting that takes manpower.” Broom millet. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian Mexican imported broom millet. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian While the mainstay customers of the factory are rural farming families who have grown up with a woolshed broom, seven-tie broom and caravan broom all from the one factory, Wortes says there is increasing demand from city customers for an authentic, locally grown and made product. “People really appreciate, especially in the past five years, that it’s made in Australia,” he says. “Even though we do import the millet, we’re still making the brooms here, the handles are Australian timber. “During Covid it became very apparent how much we’re relying on other countries for our goods and services, and I think that’s why people want to see Australian-made make a comeback.” Finished brooms. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian It is quiet in the factory between tours and passing trucks. The skylights on the roof were filled in years ago, leaving the huge double doors to let in most of the light. Most days, as Wortes prepares to shut the shop for lunch, he uses the lull to take advantage of the vaulted ceilings and play some Bon Iver. The music career is never far behind. “This place has really good acoustics, I’ve put speakers in here before just to hear the space and it could be a really good live venue in here,” he says. With the music playing and the warm light filtering through, he can think about the history of the place. “I want to make brooms because it is traditional,” he says. “I didn’t want to see it disappear and become one of those trades that people stopped doing.” Sign up for the Rural Network email newsletter Join the Rural Network group on Facebook to be part of the community

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/26/dublin-airport-suspends-flights-after-hangar-fire

World news

2015-08-26T08:18:00.000Z

Henry McDonald

Dublin airport reopens after hangar fire

Dublin airport has reopened to flights after a major fire in a hangar forced planes to be diverted to Shannon and Belfast on Wednesday morning. No one was reported injured in the blaze, which was in an area of the airport estate in north Dublin usually cordoned off from passengers. Smoke billowing from the fire in hangar three, which started around 7am, forced the temporary closure of the runway, Dublin Airport Authority said. Pictures tweeted from the scene showed large flames engulfing one side of the metal hangar. Flights Have Suspended After Fire In Hangar At Dublin Airport, Ireland http://t.co/0QgKiXKEpz pic.twitter.com/CuMMBZLI4Q — Knock Inn (@knockinn) August 26, 2015 Six flights scheduled to land in Dublin on Wednesday morning were diverted to Shannon airport in Ireland’s south-west. A further four planes were told by air traffic control to fly further north into the George Best/Belfast City airport. A DAA spokesman saidflights were disrupted for around 90 minutes before services into and from Dublin airport were able to return to normal. So far a cause for the blaze had yet to be determined, the DAA spokesman added. The owner of hangar three, Eirtech Aviation, also confirmed that no one had been injured in the fire on its premises. In a statement, Eirtech Aviation said: “The fire is limited to a section of roofing and the Dublin Airport Fire Brigade is on site managing the situation. “We understand from the emergency services that the fire has been contained (as at 8.35am). “We can confirm that there have been no injuries and all personnel on site have been evacuated and are safe.” The company statement added: “The aircraft in the hangar are not affected but will be fully inspected in due course, as safety is Eirtech Aviation’s number one priority. “We are working closely with the authorities at Dublin airport and apologise to all passengers for the disruption caused as a result of the fire.” Two “Whisper” jets – one of which is operated by CityJet that runs an air route from Dublin to the City of London airport and Paris – were in hangar three at the time. However it is understood that no major damage was caused to either aircraft. Dublin airport is the hub for some of the busiest routes in Europe and is now also a major centre for transatlantic air traffic. In the first six months of this year the DAA reported that 11.5 million passengers had passed through its doors – a 15% increase in numbers compared with the same period last year. Airlines such as Aer Lingus and Ryanair fly to 25 different destinations in the UK alone from Dublin airport. Just over a million passengers between January and June 2015 flew across the Atlantic from Dublin, with the airport now operating 22 new routes to different destinations in North America, Britain, Europe and the Middle East. Flight operations are temporarily suspended due to a fire in a hangar. http://t.co/UsayTd1Q89 — Dublin Airport (@DublinAirport) August 26, 2015 The fire that broke out in a hangar this morning has now been contained. Flight operations remain temporarily suspended @DublinAirport. — Dublin Airport (@DublinAirport) August 26, 2015

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/apr/24/char-grilled-asparagus-egg-recipe

Life and style

2013-04-24T09:55:11.000Z

Angela Hartnett

Angela Hartnett's char-grilled asparagus with soft boiled egg – recipe

Finally the asparagus season is upon us. This wonderful vegetable deserves to be served on its own in the simplest way possible, so celebrate its arrival at least once with just a touch of butter and pepper. Then try the below for a lovely light spring supper. (Serves 4) 75ml olive oil 15ml white wine vinegar ½ tsp Dijon mustard 8 free range eggs 20 spears of green asparagus 100g Cornish yarg, shaved Extra olive oil, for grilling Beat the vinegar and oil with the mustard until emulsified, season, and leave to one side. Remove the woody stalks from the asparagus (the spears will snap at the right point when pressure is applied). Add the eggs to a pan of boiling water and cook for eight minutes. Remove the boiled eggs and place them in cold water for a couple of minutes before removing the shells. Season the asparagus spears with salt and pepper and glaze them with olive oil. Smear some oil on to a grill pan, add the asparagus, in batches, and lightly grill, while turning, for three to four minutes depending on the size of the spears. Halve the boiled eggs, season and place on top of the asparagus. Add the sliced Cornish yarg and finish off with the vinaigrette. Serve with a green salad and toasted sourdough. Angela Hartnett is chef patron at Murano restaurant and consults at the Whitechapel Gallery and Dining Room, London. Twitter.com/angelahartnett

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/aug/31/caste-the-lies-that-divide-us-by-isabel-wilkerson-review

Books

2020-08-31T10:00:05.000Z

Ashish Ghadiali

Caste: The Lies That Divide Us by Isabel Wilkerson – review

In the late 1960s, in response to the assassination of Martin Luther King and the subsequent social unrest, a white school teacher in the farm town of Riceville, Iowa, undertook a now famous experiment on her all-white class of third graders. She separated the blue-eyed kids from those with brown eyes, telling them that the brown-eyed kids were not as good as the blue-eyed kids; that they were slower, not as smart, would not be allowed to drink from the water fountain and could not play with the blue-eyed ones. She wanted them, like so many African American children, to experience, if only for a moment, prejudice based on an arbitrary physical trait. By break-time, “brown eyes” had been adopted as a playground insult. Soon after, the brown-eyed children “looked downcast and defeated” and by the end of the day the impact on their academic performance was apparent as brown-eyed children were taking twice as long as normal to finish their phonics exercises. Pulitzer prize-winning journalist and acclaimed author Isabel Wilkerson recounts this story in Caste: The Lies That Divide Us as a key illustration of the way that, beyond the specific categorisations of race or class, this process of creating artificial hierarchies can work to subjugate people in any culture. One group sets out to stigmatise and dehumanise another to justify a state of enduring domination Wilkerson invites us to see this as the deeper psychological process that defines 400 years of racism – what she calls America’s caste system – drawing a comparison with two other such structures – “the tragically accelerated, chilling and officially vanquished caste system of Nazi Germany” and “the lingering, millennia-long caste system of India”. In each of these cases, one group sets out to stigmatise and dehumanise another to justify a state of lasting domination. Laying bare the roots and machinations of that process in a style that combines history, personal testimony and analysis, Wilkerson itemises “eight pillars of caste”, which range from assertions of divine will and natural law to strategies of “terror as enforcement” and “cruelty as a means of control”. If race is the language in which Americans have been trained to see humans, she argues, then caste is its grammar and enduring structure. Wilkerson was the first African American woman to win a Pulitzer, for her feature reporting of the midwestern floods in 1993, when she worked for the New York Times. Since then, she has taught at Emory, Princeton and Boston universities and lectured at more than 200 colleges around the world. Caste is the follow-up to her acclaimed bestselling debut in 2010, The Warmth of Other Suns. Isabel Wilkerson: ‘inspiring and hopeful’. Photograph: Joe Henson As research for that book, she interviewed more than a thousand African Americans who, between 1915 and 1970, had made “the great migration” in search of jobs and freedom from the entrenched racial hierarchies of the American south, towards the perceived promised land of the country’s northern and western cities. When she started working on The Warmth of Other Suns, Wilkerson initially thought she was writing about “geography and relocation”. Only later did she realise that she was uncovering the story of “a stigmatised people, 6 million of them, who were seeking freedom … only to discover that the hierarchy followed them wherever they went”. It was these thoughts that led her to explore the history of American racism within the context of other, global systems of exploitation; a “desire to reach out across the oceans to better understand how all of this began”. The approach she takes is both persuasive and unsettling. In Caste, she demonstrates, for example, how architects of the Third Reich, “in debating how to institutionalise racism [in Germany], began by asking how the Americans did it” and found, in the US, the “classic example” of a “racist jurisdiction”, leaving us to consider how far this legacy persists, whether in modern America today or elsewhere. In the everyday acts of subtle racism – at the airport, in a restaurant, at an academic conference – Wilkerson finds that this “unseen hierarchy” repeatedly undermines her self-image as a middle-class professional, and even a member of the cultural elite. It suggests that beneath the veneer of meritocratic idealism lie deeper layers of the American psyche where white supremacy still reigns. But the case Wilkerson puts forward is inspiring and hopeful. Her writing incorporates and reflects the anti-racist traditions embodied by figures such as African American liberationist WEB Du Bois and the trailblazer of India’s Dalit movement, Bhimrao Ambedkar, who wrote: “Caste is [just] a notion; it is a state of mind.” Like him, Wilkerson wants us to recognise that caste can be dismantled, setting everyone free. Caste: The Lies That Divide Us by Isabel Wilkerson is published by Allen Lane (£20). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com. Free UK p&p over £15

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2024/mar/14/kalvin-phillips-dropped-by-england-ivan-toney-branthwaite-gomez-gordon-call-ups

Football

2024-03-14T22:44:52.000Z

David Hytner

‘Not an option’: Southgate says he had to go public on Ben White England snub

Gareth Southgate has revealed that Ben White does not want to be considered for England selection, saying he had to go public with the truth because to continue to “protect” the Arsenal player would have been to risk his own credibility. Southgate wanted to call up White for the upcoming Wembley friendlies against Brazil and Belgium, with the Football Association making inquiries about adding him to the pre-squad-announcement long list. White, outstanding for Arsenal as they have surged to the top of the Premier League and into the Champions League quarter-finals, went home early from the 2022 World Cup in Qatar – his last involvement with England. Southgate said Arsenal’s technical director, Edu, had phoned his FA counterpart John McDermott to say that White had made himself unavailable. Southgate, who has not spoken to White in recent weeks, said he did not know why the defender did not want to play for England. Clubs angry as England Women plan long camp before July internationals Read more The manager has recalled Ivan Toney and Joe Gomez and given first call-ups to Jarrad Branthwaite and Anthony Gordon. He has been forced to deal with a slew of injury absentees, taking in Kieran Trippier, Luke Shaw, Reece James, Levi Colwill, Marc Guéhi, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Jack Grealish and Callum Wilson. Ben Chilwell and Harry Maguire are in despite missing recent club games. Southgate has dropped Kalvin Phillips, having decided he could no longer stand by the midfielder in the face of his struggle for form, and there were no places for Rico Lewis, Fikayo Tomori or Raheem Sterling. White was the most prominent storyline. Earlier Arsenal had announced he had signed a new four-year contract with the option of an extra year. They had negative headlines coming down the track. “In these situations I’ve tried to protect players,” Southgate said. “Clearly that is impossible at this point [with White]. Because the timing of asking to come off the long list and the fact that … I don’t have huge credibility but there would be none if I didn’t pick him on form. “I don’t think it would be right not to state the situation we’re in. We’ve explained to Arsenal we were going to do that. And if you make a decision like that, you do have to stand by it.” Southgate wanted to “keep the door open” for White but admitted there was virtually no chance of him going to the European Championship in Germany this summer. White is understood to be open to returning at some point. “I don’t want there to be a backlash [against White],” Southgate said. “I understand we’re in a situation where that could happen. For me, the shame is that he’s a player I like. I would have liked to have picked him. But it’s not an option that’s open to me. I completely respect it. “I haven’t spoken to him since this decision because I think it would be a similar conversation to the last one I had with him after Qatar. I could sense a reticence there which I felt I should back away from. I think it’s for him now.” White did not feel at ease in Qatar, which is why he asked to go home, but Southgate said he was unable to articulate the specifics about why the player’s international career was on hold. He attacked the notion that it was because of an issue with his assistant Steve Holland. “You’d have to speak to him or Arsenal to get an understanding,” Southgate said. “For me, England was the pinnacle. But I wasn’t at a club going for the league title or in the last couple of rounds of the Champions League. Everybody’s wired differently. There’s clearly a reason. But I don’t know the full reason.” Ben White’s decision not to make himself available for England was described as a ‘great shame’ by Gareth Southgate. Photograph: Simon Dael/Shutterstock Toney is back at the first time of asking after his eight-month ban for breaking the FA’s betting rules, and Southgate spoke effusively about the centre-forward’s “super quality” and “tremendous self-belief”. He added that Toney’s suspension was “in the past … he’s got to move forward now, everybody has.” 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. On Phillips, Southgate said he “couldn’t be confident on the performances he’s had in the last few weeks that he could go on to the field and do the job we know that he’s capable of”. He added: “Maybe it’s a moment where you think that’s perhaps the lowest it can get for him … now he can just go for it and be himself.” There was an update on Shaw, who he confirmed was touch and go for the finals. “We are all hoping – ourselves and Manchester United – that he could be back just before the end of the league season,” he said. “But that is getting really tight to the Euros and there is a reality about whether it’s possible to play seven games in the Euros. There is getting fit to play but there is also what that means about level of performance.” Quick Guide England squad Show Southgate again made his personal position clear; he is focused purely on delivering at the Euros and by that he means winning the tournament. Only then would he consider his next move – whether to stay or go. He is under contract to December. The FA would love him to extend for the 2026 World Cup. “We’ve consciously shelved any discussions internally about what might be next,” Southgate said. “Because if we had sat and signed a new contract and done that before the tournament, everybody would have said: ‘Well, you did this with [Fabio] Capello [before the 2010 World Cup] and you should be proving yourself before you sign.’ I have no idea where we’ll be in the middle of July other than I hope it’s Trafalgar Square and let’s get the party on. “I think that [new contract talks] has the potential to negatively affect the reaction to the team. The team need the clearest run they can possibly have at this tournament.”

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2019/jun/02/klopp-pochettino-english-basics-liverpool-champions-league-tottenham

Football

2019-06-02T13:36:00.000Z

Jonathan Wilson

Klopp and Pochettino go back to English basics in final that fails to fire | Jonathan Wilson

For Liverpool this has been a season of two extraordinary statistics: 11.7mm and 64%. It was the former that denied them a goal (albeit a freakish one via John Stones and Ederson) away to Manchester City in January, and it was with the latter they won the Champions League. Neither makes much sense. That games can be swayed by margins as fine as that defies comprehension. But it feels at least as incredible that Liverpool could win a Champions League final with 64% pass accuracy. Liverpool worry about pass accuracy far less than many sides. Their pass completion rate of 79.9% in the Champions League was the 21st highest of the 32 teams who reached the group stage and beyond this season. They are happy to take risks. They play at high tempo. They are exceptionally good at winning back the ball, which possibly means they protect possession less assiduously than certain sides. They get the ball forward quickly. Mo Salah says photo of Kyiv pain inspired him to score against Spurs Read more Speed is prized over precision – or, at least, that is how they used to be; that is how the template tells us it should be. This season, though, Liverpool have been notably more controlled. In the league their pass completion was 84.4% as opposed to 83.8% last season. They have not pressed so hard. Regains in the opposition’s final third are down almost 9%. Passing sequences of 10 or more resulting in a shot are up 21.5%. They have not gone quite so hell for leather. Neither mode, neither the tumultuous storming of the past nor the more deliberate recent style, was much in evidence on Saturday. Liverpool’s greatest triumph in 14 years, the win that ended Jürgen Klopp’s run of six successive final defeats, that ensured this stirring period in the club’s history would not be characterised by near misses, came with 64% pass completion. To put that in context, that is 0.1% more than Cardiff over the course of this season, and less than any other Premier League club. It is also 7% less than Red Star Belgrade, who had the lowest pass completion of any side from the Champions League group stage onwards. Klopp dismissed concerns that Liverpool hadn’t played all that well. Sometimes resilience, digging in, is what it takes The statistic tallies with the general impression of the final as a bitty affair when neither side produced anything like their best form and perhaps in part explains Klopp’s reluctance to discuss the mechanics, his laughing dismissal of concerns that Liverpool had not really played all that well. Sometimes resilience, digging in, is what it takes, and Liverpool did that. Quite why it was such a scrappy game is another issue. It can be an inevitable danger when two sides who like to press meet: they end up locked in a tussle when there is insufficient time for creativity. Klopp and Mauricio Pochettino have, in their own ways, reawakened the spirit that underlay English club’s dominance of Europe in the late 1970s and early 80s; it is unsurprising then that they should also produce a final to evoke memories of those attritional days when it felt that every final finished 1-0. So, too, would this one but for Divock Origi’s late goal, one that seemed almost a pastiche of the most mocking interpretations of the English game, a corner bobbing about, bouncing off head after head before falling for him to slam his finish into the bottom corner. Liverpool’s Divock Origi makes it 2-0 – a goal ‘that seemed almost a pastiche of the most mocking interpretations of the English game’. Photograph: Manu Fernández/AP Yet that is not an adequate explanation why this was such a scruffy game. It was the 10th meeting of Klopp and Pochettino and the majority have been entertaining, high-quality affairs. Perhaps it was tension, perhaps the heat or the three-week break since either side last played – something that also seemed to hamper the first half of the Europa League final. Champions League final 2019: Tottenham 0-2 Liverpool – in pictures Read more There is also a sense of familiarity. These are two managers who know each other well, who know how to interfere with each other’s plans and who have had three weeks to plot doing so. Klopp was always going to start with a 4-3-3 but it was telling that Pochettino eschewed the back three he had deployed from the start at Anfield in favour of a 4-2-3-1. That pushed Son Heung-min tight against Trent Alexander-Arnold and his efforts perhaps explain why Alexander-Arnold completed eight of his 28 passes and one of eight crosses. In a sense, though, once Liverpool had gone ahead through the penalty, that mattered less than his defensive performance. Not that it was policy but the disjointedness of the game ended up suiting Liverpool. “Something changed in the world of football,” Klopp said in February after the 0-0 draw at Old Trafford in February, which came five days after the goalless draw at home to Bayern Munich. “Everyone adapted to it and we have to make sure we adapt.” This is not a new defensive age – far from it – but by discovering a capacity to resist, and by pairing central defenders in Virgil van Dijk and Joël Matip who excel at the traditional virtues of defending – heading, marking, tackling – at least as much as playing the ball out, Liverpool have discovered a competitive advantage. The Fiver: sign up and get our daily football email.

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https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/apr/05/irish-punks-fontaines-dc-you-can-feel-the-growing-anglophobia

Music

2019-04-05T07:00:28.000Z

Dean Van Nguyen

Irish punks Fontaines DC: 'You can feel the growing Anglophobia'

If there’s any justice, Fontaines DC’s debut album Dogrel will enter the canon of classic dramatic depictions of Dublin. The city is unalterably embedded in the record’s DNA – it is as quintessentially Dublin as the work of James Joyce was a century ago. “I think a lot of our music sounds, to me, like buses and trains and just hordes of people on particular streets in Dublin,” says frontman Grian Chatten, who is sitting opposite me in the Clarence hotel, flanked by his bandmates Conor Deegan III, Conor Curley, Carlos O’Connell and Tom Coll. The band’s punk licks and brogue-heavy narration present an unvarnished but undeniably romantic version of the city: this is music that sounds like Dublin feels. Chatten’s heavily accented vocals play a part; there are references to specific areas, pubs and landmarks, plus a cast of characters who populate the songs. But there is something more than just portraits. The rough production and rickety rhythms conjure familiar Dublin moods: bustling markets, rain-streaked cobblestones and the rumbling of cold early-morning commerce. “I think of Dublin and our music as one and the same, because it was written by people who were intensely absorbed by the city,” says Chatten. “We were just really consumed by it; it influenced us in just the way street corners looked and how people spoke, and absolutely every aspect of it filtered through.” Fontaines DC frontman Grian Chatten. Photograph: Lorne Thomson/Redferns “There’s a natural rebelliousness to Irish trad music,” says Deegan, the band’s bassist. “That combined with punk feels really natural. I think singing in an Irish accent on top of punk, it just doubles down on that sense.” Chatten’s rugged vocals are key in defining the Fontaines DC sound. In person, he spins the streetwise wisdom of a beatnik balladeer, his conversation delivered in a gripping drawl through a sleepy exterior. This classic frontman allure has helped make Dogrel the most hyped Irish rock debut in years – a quick ascent for a group of twentysomethings whose initial desire was to form a kind of “punk Beatles”. Mercifully, their ambitions evolved. Chatten cites the Pogues and their 1984 debut album Red Roses for Me as one of their chief inspirations. “The spirit of it, the carnage of it,” he gushes. “It sounds so raucous but at the same time so intelligent.” Fontaines DC’s album has a live, unproduced feel. “You want it to sound raw, maybe full of mistakes, at its most potent, which is like a living thing,” Chatten says. “The very act of letting it go in the natural form, that it is really very much aligned with our principles as artists: accepting the first way that you phrase something has truth.” The opening track from Dogrel features the lyrics, “Dublin in the rain is mine / A pregnant city with a catholic mind,” bellows Chatten. “My childhood was small but I’m gonna be big,” seemingly willing his fame into existence. Yet according to the writer himself, he’s playing a role. “The ambition that character has is more of a sickness and a product of capitalism,” he says. “His own background he feels is inferior in the context of other people’s backgrounds. So it’s almost sarcastic for us.” This very Irish album arrives at a time when Anglo-Irish relations are as strained as they have been in years, with Brexit negotiations pitting the nations in opposite corners. “The only thing that concerns me about that is the state of Northern Ireland,” says Deegan. “I don’t really care what Britain does. That’s kind of the whole point of forming a republic in the first place.” “You can definitely feel the growing Anglophobia,” says Chatten. This idea is probed on the song Boys in the Better Land, where a taxi driver from a multicultural background asserts his own sense of Irishness by smoking Carrolls cigarettes and yelling: “Brits out!” “He has suddenly found a bit of meaning in considering himself to be Irish and Anglophobic or anti-British,” explains Chatten. “It’s just to show how flippant these things are and how much they are based on ego and wanting to feel part of something, as opposed to a genuine hatred of something else.” There’s a natural rebelliousness to Irish trad music – that combined with punk feels really natural The album ends with Dublin City Sky, a lament to the end of a toxic relationship and the fracturing of the city’s bohemian character under the weight of capitalism and gentrification. “It feels very important to explore the dying culture that’s being murdered by gentrification,” Chatten says. “It’s casting a shadow on what we love about the city and that gives us the impetus to write about what’s in that shadow.” Deegan adds: “The increase of tech companies here, all of the capitalist stuff going on in Dublin right now, the focus on money over quality of life or art, is why gentrification is a given now. I think romantic Ireland is dead and gone.” “It’s with O’Leary in the grave,” shouts Chatten to laughter, completing the quote from WB Yeats’s poem September 1913. According to Deegan, though: “We do our best to try to keep it going.” Five more fast-rising Irish bands Bitch Falcon The Dublin trio’s uncompromising grunge throttles with titanic power, with singer/guitarist Lizzie Fitzpatrick’s voice ringing with an operatic gloaming. Bouts Their recent debut album Flow sees the band shape a tuneful indie-pop sound, all smooth chord progressions and catchy hooks. Just Mustard The heavy atmospherics and stifling textures of the Dundalk group’s strong first album Wednesday make being young sound like chaos and disorder. Pillow Queens Catchy guitar licks and regional articulation punctuate the Dublin band’s furious, fun and totally distinct punk sound. PowPig This emerging young Limerick four-piece make lo-fi, pop-focused garage rock tunes with an enjoyably sardonic sense of humour.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/business/nils-pratley-on-finance/2022/aug/22/as-the-bulb-fiasco-shows-hoping-for-the-best-is-not-good-strategy

Business

2022-08-22T17:49:49.000Z

Nils Pratley

As the Bulb fiasco shows, hoping for the best is not good strategy | Nils Pratley

‘T he house should understand that we do not want this company to be in this temporary state longer than is absolutely necessary,” said Kwasi Kwarteng, the business secretary, when he authorised the nationalisation of Bulb, the failed retail energy supplier, last November. Was it such dreams of a quick sale and a rapid return to the private sector that persuaded the government that there was no need to put in place hedging contracts to cover the cost of buying energy for Bulb’s 1.4 million customers? If so, the decision was a shocker. Nine months later, Bulb still sits on the state’s books and the price of running an unhedged operation increases with every spike in the gas price, up about 20% since last Friday. At the outset, the government advanced £1.7bn of public money to run Bulb for six months, with the hope of getting a large chunk back via a sale. Then, as wholesale energy prices continued to climb, the Office for Budget Responsibility said in March that the bailout would cost £2.2bn over two years. Now we’re talking properly serious sums. Take your pick from any number between £3bn and £4bn. Energy consultancy Auxilione forecasts plausibly that Bulb could lose a further £420m over this summer and potentially £1.6bn during the winter. The no-hedging policy has made a rotten financial position worse. As it happens, Kwarteng didn’t mention his “no longer than necessary” timetable when quizzed on the approach by a select committee in May. Instead he said this: “The issue with hedging is that it is very risky because, essentially, you are taking a bet or trying to insure yourself against price movements. That insurance … costs money. In terms of managing public money, the Treasury, rightly, does not think that that is what the taxpayer should be doing.” To put it mildly, that analysis does not read well in light of events. Hedging really isn’t like taking a bet; it’s about securing certainty over the price you have to pay. Bulb didn’t have sufficient hedges in place to cope with a rigid price cap and a spiralling wholesale price, so it was particularly perverse for the government to continue with a failed strategy. Whatever the Treasury orthodoxy says, sometimes you have to apply common sense. The business and energy select committee made the same point in its report last month: “The decision not to implement a hedging strategy may have led to the sale of Bulb being less desirable and significantly increased costs to taxpayers.” You bet: there’s no longer any doubt about it. It is probably pointless for the government or Bulb’s administrators to try to play catch-up at today’s much-higher prices. The moment to put hedges in place was at the outset. Instead, ministers hoped for the best. That could also roughly describe of the UK’s entire approach to energy security over the past 20 years. Cineworld needs a new cast of characters It’s “business as usual” for customers, said Cineworld as it confirmed it is considering filing for bankruptcy in the US. The debt-laden cinema giant added that it hopes to emerge eventually from a financial restructuring “with no significant impact upon its employees”. By rights, though, there ought to be a significant impact on at least two personnel: chief executive Mooky Greidinger and his brother and deputy, Israel. The price of restructuring ought to be their departure at an early stage of the process. The duo’s debt-fuelled stewardship of Cineworld has been a calamity and is almost certainly about to deliver near wipe-out for shareholders, or “very significant dilution” in the coy corporate language. Sign up to Business Today Free daily newsletter Get set for the working day – we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning 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. Greidinger interests speak for 20% of that equity, which presumably will also become near-worthless, but there may be a temptation to see the family as vital to a post-restructuring corporate sequel. The banks should resist such thoughts: this is an uncomplicated chain of cinemas that doesn’t need the old cast at the helm. Bad timing What a moment for the senior independent non-executive director (SID) at Made.com, the beleaguered online furniture retailer, to depart with immediate effect: just as the company tries to assemble an emergency fund-raising that may require it to raise more than its current stock market value of £35m. Gwyn Burr cited a need to give more focus to her “other professional commitments”, which presumably means chairing Skipton building society, which she has done since February. All the same, she’s only been on Made’s board since the flotation 15 months ago at 200p. With the shares now at 9p, this is when a SID earns her fees. Or not, in this case.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/oct/07/tony-blair-says-his-return-to-british-politics-is-an-open-question

Politics

2016-10-07T07:11:29.000Z

Rajeev Syal

Tony Blair says his return to British politics is an open question

Tony Blair has refused to rule out a return to British politics, in an interview in which he predicts the centre ground will rise again within the Labour party. The former prime minister said he was still trying to find a political role which would help the party become electable. In an interview with Esquire magazine, he said the centre of British politics would rise again and he did not rule out a role in that rise. “I don’t know if there’s a role for me,” he said. “There’s a limit to what I want to say about my own position at this moment. All I can say is that this is where politics is at. Do I feel strongly about it? Yes, I do. Am I very motivated by that? Yes. Where do I go from here? What exactly do I do? That’s an open question. “There’s been a huge reaction against the politics I represent. But I think it’s too soon to say the centre has been defeated. Ultimately I don’t think it will. I think it will succeed again. The centre ground is in retreat. This is our challenge. We’ve got to rise to that challenge.” He reiterated his views on Jeremy Corbyn’s election and re-election as Labour’s leader over the course of a year, saying he had a set of policies that would take the UK back to the 1960s. “Frankly, it’s a tragedy for British politics if the choice before the country is a Conservative government going for a hard Brexit and an ultra-left Labour party that believes in a set of policies that takes us back to the 1960s,” he said. “In the UK at the moment you’ve got a one-party state. When you put it all together (taking into account that the Conservative leader wasn’t elected), there’s something seriously wrong.” His comments will anger many new party members who have blamed Blair’s quest for the centre ground for letting down working-class voters, union members and leading the UK into the Iraq war. Blair was dismissive of Jeremy Corbyn’s policies, saying they don’t work. Photograph: David Gadd/Sportsphoto Ltd/Allstar Blair has spent the nine years since his withdrawal from frontline politics developing an organisation that employs about 200 people and operates in more than 20 countries. Last month, he announced he would stand down to concentrate on not-for-profit organisations. But in the UK, where he has been criticised for the ways in which he has earned his money and for his role in the lead-up to the Iraq war in 2003, his reputation is low. July’s Chilcot report was damning about the decision-making on Iraq in Whitehall and the way in which intelligence was presented, but did not say that Blair lied about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Asked whether Corbyn could ever be taken seriously as a leader, Blair told the magazine that the problems within the party ran deeper than a single individual. “This is not about Jeremy Corbyn,” he said. “It’s about two different cultures in one organism. One culture is the culture of the Labour party as a party of government. And that, historically, is why Labour was formed: to win representation in parliament and ultimately to influence and to be the government of the country. “The other culture is the ultra-left, which believes that the action on the street is as important as the action in parliament,” he said. “That culture has now taken the leadership of the Labour party. It’s a huge problem because they live in a world that is very, very remote from the way that the broad mass of people really think. “The reason why the position of these guys is not one that will appeal to an electorate is not because they are too left, or because they are too principled. It’s because they are too wrong. “The reason their policies shouldn’t be supported isn’t because they’re wildly radical, it’s because they are not. They don’t work. They are actually a form of conservatism. This is the point about them. What they are offering is a mixture of fantasy and error.”

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/may/21/novelist-julie-myerson-childrens-secrets-living-with-teenagers-nonfiction

Books

2022-05-21T08:00:14.000Z

Lisa Allardice

Novelist Julie Myerson on sharing her children’s secrets: ‘I’ve got in so much trouble’

Few writers have published and been damned with quite the ferocity Julie Myerson was back in 2009 for her memoir The Lost Child. The book, which included descriptions of her 17-year-old son Jake’s cannabis addiction and her painful decision to lock him out of the family home, was debated everywhere from Mumsnet to newspaper opinion pages – “a betrayal of motherhood itself” – and even the House of Commons. Extended family members were doorstepped and Jake was approached by a tabloid to sell his story at a time when he was extremely vulnerable. “A little bit of me broke,” the novelist says, looking back. She was no longer able to drive, and certainly wasn’t able to do live radio or TV (she had been a regular commentator on the BBC’s Newsnight Review). “It was terrible. My anxiety reached peaks that were just unmanageable. It was so shameful for me. I felt I had brought terrible things on my family through my work.” Now she has written another book about parents struggling with a teenager’s drug addiction. Narrated by a writer, it is called Nonfiction: A Novel. Why has she returned to a subject that left her so badly scalded? “I’ve got to be careful. I’ve got in so much trouble in the past,” Myerson says, almost to herself, as we settle in the jewel-coloured living room in the Camden townhouse she and her husband, playwright Jonathan Myerson, have recently renovated. A gallery of photos of their three, now grownup children (Jake, Chloë and Raphael) line the stairs. Their collie dog, Rabbit, waits patiently by french windows overlooking the garden with Jonathan’s state-of-the art office-shed at the bottom. “Why am I jumping straight in?” she asks, tingling with nervous energy. Myerson in 2004 with her children, from left, Jake, Chloë and Raphael. Photograph: Zoe Norfolk/Camera Press Myerson got back late the night before from a holiday with Jonathan in Sicily. The author, who will be 62 next month, is recovering from a hip replacement, following a mastectomy after she was diagnosed with breast cancer during the Christmas lockdown of 2020. The past five years have been dogged by ill-health, starting with the onset of chronic fatigue syndrome, which she believes was caused by the furore over The Lost Child. She might have been forgiven for retreating and writing a historical novel or a thriller, both of which Myerson has done very well over a career spanning nearly 30 years and 14 books. Indeed, she has published three novels since The Lost Child: Then, set in a post-apocalyptic London, which ends with a mother smothering her children (no prizes for guessing what’s going on there: “I was still in a place of some trauma when I wrote that novel”); a crime novel, The Quickening, and The Stopped Heart, a gothic mystery with even more than Myerson’s usual quota of dead babies. As she quips, you can recognise a Myerson novel by the number of illicit affairs and dead children, and Nonfiction is no exception. Myerson thinks it is perhaps her best, although it is the one she has wrestled with the longest. There are plenty of knotty issues raised, right from that tricksy title: Nonfiction: A Novel (her publisher suggested the subtitle to avoid confusing booksellers). “This book is completely made up. It is also completely true,” Myerson says, helpfully. I’ve always wanted to write things that feel brave. That make people uncomfortable. I want to be on the edge of what is OK Writing about your family, even as fiction, is a fraught affair as Hanif Kureishi and Rachel Cusk have found to their cost. To do so again seems not so much to be writing from the wound, but picking it open. Courageous or reckless, she says her new novel is her “riposte” to all those who vilified her back in 2009. “It makes you brave having had cancer,” she says (she finished the final edits in hospital days before her mastectomy). Obviously she would hate for her family to be targeted again, but if the book is going to be attacked in the same way as The Lost Child, she says part of her thinks, “Bring it on. Because this is who I am. This is the writer I am. This is the person I am. That isn’t the same as saying it is nonfiction, because it is not.” So why call it Nonfiction? “I was lying in bed one morning reading the paper and I said to Jono, ‘I’ve had an idea what to call my book,’ and he didn’t know what my book was and said, ‘That’s a great title.’ I liked the word. I think fiction tells the truth often more than nonfiction does,” she explains. “I think it is quite a cool title.” Really? “Did I know as I wrote it that people would be thinking it is about us? Yes of course I did. Yes. Absolutely deliberate. It is a tease of a title.” She has tried “to write a novel about some of the hardest things that there are to say about writing, which is that sometimes you do feel your writing damages the people you love, and obviously I’m a really good example of that.” M yerson first got into trouble for writing about her children over an anonymous column for this paper that ran from 2006 to 2008, called Living With Teenagers. Her children were between the ages of 14 and 17 when it started, and the column took in everything from temper tantrums to pubic hair, with a lot of swearing in between. It was a huge hit (when she was in hospital people still told her how much they identified with it) and later became a book, with the subtitle One Hell of a Bumpy Ride. She regrets letting it run for so long without telling her children: “We got that wrong … but it was an innocent mistake.” When they were very little she had written about them in a column for the Independent, appearing alongside Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary. Later, they would read these columns aloud at the dinner table, because the antics of their younger selves were so funny. In the altercations over The Lost Child, Jake accused his mother in a tabloid interview of being “addicted” to writing about them. Now she is returning to a subject so close to home, you can’t help but wonder if he had a point. “I’m addicted to trying to be as truthful as possible about the world that I see around me,” Myerson says. “I’ve always wanted to write things that feel brave. That make people slightly uncomfortable. I like reading work that makes me slightly uncomfortable. That’s why I write. I want to be on the edge of what is OK. I don’t want to hurt anybody I love, of course not. But I need to be as honest as I possibly can.” ‘I’ve accidentally hurt people I would rather not hurt, but I didn’t do it with a bad heart.’ Photograph: Harry Borden/The Guardian The Lost Child had begun as an investigation into the disappearance of a 19th-century child called Mary Yelloly, but Myerson found herself “too distracted and distressed” by the crisis at home not to write about Jake, so she “let the two strands weave together on the page, just as they seemed to in life”. (No one bothered much with the Mary Yelloly bits; in fact very few of her critics had actually read the book at all, as proofs weren’t even available – something that’s “going to give me grief to the end of my days”, she says.) It describes the couple’s decision to turn Jake out of the house – “No parent asks a child to leave except as a last terrible resort,” she wrote – along with well-documented incidents such as Myerson ending up in A&E with a perforated eardrum after her son struck her. A while after The Lost Child, Jake came home and things seemed to be getting better. But then, like the daughter in Nonfiction, he started using heroin (Myerson only mentions this because Jake revealed it in a further newspaper interview in 2014). While Nonfiction might not be explicitly Jake’s story (the child is a girl), like many of Myerson’s novels it imagines the worst-case scenario: a tragic possibility that for a long time seemed all too real. People had stopped talking to them because of what was happening with Jake, she says. She used to imagine a day when someone asks, “‘How’s Jake?’ And I say, ‘Oh he died.’ And they say, ‘I’m so sorry. How’s your work going?’ People just couldn’t talk about it.” But Myerson is adamant that she is writing the mother’s story: “I would never try and write about what it is like to be the teenager.” It is about parents who’ve had an addictive child: “I could not possibly have written it had I not experienced being the mother of somebody suffering from addiction.” You cannot have a child addicted to a substance and not feel the most immense guilt. It devastates you as a parent The book is dripping with maternal guilt: “I’ve been a bad parent to you, I’ve been selfish, neglectful. Again and again I’ve put myself first … I’ve lied. I’ve been greedy. I’ve said yes to things I shouldn’t have said yes to. I’ve hurt the people I love,” the narrator confesses in a self-laceration that goes on for pages. “You cannot have a child addicted to a substance – your darling child who you have done everything possible for, put fluoride on their teeth, got them to school, done homework with them, and tried to excite them about the world – and not feel the most immense guilt. Although all the addiction books tell you it’s not your fault,” she says. “Jake at the age of eight was the most switched on, responsible, communicative and happy boy. It devastates you as a parent.” Although she is clear she didn’t want either The Lost Child or Nonfiction to be read as campaigning or issue-driven books, she feels middle-class families need to talk truthfully about skunk cannabis and heroin: “So if my novel provokes a bit of that, that is entirely good.” The other drug Myerson wanted to explore in this novel was writing: “It’s difficult for families living with a writer. It’s very difficult having a mother who is a writer. You want to be a good person and parent. But you really want to tell the truth,” she stresses. “I don’t know how you square it, really.” As her daughter, Chloë, pointed out, it is “a sort of meta-novel”. “I’m not quite sure what ‘meta’ means,” Myerson muses now, but a conversation on the ethics of fiction runs throughout the novel as the narrator reflects on her craft, teaches creative writing and talks to fellow writers. Anyone who has ever sheltered from the rain in the yurt at the Edinburgh festival or tiptoed through muddy fields at Hay-on-Wye will enjoy the scenes set at book festivals, mischievously inviting readers to wonder about the identities of the female poet or pompous journalist. “Good, you are supposed to wonder,” Myerson says, clapping her hands together. ‘I do think men are far less often accused of mining their own real lives in their fiction.’ Photograph: Harry Borden/The Guardian In one central scene at a book event, the narrator is pushed to admit she has had affairs, because they appear in her fiction. “I do think men are far less often accused of mining their own real lives in their fiction,” Myerson says. For the record, unlike the narrator in Nonfiction, she didn’t have an affair, “and I wouldn’t tell you if I had”, she laughs. “The more things you put in that are fictional the better, because it distracts people,” she says. Although she will say that the marriage in the novel is based on her own: “Jono is such a good man.” As if on cue, Jonathan bounds in from the garden. He is off to meet a man about a musical, though he hadn’t mentioned it to her before. There is a bit of chat about who is going to walk the dog. “All marriages need their mysteries,” he calls back as he leaves. But ever since her first novel, Sleepwalking, which she published in 1994 when she was 34, written while she was on maternity leave after having Chloë and pregnant with Raphael, her real life has seeped into her fiction. Beginning with the suicide of the heroine’s father (Myerson’s father killed himself the night Chloë was born – although the two events were not connected), Sleepwalking is the story of a woman who has an affair late in her pregnancy. “I try and write about the things I find most difficult to imagine happening,” she says. Hence all the dead babies. She is most proud of Laura Blundy, her 2000 historical novel about a Victorian woman haunted by the loss of her son. “Who could have known that years later I’d in effect lose my son, or almost lose him,” she says. “I seem to have this need to talk about loss.” The other big loss in Nonfiction is that of her mother, who died when Myerson was in the earliest stages of writing the novel. All cigarette smoke and catty comments, the narrator’s mother is the standout character and the one Myerson is most prepared to own as being drawn directly from life. Spiteful incidents, such as sending Myerson her baby photos because she didn’t want them any more, really happened, she says. Myerson’s mother never liked her writing, or her husband, even though they’ve been together for more than 30 years. “She said she was ashamed of everything I’d written. She was very competitive with me and couldn’t be proud. It has given me a lot of pain,” the author says. Can a writer ever be trusted with their own story? My answer would be no. You can’t trust a writer Myerson chose to cut off nearly all contact with her mother, and didn’t see her before she died. She was forbidden from attending the funeral, and told there would be people there to send her away if she tried to come. “I’ve had to wrestle my way out from under her to some extent, as a person, as a writer and definitely as a mother.” She would never have published the novel had her mother still been alive, she says (although, as she points out, she had already begun writing). “My mother would have been appalled by this book.” Yet Myerson describes her childhood as “inspiring” rather than miserable. The eldest of three sisters, she was “a very shy, very anxious child”. She credits her mother with turning her into a writer by making her excited about books; ironic, given that she hated Myerson being published. When she was 12 her mother left her father for another man; a “brave” thing to do, Myerson says, as her father was hitting her, which the young Julie witnessed, “so I suppose you would class that now as unhappiness, but I didn’t feel unhappy”. After being made to pay her school fees by a court when she was 17, her father told her he never wanted to see her again. They didn’t meet for many years, until Jonathan insisted they take a newborn Jake to see him: “he wasn’t very welcoming,” she says. He killed himself on New Year’s Eve, within hours of Chloë’s birth. “It sounds more dramatic than it is,” she says matter-of-factly, as they were estranged at the time. She was cut out of both her parents’ wills, something that “hasn’t happened to anybody else I know”, she says. Despite all this, Myerson has never had proper therapy: “All my children think I should talk to somebody,” she says. She winces at the idea of writing as therapy, but does think part of the artistic process is to make something “constructive and positive” out of trauma; indirectly, all her novels have been a way of coming to terms with her past. She suspects that the experience of having cancer, of being forced “to really peer into an abyss”, will inevitably surface in her work. “That shapes you as a person and a writer.” I t’s a funny thing getting older, she reflects. Looking back, there was a time when she thought she might become the bestselling, award-winning writer she had longed to be since she was eight (when she wrote fan letters to Daphne du Maurier): “Then you begin to realise time has passed and maybe it is not going to happen. There are all these great young writers coming up, and you suddenly realise you are one of the older ones.” At events she is often introduced as “prize-winning”, she says, “and I think, I wish”. It particularly irks her that she has never even been longlisted for the Women’s prize for fiction. “People always think I am posher and more successful than I am.” Given the shrillness of the attacks against her, it’s hard not to think Myerson was partly punished for being pretty and appearing on TV to talk about books and art. Antonia Fraser, who’s featured in her share of gossip columns over the years, told her: “This has only happened to you because you are blond’”, she recalls. “I’m only a bottle blond,” Myerson adds, laughing. But she will never stop writing: “I’m still this very strange little person who used to shut herself away in her bedroom with an old typewriter that I got from my grandfather and write these things that I had to write.” Both Chloë and Raphael have inherited the writing gene – Jake is a musician – and she is quite prepared to see herself in a novel at some point. Sign up to our Inside Saturday newsletter for an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the making of the magazine’s biggest features, as well as a curated list of our weekly highlights Has Jake read Nonfiction? (Much was made at the time of the fact that when Myerson and Jake met to discuss The Lost Child, he said “I can’t stop you publishing it.”) He has been sent the new book, but she’s not sure he has read it. “I wish any of my children would read my books,” she laughs. She is confident that he is in a much better place now, “he’s not an addict”, and that he would respond very differently today. They are in regular contact and she is currently helping him do up a flat. While Jake is “still working himself out in a way”, they are all much happier. “We feel like a family again.” She feels Nonfiction has drawn a line under The Lost Child, “which I may or may not get away with, but it feels good to have written it”. She refuses to apologise for her books again. “Now that I’m in my 60s and have had cancer, which may or may not come back, I’m just going to relax and carry on doing the thing that I do best.” she says. “I’ve accidentally hurt people I would rather not hurt, but I didn’t do it with a bad heart.” Two things are clear: she is devoted to her writing and to her children, and, as she discovered, sometimes it is impossible to serve both masters. There is no right answer as to what a mother can write, she concludes. But it is an important question to raise, and that is what she set out to do with this book. “I’m saying, Can a writer ever be trusted with their own story? My answer would be no. You can’t trust a writer. You can’t know if they are telling the truth or not. How much came from real life and how much didn’t,” she says. “But Nonfiction is definitely a novel.” Nonfiction: A Novel is published by Corsair at £16.99. To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

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https://www.theguardian.com/football/2024/feb/24/we-are-in-a-good-way-pochettino-spies-seeds-of-success-in-chelsea-team

Football

2024-02-24T22:30:39.000Z

David Hytner

‘We are in a good way’: Pochettino spies seeds of success in Chelsea team

Mauricio Pochettino believes his Chelsea team are ready to blossom and could accelerate their growth by beating Liverpool in Sunday’s Carabao Cup final. The manager has endured some difficult days since his arrival at the club last summer as he has tried to bed in a host of new players. Creating the right environment takes time, he said, and must happen in a fairly organic way. But Pochettino has started to see the green shoots, especially in last Saturday’s 1-1 Premier League draw at Manchester City, which followed the away wins over Aston Villa (in the FA Cup) and Crystal Palace. Prior to that, Chelsea had lost heavily at Liverpool and to Wolves at home. Pochettino was delighted with the finer details against City, such as the defender Axel Disasi celebrating a headed clearance as if he had scored a goal. Pochettino warns Carabao Cup final officials over Klopp’s Liverpool exit bias Read more “Things are changing,” Pochettino said. “Did you see at the beginning of the season this type of behaviour from the players – to celebrate a block, to celebrate all together, to encourage each other? That is the process of all new teams – to build this competitive spirit. What Disasi did is a good sign. That is when as a coaching staff you start to feel: ‘We are in a good way.’ “When you plant a seed you don’t see, at the start, when it begins to grow. You need time. You need many things. In all of these types of projects … the first year or year and a half or two years, it is always difficult to see what is growing from the outside. Planting is about first growing the roots. Then things start to appear.” Pochettino, who is seeking his first silverware in England, made it clear that winning was the only thing that mattered in the final against Liverpool. He also remembered how his first trophy as a player – the Apertura with Newell’s Old Boys as an 18-year-old in 1990 – was transformative. “It changed me and changed my career, it changes how people perceive you and your belief,” he said. “We are going to build the players’ careers and our careers by winning trophies. It’s nice to play football with your friends. But you come here and put your Chelsea shirt on and it’s about competing. “Since the start of the season, we have been talking about the mentality of this football club and needing a team to match it. Winning titles will be a good way to arrive at this capacity of competing well. A final is about winning and we need to win. Being second is the worst thing in the world.” Pochettino finds it strange that VAR technology will be used in the final, having not been available in the previous rounds of the competition, although he is broadly a fan of it. The subject stirred unhappy memories of his meeting with Jürgen Klopp’s Liverpool in the 2019 Champions League final when he was in charge at Tottenham. The game was shaped by a penalty for Liverpool at the very start for handball against the Spurs midfielder Moussa Sissoko. Mohamed Salah scored and Liverpool went on to win 2-0. Pochettino continues to believe the VAR ought to have advised the award be overturned. 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. “Were we playing [that night] with VAR or without?” he said. “Because the ball on Sissoko after 30 seconds was here [signals to his armpit]. Today do you think they would give a penalty?” Pochettino was otherwise supremely relaxed, projecting confidence. “I don’t feel the pressure,” he said. “I am not the type of person or coach … ahhh, the anxiety or like this. We trust in ourselves and the team. And then it’s football. If you want to compete your best, you need to feel good, be happy. I don’t change too much. I am the same. I didn’t change the colour of my hair.”

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https://www.theguardian.com/football/2019/dec/11/football-referee-upside-sport

Football

2019-12-11T11:52:35.000Z

Sam Phipps

The best decision I ever made': the upside of being a football referee

Doug Prentice started refereeing in the public parks of Edinburgh in 1977 and had seven seasons on the Scottish senior list from 1986 until 1992. His family is steeped in football. His father John played for Hearts and Rangers, among others, and was the Scotland manager in 1966 when they drew 1-1 with Brazil – Pelé and all. Doug’s brother Alan played for Meadowbank and Hamilton. “I wanted to be involved in the game but wasn’t good enough as a player,” he says. So he took up refereeing. “It has been so fulfilling, the best decision I’ve ever made, and I’ve made friendships around the world that still flourish today.” Prentice emigrated to Brisbane almost three decades ago and he still referees today, aged 62. He is into his tenth season as a referee assessor on the A-League, the highest level of the men’s game in Australia. He has almost learned to be philosophical about the downsides of officiating. “Abuse of referees at all levels has been going on since the game started,” he says. “I think some people go to games specifically for that purpose. Sometimes it’s the parents of the younger team players who are the worst – I have seen them going daft, screaming and writhing around on the ground. It is not just our sport either. In Australia, they love their rugby league but it has the same issues.” Despite the problems, he is keen to avoid giving an impression of widespread anti-ref anarchy. “Overall, I have seen far more respect than disrespect and I would say that’s true of most of us. In recent years, I have been lucky to travel back to the UK and also to the States. Invariably, it revolves around football and refereeing, where there is usually a reunion involved. The memories are priceless.” Vikki Allan officiated at a match on Mount Kilimanjaro 4,800m above sea level. Vikki Allan is still in her twenties but has already hit the refereeing heights – quite literally. In 2017, she was assistant referee at a game played on a crater just short of the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro, the tallest mountain in Africa. The match was played at 4,800m above sea level – a Fifa world record – as part of a campaign, Equal Playing Field, to break down gender barriers in sport. “It took us seven days to climb up the mountain, carrying all the gear, including goalposts,” recalls Allan. “We used white flour for the lines and marked them out on the volcanic ash. At that altitude, a 90-minute game of football is reckoned to be the equivalent of six hours!” The thought of all the girls around the world who are not allowed to play outside, let alone play football, kept Allan going, she says. Growing up in Scotland, she had to overcome her own obstacles to following in the footsteps of her father, Crawford Allan, a top-level referee, who retired in 2017. “I was told again and again ‘girls don’t referee’ but I knew that’s what I wanted to do and, as soon as I turned 16, I started the training.” Within months, she had her SFA badge. Ten years later, she has officiated not just at those dizzy heights in Tanzania but also at the lowest altitude, in Jordan, as part of the same campaign. This season, she has run the line at Atlético Madrid in the Women’s Champions League and in a Euro 2021 qualifier. 5,500 miles to see one goal: the Hearts supporters' club marooned in England Read more Allan regularly referees in the Scottish Women’s Premier League and is also an assistant referee in the East of Scotland men’s league. “When I started out, there were few, if any, role models but that’s changed massively, especially with the Women’s World Cup and people like Kylie Cockburn and Lorraine Watson,” says Allan. “I want to keep improving and go as far as I can. Refereeing gives you a lot in real life. You become a team leader, make decisions. It’s made me more confident as a person. And I’ve also made friends all over the world.” How does she cope with abuse from crowds? “You block it out most of the time but people also need to remember we are going to make mistakes sometimes. We also don’t necessarily switch off as soon as we leave the ground. I speak to my father and go over things from the game, discuss points.” Arbroath v Edinburgh City at Gayfield Park. Photograph: Colin McPherson/Getty Images Craig Jardine used to play Sunday league football. The games were tough and the standard of refereeing sometimes questionable. “One of the funniest things was when we played a game at Inverleith Park,” recalls Jardine. “Their team took a throw-in and our goalie was so bad it went straight in. We said: ‘That’s not allowed, you can’t score direct from a throw-in’. But the ref went: ‘No, it’s a goal.’ We lost one-nil.” Another time, Jardine was crunched from behind so badly he thought he had broken a leg. “I thought, that’s a red card – I’m finished here for the game. But it wasn’t even given as a foul.” Then came a game-ending tackle too far. “I limped to the changing room, got in the car and thought: ‘I’ll show them, I’ll become a ref!’” After a series of interviews and exams, Jardine started with under-13 matches. “At that age group, it’s not the kids who are the problem – it’s the coaches. Right from shaking hands before the start, they would try to take control, suss you out.” Once Jardine was officiating an under-14 game in Musselburgh. “Five minutes in, a player ran in front of me and tripped over my foot. The other captain burst out laughing and I laughed too. It was so funny but the player who tripped went down injured and the manager came on and said, straight-faced: ‘Ref, you’ve injured my player’. I said: ‘No, he just fell over.’ Right then, the whole dynamic changed. The problem is when something like that happens, you can’t help liking the other team! But you can’t do that, you’ve obviously got to keep impartial. We carried on and it was fine.” The most torrid game Jardine ever refereed was an under-17 Scottish Cup semi-final on Leith Links between a big Glasgow team (he still prefers not to identify them) and Leith Athletic. “It started off with a crowd of maybe 100, but people would see the visitors’ kit and flock to the game. Eventually there were hundreds. I was on my own.” Why would anyone be a Sunday league referee? The love of the game Read more Leith were the underdogs but, towards the end, they went 3-0 up. “That’s when the Glasgow team tried to influence the game. They were shouting at me, coming on to the pitch. I was struggling to control things. A Leith player made a strong tackle and I was about to book him, but the other team’s manager came on and screamed at me. There were some horrendous challenges after that and fights were breaking out. The Leith manager came on to help me keep players apart. The other team were trying to get the game abandoned so it would be replayed. We just about managed to get through to the final whistle. And I’m just thinking: ‘I want to go home. It’s Saturday afternoon, I’m tired!’” Even that was not the end of it. The team from Glasgow complained to the SFA, saying the Leith manager had assaulted one of their players. Jardine got a call from the SFA. “They said: ‘Tell us what happened, or we’ll either have to replay or knock Leith out of the competition’. I told them the truth – that the Leith manager was fine and respectful. He just helped me with the situation. If you have to replay, I’m leaving the refereeing fraternity. They took my word, which was great.” Glan Conwy v Llanrwst United in Wales. Photograph: Matthew Ashton/Getty Images Derek Hall took up refereeing in the late 1970s and has coached other referees for about 30 years. “Back when I started, you got your badge or diploma and were put straight out on your own into public parks football,” he says. “Remember, for most games at the start of your career, you’re on your own – no one is running the lines. It’s a huge test of character and you find out things about yourself. “These days it has come on in quantum leaps in terms of support. But a ref can still be starting out at the age of only 16 and a small minority of parents on the touchline can be a problem. Or much older players not taking kindly to finding out they’re not the ones in charge. But the vast majority of clubs realise they wouldn’t have the game without a ref, so they tend to be supportive.” “It’s about balancing expectations with reality. Some parents might be expecting Pierluigi Collina to turn up and ref their son or daughter. You don’t expect every midfielder to have that brilliantly creative pass, or every striker and defender to excel all the time. And, if players need time to develop, then young refs need it too. They’re going to make mistakes. “When I was in coaching, a key message was always: if anything has happened on the pitch that you’re not happy about – whether that’s your own mistake or something else – don’t sit on it and worry. We always try to be as positive as possible and easy to contact. Failure to provide that kind of support is likely to be one of the reasons why you might lose a young ref. And retention is probably going to remain one of the most difficult things, with so many competing attractions. It can be very intimidating to a young referee. Young referees, at 16 and 17 years of age, are classed as vulnerable adults. As such, they are offered more protection by the law, just as young players of the same age are afforded the same protection from abuse. “Also, if what’s coming from the sidelines, particularly from parents, is getting to you and affecting your confidence and performance, at a stoppage in play, you should approach club officials. Never, ever go near a spectator. You go through the club officials and say: ‘That gentleman or lady is supporting your club and what they are saying is totally unacceptable.’ The club has to deal with that, even in a public park.” What if my child does not want to support my football team? Read more Thankfully, physical assaults are very rare, Hall says. “I’ve never been assaulted and that is also true for the vast majority of refs. But when it does happen, it gets a disproportionate coverage and that sometimes doesn’t help. If anything was to happen to one of our refs, I’d always say to get the police involved. It doesn’t matter if the culprit is young or old.” But why are so few players sent off for intimidating language? “Refs only deal in facts and, unless you’re looking straight at a player, you might have no idea who has done it.” Hall’s own donning of the black came about in a similar way to his friend Prentice’s. “I was a particularly poor goalkeeper but I really wanted to get involved. It was either physio or admin – or get out on the park. It can take you anywhere. I refereed at a tournament in China a few months ago. One of my friends was lucky enough to be on the line when Barça visited Hearts and Hibs. Messi and Eto’o were playing. Unbelievable. And all from answering an ad in the Edinburgh Evening News years before.” This article appeared first in Nutmeg magazine Follow Nutmeg on Facebook, Twitter and Soundcloud Follow Sam Phipps on Twitter

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https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2010/nov/11/stan-tracey-under-milk-wood

Music

2010-11-11T15:45:59.000Z

John Fordham

50 great moments in jazz: Stan Tracey's Under Milk Wood and the rise in British jazz

When Wynton Marsalis appeared at a Barbican tribute concert to the late Sir John Dankworth in June, it felt like a symbolic convergence of creative forces – those of jazz's American homeland, and of its many and varied descendants in Europe. Jazz arrived early in Britain, when the Original Dixieland Jazz Band – the white New Orleans group that cut the first jazz records in 1917 – played a London residency, inspiring local players to follow in their footsteps. But throughout the 20s and 30s British jazz (and that of continental Europe) was widely sidelined as a poor imitation of the real thing, with Belgian guitarist Django Reinhardt one of the few undisputed international stars. The Barbican concert attended by Marsalis provided spectacular snapshots of British big-band history from the 30s to the present. It showed there was a lot more to early British jazz than had been previously credited – but it was octogenarian London pianist Stan Tracey and his atmospheric tenor-sax partner Bobby Wellins who furnished one of the highlights of that night with a reprise of their classic 1965 original, Starless and Bible Black (see clip above). Tracey's roots were in Thelonious Monk and Duke Ellington, but he was one of a crop of creative British players inspired by the bebop revolution of the 40s (including saxophonists Ronnie Scott and John Dankworth) who were discovering their own sound. By the 60s, some of that generation – and a younger one close on its heels – began to shift British jazz from skilful imitation to genuine independence by replacing respectful covers with original material. The British DJ Gilles Peterson (with his Impressed series of reissues) and a raft of small indie labels have extensively documented this development now, and the 60s and 70s saw the UK jazz scene on a remarkable roll, with Dankworth, pianist Michael Garrick, bandleader/composers Mike Westbrook, Mike Gibbs and the South African Chris McGregor, and many others generating new music that no longer sounded like a clone of an American model. Among these, Stan Tracey's Under Milk Wood still seems particularly emblematic. Sonny Rollins, who often worked with Tracey in his years as house pianist at Ronnie Scott's in the 60s, once asked: "Does anybody here know how good he really is?" It took a long time for that question to be answered in the affirmative, with the disillusioned pianist almost quitting the business in the next decade, before being rediscovered by a younger generation of players who pulled him back to the bandstand. As a teenager Tracey had been an accordion entertainer for the military during the second world war, then a sideman with the famous Ted Heath jazz/dance band, then a Monk-esque pianist with an increasingly quirky compositional ear. But it was his six years as house pianist at Ronnie Scott's, backing the biggest stars in jazz from Rollins to Stan Getz, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Anita O'Day, Wes Montgomery and many more, that really fired his imagination. The thrill of those encounters, and the musical ideas they sparked night after night, set him composing prolifically – often on the night bus home after the gigs. Under Milk Wood was an evocative collection of sparky themes inspired by the Dylan Thomas radio play (it's sometimes performed with a narrator reading the parts). And thanks to Tracey's sparing piano and Wellins's softly hooting sax, the rippling tone-poem Starless and Bible Black is widely acclaimed as one of the great jazz performances.

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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/17/quad-summit-meeting-cancelled-joe-biden-calls-off-australia-trip

World news

2023-05-17T07:01:59.000Z

Amy Remeikis

Quad summit cancelled after Joe Biden calls off trip to Australia

Anthony Albanese has confirmed the Sydney Quad meeting will not go ahead, after US president Joe Biden pulled out of his Australian visit to deal with domestic issues. Early Wednesday morning Albanese was still hopeful the meeting with the leaders of India and Japan could proceed with a senior representative from the US, but hours later he confirmed the event was off. Instead, the Quad nations are expected to have a sideline meeting at the G7 summit in Hiroshima this weekend, with all four leaders still attending. Biden cancels Australia and Papua New Guinea visit as debt limit crisis looms Read more While a meeting is yet to be locked in for the Japan gathering, Albanese said it was “appropriate that we talk”. “The Quad is an important body and we want to make sure that it occurs at leadership level and we’ll be having that discussion over the weekend,” he said. Biden’s visit to Australia, with a historic stop to Papua New Guinea having been confirmed in recent weeks, had been long anticipated and would have included an address to the parliament. Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup Instead, Albanese will hold a bilateral meeting with Biden in Japan, and has been invited to the US later this year for a state visit. It is not known when Biden will be able to reschedule his Australian trip. The postponement, due to hostile negotiations with the Republican-heavy US Congress over the government’s debt ceiling, comes at a delicate time in the US’s engagement with the Pacific region. The visit was supposed to help cement the US’s renewed interest in the Indo-Pacific and help quell regional concerns over the Aukus agreement. 1:23 Biden speaks of 'devastating' effect of debt limit failure as he cuts short Asia tour – video In a radio interview speaking on the postponement, Albanese stressed Biden’s commitment to the Quad arrangement. “President Biden emphasised the importance of the Quad,” he said. “He was very disappointed at some of the actions of some members of Congress and the US Senate. We long ago passed the time where opposition parties tried to hold up supply in Australia … but that effectively is what you’ve got in the US at the moment. 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. “And obviously the domestic priority for the president, understandably, is to play a role in resolving those issues.” Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese. Photograph: Mark Baker/AP Albanese confirmed that the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, would still visit Australia next week for a bilateral meeting and to make a public address in Sydney. “I look forward to welcoming him to Sydney. He made me a very welcome guest in March and he is the host of the G20 this year,” Albanese told ABC Radio Brisbane. But Albanese indicated that the Japanese prime minister, Fumio Kishida, was no longer likely to visit Australia. He noted Kishida had visited Perth late last year, and Albanese would attend the G7 summit hosted by Kishida this weekend. Formally called the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, the US, Japan, India and Australia relationship was formed during the international response to the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, officially meeting for the first time in 2007. It was disbanded in 2008, although the history of Quad 1.0 remains contested, with some blaming the Australia government under Kevin Rudd for pulling back in a bid not to upset China, while others point to the US’s own go-slow approach for the break. It was revived at the 2017 Asean summit at a ministerial level, while Malcolm Turnbull was prime minister and Donald Trump was US president. Further meetings were held between the four nations, including among defence personnel, and “leaders’ summits” have been held since 2021. The Quad was instrumental in creating the concept of the “Indo-Pacific”, instead of the Asia Pacific, in a nod to the ties between the nations between the Indian and Pacific oceans.

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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/10/animal-tranquiliser-opioids-deaths-study-xylazine

US news

2023-10-10T12:00:09.000Z

Chris McGreal

Animal tranquiliser added to opioids causing ‘steep increase’ in deaths

Medical researchers have called for greater education about the rise of an animal tranquiliser, xylazine, in the US’s illicit opioid supply that is not only contributing to deaths but causing severe ulcers and open wounds requiring amputation. The authors of a new study in the Annals of Internal Medicine have warned of insufficient awareness about the drug now widely found mixed in with heroin and the even more deadly opioid fentanyl, which has driven up overdoses to record levels in recent years. The paper said that “exposure to xylazine mixed into illicitly manufactured fentanyl has been associated with prolonged sedation … and a steep increase in deaths”. Xylazine can increase the potential for fatal overdoses as the drug further suppresses breathing on top of the effect on respiration caused by opioids. ‘I yelled, “I’m putting this up your nose”’: what it’s like to use Narcan Read more The combination of xylazine and fentanyl, known as “tranq dope”, has been identified in 48 states. The study estimates that one-quarter of the fentanyl powder supply has the tranquiliser added. The study, Xylazine Adulteration of the Heroin-Fentanyl Drug Supply, was led by Dr Joseph D’Orazio, an addiction medicine specialist at Cooper university hospital in Philadelphia. D’Orazio said xylazine is a psychoactive medication that acts like Xanax and other benzodiazepines that reduce anxiety. But he said they also create their own dependency alongside that caused by the opioids and that some of his patients have told him that xylazine made it more difficult to break their addiction to heroin or fentanyl. “In the Philadelphia area most people who are using opioids are getting exposed to xylazine. They don’t want to be exposed but they really don’t have much choice because more than 90% of the supply in this area is contaminated with it,” he said. “They’re looking for the opioid experience but they end up getting a good dose of xylazine and are unconscious for hours at a time. Then they wake up and they’re in withdrawal so they’d love to avoid it. But things have evolved, and now people really can’t go without it.” Fentanyl remains the primary killer but while people who overdose on opioids can be saved with an antidote, naloxone, it has no effect on xylazine which can still result in suffocation and fatal poisonings. D’Orazio said that xylazine also causes severe open skin ulcerations and chronic wounds. “We see lots of amputations and infections. People have had dysfunction of a limb or a foot or a hand. We see lots of admissions to clear maggots out of a wound or get antibiotics to clear up a secondary infection,” he said. The paper said that the ulcers are frequently a significant barrier to obtaining treatment for addiction because rehab centres and homeless shelters turn away people with open infections. D’Orazio said it is not clear what causes the wounds but they may be associated with needles used for injecting drugs. Purdue can shield wealthy Sackler family from opioid lawsuits, court rules Read more A Drug Enforcement Administration report said that xylazine’s low cost makes it an attractive alternative for dealers to more expensive drugs. “A kilogram of xylazine powder can be purchased online from Chinese suppliers with common prices ranging from $6-$20 per kilogram. At this low price, its use as an adulterant may increase the profit for illicit drug traffickers, as its psychoactive effects allows them to reduce the amount of fentanyl or heroin used in a mixture,” it said. “It may also attract customers looking for a longer high since xylazine is described as having many of the same effects for users as opioids, but with a longer-lasting effect than fentanyl alone.” However, the report noted that other users reported that xylazine reduced the effect of heroin and fentanyl and tried to avoid it. The Office of National Drug Control Policy released a national response plan in July to combat what it described as the “emerging threat” from xylazine. The arrival of xylazine is just the latest twist in a drug epidemic that began with prescription opioids, shifted to heroin and then caught everyone off guard with the flood of fentanyl. D’Orazio said he does not know what is coming next but he is not optimistic that the worst drug epidemic in US history will pass any time soon. “It’s very clear that the epidemic is not nearing an end. I’m concerned that it will just continue to get worse … The monetary forces, the availability, the problems with mental healthcare in the United States have all lead to a worsening problem,” he said.

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https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/nov/21/children-who-grow-up-on-prescription-drugs-us

Society

2015-11-21T13:00:14.000Z

Sarah Boseley

Generation meds: the US children who grow up on prescription drugs

In America, medication is becoming almost as much a staple of childhood as Disney and McDonald’s. Kids pack their pills for school or college along with their lunch money. Some are taking drugs for depression and anxiety, others for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The right drugs at the right time can save young people from profound distress and enable them to concentrate in class. But some adolescents, critics say, are given medication to mask the ordinary emotional turmoil of growing up; there is a risk that they will never learn to live without it. According to America’s Centers for Disease Control, 11% of four- to 17-year-olds in the US have been diagnosed with ADHD, a label for those who are disruptive in class and unable to concentrate; just over 6% are taking medication. But the official figure hides huge variation across regions and class. Numbers are very high in the white, middle-class east coast population, says Ilina Singh, professor of neuroscience and society at Oxford University, while there is under-diagnosis in poor white populations and among ethnic minorities. “In the middle-class, educated group in New York, you probably are seeing kids who are just under more academic pressure,” she says. “Parents will begin to look at psychiatric diagnosis and treatment with drugs as one option for making children perform better. You have parents saying, ‘My child must be on Ritalin because all the other children in the class are.’” In the UK, meanwhile, about 3% of children are diagnosed with ADHD; just 1% are on medication. American children can go through six or seven different drugs quite early in their lives; in the UK, children are usually sent for cognitive behaviour therapy first, in line with guidance from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. Medication for ADHD has long provoked controversy. But in recent years, the big upturn in the US has been in prescribing for depression and anxiety. It is now generally accepted, says David Healy, professor of psychiatry at Bangor University, that 20%-25% of students at most universities in the US are on medication, often on multiple prescriptions. There, he says, taking your meds is often seen as proof that a young person is dealing with their problems. “But you are not going to learn coping skills if you are taking pills,” he adds. He believes the UK may follow where the US leads. Once, it was unusual for British children to be put on medication; mental health teams would expect to work with a family over issues such as divorce. But increasingly, Healy says, young people turning 18, who transition into the adult mental health services where he works, arrive with a diagnosis of ADHD, autistic spectrum disorder or even bipolar – and will argue that they should carry on taking the pills they have been given by the children’s services. “We used to have a world in which it was accepted that kids in their teens were confused,” he says. “It’s an extraordinary change compared with even five years ago. This is the new norm.” Edward at 16 Condition: OCD Medication: Fluvoxamine 300mg a day for the past nine months Photograph: Baptiste Lignel/Otra Vista I’ve always seen a psychotherapist. Then, a couple of years ago, when I was in drama class, I started twitching on stage. I tried acupuncture and hypnosis, but that was very high-maintenance. Medication wasn’t an option until the disorder became physically painful and socially crippling. I was constantly checking that I hadn’t lost something, turning my head around. Then my body needed to feel the muscle tension of looking backwards in order to feel at ease. I started on a low dosage, and I initiated the whole thing. School was not involved, my parents were not involved. I’ve always been a perfectionist, focused on very little things, but the medicine helps relax those compulsions. I’m really thankful for it. Edward at 19 Condition: OCD and anxiety Medication: Fluvoxamine 200mg a day; guanfacine 1mg a day Photograph: Baptiste Lignel/Otra Vista I’m taking pills for anxiety and repetitive behaviours. I realised I didn’t know much about the medication, so I read up; one is apparently prescribed for Tourette’s, but also ADHD and anxiety – it’s sort of a one-size-fits-all. I’m studying in England now, so my doctor prescribed a dose that was higher than I actually take. I just brought a bunch with me, and had my mother send more. Here, medication seems less common, but it might simply be less discussed. People in the UK like downers, such as ketamine, so I guess Adderall is not their drug of choice. I’m sure the medicine does terrible things to my liver, but the benefits outweigh the negatives. I’m probably a product of my generation, but I like quick fixes. Madison at 16 Condition: ADHD Medication: Focalin XR 20mg; Focalin XR 5mg; both for two years Photograph: Baptiste Lignel/Otra Vista I did really badly in some tests. I got angry and gave random answers, and didn’t finish. So I got tested, which took four days and led to a 300-page report. That got me time and a half for tests, the same as five or six other people in my class of 30. My usual dosage is 15mg, and at exam time I might take 35mg. But I don’t like the side-effects: depression, and a kind of OCD, sometimes headaches, or nausea. In the summer, I like to stop, so I don’t have the side-effects and I don’t have to take antidepressants. My mum takes it, too, because she helps my father with his business. My father is a workaholic; he should really be on medication, too. Madison at 19 Medication: Focalin XR 25mg a day; Focalin XR 5mg a day as needed Photograph: Baptiste Lignel/Otra Vista Since I started at art school, my workload has been consistently high – I might have five hours of homework a night – so my dosage has gone up. When I don’t take them now, it’s OK – I’m not a zombie and can interact, but I am almost more hyper. I am learning to sit down and concentrate when it comes to things I love or get excited about, but it doesn’t last as long as a natural attention span should. I am continuing to be responsible. I make sure I eat before I take it, so I don’t get headaches. In college, many people see it as a smart pill and use it to get work done. They don’t understand the harm it does to your brain and heart. I feel it limits my creativity, though I have learned to think efficiently on it, even when it comes to my art. Madison at 22 Medication: Focalin XR 5mg a day Photograph: Baptiste Lignel/Otra Vista I’m really OCD when it comes to my work: either something has to be made well or it has to be finished, and that’s a hard decision for me. A lot of my friends who were on medication have stopped, to see if they are dependent on it, but some people abuse it to be productive. When they come to me around finals time, I’m like, “I’m sorry, there is no generic version of my pill, they are $90 a month, so, no, I’m not giving them to you!” And I’m not going to support that. I can take my pill and not feel blocked any more. I have a huge problem with younger kids taking it, because a) it could be a phase, or b) they are not the ones who are able to control it – their parents make them take it. It works for me, because I’m educated about it. Obviously, I don’t want to be 30 and taking it. But as long as I’m in school and have these deadlines and pressure, for sure. Michelle at 17 Condition: depression Medication: BuSpar 100mg, one a day; Zoloft 200mg, one a day, both for the past year Photograph: Baptiste Lignel/Otra Vista I started taking medicine when I was 14. I had been going to therapy for a few years, and it wasn’t enough. My father is a doctor, so he was very concerned about excesses in behavioural medication, but after three years of therapy, I had to take the meds. And I’m thankful – I’m significantly better. At first, I tried Cytomel combined with Zoloft, but I had terrible side-effects: they gave me cold sweats and I couldn’t sleep. BuSpar and Zoloft are working fine. Michelle at 20 Condition: anxiety and depression Medication: Ativan 20mg as needed; Cymbalta 60mg a day; Seroquel 50mg a day; Paxil 40mg a day Photograph: Baptiste Lignel/Otra Vista My condition has become more complex, but at the same time more manageable. I have major depression with symptoms of psychosis; I have episodes where I’m hallucinating, stuff like that. As you get older, all the hormonal pieces of the equation go away and it becomes more about the actual medical problem. I’m much more committed to my recovery. I’m taking my medicine; I have two therapists. In college, people are open about their problems. Some try to utilise it for their work: “I’m disturbed and I make art!” I have to deal with people judging my work and not spiral into a depressive episode because someone doesn’t like my pictures. But I’m getting more confident, and starting to get some work. Michelle at 23 Condition: depression Medication: Cymbalta 20mg a day; Seroquel 50mg a day; Paxil 15mg a day Photograph: Baptiste Lignel/Otra Vista I’m taking three medications, but pretty much the lowest recommended dose of each; I think I’ve worked out the emotional adjustment part, and now it’s just the chemical part. I have more control over my schedule now I’m not in college. Also, in the professional world, I think people have fewer qualms when it comes to speaking about their issues. You have your hyperactivity issues, you have your depression issues, you have your anxiety problems – we all have issues, and that helps us stigmatise it less. Most of my pills sell for about $100, and my insurance covers maybe half of it, so I have to pay $40 per bottle per month. My doctor doesn’t accept my insurance, so I have to pay him and my therapist. That gives me more incentive not to get too comfortable in my dosage. If I can be on a small dosage, or none at all, that would be great. All the signs are pointing to a functional, peaceful life. Mike at 17 Condition: ADHD Medication: Adderall XR 20mg, in the morning; Adderall 10mg in the evening Photograph: Baptiste Lignel/Otra Vista When I was a kid, I would be a complete disruption, not letting anybody around me do their homework. I was the class clown. When I was 12, I was “diagnosed” by another parent. We went to the doctor, who had me tested; I’ve been on medication since then. There weren’t many kids who were taking it then; now, a good third of the school are. I feel the medication constrains my creativity, so I don’t use it for music, but for school it really helps. My group of friends are more into a rock band lifestyle and don’t take so much medication. I think it is more common for people doing classical music, who need to practise a lot. I was in therapy until about a year and a half ago. Now, if there is a special problem, my mother will make me go, to balance things out. Mike at 20 Medication: the same as at 17 Photograph: Baptiste Lignel/Otra Vista I went from a 250-student high school to a 4,000-student college, which was a shock. And in college, everyone is doing some kind of drug. Less than 10% of it is prescribed medication, but 50-60% of kids take drugs. I’d say that for every sale of pills, there are two sales of marijuana. I never heard of people getting in trouble for selling or buying the meds, but they do for marijuana or drinking. Blue pills [Adderall] will sell for $2-$3 a pill, and orange pills [Adderall XR] for $10-$12, because they are slower release. Marijuana helps me work on my music; meds just make me feel like cleaning everything up. I even clean my mother’s room. When I have to do just one thing, I’ll take the blue pill rather than the orange pill. Mike at 23 Medication: 10mg Adderall, when needed Photograph: Baptiste Lignel/Otra Vista I’ve been taking Adderall on and off for nine years. I’ve kind of turned to coffee now, and that’s been working out really well – I’ve been getting just as much done. My doctor thinks it’s great. The priority of all doctors, really, should be to move their patients off medication. I’m studying psychology, and I want to go into clinical psychiatry so I can help people in the same position I was in. I want to be able to help people like my mother, people who have a psychosis. After so many years of talking to people who are prescribed the wrong medicine, I feel like I’m able to judge that very well. There is a paradox to it: I believe that medication is absolutely necessary, but necessary to start you on a journey towards ridding yourself of medication. I don’t see myself taking medicine in five years’ time. More coffee, less Adderall. Jessica at 14 Condition: ADHD Medication: Adderall 20mg a day, for the past two years Photograph: Baptiste Lignel/Otra Vista I’m not sure I like my medication. I see a little change, but not as much as I think I should. It makes me lose my appetite, and then I’m kind of spacey, because I didn’t eat. Some girls use it to lose weight, and some people snort it to get high. I try taking it every day but sometimes I’ll forget or I just don’t want to. Last summer, I didn’t take any. Jessica at 17 Condition: ADHD and anxiety Medication: Adderall XR 25mg a day; Adderall 40mg when needed; Ativan 5mg a day, for the past six months Photograph: Baptiste Lignel/Otra Vista Adderall definitely helps with homework. I’m supposed to take it every day, but I take it only when I need to. I also take an instant-release pill around 1pm, before school lets out; otherwise, I couldn’t do my homework, because the effects of Adderall wear off in the afternoon. Sometimes I’ll take it to do homework, and end up just calling somebody and having a long conversation, or cleaning my room. I’ll get sidetracked and procrastinate, but I’m really focused on what I’m procrastinating about. I started getting a lot of bad panic attacks, mostly school-related, so they put me on Zoloft. They gave me Lorazepam for when I have a bad one; it’s a benzo[diazepine], so it turns off some of your brain receptors. I’m also interested in cannabis as a medicine, especially CBD [cannabidiol] oil, which is not psychoactive. It doesn’t have all the side-effects, the jaw chattering, jitteriness and weird gagging that Zoloft gave me. For a while, I was trying to start a learning disability club at school, but I couldn’t get the numbers. I feel that people don’t want to own up to it. But it’s a double standard, because at exam time, everybody is trying to find Adderall. And they’ll go to the kids who they know have learning disabilities – now you’re my friend. In terms of college, I’m trying to go to a school with not too much academic pressure, because that’s what gives me panic attacks. I don’t want to be put on antidepressants. As for the ADHD, I haven’t found another option. Nick at 19 Condition: ADHD Medication: Concerta 27mg a day, for past two years; Ritalin 15mg a day, for the past six years Photograph: Baptiste Lignel/Otra Vista Sixth grade was just a disaster. It was fast-paced, with reading and tests, simply too much. So my mother switched me to the Montessori school, where all the kids had their own gifts and disorders, so I fitted in perfectly. I’m sure a lot of people there were taking some kind of medication. My mother thought it might be helpful, so we tried Albuterol and Adderall. Then we got to Ritalin. It helps if I take it and then do something physical for 20 minutes, to get the blood circulating, so that when it kicks in I can hit the ground running. Doing parkour and just going through the woods is a great way to clear my head. I think it’s a good exercise just to learn how to focus, to be more in control. Nick at 22 Medication: Focalin XR 10mg when needed Photograph: Baptiste Lignel/Otra Vista I still take medication, but less frequently than when I was in school. Now I’m on a better schedule and more organised. If I don’t get enough sleep and have to be at work at 8am (I’m a personal trainer), I’ll use Focalin to keep me up and keep me alert. Another bonus of stimulants is that they curb my hunger, so if I don’t bring lunch with me, I can take a pill, skip a meal and it doesn’t kill me. Yesterday, I ate an apple before I worked out, because I know it’ll give me enough energy and carbs for what I need to do. If I take a Focalin an hour before that, my workout is perfect. All interviews by Baptiste Lignel, whose book about behavioural medication in the US, Pop Pills, will be published by Dewi Lewis next year; poppills.org.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2015/may/20/greg-davies-making-people-laugh-fills-me-with-hope

Television & radio

2015-05-20T18:30:18.000Z

Emine Saner

Greg Davies: ‘Rik Mayall was still a force of nature. His ambition was huge’

Oddly, the strangest thing about Man Down, Greg Davies’s Channel 4 sitcom in which he plays a teacher, is not the far-fetched set pieces or the ludicrous characters. It is the fact that the school drama studio in which his character works, while hating his job, is the very one Davies used to teach in for real – while hating his job. Out the back, you can find a blackened hole in the bricks where he used to stub out cigarettes while commiserating with the equally miserable music teacher. Doesn’t it feel odd to be back there? It is, he says with a laugh, “almost therapy. Every time I wrote a school scene I thought of that drama studio, because that’s where I was a bit lost at sea. I often run teaching down in my standup, but I had some great years and it’s a great job. It represented a place where I knew what I wanted to do but didn’t have the courage. So it’s nice to be back in that room remembering myself. It’s not somewhere I’ve had profound revelations, it’s just a fairly warm feeling. I sat in that room dreaming of doing something like this.” This is two acclaimed solo standup tours, his own sitcom, appearances on panel shows and, perhaps most famously, his role as another teacher, Mr Gilbert, the head of sixth form in The Inbetweeners. There are times when he regrets not being brave enough to try for a career in comedy earlier, but what would be the point in worrying about that now? We meet in a cafe in south London, near where Davies, 47, lives. There does not seem to be much of a distance between his stage persona and who he appears to be in real life – he is a generous talker, a talented storyteller. Man Down, in which Davies plays Dan, an inept fortysomething manchild, is about to start its second series. One of the best things about it was the casting of Rik Mayall as Dan’s dad – Davies looks like an overgrown version of Mayall – and the cruel, anarchic pranks he played on his son. Mayall’s sudden death last year feels like a huge loss to the show. Greg Davies with Gwyneth Powell and Rik Mayall in Man Down. Photograph: Shamil Tanna/Man Down Working with Mayall, whose comedy The Young Ones had been a massive influence on Davies as a boy, was a dream, he says. “He was a force of nature. His appetite was not blunted, and his enthusiasm and his ambition were huge.” And so professional, he adds. “He often asked me: ‘What’s my motivation for this scene?’ ‘Why am I sitting on your toilet having a shit?’ was a question he genuinely asked me, and I had to say: ‘It’s … fun? There’s nothing deeper than that, I’m sorry’.” Davies grew up in Wem, a small town in Shropshire. Comedy was a big feature in his house – his dad was the funniest man he has ever met – but until his late teens, he had no idea that comedy could be a career. His father, a lecturer, was teaching in the US, and Davies, his A-levels finished, went out to visit. Because his dad was at work, Davies spent all day listening to the two tapes he had brought for his Walkman: the Smiths’ The Queen is Dead, and Eddie Murphy’s live show Delirious. “It’s a hugely offensive piece of work now,” he laughs, “but there are elements that are such great storytelling. It was the first time I thought: ‘You get paid for this? For telling silly stories?’” Davies had been involved in amateur dramatics, and went on to do English and drama at university. He took his final third-year piece, a silly, one-man play, to the Edinburgh fringe, performing at lunchtime for three days, “to about four people”. One reviewer came and though “he definitely fell asleep during it”, he saw enough to write: “The young man ruined a perfectly good autobiography by pulling silly faces.” “It was the first time I’d been into the big wide world and it horrified me,” says Davies. Properly? It put him off? “Yeah. I was a very young 21-year-old. I was very scared. I spent three years at university in west London and I went into central London three times. I came from Shropshire, and just having travelled that far was enough ambition.” Davies with Roisin Conaty in Man Down. Photograph: Rich Hardcastle/Man Down His father suggested he get a proper job so Davies spent the next 13 years teaching. “My dad was wonderful but that was his one piece of terrible advice, although my mum and sister think I needed to toughen my hide before I entered this world and they were probably right because I would have crumbled back then. I wouldn’t have had the guts for it. I’ve barely got the guts now.” At 33, sure that he would turn into a teacher like one of those he had seen sitting miserably around a table, moaning about a child, he had “an early midlife crisis. I had a very pragmatic girlfriend at the time, a remarkable woman who said: ‘I don’t understand. You don’t want to do teaching, stop doing it; you want to do comedy, start doing it.’” Davies took a comedy course, which gave him the courage to start gigging. Soon he was doing three gigs a week, while still teaching, though when a friend got him a job writing for the children’s TV channel CBBC, he gave his school, where he had just been made head of drama, six months’ notice. What did it feel like when he left? “Amazing. And petrifying.” For the first couple of years he thought about walking away from it every day, he says. “It was so frightening. Once you’ve dared put your head above the parapet the idea that you’re not going to be good enough to progress, to me, was terrifying.” Did he have a career plan? “No. It was only ever: ‘Could I earn a living out of comedy?’” He was in the sketch group We Are Klang (they had a shortlived series on BBC3), but it was the Inbetweeners that really raised his profile; he followed that with two successful standup shows. There have been parts in other things, the comedy Cuckoo for instance, and when Channel 4 commissioned Man Down he must have felt his career change was justified. Even so, he says his mother still worries about how his career is going, and his father regularly asked if he needed any money, so accustomed was he to bailing out Davies. Davies with Simon Bird in The Inbetweeners. Photograph: Channel 4 His father, Bob, died last year. How has that affected him? I don’t mean in the obvious sense – he was incredibly close to his father, and will have been devastated. But not many of us are so tightly bound to our parents in our work. Bob Davies is almost certainly the reason his son became a comedian – “I always had my dad’s full attention when I was being funny, so it’s no surprise that I’ve gone on to see just how much attention I can get by being funny” – and he featured often in his material. So much of Mayall’s character was inspired by Bob, for instance. “By any stretch of the imagination, it’s a peculiar set of circumstances to lose a fictional father and real father in the same year,” says Davies. “It’s very difficult and I miss him terribly. We were a good father and son, we had a lot of fun together. I laugh with my mum and sister regularly, we are still reduced to fits of laughter remembering him. And I’m really glad he got to see what I did. Even when he was poorly and in a wheelchair, he was wheeled into gigs, and was of the opinion that he would have done a much better job – and rightly so.” Will he be able to get out on stage and talk about his dad again without dissolving? “I suppose you try and compartmentalise the way you’re feeling. If I’m remembering great times we had together … It’s very simplistic but I don’t feel sad when I’m laughing. It’s easy to separate the two feelings. The joy of comedy is that you’re absolutely in control of what you reveal of yourself. People say I have talked about my dad for years, and I have, but I haven’t touched on our relationship really, I’ve just taken tiny aspects of his personality and profited from them.” He laughs. “Much to his irritation.” He reminds me of this idea of being in control of what he reveals of himself when I ask him about his former relationship with Liz Kendall, the MP who was first to put herself forward for leader of the Labour party (they were together for eight years, and remain good friends). Was he wary of her career and how the things he said on stage or on panel shows might affect her? There is a long pause, then: “I’m really not comfortable talking about my personal life.” But it’s more a question about your work, I say. “I think,” he says, after another long pause, “if you’re creative and trying to do something that comes from a place of honesty, you can’t clip those wings for any reason. But that’s not to say it wasn’t something I was concerned about. Of course. But I do what I do. What is the point of pretending to be something other than I am? It would be ridiculous to start behaving differently. So, yes, something of concern but I’ve never modified what I do, and nor have I ever been expected to.” He is quiet, but smiling, his mouth clamped shut. If Man Down gets a third series, he will spend most of his time on that, but he wants to do another standup show and tour next year “because I miss it. I haven’t done a gig for two years.” It will be interesting to see what he comes up with, partly because the more successful he becomes, the harder it is to pull off the conceit that he’s a tragic, middle-aged loser. “Yes, but I’m still a mess,” he says with a laugh. “Look at how fat I am.” What does he love when he is standing there, in front of people? “I love to make people laugh and that will come from trying to make my dad laugh,” he says. “I love it in a visceral sense – it fills me full of hope. It’s instant gratification. It’s a group of people going, ‘Yes, you have done well, it’s funny’ straight away. It’s just joyful to see people laugh.” The new series of Man Down is on Channel 4 on Monday 1 June at 10pm.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/dec/06/regulators-lawyers-ofcom

Business

2012-12-06T16:30:26.000Z

Juliette Garside

Government backs reform to regulatory appeals process

The ability of big companies to use armies of lawyers to prevent regulators from introducing consumer-friendly measures will be curbed after the chancellor's autumn statement promised to make appeals quicker and easier. Legal action and threats of litigation against the media and telecoms watchdog Ofcom in particular have held up the auction the new 4G mobile spectrum, overthrown a long battle to force BSkyB to share its sports and films programming with other channels, and delayed cuts to the cost of calling a mobile phone. The government on Wednesday promised three new measures, designed to "minimise the burden of economic regulation", including reviewing the appeals processes to make challenges to decisions by watchdogs "quicker and easier". There will also be incentives to encourage watchdogs to intervene more readily where markets are failing to deliver for consumers, and there will be greater transparency on their fees. It is understood the government wants the appeals process to change so spurious challenges can be rapidly weeded out and genuine complaints dealt with more quickly. The changes, which will be set out in detail in spring by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, apply to all economic regulators including Ofgem for electricity and gas, Ofwat for water and sewerage, the Civil Aviation Authority and the Office of Rail Regulation. Ofcom has been particularly vocal about the need for change. Its chief executive Ed Richards said earlier this year that the UK system was "too legalistic and too open to gaming" by companies able to pay for large legal teams, and that "everything we do now is subject to the huge shadow of threat of litigation." An Ofcom spokesperson said on Wednesday: "Ofcom welcomes the Government's plans to reform the appeals process. A quicker and more focused appeal process will help us to regulate the communications market more effectively, to the benefit of UK consumers and businesses." The first major auction of UK airwaves since 2000 will take place in January next year, but was originally scheduled for July 2008. A combination of a change of government and legal threats from mobile operators repeatedly delayed the process. Ofcom's battle to loosen Sky's grip on film and sports broadcasting, which had seen the issue pass to the Competition Appeal Tribunal and eventually the Competition Commission, took five years and ended in a defeat for the regulator. The latest round of cuts to the cost of calling a mobile was blocked for 14 months by legal challenges from network operators before being approved on appeal earlier this year. And a move to allow consumers to transfer their mobile number from one network to another in a matter of hours rather than days has been held up since 2007, following a 2008 legal challenge by Vodafone. A spokesman for Three, the UK's smallest mobile network, said: "We welcome the proposal to focus regulators on promoting competition. Ofcom has a clear duty to promote the interests of consumers through competition, but too often it is frustrated by petty legal challenges."

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/21/coronavirus-here-to-stay-moonshot

Opinion

2020-09-21T09:00:10.000Z

Samuel Earle

Coronavirus is here to stay. The sooner we accept that, the better | Samuel Earle

Seven or so months ago, at the start of the pandemic, many of us found it easy and natural to imagine a time when all of this would be over: a single, obvious moment when society’s recreational life resumed to normal, when friends and family welcomed us into their homes with hugs and kisses, and we all talked, with excited, wounded relief, about how hard it had been, and how happy we were that the virus was behind us. In Britain, as elsewhere, such wishful thinking was prescribed. Boris Johnson declared that, if we all did what we were told, we could “turn the tide on the virus within 12 weeks”. Meanwhile the ubiquitous analogies comparing a pandemic to war fuelled the fantasy that we would have our own “liberation day”. Much of the media eagerly encouraged this feeling, at the same time as it stoked implausible hopes of a vaccine arriving by September. As these hopeless timelines collapse, and now as restrictions on our social lives retighten, the dream of a cathartic endpoint is becoming harder to sustain. Johnson’s assurances that it could all be over by Christmas have an even hollower ring than they usually do. Modellers studying the next 12 months of the virus diverge greatly, but they all essentially agree on one thing: the coronavirus, and some version of its claustrophobic architecture, is here to stay. This dawning awareness is likely to make a second wave and another lockdown even more psychologically challenging than the first. For many, it was only the belief that we were working together towards a clear end point that made the extreme measures to combat the virus palatable. Even then, reported rates of depression among UK adults doubled. The second time will be no easier for having been through it before. As an Arizona man told the Washington Post in a recent article on “pandemic fatigue”: “It’s difficult when you think you have a light at the other end of the tunnel to look forward to, and then all of a sudden you realise it’s a train.” How do we summon the strength and energy to endure another wave and lockdown? Media theorists and psychologists have long warned about “crisis fatigue” in society: the exhaustion that comes from a torrent of calamitous events in the news cycle, making some people switch off and others sink into nihilism. The uniquely exhausting power of the pandemic, however, is different. Other dramatic crises seem to come and go – wildfires, floods, civil uprisings, the ever-quainter Brexit – but the pandemic persists, interminably, over and above it all. This is why pandemic fatigue is sharper than a more generalised “crisis fatigue”: there is no sense of an ending. (If the coronavirus crisis really is “like a movie”, it’s surely Batman: just when you think you’ve seen the back of it, a new instalment pops up.) Whereas we like to see crises as moments of transition – as “wake-up calls” or “turning points” that take us to a higher plane – the resurgence of the virus across Europe and beyond contradicts this traditional storyline: it feels like we’re back where we’re started, only more jaded. In The Sense of An Ending, published in 1967, Frank Kermode argued that this “fiction of transition” was now central to the modern condition. “It reflects our lack of confidence in ends,” he wrote, and also our fear (a kind of “fomo”) that history only happens in other eras. Kermode also suggested that this feeling of transition was increasingly experienced as an end in itself. “The belief that one’s own age is transitional between two major periods turns into a belief that the transition itself becomes an age”: the age of “eternal transition, perpetual crisis”. At times, the coronavirus crisis feels just like this – eternal transition. In gloomier moments, it is even more dreary: the fiction of transition fades, and it becomes perpetual crisis with no higher purpose. The promise of transition carries obvious consolation, but it is also a source of frustration and stasis that shapes politics. We can only wait for so long before we become restless, desperate to move on. Contemporary populism is defined by its impatience: its reactionary leaders declare that the time of waiting is over and that, as Donald Trump said in his inaugural speech, “the hour of action has arrived”. Inconvenient truths and deliberative processes are dismissed in the name of speed and feel-good inefficiency. Hence Johnson’s “oven-ready” Brexit deal: no more faffing around. “I do not think it vainglorious or implausible to say that a new golden age for this United Kingdom is within reach,” he announced in December: history is upon us. Now, with history very much upon us, Johnson, Trump and their like turn their impatience on the pandemic, the mighty virus that, for now, has displaced liberal democracy as the great source of gridlock in our lives. The rebellious firebrands who once pledged to upturn the status quo now insist, even more implausibly, that they’re the ones to bring it back. Even as they offer calamitous displays of incompetence, their enduring popularity shows how their empty promises – that the pandemic will soon pass, that normal life will resume imminently – appeal to people’s own impatience with the virus. Any pseudo-solution will do, and then when the magic pill or “moonshot” doesn’t work out, someone else can always be blamed. We would do better to abandon the fantasies of a quick-fix entirely. This is not a race, not even a marathon: there’s no finish line to cross, no shorter route to take. As we brace ourselves for a second wave and a second lockdown, we need a more realistic appraisal of where we are and where we’re headed, a rough map to see us through the darkening winter days without taunting us with illusions that only end in disappointment. Our desire to put the pandemic behind us makes sense, but the virus and its unsettling associates – masks, social distancing rules, hand-sanitiser dispensers, quarantines, lockdowns – aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. Our future plans must begin from this fact. Samuel Earle is a writer based in London

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/10/calais-jungle-refugee-camp-volunteer-conditions

Opinion

2015-12-10T08:00:19.000Z

David Kraft

I went to help at Calais’s Jungle refugee camp – and what I saw haunts me | David Kraft

I’m an ordinary man. I have no skills or experience helping desperate, traumatised people, but when those images of three-year-old Alan Kurdi lying lifeless on a Turkish beach appeared, it was a punch to the gut. I made an online donation, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the awful situation unfolding for refugees, so I started to wonder what more I could do. Conditions in the camp in Calais known as the Jungle were clearly getting worse by the day, and it was relatively close. Could I actually go there? And would I be of any use? Migrant life in Calais' Jungle refugee camp - a photo essay Read more One of the most pressing needs in the Jungle, as in any refugee camp, is food: there is some provision, but the majority of the 6,000 people there go hungry every single day. I cook meals at home. I can chop onions and wash up. It seemed a good place to start. I posted on Facebook, asking if anyone would like to come. An old friend of mine, Rob Lawson, a chef, said yes. Then Tom Southern, who takes troubled young people on outdoor activities, volunteered. Then Waleed Ghani, who recently refounded the Whig Party, said he wanted to be involved. I set up a JustGiving page for donations – we wanted to take food and buy other kitchen supplies when we arrived. I booked the ferry and basic accommodation. Via an online forum, I contacted the volunteer-run Ashram kitchen, which feeds 600 people two meals a day – they were desperate for help. We filled Rob’s van with items they urgently needed including 100kg of rice and we set off, with little sense of what awaited us. The conditions are beyond awful – the image of what we encountered in the Jungle still haunts me. No sanitation, no healthcare, no security, no refuse collection, and no roads – just tracks of stinking mud full of litter and human detritus. Fires break out, as people are forced to light damp piles of wood in their tents to cook and keep warm. But there’s no fire brigade, just social media where urgent calls for fire extinguishers, buckets and sand go out. The weekend before our arrival, fierce winds spread a fire, destroying 250 tents. The Ashram kitchen is a large tent and a shipping container. There is no running water and only two gas burners. One of those gas burners is constantly required for boiling water, which is brought from a standpipe 100 yards away, through tracks of stinking mud and cesspools. My unfit shoulder muscles are still burning. Calais migrants: life in the Jungle Guardian At mealtimes, the place is crammed inside, while a long queue forms outside. Plates are frantically washed, dried and reused immediately. There is never enough to feed everyone. Rob broke down when he realised he was running out of hot chai on a freezing day, and could practically identify the very person further along the queue he was going to have to disappoint. And everyone else beyond them. The only reason thousands of people are not starving and freezing to death only 22 miles from Kent is down to volunteers At the end of “service”, we clean. The pot wash area consists of pallets covered with mesh over a makeshift drain that flows into the main thoroughfare. Everything must be poured through the mesh, which is emptied and cleaned by whomever has the strongest stomach. We move all the valuable equipment into the lockable shipping container at the end of the day. There was little time to talk to the refugees, but many volunteer themselves, and this provides an opportunity to chat. We asked one of the refugee volunteers his story. Visibly traumatised and struggling to speak, he told how his sister had been raped and killed in front of him. After they killed her, they raped her again. It felt cruel to have him continue, so we didn’t. We never asked anyone again. The volunteers are a mixed bunch – a middle-aged Home Counties gent in tweeds and red trousers works alongside a dreadlocked hippy. One woman, Amy, a chef from London, booked a week off work and cycled there because she couldn’t bear to do nothing. We thought we were imagining we saw Downton Abbey butler Carson washing up, but it really was actor Jim Carter who is setting up his own charity, Wand Aid. All this was uplifting. As was the beautiful artwork we saw painted by the refugees on corrugated iron – a soul-gladdening juxtaposition to the ugliness of the £15m fence erected by the British government. What you could do with £15m in the Jungle. If you hate the migrants in Calais, you hate yourself Nick Cohen Read more I can’t make sense of the situation in Calais – an obscene level of suffering on our doorstep, and in one of the world’s most prosperous countries, and yet no one accepts responsibility. The UN is not in the Jungle and so therefore neither are the main aid agencies. And yet conditions fall short of basic UN humanitarian standards. The French and the British governments each claim it is not their problem, and so refuse to provide the most basic infrastructure and safe, legal means for refugees to seek asylum in the UK. It is a grotesque abdication of responsibility. As Waleed said: “I’m a patriot – I served in the army – but this place makes me embarrassed to be British. The UK is supposed to be a force for good in the world and defend human rights, but the best we can do when there’s a humanitarian crisis just 22 miles from our border is just to put up a bigger fence and more barbed wire?” What volunteers can provide falls well short, but they do it because no one else is doing it. The only reason thousands of people are not starving and freezing to death only 22 miles from Kent is because of volunteers – decent, ordinary volunteers who cannot stand by and let people suffer – people not represented by this government. And so, for this reason, we will also be returning to the Jungle next year. I can’t stay away.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/jun/16/richard-rogers-prince-charles-architecture

Art and design

2009-06-15T23:05:06.000Z

Robert Booth

Richard Rogers: 'Prince Charles single-handedly wrecked my Chelsea project'

Last Friday at 9am, the phone rang at Richard Rogers's hi-tech ­office by the Thames at Hammersmith, west ­London. On the line was an aide to ­Qatar's royal family, the architect's ­client on a multibillion pound housing project on the site of the former Chelsea barracks. The news was not good. After two and a half years of design work and days before expecting to win planning permission, the award-winning firm was sacked. The royal aide told ­Rogers a press statement would be released within an hour. ­Rogers desperately argued his corner, trying to persuade the Qataris they were making a mistake, but he could tell the game was up. His name was never mentioned, but everyone knew: Prince Charles had struck again; and for the third time in his long career Rogers was left to come to terms with the Prince of Wales ­wrecking his projects. "It knocked the stuffing out of me, and the design team even more," ­Rogers said , in his first interview since his sacking. "We had hoped that Prince Charles had retreated from his position on modern architecture, but he single-handedly destroyed this project." It was a familiar feeling for the 75-year-old architect. In 1987, ­Rogers, riding high after building the ­Pompidou centre in Paris and the Lloyds building in the City of London, was the ­frontrunner to rebuild ­Paternoster Square beside St Paul's Cathedral, until Charles spoke out against his plans, and the Rogers scheme was dropped. "You have to give this much to the Luftwaffe," Charles said in a speech at Mansion House referring to the ­proposals. "When it knocked down our buildings, it didn't replace them with anything more offensive than rubble." He struck again when Rogers was in contention to rebuild the Royal Opera House. There was no speech, but this time the prince's power was at work through back channels. "We got a phone call from the people at the Royal Opera House one evening, about 9pm saying 'good scheme, but you're too risky'," Rogers said. "I was basically told: 'the prince does not like you'. These are the ­interventions we know about, but there may be others." Now Rogers has decided to fight back against the prince's influence, and today demands a public inquiry into the constitutional ­validity of Charles's ­interventions on this project, in architecture more widely, as well as in his other areas of interest including ­medicine, farming and the environment. "This sort of situation is totally unconstitutional and should never ­happen again," he said . Over the weekend, as the dust ­settled on the prince's latest attack, the ­Rogers household was inundated with calls of moral support. The sculptor Anish Kapoor was among the artists and ­writers who called and helped galvanise Rogers to call for action against Charles. "They've called in saying, it's you today, but who is next?" said Ruth ­Rogers, the architect's wife, who runs the River Cafe restaurant next to his offices. "The prince's actions are akin to calling up a publisher and saying I want all books to have happy endings or ­saying to the Guardian, I don't like ­colour photography, let's go back to sepia." But as with any architect, the first thing Rogers wanted to talk about was his firm's design for Chelsea barracks, which, he tantalisingly said, could have been "one of the best schemes my office has ever produced". That is quite a claim for a firm which won the 2007 Stirling prize for Madrid airport. Opponents described the Chelsea ­barracks project as a series of glass and steel towers, but Rogers emphasised it would have risen only to nine storeys. He is proud of the ban on cars at surface level, the large open spaces, and the copper, glass and concrete walls which would have been coloured to blend with the surrounding architectural styles from Georgian, through Victorian to 20th and 21st century design. Far from being "a Gucci ghetto" for super-rich ­oligarchs as the project was originally labelled, he said he had ­managed to "de-Guccify" it by ensuring public access 24 hours a day and 50% affordable housing. Public consultation was extensive with at least 80 meetings, he said. With such obvious pride in the scheme, it raises the question why ­Rogers, or no one else, spoke up for it when the prince was giving it a public kicking, via the leaking of his private ­letter to Qatar's royal family. "When the Qataris took full control about nine months ago, I was told to keep out of the limelight and stay quiet," said Rogers. "There was no major public relations strategy. It gave us the feeling they didn't understand that this was a democratic process. The Qataris never sorted out the difference between royalty and government." It was to be a misunderstanding that Rogers believes Charles exploited. He asked "prince to prince" for an ­alternative design to be adopted and it is thought this was hugely influential in Qatar where royalty and government are the same thing. Aides to the Qatari royal family said they felt the prince's ­opposition could undermine the ­diplomatic advantage they hoped to gain in the UK by investing in such a prominent site. Without any resistance to the ­criticism from Charles, a small campaign group against the Rogers scheme, the Chelsea Barracks Opposition Group, was able to monopolise the argument and praised the Prince of Wales for standing up for the ordinary people of the area and resisting an alien project. "The idea that he is a man of the ­people fascinates me," said Rogers. "He is a man of the rich people, that is for sure. "Up to two months ago we were pretty convinced we were going to get our scheme through Westminster's planning committee. We enjoyed some of the strongest support I have ever had from Westminster and the Greater London authority, including the great report we had only last week from the planners, which is why I thought we were home and dry. I just don't know what happened." Tonight, Clarence House refused to be drawn on Rogers's comments, saying "we don't want to get into a debate with Richard Rogers," and this is at the heart of the architect's frustration. "Charles knows little about architecture," said Rogers. "He sees this debate as a battle of the styles, which is against the run of history because architecture evolves and moves, mirroring society. It is not a frozen thing, though if it was I have to say, why choose the 17th century as the prince seems to. I would say gothic is more English than the ­renaissance, but I wouldn't say we should all follow gothic style. "By the same token, the prince's love for Christopher Wren is clear, but he doesn't seem to realise that Wren was a revolutionary at the time and I think his projects would definitely not have been supported by the prince." In a scathing attack on Charles's search for a meaningful role, Rogers said: "The prince does not debate and in a democracy that is unacceptable and in fact is non-constitutional. I think he pursues these topics because he is looking for a job and in that sense I sympathise with him. He is actually an unemployed individual, which says something about the state of the royal family. I don't think he is evil per se, he is just misled."

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/jul/09/flute-lizzo-and-the-woodwind-renaissance

Music

2019-07-09T08:00:50.000Z

Leonie Cooper

Flutes you: Lizzo and the woodwind renaissance

There are many things you might expect to find while waiting for an early morning flight at Los Angeles International airport. Overpriced breakfast sandwiches and bawling toddlers feature high on the list, but André 3000 pootling around playing a 40-minute flute solo isn’t usually a contender. And yet that’s exactly what happened last month, with podcast producer Antonia Cereijido spotting the Outkast man strolling from gate to gate, casually going to town on a handcrafted Mayan wind instrument like the low-key legend he is. Of course, this isn’t the kind of moment that can pass without some sort of social media validation. Her joyous selfie with The King of Wind – as he shall now be known – has now been liked almost 400,000 times. Flutes, you see, are currently having what’s known as “a bit of a moment”. Sure, they might be one of the world’s oldest-known pieces of kit for bashing out a tune on – the drum, obvs, takes the top spot here – but their time is now. The flute’s brightest champion is the rapper Lizzo, who also just so happens to be a classically trained player. Her long silver sidekick Sasha Flute even has its own Instagram account with an extremely decent 130,000 followers. Sasha can be found at @sashabefluting if you wanna give her a follow and see the flute’s many joyful adventures, including outings with Gucci sunglasses and Nando’s takeaway bag. Truly, Sasha is living the rock star dream. Sasha recently joined Lizzo for her most fabulous outing yet, during her BET awards performance of Truth Hurts, which not only saw her twerking on a giant wedding cake but scoring a standing ovation from Rihanna and – maybe even more excitingly – the headline “Lizzo’s BET 2019 flute performance is a whole vibe” from the bad boys of ClassicFM.com. “Lizzo transcends all kinds of stereotypes,” explains Lisa Nelsen, acting chair of the British Flute Society and steadfast Lizzo stan. “The flute gang are pretty ready to show off what we can do. Pop, classical, beatbox – we’ve got our fingers in lots of pots.” Earlier this year, Will Ferrell even took Ron Burgundy out of semi-retirement to accept Lizzo’s jazz-flute challenge. She countered with a shot-for-shot recreation of Anchorman’s seminal club scene, set to her single Juice. 1-0 to Lizzo. Norwegian-Mexican-American ambient artist Carmen Villain is also getting in on the action, making flute a key part of her dreamy new album Both Lines Will Be Blue. The playing comes courtesy of Johanna Scheie Orellana – formerly of Oslo electropop trio Sassy 009 – who has a particularly spiritual reasoning behind her love of the instrument. Wind power… Terry Crews on Busy Tonight. Photograph: E! Entertainment/NBCU Photo Bank/Getty “Playing is a very physical and intimate experience because you have to create the sound within your body, almost like a singer,” she explains. “Sometimes I imagine that the airstream comes straight from my soul itself.” Rather than bashing out instantly iconic R&B hits like Lizzo, Orellana’s approach to Villain’s album is way more avant garde. “In one of the songs I’m blowing air through the instrument without any tone. When I listen to it now, I can hear my own vulnerability in the melodies.” So that’s your artsy and hip-hop bases covered, but flautism has broken through into the middle American mainstream, too. America’s Got Talent host and secret flautist Terry Crews just joined a contestant on the show for a shirtless flute duet of Ginuwine’s Pony, much to Simon Cowell’s shock and abject horror. The contestant, sadly, did not make it through to the next round, but a life of mid-range Las Vegas hotel appearances surely awaits. It is also true that pop’s fascination with the flute is nothing new. If you can, please forget Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson balancing on one leg with flute perched coyly against his pursed lips and instead focus on someone altogether more magical. “I remember Prince coming out with Gett Off in the 90s and there was a fabulous flute lick in it,” recalls Nelsen. “I had to learn it to get my students to do it.” Honourable mentions must also go to the fluttering sample in Beastie Boys’ Sure Shot, the Mamas and the Papas’ California Dreamin’ and Justin Bieber’s unhealthy obsession with pan flutes: see everything he ever released in 2015. As nobody ever says: “If you’ve got it, flaut it.”

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/jan/12/railway-man-review-mark-kermode-colin-firth

Film

2014-01-12T00:05:18.000Z

Mark Kermode

The Railway Man – review | Mark Kermode

The story of Eric Lomax, a signals engineer who was forced to work on the infamous Thai-Burmese "Death Railway" after being taken prisoner by the Japanese during the second world war, has been told several times before, in print and on screen. We have Lomax's source memoir (upon which this film is based) and Mike Finlason's documentary Enemy, My Friend?, alongside an episode of the long-running Everyman TV show Prisoners in Time that cast John Hurt as the former soldier eaten away by nightmares of torture. Even Lomax's wartime tormentor Takashi Nagase has told his side of the story in the book Crosses and Tigers. This latest retelling, from a screenplay by Frank Cottrell Boyce and Andy Paterson, wrestles with themes of suffering and redemption as it criss-crosses between Colin Firth's ageing Lomax living a purgatorial existence in late 20th- century Britain and Jeremy Irvine's embattled young soldier suffering at the hands of his wartime captors. It's not a match made in heaven; while the latterday segments make specific reference to Brief Encounter as railroad love blossoms between Eric and Patti (a dowdy Nicole Kidman), the Thailand sequences have an oddly televisual air that somewhat undercuts their dramatic clout. Hats off, however, to Irvine, whose vocal inflections carefully prefigure those of Firth's older man, drawing the intersecting threads together even as the narrative threatens to unravel. Considering the clarity of the real-life story, it's surprising how muddled and inert director Jonathan Teplitzky manages to make things, wibbling through complex junctions and shunting into narrative sidings like an oft-disrupted train journey. But you'd have to be pretty hard-hearted not to be moved by this tale's final destination, even if the route there is somewhat circuitous.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/jul/10/prime-minister-no-thanks-andy-murray-not-interested-in-political-points

Sport

2016-07-10T17:26:38.000Z

Alice Ross

PM's job? No thanks, says Andy Murray, as Cameron booed on Centre Court

Andy Murray may be Britain’s most popular public figure today after his second Wimbledon victory, but he won’t be running for the nation’s highest office any time soon. Andy Murray wins second Wimbledon title by beating Milos Raonic Read more In a post-match interview after his straight-sets victory over the Canadian player Milos Raonic, Murray told BBC presenter Sue Barker that being prime minister was an “impossible job”. Murray said it had been a pleasure to play for the crowd, saying it contained the numerous tennis legends and the prime minister. The mention of David Cameron, who had been sitting next to his mother in the royal box for the match, elicited boos from some members of the crowd. The tennis player retorted: “I think playing in a Wimbledon final’s tough, but I certainly wouldn’t like to be prime minister. It’s an impossible job.” The comments drew a rueful on-camera laugh from Cameron, who is due to stand down from the role by September. Murray’s voice cracked as he said to his family: “I love all of you.” And he paid tribute to his opponent and his team, describing Raonic as “one of the harder workers out there” and saying he had made big improvements in his game to reach his first grand slam final. “Sorry about today,” he added. Andy Murray wins Wimbledon 2016 - video highlights Guardian

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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/may/01/gateway-pundit-2020-election-lies

US news

2024-05-01T10:00:54.000Z

Sam Levine

Workers at far-right site Gateway Pundit feared credibility issues, filing shows

Employees of the far-right website Gateway Pundit, which has played a key role in spreading lies about the 2020 election, were worried contributors were not credible and expressed concerns about plagiarism, a court filing last month revealed. Lawyers for Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss, two Georgia election workers suing the site for defamation, made the disclosure in a 16 April court filing seeking a court order forcing the website to turn over more internal documents. They said they had obtained text messages from Gateway Pundit’s director of operations and associate editor “expressing concerns that a contributor engaged in plagiarism and made claims without any sources”. Rightwing US website that spreads election conspiracies declares bankruptcy Read more “Documents produced by third parties but not by Defendants show that TGP’s staff had major concerns as to the professionalism, reliability, and honesty of several contributors, including Jordan Conradson, who wrote some of the defamatory Articles,” the lawyers wrote in the filing in circuit court in St Louis, Missouri. Conradson, 22, is a Gateway Pundit writer who rose to prominence covering the widely criticized “audit” of Maricopa county’s 2020 election results and frequently posts stories with false information about elections. He wrote two 2021 stories for Gateway Pundit cited in the lawsuit containing language that falsely accused Freeman and Moss of fraud. Gateway Pundit has denied publishing libelous statements about Freeman and Moss. Conradson did not respond to a request for comment. Marc Randazza, a lawyer representing Gateway Pundit in the lawsuit, did not comment on the filing but said he trusted Conradson’s reporting. “We have the utmost confidence in Mr Conradson, always have and continue to do so. I personally know Mr Conradson, and know him to be an ethical, intelligent and fearless reporter who strives to produce quality work,” Randazza said. “I would place his ethics far above those of most journalists that write for larger and more compliant news organizations.” The Guardian was not able to review the content of the messages beyond what was included in the public filing. The document contains significant redactions and does not name all of the contributors who concerned staff. The filing offers a glimpse into the kind of evidence lawyers for Freeman and Moss had been amassing in the defamation case against Gateway Pundit. It came a little more than a week before Gateway Pundit declared bankruptcy in Florida, a legal maneuver that will significantly delay the case and could prevent similar evidence from coming to light into whether Gateway Pundit writers knew that what they were saying was false. The parties were scheduled to complete fact discovery – exchanging internal messages and other relevant information – by 31 May. “Plaintiffs have been attempting to schedule depositions of the defendants for months. On the same day TGP filed for bankruptcy, we had just given notice for the depositions of [Gateway Pundit co-founders] Jim and Joe Hoft to be taken in May,” said Brittany Williams, a lawyer for the non-profit group Protect Democracy, which is representing Freeman and Moss. Attorneys for Freeman and Moss also said in their filing that John Burns, a lawyer for Gateway Pundit, had warned the site about relying on Kevin Moncla, a source in Georgia who fed the site information on Freeman and Moss, including their non-public personnel files, according to the filing. “Moncla is a known fabricator. I wouldn’t touch/publish anything he produces,” Burns reportedly wrote, calling him “a goddamned fraud”. Freeman and Moss’s attorneys also said they had a message in which Moncla said, “I will help you nail these bitches,” referring to Moss and Freeman. Amid Burns’s concerns, David Cross, another source, vouched for Moncla, the lawyers said in their filing. “Mr. Burns is entitled to his opinion, as I am entitled to mine. I would challenge the son of a bitch to provide any support for such statements – in the multiple articles I have ghost-written for his client, The Gateway Pundit, or otherwise,” Moncla said in an email. “I stand behind my work and my statements as I invest the time to do the work and research and take very seriously what I publish.” Moncla also provided a screenshot of a 2022 public records request he had submitted to Fulton county requesting the employment and payroll records for Freeman and Moss. Cross, a vice-chair in the Georgia Republican party, did not return a request for comment. Both he and Moncla are connected to the Election Oversight Group, an organization that has made false claims of election fraud in Georgia and Texas. When an investigator looked into Cross’s claims of ballot harvesting in Georgia and dismissed them, Cross questioned whether the investigator had looked hard enough. In 2022, Moncla claimed to have evidence that poll books had been adding votes in Dallas and tried to stop certification of the election. In 2006, Moncla was ordered to pay $3.25m on a voyeurism charge after filming guests at his home while they were in the bathroom. Gateway Pundit served as a key source of false information about the 2020 election and targeted Freeman and Moss extensively. Both women have spoken about the vicious harassment they faced after they were falsely accused of criminal conduct. Georgia election officials quickly debunked the claims against them, and a state investigation has formally cleared them of any wrongdoing. “The lies about Ms Freeman and Ms Moss have not only devastated their personal and professional reputations but instigated a deluge of intimidation, harassment and threats that has forced them to change their phone numbers, delete their online accounts and fear for their physical safety,” lawyers wrote in the original complaint in the lawsuit, filed in 2021. “The Gateway Pundit’s stock in trade is spreading disinformation, including lies about the integrity of the 2020 election.” The two women say the outlet continued to defame them even after the filing of the lawsuit. Lawyers for the two women have also accused Gateway Pundit of withholding key information in the case. Freeman and Moss also sued the One America News Network (OANN), Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani for defaming them. OANN settled the case and apologized on air to the two women. Giuliani was ordered to pay $148.1m in damages to them, but has declared bankruptcy to avoid payment.

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https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/apr/01/best-uk-music-festivals-still-available-to-book-2023

Music

2023-04-01T10:55:49.000Z

Michael Cragg

Give it some welly: the 30 best UK music festivals still available to book

Best for big names Download 8 to 11 June, Leicestershire For its 20th edition, the biggest name in metal fests is getting going a day early on the Thursday, giving Metallica the chance to headline twice (with completely different sets) over the same weekend. Friday night sees Bring Me the Horizon make the step they’ve been preparing for since getting a major-label deal, but the draw of Download has always been its total immersion in metal, not just the headliners. Michael Hann TRNSMT 7 to 9 July, Glasgow Fellas from across the generations head up Glasgow’s TRNSMT, with Pulp taking up the elder statesmen position while the 1975 and Sam Fender will be doing their bit for the Gen Z crowd. Blokey headliners aside (Pulp’s Candida Doyle, we thank you for your service), there’s fun of all pop-adjacent varieties from Dream Wife, Ashnikko, the Big Moon and Becky Hill, while girl group of the moment Flo face their biggest test to date: seeing how their zingy sound translates to the festival stage. Leonie Cooper Wireless 7 to 9 July, London Back to a singular weekend in north London’s Finsbury Park for 2023, Wireless is still the UK’s go-to destination for hip-hop and R&B. This year, it has pulled out four UK festival exclusives: headliners Playboi Carti, Travis Scott, D-Block Europe and 50 Cent won’t be performing anywhere else, offering solid bang for your TikTok-streaming buck. Another big draw is the improved presence of women on the lineup; Glorilla, Flo and Ice Spice are unlikely to be playing in such early festival slots for long. Jenessa Williams Latitude 20 to 23 July, Suffolk Not only does Latitude feature ruddy-cheeked Radio 2 fave George Ezra, brooding Scottish troubadour Paolo Nutini and returning Britpop dandies Pulp as its musical headliners, it has also gathered together some top-notch comedy in the shape of Ed Gamble, Bridget Christie, Sara Pascoe and Romesh Ranganathan. If you’re feeling a bit squiffy on the Sunday there is also an afternoon orchestral performance to look forward to from Manchester greats James. Michael Cragg Reading & Leeds 25 to 27 August, Reading and Leeds With both sites now featuring two main stages – billed as east and west – this messy, summer bank holiday, pre-university blowout has even more space for music’s big guns. While – deep breath – the Killers, Lewis Capaldi, Billie Eilish, Imagine Dragons, Sam Fender and Foals sit at the top of the bill in the biggest fonts, they’re ably supported by a clutch of next-gen headliners such as Wet Leg and Rina Sawayama. MC Bot’s up doc … Camp Bestival will bring family larks to Dorset and Shropshire this year. Photograph: Alex Laurel Best for family fun Bearded Theory 25 to 28 May, Derbyshire Proudly independent and with absolutely no sponsorship or branding anywhere on site – for one weekend you shall be free from the tyranny of Oatly/Red Bull/insert other overbearing marketing campaigns – Bearded Theory offers a true getaway from modern capitalism. Sure, preteens may shrug with indifference at headliners Interpol, Primal Scream and the Pretenders, but they’ll be endlessly entertained by the Children’s Village, which includes a “festival school” that’s previously hosted such delights as PE classes from Derby County FC. LC Camp Bestival 27 to 30 July, Dorset; 17 to 20 August, Shropshire Not so much a festival as a family entertainment bazaar for campers, Camp Bestival pioneered the concept of the festival at which Dick and Dom are as important to the lineup as this year’s Dorset headliner, Grace Jones. For the grownups, expect a bit of nostalgia, some cool current stuff, and – for Shropshire attenders only – the extreme grindcore stylings of Napalm Death. MH Deer Shed 28 to 31 July, North Yorkshire Nestled in the Yorkshire Dales, Deer Shed has quietly grown into one of the UK’s most smartly curated and best-value summer events. Headliners the Comet Is Coming, Public Service Broadcasting and the Delgados will entertain the hipster parents, but Deer Shed really comes into its own with its fancy dress themes, family-friendly workshops and sports activities, ranging from sock wrestling and kayaking to AI-themed album artwork creation. Kids under two go free, and an under-15s weekend ticket is a reasonable £77. JW Stowaway festival 18 to 20 August, Buckinghamshire Adults seem almost like an afterthought at Buckinghamshire’s relentlessly active Stowaway, which couldn’t be any more appealing to kids if it had an indoor soft play centre hosted by Peppa Pig. The majestic Kid’s Kingdom boasts a roller disco, tree climbing, a vintage funfair, paddleboarding, circus workshops and a host of hyperactive entertainers in glitter and faux fur who’ll take your children off your hands while you snooze away to funk and soul great Roy Ayers’ farewell tour set. LC The Big Feastival 25 to 27 August, Oxfordshire You want bucolic? The Big Feastival will throw bucolic at you (it lists its location as: “Alex James’s farm, the Cotswolds”). Here – as the name suggests – the chefs fight it out with the bands and the kids’ entertainers for top billing. Not one for the real ale enthusiast with a penchant for post-rock, but very much the event for those with the desire for music to be the setting rather than the purpose for their weekend. And maybe you’ll get to meet Jeremy Clarkson! MH Jazz summers … The Comet Is Coming entertain the faithful at last year’s We Out There. Photograph: Rob Jones Best for going hard Parklife 10 & 11 June, Manchester For those who thrive off the buzz of a packed crowd, Parklife offers a rammed roster of dance, alt-pop and mainstream-adjacent curios. Hometown heroes the 1975 will headline on the Sunday, but huge crowds are also anticipated for Fred Again, Slowthai, Eliza Rose and Skrillex, topped off by a vibrant roster of DJs late into the night. Just remember to get that taxi booked in advance: it’s a long walk back into town on worn-out dancer’s feet if you can’t squeeze on the tram. JW Tramlines 21 to 23 July, Sheffield Although its origins as a free, community-focused event are in the past, Tramlines retains a strong northern identity (this year’s headliners are Richard Ashcroft, the Courteeners and Paul Heaton and Jacqui Abbott). It’s an expertly judged mix of the very familiar and the just-unusual-enough to mean both the daytime radio listeners and music snobs will find something to interest them. MH Wilderness 3 to 6 August, Oxfordshire Billed as “a weekend of escapism, high jinks and wholesome hedonism”, this dance-leaning festival nestled in a big park in Oxfordshire is ripe for forgetting all about real life. You can dance like no one’s watching to headliners the Chemical Brothers and Fatboy Slim, submit yourself to Christine and the Queens’ delicious art-pop, or party like it’s 2002 to the re-formed Sugababes. There’s even a wellbeing area for when you need to come back down to earth. MC We Out Here 10 to 14 August, Dorset DJ and broadcaster Gilles Peterson’s We Out Here festival has grown at a rapid pace. While its debut edition in 2019 played as a small-scale celebration of the UK jazz scene and its intersections with club culture, 2023’s event boasts an expanded new site in Dorset and international names across genres. It is a weekend for the jazz technicians and all-night ravers alike, featuring performances from spiritual jazz pioneers Sun Ra Arkestra and Paris-via-Chicago drummer Makaya McCraven, as well as fast-paced DJ sets from LTJ Bukem, Goldie and Roni Size. Ammar Kalia All Points East 18, 19, 25 & 28 August, London City day festivals always feel ripe for big blowouts: you’ve got more energy, you’re not preoccupied by the threat of your tent washing away, and smaller sites make it easier to link up with pals. All Points East, which is split over two weekends, features a typically exuberant crowd descending oneast London’s Victoria Park, and is this year headlined by indie-disco favourites the Strokes, the impeccably choreographed Haim, and fast-becoming-headline-veteran Stormzy. MC Disco in ferns, oh! … Lost Village, a party in beautiful Lincolnshire woodland. Photograph: Andrew Whitton Best boutique festivals HowTheLightGetsIn 26 to 29 May, Hay-on-Wye Described as a “philosophy and music festival”, HowTheLightGetsIn makes confident use of onstage debate, scientific lectures and breakfast roundtables to present an alternative take on festival collectivism, positioning intimate, open-minded conversation as a social good. At the end of a long day’s thinking, you can throw some shapes to the likes of Gruff Rhys and Anna Meredith, or embrace the luxury of a four-course sundown banquet alongside the River Wye. It certainly beats bickering with strangers over Twitter … JW Kite festival 9 to 11 June, Oxfordshire If Joan Collins, Candi Staton and David Baddiel sound like an imaginative answer to the eternal “ideal dinner party guest” question, look no further than Oxfordshire’s Kite. Equal parts music festival and literary event, this year’s lineup boasts interesting book-oriented conversation salons, as well as performances from young and innovative artists. From the art-pop drag subversion of Lynks to the hip-hop/jazz fusion of Ezra Collective, you are almost guaranteed to discover a new-to-you artist with something to say – and there are more familiar attractions in the shape of Suede, Hot Chip and the Pretenders. JW 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. Lost Village 24 to 27 August, Lincolnshire One for the early birds, the ultra-immersive Lost Village is all about daytime fun. There’s no need to wait until sundown to become your most feral self in this atmospheric Lincolnshire woodland, with activities kicking off at 9am every day. The Blessed Madonna, Horse Meat Disco and Jayda G are on DJ duties, but it’s perfectly acceptable to eat and laugh your way around the intimate site too, with big-name comedians and fancy banquets as well as creative workshops and intriguing talks. LC Krankenhaus 25 to 27 August, Cumbria At the time of writing, the lineup for the third edition of Sea Power’s festival has not been announced, but expect it – like its curators – to be an agreeably eccentric mix of styles, made by beloved outliers. But you don’t go to Krankenhaus for who is playing so much as for where it is (at the edge of the Lake District, next to the Ravenglass and Eskdale Railway) and what it is (the only festival with daily heron feeding). MH End of the Road 31 August to 3 September, Dorset End of the Road consistently manages the delicate balancing act of keeping its audience capped at only 15,000 revellers to ensure that its idyllic site stays clean and spacious, while also booking fairly major names such as King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard and Future Islands. The headliners skew towards the guitar-oriented, but early showings by upcoming acts (such as Jockstrap in 2019), to a range of comedy and literary talks. AK Get on Downs … A Love Supreme, where the jazzers play live in Lewes. Best specialist events Cheltenham jazz festival 26 April to 1 May, Cheltenham Smart, sophisticated and civilised, Cheltenham’s jazz festival is a far cry from the muddy fields of most British weekenders. With gigs taking place in small venues throughout the town, as well as in a tented campus in the city centre, Cheltenham is a playground for jazz veterans as well as newcomers, featuring performances this year from singer Gregory Porter and bassist Stanley Clarke. For a more unbuttoned feel, the jam at the Hotel du Vin carries on into the early hours. AK Black Deer 16 to 18 June, Kent If you think the garden of England is a strange place to enjoy the twanging sounds of Americana, you’d be right. But Black Deer isn’t going to let the cruelty of geography stop it from throwing one of the most fabulously curated hoedowns of the summer. Alongside the venerable Bonnie Raitt and Lucinda Williams, you will find groundbreaking folk newcomers Allison Russell and Willi Carlisle. Don’t miss the Roadhouse area, a full-throttle tribute to leathered-up Easy Rider counterculture where your best Patrick Swayze impersonations are encouraged. LC Love Supreme 30 June to 2 July, East Sussex If Cheltenham occupies the concert hall end of the jazz festival spectrum, Love Supreme is its faster and looser opposite. Touted as Europe’s largest outdoor jazz festival, Love Supreme is the full fields-and-camping experience, replete with a lineup that combines improvising greats with crowd-drawing funk, soul and rap stars. The 2023 edition features Mercury prize winner Little Simz and Grace Jones alongside Ethio-jazz pioneer Mulatu Astatke, drummer Yussef Dayes and the British saxophonist Courtney Pine. AK Womad 27 to 30 July, Wiltshire Whether you call it global music, “the world’s music”, or something else entirely, Womad has been championing music from non-western traditions since 1980. It has been home to formative performances from the likes of Sufi singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, the Royal Drummers of Burundi and sitar player Ravi Shankar, while this year’s lineup features the son of Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti, Femi, along with reggae singer Horace Andy. It’s the most diverse festival selection you’re likely to find. AK Rebellion festival 3 to 6 August, Blackpool Expect to see PUNX NOT DEAD spray-painted on the back of leather jackets at Blackpool’s annual indoor jamboree of all things spiky-haired. Much of the bill would be present and correct were it to be magically transported back 40 years (the Damned, the Exploited, UK Subs, Ruts DC). But there are newer stars (Bob Vylan, Chubby and the Gang, the Chisel) and US hardcore greats (Descendents, DRI, Gang Green) as well. MH Champagne super cove, yeah … Boardmasters’ lineup features Liam Gallagher, Lorde and Little Simz. Photograph: James North Best for epic scenery Timber festival 7 to 9 July, Derbyshire If you’re worried that Timber sounds a bit wooden, don’t be: that’s the whole point. Taking place in Feanedock – the UK’s first new forest in 1,000 years – this festival celebrates all things green. The bill is unsurprisingly folksy, with bat walks, falconry displays and a woodland hot sauna and ice plunge-pool on offer, not to mention readings from the poet laureate Simon Armitage and author-walker Raynor Winn, and a set from Bristol’s sublime singer-songwriter Lady Nade. LC Doune the Rabbit Hole 21 to 23 July, Stirlingshire Nestled among the ancient oak trees of the Cardross Estate, this intimate independent Scottish festival boasts consistently impressive lineups (this year’s is TBC) and demands you clear storage space on your phone for all the incoming photos. As well as those cosmically lit giant oaks, there are rolling hills, ancient buildings and mini circus tops featuring impromptu drum circles. The kids’ designated Play Zone even features a fairy garden. MC Belladrum Tartan Heart 27 to 29 July, Inverness Set in the Italian gardens of the Belladrum Estate near Inverness, the family-friendly Belladrum Tartan Heart festival is a boutique weekender with a taste for pop-leaning headliners and homegrown talent to accompany its rolling green scenery. Since 2004, Scottish stars such as Franz Ferdinand, Chvrches and Texas have all topped the bill, while this year’s edition sees 2012 headliners Travis return, along with Norwegian pop star Sigrid and Eurovision runner-up Sam Ryder. AK Kendal Calling 27 to 30 July, Cumbria Imagine an episode of Countryfile soundtracked by a jolting mix of Magic and XFM and you’ve got Kendal Calling. Housed in the beautiful, evergreen Lowther Deer Park in the Lake District, it’s a festival that mirrors its breathtaking surroundings in its stage design. So there’s the cascading foliage of Parklands, the neon psychedelia of Lowlands and the rustic feel of Woodlands, which ring to the sounds of everyone from Kasabian to Rick Astley via Natalia Imbruglia and Blossoms. MC Boardmasters 9 to 13 August, Cornwall One of the few fests in the world that can claim a surfing competition as one of its biggest draws, Boardmasters makes excellent use of its Cornish coast location, complementing the scenery with an array of feelgood musical bookings. Friday headliner Lorde feels like an especially inspired fit given the beachy escapism of her most recent album Solar Power, but Liam Gallagher, Florence + the Machine, Little Simz and Ben Howard all feel like equally good gets for easing into the final few weeks of summer. JW

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/dec/05/teal-voters-are-more-likely-to-be-labor-leaning-than-conservative-study-finds

Australia news

2022-12-04T19:06:02.000Z

Paul Karp

Teal voters are more likely to be Labor-leaning than conservative, study finds

Fewer than one in five teal independent voters were disaffected Coalition voters, with most identifying as far to the political left as Labor voters regard themselves, a major study has found. Scott Morrison was also judged to be the most unpopular party leader since the study began in 1987, with voters turning against the Liberal party over its handling of the economy, the pandemic response and Morrison’s leadership. The Australian National University’s 2022 Australian Election Study, the most comprehensive of its kind, noted voters reported “the most pessimistic view of a government’s economic management, including the cost of living, in 30 years”. It also found that voters engaged in “tactical voting” at rates that far exceed international studies. Morrison’s popularity confirmed preliminary findings that he and Barnaby Joyce were the most unpopular party leaders in 35 years, with Morrison scoring just 3.8 on a scale of 0 to 10, after rating 5.1 in 2019. Joyce was even lower at 3.2. The study authors noted that taken together, the findings represent “a serious existential crisis” for the Liberal party, with younger voters from millennials down turning their back on the now-opposition. “Younger generations have very different voting patterns to previous generations at the same stage of the life cycle and are much further to the left in their party preferences,” said one of the study’s co-authors, Prof Simon Jackman, from the University of Sydney. Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup The 2022 election saw Labor, under Anthony Albanese, win a slim majority of 77 seats with a record low primary of almost 33%, while the Coalition shrank to just 58 seats, losing 10 seats to Labor, three to the Greens and six to teal independents in ordinarily safe blue-ribbon seats. The study noted the Coalition’s losses to Greens and independents resulted in a “more proportional” outcome, receiving 36% of the first preference votes and 38% of the seats. Scott Morrison and Barnaby Joyce were most unpopular leaders at election since 1987, study shows Read more Another study co-author, Prof Ian McAllister, from ANU, said there was a “large-scale abandonment” of major political parties at the 2022 federal election, with the two-party vote falling to “historic lows”. The study noted that the conditions leading to the independents’ breakthrough had been building for decades, with the proportion of “rusted-on” voters who always vote for the same party shrinking from 72% in 1967 to a “record low” of 37% in 2022. The study found that among supporters of teal independents, 31% voted Labor in 2019, 24% for the Greens and only 18% voted Liberal. “By far the largest group are tactical voters who see their preferred party as nonviable in the electorate and use this information to defeat the most viable party – the Liberals,” it said. Asked to rate themselves on zero to 10 on a left-right scale, Coalition voters put themselves on the political right with an average score of 6.7, while Greens were on the left with an average of 3. 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. “Teal voters are almost the same as Labor voters in their ideological position with a mean of 4.4 compared to Labor voters’ mean of 4.3,” it said. “Perhaps more importantly, teal voters are more likely to see the Liberal Party as further to the right than any other party group, except for Greens voters. “For example, Labor voters place the Liberals at 6.6 on the scale, compared to 7.1 for teal voters. These findings counter the narrative of Teal voters as disaffected Liberals, showing that for the most part, they see themselves as left-of-centre.” The Coalition also failed to win back female voters, with just 32% of women voting for the then government, the lowest share in the study’s history, which the authors traced back to the Coalition’s treatment of women within the party. Rated on a 10-point scale, Albanese was the most popular leader in 2022, with an average evaluation of 5.3, followed by the Greens leader, Adam Bandt, on 4.1. The study provides new insight into the qualities that voters preferred in Albanese, with strong leads over Morrison on compassion (+39% to Albanese), honesty (+29%) and trustworthiness (28%). A study co-author, Dr Sarah Cameron, from Griffith University, said “voter disenchantment with the major political parties alone is not enough to see a change in outcomes, there also needs to be a viable alternative for these disenchanted voters to support”. The teals benefited from voters’ disenchantment with the Coalition and Morrison, while running “well-funded, well-organised campaigns that were widely covered in the media”, Cameron said.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2015/apr/08/game-of-thrones-season-five-essential-primer

Television & radio

2015-04-08T11:37:42.000Z

Sarah Hughes

Game of Thrones: your essential primer for season five

Spoiler warning: contains references to events in seasons one to four of Game of Thrones. The triumph of fantasy fiction Read more Can Marxist theory predict the end of Game of Thrones? Read more The Lannisters Westeros’s prime movers were left in something of a sticky spot after youngest son Tyrion slew his father Tywin with a crossbow. Tyrion was last glimpsed sailing for shores unknown in the company of “Master of Whispers” Varys, which at least provides for a potentially entertaining new buddy duo in season five. As to Tyrion’s siblings: Jaime will presumably be wrestling with the guilt of freeing his younger brother and thus indirectly causing his father’s death, while Queen Mother Cersei finally has access to the power she’s always dreamed of. Will she use it for good? The evidence of the past four seasons suggests otherwise. The Starks By the close of the fourth season, the ever-diminishing Stark clan was scattered to the corners of Westeros and beyond. Eldest daughter Sansa was last seen clad in dramatic black, apparently firmly in (the supremely slippery) Littlefinger’s corner after supporting his version of her aunt Lysa’s death. Meanwhile, middle child Bran survived a brutal march north and looks set to continue his vision quest in a conveniently placed Weirwood tree, while Arya, seemingly increasingly disturbed, boarded a ship heading for Braavos and an unknown future. Then there’s youngest son Rickon, little seen on screen. Where has Osha taken him? The Targaryens The last surviving Targaryen, Daenerys Stormborn, Mother of Dragons and collector of titles, has set up home in the former slave city of Meereen to try to learn the basics of governance before launching her attack on Westeros. Unfortunately, she has also been forced to banish her oldest adviser Ser Jorah Mormont after discovering his betrayal, and chain up two of her dragons underground, the third having vanished after killing a child. None of which suggests this season is likely to be happy for the young queen. The Tyrells Westeros’s great survivors spent much of season four ensuring that they remained closely connected to the throne, the death of Joffrey not so much an unfortunate setback as a plot orchestrated by the Queen of Thorns to ensure Margaery’s new husband was a Lannister prince who wasn’t also a murderous torturer. As a result, the Tyrells are currently sitting very pretty – or will be, so long as a newly empowered Cersei allows Margaery to marry Tommen. The Baratheons Stannis Baratheon, rightful heir to Westeros (in his mind at least), pulled off the surprise move of last season when he rocked up at the Wall just in time to save Jon Snow and co from wildling devastation. What does Stannis want? Ultimately, a kingdom – but while Red Priestess Melisandre is by his side, it is difficult to determine which kingdom or how he means to take it. Two things are certain: our men on the Wall are in for an uncomfortable time, given Stannis’s rigid adherence to what he sees as right, and Davos Seaworth will continue to be the most decent man in the Seven Kingdoms. The Greyjoys Their house motto proclaims: “We do not sow,” in reference to a raiding past, but on the evidence of the past four seasons, the Greyjoys don’t do much of anything else either. Poor Theon, tortured past breaking point and reborn as Reek, was last seen following a newly legitimised Ramsay Bolton north to Winterfell. Sister Yara, meanwhile, has abandoned her brother to his fate following a botched rescue attempt. Will she reconsider? Sophie Turner, as Sansa Stark, and Aidan Gillen as Petyr “Littlefinger” Baelish. Photograph: Helen Sloan/AP The Night’s Watch The brothers had a torrid time defending the Wall against Mance Ryder’s wildling army, thanks to their severely depleted numbers. Stannis’s arrival saw off that attack, but the Night’s Watch is still in disarray and has yet to vote for a new Lord Commander. Questions to be answered include: how long can Sam continue to keep Gilly and baby living with him at the Wall? And what exactly does Melisandre want with Jon Snow? The Martells We currently know little about Dorne’s ruling family, save that they are a proudly independent principality – their motto is “Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken” – and that their emissary to Joffrey’s wedding, the late and much lamented Oberyn Martell, was expert with spear and poison, but not so good at staying quiet and finishing the job. Season five, however, promises a trip to Dorne and some answers as to what the game’s newest players might want. Game of Thrones returns to HBO on 12 April at 9pm, to Foxtel on 13 April at 11am AEST, and to Sky Atlantic on 13 April at 9pm.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/jan/03/doctors-criticise-delusional-rishi-sunak-denying-nhs-crisis

Society

2023-01-03T19:00:45.000Z

Denis Campbell

Doctors criticise ‘delusional’ Rishi Sunak for denying NHS is in crisis

Doctors have accused Rishi Sunak of being “delusional” after he denied the NHS was in crisis and insisted it had the money it needed to cope with the surge in winter illness. Amid mounting anger over shortages and delays that could be causing unnecessary deaths, doctors and opposition parties reacted with scorn, anger and disbelief to comments made by the prime minister’s official spokesperson at a Downing Street briefing. Doctors say problems accessing NHS urgent and emergency services could be causing as many as 500 avoidable deaths a week. Asked if the health service in England was in crisis, the spokesperson indicated that they did not agree and instead said: “This is certainly an unprecedented challenge for the NHS, brought about by a number of factors, most significantly the global pandemic. “We are confident we are providing the NHS with the funding it needs, as we did throughout the pandemic, to deal with these issues.” Sunak’s spokesperson acknowledged that many people were having great difficulty trying to see a GP, get an ambulance and seek help in A&E, amid intense pressures on the NHS. “For a number of people seeking to access the NHS this winter it will be very difficult, because of some of these huge challenges that the pandemic in particular has forced upon us.” But the spokesperson defended the government’s efforts to prepare the NHS for winter. “What I’m saying is that we recognised well in advance that this would be a challenging winter, and we have sought to put in place a number of measures to mitigate these challenges.” Dr Vishal Sharma, the chair of the consultants committee at the British Medical Association, which represents most of Britain’s doctors, responded with amazement at the remarks. “For staff working in the NHS or any patients desperately trying to access care, No 10’s refusal to admit that the NHS is in crisis will seem simply delusional. To try to reassure us that ministers are confident the NHS has all the funding it needs, at a time when families are seeing relatives left in pain at home or on trolleys in hospital, is taking the public for fools. “Moreover, the attempt to portray this winter’s crisis as the result of the pandemic and not the result of more than a decade of political choices to reduce investment in the NHS and its workforce is little more than an attempt to rewrite history,” said Sharma. Anyone who seeks care or treatment these days “can see that NHS is quite clearly broken”, he added. Its rapid deterioration “did not happen overnight but is a direct result of the government underspending on health and ignoring repeated warnings from staff about workforce shortages, soaring demand and crumbling infrastructure”, he said. Dr Adrian Boyle, the head of the body that represents Britain’s A&E doctors, said Sunak’s view that Covid was the main reason for the NHS’s overstretch was “disingenuous”. Boyle, the president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, claimed hospitals could not offer speedy care to the record numbers seeking help amid an upsurge in infections such as flu and Covid because NHS England had not delivered on its pledge to create 7,000 extra beds to help the health service cope this winter. It had provided only 1,742 more by Christmas, Boyle said. The NHS denied the claim, with sources saying the true number was more than 3,000. Hospitals were struggling because bed numbers had not risen, Boyle said. “I’m concerned that the pledge of 7,000 more beds for this winter hasn’t been delivered because we need the capacity within our hospitals to admit patients. We have these long waits in emergency departments and in the ambulance service because our hospitals are full, because we don’t have enough beds.” But sources at NHS England said Boyle’s claim was unfair because it had promised to provide the 7,000 beds through a combination of extra beds in hospitals, discharging more patients who are medically fit to leave and increasing the number of the sick who are looked after in “virtual wards”, where they stay at home, their condition is monitored and are visited by health professionals. And the deadline for delivery was March, they said. On Sunak’s views, Boyle added: “It is disingenuous to blame the current situation on the pandemic. It is beyond doubt that Covid made a bad situation worse, but the structural problems were there long before. 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. “Emergency care performance has been deteriorating for nearly a decade, which is a consequence of wider staffing issues within the NHS, lack of beds and capacity, and lack of social care – all problems which are due to underresourcing. An NHS spokesperson said: “These claims are categorically untrue and exclude thousands of additional beds and bed equivalents already delivered by the NHS through investment in community care, discharge, and virtual wards, ahead of the ambition to deliver the equivalent of an extra 7,000 beds by the end of March.” Dr Kamila Hawthorne, the chair of the Royal College of GPs, joined those rebuking Sunak and also emphasised that the NHS’s inability to do its job was putting patients in danger. “The NHS is in a terrible crisis. From general practice to emergency departments and right across the NHS, those on the frontline are all saying the same thing – the pressures we’re working under are unsustainable and unsafe for patients. “The situation the NHS is in, and the impact this is having on patients and frontline staff, must not be downplayed. It must be recognised and addressed.” Hawthorne and Boyle said the NHS’s problems were fixable if the government commited enough money and brought forward a detailed plan to tackle chronic understaffing. Opposition parties ridiculed the prime minister. “This is an insult to all those suffering in hospital corridors or in the back of ambulances because the government refused to act sooner. Rishi Sunak is in complete denial about the damage done to the NHS by years of underinvestment and recruitment failures,” said Daisy Cooper, the Liberal Democrats’ health spokesperson. Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, tweeted: “Everything’s ‘quite normal’ in the NHS according to the government. This breathtaking complacency does at least explain why Rishi Sunak and [health secretary] Steve Barclay are nowhere to be seen. Negligent, irresponsible and a risk to the public’s health.” The NHS Confederation urged ministers to make renewed efforts to avoid the strikes by nurses and ambulance personnel that are due to disrupt NHS care for the next three weeks, starting on 11 January. “It’s really important that, as ministers return to their desks, that they consider ways of reopening negotiations with the trade unions because four days of strikes on top of the situation we’re in now is the last thing we need,” said Matthew Taylor, the organisation’s chief executive. At least a dozen NHS trusts in England, including regional ambulance services, were forced to declare a “critical incident” over the festive period because they could not cope with the level of demand for care they were facing.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/jun/11/juliette-binoche-interview-life-is-to-love-slack-bay

Film

2017-06-11T06:00:47.000Z

Tim Adams

Juliette Binoche: ‘Life is to love’ | Tim Adams

Arriving at a corner café in the 15th arrondissement in Paris, I tell the barman in poor French that I believe my companion has booked a table for lunch. “What’s the name?” he asks, consulting a list. “Um, Juliette Binoche,” I suggest, unlikely as that suddenly sounds. He raises a quizzical eyebrow as if he is not getting the joke. “Who?” “Juliette Binoche?” I say more loudly. He shakes his head and, along with the drinkers at the bar, gives me a look that suggests: the Englishman is clearly delusional. I am seated in a gloomy corner and periodically treated to the same look for the next 20 minutes, sipping my water, checking my phone, as my semi-mythical guest fails to arrive. But lo, here, eventually, following her cheekbones through the gloom of the café is the star of Chocolat, The English Patient and Three Colours: Blue, in her plain sweatshirt and no make-up, apologising for her lateness and laughing her throaty, raucous laugh, and ordering steak and “the very freshest vegetables” while I take the chance to catch the barman’s eye. Serious business: with Daniel Day-Lewis in The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Photograph: Allstar/Cinetext Collection Binoche is now 53, and is probably the highest paid and – Depardieu apart – best-known actor in France. Still, she goes about her business in Paris, she insists, without too much fuss, taking the metro and letting people wonder, “Is it or isn’t it?” You might think of her as an archetypal Parisian, but she doesn’t see herself – the daughter of a Polish émigré mother – as “Frenchy-French” at all. Or at least she has a fierce dislike of being boxed in. To prove the point she has rushed here from a singing lesson, one of an intensive series she is taking in order to star in a stage show about the chanteuse Barbara, friend to Jacques Brel. In the past, Binoche says, whenever she has started to sing, people, particularly her two children, have generally encouraged her to stop. But that has not put her off. Her singing coach insists she can learn. “Isn’t there a danger of Florence Foster Jenkins?” I wonder. She guffaws at the idea. “I hope I have good enough friends around me,” she says. “But I feel it is a little bit shameful for me not to at least try to sing…” I was 14 and my mother’s friend signed a poster which said: ‘Juliette: choose to do everything!’ That stayed in my mind We’re here to talk about another surprising departure, her movie Slack Bay. The film is in that little-explored genre, northern-French-murder-mystery-slapstick-costume drama (with a little cannibalism thrown in). Binoche plays, with wonderful abandon, an haute-bourgeois aunt, all impressionist hats and unhinged operatic emotions, on vacation in Pas de Calais just before the First World War. She and her brother’s family become involved with some mussel pickers who live hand to mouth by the beach. They come off decidedly worse. Binoche spends the second half of the film in bandages, having been repeatedly clunked around the head with an oar. The film is both occasionally shocking and weirdly hilarious. It is the second film Binoche has made in recent years with director Bruno Dumont, who has lately traded auteur seriousness for low farce. The previous one was more predictable fare for both him and her: a biopic of Camille Claudel, the sculptor and lover of Rodin, who worked out of a psychiatric hospital for the last 30 years of her life. That was a soul-baring and arduous shoot for Binoche. In the evenings, she says, over a glass of wine, she would plead with Dumont to “next time ask me to do a comedy”. Slack Bay makes good on that promise. The contrast suits a lifelong philosophy (Binoche is keen on philosophies, on statements of intent. “When you are not judged from outside you can go very far,” she will say. Or, “In order to create, the need to express has to be bigger than the fear.”) This one she picked up in her teens. Troubled water: with Denis Lavant in Les Amants du Pont Neuf. Photograph: The Kobal Collection “We limit ourselves, all the time,” she suggests. “I had a dilemma when I was 14 years old. I loved painting and I also loved theatre. I thought I had to choose. My mother had a friend who was a painter. I told her my dilemma. She signed a poster to me which said: ‘Juliette: choose to do everything!’ That always stayed in my mind.” You could say she has made good on her ambition. She has made more than 60 films that range from The Unbearable Lightness of Being (described by the Guardian reviewer as a role that demanded “very little speaking, a lot of sulky staring and an incredible amount of frenzied bonking”) to Godzilla. She has continued to paint, releasing a book of portraits of her directors along with short poems about them. In 2008, from a standing start at 44, she performed a dance show, choreographed by Akram Khan, at the National Theatre. She has been politically active, particularly in support of artistic and journalistic freedom, and in the past couple of years has gone from sold-out seasons of Sophocles’s Antigone in London and New York to singing and slapstick. Having been, in her 20s and 30s, the muse of just about every notable director in Europe (a fact which prompted David Thomson to ask in his Biographical Dictionary of Film, simply: “Is she the most beautiful woman in cinema?”) I wonder if she is feeling freer, a bit liberated from that intense male gaze as she gets older. “There is only joy in that [muse] relationship,” she insists. “It is about sharing. The joy of making.” Even so, she says, “what seemed important when you are 20 – when you are 50 is hopefully not so important. Unless you haven’t grown up.” Binoche started acting as a child in part to get the approval of her parents. Her mother was an actor and drama teacher, her father was for some time a mime artist. They split up when Binoche was four and she was sent away to boarding school. Best supporting actress: Juliette Binoche holds the Oscar she won for The English Patient. Photograph: Getty Images Did she perform to make them happy? “I was always waiting for the recognition of both parents,” she says. “But there is a moment you stop waiting for it. At some point I decided I could let go of the need.” I ask what her mother, with a lifetime as an often struggling actor and director, made of her daughter’s overnight success – being cast by Godard in her first film, Hail Mary, and all that followed. “She had different feelings about it. It was not always easy. But I was very inspired by my mother’s love of the arts. I remember there was a dissertation we were asked to do at school about one word that was important to us. I asked her what is her favourite word and straight away she said: ‘enthusiasm!’ and I was, ‘Yeah! Yeah! Exactly that!’” She claps her hands. “My enthusiasm always met hers…” Binoche insists a couple of times, “I am not a past-obsessed person.” She tries to see her films only once or twice if she can help it, but if she happens to see her former self in those films she is struck by how much her voice in particular has changed over the years. “It was not in my body. There was something not grounded about it.” The shift happened, she suggests, during the infamous making of Les Amants du Pont Neuf (1991), with Leos Carax, then the enfant terrible of French cinema, and also her lover. The filming lasted for three years. For Carax it was often troublingly autobiographical. The film ending he had in mind, she recalls, was “me dead and him standing on the bridge thinking, ‘Did she ever love me?’” That image almost became horribly true when Binoche came close to drowning in the Seine while filming. She recalls a catharsis under water. “In the moment I was coming back up for air,” she says, “there was a sort of contract being made inside me: after that, I was going to choose life no matter what.” Had she not been making that choice up to that point? “I saw that life is to progress, to move through things, to be open to change and to know new things. Life is to love…” La vie en rose: In In-I, a dance show at the National. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian She broke up with Carax when she read the ending he had imagined. He changed it for her, to something happier, but she left him anyway. She has, famously, never married, despite “four proposals” which she “never answered”. After she left Carax she had a son, Raphael (now 22) with André Halle, a scuba diver on Les Amants du Pont Neuf. The father of her daughter Hana, 17, is Benoît Magimel, her co-star in Les Enfants du Siècle (1999). More recently she has been in significant relationships with American actor Patrick Muldoon and Argentine Santiago Amigorena, her director in A Few Days in September (2007). She is infamously protective of her private life, stubbornly defending mystery, occasionally with the aid of the courts. I ask her at one point if she is living on her own. “I have been in a relationship for a long time,” she says. “But of course you cannot know with whom…” Why of course? “Because: of course.” Jeanne Moreau said to me, of love, ‘I never said no to green grass.’ I found that beautiful. But I am not like that I mention how the great French star of the 60s, Jeanne Moreau, once said about actors that they had to be “in love with love”. Would that describe her? She smiles. “I had conversations with Jeanne. Once she said to me, of love, ‘You know, I never said no to green grass.’ I found that beautiful. But I am not like that at all. I have often said no to green grass. For my grace.” We talk a little about how directors have sometimes tried to control her over the years, and how she feels she has resisted that. Ironically the women she has been directed by, she suggests, have often been the worst. She won’t name names but recently she came up against a woman (“not Claire Denis”) who tried to tell her how to act. “Even the biggest directors would not dare to tell me how to say a fucking sentence,” she says. “And this one was trying to do that with every line. I was like a good soldier; I went along with it. And I said to myself: ‘Ju, this is great you are being really humble!’ But I was very miserable at the end. You have to let an actor create.” Fan club: playing an emotionally unhinged aunt in the slapstick Slack Bay. Bruno Dumont clearly gave her plenty of licence in her new film, though she says that, as with other male directors, “He hates my laugh.” Maybe that’s why he had you bandaged up, I suggest. She rocks back and laughs at the thought, agreeing that her operatic character is perhaps closer to the real Juliette than you might imagine – or at least that her kids might recognise that side of her. Will Slack Bay herald a new chapter of Binoche slapstick I ask, as she checks her watch, alarmed at the time. “Who knows?” she says. “I’m all for adventure.” And she hurries back to her singing teacher, to run through her scales. Slack Bay is released by New Wave and MUBI on 16 June Correction: The film Slack Bay is filmed in Pas de Calais and not in Brittany as was originally stated in this article

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2015/may/31/nico-muhly-on-my-radar-brawn-bletchley-park-new-yorker-joe-snape

Culture

2015-05-31T06:00:05.000Z

Corinne Jones

On my radar: Nico Muhly’s cultural highlights

Nico Muhly, 33, is perhaps the most successful classical composer of his generation. Raised in Rhode Island, he studied music at the Juilliard School, New York, under Pulitzer-prize winning composer John Corigliano before going on to work with Philip Glass, compose music on commission for St Paul’s Cathedral, write film scores for The Reader and Kill Your Darlings and collaborate with musicians including Björk, the National, and Antony and the Johnsons. Muhly is currently based in London and is one of the participating artists in Soundscapes at the National Gallery, 8 July-6 September. Exhibition: Magnificent Obsessions – The Artist as Collector, the Barbican This was really moving to me because I’m sort of a collector too, except my collections are digital because I don’t really live anywhere. I live in New York but I’m here in London all the time, and wherever I stay is always a small space, like a hotel room or a rented maisonette. My flat in New York is basically the size of a piano so I don’t really have room for physical objects, but this exhibition inspired me to try to work harder to afford a larger space with a shelf in it so I can have some weird Japanese dolls or whatever it is that I decide I need... There were a lot of different things on display: Edmund de Waal’s small Japanese dolls, a bunch of skulls from Damien Hirst, Hiroshi Sugimoto had some gorgeous 19th century French medical illustrations. All that was really interesting. Obsession is precisely the right word, I thought. It was really well curated and a pleasure to be in. I’d been working at the Barbican for a couple of days, so I’d go in and see a little bit and go back again to see a bit more another day. Restaurant: Brawn, London I was here maybe five or six years ago and went back recently. They do everything really well. It’s not one of those irritating endless small plate meals. They’re perfectly composed, beautiful plates: a scallop with a bit of oil that’s just heaven, or vitello tonnato – veal with a tuna sauce, which sounds vile but it’s one of the most gorgeous, classic Italian things. The whole thing was great and it was with a friend I’ve not seen in a while so we aggressively caught up on everything that had happened in our lives in the last five months. Place: Bletchley Park I wrote a piece that’s based on the scientific experiments in early artificial intelligence by Alan Turing and his colleagues, but I’d never been to Bletchley Park [until recently]. I had this bizarre experience where I landed in London at six in the morning and went to Bletchley Park at two in the afternoon. I felt peculiar, but I feel like there’s a great poetry in going to things when you’re jetlagged, because sometimes it heightens the experience. It’s a very well-curated museum and it’s not beautiful, which I think is important; it doesn’t romanticise any of that code-breaking work. It’s as bunkerish as it would have been in the 40s, and it feels honest to the spirit of the place. It’s not one of these things where they’ve over-designed it so that it feels kind of modern. It felt really like a blast from the past in a sense. Everyone should go immediately, it’s really great. Live music: Whit Sunday at Westminster Abbey I went to Westminster Abbey to hear the choirs and go to the service for Whit Sunday last Sunday, the first day of Pentecost, a celebration of the time when the Holy Ghost appeared to the surviving disciples and made them speak in tongues in this ecstatic way, and suddenly they all spoke languages that they didn’t speak before. I was a chorister as a young boy, so for me the music associated with that day is the most powerful and it relates almost constantly to the work I do now. My music is always about language and about the ecstatic relationship between notes and words, and that work is a very early example of speaking in tongues. What’s cool about the music is that it’s something that’s been celebrated for thousands of years. Whit Sunday is just great; it’s a beautiful, musical, liturgical day. There was a piece by Thomas Tallis and then there was this completely revolutionarily weird setting by Michael Tippett, who’s an English composer, which is totally beautiful, and then there was a piece by Jonathan Harvey, another English composer, which is just about as strange as it gets for vocal music that can be done in the Lord’s house. It’s this ecstatic language-based twitching that makes me so happy. It’s amazing to hear such wild music in that building. There’s a great tension and tautness between the tradition of it and the modern iteration. Magazine: The New Yorker Great things about the New Yorker: number one, it’s long form, and number two, they are obsessed with fact checking, so the way that they’ve fact-checked an article informs the writing of it. It’s amazing. There was an article a few years ago about Scientology that became an article about how difficult it was to write an article about it. The recent article about real estate in London and Russian oligarchs buying up these huge houses, it’s one of these things that you suspect is going on in the big cities of the world but it was great to see it explained in that way. Album: Joe Snape, Brittle Love Joe Snape is a friend of mine and released this album recently. It’s an amazing collection of electronic music and it’s fun, organised disorder – it feels chaotic but in a really beautiful way. I’ve had it on repeat for the past couple of weeks since he sent it to me.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/apr/26/census-results-house-seats-texas-florida-new-york

US news

2021-04-26T21:25:30.000Z

Sam Levine

Texas, Colorado and Florida among states to gain House seats after Census

Sign up for the Guardian’s Fight to Vote newsletter Six states will gain additional seats in the US House of Representatives because of population shifts over the last decade, the US Census Bureau announced on Monday. Seven states will lose one congressional seat. The US saw a total population growth of 7.4% over the last decade, the second slowest change in US history (the previous slowest was 7.3% from 1930 to 1940). Overall, the total US population was 331,449,281 people on 1 April 2020, the day the Census Bureau uses as a marker to count. Texas will gain two additional seats in the House, the bureau said on Monday. Colorado, Montana, Oregon, North Carolina and Florida will also gain a congressional seat. The seven states that will lose a seat are: California, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Overall, the fastest growing parts of the US were the southern and western portions of the country. The US constitution requires the federal government to take a census of the population every 10 years. That tally is used to allocate seats in the House and determine how almost $1.5tn in federal dollars are allocated. I became a US census worker. Here’s what I learned Read more The changes in seat counts will also reflect changes to each state’s electoral college votes for the next decade. A state’s electoral college votes are equal to the total number of representatives in Congress. The shift of seven seats among 13 states was the smallest since 1941, said Ron Jarmin, the acting director of the Census Bureau. The numbers came as somewhat of a surprise; projections based on population estimates had Texas gaining up to three seats, Florida gaining two and Arizona gaining a seat. Experts projected Alabama Minnesota, New York, and Rhode Island could all lose additional seats. Bureau officials acknowledged that difference on Monday, but said repeatedly they were confident in the results and that they were within 1% of the estimated projections in many states. The officials also revealed how much every census response matters. Had New York state counted just 89 additional people, it would not have lost a congressional seat, bureau officials said on Monday. Monday’s announcement was an important milestone in the once-a-decade process of redrawing electoral boundaries, which is also required by the constitution. Census officials are expected to deliver redistricting data to states later this year. The entire process has been delayed several months because of the Covid-19 pandemic, which forced the bureau to push back its work. Monday’s announcement also came after the Census Bureau, states and civic groups spent years convincing people it was safe to respond to the census during Donald Trump’s administration. Trump unsuccessfully sought to undermine the count by adding a question asking about citizenship to the survey. When that move was blocked by the supreme court, Trump instructed census officials to come up with redistricting data that only counted citizens. Joe Biden reversed that effort on his first day in office.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/crossword-blog/2023/jun/19/crossword-blog-everyman-from-no-1-to-4000

Crosswords

2023-06-19T10:30:08.000Z

Alan Connor

Crossword blog: Everyman from No 1 to 4,000

Given that the edition of the Observer published on 12 August 1945 has only six pages due to paper rationing, we can be thankful that it found room for a crossword. And given that the rest of the paper is made up of urgent headlines including … St Paul’s Was Saved By Only One Second Zionists press for a Jewish State JAPAN IN RUINS: ENTER RUSSIA Atomic Power Possible In Ten Years … solvers may have been happier still for the diversion. Page 2 of the Observer, 12 August 1945 The puzzle is headed ‘EVERYMAN CROSSWORD.—No. 1 (NEW SERIES)’, though crosswords in general had not stopped for the war (what would be the point in winning if the UK had given up its wordplay?) and it wasn’t exactly the first such puzzle from its setter, Ximenes. A potted history might go something like this: in 1926, poet Edward Powys Mathers makes crosswords cryptic and sets for the Observer until he dies in 1939, using the name of the Grand Inquisitor Torquemada. Classicist DS Macnutt then takes over, using the name of a different Inquisitor and tidying up the conventions. In 1941, he decides to alternate his tricky puzzle (set since 1972 by Azed) with one that’s more approachable. And in 1945, that more approachable puzzle gets its own name: Everyman. Is it like today’s Everyman? That may not be the best question, as this week’s puzzle is Everyman 4,000, which includes clues written by everyone who has set in the intervening 78 years; more on that here. Also, you should have a look at Everyman 1 before reading on: it has joined the online archive. Done that? Some thoughts of mine, then one of Ximenes’s and – I hope – some of yours. There are some clues I honestly still don’t understand: why is Ambrose a jazz expert? On the subject of music: unlike people, songs age at different speeds throughout their lives. Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay was old (54) but current enough to justify its place in Everyman 1; it’s now 132 and much less likely to appear in a crossword than the one-year-younger song about the bicycle made for two Did people just know more dog breeds in 1945? Some of my favourites are the amusing definitions Some quotations don’t age; some political nicknames do 27 across is also part of this week’s puzzle And I was delighted to see longish paired answers. I use these myself, on the basis most people won’t notice but those with an Everyman habit get an extra hint to one once they’ve solved the other. Here’s Ximemes himself, in his 1966 book Ximenes on the Art of the Crossword: What about the first post-war Everyman, the first puzzle of the present Everyman series, which I initiated? Definitions: two; elusive definitions: still, I’m sorry to say, ten, hints and references to letters only: none, bald anagrams: one, cryptic: fifteen, at least four of which I should now call unsatisfactory; and two quotations. ‘Is this terrier ever the limit?’ – SKYE, is one of those I disapprove of. The query is hardly enough to hit at the pun. Over to you. Find a collection of explainers, interviews and other helpful bits and bobs at alanconnor.com. The Shipping Forecast Puzzle Book by Alan Connor, which is partly but not predominantly cryptic, can be ordered from the Guardian Bookshop

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/askjack/2016/feb/18/how-can-i-stop-spam-emails

Technology

2016-02-18T08:43:29.000Z

Jack Schofield

How can I stop spam emails?

My wife and I have never received more than three or four spam emails each week for over two decades. Recently we started getting large volumes of spam. We are with BT but tend to use eM Client for our emails using the IMAP system. eM Client can dump these into Junk and blacklist the domain, but this does not stop the spam emails, which are now five a day at least. Neither BT nor eM Client nor Sophos (our anti-virus company) have any ideas about how to stop this happening, other than to get a new email address. Do we just have to live with it? Mike The short answer is that you just have to live with it. However, different email services have different levels of spam blocking, so you would probably see less spam if you got a new email address. First, your new address would not be on any of the mailing lists used by spammers – at least for a while. Second, you could use a service that blocks more spam, such as Google’s Gmail or Microsoft’s Outlook.com (aka Hotmail/Live mail). You are using a btinternet.com email address, so I presume that your emails are actually being handled by Yahoo. In my experience, Yahoo’s blocking is less aggressive than either Gmail or Outlook.com, so you would probably benefit by switching. The drawback is that these email services also tend to put more legitimate emails in their junk folders. Sometimes my Gmail and Outlook.com spam boxes have more legitimate emails than spam. Switching to Gmail It’s not hard to switch to a Gmail address, because it can retrieve emails from your BT address, and you can use Gmail to send emails from or on behalf of your BT address. Once you have set up a Gmail account, click the cogwheel on the top right, select Settings, and go to the “Forwarding and POP/IMAP” page to set “Enable IMAP”. Remember to click “Save Changes” at the bottom of the page. Next, click “Accounts and Import”. The second option on this page is “Import mail and contacts”, which allows you to “Import from Yahoo!, Hotmail, AOL, or other webmail or POP3 accounts.” You will obviously have to give Gmail your email address and password so that it can fetch your old emails. (Outlook.com has similar features.) The next option is “Send mail as”, which enables Gmail to send emails from your old email address. You can elect to “reply from the same address to which the message was sent” but I’d recommend setting Gmail as the default address. This will encourage your contacts to use the Gmail address rather than your old BT Internet address. Sorry to say, I’m not sure how eM Client will handle this. I looked through all the eM Client options without finding a way to set a different email address. I also used eM Client to send a test email, but it sent it using my Gmail address, not the default email address I use on Gmail (which uses my own domain name, not gmail.com). However, you can always select an email address when you write an email in eM Client. Note that if you use an email program instead of the web interface, BT Yahoo mail will not download the contents of your spam folder by default. This will prevent you from seeing any legitimate emails that have been blocked. See Using BT Yahoo’s anti-spam features for details. You can also tell an email service to forward all your emails to a different inbox – in your case, from BT Internet to Gmail, for example. Spam emails are generally not forwarded. Incidentally, Google has just announced a new smartphone feature called Gmailify, which lets you Gmailify a “Yahoo! Mail or Hotmail/Outlook.com” account. Your linked account will then get Gmail’s spam-blocking without you opening a Gmail account. Presumably, Gmailify is aimed at people who have limited technical abilities. I think it would be better to open a Gmail account and add your old account as described above, but if that sounds too hard, maybe Gmailify is the answer. Protecting your new address The secret to keeping your email inbox mostly spam free is not to tell anyone about it. This is impractical, but you can at least give your address to as few people as possible. In particular, don’t post it online where it can be harvested by would-be spammers. Also, don’t forward things like chain letters or cute pictures of furry animals: if you do, you could be sending your email address to hundreds of people you don’t know. Avoid opening spam emails, don’t allow spam emails to load pictures, and never click on links in spam emails. Emails can include web beacons, web bugs or tracking pixels that tell the spammer you have accessed an email and therefore that your account is a live one. More spam will follow. In Gmail, you can tick the box next to an email and then click the Spam button in the toolbar to get rid of spam without opening it. This also helps Gmail to identify the same sort of spam sent to other people, which is why you should never mark legitimate newsletters as spam. Don’t give your email address to companies you don’t trust. And when you do give it to companies, make sure you are not opting in to marketing emails, newsletters and other bumf. Some people set up separate mailboxes for newsletters and marketing emails, but reputable companies almost always provide a simple way to unsubscribe if you change your mind. You can use another Gmail feature to provide one or more customised addresses. For example, if your email address is [email protected], you can give someone an address such as [email protected] or [email protected]. Gmail ignores anything after the plus sign and delivers these emails to your inbox as normal. However, you can set up filters to divert or delete them. You could even use a different +based email address for each company, so you’ll know if one of them sells your email address. But I think this is more trouble than it’s worth. As things stand, the better email service providers, including Google and Microsoft, are doing the bulk of the work in blocking spam, and they stop the vast majority from even reaching your spam box. There’s very little that an individual can do to improve on that, beyond the simple measures described above. It’s best to accept that some spam will always get through, but if you’re only getting five a day, it’s not worth worrying about. Just delete them and concentrate on the more important things in life. Have you got another question for Jack? Email it to [email protected]

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/jan/22/mark-anthony-turnage-opera-composer

Music

2011-01-22T07:59:00.000Z

Nicholas Wroe

Mark-Anthony Turnage: A life in music

Two years ago Covent Garden announced that it was to stage a new opera by composer Mark-Anthony Turnage. It would be based on the life of Anna Nicole Smith, the Playboy model who became a tabloid sensation by means of her brief marriage to an 89-year-old billionaire, the subsequent courtroom battles over his will, the lurid details of her life and the sordid circumstances of her death, aged only 39, from a drug overdose in a Florida hotel room in 2007. The Guardian arts pages responded with a snap readers' poll. "Is the life and death of Anna Nicole Smith a good subject for an opera?" it asked. "And for a moment or two that did shock me," recalls Turnage. "It's not what you're used to, but pretty quickly I realised it was actually an appropriate response in that the opera deals with modern celebrity, part of which seems to involve public voting for TV programmes such as Big Brother and X Factor and all the other reality shows. Of course the result of the poll wouldn't have affected what we did [the final vote was 78.2% for and 21.8% against], but I was actually quite pleased to see that the public agreed with us." Turnage, who despite turning 50 last year is still widely regarded as one of the most prominent younger British composers, admits he is "slightly ashamed" to be familiar with X Factor. "How can I put this? It is on in our house and although I don't pay that much attention, I'm always amazed that no one has picked up that they all sing sharp." He was also "half-aware" of Smith during her life and when invited by Covent Garden to write an opera she came to mind. "Finding subjects is always difficult, but her life was undoubtedly very operatic." Anna Nicole opens on 17 February with a libretto by Richard Thomas of Jerry Springer: The Opera fame and directed by Richard Jones. Dutch soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek will sing the lead. "The more we looked into it, the more interesting it got," Turnage says. "There is all the modern celebrity stuff of cosmetic surgery, drugs, dramatic weight loss and gain. It also has the big eternal themes of love, death, jealousy, marriage, sex and money. And it's hardly unknown in opera for the morally suspect soprano to die in the last scene. But also the details are fascinating. She was from a dirt-poor background, her mother was a sheriff; Marshall, the old man she married wasn't stupid, he was a former Harvard professor who had written textbooks about oil." Smith's notoriety has continued after her death with controversies and conspiracies about questions of paternity and the supply of drugs. She was even the subject of a WikiLeaks diplomatic cable reporting the chaos her presence had wrought on the government and media of the Bahamas. The immediacy of her story appealed to Turnage. "The trouble with a lot of operatic subjects is their distance from today. I'm not against using myth or history, and obviously I'm aware that both can have relevance to me and to now. But in reality it hardly ever grabs me like that. It too often feels that it's just about Orpheus and becomes rather worthy stuff to which you fall asleep. It's what Richard Jones calls 'classy snooze'. Which is pretty much the definition of what I try to avoid." Turnage's willingness to engage with the nitty gritty of contemporary life is matched by his openness to popular music: most obvious has been a love of jazz, with nods to such artists as Miles Davis, going back to the very beginning of his career, but he doesn't deal exclusively with such respected work. Careful listeners to his 1988 opera Greek, the piece that established his reputation, might catch a hint of the old ITV World of Sport theme tune. More recently, at last year's Proms, his Hammered Out echoed Beyoncé's "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)". A few weeks ago he premiered a string quartet at the Wigmore Hall. Two of the movements of Twisted Blues with Twisted Ballad were inspired by the Led Zeppelin songs "Dazed and Confused" and "Stairway to Heaven". Led Zeppelin's bassist John Paul Jones, a friend, was in the audience that night and will be on stage at Covent Garden for Anna Nicole, playing in scene requiring a jazz trio. This attachment to popular culture, along with his status as an Arsenal fan and willingness to embrace bad language in his librettos, soon saw Turnage cast as a working-class wunderkind. But over the past three decades he has sustained a distinguished and productive career that has seen him working closely with conductors of the stature of Bernard Haitink, Esa-Pekka Salonen and, particularly, Simon Rattle. He has been attached to prestigious institutions, such as English National Opera and both the BBC and Chicago symphony orchestras, and has written a vast range of music for many different instruments and ensembles. He says he has surprised himself in now writing a third opera – "I was very wary of the whole idea of opera when I started out" – and even more surprised to see, in hindsight, themes emerging across his work. "I always want to do something different, which is part of the reason I've written an opera only every 10 years. But there are plainly interests that I'm drawn back to which seem to boil down to the importance of family members. This piece is actually very different from either Greek, which was based on Oedipus so that was pretty obvious, or The Silver Tassie [his 2000 opera for ENO based on Sean O'Casey's play about a footballer injured in the first world war], but the family thing has cropped up again. Originally we weren't going to have Anna Nicole's son, Daniel, who himself died of an overdose before his mother did, singing. But then towards the end I gave him this aria, which is just a huge list of drugs. At another point the whole family is wheeled out to say what they think of her. Maybe I'll manage to steer clear of families if I do another one, but there does seem to be something about them that keeps pulling me back." Turnage was born near Grays, Essex, in 1960. He says while there are members of his family in traditional local industries, his own working-class identity was "seriously overdone in the press in the early stages of my career, to the point of making my parents furious. I'm not entirely blaming the journalists because I did play on it a bit, but ultimately it seemed to come down to the fact that I like football and came from Essex. In fact I grew up with lots of books and music in the house. My dad sang and my mum played the piano and while my upbringing might be different to, say, Tom Adès or George Benjamin, if you go back a generation, to the likes of Harrison Birtwistle and Peter Maxwell Davies, they came from very ordinary backgrounds." They were an evangelical Christian family; Turnage was "quite absorbed" in religion before ultimately "becoming disillusioned and moving away" while retaining a respect for faith, particularly as something for his parents to turn to after the drug-related death of his brother. "He died before I'd had children" – he now has three and "another on the way" with his third wife, the cellist Gabriella Swallow – "but now I can see it as a parent and simply can't imagine what it must be like to lose a child. Anything that helps is important." Turnage's compositional career began "pretty obsessionally", aged nine. "I'd have too many crotchets in a bar and things like that, but still wrote symphonies and concertos. I could recite every composer's dates and would etch their names on to my leather briefcase. I had league tables, so when I discovered Shostakovich he came in at number eight and pushed Nielsen down to nine. And I would listen to Radio 3, sometimes for 16 or 17 hours a day, and would underline everything I'd heard in the Radio Times. I should add that I also liked football, but I do find it a bit depressing when I come across composers now who don't want to listen to absolutely everything." He says his parents thought he was unusual, but encouraged him. "School was very unsupportive. I was hopeless at everything apart from music and only got two O-levels. I then only got a B in my music A-level because one of the questions about the Berg violin concerto was so ridiculous I said so in my answer. Although I wasn't a confident kid, I was very confident about music and actually used to correct one teacher's pronunciation of composers names. No wonder they hated me." At age 14 Turnage was studying at the junior section of the Royal College of Music. Soon after, he came into the orbit of the composer and conductor Oliver Knussen, who was a tutor. "By the time I got to meet Ollie, my listening habits had become quite advanced and I had quite sophisticated taste for someone so young. But the music I was composing was very traditional. There was no correlation between what I was listening to and what I was writing. Ollie helped to change that." Not only did Turnage begin to write in a more contemporary idiom, he also began to incorporate his interest in jazz as well as soul music, "which was a very Essex thing. I actually objected to white rock music and was quite snooty about long guitar solos. And I sort of missed out on punk." Instead he played keyboard in a jazz funk band, "with one finger while looking a bit pissed off. Presumably it was a slight rebellion thing against the Royal College, but I was conscious of having a broader taste than most music students and I did keep up the serious composing at the side of it." One of the first pieces he worked on with Knussen, Night Dances (1981), featured a middle movement that was "sort of a tribute to Miles Davis. I'm still fond of it but the jazz is not very well absorbed into the wider piece. I didn't actually know any professional jazz players then. And I certainly wasn't ready to play with people. I might have been able to fool people in Grays, but not people who really knew about jazz so I was a bit isolated and it took a while for me to absorb it a bit more naturally." While at college Turnage assumed that he would have to make his living writing commercial music. "I actually wrote to the BBC radiophonic workshop asking for a job when I was a teenager. I didn't really have expectations of writing concert music and certainly not to a write an opera. As it turned out I haven't done any of that type of commercial work, but it wasn't really until after Greek that I realised I was going to get the opportunity to do the things I really wanted." The genesis of Greek came in 1983 when Turnage won a scholarship to study with Gunther Schuller and Hans Werner Henze at Tanglewood in America. "I'd always had a problem with classical music being a minority thing. But while I was uncomfortable with only a certain amount of people from a certain class listening to this music, I didn't become political about it until I met Henze. Age 16 I was buying the Daily Telegraph – again very Essex – but in my early 20s I became very anti-Thatcher and anti-Conservative which was reflected in Greek." Turnage's adaptation of Stephen Berkoff's updated, East End version of Oedipus the King was premiered in Munich in 1988. The following year Turnage became an associate composer with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and collaborated on a series of acclaimed works with Rattle. When Rattle was appointed chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic in 2002, one of the first pieces he performed was Turnage's Blood on the Floor, a suite of music that includes sections titled "Needles", "Junior Addict" and "Elegy For Andy", which memorialised his late brother. He has often returned to the elegy form, most recently for Fausto Moroni, Henze's partner, to whom he dedicated the middle section of Twisted Blues with Twisted Ballad. "I do have a mortgage and I am quite heavily commissioned. But you have a sort of freedom when something happens in your life. So there are elegies and there are birthdays. Both can be emotional but I feel it is a positive response to someone you cared for." In 1995 Turnage became attached to ENO where The Silver Tassie won the 2000 Olivier and South Bank Show awards. Since then he has been looking for another opera idea. "There are so many bad ideas and hardly any good ones." He says the response within the Royal Opera House to Anna Nicole was positive, but with some nervousness about the baggage Thomas brings from Jerry Springer and the fact that the piece deals with people who are still alive. "We've had no contact from anyone so far, but who knows – there might even be another opera in it." Having read most of the many books about Smith he says there are "so many conflicting versions of her story and so we play with that idea of what is the truth of a life. The whole construct of celebrity makes it even more difficult to pin down. What's obvious is that she had a pretty terrible life, in that she was abused as a kid and lots of other things. That she became this world-famous model from that background is remarkable in itself." He says his overriding emotion is sadness. "I didn't want to diss her, more celebrate her; the piece is pretty much a comedy until about the last quarter, but ultimately it is comic-horror, as opposed to tragedy. What happened to her was horrific, particularly at the end, and at the first read-through Richard Jones quite correctly said that this is a political piece, as are many of the things I've done. It's about the society she came from and the society she lived in. I'm certain that if she'd come from a different strata of society, people would have treated her differently. And that does strike a nerve. "The story of a 19th-century courtesan is accepted as grist to the mill of opera composers. But because she died only in 2007 and is meant to be trailer-trash, it makes people uncomfortable. If it had been about a person who had essentially been approved of, then it would have been fine. But why is she of less value or less suitable as a subject than, say, Marilyn Monroe? We are still dealing with a fascinating human being whose life, however weirdly, reflected the times we all live in."

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/dec/20/it-was-too-dangerous-for-white-men-the-racist-history-of-pearl-diving-in-australia

Culture

2023-12-20T14:14:34.000Z

Kelly Burke

‘It was too dangerous for white men’: the racist history of pearl diving in Australia

In a park in Broome, a pregnant Indigenous woman emerges from the water offering up a pearl shell. At three metres high, the Women of Pearling monument overlooking Western Australia’s Roebuck Bay acknowledges the exploitation of Indigenous women during Australia’s blackbirding era, when they were kidnapped and coerced into free diving for white-owned pearl luggers along the north-west coastline. In an age before diving apparatus was introduced, pregnant women became the most highly prized by their white masters, under the misguided belief that their lung capacity was greater; that they could survive longer and dive deeper. They couldn’t. For many, those pearl shell beds – as deep as 25 fathoms, or 45 metres underwater – became a deathbed. The Women of Pearling monument in Broome, Western Australia. Photograph: Phil Hill/Alamy The Broome-based Indigenous intercultural dance theatre company Marrugeku has taken this history as its starting point for a piece of choreographic truth-telling, in a new work titled Mutiara, meaning pearl in Malay, which is heading to Sydney and Perth festivals next year after premiering in Broome in September. Sign up for a weekly email featuring our best reads The work is a co-creation between artists of Indigenous and Malay heritage, as the pearl shell industry in the Kimberley itself became, after an 1871 moratorium on the use of Indigenous women on pearl luggers by Western Australian authorities. An influx of indentured male workers from south-east Asia became divers over subsequent decades to ensure the continued supply to factories across Europe of pearl shell as the chief material for button making. The utmost amount of diving must be sucked out of the man, kill him or not; for who knows who will be his owner next season! An 1875 editorial The migrant workers and the Yawuru people lived, worked and suffered together – and found myriad ways to defy a White Australia policy that ensured roots in communities were not planted by the visitors, who were permitted only to work on three-year contracts before being sent home. “No [Malay] man’s life is valued in the economising of that life,” the Inquirer and Commercial News editorialised about the pearl shell industry on 28 April 1875. “But the utmost amount of diving must be sucked out of the man, kill him or not; for who knows who will be his owner next season!” By the 1870s, deep sea diving technology consisted of canvas and steel suits, bolted copper helmets and a rubber hose through which a crew member on the surface hand pumped air to the diver. Little was known medically about the bends – diver’s paralysis – caused by bubbles of nitrogen getting into bodily tissues when a diver rose to the surface too quickly. Sharks and other underwater hazards claimed lives and tropical cyclones wiped out dozens of pearl luggers and their crews. A hard-hat pearl diver returns to the boat in Broome, Western Australia (date unknown). Photograph: Bourne family collection/WA Museum It is believed up to one-third of all indentured divers died, says Sarah Yu, a curator and cultural heritage specialist with Broome’s Nyamba Buru Yawuru centre. “It was horrendous, really,” she says. “They didn’t really know how diving worked … and it was considered too dangerous for white man to do the work, so there were exemptions made to the White Australia policy to keep the pearl luggers going.” In 1916 a royal commission into WA’s pearling industry concluded that the use of indentured Malay, Singaporean and Japanese divers must continue, because although their presence compromised the Australian ideal of racial homogeneity, “the life is not a desirable one, and the risks are great, as proved by the abnormal death rate amongst divers”. The life of a pearl shell diver was “incompatible with that a European worker is entitled to live,” parliament was told. Dalisa Pigram and Zee Zunnur of Marrugeku perform Mutiara. Photograph: Michael Jalaru Torres Through dance and music, Mutiara explores the concepts of colonialism, racism, exploitation, slavery, and stolen children, like “buried truths washed up and left along the shores of time” according to Marrugeku’s statement. But it is also a celebration of First Nations people and Malay immigrants, who built deep interracial relationships, in defiance of the country’s White Australia policy. One of the creators and performers in Mutiara is Singaporean-born Broome resident Ahmat Bin Fadal, now in his 80s, who worked as an indentured diver in the 1960s. He describes how he felt the fear of death each day the helmet was bolted to his shoulders, and the day that led to him leaving the industry. ‘I saw my mother’s face …’ Ahmat Bin Fadal, a performer in Mutiara who worked as an indentured diver in the 1960s. Photograph: Michael Jalaru Torres Preparing to resurface, Fadal’s oxygen supply was accidentally cut off by a crewman on the lugger above. “I saw my mother’s face, I saw the name of Allah and then I passed out,” he says. The day Fadal cheated death is re-enacted in Mutiara. The Marrugeku collaborators’ choreographic statement says the undersea world inhabited by First Nations Yawuru people and migrant divers paralleled a wider Australian story of migration and not belonging. “We are in solidarity to reclaim these stories: to remember, to celebrate and to honour.” Of the Indigenous women who were blackbirded into free diving for pearl shell prior to the introduction of diving apparatus and indentured labour, records do exist, says Yu, but there is scant visual documentation. In 2019, the remains of 14 Yawuru and Karajarri people were returned to Broome from the Grassi Museum in Leipzig. “They were male and female, and some had evidence of trauma like damaged eardrums, consistent with diving injuries,” Yu says. “The remains were all taken from Roebuck Bay and sold in the 1890s by a pearler to the museum in Germany. We know these were our ancestors who experienced the brutal life of pearl shell diving.” As part of Naidoc week this year, Broome staged Wanggajarli Burugun, an exhibition marking the repatriation of ancestral remains taken from Yawuru Country. Among those recognised and placed to rest were the pearl divers of Roebuck Bay. Mutiara by Marrugeku will be performed at Sydney festival, 19-21 January; then at Perth festival, 9-12 February

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2018/apr/10/love-simon-russell-t-davies-and-more-on-why-the-gay-teen-movie-is-a-glorious-victory

Film

2018-04-10T08:00:22.000Z

Anna Smith

Love, Simon: Russell T Davies and more on why the gay teen movie is a 'glorious victory'

From his clean-cut good looks to his inner angst, the titular character in Love, Simon seems like your average American high school movie hero. Except for one thing: he’s secretly gay. The story of Simon’s journey out of the closet drives this sweet, funny and in many ways conventional teen comedy-drama that’s doing brisk business in the States. What’s more, Love, Simon is produced by 20th Century Fox, which makes it the first major studio teen movie with a gay hero. While arthouse and LGBT cinema have long explored the coming out story, queer characters have been minor players in films such as Mean Girls and Clueless. Indie comedies But I’m a Cheerleader (1999) and GBF (2014) put LGBT characters at the centre, but in the studio movie playground, the words gay and lesbian are insults spat out by prom queens and jocks. Occasionally, the butt of their joke is actually gay, such as Les in Bring It On (2000). But often this is directed at our straight hero or heroine, who must have a makeover and prove their heterosexuality in order to gain acceptance from both peers and audience. “When mainstream teen movies began to incorporate LGBT characters more regularly in the 1990s, they almost always came in the form of wisecracking cis men,” says Charlie Lyne, director of Beyond Clueless, a documentary on the 90s satirical teen comedy. “And even then, they were routinely sidelined and desexualised, as in the case of Damian from Mean Girls, who we’re told is ‘too gay to function’, but who never once expresses any attraction to other men. They’re often great characters in other ways but they’re deeply limited.” Based on the novel by Becky Albertalli, Love, Simon bucks many of these trends. Simon (Nick Robinson) is a well-rounded character whose sexuality is only part of his identity – and whose makeover is heading in a completely different direction. Also, he’s not alone in high school. Along with the jocks, nerds and cheerleaders, there’s one openly gay student, as well as at least two in the closet: Simon’s hesitant online flirtation with an anonymous pupil keeps the audience guessing. “The treatment of LGBT issues in teen cinema has definitely progressed in line with wider cultural attitudes,” Lyne adds. “If anything, teen movies have typically been a few years behind actual teenagers, who are usually among the earliest in society to sense a changing social tide. As recently as the early 00s, while queer teenagers built vast online communities at the very heart of mainstream platforms such as YouTube, teen movies continued to relegate LGBT characters to the sidelines.” Compared to cinema, television has been much quicker to catch up, notes Russell T Davies, who brought a gay teen to Channel 4 in Queer As Folk (1999). “The brilliant gay teen in My So-Called Life was 23 years ago,” he notes. Davies says that Love, Simon’s director has championed gay characters in many TV shows, from Dawson’s Creek to The Flash: “Greg Berlanti is a TV man through and through. He’s got acres of successful gay stories behind him. To see him bringing that into the multiplexes is a glorious victory.” So why has it taken film so long to catch up? The answer, says Davies, is simple. “It’s our old friend, that lumbering beast, the white, straight man. But it comes down to money in the end. Television can be more nimble because it’s cheaper: you’re looking at roughly $1m for an hour of drama. But if a movie costs, say, $30m, then there’s 30 times the caution, 30 more levels of bankers being scared, 30 times the arguments. Thirty more idiots, in the end. And if you increase the sums, if you go up to blockbusters costing $100m, then you have a hundred times the fear. That’s why a vast empire like the Marvel Cinematic Universe is devoid of gay characters. And that’s why Pixar has only managed the horrific camp of the Ken Doll in Toy Story 3.” Wide appeal ... Timothée Chalamet and Armie Hammer in Call Me By Your Name. Photograph: Allstar/Sony Pictures Classics The money men need only look to recent awards seasons to see that gay stories have wide appeal. Moonlight, God’s Own Country and Call Me By Your Name featured young gay characters who have become beloved by audiences beyond the LGBT demographic, winning Oscar-nominated Call My By Your Name star Timothée Chalamet a wealth of obsessive female fans. Combined with Love, Simon’s success, does this add up to a brighter future for high school movies with gay leads? Director Joe Stephenson (Chicken, McKellen: Playing the Part) isn’t sure. “Love, Simon is an anomaly in that it is receiving the support of a studio, and I’m sceptical about whether its success will trigger a wave of support from others on stories centred on gay characters. There remains a fear that a film centred on a gay character will be classed as a ‘gay film’, only of interest to gay people. People hoped a change would come with Brokeback Mountain but here we are 13 years later, asking if the change will come again.” Davies is similarly cautious. “I think we should be very careful if we imagine these changes are permanent. It’s been almost 20 years since Queer As Folk but still, every time I write a gay character, someone somewhere complains, and someone somewhere says, ‘This is new!’ It’s not one battle, it’s a constant fight.” And the fight isn’t just about representation, but narrative. Says Stephenson, “My hope is that gay characters can finally start existing in mainstream films without their sexuality being the key character trait. Straight people in mainstream films don’t have to deal with their sexuality constantly, neither does their sexuality have to be a ‘reveal’. How nice it would be for a character to be gay and it be of no consequence to the plot or their mental health at all.”

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/may/02/anti-monarchists-receive-intimidatory-home-office-letter-on-new-protest-laws-coronation

Politics

2023-05-02T18:26:58.000Z

Ben Quinn

Anti-monarchists receive ‘intimidatory’ Home Office letter on new protest laws

Official warning letters have been sent to anti-monarchists planning peaceful protests at King Charles III’s coronation saying that new criminal offences to prevent disruption have been rushed into law. Using tactics described by lawyers as “intimidatory”, the Home Office’s Police Powers Unit wrote to the campaign group Republic saying new powers had been brought forward to prevent “disruption at major sporting and cultural events”. The new law, given royal assent by Charles on Tuesday, means that from Wednesday: Protesters who block roads, airports and railways could face 12 months behind bars. Anyone locking on to others, objects or buildings could go to prison for six months and face an unlimited fine. Police will be able to head off disruption by stopping and searching protesters if they suspect they are setting out to cause chaos. “I would be grateful if you could publicise and forward this letter to your members who are likely to be affected by these legislative changes,” says the Home Office letter, which lists the creation of a number of new criminal offences under the government’s much criticised public order bill. The Home Office claims that the timing of the laws is coincidental. But lawyers have told Republic that the letter could be viewed as intimidatory, days before planned demonstrations in central London around the coronation. Graham Smith, the campaign group’s chief executive, described the letter as “very odd” and said the group was seeking assurances from the police that nothing had changed in relation to its plans to protest on coronation day. “We have been in direct contact with liaison officers and have met with senior commanders, who we have been very clear with about what we intend to do. Their response is that they are happy for us to proceed. But this letter has come out of the blue,” Smith said. “Lawyers who we have been in touch with agree it sounds like intimidation and we are currently waiting for assurances from police nothing has changed.” Republic has been planning protests on Saturday under the banner “Not My King”, including one at the statue in Charing Cross of Charles I, who was beheaded in 1649, leading to a short-lived republic. Other groups including Extinction Rebellion have been sent similar letters, insiders said. The development has dismayed campaigners for freedom of speech who say it could be interpreted as a way of restricting peaceful and legitimate protests. Jun Pang, a policy and campaigns officer at Liberty, said: “Key measures in the bill will come into force just days before the coronation of King Charles – a significant event in our country’s history that is bound to inspire a wider national conversation and public protests. At the same time, the government are using a statutory instrument to bring draconian measures that the House of Lords threw out of the bill back from the dead, once again evading scrutiny and accountability. “It’s worrying to see the police handed so many new powers to restrict protest, especially before a major national event. When the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act came into force, the police repeatedly misused them – in part because they simply did not understand them. Similarly, when Queen Elizabeth died, we saw police acting in inappropriate and heavy-handed ways towards protesters that violated their rights.” Shami Chakrabarti, the former shadow attorney general, said: “During the passage of this illiberal and headline-grabbing legislation, ministers admitted that the new offence of ‘locking on’ is so broad as to catch peaceful protesters who link arms in public. 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. “Suspicionless stop and search is notorious for racial disparity and it is staggering that more of these provisions have brought into force so soon after Louise Casey’s devastating report [on the Met police]. The home secretary can blast ‘ecowarriors’ but this legislation may be used against anti-poverty and Ukraine solidarity protesters too.” Democracy campaigners said they had expected the new laws to be introduced on 15 June and were surprised that they had been brought forward to May. Home Office sources insisted that the new laws had not been rushed through for the coronation but added that they may be a “signalling point” to police and protesters before Saturday. One senior source with knowledge of the discussions between government and police over the new powers said the looming coronation was one factor leading to them coming into law on Wednesday. Asked if the coronation was a factor, the source said: “I think it is, and Just Stop Oil has been pretty active in London recently.” A statement from the home secretary, Suella Braverman, said: “This legislation is the latest step the government has taken against protesters who use highly disruptive tactics to deliberately delay members of the public, often preventing them from getting to work and hospital, as well as missing loved ones’ funerals. “The range of new offences and penalties match the seriousness of the threat guerrilla tactics pose to our infrastructure, taxpayers’ money and police time.” A Home Office source added that the letter sent to Republic was meant to inform, not intimidate.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/jan/01/escape-your-comfort-zone-i-cant-ride-a-bike-drive-a-car-or-swim-can-i-learn-to-rollerskate

Life and style

2022-01-01T09:00:45.000Z

Yomi Adegoke

Escape your comfort zone: I can’t ride a bike, drive a car or swim. Can I learn to rollerskate?

Iconsider myself to be “transportationally challenged” – that is to say, I can’t drive a car, ride a bike, ice-skate, ski or swim (at least not in a way that doesn’t endanger others, given my aggressively flailing limbs). Any method of moving from one place to another aside from walking eludes me. It’s probably no surprise to hear that I can’t rollerskate, either. To me, rollerskating borders on black magic. I watch in awe as pros pull off precarious moves with the nonchalance of someone taking a stroll to the corner shop. It’s an enviable, effortless kind of cool, exemplified by the Berlin-based rollerskater Oumi Janta, whose videos went viral during lockdown. Last June, she posted a clip on Instagram that featured her rollerskating while dancing – backwards. It garnered more than 2.9m views and helped launch a cabal of rollerskating influencers. Google searches for “rollerskates” had already started to rise, with global searches for the word increasing by 77% between March and May 2020, when, months later, the fourth season of The Crown furthered the fervour with scenes of Diana, Princess of Wales whizzing her way through Buckingham Palace. So when thinking about how to escape my comfort zone, I plumped for the activity that had the potential to make me look the most stupid, but also, if I managed to pull it off, the coolest. I arrive at Roller Nation in north London on a damp and dreary afternoon, desperate to get my rollerskating lesson over and done with. Glimpsing knee pads on a table as I step inside, I am struck with thoughts of how inevitable it is that I’ll fall over, but my nerves are soon calmed by the venue’s sparkling disco balls and my unnaturally patient instructor, Nele, the founder of the rollerskating school Isle of Skating in London. My first topple comes about six minutes in and means Nele takes me back to basics, teaching me how to fall correctly – which is harder than it sounds. The trick is to land on your knees, rather than your bum. Having perfected the art of falling over, I feel slightly less worried about the likelihood of having to leave the venue on a stretcher. I am ready for more. The second rule of skating, it seems, is multitasking: something else I’m notoriously bad at. Keeping your feet in, knees low, chest high, bum low, and arms in, while propelling yourself forward by shifting your weight from side to side is … difficult. All the while, you must avoid looking at your feet – Nele takes to asking me how many fingers she’s holding up, in order to stop me gazing at the floor and, ultimately, falling towards it. After many unsteady laps around the rink, walking like a penguin on my skates with Nele holding my hand, I am surprised to see I am absentmindedly skating solo. Who would have thought the phrase “practice makes perfect” might have some truth to it? Leaving my comfort zone wasn’t exactly painless – I’m still nursing a bruised arm – but it was worth it. I probably won’t be signing up to a roller derby or showing off my moves at a roller disco just yet, but I wholly intend to keep learning. I leave feeling buoyed up by the experience and hoping that, next summer, I might finally have the confidence to take on my lifelong enemy: the bicycle.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/apr/18/dubravka-ugresic-obituary

Books

2023-04-18T14:41:10.000Z

Marina Warner

Dubravka Ugrešić obituary

The writer Dubravka Ugrešić, who has died aged 73, disliked borders, and came to think of herself as transnational or even postnational. While in her native Yugoslavia, as it then was, at the age of 22 she published her first work, a characteristically experimental and effervescent children’s book called Little Flame (1971). Fording the Stream of Consciousness (1988) dramatises an international literary conference in which characters from books and their authors turn up to confront scholars who are, in their view, horribly misrepresenting them. Light-footed yet learned, it displays Dubravka’s masterly literary range, expertise, and her love of parody and gift of ventriloquism. The witty, playful, absurdist fictions that followed as her life became more complex won esteem and many prizes. In the trouble-free days before the former Yugoslavia was consumed in the civil wars of the 90s, she dwelt in opposing worlds, as a strikingly imaginative writer of fiction and an academic at the University of Zagreb, a city that before Yugoslavia’s formation in 1918 had been part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. She specialised in the Russian avant garde, reading and editing works by writers several of whom had been imprisoned or executed, their works censured and forgotten. After the communist leader Marshal Tito died in 1980, Yugoslavia eventually disaggregated into separate nation states, with Croatia and Slovenia declaring independence in 1991, and Dubravka was caught in the crossfire. With a Bulgarian mother, she was not sufficiently pure ethnically, and as a Russian speaker who had studied in Moscow during the Soviet era she was politically suspect for revanchist nostalgia and communist sympathies. An article in 1992 denounced her, alongside four other women writers including Slavenka Drakulič, as “the five Croatian witches”. Crucifixes began appearing in the university’s rooms and personal offices, and when Dubravka expressed horror at the new nationalists’ selective memory, her colleagues shunned her. In 1993, she left the new nation, almost unthinkingly; as she said later, it was an impulsive move: “I decided to take my broom and fly away.” Her existence as a nomad, a migrant, a transnational began – she rejected the word exile for its claim on glamour. Her writing turned more acerbic and melancholy, characterised by unsparing, Swiftian trenchancy, but nevertheless lit up by mischievous wit and flashes of empathy for the victims of the inane developments she was diagnosing. With an incomparable range of cultural references, she gathered material for scathing essays on the cultural norms in her new places of unbelonging – from psychotherapy to shopping malls, Disney to cosmetic surgery and beauty farms. Her writing turned more acerbic and melancholy, characterised by unsparing, Swiftian trenchancy Ingratiation and flattery were as foreign to Dubravka as snow on the equator. She liked to invoke Isaiah Berlin’s distinction between foxes and hedgehogs, but, although she identified passionately with the creature that knows many things rather than one big thing, she could be more accurately compared to a porcupine, or perhaps a sea urchin whose prickles are even more barbed and lethal. Have a Nice Day (1994) is an essay collection that dissects American hypocrisies; The Culture of Lies (1996) damns the ideological erasures of history; Nobody’s Home (2005) investigates the question of Europe, the meaning of belonging, the nostalgia for a fantasised past; Thank You for Not Reading (2016) fearlessly attacks the venality of the publishing industry. She liked to invoke as a model the boy in the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale The Emperor’s New Clothes, who points out what everybody else is failing to see – or at least pretending not to. Alongside these collections she developed a high-spirited form that she dubbed “patchwork fiction”, composed of autobiography, flâneurism, political satire, literary commentary and carnivalesque plotting. Some of her earliest loves, such as Mikhail Bulgakov, Nikolai Gogol and Velimir Khlebnikov, haunt these dynamic experiments. The novels, like the essays, bubble with her multifaceted enthusiasms – ranging from screwball comedies to children’s literature (Alice, Peter Pan, The Wizard of Oz), Slavic folklore, animal fables and fairytales from the world over. In these patchworks, such as The Museum of Unconditional Surrender (1999), she records, the New York Times reviewer wrote, “not the gory amputation of refugee flight, but arrival’s greyer course of tissue rejection”. In The Ministry of Pain (2004), thought by some critics to be her finest novel, she mines this rich composite seam to portray the freedoms of the west and their distortions, and retrieve “confiscated memories” in the new political order after 1989. In Baba Yaga Laid an Egg (2007) and Fox (2017) she enjoys herself by reclaiming vilified female figures such as crones, shrews – and witches. Born in Kutina, south-east of Zagreb, Dubravka was the daughter of Veta (Elizaveta, nee Stoikova), from Burgas, who worked as a medical administrator, and Nikola Ugrešić, who had fought as a partisan against the fascists during the second world war, and became director of a petrochemical plant in the city. Dubravka studied comparative and Russian literature at the University of Zagreb and in Moscow, and later taught in the institute of literary theory at Zagreb (1973-93). After she was forced to leave, she lived hand-to-mouth on her earnings and awards, surviving on coffee and cigarettes, and on visiting fellowships at US universities – Radcliffe, UCLA, Columbia, Wesleyan – and in Germany and the Netherlands, until more by accident than design she settled in Amsterdam. She took out Dutch citizenship in 2004, always refused to call herself a Croatian writer and continued to write in Serbo-Croatian, despite the Serbian and other aspects of the region’s common language being ostracised in Croatia. When the Royal Society of Literature elected her one of their international writers in 2021, she wrote how delighted she was because she had no home but literature. When elected to the Royal Society of Literature, she wrote how delighted she was because she had no home but literature She did begin to revisit the land of her birth, mainly to be with her mother during her last years; she travelled back with her to Sofia, but, as she relates wistfully in Baba Yaga Laid an Egg, they found nothing recognisable. Dubravka also spent summers by the sea on the Dalmatian coast with her brother and his family. She wrote in a deeply melancholy vein as well as with adroit comic wit: she recognised that she had an element of litost, as explored by Milan Kundera: a pervasive ironical ruefulness which is “a deep understanding of human inadequacy”. Her unusual mixture of Orwellian stringency and madcap lightness won her readers across 30 languages. Awards included the Neustadt international prize for literature in 2016, and she was much bruited as a candidate for the Nobel. Writing in what she termed “a small language”, studiedly ignored in her own country (her books were even removed from libraries at one time), Dubravka learned to speak English very expressively, but she depended on translators, among them Michael Henry Heim, Celia Hawkesworth and, for the recent works, David Williams and Ellen Elias-Bursač. Her honesty and straight-talking, her shafts and barbs, did not make her life any easier. Dubravka prided herself that she stood in a proud, endangered writerly lineage; she was also an affectionate, funny, thoughtful and always stimulating friend. She is survived by her brother Siniša and his children, Korina and Nikola. Dubravka Ugrešić, writer, born 27 March 1949; died 17 March 2023 This article was amended on 19 April 2023. Veta Ugrešić came from the Bulgarian city of Burgas, not Varna as an earlier version said.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2020/feb/05/bristols-old-police-headquarters-is-now-a-boutique-hostel-with-a-social-conscience

Travel

2020-02-05T06:30:02.000Z

Nick Hunt

Bristol’s old police headquarters is now a boutique hostel – with a social conscience

Not so many years ago, arriving on a Friday night at Bridewell Street in the centre of Bristol (better known as The Bridewell) might have meant a night in the cells. Until 2005, this cluster of Grade II-listed buildings housed a police headquarters, police station and law courts, as well as a fire station. Since then it has been many things, including a graffiti gallery and a circus space – I have dim memories of coming to a rave here, once – and now it’s home to the Bristol Wing, a new boutique hostel with a social conscience. Passing through a doorway engraved with the words Bristol Police Headquarters, my partner and I found ourselves in a stately 1920s foyer with forest-green walls, a black-and-white tiled floor and a restored cage lift: it’s a bit like a scene from Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel. It would be tempting to describe this as a sanctuary from the streets outside, but that would miss the point. Along with its green credentials (wood-fibre insulation, solar panels and bird boxes on the roof), this hostel, opened in January 2018, provides nine single bedrooms for young homeless people every night, as well as one-to-one support, subsidised by fees from the commercial rooms and dorms. The need for such a service is desperately apparent. As it gets more popular, and gentrified, Bristol has experienced a huge rise in homelessness: 128% over the past three years. As we walked through the centre of town, it seemed that every shop doorway sheltered a figure in a sleeping bag, the fallout of austerity and a street drug crisis. Shining lights: an eco-break in Northumberland's dark-sky country Read more Inside Bristol Wing, however, the reception/kitchen/hangout space had an air of almost-scholarly calm (no stag or hen parties are allowed), with people sitting reading books and quietly conversing. A group of Spaniards, Germans and Finns attending a circus skills course were discussing what dogs and cats say in European languages (Finnish dogs say “hau hau”, apparently); it’s a conversation I must have heard in hostels on five continents. The convivial atmosphere, with help-yourself tea and coffee, is conducive to breaking down barriers between paying guests and those without a home; across the foyer, a snug with armchairs, sofas and bookshelves is another encouragement towards social intermingling. Other community-minded touches include a resident chaplain, available every Wednesday morning, and a free weekly feast at which guests can volunteer to cook or simply take a seat and get to know their neighbours. The hostel’s communal ‘hangout’ space Our first-floor bedroom had stylish Anglepoise lamps and an enormous square bed, plus an en suite shower room. The window (thermally efficient, according to the blurb), overlooked the spacious yard of the old fire station next door, which now houses a performance space, community radio station Ujima and the Creative Youth Network, which offers support services for young people. On the evening we arrived, the station was hosting a club night – happily, the windows insulate sound just as well as temperature – and a couple of costumed fire jugglers were swinging flaming orbs outside, which the building’s former owners might have taken as a professional challenge. Family room at the hostel This repurposed municipal complex is the perfect place from which to explore the city’s green and alternative side. Bristol, which regularly appears on lists of the UK’s best places to live, is also one of its most polluted, with levels of nitrogen dioxide almost twice the legal limit; a recent study claimed that pollution kills five people a week. Congested it may be, but the city is fighting back. Visitors arriving here by coach can’t fail to notice the Extinction Rebellion artworks lining the M32, and pressure from environmental campaigners – not least the School Strike for Climate movement – has led to two recent victories: a vote to ban diesel vehicles from the centre from 2021, and the creation of a Citizens’ Climate Assembly. Ashley Vale, in the neighbourhood of St Werburghs, is the catalyst for much of this, and a good port of call if you want to escape the congestion. This community of eco-friendly self-builds, surrounded by allotments and smallholdings, is only half an hour’s walk from the hostel but feels more like the countryside, with the grunts of pigs (and the smell of manure) drifting from the free city farm, and an indoor climbing centre in a deconsecrated church. It’s worth stopping in St Werburghs to eat: The Cauldron serves ethically and locally sourced food cooked over open coals and in a wood-fired oven (mains from £14) and is a great place for brunch (from £6). The Miner’s Arms up the road is one of the friendliest pubs in Bristol. The Cauldron restaurant Not far away, richly graffitied Stokes Croft – scene of a riot in 2011 over plans to open a Tesco Express – is still the frontline between gentrification and alternative culture, with an ongoing battle to save the artists’ studios and community space of Hamilton House from developers. A neighbourhood gem is the Cube Cinema, an independent “microplex” behind King Square, with £5 film tickets (free for asylum seekers), “feral trade” coffee brought by ship from Central America, and a radical, eclectic programme of music, performance and storytelling. Having fought – and won – its own battle against eviction in 2014 (a community fundraising campaign enabled the purchase of the building) it is a heartening example of Bristol’s independent spirit. From Bristol Wing we spent our weekend exploring these alternative corners of town, a stone’s throw – but a world away – from the commercialism of the city centre. We left on the Sunday morning, well-slept, our £3.95 continental breakfasts inside us. The doors to the former police headquarters swung shut on a project that is doing its part towards making the city, and the world, a slightly kinder place. Accommodation at The Bristol Wing was provided by Sawday’s, dorm beds from £18 a night, doubles from £50 a night Nick Hunt is author of The Parakeeting of London: An Adventure in Gonzo Ornithology (Paradise Road, £10) Looking for a holiday with a difference? Browse Guardian Holidays to see a range of fantastic trips

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/18/what-happened-at-cop27-on-day-11

Environment

2022-11-18T18:32:11.000Z

Bibi van der Zee

What happened at Cop27 on day 11?

The biggest news of the day broke on Friday morning, with the announcement that the EU would agree to a loss and damage fund to help poor countries with climate disasters. The climate summit will run until Saturday, according to Agence France-Presse. This is not really a surprise to anyone. Youth activists staged a Friday climate strike to mark the last formal day of negotiations. Meanwhile during the talks, Nakeeyat Dramani, a 10-year-old Ghanaian climate activist, asked delegates to “have a heart”. Elsewhere the activists who interrupted the US president, Joe Biden, lost their summit passes, as did the Ukrainian protester who spoke out at a Russian press conference. A surprisingly large number of gas deals were struck at the summit, with more than a dozen set up. And Desmog crunched the numbers and found that representatives from big agriculture more than doubled at Cop27.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/food/2020/mar/12/chef-michel-roux-dies-aged-79

Food

2020-03-12T20:25:45.000Z

Mattha Busby

Michel Roux Sr, chef who reshaped British cooking, dies aged 78

Michel Roux Sr, the French chef and restaurateur whose work profoundly reshaped British cooking, has died aged 78. His family were at his side at the family home in Bray, Berkshire, when he passed away from a longstanding lung condition, idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, on Wednesday evening. They described him on Thursday as a “humble genius” who had an “insatiable appetite” for life. “We are grateful to have shared our lives with this extraordinary man and we’re so proud of all he’s achieved. A humble genius, legendary chef, popular author and charismatic teacher, Michel leaves the world reeling in his wake,” a statement said. “For many, he was a father figure inspiring all with his insatiable appetite for life and irresistible enthusiasm. But above all, we will miss his mischievous sense of fun, his huge, bottomless heart and generosity and kindness that knew no bounds. Michel’s star will shine forever, lighting the way for a generation of chefs to follow.” Michel Roux obituary Read more Roux brought Paris-style fine dining to London in the 1960s and he leaves an enduring legacy. He trained some of the most distinguished chefs in London, including Gordon Ramsay, Pierre Koffmann and Marco Pierre White. Antony Worrall Thompson said Roux changed the face of British dining and that thanks to him nobody could ever dismiss the quality of food in the UK. “He was a great man, he always had an arty glint in his eye, he had a great chuckle and was a great chef,” he told the Guardian. “He and his brother Albert adopted this country very much like their own. They were the first people in the country to win three Michelin stars. We were considered a joke before them.” Worrall Thompson, who was mentored by Roux and asked him and his wife, Robyn, to be his first child’s godparents, celebrated how he “put cooking on the map” in the UK. “No one can ever say the food in Britain is bad any more,” he said. “They started that; They lifted it out of the grey, Edwardian era. There was no passion in it.” Michel and Albert Roux opened Le Gavroche on Sloane Square, in London, in 1967 and it became the first restaurant in the UK to win a Michelin star, before going on to become the country’s first three-Michelin-starred restaurant. Roux’s nephew, Michel Roux Jr, is also a renowned chef and now runs the ground-breaking restaurant. Roux’s other restaurant, the Waterside Inn in Bray-on-Thames, emulated its Michelin rating and has held the accolade ever since; the only restaurant in Britain to have retained its three stars for more than 30 years. Roux was born in Charolles, a small town in Bourgogne, eastern France, in April 1941. He worked as a pastry cook in the British embassy in Paris and for the Rothschild family before moving to London where he opened the restaurants. He went on to write books, appear on television programmes and found a prestigious competition for chefs. He was awarded an OBE in 2002, and received France’s highest honour, the Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur, two years later. Brian Turner, a chef and the president of the Royal Academy of Culinary Arts, said Michel and Albert had a poor upbringing and that experience taught them to create wonderful, flavoursome food “out of anything”. “His real legacy is the Roux scholarship, a major culinary prize which has changed the lives of chefs for the better over the last 30 years,” he said. “He will be sorely missed. He and his brother have done an awful lot for this country.”

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/dec/02/nicholas-lezards-best-books-paperbacks-2015

Books

2015-12-02T12:00:08.000Z

Nicholas Lezard

Nicholas Lezard’s best paperbacks of 2015

To get the bad news out of the way first: the scariest paperback of the year was Elizabeth Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction (Bloomsbury). It considers the vast damage being done to the biosphere by human beings, summed up by one scientist thus: “Look around you. Kill half of what you see. Or if you’re feeling generous, just kill about a quarter of what you see.” For life-affirming relief from this, touching on subjects of deep importance – women’s identities and roles, from youth to middle age; cancer; fitting into society; and much more – it has to be Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys by Viv Albertine, pictured (Faber). Albertine was the guitarist in the groundbreaking and even-better-than-you-remember-them feminist punk band the Slits, who I suspect inoculated many young men against sexism at the end of the 1970s: and this memoir is hilarious, moving and thought-provoking. It’s probably my favourite book of the year, and its popularity one of those phenomena that make you think that not all hope is lost. Best books of 2015 – part one Read more Will Hodgkinson’s memoir The House Is Full of Yogis (Harper Collins) describes his father’s sudden conversion, following near-death from salmonella, to the Indian religious cult of the Brahma Kumaris (tenets: vegetarianism, asceticism, white pyjama suits). It’s both hugely engaging and mind-boggling, especially when Hodgkinson’s tabloid journalist mother writes a bestseller called Sex Is Not Compulsory just, so it would seem, to wind people up, and with no consideration for her mortified children. She’s a splendid creation of egotism whom imagination alone would be hard-pressed to conjure. You may have aged relatives to consider. Nostalgic agitproppers with an interest in the capital’s history will love David Rosenberg’s Rebel Footprints (Pluto), which arranges London’s radical past into easy but fascinating and inspiring historical walks. Those who did national service, or managed to avoid it, will particularly appreciate National Service (Penguin) by Richard Vinen, a long book that never becomes wearisome, and has at least one fascinating item on every page. My favourites include the story about John Peel’s brother-in-law insisting Peel address him as “sir”, and the squaddie in church who was shouted at by a corporal: “Oi! You take your hat off in the house of the Lord, cunt!” Of course, you don’t have to be old to love this book. More genteel is Stefan Zweig’s monograph, Montaigne (Pushkin), a beautiful, perhaps even the best, reflection on the great French essayist. Best books of 2015 – part two Read more There has been some great fiction this year, too. Reprints: Victor Serge’s Midnight in the Century (NYRB Classics), which tells you, sometimes with deadpan, horrified humour, always with intelligence and honesty, what it was really like to live in Stalin’s USSR, either as a citizen or a guest of the gulag; and Danilo Kiš’s Encyclopedia of the Dead (Penguin Modern Classics), one of those story collections that brings to mind Jorge Luis Borges but seems somehow more full of circulating blood, pumped by a heart as well as a brain: thought experiments that can move almost to tears. New(er) fiction: Wake Up, Sir! by Jonathan Ames (Pushkin) is a seemingly bizarre attempt to update PG Wodehouse’s Jeeves novels to contemporary America – but an extremely successful one, too, true in spirit not only to the original but to the concerns of modern fiction. It’s a Necker Cube of a book in that it can be either extremely funny or extremely sad, depending on the face that presents itself to you as you read (it is of course both, and everyone who bought this book on my recommendation has told me they loved it). Do also read, whether you are new to his long-running character Frank Bascombe or not, Richard Ford’s Let Me Be Frank With You (Bloomsbury), in which Ford’s genial, wise, droll narrator muses on the vagaries of life as it shuffles through its autumn. It’s delivered in prose that is effortlessly stylish, exact and always trembling on the edge of great humour. Off to the States? … Stephen Fry as Jeeves and Hugh Laurie as Bertie Wooster in Jeeves and Wooster. Photograph: ITV / Rex Features Back on this side of the Atlantic, Guy Ware’s The Fat of Fed Beasts (Salt) is Samuel Beckett by way of Quentin Tarantino, with a good shake of Franz Kafka: featuring guns, bank robbery, metaphysics and the question of good and evil. There can be only one contender for sports book of the year: Giles Smith’s Roy of the Rovers: the Official Autobiography (Arrow). The man, the myth, the legend, the suspiciously large number of kidnappings – it’s all here. If you can’t make your mind up about any of these, just buy a huge stack, if not the entire list, of Penguin Little Black Classics’ celebration of 80 years of being in business. There are 80 60-or-so-page extracts from 80 works covering millennia: 80p each or £49.99 for the lot, which you can keep in a box by the bed and dip into, as you would a box of chocolates. And if 50 quid seems a lot for a bookish present, reflect that it is considerably cheaper than a degree in the humanities, and probably, these days, at least as useful. Save at least 30% Browse all the critics’ choices at bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. From now until Christmas, 20p from each title you order will go to the Guardian and Observer charity appeal 2015 Best books of 2015 Fiction of the year Crime and thrillers of the year Science fiction and fantasy of the year Biographies and memoirs of the year Sports books of the year Children’s books of the year Nature books of the year Politics books of the year History books of the year Paperbacks of the year Music books of the year Food books of the year Drink books of the year Stocking-filler books of the year Best art books of the year Best architecture books of the year Best graphic novels of the year Best photography books of the year Vote now: what was your favourite book of the year?

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/sep/17/top-boy-soundtrack-review-drake-dave-headie-one

Music

2019-09-17T08:54:47.000Z

Ammar Kalia

Top Boy soundtrack review – a showcase of UK rap's strength and diversity

There is seemingly no end to Drake’s adoration of UK rap culture. Beginning with his impromptu features at Skepta’s London shows in 2015 and an effusive back-and-forth on social media, the Canadian rapper was soon bringing up obscure references to smoking a blem and wearing Hermès in “Gyalchester” on 2017’s More Life. Yet the pinnacle of his grime fascination came with the Channel 4 series Top Boy. Consistently posting stills of the show on his Instagram, featuring clumsy captions like “real bod man”, he couldn’t get enough of the east London drug gang drama. Cancelled after two seasons, Drake has now been pivotal in bringing the show back to life on Netflix. It’s apt, then, that with grime’s ascension into the mainstream since Top Boy went off-air in 2013 that music is central to the new series. This compilation isn’t strictly a soundtrack but a collection of tracks loosely inspired by the show, featuring some of its newest onscreen stars like Dave and Little Simz, as well as standout talents from the wider scene like AJ Tracey, Ghetts and Headie One. The artwork for Top Boy. Photograph: OVO Sound Highlights come from the bigger names like Dave on Professor X, employing his characteristic verbal dexterity, rapping, “I’m a top boy like Sully but darker” over a down-tempo undulating instrumental, or “I do seafood Saturdays when I see your girl / Only oysters she’s ever had were on TFL” on the Godfather-esque God’s Eye, while AJ Tracey is frenetically paced over a UK garage-referencing Elastic. Numbers like Nafe Smallz’s Riding on E and Teeway’s Feeling It are less remarkable, though, playing like lacklustre covers of Drake tracks in their spartan mid-tempo production and Auto-Tuned hooks. Even with some middling tracks, the album documents the breadth and depth of UK rap’s influence in 2019. From Little Simz’s incisive, high-drama standout Venom, or veteran Ghetts’ sub-heavy Listen, it is a vibrant, tangibly British set of tracks, brought together under the umbrella of a cult show that has come to visually represent this music. The taunting singsong flow of UK drill, arguably the sound of London gang life in 2019, is rightly represented in strong tracks from Headie One and SL. Drake, of course, closes the record with Behind Barz, and leaves a bitter taste with his grim pastiche: an embarrassing hybrid of drill and Skepta delivered in a ripe Jamaican-inflected accent. He is better employed instead as a fan and A&R, allowing the true stars, with their intuitive grasp of the British genre, to shine.

Full

http://www.theguardian.com/weather/2012/jun/29/colorado-springs-wildfire-survival

Weather

2012-06-29T14:46:00.000Z

Suzanne Goldenberg

Surviving Colorado's wildfires: 'Nothing in there is important. I need to get out'

The full weight of Bill and Christine Poley's loss in Colorado's wildfires – 5,000 sq ft house, hand-made quilts and family heirlooms, model train and stamp collections – bore down on them in stages. The first report came over a police scanner on the same night as their smoky chaotic flight. The next day brought more grim news from a firefighter friend. The Denver Post published an aerial photo of burnt-out homes on their cul-de-sac that – agonisingly – stopped just short of their home, But reality for the Poleys, and for hundreds of other families in Colorado Springs, did not entirely hit until they were called to an emotional public meeting on Thursday night to be officially informed that theirs was among an estimated 347 homes burnt to the ground by the fire. Until then, Bill Poley had clung on to hope, saying: "A little part of me thinks it is still there." The Poley's house on Talleson Court was in the Mountain Shadows neighbourhood, where entire roads were incinerated in a matter of hours when a giant ball of fire exploded across protection lines earlier this week. Bill and Christine, their adult son Jeremy and his girlfriend Brooke Bradley, got out with only moments to spare. Flames had already jumped through to a neighbouring home by the time the evacuation order went out. Most of their neighbours had left, and the streets were obscured by smoke and bits of ash and falling debris. The roads were clogged, and people were driving aggressively. "It was like something you see in a movie," Christine Poley said. "We didn't even stop to talk. We were just flying by each other saying, 'Did you gets this, did you get that?'," she said. "It was such a rush. I looked at things inside my china cabinet and I thought, 'There is nothing in there that is important. I just need to get out.'" She even told Jeremy to leave the family photo albums. He ignored her, and grabbed them anyway. She was feeling one or two twinges of regret now. She could easily have grabbed one of her prized quilts off a rail and stuffed it in the car. Bill could have grabbed one of his locomotives. Then there is her crafting business, which Christine ran from the home. Her entire inventory of rare fabrics was in the basement. The aerial photographs they have been scanning on their cellphones provide frustrating little detail. The building the Poley point to as their home looks more like an archaeological ruin – just a hint of a foundation. It had been their home since 1998, when the Poleys returned to the area from California, attracted to Mountain Shadows in part because of the trees. Bill Poley acknowledges that seems strange now. "I do realise rather abruptly the area we live in is rather more dangerous than I had thought," he said. The authorities have promised a bus trip within the next few days, but residents were told at Thursday's meeting it was still too dangerous to allow them to sift through the wreckage. But the Poleys said their minds are already made up about what to do next: they will rebuild, hopefully on the same site. Bill, a retired engineer, had already spoken to their builder. He even had the original plans, he said – although he then remembered they were in the house. "We may look at the site and say: 'Oh my lord things are so bad, we can't put up with it,'" said Bill Poley. "But I am 70% sure – she is 100% sure – we are going to rebuild." His wife agreed. "I am so looking forward to rebuilding," Christine Poley said. "It's like getting my house back." The only caveat, said Jeremy. was if the area was left so desolate none of their neighbours would want to return. But there was reason to hope on Friday. Officials said the destruction – though total in the Poleys' case – seemed confined to pockets. Firefighters managed to save more than 18,000 other homes in Mountain Shadows. Even in the Poleys' immediate area, some trees were still standing and their neighbours' houses looked intact. And, as they all acknowledge, it could have been far, far worse. Christine Poley was several minutes behind the others in reaching their pre-arranged meeting point after their evacuation. There was no answer on her cellphone. "When we got to the house and Christine wasn't there – that was probably the worst five or 10 minutes of my life," said Bill Poley tearing up. "We got out what was important, which is ourselves," said Jeremy Poley.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2021/nov/20/manchester-united-have-bigger-problems-than-just-solskjaer

Football

2021-11-20T22:30:04.000Z

Jonathan Liew

Dysfunctional Manchester United have bigger problems than just Solskjær | Jonathan Liew

Manchester United are a club hooked on instant highs and short-term fixes, where memories are short and judgments are definitive, right up until the moment they aren’t. New episodes arrive twice a week. Redemption is – usually – only ever 90 minutes away. United’s 4-1 defeat at Watford on Saturday proved a watershed moment for Ole Gunnar Solskjær’s management, the final straw – except the humiliation against Manchester City was supposedly the final straw. So too the 5-0 trouncing at home to Liverpool. Or the time they conceded a goal to Istanbul Basaksehir without a single defender in their own half. Manchester United board decide to sack Solskjær at emergency meeting Read more Even so, the dead energy to United at this particular moment seems vaguely new and vaguely familiar all at once. The glumness and the vacant stares are redolent of the Louis van Gaal end-days; the half-paced running and basic lack of sacrifice a throwback to the José Mourinho years. If United in their worst moments under Solskjær have occasionally looked like a team running around with no idea what it was doing, then it was at least marginally preferable to them not running around at all. Afterwards Solskjær was asked where things were going wrong. Honestly, you may as well have asked him to explain the internal combustion engine. “That’s human beings,” he said in response to a question about why so many garlanded footballers were playing so drastically within themselves, and from his perspective it probably is that bafflingly simple. Humans. They play football. Sometimes they win. Sometimes they lose. Either way, enjoy it. One actually felt for him. It’s hardly Solskjær’s fault he was handed a job for which he was so patently ill-equipped, and with this in mind it’s probably fair to say he exceeded expectations. He may not have the personality or the CV to mould a dressing room in his image, the tactical nuance required to coach title-winning sides. But for three years he at least kept the show on the road, reached a European final, made some memories. Nobody really saw that coming. 1:04 'I have belief in myself': Ole Gunnar Solskjær defiant after Watford defeat – video And yet by a curious quirk of fate it is probably Solskjær’s lack of intrinsic ability that had kept him in the job this long. It is often said that managers can weather defeats but not being turned into a punchline. Solskjær, by contrast, was appointed as a punchline, the Norwegian Ted Lasso, a fun sketch taken just a little too far. And so when things started going wrong the only real option was to double down on the joke, spin it out, suspend our disbelief even longer. To do anything else would be like Jason Sudeikis breaking the fourth wall and earnestly admitting to the audience that yes, the whole thing was actually fictional from the start. As for the football itself, United were dysfunctional before Solskjaer arrived and will probably continue to be dysfunctional after he has gone. At times one could glimpse the bones of something promising in there: a second-placed league finish, big European scalps, a home-grown core with a sturdy defence and an exciting forward line (although not always at the same time). And so, in retrospect, the decision to go all-in on Jadon Sancho and Cristiano Ronaldo in the summer rather than strengthening in midfield or at full-back may go down as one of those crossroads moments in the club’s modern history: the point at which they were on the verge of building a new house, but instead decided to blow it up for the YouTube numbers. Sign up to The Recap, our weekly email of editors’ picks. Indeed, perhaps the biggest mistake United could make at this point was to conclude that Solskjær is the root of their current problems. The rot goes far deeper: an imbalanced squad of many egos but few leaders, where players are signed on their individual merits and play largely the same way. The need for some sort of grand idea or defining identity can occasionally be overplayed a little – what is Chelsea’s defining identity over the last decade, for example? But at a bare minimum you need a proper structure, applicable footballing expertise at boardroom level, a coach with more tools in his locker than “just believe in yourselves”. United are too big and too rich to keep making the same mistakes indefinitely. Wealth and power are like an infinite supply of lottery tickets; one day, eventually, you’ll nail it. It was Solskjær’s eternal ambition to be the man holding the ticket when that day came. Alas, his luck has finally run out.

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https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/feb/11/in-brief-splinters-leslie-jamison-fervour-toby-lloyd-elderflora-modern-history-ancient-trees-jared-farmer-review

Books

2024-02-11T15:00:15.000Z

Hephzibah Anderson

In brief: Splinters: A Memoir; Fervour; Elderflora: A Modern History of Ancient Trees – review

Splinters: A Memoir Leslie Jamison Granta, £16.99, pp272 This first memoir finds lauded essayist Jamison navigating bumpy new motherhood, a bitter divorce and the pandemic, yet its pages are lit by flinty humour and grownup joy as thought and feeling are joined in prose that’s intimate and exacting. It’s never less than gripping either, as she takes stock of how she’s been remade – and reinvigorated – by the dismantling of a marriage and the insistent needs of an infant. New romance flares and fades for her, but from the sharp fragments of her title she fashions a mother-daughter love story that reads like a classic. Fervour Toby Lloyd Sceptre, £16.99, pp320 Lloyd’s suspenseful debut novel propels the reader deep into the heart of an idiosyncratic – and decidedly dysfunctional – family. Religious Jews and intellectual sticklers Hannah and Eric Rosenthal have tended to favour their brilliant daughter Elsie over her siblings. When she begins behaving oddly after the death of her grandfather Yosef, a Holocaust survivor and the subject of Hannah’s forthcoming, somewhat sensationalist book, they blame her obsession with Kabbalah, but younger brother Tovyah has other ideas. Infused with motifs from Jewish folklore and classic horror films, Fervour animates themes of betrayal, belief and the past’s long tail. Elderflora: A Modern History of Ancient Trees Jared Farmer Picador, £10.99, pp448 (paperback) Having spent years resisting being labelled a “tree guy”, environmental historian Farmer indulges his passion in this fascinating and wide-ranging exploration of ancient trees. Although traditionally associated with gods and gurus, they have been vandalised by people, who plundered them for land, resources and knowledge. Determined to be hopeful – “or least anti-hopeless” – Farmer looks forwards as well as back, reminding us that today’s trees are the “elderflora” of tomorrow, however things pan out for our own species. To order Splinters, Fervour or Elderflora go to guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/mar/24/no-bottle-deposit-return-scheme-for-most-of-uk-until-2024-at-earliest

Environment

2021-03-24T17:38:00.000Z

Sandra Laville

No bottle deposit return scheme for most of UK until 2024 at earliest

A promised deposit return scheme for plastic bottles to cut marine pollution will not be in place in England, Wales and Northern Ireland until late 2024 at the earliest – six years after it was announced by the government as a key environmental policy. Critics said the delay was “embarrassing” and not the sign of a government committed to tackling plastic pollution. The environment minister Rebecca Pow announced the publication of a second consultation on a deposit return scheme (DRS) on Wednesday. The document revealed no such scheme would be introduced until late 2024 – more than a year after the original deadline for the initiative and after the next general election in May of that year. The new consultation document said ministers were still committed to a deposit return scheme but Covid-19 “had disrupted the economy and society in unimaginable ways, with many people reassessing their values, decisions and priorities in both the immediate and longer term”. “On this basis, our second consultation will build on the first consultation, offering a chance to explore further what the continued appetite is for a deposit return scheme in a ‘post-Covid’ context,” it read. A DRS was first announced in 2018 by the then environment secretary, Michael Gove, to cut the litter polluting the land and sea by returning a small cash sum to consumers who return their bottles and cans. It came after years of campaigning and with a warning from Gove that it was “absolutely vital we act now to tackle this threat and curb the millions of plastic bottles a day that go unrecycled”. The government’s manifesto promise in 2019 was to introduce a deposit return scheme to incentivise people to recycle plastic and glass and the first consultation was met with a high level of support for the scheme. But after years of discussions and ministerial engagement the new consultation document published by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, showed no decision had yet been made on what kind of deposit scheme should be in place. Options include an all-in deposit return scheme for all plastic bottles, glass bottles and aluminium drinks cans and a scheme that just covers containers bought and used in takeaways. Across the UK, consumers go through an estimated 13bn plastic drinks bottles. Only 7.5bn are recycled. The remaining 5.5bn are landfilled, littered or incinerated. The scheme when introduced would cover PET plastic bottles, glass bottles and steel and aluminium cans. The Scottish government has plans to start its all in deposit return scheme in July next year. Pow told the environmental audit committee on Wednesday that the DRS was important to put in place a “fully circular economy … which we have talked about for so long. “One of the really important aspects of it is to reduce litter,” she said. The government defended the delays, saying: “We believe this revision presents a realistic yet equally ambitious timeline to implement a complex but incredibly important policy in the most effective way possible.” But Sam Chetan-Welsh, a political campaigner at Greenpeace, said: “Taking more than seven years to introduce a bottle return scheme, when other countries have had them for decades, is embarrassing. “This is not the action of a government that is serious about tackling plastic pollution, and is nowhere near world-leading. Further delay means billions more plastic and glass bottles and cans will be dumped or burned. This is asking our rivers, oceans and wildlife for an extension they can’t afford to give.”

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2016/nov/30/art-world-protest-fate-of-new-art-gallery-walsall-grayson-perry-letter-closure

Culture

2016-11-30T19:15:26.000Z

Hannah Ellis-Petersen

Art world heavyweights protest over fate of New Art Gallery Walsall

Leading figures in the British art world, from Grayson Perry to incoming Tate director Alex Farquharson, have written a letter to the Guardian protesting against the potential closure of a gallery in the West Midlands that has been a prototype for others. The New Art Gallery Walsall faces closure after local government funding cuts left the council needing to make £85m of savings over the next four years. The letter, which had 35 signatories including artists and gallery and theatre directors, expresses “deep concern” that the gallery might fall victim to austerity and describes the art space as “a symbol of the social and economic regeneration of Walsall”. Bitter realities of arts funding amid the cuts | Letters Read more The gallery opened in 2000 at a public cost of £21m. Its success in drawing in audiences from the local area, as well as providing a much-needed fillip to Walsall, an area in which 40% of children live in poverty, has been used as a template for regional galleries that opened subsequently, including the Hepworth Wakefield, the Turner Contemporary in Margate and the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art. As well as Perry and Farquharson, others objecting to the potential closure include Hans Ulrich Obrist, artistic director of the Serpentine Gallery; Iwona Blazwick, director of the Whitechapel Gallery; Judy Kelly, artistic director of the Southbank Centre; Jonathan Reekie, director of Somerset House, and the artist Richard Wentworth. The letter stresses that the 3,000 works that make up the gallery’s collection, which includes paintings by Vincent van Gogh, Amedeo Modigliani, JMW Turner, Lucien Freud and Claude Monet, was a testament to its important presence in the British art world and ensured such prestigious works could be seen by those who live outside of London. “The gallery’s closure would be a devastating blow to the life of the community and send a signal that the authorities have no regard for the value of the arts to those very communities,” says the letter. Under the proposals, Walsall council would stop funding the gallery. This would leave it with just the £880,000 a year it receives from the Arts Council. However, without local backing, the gallery is likely to be seen as unviable and therefore not eligible for further funding, which would lead to closure. A closure would also undermine the ambitions by the Arts Council to support more regional institutions, outside of London, to ensure funding is more evenly spread. The New Art Gallery was among those singled out by Sir Nicholas Serota this year when he announced he would be leaving the Tate to become chairman of Arts Council England. Serota said there had been a transformation in the public’s appreciation of the visual arts over the past 30 years, which was driven by “national and regional museums and the new galleries that have opened across the country in places like Walsall, Margate, Wakefield, Gateshead and Nottingham”. The decision about the fate of New Art Gallery will be made by the council on 23 February. However, the gallery has to submit its Arts Council funding application for the next four years by 31 January, before it knows how much future funding, if any, it will be given by Walsall council. This puts the entire grant application at risk. As well as the threat to the art gallery, all but one of Walsall’s 16 libraries are under consideration for closure. The petition to save them has more than 2,500 signatures.

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https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/dec/18/octopus-energy-raises-800m-aims-create-3000-green-jobs-uk

Business

2023-12-18T14:53:00.000Z

Alex Lawson

Octopus Energy raises $800m and aims to create 3,000 green jobs in UK

Octopus Energy has raised $800m (£630m) from its shareholders in a move that values the company at nearly $8bn, weeks after it became Britain’s biggest power supplier. Its existing investors, which include Japan’s Tokyo Gas and Al Gore’s Generation Investment Management, have ploughed in extra cash as the value of the utility company surged by 60% since its last fundraising round two years ago. The company said the investment was expected to create “3,000 green jobs” in the UK in 2024. Earlier this month, Octopus completed the acquisition of Shell Energy – which the oil major put up for sale earlier this year – making it the UK’s largest domestic power supplier. Octopus was founded in 2015 by Greg Jackson, an entrepreneur who has had several ventures including a customer relationship tech business sold for £4.5m in 2006. It has grown rapidly to compete with established players in the energy industry, including British Gas and E.ON, during a decade of flux in the industry. Octopus emerged in a wave of upstarts attempting to disrupt existing domestic gas and electricity suppliers. However, nearly 30 suppliers collapsed amid a surge in wholesale gas prices. Octopus’s growth has been aided by the acquisition last year of the supplier Bulb Energy, which collapsed into a government-handled administration, in a deal that was challenged by rivals in court. Separately, Octopus said the deal to buy Shell Energy, which has 1.3 million home energy customers, meant it had a greater share of the domestic electricity supply market, with 21.3%, than British Gas’s 20.4%, according to figures from the industry regulator, Ofgem. Jackson stressed the company’s green credentials on announcing the fundraising: “With the renewed commitment seen at Cop and our model proven, we will invest to accelerate our growth and create a truly global clean energy giant.” The Australian firm Origin Energy and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board also participated in the fundraising. The Origin Energy chief executive, Frank Calabria, said of the investment: “The success of Octopus since our initial investment in May 2020 has exceeded all expectations and cemented our belief in its unique capabilities and strong platform for future growth.” Sign up to Business Today Free daily newsletter Get set for the working day – we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning 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. Jackson has been a keen champion for the rollout of heat pumps in the UK. If the Labour party gains power, Keir Starmer will be under pressure to set out his plans for the technology, amid calls for low-income households to be given a free electric heat pump to replace their gas boiler. The Labour leader and the shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, toured an Octopus facility in Slough earlier this year to examine technology the firm is working on.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/15/amanda-knoxs-former-boyfriend-raffaele-sollecito-defends-social-network-for-graves

World news

2016-02-15T04:37:13.000Z

Elle Hunt

Amanda Knox's ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito defends 'social network for graves'

The Italian man who spent four years in prison for the murder of the British student Meredith Kercher has denied that his new business venture, “a social network for graves”, is morbid. Raffaele Sollecito – who announced last month that he is seeking more than €500,000 (A$790,000) in compensation for wrongful imprisonment – has expanded on his vision for Memories to the English-language Italian newspaper the Local. Members will be able to create profile pages for their deceased friends and relatives, on which they can post photos and videos. They will also be able to order “graveside services” such as flowers, candles, wreaths and even the cleaning of tombstones and mausoleums online through Memories’ bespoke “e-commerce portal”. Prices for services will start at €45. Sollecito is also hoping to offer a personalised urn service. Memories’ website describes it as a “work in progress”. Sollecito has been contacted by email for comment. Asked by the Local if he did not think that the enterprise was “a little morbid”, he said it was “innovative”. “There’s no other service like this at the moment,” he said. “I think it’s a really sweet idea and a good way to remember the dead.” Amanda Knox acquitted because of 'stunning flaws' in investigation Read more He said he had come up with the idea after the death of his mother in 2005. The 31-year-old and his former girlfriend Amanda Knox spent nearly four years in prison for the murder of Kercher before being cleared by Italy’s highest court last March. He announced in January that he is seeking more than €500,000 – the maximum amount he could have asked for – in compensation for wrongful imprisonment. Sollecito completed a degree in computer science through the University of Perugia while in prison in 2008. He received a €66,000 grant from Puglia’s regional government for Memories, as well as some funding from his family “to cover small expenses”. He began working on Memories in October 2014 and told the Local it would be online by the European spring. Though people can sign up to Memories from anywhere in the world, it will only cover graves in Italy, says Sollecito, though he has ambitions of global expansion.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/jan/01/doctor-who-new-year-special-recap-revolution-of-the-daleks

Television & radio

2021-01-01T20:00:18.000Z

Martin Belam

Doctor Who new year special recap – Revolution of the Daleks

“I’d rather not have met her. Because having met her, and then being without her, that’s worse” Let’s get the Judoon in the room out of the way. That episode was no Robot of Sherwood, Jo Patterson was no Harriet Jones, and I’m no Dan Martin. All of us at the Guardian were devastated to lose Dan in 2020, but we didn’t want the festive special of Doctor Who to pass without giving you a chance to pay a tribute to him, or to discuss a New Year’s Day special that was … well … uneven at best. The episode followed far more directly from Resolution than anticipated, but it was an extremely long slow burn of a setup before it got going. Harriet Walter played Prime Minister Patterson as cold and calculating, but nevertheless ended up the second British PM exterminated by the Daleks in recent years. It’s becoming quite the occupational hazard if you’ve been in No 10. As Leo Rugazzi, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett played the latest in a long line of misguided scientists and geniuses in Doctor Who who end up duped and controlled by the alien technology they are messing with. I think we all expected it would be Captain Jack who rescued the Doctor from space prison. I’m not sure anybody had “and then they zorb their way out” on their bingo card, though. John Barrowman was charming and good value as ever, with precious little explanation of what he’d been up to in the years since we last saw him, but some lovely throwback gadgets. Someone should give him his own series, eh? “If you’re dealing with Daleks, you are way out of your depth” Having said that, while the pre-publicity may have focused on the return of Barrowman, for me it was Chris Noth’s business monster, Jack Robertson, who stole the show. Criticised as being a too-thinly concealed Donald Trump cipher in his first appearance, here he got more depth – even if still a cynical manipulator of events happy to sell the human race out to the Daleks. His timely deadpan of “This is why people don’t like experts” raised a genuine laugh, and the episode’s conclusion, where despite everything he managed to position himself as a saviour of the planet heading back for the political big time, seemed frustratingly familiar to the consequence-free behaviour of certain real-world politicians. Chris Noth, Bradley Walsh, Tosin Cole and Mandip Gill face off in Sheffield. Photograph: James Pardon/BBC Life aboard the Tardis I worry slightly about Chibnall-era Who without Graham in the Tardis. Bradley Walsh has been, for me, consistently one of the most watchable elements, not just his little faces and asides adding some humour, but his character seemed to carry most of the emotional heft over the last couple of years. Ryan, you suspect though, will not be making it into the pantheon of all-time great Who companions. He’s had some fun moments – making shadow puppets in the lab in Arachnids in the UK, that basketball bomb slam-dunk at the Cybermen, his gun-blazing dash at the robots in The Ghost Monument – but his character development has always been slight. His voluntary exit follows up on the theme established in Can You Hear Me?, that his mates are missing him and he’s missing them. Mandip Gill’s Yasmin was clearly the most affected by the Doctor’s absence, sleeping in the abandoned Tardis, and angry when the Time Lord suddenly returned with a huge grin on her face as if nothing had happened. Her talk with Jack about how the Doctor disappearing seemed “cruel” was the most heartfelt of the special, and that anxiety she showed harked back to the insecure and unsettled younger version of her we met in flashbacks in Can You Hear Me? Fear factor Yaz and Jack being attacked by the Dalek squid creatures in Japan was perhaps the only real moment of jeopardy for the main cast in an episode that was pretty low-key in terms of direct threats. Yes, Daleks were massacring people on the streets of Britain, but we hadn’t met any of them. Chibnall’s scripts just don’t seem to have Russell T Davies’ knack of connecting the big set-pieces with people you care about, even if you’ve only met them briefly. It also says something about the brilliant job the 2005 Doctor Who team did redesigning the Daleks that the sudden appearance of the bronze ones was a highlight in 2020. At last, some proper Daleks. Dalek drones in Downing Street – not as menacing as the 2005-era bronze models that appeared later in the New Year’s Day episode. Photograph: James Pardon/BBC Mysteries and questions This year’s obligatory long dialogue scene saw Tosin Cole trying to get Jodie Whittaker to address what happened in the Timeless Children, in a conversation that seemed as much addressed from the production team to disgruntled fans as it was between Ryan and the Doctor. By the episode’s conclusion, Whittaker had very much regained her sense of purpose – “I’m the Doctor. I’m the one who stops the Daleks. All of you, to the Tardis, now!” – but you get the sense that Chibnall is not done with this story thread of the Doctor’s true origins yet. Deeper into the vortex Is psychic paper the best parting gift in recent years from a Doctor to a companion? It certainly seems the most useful since Tom Baker’s Doctor got out of the habit of gifting replica K-9 robots to departing co-stars. Emily Maitlis follows in the footsteps of Kirsty Wark, Sian Williams, Bill Turnbull and Andrew Marr by appearing as herself – a BBC news presenter. Kenneth Kendall was the first newsreader to portray himself like this in Doctor Who – way back in 1966 during William Hartnell story the War Machines. Jack Robertson’s bafflement at how Rugazzi could have got the purchase orders raised to build the Dalek clone factory was surely a W1A-style joke about the internal workings of the BBC. It’s a shame that “Sheffield House” Tardis got destroyed as part of the Doctor’s trap – that really was a lovely retro set design. It was nice to get an all-too-brief glimpse of Sharon D Clarke, bringing the end of season 12 full circle with the opening scenes of season 11. Next time We know, at least until further Covid restrictions were placed on Wales just before Christmas, that the next season of Doctor Who was not only in production but filming. There will be eight episodes, and location pictures suggest that at least one – if not two – old monsters will be coming back. And, from the trailer at the end, we now know that John Bishop will be in it. They are still aiming to air it later this year. We’ll see you then. Quick Guide Doctor Who: all our episode-by-episode recaps Show

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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/oct/13/trump-iran-deal-jcpoa-sanctions-congress

US news

2017-10-14T06:00:00.000Z

Julian Borger

Trump risks making US rogue actor as he condemns Iran nuclear deal

The content, tone and style of Donald Trump’s speech about Iran on Friday was a reminder of how much the current president of the United States relishes conflict. With his domestic legislative agenda stalled and a federal investigation scrutinising his finances and his relations with Moscow, Trump has taken to finding enemies to rail against, including the press and black football players who kneel during the national anthem. The tactic galvanises his core supporters and seems to rejuvenate him. He appeared similarly energised excoriating Iran on Friday. But taken into foreign policy, Trump’s visceral drive for confrontation threatens to add a second nuclear crisis to the one Trump has already escalated in the Pacific with North Korea. The 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran, the Joint Comprehensive Programme of Action (JCPOA), was aimed at ensuring that nearly 40-year feud between the US and revolutionary Iran did not mutate into a confrontation between two nuclear states. In return for sanctions relief from six major powers and the international community as a whole, Iran accepted very deep constraints on its nuclear programme. Its current stockpile of enriched uranium, for example, is just over 1% of what it was before the deal. But in his speech, Trump completely ignored the non-proliferation gains represented by the JCPOA, and portrayed the repatriation of Iran’s previously frozen assets as money for nothing. He made the false claim that Iran had been on the point of “total collapse” when the agreement was signed. His claims that “the Iranian regime has committed multiple violations of the agreement” were also misleading at best. On two occasions, Iran’s stockpile of heavy water flowed over the ceiling imposed by the deal, but the situation was quickly rectified and Iran’s reserve is now below the limit. Nor is heavy water a direct proliferation threat. It is used in certain reactors that produce plutonium as a by-product. However, under the deal, Iran has destroyed the only reactor of that type. Trump’s remark that Iran had “failed to meet our expectations in its operation of advanced centrifuges” appeared to refer to an ambiguity in the deal that has since been resolved and was not declared to be a violation. Trump’s litany of Iran’s past alleged crimes was also highly contentious, including an effort to link Shia Iran with the Sunni militants of al-Qaida, and in particular Osama bin Laden’s 1998 attacks on US embassies in east Africa. 'It's become a monster': is Iran's revolutionary guard a terror group? Read more The state department did not comply with White House pressure to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organisation, but the Treasury did make that designation – under a relatively obscure clause – marking the first time a major part of a country’s armed forces has been described as terrorist. It was – to say the least – a risky move given that troops from both countries are in close proximity in Syria and potentially elsewhere in the region. Trump’s speech also dimmed hopes that the nuclear deal could escape Trump’s hostility if he passed the decision over its fate to Congress. Congress is deeply divided over the issue and therefore might end up doing nothing, European diplomats had reasoned. But after Trump’s remarks, that escape ramp appears to be blocked. Trump has called on Congress to add conditions to those Iran already complies with under the JCPOA, restricting ballistic missile development and extending restrictions on its nuclear programme indefinitely. 1:40 Trump retains right to cancel Iran nuclear deal - video Even if a deeply divided Congress agreed on such changes – which would require the support of 60 senators – there is no realistic possibility Iran would accept them. In that case, Tehran would be bound to cast the US as the rogue actor on the world stage – and Washington’s European actors would find it hard to disagree. “Iran is not going to comply with provisions imposed unilaterally by the US. If the US then imposes sanctions or scraps the deal, then the US will be left highly isolated,” said James Acton, co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program and a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “The US will be blamed across the world for the collapse of the Iran deal, other countries will not cooperate with the US in reimposing sanctions on Iran, and the end effect will be that Iran’s nuclear programme will be unconstrained and the US will have no leverage to try to constrain it.” 0:48 Iran will not renegotiate nuclear deal, says Rouhani - video However, if Congress does not agree on new conditions, Trump threatened to “terminate” the deal himself, by executive order. If he sticks to his word, the JCPOA appears doomed in its current form. The other signatories could try to keep it going but major European companies are likely to flee Iran for fear of losing US markets. The benefits for Iran would shrink significantly, as would incentives to abide by its strictures. A change of mind is always possible. Trump on Friday said he was “always open” to negotiation with North Korea after weeks insistenting that he had no intention of talking to the regime. Yet his animus towards Tehran, stoked by Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates seems, if anything, even more deeply entrenched.

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https://www.theguardian.com/healthcare-network/2016/may/18/patients-pharma-payments-doctors-database

Healthcare Professionals Network

2016-05-18T09:57:19.000Z

Lucy Jolin

How much should patients know about pharma payments to doctors?

Pharmaceutical firms currently pay about £40m every year to healthcare professionals, including doctors and pharmacists. These payments could be for anything from expert advice to sponsoring a healthcare professional’s medical education. Now, the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) has created a central database, going live in June, on which its member companies, and others that have signed up to comply with the ABPI code of practice, will disclose who these payments are made to, and for what. At the same time, Jeremy Hunt’s “sunshine rule” will make it mandatory for NHS staff to declare gifts received from drug companies. How will this new transparency affect the complex matrix of relationships between health professionals, pharmaceutical firms, the NHS and, most importantly, patients? That was the underlying question under discussion at a seminar hosted by the Guardian and sponsored by the ABPI. Experts from all sides of the debate made up the panel, which was followed by a keynote address by George Freeman, minister for life sciences. Sarah Boseley of the Guardian kicked off the discussion by pointing out that the ABPI database has already come in for some criticism: the Academy of Royal Medical Colleges says it doesn’t go far enough. But should disclosure be mandatory? Only 69% of healthcare professionals say they would agree to have their relationships with pharmaceutical companies disclosed on the publicly searchable database. Virginia Acha of ABPI said that 69% was an encouraging figure and stressed the need for education and understanding for those who choose to opt out. “If people are worried about disclosure, addressing the payments made is key,” she said. “I would be pleased to see my GP have up on his bulletin board that he’d been involved in clinical studies, or was pursuing training in his own time, as that’s reinforcing to me that the care he’s giving me and my family is the best in the world. We need to help people feel more confident in this disclosure environment and explain what the money is for.” Disclosure of payments from pharmaceutical firms Ash Soni of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society agreed that disclosed payments need to be seen in the right context to be of value. “It’s important that there is an ability to respond and react to some of this disclosure. Sometimes people are doing things in the best interests of collaboration, but then something gets published or something comes out which means people are tarred with the brush of accepting money from someone for something. But you don’t get the opportunity to say why, what the purpose was, what it was designed to do, why the engagement was there.” The panel members were in broad agreement that increased transparency is a good thing, whether it’s disclosing payments or publishing clinical research data – but, like Soni, Nikki Yates of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) stressed the need for education around its issues. “The way I’ve embraced it [disclosure and transparency issues] is to take a step towards ensuring that whoever we are working with has a full understanding of why this is an important thing to do,” said Yates. Since 2014, she said, GSK has had a disclosure clause in its contracts. Thus far, it has had more than 90% agreement for disclosure of payments to healthcare professionals. “And we’ve gone a bit further and said if we can’t agree on disclosure, then we won’t work with those individuals.” However, it’s vital to keep the end goal of transparency in mind, said Dr Graham Jackson of NHS Clinical Commissioners. “What’s our point? What’s our outcome? If our outcome is to provide service design, workload design, research and products that lead to better outcomes for our population across the NHS, then it’s fine to have this relationship [with pharmaceutical companies] and I’m much happier with this relationship within a transparent environment.” Eric Low of cancer charity Myeloma UK agreed: “The reason that we collaborate, the reason that we speak to each other, the reason that we educate, the reason that we compete internationally to get clinical trials to the UK is because we care about our patients. And it would be unthinkable for me, as leader of a patient organisation, to not work with industry in such a critical role.” Collaboration on clinical trials He added that he’s “not frightened at all” of disclosure. Myeloma UK collaborates with industry in clinical trials, and gets free drugs from industry to use in those trials. For one trial, that might be £6m to £7m worth of drugs. “If you look at that as a proportion of our turnover, that could raise some eyebrows. But we should celebrate it. There’s nothing inappropriate about that relationship.” But GP Dr Margaret McCartney pointed out that talking about shared goals, partnership and collaboration is all very well – but what are the shared goals and who decides what they are? She cited the pharmaceutical researcher who had approached her practice to do clinical research. When McCartney asked him if results would be published no matter what they showed, she was told no, and that McCartney herself would not be allowed to make them public. “How can I trust a leadership that says it will not guarantee published results, no matter what they show?” she asked. She went on to highlight “morally distressing” practice around patient data. Drug companies, she said, are paying for independent pharmacists to go into GP surgeries, audit patient notes and make recommendations for treatment. Their patients have not given consent for this. “Many GPs seem to be happy with this. As a patient, I am not happy with this. Patient groups are not happy with this. I think we should fund the NHS to do this work. I do not think we should allow external people, who have a vested interest in prescribing and medication, freedom of access to your notes. I think that’s wrong, and that debate hasn’t been had.” This kind of poor practice, the panel agreed, is unacceptable and should be reported to the appropriate authorities such as the Prescription Medicines Code of Practice Authority (PMCPA), which operates the ABPI Code of Practice for the Pharmaceutical Industry. So should disclosure be required by law? McCartney said she was pleased with GSK’s advances in making clinical data public, but believed that the process has to be “enshrined in law”. Others were not so sure: Jackson was concerned with “over-sterilisation” of the system. There are conflicts and competing interests in many areas, he pointed out, not just in pharmaceutical company funding, and a certain amount of competing interests are inevitable. “It’s human nature, and if we legislate, and go too far, then we could end up stifling the system by not allowing it to breathe.” Comments from the audience expanded on the theme of drug companies versus doctors: Joe Taylor, a medical doctor by training and a lecturer at the University of Oxford, said that, like most doctors, he wasn’t up to date on every single study, and that incentivisation from pharmaceutical companies could force him to re-evaluate his prescribing practice. “Could it be that incentivisation is a positive thing and could be misinterpreted by patients?” he asked. McCartney disagreed, saying doctors didn’t need incentives from drug companies to do their job well. But a general belief that drug companies are the bad guys could actually make people reluctant to disclose, said Robert Miller, chief medical officer and managing partner at Artemida Pharma. “I applaud full disclosure but I think one of the reasons why people are probably not prepared to fully disclose in some areas is because of the vilification of the pharmaceutical industry,” he said. “If we can work with pharma and not think of them as an evil empire, then people will be much happier to disclose.” Transparency in the interest of patients But times are changing, said Soni. “The industry did have a very bad reputation and there is no doubt that it earned it. Some of the things it did were not in the interests of patients or for the best interests of care. However, the industry has changed – it’s had to. It had to realise some of the things it was doing were not of a suitable standard. And I think this is helping us to move further and further in the right direction.” Freeman took up this theme in his keynote address, praising not just the “extraordinary” NHS but also the contribution made by pharmaceutical companies to both the economy and to patient care. For him, transparency is right at the heart of the challenges and opportunities faced by the NHS – the “oil” of the 21st–century healthcare landscape. And he painted a picture of a future NHS driven by what Jeremy Hunt calls “intelligent transparency”, free of paper and cardboard, and using its own daily data footprint to improve its own performance and improvement. He sensed, he said, great opportunity and excitement around transparency. “We have a choice between historically justifiable conspiracy theory, distrust and legislation as the only solution – the law or the threat of law, which I think drives defensiveness – or an approach based on mutual respect for others’ perspectives. [That approach] will accelerate us into this landscape of a more transparent healthcare ecosystem, which I think is genuinely in the interests of all of us.” On the panel Sarah Boseley (Chair) Health editor, the Guardian Virginia Acha Executive director, research, medical and innovation, ABPI Dr Graham Jackson Co-chair, NHS Clinical Commissioners Eric Low Chief executive, Myeloma UK Dr Margaret McCartney GP and broadcaster Ash Soni, President, Royal Pharmaceutical Society Nikki Yates General manager, GlaxoSmithKline This article was amended on 18 May 2016 to clarify that the 90% agreement for disclosure stated by Nikki Yates of GSK referred to disclosure of payments to healthcare professionals. A previous version of this article said the figure related to trial results.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2021/mar/13/a-community-of-equals-the-private-school-with-no-fees-set-up-by-a-south-london-teacher

Education

2021-03-13T08:30:57.000Z

Jess Staufenberg

A community of equals': the private school with no fees, set up by a south London teacher

While most teachers express frustration about the education system in England, with its focus on Sats, GCSEs and league tables, what they don’t usually do is set up their own school instead. But that is exactly what Lucy Stephens did. Stephens had been a primary teacher for six years but grew disillusioned and left. “I was just shoehorning kids through test papers,” she says. “Everything was so competitive. You’d find the headteacher in your room, looking through your books, checking on you. Behaviour managers can rule by fear, the staff as well as pupils. I’ve seen them scream at kids in front of the whole school, humiliating them.” Stephens decided to resign and work for The Prince’s Trust charity, helping vulnerable young people. But now she is back teaching – this time in her very own school, where she writes the rules and sets the pace. The New School, based in Croydon, south London, opened its doors in September. It has no Sats and no behaviour policy, and operates on a “democratic” decision-making model for pupils and staff. It can escape statutory testing because it is a private school – but one with no fees. It is funded by philanthropic company donations – £1m of seed funding this year – although Stephens hopes to move to a completely different funding model involving her local authority, believing she can offer a social partnership approach which could be copied by other schools that want to innovate. 'Drill and kill' for England's state schools while private sector goes progressive Read more The main aim is to create a mini democracy. Many schools have become focused on maintaining a hierarchy to control children’s behaviour, rather than listening to them or building meaningful relationships with them, she says. “We live in a democracy, but we don’t practise that model in schools. And then we expect young people to come out aged 18 and operate democratically in society.” The idea is for “self-determination within a community of equals”. “It’s important not to just say that children are adults in the making,” she says. “Why would we just ignore them now? They have such valid opinions, such interesting takes on things.” The school opened with 46 primary pupils, a high proportion from disadvantaged backgrounds – 34% of pupils are eligible for free school meals, one-fifth have special educational needs and 65% were previously homeschooled (an issue of increasing concern to the government). There were 115 applications for the 46 places this year and, if all goes to plan, the New School will eventually become a small all-through institution up to year 11. The idea of opening her own school came to Stephens when she had her first child. “I thought, what should I do now? I don’t want them in this system. I don’t want them to have to stand on a traffic light or a rain cloud if they disobey an instruction,” she says, referring to the sort of behaviour policies in place in some schools. UK children report the lowest life satisfaction across Europe, the Children’s Society found last year – with school pressures and “fear of failure” scoring high. But when Stephens began researching other models, such as Steiner and Montessori schools, she hit the catch: fees. She could not set up a free school, because then Sats would be obligatory, and “it would likely have taken four to five years”. “So I called everybody I’d ever worked with in fundraising, impact, in marketing, and said, ‘can I buy you a coffee?’. You get a lot of people looking at you like you’re mad,” she says. “They think, ‘that’s a nice idea’, or ‘she seems sweet’.” But eventually she secured £1m to open her small school, going entirely against the “economies of scale” drive behind the government’s preferred academy trust model. We live in a democracy, but don’t practise that in schools. But we expect young people at 18 to operate democratically Lucy Stephens She is not telling who the current financial backers are, describing them as “generous philanthropic individuals and a corporate foundation”. But she says none of the funders has political connections or a political agenda, and the corporate foundation supports other projects in education and healthcare that tackle disadvantage. “They’re like maverick funders in the system.” In some ways, the school is not all that radical, she says. “We emphasise good teaching and we still recognise there’s a qualification system in the UK and we can work around that.” Pupils get about three to four hours of English and maths teaching each week. But an “interdisciplinary, concept-based curriculum” as found in Finland, in which topics rather than distinct subjects are taught, is being introduced, along with “self-directed” learning for a couple of hours each day. Classes have mixed age groups. None of these ideas is new, but they have been looked on with suspicion by the most powerful voices in education for the past decade. Instead of a behaviour policy, the school operates “community accountability”. That means there is no system of punishment, only “restorative justice” circles in which actions are discussed and apologies given, a deliberate inversion of the hierarchy-driven, “untrusting” system Stephens found so disheartening. When school is an isolation cubicle with three toilet breaks a day Read more “The aim is that young people leave with a strong sense of personal agency,” she says. Research published in 2018 found private schools increase pupils’ “locus of control”, a psychology term for a sense of control over one’s life, compared with similarly qualified state schoolchildren. Even lunch at the New School is modelled around this principle, with bowls of food on the table so staff and pupils can serve themselves “to support autonomy with eating”. The school has partnered with the University of Nottingham to assess its outcomes, with findings to be published in October. The funding this year equates to £17,000 a pupil, equivalent to an average boarding school place, which she expects to reduce to £11,000 when the school is at capacity (compare that with the minimum 2021-22 funding of £4,180 per pupil in English primary schools). Parents know they have taken a risk in sending their children here, and were asked to sign a form to say they were aware that just one year’s funding had been secured. Stephens says she is on the brink of getting the second year agreed, but after that is hoping to adopt a model called “social outcomes commissioning”. Under this agreement, a private funding organisation stumps up the cash for an organisation to reach a particular set of “social outcomes” required by a body with statutory funding, such as a local authority. Once those outcomes are reached, the public body pays back the original funder, plus a small fee. A school in Doncaster is already operating such a model, and Stephens believes such contracts could offer other schools the chance to innovate and avoid the current accountability structures. Nevertheless, the New School will still have to face the state inspectorate, Ofsted. Can she succeed in disrupting the system? Jonathan Simons, from the consultants Public First, says that for the model to work, Stephens will have to convince her local authority it can save money and reach specific goals, such as reducing exclusions. “It has to be a set-up where the council is saving money directly and getting outcomes in a shorter timeframe than it otherwise would,” he says. “If it’s a very small institution, the savings might not be enough.” The school has been deluged with job applications from frustrated state school teachers and the staff have high hopes. “There is a problem in the system, and we can solve it,” Stephens says.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/may/15/les-miserables-review-ladj-ly-debut-feature-paris-suburb-cop-procedural

Film

2019-05-15T18:13:12.000Z

Peter Bradshaw

Les Misérables review – savvy cop procedural swerves into molotov mayhem

This movie from first-time feature director Ladj Ly has one of the most striking and even glorious pre-credit sequences I can remember. It shows the cheering, screaming crowds on the streets of Paris last summer, when France had just beaten Croatia 4-2 in the World Cup. This is a seething mass of humanity with tricolours waving everywhere, boiling with joy. Finally, the director flashes up the title over the people, ecstatic in their triumph: Les Misérables. It’s an irresistible irony and it kicks the film off with a great exhilarating jolt of humour, cynicism, energy and savvy. But what begins as a fascinatingly tough cop procedural gets less interesting when the violence begins, and it becomes a solemnly ponderous issue movie on those familiar subjects of police brutality and community divisions. The stakes are ostentatiously raised, the riot makes it looks like a war movie and it ends unconvincingly. Rather as with Jacques Audiard’s Dheepan from 2015, it’s a movie that builds to a confrontation that isn’t satisfying dramatically (although Dheepan was the Cannes Palme D’Or winner). Confronting issues head on ... Ladj Ly. Photograph: Eric Feferberg/AFP/Getty Images The setting is the tough Montfermeil district in the east of Paris, known for its violent banlieue Les Bosquets, and also for being the location of the Thenardiers’ inn in Victor Hugo’s novel Les Misérables. Stéphane (Damien Bonnard) is a cop who has just joined the street crime unit’s day patrol, alongside Gwada (Djibril Zonga) and under the command of the notoriously cynical, reactionary and streetwise Chris (Alexis Manenti), who gives Stéphane’s debut a real Training Day feel. Their job is simply to cruise around, a visible demonstration of the law, not hesitating to chat, to establish a breezily and superficially friendly relationship with the community, and to cultivate informants – but also to go in hard against anyone they suspect for any reason: Chris loves to “frisk” attractive young women at bus stops. Stéphane soon sees that the power structure on the streets, and within his unit, is very complex: Chris’s power over him and Gwada is maintained by exhausting stream of banter and bullying, and there is a fascinating cameo from Jeanne Balibar as their chief, who establishes a very similar flirtatious relationship with her low-ranking subordinates. Chris’s own authority outside is created via a kind of trusted local, nicknamed “The Mayor” (Steve Tientcheu) who manages the market stalls in a semi-corrupt way and is a de facto police community liaison person. But the cops must also negotiate their relationship with Salah (Almamy Kanouté), a reformed jihadi who owns a kebab shop and commands great respect with the hair-trigger young men. The police rely on Salah’s goodwill, or at any rate his impassive neutrality. In the case of a real threat of violence, the officers have “less-lethal” Flash-Ball guns that can be fired terrifyingly and deafeningly into the air. The film’s ambient mood is initially very good: there is a terrific easy swing to the action as the cop car barrels through the streets, stopping periodically to bust someone’s balls, or for the cops to bust each other’s balls – and this is a very male world. “Like Miss France, all I want is world peace,” says Chris, jauntily. But then there is a bizarre mishap: a lion cub is stolen from a travelling circus run by Gypsy travellers who, having suspected a local boy, bust out the N-word in their confrontation with the Mayor – and it is down to our three anti-heroes to find the lion cub and save Montfermeil from a gigantic race riot. But their heavy-handed policing makes the situation very much worse, and then they realise they are being filmed by a drone belonging to a local kid. Pre-violent normality is where this movie is at its strongest: just the day-to-day, hour-by-hour experience of being out on the streets, feeling the simmer of something that might escalate but probably won’t. After all, Paris and all France are loved up by the World Cup. A smaller-scale dramatic situation within this mesh of racial and ideological tensions might have worked better. But the colossal conflagration becomes paradoxically less exciting, and the tang of black comedy vanishes when real bloodshed appears. The director may want to confront these issues head on – the racism and violence just below the surface. Indeed, raising it above the surface is the point. But much of the drama and humanity get blitzed by the molotov cocktails.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/may/11/the-awkward-age-by-francesca-segal-review

Books

2017-05-11T14:00:04.000Z

Alice O'Keeffe

The Awkward Age by Francesca Segal review – modern-day family fallout

Francesca Segal’s sharply observed second novel asks what parents owe to their children, and vice versa. After five years of widowhood, Julia Alden has met and fallen in love with James Fuller, a handsome American doctor. James and his teenage son, Nathan, have moved into the north London home Julia shares with her teenage daughter, Gwen. But as the novel opens, this is not so much a blended family as an elaborate civil war. Gwen is desperate to have her mother to herself, and wants Nathan and James out of the way; James finds her irritatingly needy. Nathan can’t bear the highly strung Gwen; Julia hates the way Nathan preys on her daughter’s insecurities. Holding it all together involves endless restraint and diplomacy, but, for Julia and James, it’s worth it for the sake of a second shot at happiness. “When will they start to be nice to each other?” asks Julia, as if to convince herself that it might be that simple. Francesca Segal: ‘I think there are multiple awkward ages’ Read more Julia’s dreams of familial harmony seem to be coming true when, on a family trip to Boston, the relationship between Gwen and Nathan noticeably thaws. Only afterwards does she discover that the teenagers have strayed beyond the required brief: they are not simply being nice to one another, they are copping off in Gwen’s bedroom. “Nathan and I are together,” Gwen informs her mother, imperiously, once she has straightened her clothes. The fallout from this moment is traced in claustrophobic and utterly believable detail: Julia’s rage at her daughter, and her conviction that it can’t, won’t, mustn’t last; Gwen’s stubborn refusal to put her mother’s needs first, citing Julia’s failure to do the same for her; Nathan’s careless sense of entitlement; James’s baffled, fading optimism. It is a full-on insurrection, and there is precious little the parents can do to curb it. When the teenagers’ relationship deepens and then gets complicated, James and Julia’s future is thrown into doubt. Can they insist on the primacy of their own right to love? Or must they sacrifice everything for the sake of their children? Family interactions – the primal resentments played out over a bowl of porridge – are observed with hawk-like precision It’s a great premise for a novel, and Segal handles it expertly. Her 2012 debut, The Innocents, won awards and critical acclaim, combining an eye for modern manners with old-fashioned clarity and elegance of style; she has stuck to that winning formula for The Awkward Age. Descriptions are spare and unerring: James is “square in the way that only Americans are square – as if raised, corn-fed and free-range, on strong sunshine and red meat and the earnest and deliberate pursuit of happiness”. Everyday family interactions – the deep, primal resentments played out over a bowl of porridge, or a shopping list – are observed warmly and yet with hawk-like precision. Gwen notices that James always leaves the door open when he comes into her bedroom, “adopting modes of monkish propriety that he had no doubt learned from a book of pop psychology. How Not to Make Your Stepdaughter Think You’re a Perv, Volume I.” But while appreciating its artistry, I can’t love this book. The detail is spot on, and yet it lacks a sense of the bigger picture, of the events in the wider world that might play, too, on the emotional landscape of the Fullers and the Aldens. Segal places them solidly among the contemporary middle classes of north-west London – Gwen has a blog, everyone texts, the pubs have been refurbished. Julia’s house is in Gospel Oak, an area that has been as affected as everywhere else in the capital by the housing crisis and rising austerity of recent years. And yet the characters seem blissfully and oddly unaware of these momentous social changes. I suppose it is not entirely impossible that Julia, a part-time piano teacher, and doctor James might have found a way to finance not only their house but also private schools for their children, weekends in Boston, trips to see the opera in Milan, and regular visits to the Wigmore Hall. But surely they would still occasionally look up and notice what is going on around them? It is a jarring omission in an otherwise skilfully crafted morality tale for our times.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/feb/02/warm-home-discount-scheme-the-key-questions-answered

Business

2022-02-02T06:00:17.000Z

Hilary Osborne

Warm home discount scheme: the key questions answered

The warm home discount scheme, which at the moment offers a £140 discount to those on certain benefits during the winter months, has come under the spotlight as ministers explore ways to tackle the impact of the energy crisis on household bills. The government has said the discount will be increased next winter, and the Labour party pledged it would add to the funding and expand its coverage. What is the warm home discount? The scheme offers vulnerable energy customers a discount on their energy bills each winter. Since 2014/15 the discount has been worth £140 a year. Discounts are given automatically to people on pension credit, but other low-income households must apply and only get help if their providers offer the scheme and there is still money available. The money comes off bills, rather than being paid to customers. Who pays for it? The energy companies fund the discount, with the money coming from customers’ bills. The sums put in are mandated by the government. This year suppliers have put in a total of £350m, which has added about £14 to bills. Next year they will put in more – a consultation last year suggested £475m in total – which will cost customers £19. The Treasury does not currently add to the scheme. Can I get the discount? Around 2m households currently qualify to apply – but not all will be able to get hold of the discount. If you are on pension credit you should have automatically been accepted. If not, you need to apply. Applications are currently only available to those on low incomes who receive certain benefits, including income support and universal credit, and meet other qualifying criteria. More than 900,000 eligible pensioners who have not applied for pension credit are thought to miss out each year. Only energy suppliers with at least 150,000 customers have to offer the discount currently, so those with smaller companies miss out. When providers have allocated all of their required funds, schemes are closed. Which schemes have already closed? EDF and Scottish Power have both already stopped taking applications. EDF said it had provided about 260,000 rebates worth a total of £36m. It said it had other support for customers, including a Customer Support Fund (CSF) for help with an outstanding debt or replacing essential white goods. A Scottish Power spokesperson said the scheme had been open between August and December, as in previous years, and it had worked hard to raise awareness among customers, which had led to it being fully subscribed. “Supporting customers in vulnerable circumstances is one of our priorities,” the spokesperson said. “As well as the warm home discount, we offer a wide range of customer support – like our prepayment voucher scheme – and we also support a number of external industry initiatives. We would encourage any customers having difficulty paying their bills to contact us.” What is changing? Next winter the discount will go up to £150 and the government will change the criteria to focus on those in fuel poverty. This will only affect energy customers in England and Wales. The changes follow a consultation before the energy crisis took hold, which also proposed offering automatic payments to everyone who qualifies, rather than asking people to apply. The government has not confirmed that it will make that change. It has also proposed to reduce the number of households who miss out because their energy provider is too small by lowering the number of customers a supplier must have to 50,000 in April 2022 and then to 1,000 from April 2023. At that point, the government said an estimated 99.99% of domestic customers would be with suppliers that had to offer the discount. A business department spokesperson said: “As set out in the energy white paper, from 2022/23, we plan to extend the warm home discount until 2026, increase it by £10 to £150, and help an extra 780,000 pensioners and low-income families with their energy bills.” Does that go far enough? Charities have welcomed the changes – Citizens Advice, for example, suggests the biggest problems with the scheme will be addressed. Gillian Cooper, head of energy policy at Citizens Advice, said currently rebates were unfairly distributed. Because the number of rebates for each company is based on their customer numbers rather than need “every year we see clients who miss out on rebates because their supplier is oversubscribed. Conversely, some suppliers are unable to give out all the rebates they’re required to, because their customers are more affluent, and put the unspent money towards alternative support instead.” However, others have called for the government to inject some money into the scheme so that discounts can be more meaningful. The fuel poverty charity, National Energy Action says the government needs to pay in £500m to make sure those who qualify can all get the money and to increase the discount. “As a very bare minimum, the scheme should at least be sufficient to make sure that everybody eligible for it should get it automatically,” says Peter Smith, director of policy at the charity. “A £500m injection from the Treasury would mean that everyone currently eligible could automatically receive a discount of just over £200.” Adding government funding to the scheme would be cheaper than scrapping VAT on energy, a proposal that the government is understood to be considering. The end of VAT on bills would cost the Treasury an estimated £2bn and not be targeted at the households in greatest need.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/may/23/tender-belinda-mckeon-review-absorbing

Books

2015-05-23T07:30:00.000Z

Catherine O'Flynn

Tender by Belinda McKeon review – richly nuanced and utterly absorbing

In 1997 Catherine Reilly is in her first year studying English and art history at Trinity College Dublin. Living away from her home on a farm in County Longford for the first time, she meets the aspiring artist and fellow exile from rural Ireland James Flynn. While Catherine is tentative and lacking in confidence, James is flamboyant, knowledgeable and penetrating. With his mad red hair, thin lips and wrong kind of Doc Martens, James is not her idea of boyfriend material, but the two quickly become inseparable – best friends of the fiercest kind. McKeon takes a line from James Salter’s Light Years as her epigraph: “You know, you only have one friend like that; there can’t be two.” At 18, Catherine is well aware of her own childishness, prone at times to petulance and giddiness. Her admiration for James is breathless and adolescent in tone: he is “brilliant” and “amazing”, a blast of fresh air after the whispering conservatism of her home, and the relentless self-consciousness and doubt of her first year at Trinity. It is a mark of the author’s achievement that the character of James goes some way towards living up to Catherine’s estimation, stepping off the page with his glinting comedy and his fond, gleeful kind of swearing. After her arid upbringing, Catherine’s thirst for James and everything he represents is voracious. She envies flatmates for the schooldays they shared with him. She becomes increasingly proprietorial towards him: when he returns to Dublin after working in Berlin, she parades him before her friends as both trophy and shield. McKeon explored the tension between traditional rural and educated urban Ireland powerfully in her acclaimed debut novel, Solace. Here Catherine’s housemate Amy jokes: “Nobody cares that you grew up on a farm. Anyone would think you’d crawled to college straight from the famine, the way you go on. Cows and tractors, for Christ’s sake. So what?” But in fact we hear relatively little about Catherine’s background. McKeon offers just a few memorable scenes of life in Longford: a confrontation between Catherine and her fearful, controlling parents; a night with the “clodhopper morons” down at the dire local nightclub; urgent advice from her hilarious Aunt Fidelma counselling Catherine to make the most of her freedom in Dublin: “When you’re my age you’ll know I wasn’t joking you. Ride. All. Around you.” Many writers would be unable to resist mining this rich seam far more deeply, but McKeon is unswerving in her description of Catherine’s emotional journey and her relationship with James. Digressions and subplots are almost ruthlessly curtailed and suppressed. If reading Tender can at times feel a claustrophobic experience, it is deliberately so. The novel is set predominantly in the late 90s, with the Celtic Tiger and the political negotiations in the North forming the background hum. There is no tritely reductive mirroring of a young woman’s move to the big city with Ireland’s own expanding outlook of the time, but there is a sense of change and emergence. The decriminalisation of same-sex sexual acts is a recent memory and the Good Friday Agreement marks a new phase in the country’s history.Ted Hughes’s Birthday Letters, written about Sylvia Plath, was also published in 1998, and as Catherine’s relationship with James becomes increasingly suffocating, she immerses herself in their troubles, claiming as her own Hughes’s line: “What happens in the heart simply happens.” Tender charts the marshy territory of friendship, obsession and love, and offers no easy path. Catherine may lose her way with James, but her self‑deceit is never complete – she maintains a terrible awareness of what she is doing. McKeon’s immersive, unflinching yet humane portrait of Catherine makes Tender richly nuanced and utterly absorbing. Catherine O’Flynn’s The News Where You Are is published by Penguin. To order Tender for £11.99 (RRP £14.99) 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/2018/jun/15/sophie-oil-of-every-pearls-un-insides-review-taking-it-to-sexy-extremes

Music

2018-06-15T08:00:11.000Z

Ben Beaumont-Thomas

Sophie: Oil of Every Pearl's Un-Insides review – taking it to sexy extremes

In the same extruded plastic lane as pop provocateurs PC Music, Sophie emerged in 2013 with tracks that were as shiny, artificial and joyously fun as the plastic waterslides of their cover artwork: they lurched around, you could feel the joins to each section, and serious people refused to go near them. A shadowy figure, she was snapped up to work with Madonna, Charli XCX and Vince Staples, before emerging earlier in 2018 with the first single from this debut full-length, It’s Okay to Cry. Like nearly all the tracks here, it is extremely powerful, and marks a deepening of her already unique aesthetic. Using her own quiet but determined voice, it’s like a trance track with the insistent beats removed – a brilliant trick she repeats to even more dramatic effect on Is It Cold in the Water, like a beatless trance breakdown unmoored from its original track and left floating in ecstatic inertia. It segues into cathedral-filling power ballad Infatuation, a weighty, sad track saved from mere moping by her usual authorial flourishes: whinnying sirens, urgent whispers. Her other mode of expression is the one she deployed on early tracks such as Hard: mechanistic dance tracks as sexual, tough and water-resistant as the prostate massagers she once sold as merch. But where once those tracks were tinny, here they have become steroidally imposing, gilded with distortion and industrial heft. Based around catchy chants, perfect for skipping rope games conducted by dominatrices, Ponyboy, Faceshopping and the Aladdin-quoting Whole New World/Pretend World are dazzlingly brash and butch. Pretending is less successful – a stately bit of Tim Hecker-ish ambient, where her very particular sonics get lost in reverb – but it leads into the album’s biggest pop moment, Immaterial, where all the latent J-pop vibes get brought to the fore in a high-speed pachinko cacophony. Despite software advances, so many electronic producers are content to lapse into nostalgia or a safe, compromised emotional range; Sophie has crafted a genuinely original sound and uses it to visit extremes of terror, sadness and pleasure. Sign up for the Sleeve Notes email: music news, bold reviews and unexpected extras Read more

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2016/jul/15/last-journalists-leave-fleet-street-as-sunday-post-retreats

Media

2016-07-15T12:27:27.000Z

Roy Greenslade

Last newspaper journalists leave Fleet Street as Sunday Post retreats

Two weeks ago I was preparing to report that the Sunday Post, the Dundee-based newspaper, was closing its London office. It represented a landmark moment in the history of newspapers - the clichéd “end of an era” - because its two staff are thought to be the last newspaper journalists working in Fleet Street. Having been tipped off that the paper’s editor, Richard Prest, had visited the London office on 30 June to talk to staff about the decision to close the office, I called the publisher, DC Thomson. But I was told firmly by one of the company’s communications team that the London office was not closing. So I didn’t report it. Now it transpires that my tipster was correct and, strictly speaking, so was the company’s spokesperson. Although the editorial presence is indeed to disappear, “the London office” will remain in existence because advertising staff will go on working there. DC Thomson has since confirmed that its two London-based journalists and another one working in the north of England are to leave the newspaper. But two English-based sports journalists will be retained. Meanwhile, three new roles are being created: an investigations co-ordinator in Glasgow, plus reporting posts in Edinburgh and Inverness. And a new deputy editor role is being created as well. Aside from the Sunday Post, DC Thomson publishes the Dundee Courier and the Aberdeen Press & Journal plus, of course, several iconic comics. Source: DC Thomson

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/jan/05/grealish-and-mahrez-come-off-the-bench-to-spark-manchester-city-win-at-chelsea

Football

2023-01-05T22:00:01.000Z

David Hytner

Grealish and Mahrez come off the bench to spark Manchester City win at Chelsea

It was a night when Pep Guardiola twisted on the tactical front and then twisted some more. For much of a slow-burning encounter, part of the battle was to decode the schemes of the Manchester City manager. His most recognised left-back, João Cancelo? Pinned high on the right wing. The returning Kyle Walker? On the right of a defensive three. The midfield was flexible to the point of indecipherable. And for the opening 45 minutes, it did not work. Erling Haaland’s shadow display adds intrigue to Manchester City story Read more So Guardiola twisted again, swapping Cancelo and Walker for Rico Lewis and Manuel Akanji at the start of the second half. City remained similarly set, broadly a 3-2-4-1 in possession, and they began to squeeze higher, to find their pass-and-move grooves. Then Guardiola twisted yet again. This time it was decisive. There were 60 minutes on the clock when he introduced Riyad Mahrez on the right and Jack Grealish on the left. It was a double substitution to highlight the riches at his disposal and one that surely turned Graham Potter a shade of green. The Chelsea manager had lost Raheem Sterling and Christian Pulisic to injuries in the early running, on the back of seeing Mason Mount ruled out with a training-ground knock. Potter can now count his senior absentees on all of his fingers and thumbs. Within three minutes Grealish teased over a low cross, Mahrez swooped to finish and City were on their way to cutting Arsenal’s lead at the top of the table to five points. It was a lovely team move, out to the right, then back over to the left, with Kevin De Bruyne prominent. Grealish’s assist was a beauty and the only question was why Kepa Arrizabalaga did not stick out a hand before it reached Mahrez. The ball had seemed to be there for the Chelsea goalkeeper. It was a big win for City – particularly after the frustration of their 1-1 home draw with Everton on New Year’s Eve – and it had been in doubt as Chelsea pushed in the first half. Yet it never seemed to be in the second half and certainly not after the goal. Potter had brought on Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang when Sterling limped off in the second minute but he would substitute the substitute as he chased the game. Hakim Ziyech was also hooked. Potter sent on the 19-year-old Omari Hutchinson for his debut on the right wing and the 18-year-old Lewis Hall at left-back, sticking with his 4-2-3-1 formation and simply rotating the personnel. The equaliser never looked on and Potter was left to reflect on another blow to Chelsea’s hopes of a top-four finish. The club have attacked the January transfer market, announcing the capture of another centre-half – Benoit Badiashile from Monaco for £33.6m – before the game. They also want to add the midfielder Enzo Fernández from Benfica and the winger Mykhailo Mudryk from Shakhtar Donetsk. Chelsea lose Christian Pulisic with an injury midway through the first half. Photograph: Tony Obrien/Reuters It feels as though there are moving parts everywhere, a relatively new ownership group in a hurry to splash the cash and drive change quickly. But on the field, Potter’s team have taken just six points from an available 24. The table does not make for pretty reading. They are not only the fifth-placed team from the capital but the third from west London, behind Fulham and Brentford. Next up for them in the FA Cup on Sunday is an away game against City, who have already dumped them out of the Carabao Cup. Pulisic was hurt when the excellent John Stones stretched into a saving block challenge on him in the 17th minute. The winger was in after a nice Kai Havertz pass after a mix-up between Cancelo and Walker, and it was a bright first-half showing from Chelsea. 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. Mateo Kovacic and Denis Zakaria caught the eye in midfield, while Havertz drifted into dangerous spaces. City needed a Bernardo Silva tackle to snuff out Pulisic’s replacement, Carney Chukwuemeka, after a Havertz pull-back. And it was Chukwuemeka who so nearly broke the deadlock just before half-time. After another Havertz pass, he cut inside from the right and watched his shot beat Ederson, via a slight deflection, and rebound off a post. ‘Now the gap is five’: Guardiola ‘satisfied’ after Manchester City’s win at Chelsea Read more Guardiola had started with Phil Foden pinned high on the left and it seemed as though Rodri was the only vaguely fixed point in midfield. Then again, he sometimes dropped into the defensive line. It was strange to see City so disjointed in the first half. And yet when Erling Haaland is around, no defender can ever relax. Out of very little on 38 minutes he crackled to life, taking an Ilkay Gündogan pass with a fabulous first touch, veering away from Kalidou Koulibaly and unloading a shot in what felt like the same pre-programmed movement. The back-lift was minimal to give Koulibaly less chance to get across, Arrizabalaga less time to react. It whistled narrowly over. Guardiola was not happy at the interval. But his mood improved as Lewis and Akanji settled, the former tucking in alongside Rodri and also covering at right-back out of possession. Bernardo Silva went wide right. Nathan Aké headed against the crossbar from a De Bruyne cross after a short corner routine while Bernardo Silva beat the unconvincing Marc Cucurella to pull back for De Bruyne who blasted off target. Thiago Silva had lashed wide at the other end but it felt as though a City breakthrough was coming. They were enjoying more time on the ball and were getting in around the sides. Enter Mahrez and Grealish. Chelsea could not respond and Haaland almost added a second, narrowly failing to reach a low De Bruyne cross.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/may/08/rochdale-child-sex-ring-case

UK news

2012-05-08T16:46:29.000Z

Helen Carter

Rochdale child sex ring case: respected men who preyed on the vulnerable

One of the victims had sex with 20 men in one night when she was drunk, according to police. The girl was 15 and can barely recount events but her friend recalls men queueing up outside a bedroom. Another had drunk so much alcohol she was raped by two men while she was vomiting over the side of a bed. She then cried herself to sleep. All the girls targeted by the gang of nine men convicted on Tuesday of sexually exploiting the girls were vulnerable and from broken homes, hanging around takeaway shops in Heywood, near Rochdale, late at night and befriending the staff there. They were plied with drugs, alcohol, food and gifts. Some of the men paid them to be introduced to younger girls and they were "shared" among the men. Five girls were initially identified as victims of child sexual exploitation, but during the course of the police investigation involving the nine offenders – who were chiefly British Pakistani men with ordinary jobs, often married and well-respected within their community – the police identified a further 42 victims. Greater Manchester police first heard about the grooming when one of the teenage girls made a complaint four years ago. Detectives took her case seriously and offered her support. But controversially, the Crown Prosecution Service took the decision in 2009 not to charge two of the men convicted on Tuesday, a 59-year-old who cannot be named for legal reasons, and Kabeer Hassan, despite one of the victims giving a lengthy videotaped interview to police. DNA evidence was collected from the girl's clothing that was crucial to the case. The decision not to prosecute was hastily overturned in summer 2011 when the north-west's new chief crown prosecutor, Nazir Afzal, took up his post. Afzal said the original prosecuting decision was based on the credibility of the victim, and the original lawyer felt there was "insufficient credibility" to secure a conviction. "I formed the opinion she was entirely credible and the two suspects should be charged," he said. It is very rare for a chief prosecutor to overturn a decision in this way – it happens only once or twice a year. The matter has voluntarily been referred to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, which is supervising a Greater Manchester police inquiry. It will report at a later date. Greater Manchester police have publicly apologised to the victims, adding that "with hindsight" things would be done differently now, as more is much known about this type of criminality. "It's genuinely about vulnerability and demographics," Assistant Chief Constable Steve Heywood said. "This is about adults preying on the vulnerability of young members of society." Coverage of the phenomenon of on-street grooming has often characterised the issue as being about gangs of Asian men preying on white girls, and the case has sparked concerns about racial tensions in the north-west and the input of far-right elements. The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) carried out a study of on-street grooming that showed that of 753 offenders, nearly half were of Asian heritage. But the police say the phenomenon is not restricted to any one race – the vast majority of those on the sex offenders register in Greater Manchester are white (95%). "Child sexual exploitation is not confined to one community, age demographic, social status or gender," said CEOP. It found that in one case the first contact had been a white British male who groomed the girls as girlfriends, then passed them on to an Asian gang. CEOP's chief executive, Peter Davies, said sexual exploitation of children was child abuse and often involved rape. He said it was "premeditated, carried out systematically and with a complete lack of respect or empathy for the victims. They are often singled out for their vulnerability." A CEOP report published in 2011 spoke of the difficulties, with CPS solicitors "often reluctant to take up cases of child sexual exploitation because victims are often perceived as unreliable". Detective Chief Superintendent Mary Doyle, of Greater Manchester police, said: "As long as there are adults willing to abuse vulnerable children and other adults, it will continue." On the issue of race, she said it was about vulnerability, not ethnicity. "I think if we start to get ourselves hung up on race and ethnicity issues, we take away the real issues," she said. One of the victims, who was in the care of Rochdale local authority, wrote a note to a member of staff saying she needed to move out, but refused to elaborate. The staff member told the trial: "She said she needed to be moved for her safety as well as our own but would not say what that actually involved." Days later she handed him a second note. It said: "Asians pick me up, they get me drunk, they give me drugs, they have sex with me and pay me not to tell anyone. I want to move." The note was read to the jury. Giving evidence, the 59-year-old defendant who cannot be identified claimed the girls were clever and ran a "business empire" that extended from Leeds to Nelson and Bradford. One of the girls caused problems for him and "corrupted" the others, he said. But it was a version of events the jury rejected. The man lost his temper in the witness box, shouting: "It's all white lies. Shame on the police. You're looking for scapegoats. Where are the white people?" The trial was beset by difficulties, as the far right stirred up unrest, picketing outside Liverpool crown court. A defence barrister was assaulted and refused to return to court, delaying the case as a new defence team took it on. As the first verdicts came in, the leader of the BNP, Nick Griffin, tweeted about it, a potential contempt of court. The coverage of the case also had a knock-on effect on community tensions in Heywood. In February, concerns emerged over racial tensions after trouble broke out and 200 young people congregated in the centre of town. A car and three police vehicles were damaged and an officer suffered bruising to his arm and legs. Greater Manchester police in effect issued a curfew when they warned all parents in the area to ensure their children were at home. Within an hour, the streets were clear. The chief constable, Peter Fahy, blamed outsiders who would "like to see groups turn against each other for their own ends". In the end, tensions calmed. Mohammed Shafiq, director of the Ramadhan Foundation, said of the 68 recent convictions involving child sexual exploitation, 59 were of British Pakistani men, "so clearly we have got a problem when it comes to on-street grooming". Shafiq said that a minority of Pakistani men thought white girls were worthless, a viewpoint he and he said the majority of the community found abhorrent. The perpetrators A 59-year-old man from Oldham, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, was regarded as the ringleader. He used an older girl to procure young girls for him and his friends. During the trial he accused his victims of being prostitutes and having enough business acumen to win The Apprentice. Abdul Aziz, 41, of Rochdale, a married father of three, later took over as the key trafficker and was known by the girls as "Master". Kabeer Hassan, 25, of Oldham, is married and lives with his parents. He worked at two takeaways in Heywood, now under new management. The 59-year-old ordered him to have sex with the first victim on his birthday against her will. Adil Khan, 42, of Rochdale, is married with one child and was known as Billy. He allegedly made a 13-year-old girl pregnant and she had an abortion. Khan denied knowing the girl, despite DNA evidence proving the child was his. Abdul Rauf, 43, of Rochdale, was a taxi driver at Castleton Taxis and was known as Cassie or Castleton. He is married with five children and had arrived in the UK from Pakistan in 1993, initially teaching religion at a mosque. He asked a 15-year-old girl if she had any younger friends. During the trial, he collapsed in the witness box and was taken to hospital for checks. Mohammed Sajid, 35, from Rochdale, was known as Saj. He regularly plied the victims with alcohol before having sex with them at his flat, where groups of men would wait. He moved to the UK in 1993 and was separated from his wife. He worked at a cash and carry until the trial began. Abdul Qayyum, 43, of Rochdale, was a driver for Streamline Taxis in Middleton and was known as Tiger. He is married with two children and began his own breakdown recovery business at the time of his arrest. Two Rochdale councillors provided character references describing him as hard-working. Mohammed Amin, 45, of Rochdale, was a driver for Eagle Taxis for 14 years and was known as Car Zero. He is married with school-age children. Hamid Safi, 22, is an illegal immigrant who arrived in the UK on a lorry four years ago from Afghanistan because his uncle was murdered by the Taliban. In 2009, he moved to Rochdale after he was released from a detention centre. Police are still searching for another man, Mohammed Shazad, 39, from Rochdale, who absconded while on bail following his first arrest.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/dec/30/kingsman-the-secret-service-first-look-review

Film

2014-12-30T11:28:09.000Z

Jordan Hoffman

Kingsman: The Secret Service review – dapper laughs in thrillingly adolescent 007 pastiche

They say the clothes make the man, and these are some killer duds. Colin Firth is both ludicrously British and modern-day Hollywood in Kingsman: The Secret Service, the wildly enjoyable new film from Matthew Vaughn. His Harry Hart muses on the importance of a bespoke suit one moment and dispatches a band of villains with precise alacrity and nifty gadgets the next. This movie stands in reverence of the English upper classes and the seeming ease with which they gracefully solve problems, yet is so wonderfully absurd that, if one were ever to speak so coarsely, one would say they were “taking the piss”. Kingsman quite neatly has its scone and eats it, too. Harry Hart is the Obi-Wan Kenobi to Eggsy (Taron Egerton), a good-natured but wayward kid living in a brutalist apartment block with his mom and abusive stepdad. But his biological father, who died years ago, had a secret identity. He was a Kingsman, and now that Eggsy has come of age (and run afoul of the law), that mysterious group has recruited him for training, too. Kingsman is a highly advanced, well-funded independent secret service unaligned with any government. If the bit of exposition in the film is to be believed, it was founded by high-end tailors looking to maintain world security so as to ensure a market for their sharp and fancy wares. It’s preposterous, but you buy it since the info drops during a tour of the very elegant, somewhat steampunky private underground system that can whisk agents from London to their manor outside of town. It’s there where Eggsy will train, Ender’s Game-style, and compete for the one open slot on the roster. There’s need of a new member because an operation to rescue a tweedy professor (played to great effect by Mark Hamill) has gone awry. A gorgeous female henchman with razor-blade prosthetics for legs sliced an agent in half in a lusciously decorated mountaintop chalet, you see. This weird death is part of a nefarious scheme by Kingsman’s great nemesis, Valentine, a Mark Zuckerberg-meets-Dr Evil type and source of some of the film’s most unexpected gags. Samuel L Jackson’s psychotic baddie has a thick lisp, penchant for wearing baseball caps indoors and adorns his home with portraits of panda bears that look like they’re designed by Patrick Nagel. When Hart and Valentine finally meet tête-à-tête at his headquarters, they dine on Big Macs served on place settings. And they discuss the absurdity of James Bond movies. The spirit of 007 is all over this movie, but Vaughn’s script (written with frequent collaborator Jane Goldman) has a licence to poke fun. There are direct references, like how to mix a martini and Lotte Lenya’s spiked shoe, but the overall vibe is sheer glee, as if no one involved in the production can believe they’re getting away with making such a batshit Bond. Kitted out ... Colin Firth in Kingsman: The Secret Service Photograph: Allstar/20th Century Fox Vaughn and Goldman are working off a comic book by Mark Millar, who also provided source material for their similar (but hardly as clever) Kick-Ass. Millar, whose Marvel Ultimates comics, some argue, form the spine of the current Marvel Cinematic Universe, continues to find virtue in very basic, adolescent “could you just imagine if?” narrative exploration. (L’essence du Millar can be read in his 2003 comic Superman: Red Son, in which the interplanetary basket holding Krypton’s last hope landed not in Kansas but in the USSR.) This manifests itself in Kingsman with some set-pieces designed to rattle the cages of rightwing media critics, as if on a dare. A particularly shocking bit of business happens at a rural American church, followed by some screenplay twists that wouldn’t happen in any pusillanimous or “normal” movie. Millar’s voice seems to be egging on Vaughn, whose last film, X-Men: First Class, was quite enjoyable but not nearly hardcore enough for denizens of the darker comic-book playgrounds. Despite the presence of grandfatherly Michael Caine, Kingsman’s tone is about as far from the Christopher Nolan-style superhero film as you can get. Verisimilitude is frequently traded in for a rich laugh. The action scenes delight with shock humour. It’s violent, but not gory, ready-made for word balloons reading “OOOF” or “KRAKOOM”. This movie is so alive that few will roll their eyes at the message – one that says a true gentleman’s virtue comes from within, and not their accent. (Once Eggsy dons the proper garb, it isn’t like he loses the “bruvs”.) Valentine’s convoluted plan to conquer the world involves hacking our ubiquitous cellphones. But if the spirit of Kingsman takes hold of our culture, all we’ll be carrying is a pocketwatch.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/sep/14/away-from-the-ghosts-barca-prodigy-ansu-fati-starts-again-at-brighton

Football

2023-09-14T11:29:25.000Z

Sid Lowe

Away from the ghosts: Barça prodigy Ansu Fati starts again at Brighton | Sid Lowe

Ansu Fati was the best thing to happen to Spanish football for years. The youngest La Liga goalscorer in Barcelona’s history, the youngest the national team had seen too, his story had begun in a self‑proclaimed communist utopia, a tiny Andalusian village where Che Guevara looks out from the sports centre wall, and would end on top of the world. Blessed by Lionel Messi, handed his No 10 shirt, he was Barcelona’s great hope: the chosen one, beloved by everybody. There was something about him, a genuinely special player guided by a star. He was magic, one teammate said. He was daring, electric, unstoppable. He was. But now? Now no one really knows for sure what Ansu Fati is. The most simple question of all, asked of every new signing, does not have a simple answer, or maybe even an answer at all: how good is he? Which is why there were few real offers for a player whose buyout clause had once been set at €1bn to ensure there were none; why Barcelona let go of a player their coach called “our heritage” but also why they didn’t let go entirely, finally agreeing to a year’s loan at Brighton with no option to buy. Because if he is not that player any more, and if some on the inside fear he never will be again, he still might be. Ansu Fati is introduced to the Brighton fans at the Amex in September. Photograph: James Marsh/Shutterstock Brighton offers a place for them to find out, and there is still time. The Amex might not have seemed the most likely destination but there was a kind of collective relief at finding him a club and them a solution to a growing problem, however temporarily. One that offers the hope of something a little more permanent, a revival. Brighton’s manager, Roberto De Zerbi, spoke to Fati, reassuring him that this could be good for him, that he had a role, support. This is a place for him to get the opportunities denied at Barcelona, away from the injuries and the pressure, the increasing tension; away from the ghosts. A place to be liberated, to find himself. A place, above all, to play. For too long, he had not. Last season, 16 members of the squad got more minutes than Fati. This season, the kid once identified as a generational talent had played 47 minutes and that felt like it was actually a lot, like he could not expect more. Injury had interrupted everything, the damage not purely physical, and not playing had become normal, just the way it was. All that excitement, all that promise, had slipped away. There was a kind of nostalgia that clung to him, which is absurd for a footballer who is still only 20. But he was no normal footballer. Or at least he hadn’t been. “It’s not normal for his first touch to be a goal, it’s not normal for his second to be an assist, and it’s not normal for his third to almost go in the top corner,” the then head coach, Ernesto Valverde, said after Fati’s first start at the Camp Nou, in September 2019. He was only 16 and he had scored inside two minutes. It wasn’t his first goal, either: the previous game, he had come on at Osasuna and scored inside six. “It’s all a bit exaggerated. This will get bigger and bigger. Between us we have to stop it getting overblown to protect the player,” Valverde said. Sergio Busquets stated: “He’s very young. We know what he is capable of, what he’s doing, that the fans are excited, that people are comparing him to great players. He has the quality. We have to support him because we know hard times will come; he has to know where he is.” It did get bigger and bigger, and bigger. Hard times did come. Fati scored and assisted on his first start for Spain in June 2020, becoming more than just a Barcelona player but someone the country held close, warmth and affection in their embrace; he was just a child and looked it too. What he did was so natural, so smooth, that it appeared almost effortless, innocent, like he felt no pressure and nothing could stop him. He had a gift; it was as if he did not need to chase goals, they came to him. Even when he suffered a torn meniscus, out for 323 days, he came back, in September 2021, and immediately scored again. But it had been hard. That day Ronald Araújo lifted him to the sky, as if to offer him to everyone. Even the opposition manager said he was “happy for football that Ansu’s back”. Fati climbed into the crowd to embrace medical staff and family. He had undergone four operations in three countries, in November 2020 and January, March and May 2021. He was still only 18. In his absence – in Messi’s absence too – the pressure had increased, the reliance. He was given the No 10 shirt, a new contract announced under the slogan Dream Teen. “He can’t be asked to fix everything Messi left,” Ronald Koeman, by then the coach, said, tellingly. The reaction that day showed Barcelona had needed him as much as he needed them. Ansu Fati celebrates after scoring the final goal in Barcelona’s 3-0 win over Levante in September 2021. Photograph: Albert Gea/Reuters Then in November, he suffered a muscle injury in Vigo. He was out for two months then returned, too soon, for a cup game in Bilbao and immediately got injured again. This time the impact was lasting. Doctors wanted him to be operated on but Fati resisted, determined to avoid going under the knife yet again. He did not return until May 2022, making a handful of substitute appearances, still not truly ready. Across 2020-21 and 2021-22, he started only nine league games. He wasn’t the same; he wasn’t given the opportunity to be the same, either. In the second week of the following season, 2022-23, Fati came on and changed the game at Real Sociedad. “I’m playing without fear now; I’m not far off being 100%,” he said that night and a couple of weeks later Xavi declared the injuries “forgotten”. But neither of those lines was entirely true and the coach admitted his return was hard to manage, that he needed to go slow. Besides, they had Robert Lewandowski now, with whom he was an uneasy fit, and Fati did not start a league game until October. He was also left out of the year’s first Spain squad. The surprise came when Luis Enrique did then take him to the World Cup in Qatar. It was Luis Enrique’s only regret. “Ansu’s level is unquestionable,” the Spain coach had said when he named the squad. He also admitted that he had doubted over what to do until the very last minute; the “what if?” which everyone still feels even now, finally won him over. 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. “I hope I can recover his best version. When I see him train I will know if his improvement is real. He’s not starting for his club yet but this [World Cup] can be the stimulus he needs,” Luis Enrique said. But in Qatar Fati cut a slightly melancholic figure and the coach concluded, sadly, that he was wrong. Fati played 22 minutes each against Japan and Morocco, and returned having made little impact. Morocco’s Jawad El Yamiq (centre) and keeper Yassine Bounou combine to thwart Spain’s Ansu Fati during their World Cup 2022 last-16 match, which Spain lost on penalties. Photograph: Patrick Smith/Fifa/Getty Images As the months went by, there were moments – after an impressive performance as a substitute in the Super Cup in January, Xavi conceded “maybe I should have put him on sooner” – but they were never more than moments. “I’m happy for him because he has suffered,” the Barcelona coach said that night, promising that he would be more important from then on, but it did not happen. Fati wasn’t the same. Something was wrong. It was like all that daring, that joy, that sense of ease had gone, and it wasn’t clear how to get it back. This kid who used to score goals without trying was now missing chances, like the gods had deserted him. Something had: some thought he was fearful or, worse still, finished. That he was not as explosive, not as fast, might be natural but there are those inside who believe this is more about the mind. He seemed reluctant to take risks, to put his foot in. Sitting out wasn’t the solution. Fati needed continuity and confidence but that wasn’t coming at the Camp Nou, not in the midst of competition, not unless he made a case so clear it could not be ignored. Xavi said he needed time, noting “the younger generation is in a hurry. I wore No 26 for three years,” and called him Barcelona’s “present and future” but that was only half true at best. There had been increasingly fraught meetings between the club, Fati’s father Bori and his agent Jorge Mendes, a growing sense that they had a problem on their hands, and in the spring Bori exploded, every bit the embarrassing dad. Bori claimed that his son had fully recovered, fitness no longer an excuse for not playing him; had taken responsibility when the club was in “freefall”; and had hurried his return – “and for what?!” It was time, he said, for a change. “Ansu deserves much more. It annoys me that he plays so few minutes,” Bori insisted. “If it was up to me, I would take him out of Barcelona.” And so he did, bound for Brighton where maybe he can be himself again.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2017/feb/27/dont-let-that-oscars-blunder-overshadow-moonlights-monumental-achievement

Film

2017-02-27T13:39:50.000Z

Steve Rose

Don't let that Oscars blunder overshadow Moonlight's monumental achievement

So which did you want to win, the black film or the white film? Anatomy of an Oscars fiasco: how La La Land was mistakenly announced as best picture Read more This year’s best picture Oscar was technically a nine-horse race, but it was reduced to, and will be remembered as, essentially Moonlight v La La Land. There was never any doubt that one or other of these films would win best picture, and the two movies readily lent themselves to polar opposition. Moonlight is small in scale, personal, bang up-to-date; La La Land bigger, bolder, unashamedly retro. One is a story of marginal, southern African-American experience; the other a big, predominantly white “hooray for Hollywood”. Moonlight was the David to La La Land’s Goliath. The impression of rivalry was only reinforced by the farcical “And the winner is … Oh no it isn’t!” mix up, which brought the makers of the two movies on stage together, and practically snatched the statuette out of La La Land’s hands, mid-acceptance speeches and thrust it into Moonlight’s. A symbolic passing of the baton, perhaps, but you could say there was something tragically apt about the way Team Moonlight’s limelight was cruelly stolen away from them in the confusion. Director Barry Jenkins, writer Tarell Alvin McCraney and producers Adele Romanski, Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner were outsiders even at their own coronation, denied what should have been a moment of glory. There were echoes of Hattie McDaniel, 76 years ago, who had to walk up to collect her Best Supporting Actress Oscar from a table way down the back of the hall. She was seated separately from the rest of the Gone With The Wind stars, whose own table groaned with statuettes and champagne bottles. McDaniel was lucky to even be allowed into the segregated Ambassador Hotel for the ceremony. Something about the way Moonlight won felt similar – a moment of triumph, tarnished. Confusion as Moonlight wins best picture – Oscars 2017 video highlights Guardian Moonlight was a thoroughly deserving winner for so many reasons, many of which boil down the fact that this type of movie doesn’t usually get Oscar recognition. It was a historic win in terms of films about LGBT subjects. In the past, many films, including such as Brokeback Mountain, Dallas Buyers Club or Kiss of the Spiderwoman have come close or picked up other awards, but not best picture. More importantly, it was historic in terms of African-American cinema. It isn’t the first best picture winner (Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave achieved that milestone four years ago), but it was the first to do so without being about civil rights or race relations – which is also a milestone. That’s tended to be the only type of African-American picture the Academy recognises, be it 12 Years, Lincoln, In the Heat of the Night or Driving Miss Daisy. If you were feeling less charitable and more Team La La Land, you could also consider Moonlight’s victory in the context of last year’s #OscarsSoWhite debacle about the lack of African-American representation in the acting categories. Big stars like Will Smith boycotting the world’s pre-eminent awards show was a shaming the Oscars could not afford to repeat. Before last year’s ceremony, Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs announced sweeping changes to its entry process which would bring more women and people of colour into a voting body that was 74% male and 93% white. Last year it gained a record 683 new members, 46% of whom were women, 41% people of colour. Did that, combined with an Academy-wide sense of guilt, tip the balance in Moonlight’s favour? To deny that the new, more representative voting demographic might have contributed to this result would be to defeat the purpose of the exercise. To acknowledge it is to call into question every previous Best Picture winner, decided by a bunch of old white guys. Oscar winners 2017: the full list Read more Even more contentiously, did #OscarSoWhite affect critical opinion? No critic would ever admit such a thing, but few of them had a bad word to say about Moonlight. It has a 99% rating on Metacritic – the fourth highest of all time (La La Land’s is 93). And while La La Land’s huge popularity prompted something of a backlash, when Sunday Times critic Camilla Long gave Moonlight a negative review a murmuration of Twitter users bore down on her like something out of a Hitchcock movie. Long’s objections might have borne little substance for many – they basically boiled down to “I’m white and middle class, so there” – but there must have been plenty of critics out there relieved it wasn’t them getting pecked to pieces. Moonlight becomes him: Barry Jenkins's journey from a Miami housing project to the Oscars Read more Couching Moonlight’s victory in any of these terms somehow detracts from it, though. Can’t we just say it won because it was a great movie? It’s such a brave, fresh piece of work. Brave in its three-act, three-actor structure. Brave in its deconstruction and reappropriation of African-American stereotypes. Brave in its suggestion that humiliation and repression lie often beneath the carapace of masculine swagger. Brave in its soundtrack, its lighting, the way its swooning dreamy mood could take in harsh social realism, too. It’s a unique, complete work of art – and the Academy is notoriously bad at recognising those. But here’s the thing. La La Land is a great film, too. It’s also bold and brave and adventurous, and would have been just as deserving of best picture, in my opinion. (Though if I had to choose I’d have given it to Moonlight – first, it could do with the extra box office and La La Land is already a smash; second, I slated Barry Jenkins’ first movie, Medicine for Melancholy, at the time, perhaps unfairly. I promise to bring myself to rewatch it, but I reserve to right to still dislike it). In the current Hollywood landscape, the mega-budget blockbusters are the Goliaths; Moonlight and La La Land are both Davids. ‘It’s all about perception’: director and cast on Oscar contender Moonlight Guardian Why do we have to pick sides? Amid the surreal on-stage confusion last night, as the statuettes and red envelopes changed hands and Bonnie and Clyde looked for their getaway car, host Jimmy Kimmel gushed to one of Team La La Land’s crestfallen members: “I would like to see you get an Oscar anyway. Why can’t we give out a whole bunch of them?” So many presenters and winners last night said sincere, noble and important words about healing divisions and human decency and resisting the unravelling of the US – and possibly global – order that President Trump threatens to wreak. Starting with Kimmel, who beseeched viewers at home to “reach out to one person you disagree with, someone you like, and have a positive, considerate conversation”. And that’s the problem: the Oscars is like sports or politics. It’s about creating winners and losers. It’s about pitting one team against another. In a small way, it’s about manufacturing the type of divisions its nominees spoke against. But then again, who wants to see an awards show where everybody gets an Oscar?

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/nov/01/gender-pay-gap-217-years-to-close-world-economic-forum

Society

2017-11-01T23:01:38.000Z

Jill Treanor

Women will wait 217 years for pay gap to close, WEF says

Women around the globe may have to wait more than two centuries to achieve equality in the workplace, according to new research. The World Economic Forum, best known for its annual gathering in the Swiss resort of Davos, said it would take 217 years for disparities in the pay and employment opportunities of men and women to end. This is significantly longer than the 170 years its researchers calculated a year ago. Extend paternity leave and enshrine it in law, says French petition Read more Taking other indicators such as access to healthcare and education and participation in politics in account, the overall gender gap will take 100 years to close – also longer than the 83 years the WEF researchers predicted last year. It is the first time since the WEF began publishing its gender gap report in 2006 that “slow but steady progress” towards parity between men and women has halted. Saadia Zahidi, the WEF’s head of education, gender and work, said: “In 2017 we should not be seeing progress towards gender parity shift into reverse. Gender equality is both a moral and economic imperative. Some countries understand this and they are now seeing dividends from the proactive measures they have taken to address their gender gaps.” The research ranks 144 countries on the gap between women and men based on economic, health, education and political indicators. The UK has risen five places since last year to 15th on the index, largely as a result of improvement in the political indicators after the appointment of Theresa May as prime minister in 2016. When the index started in 2006, the UK was ranked ninth. The report cites research from the accountancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers showing that, in the UK alone, economic gender parity could add $250bn (£188bn) to GDP. Iceland is top of the index after closing 88% of its gap, and has been the world’s most gender-equal country for nine years, according to the WEF. It has pulled away from the competition as Norway and Finland, in second and third positions, experienced a widening in their equality ratings.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/oct/25/guillermo-del-toro-cabinet-of-curiosities-review-netflix

Television & radio

2022-10-25T15:13:00.000Z

Leila Latif

Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities review – the horror series that’s perfect pre-Halloween viewing

There are few safer bets than being a Guillermo del Toro fan. Whether he’s breathing life into a wooden puppet, having Sally Hawkins fall in love with a fish, or defending Martin Scorsese online, he is a seemingly endless source of delight. In the run-up to Halloween, he continues to bear fruit with his Cabinet of Curiosities (Netflix), an eight-part series that is as elegant as it is grotesque. While it is assumed that in any anthology series there will be hits and misses, nothing in this cabinet is worth discarding. Del Toro has written two of the episodes but “curated” them all, and assembled eight directors to create self-contained nightmares. He appears at the start of each, not unlike Rod Serling in The Twilight Zone. But Del Toro cuts a more sinister figure, with a firmly unsmiling expression as he ominously presents each episode as though it were a cursed object. The literal cabinet appears alongside him, an ornate wooden structure that resembles a many-tiered mansion; its contents, we are told, range from keys to bones to unicorn horns. Meanwhile, Del Toro’s cabinet is also brimming with some of the most exciting voices in horror, including Jennifer Kent of The Babadook, Ana Lily Amirpour of A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night and David Prior of The Empty Man. But each keeps their offering rooted in Guillermo’s signature style of the twisted fairytale, packed with stomach-churning effects and morbid morality. This is a cabinet in which hubris leads you to hell and cruelty comes back tenfold. The series starts with Lot 36, directed by Del Toro’s long-term collaborator Guillermo Navarro– who won an Oscar as the cinematographer of the director’s finest film, Pan’s Labyrinth. There are similar threads of fascism and fantasy in Lot 36, in which Tim Blake Nelson plays a military veteran slowly being swallowed whole by “alt-right” talking points. He spends his days being chased by debt collectors and selling the contents of abandoned storage units. Blake Nelson is phenomenal, playing all the bitterness and selfishness of his fascist brainwashing but keeping enough tiny cracks of humanity to remain compelling, even when he inevitably comes across a storage unit with truly horrific contents. The series then plunges into its tautest tale, Graveyard Rats, from Vincenzo Natali who was behind the cult-classic Kafkaesque nightmare Cube. Adapted from the Henry Kuttner short story, the premise is simple: a grave-robber digs up a wealthy corpse, only to see it dragged away by a pack of rats. Undeterred, he pursues the vermin through dark and twisted tunnels and discovers something far worse down there. The journey through the tunnels is utterly foul and heart-stoppingly stressful. Equally horrific moments and grisly body-horror populate the pitch-black tale of The Autopsy, where Prior as a coroner’s office doctor encounters a corpse in need of more than a “cause of death”. Meanwhile, HP Lovecraft’s Pickman’s Model is in the hands of The Vigil director Keith Thomas, who embraces the fantastical potential of Del Toro and the cosmic dread of Lovecraft with a cast led by the always intriguing Crispin Glover. But most fantastical of all is The Viewing from Panos Cosmatos, director of the avant garde Nicolas Cage revenge flick Mandy. This drug trip gone wrong fable builds to a demonic figure that feels plucked from Del Toro’s coterie. Throughout the series the tone shifts, but it always keeps one foot in Del Toro’s filmography; the dark humour of the Hellboy films is present in makeover nightmare The Outside, where Stacey (a brilliantly awkward Kate Micucci) plays an amateur taxidermist longing to fit in with her glamorous colleagues at the bank. Despite her husband’s (Martin Starr) protestations, she cannot resist the lure of Alo Glo, sold on television infomercials by a deliciously camp Dan Stevens. It’s a classic tale of “be careful what you wish for” done with all the panache you would expect of Del Toro and director Amirpour. Perhaps the most significant deviation from the pack is the least scary but most haunting entry. The Murmuring sees Kent reunite with its star Essie Davis for a mournful tale of a pair of ornithologists retreating to a secluded home to research bird migrations and recover from a terrible loss. The piece has all the gentle sorrow of Kent’s work and the tragedy of Del Toro’s orphanage horror The Devil’s Backbone. It also perfectly encapsulates what makes Cabinet of Curiosities an absolute triumph. It lets film-makers draw inspiration from the master without squashing their own spirit, giving Del Toro plenty of delectably nasty tales to present to the viewer. There seems no better way to countdown to Halloween than this assurance that the state of horror is in safe, if sinister, hands.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/feb/20/mail-online-traffic-metro-standard-mirror

Media

2014-02-20T15:22:08.000Z

Mark Sweney

Mail Online traffic soars by nearly 20% | Digital ABCs

Mail Online enjoyed another massive surge in traffic in January, increasing its online audience by nearly 20% and putting it within touching distance of 190 million monthly unique browsers. Most UK national newspaper websites enjoyed a traffic surge last month, after the traditionally quiet festive holiday period in December, with Metro.co.uk, the Evening Standard and Mirrror.co.uk reporting growth of 20% or more in either daily or monthly unique browser numbers. Mail Online's average daily unique browser figure leapt by a shade under 20% to nearly 11.8 million. The Daily Mail website increased its monthly unique browsers by 17.5% compared with December from 161.3 million to 189.5 million – adding close to the equivalent of Independent.co.uk's monthly audience. Month-on-month growth of 6% in February will result in Mail Online hitting 200 million monthly unique browsers. Metro.co.uk reported the biggest proportionate rise, with a 25.72% jump in daily unique browsers to crack 1 million for the first time. The Evening Standard website, Standard.co.uk, followed suit with a 24.79% rise in daily browsers to 247,000. Monthy browsers were up just over 19%. The Audit Bureau of Circulations monthly digital traffic report published on Thursday also featured a debut for Trinity Mirror's Manchester Evening News. Manchestereveningnews.co.uk reported 256,444 average daily unique browsers – ahead of the Evening Standard's 247,000 – although the London paper can claim it a draw with more wins on monthly browsers (5.4 million to 4.3 million). Trinity Mirror flagship the Mirror.co.uk saw average daily browser numbers grow 21% to 2,449,876. Monthly browser numbers grew much more modestly at 8.65%. Telegraph.co.uk increased its daily browsers by 14.62% and monthly browsers by 12.11% - to 3,383,247 and 68,362,492 respectively. Theguardian.com topped 5 million average daily unique browsers and 90 million monthly browsers for the first time. Theguardian.com increased its daily browsers by 8.83% to 5,000,952, and monthly numbers by 5.95% to 90,333,500. Independent.co.uk rose 14.41% in daily browser terms, to 1,551,112, and 14.67% in monthly browsers to 34,279,716. Mail Online Daily average browsers: 11,768,620 Month-on-month change: +19.96% Year-on-year change: +47.53% Monthly browsers: 189,529,629 Month-on-month: +17.49% theguardian.com Daily average browsers: 5,000,952 Month-on-month change: +8.83% Year-on-year change: +15.78% Monthly browsers: 90,333,500 Month-on-month: +5.95% Telegraph.co.uk Daily average browsers: 3,383,247 Month-on-month change: +14.62% Year-on-year change: +8.10% Monthly browsers: 68,362,492 Month-on-month change: +12.11% Mirror.co.uk Daily average browsers: 2,449,876 Month-on-month change: +21.06% Year-on-year change: +130.05% Monthly browsers: 46,558,736 Month-on-month change: +8.65% Independent.co.uk Daily average browsers: 1,551,112 Month-on-month change: +14.41% Year-on-year change: +27.75% Monthly browsers: 34,279,716 Month-on-month change: +14.67% Metro.co.uk Daily average browsers: 1,051,030 Month-on-month change: +25.72% Year-on-year change: +304.06% Monthly browsers: 22,954,776 Month-on-month change: +17.42% Standard.co.uk Daily average browsers: 247,000 Month-on-month change: +24.79% Year-on-year change: +19.05% Monthly browsers: 5,425,864 Month-on-month change: +19.24% Trinity Mirror Regionals Manchestereveningnews.co.uk Daily average browsers: 256,444 Month-on-month change: +45.54% Year-on-year change: +107.89% Monthly browsers: 4,269,895 Month-on-month change: +23.60% Liverpoolecho.co.uk Daily average browsers: 192,457 Month-on-month change: +59.59% Year-on-year change: +90.07% Monthly browsers: 3,003,047 Month-on-month change: +39.08% To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email [email protected] or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication". To get the latest media news to your desktop or mobile, follow MediaGuardian on Twitter and Facebook.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/nov/08/bbc-philharmonic-schwarz-review-tom-coult-pleasure-garden-daniel-pioro

Music

2021-11-08T11:14:43.000Z

Hugh Morris

BBC Phil/Schwarz review – Coult’s bewitching Pleasure Garden goes back to nature

Tom Coult’s new Composer in Association role with the BBC Philharmonic commits him to three substantial works over the next three years, the first of which, Pleasure Garden, received its premiere here. The violin concerto, a co-commission from the orchestra and Salford University, and written to celebrate the recent opening of the RHS Garden Bridgewater in Salford, invites listeners to explore the relationship between nature and music, and debate the future of our green spaces. Coult explained in brief programme notes that he had steered clear of any attempt to “tell a story”, though the four sources that inspired each respective movement are entertaining tales in their own right, ranging from 14th-century organetto player Francesco Landini performing to a group of increasingly unruly birds, to the time Salford’s Worsley New Hall attempted to dye the orange, ore-stained Bridgewater canal blue to mark the visit of Queen Victoria. The logic of Coult’s musical ideas alone wasn’t always enough to give the piece obvious direction, particularly through the first movement where green shoots of life from the violin were pruned vociferously by vertical stabs of orchestral sound. Much of the remaining three movements featured slower-moving textures, methodically crafted yet bewitchingly original. Coult’s writing is strongest when elaborately unravelling a sound’s constituent parts. The music has a Takemitsu-like quality in that regard, to which Coult adds his own mischievous touches. Violinist Daniel Pioro was an assured soloist, switching with ease between an embedded near-tutti role, and his position as the orchestra’s sparring partner. Swiss-Australian conductor Elena Schwarz, in her debut with the orchestra, made her way carefully through Kurt Weill’s rarely performed second symphony. The piece sees Weill in transition, moving away from orchestral music and towards the stage, and the Philharmonic’s soloists added just enough of the jazzy swagger that would come to define his later work. Schwarz’s fleet-footed presence on the podium was better suited to the evocative strains of Ravel’s ballet Mother Goose, which brought some gorgeous playing from the Philharmonic – special mention for harpist Clifford Lantaff, equal to the varied demands set by Ravel and Coult. You’d be hard pressed to find a more lovely end to a programme than the conclusion of Ravel’s score, where Sleeping Beauty is awoken by her Prince Charming. Broadcast on Radio 3 on 10 November and then on BBC Sounds until 9 December.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/01/parents-are-dressing-up-their-children-to-be-buried-syrias-war-on-young-escalates

World news

2021-08-01T17:05:47.000Z

Bethan McKernan

‘Parents are dressing up their children to be buried’: Syria’s war on young escalates

Amid the rubble of bombed homes in Binnish, a town in north-west Syria, a brightly painted mural stands out. The image shows an intact house, with love hearts streaming from the windows. Overhead, however, the dark silhouettes of birds are accompanied by helicopters, warplanes and missiles, and the garden’s red and yellow flowers look like flames. Syria: Assad shells former opposition stronghold Deraa Read more The mural is the work of 13-year-old Hussein Sabbagh, who was eight when his family fled Bashar al-Assad’s attacks on Aleppo in 2016. Like millions of other Syrians, the Sabbaghs ended up in north-west Syria, the last pocket of the country that remains outside the regime’s control. The family tried to build a new life despite the fact that war still raged around them: for Hussein, there was respite in football, and helping the local artist Aziz al-Asmar with his famous political murals. But the teenager’s dreams of being a painter ended last month when regime forces targeted a swimming pool in the town of Fua with artillery shelling. Hussein, along with his 17-year-old brother, 23-year-old uncle, and three more civilians, was killed. A mural painted on a bombed house in Binnish, an opposition-held town in the Syrian province of Idlib, by 13-year-old Hussein Sabbagh. Photograph: Muhammad Haj Kaddour/The Syria Campaign “Hussein was loved by everyone. He helped me in many of the murals I painted … He was talented and had such a beautiful imagination,” said Asmar. “There was one particular drawing that he loved to paint a lot, a house with love hearts … He wanted to say that these bombs kill love and destroy homes.” Hussein is one of 27 children who have been killed in government attacks across north-west Syria in the past two months alone as Bashar al-Assad’s war of attrition takes its toll on the area’s youngest and most vulnerable residents. Seven school buildings have also been hit, adding to the regime’s ugly track record of targeting civilian infrastructure. “We have begun to notice a pattern in recent years, where the bombing gets worse on holidays like Eid,” said Laila Hasso, the director of communication and advocacy for the locally run Hurras Network, a charity that works to protect children in Syria. “Thirteen children were killed in just three days. Now every time Eid comes we are afraid we will lose more children. Instead of giving them new clothes to dress up and celebrate, parents are dressing up their children to be buried.” North-west Syria is mostly ruled by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, an Islamist group that seized control from other opposition factions in 2019. While HTS has made efforts to distance itself from its al-Qaida origins, the group tolerates little dissent and enforces religious edicts on those living in its territory. The area is supposedly protected by a ceasefire brokered by Turkey and Russia in March 2020, but the deal is routinely ignored and the area’s residents live in fear of the next wave of airstrikes. A bombed house in Binnish, Idlib. Photograph: Muhammad Haj Kaddour/The Syria Campaign About three-quarters of the estimated population of 3.5 million fled to the north-west to escape fighting in other parts of the country. Living conditions are dire and have worsened since last year’s collapse of the Syrian currency, which sent food prices soaring. A steady stream of aid cuts and the arrival of Covid-19 have also added to the hardships of daily life for people trapped between the regime and HTS. The violence has escalated in the two weeks since the Eid al-Adha holiday. Around the same time, Assad took the oath of office for a fourth seven-year term as president after winning 95% of the vote in May’s fraudulent election, vowing to make “liberating those parts of the homeland that still need to be” one of his top priorities. “The regime calls the people in north-west Syria terrorists. But the acts of terrorism is what the regime does, attacking civilians and schools,” said Hasso. “Sometimes parents ask us to close the school buildings because they are so afraid that their children will die there. In other parts of the world, schools are regarded as safe places … The regime wants to send the message that there is no future in this area for you or your children.” Asmar, the artist, went to leave flowers at Hussein’s grave in Binnish last week. Despite the pain of losing his young assistant, painting remains a way to hold on to hope and remind the world that Syrians still dream of peace and justice, he said. “Since I came back to Syria from Beirut years ago, I seek to draw a smile on children’s faces. I try to make them forget, even for a moment, the terror and war they’ve lived through,” he said. “I let them participate with me so that they are able to express their feelings through art. I want to deliver a message to them that hope still exists.”

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/sep/10/raekwon-interview

Music

2009-09-10T21:20:00.000Z

Angus Batey

The return of Raekwon

Corey Woods is tired, but happy. The rotund rapper with the slurring voice and the mouthful of gold teeth sits in the lobby of a London hotel, chewing over the ups and downs of his musical career in the same way he tears into rhymes that earned him a place among the hip-hop greats. He's just flown in from New York, where last night he finally pronounced his latest album – a sequel and companion piece to his much-praised, decade-and-a-half-old debut – finished, after four arduous and often fractious years. It's been a tortuous and troubled process, with friendships pushed to the limit as the record inched towards release. But finally it's ready, and the 41-year-old better known as Raekwon the Chef is proud of it. "The whole main purpose of the album is to make you reminisce," he says. "But at the same token, you still gotta show some kind of growth, and we did that, too. My mind is thinkin' in both directions at the same time – on makin' a classic album and still managin' to make it sound like how we was feelin' when we made music way back when. Wasn't the easiest shit, but some geniuses, they go through what they go through to find out how it is to be a genius, you know what I mean? And I really feel like a genius right now, because I know I paid the dues to be that way." Raekwon was an integral part of the Wu-Tang Clan when the group's 1993 debut album broke the hip-hop mould, and their radical business plan – each of the nine members was free to sign his own record deal, and eventually they all made at least two solo albums – brought them to a position of unprecedented dominance in the rap world. Raekwon's first solo album, Only Built 4 Cuban Linx became a revered rap touchstone, and Raekwon's fusing of crack-dealing tales with a vivid feel for cut-up verbal imagery became a key factor in New York rap's development. Since its 1995 release, though, its maker has struggled. His next two albums failed to meet the expectations his debut had created. Fine performances on solo albums by fellow Clan member Ghostface Killah went all but unnoticed, and Raekwon's verses on the third and fourth Clan albums did not always showcase him at his best. Then, in late 2007, on the eve of release of the Clan's make-or-break comeback album, 8 Diagrams, his frustration boiled over. In a video interview, he launched a stinging attack on the album, and specifically on the production by the Clan's leader, Rza. He claimed that the music the rappers were given to work with hadn't inspired them, that it had little of the energy and fire long-term fans had a right to expect, and that all the other group members felt the same. He refused to have anything to do with the album, failing to appear in the video for the first single, My Guitar Gently Weeps, on which he was prominently featured. Yet what seemed at the time a lunatic piece of self-sabotage now makes a kind of sense. Raekwon had announced a sequel to Cuban Linx, and said the record would be released by Dr Dre's Aftermath label (a deal that never materialised), the imprint that had fuelled the rises of Eminem and 50 Cent. He and Rza had agreed that Cuban Linx 2 would be released after 8 Diagrams had re-established the Clan, but listening to the new group album, Rae feared a different scenario. To his ears, 8 Diagrams took the Clan's classic sound – scratchy drum loops, portentous martial arts movie samples, sound effects and wonky pianos – too far into a rock-influenced direction. The record would be a flop, his bargaining position with labels diminished, and Cuban Linx 2 was likely to suffer a fate similar to his previous two solo projects. He came out swinging, because he felt he was fighting for his own survival. "I still wanted to see the family come back to life," he says, looking back on the contretemps. "And when that didn't transpire from the music, it kinda made me feel like I was bein' taken advantage of. I thought, when people heard 8 Diagrams, they'd be like, 'Oh, Wu-Tang is a wrap now – they've lost it.' And I know that we didn't lose it. I was thinkin', 'Damn! I'm sacrificin' my time for something that I know people is gonna ridicule, while I know I'm sittin' here with a classic!' And that shit was fuckin' with me." Rza produces three tracks on Cuban Linx 2 and raps on one, but the relationship between him and Raekwon is still complex, and somewhat fraught. "Wu-Tang is the house that Rza built," Raekwon admits. "We can't lie about that. He knows that he put everybody in the situation, and he's cocky about that. What happens is, you look up to somebody who you respected for givin' you the opportunity to be here today, and you kinda hide a lot of the stuff that you all been through. We wasn't tryin' to say 'Rza's music is trash,' because he's not trash. I could never say Rza's trash. But he didn't come with the right formula on 8 Diagrams. I think Cuban Linx 2 will have the Clan back where they need to be, but then it's up for the Clan to be back where they need to be, too. 'Cos it ain't just the album, you know what I mean? It's everything." Resurrecting his group's fortunes might sound like an overly ambitious mission for an artist in Raekwon's precarious career position to attempt, but Cuban Linx 2 makes good on the promise. Even at the height of their war of words, Rza was in no doubt about Raekwon's prowess, telling me in November 2007 that Rae was "the best MC in the world right now. We argue every day, but his talent is at its fuckin' peak." Tracks such as House of Flying Daggers or the blaxploitation stomp Canal Street validate that judgment, and prove Raekwon's decision to revisit and rekindle past glories as a means of achieving forward momentum was inspired. And on Cuban Linx 2 Raekwon does relocate his muse in the interplay between dirty sampled loops – what might be called "traditional" hip-hop production – and the scattershot splattering of verbal detail. Surgical Gloves, a track produced by Eminem's tour DJ, the Alchemist, is the album's key moment: over a backing track that revels in its modernity even as it recalls old-style hip-hop production, Raekwon tells a street crime story in a chopped, fragmentary style that reveals narrative through glimpses of detail – a technique deliberately conceived to speed up his storytelling and lend it immediacy. "That came from visionin' myself bein' back with some of the most ruthless animals in the streets," he explains. "I've been around good dudes that had terrible reputations. My friends, they didn't give a fuck: they would sell to pregnant crackheads, one-armed mo'fuckers with no eyes – whatever. And I felt like that beat made me go back to that ruthless side of us. I'm a storyteller – that's my chamber, that's my box. I'm always tryin' to give you the best story from our side of the table that you could really relate to quick. I understand where I wanna be at, but sometimes the production takes me where I need to go."

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/dec/10/should-i-worry-about-flossing

Life and style

2023-12-10T15:00:52.000Z

Joel Snape

Should I worry about flossing?

‘H ow often do you brush, Ralph?” a dentist asks Chief Wiggum’s son in Last Exit to Springfield, frequently cited as one of The Simpsons’ best ever episodes. “Three times a day, sir!” chirps the hapless Ralph, only to have the cold glare of the dental lamp shone in his face along with his orthodontist’s ire: “Why must you turn my office into a house of lies?” If this scene seems familiar, it’s probably because you have been interrogated once too often about how often you floss. Invented almost 200 years ago, flossing has never caught on in quite the same way as a twice-daily brush – and a few years ago, a decent-sized study put the dental profession on the defensive by claiming that it might not actually be all that worthwhile. But the NHS didn’t change its recommendations on interdental care, and oral health specialists are as persistent as ever. So what should you be doing? First, what about that study? Well, in 2016 the Associated Press published a piece based on freedom of information requests to the US departments of health and human services and agriculture for evidence in favour of flossing and concluded that the evidence for flossing was “weak, very unreliable” and carried “a moderate to large potential for bias”. Stories at the time pointed to another review of studies from 2015, claiming that it showed “very inconsistent/weak evidence” for flossing. Before you toss the floss, though, there are a couple of problems with all this. First, that frequently quoted 2015 study looked specifically at periodontitis, a severe form of gum disease that is among the leading causes of tooth loss in adults, not the effectiveness of flossing more broadly (gingivitis, also considered in the study, is less serious, but can escalate). More generally, it is very difficult to conduct good long-term studies on flossing because many people will lie about their health-based behaviour – whether that is how much they drink, how often they exercise or how they take care of their teeth. Over the long term, it is also difficult to ensure test subjects are flossing for long enough, or using the correct technique, even if they think they are doing everything right. And in a study published this year, researchers found that people who learned and consistently used proper flossing technique showed a significant reduction in gum bleeding compared with people who just carried on with whatever strategy they were using. As bleeding gums can be an early indicator of gum disease, that is a pretty significant finding. “If you never floss your teeth, you’re missing out on a crucial part of oral hygiene,” says Dr Thomas Servos, of the University of Texas Health school of dentistry in Houston. “Flossing helps to remove plaque and food particles from between your teeth and areas that your toothbrush might not reach effectively.” This means that flossing can help to manage or prevent halitosis, as well as managing the buildup of plaque that can otherwise only be removed by a professional when it turns into tartar. There is also (limited) evidence that flossing might improve your oral microbiome, so your mouth is healthier overall. “There are a number of options for what we call interdental care, including tape, picks, and brushes, and your choice of floss can impact on effectiveness, comfort and ease of use, so finding the right type for your teeth is important,” says Servos. “Using proper technique ensures that you effectively remove debris without causing harm to your gums,” he adds. “Use a gentle back-and-forth motion and avoid snapping the floss into place, which can harm your gums. Make sure to clean both sides of each tooth – and don’t force it. If you haven’t flossed regularly, your gums might bleed initially due to inflammation or gingivitis. However, consistent flossing should improve gum health and reduce bleeding.” Ideally, you should floss at least once a day – consistency matters more than frequency, so consider pairing it up with another regular daily activity, such as your morning shower or evening audiobook. And yes, dentists really can tell whether you do it or not. Don’t turn your dental surgery into a house of lies.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/19/twitter-supposed-to-spread-democracy-not-trumps-ravings

Opinion

2018-08-19T06:00:15.000Z

John Naughton

Twitter was supposed to spread democracy, not Trump’s ravings | John Naughton

Here’s the $64,000 question for our time: how did digital technologies go from being instruments for spreading democracy to tools for undermining it? Or, to put it a different way, how did social media go from empowering free speech to becoming a cornerstone of authoritarian power? I ask this as a distressed, recovering techno-utopian. Like many engineers of my generation, I believed that the internet would be the most empowering and liberating technology since the invention of printing by moveable type. And once the web arrived, and anyone who could type could become a global publisher, it seemed to me that we were on the verge of something extraordinary. The old editorial gatekeepers of the pre-internet media world would lose their stranglehold on public discourse; human creativity would be unleashed; a million flowers would bloom in a newly enriched and democratised public sphere. In such a decentralised world, authoritarianism would find it hard to get a grip. A political leader such as Donald Trump would be unthinkable. Naive? Sure. But I was in good company, as Fred Turner, the distinguished Stanford sociologist, recounts in a remarkable essay about Twitter in a collection recently published by MIT Press. Turner sets our contemporary dilemma in a longer historical context of the relationship between media and power. In the 1930s, observers marvelled at the astuteness of Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda chief, particularly the way he harnessed broadcast (ie one-to-many) communications technology to induce Germans to tune into a single powerful source. “By turning together in a single direction,” Turner writes, “audiences rehearsed the one-to-many structures of fascism.” Mass media deployed in this way “tended to produce an authoritarian personality style”. Analogue broadcast technology worried governments and social theorists in the postwar era. If mass media promoted common audience experiences, then it also promoted “undifferentiated mass society”. Trying to prevent this was what lay behind the concerns of regulators to try and ensure “plurality” when considering media mergers and acquisitions – and also why military coups invariably involved first seizing radio and TV stations. But for a long time there was no way of reining in broadcast media other than by regulation. Trump displays most ingenuity in using Twitter to project his charisma And then, one day, the internet arrived and the game changed. Suddenly, anyone could be a publisher. Every individual would be able freely to choose what to believe, with whom they would associate and where they would choose to direct their attention. The power of broadcast media would be attenuated. The public sphere could become a free “marketplace of ideas” in which good ideas would drive out the bad. Twitter seemed like the technological instantiation of this ideal: it promoted individual expression and helped to build social networks. Anyone could say anything (well, almost: there were always those vapid “community guidelines”). The first amendment ruled OK. Trump’s capture of the presidency, says Turner, has comprehensively refuted the democratising promise of digital media. The key feature of authoritarian capture is the projection of the charismatic personality of the ruler. In an analogue era, that meant that the bodies or minds of his audience had to be brought together in one place so that he could work his hypnotic magic. Think Nuremberg rallies or regular speeches like the ones Goebbels used to transmit, via the inexpensive radio receivers he dispensed and also by loudspeakers in public places. Although Trump has used mini-Nuremberg-style rallies to great effect, he displays most ingenuity in using Twitter to project his charisma. Turner highlights two aspects of this. The first is the way he uses the medium to project his personality: the daft, tempestuous tweets that so infuriate liberals are taken by followers as a sign of his authenticity as a person. He’s “just being himself” – so unlike conventional politicians – and so claims the right to their attention and political support. The second significant aspect is that his tweets come as part of a follower’s twitterstream, interspersed with tweets from friends and a range of other sources. In that way, Trump uses the medium “to insert himself into the company of a user’s chosen conversation partners”, much as Franklin Roosevelt used his “fireside” radio chats during his presidency. Turner’s analysis of Trump’s ascendancy is as depressing as it is acute. He concludes that “authoritarian charisma is not medium-dependent. Nor are authentic individuality, the intimate social sphere, or flexible collaborative networks necessarily enemies of totalitarianism.” And it’s not clear what, if anything, can be done to improve things. Of course, Twitter could ban Trump, but with 53.8 million followers it’s unlikely to do that. Mainstream media could start ignoring Trump’s tweets, which effectively allow him to control their news agendas, but they won’t, because he’s good for clicks and circulation. And besides, the guy is, after all, the elected president of the United States. Which, in a way, neatly summarises the problem we’ve got. What I found on the web The Tesla Model 3: ‘a giant iPhone on wheels’. Photograph: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images 1. A review of the new Tesla Model Three. Think of it as a giant iPhone on wheels. Everything is controlled via a huge – and occasionally incomprehensible – touch screen. As Miss Jean Brodie memorably observed about chemistry: “For those that like that kind of thing, that is the kind of thing they like.” Count me out. 2. The Chinese regime’s war on Pooh Bear. Apparently the supreme leader is sensitive about his weight and doesn’t like being compared to Christopher Robin’s portly friend. Such are the frailties of authoritarians. 3. If you want proof that social media is a performative space, then ponder this: 9% of UK Instagram users are buying outfits online just to photograph themselves in and then returning them to retailers.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/jun/04/abba-voyage-review-a-dazzling-retro-futurist-extravaganza

Music

2022-06-04T13:00:37.000Z

Kitty Empire

Abba Voyage review – a dazzling retro-futurist extravaganza

It starts with The Visitors, an icy, electronic track in which authoritarian agents hammer on the door of a fearful dissident – not the Abba you expected to come calling in this trailblazing, retro-futurist extravaganza of a show. The song’s lead singer, Anni-Frid Lyngstad, is, as we all know, not really on stage tonight either. She and her bandmates are 3D renderings created via the granular CGI of Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), which cut its teeth on Star Wars and the Marvel films. Lyngstad’s verisimilitude is, however, off the hook. The swish of the hair, the dentistry, the believability of her 1979 dance moves all contribute to a desire to suspend your disbelief and cast off on this surreal Voyage, which delivers everything Abba fans expect – the hits and the outfits – but still manages to surprise. In the middle of the set is Eagle, which plays out as an anime video quest that recalls Studio Ghibli and the 2012 video game Journey. It’s unclear what the animation is doing here beyond padding out the voyage theme while the “performers” allegedly “change outfits” – one of the many little pacing tics that makes this gig feel real-ish. But it is surely to do with Abba’s desire to be understood as contemporary audio-visual movers and shakers, which they achieve, and then some. Shortly afterwards comes Lay All Your Love on Me, in which the four seventysomethings, too often misunderstood as a frothy Swedish light entertainment outfit, make a serious bid to out-robot Kraftwerk in 3D with their luminous Tron suits and commitment to electronics. Underneath Benny Andersson’s churchy organ work is a synth line that would make the very early Depeche Mode proud. The most enduring pleasure of the whole endeavour is exactly how uncheesy Voyage is A big chunk of Abba Voyage is, of course, devoted to the Chiquititas, Fernandos, Mamma Mias and Waterloos of playlist overkill. It’s a theatre performance, with a 7.45 start and matinees, rather than a gig. Quite a lot of big numbers accompany this production, which really does recapture much of the essence of one of the biggest bands in the world in their prime, give or take a slightly glassy expression here and there. One thousand animators worked on digitising footage of the four, who were filmed performing their songs by 120 motion capture cameras, then projected on this 65m pixel screen. This purpose-built, collapsible 3,000-capacity venue was designed to be shipped elsewhere with a relatively smaller carbon footprint. The surround sound is terrific (291 speakers), the 10-piece band are lively, fleshing out the 70s and 80s-era vocals. The many descending ropes of light are not a million miles away from Four Tet’s mesmerising, immersive rave shows. The biggest number, though, is the bottom line. This venture needs to rake back £140m to break even. It has been a deliriously expensive undertaking, in which corporate sponsors, branding and ads are conspicuous by their absence. Until now, the most futuristic ersatz gig I have seen was Billie Eilish’s augmented reality livestream of 2020, in which a giant luxury car “raced” around the stage, footing some of the bill, no doubt. There is one sponsor here: the shipping company that will, eventually, take this nostalgic, future-forward circus elsewhere. Photograph: Johan Persson/PA It is only natural to muse which megastars might attempt to copy Abba’s 21st-century travelling show. But the group’s deep pockets – the Mamma Mia! millions? – and detail-savvy creative control have ensured that this quest is one that few will undertake, at least with such surefootednesss. Because the most enduring pleasure of the whole endeavour is exactly how uncheesy Voyage is; how it is not a Madame Tussauds with go-faster stripes. A kind of Scandinavian classiness is built into everything from the building’s exterior pine construction on up to the tunes themselves, in which stoicism and good sense barely hide the unbridled misery of a series of leave-takings. When All Is Said and Done and The Winner Takes It All deliver their bleak payload, even as they are sung by ghosts in the machine. And that misused Alan Partridge theme tune, Knowing Me, Knowing You, claws back much of its shard-like poignancy. The eye-popping treatment suggests a fracturing hall of mirrors, in which the members of Abba split up, embrace and fall apart again. Abba Voyage continues at the Abba Arena, Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, London E20, until May 2024 Watch a trailer for Abba Voyage.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/jun/21/sergio-ramos-diego-maradona-carlos-queiroz-iran

Football

2018-06-21T09:50:26.000Z

Sid Lowe

Sergio Ramos hits back at Diego Maradona, Carlos Queiroz and Iran

Carlos Queiroz stopped on the way out of the Kazan Arena and embraced Sergio Ramos before continuing towards the bus, which was still parked at one end. As the Iran manager departed, the Spain captain gave a knowing look, while someone spluttered: “And now he hugs you!” That drew an ironic smile. “At half-time he gave me a hug too and asked me how I am, we have a good relationship, so that’s why it surprises me that he then says things,” Ramos replied. “Like Diego Maradona, the things he says don’t make any sense.” The things Queiroz had said were not entirely complimentary – something Ramos attributed to the Portuguese’s desire to be talked about and something to which he responded in the moments after Spain’s 1-0 victory. Iran’s defensive, physical approach and alleged gamesmanship had become a topic for discussion. However if Ramos was relatively gentle with Queiroz – despite the manager appearing to criticise the player for Mohamed Salah’s injury in the Champions League final – he hit Maradona where it hurt. Diego Costa gets luck of the bounce as Spain deny stubborn Iran Read more Maradona had praised Diego Godín earlier this week, suggesting that while Ramos gets more attention the real star defender is the Uruguayan. Ramos, he said, is not a “crack” player. Asked about those comments, Ramos replied: “Maradona is a great, he is a crack and I respect him, so I’m not going judge his personal opinion. I think he is a crack but Argentinian football knows that Maradona is light years behind the best Argentinian player – who for me is Leo Messi.” The Queiroz saga had started with Dani Carvajal. After the game, Spanish television asked the right-back rather pointedly, indignantly even, about the way their opponents had gone about their task. “What Iran did is not football, it is disloyal,” Carvajal said. “On a tactical level, sitting deep, committing fouls is part of the game,” he explained, “but wasting time, faking injury, pretending you’re hurt, is bad for football and the referee has to cut that out. For me, it’s not football, it’s unfaithful [to the game], but that’s down to each individual and their conscience.” Ramos then said: “I’m not going to judge, it’s part of football. If they go out to waste time, that’s their problem. We like to win a different way. It is true that the referee allowed everything one way – for them – and blew almost all of our [challenges] as fouls.” The World Cup Fiver: sign up and get our daily football email. When Carvajal’s words were relayed to Queiroz, especially the use of disloyal, the manager asked: “Carvajal said that? That’s not true. There were two teams fighting hard, strong contact, and our players needed [medical] attention. If you come to the clinic tomorrow you will see that we have lost two players – and there was not even a yellow card given. I’m not complaining but that is a reality. “I recommend that Carvajal looks at his teammate who put an Egyptian player out of the World Cup.” Sergio Ramos Asked if he was criticising Ramos’s conduct in the Champions League final, Queiroz responded: “No. I’m just saying that if he criticises Iranian players it would be good for him to cast his eyes on his teammates.” He was then asked if he was saying Ramos had deliberately injured Salah. “I’m not saying anything,” he replied, “I’m just recommending that he looks at his own teammates. Ramos is a great player and there’s no problem. Sergio is a player I tried to sign at Madrid, I fought to bring him there.” “I know, I know,” Ramos said. “That’s why I’m surprised by what he said.” He was surprised too by what Queiroz did next.

Full

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/shortcuts/2017/sep/25/postcards-demise-britains-oldest-publisher-industry-death

Art and design

2017-09-25T16:09:13.000Z

Gavin Haynes

Postcards on the edge as Britain’s oldest publishers signs off

Things we forgot we already knew: the postcard industry is dying. The country’s oldest postcard publishers J Salmon has been churning small coloured squares of card out of its factory in Kent for more than 100 years. Until now. The fifth-generation brothers who still run the company have sent a letter to their clients, advising them that the presses will cease printing at the end of the year, and they will sell off their remaining stock throughout 2018. It’s a sad demise for a company that brought us some iconic images of our country. The firm’s story began in 1880, when the original J Salmon acquired a printing business on Sevenoaks high street, and produced a collection of twelve black and white scenes of the town. In 1912, the business broke through into the big time by commissioning the artist AR Quinton, who produced 2,300 scenes of British life for them, up until his death in 1934. From Redruth to King’s Lynn, his softly coloured, highly detailed watercolours of rosy milkmaids, bucolic pumphouses and picturesque harbour towns earned him a place in the hearts of the public. J Salmon did photographs, it did cheery oils of seaside imagery titled with a garrulous enthusiasm: “Eat More Chips!”, “Sun, Sand & Sea”, “We’re Going Camping!”. It commissioned the comic artist Reg Maurice (who often worked under the pseudonym Vera Paterson), to produce pictures of comically bulbous children with cutesy captions, alongside the usual stock images of British towns. A 1900s Edwardian saucy postcard by the artist Reg Maurice. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo It was this century’s changing habits – and technology – that did for them. “People are going for shorter breaks, not for a fortnight, so you’re back home before your postcards have arrived,” co-managing director Charles Salmon noted. He barely needed to say that Instagram and Facebook had made their product all but redundant, almost wiping out the entire industry in a decade. Wish you were here: a 1932 postcard from the seaside. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo Rodney Villiers is managing director of The Postcard Company. Based in Omagh, the firm physically prints the images that postcard publishers send them. Only, not so much any more. “We’ve lost about 90% of our customers. It’s a dying business, on its uppers,” he says. Villiers dates the decline to “around 2007” – the year social media bit hard. The Postcard Company has managed to hang on by diversifying its business into art printing. “We survive on postcards we print for art galleries and the like.” The kings of the saucy seaside postcard, Bamforth & Co, ceased to be in 2001. “When I heard the news, I was actually surprised they still existed,” says Michelle Abadie, co-director of the John Hinde Collection. John Hinde was once J Salmon’s biggest rival; it sold 50-60 million postcards a year at its peak in the 1960s, but it, too, shuttered about four years ago. The licensing for its rich archive of images was sold off, and repurposed in art books. This may be the fate of J Salmon. Because, in one sense, the death of the postcard is overstated. Like vinyl records, our fetish for the physical objects we left behind is already making its presence felt. “If you go into Waterstones now, they sell lots of postcards of book covers,” Abadie points out. “The idea itself isn’t dead – as a decorative object, people still want them.”

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https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/sep/25/global-goals-summit-2015-country-prioritise-sustainable-development

Global development

2015-09-25T15:50:47.000Z

Carla Kweifio-Okai

Open thread: which global goal should your country prioritise?

After more than two years of consultation and planning, the sustainable development goals have come to fruition. The 17 goals are designed to be the roadmap leading to a fairer world, tackling issues of poverty, inequality and climate change. Unlike their predecessors, the millennium development goals the new global goals are universal in nature, meaning they will be applied to all countries, rich and poor. Sustainable development quiz: what do you know about the global goals? Read more The 17 goals End poverty in all its forms everywhere End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture Ensure healthy lives and promote wellbeing for all at all ages Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls Ensure the availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialisation and foster innovation Reduce inequality within and among countries Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalise the global partnership for sustainable development Now it is time for each country to work out how they are going to implement the goals, and which ones they should prioritise. We’d like to hear your thoughts. Which goal should be on the top of your country’s list and why? You can leave your thoughts in the comment thread below, or email us at [email protected].

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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/nov/10/scott-morrison-could-restore-australias-climate-reputation-as-a-lifter-rather-than-a-leaner-with-five-steps

Opinion

2021-11-09T23:39:49.000Z

Tristan Edis

Scott Morrison could restore Australia’s climate reputation as a lifter rather than a leaner with five steps | Tristan Edis

Supporters of fossil fuels in Australia’s media and political classes have been gleefully echoing Greta Thunberg’s claims that the Glasgow climate summit has been a failure. Yet both European and American politicians have been busily working on other plans to discipline climate change bludgers. These involve measures such as taxing carbon intensive goods imported from countries without equivalent emission control policies, and also choking off finance to high-polluting industries. Which side of history will the Morrison government be on when Glasgow is over? Bill Hare Read more The Morrison government’s recently released long-term emissions reduction plan claims that it will protect us from such actions, stating the plan will “ensure Australian exporters are not targeted by trade action, and Australian businesses do not face cost of capital premiums”. While Scott Morrison might be able to fool voters, there is little chance the US and European governments will fail to notice this is a plan to freeload off their hard work. The government has been busily rearranging and rebadging funding to the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and the Renewable Energy Agency like its announcement on Wednesday. But foreign climate policy observers know this is largely just a shuffling around of old money allocated to these institutions by the Gillard Labor government. Given what this Liberal-National government has claimed in the past, it would be political suicide for them to acknowledge we should implement a carbon price. Still there is a five-step plan open to Morrison where he could still claim their climate policy was all about technology not taxes, while also restoring Australia’s reputation as a lifter rather than a leaner. 1. Accept the court verdict that the environment minister has a duty of care to prevent harm to children It might stagger you to hear about a judge’s finding that Australia’s environment minister should seek to protect Australia’s children from harm. This case brought by eight children argued that the environment minister should consider the potential harm new projects, such as coalmines, could have on children by exacerbating climate change before granting an approval under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. Instead of arguing the indefensible, the government could amend the act to require all major carbon-emitting facilities install best-available technology for containing carbon emissions within 10 years. 2. Require landlords to meet minimum standards for rental property thermal comfort and energy efficiency to be eligible for tax concessions The poor level of thermal comfort and energy efficiency of Australia’s rental housing stock is a national disgrace. Renters’ energy bills could be cut in half, while reducing emissions and improving people’s health by requiring landlords to ensure their rental homes meet basic standards of energy efficiency. This could be met through straightforward upgrades like better insulation; efficient heating and cooling via reverse cycle air conditioners; efficient water heaters; and solar power. Landlords receive large tax concessions which multiple economists have pointed out hinder economic growth while doing little to help renters. Why can’t we at least ask that in return landlords provide housing with reasonable levels of comfort for tenants with affordable energy costs? To completely remove any financial and political sting from such a reform, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation could provide finance at a concessional interest rate for such upgrades. 3. Amend the existing solar support scheme to drive uptake of batteries Australia leads the world in the uptake of solar systems at the household level. Around a quarter of dwellings nationally have a solar system. However, within the next few years we’ll reach the point where increasing amounts of solar generation will be spilled and wasted during midday hours because it exceeds overall power demand, and its market value will be very low. Yet once the sun goes down over the hours of 4pm until 8pm, more expensive gas-fired generators push the price up dramatically. To flatten prices in the evening and fully exploit the potential of solar, the government needs to amend the solar support scheme known as the Small Scale Renewable Energy Scheme to encourage the uptake of batteries. The level of government support provided to solar systems has been structured to decline over time and will be completely phased out after 2030. The rebate is now a quarter of what was provided per kilowatt 10 years ago and a third less than what it was five years ago. To drive significant uptake of batteries all the government needs to do is restore the solar rebate back to 2016 levels if the household also installs a battery. Meanwhile the rebate provided to those that install solar only will continue to decline, enhancing the incentive over time to couple batteries with a solar system. Green Energy Markets estimates that such a reform has the potential to drive the installation of as much as 10,000MW of home battery capacity by 2030 – equal in size to five Liddell coal-fired power stations. 4. Follow California’s lead on vehicle emission standards Morrison’s claim at the last federal election that Labor’s target to increase electric vehicle sales would steal the weekend is looking more and more ridiculous as each day passes. He has since tried to cover up for this embarrassing claim via a Future Fuels Strategy. Unfortunately, within hours of its release the Electric Vehicle Council labelled it a “fizzer” that left Australia as a “dumping ground for the world’s dirtiest vehicles”. Morrison could make an about face explained away by a change in policy in California. Scott Morrison wants to be Australia’s Prime Marketer – but voters aren’t buying his woeful climate rebrand Peter Lewis Read more For many decades California has been allowed to impose its own emission standards on motor vehicles that go beyond those regulated on a national basis in the US. In addition, a further 14 states within the US choose to impose the Californian standard instead of the federal government’s standard. All up these states represent over a third of the US motor vehicle market. This is a market that by 2035 will only allow the sale of zero emission passenger cars. By announcing Australia will follow the Californian standard, Morrison can claim he is merely responding to changing circumstances that have made electric vehicles a vastly more practical and affordable option for Australians. At the same time he will ensure Australian consumers aren’t saddled with obsolete oil-fuelled cars which by around 2035 will become increasingly expensive and difficult to service and fuel. 5. Implement a green gas target Both the Morrison government and the oil and gas industry, among others, are claiming hydrogen will be a miracle cure to our emission problems. While it’s theoretically possible that it could provide weather-independent energy at large scale and affordable cost, a heck of a lot of improvement is required in order fulfil its potential. Feasibility studies and “pilot hubs” won’t deliver this improvement. If there’s anything we’ve learnt about effective climate policy in the past 20 years it’s that to get the cost of low carbon technologies down we need to deploy them in the field and steadily build up manufacturing scale. So if industry and government are genuinely serious about delivering affordable hydrogen at scale, they should be willing to back it with a legislated target that would steadily grow the amount of hydrogen we use. According to the gas industry, it is possible to blend hydrogen into the existing gas supply infrastructure at levels as high as 10% without significant modification to existing equipment. If this is accurate then this is what suppliers should be required to deliver by 2030. Tristan Edis is the director of analysis and advisory at Green Energy Markets

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https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2014/dec/09/iaaf-alleged-blind-eye-suspicious-blood-tests-briton

Sport

2014-12-09T17:00:00.000Z

Sean Ingle

Top Briton said to be among suspicious blood tests notified to IAAF

Sensational claims that 150 athletes, including one of Britain’s best-known track and field stars, had suspicious blood values that were covered up have been played down by the International Association of Athletics Federations. The allegations, made by the German TV station WDR, were based on a whisteblower from the IAAF’s medical commission, who told the programme Inside Sport he had a list of dozens of suspicious blood tests that were not followed up from 2006 to 2008. Many of the samples were reported to have come from Russian athletes but among others involved were three British athletes who are said to be on the list. The IAAF inferred it would be wrong to assume too much from blood tests, given the athlete biological passport was introduced only in 2009 “when Wada [the World Anti-Doping Agency] set out a harmonised regulatory framework allowing the use of reliable and comparable values”. The IAAF also suggested the tests conducted between 2006 and 2008 might not be able to show an athlete had doped and has hinted that the knowledge of WDR’s whistleblower might be incomplete. “The blood data collected before 2009 were used for target purposes to trigger follow-up urine tests for EPO detection,” it said. “This was the practice by the few international federations which were conducting blood tests back then. Abnormal results were duly followed up by the IAAF, whenever possible logistically. “One cannot draw any conclusion on whether or not an athlete has doped on the basis of one single blood value. The whole concept of the ABP is to monitor the variations of an athlete’s profile consisting of multiple values. A member of the IAAF medical and anti-doping commission would not know whether follow-up tests would have been conducted or not.” Despite the IAAF’s vigorous defence, the claims heap yet more pressure on the governing body of world athletics. In the past week it has been alleged by WDR that a number of high-profile Russian athletes, including the London 2012 800m champion, Mariya Savinova, doped with the full knowledge of the Russian authorities. The IAAF treasurer and Russian Athletics Federation president, Valentin Balakhnichev, was also said to be aware a Russian official extorted €450,000 from Liliya Shobukhova, the London Marathon winner in 2011, to allow her to compete at the 2012 Olympic Games – yet did nothing. WDR also alleged Papa Massata Diack, the son of the IAAF president, Lamine Diack, had business links with the owner of the Singapore-registered company, Black Tidings, which was used to cover up doping. Diack has denied involvement with the company but has admitted to business links with its owner. The IAAF said the blood tests conducted before 2009 were used as part of a study which allowed it to identify the countries where there was a high risk of doping and to adjust its doping control programme accordingly.It claimed the results were not as reliable as those conducted since 2009. “When they are available, the IAAF has used the blood values prior to 2009 as secondary evidence, in support of an increased sanction in addition to the post-2009 profile to establish the athlete’s long history of doping,” it said. “However these values do not have the same level of reliability and strength as the post-2009 values which were collected under strict and stringent conditions.” Lord Coe, who last week announced his candidacy for the IAAF president and has called for the establishment of an independent doping body, said he would wait for IAAF’s ethics committee and Wada to report before considering what should happen next. “It is vital that the IAAF, the ethics committee and Wada complete their work on recent allegations. Only then can appropriate steps be considered,” he said.

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